“There are various schools, in India and further East, where they teach methods of meditation — it is really most appalling. It means training the mind mechanically; it therefore ceases to be free and does not understand the problem.
So when we use the word ‘meditation’ we do not mean something that is practiced. We have no method. Meditation means awareness: to be aware of what you are doing, what you are thinking, what you are feeling, aware without any choice, to observe, to learn. Meditation is to be aware of one’s conditioning, how one is conditioned by the society in which one lives, in which one has been brought up, by the religious propaganda — aware without any choice, without distortion, without wishing it were different. Out of this awareness comes attention, the capacity to be completely attentive. Then there is freedom to see things as they actually are, without distortion. The mind becomes unconfused, clear, sensitive. Such meditation brings about a quality of mind that is completely silent — of which quality one can go on talking, but it will have no meaning unless it exists.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Source: movingthroughrecordedthoughts)
If You Find Yourself Caught in Love - Belle & Sebastian
You talk of freedom don’t you see? The only freedom that you’ll ever really know Is written in books from long ago.
(Source: authenticsophisticate)
The three levels of Freedom
There are 3 senses of ‘freedom’ that must be differentiated and argued individually:
political freedom — freedom(p)
(king/oppression vs. democracy/egalarianism)
This is the arena that the cultural critics and political philosophers focus on.
Political freedom is good, legitimate, attainable, and worth seeking.
existential/practical freedom — freedom(e)
The freedom to move my finger, the sense of freedom
This is the arena that the freewillists focus on - it’s at the apparent, surface level.
Existential freedom is undeniably real; your existential freedom is a concrete problem demanding active response
metaphysical/underlying freedom — freedom(m)
This is the arena that the determinists focus on - it’s on a hidden, underlying level. It probably doesn’t make any difference whether there is freedom at the underlying, metaphysical level.
Metaphysical freedom is illusory and virtual, false and unreal.
(via jumbi-ism)
“The self is not just a gift, it is also a task”
Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death
(via pyrrhosrepublic)
(Source: corona--graminea)
“Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for it’s existence. ”
— Hannah Arendt
(via viovioletta)
As a moral atheist you have a number of rights and responsibilities. These include (but are not limited to):
1. Have no gods.
2. Don’t worship stuff.
3. Be polite.
4. Take a day off once in a while.
5. Be nice to folks.
6. Don’t kill people.
7. Don’t cheat on your significant other.
8. Don’t steal stuff.
9. Don’t lie about stuff.
10. Don’t be greedy.
Remember, theists may condemn you for living by this code because you are doing it of your own free will instead of because you’re afraid that if you don’t a supreme being will set you on fire.
Existential pain—an entity, a provocation, or a challenge?
Existential issues in general have been thoroughly analyzed by philosophers such as Kirkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Frankl, and others. These authors address a range of existential questions. Briefly, it can be mentioned that Kirkegaard focused on death anxiety and the dread for annihilation. He was the first to make a clear distinction between fear (for something) and diffuse unfocused anxiety (dread). As such, anxiety (e.g., death anxiety) cannot be located and the source cannot be defined, it can neither be understood nor confronted and it begets a feeling of helplessness. Jaspers emphasized the impact of boundary or border situations (e.g., a cancer diagnosis) on human behavior: such unalterable experiences make us either live more intensely, in a more authentic fashion, or make us give up. This was also emphasized by Heidegger, who stated that only true awareness of our personal death can shift us from one mode of existence (“unauthentic”) to a higher one (“authentic”). We value life when death is a reality. Heidegger and Frankl also stressed the impact of meaning, although partly from different angles. Both stressed that meaning is essential for life and that humans are intentional: looking for or creating meaning, as meaninglessness is impossible to endure. However, according to Frankl, life has an inherent meaning, whereas Heidegger’s point of departure was the concept of meaninglessness: There is no given meaning in life and this lack of meaning drives us to search for or create our personal meaning. Sartre was the forerunner for the concept of man’s freedom: man is doomed to freedom, meaning that man must always choose and choices create anxiety. However, one is always responsible for one’s own life. Also, Frankl stressed the freedom of will: we have freedom to find meaning in existence and to choose our attitude to suffering. Read more here.
Existential pain—an entity, a provocation, or a challenge?
“Existential pain” is a widely used but ill-defined concept. Therefore the aim of this study was to let hospital chaplains (n = 173), physicians in palliative care (n = 115), and pain specialists (n = 113) respond to the question: “How would you define the concept existential pain?” A combined qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the answers was conducted. In many cases, existential pain was described as suffering with no clear connection to physical pain. Chaplains stressed significantly more often the guilt issues, as well as various religious questions (P<0.001). Palliative physicians (actually seeing dying persons) stressed more often existential pain as being related to annihilation and impending separation (P<0.01), while pain specialists (seeing chronic patients) more often emphasized that “living is painful” (P<0.01). Thirty-two percent (32%) of the physicians stated that existential suffering can be expressed as physical pain and provided many case histories. Thus, “existential pain” is mostly used as a metaphor for suffering, but also is seen as a clinically important factor that may reinforce existing physical pain or even be the primary cause of pain, in good agreement with the current definition of pain disorder or somatization disorder.
Peter Strang MD, PhD, Susan Strang RN, PhD , Ragnar Hultborn MD, PhD and Staffan Arnér MD, PhD
Department of Oncology and Pathology (P.S.), Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm; Departments of Neurology (S.S.) and Oncology (R.H.), Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg; and Multidisciplinary Pain Center (S.A.), Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden
Accepted 21 July 2003. Available online 4 March 2004.Authenticity and Inauthenticity
What is meant by authenticity is that in acting, one should act as oneself, not as one acts or as one’s genes or any other essence require. The authentic act is one that is in accordance with one’s freedom. Of course, as a condition of freedom is facticity, this includes one’s facticity, but not to the degree that this facticity can in any way determine one’s choices (in the sense that one could then blame one’s background for making the choice one made).
