Wu Project

Often it's said, "God is mystery." People love mysteries. They're interesting, intriguing, and, well, mysterious. So religious believers, rather strangely, somehow combine an acceptance of well-defined dogmas, teachings, commandments, and such with an embrace of a Great Unknown.Mysticism, to which I'm considerably more attracted than religion, dumps the "acceptance" stuff and jumps right into the "embrace." Mystics say, I want mystery (that's why they're called mystics).So does science. The known is appealing to scientists. But it's the unknown that really gets their truth-seeking juices flowing. The central thing that differentiates my churched self from my churchless self is this: now I've…

I've been rediscovering existentialist philosophy lately, since I'm re-reading Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" after a long absence from the pages I densely highlighted decades ago.Sartre was an atheist. Atheist existentialism isn't the only form of this philosophy, but non-belief in God is much more compatible with an existentialist perspective than believing is.It's tough to encapsulate Sartre's outlook on life. He's a marvelously rich and complex thinker. I love getting into his head via what he wrote in "Being and Nothingness." Sartre often writes in a dense intellectual style, but (thankfully) he frequently throws in nuggets of simplicity that inspire…

I read some passages from Jean-Paul Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" to my wife recently. Her reaction: "How the heck can you make sense of that?"Reasonable question. Sartre can be dense. But I love how he rambles along in his French existentialist intellectual writing style for a while, then throws in a simple clear gem that makes me go Wow! Right on, Jean-Paul.For example, how he ends these thoughts.Anguish in fact is the recognition of a possibility as my possibility; that is, it is constituted when consciousness sees itself cut off from its essence by nothingness or separated from the future…

For the past few days I've been enamored with my "What's good about God?" question. It keeps running through my mind, particularly the answer:Nothing. In the comments to that post I clarified a point that might have confused some people. I didn't mean that people aren't affected -- both positively and negatively -- by a belief in God.But this is much different from being influenced by God directly. For that to happen, (1) God would have to be real, and (2) God would have to act upon human beings in some demonstrable fashion. I responded to a comment with...My question…

Yesterday I got a request emailed to me: I was wondering if you could perhaps write one of your essays about "impermanence" or "nothingness" to stimulate some more positive and philosophical responses and discussions.Glad to oblige. When I read this I thought of Anaïs Nin, who wrote erotic and pornographic narratives in the 1940s for a dollar a page. The difference between her and me is that I pay for the privilege of writing on this blog. And my musings aren't nearly as stimulating.Anyway, since I was thirteen I've loved to ponder nothingness. What we don't know, the vast darkness…

So many religious beliefs.So many philosophical systems.So many gurus with divergent truths.So many notions of what life is all about.So many guides pointing in different directions.And so few people willing to say, "I don't know."Ignorance isn't bliss. But neither is illusory knowledge. I'm much attracted to those who have done their best to sort through the world's collection of answers to life's biggest questions and have the guts to say it like it is:All come up short.Virtually everyone ends up choosing sides in the massive Game of Meaning, where countless teams vie to collect the greatest number of people willing…

One of my pet peeves is how often I hear, "Brian, you think too much!" Almost always I'm told this by a true believer (generally in Sant Mat, my previous faith) who is using his or her mind to express that thought. So obviously that person isn't opposed to thinking, because they're doing it when they tell me "You think too much." What they really are saying is that they don't like what I'm thinking. Which, when expressed in a Church of the Churchless blog post, often has to do with the futility of religious believing. Those beliefs, whether Christian,…

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these. I didn't have a whole lot to say. Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide. I told my friends, "If the world and…

If a movie ever is made of my life, this coffee house moment has to be in it. In an intuitive flash, I got a glimpse into what the universe is all about. Nothing. None of the above. No answer. Nobody home. No way to know. A bunch of negatives. But the feeling I had was wonderfully positive. Unfortunately, it didn't last. While it did, though, I felt lighter, more joyful, the weight of a gigantic question mark having been lifted off of my inquiring psyche. Reading the first few pages of a book, "The Way of Wonder," preceded my…

"Faith" is one of those words that people use a lot, but sloppily. That is, the meaning is assumed rather than being clearly defined. So I enjoyed reading a message ("why argue faith?") over on the Church of the Churchless Google Groups discussion forum, which is rarely used – except by spammers. Jptxs (probably not a real name) has some interesting things to say about faith. So you can take the definition of faith and now use some substitution and come up with this: Faith is an opinion or conviction not based on proof. If that is true, then one…

The "empty your cup" story is a favorite in spiritual circles. Most commonly, it's told from a Zen perspective. A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor's cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. "It's overfull! No more will go in!" the professor blurted. "You are like this cup," the master replied, "How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup." I'm attracted to emptiness.…

Some more Maui meditations...following up on "Big waves, small waves: no difference?" I enjoyed the comments on this post. I agree: splitting reality up into awareness and what we're aware of – how is this not another duality that the consciousness is all philosophy tries to get away from? Reading further this morning into Peter Dziuban's book by the same name, my consciousness made clearer by Kona coffee, I'm struck by how Awareness (with a capital "A") can be made into an abstract divinity with pretty much the same characteristics as God. I've never been aware of Pure Awareness, unsullied…

My second straight post with a question mark in the title. I still don't know if awareness can be aware of nothing, so I'll extend my ignorance by talking about what happens when we're unaware of everything. Like, under anesthesia. Or after being hit on the head with a baseball bat. Or in deep dreamless sleep.This latter state is particularly praised by Advaitist sages such as Ramana. I like Ramana a lot. But whenever he extols dreamless sleep as being akin to a realized consciousness, I'll pause in my reading and think: Gosh, I'm not sure I want to be…