Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org

@atomicpoet
2.5 Mastodon users are a better, nicer, friendlier, more intelligent, funnier, more supportive, and generous class of people

@shlowry
Hey, always nice to meet another Lowry! Unusual to see what I think of as the "real" spelling. 😉

@jayarava

@kombi @ben
It's really pretty good nowadays, and doesn't suffer from the perennial memory leak slowdown problem that Chrome has had for years. Far more configurable as well. Best of all, it's open source-- you could rewrite and alter a function if you wanted. The way it handles SSL security updates makes a lot more sense too-- Chrome creates their own authority lists, which seems kinda nutty to me. Firefox gets them from the certificate assigners, just as the rest of the world does. Yeah, I guess I kinda like it. 😉

@harphat
You got that right, Dr. H! And the tempo is unsteady too...

@feijoa
Just as a tip, I was helped a lot with the crushing fatigue by a small dose of Ritalin. A lot of doctors don't seem to think of it; I had to look it up myself to suggest to my palliative guy. Doesn't fix it, but it helps. There's research out there from the US NIH to support that usage of the drug, if somebody needs research it.

@jayarava
Oh ho! My big question and concern were addressed right there in the abstract.

"...about the cessation of sensory experience leaving the meditator in a state of contentless awareness which early Buddhists called suññatāvihāra, “dwelling in [the] absence [of sensory experience].”

Though I surely wouldn't call contentless awareness the same thing as absence of sensory experience, at least I now understand what you were getting at. Contentless awareness I can understand.

Now on to read the rest to see how that could relate to gradations of the sensorium!

@jayarava
Perfect! Gotta track that one down, as I'm frequently in that position.

@jayarava
😘

@jayarava
And now I'm sad that what struck you about it was its length. 😉 Sigh.

@jayarava
The guy whose server I'm using has a background in science and science education, so I presume he wanted to make sure somebody could do a lengthy and involved presentation of research if they wanted to. There are a few instances out here like this, though not many. This one only has about 25,000 users, so it's not costing him and arm and a leg for hosting. (He's also friendly and responsive in a timely way with issues and problems). I was really lucky to happen upon it.

@jayarava
Ah! Gotcha. I'm lucky, my Mastodon instance allows 64K of text. I could write a novel in here. Don't tempt me. 😜

@jayarava
I'm ignorant of that abbreviation and web search is unhelpful-- is it "copies" maybe?

@jayarava
With your general-interest post today about sensations and samadhi, I think I've figured out my problem with what you've been saying regarding sensory engagement-- I was misunderstanding what you meant by "sensation" in other discussions because of your (and Orsborn's) conclusions about the topic of anupalambhayogena. Had I just taken it in the usual Skandhas R Us "vedana" way, I would not have managed to confuse myself as much. 😉 I really need an emoticon for slapping-one's-forehead.

As to whether the Prajnaparamita texts really are recommending withdrawal from sensory input, that will take more work on my part to understand. It's a very stupid idea, but that doesn't mean nobody ever had it or tried it out. I gather that Jains and Brahmins do indeed engage in such practices, but it seems the opposite of Buddhist teachings of any school (though I don't know a lot about the Tibetan methods; perhaps they're into such practices).

I am aware of the jhana instructions which spend some time on sensory withdrawal, but never thought of them as a path toward awakening, more like beating the dancing monkey into submission so as to get some insight into what the mind is doing and why.

Samadhi seems the opposite of withdrawal to me, as would the realization of anatta/emptiness, but then my background is mostly Zen, where they use the terms in that sense. There are references in the suttas (actual suttas, the Pali ones, I mean) to that Zennish awakening experience, like in the Theri- and Theragatha recountings of the typical out-of-the-blue occurrence. There's also the Ananda awakening story in which it happens after exhausting himself in striving and then the big zap as his head is on its way to his pillow, but there are several versions of it and thus hard to know what the real version is if there is one.

I used to be disappointed in the lack of text referring to the actual experience of arhantship, but then realized that they wouldn't have been any better at talking about it than the bazillion words in Chan/Zen books are. The whole lesser-or-greater vehicle and bodhisattva ideas in both the Pali sense and the Mahayana sense are very misleading, since the experience and resultant understandings have always been the same. There, I said it. I can see the Tricycle headline now: '"Ain't no difference in the Dhamma teachings,"' claims unknown guy who is neither a scholar nor a teacher." 😎

@AnEnglishHuman@mstdn.party
Well, when you consider the sorts of things they were eating...

@daphnaorenm@historians.social @annmlipton
That particular tower doesn't seem to be constructed of the traditional ivory.