Posted inBuddhism Reality

Asked to say something about love, I’m pretty much speechless

Yesterday I got an email message: Dear Mr. Hines , Your blog is very honest and nothing is more beautiful save love itself. Please tell us more about self-less and mutual love  and your views on the subject. Sincerely, __________ Reading those words, I realized that I haven't written much explicitly about love during the eleven years this blog has existed. This will be post # 2,140. When I used the search box in the right sidebar to see what popped up when I put in "love," almost all of the Google results for my two blogs were on my more…
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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 inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

30-plus days into Headspace meditation, I’m liking it a lot

A bit over a month ago I discovered Headspace, which was founded by Andy Puddicombe, a British guy who trained as a Buddhist monk before starting this online meditation site. My first free trial experience on July 7 led me to write "Yikes! I actually like a guided Headspace meditation." I'm not a big fan of guided meditations. Usually they irk more than relax me. I get annoyed with the (usually) New Age'y tone of the person doing the guiding. Hey, if anybody is going to annoy me while I meditate, I'm perfectly capable of filling that role myself. After about…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Yikes! I actually like a guided Headspace meditation

I'm not a big fan of guided meditations. Usually they irk more than relax me. I get annoyed with the (usually) New Age'y tone of the person doing the guiding. Hey, if anybody is going to annoy me while I meditate, I'm perfectly capable of filling that role myself. After about 45 years of daily meditation, that's one thing I've learned from contemplating the workings of my mind. (Maybe the only thing... but at least that's one thing.) A few minutes ago, though, I actually enjoyed a ten minute guided meditation. Listening on my laptop while sitting outside on our…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Idea of no-self doesn’t translate into no-fear-of-death

Over on Slate there's an interesting piece by Nina Strohminger, Jay Garfield, and Shaun Nichols, "Buddhism and the Loss of Self." I've copied it in below for easy reading. Surprisingly, research seems to show that Buddhists who don't believe they have (or are) a continuous self are more fearful of death than Hindus or adherents of the Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). Buddhists also were less generous in a thought experiment about giving away a single dose of medicine that could extend either their own or someone else's life. But I guess this really isn't so surprising. After all, our sense of…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” video is well worth $4.99

I've read Sam Harris' book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I've written four blog posts about his book (see here, here, here, and here).  So when I learned that Harris was offering a $4.99 video -- an hour of him talking about the message of "Waking Up" plus an hour or so of audience Q&A -- I wondered if it was worth five bucks to me. Turns out, it was.  I came away with a deeper appreciation for Harris' central theme: the supernatural side of religions is bullshit, but a secular understanding of how human consciousness functions…
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Posted inBuddhism Taoism/Tai Chi Vedanta/Advaita

Why an experience of “pure consciousness” says little about reality

As I said in a previous post, I've dug David Loy's book, "Nonduality," out of a forgotten book bag and have gotten back to reading it after a several-year break.  A few days ago I read his chapter, The Mind-Space Analogy. Pretty damn brilliant. Of course, this book is based on Loy's philosophy doctoral dissertation, so I guess the brilliance isn't surprising. Below I've shared Loy's analogy in his own words, albeit condensed. I've left out F and G of his analogy, which are another form of Mahayana Buddhism and Theism.  As you'll see, what Loy has done is imagine…
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Posted inBuddhism Taoism/Tai Chi

Nothing special: lucid dreaming and mindfulness

I dream a lot, as we all do. Lucid dreaming, though -- very rarely. That's when you're aware that you're dreaming, while still in a dream. Maybe I've had a couple of lucid dreams in my entire life. Three years ago I blogged about a semi-lucid dream experience in "I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality." The title of that post points to a notion Evan Thompson talks about in his book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being." It's the familiar philosophical conundrum: how can we be sure that we're not dreaming in everyday life, since dreaming while we're asleep…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Genuine enlightenment is a simple intellectual understanding

Ooh! I bet the title of this blog post will irk spiritual types who believe that enlightenment is some sort  of mystical transformation of consciousness requiring lots of meditation and/or other practices to achieve. I certainly would have felt that way myself prior to my enlightenment about enlightenment. But as noted in this recent post, I've come to the understanding that spiritual realization (if this term really means anything) involves seeing through the illusion of a soul/self that is separate and distinct from the body and brain. In short, there is no self. No soul. No person sitting inside our…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

The self exists, but not independently of its parts

My journey from churched to churchlessness pretty much can be summed up in this fashion: I used to believe that I had (or was) a distinct, unified, immaterial soul or self. Now, I rejoice in the understanding that there's no non-physical "pearl" of Me; I'm a collection of material stuff just like everything else in the universe is. Julian Baggini says this in his terrific book, The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to Be You? A cart is not an illusion just because it has no existence other than by the correct arrangement of its parts. The only thing that…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris talks about mindfulness without religion

One great thing about being churchless is that you don't have to sit through long boring sermons. You can pick and choose your sources of inspiration and information.  Here's a recommendation. Watch a new 7-minute talk by Sam Harris, atheist author of "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." (See my posts about this book, here, here, and here.)   Harris makes some great points about mindfulness and meditation. He says that religiosity, whether Buddhist or any other kind, shouldn't be mixed up with understanding how the mind works. Just as there is no Christian physics, just physics, neither…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

If I’m not the one inside my head, then who is?

I enjoy Zen. But I have no desire to actually practice Zen. Not formally. Too much work. Too much discipline. Too much bowing before a master who, you eventually realize, doesn't deserve veneration. I prefer the idea of being my own Zen teacher. That way, I can do as much Zen-stuff as I want, in the way I want to, when and how I want.  Which includes giving myself koans to solve. This is my new one: If I'm not the one inside my head, then who is? l really like this koan. I'm SO happy I thought of it.…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

I’ve finished Sam Harris’ “Waking Up.” Guess I have, sort of.

Well, Sam Harris' new book "Waking Up," a guide to spirituality without religion, was about what I expected. Interesting. Inspiring. Well written. Not hugely enlightening.  I've already blogged about some key themes in the book here and here. Like I said in the second post, there are subtleties in Harris' message that require some pondering -- as would be expected for such ponderable subjects as the nature of consciousness and the self. Having read a bunch of neuroscience books, I wasn't surprised by reading this. Once one recognizes the selflessness of consciousness, the practice of meditation becomes just a means…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Real spirituality is realizing you aren’t a soul, or self

Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." I'm about a third of the way through. Which is far enough to have discovered the central theme. Harris writes: My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion -- and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment. ...Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self -- not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that…
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Posted inBuddhism

Buddhist “emptiness” appeals to my churchless non-soul

When true believers (as I was at one time) start to give up religiosity, often they pass through various stages of withdrawal from their addiction to dogma. For me, one stage is an admiration of Buddhism and Taoism, spiritual philosophies which have an affinity with modern science and secular ways of looking upon the world. I'm still in that stage. I may never leave it. Yesterday I picked up Stephen Bachelor's "Verses from the Center: A Buddhist VIsion of the Sublime," after a long absence. It's Bachelor's interpretation of Nagarjuna's teachings about emptiness, a core Buddhist concept.  Well, non-concept. Because…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Scattered thoughts about mindfulness

These thoughts are powered by (1) a 16 ounce can of Mike's Harder Margarita, which I've never tried before, but surely will again, and (2) a 16 ounce serving of the Sisters blend from the Sisters Coffee Company in central Oregon.   This blend of alcohol and caffeine is guaranteed to produce a magnificently coherent amalgamation of scattered thoughts about this evening's chosen blog topic: mindfulness. In my own mind at least, the only mind I really give a shit about, being clueless about all others. Regarding mindfulness, I started meditating in 1969, so I've got 45 years of daily…
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Posted inBuddhism

The Embodied Mind — interesting interview with Evan Thompson

Neuroscience. Buddhism. Meaning. Consciousness. Brain. Body. Culture. There's a lot of threads woven into a pretty persuasive view of things in a Tricycle interview with Evan Thompson: Thoroughly grounded in Western and Buddhist philosophy and learned in science, Thompson has been dedicated to cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue between Buddhism and cognitive science for over two decades. Give it a read. The piece is just the right length. Not too long. Not too short. Readable in a single spiritual philosophical sitting. The only reader comment (at the moment) also is perceptive. I liked how Thompson is skeptical about the whole Buddhist…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t be Big Brother to yourself, “I” watching “me”

Non-religious Buddhism and neuroscience agree on this: there is no such thing as a "self." Meaning, there isn't an "I" who is separate from "me," a soul separate from body, a mind separate from brain. Understanding this -- no, more, intuitively experiencing the truth of this -- cuts through mountains of religious, spiritual, mystical, and philosophical crap. It also makes life way simpler.  It's crazy that we humans look upon ourselves as if we are an object to be manipulated, like a smart phone or chainsaw. We're always asking ridiculous questions like, "Why don't I feel better about myself?"  There…
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Posted inBuddhism

I’m liking Chögyam Trungpa’s take on spiritual materialism

Somehow I'd read a lot of books on Buddhism without ever becoming familiar with Chögyam Trungpa. I'd heard the name before, but had no idea who the guy was. Recently one thing led to another, which led me to buy his "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism." I'd read a short essay of his in a book on mindfulness. That spurred me to Google him, where I found that Trungpa was a Buddhist meditation master who, among other things, had sex with students, abused alcohol and cocaine, and had other endearing qualities (to someone irreligious like me). So I bought the above-mentioned book.…
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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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