AGENDA
- What is meaning? (recap)
- Presence
Recap: What is meaning? What makes a life more meaningful?
- Union with the infinite (Tolstoy)
- Having a passion for whatever you're doing (Taylor...but this is just subjective meaning)
- Subjective attraction to things that are objectively attractive (Wolf)
- Telling our life stories, which makes us intelligible to ourselves and others (DeBres says this is just one source of meaning)
- Presence (Setiya, Hanh)
- living in the present, seizing the day, focusing on the here and now
- mindfulness, awareness, paying attention
Authors discussing presence
Kieran Setiya -- last section of chapter from Midlife ("Living in the Present") we already readThich Nhat Hanh -- a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author -- You are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present MomentAntti Kaupinnen -- "Against Seizing the Day"
- Phase 1: You're living very telically
- Phase 2: You have a midlife crisis
- Phase 3: You shift to atelic activities
- Phase 4: You're "present" during these atelic activities
- Life is suffering
- The source of suffering is attachment
- The solution is to give it up.
- The way to do so is the Eightfold Path
- No more desiring
- No more aversion
- "Absorb the revolutionary metaphysics of 'anatta' or no-self" (p. 147)
- Meditation ... for serenity and insight (p. 147)
"There are stages to the meditative process, which begins with quiet, seated concentration on the breath—breathing in and out— felt calmly, almost musically in the chest or throat or nose. There is awareness of bodily sensations, sounds, suspended and detached from the need for active response. There is awareness of one’s passing thoughts and feelings, equally suspended, equally detached, their ebb and flow, transient and separable. And there is, in a certain phase of meditation, an
intuitive, not merely intellective grasp of impermanence, suffering, and no-self: I do not exist. This is Buddhist enlightenment." (p. 147)
Thich Nhat Hanh reading -- much more detail about meditation and what it achieves (we'll come back to that)
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Presence through meditation: what is its value, according to Setiya?
- Argues against Buddhist ideas like no-self.
"Meditation fosters an intuitive, not merely intellective grasp of the meaning and value of atelic activities." (p. 151)
"The point I am making here is that it is not sufficient for meaning in life that one attend to the present, to the atelic activities in which you are engaged. It matters what you are doing, not just that you are doing it in the Now." (p. 153)
"Meditating on your breath, your body, the sounds in your environment is a way to train your appreciation of simple atelic activities: breathing, sitting, listening. There is value in these activities, though not enough for a meaningful life. Attending to their presence is not an end in itself. It is a way to develop your capacity to be in the moment, so as to appreciate the atelic counterparts of the telic activities that matter to you. In order to do this, you must overcome the magnetic pull of the telic orientation. You must prevent your attention from being absorbed by projects. You need the mastery of mental focus, of your own thoughts and feelings, that is nurtured by mindfulness meditation." (p. 153)
- Sisphus rolling boulders -- no point in doing with presence!
- doom scrolling
- looksmaxxing
- going for a walk
- listening to music
- Ameliorative value -- something is bad and you're fixing or overcoming it
- Existential value -- something is worth doing, nothing bad preceded it
- a Buddhist monk, so finds genuine Buddhist value in meditation (not surprising!)
- meditation & presence allow you to enter the Pure Land & the Kingdom of God
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| Hanh p. 9 |
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| Hanh p. 12 |
Hanh p. 22
