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NeuroContemplative

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Meditation: It’s Not What You Think. Do you have family, friends, colleagues who say they just can’t meditate? Mind and Life’s resident neuroscientist Wendy Hasenkamp explores the popular misconceptions surrounding meditation, and the reasons to keep trying. When I explain to someone that I’m involved in research on meditation, it’s not uncommon for me to hear, “Oh, meditation—I tried that.

I couldn’t do it.” This response brings up a mix of emotions in me that is equal parts sadness and frustration, with a heaping dose of motivation on top. Sadness because people have experienced meditation in a negative light and come to associate it with a sense of failure. If you do a quick online image search on meditation, what you’ll find is a popular depiction: people sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, seemingly serene and free of thoughts, some even with beams of light shooting out of their heads.

The struggle with meditation typically arises because our goals are misplaced. What’s all the hype about? But don’t take my word for it. Global Brain Institute. Can You Build a Better Brain? - Newsweek and The Daily Beast. The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 9, No. 3/4 (2005), pp. 331-352. Art and the Limits of Neuroscience. The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. What is art? What does art reveal about human nature?

The trend these days is to approach such questions in the key of neuroscience. “Neuroaesthetics” is a term that has been coined to refer to the project of studying art using the methods of neuroscience. Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist at University College London, likes to say that art is governed by the laws of the brain. Leif Parsons What is striking about neuroaesthetics is not so much the fact that it has failed to produce interesting or surprising results about art, but rather the fact that no one — not the scientists, and not the artists and art historians — seem to have minded, or even noticed.

What we do know is that a healthy brain is necessary for normal mental life, and indeed, for any life at all. But there is a second obstacle to progress in neuroaesthetics. Yet it’s early. Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe V. Wade? The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. When I was asked this summer to serve as an expert witness in an appellate case that some think could lead to the next Supreme Court test of Roe v. Wade, I was surprised.

Rick Hearn is the attorney representing Jennie McCormack, an Idaho woman who was arrested for allegedly inducing her own abortion using mifepristone and misoprostol — two F.D.A. -approved drugs, also known as RU-486 — and for obtaining the drugs from another state over the Internet. While the case against Ms. McCormack has been dropped for lack of evidence, Mr. The authors of a 2005 review of clinical research in the Journal of the American Medical Association have written, “Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester.”

As Mr. Leif Parsons The implicit vehicle for this inference is the concept of consciousness. Sam Harris on Meditation and Consciousness. Sam Harris Speech on Free Will Given in Vancouver to the Bon Mot Book Club. This Must Be Heaven. Once upon a time, a neurosurgeon named Eben Alexander contracted a bad case of bacterial meningitis and fell into a coma. While immobile in his hospital bed, he experienced visions of such intense beauty that they changed everything—not just for him, but for all of us, and for science as a whole. According to Newsweek, Alexander’s experience proves that consciousness is independent of the brain, that death is an illusion, and that an eternity of perfect splendor awaits us beyond the grave—complete with the usual angels, clouds, and departed relatives, but also butterflies and beautiful girls in peasant dress.

Our current understanding of the mind “now lies broken at our feet”—for, as the doctor writes, “What happened to me destroyed it, and I intend to spend the rest of my life investigating the true nature of consciousness and making the fact that we are more, much more, than our physical brains as clear as I can, both to my fellow scientists and to people at large.” Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana. Sam Harris on "Free Will" Montegrande. The Tree of Contemplative Practices.

The Tree illustrates some of the contemplative practices currently in use in secular organizational and academic settings. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list. Below the Tree you will find links to descriptions of many of these practices as well as a more in-depth description of the Tree and image files for downloading. Some of the practices on the tree link to further information–either on our website, or on Wikipedia. © The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society Concept & design by Maia Duerr; illustration by Carrie Bergman Understanding the Tree On the Tree of Contemplative Practices, the roots symbolize the two intentions that are the foundation of all contemplative practices.

The roots of the tree encompass and transcend differences in the religious traditions from which many of the practices originated, and allow room for the inclusion of new practices that are being created in secular contexts. The branches represent different groupings of practices. For printing: