059 - Meditation, Nothingness, Buddhism, and Hegel

The Cunning of Geist

To me, the goal of meditation is to escape the left-brain world of analyzing, breaking things down, either/or judgmental thinking, and to get in touch with life itself. Thoughts tend to come to the foreground, but there remains a background. In meditation, thoughts can be viewed like passing clouds in the sky, and the goal is to experience the sky, and not get hung up on the clouds.
The notion of Being and Nothing is central to Hegel's philosophy. And Hegel is clear - focusing on just "being" and not "nothingness" as well, misses the point. Becoming is the truth, which contains both being and nothing as moments. For Being to "be there" (determinate) it must contain both notions.
The goal of meditation is not to ignore or eliminate being, or thought. It is just to spend some time each day to quietly sense the complete picture, both the sky and the clouds.
This episode explores meditation from this standpoint, with commentary on Buddhism as well, noting that equating Buddhism with a nihilism of pure nothingness is a mistake.

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