About esapism, I should mention the word “ignorance”. Usually, we says that a monk ignore the world around them to meditate, but actually, we are ignoring the fact about what we really are and keep trying to sastify our senses, making the mind busy and covered (mirror with dust). We sastify our vision with beautiful pictures, scene .., sastify our hearing with music, good sounds, … sastify our touching with comfort material,… sastify our taste with good foods, drinks … sastify our smelling with perfume,… and sastify our mind with “beautiful thoughts”, with games, movies … In some sense, we are actually a slave for our own senses, trying to sastify them, avoiding those that they don’t want such as bad scene, ugly faces, noises, rough surfaces, pain, bad foods, bad smells, and thoughts that scare us. That is ignorance, escapism. We don’t really they are just senses, thoughts and keep being their slaves.

Another aspect, we have been trained in our whole life to see things as we want to see them, not as they are. Meditation (the right way) will help us see things clear as they really are, no more, no less, no bias, no prejudice, no stereotype. I think I found a research to confirm what has been known for over 2000 years since the Budda taught about it:

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050613_mars_face.html

I can only give you a brief description about meditation, I’m still a beginner and don’t know much about it. I have been meditating for 2 years, and all the benefits can be seen clearly. If you want to learn more about meditation, this book is a good one to start with:

Mindfulness in plain English (http://www.saigon.com/~anson/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm)

Hope this help.

Becoming a monk and doing it for 15 years, well, it’s escapism from the urban life like urban life is escapism from monk’s life. When you choose a way, you’re not going in the other ways. That’s the way aha aha… :P

Getting your mind off of distractions etc. is another matter. But using meditation as a way to escape your problems couldn’t possibly be a good idea, just as playing video games instead of dealing with a problem is a bad idea.

I play video games, but i don’t play them to escape problems. Actually, anything can be a form of escapism: food, alcohol, drugs, work… anything that takes you away from dealing with a particular problem.

It should be noted that when I speak of dealing with a problem I don’t mean to dwell on it, but completely blocking it from your mind rather than approaching it with calm logic is called suppression and it can cause problems later on in life.

The act of clearing ones mind is invaluable. Haven’t you ever had something stuck in your head you wanted to get rid of? distractions? Anything? A minute or so of meditation can make you far more productive.

As for escapism… jesus, man, what do you think video games are?

Monk meditation (the act of clearing one’s mind), seems to be a waste of time or a form of escapism to me (my opinion only).

Regular meditation (the practice of thinking deeply on a subject) has obvious benefits.

You’re saying that they most likely lie about it, correct? I wouldn’t doubt it, although I don’t know all the details of the test. Also, I will say that the yellow dot thing does work, i tried it and maintained it for several seconds.

That’s like asking me if I can stare at the yellow dot and make the others disappear for a long amount of time. Sure, sure I can (I’m lying) (wait, on second thought I’m not lying, I’m sure I can. Either way, you can see where I was going with this. Anyone can say they only saw this or that, that doesn’t mean that’s all they saw)