Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Enlightenment and stuff

A series of vaguely related links I stumbled thru while doing my normal searches:

Dark Night and What Enlightenment is Like
A pragmatic dharma practitioner lists a few characteristics of enlightenment.  A little bit idealized here and there, but a good general list.

How Understanding the Process of Enlightenment Could Change Science
Jeff Warren with some interesting stuff about people having cessations/fruitions in the fMRI machine.

On Enlightenment: An Interview with Shinzen Young
With his student Har-Prakash Khalsa.
 
Benefits of Long-Term Meditation with Shinzen Young
More enlightenment talk from Shinzen, a transcript from the Thinking Allowed television series.

Levels of Organization in General Intelligence
This is a long treatise on artificial intellignece.  I didn't bother to read the thing, but I noticed the abstract simplified intelligence down to the following organization: code > sensory modalities > concepts > thoughts > deliberation.  It's kind of like dependent origination.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Humor Similar to Meditation

Humor similar to meditation enhances EEG power spectral density of gamma wave band activity (31-40Hz) and synchrony.

This study looks at EEG responses to humor and sees similarities with (probably) Lutz - Davidson's EEG study of Tibetan monks practicing loving-kindness meditation.