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Tag Archives: Buddhism

The World As Emptiness, and Being Let Go

16 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Happiness, Inner peace, Lecture, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Spirituality

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Alan Watts, Buddhism, Eight-fold path, Samadhi, The World As Emptiness

Alan Watts… “I warn you, that by explaining these things to you, I shall subject you to a very serious hoax.”

Here we have a video and transcript (Part 1, Being Let Go; Samadhi):

The World As Emptiness, Alan Watts 

This particular weekend seminar is devoted to Buddhism, and it should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export. Last week, when I discussed Hinduism, I discussed many things to do with the organization of a Hindu society because Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion; it’s a whole culture. It’s a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. The Hindus and many other ancient peoples do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it. But you see, when a religion and a culture are inseparable, it’s very difficult to export a culture, because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.

So the question arises, what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that approximately, you’ll get Buddhism. As I explained, the essential of Hinduism, the real, deep root, isn’t any kind of doctrine, it isn’t really any special kind of discipline, although of course disciplines are involved.

The center of Hinduism is an experience called moksha, liberation, in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, in a way, on one level an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call ‘the self,’ the one self, which is all that there is.

The universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays ‘hide,’ it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever, and we don’t know it because it’s playing ‘hide.’ But when it plays ‘seek,’ it enters onto a path of yoga, and through following this path it wakes up, and the scales fall from one’s eyes.

Alan Watts – The World As Emptiness, Part 1

Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism, the only really important thing about Buddhism is the experience which they call ‘awakening.’ Buddha is a title, and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root, ‘bheudh,’ and that sometimes means ‘to know,’ but better, ‘waking.’ And so you get from this root ‘bodhih.’ That is the state of being awakened. And so ‘Buddha,’ ‘the awakened one,’ ‘the awakened person.’ And so there can of course in Buddhist ideas, be very many Buddhas.

The person called the Buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that Buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes, you see, there comes into the world what you might call a ‘big Buddha.’ A very important one. And such a one is said to have been Guatama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in a part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date, like 564, which some people think it was, but I give you a vague date–just after 600 BC is probably right.

Most of you, I’m sure, know the story of his life. Is there anyone who doesn’t, I mean roughly? OK. So I won’t bother too much with that. But the point is, that when, in India, a man was called a Buddha, or THE BUDDHA, this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is first of all necessary for a Buddha to be human. He can’t be any other kind of being, whether in the Hindu scale of beings he’s above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods or angels–angels are probably a better name for them than gods–all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma–that is action that requires more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They’re still, according to popular ideas, going ’round the wheel from life after life after life after life, because they still have the thirst for existence, or to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the self is still playing the game of not being itself.

But the Buddha’s doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occurred after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism, fasting, doing all sort of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But Buddha found that all that was futile; that was not The Way. And one day he broke is ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish.

So long as you think, and feel, that you are a someone contained in your bag of skin, and that’s all, there is no way whatsoever of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you’re still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehavior.

So, you know how people are when they get spiritually proud. They belong to some kind of a church group, or an occult group, and say ‘Of course we’re the ones who have the right teaching. We’re the in-group, we’re the elect, and everyone else outside.’ It is really off the track. But then comes along someone who one-ups THEM, by saying ‘Well, in our circles, we’re very tolerant. We accept all religions and all ways as leading to The One.’ But what they’re doing is they’re playing the game called ‘We’re More Tolerant Than You Are.’ And in this way the egocentric being is always in his own trap.

So Buddha saw that all his yoga exercises and ascetic disciplines had just been ways of trying to get himself out of the trap in order to save his own skin, in order to find peace for himself. And he realized that that is an impossible thing to do, because the motivation ruins the project. He found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. Trap and trapped are one, and when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left. I’m going to explain that of course more carefully.

So, as a result of this experience, he formulated what is called the dharma, that is the Sanskrit word for ‘method.’ You will get a certain confusion when you read books on Buddhism, because they switch between Sanskrit and Pali words.

The earliest Buddhist scriptures that we know of are written the Pali language, and Pali is a softened form of Sanskrit. So that, for example, the doctrine of the Buddha is called in Sanskrit the ‘dharma,’ we must in pronouncing Sanskrit be aware that an ‘A’ is almost pronounced as we pronounce ‘U’ in the word ‘but.’ So they don’t say ‘darmuh,’ they say ‘durmuh.’ And so also this double ‘D’ you say ‘budduh’ and so on. But in Pali, and in many books of Buddhism, you’ll find the Buddhist doctrine described as the ‘dhama.’ And so the same way ‘karma’ in Sanskrit, in Pali becomes ‘kama.’ ‘Buddha’ remains the same. The dharma, then, is the method.

Now, the method of Buddhism, and this is absolutely important to remember, is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn’t teach a doctrine. You cannot anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialog.

So the concern of the Buddha as a young man—the problem he wanted to solve—was the problem of human suffering. And so he formulated his teaching in a very easy way to remember. All those Buddhist scriptures are full of what you might call mnemonic tricks, sort of numbering things in such a way that they’re easy to remember. And so he summed up his teaching in what are called the Four Noble Truths. And the first one, because it was his main concern, was the truth about duhkha. Duhkha, ‘suffering, pain, frustration, chronic dis-ease.’ It is the opposite of sukha, which means ‘sweet, pleasure, etc.’

So, insofar as the problem posed in Buddhism is duhkha, ‘I don’t want to suffer, and I want to find someone or something that can cure me of suffering.’ That’s the problem. Now if there’s a person who solves the problem, a buddha, people come to him and say ‘Master, how do we get out of this problem?’ So what he does is to propose certain things to them. First of all, he points out that with duhkha go two other things. These are respectively called anitya and anātman. Nnitya means permanant, so anitya is impermanance. Flux, change, is characteristic of everything whatsoever. There isn’t anything at all in the whole world, in the material world, in the psychic world, in the spiritual world, there is nothing you can catch hold of and hang on to for safely. Nuttin’ … not only is there nothing you can hang on to, but by the teaching of anātman, there is no you to hang on to it. In other words, all clinging to life is an illusory hand grasping at smoke. If you can get that into your head and see that is so, nobody needs to tell you that you ought not to grasp. Because you see, you can’t.

Buddhism is not essentially moralistic. The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. Because what happens is he simply sweeps the dust under the carpet, and it all comes back again somehow. But in this case, it involves a complete realization that this is the case. So that’s what the teacher puts across to begin with.

The next thing that comes up, the second of the noble truths, is about the cause of suffering, and this in Sanskrit is called trishna. Trishna is related to our word ‘thirst.’ It’s very often translated ‘desire.’ That will do. Better, perhaps, is ‘craving, clinging, grasping,’ or even, to use our modern psychological word, ‘blocking.’ When, for example, somebody is blocked, and dithers and hesitates, and doesn’t know what to do, he is in the strictest Buddhist sense attached, he’s stuck. But a buddha can’t be stuck, he cannot be phased. He always flows, just as water always flows, even if you dam it, the water just keeps on getting higher and higher and higher until it flows over the dam. It’s unstoppable.

Now, Buddha said, then, duhkha comes from trishna. You all suffer because you cling to the world, and you don’t recognize that the world is anitya and anātman. So then, try, if you can, not to grasp. Well, do you see that that immediately poses a problem? Because the student who has started off this dialog with the buddha then makes various efforts to give up desire. Upon which he very rapidly discovers that he is desiring not to desire, and he takes that back to the teacher, who says ‘Well, well, well.’ He said, ‘Of course. You are desiring not to desire, and that’s of course excessive.

All I want you to do is to give up desiring as much as you can. Don’t want to go beyond the point of which you’re capable.’ And for this reason Buddhism is called the Middle Way. Not only is it the middle way between the extremes of ascetic discipline and pleasure seeking, but it’s also the middle way in a very subtle sense. Don’t desire to give up more desire than you can. And if you find that a problem, don’t desire to be successful in giving up more desire than you can. You see what’s happening? Every time he’s returned to the middle way, he’s moved out of an extreme situation.

Now then, we’ll go on; we’ll cut out what happens in the pursuit of that method until a little later. The next truth in the list is concerned with the nature of release from duhkha. And so number three is nirvana. Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism; it’s the state of liberation corresponding to what the Hindus call moksha. The word means ‘blow out,’ and it comes from the root ‘nir vritti.’ Now some people think that what it means is blowing out the flame of desire. I don’t believe this. I believe that it means ‘breathe out,’ rather than ‘blow out,’ because if you try to hold your breath, and in Indian thought, breath–prana–is the life principle. If you try to hold on to life, you lose it. You can’t hold your breath and stay alive; it becomes extremely uncomfortable to hold onto your breath [moksha: release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma… a transcendent state attained as a result of being released from the cycle of rebirth].

And so in exactly the same way, it becomes extremely uncomfortable to spend all your time holding on to your life. What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do. They spend enormous efforts on maintaining a certain standard of living, which is a great deal of trouble. You know, you get a nice house in the suburbs, and the first thing you do is you plant a lawn. You’ve gotta get out and mow the damn thing all the time, and you buy expensive this-that and soon you’re all involved in mortgages, and instead of being able to walk out into the garden and enjoy, you sit at your desk and look at your books, filling out this and that and the other and paying bills and answering letters. What a lot of rot! But you see, that is holding onto life. So, translated into colloquial American, nirvana is ‘whew!’ because if you let your breath go, it’ll come back. So nirvana is not annihilation, it’s not disappearance into a sort of undifferentiated void. Nirvana is the state of being let go. It is a state of consciousness, and a state of, you might call it, being, here and now in this life.

We now come to the most complicated of all, number four and magha. Magha in Sanskrit means ‘past,’ and the Buddha taught an eight-fold path for the realization of nirvana. This always reminds me of a story about Dr Suzuki, who is a very, very great Buddhist scholar. Many years ago, he was giving a fundamental lecture on Buddhism at the University of Hawaii, and he’d been going through these four truths, and he said ‘Ah, fourth Noble Truth is Noble Eightfold Path. First step of Noble Eightfold Path is called shoken. Shoken in Japanese means ‘right view.’ For Buddhism, fundamentally, is the right way of viewing this world. Second step of Noble Eightfold Path is—oh, I forget second step, you look it up in the book.’

Well, I’m going to do rather the same thing. What is important is this: the eight-fold path has really got three divisions in it. The first are concerned with understanding, the second division is concerned with conduct, and the third division is concerned with meditation. And every step in the path is preceded with the Sanskrit word _samyak_. In which you remember we ran into _samadhi_ last week, ‘sam’ is the key word. And so, the first step, _samyak- drishti_, which mean–‘drishti’ means a view, a way of looking at things, a vision, an attitude, something like that. But this word samyak is in ordinary texts on Buddhism almost invariably translated ‘right.’ This is a very bad translation. The word IS used in certain contexts in Sanskrit to mean ‘right, correct,’ but it has other and wider meanings. ‘Sam’ means, like our word ‘sum,’ which is derived from it, ‘complete, total, all-embracing.’ It also has the meaning of ‘middle wade,’ representing as it were the fulcrum, the center, the point of balance in a totality. Middle wade way of looking at things. Middle wade way of understanding the dharma. Middle wade way of speech, of conduct, of livelihood, and so on.

Now this is particularly cogent when it comes to Buddhist ideas of behavior. Every Buddhist in all the world, practically, as a layman–he’s not a monk–undertakes what are called pancasila, the Five Good Conducts. ‘Sila’ is sometimes translated ‘precept.’ But it’s not a precept because it’s not a commandment.

When Buddhists priests chant the precepts, you know: pranatipada: ‘prana (life) tipada (taking away) I promise to abstain from.’ So the first is that one undertakes not to destroy life. Second, not to take what is not given. Third—this is usually translated ‘not to commit adultry’. It doesn’t say anything of the kind. In Sanskrit, it means ‘I undertake the precept to abstain from exploiting my passions.’ Buddhism has no doctrine about adultery; you may have as many wives as you like.

But the point is this: when you’re feeling blue, and bored, it’s not a good idea to have a drink, because you may become dependent on alcohol whenever you feel unhappy. So in the same way, when you’re feeling blue and bored, it’s not a good idea to say ‘Let’s go out and get some chicks and have some sex fun.’ That’s exploiting the passions. But it’s not exploiting the passions, you see, when drinking, say, expresses the vitality and friendship of the group sitting around the dinner table, or when sex expresses the spontaneous delight of two people in each other. 

Then, the fourth precept, Musavada, ‘to abstain from false speech.’ It doesn’t simply mean lying. It means, abusing people. It means using speech in a phony way, like saying ‘all niggers are thus and so.’ Or ‘the attitude of America to this situation is thus and thus.’ See, that’s phony kind of talking. Anybody who studies general semantics will be helped in avoiding musavada, false speech.

The final precept is a very complicated one, and nobody’s quite sure exactly what it means. It mentions three kinds of drugs and drinks: sura[?], mariya[?], maja[?]. We don’t know what they are. But at any rate, it’s generally classed as narcotics and liquors. Now, there are two ways of translating this precept. One says to abstain from narcotics and liquors; the other liberal translation favored by the great scholar Dr Malanesecreta[?] is ‘I abstain from being intoxicated by these things.’ So if you drink and don’t get intoxicated, it’s OK. You don’t have to be a teetotaler to be a Buddhist. This is especially true in Japan and China; my goodness, how they throw it down! A scholarly Chinese once said to me, ‘You know, before you start meditating, just have a couple martinis, because it increases your progress by about six months.’

Now you see these are, as I say, they are not commandments, they are vows. Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by some kind of cosmic lawgiver. The reason why these precepts are undertaken is not for a sentimental reason. It is not that you’re going to make you into a good person. It is that for anybody interested in the experiments necessary for liberation, these ways of life are expedient. First of all, if you go around killing, you’re going to make enemies, and you’re going to have to spend a lot of time defending yourself, which will distract you from your yoga. If you go around stealing, likewise, you’re going to acquire a heap of stuff, and again, you’re going to make enemies. If you exploit your passions, you’re going to get a big thrill, but it doesn’t last. When you begin to get older, you realize ‘Well that was fun while we had it, but I haven’t really learned very much from it, and now what?’ Same with speech. Nothing is more confusing to the mind than taking words too seriously. We’ve seen so many examples of that. And finally, to get intoxicated or narcotized–a narcotic is anything like alcohol or opium which makes you sleepy. The word ‘narcosis’ in Greek, ‘narc’ means ‘sleep.’ So, if you want to pass your life seeing things through a dim haze, this is not exactly awakening.

So, so much for the conduct side of Buddhism. We come then to the final parts of the eightfold path. There are two concluding steps, which are called Samyak smriti and Samyak Samadhi. Smriti means ‘recollection, memory, present-mindedness’ … seems rather funny that the same word can mean ‘recollection or memory’ and ‘present-mindedness’ Bbut smriti is exactly what that wonderful old rascal George Gurdjieff meant by self-awareness, or self-remembering. Smriti is to have complete presence of mind.

There is a wonderful meditation called ‘The House that Jack Built Meditation,’ at least that’s what I call it, that the Southern Buddhists practice. He walks, and he says to himself, ‘There is the lifting of the foot.’ The next thing he says is ‘There is a perception of the lifting of the foot.’ And the next, he says ‘There is a tendency towards the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ Then finally he says, ‘There is a consciousness of the tendency of the perception of the feeling of the lifting of the foot.’ And so, with everything that he does, he knows that he does it. He is self-aware. This is tricky. Of course, it’s not easy to do. But as you practice this–I’m going to let the cat out of the bag, which I suppose I shouldn’t do–but you will find that there are so many things to be aware of at any given moment in what you’re doing, that at best you only ever pick out one or two of them. That’s the first thing you’ll find out. Ordinary conscious awareness is seeing the world with blinkers on. As we say, you can think of only one thing at a time. That’s because ordinary consciousness is narrowed consciousness. It’s being narrow-minded in the true sense of the word, looking at things that way. Then you find out in the course of going around being aware all of the time–what are you doing when you remember? Or when you think about the future? ‘I am aware that I am remembering’? ‘I am aware that I am thinking about the future’?

But you see, what eventually happens is that you discover that there isn’t any way of being absent-minded. All thoughts are in the present and of the present. And when you discover that, you approach samadhi. Samadhi is the complete state, the fulfilled state of mind. And you will find many, many different ideas among the sects of Buddhists and Hindus as to what samadhi is. Some people call it a trance, some people call it a state of consciousness without anything in it, knowing with no object of knowledge. Some people say is is the unification of the know-er and the known. All these are varying opinions.

I had a friend who was a Zen master, and he used to talk about samadhi, and he said a very fine example of samadhi is a fine horse rider. When you watch a good cowboy, he is one being with the horse. So an excellent driver in a car makes the car his own body, and he absolutely is with it. So also a fine pair of dancers; they don’t have to shove each other to get one to do what the other wants him to do. They have a way of understanding each other, of moving together as if they were Siamese twins. That’s samadhi, on the physical, ordinary, everyday level. The samadhi of which Buddha speaks is the state which, as it is, the gateway to Nirvana; the state in which the illusion of the ego, as a separate thing, disintegrates.

Now, when we get to that point in Buddhism, Buddhists do a funny thing, which is going to occupy our attention for a good deal of this seminar. They don’t fall down and worship. They don’t really have any name for what it is, that is, really, and basically. The idea of anatman, of non-self, is applied in Buddhism not only to the individual ego, but also to the notion that there is a self of the universe, a kind of impersonal or personal god, and so it is generally supposed that Buddhism is atheistic. It’s true, depending on what you mean by atheism. Common or garden atheism is a form of belief; namely that I believe there is no god. The atheist positively denies the existence of any god. All right. Now, there is such an atheist, if you put dash between the ‘a’ and ‘theist,’ or speak about something called ‘atheos’–‘theos’ in Greek means ‘god’–but what is a non-god? A non-god is an inconceivable something or other.

I love the story about a debate in the Houses of Parliment in England, where, as you know, the Church of England is established and therefor under control of the government, and the high ecclesiastics had petitioned Parliament to let them have a new prayer book. Somebody got up and said “It’s perfectly ridiculous that Parliament should decide on this, because as we well know, there are quite a number of atheists in these benches.” And somebody got up and said “Oh, I don’t think there are really any atheists. We all believe in some sort of something somewhere.”

Now again, of course, it isn’t that Buddhism believes in some sort of something somewhere, and that is to say in vagueness. Here is the point: if you believe, if you have certain propositions that you want to assert about the ultimate reality, or what Paul Tillich calls ‘the ultimate ground of being’ you are talking nonsense. Because you can’t say something specific about everything. You see, supposing you wanted to say God has a shape. But if god is all that there is, then God doesn’t have any outside, so he can’t have a shape. You have to have an outside and space outside it to have a shape. So that’s why the Hebrews, too, are against people making images of God. But nonetheless, Jews and Christians persistently make images of God, not necessarily in pictures and statues, but they make images in their minds. And those are much more insidious images.

Buddhism is not saying that the Self, the great Atman, or what-not… it isn’t denying that the experience which corresponds to these words is realizable. What it is saying is that if you make conceptions and doctrines about these things, your liable to become attached to them. You’re liable to start believing instead of knowing. So they say in Zen Buddhism, “The doctrine of Buddhism is a finger pointing at the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” Also, we might say in the West, the idea of God is a finger pointing at God, but what most people do is instead of following the finger, they suck it for comfort. And so Buddha chopped off the finger [metaphor], and undermined all metaphysical beliefs.

There are many, many dialogues in the Pali scriptures where people try to corner the Buddha into a metaphysical position. ‘Is the world eternal?’ The Buddha says nothing. ‘Is the world not eternal?’ And he answers ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world both eternal and not eternal?’ And he don’t say ‘nuttin’. ‘Is the world neither eternal nor not eternal?’ And STILL he don’t say ‘nuttin’. He maintains what is called the noble silence. Sometimes called the thunder of silence, because this silence, this metaphysical silence, is not a void. It is very powerful. This silence is the open window through which you can see not concepts, not ideas, not beliefs, but the very goods. But if you say what it is that you see, you erect an image and an idol, and you misdirect people. It’s better to destroy people’s beliefs than to give them beliefs. I know it hurts, but it is The Way.

Transcript source: deoxy.org

T47:28

Terms (more)

Dharma: is a key concept that signifies behaviors that are considered to be in accord with the order that makes life and universe possible. Dharma is “cosmic law and order” and includes duties, rights, laws, conduct, virtues and ‘‘right way of living” as taught by the Buddha.

Moksha: in Indian philosophy and religion is a liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth (saṃsāra); derived from Sanskrit, the term moksha literally means freedom from saṃsāra.

Samadhi: a state of intense concentration achieved through meditation. In Hindu yoga this is regarded as the final stage, at which union with the divine is reached (before or at death). 

Saṃsāra: is a Sanskrit word that means “wandering” or “world”, with the connotation of cyclic, circuitous change. It also refers to the theory of rebirth and “cyclicality of all life, matter, existence” and liberation from Saṃsāra is called Moksha, Nirvana, Mukti or Kaivalya.

The Noble Eightfold Path: is the fourth of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, and asserts the path to the cessation of dukkha (suffering, pain, un-satisfactoriness). The path teaches that through restraining oneself, by cultivating discipline, in practicing mindfulness and meditation, the enlightened ones stop their craving, clinging and karmic accumulations, and thus end rebirth and suffering. It is used to develop insight into the true nature of reality, achieve liberation from rebirths in realms of Samsara, and to attain nirvana. In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel (dharmachakra), with eight spokes representing the eight elements of the path. The eight Buddhist concepts in the Noble Eightfold Path are:

  1. right view: the belief that there is an afterlife, that not everything ends with death, that Buddha taught and followed a successful path to nirvana;
  2. right resolve: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving-kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
  3. right speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him, speaking that which leads to salvation;
  4. right conduct: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts.
  5. right livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life;
  6. right effort: guard against sensual thoughts; this concept, states Harvey, aims at preventing unwholesome states that disrupt meditation.
  7. right mindfulness: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; encourages the mindfulness about impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five skandhas, the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
  8. right samadhi (concentration): practicing four stages of dhyana meditation.

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Thanks for visiting.

New post  Eric 

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How Meditation Changes Our Brains

06 Sunday Jul 2014

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These are FACTS
:
.

Meditation helps with Stress
Meditation helps with Anxiety
Meditation helps with Hypertension
Meditation helps with drug abuse
Meditation helps with ADHD
Meditation helps with depression
Meditation helps with Asthma

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Bloggers For Peace

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.

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Thanks for visiting.

 Eric

RELATED ARTICLES

Healthy spirituality and its biology
Wisdom Is Avoiding All Thoughts Which Weaken You
Change from within
gradual freedom from habit
Is the brain spirituality wired?
Theory of mind… evolving spirituality
Meditation energizes
mindfulness – a state of non-distraction
mindfulness and prayerful healing
Mindfulness training downloads (free)
morning Meditation

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Jul 6, 2014 .

Meditation Changes Brains!

23 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in B4Peace, Consciousness, Culture, Faith, Happiness, Health, I can improve today, Inner peace, Inspiration, Lessons, Meditation, Mindful, Peace, Philosophy, Science, Self-improvement

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

B4Peace, Buddhism, compassion, free mindfulness exercises, Gamma wave, happy, joy, Learning, Matthieu Ricard, open mind, Peace, Prefrontal cortex, PTSD, Ricard, Richard Davidson, serene, serenity, success

.

Matthieu Ricard is the world’s happiest man; according to researchers. That’s not even the amazing part… so, here is a short but comprehensive look…

at meditation benefits and basics…

spend 20-60 minutes here.

Bloggers, readers, meditation and mindful practice is AMAZING! Astounding!

.

According to Ricard …

“In the Western world, meditation means sitting under a mango tree in a blissed out state. The prevailing idea is that you have to sit down and empty your mind. It’s not that at all. You have to clean up a bit. We have so many wandering and intrusive thoughts. So you have to be in control of your own mind. Meditation means inner freedom. Inner freedom doesn’t mean following every chain of thought. It’s like a sailor who takes the helm and decides where to sail instead of drifting with the current. If you want to generate particular state of mind, you do what it takes.”

Ricard

“There was a lot of activity in his left prefrontal cortex which indicates a huge capacity for happiness; this man is very unlikely to be making negative choices about his experiences,” says Neuroscientist Richard Davidson 

.

“Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain.” 

The French genetic scientist left an intellectual life 40 years ago and moved to India to study Buddhism. He is now a western scholar of religion.

His daily routine of meditation made possible amazing brain scans that demonstrate that if he is meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves never before reported within neuroscience literature.

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NOW, here begins the really amazing part Gamma brain wave production is associated with consciousness, attention, learning and memory. We want to train our brains to increase peace and serenity and this changes the brain — It’s like we come into unifying Loving Light… after time… the brain changes (maintenance required).

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FINDINGS His skull was wired up with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin and its all been recorded — he’s got a happy and joyous mind — no doubt. Scans found excess activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving Ricard an abnormally large capacity for happiness.

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FINDINGS A larger volume of a specific brain structure generally increases the abilities to carry out specific functions associated with that structure. This is widely accepted based on the assumption that greater numbers of neurons will produce larger outputs and therefore may be more influential than smaller numbers of neurons.

.

.

FINDINGS Researchers in neuroscience demonstrate that the prefrontal cortex plays a responsible role in forming of expectations based on actions and social control, predicting of outcomes, future consequences of activities, working toward goals, development of abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, abilities to determine same and different and better and best. Abilities to suppress urges that may lead to socially unacceptable outcomes are developed by this area of the brain. Meditation boosts learning ability, improves brain functioning, and reduces stress!

calming-mind-brain-wave.mindfulness

Even people meditating for the first time will register a decrease in beta waves, a sign that the cortex is not processing information as actively as usual. After 20 minutes there is a huge decrease in beta activity — these brains are learning to be highly focused.

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Matthieu Ricard: “Compassion is not just some high-minded flaky concept that Buddhist monks and New Age hippies bandy about, it’s a very practical way to operate in a world that is incredibly stressful for just about everyone.” 

FINDINGS Mindfulness meditation, one type of meditation technique, has been shown to enhance emotional awareness and psychological flexibility as well as induce well-being and emotional balance. Scientists have also begun to examine how meditation may influence brain functions. This talk will examine the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on the brain systems in which psychological functions such as attention, emotional re-activity, emotion regulation, and self-view are instantiated. We will also discuss how different forms of meditation practices are being studied using neuroscientific technologies and are being integrated into clinical practice to address symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress..

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Need help or want to collaborate with me? Just e-mail me at thehunt4truth@yahoo.com 

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Share this one around… its time to change this world, one brain at a time… each to their own.

Let’s rid the world of social anxiety:

NOTE: Social anxiety is linked to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, psychosis (not otherwise specified), drug use, alcohol use, spontaneous violence, outbursts, character flaws, behavior problems, anger and rage; to name just a few dis-eases.

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Let’s work on it together… mindfulness is a tool for awakening mental health.

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FINDINGS Related to anxiety… this is empirical evidence… about Meditation benefits. These are FACTS: .

Meditation helps with Stress
Meditation helps with Anxiety
Meditation helps with Hypertension
Meditation helps with drug abuse
Meditation helps with ADHD
Meditation helps with depression
Meditation helps with Asthma

.

Personally, I am sure that practicing mindfulness meditation with some expert therapeutic guidance  can speed healing of PTSD and possibly DID; maybe even NPD, BPD, and possibly even schizophrenia.

Meditation can speed recovery from grief.

It will probably heal some Anxiety NOS and episodic Depression.

Mindfulness can greatly decrease panic episodes… maybe cure it.

It can reduce Bipolar and Uni-polar disorder symptoms.

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  • Study shows mindfulness training can help reduce teacher stress and burnout (news.wisc.edu)
  • Is this the world’s happiest man? (dailymail.co.uk)
  • Calming the Mind (freemeditation.com)
  • Meditation Offers Lasting Peace (scienceblog.com
  • The Power of Meditation and How It Affects Our Brains (blog.bufferapp.com)
  • What Happens To The Brain When You Meditate (lifehacker.com.au)

Bloggers For Peace

This post presents facts; benefits of mindfulness and meditation. Take some time… invest in your well-being

and… share this one around.

Other WordPress Peace bloggers:
http://wordpress.com/tag/b4peace/
.
.

Thanks for reading.

 Eric

RELATED ARTICLES (HUNT FOR TRUTH)

    • Healthy spirituality and its biology
    • Wisdom Is Avoiding All Thoughts Which Weaken You
    • Change from within
    • gradual freedom from habit
    • Is the brain spirituality wired?
    • Theory of mind… evolving spirituality
    • Meditation energizes
    • mindfulness – a state of non-distraction
    • mindfulness and prayerful healing
    • Mindfulness training downloads (free)
    • morning Meditation
.
3-3-14.

How Some Of The World’s Most Successful People Discovered Their Spiritual Side

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Culture, Faith, Happiness, Inner peace, Lessons, Mindful, Peace, Philosophy, Religion, Self-improvement, Spirituality

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

B4Peace, Buddhism, Celebrities Spirituality, Christian, Ellen Degeneres, Gabrielle Bernstein, God, Healthy spirituality and its biology, Jim Carrey, John Lennon, Mark Bertolini, Mindfulness, mindfulness and prayerful healing, Oprah Winfrey, Paul Jones, Sonia Jones, Spiritual But Not Religious, Spiritual Coming Out Stories, Spiritual Development, Steve Jobs

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I came upon an article that features spiritual “coming out” stories from successful thinkers, performers and business leaders. I had 54 drafts today nearly complete, but this post suddenly ‘made me’ happy with myself. My theme here is inner peace — it comes through us by spiritual growth. Even non-religious people agree… inner peace is a transcendent quality.

Animated_Moses_with_10_Commandments

I love my faith and for me Christian belief is in my heart. Yet, deeply, I learn every day at WordPress about spirituality and reverence for life… and therefore in the bricks and mortar world too… from dozens of fellow bloggers here and from dozens of people in community… what’s most important to me — being usefulness for others… I am to be love… to love being loving.

That is what was working on me since childhood. When I got that, FINALLY, I had a complete faith that transcends egoistic me. 

I don’t anymore care much about what religion, if any, that a person follows. I care about inner peace and sharing that.

I don’t think that God is religious. I think God can handle anything and that He wants us all with Him — I think we are all pieces of the kingdom come puzzle. I think, in the end, God will have His way. That’s me… keeping it simple — nothing more complex than that really is here and there in my blog about my religious thinking. I like my religion simple. For me spirituality isn’t about religion.

Now, for the good stuff: here are 10 short “coming out” stories about people you probably know of… hope you love the stories. Oh, and there are links to video and other presentations in the text — hover the mouse pointer to get a description. I went the extra mile for you.

~ Eric

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The Huffington Post  |  By Carolyn Gregoire (reblog)
How Some Of The World’s Most Successful People
Discovered Their Spiritual Side

Now, with nearly one in five Americans identifying as “spiritual but not religious,” and countless successful people in a range of professions saying that meditation is their greatest secret to success, some of America’s most beloved public figures and successful business leaders are following suit, opening up about their first “big jelly” moments of spiritual awakening — and telling the world why they believe.

John Lennon

In a 1967 interview, “What I Believe,” John Lennon opened up to the world about how he discovered God.

You don’t have to have a great faith or anything. The whole thing is so simple — as though it’s too marvelous to be true,” Lennon said of discovering Transcendental Meditation in India with guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, during the interview with The Daily Sketch. “I don’t and never did imagine God as one thing. But now I can see God as a power source, or as an energy.

Lennon went on to say, “It’s all like one big jelly. We’re all in the big jelly.”

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Jim Carrey

In 2009, Jim Carrey gave a heartfelt talk about the first time he realized that his self was something bigger than his mind, body or thoughts. Carrey said of his spiritual awakening:

I understood suddenly how thought was just an illusory thing, and how thought is responsible for, if not all, most of the suffering we experience. And then I suddenly felt that I was looking at these thoughts from another perspective, and I thought, ‘Who is it that is aware that I’m thinking?’ Suddenly, I was thrown into this expansive, amazing feeling of freedom — from myself, from my problems. I saw that I was bigger than what I do, bigger than my body, everything and everyone. I was no longer a fragment of the universe. I was the universe.

In a 2006 “60 Minutes” segment, Carrey also said that spirituality has helped him through bouts of depression, and helped him to engage with the world from a more loving place.

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Gabrielle Bernstein

New York Times best-selling author and guru to young professional women Gabrielle Bernstein was a hard-partying New York City PR girl (and cocaine addict) when she “hit bottom” — and turned inward to find a new way. Bernstein said in a TEDxFiDiWomen talk that she woke up one morning and heard a voice tell her:

Get your life together, girl, and you will live beyond your wildest dreams.

After 25 years of looking for direction and happiness “in all the wrong places,” Bernstein got clean, began following the metaphysical text “A Course in Miracles” — which she says helped her move from a place of fear to one of love — and soon afterward wrote her ultra-successful self-help book, “May Cause Miracles.”

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Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was a practicing Zen Buddhist. At 18 years old, the tech visionary dropped out of Reed College and went to India to find himself — and came home with Buddhist values that would shape the rest of his life and career. At his memorial in 2011, Jobs had arranged for guests to be given copies of “Autobiography of a Yogi,” the classic spiritual memoir on the power of self-realization.

That was the message: Actualize yourself.

Said friend and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff who attended the funeral at the 2013 TechCrunch Disrupt SF conference, “If you look back at the history of Steve and that early trip to India … He had this incredible realization that his intuition was his greatest gift. He needed to look at world from inside out … His message was to look inside yourself and realize yourself.”

.

Ellen Degeneres

When “Ellen” host Ellen Degeneres first came out as a lesbian in 1997, the reaction from Hollywood was devastating: Advertisers pulled their funding and she was forced to cancel her show for three years. During that period, Degeneres told TODAY’s Ann Curry in 2012, she began to look for happiness and wholeness within herself.

I don’t think it was a failure, but it certainly gave me a lot of time to sit still and go, ‘Who am I?’

During that period, Degeneres found her center and created a spiritual lifestyle by becoming a vegan, yogi and, in 2011, a Transcendental Meditation practitioner. “[TM] just gives me this peaceful feeling and I love it so much,” Degeneres said at a David Lynch Foundation event.

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Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey has become a guru for modern Americans, doling out self-help, spiritual guidance and meditation tips. Winfrey has said that the only life is a spiritual one — something she knows because she has “lived in the space of spirit [her] whole life.” Oprah knew this truth even when she was four years old, she claims, when she profoundly felt the truth of her favorite Bible verse, Acts 17:28 (“For in him we live and move and have our being”).

There is a force/energy/consciousness/divine thread that connects us all spiritually to something greater than ourselves.

Oprah stated this during an Oprah’s Life Class program in 2012, defining spirituality as “living your life with an open heart through love.”

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Tina Turner

Tina Turner turned on to Buddhism in the 1970s when she was struggling to put an end to her abusive relationship with husband and fellow musician Ike Turner. Turner now follows a sub-sect of Buddhism known as Soka Gakkai, which emphasizes chanting and follows the teachings of the Lotus Sutra. Beyond, an album of Buddhist and Christian music, features Turner chanting the Lotus Sutra (“Nam Myoho Renge Kyo).”

Turner told Shambhala Sun in 2011:

I feel that chanting for 35 years has opened a door inside me, and that even if I never chanted again, that door would still be there. I feel at peace with myself. I feel happier than I have ever been, and it is not from material things. Material things make me happy, but I am already happy before I acquire these things. I have a nature within myself now that’s happy.

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Tim Ryan

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), author of “A Mindful Nation: How A Simple Practice Can Help Us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance and Recapture the American Spirit,” has been instrumental in bringing mindfulness to the nation’s capital — and into schools and communities across the U.S. Since last December, he’s led a silent meditation time on Mondays for members of Congress, the “Quiet Time Caucus.”

The Catholic former high school football player turned to meditation (which he now practices for 45 minutes every morning) when he was feeling stressed and overwhelmed with campaigning and constant work travel. So he went on a five-day mindfulness retreat in the Catskills with Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction — and the trip changed his life.

Ryan told the Washington Times:

I had two BlackBerrys. I checked them at the door. You learn to follow your breathing, appreciate how your mind works. When it starts to wander off, you come back to your body. By the middle of the retreat I felt my mind and body sync up. Like being in the zone.

.

John Mackey

In 2008, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was going through a rough patch in his life. Whole Foods was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission after acquiring its largest competitor, Wild Oats, and Mackey himself was caught in the middle of a stock market scandal. It was then that the “Conscious Capitalism” author turned to spirituality.

Mackey found solace in the practice of holotropic breathing, which led him to several important epiphanies and acted as something of a spiritual awakening.

 Mackey said in a CD released with his Conscious Capitalism:

I had this very powerful session, very powerful. It lasted about two hours. I was having a dialogue with what I would define as my deeper self, or my higher self.

.

Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna

Like Mackey, Bertolini turned inward and explored alternative healing remedies in the wake of a traumatic event. After the Aetna CEO broke his neck in a skiing accident, he was hooked on painkillers for a year. But then he found natural pain relief through mindfulness practices like yoga and meditation. Now, he’s been practicing viniyoga for nearly seven years.

Bertolini has become an outspoken advocate of mindfulness, which he credits with improving decision-making skills in the workplace. At Aetna, he introduced a 12-week mindfulness and yoga program for employees, and according to Bertolini, it’s resulted in dramatically lower stress levels and increased productivity among its 34,000 participants.

Bertolini said in an interview with yoga website Alignyo in May:

Every morning I get up and I do my asana, pranayama, meditation, and Vedic chanting before work. It’s helped me be more centered, more present.

.

Paul & Sonia Jones

In 2012, Tudor Investments founder Paul Jones and his wife Sonia donated $12 million to establish the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. The exploration of contemplative and yogic practices is close to both of their hearts.

 The couple said when they announced the gift:

We both started practicing Ashtunga Yoga in 2000 and it changed our lives. Our hope is that every person that goes into the Contemplative Sciences Center can have the same great experience that my wife and I and our family and all our friends have had.

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_ _ _ _

I don’t even like what some of the above people have done or said or still do and say. However, that isn’t what is important to me about them. They are fellow human beings on an elusive road to spirituality. Their ego is probably a crafty and tenacious adversary like mine. They get over that and the failings, and they focus on spiritual growth. I love that about them all. Today, I’m about tolerance, acceptance, patience, empathy, compassion, love and you and me with inner peace.

May God bless us all — every one of us.

.

Thanks for reading
spiritual topics in a secular age.

 Eric

.

Bloggers For Peace

RELATED ARTICLES (HUNT FOR TRUTH)

  • Healthy spirituality and its biology
  • Is the brain spirituality wired?
  • Theory of mind… evolving spirituality
  • Meditation energizes
  • mindfulness and prayerful healing
  • morning Meditation
Other WordPress Peace bloggers:
http://wordpress.com/tag/b4peace/
 
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.
.

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what is the happiest person in the world saying?

23 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Health, Inner peace, Meditation, Mindful, Philosophy, Science, Spirituality

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Art of Meditation, Brain, Buddhism, Christian, Christianity, DNA, God, healing, Jesus, joy, Matthieu Ricard, mind, Peace, Religion and Spirituality, serenity, Thought

Oh yes, I’m back on happiness and changing your DNA and your brain chemistry too; and so I’m taking a closer look with my new friend Matthieu Ricard from his Google Tech Talks in 2007 at how to re-program brains. His lecture is stored in the Youtube video library (its so nice to browse Youtube occasionally–well, actually, I do daily).

Mattieu Ricard spoke about ‘The Art of Meditation’ in a video from the charity RSA. Here are some hints and tips…

    • A healthy mind should act like a mirror – faces can be reflected in a glass but none of them stick. Use the same technique with thoughts – let them pass through your mind but don’t dwell.
    • It’s impossible to stop thoughts from coming but focusing on a particular sound or the breath going in and out calms the mind, giving greater clarity. Controlling the mind is not about reducing your freedom, it’s about not being a slave to your thoughts. Think of it as directing your mind like a boat rather than drifting.
    • Be mindful – pay attention to the sensations of your breath going in and out. If you notice your mind wandering simply bring it back to focusing on your breath. This is known as mindfulness. You can apply it to other sensations to bring you into the ‘now’ rather than dwelling on the past or future. You could focus  instead on heat, cold and sounds that you hear.
    • Once you’ve achieved some skill in this you  can use that to cultivate qualities such as kindness, or dealing with disturbing emotions. He says everyone has felt all-consuming love but usually it lasts for about 15 seconds, but you can hold on and nurture this vivid feeling by focusing on it in meditation. If you feel it becoming vague you can consciously revive it.
    • Like when playing the piano, practicing the feeling for 20minutes has a far greater impact over time than a few seconds.  Regular practice is also needed like watering a plant.
    • You can then use meditation to gain some space from negative emotions. Ricard says: ‘You can look at your experience like a fire that burns. If you are aware of anger you are not angry you are aware. Being aware of anxiety is not being anxious it is being aware.’ By being aware of these emotions you are no longer adding fuel to their fire and they will burn down.
    • You will see benefits in stress levels and general wellbeing as well as brain changes with regular practice in a month. Those who say they don’t have enough time to meditate should look at the benefits: ‘If it gives you the resources to deal with everything else during the other 23 hours and 30minutes, it seems a worthy way of spending 20 minutes,’ Ricard says.

I understand that what once was thought a miracle is a law of nature as it turns out.

Change your Mind; Change your Brain
The Inner Conditions:

60 minutes Youtube watch?v=L_30JzRGDHI

Next, I also want you to see this talk from Ricard on the habits of happiness at Ted Talks (also stored on Youtube).

21 minutes Youtube watch?v=vbLEf4HR74E

Thanks for learning with me,

 Eric

Why is Ricard “the happiest man in the world?”

A friend wants to know if I’m still Christian. YES, I am. Everything that I’m referring to from science and new age and Buddhist teachers is complimentary with Jesus’s teachings. I posted a couple of the most important Christian practices–in my opinion, 1 John (NIV) and the Our Father prayer are essential in Christian belief.

1 John 4:9-11

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  

___
Related articles

  • The entity we call “mind” may not be as neuroscience says, just a manifestation of the brain. (hunt4truth.wordpress.com)
  • morning Meditation (hunt4truth.wordpress.com)
  • 1 John (NIV) (hunt4truth.wordpress.com)
  • your eMotion matters (hunt4truth.wordpress.com)

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meditation changes brains

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Consciousness, Faith, Health, Inspiration, Meditation, Memory, Mindful, News update, Peace, Philosophy, Prayer, Religion, Science, Self-improvement, Spirituality

≈ 30 Comments

Tags

B4Peace, Buddhism, compassion, Gamma wave, happy, joy, Learning, Matthieu Ricard, Peace, Prefrontal cortex, Ricard, Richard Davidson, serene, serenity, success

.

The entity we call mind
may not be as neuroscience says
just a manifestation of the brain.

.Matthieu Ricard is the world’s happiest man,
according to researchers.

According to Ricard (text)

In the Western world, meditation means sitting under a mango tree in a blissed out state. The prevailing idea is that you have to sit down and empty you mind. It’s not that at all. You have to clean up a bit. We have so many wandering and intrusive thoughts. So you have to be in control of your own mind. Inner freedom doesn’t mean following every chain of thought. It’s like a sailor who takes the helm and decides where to sail instead of drifting with the current. If you want to generate particular state of mind, you do what it takes.

Ricard: 'Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain'

“Meditation is not just blissing out under a mango tree but it completely changes your brain.” The French genetic scientist left an intellectual life 40 years ago and moved to India to study Buddhism. His daily routine of meditation made possible amazing brain scans that demonstrate that if he’s meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves never before ever reported within neuroscience literature. NOTE: gamma brain wave production is associated with consciousness, attention, learning and memory.

His skull was wired up with 256 sensors at the University of Wisconsin and its all been recorded — he’s got a happy and joyous mind — no doubt. Scans found excess activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, giving Ricard an abnormally large capacity for happiness.

.

.

A larger volume of a specific brain structure generally increases the abilities to carry out specific functions associated with that structure. This is widely accepted based on the assumption that greater numbers of neurons will produce larger outputs and therefore may be more influential than smaller numbers of neurons.

Researchers in neuroscience demonstrate that the prefrontal cortex plays a responsible role in forming of expectations based on actions and social control, predicting of outcomes, future consequences of activities, working toward goals, development of abilities to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, abilities to determine same and different and better and best. Abilities to suppress urges that may lead to socially unacceptable outcomes are developed by this area of the brain.

.

Thanks for reading.

 Eric

.

.
RELATED ARTICLES
  • mindfulness and prayerful healing (Hunt For Truth)
  • morning Meditation (Hunt For Truth)

.

  • Is this the world’s happiest man? (dailymail.co.uk)
  • Buddhist monk is the world’s happiest man (india.nydailynews.com)
  • Scans of Monks’ Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning (psyphz.psych.wisc.edu) 
  • Neuroscience proves meditation really works (timescolonist.com)
  • The Compassionate Brain (throughthevortex.org)
.

Inner Peace

Inner Peace Award - I would have a no-awards blog but this award changed me. Thanks Suz. I'm glad I changed.

November 2013

Top Posts (LIkes)

  • Looking at yourself honestly - Mental Strength
  • Only one Word was on my mind
  • A Virus Called Fear
  • Five steps to mindfulness
  • Scientist debunks Hawking's 'no God needed' theory
  • Happiness: Self-acceptance
  • How is feeling upset my problem?
  • 7 Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra
  • 10 Principles for Success and Inner Peace
  • How Meditation Changes Our Brains

Recent Posts

  • Psychic Ability, Remote Viewing and A Course in Miracle with Russell Targ
  • America’s Great Divide
  • ACIM Zoom
  • Christ & Christianity { Alan Watts }
  • A Course In Miracles (training and discussions)
  • Awareness
  • Imagination creates reality
  • The World As Emptiness, and Being Let Go
  • Man cannot stand a meaningless life
  • Empath Support
  • Don’t take consciousness for granted
  • The World is Only Reflecting Back to You What You Are
  • Living Happily
  • we are holographic
  • How close is science to understanding consciousness?
  • Mapping the “War on Christmas”
  • The Fountain (95 minute Full Feature Film)
  • laugh… evolve…
  • be still and contemplate
  • Year 3 in WordPress time
  • mind is everywhere
  • Three Hermits – the simplicity of joyful worship
  • Love one another
  • Do Your Best
  • within these reflections…
  • signs of the Soul (reblog)
  • Verbal and Emotional Abuse… is More Than Just Words Said
  • How are you stepping outside of your childhood programming and recovering your power of creation?
  • Dreamwalker’s Hearts Beat as One!
  • Humble (reblog)
  • 2015 – resolutions
  • Artists 4 Peace
  • irrational ideas – quality of life (reblog)
  • dreams fly free (reblog)
  • A Virus Called Fear
  • The sky is not the limit (reblog)
  • Thanksgiving – Why?
  • Science and Prayer
  • Veterans Day Thanks
  • What If Heaven Is Here And Now?

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Hunt 4 Truth

Hunt 4 Truth

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." https://hunt4truth.wordpress.com/ Absolute Truth is whole, complete and perfect. Absolute Truth is just beyond words, mental concepts, and form; Non-being, yet in everything and yet beyond thought forms. Prayer and meditation fashion in our hearts further honesty, openness, and willingness and thus, we may glimpse guidance and truth to rightly think and act. Any glimpse of truth is not Absolute Truth. It may be sufficient until we renew our commitment to serve God. Life is thus best navigated during mindfulness of prayer and meditation by an inner peace. "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Romans 1:20

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