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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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what could be more natural in the 4.1 billion year history of life on planet Earth, than the food chain?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Ever seen and smelled a feed lot? Ever read about the problems of dealing with all that animal waste? Nothing natural about it.
The question for me is whether it is more effective to try to persuade people to eat less meat to save the planet or to refrain as much as possible because of the suffering of the animals,or perhaps just appeal to their own self interests in terms of personal health?
Buddha by the way, listed the four main sufferings as illness, being disabled, growing old and death.
I would say anything that has a nervous system knows suffering.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Lovegasoline
from David Ingram
With the simple exception of the fact of misperceiving the sensations occurring now and coming up with a separate, continuous individual, nearly all of the rest of the dreams are problematic to some degree.
Largo, this appears to be one your several problems -- ...misperceiving the sensations occurring now and coming up with a separate, continuous individual ... And do note the wording "continuous individual".
Meditator, Metzinger, substantiates the Gap Awareness experience while the Largo camp denies such. Yes for meditation and what happens we have some known 3000+ years of contradictions and zero contributions to how the brain makes consciousness.
The human race has maybe 1 million years of running experience. To believe people using meditation techniques & revelations will figure out how the brains makes consciousness awareness is about like believing runners of 100 years ago know all about muscle metabolism. Give me a fellow of that time that can tell us of the Krebs Cycle. Largo is not the fellow of this time that has a monopoly on what goes on during meditation.
Conscious awareness is likely the simplest of feelings and that feeling stays with us into the deepest of meditation. This feeling gives some the false interpretation of experience with no content. Hence some get the perception of the "empty drawer with no-contents" and cling to that idea like jello sticks to a ceiling and dries.
It took science to figure out how glucose powers muscles and it is going to take some science to figure out how the brain platform makes feelings. I am not holding my breath for Zen practitioners to figure out by meditating how feelings are made from brain molecules and signals.
From the Wiki, Damasio, Put simply, consciousness is the feeling of knowing a feeling ...
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Dingus-
I haven't seen anywhere on this thread where anybody is claiming that they know from meditation how feelings are made from brain molecules and signals. That is not the purpose of meditation.
On the other hand, science does not tell us how to control negative emotions let alone how to make ourselves happy in an existential world. It doesn't teach us how to be altruistic for the sake of our own survival either. It does tell us how our egos fool us and what the root causes of anger are and the irrational actions that follow. It also provides means to gain control of the irrational mind whose foundation is the ego.
Substitute lack of ego for nothingness which is a very Buddhist term, and you might have a better idea of the purpose of meditation. Without ego, without a strong sense of self identified with the body, our minds become truly free to see the world as it is, not as we think it should be in order to support our egos.
As PSP posted, there are many extraordinary states and mental refinements on this quest to see the mind and the way the mind sees the world along this path. Because they are not normal waking states, we lack the vocabulary, particularly in English, to describe them adequately and that is also part of the problem. None of that vocabulary however, is about molecules and neurons .
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Buddha by the way, listed the four main sufferings as illness, being disabled, growing old and death.
I would say anything that has a nervous system knows suffering.
all living things experience the sufferings in the Buddha's list, they all "suffer," it is to live.
But now you have somehow related "knowing" to the nervous system, which would seem to admit some physical connection.Nervous systems are an evolutionary adaptation, that is, beneficial to the survival of the species that have them.
It would seem a physical/causal path to try to walk to understand how that "knowing" comes about, an obvious hypothesis to explore, and one that is likely to provide insight and understanding.
Introspective approaches would have to deal with the subjective issues related to insight and understanding, issues which seem to dominate our contemporary world, yet have no firmer basis than someone's idea.
Driving by the slaughter houses south of Chicago in the early 1960s one would smell the results of dead, butchered animals.
Walking through the city market in Amecameca one not only smelled the butchered animals, but saw the pile of the remains.
It used to be common to know where your food came from, now less so.
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WBraun
climber
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It took science to figure out how glucose powers muscles and it is going to take some science to figure out how the brain platform makes feelings.
Then do your science as no one is telling you not to do it.
I am not holding my breath for Zen practitioners to figure out by meditating how feelings are made from brain molecules and signals.
That's not even the goal of their meditation process.
Why are projecting this nonsense from your mental speculation onto them?
Do your science and let them meditate.
Largo is not the fellow of this time that has a monopoly on what goes on during meditation.
He never said he has a monopoly. It's you that's projecting again as usual.
The human race has maybe 1 million years of running experience.
Again mental speculations as you have no real clue how long the actual human race has been in existence and it's actual progression in knowledge.
Do some real research instead of just throwing out loose meaningless quips off the top of your head
to make yourself "look" scientific as you are the one defending the "scientific method" as so-called the only authority.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Once said to me by a person from a deep and old religious background, "If you aren't suffering you must not be doing anything worthwhile."
He was joking, and serious. He had joined the Peace Corps after JFK asked, "What can you do for your country?" Part of his reason for joining may have been a relationship break-up. He may have been trying to push aside emotional suffering with a more physical variety.
Then years later I repeated what he had said, and the woman I was talking to asked me, "What century are you from?" Quite rightly.
Just because a person is suffering doesn't mean they are doing anything worthwhile. But religion and meditation both attract followers partly because they help people come to terms with suffering.
On a suffering scale from 1 to 10, I am below 1. Of course, I do suffer when I hear news of other people suffering. As with pain, suffering is what the sufferer tells you. Not a thing that can be detected with perfect reliability or measured against a standard unit.
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WBraun
climber
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Every single living entity (even a single blade of grass) in the material world suffers because it is not in its actual real constitutional position.
This was Buddha's actual message to revive the living entities real constitutional position.
The living entity is NOT material and when it comes into contact with the material world it is like a fish out of the water and thus suffers.
The living entities real position is it is always blissful but when in contact with temporary dualities of the material world that blissful position becomes covered.
That covering is the gross and subtle material energies.
We are not material entities ever and that is the real cause of our suffering.
The whole lifetime of the living entity is to mitigate and avoid suffering at all costs.
The living entity will take some suffering if that suffering will ultimately stop all suffering.
Climbers do it to ultimately temporarily to enjoy their climbing by training hard which causes them some pain and suffering due to injuries.
Their ultimate goal is to enjoy and be happy.
No one can ultimately be happy in the material world because we are NOT material ......
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Pain scale...
Self pity scale...
Worrying scale...
Suffering scale...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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the set of behaviors we refer to as "emotions" are influenced (in the extreme) by hormones that act in concert with our nervous system, and as a part of our physiology (writ large).
however, in a model that separates our "emotions" from physical influence (refer to "original sin") we posit that individuals have free will, a highly questionable concept which is nuanced by our understanding of physiology.
while the models that presume such dichotomies may have played important roles for human culture in the past, a scientific perspective forces a reconsideration of the validity of those models, especially when those models are extended beyond the small social groups and specific cultural settings where they may have had some utility.
understanding the limits of these ideas is important, and science provides a way to do that, and I would argue that helps to put our lives into a larger perspective, and ultimately does provide a guide to our existence.
you may not like the answers science provides.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6358/1406
Gating of social reward by oxytocin in the ventral tegmental area
Lin W. Hung, Sophie Neuner, Jai S. Polepalli, Kevin T. Beier, Matthew Wright, Jessica J. Walsh, Eastman M. Lewis, Liqun Luo, Karl Deisseroth, Gül Dölen, Robert C. Malenka
Abstract
The reward generated by social interactions is critical for promoting prosocial behaviors. Here we present evidence that oxytocin (OXT) release in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a key node of the brains reward circuitry, is necessary to elicit social reward. During social interactions, activity in paraventricular nucleus (PVN) OXT neurons increased. Direct activation of these neurons in the PVN or their terminals in the VTA enhanced prosocial behaviors. Conversely, inhibition of PVN OXT axon terminals in the VTA decreased social interactions. OXT increased excitatory drive onto reward-specific VTA dopamine (DA) neurons. These results demonstrate that OXT promotes prosocial behavior through direct effects on VTA DA neurons, thus providing mechanistic insight into how social interactions can generate rewarding experiences.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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But now you have somehow related "knowing" to the nervous system, which would seem to admit some physical connection. Nervous systems are an evolutionary adaptation, that is, beneficial to the survival of the species that have them.
It would seem a physical/causal path to try to walk to understand how that "knowing" comes about, an obvious hypothesis to explore, and one that is likely to provide insight and understanding.
the set of behaviors we refer to as "emotions" are influenced (in the extreme) by hormones that act in concert with our nervous system, and as a part of our physiology (writ large).
I would argue that helps to put our lives into a larger perspective, and ultimately does provide a guide to our existence.
You'll get no disagreement from me on any of this, nor I suspect from the other meditators on this thread.
Introspective approaches would have to deal with the subjective issues related to insight and understanding, issues which seem to dominate our contemporary world, yet have no firmer basis than someone's idea.
This is where I would disagree. There are time honored methods for those subjective understandings and ways for people who have experienced them to measure them also. These have not traditionally been public knowledge as science is public though I suspect they will become so in the future. However, a person without long training including in math is not going to understand advanced physics and neither is an untrained person going to understand advanced jihana states.
Likewise, only if a person has experienced some of the more dramatic forms of mind/body work such as the opening of a chakra or an experience of the kundalini, are they going to understand how the mind can change the hormones in the body and that we are not prisoners of those hormones and connected nervous systems.
From a modern perspective I see one of the purposes of meditation as being a demonstration that we are not helpless victims of our environment and our evolution. We have the ability to choose other ways of dealing with reality. Do we have complete free will? Likely not, but we have a lot of room to experiment and maneuver.
As for concepts like original sin, not even the majority Christians have believed in that (the Orthodox churches of the east never accepted it and most Protestants rejected it). The people on this thread who meditate all come from the eastern traditions or maybe western traditions that were considered heretical by the majority (Quakers), so no need to try to hold us accountable for that either.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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"original sin" is simply a place saver for the idea that since we have free will, we can decide what is "right" and "wrong" and if we choose "wrong" we are fully responsible for that choice, and the consequences of making it.
for the most part, our entire legal/penal system is predicated on that belief. a more scientific approach to behavior would admit the possibility that we might not have the capacity to make choices completely free of the physical state of our bodies.
this is still a very controversial notion.
as for learning about mediative states, etc, I don't think it is even close to being "science" in even the most liberal definition. As we see on this thread, there is a difference in opinion/interpretation/understanding/learning regarding meditative states, meditation technique, and all that, and no way to resolve it.
in physics (and most science) contrary points of view crop up from time to time and well known ways for resolving those differences are practiced. For example, the difference between wave-mechanics and vector-representations in early quantum mechanics was resolved by showing that the two are mathematically equivalent, and so the physics of the two is equivalent. end of controversy.
given the lifetime of divergent, ancient beliefs regarding meditation, it would seem no such resolution is possible. it is simply a matter of who you take as a master.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Ed's post previous to the previous one (his penultimate post) does not mention that the reward circuits of the brain were studied in mice. This fact is mentioned in the link he provided.
Whether you consider the difference between us and mice to be large or small is a matter of opinion.
We do have very similar brains, in my opinion, and we can learn from mice, ironically, and they can learn from us, but along different avenues.
If I recall correctly, mice laugh if you tickle them.
Okay. Maybe it was rats. What's the difference?
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/watch-these-ticklish-rats-laugh-and-jump-joy
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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EH said "Introspective approaches would have to deal with the subjective issues related to insight and understanding, issues which seem to dominate our contemporary world, yet have no firmer basis than someone's idea."
the have no firmer basis than someone's idea is the part that is awkward. Discussing meditation among meditators is not philosophy; it is not about what you "think", it is about what you experience and how you work with the experience. It is actually extremely physical to do a lot of meditation.
Same as after you do steck salathe and share how you dealt with the narrows and the wide chimney before it.
Maybe what you are pointing to is how do you know that guy did SS?; you don't unless you have done it and then you will recognize whether they know the territory. More important it doesn't really matter if they have done it or not because you have to do it to experience it.
It is just a misunderstood tool (by those unfamiliar) to help liberate yourself from suffering (buddhist style). It can help give you insight into unconditional love, unconditional life if you find a good teacher and do the the practice.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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More important it doesn't really matter if they have done it or not because you have to do it to experience it.
Do you have to live a life like Hamlet or Macbeth to experience what Shakespeare's plays are like? I agree that you have some kind of point, but life is usually a little more complicated than you suggest.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Must a priest be married to adequately mentor couples? Must a drug counselor have been an addict first?
Good questions.
I am sure that a priest could be a good marriage counselor without having been married, and that a drug counselor could give good advice without having been an addict. However, if the priest had marriage experience and the drug counselor addiction experience, it might improve their advice, or it might bias it.
My point was, you don't have to have been Thane of Cawdor or a Prince of Denmark to get some idea of the experiences Shakespeare wrote about.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Wow, sycorax made a reasonably good post and managed to put away the usual venom. Congratulations!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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This crowd relies on wiki, abstracts and book reviews.
actually I posted a link to the latest Science magazine I received Thursday, after reading the entire article (actually I read the whole magazine, but who cares)... because it was relevant. I'm sure there is a good wiki page though, especially if you don't have access to the full article. Perhaps it's on a preprint server... or maybe one of the authors posted it on their own website.
Science, admittedly is not Shakespeare...
experience is subjective, though we share our experiences, for sure, they are not the same thing as the experience itself (at least that is what proponents of experience say).
however, experience itself is something that is not "innate" but something we learn about, something we learn how to interpret and how to describe, actually something we learn to have.
sycorax asks an interesting question, do you need to have an experience to know about the experience?
if I practice on Zander's "Steck-Salathe" narrows simulator, does it prepare me for the real deal?
[Click to View YouTube Video]
are you experienced?
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