Page 74 - Liberating Liberals V2

The God-shaped Hole in the Soul
bedrock of their philosophy. It utilizes this meaning quandary to achieve distance on the meanings that can cause unhappiness.
For instance, Buddhism’s concept of “no mind.” According to the Standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy, no mind “means that there is no conscious activity of the mind that is associated with ego-consciousness... In other words, no mind is a free mind that is not delimited by ideas, desires, and images.”
“The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts in order for the truth to have a chance
to penetrate, to reveal itself,” wrote Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh. He might have added, to remove all meanings as well.
Monk Pema Chodron wrote: “We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs — or we don’t. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality — or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha’s opinion, to train in staying open and curious – to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs – is the best use of our human lives.”58
In addition, the East introduced the practice of meditation. Zen expert Alan Watts defines meditation to be a practice “for the mind to simply acknowledge its content without becoming identified with that content, or as an end in itself. Meditation directs awareness inward until pure awareness is achieved by being awake inside without being aware of anything except awareness itself.”59
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