Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

What we are: a strange loop in an ego tunnel

If there's one thing I know after 62 years of living, it's I don't know who or what I am. (Of course, I could be wrong about that also -- but I'd still be right about not knowing whether I was or wasn't.) Now, this isn't so different from what I used to believe in my religious days. When I embraced a mystical meditation system known as Sant Mat, I assumed that some sort of maya/illusion stood between me and reality. So I couldn't know myself or the cosmos as it really is until the veils were removed. However, the…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

Wisdom from Alan Watts’ “Nature, Man and Woman”

I love Alan Watts. Browsing through the Taoism section of my book collection this morning, I noticed an early edition of his "Nature, Man, and Woman" that I got way back in my college days but hadn't looked at for a long time. During today's pre-meditation reading I made it through the Introduction. Just reading this one chapter reminded me what a creative, insightful writer and thinker Watts was. I don't agree with everything he says, but Watts has a knack for taking familiar subjects and looking at them in a fresh fashion. Here's some quotations that I resonated with:…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Live as a river — fluid, dynamic, interconnected

I was pretty sure that I was going to like Bodhipaksa's book as soon as I saw the title: "Living as a River." The subtitle was appealing also, Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change. Having grown up in Three Rivers, California (which lives up to its name, being at the confluence of three forks of the Kaweah River), I spent a lot of time in my boyhood years swimming, inner-tubing, and otherwise frolicking in the cold snowmelt from the high Sierras. Me and my friends learned that an untamed mountain river is both a lot of fun and a…
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Posted inBooks Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

A religious or spiritual path is a metaphor — not reality

Metaphors are fun to play around with. Over on my other blog, I recently called the Oregon city where I live "a blandburger sandwiched between spicy Portland and Eugene." But Salem isn't really food. It's what it is: people, places, buildings, roads, parks, culture (and the lack thereof), plus so much else immediately cognizable stuff. Metaphors are a big step removed from the sort of reality that doesn't depend upon mentally connecting this, such as Salem, with that, such as the innards of a sandwich. I'm plugging away on reading a big thick book, "Philosophy in the Flesh," that I've…
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Posted inBooks Christianity/Jesus

“Jesus Potter, Harry Christ” relates Hogwarts and Heaven

Who comes to mind when you think...? Magic father, human motherMiraculous birth, foretold by prophecyThreatened by an evil ruler, had to go into hiding as a babyPower over animals, time, and matterSymbolized by a lion, enemy symbolized by a snakeDescended into the underworldBroke seven magical sealsWent willingly to his deathSuffered and died (or appeared to die) willingly, was mournedCame back to lifeDefeated his enemy in a glorious final battle I'm no Biblical scholar. And I've never read the Harry Potter series. But I believe Derek Murphy when he says, early on in his book "Jesus Potter, Harry Christ," that there…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

“All Things Shining” is a luminous philosophical read

If you're looking for a book that (1) discusses Western classics like Moby Dick and the Odyssey in a fresh and creative fashion, (2) points the way to a philosophy of life that navigates between the danger zones of religiosity and nihilism, and (3) was featured on a recent episode of The Colbert Report, there's only one choice: "All Things Shining," by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, two heavy-duty philosophers (Kelly is Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Harvard, but looks too young and clean-cut for this; where's the beard and pipe?) I'm not literary enough to be…
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Posted inBooks

“The Best Spiritual Writing 2011” — a religious Rorschach test

I usually find a collection of essays to be too diffuse and disconnected for my taste. I prefer a book with a unifying theme, something that either grabs me or repels me -- but at least touches me forthrightly. However, I enjoyed "The Best Spiritual Writing 2011" more than I expected. [Note: I got this book free from the publisher, who said I could have a copy if I considered writing a review of it, which I'm doing here.] The thirty essays are well-written, some more so than others, naturally. Good writing always is pleasurable, even if I don't agree…
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Posted inBooks God

More bad arguments for the existence of God

Earlier this year I wrote a post about Rebecca Goldstein's book, "36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction," citing several arguments that religiously-minded visitors to this blog often like to use. Each has flaws, which Goldstein points out clearly and entertainingly in an appendix to her book. They can be read here in their entirety. (Scroll down past the book excerpt.) I'd been slowly making my way through "36 Arguments," not finding the story all that engrossing. I liked the philosophical discussions, though, so decided to jump to the climactic debate between a religious skeptic and…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Stuff happens — meaning of life in two words

I'm not sure what I'd make of me if that wasn't who I am: me. But isn't that true of everyone, you included? (Who is the "me" to yourself, whereas I'm your "you.") By which I mean, if I saw myself from the outside rather than the inside, I'd likely think, "Wow, that dude is weird." That indeed is how I often look upon people, both dudes and dudettes. Yet to them, they're normal and it's other folks such as me who are strange. Today I sent off an email to a neighbor. I added some lines that had little…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Reality is the only guru we need

After many years of searching for spiritual truth, about forty, most of which were spent following the teachings of a supposedly God-realized guru,  I finally feel like I know what this truth is. Reality. Which isn't spiritual at all. Nor otherworldly. Or supernatural, mystical, mysterious, secret, hidden from the unitiated. In other words, the big "spiritual truth" is that there isn't any. Everything we need to understand how we relate to the cosmos is right before our eyes: everyday life. Whatever you did today, and whatever you're doing right now, contains the wisdom of the ages. We just need to…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

I’ve stopped having spiritual experiences

I can't remember the last time I had a spiritual experience. Well, more accurately, the last time I had an experience that I called "spiritual." I used to have lots of them. I've been to India twice, each time spending several weeks at the Radha Soami Satsang Beas headquarters in the Punjab. Seeing the guru, who is considered to be God in human form, seemed deeply spiritual to me. Ditto with having a feeling that I should take I-205 rather than I-5 just before crossing the Columbia River into Oregon -- I was driving home after seeing the guru give…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Exploring the moral landscape with Sam Harris

This morning I finished reading Sam Harris' newest book, "The Moral Landscape." After blogging favorably about the first two chapters, I continued to enjoy Harris' neuroscientific, yet eminently readable, take on how human wellbeing can be expanded via facts rather than faith. Events in the world, and the brain, affect how we experience life. If we study the relationship between those events and our experiences, we stand a good chance of being able to climb higher on the "moral landscape" (individually and collectively). Harris says: Throughout this book I make reference to a hypothetical space that I call "the moral…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Buddhism’s consensual core isn’t supernatural

What is the essence of a religion? That is, how can we tell whether someone is a "real" Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever? What degree of supposed heresy is beyond the bounds of a belief system? These are tough questions to answer, in part because they are religion-specific. Hinduism seems to be a lot more accomodating of alternative viewpoints than Christianity is. Yet Mormons usually are considered to be Christian, even though they stretch the gospel truth (so to speak) in some far-out directions. I got to thinking about this after having a comment interchange with Todd on…
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Posted inBooks Death/Rebirth

Here’s a tale from the afterlives

I'm hugely enjoying David Eagleman's "Sum: forty tales from the afterlives." This is a marvelously creative and thought-provoking book, unlike anything I've ever read before.

Sum is a work of fiction (maybe). The back cover says:

With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

There's no way to explain the book. So I'll simply share one of the tales that I especially enjoyed. Read on.

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Posted inBooks Science

What do you believe but cannot prove?

This is a great question. Seeing it on the cover of a book in Sisters' (Oregon) Paulina Springs Books made me instantly believe, "I'll be standing at the cash register soon with my VISA card in hand." I couldn't have proven that I'd end up buying What We Believe But Cannot Prove, yet I believed it. And it turned out that I was right. What I didn't know at the time, though, was that all of the mini-essays in the book are available for free online at Edge. So if you want to learn how some of the most brilliant…
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Posted inBooks Morality Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Sam Harris says morality can be scientific

I love Sam Harris' books. His "The End of Faith" came out about a year after I started this churchless blog in the fall of 2004. It provided me with a surge of faithless energy, validating my decision to do what I could to help rid the world of destructive religious dogma. "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2008) also was a winner, but didn't appeal to me quite as much. Never having been a Christian (aside from pretending to be one in my early elementary school years), I guess his focus on the ridiculousness of Christianity seemed self-evident to me.…
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Posted inBooks Science

Possibly I’m becoming more of a “possibilian”

My first bloggish foray into possibilianism had a pretty mild title, "Nothing wrong with being a churchless 'possibilian'." After reading more about this meaning-of-life stance in the most recent issue of New Scientist, I find myself increasingly enthusiastic about David Eagleman's attitude toward uncertainty. His piece is called Beyond God and atheism: why I am a possibilian. It's a nice blend of creative openmindedness and scientific where's-the-evidence? I have devoted my life to scientific pursuit. After all, if we want to crack the mysteries of our existence, there may be no better approach than to directly study the blueprints. And…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Wonder — the sole essential of spirituality

It's been a steady substitution. The less I've filled myself with organized religion, the more I've felt a ever-increasing sense of wonder. I guess I needed to empty myself of theological beliefs, faith-based concepts, and imaginary anticipations of a promised divinity around the corner in order to become much more aware of the Wow! that is right here, right now. Existence. Life. Consciousness. The amazing fact that we are, that the cosmos is. There's nothing more divine (in the sense of "tasty," as in "that chocolate cake was divine") than this sense of all-encompassing wonder. It isn't a wonder caused…
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Posted inBooks Science

No need for God in Stephen Hawking’s universe

Stephen Hawking, noted theoretical physicist and cosmologist, is one of the smartest guys in the world. He's also an astute marketer, as shown by the title of his newest book, "The Grand Design" (which I finished reading this morning). Hawking and his co-author, physicist Leonard Mlodinow, are going to sell quite a few copies to clueless religious folks who see "design" on the cover and think, Ooh, great, some scientific proof for intelligent design! They'll be disappointed when they get to the final chapter and read: Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself…
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Posted inBooks Science

Quantum physics and consciousness: an enigma

These days a lot of people try to marry their weird spiritual or mystical beliefs with quantum physics, one of the best examples being the pseudo-science expressed in the movie What the bleep do we know? (see here and here for some critiques) I've done considerable reading in the new physics and quantum theory, much of it when I was researching my first book, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder: Echoes of Ultimate Reality in the New Physics." However, I'll admit that my book can be criticized on the same grounds I didn't like What the bleep do we know? It was…
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