Replies

Hi Jay, I’m sorry to have missed the course orientation and look forward to seeing you again and an exciting intellectual journey.

Hi Bill, glad to see you again in this year’s ceritificate course and look forward to more discussion on mindfulness, meditation and process philosophy.

Hi Dennis, I am also taking the certificate course for the second time. Good to study the course together with you again.

Hi Kevin, thank you for sharing your NDE experience and I also find your questioning of the validity of classic NDEs plausible. NDEs are often interpreted as evidences that our consciousness can survive death of the body. I tend to think whatever part of our being survive the death of our body can no longer be identified to be “I”. what can be identified as “I” has to include my body and my consciousness. that means, whatever NDEs I might have, it’s a co-work between my body and my consciousness, not my consciousness alone.

Hi Charlie, this concept of participatory cosmology, about which I first read from a quotation of John Archibald Wheeler, has been enlightening for me. It confirms and deepens my understanding of my relationship with my body first of all. Through more than 10 years of practice of meditation, I’m more and more confident that the human body is our most intimate experience of the cosmos and its state, including its vitality, is an indication of our relationship with the cosmos.By simply trying to become more conscious of it, we are becoming one with it and can co-create new possiblities.

and here is a quotation from the Great Learning, or Da Xue, one of the major classics of Confucianism:

“Only when true sincerity is practiced, can one understand one’s own nature;

when one can understand one’s own nature, one can understand the nature of human in general;

when one can understand the nature of human in general, one can understand the nature of all beings;

when one can understand the nature of all beings, one can participate in the creation of heaven and earth;

when one can participate in the creation of heaven and earth, one can be equivalent with heaven and earth. “

[Zhenbao Jin]

that is, the highest level of observation does not simply targets the object, but at the same time requires a self-consciousness of the observer himself/herself. This is a practice, and a state of being, which leads to a vision of infinite transformation of one’s own being.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Zhenbao Jin.

Thank you Jessica for raising this issue. Indeed how to reshape the way of teaching physics and basically all the subjects as a process-relational minded teacher is very interesting and important. Somehow I believe the Whiteheadian philosophy will sooner or later lead to a revolution in the way of teachings. My daughter have been visiting a Waldorf School for 10 years since Kindergarten. The Waldorf education is based on anthroposophy, a philosophy sharing much in common with the Whiteheadian philosophy. Its principle of integrating science, art and practice in the teaching of all subjects so as to achieve the holistic development of each students is quite successful, especially at the kindergarten and elementary level.

I think the core of the Whiteheadian philosophy is not simply about a new cosmolology, but about the nature of ourselves as human being and the cosmos as well as a dynamic process of evolution with all our relations. So our learning and study of all the subjects with the light of the process philosophy definitely requires that it should be a process of transformation and evolution of our own nature, including its physical dimension and mental dimension. As a teacher, we are not simply teaching concepts and theories, but have to collaborate with the students and facilitate their personal development, so that our own personal development can be achieved.

As a meditation teacher, I have been practicing this principle of teaching in my courses and retreats for some years and find it very satisfactory. Through the practice of meditation, which is based on an integration of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, process philosophy, etc., I can clearly see how the mental pole and physical pole of my being relate and react to each other and how I can understand myself both as a nexus of actual entities and as a single actual entity, as well as how I evolve through my interaction with all the elements in the environment.

The practice of meditation is actually the practice of the highest level of observation, which is the starting point of all sciences. Normally in scientific research we are required to observe in an objective way, with the hypothesis that there is a fully objective process and reality independent from our being out there. But this is an illusion. what we have is unexceptionally relation and process. with this in mind, the purpose of education should shift from the mastering of facts and theories to the cultivation of personality.

Hi Chris, I understand cancer cells develop as a result of the fact that the “two sides of the same coin”, that is, the mental dimension and the physical dimension of our being are disconnected from each other in the process of our life. the practice of meditation is simply to activate the inherent energy flow and circulation so that the two dimensions are connected again. the effect of such practice, mainly in the form of sitting meditation, is far more intensive than those of “reading, listening, talking and writing”. on the other hand, if we have deveoped our perception of the energy flow and circulation through intensive practice of meditation, it’s easier for us to make “reading, listening, talking and writing” into different forms of meditation practice.

Thank you Dr. Davis! The course is a great inspiration for me. And thank you for referring me to the book of Whitehead. unfortunately the link you shared does not work on my computer. is it ok if you share an image of the book cover or simply put in the book title?

Thank you Kevin for sharing your experience of recovering from such a severe trauma and your opinion on immortality! I agree with you that we are bigger than the bundle of physical cells of which we are made up. we also have our thoughts, goals, ambition and consciousness, which go beyond our body and are connected with all the other beings in the cosmos, and the cosmos itself. Even if our physical body dies, our thoughts and acts, if they are valuable, could live on, and even be remembered for ever.

all these are of course important. But I would like to go a little bit further. Since our physical cells are actually not that “physical” as they look like, and they change any moment, being renewed or upgraded, leading to the development of our body and soul, or starting to deteriorate, leading to disease and death, I’m wondering whether we can play a role in its development, participate in the ongoing transformation of our life, body and soul together, thus resulting in a true immortality. It seems to me that the process-relational philosophy points to that direction, as has long been intuited by the ancient thinkers and practitioners of Taoism.

Hi Andrew, thanks a lot for referring to the work of Griffin!

Hi Kevin, when I read about Aristotle somewhere last year, it was said that Aristotle reasoned that the “unmoved mover” moves through love, but not through coercion. might be of some help.

Hi Bill,

with respect to MBSR, I think it’s too much based on Buddhism. The cosmology of Buddhism seems to me focusing on the reality more as relational and constantly changing, than as a process that is constantly evoving in the principle of creative novelty and leads to the development of so many colorful forms of life including the human being.

Hi Bill, thank you for sharing the quotation from Matt Segall. I especially enjoyed this :”They recognized that new modes of thinking inspire new modes of perception, and that new conceptually synthesized perceptions then feedback onto thinking, generating an iterative and cumulative cycle of learning.”

Kevin, Kathleen and Dr. Davis,

this topic on Whitehead and the language is really important. With philosophy, we wish to interprete something that is actually unspokable, and thus also uninterpretable.Then, what’s the use of language? Dr. Davis mentioned “grasping through feeling”. Indeed, language is not only for the brain, but it’s also for the heart, or put it more exactly, for the whole being. And it does not simply add new information to the brain, in the same way as we add some new information into a computer. It has to have some effect upon, and result in the transformation of the whole being, and not for the worse, but for the better. Language should be as delicious as a juicy peach. it does not mean that juicy language has to be poetic. rather, the language of science and philosophy could also be very juicy, as I have experienced with the thoughts of Whitehead.

I think experience, or prehension in the context of process thoughts is very much teleological. Even an actual entity, or “a drop of experience”, has some purpose, or is lured to “God”. Such purpose, or lure, however, can be totally unconscious or subconscious. The human being is the flower of this process of cosmic evolution that starts to become conscious of this process of evolution that has always been there.