Meditation alters structure of the brain.

Read the article:

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monksmed.html (http://)

That link doesn’t work.

But I read somewhere how videogames alter the structure of the brain, which could be somewhat implemented in the same category with meditation.

They actually compared it to mediation.
Both have deep concentration level intact during the activity. The most interesting part was how it affects ones dreams.
When someone who plays plenty amounts of games, he – during dreaming -becomes somewhat aware of the fact that he is asleep
You give yourself instructions and guidance during the dream, like you’re playing doom.

Would be worth it thought, practicing ‘control’ so you would gain the ability to construct dreams while being conscious.

That its is called Lucid Dreaming(LD).

You can find lots of info about that in the net.

You can auto induce LD. Just need some pratice.

I´ve lots of thing to worry about on my life, or else i would train it.

I had some LDs. Some of them are the middle term between normal dreams and reall LDs and "newbies" thing that such "middle term" LD are real LDs.

In my few LDS i has amazing dreams about flying. In one of the dreams i was runing in my house, then i jump into the air. I was flying above big trees and i could see everything in high detail. It was beautiful! Then i woke up.

On other dream i was flying above buildings, so, so high that i got scared. Again it was great!

The problem with LDs its that you are so aware of the fact that you are dreaming that you will wake up in no time.

Besides the LDs there are hypnagogic hallucinations. They are normal and completly harmless. I bet that if every people knew how to induce LDs and hypno. hallucinations there would be no need for drugs.

About LDs and these hallucinations it would be better to create a new thread.

Coming to our discussion, unfortunatly i dont have other link.

I know that in the link you could read a very dense and hard document in pdf with the details of the scientific experiment. For what i could see one needs to have good knowledges about neurology.

I know that there was another link speaking about a similar study with monks.

If the structure of the brain were never altered, there would be no learning or memory. I'm sure meditation induces some profound changes, though.

Kazbadab, I think Lucid Dreaming is something altogether different, but also an interesting phenomenon.

i agree with you

about lucid dreams i spoke about that because Perkele mentioned something about it.

Working link:

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monksmed.html

this seems dodgy to me for various reasons.
For a start it is elitist. I straightaway disenfranchizes people who are 'professional meditators'.

It contradicts what i have read about a cruel theocracy coming from Tibetan Buddhism----like where was the 'compassion' then?

It contradicts the personal experience i have had when trying to openly debate with a cross range of Buddhists, including a Tibetan Buddhist. I have never suffered so much severe abuse as i did from that lot. which was at infidel forums. not an OUNCE of compassion did the have!

Also people natrually have compassion. does this mean they have A 'higher gamma wave ratio'?.....or is all this stuff merely reductionist

i mean, shit. neuroscience? they'll be joinin up with big pharma next and pushin pills that up yer gamma wave frequency!

meant to say, it disenfranchises people who AREn'T 'professional meditators'....and i would like to add that i have also read that too MUCH meditation is not a good thing

Now i am really upset!!!!!!!!!!!

ARARGGAGHHH!!

This is soooooo BAADD!!

I was writing my post, speaking a little about compassive meditation and suddenly i deleted without wanting it, my message!!

Sorry guys, but now iam mad and maybe only later i will write it again....

and your post has sparked off My compassion! if you were here i'd gently hug you......do I know what that is like! shit, you dont know my system ..let me explain. this may make you feel better, hearing someoneELESEs misfortune...heh
i access the open internet via a digital set-top box which has incredibly low-memory, and i get cut off after a short ime online. the times i hav completed a post, dont passionatley and JUSt as i am about to submit it, or just bfore, caPOW! i get cut off and lost the fukin lot........it makes you hot. but sometimes in a definat spirit i just 'cooly' start aGain

i look foreward to your post.....beeeee coooool hehe

lol! thanks for the "hug"!

Basically i was saying that there is a difference between normal meditation that we see and between compassion meditation.

I´ve tried both of it. You dont need to know the first one in order to pratice the second, but you would benifit from it. "Standard" meditation its intended to develop concentrations skills. If you have a great amount of awareness for shure that other parts of your life will benefit from it...like compassive meditation.

This last one its a not so easy meditation because you need to forgive, in your heart, all the people that you consider your enemy, forgive everybody that had hurt you.

But if you succeed you will feel much more "clean" and "light" and your compassion will increase, because you will feel conection to other beings- empathy. With "standard" meditation your awareness will grow up. Your mind will be more focused on "here" and "now", instead of thinking in stupid things. You will be aware of your surrounding and thats a great sensation. You will feel lucid.

For that reason, both types of meditation combined are powerful.

I admit that only a few times i was able to reach a "good" state of the mind. Only at a few days ago i decided to come back to meditation, because its an hard task not for lazy minds (as mine...trying to change that).

I dont pretend to meditate all the time, but from my past experiences, meditation its great.

The problem is that many western people in nowdays meditate just because that a "vogue" thing or just because they will have better concentration.

Concentration and meditation are secondary objectives, for me, to reach the major objective: Nirvana. As a budhist (newbie in pratice, but i love it from years) i believe that we can reach a graceful stae of mind.

If i dont reach it, at least i wanna be near and i wanna reach a state in wich i will be able to help others.

Sounds crazy but thats what i want.

HI...glad to make you laugh.....

regarding your last bit....if you like it, fine. that's cool
but let me tell you a bit what i do

i am a passionate person. i can get angry, feel lustful sentimental, bored, giggly...you name it. i dont try and level it out, but allow its flow. so fro example...thinkin of an enemy will vary fro me. i might be in the mood to curse....then i might think of them later as some lesson and thenk them...then aother time depending what mood i am in i will be spittin anger at some thing they did. and that's me

i dont believe in 'meditation'. i find it a bit phony. i like how animals are. natrual. a cat...tiger,,,,brid etc will sit when they sit and move when they move. when they do it it is fully done. i like that. though i CAN see the value of sitting and allowing right brain to open up....expansive. but not in a Buddhist fomral way. i dont like all of that. sitting with aching legs etc...uh uh

as for 'nirvana'........i wonder how you define it?

lol, i am a bit like you but i wanna have more control on my feelings.

Nrivana its a state of mind in wich you no longer suffer because you see things are they really are. This is a technicall concept. I think that i will know what Nirvana is when i reach it.

Its like a blind born person: he can have lots of theory about "vision" about "seeing", but only when he heals his disease (actually its not possible, i am just in a supposition) he will know (not in a intelectual way) what nirvana is.

My mind its to lazy for Nirvana, but at leats i will give it a try.

btw, i bet that a good night of sex with the greatest "hotties" in the world its better than Nirvana :-)

and your post has sparked off My compassion! if you were here i'd gently hug you......do I know what that is like! shit, you dont know my system ..let me explain. this may make you feel better, hearing someoneELESEs misfortune...heh
i access the open internet via a digital set-top box which has incredibly low-memory, and i get cut off after a short ime online. the times i hav completed a post, dont passionatley and JUSt as i am about to submit it, or just bfore, caPOW! i get cut off and lost the fukin lot........it makes you hot. but sometimes in a definat spirit i just 'cooly' start aGain

i look foreward to your post.....beeeee coooool heheYou guys need to compose your posts on a word processor and then cut and paste them. That's pretty handy anyway because word processors are a lot more ergonomic than the primitive editor that comes with a BBS. Most of us probably started doing that after the second or third time we lost a big one. Then we get lulled into a sense of security and stop until it happens again.

You guys need to compose your posts on a word processor and then cut and paste them. That's pretty handy anyway because word processors are a lot more ergonomic than the primitive editor that comes with a BBS. Most of us probably started doing that after the second or third time we lost a big one. Then we get lulled into a sense of security and stop until it happens again.

and it would be good if you read the CONTENT and contributed rather making disparaging judgments about others contributions.

lol, i am a bit like you but i wanna have more control on my feelings.

Nrivana its a state of mind in wich you no longer suffer because you see things are they really are. This is a technicall concept. I think that i will know what Nirvana is when i reach it.

Its like a blind born person: he can have lots of theory about "vision" about "seeing", but only when he heals his disease (actually its not possible, i am just in a supposition) he will know (not in a intelectual way) what nirvana is.

My mind its to lazy for Nirvana, but at leats i will give it a try.

The vibe i get from you, is that you are one of the most human sounding people i've met here. so you must be doin somethin right
but that dont mean i agree with EVERYthing you say.....heh
you see, the concept of 'nirvana', i view as a carrot on a stick. i just dont buy it.
everyone has their own capacities, and life circumstances. for example, the middle class person living in his minimilist, safe world, with his fresh veggies, and non smoking environment, and good bank balance can kid himself he's got nirvana cause he meditates.......but try it on a council estate
so....does that mean one has to go to a monastry?.......ughhhhhhh!
so. also i see the concept of nirvana as being stasis. phony. like the Christian heaven. i just like real. real people. if someone was comin on that nuthin touches them cause theys in a 'higher' place than me, i'd smell a rat

btw, i bet that a good night of sex with the greatest "hotties" in the world its better than Nirvana :-)

hahahhhh...nowwwww yer talkin!

If the structure of the brain were never altered, there would be no learning or memory. I'm sure meditation induces some profound changes, though.

Kazbadab, I think Lucid Dreaming is something altogether different, but also an interesting phenomenon.
There is no physical restructuring of the brain in the sense that molecules get physically shifted.

Likewise, there is no physical data that shows us that memory is a function of the brain. In fact there is no evidence that the brain is anything other than a sophisticated signal processor, and that other organs of the body fill subsidiary finctions in the signal processing.
Geistkiesel

That its is called Lucid Dreaming(LD).

You can find lots of info about that in the net.

You can auto induce LD. Just need some pratice.

I´ve lots of thing to worry about on my life, or else i would train it.

I had some LDs. Some of them are the middle term between normal dreams and reall LDs and "newbies" thing that such "middle term" LD are real LDs.

In my few LDS i has amazing dreams about flying. In one of the dreams i was runing in my house, then i jump into the air. I was flying above big trees and i could see everything in high detail. It was beautiful! Then i woke up.

On other dream i was flying above buildings, so, so high that i got scared. Again it was great!

The problem with LDs its that you are so aware of the fact that you are dreaming that you will wake up in no time.

Besides the LDs there are hypnagogic hallucinations. They are normal and completly harmless. I bet that if every people knew how to induce LDs and hypno. hallucinations there would be no need for drugs.

About LDs and these hallucinations it would be better to create a new thread.

Coming to our discussion, unfortunatly i dont have other link.

I know that in the link you could read a very dense and hard document in pdf with the details of the scientific experiment. For what i could see one needs to have good knowledges about neurology.

I know that there was another link speaking about a similar study with monks.

LDs are not 'drug' phenomena. LDs are simply a matter of 'waking up' in your dream so that you are lucid, wide awake aware to the intyensity that you remember the details in the physically awake state. In other words your dream state of reality is only vaguely aware of this physical awareness and vive versaus. The secret of LDs is in the pratice of recognizing that in LDs there is no physical body to carry around and navigate with. The person who trys to walk in a 'lucid dream' has an immediate problem, there are no physically analogius structures in the dream world, physical bodies are redundant, superfilous etc, they get in the way o0f movment, motion, flying, jumping from a star to the center of the farthest galaxy with a switch of thought. The physical body is asleep; the alertness one begins to observe in sleep that gets shut off rather abruptly is from reconition of a nonphysical and strange reality. Fear , if nothing else, trigegs the response of the body to 'get awake' and protect yourself from the dangers hinted at in waking up in dreamland, a stranger in a strange land.

LDs are best practiced like learning how to walk, LDs require learning how to 'fly' wiothout a physical body. Navigating in LDs is only partially analogous to learning navigation in the physical world.

The meditation of which you speak is a generic word for all the attempts people have tried to enhance the mind/body interfaces and control. The reality of a person's life is not necessarily changed as is their ability to process energy of life due tot he meditation alone. It goes much deeper. The results can only be described intuitively. When a persons deep perception about another person has been adjusted in a meditative states then the relationship between those two persons can be enhanced as the imeditator does not respond to meetings in the exact way, something is perceived by the other as positive whjen once it was negative. Teh relationship is enhance without the two going into a deep conversational mode working out the differences etc, automatic enhancement of personal relationships.

As an anlaogy think of the energy processing that occuring as the mind setting various valves and filters when processing thought or mind energy. If the sequence of the circuitry is not 'just right' then the energy tries to force it way through the body , or to boerrow energy from another process thereby shorting another mental need to fill the one though to be in need. This is a clumsy picture I reognize;careless mind development tends to induce 'burning' and 'freezing' of the mental circuitry or to induce other pathologically observed conditions.

All of this of course is a function oif what a person 'knows' or think she knows; all the beliefs and understandings that a person picks up in life, including social, political, religious, physical, chemical and so on, where all of these 'belief systems' are linked together in a complex structure, a mode that has no physical analogue capable of equating the processes; these modes, connecting 'all' are imposed on by the person who is 'accepting' what is bbeing taught as 'truth', or what is desired, or by sheer obedience due to intimidation, threats, love, ignorance etc.

Western psychiatry has the person look inward to see the reality of their life in such a way that the energies causing pain can be absorbed with understanding and deflection, of rearranging the picture one has of her/his life. Meditation is more like the mind doing all this for you during deep meditative states. The 'fix' is going on in the background on a level of complexity that would literally shame most psychiatrists.

Geistkiesel

What a coincidence I over heard somebody saying that today.

Ya, LDs its a nice topic for conversation. btw, do you speak on that kind of things with your friends?

When i speak on LD, hypna. hallucntaions, dreams, sleep paralysis, etc my friends will chick on me. They think that i am crazy, but then what? If i dont speak on crazy thing people will chat-chat on boring things...

What your friends are doing is THe main insight of where our culture is ay--its paradigm. for example, in the previous paradigm which was church and state, if you talked about what you mentioned you could have been thoought of as being frindly with the 'Devil'...Now with science and state which promotes a mechanical paradigm, you are thought 'crazy' because the main belief is in 'mental health'.....ie., that if you dont
bow down to what THEY demand is 'normal---as defined by the presnt 'priests'-the psychiatrists---then you can be 'diagnosed' as 'mentally ill'. as you can see this belief permeates even in close intimate relations with friends and family
sorry to digress from the main subject, but what you say is really relevant for pointing out i felt