[jostmey]

I liken the brain to a mega-powerful but poorly put together computer. Why did I say this and what does it have to do with meditation?

The brain is a product of an Evolutionary process. Dawkins described Evolution best as "The Blind Watchmaker". Evolution leaves a lot of room for improvement. It is like a terrible engineer who only ever gets things right by sheer luck. Evolution is probably a pretty sloppy process. This is why I believe the brain, although amazingly-awesome, is poorly put together.

So what does any of this have to do with meditation? If you had a poorly constructed computer with lots of bugs in the software that crashed all the time, what would you do? You would probably frequently save your work and then reboot your computer. By rebooting your computer you prevent errors from propagating through the software and the operating system. I am going to extend this analogy to the human mind. Without periodically resetting our minds, more and more errors may begin to accumulate. Perhaps neural circuits begin to feedback endlessly on themselves in an escalating positive loop . Perhaps mediation is a way to dampen down mental activity, allowing the mind to reset.

It is just a crazy, bat-sh*t crazy idea. So don't take it too seriously.

[vixen99]

And none of these poorly put together computers even have a glimmering of how to simulate themselves. Meanwhile the presumably even less poorly put together computers perform amazing feats in ocean air and on land.