Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB “Buddhism” book distorts Buddhist reality

This morning I got angry while reading a chapter in "Buddhism," a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) which purports to show "the essential unity of the teachings of the Buddha and other spiritual teachings of the time." Anger isn't very Buddhist, I suppose. But it felt justified.  I'm a big fan of Buddhism, the non-religious variety, at least. Ever since my college days I've devoured writings about Buddhism, particularly Zen. So since I was an active member of RSSB for about thirty-five years prior to my churchless un-conversion, I was curious to learn how an author (K.N.…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Bad news: I’m going to die. Good news: I’ll be nirvana!

Oh, the unfairness of it all. I really like being alive. Yet one day I'll be dead. Gone. Nonexistent. Forever unconscious.  Damn it, damn it, damn it! Who the hell arranged the cosmos in this fucked-up fashion?! I want to live forever, or at least much longer than I'm going to, so where's the Complaint Department, Customer Service, Warranty Fulfillment? I need to talk to who's in charge, because this death deal is totally screwed-up. That's basically how I think in my least harmonious, accepting, live-and-let-die moments. Which are quite frequent, because such thoughts enter my mind a lot. I've…
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Posted inBuddhism

Buddhism says I’m a soul-less Heraclitean river. Cool!

Everybody wants to be something. That's so much better than being nothing. (Assuming "nothing" is something you can be.)

It seems like I'm some sort of self. After all, I'm fond of saying stuff like "Personally, I think…" and "When I look within myself, I feel…" But Buddhism, along with neuroscience, see here and here, deny that us humans have/are some sort of unchanging permanent self. 

Or soul. Which religions consider to be the same thing as a self, just spiritual, immaterial, divine, eternal.

Whatever we call it, self or soul, the big question is whether our essence is like a diamond, indestructible and unchanging, or like a river, flowing and everaltering. The scientific evidence points riverward. 

As does mainstream Buddhism, according to Owen Flanagan in his fascinating book, "The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized," where he seeks to understand what Buddhism is like without all the weird supernatural stuff.

I should explain what a personBuddha is and is not, and how a personBuddha is possible given that there are no selves. Although Buddhists are said to deny that there are persons and selves or persons with selves, this is not really so. Or better, it is so, but the devil is in the details.

When properly interpreted, Buddhists believe that there are persons, and that talk of persons and selves is harmless so long as we recognize that person and self refer to something, a pattern that is conventionally useful but that does not name anything "ultimate" or "really real."

Some kinds of persons, eternal persons, and some kind of selves, indestructible transcendental egos or immortal souls, do not exist at all, but Heraclitean selves do exist. Heraclitean selves are like Heraclitean rivers where both subsist in a Heraclitean universe.

So everything is changing. Including me, you, beliefs, brains, selves, Mt. Everest, ants, galaxies, subatomic particles, who is ahead in the latest presidential poll. Heraclitus sure seems to have gotten that right.

If we hope to base our happiness, our well-being, our satisfaction, on something immutable, unchanging, and eternal — that hope is going to be still unfulfilled on our death bed. Better to accept that we're all Heraclitean rivers in a Heraclitean universe. 

(Scholarly analysis follows)

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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Karmic causality — believable and unbelievable

Karma... a word that both is eminently scientific, and also annoyingly religious. I've spent a lot of time exploring both meanings of karma.  Ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed learning about science. In my childhood room I set up a card table that fit oh-so-perfectly inside a corner of my closet. I'd sit down at the table, slide the closet door shut, turn on a light that I'd strung over the clothes rod, and spend many happy hours performing experiments with science kits. Then, as now, the essence of science for me was cause and effect. Do this,…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Are all religions essentially the same?

I used to believe that underneath all the obvious differences between religions, there was a difficult-to-discern common core. Mysticism was what united Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, and other faiths. God is One. Humans have, or rather are, a soul. It is possible for this soul-drop to merge into the One god-ocean. There. Three simple sentences. Forget all the complex divisive theologies. That's the oft-forgotten genuine essence of every religion: realizing that our true Self is, basically, the same as God.  It was a nice belief. Warm and fuzzy. The Indian spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, that…
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Posted inBuddhism

Burn dogmas down, so you can see past them

A Zen poem can say a lot in a few words. This one is from Mizuta Masahide. Barn's burnt down --nowI can see the moon. Alternate translation: Since my house burned downI now own a better viewof the rising moon l came across the poem in James Austin's book, "Meditating Selflessly." Some commentary from Austin: It is tragic to lose one's barn in a fire. Thereafter, deprived of possessions, one could feel impoverished and hard-pressed to survive. Instead, we discover this poet who is undaunted, buoyant. Why? Now he can see the moon rise. It fills the empty space where…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

James Austin’s “Just this” meditation practice

I'm an admirer of Zen, albeit from afar. Meaning, I enjoy Zen philosophy, but diving into Zen practice doesn't appeal to me.  Zen is unreligious compared to traditional faiths. However there's still too much bowing and scraping before Zen masters for my churchless non-soul. Also, Zen's disciplines seem needlessly rigid, rooted more in habit than in practicality. That said, for a few days I've been trying out a meditation approach in James Austin's new book, "Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen." Austin, a clinical neurologist, is into the scientific side of Zen. I like the approach. Nice and simple. It gives…
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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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