Culture Wars w/ Helen Lewis (Sam Harris)

(Sam Harris) Culture Wars, DEI, and political polarization with Helen Lewis (The Atlantic)

Consciousness is not what we think (video)

Annaka Harris, Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, 2/11/20; Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The phsyical heart is closer to the seat of consciousness than the brain between the ears.

Buddha's Brain (Dr. Rick Hanson, Ph.D.)

Science is finally catching up to Buddhism (Abhidharma), realizing the unbelievable fact that "there is no self" because all things are impersonal. (Mahayana Buddhists hedge this powerful insight by saying there is a self, even a higher self as in Hinduism, but it is interdependent; in other words, "there is no separate self." That makes it sound like there is no self separate from other selves, as in "We are all One," rather than what is really being said, which is that there is no ego, soul, self, personality, being because what appears to be the atta or atman (self) is completely dependent on Five Groups clung to as self: body, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. The self is not a unity but a composite of ever-changing phenomena. Each of these groups or aggregates is composed of countless different elements grouped and classified according to their function. "Self" is a psycho-physical epi-phenomenon of rapidly arising and perishing particles (kalapas, form, body, composed of the four general qualities of ultimate materiality) and mind-moments (cittas, a stream of events that constitute awareness) that does not persist unchanged for even one moment because each composite arises, turns, and vanishes in three consecutive sub-moments that constitute one mind-moment. The same is true of each kalapa or ultimate particle, as explained in Buddhist physics in the Abhidhamma of the Pali canon. This is interesting because author Annaka Harris, the wife of prominent meditation proponent Sam Harris, almost certainly knows about the Buddhist position on these questions of ultimate reality.

• Annaka Harris (née Gorton, born 1976) is an American writer whose work touches on meditation, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and consciousness. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind (2019). She is the wife of Sam Harris:
• Samuel Benjamin Harris (born 1967) is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author, and podcast host. His work touches on rationality, religion, ethics, freewill, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, philosophy of mind, politics, terrorism, and AI. He came to prominence for his criticism of religion, Islam in particular, and is known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, along with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. His first book, The End of Faith (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. He has since written six additional books: Letter to a Christian Nation in 2006, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values in 2010, the long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014.

The physical base of consciousness is near the heart.

Buddhism exhausts the topic of "consciousness" (vinnana), but for all that one is left with a definition of it as simply "awareness." It is also pursued as "mind" (mano), that which measures or reckons or compares (manas), subconscious (bhavanga), streams of "mind-moments" (cittas), and as an inseparable part of the Five Aggregates clung to as self, one of the four groups of "mental formations" (sankharas) -- and always, always an impersonal PROCESS (verb), never a static OBJECT (noun).

Here Harris, echoing this problem of getting a handle on a better definition, chooses to translate consciousness as "experience." That is not even as good as awareness. There are in Buddhism six kinds of awareness: consciousness associated with each of the five senses and consciousness associated with the sixth sense, "mind." (Some Western translators note that all that mind does is a version of the other five senses, or it remembers or projects the other five in their absence, but "mind objects" (dhammas) -- "things" that are not sights, sounds, tastes, tangibles, or fragrances -- like ideas are not taken in by any of the other senses, so it is its own sense door with its own objects.

Harris then makes a small advancement by making the distinction between "experience" (bare awareness) and "consciousness" in the sense of complex thinking or reasoning or self-reflection, which is actually what most of us think we're trying to get at when understanding or explaining consciousness. That kind of consciousness is not addressed, except that the Buddha defines it in extreme detail in the "Higher Doctrine" or "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms" (Abhidhamma) texts, exploring it like a dispassionate scientist from inside the experience then grasping it as impersonal (not-self).

This is going to hurt. Everything you think you know is false

Conscious: A Brief Guide (Annaka Harris)

(Tom Bilyeu) What if everything you think you know about yourself is wrong? Most of us have the intuition that we have a "self" that is separate from our body and brain and that we can control our experience with conscious will. But what if that isn’t true?

Bestselling author Annaka Harris is devoted to challenging our deepest intuitions about the nature of consciousness and the self.

We may not have free will but we had this child.

In this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu, she discusses experiments on the cutting edge of physics and neuroscience and explains why those experiments matter.

The result is a fascinating conversation that will leave you questioning some of our most cherished, comforting intuitions. 

SHOW NOTES

• Consciousness is exactly as mysterious as it seems to be [2:29]
• Annaka defines what consciousness is [4:54]
• Tom and Annaka discuss the story of Phineas Gage [6:31]
• Annaka talks about the difference between consciousness and high-level thought [9:14]
• There is a basic level of consciousness that doesn’t involve awareness of consciousness [11:35] 
• Challenging intuitions is a basic element of the scientific method [14:58]
• Is there outer evidence of conscious experience? Is consciousness doing anything? [18:46]
• Upending comfortable intuitions is eventually a freeing experience [20:57]
• Annaka explains how the brain binds disparate signals to make them seem congruent [22:23]
• Annaka and Tom discuss how much unconscious brain functioning we take for granted [27:09]
• Annaka describes the false sense of self and conscious will [29:53]
• We make decisions before we are aware of them [33:41]
• Annaka discusses the question of whether or to what extent plants are conscious [35:30]
• Trees take care of their own kin, and defend their kin [40:48]
• What if consciousness is a field like gravity? [43:39]
• Annaka describes the double-slit light experiment [46:13]
• • The Double-slit experiment • Double-slit experiment explained!
• Measuring an event can change the past [51:41]
• Annaka discusses problems with the views that consciousness emerges from life [54:25]
• Annaka shares the impact she wants to have on the world [1:03:06]

AUDIO: Author Annaka Harris on the topic of consciousness (Rich Roll)

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QUOTES: “There’s something jarring about learning that the things that feel most true to you about reality are possibly not structured that way.” [21:29]

“We feel that consciousness is behind our willed actions, when in fact, there is a lot of neuroscience to suggest that it’s actually the reverse. It’s at the end. That all this processing happens, a decision gets made, and we’re kind of the last to know.” [31:54]

“We have no evidence that consciousness is due to complexity.” [1:00:24]

FOLLOW ANNAKA HARRIS: Website: annakaharris.com INSTAGRAM: bit.ly/392CIl1 FACEBOOK: bit.ly/2GTsk36 TWITTER: bit.ly/2RUoY63

BOOK: Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind [2:19]

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FREE Summit: (3/29) Gabor Mate, Tara Brach, Rick Hanson, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldberg, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dan Harris...

Sharon Salzberg; Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Jen, Wisdom Quarterly

Sharon Salzberg is delighted that Wisdom for Life came to her with the idea of creating a summit based on the themes of her new book, Real Life, to be published on April 11th.

The book is based on the possibility of moving from contraction and isolation, the “narrow straits” of habit and assumption, to a world of greater spaciousness, creativity, and connection.

In this summit, too, we will look at common states of narrowness and pain and how to work with them.

We will look at when we feel most expansive and open (e.g., states like loving-kindness and compassion) and how to cultivate them.

We will look at what we want to take along on this journey and what’s a burden best left behind. And we will look at the power of that more open and expansive state and how it can change our lives. 

• CLICK HERE TO JOIN

Sharon Salzberg is hosting the Summit and conducting many of the interviews with 30+ speakers. She’s joined in conducting the interviews by Andrés González, Ali Smith, Atman Smith of the Holistic Life Foundation, and Lily Cushman.

Speakers include meditation teachers, playwrights, activists, scientists, poets/rappers, and more. Several of these extraordinary people will be quite familiar, and some will be the most delightful new discoveries.

Upgrade page - Wisdom For Life Summits

Each of the five days of the Summit has a unique theme from the book:

1. DAY ONE: WHAT IS AUTHENTIC LIVING
2. DAY TWO: CONTRACTION
3. DAY THREE EXPANSION
4. DAY FOUR: THE JOURNEY
5. DAY FIVE: THE EMERGENCE.

The scheduled speakers are:

• Ali Smith
• Amishi Jha
• Andrés González
• Anu Gupta
• Atman Smith
• Caroline Welch
• Courtney Martin
• Daisy Hernández
• Dan Harris
• Dan Siegel
• Daphne Zuniga
• Duncan Trussell
• Dr. Gabor Maté
• Jack Kornfield
• Jerry Colonna
• Joel Leon
• Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Joseph Goldstein
• Krishna Das
• Mark Epstein
• Omid Safi
• Parker Palmer
• Pete Holmes
• Rhonda V. Magee
• Rick Hanson
• Sarah Jones
• Sarah Ruhl
• Shelly Tygielski
• Simran Jeet Singh
• Sylvia Boorstein
• Tara Brach
• Trudy Goodman
• Valarie Kaur
• Zainab Salbi.
• CLICK HERE TO JOIN

Hope you can join us.

Take care, Sharon Salzberg (sharonsalzberg.com)

MEETUP GROUPS (Los Angeles):

• Disclosure Project
• Nature Center
• PasaDharma

Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining

Charlotte Allen (LA Times, May 17, 2009)
Superstar atheists are motivated by anger -- and boohoo victimhood.

I can't stand atheists -- but it's not because they don't believe in God. It's because they're crashing bores.

Other people, most recently the British cultural critic Terry Eagleton in his new book, Faith, Reason, and Revolution, take to task such superstar nonbelievers as Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and political journalist Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) for indulging in a philosophically primitive opposition of faith and reason that assumes that if science can't prove something, it doesn't exist.

My problem with atheists is their tiresome -- and way old -- insistence that they are being oppressed and their fixation with the fine points of Christianity. What -- did their Sunday school teachers flog their behinds with a Bible when they were kids?

Read Dawkins, or Hitchens, or the works of fellow atheists Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), or visit an atheist website or blog (there are zillions of them, bearing such titles as "God Is for Suckers," "God Is Imaginary," and "God Is Pretend"), and your eyes will glaze over as you peruse -- again and again -- the obsessively tiny range of topics around which atheists circle like water in a drain.

First off, there's atheist victimology: Boohoo, everybody hates us 'cuz we don't believe in God. Although a recent Pew Forum survey on religion found that 16% of Americans describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, only 1.6% call themselves atheists, with another 2.4% weighing in as agnostics (a group despised as wishy-washy by atheists).

You or I might attribute the low numbers to atheists' failure to win converts to their unbelief, but atheists say the problem is persecution so relentless that it drives tens of millions of God-deniers into a closet of feigned faith, like gays before Stonewall.

In his online "Atheist Manifesto," Harris writes that "no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that ... God exists." The evidence? Antique clauses in the constitutions of six -- count 'em -- states barring atheists from office. More>>