Have been reading Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlighte...
If you know how to do step 1 and then follow this book to the T. You will experience the jhanas.
I however caveat, you don't want to do this. It's a bad decision. You don't want to do this, really.
>Is Jhana Really Better Than Sex?
Absolutely, up to the third jhana.
>Can Jhana Really Substitute For Other Pleasures?
The author clearly has not walked the full path. Then again someone who did would not write this blog.
>really helped people avoid addictions
Absolutely no question.
>IV. What Can Science Tell Us About Jhanas?
The science path is a bad decision.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enligh...
Let folks like Robert Wright make this mistake for you. For someone like him, he almost certainly has lost the ability to enter jhana.
When I started my meditation practice, the guided meditations in the Calm app [3] helped me a lot.
0: https://amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlightenmen...
1: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...
In essence this book tells why secular Buddhism (secular, western meditation) is actually a very reasonable way of spirituality.
If you're looking for consciousness expanding activities, I found my meditation practice and buddhist readings were 1000x more powerful than my drug attempts. For an HN'er I'd recommend starting with this:
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlighte...
as its more sciency/modern than diving into the Pali Canon or popular but dated 1960s attempts to westernize Buddhism.
The mind constantly makes philosophy. Kind of. Or mine does. Why this, why that. What if this and that. Sometimes it is useful to just let the thoughts be. Sometimes to more analytically counter it: this is not worth neither worrying about nor philosophizing about because A, B, C.
See for example William James and his counter-arguments to philosophers (according to him) who worries about “Angels balancing on a needle’s pin” (Pragmatism).
I’ve also incorporated William James thoughts on religion to reconcile my atheism with my spiritual/religious beliefs (The Will to Believe). He says something like: if you believe, what are the upsides, what are the downsides? You might not be able to prove it scientifically, but is that necessary? How I’ve applied it: if I believe in religion X and I find out before I die that it was not true, have I wasted my time? (This is more about praxis than theory.) This is counter to a lot of theists and atheists who mix religion too much with identity. I.e. I am rational therefore I ought to not believe. To be concrete: if I practiced Buddhist meditation for five years and found out that Buddhism is not true,[1] will it have been for nothing? Probably not because the benefits of meditation are well-documented at this point.
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The most fascinating philosophy is the Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that rigorously analyzes things in order to ultimately arrive at conclusion that sort of says that most of metaphysics are ineffable to the analytic mind. Because you might need the process of analysis in order to arrive at that non-answer. Maybe that was something that Wittgenstein did in his first book?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Buddhism-True-Philosophy-Enlighte...