Attention is important. The ability to direct your attention where you want is important. If you can do it well then you can do tricks like “concentration”. Concentration is necessary for careful doing and deep seeing. Every engineer, scientist, artist, lawyer and professional thinker needs concentration to do their job.

People with ADHD have a problem controlling their attention. Or something. Normies aren’t too good at it either. (Is the ability to concentrate on stuff that you don’t really care about, to do that a lot every day, a power or a weakness? Good question but beside my point).

Meditation is all about getting better at using attention. Getting better control over it, seeing it doing its thing better, learning its ways.

We basically have 2 techniques. In the first one you practice concentration. It’s a skill that you get better at. And then you take it deeper and you learn a lot. You gain a superpower.

The second one is trickier but better.

The Buddhists call the techniques samatha and vipassana.

  • rainrainOP
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    22 hours ago

    If ADHD is a lack of attention-control, and meditation increases attention-control, then it would naturally follow that meditation can help with ADHD.

    • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com
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      20 hours ago

      But ADHD and not being able to focus isn’t solved by focusing harder. May be helpful but can’t solve a physical issue

      • rainrainOP
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        20 hours ago

        “Focusing harder” doesn’t cover it. Better to see for yourself.

        • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com
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          19 hours ago

          I mod the Buddhism coms here and am working on a PhD in Buddhism. I think I got it covered.

          There’s a reason people take medication.

          • rainrainOP
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            19 hours ago

            Do you meditate?

            You could say that you are concentrating harder. You could also say that you are concentrating better, with greater care and understanding. You could also say that the concentration is merely a foil against which the action of awareness becomes clearer.

            I mean, it’s a real thing. Therefore words can only hint at it, it has infinite depths and angles, etc.

              • rainrainOP
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                19 hours ago

                I think that I addressed your “concentration meditation is focusing harder” and “I’m experienced” (to paraphrase) comments pretty dead on actually.

                Your “people take meds for a reason”…ya, I skipped it as nebulous.

                So don’t give me that silly guff.

                But seriously, do you meditate?

                  • rainrainOP
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                    18 hours ago

                    Cool. What’s your favorite technique?

    • pannenkoek@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      A brain that is wired differently will be very hard to control without some help of meds in my experience.

      • rainrainOP
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        20 hours ago

        That sounds like an experiment begging to be conducted.