Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Rationality Through Meditation
DaltheJigsaw
Mountain View Veteran
Meditation is often packaged up with so much nonsense metaphysics, religious baggage, and spiritual glitter that it is tough to take seriously. Sam Harris, a renown skeptic, is a proponent and practitioner of meditation, but even he is honest in acknowledging the ridiculous fanfare that accompanies it. Where should a level-headed, rational-thinking intellectual start on their path to discovering the realities and benefits behind meditation? That’s what I was wondering when I showed up for a group discussion on the matter. I came away with some very enticing points.
The definition of meditation can be distilled in many ways, but it mostly comes down to focus. All agree that the practice is difficult in its beginnings, but over time, one becomes better at letting their thoughts bead and roll off the surface of their consciousness, rather than soak in. Weatherproofing for the mind. The efforts of this exercise, which takes less than an hour a day, are realized in the brain, where structural changes can occur, to the effect of lowering anxiety and even increased sustained focus during involved tasks.
But the most compelling benefit of meditation for me would have to be its potential for promoting rational thought. You must be curious how I could see meditation, a junkyard magnet for woo-woo bullshit, as a gateway to rationality when the vast majority of its spokesmen seem to lack that very trait. Expectations go a long way in shaping our subjective worlds. You don’t need to buy into the concept of transcendence to empty your mind. Just like peyote may be used by shaman and laymen alike, you get out of meditation what you make sense of. It won’t turn a guru into a skeptic and it won’t turn a skeptic into a yuppie.
The process of meditation takes many forms. Let’s just talk about breathing and thoughts. As you fill your lungs and focus on the sensation of the air tickling the outer rims of your nostrils, thoughts may enter your mind, but they are not welcome now. You shoo them out and bid them to return later whilst every breath sweeps the dirt from the surfaces of your mind’s machinery. Eventually, you become more at ease and your mind hums with the white noise of a silenced motor. Now when thoughts occur, you experience them briefly, and then let them dissolve. You label them. “That is a thought.” And watch them slide away, never hearing or caring if they make a noise when they reach the bottom of the abyss.
http://www.dontfeedtheanimals.net/2011/08/rationality-through-meditation.html
The definition of meditation can be distilled in many ways, but it mostly comes down to focus. All agree that the practice is difficult in its beginnings, but over time, one becomes better at letting their thoughts bead and roll off the surface of their consciousness, rather than soak in. Weatherproofing for the mind. The efforts of this exercise, which takes less than an hour a day, are realized in the brain, where structural changes can occur, to the effect of lowering anxiety and even increased sustained focus during involved tasks.
But the most compelling benefit of meditation for me would have to be its potential for promoting rational thought. You must be curious how I could see meditation, a junkyard magnet for woo-woo bullshit, as a gateway to rationality when the vast majority of its spokesmen seem to lack that very trait. Expectations go a long way in shaping our subjective worlds. You don’t need to buy into the concept of transcendence to empty your mind. Just like peyote may be used by shaman and laymen alike, you get out of meditation what you make sense of. It won’t turn a guru into a skeptic and it won’t turn a skeptic into a yuppie.
The process of meditation takes many forms. Let’s just talk about breathing and thoughts. As you fill your lungs and focus on the sensation of the air tickling the outer rims of your nostrils, thoughts may enter your mind, but they are not welcome now. You shoo them out and bid them to return later whilst every breath sweeps the dirt from the surfaces of your mind’s machinery. Eventually, you become more at ease and your mind hums with the white noise of a silenced motor. Now when thoughts occur, you experience them briefly, and then let them dissolve. You label them. “That is a thought.” And watch them slide away, never hearing or caring if they make a noise when they reach the bottom of the abyss.
http://www.dontfeedtheanimals.net/2011/08/rationality-through-meditation.html
0
Comments
Anyway, for me, meditation put a little meat on Vivekanada's suggestion-bone. I'd say he was right on target.