Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Rabbi Brian’s Highly Unorthodox Gospel

Recently I got an email with an offer to read and comment on a book by Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer, Rabbi Brian's Highly Unorthodox Gospel. (It comes with stickers that you apply at various places in the book.) Naturally I said, "Absolutely!" to Rabbi Brian. Hey, we share a first name. Also, a state, since Rabbi Brian lives in Portland, the more with-it city some 50 miles north of where I live in sleepier Salem. And both of us don't like organized religion. Plus, we each have a beard, though Rabbi Brian's is way darker, since he's way younger. I've…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

The endpoint of spirituality is breaking the addiction to spirituality

For a long time, including at this very moment, I've had a feeling that both disturbs and elates me: almost everything that I once thought was true about spirituality actually isn't, which means that what remains when my addiction to spiritual seeking has run its course is what I'm truly looking for. This is sort of akin to the Zen'ish adage, first there is a mountain, then there isn't, then there is. I alluded to this in a 2015 post, "I don't really know what 'spiritual' means anymore." Since I don’t see anything other than naturalistic reality as being, well,…
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Posted inNeuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

Believing that the mind’s resources are non-limited allows more mental effort

Beliefs are powerful. We need to use them wisely. Not by believing crazy stuff wildly out of touch with reality, but by believing in possibilities firmly within our potential to achieve.  The placebo effect is a good example of this. Taking a sugar pill that is believed to be efficacious isn't going to cure a Stage 4 cancer. However, it can have other positive effects, such as reducing pain.  Reading David Robson's book this morning, The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change the World, I came across an interesting example of the power of belief in his "Limitless Willpower"…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation isn’t about doing it right. It’s about trusting yourself.

TIME magazine rarely has stories about meditation. So it was a pleasure to turn a page of the February 12, 2024 issue and see a title: "The noises in my head at a silent retreat." I could relate to those words. For after starting to meditate every day in 1971, during the past fifty-three years my meditation has involved a lot of noises inside my own head.  Thoughts. Emotions. Cravings. Things to do. Cosmic conceptions. Crude desires. You know, everything that's going through my mind outside of meditation. It's just more obvious when I'm sitting still, usually with eyes closed,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

The spiritual journey leads nowhere, and that’s absolutely fine

My last post was a digression of sorts, as I explained in the opening paragraphs.  Today I was planning to write a post about a central theme in a book I've been blogging about recently, Joan Tollifson's Nothing to Grasp. I was struck by how Tollifson has come around to viewing reality in simple terms, "as it is." Leaves falling. Birds flying. Pain happening. Dishes being washed. She came to this outlook after a lengthy period of seeking the Truth of It All via meditation, Zen Buddhism, nondual teachings, therapy, and other means. I wanted to write about how weird…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Joan Tollifson’s Pathless Path to Here/Now

For thirty-five years I was a member of an organization, Eastern religion variety, that taught how to pursue a spiritual Path. That word was capitalized, because it was no ordinary path, but a Path from the illusion of the physical world to supernatural realms of existence.  It feels great to be free of that fantasy.  Here's passages from "The Pathless Path to Here/Now" chapter in Joan Tollifson's book, Nothing to Grasp. She beautifully captures the wisdom of giving up the notion of a Path in favor of experiencing the reality of what is what right before us at every moment.…
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Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation

I hear from someone who experiences mystical sound and light

Recently I got an email from a man in Austria who started to experience mystical sound and light, even though he had no connection with a teaching that claims to produce such experiences. Since, we've exchanged several messages. I asked him if I could share his messages on my blog. He asked that I remove some of what he said that wasn't germane to what he's been experiencing, which I've done. You'll find his email address at the end of this post, as he'd welcome being contacted by anyone who has experienced something similar. Enjoy... I came across your critical…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Maybe the biggest problem with life is believing there’s a problem with life

It sort of feels to me like a rapidly descending elevator. You know, when it seems like the floor is falling away beneath you even though you're standing on it. Except in an elevator you know what the lowest level is.  I'm not sure how much further I have to sink. And that's okay with me. At least I'm moving in the right direction: away from the heights of religious supernaturalism toward a grounding in here-and-now reality. Reading Joan Tollifson's book, Nothing to Grasp, has made me more aware of that descending elevator feeling. For she ably undercuts what I…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

For me, the real spiritual quest is to stop searching for spirituality

A few days ago I wrote about how discovering Jean Toliffson was a gift not only for myself, but for the readers of this blog. Since, I finished listening to her interview with Sam Harris on his Waking Up app, which made me even more appreciative of Toliffson's naturalness and humility. She's a spiritual teacher who doesn't actually believe in either spirituality or teaching. At least, not as how those words are generally defined and used in Zen, Buddhist, Advaita, Nonduality, and similar pursuits. That's what made her discussion with Harris so interesting. I like and respect Harris a lot.…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Happy New Year. Here’s my gift of Joan Tollifson.

In a few hours it will be 2024 here in Oregon. Of  course, in one sense tomorrow is just another day, another rotation of Earth on its axis. But we humans have come up with the calendar, so in another sense tomorrow is the beginning of a brand new year. At any rate, I want to express how grateful I am that in 2023 not only was I able to write a Church of the Churchless post every other day (on the other days I tend to my HinesSight and Salem Political Snark blogs), but that my posts were enriched…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Ouspensky leaving Gurdjieff has lessons for spiritual independence

As noted in my previous post, "Between Gurdjieff and Zen, I much prefer Zen," after reading the first chapter in P.D. Ouspensky's book about his time with Gurdjieff, In Search of the Miraculous, I decided that I'd only read one additional chapter -- the last one where Ouspensky describes why he parted company with Gurdjieff. Having done that, here's the reason Ouspensky gives. In regard to my relations with G. I saw clearly at that time that I had been mistaken about many things that I had ascribed to G. and that by staying with him now I should not…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Renunciative versus life-affirming types of meditation

I'm an easy sell when it comes to books about meditation. Especially when they have a title like Opening Awareness: A Guide to Finding Vividness in Spacious Clarity.  Hey, give me some of that vividness, especially if it's found in spacious clarity, leaving aside the minor problem that I had no idea what those lofty words meant. So I sent $15 off to Amazon. (When I just checked out the group that published the book, Evolving Ground, I noticed that portions of this little book are available online, but not the whole thing.)  The basic meditation approach presented in the…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris speaks truth to Russell Brand’s B.S.

I'm a big fan of Sam Harris, the noted atheist who richly deserves his reputation as a rational mystic. For Harris has a Ph.D. in neuroscience and also is deeply experienced in meditation, primarily the Dzogchen variety of Buddhism.  Whenever I read Harris' books, listen to his guided meditations and conversations with other people, or view his videos, I come away impressed with his ability to clearly reason about difficult issues concerning all sorts of subjects -- notably including consciousness, religion, mindfulness, and social issues. It takes me about 10 minutes to do my weekly watering of two bonsai plants…
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Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

If we’re only happy when life has no problems, we’ll never be happy

After recommending a conversation between Sam Harris and André Duqum after listening to only ten minutes of it, now I can really recommend the conversation after listening to two hours of the 2:20 talk between them. Harris is in fine form here. Having been an avid user of his Waking Up app, I've heard quite a few talks between Harris and some other spiritually inclined person. He tells some of the same stories in the Duqum conversation but much of what Harris says is new to me. I haven't been taking any notes, so will simply relate what I remember…
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Posted inConsciousness Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t watch yourself. Be yourself. In meditation, and in everything.

I usually listen to a daily guided meditation on Sam Harris' Waking Up app. But sometimes I enjoy other offerings on the app, which includes a section called Theory. There's also Practice and Life. Now and then Harris correctly says in his guided meditations that listening to a conversation in the Theory section can be just as valuable of meditating. After all, meditation is about paying attention to what's happening in the present moment. If that thing is an interesting conversation between Harris and someone else, and I'm paying close attention to it, then, hey, that's a form of meditation.…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m enjoying the Stoic test. Haven’t gotten an A or A+ yet.

As noted in my previous post about a modern approach to Stoicism, "Stoicism advises being happy with what we already have," the idea is to be content (or at least as content as possible) with what life brings us. That doesn't mean we don't try to deal with problems. But we'll be better able to deal with them if we're not in the grip of a strong negative emotion like anger, despair, self-pity, and such. And in accord with the Buddhist notion of two arrows, it's preferable to just have a single arrow strike us -- such as an illness…
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Posted inBooks Neuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

Stoicism advises being happy with what we already have

A few weeks ago I wrote a philosophical post for my HinesSight blog: Stoic guide to happiness: want the things you already have. Here's an excerpt from the talk by William B. Irvine that I transcribed. The ancient Stoics came up with a way to get off the hedonic treadmill. The trick, they said, is to want the things you already have, to love the life you happen to be living.  To better understand this trick, let’s turn our attention back to the gap theory of happiness. The Stoics agreed that the presence of a gap between what you have…
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Posted inBuddhism Morality Spiritual practice/meditation

Tonglen seems like a good practice, if it is more than mental

Today I read a talk in Pema Chödrön's book, The Wisdom of No Escape, where she explained to her Buddhist retreat students what the practice of tonglen is all about -- something I'd never heard about before. I found a web page where Chödrön describes tonglen in the same way as she did in her book. Check out "How to Practice Tonglen." Here's an excerpt. Tonglen practice, also known as “taking and sending,” reverses our usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In tonglen practice, we visualize taking in the pain of others with every in-breath and sending out…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Stoic gods are useful even though they don’t exist

I enjoy believing in Gods that don't exist. You get the benefit of a higher power but without the drawback of taking a fantasy to be real. A few days ago I started reading a book about a modern approach to Stoicism, The Stoic Challenge: A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Tougher, Calmer, and More Resilient by William B. Irvine.  Irvine begins his book by relating a tale of how, after several attempts to repair a plane's cargo door had failed, with an extended delay in taking off, a gate agent announced that the passengers would have to wait until morning…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

More interesting observations from “Seeing That Frees”

I'm continuing to enjoy the book by Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. (First post about it is here.) It's clear that Burbea knows a lot about meditation, Buddhist variety, and is skilled at communicating his knowledge both to his students in person and to the world at large through his book.  There's so much of interest in the six chapters (out of 31) that I've read so far, I find it difficult to decide what to share in my blog posts about the book. So I'll focus on some of what got special highlighting…
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