this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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23
Meditation is like drugs but better (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 21 hours ago by rainrain@sh.itjust.works to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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[–] MrFunkEdude@piefed.social 3 points 1 hour ago

The fact that people in this thread are bitching at each other and calling each other names over how they approach meditation is sad. Over the last year I have practiced Transcendental Meditation, Samitha, Vipassina, and I am now working on Zazen. I practice for two hours each day. Once in the morning and once in the late afternoon.

From all of them the one thing I have taken away is an increase in empathy and compassion. By calming the mind and noticing the impermanence of thought and coming to the realization that the majority of people suffer from their thoughts which they have little control over, I was able to extend compassion and widen my capacity for empathy. So I don't understand the vitriol being tossed around by those professing to know what meditation "really is".

If someone is saying that they meditate and it's as good as drugs for them, then who am I to judge? If someone says that they meditate and it's not as good as drugs, who am I to judge? If someone says that they meditate and that it doesn't increase their capacity for empathy and compassion, again, who am I to judge?

There is a Zen saying... "Practice like a blind person in a dark room.” I encourage everyone to meditate on this informal Koan.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 6 points 12 hours ago

Why not both

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Lol OP is actually right but not explaining it well in the comments.

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Gimme your better explanation please.

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 7 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Meditation is essentially a self-imposed flow state; an artifact of consciousness reflecting extreme focus. It's akin to a runners high. Its features include ego dissolution, a distorted sense of time, reduced perceptions of pain, and feelings of bliss.

This is normally due to the release of neurotransmitters - dopamine, serotonin, endorphins and GABA, the same chemicals affected by common recreational drugs.

These features are regrettably short-cut with drug use. With training, these states of consciousness can be attained without any downsides (barring destabilizing intuitive realizations like free will being an illusion), though at the cost of not being quite as powerful as drugs.

Think of it this way, meditation is like pouring happy juice on your brain slowly. Taking drugs is like placing the bottle on your head and smashing it with a hammer - sure, you're going to get a lot of happy juice on your brain, but the glass might make it unbearable, you have no choice when it ends, and the next day you're going to be forced to pick the shards of glass out.

Weird analogy I suppose, but it helps to illustrate why OP might prefer the slow drip.

At the end of the day, there's no debate about whether meditation can produce these feelings - it's simply a matter of whether a person has the time and interest to seek these things out, or whether they want to flood their brains with happy juice.

Personally, I live in both camps; I've had profound realizations about my own mind while meditating, but I also like getting zonked off my gourd.

Shout to my own comment from a month ago

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Meh. Your view is born of merely conventional thought and scant experience.

Here's better.

Meditation is a thing that you do with your attention (aka awareness, sati... depending on who you talk to).

By attention I mean what you direct when you pay attention, what do you concentrate when you concentrate and what gets jerked around when you are distracted.

Attention is the axis of your reality. Its action determines what is visible and invisible, what is important and unimportant. Its shape determines your perspective.

We basically have 2 forms of meditation. 1) a refined form of concentration 2) sortof the opposite.

Drugs influence the attention via the flesh. Like a rough road bounces the driver by bouncing the car.

Meditation addresses the attention directly.

Drugs are limited the way any device is limited. It is crude the way any dumb machine is crude. It is weak as all dumb things are weak. Weak borrowed wings

Meditation is not limited this way. Meditation shows you your own wings and then you pump up those wings and make them strong.

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Let’s break this down: You’re essentially saying that paying attention to something is how we experience reality. Well, no kidding. If you pay attention to something, you’re going to notice it more. But that's not some grand, cosmic revelation. That’s just basic human perception.

I think there's a bit of overcomplication here. Yes, meditation involves focusing attention, but describing it as the "axis of your reality" is a bit much. The basic idea is that by concentrating, we become more aware of certain things, which does influence our experience. That’s a simple process, not some deep philosophical mystery.

The "wings" analogy also feels like an attempt to make meditation sound more magical than it really is. Meditation is a way to help focus the mind, find calm, and possibly gain insight. But it's not about discovering some hidden set of "wings" or some grand spiritual power. It’s just a practice for mental clarity.

As for the comparison to drugs, both meditation and drugs alter consciousness, but in different ways. Drugs can give an intense experience, while meditation tends to offer a slower, more controlled shift in awareness. Saying that drugs are weak because they’re like a “dumb machine” doesn’t really capture the complexity of either experience. Both have their place, and both can have benefits, depending on what someone’s looking for.

In short, meditation isn’t some mystical or supernatural process, it’s about training attention in a specific way. The real value comes from consistency and practice, not some grand revelation.

Edit: also, bold of you to assume my experiences are scant, and born of conventional thought - when you have no way of actually understanding what experiences I've had.

It's evident that your experiences with meditation aren't sufficient to counter your hubris.

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Yes scant and born of conventional thought. You talk like a guy who just finished reading a pop-psychology book on meditation.

And your retort consists of "well no kidding" (so we agree, right?) and "it isn't a grand cosmic revelation" (or "deep philosophical mystery") (which I didn't say at all).

Look, if your reality consists of what you see, circumscribed by what you don't see, and attention draws that line, then yes, I'd say that "axis of reality" characterizes that nicely.

And if your attention is bound by, say, a thousand habits, and meditation removes those habits (temporarily, messily, in the case of drugs), replacing them with intelligent action (a flying-like freedom, one might say), then yes, "wings" fits nicely too.

As for the difference between drugs and meditation. You are splitting hairs. I'd call the one splashing on the shore and the other going for a swim. Same ocean tho.

But you think I'm overstating it and my metaphors are overblown, well, that's just your opinion and there is a strong possibility that our experiences simply differ.

[–] Dropper_Post@lemm.ee 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe i was doing meditation wrong. Can anyone give a tutorial how to do it so it’s better than drugz?

[–] Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Nah OP's just doing drugs wrong

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

[–] Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

That's on her for injecting 4 marijuanas at once

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 14 points 16 hours ago

I've meditated a lot.

I've done a few drugs.

I liek drugz

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 18 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Nah, I am 100% certain drugs are better.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 hours ago

I was gonna say, OP's got it backwards, but if that works for them, more power to them !

[–] serpineslair@lemmy.world 41 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Drugs are like meditation but better.

[–] farcaster@lemmy.world 22 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

No, meditation is not like drugs. If anything it's like exercise for a very particular part of your mind. It can train the mind to be calm, patient, observant and focused. I practiced for many years. In my experience it does not in and of itself bring any sort of feelings of happiness.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 0 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

No, meditation is not like drugs.

You've been doing the wrong meditation. ;)

Seriously, though, I kindof bristle any time I hear anyone say that "meditation is" some particular thing. What meditation is is extremely broad and varied to the point that it nearly defies definition.

Sure many buddhist jhana practitioners will say that the purpose of jhanas is insight, but what if I develop my jhana skills and never seek insight? Is that really not meditation?

Or, if I sit quietly and learn to contact my subconscious and/or Jungian archetypes. Or if I make up my own idiosyncratic form of practice specifically in order to try to become a hungry ghost in the next life, is that really not meditation?

(Mind you, it's valid to accept a particular strict definition of meditation within a specific context. If I was at a vipassana retreat doing white skeleton meditation, that'd probably be kindof assholeish. And if the teacher was like "no, correct meditation is such-and-such," I wouldn't be like "nuh-uh my ass is meditation, man". This situation is pretty different. If OP has found a way to "meditate" that's "better than drugs" rather than "training the mind to be calm, patient, observant and focused", that hardly makes it invalid or "not meditation." Any more so than if they say "nice to meet you" rather than "hey, what's up", that makes it "not a greeting.")

[–] Zozano@aussie.zone 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

It might be more beneficial for some people to think of 'meditation' as 'exercise'.

If someone says they've exercised, we dont automatically assume they've lifted weights, or done cardio, or stretches; we know how broad this term is.

One of my friends did 'meditation' during his karate days, but failed to understand a lot of basics around the science focused practices like mindfulness.

Turns out his dojo was practicing zen meditation, which involves trying to illicit vivid imagery in the mind (according to him).

Now, I dont know a lot about zen-meditation, maybe they did it as a cultural thing, but from what he was able to tell me, it sounded like a whole lot of junk mind flailing.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

zen meditation... trying to illicit vivid imagery in the mind... it sounded like a whole lot of junk mind flailing.

See, but, this is exactly the kind of attitude I'm trying to address in my comment. People judging other people's meditation practices. You didn't specifically go so far (at least not explicitly) as to call it "not meditation", but you're still judging the practice without really understanding it. (Not that I think you should be judging it even if you did understand it.)

The practice you're describing might have been something called "kasiṇa". And it's known to "illicit vivid imagery." There are multiple kinds of kasina practices, but they originate from the Pali Canon itself in works such as the Visuddhimagga and Vimuttimagga^[ The Fire Kasina Meditation Site ]^[ Wikipedia page on Kammaṭṭhāna ].

That's as meditation as meditation gets. If you're going to call that "junk mind flailing", the Buddha would like a word.

Now, I don't know for sure kasina was what you're describing. But it's also beside the point. I don't think meditators really have a leg to stand on to claim that even something like sitting quietly, eyes closed, and playing the whole original Star Wars trilogy in their head from memory is "bad meditation" or "not meditation" just because they judgmentally can't imagine it "exercising" a "muscle"/"mental skill"/etc. (Daniel Ingram, one of the co-authors of the fire kasina site I cited earlier and a huge advocate for fire kasina as a practice, talks about using fire kasina to conjure vivid images of dragons from Lord of the Rings, kinda just because he's a geek (and I mean that endearingly) and it's fun. Though he's also strongly of the opinion that kasina can lead to insight.) "Meditation" is not the sort of term that a lot of people tend to try to gatekeep, and I think that's basically never a good thing.

[–] farcaster@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah I should've written it as "It is not like that for me". Though this is the first time I've heard someone who meditates compare it to doing drugs.

[–] JGrffn@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

I've heard of people having breakthroughs/ego deaths while meditating, so it can definitely get there by the looks of it

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 11 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

You've been using the wrong drugs.

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works -3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

I've been meditating for a while. And I've done a variety of drugs. So I speak from experience.

Meditation, like drugs, gets you high and changes your perceptions.

Meditation, unlike drugs, takes effort and practice. It's also way way smoother. And there's no ceiling.

And here's a thing. Consider the act of concentrating your attention. The control, clarity and depth of perception that it brings. It's something that we all use. Every scientist, engineer and artist uses concentration as his main tool, without which none of that would be possible. Concentration is the backbone of our culture.

One meditation technique (we basically have 2) takes that further. It takes that awesome power of concentration to very deep and strange places. Magical even. But still, it's just that same old familiar magic that we all depend on, just taken further.

(Therefore, if you respect science, technology and art, then you must pay equal if not greater respect to a further venture into the depths of concentration. Right? I mean, that follows)

And then there is another meditation technique too.

[–] FUCKING_CUNO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

You mentioned a few times meditation gets you "high". What exactly do you mean by that?

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works -3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Elevated mood combined with strange perceptions.

Or, to explain by example. You ever used weed, cocaine or shrooms? It's in that general vicinity.

[–] Lemming6969@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You have a medical problem, possibly schizophrenia, get help. Meditative thinking does not produce any of this for a normal person.

[–] rainrain@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

(sorry. Nevermind. Satire conveys badlyin this medium.)

Heck yes!

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

Mmm K