tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post2515129505404682055..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: Under constructionmtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-60225477267269860932010-09-27T23:25:53.508-07:002010-09-27T23:25:53.508-07:00I'm married to a former anthropology student. ...I'm married to a former anthropology student. I learned the very useful buzzword "liminal" (title of the previous post) from her.<br /><br />I actually have the Aro email course, and made it a short way in before it stopped making sense to me. The early posts were quite useful to me, and as I muddle along perhaps I'll try to progress further into it. I'm pretty resistant to this stuff, but my resistance has been getting worn down. I've been pretty impressed with the practical benefits from even my lightweight efforts. <br /><br />Don't know about whether a watcher is desirable or not...but certainly there is WATCHING going on, and by the iron laws of grammar a subject must appear to go along with the verb. This stuff is hard to talk about sensibly. I get the impression that Buddhism contains all sorts of elaborate technical language for doing just that, but I can only follow it for a short way, at least for now.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-55001907491750596072010-09-27T09:19:24.713-07:002010-09-27T09:19:24.713-07:00All very interesting...
I've found the anthro...All very interesting...<br /><br />I've found the anthropology of religion helpful in understanding both what other people do religiously and my own responses to religion. "The self under construction in this world is a social self, inherently part of a community doing things together and taking a collective responsibility for itself and the world" is definitely the anthropological line.<br /><br />Being a geek, this only semi-works for me too. I do think I'm part of a social whole, and responsible to and for it, but the rituals and rhetoric social groups use to produce cohesion are mostly alienating for me.<br /><br />Regarding Buddhist meditation. The systems I know about are not supposed to produce an extra layer of self that stands outside to monitor the rest. I gather that this is an explicit method in some Hindu systems, where that is called "the watcher". It's possible some Buddhist systems also try to produce that -- Buddhism is extraordinarily diverse -- but the best-known ones don't. <br /><br />The main meditation instruction of one of my Buddhist teachers was "slaughter the watcher". He came out of a Hindu background, though, and this is not exactly the mainstream advice.<br /><br />The sense of a watcher or witness might arise spontaneously, without deliberate production, which would not be a problem particularly. Generally the mainstream method is to remain without involvement -- so you neither attempt to produce a watcher, nor to get rid of one. If you do that for long enough, eventually the watcher dissolves spontaneously. If that doesn't happen after a few months of regular meditation practice, you might want to check with a teacher -- your technique might be a bit off.<br /><br />Plug: I helped produce the <a href="http://aromeditation.org/" rel="nofollow">Aro email meditation course</a>, which is a series of weekly automated emails that gradually take you further into Buddhist meditation methods. It's free and you can unsubscribe at any point if it's not useful.<br /><br />DavidDavid Chapmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02978572666896046329noreply@blogger.com