Religions
February 16, 2024
K. Taylor, Eli Kramer
In this paper, we will present Rinzai practices from Zen Masters Ikkyū Sōjun (一休宗純, 1394–1481) and Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴, 1686–1769) as offering a distinctive kind of spiritual exercise: disruptive reorientation to transcendence (enlightenment) through immanence (a return to the world in all its ugly distractions, beauty, and insight). This paper seeks to explore Hadot’s philosophy as a way of...
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
February 10, 2024
Alyssa F. Harlow, Peter S. Hendricks, Adam M. Leventhal et al.
6 citations
Despite common depictions in the media, there is little scientific evidence on microdosing psychedelic drugs. We assessed awareness, prevalence, and dosing practices of microdosing psychedelic drugs among young adults 18-22 years old from Southern California (2018-2019). We examined whether sociodemographic factors, personality traits, mental health, or other substance use behaviors were...
Literary Voice
February 8, 2024
Good bodily and mental health is a condition of well-being. We may keep our bodies in good health by embarking on a quest to explore the deepest corners of our minds. The practical and scientific approaches for comprehending the relationship between the mind and body are the main emphasis of the study. Through their writings, Deepak Chopra and Swami Vivekananda emphasize the vitality of the...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
A well looks at a donkey, not vice versa [#33] Self-image and infinity somehow fell into one.[#3024] One of the many things that make a more genuinely philosophical meditation practice so in ter est ing is that some of its aspects can be taught, while others can't.Some things you simply have to find out for yourself.Before we start, let us do a little demo.Be assured that you do not have to be...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
There is no waking, there is no sleeping, there is only being.[#1784] Contemplative practice is related to sleep in a number of in ter est ing ways.First, many dozens of our experiential reports emphasize how deeply relaxing, restful, and refreshing it is to spend a while abiding in the wakeful presence of bare awareness.What is more, the relationship between our subjectively experienced target...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
First, many meditators report a phenomenal character of spatiality as such, a vast openness lacking any more concrete frame of reference.Often, we find this coemerging with some of the specific experiential qualities we have already investigated, like existential ease, simplicity, brightness, unity, a velvety character, high precision, clarity, wakefulness, and connectedness.Here are ten...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
The world reflecting in a mirror without a perceiving observer.[#1735] An impression of " there are impersonal eyes in the room."[#3451] "Witness consciousness" is a global phenomenology.This is to say that the totality of all experiential contents appears as if being observed by something that isn't really an "observer" at all-by a timeless, impersonal, knowing presence.Witness consciousness...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
Our reports show that the phenomenology of "pure being" can either be the sole defining characteristic of a full-absorption episode or coexist with other forms of experiential content.Next, you will find nine examples of the phenomenal quality that I am trying to isolate here.Note that some of the descriptors explored in earlier chapters-like "body dissolution," "peace," "silence,"...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
When openness touches openness.[#1444] For many centuries, meditators have been describing states of direct perception, the experience of seeing what is.Meditation involves a distinct phenomenology of perceiving, timelessly, without any conceptual overlay or any form of judgment, interpretation, or choice.Seeing what is out of a state of pure awareness often reveals another par tic u lar and...
The MIT Press eBooks
February 6, 2024
It was as if my body / my being was pixelated and dissolved into the rest of the pixels that make up the entirety of every thing else.[#3086] There are countless ways in which the experience of pure awareness can shift from background to foreground.The phenomenology of translucency is one way: "It's like real ity shining through when all ideas, concepts . . .step aside for a moment" (#2528; see...