Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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Jason Snyder, modified 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 8:53 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 8:53 PM

Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

Posts: 186 Join Date: 10/25/13 Recent Posts
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 11:31 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/18/14 11:31 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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The Syria test? LOL! emoticon
Andreas Thef, modified 9 Years ago at 8/19/14 4:23 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/19/14 4:23 AM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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You just gotta love this guy. Thanks for posting!
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Jason Snyder, modified 9 Years ago at 8/19/14 8:13 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/19/14 8:13 AM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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I wish they had talked more about actual practice, and I wish Shinzen had differentiated between concentration and insight practice. The host kept hinting that he thought practice should be blissfull (he is a TM guy), and it would have been a great opportunity for Shinzen to point out that actually,  stuff like TM is a concentration practice that will produce bliss but not a lot of insight, and that insight practice, by its very nature is not meant to be blissfull, it is meant to be reality as it really is. I don't think a lot of people in the spiritual arena really understand that, including the host.
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Richard Zen, modified 9 Years ago at 8/20/14 12:54 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/20/14 12:54 AM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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I think the other post got that point of constantly chasing pleasant states.  I particularly liked the admission that highly enlightened people can have bad behaviour and bad habits.  It shows how the habit development of ethics is still necessary even if you're a 4th pather.
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Dada Kind, modified 9 Years ago at 8/20/14 5:54 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/20/14 5:54 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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I expected Shinzen to take a more nuanced position on the 'ontological' status of the Powers. I wonder if he's hesitant to commit to an answer because he doesn't want to scare off the scientific crowd. As Daniel pointed out in his BATGAP interview, there are many more points of view on the Powers than the simplistic, binary 'real' 'not real' options. Shinzen mentions that no one has been able to demonstrate the Powers... not quite true. I can think of several explanations for how the Powers could 'exist' (in a sense) but be effectively untestable by the 'objective' 'scientific method'.

One wonders how far people that only accept 'scientific' data will take it. For example: You wake up to a luminous angel floating in front of your bed. The angel tells you the upcoming lottery numbers, predicts the results of the next four Super Bowls, and predicts the next four presidential elections. The angel punches you in the stomach and then disappears in a cloud of smoke. When you wake up the next day (with a sore stomach) you quickly scribble down all the predictions, and proceed to verify them all as correct over the years. What does a 'skeptic' do then? How much 'subjective' data is enough?
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sawfoot _, modified 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 12:01 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 12:01 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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Jason Snyder:
I wish they had talked more about actual practice, and I wish Shinzen had differentiated between concentration and insight practice. The host kept hinting that he thought practice should be blissfull (he is a TM guy), and it would have been a great opportunity for Shinzen to point out that actually,  stuff like TM is a concentration practice that will produce bliss but not a lot of insight, and that insight practice, by its very nature is not meant to be blissfull, it is meant to be reality as it really is. I don't think a lot of people in the spiritual arena really understand that, including the host.

A lot of people in the spiritual arena think you can use insight practices to see reality as it really is. An alternative perspective would be that insight practices can you give you insight into the reality of a mind of someone doing insight practices. See that interview with Evan Thompson I recently posted for a discussion of that if you are interested. And just to point out, there are plenty who teach practices where there isn't a clear separation between concentration and insight, and where blissful states are pretty integral to the process of developing insight. See, for example, Bhante Vimalaramsi's version of anapanasati. Just goes to show that it is hard to say there is "meant" to be a way of doing things outside of a particular system (which might not be shared by everyone). 

Droll, here is another example. Imagine that instead of one angel, there were 4 million angels, each of which gave 4 million different people a different lottery number, and they all played the lottery. What would you then think when you won then? Or here is another example - instead of the angel, one day an alien turned up, took you into a spaceship, and then you went to the moon, where you turned into a giant elephant, 4000 feet tall (it was on the dark side so nobody could see), and then got teleported back to earth, and turned into a marshmellow. And the next day, you went back to normal, just that you felt a bit squidgy.

This seems as about as plausible to me.  
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Eric G, modified 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 3:05 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 3:04 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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There are a LOT of studies that apparently show the efficacy of say, homeopathy.  So a certain type of person can make a big list of those studies, along the way eliminating the studies that don't show efficacy, and lots of people will simply believe it on that basis, seeing that there is support from "scientific" studies.  But if you actually start digging into the totality of the studies, a funny (or not so funny) thing happens.  You begin to notice a relationship, that is, the tendency for efficacy to typically be shown by the smaller and/or less well designed studies, from the poorer quality journals and institutions and researchers, and the opposite is true of larger, better designed studies associated with more reputable journals, institutions and researchers.  To me, there is a kind of enlightenment in understanding this.
Small Steps, modified 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 4:47 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 4:47 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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Richard Zen:
I think the other post got that point of constantly chasing pleasant states.  I particularly liked the admission that highly enlightened people can have bad behaviour and bad habits.  It shows how the habit development of ethics is still necessary even if you're a 4th pather.

I think Daniel said it nicely on his BATGAP interview: (to paraphrase) -- how much kinder, how much more compassionate can one become? The journey then seems to continue, even for 4th pathers.
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Dada Kind, modified 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 7:02 PM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/21/14 7:02 PM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis
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sawfoot _, modified 9 Years ago at 8/22/14 3:22 AM
Created 9 Years ago at 8/22/14 3:22 AM

RE: Shinzen Young Interview on BATGAP

Posts: 507 Join Date: 3/11/13 Recent Posts
Droll Dedekind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis
Yep, that is the sort of thing Eric is referring to. More specifically, something like:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673605671772

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