Posted inBooks Buddhism Meaning of life

Beautiful: how Joan Tollifson sees life, and us.

Having received Joan Tollifson's book, Nothing to Grasp, I wanted to share these passages from her opening chapter, "Life." The more I learn about how Toliffson views things, the more I like her perspective. How do we make sense of all this? What's it all about? Is there any way out of our suffering or the world suffering, or any way to live through it without falling into destructive mind-states like despair, anger, hatred, and self-pity? Like many others, I looked in different directions for answers to these questions. I tried alcohol and drugs, psychotherapy, political activism, meditation, satsang and…
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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 inBasics of our faithless faith Buddhism

Why it makes sense to assemble your own unique spirituality

As I've noted many times before, and surely will note many times again, like right now, it took me just a few seconds back in 2004 to come up with the tag line, or slogan, that's below the title of this blog: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.  I've never thought of changing those words, because they encapsulate what I consider to be the wisest form of spirituality. To me spirituality doesn't have anything to do with religion or supernatural stuff; it's a quest for the deeper side of life, which means it has no firm definition. And that's the…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

Here’s a good description of what Buddhist mindfulness is all about

There's lots of ways to look upon mindfulness. Mostly I view mindfulness as a practice that doesn't require a grounding in Buddhism. However, I enjoy reading about how Buddhist practitioners view mindfulness, or vipassana insight meditation.  A concluding chapter of Mindfulness in Plain English, by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, a Buddhist monk, contains a description of what mindfulness can lead to that I found clear and mostly convincing, though I have some doubts about whether the supposedly unconditioned state of nibbana/nirvana actually can be achieved. Enjoy. As you continue to observe these changes and you see how it all fits together,…
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Posted inBuddhism Christianity/Jesus

Here’s my Christmas letter and blog post about not liking the holiday season

Well, here in Oregon, Christmas day is almost over. Per usual, it didn't mean much to me and my wife. Since neither of us are Christians -- not even close, since we're atheists -- the whole birth of Jesus thing is totally meaningless to Laurel and me. We had five friends over for dinner last night, Christmas Eve. That was pleasant. Good conversation and a great vegetarian meal prepared almost entirely by my wife. My main contribution was washing a lot of dishes, a task that I'm well qualified for (as opposed to cooking). Here's our 2023 Christmas Letter, otherwise…
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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 inBooks Buddhism Free will

Between Gurdjieff and Zen, I much prefer Zen

Wanting to read something different yesterday, I picked up my copy of P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous. Since that copy has a 1949 copyright date, it's a first edition of the book that was published after Ouspensky died in 1947. My mother, though not at all religious, was a fan of P.D. Ouspensky, who studied a form of Eastern mysticism (roughly speaking) taught by George Gurdjieff. I kept a few books of my mother's after she died. One was The Fourth Way by Ouspensky. I'm pretty sure In Search of the Miraculous also was her book, though it…
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Posted inFree will

“The Rigor of Angels” ended up disappointing me

As noted in my previous post, I was disappointed when I got to the discussion of free will in William Egginton's book, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, and found that Egginton embraced the absurd notion much beloved by philosophers like himself that determinism and free will are somehow compatible. Hence, the term compatibilism for this nonsensical belief. It's nonsensical because it does away with the "free" in free will, since determinism holds that what came before this present moment determines how that moment unfolds. Where's the "free" in that? But I became…
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Posted inFree will

Oh, no! The author of “The Rigor of Angels” is a compatibilist

Disappointment is part of life. Okay, a big part. Still, it hurt when I reached the Free Will chapter in the book by William Egginton that I'm enjoying a lot: The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality. Up to that point, Egginton impressed me with his writing ability, intelligence, and ability to weave the lives and teachings of a poet, physicist, and philosopher into a satisfying picture of what reality is all about. (One sentence summary of the book: we never learn what reality is, in itself, but how reality appears to us based…
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Posted inFree will

Watch this video of Sapolsky talking about accepting no free will

Here's a thought-provoking video of Robert Sapolsky speaking about how difficult it is for him, and others, to experientially live as if free will doesn't exist, even though he's spent fifty years not believing in it. I've made the video start at this point of the interview. The next 20 minutes or so are interesting, as is the entire interview, since the conversation moves into atheism and other subjects. Enjoy, whether or not you agree with Sapolsky.
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Posted inFree will

No free will is easily misunderstood. Some blog comments prove that.

I readily confess to being a no-free-will addict. However, I'd never join a 12-step program aimed at, um, freeing me from this addiction, because I consider it a good thing to embrace the reality of determinism instead of the illusion of free will. I've been feeding my taste for no-free-will for quite a few years. I've read every book published in English on this subject that I can find. Some of them have been read repeatedly. Most recently, I studied Robert Sapolsky's instant classic Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will closely, since Sapolsky has written the definitive critique…
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Posted inFree will

Emergent properties can’t produce free will, says Sapolsky

I enjoyed Robert Sapolsky's book, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, so much, I've been listening to You Tube interviews of Sapolsky while I do a workout every day with my Monkii 360 Core Training System (the Monkii ball and resistance bungees are an enjoyable way to exercise). His interview with Michael Shermer was interesting because Shermer had some compatibilist views about free will that Sapolsky strongly disagreed with. Compatibilism is a misguided attempt to save a form of free will by saying that even though our thoughts, actions, emotions and such are determined by causes, free will…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Kant is difficult to understand, but pleasingly irreligious

I haven't read much of Immanuel Kant directly. Basically, all I've known about this great philosopher is his distinction between noumenon, which can't be known, and phenomenon, which can be known. But since the book I'm reading now, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, contains a heavy dose of Kant, I'm gradually learning more about his worldview. Which is pleasingly irreligious. I had no idea that Kant was so down on religion and the supernatural. Here's some passages about his philosophy from what I read today. Like Kant's writing itself, they aren't the…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

We can’t grasp reality as it is, only as we know it

My new favorite book, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, had such a provocative title, as soon as I saw it recommended in The New Yorker I knew that I'd have to buy it. Wow. It's a work of literary genius, based on my reading of the first part of it. The author, William Egginton, is a humanities professor, but he clearly has an excellent grasp of modern science also. The front cover has a one-sentence summary of what the book is about. A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest…
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Posted inFundamentalism Science

“I could be wrong” is what separates openness from dogmatism

Two wonderful sayings that every person should embrace are "I don't know" and "I could be wrong." Each points toward openness, humility, and a rejection of dogmatism. My favorite, though, is I could be wrong. One reason is that there are so many things that each of us doesn't know. The number of things we know is far, far, far exceeded by the things we don't know. This makes I don't know a commonplace statement. But I could be wrong is about a belief we hold that seems true to us, yet there's at least some chance we're incorrect about…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Delusions

Belief in life after death precedes religious belief

Religious believers, of whom I used to be one, so I know what I'm talking about, like to view tenets of religiosity as being a higher form of knowledge than ordinary knowledge of this world.  But from my current more enlightened atheist perspective, it's much more likely that the actual situation is reversed: religions make use of how people view things before religion comes along, which helps explain the appeal of religiosity. It feels natural. Here's a good example. Death. Not the cheeriest topic, but a important one, since death arrives for everybody. The October 14, 2023 issue of New…
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Posted inAlan Watts Buddhism

Alan Watts on how we create an illusory problem, then want it solved

You Tube works in mysterious ways. After I started listening on my iPhone to a video of Robert Sapolsky talking with an interviewer about how the brain constructs emotions, I noticed that an Alan Watts talk had popped up in a list of supposedly related videos. Okay, I thought, I like Alan Watts, and the title sounds intriguing, "Alan Watts: Live Without Worry or Fear." Wow, all I have to do is spend 53 minutes listening to an Alan Watts talk, and I'll be worry and fear free.  Of course, that didn't happen, unless there's a delayed reaction after hearing…
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Posted inAtheism

More atheist wisdom from “We of Little Faith”

The more I read of Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too), the more I enjoy what this talented writer has to say about openly, honestly, and bravely proclaiming one's atheism. Here's some additional excerpts from the book, which I wrote about in an initial post a few days ago. First, I recall that one of the comments on the post said that it isn't possible, or at least very difficult, to be a Jewish atheist, since Judaism is a religion that believes in God. That ridiculous, as anyone…
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Posted inAtheism

Excerpts from a great book: “We of Little Faith” by Kate Cohen

On one of my other blogs, recently someone shared a link to Kate Cohen's book, We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe (And Maybe You Should Too). I bought it, because while I've read and enjoyed books that praise atheism by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others, Cohen takes a different approach from these men. Cohen's book is rooted in her experience as a Jewish woman who found her atheist voice and was determined to bring up her children not as secular, spiritual but not religious, or any other euphemism, but as the…
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