Posted inHumor

Comic Jessi Klein’s story about her dream job

Here's something questionably/ definitely/ absolutely not (take your choice) spiritually significant. Click on segment 1. Listen. Smile. Laugh. Learn. Loved the ending. And comic Klein's attitude. More and more, I think comics are the wisest people on Earth. In addition to the funniest. Age old moral here: be yourself. Not the person you believe either you or someone else wants you to be. Bonus extra visual addition: if you listen to Klein's podcast and are intrigued by her mention of Blake Lively, here's a photo. (Klein speaks the truth.) Double bonus extra visual addition: if you listen to Klein's podcast…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Almost-65 me is asked “what best prepares for old age?”

Longer ago than I want to admit (I dislike procrastination, even though I engage in it frequently), someone who was reading my book about Plotinus, "Return to the One," emailed me a good question about growing old. More recently, he reminded me of the question that I hadn't answered. Here's part of his email. Have you got around to putting any thought into my last inquiry...  “In light of Platonism and maintaining good mental health, what would you say might prepare a person best for old age, as in the interval between old age and death?” Even though I may…
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Posted inReligions

Religion Cheat Sheet — see what faith you believe in

When I got an email from someone representing Christian Universities Online who shared a link to their "Religion Cheat Sheet," I deleted the message after a quick lookover. But the next day this person said she was checking to see how I liked the infographic. If I did, was I going to pass it along to my blog readers? Well, Hailey, actually I do like the Religion Cheat Sheet. It's a clever and seemingly pretty darn accurate flow chart of what religion you end up with, given your answers to a few questions.  Give it a look-see below, or via…
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Posted inGod Science

God is as real as human consciousness

Below is a highly persuasive answer to the question, "Is God real?" I like the answer a lot, mostly because it is the answer I would have given to the question if I was as neuroscientifically wise as Michael Graziano, author of "Consciousness and the Social Brain," a book I've blogged about here and here. (Check out my Amazon review of the book.) Near the end of his book, Graziano asks Does God Exist? Here's extended quotes from that section. Graziano is such a good writer and thinker, I'm wary of paraphrasing this Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton University. Across all…
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Posted inScience

A puppet is as conscious as you are

I'm back!... to writing about Michael Graziano's super-interesting book, "Consciousness and the Social Brain." It was the subject of my Awareness is a fictionalized sketch of attention, which encapsulated the central theme of his neuroscientific theory. Every time I pick up the book I'm challenged to look at myself and the world in a fresh way. A believable way. Yet sometimes, a rather disturbing way. Like when I read this morning, after Graziano described how a ventriloquist makes a puppet look like it is alive, he said: It seems crazy to insist that the puppet's consciousness is real. And yet,…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Finding joy in a meaningless life

A few days ago I was riding my bike in central Oregon. I was having a good time cruising around the dirt roads and nicely graveled bike paths in oh-so-charming Camp Sherman, where the Metolius River flows. Pedaling along, idly pondering the Meaning of It All, my brain ejected a marvelous thought that instantly struck me as having a great intuitive appeal. There's no meaning to life, which is absolutely freaking glorious! I felt like a weight had been lifted from my pondering psyche. Meaning is heavy, man. It isn't something you toss around lightly.  Even if you're no longer…
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Posted inScience

Awareness is a fictionalized sketch of attention

The title of this post is a quote from p. 79 of Michael Graziano's highly persuasive and fascinating book, "Consciousness and the Social Brain." As noted in my previous post about neuroscientist Graziano's creative theory about what awareness is, I bought the book after reading an article by the author. I'm loving it. Probably the best book about the brain I've ever read, and I've read a lot. Graziano is an excellent writer (cover says he is "an award winning novelist). His take on awareness makes more sense than anything mystics, philosophers, meditators, or other scientists have come up with.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Missing dog food can shows power of false belief

"Where is the dog food left over from what you fed them last night?" My wife, Laurel, asked a simple question. It led to a fascinating insight into how our brains work. OK, how my brain worked after I heard the question. But my brain is pretty damn normal most of the time. And I've read enough neuroscience books to know that how I responded is a good example of how false beliefs that can seem absolutely true take root in the human brain. Laurel added, "I can't find it in the refrigerator." I told her, "It must be there.…
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Posted inReligions

Don’t experience life through your phone. Or religion.

I admit it. I look at my iPhone frequently. It's a good friend. Keeps me in touch with what's going on. Does what I want it to most of the time. Allows me to communicate with people I care about. But I saw some of myself in a viral video, "I Forgot my Phone." Shows what occurs when life is lived through the screen of a smart phone: a direct connection with what is happening right in front of us becomes diluted through a technological filter. Question is: how different is this from living life through the screen of religious…
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Posted inScience

Religionists get fact and opinion backward

I'm almost 65, but I like to think of myself as a modern with-it guy. Hey, I've got an iPhone 5; I ride five miles on my longboard/skateboard several times a week; I watched the entire freaking MTV Video Music Awards (and could even understand some of the song lyrics). But there's one thing I'm decidedly old-fashioned about: I believe in facts. This goes against the grain of some widely pervasive viewpoints. Like post-modern deconstruction. And pre-modern religiosity. Sorry, fact-deniers. I'm going to cling to my beloved facts. When I was a kid my mother used to buy the World Almanac…
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Posted inBuddhism

Dalai Lama is a celebrity who doesn’t have much to say

My wife is an avid reader of Psychology Today. She pointed out an interesting article in the September/ October issue, "Holy Celebrity," by Joachim Kreuger, a social psychologist. It's about the Dalai Lama. Basic theme is that if you're a celebrity, spiritual or some other variety, your vacuous statements take on an aura of meaningfulness that people wouldn't ascribe to those words if a non-celebrity said the same thing. All religions assume that certain individuals have special access to divine, esoteric, or transcendental knowledge, although they tend to be mute on just how this knowledge is transmitted. This view does…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality

Not only the devil, but also reality, is in the detail

Didn't know this: Wikipedia tells me that the familiar "the devil is in the detail" saying was preceded by "god is in the detail."  OK. So it looks like detail is really important whether we aim at hell or heaven. This is the intriguing premise of "Things Fall Apart" by Philip Kitcher, a philosophy professor at Columbia University.  In his Queries to the “Opticks,” Newton looked forward to a vision of the cosmos in which everything would be explained on the basis of a small number of physical principles. That Newtonian vision remains highly popular with many scientists who turn…
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Posted inScience

Consciousness, magic, and scientific rationalism

Here's a really interesting piece by neuroscientist Michael Graziano, "Consciousness and the Unashamed Rationalist." Naturally I just ordered Graziano's book, Consciousness and the Social Brain. His distinction between attention and awareness makes a lot of sense. As Graziano says below, his theory posits that awareness "is the brain's own fuzzy description of attention. A brain attends to thing X; the brain constructs the description, 'I am aware of thing X.'" Read the whole thing: Theories of consciousness are always a difficult sell because the topic is fraught with religious and spiritual issues. Almost all people who think about the question,…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi Vedanta/Advaita

Pink Panther and Alan Watts on nonduality

I'm reading a book about nonduality by David Loy that has a pleasingly appropriate title, "Nonduality." Loy is a Zen practitioner and a university professor.  I like his style. He thinks. He analyzes. He studies the relationship between substance philosophies like Vedanta (Self is real) and flux philosophies like Buddhism (nothing is immutable). Loy is helping me to realize that nonduality really isn't about oneness. It is about the rather obvious fact that this requires a that. And light requires dark. And self requires non-self. And life requires death. And so on and so on and so on. Oneness is…
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Posted inScience

Relativity “mysticism”: no time and no space at speed of light

Who needs spiritual/religious mysticism? Science has plenty of it. And here's the great thing: it is real! In the August 31 issue of New Scientist magazine I came across a letter to the editor that blew my mind. Repeatedly. Because every time I re-read the letter, I got the same Whhhhhaaaaaatttttt? sensation. Wilken Sporys from Christmas Hills, Victoria, Australia commented on a New Scientist story about the nature of reality that I blogged about last month. The basic notion of the story was "Something has to go -- reality, relativity, causality, free will. They can't all coexist as how they…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Guru Gurinder Singh Dhillon gets wild and crazy

Below is another interesting message from Osho Robbins. He relates how he saw the current Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru behaving in a way that is far from traditional. Here's my take on this: It is only when we put gurus up on an undeserved pedestal, viewing them as other-worldly beings rather than ordinary humans, that behavior like Robbins describes appears unusual. For many years I was a devotee of Gurinder Singh's predecessor, Charan Singh. People would be amazed at Charan Singh doing everyday things, like reading a newspaper. Likewise, in the early days of Gurinder Singh's realm, people would…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Be like Keats: embrace your “negative capability”

The final chapter in Oliver Burkeman's marvelous book, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking," is called Negative Capability. I liked it a lot.  Get your negative on! You'll feel better. Here's some excerpts from the chapter. That letter [by the poet John Keats] records what one Keats biographer has called a 'touchstone moment' in the history of literature: I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Our physical self dies; our symbolic self believes it won’t

When I'm in a complaining mood, I like to curse the cosmos for crap that particularly annoys me. Who asked for this stuff? We'd be better off without it.  For example... Fourteen billion or so years after the big bang, life on Earth has evolved to the point that we humans can envisage the possibility of our self existing forever, even though it is obvious that every single Homo sapiens who has ever lived, has died. This is totally fucked up. Whoever is in charge of the cosmos, and it seems pretty damn clear that nobody is, there's obviously hugely…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

More thoughts on being your own “religion of one”

I've been enjoying the comments that have been left on my previous post, "Become your own weird religion of one." Thanks particularly to commenters "cc" and "Willie R."  You've made me think. About my own thinking. And wonder. About my own wondering.  In the post I said that I found it difficult to believe that I believe what I believe. That's true, but "cc" correctly noted there still is an illogical intuitive consistency in the weird stuff that courses through my psyche. Yes, everyone holds irrational beliefs and most of us believe we're not irrational people, but no one can…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Become your own weird religion of one

I'm churchless. I don't belong to any organized religion. But actually I'm still religious. In a marvelously disorganized sense.  Meaning, I believe in a religion of one -- my own. It's all about me, myself, and I. There are no other members of my religion than moi.  And I seek no other members. In fact, it would be impossible for anyone else than me to believe in my religion, because not even I do.  Likely you're confused about what I just said. Join the club. I am also. Believe me, I find it difficult to believe that I believe what…
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