How to Recover From the ‘Crisis of Meaning’ in the West: John Vervaeke

Jun-15-2024
“People don’t know where to go to cultivate wisdom. I will ask my students: ‘Where do you go for information?’ They‘ll hold up their cell phones right away. ‘Where do you go for knowledge?’ And they’re ... a little bit more suspicious. They’ll say, ‘Well, the university, science …’ and then I'll say, ‘And where do you go for wisdom?’ And they don’t have an answer.”
John Vervaeke is a professor of cognitive science and Buddhist psychology at the University of Toronto. He is the creator of the internationally acclaimed lecture series “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.”
“There’s no possibility of truth without trust,” he says.
Mr. Vervaeke’s work merges science and spirituality, and reaches into the past to understand the history of ideas. He has developed a set of practices to cultivate insight in the quest to regain meaning.
“On social media, you have connections, but you don’t have actual social relationships with people. So people pile up the number of connections they have, but they’re not actually connected,” says Mr. Vervaeke. “The deepest truths are not accessed by us. They don’t get disclosed by us unless we’re willing to go through transformation, and unless we’re willing to grow our personhood.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/how-to-recover-from-the-crisis-of-meaning-in-the-west-john-vervaeke-5668298