059 - Meditation, Nothingness, Buddhism, and Hegel

To me, the goal of meditation is to escape the left-brain world of analyzing, breaking things down, either/or judgmental thinking, and to get in touch with life itself.   Thoughts tend to come to the foreground, but there remains a background.  In meditation, thoughts can be viewed like passing clouds in the sky, and the goal is to experience the sky, and not get hung up on the clouds. 

The notion of Being and Nothing is central to Hegel's philosophy.  And Hegel is clear - focusing on just "being" and not "nothingness" as well, misses the point.  Becoming is the truth, which contains both being and nothing as moments.  For Being to "be there" (determinate) it must contain both notions.   

The goal of meditation is not to ignore or eliminate being, or thought.  It is just to spend some time each day to quietly sense the complete picture, both the sky and the clouds.   

This episode explores meditation from this standpoint, with commentary on Buddhism as well, noting that equating Buddhism with a nihilism of pure nothingness is a mistake.  

Transcript

Gregory Novak 0:01

Hello, this is Gregory Nowak. This was the cunning of Geist episode 59. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to cover philosophy psychology. And science in an effort to demonstrate that we are much more than products of blind materialistic naturalism, which means there is more going on here than Darwinian evolution. I E survival of the fittest and genetic mutations. And it has to do with mind, AKA spirit. In German. Those two terms are combined in one word Geist. And in this podcast, I put special significance and emphasis on the great 19th century philosopher. George William Friedrich Hagle, who, by the way, just celebrated a birthday on Saturday, August 27, he was born 252 years ago on that day. First some background. I personally never gotten into TM, transcendental meditation back in the late 1960s when it was all the rage and it seemed everybody was doing You know, the Beatles did it, the beach boys did it so many others did it. And, although I was very much interested in new age thinking and Eastern practices, I somehow. did Pick up TM at the time. But after graduating from college in the early seventies, I began an intense search. If you will, for meaningful esoteric and a cult literature stuff, that's different than just what I was learning in school. And there was not a lot out there, certainly not even close to what there is today. Back then there was usually just one shelf on one book case in a local bookstore. And that was it. Now, today, it's all, you know, you have whole aisles of new age, material in different sections of new age. And interesting. Whenever I would travel to New York city back then I'm business, I would make sure to step into Weiser is bookstore. Which specialized in this type of material is the only bookstore in the big city that did that. So. You're going to, an idea of how difficult it was to find. Good, good stuff back then. At the time I was into the Chinese eat Ching, as I've talked about the writings of George Gurdjieff and his pupil PD is Penske. And I also had. Uh, obviously dabbled in some, uh, philosophical readings as well. But in my late twenties, I began to broaden my scope. I was working very hard at the time. I was married, had a family. Raising kids. Trying to get ahead. and I needed. Some time to relax, to sort of calm down. I took up jogging. I will go off for a three or four mile run several times a week, and that really helped, but I felt that I needed more. I needed time to relax my brain. My I need something just beyond running. And this brings me to meditation. Now. Back. Then in the 1970s, I became particularly impressed with this fellow Richard Heidelman who had a syndicated television show on. Sometimes on late at night, sometimes it'd be on the mornings, whatever. and it was on yoga. And he would have demonstrations. He had a model there that would do the actual, Hafi yoga exercises. And you, you do it along with her. Uh, but it also includes some discussions of, meditation as well at the end. And he would even lead a guided meditation at the end of the show for a few minutes. And it said that this show was very popular in. Introduce yoga to millions of Americans at the time. I'm not sure if it was available. Worldwide. In Europe or Asia, but, it, it certainly was a, a big thing here in the United States. And what attracted me to the show was there was always a beautiful spiritual message and meditation at the end. And, uh, I would, I really enjoyed that. And. Exercise right along with him on the TV and then do the guided meditation as Y decided to get further into, into meditation. And. I checked him out in the bookstore and he had a book. Uh, one of his books was called Richard Hillman's 30 day yoga meditation It was quite an interesting book. It outlined a program of hot yoga exercises and meditations. There were 30 different meditation practices. A different one to be tried on successive days, each lasting from five to 10 minutes. All but one. All 29 involved, 29 of the 30 involved looking at some objects, such as a flower or a symbol. Or pronouncing some word. The odd one out was called meditation without seed, which involved, just concentrating and not thinking about anything. Following the first 30 days of going through 30 different meditation exercises, the student was then to select the three most promising techniques for further use. If they can not choose, they were to repeat all 30 meditations until the three best emerged. And once they had the three leaders, they were to continue practicing with these three until one emerged as the best. Nine narrowed it down to three. I can't remember which the other two were, but after doing the three for a while, I ended up with meditation without seed is my preferred approach. I'm not sure why, but I just liked the clarity of not focusing on something. Seemed to intrigue this meant I did not use a mantra like they do in TM or a visual symbol to stare at it and stare at a flame. I didn't say own. I just cleared my mind. And as words came to me, I treated them as though they were just clouds passing by. I wanted to connect with the sky, not the clouds. Every day I would do about 10 minutes of yoga exercises followed by about 10 minutes of meditation. And I did it at home every I religiously, I even had my own yoga mat. I did it on business trips. I would never miss a day. I continued doing this. Meditating for many years. Later on, I think in the. 1980s. I read that Deepak Chopra recommended a half hour meditation twice a day. It was kind of quite a big jump up from what I was doing just 10 So as such, I increased my meditation time and continued faithfully doing it. Um, I do half Twice a day. Although often I have to admit my evening, meditation ended up with me sleeping. And Deepak said that was okay. It just meant you were tired. That's all. And sleep is good. So having a busy house with kids, I just needed some quiet time to meditate. So we put on the headphones. To keep out the noise of the kids running around and I'd listen to a tape of ocean waves. Rolling. And this was my seed for meditation. It was very calming and soothing. And. I believe that. Through meditation. I was connecting with something deeper in myself and it's hard to put it in words. I don't think you can't put in words, but. It would block out all the trials and tribulations to the day's work. Uh, it would calm me down. I found it refreshing. And at the same time I began. To become more interested in Hindu philosophy, yoga philosophy. And I read a few books on this and I was just absolutely astounded at the depth of many Hindu thinkers in schools. Of yoga. And one of the things I learned. In I'm meditating with that seed is that you cannot completely eliminate your thoughts for any stretch of time. The most you can do is maybe a minute. If you're lucky. Some sometimes you can't even get past 10 or 15 seconds and also saying to yourself, Hey, I'm not thinking anything. That is a thought. So any kind of word that pops in that is a thought. And it's interesting to try to do that exercise, not even as a meditation, just try it. In fact, the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff that we've talked about several times. Here used to use this as an exercise. Uh, to show how asleep his pupils were. He would ask them to see how long they could go without saying a word in their mind. The pupil soon to realize how little actual control they had over managing their thoughts. And that was the purpose of this lesson of this exercise. But let me stress. The key and meditation is not the stop thoughts. The key is not identifying with the thoughts, not letting them capture Whole. Um, just let them go. Like clouds passing in the sky above. Look at them. Say, I got that. See it's there, but. don't get wrapped up into it. So. As I said, meditation is a subject for this episode. And what I want to do is, is hopefully show that. The practice of meditation has a clear correspondence to Hegel's notion of being in nothing. And it was a big statement, but hopefully I'll back it up. It also has correspondence to the Buddhist teaching of nothingness, which all I'll get into. And of course meditation is practiced throughout the And it's part of the religious traditions around the Earliest mentions of it are in the Upanishad the ancient Indian writing. And the practice plays a very prominent role in both Hinduism and Buddhism. And while we traditionally associate meditation with the east. It's also an important aspect of the Jewish religion, particularly in the old BCE days before. Christianity. NT Wright in his book, Paul, about the apostle Paul. Uh, states his hypothesis that SOLs intense meditative practices. This was before. He, converted. When I converted, but it had the vision of anti-rape believes that Paul. Uh, did intensive meditative practices and this may have put in the proper state to receive the vision that he did and go on his own on, on mission. on the road to Damascus, leading him to become Paul. Now the key thing though, that I want to cover is that. Meditation. Allows one to actually get in touch. With nothingness. Once we can concentrate in the space between the thoughts. This can provide a powerful, mental and physical refresher. But it is more than just a refresher. It can enable a greater, deeper connection to our own lives. Now I do not believe that meditation is the fast lane to cosmic consciousness. And now the skies do not part. No, there'll be no bolts from the blue. You will not rise up and float in the air. but perhaps something more meaningful happens. It allows you to connect with a background of being itself. And this is so It allows you to connect with nothingness. As we've stated here often being nothing or the two predecessors to becoming, we covered this explicitly in the very last episode. episode 58, Hegel's becoming what it means, why it's unique and why it matters. Yes, there is a background, the voice in her head. And there is perhaps a lot there in that background. And that's important to realize. when we meditate, we can get in touch with ourselves as living creatures. We can have total awareness of our liveliness at the moment. We Living now. We're the beneficiaries of millions of years of previous ancestors. And what have we inherited in this moment? Can we soundly get in touch with the wisdom of the ages. One of the voices of the past whispering to us now, you're not going to hear voices, but you know what I mean? The key thing in meditation is, is to quiet your mind. So you can sense these things and appreciate these things what's gone before. And what, and what the. What, what the present moment holds for you? And it's not to think about these things or analyze them. That's left brain thinking you don't want to break things down and analyze things since the component parts. There's no right or wrong. No, either or no judgemental. this or that, there's just the experience of life itself. The process of life itself. Now. Of course everyone's experience with meditation will be different. But what I presented here is the basic mindset for undertaking meditation. And to share my belief that in meditation, one is getting in touch with something that is real. Being in nothing or both real together as moments of becoming. Just let me back up a bit. Everything needs a background in order to be seen. This is what Hagle means by determinant. It's a negation. The background is negated by the object that is perceived, but it is still there. Both the background and the object are there foreground and background? And nothing is what makes being determinant. So we discussed in the last episode, if there's no, nothing than being would just be nothing at all. To stick with the sky example, the sky allows us to perceive the clouds. We see a cloud, but the sky remains. 20th century media scholar, Marshall McCluen. And we've discussed him often. He has a concept called figure and ground, which relates to this. Particularly, if you want to go to one episode. episode 21. The rise in return of tribalism technology McClune and Hagle, where we cover McClune in a lot of detail. And as I said, From McClune to figure was what jumped out at you and the ground allowed you to perceive it. Being jumps out at you and nothing allows you to be part of it. Oftentimes, we take the ground for granted. A light bulb in a room provides light for us to see, to see each other, to read, et cetera. The light in the room is the ground in which we see things, the figures we were looking at. This is also true with media in which McClune specialized is the television that allows us to watch television shows. It is the internet, which allows us to communicate on social media. Now McCluen held that the medium was as important as the message perhaps more important. We tend to forget about the television set and what's going on. We concentrate on the show, but it's the television itself. That's part of this process. No, I don't want to divert too much into McClune. Perhaps we can do it in another episode. But the point is nothing is just as important as being in what allows it's what allows being to be being. The river bed allows the river, the air we breathe allows life. I think you get what I mean. I'm just a little bit on Buddhism. The reason. Is that the notion of nothingness is often associated with Buddhism as most of you know, Buddhism is a religion and or philosophy that began with the teaching of Siddhartha. Gautama in ancient India and the fourth and the fifth to fourth century BCE. Now Buddhism is a huge topic and it it's, it's got a very rich tradition. In both philosophical thought than meditation and everything. It's the world's fourth largest religion behind Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. And there's over a half a billion followers. And maybe someday I can devote more time to it. I would really like to do that. But what I want to focus on now is the notion of nothingness. Which is often associated with Buddhism. And I should point out often associated incorrectly. It's not that nothingness in Buddhism is some other realm, some black hole. Actually is much more line the lines of we've been discussing. Nothingness, our emptiness does not mean nothing exists at all. It is more the things we see, the figures that we grasp onto do not have a reality existence in their own. Right. They are dependent on that background. The river is dependent on the river As we discussed in the last episode, even the reality of the present moment does not exist in its own, right. It is both being and nothing. It's always becoming when we try to latch onto a thing and ignore the bigger We don't understand what that thing is in isolation. It is meaningless. Everything is relational. This is a key part of Hegel's philosophy that we've discussed here. So often. Isolating his left brain thinking. And that is a major problem in the world. Today. We are overrun with left brain thinking. And we, we talked a lot about left brain, right. Brain and dichotomy, but the specific episode is episode 10, the divided brain and the unhappy consciousness. Okay. Now I want to Hagle. Although Eastern religions were beginning to be studied in sagos day. Certainly there was still little available on Buddhism. Andy. To show, to show this, let me read a quote by Hagle regarding Buddhism. And this is from his philosophy of religion. Quote. When we view the whole world, we can only say that everything is and nothing more. We are neglecting all specialty. And instead of absolute plentitude we have absolute emptiness. The same stricture is applicable to those who define God to be me or being a definition, not a wit better than that, of the Buddhist who may God to be not. And who from that principle drove the further conclusion that self-annihilation is the means by which man becomes God. And. Okay, let's unpack this. And the first sentence Hagle is reiterating that when we say everything is we Neglecting specialty. And hence we end up with nothing. He then goes on to say the same about God. If God is all in everything, then God is nothing. He then however, moves on and mistakenly claims that this is what Buddhist believed that God is nothing. The other half of the. Um, of the equation, a nihilistic view. Now, what he says about being in God is what his whole philosophy is about. But his nihilistic interpretation to Buddhism was based on the limited knowledge that was available to him in his day. For example, this is. From a 18th century book. on, on Chinese by John Baptist, do Halda and this was available in Hegel's day. And let me read it to you. A quote. They teach that a vacuum where nothing is the principle of all things, that it is from nothing that all things are produced. And to which they all returned. So to live happily, we must continually strive by meditation and frequent victories over ourselves to become like this. Principia. And to this end, a customer sells to do nothing, to desire, nothing to perceive nothing and to think on nothing and So it's not surprising that Hagle was sheriffs such. If you have, these are the sources. Such as these that he was. He could get his hands on. But this is not the true picture. Hegel's comments and being in nothing, God and nothing are spot on. Correct. But on the Buddhism, he doesn't have the full picture. Let me continue on. There's a. Quite a little further down. Quote in saying that God is only the Supreme being and nothing more for this is really declaring him to be the same negativity as The nothing, which the Buddhist make the universal principle. As well as the final aim and goal of everything is the same abstraction and quote. So again, Angel's saying more or less the same thing. Uh, he's corrected by God is, is more than just the Supreme being, but he's incorrect in saying that nothing is the goal of Buddhism. Okay. Let's let's summarize what we've, what we've covered. I've shown that meditation is an attempt to quiet the To see the big picture. To comprehend both being in nothing. But to see the figure and the ground, the clouds and the sky. To feel a liveliness in all its glory. And also know that for the individual, it is fleeting, just like the cloud. It's just like a single cloud I'm reminded of a quote. That was in the movie patent. Uh, about us general George Patton during his time in world war II, it started George C. Scott. It was toward the end of the movie. Let me read it to you. Quote. This is pat and speaking. Quote for over a thousand years, Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoy the honor of triumph tumultuous parade. And the procession came The tears musicians and strange animals from conquered territories. Together with carts Laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquer is Roden triumphal, chariot, the days prisoners walking and chains before Sometimes it's children robed in white, stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. Uh, slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear. A warning. That all glory is fleeting. End quote. Although individual clouds come and go. individual glory comes and goes, but clouds themselves will remain human achievement will remain. The present moment is fleeting. But the continuation of the present moment will remain. Well, That's it for this episode, hopefully you enjoyed it. Thank you. Once again, so much for listening to these episodes, to this podcast. As always all references will be supplied in the podcast, Facebook page at cutting of Geist. And eventually a transcript will be posted there as well. Please be sure to check in and that page, because I post there often in between episodes. If you're on Twitter, you can follow me there as well. Also at Cunningham. Geist. And please be sure to tell your like-minded friends about this podcast as well. The more the merrier spread the word. This is Gregory Nowak. This. Is the cunning of Geist. See you next time.