mindfulness

In the west the word is used in the context of what happened in Europe in the 18th century. And even in that context the scholars cannot agree what the word stands for or exactly when i begun. So it would be ridiculous to exactly name what enlightenment stand for in a spiritual  context. But we can try and if we would like to have en European perspective of the word we can for instance start with Schopenhauer. He was influenced by Kant, but also by Buddhism and Hinduism. Here is a good English radio program about him. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nfrrz I like the way S puts music in the philosophical spotlight. He used to play the flute himself. But his personal history, a depressed father and so on has for certain influenced his philosophy. But does desire always bring us to suffering? Lets take the example of the new President in the US. Its obvious that he is driven by desires and wish  for fame. But that has taken him a really long way. But who know...

An interesting conversion between the two Wrights; Robert and Dale, the latter has written a book about this topic. Do we need terms like karma and  enlightenment? Dale think so. Not because they are in then Buddhist context, but also because they pragmatically can be in use. Even if we don't  believe in reincarnation, our deeds will shape us. If we do good deeds we will become good - in this life. And this may be true even outside a religious context.  http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/38017?in=22:47 Here, in Sweden, more and more people are leaving the church. Many of us, because we don't  want to pay the tax - but also don't believe in  God anymore. I'm right now in the countryside, and  here many still go to to evangelicals meetings. Maybe partly for a social reason, to meet and have a chat with other people. It may be be that people here also believes in karma, even if they name it "what comes around goes around". But they also have to b...

We are going towards a society where artificial intelligence will have more and more importance and power. Descartes meant that animals are automates. But if they are, we are too! Animals are conscious, they have feelings and so on, even insects at some level. Though we have more  intelligence than other animals. But machines can be intelligent too. Even more intelligent than we are (depending on what we mean with the term intelligence). Yuval Harari and others mean that we will interact with AI and be super intelligent and become so different that we can call it a new specie. But just very rich people can afford it. So we will have different species on earth, as when the neanderthals lived here. The physician Michio Kaku means that the brain is not more or less than  a biological machine. And it may be replicated, even if it will be very difficult. But what about ethics?  And what about art? What about meaning? Immanuel Kant meant that he had mora...

Well it´s not a question about win or loose - it's about definitions. Empathy often means something like ; the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. The keywords is "share the feelings of another".  Of course it's okay to share the feelings of a friend, or a happy person. But many around us is not happy, and if we read the news we may think that no one is happy. So empathy can be exhausting.  In mindfulness compassion often means "love and kindness". Also called metta. That word  derives from Pali, an ancient language in India spoken and written in the lifetime of Buddha. It can be helpful to meditate on compassion, specially if it is for all beings, without discrimination.  You may feel well after a metta meditation.  But it will be to no use if you don't act in some way. But the action doesn't have to driven by just feelings.  We can look at our feelings and not act immediately. Maybe we can find a more effecti...

In times of nationalism and talk about borders and fences, it's important to see the bigger picture. From the time that humans spread from Africa, our world have become bigger and bigger. And the interaction between different parts of the world have increased. As Yuval Harari has stressed, is this trend supported by dark events like wars, colonization and in these days the climate effect. In the long run this trend seem unstoppable. Once the Romans built a wall in England to secure the empire, Hadrian's wall. It's still there. Very long, from shore to shore. Hadrian was an emperor from 117 to 138 AD. The western part of the empire was soon going to undermine itself. But now, in a much more peaceful time, the borders in Europe is secured on other ways and its still possible for  the most of us to travel in Europe. We live in quite peaceful time, compared to the last centuries. Media reports of every incident, so it seems not to be so, but it is. And ...

John Grays book is titled after a sentence by Lau Tzu: Heaven an earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.  Near the end of his book Gray is more direct: The good life is not found in dreams of m progress, but in coping with tragic contingencies. We have been reared on religions and philosophies that deny the experience of tragedy. Can we imagine a life that is not founded in the consolations of action? Or are we too lax and coarse even to dream of living without them? A life without action would be a meditating life, I guess. But meditating that includes the destructive forces in the universe. Even forces like depression or worries or hatred. The person who can have a look at it dark sides, without suppressing them, may not let the be outlived in action. Even so, catastrophes may lead to new life. When another planet crashed  in to the earth in the early days of the universe, the remains were, more or less, only small dust. But by time...

Carlo Rovelli is trying to explain the riddle of quantum mechanics. The riddle resides in the fact that the theory works very well but we don't know how. How can the a wave suddenly act as a particle when it's observed? Rovelli means that its about interaction. We should not see manifestations as photons or mountains as independent objects: "I believe that in order to understand reality we have to understand that reality is this network of relations, of reciprocal information, which weaves the world..... reality is nor made up of discreet  objects. It is a variable flux. Think of an ocean wave. Where does a wave finish? Where does it begin?.... a wave and a mountain is not objects in themselves, they are ways that we have of slicing up the world to apprehend it, to speak about it more easy". ( From Rovelli - Reality is not what it seems) So it seems that Rovelli has the same view as Buddha. Things and persons have no intrinsic selves. And it's about the...