The magic happens in empty space-neuroplasticity
Mark Shefsiek stashed this in Associated stories of interest
This is an excellent western neurobiology view.
The mind purifies in the empty space of the form body.
Only took a thousand of years for "science" to start looking. The great Zen master Dogen said to seek mind with mind is the greatest of all disease.
The "cure" if there is one for all our disease is not loading the form with chemicals that must be purified or constant manipulation of form, but rather to constantly purify the space by seeking mind within the empty.
One MRI maintainance budget funds 10 monasteries and 10,000 meditation teachers. The purchase of fMRI funds them forever.
http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/extra-cellular-matrix-is-critical-to-neuroplasticity
Stashed in: Zen, @dalailama, Brain
If we cannot seek mind with mind, what can we seek mind with?
Experience. We seek with non-conceptual experience.
Then post experience when we try to conceptualize it, we renounce the concept and go back to experiencing.
Dogen had a way with words. "Thinking non-thinking what kind of thinking is that?"
The 7th Dalai Lama wrote more poetically
"The Sky of unstained space,
I thought to blend my mind with it
The center of fresh hanging clouds,
I thought to touch their softness."
Those are different expressions of same experience.
You can be a child and look at cloud and think, that looks like an elephant, or a learned adult and think not think my mind is not separate from the cloud, or a master that experiences the cloud and unstained space.
This is not "mindless" banter or banter about mindful or mindlessness
We are ever closer to running out of resources. We are moving towards less pure water, less pure air, too much wind and fire, and space is becoming stained.
Space both internal in the form of polluted bodies and external in the form of sky.
Resource distribution has never been more skewed. Health care is ungodly.
Resources must go towards people devoted to the selfless experience and teaching of mind, not those "seeking mind" with machines, microscopes and conceptual thought.
Almost 30 years ago (I was 16ish) I did a meditation demonstration for a room of physicians in the Boston area. I was hooked up to an Apple II and they could watch me manipulate biometrics. They were confused because that should not be possible. They asked inane questions and could not understand my answers. How could a kid with "6 weeks" of "training" do this? How can anyone?
Super fMRIs later, they still cannot understand. (Yes people at UW Madison and Stanford and Harvard I am talking to you).
We are funding conceptual frameworks and the universities that cannot even glimpse the experience while those that experience are struggling to eat, if not torching themselves in public squares.
For those that care about and believe the mind is the key to our human progress (or even survival) they need to do the right thing and support the teachings and practitioners not their own CV and speaking tours.
There is a short window of time to accomplish this. 10 maybe 15 years and then the meditation halls start to go dark.
I really am pleading for people to spread my idea of 10 years and 10,000 masters. Right now in the US maybe there are a dozen. In the world a hundred. We need to protect them and create a space in the West for them to grow and flourish.
Please stop thinking and start doing.
We have the potential to lose what we are searching for.
Our minds
It just would happen Huff post has an article on Tibetan Nun Project.
Fifty years since the destruction and there are 700 free nuns and that is a major accomplishment.
I agree that there is no substitute for doing.
I looked for Tibetan Nun Project on huffpo and found this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/20/tibetan-nuns-project_n_4304222.html
It sounds crazy but we can outsource meditation and health.
Since we are all connected we can care for and support those that are living for our collective well being.
But, when we support systems and institutions that are destroying those that are doing nothing but trying to help, there is no hope.
What if, those 10,000 meditators invaded your life.
They sat and taught in public places everyday all day.
Instead of the push notifications to shop, you get a mantra.
What if a person could Know Now via txt that I was taking their name with me into the clear light for a few minutes?
This is what I do for my "followers"
They Know right Now
Om ma tri mu le sa le du
6:12 AM Nov 22 2013