June 18, 2016

"During my first retreat, I wondered how... looking at a single flower for 45 minutes was even possible, let alone so gratifying."

"My thoughts — when I returned to the act of thinking about something rather than nothing — were fresher and more surprising. It is clear to me that this ancient meditative practice helps free the mind to have richer experiences of the present. Except when you are flying an F-16 aircraft or experiencing extreme fear or having an orgasm, your life leaves too much room for your mind to wander. As a result, only a small fraction of your mental capacity remains engaged in what is before it, and mind-wandering and ruminations become a tax on the quality of your life."

Says the neuroscientist Moshe Bar.

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10 comments:

rhhardin said...

Except when you are flying an F-16 aircraft or experiencing extreme fear or having an orgasm, your life leaves too much room for your mind to wander.

Think about baseball to prolong the orgasm.

traditionalguy said...

The poor guy has such an intense mental focus disease that he declares he is suffering from Anhedonia. But he then thinks his way out of it by thinking about it.

This guy needs to play golf.

wildswan said...

If I were a dictator I would force everyone in the world to learn the words vernation, aestivation and pytxis so that everyone could look up pictures of these processes on Google and be happy.
The words mean the arrangement of leaves in a bud; the way in which the petals and sepals of a flower are arranged in a bud; the way an individual leaf is folded within a bud.

rhhardin said...

On the credenza, in the empty room, no ptyx.

Fernandinande said...

rhhardin said...
Think about baseball to prolong the orgasm.


Think about sex while staring at plant genitals to avoid thinking about baseball.

MikeD said...

Jeez, hope I didn't waste my "free NYT article" limit with this navel gazing nothingness! Obviously this douche has never flown an F-16 nor has he ever tried to delay his orgasm for his partners pleasure, mother thumb and her four daughters could care less.

JackWayne said...

Says the man who cannot be in the moment. I guess those of us who enjoy the moment without flying an F16 or having an orgasm are just weird. I guarantee this guy is extremely boring to talk to because he is always distracted by his special thoughts.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

"In another experiment, we found that longer response times were correlated with less diverse responses, ruling out the possibility that participants with low mental loads simply took more time to generate an interesting response. Rather, it seems that with a high mental load, you need more time to generate even a conventional thought."

This might be happening when I tweet and get a response.

LOL is out.

effinayright said...

The writer could have taken a shortcut and ingested some Acapulco Gold.

"Bad-ass weed".

tim in vermont said...

I never understood that "no stems no seeds that you don't need" line. You can boil the stems and seeds in water with butter, then cook with the butter like you would in any recipe, it works pretty damn good.