{"id":50241,"date":"2016-05-17T20:57:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T20:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=50241"},"modified":"2016-05-18T21:56:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T21:56:30","slug":"why-i-suspect-id-make-a-lousy-tibetan-buddhist-meditator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=50241","title":{"rendered":"Why I suspect I&#8217;d make a lousy Tibetan Buddhist meditator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; where the blind spot of aphantasia meets the beauty of Avalokiteshvara ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Tablet-DQ-600-Avalokiteshvara-the-aphantasic.png\" alt=\"Tablet DQ 600 Avalokiteshvara &amp; the aphantasic\" width=\"600\" height=\"870\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-50242\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Tablet-DQ-600-Avalokiteshvara-the-aphantasic.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Tablet-DQ-600-Avalokiteshvara-the-aphantasic-207x300.png 207w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps sadly, perhaps not, I suffer from <strong>aphantasia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a great relief, actually, to have found someone who doesn&#8217;t laugh at me when I say I can&#8217;t visualize &#8212; a researcher, no less, Prof. <strong>Adam Zeman<\/strong>, with a paper on the topic in <strong>Cortex<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<p>I have tried on occasion to find metaphors for my condition. The best way to explain what <strong>does <\/strong>happen when someone asks me to visualize something is to say I can see it &#8220;as if painted in water on glass&#8221; &#8212; or &#8220;as if it&#8217;s behind me, out of sight, but I can remember roughly what it was like when I last looked.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li><strong>Lion&#8217;s Roar<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lionsroar.com\/developing-pure-perception-through-visualization\/\">Developing Pure Perception Through Visualization<\/a>\n<li><strong>BBC Science news<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-34039054\">Aphantasia: A life without mental images<\/a>\n<li><strong>University of Exeter<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.exeter.ac.uk\/news\/research\/title_467790_en.html\">Can\u2019t count sheep? You could have aphantasia<\/a>\n<li><strong>Adam Zeman<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0010945215001781\">Lives without imagery \u2013 Congenital aphantasia<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; where the blind spot of aphantasia meets the beauty of Avalokiteshvara ] . ** Perhaps sadly, perhaps not, I suffer from aphantasia. It&#8217;s a great relief, actually, to have found someone who doesn&#8217;t laugh at me when I say I can&#8217;t visualize &#8212; a researcher, no less, Prof. Adam Zeman, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[701,649,526,24,852,436,699,1,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-buddhist","category-charles-cameron","category-cognition","category-meditation","category-psychology","category-tibet","category-uncategorized","category-visualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50241"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50253,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50241\/revisions\/50253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}