David Gould <dave at deep-tranceNOSPAM.com> wrote:
>>http://www.google.com/groups?selm=ei5ocvkqcm7ee3bjl2hbfj5c1h6e6gb1vg%404ax.com>>>> Shocked, flustered, and surprised are anxious responses
>> that the Reuter's article appears to link to the amygdala.
>> So it seems that meditation may suppress amygdala responses.
>>You don't want to suppress all amygdala responses.. it mediates
>pleasurable sensations like love and lust too ;)
IAN: Good point. And it depends on one's ultimate goals.
Meditation may reasonably be seen as a drug (albeit very
different in that it is self-directed) in which a lower
dose will produce a milder effect and a higher dose will
produce a stronger effect. The goal of many practitioners
is to suppress feelings of lust and even feelings per se.
Such goals are best achieved by high doses of meditation.
"Symptoms of enlightenment" are often characterized
along the lines of an abolition of emotional responses;
a perception of no difference between viable conditions.
Some glimpses of nirvana from the Hindu sage Sri Sankara:
"Neither greed nor delusion, nor loathing, nor liking have I."
"Nothing of pleasure or pain or virtue or vice do I know."
"One who in a dream, sees things good and bad, high and low,
favourable and fearful, thinks that they are actually real,
and never for a moment thinks they are unreal while dreaming.
Even so is this world till the dawn of Self Knowledge."
Source: "Thus Spake Sankara." Mylapore India: Sri Ramakrishna Math.
One could find many more examples of descriptions of the
enlightenment state as the cessation of emotional responses
expressed as a response of indifference to variable conditions.
In light of the topic at hand, we might see that as a result
of high-dose meditation. Lower doses would be indicated for
those wishing to modulate but not eliminate their emotions.
http://IanGoddard.net/philo.htm
"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." Henri Amiel (1821-1881)
