On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of ExperiencingNatalie Depraz, Francisco J. Varela, Pierre Vermersch This book searches for the sources and means for a disciplined practical approach to exploring human experience. The spirit of this book is "pragmatic" and relies on a Husserlian phenomenology primarily understood as a "method" of exploring our experience. The authors do not aim at a neo-Kantian "a priori" new theory of experience but instead they describe a concrete activity: how we examine what we live through, how we "become aware" of our own mental life. The range of experiences of which we can become aware is vast: all the normal dimensions of human life (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments (e.g., a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). The central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly. Exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability through specific training. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic approach can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book. (Series B) |
Contents
A guide for the perplexed | 1 |
The basic cycle | 15 |
The structure of a session | 65 |
Surrounding events | 97 |
The point of view of the researcher | 115 |
Case studies | 122 |
Concerning practice | 155 |
The philosophical challenge | 169 |
Wisdom traditions and the ways of reduction | 205 |
Open conclusion | 233 |
241 | |
Glossary of terms | 253 |
263 | |
Other editions - View all
On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing Natalie Depraz,Francisco J. Varela,Pierre Vermersch Limited preview - 2003 |
On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing Natalie Depraz,Francisco J. Varela,Pierre Vermersch No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
act of becoming action activity apodictic apprenticeship attention basic cycle becoming aware bodhicitta Buddhist Chapter cognitive science concept concrete consciousness constitutive context critique debriefing interview Depraz describe developed dimension dynamic Dzogchen eidetic embodied epoche example experiential experimental expression fact Fink first-person fulfillment gesture going Hinayana Husserl Husserlian intersubjective introspection intuitive evidence Jesus prayer knowledge letting-go lived experience logic Mahayana Maine de Biran means mediation mental method methodological mind mode motivation Nyingma object ontological perception phenomenology philosophical point of view position possible practice pragmatic praxis precisely problem psychology qualia question reduction reference reflecting act rience scientific second-person sense sensory session shamatha simply singular situation stereoscopic vision structure subjective experience sunyata suspension techniques temporal temporal logic thematized things third-person Tibetan Tibetan Buddhism tion tive tonglen tradition transcendental Vajrayana validation Varela variations verbalization words