Church of the Churchless

A message from someone finding purpose in Judaism, and my response

Recently I found a message from someone in the depths of my email inbox that I had ignored for a long time.

I wrote back to them. A few days ago I got a reply, which I'm sharing below. 

It's a well-written honest explanation of how they went from being non-religious to finding a sense of purpose and belonging in Judaism. 

I can understand why someone would embrace the commandments/rules of a religion rather than struggling to find their own moral code, even though this doesn't make sense to me any more.

After this person's message, minus their name, I've shared my reply to them.

Brian, thank you so much for getting back. I read through our conversation and I am blown away by the full span of emotions I used to feel at the ripe age of 22. I've recently returned to Judaism and have found a lot of peace and meaning in it.

My view of Judaism is very similar to a Zen interpretation of Buddhism: I can't explain to you why G-d exists or whether anything in the Torah is historical, but I know what the practice does for me and that it is beneficial.

As I reread our conversation, I realize I take you a lot more seriously now than I did then (if you could believe that). Memories come back to me of thinking "well maybe he doesn't know" regardless of my affirmations I've expressed; for example, when you say that Buddhists are just as dogmatic, I remember denying the possibility (due to dogmatic thinking), although now, in retrospect, I come to understand that reality.

Judaism has truly given me a lot of divine purpose. I find that it has this uniqueness that there's something in it for every Jew. They say for every two Jews, there's three opinions. I find that to be absolutely true because, as someone looking for spiritual fulfillment, freedom from attachment, and a drive for my compassion, I find all that there ready for the taking.

The idea of taking all of my concerns, throwing away their selfish value, and using them for the purpose of serving G-d is a level of detachment itself.

The idea of G-d is so far away from human understanding that taking all my pleasures and my pains and realizing that it is for the purpose of worshiping something completely intangible has the function of removing the responsibility to be concerned with them from a selfish point of view.

I've noticed that the less I worry about my happiness and more about the happiness of The Intangible Creator, the happier I really am due to the abandoning of my sense of self.

Three times a day I say the most important prayer in the Jewish religion, known as the Shema. Hear O' Israel, The L-rd is Our G-d, The L-rd is One. Meditation is a necessity during this blessing as I run the ideas through my mind respectively, "I am given this responsibility to serve G-d, He is in control of everything and I don't have to worry, and He pervades all matter and all entities and ideas, therefore nothing should ever feel unfamiliar."

This is the Jewish version of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.

Another thing I love is Shabbat. This is the fact that once a week, we turn off all of our electronics and spend a joyous day where worry is forbidden, family is together, and we are disconnected from all the strain and pain of the world that our phones make sure to frequently remind us of.

I've absolutely fallen in love with Judaism. Once again, I could never point to science and explain why it confirms my beliefs, but I can explain why it makes me happy and can improve my life; and it has.

The amount of "everyday" philosophy that it's provided has been enormously helpful. It's a huge relief to stand on the shoulders of giants with thousands of years of moral documentation. The greatest thing that made me come to the realization that Judaism was something that I needed goes back to the day I "found G-d." I was sitting in my car one night after a tough visit with my therapist.

I was at a crossroads trying to decide if I wanted to do the "right thing" or the "easy thing." The easy thing was something that I knew to be obviously immoral but would allow me to live my life the way I wanted.

Sitting in my car writing down all my thoughts and feelings, I realized that in a case like that, I would not do the right thing unless I subscribed to a form of objective morality to keep myself accountable. I realized that my subjective morality was too unreliable to make me do the right thing and I really wanted to do the right thing.

Right then and there, I felt a rush run over me and an intense calm from the idea that I could prescribe to my life the Torah and finally have a manual on how to live my life in this clueless world. And that's what I did, I subscribed to this ancient morality and decided to do the right thing.

I ended up having my cake and eating it too. Everything happened to go as smoothly as it could be. Ever since then, I feel a huge responsibility to make the world a better place which I am enthusiastic to bear.

I'm sorry to come back to you after reading your blog for about three years about open-mindedness and free choice to seem that I support the established order. However, Judaism is not Christianity and a wandering Jew like myself would be pleased to find that if happiness is what we're all chasing, we may be able to find it in our own backyard. After all, as the Buddha taught, peace isn't something you find outside of yourself.

Thank you for your correspondence and I hope this new year finds you many blessings.

Here's my reply to the message above.

 

I’m glad that you have found so much support in Judaism. I look upon Judaism as being as much about fostering a sense of community among Jews as being a belief structure.

 

Regarding the latter, which includes complying with the Torah, I’ll simply do some arguing (very Jewish!) and observe that your distinction between subjective and objective morality, though superficially correct, has to be taken in a larger context.

 

There is no evidence that Torah morality, or any other religiously-based morality, is objectively true in the sense of reflecting a universal law, as scientific laws do, particularly laws of physics.

 

So choosing to accept a certain form of religious morality is a subjective decision. There’s little doubt that if you had a Hindu background, you’d now be finding support in Hindu traditions. Ditto for any other religion that was a part of your heritage.

 

In no way am I saying that the satisfaction you feel in following Judaic law isn’t genuine and real. We all need something to lean on.

 

I’m just suggesting that in my view the only possibly genuine form of universal human morality needs to rest on evolutionary principles, which some philosophers and scientists are attempting to do. For example, it seems clear that early humans were more likely to survive and thrive if they had a common set of moral beliefs, of what is right and wrong.

 

And our sense of empathy and compassion is tied into this, since the more we help others in our “tribe,” the more likely the group can handle challenges.

 

So it’s no wonder that you are finding such satisfaction in belonging to your particular Judaic tribe. Members of every religion feel the same way, as do secular people like humanists and atheists. However, the latter lack rituals such as those you mentioned, so this limits the power non-religious groups have to bind people together.

 

        — Brian

Blog post about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton

If Church of the Churchless visitors want to see a photo of me as a kid, looking questionably cute, I just wrote a post for my HinesSight blog that included one.

See "The Hiltons" is a book about my great-uncle, Conrad Hilton.

We don't know what we don't know until it's too late

My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist.

At any rate, this morning I found myself thinking along this line. If you consider that this shows I'm questionably sane, I'd be the first to agree with you.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. So have you, I'm confident. But from here on I'm going to use "I" to refer to myself as an example that applies to almost everybody.

The problem is, those mistakes have only been evident after the fact. Meaning, after I'd already done what, a bit or a lot later, I regretted doing. 

So at the time I did what turned out to be a mistake, my mind was feeling that I was doing the right thing.

This is obvious, because if I'd had a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing, I would have stopped and tried to figure out what needed to be done right.

Now, this shows that it is really difficult for me to not do the wrong thing, since there's no warning light in my mind that flashes when I'm heading off the right track.

My Subaru Crosstrek, on the other hand, makes a chirp when I cross the center line of the road. In that sense, my car is smarter than I am.

On the positive side -- assuming there's something positive in doing wrong -- it's hard for me to blame myself when I didn't know that I was screwing up at the time, only later.

Hard, yet not impossible, because I often do berate myself for not recognizing what I should have done differently.

I then pondered the question of what to do about this vicious circle of not knowing that I don't know what I should be doing until it is too late to do anything differently.

At first I thought it would be possible to carefully consider alternative ways of doing something before I did it, to have a better chance of doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing.

But there's several problems with this.

One is that it would take too much time, even if I only did this for new or unusual things that needed doing. Washing dishes, for example, is so habitual and familiar, I rarely mess it up. 

By contrast, last Saturday I changed the oil in our generator after it had been running for most of the day during a full week after an an ice storm caused massive power outages in Oregon. 

I got the warm oil draining into a quart yogurt container and figured I had time to change the air cleaner on the other side of the generator. When I went back to the oil change side, the container had started to overflow with oil.

I immediately thought, "That was stupid of me." Yet at the time I had no thought that taking my eye off of the draining oil was going to cause a problem. 

So is it possible to eliminate our screw-ups when we have no idea that we're doing something wrong? No. Screwing up comes with being human. I do feel, though, that focusing on doing one thing at a time reduces the chance of a screw-up.

If I'd patiently watched the oil drain into the yogurt container instead of changing the air cleaner simultaneously, I would have been able to prevent the minor oil spill onto our carport cement.

However, no matter how carefully we try to do things, frequently we'll find that we've done something wrong. In that case, compassion appears to be in order.

After all, few of us consciously set out to mess something up. Almost everybody tries to do the right thing, even if it seems clear to almost everybody else that we did the wrong thing. Thus self-compassion is as important as compassion for others. 

Often we just don't know. And we don't know that we don't know. Neither do the other people who don't know that they don't know.

If the person in the car ahead of me knew that their left-turn blinker has been on for several blocks, I'm confident they would have turned it off. So they're not trying to irritate me by pretending they're turning left, yet never do.

They, like me frequently, are just caught in the grip of not knowing that they don't know.

This, of course, gets us into the much larger question of free will. Along with many, if not most, neuroscientists, after a lot of reading about how modern science looks upon free will, I don't believe it exists.

Which doesn't stop me from getting upset when generator oil being changed overflows a yogurt container. I do, though have a more philosophical attitude when I do something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done.

How to become an atheist in three easy steps

This says it all, in just a few words.

Escaping from the need to escape

My wife and I have been without electricity for 11 days during the aftermath of the worst ice storm to hit Oregon in a long time. In fact, it might have been the worst ice storm ever to hit the state.

Today, while I was on a dog walk around our rural south Salem neighborhood, I heard someone scream in delight. Then I noticed lights on in houses. 

For the rest of my walk home I visualized coming back to a house with electricity. I pictured myself taking a hot bath for the first time in over a week and a half. I thought about the joy of turning our generator off.

Then I walked in our front door and flipped a switch in the entry way. Nothing happened. We still lacked power. After calling PGE, our utility company, it became clear that we were one of only a few houses whose electricity hadn't come back on.

On our neighborhood's Facebook page person after person was posting about how happy they were.

Me, I was astoundingly sad. After eleven days of worrying about when our power would be restored, now I had to start over -- worrying about when a repair crew would fix the small outage of ourselves and a couple of neighbors.

For much of tonight I felt listless, low energy, too despondent to write a blog post.

So I decided to make a transcript of a guided meditation by Jeff Warren I'd listened to this morning on my Calm iPhone app. It helped a lot to do this. 

You won't get the same feel from Warren's words as if you heard him speak them himself. And the pauses in the guided meditation aren't shown in the transcript.

But I hope you'll like what Warren says as much as I did. Enjoy.

The Great Escape

Do you ever find yourself plotting your escape? I do. My mind goes around and around, trying to figure how to get out of my situation. 

I think, maybe I can travel somewhere new. Nope. 

Maybe I can go see my friends. Nope.

Maybe I can just go outside and lay down in the sun, and just escape my responsibilities for one day. Nope.

Right now the pandemic has many of us confined. All our normal escape routes are blocked, all the usual ways we take care of ourselves. 

What to do? It's an ironclad rule of human existence, when there's nowhere else to go, when we can't escape from our life, then we have to learn to escape into our life.

The greatest escape actually isn't an escape at all. It's showing up in a new way.

So here's a practice for whenever you're having a hard time and feeling trapped. If you're feeling just fine, this is also a good practice to explore.

Because the skills you strengthen here are relevant to being human anytime. Let's go.

Close your eyes and then take in a few full deep breaths. As you inhale, stretch up the spine, find some dignity in the posture, like you're connecting to human nobility and fierceness in facing your life.

Then, as you breathe out, imagine you're breathing out an intention, or reservations, or worry. 

Some nice long exhales. Now find your equanimity. Equanimity is the muscle of staying open. Open to the full 360 surround of sensations and sounds and thoughts, open to what actually is here.

So let's start with some basic Humanity 101. 

Sometimes life is hard. Feeling like life is hard puts everyone of us in good company. So we can practice sending some kindness to ourselves, whether we're feeling just fine or whether we're not feeling so fine.

You can say something to yourself like, hey, I've got your back here. I'm the part that sends in the love. Here you go. 

So you're not after some big sentimental swell here, though that can happen. You're more after an acknowledgement of caring. 

Take a moment to just feel what you feel. Caring about yourself exactly as you care about a friend who is having a hard time. To you, it feels calm, patient. You're just being present.

Or maybe I feel strong and supportive. Maybe it feels warm and loving. All these are expressions of caring. You can say your phrase and send in your caring, in your way.

Try this for a bit.

OK, so keep that caring attitude going on in the background. Our next move is acceptance. Can you feel everything you're feeling without needing to change it?

This is how we make space. It's the beginning of escaping from the need to escape. 

If you want a bit of extra support, it can help to lightly pay attention to a home base. It may be the feeling of the breath at the nostrils, or some background sound. 

Keep going here.

OK, so maybe you are lightly paying attention to a home base, like the soft sensation of the breath. And all the while, you've got this attitude of caring, of accepting your situation. 

Letting go the problem solving, the scheming, of any attempts to avoid whatever it is you're feeling. You're just being where you are.

This is being human practice. Opening to how we are. And if the feelings are strong, remember your support. The breath, or your home base. 

Remember your caring acknowledgment that this can be hard.

And now, in this final stretch, just rest. 

No external freedom is forever, because life keeps mixing it up. That's just how it is. Fortunately, freedom also can come from the inside. 

It has to do with our capacity to make space, moment by moment, for exactly what's here. 

Instead of getting free from our life, we get free around it and with it. Sometimes this is easy. Sometimes this is ridiculously hard. We do it anyway. 

Because that's what humans do. 

When you're ready, open your eyes. Very good to be human with you.

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention

At the moment it's hard for me to write about anything other than the ice storm aftermath here in Oregon, the subject of my last churchless blog post, "Being without power for a week shows what's important." 

Well, it's now been nine days since our electricity went out. All of our neighbors are in the same power outage situation, along with 38,000 other Oregonians. 

Last night my wife and I hosted a Zoom meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group. Our generator powers a Starlink satellite internet connection, which worked great all through the 100 minute meeting.

After the meeting I wrote on my HinesSight blog about three themes that dominated our conversation: How to prepare for no electricity, Independence versus reliance on society, Staying in touch with others.

It wasn't surprising that everyone wanted to talk about what's been the focus of their minds recently -- coping with no electricity. 

One person only was without power for about a day. Others, about a week. My wife and I, along with neighbors who also are part of the discussion group, were the only ones still without electricity because we live in a rural area.

Usually talking about politics takes up about half of our conversation time. Sometimes even more. Last night, no more than five minutes, or about 5% of the Zoom meeting, focused on politics. 

What this shows is something obvious that is nonetheless often overlooked.

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention. This relates to the familiar hierarchy of needs. I'm not sure where politics and religion are on the hierarchy, but they seem to be near the top of the pyramid rather than close to the base.

Being without electricity for more than a short time when you're used to it -- which is the case with almost everyone in the United States and other wealthy nations -- shifts one's focus into the safety and physiological levels. 

It is more difficult to cook, get water, flush the toilet, sleep comfortably. People reach out to neighbors in a different way than before, because they seek safety and a sense of belonging. 

It isn't that I'm no longer interested in politics or in pondering the downside of religions. Those subjects just haven't been much on my mind the past nine days, because I've had to focus on playing my part in keeping our electricity-less home going.

(Yes, we have a generator, so we have 7,000 watts of electricity available. But that isn't enough for our heat pumps, hot water heater, most lights, oven, dishwasher, garbage disposal, and other things in our house that have been dormant since our power went off.)

So this experience, which is the longest time I've been without full electricity in my 72 years of living, has given me more of an insight into how lots of people in the world live all the time. Namely, struggling to find the necessities of life.

For them, a religion often provides a sense of comfort and meaning.

But if that religion takes up too much time and attention, that detracts from their ability to meet their safety and physiological needs. Same with politics. A little attention is fine; more than that is counter-productive. 

Which raises a question. If what seems important to us is so dependent on our circumstances, can we ever be really confident that what we care so much about at any given time truly deserves all that attention? 

I guess the answer is that in one sense it does, and in one sense it doesn't. Which isn't much of an answer, but it's the best I can come up with.

Being without power for a week shows what's important

My wife, Laurel, and I, along with all of our neighbors, plus over a hundred thousand other Oregonians, have been without electricity since last Friday night, February 12.

That's when a massive ice storm hit Northwest Oregon, powered by cold air from the polar vortex that afflicted much of the United States and a moisture-laden storm coming in from the Pacific. 

The result was snow in areas to the north of us, including Portland, but freezing rain in our area. Which, believe me, is way worse than snow.

I shared photos of the damage to our property in a Saturday post on my HinesSight blog, "Photos of the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021." The next day I wrote a light-hearted post, "Our dog is enjoying no electricity. Me, not so much."

After that, my mood turned darker as Portland General Electric, our power company, stopped providing estimates to their customers of when power would be restored.

I wrote "PGE getting well-deserved ice storm criticism" and "Ice storm disaster should prompt close look at PGE." By tomorrow PGE claims that power will be restored to 90% of those with outages. I hope we're not part of the 10%.

Laurel and I have a wood stove, a fairly plentiful supply of oak firewood, and a generator -- so we're more fortunate that lots of other people in Oregon lacking power. Still, it's been tough.

Our routines have been disrupted, obviously. 

First thing in the morning Laurel starts a fire in the wood stove. I add gasoline to the generator, check the oil level, and start it up.

That provides us with warmth that slowly permeates through part of our house, and enough electricity to power some lights, the microwave, cooktop, TV, and internet router, plus some outlets to charge our phones.

During the rest of the day we have to keep the wood stove going and the generator supplied with gas. We've done quite a bit of cleanup of tree limbs that fell from ice accumulation, but there's a lot more to do on that front.

The chain on my chainsaw came off and was damaged in the process. So I had to take the chainsaw in to Ace Hardware for a chain replacement. The seal on our wood stove door fell off, which required a drive to a wood stove store that, thankfully, was able to glue in a replacement seal.

Otherwise it would have been difficult to burn wood, our only source of heat.

In short, going without electricity changes one's focus to immediate needs. Heat, water, food. Sure, we still watch TV in the evening, but much of our day centers around activities that were absent from our life prior to the ice storm.

I'm a political person. For the past week I've thought of politics much less often. 

In fact, recently I emailed our conservative Republican state representative to complain about PGE not giving estimates of when a customer could expect to have power restored, and to ask him to urge PGE to start providing estimates.

Ordinarily Representative Nearman and I are on opposite sides of the political divide. We've never talked, but if we did, we'd disagree about most issues facing our state and country. However, when it comes to PGE giving its customers an estimate of when their power would come back, we were in perfect agreement.

Nearman told me that he also lacked electricity. So we had that in common. It felt good to have a pleasant exchange of emails with someone whose politics I heartily agree with. 

That didn't matter, because coping with an electrical outage provides the common ground that politics lacks. 

Something similar happens during the two-mile late afternoon dog walk that Mooka (our Husky mix) and I take around a road loop in our rural neighborhood. 

I end up talking quite a while with people who I usually just exchange a nod and "Hi, how's it going?" with. The electrical outage creates a bond that brings us closer together, since everybody out here has to figure out how to get the same basics of life -- again, heat, water, food.

Sometimes it seems like what divides us is stronger than what unites us. 

But the ice storm electrical outage has shown me that this really isn't the case. Underneath the divisions of politics, religion, nationality, and such lies a common humanity that rests on our common needs to stay alive and well.

It's been a very good thing to realize this more fully. That said, I really, really hope our electricity is restored soon.

Satan and Kal

Here's a guest blog post from Bob Russo, who sent this essay to me a while back. I recently discovered it in the depths of my email inbox, liked it, and asked Russo if it would be OK to share it on Church of the Churchless.

He said, "sure." Enjoy some thoughts about Satan and Kal. "Kal" is how the so-called Negative Power is viewed by an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a branch of Sant Mat.

Growing up within the crystalline and dualistic (heaven and hell; Jesus and Satan) landscape of Catholicism and having the Pope to look to for spiritual direction (as a representative of Christ on earth), it was just one hop, skip, and a jump from that world to Radha Soami (Guru path). 

The only difference between the two was that I now had a Perfect Living Master to guide me out of Satan’s (Kal’s) world to Sach Khand (True Land) above.   

So what we have in both systems is the unruly hands of some “negative power” whose goal is to lead the spiritual seeker astray. 

This concept of a negative power or satanic force goes back thousands of years to Ancient Judaism and probably beyond that. Yet, apparently more strident than any “satanic” temptation is the use of this concept by religious leaders and spiritual groups to ingest fear into the minds of sincere individuals and thus control them. 

It’s the same ole problem, reaction, solution scenario that we see played out time and time again under authoritarian religious organizations, which RSSB is certainly one of. They identify YOUR problem and of course, as part of their modus operandi, have the solution.      

Consequently, during a recent trip to Shambala bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I couldn’t help being drawn to a book entitled The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels.

What made this book a must read for me was its historical overview of Satan from Judaism through early Christianity, and, IMO [in my opinion], seeing a blending together of adversarial roles he/she played (or plays) in both religions and with Kal’s role in Sant Mat.  I suspect the concept of a negative power or entity found its way to Northern India from the Middle East.  

Without going into too much detail, it appears that Satan may have evolved from being part of God’s Grand Hierarchy and his loyal servant, as in Sant Mat (Radha Soami path), to one opposed to God in his/her entirety in early Christianity (the fallen angel set apart from God). In Judaism, Satan’s role was to obstruct human activity, that is, to create chaos, misfortune, conflict, and to test the soul’s loyalty to God (see story of Job).       

During my years in Sant Mat, whenever mention was made of the hapless condition of the world, with its wars, hunger, and plagues, it wasn’t long before someone would comment or read something from an RSSB book on not expecting more from Kal’s domain.  

In RSSB, Kal is responsible for humankind’s screwups and misfortunes as we see with the Satan of Judaism (since Kal is the ruler of the three lower worlds). And as such, continues to confuse humankind as it helplessly and aimlessly drifts about with no direction in sight (until the Perfect Living Master comes to the rescue).    

According to RSSB theology, once an individual gets initiated the situation changes because although Kal rules the world, anything that happens to the Satsangi (followers of the Radha Soami path) is supposedly the amiable work of the Master. 

IMO, this whole thing is very confusing, because if an earthquake strikes and both Satsangis and non-Satsangis are injured, then who do we claim is responsible for the earthquake, the Master or Kal?   

Now, with the development of Christianity, Satan evolved into an evil entity completely opposed to God as seen in the New Testament where Satan was held responsible for the arrest and execution of Jesus.  And, the Jews unfortunately, were labeled as agents of Satan for having played their fateful part in Jesus’ death.

(We can effortlessly glance into history to see the results of this horrific prejudice that has cost the Jewish people countless lives and hardships over the past two millennium). Thus, a major rift grew between this new religious movement called Christianity (which had a lot of Jewish members), and the Jewish people, particularly the Judaic religious ruling class.   

Now, as Christianity grew, most people were looking for “rules” and guidance on how to be true Christians. Thus, an “orthodox” branch of Christianity made firm headway among this new religion, and as such, became institutionalized with its various do’s and don’ts, priests, and bishops. This new branch of Christianity (which evolved into the Catholic Church), ultimately labeled any other branch of Christianity and all other religions for that matter, as evil products of Satan.   

Certain members of this orthodox branch, such as Tertullian, whom according to Pagels, was a convert from Carthage in Northern Africa around 180 C. E., denounced all those who deviated from the “majority” or orthodox teachings as heretics. 

What I found interesting is that the Greek translation for heresy (hairesis) is choice. Therefore, one who makes a choice is a heretic. 

Pagels mentions on pg.164 of her book that Tertullian insists that making choices is evil, since choice destroys group unity (which probably means less control and $ for the spiritual elite leaders).  She goes on to quote Tertullian as saying “that church leaders must not allow people to ask questions, for it is questions that make people heretics.”    

Since Satan was opposed to God, it becomes quite clear that Christians were involved in a sort of spiritual cosmic war between good and evil. They, of course, represented good, while all “unorthodox” Christians and pagans were viewed as agents of Satan.

Pagels writes on pg. 165, “Instead of admitting Christians into debates over the Scriptures, Tertullian says, ‘straight thinking’ (the literal translation of orthodox) Christians must simply claim the Scriptures as their own exclusive property’…but, how do heretics come up with such ingenious and persuasive arguments from Scripture?  Their inspiration comes, Tertullian says, ‘from the devil, of course, to whom belong the wiles that distort the truth’”.

How’s that for enforcing mind control? We can also see how “ownership” of the “truth” as “exclusive property” is a prized tool in controlling the masses!

Thus, although more subtle, IMO, the Radha Soami tradition, at least in Beas, has firm distain for any polemic or  “revealing” questions that may potentially uproot the reality or spiritual competency of the guru and/or the philosophy he represents (this is quite obvious to me from their response to internet discussions of RS and their letters to David Lane). 

And, as a friend mentioned recently, a ”true believer” will never ask the real questions while those that would are probably never going to be there to ask them in the first place.

Here we are in the year 2002, and we can still walk the streets of Dera or stroll along the freshly landscaped gardens of Petaluma or visit the cascading waters of Calvary Baptist College (formerly Murrieta Hot Springs) and what will we find in common among the members of each group? 

A firm belief that they, themselves, are the “chosen” ones, the lucky few who have God on their side while the rest of the world wallows in Satan’s nebulous and dingy shadow! For the Fundamentalist Christian, the cosmic war between good and evil is alive and well today while for the satsangi, this dreary epic is faced each day in meditation.    

Unfortunately, this dualistic outlook has created a split society or “them and us” mentality that has caused unimaginable pain, suffering, and death to countless individuals and unbearable hardship to innumerable families throughout modern history. 

And, this “split” is not limited to externals but has caused considerable mental anguish and cognitive problems to individuals living within a strict right versus wrong world.  

Too much mindfulness can increase anxiety

Someone sent me a link to an interesting BBC story, "How too much mindfulness can spike anxiety." It describes research about the downside of mindfulness and meditation in general. 

In any discussion of mindfulness, it’s important to remember that there are many different techniques that train particular types of thinking and being. The best-known strategies are mindful breathing, in which you focus on the feelings of respiration, and the body scan, in which you pass your attention from head to toe, noting any physical sensations that arise in the course of the session.

These kinds of practices are meant to ground you in the present moment and the effects can be seen in brain scans, with growth in the insula cortex, a region that is involved in bodily perception and emotion. As a result, mindfulness training can leave us more in touch with our feelings, which is important for good decision making.

Many mindfulness practices also encourage a more general “observing awareness”, in which you train yourself to notice your thoughts and feelings without reacting or judging. With practice, this can increase your capacity for emotional regulation so that you are no longer as susceptible to flashes of anger, for instance.

Ideally, these changes should complement each other and result in greater wellbeing. But that’s only possible if they occur in balance and moderation. Unfortunately, some meditators may pass the optimum point on either one of these elements, leading to distress.

The article ends with some sentiments that I heartily agree with. Sticking with one meditation approach for the rest of your life doesn't make sense if you aren't getting the results you want from it. Experiment. Try something different. Be flexible.

For those who still like the idea of contemplation, it may be time to consider a broader range of techniques. Certain religious traditions encourage practitioners to focus on things outside your body, for instance – such as a bunch of flowers on your desk or even a passage from a poem. These may be better at calming overwhelming feelings of anxiety, or coaxing yourself out of those feelings of dissociation than observing your body or your breathing, says Britton.

There’s also a growing interest in meditative techniques that encourage you to think about others’ perspectives and to cultivate feeling of compassion – strategies that are especially effective against feelings of loneliness.

At the moment, some people may feel like they have to stick with one particular strategy – like mindful breathing or the body scan – without considering the alternatives. But this is a mistake, says Britton.

“We should really honour the diversity of contemplative practices that are available, because they all do different things, and people would have a much better chance of matching what they need, if they had a bigger buffet of choices.” Each person should choose the best technique – and the correct “dose” – for their particular situation, rather than doggedly pursuing a plan that is not working.

Ultimately, Britton thinks that these issues should be incorporated into all mindfulness courses – in much the same way that the visitors to a gym are taught about the potential for injury. “It comes down to giving meditators a bit more agency.”

And as I discovered myself with my own ill-fated attempts to gain mindfulness, this may sometimes include the decision that enough is enough.

Final thoughts on the wonderful irrationality of modern science

Having finished Michael Strevens book, 'The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science," I wanted to close the book on this book, so to speak, by sharing some further ideas about how Strevens' Big Idea applies to us in everyday life.

(My three previous posts about The Knowledge Machine are here, here, and here.)

The Big Idea that makes modern science a highly effective way of generating knowledge is restricting scientific communications -- journal articles, research reports, and the like -- to only empirical evidence. 

So if a scientist wants to argue some point, they must do so on the basis of empirical evidence, not on philosophy, religion, personal beliefs, and so on.

In their non-official life, scientists are free to speculate all they want about whatever they want. Only in their official communications are they limited to what Strevens calls the Iron Law -- the Big Idea in his book.

Most of us aren't professional scientists. 

However, I think we all would benefit from embracing the wonderful irrationality of modern science when this is appropriate in everyday life.

At first I found it difficult to understand the subtitle of The Knowledge Machine, since I've always considered rationality to be a hallmark of science. 

Surely, it is.

But as Strevens discusses, it took a long time for the Iron Law of empirical evidence to take root, because we humans are so addicted to philosophizing, telling stories about our life, finding reasons for why this or that happened that make sense to us.

Giving that up would have seemed crazy to the early Greeks, as to medieval thinkers like Descartes. They wanted to fathom the workings of the entire universe, the cosmos. 

Thus to them the scientific method involved grand conceptual schemes, not data-driven empirical evidence. Hence, the seeming irrationality of the Iron Law.

Given the many examples offered up in The Knowledge Machine about how almost obsessive attention to minute detail is how scientific progress usually occurs, I came away convinced that our everyday lives would also benefit from fewer stories in our heads and more empirical facts.

Here's a couple of examples from my own recent life.

Last night I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog about a controversy over Salem's Mayor, Chuck Bennett, failing to assign a progressive city councilor, Jackie Leung, to any City Council committees other than a single spot as an alternate.

Since Leung is a woman of color, quite a few people commented on Facebook that this showed how racist and sexist Bennett is.

They were outraged that Leung had been treated so badly by the Mayor, since other members of the City Council got three, four, five, or six committee assignemts.

At first I shared some of that outrage, but the more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed that racism and sexism explained Bennett's behavior.

So I emailed the Mayor, asking him to explain himself. 

In other words, I sought some empirical evidence in the form of a reply to my message. That reply turned out to be highly believable. Bennett told me that last year Leung hadn't wanted any committee assignments because she was too busy.

When she failed to respond to a request from the Mayor to list her committee preferences for 2021, he figured that once again she wasn't interested in being assigned to some committees. Yet actually she was. 

It turned out, then, that a failure to communicate by Bennett and Leung led to a simple mistake. As far as I can tell, the claims of racism and sexism were just stories people used to explain what the Mayor did.

Here's another more personal example of how a failure to use empirical evidence and attention to detail led to a preventable error.

This morning I got a call from an unknown number on my iPhone that didn't ring, because the caller wasn't in my Contact list. That happens frequently. 

I did what I usually do: click on the "phone" icon on the home screen, so by going to Recents, the red "1" (for one call) above the icon would go away.

But after doing this, or at least believing I'd done this, the red "1" was still there. That made me think that perhaps the caller had left a voice mail message, and that message was creating the "1."

Checking Voicemail, I listened to the top message. I couldn't understand all of it, the gist of it being that Amber wanted me, Brian, to call back at _____ Health. When I Googled the phone number, I saw that it belonged to Salem Health Urgent Care.

Which perplexed me, since I haven't been there for quite a few months.

Still, I wanted to find out what Amber wanted. I called the number on the voicemail and found that I was third in line to have my call answered. I listened to annoying music and repeated messages to be patient because my call was important to them for about ten minutes.

Then I was able to talk with someone. "Amber left a message for me," I said. "Is she there?" "No," I was told, "Amber isn't working today." 

That led to me being asked my name and date of birth so they could look up my records and try to figure out what Amber wanted. Eventually I was asked a simple question, "What time was the voice mail message left?"

"Well, it was February... oops. February 27, 2020. A year ago. Wow, sorry. Last night I deleted a bunch of old voice mail messages and the one from Amber a  long time ago now was at the top. So I thought it was a recent message, having forgotten that I'd deleted other old ones."

The Salem Health Urgent Care person laughed and said that she's done something like that before. That made me feel a bit better, a little less embarrassed. 

Now, in retrospect I should have paid more attention to details rather than jumping to the conclusion that today I'd gotten a voice mail message from Salem Health. I'd stared at the message several times, but never noticed the date of the message, since I'd assumed it was from today.

Not a scientific attitude. If I'd gathered more empirical evidence rather than believing the story I'd told myself, I wouldn't have spent time trying to unravel a mystery of my own making.

The good life is the life you already have

lt took me a few months, but today I finished reading John Gray's provocative little book, "Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life." (Other books took priority in my morning reading time; my first post about this book is here.)

The final chapter contained some nice observations about our search for meaning, and what cats can teach us in this regard. Here's some excerpts.

If cats could understand the human search for meaning they would purr with delight at its absurdity. Life as the cat they happen to be is meaning enough for them. Humans, on the other hand, cannot help looking for meaning beyond their lives.

The search for meaning comes with awareness of death, which is a product of human self-consciousness. Fearing their lives ending, human beings invented religions and philosophies in which the meaning of their lives carried on after them.

But the meaning humans make is easily broken, so they live in greater fear than before.

The stories they have fashioned for themselves take over, and they spend their days trying to be the character they have invented. Their lives belong not to them but to a figure conjured up in their imagination.

One consequence of this way of living is that human beings may become fixated on occasions when their stories are disrupted. They may lose loved ones, find their own lives in danger or be forced to leave their homes.

Those who turn their life into a tragic story are coping with experiences of irremediable loss. But it is a way of coping that comes with a cost. While thinking of your life as a tragedy may give it meaning, it binds you to your sorrows.

...Contrary to the post-modernists, there is such a thing as human nature. It is expressed in the universal demand for meaning, for one thing.

But human nature has produced many divergent and at times antagonistic forms of life. How can anyone know their own nature, when human nature is so contradictory? Might the idea that each of us has a nature of our own be just another metaphysical fiction?

The truth in the fiction of an individual nature is that the good life for each of us is not chosen but found.

Even when they come from decisions we believe we have made, our experiences are not determined by us. The good life is not the life you want but one in which you are fulfilled. Stripped of metaphysics, this is Spinoza's idea of conatus and the Taoist belief that we must follow the way within us.

In this we are at one with all other creatures. 

Humans do not rank above other animals, or below them. There is no cosmic scale of value, no great chain of being; no external standard by which the worth of a life can be judged.

Humans are humans, cats are cats. The difference is that, while cats have nothing to learn from us, we can learn from them how to lighten the load that comes with being human.

One burden we can give up is the idea that there could be a perfect life.

It is not that our lives are inevitably imperfect. They are richer than any idea of perfection. The good life is not a life you might have led or may yet lead, but the life you already have. Here, cats can be our teachers, for they do not miss the lives they have not lived.

QAnon and religion are both mass delusions

The Real Time With Bill Maher show always ends with a feature called New Rules. Most of the rules are brief and humorous, while the last takes longer to explain and is more serious, though still funny in a different way.

I just finished watching our recording of the February 5 episode. 

Maher's closing New Rule was a right-on discussion of how the craziness of QAnon relates to religious belief. Probably you're familiar with this cult, but if you aren't, a BBC story describes what QAnon is about.

At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.

QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.

That's the basic story, but there are so many offshoots, detours and internal debates that the total list of QAnon claims is enormous - and often contradictory. Adherents draw in news events, historical facts and numerology to develop their own far-fetched conclusions.

Here's a five and a half minute video of what Maher had to say. It's both entertaining and persuasive. Once someone believes in one thing without evidence (like religion), it is easy to transfer that gullibility to another thing that lacks evidence (like QAnon). 

The You Tube video description says:

It's fun to laugh at QAnon, but if you accord religious faith the kind of exalted respect we do here in America, you’ve already lost the argument that mass delusion is bad.

Enjoy.

Have a listen to my Everyone's Autonomous podcast interview

Today my rather lengthy interview with Marie D'Elephant's Everyone's Autonomous podcast interview appeared on her web site. The episode starts off with about 35 minutes of Marie talking before our interview starts.

So click your way to the 35 minute mark if you're mainly interested in the interview with me. There's a few gaps in the recording, but they don't last long, so stick with the silence and it will soon end.

https://everyonesautonomous.com

We covered a lot of spiritual, philosophical, and religious ground. The focus of Everyone's Autonomous is on recovering from dogmatic religiosity. Mostly Marie speaks with Christians who have had a bad religious experience.

So I provided a somewhat different perspective, having spent 35 years as an active member of an Eastern guru-centered religion. 

It's always a bit disturbing for me to listen to myself, especially my frequent use of you know. But that's something I have no control over when I'm talking, so I guess it doesn't make sense for me to be disturbed. 

That's one of the themes we covered in the podcast. How we often are much harder on ourselves than we would be if someone else came up to us and said, "Should I be so worried about this?" Usually we'd answer, "No." 

Compassion, like other good qualities, is in us, not the cosmos

As noted in a recent post, I've been playing around with using the Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu.

I like the way it sounds. I'm attracted to Buddhism, so long as it is stripped of extraneous supernaturalism. I don't believe that Namu Amida Butsu is anything special. It's simply a way for me to focus and calm my mind.

That mantra is part of the Shin aspect of Buddhism. 

I have some familiarity with Shin, also known as the Pure Land tradition. In 2005 I talked about Namu Amida Butsu in "Mantra meditation: what's in a word?"  In 2013 I wrote "Interesting take on how Shin Buddhism supports social activism." 

Here's an excerpt from the 2005 post. 

D.T. Suzuki, a noted Zen adept, says that there are two ways of conceiving the purpose of a mantra.

In the first case the name itself is regarded as having a wonderful power, especially over human affairs; it is a magic formula…In the second case, the name is pronounced not necessarily as indicative of things that are therein suggested, but in order to work out a certain psychological process thus set up.

He is speaking here of “namu amida butsu,” but the principle applies to every variety of mantra. When we repeat certain words over and over, is it with an outward or an inward intention? Are we trying to influence someone or something out there that is separate from us, or is it we ourselves in here who is affected by the repetition of the mantra?

In every religion there are outward-directed and inward-directed followers. For example, in Buddhism the Pure Land believers consider that repeating “namu amida butsu” brings all kinds of benefits from various deities:

When we say "Namu-amida-butsu," the countless Buddhas throughout the ten quarters, surrounding us a hundredfold, a thousandfold, rejoice in and protect us.

OK. Maybe. I doubt it, but everyone is entitled to their own beliefs.

I find that the Zen approach to mantra meditation makes a lot more sense, for it is psychological rather than theological. D.T. Suzuki says that when “namu amida butsu” is repeated without regard to the meaning of the words, or envisioning that countless Buddhas are hearing the invocation, a profound alteration in consciousness may occur.

Psychologically considered, the aim of the vocal Nembutsu is to do away with the fundamental dualism which is a condition of our empirical consciousness. By achieving this the devotee rides over the theoretical difficulties and contradictions that have troubled him before. With all intensity of thought and will he has thrown himself into the deeps of his own being.

And what is found in those depths, ultimately, is Buddha nature. So the Pure Land devotee and the Zen practitioner seemingly arrive at the same destination via different avenues. Zen, however, takes a more direct path, since the journey doesn’t involve any appeal to beings or entities separate from the devotee’s own consciousness.

Wanting to better understand what Shin is all about, I bought a book by Taitetsu Unno, "River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to the Pure Land Tradtion of Shin Buddhism."

Well, actually this is the second time I've bought the book, something Amazon reminded me of when I went there just now to get a link to it. I recall that I gave the book away because it didn't resonate with me as much as my other Buddhist books.

But on my second reading, I'm taking a different attitude toward "River of Fire, River of Water." That attitude is in line with the Zen approach described in the above excerpt from my 2005 post.

Meaning, psychological rather than theological. 

I don't believe that repeating Namu Amida Butsu causes countless Buddhas to rejoice in and protect the person reciting those words. However, this mantra, as with any mantra, has an effect upon the person speaking it.

Thus if we find that a mantra produces some good quality in us, this is  wonderful. We just shouldn't believe that the quality entered into us from the outside, from some corner of the cosmos. 

For example, Unno says in his book, "To bring about such a transformation is the sole purpose of the Primal Vow of Amida, the working of great compassion that courses through the universe."

When I read those words, I thought about disease, hurricanes, tsunamis, birth defects, and all the other nasty stuff that seems incompatible with a compassion that courses through the universe. Then it struck me that compassion isn't out there. It is in here.

Within us. 

Almost everybody is compassionate. Not all the time. Not to everyone deserving of it. But at least to some people, to some living beings, some of the time. Which  naturally includes ourself, for compassion begins with self-compassion.

And we can learn to become more compassionate through a variety of means, including Buddhist practices.

Thus we shouldn't be led astray by the familiar habit of believing that a feeling we have is produced by an external force. When I was a member of a guru-centered religious organization, people would return from seeing the guru and say, "He made me feel so wonderful."

No, he didn't.

The proof of this is that other people can see the guru and feel nothing, or even a negative emotion. Likewise, a movie doesn't make us cry, or laugh, or scared. Our own mind produces those sensations, stimulated by the movie. Someone else may feel no sadness, humor, or fear from the same movie.

That's why I'm confident that the universe doesn't have compassion coursing through it. Our mind can, though. And if repeating Namu Amida Butsu makes us feel more compassionate, or more relaxed, or happier, that's a wonderful thing. 

Religious nationalism must be fought, no matter the religion

Nationalism is dumb. Religious nationalism is dumber.

Believing that your country is superior to all others makes no sense, since lots of people in many countries, maybe most countries, consider that they're fortunate to live in the best country on Earth.

But at least there's no doubt that these countries exist. They have governments. They have boundaries. They can be photographed. So nationalism, as misguided as it is, has a foundation in objective reality.

Religious nationalism, though, adds a fantasy -- the unproven belief that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, or some other religion is rooted in a supernatural realm that truly exists even though there is no demonstrable evidence of it.

This makes religious nationalism a delusion attached to a irrational assumption.

Not surprisingly, religious nationalism is destructive. Hindu nationalism leads to violence and oppression of minorities in India. Jewish nationalism makes it more difficult for Israel to reach an agreement with Palestinians. Islamic nationalism encourages terrorists. Christian nationalism fosters divisiveness in the United States.

Actually, more than divisiveness. Christian nationalists played a central role in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's Capitol that was notihing less than a coup attempt. 

An opinion piece in USA Today describes how the Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol used Christian rhetoric to justify their unjustifiable actions. Here's excerpts from "Christian nationalism is a threat, and not just from Capitol attackers invoking Jesus."

After a portion of the mob entered the Senate chamber on Jan. 6, a handful of men mounted the podium. One of them lifted his hands and cried out, “Jesus Christ, we invoke your name. Amen.” Then Jacob Chansley, sometimes called the "QAnon Shaman," took his bullhorn and announced gratitude to God for being able to “send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists that this is our nation, not theirs.”

Bare-chested to expose his white supremacist tattoos, he had paused briefly to remove his Viking-inspired horned headdress and cap — presumably to assume a properly humble posture as he claimed the United States for himself and his fellow-believers.   

...It is easy to protest when white Christian nationalism turns violent. Within the chorus of critics, however, are a substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, a leader of the misinformation campaign that led people to believe (falsely) that the presidential election was stolen, is among them.

Speaking in his official capacity as attorney general of Missouri in 2017, he proclaimed at a “Pastors and Pews” meetingthat their charge is to “take the lordship of Christ, that message, into the public realm and to seek the obedience of the nations — of our nation… to influence our society, and even more than that, to transform our society to reflect the gospel truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Hawley is aware that not everyone will become Christian, but believes we should all live by his interpretation of Christian values. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, asserts that elected officials should look to Scripture when making policy, “because every problem we have in America has a solution in the Bible.”  

Look, there's nothing wrong with loving your country, just as there's nothing wrong with loving your religion. But this is akin to loving your spouse or children.

Love isn't a competition. I can love my wife and my child without thinking that they are the very best wife and child in the whole world. It would be crazy  for me to think that way.

Yet that's what religious nationalism does. It perverts the natural love of country and religion into an extreme view that elevates a particular country and a particular religion into an exalted position that is indefensible and dangerous.