Carved by experience : vipassanā, psychoanalysis, and the mind investigating itself / Michal Barnea-Astrog.

Author
Barnea-Astrog, Michal [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
London : Karnac Books, 2017.
Description
xxii, 210 pages ; 23 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

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Firestone Library - Stacks BQ4570.P755 B37 2017 Browse related items Request

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    Summary note
    Carved by Experience is a close look through psychoanalysis and Buddhism into the mind's most basic conditioning: to crave the pleasant and reject the unpleasant. Drawing upon the rich literature concerning projective mechanisms, Buddhist concepts such as kamma (karma) and conditioned arising, personal stories, and real-life situations, the book follows the manner in which this conditioning takes part in the way we experience reality, perceive it, and react to it. It explores the self-reinforcing habitual patterns formed by this conditioning, and the way they are reproduced across various relationships and situations, thus building our own virtual realities and personal prisons. But the discussion soon transcends the seemingly fixed boundaries of the individual mind. It reveals their fluid and relative nature, and shows how mental pain spills out of the psyche into the interpersonal sphere, where it affects the minds of others. While addressing these issues, the book examined the special role of body sensations in the complex fabric of the human mind, and the manner in which Vipassana meditation harnesses this aspect of experience for the sake of investigating suffering and untangling it. All along, the existential paradox that we humans are subject to emerges, namely, that we have no other instrument for studying ourselves but our own shrouded minds; and it is only through those very minds that we can subvert the subjective point of view that obstructs them, unravel the conditionings in which we are captured, and break the vicious circle of producing misery and spreading it.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 189-200) and index.
    Contents
    • Projection and projective identification: on the impulse to expel
    • Vipassana meditation as the investigation of mental action
    • Perceiving reality through the experience of self
    • Karma and the nature of boundaries between minds
    • One mind constituting another: the network paradigm and non-dualistic thought
    • Projection as mental action that induces suffering
    • Transference and samsara
    • The alternative to projection
    • Is there mental life free from projection?
    ISBN
    • 9781782204503
    • 1782204504
    LCCN
    2016461856
    OCLC
    953984348
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