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 Sunday, September 15, 2013
posted by Sastry Rama 8:27 AM
Thursday, November 01, 2012
posted by Sastry Rama 3:25 PM
Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower Is More Than a Metaphor
[Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 2, 325–336]
Abstract:
The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests
of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of
social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an
interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels
of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control
task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but
consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of
glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels,
thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.
[also saved in Google Docs]
posted by Sastry Rama 3:15 PM
The pursuit of meaningfulness in life.
Baumeister, Roy F.; Vohs, Kathleen D.
Snyder, C. R. (Ed); Lopez, Shane J. (Ed), (2002). Handbook of positive psychology., (pp. 608-618). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press, xviii, 829 pp.
Abstract
- Human beings begin life as animals and remain tied throughout life to natural cycles of birth and death, eating and sleeping, reproduction, danger and safety, and more. Yet to this natural dimension of human life must be added a cultural one. Humans use their thinking capacity to transcend their immediate environment and their natural urges and responses. Thinking usually involves meaning, as in the use of language, symbols, and connections between concepts. The authors discuss the pursuit of the meaningfulness in life. The aim of positive psychology is to catalyze change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about positive subjective experience: well-being and satisfaction (past); flow, joy, the sensual pleasures, and happiness (present); and constructive cognitions about the future--optimism, hope, and faith.
[copy in Google Docs - Chap. 44 of Handbook]
posted by Sastry Rama 3:10 PM
Notes from "Understanding the Search for Meaning in Life: Personality, Cognitive Style, and the Dynamic Between Seeking and Experiencing Meaning"
Journal of Personality 76:2, April 2008
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2007.00484.x
Michael F. Steger,1 Todd B. Kashdan,2
Brandon A. Sullivan,3 and Danielle Lorentz3
1University of Louisville
2George Mason University
3University of Minnesota
posted by Sastry Rama 3:07 PM
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
भक्त्या मामभिजानाति यावान्यश्चास्मि तत्त्वतः।
ततो मां तत्त्वतो ज्ञात्वा विशते तदनन्तरम्।।18.55
[Source: Gita Supersite http://202.3.77.102/acquia/?q=node/20]
posted by Sastry Rama 8:27 PM
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Prof Jonardon Ganeri has published a work on conceptions of self in Indian ethics and epistemology, The Concealed Art of the Soul (Oxford University Press 2007) [here]. The book argues for a performativist conception of self. "The startling idea of the Hindu Vedantins, again, is that the way out of colossal error is to embed within the illusion the catalyst of its own destruction. The Upanisad is a ‘Trojan text’, a false gift that will blow up in the mind of its recipient, destroying the error of which it too is a part. It is a false vehicle with a true content.
posted by Sastry Rama 1:37 PM
Thursday, January 14, 2010
"Happiness for Aristotle is not an inward disposition that might then issue in certain actions, but a way of acting which creates certain dispositions."
[Source: Pg. 84, "The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction" by Terry Eagleton]
posted by Sastry Rama 7:10 PM
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Apologetics is the whole of the consensus of the views of those who defend a position in an argument of long standing. The term comes from the Greek word apologia (απολογία), meaning a speaking in defense. Early Christian writers (c 120-220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists
posted by Sastry Rama 6:44 PM
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
"the great seventeenth-century philosopher-scientist René Descartes is often said to have banished teleology from science. He envisaged a unified style of explanation based ultimately on the universal laws of mathematical physics that governed the behaviour of all natural phenomena, celestial and terrestrial alike. There was no room for any irreducible purposiveness or goal-seeking deep down in nature.The job of the scientist was to subsume all observable events under the relevant mathematical covering laws; and in respect of these ultimate laws there was no attainable answer to the question ‘why?’ One could say – and Descartes did say – that God had decreed that it should be so; but he immediately added that the rationale for God’s decrees was not for human scientists to discover: it was ‘forever locked up in the inscrutable abyss of His wisdom’. David Hume, writing a century after Descartes, took an essentially parallel line, though couched in entirely secular language: the job of science was to map the observable natural world, but any supposed ‘ultimate springs and principles’ of nature were beyond human power to fathom."
"Belief in God, according to Freud’s view in Civilisation and its Discontents, is based on an infantile response: the terrifying ‘feeling of helplessness’ in childhood aroused the ‘need for protection’ – for protection through love – which was provided by the father; and the recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a Father, but this time a more powerful one. This Freudian diagnosis has been highly influential, and can often be seen as informing the idea, voiced by many contemporary atheists, that God is merely a projection formed in response to our human insecurities. But there are at least two problems with this way of dismissing the religious impulse. ..."
[Source: "On the Meaning of Life" by John Cottingham]
living grudgingly vs. living gratefully
posted by Sastry Rama 5:21 PM
Monday, January 04, 2010
"For non-human animals, life can be wretched or happy, but there is nothing much they can do about how it turns out. For human beings, by contrast, at least those who are fortunate enough to have the material resources to free them from the daily struggle for existence, there is the opportunity to reflect on how life should be lived. Among the educated citizens of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, many found it natural to turn to philosophy for guidance; as for the philosophers themselves, though few were prepared to offer instant solutions, most saw it as a main part of the purpose of philosophizing to reach a view on how to achieve fulfilment in life. In the centuries that followed, philosophical systems became steadily more complex and elaborate, but their authors held fast to the old aspiration of philosophy to help humans lead happy and worthwhile lives.
Nowadays, things are very different. ..."
[Source: Philosophy and the Good Life (Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics) by John Cottingham]
Other books by the same author (John Cottingham):
Why believe?
The Spiritual Dimension - Religion, Philosophy and Human Value
Theodicy: the branch of theology that defends God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil
submission to god: an obsolete ideal? "... The paradox of our humanity is that we oscillate between two poles: on the one side our contingency and dependency, and on the other our aspiration to independence and autonomy. The admission of dependency which {one might dislike in prayer to the Lord} is simply a religious expression of something fundamental to what it is to be human. For pace the existentialists, we are not self-creating beings: our fulfilment hinges on a nature and a context we did not create, and cannot radically change. Today’s fashionable talk about ‘life-style choices’ often seems to gloss over this central truth – indeed the legitimate scope of our choice is taken by some to embrace even the supposed ‘self-assignments’ of gender and bodily appearance that are made possible by modern plastic surgery. But one does not need to pass judgement one way or the other on these costly attempts at self-recreation with the aid of the surgeon’s knife in order to believe that there will always remain (irrespective of gender and appearance) an essential structure to our humanity, not of our making, which has to be accepted, like it or not, if we are to function as human beings in the first place. It is hubris to think that we can rewrite these fundamental rules – for example the rules of love and vulnerability that determine what we can achieve in relationship to our fellow humans. We can try to force things our way, to demand, to insist, to reject, to rant and rail, but ultimately we can only achieve our goals by conforming to the laws of love: give, not take, fellow-feeling not arrogance, patience not grasping, waiting not insisting. These laws are written deep in our nature as moral beings; and the submission to them which is encapsulated in religious expressions such as ‘Thy will be done’ is not some strange self-abasement before an alien will, but an expression of objective moral realities to which, like it or not, our lives must conform if they are to flourish.
... It is a complete misunderstanding to suppose that the religious stance – ‘Thy will be done’ – involves a servile submission to an alien power. The Will that is held up as our destiny is the kind of will that a human parent has for a child – a will that envisages not conformity but open-ended growth."
[Source: Chap. 3 The Spiritual Dimension - Religion, Philosophy and Human Value]
posted by Sastry Rama 6:43 PM
Saturday, January 02, 2010
"When considering the doctrines of the Stoics, it is important to remember that they think of philosophy not as an interesting pastime or even a particular body of knowledge, but as a way of life. They define philosophy as a kind of practice or exercise (askêsis) in the expertise concerning what is beneficial (Aetius, 26A). Once we come to know what we and the world around us are really like, and especially the nature of value, we will be utterly transformed. "
[Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism
Soteriology is the study of religious doctrines of salvation, which are a feature of various religions.Labels: philosophy
posted by Sastry Rama 11:25 PM
A pedagogy of becoming By Jon Mills
Book overview: This book advocates a return to the spirit of the Greek notion of paideia, emphasizing a pedagogy of becoming. The authors offer a holistic approach to education that aspires toward the inclusion, promotion, and nurturance of virtue and valuation.
Chapter 1: Can Wisdom be taught? by David A. JoplingLabels: booksToRead
posted by Sastry Rama 11:06 PM
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
apophatic: of or relating to the belief that God can be known to humans only in terms of what He is not (such as `God is unknowable')
An example of apophatic mysticism is in the classical Tao text, Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao Tsu (6th century B.C.E.), which begins with the words, “Even the finest teaching is not the Tao itself. Even the finest name is insufficient to define it. Without words, the Tao can be experienced, and without a name, it can be known.” (Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/)
posted by Sastry Rama 6:34 PM
Friday, November 06, 2009
ॐ यो ब्रह्माणं विदधाति पूर्वं। यो वै वेदांश्च प्रहिणोति तस्मै। तं ह देवमात्मबुद्धिप्रकाशं मुमुक्षुर्वै सरणमहं प्रपद्ये॥ ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः॥९॥ He who creates this universe in the beginning and He whom the Vedas gloriously praise and sing about, in Him I take refuge in the firm faith and belief that my intellect may shine with knowledge of Brahman. Om Peace, Peace, Peace. [Source: http://www.dlshq.org/books/es25.htm]
Labels: Chants
posted by Sastry Rama 6:27 PM
Monday, October 26, 2009
theodicy – theology that defends God in the face of evil
Reclaiming Theodicy: Reflections on Suffering, Compassion and Spiritual Transformation (Library of Philosophy and Religion) by: Michael Stoeber
posted by Sastry Rama 9:28 PM
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
veridical: True; Pertaining to an experience, perception, or interpretation that accurately represents reality; as opposed to unsubstantiated, illusory, or delusory
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/veridical
posted by Sastry Rama 6:51 PM
Friday, September 18, 2009
"Upadesa Saram was written by Sri Bhagavan Ramana not only in His native Tamil, but also in Sanskrit, Telugu and Malayalam— so important did He consider this ‘Essential Teaching’.
Though He had made no study of Sanskrit grammar, His spontaneous composition in the lilting supratistha metre of that classical language so impressed the great Sanskritist, Kavyakantha Ganapati Muni, that he promptly wrote a revealing commentary upon it."
[Ref: SRI MAHARSHI’S WAY - A Translation and Commentary on Upadesa Saram
by D.M. Sastri; (1999) SRI RAMANASRAMAM, Tiruvannamalai]
In Sanskrit (and many other languages), meter is determined by the pattern of long and short syllables. There are dozens of meters; some are determined by the number of syllables in a line, and some by the total length of the syllables in a line.
Names of meters and numbers of syllables: ukta - 1; atyukta 2; madhya 3; pratistha 4; supratistha 5; gayatri 6; usnik 7; anustubh 8; brhati 9; pankti 10; tristubh 11
[Ref: Math for Poets and Drummers]
SuprathisthA is a metre of twenty syllables.
posted by Sastry Rama 4:53 PM
Saturday, September 12, 2009
antinomianism - ("against the law") the theological doctrine that by faith and God's grace a Christian is freed from all laws (including the moral standards of the culture)
autochthonous: Native to the place where found; indigenous; Originating, where found; "the autochthonal fauna of Australia includes the kangaroo";
Akrasia weakness of the will; "lacking command (over oneself)", occasionally transliterated as acrasia, is the state of acting against one's better judgment;
Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and Self-Control (1987)
posted by Sastry Rama 4:35 PM
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
"The startling idea of the Hindu Vedantins, again, is that the way out of colossal error is to embed within the illusion the catalyst of its own destruction. The Upanisad is a ‘Trojan text’, a false gift that will blow up in the mind of its recipient, destroying the error of which it too is a part. It is a false vehicle with a true content."
[Ref: Page 3 of "The concealed art of the soul : Theories of Self and Practices of Truth in Indian Ethics and Epistemology"By Jonardon Ganeri (2007, OUP)]
(hermeneutics: The theory and methodology of interpretation, especially of scriptural text; the branch of theology that deals with principles of exegesis;
exegesis:An exposition or explanation of a text, especially a religious one)
[Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons by: Rita Sherma (2009, Springer)]
(panegyric: a formal public speech, or (in later use) written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical.)
"...For Voltaire, Asia was the ideal. In fact, in the eighteenth century, Voltaire was a principle panegyrist and official defender of Asia’s moral rectitude."
[Ref: Aryans, Jews, Brahmins : theorizing authority through myths of identity - Dorothy M. Figueira (2002, SUNY Press)]
posted by Sastry Rama 2:31 PM
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