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"Real knowledge is to know
the extent of
one's ignorance" - Confucius ---
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I have no philosophy or belief about life,
I
have "LIFE" itself ---
There are many who have philosophies
or a belief ABOUT life, but they don't
have any life
---
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The inner revolution brings
freedom and the only way to make oneself go through the inner revolution is meditation. Meditation simply means learning to
forget all that you have learned. It is a process of deconditioning, a process of dehypnosis.
The society has burdened
everybody with thousands of thoughts. Meditation simply helps you to come out of that
world of thoughts, into a state
of silence. It is a process of cleaning your slate completely, it is emptying all that has been forced and stuffed inside
you.
Once you are empty, spacious, silent, clean, the revolution has happened, the sun has risen; then you live in its
light! And to live in the light of your inner sun is to live rightly. In fact that is the only way to live. Others are
only dying, just dying slowly, moving in a queue goes on becoming shorter and shorter every moment, and any moment
you
may be the first in the queue. In fact everybody is trying to be first in the queue; a great desire to be the first everywhere.
The ordinary life is only called life - it is not. It is only so-called life. It is a process of gradual death or to be
more accurate, a process of gradual suicide.
The moment you become silent and aware and clear and your inner sky is full
of delight, you know the first taste of true life. One can call it god, one can call it enlightenment, one can call it liberation;
the experience of truth, love, freedom, bliss - different names but the phenomenon is the same.
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Health & Meditation
Meditation and
Brain Rot
By: Amrito MD
RECENT RESEARCH HAS NOW ESTABLISHED that
thinking too much can rot the brain. What they have yet to discover is that meditation is the key to the "off" button.
The
Economist puts it perfectly: "Just as hard labor leaves marks on the hands, hard thinking leaves marks on the brain."
And
medical research has known for some time that the brain is a malleable organ: the brains of sportsmen look
different from
computer users.
In the 1960's, research at University of California at Berkeley showed that rats brought up in a stimulating
environment had denser, more complex brains than those in boring environments. Even old rats put in a more interesting cage
show the same changes in their brains, with more synaptic connections between the cells supporting the old adage of "use it
or lose it."
Not only do the brain cells increase, but the blood supply which brings the needed energy sources increase
too.
So, not only do "young interested rats develop 20-25 more synapses per nerve cell than do their bored contemporaries,"
but also they have "80% more capillaries" to supply the energy-bearing blood.
Recent research by William Greenough and
his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign subjected three sets of rats --"acrobats," "jocks," and "couch
potatoes" to different environments--with the acrobats
challenged by tasks that required coordination, the jocks just
challenged physically, and the couch potatoes not
challenged at all. The acrobats showed dramatic changes to the parts
of the brain involved with coordination.
But what about overdoing it? It is also known that thinking too much can kill
brain cells. It appears that chemicals
excreted by thinking cells may not be cleared away quickly enough and may poison
and kill the brain cells.
When Ruben Gur at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia asked men he was studying to
relax, they could not -- their brains kept banging away at whatever they had been doing before without their being aware of
it.
Essentially this means, like all non-meditators, they were unaware of their thinking.
By contrast, women shifted
to thinking about something completely different, using a different part of their brain. This difference, he believes, may
explain his other main finding, which is that men's brains rot a lot faster than women's. Despite their big head start, by
the age of 45, with their attention span and memory failing, the front of the men's brains which is responsible for "complex
thinking" has shrunk to same size as "the frontal lobes of women of the same age." Alzheimer Lite all round for the boys.
So, not surprisingly, the brain works very much like the rest of our biological system. Rest between periods of
exertion
-- is the natural way of functioning. Lack of rest will cause over-training in athletes and reduce their function...the same
is obviously true of the brain. And there is an intriguing relationship between awareness of breath and the fatigue that precedes
heart attacks in stressed patients, over-training in athletes, and the chronic fatigue syndrome in others.... And while at
least the athletes muscles rest while he or she sleeps, our multimedia brains do not. They switch over to a picture show called
dreams, which in stressed, tense people can be quite a horror show.
Similarly it is not surprising that other investigators
are increasingly recognizing a connection between alertness and function on the one hand, and relaxation on the other.
The
key to reducing brain loss with age is the ability to relax the brain -- which means allowing the mind to stop and rest. The
first essential step is to become aware of our thoughts. This is the knack of meditation. Then you can
experience a real
surprise. Thoughts are very shy. The moment you become aware of them, they begin to dissolve,
leaving behind, "the peace
that passeth all understanding."
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KNOWLEDGE: - Knowledgeability is not wisdom;
knowedgeability is, on the contrary, a hindrance to wisdom. The more knowledgeable you become, the less is the possibility
of attaining your own experience, because
knowledge deceives - it deceives others, it deceives you. It goes on giving
you a sense AS IF you know, but that "as if" has not to be forgotten. That "as if" can easily be forgotten and one can be
deceived. --- Remember one very significant saying in the Upanishads: Those who are ignorant, they are bound to be lost in
darkness; and those who are knowledgeable, they are bound to be lost in a far bigger darkness than the ignorant ones. ---
The ignorant person is at least sincere: he knows that he does not know; at least this much truth is there. But the knowledgeable
covers up his wounds, his ignorance, his black holes. He covers them with scriptures and he starts pretending
that he
knows. He is harming others, but that is secondary; far more significant is that he is harming himself. He will be lost in
a far deeper darkness. --- That's why it is very difficult for pundits, scholars, the so-called learned people, to become
enlightened; it is a miracle if it happens at all. Sinners are more easily ready to go through the transformation because
they have nothing to lose-except their chains, except their ignorance. But the knowledgeable person is afraid to lose his
knowledge; that is his treasure. He clings to it, he protects it in every possible way. He finds rationalizations, excuses,
why the knowledge has to be protected. But, in fact, by
protecting his knowledge he is simply protecting his ignorance.
Hidden behind the knowledge is his ignorance. The knowledge is just a mask which covers his original face. You cannot see
his original face, he himself cannot see it. He is wearing a mask, and looking in the mirror he thinks, "This is my original
face." --- It is very difficult for
the knowledgeable to drop his knowledge and to become ignorant again. Unless he gathers
enough courage to become ignorant again, to become like a child again-innocent, not knowing anything, what Dionysius calls
AGNOSIA, moving into a state of not knowing ... It is certainly very arduous for the knowledgeable person-his whole LIFE he
has been accumulating knowledge. He has wasted his whole life, he has invested his whole life in knowledge. How can he drop
it? So he protects it, he FIGHTS for it. --- And this is the most amazing thing in the
world: the prisoner is fighting
so that you cannot take him out of the prison! And of course he is very clever and very cunning, so he can play with words
and he can quote scriptures, but all his quotations are parrotlike; he has no understanding. --- Knowledge has its uses, it
is not absolutely useless. But if you are going inwards it
becomes more and more useless; the deeper you go the more useless
it is. If you are going outwards, the farther you go into the world the more useful it becomes. The world respects the knowledgeable
person. It needs experts; it needs all kinds of people carrying information, knowledge, expertise. But in the inner world
the question
does not arise: in the inner world the same knowledge becomes a hindrance. That which is useful in the outside
world becomes a barrier to the inner. It is a bridge to the world; it is a barrier to the inner exploration. --- Knowledge
tries to control. Knowledge makes you powerful. Ignorance makes you humble. So remember not to
become knowledgeable. Never
allow knowledge to collect around you. Every day knowledge is accumulated through experience; every day, throw it away. It
is dust that gathers on the mirror of consciousness. --- Hence the seeker of truth has to leave behind all that he knows,
all knowledge as such, because it consists only of theories,
assumptions, beliefs, inferences, hypotheses, philosophies.
It consists of all that is borrowed from others, and you cannot know truth unless you are totally free from all that has been
taken from others. That is a hindrance. It does not allow you innocence, it does not allow you clarity, perceptiveness, transparency.
--- So put aside all that is
borrowed, be utterly nude, naked like a small child, knowing nothing. From that point the
real journey begins. Wisdom is not far away from a state of not-knowing; in fact half the journey is already complete. The
negative part you have already done, you have removed all the rocks. Now you can wait, and the spring will start flowing.
It
was hindered; now there is no hindrance it will start flowing. --- Man can do only the negative part, the positive
happens of its own accord. You put aside knowledge and wisdom wells up. --- +
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Not everything that counts, can be counted,
not everything that can be counted - counts.
Einstein
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