Category Archives: Philosophy

still·ness /ˈstilnəs/ noun: the absence of movement or sound

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The word comes up with some frequency when reading about meditation. We try to sit still… and allow the mind to become still. Applying the definition above, sound is pretty simple. We try to find a quiet place to meditate to avoid distracting sounds but some — I’ve read — can tune out the sounds around them. It’s the movement of our thoughts (non-stop) that seems to get in the way of stillness when meditating. And the only way to stop that movement is to silently observe thoughts as they come and go. Such awareness somehow… dissolves or  dissipates thoughts.

What, I wonder, would be the experience of such internal stillness? What would that be like? With which of our senses would we notice stillness? Not sure what stillness would look like. Assuming there were little or no sound to hear, what would mental stillness sound like? I’m tempted to say it’s more of a feeling than a sensation but “feeling” is a pretty slippery word. We all have feelings but we don’t know where they come from and we have no more control over them than we do thoughts. I think we need that sixth sense to experience Stillness: consciousness or, better still, awareness.

But stillness is a fragile state. Even the thought, “So, this is stillness” breaks the… spell? Like so much in meditation, “trying” gets in the way. “Alright everybody, BE STILL!” Doesn’t work. We don’t find stillness, stillness finds us.

 

Light

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“Like a hole in the paper is both in the paper and yet not of the paper, so is the supreme state in the very centre of consciousness, and yet beyond consciousness. It is an opening in the mind through which the mind is flooded with light. The opening is not even the light, it is just an opening.”

“When you understand that names and shapes are hollow shells without any content whatsoever, and what is real is nameless and formless, pure energy of life and light of consciousness, you will be at peace — immersed in the deep silence of reality.”

“There is only light and light is all. Everything else is but a picture made of light. Life and death, self and not-self — abandon all these ideas. They are of no use to you. See the light and disregard the picture.”

“In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point that moves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, concepts and ideas, like a pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by our movement the world is ever re-created. Stop moving, and there will be no world.”
— I Am That (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

“How can I look into the darkness, when looking makes it light?”
— Ten Zen Questions (Susan Blackmore)

“You are walking along a path at night, surrounded by a thick fog. But you have a powerful flashlight that cuts through the fog and creates a narrow, clear space in front of you. The fog is your life situation, which includes past and future; the flashlight is your conscious presence; the clear space is the Now.”
—The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle)

True Detective (Season One): Philosophy of Rust Cohle

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I was not a fan of what I think of as the early Matthew McConaughey but his later stuff really speaks to me. Mud (2012) and Dallas Buyers Club (2013). Top of my list is his portrayal of Rust Cohle in the first season (2014) of the HBO series True Detective. In the scene above (with Woody Harrelson) Rust shares his view of the cosmos.

All I know for sure

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“All I know is that there is existence and there is awareness of existence. That’s all I know for sure. And I feel that life isn’t quite right. Instinctively I know that it should easier than it is. Why isn’t life quite right? Well, because there is an underlying fear of life – an underlying, constant unrightness. I don’t know this the way I know that there is existence and awareness of existence. But it makes sense to me. There is an underlying fear, a lie, a lens through which we live life.

— Beyond Kama (Kaushik)

How life happens

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“Life is nothing but moments, and every moment is nothing but another culmination of the universe’s incalculable ripples. Out where we can’t see, they’re crossing and merging, bringing toward us new forms and experiences that are almost perfectly unpredictable. Yet the way we think about life seldom reflects that reality. We plan and worry and forecast and dread, all with an absurd sense of certainty, like we’re setting up snooker shots and we can see all the balls.”

— David Cain

The illusion of free will

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“In a study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made 11 seconds before they consciously declared their decisions.”

“In the study, 14 participants—each placed in an fMRI machine—were shown two patterns, one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes. They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between them. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Finally, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons.”

“Using the fMRI to monitor brain activity and machine learning to analyze the neuroimages, the researchers were able to predict which pattern participants would choose up to 11 seconds before they consciously made the decision. And they were able to predict how vividly the participants would be able to envisage it.”

“Lead author Joel Pearson, cognitive neuroscience professor at the University of South Wales in Australia, said that the study suggests traces of thoughts exist unconsciously before they become conscious.”

  1. You are not driving the bus
  2. There is no “you”

Sit Down and Shut Up

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Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, & Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

Amazon: “In Sit Down and Shut Up, Brad Warner tackles one of the great works of Zen literature, the Shobogenzo by 13th-century Zen master Dogen. Illuminating Dogen’s enigmatic teachings in plain language, Warner intertwines sharp philosophical musings on sex, evil, anger, meditation, enlightenment, death, God, sin, and happiness with an exploration of the power and pain of the punk rock ethos.”

This book got a lot of my highlighter. A few examples below:

“There are two basic kinds of thought. There are thoughts that pop up unannounced and uninvited. These are just the results of previous thoughts and experiences that have left their traces in the neural pathways of our brains. The other kind of thought is when we grab on to one of these streams of energy and start playing with it.”

“Effort is far more important than so-called success because effort is a real thing.”

“Thoughts are nothing more than electrical activity, changes in the organic chemistry of the brain.”

“Words cannot capture what your life really is. […] All humankind’s problems today stem solely from our inability to see that words are just words.”

“Everything you ever do is always, always, always a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Oliver Sacks on steam engines, smartphones and fearing the future

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“I cannot get used to seeing myriads of people in the street peering into little boxes or holding them in front of their faces, walking blithely in the path of moving traffic, totally out of touch with their surroundings. I am most alarmed by such distraction and inattention when I see young parents staring at their cell phones and ignoring their own babies as they walk or wheel them along.”

“Everything is public now, potentially: one’s thoughts, one’s photos, one’s movements, one’s purchases. There is no privacy and apparently little desire for it in a world devoted to non-stop use of social media. Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one’s device clutched in one’s hand. Those trapped in this virtual world are never alone, never able to concentrate and appreciate in their own way, silently. They have given up, to a great extent, the amenities and achievements of civilization: solitude and leisure, the sanction to be oneself, truly absorbed, whether in contemplating a work of art, a scientific theory, a sunset, or the face of one’s beloved.”

The Machine Stops

Thoughts think themselves

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For those of us who subscribe to the theory there is no self — that me “I” thought is just a persistent illusion — a frequent question is where do thoughts come from if there is no “me” to think them?

They come from the subconscious whose name happens to be Jeff. Jeff sits in the refrigerator that is your consciousness. He has one of those horseshoe magnets he uses to arrange tiny word magnets on the outside of the refrigerator. Jeff is working backward and in the dark (trust me on that point) so the ideas he strings together are often random and arbitrary. He can sense when there is an awareness on the other side of the door and this makes him uncomfortable so he slows down the magnet work. When he feels the awareness depart he gets busy again.