Meditation explorations

**A comment came in about an entry I made in 2007 quoting a poem by Wes Nisker:

"Why did you leave out the last line? This poem ends this way: I meditate because I want to discover the fifth Brahma-vihara, the Divine Abode of Aw, and then I'll go down in history as a great spiritual adapt."

Actually I didn't leave out the last line, which is not the one cited above. It is this:

"I meditate because I want to discover the fifth Brahma Vihara, the divine Abode of Ah
And then I’ll go down in history as a great spiritual abbot
I meditate because I am building myself a bigger and better perspective
And occasionally I need to add a new window."

There also appear to be several versions of this poem around the Internet.

I spent a day at a Nisker retreat and even got to say a few words with him. I'm still not able to make the leap to that practice, though I've been reading several books about it, the most recent being Sam Harris's "Waking Up." I've also recently read "10% Happier" and "Training in Compassion." Still not convinced.

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind"

**I read many books. Most of them are for enjoyment, or to pass the time during exercise. Some of them change my perspective enough to afford me new directions to explore. Such is Yuval Noah Hariri's "Sapiens." One thing it made realize more deeply is the ability of religious belief to mitigate suffering. I've always contended that religion is a kind of mind-altering drug that induces calm and hope despite external conditions. Hariri shows how this had an evolutionary role. A peasant in the Middle Ages might live a miserable daily life but was probably happier than today's skeptic, cynic or atheist. I know this from personal experience. I wrote a song, Bone on Bone, that suggests the pain of living without the buffer of spiritual illusions. There are plenty of other anesthetics, of course, and I have availed myself of them. Still, I can't say that I'm happier overall. Life is still hard. I came away wanting to look into Sam Harris's work a little more. Harris was one of the first "Four Horsemen" who eased me out of religion and spirituality. He's since developed along different lines from the other Horsemen and he may have something to say to me.

Hariri writes (or is translated) beautifully and I took copious notes as I read on my iPad with the Kindle app. I share below those highlights in hopes they might coax someone else into reading it and sharing ideas about it.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

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Last annotated on June 12, 2015

Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.Read more at location 389

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This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.Read more at location 415

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Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals.Read more at location 452

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How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.Read more at location 462

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There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.Read more at location 472

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As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.Read more at location 548

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The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups. This glue has made us the masters of creation.Read more at location 645

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Albert Einstein was far less dexterous with his hands than was an ancient hunter-gatherer. However, our capacity to cooperate with large numbers of strangers has improved dramatically.Read more at location 649

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We hardly notice how ubiquitous our stuff is until we have to move it to a new house.Read more at location 723

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Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.Read more at location 760

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Before the Agricultural Revolution, the human population of the entire planet was smaller than that of today’s Cairo.Read more at location 786

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The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2 Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.Read more at location 1273

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One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.Read more at location 1403

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We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.Read more at location 1756

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A single priest often does the work of a hundred soldiers – far more cheaply and effectively.Read more at location 1776

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Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘Follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths.Read more at location 1829

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in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.Read more at location 1886

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There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.Read more at location 1890

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Hives can be very complex social structures, containing many different kinds of workers, such as harvesters, nurses and cleaners. But so far researchers have failed to locate lawyer bees.Read more at location 1907

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musical notation, are partial scripts.Read more at location 1981

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how did humans organise themselves in mass-cooperation networks, when they lacked the biological instincts necessary to sustain such networks? The short answer is that humans created imagined orders and devised scripts.Read more at location 2102

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Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.Read more at location 2121

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Whatever is possible is by definition also natural.Read more at location 2331

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But evolution has no purpose. Organs have not evolved with a purpose, and the way they are used is in constant flux. There is not a single organ in the human body that only does the job its prototype did when it first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago.Read more at location 2337

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Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.Read more at location 2395

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Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off.Read more at location 2540

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From such a vantage point it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity.Read more at location 2574

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We begin with the story of the greatest conqueror in history, a conqueror possessed of extreme tolerance and adaptability, thereby turning people into ardent disciples. This conqueror is money.Read more at location 2666

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People who do not believe in the same god or obey the same king are more than willing to use the same money.Read more at location 2667

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The sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion.7 More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers.Read more at location 2754

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everyone always wants money.Read more at location 2761

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The truth is that empire has been the world’s most common form of political organisation for the last 2,500 years.Read more at location 2975

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Much of ancient mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals – the first chapters of the book of Genesis are a prime example.Read more at location 3269

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But once kingdoms and trade networks expanded, people needed to contact entities whose power and authority encompassed a whole kingdom or an entire trade basin.Read more at location 3275

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Polytheism thereby exalted not only the status of the gods, but also that of humankind.Read more at location 3288

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Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and ‘infidels’.Read more at location 3316

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it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion. The religious wars betweenRead more at location 3329

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religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.Read more at location 3368

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So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.Read more at location 3417

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Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts.Read more at location 3713

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history’s choices are not made for the benefit of humans.Read more at location 3728

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There is absolutely no proof that human well-being inevitably improves as history rolls along.Read more at location 3729

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What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future.Read more at location 4756

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This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.Read more at location 4757

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Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest.Read more at location 4900

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The most important economic resource is trust in the future,Read more at location 5101

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Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.Read more at location 5143

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For decades, aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks.Read more at location 5284

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If I bake a cake from flour, oil and sugar, all of which have been sitting in my pantry for the past two months, it does not mean that the cake itself is two months old.Read more at location 5653

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The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. ThroughoutRead more at location 5708

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Real peace is the implausibility of war.Read more at location 5769

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Never before has peace been so prevalent that people could not even imagine war.Read more at location 5783

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Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health.Read more at location 5933

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People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of.Read more at location 5934

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People are made happy by one thing and one thing only – pleasant sensations in their bodies.Read more at location 5999

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If we accept the biological approach to happiness, then history turns out to be of minor importance, since most historical events have had no impact on our biochemistry.Read more at location 6039

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Today, when we finally realise that the keys to happiness are in the hands of our biochemical system, we can stop wasting our time on politics and social reforms, putsches and ideologies, and focus instead on the only thing that can make us truly happy: manipulating our biochemistry.Read more at location 6058

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As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.Read more at location 6083

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So our medieval ancestors were happy because they found meaning to life in collective delusions about the afterlife? Yes.Read more at location 6091

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What happens to concepts such as the self and gender identity when minds become collective?Read more at location 6354

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Whereas we and the Neanderthals are at least human, our inheritors will be godlike.Read more at location 6417