Free Will – Stories From the Ground.

How to Have a Good Meditation Retreat: In Theory and Practice

“If you practice for a result, then it becomes a hindrance.” – Dipa Ma (common advice to students)

“What is important is not the experiences we have but how we get transformed by them.” – Sayadaw U Jagara (recounted by Joseph Goldstein in Reflections on Nibbana)

Thwarted Desires

In Buddhism, there’s a saying that the path is “good in the beginning, good in the middle, good in the end.” Upon starting a meditation practice, many of us notice surprising benefits. Encouraged by these benefits, we may then seek to take the practice further, setting aside days, weeks, or months to retreat from the world, dedicate ourselves to meditation, and reap the fruits of deep stillness.

Four Arguments for the Nonexistence of Free Will

[A tip for those in a rush: If you want to cut straight to the point, skip the intro paragraphs and start at “What Do You Mean, Free?”]

“The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are—and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.” — Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Steeped in Intuition

Knowledge comes through many channels. It can be gained through deliberate study, absorbed through exposure to contexts and cultures, or emerge unbidden in flashes of insight from the subconscious. It can even develop over aeons of natural selection, shaping dispositions suited for survival in an unforgiving world. Yet despite these diverse ways of knowing, all knowledge shares a common root: a dependence on intuition.

Four Arguments for the Nonexistence of Free Will

charl-van-rooy-616500-unsplash

[NOTE TO READER: This essay has been updated. Please read the more recent version (scroll up).]

“The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are – and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.” — Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Bending Intuition

Knowledge comes through many channels. It can be acquired by conscious effort, per academic ways of learning. It can accumulate unconsciously, seeping in through exposure to various cultures and contexts. It can arise suddenly, via flashes of insight produced by the veiled churnings of the subconscious mind. Or it can develop over aeons of natural trial and error, resulting in dispositions suited for survival in an oft-unforgiving world. But for all its different modes and forms, every bit of knowledge shares one crucial requisite: a dependence on intuition. Continue reading “Four Arguments for the Nonexistence of Free Will”

Why Bother Meditating?

“Though the world is torn and shakenEven if your heart is breakin’It’s waiting for you to awakenSomeday you willLearn to be still.”—Eagles, Learn to Be Still

An Unsatisfying Present

Throughout life, we are conflicted about the present moment. As children, we long for the freedom of adulthood; as adults, we envy the carefree ease of childhood. Whether romanticising the past or exalting the future, we often wish to be someplace other than here, now.

Continue reading “Why Bother Meditating?”

Who’s in Control?

“The inner man has been created in the image of the outer.” – BF Skinner

“We live our lives, as it were, ‘inside out’, projecting the existence of an ‘I’ as separate from an external world which we try to manipulate to gain satisfaction.” – Namkhai Norbu

Introduction

Until better explanations became available, humans personified nature to explain its workings: gods with human looks and emotions have been invoked across cultures as causes behind natural processes, it was once believed that sperm housed little humans, and the mental faculty of foresight is often attributed to blind evolutionary processes that cannot anticipate future states. Fortunately, the scientific method has usurped much of the personified description of nature. Though we’ve realized personification’s inadequacy at explaining natural processes, the common understanding of our inner mental lives – themselves natural processes – hinges upon personification. We wrongly invoke personae (aka “selves”) as the causes behind human behaviour.[1] This oversimplification neglects the formative role of the environment on actions and mental states.