Great episode! I laughed when i heard of Richie’s experience at the museum in NYC. The natural history museum was the location of my first date. He also spent his weekends there!
Thank you for this 'first principles' approach to framing behavior. It may be that the most fundamental information processing or decision we make is to Approach or Avoid. Taking it further, beyond overt observable behaviors of an organism, it can apply to a defining characteristic of all biological life: that it is (always?) bounded. And, yet it is a qualified boundedness; it is also integrated with the environment, to function as an open system. Even the one-celled organism, adrift in the ancient Primordial Sea, was bounded within a membrane. And yet that barrier (defining a provisional, contingent, non-static self) was necessarily permeable. More specifically, it was 'semi' permeable, implying a sort of primordial choice: a Yes! to X and No! to Y, as in Nutrient in, Waste out.
As it is with this most fundamental defining characteristic of biological life, there are analogs in systems thinking, applicable and discernible in many other phenomena. Elastic, contingent but crucial balances maintained within a performance envelope (think 'flight envelope' in aircraft) and impinged upon by "other" infinitely complex factors, while always maintaining a dynamic enthalpy (order) within storms of entropic forces.
How could there be any movement or change otherwise… anything at all? Without contrast, can there any difference between X and Y? The very premise of there being information to process, or states to maintain, implies contrast as a necessary condition: a difference that makes a difference. Even our often ill-advised impulse to resist change may have as its counterbalancing opposite the capacity to recognize or surrender to change.
There is certainly a rich vein of wisdom to pursue here by, as Cort mentioned, looking for analogs to the scientific view on asymmetries in the body of Buddhist psychology and epistemology. Future Dharma Lab topic?
Thank you for this remarkable conversation. While I will not remember all of the details, I cherish that I have had the chance now to glimpse their illuminating qualities, the deeper and wider landscapes to which they point, and how you are attending these through your work. Very moving, indeed - and we are all the better for it! Beyond words, really, even though I have access them!
Victoria, we had the same thought of a lot of details and wanted to help distill. Check out our flashcards, let us know if it is helpful, it is an experiment. https://glittering-cascaron-a74129.netlify.app/
Thank you! Yes, these notes are both very helpful and very generous. To know just one more thing always helps me to create a more compassionate response. I temporarily left my preschool teaching in 2001 to work in an independent I/DD school, and once there, how often I wondered when will we know more about the brain and healing it?! Some years later, I volunteered in a center caring for those with memory loss. So many questions I asked found the reply at that school, "We don't know." As I hold the memory of the people I met then, I realize how your sacred curiosity and your work have been an answer to a prayer from long ago. Your commitment brings me such comfort, both from knowing that something, indeed, was happening then, and that, in a timeless kind of way, I can bring that comfort to those I keep in my heart... Just to understand one thing more, because every person, young, old, well, sick, with behaviour that is beautiful or bizzare,wants to know and be known, to love and be loved, to bless and be blessed and heal and be healed. How your work ripples out. Thank you again.
Thank you, Victoria, for bringing this empiricism into the heart-space language, where you speak in terms of: "sacred curiosity" and "brings... such comfort" and "in my heart" and "[all of us wanting] to know and be known". There's a wonderful, synergism in the fusion of this intellectual/scientific project and the lived experience and effects, which are the ground from which they both originate and ultimately apply. Your words and work seem to weave these strands together so well. Steady onwards, with your good work.
This is a wonderful follow-on to the discussion, and something that may have ongoing generative impact as a way of infusing these discoveries and wonderings into the next generation. You have reduced and specified in order to illuminate and edify. This is wonderful, and reveals (to my confabulating mind) just how long and comprehensive your views are, making not just satisfying conversation but living tools. The rubber meets the road at repetition, and flashcard stacks like this (maybe include it within an app?) can put many more of us on this road, benefiting from your work. Virtuous and Right Effort, indeed!
Approach vs avoidance concepts tied to brain hemispheres is amazing. What about left handed people who utilize a different approach to both hemispheres? Our storytelling function is useful for problem solving and creativity. Love these articles!
Your conversation is so amazing; I just listened to it, and I am so grateful to have this chance to hear all these fabulous knowledge of Richie and you, Cort. It raises so much questions...
- In the MSBR study, were some of the participants more left prefrontal brain stimulated at baseline? Did that influence their response to MSBR?
- If the left prefrontal brain is linked to the immune system, could there be a relationship between the stimulation of this brain area and pathologies related to an overstimulation of the immune system (ulcerous colitis for example)?
- What about the immune system of the long time meditators? Do they get less illnesses?
- Long time meditators appear to manage emotions more easily: they do feel strong emotions (showed in one pain study of yours, Richie), but they do not cling or attach to them and they have no ruminations. So, is it rumination that are linked to a reduction in immunological response? But was is the logic with immuno-related pathologies?
This is a Pandore box! Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge. Gratitude +++.
Great episode! I laughed when i heard of Richie’s experience at the museum in NYC. The natural history museum was the location of my first date. He also spent his weekends there!
We also enjoyed hearing about him cycling across the Brooklyn bridge to Manhattan as an excursion.
Thank you for this 'first principles' approach to framing behavior. It may be that the most fundamental information processing or decision we make is to Approach or Avoid. Taking it further, beyond overt observable behaviors of an organism, it can apply to a defining characteristic of all biological life: that it is (always?) bounded. And, yet it is a qualified boundedness; it is also integrated with the environment, to function as an open system. Even the one-celled organism, adrift in the ancient Primordial Sea, was bounded within a membrane. And yet that barrier (defining a provisional, contingent, non-static self) was necessarily permeable. More specifically, it was 'semi' permeable, implying a sort of primordial choice: a Yes! to X and No! to Y, as in Nutrient in, Waste out.
As it is with this most fundamental defining characteristic of biological life, there are analogs in systems thinking, applicable and discernible in many other phenomena. Elastic, contingent but crucial balances maintained within a performance envelope (think 'flight envelope' in aircraft) and impinged upon by "other" infinitely complex factors, while always maintaining a dynamic enthalpy (order) within storms of entropic forces.
How could there be any movement or change otherwise… anything at all? Without contrast, can there any difference between X and Y? The very premise of there being information to process, or states to maintain, implies contrast as a necessary condition: a difference that makes a difference. Even our often ill-advised impulse to resist change may have as its counterbalancing opposite the capacity to recognize or surrender to change.
There is certainly a rich vein of wisdom to pursue here by, as Cort mentioned, looking for analogs to the scientific view on asymmetries in the body of Buddhist psychology and epistemology. Future Dharma Lab topic?
Thank you for this remarkable conversation. While I will not remember all of the details, I cherish that I have had the chance now to glimpse their illuminating qualities, the deeper and wider landscapes to which they point, and how you are attending these through your work. Very moving, indeed - and we are all the better for it! Beyond words, really, even though I have access them!
Victoria, we had the same thought of a lot of details and wanted to help distill. Check out our flashcards, let us know if it is helpful, it is an experiment. https://glittering-cascaron-a74129.netlify.app/
Thank you! Yes, these notes are both very helpful and very generous. To know just one more thing always helps me to create a more compassionate response. I temporarily left my preschool teaching in 2001 to work in an independent I/DD school, and once there, how often I wondered when will we know more about the brain and healing it?! Some years later, I volunteered in a center caring for those with memory loss. So many questions I asked found the reply at that school, "We don't know." As I hold the memory of the people I met then, I realize how your sacred curiosity and your work have been an answer to a prayer from long ago. Your commitment brings me such comfort, both from knowing that something, indeed, was happening then, and that, in a timeless kind of way, I can bring that comfort to those I keep in my heart... Just to understand one thing more, because every person, young, old, well, sick, with behaviour that is beautiful or bizzare,wants to know and be known, to love and be loved, to bless and be blessed and heal and be healed. How your work ripples out. Thank you again.
Thank you, Victoria, for bringing this empiricism into the heart-space language, where you speak in terms of: "sacred curiosity" and "brings... such comfort" and "in my heart" and "[all of us wanting] to know and be known". There's a wonderful, synergism in the fusion of this intellectual/scientific project and the lived experience and effects, which are the ground from which they both originate and ultimately apply. Your words and work seem to weave these strands together so well. Steady onwards, with your good work.
Thank you so much for your words!
This is a wonderful follow-on to the discussion, and something that may have ongoing generative impact as a way of infusing these discoveries and wonderings into the next generation. You have reduced and specified in order to illuminate and edify. This is wonderful, and reveals (to my confabulating mind) just how long and comprehensive your views are, making not just satisfying conversation but living tools. The rubber meets the road at repetition, and flashcard stacks like this (maybe include it within an app?) can put many more of us on this road, benefiting from your work. Virtuous and Right Effort, indeed!
Approach vs avoidance concepts tied to brain hemispheres is amazing. What about left handed people who utilize a different approach to both hemispheres? Our storytelling function is useful for problem solving and creativity. Love these articles!
Your conversation is so amazing; I just listened to it, and I am so grateful to have this chance to hear all these fabulous knowledge of Richie and you, Cort. It raises so much questions...
- In the MSBR study, were some of the participants more left prefrontal brain stimulated at baseline? Did that influence their response to MSBR?
- If the left prefrontal brain is linked to the immune system, could there be a relationship between the stimulation of this brain area and pathologies related to an overstimulation of the immune system (ulcerous colitis for example)?
- What about the immune system of the long time meditators? Do they get less illnesses?
- Long time meditators appear to manage emotions more easily: they do feel strong emotions (showed in one pain study of yours, Richie), but they do not cling or attach to them and they have no ruminations. So, is it rumination that are linked to a reduction in immunological response? But was is the logic with immuno-related pathologies?
This is a Pandore box! Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge. Gratitude +++.
WOW!!