Informal Meditation of Boredom

April 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Ranney posits that boredom is a necessary function of the human system, allowing certain cognitive or emotional processes to be carried out whilst the organism/subject is conscious but inactive, (which is why boredom does not propel us to actually get up and do something, but instead anchors us in a prison of ennui). The reason why boredom is unpleasant, says Ranney, is that if this were not the case then there would be no reason for the organism to stop the inactivity of boredom, and might ultimately sit until they starved. The tedium of boredom ensures that when the necessary cognitive work is done, we get up and on with our lives. This parallels other necessary functions such as eating, which are pleasurable or bearable up to a point, then continued eating becomes such an unpleasant experience that most of us stop before physiological damage is done.

It may be possible to carry out the work of boredom without the unpleasant side-effects by following a meditation programme.

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Listening as a Metaphor

June 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The term ‘listening’ has been used to refer to a type of awareness or ‘openness’ unconnected to the reception of auditory stimulus. It is used metaphorically to describe a phase in creativity or intuition immediately prior to, and hopefully facilitative of, a moment of ‘breakthrough’ or ‘illumination’ . This undirected listening, a heightened sense of awareness without that awareness having an object, is also a feature of certain meditation techniques.

It is likely that parts of the the auditory system within the brain are being activated within this particular state, although clearly not in a way which is instrumental or intended to actually hear things in the outside world.

It is also likely that this form of ‘listening’, in which the action of paying auditory attention is carried out by the metaphorical body, rather than the physical body, has a significant synaesthetic component, since the type of intuitions or creative entities which emerge from this ‘listening’ are not necessarily auditory in nature.

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Flying through the Space of Thought

June 23rd, 2006 Fred McVittie

The kind of processes we refer to when we arrange out thoughts, and the type of psychological gestures we make in order to move through our thoughts, suggests that cognitive organisation makes heavy use of a metaphor of space. The metaphor of the mind as a kind of spatially extended domain is one of the most important and robust mental structures. This space of thought roughly corresponds to Cartesian or Newtonian space, a fact which is evidenced in the language we use to talk about the contents and processes of our minds (streams of consciousness etc) and also in techniques for cognitive enhancement such as mnemonic systems like the method of loci, which uses the construction of elaborate storage spaces, so-called ‘memory palaces’, to enable easy retrieval of facts and ideas.

A significant departure from this schema is our ability to make intuitive leaps, or simply to allow our thoughts to hop from one topic to another without apparently crossing any intervening space. A number of subsidiary metaphors attempt to explain this phenomenon; William James, in addition to referring to the ’stream of consciousness’ also describes consciousness rather as a bird in flight. He says, ‘Our psychic life has rhythm: it is a series of transitions and resting-places, of “flights and perchings”‘ (PP 236). Also, a common feature of Buddhist meditation teaching is an attempt to tame the ‘monkey mind’, the tendency of consciousness to jump uncontrollably from one branch of knowledge to another. Both these metaphors invoke an image of space which, whilst still Cartesian, is not empty and unstructured but is somewhat like a forest. A space in which knowledge forms grow, interpenetrate, and spread, allowing a smooth linear passage from one to the next, but also a space through which it is possible to swing and swoop, catching knowledge on the fly.

Baby swifts leave their nests at a few weeks old, launching themselves on their first flight without any tuition or preparation. They then spend the next two years of their lives on the wing. It may be interesting to speculate on the possibilities of maintaining extended periods of flight in cognitive space. Staying airborne, like the swift, in the spaces between one idea and another.

Posted in Buddhism, James, William, Knowledge, Meditation, Metaphor, Mind, Space | No Comments »

The Ontology of Breathing

November 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Many meditation techniques refer to the regulation and heightened awareness of breath (Pranayama Yoga being the prime example). One possible reason for this is that the ontology of breath makes it particularly suitable for this use. Breath is, by nature, not apprehensible to the visual sense, but is only possible to experience through touch or proprioception; the feel of the air passing over the surface of our skin; the movements of the body which accompany breathing. It is also experienced primarily as an internal sensation, although one which connects inside and outside, self and world.

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Meditation, Measurement and Centre

November 20th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The term ‘meditation’ has its etymological origins in the concepts of measuring, of taking a sounding of the depth of an ocean, or of identifying the extent of a region of space. In meditation we place the mind in a state such that it becomes available for the possibility of such measurement. There is the mind. It has dimension available to mensuration. It is an object or area of study. It is ‘over there’. It is not ‘us’. The calming of the mind in meditation is also an objectification of the mind and allows for a separation of this objectified (or spatially extended) mind from the concept of the self. Inherent in the practice is a distinction between the contents and processes of the mind-thing, occupying mind-space, and the dimensionless, contentless observer of that mind; the measurer of all things.

I will suggest here an additional interpretation of the term ‘meditation’ derived from the same origins which gave us ‘Mediterranean’ and ‘Median’. Here the prefix ‘medi’ indicates centrality, but this is a centre without extension. It is a point on a map formed at the crossing of trajectories. The dimensionless location at the cross-hairs of a telescopic sight. Exact, specific, and totally empty. This vital centre is the axis around which experience turns and where balance is defined. Meditation, in this formulation, consists partly of an identification of one’s self with such a centre. A place from which the measuring might be made.

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Open Source Spiritual Cosmology

February 7th, 2008 Fred McVittie

One of the criticisms often levelled against atheists is that they dismiss the idea of a cosmology involving a transcendent reality ‘beyond’ normal existence and day to day waking awareness. In particular, the notion that this ‘beyond’ might be populated by giant gaseous beings with super powers is treated with appropriate disdain. Amongst those who do have such beliefs however, these beliefs are supported and reinforced by individual, social, and institutional practices that are (ideally) coherently integrated into the cosmology such that these practices; prayer, meditation, rituals etc, ‘make sense’. And whilst these practices may bring other benefits or have other effects, to do with individual health and happiness, or with social cohesion for example, these other effects are not ultimately seen as the point of the practices and would likely be considered indulgent or cynical if carried out for these reasons alone.

Recent writing by Sam Harris, the author of ‘The End of Faith’ and ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’, unusually for work which is critical of theism, does acknowledge and even praise what might be referred to as spiritual practices. He recognises that many individuals within all cultures have experience of forms of consciousness which are so distinct from normal waking awareness that they seem to require special attention (as distinct from unusual states of consciousness which are less worthy; drunkenness, coma, drug-induced hallucinatory states for example). Meditation particularly is given considerable airtime as a practice which, even if divorced completely from any supernatural connections, can still be of value. It is worthwhile considering what this value might be however, and what role such practice might serve. Without its holistic relationship to an overarching cosmology meditation can ultimately only be a self-help technique. Useful and transformative undoubtedly, but only at the level of the individual and then only within the narrow framework of individual spiritual knowledge. Meditative practice does not, for example, allow one to experience or connect to secular cosmologies provided by physics, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, etc. To the extent that it connects to rational scientifically valid knowledge at all it is to psychology and neuroscience; and as interesting and research-worthy as this may be it is a long way short of the ambitions of religious contemplatives.

It seems to me therefore that there are two possible courses of action which follow from this. Either we can accept the limitations imposed by a secular account of spiritual practice, that whatever intuitions and feelings may be produced by such practice it does not somehow connect one mystically to the workings of the universe. Alternatively we can construct a new interpretation of meditation experiences such that its intuitions match up to the best that rational science can offer, presumably, given the developing state of scientific endeavour, a non-dogmatic, evolving interpretation, a kind of open-source spiritual cosmology.

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