Meditation and Unconscious: A Buddhist Monk and a Neuroscientist (2022) | Hacker News Reader

Meditation and Unconscious: A Buddhist Monk and a Neuroscientist (2022)

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

22 pointsarunc7 comments

The classic book on this subject is Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness by James H. Austin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Brain and https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262511094/zen-and-the-brain/ and http://www.zenandthebrain.com/

Be warned though; it is a huge, dense and detailed book since the author is both a neuroscientist/neurologist and a zen meditation practitioner himself.

Look up the articles and videos from Alex Gómez Marín too. A few of these are in Spanish, but technical Spanish will almost perfectly map into technical English with any good online translator. I'd say the wording, constructs and Romance based words in papers are 100% the same and they will translate perfectly fine.

As a practitioner of meditation and a student of Buddhism, this article offers a limited perspective. In my humble opinion there are many many different modes of consciousness that do not benefit from the simple 'antidotes' described in this article.

But then again I've read Matthieu Ricard's book and find his writing to be less than compelling, very subjective and generalizing ideas that have easy to find exceptions. Not to take away from the absolute wealth of knowledge in Buddhism.

I find this so worthwhile though:

"Sometimes you are just sitting there, thinking of nothing in particular, and suddenly the thought of someone or a particular event or situation pops up in the mind, seemingly out of nowhere. From there, a whole chain of thoughts begins to unfold, and if you are not mindful, you can easily get lost in it."

Man, if only 18-year-old-me could have realized this!!

But this excerpt is a play between two characters. Ricard looks for the most effective perspective to communicate his knowledge, so it is not fair to accuse him of a limited perspective.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656543

That reminds me on Lee Si Chen, a great Electrical Engineer (IEEE level) but a fringe science supporter. Yes, a bit like Will Beaty and in its infamous web from the 90's, but he put all of these theories under a section "just in case some cracknut it's right".

Back to Si Chen, here you have:

- Paper about finger reading

https://ijhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SCLee-2-2.pdf

- Video explanation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ9g1CM5m8Q

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