Posted inBooks Morality Science

Humans are animals. Religions should accept this fact.

Frans de Waal has written a fascinating book about animal intelligence, "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" I'm only a little ways into the book, but what I've read so far has gotten me to thinking about how religions view humans -- as animals, or as a non-animal species? Here's a passage from the prologue that makes clear how de Waal looks upon this question. In all this, we love to compare and contrast animal and human intelligence, taking ourselves as the touchstone. It is good to realize, though, that this is an outdated way of…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Your soul can’t be found because it doesn’t exist

I'm enjoying my re-reading, or re-re-reading, given the highlighting I've done to this book, of Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-Kha-Pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path." It's a brilliant discussion of a core Buddhist notion, defined as the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. In other words, nothing is intrinsically itself. Everything depends on other things for its existence, us naturally included. Nothing stands on its own, an island unto itself. Interconnectedness and interdependency is how the cosmos works. So Buddhism is unique among the world's major religions in not positing an eternal soul. (Because it isn't really…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Behold my use of “Wittgenstein” in this blog post title

I've been hanging onto my copy of the October 19 issue of The New Yorker because it contains a book review ("Losing Propositions") about the state of philosophy in Europe after the First World War. The review has numerous mentions of Ludwig Wittgenstein, "perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century." So this gives me the opportunity to use Wittgenstein in the title of this post -- which in my utterly subjective opinion, elevates the profundity of this blog to an even higher level. What I liked most  about the book review were the parts dealing with language that…
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Posted inBooks

Wabi sabi: imperfection is the natural state of everything

Perfection is a concept of something that doesn't exist. Nonetheless, we humans cause ourselves grief as we try to attain this non-existent notion.  Too often, our goal is to have a perfect mate, a perfect body, perfect children, a perfect job, a perfect religion, a perfect home decor. Sure, we know that it really isn't possible to achieve the goal of perfection. But it is something to aim for. However, not to those who embrace the subtle Japanese idea, or feeling, of Wabi sabi. Last year I wrote a blog post on this subject after starting to read Beth Kempton's…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Pre-scientific religious dogma shouldn’t be trusted

As I said in my previous post (My #1 problem with Steve Hagen's 'The Grand Delusion"), the teachings of a ninth-century Zen master, Huang Po, shouldn't be given more credence than modern neuroscience. After all, Huang Po, along with everybody else in those pre-scientific times, had no understanding of how the brain works. Naturally people knew how their mind seemed to work, but seeming is a long way from actuality.  This is why Huang Po could claim that conception is totally different from perception. Now it is known that both conception and perception are founded on complex goings-on in the…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Consciousness

My #1 problem with Steve Hagen’s “The Grand Delusion”

I'm a big fan of Steve Hagen's books about non-religious Buddhism. "Buddhism Plain and Simple" and "Buddhism is Not What You Think" really resonated with me.  But his new book, "The Grand Delusion: What We Know But Don't Believe" elicited a lot of question marks in the margins.  One problem I had with the book is that while Hagen's other books were marked by humility, this one has a heavy dose of grandiosity. Hagen sets out to solve every issue perplexing humanity, or more accurately, scientists.  Consciousness. Quantum theory. Free will. Existence of God. All these topics, and more, supposedly…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Here’s what meditation is and isn’t, from a Buddhist perspective

People have a lot of different views about what meditation is and isn't. I've changed my mind on this subject considerably.  For thirty-five years I viewed meditation as a way to access a supernatural realm of reality, have mystical experiences, and realize God. But that's a narrow perspective, something I realize now. Currently I embrace a form of meditation that is vaguely Buddhist, even though I don't consider myself a devotee of Buddhism. I enjoy being as fully aware as possible of what is happening both inside and outside me, within my mind and without in the world.  Which, I…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Adyashanti book confirms my commitment to secular spirituality

Recently someone who asked if I'd like to be a guest on her podcast (I would!) responded to an email I sent her which said, in part, "I’m sort of in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp. However, I’m not sure if 'spiritual' has any meaning for an atheist." She replied, saying, "The intersection I think we may intersect is this kind of secular spirituality pursuit. Would you say that's a phrase you kind of resonate with? That's the sense I get from your writings." Sure. Typically secular means not-religious, not-spiritual, not-sacred. But I like the idea of mixing two seemingly contradictory ideas…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

“A good traveller has no fixed plans,” says Lao Tzu

The Eastern religion that I was an active member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), liked to talk of being on "the path." (One of the RSSB books is called "The Path of the Masters.") Well, my attitude toward religious or spiritual paths has changed a lot. And it keeps changing.  More and more, I'm convinced that not only is there no evidence that any path leads to God or some supernatural reality, it isn't even wise for someone to consider that they're on a life path in this physical world.  At least, that's how I see…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Reality — a horrible thing to waste (but Trump does)

Yesterday I wrote about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis over on my Salem Political Snark blog in "Reality is the big winner in Trump's COVID-19 infection." Here's the most philosophical part of the post. Being as deeply philosophical as I am deeply political, I now want to broaden my take on the meaning of Trump coming down with COVID-19. It's a big win for reality! Not that reality needs any help. Reality always comes out on top in the end, because, well, reality is the only thing that is truly real.  A short blog post isn't the place to discuss what I…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

It feels good to be getting back into yoga

When I was about 20 or 21, I was a yoga dude. My college girlfriend and I had been studying yoga and meditation with (in retrospect) a crazed Greek teacher who managed to cobble together a blend of Eastern religion, yoga, and Christianity. We used to drive around with him in a VW van with Christananda Ashram on the side. Yeah, it was weird, but this was 1969 and 1970, when weirdness permeated the San Francisco Bay Area, where we attended San Jose State College.  Here's a photo of me from my yoga days. I got pretty damn good at…
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Posted inBooks

Get off the satisfaction treadmill where you always want more

I've got several stacks of books in my office that I've read, found interesting, but haven't yet written a blog post about. So I'm going to make a start on them by picking the one on top, "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by William B. Irvine.  Well, I decided to check and see whether I'd written about Irvine's book and it turns out that I had last June, in Past and present are outside our control. So here's my second post about the book. Irvine, a philosophy professor, wants to make Stoicism relevant…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Life is best lived by embracing insecurity

One of the things I talked about in my first book, a shorter and simpler version of which I published a few years ago, is that happenings in the world can be deterministic while also being unpredictable. This is what chaos theory is all about. Complex systems are made up of causes and effects, yet in such a fashion that it is virtually (and maybe totally) impossible to know what they are going to do next.  An example I cited in my book is tossing a cork into a stream above some rapids. Every movement of the cork is determined…
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Posted inBooks

The stories we tell ourselves can go awry

A few days ago I wrote about how amazing it is that fictional stories can seem so real. In that post I was speaking about stories told to us by others in the form of movies, TV shows, novels, and the like.  But we humans also tell stories to ourselves. Not just a little, but a lot.  After all, much, if not most, of our inner dialogue, that voice speaking inside the head of the vast majority of people (I've read that some individuals don't experience that inner speech) has to do with explaining to ourselves what did happen, is…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Buddhism’s non-dualistic view of meditation

It's usually rather simplistic to start off by saying "There are two kinds of...", because generally nature, or reality, doesn't come in two well-defined flavors -- like vanilla and chocolate. Instead, there are many flavors, many shades of gray between black and white. That said, in general I consider there are two views of meditation, dualistic and non-dualistic.  Dualistic approaches typically see us humans as being comprised of an immaterial soul and material body. The goal of meditation is to detach the soul from the body, which enables it to return to god, or merge with god, as in the…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Know when to step back, to reassess, to go in a different direction

As I make my way through Maria Konnikova's book about learning poker, "The Biggest Bluff," I keep my eye out for insights by this Ph.D. psychologist that pertain to a churchless way of life. Below are some passages I read this morning that are pertinent to those who are wondering whether they should stick with a religion, spiritual path, or mystical teaching that no longer seems to make sense. Konnikova speaks of the sunk cost fallacy. Basically, it means that you keep on doing something because you're invested in it. The investment could be money, but it also could be…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

Flow is key to poker, and also to life

I'm reading a fascinating book about poker, "The Biggest Bluff." The author, Maria Konnikova, has a Ph.D. in psychology from Princeton after graduating from Harvard. So she's obviously smart. But she knew nothing about poker until she decided to learn the game under the guidance of Erik Seidel, a poker champion with tens of millions of dollars in earnings. That would make for interesting reading all by itself. What makes this book much more intriguing is how Konnikova's background in behavioral science enables her to discover important life lessons as she starts to play poker with the goal of entering…
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Posted inBooks

Past and present are outside our control

I bought "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" back in 2011. Soon after, I'd read most of it, then set it aside. Now I've finished the book.  It's an interesting look at ancient Stoicism from a modern perspective. The author, William Irvine, is a Professor of Philosophy who, unlike most academic philosophers these days, believes philosophy should have something to say about how we should live our lives -- which is how the ancient Greeks viewed philosophy. Here's some passages regarding the past, present, and future that I like. Somehow I'd never really grasped…
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Posted inBooks Science

Future of brain research is filled with “or’s”

Here's some passages from the "Future" chapter in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience by Matthew Cobb that I've blogged about recently. (See here and here and here for my previous posts about the book.) I especially like the passage that begins with "A related view" below. Almost certainly the brain isn't at all like a computer, for reasons Cobb describes.  I also enjoyed the open-ended possibilities of where brain research is heading that concludes Cobb's book -- the last passage i've shared.  With science, research can go in many different directions. That's a big appeal of science,…
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Posted inBooks Science

There’s no reason to doubt that the mind is material

Well, today I got to the chapter in The Idea of the Brain: The Past and Future of Neuroscience that I was most interested in reading. (See here and here for my previous posts about the book.) Since the author, Matthew Cobb, is exceedingly well informed about past and present history of research on the brain, I was curious what he would have to say about "Consciousness," the final chapter in the Present section of the book. Not surprisingly, Cobb says there is no reason to doubt that the mind is material, being the brain in action, basically. Below I've shared excerpts…
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