Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

James Austin’s “Just this” meditation practice

I'm an admirer of Zen, albeit from afar. Meaning, I enjoy Zen philosophy, but diving into Zen practice doesn't appeal to me.  Zen is unreligious compared to traditional faiths. However there's still too much bowing and scraping before Zen masters for my churchless non-soul. Also, Zen's disciplines seem needlessly rigid, rooted more in habit than in practicality. That said, for a few days I've been trying out a meditation approach in James Austin's new book, "Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen." Austin, a clinical neurologist, is into the scientific side of Zen. I like the approach. Nice and simple. It gives…
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Posted inReality

With life, there’s no possible comparison

A few days ago, during a dog walk, when insights often spring into my psyche, I was contemplating the fall colors and how the number of years I'll be able to enjoy changing seasons is falling with every passing birthday. I had a brief relapse into a sort of semi-faithfulness, visualizing how nice it would be if life could be everlasting, eternal, without end. But almost instantly a compared to what? echoed in my consciousness, drowning out the anti-death wish fulfillment chatter. Yes, indeed: when we complain about life, not its particulars, but life itself, there's no basis for comparison.…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Do you want life to be experience, or memory?

Psychologist, Nobel laureate (in economics), and happiness researcher Daniel Kahneman describes a interesting thought experiment in his fascinating TED video, "The riddle of experience vs. memory."  It seems to point to something really important about life, spirituality, meaning, well-being, and all that. I just can't quite figure out what it is -- which probably is a result of me being immersed in the riddle of experience vs. memory, as all of us are. That is, I got an intuitive flash when I heard Kahneman talk about the thought experiment, but when I reflect upon it, as I am now, I'm focusing…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“War of the Worldviews” ends with clear win for science

Just like I thought after reading only four of the nineteen debates between spiritually-minded new age sage Deepak Chopra and scientifically-minded physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their book, "War of the Worldviews," I finished the final chapter feeling that science emerged the decisive victor. Understand: I've got a lot of sympathy for mysticism, meditation, and unconventional ways of viewing the cosmos. I don't believe that science has all the answers, because I don't believe that anybody does.  But I've always liked my "spirituality" (a term that doesn't mean to me what it used to, yet which I continue to use out…
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Posted inPolitics

Should a presidential candidate’s faith matter?

I've argued before that religious beliefs have no place in politics. (See here, here, and here.) This isn't the same as saying that religious people can't be politically active. Heck, if that were the case the vast majority of American citizens would be apolitical. I just feel that when it comes to policy-making, elected officials should offer up good reasons for why they want to do X rather than Y. Then those who disagree with that choice can engage in a rational debate rather than being met with a faith-based "just because." Pastor Robert Jeffress has a different point of…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Good news, bad news: this moment will never come again

Over the years, as I've become less and less religious, my take on "spirituality" has become similarly pared down. I used to believe that a being a spiritual person had something to do with rising above or beyond this world into some ethereal realm. Now, I consider that being fully present is most, if not all, of what it means to be spiritual -- which removes supernatural connotations from this word and places it firmly in this world, not the next. The older and more churchless I get (the two qualities being closely tied together in me) the more frequently…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

I get mail: an “Atta boy” and a “Come home”

I enjoyed an email message from Tamara so much, I asked her if I could share it in a blog post. Her OK reply was equally enjoyable: "By all means, Brian, throw my golden prose onto the godless telegraph. ha. My opinions are always liberally (double meaning) expressed to everyone within earshot--or email. Accreditation is no prob." Here's her message: Brian, baby, LOVE LOVE the Oct. 12 "God is too good..." piece. At last, a kindred spirit in this religion-soaked world. My opinion of god is, if we entertain the premise of that existence--he/she/it does not DESERVE my worship. This crap about…
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Posted inBooks Science

Deepak Chopra’s inanity makes my head explode

Like I said before, I'm enjoying the series of mini-debates between Deepak Chopra and Leonard Mlodinow in "War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality." Now that I'm more than halfway through the book, it's more obvious than ever that Mlodinow is kicking Chopra's intellectual/philosophical butt. Here's a non-verbal depiction of my reaction to Deepak Chopra's New Age'y, mostly fact-free arguments on some Big Questions of Life. This photo is of the second page in Chopra's eight page answer to "Does the Brain Dictate Behavior?" Those are nine -- count them, nine -- marginal question marks that I highlighted in on…
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Posted inBuddhism

“Dot, an ordinary life” shows limits of Zen — and meditation

Yesterday my wife and I watched "Dot" at the Salem Film Festival. It's a documentary about an extraordinary 82 year old woman from Ashland, Oregon who believably claims that her life is ordinary. From the film's web site: Dot Fisher-Smith is a mystical masterful artist, a war resister, an environmental activist, a community presence, a jailbird. As a great-grandmother, she chained her neck to a log truck to protest salvage logging of old-growth forest. Yet she calls herself a mistaken Buddha and her own life ordinary. This moving documentary is an intimate portrait of life and death through the eyes of 82-year-old…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

My meditation: learning how unfree I am

Even though I no longer follow an organized system of meditation (for over thirty years I was a member of an India-based group, Radha Soami Satsang Beas), I still enjoy meditating every day. Sometimes I follow my breath. Sometimes I repeat a simple mantra of one or two syllables. Since I practice Tai Chi and resonate with Taoism, the words "wu chi" appeal to me. It's the readiness posture in Tai Chi, an embrace of empty fullness. And it's the core of the Wu Project that I've been blogging about. I also like to listen to a mantra in my…
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Posted inReligions

God is too good to believe in Him/Her/It

One big reason I don't believe in God is that descriptions of the Supreme Being almost always are unbelievably perfect.  Show me a flawed, clueless, unknowing, emotionally infantile God and I'd be a lot more inclined to sign up as a true believer. But then I'd wonder "What's the point in being devoted to a supposedly divine being who actually is no better than us humans are?" It's deeply suspicious that virtually every religion posits a super-good God. Sure, the Old Testament God and similar gods exhibit some nasty character flaws -- jealousy, cruelty, egotism, to name a few --…
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Posted inReligions Science

Mlodinow beat Chopra in “War of the Worldviews”

I've only read four of the nineteen debates between New Age "guru" Deepak Chopra and top-notch physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their fascinating book, War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality.  But I'm ready to declare a clear winner: Mlodinow. Highlighter in hand, I'm filling the pages Chopra authored with marginal question marks. By contrast, so far I haven't found anything obviously questionable in what Mlodinow wrote. That's because science sticks with facts, by and large, while spirituality is prone to fluttering all over the place with ethereal unproven pronouncements. You should make up your own mind, though. That's the best thing…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Steve Jobs warns against dogma

Early in the 1980's I got my first Apple computer, a II Plus. I remember taking it into work (Oregon's state health planning agency) and wowing my fellow employees with how VisiCalc could automate a spreadsheet, showing results on a small green screen. Since, I've owned and enjoyed many other Apple products. So I felt sad, along with countless other people, when I heard that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had died. Watching tributes to him on TV, I was exposed to Jobs' philosophy of life. Until now I hadn't realized how appealing his outlook on life and death was. I…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Embrace the ordinary (because it’s special)

This morning I found myself wondering what the day would bring as I walked up our long driveway to get the newspapers. I had a feeling, hopefully there will be more... What came after the ellipsis was left unsaid in my mind. I wasn't sure what more I wanted, just that whatever it was, it should be more than what I was doing at the moment: walking up our long driveway to get the newspapers. I've been doing this sort of thing for most of my sixty-two years. Looking for something extra, the frosting on life's bare cake, the final…
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Posted inReality Science

Physicists may have discovered extra dimensions

Note the word "may" in this blog post title. That's the most important thought in the potentially super-exciting story of how CERN researchers may have discovered that neutrinos travel slightly faster than the speed of light. If this is true, the implications would be astronomical. Literally. Because a leading explanation for the Einstein-defying neutrinos (his theory of relativity makes the speed of light an absolute speed limit) is that the nearly massless particles are taking a short cut through extra dimensions of reality on their way from CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to a particle detector near L'Aquila, Italy. An article…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Unmediated experience doesn’t exist

A comment conversation between me and "cc" on a recent blog post got me to thinking about whether any human experience can be unmediated. Meaning: not communicated or transformed by an intervening agency In a comment I said: But sometimes people do need to be talked out of an erroneous belief system. That was the job of my wife, when she worked at a state mental hospital, and then also (to a different degree) as a private psychotherapist. Just because someone feels like they are one with the cosmos doesn't mean this feeling has any basis in reality. People also…
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