Minds, bodies-or stories?

[gardener]

With only 21 topics (plus this one) Mind/Body is one of the orphan children of this corner of Cyberworld. We're invited to discuss the connection of these two entities. That implies that they are (1) separate, though (2) related.
Some of us have read Descartes. Besides saying that he thought and therefore he was, and could prove the existence of God with a couple of additional steps, he argued that other animals were machines or automata, pure bodies. People are different. We have bodies, like machines, but we also have minds. Bodies exist in time and space. Minds exist only in time, and they aren't physical.
A problem lurks here. If minds and bodies are entirely different things, but affect one another, how do they do so? What is the point of connection?
Descartes thought it was the pineal gland.

Okay, I'm a retired philosophy teacher. And I never quite managed to help my students get past Descartes. Are there two kinds of things, material and spiritual? Or only one kind of thing. And if so, is it material? Or is it spiritual?

If I had to answer this question I would say, there's one kind of thing. It's material. What we call mind is an activity of something material. Down deep we're truly chemical. I think wonderfully so! Someone walks in front of your car in 1958, something clicks as it never has before, and the next thing you know there are grandkids. (Saying we're truly chemical doesn't demean us: we all decide what to do with our chemistry.) But why should I have to answer the question mind or body?

I had a teacher who taught me long ago that the world's languages are full of words for us, for our essence. We are, in Hebrew, nephesh, which means breath, but gets translated as soul. We are, in Greek, psyche, which gets translated sometimes as mind, sometimes as soul. We are spirit, which means breath. we are anima. My teacher proposed that we never say "mind" along or "body" alone, just talk about "mindbodies."

I'll throw something out that I think I've learned. What we really are is not this part and that part of an functionally organized whatchamacallit, not the carburetor and the clutch of a Porsche.

We are stories, each of us. We are the things which happen to us, and our reaction to the things that happen to us. We are the things we do, and the way these reverberate or fail to reverberate in the world of the people around us. We are the almost-marriages and the ex-marriages; the love for those who disappointed us (or whom we disappointed), and the loves for those in whom we found fulfillment and meaning by a mere touch of the hand at 3 in the morning when both of us are only half awake. We are the tales of the good work work we have done, and also the tales of our shame over slipshod and perfunctory. We are the music we love over and over, and the music we have just discovered. We are our memories of good sex and bad, and our hopes for only good in the days to come, but our conviction that that hope may be a bit unrealistic.
We are the intersection of our stories with the stories of others--particularly the stories of the other creatures who are our children.

I have never found it stimulating to think of myself or others as minds in bodies. But when the thought turns up that each of us in an ever unfolding story....well, that's a good starting point.

Off tomorrow to NYC to see the El Greco show at the Met.

Cheers.


"I'd like to get to know you ," means "Tell me your story."

And what I love about this forum is the tiny bits of stories that occasionally rise into view.

I also think JP is great for providing this venue, and Erika for putting up with two males in the house...and another to come very soon.

Now, we won't have to look at "we, the miraculous" staring at us.

Allen

[Q.]

I'm not a philosopher, academically speaking, and I have also never been a particularly religious person either. I believe that some things may simply be unknowable and I've never felt that it was a very good solution to create explanations just for the purpose of salving some innate need to have an explanation of some sort. Then there's the epistemological problems to deal with...

[Maybe I should also add that Alan Watts is my favorite philosopher and Gary Snyder my favorite poet... although I don't read either much anymore. Maybe that explains "me" a little better.]

To me, this is particularly important when discussing religion because of the harm that self-righteousness often causes. However, this type of philosophical discussion is more like a mental workout and seemingly benign. If we didn't dream or didn't seek answers to life's questions, we certainly would not have gotten to where we are today... and we would have missed out on a lot of great discussions!

Anyway, THANKS for bumping "we, the miraculous" off the top spot!

[GuyYoga]

((With only 21 topics (plus this one) Mind/Body is one of the orphan children of this corner of Cyberworld.))

I apologize that I haven't been more active in this forum. My travels have kept me away from the computer for quite a few weeks in a row. And... unfortunately I'm leaving tomorrow for another week of cybervoid. (This should be changing soon).

Just stopped in to let you know that I completed a week-long teacher training workshop for a particular style of yoga called Anusara. Anusara means "Flowing with Grace".

A big focus of yoga has to do with developing the connections between the mind and body, and increasing awareness of both. Anusara is a well designed and balanced contemporary discipline, which incorporates the Universal Principles of Alignment in the poses, as well as incorporating breathing and meditation techniques.

Betsy Downing, Ph.D., was the main facilitator of this workshop. She said the undisciplined mind processes between 1000 and 5000 thoughts an hour, somewhere between fifty and sixty-thousand thoughts per day. We can dramatically affect these numbers by employing focusing and meditating techniques, which also increase our mental clarity.

I hope to communicate more with you on these and other topics in the coming weeks. I'll be out until the 9th or so. Will check in shortly thereafter. I would be glad to answer questions if you have any, and will share what I know with you (as it is unfolded to me). Be aware that nobody can know it all, and there are quite a few viewpoints that have become popular in recent days. However, there are some physical principles that remain universal. We can talk about those here if you like.

By the way, in inversions, such as headstand and handstand, the pineal gland gets an extra fresh and generous supply of blood for the few moments the poses are held. Could this be a secret to the fountain of youth? Some schools of thought believe it is!

Enjoy the path...