Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

My new affirmation: softer, slower, smaller

I've been practicing Tai Chi for about eleven years. Before, I was into hard style martial arts -- traditional Japanese Shotokan karate at first, then a mixed style focused on Korean karate.  Soft-style martial arts like Tai Chi (a.k.a. internal styles) take considerably more time to learn and, perhaps, master. External styles are centered on punching, kicking, blocking, and such. What you're supposed to learn is pretty much open to view. Sure, there's a mental side to karate, but by and large the emphasis in training is on what your body is doing, not your psyche. With Tai Chi, there's…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

“Soul” — an appealing notion, but no agreement on what it is

For many years I believed that I had, or was, a soul. This idea was comforting, because the spiritual philosophy I followed taught that the essence of human beings was non-material, pure consciousness, and everlasting. So when my body died, supposedly my soul would live on. Worse case was, it, or I, would be reincarnated as another bodily life form. Best case was, my soul, or True Me, would leave matter and mind behind forever. In this case, soul-me would exist in a "heavenly" realm beyond time and space. Now, it was always hard for me to imagine what such…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

“Faithless Feminist” speaks to irreligious women and men alike

My wife, Laurel, is an increasingly ardent scientifically-minded religious skeptic. After starting a Meet Up discussion group here in Salem -- Science Minded Skeptics --  she's gotten to know Karen Darst, a Portland woman who runs the Faithless Feminist web site.  Check it out. It isn't just for women, or feminists. I liked Garst's "The Devil Made Me Do It" post. The whole idea of the devil is ridiculous, but the notion of an supernatural power in opposition to God (who is another absurd idea) can be found in Eastern as well as Western religions.  For a long time I…
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Posted inScience

Consciousness could be the mind’s way to explain unconscious actions

One of my favorite parts of New Scientist issues are the letters. Not surprisingly, given the readership, the letters typically are intelligent, insightful, and creative.  Below is one from the October 10 issue that grabbed my attention. It just seems like it could be so right, though I'm not sure how anyone could test this hypothesis.  The letter writer suggests that just as the human mind/brain has an inherent tendency to attribute conscious purpose to other people (basically, "theory of mind"), perhaps that same ability to construct a purposeful agent also is applied inwardly -- to one's own mind.So when we…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Afterlife myths enabled early humans to cope with fear of death

Members of a wolf pack who are hunting prey with sharp horns don't stop and think, "Damn, if I keep chasing those animals, I could freaking die!"  Early humans did. Because we have self-awareness, while animals, almost certainly, simply are aware.  Meaning, a human can anticipate his or her death, even when the threat of that happening isn't imminent. Other animals also fear death, but only when their lives are immediately threatened. This is a huge difference. An important difference. A difference that makes all the difference between us and other species. It also is a central theme of a…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra meditation basically is useless

First off, tonight I had another circular moment when I decided to search Google for "mantra meditation useless," the topic that I wanted to blog about. This has happened to me before when I've asked the Great God Google to enlighten me on some subject. I do a search, then find that some of my own Church of the Churchless posts are the top results.  So I turn out to be the answer to the question that I asked myself.  In this case, Google led me to my "Meditation is useless" and "Skeptical look at mantras and Transcendental Meditation" posts. …
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Posted inPolitics Religions

“Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!”

FEMEN International has a good slogan -- the title of this post.  Recently they made good on those words, as described in "Topless female protesters manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France."  Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process....Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Don’t care about what others think about you

A few days ago I had one of my mini-enlightenments -- a SO TRUE intuition that popped into my mind unexpectedly and unbidden. It felt like it came from a unconscious part of my psyche that is sometimes (or always) wiser than my conscious self. The intuition seemed really important at the time. Still does. Though it's kind of hard to put into words. Best I can do is this: Why the hell do I care so much about how other people look upon me? How I feel about myself is way more important than how they feel about me. When…
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Posted inBuddhism Morality

Tantra vs. Buddhist ethics (Tantra is a lot more fun!)

I don't know much about Tantra. I've had the impression that Tantra was all about wild spiritual sex -- which might have some truth to it, but possibly just a little. David Chapman, though, knows a lot about Tantra. The real Tantra. Also, Chapman is an expert on Buddhism. So he's just the guy to write a post called "Buddhist ethics": a Tantric critique. The post, like all of Chapman's writings (I'm a fan), is clear and nicely composed. Still, it will strike people not into this subject as rather Buddhist-geeky.  Which isn't a criticism. Just an observation.  I read…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

A walk in nature could be better than meditation

I've meditated every day since 1970. So obviously I'm a big believer in meditation.  But the more meditating I've done, the less I believe it is the best way to feel better and deal effectively with life's problems.  Sure, it is one way. There just are so many others -- as Brené Brown implied in an answer to a question posed to her in the "8 Questions" feature on the last page of a recent issue of TIME magazine. You say one of the keys to all this is spirituality. Why is that?I really wrestled with that. The way I define spirituality is a deeply…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

It is impossible for the brain to always “be here now”

I'm a big fan of mindfulness and meditation. I resonate with a non-religious, secular, scientific approach to Buddhism.  But I'm also an avid reader of neuroscience books. My current fave is Antonio Damasio's "Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain."  Much of the book is filled with more details about brain anatomy and functioning than I really care about. The overall theme, though, is fascinating -- how our sense of self is built up from more primitive primordial feelings, along with a less primitive core self and a possibly uniquely human autobiographical self. Today I came across a section…
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Posted inFundamentalism

Hindu fundamentalists are killing freethinkers in India

Well, a story in the New York Times, "India's Attack on Free Speech," makes me feel better about religious craziness in the United States. We have lots of fanatic Christian fundamentalists in this country. But we also have the First Amendment and a healthy respect for free speech. Our Christian nationalists don't kill anti-religion bloggers. (Good news for me!) In India, though, people are being killed for speaking their faithless minds. I'd thought that India was making progress on becoming a liberal democracy akin to ours ("liberal" means something different in this context from the usual liberal/conservative distinction). But apparently…
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