Posted inBuddhism Free will Reality

“Moon” movie points to shocking non-supernatural realization

A year or so ago I watched "Moon" via Netflix. I guess at this point I need to enter an obligatory spoiler alert, in case anyone hasn't seen this 2009 movie and thinks they might want to see it without knowing a crucial plot element. This was an intriguing movie, though not super-entertaining. The acting was good, but not exceptional. What I distinctly remember was a shocking twist. There Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is, at a base on the moon where a mining operation is taking place. He's looking forward to returning home after a three-year solitary tour…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Here’s an elusive cosmological koan to beguile you

When I saw a book called Cosmological Koans mentioned in another book I was reading, there was little doubt in my mind that it would be delivered to me by Amazon before too long. And so it came to pass. Anthony Aguirre is a Professor of Physics at University of California - Santa Cruz. That is so perfect! I can't imagine a more appropriate place for a koan loving, Buddhism inspired, creative writing physicist than UC Santa Cruz.  (I went to college at San Jose State in the 1960s; Santa Cruz beaches were a favorite spot for LSD trips, along…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Meaning of life

Marvelous mystery lies in the complexity of the world

Most of us want to believe in something greater than ourself. That's a worthy ambition. Problem is, religious believers head off in a misguided direction when they imagine that the something greater lies in a vertical direction. Meaning, they fantasize that a heaven awaits above; or that higher supernatural regions of reality exist; or that their consciousness needs to be elevated beyond worldly concerns. What these devotees of verticality fail to understand is this: the world right here and right now possesses all the majesty, mystery, and meaning that anyone could desire. It just takes eyes to see, which, sadly,…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Buddhism can help silence your inner critic

I enjoy reading movie reviews. The people who write them are called critics. When they criticize a movie, or streaming show, that I was considering watching, often I'll decide to see something else instead. So critics can be wonderful. However, there's also a critic who is uncomfortably close to me. In fact, it is me. Or at least, a part of me who isn't shy about pointing out my screw-ups, mistakes, and such -- often in a caustic manner that leaves me feeling bad about myself. I don't mind getting feedback about things I could have done better, whether from…
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Posted inBuddhism Consciousness

Motive of a mass murderer wrongly assumes conscious will

One of the things that comes through loud and clear in the many modern neuroscience and psychology books I've read is that we humans are lousy at knowing why we act a certain way. Experiments on split-brain patients, for example, where the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been severed, shows that even when the left side of the brain (which controls language) is unaware of the reason the right side did something, the patient will make up a "why" story that has no basis in fact. We don't like to admit that we don't know. So the brain…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Delusions

There are no essences, just interpretations

We humans want to make more of reality than is actually there. We believe that things have more substance, more independence, and more of an unchanging essence than is justified. This is the message of my previous post about the relative nature of the quantum world. And as I noted in that post, it fits with a core tenet of Buddhism -- emptiness. Buddhism emptiness doesn't mean a void, or nothingness.  It refers to the fact that nothing has inherent existence. Nothing has an unchanging essence. Nothing stands alone, complete in and by itself. In the book I've been writing…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Not having an illusory self has some real benefits

I'm continuing to enjoy my re-reading of Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True," a book that I neglected to write about after I first read it several years ago. My first post about it is here. In his The Alleged Nonexistence of the Self chapter, Wright offers some advice. Continue to entertain the proposition you've probably been entertaining your whole life, that somewhere within you there's something that deserves the name I. And don't feel like you're committing a felony-level violation of Buddhist dogma just because you think of yourself as being a self. But be open to the radical…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Reality

Buddhism can free us from evolution’s delusion

It happened again this morning, a sign from the non-God.  I'd tried to continue reading a couple of Buddhist books that appealed to me, aside from occasional mentions of supposed supernatural phenomena, which had been bothering me. Today the bothering overcame my liking of the books.  In the course of returning them to the Buddhism section of my bookcase, my eye hit upon a book by Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment." Highlighting indicated that I'd read the entire book. But so far as I can tell, I never wrote a blog…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

“Nothing special” explains a lot about human nature

A few days ago I'd woken up in the middle of the night. In the course of lying in bed, waiting to get back to sleep, the thought of "nothing special" suddenly came to mind. I then pondered the fact that I'm nothing special; that all of humanity is nothing special given the vastness of the cosmos; that, nonetheless, religions try to make their followers feel very special by supposedly enjoying a special relationship with God; that if people could somehow have a sense that they're nothing special, along with everybody else, the world would be a better place. Since,…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Compassion, like other good qualities, is in us, not the cosmos

As noted in a recent post, I've been playing around with using the Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu. I like the way it sounds. I'm attracted to Buddhism, so long as it is stripped of extraneous supernaturalism. I don't believe that Namu Amida Butsu is anything special. It's simply a way for me to focus and calm my mind. That mantra is part of the Shin aspect of Buddhism.  I have some familiarity with Shin, also known as the Pure Land tradition. In 2005 I talked about Namu Amida Butsu in "Mantra meditation: what's in a word?"  In 2013 I…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

There are pros and cons to repeating a mantra

On this blog I've done a lot of writing about mantras. I just used the Google search box in the right sidebar to locate posts dealing with "mantra." The results went on for 10 pages, all of most of the posts being written for Church of the Churchless rather than my other two blogs. I assiduously repeated a mantra silently both in meditation and during some of the rest of my day for thirty-five years.  That was the meditation method I first was taught, though it had a component of open awareness to go along with the focused attention of…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Taoism/Tai Chi

Stillness can make action more effective

I'm continuing to enjoy Domyo Sater Burk's Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness.  Today I read her take on getting comfortable with stillness and silence. This appealed to me, not only because I've been meditating every day for over 50 years, so I understand how difficult it can be to keep the mind and body more or less still and silent. This also is espoused in Tai Chi, which I've practiced for the past 16 years. Of course, you can't be perfectly still in Tai Chi, which I like to call "Taoism in motion."  But listening skills are a big part of…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Mindfulness isn’t a fad. It’s awareness of present experience.

After discovering the great writing of Domyo Burk on her Zen Studies Podcast episodes, I was eager to buy the Idiot's Guide to Zen Living that she wrote. But that book is out of print, with only expensive used copies available, other than the Kindle version (I like my books on paper, not a screen). However, I found another book by Burk, the Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness.  It arrived yesterday, and I already can tell that I'm going to enjoy it a lot. Below is the Introduction, which is a great short summary of what mindfulness is all about. In…
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Posted inBuddhism

Zen Studies Podcast is a great Buddhist resource

A few days ago I wrote a post about me embracing Shikantaza, the Zen Buddhist approach to meditation where you let go and do nothing other than remain aware of what's present without you doing anything. The next day I checked out a post on the Zen Studies Podcast that I'd linked to, Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything  First I listened to Domyo Burk, who narrates the podcasts. Then I read the transcript of the podcast -- a great feature for those of us who like a choice of the written word or…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I've got some amazing news to report about how I meditate. I toyed with the idea of issuing a press release in case the New York Times and Washington Post want to cover this breaking news (CNN also, since everything is breaking news on CNN), but I decided that readers of this blog deserved to be clued in first. Today, before I meditated, I decided that what I'm going to do from now on -- unless I change my mind -- is... drumroll, please... a little longer drumroll to let the anticipation build...  Absolutely nothing.  OK, take some deep breaths.…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality

My podcast interview with Marie D’Elephant was enjoyable

Yesterday I spent 1 hour and 48 minutes talking with Marie D'Elephant for a podcast that's scheduled to be released on February 4 via her Everyone's Autonomous Podcast site.  Here's the description of what D'Elephant is up to. During the Everyone's Agnostic podcast from 2015-2019, we shared our stories of religious trauma and the pain of deconversion.  When that podcast went on a hiatus, a beautiful child was born: Everyone's Autonomous by Marie D'Elephant. She picks up the discussion by talking with guests and subject matter experts about how we can begin to move forward after having processed our toxic…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

I never was, so I always will be

Profound? Obvious? Confusing? Meaningless?  No matter what you might think of this blog post title, I reply: Yes, Yes, Yes, and...Yes. In other words, I agree with you. I take this stance because I like the one-sentence statement that popped into my head a week or so ago, stimulated, I suspect, by the Buddhist books I've been re-reading lately. So it doesn't really matter how anyone else looks upon I never was, so I always will be. Those words resonate with me, because they seem absolutely true. Let's examine why I say this. I never was points to the absence…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Your soul can’t be found because it doesn’t exist

I'm enjoying my re-reading, or re-re-reading, given the highlighting I've done to this book, of Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-Kha-Pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path." It's a brilliant discussion of a core Buddhist notion, defined as the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. In other words, nothing is intrinsically itself. Everything depends on other things for its existence, us naturally included. Nothing stands on its own, an island unto itself. Interconnectedness and interdependency is how the cosmos works. So Buddhism is unique among the world's major religions in not positing an eternal soul. (Because it isn't really…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Clear thinking is a big part of Buddhist spirituality

I've never understood why some people are so down on thinking as an avenue to spiritual growth -- using "spiritual" in a non-supernatural sense, basically an exploration of what it means to be a caring, compassionate person who is grounded in reality. Naturally those thinking skeptics express their view in, no big surprise, thoughts. So they cast doubt on the value of thought while thinking thoughts.  One reason I enjoy reading Buddhist books (non-religious variety) is that Buddhism is fine with thinking. Also, with not thinking. That's an example of the middle way favored by Buddhists. Thinking and not thinking…
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Posted inBuddhism

Stephen Bachelor has a beautiful take on Buddhist emptiness

In my shelf of Buddhist books, there's one called something like The Emptiness of Emptiness. I bought it for the title. The description of emptiness in the book left me confused. Not so with the chapter on Emptiness in Stephen Bachelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs.  Below are some extensive quotes from the chapter. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.  After reading, or rather re-reading, the final passage, I was reminded of an experience I had in college while stoned on mescaline. I related it in a 2007 post, Loosening the bounds of "I am..." Might as well copy it…
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