• Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
• Author: David Loy

David Loy explains how - the denial of ego-self, also known as anatma - becomes the root of a persistent sense of lack - as self-consciousness continues to try to ground itself, reify itself and make itself real - while all the meanwhile it is a compelling mental construction

A good paper on the role (non-rational) relational ritual can play to help us out of the current polycrisis is given here: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrill.com%2Fview%2Fjournals%2Fwo%2F25%2F2%2Farticle-p113_1.xml%3Flanguage%3Den&group=world

// - this is the mechanism by which ritual practice can bring about interpretive shift unconsciously -because bodily movements have a priming effect - Lakoff points to the concept of "biconceptualism, a compartmentalism in our physical brain

• Key Definition
  • Interpretative Shift (Luhrmann)
  • can be initiated through ritual practice // We can build interventions based upon encouraging ritual practice that causes interpretative shifts

// in other words - mortality salience alone is counter-productive - it triggers psychological defense strategies. - it must be accompanied by expressions of gratitude to be effective and transformative

// abstract - summary - Rationalist approaches to environmental problems such as climate change - apply an information deficit model, - assuming that if people understand what needs to be done they will act rationally. - However, applying a knowledge deficit hypothesis often fails to recognize unconscious motivations revealed by: - social psychology, - cognitive science, - behavioral economics.

• Applying ecosystems science, data collection, economic incentives, and public education are necessary for solving problems such as climate change, but they are not sufficient.
• Climate change discourse makes us aware of our mortality
• This prompts consumerism as a social psychological defensive strategy,
• which is counterproductive to pro-environmental behavior.
• Studies in terror management theory, applied to the study of ritual and ecological conscience formation,
• suggest that ritual expressions of giving thanks can have significant social psychological effects in relation to overconsumption driving climate change.
• Primary data gathering informing this work included participant observation and interviews with contemporary Heathens in Canada from 2018–2019.

El ritual cotidiano de la dación. Ocurre como resultado de la celebración de alguien que ha dado y recibe también como resultado la conmemoración de dicha persona.

Fiestas como medio para crear o reafirmar lazos sociales.

La importancia del rito y de lo que se puede llamar post-ritual, debido a que luego de cerrado el ciclo de la fiesta, ocurre un instante de superación, reconciliación, etc... para los miembros de dicha fiesta. Este sentir variará según la subjetividad de cada miembro.

Hay dos niveles en los rituales de fiesta, en un nivel pueden generar nuevas formas de relaciones de amistad, compañerismo, compadrazgo, padrinazgo, etc., que se construyen desde dinámicas ya instituidas; el otro nivel conlleva a reafirmar las relaciones existentes y confirmar las lealtades o promesas instituyentes o en gestación.

• Cuerpo: Forma corporal, es el instrumento que permite la realización de la fiesta.

• Espíritu: se conecta por medio de los símbolos, imágenes, etc... que le permitan vivir esta fiesta.

Símbolo como medio para la integración del ritual, en donde, se comparten ciertos valores y sentimientos por parte de los miembros de dicha fiesta, así mismo, se reafirma la relación entre ese entidad y el sujeto. Según dicha entidad, variará bien sea la fe, el credo, sus cultos y/o prácticas.

Ligados a una entidad superior como lo puede ser la patria y según su religión, el dios que lo rige. De allí que distintos aspectos y/o conceptos y sus connotaciones se vean flexibilizadas, como lo es, la familia, sus miembros, responsabilidades, etc..

Muchos de los rituales praticados son resultado de la comunión de grupo que pertenece a un específica religión.

¿Qué es reificar? * Reificación es considerar a un ser humano o viviente consciente y libre como si fuera un objeto o cosa no consciente ni libre.

Definición de ritual En este caso el ritual ratifica lo que para un sujeto significa cierta practica y permite de la misma manera reforzar su modo actuar, pensar y ver su mundo bajo la práctica de dicho ritual.

Parte de convivir con otros en la escuela, es la transmisión, socialización y exaltación de ciertos rituales que para cada estudiante es importante para su vida o incluso que dicho ritual sea compartido por una población más grande (clase, colegio). Esto permite un mayor afianzamiento del lazos.

donde los participantes comparten símbolos ligados a imaginarios, de ahí la importancia del análisis que permite comprender las instituciones como entramados simbólicos (Escuela)

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/feb/03/thornborough-henges-north-yorkshire-gifted-england-heritage

read on Sat 202302-04T19:46:00-08:00

Taking space key, not filling every moment; power of ritual and ceremony to grant us those spaces we otherwise might not claim for ourselves

There's an irony here in that this "cult" may have actually been a cult of teachers and students. Should the broader thesis bear out, we're going to have lots of references to these cults of teachers lingering in the literature....

https://hardhistoriesjhu.substack.com/p/a-ritual-of-remembrance-on-the-jhu

Dr. Martha S. Jones reflects on the recent Ritual of Remembrance at the Homewood Museum at Johns Hopkins University.

Given the root word for museum, I'm reminded that the mother of the nine muses was Mnemosyne ("Memory"). I'm glad that there's a re-memory held there for those who history has conspired to erase.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2022/01/21/ritual-of-remembrance-enslaved-at-homewood/

The parade is simply a display of collective consciousness, which Le Guin describes as Jung's term for the lowest common denominator of all the little egos added together, the mass mind... all the hollow forms of communication and 'togetherness' that lack real communion or real sharing. The ego, accepting these empty forms, becomes a member of the 'lonely crowd.

Public life on Gethen is essentially godless, its official rituals having rigidified into lifeless, uninspired, static forms.

"Art is in fact but a later and more sublimated form of ritual" (p. 225) and, as I shall demonstrate, the Foretelling ceremony in LHD presents not only a re-enactment of primitive ritual, but also a description of the process of creation experienced by a contemporary mythic artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjf0hCKOCE

The sky is a textbook. The sky is a lawbook. The sky is a science book. —Duane Hamacher, (1:24)

Hamacher uses the Western description "method of loci" rather than an Indigenous word or translated word.

The words "myth", "legend", "magic", "ritual", and "religion" in both colloquial English and even anthropology are highly loaded terms.

Words like "narrative" and "story" are better used instead for describing portions of the Indigenous cultures which we have long ignored and written off for their seeming simplicity.

The West African tradition of libation, or pour out of water, honors the deceased and holds the belief that saying people's names aloud keeps them alive.

https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2021/11/birth-of-the-gods/

This is a good example of the default "ancestor worship" and "rituals" label on archeological finds of ancient peoples

What is the actual basis for assigning these labels? Is there any real evidence or is it just become the default in the literature.

Personally I'm building evidence towards a more comprehensive thesis for what these practices may have been used for.

The Western word "ceremony" is certainly not the best word for describing these traditions. It has too much baggage and hidden meaning with religious overtones. It's a close-enough word to convey some meaning to those who don't have the cultural background to understand the underlying orality and memory culture. It is one of those words that gets "lost in translation" because of the dramatic differences in culture and contextual collapse.

Most Western-based anthropology presumes a Western idea of "religion" and impinges it upon oral cultures. I would maintain that what we would call their "religion" is really an oral-based mnemonic tradition that creates the power of their culture through knowledge. The West mistakes this for superstitious religious practices, but primarily because we can't see (or have never been shown) the larger structures behind what is going on. Our hubris and lack of respect (the evils of the scala naturae) has prevented us from listening and gaining entrance to this knowledge.

I think that the archaeological ideas of cultish practices or ritual and religion are all more likely better viewed as oral practices of mnemonic tradition. To see this more easily compare the Western idea of the memory palace with the Australian indigenous idea of songline.

Stein, D. H., Chatman, J., & Schroeder, J. (2021). Is Commitment Getting Infected Too? How COVID-19 Stay-Home Orders Influence Workgroup Commitment. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mhqbv

McPhetres, Jonathon. ‘Preregistration Is for Planning’, 1 June 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cj5mh.

I was hoping that more people would read this, look through Wakelet, and be prompted to consider the role of ritual in their workplaces. Gonna keep looking at this myself, especially in my own life.

https://youtu.be/yiKFYTFJ_kw

in the case of the transparency myth, we see it built into the very institution of the Court, glass everywhere, social media use, etc.

Delano' does not only grieve the death of his brother, but also that his brother did not receive a proper Christian burial. Had his brother's body been preserved, this, theoretically, would have been possible, although quite belated. The secrecy and, to Western sensibilities, gruesome manner in which Aranda's remains were preserved by the Africans on board further exacerbates the suggestion that they are inhumane and amoral. See this article in Vol. 8 of Sharpe's London Magazine (1849) for perspectives on the burial practices of "barbarous nations" contemporary to the composition of Benito Cereno.

Western embalming techniques were first developed in 16th century England for scientific purposes; at the time this story is set, embalming the dead was a more common practice.

"The English physician William Harvey created the modern method of embalming in the 17th century. This method involves injecting chemicals into a dead body's arteries to keep the body from decaying. Up until the middle of the 18th century, embalming was used mostly in science and medicine. However, in the mid-18th century, the Scottish surgeon William Hunter used Harvey's methods to preserve bodies in morgues. His brother, John Hunter, was the first to advertise embalming to regular people who wanted to see their loved ones' bodies preserved after death." https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embalming#The_17th_and_18th_centuries

https://www.trustarts.org/pct_home/visit/facilities/oreilly-theater

The magistrate has all this disbelief for all of the inhumanity that Joll has been showing ever since he arrived, so he wants to believe that in order for Joll to walk this earth without remorse that he is somehow able to "clean" himself of all of the cruelty. By showing the inhumanity of Joll and the men that follow him, we are able to see the humanity in the magistrate. For him it is impossible not to feel empathy for the prisoners and even more so being that brutal; especially, not without having a ritual that would help him be a clean man.

The concept of eternal return has a chequered history through philosophy and culture, but Alasdair Roberts is invoking the particular use of the term by the religious historian Mircea Eliade. The Wikipedia entry) says that Eliade's eternal return is "a belief, expressed... in religious behaviour, in the ability to return to the mythical age, to become contemporary with the events described in one's myths".

Thus, through the medium of song, we are taken back to become contemporary with, among other things, the Crusades and the falls of Jericho and of Babylon.

From Alasdair's interview by Tyler Wilcox in 2009:

the first song in some ways explores the idea of “eternal return” – I was reading Mircea Eliade on the subject, and Nietzsche obviously wrote about it – I became obsessed with the idea and the various ways in which it could be configured. There’s obviously the classic image of the ouroboros serpent… but I was also think about it in terms of the myth of progress – when what we think of as progress is actually destruction. Like Kekulé’s ring, Benzene. And the fact that I personally constantly return to Song as a form of “expression” or creation rather than, say, improvisation or composition.