Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Meditation

  • The Discursive as Distraction

    The search for the Real takes us outside ourselves. We may seek the Real in experiences, possessions, distant lands, or other people. These soon enough reveal themselves as distractions. But what about ideas and theories? Are they simply a more lofty sort of distraction? “Travelling is a fool’s paradise” said Emerson. Among lands certainly, but…

  • Time Apportionment as Between Athens and Benares

    If a philosopher who meditates spends five hours per day on philosophy, how many hours should he spend on meditation?  One corresondent of mine, a retired philosophy professor and Buddhist, told me that if x hours are spent on philosophy, then x hours should be spent on meditation.  So five hours of philosophy ought to…

  • Re-collection

    Recollection is a flight from the diaspora  of animal inclinations and social suggestions.  One collects oneself.  Life is one long battle against the centrifugal pull of these two.  Time too flees and flies not just by passing unaccountably but also by losing itself in the diaspora of its own modes, past, present, and future.  What…

  • Unusual Experiences and the Problem of Overbelief and Underbelief

    One day, well over 30 years ago, I was deeply tormented by a swarm of negative thoughts and feelings that had arisen because of a dispute with a certain person.  Pacing around my apartment, I suddenly, without any forethought, raised my hands toward the ceiling and said, "Release me!"  It was a wholly spontaneous cri du coeur,…

  • Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism and Whether the Self is an Illusion

    London Karl brings to my attention an article by Sam Harris touching upon themes dear to my heart. Harris is an impressive fellow, an excellent public speaker, a crusader of sorts who has some important and true things to say, but who is sometimes out beyond his depth, like many public intellectuals who make bold…

  • High-Level Self-Denial

    Going to the mat of meditation at the appointed time when the caffeine-induced riot of thoughts clamors for blogic expression.

  • Max Black in Meditation

  • Meditation: How Long and What to Expect

    A student from Northern Ireland writes, I've recently been contemplating practising meditation. I decided to look up what you had to say on the subject, and I was happy to discover the "how to meditate" post. I was just wondering though, how long should a person meditate, and what should a first timer like myself…

  • De Magistro

    Seek the Teacher deep within.

  • The Mind’s Centrifugal Tendency

    Meditation is a battle against the mind's centrifugal tendency.  In virtue of its intentionality, mind is ever in flight from its center, so much so that many have denied that there is a center or a self.  The aim of meditation is centering.  To switch metaphors, the aim is to swim upstream to the thought-free…

  • Asceticism

    A reader writes, I am a philosopher and a conservative (in many ways) and I enjoy your blog very much. One thing I find rather puzzling (and interesting), though, is your extreme asceticism. Recently, you said: "Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere.  But it is at least possible that thinking…

  • Socrates

    Paul Brunton, Notebooks, vol. 4, part 1, p. 40, #286: When Socrates thought and talked, he walked about; but when the transcendental experience struck him, holding him enraptured and thought-free, he remained rigidly still, standing where it caught him.  No probing questions then engaged him, no arguments with his friends then interested him. The dialectic…

  • The Halloween Dance

    Wife went, I didn't.  She goes every year, I beg off every year.  Angel that she is, she doesn't begrudge me my nonattendance.  I'd rather think and trance than drink and dance. Why?  Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere.  But it is at least possible that thinking and trancing will.

  • Is Neuroscience Relevant to Understanding Prayer and Meditation?

    One aspect of contemporary scientism is the notion that great insights are to be gleaned from neuroscience about the mind and its operations.  If you want my opinion, the pickin's are slim indeed and confusions are rife. This is your brain on prayer: A test subject is injected with a dye that allows the researcher to study…

  • Realms of Experience Beyond the Natural

    This from a reader: I was reading your post on Religious Belief and What Inclines Me to It and was struck by a statement you made at the end regarding "mystical glimpses, religious vouchsafings, paranormal experiences."  By this you seem to confirm a developing series of thoughts I have had for a few years.  As…