Random Dharma

Chris Marti wrote: Based on what I read on that website that person only spent 3 years, tops, in a coding job. Hmmm.....

When considering the fate of mindfulness in the American marketplace, it’s instructive to look at the evolution of yoga. Like mindfulness, yoga has its roots in the spiritual traditions of India, and was practiced for decades by enthusiasts before it went mainstream. But as yoga grew more popular, it mutated in strange ways. Today there is naked yoga, paddleboard yoga, and doga — that is, yoga done while holding your dog. Yoga also became a multibillion-dollar business, spawning apparel companies like Lululemon, a vast cottage industry of studios and teacher trainings, and a kaleidoscope of yogi bric-a-brac.

Kaitlin Quistgaard chronicled yoga’s often bizarre ascendance as the former editor of Yoga Journal. She said that while purists sometimes wrung their hands about its commercialization, their lamentations were in vain. Let loose in the American marketplace, yoga took on a life of its own. Now, she said, the same thing is happening with mindfulness.

When I am about ninety I will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, and re-evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue or not. On that basis we will take a decision. If it is decided that the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama should continue and there is a need for the Fifteenth Dalai Lama to be recognized, responsibility for doing so will primarily rest on the concerned officers of the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Trust. They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound Dharma Protectors who are linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. They should seek advice and direction from these concerned beings and carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition. I shall leave clear written instructions about this. Bear in mind that, apart from the reincarnation recognized through such legitimate methods, no recognition or acceptance should be given to a candidate chosen for political ends by anyone, including those in the People’s Republic of China.

The new model, developed by Michael Herzog from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and Frank Scharnowski from the University of Zurich, proposes a two-stage processing of sensory information. During the first phase, the brain processes specific features of an object, say, its color or shape. This scanning is done semi-continuously, but we humans are completely unaware that it’s happening. During this first phase, even changes to the object (like a change in its color or brightness) aren’t consciously perceived.

But then comes the second stage: the transference of the stimulus to actual conscious perception. During this stage, the brain renders the perceived features after the unconscious processing has been completed. We experience all this as qualia (i.e. subjective) conscious experience arising from sense perception. It’s like that moment when a polaroid film reveals its hidden details and we’re finally aware of what we’re looking at—except this process happens so fast that we’re oblivious to the “developing” phase.