Posted inBuddhism

Susan Blackmore on falling into Zen

I have a steadily decreasing tolerance for spiritual dogmatism, whether of the religious, mystical, New Age, or any other variety.  So when I need some inspiration, I don't look nearly as often to people with supposed answers to life's mysteries as I used to. Instead, I resonate with people who focus on facts rather than faith, and probing questions rather than superficial answers. Which is why I enjoy Susan Blackmore's book, "Ten Zen Questions."  Picking it up this morning, after having first read it in 2010, I liked what Blackmore says in her initial Falling Into Zen chapter.  Alongside my…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Death is the only victor in Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine

Apartment buildings can be rebuilt. So can hospitals, shopping centers, elder care homes, and all the other structures being destroyed by Russia's purposeful bombing of civilian areas, a clear war crime. What can't be undone are the many thousands of deaths: soldiers on both sides, plus women, children, the elderly, and other Ukrainians unable to flee Putin's invasion. That's heartbreaking.  After Russia started this war, I've had this thought whenever I feel like my day isn't going well: I do have some problems, but I'm alive, and I don't have to worry about a missile demolishing my home. There's a…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 42 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it might be because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such.…
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Posted inBuddhism

Salvation has no meaning in Zen Buddhism

I don't believe I need salvation. Neither does Zen Buddhism. This is one reason, among many, I've been a fan of Zen since my college years.  A few days ago I started re-reading Hubert Benoit's marvelous book, The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought.  I've written lots of blog posts about the book, which I've read about a half dozen times. Back in 2005 I wrote a post, "'The Supreme Doctrine,' thirty-six years overdue."  Since this is 2022, the book I couldn't bear to return to the San Jose Public Library is now 53 years overdue. If I believed…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I’m more proud of being married for 32 years than of being religious for 35 years

Today is our anniversary. Easy to remember, since Laurel and I got married on St. Patrick's Day, 1990. That makes 32 years we've been husband and wife. Or as Laurel might say, wife and husband.  Whenever I look at our wedding photo, naturally I think, Damn, we looked so young back then! Well, yeah, that's what 32 years will do to you. Forty-one is way younger than seventy-three. Another thing 32 years of being married will do is teach you a lot. (Actually, I've been married for 50 years, since my first marriage lasted 18 years; Laurel had never been married…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Not only God is beyond words, everything is

Often people say "God is beyond words." No argument from me there, for several reasons. First, if God doesn't exist (the most likely scenario), then naturally God is beyond words, since no word describes nonexistence. Second, everything is beyond words. It simply isn't possible to capture all of the characteristics of something in words, numbers, concepts, images, or any other means. Even a single cell in our body defies description. A recent article in The New Yorker made that clear. Every cell is completely filled with complex entities, all engaged in constant motion, and so far scientists have been unable…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

“May I be free of fear” — my addition to loving kindness meditation

For quite a while, maybe five years, I've been repeating a form of loving kindness meditation that I learned from listening to Tamara Levitt's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. It starts like this. Then "I" is replaced by "you," someone I care about (usually my wife), followed by "all" replacing "you." May I be happy.May I be safe.May I be healthy.May I be at peace. Recently I've added a fifth sentiment. May I be free of fear. When I do the "all" thing, previously I envisioned the entire world, as if I was floating in space and casting…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

What do you find inspiring about Ukrainians?

I'm curious. While I realize that most of the people who visit this blog aren't as obsessed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine as I am -- I check my Twitter feed for recent news about Ukraine many times a day -- likely everybody is at least somewhat familiar with how bravely the Ukrainian people are fighting against this unprovoked war by Vladimir Putin. So I'm interested in learning how you feel about what's happening in Ukraine. Note, feel. I stress that word because while I do a lot of thinking about Ukraine, all those thoughts aren't nearly as important…
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Posted inAtheism Free will

Before you decide to do something, you’re already acting

I'm a big non-believer in free will. OK, more simply put, I don't believe in free will -- even though, like almost everybody, I feel like I have it. Today I listened to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my Calm iPhone app. It starts off this way.  There's a famous neurobiology finding where a test subject is told to push a meaningless button whenever they feel like it. And meanwhile, scientists are watching the subject's brain activity on an EEG machine. And here's the weird thing. A full six seconds before the person has the thought, I'm going…
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Posted inReality Religions

Enjoying religious stories is fine. Just realize they’re fiction.

As I've noted before on this blog, I'm a big believer in good stories. I enjoy reading fiction. I enjoy watching fiction.  It never fails to amaze me that I can be sitting in our bathtub every evening, nestled in hot water with a vaporizer full of quality Oregon marijuana, holding an escapist thriller book (I love Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp novels; he's a CIA operative), getting excited about whether Rapp is going to succeed in his latest exploit -- while I know full well that Mitch Rapp is a creation of Flynn's imagination, or in the case of the…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

All upset exists in you, not in reality

I'm a fan of Anthony de Mello, a free-thinking Jesuit priest. In a 2015 post, "Anthony de Mello -- a heretic Catholic spiritual rebel," I shared links to eight other blog posts I'd written about de Mello's writings.  Recently I finished reading what probably will be the last published book of his. "Rediscovering Life: Awaken to Reality" is based on a lecture de Mello gave a few months before he died in 1987. Excerpts from the book can be read below. On the whole, I agree with what de Mello says here. It's a tough love sort of message. But…
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Posted inAtheism God Religions

Fear of God’s wrath is a lousy reason to be religious

Life is difficult. This is something almost everyone can agree on, believers and atheists alike. But only religious people add to life's difficulties by imagining God inflicts pain and suffering on those who don't comply with whatever commandments their religion believes in. I was a Catholic briefly as a child. I readily admit that I've never learned why confession is, or at least was, a big part of being a Catholic. I simply remember that as part of my first communion, I had to confess my sins to a priest. Being so young, I wasn't much of a sinner. So…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Putin is an authoritarian. So are most religious leaders.

There are lots of reasons to support Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia. One key reason is this: it wasn't Russia that invaded Ukraine. It was Vladimir Putin, the authoritarian ruler of Russia. Now, defenders of what Russia did might say that in the United States, the president is the commander-in-chief of the military. So a decision to go to war rests with the president.  Actually, that isn't true. Our Constitution gives Congress the right to declare war. Recently American presidents have usurped that power in various ways, but the Constitution hasn't changed.  But in Russia, Putin is completely…
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Posted inScience

Science is the best lens we have to view the world

Here's a typically thoughtful comment from Appreciative Reader on a recent post. I made it into a blog post of its own for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, the comment explains in a clear, persuasive fashion why science is just a great way of learning about the world and our place in it. Secondly, Appreciative Reader's comment went into the spam filter of Typepad, my blogging service, and it took me several days to notice that this had happened, because I've been so obsessed with keeping track of what's going on with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So it's Putin's…
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Posted inReality

We live in a world of imperfect realism

A few days ago I explained why I wasn't writing about an idea I had: Embrace what's real, not an ideal. I was planning to revisit that topic tonight. But this morning I read a fascinating chapter in David Chalmers' new book, Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy.  The chapter, "Have we fallen from the Garden of Eden?," reflected the basic notion I had. That there's a marked difference between viewing life as it actually is, versus how it could ideally be. Chalmers starts off his chapter with a creative look at how science has changed the Eden-like…
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Posted inPolitics

Russia invading Ukraine makes religiosity seem irrelevant

This morning I had an idea for a Church of the Churchless blog post. I jotted down the topic: Embrace what's real, not an ideal.  It had struck me that many, if not most, of our personal problems stem from expecting too much from life. We think, "Ideally, I wouldn't be ______" (fill in the blank). Having so much pain. Failing to enjoy my job. Arguing with my teenage child. Wondering why I'm not happier. So many possible ideals that reality doesn't match up with. Probably I'll revisit this subject later. Right now, I find it hard to concentrate on…
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Posted inScience

A scientific theory never becomes a fact

New Scientist has a feature near the end of the magazine where reader questions shared in one issue are answered by other readers who send in submissions that are selected to appear in a later issue. Below is a question and six answers related to when a theory becomes a fact. The answers make a lot of sense. Even though I've been aware that when something is called a theory, this doesn't mean that it isn't a well-proven means of describing reality. But this is how many people view a theory -- as something speculative, as when we say "I've got…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Mind-body dualism almost certainly isn’t true, but it could be in a simulation

Are mind and body two different things, or one thing? Descartes, along with Eastern religions that view consciousness as immaterial, argue that mind and body belong to different realms, nonphysical and physical. A big problem with this view, of course, is that it's obvious that mind and body are intimately connected. I think, "Type I think," and voila, that's what happens. If mind and body are different, how could an immaterial mind control the physical fingers that tap out letters on my keyboard? And how is it that ingesting coffee, LSD, alcohol, or numerous other substances affects the mind, if…
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Posted inAtheism

Atheism has no doctrines

In Armin Navabi's book, Why There is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God, he has a chapter called "Atheism has killed more people than religion, so it must be wrong." Navabi's main argument against this is in a section called Atheism Has No Doctrines. He makes some great points, so I'm sharing that section here. Atheism Has No Doctrines The violence within Christianity or Islam can often be traced back to the teachings of those religions because it is embedded in the ideology of the religions themselves.  Even though war and violence in…
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