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.…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

12 Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening

This morning I came across 12 Symptoms of a Spiritual Awakening on a friend's Facebook feed. I liked them, even though I noticed that they came from a recovery web site. No mention of a higher power or God in the twelve, thankfully.  1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen. 2. Frequent attacks of smiling. 3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature. 4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation. 5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears based on past experience. 6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.…
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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…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Your spiritual experience means nothing to me

Experience. A wonderful word. So important. It's all that we have, really. Experience. Without it, we're nothing. Dead. Unconscious.  So saith the Merriam-Webster dictionary. 1 a : direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge    b : the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation 2 a : practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity    b : the length of such participation <has 10 years'experience in the job> 3 a : the conscious events that make up an individual life    b : the events that make up the conscious…
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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…
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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…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Catholic woman is offended by McDonald’s

Recently our local newspaper here in Salem, Oregon had a column by Carol McAlice Currie that resonated with my long-time experience of being a vegetarian.  Download Fast food offends religious woman  Since I've shunned meat and fish since 1970, and raised a daughter born in 1972 as a vegetarian, I know what it's like to ask servers in a restaurant to substitute something animal'ish for something vegetable'ish.  Many times I walked into a McDonald's with my daughter and said to the person behind the counter, "Could you make us a Big Mac without the hamburger?" Or at Taco Bell, "We'd…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Nine essential qualities of mindfulness

Here's a good overview of what mindfulness is all about. Nine qualities are listed in the Psychology Today piece by psychologist Melanie Greenberg. Great advice for living. Read the whole article to feast on the full mindfulness meal. Focus on the Present Moment—When your thoughts get lost in thinking about the past or worrying about the future, you bring them back to what you are experiencing right now. Being Fully Present—You are spaciously aware of whatever you are experiencing in the present moment as you go through your daily life.  Openness to Experience—Rather than dreading and shutting out your own…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Scientific news flash: People are different!

OK, this isn't a surprising discovery -- that "people differ so widely in their emotional responses to the ups and downs of life." So say psychologist Richard Davidson and science writer Sharon Begley in their recently published book, "The Emotional Life of Your Brain." But in the opening lines of their One Brain Does Not Fit All chapter, Davidson points out how there's a common assumption that people are predictable. If you believe most self-help books, pop-psychology articles, and television therapists, then you probably assume that how people respond to significant life events is pretty predictable.  Most of us, according…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Mindfulness 101: separate your senses from your stories

Oh, the stories I tell myself. As do you. As does everybody. We wouldn't be human if we weren't story tellers.  I wake up in the morning. Almost immediately I recollect the basic narrative of my life. I live in Oregon. I'm married to the woman in bed next to me. I need to get up, raise the thermostat to 69 degrees, and let our dog out of the downstairs room where she spends the night. Then... make coffee, take the dog outside, get the newspapers. If I simply was aware of what my senses were telling me, I'd be…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

“Nothing” is my spiritual resolution for the New Year

Yesterday some friends and I talked about our New Year's resolutions. The conversation didn't last long. We agreed there wasn't any point to making resolutions, since we never followed them.  That partly explains why my resolution for making spiritual progress in 2012 is pithy: nothing. No resolution, guaranteed success. I'm really great at doing nothing. Some days that's my primary accomplishment. But I also have some semi-serious reasons for recommending nothing as a spiritual goal. See here and here. As quoted in the first-linked "here," this saying on a Japanese Zen scroll makes a lot of non-sensical sense. There is…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

“Survivor: South Pacific” shows ridiculousness of religion

My wife and I are big Survivor fans. We've watched every episode of each season. "Survivor: South Pacific," which concluded last Sunday, was one of the most captivating series for this reality show. Also, one of the most annoying for us, because religion played a much larger role in the interactions between the people trying to outwit, outplay, and outlast (the Survivor mantra) each other on the island until one becomes the "sole survivor." One tribe was filled with obnoxiously explicitly devout Christians who regularly stood in a circle, held hands, prayed together -- and then proceeded to do their…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

The notion of a cosmic illusion is illusory

I loved "The Matrix." It's an entertaining movie with a compelling plot line. Eventually, Neo finds Morpheus, and is then told that reality is actually very different from what he, and most other people, perceives it to be. Morpheus tells Neo that human existence is merely a facade. In reality, humans are being ‘farmed’ as a source of energy by a race of sentient, malevolent machines. People actually live their entire lives in pods, wtih their brains being fed sensory stimuli which give them the illusion of leading ‘ordinary’ lives. Morpheus explains that, up until then, the “reality” perceived by Neo is…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Become the person you once feared to be

Having watched "The King's Speech" last night, courtesy of Netflix, I'm fired up about finding our own voices. (It's a great movie; see it, if you haven't already.) What keeps us from saying, doing, or feeling what we want to? Often, nothing but a fear of being different, going against the grain, marching to the beat of our own drummer, defying an authority figure. Yet here's the strange thing: almost everybody adores individualists, people who express themselves creatively, freely, spontaneously, courageously.  So why isn't each of us the person we love from the outside, but may fear to be on…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Why ask “why” if the question is unanswerable?

Why fascinates me. I don't know why. It just does.  Is there a problem with that? I respond "no." But asking that question belies the answer. Better to say, "sometimes there's no why, just is." Reasons lie on a sliding scale, though. In some areas of science causes and effects can be determined in amazing detail. If such wasn't the case, I wouldn't be able to type this blog post on a computer and publish it on the Internet where you can read it. Nor would space probes be able to reach the most distant planets in our solar system…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Spiritual practice/meditation

What’s so great about ego loss?

Yesterday I got an email from someone who asked an excellent question. Why should he engage in ego-lessening practices? Hello Mr. Hines. I have practiced Zen for several years, but in the past year or two I have ‘fallen away’ from the practice. I find myself resonating with your concepts of ‘spiritual independence’ and ‘church of the churchless’. I’m sending you this email because I thought you might have some insight on my question. Why do (why should?) I engage in ego-lessening practices?  I realize that the question comes from the ego.  It’s a sort of ‘what’s in it for me’ question.  But…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

More proof of my enlightenment

One of the big benefits of not being part of an organized religious faith is that you can affirm your own enlightenment -- or salvation, sainthood, mastership, gurudom, whatever.  Life is short. Why wait for someone else to tell you about your elevated state of consciousness? Do it yourself! Well, in my case, with the help of Google, as I needed assistance in remembering where prior bloggish proofs of my enlightened being lay. Thank you, Oh Great Google, for pointing me to here, here, here, and here. (Though truly, my entire Church of the Churchless blog post production testifies to…
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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 inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Do you want life to be experience, or memory?

Psychologist, Nobel laureate (in economics), and happiness researcher Daniel Kahneman describes a interesting thought experiment in his fascinating TED video, "The riddle of experience vs. memory."  It seems to point to something really important about life, spirituality, meaning, well-being, and all that. I just can't quite figure out what it is -- which probably is a result of me being immersed in the riddle of experience vs. memory, as all of us are. That is, I got an intuitive flash when I heard Kahneman talk about the thought experiment, but when I reflect upon it, as I am now, I'm focusing…
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