Archived threads in /his/ - History & Humanities - 3826. page

>>903353
As an insight meditation teacher, reading Waking Up by Sam Harris was simultaneously joyful and shameful. It is a fine book that points to a weakness in the culture of awakening that is hard to look at directly. In his usual style, he is honest to the point of painful, and sometimes it can be hard to take.

Let me back up.

For those who don’t know Harris, he is a neuroscientist who became most well known for publishing The End of Faith, a book promoting the idea that what we believe influences how we behave, and that faith-based beliefs lead to rather irrational behavior. Like flying planes into buildings. He’s dry, technical, but funny and obviously not afraid of controversy. Apparently people really like that combination, because The End of Faith stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over 30 weeks. Harris quickly moved from obscure neuroscientist to intellectual sensation, and was lumped in with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett as the leading edge of a revitalized post-9/11 atheist movement described as “new atheism.” Together they were ironically dubbed the “four horsemen.”

But Harris is an odd fit among the horsemen. While Hitchens, Dennett, and Dawkins all rail against the privileged position that eastern spirituality seems to have among western intellectuals, Harris openly disagrees with them, making the case that despite the woo-woo clearly at work in the offerings of Deepak Chopra, The Secret, and similar new age flim-flam, there is something valuable to be found in the spiritual traditions of Asia that is being obscured, rather than revealed, by pop spirituality. He uses his public platform to urge people to dig a little deeper.

>>903365

It turns out he is speaking from experience. Waking Up is not just an introduction to Buddhist meditation and the liberation that it leads to, it is a spiritual memoir told from the perspective of a consummate rationalist and skeptic. One who stumbles upon enlightenment.

After a few chapters of fleshing out why some spiritual practices are fruitful human endeavors and others are not, and correlating the claims of mystics with modern neuroscience, Harris gets down to the memoir part of his book and dishes on his own experiences. I was thrilled to read that Harris begins his spiritual search in U Pandita’s meditation center, where he practices a rigorous form of insight meditation. Harris is told that he is working through the progress of insight toward “cessation,” and will attain his first taste of awakening upon that strange moment of non-occurrence. For readers of my site, or fans of insight meditation, this should all sound very familiar.

When I read this part of the book I was rooting for Harris, excited to hear what he makes of the shift in consciousness that occurs after cessation. I looked at how many pages were left and anticipated that there would be a detailed account of how he reconciled his own encounter with nibbana with cutting edge brain science. This, I thought, is the book I’ve been waiting for.

So imagine my disappointment, shock really, when on the same page he reports that he couldn’t do it, and gave up.

No cessation. No stream entry. Zilch.

Something, I thought, went horribly wrong.

>>903368

It is not exactly clear from the book what happened. In retrospect he reasons that moving toward a goal (cessation) did not feel like the right path to enlightenment, and that truth can be glimpsed no matter where one is on the path, and truth is not found in a state, cessation is not necessary and… his explanation started to feel fishy as I read it. Frankly, this sounds like a rationalization after the fact. Indeed, it sounds identical to what he was taught by the teachers and traditions that he encountered after he left Pandita’s center (Advaita and Dzogchen). So what was he really thinking and feeling at the time he threw in the towel?

A hint can be found in his description of the wall he hit during a year-long retreat:

“But cessation never arrived. Given my gradualist views at that point, this became very frustrating. Most of my time on retreat was extremely pleasant but it seemed to me that I’d merely been given the tools by which to contemplate the evidence of my non-enlightenment. My practice had become a vigil. A method of waiting, however patiently, for a future reward.”

Harris is describing an insight practice that has stalled out in one of the stages along the progress of insight. In another passage he points out that his movement through the progress of insight wasn’t very clear and although he had many interesting experiences he did not know if he was making any progress at all. Why didn’t he know?

What concerns me most about this is that Harris does not describe what would have been the best, most natural, and sensible antidote for his struggle: someone simply telling him where he was on the path and what to do to move on. I wonder what kind of book Waking Up would be if someone had simply taken him aside at that time and said “hey, relax, you are in lower equanimity. It goes on for a while and can sometimes feel uneventful. Here’s what you can do about it…”

Perhaps life is only viewed as something so special because we are a part of it. Maybe life is just another natural system on Earth, inherently no different from the weather.

We attribute value to life because we arn't edgelords.

>>903314
some possibilities

a) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis
b) most stars did not produce enough CHON for life too develop yet, will be more later.
c) intelligent life always drives itself extinct
d) intelligent life does not wander from from it's planet in constant expansion

I personally believe that life forms that believe in constant explanation will drive themselves extinct, and those that don't will be regulated to a small amount of space

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Cross of Santiago <3

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>tfw you'll never fight for the blue shirts

>>901886
Did you actually go there to win anything?

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>>901898
poon

Well, we sure as shit didn't win.

I don't know if I'd call it a "loss" as I'm not entirely convinced there was a real goal besides "let's see how much military hardware we can sell before people get tired of this"

>>901126
Bible Jesus and Quran Jesus are on different power-levels.

You have to specify which.

Bible Jesus wins when he loses.

It doesn't bode well for Jesus. His only attack "Turn Cheek" is basically an antique "magikarp splash," and does nothing whatsoever. Mohammed has the power to throw stones, and carries a sword. Jesus however has the ability to resurrect the dead, leading to a stalemate over infinite series of combats where Mohammed beheads Jesus n times and Jesus resurrects himself n+1 times, until Mohammed dies of old age or possibly venereal disease.

>>901141

Bible Jesus vs Koran Mohammad.

>>901110
It's my understanding that the plans for the Holocaust were generally limited to areas of Europe Germany intended to settle. With the exception of the hate-boner for "international jewry," I'd expect the colonies to be left relatively untouched.

>>901110
Hitler didn't even have plans for France and Britian before 1939
He never expected to go to war with them

Imagine how great Africa could be if it wasn't filled with Africans

>>900980

Thatcher Thatcher baby milk snatcher.

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Pleb questions senpai.
She still triggers lefties though, so fair play to her

>What did she do wrong?

Didnt die in that bomb

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>>899805
In any case, these materials were used by so called 'cunning folk' as the grimoire period wound down. A long time ago Mead wrote about a theoretical “witch cult” and long ago it was debunked....A guy by the name of Andrew Chumbley, practicing occultist and PhD candidate in History was writing a dissertation on possible validations of Mead when he died of asthma shortly after preparing to release some occult books which were pushed back many years. Anyway, some of his assertions can be found in “children of qayin” which is in my Cultus Sabbati folder; it displays photos of “witch jugs” held in museums, the jugs having origins in both America and Europe, they bear marks that look more or less like the sigil methods described by Agrippa and later popularized by Spare and the Chaos Magick traditions. Moreover, we've found a text I also present, the Grimoire of Arthur Gauntlet, a “cunning man” from England who blends well known grimorie material with folk magick not seen elsewhere...possibly a touchpoint by which to validate old witch cults? I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

>>899957

I also have a decent amount of Greek reconstructive material and info on obscure forms of Euro paganism. Not much but it's there. Using my material on Greek Sacred Law one might make a rough reconstruction of Eleusinian mysteries, but it'd be a pain in the ass with no temple or hard answers on Kyekon. More easily reconstructed is the late Greek magical tradition in the Greek Magickal Papyri using Jake Stratton Kent's “Geosophia” as a guide.

Anyway, direct links:
Cultus Sabbati: https://mega.nz/#F!hUAiHTSK!7zcl8cs3IhCd5QqEOCmrPg
Euro: https://mega.nz/#F!wJAnXb4J!4Hkn5E4LJz0c6UYSrj3y5g
Grimoires: https://mega.nz/#F!AExjhAoS!lPomaOs11pcSIQGiSZqEEg

bump?

Is that Pepe on the left?

>>898550
Entertainment.
Also torture works perfectly well for performing power's acts upon the body and making the body "legible" to the state.

isn't that pic from Amnesia: The Dark Descent?

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most comfy shield design coming through

>>896980
I'm getting a kteisic vibe from the one on the left, if you know what I mean.

All versions up for discussion

The NBC version probably is. That version almost seems like everything he does is a choice, that he's got no real mental health issues that compel him to murder and eat people. He does it because he chooses to do it, and that's ubermensch as fuck.

>>898204
I'd say his little 'aesthetics becomes ethics' speech says he is.

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>something effects a massive continent differently than a city state

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>>897409
The answer is simple
>niggers

>>897419
this

and Singapore was and still is a major port city so no wonder it's doing alright

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>>896390
Good history program desu

>>896390
Just saw this video about some shithead at the 'ol Alma Mater. Business school students can all go off themselves imo (plus, any job you can get with a degree in business you can get with a degree in literally anything else).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12VeNY-QoYA

Why are you doing this?

Nice logical fallacy ;)

>>896247
wink
Also we're about 70fags from /sci/g/lit/
it's fun.

>>896260
>70
You are really fags
I'll stop by
[email protected]

>>895508
i thought that istanbul was constantinople, but now i know that it's istanbul, not constantinople

>>895508
That the dark ages werent real
That the islamic golden age didnt happen

>>895508

Timecube blows my mind in how much sense it doesn't make