Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

If our attention wanders, the question is where it should rest

Most of us are afflicted more often than we'd like with what often is called "monkey mind." Meaning, our attention is prone to flitting around from this to that to whatever, sort of like monkeys swinging from branch to branch in a seemingly aimless fashion. But why is monkey mind a bad thing? Monkeys seem to have a good time in trees. Why are we humans so concerned about controlling our attention? That's one of the themes in an article by Casey Cep in the January 30, 2023 issue of The New Yorker, Eat, Pray, Concentrate. The online version is…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

More on why mindfulness is better than mantra meditation

It goes without saying, but I'll say it regardless, that my Church of the Churchless blog posts reflect what I find interesting and what makes sense to me.  If you disagree with a post, naturally that's wonderful. You're you. I'm me. We're different people, so we're going to look at some things differently. Maybe a lot of things differently.  All I can do is explain myself as best I can, while all you can do is explain yourself as best you can in comments on my blog posts -- should you choose to do that. So here's another try at…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra versus mindfulness — which is better?

Paying $24.95 for a Learn to Meditate course based on a mantra, that is roughly akin to the Transcendental Meditation approach, had at least one immediate benefit for me. It got me to pondering the pros and cons of using a mantra, versus pursuing mindfulness. This is going to be a fairly short blog post, because after a couple of days where I experimented with repeating the one-word mantra that I chose for the course -- "peace" -- it dawned on me why I gave up on using a mantra and made mindfulness my meditation.  Yes, I still play around…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

I pay $24.95 for a Learn to Meditate course

As I was reading Galen Strawson's book, "Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, Etc.", I read a mention by Stawson that he'd tried out psychologist Patricia Carrington's approach to meditation, liked it, but didn't stick with it for very long. Curious, I headed to Carrington's web site, which has sort of an old-fashioned internet vibe to it. I poked around the site for a while, focusing on what she has to say about meditation, and liked her emphasis on meditation being as effortless as possible. Since I'm a firm believer in spiritual laziness, I decided to fork over…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Instead of trying to fix ourselves, it’s better to be just be ourselves

One of the joys of reading for me is finding connections between seemingly disparate books. As I wrote about a few days ago, I'm reading a book about depression and mindfulness. I've also started a book by a neuroscientist, "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness." Patrick House, the author, says that he doesn't agree with all of those ways, but in brief creatively-written chapters he makes the case for each way in accord with how proponents argue for it. In his first of the nineteen ways, House puts us in the place of a sea creature. It needs fast reflexes…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m reading a good book about depression and mindfulness

Given how disturbing it's been for me to endure four days of non-functionality from Typepad, my blogging service, following a failed data migration to new servers (shared that post on Blogger since Typepad is so screwed up at the moment), I guess it was good timing that I got a book from Amazon about depression and mindfulness.  Not that I'm actually clinically depressed, though I was at one point in my life, about five years ago. What attracted me to "The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness," was a reader review on Amazon that said this was one…
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Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m a human being having a human experience. How about you?

During my religious believing days -- well, 35 years actually -- I'd frequently hear people talk about "We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience." That quote came from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. So it isn't surprising that he'd have such a dualistic attitude, with our bodily existence as humans just being a step on the way toward a supernatural experience as a spiritual being. But early on in my churchless evolution, I realized that it makes no sense to view myself in that way. So if…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris and Loch Kelly on nondual mindfulness

Today I set aside my doubts about Loch Kelly's approach in his "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide For Living an Awakened Life," and continued on with my re-reading of his book.  I liked what I read, by and large. Then I listened to the daily guided meditation by Sam Harris on his Waking Up app. It struck me as highly compatible with what I'd just read in Kelly's book. Which isn't surprising, since both Harris and Kelly embrace a similar Buddhist approach, that of Dzogchen. Here's my transcription of what Harris said. Just sit comfortably. And close…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m giving “The Way of Effortless Mindfulness” another read

This morning I felt like brushing up on mindfulness, one of my favorite subjects, since mindfulness has become my meditation.  Looking through my books about mindfulness, I decided to pick up Loch Kelly's The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. As I noted in a 2019 post, "Effortless mindfulness versus deliberate mindfulness," I liked the idea of putting in no effort. A book by Loch Kelly, "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness," came to my attention via an interview Sam Harris conducted with Kelly and shared on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app that I'm a fan of.  Any book about meditation that has…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Spiritual practice/meditation

“Open Mind, Open Heart” is an intriguing book about Christian meditation

It's probably surprising to others, and definitely surprising to me, that as churchless as I am, one of my favorite meditation books is Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating, a Catholic priest, monk, and abbot.  (There's a new edition of the book, but I'm familiar with the old one, and the new one is more difficult to read typographically, from Amazon reviews I've read.) I've written some blog posts about the book, which I bought in 2005. Support for the churchless Seeing clearly now Let go. Then let go of letting go. Let it go. So simple.    The…
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Posted inBuddhism Consciousness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m pretty sure Sam Harris’ “pure awareness” doesn’t exist

As much as I like Sam Harris' approach to meditation, which basically is Buddhism (Vipassana variety) minus the Buddhist part, I'm still left with a key question. Which if asked of a Zen master likely would earn me a smack on my head or kick of my butt -- or more mildly, a quizzical look and an admonition to return to my meditation mat and seek more diligently for the true nature of my self. That self, of course, doesn't really exist in Buddhism, nor in Sam Harris' guided meditations on his Waking Up app. So whoever it is who…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris and I make up. All is good between us now.

For those worried about my previous post where I expressed some criticism of Sam Harris' approach to meditation -- are Harris and Hines at risk at breaking up? -- I want to reassure all of you, who likely number in the low single digits, that our relationship is back on track now. Well, more accurately, my relationship with Harris is back on track. Harris has no idea that I exist, which makes for a decidedly unbalanced relationship, since my contact with him is limited to his writings and some recordings by Harris on his Waking Up app.  Regarding the app, a…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris isn’t crystal clear about meditation

A few days ago I shared some brief thoughts from Sam Harris on what makes life worth living. He ended with: I don't think there's just one answer to this question. We might want to say that love is what makes life worth living, or doing meaningful and creative work, or appreciating the beauty of nature, or helping other people and making their lives better. And I'd probably say all of these things.  But all of these things have a common property. They all depend on real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present. And…
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Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris answers “What makes life worth living?”

I came across a tweet by Sam Harris that was a (mildly) animated GIF with Harris' narrated words scrolling at the bottom.  He asks a good question. Whether you think his answer is New Age bullshit, ancient spiritual wisdom, or something in-between is another good question. What makes life worth living? This is an important question, probably the most important question, because if we don't know, then we can't prioritize what we actually value. We tend to live as if we've answered this question for ourselves. But most of the time we're just doing one thing after the next, following…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

The big problem with life is…life. So what to do?

Yesterday I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog about a stand-up comedian I like a lot, Taylor Tomlinson. The post started off with a bit of semi-tongue-in-cheek philosophizing. My big problem with life is... (drumroll please)... LIFE.  Meaning, insofar as I know what I mean, but now that I just wrote this blog's topic sentence, I'm stuck with explaining it, no matter how many problems get fixed in my life, new ones pop up like a perpetual motion machine designed by a sadist. I suspect most people feel this way. So what are we to do?  Sex, drugs, and…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

A compassionate perspective on Sant Mat and the spiritual pursuit

Here's a guest blog post from someone who writes well, thinks clearly, and has an interesting perspective on the spiritual pursuit. Kinder and gentler than my own attitude toward cults and religions. I added a couple of links to the person's post. Dear Brian, I was searching the internet for Sant Mat history and I found your blog. As I was reading it, back and forth, there have been quite a few entries of people over the years, I felt glad that I found some answers that clarified my own thinking. So then I wanted to , you know, say…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

I respond to a B.S. comment about my 52 years of meditation

UPDATE: Spence Tepper has apologized to me for his ridiculous attempt to claim that my 35 years of daily meditation while a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, usually for several hours a day, amounted to "nothing." Good for Spence. He recognized how wrong he was. Hopefully from now on he will realize that my approach to meditation is the wise one: don't challenge someone's personal experience in meditation, but DO challenge any claim that this experience proves the existence of a supernatural realm beyond the physical. Spence doesn't like my skepticism toward his brand of religious fundamentalism. I've pointed out…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t repress your feelings because you think that’s “spiritual”

I'm coming to dislike that word, spiritual. It conjures up an image of something ethereal, other-worldly, supernatural, divorced from the messy reality of this physical world. Which, of course, is the only world there is -- because there's precisely zero demonstrable evidence that any other realm exists. No heaven. No hell. No divine regions of reality.  This is it. So rather than say something like "I'm a spiritual person," how about simply "I'm s person." Just as we all are. Doing our best to live a good life in a world that's filled with challenges. That includes dealing with challenging…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Embrace everything about yourself, including the good, bad, and the ugly

I'm cured! But before I get too excited over this news, I need to remind myself that what happened yesterday was, after three counseling sessions, Wayne, the counselor I was seeing, agreeing with me that there wasn't any need for me to continue seeing him. What caused my therapeutic breakthrough is interesting, because it fits with the blog post I wrote about a week ago, "Zen'ish adage: when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy." I mentioned that post to Wayne in the course of explaining my Big Realization. Namely, that the goal I'd written down at Wayne's…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation Vedanta/Advaita

Nonduality says nothing about how the world really is

Following up on my previous post about David Loy's book, Nonduality, here's some additional thoughts on a subject that both intrigues me and irritates me. The intrigue part stems from a desire most of us have, me certainly included, to look upon the world without feeling so separate from it. That separateness is inherent in a central fact about we humans. Each of us views things from an inescapable subjective perspective. Meaning, we are subjective beings in an objective world. Or at least, what sure appears to be an objective world. No one knows what it is like to be…
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