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@Jeroen said:

@person said:
In the more traditional circles I'm familiar with they don't just drop people into meditation. There's lots of study to understand the view, lots of preliminary practices. And to do long, solo retreats its way more of that.

Yes, when I was studying at the Tibetan Gelug temple near my home I also heard that they had a long preparatory trajectory before they would encourage people to learn meditation. This was with the Dalai Lama’s school of Buddhism, not all Tibetan schools share this approach as you probably know with your background in Tibetan Buddhism.

Yeah, they aren't all the same in approach, but they all have some degree of preliminary practice like study or prostrations. And the lay population doesn't really meditate at all.

Zen is fairly meditation forward. But my overall point was that the way meditation is treated in the west today is a new development, different from how it has been treated traditionally.

In the modern context, when I've looked at 3-10 day retreats they usually do mention caution around pre existing mental health issues.

That’s true, but the article goes further than that. They say people with high degrees of anxiety (not even clinically diagnosed), large amounts of neuroticism and so on need to be aware. It’s an attempt to classify people into at-risk groups using ordinary behaviour as a pointer to what might emerge during a meditation retreat, but not in a scientifically sound manner.

I think it’s more that people view meditation as a “health hack” for improved calmness, mental resilience and so on. It is marketed that way, in the States especially, with as a consequence that people buy a book and start experimenting at home. Which is harmless and beneficial for short stretches of half an hour, but when you go over the top and do three hours multiple times a week you might run into some of these unexpected side effects.

Then you are essentially stuck because you have no support, no knowledgeable teacher to call a halt to your experimentation. Although it has to be said that even if you had a teacher you might run into the “the cure for bad meditation is more meditation” attitude, which is so prevalent that they even mention it in the article.

Yeah, I think that's kind of where we are today. Its oversold, it lacks the traditional support framing and personal guidance.

I felt for Willoughby's experience of rejection and denial from some in the community for speaking up.

ty person for addressing this. the western world have to take the whole practice.without the foundation of ethics and wise seeing our mind body needs a sure ground of being of right intention to insee the mind body complex. without sila/ethics and prajna/wisdom doing effort mindfulness and concentration or western meditation leads to a mind crack.

that is why step 6 to 8 is for prepared mind to focus on the path of sila and wisdom. if people dont have their mind body prepared psychosis may fracture reality;

the buddha in his wisdom prapared his followers on the grounds of reality to be less dukkha in how you live the steps 1 to 5 , right view, right intention, right speech, right action and right livelyhood before you refine your mind to nirvana.

its a caution you cant bypass the steps in the buddha dharma , foundation first then mind studying of 6to 8 noble path.