Releasing the Cramp in the Mind

One method of muscular relaxation is to begin by increasing tension in the muscles so as to have a clear feeling of what not to do.15 In this sense there is some point in using the initial koan as a means of intensifying the mind's absurd effort to grasp itself. But to identify satori with the consequent feeling of relief, with the sense of relaxation, is quite misleading, for the satori is the letting go and not the feeling of it. The conscious aspect of the Zen life is not, therefore, sator...

 Grasping for Nirvana is Grasping

"If my grasping of life involves me in a vicious circle, how am I to learn not to grasp? How can I try to let go when trying is precisely not letting go?" Stated in another way, to try not to grasp is the same thing as to grasp, since its motivation is the same-my urgent desire to save myself from a difficulty. I cannot get rid of this desire, since it is one and the same desire as the desire to get rid of it! This is the familiar, everyday problem of the psychological "doublebind," of creati...

 How Steroids Produce Rage in Users

I pride myself on never losing my cool I've never screamed at anyone I've never gotten physical with anyone but the ideas in my head that tell me to do things tell me to do unspeakable things like what they're unspeakable I'd have to speak them you really want to know Mum I'm also [ __ ] weird so just remember that no we bit most people uhprobably don't have this severity but I'll read a comment on social media directed at me I guess about me um and it's from like you know nameless faceless ...

 Prosochē - Stoic Version of Mindfulness

Prosochē (προσοχή) [pro-soh-KHAY]—the attitude and practice of attention—is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude.1 It is a state of continuous, vigilant, and unrelenting attentiveness to oneself—the present impressions, present desires, and present actions which shape one's moral character (prohairesis).2 When you relax your attention for a while, do not fancy you will recover it whenever you please; but remember this, that because of your fault of today your affairs must ...

 Cultural Achievement Undermines Contemplative Attention

Excessive positivity also expresses itself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered. Moreover, the mounting burden of work makes it necessary to adopt particular dispositions toward time and attention [Zeitund Aufmerksamkeitstechnik]; this in turn affects the structure of attention and cognition. The attitude toward time and environment known as “multitasking” does not repre...

 Zen Meditation is Proactive

The negativity of not-to also provides an essential trait of contemplation. In Zen meditation, for example, one attempts to achieve the pure negativity of not-to—that is, the void—by freeing oneself from rushing, intrusive Something. Such meditation is an extremely active process; that is, it represents anything but passivity. The exercise seeks to attain a point of sovereignty within oneself, to be the middle. If one worked with positive potency, one would stand at the mercy of the objec...

 Learn to See, to Think, and to Speak and Write

The vita contemplativa presupposes instruction in a particular way of seeing. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche formulates three tasks for which pedagogues are necessary. One needs to learn to see, to think, and to speak and write. The goal of education, according to Nietzsche, is “noble culture.” Learning to see means “getting your eyes used to calm, to patience, to letting things come to you”— that is, making yourself capable of deep and contemplative attention, casting a long a...

 Why Humans Evolved to be Active

Humans of all to be much more physically active than our ape ancestors. Typical chimpanzee walks maybe two to three kilometers a day, and they take maybe what, three, 4,000 steps a day. A typical hunter-gatherer takes about 15 to 20,000 steps a day. Per kilo hunter-gatherers spend about twice as much energy per kilo on being physically active per day than our ape cousins. And importantly, that physical activity occurs as we age, right? So Americans are pretty inactive, as we all know. A typ...

 Digestive Enzymes Leaking into the Body May Increase Aging

In young rats, the researchers found low levels of the protein-breaking enzyme trypsin, although the tiny folds (villi) of the small intestine and the lungs contained more of this molecule. However, trypsin levels were much higher in old animals. “High densities are on sections of the intestine, liver, and lung, organs that are in the pathway of digestive enzymes leaking from the small intestine,” the paper says. Elevated levels of other digestive enzymes (elastase, lipase, and amylase) ...

 The Science of Wisdom

A bulk of research has already shown that this kind of third-person thinking can temporarily improve decision making. Now a preprint at PsyArxiv finds that it can also bring long-term benefits to thinking and emotional regulation. The researchers said this was ‘the first evidence that wisdom-related cognitive and affective processes can be trained in daily life, and of how to do so’. [...] Grossmann’s aim is to build a strong experimental footing for the study of wisdom,...