Church of the Churchless

My new affirmation: softer, slower, smaller

I've been practicing Tai Chi for about eleven years. Before, I was into hard style martial arts -- traditional Japanese Shotokan karate at first, then a mixed style focused on Korean karate. 

Soft-style martial arts like Tai Chi (a.k.a. internal styles) take considerably more time to learn and, perhaps, master.

External styles are centered on punching, kicking, blocking, and such. What you're supposed to learn is pretty much open to view. Sure, there's a mental side to karate, but by and large the emphasis in training is on what your body is doing, not your psyche.

With Tai Chi, there's much more of a balance between body and mind. Intention is key. Where the mind goes, the body will follow. This makes the internal martial arts styles much more subtle than the external styles. 

After more than a decade, I'm still barely more than a Tai Chi beginner. During every class, I learn something new about myself and Tai Chi. 

The hardest habit to break -- and this applies to just about everybody who learns Tai Chi, not just people like me who migrated to it from a hard style martial art -- stems from that word, hard. Usually the natural human inclination is to try hard, to work harder, to be a hard person to defeat. 

In Tai Chi, though, you learn that being soft is more important than being hard. Also, that being slow is more important than being fast, and being small is more important than being large. 

This may sound paradoxical.

For a long time it didn't make sense to me. But gradually, bit by bit, lesson by lesson, seeing how the Daoist principles of Tai Chi play out physically has helped me understand that the same principles apply in everyday life. 

Including my mental life.

So the past few days I've been experimenting with a three word affirmation before I meditate every morning: softer, slower, smaller. It's easy to try too hard in meditation, just as it is in Tai Chi.

Doing less often is more productive than doing more. Relaxing and letting go often leads to a more pleasant outcome than striving to achieve a goal.

Again, for me this has been easiest to understand through physical movement, because outcomes are difficult to ignore -- whereas when we're in our mind, we can pretend we're something other than what is real. In Tai Chi, using too much force and power usually is counter-productive. Getting tight and rigid just gives another person a lever to use against you.

Don't get me wrong: there's a time and place for harder, faster, and larger. But when this is our only recipe for getting through life, our sole repertoire for dealing with problems, our capabilities will be limited. 

One of the fascinating aspects of Tai Chi is the emphasis on yin and yang. The familiar symbol contains a lot of wisdom. 

At an extreme lies an opposite. Which isn't so much opposed, as a complement. When white reaches a maximum, black begins to grow. When softness is expressed completely, hardness manifests. Thus Tai Chi is continually alternating between yin and yang, soft and hard, rest and motion, slow and fast. 

This can be difficult to observe from the outside, since Tai Chi typically appears to be quite gentle and slow-moving. But internally, and also externally in the case of some more martially-oriented forms, the alternation of yin and yang is evident.

Everybody is different.

People often go to extremes in different ways. Some are habitually too passive, others too aggressive. Some are habitually too easy-going, others too hard-driving. For me, I've found it helpful to focus on the above-mentioned affirmation: softer, slower, smaller. 

This helps balance me, since I tend toward the opposite direction. As my Tai Chi instructor is fond of saying, there's no right or wrong here. There's just what works, what feels right, what helps me sleep soundly. 

Fighting fire with fire, or force with force, sometimes makes sense. Usually, though, it doesn't. Just as with flying across the world, a great circle can get you where you want to go more readily than a straight line.

"Soul" -- an appealing notion, but no agreement on what it is

For many years I believed that I had, or was, a soul. This idea was comforting, because the spiritual philosophy I followed taught that the essence of human beings was non-material, pure consciousness, and everlasting.

So when my body died, supposedly my soul would live on.

Worse case was, it, or I, would be reincarnated as another bodily life form. Best case was, my soul, or True Me, would leave matter and mind behind forever. In this case, soul-me would exist in a "heavenly" realm beyond time and space.

Now, it was always hard for me to imagine what such a soulful existence would be like. This was understandable in one sense, because all I knew was living in this physical realm.

However, descriptions of the Indian/Eastern version of the above-mentioned "heaven" were disturbingly vague -- which led increasingly skeptical moi to question whether the gurus who talked about this stuff had actually experienced a bodiless existence. 

The fact is, most religions believe in some sort of soul. But just because they all use this word (or a term in another language, such as atman), doesn't mean there is agreement about what "soul" means. 

Along that line, here's an interesting passage in a book I'm reading, "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life." It starts off a section called A Brief History of the Soul.

Common to virtually all conceptions of literal immortality is the idea of the soul. Otto Rank proposed that the soul is one of humankind's earliest and most clever inventions, enabling humans to dodge death by perceiving themselves as more than just physical beings.

As Rank's translators put it, "the soul was created in the big bang of an irresistible psychological force -- our will to live forever -- colliding with the immutable biological fact of death." Unencumbered by finite flesh, the soul's existence was not only conceivable, it was also certainly more welcome than the alternative prospect of total annihilation. 

Throughout history, humans everywhere have had souls, although the specific nature of them varies considerably across time and space.

For some, the soul is a physical entity with mass and volume, ranging from a full-sized shadow to a miniature replica of the body. For others, the soul is immaterial, but no less real. 

In some cultures, only humans have souls. In others, all living things have souls. In still others, all living things and minerals have souls. 

Some souls are completely independent of their body; they can come and go as they please, and they often appear in dreams and ritually enacted spiritual experiences. Others are connected to bodies to some degree. When bodies die, souls depart, either wholly or in part, depending on how the relationship between soul and body is construed by the culture.

Some have an autonomous ethereal existence of their own. Others join a general pool of ancestral "soul-stuff." Some souls are reincarnated into other life-forms. Others are reunited with their resurrected bodies. Regardless of the differences, all soul concepts render the prospect of immortality feasible because souls are detachable from their corporeal containers. 

Well, that's good news.

But if soul is real, seemingly there should be more agreement about what soul is like. So I'll be pleasantly surprised if my soul-consciousness continues after death.

I'm not going to bet my life on it, though.

"Faithless Feminist" speaks to irreligious women and men alike

My wife, Laurel, is an increasingly ardent scientifically-minded religious skeptic.

After starting a Meet Up discussion group here in Salem -- Science Minded Skeptics --  she's gotten to know Karen Darst, a Portland woman who runs the Faithless Feminist web site. 

Check it out. It isn't just for women, or feminists. I liked Garst's "The Devil Made Me Do It" post.

The whole idea of the devil is ridiculous, but the notion of an supernatural power in opposition to God (who is another absurd idea) can be found in Eastern as well as Western religions. 

For a long time I belonged to an Indian spiritual organization led by a line of gurus. They taught the existence of Kal, the Negative Power, who bore some resemblance to the Devil.

One weird thing, among many, about those teachings was that the human mind supposedly was the vehicle that allowed Kal to lead people astray. Yet the gurus used their minds to communicate words, concepts, arguments, and such about Kal to their disciple's minds. 

Well, one truth about religion is that it doesn't have to make sense to appeal to people. Here's some quotes from Garst's "The Devil Made Me Do It."

While this saying is often made in jest, the underlying meaning is much more sinister. It implies that there is either a supernatural entity or a cosmic force that preys upon humans to encourage them to commit heinous acts. The shooter in the recent tragedy at Umpqua Community College in Oregon is reported to have left a message on social media saying that he would be “welcomed in Hell and embraced by the devil.”

How can people believe in such a malevolent force if they also believe in an omniscient and all-powerful deity? How is the fear of evil used to motivate and control people to accept religious dogma? How does this concept of the devil and hell impinge on our ability to get at solutions to tragedies such as the one at UCC?

...But what if there is no cosmic evil force? How would our actions change?

Instead of stating as Jeb Bush did in response to the UCC shootings—stuff happens—maybe we would look harder for solutions and seek to understand the various factors at play in a tragedy such as that of UCC: identifying and providing support to youth, especially males, with tendencies toward violence or with mental health difficulties; examining how we can reach a compromise on gun control; looking at what in our culture leads to young males feeling they are victims or losers, etc. Yes, it would require more thinking than just saying—the devil made me do it—but we might actually prevent these acts from reoccurring.

Consciousness could be the mind's way to explain unconscious actions

One of my favorite parts of New Scientist issues are the letters. Not surprisingly, given the readership, the letters typically are intelligent, insightful, and creative. 

Below is one from the October 10 issue that grabbed my attention. It just seems like it could be so right, though I'm not sure how anyone could test this hypothesis. 

The letter writer suggests that just as the human mind/brain has an inherent tendency to attribute conscious purpose to other people (basically, "theory of mind"), perhaps that same ability to construct a purposeful agent also is applied inwardly -- to one's own mind.

So when we see ourselves acting, thinking, feeling, and so on, instead of attributing this to the unconscious sources of mental activity, the mind/brain tells itself "A conscious agent -- ME -- is in charge."

This added level of self-consciousness, a feeling that "I" am choosing what to do and think, etc., produces a uniquely human awareness of agency.

Which could very well be an illusion. Free will probably doesn't exist in the way we humans believe it does. However, there must be an evolutionary reason why attributing agency to others, and also to ourselves, is part of our makeup. 

Here's the New Scientist letter:

-------------------
Consciousness, illusion and agency
From Ray Thompson

I’m reminded of Graham Lawton’s observation that humans tend to seek “agents” with purpose (4 April, p 28). There is a survival advantage in always being on the lookout for the causes of things that happen around you. Could consciousness be a constructed “agent” explaining one’s own unconscious actions as things that occur in one’s local environment? This construct would provide a valuable interface with other local conscious “constructs” (that is, people), and allow the establishment of social groups.

Lymington, Hampshire, UK

Afterlife myths enabled early humans to cope with fear of death

Members of a wolf pack who are hunting prey with sharp horns don't stop and think, "Damn, if I keep chasing those animals, I could freaking die!" 

Early humans did. Because we have self-awareness, while animals, almost certainly, simply are aware. 

Meaning, a human can anticipate his or her death, even when the threat of that happening isn't imminent. Other animals also fear death, but only when their lives are immediately threatened.

This is a huge difference. An important difference. A difference that makes all the difference between us and other species.

It also is a central theme of a fascinating book I'm a few chapters into, "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life" by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszcyynski.

The authors are psychology professors who have engaged in a lot of research involving attitudes toward death and how people cope with knowledge of their own inevitable demise. This makes their book different from purely philosophical discussions of death.

They tie together psychological studies, anthropological findings, evolutionary theories, and other scientific/quasi-scientific information in a thoughtful, readable fashion.

I'm getting fresh insights into familiar ideas.

It seems obvious that myths about the afterlife are one way humans cope with the consequence of our unique ability to anticipate the future. This is a positive when alternative action scenarios are being pondered, but a drawback when a fear of death interferes with normal functioning.

Here's some passages from a chapter I read this morning, Homo Mortalis: From Primate to Human.

Symbolization, self-consciousness, and the capacity to contemplate the future were extremely helpful to our ancestors. But these highly adaptive cognitive abilities also gave rise to an ever-present potential for mortal terror. What happened when a life-form, crafted by billions of years of evolution to strive to survive at almost any cost, recognized that it was destined to lose that war?

...Our ancestors consequently used their imagination and ingenuity to stifle their existential dread. They were already employing their sophisticated intellectual abilities to ask and answer questions about how the world worked. But solving the practical problems of living was of little use or solace to them in the face of death.

...People terrified by the prospect of their own demise would be less likely to take risks in hunting to increase the odds of landing big game, to compete effectively for mates, or to provide good care for their offspring. So our ancestors made a supremely adaptive, ingenious, and imaginative leap: they created a supernatural world, one in which death was not inevitable or irrevocable. 

The groups of early humans who fabricated the most compelling tales could best manage mortal terror. As a result, they would have been the most capable of functioning effectively in their environment and thereby most likely to perpetuate their genes into future generations.

So afterlife myths sprang up. Along with rituals that acted out those myths.

Eventually full-blown religions came to be, sophisticated myths that reassure people afraid of dying and not existing... forever. Interestingly, the authors point out that embracing a supernatural unreality can be a good thing when it enables people to function better in natural reality.

Like ritual, art helped to make the incredible credible by offering concrete signs of a supernatural world. "Without art," mused George Bernard Shaw, "the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable." Art depicting the supernatural, a feature of every known culture, is fundamental to constructing and maintaining supernatural death-transcending conceptions of reality.

...Ritual, art, myth, and religion thus play a much more significant role in human affairs than it is currently fashionable to acknowledge. Many evolutionary theorists view art and religion as superfluous by-products of other cognitive adaptations that have no adaptive significance or enduring value.

This view is simply wrong. These products of human ingenuity and imagination were essential for early humans to cope with a uniquely human problem: the awareness of death. The striving for immortality -- universal to all cultures -- forestalls terror and despair. 

Consequently, humans do not have agriculture, technology, and science despite ritual, art, myth, and religion; rather, humans developed agriculture, technology, and science because of them. 

Although "in their developed forms, phantasy-thinking and reality-thinking are distinct mental processes," wrote psychoanalyst Susan Issacs, "reality-thinking cannot operate without concurrent and supporting... phantasies." We might not have calculus without grave goods, or dentistry without the tooth fairy.

Religious beliefs in an afterlife are false. But these illusions are useful. Or at least, they have been.

I'll be interested to see how, in later chapters, the authors look upon modern myths of eternal life, especially when these are tied to anti-scientific ideas about reality. I can understand how supernatural myths are a positive cultural force when they enable humans to better live their lives.

However, in this 21st century we're seeing the downside of religious myth-making.

Many people in this country, for example, refuse to believe in the reality of global warming because they feel that God is looking out for the Earth and wouldn't do anything to seriously screw the habitability of our planet.

So at this point in my reading of the book, I'm willing to accept the argument that afterlife myths were generally beneficial for early humans. I'm dubious, though, about the benefits religiosity is bringing to modern Homo sapiens. 

Sure, individuals feel better when they think they're going to live on after they die. But if this myth helps contribute to the demise of civilization as we know it, I don't see how this can be a good thing.

Mantra meditation basically is useless

First off, tonight I had another circular moment when I decided to search Google for "mantra meditation useless," the topic that I wanted to blog about.

This has happened to me before when I've asked the Great God Google to enlighten me on some subject. I do a search, then find that some of my own Church of the Churchless posts are the top results. 

So I turn out to be the answer to the question that I asked myself. 

In this case, Google led me to my "Meditation is useless" and "Skeptical look at mantras and Transcendental Meditation" posts. 

From the second post, I was sort of surprised to find that over three years ago I'd come to the same conclusion that has more firmly settled into my meditating mind now.

This is some of what I said back in 2012.

I've never practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM). But for over forty years I've meditated daily, mostly using a mantra (a word or words repeated over and over) just as TM does.

...For most of those forty years I used a mantra taught by a Sant Mat organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, that was known as the Five Holy Names. The mantra bore some resemblance to the ones used by the Transcendental Meditation folks. 

...I've come to much the same concluson as Sudarsha has: following the breath mindfully is a better meditation approach than is repeating a mantra mindlessly. 

...Why would you repeat a mantra in your mind when your goal is to be aware of what exists in what I like to call really real reality?

It'd be ridiculous to remain focused on mentally repeating sex, sex, sex, sex, sex when a beautiful willing partner is lying next to you on a bed, arms outstretched for your embrace. 

Likewise, it'd be ridiculous to keep saying sunset, sunset, sunset, sunset, sunset as the REAL sun is dipping below the horizon, displaying gorgeous colors across the sky.

And even if your aim is religious, does it make any sense to utter God, God, God, God, God (or other supposed names of divinity) instead of being receptively open to whatever divine presence might be capable of being experienced at the moment?

Occasionally I still use a mantra, but more and more it seems pointless to speak repeated words inside my head. Life is going on all the time I'm awake and aware; experience is happening all the time I'm awake and aware.

A mantra now seems like an unnecessary distraction from life and experience. When I'm ballroom dancing, I don't think to myself dance, dance, dance, dance, dance. I just dance. 

I was planning to say something new about why mantra meditation strikes me as useless. But re-reading what I said before, there isn't much that I want to add to it.

Currently, I still enjoy simply being aware of what is right around me -- both inside and outside of me. 

Breathing. Sounds. Sensations. Thoughts. Feelings. 

Once in a while I revert to repeating some sort of mantra, but I don't keep that up for very long. It just seems boring to repeat a sound or word inside my head. Why do this when the world is continually "repeating" something much more interesting? 

Reality.

I'll take that... over this...

"Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!"

FEMEN International has a good slogan -- the title of this post. 

Recently they made good on those words, as described in "Topless female protesters manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France." 

Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process.

...Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as Buzzfeed reported, included a conversation about “Women’s valuation in Islam.”

In dramatic video that’s not exactly safe for work, the women take the lectern and start shouting in French: “Nobody enslaves me, nobody owns me, I’m my own prophet.” Messages written on their chests — a Femen trademark — offered similar messages.

“The two activists (both coming from Muslim families) [gave voice to] hundreds of women, feminists, and associations, all disgusted by this public hate speeches,” the group wrote on Facebook. “It was our duty to interrupt this enslavement event, and to let a scream of freedom be heard in the middle of their submission lessons.”

The women were quickly escorted offstage. But the escorting seemed to turn into a scuffle as a number of men began kicking the women once they were down.

Here's the video. Great way to protest religious absurdity.

 

Don't care about what others think about you

A few days ago I had one of my mini-enlightenments -- a SO TRUE intuition that popped into my mind unexpectedly and unbidden.

It felt like it came from a unconscious part of my psyche that is sometimes (or always) wiser than my conscious self.

The intuition seemed really important at the time. Still does. Though it's kind of hard to put into words. Best I can do is this:

Why the hell do I care so much about how other people look upon me? How I feel about myself is way more important than how they feel about me. When I'm strongly drawn to do something, I should just damn well do it. Not rashly; not crazily; not stupidly. But like Davy Crockett said in the movie that I saw so many times as a kid, "Be always sure you're right -- THEN GO AHEAD!" And there's nobody who knows what's right for me but... ME.

This quote says it another way.

Naturally I inquired to the Great God Google, curious about how others had viewed the notion that came upon me so strongly. I was confident that someone else had expressed this don't give a shit about what anybody thinks in a clearer and more comprehensive way that I, Davy Crockett, or Johnny Depp had.

I was right. Among many hits on "stop caring what other people think," a post by one of my favorite web sites, Wait But Why, hit the mark.

Here's some excerpts from TIm Urban's Taming the Mammoth: Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think. The whole essay is really good, complete with a bunch of cartoons and illustrations. 

Your Great2,000 Grandfather’s Social Survival Mammoth was central to his ability to endure and thrive. It was simple—keep the mammoth well fed with social approval and pay close attention to its overwhelming fears of nonacceptance, and you’ll be fine.

And that was all well and fine in 50,000BC. And 30,000BC. And 10,000BC. But something funny has happened for humans in the last 10,000 years—their civilization has dramatically changed.

Sudden, quick change is something civilization has the ability to do, and the reason that can be awkward is that our evolutionary biology can’t move nearly as fast. So while for most of history, both our social structure and our biology evolved and adjusted at a snail’s pace together, civilization has recently developed the speed capabilities of a hare while our biology has continued snailing along.

Our bodies and minds are built to live in a tribe in 50,000BC, which leaves modern humans with a number of unfortunate traits, one of which is a fixation with tribal-style social survival in a world where social survival is no longer a real concept. We’re all here in 2014, accompanied by a large, hungry, and easily freaked-out woolly mammoth who still thinks it’s 50,000BC.

Why else would you try on four outfits and still not be sure what to wear before going out?

...With so much thought and energy dedicated to the mammoth’s needs, you often end up neglecting someone else in your brain, someone all the way at the center—your Authentic Voice.

Your Authentic Voice, somewhere in there, knows all about you. In contrast to the black-and-white simplicity of the Social Survival Mammoth, your Authentic Voice is complex, sometimes hazy, constantly evolving, and unafraid.

Your AV has its own, nuanced moral code, formed by experience, reflection, and its own personal take on compassion and integrity. It knows how you feel deep down about things like money and family and marriage, and it knows which kinds of people, topics of interest, and types of activities you truly enjoy, and which you don’t. Your AV knows that it doesn’t know how your life will or should play out, but it tends to have a strong hunch about the right step to take next.

And while the mammoth looks only to the outside world in its decision-making process, your Authentic Voice uses the outside world to learn and gather information, but when it’s time for a decision, it has all the tools it needs right there in the core of your brain.

Your AV is also someone the mammoth tends to ignore entirely. A strong opinion from a confident person in the outside world? The mammoth is all ears. But a passionate plea from your AV is largely dismissed until someone else validates it.

And since our 50,000-year-old brains are wired to give the mammoth a whole lot of sway in things, your Authentic Voice starts to feel like it’s irrelevant. Which makes it shrink and fade and lose motivation.

...The irony of the whole thing is that the obsessive lumbering mammoth isn’t even good at his job. His methods of winning approval may have been effective in simpler times, but today, they’re transparent and off-putting. The modern world is an AV’s world, and if the mammoth wants to thrive socially, he should do the thing that scares him most—let the AV take over. Here’s why:

AVs are interesting. Mammoths are boring. Every AV is unique and complex, which is inherently interesting. Mammoths are all the same—they copy and conform, and their motives aren’t based on anything authentic or real, just on doing what they think they’re supposed to do. That’s supremely boring.

AVs lead. Mammoths follow. Leadership is natural for most AVs, because they draw their thoughts and opinions from an original place, which gives them an original angle. And if they’re smart and innovative enough, they can change things in the world and invent things that disrupt the status quo. If you give someone a paintbrush and an empty canvas, they might not paint something good—but they’ll change the canvas in one way or another.

Mammoths, on the other hand, follow—by definition. That’s what they were built to do—blend in and follow the leader. The last thing a mammoth is going to do is change the status quo because it’s trying so hard to be the status quo. When you give someone a paintbrush and canvas, but the paint is the same exact color as the canvas, they can paint all they want, but they won’t change anything.

People gravitate toward AVs, not mammoths. The only time a mammoth-crazed person is appealing on a first date is when they’re on the date with another mammoth-crazed person. People with a strong AV see through mammoth-controlled people and aren’t attracted to them.

A friend of mine was dating a great on-paper guy awhile back but broke things off because she couldn’t quite fall for him. She tried to articulate why, saying he wasn’t weird or special enough—he seemed like “just one of the guys.” In other words, he was being run too much by a mammoth.

This also holds among friends or colleagues, where AV-run people are more respected and more magnetic—not because there’s necessarily anything extraordinary about them, but because people respect someone with the strength of character to have tamed their mammoth.

Tantra vs. Buddhist ethics (Tantra is a lot more fun!)

I don't know much about Tantra. I've had the impression that Tantra was all about wild spiritual sex -- which might have some truth to it, but possibly just a little.

David Chapman, though, knows a lot about Tantra. The real Tantra. Also, Chapman is an expert on Buddhism. So he's just the guy to write a post called "Buddhist ethics": a Tantric critique.

The post, like all of Chapman's writings (I'm a fan), is clear and nicely composed. Still, it will strike people not into this subject as rather Buddhist-geeky. 

Which isn't a criticism. Just an observation. 

I read some parts of his piece carefully, and other parts less carefully. The whole essay, though, merits reading. Though focused on Tantric and Buddhist ethics, Chapman addresses issues that are relevant to anyone seeking to live a happy, meaningful, ethical life.

Which is just about everyone, right?

Here's some passages that I particularly liked, which will give you a flavor of David Chapman's piece.

A highlight of my time as a Wiccan Neopagan was the culminating ritual of a week-long retreat. The ceremony evolved by stages into two hundred witches dancing naked around a bonfire for hours after midnight. It was a sublime, transformative experience.

It is unthinkable that anything similar might happen on a Consensus Buddhist retreat. But why? What Buddhist principle would it violate?

The ritual violated every principle of Sutrayana. But nobody practices that in America. What of Consensus Buddhism? That is not anti-nakedness, anti-dancing, anti-bonfires, or anti-staying-up-late. Or is it?

Such a ritual would be too much fun. You might have frighteningly strong emotions. You might lose control. That would be undignified and awkward. Someone might see you having too much fun, and would judge you for it, and you’d feel awful the next day.

These are not Buddhist criteria. They are Puritan criteria. They are American middle class public morality—which is mainly Puritanism, lightly revised to reflect improved contraceptive technology.

...Two puritan fears inhibit us. The first is that intense enjoyment must lead to harm. “That ritual sounds extremely problematic. Probably everyone drank way too much, and some had inappropriate sex they regretted in the morning. You should be mindful at all times, lest you harm yourself or others. That was the traditional meaning of the Fifth Precept.”

Tantra emphasizes personal responsibility, and basic sense and sanity. Tantra is not hedonism—the antonym of puritanism in current usage—but only because it recognizes actions have longer-term consequences. Seeking immediate pleasure without regard for consequences is simply stupid.

If you drink too much, expect and accept the result. Don’t blame the ritual’s leaders; no one forced you to do that. You should know your own limits and act accordingly. “We shouldn’t hold revels on Buddhist retreats because some people would do stupid things” gives stupid people veto power over the religious practice of responsible people. That’s morally wrong, in my opinion.

The second fear is social judgement. Puritanism encourages everyone to police everyone else’s enjoyment. I think that is also morally wrong.

If I can offer just one piece of ethical advice, from this whole series on “Buddhist ethics,” it is this:

Do not judge, censor, condemn, or ridicule anyone else (not even those bad people!) for enjoying things you consider “problematic,” “inappropriate,” or just don’t like yourself.

“Problematic” could be an expression of genuine moral concern. Too often, though, it’s just an expression of self-righteous judgmentalism. Those bad people enjoy the wrong things, and too much. “Inappropriate” may conceal simple envy.

Learn to accept other people enjoying things you dislike—or that your social group rejects. Then learn to enjoy their enjoyment of those things. This is entirely possible! You may then come to enjoy those things, too—if you have the courage to engage in pleasures your social group disparages.

You may find the only reason you thought you disliked them is that “people like you” aren’t “supposed to” like them. You may also find you truly don’t like them—and that’s also fine. You can still enjoy other people’s enjoyment of them. 

A walk in nature could be better than meditation

I've meditated every day since 1970. So obviously I'm a big believer in meditation. 

But the more meditating I've done, the less I believe it is the best way to feel better and deal effectively with life's problems. 

Sure, it is one way. There just are so many others -- as Brené Brown implied in an answer to a question posed to her in the "8 Questions" feature on the last page of a recent issue of TIME magazine.

You say one of the keys to all this is spirituality. Why is that?

I really wrestled with that. The way I define spirituality is a deeply held belief that we are inextricably connected to one another by something bigger than us, and something that is grounded in love. Some people call that God, and some people call that fishing.

Well, my wife would call that "nature."

She, like me, finds much peace and contentment in walks, usually with our dog. I feel as calm, centered, and at ease with myself and the world after a few minutes of walking on the unpaved natural paths in our rural neighborhood as I do after a considerably longer meditation session.

Which doesn't mean meditation is useless. I enjoy closing my eyes, following my breath, and letting myself be immersed in the present moment. 

However, there are lots of ways to be mindful of the here and now. Some don't require any special attention or effort -- such as engaging in a physical activity that grabs one's attention fully.

Dancing. Surfing. Skiing. Sex. To name a few.

So I enjoyed a piece by Adam Grant in the New York Times, "Can We End the Meditation Madness?" Meditation, like yoga, has become a trendy fad. The hype, though, is greater than the reality. Grant writes:

I am being stalked by meditation evangelists.

They approach with the fervor of a football fan attacking a keg at a tailgate party. “Which method of meditation do you use?”

I admit that I don’t meditate, and they are incredulous. It’s as if I’ve just announced that the Earth is flat. “How could you not meditate?!”

I have nothing against it. I just happen to find it dreadfully boring.

“But Steve Jobs meditated!”

Yeah, and he also did L.S.D. — do you want me to try that, too?

“L.S.D. is dangerous. Science shows that meditation is good for you. It will change your life.”

Will it?

...Before we’re all swept into this fad, we ought to ask why meditation is useful. So I polled a group of meditation researchers, teachers and practitioners on why they recommend it. I liked their answers, but none of them were unique to meditation. Every benefit of the practice can be gained through other activities.

This is the conclusion from an analysis of 47 trials of meditation programs, published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine: “We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (i.e., drugs, exercise and other behavioral therapies).”

The primary reason people meditate, the experts tell me, is that it may reduce stress. Fine. But so does quality sleep and exercise. And you can reduce stress simply by changing the way you think about it. When you’re feeling anxious, it’s a signal that you care about the outcome of an upcoming event — and it can motivate you to prepare.

In an experiment led by the Stanford psychologist Alia Crum, when people had only 10 minutes to prepare a charismatic speech, simply reframing the stress response as healthy was enough to relax them and reduce their physiological responses, if they tended to be highly reactive.

Sure, meditate if you enjoy it. And do something else if that makes you feel better than meditation does. 

In the long history of humanity, most people have lived their lives pleasantly and meaningfully without doing a special thing called "meditation."

During my many years of meditating, I haven't found that, in general, people who meditate are any kinder, happier, or wiser than people who don't meditate. 

Like fishing, meditation appeals to some, while not to others. Each to their own. Vive la difference.

It is impossible for the brain to always "be here now"

I'm a big fan of mindfulness and meditation. I resonate with a non-religious, secular, scientific approach to Buddhism. 

But I'm also an avid reader of neuroscience books. My current fave is Antonio Damasio's "Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain." 

Much of the book is filled with more details about brain anatomy and functioning than I really care about. The overall theme, though, is fascinating -- how our sense of self is built up from more primitive primordial feelings, along with a less primitive core self and a possibly uniquely human autobiographical self.

Today I came across a section in the book that reinforced my skepticism about the oft-heard meditation admonition to shut off discursive thinking and be here now.

Which basically means, immersed in direct perceptions and associated feelings of what is right around us. 

In Damasio's terms, this would leave us, pretty much, with just those primordial feelings of bodily existence and a core self existing in the present moment. In other words, not fully human. 

Sure, some people overdo thinking.

There is a time and place for embracing sensory impressions and bodily actions with little additional cogitation. But our brains also need space for contemplating the past and future, envisioning possibilities, imagining what could be rather than what is.

In this passage Damasio explains why it isn't possible to be both fully present in the here and now, and fully engaged in higher order activities of the cerebral cortex. We only have so much brain processing power.

Conscious deliberation is about reflection over knowledge. We apply reflection and knowledge when we decide on important matters in our lives. We use conscious deliberation to govern our loves and friendships, our education, our professional activities, our relations to others. Decisions pertaining to moral behavior, narrowly or broadly defined, involve conscious deliberation and take place over extended time periods.

Not only that, such decisions are processed in an offline mental space that overwhelms external perception. The subject at the center of conscious deliberation, the self in charge of the prospection of the future, is often distracted from external perception, inattentive to its vagaries. 

And there is a very good reason for this distraction in terms of brain physiology: the image-processing brain space, as we have seen, is the sum total of early sensory cortices; this same space needs to be shared by conscious reflection processes and direct perception; it is hardly up to the task of handling both without favoring one or the other.

Makes sense.

We speak of being "lost in thought." This isn't a bad thing. In fact, it is essential when conscious deliberation is taking place. If we were fully aware of the here and now, the brain wouldn't have the ability to do its thinking thing.

So there's a time to Be Here Now, and there's a time to Be There Then. It makes no sense to elevate one over the other, since both are a central part of being human.

Hindu fundamentalists are killing freethinkers in India

Well, a story in the New York Times, "India's Attack on Free Speech," makes me feel better about religious craziness in the United States.

We have lots of fanatic Christian fundamentalists in this country. But we also have the First Amendment and a healthy respect for free speech. Our Christian nationalists don't kill anti-religion bloggers. (Good news for me!)

In India, though, people are being killed for speaking their faithless minds.

I'd thought that India was making progress on becoming a liberal democracy akin to ours ("liberal" means something different in this context from the usual liberal/conservative distinction). But apparently not. 

Here's how the story starts off:

London — IN today’s India, secular liberals face a challenge: how to stay alive.

In August, 77-year-old scholar M. M. Kalburgi, an outspoken critic of Hindu idol worship, was gunned down on his own doorstep. In February, the communist leader Govind Pansare was killed near Mumbai. And in 2013, the activist Narendra Dabholkar was murdered for campaigning against religious superstitions.

These killings should be seen as the canary in the coal mine: Secular voices are being censored and others will follow.

While there have always been episodic attacks on free speech in India, this time feels different. The harassment is front-page news, but the government refuses to acknowledge it. Indeed, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence is being interpreted by many people as tacit approval, given that the attacks have gained momentum since he took office in 2014 and are linked to Hindutva groups whose far-right ideology he shares.

Earlier this month, a leader of the Sri Ram Sene, a Hindu extremist group with a history of violence including raiding pubs and beating women they find inside, ratcheted up the tensions. He warned that writers who insulted Hindu gods were in danger of having their tongues sliced off. For those who don’t support the ultimate goal of these extremists — a Hindu nation — Mr. Modi’s silence is ominous.

What gives, India?

You have a history of religious acrimony, but also a history of religious accommodation. Maybe I've been wrong about this, but I've viewed India as a place where all sorts of spiritual beliefs, including having none at all,  were accepted.

So it was disturbing to read this:

This is a turning point for India, a country that has taken pride in being a liberal democracy and that often adopts a high-minded tone when neighbors fall short of the same standards.

...Like the murdered bloggers, the Indian victims held liberal views but were not famous or powerful. Mr. Kalburgi had publicly expressed skepticism toward idol worship in Hinduism, but he didn’t pose a threat to anyone.

While the authorities are pursuing the culprits on a case-by-case basis, the overarching attack on free speech has not been addressed. The threats and killings have created an atmosphere of self-censorship and fear.

...The goal of transforming India from a secular state to a Hindu nation, which seems to be behind the murders, is abetted not just by the silence of politicians, but also by the Hindu nationalist policies of the ruling B.J.P.

...It’s also not surprising that Hindu fundamentalists would feel empowered in the shadow of a Hindu nationalist government. Still, few expected that freedom of speech would become a contestable commodity and that some who exercised it would lose their lives.

...It’s hard to accept what is happening in India. It is easier to ignore or dismiss the attacks and the threats as a liberal persecution complex or a phase that will last only as long as the B.J.P. is in power. But the country is undergoing a tectonic shift that will have long-term repercussions.

The attacks in India should not be seen as a problem limited to secular writers or liberal thinkers. They should be recognized as an attack on the heart of what constitutes a democracy — and that concerns everyone who values the idea of India as it was conceived and as it is beloved, rather than an India imagined through the eyes of religious zealots.

Indians must protest these attacks and demand accountability from people in power. We must call for all voices to be protected, before we lose our own.