The Dharma, sutras, and commentarial interpretations of interest to American Buddhists of all traditions with news that not only informs but transforms. Emphasis on meditation, enlightenment, karma, social evolution, and nonharming.
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Therapy is a powerful tool, says Buddhist psychologist Paul Fulton, but it can’t solve the problem of being human.
There is no single Pali [the language spoken by the Buddha] term that precisely describes the experience of self-directed aggression.
The word aparadha refers to the sense of responsibility that follows from a transgression or crime. Hiri connotes the inner experience of shame that follows from a moral transgression, and ottappa suggests the fear of blame for doing wrong.
Together, hiri-ottappa speaks to the inner and outer dimensions of moral dread or shame and describes the beneficial mechanisms that help prevent us from transgressing
From this perspective, the arising of hiri-ottappa is a mentally healthy response to unethical conduct, as this suffering due to misconduct informs our future behavior.
Ideally, once harmful conduct ceases, so should the corresponding moral shame.
However, the concept of hiri-ottappa as a form of moral sensitivity does not account for the toxic experience of guilt, shame, and self-criticism that is detached from actual harmful conduct.
The latter constellation of emotions is not protective but destructive, egocentric, and often impervious to healing through wholesome conduct.
The Western tradition borrowed from the East.
It is, as described by Western monk Ajahn Amaro (Thai Theravada tradition), what happens when “the ego ruthlessly co-opts hiri-ottappa.”
Among Western Buddhist practitioners, this experience is often unresponsive to healing through sila (virtue), or mindful awareness (sati), leading many to seek more targeted practices such as mindful self-compassion and psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy is a powerful tool for many issues, but it takes discernment to know what can and cannot be addressed in therapy. Analyzing problems innate to being born as a human may be akin to handing a shovel to someone caught in a pit, when what is really needed is a ladder.
To recognize insecurity as a fact of human existence — and not evidence of shameful shortcomings — helps relieve ourselves of the unrealistic expectation that it is a problem we should be expected to solve, and allows for a different way of encountering, holding, and opening to this as a reality.
This possibility is where our Dharma (the Buddha's Teachings) practice begins. Source
(Lion's Roar) Holy Buddha...it’s almost the election! There’s no doubt that there is a lot going on, so it’s natural to feel paralyzed or even despondent.
But we invite you to consider what you can do in this moment and the moments to come:
vote,
volunteer, and
take care of self and others.
At the very least, we encourage you to pause before refreshing the homepage of your most frequented news website as the results roll in.
To help you out, we’ve put together the following guide to keeping your head in the days before, during, and after the 2020 election.
Preparing for Election Day:
You might be feeling powerless lately. But one thing that is within our control is the ability to... More
The year 2020 has brought sharp focus to our collective struggles: a global pandemic, environmental destruction, threats to democracy, reckonings with racial inequality.
How is it possible to blossom, lotus-like, from the mud of suffering? The Dalai Lama offers an incredible example of how to live with compassion, courage, and ethical conviction in the face of tremendous adversity.
It's a beacon of hope for a troubled world from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, for Tibetan Buddhists the human manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion Kwan Yin (Kannon).
The 14th Dalai Lama is loved worldwide for his unwavering commitment to non-violence and his example of the power of compassion, other than that whole CIA business. Now for the first time, Lion’s Roar and Tibet House US, and with the express endorsement of the Dalai Lama himself, are bringing together an extraordinary gathering of experts to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s vision and profound wisdom in this historic online summit.
A panel of 21 teachers, spiritual leaders, scholars, and devoted students of the Dalai Lama offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore his life and teachings. Drawing on decades of personal experience, they offer expert insight, teachings, guided meditations, and opportunities for reflection, allowing all to slow down and discover for themselves how the Dalai Lama’s teachings can touch that heart and enrich lives.
Over the course of six days, Oct. 22-27, the summit will unpack some of the Dalai Lama’s unparalleled wisdom with the help of 21 expert speakers, including monks and nuns, teachers and authors, scholars, scientists, and personal friends of the Dalai Lama himself.
Thupten Jinpa principal English translator to the Dalai Lama, founder of the Institute of Tibetan Classics
Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, author, founder, and abbess of Sravasti Abbey
Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. director, Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Richard Gere, founder of The Gere Foundation
Robert Wright, author of Why Buddhism Is True
Sharon Salzberg, Buddhist mindfulness teacher, author of Real Happiness and Real Change
Dr. Deepak Chopra, MD, founder of The Chopra Foundation, author of Total Meditation
Lama Tsultrim Allione, spiritual director, Tara Mandala
Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Seminary
Jan Willis, professor emerita of religious studies, Wesleyan University
Dr. Mark Epstein, MD, psychiatrist and author
Amishi Jha, neuroscientist and researcher, University of Miami
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, Beyt Tikkun Synagogue
B. Alan Wallace, founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies
Venerable Tenzin
Priyadarshi, author, president of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT
Sofia Stril-Revor, author and creator of the Be the Love medit-action training program
Daniel Goleman, psychologist and science journalist
Dr. Alberto Villoldo, medical director of The Four Winds Society, author of Grow a New Body
Karenna Gore, director of the Center for Earth Ethics
Robert A.F. Thurman, Uma Thurman's dad, Padma Shri, professor emeritus, translator, author, and president of TibetHouse.us
Dan Harris,
ABC News anchor, author of 10% Happier
Over six days the FREE online Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit will explore the life, teachings, and vision of the current Dalai Lama — one of the most celebrated spiritual leaders and visionaries in the world. With expert presentations covering six major themes of the Dalai Lama’s message of wisdom, compassion, and peace, the summit rejoices in his vision of human harmony, and invites all to consider how to make it a reality.
Hiri and Ottappa (illustration by Christian Dellavedova)
When the Buddha spoke of superheroes, he mentioned two guardians, “two bright qualities [that] protect the world.”
People have always been interested in superheroes,
and lately, as Hollywood blockbusters inundate us, a new wave of interest is
swelling.
We like the idea of someone with special powers watching over
us, ready to intervene in a crisis and keep us safe from dark forces.
The Buddha also spoke of two superheroes he called “the two bright
qualities [that] protect the world” or dve sukka dhamma lokam palenti (AN 2.9). These are Hiri, or conscience,and Ottappa, respect for others.
Hiri and Ottappa do not flit around the universe
in spaceships, shooting lasers. They are found patrolling the depths of
the human psyche, where they swoop in to thwart the evil masterminds
who concoct our suffering and plot to destroy our world.
Today, humans are no longer constantly threatened by the ferocious beasts of the wilderness, and science has dispelled many of our former superstitions.
The greatest dangers we face now erupt from within our own human hearts:
greed
hatred
delusion.
These arch-villains cause many
real world problems. Greed, the powerful impulse to snatch whatever it
can, will take even life itself from the defenseless. Hatred drives us
to do unspeakable things to those we view as other. And delusion, so
willingly embraced, smothers any insight that might arise about the
danger we’re in or the harm we may do.
The twin guardians Hiri and Ottappa are crucial allies we have to foil their plots.
The first hero, Hiri, can be thought of as conscience or self-respect. She (the Pali
language noun is feminine) flies into our mental world at the moment when we are
considering doing something that we know deep down to be wrong. Hiri is
our personal sense of ethical integrity, our moral compass, our
intuitive understanding of what is right and wrong, what’s appropriate
and what isn’t.
She is not a severe critic but a soft, caring voice
whispering in our ear and guiding us through our lives with courage and
compassion. She saves us from the demons lurking within and stands
beside us when we say, “No, that is just not right. I will not do it (or
say it or think it).”
Her intrepid ally Ottappa is the elemental force of caring for others
and respecting their concerns. It (the Pali noun is neuter) appears on
the scene when we’re tempted to do something that is against the laws of
propriety, outside social norms, or would be condemned by the
people we respect.
Ottappa draws its strength from the fact that we are
social creatures who belong to a family or community, and that our
actions are rooted in and accountable to a larger collective order.
The Buddhist sangha or community is like a group of stars that helps us navigate a moral course.
Ottappa points steadily at the inherent respect we possess for others as
our north star, and helps us say, “I care about the opinion of the
group and would not have my friends be ashamed of my actions [or my
words or even my thoughts].”
Whenever these two superheroes are at our side, we are sure to make
the right choices and to act, speak, and even think in ways that are
helpful, healthy, and skillful. The Buddha said they guard the world,
protecting it from getting broken by the onslaught of the worst parts of
ourselves.
Without them people could act like beasts, ravaging even
their own mothers. We all know what atrocities human beings are capable
of. For so many victims, Hiri and Ottappa do not always show up in time,
held at bay by their nemeses, Ahiri (lack of conscience) and Anottappa
(lack of respect).
These two anti-heroes are present every time a
harmful, cruel, or ignorant deed is done, blocking out the benevolent
effects of conscience and respect.
Fortunately Hiri and Ottappa have other friends, including Sati, Mindfulness, who goes first into every fray and summons the team
into action.
Sati is conscious awareness of what is happening right now,
and Ahiri and Anottappa can only function when such awareness is
absent. When people do harm to themselves and others, they are often not
aware of what they are doing. They are conscious enough to act, but not
conscious enough to be aware of the quality of their actions or of
their consequences.
Whenever a person musters even a degree of
mindfulness, conscience and respect arrive there too, helping them do,
say, and think what is helpful rather than what is harmful.
The superheroes we need don’t come from faraway planets or live in
secret hideouts on remote islands. Our heroes must be summoned from
within. It’s up to us to put them to work and to learn how to save
ourselves.
AUTHOR: Andrew Olendzki is
a professor at Lesley University and the director of its graduate
program in Mindfulness Studies. He teaches two Tricycle online courses, Going Forth and Living in Harmony.
Ram Dass: Becoming Nobody Becoming Nobody (2019) represents the core arc of Harvard professor Dr. Richard Alpert or Ram Dass’ teachings and life. His ability to entertain and his sense of humor are abundantly evident in a spiritual conversation that brings us around to address the vast question of ultimate freedom. Becoming Nobody is the quintessential portal to Ram Dass’ life and teachings.
(Here and Now) See the latest Ram Dass documentary Becoming Nobody on gaia.com/BeHereNow. The library supports transformational content and can be seen by going to gaia.com for a free trial.
Pink Floyd HD; Cool Coyote, March 24, 2019; Seth Auberon, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
This is the Making the Dark Side of the Moon in studio. The album was developed during live performances. An early version premiered several months before recording began. New material was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road studio in London. The group used advanced recording techniques for the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops, and analogue synthesizers were prominent on several tracks.
"Us and Them"
Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" -
This studio footage is from 1972's Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (The Director's Cut). The members of the band show that one does not need to take a lot of drugs to be creative and play music. They do everything their way with a 1960's sensibility.
AWAKENING IS ABOUT LETTING GO "So long as you are trying to make progress, you will go up. But up always implies down. So while you are trying to get better and better and better, that means when you get to the best, you can only go on to the worst. And so you go round and round and round, ever chasing the illusion that there is something outside yourself, outside your here and now, to be obtained that will make things better. And the thing is to recover from that illusion."
Depression relief is brought about using alpha and beta binaural beat meditation music with the sound of ocean waves and soothing chimes.
DESCRIPTION: Many depressed individuals have an overabundance of right frontal brain activity and insufficient left frontal activity. So the goal of this session is to stimulate beta activity in the left hemisphere, while soothing the right hemisphere with alpha rhythms. Beta is sent to the right ear to stimulate the left brain, and alpha is sent to the left ear to stimulate the right brain. This REQUIRES headphones.
INSTRUCTIONS: Before each session, make sure to be well hydrated. Then find a quiet, comfortable place in a chair or lying down, free of all distractions. After starting the session, close eyes and relax.
Buddho (buddho.nl/en) edited by Pat Macpherson and Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Those who like it can study the Abhidharma (Pali Abhidhamma) as a helpful addition to meditation. The prefix abhi means "higher" or "transcending." As used here the word dhamma has the meaning of "truth" or "teaching."
So together the approximate meaning is the "Higher Teaching."
American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi writes in his translation of the Abhidhammattha Sangaha (a summary of the Abhidhamma written by Ven. Anuruddha around the 11th-12th century AD):
In the sutras the Buddha regularly makes use of conventional language (vohara-vacana) and accepts conventional truth (sammuti-sacca), truth expressed in terms of entities that do not possess ontological ultimacy but can still be legitimately referred to them.
Thus in the sutras the Buddha speaks of “I” and “you,” of “man” and “woman,” of living beings, persons, and even self as though they were concrete realities.
The Abhidhamma method of exposition, however, rigorously restricts itself to terms that are valid from the standpoint of ultimate truth (paramattha-sacca): dhammas ["things"], their characteristics, their functions, and their relations.
So in the Abhidhamma all concepts, which are still accepted in the [conventional] sutras for easier communication, are not used anymore.
Thus in the Abhidhamma all such conceptual entities provisionally accepted in the sutras for purposes of meaningful communication are resolved into their ontological ultimates, into bare mental and material phenomena that are
impermanent [radically shifting and unstable at every moment],
conditioned [dependent on supporting conditions for their existence], and
dependently arisen [coming into existence based on conditions], empty of any abiding self or substance [impersonal].
The Abhidhamma "transcends" the conventional character of the sutras. Take a car as an example. Is it still a car if you loosen every screw and put every part on the ground separately?
In the ultimate sense, a car is not a reality. We call the conglomerate of material phenomena assembled in a specific form with specific properties "car." It is an agreement, a convention [a conventional truth].
The Abhidhamma would not speak of "car," but of these smallest phenomena and their mutual relations and properties.
In the first book of the Abhidhamma (the Dhammasaṅgāni) all the smallest building blocks are listed, and thus the smallest components of reality are represented. This is the analysis.
In the last book (the Pattahāna) the conditional relationships, the connections between these building blocks, can be found. This is the synthesis.
These two aspects together, the analysis and the synthesis, reflect the uniqueness of the teaching of the Buddha.
Namely, everything is transient and without self, but that it is still worthwhile to develop morality, concentration, and wisdom. More
Hemi Sync; Buddho (buddho.nl/en) edited by Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
The cognitive process according to the Abhidharma
Words like citta (moment of consciousness) and cetasika
(attendant mental factor) can sound quite abstract. (See Ultimate Reality and
Ethical Quality in the Abhidhamma). Our own experience is, it is supposed,
not a bunch of independent cittas but a dynamic process.
Citta and cetasika come to life when we look
at the cognitive process that takes place in our daily lives. Maybe we already think we know enough about the functioning of our consciousness. After
all, we experience it from the inside on a daily basis.
But it's good to examine the following explanation carefully and to
think about it from time to time during the day. Right-view (samma-ditthi) is not
always easy to intuit.
This is because our views are conditioned by an enormous number of akusala (unwholesome) cittas. Most of us will probably not experience kusala (wholesome) cittas more than a fraction of the time. Therefore, basing our views on the remaining 99.9% of akusala cittas, we see where we end up.
The Abhidharma can help form cracks in our habitual and hardened wrong views so that they can be replaced in the future with liberating right views.
Before explaining the cognitive process, it's useful to clarify one point -- the usefulness of studying the Abhidhamma or "Higher Doctrine, the Dharma in Ultimate Terms. Three steps can be undertaken to correct one pernicious wrong view, namely, the wrong view that there is an "I" or "self."
Almost everyone holds this wrong view, many quite tenaciously. It is technically called "conceit" (mana). How could it be that there is no I, self, or mine? This wrong view is deeply rooted. And three gradations of it can be distinguished before a correct view is arrived at and established.
Self: The wrong view “This is me”
Everybody thinks about the "why" question of life and, by extension,
about "who" or "what" we really are. Not everyone continues with this
until a precisely defined understanding emerges, but we will have formed an
idea about it.
This idea is the philosophical framework on which we base the
concept of "I." We might think, for example, that we are nothing more
than matter. After all, we are composed of countless bits (cells) that die at some point. We might think that after death there is nothing more and that even before we were born there
was nothing.
With this view, opinion, outlook we have already devised a whole system to which we link a "self," a point of view, a frame of reference, a clinging to wrong view.
Some theorists, philosophers, and theologians will refer to this.
Others will say, “That’s just the way it is” and be done with it.
The intensity doesn’t make much difference to my story. What is more
important is that this idea, this framework, is a point of view, a
viewpoint that we’ve created/devised ourselves, emphasis on "devised." We've fabricated it.
It is nothing more than a construct, a concept, a theory, an idea, a view; it has nothing
to do with reality. After all, we don’t know for sure. If we
experience reality from our own experience, we would know for sure.
Now, based on this made-up framework, we become convinced that there is
an "I." Of course, it's the experiencer, the recipient of the results of karma, the watcher, the feeler, the thing that goes out of existence at death and enters existence at rebirth.
This deeply rooted and misconceived belief is the first and worst
gradation of the mistaken view that there is an "I." We could call it
the "this is me" view, because we have an idea of what we are.
The wrong view “I am”
If we start engaging with Buddhism, we soon notice that "non-self" is often talked about.
It is also often said that our own perception is very subjective and
that we have to be careful not to draw conclusions based on subjective experience prematurely.
Even drawing conclusions based on deep meditative experience must be
cautioned against, and those experiences must be taken with a grain of salt. We can step into the trap of thinking we have already acquired complete wisdom while taking only a small step.
That's why a teacher is important. Without a teacher who has
achieved the necessary direct experience, we can easily get sidetracked or
stuck somewhere because it is nice to stay without yet having reached the goal of complete liberation.
What is possible, however, is that sufficient experience in
meditation, for example the repetition of the word buddho, provides confidence. Trust in
the Dharma, the way of practice taught by the Buddha.
We notice that meditation helps us in daily life. Step by
step we notice that things we have read in Buddhist books apply
to us.
This can help us stop generating theories about "self." It's not that we
immediately see that everything is impersonal -- nothing more than conditioned
(dependently arisen) moments that are transient and unsatisfactory -- but we accept on the basis of personal
meditation experience that our perception and our idea of an "I" might be wrong.
If we stop making and adhering to a theories and philosophies of "I," we have left the worst form of mistaken perception of a self
behind us. We’ve taken a step toward right view, but we haven’t
experienced non-self yet.
This is the second degree of misconception that an "I" exists. We
could call it the "I am" view, because we only accept that we are.
The wrong view “I”
By continuing to work with the insight meditation system (vipassana) with energetic
perseverance, there will automatically come a moment when we get a
first experience of non-self.
We see for a few moments that we are a collection of loose mental elements (cittas and cetasikas) and matter (rūpa, fundamental qualities of materiality, constituent elements)
that appear only to serve a function and perish based on supporting conditions. In
other words, we see the rise and fall of mental processes and matter or nāma-rūpa.
This further destroys the idea of an “I,” but we are not there yet.
When we rise from meditation and look into the world around us, we
see with our own eyes, smell with our own nose, taste with our own tongue. We
know with certainty that, based on our own direct experience, there is no "I," even though in daily
life it feels as if it is an "I" that perceives things.
This is the third and most subtle form of misunderstanding. We could
call it the "I" view -- a pernicious wrong view -- because in the most subtle ways we still think
in terms of a "self," but no more than that.
The final step Luckily we have a teacher in the Buddha who points out that even the feeling of perception by a "self" is an illusion.
And by striving further, there comes a moment when even this
subtle form of ego-thinking is destroyed and every form of longing and
attachment to a self is abandoned as a painful illusion.
That is the moment right-view of non-self is
achieved. This is part of the enlightenment process, the goal of the Buddhist eightfold path.
Background information for the cognitive process If reading up to here, it might be possible to imagine how stubborn the notion of an actually existing "I" is.
When the essence, the deep meaning of the Abhidharma, begins to penetrate, the first hairline crack in the "self" illusion or conceit can appear. The Abhidharma teaches that all things are composed conditioned transient moments. That is to say, there is actually no "me," no "self," no "mine."
It is a beautiful addition and deepening of one’s meditative experience to realize it and be free of the oppression of personalizing everything.
Let's look at the cognitive process. Since the cognitive process consists of a sequence of cittas, it is useful to repeat what we have learned about cittas so far:
A citta (consciousness moment) is an ultimate reality (paramattha-dhamma).
A citta is one of the four categories into which the Abhidharma divides ultimate reality, the other three being cetasikas (mental factors), rūpa (matter), and nirvana.
A citta is:
mental
conditioned
impermanent
impersonal (selfless)
Cittas and cetasikas:
co-rise together (appear simultaneously)
fall away together (disappear at the same time)
have the same object
have the same base
A citta knows the object, perceives the object. Cetasikas perform functions in the observation process. Citta is like a ruler, cetasikas an accompanying entourage.
Cittas exist in three ethical varieties:
wholesome
unwholesome
indefinite
Cittas can be mundane or supramundane.
Cittas appear and disappear with incredible speed; billions of cittas pass in the blink of an eye.
The term citta being defined, let's start looking
at the cognitive process. But first a comment and clarification of expectations.
Ahba has sometimes indicated that one should not concern oneself too much with individual cittas.
He indicates that otherwise it remains too abstract. Perhaps it is
better not to be too busy with things that are very far from the
world of experience while there is still so much to learn about things we experience.
Exactly how many steps the mental process has and which citta performs which function and how they relate to each other is of secondary importance.
The essence or conclusion to be drawn from explanations in the Abhidharma about consciousness is more important. For details, refer to Bhikkhu Bodhi’s A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, Ven. Buddhaghosa’s Visuddhimagga, or to the Dutch Abhidhamma page.
There are a few principles that are useful as background information.
One cognitive process consists, according to the commentaries, of 17 cittas.
Which 17 and what function they fulfill in the process is, as already stated, not
that important right now. What is important is that these 17 rise and
fall one after the other. The first citta rises and falls, then the second, then the third, and so on.
So a cognitive process consists of all separate moments of consciousness that follow each other in rapid succession.
It is also useful to know that Buddhism always speaks of six
senses. In addition to the usual five (eye, ear, nose, tongue,
touch) known in the West, and "consciousness" also finds a place
here. (Mental) consciousness as a sense base perceives mental objects, just as eyes perceive visible things and ears perceive
sounds as their objects.
The cognitive process There are, roughly speaking, two types of processes. The first is sensory. One
of the five bodily senses (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or touch) is
brought into contact with its corresponding sense object and, if all conditions
are met, a sensory-cognitive process based on that sense is
automatically created.
Take eye consciousness as an example. If there is a working eye (i.e.,
eye-sensitivity), a visible object, light, and attention then all
conditions are present for an eye cognitive process. At that moment this
process takes place anyway, completely automatically, purely on the
basis of conditions without an "I" being involved.
Every sense has its own process in this way. We know that cittas always rise and fall one after the other, it follows that only one kind of cognitive process can take place at a time.
This is the first essence of the consciousness process. Although we
think we see, hear, smell, taste and feel at the same time, this is not
so! It happens in rapid succession.
It's the same whether we see, whether we hear, whether we smell, whether we taste or feel or cognize.
Just as a movie actually consists of all separate still images played at least 24 frames per second to give the illusion of unbroken/flowing
movement, cittas, and by extension cognitive processes, present themselves as a continuous flow.
Only through very high concentration can this process be analyzed
down to the smallest parts via personal experience. This was a brief
description of the first kind of process, the sensory cognitive process.
The alert reader has probably already noticed that the sixth sense,
the (mental) consciousness, has not yet been mentioned. The
mental cognitive process is the second kind of cognitive process.
This process can be divided into two parts. First, the pure
mental cognitive process, which is used for example during abstract
thinking about things.
This process, like the sensory cognitive process, is activated by the presence of conditions. In this case they are the
heart-base, the mental object, life continuum, and attention. If these
conditions are present then the mental object is known.
Second, mental cognitive processes (plural) also occur after a sensory consciousness process.
After contact takes place between object and sense and all conditions
are met, a sensory cognitive process starts. Like the above mentioned
eye cognitive process. This is known to the sensory object.
In principle
this is a very pure perception of the object to which no concepts have yet
been added. Immediately after this sensory cognitive process some
mental cognitive processes take place one after the other to give
meaning to what has been observed by the senses.
However, a
mental cognitive process does not do this with the real "external"
phenomenon as object, but rather with a mental copy!
For example, if an eye cognitive process has taken place because conditions
for it have been met, the visible object has been observed.
However, a visible object is just color, not form, material, name, and
so on.
Why? Take shape for example. We cannot see shape. We can only feel
shape. Think of all the visual illusions that can be made with
pen and paper. Suddenly a two-dimensional sheet of paper with a drawing on it seems to have
depth as we look at it. But that's not true at all. If we feel the sheet of paper, we know that depth is not true. Shape is something we feel.
What we see is color and contrast and, based on previous experience
and other things, consciousness links to a certain form.
Observing a shape on the basis of seeing with the eyes is a derivative act.
That's why optical illusions go wrong. Mental cognitive processes
link something to the contrast and color we see when in reality there is none.
The same goes for a name, of course. We don’t see an orange. What we see is orange. Consciousness tells us it has the shape of a
sphere. Further analysis attaches the name "orange." If we’ve
never seen an orange before, we can’t label it that name, so the
process stops at "an orange sphere."
The bizarre thing about this whole thing is that only the first
sensory cognitive process actually perceives the object (e.g., the color
orange). Then a mental copy is made of that object which is then used as
a mental object for further analysis during the
mental cognitive processes.
All (mental) analysis is therefore performed on a concept and not on the actual object.
For example, if we look at a beautiful rose, we do not
experience the rose as beautiful. We experience the mental concept of "rose." This is because what we see is only color (such as red). The shape "flower" and
the name "rose" are concepts added to the mental copy (and not to the
actual external object). So the word "beautiful" is being applied to a concept not to a reality.
Why is this important? It's important because we are totally engrossed in it, because we merrily run along with it, because we delight in it.
Suddenly we have an opinion on everything. We think it’s a nice, ripe,
good looking orange we’d really like to eat. Or we may think
it’s a tart, ugly, fused orange that we definitely do not want
to eat.
Desire rises. Wanting something is just as much a desire as not
wanting something. As soon as desire is involved, problems arise.
If we do not get the nice orange we are sad, if we have to eat the ugly orange we are sad. And the pleasure we experience by
satisfying our desires, by eating the orange, is transient, only of
short duration, and therefore actually sad.
Immediately after that pleasure of satisfying our desire, there are many other things we may or may not want.
It's just like a child in a toy store. The child wants one toy.
That’s why it whines. But when the child gets it, s/he is
playing happily for a few days or weeks. But before we know it, the toy
is forgotten somewhere in a corner and there is another "one
toy" the child wants and whines about.
And this digressing, this absorbing, this desire is all purely based on concepts, mental copies. Not based on reality.
Only if our concentration is very high can we intervene quickly
enough to prevent ourselves from being unjustly absorbed in the illusions of consciousness and prevent desire and thus problems from arising.
In this way we penetrate the true nature of things.
"How boring," we might think. But thinking this is nonsense. We will then have
no more desire and therefore no more misery -- no misery, but pleasure
instead. We can still eat an orange and enjoy it, and if it were
different, it wouldn’t matter.
As Ahba says: “Desire is the problem. Suppose there’s something that you really
want, that you really want to get as a present. But you don’t get it.
Then you are sad or angry or disappointed. When you have concentration
you no longer have desire. Maybe there’s still something you want. When
you get it, you’re happy. But if you don’t, you’re happy too! It doesn’t
matter anymore. It’s not a problem anymore. Everything’s easy then.”
This is the second important essence of the cognitive process. After the pure sensory cognitive process, a mental copy is made that we
can get rid of. All we think of things is no more than
subjective mental additions. And because of this we desire to have
something or not and that because of this we cause all the problems in our
lives all by ourselves.
We can read the previous paragraphs and take them for granted, but
that would be a pity. The information only makes sense if we think about it from
time to time. What are the consequences of it? What does it mean? If I
want something or not? If I find something? If I’m happy, angry, or sad?
Knowledge about the cognitive process can contribute to the insight
that everything is conditioned, transient, and impersonal (without self). And in this
way we can make room for the previously mentioned fractures in
our wrong views, our habitual way of looking at things, allowing room for liberating right view.
Brian Handwerk (Smithsonian Magazine) edited by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
Mohenjo
Daro, or "Mound of the Dead," is an ancient proto-India Indus Valley Civilization
(IVC) city that was abandoned in the 19th century BCE as the IVC declined. It was not rediscovered until the 1920s. Built
around 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest IVC settlements and one of the world's earliest major urban
settlements (SM Rafiq Photography/Getty Images).
The Indus Valley Civilization flourished alongside Mesopotamia and Egypt, but the early society remains shrouded in mystery.
During the last few millennia B.C.E., beginning roughly 5,000
years ago, great civilizations prospered across Eurasia and North
Africa. The ancient societies of Mesopotamia and Sumer [of the Sumerians] in the Middle
East were among the first to introduce written history; the Old, Middle,
and New Kingdoms of Egypt established complex religious and social
structures; and the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties ruled over ever
advancing communities and technologies in China.
But another, little
understood civilization prevailed along the basins of the Indus River,
stretching across much of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan and into the
northwestern regions of India. [This is the area where the Buddha was born, Scythia or Shakya Land.]
Archaeological evidence gives researchers some sense of the daily lives
of the Harappan people, but scientists have struggled to piece together
evidence from ancient DNA in the IVC due to the deterioration of genetic
material in the hot and humid region—until now.
For the first time, scientists have sequenced the genome of a
person from Harappa/the IVC, which peaked in
today’s India-Pakistan border region around 2600 to 1900 B.C. A trace
amount of DNA from a woman in a 4,500-year-old burial site,
painstakingly recovered from ancient skeletal remains, gives researchers
a window into one of the oldest civilizations in the world.
The work,
along with a comprehensive analysis of ancient DNA across the Eurasian
continent, also raises new questions about the origins of agriculture in
South Asia.
The ancient Harappan genome, sequenced and described in the journal Cell,
was compared to the DNA of modern South Asians, revealing that the
people of the IVC were the primary ancestors of most living Indians.
Both modern South Asian DNA and the Harappan genome have a telltale
mixture of ancient Iranian DNA and a smattering of Southeast Asian
hunter-gatherer lineages.
"Ancestry like that in the IVC individuals is
the primary ancestry source in South Asia today,” co-author David Reich,
a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, said in a statement. “This
finding ties people in South Asia today directly to the Indus Valley
Civilization.”
The genome also holds some surprises. Genetic relationships
to Steppe pastoralists, who ranged across the vast Eurasian grasslands
from contemporary Eastern Europe to Mongolia, are ubiquitous among
living South Asians as well as Europeans and other people across the
continent.
But Steppe pastoralist DNA is absent in the ancient Indus
Valley individual, suggesting similarities between these nomadic herders
and modern populations arose from migrations after the IVC’s decline.
These findings influence theories about how and when
Indo-European languages spread widely across the ancient world. And
while shared ancestry between modern South Asians and early Iranian
farmers has fueled ideas that agriculture arrived in the Indo-Pakistani
region via migration from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, the
ancient Harappan genes show little contribution from that lineage,
suggesting that farming spread through an exchange of ideas rather than a
mass migration, or perhaps even arose independently in South Asia.
“The archaeology and linguistic work that had been carried
out for decades was really at the forefront of our process,” says Vagheesh Narasimhan,
a Harvard University genomicist and co-author of the study. “These
projects bring a new line of genetic evidence to the process, to try to
show the impact that the movement of people may have had as part of
these two great cultural transformations of agriculture and language.”
The large, well-planned cities of the IVC included sewer and
water systems, as well as long-distance trade networks that stretched
as far as Mesopotamia. But despite its former glory, the civilization
was unknown to modern researchers until 1921, when excavations at
Harappa began to uncover an ancient city.
The Harappans have remained
something of a mystery ever since, leaving behind extensive urban ruins
and a mysterious language of symbols and drawings, but few additional
clues to their identity. What ultimately befell the Harappan
civilization is also unclear, though a changing climate has been posited as part of its downfall.
Scientists have a notoriously difficult time recovering
ancient DNA in South Asia, where the subtropical climate typically makes
genetic preservation impossible. It took a massive, time-consuming
effort to produce the genome from remains found in the cemetery at
Rakhigarhi, the Harappans’ largest city, located in the modern Indian
state of Haryana.
Scientists collected powder from 61 skeletal samples,
but just one contained a minute amount of ancient DNA. That sample was
sequenced as much as possible, generating 100 different collections of
DNA fragments, called libraries, each of which were too incomplete to
yield their own analysis.
“We had to pool 100 libraries together and sort of hold our
breath, but we were fortunate that that yielded enough DNA to then do
high resolution population genetics analysis,” Narasimhan says. “I think
if anything, this paper is a technical success story,” he adds, noting
that the approach holds promise for sourcing DNA in other challenging
locales.
A single sample is not representative of a widespread
population that once included a million or more people, but a related study published today in Science
lends some wider regional context. Several of the same authors,
including Narasimhan and Reich, and dozens of international
collaborators, authored the largest ancient DNA study published to date.
Among the genetic sequences from 523 ancient humans are individuals
from sites as far flung as the Eurasian Steppe, eastern Iran, and Iron
Age Swat Valley in modern Pakistan.
The team found that among many genetically similar
individuals, a handful of outliers existed who had ancestry types
completely different from those found around them.
Eleven such individuals found at sites in Iran and
Turkmenistan were likely involved in interchange with the Harappan
civilization. In fact, some of these outlier individuals were buried
with artifacts culturally affiliated with South Asia, strengthening the
case that they were connected to the IVC.
“This made us hypothesize that these samples were migrants,
possibly even first-generation migrants from South Asia,” Narasimhan
says. The IVC genome from Rakhigarhi shows strong genetic similarities
to the 11 genetic outliers in the large study of ancient humans,
supporting the idea that these individuals ventured from the Harappan
civilization to the Middle East. “Now we believe that these 12 samples,
taken together, broadly represent the ancestry that was present in
[South Asia] at that time.”
The first evidence of agriculture comes from the Fertile
Crescent, dating to as early as 9,500 B.C., and many archaeologists have
long believed that the practice of growing crops was brought to South
Asia from the Middle East by migrants. Earlier DNA studies seemed to
bear out this idea, since South Asians today have significant Iranian
ancestry.
“I really found their analysis to be very exciting, where
they look at ancient DNA samples from different time scales in Iran and
try to correlate how the Iranian ancestry in South Asians is related to
those different groups,” says Priya Moorjani, a population geneticist at UC Berkeley not involved in the Cell study of the IVC genome.
However, the new analysis shows that the first farmers of
the Fertile Crescent appear to have contributed little, genetically, to
South Asian populations. “Yet similar practices of farming are present
in South Asia by about 8,000 B.C. or so,” says Moorjani, a co-author on
the wider population study of South and Central Asia.
“As we are getting
more ancient DNA, we can start to build a more detailed picture of how
farming spread across the world. We’re learning, as with everything
else, that things are very complex.”
If farming did spread from the Fertile Crescent to modern
India, it likely spread via the exchange of ideas and knowledge—a
cultural transfer rather than a significant migration of western Iranian
farmers themselves. Alternatively, farming could have arisen
independently in South Asia, as agricultural practices started to sprout
up in many places across Eurasia during this time.
Ancient IVC ancestry holds other mysteries as well. This
civilization was the largest source population for modern South Asians,
and for Iron Age South Asians as well, but it lacks the Steppe
pastoralist lineages common in later eras. “Just like in Europe, where
Steppe pastoralist ancestry doesn’t arrive until the Bronze Age, this is
also the case in South Asia,” Narasimhan says.
“So this evidence
provides information about the timing of arrival of this ancestry type,
and their movement parallels the linguistic phylogeny of Indo-European
languages, which today are spoken in places as far away as Ireland to
New Delhi.”
The authors suggest Indo-European languages may have reached
South Asia via Central Asia [where the Buddha was from] and Eastern Europe during the first half of
the 1000s B.C., a theory evidenced by some genetic studies and similarities between Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages.
Narasimhan hopes that more genetic data can help clear up
this ancient puzzle—especially by exploring where DNA dovetails or
differs with findings from other lines of evidence.
“We’re trying to look at when and how archaeological
cultures are associated with a particular genetic ancestry, and whether
there’s any linguistic connections,” he says. “To understand human
history, you really need to integrate these three lines.”
Brian Handwerk is a freelance writer based in Amherst, New Hampshire.
LIVE: Judge Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Day 4 (PBS NewsHour) The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday (Oct. 15, 2020) holds its fourth and final day of the hearing on Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. Barrett’s testimony has concluded, and the committee will now hear witness statements from four Republicans and four Democrats. Republicans control the Senate majority and thus the majority in the committee, and they have the votes to send Barrett’s nomination out of committee to a full floor vote. Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., opened the hearing by setting a committee vote for Oct. 22, but Democrats are expected to try to delay it.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya, 2019 Retreat Group 4 Round 4 (51:20-53:09), Ellie Askew, Wisdom Quarterly
Is the mind aware, mindful of the present?
Good or bad, the mind already knows the value of awareness [of the present moment we call mindfulness], from a yogi’s notes.
Yogi: There was a lot of wanting during the sit: it should go this way or that way. After two days, the mind relaxed. Then awareness was easy and smooth.
Later, the mind became tight again, back and forth.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya: You can already check your awareness: There is nothing else to do but just checking whether awareness is present or not.
Let the experience be.
Whatever you do, the mind is already knowing something. This is all you have to do.
For example, you’ve probably heard about – or have personally
experienced – a date that was planned online but didn’t go well for one of the following reasons:
He was shorter than his profile said he was,
she looked different [fatter] in
person than she did in her photos, or
he was talkative over text but it
was like pulling teeth at dinner.
In other words, a person’s profile – and the messages sent before a date – might not capture who a person really is.
In a 2018 paper, my colleague Jeff Hancock and I wondered, How often do people who use dating apps lie? What sort of things are they prone to lie about?
‘My phone died at the gym’ Our studies are some of the first to address these questions, but others have also examined deception in online dating.
But profiles are only one aspect of the online dating process.
Only after messaging a match will one decide if one wants to meet him
or her.
To understand how often people lied to their partners and what
they falsified, we evaluated hundreds of text messages exchanged after
daters swiped right, but before they met – a period we call “the
discovery phase.”
We recruited an online sample of over 200 participants
who provided us with their messages from a recent dating conversation
and identified the lies, with some participants explaining why these
messages were deceptive and not jokes.
We found that lies could be categorized into two main types. The
first kind were lies related to self-presentation. If participants
wanted to present themselves as more attractive, for example, they would
lie about how often they went to the gym. Or if their match appeared to
be religious, they might lie about how often they read the Bible to
make it seem as if they had similar interests.
The second kind of lies were related to availability management,
with daters describing why they couldn’t meet, or giving excuses for
radio silence, like lying about their phone losing service.
These deceptions are called “butler lies”
because they’re a relatively polite way to avoid communication without
completely closing the door on the connection. If one has ever texted,
“Sorry I went AWOL, my phone died,” when not wanting to talk,
that was telling a butler lie.
Butler lies don’t make one a bad person. Instead, they can help avoid dating pitfalls, such as appearing desperate or always available.
Purposeful or pervasive lies? While deceptions over self-presentation and availability
accounted for most lies, we observed that only 7 percent of all messages
were rated as false in our sample. Why such a low deception rate?
A robust finding across recent deception studies suggests that
the majority of people are honest and that there are only a few prolific liars in our midst.More
Hours of baffling advanced ancient stonework experts are still struggling to explain (Ancient Enigmas, 6/20/20) In these strange ruins, advanced tool marks have been left behind. They show precision surfaces as if they were carved and shaped using modern machinery. Also, there are massive shafts. Another mystery is the vast distances that these monuments, some weighing several hundred tons, were moved from quarries. How could they efficiently shape hard stones like basalt, granite, and diorite? Ancient Egypt, Peru, Bolivia, Petra, and Easter Island contain enigmas and mysteriess in stone, which most conventional scholarship can`t explain. Some of these places seem to have been constructed using what we would call high-level machine technology. Could unknown advanced civilizations have existed before known ones?
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