why are Buddhists so...

[Gem]

Originally Posted by DalesRealMeditation

I've been searching the Buddhist forums online and besides being very inactive, there also is a great abundance of study and "daily living" type content, with next to nothing about meditative practice, despite Buddha's frequent and deliberate emphasis on it.

Can somebody explain? I've been away from the interwebs for some years now.

I think we get all sorts of things being called 'meditation', which are dissimilar and somtimes contradict each other. Then there's popular notions such as 'find what works for you', where 'works' could be defined by any arbitrary indicator. So it is said 'it depends on what you want to achieve', and anything else that avoids speaking about what it is.

The problem I see with that is, knowing 'how to meditatate' relies on knowing 'what meditation is', so rather than telling people 'how', which reduces them to mere obedience, the discourse should lend toward the subject itself: 'What'.

It's easy for anyone to say 'do such and such an exercise' - breath thus, mantra thus, visualise thus etc - but broach the subject of meditation without any 'how' forces the subject itself: 'what'.

That usually puts the cat in the coop, though, as all the peoples special Gods, treasured methods and revered traditions become irrelevant to the subject of meditation as universal principle.