Economic Development, Urbanization, and the Food System in East Africa

I am a co-author on a new article that can be found here. It is titled "The Rise of the Middle Class in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Food System Transformation". The paper makes a few points that have policy implications:

• Urbanization and economic development is occurring rapidly in many Sub-Saharan African countries
• There is a growing urban middle class which is associated with a rapidly shifting structure of food demand - away from staple grains and towards processed and fresh perishable foods.
• The current system is not sufficient to support this demand.
• While many people predict that much of this growing demand will be provided by imports, we show that the share of imported food has actually decreased with rising incomes
• However Africa still imports more than what would be predicted relative to other developing countries, suggesting much more room for improvement in the development of the local food industry
• More research and investment is needed in the development of the food processing sectors and fresh perishable food supply chains in order to 1) ensure food security and decrease reliance on imports, 2) support small farmers, and 3) provide sources of employment for the burgeoning youth population. 

How to Engage Creative Ideas/Intuitions that Arise Spontaneously in Meditation, In Meditation.

One of the things that people say about meditation is that you shouldn't buy into the content of your thoughts. Instead just be a witness to them - watch them arise and pass away. The ironic thing about this instructions is that becoming present and still leads to the arising of creative thoughts and new ideas. Almost without fail, I will be sitting there and some great idea pops up, maybe an observation that I want to tell somebody about, an academic research idea, or even an idea for a blog post. My first instinct is than to immediately try and flesh it out in my mind, but of course, then, I am not meditating any more. I haven't really seen anybody talk about this or discuss what to do (with the exception of Jason Siff. He wrote a book Unlearning Meditation which I am hoping to read). I guess a strict Buddhist perspective would be to see it for the emptiness that it is and let it go immediately. Since I also must live and act in the world, hopefully skillfully, I have preferred a middle ground where I allow the idea to marinate for around a minute, and then let it go with faith that it will be available later when I might think and act on it. Usually this marination doesn't involve much rational thought, it is more of a feeling out of the idea, gaining an intuitive understanding. 

Christian Wiman on Ambition

Christian Wiman is a very thoughtful and introspective Christian author. I am really enjoying his book My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer. This quote struck me, especially the last couple of sentences. 

"I once believed in some notion of pure ambition, which I defined as an ambition for the work rather than oneself. But now? If a poet's ambition were truly for the work and nothing else, he would write under a pseudonym, which would not only preserve that pure space of making but free him from the distractions of trying to forge a name for himself in the world. No, all ambition has the reek of disease about it, the relentless smell of the self - except for that terrible, blissful feeling at the heart of creation itself, when all thought of your name is obliterated and all you want is the poem, to be the means wherein something of reality, perhaps even something of eternity, realizes itself. That is noble ambition. But all that comes after - the need for approval, publication, self-promotion - isn't this what usually goes under the name of "ambition"? The effort is to make ourselves more real to ourselves, to feel that we have selves, though the deepest moments of creation tell us that, in some fundamental way, we don't (souls are what those moments reveal, which are both inside and outside, both us and other.) so long as your ambition is to stamp your existence upon existence, your nature on nature, then your ambition is corrupt and you are pursuing a ghost.

Recent Contemplation on Death

One interesting side effect of meditation is that there seem to be a lot of aha! moments. Some of them are terrifying, and some seem like they should be terrifying, but are actually liberating. One such experience (of the latter sort) recently occurred during meditation. I was doing my usual thing, scanning and investigating sensations in consciousness. Sometimes when I am doing this, there is a flash of very visceral intuition: "actually there is no self here, there is an organism, carrying out its chain of conditioning, but actually, wow, there is nobody home." What was different about this particular episode was that the specter of death came up in my consciousness, the recognition that this organism's days are numbered. I imagined my own death, and probably for the first time not one bit of fear came up. Because there was nobody there to die.

For me, this was only a passing insight, but for those who have become "enlightened", this is a permanent and not just intellectual realization. In the words of Kalu Rinpoche:

We live in illusion
And the appearance of things.
There is a reality:
We are that reality.
When you understand this,
You will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing,
You are everything
That is all.

Questions and Experiences on the Meditation Path

Just thought I would post some links to threads I have started on the meditation forum, Dharma Overground. In my experience, everybody who gets into meditation inevitably has many questions and doubts, ups and downs. It helps to be part of a forum of practitioners who can empathize and give you technical advice. Here is a sampling of reports and questions that I have had...and some responses by people much more experienced than me.

my meditation practice log
Fear of Losing my "Soul"
What Actually Happens in the Brain at Stream Entry?
Free Will and the Problem of Consciousness
Experience of intense weight/compression, feeling like a rock like orb
Is "feeling present" what access concentration is?
Am I advancing quickly or have I barely begun?

10 Meditation Techniques that I Have Found Helpful

In the past year I have gotten into meditation and have experimented with a number of techniques. While there is great value in going deep with one method, I have also found value in becoming comfortable with many, having many tools in the toolbox, so to speak. Over time it becomes natural to switch among them, to mix and match, even in the course of a single sit. Here is the list of boiled down techniques and tips that I wish I would have had from the beginning.


1. Just settling down, being present, abiding in awareness

• Just sit there and don't try to accomplish anything.
• If you get distracted or lost in thought, don't worry, because you are not trying to accomplish anything.  
• Enjoy the space that you are giving yourself to just be as you are. To abide in reality as it is. If you aren't enjoying it, don't worry, because you are not trying to accomplish anything.
• There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to do, you are already here. 

2. Mindfulness of the breath

• Whenever it occurs to you, notice the sensations of the breath
• If you get distracted for a moment or for a long time, don't worry about it, just come back to noticing the breath
• Don't try to hard, don't strain, don't beat yourself up. Whenever it occurs to you, just nudge your attention gently towards the breath. 
• Instead of straining, just try to generate interest. Isn't it interesting that such a simple thing, this expansion and contraction, has always been with us, keeps us alive?

3. Concentrating on an object

• Pick something, anything, that seems relatively stable or predictable and keep your attention on it.
• If your notice that your attention has wandered, gently bring it back to the object of concentration
• When you notice that your attention has wandered, you are already back, getting frustrated or angry with yourself is not helpful. 
• It doesn't matter how many times you wander or how long you wander. Each time you come back to the object of concentration, you are building concentration muscle. Think of it as weight training, it takes many reps. 
• Popular objects of concentration include: the breath (see #2); an external object (flower, rock, candle flame); a constant or repetitive sound, a mantra (internally repeat a 1-3 syllable sound over and over again); the feeling of attention or presence; the feeling of being a witness; a positive feeling such as calm, joy, love, tenderness, or peace. In this last case, it might help to start by remembering a situation that evoked this feeling.

4. Metta/Loving Kindness

• Start by remembering or visualizing a situation or person that evokes positive feelings such as calm, joy, love, tenderness, peace, compassion, etc. 
• Allow yourself to soak in this feeling for a while, allow it to expand and envelop your whole being.
• Now apply this feeling to yourself. Wish yourself happiness, contentment, joy, and loving kindness. If you are self critical have compassion and forgiveness for yourself. 
• Now apply this feeling to the people in your life that you love. Wish them the same things that you wished yourself
• Now apply this feeling to people in your life that you don't particularly care for, or even those that you might actively dislike. Finally, apply this feeling to all of humankind.

5. Choiceless noting

• Either out loud or using a mental label, simply note the most immediate sensation in your awareness.
• By noting objects in consciousness, you are objectifying and dis-embedding from them. This can be incredibly liberating. 
• Here is an example of a sequence of labels one might use: feeling, feeling, itching, anxious, feeling, thinking, thinking, calming, hearing, hearing, dryness, itching, self awareness, thinking, planning, planning, itching, anxious, warmth, pleasant...
• Don't worry about finding the "correct" label. Also don't worry about diversity, if the same label keeps coming up again and again, that's fine.
• If trying to find the correct label is tripping you up, over time it might be useful to develop a vocabulary for common or subtle sensations when you are not meditating. 
• If you find yourself getting distracted by thoughts or difficult emotions, just note them: thinking, distracted, angry, restlessness, craving...etc. Think of every distraction as fuel for mindfulness. 
• Go at a speed that feels natural. For some people this will be 1 note every 2-5 seconds, and for others it will be 1-3 notes per second. With practice you might pick up speed, but this will happen naturally, no need to force it or attain a certain speed
• If you start noticing faster than you can label, than switch down to mono-syllables to tag experience. For example: dat, dat, dat.....  or hm, hm, hm......
• If even mono-syllable labeling starts to seem cumbersome, slow, or to be a needless filter on experience, than it has finished serving its purpose. Feel free to drop it and switch to choice-less noticing (see #7).

6. Structured noting

• Similar to #3, but decide beforehand on the noting framework to use. There are countless ways to do this. Here are some examples.
• Just note the general senses: feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting. You might also add thinking as the "6th sense". 
• Shinzen Young's schema: "feel in" for any emotion, "feel out" for any non-emotional physical body sensation, "see in" for mental images, "see out" for external sights, "hear in" for internal dialogue, "hear out" for external sounds, "...rest" if you notice the absence of feeling, hearing, or seeing, and "gone" if notice the the disappearance of a sensation. 
• Noting the "Three Characteristics": In Therevada Buddhism the meditator tries to notice that all sensations are 1) impermanent, 2) unsatisfactory, and 3) impersonal (or not self). One can note aspects of these. For 1) notes can include "arising", "passing", and "gone". For 2) notes can include "clinging", "craving", and "aversion". For 3) notes can include "empty" and "not me".
• Simple Noting. For example, one can just note "thinking" every time they catch themselves thinking. Or they can just note whether the current sensation is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. 

7. Choice-less noticing/open awareness

• This requires some degree of prior concentration. If you feel distracted or you are getting lost in thought (which is different than noticing thoughts), try one of the previous methods first. 
• Become receptive to the whole field of awareness. Pay attention to whatever seems to take precedence in any given moment. 
• Try to break larger sensations and feelings (aggregates) down to their energetic components. Notice that all sensations are impermanent and impersonal. They are just empty energy blips flickering in and out. 
• When you do this, distinctions of inside/outside, me/not me, pleasant/unpleasant etc. will start to fade away. Let them fade.
• If you get distracted, instead of switching to another method, you can also try just tapping into the insight that "you" are not actually in control of anything. Thoughts arise on their own, sensations arise on their own, even intentions arise due to prior conditions. 

8. Body scanning

• Pay attention to the sensations in the body
• It is easiest to start with one body area at a time, taking a few minutes with each. For example, start by feeling the hands, than the arms, than the feet, than the legs, then the lower core, than the upper core, than the head, than the whole body at once. 
• Don't try to manipulate or amplify the sensations. Just allow yourself to feel what you in fact feel. If you don't feel something strongly or at all, that's fine, just keep your attention there anyway. 
• If you find yourself getting distracted, note the distraction (e.g. "thinking") than return to scanning. 

9. Experimenting with boundaries

• In #7 I mentioned that certain dualities in your experience might start to fall away. This can also be cultivated directly. The point is to recognize that consciousness is one, there is only the unified field. Here are some techniques for doing this:
• Look out at the world (or close your eyes and listen out) and notice that it is outside of yourself. Now imagine that it is actually inside. 
• Close your eyes and contemplate the feeling of time. Investigate: How do you know that time is passing? What sensations are associated with the passing of time, what internal images or memories or emotions contribute to this feeling? 
• Close your eyes and imagine a scene from your childhood, remember how it felt. Remember the sense of being alive, remember the sense of being present at that moment. Now image a scene within the past few years and do the same. Now open your eyes and notice the feeling of being present now. Investigate: Isn't it always the present?
• Try to find your mind. Where is it in the field of experience? A thought arises, is that your mind? If yes, how can something that arises and vanishes be your mind? Notice that, as a matter of experience, there is no mind, it is empty, their are only objects in consciousness. 
• Open your eyes and imagine that your don't have a head. It shouldn't be very hard because you can't see your head (just part of your nose and maybe eyebrow, and without hands you cannot feel your head (you can only feel sensations). It might help to try pointing your finger and looking at various objects. Finally, point your finger back at your head. What is it pointing to? As a matter of experience, you can only see the finger pointing, not the thing it is pointing to.  

10. Self Inquiry

• This is similar to #9, but the boundary is the sense of self. 
• Ask yourself, "who am I?". Notice the thoughts and sensations that arise. Ask yourself, "to whom do these thoughts/sensations arise?". If the answer is "to me?", ask yourself again, "But who am I?". 
• There are countless variants to this. Other questions include: "where am I?", "who is hearing this sound?", "who is seeing?", "who is feeling anxious"...in fact, whenever you notice any feeling at all, you can turn it around and inquire to who/what/where/why the feeler is. This can be done at any point during the day when your attention isn't immediately occupied. 
• If you inquire and nothing comes up, that is good, just abide in the emptiness/oneness. Don't try generating thoughts/sensations that don't arise spontaneously
• You can also use affirmations and negations. An example of an affirmation is: "I am" or "I am not separate from the universe". An example of a negation is: "I am not my body, I am not the sensations that arise, I am not my thoughts". 

Free online resources that I have found immensely valuable:

Daniel Ingram's pragmatic dharma book
Shinzen Young's Five Ways manual
Shinzen Young on mindfulness 
Kenneth Folk's 3 speed transmission:  Here and here
The Dharma Overground, an online pragmatic meditation forum
In depth interviews with "enlightened" people. Although some of them just appear crazy.
Guided meditation by Eckhart Tolle
Guided meditation by Sam Harris

Links to Selected Essays I Have Submitted to Other Blogs

Just aggregating some selected writings posted to Baha'i Coherence and another blog project that aren't already posted here. At this point I don't want to post them in full since they are outdated and in some cases, I no longer take the same position. I am also no longer a Baha'i, and so I think it would be misleading for me to post the Baha'i Coherence stuff as if they had just been written. A longer term project will be to organize various things I have written and perhaps update some of the with my current thinking.

From Baha'i Coherence:

Is Usury Good?
Theology or Consciousness
Reflections on Robert Wright's: Evolution of God
Depression as an Opportunity
The Process of Authenticity: Part 1
The Process of Authenticity: Part 2
Beyond Utopia and Myopia
The God of Evolution
A Religion for Atheists?
Physical Resurrection: Linchpin of Christianity?
The Search for a Modern Theology

From Bounded Irrationality:

How to Run the World
The Problem of Artificial States
A Distinctly Africa Green Revolution
Islamic Banking and Moroccan Attitudes Towards Interest

Brief Thoughts on Waking up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris

In some ways I wish this book would have been published a year earlier, because so much of what I have experienced and thought about in the last year aligns almost perfectly with the themes in this book. It could have given me a head start on the path I was taking. Reading this book now, it seems thoroughly familiar.

To explain: last year at this time I began meditating and taking an interest in spiritual experience divorced from the burden of maintaining unverifiable beliefs (I had previously been actively religious). I took an interest in Vipassana meditation, using techniques from the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition and following the "stages of insight" laid out originally in the Visuddhimagga. I also became interested in Advaita Vedanta and self inquiry and struggled to reconcile the two paths in my mind (gradual vs. sudden). I  experimented with the "having no head" approach to perception that he describes and have taken hallucinogenics, considering their role on the spiritual path. I have read neuroscience books debunking the "illusion of self" from a naturalist point of view, and have considered the idea of brains being filters of universal mind. I could go on and on. 

I think the value of this book for me is that it beautifully weaves together and confirms what I had already found to be true. There is an intimacy to knowing that other people are reading this and being exposed to practices and ideas that have so enthralled me. 

There are a couple of quibbles that I have.

For one, I think he slightly misconstrues the Vipassana approach. While the means of Vipassana is cultivating concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity, a gradual process which implies somebody who is practicing (i.e. dualistic in a sense), the whole point is to more clearly and directly recognize the "three marks of existence", i.e., that all sensations and thoughts, including the ones normally thought to comprise the self (like the sensations behind the eyes), are inherently impermanent, unsatisfactory, and impersonal. According to my understanding and experience, if done correctly, it is just as "direct" as the other approaches he describes; in fact it all boils down to the same basic thing, just coming from a slightly different perspective. 

He also doesn't address the fact that, despite its evanescent nature, the sense of self obviously evolved over time through natural selection because it provided an evolutionary advantage at some point. It may very well be true that it is no longer useful to thrive in the 21st century, but to dismiss it out of hand and call it an illusion, without placing it in a historical context, is kind of misleading. 

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 3

I realize that most people go into meditation looking for stability, happiness, and comfort in the face of their own existence...I have spent many years cultivating extreme experiential instability, careful awareness of the minutia of my suffering and the clear perception that I don't even exist as a separate entity...I can honestly say that these practices are without doubt the sanest thing I have ever done in my life. -Daniel Ingram

The path of insight is not known to be easy. There are said to be many ups and downs - ecstatic bliss and energy one moment and crushing fear and misery the next. There are many maps of this territory, all different on a superficial level, yet all containing many of the same fundamentals. In the words of Ingram:

One of the most profound things about these stages is that they are strangely predictable regardless of the practitioner or the insight tradition. Texts two thousand years old describe the stages just the way people go through them today, though there will be some individual variation on some of the particulars today as then. The Christian maps, the Sufi maps, the Buddhist maps of the Tibetans and the Theravada, and the maps of the Khabbalists and Hindus are all remarkably consistent in their fundamentals. I chanced into these classic experiences before I had any training in meditation, and I have met a large number of people who have done likewise. These maps, Buddhist or otherwise, are talking about something inherent in how our minds progress in fundamental wisdom that has little to do with any tradition and lots to do with the mysteries of the human mind and body. They are describing basic human development. These stages are not Buddhist but universal, and Buddhism is merely one of the traditions that describes them, albeit unusually well.

In this post I will discuss the map, known as the "Progress of Insight", which is originally derived from the Pali cannon in the Theravada tradition, as related by Mahasi Sayada and Daniel Ingram. The part of the map that I will discuss is "1st path" (there are four successive paths) which is basically the road to initial, but not complete, enlightenment, to a point after which insight generates itself automatically whether one practices or not, beyond the "plane of limitation". I will also relate this path to the first Four Valleys in the Sufi tradition, as commented on by Baha'u'llah: Search, Love, Knowledge, and Unity. 

My motivation for doing this is simply to share something that has become a big part of my life. This is my own working model of spiritual development and I will relate some of my experiential reports traveling along this path. 

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 2

-Part 1 Here-

And if we turn inward and prove our True Nature, that True Self is no-self, our own self is no-self, we go beyond ego and past clever words. Then the gate to the oneness of cause-and-effect is thrown open. Not two and not three, straight ahead runs the Way. Our form now being no-form, in going and returning we never leave home. Our thought now being no-thought, our dancing and songs are the Voice of the Dharma. How vast is the heaven of boundless Samadhi! How bright and transparent the moonlight of wisdom! What is there outside us? What is there we lack? 
-From the Song of Zazen

The Baha'i Faith is a mystical religion. Baha'u'llah describes the spiritual seeker in the Valley of Knowledge - "the last plane of limitation" - as one who has "passed over the worlds of names, and fled beyond the worlds of attributes as swift as lightning" and has "made their dwelling-place in the shadow of the Essence." 

It is also a practical religion. Baha'u'llah emphasizes the need to be "anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."

Putting these two things together requires being “in the world, but not of the world” so to speak. This requires a delicate balance and careful integration of the two modes; yet they are each distinct. They are mutually reinforcing but they also develop along different axis.

Somewhat along these lines, in Buddhism there are three types of training which reinforce and integrate with each other, yet are distinct: morality, concentration, and insight. 

Buddhism, Meditation, and the Baha'i Faith: Part 1

So the true goal of meditation is achieved through a dialectical process that alternates between dissolving into flowing nothingness and detecting subtler and subtler instances of solidified somethingness. - Shinzen Young

In my opinion, the Baha’i community is exceptionally well developed in two important ways. 

The first way has to do with thinking about and acting in the world.  It has a comprehensive system of morality - with laws and principles that guide personal conduct and attitude; it has a brilliant evolving mechanism for interacting in the world and trying to make it better - the institute process; it has a universal and unique system of governance; and it is philosophically and theologically rich and modern.

The second is along a mode of spiritual practice: prayer and contemplation. There are countless prayers revealed by Baha’u’llah and Abdu’l Baha, and clear instructions for ideal practice, for example in the long obligatory prayer. The writings are poetic and intriguing and, by both the content and the very structure of the language, evoke positive spiritual feelings, mystical inclinations, and realizations of oneness.  

On Losing My Faith

After seeing Bryan's post I felt compelled to update as well, after about two years of inactivity. This is essentially a coming out post. I have only told a handful of people where I am at - out of worry that I would disappoint friends. Now it has been a while, and since I helped start this blog I feel like I should use this forum to explain myself. To put it simply: I lost my faith. Since then I have regained interest in spiritual practice - but not belief in a Baha'i sense. Let me explain.

Check in

It's been a long time since I posted hear and a lot has happened. It occurred to me that there might be some value to having a space to write and aggregate ideas, quotes, and other things that I put online. I see my meditation practice log going on here, as well as previous essays written for Baha'i Coherence, quotes that I like, and a space for poetry and prose both refined and therapeutic. The next few posts will be stuff that I have written in the last few years on other forums, it will probably take a while to get it all transferred.