Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience

Belief in a human “essence” is strong, but almost certainly wrong

On the whole I agree with Amit Sood's view of things. He's an M.D. who has written a book about a more modern approach to mindfulness that I enjoyed reading. I decided to buy a recent book of his, It Takes You to Tango: Leverage the Science of Loneliness to Master the Art of Connection. It's turned out to be sort of a disappointment. I'm liking the book, but so far it hasn't really done much to inform or interest me. And when I came to several chapters about what Sood calls the Esse, an essence in every person deeper…
13
Posted inBuddhism

Not knowing is most intimate — a Zen koan that I grasped instantly

Zen master Henry Shukman's The Way app, which I embarked on in January of this year and have been enjoying ever since, contains guided meditations that include koans.  Pleasingly, Shukman's view of koans isn't that they are a spiritual puzzle to be solved, but simply messages to consider and see what effect the koan has on us. A few days ago he introduced a koan that I was unfamiliar with: Not knowing is most intimate. Two Zen teachers meet; one is carrying his bags. “Where are you going?”, inquires the first teacher. “I’m going on a pilgrimage”, the other teacher…
12
Posted inBuddhism Consciousness Taoism/Tai Chi

What is changeless? Important question that I’m not sure about.

I stay in touch with a few people from my high school years, including an old friend that I went to elementary school with. He's as philosophically and spiritually minded as I am, so I enjoy our periodic email exchanges. In our most recent sharing of views, my friend included a quote from a previous message I'd sent him. I was referring to Robert Wright, the author of Why Buddhism is True, a book I've written about on this blog. Wright says that the main illusions Buddhism can help us dissolve are a belief in an enduring unchanging self, and…
9
Posted inBuddhism

“The White Lotus” show raises question about Buddhist truth

First, unrelated to the primary subject of this post I wanted to mention a You Tube channel, No Nonsense Spirituality, that someone recently pointed out to me via an email, as he liked this woman's style. It's worth a look, based on my quick browsing of some videos. Here's what's said about a Welcome video: Welcome to No-Nonsense Spirituality! If you're feeling lost in a world filled with competing beliefs and overwhelming choices, you’re not alone. In this video, Brit Hartley, an atheist spiritual director with advanced theological training, guides you through the process of deconstructing your beliefs about God,…
2
Posted inBuddhism Reality

This is all there is, says David Chapman. But what is, is extraordinary.

David Chapman is a really interesting guy. I've followed his writings on Buddhism, artificial intelligence, and other subjects for quite a few years. Meaningness is his main web site, and well worth a look. Chapman describes his form of Buddhism this way: I am, somewhat reluctantly, a Buddhist. Of an odd sort: “the opposite of whatever you’d expect” comes close. That sort of Buddhism shares central themes with Meaningness. I explain it elsewhere: A window has recently opened for Buddhist innovations that can address new cultural, social, and personal problems. Vividness explores possible futures, based on Buddhism’s history and its…
3
Posted inBuddhism

Nirvana basically is reducing our habitual reactivity

Nirvana is a word that often conjures up visions of an otherworldly paradise, sort of like heaven. But the literal meaning in Sanskrit is "blown out," as in blowing out a candle -- which points to the extinguishing of passions that lead to suffering, as desires are endless and so cause us to continually chase them, much as the proverbial donkey drawn to walk fast in an effort to get the carrot dangled in front of the animal's face that grabs its attention but is impossible to reach, though the donkey doesn't know this. In Robert Wright's book, Why Buddhism…
7
Posted inBuddhism

I enjoy Buddhism’s Pure Land tradition, but I don’t believe in it

Is it possible to enjoy a religious tradition without believing in it? Absolutely. In a sense that's what Christmas is like for many people. You don't have to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and is God's beloved son to like the Christmas season. All that's needed is to keep the parts of Christmas you can accept, and reject the parts you can't accept. Same goes with any religion.  That's how I explain my enjoyment of the Pure Land tradition of Buddhism, which I mainly know about from reading Taitetsu Unno's book, "River of Fire, River of Water."…
9
Posted inBuddhism India Religions

Classical Indian philosophy makes little sense to me

Well, I gave it a try. Today Google News, in its Picks For You section, presented me with a link to an Aeon article, "By the light of brahman: Ideas from classical Indian philosophy help illuminate the enigmas of selfhood, consciousness and the nature of reality." I decided to read the article, albeit quickly, because I hoped it would live up to the title by illuminating those enigmas. I did learn something: that classical Indian philosophy makes little sense to me. Of course, since this philosophy is the foundation of Hinduism, it isn't surprising that atheist me would find little…
11
Posted inBuddhism

I love this Zen saying, though it’s difficult for me to grasp

I've been reading, and enjoying, Zen literature since my college days about 56 years ago. That explains how I was able to write a blog post in 2005 called "The Supreme Doctrine," thirty-six years overdue.  “The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought” is one of my favorite books. When I checked it out from the San Jose Public Library while I was a San Jose State University student, I couldn’t bear to return it. It’s now thirty-six years overdue. I’m pretty sure I paid the library the $1.65 replacement cost. That’s a heck of a lot cheaper than 5…
3
Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

We impose meaningfulness on the world through our stories

Yesterday my increasingly buggy blogging service, Typepad, kept generating a "503" error message all day long, so I wasn't able to write a post for one of my other blogs. I just did that, composing "My fall into a creek shows why doing one thing at a time makes sense."  That post includes a mention of my recent post here about human cognition being amazingly slow, so it's worth a read. You also can see photos of an attractive creek that runs through our rural property. Plus our electricity is off at the moment, owing to some downed power lines…
10
Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

Theory of mental modules made me feel better about my many failings

I love it when after reading something in a nonfiction book, it doesn't just make sense to me intellectually, but deeply touches me emotionally.  That's how I felt after reading a chapter in Robert Wright's Why Buddhism is True book, "How Thoughts Think Themselves." Before describing the wonderful feeling I had, I'll share some of the intellectual side of Wright's message -- which is based on a blend of Buddhist teachings, evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience.  He says this about the theory of mental modules in relation to mind wandering: Though the trains of thought that carry you away from direct…
1
Posted inBuddhism

For Buddhism, taking the “red pill” means more than just mindfulness

It's been quite a while since I've watched The Matrix. You know, the movie where really real reality is very different from how things appear to those trapped in illusion -- which in this case is being confined in a pod, hallucinating that what you're dreaming is actually true. Robert Wright starts off his Why Buddhism is True book by using the red pill/blue pill choice in The Matrix as a metaphor for what Buddhism seeks: the truth about life. The prison is called the Matrix, but there's no way to explain to Neo what the Matrix ultimately is. The…
3
Posted inBuddhism Science

Evolution doesn’t care if feelings are true, just that they are good for us

In a recent post, "No, major religions don't provide a truer picture of reality," I noted that evolution doesn't care about truth, just about whether genes are passed on to the next generation. Of course, this is just a manner of speaking, since evolution isn't about caring or not-caring. This goes against one of the primal facts about evolution: that species prosper not because they possess a greater grasp of reality, but because they are adept at passing on genes, organisms being well suited to the environment in which they find themselves. After writing that, I came across a mention…
7
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Here’s the best description of Zen koans I’ve ever seen

Koans are an aspect of Zen Buddhism that I've always looked upon as wonderfully mysterious, yet unappealing. For in traditional Zen writings I'd read about a student being given a koan like "Does a dog have buddha nature?" Then they struggled to figure out what the answer is, periodically having a get-together with their Zen master for him to see how they're doing, where usually he rejects their lame attempt at a response by hitting them on the head with his staff or screaming at them. Not exactly something that sounds either pleasant or productive to me.  But near the…
14
Posted inBuddhism Reality Religions

Science is the best guide to spirituality

Some people believe that science is opposed to spirituality, that these pursuits operate in different realms of reality and an embrace of one implies a distancing from the other. I've never believed this. Even when I was in my most religious frame of mind, the 35 years I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human Form, I remained intensely interested in what science has learned about our universe even as I explored the possibility of realms beyond the physical. This is why…
4
Posted inBuddhism

It’s great that a Zen master can be an atheist

[Before I get into the subject of this blog post, a note about keeping to the subject in comments on my blog posts. I just had to unpublish a comment on my previous post about the need to choose a religion, as the comment was related 100% to a defense of an outrageous action by the Trump administration that I wrote about last night on my Salem Political Snark blog. I'm fine with some mildly off-topic comments, but not those completely unrelated to the subject of a blog post, as that is highly confusing to anyone reading such a comment.…
5
Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

I like the idea that love is akin to spaciousness

Love. What is it? For me, love has been easier to feel than to describe. It seems to have something to do with attraction, since I want to be closer to people and things that I love, while the opposite is true of people and things that I hate or dislike. Every night I say "love you" to my wife before we go to sleep. She says the same to me. It's a ritual that means a lot to me, in part because it makes me feel good to know that if I die in my sleep, those would have…
7
Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

We are both the mind and the observer of the mind

Recently I read an essay in either the New York Times or Washington Post by someone who spoke about how Thich Nhat Hanh's classic little book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness," had changed his life.  That spurred me to head to Amazon to see if I'd already bought that book. Yes, Amazon told me, you did, in January 2019. Looking through the Buddhism section of my bookcase, there it was, all 139 pages of it. I've been re-reading parts of The Miracle of Mindfulness the past few days. Published 50 years ago, in 1975, the book is wonderfully clear and concise.…
4
Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

The goal is our chosen direction, says Zen master Henry Shukman

I think it'd be cool to be a Zen master. However, to do that I would have had to actually practice Zen under the guidance of a Zen master, rather than admire Zen from the outside and practice it in my own idiosyncratic fashion. Henry Shukman, who wrote the book Original Love that I'm reading now, and fashioned The Way app on my iPhone that I've using every morning in a cyberspace form of Zen meditation, is indeed a Zen master. I just checked out the Sanbo Zen International web site and Shukman is listed there along with other masters…
8
Posted inBuddhism Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Why general relativity leads me to prefer Zen’ish meditation

Ever eager to cram together two seemingly highly separate subjects into a profound (or pseudo-profound) blog post, here's my take on relativity theory and Zen. I got to pondering the connection after two events in my life today tilted me in that direction.  Event #1 occurred when I read an article in the August 6, 2022 issue of New Scientist that I'd dug out of the bottom of a forgotten pile of unread magazines. In it Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire, described why general relativity is known as a background…
29