71–80 of 114 posts
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I'm not sure what you're driving at. Beyond relaxation, ego-issues are what meditation has always been about, in multiple traditions if not all.
Given the smugness of many meditation enthusiasts I would worry that meditation would only work to make my ego louder .
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The base of that goes back to a very simple realization: On a cosmic scale nothing that we do is of great importance. This planet likely is not as special as we would like to think it is and we are not as special as we like to think we are. We are to the universe as a single bacterium is to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 Is a nice recap of just how vast the universe really is and how utterly insignif…
I can just as easily extract the opposite conclusion, and say that we must be incredibly special if it took an universe that big to create us. And it's as good as a conclusion until we discover if intelligent is common or not. I'd side with it not being a good argument.
The gold is at the bottom: “The humble person is probably more aware and accepting of the fact that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute.” If there's one thing that will humble you it's trying to fathom the scale of the universe. You think a celebrity matters at these scales? But don't let it make you feel impotent - rejoice at the fact that you're alive, you exist and the world is fu…
I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling. What does size have to do with importance? That's like saying a bar of gold has less value if you store it in a bigger room. There are many humbling things in the universe, like making an off-by-one error in C++ with more than a decade of programming experience, but the vastness of the universe is not one of those things.
So how is a quiet ego measured? I understand those four facets in the article are supposed to correlate with the quiet ego, so it would be interesting how the loudness of your ego is measured before those 4 questions. Otherwise is seems like imposing your own bias to create a category that fits your per-conceived western Buddhism bias. For example "Facet #1: Detached awareness", I don't really see what "detached" add…
So how is a quiet ego measured? I understand those four facets in the article are supposed to correlate with the quiet ego, so it would be interesting how the loudness of your ego is measured before those 4 questions. Otherwise is seems like imposing your own bias to create a category that fits your per-conceived western Buddhism bias. For example "Facet #1: Detached awareness", I don't really see what "detached" add…
In our lab, we recognize is as deactivation in the PCC, some of our collaborators recognize it as deactivation in the DMN, measurable with both EEG/fMRI.
>All in all I don't buy it unless there's more to it.
I'd say it's preferable if more people don't feel like they have to "buy" into it… but as you know, there's a burgeoning industry surrounding such, but I'm mostly grateful that I get to be apart of working on the technology which I'd say will be way more useful outside of just meditation and contemplative practices…
It's funny how most of this ideas are in reality very old concepts of Greek/Roman philosophy. Seneca was a big proponent of "quite ego", for instance (his critic to a strong ego/desire: Tamquam mortales timetis, omnia tamquam immortales concupiscitis). Socrates could be too. I think the common denominator was the understanding that we have no access to the Truth and that we might as well spend the time trying to know…
It is actually Indian philosophy, based on Upanishads, much older that anything Greek/Roman. Basically, they say that it is your "ego" which prevents you, like a veil, from seeing reality as it is, because your mind is constantly busy, preoccupied with petty desires and childish concerns. Think of the ego as a virus processes with results in a high load average load average: 5.38, 5.30, 4.11 The oldest maxim says - l…
The most important realisation with Buddhism I had was the idea that you can't know the truth but you can be it. That changed everything for me.
While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird. People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humb…
Once me and colleagues were discussing some technical issue with our customer. At one point I suggested a solution which I wasn't really confident in, but I liked to hear his opinion anyway. The guy listened to me and then, in split second, resumed the previous thread of conversation as if exactly nothing had happened.
I didn't even feel offended, just spent the next minute silently amazed by this weird glitch in human psychology. His reaction looked so automatic that I felt he wouldn't even be able to consciously recall this event afterwards.
While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird. People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humb…
Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room.
Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.
While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird. People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humb…
Humility doesn't mean letting people walk all over you, it means not thinking you're the most important person in the room.
Mr Myagee (sp?) from Karate Kid was both humble and assertive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is actually Indian philosophy, based on Upanishads, much older that anything Greek/Roman. Basically, they say that it is your "ego" which prevents you, like a veil, from seeing reality as it is, because your mind is constantly busy, preoccupied with petty desires and childish concerns. Think of the ego as a virus processes with results in a high load average load average: 5.38, 5.30, 4.11 The oldest maxim says - l…
The idea of some "ultimate reality" is so annoying to me. There is regular ol' reality which our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection over millions of years. The reasons we have a lot of "scripts" running in our mind is because they have historically helped us survive and pass on our genetics. Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.
Ultimate reality is realization (a glimpse of) the fact, that the ego is not the self, and even intellect is not the self, that most of our perceptions are socially/culturally conditioned, beginning with our spoken language in the first place, and that there is no self apart from that conditioning.