mindfulness

What about the future? Some people say that the know. Like this man ;  https://jembendell.com/ He started the organisation Deep Adaptation. :Here he is speaking about it at youtube.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ...

Peter Wessel Zapffe is a seldom mentioned philosopher from Norway. Maybe his most known for his pessimism and for being a follower of  Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Maybe his so pessimistic about mens fate that tom manty want to read his books. But there is a short essay that briefly summarize his ideas. But not only that he gives some advice how to make our burden a bit lighter. Here it is: The last Messiah Is it worth reading it? Maybe not. But he anyway he lived with this vision in 90 years. I guess he didn't call it pessimistic bit realistic In fact it has much in common with the philosophy of Buddha. Buddha says that life is suffering. And Zapffe says that we all carry an inner despair. Why? Because of consciousness of the world and self-consciousness. In meditation you try to put the consciousness in standby. Zapffe would call that to act like animal. Or a wanting to get back to nature. Actually Zapffe liked to take long mountain walks. And that could ...

In the 14 precepts for Thich Nhath Hanh's community the first goes: Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. Buddhist systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth. Does he mean that we should skip Buddhism? probably not. But we cannot be sure of anything Buddha said, he didn't write anything down. other did, all a long time afterwards. Maybe it's right maybe not, maybe some of it are right. Maybe the first writings are the more accurate As the four Noble truth and such. But I'm sure T N H is hanging n to mindfulness, i guess because it works for him. For me its a great help too -  but its not a miracle cure. You have to combine with another things. As exercise. I play a lot of table tennis with not mindfulness trained bur nice people. There I can use mindfulness to try to be concentrated. But its all about to win too. And it would be foolish not to to try to do it, that's import...

Is  something happening that we are involved in without to understand it? Some say that human consciousness should be a part of science and of the development of the world. Consciousness have led us to go to the moon, has helped us make UN och to build bombs. It has given us internet that are connecting the world. Let's say that art, science and  infrastructure  is a part of the earth and therefore a part of the universe. It's a kind of nature made by the human mind. And the mind is made by life on earth. Ants and beavers also build places to stay and birds sing and dance. But they don't write books and direct films. We enrich the earth with these human phenomena and hopefully enrich ourselves too. As somebody said; Hamlet and other fictional characters exist, in a special area that are not connected at all to for instance, science and astronomy. So  to say something holistic about the universe is really impossible, as it contains so many different ar...

Maybe a question we don't use so often. Of course I'm the ruler of me! Well after some years of meditation training you may anyway want to look for what is the "king" or ruler in me. And the answer may be; nothing in particular.  Different parts of me rules in different times. The environment wakes up different parts of the brain. If we are scared probably the fight area or the flight  area will react. And they react before we are aware of it. Of course inheritance and environment may influence what part of the brain will react. But neither inheritance or the environment i come from is the king. We can train to not follow our impulses. A swedish monk in California have cancer, and in a talk he empathies the benefits the Buddhist training has given him. It has learned him to let go. To not be overwhelmed by feeling and so on. He led a retreat i visited some years ago, but then he had so much energy. In this talk he is another, but still a sympathetic man. ...

We live in an era where we seem to be more mighty and at the same time more vulnerable than ever. The word Anthropocene can help us to understand why. I can collect many questions under it wings and bind them together in the same discussion.  We can, for instance, se climate change and extinction of species as connected phenomena.  We can also see that something happened with the human society after WW2. ( se more at  http://www.anthropocene.info/great-accele ration.php  ) Until recently not many understood that we could change the surface or the earth so much. That we also have influenced the atmosphere and the big oceans a lot. That we are causing a mass extinction of animals and insects.  In the site above there are many suggested solutions to look at. And the situation  is very severe.    The new view of humankind is that we really can influence the Earth. We have not been aware...

Will all fall apart if we don't have anything to believe in? The importance of the  old gods in Greek and Rome faded away. And instead came Christianity. Now, in the west, the belief in God and the truth of the Bible is fading away too... This painting of Goya is said to illustrate this; The dog is looking for his master in a cold and empty world, but he (God) is nowhere to be found. What myths do we have insteadS Maybe the one of liberal democracy . It may be a good one, even if its now threatened by old fashioned ideas. In Brunei, for instance, sharia-laws are introduced, as stoning for homosexuality and adultery. In other part of the world nationalism is growing. Yuval Harari points out that liberal democracy has a hidden weakness, the belief in free will. We have never had much free will, but in the future it may be totally gone. We will be in danger of being hacked by the algorithms in AI. Governments or companies can send so much false news , that we st...