Posted inBuddhism

“Dot, an ordinary life” shows limits of Zen — and meditation

Yesterday my wife and I watched "Dot" at the Salem Film Festival. It's a documentary about an extraordinary 82 year old woman from Ashland, Oregon who believably claims that her life is ordinary. From the film's web site: Dot Fisher-Smith is a mystical masterful artist, a war resister, an environmental activist, a community presence, a jailbird. As a great-grandmother, she chained her neck to a log truck to protest salvage logging of old-growth forest. Yet she calls herself a mistaken Buddha and her own life ordinary. This moving documentary is an intimate portrait of life and death through the eyes of 82-year-old…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Unmediated experience doesn’t exist

A comment conversation between me and "cc" on a recent blog post got me to thinking about whether any human experience can be unmediated. Meaning: not communicated or transformed by an intervening agency In a comment I said: But sometimes people do need to be talked out of an erroneous belief system. That was the job of my wife, when she worked at a state mental hospital, and then also (to a different degree) as a private psychotherapist. Just because someone feels like they are one with the cosmos doesn't mean this feeling has any basis in reality. People also…
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Posted inBuddhism Mystics Spiritual practice/meditation

Mystical experiences prove nothing

Whatever I say in this post -- and as a blogger I never know what that is until I say it -- it won't be anywhere near as good as what David Chapman has said in his "Are Mystical Experiences Metaphysical Evidence?" So the best thing you could do is stop reading what I've written, and read Chapman now. The second best thing would be to click on the links I've given after you peruse this post. But if you've ever believed that a mystical experience means something beyond the obvious, that someone has had some sort of experience, I…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Cutting through Buddhist and other mystical crap

OK, the title of this blog post is blunter than David Chapman's "Effing the ineffable," but what I said is pretty much the point of his well-written and entertaining essay. A few months ago I talked about discovering Chapman's web sites, which offer a pleasingly dizzying perspective on matters philosophical, scientific, spiritual, and mystical. His take on ineffability, plus related subjects, was equally interesting reading. Chapman said stuff that I've vaguely understood in a roughly similar fashion, but hadn't been able to pin down so clearly. Here's some excerpts from his piece, which deserves to be read in its entirety.…
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Posted inBuddhism

How Zen’s nonduality is confirmed by neuroscience

Every morning I experience in a concrete fashion the tension between science and spirituality. In my meditation area I always have several books available for my morning caffeinated reading. Some are scientific -- about neuroscience, evolution, global warming. Others are spiritual -- mostly books on Buddhism, Taoism, mindfulness. There are days when I start reading a science book and it seems too dryly factual. Others days I'll pick up a spiritual book and find it annoyingly airy-fairy, dogmatic, or preachy. So often I'll bounce back and forth between several titles, searching for science with a poetic soul and for spirituality…
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Posted inBuddhism Morality

Shun extremes. Usually. (Be moderate in shunning also.)

The past few days I've made my way through all of David Chapman's "Meaningness" online book, which I first blogged about here. Since I'm a habitual highlighter of print books, it's been an interesting change of pace to page through screen after screen on my laptop without making any important!, I like!, or hmmmmm... marks. All of the markings have been in my mind. So I'll consult my memory and share what has struck me the most about what Chapman says in his scientifically Buddhist'y fashion: Life is best lived between extremes. But let's not make that adage into something…
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Posted inBuddhism

David Chapman’s dizzying writings on Meaningness and Buddhism

I don't often use the word "dizzying." Especially in the title of a blog post. Here, I mean it as a compliment, in the sense of... giddy, bewildering. Those are good things when it comes to writings that attempt to get at What Life is All About. Because if we think we understand what life is all about, we don't. Today someone sent me an email. Wanted to make sure you've seen this one:http://meaningness.wordpress.comas he is a wonderful writer *and* touches on subjects that seem to be dear to your heart. Instead of reading a book during my pre-meditation time…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

The reasons we give for what we do: are they reasonable?

About a week ago Marina, a visitor to this blog, asked me to explain why I left the spiritual organization that I'd belonged to for about thirty-five years. She then reminded me that I hadn't answered her question, asking again: What made you leave RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] – a major thing or a nagging feeling over the years? I pointed her to a partial compendium of posts that I've written for this blog, quite a few of which addressed this question. But something kept nagging at me as I thought about her first three words. What made you...…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

What does “going inside” in meditation really mean?

I'm a long-time daily meditator. I did the closed-eyes introspecting thing almost every morning for over forty years. During that time my practice was focused on "going inside." Inside what? Good question, one which I never gave much thought to during my true-believing spiritual phase. The guru I followed used those words going inside a lot, so I assumed they meant something. Now it seems to me that reality doesn't have an inside and an outside. I've given up the goal of concentrating on the interior of my cranium, which many meditators believe leads to an experience of wholly other-worldly…
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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 inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

What, I’m not the center of the universe??!!

Copernicus may have demoted us humans from an objectively real position at the center of the cosmos, but most people continue to believe that everything revolves around them. Why else would we get so upset when life doesn't give us what we feel we deserve, even though much of the time what doesn't come to me benefits someone else? (Like the guy who darts ahead of my car and takes a choice parking space that I'd been lusting after.) The crazy thing is, being the center of the universe really isn't much fun. It's exhausting trying to keep reality revolving…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Letting go — the essence of Zen

Ah, I love the title of this blog post. It sounds so assured, so confident, so Zen-master'ish. Yet I'm not sure if what I wrote is accurate. No big deal. Because if Zen actually isn't about letting go, we can let go of that notion. And if it is about letting go, then I've hit the Zen nail on the head. As should be obvious, I'm a big admirer of Zen who doesn't want to put in any serious work toward satori, enlightenment, or whatever it is Zen students aspire to. This makes me a Zen dilettante -- proudly so,…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

If everything is perfect as it is, so is feeling it isn’t

I learned about Vincent Horn, "Buddhist Geek," via one of those marvelous Twitter tweets from someone you follow for a reason long forgotten. Yet you're happy you do, because now and then they share a link that clues you in to a interesting perspective. Such as Horn's "The Place of Practice: Integrating Perspectives and Clinging to Nothing." He addresses a question that has often come to my mind as I've pondered non-dual philosophies which claim that everything is absolutely as it should be, just as it is. (Obviously there's a lot more to nondualism. But if things aren't two --…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Overcoming the fear of non-existence

So far I've written 1,228 posts for this blog. Like a proud parent, I'm tempted to say that I don't have a favorite, that I love all of my writings equally. But that wouldn't be true. Some posts resonate with me more than others, because they spring from a deeper meaning-place. Notably, "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." The day I wrote it, back in 2006, I didn't have much time for blogging. For me, that post was unusually short and to the point. Which was how it had to be. There isn't anything complex or subtle about the…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Thinking and meditation go hand in hand

For a long time I thought that I shouldn't think during my meditation time. I'd been taught to either (1) repeat a mantra, thereby keeping thoughts away, or (2) rest in a thoughtless state where the meditator gazes into inner darkness and listens to inner silence, waiting for divine light/sound to appear. Now, though, I've expanded my meditative horizons, questioning assumptions that I used to accept, well, unquestioningly. Such as, whether it's really desirable to stop thinking while meditating. Here's my pithy current answer: no. But it's up to the meditator. That's my answer, nobody else's. I think (there I…
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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 inBuddhism

Zen says the door is wide open (while we cling to bars)

As noted before, I keep re-reading Hubert Benoit's brilliant book about Zen, "The Supreme Doctrine." No matter how many times I ponder a page, a fresh understanding (or productive non-understanding) almost always pops into my psyche upon another perusal. This morning I re-read Benoit's chapter on The Immediate Presence of Satori. In the first few paragraphs he accurately captures the psychology of both spiritual seekers and humanity at large. My primordial demand to be a distinct being conditions all my desires and, by my desires, my hopes and my beliefs. Bearing this claim, I am the bearer of an aspiration,…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Selfless Insight” — intriguing, yet disappointing, Zen book

I didn't enjoy neurologist James Austin's book about Zen and neuroscience as much as I thought I would. My reading of "Selfless Insight: Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness" may show, of course, that I'm neither selfless nor imbued with enlightened (or kensho'ened) insight -- both of which I plead guilty to. Regardless, I expected that Austin would provide a clearer and simpler analysis of how Zen meditation and brain science relate. He's written two other books on this subject, this being the most recent, so perhaps "Selfless Insight" is more complicated than his earlier works. I was left…
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Posted inBuddhism

Did Buddha have a stroke?

Maybe Buddha's enlightenment was caused by a lack of oxygen in his brain -- a stroke. It's a hypothesis that makes some sense. (Thanks, Mike, for sending me a link to this article.)
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Posted inBuddhism

Take a look at Best of Raptitude 2010

As noted before, I enjoy the Raptitude blog. Blogger David has listed his top 10 posts of last year, so that makes it easy to hit the 2010 Raptitude highlights. "Die on Purpose" is intriguing. Excerpt: I think it’s really helpful to forget you exist, and often. It sounds impossible, but it can be done. Here’s an exercise I do sometimes to achieve that perspective:Wherever I am, whatever location I am in, I picture the situation exactly as it would be if I wasn’t there. I just watch it like it’s a movie, and the people still in the scene…
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