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@Jeffrey
In my experience, despite being a Zen guy, intense meditation is more often than not, just another expression of asceticism.

Or put another way, when concentration is appropriate it can aid in the ego's deconstruction, whereas when a concentration is inappropriate it simply aids in an ego's attachment to that concentration.
The latter is well represented on the Tibetan wheel of life as the Asuras who continually try to storm "heaven". Those who are unable to simply accept where they actually are.

Here, the importance of the concentration described in the 8 FP is not just in the bare development of concentration but is found in the "right or appropriate" manifestation of it.

Where the artifice of a deep push into a meditation practice can definitely unearth personal and disturbing challenges that the practitioner might not yet be ready to address, a softer, steady & consistent meditation of the moment is the safer route to follow (especially beyond a teacher's guidance) for how it tends to only bring up that which the meditator is actually capable of presently facing.

Most games offer the underlying chaos of life to be assuaged by the illusion that they are actually under our control. They are the sandboxes of play defined as much by the artificial walls containing them as they are by the opiated denial of suffering's causes and their true resolutions.

I think....
to assess how much of a junkie to a game one actually might be, the best evidence comes from not only seeing how long one could put aside the game but is in seeing how long one can do that without substituting that game for anything else.

cheers H.

I wonder from experience if an (at home) retreat life triggers my mental illness which can last for months of hearing and believing delusive stuff. So I'm hesitant to do more intense meditation, periods and focus, to avoid triggering that mental stuff.

So my life is going to revolve around something other than meditation to stay mentally healthy. I like to read books fiction and non-fiction. I like to play games that uncover a story and explore along with creative and imaginative (self) narrative and strategy. I don't get obsessive with either games or books and it's just a part of my life.

I think a life without intense meditation can still be a compassionate life and include games and fun activities in moderation.

My comment may or may not be helpful or in the direction you wish to go.

However, my recently adopted view is that we like games because they offer the possibility of progress and reward, without the risk of failure.

If you fail at a game (get "killed", your village getting "destroyed", your resources "plundered"), there is no real consequence. But if you "win" you feel the same feelings as if you'd "won" at something in real life.

Many real-life activities are very similar to playing games and use the same skills. However, here we are faced with the prospects of both real wins and real failures.

That's my view at the moment at least.

@FleaMarket said:
why Buddha pointed to even Chess as a distraction

I’ve asked myself that question, and I came up with these points:

1. It is a waste of time, activity unconnected to the search for enlightenment
2. It is a focus on the mind’s activity, not no-mind (or is that too Zen?)
3. It is concerned with doing, and not with Being
4. It creates a habit of goal-oriented thinking, which is not an open, meditative state of mind

Cinematic games I think are worse, because they are much more convincing simulations of illusory worlds, with which you still interact as if they are chess-like games, but they are built to trigger your survival instincts and can also act on your emotions. If Mara is the lord of illusions, what exactly is his relationship to games?

I had this discussion with my cousin as well, he is quite into spirituality and has a coach with whom he discusses these things. His view was that even films, books and such take time away from the spiritual search and are unnecessary. Although, he still games and reads and watches films. No relaxation at all seems quite extreme to me, I have to say.

As with alcohol, I think one should just spend some time contemplating whether it is beneficial. Can you find what attracts you to these activities? In the end if it turns out to clearly not be beneficial, then you will drop it in the moment of realisation.

@FleaMarket said:

@marcitko said:
Today I am trying an experiment: just to be productive all day. Even "active rest" counts (not mindless scrolling). Kind of a "hurry slowly" attitude and see what happens.

How does it work in practice? What's active rest like for you?

"Active rest". I'm not quite sure what I mean either but I'd say it's doing something relaxing that's deliberate and wholesome? I can watch a movie that I actually want to watch or I can just watch any movie just to make some noise and "run away". I can open Facebook and contact someone I'd enjoy talking to or I can mindlessly scroll my feed. I can go to Youtube and deliberately look for videos on topics I am trying to learn or that interest me or I can watch the first video that grabs my attention just to pass the time. I can go for a walk without a destination, just for fun, I can read a good book (as I did today), I can watch the clouds go by, I can make a good meal, I can call someone just to talk without a reason..."Active rest" - I'm still exploring - but it makes sense today.

Thats certainly one aspect of what makes games attractive, @marcitko. And of course because I feel these negative things doesn’t necessarily mean that others will feel the same thing. If you only play puzzle games on your iPhone you likely won’t feel the same.

But for me I think some of it is related to my period of intense World of Warcraft playing. I know that engaged my passion, my enthusiasm, and it left traces deep inside. When I dream, I sometimes still dream of playing that game. So spiritually it also had certain consequences.

So when I feel tempted to re-engage with those activities, I end up asking myself, is it beneficial? Does it help me on my chosen path, which is the spiritual journey?

While it becomes clear at an early point in spiritual growth that shooting other animated things in the face with guns doesn't bring anyone closer to the goal, reaching the understanding behind why Buddha pointed to even Chess as a distraction doesn't always come right away.

Lately I've been viewing sila and precepts less like rules and more like dance moves. If you want to dance well, you have to hit the moves at the right rhythm and with the right effort and stuff. It's not done because the dance is forced on you, it's done because the dance is beautiful and enjoyable and entices you to dance it well; a dance of laying down the burden. There are still moments in the song when I like to dance my own moves rather than the choreographed ones. Games are of those moments.

I used to spend lots of time on Counterstrike and WoW and many others. Similar to you @jeroen, I played WoW on launch and playing it every free moment quickly became my goal in life. It filled very quickly many pockets of emptiness which took much more time and effort to fill before it came along. A marketplace of interactions and challenges and colors and surprises and rewards all right on screen for as long as I wanted, it felt. What I was missing from here or there in my daily life it made up for and was incredibly easy to access.

But naturally as anyone who's done anything for a while knows what happens, it grew stale. The add-ons and expansions were just rinse-and-repeat, the community changed, the mystery became known, mastered, there was nothing new and it stopped working. But I soldiered on. I pressed on because maybe that would change and return to those happier days. I desired those old days back badly and clung to the memory. I struggled frustratingly, selfishly, day after day on that game. The joy from those treasured memories were all I liked about it any more. And it became almost like a job that I didn't even really want to go to...which I'd play after my job...which I didn't really want to go to...as a reward to myself for doing that job. Yeah I don't know how that worked for so long either. Addiction to the memory of what it used to be, ignoring what really was being experienced.

Oddly enough I don't see how my behavior with gaming is fundamentally different from infatuation with other hobbies like sports or cooking or tech or music or chess; maybe even the spiritual journey. It's our human-being life-cycle. We're born, we learn to like and dislike things, we try to do the things we like more than the things we dislike until we die. Without other direction, that just sounds pretty natural and standard-world human-being behavior.

In fact I'd argue there's value in having experienced deep infatuation or addiction to something prior to beginning the spiritual journey. Typically those with an addiction have had insight into the nature of total absorption into their activity. Even if that activity was unhealthy, the methods of associating to it required tools of mindfulness and concentration. There were times playing WoW when there were no distractions where I was essentially "zoned-in" to the screen. The game was all that existed in that moment and every detail was sensitive to. It could have been a chef in a kitchen, a footballer on the field, an engineer in the shop.. but that might be a discussion for another topic. This one's about letting go of games, not for the sake of games. Though interestingly enough using that memory of being absorbed into a computer screen, into the activity, examining it for the useful parts like the methods of associating, and applying some of those methods to the spiritual journey are having some interesting results.

I think I’ve reached a turning point in my relationship with games. In the past I’ve mentioned that I had a strongly ambivalent stance towards games. I worked on games as a designer and a software developer for many years, but ever since finding myself on a spiritual path ten years ago, I have been getting signs that these two don’t go well together. It’s been difficult for me to let go of it because it was a huge part of my life and my passion, and coming across things online has kept enticing me back.

Recently I made a summary on paper of the things telling me games weren’t a beneficial direction. Firstly, violence, rewards and addictiveness. Second, that you’re not getting closer to truth and enlightenment, but that you get more stuck in illusions and other people’s dreams. Third, that the Buddha also said games were a waste of time and energy (admittedly he was talking about early variants of chess). Fourth, I can feel in my mental states that most games play on desire, lust for battle, challenge and passion, and that this feeds the fires within and doesn’t lead to inner peace.

So something seems to have changed, making this summary has allowed me to drop a few things. My father advised me to adopt another activity, to channel my energies in a different direction, and I think that is wise advice. Do something else instead. Thanks dad.