Warning, Bad Person ahead. I remember feeling this way with my own parents. Newly grateful that I never had children. Because I can be sure I will never, ever inflict this kind of thing on anyone.
Oh Tytania, you are going to grow old alone. Fuck yeah.
Splashes of jewel tone. I need to go back to subtlety.
by Sam Harris
You know I have to have a very high regard for Mr. Harris to read a whole book exhorting me to consider Buddhism and meditation. And I do. He presents an empiricist’s take throughout.
I still really need to sit down with somebody who practices these things and ask all my questions.
I guess first off, WHY. Why do you want to transcend the self in the first place? The self is all we have. Harris’ main claim however is that the self is an illusion. Well, so is free will; but do you wake up every morning and lay there doing nothing, saying, let’s see what I do today?
And if you can alter your consciousness and see that the self is an illusion, if this is a way to mitigate anxiety and bad feelings, doesn’t it get rid of the good feelings too? Why would you want to live that way?
It’s sold as a way to get off the hedonic treadmill. We are constantly chasing pleasure, avoiding pain, bounced around among our emotions, seeking something that can never be permanent. Yup. That’s called the HUMAN CONDITION. The pursuit of happiness… it’s what life is ABOUT. I don’t get why you’d want to spend the effort fighting human nature, eliminating the joy that comes from achieving goals and looking forward to the future and looking back at happy times, in exchange for some steady state of emotion-free selflessness.
I know I’m not getting it entirely. That’s why I need to sit down with somebody.
I really do appreciate Harris’ efforts here. He is against every form of faith-based religion and claims nothing that is not empirically testable. My readings here and elsewhere about meditation and psychedelic use have ‘opened my mind’ a bit – to the extent I actually can read about Buddhism and meditation without running away screaming (much).
One exercise I did enjoy much was about “having no head.” You can’t see your head. Try pretending you don’t have one. Just pretend for a moment, don’t dwell on it. Look around. How does the world look? Douglas Harding: “This hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing… It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything: room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills…” Trippy. Drawing of headlessness by Ernst Mach:
A little greenhouse Xopher has going in the mudroom. Wasn’t planned. Just things here and there he wanted to keep alive.
We survived the infamous, nefarious, notorious Burlington, Vermont, after dark!
On the left is a Carolina Wren. A new one for us this year. Hope he’s not caught unawares by Vermont winter.
I feel such a sense of peace today. Or call it ennui or bummed or lazy or uninspired or unenergetic – or call it peaceful.
It’s a judgment.
by Sam Harris
Sam Harris’ Making Sense is my podcast discovery of the year. He talks about the coolest shit, has the most awesome “slow talker” delivery, puts no time limit on his rambling introductory monologues or interviews… and always makes me laugh by timing how long it takes him in any podcast to ask his guest, whosoever the guest may be, “Ever tried psychedelics?” and/or “Do you do meditation?” You know he has to be a real quality thinker and talker for me to put up with smugness about meditation, and envy of psychedelic use.
This book is a transcript of a bunch of his podcast interviews. The topics include consciousness, a bit of current events circa 2017, AI, and tangential general psychology. It was all interesting. I have no jump-out quotes to share, though.
New expensive beefy tree stand! We turned our backs and the tree fell down again.
I’m really taking this to heart.
Look at the magnitude of the problem I’m trying to “fix.” Justifiable grieving and a lifelong depression? You cannot fix this. However much of yourself you pour into it will never, ever be enough. There is in fact very, very little that I control in this world beyond the reach of my little fingers. You can only make the best of whatever is within that tiny little reach.
So, what am I willing to do? Decide what I can and am willing to do for this person. Do it, and make peace with it.
Good advice from my brother:
If there’s something you don’t want to do, but you feel you should, but you really don’t want to, but you feel you really have to…
either, a) Don’t do it. And make peace with that. or,
b) Do it. And make peace with that.
Do not: Do it, and still feel bad about it!
Because that’s what I do, because it never feels like enough, but it will never be enough.
Tytania 