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Is being centerless really such a bad thing? Then again, I really haven't experienced the concept at a fundamental, spiritual level, only intellectually; I don
by kfajdsl 4y ago
Is being centerless really such a bad thing?
Then again, I really haven't experienced the concept at a fundamental, spiritual level, only intellectually; I don't really meditate. Maybe there's something deep in our wiring (probably in our unconscious mind, which really pulls most of the strings) that has difficulty grappling with the loss of the idea of "self".
- haswell 4y agoI don’t believe it’s a bad thing at all, it just is. And glimpsing centerlessness for yourself sounds disconcerting, but instead seems paradoxically comforting when it happens. For me personally, it brought with it a deep sense of peace and wonder about my existence and coexistence with a world full of similarly centerless beings. To your point about wiring, I think absolutely yes. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, many aspects of conscious experience ensure we stay alive and procreate, but are not necessarily pleasant and seem to be increasingly incompatible with modern life. Robert Wright’s book “Why Buddhism is True” explores this at length and is a really interesting read. It’s not a book about religious truth, but one that maps a modern understanding of evolutionary psychology onto the insights of Buddhist philosophy and how such philosophy can be incredibly helpful when dealing with the implications of living in a body that did not evolve to survive the conditions to which it is currently subject.