Zen Shit

[Mr. Blonde]

"A monk asked Ummon, "What is Buddha?"

Ummon replied: "Dried shit stick."

Sam Harris is up to some very interesting things. I have suspected it for a while (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), but now he seems to be "out of the closet", so to speak. This Fall, he is releasing a book about meditation, consciousness, and humanity's relationship to reality, called Waking Up:



At the height of my militant anti-religious bloodlust, I became cognizant of the fact that the likely billions spiritual experiences still deserve an explanation, and this is Sam Harris's attempt at pointing humanity in the right direction. I believe it was while reading Ray Kurzweil speculate that we will create intelligent machines that will eventually claim to have spiritual experiences, and that we will believe them. Imagine a robot telling the entire world on national hypertelevision that he regularly speaks with God. Creepy.

Point is, consciousness is very strange, and exploration of the vast inner realm of one's own mind is probably going to be a large part of humanity's future. Meditation is one of the safest (and most helpful IMO) ways to do just that. I'm looking forward to reading it.

[DJ FC]

I want to smoke DMT

[Mr. Blonde]

V2 THREAD

but yea me too, have a few friends who have done it. i might be too chicken. I'd love to get down to SA and drink ayahuasca with some shamans tho.

[Dent]

Sam Harris Explains Why God Exists - YouTube

Sam Harris Explains Why God Exists - YouTube

* "I identified God with the wave-function of the universe."

Originally Posted by http://hedweb.com/social-media/2014.html

If we conjecture [contra Kant, but following Schopenhauer, Russell, Lockwood, Strawson et al.) that the phenomenology of one's mind discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical, then presumably mathematical physics describes patterns of qualia. Solving the fundamental field equations of QM entails discovering the values of qualia.

I look forward to the book.

[Dent]

edeeet : I just put these two sticks together guys guys

wireheading - YouTube

wireheading - YouTube

[Dent]

Guys guys Sam Harris doesn't explain why god exists in that video.


The difference between DMT and psilocin is a hydroxyl group



Here's a good one of Sam Harris, something about not enough protons.

Can You Defend Eating Meat with Sam Harris - YouTube

Can You Defend Eating Meat with Sam Harris - YouTube

Also note Blondie referring to "spiritual experiences" and how much weight the word spiritual is pulling (0)


Here is a video of a guy with grey hair talking, if it were any other colour I wouldn't listen.

Michael LaTorra - Buddhism & Transhumanism - YouTube

Michael LaTorra - Buddhism & Transhumanism - YouTube

here is a video of an american guy trying to teach a LLama what the western world thinks consciousness could be, it's pretty good.
Christof Koch is some sort of PaaaaaanPSYCHISMist but not quite the same as the rest of them because he could do with selling some books.

Day4 am - Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - YouTube

Day4 am - Mind and Life XXVI: Mind, Brain and Matter - YouTube

^ all three come with my seal of approval please watch and call me a prick afterwards
Or before, or even before and after I don't care.
xxx

[Mr. Blonde]

I'll try to watch these this week.

This is an audiobook I'm listening to right now: 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story: Dan Harris: 9780062265425: Amazon.com: Books

It is written by Dan Harris, former ABC anchor who had a "meltdown" on live news broadcasted to millions of people. His story is extremely fascinating. I just started it yesterday, but the book basically focuses on Dan trying to sift through all the pseudoscientific spiritual stuff out there (Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, etc) in order to seek the scientific mental benefits of meditation. So far his skepticism is holding up remarkably well and he's rather funny. He has clearly mastered the art of self-deprecating humor as a disarming tactic.

The part that sticks out to me the most is how honest he is with himself and the reader in the book. Openly talking about his borderline sociopathic nonchalant attitude towards death as a war correspondent and his subsequent dependency on cocaine and ecstacy, which is what lead to his on-air flip-up, is a primary theme so far.

You might be into it, the whole angle is basically him willing to give meditation a shot but not if it sounds like bullshit to him.

[Dent]

I saw this clip of him a few weeks ago, seems like a nice enough guy.

Dan Harris' Panic Attack (and Discovery of Meditation) - YouTube

Dan Harris' Panic Attack (and Discovery of Meditation) - YouTube

wait a minute.. this is the same person Sam Harris had a conversation with recently too right? I thought he was his brother or something

[Mr. Blonde]

Could have been, I have not seen the video.


For those of you interested in free shit, here is a link for two free books with Audible.com. If you have an an Amazon account, even better.

[Mr. Blonde]

Now Zen is a little bit unlike the rest of Hinduism and Buddhism in that it's summed up in these four principles: It's a special transmission of the Buddhist enlightenment outside the scriptures. It does not depend on words or letters. It points directly to your own mind-heart and attains therefore Buddhahood directly. Buddhahood means the state of being awakened to the real nature of things. But you see, what IS the real nature of things? It obviously cannot be described. Just as if I were to ask what is the true position of the stars in the big dipper. Well, it depends from where you're looking. From one point in space, they would be completely different in position from another. So there is no true position of those stars. So in the same way, you cannot therefore describe their true position or their true nature. And yet on the other hand, when you look at them, and really don't try to figure it out, you see them as they are, and they are as they are from every point of view, wherever you look at them.

So there is no way of describing or putting you finger on what the Buddhists call reality or in Sanscrit, tathata, which means 'suchness' or 'thatness,' or sunyata, which means 'voidness,' in the sense that all conceptions of the world when absolutised are void. It doesn't mean that the world is, in our Western sense, nothing. It means that it's no-thing. And a thing is a unit of thought. A think. So reality isn't a think. We cannot say what it is, but we can experience it. And that is of course the project of Zen.

Now, it does it by direct pointing. And this is what exciting people about Dr Suzuki's work when he first let people know about Zen in the Western world. It seemed to consist of an enormous assemblage of weird anecdotes. That these people instead of explaining had kind of a joke system, or kind of a riddle system. the basic secret of the Buddha system is simply this, and it's explained by a great Chinese Zen master, whose name was Hui-neng, who died in the year 713 AD. And he explained it in his sutra. He said, 'If anybody asks you about secular matters, answer them in terms of metaphysical matters. But if they ask you about things phusical, answer them in terms of things worldly.' So if you ask a Zen master what is the fundamental teaching of the Buddha, he answers immediately, 'Have you had breakfast?' 'Yes.' 'If so, go and wash your bowl.' Or such a thing as 'Since I came to you master, you have never given me any instruction.' 'How can you say that I've never given you any instruction? When you brought me tea, didn't I drink it? When you brought me rice, didn't I eat it? When you saluted me, didn't I return the salutation? How can you say that I haven't instructed you?' And the student said, 'Master, I don't understand.' And he said, 'If you want to understand, see into it directly, but when you begin to think about it, it is altogether missed.'

~ Alan Watts, excerpt from The Value of Psychotic Experience 1.

What Is Enlightenment? |
Immanuel Kant

[Dent]

Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One - YouTube

Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One - YouTube

Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One

[Mr. Blonde]

Saw this this morning! Haven't had a chance to listen yet. Excited.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Krishnamurti

Observation implies no accumulation of knowledge, even though knowledge is obviously necessary at a certain level: knowledge as a doctor, knowledge as a scientist, knowledge of history, of all the things that have been. After all, that is knowledge: information about the things that have been. There is no knowledge of tomorrow, only conjecture as to what might happen tomorrow, based on your knowledge of what has been.

A mind that observes with knowledge is incapable of following swiftly the stream of thought. It is only by observing without the screen of knowledge that you begin to see the whole structure of your own thinking. And as you observe -- which is not to condemn or accept, but simply to watch -- you will find that thought comes to an end.

Casually, to observe an occasional thought leads nowhere, but if you observe the process of thinking and do not become an observer apart from the observed -- if you see the whole movement of thought without accepting or condemning it -- then that very observation puts an end immediately to thought, and therefore the mind is compassionate, it is in a state of constant mutation.

.

[Dent]

Originally Posted by Sam Harris

"I don’t actually argue that consciousness is “a reality” beyond the grasp of science. I just think that it is conceptually irreducible — that is, I don’t think we can fully understand it in terms of unconscious information processing. Consciousness is “subjective”— not in the pejorative sense of being unscientific, biased or merely personal, but in the sense that it is intrinsically first-person, experiential and qualitative"

Not a dualist
Consciousness irreducible
Can't derive any notion of reality from experience.(?)
...
Sam Harris
Profit!

[Dent]

Link for that quote : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...ype=blogs&_r=0

Waking Up is released today!



Discussion ceased over a year and a half ago (Yoga thred.. also renewed recently I think) but I noted this in chapter one.
Doesn't sound like the "Before medication, yoga and meditation." mantra.

Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One - YouTube

Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

Found out about this book last night.

People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, and compile knowledge. We strove for an instantaneous network where time and space could be compressed.

Well, the future’s arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by Twitter, email, and a so-called real-time technological shift. Yet this “now” is an elusive goal that we can never quite reach. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.

As both individuals and communities, we have a choice. We can struggle through the onslaught of information and play an eternal game of catch-up. Or we can choose to live in the present: favor eye contact over texting; quality over speed; and human quirks over digital perfection. Rushkoff offers hope for anyone seeking to transcend the false now.

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by Dent

Discussion ceased over a year and a half ago (Yoga thred.. also renewed recently I think) but I noted this in chapter one.
Doesn't sound like the "Before medication, yoga and meditation." mantra.
Waking Up by Sam Harris Chapter One - YouTube

What Dent means, but was unable to communicate effectively, is that he deep-linked the Youtube video to a portion of the first chapter (transcipt below) which features what appears to be a CYA disclaimer on Sam Harris' part, then referenced a separate Nubblies thread (not linked) where we were discussing the benefits of yoga and meditation as a possible prerequisite (or replacement) to taking psychiatric medication.

Originally Posted by Sam Harris

So I want to make it clear that the instructions in this book are intended for readers who are adults (more or less) and free from any psychological or medical conditions that could be exacerbated by meditation or other techniques of sustained introspection. If paying attention to your breath, to bodily sensations, to the flow of thoughts, or to the nature of consciousness itself seems likely to cause you clinically significant anguish, please check with a psychologist or a psychiatrist before engaging in the practices I describe.

I would probably have to agree with Sam Harris on this point. Meditation can indeed decrease symptoms of depression (particularly as one pays more attention to their unconscious conditioned thoughts about society/reality, corrects them, and thus decreases negative thoughts as a whole), but I can also say from personal experience that sometimes the meditative state can be quite jarring and scary, especially when going through a major depressive episode.

We live in a society that is terrified of death and many do not fully accept this inevitable fate until they are forced to by circumstances (death of a truly loved one, near death experience, etc) or until they are faced with their own death.

Clinical depression is a dangerous and generally misunderstood illness in itself, as those who do not suffer from it have a very difficult time understanding something that they cannot see and have not experienced (as opposed to more visible illnesses or injuries such as Cancer, or being a paraplegic) --- and this is one of the biggest challenges of American society today in my (biased) opinion, given that:

...According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about "14.8 million adult Americans experience clinical depression in any given year -- or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population over 18.----(1.)

This means that if you are in a room with 100 people, about 7 of them are consistently plagued with suicidal thoughts and ideation.

************************************************** ************************************************** *******

This is, quite clearly, a HUGE social problem, that will continue to go ignored for three main reasons that I have observed personally:

1. The majority of people who have never suffered from depression just simply don't understand it, and therefore are unable to empathize with those who are legitimately undergoing a major depressive episode -- preferring to mentally cast such judgments as "this person just wants attention", "you just need to buck up and stop moping around", "everybody gets sad, stop whining", etc.. It is extraordinarily damaging to a severely depressed person to issue these remarks when someone is very likely already feeling very guilty about feeling depressed in the first place and possibly considering suicide.

2. In general, people simply don't like to be around depressed people because their very presence/conversation tends to take those who are not depressed down their own avenues of negative thoughts and ideas about life, existence, and death, that they would to either not address or sweep under their own mental carpets. This is probably the saddest part of all, as it is quite literally compounding suffering.

3. Our society is very self-based (focusing almost exclusively on their own thoughts and dreams of personal gain rather than focusing on the happiness of a community as a whole), so many people don't even pick up on the "invisible" illness of depression in those they are close to until it is far too late.

Until we address these mass trends as a whole (something that I hope for eventually, but likely not in our lifetime), we will continue to lose valuable members of the human community to something that is generally treatable anad preventable.

If you are seriously interested in knowing what it is like to experience a clinical, long-term major depressive episode (lasting for weeks or months at a time), and actually have the ability/desire to empathize with your human brothers/sisters, this article is a good start: What It's Like Inside a Depressed Person's Head

P.S. -- for those not interested in listening to the audiobook, the entire excerpt of the 1st Chapter of this book can be found by scrolling down on the Amazon page for the book: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spir...ion/1451636016

[Dent]

Spoiler Alert (lengthy quotes from Waking Up)

On Binding (chapter 2)

Here is where the distinction between studying consciousness itself and studying its contents becomes paramount. It is easy to see how the contents of consciousness might be understood in neurophysiological terms. Consider, for instance, our experience of seeing an object: Its color, contours, apparent motion, and location in space arise in consciousness as a seamless unity, even though this information is processed by many separate systems in the brain. Thus, when a golfer prepares to hit a shot, he does not first see the ball’s roundness, then its whiteness, and only then its position on the tee. Rather, he enjoys a unified perception of the ball. Many neuroscientists believe that this phenomenon of “binding” can be explained by disparate groups of neurons firing in synchrony. Whether or not this theory is true, it is at least intelligible—because synchronous activity seems just the sort of thing that could explain the unity of a percept.
This work suggests, as many other findings in neuroscience do, that the contents of consciousness can often be made sense of in terms of their underlying neurophysiology.However, when we ask why such phenomena should be experienced in the first place, we are returned to the mystery of consciousness in full.

On ‘mergence (chapter 5)

As should be clear from the preceding chapters, unlike many scientists and philosophers, I remain agnostic on the question of how consciousness is related to the physical world. There are good reasons to believe that it is an emergent property of brain activity, just as the rest of the human mind is. But we know nothing about how such a miracle of emergence might occur. And if consciousness were irreducible—or even separable from the brain in a way that would give comfort to Saint Augustine—my worldview would not be overturned. I know that we do not understand consciousness, and nothing that I think I know about the cosmos or about the patent falsity of most religious beliefs requires that I deny this. So, although I am an atheist who can be expected to be critical of religious dogma, I am not reflexively hostile to claims of the sort Alexander has made. In principle, my mind is open. (It really is.)

On Ism (chapter 5)

Whatever the case, the action of these drugs does not rule out dualism, or the existence of realms of mind beyond the brain—but then, nothing does. That is one of the problems with views of this kind: They appear to be unfalsifiable. Physicalism, by contrast, could easily be falsified. If science ever established the existence of ghosts or reincarnation or any other phenomenon that placed the human mind (in whole or in part) outside the brain, physicalism would be dead. The fact that dualists can never say what might count as evidence against their views makes this ancient philosophical position very difficult to distinguish from religious faith.

On drugs and the brain

Many people wonder about the difference between meditation (and other contemplative practices) and psychedelics. Are these drugs a form of cheating, or are they the only means of authentic awakening? They are neither. All psychoactive drugs modulate the existing neurochemistry of the brain—either by mimicking specific neurotransmitters or by causing the neurotransmitters themselves to be more or less active. Everything that one can experience on a drug is, at some level, an expression of the brain’s potential. Hence, whatever one has seen or felt after ingesting LSD is likely to have been seen or felt by someone, somewhere, without it.

Not from the book, Pearce on psychedelic plants.

Malaise-ridden "ordinary waking consciousness" has probably been more important in human progress to date than psychedelics. After all, plants manufacture such compounds to reduce the fitness of animals who ate them. By contrast, interventions radically to raise hedonic set-points needn't impair rational serial thought.

[Mr. Blonde]

How's meditating going, Dent?

[THEINCREDIBLEdork]

Song recommendation

Kinge Missile - Mystical Shit

[Mr. Blonde]

Note that Joseph Campbell used the enso as the primary symbol of his books and works.

Joseph Campbell--Mythology of the Trickster - YouTube

Joseph Campbell--Mythology of the Trickster - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

Nietzsche and Zen

Here I offer a summary of Nietzsche’s philosophical development and say something
about what Zen is. There is something inherently paradoxical about trying to do
either. Nietzsche’s philosophy and Zen are elusive, aphoristic and practical in ways
that render any précis of them incomplete and misleading. Paradoxically, their
essence is to have no essence. The only way to understand Nietzsche is to read him
and think. The only way to understand Zen is to do it or, more accurately, be it.

[Mr. Blonde]

Steve Jobs was very likely a Zen Master (if there is such a thing).

How Atari Sent Steve Jobs On a Spiritual Quest to India

Did Steve Jobs Eat Just Any Old LSD? | Motherboard

Psychedelics and Zen: Teach Your Children Well | Alternet

[Mr. Blonde]

Alan Watts - "The Future is Absurd, the Universe has no Purpose & Life is a Game" - YouTube

Alan Watts - "The Future is Absurd, the Universe has no Purpose & Life is a Game" - YouTube

[Mr. Blonde]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_language