Silence Unheard maintains that the reality of Patanjali's Yogasutra is a profound silence barely and variously audible to the scholars and interpreters who approach it. Even the Yogasutra itself is an "approach," a voice articulating an other-- a silent, beyond-speech yogin. Author Yohanan Grinshpon presents Patanjali as a Sankhya-philosopher, who interprets silence in accordance with his own dualist metaphysics and Buddhistic sensibilities. The Yogasutra represents an intellectual's conceptualization of utter otherness rather than the yogin's verbalization of silence. Silence Unheard focuses on the yogin's supra-normal experiences (siddhis) as well as on the classification of silences and the ultimate goal of disintegration through guna balance. The book provides a translation of the Yogasutra divided into two sections: an essential text, concerning the yoga practitioner, and a secondary text, concerning the philosopher. Grinshpon also surveys the encounters of intellectuals, scholars, seekers, devotees, and outsiders with the Yogasutra.
This study investigated the effects of Chan (Zen) meditation on musical performance anxiety and musical performance quality. Nineteen participants were recruited from music conservatories and randomly assigned to either an eight-week meditation group or a wait-list control group. After the intervention, all participants performed in a public concert. Outcome measures were performance anxiety and musical performance quality. Meditation practiced over a short term did not significantly improve musical performance quality. The control group demonstrated a significant decrease in performance quality with increases in performance anxiety. The meditation group demonstrated the opposite effect — a positive linear relation between performance quality and performance anxiety. This finding indicates that enhanced concentration and mindfulness (silent illumination), cultivated by Chan practice, might enable one to channel performance anxiety to improve musical performance.
Classroom observations are an important source of information about teaching and about the practice of particular teachers. The paper considers the value placed on talk as opposed to silence in this context and suggests that a cultural bias towards talk means that silence is commonly perceived negatively. The paper is based on a qualitative research study involving interviews with 25 teacher participants. These participants identify different types of silence and report how they use various silences in the classroom, suggesting that many different types of silence may be used productively in teaching and learning. The paper provides examples of questions that might be asked when observing teachers' uses of silence rather than talk. It concludes by proposing that classroom observations should take into account the complex skills of ‘silent pedagogy’ where the teacher makes conscious decisions to abstain from intervention based on continuous sensitive readings of the learning environment.
Silent Spring began with a “fable for tomorrow” – a true story using a composite of examples drawn from many real communities where the use of DDT had caused damage to wildlife, birds, bees, agricultural animals, domestic pets, and even humans. Carson used it as an introduction to a very scientifically complicated and already controversial subject. This “fable” made an indelible impression on readers and was used by critics to charge that Carson was a fiction writer and not a scientist.Serialized in three parts in The New Yorker, where President John F. Kennedy read it in the summer of 1962, Silent Spring was published in August and became an instant best-seller and the most talked about book in decades. Utilizing her many sources in federal science and in private research, Carson spent over six years documenting her analysis that humans were misusing powerful, persistent, chemical pesticides before knowing the full extent of their potential harm to the whole biota.
Carson’s passionate concern in Silent Spring is with the future of the planet and all life on Earth. She calls for humans to act responsibly, carefully, and as stewards of the living earth.
Additionally Silent Spring suggested a needed change in how democracies and liberal societies operated so that individuals and groups could question what their governments allowed others to put into the environment. Far from calling for sweeping changes in government policy, Carson believed the federal government was part of the problem. She admonished her readers and audiences to ask “Who Speaks, And Why?” and therein to set the seeds of social revolution. She identified human hubris and financial self-interest as the crux of the problem and asked if we could master ourselves and our appetites to live as though we humans are an equal part of the earth’s systems and not the master of them.
Carson expected criticism, but she did not expect to be personally vilified by the chemical industry and its allies in and out of government. She spent her last years courageously defending the truth of her conclusions until her untimely death in 1964.
Silent Spring inspired the modern environmental movement, which began in earnest a decade later. It is recognized as the environmental text that “changed the world.” She aimed at igniting a democratic activist movement that would not only question the direction of science and technology but would also demand answers and accountability. Rachel Carson was a prophetic voice and her “witness for nature” is even more relevant and needed if our planet is to survive into a 22nd century.
Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking investigation into the harmful effects of DDT and other pesticides on the environment.
By giving our bustling minds a dedicated break from day-to-day worries, meditation appears to empower the brain to run more efficiently, new research shows.
<p>The papers in this volume were originally presented at the conference "Beginning a Third Century of Tibetan Studies," which was held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, April 17-19, 1984. The papers cover topics dealing with Tibetan history, medicine, literature, and thought. (Ben Deitle 2006-04-03)</p>
The papers in this volume were originally presented at the conference "Beginning a Third Century of Tibetan Studies," which was held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, April 17-19, 1984. The papers cover topics dealing with Tibetan history, medicine, literature, and thought. (Ben Deitle 2006-04-03)
<p>Three theories currently compete to explain the conceptual deficits that result from brain damage: sensory-functional theory, domain-specific theory, and conceptual structure theory. We argue that all three theories capture important aspects of conceptual deficits, and offer different insights into their origins. Conceptual topography theory (CTT) integrates these insights, beginning with A. R. Damasio’s (1989) convergence zone theory and elaborating it with the similarity-in-topography (SIT) principle. According to CTT, feature maps in sensory-motor systems represent the features of a category’s exemplars. A hierarchical system of convergence zones then conjoins these features to form both property and category representations. According to the SIT principle, the proximity of two conjunctive neurons in a convergence zone increases with the similarity of the features they conjoin. As a result, conjunctive neurons become topographically organised into local regions that represent properties and categories. Depending on the level and location of a lesion in this system, a wide variety of deficits is possible. Consistent with the literature, these deficits range from the loss of a single category to the loss of multiple categories that share sensory-motor properties.</p>
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We present a simple framework that highlights the most fundamental requirement for the evolution of altruism: assortment between individuals carrying the cooperative genotype and the helping behaviours of others with which these individuals interact. We partition the fitness effects on individuals into those due to self and those due to the ‘interaction environment’, and show that it is the latter that is most fundamental to understanding the evolution of altruism. We illustrate that while kinship or genetic similarity among those interacting may generate a favourable structure of interaction environments, it is not a fundamental requirement for the evolution of altruism, and even suicidal aid can theoretically evolve without help ever being exchanged among genetically similar individuals. Using our simple framework, we also clarify a common confusion made in the literature between alternative fitness accounting methods (which may equally apply to the same biological circumstances) and unique causal mechanisms for creating the assortment necessary for altruism to be favoured by natural selection.
The determination of trace plant growth regulator (PGR) has received more and more attentions in the field of phytophysiology and food safety. But the simple and sensitive method for simultaneously analysing multiple classes of PGR remains poorly investigated. In this study, a new pre-column fluorescence labelling method using 2-(11H-benzo[a]carbazol-11-yl)-ethyl-4-methylbenzenesulfonate (BCETS) as the labelling reagent has been developed for simultaneous determination of seven PGRs (i.e., indole-3-acetic acid, 3-indolybutyric acid, 3-indolepropionic acid, jasmonic acid, gibberellin A3, 1-naphthylacetic acid and 2-naphthaleneacetic acid) by HPLC with fluorescent detection (FLD). The proposed method offered the LOD of 0.34-0.73 ng/mL for seven PGRs, which were significantly lower than the reported methods. The crude extract without complex pre-treatments and purification was directly labelled by BCETS and analysed by HPLC-FLD, which facilitates the high-throughput sample screening. This method was proven to be inexpensive, simple, selective, sensitive, accurate and reliable for trace PGR determination.
Without breath, the prana we cultivate through yoga practice would have no real avenue for circulation; the breath is everything. Try this easy breathing meditation to foster a more effective practice.
A new study suggests that mindfulness practices may help boost mood and prevent full-on depression.
Tools on this platform allows the user to analyze their thoughts and structure them with SimpleMind. The unique free lay-out allows the user to organize your ideas exactly how they want it.
Some degree of fear and anxiety is inevitable in life. But for some people, these emotions can become truly debilitating, keeping them trapped in cycles that can lead to depression and even chronic pain. So how can we help patients better manage fear and anxiety when they come up? Below, you’ll find a simple exercise …
A fundamental aspect of all biological systems is cooperation. Cooperative interactions are required for many levels of biological organization ranging from single cells to groups of animals1,2,3,4. Human society is based to a large extent on mechanisms that promote cooperation5,6,7. It is well known that in unstructured populations, natural selection favours defectors over cooperators. There is much current interest, however, in studying evolutionary games in structured populations and on graphs8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17. These efforts recognize the fact that who-meets-whom is not random, but determined by spatial relationships or social networks18,19,20,21,22,23,24. Here we describe a surprisingly simple rule that is a good approximation for all graphs that we have analysed, including cycles, spatial lattices, random regular graphs, random graphs and scale-free networks25,26: natural selection favours cooperation, if the benefit of the altruistic act, b, divided by the cost, c, exceeds the average number of neighbours, k, which means b/c > k. In this case, cooperation can evolve as a consequence of ‘social viscosity’ even in the absence of reputation effects or strategic complexity.
A Simpler Way: Crisis As Opportunity is a feature-length documentary that follows a community in Australia which came together to explore and demonstrate a simpler way to live in response to global crises.
<p>Many patients can obtain rapid, short-term relief of anxiety through the use of simple, meditative techniques. Anxiety, tension, mild depressive feelings, and psychophysiologic symptoms frequently respond to such techniques. Five techniques are described, including physical self-support, attending to unpleasant feelings, listening to thoughts, listening to sounds, and paying attention to one's breathing. The techniques are easy to learn, innocuous, and well accepted by most patients. Patients who experience relief with simple psychological techniques are often more hopeful and more accessible to treatment.</p>
The old Indian literature describes a technique known as Sutra-Neti. That is, passing a catheter or similar material through the nose and out of the mouth as a means of clearing the airway. One of our patients adapted this method, tying the catheter end to end, in order to control his severe snoring and obstructive sleep apnoea. This was effective for several months. He subsequently responded well to a uvulopalatopharyngoplasty.
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