That's a great lead in to something I really wanted to discuss on HN.
I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics.
Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian
monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks.
The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence.
This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?".
My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).
Prolonged isolation and meditation will do that to you. I twice spent a week in a Buddhist retreat, meditating under the guidance of monks from Burma pretty much all day long (well, at least I was supposed to, but I made friends with other people on the retreat...) Even without following all the rules you would be surprised what kind of amazing changes can go on in your mind in only one week. It does feel like you're stoned, only every day the trip is completely different. I cannot begin to imagine what happens after years of doing this.
Science studies the objective - if other people can't observe an event then it's outside of scientific discourse. Monks do the exact opposite and study the subjective - their own minds. You can't have other people observe your thoughts, but you can talk about them and verify that the processes you go through are similar to the processes of other people.
Monastic lifestyle is absolutely fascinating, from the first glance it might seem incredibly boring. I think of the two retreats as some of the most interesting moments in my life. It's at the very least as fun to do as starting a startup or going to a university.
On the first retreat, yes, because I wasn't prepared for such a radical transformation. Some of it was pleasant, and some of it was very unpleasant. Yes, you can get bad trips.
On the second retreat, no.
You could purposely slightly change the instructions to take detours into all kinds of things, and it seems that most people do, but it probably isn't safe and it isn't the point at all. The faster you can get over the "wow, I could do that without any substances?!" stage and focus on actually watching the layers of your psyche unfold as your mind calms, the better off you'll be.
Nothing really bad, just unpleasant states of mind. Brief lapses of panic, paranoya, etc. This is why meditation isn't recommended for people with history of mental illnesses.
I was in my ethics class today and my professor started talking about plato's cave allegory, how one can only know good by doing, not talking (he did note the irony of teaching a class about this), and other such topics.
Eventually he told a story that struck me as very similar to what you describe. He said he met a bunch of Cistercian monks and talked with them a while and that the most interesting thing about them was that they seemed to hold no views about the world. They were supposed to be catholic, but they didn't pray anymore, they didn't seem to care about abortion (as an issue, not that they took a side), they didn't make any assumptions about god's shape. It was radically different from the popular conception of monks.
The professor said that the only thing that they believed in was that god was present, and that the universe was a wondrous thing to behold. They just basked in the glory of existence.
This surprised me, because I thought that the thinking of the most religious people would be radically different from the perspective of science. Both ask why, and have intellectual integrity about it. The major difference between the two is that science constantly asks "how?".
My professor said that the monks acted kind of like they were stoned. Perhaps the true difference between the two prespectives is that the monks are on downers and the scientists are on uppers :-).