And talking about the kings, one of the pious said : “If the kings and the children of the kings knew what [felicity] we are in, they would fight us over it with their swords.”
Working from home this entire year, I have tried to practice taking at least 15 minutes everyday, couple of times a day, laying down and just listening to my thoughts, understanding my anxieties. Trying to understand why I feel the way I do, instead of running away from them by distracting myself by various means.
This new habit of mine truly has been a life saver in this year.
I didn't read his works enough, none apart from the above quote in fact, to comment on whether or not he recommends acknowledging our inner thoughts and contemplating on them.
As for me, I feel real and lasting relief from worshipping Allaah. It's something very tangible and enlightening. It might seem counterintuitive, but it does boost my productivity a lot, even though I ignore thinking about work during prayer.
Now, having belief in Allaah has its manifest benefits. I am happy as I write this. I am able to keep afloat a bit in trying times. I was able to come out of depression (and quite a few other mental illnesses). None of it I could achieve except by Allaah's help.
When I used to go to hospital for psychiatric treatment, the doctor used to advise me that whenever I feel anxious, I lie down on a bed, relax and think of some beautiful place, in order to ward off the bad feelings. So, even the best advice the doctor could give me was this.
And what better place to think of than Paradise?
What Pascal was explicit in saying is that there is no inherent happiness in material possessions. But if you know that there is a life after death, that there is a Paradise and a Hell, that there is a Merciful God who, if you believe in Him and obey Him, will reward you for you good deeds and forgive your bad deeds, you will be humble, you will be hopeful, and you will be happy.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
And I laid me down with a will.
Here he lies where he longed to be;
And the hunter home from the hill.
Not every religion considers eternal life desirable. In some forms of Buddhism and Hinduism, for example, the ultimate goal is to leave the cycle of death and rebirth.. not in to paradise, but in to nothingness.
Also, the ultimate reality in Buddhism, Hinduism, and (incidentally) mystic forms of Islam, is often described as being beyond words and even beyond conception, so there is a limited amount that could be said about it in ordinary language -- though that hasn't stopped people from trying.
In Buddhism one often hears the teachings described as the finger pointing towards the moon. Language may be inadequate to describe ultimate reality, but it can point to it.
The so called mystic Islam also known as Sufism, is a deviant sect, and is fundamentally a gateway to polytheism, as it borrows many practices from polytheistic religions. In fact, many of the famous ancient sufis have roots in India, where paganism and idol worshipping was and is still prevalent. Hence sufis are adored by Hindus.
I hope i could be clear to you
You'll find Sunnis who think Shiites are heretics, and Shiites who think Sunnis are heretics, and both are major branches of Islam.
Of course you'll find both Sunnis and Shiites who think Sufis are heretics, and Sufis who think Sunnis and Shiites are heretics (or at least don't understand the true or secret meaning of the Koran or of Islam).
And does the Koran have a secret meaning, or only a surface meaning? This important question itself is also a matter of opinion and will differ based on who you ask.
There have also been mystics in Islam apart from the Sufis: Avicenna, the Ismailis, and Alawites spring to mind.
As a non-Muslim, when I see the members of these sects disagree with one another as to who is a "true Muslim" or what is or isn't Islam, what reason do I have for believing any one of them over the others?
Their appeals to scripture, lineage, famous commentators and the like are not very convincing both because as a non-Muslim I have no reason to believe in any of them and because you can easily find other people who claim to be Muslims making pretty much the same appeals in support of completely different conclusions.
At this point in my life, anyone who considers the Koran their central scripture is a Muslim in my eyes.
If you have a better definition that doesn't rely on appeals to scripture, to lineage, nor to the authority of some person, I'd love to hear it.
I will start from the basics:
The fundamental word of Islam, the one word which differentiates between who is a Muslim and who is not is the well known Kalima (كلمة) of Islam, La ilaha illallaah. Which translates to there is none worthy of worship except Allaah. This statement encapsulates the entire monotheistic creed of Islam in it. It is the pivot of any Muslim’s religion. A Muslim strives to preserve this statement in his heart while believing in it. He does this by trying to ensure harmony in his speech and his deeds.
One who lacks firm belief in his heart in this word, is a weaker believer than one who has firm belief, even though both might utter the word in the same manner.
Though we can’t see what the heart contains and hence we can’t normally judge a person’s level of faith, his outward actions, to an extent, do communicate his level of belief. So much about this word.
The one who brought this word to the people was a man called Muhammad (upon him be peace) over 14 centuries ago. The people who he first invited to his religion were the people of of his birthplace, the city of Makkah. His people were originally on the religion of Abraham, worshipping the One God of all that exists, Allaah. But in due course of time, they forgot the truth and started worshiping idols.
So Muhammad (upon him be peace) was sent to them as Messenger by Allaah, just as Messengers from among men were sent by Allaah to earlier people, in order to warn them about the consequences of idol worship and to call them to the worship of the true God, Allaah. Some Messengers which were sent before him were Noah, Lot, Moses, Jonah, Jesus, all mentioned in the Bible and Qur-aan.
Muhammad (upon him be peace), warned the people of eternal hell if they did not believe in his Message and desist from idol worship. And he promised Paradise for whoever believed in him and acted upon what he commanded.
His Prophetic Mission lasted 23 years, of which the first 13 were spent in Makkah and the last 10 were in Madinah. He was made a Messenger at the age of 40, and he dies at the age of 63.
Throughout his mission, Allaah sent the Verses of His Book, Al -Qur-aan to guide him and his followers, gradually teaching them the rituals of prayer, charity, pilgrimage. As the Messenger (upon him be peace) and his followers were the subject of great deal of ridicule and torture, Allaah, in these Verses, also supported them and encouraged them. Allaah also taught His Messenger how to present his Message to people in the elegant way.
That’s all I could muster. Wish you best.
This illustrates that you have a fundamentalist streak in you: you've described a form of Islam you don't like as being "deviant". You're gatekeeping Islam.
Sufism is a later invention.
Eventually the prince does come into contact with suffering, and leads to him trying to find an end to suffering.
This doesn't fully make sense to me.
Sure, at some point your pleasure will end, but do you have to judge something by its end? Why not judge it by its beginning or middle instead?
It's like saying "don't enjoy your meal, because at some point later you're going to get hungry".
That makes no sense to me.
Also, regarding the lack of meaning of distraction and entertainment, it's not like "nothingness" (which Buddhism tries to put in its place) has any meaning either. So I'm not sure why one should seek to put one meaningless thing in the place of another.
Suffering can be temporarily staved off, but not completely removed.
Pretty words, but do they mean anything? For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing? I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
I'm interested in meditation to learn more about my own body and mind, maybe improve my life somehow. But IMHO the discussions around it could do with less of this type of mystic woo.
FWIW I have a friend who is deep into spirituality, still works at a FAANG but definitely feels like he can attain higher states of awareness in his meditations. I don’t see him active on social media, he leads a reasonably ascetic life and so on.
This person doesn’t have much success in making others believe. At best, he gets ‘hey, I am happy that you’re happy’ from folks like me, most feedback is around ‘mystic woo’. I have another friend deep in this world, but she balances it with real world and doesn’t really proselytize.
I think it is very much a catch 22. You won’t believe it unless you’re doing it. So if belief is required for you to give it a shot, that’s a non-starter.
I would say try it out and make up your own mind! What do you got to lose anyway - stay away from holy men who make you uncomfortable, start with books or YouTube!
If the belief is weak (or false), it might lead to confusion and distrust, which will make it impossible to learn anything.
Also, experiencing heightened states of awareness is not necessarily beneficial, people on drugs experience it routinely.
Take the biases that we've heard about in image recognition where these ML models misclassify black people. If a person had done that you would accuse them of racist beliefs.
Why is the computer model so different? Because you don't want to believe that computers can reach consciousness? (I don't either at this point but time will tell. We don't really know enough - or I don't - about what consciousness is and how it works.)
Otherwise, chatbots are very good at learning abusive and racist language. It's due to our belief that it's not right and decent that we train them using a bias. And it's only due to beliefs that we rein in the rogue AI which misclassifies black people.
Edit: If you still want to think of belief as an input node whose link has weight, then set the weight to infinite
Well, they have, but nobody believes them :)
In any case, I understand your attitude to the mystic woo. It used to put me off a lot when I started meditating.
Now I take it as simply something that's there. They are statements that someone makes. If they're talking about states that someone could reach and they also give instructions, I might consider trying them to see what happens.
In any case as a programmer and scientifically minded meditator, I encourage you to pursue your interest in meditation. Try different techniques until you find something that works. Take it easy, take it slow, cultivate play and joy in your practice. If you manage to do that, you'll reap the fruit of your practice.
I wish you good luck!
Yes.
> For example, if I reach this state, will it be revealed to me why there is something rather than nothing?
More-or-less. You do get the punchline, and the joke is quite good.
> I think not, otherwise someone would have reported back with the answer already.
They have, over and over and over again. However, it's not something that fits in words. You have to stop wording in your mind, and know. Literally the first line in the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao."
Meditation sans "mystic woo" is like using your car only to drive from your garage to your mailbox at the end of the driveway to get your mail and back. You might learn a little more about your own car, and maybe improve your mail-retrieval somehow, but you're not really going anywhere, eh?
My takeaway is that there's something in this meditation thing. At the very least, concentrating on a static imaginary shape activates some kind of drainage system in the brain: for a few minutes you feel what a clogged pipe would feel when it's being cleaned by a powerful water stream. That effect alone seems valuable.
Regarding the meaning of meditation, my conclusion is that it's a whistle. Just like you'd produce a certain whistle to summon an animal or a bird, you'd sharply imagine a certain shape or symbol to summon ideas or certain effects. The former is how you get inspiration. "Mysticism" begins when you are able to produce this whistle the right way and when you know which thoughts or symbols to target.
The most comprehensive explanation of meditation that's available in English is probably lamrim, volume 4 (500 or so pages, described by its author as a brief summary of key concepts from canonical sources that an interested reader should read himself).
And yes Marxism has died. Communism is dead. It’s just a name for brutality and dictatorship.
What do the words "occult practices" mean to you? Do you consider them bad? If so, why?
Contemplation of dependent origination is a meditative practice.
Although a bit verbose and repetitive at times, I liked the exploration of the concepts of attention and peripheral awareness. I may give the "stage one" instructions a try, and buy the rest of the book if it goes well.
In the first few sentences it talks about the "soul" wanting to return back to it's source, the "supreme consciousness". Then a couple pages further, a statement about reincarnation:
"If you don’t believe in rebirth then this book will be of little use to you. As I said earlier, meditation to me is the most powerful tool to harness and channelize the restive and other tendencies of the mind we’ve been carrying with us over lifetimes."
Is there?
Sounds like a walk in the park for an ascetic. We forget how comfortable we’ve become, 250 years ago this would have been your average Tuesday.
"The researchers collected data during the unique ceremony in Tibet, where nuns were able to raise their core body temperature and dry up wet sheets wrapped around their bodies in the cold Himalayan weather (-25 degree Celsius) while meditating. Using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings and temperature measures, the team observed increases in core body temperature up to 38.3 degree Celsius..."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130408084858.h...
If it’s scientific then it must be well understood in terms of cause and effect. In which case, it is like any other physical phenomenon, nothing special.
And if it’s not scientific, rather if it’s a mystery, then scientists will have to take a call on what is.
It was more about questioning the relevance (and authenticity) of "deep mysteries" and "existence" etc. It was not about whether or not human beings can train themselves to endure such difficulties. Which they can, apparently.
When you said "it would be a cake walk for an ascetic" I thought that by ascetic you meant one who is into meditation and all such "deep realities". Not Wim Hof.
Nevertherless, I personally don't see any virtue in being hungry in -1 degree celsius, if I have food and a warm home. Except in case someone is making money out of it, like Wim.
Why are ants and amoebas always moving? Their biological drives continue to give them orders and so they are never satiated.
Wouldn't that itself be a form of distraction. Your subconscious will be activated but your conscious mind be distracted.
I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Agreed.
> I'm fact, if you look at African tribes and their original lifestyle you will realize how little time they had to spend on getting food and how much time they were able to spend just being happy, playing, drinking hallucinogenic substances to get into an enlightening trance etc.
Generalizations about foraging populations are fraught with problems because there was a lot of diversity among them and its not possible to study them in a "pure" (untouched by agricultural peoples) setting.
Maybe because ant society expects it and can only function with ants constant in motion.
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself.
Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war, and high posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours, and amuses us.
Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.
Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is in fact the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings, that men try incessantly to divert them, and to procure for them all kinds of pleasures.
The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.