Church of the Churchless

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Life is a mystery. Afterlife, ditto.

I like how Zen talks about the need for a "great ball of doubt." It seems like I should have enjoyed a satori by now, my doubt is so balled up.

Some days more than others. This was a good doubting day.

I just had an interview with my Zen master, who, conveniently, is myself (makes it easy to get appointments). He reviewed the enigmatic koans that life presented me on this Sunday, along with my responses.

I think he was pleased. But I can't say for sure. That doubt thing, you know.

Sundays usually follow a fairly predictable routine for me – breakfast at home, coffee at Starbucks with friends, exercising at athletic club, napping and chores. Today was way different.

Which got me to thinking: if it's so tough to figure out what's going to happen moment to moment here in this material world, how the heck can anyone believe they've got the afterlife figured out?

When I walked into Starbucks and didn't see anyone familiar there, "Mother's Day" popped into my mind. My mother being dead and gone who knows where, I'd forgotten that spending the day with Mom is what this May 11 means for a lot of people.

Including, apparently, my usual coffee klatch group.

Well, no problem. Starbucks still was pleased to sell a skinny venti vanilla latte to me, along with a New York Times. A third of my way into the latte an older woman walks over to my chair. Sort of eccentric looking. With purple fingernails.

One bit of small talk from her: "Nice shirt." "Thank you." Then: "Do you have a phone?" "Yes." "Can I borrow it for a local call?" "Sure."

Never happened to me in Starbucks before. But then, lots of things happen that never have happened to me before. Well, everything, in fact. Same for everybody. We just get lulled into the illusory quasi-predictability of life.

The woman went back to her table. She fiddled with my phone for quite a while. At one point she asked, "Do you have a watch?" "Yes." "What time is it?" "12:15"

I never heard her actually talk to anybody. I pictured her putting my phone into her purse and walking off with it. I wondered how I'd get it back. The way it happened was, she walked over and handed it to me. So predictable, it surprised me.

Turned out I needed the phone again, a few minutes later. A barista steps out from behind the counter and yells, "Anyone named 'Brian' here?" "Yes."

She walked over. "Your wife just called. Some sort of water emergency. She wants you to phone home."

Laurel and I never turn on our cell phones except when we need to make a call. So she found me via Starbucks. Another first.

After talking with Laurel I knew that the day was going to be even less predictable than I'd already found it to be. Gigantic bursts of air, and not much water, was coming out of our pipes.

Living in the country, with a well connected to a complex mass of water treatment equipment – softener, iron filter, ph adjuster, ozonator – we're used to dealing with water problems. This one, though, was beyond Laurel's ability to handle herself.

The man of the house was needed. I fired up the Prius and headed home.

Where I spent the next four hours dealing with mystery after mystery, aided in my quest by a couple of phone consultations with the guys who installed our water treatment system.

My usual fix for air in the pipes (disconnect ozonator solenoid; dislodge debris with paper clip) didn't work. More drastic measures had to be taken, stretching my minimalist plumbing skills.

Another trip into town to the hardware store to buy an O-ring became obviously necessary when water sprayed into my face after turning the system on, expecting that I'd solved the problem, only to find that the original problem had morphing into a fresh form.

Throughout, I was surprised at how serene I remained.

My churchless soul didn't see this, as it once would have, as: karma to be gone through, an opportunity to practice detachment from worldly concerns, or a test of my ability to perform selfless husbandly service.

It just was life. Stuff happens. Unpredictable stuff. Stuff with no meaning other than the need to deal with it.

A few weeks ago the Religion columnist in our local newspaper, Hank Arends, quoted Salem's Unitarian Universalist minister, Rev. Rick Davis. Davis likes to break out of conversational ruts. Recently, when he checked into the church office by phone he'd ask the office administrator, "What is the meaning of life?"

She ducked the question for several days, then answered: "To reflect the Divine Light into Earth's dark places." Here's what Davis said in the newsletter.

This answer provides a good 'purpose' for life but dodges the question about the 'meaning' of life. Seems to me that question is an imposition of a human concept upon a universe that doesn't operate according to our limited frameworks of understanding.

That's for sure.

We strive to find meaning in events because their unpredictability threatens our humancentric position at the center of existence. There's got to be some purpose, some master plan, some reason behind a malfunctioning water treatment system that consumes my entire afternoon, right?

No. Life can just be what it is. Arends continued:

By getting so involved in studying for the meaning of life, one could consume years of time and thereby miss life itself. Davis pointed to those who questioned Buddha with abstract metaphysical questions.

In response, Buddha said in essence: "Knock it off. You can endlessly speculate about such matters but that will not add to the quality of your present condition. Be aware. Pay attention. Wake up."

That's all we can do, really. Moment to moment, life is a mystery. The afterlife, infinitely more so, since we don't have any history, any regularities, any experience to base a prediction on.

Driving home after picking up the O-ring I tuned to the Oregon State baseball game with UCLA. OSU won the national championship the past two years, but the team has been slumping recently.

They were behind 7-4 in the top of the eighth. Bummer. Oregon State needed a win to take the weekend series and bolster their chances for post-season play. I figured I'd open up the paper tomorrow and read about another disappointing loss.

I turned on the radio on my third trip into town today, finally getting to get to my Sunday athletic club workout after mastering the mystery of the ozonator problem. First words I heard were…

"One of the greatest baseball games I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Unbelievable – a grand slam home run in the bottom of the eighth with one out. Then a double play in the ninth to seal the win."

Life. Who can figure it? When religious true believers say they can, don't believe them.

Unless they can reliably predict the outcomes of baseball games with one out in the eighth. And whether, when I'm sitting in Starbucks peacefully drinking a latte, I'll soon find myself playing with plumbing.

Being absolutely right, you’re wrong

You can't have "right" without "wrong." So if what you say is absolutely 100% certain, no doubt about it – that can't be true.

The Taoists figured this out a long time ago. Yin requires yang. Up needs down. Truth depends on falsity.

Much more recently, Karl Popper made falsifiability the cornerstone of what distinguishes a scientific theory. I echoed his ideas in "If a religion can't be wrong, it surely is."

I keep coming back to this notion, because both intuitively and logically it appeals to me. Sure, something may be real, yet improvable or indescribable.

Existence, for example. "What is, is." That statement sounds marvelously correct. And it is. But it doesn't mean anything. Not really.

"The Dream Weaver," a book I'm reading now, talks about words without meaning.

Basically, when you use a word, it needs a criterion. There must be a way to use the word incorrectly. It can't be the case that everything is selfish, or that everything is natural. If that were the case, then the word would become meaningless. If everything were considered natural, what would be the point of asking, Is this thing natural? It's sort of paradoxical in a way: I create a word that means everything and, in doing so, it means nothing.

Now, I'm fine with indescribable meaninglessness. That could well be the most meaningful thing in the world. Lots of experiences just are what they are – incommunicable to anyone else, but filled with Wow! for the experiencer.

Like the Greeks, we need to distinguish Truth from Beauty. A rose is a rose is a rose. That's beauty. Water is two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. That's truth.

A rose can't be anything other than a rose. Several molecules can be something other than water.

Similarly, much religious or metaphysical dogma can't be wrong because words are used in a way that defy falsification.

"God is everything."
"Consciousness is all."
"Whatever happens has to happen."
"A perfect guru never makes a mistake."
"Everything is destined."
"The world is illusion."
"Jesus is coming."

In each case, someone making the statement can't be pinned down if you try to show they could be wrong. They always have a way to wriggle out from skepticism because there's no "there" to what they're saying.

As I noted before, Eastern philosophies and religions are as prone to this as Western ones are. The Bible is true because it says in the Bible, "This is the word of God." The guru is perfect because his predecessor was flawless, and perfect gurus can't err when they appoint a successor.

Whenever I run up against words that can't be wrong, I start to lose interest in them – since they can't be right.

This explains why I've found myself gritting my teeth and filling the margins with question marks as I make my way through the last chapters of "Consciousness is All," a book that started off more interestingly than it is ending up for me.

In the beginning I liked how the author directed my attention to how awareness works. But when he turned to saying (over and over, in various ways) that everything is consciousness, it sounded just the same as "God is love."

Religious. Dogmatic. Meaningless.

Yet those words sound so wonderful. They explain it all! Karl Popper writes:

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated.

Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. This its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analysed" and crying aloud for treatment.

Recently there's been quite a bit of discussion on this blog about awareness. This can be another example of a word that doesn't mean anything, yet can seem deeply meaningful.

Yes, without awareness we can't be aware of anything. And without existence, nothing exists. Nor would life be lively if we weren't alive.

These are realities – awareness, existence, life. But they're not truths, not in any sort of scientific, logical, or evidentiary sense, because there is no untruth to which they can be contrasted.

How could I be aware of unawareness, or exist as nonexistence, or live a non-life? If such were possible, then speaking of these contraries would have some purpose.

As it is, discussions of these subjects can end up sounding to me like the oft-heard quote on sports radio: "It is what it is." (frequently spoken after a devastating loss or embarrassing athletic moment)

Don't get me wrong: there's nothing more interesting to me than awareness, existence, and life. That's because I've got a huge interest in being aware of existing after I stop living my life.

It's just that when I hear talk of "awareness never ends" it strikes me as no different in kind from "Jesus saves." Namely, a belief that can't be tested. At least, not in this life – which is the only life I can be sure of.

While I have a fondness for philosophies that assure me life is just fine exactly the way it is, and I don't need to do anything about it, I'm skeptical about whether there's any meaning to these assurances beyond the warm, fuzzy feeling they produce in my often-anxious soul.

Zen tells me, "first there is a mountain; then there isn't; then there is." I also have heard that the world appears just the same to an enlightened sage as an unenlightened fool. So why not remain a fool if there's no way to tell the difference?

In the end, there could well be no beginning and no end. But so long as we're not there, isn't there a "here" as well as a "there"?

[Note: Popper's proposition that falsifiability is what distinguishes science isn't universally accepted, for sure. See here and here (scroll down to Goldstein).

But even though I don't claim to fully understand the objections to his view, one reason seems to be that falsifying isn't what scientists really do, mostly. They set out to prove rather than disprove.

Fine. I'd be just as happy if metaphysical propositions could be proven to be true, rather than capable of being shown to be false. Sort of seems like the same difference to me, but someone more knowledgeable is free to prove me wrong.]

Update: This blogger has a nice take on falsifiability, viewing it as a necessary but not sufficient condition for a scientific hypothesis.

Which raises the question…if you hold to a metaphysical, spiritual, or religious belief, what would it take for you to admit, "I'm wrong"?

If you can't come up with an answer, that belief either is blind faith or not really anything capable of being believed (as noted above, awareness, existence, and life are outside the arena of belief, being pre-requisites for playing the game).

I know I’m right about uncertainty

Ooh! It feels so good to have my view of life confirmed. Today someone sent me a link to "On Being Certain," which talks about a book with the same name by Robert Burton, M.D.

It's subtitle is believing you are right even when you're not. Nice!

Not that it applies to me. Because I know I'm right about uncertainty. Why, I've read marvelous blog posts about this subject, each of which, I'm pleased to say, was written by me (see here, here, here, and here).

And now I learn from a description of Burton's book that science shows I've been even more right than I thought I was.

You recognize when you know something for certain, right? You "know" the sky is blue, or that the traffic light had turned green, or where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001--you know these things, well, because you just do.

In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges the notions of how we think about what we know. He shows that the feeling of certainty we have when we "know" something comes from sources beyond our control and knowledge. In fact, certainty is a mental sensation, rather than evidence of fact. Because this "feeling of knowing" seems like confirmation of knowledge, we tend to think of it as a product of reason. But an increasing body of evidence suggests that feelings such as certainty stem from primitive areas of the brain, and are independent of active, conscious reflection and reasoning. The feeling of knowing happens to us; we cannot make it happen.

I get an enjoyable tingle up my spine (caused by a primitive area of my brain?) when I hear about how uncertainty rules the mental roost.

Of course, part of that good feeling comes from a sensation of it's good to be able to depend on something…I mean, nothing.

Regardless, this shows that I'm much more of a Taoist than a fundamentalist. In Taoist writings people jump into raging rivers, bounce around in the current, then emerge with advice for those watching with wide-eyed amazement from the bank.

"Just go with the flow, dude." (or words to that effect)

This seems a lot closer to how life really is than the "find a path and stick to it" philosophy. But the author of the "On Being Certain" article, Harriet Hall, says that some may be genetically predisposed to embracing certainty.

Richard Feynman said, "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things… It doesn't frighten me."

On the other hand, many people, especially religious fundamentalists, can't deal with uncertainty. They demand absolute answers and cling to their certainties even in the face of contrary evidence. Why are people so different in their need for certainty? We know there is a gene associated with risk-taking and novelty-seeking. Burton makes an intriguing suggestion: could genetic differences make individuals get different degrees of pleasure out of the feeling of knowing?

I can't quite figure out the connection between all this and another story I read this morning that, intuitively, seems deeply significant to me: "Wine's Pleasures: Are They All in Your Head?"

But I'm certain there is one.

I started drinking red wine only a few years ago. It didn't take me long to realize that the descriptions on the back of the bottle bore little resemblance to how the wine tasted to me.

As the article says, one description of an Argentine red goes: "Dark and rich, with lots of fig bread, mocha, ganache, prune and loam notes. Stays fine-grained on the finish, with lingering sage and toast hints."

Toast? Mostly me and my wife get tongue-tied after we say, "Um. Good."

I was pleased to read that price doesn't relate much to quality when it comes to wine. What counts more is that the imbiber believes he or she is drinking an expensive bottle. Thoughts of high cost translate into yum, apparently.

Much like religion.

Feeling you're part of a rare and exclusive spiritual vintage adds much to its enjoyment. The religious equivalent of Two-Buck Chuck (which was equal to a $55 cabernet in a taste test) often doesn't have the same appeal.

But it can.

Just as understanding when to dress up and when to dress down is intuitive for many people, so, too, does it become instinctive over time for wine lovers to know which is the proper bottle to open. But that requires experience of many different wines. Eventually the novelty of great wines, or expensive wines, can wear off.

"Sometimes a great Beaujolais is a better choice than La Tâche," said Nathan Vandergrift, a statistical researcher at the University of California at Irvine, who has seen the wine business as a retailer, an importer and distributor, and most recently as a blogger at the Vulgar Little Monkey Translucency Report. Mr. Vandergrift has had plenty of Beaujolais, and a fair amount of La Tâche, one of the most highly sought wines in the world.

Would that we all could achieve that sense of freedom and zen-like serenity, where we've had our fill of all else and can simply choose the right wine because it's the right wine.

Start with mystery closest to home

I've been enjoying recent Church of the Churchless comment conversations, here, here, and here (plus a few other post places).

In this regard, I want to mention that I keep on telling TypePad, which hosts this blog, that they need to improve their comment features. It bugs me that only the ten most recent comments are shown on the left sidebar, and that it isn't possible for visitors to search through previous comments (I can, but others can't).

TypePad assures me that they'll get around to this. Someday. Guess I need to have faith.

Which brings me to a thought that's been stimulated by what others have been saying in their comments – and usually is front and center in my own questioning mind: What can we know for sure?

Really, not much. Even science recognizes this, because every scientific theory is provisional. Meaning, it can be falsified if new evidence comes along.

With religion, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy, the knowing is even less certain. Here beliefs rather than observations predominate. And beliefs, being mental, always can be refuted by someone with a different mentality.

"Jesus died for our sins so that we may be born again and reside with our Father in Heaven."
"Prove it."
"It's a matter of faith."
"No, it's a matter of bullshit."

So it goes in the arena of belief. Nobody can be declared a winner, except by those who refuse to recognize the other contestants.

God remains a mystery. We don't know whether God exists. So obviously we also don't know how God might exist. Yet every religion and spiritual path believes that it has the answer, ignoring the evident fact of mystery.

As many commenters keep saying, either directly or indirectly, it makes sense to start from the other direction: with another mystery much closer to home. So close, it's right before our eyes. In fact, it is our eyes – plus every other sensory organ.

Because it's awareness, or consciousness. This is just as much a mystery as God is.

Science has no idea (though notions abound) as to how consciousness arises or what it is, really. Much is known about brain functions related to mental events, but the hard problem of consciousness — what is awareness? — shows no sign of being resolved.

Why not start here, if you're a spiritual seeker? Why speculate about far off divinities or heavens when you've got an equally peachy-keen gigantic mystery right here?

I'm aware. You're aware. That's so freaking amazing (and also the most natural thing in the world) that there's no need to look beyond awareness if we're wanting to grasp What It Is All About.

This morning I picked up one of my favorite books, "Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi." The first chapter starts off by talking about the mystery of awareness.

The essence of Sri Raman's teachings is conveyed in his frequent assertions that there is a single immanent reality, directly experienced by everyone, which is simultaneously the source, the substance, and the real nature of everything that exists.

He gave it a number of different names, each one signifying a different aspect of the same indivisible reality. The following classification includes all of his most common synonyms and explains the implications of the various terms used.

1. The Self. This is the term that he used the most frequently. He defined it by saying that the real Self or real "I" is, contrary to perceptible experience, not an experience of individuality but a non-personal, all-inclusive awareness. It is not to be confused with the individual self which he said was essentially non-existent, being a fabrication of the mind which obscures the true experience of the real Self.

He maintained that the real Self is always present and always experienced but he emphasized that one is only consciously aware of it as it really is when the self-limiting tendencies of the mind have ceased. Permanent and continuous Self-awareness is known as Self-realization.

Now, there's quite a bit in "Be As You Are" that, in my opinion, edges into esoteric Indian mysticism and beliefs that need to be taken on faith.

But it's impossible to argue with the fact that each of us is aware. And this is a mystery that holds the key to every other mystery – because consciousness is a prerequisite for being conscious of anything.

For a long time I've had an itch to write a book called "My Best Guess About God." Because that's all I have: speculations on the subject. There'd be one line in the book, though, that would be incontestable.

And cribbed from Descartes. Who echoes a multitude of other philosophers, mystics, and sages across the ages.

"I'm not sure about anything except that I am aware…of not being sure about anything."

Each of us has to start from somewhere. Awareness. Whether we ever can move from this place is exceedingly unlikely. In fact, impossible.

So religious dogmas that skip over this evident fact are worthless. They ignore the mystery (many would say, divinity) of our own self and would have us believe in artificial human conceptions rather than the most natural thing in existence.

Consciousness of existence.

Critics are our best spiritual friends

The worst thing about belief? In one way or another, it's always unbelievable.

The best thing about belief? When the unbelievable is stripped away, you're likely to be pointed toward truth.

So strippers – no, not that kind (sadly) – are all-important on a spiritual journey. Without them, religious or other sorts of dogma are accepted uncritically, leaving us wandering in a maze where every path leads anywhere you believe it will.

The Indian guru I began to follow in 1971, Charan Singh, was fond of saying: "Critics are our best friends." His disciples would nod, seemingly taking the words to mean that criticism can help make us humble.

True. But it's possible to embrace spiritual criticism more deeply, in a fashion that has the potential to change the entire direction in which we're moving (as opposed to merely proceeding in the same direction less egotistically).

This requires a lot more openness. And yes, humility. It means accepting the possibility that cherished beliefs you've held for many years, perhaps for most of your life, are just that: beliefs.

Not the truth.

Recently I've been alternating between reading two books before my morning meditation. One I've written about before in several posts, "Consciousness is All" by Peter Dziuban.

The title, not surprisingly, says it all about the book. Dziuban is an enthusiastic advocate of the notion that consciousness is the sole reality. So enthusiastic, often his advaitish, non-dual outlook seems uncomfortably dogmatic to me.

When that happens I put down his book and pick up "The Dream Weaver" by Jack Bowen. He's a philosopher.

Philosophers often are put down by spiritual types because they think and reason a lot. As if that's a bad thing. What's forgotten is that beliefs also are thoughts. Unexamined thoughts. Uncritically accepted thoughts.

What philosophical examination can do, and often does very well, is strip away the seemingly solid foundation of a belief structure. Bowen does this skillfully in his book.

So far I've read chapters about "Knowledge," "Self, Mind, Soul," "Science," and "God." With each subject I'm left with questions rather than answers. Ideas that seem to make sense are shown to be nonsensical from a different perspective.

For example, I came across a critique that pertains to the consciousness is all belief – which, for Dziuban, assumes that awareness is separate and distinct both from what one is aware of and also the brain/body.

Look at the clouds. It would be wrong to say that clouds have water in them, separate from them. Clouds are water – condensed water. There's no water separate from clouds, or clouds separate from water. We'd be wrong to say, "I have a mind and a brain" just like we'd be wrong to say "Look at the cloud and the water" or, "Look at the water and the H-two-O."

Your "mind is indivisible" argument assumes that the mind exists to begin with. If the mind doesn't exist, then it can't be indivisible. Just like little invisible Martians under your bed can't be red if they don't exist.

Just because someone perceives two things differently, doesn't mean they are uniquely different things: that has more to do with the perceiver than the thing being perceived. How I perceive something is hardly a quality of that thing.

Now, this is just one side of the argument. But when it's seen that there are two sides, dogmatic belief can no longer rest on blind faith.

You've got to choose one side or the other based on what makes the most sense to you. And with spirituality, often neither side is going to be persuasive.

In large part, this is because the spiritual search usually is for Oneness, the Ultimate – which can't have two sides to it. It's a leap into mystery, not a journey along a path demarcated by neat and clean boundaries.

So when someone points out the illogic of a cherished belief that you or I have been clinging to, we should be grateful. We've just been given a pointer: Not this way.

The frustrating thing is, every belief can be shown to be illogical, indefensible, improvable. Which is a good thing, because eventually we're totally surrounded by signs that say Not this way.

At that point, there's nothing to do but stand still, utterly perplexed.

And there we are.

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 the National Day of Prayer revealed its dark side – just as I expected.

For one thing, this "national" prayer effort leaves out much of the nation. Namely, anyone who doesn't believe in the Judeo-Christian God.

The web site explains why Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and other heathens aren't welcome under the not-so-inclusive National Day of Prayer tent:

The National Day of Prayer Task Force was a creation of the National Prayer Committee for the expressed purpose of organizing and promoting prayer observances conforming to a Judeo-Christian system of values… The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.

Right at the top of the home page you can see in some Flash video what the National Day of Prayer really is all about: politics.

I'm told that prayer is America's strength and shield. Gosh, who knew? I thought it was the Constitution, which calls for the separation of church and state.

But, no, it's prayer. And what should we pray for? What a silly question. Election Day. This gets the primo position on the National Day of Prayer web site.

Not world peace, reducing poverty, alleviating disease, helping the hungry, bringing people together. Election Day.

Again, silly me. I didn't realize that Election Day needed praying for. I didn't even know that it had problems requiring God's intervention. Won't Election Day take care of itself this November?

Apparently not.

I dutifully watched the video on the election page. It was mercifully short. I learned that red is the color of America. Funny. The flag is red, white, and blue. But the video only mentions red as representing American values.

Oh, I get it!

Red states and blue states. Republican and Democrat. Vote red/Republican. So the National Day of Prayer not only is limited to Jews and Christians, it looks like Independents and Democrats also aren't part of God's prayer family.

Who clearly are focused on just on a few political issues.

I clicked on a National Day of Prayer link that led me to a helpful Voter's Guide. This will tell me what I should ask God to make happen on Election Day.

Wow, what a non-surprise! Neither Clinton nor Obama gets a "yes" on any of the issues I'm supposed to care about. but a guy in red, John McCain, scores five out of seven (Huckabee, bless his soul, was all "yes").

Human Life Amendment
Traditional Marriage
Gun Rights
Business Freedom
Limit Taxes
Opposes Gay Pride
Iraq War
Moral Education

These are the things to pray for, the Judeo-Christian values that make our country great. Killing. Hatred. Discrimination. Ignorance.

So it's a no-brainer for me to decide what to do on the National Day of Prayer: tell it to go to hell.

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 nada route, so I'll assume my frustrating perch on the beach contains some sort of message for me.

What struck me, watching the waves crash into Napili Bay, is how virtually every beachgoer respected the warning signs – and, likely, word of mouth "jellyfish" messages.

Big waves usually bring out big wave players. Boogie boarders. Surfers. Bobbers. But today there were very few; none out where the waves were breaking; some close to shore. A big difference from other large wave days.

Lots of people consider science to be an unreliable way of knowing truth, compared with religion. However, when it comes to assessing the risk of venturing into water where jellyfish warnings have been posted, almost everybody uses the scientific method.

Including me. Sitting on the beach, desperately wanting to paddle out and catch some waves, I ran through the costs and benefits of taking a chance on the warning being spurious.

I pondered what little I knew about jellyfish. I talked the situation over with another man whose boogie board was sitting high and dry.

I remembered the Hawaiian adage, "If you don't see locals playing in the waves, usually there's a good reason why; don't be the first person out surfing or boogie boarding unless you're sure you know what the conditions in the water are."

In the physical world, by and large there are good reasons to go with the factual crowd. Studies have shown that group assessments of a situation are more accurate than the average person's (this is why the stock market is a decent predictor of the economic outlook).

So there I was, someone with a blog whose tagline is "Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence," sitting on the sand – going with the jellyfish warning-believing crowd.

Because material isn't spiritual.

When I know something is dangerous, and I've been told that this something has been sighted nearby, it makes sense to avoid it. If I see almost everyone else around me doing just that – staying away from it – my concern tends to be confirmed.

On the other hand, belief in God or other supernatural beings is a lot different. The beach could be plastered with "Warning: Devil in the water" signs, and I'd laugh right by them on my way into the ocean.

Yet the strange thing is, so many people believe them. Like, the Bible. Whereas they'll use logic, reason, and common sense when it comes to deciding whether to venture into a Maui bay, when it comes to religion blind faith rules.

Why don't believers go in the water even though a jellyfish warning is posted? Won't Jesus protect them? Supposedly he's going to save their souls after they die. Can't he save them from a jellyfish sting while they're alive?

Seeking answers to these questions, I checked out www.God.com this evening. I was curious to see which of the world's religions had the rights to this primo domain name. As I could have guessed, it was Christian evangelicals.

There's only six Q and A's on the web site, way less than the questions in my mind. One was germane to my jellyfish situation, though.

I am going through countless problems in my life. It seems to be one thing after the other. I pray every day that God will help me, but He doesn't seem to listen or do anything. Why doesn't God answer my prayers?

My problem precisely. Why the hell did God combine beautiful waves in Napili Bay with a jellyfish warning, when I've been praying for another day of good boogie boarding all week?

The answer started off in an discouraging fashion.

Sometimes when you pick up the telephone receiver to call someone, you find the line is dead. If you ignore this and just talk into the telephone anyway, will the person at the other end hear you and respond?

No, they won't. Because the line is dead and I'm talking to myself. If the God.com web site had ended its answer on this note, that would have been cool – a verification of my churchless leanings.

But it went on to explain why we don't get a response.

It is not that God cannot hear your prayers or that He does not want to listen; the problem lies in the individual: "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you."

Well, I'd consider this possibility if someone could show me God's face so I'd know what I'm separated from.

When I got back to our room I turned on my laptop, fired up Google, and found lots of images of jellyfish. Shouldn't God be at least as well-known as the Portuguese Man of War?

I found an earlier jellyfish warning that blamed the West Maui problem on southerly winds, which is the meteorological situation today. That's a reasonable explanation for why I was separated from the waves.

However, God.com didn't do nearly as well in explaining what I have to do to get together with God. Supposedly He won't listen to me until the barrier of my sins is broken down. Until that happens, my prayers are useless.

I need a relationship with God. Then He will pay attention to me. And how do I get our relating going?

To establish that relationship, you must first believe without any doubt that God exists.

Oh, come on, dude! The Bible says you created jellyfish, but I know way more about their existence than yours. That's crazy. How about showing me some skin (or whatever form you have)? Then I'll start believing in you.

At least a little bit.

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 by anything I'm aware of. And I strongly suspect that neither Dziuban nor anyone else ever has either.

Yet somehow I'm supposed to consider this the really real reality, even though it is nowhere apparent. I'm supposed to view what my senses tell me as akin to images on a movie screen: passing, ephemeral, lacking unchanging being.

But where is this Being that Dziuban (and Plato, among many others) talk about? How can it be separated from my here and now awareness, which contains many beings, me included, naturally?

Methinks too much can be made of what most probably either is (1) so absolutely simple, we aren't recognizing it as such or (2) so absolutely different, we aren't looking in the right place.

Whatever.

I'm not interested in trading away the aliveness of the present moment for deadening promises that later, someday, tomorrow, after death, eventually, I'll be aware of something other than what I'm conscious of now.

Laurel and I went on a Pacific Whale Foundation sunset dinner cruise yesterday. It sure seemed real. But the whole time I was only aware of what my senses, thoughts, and emotions conveyed to me – not Awareness itself.

Which was good, because if I'd been in a state of Pure Awareness I would have missed the whales and dolphins that appeared next to the boat (against the odds, according to my experienced captain, given that only a couple of whales are still hanging around Maui).

I'm not denying the possibility that consciousness is separate from the body that each of us is (or at least, seems to be) at the moment.

But every time Dzuiban approaches the central question about consciousness that I raised earlier, it gets skirted. Here's an excerpt from a chapter I read today:

A question that may arise based on all of the preceding might go like the following:

"If the mind is not inside a body or brain, then why does the mind's activity stop when the body is anesthetized? How could anesthesia affect the mind if the mind is not there? And if the mind isn't in the brain, then why don't the mind and body function just as well when the brain is damaged or removed?"

Great questions. No good answer. This one leaves a lot to be desired.

So if it appears the state of a "body" is altered via chemical anesthesia or surgery, naturally the state of the "mind" will appear altered too, for it is all the same, one "stuff." It is not because a mind is inside a body…This book is not denying that such things seem to occur.

Well, as I said before I'm not big on relying on quotation marks to define reality. If I seem to be unaware when I'm anesthetized, a literary device – making it into "mind"—doesn't change the situation for me. Or anyone else.

Feeling alive. Isn't this what life should be about? When I'm catching a wave on my boogie board, soaring down a zipline, or watching a whale surface nearby, I'm absorbed in the moment.

I'm not anticipating the future or remembering the past. For me, this is where the feeling of increased aliveness comes from: being here and now, fully.

Positing some state of Being separate and distinct from what's present, this is the province of religion – whether it be a monotheistic creed or a philosophic exaltation of "consciousness is all."

Way back in the '60s I grooved over Be Here Now. I haven't moved much, if anywhere, since. How could I?

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 reading more of "Consciousness is All." An excerpt hit close to home. Our temporary home.

Imagine a drive-in movie theatre with a picture showing on its large white screen.

In the movie picture, a woman and man are standing on a tropical beach, gazing out over the ocean. There's a beautiful sunset and a boat is sailing by in the distance. As a large orange sun appears to drop below the horizon, the woman and man are talking about what a wonderful day they've had, expressing their emotions of happiness.

Now, Peter Dziuban's point is that all this wonderfulness is just images on a screen. The images aren't real. Only the screen is – the screen of consciousness.

For this example, all that is important is the screen, wholly apart from any picture projected, any movie projector, theatre, observers, or anything else.

Hmmmm. I like Consciousness is All as a philosophy. Oneness is so deliciously simple. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everything was the same thing, and nothing was different? Or…would it?

I can't deny my present reality, where some things sure seem to be a heck of a lot better than other things – regardless of whether they're ultimately real or not.

Since we got here my boogie board has been sitting on the sand. This morning the ocean changed. High pressure moved from the south to the north of the islands, doing something or other to the prevailing winds.

Whatever it was, the result was boogie boardable waves. Not great, but good.

And I felt so much better. More alive, because I love catching a wave and feeling the rush of being carried along by a force much more powerful than myself, yet under my control (sort of) if I can flow with it.

Big waves, small waves. A considerable difference, to me. Yet many mystic types would say, "All is one. Physical and mental sensations are passing phenomena, not part of unchangeable unity."

OK. I still prefer big waves to small waves (my wife feels exactly opposite, being a snorkeling fanatic, so we pray to different wave gods).

The Zen folks deal with this stuff somewhat similarly, or so my shallow understanding of Zen tells me. One school puts a big emphasis on keeping the mirror of the mind clear of dust. Another school says, what mirror, what dust?

There are two primary schools of Zen Buddhism. The Gradual School of Enlightenment is firmly rooted in the scripture of Indian Buddhism and the inheritor of that school of meditation. A verse from this tradition:

"This body is the Bodhi-tree
The soul is like a bright mirror.
Keep it clean at all times,
And let no dust gather upon it."

The School of Sudden Enlightenment created an entirely new phenomenon as expressed in an answering verse:

"The Bodhi is not a tree
The bright mirror is nowhere shining
As there is nothing,
Just where can the dust settle?"

and absorbed the Taoist approach to life. "The world is always held without effort. The moment there is effort, the world is beyond holding."

I guess I'm more of a Taoist than a mirror cleanser, or a movie screen devotee. I like reflections. I like images. Particularly when they're of stuff that I enjoy, such as large waves coming into Napili Bay.

Religions generally preach the merits of an other-worldly attitude. But all I know is this world, right here, right now. To deny my experiencing of it, my love of it, my enjoyment of it – senseless.

That said, I also can see how nice it would be if everything that I experienced was, well, nice. Because I didn't take it seriously and could enjoy it while it lasted – which, given the nature of the world, won't be for long.

Hawaiians are big on "hang loose." A good philosophy of life. There's got to be a way of melding an attraction for the screen, and enjoyment of what appears on it. Some movies are better than others, for sure.

But in the end there's "The End." Waves come, waves go. The ocean remains, though. I just want my boogie board to be out in big waves tomorrow.

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 enlightened if it means I'm unaware of everything.

What's the difference between being (1) dead and gone and (2) alive and unconscious? Not much.

That's why lots of people have signed living wills that allow life support to be withdrawn if they're in an irreversible persistent vegetative state.

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm reading "Consciousness is All" while here on Maui. A good book, creatively and intelligently written, very much in the Advaita tradition – but without the Indian cultural trappings (which appeals to me).

Today I made my way through the "Consciousness is not the 'human mind'" chapter. In arguing that consciousness isn't tied to the body, Peter Dziuban said:

This point can be illustrated by this typical human assumption: "Consciousness has to be inside the body. Why? Well, suppose my body had surgery, and was given heavy anesthesia. Or suppose my body got knocked out. In each case I would be 'unconscious' or 'unaware.' When any of those things happen to my body, Consciousness stops functioning – at least temporarily – so Consciousness must be inside the body."

First, a literary quibble. I understand the purpose of the quotation marks around 'unconscious' and 'unaware.' But they don't change the fact that when I got my tonsils out as a kid and had an ether-soaked cloth put over my nose, I really was unconscious and unaware for quite a while.

Similarly, you could say that when I take my last breath I'll be "dead." Well, it's sort of nice to see those not really quotation marks again. However, they're not going to change the reality of the situation.

Which, for the anesthesia and knocked out examples, Dziuban sees differently from me.

In such cases something seems to cease functioning, of course. But it is not Consciousness, the Infinite that stops. It is the so-called human, sensing "mind," or that which is finite, that stops. They're not the same.

…In other words, it would be everything one appears to be conscious of that gets disrupted, not Consciousness Itself. It would be everything observable that gets knocked out. Consciousness Itself never is observable to begin with – because it's infinite! So the fact that everything observable seems to have gone doesn't mean Consciousness itself has gone.

Though I'm attracted to Advaitist and non-dual approaches, this is where they and me start to part company: when I'm asked to have what sounds like blind faith in infinite Consciousness. How is this different from blind faith in God?

I mean, I'm unconscious. I'm unaware. Yet supposedly Consciousness and Awareness (the capital letters signifying their universality) proceed on their merry way.

They're still there. They just can't be observed. Well, if consciousness is all, as the title of the book says, why isn't it more noticeable rather than less when the obscuring physical body and mind are removed from play?

In other words, why doesn't being knocked out with a baseball bat lead to enlightenment? Now that the senses aren't working and thoughts have stopped being produced by the mind, shouldn't the purity of Awareness shine much more clearly?

Conceptually (and I know: concepts are a no-no in nonduality) this is a big problem for Consciousness is Everything folks. As for those who believe that immaterial soul consciousness is the true Self.

Again, why isn't the soul's intrinsic awareness evident when the normal functioning of brain/mind is interrupted? What happens is just the opposite. We become much less conscious and aware when the body isn't functioning as usual.

On this note I'll end with a pointer to an interesting post by Manjit on the Church of the Churchless message board, who also tilts strongly toward non-duality, but has some reservations about it. An excerpt:

Midway through a 4 week mini meditational home retreat, checking my emails and reading the posts on the main blog, I thought I'd add my personal understandings of the value of 'spiritual practice'.

Spiritual practice specifically in relation to the absolutist, pure non-dual and so-called 'neo-advatist' etc, views or positions. A View that is promoted by so many, including myself on occassion, on the ChurchoftheChurchless blog. More specifically, the complete and total dismissal of any kind of  'spiritual practice' whatsoever, with a kind of implied belief that by simply adopting that View, it will in and of itself resolve all the various factors which lead to the primal suffering/existential angst/incompleteness etc, which caused one to 'seek' or search for spiritual peace or God or whatever.

Having myself often expressed myself with this 'View' too, it may seem strange or contradictory when I say that sometimes this View comes across as rather hollow or shallow sounding? Even stranger, from my perspective, and I have considered it deeply, it is entirely integral!

In the end, what the @#$%&! do I know? Or any of us knows? Maybe a lot. Maybe nothing.

Today I enjoyed Mark Morford's column about the Earth singing its own music, along with the entire cosmos.

Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

Yeah, for sure.

Each of us gets a lot less time than the Earth to ring (maybe). Regardless, when our tone comes to an end, at least we can also say, "well that was interesting."