Over the years of practicing and sharing meditation, I’ve long believed that attaining a thoughtless state is not the goal of practice. Rather, the aim of practice is to bring mindfulness to thoughts, effectively disempowering them and liberating oneself from their tyranny. I still, more or less, believe all that to be true, but have recently come across a fascinating dialogue between Robert Wright (whom, ahem, I had lunch with at the end of my last meditation retreat), and a guy named, Gary Weber, who is talking about his own experience of awakening.
Mr. Weber describes a state of awakening in which self-referential thoughts have come to an end, and from a number of perspectives (biological, ethical, interpersonal, practical), I find this very intriguing.
When you have a free hour or so, I strongly recommend checking out this dialogue at http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/14840
Originally published on January 29, 2013
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