Church of the Churchless

What if religions are wrong and there's nothing to find?

In my experience, the most difficult part of writing is the first sentence and the last sentence. With one, there's nothing that comes before. With the other, there's nothing that comes after. So those sentences are unique.

I struggled with the first sentence in my book, Return to the One. Until finally, a sentence popped into my head that seemed just right to me.

If something has been lost and you're not sure where to look for it, there's good reason to start searching right where you are rather than far afield.

Then I spoke about the familiar situation (familiar to me, at least) of looking for your car keys only to discover that they were sitting unnoticed in a pocket or purse the whole time.

But let's think about what's necessary for a search to make sense. To begin with, you really need to have lost something. Meaning, it was in your possession at one point, and now it isn't. Then there has to be a decent probability that you can find that thing you used to possess.

If you're on a cruise and drop your glasses into the ocean while leaning over a railing, you know what you've lost, but for all practical purposes you have a zero chance of finding that item.

In Return to the One I argued that we have a sense of loss, yet most of us don't understand what we're longing to recover: God, or the One. I feel like I did a pretty good job making that argument, yet in my current frame of mind I no longer find what I wrote to be persuasive.

I still like my first sentence in the book, though. But now I see it as pointing toward the desirability of living in the here and now, rather than a there and then. After all, where we are, where everyone is, without exception, is the present moment.

No searching required. Just be here now.

This, of course, is the essence of mindfulness. And of the non-religious aspect of Buddhism, which includes Zen. Such distinguishes these forms of spirituality from the seeking forms of spirituality and religion where there is much talk of a path to be followed, and signs of progress along the way.

Here's some illustrative passages from Jon Kabat-Zinn's book, Mindfulness for Beginners: reclaiming the present moment -- and your life.

Not only is it always now. The "curriculum" of this adventure we call living, where mindfulness can play such a pivotal role, is always what is unfolding in this moment, whether we like what is happening or not. 

Whatever is arising in this moment becomes the curriculum for liberating ourselves from the shackles of greed, hatred, and delusion. We do not need some ideal or romantic fairy tale of what would be best for us. What we most need is what is already given to us: the actuality of things as they are in the only moment we will ever have -- this one.

...So as we have already seen, the notion that in meditation practice there is no place to go, nothing to do, and nothing to attain can be quite strange and mysterious -- even foreign -- to our striving temperaments and our need to always be getting better.

...Non-striving is not trivial. It involves realizing that you are already here. There's no place to go, because the agenda is simply to be awake. 

It is not framed as some ideal that suggests that after forty years of sitting in a cave in the Himalayas, or by studying with august teachers, or doing ten thousand prostrations, or whatever it is, you will necessarily be any better than you are now.

It is likely that you will just be older. What happens now is what matters.

If you don't pay attention now, as Kabir, the great Indian poet of sixteenth-century India said, "You will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death."

...Awareness itself is what mindfulness is about. It is not about achieving an ideal, or a particularly desirable or longed-for special state.

If the mind is thinking: "If I meditate I'll always be compassionate. I'll be like the Dalai Lama. I'll be like Mother Teresa" or whoever your spiritual guru/hero of the moment is, it may help to remind yourself that you don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being like the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa or anybody else. Nor do you know what their interior experience is.

The only person that you have the remotest possibility of being like is yourself. And that, when it comes down to it, is the real challenge of mindfulness: the challenge to be yourself.

The irony, of course, is that you already are.

Mindfulness: whatever happens is the curriculum of that moment

One of the things that I like about the Buddhist notion of emptiness, where change is omnipresent because nothing possesses an inherent existence, is how much money it saves me on books.

For I've found that rather than buying a new book to get some fresh ideas, I can look over the books I already own and reread them. This gives me fresh ideas because I've changed from the last time I read the book, so much of it will seem new to me.

Case in point: a few days ago I was looking at the mindfulness section in my office bookcase and noticed Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness for Beginners: reclaiming the present moment -- and your life. 

Amazon tells me that I bought the hardcover version in 2011, twelve years ago.

Since, I've learned a lot abut mindfulness, but I still consider myself a beginner, so I decided to take another look at the book. Based on my highlighting and notes in the back part of the book, I can tell that what most appeals to me now is different from what I liked in my first reading. 

Here's some passages that resonated with me in the first part of the book, which I finished re-reading today.

(1) I'm not opposed to the idea of discipline. However, I also like to flow with life as much as possible. A mini-chapter on "The Beauty of Discipline" (they're all just a few pages long) had some good things to say on this subject.

The discipline I am referring to is really the willingness to bring the spaciousness and clarity of awareness back over and over again to whatever is going on -- even as we feel we are being pulled in a thousand different directions. 

Just taking this kind of of stance toward our own experience, without trying to fix or change anything at all, is an act of generosity toward oneself, an act of intelligence, an act of kindness.

The word discipline comes from disciple, someone who is in a position to learn. So when we bring a certain discipline to the cultivation of mindfulness and are aware of how challenging it is to bring a sustained attending to any aspect of our lives, we are actually creating the conditions for learning something fundamental from life itself.

Then life becomes the meditation practice and the meditation teacher, and whatever happens in any moment is simply the curriculum of that moment. 

(2) I've never understood why some people view thinking as negative, something opposed to a spiritual life, a mindful life. A "Befriending Our Thinking" chapter corrects this misconception.

It is very important as a beginner that you understand right from the start that meditation is about befriending your thinking, about holding it gently in awareness, no matter what is on your mind in a particular moment. It is not about shutting off your thoughts or changing them in any way.

Meditation is not suggesting that it would be better if you didn't think and were simply to suppress all those sometimes unruly, disturbing, and disquieting, sometimes uplifting and creative thoughts when they arise.

If you do try to suppress your thinking, you are just going to wind up with a gigantic headache. Such a pursuit is unwise, pure folly -- like trying to stop the ocean from waving. It is the very nature of the ocean for its surface to change as a result of changing atmospheric conditions.

...The mind is similar. The surface can be extremely labile, changing constantly with the changing "weather patterns" of our lives: our emotions, moods, thoughts, our experiences, everything, often with little or no awareness on our part.

We can feel victimized by our thoughts, or blinded by them. We can easily mistake them for the truth or for reality when in actuality they are just waves on its surface, however tumultuous they may be at times.

The entirety of our mind, on the other hand, is by its very nature deep, vast, intrinsically still and quiet, like the depths of the ocean.

(3) There's a me. But it's not mine. This teaching of Buddhism, and also of modern neuroscience, is both wonderfully appealing to me and also wonderfully confusing. Jon Kabat-Zinn explains things in a chapter called "Our Love Affair with Personal Pronouns -- Especially I, Me, and Mine."

The Buddha taught for forty-five years. He is said to have said that all of his teachings could be encapsulated in one sentence. If that is so, perhaps we might want to remember what it was, even if we don't necessarily understand it at first. Imagine forty-five years of profound teaching distilled into one sentence: "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine.'"

It might be helpful to reflect on what the Buddha might have meant when he used the verb "to cling." "Nothing is to be clung to as 'I,' 'me,' or 'mine'" does not mean there is no "you." It isn't suggesting that perhaps you will have to hire someone to put on your pants in the morning because there's no "you" to do it.

Nor does it mean that you should give away all the money in your bank account because it is not yours and there is no real bank anyway.

What it means is that clinging is optional, that we can recognize it when it arises and choose not to feed it. It means that the selfing habit is a major part of our default setting, that mode of mind that we revert to constantly when we go unconscious or drone on in the automatic pilot doing mode. 

It means that how we relate to all our moments, all our experiences, is a choice.

It means that we can make the choice, moment by moment, to recognize how much we do cling to "I," "me," and "mine," how self-oriented and self-preoccupied we can be, and then decide not to cling to them, or more reasonably, to catch ourselves when we do it.

It is saying that we don't have to automatically and with no awareness fall into the habits of self-identification, self-centeredness, and selfing. What is more, if we are open to looking at ourselves afresh, we can really see that these thought-habits actually distort reality, create illusions and delusions, and ultimately imprison us. 

The appealing notion of "good enough"

Back in my religious-believing days, I would have viewed this as a sign from God. Now, I just see it as an interesting coincidence. But who knows? Maybe it is a sign from God!

Last week I'd scribbled on a large post-it note some of what Sam Harris had said in a guided meditation of his Waking Up app, then stuck the note next to books that I read every morning before meditating. It quoted Harris as saying:

The goal of meditation is to realize that consciousness as it is, is good enough. Not waiting for something to happen. 

I planned to write about "good enough" today in a churchless post. Since I'd been reading about Zen recently, this morning I picked up a book that I'd set aside during my Zen phase: Question Everything, a collection of brief essays from the New York Times philosophy series.

A bookmark I'd put in Question Everything led me to the next essay that I hadn't read yet. The title that leapt out at me was "The Good-Enough Life" by Avram Alpert. I'll share the passages that I highlighted.

Ideals of greatness cut across the American political spectrum... The desire for greatness also unites the diverse philosophical camps of Western ethics.

Aristotle called for practicing the highest virtue. Kant believed in an ethical rule so stringent not even he thought it was achievable by mortals. Bentham's utilitarianism is about maximizing happiness. Marx sought the great world for all. Modern-day libertarians will stop at nothing to increase personal freedom and profit.

These differences surely matter, but while the definition of greatness changes, greatness itself is sought by each in his own way.

Swimming against the tide of greatness is a counter-history of ethics embodied by schools of thought as diverse as Buddhism, Romanticism, and psychoanalysis. It is by borrowing from D.W. Winnicott, an important figure in the development of psychoanalysis, that we get perhaps the best name for this other ethics: "the good-enough life."

...To fully become good enough is to grow up into a world that is itself good enough, that is as full of care and love as it is suffering and frustration.

From Buddhism and Romanticism we can get a fuller picture of what such a good enough world could be like. Buddhism offers a criticism of the caste system and the idea that some people have to live lives of servitude in order to ensure the greatness of others.

It posits instead the idea of the "middle path," a life that is neither excessively materialistic nor too ascetic. And some Buddhist thinkers, such as the sixth century Persian-Chinese monk Jizang, even insist that this middle life, this good-enough life, is the birthright of not only all humans, but also all of nature as well.

...The Romantic poets and philosophers extend this vision of good-enoughness to embrace what they would call "the ordinary" or "the everyday." This does not refer to the everyday annoyances or anxieties we experience, but the fact that within what is most ordinary, most basic, and most familiar, we might find a delight unimaginable if we find meaning only in greatness.

...Being good enough is not easy. It takes a tremendous amount of work to smile purely while waiting, exhausted, in a grocery line. Or to be good enough to loved ones to both support them and allow them to experience frustration.

And it remains to be seen if we as a society can establish a good-enough relation to one another, where individuals and nations do not strive for their unique greatness, but rather work together to create the conditions of decency necessary for all.

Achieving this will also require us to develop a good-enough relation to the natural world, one in which we recognize both the abundance and the limitations of the planet we share with infinite other life-forms, each seeking its own path toward good-enoughness. 

If we do manage any of these things, it will not be because we have achieved greatness, but because we have recognized that none of them are achievable until greatness itself is forgotten.

I could say more about this subject, but I feel that this blog post is good enough as it is.

Emptiness is the key to understanding Buddha nature

A few days ago, in a blog post about Shunryu Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I said:

If you're unsure what Buddha nature consists of, join the club, because I feel the same way. But I have some ideas gained from re-reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I'll share them in an upcoming post.

This is that post. Of course, before launching into what I consider Buddha nature is all about, it bears saying that like so many other subjects in Zen, Buddha nature supposedly is beyond words and concepts.

OK, no argument there.

But so is love, and we humans write and say copious amounts about love, which remains a subjective sensation, not anything that can be dissected or analyzed in an objective fashion. So I have no problem with trying to describe Buddha-nature. 

After all, while I embrace much of Buddhism, as long as it is stripped of its religious and supernatural aspects, I'm not a Buddhist. I'm just a guy who is trying to understand life and reality, and Buddhism has supplied some of the puzzle pieces that I've been able to put together so far in that quest.

After I'd published the post where I said I'd discuss Buddha nature in a succeeding post, I started to think about the most likely place Buddha nature would reside. It quickly dawned on me that an obvious place to look (really obvious) was in the core notion of Buddhism: emptiness. 

OK, some would say that emptiness isn't the core notion, but a core notion. They can make that argument, but since they're not writing this post, and I am, I'm sticking with the core notion. I say that because emptiness is what distinguishes Buddhism from religions that assume there's an unchanging essence at the root of reality: God, Brahman, Spirit, whatever you want to call it. Or of us, an enduring soul or self.

Buddhism says, no, there isn't. Everything is marked by emptiness. Which includes emptiness. (I once had a book called The Emptiness of Emptiness, which Amazon tells me I bought in 1998; I loved the title but must have given it away, since I can't find it.)

However, I do have a pleasingly readable book about emptiness by Guy Newland, Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-Kha-Pa's great treatise on the stages of the path.

I just saw that in the Amazon description of the book, it's noted that "Readers are hard-pressed to find books that can help them understand the central concept in Mahayana Buddhism—the idea that ultimate reality is emptiness." So this buttresses my contention that emptiness is the core notion of Buddhism.

Here's how Newland talks about emptiness in the first few pages of his book.

We suffer unnecessarily because we do not know ourselves. Like addicts fiercely clinging to a drug, we cannot let go of the sense that we are substantial, solid, independent, and autonomous.

...Of course, we do exist. We are living beings. We make choices and our choices make a difference, for ourselves and others. But at some level, for all of us, we cannot leave it at that. To be real, to be alive, we feel that we must deep down somehow exist in a solid and independent way.

Death tells us a very different story, but for that very reason we find a million ways to avoid hearing the message of death. The message is that we are impermanent. Our bodies are disintegrating moment by moment, right now. 

And though we desperately want to believe otherwise, the truth is that beneath our ever-changing minds and aging bodies there is no eternal and essential self. We have no natural existence, no independent way of existing.

We exist contingently, interdependently. We exist, but only in dependence on our ancestors, our body parts, our food, air, and water, and the other members of our society. We could not and do not exist otherwise. Devoid of any independent or substantial nature, our existence is possible only because it is far less rigid, less concrete, than what we imagine it to be.

Rather than seeing things as they are, we superimpose upon ourselves -- and on things around us -- a false existence, a self-existence or essential reality that actually does not exist at all. In the Buddhist philosophy explained here, the ultimate truth is the sheer absence, the lack, of any such essence.

This is emptiness (stong pa nyid, shunyata). 

While this may sound bleak, disappointing, or frightening, it is the very nature of reality. And it is reality -- not fantasy -- that is our final hope and our refuge. The path to freedom from needless misery, for ourselves and others, is through profound realization of this fundamental reality.

Thus Buddhism teaches that every human without exception lacks inherent existence or self-existence. Ditto for every other living thing. Ditto for every other non-living thing. Ditto for the Buddha. Ditto for Buddhism. All is marked by emptiness -- interdependence, impermanence, reliance on causes and conditions. Including emptiness itself.

This means that whatever Buddha nature is, it isn't something separate from the universal principle of emptiness. In other words, Buddha nature is marked by the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature, which is how Newland pithily describes emptiness in his glossary. 

With this in mind, here's an excerpt from the "Nothing Special" chapter in Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

If something exists, it has its own true nature, its Buddha nature. In the Pari-nirvana Sutra, Buddha says, "Everything has Buddha nature," but Dogen reads it this way: "Everything is Buddha nature." There is a difference.

If you say, "Everything has Buddha nature," it means Buddha nature is in each existence, so Buddha nature and each existence are different. But when you say, "Everything is Buddha nature," it means everything is Buddha nature itself.

When there is no Buddha nature, there is nothing at all. Something apart from Buddha nature is just a delusion. It may exist in your mind, but such things actually do not exist. So to be a human being is to be a Buddha. Buddha nature is just another name for human nature, our true human nature.

So Buddha nature is the same as true human nature. And we've seen that Buddhism teaches that this nature is emptiness. Meaning, an ever-changing nature, a nature that has no inherent existence, a nature that alters as the causes and conditions that cause us to act, think, and feel change.

Yet just as some people, or more accurately, most people, fail to understand that emptiness is the heart of reality, most people don't understand that Buddha nature is what they truly are. So something is preventing that realization. 

What that something is, that's a big question for Buddhists. Different schools of Buddhism, and different schools of Zen, have a varying approach on how to achieve a realization of Buddha nature. This is how Suzuki describes his Soto Zen approach in the "Limiting Your Activity" chapter.

In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, or any special object of worship. In this respect our practice is somewhat different from the usual religious practices. Joshu, a great Chinese Zen master, said, "A clay Buddha cannot cross water; a bronze Buddha cannot get through a furnace; a wooden Buddha cannot get through fire."

Whatever it is, if your practice is directed toward some particular object, such as a clay, a bronze, or a wooden Buddha, it will not always work. So as long as you have some particular goal in your practice, that practice will not help you completely. It may help as long as you are directed towards that goal, but when you resume your everyday life, it will not work.

You may think that if there no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do. But there is a way.

The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity, or to be concentrated on what you are doing in this moment. Instead of having some particular object in mind, you should limit your activity.

When your mind is wandering about elsewhere you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature. This is our way.

When we practice zazen [meditation] we limit our activity to the smallest extent. Just keeping the right posture and being concentrated on sitting is how we express the universal nature. Then we become Buddha, and we express Buddha nature. So instead of having some object of worship, we just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment.

When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit, you should just sit; when you eat, you should just eat. If you do this, the universal nature is there.

If what Suzuki said above about Buddha nature doesn't make a lot of sense to you, here's some possibly easier-to-grasp excerpts from what Barry Magid said in "What is Buddha nature," which echoes my perspective about emptiness and Buddha nature.

What exactly is Buddha Nature? While we can talk about it many ways, it's probably best to start by saying there's no such thing as Buddha Nature. And the important word in there, of course, is thing. Because we don't want to use the word Buddha Nature to intentionally or unintentionally denote some kind of subtle, mysterious, esoteric essence that lies behind or inside who or what we otherwise seem to be.

Buddha Nature is not a seed or potential or latent capacity that we uncover and develop. It's not a separate true self that we uncover. So what is it? What's a way to talk about Buddha Nature that doesn't lead us down one of these confusing byways?

...To say that all things have Buddha Nature is in a way to simply re-describe or re-perceive what we and things in the world are actually like, as opposed to the description that we or our language can fall into when we talk about selves or chairs or objects as fixed, unchanging things.

Buddha Nature is saying that everything, as it is, rather than being permanent and solid, is actually impermanent and changing. And any permanence is a permanence that we conceptually or linguistically ascribe to it, more or less for our functional or emotional convenience.

That everything by its nature is in a constant state of interdependent flux. Everything is subject to being in relationship to something else, everything is changing over time, and that it is all empty of some fixed essence that is immutable while things around it change.

So to say that something possesses Buddha Nature is not to identify any separate inner quality to that thing, it's just to describe the thing as it already is, from a particular point of view. Or to describe it maybe more strictly from the absence of a usual point of view, that ascribes a certain permanence to it.

And if you're totally confused by everything said in this post, a cartoon provides maybe the best understanding of all about emptiness and Buddha nature.

 

Shunryu Suzuki is a Soto Zen balance to Rinzai's D.T. Suzuki

Having written about D.T. Suzuki's take on Zen Buddhism in a couple of recent posts (here and here), I figured it would be good to balance my Zen scale by re-reading Shunryu Suzuki's wonderful little book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. 

(The book is based on talks by Suzuki. I've written a couple of other blog posts about it here and here.)

They share a name, but D.T. Suzuki leaned strongly in the Rinzai Zen direction while Shunryu Suzuki belonged to the Soto Zen lineage.

Rinzai believes in instant enlightenment through koan study or some other means, like hearing a sound or a Zen master utterance. Soto believes in a gradual approach to enlightenment. I remember this difference by associated Soto with it'll take you so long to be enlightened. 

Of course, Rinzai is no walk in the park, since you've got to put your mind into a Great Doubt and hope that by banging your head against the wall of Zen for months, years, or decades, at some point the wall will instantly dissolve into a warm pool of comfortable enlightenment. 

Personally, I'm more attracted to the Soto way. It just seems to me that most things in life happen gradually, though I did have a Loony Labyrinth Rinzai'ish experience back when I was addicted for a while to playing this early pinball game for the Macintosh computer.

If anyone doubts my claim to instant enlightenment, computer game addiction variety, I offer this description of my satori that I included in a post, "End of spiritual questions is the final answer."

In the early 1990s I had an Apple computer on which I played a pinball game, Loony Labyrinth. I played it a lot. I was addicted to it.

My wife was almost driven crazy by the Loony Labyrinth theme music, especially after I became proficient at making my way through the levels of the game. I could easily play a single game for half an hour.

Eventually I became disturbed by how much time Loony Labyrinth was taking out of my day. I tried to stop playing. But I couldn't. I'd manage a day or two of going pinball cold turkey, but soon I'd be feeding my addiction again.

Until...

I entered the Loony Labyrinth sweet spot, the zone, pinball nirvana. The game began normally. Then I reached levels of Loony Labyrinth'ness never attained before. I couldn't make a mistake. Extra balls and higher levels kept popping up without end.

I think I reached a billion points before the last ball was lost and ecstatic congratulations appeared on my computer monitor. Along with "Play again?"

No thank you. I had zero interest in Loony Labyrinth. My addiction to the game had instantly dropped away without any effort on my part. I never played it again.

Reading U.G.'s "Mind is a Myth" reminded me of how I bounced back and forth between desiring to play Loony Labyrinth, and desiring not to play Loony Labyrinth, until that spontaneous unforced moment came when I simply wasn't interested in Loony Labyrinth.

So, yeah, I've had a profound personal experience of instant enlightenment -- if one defines enlightenment as no longer wanting to play an enticing computer game.

On the other hand, and I have no doubt that Shunryu Suzuki would give me that hand, perhaps via a slap to the side of my ignorant-of-enlightenment head, the short talk he gives near the end of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in a "Buddha's Enlightenment" chapter argues that if anyone looks upon enlightenment the way I did just now, their Zen is useless.

I am very glad to be here on the day Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bo tree. When he attained enlightenment  under the Bo tree, he said, "It is wonderful to see Buddha nature in everything and in each individual!"

What he meant was that when we practice zazen [meditation] we have Buddha nature, and each of us is Buddha himself. By practice he did not mean just to sit under the Bo tree, or to sit in the cross-legged posture.

It is true that this posture is the basic one or original way for us, but actually what Buddha meant was that mountains, trees, flowing water, flowers and plants -- everything as it is -- is the way Buddha is. It means everything is taking Buddha's activity, each thing in its own way.

But the way each thing exists is not to be understood by itself in its own realm of consciousness. What we see or what we hear is just a part, or a limited idea, of what we actually are. But when we just are -- each just existing in his own way -- we are expressing Buddha himself.

In other words, when we practice something such as zazen, then there is Buddha's way or Buddha nature. When we ask what Buddha nature is, it vanishes; but when we just practice zazen, we have full understanding of it.

The only way to understand Buddha nature is just to practice zazen, just to be here as we are. So what Buddha meant by Buddha nature was to be there as he was, beyond the realm of consciousness. 

Buddha nature is our original nature; we have it before we practice zazen and before we acknowledge it in  terms of consciousness. So in this sense, whatever we do is Buddha's activity. If you want to understand it, you cannot understand it. When you give up trying to understand it, true understanding is always there.

Usually after zazen I give a talk, but the reason people come is not just to listen to my talk, but to practice zazen. We should never forget this point. The reason I talk is to encourage you to practice zazen in Buddha's way.

So we say that although you have Buddha nature, if you are under the idea of doing or not doing zazen, or if you cannot admit that you are Buddha, then you understand neither Buddha nature nor zazen. But when you practice zazen in the same way as Buddha did, you will understand what our way is.

We do not talk so much, but through our activity we communicate with each other, intentionally or unintentionally. We should always be alert enough to communicate with or without words. If this point is lost, we will lose the most important point of Buddhism.

Wherever we go, we should not lose this way of life. That is called "being Buddha," or "being the boss." Wherever you go you should be the master of your surroundings. This means you should not lose your way. So this is called Buddha, because if you exist in this way always, you are Buddha himself.

Without trying to be Buddha you are Buddha. This is how we attain enlightenment. To attain enlightenment is to be always with Buddha. By repeating the same thing over and over, we will acquire this kind of understanding. 

But if you lose this point and take pride in your attainment or become discouraged because of your idealistic effort, your practice will confine you by a thick wall. We should not confine ourselves by a self-built wall.

So when zazen time comes, just to get up, to go and sit with your teacher, and to talk to him and listen to him, and then go home again -- all these procedures are our practice. In this way, without any idea of attainment, you are always Buddha.

This is true practice of zazen. Then you may understand the true meaning of Buddha's first statement, "See Buddha nature in various beings, and in every one of us."

If you're unsure what Buddha nature consists of, join the club, because I feel the same way. But I have some ideas gained from re-reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I'll share them in an upcoming post.

A defense of D.T. Suzuki

I was planning to write about a subject other than Zen Buddhism today, but a comment by Appreciative Reader on one of my posts about D.T. Suzuki, a noted author and popularizer of Zen, stimulated me to compose this defense of Suzuki.

Which isn't going to be in my words. I've read three of Suzuki's books, each several times. I consider that this gives me a good feel for both the man and his work. But that's just my opinion. Appreciative Reader has its own, though he admits that he isn't very familiar with Zen, nor with Suzuki. 

What particularly caught my eye was Appreciative Reader's contention that Suzuki was a charlatan who came to the West to make money and a name for himself. That struck me as an odd thing to say, even if someone was deeply familiar with Suzuki and his writings. To just assert that without any evidence struck me as an insult to Suzuki and his legacy.

So I'm requesting that Appreciative Reader read some information about the life of D.T. Suzuki, and consider whether he may be mistaken about him. There's an informative biographical summary of Suzuki on the Association for Asian Studies web site. Here's info on the author:

ERIC CUNNINGHAM is a Professor of East Asian and World History at Gonzaga University. He complements his specialty areas of modern Japanese intellectual history with research in Zen Buddhism, Eastern and Western spirituality, film, and Japanese literature. He is the author of Hallucinating the End of History: Nishida, Zen, and the Psychedelic Eschaton (Academica Press, 2007); Zen Past and Present(AAS, 2011); and over a dozen articles.

The biography is very positive. This is the first (long) paragraph, which I've broken int0 several paragraphs to make it easier to read.

It would be difficult to name any world religious or cultural figure of the twentieth century who did more to transform modern civilization than Zen Buddhist scholar Daisetsu Teitaro (D. T.) Suzuki (1870–1966). While we might look to such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or Mother Teresa and note the profound changes their lives brought to postwar global consciousness, the influence they exercised was of a different species than Suzuki’s.

D. T. Suzuki did not just hold up a “spiritual” mirror to the modern West to reveal its moral contradictions, nor did he engage in activism of any kind. He was, rather, in his unofficial capacity as Zen’s “apostle to the West,” a spirit-minded scholar who consciously wove his life’s work into the fabric of history, helping a modern global society reconsider its assumptions, aspirations, and mode of operating.

As a mentor to such international culture producers as Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Heidegger, John Cage, and Gary Snyder—to name but a few—Suzuki worked effectively across cultural, social, and generational boundaries to help articulate a new historical consciousness whose full effects have yet to be realized. While he may not have occupied as strong a position in the hearts and minds of the masses as other modern spiritual leaders, Suzuki was indeed unique in his contributions to the world’s religious culture.

I also asked ChatGPT to give me a biography of Suzuki, since I was interested in what an artificial intelligence had to say about him.

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, more commonly known as D.T. Suzuki, was a Japanese philosopher, author, and scholar who is best known for his pioneering work in bringing Zen Buddhism to the Western world. He was born on October 18, 1870, in Kanazawa, a city on the west coast of Japan.

Suzuki's father was a physician, and his mother came from a family of samurai. From an early age, Suzuki showed an interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions, and he studied the writings of Confucius and Lao-Tzu as a teenager. He also learned English and began to read Western philosophy.

In 1890, Suzuki enrolled at Tokyo University, where he studied philosophy and Sanskrit. After graduating, he became a lecturer at the same university and began to specialize in the study of Buddhism. He later became a professor of Buddhist philosophy at Otani University in Kyoto, where he taught for many years.

In 1897, Suzuki met the Zen master Shaku Soen, who was then the head of Engakuji temple in Kamakura, Japan. Soen became Suzuki's mentor and introduced him to the practice of Zen meditation. Suzuki became deeply committed to Zen and began to write extensively on the subject, publishing numerous books and articles throughout his career.

Suzuki's work emphasized the practical, experiential nature of Zen, and he emphasized the importance of meditation and direct experience in understanding the teachings of Zen. His most famous book, "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism," was first published in 1934 and is still widely read today.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Suzuki began to travel to the United States and Europe to give lectures and seminars on Zen Buddhism. He became a popular speaker and was widely credited with introducing Zen to the Western world. His work influenced many leading Western philosophers, theologians, and writers, including Martin Heidegger, Thomas Merton, and Jack Kerouac.

Suzuki remained active in teaching and writing throughout his life, and he continued to be a leading figure in the Zen community until his death in 1966 at the age of 95. Today, he is widely regarded as one of the most important Zen masters of the 20th century, and his work continues to be influential in both Eastern and Western philosophy and religion.

Zen is Buddhism stripped down to the spirit

I'm continuing to enjoy re-reading D.T. Suzuki's collection of writings in the 1956 edition of Zen Buddhism, a book that I've had for over 50 years (yeah, I'm old) and wrote about a few days ago in D.T. Suzuki on the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind. 

Suzuki is a pleasingly clear author. He also doesn't mince words, as you'll see below where I share some passages about the difference he sees between Indian and Chinese ways of thinking. The chapter I'm writing about today is "Zen in Relation to Buddhism Generally."

It helped me better understand why Zen considers itself to be the genuine heir to what the Buddha taught. 

The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.

But Suzuki starts off the chapter with a recognition that Zen can be off-putting.

Superficially, indeed, there is something in Zen so bizarre and even irrational as to frighten the pious literary followers of the so-called primitive Buddhism and to make them declare that Zen is not Buddhism but a Chinese anomaly of it.

I mentioned the seventh century Zen adept, Hui-neng, in my previous post. Suzuki says that he was chosen as the sixth patriarch of Zen because the fifth patriarch observed that of his five hundred followers, four hundred and ninety-nine understand well what Buddhism is, except for Hui-neng. 

This marvelous anecdote shows how different Zen is from other spiritual traditions. Zen practitioners clearly are intelligent and logical, notably including D.T. Suzuki. However, they are after the experience Buddhism offers, not a description of it.

And Zen arose as a reaction to the deification of Buddha after his death. 

The process of deification thus constantly went on until, some centuries after the death of the Master, he became a direct manifestation of the Supreme Being himself -- in fact, he was the Highest One in the flesh, in him there was a divine humanity in perfect realization. He was Son of God or the Buddha and the Redeemer of the world.

...Indeed, the teaching is to be interpreted in the light of the teacher's divine personality. The later now predominates over the whole system; he is the centre whence radiate the rays of Enlightenment, salvation is only possible in believing in him as saviour. 

So Suzuki argues that the simple essence of the Buddha's teachings got covered up by a mass of supernaturalism, dogmatism, and theology. Zen seeks to recover the lost spirit of Buddhism.

When we wish to understand Buddhism thoroughly we must dive deep into its bottom where lies its living spirit. Those that are satisfied with a superficial view of its dogmatical aspect are apt to let go of the spirit which will truly explain the inner life of Buddhism.

This occurred in China, not India. Suzuki explains why.

To understand how the doctrine of Enlightenment or self-realization came to be translated in China as Zen Buddhism, we must first see where the Chinese mind varies from the Indian generally. When this is done, Zen will appear as a most natural product of the Chinese soil, where Buddhism has been successfully transplanted in spite of many adverse conditions. 

Roughly, then, the Chinese are above all a most practical people, while the Indians are visionary and highly speculative. We cannot perhaps judge the Chinese as unimaginative and lacking in the dramatic sense, but when they are compared with the inhabitants of the Buddha's native land they look so grey, so sombre.

Ouch! Guess I should have given a trigger warning to any Chinese readers of this blog post. Suzuki doesn't stop there. It gets worse.

The geographical features of each country are singularly reflected in the people. The tropical luxuriance of imagination so strikingly contrasts with the wintry dreariness of common practicalness. The Indians are subtle in analysis and dazzling in poetic flight; the Chinese are children of earthly life, they plod, they never soar away into the air.

Suzuki finds a lot to like in the Indian mentality, even though it isn't conducive to Zen.

The Indians found quite a novel way of illustrating philosophical truths that cannot be applied to analytical reasoning. They resorted to miracles or supernatural phenomena for their illustration. Thus they made the Buddha a great magician; not only the Buddha but almost all the chief characters appearing in the Mahayana scriptures became magicians.

And in my view this is one of the most charming features of the Mahayana texts -- this description of supernatural phenomena in connection with the teaching of abstruse doctrine.

...At all events the above references will suffice, I believe, to establish my thesis that the reason for the introduction of supernaturalism into the Mahayana literature of Buddhism was to demonstrate the intellectual impossibility of comprehending spiritual facts.

But the Chinese had a better way. 

The Chinese have no aptitude like Indians for hiding themselves in the clouds of mystery and supernaturalism. Chwang-tzu and Lieh-tzu were the nearest to the Indian type of mind in ancient China, but their mysticism does not begin to approach that of the Indian.

...The Chinese genius was to demonstrate itself in some other way. When they began inwardly to assimilate Buddhism as the doctrine of Enlightenment, the only course that opened to their concrete practical minds was to produce Zen.

When we come to Zen after seeing all the wonderful miracles displayed by the Indian Mahayana writers, and after the highly abstracted speculations of the Madhyamika thinkers, what a change of scenery do we have here?

No rays are issuing from the Buddha's forehead, no retinues of Boddhisattvas reveal themselves before you, there is indeed nothing that would particularly strike your senses as odd or extraordinary, or as beyond intelligence, beyond the ken of logical reasoning.

The people you associate with are all ordinary mortals like yourselves, no abstract ideas, no dialectical subtleties confront you.

Mountains tower high towards the sky, rivers all pour into the ocean. Plants sprout in the spring and flowers bloom in red. When the moon shines serenely , poets grow mildly drunk and sing a song of eternal peace.

How prosaic, how ordinary, we may say! But here was the Chinese soul, and Buddhism came to grow in it.

When a monk asks who is the Buddha, the master points at his image in the Buddha Hall; no explanations are given, no arguments are suggested. When the mind is the subject of discourse, asks a monk, "What is mind, anyway?" "Mind," says the master. "I do not understand, Sir." "Neither do I," quickly comes from the master.

As the chapter draws to a close, Suzuki restates some key points.

The truth has many avenues of approach through which it makes itself known to the human mind. But the choice it makes depends on certain limitations under which it works. The superabundance of Indian imagination issued in supernaturalism and wonderful symbolism, and the Chinese sense of practicalness and its love for the solid everyday facts of life, resulted in Zen Buddhism.

We may be able to understand, though only tentatively by most readers at present, the following definitions of Zen offered by its masters.

When Joshu was asked what Zen was, he answered, "It is cloudy today and I won't answer." 

To the same question, Ummon's reply was: "That's it." On another occasion the master was not at all affirmative, for he said, "Not a word to be predicated." 

These being some of the definitions given to Zen by the masters, in what relationship did they conceive of Zen as standing to the doctrine of Enlightenment taught in the Sutras? Did they conceive it after the manner of the Lankavatara or after that of the Prajna-paramita?

No, Zen had to have its own way; the Chinese mind refused blindly to follow the Indian models.

D.T. Suzuki on the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind

I've had this book for a long time, probably since my college years (1966-71) when I first dived into the deep waters of Zen Buddhism. The copyright date is 1956. The cost is 95 cents. Ah, the days when paperback books with 294 pages cost under a dollar.

I'm not sure what led me to pull the book out of a Buddhism shelf a few days ago. I guess I needed a hit of classic Zen, since D.T. Suzuki, the author, is described on the back cover as "Zen's chief exponent in English." Of course, since the book was published there's been an explosion of interest in Zen.

For good reason. I consider Zen to be the best inspiration for people like me who fall into the spiritual but not religious camp. (I was religious for 35 years, of an Eastern religion variety, but now am not.)

I love how Zen is so completely this-worldly rather than other-worldly. I love that Zen has no need for God or any other supernatural entity. I love the quirky Zen tales and anecdotes, even when I have trouble grasping them. I love how even though "Zen" typically is paired with "Buddhism," Zen Buddhism doesn't take itself as seriously, nor does it pay much attention to esoteric Buddhist notions like karma and rebirth.

And I love how Zen is thoroughly non-dualistic, having no patience for typical religious preoccupations with virtue and vice. Or purification. This separates Zen, and Buddhism in general, from Hindu philosophy where the Atman/Soul is considered to be hidden under layers of mire that prevents us from realizing its connection with Brahman/God.

Below I've shared excerpts from the book's chapter, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind. They provide a wonderful background for comprehending the unique methods of Zen. I didn't include any excerpts dealing with the rather difficult concepts of Prajna, true understanding of the nature of phenomena.

You'll find a mention of Hui-neng in the initial excerpts. He was a Chinese dude of the seventh century who famously wrote a short poem that according to Suzuki, started Zen as an offshoot of Buddhism. I wrote about him in a 2012 post, "No-self" isn't a spiritual goal, it's what we already are.

I don't claim to fully grasp the following classic Buddhist verses. However, in the past I found the first much more reasonable. Now, the second resonates with me. Here's an excerpt from Mark Epstein's book, "Thoughts Without a Thinker," where he describes some Buddhist seventh-century happenings.

The foremost disciple, Shen-hsiu, who was expecting to assume the role of the master, presented the following.

The body is the Bodhi tree,
The mind is like a clear mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
Allow no grain of dust to cling.

A perfectly acceptable resonse, Shen-hsiu's verse made a virtue of the empty and reflecting mind, a recurrent motif in Buddhist literature. But the clear mirror, like the true self, too easily becomes an object of veneration. Such a view merely replaces the concrete self with a more rarefied version that is then thought to be even more real than the original.

An illiterate kitchen boy, Hui-neng, grasped the imperfection of Shen-hsiu's response and presented the following alternative:

The Bodhi is not a tree,
The clear mirror is nowhere standing,
Fundamentally not one thing exists,
Where then is a grain of dust to cling? 

...Hui-neng avoided the common misconception of liberation as a mind emptied of its contents or a body emptied of its emotions. The mind, or self, that we conceive of does not exist in the way we imagine, said Hui-neng; if all things are empty, to what can we cling? If the mind itself is already empty, why should it have to be cleansed? If the emotions are empty, why do they have to be eliminated?

Again, spiritual seekers are faced with some clear (though not always easy to discern) alternatives. Having been a "wipe the mirror" meditation-guy for many, many years, I realize how difficult it is for people who've embraced a self-realization path to recognize the validity of another way.

I urge you, though, to open yourself to the notion that you are not a self. Nor a soul. Nor a drop of the divine ocean. You're as empty of intrinsic being as anything or anyone else in this vast, mysterious cosmos.

Here's some of the passages that I especially resonated with in D.T. Suzuki's The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind chapter. Dhyana basically means meditation.

The dominant idea prevailing up to the time of Hui-neng was that the Buddha-nature with which all beings are endowed is thoroughly pure and undefiled as to its self-being. The business of the Yogin is therefore to bring out his self-nature, which is the Buddha-nature, in its original purity.

But, as I said before, in practice this is apt to lead the Yogin to the conception of something separate which retains its purity behind all the darkness enveloping his individual mind... But serenely reflecting or contemplating on the purity of the Mind has a suicidal effect on life, and Hui-neng vehemently protested against this type of meditation. (p. 159)

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There are as many types of binding as there are types of clinging. When we cling to purity we thereby make a form of it, and we are purity-bound. For the same reason, when we cling to or abide with emptiness, we are emptiness-bound; when we abide with Dhyana or tranquilization, we are Dhyana-bound. 

However excellent are the merits of these spiritual exercises, they inevitably lead us to a state of bondage in one way or another. In this there is no emancipation. The whole system of Zen discipline may thus be said to be nothing but a series of attempts to set us absolutely free from all forms of bondage.

Even when we talk of "seeing into one's self-nature," this seeing has also a binding effect on us if it is construed as having something in it specifically set up; that is, if the seeing is a specific state of consciousness. For this is the "binding." (p. 161)

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That Dhyana has nothing to do with mere sitting cross-legged in meditation, as is generally supposed by outsiders, or as has been maintained by Shen-hsiu and his school ever since the days of Hui-neng, is here asserted in a most unmistakable manner.

Dhyana is not quietism, not is it tranquilization; it is rather acting, moving, performing deeds, seeing, hearing, thinking, remembering. Dhyana is attained where there is, so to speak, no Dhyana practiced. (p. 181)

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Hui-neng's school thus objects to Shen-hsiu's on the ground that those who spend their time in sitting cross-legged in meditation, trying to realize the state of tranquility, are seekers after some tangible attainment; they are upholders of the doctrine of original purity, which they consider to be something intellectually demonstrable; they are gazers at a special object which can be picked up among other relative objects and shown to others as one points at the moon; they cling to this special object as something most precious, forgetting that this clinging degrades the value of their cherished object because it is thereby brought down to the same order of being as themselves; because of this clinging and abiding in it, they cherish a certain definite state of consciousness as the ultimate point they should attain; therefore they are never truly emancipated, they have not cut the last string which keeps them still on this side of existence. (p.195)

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A monk asked Ching-t'sen, of Chang-sha: "What is meant by 'one's everyday thought is the Tao'?"
CHING-T'SEN: "When I feel sleepy, I sleep; when I want to sit, I sit."
MONK: "I fail to follow you."
CHING-T'SEN: "In summer we seek a cool place; when cold we sit by a fire." (p. 207)

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A Vinaya master called Yuan came to Tai-chu Hui-hai, and asked, "When disciplining oneself in the Tao, is there any special way of doing it?"
HUI-HAI: "Yes, there is."
YUAN: "What is that?"
HUI-HAI: "When hungry one eats; when tired, one sleeps."
YUAN: "That is what other people do; is their way the same as yours?"
HUI-HAI: "Not the same."
YUAN: "Why not?"
HUI-HAI: "When they eat, they do not just eat, they conjure up all kinds of imagination; when they sleep, they do not just sleep, they are given up to varieties of idle thoughts. That is why theirs is not my way." (p. 207)

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Both in Te-shan and Huang-po, Zen is taught to be something in direct contact with our daily life; there are no speculations soaring heavenward, no abstractions making one's head reel, and no sentimental sweetness which turns religion into a love-drama. Facts of daily experience are taken as they come to us, and from them a state of no-mind-ness is extracted. (p. 219)

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A monk asked Hsiang-nien: "What is your eye that does not deceive others?" This is a literal translation; the question really demands the expression of the master's genuine, undeceiving attitude of mind which controls all his experiences. 

Our eye is generally found covered with all kinds of dust, and the refraction of light thereby caused fails to give us the correct view of things. The master responded right away, saying: "Look, look, winter is approaching."

Probably this mondo took place in a mountain monastery surrounded with trees, now bare and trembling in the wind, and both were looking at the snow-bearing clouds. The approach of the winter was quite certain; there was no deception about it.

But the monk wondered if there was not something more than that and said: "What is the ultimate meaning of it?" The master was perfectly natural and his answer was: "And then we have the gentle spring breeze."

In this there is no allusion to deep metaphysical concepts, but a plain fact of observation is told in the most ordinary language. 

The monk's question may elicit in the hands of the philosopher or theologian quite a different form of treatment, but the Zen master's eye is always on facts of experience accessible to everybody, and verifiable by him whenever he wants.

Whatever mysticism enveloped the master was not on his side, but on the side of him who looks for it because of his own blindness. (p. 222)

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We always seek something beyond or behind our experience, and forget that this seeking is an endless regression either way, inward or outward, upward or downward. The Zen master is well aware of this, and avoids the complications. (p. 224)

I might have had a mini-enlightenment last night

Even though I no longer believe in God, I'm attracted to non-religious Buddhism. So even though I don't engage in any sort of formal Buddhist practice, I like the idea of being enlightened. 

Just seems better than being endarkened. 

Though I can't say with any certainty that the intuitive flash that coursed through my consciousness as I was heading to bed last night was a sign of a mini-enlightenment (I'm way too humble to claim a maxi-enlightenment), I like the idea that it was.

So I'll go with that.

I was heading down the stairs that lead to the bedroom where I sleep when an unbidden realization hit me. This wasn't a thought, or an emotion. It was an instant knowing. 

What I knew at that moment surprised me, given my usual tendency to see myself more positively than I'm sure I deserve. 

It was: You're just an ordinary person. Nothing special. Nothing really to be proud of.

While this didn't feel like an emotion, the after-effect of the knowing was pleasant. I felt like a weight had been lifted from me, the burden of trying to appear more competent and accomplished than I actually was.

It was sort of akin to the sensation I had decades ago when, after believing that I could figure out a way to actively manage the investments my wife and I have and beat the market, I concluded after considerable reading and research that investing in index funds was the way to go.

Meaning, I'd just try to be average, as I wrote about in a 2008 post, "Profitable spiritual investing."

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

This is pretty much the same way I feel about my spiritual investing strategy now.

For many years I thought I could beat the system. That is, find a way to salvation, God-realization, enlightenment, or whatever, that would lead to a better result than others would enjoy who weren't privy to the inside knowledge I possessed.

I've written about my shift from "active" to "passive" spiritual investing in previous posts:
"Running so fast to become motionless"
"Spiritual diversification, a sound investment strategy"
"Spiritual investing takes nothing"

Here's  an excerpt from "Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers," a 2014 post that echoes some of what I experienced in last night's mini-enlightenment. 

Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God. But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why.

I no longer feel special.

Virtually every religion and spiritual path considers that its adherents have a special relationship with God or whatever other supernatural entity they believe in. 

There are so many chosen people on Earth, they vastly outnumber the unchosen, the non-special group I'm pleased to be a part of.

I understand that feeling special has its own delights.

In my case, I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization which taught that those approved for initiation by the guru had been "marked" to return to God/heaven after a karma-cleansing meditation process.

Cool!

For about 35 years I embraced the enjoyable belief that, out of all the billions of people on this planet, I was one of a relative few who were the special beloveds of the supreme being. 

Of course, devout Christians, Jews, and Muslims feel the same way, along with countless believers in other theological belief systems. 

Eventually I started to realize that all the talk I was hearing about being "humble servants of the Lord and the guru" was, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. Genuine humility wasn't much to be seen among devotees of my spiritual organization.

Not surprising.

Since members of this group were told over and over that they've been singled out by a higher power to learn cosmic truths and experience realms of reality not available to other human beings, naturally a pervading sense of "tribal" pride was evident throughout the organization.

We were the cool kids in the spiritual lunch room. Other faiths were inferior, since they didn't have the direct connection to God we did. 

I'm happy that this form of egotism has been discarded.

Sure, I've still got lots of other self-centered tendencies rattling around in my psyche, as we all do. But to get rid of The Big One, a belief that God had chosen me to be his best buddy for eternity, whereas my infidel wife wasn't going to get the same afterlife prize -- this increased my humility quotient by a lot.

Now I don't expect that I'm going to have any different sort of afterlife anyone else does. Namely, I strongly suspect, none at all. 

I also don't expect that there is any power guiding my life which isn't also directing the lives of every other entity on Earth. 

Thus I've embraced a sort of "index fund" approach to spirituality.

Meaning, I don't try to beat the market. I don't assume that I have any special knowledge, any special talent, any special relationship with reality. Whatever laws of nature apply to everybody else, I'm content with.

Why I prefer Buddhism to Advaita Vedanta

On Sam Harris' Waking Up app, I noticed there was a lengthy (1 hr 37 m) discussion between Harris and Swami Sarvapriyananda, a Hindu monk and Minister of the Vedanta Society of New York.

So for the past few days I'd listen to 10-15 minutes or so of the discussion every morning. Today I finished listening to the whole exchange as I was driving around in my car.

It was really interesting.

Both Harris and Sarvapriyananda are highly knowledgeable about both Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. Of course, Harris embraces Buddhism and Sarvapriyananda Vedanta, so each of them is more expert in their favored philosophy.

While Harris and Sarvapriyananda had a lot in common, some core differences couldn't be bridged.

Buddhism is all about emptiness, the lack of anything in existence standing in isolation from other entities, while Vedanta assumes that humans possess an eternal soul, Atman, that is essentially one with God, Brahman.

I thought that Harris had the better arguments in this regard. The notion of no-self is solidly compatible with modern neuroscience, while Atman and Brahman are religious abstractions. 

I can't recall any instance where Harris relied on a Buddhist scripture to make a point (he favors the Tibetan Buddhism sect of Dzogchen), while Sarvapriyananda frequently cited Hindu or Vedanta writings, speaking them in an Indian language, then translating into English, which he speaks very well.

Consciousness is key in Vedanta.

For Harris, consciousness probably arises from the matter of the brain, though he acknowledges that many mysteries remain about the nature of consciousness. By contrast, for Sarvapriyananda, human consciousness partakes of the universal consciousness of Brahman, God.

However, Sarvapriyananda never explained what the evidence is for this. Apparently it is just supposed to be taken on faith, even though he would repeatedly say that Advaita Vedanta doesn't require religious faith, just a willingness to experience the truths of Vedanta.

At one point Harris invited Sarvapriyananda to take five minutes or so to lead Harris and listeners to the discussion in a Vedanta exercise, or meditation, that would show the approach of Vedanta.

But Sarvapriyananda used that time, and more, to describe a logical approach to Vedanta, which disappointed me.

Often I listen to Harris' guided meditations on the Waking Up app. He uses a variety of simple exercises to help the listener understand that there is no thinker inside our head in addition to thoughts, no hearer inside our head in addition to hearing, and so on.

So I came away feeling that Buddhism is on a much solider foundation when it comes to the doctrine of no-self than Advaita Vedanta is when it comes to the doctrine of Atman, or soul. Still, I found Sarvapriyananda to be appealingly humble and open-minded.

He just buys into the truth of Vedanta more strongly than I see Harris buying into the truth of Buddhism, perhaps because Harris' secular variety of Buddhism is much less dogmatic than Sarvapriyananda's religious brand of Advaita Vedanta. 

I got the impression that Sarvapriyananda embraces Vedanta because it tells such a compelling story within the Hindu tradition. Indeed, Harris admitted that he finds the notion of Atman and Brahman to be more appealing than Buddhist emptiness and no-self.

However, Harris considers Buddhism to be closer to the truth. I agree.

The self, like emotions, is constructed by the brain

I'm continuing to make progress on reading Lisa Feldman Barrett's book, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. 

As noted in a previous post about the book, I'm glad that I decided to read it straight through, even though some chapters seemed more appealing than others. Barrett is a good writer. She organized her book well, with interesting topics in every chapter.

Before I get to how she views the self, which is pretty much how I also see it, as something constructed, not a given, I want to briefly mention her wise words about jumping to conclusions about how someone feels.

We're all guilty of this, me certainly included. It's easy to do, but we shouldn't do it. Feelings, or emotions, are private. And Barrett stresses that there aren't universal outward signs of any emotion. For example, a person can smile when happy, smile when anxious, or smile when angry.

So assuming that they are happy because they're smiling isn't justified. Of course, it's way worse when people on social media claim that they know how someone feels just from words appearing on a computer screen.

Barrett writes:

Perceptions of emotion are guesses, and they're "correct" only when they match the other person's experience: that is, both people agree on which [emotion] concept to apply. Anytime you think you know how someone else feels, your confidence has nothing to do with actual knowledge. You're just having a moment of affective realism [tendency of your feelings to affect what you see].

Now, regarding the self, Barrett views it as constructed in much the same way she views emotions as constructed.

Not by a conscious act of will, but via brain processes. This means that just as there is no hard-wired place in the brain where anger or any other emotion resides (an essentialist view), neither do we possess, or are, an essential self, a perspective shared by Buddhism. She writes:

My scientific definition of the self is inspired by the workings of the brain yet is sympathetic to the Buddhist view. The self is part of social reality. It's not exactly a fiction, but neither is it objectively real in nature like a neutron. It depends on other people.

In scientific terms, your predictions in the moment, and your actions that derive from them, depend to some extent on the way that others treat you. You can't be a self by yourself. We can understand why Tom Hanks's character in the movie Cast Away, who was marooned alone on a desert island for four years, needed to create a companion named Wilson out of a volleyball.

Certain behaviors and preferences are consistent with your self and some are not. There are foods you enjoy and others you'd prefer not to eat. You might call yourself a "dog person" or a "cat person." These behaviors and preferences vary quite a bit: your favorite food might be French fries, but not at every meal.

The most enthusiastic dog lovers know a couple of dogs that they can't stand and are secretly fond of a few cats. Overall, your self is like a collection of dos and don'ts that summarizes your likes, dislikes, and habits in the moment.

We've seen something like this before. These dos and don'ts are like the features of a concept. So in my view, the self is a plain, ordinary concept just like "Tree," "Things That Protect You from Stinging Insects," and "Fear."

I am quite sure you don't go around thinking of yourself as a concept, but just go with me for a bit on this.

If the self is a concept, then you construct instances of your self by simulation. Each instance fits your goals in the moment. Sometimes you categorize yourself by your career. Sometimes you're a parent, or a child, or a lover. Sometimes you're just a body.

Social psychologists say that we have multiple selves, but you can think of this repertoire as instances of a single, goal-based concept called "The Self" in which the goal shifts based on context. 

How does your brain keep track of all the varied instances of your "Self" as an infant, a young child, an adolescent, a middle-aged adult, and an older adult? Because one part has remained constant: you've always had a body. 

Every concept you have ever learned includes the state of your body (as interoceptive predictions) at the time of learning. Some concepts involve a lot of interoception, such as "Sadness," and others have less, such as "Plastic Wrap," but they're always in relation to the same body.

So every category you construct -- about objects in the world, other people, purely mental concepts like "Justice," and so on -- contains a little bit of you. This is the rudimentary mental basis of your sense of self. 

The fiction of the self, paralleling the Buddhist idea, is that you have some enduring essence that makes you who you are. You do not. 

I speculate that your self is constructed anew in every moment by the same predictive, core systems that construct emotions, including our familiar pair of networks (interoceptive and control), among others, as they categorize the continuous stream of sensation from your body and the world.

As a matter of fact, a portion of the interoceptive network, called the default mode network, has been called the "self system." It consistently increases in activity during self-reflection. If you have atrophy in your default mode network, as happens in Alzheimer's disease, you eventually lose your sense of self.

Deconstructing the self offers a new inspiration for how to become the master of your emotions. By tweaking your conceptual system and changing your predictions, you not only change your future experiences; you can actually change your "Self."

...Western culture has some common wisdom associated with these [Buddhist] ideas. Don't be materialistic. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Sticks and stones [may break my bones but words shall never hurt me]. But I am asking you to take this one step further.

When you are suffering from some ill or insult that has befallen you, ask yourself: Are you really in jeopardy here? Or is this so-called injury merely threatening the social reality of your self?

The answer will help you recategorize your pounding heartbeat, the knot in the pit of your stomach, and your sweaty brow as purely physical sensations, leaving your worry, anger, and dejection to dissolve like an antacid tablet in water.

Sam Harris and Loch Kelly on nondual mindfulness

Today I set aside my doubts about Loch Kelly's approach in his "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide For Living an Awakened Life," and continued on with my re-reading of his book. 

I liked what I read, by and large. Then I listened to the daily guided meditation by Sam Harris on his Waking Up app. It struck me as highly compatible with what I'd just read in Kelly's book. Which isn't surprising, since both Harris and Kelly embrace a similar Buddhist approach, that of Dzogchen.

Here's my transcription of what Harris said.

Just sit comfortably. And close your eyes. And become aware of the weight of your body, the feeling of gravity holding you in place. See if you can let the shape of your body dissolve. And notice whatever sensations spontaneously appear.

As you pay attention to sensations, let your mind expand and become an open space in which everything is appearing. Notice if your mind feels contracted at all. Are you stressed, or tired, restless? Notice if there is any pattern of energy here that's coloring your awareness.

Recognize that too as a mere appearance in this prior condition of consciousness. 

However your mind feels in this moment, recognize that this moment is the only moment in your life that is your life. This is the only moment that stands a chance of being real. Everything else is just something you're thinking about.

Resolve to fully connect here.

The moment you realize your mind has been captured by thought, drop back and recognize thought itself as an appearance. Where does it come from? And where does it go? There is a single space of consciousness. 

See if you can feel your identity with that. Not meditating on it. Not wandering from it. Everything that's happening is happening in, and as, consciousness. And if it feels like you are the observer, the center of experience, see if you can observe how that feeling arises.

It must be something, yet another appearance. Otherwise you couldn't feel it. It too is arising in a condition that is totally undefined. Just be that condition. 

In the last minutes of the session, pay careful attention to each breath. Simply cover each inhalation and exhalation with your awareness. 

OK. Well, as you go about your day today, you might try an exercise. You'll confront many things that annoy you, that cause you anxiety. You'll see many things online about which you have a strong feeling of judgement.

As a frame for the rest of the day, see if you can just decide in advance to dial down your reaction to all of that. Dial it down to 50 percent. Be 50 percent less reactive, less perturbed, less judgmental. Just see if you can decide to do that, and see if it has an effect.

And I'll see you here tomorrow for the next session of the Waking Up course.

Before speaking more abut Kelly's approach to mindfulness, I'll share a recent Pearls Before Swine comic that illustrates what I find lacking in my own approach to mindfulness. 

OK, usually I'm not quite as bad off as Rat, but some days I'm right there with him. And I have to say that I think Rat is correct about what mindfulness is all about. Kelly includes a quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn, a leading teacher of mindfulness.

Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally. 

Here's how Kelly distinguishes traditional mindfulness from effortless mindfulness. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this in another blog post. For now I'll just share this passage, which appeals to me even though I'm not completely confident that what he describes is attainable.

One simple way to distinguish the two types of mindfulness is to say that they are both being mindful but from different levels of mind. This is important because what you can be mindful of depends on what level of mind you're mindful from.

In effortless mindfulness, it is not as important to focus on what thoughts and emotions are arising but rather to ask, "Who or what level of mind are they arising to?" In effortless mindfulness, we shift from focusing on what we are aware of into focusing on awareness itself -- moving from a detached observer and into a view from interconnected awake awareness.

In deliberate mindfulness, we are aware, from our mindful witness, of things arising and passing. Effortless mindfulness invites us to be more intimately connected with our experience and all that is happening. This begins when we shift out of both our conceptual mind and our mindful witness and into awake awareness.

Deliberate mindfulness focuses on the contents of consciousness, while effortless mindfulness turns back to be aware of the context -- awareness itself. With deliberate mindfulness, we discover who we are not. With effortless mindfulness, we discover who we essentially are.

Effortless mindfulness does not lead to being detached from emotions but rather to both feeling more vulnerable and to having more capacity to be tender and welcoming of all feelings. The radical reports from my students are that our essential nature is loving, joyous, and free of worry, and we just need to untie the knots of conditioning to reveal these natural qualities. 

A philosopher's take on fate, Buddhism, religions

Before the book I've been writing about recently -- Kieran Setiya's Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way -- is put away on a bookshelf where I'll have trouble finding it (my books aren't organized very well), I wanted to share some final observations from Setiya that I found interesting.

No such thing as fate. I agree with Setiya that fate doesn't exist, at least not in the sense of events in our life being preordained. I'd say, though, that they're ordained, in that chains of causes and effects control everything in the cosmos outside of the rarified realm of quantum mechanics where probabilities rule. But that realm has no bearing on everyday life.

In this passage Setiya is talking about an episode in baseball.

No one''s life can be reduced to one event, one enterprise, or one ambition. Each is made of facts and facts and facts. Nor is there any fate to be discerned in what transpires. As we relive the season, the at bat, we see how differently things could go, the sheer contingency of failure and success.

More than that, we see how tempting and how dangerous it is to tell the stories of our lives as if they had some hidden teleology, driving onward to predestined ends.

...We can be at fault for failure, but the chaos of contingency in life -- the pitch that dips or doesn't, the catch that bounces from the heel of a glove -- reminds us that control is never absolute and often limited. Whatever your mistakes, moreover, there is more to you than the failures they explain, more than any project you pursue.

Buddhism is mistaken. I can sort of see why Setiya makes the following critique of Buddhism, but he's speaking of the religious side of Buddhism, the supernatural side. There's also a secular side to Buddhism that does proclaim that living in the present moment is the wisest thing to do. (Atelic means being unfinished, incomplete.)

An alternative reading of the film treats life in Groundhog Day as an allegory for samsara, the cycle of suffering conjectured by Buddhist philosophy, in which we live life after woeful life according to the law of karma. The goal is to be free of this cycle, no longer reborn, in the nothingness of nirvana. Thus Phil escapes from repetition to mortality.

Whatever its merits, the Buddhist interpretation of Groundhog Day, and of human life, is not the same as mine. For Buddhists, the power of now is about the transience and emptiness of reality, overcoming attachment to persons and things, the liberation of disengaging from what is fragile, perishable, shifting. For me, it's the opposite. 

To value the atelic is to attach oneself to the present. It's not about emptiness but fullness, not about detachment or liberation but engagement with, and attention to, what is happening now.

...In Midlife, I wrote about meditation as a way to reorient oneself to the atelic. To focus mindfully on breathing, sitting, listening to sounds, detached from future goals to learn to appreciate the present; it nurtures an ability to find atelic value that transmits into everyday life.

Not all religions appeal to God. Setiya is absolutely correct about this. It's a good thing to remember when religious believers make a sharp distinction between atheism and religiosity. Actually, some religions, like Buddhism, are atheistic.

The first thing to say is that not all religions appeal to God. Beside the monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- there are polytheistic religions like Hinduism, and religions that arte nontheistic, like Buddhism.

It's not easy to say what these religions have in common, what makes them religions, binding together a "total reaction upon life" with creeds and doctrines, rituals and practices. But one element of any religion is belief, or faith, in something that transcends the ordinary world -- if not God or gods then a metaphysics of some kind, as in the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness and the puzzling proposition that there is no self.

Religion is, I believe, essentially metaphysical. It provides a picture of the world as a whole that guides our total reaction: how we are meant to feel about life, the universe, and everything. This might involve our relation to God or it might not; but it always involves a metaphysics of transcendence. 

Take Buddhism, for instance. What distinguishes Buddhist meditation from mindfulness as a method of stress control is the aim of ending suffering through discovering the truth -- in particular, the truth that you don't exist. If neither you nor those you love are real in anything like the way you once believed, mortality and loss are less traumatic.

(That is the idea, anyway; it's never been clear to me why discovering this "truth" is not at least as traumatic, like being told that everyone you know, including you, is already dead.)

To come to terms with life through meditation for serenity, or through talk therapy, is not to be religious, or to know the meaning of life, since it is not to discover any such truth.

"Living as a River" is a great non-religious Buddhist book

A few days ago I was drawn to look over the Buddhism section of my bookcase to see if a title appealed to me as something to re-read.

One did. Bodhipaksa's Living as a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change. (The author was born as Graeme Stephen in Scotland before he took on a Buddhist name.)

After buying the book in 2011, I've written several blog posts about it.

Live as a river -- fluid, dynamic, interconnected
We have a conventional self, but not a soul-self

And I mentioned the book in Overcoming the fear of non-existence, where I tried to answer a question from a commenter, Chris, about how I've been doing in this regard.

Chris, if you haven't done this already, I encourage you to delve into what I look upon as "neuroscientific Buddhism." Or, "Buddhist neuroscience."

Namely, writers and researchers who are trying to make sense of the apparently solid fact that the self (or soul) doesn't exist as a separate, distinct, independent entity. Currently I'm reading, and enjoying, "Living as a River" -- a book I've blogged about recently.

I think the approach Bodhipaksa, the author, takes is right on for dealing with a fear of non-existence. HIs subtitle is fearlessness in the face of change. Well, what's a bigger change than death?

Fear, of anything, usually doesn't disappear suddenly.

The Six Element Practice described in "Living as a River" is traditional Buddhism, yet pleasingly updated with modern scientific insights and stripped of unnecessary religious dogma (such as rebirth).

Again, it seems to be that the best way to deal with a fear of not-existing is to undertand -- really understand, intutively, emotionally, in your gut -- that you have never existed as the self that is afraid of non-existence.

The Introduction is available to read at no charge. When I re-read the Introduction yesterday, I was much impressed by how clearly Bodhipaksa writes, with a pleasing focus on melding science and Buddhist philosophy.

His take on consciousness makes a lot of sense. 

Mentally, we are each "networked" to other minds through the action of mirror neurons, which allow us to share other people's experiences. You could not in fact have a conscious self, in the sense that you have one now, without having encountered other conscious selves.

Consciousness is something "caught." In fact, there's no such "thing" as consciousness. Consciousness is not an entity that sits within us, awaiting contact with the outside world; rather it's a series of activities that arise in dependence upon contact with the world.

The ultimate act of letting go is to abandon the delusion that consciousness and the world are separate things. The more we reflect, the more we can recognize that there is nothing permanent or separate in the body or mind that can constitute the very limited and limiting kind of self we commonly assume we have.

I also like how Bodhipaksa views the Buddha.

The Buddha wasn't a god, or a prophet, but an introspective philosopher who attempted to live a life of ethics and intellectual integrity, based as much as possible on truths discoverable by the unaided (although not untrained) mind.

Because the title "Buddha," which means "awakened one," can be a bit offputting for some people, for the purposes of this chapter I won't refer to him as "the Buddha," but by his family name, Gautama. Perhaps this may bring him down to earth and make him seem less of a "religious" figure.

I'm pretty sure Sam Harris' "pure awareness" doesn't exist

As much as I like Sam Harris' approach to meditation, which basically is Buddhism (Vipassana variety) minus the Buddhist part, I'm still left with a key question.

Which if asked of a Zen master likely would earn me a smack on my head or kick of my butt -- or more mildly, a quizzical look and an admonition to return to my meditation mat and seek more diligently for the true nature of my self.

That self, of course, doesn't really exist in Buddhism, nor in Sam Harris' guided meditations on his Waking Up app.

So whoever it is who has this question about meditation isn't an enduring standalone Soul or Self with a capital "S." That who is something else. Which means my question might be unanswerable, since an answer seemingly would have to come from an entity that doesn't exist.

Confusing? Absolutely. So let's leave those thoughts behind and focus on the question.

Who or what is aware of the contents of my consciousness?

Harris, echoing the Buddhist notion of emptiness, that everything in existence is dependent on causes and conditions existing in a vast web of interdependency, likes to say that everything in a human mind is a modification of consciousness.

This includes the idea, everything in a human mind is a modification of consciousness.

Or, the feeling of being a self that has such an idea. No matter where you turn in the mind, no matter what elevated sensation of this'ness or that'ness that makes you think, ah, unvarnished truth, it's all just a modification of consciousness in Harris' view.

OK.

This assumes a dualism that sort of bothers me, since we have (1) consciousness and (2) contents of consciousness, even though I'm not aware of ever being purely consciousness, and can't imagine what this would be like or how one would know they were pure consciousness since Harris says that consciousness isn't something we possess but what we are.

Nonetheless, in his Waking Up book Harris claims to have attained a state of pure consciousness without any content during a lengthy meditation retreat.

But his consciousness must at least have contained the sensation, or memory, or perception, or something that allowed him to conclude that he experienced consciousness without any content. In other words, at minimum Harris' consciousness must have included the content of I'm not experiencing any content.

Which returns me to my question.

I doubt there is such a thing as pure awareness, or pure consciousness. Anyone who claims to have experienced such a state, including Sam Harris, almost certainly is mistaking a feeling or thought of pure awareness for the actual thing. 

So my attitude is that one part of my conscious brain is aware of other parts of my conscious brain, which could include a sensation of Wow, I'm experiencing pure awareness! My meditation rocks!

This leaves mindfulness as an activity, or ability, to be aware of the contents of consciousness, with mindfulness being part of those contents. Thus Harris is on the right track when he says that mindfulness practice leads us to see that the contents of consciousness are constantly shifting and changing within our mind.

Where I disagree with him is his assumption that somehow we are clear pure consciousness. This is at odds with modern neuroscience, as I wrote about in Brain's "dark energy" casts doubt on pure awareness. 

I wrote about my problem with Harris' claim of pure awareness in this post. What I said in 2016 still makes sense to me now.

But as I said in the previous post, I can't grasp what Harris is getting at when he writes about what he experienced while meditating:

There were periods during which all thought subsided, and any sense of having a body disappeared. What remained was a blissful expanse of conscious peace that had no reference point in any of the usual sensory channels. 

Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses -- and that the idea of a "pure consciousness" apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken.

Hmmmm. I'm just as confident that they are not mistaken.  It seems obvious that everyday consciousness isn't limited to sense experiences. Dreaming is a conscious act. It doesn't involve seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching via the five senses. 

Likewise, I can believe that in a state of deep meditation, Sam Harris did indeed lose any sense of having a body, and wasn't thinking in any ordinary sense. But Harris was still conscious of something, right? He speaks of this as "a blissful expanse of conscious peace." 

That doesn't sound like "pure consciousness." It sounds like consciousness of a blissful expanse of conscious peace. No thought. No sensory impressions. But there were contents within Harris' consciousness: bliss, an expanse, peace.

Harris appears to view consciousness as something separate and distinct from what the brain does. Yet Harris makes clear that brains are us. For example:

We know, of course, that human minds are the product of human brains. There is simply no question that your ability to decode and understand this sentence depends upon neurophysiological events taking place inside your head at this moment. But most of this mental work occurs entirely in the dark, and it is a mystery why any part of the process should be attended by consciousness.

This passage makes good sense. Aside from the final part of the last sentence. 

Harris sees a mystery where there doesn't have to be one. He distinguishes between (1) brain processes and (2) consciousness. But if consciousness is a product of the human brain, not something separate and distinct from the brain, then consciousness is part of what the brain does.

Consciousness is a brain process.

Sam Harris isn't crystal clear about meditation

A few days ago I shared some brief thoughts from Sam Harris on what makes life worth living. He ended with:

I don't think there's just one answer to this question. We might want to say that love is what makes life worth living, or doing meaningful and creative work, or appreciating the beauty of nature, or helping other people and making their lives better.

And I'd probably say all of these things. 

But all of these things have a common property. They all depend on real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present.

And that's what meditation is, whether most people know it or not. Meditation is the essence of everything else that makes life worth living.

Not surprisingly, I took those words to mean that meditation is about real attention, real presence of mind, real connection with life in the present.

But since those qualities can be had outside of meditation, it seemed to me that meditation is just one way of manifesting those qualities -- which Harris said above also can be had through love, meaningful work, the beauty of nature, and helping other people.

This morning I re-read the "Meditation" chapter in Harris' book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I came away confused about what he means by meditation, a confusion that I've felt since the first time I read Waking Up in 2014. 

I included this quote in I've finished Sam Harris' "Waking Up." Guess I have, sort of.

The form of transcendence that appears to link directly to ethical behavior and human well-being is that which occurs in the midst of ordinary waking life... The freedom from self that is both the goal and foundation of spiritual life is coincident with normal perception and cognition -- though, as I have already said, this can be difficult to realize.

Here we see three things: (1) Transcendence can occur in ordinary waking life and also in meditation; (2) Freedom from a sense of self is what Harris sees as the goal of spiritual life and meditation; (3) Freedom from a sense of self can be difficult to realize.

Note that while Harris said "freedom from self," I changed that to "freedom from a sense of self," because Harris is clear that there is no enduring self in the human psyche, no supernatural soul, no ghost in the machine, as Arthur Koestler put it in his book.

Here's a quote from another post I wrote about Waking Up, "How Sam Harris views Dzogchen."

Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience -- self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light -- constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.

That principle is the subject of this book. The feeling that we call "I" is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is -- the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes looking out at a world separate from yourself -- can be altered or entirely extinguished.

Although such experiences of "self-transcendence" are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are.

Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by "spirituality" in the context of this book.

OK, I'm good with that. It's how we cut through the illusion of the self that I have questions about. The way I see it, there are lots of ways to diminish the feeling of being an "I" looking at a world separate from us.

This is how I put it back in 2014 in Questions I had in Sam Harris' "Waking Up" meditation chapter.

To me, this sense [of not being a separate self] is very common. Harris studied Dzogchen under various teachers to achieve the insight he describes. Other people experience it naturally in the course of everyday life.

It sounds virtually identical to "flow." That pleasant feeling when the thing you are doing isn't different from the doing itself. Athletes feel it. Dancers feel it. Musicians feel it. Thinkers lost in thought feel it. People having sex feel it.

For sure, I'm no enlightened being.

But often I feel little if any distance between what I'm experiencing and my experience of it. After I finish this post I'm going to return to reading an engrossing novel. Like an engrossing movie, I get absorbed in the fictional world and temporarily forget that it isn't real.

Well, actually it is real. For me. My mind makes it so. 

I think Harris makes this notion of selflessness more complicated than it needs to be. After all, since I agree with Harris (and Buddhism, and modern neuroscience) that we humans don't possess or are a self separate from the world and the goings-on of the human brain, there is no self to be gotten rid of, as is implied when people talk about losing the ego.

It's confusing that in his meditation chapter, Harris uses the analogy of looking through a window and seeing our own reflection in the glass. The way I see it, this would be a bad thing if the window is consciousness and the reflection is our sense of self. Aren't we supposed to be losing that sense? 

Yet Harris writes:

Of course, you could easily direct her attention to the surface of the window by touching the glass with your hand. This would be akin to the "pointing-out instruction of Dzogchen." However, here the analogy begins to break down. 

It is very difficult to imagine someone's not being able to see her reflection in a window even after years of looking -- but that is what happens when a person begins most forms of spiritual practice. 

Most techniques of meditation are, in essence, elaborate ways for looking through the window in the hope that if one only sees the world in greater detail, an image of one's true face will eventually appear. Imagine a teaching like this: If you just focus on the trees swaying outside the window without distracting, you will see your true face.

Undoubtedly, such an instruction would be an obstacle to seeing what otherwise be seen directly.

But there's nothing to see. The self doesn't exist. Harris is clear about this. His main approach in the guided meditations on his Waking Up app, which I've been listening to for several years, is to look for the self that is doing the looking. 

When you can't find it, that's what you're looking for: an absence, not a presence. So I favor more of a relaxed Taoist approach to meditation rather than Harris' rather serious Buddhist approach. There's no self to be found, so everywhere you look, you've succeeded in not finding it.

Congratulations! End of spiritual search!

"No mind" in Zen doesn't mean what most people think it does

Something led me this morning to take a look at a book I'd already read, James Austin's Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen.

Austin is a clinical neurologist, researcher, and long-time Zen practitioner, so his background is right up my reading alley. And I enjoyed re-reading the first few pages of his book.

But the Great God Google, whose presence I feature in a search box in the right sidebar of this blog, led me to a couple of posts I wrote in 2011, when I bought this book.

Turns out that I didn't resonate all that much with it, according to "Selfless Insight" -- intriguing, yet disappointing, Zen book.

I didn't enjoy neurologist James Austin's book about Zen and neuroscience as much as I thought I would.

My reading of "Selfless Insight: Zen and the Meditative Transformations of Consciousness" may show, of course, that I'm neither selfless nor imbued with enlightened (or kensho'ened) insight -- both of which I plead guilty to.

Regardless, I expected that Austin would provide a clearer and simpler analysis of how Zen meditation and brain science relate. He's written two other books on this subject, this being the most recent, so perhaps "Selfless Insight" is more complicated than his earlier works.

I was left with just a few Memorable Impressions after reading each of the book's often-dense 269 pages.

The detailed descriptions of brain functioning and anatomy didn't resonate much with me, as I was looking for something other than a neurology text for the layman. Ditto with the many summaries of research on how this or that in the brain results in X sorts of awareness under condition Y.

Eventually the stylistic medium of the book became a main message for me, albeit a familiar one. Namely, whatever we experience in (or as) our consciousness is produced by certain states in the physical brain.

I like Zen philosophy and literature because it is grounded. Heaven, the supernatural, God, soul, spirit -- all this airy-fairy stuff is meaningless to a Zen Buddhist like Austin, which enables him to easily meld his scientific bent with his meditative practice.

One of the things I did like about the book was a simple meditation approach, which is described in James Austin's "Just This" meditation practice. I tried it out this morning for a whole 15 minutes and felt pleasingly Zen'ish. I'm entitled to my Enlightenment Diploma now!

And I enjoyed what Austin had to say about the Zen notion of "no-mind," which I came across in the few pages I read today.

Zen keeps reminding us to focus on more than the psychological problems caused by the way the Self has been conditioned. We also need to be alert to the huge problems caused by the way we use words. Zen itself has introduced some confusing words.

Consider the Zen phrase mu-shin, meaning "no-mind." It doesn't mean a vacuity, a mental blank, a state of unconsciousness. 

Instead, it refers to the basic clarity and receptive nature of our mind once we liberate it from discursive thoughts driven by unskillful emotional reverberations. The Korean Zen Master Chinul (1158-1210) devoted fifteen chapters to his "Straightforward Explanation of the True Mind."

Chinul carefully explained what this no-mind was. It was a mind not deluded by errant thinking. This mind could still access its full range of subtle discriminative mental functions.

Thus, "no-mind" refers, not only to our being keenly aware of each present moment in a calm, clear manner, it can also include our normal allied capacities for calm, clear, objective mindful introspection. 

Treat yourself like you would a friend: gently, kindly, compassionately

Loving-kindness meditation as I've learned it typically starts off with an "I" statement, then moves on to "you" and "all."

As in May I be happy... May you be happy... May all be happy.

Sometimes this rubs me the wrong way, as it seems egotistical to start off with an intention for my happiness, and only then visualize someone close to me (usually my wife) and all of humanity being happy.

But given the way most people treat themselves, it does seem like it makes sense to extend loving-kindness to our own self before extending it to others.

Often we're considerably harder on ourselves than on a friend or loved one. 

This is one of the points that Ethan Kross makes in his book, Chatter, about the voice in our heads and what it says to us.

If a friend wasn't careful enough when backing out of a parking space and hit a light pole, damaging their bumper, after hearing their tale of woe likely we'd say something like, "Hey, accidents happen, this is no big deal."

But our inner voice, which in this case is an inner critic, says, "Jeez, what a stupid thing to do; only an idiot would smash their bumper while backing up."

There's no way we'd say that to a friend or loved one. So why can't we look upon ourselves as deserving of the same positive attitude we'd give to someone in distress who we care about? Don't we care about ourselves?

An article in the May 2022 issue of Scientific American, "Others Don't Think You're a Mess," has some observations about the relationship between being vulnerable with others, and being compassionate to ourself.

Self-compassion originated from ancient Buddhist teachings. Today's scientists, however, have researcher Kristin Neff of the University of Texas at Austin to thank for defining the concept in detailed psychological terms.

According to Neff, self-compassion consists of three components. First, self-kindness entails a caring and understanding response toward one's own suffering.

For instance, when someone is struggling with feelings of failure, Neff encourages people to imagine how they might speak supportively to a friend in that position and then apply similar thoughts to themselves.

The second component -- common humanity -- refers to recognizing pain and failures as an unavoidable part of life. Finally, mindfulness entails clear awareness of the present moment -- neither ignoring one's difficulties nor exaggerating their magnitude.

My colleagues and I thought that self-compassion could influence how people perceive their own display of vulnerability. After all, vulnerable situations can trigger a lot of shame and fear, and these moments are precisely when self-compassion is most helpful.

For example, consider admitting a mistake. People who treat themselves as they would treat a good friend wouldn't shame themselves for being imperfect. Instead they would remind themselves that imperfection comes with the territory for all mortal creatures.

In addition, a mindful approach to the mistake would lessen the need to either exaggerate or deny its significance. 

...Luckily, our sense of self-compassion is not set in stone, and it can be intentionally cultivated. For example, journaling exercises can help people change the way they think about their own strengths and weaknesses by writing about one's feelings with awareness and acceptance, offering oneself words of support and reflecting on how others share difficult experiences.

By developing a kind, mindful attitude toward ourselves, we can become more comfortable with showing our vulnerabilities. This practice, in turn, can strengthen our close relationships.

Great Zen story about letting go

Recently I tried to tell someone about a story in the Zen Flesh, Zen Bones book that I've had since my college days, 1966-71. 

(It's got a price of 95 cents on the cover. I see that Amazon has a copy of that 1961 edition listed for $81.53. But to me its priceless (almost), I've enjoyed the book so much over the years.)

When I checked the book today, I found that while I'd gotten the gist of the story correct, but not the details. Regardless, I really like the story.

Great advice about letting go, whether of the past or of anything else that needs releasing.

This was my misremembered version.

Two Zen monks who are walking along come to a river where a woman is standing on a bank, unable to cross the rushing water.

 

One monk puts her on his back and carries her across. The monks then walk on in silence for a while until his companion says, “We monks are not supposed to have anything to do with women. Why did you do what you did?” The other monk says, “I dropped her a mile back. You are still carrying her in your mind.”

 

And this is the version in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. 

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. 

"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he could no longer restrain himself.

"We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Selves only get in the way. That's why we are persons.

I'm sharing some final excepts from Jay Garfield's book, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self, because I liked what he had to say near the end of his book so much.

What the world needs now is what the world has always needed: a recognition by people that we are interdependent, not independent. A belief in selves fosters a feeling of independence. A recognition that we are persons, not selves, fosters a feeling of interdependence.

Here's how Garfield puts it.

But there is a dark side to narrative as well. For one thing, as we saw in chapter 3, we are not the sole authors of the stories in which we participate, and some of these tales may be deeply destructive. For another, it is all too easy to take the characters in the narratives we coauthor to exist independently of the stories.

And just as we shouldn't ever think that Hamlet has any reality outside of the play, we shouldn't ever think that we as persons have any reality outside of the narratives in which we participate. 

In one sense, we are as fictional as Shakespeare's creations: we are constituted as characters through the telling of a story; we are absolutely real within the bounds of that story; we are created, not discovered; and we have no reality at all outside of the context of the stories in which we figure. 

This is why we are persons, and not selves. 

But we are real persons, and not imaginary persons. Therefore, in another sense, we are different from Hamlet and his cohort, and that difference is every bit as important as the similarity. Shakespeare's fiction is local, optional, and its roles need not be instantiated; the fiction in which we play our parts is global and mandatory.

...As we saw earlier, nobody believes that we just discover money; we create it. And we do so by interpreting various bits of paper, metal, and states of computing machinery as having monetary value. In virtue of that interpretation, those values become real.

Money, that is, gets its very existence as well as its value through our collective acts of interpretation, not through any preexisting reality on which we stumbled. It is fictional.

But this does not mean that there is no truth of the matter regarding whether a particular piece of paper is a dollar note, or what my bank balance is. There is fact within that fiction; the creation of the fiction, and its globality, mandatoriness, and use constitute its truth.

And the fact that in the United States we simply decided to drive on the right does not make it any less a fact that that is the correct side on which to drive; instead, that is what makes it a fact in the first place. That is, while the whole system is created, once created it in turn creates a context in which particular statements can be true or false in virtue of the interpretations already assigned to others.

That is how it is with us, when considered not as hominids, but as persons.

...For these reasons, there can be no "problem of other minds" any more than there can be a "problem of other dollars." To be a mind is not to house inner particulars that have their character independent of how we understand them, and that we somehow discover; it is to interpret and to be interpreted; to address and to be addressed; to participate in the complex human conversation, and to share a world with others like us.

So to know that others have minds is not to know that they have mysterious inner worlds, and to know that we have minds is to know that we are like others. We each know immediately that we are minds not through introspection, but through participation. We know that others are minds not through inference and not through clairvoyance, but through co-participation. 

To allow ourselves to be addressed by, or to address, another is to take her to be a person, to have a mind; it is at the same time to take ourselves to be persons.

This phenomenon of address requires neither reflexive self-consciousness, nor qualitative experience, nor interiority, nor autonomy, nor any of the other properties associated with selves. It only requires us to recognize each other as members of the same community, sharing the same world.

But what is it to recognize ourselves and others to be members of a community of persons? It is, we shall see, to see one another as valuable, as objects of care and respect. And the deepest reason to forego the myth of the self for the recognition of the reality of the person is that it is persons, not selves, that merit respect and care.

...We care about one another, take one another's desires and welfares seriously, respect one another's rights, and treat one another with consideration -- in short, we value one another -- to the degree that we embrace one another in a moral and social community.

That is, moral valuation depends on seeing one another as together in a shared world. 

This does not require that we agree about everything, or that our projects are the same. We can respect and honor those with whom we share little in the way of beliefs, values, or way of life. But this kind of moral respect and recognition does require that we see one another as potential fellows in a larger sense: as playing analogous roles in the human world, and so as potential addressees or addressors -- more simply, as conversation partners.

And conversation requires both a broadly shared background of concerns and presuppositions, and distinct vantage points or perspectives discernible against that shared background. As we have seen, it also presupposes that each party takes the other as one who can take seriously what the other says, and who has something to tell the other.

...When we recognize each other in this sense -- a kind of recognition absolutely fundamental to our collective lives -- we recognize our interdependence, not our independence; our roles and commitments, not our subjectivity; our participation in a shared world, not our spectatorship of a world of which we are independent. 

In short, this kind of moral and political recognition is the recognition of persons, not of selves. 

...This attitude of universal care is the foundation of genuine moral concern. When we adopt this attitude, we do not see ourselves and others as isolated, independent selves who happen to find one another in proximity in a featureless abstract landscape, and then have to figure out whether and how to relate to each other.

Instead, we see one another as persons who share a world pregnant with meaning -- meaning that we collectively create, and which in turn shapes our lives. In seeing one another in this way, we come to appreciate the way we co-constitute each other, and the ways in which we are responsive and responsible to one another.

Selves could never facilitate our moral or collective lives; they could only get in the way.

That is why Dogen writes that "To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to cast off body and mind; to cast off body and mind is to be affirmed by all things." This affirmation is, and can only be, the affirmation of our shared personhood.

 

Awareness doesn't require a subject who is aware

A few days ago I wrote about how there's no need to find your self, because you don't have one. That's the central message of Jay Garfield's book, "Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self."

Sounds good to me. One of my favorite humorous pieces from The Onion is Search For Self Called Off After 38 Years.

Here's how it starts off.

CHICAGO—The longtime search for self conducted by area man Andrew Speth was called off this week, the 38-year-old said Monday.

"I always thought that if I kept searching and exploring, I'd discover who I truly was," said Speth from his Wrigleyville efficiency. "Well, I looked deep into the innermost recesses of my soul, I plumbed the depths of my subconscious, and you know what I found? An empty, windowless room the size of an aircraft hangar. From now on, if anybody needs me, I'll be sprawled out on this couch drinking black-cherry soda and watching Law & Order like everybody else."

"Fuck it," he added.

My sentiments exactly, though I don't like black-cherry soda or Law & Order. 

The passages below from Garfield's book are considerably more philosophical than The Onion piece, but they share the same message. Stop looking for your self. It's an illusion. 

Here Garfield is talking about a minimal approach to the self. By minimal, he means something that isn't a full-blown transcendent self/soul such as the Atman in Hinduism, the whole ground of being thing where the self/soul is a drop of the ocean of Brahman/God.

Instead, the minimal self is essentially the subject of experience, a view held by Galen Strawson, Evan Thompson, and Dan Zahavi. Strawson puts it this way.

I propose to take the unchallengeable, ontologically non-committal notion of the subject of experience in a minimal or 'thin' way... I mean the subject considered specifically as something 'inner', something mental, the 'self', if you like, the inner 'locus' of consciousness considered just as such.

Well, Garfield finds that notion eminently challengeable. Here's how he describes his challenge, which makes a lot of sense to me. Simply put, there can be thoughts without a thinker, perceptions without a perceiver, and awareness without a singular self that is aware.

To say that awareness is necessarily a property of a subject of awareness, while perhaps seeming to be an innocent grammatical point, in fact commits the very fallacy of reification that we addressed in chapter 2. That is the fallacy of going from the mere fact of awareness to the existence of a subject of awareness. 

To draw this inference is kind of like going from the claim that it is raining to the claim that there is something that is the agent of raining, that is doing the raining. To presume that the very fact of awareness entails the existence of a subject -- in the strong sense that Strawson and other friends of the self have in mind -- is to assume that which is to be proven, viz., that awareness presupposes a self. 

The parallel to the failure of Descartes's cogito argument in which he goes from the mere fact of thinking to the existence of a substantial subject of thought is striking.

...Awareness is most plausibly an umbrella property that reflects an extremely complex set of underlying properties and relations. If this is the case, awareness can be present -- a person can be aware -- without there being any single thing that is aware, just as a nation or corporation can act without there being a singular entity that performs that action.

Now, we might say that if there is awareness, something is aware, e.g., a person, just as we can say that when a corporation sells a product, something, e.g., the corporation, is the seller. But it is plain in that case that we do not thereby implicate a localizable single thing that is a subject or an agent, only a broad set of processes and events.

So even if we grant that awareness always has a subject-object structure, the defender of the reality of the self is not entitled to the premise that the subject is singular, and so cannot presume that it is a self.

But there is also a second, deeper problem with this argument.

The first premise, as we have just noted, presupposes that awareness must have a subject-object structure. We granted that premise for the sake of argument, and we saw that even then we do not get a good argument for the reality of a self. But we can also question the presupposition.

The idea that awareness always has a subject-object structure -- with a subject characterized by a kind of interiority, as opposed to the exterior object that is somehow brought into awareness in that interior space -- might well be an illusion of consciousness.

That is, it might be a fabrication, not a basic reality.

To put the point more precisely, the conviction that awareness is fundamentally a relation between an independent subject and a substantially distinct object may be the result of a cognitive illusion, just as the conviction that we are selves is not the consequence of looking inside and simply finding a self, but of cognitive illusion.

...It makes a great deal of biological, psychological, and ecological sense instead to think of awareness as a constant modulation of the open interaction between an organism and its environment, of the adjustment of the state of the organism and attunement of the posture and goals of the organism as its senses and movements interact with the world it inhabits.

In other words, we can think of awareness as a mode of embedding of the organism in its world, instead of the relation between an interior subject and an exterior object, even if that is how it appears to us in introspection.

To think of awareness in this way is to take seriously the idea that we don't stand against the world as subjects that detect its properties or agents that act on it, but instead are part of the world, and that awareness is more an attunement to our environment than a recording in our minds of what is going on outside.

This approach to cognition, which is called the "embedded, embodied, enactive" model of cognition, is gaining wide acceptance among philosophers and cognitive scientists.

The view that introspection may be wildly deceptive, called "illusionism," is also gaining currency in the philosophy of mind today, inspired in part by the analysis of human existence developed by twentieth- and twenty-first-century existential phenomenologists.

But it is very old in India, and underlies the idea of the nonduality of consciousness articulated both in the Vedanta school and in Buddhism. Philosophers in each of these traditions argued that we are subject to pervasive confusion not only regarding the external world, but also regarding our own nature and regarding the structure of our experience.

So we shold treat Strawson's first premise with suspicion. This suspicion, we have seen, is justified for two reasons: first, our existence may well be that of a complex set of subjective processes as opposed to that of a single self; second, the subject-object structure of awareness that he takes for granted may well be illusory.

Relax: no need to find your self, because you don't have one

I've become a fan of easygoing approaches to spirituality. That's one reason I enjoy Taoism so much. The Taoists I've known don't look upon life very seriously. Neither do many Buddhists.

A common denominator of Taoism and Buddhism is that neither philosophy assumes that we have a self or soul. Meaning, they're selfless. 

This takes the pressure off of goals such as self-realization, self-awareness, knowing one's self, and so on. Those sorts of practices still can be pursued, but with the understanding that there's no such thing as an unchanging self or soul lurking within us. Just substitute "person" for "self."

No-self philosophies, or religions if you like, are very different from self-centered philosophies/religions such as Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. The latter are seriously concerned with what happens to one's immortal soul.

The former say, "What soul? What self? We humans are like everything else that's alive in the world -- ever-changing, interdependent, part and parcel of all that surrounds us, and indeed is us."

Having been a believer for 35 years in an Eastern philosophy that taught we have, or are, a soul, and that the goal of life was to merge one's soul with God insofar as this is possible, I'm able to contrast that point of view with my current embrace of Taoism and non-religious Buddhism.

I'm a lot more relaxed now in my meditation. I no longer try to leave this world behind in hopes of finding a better supernatural reality, but instead simply try to be more aware of what is right here, right now, both inside and outside of me.

This image comes to mind. 

No-self meditators are akin to people lounging on a beach, cool drink in hand, lounging under an umbrella, idly feeling the sand move beneath their toes, watching the sun go down over the ocean. Self-centered meditators are akin to people who make sure they complete an intense workout every day in the hotel exercise room even though they're supposedly on a vacation.

After hearing Jay Garfield converse with Sam Harris for 90 minutes or so on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app, I bought Garfield's book, "Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self." It's an enjoyable read, though a bit philosophically dense in places.

(Garfield is a Professor of Philosophy, Logic, and Buddhist Studies at Smith College and a visiting professor of Buddhist philosophy at Harvard Divinity School.)

I've read four of the ten chapters, so have a way to go in the book. Garfield's Big Idea is that while we are not selves, we are persons. OK, that may seem obvious to those who, like me, embrace science, dislike religion, and don't believe in a soul. But the notion of a self is tough to break away from entirely.

Garfield writes:

In order to be successful, these no-self positions must show both that the idea of the self is incoherent and that everything that the self is meant to explain can be explained in its absence. That is, the proponent of the no-self view must show that everything that the self is meant to explain can actually be accomplished by a person, a socially embedded human being with no self.

In an early chapter, the writings of Candrakirti, a Buddhist who lived in 600-650 CE, are discussed. Garfield says:

Candrakirti was writing in an Indian context. So, the view of the self that he took as the object of negation in his argument (an argument we will explore in chapter 2) is the view that to be a sentient being is to be an atman. This term is usually and appropriately translated into English as self or soul. The idea that the atman lies at the core of our being is ubiquitous in orthodox Indian philosophy, and it was a principal target of Buddhist critique.

In the Vedas, and in particular, the Upanisads -- the texts that ground many of the orthodox Indian philosophical schools -- it is characterized as unitary, as the witness of all that we perceive, as the agent of our actions, and as the enjoyer of our aesthetic experience. It is regarded as that which is always the subject, never the object; and as that which persists through life despite changes in body and mind, and which even persists beyond death and in transmigration.

Sounds good, right? I certainly thought so for 35 years.

But gradually I came to realize that almost certainly I didn't have a self or soul, and that was perfectly fine with me. This realization came about through a variety of means: daily meditation, Buddhist literature, a whole lot of books about modern neuroscience, and simply being mindful of my everyday experience. 

Garfield also uses Western philosophers to buttress the contention of no-self found in Buddhism. This quote from David Hume was familiar to me, but a pleasure to re-read.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without perception, and I never can observe anything but the perception.

A comment from Garfield follows that quote.

Moreover, he [Hume] points out, the collection that we find is not constant, but is always changing. There is nothing permanent in our experience.

If this is so, Hume argues, when we use the word self, there is nothing to which it refers: we are nothing more than bundles of psychophysical processes -- changing from moment to moment -- who imagine ourselves to be more than that.

Note, once again, this is not the absurd claim that we don't exist, but rather the claim that the way we exist -- as persons -- is not the way that we normally take ourselves to exist -- as selves. 

I'll have more to say about this illusion of the self as I read more of "Losing Ourselves."

"Nonduality" is a great book about a fascinating subject

Since I've been writing about nonduality in a couple of previous posts (one explicitly, the other implicitly), I was drawn to pick up David Loy's book, Nonduality, after noticing it gathering dust on a bookshelf.

I've written three posts about the book:
Pink Panther and Alan Watts 
Cutting out the bullshit from "nonduality"
Why an experience of "pure consciousness" says little about reality

A favorite part of the first blog post (September 2013) is a You Tube video by Jeff Foster, The Advaita Trap, in cartoon form. Brilliant. Hopefully I've never sounded this bad, but for sure I've written some posts that included language which, though not so annoying, hit some of the same themes.

What I like about Loy's book, which I've started rereading, is that an early draft of Nonduality was his doctoral dissertation. So there's an intellectual rigor to this book that's lacking in other New Age'y books about nonduality that I've read -- then given away for the annual Salem Library book sale fundraiser.

Yet the back cover says that David Loy "has been a student of Zen for over twenty years and is a qualified Zen teacher." Thus he has some direct experience with the philosophies of nondualism discussed in his book: Hindu Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, and Taoism.

This morning I skipped to a chapter that Loy calls his most important, "The Deconstruction of Dualism." It starts off by discussing a subject that I find fascinating: how two philosophies arose in India that in large part are incompatible with each other.

So when people glibly speak of "Indian philosophy," that's pretty much meaningless unless we know exactly what philosophy is being spoken of. Here's the initial paragraphs of that chapter.

After rejecting the dualism of Sankhya-Yoga, in chapter 5 I suggested an affinity between Buddhism and Vedanta in several ways. But the most important differences between them have not been resolved. As a starting point, we may ask why these two traditions rather than a single tradition arose in India -- and traditions that are not just inconsistent with each other but diametrically opposed in their ontological categories.

T.R.V. Murti summarizes the situation and the contrasting views of each party:

There are two main currents of Indian philosophy -- one having its source in the atma-doctrine of the Upanisads and the other in the anatma doctrine of Buddhism. They conceive reality on two distinct and exclusive patterns.

The Upanisads and the systems following the Brahmanical tradition conceive reality on the pattern of an inner core or soul (atman), immutable and identical amidst an outer region of impermanence and change, to which it is unrelated or but loosely related. This may be termed the Substance-view of reality....

The other tradition is represented by the Buddhist denial of substance (atman) and all that it implies. There is no inner and immutable core in things; everything is in flux. Existence (the universal and the identical) was rejected as illusory; it was but a thought-construction made under the influence of wrong-belief. This may be taken as the Modal view of reality.

However, on the next page Loy writes provocatively:

My intention is rather to demonstrate that both extremes, in trying to eliminate duality, result in much the same description of nonduality -- just as one may travel east or west halfway around the world to arrive at the same place.

I can't remember whether I found Loy's attempt to bridge that gap persuasive. Will have to reread more of his book.

Sam Harris speaks eloquently about non-dual mindfulness

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about my Zen'ish adage that when you're sad, be sad; when you're happy, be happy. 

I mentioned that part of the inspiration for that post came from listening to a conversation Sam Harris had with Nikki Mirghafori on his Waking Up app. 

Mirghafori believes that equanimity is central to spirituality. She has a dualistic approach to enlightenment, or realization, where the goal is to attain an inward state of silent/pure consciousness that is separate from everyday consciousness. 

I skipped quite a bit of the more than two hour conversation. But at about the 1:18 mark of the "Practicing With Ease" recording, I came across a response, or retort, from Sam Harris that I liked a lot. So today I made a transcript of what Harris said.

He's talking about the difference between dualistic mindfulness and non-dual mindfulness.

Dualistic mindfulness is akin to thinking "I'm washing the dishes" while you're washing the dishes. There's a doer separate from the doing, a perceiver separate from what is perceived, a feeler separate from what is felt.

Non-dual mindfulness doesn't make those distinctions. As Harris says in the transcript, it's not where people begin mindfulness practice. But his Dzogchen training, which fits with his neuroscience Ph.D., leads Harris to consider, along with most Buddhists and many or most neuroscientists, that an enduring self is an illusion.

A little while ago I Googled "Sam Harris non-dual mindfulness" to see what has been written on this subject.

The description of a search result on the first page of results looked promising, so I clicked on it. It turned out to be a 2014 blog post I'd written, Non-duality is simply this: observer and observed are one. Cool. What I was searching for turned out to be something the searcher had written. Nicely non-dual. 

So if you want to learn more about non-duality, that's one place to look. This web page also has a good description of non-dual mindfulness. Here's the transcript of what Sam Harris said in the course of his conversation with Nikki Mirghafori.

When I look at how I suffer psychologically, in what sense is mindfulness really an antidote to it? The mindfulness that really is an antidote to it, is the mindfulness that cuts through to this non-dual recognition.

There certainly is some kind of significant relief from suffering possible even with dualistic mindfulness. I'm not going to deny that. It's very useful to learn to be strategically aware of everything, thoughts and feelings and everything you can be aware of. And to have that kind of unhook you from the gross identification with thought that keeps you ruminating and perseverating and miserable.

But take an experience of sadness or anger or fear. You have the full-blown energy of one of those classically negative emotions arising in your mind. And the default state for most people is to feel that as suffering. It's unpleasant, and it's also being sort of connected to thoughts about one's life or one's past or one's future, or the state of the world.

Whatever is occasioning the grief or anger or fear. And now we're not talking about some version of the impersonal vale of tears you went through on your first retreat, but you have reasons, presumably, for being unhappy in this case. You're thinking about those reasons. 

The feeling state is provoking the thought. And the thought is ramifying the feeling state. The whole wheel works of psychological suffering is turning. Yes, you can interrupt that with dualistic mindfulness. But when you ask, what is the recognition that truly equalizes the energy of sadness or fear or anger with anything else?

It's like your freedom is no longer contingent upon this even disappearing, because in this moment even the energy of it has no meaning and no implication. That, to my eye, requires this full insight into non-duality. 

Short of that, there's still this sense of -- I could be slightly overstating this -- but for most people, and perhaps for everyone practicing dualistic mindfulness in a moment like this, there's still this subtle sense that you're paying attention to it in order for it to go away. Right?

Like you've got some distance from it. You've recognized that you're not identical to it. But there is a bit of a vigil still happening where you think your freedom is elsewhere. Your freedom is in no longer experiencing this thing, even though, yes, you've managed to convince yourself that you're just going to patiently experience it and pay attention and you're open to it and you're feeling it and you're not resisting it.

But there's still this sense of "I" in relation to the energetics of experience in that moment. That's enough dukkha [suffering]. The problem still has its usual structure. And you're vulnerable to the next moment of it not going away, or your getting captured by the next thought about it.

Whereas, if in the seeing of just seeing, and the feeling of just feeling, there really is no problem. Right? There's no one to have a problem in that moment. I guess what I'm arguing for here, the assumption that you might have detected, is that this is an inconvenient thing to be arguing for as a teacher. I don't want to say anything that discourages people wherever they are in their practice.

It's fantastic to be starting a practice, and everyone starts dualistically. That's the place you have to start from. But I guess the other message is, I want to say to people, you shouldn't be satisfied with mindfulness until it really does meet the test of, in this moment is there something you can be aware of that is synonymous with freedom?

Like, it actually meets the requirement -- however you form that requirement -- of, if freedom is this, well then, that is good enough. Right? The search actually is over in this moment. If you can't do that, to put it into terms of doing, you still do have a problem to solve, as much as you might spend a lot of your time convincing yourself that there's no problem to solve and you just have to be aware.

The final statement I'll make here is that it felt like so much of my practice, in the first few years -- I think I'd probably spent a year on retreat -- and this still would have been true of me even after a full year on retreat, my practice was a kind of vigil. 

What I was mindful of was the evidence of my unenlightenment. That's not to say that it wasn't punctuated by beautiful, joyful experiences of where I would have said, if I could just keep this, that seems like the mind of the Buddha. This is fantastic. But all of that is impermanent, obviously.

I couldn't recognize that ordinary consciousness that is compatible with having a conversation like this or driving a car is already totally empty of a self that would seek enlightenment.

Our reactions are a "second dart" that can cause a lot of distress

I'm certainly no Buddha, nor even much of a Buddhist, since while I enjoy non-religious Buddhist teachings, in no way do I consider myself a Buddhist.

But occasionally i have some moments that are in line with Buddhist wisdom, such as what's espoused in an excellent book, "Buddha's Brain: The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom."

Last night my wife, Laurel, and I started watching the fourth season of Yellowstone, a streaming series that I like more than Laurel. (Often we alternate in our nightly TV watching between a series she likes more than me, like Bridgerton, and a series I like more than her, like Yellowstone.)

Laurel places much more of an emphasis on realism in movies and television than I do. So yesterday she spoke up several times in the first few minutes of Episode 1 of Season 4, pointing out how this or that couldn't really have happened the way it did in Yellowstone.

I was tempted to argue with her. But after 32 years of marriage, I've learned that some things are worth arguing about with Laurel, and some aren't. Like this one. So I basically kept saying things like, "OK, I see what you mean," which acknowledged her claim of unreality without endorsing it.

(Me, I figure that if I want reality, I just need to look at everyday life. What I want from television or movies is entertainment, getting away from everyday reality into an alternative view of the world.)

What I did, in terminology used by the Buddha's Brain authors, was keep the First Dart of Laurel's criticisms of Yellowstone from becoming a Second Dart caused by my reaction to her comments. Here's how Hanson and Mendius describe the two darts.

Some physical discomfort is unavoidable; it's a crucial signal to take action to protect life and limb, like the pain that makes you pull your hand back from a hot stove. Some mental discomfort is inevitable, too.

For example, as we evolved, growing emotional investments in children and other members of the band motivated our ancestors to keep those carriers of their genes alive; understandably, then, we feel distress when dear ones are threatened and sorrow when they are harmed.

We also evolved to care deeply about our place in the band and in the hearts of others, so it's normal to feel hurt if you're rejected or scorned.

To borrow an expression from the Buddha, inescapable physical or mental discomfort is the "first dart" of existence. As long as you live and love, some of those darts will come your way.

First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are "second darts" -- the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts. 

Suppose you're walking through a dark room at night and stub your toe on a chair; right after the first dart of pain comes a second dart of anger: "Who moved that darn chair?!" Or maybe a loved one is cold to you when you're hoping for some caring; in addition to the natural drop in the pit of your stomach (first dart), you might feel unwanted (second dart) as a result of having been ignored as a child.

Second darts often trigger more second darts through associative neural networks: you might feel guilt about your anger that someone moved the chair, or sadness that you feel hurt yet again by someone you love. 

In relationships, second darts create vicious cycles: your second-dart reactions trigger reactions from the other person, which set off more second darts from you, and so on.

Remarkably, most of our second-dart reactions occur when there is in fact no first dart anywhere to be found -- when there's no pain inherent in the conditions we're reacting to. We add suffering to them. For example, sometimes I'll come home from work and the house will be a mess, with the kid's stuff all over.

That's the condition. Is there a first dart in the coats and shoes on the sofa or the clutter covering the counter? No, there isn't; no one dropped a brick on me or hurt my children. Do I have to get upset? Not really. I could ignore the stuff, pick it up calmly, or talk with them about it.

Sometimes I manage to handle it that way. But if I don't, then the second darts start landing, tipped with the Three Poisons: greed makes me rigid about how I want things to be, hatred gets me all bothered and angry, and delusion tricks me into taking the situation personally.

Saddest of all, some second-dart reactions are to conditions that are actually positive. If someone pays you a compliment, that's a positive situation. But then you might start thinking, with some nervousness and even a little shame: Oh, I'm not really that good a person. Maybe they'll find out I'm a fraud.

Right there, needless second-dart suffering begins.

Susan Blackmore on falling into Zen

I have a steadily decreasing tolerance for spiritual dogmatism, whether of the religious, mystical, New Age, or any other variety. 

So when I need some inspiration, I don't look nearly as often to people with supposed answers to life's mysteries as I used to. Instead, I resonate with people who focus on facts rather than faith, and probing questions rather than superficial answers.

Which is why I enjoy Susan Blackmore's book, "Ten Zen Questions." 

Picking it up this morning, after having first read it in 2010, I liked what Blackmore says in her initial Falling Into Zen chapter. 

Alongside my science I have explored many alternative world views from witchcraft to spiritualism and Theosophy to chakras, but in spite of their superficial appeal they all proved deeply unsatisfactory.

They provided answers all right, but the answers were dogmatic and confusing; they didn't fit with scientific understanding, and neither did they lead to any new discoveries. Worst of all, their doctrines did not change in response to change, but remained rigidly dependent on ancient books or the claims of their proponents.

That is, until I stumbled across Zen. I was encouraged to have 'Great Doubt', told to 'Investigate!', and taught how to do it.

...Although based on the teachings and insights of the historical Buddha, Zen puts far less emphasis on theory and studying texts than do other branches of Buddhism, and far more on practicing meditation to gain direct experience of one's true nature.

This may be why, from its appearance in the West in the late nineteenth century, Zen has appealed to academics, philosophers, and other thinkers who enjoy its strange paradoxes and who don't want to be involved in religious practices or dogmatic beliefs.

Like science, Zen demands that you ask questions, apply disciplined methods of inquiry, and overthrow any ideas that don't fit with what you find out. Indeed Zen is just like science in being more a set of techniques than a body of dogma.

Blackmore talks about how, for seven weeks, she worked diligently on trying to live in the present moment and avoid thoughts of past and future. She describes some findings.

Letting go of what you've done immediately afterwards is enormously freeing but, in conventional terms, rather worrying. A natural fear is that you will behave idiotically, make a fool of yourself, do something dangerous or, more worrying still, that you will let go of all moral responsibility.

Oddly enough this did not seem to happen.

Indeed, the body seemed to keep on doing relevant and sensible things, apparently without all the agonising I had assumed was essential. Time and again I found that mind had summed up the options, chosen one, carried it out, and moved on.

I didn't need to fret over every decision, or ask whether it was the 'right' thing to have done. It was past.

Last night I heard a crash in the part of our house that had been set up as a separate apartment area. My wife, Laurel, had tried to pull a shade down because the sun was coming in.

But the entire shade fell off, leaving a gouge in the bottom molding and apparently a broken string, because after I put the shade back up, it wasn't working right.

After the shade fell, Laurel said, "I had to lean awkwardly over your mini-trampoline to reach the shade." I told her, "I know you don't like my mini-trampoline, but don't blame it for the shade falling down."

We were both irked at each other. I went and did something else for a while.

Then I returned to the apartment living room and started to take off the handles on the side of the mini-trampoline. Laurel was watching the TV in the living room.

She asked what I was doing. I said, "Since you don't like the mini-trampoline, maybe it's time to get rid of it."

In line with how Blackmore spoke of living in the moment, I hadn't given a lot of thought to selling the mini-trampoline. It just seemed like the right thing to do, because it had led to a mini-argument between Laurel and me.

"You should leave the handles on," Laurel said. "That way you can take a photo of it and advertise it as it actually looks." "I'm just taking the handles off so I can roll it into the bedroom for now," I told my wife. 

This is how the apartment living room looks with the mini-trampoline removed. It had been sitting in front of the windows on the left, where I could look out upon our yard when I used it. I have to admit that the living room looks more open, with more room for the potted plants, without the mini-trampoline. 

So Laurel is happy about that.

What I realized, though, after I'd rolled the mini-trampoline into the apartment bedroom, is that there was plenty of room for it there. Again without much thought, last night I put the handles back on the mini-trampoline.

That made me feel better, because I really didn't want to sell it. I also didn't want to have Laurel upset. What happened, then, is by doing what felt natural at the time, without thinking much about it, resulted in a win-win situation.

Today I used the mini-trampoline in its new location. I enjoyed the view just as much as in the old location. 

The lesson, which I hesitate to elevate to a "Zen lesson," but will just for the heck of it, is that following feelings as honestly as possible often leads to a desirable outcome that a bunch of thinking couldn't have accomplished as easily.

It always was possible to put the mini-trampoline in the bedroom. I just hadn't thought of that before.

But when I simply did what seemed like the right thing to do -- decide to sell it, take the handles off, roll it into the bedroom, see how it looks there, decide not to sell it, put the handles back on -- a series of present moment actions led to a positive result.

Blackmore writes:

To explain the Zen method more clearly, John used to say, 'Let it come. Let it be. Let it go.' This roughly means -- when any ideas or feelings or troubles come along in meditation [or I'd say, out of meditation], don't fight them, don't engage with them, don't push them away or hang onto them, just go through the same gentle process again and again: let them arise in the mind, let them be whatever they are without elaboration, and let them go in their own time.

Salvation has no meaning in Zen Buddhism

I don't believe I need salvation. Neither does Zen Buddhism. This is one reason, among many, I've been a fan of Zen since my college years. 

A few days ago I started re-reading Hubert Benoit's marvelous book, The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought. 

I've written lots of blog posts about the book, which I've read about a half dozen times. Back in 2005 I wrote a post, "'The Supreme Doctrine,' thirty-six years overdue." 

Since this is 2022, the book I couldn't bear to return to the San Jose Public Library is now 53 years overdue. If I believed in reincarnation, I'd worry about being reborn as a librarian tasked with fining people who don't return library materials.

Benoit devotes a short chapter, three pages, to The Idolatry of 'Salvation.' Excerpt:

In many 'spiritual' systems, religious or otherwise, man has the 'duty' of achieving his 'salvation'; he denies all value to that which is temporal and concentrates all the reality imaginable on the 'salvation.'

It is evident, however, that there is again here a form of idolatry, since realisation, seen thus as something which excludes other things, is then only one thing among others, limited and formal, and that it is regarded at once as alone 'sacred' and immeasurably superior to all the rest.

All the determining, enslaving reality which man attributed to this or that 'temporal' enterprise is crystallised now on the enterprise of 'salvation', and this enterprise becomes the most determining, the most enslaving, that can be imagined.

Since realisation signifies liberation one arrives at the absurd paradox that man is subjected to the coercive duty to be free. Man's distress is concentrated then on the question of his salvation; he trembles at the thought that he may die without having attained his deliverance.

Such a grave error of understanding necessarily entails anxiety, inner agitation, a feeling of unworthiness, an egotistical crispation on oneself-as-a-distinct-being, that is to say, it prevents inner pacification, reconciliation with oneself, disinterestedness toward oneself-as-a-distinct-being, the diminution of emotion -- in short all the inner atmosphere of relaxation which governs the release of satori.

In my current re-reading of The Supreme Doctrine, I noted Benoit's mention of a book by D.T. Suzuki, a noted Zen practitioner, called The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind. I ordered it from Amazon and just started reading it.

Suzuki's book is about the teachings of Hui-neng, a famous Zen master (638-713). Hui-neng is noted for engaging in a Zen contest of sorts between himself and another Zen practitioner, Shen-hsiu. The disagreement between them is key to understanding the two main schools of Chinese Zen, southern and northern.

The southern school, which traces its lineage to Hui-neng, believes in sudden realization, while the northern school, which traces its lineage to Shen-hsiu, believes in gradual realization. Neither is akin to religious salvation, but Hui-neng is less salvation'y than Shen-hsiu, as can be seen in the words each presented to the Fifth Patriarch.

Shen-hsiu said:

This body is the Bodhi-tree.
The mind is like a mirror bright;
Take heed to keep it always clean
And let not dust collect upon it.

Hui-neng responded with what amounted to a Zen smackdown.

There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of mirror bright.
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?

Suzuki writes:

There are as many kinds of binding as there are kinds of clinging. When we cling to purity we thereby make a form of it, and we are purity-bound. 

For the same reason, when we cling to or abide with emptiness, we are emptiness-bound; when we abide with Dhyana or tranquilization, we are Dhyana-bound.

However excellent are the merits of these spiritual exercises, they inevitably lead us to a state of bondage in one way or another. In this there is no emancipation.

The whole system of Zen discipline may thus be said to be nothing but a series of attempts to set us absolutely free from all forms of bondage.

Even when we talk of 'seeing into one's self-nature', this seeing has also a binding effect on us if it is construed as having something in it specifically set up; that is, if the seeing is a specific state of consciousness. For this is the 'binding'.

...The seeing is the result of his having nothing to stand upon. Hui-neng is thus in one way looked upon as the father of Chinese Zen.

All upset exists in you, not in reality

I'm a fan of Anthony de Mello, a free-thinking Jesuit priest.

In a 2015 post, "Anthony de Mello -- a heretic Catholic spiritual rebel," I shared links to eight other blog posts I'd written about de Mello's writings. 

Recently I finished reading what probably will be the last published book of his. "Rediscovering Life: Awaken to Reality" is based on a lecture de Mello gave a few months before he died in 1987. Excerpts from the book can be read below.

On the whole, I agree with what de Mello says here. It's a tough love sort of message. But after at first resisting the idea that we create our feelings of being upset, not anything outside of us, I've come around to thinking that he's right. 

This is the core of de Mello's message in Rediscovering Life.

It's so simple. As I told you, I could put it down for you in two minutes. Whether you'll hear it, though, is another matter. That depends on your own heart. So here it is.

The world is full of sorrow. The root of sorrow is attachment/desire. The uprooting of sorrow is the dropping of attachment.

How does one drop attachment? You only look and see that it is based on a false belief -- the belief that, without this, I cannot be happy. That's false.

The moment you see that belief is false, you're free. Good luck to you. It may take you one minute, it may take you twenty-five years. But the day you see it, you're free. You're free as a bird.

...All right. Does it mean that we withdraw from the human endeavor, having no attachment? No. Plunge into the din of battle. 

And you know, you have so much more energy, believe me, when you have no attachments. You've got all of your energy available to you.

The great Chinese sage Tranxu puts it marvelously: 

"When the archer shoots for nothing, he has all his skill. When he shoots for a brass buckle, he is already nervous. When he shoots for a prize of gold, he goes blind. He's out of his mind. He sees two targets. His skill has not changed. But the prize divides him. He cares. He thinks more of winning than of shooting. And the need to win drains him of power."

Isn't that sublime? The need to win drains us of power. If we don't need to win, we have so much more energy.

So, no one joins in the human enterprise of human dreams and visions and goals so marvelously and so creatively as the person who is unattached. 

Unfortunately, we've come to associate nonattachment with not caring, with not enjoying, with asceticism. No, I'm not talking about that at all. You'll see this as we go on.

...Get your soul ready for a shock. Here it comes. I say it just like it is; I'm going to lob the bomb right into your midst. Listen to this:

Nothing in reality, nothing in life, nothing in the world, upsets you. Nothing has the power to upset you. Did anyone tell you that?

All upset exists in you, not in reality. You can underline the word all. All of it. All of it. All of it. All upset is in you, not in life. Not in reality. Not in the world. It's in  you.

Just understanding this has changed the lives of people, I mean, 180 degrees. Just understanding this and no more. Reality is not upsetting. Reality is not problematic. If there were no human mind, there would be no problems.

All problems exist in the human mind. All problems are created by the mind.

...You're planning a picnic on Sunday and the picnic gets rained out. Where do you think the upset is -- in the rain or in you? In the rain -- or in your reaction to the rain?

The upset feeling is not caused by the rain, but by your reaction to the rain. Someone else would react differently: no upset.

...Are you getting some inkling of what it would mean if you really grasped this? You'd be above it all. That's one nice definition of spirituality.

Spirituality means no longer being at the mercy of an event, or a person, or anything else. 

I didn't say not to love people. I said, you're not at their mercy anymore. You're no longer at the mercy of an event, or of a person, or of anything else. In other words, no matter what happens, you no longer upset yourself.

...The world is full of sorrow. The root of sorrow is attachment. The uprooting of sorrow is the dropping of attachment. The understanding that attachment is a false belief -- the false belief that anything or any person can make you happy.

True happiness is caused by nothing. True happiness is uncaused. If you ask the mystic why he or she is happy, the answer will be, "Why not?" No block, no obstruction. Why not?

Have you ever thought that if something causes your happiness, when you lose that something then your happiness will be destroyed? Has it ever occurred to you that if something causes your happiness you will become possessive of that thing? That you will become anxious lest you lose it?

Whatever that thing be -- learning, reputation, good health, life itself. Yet how interesting: the rediscovery of life.

You will never live unless you stop clinging to life. Let go. When you cling, happiness dies. If your happiness depends on anyone or anything, that's not happiness. That's anxiety. That's tension. That's pressure. That's fear.

...Do you know what it means to be with people and to have no tension? Because you don't give a damn whether they like you or not, don't care what they think of you. Do you know what that means?

Freedom. Joy. They can think what they want, they can say what they want. That's all right. You're not affected. You've gotten the drug out of your system.

Sam Harris on the riddle of the self

Figured I might as well continue on with how Sam Harris views meditation, spirituality, and the non-existence of an enduring self, even though I've previously written quite a bit about this.

As noted before, Harris is one of my favorite spiritual writers because he both recognizes the downside of religions and believing in a God for which there's no evidence, while also recognizing that there is much to learn about the human mind and how we can live more pleasantly through meditation and mindfulness.

Here's a footnote to my recent post about Harris and Dzogchen, the Tibetan form of Buddhism he's fond of.

I didn't mention in that post how Harris views the transmission of wisdom from a Dzogchen master to a disciple not as something mystical or supernatural, but as akin to someone showing how the eye's blind spot can be directly experienced instead of merely known intellectually. 

(I won't share those simple steps; this web page describes them.)

Harris' point is that a skilled teacher can do the same thing with regard to an intellectual belief in the non-existence of an enduring self.

In The Riddle of the Self chapter in his "Waking Up" book, Harris starts off by describing what happened during his visit to the Sea of Galilee where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon.

As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self -- an "I" or a "me" -- vanished. 

Everything was as it had been -- the cloudless sky, the brown hills sloping to an inland sea, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water -- but I no longer felt separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained.

The experience lasted just a few seconds, but it returned many times as I looked out over the land where Jesus is believed to have walked, gathered his apostles, and worked many of his miracles. If I were a Christian, I would undoubtedly have interpreted this experience in Christian terms.

I might believe that I had glimpsed the oneness of God or been touched by the Holy Spirit. If I were a Hindu, I might think in terms of Brahman, the eternal Self, of which the world and all individual minds are thought to be a mere modification. If I were a Buddhist, I might talk about the "dharmakaya of emptiness," in which all apparent things manifest as in a dream.

But I am simply someone who is making his best effort to be a rational human being. Consequently, I am very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions from experiences of this sort. And yet, I glimpse what I will call the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness every day, whether at a traditional holy site, or at my desk, or while having my teeth cleaned.

This is not an accident. I've spend many years practicing meditation, the purpose of which is to cut through the illusion of the self.

This passage contains the basics of how Harris views intrinsic selflessness. It isn't something to be attained, since there is no self to be gotten rid of. It is something to be experientially realized, either spontaneously or as the result of a meditative practice.

As Harris says in the first paragraph, the key is silencing of thoughts. Or at least, keeping them to a whisper rather than a shout. Thoughts make us feel like we have a self because we assume that thoughts require a thinker, some little guy or gal inside our head who is in charge of us.

Of course, writing that last sentence the way I did shows the absurdity of believing that we have a self. What the heck is the difference between "we" or "I" and the self that we/I have? If I have a self, does my self have its own self? 

It doesn't help much to say "I am a self." That still leaves "I" and "self" connected by a meaningless "am." Meaningless, because it is like saying a flash of lightning. The flash is lighting. 

So as Harris is gazing at his surroundings, he feels his "I" slipping away until there is just the outside world. This isn't a mystical experience. It is the normal experience when inner stillness replaces the mental motion that usually is present for most people.

I've been critical of those who claim that it's possible to attain a state of consciousness without conscious content.

At times Harris can sound like he's saying this, but I don't think he really is. Instead, there's conscious content -- such as a vision of the Sea of Galilee -- yet without the sense of a self inside our head who is separate from the contents of consciousness.

Has this ever happened to you? Probably it has.

Fairly frequently I'll wake up in the morning, open my eyes, and see the room where I sleep. For a few seconds all I'm aware of is my physical surrounding. Then, sort of like a computer with a flash drive booting up really rapidly, suddenly a worry, say, of a problem I was dealing with before I went to bed pops into my mind.

From simple clear relaxed consciousness of the outside world to complex foggy anxious awareness of my inner world in little more than an instant. This is a good example of how no-self becomes self. Harris writes:

From the contemplative point of view, being lost in thoughts of any kind, pleasant or unpleasant, is analogous to being asleep and dreaming. It's a mode of not knowing what is actually happening in the present moment. It is essentially a form of psychosis.

Thoughts themselves are not a problem, but being identified with thought is. Taking oneself to be the thinker of one's thoughts -- that is, not recognizing the present thought to be a transitory appearance in consciousness -- is a delusion that produces nearly every species of human conflict and unhappiness.

It doesn't matter if your mind is wandering over current problems in set theory or cancer research; if you are thinking without knowing you are thinking, you are confused about who and what you are. The practice of meditation is a method of breaking the spell of thought. 

...Long before reaching this kind of stability in meditation, however, one can discover that the sense of self -- the sense that there is a thinker behind one's thoughts, an experiencer amid the flow of experience -- is an illusion.

The feeling that we call "I" is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking. 

....What are we conscious of? We are conscious of the world; we are conscious of our bodies in the world; and we also imagine that we are conscious of our selves within our bodies. After all, most of us don't feel merely identical to our bodies.

We seem to be riding around inside our bodies. We feel like inner subjects that can use the body as a kind of object. This last impression is an illusion that can be dispelled. The selflessness of consciousness is in plain view in every present moment -- and yet, it remains difficult to see.

...No doubt most people in human history have been totally unaware of the optic blind spot. Even those of us who know about it go for decades without noticing it. And yet, it is always there, right on the surface of experience. 

The absence of the self is also there to be noticed. As with the optic blind spot, the evidence is not far away or deep within; rather, it is almost too close to be observed. For most people, experiencing the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness requires considerable training.

It is, however, possible to notice that consciousness -- that in you which is aware of your experience in this moment -- does not feel like a self. It does not feel like "I." What you are calling "I" is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness.

Consciousness is prior to it, a mere witness of it, and, therefore, free of it in principle.

How Sam Harris views Dzogchen

Sam Harris is a fascinating guy. To me, he pretty much epitomizes the "middle way" that Buddhism espouses. Meaning, he is at home both with science and spirituality, finding both compatible with each other and with reality.

Which I guess isn't too surprising, since Harris has a deep fondness for Buddhism, particularly Dzogchen, a variety of Tibetan Buddhism.

Harris is a leader of the New Atheism movement. He has a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience. The personal section of his Wikipedia page contains interesting information about him. (I've taken out the links and footnotes.)

Samuel Benjamin Harris was born in Los Angeles, California, on April 9, 1967. He is the son of actor Berkeley Harris, who appeared mainly in Western films, and TV writer and producer Susan Harris (née Spivak), who created Soap (TV series) and The Golden Girls among other series. His father, born in North Carolina, came from a Quaker background, and his mother is Jewish but not religious. He was raised by his mother following his parents' divorce when he was aged two. Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular and that his parents rarely discussed religion, though he also stated that he was not raised as an atheist.

While his original major was in English, Harris became interested in philosophical questions while at Stanford University after an experience with the empathogen–entactogen MDMA (colloquially known as ecstasy). The experience led him to be interested in the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs. Leaving Stanford in his second year, a quarter after his psychedelic experience, he visited India and Nepal, where he studied meditation with teachers of Buddhist and Hindu religions, including Dilgo Khyentse. Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.

He received a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. His thesis was titled The Moral Landscape: How Science Could Determine Human Values. His advisor was Mark S. Cohen. 

Early on in his book, Waking Up, Harris describes his central thesis.

Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience -- self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light -- constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.

That principle is the subject of this book. The feeling that we call "I" is an illusion. There is no discrete self or ego living like a Minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. And the feeling that there is -- the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes looking out at a world separate from yourself -- can be altered or entirely extinguished.

Although such experiences of "self-transcendence" are generally thought about in religious terms, there is nothing, in principle, irrational about them. From both a scientific and philosophical point of view, they represent a clearer understanding of the way things are.

Deepening that understanding, and repeatedly cutting through the illusion of the self, is what is meant by "spirituality" in the context of this book.

Given how much Harris dislikes religion and dogmatism, how is it that he has so much fondness for Dzogchen? Here's some excerpts from Waking Up about Dzogchen.

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche lived in a hermitage on the southern slope of Shivapuri Mountain, overlooking the Kathmandu Valley. He spent more than twenty years of his life on formal retreat and was deservedly famous for the clarity with which he gave the "pointing-out instruction" of Dzogchen, a formal initiation in which a teacher seeks to impart the experience of self-transcendence directly to a student.

I received this teaching from several Dzogchen masters, as well as similar instructions from teachers like Poonja-ji in other traditions, but I never met anyone who spoke about the nature of consciousness as precisely as Tulku Urgyen. In the last five years of his life, I made several trips to Nepal to study with him.

The practice of Dzogchen requires that one be able to experience the intrinsic selflessness of awareness in every moment (that is when one is not otherwise distracted by thought) -- which is to say that for a Dzogchen meditator, mindfulness must be synonymous with dispelling the illusion of the self.

Rather than teach a technique of meditation -- such as paying close attention to one's breathing -- a Dzogchen master must precipitate an insight on the basis of which a student can thereafter practice a form of awareness (Tibetan: rigpa) that is unencumbered by subject/object dualism. 

Thus it is often said that, in Dzogchen, one "takes the goal as the path," because the freedom from self that one might otherwise seek is the very thing that one practices. The goal of Dzogchen, if one can call it such, is to grow increasingly familiar with this way of being in the world.

...I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self-transcendence, and in a few minutes he showed me that I had no self to transcend. 

In my view, there is nothing supernatural, or even mysterious, about this transmission of wisdom from master to disciple. Tulku Urgyen's effect on me came purely from the clarity of his teaching. As with any challenging endeavor, the difference between being utterly misled by false information, being nudged in the general direction, and being precisely guided by an expert is difficult to overstate. 

...This instruction was without question the most important thing I have ever been explicitly taught by another human being. It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering -- fear, anger, shame -- in an instant.

At my level of practice, this freedom lasts only a few moments. But these moments can be repeated, and they can grow in duration.

Punctuating ordinary experience in this way makes all the difference. In fact, when I pay attention, it is impossible for me to feel like a self at all: The implied center of cognition and emotion simply falls away, and it is obvious that consciousness is never truly confined by what it knows.

That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I am lost in thought, however, I'm as confused as anyone else.

Given this change in my perception of the world, I understand the attractions of traditional spirituality. I also recognize the needless confusion and harm that inexorably arise from the doctrines of faith-based religion.

I did not have to believe anything irrational about the universe, or about my place in it, to learn the practice of Dzogchen. I didn't have to accept Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about karma and rebirth or imagine that Tulku Urgyen or the other meditation masters I met possessed magic powers. 

And whatever the traditional liabilities of the guru-devotee relationship, I know from direct experience that it is possible to meet a teacher who can deliver the goods.

In his guided meditations on the Waking Up app (I have the iPhone version), Harris offers a simplified version of Dzogchen. I suspect the practices he uses bear a relationship to the direct pointing techniques of "real" Dzogchen.

For example, Harris will say something like this (these are my own words):

With your eyes open, on an in-breath visualize that you are breathing in the world. On an out-breath visualize yourself being projected out into the world. Then, quickly, in an instant as short as a finger snap, look for the place where you feel the breathing-in and breathing-out of the world is happening. 

Note the absence of a self in that place. Again, quickly, in an instant. That absence is what you are looking for. And if what I just said doesn't make sense to you now, it may later.

Descend into the valley of life, rather than climb the mountaintop

At first I didn't like a book I have about Pure land (Shin) Buddhism. But I've come to enjoy "River of Fire, River of Water" by Taitetsu Unno. Here's some passages about embracing the valley of life

The ideal of monastic Buddhism is transcendence of mundane existence, as if one were ascending to the mountaintop. In contrast, the praxis of Pure Land Buddhism takes place by descending into the valley, the shadow of the mountains. 

We find a similar contrast in Chinese civilization. Like monastic Buddhism the Confucian ideal may be symbolized by the soaring mountain peaks , manifesting the highest achievement of the literati. 

And like the Pure Land, Taoism is found in the valley and lowlands, a haven for those who do not fit into conventional society for whatever reason. But it is in this valley that life and creativity flourish. In the words of Tao-te-ching: 

The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is named the Mysterious Female.
And the Doorway of the mysterious Female
Is the base from which Heaven and Earth spring.
It is there within us all the while;
Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry.

...In Japan, traditional Buddhist monasticism -- whether Tendai, Shingon, or Zen -- aims at the transcendence of earthly passions. Its basic  precepts consist of renouncing all family ties, maintaining celibacy, mastering rigorous disciplines, avoiding contact with the opposite sex, and engaging in elaborate rituals.

In contrast, Pure Land is the trans-descendence into the opposite world, the self-awakening to the immersion in the swamp of anger, jealousy, insecurity, fear, addiction, arrogance, hypocrisy.

...Shin Buddhism comes alive for those who live in the valley and in the shadows. It challenges people to discover the ultimate meaning of life in the abysss of the darkness of ignorance.

...Pure Land Buddhism might suggest an otherworldly orientation, but its primary focus is on the here and now. Not the here and now grasped by the controlling ego-self, but the here and now cherished as a gift of life itself to be lived creatively and gratefully, granted us by boundless compassion.

The bountifulness of great compassion makes possible our liberation from the iron cage of our own making.

 

Taoism is playful. Buddhism is serious. I prefer Taoism.

One of my favorite books is Ray Grigg's The Tao of Zen. His thesis, which he argues persuasively, is that Zen is rooted in Chinese Taoism, while Zen Buddhism is, obviously, rooted in Indian Buddhism.

Here's a lengthy excerpt from the "Buddhism in China" chapter. While it's possible to quibble with some of Grigg's conclusions, his basic contrasting of Taoist/Chinese and Buddhist/Indian approaches to life seems accurate to me. 

The indented italicized passages are quotations from other writers. I haven't included the footnotes that show where the quotation came from.

As Buddhism in China was adjusted to fit Chinese sensibilities, the distinction between it and the Taoist sects and religions began to blur. In the common mind a synthesis of Buddhism and Taoism began to take place.

Chinese versions of the Buddhist scriptures were adapted to Chinese ideas, and Buddhism and Taoism were often mingled together in popular belief.

This mingling did not take place among the more literary and scholarly Taoists. For them the integration of Buddhism into China helped to define and invigorate the Taoism of the Lao Tzu and the Chuang Tzu. 

Their Taoism involved ostensibly, no belief; it was and continues to be an aesthetic philosophy rather than a religion. 

Mahayana Buddhism is a religion that evolved from a philosophical base. Taoism and Buddhism can be reconciled philosophically but not religiously. Those following the original form of Taoism have been unable to relate to the Mahayana aspects of Buddhism.

Even in the popular mind some of these differences were not so easily resolved.

Buddhism was in many ways distinctly un-Chinese. The Indian belief that human beings live over and over again on earth was entirely unknown in China. The Chinese reverence for the family clashed with the Buddha's teaching that family ties were a hindrance to enlightenment, and the celibacy required of Buddhist monks.

Where Buddhism saw life as suffering, Chinese tradition regarded the order of nature as fundamentally good and the right life as one lived in harmony with nature. Far from wanting to escape from the body and individual personality, most Taoists wanted to prolong their individual existence indefinitely. 

In other words, a basic difference separates the character of Indian Buddhism and the native Chinese traditions of Confucianism and Taoism. 

Taoism is earthy. It is basically optimistic. It accepts in general terms that life is worth living and that nature, personified in the metaphor of the Great Mother, is essentially a balanced beneficence. 

Buddhism's character is more sober, less optimistic. As Richard Cavendish notes:

Although it has often been observed that Buddhism is a cheerful and good-hearted religion, the Buddhist attitude to life is intensely pessimistic. Life on earth is evil, painful and transitory. It is full of suffering and nothing lasts, nothing stays the same.

One of the characteristics of Zen that argues for a Taoist rather than a Buddhist origin is its lightness, its playfulness, its appreciative acceptance of life. Buddhism is serious, leaden, weighted down by Gautama's traumatic realization that suffering lies beneath the veneer of life's comforts, and pleasures.

The story of his own evolution from innocent prince to enlightened being is a revealing process. The emphasis is on the endurance and perseverance that the quest for enlightenment demands.

He struggles through seven years of wilderness meditation and asceticism before reaching realization. The same long struggle is reenacted later in China by Bodhidharma who sits persistently for nine years facing a wall. The literal truth of these stories is less important than the underlying attitudes they reveal.

The Chinese embrace life as worth living, and they seek ways of living it wisely and well. This is evident in the popular Kuan-yin, a maternal incarnation of the Buddha, who bestows fertility, safety, and comfort to her supplicants.

This same positive attitude is seen in the round and jovial folk-Buddhas of modern China who sit big-bellied and contented, or stand wide-legged and laughing. These images of the Buddha, unlike the austere and emaciated ones from India, invite a full and happy life.

Even in religion the Chinese enjoy life too much to waste it on asceticism and metaphysical exercises.

They would gladly sacrifice a few years for immortality as a good investment of time. They would willingly do t'so-ch'an (Japanese: zazen, literally "sitting meditation") to effect social harmony or  attain worldly gain and influence.

But they would not expend much energy on something as abstract and metaphysical as enlightenment. "Once you had enlightenment," they would ask, "what would you do with it?" The question is expressed with an appropriate mixture of playfulness and practicality in a Zen story:

A Zen roshi and a Hindu guru were walking together along a riverbank and decided to visit an adjacent island.
"Let's walk to the island," said the guru.
"Why not take the ferry?" suggested the roshi.
"Because," said the guru, "I've spent twenty years learning to walk on water."
"Why take twenty years learning to walk on water," asked the roshi, "when you can take a ferry for a penny?"

The same grounded practicality characterizes the Lao Tzu. As Victor H. Mair points out:

The Chinese classic emphasizes political skills and social harmony in preference to the theistic orientation of the Indian scripture.

The Mahayana religious component in Ch'an and Zen Buddhism emphasizes the zazen in emulation of the sitting Buddha of India. Very practical reasons exist for doing zazen but they have been overlayed with exhortations to persevere, to be like the Buddha, to sit until all sentient beings are saved.

In contrast, the Taoist element in Ch'an and Zen Buddhism is not interested in such theological objectives.

The purpose of protracted sitting is not to perpetuate itself but to release the practitioner into the spontaneity and freedom of merely being. The end of the searching and discipline is a full and balanced life lived gracefully and harmoniously in wonderful simplicity.

The sitter returns to the village to become fully engaged in the profoundly ordinary business of day-to-day existence. 

The Lao Tzu dedicates about half its wisdom to the affirmation of such worldly affairs. Although its treatment lacks the playfulness of the Chuang Tzu, it is nonetheless a clear confirmation of this life in this earthy place, fully committed to the worth that is inherent in the whole social and natural world.

Any discipline in Taoism is used to reenter fully what is already present. This is also the case in Zen.

Buddhism's discipline does not complete the cycle of leaving, returning, and reaffirming. It spins outward to become removed, unearthly, and austere, reluctantly present in the world as if living were a kind of selfless sacrifice. 

Great Zen advice: be natural, not intentional

During the 35 years I was an active member of an India-based spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), I observed a lot of unnatural behavior. 

I did this myself, though not to the degree that I observed in many others. They would put on what they thought was a virtuous demeanor, though from what I could see, it just looked fake, artificial, pretentious. 

The RSSB teachings decried the "five deadly sins" of lust, anger, greed, attachment, and egotism. So some members of the group took this to mean that they should look as if they had overcome these supposed character defects, even if in reality they still possessed them.

I came to feel that I'd rather be in the presence of an honest sinner than a hypocritical saint.

It was aggravating to talk with someone who wasn't really there, because their mind was split between attending to our conversation and monitoring whether they were coming across as the exemplary RSSB disciple that they wanted others to see them as.

Today I read the Communication chapter in Shunryu Suzuki's book, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." It was a breath of natural fresh air, compared to the often artificial atmosphere I experienced at RSSB gatherings.

Here's excerpts from the chapter.

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is.

We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other.

Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion, you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not really hear it.

...A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits is not open to things as they are. That is why we practice zazen [meditation]: to clear our mind of what is related to something else.

To be quite natural to ourselves, and also to follow what others say or do in the most appropriate way, is quite difficult. If we try to adjust ourselves intentionally in some way, it is impossible to be natural. If you try to adjust yourself in a certain way, you will lose yourself.

So without any intentional, fancy way of adjusting yourself, to express yourself freely as you are is the most important thing to make yourself happy, and to make others happy. You will acquire this kind of ability by practicing zazen.

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense.

...So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings.

Even when you do not feel so well, it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention.

So you may say, "Oh, I am sorry, I do not feel well." That is enough. You should not say, "You made me so!" That is too much. You may say, "Oh, I am sorry, I am so angry with you." There is no need to say that you are not angry when you are angry.

You should just say, "I am angry." That is enough. True communication depends upon our being straightforward with one another.

Genuine spirituality is very simple. Not like religion at all.

Here's what I've come to realize after over fifty years of searching for spiritual truth.

For most of that time, I had things completely backward, because I didn't understand how simple genuine spirituality really is. 

I've got lots of company in that regard. 

At first, almost everyone approaches spirituality, or religion, like everything else in life. It's viewed as something to be desired, then worked for, then hopefully attained.

This is how we get a college degree. This is how we get our first real job. This is how we get married. This is how we have children. This is how we become proficient at a sport like golf, surfing, or tennis.

We seek instruction from people who have the sort of knowledge we want. We put in effort aimed at achieving our goal. We get support from friends and family who inspire us to keep pursuing our dream rather than get discouraged.

Then... we repeat the process. Because desires and attainments never end. 

When spiritual advancement or a religious quest is viewed in this way -- and almost everyone does just that -- disappointment is inevitable. 

After all, how many people do you know who are completely satisfied with their life? I'm willing to bet, zero. And naturally that includes you, along with me.

This is the problem with making spirituality into a commodity, something to be purchased with the proper amount of time, energy, knowledge, enthusiasm. 

We expect that just as we're able to achieve a good education, get a worthwhile job, or find a loving partner, we should be able to become a spiritual person if we channel our desire in that direction.

Most people pursue this approach for their entire life.

A few stick with the same religion or spiritual path until they die. Most, though, try several forms of spirituality, moving from one to another in the same way people change jobs, romantic relationships, athletic activities, cars, homes, and such.

New spiritual goals replace old ones. Or the same spiritual path/religion undergoes a sort of remodeling project. Fresh ideas take the place of stale ones. But the same basic approach mentioned above holds:

Something is desired, then worked for, then hopefully attained.

There's a better way, though. It's so simple, most people fail to grasp it. I certainly did, even though I've been an admirer of Zen Buddhism and Taoism ever since my college days in the late 1960s.

Zen and Taoism, in their non-religious forms, come the closest of any organized philosophy to that simple better way. Mindfulness, also -- which really is Buddhism expressed in a different modern fashion.

This way actually is better described as a non-way, since it doesn't involve any steps, any path, any destination, any goal. 

It's just attending to life as it appears to us at every moment.

Now, I realize that statement sounds ridiculously trite to most people. All I can say is that I agree. It is ridiculously trite. Which is why I love it so much.

I'm not saying I've become a Zen master or a Taoist sage. Far from it.

I'm just a regular old guy doing his best to keep my head above water as I cope with the everyday problems I've had to deal with my entire life. However, I'm gradually starting to see life in a different fashion.

Which is difficult for me to put into words. So I'll let Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher whose words make up the book I've been rereading, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind," describe what I'm struggling to say.

In our practice we have no particular purpose or goal, nor any special object of worship.

...You may think that if there no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do. But there is a way.

The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity, or to be concentrated on what you are doing in the moment. Instead of having some particular object in mind, you should limit your activity.

When your mind is wandering about elsewhere you have no chance to express yourself. But if you limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment, then you can express fully your true nature, which is the universal Buddha nature. This is our way.

When we practice zazen [meditation] we limit our activity to the smallest extent. Just keeping the right posture and being concentrated on sitting is how we express the universal nature. Then we become Buddha, and we express Buddha nature.

So instead of having some object of worship, we just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment.

When you bow, you should just bow; when you sit, you should just sit; when you eat, you should just eat. If you do this, the universal nature is there.

U.G. Krishnamurti and Zen have quite a bit in common

As noted a few days ago, I'm taking another look at U.G. Krishnamurti through his book, "Mind Is a Myth."

I read a few pages every morning, along with a Zen book by Shunryu Suzuki I'm re-reading, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" -- the title of which shows that Krishnamurti and Zen aren't totally in sync. 

But there's definitely some commonalities. 

They both can be outrageous.
They both aren't afraid to defy conventional ways of thinking.
They both focus on the physical world.
They both have no interest in supernatural fantasies.
They both advise to live in the present moment.

Zen, at least in its Soto form/lineage, teaches that there is no difference between enlightenment and the act of sitting in meditation. Or doing anything else with full attention. 

Suzuki says, "Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some special state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment."

So there's a certain absence of goals in Zen. Suzuki says, "When you do something, just to do it should be your purpose."

You know, the whole chop wood and carry water thing. Just chop wood. Just carry water. Don't add unnecessary gaining ideas to simple actions. 

In a Mistakes in Practice section, Suzuki says:

There are several poor ways of practice which you should understand. Usually, when you practice zazen [meditation], you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd.

When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal. 

So as long as your practice is based on a gaining idea, and you practice zazen in an idealistic way, you will have no time actually to attain your ideal. Moreover, you will be sacrificing the meat of your practice. 

Because your attainment is always ahead, you will always be sacrificing yourself for some ideal in the future. You end up with nothing. This is absurd; it is not adequate practice at all. 

In passages I read this morning, Krishnamurti speaks using different language, but I see some close connections between his view and that of Suzuki.

Understanding your goal is the main thing. To achieve that goal implies struggle, battle, effort, will, that is all. There is no guarantee that you will reach your goal. 

You assume the goal is there. You have invented the goal to give yourself hope. But hope means tomorrow. Hope is necessary for tomorrow, not for today.

You know. You want more knowledge so you can develop better techniques for reaching your goal. You know that there is no guarantee that more experience, more knowledge, more systems and more methods will help you reach your goal.

Yet you persist; it is all you know how to do. Seeing today demands action. Seeing tomorrow involves only hope.

...You want to see meaning in your life. As long as you persist in searching for a purpose or meaning to life, so long whatever you are doing will seem purposeless and meaningless.

The hope you have of finding meaning is what is causing the present state of meaninglessness. There may not be any meaning other than this.

...Life, the so-called material life, has a meaning of its own. But you have been told that it is devoid of meaning and have superimposed a fictitious layer of "spiritual" meaning over it. 

Why should life have any meaning? Why should there be any purpose to living? Living itself is all that is there. Your search for spiritual meaning has made a problem out of living.

You have been fed all this rubbish about the ideal, perfect, peaceful, purposeful way of life, and you devote your energies to thinking about that rather than living fully.

In any case you are living, no matter what you are thinking about. Life has to go on.

Late this afternoon I went for a walk with Mooka, our dog, around the community lake a short distance from our property.

Mooka enjoyed sniffing for creatures in the vegetation on the water side of the earthen dam. I enjoyed the view. Life seemed fine, just the way it was.

Returning to the trail that leads to our house, fallen leaves heralded the coming of winter. Life seemed fine, just the way it was.

The bright red of a tree next to our water feature caught my eye. Life seemed fine, just the way it was.

The ancient white oak in our yard lost two large limbs in an ice storm last February. It survives, continuing to gladden my heart as I snapped one last photo before going inside to feed our dog. Life seemed fine, just the way it was. 

"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is a classic that I like a lot

Recently I wrote about how always trying to improve yourself is foolish. Since this makes a lot of sense to me, I'm attracted to Zen Buddhism because it shares that perspective, by and large.

This attraction is long-standing. 

One of my favorite Zen books, The Supreme Doctrine, has been in my hands since 1969, when I couldn't bear to return it to the San Jose Public Library while I was going to San Jose State College.

Another favorite is Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I have the 1973 first paperback edition. A few days ago I started re-reading it after a long absence.


Shunryu Suzuki's words (the book is based on his recorded talks) always refresh and center me. 

These days I have minimal tolerance for spiritual books that aren't grounded in here-and-now physical reality. I've had my fill of supernatural bullshit. 

Zen is notorious for cutting through the crap. I like all of the many Zen books that grace the Buddhist section of my bookshelf. 

But there's something about Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind that really appeals to me. Here's some quotations from the initial chapters that I've read the past few days. Zazen means meditation.

For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind.

This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

-------------------------------

In the beginner's mind there is no thought, "I have attained something." All self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind.

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This is the most important teaching: not two, and not one. Our body and mind are not two and not one. If you think your body and mind are two, that is wrong. If you think that they are one, that is also wrong. Our body and mind are both two and one. 

-------------------------------

That is why Buddha could not accept the religions existing at his time. He studied many religions, but he was not satisfied with their practices. He could not find the answer in asceticism or in philosophies. He was not interested in some metaphysical existence, but in his own body and mind, here and now.

And when he found himself, he found that everything that exists has Buddha nature. That was his enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment.

-------------------------------

When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.

We say "inner world" or "outer world," but actually there is just one whole world. In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door. The air comes and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door.

If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra. There is no you to say "I." What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no "I," no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

So when we practice zazen, all that exists is the movement of the breathing, but we are aware of this movement.

-------------------------------

If you want to obtain perfect calmness in your zazen, you should not be bothered by the various images you find in your mind. Let them come, and let them go. Then they will be under control. But this policy is not so easy. It sounds easy, but it requires some special effort. How to make this effort is the secret of practice.

-------------------------------

The only effort that will help you is to count your breathing, or to concentrate on your inhaling and exhaling. We say concentration, but to concentrate your mind on something is not the true purpose of Zen.

The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

-------------------------------

The true understanding is that the mind includes everything; when you think something comes from outside it means only that something appears in your mind. Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble.

You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called big mind.

-------------------------------

Strictly speaking, any effort we make is not good for our practice because it creates waves in our mind. It is impossible, however, to attain absolute calmness of our mind without any effort. We must make some effort, but we must forget ourselves in the effort we make.

In this realm there is no subjectivity or objectivity. Our mind is just calm, without even any awareness. In this unawareness, every effort and every idea and thought will vanish.

So it is necessary for us to encourage ourselves and to make an effort up to the last moment, when all effort disappears. You should keep your mind on your breathing until you are not aware of your breathing.

-------------------------------

We say, "A good father is not a good father." Do you understand? One who thinks he is a good father is not a good father; one who thinks he is a good husband is not a good husband.

-------------------------------

But so long as you think, "I am doing this," or "I have to do this," or "I must attain something special." you are actually not doing anything. When you give up, when you no longer want something, or when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something When there is no gaining idea in what you do, than you do something.

-------------------------------

If you continue this simple practice every day you will obtain a wonderful power. Before you attain it, it is something wonderful, but after you obtain it, it is nothing special. It is just you yourself, nothing special.

As a Chinese poem says, "I went and I returned. It was nothing special. Rozan famous for its misty mountains; Sekko for its water."

People think it must be wonderful to see the famous range of mountains covered by mists, and the water said to cover all the earth. But if you go there you will just see water and mountains. Nothing special.

"Moon" movie points to shocking non-supernatural realization

A year or so ago I watched "Moon" via Netflix. I guess at this point I need to enter an obligatory spoiler alert, in case anyone hasn't seen this 2009 movie and thinks they might want to see it without knowing a crucial plot element.

This was an intriguing movie, though not super-entertaining. The acting was good, but not exceptional. What I distinctly remember was a shocking twist.

There Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell) is, at a base on the moon where a mining operation is taking place. He's looking forward to returning home after a three-year solitary tour of duty on the moon. 

Sam gets pleasure in recorded messages from his wife on Earth, who was pregnant when he left for the moon. Communication difficulties prevent live back-and-forth communication with his wife.

All this seems completely normal. However, through a series of events that I've mostly forgotten, Sam eventually discovers a shocking secret the mining company has been hiding.

Sam is a clone.

The memories he has of his wife and previous time on Earth were implanted in his brain. None of that is real. Sam isn't who he thinks he is, a human being like everybody else back on Earth. Though his body is human, his mind is artificial.

How Sam deals with this occupies the rest of the movie. 

What galvanized me as I watched "Moon" was that moment when Sam realizes that everything he relied upon to help  get him through his stint on the Moon was false. The foundation of his existence was shaken to the core.

Not only wasn't his Earth life what he'd thought it was, he himself wasn't who he thought he was. 

And this wasn't a shift in consciousness like, say, someone finding their more genuine self after psychotherapy, climbing Mt. Everest, or whatever. It was a total reversal of how Sam had looked upon the world. 

Well, even more than that, since a reversal implies that the thing being reversed is simply the flip side of what the reversal reveals -- like someone realizing they aren't heterosexual but homosexual. A big change, yet they're still sexual. 

Rather, Sam went from seeing himself as a normal human being to seeing himself as not at all human, but a manufactured clone, no different from hundreds or thousands of clones exactly like him that he discovers in a hidden section of the moon base.

What struck me about this aspect of the movie is how Sam's shocking realization could be viewed as a metaphor, or reflection, of another sort of shocking realization that could be possible for any of us. Not that we're a clone, but that we're not who we have always viewed ourselves as being.

Now, I don't know what that shocking realization might consist of. Or if it really would be shocking. Maybe it would feel entirely natural, as if we'd woken up from a dream that had been going on for our entire life.

I'm not talking about a religious realization, such as "God loves me" or "Jesus is my savior." These are additions to a mind that don't overturn a mind's  basic assumptions. Nor am I talking about something supernatural.

Rather, I see this realization as being along the line of "The world as I've known it is an illusion, but there is no world more real than this one." In other words, it is the perception of the everyday world that is turned upside down in some fashion, not the world itself, which remains just as it is.

My best bet as to what this sort of shocking realization could consist of -- which arguably is very much in line with Buddhist enlightenment or nirvana -- is an experience that the self we take ourselves to be actually doesn't exist. 

This is akin to what Sam experiences in "Moon," aside from the fact that Sam was distressed by the fact that he wasn't who he always thought he was, while the experience of selflessness would be much more pleasant, blissful even. Or at least no less pleasant or blissful than our previous existence as a self, just different in a difficult-to-describe way.

Along with this would be a realization that the free will we always thought we possessed also was an illusion.

I see this as a massive relief. I've had glimpses of such a state of being in which I see that who I am at any given moment is the result of causes and effects extending back to my birth -- and even far beyond that, to the moment of the big bang 14 billion years ago.

My view, which isn't at all original, is that evolution adapted us to an illusion of ego/self because this aided in our survival as early humans.

We continue to buy into this story of individual separateness because every human culture teaches it is true, even though some cultures (Chinese and Indigenous, for example) buy into it less than other cultures (American and European, for example).

Anyway, I like the idea that our view of ourselves could be upended in a dramatic fashion.

I'm not sure how this could come about. It simply seems like a real possibility that fits with experiences I had with psychedelics in my college days, and other experiences I've had with meditation/mindfulness since.

Here's an elusive cosmological koan to beguile you

When I saw a book called Cosmological Koans mentioned in another book I was reading, there was little doubt in my mind that it would be delivered to me by Amazon before too long. And so it came to pass.

Anthony Aguirre is a Professor of Physics at University of California - Santa Cruz. That is so perfect! I can't imagine a more appropriate place for a koan loving, Buddhism inspired, creative writing physicist than UC Santa Cruz. 

(I went to college at San Jose State in the 1960s; Santa Cruz beaches were a favorite spot for LSD trips, along with the mountains separating San Jose from the Pacific coast and Santa Cruz.)

For quite a while I could only read one cosmological koan chapter a day, because each koan stretched my mind so much. Aguirre mixes together science and philosophy in a wholly unique way. It's hard for me to describe this book, other than to say it is like no other.

But when I got to Part 5, "Who Am I? Don't Know!," I found myself in more familiar territory. So I've been reading several cosmological koans a day, eager to get to the final Part 6, "Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is Form."

Below is a passage from the Time and Free Will cosmological koan. You'll see that Aguirre skillfully keeps the reader off balance, as a physicist Zen master would. Just when you think his train of thought is heading in a certain direction, surprise!, it jumps onto another track. 

The two tracks are connected, yet also separate. This makes for provocative reading. Also, frustrating reading, since I have to attend closely to the subtleties of what Aguirre is saying, rather than letting his words wash over me in a free and easy fashion.

I like how Aguirre presents a fresh way of what being in the present is. Basically, there's no such thing. Although in a sense there is. "Now," he says, is the point where uncertainty in the history is the least. 

Brilliant. Along with perfectly obvious. Koan on...

Though the state-based and the history-based descriptions can be mathematically translated into each other, they give quite different feelings, and they relate to different aspects of how we experience the world. 

The state-based view accords with how we experience the present. The world is some way, which we infer from observations. The world's future is tightly connected to its present configuration in ways that are somewhat but not entirely predictable, and the future's unpredictability leads to feelings of both freedom and frustration.

But the past feels more history based: we look back at how things evolved through time, at full trajectories, at seemingly inescapable chains of cause and effect. We may have uncertainty about the past, but feel that the past itself is certain while our knowledge of it is partial.

We might also think of the future in terms of histories, playing our stories in our minds of how things could go. But we generally believe -- or at least act -- as if we are uncertain of the future because the future itself is uncertain, not just our knowledge of it.

The state-based and history-based perspectives also give very different senses of the uncertainties inherent in the "now." 

This uncertainty in the present state gives rise to a sense of "splitting" of the future into many different possibilities: from one uncertain present, many possible futures. Yet from the history-based view, no history starts now; each extends indefinitely forward and back in time. 

The uncertainty in the present is just a particular type of uncertainty in the history. "Now" is, in a sense, the point at which our uncertainty in the history is the least, and it is in the space-time locale at which the different possible histories say very similar things about our observable surroundings.

Our present knowledge thus allows us to select a subset of all possible histories that accord with our present view and knowledge of the world. We call this subset selection "learning about the world"; selecting a smaller and smaller subset means that the present state is more and more precisely specified, which in turn means that we attain greater and greater knowledge. 

Insofar as the two views can be mathematically related, there is no sense in which one is more "right" than the other. However, insofar as they are views of how the world works, we might be led more, or less, astray. 

In particular, we are quite used to thinking of "places" in space, so it is natural to think of "places" in time. And the mathematics of fundamental physics allows us to do this. Yet we also recognize that there are some "things" that have a wholeness that is rather at odds with divvying them up into parts that are here and there.

We recognize that we can't talk about the left-hand side of a thought, or the northern half of a computation, the east end of blueness, or the bottom of a smell.

We also understand that processes unfold in time, and by its very nature a process, which involves time, cannot be happening at an instant any more than an arrow can fly during a moment of zero duration.

Yet we are often tempted to think about things like "your mind now" or "the person up until some point in time." We slice time into past, present, and future as if we might really slice it this way without doing terrible violence; but we can't, any more than we can take a slice out of a person to study the operation of their heart.

If there is no "left side" of a thought, is there really a "beginning" of a thought, or an "end"?

If we don't slice up our minds, if we consider them as just part of a chain of events and outcomes, then look what happens: they become unfettered, extending over great distances in space and time and including books, relations, records, laws, statements, and arguments, as well as neurons.

Much more than they are extended in space, our minds are extended in time, as undivided processes playing out over many timescales. Our mental life is built largely of memory, and we function as intelligences and agents in the world largely through predicting, envisioning, and acting toward the future.

Any amount of introspection will reveal that we tend to spend most of our time in either what was or what might be.

Perhaps we should take this very seriously -- this idea that our very existence is contingent on being extended nonlocally in time. Many of the rather unsettling implications we've explored in Part 5 have hinged on an assumption that there is a state of a mind, a self, a consciousness, as it is right now. 

Could there be something fundamentally wrong with this notion that could extricate us from some of those disturbing directions of thought?

This view is slippery, elusive, and beguiling. 

Marvelous mystery lies in the complexity of the world

Most of us want to believe in something greater than ourself. That's a worthy ambition. Problem is, religious believers head off in a misguided direction when they imagine that the something greater lies in a vertical direction.

Meaning, they fantasize that a heaven awaits above; or that higher supernatural regions of reality exist; or that their consciousness needs to be elevated beyond worldly concerns.

What these devotees of verticality fail to understand is this: the world right here and right now possesses all the majesty, mystery, and meaning that anyone could desire.

It just takes eyes to see, which, sadly, all too often religious believers lack -- because their attention is focused on mental concepts of a imagined vertical realm rather than the reality of what the world offers.

So what I'm encouraging people to do is extend their vision horizontally. Try to understand the marvelous nature of this world, all that extends in every direction from our own body/mind. 

Nature. Animals. Humans. Galaxies. Plants. Minerals. Science. Art. Culture. A limitless expanse that is partially known, yet mostly remains a mystery.

Not because it can't be known. Because it takes time and effort to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, including the small portion we call Earth. 

It's a big mistake to think that scientists have a narrow, mechanistic perception of reality.

Sure, some do, but they're by far the exception. The prevailing view of modern science is strongly moving toward a systems approach that emphasizes complex interrelationships, not simple bits and pieces of matter/energy.

Jeremy Lent speaks of this in his book, "The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe." In the Introduction he says:

The Web of Meaning takes up where The Patterning Instinct [his previous book] left off, by laying out a framework for a worldview that could foster humanity's long-term flourishing on a healthy planet. It is a worldview of integration: one that identifies the unifying principles that flow through all things, while celebrating the differences that lead to the richness of our lived experience. 

It's a worldview that links together scientific findings in recent decades from such diverse fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience and complexity theory, showing how they affirm profound insights from the world's great wisdom traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and traditional knowledge from Indigenous peoples around the world.

This integrated worldview breaks down many of the barriers that tend to separate different forms of knowledge and activity in modern society. 

We're accustomed to thinking of science as existing in a different domain from spirituality. We generally view the intellect as distinct from emotion; the mind as separate from the body; humans as separate from nature; and spiritual insight as separate from political engagement.

In the integrated worldview laid out here, each one of these domains is intricately connected with the others in an extended web of meaning.

A complex web of meaning. But "complex" doesn't necessarily mean confusing, disturbing, undesirable. Complexity just is the way the world is. 

Yes, we humans like to imagine that the world is made of discrete entities. There is me, and there is you. Two things. I am me, you are you. Pretty damn simple. 

And yet... 

When I'm with my wife I'm a different person than when I'm by myself. Or with someone else. Every relationship is just that: a relation between two or more entities, in this case, people. That relationship is more than the sum of the parts of the entities. 

It is a process, give and take, a flowing dance that can't be understood by freezing motion into a static "me" and "you." In every relationship between two living beings, there is an astounding degree of mystery, of unpredictableness, of creativity.

We have no idea who our self is. Not really. Almost certainly the reason is that the self doesn't exist. At least not in the way most of us conceive of it.

We imagine an unchanging core at the center of our being. Consciousness. Soul. Ego. Self.

Whatever name it goes by, there's no evidence of it, even though it seems entirely real. So does a mirage, until we drive close to the shimmering pool of water in the middle of a road and realize that it only exists as ephemeral waves given off by a hot road. 

(When I was a child my mother lived in El Paso and drove to New Mexico regularly, so I became familiar with this sort of mirage.)

We have a lot of difficulty grasping that there's no enduring self -- just relationships between our body/mind and the world.

Zen masters are fond of asking their students to point to that supposed self, to their imagined Buddha-nature, to the "I" lurking in their cranium.

When all that pointing is shown to be illusory, they advise looking instead to eating a bowl of rice, or to sweeping the floor, or to carrying a pail of water. We find ourselves by losing ourselves in the greater world.

Jeremy Lent says in his book:

Along with other Buddhist schools, Zen recognizes that, of all the cognitive patterns blocking a deep realization of reality, the most insidious is the belief that "I" am an objective and fixed entity, rather than a mere abstraction. Philosopher Alan Watts illustrates this by comparing the "I" to the illusory circle of light created by a whirling torch or the flight path made by a bird in the sky.

It doesn't objectively exist, but we create the abstraction by weaving together a pattern of past and future.

The word for this Buddhist insight, anatman, which literally means 'no atman', is often confusingly translated as 'no-self', but it would be more accurate to translate it as 'no-fixed-I'. 

The meaning of the ancient Indian word atman correlates closely with the Greco-Christian idea of a fixed eternal soul that is freed from the body at death. When the Buddha renounced this core Vedic belief with the principle of anatman, it would have been as revolutionary as an early Christian claiming that the soul didn't exist.

Buddhism can help silence your inner critic

I enjoy reading movie reviews. The people who write them are called critics.

When they criticize a movie, or streaming show, that I was considering watching, often I'll decide to see something else instead. So critics can be wonderful.

However, there's also a critic who is uncomfortably close to me. In fact, it is me.

Or at least, a part of me who isn't shy about pointing out my screw-ups, mistakes, and such -- often in a caustic manner that leaves me feeling bad about myself.

I don't mind getting feedback about things I could have done better, whether from myself or anybody else.

But that inner critic often goes overboard, constantly reminding me of mistakes from long ago that I'm already well aware of and which can't be undone because they're in the distant past.

So I perked up when I came to a section in Robert Wright's book, "Why Buddhism is True," that talks about how Wright was able to deal with his own inner critic through mindfulness meditation. 

Here's what Wright said about this.

I've always been good at convincing myself I've made a mistake, at chastising myself for it, and sometimes at pretty literally hating myself for it. For decades people have told me I shouldn't be like this.

They've said things like, "Don't beat yourself up about it." 

This has always annoyed me. My feeling has been that you should beat yourself up about things you do wrong. Otherwise you may keep doing them!

And let's be honest, isn't one of the big problems with the world how many people do bad things and then don't feel any need for self-chastisement?

...The experience I had that night wasn't a full-fledged hallucination. As I entered that weird visual space, I didn't lose contact with the real world. I was aware that I was sitting in a meditation hall and that intense concentration had put my mind in a place it had never been.

But where was this place? Only after looking around a bit did I realize that the place my mind had entered was my mind -- or, at least, my mind's representation of my mind.

The tipoff was that I "saw" -- and, I guess, "heard" -- a particular thought I've had many times after doing something arguably stupid or inept or wrong. 

The thought was "You screwed up."

Actually, "screwed up" is a sanitized version of the phrase I tend to use and of the phrase that constituted the thought I observed that night. Anyway, the main thing is this: I now saw this thought assume a form I had never seen it assume before.

Come to think of it, I had never seen this thought assume any form at all. But it now looked as if -- literally looked as if -- one part of my mind was speaking the thought to another part.

There was even a kind of line tracing the path of the message, like an arrow on a diagram indicating the direction of communication.

I watched this intracranial conversation, watched the message travel from sender to recipient, as a kind of outside observer, even though I thought of the recipient as in some sense being me.

It's almost impossible to convey in words the power of this experience and its aura of significance.

...And what was the truth I was seeing? What struck me at the time was that, for the first time ever, this standard thought of mine -- "You screwed up" -- didn't seem to be coming from me.

It was just some guy in my head doing the talking. And it wasn't clear that he was worth paying attention to. Who the hell was he, anyway?

Now, more than a decade later, having thought about this stuff more and written this book, I might answer, "He was a module in my mind."

But at the time I was thinking less academically, and the lesson seemed to be that in the future I could treat my inner critic with some critical distance, if not outright disdain.

As much as I had resisted efforts to quit beating myself up, as much as I had minimized the toll it took on me, the prospect of living without this self-torture now seemed powerfully appealing. I'm not much of a crier, but I started crying. I tried to do it quietly, but I did it fully.

...And then I lived happily ever after.

Actually, no. Another line in that Foreigner song, right after "feels like the very first time" is "like it never will again." And, indeed, I haven't had a meditative experience that joltingly powerful since then.

My belief that I would be able to access this plane again and again and use it to orchestrate my own personal spiritual renaissance was naive.

So was my belief that I would quit beating up on myself, though the frequency and severity of the beatings seems to have fallen off a bit.

OK, Wright's meditation experience wasn't truly mind changing. Still, it benefitted him. Here's another excerpt from his book that's an overview of his attitude toward meditation.

In case all this sounds too abstractly philosophical, let me try to put it in more practical form, as the answer to this oft-asked question: Will meditation make me happier? And, if so, how much happier?

Well, in my case -- as  you will recall, I'm a particularly hard case -- the answer is yes, it's made me a little happier. That's good, because I'm in favor of happiness, especially my own.

At the same time, the argument I'd make to people about why they should meditate is less about the quantity of happiness than about the quality of the happiness.

The happiness I now have involves, on balance, a truer view of the world that the happiness I had before.

And a boost in happiness that rests on truth, I would argue, is better than a boost in happiness that doesn't -- not just because things that rest on truth have a more secure footing than things that don't, but because, as it happens, acting in accordance with this truth means behaving better toward your fellow beings.

So that's why I'd say that increments of happiness that insight meditation may add to your life are especially worth working for: because these are increments of valid happiness.

This is a happiness that is based on a multifaceted clarity -- on a truer view of the world, a truer view of other people, a truer view of yourself, and, I believe, a closer approximation to moral truth.

Motive of a mass murderer wrongly assumes conscious will

One of the things that comes through loud and clear in the many modern neuroscience and psychology books I've read is that we humans are lousy at knowing why we act a certain way.

Experiments on split-brain patients, for example, where the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been severed, shows that even when the left side of the brain (which controls language) is unaware of the reason the right side did something, the patient will make up a "why" story that has no basis in fact.

We don't like to admit that we don't know. So the brain makes up reasons in an effort to make sense of the world, even when those reasons lack a connection to reality.

The legal system is behind the times in this regard, as evidenced by the talk after every mass shooting in the United States about it being important to learn the killer's motive.

This assumes a direct link between (1) what we do, and (2) a preceding conscious thought or emotion that impels us to engage in that action. This assumption is highly suspect, since there's a lot of evidence that conscious awareness is a caboose at the end of an Action Train, not the locomotive that leads the way.

After Robert Aaron Long killed eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women who worked at massage parlors, many commentators saw the murders as racially motivated. But police reported that after they talked with Long, he said that his killings stemmed from a sex addiction, not racial hatred.

Well, the plain scientific fact seems to be that Long can't accurately say why he killed those people, just as nobody else can accurately say why they did this or that -- except, perhaps, for the simplest of actions.

Here's an excerpt from the book I've been writing about recently, Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True."

The split-brain experiments powerfully demonstrated the capacity of the conscious self to convince itself that it's calling the shots when it's not. However, this demonstration was done with people who don't have normal brains. How about the rest of us, whose two hemispheres aren't separated? Do our brains actually make use of this capacity for self-deception?

There is good reason to believe the answer is yes.

In one much-cited experiment, the psychologists Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson asked shoppers to appraise four pairs of pantyhose and choose the best pair. It turned out people had a strong tendency to choose the pair on the far right.

But when asked why they had chosen the pair, they didn't say, "Because it's on the far right." They tended to explain their choices in terms of the quality of the pantyhose, sometimes going into detail about the fabric, the feel, and so on.

Unfortunately for these explanations, the four pairs of pantyhose were identical.

...At a minimum, it seems fair to say that the role of our conscious selves in guiding behavior is not nearly as big as was long thought. And the reason this role was exaggerated is that the conscious mind feels so powerful; in other words, the conscious mind is naturally deluded about its own nature.

...From natural selection's point of view, it's good for you to tell a coherent story about yourself, to depict yourself as a rational self-aware actor. So whenever your actual motivations aren't accessible to the part of your brain that communicates with the world, it would make sense for that part of your brain to generate stories about your motivation.

There's good reason why the terms "implicit bias" and "systemic racism" are used so often in discussions of racial discrimination. People may consciously believe that they aren't racially biased, while actually they are.

Sometimes racism is subtle. Sometimes racism is so much a part of society that it goes unnoticed, being so familiar.

And sometimes, maybe most of the time, a mass shooter who kills a number of people of some race is unaware of why he did this. So I don't think investigators of the Atlanta shootings should put much credence in how Robert Aaron Long explains his murders.

Perhaps the law requires that a conscious motive be present for there to be a hate crime. But neuroscience and psychology don't require this -- quite the opposite, in fact.

There are no essences, just interpretations

We humans want to make more of reality than is actually there. We believe that things have more substance, more independence, and more of an unchanging essence than is justified.

This is the message of my previous post about the relative nature of the quantum world. And as I noted in that post, it fits with a core tenet of Buddhism -- emptiness.

Buddhism emptiness doesn't mean a void, or nothingness. 

It refers to the fact that nothing has inherent existence. Nothing has an unchanging essence. Nothing stands alone, complete in and by itself.

In the book I've been writing about recently, "Why Buddhism is True," Robert Wright, the author, says that essence is closely linked to emptiness.

Essence, as we've seen, is central to the Buddhist concept of emptiness. At least its absence is central to the concept of emptiness. The idea of emptiness is that, while the things we perceive out there in the world do in some sense exist, they lack this thing called "essence."

Essence appears in quite a few of the neuroscience books I've read. Often the example used is of, say, someone being told that they could have a nice used sweater at no cost.

The person is delighted.

Then they're told that the sweater belonged to a murderer who killed his victims in a grisly fashion. Learning that, often the sweater offer is refused, because somehow the essence of the murderer is felt to be part of it.

More positively, Wright cites the true example of someone who paid $48,875 for a tape measure owned by John F. Kennedy, "apparently motivated by a sense that it was imbued with some sort of presidential 'essence.'"

He then wonders what would have happened if the successful bidder was told that a mistake was made, and the tape measure actually belonged to a plumber.

The bidder's altered facial expression would leave no doubt that there had been an alteration of feeling. A tape measure that moments ago inspired awe and adoration would now inspire nothing of the kind. A precious relic had turned into a mere object, emptied of the essence it possessed only moments before.

What this points to is another subject discussed by Wright, how perceptions and feelings are intimately related. In fact, they are virtually inseparable. 

Meaning, how we look upon something or someone is deeply affected by our prior experience and emotional attitude. 

I've talked about this sort of thing in reference to how devotees of a guru typically view his qualities in absolute terms, whereas actually they're relative.

I had personal experience of this when my wife went with me to see the guru who led the religious organization I belonged to at the time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Well, actually my wife went to Palm Springs for shopping and sightseeing. But she was able to see the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, at a small group session where she got to sit in the front row.

She wasn't at all impressed. To her, Dhillon just seemed like a regular guy.

But to his devotees, the guru was imbued with marvelous qualities: love, wisdom, charm, and so on. This shows something obvious: beauty, or any other quality, is in the eye of the beholder, not anywhere outside.

Essence also is tied into stories, as Wright describes.

The stories we are told about things, and the stories we tell ourselves about things, influence how we feel about those things and, presumably, thus shape the essence that we sense in them. 

If the story behind a tape measure is that it belonged to JFK, that implies a different feeling -- and a different essence -- than the story that the tape measure belongs to a plumber.

If we think of ourselves as having a successful marriage and wonderful, thriving children, then the sight of our home probably gives off more positive vibes than if we think of ourselves as trapped in an obsessive marriage that has bred ne'er-do-well kids. And so on.

...But that's just one example of a more general illusion: that the "essences" we sense in things really exist, that they inhabit the things we perceive, when in fact they are constructions of our minds, with no necessary correspondence to reality.

Things come with stories, and the stories, whether true or false, shape how we feel about the things and thus shape the things themselves, giving them the full form we perceive.

Not having an illusory self has some real benefits

I'm continuing to enjoy my re-reading of Robert Wright's "Why Buddhism is True," a book that I neglected to write about after I first read it several years ago. My first post about it is here.

In his The Alleged Nonexistence of the Self chapter, Wright offers some advice.

Continue to entertain the proposition you've probably been entertaining your whole life, that somewhere within you there's something that deserves the name I.

And don't feel like you're committing a felony-level violation of Buddhist dogma just because you think of yourself as being a self.

But be open to the radical possibility that your self, at the deepest level, is not at all what you've always thought of as it being.

If you followed the Buddha's guidance and abandoned the massive chunks of psychological landscape you've always thought of as belonging to you, you would undergo a breathtaking shift in what it means to be a human.

If you attained the state he's recommending, this would be very different from having a self in the sense in which you've always had one before.

Basically, what Wright means by this is that it's possible to look upon our emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and such as not being in the realm of good and bad, nor as being lasting parts of who we are.

Nothing lasts. Nothing stands alone. Everything changes. Everything is interdependent, connected to other things.

Wright says:

Think of yourself as having, in principle, the power to establish a different relationship with your feelings and thoughts and impulses and perceptions -- the power to disengage from some of them; the power to, in a sense, disown them, to define the bounds of your self in a way that excludes them.

Think of some degree of liberation being possible -- and don't worry about the fact that this would seem to imply that there's a self to be liberated. There are worse things than being a self that gets liberated. 

One aspect of this liberation is being free of two illusions. Wright describes them clearly. 

So, all told, we're under at least two kinds of illusions. One is about the nature of the conscious self, which we see as more in control of things than it actually is. The other illusion is about exactly what kind of people we are -- namely, capable and upstanding.

You might call these two misconceptions the illusion about our selves and the illusion about ourselves. They work in synergy.

The first illusion helps us convince the world that we are coherent, consistent actors: we don't do things for no reason, and the reasons we do them make sense; if our behaviors merit credit or blame, there is an inner us that deserves that credit or blame.

The second illusion convinces the world that what we deserve is credit, not blame; we're more ethical than the average person, and we're more productive than the average teammate. We have beneffectance.

[Defined as the way people naturally present themselves to the world, as beneficial and effective.]

In other words, if you were to build into the brain a component in charge of public relations, it would look something like the conscious self.

In the next chapter, The Mental Modules That Run Your Life, Wright shares this compelling passage.

Indeed, if there is something that qualifies as a constant amid the flux, something that really does endure, essentially unchanged, through time, that something is an illusion: the illusion that there is a CEO, a king, and that "I" -- the conscious I -- am it.

We saw in the previous chapter that this illusion makes sense in evolutionary terms. The conscious I is the I that speaks, the I that communicates with the world, so it gets access to perspectives whose purpose is to be shared with the world.

These perspectives include the sense that there is an executive self, and that it is a pretty damn effective and upstanding executive self at that!

Now, this might seem kind of depressing. I, and you, and everybody else, we wrongly believe that our conscious self is much more in control of what we do than is actually the case.

Plus, we wrongly believe that this illusory CEO or king/queeen is much more loving, effective, competent, and so on than it actually is. (Again, ignore the paradox of an illusion having qualities; this is just the way Buddhism puts things.)

I like what Wright is saying, though. 

Because we think we're better people, a better self, than we truly are, most of us are harder on ourselves than we should be.

Mistakes, screw-ups, failures -- these challenge our sense of ourselves. We can't understand how someone so caring and competent could mess up so badly. 

Well, this assumes that there's a caring and competent self inside our head. It's akin to a general taking responsibility for a battlefield defeat because he's in charge and should have known better than the failed strategy that his troops followed.

But what if there's no general, no CEO, no king, no one in charge? What if our brains are just highly complex entities with many different modules, or states, that come into play as different circumstances arise? 

Then there would be little reason to engage in regret or recriminations for something poorly done. 

We simply do the best we can with what evolution has given us. No one is in charge of our life, of all our doings. There's just things going on inside and outside our psyches. 

Wright says:

Buddhist thought and modern psychology converge on this point: in human life as it's ordinarily lived, there is no one self, no conscious CEO, that runs the show; rather, there seem to be a series of selves that take turns running the show -- and in a sense, seizing control of the show.

If the way they seize control of the show is through feelings, it stands to reason that one way to change the show is to change the role feelings play in everyday life. I'm not aware of a better way to do that than mindfulness meditation.

Buddhism can free us from evolution's delusion

It happened again this morning, a sign from the non-God. 

I'd tried to continue reading a couple of Buddhist books that appealed to me, aside from occasional mentions of supposed supernatural phenomena, which had been bothering me.

Today the bothering overcame my liking of the books. 

In the course of returning them to the Buddhism section of my bookcase, my eye hit upon a book by Robert Wright, "Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment."

Highlighting indicated that I'd read the entire book. But so far as I can tell, I never wrote a blog post about it. Well, that changes with today. And I'm sure I'll write more posts as I re-read the book.

Here's an excerpt from the first chapter of the book that I got through this morning. I really like Wright's writing style and his approach to Buddhist meditation.

Evolutionary psychology can be described in various ways, and here's one way I had described it in my book [The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life]: It is the study of how the human brain was designed -- by natural selection -- to mislead us, even enslave us.

Don't get me wrong: natural selection has its virtues, and I'd rather be created by it than not be created at all -- which, so far as I can tell, are the two options this universe offers. 

Being a product of evolution is by no means entirely a story of enslavement and delusion. Our evolved brains empower us in many ways, and they often bless us with a basically accurate view of reality.

Still, ultimately, natural selection cares about only one thing (or, I should say, "cares" -- in quotes -- about only one thing, since natural selection is just a blind process, not a conscious designer). And that one thing is getting genes into the next generation. 

Genetically based traits that in the past contributed to genetic proliferation have flourished, while traits that didn't have fallen by the wayside. 

And the traits that have survived this test include mental traits -- structures and algorithms that are built into the brain and shape our everyday experience.

So if you ask the question "What kinds of perceptions and thoughts and feelings guide us through life each day?" the answer, at the most basic level, isn't "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that give us an accurate picture of reality."

No, at the most basic level the answer is "The kinds of thoughts and feelings and perceptions that helped our ancestors get genes into the next generation."

Whether those thoughts and feelings and perceptions give us a true view of reality is, strictly speaking, beside the point. As a result, they sometimes don't. Our brains are designed to, among other things, delude us.

In the rest of his book, Wright describes his exploration of Buddhist meditation and how it can lead us to a less deluded view of reality.

One reason I like non-supernatural Buddhism so much is that it flips around the Hindu conception of maya, the illusory nature of this world. 

In Buddhism the world is simply what it is, the world.  

There's no problem with the world. The problem lies with the human mind that is trying to comprehend the world, to find the world satisfying, to treat other people compassionately. 

This is one reason why the Buddha reportedly wasn't much interested in abstract discussions of how the world is. His focus was on how a correct view of the world can lead to much reduced suffering, which Wright suggests is better termed "unsatisfactoriness."

At the end of his second chapter, Paradoxes of Meditation, Wright cites the questions he's going to explore via the scientific foundation of a Buddhist worldview.

Why, and in what particular ways, are human beings naturally deluded? How exactly does the delusion work? How does delusion make us suffer? How does it make us make other people suffer? Why would the Buddhist prescription for dispelling the delusion -- in particular, the meditative part of that prescription -- work?

And what would it mean for it to work fully? In other words, does the elusive state that is said to lie at the culmination of the meditative path -- sometimes called enlightenment -- really qualify for that term? What would it be like to see the world with perfect clarity?

Great questions.

I look forward to learning the answers through a second reading of "Why Buddhism is True." I'm a different person than I was almost four years ago, when I bought the book in August 2017.

So my comprehension of what Wright has to say also will be different now.

"Nothing special" explains a lot about human nature

A few days ago I'd woken up in the middle of the night. In the course of lying in bed, waiting to get back to sleep, the thought of "nothing special" suddenly came to mind.

I then pondered the fact that I'm nothing special; that all of humanity is nothing special given the vastness of the cosmos; that, nonetheless, religions try to make their followers feel very special by supposedly enjoying a special relationship with God; that if people could somehow have a sense that they're nothing special, along with everybody else, the world would be a better place.

Since, I've been enjoying playing around with this "nothing special" idea. 

It seems to go a long way toward explaining the gap between how reality actually is, and how we humans typically consider it to be.

Meaning, we're really good at deluding ourselves.

And one reason this happens is our failure to look upon ourselves as nothing special. Instead, we have a strong tendency to see ourselves as being in a spotlight on the Stage of Life, while other people play supporting roles in the shadows.

This is to be expected, I guess. The only person we are in an intimate subjective relationship with is our own self. Everybody else we view from the outside, while we know ourselves from the inside.

So it takes some effort, some spiritual work, to alter that I-centered point of view into a more realistic I'm-nothing-special perspective.

For example, we see death all around us and know that no one is able to escape being dead at some point. Yet most people believe in life after death -- because their religion tells them that they're going to have a nice afterlife, while non-believers in that religion won't.

Today I wondered if Amazon had any books with the title Nothing Special. I found several, but only one book that had a similar philosophical perspective on how I viewed that term, Charlotte Joko Beck's book with the subtitle "Living Zen."

Amazon informed me that I'd bought this book on June 24, 2012.

Indeed, I found it in the Buddhist section of my bookcase. Interesting. Maybe my mind popped up with that nighttime "nothing special" thought on its own, but it seemed entirely possible that a memory of the title of Beck's book surfaced out of the depths of my unconscious.

I'd written a couple of blog posts about Nothing Special. 
What zen practice is... so simple...
Anxiety stretches between real and unreal

I've started to re-read Nothing Special, or at least parts of it. Here's how the book starts out. I like this imagery.

We are rather like whirlpools in the river of life. In flowing forward, a river or stream may hit rocks, branches, or irregularities in the ground, causing whirlpools to spring up spontaneously here and there.

Water entering one whirlpool quickly passes through and rejoins the river, eventually joining another whirlpool and moving on. Though for short periods it seems to be distinguishable as a separate event, the water in the whirlpools is just the river itself. 

The stability of a whirlpool is only temporary.

The energy of the river of life forms living things -- a human being, a cat or dog, trees and plants -- then what held the whirlpool in place is itself altered, and the whirlpool is swept away, reentering the larger flow. 

The energy that was a a particular whirlpool fades out and the water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool.

We'd rather not think of our lives in this way, however. We don't want to see ourselves as simply a temporary formation, a whirlpool in the river of life. The fact is, we take form for a while; then when conditions are appropriate, we fade out.

There's nothing wrong with fading out; it's a natural part of the process.

However, we want to think that this little whirlpool that we are isn't a part of the stream. We want to see ourselves as permanent and stable. Our whole energy goes into trying to protect our supposed separateness.

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. 

There are pros and cons to repeating a mantra

On this blog I've done a lot of writing about mantras. I just used the Google search box in the right sidebar to locate posts dealing with "mantra." The results went on for 10 pages, all of most of the posts being written for Church of the Churchless rather than my other two blogs.

I assiduously repeated a mantra silently both in meditation and during some of the rest of my day for thirty-five years. 

That was the meditation method I first was taught, though it had a component of open awareness to go along with the focused attention of repeating a mantra.

At times I've considered that mantra meditation basically is useless. In part, that's because I no longer like the idea of separating my body and mind. 

When I was really into repeating a mantra, I found that this created a distance between what I was doing physically and my awareness, because part of my mental energy was devoted to the mantra while, say, I was doing the dishes.

Now I prefer to be mindful of whatever I'm doing, no mantra required, which is why I've said that mindfulness has become my meditation. 

But I still play around with repeating a mantra -- the operative word being "play." I no longe view a mantra as anything serious, a cosmic secret between me and the guru who gave me supposedly sacred words to repeat in my mind.

Nor do I consider that a mantra has any special powers, or is a means of achieving some sort of supernatural consciousness. Rather, I like to try out various mantras just to see how this feels to me, sort of like an actor playing various roles. 

An actor tries to inhabit the role being taken on in order to make their acting appear genuine. But they never lose themselves in a role so deeply, they aren't conscious that what they're doing is just an act.

Being inclined toward Buddhism, though in no way am I a Buddhist, I've been trying on the Shin/Pure Land mantra of Namu Amida Butsu. 

Basically those words mean "I take refuge in the Buddha." There's quite a bit of weirdness associated with the Shin branch of Buddhism, but I don't have to embrace all that when I'm repeating Namu Amida Butsu. 

I like how those words sound, especially when repeated slowly, one word to each out breath.Namu ends in "ooh." Amida ends in "ah." Butsu ends in another "ooh." Nice soft vowels. They relax me.

Mostly I play at repeating the Nembutsu, as it is called, when I'm not doing anything else. Going to sleep, for example. 

But there's other times when I enjoy repeating this mantra, or some other word(s), especially when my mind is overly active. Yes, in general I believe in not diffusing my attention with a mantra when I could be simply fixing lunch, taking out the trash, or whatever.

That assumes my mind is quiet enough to be mindful of what I'm doing physically, However, sometimes thoughts of something I've done, or something I need to do, keep intruding. 

In that case, I figure that it makes sense to have a few simple words being repeated mentally than to have a whole bunch of complex thoughts rattling around in my head. 

I'd rather be speaking to myself Namu Amida Butsu than, say, "Geez, I can't believe Governor Brown decided Oregon teachers should get a Covid vaccine before seniors. So wrong. Maybe I should write about this tonight. Or maybe not. Hard to decide. Politicians are doing so much that's stupid. Mostly Republicans, but Democrats also. So irritating..."

Most of our inner speech isn't productive. it's just how our mind likes to pass time, by talking to itself. So a mantra can be a useful means of quieting the mind, sort of like giving a baby a pacifier it can suck on rather than crying. 

Stillness can make action more effective

I'm continuing to enjoy Domyo Sater Burk's Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness. 

Today I read her take on getting comfortable with stillness and silence. This appealed to me, not only because I've been meditating every day for over 50 years, so I understand how difficult it can be to keep the mind and body more or less still and silent.

This also is espoused in Tai Chi, which I've practiced for the past 16 years. Of course, you can't be perfectly still in Tai Chi, which I like to call "Taoism in motion." 

But listening skills are a big part of the effectiveness of Tai Chi as a martial art, a quality that applies to other martial arts such as karate. Tai Chi, though, promotes a certain quietude and stillness in sensing what an opponent is intending that is uncommon in more active forms of self-defense. 

The idea is to sensitively sense the energy of a punch, kick, or whatever without initially interfering much with it, if it is interfered with at all. Only then can the attack can dealt with effectively, because you haven't allowed a premature urge to respond to interfere with learning what it is that needs to be dealt with. 

Here's some excerpts from the " Comfort with Stillness and Silence" chapter I read this morning.

To cultivate the receptive attitude required for mindfulness, you temporarily stop trying to influence your circumstances and just open the doors of perception. You try to let go of activity, judgement, and trying to figure things out using your ordinary level of thinking.

You momentarily set aside commenting on things and explaining your point of view to others.

Your body-mind may generate thoughts and feelings all on its own, but you simply observe them as being part of your overall experience of the moment. You're just watching, listening, sensing, and perceiving,

The subjective experience of this purely receptive mode is stillness or silence. The absence of activity or noise may be internal, external, or both. It can be very uncomfortable if you're not used to it.

Fortunately, you can increase your ability to let go of activity and be still. You might even end up liking the experience! The more familiar you get with this simple mode of being, the easier mindfulness will get. 

...Stillness is simply letting go of all activity. The activity you let go of may be working to obtain something you want, trying to avoid or get rid of something you don't want, or escaping something you find neutral or boring. It can be obvious or subtle.

...When you're able to rest in stillness, you become much more receptive to what's going on in your life. It's as if your mental and physical activity create a whole lot of noise. When you let go of that activity, it's like turning off the noise.

Suddenly you can hear. You're able to perceive what's going on around you.

In addition, when you turn off your volitional actions and thoughts, you dramatically increase your ability to see, touch, smell, taste, and objectively perceive the feelings and thoughts that are present in your body-mind in spite of "you" (that is, the conscious, willful part of you).

It isn't necessary -- or advisable -- to choose stillness and then do nothing. Mindfulness isn't about becoming passive. What you're trying to do is see your life clearly so you can take better care of it.

At some point action is necessary and wise, but you're unlikely to be able to know the best time to act or the best thing to do unless you take some time to rest in stillness first. This turns down the noise in your body-mind and opens up the doors of perception.

It's important to realize that stillness is not ultimately useless; it's only apparently useless at the moment. 

As you rest in stillness, your body-mind is still present and operating; it's just not being guided or censored by the part of you responsible for ordinary discriminatory thinking and judging. The information that you receive while mindfully aware goes into your body-mind and affects you. You're just temporarily suspending judgment and action.

This actually gives you a chance to process things in a more holistic and deep way than you habitually do. Ironically, resting in stillness can help you make better decisions and be more effective in your life.

Mindfulness isn't a fad. It's awareness of present experience.

After discovering the great writing of Domyo Burk on her Zen Studies Podcast episodes, I was eager to buy the Idiot's Guide to Zen Living that she wrote. But that book is out of print, with only expensive used copies available, other than the Kindle version (I like my books on paper, not a screen).

However, I found another book by Burk, the Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness.  It arrived yesterday, and I already can tell that I'm going to enjoy it a lot.

Below is the Introduction, which is a great short summary of what mindfulness is all about. In it there's a mention of stimulus-independent thought. Since this isn't a familiar term to most people -- it sure wasn't to me -- here's a description from a section that follows the Introduction.

Researchers have recently made a very interesting discovery: when you're not otherwise occupied, you're usually engaged in very active self-referential thinking. It's like your mind takes advantage of any down time by analyzing, planning, and evaluating all the stuff in your life so you can be better prepared for it.

This thinking is what researchers call "stimulus-independent thought," because it is all in your head -- it generally has little or nothing to do with what is going on around you at the moment. This stimulus-independent, self-referential processing is called the brain's default mode.

This is the Introduction itself.

Over the last 25 years, the practice of mindfulness has been shown to be very beneficial to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons. It's really quite amazing. 

Mindfulness has been shown to improve cardiovascular health, increase rates of healing, decrease reported pain levels, and improve immune response. There is evidence it can decrease anxiety and stress, provide a way to cope with depression. increase levels of satisfaction with relationships and work situations, and help people change problematic behaviors.

It has been effective with populations that other methods have not reliably been able to benefit, including at-risk youth, prison inmates, and people suffering from certain kinds of intense and complicated mental illnesses.

Is mindfulness a fad? Is it a quick, easy answer to things we'll later discover has a serious downside? Ten or twenty years from now, are we going to look back and laugh, saying, "Remember when mindfulness was all the rage?"

I don't think so. Mindfulness isn't a special technique you add to your life. It's about learning to use your body and mind more effectively. It's a simple process of cultivating receptive awareness of your present experience, no matter what it is.

To do this, you have to learn to let go of your stimulus-independent thinking, such as ruminating on the past, planning, analyzing, evaluating, judging, fantasizing, and daydreaming.

What's remarkable is that such a simple practice makes such a big difference.

Science will undoubtedly be able to explain why this is the case someday, but in the meantime we have to rely on our subjective experience of mindfulness to understand it. Essentially, it means that human intelligence, while very advantageous in many ways, also causes you problems.

You come to rely too heavily on the abstract world that only exists in your own mind. You spend more time thinking about things that aren't actually going on around you than you do paying attention to your present experience. 

You perceive things through the filter of your ideas and judgments, and fail to notice cause-and-effect relationships because you're so preoccupied with your thoughts. You believe your feelings, concepts, judgments, and emotions reflect reality, and therefore you're compelled to defend or act on them.

Simply and repeatedly turning your attention back to the present moment counteracts the effects of spending so much time stuck in your head.

It isn't easy to make mindfulness a stronger habit than dwelling on stimulus-independent thinking, but each time you become aware of your actual experience here and now, it helps you gain perspective on your life.

For a moment, you notice what's in our own mind versus what's actually going on. This moment opens up many possibilities for different ways of thinking and behaving.

The greatest thing about mindfulness is that it's very simple to do, and anyone can do it. The necessary tools are accessible to anyone, they cost nothing, and they have no negative side effects! 

It may sound too good to be true, so I'll let you know what the catch is: mindfulness takes work. This book will tell you what that work entails so you can make mindfulness a part of your life, no matter what kind of life you lead.

Zen Studies Podcast is a great Buddhist resource

A few days ago I wrote a post about me embracing Shikantaza, the Zen Buddhist approach to meditation where you let go and do nothing other than remain aware of what's present without you doing anything.

The next day I checked out a post on the Zen Studies Podcast that I'd linked to, Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything  First I listened to Domyo Burk, who narrates the podcasts.

Then I read the transcript of the podcast -- a great feature for those of us who like a choice of the written word or spoken speech.

I was blown away by how clear, coherent, informative, and entertaining Domyo's talk was. I tried to send her a thank you via a Contact page, but kept getting an error message. 

Eventually I learned where Domyo does her Zen teaching and was able to send Domyo an email through that route. Interestingly, it is just a hour's drive from Salem, where I live: Bright Way Zen in Portland, Oregon.

I haven't listened, or read, any of the other podcasts. I've looked at a list of the 131 podcasts in the order they were made, and they look like an amazingly valuable resource for anyone interested in Zen or Buddhism in general. I'll be reading many of them, for sure.

Here's part of the Shikantaza podcast. I've chosen passages I really liked from the beginning and end of the podcast. Domyo clearly has a sensitive understanding of how the mind works in meditation, and also outside of it. Zazen simply means meditation, Zen variety.

It’s like we can’t fully trust ourselves, let alone beginners, to just sit. We’re afraid that if we give up trying to control our minds, they’ll do nothing but wander all over the place and waste our time. We’ll sit there on the meditation seat planning and rehashing memories and thinking random stupid thoughts unless the “executive I” exerts some discipline, or at the very least makes a wiser choice when the opportunity presents itself.

If we just sit there, we’ll never improve or attain anything. Nothing will happen. Those lovely moments when the thinking subsides – when we’re intimately “present for our lives” and everything seems to fall into place – will evade us or become very rare. Just sit? Are you crazy? We can’t just let ourselves sit!

In our doubt, we cling to overt or subtle meditative techniques to minimize the amount of time we spend caught up thoughts while sitting zazen. Our natural preferences morph into judgments, even if parts of us resist those judgments: Silence = good, internal verbiage = bad. Awareness of the present = good, thinking about past or future = bad. Calm = good, agitation = bad. A sense of transcendence = good, a sense of being trapped in a small self = bad. Self-consciousness = good, forgetting we’re even meditating because we’re lost in thoughts = bad.

We may learn to refrain from judging our meditation, but sometimes this is more about accepting we’re mediocre meditators (why make ourselves miserable about it?) than it is about entirely transcending judgment of our meditative experience.

Why is it so hard for us to wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to just sitting? Because it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s scary because we don’t trust ourselves. We’re identified with our sense of “executive I,” which we perceive as guiding us safely through this world. To set aside or ignore the “executive I” seems like laziness at best and madness at worst.

But Zen says the “executive I” is an illusion, and therefore it’s an illusion it’s in charge of your meditation to begin with. Shikantaza challenges you to physically enact nonduality and no-self. When you let go of the struggle to control your experience and find out everything flows along perfectly fine anyway, this brings the Buddhist teachings home in the most profound and transformative way possible.

...I’ve already talked about how obvious stimulus-independent thinking is doing, but there are an infinite number of ways we’re exerting effort every moment without even realizing it. We maintain views that help us make sense of the world and our place in it. We hold assumptions about the nature of self and reality, and subtly avoid or deny certain facts or experiences.

We anticipate what’s going to happen next, and what our lives are probably going to be like from here on out. We gloss over our direct experience, categorizing it as something we’ve seen before, or something not worth our attention. In a strange way, we believe we’re holding reality together with our minds.

In zazen we can make energetic efforts to relax all of these efforts. Of course, this is not the usual kind of effort. It’s more like what you need to do if a massage therapist tells you your shoulder muscles are really tense and asks you to relax them. Or what you need to do if you’re feeling insecure in the water and someone tells you to relax and float. Or what you need to do to make friends with a standoffish cat.

Direct, willful effort isn’t going to work, but you need to put a lot of effort into paying attention, being sensitive and aware, letting go of what isn’t helping, and trusting the process. You also need to take a leap of faith that something beyond your sense of “executive I” – your body, the water, the cat, the universe – will respond and support you.

Gradually, zazen teaches us we don’t have to hold reality together with our minds. In fact, we realize reality is perfectly fine on its own, and the world we’ve constructed in our minds is only a pale reflection of it.

I’m guessing other meditative approaches, as well as the spiritual practices of other religious traditions such as prayer, can eventually get you to the same place. I certainly resonate with the descriptions of the divine and transcendent from mystics from all traditions, so clearly zazen isn’t the only way.

What’s consistent in all peak spiritual experiences of human beings, however, is a transcendence of the sense of self. I believe zazen is an elegantly simple and direct practice that very cleverly asks you to leave behind the “executive I” from the outset, so you don’t have to struggle to shed it later after it’s appeared to lead you to all kinds of great spiritual rewards.