Neil Peart (of Rush): A Memoriam

Rush's drummer and lyricist Neil Peart passed away on January 7th, 2020 at the age of 67. He was widely considered to be one of the best rock drummers in the world. I found this New Yorker tribute and this one by Rolling Stone to be among the best.

Other noteworthy tributes include Bret Stephens (New York Times) and Nick Raskulinecz (at Ultimate Guitar). Rushisaband has a comprehensive list.

Rush's Power Windows album brought me out of a depression (in 1985/1986). It was also instrumental in helping navigate the treacherous passage that every (non-Western) immigrant has to take. Marathon and Territories were really helpful. Neil Peart's lyrics could be "on the nose" at times but those two songs in particular, spoke to me. Here's a lyric snippet from The Garden (Clockwork Angels):

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect

So hard to earn, so easily burned

In the fullness of time

A garden to nurture and protect

While Tom Sawyer, YYZ, Fly by Night, Working Man, 2112 and Spirit of Radio are well known Rush songs, I thought quite a bit about Rush's best tracks [and the criteria included composition, emotion, vocals (ouch) AND playing]. Came up with this list.

1. The Main Monkey Business

2. The Garden

3. Losing It

4. Afterimage

5. Mystic Rhythms

Honorable mentions:

6. Bravado

7. Clockwork Angels

8. Limelight

9. The Way The Wind Blows

10. Territories

And their best cover:

Heart Full Of Soul (the old Yardbirds song)

Update (2020/02/06): Liz Swan (an academic philosopher at the University of Colorado, Boulder) has a great article on Neil Peart in Psychology Today. She especially focuses on Rush's Hemispheres album and in particular, dwells on the importance of "uniting heart and mind in a single perfect sphere." I'd add that the lyrics on Hold Your Fire (a under-appreciated Rush album, at least lyrically) also emphasize the inner world while elaborating on the themes of Hemispheres in a non-mythological way.

But it's Liz Swan's take on consciousness that caught my eye (and what are the odds that a person would be into Rush AND consciousness). She writes "There is a misguided question in contemporary philosophy called “the hard problem” which was conceived in a philosophical vacuum..." and goes on to say "My own personal answer to this question is that we wouldn’t have the privilege of being alive in the 21st century to ask these questions if we hadn’t in fact been in touch with our world qualitatively the whole time." Since I've thought about the hard problem of consciousness since 1996, a response is absolutely required. It's not the case as Liz Swan says that access to our own phenomenology (via being "in touch with our world qualitatively") renders the hard problem moot. The issue is: what is the relationship between phenomenology and physicalism - the most successful modern doctrine of the world and its dynamics. Of course, we have access to experience. But, how do we accommodate experience within the "natural order." That's the hard problem. I (and many others have suggested) that this implies that our understanding of physicalism and what it entails is cracked. But, cracked how? There's no consensus at present. Whether you're a dual aspect theorist, neutral monist, panpsychist, emergentist, cosmo-psychist or cosmo-holist (my view), you have to concede that there's no consensus on that which is absolutely central to existence - experience.

No self in Mahamudra

In February 2018, I did the Pointing Out retreat with Dan Brown and something clicked. Will try and describe the shift to the best of my ability. But, first a preamble:

Dan Brown's Level 1 retreat uses the pointing out tradition to mainly follow the Mahamudra steps to enlightenment. These, as per Tashi Namgyal are (i) the one-pointed yoga, (ii) the nondiscriminatory yoga, (iii) the yoga of one taste and (iv) the yoga of non-meditation. Since Dan could not assume that we all could achieve good levels of concentration, he used the elephant path (also described by Tashi Namgyal) to build sufficient levels of concentration before embarking on the four yogas. Since we cannot expect much familiarity with any of this, I'll restrict this post to the first stage - the one-pointed yoga - and describe its benefit.

tl;dr: Practicing the one-pointed yoga moves one away from the "existential level," where awareness is unpacked as self-awareness and the self identified with it. The one-pointed yoga causes a shift wherein the self gets out of the way and awareness directly relates to phenomenal content (sensations, perceptions, emotions, cognition, visualizations). The existential depression - caused by mistaken identification of awareness as self-awareness - permanently lifts.

Here's Tashi Namgyal:

 "The meditator has realized the one-pointed yoga when he has with conscious certainty gained insight into his own inmost awareness, which is an inseparable blend of its intrinsic clarity and emptiness. Like the expanse of space, this simplicity of mind is detached from any substantive entity while manifesting itself clearly and uninterruptedly."

And here's Dan Brown:

"Determining the mind to be a nonentity is said to "cut off the root"...The misery of samsara is said to be produced by the mistaken view of a seemingly real, objective world and a self-existent, subjective sense of self, whose interaction leads to attachment, aversion and ignorance."

In the actual practice, the meditator searches for real entities underlying all phenomenal content until finally giving up. Also, the meditator searches for any real entity underlying the self and gives up when it cannot be found. For me personally (while being well aware of the irony), this caused a shift wherein there only seems to be a vast awareness and phenomenal content in each moment. The self identification with awareness finally dropped away and with it the existential depression which had gotten much much worse over the years.