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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 23, 2014 - 11:57am PT
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You will never, under any circumstance, meet someone who can hold an alert, open focus without prolonged practice (JL)
A conviction borne of personal experience and lots of data no doubt. If you say so.
John, this is not a case of me "saying so" based on my guessing about what I believe or in trying to bolster my position or any succh thing. MH2 is arguing simply because he likes to challenge anyone claiming anything catagorically - with the excepting of someone providing a measurement. But notice what he will NOT do - try it on for size himself and report back as he was invited to do. As is, he's arguing about Paris having never been there, always trying to find an exception to undermine, and missing Paris entirely. Judgement sans inveestigation is truly a duffer's trap.
And an Open Focus does not translate to an "empty mind," but rather to the direct experience of emptiness, or no-thing-ness. Big difference.
I view allof this talk as unconscious discusive rants demanding, beseeching the opposite to be false, unverifiable, invalid, etc. However when it comes time to actualy do the testing, to put the hypothesis to work, we get nothing back but more talk. Mercy . . . It's basic science. Here is the theory - you cannot hold an open focu for long without training. You doubt the theory, simply test it. No woo or mystery to it.
Per the "data," that data is overwhelmingly robust, reaches back thousands of years and exists in all meditation halls and in any text that goes into personal or 3rd person (in the case of teachers) accounts of people dealing with the challenges of practicing alert, empirical self observation. There is no instance in the literature, nor yet will you find any teacher or practitioneer who has either experiences, or data of others, who right off the bat simply sat down and dropped into the space between thoughts, sensations, memories, desires, etc. and could hang there witout being shanghaied by the first idea that came along, then snapping back to a while later and wondering where they went, how they lost the open focus, etc.
The practice is a proces and no one skips rungs, though some are faster than others. But be a good scientist and don't take my word for it. Test the theory for yourself, or read about it if your are scared or bored or lazy or can't be bothered for whatever reason - and tell us your experience, or what you have read about people getting started with no-mind self observation. What people struggle with is that this is not an inherent skill, and that someone, somewhere has dicked it with no practice - which is as ludicrous as claiming someone could master writing sonnets or playing the violin or doing hard math with no practice at all. They could just step up and do it.
Not ever . . .
More later. Time to go riding.
JL
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 23, 2014 - 04:16pm PT
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Thanks Base, for the heads up on the new Scientific American and you should read the new chapter by Sam Harris in return. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/chapter-one
I do really like what Harris has written. I was thinking as I read it that he covers many of the same issues I always did in my comparative Asian religion classes. As for religion, he doesn't espouse any, but he's got Buddhist philosophy oozing out of his pores.
For all those who read Largo and get confused, try Sam Harris. He says much the same thing about emptiness and no thingness and loss of self, but in slightly different vocabulary which often helps. Harris seems to have mostly followed the Theravada school of philosophy and meditation which is an entirely different branch than Zen, so it's interesting to see the similarities and differences.
Harris also takes the very classic Buddhist approach of discussing things from the personal up. Are you happy and what does happiness mean anyway? If you aren't, how can you acquire happiness? No talk of cosmology or metaphysics at all, but an emphasis on personal ethics instead.
The great British historian of the rise and fall of civilizations, Arnold Toynbee, often said that the most important event of the 20th century is that Buddhism made it to the West. I thought of this often as I read Harris. His secularized Buddhism (the Theravadins say this was the original Buddhism) is the type that will take hold I'm sure. It is skeptical of all isms, sees the shortcomings of both religion and science in human affairs, at the same time believing that the findings of neuroscience will help us to understand why these age old techniques of meditation work. He sees meditation as a method of building a better and happier and more ethical brain. No woo.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 04:32pm PT
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For all those who read Largo and get confused, try Sam Harris.
lol, I was going to post up the same thing yesterday, but then I got distracted. Darn the discursive! discursive this and that, discursive wanting, discursive surfing, discursive reading. At bottom, discursive out of control, unregulated thinking I guess. No wonder half the time I feel like a bb in a tin can in a wash machine!
But I'm not sure I got a lot out of it, this first chapter. But I'll withhold judgment and wait to see. Frankly, his writing on this one seemed, well, a bit "discursive," but we'll see later.
I agree though on this. Given the "poverty of language" concerning all the many and various new schools of thought and thinking going on ushered in by the modern secular age, there is a place for "spiritual" even among the atheists, non-religious, scientific and others, imo, although of course the definitions need to change depending on area, field or context.
"Spiritual" doesn't necessarily need to mean ghostly or pertain to woo.
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 05:19pm PT
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How ironic HFSC and Sam Harris both atheists following Buddhist philosophy.
Buddha was none other than God himself but never said he was.
He preached Ahimsa non violence against animals and all living entities.
The Brahmanas during that period used a vedic animal sacrifice for eating animals.
There was never any injunction for killing animals for sense gratification.
The sacrifice was for releasing the soul of the animal to get a higher body namely human.
They only used a very old animal.
It was a test of their brahmical powers.
Because Buddha preached against the vedas it was considered atheistic.
But only God himself can do this correctly by cheating the atheists to stop further Karmic reactions that will occur in their next lives.
After Buddha disappeared from view to the materialists he returned as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and drove Buddhism out of India and reestablished the vedic consciousness.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu defeated all the atheists, impersonalists, the mayavadis, and the Buddhists.
The Buddhists maintain that the principle "I am" is the Ultimate Truth, but this excludes the individuality of "I" and "you."
If there is no "I" and "you," or individuality, there is no possibility of argument.
The Buddhist philosophy depends on argument, but there can be no argument if one simply depends on "I am." There must be a "you," or another person also.
The philosophy of duality--the existence of the individual soul and the Supersoul--must be there.
This is confirmed in the Second Chapter of the Bhagavad-gita
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 05:59pm PT
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Harris writes,
"1. The moment we admit the possibility of attaining contemplative insights—and of training one’s mind for that purpose—we must acknowledge that people naturally fall at different points on a continuum between ignorance and wisdom. Part of this range will be considered “normal,” but normal isn’t necessarily a happy place to be. Just as a person’s physical body and abilities can be refined—Olympic athletes are not normal—one’s mental life can deepen and expand on the basis of talent and training. This is nearly self-evident, but it remains a controversial point. No one hesitates to admit the role of talent and training in the context of physical and intellectual pursuits; I have never met another person who denied that some of us are stronger, more athletic, or more learned than others. 2. But many people find it difficult to acknowledge that a continuum of moral and spiritual wisdom exists or that there might be better and worse ways to traverse it... 3. Stages of spiritual development, therefore, appear unavoidable."
I thought this was an interesting section. All three points, at least thought-provoking.
This one, too, regarding first person mental facts...
"Every mental state you have ever had has arisen and then passed away. This is a first-person fact—but it is, nonetheless, a fact that any human being can readily confirm. We don’t have to know any more about the brain or about the relationship between consciousness and the physical world to understand this truth about our own minds."
So we can gather together facts (collect into a body of knowledge) about our minds and how they work, also facts about first-person sujectivity, that many if not most should be able to agree on.
Now of course I knew this before just as millions do but it is nice to hear it expressed every so often for reinforcement sake. Maybe someday it will be a part of a new modern secular belief system for getting on in life that millions will share in as a kind of common ground.
Iow, what he's discussing here is the issue or claim that there are objective facts about subjective experience. No wonder we are sometimes confused between objective and subjective.
And I like to ponder this, too, as a variation in terms of "mental life." So thus, version #2: there are objective facts to be known, to be discovered, to be learned, to be taught, about our "mental lives."
My "mental life" was busy as a bee today, everywhere discursive but also productive, I think. :)
.....
Still a personal favorite of Sam Harris: Insofar as it's a pointless universe and we're mortal... "How can we create lives that are truly worth living, given that these lives come to an end?"
I think it's right up there with: To be or not to be?
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 23, 2014 - 06:18pm PT
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which is as ludicrous as claiming someone could master writing sonnets or playing the violin or doing hard math with no practice at all. They could just step up and do it (JL)
Good Will Hunting notwithstanding - that movie was a real stretch.
;>)
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MH2
climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 07:41pm PT
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There is no instance in the literature, nor yet will you find any teacher or practitioneer who has either experiences, or data of others, who right off the bat simply sat down and dropped into the space between thoughts, sensations, memories, desires, etc. and could hang there witout being shanghaied by the first idea that came along (JL)
That does not guarantee, as you claim, that no one has ever done that.
How much do music, sonnet-writing, and math share in common with holding an open focus?
The interesting thing to me is that you are unwilling to qualify your statement. You insist on the unverifiable absolute rather than say that holding an open focus is merely difficult and to the best of your knowledge requires practice.
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jstan
climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 08:20pm PT
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That does not guarantee, as you claim, that no one has ever done that. MH2
Based just on his perceptions, JL is long on knowing what can't be done. It is left to us to get used to letting all this just float by.
ood Will Hunting notwithstanding - that movie was a real stretch. JG
Millions of people are letting the possibility of being a Warren Buffet guide their vote. I hope it is less serious when I wonder why I can't read as fast and remember as well as Will Hunting. He was pretty stupid on one level though. Wondering whether he should check into Minnie Driver. That is pretty bad.
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MH2
climber
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Aug 23, 2014 - 08:24pm PT
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Thank you. Yes. Open focus. Things float by.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 23, 2014 - 08:51pm PT
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Reading fructose's comments on Harris, I feel I should clarify that while I saw Buddhism all over what Harris wrote, and he admits he has spent as much as two years in silent meditation altogether, unless you are very familiar with Buddhist vocabulary, you probably won't perceive it that way but will simply see his writings as a modern secular philosophy as does fructose.
For sure, he has found a way to discuss meditation and other than normal states of mind in a neutral enough way, that what he says will be accepted by a large spectrum of people. I admire this because I personally struggled hard to speak in an absolutely neutral way in comparative religion classes. Almost every word to describe the inner subjective world is so loaded with cultural and religious baggage, it's a real challenge.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 23, 2014 - 09:59pm PT
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Well Sam is very "Deterministic".
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2014 - 08:43am PT
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Please explain the theistic context which the "untouchables" find themselves in, as prescribed by Brahmins.
This is a material designation created by stupid British.
Research it.
There is no such designation on the spiritual platform .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 24, 2014 - 09:25am PT
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The Indian caste system is based on the conquest of India by other groups. The people at the bottom are the original stone age inhabitants who were one of the first migrations out of Africa. In some areas like the Himalayas, they were remote enough to retain their tribal identity. In the populated plains, they became the casteless people the British labeled untouchables. They are considered polluting for the work they do - including killing animals (one whole group catches rats from the fields and that is the main stay of their diet), cleaning toilets, carrying corpses etc. Some of them in the west, seem to have obtained that status through mixing with Alexander's soldiers as there are not a few with blue or green eyes and light hair.
Just above them are the majority who are agricultural workers, above them the merchants, above that the warrior caste and on the top, the Brahmin priests, educators, and intellectuals. In general, the darker the skin, the longer time spent in India, and the lower the caste. The invading Indo-Europeans did however, give honorary Brahmin status to some of the indigenous Dravidian priests who were already there and had a highly developed society along the river banks while the tribals lived in the jungle.
The caste system created a very stable agrarian society with a large food surplus and over time, was incorporated into religious teachings to justify the privileges of those at the top. You can make an almost one for one comparison with the system of slavery and segregation that existed in America in the south, complete with scriptural quotations as to why that system was God ordained.
Jesus mixed with Samaritans, the Untouchables of his day. Buddha had many close untouchable followers. Both great spiritual leaders broke with the stratified societies of their time. Millions of untouchable Indians have converted to Islam in the past and Buddhism more recently. A significant number are also becoming Christian. Educated Hindus do not believe in caste and almost all modern Hindu religious leaders have spoken against it. As we have seen from our recent riots however, changing people's hearts and minds and the elite power structure is a slow process.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 24, 2014 - 10:13am PT
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What people struggle with is that this is not an inherent skill, and that someone, somewhere has dicked it with no practice - which is as ludicrous as claiming someone could master writing sonnets or playing the violin or doing hard math with no practice at all. They could just step up and do it.
Not ever . . .
I agree with Largo on this... in the age of Google it has become easy to opine on something based on the opinions of others.
Take climbing, for instance... a fraction of the climbs that have been done are every repeated, based largely on the communication of the opinions of "quality" and a shared communal esthetic that changes as a fashion. Not unlike the clothing worn by the participants, and about as deeply motivated.
If you take nothing else from Largo's entreaties, take his implore to go out and do it (and you can fill in what "it" is). Often, it is more important to walk down a path, what ever path, than to sit and discuss what you will find at the end of that path, and especially if you never get around to the journey.
Being a scientist doesn't have a lot to do with sitting around taking about science, it has a lot to do with doing science. And to do science requires a lot of practice... reading popular accounts from scientists doesn't get you very far...
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 24, 2014 - 02:21pm PT
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And to do science requires a lot of practice... reading popular accounts from scientists doesn't get you very far...
Ditto for math.
I agree with JL on this also. I have always respected his meditative efforts, although I tend to disagree with the interpretation of the results. He has done the work. The same might be said of my efforts in math research: lots of hours in the saddle, but uncertainty regarding the value of the results (well not really - they are minor!) That's OK - it's the journey that matters. The voyage of discovery, no matter how elementary the results, provides satisfaction. That should be the motivating factor for anyone getting into science or math.
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Aug 24, 2014 - 03:11pm PT
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What people struggle with is that this is not an inherent skill, and that someone, somewhere has dicked it with no practice - which is as ludicrous as claiming someone could master writing sonnets or playing the violin or doing hard math with no practice at all. They could just step up and do it.
I agree with the general premise reflected in the above comment--- namely, that the full range of any given skill or practice must be experienced first hand, subjectively, to be properly validated and truly understood. Somewhat of a no-brainer in fact.
The difference, and this is crucial in understanding much of the discussion having transpired on this thread, is that the practitioners of fiddle playing or hard math or sonnets are not ---as a matter of course, establishing and sustaining ironclad antithetical distinctions between their transcendent discipline versus normal default modes of mental functioning. A fiddle player is not positioning his special knowledge or experience as an equivalent ontological or epistemological rival to ordinary non-fiddle knowledge . Nor is the fiddle player requesting that you spend years fiddle playing as the indispensable condition for validating your considered criticisms of any non-empirical heuristic claims ,with which ,on the face of it, you just might happen to disagree .
To do so creates an unbridgeable chasm based upon an oppositional framework . IMO it's about high time to bring the "meditative arts " into proper appositional perspective, like fiddling, as a healthy corollary to daily living ---and thereby hopefully rid it of any awkwardly high pretensions of a profoundly existential nature.
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MH2
climber
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Aug 24, 2014 - 03:40pm PT
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I would not compare doing science or doing math with doing meditation except in the most general sense that they all involve doing something.
I agree that if you are curious about an activity and want to know about it you will learn things from doing it that you would not learn from reading about it or listening to someone talk about it.
I do not understand why Largo goes on at such length about meditation when it is so slippery to describe and so simple to say: just do it. Why say more?
The original post had to do with "mind" and said that a scientific understanding of consciousness could be ruled out because an apple is not an orange.
As jgill said on page one:
So many words...
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WBraun
climber
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Aug 24, 2014 - 04:13pm PT
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I do not understand why Largo goes on at such length about meditation when it is so slippery to describe and so simple to say: just do it. Why say more?
Because he's compassionate enough to actually care about other living entities.
There was a monk at the river who kept rescuing a scorpion out of the river as it kept going in knowing it was going to drown.
Every time the he pulled the scorpion out of the water it would sting him.
A mental speculator gross materialist was watching this for a time.
It was far beyond his comprehension why this monk was doing this and suffering each time getting stung.
Finally the mental speculator gross materialist went up to the monk and asked him why he's doing this.
The monk replied; "This is my nature".
Some of you people are the scorpions .......
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 24, 2014 - 04:17pm PT
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Lol, that might be the funniest thing you've ever written!!
Variation on a theme, gotta love it.
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