Posted inBuddhism

How do we know someone is enlightened?

Enlightenment. It's an appealing notion. There I am, clueless, ignorant, unsatisfied, then bingo!, an enlightenment switch is flipped. Now I know what life is all about. I go around with a Buddha-smile for the rest of my days, blissed out because I'm no longer floundering blindly in cold cosmic darkness, but rather am basking on the always-sunny beach of enlightenment. Only problem is...some questions.  Does enlightenment exist? Could I tell if I've got it? Is it possible to know whether someone else is enlightened? Are there various types of enlightenment?  Short answer: nobody knows. Opinions abound. Demonstrable evidence is lacking.…
15
Posted inBuddhism Reality

How consciousness is related to Buddhist “emptiness”

When I wrote a recent post about the Buddhist notion of emptiness, I noted how Guy Newland defined an important concept: intrinsic nature: an essential nature whereby something comes to have an independent way of existing without being posited through the force of consciousness. The sheer absence of this is emptiness. Even though I'd just read Newland's fascinating book, "Introduction to Emptiness," I didn't really understand the reference to the force of consciousness when I typed those words. So I suspect others would be equally mystified by what he meant. I'll let Newland explain: Therefore, at bottom, to understand emptiness…
11
Posted inBuddhism

Religious belief: a delusion about an elephant in the house

I'm damn sure there isn't an elephant in my house. I know what elephants look like. I know how large they are. I've checked every area where an elephant would fit. So it's reasonable for me to say "There's no elephant in my house." But not if I thought like a religious believer. Because then I could argue, "Yes, there's an elephant in my house, because..." It's an invisible elephant.I'm the only one who can see it.I can sense the elephant even if no one else can. Its disguised as an ordinary object.  There are other possible delusions that follow the…
5
Posted inBuddhism

Why Buddhism doesn’t believe in self-realization

For a long time in my spiritual seeking career -- about 1968 to the present -- I thought "self-realization" was a worthy goal. I knew people who were active in the Self-Realization Fellowship founded by Yogananda. I followed a meditation practice that taught "self-realization before god-realization." I avidly read books by people who has supposedly found their true self. Now, I'm much more inclined to the Buddhist viewpoint: there's no such thing as the self, so self-realization isn't possible. This differentiates Buddhism from other religions, spiritual philosophies, and mystic paths which hold that we humans have (or are) a soul…
43
Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Lineage means little in science and art. Why so important in religion?

When you learn about an important scientific discovery, does it matter to you what "line" of scientists the researcher is associated with? When you listen to a scintillating musical performance, does it matter to you what "line" of musicians the artist is associated with? No. At least, not much. Likely not at all.  Recently the Oregonian had a story about a classical guitarist who is going to play in Portland. It was mentioned that Scott Kritzer was the "grandson" of famed guitarist Andres Segovia, because his teacher was a Segovia student. But that fact has no bearing on Kritzer's reputation as…
26
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Pay attention to your life as if you had to testify about it

It's strange how some things stick with me, and so many don't. I've forgotten so much about what happened to me during my childhood, while remembering surprising details. LIke my mother, an avid reader, telling me about what a noted novelist of the times (can't remember his name) said he did when he heard something unexpected late at night. He'd glance at his watch to see what time it was. He'd listen for other sounds. He'd focus on anything else that seemed out of the ordinary. The novelist wanted to be prepared in case what he heard was connected with…
1
Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Extreme is good. Be spacious in your extremeness.

Often we're advised to embrace moderation. Don't be extreme. Stick to the safe middle ground. Edges are dangerous; cliffs await.  Most religions, forms of spirituality, mystic practices -- they like boxiness. Commandments keep devotees' actions within certain bounds. Rituals are well-defined and repetititve. Prayers, meditative practices, worship... stay in control, sit in your seats, listen and don't talk back. For God's sake, don't yell, scream, object, or in any other way do your own unfettered thing. Here's some countervailing thoughts about going to extremes. Two personal stories, one link to a Tantra-related blog post. I'd almost forgotten about the Groupon…
8
Posted inBuddhism Universe

There’s no answer to “Why does the world exist?”

Here's the sort of spoiler alert that irritates me when it pops up in a movie review -- a warning about a giving away of the key plot element that's so close to the spoiler itself, I can't help but see what I'm not supposed to see if I want to keep the movie's meaning a surprise. Ha-ha! If you read the title of this blog post, it's too late. You know. There's no answer to "Why does the world exist?" Hope this doesn't ruin your day. Probably it will, if you're a religious devotee, because likely you think that…
5
Posted inBuddhism

Anxiety stretches between real and unreal

This morning I came across some great passages in Charlotte Joko Beck's "Nothing Special -- Living Zen." Anxiety is always a gap between the way things are and the way we think they ought to be. Anxiety is something that stretches between the real and unreal. Our human desire is to avoid what's real and instead to be with our ideas about the world:  "I'm terrible." "You're terrible." "You're wonderful." The idea is separated from reality and anxiety is the gap between the idea and the reality that things are just as they are. When we cease to believe in…
4
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

What Zen practice is… so simple…

I've been reading Zen books since my college days, forty-four years. I go hot and cold with Zen. Never have heated up enough to study it formally. Never have cooled off enough to lose interest in it entirely. When an author throws too much Buddhism into the mix of Zen + Buddhism, I get turned off. I like my Zen to be as non-religious as possible.  Which explains why Charlotte Joko Beck's "Nothing Special" appeals to me so much. I learned about the book from an interesting blog post by David Chapman with the same name.  I took the title…
5
Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Uncertainty: the key to dealing with death and non-existence

Last night I had another of my Holy shit! I'm going to die and not exist forever! moments. I wrote about these disturbing experiences six years ago in "Death and the primal fear of non-existence."  I’ve come face to face with not-existing. It’s scary. Really scary. I’ve never experienced anything scarier. I can call it “fear,” but it’s more than that. Worse than that. Regular fear arises when something bad is happening or could happen. But primal fear is looking into the maw of nothing happening to you, because there will be no you around for anything to happen to. Do you get the…
59
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

How to move between horizontal and vertical time

Memories are strange. I've forgotten so much about the past, yet some memories have stuck with me in a surprising fashion. Fairly early in my meditating years (I've meditated daily since 1970), I'd attend talks by Gordon Limbrick, a Canadian. He habitually offered three pieces of advice: "Keep your back straight; smile inwardly; visualize a trap door opening in the ceiling of your mind." I liked all three tips back then. I still think of them now. With some variations. Such as visualizing myself opening a trap door on the ground floor of my body also. This reflects my Tai Chi…
4
Posted inBuddhism Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Key to self-knowledge: knowing you don’t have a “self”

I love the idea that "I" don't exist. Life sure seems like it'd be a lot simpler without a "me" around. Most of my problems aren't physical, but psychological. So if my body is real, but my self isn't, potentially that removes a large source of difficulties. Fortunately for the "me" who I don't want to be, modern neuroscience has come to a pretty firm conclusion that, indeed, the self is an illusion.  Such is the central theme of a book by Bruce Hood I've started to read, "The Self Illusion." I blogged about an interview Sam Harris did with…
15
Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Skeptical look at mantras and Transcendental Meditation

I've never practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM). But for over forty years I've meditated daily, mostly using a mantra (a word or words repeated over and over) just as TM does. So I resonated with a "Mantras" post on the TM-Free blog, which describes itself as: Insider information about the Transcendental Meditation™ techniques, the TM movement and its late founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Our bloggers take independent, skeptical and critical views of TM claims and research. We report allegations of deception by TM organizations and reports that some individuals experience harm from involvement. For most of those forty years I used a…
22
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

High-resolution perception brings mindful clarity

I've finished Chade-Meng Tan's "Search Inside Yourself," after calling the book compassionate, scientific, businesslike in my first post about it -- written after I'd only read a few chapters. The book turned out to be more Buddhist'y than I'd expected, but since the author is a Buddhist (as well as an engineer who was one of the first Google employees), that shouldn't have been a big surprise.  Still, Chade-Meng has a pleasingly non-religious, non-metaphysical, non-mystical approach to mindfulness. Which also isn't a big surprise, given that mindfulness is about paying attention to what is here and now, not there and then.…
No Comments
Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Sam Harris interview with author of “Illusion of the Self”

Damn! (but actually I'm happy) Another $19.57 has found its way from my VISA account into Amazon's accounts receivable, thanks to Sam Harris' interview with the author of Illusion of the Self -- another neuroscience book that the "I" who isn't me was led to order by largely unconscious brain processes over which the "I" who isn't me has no control. If you're interested in this stuff, but not twenty bucks worth of interested, it'll cost you nothing to read the interview. I'm fascinated by the increasingly evident neuroscientific conclusion that there's no such thing as a Self to be…
3
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Buddha in Blue Jeans.” Kindle cost: $0.00. Worth much more.

If you've got a Kindle, or a Kindle reader, you'll definitely get your money's worth out of a 26 page e-book, Buddha in Blue Jeans: An Extremely Short Zen Guide to Sitting Quietly and Being Buddha. The cost is zero, nothing. $0.00, nada, zilch.  The message is valuable: sit quietly every day. I've been doing that for 43 years. Can't say that I'm a Buddha, but hey, maybe I am. Regardless, my morning meditation seems to have helped keep me from becoming any crazier than I already am. Maybe even a little saner. (Alternative equally valid rendering: My morning meditation…
3
Posted inBuddhism

Even Hardcore Zen is too softcore for me

I've come across Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen site several times. I know this, despite my sometimes bad memory, because I always look at the t-shirts for sale. So I remember a repeated feeling of "Seems like I should be the sort of guy to wear a Hardcore Zen t-shirt, but they don't appeal to me." Too Buddhist'y, even with the Buddhist dogmatism and religiosity supposedly removed. I have the same reaction to Warner's recent post, When You Reach Pure Awareness You Will Have No Problems.  He makes fun of Deepak Chopra, which I like. Chopra tweeted "When you reach pure awareness…
5
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Search Inside Yourself” — compassionate, scientific, businesslike

I've got a new favorite book: Chade-Meng Tan's Search Inside Yourself -- the unexpected path to achieving success, happiness (and world peace). It didn't take much searching inside myself to realize that I liked Tan's approach to mindfulness, meditation, and all that stuff. Just reading the forewords by Daniel Goldman and Jon Kabat-Zinn, along with Tan's first two chapters, had my inner self saying "Yes, yes, yes" this morning. Here's one Yes passage: In learning and teaching meditation, the good news is that mindfulness is embarassingly easy. It is easy because we already know what it's like, and it's something…
1
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

David Chapman: “There are no spiritual problems”

I knew I'd like David Chapman's most recent blog post when I saw the title. There are no spiritual problems.  Amen to that, brother David.  I don't usually say "brother," but it seems fitting here. Recently I was thinking bloggishly along the same lines in My new Major Life Project: don't have one. Except, as noted before after I first came across Chapman's writings... I've read several posts/chapters and am blown away by this guy. He's like a more intelligent, more scientific, more coherent, more wise version of me who also can write a heck of a lot better. And…
3