From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon May 18 1998 - 07:49:25 MDT
Remi Sussan <sremi@compuserve.com> writes:
> I would separate meditation from relaxation although they share the same
> basis. In fact, meditation seems to be relaxation combined with a high
> level of awareness. Contrary to relaxation (which often occurs while
> sitted on an armchair, laying on a bed eyes closed, or even on the floor
> as in the yogic savasana posture), meditation includes some tension
> which have to be maintained during the whole session : the back
> straight, eyes open, hands or whole body in strange and hard to maintain
> postures, etc.
The tension is likely necessary to keep the awareness high; if it
falters and begins to move towards relaxation (which tends to decrease
awareness as we slip into normal rest/sleep) we get a mechanical
response (sagging back, a sudden touch as the fingers move or the need
to realign the posture) that alerts us to this.
> Martial art can even be seen as medtation occuring in the
> stressing environment of fight!
I really like the japanese idea of finding meditation potential in all
sorts of tasks, not just traditional meditation forms but in martial
art, everyday work or various ceremonies. I wonder if we could develop
a form of meditation for studying?
> if meditation is "created" by changing
> the parameters of relaxation, we can perhaps change meditation by adding
> some new elements created especially in the purpose of increasing
> intelligence. for instance, combine meditation with Ars memoria, or
> doing martial arts movements to navigate in an abstract virtual
> interface representing some mathematical or scientifical truthes, in
> little like the tai-chi experiment at
> this page : http://dbecker.www.media.mit.edu/~dbecker/
Sounds a bit like the "information skills" and mental states described
in David Zindell's books where people use them when interfaced with
library, ship and religious computers.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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