Language is an instrument for dealing with the details of reality. All of our words, along with the ways we string them together, contain or reflect concepts — signs or semiotic constructs – by which we refer to elements of a dynamic world. Because they are essentially pragmatic and context-specific, if we scrutinize any of […]
Posts Tagged ‘practice’
Why religion isn’t (coherent)
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged global catastrophe, global crisis, Peter Sloterdijk, practice, religion, religious studies on February 29, 2024 | 5 Comments »
Being present while screaming
Posted in Spirit matter, tagged askesis, G. I. Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff Work, mindfulness, philosophy as a way of life, philosophy as way of life, practice, presence, Shadowing the Anthropocene, Shinzen Young, triune brain, vibrant materialism, Vipassana meditation on October 20, 2021 | Leave a Comment »
One of the things modern humans aren’t very good at is being fully present in a given moment — being here now, as Ram Dass famously put it — and remaining so in the midst of the activities, distractions, and challenges of the day. Meditation apps and mindfulness teachers can train you to do that […]
(Mc)Mindfulness?
Posted in Philosophy, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, McMindfulness, mindfulness, Peirce, political ecology, practice, process-relational thought, Shadowing the Anthropocene, Shinzen Young on June 22, 2019 | 2 Comments »
A Guardian article making the rounds on social media argues that the mindfulness movement has become “the new capitalist spirituality” — “magical thinking on steroids,” which instead of overturning the “neoliberal order,” now “only serves to reinforce its destructive logic.” This “McMindfulness,” as Ronald Purser calls it, has been “stripped of the teachings on ethics […]
What a bodymind can do – Part 2
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, Peirce, practice, Shinzen Young, Whitehead on May 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »
This continues from the previous post, where Shinzen Young’s model of core mindfulness practices was expanded into a system of classifying what a human bodymind can do. Here the model is deepened following the process-relational insights that are at the core of Shinzen’s system as well as of other (especially Mahayana and Vajrayana) Buddhist systems, […]
What a bodymind can do – Part 1
Posted in Philosophy, Process-relational thought, Spirit matter, tagged Buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, Peirce, practice, Shinzen Young, Whitehead on May 30, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Working with Shinzen Young‘s system of mindfulness training, which I’ve described here before, and thinking it through in the process-relational logic I’ve been developing on this blog (and elsewhere), is resulting in a certain re-mix of Shinzen’s ideas, and of Buddhism more generally, with Peirce’s, Whitehead’s, Wilber’s, Deleuze’s, and others’. Here’s a crack at where […]