Posted inReality Science Universe

Religion hates mystery. Science loves mystery.

Recently there's been a comment conversation on this blog about the religious philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, a medieval Christian. I've never been interested in his theology, since like most avid religious believers, Aquinas wants to use philosophy to defend his faith, not to engage in a search for truth. Wikipedia has a cogent criticism of Aquinas by Bertrand Russell. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know in advance. Before he begins to philosophize, he already…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

New Scientist story by Heinrich Päs about quantum oneness

I got excited when I saw the cover of the most recent issue of New Scientist that appeared in our mailbox a few days ago. Ooh! "A bold new way to think about how the universe fits together" Bring it on! When I turned to the cover story, which is called Reality Reconstructed in the print edition, I saw that the author was Heinrich Päs, the theoretical physicist who wrote The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, which I've written previous blog posts about here, here, and here.  As noted in the third post, Päs devotes…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Einstein: “It is the theory which decides what can be observed”

Here's my third post about Heinrich Pas' book The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, the previous posts being here and here. In my reading I've reached a sort of interlude in-between the first and last parts of the book, each of which deal fairly directly with a monistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, which explains The One title. But two intervening chapters, "The Struggle for One" and "From One to Science and Beauty," focus on the historic struggle between monism and dualism in Western thought (there's very little mention of Eastern thought, which also has monistic and dualistic…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

The “many worlds” of quantum mechanics arguably is a “single world”

Here's my second post about Heinrich Pas' book The One: How An Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics, the first post being here.  I realize that probably I'm more interested in quantum mechanics than most people visiting this blog, so I'll do my best to make my posts about the book as simple as possible. Which isn't easy, since quantum mechanics is confusing at best and totally mystifying at worst -- at least for those of us who aren't professional physicists, and even they readily admit that much about quantum mechanics is difficult to grasp. The so-called "measurement problem," for…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“The One” is a fresh look at the meaning of quantum mechanics

There's been two big problems with attempts to fathom the meaning of quantum mechanics (the commonly used term by scientists in that field, rather than quantum physics). New Age types, along with other mystically-inclined fans of quantum mechanics, make too much of what quantum mechanics means -- spouting indefensible notions of how we create our own reality, consciousness pervades the cosmos, and such. Physicists, along with others who work with the applications of quantum mechanics, typically make too little of what quantum mechanics means -- proclaiming that all that counts is the astoundingly precise mathematics underlying this field, often encapsulated…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Buddhism and quantum physics both point toward One

I feel a duty to report on how the subject I've been writing about recently, Rob Burbea's book about Buddhist teachings, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, ends. There wasn't a big surprise in the final pages. Burbea had been steadily building a case for emptiness being the foundation of both inner and outer reality, so it wasn't a shock when the final chapter concluded, in a thoroughly Buddhist fashion, that the world as it seems (distinct separate objects) and the world as it really is (empty of inherent existence) amount to the same thing. Burbea writes: We…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Can your religion survive without supernaturalism? Buddhism can.

I'm pleased to present another comment from "Appreciative Reader," a regular commenter on this blog, that I liked a lot. (Not coincidentally, I agree with with what he says.) Appreciative Reader makes a point that, while it appears obvious now that I've read the comment, I hadn't thought of before. Or at least, not as clearly as he expressed it.  Namely, that some religions, mystical practices, and other forms of spirituality can function just fine without supernaturalism, while others require supernaturalism in order for their teachings to be coherent. By coherent, I don't mean that the religion or whatever makes…
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Posted inBuddhism

Spirituality comes in two flavors: “That” and “This”

As noted before, what I both like and dislike about Rob Burbea's book about Buddhist teachings, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising, is how marvelously detailed and deep Burbea dives into his subject.  In no way is this a popular Buddhist book, using "popular" to mean a book aimed at people who want to know more about Buddhism but aren't into the farthest reaches of classic Buddhist writings and practices. It's more like a manual for attaining both a full conceptual knowledge and intuitive experience of what Burbea considers the core of Buddhism: emptiness, along with the closely…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience

Concepts can’t be avoided and are different from thoughts

I've continued to make my way through Rob Burbea's excellent book about Buddhist teachings, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. As noted before, Burbea goes into considerable detail about his subject, sometimes more than I'm capable of appreciating -- since I'm a fan of Buddhism but don't consider myself a Buddhist. Then I come across some passages that truly do resonate with me. Here's a sampling.  This discussion of concepts impressed me because it fits so well with the modern neuroscientific theory of predictive processing by the brain. Basically this says that the brain is constantly making…
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Posted inReligions Science

Detection of gravitational wave “orchestra” shows power of science

Since I subscribe to the online edition of the New York Times, I get frequent notifications of new stories on my iPhone. Some interest me. Some don't. This morning it was a pleasure to be sent a story about how scientists were able to discover a background hum of gravitational waves, building on the first detection of these waves in 2015. I've made a PDF file of the story, "The Cosmos is Thrumming With Gravitational Waves, Astronomers Find." It's well worth a read, having been written by a science reporter with a Ph.D. in particle physics. I'll share a few…
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Posted inBuddhism

Buddhism, pain and pleasure are not the same

I'm personifying Buddhism in the title of this blog post. But really I'm talking about how Rob Burbea viewed the Buddhist approach to dualities in his book, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. As noted in recent posts about the book, I like the way Burbea explains his subject, though sometimes he can be too Buddhist-geeky for my less-committed-to-Buddhism taste. However, today my yellow highlighter kept making question marks in the margin as I read two chapters about "The Dependent Arising of Dualities" and "The Fading of Perception." I found much to like in the chapters, but…
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Posted inAwareness Buddhism

Spaciousness of awareness is a nice thought, but not reality

Buddhism, like all "ism's", can be irritating. But that's the case with everything in life, really. Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I resonate with Buddhist teachings. However, as I make my way through Rob Burbea's in-depth examination of the Buddhist notions of emptiness, dependent arising, suffering, and such, some chapters in Seeing That Frees are too Buddhist-geeky for my taste. Burbea, like some practitioners who are really into Buddhist teachings, strikes me as being akin to a car enthusiast who wants to fine-tune every aspect of a vehicle's operation. So his book goes into…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

My weird dream points to the fluid boundaries of self

Most of us believe that our self -- leaving aside what that word truly means -- is something solid and real. But there's plenty of evidence all around us that calls this assumption into question. Which is an understatement. Because that evidence actually demolishes the notion of an enduring unchanging self. So those who claim that notions about awareness, consciousness, or soul point to a self that is a fixed North Star in a constellation of change have a lot of explaining to do. For mental illness can markedly change the contours of a person's self. So can dementia, where…
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Posted inBuddhism

It’s best to respond to most problems, not react to them

It's a fitting day to be writing about reactivity, given that at the moment the fate of five people in a submersible craft that was on its way to view the wreck of the Titanic, some two and a half miles down in the ocean, is unaccounted for. Meaning, the craft hasn't been located after it lost communication with the mother ship about an hour and a half into its descent. By this time, it's estimated that if the five people are still alive, they're about to run out of air. That's a truly horrendous situation. It'd be extremely easy…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

More interesting observations from “Seeing That Frees”

I'm continuing to enjoy the book by Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. (First post about it is here.) It's clear that Burbea knows a lot about meditation, Buddhist variety, and is skilled at communicating his knowledge both to his students in person and to the world at large through his book.  There's so much of interest in the six chapters (out of 31) that I've read so far, I find it difficult to decide what to share in my blog posts about the book. So I'll focus on some of what got special highlighting…
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Posted inBuddhism Neuroscience

“Seeing That Frees” — a great book about Buddhist emptiness

Shamil Chandaria's talk on the Bayesian Brain and Meditation that I wrote about recently is a gift that keeps on giving. For on one of his slides there was a small image of a book by Rob Burbea, Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising. I recall that Chandaria mentioned it briefly, but he certainly didn't dwell on the book. I figured, correctly as it turns out, that the book was in line with the ideas about the brain that Chandaria was talking about, so I decided to order a copy from Amazon. It took a while to…
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Posted inGay rights Morality

The beauty of “We don’t not care” rather than “We don’t care”

Sometimes a television program can get a moral point across in a few minutes of entertainment that is more clear and convincing than a lengthy ethical treatise. That happened to me last night when my wife and I were watching an episode of season 3 of Ted Lasso on AppleTV+. Before I share a clip of that scene, a bit of background.  Colin, one of the soccer (football, to most of the world) players on the professional team Lasso is coaching, inadvertently revealed that he was gay, homosexual, to the team captain, Isaac, when Isaac saw some photos on Colin's…
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Posted inReality Vedanta/Advaita

Experience is all there is for us. Praise be to nonduality!

Once again proving my adage that I don't need to buy nearly as many new books as I used to, now that I've realized that every time I re-read a book, it's as a new person, I'm back to taking another look at David Loy's Nonduality.  (That's a newer edition; I have the 2010 version.) It was just about a year ago that I wrote about the book in my aptly titled post, "Nonduality" is a great book about a fascinating subject. In that post I shared links to three previous posts about the book, the first written in January…
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Posted inAwareness Neuroscience

Phenomenology can deconstruct religious dogma

While I said in my last post that I'd be moving on from the subject of predictive processing, I'm only going to go halfway there. Because I want to explore something that stood out for me in one of the slides I shared in that post from a talk by Shamil Chandaria about "The Bayesian Brain and Meditation." This is how I described the blue box with various terms for Non-Dual Awareness and its associated orange'ish note in my previous blog post. Emptiness, in the Buddhist sense, is one of the spiritual notions (in the blue box) that Chandaria says…
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Posted inNeuroscience

A summary of Shamil Chandaria’s “The Bayesian Brain and Meditation”

Don't worry, Church of the Churchless visitors who aren't as interested as I am in the hot new neuroscience theory of predictive processing by the brain, which is why I've been writing about Andy Clark's book The Experience Machine recently. I'll be on to other topics soon. But not quite yet, since I want to share some of what I learned by watching Shamil Chandaria's talk on YouTube about "The Bayesian Brain and Meditation." I heard Chandaria and Sam Harris engage in a fascinating conversation on Harris' Waking Up app.  That led me to watch Chandaria's talk, since he's knowledgeable…
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