[FairfieldLife] Waking Up - the art of pitching meditation to skeptics
I finished Sam Harris' new book, and am up for discussing any parts of it with people here who have also read the book. It should go without saying that in addition to the folks whose posts I never read period (none of whom are likely to have the attention span or humility to read this book anyway), I will engage with no one who hasn't done the homework of actually having read the book. But it's a good book IMO, and opens up many questions for discussion, among people open to actually learning new things. As an overview, I think it was an ambitious task that he managed to pull off fairly well. It isn't the easiest thing in the world, after all, to pitch the value of meditation and spirituality to people who have not the least bit of interest in Woo Woo or religious dogma, and in fact are pretty averse to those concepts. But I think he did a good job of it. For those whose only interest in such things is their own self-importance, i.e., Did he mention TM?, no, I don't think he did. He mentioned some research on meditation, but mainly on vipassana-mindfulness-based secular meditations. Personally, I don't think he'd even consider TM to *be* meditation, based on his descriptions of what he considers meditation to be. After all, in TM most people are sitting there *most of the time* lost in a sequence of reactive thoughts. This is exactly what his idea of meditation hopes to *avoid*. So no, even if TM weren't full of religious ideas and Woo Woo that he'd dislike, he'd probably not consider it real meditation. Speaking to more open-minded people, and to actual scientists (as opposed to Woo Woo Newagers who spout quantum this and unified field that without having any idea what they're talking about), I think Sam does a good job of presenting a case for investigating the spiritual side of life through meditation. His pitch is based pretty strongly on the need for self-knowledge, and for determining who that mysterious I that you consider your self is, and that's not going to appeal to everyone. But I think he mentions enough of the real-world, tangible benefits of meditation that a few people are going to undertake it, based on his book. He even gives a few intro techniques, which I cannot disagree with. I think that for most people his simple mindfulness technique would produce more tangible benefits after a few weeks of practicing it than TM would. And of course Sam's version is free, included in the first chapter he put online to give people a taste of the book. As a writer and as a personality, Sam Harris is NOT gonna be everyone's cuppa tea. For a person whose mantra (so to speak) is self is an illusion, he seems to have the strongest, most opinionated, and outspoken self I've encountered in years. :-) He's not only unafraid to say what he thinks of certain traditions and teachers, he does so occasionally for effect, to poke and prod people who are heavily invested in those traditions or teachers. I found that absolutely *nothing* he said in this book offended me in any way, but I'd be willing to bet that many long-term TMers and religionists here would be in pretty much a perpetual state of faux outrage if they actually tried to read the book. Fortunately for them, they'll never even try, because that would imply (horrors!) that they think they might have something to learn from an atheist. :-) If I have nitpicks with the book, they are, in fact, nitpicks...passages that I would have phrased differently, because I'm even more of a stickler for precision in language than he is. As an example, here's a passage from the book...try to figure out in advance what I disagree with, and how I would change it to make it better: Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind. Buddha means 'awakened one'—and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self.' I think honestly that Sam Harris is FAR more hung up on proving that there is no such thing as self than he needs to be. *For him* that's important...for me, not so much. So even in this descriptive phrase I would say ...who woke up from the dream of being *only* a separate self. That's more precise IMO, because it doesn't imply that having no-self is in any way better than having one. No-self/self are for me just two sides of the same coin. IMO the thing about self is that many who claim that there isn't one (for example...duh...Sam Harris) sound just as didactic and just as fanatical as those who claim there is. I don't tend to hang with absolutists, of *any* stripe. My bet is that the original Buddha didn't much give a shit whether he had a self or not...he was just awake, and in the moment. In some of those moments, he had a self; in others, not so much. And *none* of those moments
Re: [FairfieldLife] Waking Up - the art of pitching meditation to skeptics
You need to get some smarts, Barry - NOBODY on FFL, that has a lick of sense, is going to pay $16.00 for a 256 page book so they can read what Sam Harris says about Buddhist meditation. Only a nerd would do that - because there is nothing new in his book to read - this is some pretty basic stuff. We saw the book at the Public Library and at Barnes Noble and we both read almost the entire book standing in a book stall or in the stacks. Sam Harris refutes almost everything you've been posting to FFL for the last ten years, Barry. Get a clue - you are living in a fantasy if you think this is a way to start a dialog. I already posted to the internet almost everything Sam Harris says about Tibetan meditation and you failed to respond to a single message. You suck as an informant! Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/Reviews/ http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/product-reviews/1451636016/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1 On Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 3:15 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife] FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com wrote: I finished Sam Harris' new book, and am up for discussing any parts of it with people here who have also read the book. It should go without saying that in addition to the folks whose posts I never read period (none of whom are likely to have the attention span or humility to read this book anyway), I will engage with no one who hasn't done the homework of actually having read the book. But it's a good book IMO, and opens up many questions for discussion, among people open to actually learning new things. As an overview, I think it was an ambitious task that he managed to pull off fairly well. It isn't the easiest thing in the world, after all, to pitch the value of meditation and spirituality to people who have not the least bit of interest in Woo Woo or religious dogma, and in fact are pretty averse to those concepts. But I think he did a good job of it. For those whose only interest in such things is their own self-importance, i.e., Did he mention TM?, no, I don't think he did. He mentioned some research on meditation, but mainly on vipassana-mindfulness-based secular meditations. Personally, I don't think he'd even consider TM to *be* meditation, based on his descriptions of what he considers meditation to be. After all, in TM most people are sitting there *most of the time* lost in a sequence of reactive thoughts. This is exactly what his idea of meditation hopes to *avoid*. So no, even if TM weren't full of religious ideas and Woo Woo that he'd dislike, he'd probably not consider it real meditation. Speaking to more open-minded people, and to actual scientists (as opposed to Woo Woo Newagers who spout quantum this and unified field that without having any idea what they're talking about), I think Sam does a good job of presenting a case for investigating the spiritual side of life through meditation. His pitch is based pretty strongly on the need for self-knowledge, and for determining who that mysterious I that you consider your self is, and that's not going to appeal to everyone. But I think he mentions enough of the real-world, tangible benefits of meditation that a few people are going to undertake it, based on his book. He even gives a few intro techniques, which I cannot disagree with. I think that for most people his simple mindfulness technique would produce more tangible benefits after a few weeks of practicing it than TM would. And of course Sam's version is free, included in the first chapter he put online to give people a taste of the book. As a writer and as a personality, Sam Harris is NOT gonna be everyone's cuppa tea. For a person whose mantra (so to speak) is self is an illusion, he seems to have the strongest, most opinionated, and outspoken self I've encountered in years. :-) He's not only unafraid to say what he thinks of certain traditions and teachers, he does so occasionally for effect, to poke and prod people who are heavily invested in those traditions or teachers. I found that absolutely *nothing* he said in this book offended me in any way, but I'd be willing to bet that many long-term TMers and religionists here would be in pretty much a perpetual state of faux outrage if they actually tried to read the book. Fortunately for them, they'll never even try, because that would imply (horrors!) that they think they might have something to learn from an atheist. :-) If I have nitpicks with the book, they are, in fact, nitpicks...passages that I would have phrased differently, because I'm even more of a stickler for precision in language than he is. As an example, here's a passage from the book...try to figure out in advance what I disagree with, and how I would change it to make it better: Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism
Re: [FairfieldLife] Waking Up - the art of pitching meditation to skeptics
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, punditster@... wrote : You need to get some smarts, Barry - NOBODY on FFL, that has a lick of sense, is going to pay $16.00 for a 256 page book so they can read what Sam Harris says about Buddhist meditation. Only a nerd would do that - because there is nothing new in his book to read - this is some pretty basic stuff. We saw the book at the Public Library and at Barnes Noble and we both read almost the entire book standing in a book stall or in the stacks. Sam Harris refutes almost everything you've been posting to FFL for the last ten years, Barry. Get a clue - you are living in a fantasy if you think this is a way to start a dialog. I already posted to the internet almost everything Sam Harris says about Tibetan meditation and you failed to respond to a single message. You suck as an informant! Amazon reviews: Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/product-reviews/1451636016/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1 http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/product-reviews/1451636016/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1 Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Waking Up: A Gui... http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/product-reviews/1451636016/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1 Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbias... View on www.amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/product-reviews/1451636016/ref=dpx_acr_txt?showViewpoints=1 Preview by Yahoo So far the passage bawee has cut and pasted here is pretty pedestrian. Nothing that someone with a lick of sense wouldn't already know. Let's see if there is any other pearls of wisdom in our FFL future from this author but as far as I can see we have all discussed this to death already. Of course, bawee will have three people to have a conversation about it if they so desire: Sal, Susan and Xeno - he has a limited friend list.
