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Category: meditation

A Buddhism critic does a week-long retreat

A Buddhism critic does a week-long retreat

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Some excerpts in Scientific American from John Horgan’s experience. The retreat cost was $1800, plus a teacher donation, an expensive lesson. “But enlightenment, I decided by the end of the retreat, is banal. It means simply appreciating each moment, no matter how mundane and annoying, as an end in itself, not as a means to another end, like making money or impressing others. Like, be here now, Dude.” “Is it worth devoting weeks, months, years, decades to cultivating hyper-attentiveness? Is…

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Altered states and altered traits

Altered states and altered traits

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Good, brief clip on the difference between the above, and how meditation can turn altered states into lasting traits that one carries in their daily life. Aside from the physiological benefits, if we can just dump the metaphysical mumbo jumbo that accompanies traditional interpretations of what these states and traits mean then we’ll have made progress toward a postmetaphysical cultural metaphor.

Seeing my blindfold

Seeing my blindfold

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I’ve found some thought-provoking answers on the Q&A social media site, Quora. Follow the link to a perceptive and helpful answer to, “Can a person be able to objectively identify exactly when and how their thinking processes are being affected by cognitive biases?” The author provides some practical (if exhausting) recommendations that, if even partly followed by a third-to-half of people (my guestimate), would possibly collapse the adversarial culture in our country.

Liology: Towards an integration of science and meaning

Liology: Towards an integration of science and meaning

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In this 20-minute video Jeremy Lent gives a brief introduction into his system of liology, his response to substance dualism. Conventional science maintains this dualism, so it is up to the ecological science of dynamical systems theory to correct it. He finds a precursor of systems science in Chinese Neo-Confucianism, which seems a bit of romantic retro-fitting to me, given their own environmental degradation which he minimalizes in his book The Patterning Instinct. That aside, he’s right about the emerging paradigm…

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Future discussion topic recommendations

Future discussion topic recommendations

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Several of us met on Labor Day with the goal of identifying topics for at least five future monthly meetings. (Thanks, Dave N, for hosting!) Being the overachievers we are, we pushed beyond the goal. Following are the resulting topics, which will each have its own article on this site where we can begin organizing references for the discussion: sex-related influences on emotional memory gross and subtle brain differences (e.g., “walls of the third ventricle – sexual nuclei”) “Are there…

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The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

The differences between sitting and moving meditative states

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Here is Thompson’s talk on the topic. As a dancer and martial artist, as well as an embodied cognitioner, this talk is particularly relevant to me. I’ve been saying since forever that these arts are meditative disciplines in themselves. And one doesn’t necessarily need the sitting still sort of meditation to achieve meta-cognition. Having done both kinds my anectodic report is that both sitting and moving meditation induce meta-cognition. But there are no studies on movement meditation to confirm it…

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Evan Thompson: Buddhism and the brain

Evan Thompson: Buddhism and the brain

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Here is an interview with Thompson on Buddhism and the Brain. It starts with defining consciousness as awareness, its changing contents and how both then identify as a self in changing contexts. “Consciousness is something we live, not something we have.” I also like using the metaphor of dance for the process of self. Both are in the enaction of the process, not a thing apart from that process. He also goes into how mindfulness in our culture has turned…

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Collective Enlightenment Through Postmetaphysical Eyes

Collective Enlightenment Through Postmetaphysical Eyes

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The paper can be found here. The abstract follows: Enlightenment has had broadly different definitions is the East and West. In the East it is seen as an individual accessing meditative states that transcend the world of form in a metaphysical reality. In the West it is more about individual development to abstract reasoning, which can accurately represent empirical reality but is itself an a priori, metaphysical capacity. Enlightenment in either case is based on metaphysical individual achievements. However the…

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