Interview with Mark Epstein

[Edward theurj Berge]

I was alerted to this by Integral Options. Check out the interview and if interested we can discuss. Also recall we discussed him before at Gaia. This link is to that discussion wherein he said (and out of which molehill I made a mountain):

“The development of mindfulness...involves a 'therapeutic split in the ego'...in which the ego becomes both subject and object, observer and observed.... Thus mindfulness is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe its own manifestations.”

[Edward theurj Berge]

At around 11:00 into the interview Epstein is asked about free association in relation to meditation. He redirects the answer into how Freud would approach listening to his patients without judgment in what he termed "evenly suspended attention" (around 12:00). I'm reminded of Levin's listening.

[Edward theurj Berge]

At 8:40 he says that emptiness is metaphorically a pregnant womb, in that it symbolizes an open "potential that is already there." Sounds like withdrawn substance to me. At around 9:00 the interviewer relates this to the capacity for creativity, again reminiscent of Bryant's withdrawn. And not coincidentally hearkening back to Derrida's an-archic khora in this thread, of which Bryant makes use in elucidating the withdrawn.

[Edward theurj Berge]

At around 12:00 he discusses how Freud came to his "evenly suspended attention" and writing was one of those practices. At around 14:00 they discuss why Freud had patients lie on a couch facing away from him. While they don't recognize this, it occurs to me that in every Zen meditation sangha I've attended one faces a wall, not another person.