Posted inPolitics

Curse the National Day of Prayer

Here on the West Coast there's still a few hours left to take part in the National Day of Prayer (May 1). My recommendation: swear at it. That's the tack one of my favorite web sites, Pharyngula, took. In the midst of a post on this ridiculous religious observance I found a well-spoken pithy piece of advice. "Fuck the National Day of Prayer." Now, that might seem a bit harsh. What's wrong with warm fuzzy prayer? Well, nothing. So long as you're into having one-sided conversations with imaginary people. But a few minutes of browsing the official web site of…
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Posted inGod

Jellyfish and God, the differences

Main difference: jellyfish are real. I'm so certain of this, today I sat for two hours on Maui's Napili Beach, watching terrific large boogie boardable waves from the sand, passing them by because of jellyfish warning signs that had been posted. Having just invested a lot of time in pondering jellyfish, much more than I've ever done before, I've been trying to fathom what cosmic significance this dangerous sea creature (whose sting toxin supposedly is seventy-five percent as powerful as cobra venom) has for my spiritual development. Assuming it has any at all. But it's no fun to go the…
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Posted inWu Project

Feeling alive, undeadened by religion

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…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Big waves, small waves: no difference?

It's easy not to think too much on Maui. But my blogging addiction presses me toward a Church of the Churchless posting. Where is my inspiration? In today, in the waves. They were good sized today in Napili Bay, praise the wave gods. Whenever we come to Maui I religiously bring my boogie board on the airplane. Then I devotedly cart it down to the beach, every time we go, no matter how calm the ocean is. You never know. You really don't. I've been fooled before. Nice waves can spring out of nowhere. Like satori. This morning I was…
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Posted inWu Project

When I’m unconscious, why aren’t I enlightened?

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…
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Posted inWu Project

Can awareness be aware of nothing?

My wife and I are in Maui. We've overcome a lot of struggles to get here, as documented in "From snow to sunshine with snafus." For example, our first class upgrades didn't get us much of a vegetarian meal on Hawaiian Airlines. The Buddha was right: life is suffering. I like to keep things simple on Maui. Today we sat in some shade on the beach until the mid-day sun drove us into the ocean -- Laurel to snorkel, me to swim back and forth across Napili Bay. When to lie on the sand; when to go in the water.…
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Posted inMorality

Moral relativism is absolutely great

I love to argue with the Pope. It sends a thrill up my lapsed Catholic spine. The notion that insignificant me has a shot (in this case, a certainty) at out-moralizing the head of one of the world's major religions – marvelous! Pope Benedict XVI hates moral relativism. I adore it. So who's right and who's wrong? This is why I win: the fact that this is a serious question shows I'm right. Nobody says that the atomic structure of water has several possible answers. Two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen always is the correct response. Recently President…
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Posted inMystics

“Perfect” gurus: myth or reality?

Those steeped in a Western monotheistic religion, such as Christianity or Judaism, might be surprised to learn that millions of people in the world today believe that God walks on Earth in a human form – divinely perfect. Some Christians believe that Jesus was perfect, but his flawed humanity seems to be as important as his divinity. In like fashion, most Muslims consider that Muhammad was a flawless conduit for God's message as revealed in the Koran, but the Prophet himself isn't revered as God. It's only in the Eastern religions, so far as I know, that a person is…
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Posted inPolitics

Bitterness and religion: some advice for Obama

I've been doing some thinking, from my churchless perspective, about the controversy over Barack Obama's remark that people in struggling Pennsylvania towns are bitter and cling to religion (among other things). And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations. Clinton has seized on the words "bitter" and "cling" in blasting Obama for his supposed elitism. On cable news today I kept seeing her new ad being played. In the ad a Pennsylvania woman…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Radha Soami Satsang Beas embraces the Internet

I like it when a religious organization shows some flexibility. So kudos to the group that I belonged to for some thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, for significantly expanding its embrace of the World Wide Web. Today I learned that the RSSB web site has a new look. Previously there was basically just a home page and a catalog of RSSB publications. Now there's much more, including essays on the Sant Mat philosophy that forms the core of the group's teachings. For a long time the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh, asked that disciples refrain from discussing Sant Mat…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Religions should offer a better deal on death

Yesterday I spent part of a nice afternoon musing about a not-so-nice subject, death. And here I am doing it again, on an even sunnier and warmer Oregon day. As I said in "Baby boomers confront the big 'boom,' death," dying is an unwanted intrusion into the pleasant pursuit of existing. Dying wouldn't be so bad if there wasn't a likely nasty side effect: non-existence. Forever. That'd be a bummer, to put it mildly (only good side is, I won't be around to be bummed out). So humans have invented religions to reduce anxiety about the hereafter. Which is more…
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Posted inVedanta/Advaita

I am, therefore I am

The older I get, the more I feel like embracing seriously simple approaches to spirituality. That way, if I become senile, when someone asks me what I believe a ready answer is more likely to spring from my receding lips and failing psyche. This helps explain why I'm enjoying Stanley Sobottka's Course in Consciousness so much. I've been lugging my laptop into my meditation lair each morning, reading some of his downloaded book-length manuscript before I meditate. I'm about halfway through. The basic message is exceedingly simple, though it takes over 200 pages to express it. Consciousness is all there…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Loving is one thing, investing another

I've had an interesting email exchange with someone who noted my statement in a previous post: "Often I hear believers say, on this blog or elsewhere, that sharing their personal experience runs the risk of enlarging their ego. In my opinion, the risk lies in the other direction." She disagreed, saying that for her (a Sant Mat initiate), love is the whole of spirituality. And love should be private. The inner personal experience of meditation is regarded by many satsangis as a very personal, private, and precious gift which has relevance only to oneself. The experience is a special gift…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Short cut to losing the ego

Been meditating for lots of years? Made pilgrimages to India? Devoted yourself to serving a church or other faith? And you still have a big ego? Don't worry. I've discovered another path to egolessness. No Zen master required. All you need is an inexpensive Flip Video and a free You Tube account. Then make some videos of yourself doing something that you think you can do, upload them, and experience the marvelous humility of seeing yourself from the outside rather than the inside. That's what I did yesterday on my other blog, with "Me doing Tai Chi." I mention this…
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Posted inScience

Brain damage = enlightenment?

Jill Bolte Taylor had what she calls a "stroke of insight." In her case it was an actual stroke – which produced a blood clot the size of a golf ball that pushed on her language centers in the left side of her brain. Watch the nineteen minute video of her talk about the experience. Or read the transcript. It's fascinating and moving. Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by…
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Posted inScience Vedanta/Advaita

Quantum and non-dual consciousness

Ah, intellectual and inspirational bliss. A free, downloadable, thoughtful, well-written "Course in Consciousness" that moves smoothly from down to earth quantum theory to soaring spirituality. This is my cup of reading tea. I've only been able to quickly browse through the 242 pages of Stanley Sobottka's writing, but I can tell that there's a lot to like here. Sobottka is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia, so obviously he knows his scientific stuff. His deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, Buddhist/Advaita teachings is more surprising – though he isn't the only physicist to wade into some…
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Posted inMiracles

Curse god freely. Then, laugh.

Praising god, what fun is there in that? But cursing god – or whatever higher power you don't believe in – this has a lot more entertainment value. Over on the terrific science blog Pharyngula ("Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal"), I ran across a post about a Indian man who volunteered to be put to death by a Tantrik magician. On live TV, no less. The laughing fellow on the left is Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International and atheist. The cranky old man in the robes on the right is Pandit Surinder Sharma, a…
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Posted inBooks

I abandon all hope in my book shelves

It's the only line from Dante's Divine Comedy that I know: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here." (one of various translations of what's inscribed on the gate of hell) For me, it's what I feel nowadays when I peruse the spiritual, mystical, metaphysical, and religious volumes in my book collection. I used to read these books voraciously, devouring them for insights into the Meaning of It All. I went through phases where I'd study a single subject for weeks or months. Sant Mat. Rumi. Meister Eckhart. Other medieval Christian mystics. The "desert fathers." Zen. Taoism. Plotinus. Emerson. To name…
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Posted inMiracles

Magicians, gurus, and magical thinking

Magic is so, well, magical. We see, but we can't believe our eyes. A rabbit comes out of a hat. But I saw the hat was empty! And nothing could have been put into it! Yet there's the rabbit, coming out of the hat. Go figure. Which most of us can't, because magic tricks usually are closely guarded secrets – from non-magicians, at least. Adam Gopnik wrote a fascinating piece for The New Yorker, "The Real Work," about the practice and philosophy of magic (the full story doesn't appear to be available online, just an abstract). About all an outsider…
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