mindfulness

I have been here before. A month ago - same bar, same table at the pavement. Probably the same chair. Drinking the same kind of coffee. Then everything was new to me. The stream of motorcycles, the sellers (some of them are the same) and the thin men with their cyklos. A lot of guesthouses and travel centers. It's in the backpackers area and the guests in the bar is also about the same: Young westerners sipping Saigon red, the local beer. An open Lonely Planet on the table, planning their next move: Cambodia? Mekong river? Phu Quoc? I have just visited the two last places and even stayed some days at a friends place in Bien Hoa, a smaller town an hour on bus north of Saigon. A smaller town means about one million, in Saigon there are at least nine million inhabitants; as in the whole of Sweden. A month in this country is of course a too short time too understand  it. I'm just a visitor, a stranger - living in a country that has not seen war for 250 years. Of course ...

Marx is supposed to have said; I am no Marxist. Perhaps Buddha would have said the same about Buddhism. (Perhaps Christ about Christianity) Dan Harris Writes in an article about this: We have to differ Buddhas Dharma from Buddhism or from religion as a phenomena. Even if Buddha was right his teachings have been popularized and vulgarized. But the original teachings can be used in a context outside of Buddhism Harris argues: Algebra comes from the Arabs, but now it's used by the whole world. Science came from the west but belongs to everyone that practice it - and so on. Harris is the US news anchor that found out that mindfulness helped him - though it was no miracle cure. I use to practice mindfulness with a "light" Buddhist group inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh. You don't have to be a Buddhist to join in, but they emphasize some ethics that is fine for me: http://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-5-mindfulness-trainings/    It was hard from th...

If you are interested in Philosophy or religion, you probably also are interested in ethics. The fruits of the earth belongs to everybody but the earth belongs to nobody.... We have found out that we live in a very small planet in a giant universe. Just a blue water drop in a sea of planets, stars and galaxies. We have done this because of our intelligence. But even though there are things we cannot measure and things that mathematics is of no use. Maybe the most valuable experiences are like this. for instance birdsong. If the birdsong finished most of us would be missing it badly. But how many dollars are the birdsong worth? What would we do to save for our children? It's easier if we look at a bigger picture - if we destroy our forests and lakes it will in the end decrease our chance to survive on this planet Most of us understand that. Anyway we have problems to grasp it. First comes the stomach, then the moral, as Bertold Brecht puts it in the play, Mutter ...

  Well, Wittgenstein didn't write directly about mindfulness.  But his first book.  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,  ends with the world;" Whereof  one   cannot     speak , thereof one must be silent." That resembles meditation; If you want to experience the absolute reality you have to stop thinking. If you will have some space between your thoughts you will feel less separated from everything else.  And then again -we always have to return to the conventional truth – it's where we live. In the book Wittgenstein also claim that religion and science speaks different languages and shouldn't be mixed up.  As religion is about myth's it show us way to live our lives.  That can also be said about mindfulness in the Buddhist context.   It is for sure shown in the five mindfulness trainings. A version of the eightfold path prepared by Tich Nath Hanh in Plum Village.  It is meant for a guide for...

In her book, "Are you an illusion?" Mary Midgley supports holism She argues that the thoughts we have, the longing and the choices we make are important - it's i not only signals in the brain. Perhaps obvious, but not if you are a 100% reductionist... We also have some freedom, I can lift my arm when I decide to do so... So our will  seems to influence the brain and the muscles in the arm - we are not totally ruled by the genes, as Dawkins seems to mean. A Buddhist would say that the  brain and the mind is interrelated. Without the brain there would be no mind. But without the mind - no brain. Or; the brain has been developed to construct mind - without the mind the brain would have no function and would therefore be smaller and smaller  like our smallest toes are... - because of that we now seldom climb trees, There must for sure be a self in each men, she argues. and mocks the philosophers  that  claims that the self just is an illusion, though ...

If we have no permanent or separate self, we probably would change quite often. And we do... Our mood swings not just with aging - less testosterone in men and more in women - but also over days or weeks. So the teenager and the old man cannot be really the same... But some things in us seems to remain the same - do you for instance like the same music now as when you were seventeen? Or some of it? Or maybe some music  are timeless... (doesn't matter what genre) ? Anyway - in this guys there are many hormones acting - but there must be something more... I suppose we are not just matter.... For instance - what is music?

We all tell stories, don't we. I do. I suppose we have to.  But we are not always aware of that we do it. Perhaps we think we talk about the Truth or facts. I tell stories around mindfulness, tries to make it meaningful, tries to make fit into a discourse. But I cannot leave the context and language that my clients feel at home with. I try to make my own life meaningful and therefore I tell a story about myself where mindfulness fits in. I'm really not sure if I tell the truth, but I anyway need the story, not at least for my own identity. Even parties need stories; In the Swedish election yesterday. The parties have to tell coherent stories about themselves, that may attract the voters. In politics we all now that the leaders make promises and often exaggerate. But we anyway sometimes are seduced by the stories. What we always don't see is that even such things that courts and judges are influenced by stories. Stories about what is a criminal behavio...