Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama by Daniel
Goleman
As a rationalist and skeptic, I had been extremely suspicious of "woo woo"
claims about meditation, but I was interested is Dan Goleman's research
into meditation and stress and I was intrigued by the "scientific dialog"
claim. I was reading along with a rather skeptical attitude when I ran
across a chapter talking about an experiment that Paul Ekman did with a
trained meditator, in which he suppressed his startle reflex. That should
not be possible! Digging further I discovered that meditation does seem to
have objective measurable effects and I now meditate daily. Because of this
book.
-- Charles
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 12:57 AM, John Sundman <j...@wetmachine.com> wrote:
> I was happy to see The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
> Bicameral Mind on the list in the Chronicle (although it's more than 30
> years old. Closer to 40, I think.) I remember reading it shortly after it
> came out, and while some of its conclusions seemed a bit of a stretch, it
> was certainly provocative & answered questions that I had never thought
> about but which are in fact interesting & legitimate.
>
> If I had to choose 1 non-fiction book that has changed my mind it would be
> Hofstadter's Goedel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (It too is dates
> from 1970's but if Jaynes gets in, then I'll assume Hofstadter can too.)
> This book changed me in two ways. The first was in tying together the
> various ideas about recursion, self-similarity, and of course the Strange
> Loop, and the provocative thesis that strange loops are at the core of
> self-awareness & consciousness (which I believe is very likely on the right
> track & which has certainly influenced me as a novelist; all of my work
> touches on this central idea in one way or another).
>
> The second way that the book changed me was in convincing me that I could
> understand concepts that had scared me away before I read it. I graduated
> from college in 1974, a few years before I read GEB. In college I didn't
> take a single math ("maths") course or course in logic. After college I
> spent 2 years in the Peace Corps, most of that time living in a mud hut on
> the edge of the Sahara, a full day's travel from reliable electricity or
> running water. I was interested in agriculture & my philosophy was pretty
> romantic -- still feeling the after effects of the whole hippie thing. GEB
> showed me that what I really love, where I'm really at home, is in the geek
> world where ideas & fixations like his predominate.
>
> jrs
>
>
>
> On Nov 14, 2014, at 5:29 PM, Thaths wrote:
>
> > This post
> > <http://chronicle.com/article/What-Book-Changed-Your-Mind-/149839/> of
> > people talking about the books that changed their minds made me
> wonder....
> >
> > Which book made *you*, dear Silk lister, change your mind? How?
> >
> > A handful of books have had such an impact on me. I need to whittle it
> down
> > to one.
> >
> > Thaths
> > PS: The annual Silk List Book Recommendations thread is starting early
> this
> > year.
>
>
>
