--- In [email protected], Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >
> > I believe that's just the blog writers comments. IIRC, that example > does not appear in the video. > > The jelly donut idea has more to do with confirmation of your > experience to a 'community of the experienced' to see if historically > that is what others have also experienced in their Zazen practice. And > of course the outcome they're supposed to have is Satori, not jelly > donuts. All your example would prove is that you can bias someone > towards a certain thought though bad study design and via suggestion. > You're not supposed to bias their decision making process by > suggesting what the experience should be. It was my comment and yes, it did not come from the video. I was just illustrating potential error by using an extreme example. People often go into meditation with certain expectations which can color the results. It is very difficult to differentiate between expectations, whether preexisting or brought about by the meditation teachings, and results "caused" by meditating. People are prone to justification. For example, if a person is charged $5000 to learn meditation, with so much skin in the game the practitioner may justify that cost by developing a belief in good effects. Now, if you took the example from the video you might get somewhere. You simply ask randomly selected people to think about their breathing for so many minutes a day and do that for 5 years. Nothing more. Five years later you ask about their experiences and acquire data. (If they didn't all drop out). You may find that many people had the same experiences. If so, that may be interesting and lead to further inquiry. There is still a chance your study is poisoned by outside influences for example, people might poke around on the internet to figure out why they might be focusing on their breathing. And it would be interesting to learn about the dropouts. >
