Posted inBuddhism Taoism/Tai Chi

“Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen” — great Alan Watts essay

Back in 1958 Alan Watts wrote a classic essay, "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen." Beat and square, back in the 50's, were words roughly equivalent to our "cool" and "lame." Or "hip" and "traditional." A beatnik bore some resemblance to today's hipster. I was just ten years old in 1958, so wasn't able to embrace the beat generation thing. Had to wait until the 60's to dive into the next counter-cultural evolution: hippies. A few days ago I came across Watts' essay in a compilation of three of his writings, "The Wisdom of Insecurity" (one of my all-time favorite…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Get wonderful strangeness! Fast. Free. Fun.

Behold: my "Four Recipes for Instant Strangeness." This is my most recent Strange Up Salem column in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly. It's got some churchless aspects to it, for sure. Strangeness is what we want, even if this isn't obvious. No need to look for it in some esoteric, unbelievable, supernatural religion. Embrace it close at home, wherever you are. Here's my tips. Four recipes for instant strangeness It’s summer. Living is easy. Who wants to work hard at making Salem stranger? Instead of laboring to cook up a stew of strangeness, here’s four ways of making our…
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Posted inScience Wu Project

Best explanation of Schrödinger’s cat I’ve ever seen

Schrödinger's cat is a perplexing animal that seemingly is both alive and dead before an observation is made of it. This thought experiment was intended to show how the weirdness of quantum mechanics could be applied to everyday objects. It's always bothered me that a human, or some other observer, was needed to make the twin potentiality of "dead" and "alive" become a single actuality. Why couldn't the cat observe itself? In Amanda Gefter's book, "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn," she has the best explanation of the Schrödinger's cat paradox I've ever come across. The implications of this are huge -- a…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Is seva, selfless service, possible? Why direct it toward God?

During my thirty-five years as an active member of an Indian spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I heard a lot about seva, selfless service.  Sikhs are big on seva and Radha Soami Satsang Beas' (RSSB) teachings, a form of Sant Mat, are closely aligned with Sikhism.  The way I was taught, the highest form of seva is service to God. Since the guru was considered to be God in human form, service to the guru was the next best thing to performing service to God directly. Who, since there was no sign of this divine being, wasn't available to…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

Folk theory of enlightenment: sophisticated B.S.

"I am nothing." "I am God, or all." Somehow these seemingly contradictory hypotheses coexist within what the Shimmering Dead End blog calls the folk theory of enlightenment. Here's a diagram of the whole confusing thing. (click to enlarge) Pretty darn interesting. There's a slide show that explains this schema.  From my quick perusual of his/her writings, The Shimmering Dead End guy/gal appears to believe in some sort of immediate experiential non-dual awareness (whatever that means), but considers that the conceptualizations underlying "I am nothing" and "I am God, or all" are, basically, bullshit.  Popular bullshit, to be sure. I've bought…
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Posted inVedanta/Advaita

Non-duality tweets by David Chapman

Hey, Twitter certainly can be philosophical. In 140 characters or less. Here's a series of recent tweets from David Chapman that I enjoyed. ----------------------------------- David Chapman @Meaningness · Jun 28 Since All is One, seeming differences are illusion. Illusion is bad, so Oneness is better than differences. [The duality of #nonduality.] David Chapman @Meaningness · Jun 28 In Oneness, all is equal. Equality is better than difference, so we who know Oneness are more equal than you. [Authoritarian #nonduality.] David Chapman @Meaningness · Jun 28 Since your self is an illusion, doing what you want is meaningless—there's no "you" to want it—so stop now. [Renunciation in #nonduality.] David Chapman @Meaningness · Jun…
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Posted inReligions Science

Five simple rules of science from Neil deGrasse Tyson

The final episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" ended with host Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, cogently describing how science is able to comprehend mysteries of the universe that other ways of knowing reality are unable to fathom. Like religion. Consider how Tyson's Five Simple Rules are almost diametrically opposed to the faith-based belief systems espoused by religions the world over.  They ask us to revere authority, not question theological dogma, have unshakable faith, remain within a single chosen religion, and accept that some saint, prophet, or other godly person was able to perfectly know divine truth. Whereas this, according…
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Posted inReality Science

In a God’s eye view, who does the seeing?

I've heard the term, "God's eye view," before. But I haven't given it much thought. Maybe it was because I believed in God for so many years. I never questioned the notion that there could be a way of looking upon reality that was godlike. After all, even scientists -- not just religious believers -- assume the cosmos can be viewed from some sort of detached objective transcendent perspective. This is the way things are.  OK. But says who? And where is that entity? If inside the cosmos (which I define as everything that exists), then this being with a…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

One hour with my father: a story with churchless subtext

Here's something different, Church of the Churchless blog post-wise. An audio recording of my ten-minute Stories from the Dark Side talk last month.  Click here. Then on the orange play/stop button, top left side, next to my name: Brian Hines (Brian Hart is one of the organizers of Stories from the Dark Side). The overall theme of the evening was Gone for Good. I blogged about it in "Telling a story from my dark side felt like church. Without the religion." At the time the audio recording of my talk wasn't available. Now it is.  I just stood at the…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Regarding God: How do you know? What are the chances?

After about fifty years of spiritual searching, what I've learned about God comes down not to answers but to two questions applicable to everybody -- including me. How do you know?What are the chances? There's a lot to say about these eight words. I've done just that over my ten years of churchless blogging. (On the specific subject of chances, see here, here, and here.) I'll reprise the basic reason I now subscribe to a decidedly skeptical view of religious, supernatural, and other-worldly claims: It is damned unlikely, and also  egotistical, for anyone to believe they know the truth about…
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Posted inScience

Glimpses of observer-dependent reality on “Einstein’s Lawn”

"Excellent book buy, Brian." I enjoy praising myself. I rarely fail to make sense when I'm speaking to someone who understands me: Me. The book I'm talking about to myself is Amanda Gefter's "Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything." I was worried it'd be too sentimental, with too much father-daughter stuff. I was mainly interested in the physics, the meaning of a cosmos that, as the subtitle says, is mainly (or completely?) comprised of nothing. No worries. Three chapters in, I'm hooked. Both on Gefter's compelling prose and the search…
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Posted inFree will Science

Society would do fine without a belief in free will

I'm fascinated by free will. Especially the lack thereof. Do a "free will" Google search of my blogs (via the box in the right sidebar) and you'll find lots of posts I've written on this fascinating subject.  (Some are here, here, here, and here.) It doesn't bother me at all that modern neuroscience is steadily demolishing philosophical and religious reasons for believing in free will. If this is the way the world works, where's the problem? To me, worrying about the consequences if people stop believing in free will is almost exactly the same as previous worries about what would…
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Posted inGod Reality

Once God is gone, the world shines more brightly

I've flown both ways. For many years I Iooked upon the world through a conceptual prism where my belief in God, a being unseen and unknown, altered the perspective from which I saw things. Now, I do my best to cast off the filter of spiritual imaginings, desiring to view reality as clearly as possible as it is rather than how I'd like it to be. I've discovered something interesting: when I don't try to fashion the world into a place that it isn't, full of illusory ideas about salvation, divinity, soul, eternal existence, and such, what is turns out…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

A brief conversation with a newly churchless friend

Sometimes a lot can be said in a short time. It all depends on how honest and direct the conversing is. With Russell, a Tai Chi friend who I hadn't seen for quite a while after he stopped coming to classes, we covered a lot of philosophical ground in a few minutes after we ran into each other in a downtown Salem coffeehouse. He was chatting with the barista when I walked up to the counter to order. Russell greeted me in his usual wonderfully friendly manner. I told the barista, "I know Russell from Tai Chi. He's the only…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

Inference to the best explanation. Fancy words, simple way of living.

Idly glancing at a bookshelf in our house a few days ago, I noticed a book that I bought back in 2010, Paul Thagard's "The Brain and The Meaning of Life." Since, I've been re-reading some of it each morning. Great book, with some great ideas. I blogged about these before in "Reality is real, but brains construct knowledge" and "Divinity isn't necessary to make life meaningful." Here's an excerpt from the first post. When we go on our evening walk, my dog has a very different experience of reality than I do, given her vastly superior sense of smell.…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Reduce the chatter of your inner anchorperson

The 24 hour cable news channels are a fairly recent invention. But the voice inside our head that chatters away almost non-stop likely is as old as modern human consciousness. There's a lot of similarity between so-called news anchors and our own inner commentator. (Who is it? Me? But it's giving me advice, berating me, encouraging me, talking to me. So how could it be me? Assuming there even is a "me" for the voice to be or not to be.) They both spend a lot more time recollecting the past and musing about the future than reporting on what…
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Posted inReality Science

Try to have your philosophy disturbed every day

Driving home this evening, on my car radio I heard the end of an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson, the astrophysicist who hosts the new Cosmos series. Tyson said: I try to have my philosophy disturbed every day.  Beautiful. That's obviously an open-minded scientist speaking, not a fundamentalist religious believer. People of faith don't want to have their philosophy disturbed, because its foundation is so shaky. They don't know. They aren't sure of the facts. They don't possess demonstrable evidence. No, they just have faith that maybe, perhaps, possibly, what they want to be true really is: salvation, eternal life,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Religions

Telling a story from my dark side felt like church. Without the religion.

Last night I was one of eight speakers who took part in the second Stories From the Dark Side event here in Salem, Oregon. I enjoyed myself. The organizers kindly provided a bottle of Jack Daniels and a couple of shot glasses in the Grand Theatre's "green room." Plus, Santiam Brewing Company had some dark stout on tap in the lobby. I managed to get myself in a great story-telling frame of mind via a balanced blend of coffee, beer, and whiskey. I talked about my one hour with my father. That is one of my favorite blog posts, mostly because I wrote…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

We’ll die the way we have lived

I don't like to think about death. Especially my own. When my wife and I went to get our wills made, I asked the attorney to say "gerbiled" rather "died" whenever she needed to refer to my death. Yeah, it sounded sort of ridiculous when the attorney told us, "So upon Brian's gerbiling, his estate will pass to..." But I was fine with ridiculousness so long as I could lessen the probability that I'd have to seriously envision my, um, eventual gerbiling. No, I can say it now: eventual death. I still don't enjoy pondering my demise. However, for some…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

True cliche: live every moment as if it were your last

One of the benefits of growing older -- I'm 65 -- is that you acquire some Zennish enlightenment without having to meditate on hard cushions, figure out koans, or do any other of the Official Zen stuff. Just seeing people you know about your age or younger die naturally leads to a realization that, as I said in another blog post on this subject three and a half years ago, This is it. We live. And eventually we die. What I knew on the dog walk, and still know, is that this moment, whatever it consists of, never will come again.…
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