Kind Of Meditation Research Articles

Ethics and Meditation: A New Educational Combination to Boost Verbal Creativity and Sense of Responsibility.

Both creativity and responsibility are important higher-order skills to develop to meet the challenges of the Anthropocene, and both are related to attentional states of consciousness and to ethics. Meditation is a set of practices that trains attentional and emotional regulation. A few studies have shown that different kinds of meditation can foster different kinds of creative thinking, and others have begun to investigate the effect of the combination of meditation and ethics on ethical characteristics (but not yet on creativity or precisely on responsibility, so far). Here, we present a nonrandomized trial with an active control group among second-year science university students (n = 84) to test the effect of the secular Meditation-Based Ethics of Responsibility (MBER) program on creative potential, self-reported awareness, and sense of one's own responsibility. The results show a large effect of the program on sense of one's own responsibility and convergent and divergent creative writing tasks, both in conceptual-semantic and engineering-like verbal ideation. They also suggest that convergent conceptual-semantic thinking might moderate the effect of the MBER program on the awareness and sense of one's own responsibility. This work opens up new research and educational perspectives linked to necessary behavioral changes in the Anthropocene.

Church, Ostuni, and: Byzantine

Church, Ostuni, and: Byzantine Miriam O'Neal (bio) Church, Ostuni On the highest hill, above the sea,the Church of the Annunciationknown for its Bourbon flourishesand its frescoes of the cousins,Mary and Elisabeth. The story goes that when the Alliesbegan bombing the harbor, the faithfulrushed to the church to sandbag their saintsagainst concussion, but the less protectedcousin suffered, losing a portion of her arm—a chunk of her foot, parts of her halo flaked to dustthe priest swept up. In the dim of candles lit for nickelsto bless the dead, Mary gazes past usat her cousin's face and upturned wrist,the open hand that floats without its arm,the broken foot. Before the Angel spoke, Elisabeth had already toldMary her fate—a child, unexpected, loved.I remember my mother's sister knowing the sameof me—how she watched me from a distance,silent, smiling. That night, when the people of Ostuni ran up the hill,miles overhead each navigator calledlongitudes and latitudes to his bombardiers.As above, so below—in each pair of handsa crossing in every mouth, a prayer. [End Page 57] Byzantine When Saint Francis cut off Saint Clare's hairin a gesture of consecration, we might assumehis brothers bore witness to her state of grace,praying over her small body for her soul. But in the frescoes by Il Maestrodi Santa Chiara, the men don't watch.Like a bad family photograph, they look everywhere,as if a bird had flown in and surprised themjust as the aperture opened, and another birdcalled from a branch as it closed. Even Francis seems distracted.One hand holding scissors, the othera hank of Saint Clare's hair, he's looked away.As I traverse the circle of the crypt, I tryto coalesce that scene into some kind of meditation, but end each time, with a memoryof the night our neighbor, Carl, volunteeredto try to fit our family of fifteen into a singlesilver space. Each pop and hissof the Nikon's flash a small explosion. That day the same birds worked the air—my little brothers bug-eyed in every frame,and one sister who was clearly thinking sad thoughtswhile the youngest twisted on her toes in holey socksbetween our parents whose focus locked on the middle distance because they couldn't imaginehow to pose with their kids at Christmas.And in the lower left-hand corner of every proof,the grainy blur of our blonde lab's wagging tail. [End Page 58] Miriam O'Neal miriam o'neal's, The Body Dialogues (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020) was nominated for a 2020 Massachusetts Art of the Book award. A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, a Finalist in the 2017 Brian Turner Poetry Prize and the 2019 Disquiet International Poetry Competition, she lives in Plymouth MA. Copyright © 2023 University of North Dakota

Towards the philosophical meditation on the technical science and the humanities

The main purpose of this study, treated as a kind of meditation, was to show the interconnections between various forms of human thought and those concerning real life issues – where spirit and matter interact. Hereby, the assumption was taken that the spirit – in order to achieve mature effects – should precede matter. In a feedback loop, predicted goals have a chance to become more perfect. Similarly, the thesis was formulated and proved that each individual human domain can be considered as an element of a more general one – where philosophy can play the role of a “common denominator”. Such general statements were addressed in particular to the technical and human sciences – as well on native soil as in Japan – referring simultaneously to various spiritual attributes given to the Cosmos.

Which meditation is suitable for me? A neurophysiological perspective

In Eastern, philosophy meditation is considered part of a yogic lifestyle. Meditation is increasingly being popular amongst the masses and routinely practiced for well-being and as a means to alleviate stress and related disorders. There are various types of meditation practices prevalent across the world and with a boom in social media and communication technology we are widely exposed to many types of meditation practices. Still, the selection of meditation is mainly based on common intuition or layman recommendations. However, there are large variations in personality, temperament, and external circumstances of an individual. With the progress of scientific research in the meditation field, all kinds of meditation can be broadly classified into major three types: focussed attention (FA), open monitoring (OM) and automatic transcendence (AT). The neurophysiology of meditation has given insight into selective functional brain networks activation such as executive control network (ECN) in FA type and default mode network (DMN) in AT type of meditation. ECN provides substratum for the focussed attention and DMN for the mind-wandering state. One fundamental question is what factors lead to oscillations of the brain between two states. Here, we are proposing that oscillations of the brain in these two states are chiefly determined by the daily life challenges and a nice way to group daily life challenges is by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The individuals lower in this hierarchy are required to execute more of ECN for the successful survival. In this paper, we are hypothesising the detailed intricacies of the selection of meditation based on the position of an individual in the pyramid of needs and their predominant functional brain states.

Om bergvisjoner og diktning hos Ibsen

This article examines some connections between rock and mountain visions and poetry in Henrik Ibsen’s writings. The article argues that the poem «Paa Vidderne» and also the poem «Bergmanden» thematizes the poetic call, where the starting point of the poetry is analogous to ascending a mountain or penetrating into a dark rock room below the ground. Also in several of Ibsenʼs dramas (Keiser og galiæer, Peer Gynt, Brand, John Gabriel Borkman), the rock motif is of considerable importance, both related to cognition and poetic inspiration. In Når vi døde vågner, the rock and mountain motif is linked to the metapoetic on a number of levels. Not only does Irene insist on calling Rubek – stonemason by profession – a poet. The drama as such, and perhaps in particular Professor Rubekʼs marble stone group, can also be considered as a kind of meditation over Ibsenʼs life work. Not least, the high mountains play a dominant role as a room of the dramatic action in the dramaʼs final act. The drama ends high in the mountains, and with it also Ibsenʼs writing, as a last testimony to the fundamental significance of this topos in Ibsenʼs oevre.

Differential effects of mindfulness meditation conditions on repetitive negative thinking and subjective time perspective: a randomized active-controlled study

Objective Preliminary findings suggest that different kinds of meditation could work on diverse cognitive and psychological processes. The present study aimed at disentangling the effects of three mindfulness techniques on mental rumination and subjective time perspective. Design: 75 young healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: mindful breathing, body scan, observing-thoughts meditation and an active control condition. The meditation groups practiced mindfulness daily and attended weekly group meetings for 8 weeks, while the control group was involved in reading and discussing a book about mindfulness. Main outcome measures: Self-report measures of mindfulness skills, ruminative thinking, attitude towards time, anxiety, depression and personality traits. Results: In all meditation conditions, analysis of covariance showed a significant improvement in mindfulness skills compared to the control group. We found a specific effect of mindful breathing in reducing participants’ tendency to brooding and in increasing their positive vision of the future, compared to all other conditions. Conclusions: As expected, we found some differential effects: breathing meditation helped practitioners to train more effectively their ability to disengage from maladaptive ruminative thoughts, which could be reflected in a more optimistic attitude toward the future. These results provide useful information to structure better mindfulness-based interventions.

Dissimulation

At the fringes of the platform economy exists another web that evokes an earlier era of Internet culture. Its anarchic subculture celebrates a form of play based based on dissimulation. This subculture sets itself against the authenticity injunction of the current mode of capitalist accumulation (Zuboff). We can imagine this as a mask culture that celebrates disguise in distinction to the face culture as embodied by Facebook’s “real name” policy (de Zeeuw and Tuters). Often thriving in the anonymous milieus of web forums, this carnivalesque subculture can be highly reactionary. Indeed, this dissimulative identity play has been increasingly weaponized in the service of alt-right metapolitics (Hawley).Within the deep vernacular web of forums and imageboards like 4chan, users play by a set of rules and laws that they see as inherent to online interaction as such. Poe’s Law, for example, states that “without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views”. When these “rule sets” are enacted by a massive angry white teenage male demographic, the “weapons of the geek” (Coleman) are transformed into “toxic technoculture” (Massanari).In light of an array of recent predicaments in digital culture that trace back to this part of the web or have been anticipated by it, this special issue looks to host a conversation on the material practices, (sub)cultural logics and web-historical roots of this deep vernacular web and the significance of dissimulation therein. How do such forms of deceptive “epistemological” play figure in digital media environments where deception is the norm — where, as the saying goes, everyone knows that “the internet is serious business” (which is to say that it is not). And how in turn is this supposed culture of play challenged by those who’ve only known the web through social media?Julia DeCook’s article in this issue addresses the imbrication of subcultural “lulz” and dissimulative trolling practices with the emergent alt-right movement, arguing that this new online confluence has produced its own kind of ironic political aesthetic. She does by situating the latter in the more encompassing historical dynamic of an aestheticization of politics associated with fascism by Walter Benjamin and others.Having a similar focus but deploying more empirical digital methods, Sal Hagen’s contribution sets out to explore dissimulative and extremist online groups as found on spaces like 4chan/pol/, advocating for an “anti-structuralist” and “demystifying” approach to researching online subcultures and vernaculars. As a case study and proof of concept of this methodology, the article looks at the dissemination and changing contexts of the use of the word “trump” on 4chan/pol/ between 2015 and 2018.Moving from the unsavory depths of anonymous forums like 4chan and 8chan, the article by Lucie Chateau looks at the dissimulative and ironic practices of meme culture in general, and the subgenre of depression memes on Instagram and other platforms, in particular. In different and often ambiguous ways, the article demonstrates, depression memes and their ironic self-subversion undermine the “happiness effect” and injunction to perform your authentic self online that is paradigmatic for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In this sense, depression meme subculture still moves in the orbit of the early Web’s playful and ironic mask cultures.Finally, the contribution by Joanna Zienkiewicz looks at the lesser known platform Pixelcanvas as a battleground and playfield for antagonistic political identities, defying the wisdom, mostly proffered by the alt-right, that “the left can’t meme”. Rather than fragmented, hypersensitive, or humourless, as online leftist identity politics has lately been criticized for by Angela Nagle and others, leftist engagement on Pixelcanvas deploys similar transgressive and dissimulative tactics as the alt-right, but without the reactionary and fetishized vision that characterises the latter.In conclusion, we offer this collection as a kind of meditation on the role of dissimulative identity play in the fractured post-centrist landscape of contemporary politics, as well as a invitation to think about the troll as a contemporary term by which "our understanding of the cybernetic Enemy Other becomes the basis on which we understand ourselves" (Gallison).ReferencesColeman, Gabriella. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. New York: Verso, 2014.De Zeeuw, Daniël, and Marc Tuters. "Teh Internet Is Serious Business: On the Deep Vernacular Web and Its Discontents." Cultural Politics 16.2 (2020): 214–232.Galison, Peter. “The Ontology of the Enemy.” Critical Inquiry 21.1 (2014): 228–66.Hawley, George. Making Sense of the Alt-Right. New York: Columbia UP, 2017.Massanari, Adrienne. “#Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures.” New Media & Society 19.3 (2016): 329–46.Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.

Matching pursuit based indices for examining physiological differences of meditators and non-meditators: An HRV study

Since meditation has recently been used as a complementary therapy, the study of physiological effects of different kinds of meditation has been augmented over the last decade. In this study, a robust method based on the matching pursuit (MP) algorithm was proposed to examine the heart rate variability (HRV) differences of meditators and non-meditators. The non-meditators were comprised of metronomic breathing (MB) and spontaneous nocturnal breathing (SNB) groups. The meditators were comprised of pre Chinese Chi meditation (pCCM), during CCM (dCCM), pre Kundalini yoga meditation (pKYM), and during KYM (dKYM). Following MP based decomposition of HRV into its sparse parts, eleven indices were extracted for the MP coefficients. The efficiency of the indices was also examined through statistical significance between the groups. It was shown that for almost all indices, significant differences between the classes were observed. Furthermore, a probabilistic neural network (PNN) with a variable sigma (σ) value, was trained to classify the physiological responses of the groups. A maximum accuracy of 99.61% was detected for dKYM using 5-fold cross validation scheme. It was also shown that lower σ values give higher classification rates and upper σ values provide more robust accuracies. In conclusion, the proposed method is a promising technique for showing significant differences between HRV responses of different non-meditator and meditator groups.

[ign]Complementary/alternative medicine in adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mood disorders

Review the available evidence regarding the use of CAM in adolescents with the attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome (ADHD) and mood disorders. A review of the related literature about this topic on PubMed, focus on the last 10 years and using as a keywords Complementary/Alternative Medicine/Therapies, Attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity, Mood disorders, and Children/Adolescents. The revision was also complemented with other sources of information. Globally there has been a progressive increase in publications in relation to the CAM. However, not all studies follow a good methodology and the majority of the studies in adolescents show inconclusive results. The ADHD studies have shown benefits when using omega 3 fatty acids. Regarding other CAM and ADHD, the evidence does not show any favorable results beyond placebo. Though some of these studies have methodological mistakes or lack of enough studies, making it impossible to have conclusive. In mood disorders, there are several promising therapies, such as: physical exercise, light therapy, St. John’s Wort and some kinds of meditation like Mindfulness. In Chile, there are still no studies in this age group, which makes important the development of a line of research in this area.

Effect of advance meditation program on electrocardiogram, blood pressure, and stress level in young healthy adults

Background: Meditation is a mind and body practice for increasing calmness and physical relaxation, improving psychological balance, coping with illness, and enhancing overall health and well-being. Many studies have already been carried out to see the effect of Yoga, Pranayam, meditation, Sudarhan Kriya on physiological parameters, but till date, there is not a single study which shows the cumulative effect of yoga, pranayam, meditation along with sudarshankriya on physiological parameters. Methods: This observational study was conducted in the Department of Physiology, Rajasthan University of Health Sciences, Jaipur and in association with Art of living organization. The study participants were enrolled into three groups. In the first group, 10 participants of Advance Meditation Program (AMP), who were doing this program for the first time, in second group, 10 participants who were doing AMP along with regularly practicing Padam Sadhna for at least 2 years and finally, in the third group, 10 participants who were not practicing any kind of meditation or yoga. After consent, subjects filled the Cohen's stress questionnaire. Electrocardiography (ECG) was recorded before AMP and after AMP. Results: There was significant difference in heart rate (P = 0.002), systolic blood pressure (P = 0.028), diastolic blood pressure (P = 0.005), RR interval (P = 0.020), PR interval (P = 0.040), and stress score (P = 0.027) in first time participants. Similarly, in the second group (repeaters) also significant difference was noticed. Conclusion: AMP has its positive effects on ECG, blood pressure, and stress level. Thus, it can be considered as one of the important nonpharmacological methods for prevention of stress, anxiety, and cardiovascular diseases.

Effects of Yoga, Exercise and Prayer on the Quality of Life

Background of the study: This paper aims to find out the effects of Yoga, Exercise and Prayers on the quality of life of people. It is found that people who regularly practice yoga or do exercise and indulge in continuous prayers which is a kind of meditation are healthier and living a peaceful life. It gives them an inner strength which is helpful in leading a quality of life. Practising yoga or exercise and the daily prayers unites the mind and the heart of the individual and people are able to perceive the inner and outer world more positively. Material and Method: 30 subjects aged 18-60 years who regularly practice yoga or any exercise and indulge in regular prayer will be randomly taken and the questionnaire of WHO quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF) will be administered. Result and Discussion: The result of this study shows that there is a positive effect of yoga, exercise and prayer on the quality of life. Individuals who practise yoga, exercise and indulge in daily prayers are more satisfied healthy and there is a connection between their mind and body.

The short term effects of two kinds of meditation and the long term effects of successive meditation experience on the speed, accuracy and variability of responses

The short term effects of two kinds of meditation and the long term effects of successive meditation experience on the speed, accuracy and variability of responses

Meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus.

Recent studies have shown that meditation inhibits or relieves pain perception. To clarify the underlying mechanisms for this phenomenon, neuroimaging methods, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, and neurophysiological methods, such as magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography, have been used. However, it has been difficult to interpret the results, because there is some paradoxical evidence. For example, some studies reported increased neural responses to pain stimulation during meditation in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and insula, whereas others showed a decrease in these regions. There have been inconsistent findings to date. Moreover, in general, since the activities of the ACC and insula are correlated with pain perception, the increase in neural activities during meditation would be related to the enhancement of pain perception rather than its reduction. These contradictions might directly contribute to the ‘mystery of meditation.’ In this review, we presented previous findings for brain regions during meditation and the anatomical changes that occurred in the brain with long-term meditation training. We then discussed the findings of previous studies that examined pain-related neural activity during meditation. We also described the brain mechanisms responsible for pain relief during meditation, and possible reasons for paradoxical evidence among previous studies. By thoroughly overviewing previous findings, we hypothesized that meditation reduces pain-related neural activity in the ACC, insula, secondary somatosensory cortex, and thalamus. We suggest that the characteristics of the modulation of this activity may depend on the kind of meditation and/or number of years of experience of meditation, which were associated with paradoxical findings among previous studies that investigated pain-related neural activities during meditation.

Imitations of lives: ageing men, vocal mimicry and performing celebrity in The Trip

This essay examines the role of the voice and vocal performance in the BAFTA award-winning BBC2 semi-improvised sitcom series, The Trip (2010a). Starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, the two men embark on a culinary road trip around Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Lake District in the interests of sightseeing and food reviewing. Behind the premise of the series being about, as Coogan explains, ‘restaurant celebrities and their fashion-grabbing with food’ (Thorpe 2010) lies an increasingly poignant meditation on ageing and its relationship to masculinity and the male body, fame and celebrity. On this alternative menu is unease with the crunching of gears from youth to middle age, of the ageing process and all that it entails while in the media spotlight. This essay develops these themes in relation to the role of the voice and vocal performance – impersonations, crafting characters based on devising a distinctive voice – to offer a peculiar kind of meditation on the very nature of modern celebrity and ageing in the media.

Meditation and the startle response: A case study.

The effects of two kinds of meditation (open presence and focused) on the facial and physiological aspects of the defensive response to an aversive startle stimulus were studied in a Buddhist monk with approximately 40 years of meditation experience. The participant was exposed to a 115-db, 100-ms acoustic startle stimulus under the 2 meditation conditions, a distraction condition (to control for cognitive and attentional load) and an unanticipated condition (startle presented without warning or instruction). A completely counterbalanced 24-trial, single-subject design was used, with each condition repeated 6 times. Most aspects of the participant's responses in the unanticipated condition did not differ from those of a comparison group of 12 age-matched male controls. Both kinds of meditation produced physiological and facial responses to the startle that were smaller than in the distraction condition. Within meditation conditions, open presence meditation produced smaller physiological and facial responses than focused meditation. These results from a single highly expert meditator indicate that these 2 kinds of meditation can differentially alter the magnitude of a primitive defensive response.

Clinical Meditation Teacher: A New Role for Health Professionals

The support for integrating meditation into health care and mental health has reached scientific and public acceptance. For the public to receive the benefits of the mind—body medicine of meditation, it is time for health professionals to step into the role of clinical meditation teachers. Clinical meditation refers to the ability to discern the right kinds of meditation for the right person at the right time. With the increased emphasis on preventative medicine and self-care skills to reduce health care costs, the timing is absolutely appropriate for health professionals to gain skills in this new role.

Meditation and Psychotherapy: An Effective Combination

This column discusses concepts of an integrated psychotherapeutic approach to patient care and explores some of underlying principles that make it beneficial. It may come as a surprise to some practitioners, but as early as 1977, American Psychiatric Association was suggesting that could facilitate therapeutic and it encouraged research to evaluate its possible usefulness (Task Force on Meditation, 1977). That statement was made because a growing number of clinicians, particularly psychoanalysts, were working with meditation and psychotherapy together and finding it a powerful combination (Carrington & Ephron, 1975; Shafii, 1973). So, one might wonder, what's happened? How could an approach that seemed so promising and is so effective still be considered somewhat on fringe? The answer, in part, may go back to some of originators of psychoanalytic theory. Freud, while unfamiliar and inexperienced in meditation, believed it evoked a regressive state and considered it pathological rather than a productive integrative approach (Epstein, 1984). His attitude was adopted by many of his followers and tended to perpetuate a tradition that equated meditation with religious, irrational, and infantile thinking. A small minority of neo-Freudian psychoanalysts did approach concepts of meditation and psychotherapy with an open mind (Homey, 1945; Kelman, 1960), but they did little to change deeply entrenched view that these two approaches stood very much apart. Current research into effectiveness of meditation on a whole range of medical and psychological problems has begun to call into question this old separatist view, as more and more data support use of meditation for any number of psychological problems ranging from anxiety to schizophrenia (Kutz, Leserman, et al., 1985). Over time, considering growing number of practitioners who are using and researching this combination, use of meditation in therapeutic process may become an important tool to support change and increase insight. This column discusses some of advantages of combining meditation with psychotherapy and provides a description of what a sitting meditation practice looks like and how it can be generated in therapeutic session. A brief clinical example is given to show how principles can be integrated into a whole. The term meditation may mean any number of things and approaches, from focusing on breath to repeating a mantra. Whether one is practicing transcendental meditation, mindful meditation, or another kind of meditation, a number of principles are basic. First, there is a focusing of attention (Kabat-Zinn, 1982). This focusing is achieved by restricting attention to a single repetitive stimuli, such as a word, sound, prayer, phrase, sensation of breath or a visual (Kutz, Borysenko, et al., 1985, p. 2). At same time, participant maintains a passive attitude and becomes a silent witness to his/her thoughts, accepting whatever they may be with a nonjudgmental attitude (Castleman, 1996). When attention wanders, meditation continually refocuses on meditative stimulus. When strong feelings arise, meditator notices feeling and allows himself or herself to be with feeling as it occurs, observing it until it subsides, then returning to object of attention (Astin, 1997). As ability to meditate and focus increases, a number of physiological changes have been shown to occur in participant. Benson (1974) termed these changes the relaxation response and noted they include a decreased heart rate and breathing rate and a lowering of blood pressure. Further studies also have shown changes in EEG brain-wave activity as well as increased hormonal levels of cortisol and serotonin (MacLean et al., 1997). Beyond these significant physiological changes, there is a change in perception of meditator. …

“Seek for Something New”: Mothers, Change, and Creativity in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Homebody/Kabul, and Caroline, or Change

Despite striking differences in subject matter and dramatic form, each of these works probes the connections between mothers and children; each arguably is a kind of meditation on the meaning of the death of Kushner’s own mother, Sylvia Deutscher Kushner. Angels, Homebody/Kabul, and Caroline, or Change, however, do not sentimentalize the mother–child relationship nor do they identify mother figures with some unalterable biological ground of being. Instead, “mothers” in these dramas perform actions that disrupt the status quo and the fixity of identity: they shift location, stir up change, and even multiply into doubles and triples, whose personalities and ideas sometimes mirror, sometimes contradict, each other. Thus mothers and their relationships to the next generation of children serve as important loci for dramatizing the operation of the dialectic.

2. Freud's ‘id’ and Jung's ‘self’ as aids in self‐analysis

The id and the self are described as constructs of our unconscious which can be deployed in describing the analytic process. They can be used like the x in mathematics or the joker in a pack of cards as fitting in almost anywhere. But we can call on them as important aids to concentration, when additional room is made for meditating on the past which then comes to life again. They are useful for analysing ourselves and others. In this way the id as well as the self become aide-mémoires. The analysis of the repressed by means of the transference is not the only road to hitherto unconscious memories. This kind of meditation has helped me despite all reservations to undertake self-analysis and to write an autobiography. I maintain that one can have a transference to oneself. It is, of course, narcissistic. But then, no one can write an autobiography without a healthy dose of narcissism.

The Sculpture of Indeterminacy: Alison Knowles's Beans and Variations

Sometimes the piece of tempura is in stages … but the contour is so light that it becomes abstract: the foodstuff has for its envelope nothing but time, the time (extremely tenuous, moreover) which has solidified it … refined by the Japanese techniques of cancellation and exemption, it is the nutrient of another time … a kind of meditation, as much spectacular as alimentary (since tempura is prepared before your eyes)___[It is] on the side of the light, the aerial, of the instantaneous, the fragile, the transparent … but whose real name would be the interstice without specific edges, or again: the empty sign.