Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
zBrown
Ice climber
Brujò de la Playa
|
|
I think that the point is, once they are inside the cells they will not require an electrical outlet, nor even a AA/AAA (rechargeable?) battery.
The cost savings are dramatic. They haven't solved the drought issue yet, those cells are still going to require some fluid.
Forget about upgrades and electronic disposal fees for the short run.
On the bright side, one could go off grid and still follow the ST forum. As with all things, a mixed bag.
This was on the page when I looked at it, now it'll be here till the thread is deleted. (BTW Total messages posted: 2,160,026)
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
it's called television
Yep. Something that carries Hogan's Heroes can't be all bad though.
Oooooh it's coming on now...
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
Looks like she cheats on that diet, too.
That rides got junk in the trunk AND a spare tire.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
Crowley's exploration of Tantric practices revealed just the scenario I described regarding Tibetan monks (minus Stapler)
I had to look up Aleister Crowley to see what you were talking about and I agree that if all you knew about Tantra came from Crowley you would have this impression and worse. He's an example (one of many) of westerners who have selectively adopted what they wanted from Eastern religion and philosophy to justify their libertine lives. The Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trunpa labeled this "spiritual materialism". I would call it far worse.
As far as facts go. The tantric tradition is completely separate from the monastic tradition. Monks take vows of celibacy. Tantrikas can be married or single but are not celibate. None of them are prostitutes.
In fact, the Tibetan teachers I know have always said that it's easier to be celibate than have the discipline to practice Tantra as it is supposed to be practiced and there fore they advocate monagamy or celibacy.
Exotic esoteric practices can be either licentious or spiritual. It depends on the motivation and the discipline of the practitioner.Tantra and promiscuity of the type exhibeted by Crowley was definitely not spiritual.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
Crowley (pronounced "ale-ster crow-lee") was as bizarre and enigmatic a figure if ever there was.
Any misbegotten attempt to either align or misalign Crowley with a particular given credo is doomed to failure---even the so-called religion he himself was reputed to have founded.
Crowley is one of those puzzling historical figures about which anything or everything said about him can be proven true to some degree. "Chameleon" would be an understatement.
I think one of his noted biographers ended up in an insane asylum---he was perfectly sane before his research on Crowley commenced. LOL
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
When I was doing historical research for my website ten years or so ago I was surprised, even shocked to find that Crowley was one of the pioneers of the sport of rock climbing in Britain. As a young man he was a trickster, before becoming the champion of Magick, as you will see if you read of his scheme to debunk the climbing vicar in Switzerland: one of the first recorded instances of sandbagging in rock climbing. His close friendship with Eckenstein, very much a scientific type not prone to religious thought, an engineer with British Railroad in the 1890s, and the difference in their climbing styles (Crowley, limber but not strong - Eckenstein tough, compact and powerful in bodyweight strength) is another facet of his strange life. However, Eckenstein did have an unusual experience that may have predisposed him to considerations of the paranormal.
FYI: Tulpas
|
|
cintune
climber
The Utility Muffin Research Kitchen
|
|
Crowley on Kanchenjunga is a horrible little story. Talk about sociopathic mountaineers, he pretty much invented the persona.
|
|
MH2
climber
|
|
"I crossed the road to Thomas Cook, and was inquiring if they knew the whereabouts of Mr Aleister Crowley, when a voice behind me chanted, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,' and I turned an introduced myself."
"I spent the morning with him.. I was far from impressed by the great magician's mental powers. For a long time he would not leave the subject of rock-climbing. When I finally got him to talk about drugs and sex, he seemed rather bored."
"Ether perhaps pleased him most; it was possible to get drunk and sober again several times a day."
"He was immensely conceited."
"I saw Crowley again occasionally over the next twenty years. He never again achieved the notoriety of 1923. He continued to write poems and occult books that nobody read but that are now valuable collectors' pieces. I don't think he was 'The Wickedest Man in the World' as the journalist 'Cassandra' called him. He was a very silly man and I doubt whether he did anybody any real harm."
Raymond Greene
Moments of Being
|
|
jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
|
|
The last few posts are not really a serious diversion from "mind" since Crowley seems to have believed tulpas or thoughtforms were possible: physical manifestations arising from meditation, an instance of a physical object being projected from the mind. This of course is a stretch, but the idea that one could "create" entities that seem to have identities and personalities should not be summarily dismissed, especially if through Zen practice it becomes obvious that the "I" of the meditator is a kind of illusion. Why then cannot a second personality arise from the mind, seemingly external and not an internal manifestation of multiple personality disorder? Indeed, what is "personality?"
|
|
MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 08:12am PT
|
Los Angeles Times
Our geography, ourselves
Robert Sapolsky
1 August 2014 -- What determines behavior?
That's a question with a lot of partial answers. Upbringing. Genes. Brain chemistry. Peers.Sunday morning sermons. Inane values communicated in TV ads. The levels of various hormones in the fluid we marinated in as fetuses. The list goes on and on.
Many of these influences can be grouped under the nebulous category of "culture." Examples of cultural influences on behavior are numerous. Austrians, say, are more likely to ski than Tahitians. But some differences are less obvious. For example, monotheistic religions tend to come from desert cultures, while rain forest cultures tend to be polytheistic. And societies of people who make a living as nomadic pastoralists — herders of cows, camels, or goats — are more likely than hunter-gatherers to evolve "cultures of honor" built around warrior classes, retributive violence and clan feuds.
Some of the best-studied cultural contrasts are between "collectivist" and "individualistic" cultures, most commonly between East Asian cultures and that of the U.S. Collectivist cultures are about cooperation, interdependence, the good of the group outweighing the needs of any individual. These are societies in which people are uncomfortable standing out in the crowd, hewing to the principle that "the tall sheath of wheat is the first to be cut down." Individualistic cultures, in contrast, emphasize competition, independence, individual achievement and "looking out for No. 1."
What do these cultural differences look like on psychological tests? When asked to draw a "sociogram" — a diagram of their social network, with circles representing themselves and their friends, connected by lines — Americans tend to place the circle representing themselves in the middle of the page, and make it larger than the other circles. East Asians typically draw the self circle smaller than the others.
When given a scenario in which a friend has cheated them in a business deal, Americans are likely to want to punish the jerk. East Asians are likely not to want to see their friends penalized.
Accidents of geography...can alter how a person thinks in all sorts of unexpected realms. -
When presented with a trio of items — a rabbit, a dog and a carrot — and asked which two go together, individualists tend to think in an analytical, categorical way — rabbits and dogs, because they're both types of animals. Collectivists are likely to think in a more holistic, relational way, connecting rabbits and carrots, because if you think about a rabbit, you also must think about what it's going to eat. Having been to China half a dozen times and to some fairly remote regions as well, I find that the patterns are interesting, but based on so small a sample as to be quite malleable. China is a very individualistic society that wants the jerk punished and looks out for family and...
When briefly shown a picture of a complex scene, Americans are most likely in the first fraction of a second to look at the center of the picture, and to remember the main object in it. East Asians, in contrast, are more likely to scan the periphery and remember the overall scene. And Americans find it easier to recall times when they influenced someone else than times when someone influenced them; with East Asians, it's the opposite. Naturally, not all members of a culture fit neatly into its norms. Nonetheless, numerous studies taking averages of study subjects have found large differences among cultures. Of course, "Americans" and "East Asians" are pretty broad terms, and looking at differences within those cultures can also be interesting. That's what a terrific new study in the journal Science does. Much of traditional Chinese agriculture is about rice farming, which is the epitome of collectivism. Entire villages labor together to maintain irrigation systems, and crops are planted in rotation, since the whole village is needed to harvest each family's crop. But scattered throughout China are regions where wheat is farmed because it is too hilly to grow rice. In wheat country, each family works its own land.
Thomas Talhelm, of the University of Virginia, and an international team of collaborators looked at these two types of farmers in rural China, carefully controlling for such things as income, ethnicity, climate and patterns of disease. And it turned out that people in wheat-farming districts look like folks from individualistic cultures. They draw sociograms in which the circles representing themselves were significantly larger. They are more likely to want a sleazy friend punished, and they link rabbits to dogs rather than to carrots. People from wheat districts also showed two additional markers of individualistic cultures — higher divorce rates, and they file more patents.
Thus, accidents of geography — in this case whether someone was born in a hilly or a flat region — can alter how a person thinks in all sorts of unexpected realms.
Perhaps next, the researchers should study the ways in which the mountain tribes of Pacific Palisades think differently about bunnies and friendships than the plains tribes of, say, Whittier.
But the main point of cool studies such as this one is simply to make us marvel at the subtlety of the factors that shape us.
{End}
-----
I'd say more subtlety and partial than anyone could conceivably say. It's fine to wonder, model, or get involved in any way to experience reality, but in the end, no one really knows what anything really is or why anything "does" anything. The exercise of "determination" (of anything) ends up constituting a fool's errand. It's nice to hear someone in research admit it once and a while.
(I read this on a international organization blog, and I thought of you, Jan.)
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 08:27am PT
|
Graziono's speculations on the void:
"In the absence of light entering the eye, the visual system computes representations that can be seen as dim floating colors and shapes. Likewise, in the absence of focused attention occurring in your brain, in theory the relevant circuitry should be able to construct a model of you directing focused attention, and in theory that model is awareness, just awareness, unbound, unattached to subject or object, without a spatial or temporal structure, without location. Pure essence."
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 09:17am PT
|
Fascinating Mike and of course right up my alley although I had not seen the wheat vs rice farmers article. Right now I am reading a very humorous and insightful book written by a man who taught English for a year in a rural Japanese school (Bruce Feiler, Learning to Bow) which illustrates so well how opposite views of life can both succeed in the modern world based on different historical precedents.
I have always believed in the influence of geography; cultural ecology was my theoretical specialty in grad school. However, like a lot of anthropologists, I had some of my best theoretical ideas blown out of the water my first week of real fieldwork. I had assumed that the Sherpas would have many clever material adaptations to life in the cold at altitude, yet the first week I was there I watched fine snow come through the roof and pile up in a snow cone on the floor.
Soon I learned that their way of coping was not to fix the roof but to gather a crowd of people in a room and ply them with home brew - much more fun and warmed everyone right up. Later I learned that the problem with Sherpa building construction did have to do with the environment. They had only sand, not mud or clay to chink the house, couldn't use yak dung as a mortar because they needed it for cooking above the tree line, and cement had to be carried for 8 days on someone's back.
An American would have persisted in overcoming these material obstacles, while social life was more important to the Sherpas. Later when I asked Sherpa children to draw pictures of their family's house they all drew multiple houses with the paths connecting the houses as large as the two story houses themselves. So now, with cultural ecology as with most ideas, I have a modified theory.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 09:32am PT
|
Great questions, jgill. For sure tulpas would not happen in Zen with its single minded emphasis on nothingness. Even if they arose, they would quickly be labeled makyo, illusion, and dismissed. The Tibetans and Indians are much more into the varieties of mental experience.
In contemplating tulpas as alternate personalities, I can't help but think of that very old film, that probably only you and I remember, The Three Faces of Eve. If one can create and then dissolve a tulpa, maybe the dissolution technique would help people with multiple personalities.
I do not have Alexandra David Neel's book Magic and Mystery in Tibet at hand, so I can not check if other people were able to see her tulpa or not, but I would not be surprised given the power of suggestion.
And what is personality? I definitely have a Japanese, a French, a Sherpa, and an American personality, yet I remain myself. I haven't figured out exactly how that happens, but am open to any theories. For me personally, my experience as an anthropologist has helped me to better understand the Buddhist concept of no permanent self.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 09:44am PT
|
Everyone one has many personalities. We constantly transition from one to another as we switch roles and social situations, at times employing more than one at once. Talk to a neighbor and her dog and you'll quickly see what I mean.
Multiple personality disorder (if it actually exists - there's some controversy around that) is different from 'normal' in two ways. Memories aren't shared between personalities, and transitions between personalities are sudden and total.
Given that an attention schema, a construct model, allows just about any mental state - it would probably be more surprising if this disorder didn't exist. There's no real physiological basis for supporting it's impossibility.
Such a condition does fly in the face of any idea of a 'soul', however. Do people with multiple personalities have multiple souls? If so - does each soul get reincarnated into different bodies, or can one soul go to heaven and one to hell? If not - which personality is the real soul, or do souls not have personalities? If not, how would one distinguish one soul from another?
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 10:16am PT
|
Although Buddhism denies a permanent soul, other philosophies say that the state of no self is our original soul/spirit and the rest is just transitory personality.
|
|
Tvash
climber
Seattle
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 11:12am PT
|
If you can report it, however 'it' might be interpreted, then it must be represented by neural information. Otherwise - what, exactly, drives the neurons doing the reporting?
Therein lies the rub.
I would argue that, rather than the void being some proto-state that underlies it all - it is, rather, an alternative state induced by sensory deprivation, on par with hallucinations produced by similar means. Like all states, it is a construction of the attention schema. The brain's default or proto-state, as exhibited by much of the rest of the animal kingdom, is to attend.
The value of spending so much valuable time and effort attaining such a state, or any alternative state, is up to the individual. Any universal value to such a practice is, of course, a fiction born of our evolved need for status.
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 01:04pm PT
|
Or it took so much effort to get there that it seems more important than states that took less effort?
Or it is such an intense and moving experience that it feels like it should be shared?
Emptiness Protostate vs. halucinations is an interesting juxtaposition however.
|
|
Ward Trotter
Trad climber
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 01:22pm PT
|
it is, rather, an alternative state induced by sensory deprivation, on par with hallucinations produced by similar means.
If you are referring to the general state of meditation ,such as the reported "no-thing" , then your point is similar to a point I once made on the other thread quite some time ago.
Since then I have learned there are some striking ,and well-catalogued, differences between what one can generally describe as "meditation states" and that which has come to be defined as "sensory deprivation"
The biomarkers and brain scans are somewhat different and somewhat similar. If I weren't so lazy right now I'd fetch the numerous links to illustrate.
Like all states, it is a construction of the attention schema.
Graziano's Attention Schema Theory is based exclusively on a type of control theory:
Attention requires control. In the modern study of robotics there is something called control theory, and it teaches us that, if a machine such as a brain is to control something, it helps to have an internal model of that thing.
It's hard to see how an attention schema, calibrated primarily to the processing of external stimuli, could on the face of it ,be very handy at dealing with multifactorial internal mental states, each with its own model. Grazianos schema amounts to a type of "controller" that by its very nature must be lean and mean. If the controller is forced to spend valuable time and resources accounting for desultory mental events that are operationally irrelevant to the strictly attentional domain--- then it runs the risk of breaking down. Sort of like the computer in cheesy SciFi that when overloaded with data begins to sputter and smoke. The attention controller may conversely operate within a "power window" that results in sputtering and smoking when too little data is forthcoming as well.
Perhaps this is precisely why bona fide hallucinations are often encountered in sensory deprivation tanks. These hallucinations may be nothing more nor less than a decompensating outcome of the breakdown of the controller schema under conditions of low-grade or non-existent data supply.
BTW as far as I know meditation rarely results in hallucinations, either as eyewitness reports or as compared to the biomarkers catalogued from non-meditation sources such SD and psychedelic drugs.
|
|
BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 01:32pm PT
|
Any universal value to such a practice is, of course, a fiction born of our evolved need for status.
Well so is your attention schema practice.
If you can report it, however 'it' might be interpreted, then it must be represented by neural information. Otherwise - what, exactly, drives the neurons doing the reporting?
i'm with you here! HOW and WHY would there be something like "no-thingness" in a world of "things"? EVERYWHERE there is either matter or energies. So if no-thingness is a conception of the mind, it would be a thing!?
Then what could there ever be as a long time reward by dissolving the "I". Personality tests show that confidence in the ego equates to happiness. Extraverted personalities are more happy than introverted personalities. Is there a difference between "ego-less" and Humility? Humility is a by-product. There's no reason not to be confident in being humble. It doesn't directly correlate to meekness.
One can be ego-less and still be a wheat farmer(as in the above example of being independent). As far as the rice farmers being in a "all for one, one for all" state of mind, and life. Maybe their Ego is calibrated between the "All" for the righteousness of the whole society? Somewhat like Ants? But there's no reason to be less confident or introverted around this style.
i am excited and enthralled by MY "i"! I look forward to seeing "him" come out in public settings. Its only when i allow "him" to run freely, can i honestly know the fruits of my labor. He is the only thing that only i have total responsibility and control in shaping and forming into what i deem as valuable. Maybe meditative suppression of the "i" is a good exercise in getting to know and controlling the "i" if your not acquainted. But thats ONLY practice for the ballgame. The Game starts and ends with being eye-to-eye with the "i". Batter up!
|
|
Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
|
|
|
Aug 10, 2014 - 02:14pm PT
|
Hey Blue, isn't the essence of Christianity putting others before yourself? Even to the point of death? "No greater love has a man than he gives up his life for his friends"?
As for extraverted personalities being more happy, it seems to me that's a judgement call on their part, assuming they've managed to come up with a universal definition of happiness.
And please, are you really saying the people in Asia are like ants? A little bit ethnocentric I would say.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!