The Hippies Were Right: It's All about Vibrations, Man! Why are some things conscious and others apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A bat? A cockroach? A bacterium? An electron? These questions are all aspects of the ancient “mind-body problem,” which has resisted a generally satisfying conclusion for thousands of years. The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the last two decades and is generally known now as the “hard problem” of consciousness (usually capitalized nowadays), after the New York University philosopher David Chalmers coined this term in a now classic 1995 paper and his 1996 book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Fast forward to the present era and we can ask ourselves now: Did the hippies actually solve this problem? So how were the hippies right? All things in our universe are constantly in motion, vibrating.
An interesting phenomenon occurs when different vibrating things/processes come into proximity: they will often start, after a little time, to vibrate together at the same frequency. The Pygmalion Effect: Proving Them Right. The question of BEING and NOT being ! ' Why there is something rather than nothing' might be the ultimate and the most central question in philosophy. Why existence, with at surface level what we see as the physical-stuff, and at the parallel level, the stuff of mind too, that in-fact had constituted the very entity of man, who asks this, and other not-so-simple-to answer questions ! This question naturally points towards a most central fact of being, that man knows and recognizes that he 'is'! He is always able to recognize the most extra-ordinary fact about his life, that yes, he exists !
He exists because he is able to realize the vital difference between being and not being. He is there, and that is why he is able to grasp the vital difference between the speculative state of his NOT being, and the irrefutable fact of his Being ! For a moment, forget about the parallel existence of the external world, as without the perceiving mechanism of mind, we would not have been able to grasp it.
Authored by: Abraham J. Why we owe it to ourselves to spend quiet time alone every day – ideas.ted.com. Dola Sun In 2016, the Harvard biologist emeritus and naturalist E.O. Wilson (TED Talk: Advice to a young scientist) published Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, in which he proposes that half the earth’s surface be designated and protected as conservation land. Just since 1970, human beings have destroyed more than 30 percent of forests and the marine ecosystem, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.
The destruction has been an unintended consequence of population growth, the desire for increased material wealth and comfort, and the associated need for more energy. It’s also been driven by the inexorable imperative of capitalism and the powerful desire of certain individuals to increase their personal wealth. Wilson’s proposal might be difficult to achieve, but it represents a recognition of the importance of our natural environment and the forces that threaten it. The destruction of our inner selves via the wired world is an even more recent, and more subtle, phenomenon. Finding our way to true belonging. True belonging. I don’t know exactly what it is about the combination of those two words, but I do know that when I say it aloud, it just feels right.
It feels like something that we all crave and need in our lives. We want to be a part of something, but we need it to be real — not conditional or fake or constantly up for negotiation. We need true belonging, but what exactly is it? In 2010, in my book The Gifts of Imperfection, I defined belonging this way: “Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. This definition has withstood the test of time as well as the emergence of new data, but it is incomplete. No matter how separated we are by what we think and believe, we are part of the same spiritual story.
Belonging to ourselves means being called to stand alone — to brave the wilderness of uncertainty, vulnerability and criticism. True belonging is not passive. True belonging is not something you negotiate externally, it’s what you carry in your heart. Rudyard Kipling: How To Be A Man. Simone Weil on Attention and Grace. “Attention without feeling,” Mary Oliver wrote in her beautiful elegy for her soul mate, “is only a report.” To fully feel life course through us, indeed, we ought to befriend our own attention, that “intentional, unapologetic discriminator.” More than half a century before Oliver, another enchantress of the human spirit — the French philosopher Simone Weil (February 3, 1909–August 24, 1943), a mind of unparalleled intellectual elegance and a sort of modern saint whom Albert Camus described as “the only great spirit of our times” — wrote beautifully of attention as contemplative practice through which we reap the deepest rewards of our humanity.
In First and Last Notebooks (public library) — the out-of-print treasure that gave us Weil on the key to discipline and how to make use of our suffering — she writes: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Weil considers the superiority of attention over the will as the ultimate tool of self-transformation: On our craving for generality. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Blue Book, chastised philosophers for what he called “our craving for generality.” Philosophers (including the earlier Wittgenstein of the Tractatus) certainly have exhibited this craving, and despite his admonishment, we continue to do so.
Philosophers seek general accounts of the nature of propositions, properties, virtues, mental states–you name it. Wittgenstein portrays the craving for generality as a kind of philosophical sin, but it is not that. First, it is hardly confined to philosophy–scientists crave generality, as do humans generally. The crux of our predicament is this: nature is heterogeneous and particular, but epistemic and practical needs require us to generalize. Wittgenstein thought that philosophers are drawn to make general claims in part because they wish to emulate “the method of science,” which he took to involve “reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws.” Bundle Theory - Philosophy.
What Ancient Chinese Philosophy Can Teach Us About Living the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Popular Professor, Michael Puett. It has at times been concerning for some Buddhist scholars and teachers to watch mindfulness become an integral part of self-help programs. A casual attitude toward the practice of mindfulness meditation can make it seem accessible by making it seem relaxing and effortless, which often results in missing the point entirely.
Whatever the school, lineage, or particular tradition from which they come, the source texts and sages tend to agree: the purpose of meditation is not self improvement—but to realize that there may, indeed, be no such thing as a self. Instead, we are all epiphenomenon arising from combinations of ever-shifting elements (the aggregates, or skandhas). The self is a conventionally useful illusion. Harvard Professor Michael Puett has been lecturing on Chinese philosophy to audiences of hundreds of students—and at 21st century temples of self-actualization like TED and the School of Life. Rather, he says, “I think of it as sort of anti-self-help. Related Content: Best of Philosophy | Journals. Best of 2017 Explore a roundup of the best of recent philosophy scholarship. As 2017 draws to a close we’re taking a look back over a year of publishing and have curated this reading list of each journal's most-read 2017 articles.
Read the online collection, free to access until March 2018. AnalysisAristotelian Society Supplementary VolumeThe British Journal for the Philosophy of ScienceThe British Journal of AestheticsMindThe MonistThe Journal of Medicine & PhilosophyPhilosophia MathematicaThe Philosophical QuarterlyProceedings of the Aristotelian SocietyPublic Health Ethics Analysis Valuing and believing valuable Robbie Kubala Reality is not structured Jeremy Goodman Cognitive penetration, hypnosis and imagination Valtteri Arstila Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume Moral Luck and Equality of Moral Opportunity Roger Crisp Lucifer's Logic Lesson: How to Lie with Arguments Roy Sorensen Perceptiveness José Filipe Silva The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Mind The Monist.
The Power of Walking and Silence - [English]: John Francis at TEDxTokyo. Home - Sri Ramana Maharshi. Earth - Organisms might be quantum machines. If there’s any subject that perfectly encapsulates the idea that science is hard to understand, it’s quantum physics. Scientists tell us that the miniature denizens of the quantum realm behave in seemingly impossible ways: they can exist in two places at once, or disappear and reappear somewhere else instantly.
The one saving grace is that these truly bizarre quantum behaviours don’t seem to have much of an impact on the macroscopic world as we know it, where “classical” physics rules the roost. Or, at least, that’s what scientists thought until a few years ago. Quantum processes might be at work behind some very familiar processes Now that reassuring wisdom is starting to fall apart. In fact, quantum effects could be something that nature has recruited into its battery of tools to make life work better, and to make our bodies into smoother machines. At one level, photosynthesis looks very simple. It’s one part of photosynthesis in particular that puzzles scientists. He was right. Becoming an Expert: The Elements of Success. Loci: Convergence | Teaching Leonardo: An Integrated Approach.
Lojong. Lojong (Tib. བློ་སྦྱོང་,Wylie: blo sbyong) is a mind training practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Geshe Chekhawa. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes. The fifty-nine or so slogans that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. They contain both methods to expand one's viewpoint towards absolute bodhicitta, such as "Find the consciousness you had before you were born" and "Treat everything you perceive as a dream", and methods for relating to the world in a more constructive way with relative bodhicitta, such as "Be grateful to everyone" and "When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up. " History of the practice[edit] Atiśa journeyed to Sumatra and studied with Dharmarakṣita for twelve years.
Geshe Chekhawa is claimed to have cured leprosy with mind training. 1. 2. List of common misconceptions. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This incomplete list is not intended to be exhaustive. This list corrects erroneous beliefs that are currently widely held about notable topics. Each misconception and the corresponding facts have been discussed in published literature. Note that each entry is formatted as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. Arts and culture Food and cooking Roll-style Western sushi. Searing meat does not "seal in" moisture, and in fact may actually cause meat to lose moisture.
Legislation and crime Literature The Harry Potter books, though they have broken children's book publishing records, have not led to an increase in reading among children or adults, nor slowed the ongoing overall decline in book purchases by Americans, and children who did read the Harry Potter books were not more likely to go on to read more outside of the fantasy and mystery genres.[21][22][23][24] Music Religion Hebrew Bible Buddhism Christianity Islam Sports. Family tree of the Greek gods. Key: The essential Olympians' names are given in bold font. See also List of Greek mythological figures Notes External links Media related to Family trees of Greek mythology at Wikimedia Commons.