The concept of reality spans a broad spectrum of levels of description. On the one extreme, that of pure quantitativeness, reality may be a mathematical structure such as an intricate quantum graph. On the other extreme, that of pure qualitativeness, reality may be what we experience when we rid ourselves of all conceptual thinking in a state of mindful awareness. Between the extremes, our levels of descriptions have different degrees of conceptuality and objectivity: from philosophical … [Read more...]
What Do Science and Spirituality Have in Common?
Science and spirituality have something important in common: both center on the process of observation. In science, we observe nature in its concreteness and then move towards causes, abstract concepts, generalizing theories, experimental repetitions, mathematical descriptions, and statistical models. In spirituality, we too observe nature in its concreteness, and with similar curiosity, but we then move no further. Instead, we keep observing—the breath, the friend, the water flowing down … [Read more...]
What You Judge You Cannot Understand
As soon as you judge—say, a person's behavior, a political idea, or something that happened to you—you are cutting yourself off from the well of understanding. For in order to understand, you need an open, observing, and questioning mind. What exactly is the person doing and why might he be acting that way? What exactly does the idea imply and where might its implementation lead to? What exactly happened and how might the event have come about? Judgments, by contrast, are closed assertions … [Read more...]
Catastrophizing Spiritual Teachings
For every job in the world, you will find competent and less competent people doing it. Spiritual teachers are no exception. What I particularly have in mind here are spiritual teachers who imitate the Freudians of previous generations by reducing the human psyche to a struggle of the ego that fanatically keeps building mechanisms to defend itself. Our common state, so their story goes, is one of suffering and absentmindedness. We live in pain and distraction, detached from our true nature, … [Read more...]
To explore, or to exploit, that is the question
Would you rather stay where you are and get the most out of your current situation, or move ahead to put yourself in a different situation from which you could get more out of? We face this question in many areas of life: In learning, we can choose to either specialize in a certain field and hone specific skills to become a masterful expert, or broaden our horizon and explore unknown territories to become a well-rounded generalist. (We know from artificial intelligence that the best approach … [Read more...]
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