DMB,
I think Sam rocks too.
Marsha
At 09:51 PM 1/29/2008, you wrote:
>Steve quoted Sam Harris:
>"...for thousands of years, contemplatives have
>claimed to find extraordinary depths of
>psychological well-being while spending vast
>stretches of time in total isolation. It seems
>to me that, as rational people, whether we call
>ourselves atheists or not, we have a choice to
>make in how we view this whole enterprise.
>Either the contemplative literature is a mere
>catalogue of religious delusion, deliberate
>fraud, and psychopathology, or people have been
>having interesting and even normative
>experiences under the name of spirituality and mysticism for millennia."
>
>dmb says:
>I mentioned this a while back after I saw it on
>YouTube. Thanks for posting it. This is what
>distinguishes Harris from most "atheists". I'd
>even make a case that he is a bit of a MOQer.
>
>Sam Harris said:
>"Now let me just assert, on the basis of my own
>study and experience, that there is no question
>in my mind that people have improved their
>emotional lives, and their self-understanding,
>and their ethical intuitions, and have even had
>important insights about the nature of
>subjectivity itself through a variety of
>traditional practices like meditation."
>
>dmb says:
>On top of the positive practical effects, which
>even a MOQer like Matt might applaud, there is
>Sam's recognition that "mystical" experience can
>provide "important insights about the nature of
>subjectivity itself". This could be taken as an
>attack on SOM, if only there were more...
>
>Sam Harris said:
>"...I am by no means denying the importance of
>thinking. There is no question that linguistic
>thought is indispensable for us. It is, in large
>part, what makes us human. It is the fabric of
>almost all culture and every social
>relationship. ...From the point of view of our
>contemplative traditions, howeverto boil them
>all down to a cartoon version, that ignores the
>rather esoteric disputes among themour habitual
>identification with discursive thought, our
>failure moment to moment to recognize thoughts
>as thoughts, is a primary source of human
>suffering. And when a person breaks this spell,
>an extraordinary kind of relief is available."
>
>dmb says:
>Here, he is talking about linguistic thought
>(static quality) and the breaking of it's spell
>(dynamic quality). Our failure to recognize
>thoughts AS thoughts, is what the philosophers
>call reification, which is to give concrete or
>existential reality to our abstractions. This is
>what Pirsig and James say happened to subjects
>and objects. And so that view is one of the
>things that's likely to break when the spell of
>linguistic thought in general is broken.
>
>Sam Harris said:
>"But the problem with a contemplative claim of
>this sort is that you cant borrow someone
>elses contemplative tools to test it. ...To
>judge the empirical claims of contemplatives,
>you have to build your own telescope. Judging
>their metaphysical claims is another matter:
>many of these can be dismissed as bad science or
>bad philosophy by merely thinking about them.
>But to judge whether certain experiences are
>possibleand if possible, desirablewe have to
>be able to use our attention in the requisite
>ways. We have to be able to break our
>identification with discursive thought, if only
>for a few moments. This can take a tremendous
>amount of work. And it is not work that our culture knows much about."
>
>dmb says:
>Here is see the idea that one has to go see it
>for one's self. Discursive thought can't convey
>the experience because its central importance
>consists in the non-discursive nature of the
>experience. There are certain techniques that
>can help, but ultimately there are no rules and
>there are as many paths as there are walkers. I
>also see him make reference to our culture's
>blind spot with respect to mysticism.
>
>Sam Harris said:
>"As someone who has made his own modest efforts
>in this area, let me assure you, that when a
>person goes into solitude and trains himself in
>meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months
>or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing
>elsenot talking, not reading, not writingjust
>making a sustained moment to moment effort to
>merely observe the contents of consciousness and
>to not get lost in thought, he experiences
>things that most scientists and artists are not
>likely to have experienced, unless they have
>made precisely the same efforts at
>introspection. And these experiences have a lot
>to say about the plasticity of the human mind
>and about the possibilities of human happiness..."
>
>dmb says:
>I'm glad to hear he's actually made some efforts
>in this area and it's what make him my fav of
>the wave of atheist authors, but the part really
>worth noticing comes at the very end. If I read
>him right, he's saying that the dynamic has a
>lot to teach us about the plasticity of the mind
>and the possibilities of human happiness. I
>think that's very, very MOQish. I think Sam rocks.
>
>
>
>
*************
DEFINITION of Marsha, I, me, self, myself, &
etc.: Ever-changing collection of overlapping,
interrelated, inorganic, biological, social and
intellectual, static patterns of value.
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
