 THE UNDEFEATED MIND Fall 2012 |
 Photo: mrsdkrebs America is a symbol of freedom all over the world, enjoying as it does freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. Our ancestors prized these political freedoms so much that many of them were willing to die defending them. And though many of us are often accused today of taking them for granted, we continue to see people rising up to fight for them when they’re threatened (when someone else’s freedoms are threatened, too). Continue reading…  Photo: limaoscarjuliet You don’t really know what an experience is like, of course, until you have it yourself. I remember thinking to myself when my wife and I first began discussing the idea of having children that this was especially true regarding parenthood. In the past I’d been able to predict with reasonable accuracy a number of novel experiences based on previous similar experiences, but no experience I’d yet had seemed even close to the experience of having a child (sorry, owning a pet doesn’t come close). Continue reading…  Photo: MikeBlogs I’ve always wanted to know the answers: What creates consciousness? How did the cosmos come to be? What happens when we die? Why are we here? From a certain perspective, my life has consisted of a series of investigations into ways of discovering the answers to these kinds of questions. In college, I became interested in philosophy. In medical school, I became fascinated by neurology and simultaneously began my experiment with Buddhism. I’ve learned a lot along the way and have settled at least the answer to the last question to my satisfaction (which, for interested readers, I detail in my forthcoming book The Undefeated Mind), but as to the others, a recent conversation with one of my brothers sparked an unhappy thought: perhaps our brains are built in such a way that they can’t even properly conceive the answers. Continue reading…  Photo: oskay I often wish I could snap my fingers and make people do what I want. I wish I could speed up the pace at which I achieve my goals and slow down the pace at which pleasant things fade. I wish I could write blog posts and books that everyone loves, that I could have solitude and company whenever I want and not when they’re thrust upon me, and that when I’m in a bad mood I could simply decide not to be. What I wish for, in short, is absolute control over my life. Continue reading…  Photo: DVIDSHUB The abhorrence we feel when encountering beliefs that contradict our own is so universal and so powerful that it’s hard to imagine it’s the result of anything other than natural selection, programmed into us by evolution because it gives us some kind of survival advantage. Even if we’re able to tolerate beliefs that are different than our own, remaining so creates a tension from which we can never quite become free. Continue reading…  Photo: jinterwas Could any commodity be more precious than time? Is there anything any of us want more—or more of—that at the same time seems to be more beyond our control to increase? Who among us wouldn’t strike the most Faustian of bargains for an extra year of life? Or an extra decade? We certainly can all adapt habits that have been shown to increase the likelihood of our living longer: moderate our alcohol intake, avoid smoking, exercise, and so on. But such measures won’t give us what we really want: an increase in the amount of time we have each day. Continue reading…  Photo: Wonderlane In Nichiren Buddhism, the mentor-disciple relationship—the relationship between teacher and student—is considered essential for attaining happiness. How does Nichiren Buddhism envision this relationship works? First, in a true mentor-disciple relationship, the mentor, contrary to what many believe, is not intrinsically superior to the disciple. Continue reading…  Photo: mclephan People sometimes argue about which scientific discovery or advance ranks as the greatest, as the most significant in the history of humankind. Popular answers include electricity, computers, immunizations, and antibiotics. Yet I would argue it’s none of these, but rather the scientific method of inquiry itself. The scientific method only came into being relatively recently in human history as people began to become interested in proving all the things that other people believed (for example, that the sun rotates around the Earth, the Earth is flat, and the Earth is only 5,000 or so years old). Continue reading…  Image: RavensHeart Web Studio As long as I can remember (so the cliche goes), I’ve wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first short story when I was five. It was called “Horse’s Birthday Party” and was, you won’t be surprised to learn, about a horse having a birthday party. I drew a cover (with a horse on it), taped the pages together, and handed it to my parents. They praised it to the skies, and I was hooked. Since then, no matter what I was doing (going to college and then medical school, trying to survive a medical residency, practicing medicine as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago), I’ve always thought of myself first and foremost as a writer—even though all throughout those years nothing of mine was ever published. Continue reading…  Photo: beatplusmelody Human beings are the only living creatures endowed with a full awareness of their mortality, a wound so painful that they’re driven to pull every cognitive trick in the book to deny it. As with any skill, some of us are far better at this than others, yielding a wide range of conscious reactions to the notion of personal non-being. Continue reading… |
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