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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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DM said" //I add intensely focused, experientially, because this condition of brain use is much different than meditation and when I am for example skiing moguls non stop the feeling of awareness vanishes as I am stuck in a task where I must let the subconscious perform the flow of muscle work. Absolutely no disturbing feelings arise while this muscle work is happening, almost all of which I have little or no awareness of in the conscious awareness experience sense. This state of mind has been called Flow.
Powerful therapy and opposite of meditation therapy in that it occurs while in action. Largo try getting into flow -- you will have to rid of the Lard. And get this: my experience while in Flow, Which is not Buddhism, holds equally valid 1st person experience of mind and awareness as you get of awareness while sitting."//
Your are touching something here Dingus. Maybe we are talking about a very similar thing!?
The koreans have a retreat called Yong Maeng Jong Jin (Yong Maeng Jong Jin" is a traditional phrase that means “to leap like a tiger while sitting.” ) for 2.5 days.
Zen Master Seung Sahn signature phrase was "only just do it" . This is not about buddhism it is about engaging life fully. Buddhism ups the ante by testing if you can engage fully while sitting doing nothing for hours on end for days. This particular style is designed to help the practitioner encounter non-dualism and experience egoless moments. These glimpses (if they happen) egoless/unconditional compassion slap you in the face with what the F### was that? It is different than skiing the knarl or doing the run out because you are just sitting there doing nothing and suddenly you are "leaping like a tiger while sitting" .
I fully agree that Zen has no monopoly on fully engaging in life; as a matter of fact many people practicing Zen are struggling with their practice experience and there is no "flow " happening. But they are making an effort to investigate; really nothing more than that. Similar to climbing sometimes it's a grovel or a sufferfest and sometimes effortless; everyday is new.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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PSP,
great job on the tone of both your posts -- thank you!
The content was also pertinent. I started looking over Mihaly's book on Flow and will relate what I find and have experienced as to how meditation and flow seem to compare.
As for therapy both are great and I would hesitate to say which is better but as you point out some people may be better suited to only one of these therapies -- we all likely need some therapy. Their results do converge when we can achieve pleasantness doing the mundane tasks of life. You say chopping wood and carrying water. Chopping wood can easily become a flow like task. As for carrying water I will try to figure out a less burdensome method. A richer life likely has a mind that can both meditate and has the skills of doing some task(s) to get into flow.
Much like the difficulty of just jumping into meditation and achieving serenity one does not just step into any task and experience flow. If you choose to easy of a task it will soon get boring and if you lack the required level of skill for a difficult task you will get feelings of anxiety. Rock climbing may have roots in focusing from our ancestral past so as to easily get us into flow when on the rock. Rich Goldstone did some climbing with Mihaly.
Mihaly makes no mention of meditation in his book on Flow. Flow is about achieving serenity while in any task of waking life. He goes into many examples. He touches on some Eastern methods of flow in the chapter, The Ultimate Control: Yoga and the Martial Arts .
Jgill, Mihaly has some discussion about achieving flow while doing math and science. I suspect you know this experience quite well.. So do I and this is done often sitting.
But my final take is that neither Flow nor Meditation is brain science. Everyone of us has our expertise in 1st person mind experience of which virtually none of it makes science by itself. It does give us a direction where to look.
You say: Buddhism ups the ante by testing if you can engage fully while sitting doing nothing for hours on end for days.
I say to this if this sitting is to achieve something other than sitting in-its-self is there a way around sitting to get the same end state of mind? As you have also said Zen has no Monopoly on fully engaging in life. For what it is worth as a challenge in waking life that can be said to up the ante even more than sitting is finding a way to achieve what Zen does in waking life without any sitting. There is no road map for this task but getting into Flow may illuminate the path to the condition of mind as such.
But a worthy question: does Zen achieve anything?
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Largo,
As Searle was saying, 3rd person speculations can only posit awareness as something else.
I find the use of what Searle says by Largo rather amusing in relation to what & who Largo will use as evidence for his arguments and yet he does condemn others for using similar ideas with such underlying methods of assessment, namely 3rd person.
We all know Largo insists that only 1st person accounts are valid. In fact only his account. But the very act of Searle speaking philosophically is a 3rd person observation and should be subject to the same scrutiny by Largo as ...something else ... that is not 1st person. If only 1st person does matter than anything Searle says to bolster Largo is irrelevant.
Obvious to most of us is that this statement, As Searle was saying, 3rd person speculations can only posit awareness as something else is in fact itself a 3rd person observation! Should not that idea too be subject to being though of as ... something else ... based on its own declaration?
And in the end I may have to forgive Searle as Largo is very sloppy/slipshod/careless when quoting anyone.
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PSP also PP
Trad climber
Berkeley
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DM said But a worthy question: does Zen achieve anything?"
This question gets to the crux of Zen and maybe true full engagement in everyday life.
The Heart sutra (a main doctrine of Zen) says "no attainment with nothing to attain" . This statement gets back to what is this "I" thinking it is attaining things? It is pointing to dualism as the limiting experience. To crack our attachment to the dualistic relationship is awkward because when in the dualistic view we are blind of the non-dual view. The endless sitting (with eyes open) is designed to open the non-dual view and experience " no attainment with nothing to attain".
It is the difference between self improvement and self realization. Zen is not about self improvement.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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I have ask,
But a worthy question: does Zen achieve anything?
PSP,
It is the difference between self improvement and self realization. Zen is not about self improvement.
I have heard that after going thru the gateless gate nothing is changed.
Ward Trotter,
thanks for the link about dopamine -- I am going for some of that AM dopamine.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 6, 2017 - 02:09pm PT
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Dingus McGee, I'm guilty once again of picking on you because you are such an easy target. All I need to do is assume the smug tone of those delivering pronouncements via quantifications and you lose your mind because that smugness does not belong to naval gazers. It's a silly game and I must abandon it.
You flatter me in a sense because you attribute common truths to me, when in act most of what I say per "the phony Zen narrative" is old news. And you're alone is believing that I consider only the 1st person to be the worm worm hole into knowing what mind is. That's al or nothing thinking - known as a thought distortion.
The long and the short of it is that each vantage has something to add to the whole, and no one field has an exclusive on the entire Gestalt. That is, every vantage has limits. Scientism believes the quantifications can fully explain anything - which is just a version of religious fundamentailism that insists that holy doctrine is the last work.
The limitation with measuring is demonstrating how objective brain function "creates" awareness. At best, brain studies disclose a high functioning machine but no clue, no concept, no conceivable model of how to even contrast objective brain function with our being aware of anything, including illusions. This leads to all kinds of dead ends. If you say that awareness is brain output, that means awareness is something above and beyond (and distinguishable as different from) objective functioning, and that violates the physicalists credo that there is never any more than a sum of physical parts. This leads some to declare that "we only think" we are aware (a logically incoherent statement) when in fact what is REALLY going on is simply brain function. If we say the brain IS aware, we have Identity Theory, and that's also a Gordian knot nobody can untie.
A common blind reach here is to lean on the computer metaphor and insist that awareness is "caused" by the interface of various objective factors, especially information, though no known or conceivable relationship is ever offered. Another angle is that brain structure creates awareness. Sure, electrochmical activity is found throughout much of Nature and it has no imaginable link to you being aware of anything. But when that activity is housed in a system like the brain, the results are different - though again, any causal link to awareness is entirely missing. Still another angle is that we just need more data - this also being based on the belief that the RIGHT objective information will show how he objective creates awareness.
And the beat goes on.
Now Dingus McGee is blubbering, but his arguments boil down to this:
Says Dingus: “You are so enamoured with your 1st person view of the mind through meditation & the phony Zen Narrative that you fail to see that 3100 years meditating has gotten us no where in how the brain makes a mind/awareness.”
Where, dear Dingus, did you ever get the idea that the “phony Zen narrative” was ever an attempt to vouchsafe the philosophical belief that the brain “makes a mind/awareness?” And if it fails to do so, it axiomatically is “phony.” It is you, Dingus, who are banking on the brain being the “real” fundamental driver of awareness, not me or anything having to do with Zen.
Arguing Damasio is pointless. Anyone who has read his books and watched his videos knows that sentience and awareness are points to which Damasio is so vague as to be nearly meaningless. Bringing in Metzinger (of whom I am quite aware of) is an interesting angle because contrary to Damasio – who has built an entire psychological structure on an imagined hierarchy of “selves” (Protoself, Core Consciousness, and Extended Consciousness), Metzinger is notorious for declaring that ALL selves are illusory. To his credit, Metzinger insists that any comprehensive take on mind must be wrought through both 1st and 3rd person inquiries. His take on the problems with Vipassana meditation (in his discussions with Sam Harris) are telling. Like any and all human organizations, meditation outfits are just as full of human shortcomings as any other groups(s).
Lastly, Dingus said that he heard that after going through the gateless gate, "nothing has changed."
The way this is posited it gives the impression that all the sitting was for nothing. But that's not what is meant. One slowly wakes up to the fact that our cognitive and sensory take on reality is like mistaking a shadow show for the real deal. It's the real deal that doesn't change. It was and is always just what it is. It's just that before we could shut up and quit evaluating, we didn't know as much.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Duck: What happens is every moment is infinitely new and ever fresh, like the very first time. In a sense, every moment becomes like this.
Exactly right.
Dingus: But a worthy question: does Zen achieve anything?
it’s not worthy, respectfully—not in a Zen sense. The answer is “mu.” When you (and Jgill) see that it’s really the wrong question, then you’d have a glimpse into another understanding.
To this point, btw, flow has an achievement dimension to it that emptiness assuredly does not. Flow can be defined and described. Emptiness cannot. Flow concerns the individual, whereas emptiness does not. Furthermore, there is a social dimension with other beings that flow appears to completely ignore. The man or woman who is resonating (experiencing atonement) with the Tao is a magnet for others, a guiding star charismatically because they are spontaneously consonant with the dharma / tao.
Get clear on this: there is no achievement. There is nothing to achieve, and no one to realize the achievement. Like Werner intimates, everything is completely normal—and completely unique. There is nothing that one does. There’s no doing. No doer, nothing done, and no recognition of doingness.
I see that PSP is pointing the way, so what I’ve said is probably clumsy and stupid sounding.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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MikeL,
you quote the Duck and say
Exactly
What happens is every moment is infinitely new and ever fresh, like the very first time. In a sense, every moment becomes like this.
Give me a brake, to stop this exclusive nonsense. This is merely one way to set up your stream of consciousness and I choose not to do it this way a long time ago.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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One slowly wakes up to the fact that our cognitive and sensory take on reality is like mistaking a shadow show for the real deal
And this is why you get accused of religious beliefs. Fact? Real Deal? Never a hesitation to avoid the possibility that what you experience may be illusory, a trick of the mind. Oh, I forgot, millions of practitioners and 3,100 years of discipline can't be wrong.
About time for a little shot of quantum juice here. Ed has seen many of these tiny critters, no doubt:
Quantum Bug
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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MikeL,
Get clear on this: there is no achievement. There is nothing to achieve, and no one to realize the achievement. Like Werner intimates, everything is completely normal—and completely unique. There is nothing that one does. There’s no doing. No doer, nothing done, and no recognition of doingness.
This too is merely another way to set up your stream of consciousness and I choose not reside here fulltime a long time ago. But I can revert to this non dual state at will.
MikeL,
To this point, btw, flow has an achievement dimension to it that emptiness assuredly does not. Flow can be defined and described. Emptiness cannot. Flow concerns the individual, whereas emptiness does not. Furthermore, there is a social dimension with other beings that flow appears to completely ignore.
Your POV of Flow comes from your very dualist mindset. Flow does not need an element of achievement. One can get into flow in social settings and in fact Mihaly has a chapter, Enjoying Friends. Your earlier on this thread post, professed knowledge of Flow seems rather limited. Is this the way of academicians?
MikeL,
The man or woman who is resonating (experiencing atonement) with the Tao is a magnet for others, a guiding star charismatically because they are spontaneously consonant with the dharma / tao.
I suppose the "guiding star" could be the charismatic Donald Trump too. Every cult has its followers.
MikeL,
Dingus: But a worthy question: does Zen achieve anything?
it’s not worthy, respectfully—not in a Zen sense. The answer is “mu.” When you (and Jgill) see that it’s really the wrong question, then you’d have a glimpse into another understanding.
When you get to where you can hold the global vantage point of where you can see Zen and beyond to the Elsewhere my question will again become meaningful.
Oh the highway is for gambles, you better use your cents [sense?] -- you choose how you want to ride this high-way.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Ms.Psycoax,
Sentiments like "Give me a brake
your ability of metaphorical literary interpretation seem somewhat low. I want a brake for stopping not a break to get a time gap from someone else's nonsense. You don't always get the metaphors from me you might expect.
Ms. Psycoax,
Both Dinguses need to cut back on posts as well as consult spell check and Grammarly.
You seem to have never figured out how threads work at this site? There has been an active dialogue going on between MikeL and me. You can ignore our writing if it so disturbs you and in fact you can turn it off. I would like to hear some rationale beyond mere assertions from you why both Dinguses need to cutback?
BTW: how is your Grammarly doing?
On second thought -- do not take the time to tell me.
Ms. Psycoax,
Masturbatory posting versus dialogue.
I doubt I will get into a Harvey Weinstein moment in front of you at my whine cellar. Nor attempt to touch you with a ten foot pole. I have already visited Yoknapatawpha County and once was enough.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jgill: And this is why you get accused of religious beliefs. Fact? Real Deal? Never a hesitation to avoid the possibility that what you experience may be illusory, a trick of the mind. Oh, I forgot, millions of practitioners and 3,100 years of discipline can't be wrong.
“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” – Niels Bohr
“Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual” (1) – Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (quote taken from “the mental universe)
“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” (Nikola Tesla)
"A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter." (R. C. Henry, “The Mental Universe”; Nature 436:29, 2005)
“If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” – Nikola Tesla.
“Space is just a construct that gives the illusion that there are separate objects” (me)
“Those who dance are considered insane by those who can’t hear the music” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
“Engineering is the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance” (A.R. Dykes, Scottish Branch, Institution of Structural Engineers (1946))
EDIT:
"Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically." —Calvin Trillin
"In mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them." —John von Neumann
"It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." —Alfred North Whitehead
"I have hardly even known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning." —Plato
Be well.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dingus,
If you don't see it, you don't see it. There is generally nothing whatever that one can do to allow another to see for themselves.
And, yes, who knows?
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WBraun
climber
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“If you want to know the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” – Nikola Tesla.
Just see. Just the same I've been saying this for years here.
The scientific test is to take a Vedic mantra and sound vibrate it.
You will not be able to vibrate a material mantra for long without getting sick of it because it has a beginning and end whereas the Vedic sound vibration has NO beginning nor end.
But the gross materialists will never do a simple test.
Instead, they just post endless links to YouTube videos and links to so-called experts who never do any such test either.
Some gross materialist scientists also heavily attacked Tesla in their brainwashed ignorance.
Energy, frequency, and vibration ARE both material and spiritual in their nature.
The material energies are inferior to the superior spiritual energies.
The gross materialist scientists never do any tests on the superior energies.
All they do is scoff and wave it off as non-existent.
Any fool can do that .......
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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MikeL,
you have quoted many relic outstanding people of science & math out of the past. I enjoyed their comments and especially the one from Nietzsche as it seems to be time invariant.
As for the rest of them, rather than laugh at 'em, I do ask, if that person were alive today would he change his statement?
I very well suspect that A.R. Dykes would because we now have finite elements and computers.
We do get a feeling of just where you are at with respect to modern science when you post these relics. But as you have said:
If you don't see it, you don't see it. There is generally nothing whatever that one can do to allow another to see for themselves.
And, yes, who knows?
Que Sara, or Che sara
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"We do get a feeling of just where you are at with respect to modern science when you post these relics." -Dingus
Perfect!
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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"I have hardly even known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning." —Plato
Well, that certainly puts me in my place. I am humbled. I must go back and re-read your posts to understand how reasoning really works. Thanks for the nudge.
;>(
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Largo: Now Dingus McGee is blubbering,
You are the sadsack, JL. The little man behind the curtain.
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