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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Iranian_Engineer: hello Sitaram
Iranian_Engineer: I read a bit of your childhood it was quite interesting

http://www.toosmallforsupernova.org/fromtheauthor.htm

Iranian_Engineer: special kid you were

Sitaram: oh, hi... I am watching educational television.... a Dr. who studies Tibetan monks brains while they meditate

Iranian_Engineer: its really interesting!

Sitaram: it just ended the show... and now... Religion and Ethics in World
News is coming on

Sitaram: the doctor was Jon Kabat-Zin

Iranian_Engineer: what were the conclusions?

Sitaram: Jon Kabat-Zinn

Sitaram: MIT Massachusetts

Sitaram: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week703/feature.html

Iranian_Engineer: how do they study the brains of meditators

Sitaram: electrodes... brain waves

Sitaram: now the show with Fareed Zakaria is on (he is an Indian intellectual)

Iranian_Engineer: what happened to brain waves while meditating?
Iranian_Engineer: they were slow?

Sitaram: yes... very unusual...in 20 yr practitioners...
Sitaram: patterns not thought possible

Iranian_Engineer: what were the patterns like?

Sitaram: http://www.eomega.org/omega/works...69a4abdcde628149f5ad73f3c9a93007/

Sitaram: I am doing Google search now

Sitaram: http://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/nd04_wylie_simon.htm

Sitaram: He was dismayed that the world’s most brilliant scientists, many
of whom were on his own campus, could be so sophisticated about
science, yet so unsophisticated about the nature of the mind that
produced the science. “We use all these fancy instruments, which are
extensions of the senses—electron microscopes, radio telescopes,
spectrophotometers—to study the world, but we haven’t paid much
attention to who’s doing all this studying. Who’s doing all this knowing?
What’s the mind of the scientist? We were, and are, smart in a lot of ways,
but idiotic in a lot of other ways,” he says.

Iranian_Engineer: interesting

Sitaram: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4770779

Sitaram: http://www.lioncity.net/buddhism/index.php?showtopic=8817

Iranian_Engineer: do you meditate?

Sitaram: http://www.khandro.net/practice_meditation.htm

Sitaram: I did for years , now... only time to write now

Iranian_Engineer: how did you do it?

Sitaram: http://www.purifymind.com/MeditationIntro.htm

Sitaram: here is the show I just watched... from the station that broadcast

http://www.mclaughlin.com/moo/

Iranian_Engineer: you mean you read this and started meditating?

Iranian_Engineer: ah ok thank you

Sitaram: here.... Washington post... brain waves and meditation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2005Jan2.html

Sitaram: over the past few years, researchers at the University of
Wisconsin working with Tibetan monks have been able to translate those
mental experiences into the scientific language of high-frequency gamma
waves and brain synchrony, or coordination.

Sitaram: they have pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex, an area just
behind the left forehead, as the place where brain activity associated with
meditation is especially intense.

Sitaram: the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we
have never seen before," said Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the
university's new $10 million W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain
Imaging and Behavior

Sitaram: Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the
same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance." It
demonstrates, he said, that the brain is capable of being trained and
physically modified in ways few people can imagine.

Sitaram: Scientists used to believe the opposite -- that connections among
brain nerve cells were fixed early in life and did not change in adulthood.
But that assumption was disproved over the past decade with the help of
advances in brain imaging and other techniques, and in its place,
scientists have embraced the concept of ongoing brain development and
"neuroplasticity."

Iranian_Engineer: you know the disease ADHD?

Sitaram: yes
Sitaram: all children have it, joking

Iranian_Engineer: not all haha, some

Iranian_Engineer: in that disease which you they cant keep their attention etc

Sitaram: The Dalai Lama ultimately dispatched eight of his most
accomplished practitioners to Davidson's lab to have them hooked up for
electroencephalograph (EEG) testing and brain scanning. The Buddhist
practitioners in the experiment had undergone training in the Tibetan
Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions of meditation for an estimated 10,000
to 50,000 hours, over time periods of 15 to 40 years. As a control, 10
student volunteers with no previous meditation experience were also
tested after one week of training.

Iranian_Engineer: and concentrate

Sitaram: The monks and volunteers were fitted with a net of 256 electrical
sensors and asked to meditate for short periods. Thinking and other
mental activity are known to produce slight, but detectable, bursts of
electrical activity as large groupings of neurons send messages to each
other, and that's what the sensors picked up. Davidson was especially
interested in measuring gamma waves, some of the highest-frequency
and most important electrical brain impulses.

Iranian_Engineer: and guess which part of their brain has problem?
Iranian_Engineer: the prefrontal lobe!

Sitaram: Both groups were asked to meditate, specifically on
unconditional compassion. Buddhist teaching describes that state, which is
at the heart of the Dalai Lama's teaching, as the "unrestricted readiness
and availability to help living beings."

Sitaram: Davidson said that the results unambiguously showed that
meditation activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly
different ways from those of the volunteers. Most important, the
electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and
unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the
movement of the waves through the brain was far better organized and
coordinated than in the students.

Iranian_Engineer: yes I opened that page

Sitaram: so, the mullahs did not block it

Iranian_Engineer: its interesting
Iranian_Engineer: tell me about your experiences of meditation ..how
you learned etc

Sitaram: I would need to compose an essay... to gather my thoughts...
which I am happy to do

Iranian_Engineer: compose essay about?

Sitaram: duh... about the complex question you just posed

Iranian_Engineer: ah ok

Sitaram: regarding my experiences with meditation

Iranian_Engineer: yes !!!I am really eager to read that essay!

Sitaram: look at this page I found JOY DETECTIVES

http://www.dharmalife.com/issue21/joydetectives.html

Sitaram: I have been writing things about it over the past 8 years
Sitaram: I suppose visions are the most interesting aspect of it
Sitaram: I will give you one link

Iranian_Engineer: what kind of visions?

Sitaram: http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page027.htm

Sitaram: there is good example
Sitaram: you can see music and pictures if this link is not blocked but I
think they block this

Sitaram: http://www.members.aol.com/Sitaram/page001.htm

Iranian_Engineer: its not blocked

Sitaram: noooooo!!!!! this one
Sitaram: members.aol.com
Sitaram: is that block.... I think yes
Sitaram: here is copy at non blocked site... I think

Sitaram: http://www.sitaram.0catch.com/page001.htm

Sitaram: that is perhaps not blocked
Sitaram: otherwise, first link is minus pictures/music

Iranian_Engineer: I meant your first link doesn’t have pictures

Sitaram: duh... that’s what I told you... not blocked... but no pictures/no music

Sitaram: you can download my entire site, as zipped files ... and unzip it
on your hard drive... with music and pictures on several pages

Sitaram: http://www.toosmallforsupernova.org/downloads.htm

Iranian_Engineer: ah there was problem the page disappeared!

Sitaram: but... perhaps, if the authorities discovered it on your hard drive... you might be in big trouble

Iranian_Engineer: come on

Iranian_Engineer: haha

Sitaram: if you download only the first 100 pages... plus wav plus gif

Sitaram: I am serious... after page 100, there are some pages which
would get you executed or imprisoned in Saudi

Sitaram: but, if you only download 1st 100 pages, wav, gif, jpg... you can
see music and pictures

Iranian_Engineer: well how can they know what I download?

Sitaram: well, if police come to your home.....

Iranian_Engineer: why police should come to my home?
Iranian_Engineer: its not that much anarchy

Sitaram: for example... let us say that I am charged here with some
crime.... and police get search warrant (this is hypothetical example)....
but this has happened.... and they seize my computer... and find child
pornography on hard drive... then I could go to prison

Iranian_Engineer: and what are those which they can execute me for?
Iranian_Engineer: but here there are no such rules

Sitaram: ok... TODAY you do not have such a government... but how do
you know that there will not be SOME OTHER REVOLUTION... another
ayatollah, or perhaps.... some Wahabi group will gain power

Iranian_Engineer: I dont think so?

Sitaram: oh... nonsense... you have had morality police... and women are
lashed for improper dress, makeup.. or acid in uncovered face (or is that
just Afghanistan)

Iranian_Engineer: why should I fear of something which doesn’t exist?

Sitaram: well... in 1920... if I talked concentration camps to a German,
and lamps made of human skin, that German would say "oh I don’t think
so"

Iranian_Engineer: when there many fearful things already?

Sitaram: in northern Nigeria, they now have Sharia law, and are cutting
off the hands of adolescents..... and stoning women... who would have
foreseen that

Iranian_Engineer: you know

Iranian_Engineer: if they find out what I talk here etc ..they might put me
in prison

Sitaram: in 1930s who would have foreseen in USA the Senator McCarthy
witch hunts for communists,.... and the blackball lists which ruined careers
of entertainers and others

Sitaram: OK, so... excellent example

Iranian_Engineer: but I don’t care
Iranian_Engineer: I don’t limit myself!!

Sitaram: martyrs rarely do

Sitaram: Nabokov said, in "Pale Fire", "Curiosity is the highest form of
insubordination"

Iranian_Engineer: interesting

Iranian_Engineer: here many people are fearful

Iranian_Engineer: you know there are enough outer authorities without
creating for yourself an inner authority to haunt you and stalk you.

Iranian_Engineer: but the main problem comes when you make yourself
a prison

Sitaram: I was quoting something today to my wife, said I think by Asar
Nafisi, or some Iranian... cant remember

Iranian_Engineer: yes?

Sitaram: they said that "the ultimate degree of religious fanaticism is
when you do not feel comfortable even in your own home"

Iranian_Engineer: yes

Sitaram: my wife said... "what does that mean"...

Iranian_Engineer: well she wasn’t living here so she might not
understand

Sitaram: I said "well, you are alone at home, and you worry that you are
properly covered up, ... or look at the clock for time of prayer.... or you
must release gas, and you worry...

Sitaram: a paranoia that you are always being watched, judged

Sitaram: even when alone

Iranian_Engineer: I know what it means

Sitaram: hadith give account of one city where the toilets faced Mecca,....
so the muslims would turn their face away, as they moved their bowels

Sitaram: this is not a joke, but a true account

Iranian_Engineer: haha

Iranian_Engineer: how stupid

Sitaram: so.... they do not feel at ease even to take a dump in the toilet...
or fart

Iranian_Engineer: haha

Sitaram: oh.... Islam teaches in Hadith, that if you wash wudu, and enter
masjid, and then fart, you must hold your nose, walk out of masjid, wash
again, and then return to prayer

Sitaram: that is not a joke... that is an actual hadith

Iranian_Engineer: these are nonsense !! and people are stupid
really...you see how dangerous religion could be for blind followers!

Sitaram: I cite these to give dramatic illustration of how one might feel ill
at ease even alone in home or in bathroom

Sitaram: you know.... I got to be intimately familiar with Sikh scriptures ,
the Adhi Granth, and Nanak, the founder... and it is truly ISLAM
reformed.... and quite appealing and compelling....

Sitaram: Sikhism developed around 16th century, in an area in Punjab
India, where Muslims and Hindus lived side by side

Iranian_Engineer: you are starting a religious talk again

Sitaram: so, we shall change the subject... I thought you might find the Sikh example fascinating

Sitaram: we shall change subject

Iranian_Engineer: you know that I agree those things are stupid and they
exist in every religon and stupid people follow such silly rules and.......

Iranian_Engineer: so don’t try to persuade me how terrible things are

Iranian_Engineer: I am more interested to know about meditation
Iranian_Engineer: or how can we change the situation?
Iranian_Engineer: you know its negative critic ...and its not productive
Iranian_Engineer: negative

Sitaram: well, I told you about engineer in Tehran, who went to yoga
classes,.... and when I asked what mullahs thought, he said it is billed as
exercise, not religion

Iranian_Engineer: imagine a poor girl in a country like Iran
Iranian_Engineer: yes true

Sitaram: but the notion was that it was a secret way to go some place,
and be spiritual in a hidden fashion

Iranian_Engineer: I am so worried about the future of my country I love
to know what am I able to do!!!

Sitaram: you know... I felt the concern of my African friends for their
troubled societies

Sitaram: which is why I created

http://voicesofafricaunited.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram: so... I am not deaf and blind to the problems and sufferings of other nations and cultures...

Iranian_Engineer: I know

Sitaram: you are right.... what is to be done in countries such as yours

Sitaram: is there not a way to have Islam and also Democracy, human
rights, freedom of speech, tolerance for other religious beliefs

Iranian_Engineer: you feel everything is in its wrong place and you cant
do anything..upper system is corrupted!

Iranian_Engineer: I think not

Sitaram: you have mentioned a key word... corruption

Iranian_Engineer: I don’t think one can rule a country with religious absolutism?

Sitaram: in so many nations
Sitaram: the Philippines... such corruption.... when it could be a shining
star...

Sitaram: in so many African nations..... those who seize power, and steal
resources from their starving people

Sitaram: north Korea has now suddenly refused food from NGO foreign
groups

Sitaram: Non Government Organizations

Iranian_Engineer: yes like us. we have such oil !! the price of oil
increases each day and we become poorer each day

Sitaram: they will only accept help for power plants.... and no one wants
to give that, because of their agenda for nuclear weapons

Sitaram: I will tell you a saying from American farmers...

Sitaram: the farmer is the only one who BUYS retail, and sells wholesale

Sitaram: if farmer needs hammer, he goes to hardware store, and pays
retail price...

Iranian_Engineer: what does it mean?

Sitaram: but he sells his milk wholesale for such little price... but the milk
factory (i forget correct term)... becomes wealthier, and grocery store
becomes wealthier, than farmer who makes the milk

Iranian_Engineer: true!

Sitaram: wholesales is cheap price

Sitaram: retail is highest price to consumer...

Iranian_Engineer: yes
Iranian_Engineer: that’s a sad truth

Sitaram: the diamonds miners do not make the same profit as the
jewelers

Iranian_Engineer: I know

Iranian_Engineer: that’s what happens to our poor people

SFG75 · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 7:22 pm Post subject:

Interesting conversation Sitaram, I did some research and found some items that may be of interest. Like anything concerning any religion, the attitudes and world viewpoint of people of a given religion are determined by how things are interpreted. It's easy to look at the fringe and to acribe their values as being the ones that dominate the religion. Fred Phelps isn't Christianity. Osama bin-Laden isn't Islam, and it's just a matter of joinging up with reform/moderate forces in one's given religious sect to make things change for the better.

This article highlights one key way of reforming Islam. At one time, the Koran wasn't interpreted in such an anti-Semitic way. Women also played a key role, much as they did in early Christianity, before being relegated to the sidelines by power-hungry leaders. If we could have theological debates and air the moderate message to counter-act the radical Muslim message, then perhaps we would have a fighting chance for the hearts and minds of the public in the middle east.

I couldn't help but notice that throughout your conversation with the engineer from Iran, that economics as a root problem kept cropping up. I'm not certain that has anything to do with radical, moderate, or liberal Islam, but I'd wager that a good dose of political reform is in obvious order. Clerics can fight the autocratic leaders and at best, end up like the Ayatollah Khomeini, who succesfully overtherw the shah of Iran. At worst, they could end up like the father of Moqtada Al-Sadr, which is dead at the hands of government troops. The most advantageous thing for both parties is to be allies. They both control a substantial amount of power, both militarily and intellectually(at least in terms of religious followers anyways) and thus, form a hard shell that many reformists are unable to overcome.

What the middle east needs now more than ever is another Answar Sadat or a Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. A person like Karzai in a way, who blends traditional beliefs(i.e.-having a cloak) around his modern beliefs(i.e.-three piece suit covered partially by the cloak) I would envision a society where the laws are not based on the sharia, but rather, civil laws. You'd encounter people allowed to dress however they want, so you might see a woman in a midriff and cut off shorts, standing in line next to a woman who chooses to wear traditional garb. You'd have a republic with a separation of church and state, but a leader who would show up at the mosque every sunday. At one point and time, Timbuktu and Arab scholars provided invaluable knowledge to Europe and the world. The east was were a person went to learn how to practice medicine, as well as to learn about translation. We could have a modern day Ottoman renaissance so to speak.

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