The Enchanted Loom reviews Shinzen Young's book The Science of Enlighenment

The Enchanted LoomTeasing sturdy threads from

neuroscience masterworks

Teasing 10 threads fromShinzen Young’s …

Thread 1:

There is not a thing inside us called a self. We are a colony of sub-personalities and each of those subpersonalities is in fact not a noun but a verb – a doing.

(pg. xv)

Thread 2:

Meditation elevates a person’s base level of focus. If you’re consistently 2 or 3 times more focused in each moment of life, then you’re living 2 or 3 times bigger, 2 or 3 times richer.(pg. 1)

Thread 3:

Mindfulness is a threefold attentional skill-set: concentration power, sensory clarity and equanimity working together.

(pg. 21)

Thread 4:

What few people realize is that deep states of presence and focus are trainable. And the ex- experience does not have to be sporadic or short-lived. It can become a permanent abode.(pg. 27)

Thread 5:

When I hear people say that meditation is selfish, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Virtually every moment of every- body’s life is self- centered. Medit- ation equips us with the skills needed to break the identification with self.(pg. 37)

Thread 6:

When you experience another person com- pletely, they are no longer “other.” There is a shift in perspective. You go from an I-It para- digm to an I-Thou paradigm.(pg. 43)

Thread 7:

The main goal of meditation is not to get to certain good states, but rather to eliminate what gets in the way of those good states.

(pg. 82)

Thread 8:

Learning how to have a complete experience of discomfort sets us free. Learning how to have a complete experience of pleasure deeply fulfills.(pg. 91)

Thread 9:

Everything that is compounded eventually passes away. If we pin all of our happiness on people, objects and situations, we set ourselves up for inevitable and perhaps horrific suffering.(pg. 116)

Thread 10:

As concentration, clarity and equanimity deepen, life presents itself less as a particle, more as a wave.

(pg. 125)

Thread 11:

“And until you know this: How to grow through death you’re just another grumpy guest on the gloomy earth.”

(pg. 187)

Image Credits:

Title Page: http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/23193-personality-traits-brain-scans

Slide 3 - https://staceylovenlife.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/sub-personalities/

Slide 12 - http://www.empiricalzeal.com/tag/wave-particle-duality/

Slide 2 - https://batgap.com/shinzen-young/

Slide 6 - http://web-presence-in-china.com/

Slide 5 - http://www.liftlifelovelife.net/?cat=36

Slide 11 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23iuPKuPd30

Slide 10 - http://matasanos.org/2015/03/17/inconsciente-en-politica/

Slide 15 - http://www.rappler.com/science-nature/23193-personality-traits-brain-scans

Slide 9 - http://www.thriftyfun.com/Unclogging-a-Toilet-1.html

Slide 8 - https://keepingfaithtoday.com/2016/07/22/i-thou/

Slide 7 - https://www.pinterest.com/alyssasprinkle/animals/

Slide 4 - http://3feathers.deviantart.com/art/Water-Joy-245484538

Slide 13 - http://arenaxlsm.wikia.com/wiki/The_Grim_Reaper

Mark Brady, PhDTheEnchantedLoom@gmail.com

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