Church of the Churchless

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.

My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I've got some amazing news to report about how I meditate.

I toyed with the idea of issuing a press release in case the New York Times and Washington Post want to cover this breaking news (CNN also, since everything is breaking news on CNN), but I decided that readers of this blog deserved to be clued in first.

Today, before I meditated, I decided that what I'm going to do from now on -- unless I change my mind -- is... drumroll, please... a little longer drumroll to let the anticipation build... 

Absolutely nothing. 

OK, take some deep breaths. Calm down. Let your heartbeat get back to normal. I realize that this meditation news could be as exciting for you as it was for me this morning, when I first heard about it from myself.

I've been edging toward this exalted approach to meditation for many years. I must be close to full enlightenment, since I heartily enjoyed the 20 minutes I spent today embracing what Zen calls Shikantaza. 

I like that word because it sounds much more profound than my "absolutely nothing," though that's pretty much what Shikantaza meditation is all about. Doing nothing. Or rather, doing nothing special.


For 35 years, 1970 to 2005, my approach to meditation was decidedly special. In my own mind, at least, which reflected the teachings of the Indian religious group I was a member of during that time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

RSSB taught that through meditation it was possible to raise one's consciousness beyond awareness of physical reality into a spiritual domain that could loosely be called "heaven," even though that's a Christian term. 

So the goal of my meditation was to concentrate on what lay within my mind, ignoring sights, sounds, and other manifestations of what the world had to offer. I tried to meditate in a quiet dark place to avoid distractions.

After I realized the drawbacks of the RSSB teachings, I gradually shifted to a mindfulness sort of meditation practice. Mostly I focused on my breathing in accord with a common Buddhist meditative approach. But I still had goals in mind: remain aware of my in- and out-breaths; try to relax; don't think too much.

Today, though, something shifted in my psyche. 

I didn't want to keep on dividing reality into what I paid attention to in meditation, and everything else. That isn't what I did during the rest of my day. I just was aware of whatever I was experiencing at the moment.

So this morning I simply set my iPhone timer for 20 minutes, shut my eyes, and sat in my chair. I was aware of my breathing, because I was alive. I was aware of heat being blown through air ducts, because it was cold outside. I was aware of the dryer going in the nearby utility room, because my wife was doing laundry.

It was refreshing to feel that nothing could be a distraction, since I wasn't focusing on anything I could be distracted from. I was awake and aware, just without a preference on what my awareness settled on. I couldn't go wrong in my meditation, given that there was no standard of rightness.

There really isn't a whole lot to say about this kind of open awareness meditation. However, I've said something about it and so have other people. Here's some examples of writings about Shikantaza with an excerpt from each source.

Just Sitting, Going Nowhere
The practice of “just-awareness” is the essence of Zen meditation. The Japanese word for this, shikantaza, is usually translated as “just sitting,” but Dogen, the founder of the Soto school of Zen, specifically taught that zazen is “beyond sitting or lying down.” Shikantaza is more than the mere physical posture of sitting, although it certainly includes that. Fundamentally it is the practice of just being here, being present—except that we are not rocks or stones, but aware beings—so I think “just-awareness” more fully captures the essence of the term. But awareness of what? That is the first question.

Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything 
I’ve been sitting zazen for over 20 years, but only recently have I had the guts to really do shikantaza or “just sitting,” and it feels profoundly liberating. In this kind of zazen, you utterly let go of doing anything except just sitting there. Really. I discuss why beginners are usually taught to count or follow breaths instead of do shikantaza, and why I think this is unfortunate. I also discuss the surprising results of a practice in which you don’t try to control your experience in any way.

Shikantaza: The Methodless Method of Zazen
A few years ago I came across an unusual description of shikantaza, the objectless meditation at the heart of Soto Zen Buddhism. “Shikantaza,” said Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, “is like sitting in the center of a clearing in the forest, knowing that ultimate danger is about to strike but not knowing what form it will take or from what direction it will come.”

I’d found this quote in an essay by Flora Courtois, a long-time Zen practitioner who’d studied with Yasutani Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. Her account of her spiritual unfolding was so striking that I was riveted the moment I began reading. But it wasn’t until I arrived at her analysis of Yasutani’s metaphor for shikantaza that I realized I’d found in it a teaching I didn’t even know I’d been missing. And like any good teaching, it would challenge much of what I thought I knew about zazen.

Just Sitting: The Zen Practice of Shikantaza
Once or twice a day, I sit facing a wall in my home. I just sit. I sit for twenty minutes, a half-hour, sometimes more. But I just sit. I sit and think not thinking; I do that by non-thinking.

This is the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” You sit, cross-legged if you can, and let your mind alone. When you stop thinking, you reach a point of non-thinking. It’s one of the typical paradoxes of Zen that makes your brain try and twist around those words, “not,” “non-” and “thinking” to figure out what they mean.

Unlike other forms of meditation, shikantaza doesn’t involve concentrating on an object, such as your breath or a mantra. It is “objectless meditation,” where you focus on everything you experience – thoughts, sounds, feelings – without attaching to any of them. When you get there, you know what it is.

My podcast interview with Marie D'Elephant was enjoyable

Yesterday I spent 1 hour and 48 minutes talking with Marie D'Elephant for a podcast that's scheduled to be released on February 4 via her Everyone's Autonomous Podcast site. 

Here's the description of what D'Elephant is up to.

During the Everyone's Agnostic podcast from 2015-2019, we shared our stories of religious trauma and the pain of deconversion. 

When that podcast went on a hiatus, a beautiful child was born: Everyone's Autonomous by Marie D'Elephant. She picks up the discussion by talking with guests and subject matter experts about how we can begin to move forward after having processed our toxic religious upbringings. 

How do we regain autonomy over our minds and bodies, AND respect the autonomy of others? How do we rejoin the human race and participate in this chaotic experiment of existence?

Great questions. D'Elephant and I covered a lot of ground in our discussion. She's a skilled conversationalist, which made the almost two hours we talked fly by in a pleasant fashion.

Several times in the course of our talk I spoke about "First there is a mountain, then there isn't, then there is." 

Today I met with an old friend for our usual Sunday afternoon coffee get-together. (We bring our own chairs and table so we can sit outside the Urban Grange coffee house in West Salem, even though both indoor and outdoor dining are prohibited right now because of Covid restrictions.)

When I mentioned the mountain saying to Jim, he said, "That was a Donovan song." Which I'd forgotten. The way Donovan put it in his 1967 song was "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." So I had it almost exactly right. 

However, the originator of the idea appears to be Qingyuan Xingsi, an 8th century Buddhist monk. According to Wikipedia, he wrote: 

Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.

The way I described the saying in my conversation with D'Elephant was that initially we take the world as it appears to be. Then some people -- which included me for about thirty-five years of religiosity -- consider that the world is illusory in some sense, with really real reality residing in another realm.

That's how Plato viewed things. This world is shadows on a cave wall, while the sun of reality is only seen by those who turn around and seek the source of that light.

I used to be a Platonist, Eastern religion variety. No longer, though. I'm now content with mountains being mountains and rivers being rivers, the endpoint of Zen Buddhism. 

Of course, I don't know how I came to this realization. I like to think that, like Qingyuan Xingsi, my thirty-plus years of meditation and other spiritual pursuits led me to pass through the then there is no mountain stage into the more refined then there is stage.

But another possibility is that I never really left the initial first there is a mountain stage, simply taking a lengthy side excursion through the land of perhaps there is something more without ever really viewing that territory as my home.

Regardless, I'm comfortable with there is a mountain, no matter how I got there.

After finishing up with D'Elephant and thinking about what we talked about, I realized that I forgot to mention one of my all-time favorite sayings. This is by poet David Ignatow.

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment on my life.

I never was, so I always will be

Profound? Obvious? Confusing? Meaningless? 

No matter what you might think of this blog post title, I reply: Yes, Yes, Yes, and...Yes.

In other words, I agree with you. I take this stance because I like the one-sentence statement that popped into my head a week or so ago, stimulated, I suspect, by the Buddhist books I've been re-reading lately.

So it doesn't really matter how anyone else looks upon I never was, so I always will be. Those words resonate with me, because they seem absolutely true.

Let's examine why I say this.

I never was points to the absence of an enduring, unchanging self or soul. This holds not just for me, but for everybody. So says Buddhism. So says neuroscience. 

Thus I, and you, and everyone else are an ever-changing process, not a standalone entity. We are part of life, of nature, of the world, of the universe. 

Certainly, we exist. Yet we don't exist in the sense most people see themselves -- as a being continuous with the baby that was given our name, and with all of the ages we experience until we die.

I never was that sort of being.

What I've been, and what I am today, is a swirling eddy in the stream of life that maintains a certain shifting shape, a certain fluid substance, but isn't in any sense a life form of which it can be said, "I am _____."

There's nothing to fill that blank. You, me, everybody, we are only an ephemeral collection of qualities produced by the seamlessly interconnected web of nature that not only surrounds us, but is us.

That's why I always will be. Because I never was.

If I'd been something that exists all on its own, my death would mark the end of that thing. (Again, there is no evidence of an enduring self or soul, so death is the last word of life's final chapter, not the beginning of a new plot line.)

However, since I never have been that sort of something, an island unto itself, I always will be. Not as me, of course, since the entity with my name attached to it is finite.

Rather, I always will be in the sense of what I already am, as we all are: nature, the natural world, reality. 

I realize that this won't seem to be good news to those who believe in a form of life after death where human consciousness persists much as it is now. But I don't see I never was, so I always will be as either good news or bad news. 

It simply is what appears to me to be the way things actually are, truth. 

The only reason someone would be dismayed at the thought of not continuing to live after their body takes its last breath is if they feel they are something that can't die. And that's a fantasy, not reality.

The beauty of Buddhism, and also of modern neuroscience, is how doing away with the illusion of self/soul eliminates the sense of unfairness, or wrongness, that we humans will die one day. 

If we never were the independently existing beings that we wrongly take ourselves to be, then death isn't the loss of anything that ever was. Since we always are changing, with no fixed center to our being, dying is the final change among countless other changes.

After that, our atoms are recycled into other entities. The world goes on. And so do we, in the only way that is possible -- as all that preceded our birth, and as all that follows our death.

Your soul can't be found because it doesn't exist

I'm enjoying my re-reading, or re-re-reading, given the highlighting I've done to this book, of Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-Kha-Pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path." It's a brilliant discussion of a core Buddhist notion, defined as the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature.

In other words, nothing is intrinsically itself. Everything depends on other things for its existence, us naturally included. Nothing stands on its own, an island unto itself. Interconnectedness and interdependency is how the cosmos works.

So Buddhism is unique among the world's major religions in not positing an eternal soul. (Because it isn't really a religion, though many Buddhists wrongly ascribe religious qualities to their faith.)

Here's two passages from Introduction to Emptiness regarding the imaginary nature of "an eternal and essential self."

Sorry to break it to you, but you don't have one. You, me, everybody -- we all have come into being through causes and conditions that don't last forever, as is obvious from the human aging process.

The language will be a bit unfamiliar, though it is certainly clear. Newland says that no one has ever perceived an intrinsic self, or soul, that is different from the mind and body. That non-existent entity is an imaginary religious concept. Give it up and you'll be closer to grasping the nature of reality.

As noted in the second passage, don't be afraid to give up a belief in an imaginary thing. Grasping after illusion is what keeps us trapped. Let go of fantasy and you'll breathe a big sigh of relief, because the pressure will be off to view yourself as anything other than what you truly are.

A transitory blip of existence, just like everything else in the cosmos. We aren't separate from what surrounds us, but an intimate aspect of it.

Tsong-kha-pa notes that non-Buddhist philosophies about an eternal and essential self arise when their proponents realize that the essential self really cannot be identical to the flux of mental and physical aggregates.

Reaching the wrong inference, they then teach about the existence of a metaphysical self that is essentially different from the mind and body.

However, their own ordinary and conventionally valid consciousnesses never perceive any essence or intrinsic self that is different from the mind and body. This is simply an imaginary construct. 

Instead of assuming that there must be a permanent self and then locating it as an essence distinct from the mind and body, they should realize that since an intrinsically existing self can be found neither as one with nor as different from the mind and body, it simply does not exist.

...The Buddha points out the painful and sad futility of our clinging to objects, people, ideas, experiences, and identities that simply cannot be held, no matter how tightly they are grasped. 

Because they have no ability to set themselves up and exist on their own, we and the things around us are in flux, changing as conditions change. With no essential nature, neither our own selves nor the things around us have any inner handle by which we can grab and hold them. 

We are afraid to face this lack, this emptiness. 

Our fear arises from and feeds our grasping, and in this way we build a prison for ourselves, moment by moment. Yet by bravely facing the reality of emptiness, we can let go of our fear, anger, and greed.

We can be free.

Clear thinking is a big part of Buddhist spirituality

I've never understood why some people are so down on thinking as an avenue to spiritual growth -- using "spiritual" in a non-supernatural sense, basically an exploration of what it means to be a caring, compassionate person who is grounded in reality.

Naturally those thinking skeptics express their view in, no big surprise, thoughts. So they cast doubt on the value of thought while thinking thoughts. 

One reason I enjoy reading Buddhist books (non-religious variety) is that Buddhism is fine with thinking. Also, with not thinking. That's an example of the middle way favored by Buddhists.

Thinking and not thinking both have their place. Which we do depends on the situation, on what makes sense at the time. 

A favorite Buddhist book of mine is Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path." I've read it several times. The highlighted passages in different colors produced at different times in my life remind me of the book's core idea.

Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. Nothing has inherent existence, being able to exist purely as itself. Everything is dependent on causes and conditions in never-ending processes of this giving way to that. 

That's what emptiness is all about. The emptiness of inherent existence. Which includes emptiness itself. 

All Madhyamaka philosophers agree that there is nothing that can withstand ultimate analysis. By this they mean that there is nothing anywhere that ultimately exists -- including, of course, the Buddha and the teachings of Buddhism. 

Even emptiness is itself empty; that is, when one searches for the ultimate essence of emptiness, it too is unfindable. One finds only the emptiness of emptiness.

This distinguishes Buddhism from Indian philosophy (along with the philosophy of other religions, including Christianity), which rest on a belief that there is something unchangeable and eternal -- such as the soul/atman and God/Brahman. 

Buddhists don't believe in either, the soul or God. As to realizing your true self, Buddhism replies, "Give up that notion. You neither have nor are an enduring self."

In his book Newland describes why clear thinking is so important to Buddhist practice of the Tibetan variety espoused by Tsong-kha-pa. 

You can't sit down and thoughtlessly meditate your way into an understanding of emptiness. That will leave you in the same state of delusion you were in before.

Sure, meditation feels good. It's relaxing. It calms the mind. It fosters concentration. That's why I've meditated every day for fifty years.

But by itself meditation doesn't lead to a firm grasp of the most important characteristic of the cosmos: that the cosmos has no enduring characteristic. And since humans are a part of the cosmos, neither do we.

As the suffering world has no independent, objective reality but is only an empty convention, we might suppose that stopping conventional thought in a meditative state would be the most liberating move.

The Chinese Buddhist master Ha-shang Mahayana, Tsong-kha-pa reports, regarded any sort of conceptualization whatsoever to be a distorting reification. Throughout the Great Treatise, Ha-shang functions as a stock character representing the perspective that we should dispense with all thought and meditate on reality by not bringing anything to mind.

Tsong-kha-pa argues repeatedly and passionately that meditative thoughtlessness is never going to get us any closer to freedom. Understanding born of careful analysis is at the very heart of what is distinctive about the Buddhist path. This is the third training, the training in wisdom.

Other religions share with Buddhism profound ethics as well as techniques for accessing amazing non-conceptual states. But Buddhism claims as its distinction a penetrating, thoughtful analysis of exactly how the world exists.

Only by engaging in this analysis, thinking it through and taking it to heart, do we begin to create the basis for real liberation from unnecessary misery.

Here's a rough analogy to what Newland just said. Imagine that you are thoughtlessly watching the sun set, your entire attention being focused on the beauty of the colors in the sky as the sun disappears below the horizon. 

That could be a wonderful experience. But it doesn't bring you closer to understanding that actually the sun is standing still, while the Earth rotates on its axis, creating an appearance that the sun is what is moving.

Or, imagine that you are meditating thoughtlessly with eyes closed, your entire attention being focused on a single internal subject of awareness. You could have a feeling of pure consciousness, that the real you is beyond time and space, an eternal I-ness. 

But that experience doesn't bring you closer to understanding that actually there is nothing permanent or independent about you. Your meditative concentration may be pleasant, yet fails to reveal your genuine nature -- emptiness.

"Dependent arising" is how Buddhism treads the middle way between nihilism and eternalism. Things actually exist, but they don't exist as themselves only. They have no inherent existence, but only come into being as a result of causes and conditions, a never-ending complex chain of causes and effects.

This present moment, whatever it might be like for you or me, has been produced by past causes and conditions extending back to the big bang (and perhaps beyond, if big bangs happen over and over). So the ephemeral instant of now is a snapshot of what actually is a very long-running movie of cosmic proportions.

In the next instant, things have changed both within and without us. This may not be obvious, but it is undeniably true.

So wisdom, or spiritual growth, doesn't reside in finding something unchangeable in us or the world, but in grasping that everything, us naturally included, is interconnected with everything else in a seamless web of ever-changing causes and conditions without end.

Stephen Bachelor has a beautiful take on Buddhist emptiness

In my shelf of Buddhist books, there's one called something like The Emptiness of Emptiness. I bought it for the title. The description of emptiness in the book left me confused.

Not so with the chapter on Emptiness in Stephen Bachelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs. 

Below are some extensive quotes from the chapter. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. 

After reading, or rather re-reading, the final passage, I was reminded of an experience I had in college while stoned on mescaline. I related it in a 2007 post, Loosening the bounds of "I am..."

Might as well copy it in, since it relates quite well to what Bachelor says about our fluid self. 

I was with a group of fellow "stoners" who'd headed off to a San Jose-area park to be high with nature. The path we were on led around a hill.

I felt energetic and forged on ahead by myself. My feet were flying through the northern California landscape. Until I rounded a corner and saw a different sort of group on the left side of the trail a short ways ahead of me.

Bikers. Drinking beer. Next to their choppers. With their equally tough-looking old ladies. At the time San Jose was a headquarters for the Gypsy Jokers motorcycle gang, which had a reputation rivaling the Hells Angels.

I didn't know anything about the bikers I was walking toward. But my first reaction was that I was an isolated peaceful hippie dude stoned on mescaline with long hair, glasses, and a corduroy coat, and they were cultural near-opposites in almost every way. Not good.

However, something snapped in me the very next moment. As I walked nearer to them I didn't feel like there was any difference between us. I could see them looking at me. I looked at them. More, I became them.

"What's happening, man?" someone called out. "Hell if I know," I said with a smile. They laughed. I laughed. I felt like I could sit down with them, have a beer, and fit right in.

My fear vanished as soon as I stopped thinking "I am…" and "They are…" Sure, it was partly (or mostly) the mescaline talking, but I suddenly felt that I was them and they were me, and we were all in this park getting high together.

Not exactly akin to the Buddha's enlightened experience of selflessness under the Bodhi Tree. But, hey, I'll take a speck of understanding any way I can get it.

Passing the biker group I realized that "I am…" can be flexible and boundless, not rigid and restricted.

Some things we always are; some things we always aren't; but there's a huge store of being-possibilities available to us moment to moment.

Here's the quotes from Bachelor about emptiness. 

In everyday experience, one thing leads to the next. I become irritated by something S said to me and end up wanting to hit him. I imagine I see a snake in the pottery shed and freeze in terror. Everything that happens emerges out of what preceded it. Everything we do now becomes a condition for what is possible later.

We may speak of conditions and consequences as though they were things, but if we look more closely they turn out to be processes with no independent reality. 

The harshness of a barbed remark that haunts us for days is no more than a brief instance isolated from a torrent of events. Yet it stands out in the mind's eye as something intrinsically real and apart. This habit of isolating things leads us to inhabit a world in which the gaps between them become absolute.

The snake in the shed is really there, as sharply differentiated from the frightened person who beholds it as from the shards of discarded pottery on which it is coiled.

Clutching at ourselves and the world in this way is a precondition for anguish. 

By regarding things as absolutely separate and as desirable or fearful in themselves, we set ourselves the task of possessing something we can never have or of eradicating something that was never there in the first place. Noticing how things emerge from and fade back into an unbroken flow of conditions begins to free us a little.

We recognize how things are relatively, not absolutely, desirable or fearful. They interconnect and interact, each contingent on the others, no one of them intrinsically separate from the rest.

Whatever emerges in this way is devoid of an intrinsic identity: in other words, things are empty. They are not as opaque and solid as they seem: they are transparent and fluid. They are not as singular and straightforward as they seem: they are complex and ambiguous.

...The same is true for each one of us. Just as a potter forms a pot on the wheel, so I configure my personality from the spinning clay of my existence. The pot does not exist in its own right: it emerges from the interactions of the potter, the wheel, the clay, its shape, its function (each of which in turn emerges from the interactions of its causes and components ad infinitum).

...As a human being I am more complex than a pot or a daffodil, but I have also emerged from causes and am composed of diverse, changing features and traits. There is no essential me that exists apart from this unique configuration of biological and cultural processes.

...To know emptiness is not just to understand the concept. It is more like stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where suddenly you can move freely and see clearly. To experience emptiness is to experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of who you are and the kind of reality you inhabit.

It may last only for a moment before the habits of a lifetime reassert themselves and close in once more. But for that moment, we witness ourselves and the world as open and vulnerable. This calm, free, open, and sensitive space is the very center of dharma practice

..."Emptiness" is a confusing term. Although used as an abstract noun, it does not in any way denote an abstract thing or state. It is not something we "realize" in a moment of mystical insight that "breaks through" to a transcendent reality concealed behind yet mysteriously underpinning the empirical world.

Nor do things "arise" from emptiness and "dissolve" back into it as though it were some kind of formless, cosmic stuff. These are just some of the ways emptiness has been appropriated as a metaphor of metaphysical and religious consolation.

...Emptiness is as devoid of intrinsic being as a pot, a banana, or a daffodil. And if there were no pots, bananas, or daffodils, there would be no emptiness either.

Emptiness does not deny that such things exist; it merely describes how they are devoid of an intrinsic, separate being. Emptiness is not apart from the world of everyday experience; it only makes sense in the context of making pots, eating bananas, and growing daffodils. 

A life centered in awareness of emptiness is simply an appropriate way of being in this changing, shocking, painful, joyous, frustrating, awesome, stubborn, and ambiguous reality.

Emptiness is the central path that leads not beyond this reality but right into its heart. It is the track on which the centered person moves. 

And we too are impressions left by something that used to be here. We have been created, molded, formed by a bewildering matrix of contingencies that have preceded us. 

From the patterning of the DNA derived from our parents to the firing of the hundred billion neurons in our brains to the cultural and historical conditioning of the twentieth century to the education and upbringing given us to all the experiences we have ever had and choices we have ever made: these have conspired to configure the unique trajectory that culminates in this present moment.

What is here now is the unrepeatable impression left by all of this, which we call "me." Yet so vivid and startling is this image that we confuse what is a mere impression for something that exists independently of what formed it.

So what are we but the story we keep repeating, editing, censoring, and embellishing in our heads? 

The self is not like the hero of a B-movie, who remains unaffected by the storms of passion and intrigue that swirl around him from the opening credits to the end. The self is more akin to the complex and ambiguous characters who emerge, develop, and suffer across the pages of a novel.

There is nothing thinglike about me at all. I am more like an unfolding narrative.

As we become aware of this, we can begin to assume greater responsibility for the course of our lives. Instead of clinging to habitual behavior and routines as a means to secure this sense of self, we realize the freedom to create who we are. Instead of being bewitched by impressions, we start to create them.

Instead of taking ourselves so seriously, we discover the playful irony of a story that has never been told in quite this way before.

Pre-scientific religious dogma shouldn't be trusted

As I said in my previous post (My #1 problem with Steve Hagen's 'The Grand Delusion"), the teachings of a ninth-century Zen master, Huang Po, shouldn't be given more credence than modern neuroscience.

After all, Huang Po, along with everybody else in those pre-scientific times, had no understanding of how the brain works. Naturally people knew how their mind seemed to work, but seeming is a long way from actuality. 

This is why Huang Po could claim that conception is totally different from perception. Now it is known that both conception and perception are founded on complex goings-on in the brain and are anything but simple. 

But those processes are hidden from view, so it seems that perception is akin to a mirror accurately reflecting what is before it. Actually, perception involves predictions by the brain based on past experiences and sometimes can't be trusted -- mirages and illusions being examples of this.

That said, I like how Buddhism is so non-religious, arguably it isn't even a religion. Sure, many Buddhists view it that way, as Stephen Bachelor writes in his appealing book, "Buddhism Without Beliefs."

If you go to Asia and visit a wat (Thailand) or gompa (Tibet), you will enter something that looks very much like an abbey, a church, or cathedral, being run by people who look like monks or priests, displaying objects that look like icons, which are enshrined in alcoves that look like chapels and revered by people who look like worshippers.

If you talk to one of the people who look like monks, you will learn that he has a view of the world that seems very much like a belief system, revealed a long time ago by someone else who is revered like a god, after whose death saintly individuals have interpreted the revelations in ways like theology. There have been schisms and reforms, and these have given rise to institutions that are just like churches.

Buddhism, it would seem, is a religion. 

Or, is it?

Well, it depends. Keep all that Bachelor describes above and you have a religion. Discard it, and you have a philosophy of life aimed at reducing anguish, which Bachelor prefers to the usual English word, suffering. 

I like how Buddhism is in line with modern neuroscience in how it denies the existence of an enduring self or soul. I also like how Buddhism reflects modern science in its notions of interdependency and ceaseless change, referred to by the potentially misleading term of emptiness. 

The way I see it, Buddhism, along with any other philosophy or approach to living, must continually evolve as fresh ideas and new facts about the world are known.

There's a parallel here between the view of the United States Constitution as a living document, or as a writing that should be interpreted through the views of those who wrote the Constitution in the late 1700s, otherwise known as originalism. An essay in the Atlantic on this subject concludes with a great line.

The Constitution should be the sturdy vessel of our ideals and aspirations, not a derelict sailing ship locked in the ice of a world far from our own.

This is how I feel about Buddhism revering outmoded views of pre-scientific Buddhists. It makes no sense to have the philosophy of Buddhism "locked in the ice of a world far from our own." Stephen Bachelor writes:

An agnostic Buddhist would not regard the dharma as a source of "answers" to questions of where we came from, where we are going, what happens after death. He would seek such knowledge in the appropriate domains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, etc. 

An agnostic Buddhist is not a "believer" with claims to revealed information about supernatural or paranormal phenomena, and in this sense is not "religious."

...The extent to which dharma practice has been institutionalized as a religion can be gauged by the number of consolatory elements that have crept in: for example, assurances of a better afterlife if you perform virtuous deeds or recite mantras or chant the name of a Buddha.

My #1 problem with Steve Hagen's "The Grand Delusion"

I'm a big fan of Steve Hagen's books about non-religious Buddhism. "Buddhism Plain and Simple" and "Buddhism is Not What You Think" really resonated with me. 

But his new book, "The Grand Delusion: What We Know But Don't Believe" elicited a lot of question marks in the margins. 

One problem I had with the book is that while Hagen's other books were marked by humility, this one has a heavy dose of grandiosity. Hagen sets out to solve every issue perplexing humanity, or more accurately, scientists. 

Consciousness. Quantum theory. Free will. Existence of God. All these topics, and more, supposedly are subject to The Grand Delusion -- a belief in substantiality, that things actually exist. 

OK, emptiness is a core Buddhist notion that I'm fine with. Nothing has inherent existence. Interdependency rules the cosmic roost.

Anything we can point to, like a coffee cup, doesn't stand by itself but is the result of countless interactions involving countless entities extending all the way back to the big bang and the creation of our universe.

While Hagen respects the conceptual thinking of scientists, and everybody else, he views concepts as a poor guide to what is genuinely real. Which supposedly is known by perception, not conception. 

I part company with Hagen on this assertion. He often quotes Huang Po, a ninth-century Zen Buddhist. In John Blofeld's translation, Huang Po says "The ignorant eschew phenomena but not thought; the wise eschew thought but not phenomena."

So Hagen speaks over and over of simply seeing. That's what reality is, what is perceived with no effort in everyday life. Sure, this is a Zen notion in line with chop wood and carry water. Just live a normal natural life and you're in touch with big "R" Reality.

Problem is, Huang Po had no idea of how the human mind and brain really work (the mind is the brain in action, though as we'll see, Hagen disputes this). I don't think we should rely on the pre-scientific assertions of Huang Po over modern neuroscience. 

Hagen is familiar with a lot of modern science. However, he fails to speak about neuroscience in nearly as much detail as he does physics, probably because he can use physics as an example of how science is confused about reality, whereas the findings of neuroscience point to Hagen's confusion about how perception works.

There is no such thing as "simply seeing." Seeing isn't simple. It requires much learning. What is learned essentially are perceptual concepts: shapes, colors, shadows, perspective, etc. Huang Po may have thought that seeing, or perception in general, is like a mirror reflecting an image. 

But this is wrong. Hagen even has an example of this in his book. 

He relates a story told by Oliver Sacks about a man who had been blind for forty-five years, "having had little more than an infant's visual experience, and this long forgotten." The man had his sight surgically restored in middle age. While he could see, it was "all mixed up, all meaningless, a blur." The man never could see normally.

This shows how important experience is to seeing. Somehow Hagen misses the point of his own example, saying, bizarrely, "Simply put, conception, as useful as it might be, is no substitute for perception." 

Huh? Conception makes it possible to see usefully. It enables infants to move from perceptual confusion to normal seeing, where that shape of color and light is Mommy, not just a blob. Who would want to trade normal seeing for mixed up, meaningless seeing? Not even Hagen, I suspect.

I have an even bigger problem with how Hagen looks upon consciousness and the brain in "The Grand Delusion," because his take on this is decidedly at odds with his frequent admonition to just see. I suspect he falls prey to Buddhist orthodoxy here, which is disappointing. 

What I see, what I know from direct experience, is that when I've been given anesthesia in several colonoscopies that I've had, I lose consciousness almost instantly. I then wake up with no memory of what happened during the procedure. So it seems clear that a chemical administered by the anesthesiologist impacts my brain, which becomes unconscious.

Same thing happens when a football player, or whoever, has a strong impact to the head. Unconsciousness results. There are countless (almost) examples of how changing the brain changes consciousness. This isn't a matter of abstract conception. It is a matter of seeing what happens. 

Yet here's some quotes from Hagen's book about the brain and consciousness. My comments are in red. 

People have noticed since the middle of the nineteenth century that there appears to be a correlation between conscious experience and brain activity. Unfortunately, serious study of that correlation over many decades has brought us no closer to understanding mind or consciousness. In fact, the more we investigate this apparent correlation, the more elusive a genuine understanding has become.

Absolutely false. Hagen needs to do more reading in modern neuroscience. A lot of progress is being made in correlating brain activity with consciousness. For example, it is now possible to predict quite accurately whether a patient is in a vegetative state from that activity.

Physical processes in the brain have never been demonstrated to give rise to subjective experience. We only assume that they do -- because there seems to be a correlation. 

Well, I assume Hagen would be fine with having his brain removed, since he is skeptical that physical processes in his brain cause his subjective experience. More seriously, Hagen doesn't put forward any other explanation for subjective experience. Because there are mysteries waiting to be revealed about how consciousness functions, Hagen denies all that science does know about the brain and consciousness.

The fact is, we have no evidence that consciousness even has an origin, let alone that it originates in matter... Consciousness will always remain a mystery for those who continue in their attempts to construct it from matter.

These baseless assertions show how Hagen has gone all-in on religious dogmatism when it comes to consciousness and the brain. There is lots of evidence that consciousness arises from the brain. There is zero demonstrable evidence of consciousness existing apart from a brain. Again, this is obvious from simply seeing how consciousness is altered or lost by physical changes to the brain. Hagen should try LSD, or just a strong cup of coffee, if he doubts this. 

Consciousness is not a thing and nothing produces it. 

Again, this is anti-scientific dogmatism. It would be honest if Hagen would say that while consciousness appears to be produced by the brain, there is a lot to learn about how this happens. Instead, Hagen veers off into his version of Buddhist orthodoxy, which places Mind as separate and distance from Matter. (I'd say that this isn't at all what Buddhism teaches, just how Hagen views Buddhism.)

Here's what meditation is and isn't, from a Buddhist perspective

People have a lot of different views about what meditation is and isn't. I've changed my mind on this subject considerably. 

For thirty-five years I viewed meditation as a way to access a supernatural realm of reality, have mystical experiences, and realize God. But that's a narrow perspective, something I realize now.

Currently I embrace a form of meditation that is vaguely Buddhist, even though I don't consider myself a devotee of Buddhism. I enjoy being as fully aware as possible of what is happening both inside and outside me, within my mind and without in the world. 

Which, I suppose, could be called mindfulness. 

This morning I started reading a book by Steve Hagen, "Meditation Now or Never." I thought I'd read all of Hagen's books, but somehow I'd missed this one until recently.

It's good. Short, simple, direct. In all of his writings Hagen takes religion out of Buddhism, which leaves the Buddha's original teachings, insofar as it is possible to discern what they were.

Below are excerpts from a right-on chapter, Things Mistaken for Meditation. It turns out that almost everything I thought was meditation for those thirty-five years actually isn't. At least, not from a Buddhist viewpoint. 

Let's start, though, with what Hagen says meditation is. 

Meditation is, finally, just to be here. Not over there, in some other place called peace or freedom or enlightenment. Not longing for something else. Not trying to be, or to acquire, something new or different. Not seeking benefit. 

We need to understand that the wanting mind is the antithesis of the mind of meditation. The mind of meditation is a mind not driven by desires and fears and longings.

Indeed, a mind that seeks to rid itself of these painful mental qualities is already the dissatisfied and confused mind from which we seek to free ourselves. 

When we desire the desirelessness, we remain trapped in desire. When we want the wantlessness, we bind ourselves with yet another chain.

And here's the excerpts regarding what Hagen says meditation isn't. 

Relaxation. If your goal is to temporarily calm down, a simple relaxation technique is helpful. If, however, you want to experience a mind that is present and collected, this is the mind of meditation. Meditation, in other words, is not a quick fix. It's long-term -- that is, it's a lifelong approach to peace of mind, tranquility, and stability.

Visualization. With visualization, you actively conjure up images in your mind. In meditation, however, there's no deliberate effort to conjure up anything, or to create any mental phenomena. Plenty of them will bubble up anyway, and in meditation, we don't try to hold on to them or drive them out. Contrary to visualization, in meditation we allow our mental images to freely come and go.

Trance. In most trance meditations, you turn inward and tune out awareness of your surroundings, your body, and your mind. Your attention becomes filed down to a very narrow, still point, which can feel temporarily blissful. But every trance is itself temporary. When you come out of it, you're back to all of the problems and confusion that were there when you went into it. There's no transformation.

Supernatural powers. But meditation is not about acquiring anything. In fact, it's about getting rid of the clutter of our mental lives. It's an act of mental housecleaning... Meditation is not about acquiring supernatural powers. It's about being present and living life completely... If you think about what you're getting from this moment, you're not in this moment. 

Going beyond. Another misunderstanding about meditation is that it's a bodily form of philosophical inquiry, a method for breaking through some cosmic mystery to a transcendent reality beyond our everyday world. Meditation is not about any "beyond." Truth and Reality are right here, in plain view. They are not vague or far away... In meditation, we see that there is no cosmic mystery to break through.

Enlightenment. You can't become enlightened. It's not possible. You can't become enlightened for the same reason that you can't come into contact with Truth: you're already here, immersed in it. It's like trying to become human, or searching high and low for air. When we search for enlightenment, we're like a fish searching for water or a bird seeking the sky.

Escaping from reality. Sometimes people get the idea that meditation is about escaping from our lives, or our painful feelings, or even Reality itself. In fact, meditation is just the opposite It's about settling down and facing Reality. In meditation we investigate our own mind openly and honestly, without denying anything. We see how we tell ourselves stories about ourselves, about others, and about the world.

Bliss. Many people come to meditation hoping to experience bliss, euphoria, ecstasy, or some superconscious state of mind. Many spiritual practices and exercises aim at inducing such states. But so can any number of things, both good and not so good -- a gorgeous sunrise, rapturous music, sex, street drugs, or even a double expresso. Meditation is not about creating any particular feeling. Meditation is about awareness, about waking up to Reality.

Spiritual thoughts. Occasionally, people use meditation to try to experience lofty or highly spiritual thoughts. These thoughts are just more distractions, more forms of delusion. In meditation, whether our thoughts are lofty or low, mundane or spiritual, we view them in the same way. We allow them, and whatever else comes up, to appear and to pass away.

Quick cure. Lastly, meditation is not a quick cure for anything. It won't magically heal your illness or fix your depression or get rid of your loneliness. It won't provide comfort or solace or nurturing, at least not the kind we typically look for to try to temporarily ease our pain. Instead, the practice of meditation involves transformation. 

...Through our effort of coming back again and again to this moment, where all of us live, we learn how to live in this world with sanity, intelligence, and true compassion.

 

Adyashanti book confirms my commitment to secular spirituality

Recently someone who asked if I'd like to be a guest on her podcast (I would!) responded to an email I sent her which said, in part, "I’m sort of in the spiritual-but-not-religious camp. However, I’m not sure if 'spiritual' has any meaning for an atheist."

She replied, saying, "The intersection I think we may intersect is this kind of secular spirituality pursuit. Would you say that's a phrase you kind of resonate with? That's the sense I get from your writings."

Sure. Typically secular means not-religious, not-spiritual, not-sacred. But I like the idea of mixing two seemingly contradictory ideas into the notion of secular spirituality. 

That preserves the useful notion of spirituality as a quest to lay bare the deeper meaning of life, to dig deeper into what it means to be human. And it makes clear that this quest has nothing to do with supernatural B.S. or mystical mumbo-jumbo.

Which goes a long way toward explaining why I quickly decided to stop reading a book by Adyashanti, "Emptiness Dancing." 

I ordered it from Amazon after listening to ten minutes of an interview Sam Harris did with Adyashanti on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app. It had been a while since I'd gotten a new book about Zen Buddhism, and I found Adyashanti making quite a bit of sense in the interview.

In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to the fact that the guy didn't have his original name of Stephen Gray.

By and large, I find that books written by people with assumed "spiritual" names don't appeal to me, because this shows that the author has bought into some sort of dogma where giving up your birth name is seen as desirable for some mysterious reason.

Still, I enjoy Zen Buddhism when it is stripped of religious crap. It didn't take more than a few pages of reading Emptiness Dancing before I realized that this book wasn't for me, since alarm bells began ringing in my mind when I came to these passages. The italicized part is my thought when I read them.

p.2  "Let go of all ideas and images in your mind, they come and go and aren't even generated by you." Oh, yeah? That's news to me. Where else would stuff in my mind come from if not from me -- both the unconscious and conscious mind of me?

p.3 "What arose was an image of what seemed like an infinite number of past incarnations, as if heads were lined up one behind another as far back as I could see." Ugh. A Zen Buddhist who believes in reincarnation, a thoroughly religious concept. 

p. 7 "We realize our own pure awareness and see that what we are is pure spirit with no form. We recognize that formless spirit is the essence, the animating presence of everything." One pure in a sentence is bad enough, two is insufferable. Any resemblance to genuine Zen is purely coincidental in Adyashanti.

Adding to my irritation with Adyashanti's book was how he spun his supposed enlightenment experience. One moment he was his ordinary self. The next moment he'd achieved... something or other. He says that suddenly "Everything was a reflection of that One thing. Everything was divine."

OK, that's cool. But everybody has amazing experiences. Few people, though, set themselves up as teachers where they try to get other people to have the same experience they had. Tellingly, Adyashanti says he had the thought, "Oops. I just woke up out of Zen!"

No kidding. I've never read a Zen book that speaks of heaven, but Adyashanti does. Apparently he's calling his own personal philosophy "Zen" even though it bears little resemblance to Zen Buddhism. 

After I put "Emptiness Dancing" aside with a feeling of relief, I picked up a book of Sam Harris's interviews with fascinating scientists, mostly. I read about the promise and pitfall of artificial intelligence, machines that soon will surpass human intelligence. It was refreshing to focus on something real rather than Adyashanti's forays into whatever his Oneness consists of.

Understand: I'll all for meditation. That's why I've meditated every day for over fifty years. I believe in mental exercises, just as I believe in physical exercises.

I also agree with Adyashanti and Sam Harris that it is possible, and beneficial, to come to a realization that our feeling of being an enduring"self" is an illusion. I just don't believe that an organized spiritual practice is needed to get in touch with what each of us already is -- a being without a lasting self.

I snapped this photo in early September of the view through the window of the room where I do my morning reading and meditating. I was struck by how my view of the curving metal dragon sculpture stuck in the ground next to a large fern was so nicely situated between two bonsai "trees" in a planter in front of the window.

Today I was struck by something different -- the absence of the sculpture.

At first I thought it had gotten hidden behind some fern fronds. But as I looked more closely, I saw that the dragon was still there. High winds yesterday had turned it sideways, so all that was visible was the thin edge of the dragon sculpture. You can see that edge in the "V" above the bottom of a bridge that's part of the bonsai planter.

This seemed like an apt metaphor. When we face the world head on, making a big deal of ourselves, considering that how we view things is the way everybody should, our sense of self is magnified.

But when we make a subtle change, turning sideways to the world, feeling how small we are compared to the vast cosmos, accepting that everyone has their own view of how things should be, our sense of self is diminished.

I bounce back and forth between these perspectives, as most of us do. And that's fine.

Some days I feel like facing the world head on. Other days I feel like turning aside and letting the world slide by me. I don't think it is possible to do anything else, though Adyashanti apparently believes he has become One With Everything.

Maybe. I doubt it, though.

"Right view" of Buddhism is of the whole dynamic world

Here's another passage from Steve Hagen's book, "Buddhism Plain and Simple," that I liked a lot. It helps explain what Hagen means by seeing, the key notion in his book. 

The way I interpret what Hagen says below isn't that we can't have views, opinions, biases. I'm a progressive who wants Kamala Harris to beat Mike Pence's butt in tonight's vice-presidential debate. 

Supporters of Pence have a different view. That's fine. 

What isn't fine is believing that our view is 100% correct, faultless, impossible to be argued with. As I often say on this blog, nothing is completely certain. Even science recognizes that the most proven scientific theories are open to falsification, even though the chance of this is low.

So Hagen says we shouldn't be caught by our views. We shouldn't hold on to them so tightly we can't make room in our mind for considering alternative views.

I also like what Hagen says about a view of the Whole.

I'm not sure how practical or easy it is to have a view of the Whole, though. I suspect that what Hagen means by this is that our overall view of reality should be based on the core Buddhist tenet that everything changes, nothing is fixed in place forever.

Read on...

The first aspect of the eightfold path is right view. According to the Buddha, to hold onto any particular view is to freeze Reality, to try to encapsulate the world into thought. To take a view is like taking a snapshot -- you've frozen the scene right there.

Once we hold a view, it's not long before our view will buck up against other views. After that, the people holding the various views will file off into separate camps. And then we start to go after each other.

What the Buddha meant by right view isn't like this at all. The view of a Buddha isn't an ordinary, frozen view.

There are those who argue that the Buddha didn't have any view whatsoever, but this is not correct. What the Buddha meant by right view is not being caught by a particular view. It's not being caught by ideas, concepts, beliefs, or opinions.

The view of a buddha is of how things actually are -- which in light of the constant flux and flow of the world, is no one way in particular. 

After all, how can things be a particular way if they are in constant motion? How can a hard-and-fast view of a world that is never hard or fast possibly be accurate?

It's not the particulars of the world that provide us with right view, but the world itself, as an ever-dynamic Whole. Right view is Wholesome -- that is, it's of the Whole. It's all inclusive. It leaves nothing out.

Such a view, by definition, does not go to war with any other view. In fact, it cannot. Since it's already of the dynamic world as a Whole, we can't conceive of anything that opposes it.

Seeing that there is no see'er inside our head is clear sight

I've been re-reading one of my favorite spiritual books, Steve Hagen's "Buddhism Plain and Simple."

I love how Hagen strips out Buddhism's religious and supernatural aspects, leaving the genuine teachings of the Buddha.

Hagen's key idea in the book is seeing. Here's a passage I read today that illustrates what he means by this.

Breaking the grip of ignorance and craving comes with just seeing, not with doing something particular about it. Once you see, your course of action will naturally follow. 

The problem in dealing with craving is that when we try to squelch it, we only step it up somewhere else. It comes bursting out more intensely than ever. For example, suppose you notice, "I'm craving a pizza now."

That's fine. Just notice it.

But we usually don't stop there. Rather than just seeing, we act upon what we notice instead. "I shouldn't be wanting pizza. I must stop this desire for pizza."

This very reaction is already more craving. We're desiring an end to desire. We're doing the usual thing again -- reaching for, insisting, grabbing. This is bondage, not freedom.

This is a subtle but crucial point. There's no bandage to use on this problem that will not itself be the same problem all over again.

The only way to eradicate this problem is to see it and thereby no longer feed it.

This is not a call to complacency or inaction. To act or not to act is never the question. You can't help but act. The question is whether or not you see. The entire issue rests on this.

Recently I experienced something along these lines. 

Laurel, my wife, is a vacuum fancier. She has several vacuums, a large corded one, a smaller battery powered one, an even smaller hand-held one.

A few days ago Laurel came up to me while I was in the kitchen. "I've been working on this for half an hour," she said. "I can't figure out how to get the vacuum filter back in the plastic case." 

She'd only removed the round filter once before, since the vacuum had a clever way of cleaning the filter that didn't require removing it. She showed me the instructions. They just said to replace the filter after cleaning it.

But the plastic cover wouldn't snap into place after the filter was inserted.

I tried myself for about 15 minutes, rotating the filter assembly every possible way, observing that, as Laurel had said, it seemed there was only one way to put in the filter.

I was doing a lot of trying, without success. 

Then I decided to stop what Laurel and I had been trying, because it clearly wasn't working. I focused instead on what simple thing I was missing, because it seemed that no vacuum designer would make replacing the filter so difficult. 

Ah... instead of inserting the filter into the top of the plastic case, I inserted it into the bottom of the case. Two seconds later the lid clicked shut without a problem.

Laurel hadn't noticed which way the filter had come out, so we both were fixated on an assumption that turned out to be false -- that the filter went in the top of the case.

So this is one way to look upon the seeing that Hagen speaks of. Seeing reality clearly, rather than through the fog of erroneous thoughts and assumptions about reality. 

Another way, a more profound way, is repeated by Sam Harris in just about every guided meditation in his smart phone Waking Up app. 

Harris will ask the listener to either look at the outside world with eyes open, or at the space behind the eyes with eyes shut. In either case, Harris asks, "Are you aware of someone who is seeing within your head, a see'er, or is there simply seeing?"

In my experience, the latter. Simply seeing. I've never come across a see'er who is separate and distinct from the act of seeing.

Which, of course, is a core Buddhist notion. There is no self, no soul, no enduring entity anywhere within us. Things simply arise and pass away. 

Thoughts. Emotions. Perceptions. Cravings. And so on.

Thus when Hagen urges us to simply see, arguably the most important sight to see is that there is no see'er doing the seeing.

Looking for our true self, eventually we grasp that there is no self to be seen -- in somewhat the same way as I came to realize that there is no way the filter could fit in the manner I was trying to insert it.

Looking in a different fashion made all the difference.

Buddhism's non-dualistic view of meditation

It's usually rather simplistic to start off by saying "There are two kinds of...", because generally nature, or reality, doesn't come in two well-defined flavors -- like vanilla and chocolate. Instead, there are many flavors, many shades of gray between black and white.

That said, in general I consider there are two views of meditation, dualistic and non-dualistic. 

Dualistic approaches typically see us humans as being comprised of an immaterial soul and material body. The goal of meditation is to detach the soul from the body, which enables it to return to god, or merge with god, as in the Hindu conception of atman (soul) and brahman (god).

Non-dualistic approaches typically see us humans as being part and parcel of the natural world, physical beings in a physical world. The goal of meditation is to accept this reality, not being attached to the world being any particular way, but coming to accept things as they are.

After some thirty-five years of embracing dualism, I'm now firmly in the non-dualistic camp. So I've been enjoying a book by Oliver Burkeman, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking." Today I finished a chapter about the Buddhist approach to not thinking positively. 

Here's some excerpts from the chapter that I liked.

The idea of meditation as a path to calmness is somewhat more realistic, since calmness -- unlike unbroken ecstasy -- can indeed be one of its side effects. Yet all these associations have contributed to a modern image of meditation as a sophisticated form of positive thinking, which is almost the opposite of the truth.

In fact, meditation has little to do with achieving any specific desired state of mind, no matter whether blissful or calm. At Buddhism's core, instead, is an often misunderstood notion that is starkly opposed to most contemporary assumptions about how to be happy, and this places it squarely on the 'negative path' to happiness: non-attachment.

...Rather than merely enjoying pleasurable things during the moments in which they occur, and experiencing the unpleasantness of painful things, we develop the habits of clinging and aversion: we grasp at what we like, trying to hold on to it forever, and push away what we don't like, trying to avoid it at all costs.

Both constitute attachment. Pain is inevitable, from this perspective, but suffering is an optional extra, resulting from our attachments, which represent our attempt to try to deny the unavoidable truth that everything is impermanent.

...Non-attachment need not mean withdrawing from life, or suppressing natural impulses, or engaging in punishing self-denial. It simply means approaching the whole of life -- inner thoughts and emotions, outer events and circumstances -- without clinging or aversion.

To live non-attachedly is to feel impulses, think thoughts, and experience life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things 'should' be, or should never be, or should remain forever. The perfectly non-attached Buddhist would be simply, calmly present, and non-judgmentally aware.

Which, let's be frank, isn't going to happen for most of us any time soon.

...When you start meditating it soon becomes apparent that thoughts -- and emotions -- bubble up in much the same uncontrollable, unbidden fashion in which noises reach the ears, smells reach the nose, and so on.

I could no more choose for thoughts not to occur than I could choose not to feel chilly when I was woken by the ringing of the morning bell at five-thirty each day -- or, for that matter, that I could choose not to hear the bell.

...In the analogy most commonly used by contemporary Buddhists, mental activity begins to seem more like weather -- like clouds and sunny spells, rainstorms and blizzards, arising and passing away. The mind, in this analogy, is the sky, and the sky doesn't cling to specific weather conditions, nor try to get rid of the 'bad' ones.

The sky just is. 

In this the Buddhists go further than the Stoics, who can sometimes seem rather attached to certain mind-states, especially that of tranquility. The perfect Stoic adapts his or her thinking so as to reman undisturbed by undesirable circumstances; the perfect Buddhist sees thinking itself as just another set of circumstances, to be non-judgmentally observed. 

Don't be proud of losing your self. You never had one.

Today I heard Sam Harris say something interesting, yet rather obvious, in a dialog with Loch Kelly on Harris' Waking Up app.

Basically, Harris said that no one should feel proud of having become selfless through their meditation, because they never had a self to begin with.

The self is a mirage. So teaches Buddhism, and so teaches modern neuroscience. It's akin to the illusion of seeing water ahead on a hot desert road. When you get closer, you realize there's no water there at all. It's a mirage.

I've written quite a bit about the illusion of a self. It's common in some religions, being manifested as the illusion of an enduring soul rather than the equal illusion of an enduring self. 

Hinduism falls prey to this illusion. So does Christianity. By and large, Buddhism doesn't. Nor does Taoism. Here's some of my blog posts on this subject.

Self, no-self...what's the difference?
We humans have selfhood without a self
Not-self a teaching of Buddhism, not Hinduism
The self as illusion
Self/Soul is evolution's trick to make us think "I'm important!"
Spiritual illusions are as deceptive as worldly illusions

I also liked how Harris spoke about the importance of making everyday life the touchstone, or test, of whether you're gaining more equanimity through meditation or some other spiritual practice.

He said that back when he actually had to be someplace at a particular time, before the COVID era did away with a lot of traveling, at times he would get irritated when he was late. Then he'd do something unthinkingly, like break a glass while putting it in the sink. Having to clean the mess up would make him even later. And more irritated.

It's easy to have an inflated sense of spiritual progress when you feel all calm and one with the cosmos while sitting cross-legged on a cushion in the morning with no stressors acting on you.

If you can feel that way when things are going to shit in your life, that's a much stronger sign that your meditation is having some positive effects. 

Our minds collaborate in the creation of the world

l'm re-re-reading a book about Buddhism that is wonderfully mind-blowing, Introduction to Emptiness by Guy Newland. Yes, that wasn't a typo in the previous sentence, I'm on my third reading of the book, each time with a different colored highlighter in my hand. 

So I may not completely understand what emptiness is all about in Buddhism, but I definitely have a colorful book on this subject.

I've shared links to six previous posts I've written about Introduction to Emptiness at the end of this post. If you aren't able to grasp all that Newland says in the passages below -- and I sure don't -- read those posts and some things likely will become clearer.

A basic notion is the distinction between ultimate and conventional truth. Here's how they are defined in an appendix to the book:

Conventional truth -- objects found by conventional minds that are not analyzing the ultimate nature of things. This includes everything that exists except emptiness. Nonexistents are not included.

Ultimate truth -- the object known by a mind discerning the final nature of things -- emptiness

So what is emptiness? Here's the definition, along with that for a related term, inherent existence.

Emptiness -- the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. For example, the table's emptiness is the table's lack of existence by way of an intrinsic nature.

Intrinsic nature -- an essential nature whereby something comes to have an independent way of existing without being posited through the force of consciousness. The sheer absence of this is emptiness.

Here's challenging, though fascinating, passages relating to how the world is created by our minds, though it also exists in an objective fashion.

We usually suppose that the world is already and always fully real, independent of our minds, out there waiting to be revealed by the searchlight of consciousness. In fact, our minds are actually collaborating in the creation of the world, moment by moment.

This does not mean that hallucinated snakes have the same status as people and cars and tables. Snakes falsely imputed to be ropes do not in fact exist, while tables and people do exist because they have a valid, conventional existence. This is a vitally important distinction.

Suppose I very much want gold. I may see a rainbow and, affected by my desire for gold, think, "Over there I will find a pot of gold." This is rather in the nature of seeing a rope and, out of fear, believing it is a snake. There is no snake, no gold, in those places at all.

But there is a rope; there is a rainbow. These things exist conventionally. We can appropriately impute them, saying, "There it is." They function.

Another way to make this clear is to consider the case of dreams. The objects that appear to our minds in dreams, under the influence of sleep, are not able to perform the functions that they appear to have. A dream cup does not hold functioning water.; a dream gun does not shoot deadly bullets.

The water and the bullets that appear in the dream cannot quench or kill. The dream mind to which a gun appears is impaired by sleep and is not a conventionally valid consciousness. Likewise, if my eyes are bad and I see two moons in the sky over the earth, I have not thereby created a second moon.

...So we can recognize that this idea -- that things depend upon minds -- does not destroy conventional existence. At the same time, it is definitely not just another way of talking about what we already know. It does not leave our usual sense of the world unscathed. 

To take the snake example: When a person sees a rope and imagines a snake, there is no snake at all in the rope. But even when there actually is a snake and we perceive a snake, the snake as we perceive it is also completely absent. It is just as nonexistent as the rope-snake.

This is profound and important to reflect upon. As we perceive it, the snake is inherently existent. It appears to our minds as something objectively real, existing in and of itself. Such a snake does not at all exist right now -- and it never could exist.

Thus when we feel that Tsong-kha-pa's emphatic validation of conventional reality is pulling us too far in the direction of affirming the ordinary way that things appear, we can recall: snakes and ropes are equally devoid of the kind of snakes I perceive, believe in, and fear.

Tables are utterly devoid of the kind of table that I believe in. People exist, but people just as I now conceive of them have never and could never exist to the slightest degree.

Unlike some Buddhist systems, Tsong-kha-pa's Prasangika Madhyamaka system does assert that there is a fully functioning external world, a world that exists outside of our minds. However, in the same breath it emphasizes that this external world is utterly dependent upon consciousness.

For example, when a god, a human, and a ghost each look at a bowl of fluid, the god sees nectar, the human sees water, and the ghost sees a mixture of pus and blood. Each being correctly perceives the fluid in accordance with the constitution of her respective sense and mental faculties. 

We cannot talk about what is really in the bowl apart from the correct perspective of the various perceivers. 

...When I teach this, sometimes I point out the tiny spiders clinging to the corners of the room. We are present together with them, here and now. We each have healthy minds and sense faculties. Our perceptions of the immediate environment are both correct, and yet they are so radically different as to be mutually incomprehensible.

Which of us sees what is really there?

Or think about taking a dog for a walk. Going down the street together, there is only a partial overlap between the dog's valid perceptions and my valid perceptions. 

We living beings all inhabit functioning worlds that arise through the unimpaired operation of our respective mental and sensory faculties; these worlds are external to -- but never independent of -- our minds. Thus it is that the worlds of our experience intersect and overlap in astonishing ways, in infinitely complex patterns.

All of this would be completely impossible if in fact each thing actually existed objectively, out there on its own, by way of its independent and intrinsic nature.

Here's the links to my previous posts about Introduction to Emptiness.

In Buddhism, ultimate reality is an absence, not a presence
Emptiness is ultimate reality: nothing, including us, has an intrinsic nature
How consciousness is related to Buddhist "emptiness"
Buddhism: the illusion of life is believing in a fixed reality
Religious belief: a delusion about an elephant in the house
Why Buddhism doesn't believe in self-realization

Buddhism's hard truths

Here's the last part of the appendix to Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. it contain some hard Buddhist truths. But I like them, even though they aren't all that pleasant. 

Truth is better than wishful religious thinking. Which is why I much prefer Buddhism stripped of supernaturalism over traditional religions.

Enjoy. Or, not.

There are two forms of grasping. First there is the grasping at sense objects. You see the object of your desire out there and you take hold of it.

The second kind of grasping is holding tight to belief. The Buddha identified three common types of belief. The first is belief in something "out there" that will set everything right and make everything perfect -- a heaven or paradise.

But even the nihilistic view that "after I die, that's it" is still a form of grasping onto such a belief. Grasping at any thoughts or opinions fits this category, since this grasping is an attempt to make sense of our existence.

A second kind of belief is belief that ritual or ceremony can somehow save us from pain, confusion, and ignorance. It's only in learning to see this very moment, as it has come to be, that liberation occurs -- not in wearing robes or performing ritual acts.

The third belief we grasp at is the belief in a self, a permanent existence. This is the belief that's most deeply rooted in us, and that causes us the most pain.

And now we have the tenth link, being: persistence or existence. This in turn will link to ignorance, since, in Reality, nothing persists. But with being comes birth, the eleventh link, and with birth comes death, the twelfth link. 

Thus birth and death, the great problem we all face, are linked to the grasping of a self. This is duhkha in its most gripping and pervasive form.

But duhkha need not grip us. To see this moment as it comes to be -- to see that all is fluidity, that nothing separate is born, and that nothing dies -- is to break the chain of bondage.

Life is a boundless sea of uncertainty

I've finished reading Steve Hagen's book, Buddhism Plain and Simple. As noted before, I found it much more agreeable than his previous book, Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. 

Yes, Hagen's conclusion is the same in both books. It's just that I like how he got to that conclusion better in Buddhism Plain and Simple. 

Basically, Hagen takes the very Buddhist'y position that nothing stands by itself.

Everything is interrelated, interconnected, interwoven. So when we abstract out some particular thing -- like our own self -- if we see that thing as separate and distinct, naturally it won't make sense, because we fail to see the larger whole in which that thing is an integral aspect.

So what we are looking for isn't distant, supernatural, mystical, or to be sought for. It is right here, right now, directly in front of us. That's reality -- the MacBook Pro screen I'm looking at as I type these words, along with the sound of the dishwasher running that I can hear, and Hagen's book that is lying on the table next to my laptop.

When we drink in reality in a single big gulp, rather than a series of small conceptual sips, that's when we see things rightly. Zen 101. 

Here's some passages about concepts from Buddhism Plain and Simple. By and large, I agree with what Hagen is saying here. We need to hold concepts lightly, not clutch them tightly. If we're not changing our mind regularly, our mind is frozen, even though the world is an ever-flowing stream.

Hagen writes...

By their very nature, all our ideas and beliefs are frozen views -- fragments of Reality, separated from the Whole. In other words, because we rely on what we think (conception), rather than on what we see (perception), there's unrest in our mind. Underneath it all, we're uneasy -- and furthermore, we know it. 

The fact is, we are already enlightened, even now. We know Truth. We just habitually overlay our direct experience of Truth with thoughts -- with beliefs and opinions and ideas. We pile them all into our conceptual frame, not recognizing the consequences of what we're doing.

The problem is not so much that we do this. In fact, we can hardly help but conceptualize. I couldn't write this book, and you couldn't read it, if we didn't conceptualize. 

The real problem is that we are caught by our concepts. We don't have to grant them power or accuracy or validity that they don't have. We simply need to recognize that our concepts are not Reality.

The mistake we make, over and over again, is to automatically posit something in our thoughts, without realizing what we've done. And then we run away with our idea, thinking we've captured some aspect of Reality.

What we overlook is that underneath the ground of our beliefs, opinions, and concepts is a boundless sea of uncertainty. The concepts we cling to are like tiny boats tossed about in the middle of a vast ocean. We stand on our beliefs and ideas thinking they're solid, but in fact, they (and we) are on shifting seas.

Any ideas or beliefs we hold in our minds are necessarily set against other ideas and beliefs. Thus we cannot help but experience doubt.

...When buddhas conceptualize (and they do), they realize what they're doing and aren't taken in by it. After all, it's not conceptualization itself that's the problem, but getting caught up in it, mistaking our concepts for Reality. 

The awakened may have thoughts and concepts just like anyone else. The difference is that they're aware that what they actually see differs from what they think. 

The Buddha called this awareness right wisdom. 

...Relative truths are the concepts we use to get an easy handle on the world. They help us in our everyday lives with a huge variety of practical matters. But the more closely we look at them, the less Real they show themselves to be.

Nevertheless, relative truths aren't to be avoided. They're not necessarily evil, or harmful, or wrong. Indeed, they're essential. In order to get through the day, we need to know things -- telephone numbers, store hours, potatoes, growing seasons, fractions, love, speed limits, how to fasten shoes.

We get into trouble when we forget that all these things, thoughts, and feelings are relative -- that they are not Real, independent entities at all. They exist only in relation to other things, thoughts, and feelings.

...Ultimate Truth, on the other hand, is direct perception. And what is directly perceived (as opposed to conceived) is that no separate, individual things exist as such. There's nothing to be experienced but this seamless, thoroughgoing relativity and flux.

 

Steve Hagen's "Buddhism Plain and Simple" appeals to churchless me

What a difference a second book makes. I found most of Steve Hagen's Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense very difficult to read. As I said in a critical blog post, it was that book which didn't make sense to me, not the world.

The end of the book was decidedly better, though. So that encouraged me to order a book Hagen wrote some seven years later, Buddhism Plain and Simple. As befits its title, I'm enjoying the much more straightforward style of this book.

Back in 2004, when I started this blog, it took me less than a minute to come up with the tagline that has been under "Church of the Churchless" for the past sixteen years: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.  

Since I believe in spiritual independence as much now as I did back then, Hagen's description of the central tenets of what the Buddha taught resonate with me. 

Here's some excerpts from the first part of the book, which is all I've read so far. I've made some comments before each indented excerpt.

For 35 years I was under the illusion that there were people who deserved the title "God in human form." Now I know better. And that's why I enjoy learning about the Buddha's teachings, since they have zero connection with any god.

The Buddha never considered himself to be something other than a human being -- only someone who was fully awake. He never claimed to be a god, or to be inspired by God, or to have access to any occult or supernatural power. He attributed his realization and understanding solely to human endeavor and human ability.

A crazy thing about the world's religions, mystical paths, and other forms of supposed spirituality is that they all have conflicting beliefs, yet those who follow these creeds all believe that their particular faith is correct. Buddhism has a different view of reality.

Buddhism is not a belief system. It's not about accepting certain tenets or believing a set of claims or principles. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's about examining the world clearly and carefully, about testing everything and every idea. Buddhism is about seeing. It's about knowing rather than believing or hoping or wishing. It's about not being afraid to examine anything and everything, including our own personal agenda.

Christians think they're going to heaven. Eastern meditation practices, such as the one I used to follow, teach that there is a "journey of the soul." But that's bullshit. Nobody goes anywhere. Pleasingly, Buddhism embraces going nowhere.

Generally we think of a journey as involving movement and direction, either going out somewhere into the world or else leading inward, into the self. But in Buddhism our journey must go nowhere -- neither in nor out. Rather, ours is a journey into nearness, into immediacy. Our journey must be to awaken here and now, to awaken to here and now. To be fully alive, we must be fully present.

Religions pull in devotees, and their money, because they make people feel they're lacking something that the religion can provide. Like, salvation, life after death, heavenly bliss. Buddhism disagrees. 

The question is: how do we do it?

In order to experience the answer to this question for yourself, you must come to three realizations. First, you must realize hat life is fleeting. Next, you must understand that you are already complete, worthy, whole. Finally, you must see that you are your own refuge, your own sanctuary, your own salvation.

Most of us wrongly think that what we lack is around some corner. So we do our best to get there. Where we discover that what we supposedly lack is around another corner. Actually, says Buddhism, what we're looking for is here, now.

You are already in reality, whether you see it or not. Reality is what's here, now. Thus you're here now, too. You know all this already, from direct experience. You're not separated from Reality. It's not "out there" somewhere, but right here.

I never was a fawning devotee of the guru who I followed for over three decades, Charan Singh. But I saw plenty of people who thought the guru could do no wrong. They thought they needed to completely surrender to him. How mistaken they were, according to the Buddha.

In his final talk before his death the Buddha said, "Each of you be a light unto yourself.; betake yourself to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth. Look not for refuge to anyone beside yourself."

You are the final authority. Not me. Not the Buddha. Not the Bible. Not the government. Not the president. Not Mom or Dad. You. No community of philosophers, scientists, priests, academicians, politicians, or generals -- no school, legislature, parliament or court -- can bear responsibility for your life, or your words, or your actions. That authority is yours and yours alone. You neither get rid of it nor escape from it.

Why are we so distrustful of our own capacity to live a fulfilling life, to be spiritually independent, to find our own way to contentment and happiness? Perhaps because thousands of years of false religious teachings have told us that we are weak fallen creatures who need to follow someone else.

Far from being a burden, this ultimate authority is actually quite wonderful. It means that you have the power to wake up. You have it now -- in your own hands. You don't have to go anywhere else. You can wake up right now, on the spot. You are fully equipped to do this now, in this moment. You already have all the power you'll ever need to realize happiness.

I have to admit that the following Buddhist precept is difficult for me to accept, because I'm so used to wanting something better than what I have now. However, it makes sense to me. Wanting never ends, though life does. So acceptance of what we have and are at every moment seems decidedly wise, since we don't know which will be our last breath.

To completely end your unease of mind, all you need to do is see that there is really nothing "out there" to get because, already, within this moment, everything is whole and complete.

I'm tired of abstractions. That's why I enjoy science and politics so much, along with Tai Chi, walking our dog, and doing chores around our house. Religious concepts like "God," "soul," and such have no meaning for me any more. I want my reality to be really real.

The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment... So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be. The table is spread before you. Let's look at how to eat.

Secret of living: hear the cries of others

Recently I wrote a post about how much I disliked Steve Hagen's book, Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. But I pressed on and managed to finish the book, continuing to dislike it until I reached the final pages.

I don't agree with everything Hagen said in his concluding chapters. However, I resonated with those chapters considerably more than the rest of the book.

If Hagen had switched things around and put what I've shared below at the beginning of his book, that would have helped me understand the otherwise mostly incomprehensible early chapters.

It turns out that Hagen was trying to convey some basic Buddhist ideas. Life is suffering. Compassion for the suffering of others, and of oneself, is all important. Nothing is permanent, including us. We lack an enduring independent self. Everything is interconnected.

I think I understand what Hagen means by just seeing: taking the world as it is, not as how we believe it to be, or as how we would like it to be. But I don't agree that concepts can be separated from what he calls bare perception. 

When I see my wife, Laurel, I don't just see a beautiful woman with blonde hair. I know that this woman is my wife, that we've been married for 30 years, that she has certain likes and dislikes, and so on. There's no way I could either simply see Laurel without everything else that connects me to her, not would I want to do this if it were somehow possible.

But other things Hagen says at the end of his book do appeal to me. See if they appeal to you...

Our task is to just see. Our direct experience -- i.e., perception itself -- is the Undefined that says with unimpeachable authority that all things appear not in being, but in becoming and in fading away.

If we try to hold to the view that a thing is merely what it is, we'll miss it totally. We'll confuse our abstraction with what's Really going on. Truth reveals itself only in the moment we stop making up a story. A story is not necessary. We only make up our story out of fear.

But what can be lost by seeing? Truth is Truth. It will not change upon being seen. What changes is simply that we no longer see incorrectly.

It's only through our faulty explanations, upon which we base so much, that we suffer pain, sorrow, loss, and lamentation. And it's only through just seeing that we may end such suffering. The end of suffering is correct seeing. 

However, just seeing -- pure perception -- doesn't mean the end of measuring, or the end of conceptualizing, or the end of discriminating consciousness. It simply means that we are no longer taken in by our objects of consciousness -- by our likes and dislikes, our preferences, our goals, our desires, and our fears.

Reality is inconceivable. But still, we can see It. We can, and do, perceive Reality. Our problem with just seeing lies in learning to get past the story being told to us by others, and to ourselves by ourselves, even now. We must learn to get past conception, past paradox and confusion.

For all our wanting of things to go a certain way, there's nothing for us to do but to simply be Here. When "good" times come, they're Here. When times are "bad," they're Here, too. As as the "good" times slip away, if we give them too much credit, they'll grow and grow and grow in our minds, until we long to get them back.

And we'll forever try to recreate those "good" times again. Thus we become spectators -- not of Reality, but of what we imagine is Real. 

We do this sort of thing endlessly, of course. What we forget is that -- as bare attention bears out -- the nature of good times, bad times, and everything else is to come and go, regardless what we do, or of what we think of them.

...We must learn to live by seeing and not by thought. We must learn to live and act from the Whole and not the part. We must learn to let the World come to us rather than thrusting ourselves upon the world.

And so, regarding that awful question, "What should I do?" coming up with an answer (as our habit demands of us) is not the point. We would only reduce Reality to concept once again. The point is simply to wake up.

Just awaken in each moment. With this you'll have right action, and so will the world.

Anything short of this, however, and you're acting out of a frozen idea -- a concept. You're carrying on in defiance of Reality, as though the world were not alive, but a corpse. Such life is exquisitely painful.

It is enough to simply act out of seeing. When we pay attention to actual perceptions instead of our concepts -- our hopes, our fears, our goals, our desires, our individual and cultural stories -- then no prescription or set of commandments is necessary. Action that grows out of seeing is naturally responsive and appropriate to the situation, whatever it may be.

This means you're not clinging to your cherished beliefs and opinions. You're ready to toss them when you notice they don't work, when you notice they're a source of pain and anxiety.

The focus always comes back to just becoming awake -- and once again, becoming awake. This is how we free ourselves, release the world, save the environment. Just this, and not another idea, another best laid plan. 

When we act based upon what arises in this moment -- rather than upon what we hope, or expect, or pretend -- we no longer need a script or set of guidelines to follow, because we have a clear view of Reality -- and of the Universe. We have the True evidence of direct experience to guide us.

Once we recognize this, we stop defying Reality.

Once you truly see the situation, you will act in the appropriate way. Action will take care of itself.

We commonly live as though at a banquet, starving -- slightly aware that something's amiss. Our feeling is that we're hungry. We look about for something to eat -- and somehow, fail to see anything. 

We don't get it.

We suffer from our thought. It tells us we must have the nugget defined. We want it defined. And it must be a jewel. A brass ring, a golden fish. It must be. 

We want life, to be sure. But we insist on having it embalmed. Generations come and go, yet we're still taken in by the tired, old, perennial issue. We long for permanence in a world of total impermanence and relativity.

Yet if we cease to create disharmony, harmony ceases to be an issue. If we cease to create meaninglessness, the desire for meaning ceases to nag at us. If we would just stop trying to hold it in our hand, nothing would be lost.

Liberation lies in just seeing, in being present, in living by experience, without reliance on belief or intent, in the true freedom that is sorrow's end.

...In that moment when we are together with the object of our desire, we may think or feel, "This is happiness." But then everything changes, and we lose our hold on that object. Suddenly we're unhappy. There's no way we can stop our circumstance from changing, however, for change is a mark of existence itself.

Then there are those things we don't want to come our way. We try to escape them or avoid them, but often we can't. We didn't want to get cancer, we didn't want our son killed in an automobile accident, we didn't want a toothache, we didn't want a nuclear waste dump built in our neighborhood, we don't want to die.

But everyone's life is full of such events, in spite of what we want. Though we try to hold them off, they come to us. We always try to push away what we don't want, but no matter what we do, undesired things and circumstances come along. They're part of the fabric of life, of existence.

If we don't see this, we'll only become frustrated and suffer still more. We'll fool ourselves into feeling that we could have made our life more pleasurable and secure if only we were more clever, or luckier, or richer, or whatever. 

We commonly try to deal with suffering by running from it, or barricading ourselves against it. But running and putting up barriers are precisely the opposite of dealing with suffering. Since dissatisfaction is built into the very fabric of existence itself, there's no way to escape.

...The person who sees Reality is the person who embraces the suffering of others and who takes on the suffering of the world. Those who can hear the cries of others have found the secret of living. They've removed all barricades. They've stopped running away. They leave themselves wide open to what others vainly try to shut out.

But in taking on our difficulties, which must include accepting the suffering of others, we no longer have such difficulties. The world is transformed, for we no longer deny Reality. 

 

Zen circle reminds me that perfection is a fantasy

Here's my new piece of art, courtesy of Amazon and a 8X10 frame that I put the print in. It doesn't really have an up or down. I just like it oriented this way, though I might change my mind. 

(I don't keep it on a rug. That was for a photography purpose. Normally it sits next to a bathroom sink where I can peruse it when I wash my hands, which is frequently, given the coronavirus scare the world is going through.)

I got the print, which admittedly isn't traditional, given its color, after reading a paragraph in Lesley Hazleton's book, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto. I like how it reminds me that perfection is an abstract idea, not anything that actually exists

Here's the passage, which was in her "Imperfect Soul" chapter.

The great Zen Buddhist masters knew what those who seek perfection do not: it leaves us cold. A classic Zen exercise is the ensō, the circle hand-drawn in a single fluid brushstroke. It is close to perfect, but never there.

If perfection is what you want, you can produce it anytime by using a compass or computer, but the ensō defies such mechanistic precision; indeed, it is often incomplete, left slightly open as though in invitation to everything beyond it.

And each one is different, never the same circle twice. You can see the hairs of the brush in the drag of the ink on the paper; trace the fluidity of the moment when the stillness of meditation was released in one rapid stroke; sense the calm grace of the artist.

The beauty of the Zen circle lies precisely (or more precisely, imprecisely) in its imperfection. That is what speaks to us and draws us in.

A perfect circle is uninteresting, a closed system containing nothing, while an imperfect one vibrates with warmth. It invites us into the moment of its creation, into that single deep exhalation as the hand arced through the air, the brush over the paper. 

It is open, human, fallible -- an expression, that is, of soul.

Religious belief is an untrue concept

So why do so many people, billions really, believe untruths about God, heaven, spirit, soul, angels, devils, and other unseen entities of which there is zero proof of their existence?

Because of the Cognitive Revolution, according to Yuval Noah Harari, a historian who has written three compelling books, Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (I've read all of them).

The February 17/24 issue of The New Yorker has a lengthy story by Ian Parker about Harari. Here's an excerpt from "The Really Big Picture." 

I think Harari is absolutely correct about religious belief being an example of how the evolved brains of humans enabled us to begin communicating untruths, which helped people to cooperate by binding them together in a shared fantasy.

in Chapter 2 of "Sapiens," Harari describes how, about seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens began to develop nuanced language, and thereby began to dominate other Homo species, and the world. 

Harari's discussion reflects standard scholarly arguments, but he adds this gloss: during what he calls the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens became uniquely able to communicate untruths.

"As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched, or smelled," he writes, referring to myths and gods.

"Many animals and human species could previously say 'Careful! A lion!' Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, 'The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.'"

This mental leap enabled cooperation among strangers: "Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins."

Here's another passage from The New Yorker story that I liked. Harari is a big believer in meditation of the Buddhist Vipassana variety. He frequently goes on retreats that last from 10 days to as much as a month.

Harari is correct: there's no such thing as an eternal essence. Belief in such a thing is another example of a mental concept that religious believers embrace because it makes them feel good. But truth is something different from feeling good.

"21 Lessons" includes extended commentary on the life of the Buddha, who "taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying." 

Harari continues, "You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfied you... 'What should I do' ask people, and the Buddha advises, 'Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.'"

Another mini-enlightenment visits me on a yoga mat

I'm assuming, and hoping, that my many mini-enlightenments are adding up to an eventual maxi-enlightenment -- in the same way saving spare change found in pockets eventually totals to some real money.

Today I added to my mini-enlightenment score card while standing on a mat in an exercise room at my athletic club where I do some Tai Chi and yoga after doing my elliptical trainer and weight lifting thing.

I decided to take a photo of the just-after-mini-enlighentment moment in case I ever attain maximal Buddha nature, and those who revere me want documentation of something analogous to the Buddha's realization under the Bodhi Tree. Plus, I like how the sunlight illuminated the mat, and how marvelously the color of my Darn Tough socks matched the mat.

Naturally the wisdom that flowed into my psyche as I was doing a yoga movement can't be expressed in language, being an ineffable showering upon me of cosmic truth. 

But I'll try to distill my mini-enlightenment into a few inadequate words.

This, right here and now, that's all there is, and will ever be. Experiencing that truth had an immediate emotional impact on me. Namely, relief.

I recall that I'd been thinking about what to have for dinner, what time the Democratic presidential debate tonight was, and other mundane thoughts. But when my mini-enlightenment hit, I realized that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what I do, no matter if pain, pleasure, or anything in-between becomes my lot -- in a very real sense, it's all the same.

Reality. This. Right here and now.

Sure, the details of here and now are ever-changing. But that everything anyone ever can be aware of is localized in here-and-now was a realization that relieved any pressure on me to be somewhere there-and-then.

Because that place would turn out to be another here-and-now.

And so it goes, for every moment of every person's life, until a last breath brings an end to here-and-nows. (Since I'm a proud atheist, I view life after death as an extremely low probability; greater than zero, but not much greater, like maybe .0001%, or a thousandth of one percent.)

If you want to peruse some of my other mini-enlightenments, the Great God Google has revealed them to me. See here, here, and here. Pleasingly, one of them involves another photo of my legs and feet!

Claims to absolute truth lead to abuses of power

Sam Harris conducted an interesting interview with Buddhist heretic Stephen Batchelor (I consider that word to be a compliment) and shared it on his Waking Up iPhone app.

Here's my transcription of a part of the interview where Batchelor talks about abuses of power in religious or spiritual organizations. I think he's correct that hierarchical institutions make it easier for wrongdoing to take place by those at the top.

And I also agree that claims to knowledge of ultimate truth by a religious leader also lead to abuses of power. This is what Batchelor said. There may be a few small errors in my transcription, but I've got it almost entirely correct.

Well, there's many different ways we could approach this. And one way I'd like to approach it off the top of my head is to think of it as really a function of a different kind of human institution. Let me just restrict myself to Buddhism.

Institutions in which you find, in a way, the greatest number of incidents are the institutions that are the most feudal and hierarchical. And as you said yourself, you have it more in the Zen and Tibetan and less in the Theraveda.

Well, the kinds of societies that these particular three traditions come from rather make my point. 

If you have a society that honors a kind of absolute relation of power between a feudal lord and underlings, or a king and the subjects, and you model your monastic institutions, probably quite unconsciously, on that structure of power, then you give people, individual men almost entirely, extraordinary power over others.

And when you have a theocratic tradition like in Tibet, with notions of enlightenment that are, frankly, superhuman, and these are projected onto these men who have all this power, you have a very unbalanced relationship between the teacher and the student.

I'm not trying to explain this away by saying it's all about the institutions and the individuals have no responsibility. Of course the individuals have responsibility for their acts. But I cannot fail to see that part of the problem lies in the structures of power in which people operate.

And the Roman Catholic church might strike us as slightly similar in its organization.

You see, any claim to absolute truth, which many Tibetan and other Zen Buddhists will claim, is a claim to absolute power. To me the split into the relative truth and the ultimate truth, which is so widespread in Buddhism, also is a doctrine that underpins and legitimizes a particular structure of power. 

The lama or the roshi or the monk who has gained insight into these deep spiritual traditions and so forth, that person has access to God, essentially, and thereby carries the authority and the power in the eyes of their followers, to God himself. I find that to be a situation where, almost invariably, abuses of power are going to take place. 

Stephen Batchelor

Stephen Batchelor on enlightenment and listening

Following up on my previous post about a charming little book by Stephen Batchelor and his wife Martine, which consists of talks they gave at a 2016 retreat in England based on the Korean Buddhist tradition (Son), here's some passages from What is this? that I resonated with in my pre-meditation reading this morning. 

I liked this take on enlightenment, which is very much in line with Zen teachings. Son, which means "meditation," is the Korean equivalent of the Japanese "Chan" and Japanese "Zen."

So once we let go of the idea that to be enlightened means to understand the nature of reality as it really is, or to gain some privileged mystical insight into truth with a capital "T" -- the way of thinking Deshan and other Son masters are trying to shake us free from -- then we shift into a practice that that is inextricably tied up with how we respond to life in each moment, which is the foundation for engaging with the world in an ethical way.

And I also liked this description of how listening can be a better way of describing what meditation, and life, is all about, than seeing is.

When you are asked to watch something carefully, what do you do?

You tend to narrow the focus of your attention onto the object, thereby letting it stand out in the wider field of vision, in order that you can look at it more precisely. What you're looking at is invariably something outside of yourself, 'over there' somewhere.

What often happens in meditation is that we fail to acknowledge the metaphoric nature of the visual language being used. Quite unconsciously, we adopt an inner stance or posture that mimics the act of seeing.

You might feel, for example, that when you're meditating there's a bit of you, in the back of your head somewhere, that's peering in on your body and breath and mental states. You've created a distance between an observer looking in and an object being observed.

But if you think about listening or hearing it's often completely the other way round. Rather than narrowing your attention on a particular sound 'out there', you open yourself up to allow the sound to enter you. 

When you listen to a piece of music in your living room, for example, what do you tend to do? Very often you dim the lights or close your eyes, then raise the sound so that it envelopes you. Then you relax and let yourself be completely receptive to the sounds that enter you from all around.

So the internal posture you assume is not that of a detached observer looking out onto something, but rather a completely vulnerable and open attention that allows sounds to stream into you from every direction.

Now that's a very different inner stance. Your physical posture might be the same, but your mental posture is the opposite to that of looking at something. 

...To think of listening in this way can help us better understand how to attend to what arises in response to the question 'What is this?'. In posing that question, allow yourself to be completely open to whatever you 'hear' in the pregnant silence that follows, without any hopes or expectations.

Metaphorically, you're waiting to hear a response rather than expecting to find an answer. The point of Son practice is not to look for an answer, or to see the nature of reality. Again, pay attention to the metaphors we use unthinkingly. 

You might find it helpful on our last full day together just to explore what it feels like in your body to be open to this question in the same way that you would open yourself to a piece of music or listen with total attention to the polyphony of the birds and wind outside, the occasional plane that flies overhead, the patter of rain on the windows.

Listen more carefully, and at the same time notice how that listening is not just an opening of the mind but an opening of the heart, a vital concern or care for the world, the source of what we call compassion or love, which brings us back into the world of relationships that we will be returning to tomorrow.

Life is a matter of material chance, not divine dispensation

The truth can be disturbing. Yet truth is immensely valuable. These two truths about truth present a dilemma to religious believers. They don't want to be disturbed, so they choose to accept falsehoods about reality.

By contrast, people like me who don't believe in religious fantasies are able to accept both truths about truth. We embrace disturbing facts such as the non-existence of God, no life after death, and the contingency of life on Earth.

That last fact is discussed by Buddhist skeptic Stephen Batchelor in an appealing little book that consists of talks he and his wife, Martine, gave at a 2016 retreat in England based on the Korean Buddhist tradition. 

I'm enjoying "What is this? Ancient questions for modern minds." Here's some excerpts from a talk Stephen Batchelor gave. His theme is how amazing existence is, even though no God designed the cosmos or is overseeing how it operates.

Yet today when I read popular books, listen to a radio programme or watch documentaries about the discoveries of the natural sciences, it often evokes in me feelings that might best be described as religious. I find the sheer scale and vastness of space and time overwhelming.

And I become acutely aware of the poignancy, the utter contingency of existence. 

Contingency means that, on the one hand, something arises contingent on other conditions, which, in turn, are contingent on yet other conditions, ad infinitum.

And, on the other hand, we make 'contingency plans' because we realize that what we prepare ourselves for might suddenly get thrown off course by circumstances we hadn't foreseen coming into play.

Such notions of contingency are very close, I feel, to what the Buddha meant by paticcasamuppada, usually translated as 'dependent origination' or 'conditioned arising'. Remember, in the early sutras the Buddha says that the person who sees such conditioned arising sees the dharma, and the person who sees the dharma sees conditioned arising.

So there's something very much at the core of the Buddha's teaching which has to do with waking up to what I would call the utterly contingent nature of experience.

...In terms of the cosmic timeframe, we are latecomers on the scene. The first human beings anatomically identical to us -- who, when naked, would have been indistinguishable from us -- first appeared somewhere between a hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand years ago. 

Which is really just the blink of an eye. And how long we will manage to remain here is anyone's guess.

The fact that all of this has happened seems entirely accidental and arbitrary. This is difficult for human beings to accept. We like to tell ourselves stories that explain how special we are. We invent concepts like 'God' to show how the story of life on earth was designed in such a way that would culminate in humankind, made 'in the image' of God.

The idea that humans could actually be a purely contingent and haphazard event we find deeply uncomfortable. We have an instinctive sense that we're so much more than just a pure accident, that there must be some reason for our being here.

Buddhists may not speak of God, but they nonetheless have developed theories of karma, which attempts to explain how over countless lifetimes we have been reaping the results of our previous actions that lead us to getting born in one place rather than another, and as one kind of creature rather than another.

This too explains why we exist; it provides reasons that we can get our heads around. It makes us feel that we are meant to be here.

According to classical Buddhist theory, this has been going on forever -- since 'beginningless time'. But the natural sciences simply don't back that up. We have emerged, it appears, out of purely physical conditions by random mutations and chance.

In principle, I see no reason why Buddhists should have an issue with this explanation of how life evolved; it accords well with the principle of conditioned arising. But I suspect many of them, like their theistic brothers and sisters, find this account rather chilling. It makes them uncomfortable.

If everything is the product of chance, rather than the moral consequences of our karma, it cannot account for the dignity and special opportunities of being human. 

But given what we now know from evolutionary biology, we have little choice, I feel, but to swallow the fact that these pre-modern explanations might simply be wrong. The fact is that we're here and, as far as we know, these material conditions alone are what gave rise to us being here.

I disagree with Stephen Batchelor about Buddhist truth claims

A couple of days ago I wrote, "I like Stephen Batchelor's take on Buddhism."

In that blog post I said that after I listened to the end of Batchelor's lengthy discussion with Sam Harris that Harris shared on his Waking Up iPhone app, I'd share anything interesting that I heard.

Well, what I heard Batchelor say in the last five minutes does strike me as both interesting and highly debatable.

Harris asked a good question of Batchelor: currently, what are your most important disagreements with Buddhist doctrine?

To his credit, Batchelor started off by saying that he can't stand dogmatic assertions by Buddhist practitioners. Since Harris had mentioned rebirth/reincarnation as a tenet that Batchelor probably disagreed with, I figured that Batchelor would agree with Harris.

Instead, Batchelor said he wasn't at all interested in the truth claims of Buddhism. Rather, what concerned him was: "How does your belief in reincarnation help you live better?" That was the central question for him.

OK. I can sort of understand where Batchelor was coming from. His focus is on practicality, not theology. If a religious belief has a practical benefit, then it gets a thumbs-up from Batchelor.

Not from me, though, not automatically.

If a religious belief isn't true -- and almost certainly rebirth/reincarnation is a fantasy -- that strikes me as a big argument against accepting it, no matter how it makes someone feel. Harris also sounded surprised at Batchelor's casual attitude toward the truth claims of Buddhism.

Sure, an argument can be made that if a religious person finds satisfaction in an untrue belief, and the belief helps them to live better, there's no harm in this.

I'd agree, so long as the belief remains private and personal. But this isn't how religious beliefs operate. They become dogmatic assertions that have real effects in the real world.

For example, reincarnation has been used as an argument for India's caste system, vestiges of which still exist in that country. (Maybe more than "vestiges.")

Likewise, a related belief in karma that extends over multiple lives can lead to an uncompassionate they deserve what they're getting attitude toward the less fortunate members of a society. So I hope Batchelor rethinks his view that it doesn't matter if a religious belief is true or not, so long as it appeals to the believer.

On a lighter note...

I like Stephen Batchelor's take on Buddhism

Over the years I believe I've read all of Stephen Batchelor's books about his somewhat heretical attitude toward Buddhism. Some blog posts about his books can be perused here, here, here, and here. 

Batchelor correctly argues that for Buddhism to make sense and be useful, its religious/supernatural aspects need to be set aside. 

Stephen Batchelor

So no karma extending over multiple lives, no reincarnation, no mythical entities inhabiting non-material realms of existence.

In this regard Batchelor agrees with Sam Harris. Both Batchelor and Harris have many years of experience with Buddhist meditation and teachings. So I've been enjoying listening to a lengthy discussion between Batchelor and Harris that is on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app that I subscribe to.

Today I heard an interesting dialogue about how they view enlightenment and the familiar Buddhist adage that life is suffering.

Because Batchelor and Harris largely agree on most things Buddhist'y, their exchange wasn't so much a debate, but an exchange of views, with each man trying to understand where the other was coming from, as the saying goes.

Harris is more into enlightenment as an end in itself, where that word basically means seeing through the illusion of a separate self or soul, and recognizing that everything we experience is an alteration of consciousness.

In his view, it is always possible to step back (a favorite Harris saying) and view an emotion, thought, or whatever as something that arises in consciousness, rather than a substantial entity -- thereby defusing the power of a disturbing or unproductive state of mind.

Batchelor agrees with the value of doing this, but prefers to speak about non-reactivity, as I noted in a blog post. 

In his book "After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age," Bachelor has some interesting observations about nirvana. Prior to saying that nirvana can be understood in one of two ways, as either the ceasing of reactivity or as freedom and independence from reactivity, he gave this view of reactivity:

We tend to regard the appearance of such a fearful world as a projection of our mental state.

But this reading of the situation is based on the cultural habit of interpreting experience psychologically. No matter how much we tell ourselves that the fearfulness of the world is just a projection, such reassurance does not significantly alter either how the world appears to us or how we feel about it.

From the perspective of a dharma practitioner, the task of "letting go of what arises" entails releasing one's grip on the whole picture: angry-me-facing-hostile-situation. 

Letting go is not simply a question of breathing deeply to calm my rattled mind; I need to cleanse the doors of my perception. This requires suspending the default habit of seeing the world as being hostile, desirable, or boring. One of the most effective ways of suspending that habit is to train yourself to comprehend the world as an infinitely suffering world.

Now, I don't claim to fully understand what Bachelor means.

However, I have at least an indistinct grasp of what he's getting at, and that's good enough for me. The way I see it, Bachelor doesn't view life as ever being free of suffering. But it is possible to lessen the impact of suffering.

Now, the differences between Harris and Batchelor in this regard are subtle. In large part they matter only to people like themselves -- so knowledgeable about Buddhist history, teachings, and writings, they can intelligently discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

That said, there was one area where I believe I understood Batchelor quite well, and agree with him to a greater extent than I agree with Harris.

Today I heard Batchelor say that individual enlightenment or ending suffering shouldn't be the final goal of a Buddhist practitioner. Instead, being a good ethical person should be. Thus our inner work should be viewed as a foundation for wise compassionate actions and relationships in our everyday life.

I see this as akin to a combination shot in pool, or billiards. You're striking a certain ball with the intention that it will hit another ball that's your primary interest.

Which isn't totally different from how Harris views things. He said that the more he can tone down or eliminate his worries, anxieties, fears, negative emotions, and such, the better his relationships with other people will be. Which makes perfect sense. It's much easier to be around someone loving and happy than someone angry and sad.

Thus what makes meditation important isn't only how it impacts how we experience the world. Equally important, if not more so, is how an inner realization affects our outer relationships.

If a spiritual practice isn't making us a better human being, it isn't serving a purpose.

This is clear when we consider how often supposedly enlightened or awakened people engage in bad behaviors. There's simply no excuse for devotees of these people to say things like, "It isn't possible to judge the behavior of an enlightened soul."

Sure it is. Are they honest, compassionate, loving, truthful, caring, generous, and so on? Are they acting like a normal good human being? If not, their so-called enlightenment or awakening is a fraud, bullshit. 

I've got a bit more of the Harris-Batchelor discussion to listen to. If I hear anything worth sharing in another blog post, I'll be sure to do that.

Dalai Lama isn't big on single-pointed attention

Here's some good news for everybody who has difficulty concentrating during meditation. The Dalai Lama does too! And he doesn't think that single-pointed attention is the best way to meditate. Analytical meditation is. 

A few days ago, in a blog post I shared a lengthy passage from my new favorite book, Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, by Amit Sood, M.D.

That passage ended with Sood mentioning that it was the Dalai Lama who provided the final push that got Sood to break away from the traditional meditation approach he learned growing up in India, and to embrace a modern version of mindfulness founded in a blend of modern science and ancient spirituality.

This is how Sood describes his conversation with the Dalai Lama at a Mayo Clinic event. The boldfacing is in Sood's book. I've added a section from the following chapter where Sood summarizes the seven tenets that have become the basis for his redesigned approach to mindfulness -- each of which makes a lot of sense to me.

It was a dramatic ninety minutes. I found the Dalai Lama to be kind, gentle, encouraging, fun, and wise. Spending time with him was like learning from my very sweet, very loving grandpa.

I asked the Dalai Lama lots of questions --- about human struggles, compassion, his childhood, and more. Then, in his presence, I asked these two questions to the audience of about five hundred people, the who's who of the meditation world.

(The answers would truly shock me and steer me forward in my path.) "How many of you have practiced meditation?" and "How many of you have found meditation a piece of cake, very easy?" 

As expected, the majority of the participants raised their hands in response to the first question. In response to the second question, barely one or two hands went up.

At that point, the Dalai Lama, in all his humility, shared his insights about meditation. I have watched this clip several times on YouTube. He described two types of meditation: analytical and single pointed.

Analytical meditation cultivates a sense of curiosity -- an alert mind that is busy exploring the nature of the body, world, humanity, and mind. Such a mind analyzes all it sees and connects different experiences to learn about the world.

Analytic meditation helps develop a holistic view. It decreases the gap between appearance and reality. This form of meditation he found easy, and he thought it was more important than the second form of meditation -- focused attention.

For the second form of meditation, which creates a single-pointed mind (in which you focus on a single object of attention), the word Dalai Lama used was impossible. It needed a lot of time -- four, five, or six hours a day.

...Talking to the Dalai Lama was a moment of great realization for me. I felt uplifted, absolved, freed. My cage had been opened. This hummingbird was ready to fly.

If the Dalai Lama struggles with single-pointed meditation and promotes a more wisdom-seeking analytical process, why was I seeking single-pointed meditation as a first step. Why were many other programs doing the same?

I realized my folly. I was copying and pasting practices I had learned without much thinking. I had picked cliches. I was talking about the "now" without knowing what it meant. I was evangelizing about being in the present moment without knowing how difficult it was.

I was sharing practices that didn't work for the majority of the people for the long term. They were just too polite to tell me. I was setting them up for failure, swapping one trap for the other. This wasn't right, and I needed to fix it.

If the basic concepts of diet and exercise are simple and can be learned in a very short time, why shouldn't mindfulness resilience, happiness, and stress management be equally simple and accessible? I thought.

...Here are the seven tenets presented as seven tweets. 

(1) Ancient wisdom relied on philosophy; modern wisdom increasingly consults twenty-first century science.
(2) Time is fleeting and untethered. Anchor presence by intentionality instead of time.
(3) Intentional attention, external or internal, engages the same brain network. Focus your meditation on the world if you struggle with the mind.
(4) If the short-term is challenged, think about the long term; if the long term is challenged, live for the next moment. Keep a flexible zoom.
(5) A non-judgmental stance can be comforting but is unachievable. Being grateful and compassionate is an easier and more accessible solution.
(6) Mindfulness isn't a practice; it is a way of life.
(7) Instead of emptying the mind, fill it with hope, inspiration, and courage.

You can see the Dalai Lama's response to the questions Sood asked the audience in this video of the event. I've set the You Tube video to start at the appropriate place, a bit after 1:05.

Reading this blog post, know that you are reading this blog post

If you're not into mindfulness meditation, the title of this blog post may seem like nonsense to you. But like I wrote last year, "Mindfulness has become my meditation."

A frequently-heard saying in the guided meditations I listen to via iPhone apps is Breathing in, know that you are breathing in. In other words, bring mind and body into a state of harmonious relatedness.

Of course, you don't have to always be aware of your breathing. But if your goal in a particular meditation session is to be aware of your breathing, then obviously you need to know that you are breathing to bring about that awareness.

It's entirely possible, very common, in fact, to be doing something physically without being aware of what you're doing. I can read several paragraphs of a book before I suddenly realize, I have no idea what I just read. My eyes were scanning the words, while my mind was thinking about something else.

So I try to get into the habit of saying to myself, "While doing ____, know that I'm doing ____."

Not continuously, of course. That would distract from my awareness of what I'm doing, since if I kept repeating that phrase, I'd be aware of repeating that phrase, not what I was physically doing.

For example, at the beginning of the three Tai Chi classes I attend each week I typically say to myself, "While doing Tai Chi, know that I am doing Tai Chi."  Maybe that seems obvious. It isn't, though. After 15 years of learning Tai Chi, I know most of the forms so well I can do them while my mind is elsewhere.

Like, thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner. Thus my body can be practicing Tai Chi, while my mind is visualizing what's going to be taken out of the refrigerator when I get home.

There's nothing wrong with doing that.

It just means that I'm not fully into the present moment, since my body is in one place while my mind is in another place. That's often fine. How would we be able to envision the future if our minds were locked into only being cognizant of what's happening right now?

Ditto for remembering the past.

I'm simply saying that by and large, I've found that life is more pleasant, and seems to flow more smoothly, when my mind is as much in sync with my physical actions as possible. Sure, sometimes we need to be almost totally immersed in thoughts or feelings that take us away from what our body is doing.

Even then, though, we should be aware of our inner contemplation while we're engaged in that inner contemplation. Most of us have had the unsettling experience of talking to somebody, then having them say, "Oh, sorry. Could you repeat that? My mind was somewhere else."

Typically we aren't as unsettled when we aren't aware of what our own mind has been saying inside our head, because this happens so frequently, it is second nature (or even first nature) to us.  

Meaning, if our inner voice were to be broadcast to the world at large via a psychological loudspeaker, other people would look upon us as if we were crazy --  much as mentally ill homeless people are viewed when they stand on a street corner and blurt out whatever pops into their head.

A main difference between them and us is that we're able to keep our bizarre non-sensical stream-of-consciousness thoughts to ourselves while we walk down a sidewalk. Which shouldn't fill us with pride in our sanity. We're just better at keeping our craziness inside our head.

Mindfulness practice hasn't made me into a Buddha, for sure.

I still get anxious, sad, upset, angry, worried, fearful, and such just about as much as before. However, I'm working on simply experiencing those feelings as they arise, rather than, say, getting anxious about my anxiety, or sad about my sadness.

Being more mindful of how I'm feeling seems to help me avoid becoming overwhelmed by an emotion, where I make myself feel worse by over-reacting to a feeling I'm experiencing. Feeling worried, I know that I'm feeling worried -- that sort of thing.

It's been a while since I've locked my car, then walked back to my car to see if I've locked it. Like I said back in February, this is a positive sign of my (mini) enlightenment.

Any resemblance between me and this image that I shared in that post is purely coincidental. I do, though, live near a lake that has water lilies, so there's that.

 

 

My Zen snow globe

BEHOLD... my mystical magical enlightening Zen snow globe!

You turn it over to stir things up, then it settles down. Until things get stirred up again, after which they settle down.

Just like life.

Buddhists, the mind isn't like a mirror. Science knows better.

In my churchless frame of mind, it's rare that I can get very far into a book with some religious overtones before I start using my highlighter to make question marks in the margins.

The book I'm reading now, As It Is by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, was bought because I was curious to learn more about one of the Dzogchen/Buddhist teachers mentioned in Sam Harris' Waking Up book -- which I like a lot.

(But which also has some question marks in the margins; just a few, though.)

I'll write about what appeals to me in As It Is in another blog post. Buddhism gets a lot right about reality, so long as the supernatural aspects of Buddhist teachings are stripped out. The doctrine of no-self and no-soul is very much in accord with modern neuroscience, for example.

Since Buddhist philosophy emanates from pre-scientific times, it's surprising that Buddhism gets so much right about how the mind works. However, it also gets quite a bit wrong, as evidenced by these quotations from As It Is that I read this morning.

Better to be like a mirror, letting reflections occur in the state of rigpa [knowledge of original wakefulness] without fixating on anything. That is the state of suchness.

...To reflect the pure development stage, first be a bright mirror. First understand, then experience, then realize. Try first of all to be a good mirror, a mind essence mirror, a rigpa mirror. 

Suchness. I don't like that word. Back in 2010 I wrote "My main gripe with Buddhist meditation." Here's some excerpts that apply to the As It Is book also.

Bare knowing. Actually happening. Just as they are. Inner life naked. As they truly are.

Many Buddhists actually believe this stuff, that through their many hours of meditation they're able to enter into an experience of suchness and thus so'ness -- which supposedly is an awareness of things as they are, not as they seem to be to deluded minds like you and I have (I'm assuming you aren't an enlightened Buddhist practitioner; if you think you are, congratulations).

Every human being, without exception, knows reality through his or her own idiosyncratic brain filters. Experience leads us to see things in a certain way, then our seeing feeds back into our experience in a never-ending cycle.

I do believe that meditation and other forms of mental training can help us become more aware of what's going on in both our inner and outer world. However, these awarenesses are of reality as we know it, not reality as it is nakedly, purely, actually.

Nine years later, I believe what I said above even more strongly. This is basic neuroscience: the mind/brain actively constructs reality; it doesn't passively reflect reality.

Recently my wife and I re-watched the first episode of David Eagleman's PBS series, The Brain. That episode is called "What is Reality?"

The description of the episode on the PBS website shows that Buddhism may be correct about many things regarding the mind, but viewing the mind as a mirror isn't one of them.

Dr. Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted. 

‘What is Reality?’ begins with the astonishing fact that this technicolor multi-sensory experience we are having is a convincing illusion conjured up for us by our brains. 

In the outside world there is no color, no sound, no smell. These are all constructions of the brain. Instead, there is electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves, and aromatic molecules all of which are interpreted by the brain as color, sound and smell.   

Cutting edge graphics show that data from the outside are rendered into electrochemical signals inside the brain, which map meaningfully onto physical reality. Our experience of reality is an electrochemical rendition of the world outside. It is not a faithful rendition.

Visual illusions are reminders that what’s important to the brain is not being faithful to ‘reality’ but being able to perceive just enough so that we can navigate successfully through it. The brain leaves a lot out of its beautiful rendition of the physical world, a fact that Dr Eagleman reveals using experiments, and street demonstrations. 

We meet the men and women whose experiences of reality reveal important clues about how the brain constructs our own reality, including the Alcatraz prisoner who was locked in the notorious ‘Dark Hole’ for 29 days, and yet experienced richly colorful moments of reality.

His experience, along with those who have experienced total sensory deprivation show us that even when sensory input to the brain stops, the show still goes on. Why? Because, amazingly, our senses – eyes, ears, skin, nose - only modulate an internally generated simulation of what the brain expects is out there. This so-called ‘internal model of reality’ allows us to move through the world, recognizing it rather than constructing it anew, moment by moment. 

We meet a man who is blind despite the fact that he has eyes that can see. His story reveals that it’s the brain that sees, not our eyes. A woman with schizophrenia, whose psychotic episodes were her reality, emphasizes the fact that whatever our brains tell us is out there, we believe it.

We have no way to get beyond what our brains allow us to perceive. Like the rest of the animal kingdom, we inhabit a miniscule slice of reality, and yet we believe it to be the whole picture. 

Eagleman also explores time, and takes a look at how – and why - the brain alters its perception of time, depending on the situation we find ourselves in. Time, it turns out, is not an absolute to the brain. 

Each one of our brains is different, and so is the reality it produces. What is reality? It’s whatever your brain tells you it is.

Sam Harris shows my meditation is on the right spiritual track

There's many forms of meditation. They all have strengths and weaknesses, pluses and minuses. But only a few forms of meditation lead to an increased knowledge of reality, since most are based on unfounded religious dogma.

I'm confident that the meditation I've been practicing for about fifteen years -- after I wisely gave up a religiously-based form of meditation -- has me on the right spiritual track.

I explained why in "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self." Here's how that 2014 post starts out.

Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."

I'm about a third of the way through. Which is far enough to have discovered the central theme. Harris writes:

My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion -- and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

...Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self -- not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that exists somehow interior to the body behind the eyes, inside the head.

The feeling that we call "I" seems to define our point of view in every moment, and it also provides an anchor for popular beliefs about souls and freedom of will.

And yet this feeling, however imperturbable it may appear at present, can be altered, interrupted, or entirely abolished. 

...Subjectively speaking, the only thing that actually exists is consciousness and its contents.

Wow. 

Now, I realize that some people would say "Yeah, makes sense, no big surprise" to the above scientifically- and experientially-persuasive truths.

But I spent decades as a devotee of a mystical philosophy that, like many others, taught that we humans have, or are, an eternal soul. The soul supposedly could return to God through meditation at the "eye center" -- that place behind the eyes and inside the head Harris, a neuroscientist and Buddhist practitioner, says doesn't house a self or soul.

So it sure seems like those who claim that this world is an illusion, with soul-realms being true reality, are the ones who have gotten it wrong. 

There is no enduring soul or self to be liberated. As Harris says in his book, genuine spirituality is realizing this. Thus a belief in the existence of soul leads one farther away from the truth, not closer. This is basic Buddhism, yet even many Buddhists still harbor fantasies of living on after death as... something or other.

Other posts I wrote about my first reading of Harris' "Waking Up" are here, here, and here. I re-read the book in 2016 and wrote another post about it. I had some quibbles about how Harris views consciousness, but upon a closer reading of certain sections I was able to better grasp his viewpoint.

The past few days I've been reading "Waking Up" a third time. I switch highlighter colors with every reading. By now some pages are almost completely highlighted.

This book is my favorite in the spiritual but not religious genre. Harris is famously down on religion, yet decidedly up on understanding the nature of ourselves through Buddhist Vipassana (mindfulness) meditation that's aimed at dissolving the illusion that we are, or have, a self/soul.

Harris writes:

Unlike the doctrines of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the teachings of Buddhism are not considered by their adherents to be the product of infallible revelation. They are, rather, empirical instructions: If you do X, you will experience Y.

Although many Buddhists have a superstitious and cultic attachment to the historical Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism present him as an ordinary  human being who succeeded in understanding the nature of his own mind.

Buddha means "swakened one" -- and Siddhartha Gautama was merely a man who woke up from the dream of being a separate self. 

Compare this with the Christian view of Jesus, who is imagined to be the son of the creator of the universe. This is a very different proposition, and it renders Christianity, no matter how fully divested of metaphysical baggage, all but irrelevant to a scientific discussion about the human condition.

...Although the experience of self-transcendence is, in principle, available to everyone, this possibility is only weakly attested to in the religious and philosophical literature of the West.

Only Buddhists and students of Advaita Vedanta (which appears to have been heavily influenced by Buddhism) have been absolutely clear in asserting that spiritual life consists in overcoming the illusion of the self by paying close attention to our experience in the present moment.

Beautiful. 

What I love about this approach to spirituality is that it's solidly founded in modern neuroscience, which also says that our sense of being a "self" is almost certainly an illusion, so meditation needs to be aimed at realizing what we are not by paying close attention to what we actually are.

Namely, thoughts without a thinker; perceptions without a perceiver; emotions without an emoter; and so on.

Sam Harris writes:

The claim that we can experience consciousness without a conventional sense of self -- that there is no rider on the horse -- seems to be on firm ground neurologically. Whatever causes the brain to produce the false notion that there is a thinker living somewhere inside the head, it makes sense that it could stop doing this. And once it does, our inner lives become more faithful to the facts.

How can we know that the conventional sense of self is an illusion? When we look closely, it vanishes. This is compelling in the same way that the disappearance of any illusion is: You thought something was there, but upon closer inspection, you see that it isn't. What doesn't survive scrutiny cannot be real.

Harris uses this visual illusion as an analogy.

There appears to be a white box in the center of the figure. But, Harris says, "when we study the image, it becomes clear that there are only four partial circles. The square has been imposed by our visual system, whose edge detectors have been fooled."

Try blanking out all but one of the black figures with your hand. That makes it easier to see that what appears to be a white square actually is an absence, not a presence. 

Just like the self, or soul. It appears to be there, but this is an illusion. Look for it, and it's nowhere to be found. If that feeling of nowhere'ness persists, congratulations. You're enlightened! Or, awake.

Here's the problem with living: we're going to die

This isn't exactly breaking news, but I'll say it anyway. Each of us is going to die. 


Those seven words are undeniably scary. Life isn't always pleasant. Yet the gulf between having a difficult life and no life at all is more than immense. It's immeasurable. There's no way to compare being alive and being dead, or existence and non-existence.

The worst day anyone can have is on a different dimension than not existing at all.

Understand: I'm not saying that life is always worth living. Suicide and death with dignity testify to the fact that sometimes people prefer to check out of life early, rather than waiting for the involuntary eviction notice.

There are many reasons most people on Earth embrace some form of religiosity. However, a central reason has to be the reassurance almost every religion provides that when the last breath is taken, that doesn't mark the end of their life, but rather the beginning of a new form of existence.

I don't believe this is true.

There's no convincing evidence of life after death. Nor is there convincing evidence that human consciousness can exist without a functioning brain. Comas, anesthesia, being hit on the head with a baseball bat -- there's abundant evidence that consciousness is a product of the brain, though how this happens still isn't fully understood.

Still, each of has to come to grips with the reality of death whether we're an ardent atheist, committed religious believer, or somewhere in-between. 

Leaving aside the option of not thinking about death until it stares us in the face (which can be a good way to live, for those capable of doing this), it seems to me that there's two basic approaches to preparing for the inevitability of our eventual demise.

One is to try to expand our self. The other is to try to shrink our self. 

Almost all religions take the first approach: expanding the self. For example, some religions say that after death there is either bodily resurrection (Christianity) or reincarnation (Hinduism). Mystical aspects of religion proclaim that the soul can merge with God, taking on divine attributes. 

Aside from the fact that self-expansion, or consciousness-expansion, likely isn't possible in any sense that extends beyond the bounds of a single physical life, there's other reasons to shy away from this approach.

It encourages grandiosity.

I see this all the time in comments religious believers leave on my blog posts, notably those who are devotees of an Indian form of spirituality known as Sant Mat, or the Path of the Saints. They're fond of claiming that this is the highest form of religion, supposedly leading as it does to knowledge of an ultimate divine reality.

Of course, just about every religion makes this same claim.

Since there is no evidence of one religion being superior to another, almost certainly because they all are "fake news" (to borrow a phrase from Donald Trump), it seems ridiculous for a member of any faith to say that their way is the only way -- sort of like people arguing about which unicorn color is the most attractive, given that unicorns don't exist except in one's imagination.

So I prefer the other approach to dealing with life and our eventual death: shrinking the self. 

After all, us humans already are pretty damn insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Aside from having a lot of company here on Earth -- the human population is about 7.6 billion -- we are on a planet circling one of about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, which is one of at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

And we're very lucky to live 100 years, which is an infinitesimal blip in the 13.7 billion year old universe we inhabit. 

Thus it doesn't take much for us to shrink down to almost nothing, either figuratively or literally (the whole "ashes to ashes' thing). But our egos enjoy pretending that we're way more important than we really are, which goes a long way toward explaining the appeal of religions.

God so loves us, he sent his only son to die for our sins. The soul is destined to return home to its heavenly father. Humans are the pinnacle of creation. 

The myths of religion are innumerable. I much prefer reality:

Each of us is nothing special. We're connected to all other living things through the secular "miracle" of evolution. We live for a while, then we die. Humility is not only a virtue, it's the way things are in a world that is much grander and longer-lived than us.

Of all the world's religions, in my opinion Buddhism and Taoism are the best at offering ways to help us shrink our sense of self. One reason is that neither posits an enduring Self, or Soul. Rather, they teach that life is ever-changing, as are we. Our existence is intimately connected with that of everything else on Earth. We're humble parts of the whole.

He who stands on tiptoe is not steady.
He who strides cannot maintain the pace.
He who makes a show is not enlightened.
He who boasts achieves nothing.
He who brags will not endure.
According to followers of the Tao, 
    "These are extra food and unnecessary luggage."
They do not bring happiness.
Therefore followers of the Tao avoid them.
    -- Tao Te Ching

As a concrete example of the difference between grandiose and humble approaches to spirituality, I spend exactly zero time and effort on religious web sites or blogs trying to push my atheist point of view. Sure, I enjoy sharing churchless/atheist ideas here on my own blog, but I don't go out of my way to convince others that they should adopt my perspective.

But ever since I started this blog in 2004, religious believers -- mostly of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas/Sant Mat variety -- have commented in droves on my blog posts. The way I see it, this shows that they're not very confident in their belief system, since when someone presents arguments against what they believe, they take this as a battle cry to fight against.

Thus I'm pleased to be a humble churchless blogger rather than a grandiose believer in religious dogma. It's much more relaxing that way, since my only commitment is to the truth as best I can understand it. Truth doesn't require any attempt to boost it up, since it stands tall on its own.

Regarding death, my bet is that what will happen to me is exactly the same thing that happens to every other person: we die and are gone forever. The way I see it, the more I can reduce my sense of ego and specialness, the easier it will be to let go when the moment of dying comes.

Until then, I'll enjoy life.

Sure, religious believers typically derive comfort from a fantasy that death won't be the end for them. But the price they pay for their belief strikes me as too high -- feeling like they are the special beloveds of God or some other higher power, which leads to a sense of separation from everybody else who won't enjoy such a marvelous afterlife.

I'd rather feel like I'm simply part of the dead-and-gone-forever crowd. If somehow I discover that I'm living on after I die, that'll be great news. I'm not counting on it, though.

Vipassana vs. Surat Shabd Yoga meditation. I pick a winner.

Arguably it doesn't make sense to consider that meditation styles can be classed as winners or losers. But, hey, that's no fun! So in this post I'm going to choose a winner after considering a question I got in an email message recently:

Do you have any opinion as to whether vipassana is more or less equal to RSSB's simran?

Well, of course I have an opinion.

I'm a blogger. Opinionating is what I love to do. I've got opinions on just about everything. Heck, on one of my other two blogs I rated the grocery carts at the three stores in south Salem (Oregon) where I do the weekly shopping for my wife, dog, and myself.

First, let's get some terms defined. Vipassana is a Buddhist meditation practice that is basically what is now called "mindfulness." Sure, there's more to it than that, as discussed in a Tricycle article, "What Exactly is Vipassana Meditation?"

The distinction between Vipassana meditation and other styles of meditation is crucial and needs to be fully understood. Buddhism addresses two major types of meditation. They are different mental skills, modes of functioning or qualities of consciousness. In Pali, the original language of Theravada literature, they are called Vipassana and Samatha.

Vipassana can be translated as “Insight,” a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. Samatha can be translated as “concentration” or “tranquility.” It is a state in which the mind is brought to rest, focused only on one item and not allowed to wander. When this is done, a deep calm pervades body and mind, a state of tranquility which must be experienced to be understood.

Most systems of meditation emphasize the Samatha component. The meditator focuses his mind upon some items, such as prayer, a certain type of box, a chant, a candle flame, a religious image or whatever, and excludes all other thoughts and perceptions from his consciousness. The result is a state of rapture which lasts until the meditator ends the session of sitting. It is beautiful, delightful, meaningful and alluring, but only temporary. Vipassana meditation addresses the other component, insight.

Simran is one component of the Surat Shabd Yoga meditation practice taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), along with other sects that fall into the general category of Sant Mat. Simran is the repetition of a mantra, so it falls into the Samatha or concentration category, as noted in the passage quoted above. 

The other components of Surat Shabd Yoga are dhyan, visualization of an image (usually the face of the guru who initiated the practitioner), and bhajan, listening to a supposed celestial or supernatural sound.

The simran part of Surat Shabd Yoga is what I was asked about, but what follows really is a comparison of Vipassana and Surat Shabd Yoga in general.

I practiced Surat Shabd Yoga diligently for about 35 years, meditating every day from 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours. For the past 15 years or so my morning meditation has been Vipassana/mindfulness oriented. 

The key difference between Vipassana and Surat Shabd Yoga is the goal.

As noted in the passage above, Vipassana, or mindfulness, aims at being clearly aware of whatever is present within one's consciousness.

It isn't other-worldly, unless sensations of another world are present. Typically awareness of the breath is used to calm the mind, though thoughts and emotions aren't rejected in mindfulness meditation, since they can be another object of awareness.

Surat Shabd Yoga, on the other hand, is very much other-worldly. The goal is to withdraw one's consciousness from the outside world, including sensations of one's own body, and bring awareness completely "inside."

Once there, at the eye center or Third Eye, supposedly one's soul consciousness rises to higher realms of spiritual reality, considered to be five in number. 

Now, I've used supposed and supposedly to describe Surat Shabd Yoga meditation, but not to describe Vipassana or mindfulness meditation. 

This points to the central reason I consider Vipassana to be superior: it deals with what is actually present in consciousness, not with what might be there. Surat Shabd Yoga, on the other hand aims at leaving this world behind in order to gain a supposedly better one.

Even the simran or mantra repetition aspect of Surat Shabd Yoga has an other-worldly connotation, since the Five Holy Names repeated by the practitioner supposedly are associated with characteristics of the aforementioned five higher realms of reality.

So the benefit of Surat Shabd Yoga meditation is much reduced if, as I consider highly likely, the supernatural regions it posits actually don't exist.

Meaning, if there's no supernatural side to reality that human consciousness can become aware of, then Surat Shabd Yoga basically is Samatha or concentration. There's a benefit to being able to concentrate on a mantra or image to the exclusion of other sensations, thoughts, emotions, and such, but otherwise the Surat Shabd Yoga practitioner isn't doing anything special.

Ah, that word, special. 

This points to another reason why I now much prefer Vipassana/mindfulness meditation. There's nothing special about it, nor is there any claim that it's something special. It's simply an attempt to recognize whatever is happening with as clear an awareness as possible.

As I frequently hear on my Daily Calm guided meditation via my iPhone's Calm app, "breathing in, know that you are breathing in; breathing out, know that you are breathing out." (Also, as I've noted in a blog post, when locking my car, know that I am locking the car.)

So mindfulness is a universal approach to living.

In a very real sense, there's nothing higher or lower, better or worse, desirable or undesirable. If we're happy, we know we're happy. If sad, we know we're sad. Judgement is absent from Vipassana meditation, as I understand it.

If the mind wanders, we know our mind is wandering. When the mind is concentrated, we know our mind is concentrating.

By contrast, my experience is that Surat Shabd Yoga practitioners -- at least those in the RSSB organization -- consider themselves to be on a very special path that leads to God-realization. The RSSB teachings claim that those initiated by the guru, who is viewed as God in human form, are "marked souls." 

Marked, that is, by God as deserving of being put on a path that is guaranteed to lead to God-realization within a maximum of four lifetimes (which entails a belief in reincarnation, obviously).

The Surat Shabd Yoga goal of leaving this world behind to find a better one within the depths of one's consciousness also encourages an unhealthy disdain for everyday life among many devotees. The RSSB guru sometimes is adored more than an initiate's own family, in line with Jesus' supposed saying:

"Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." (Matthew 10:37)

Bottom line: I'm enjoying my meditation much more now that I've switched to a Vipassana/mindfulness approach. I feel more in touch both with myself and with other people. I no longer consider that I'm on a special spiritual journey leading to the highest divine realm that people who practice other forms of meditation are unable to reach.

It feels good to simply view myself as an ordinary human being living an ordinary life.

But if God or a supernatural divinity actually does exist, seemingly Vipassana meditation will help me be mindfully aware of it, should that divinity deign to make an appearance in my consciousness.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention another reason I prefer Vipassana/mindfulness meditation now. In accord with Buddhist teachings, Vipassana leads to a realization that there's no "self" inside our head, no enduring essence, nothing separate from ever-changing experience.

Surat Shabd Yoga, on the other hand, assumes we have, or are, a soul that is unchanging and eternal, even though there's no convincing evidence of this. So in addition to assuming that supernatural realms of reality exist, Surat Shabd Yoga also assumes that the soul exists. 

I want to know reality as it is, as clearly and fully as possible. Fantasies about what could be, but isn't, can be fun to engage in (that's why movies and novels are so pleasing), but they shouldn't be taken seriously.

Here's a positive sign of my (mini) enlightenment

I was really proud of myself tonight. So proud, I'm thinking that what I did could be a tangible sign of my enlightenment, mini, or even micro, variety.

After finding a parking spot a couple of blocks from my 6 pm Tai Chi class in downtown Salem, I walked away from my VW GTI without going back and checking if I'd locked the car via a button on the door handle.

Now, this may not seem like something that distinguishes an enlightened being. It pales in comparison to what supposedly happened with the Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. 

But given how often I do return to my car to peer into the driver's side window to see if the red "locked" light is flashing, I was decidedly pleased that even though doing this did pass through my mind, tonight I recalled hearing the clunk sound my GTI makes when a door is locked. 

Thus this time I'd managed to be mindful of a habitual action: locking my car. 

Many other times, way too many to count, I'd started thinking of something else I needed to do while my finger was pressing the lock button. Since the human brain has limited bandwidth, and really is able to do only one thing at a time skillfully, my lack of attention to what my body was doing at the locking-car moment often leaves me unsure if I'd done it.

Now that I've reached the age of 70 (which seems astoundingly old whenever I see it in writing), I'm paying more attention to the few pearls of wisdom I might be able to pass on to the young'uns. Here's one pearl, as prosaic as it may seem:

Try to keep your mind and body on the same page of reality.

This is Mindfulness 101, of course. Others have said the same thing, and better, in the many books I've read about meditation and mindfulness. For example, here's a passage from Thich Nhat Hanh's wonderful little book, "The Miracle of Mindfulness."

Our breath is such a fragile piece of thread. But once we know how to use it, it can become a wondrous tool to help us surmount situations which would otherwise seem hopeless. Our breath is the bridge from our body to our mind, the element which reconciles our body and mind and which makes possible one-ness of body and mind. 

Breath is aligned to both body and mind and it alone is the tool which can bring them both together, illuminating both and bringing both peace and calm.

Life is short. The older we get, the more this becomes obvious. Some people deal with this fact by making a Bucket List of things they want to accomplish before, as the saying goes, they kick the bucket. 

I used to embrace that sort of attitude.

But now I've come to feel something different, and seemingly more attainable. I simply want to be as fully aware as possible of whatever it is I'm doing until I take my last breath. What that whatever is doesn't matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

By which I mean, there's an unbridgeable gulf between (1) existing as a living being, and (2) dying and not existing at all.

(I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in life after death. However, even religious people should admit there is no solid proof of this, so my point holds for everybody in my decidedly personal opinion.)

So let's say I write a best-selling book -- which previously was on my Bucket List. So what? How does that change my life? How does it affect my everyday existence? I still need to fix my breakfast, wash dishes, walk the dog, and, yes, lock my car. If I'm thinking of how great an author I am while doing those things, I've lost part of my living.

Again, Thich Nhat Hanh makes this point way better than I can.

If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not "washing the dishes to wash the dishes." What's more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.

In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands.

Thus we are sucked away into the future -- and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.

Meditation isn't mystical. It's about awareness of actual reality.

For about 35 years I had some deluded notions about meditation.

Back then I embraced a teaching that said meditation was about concentrating at the eye center (third eye, basically) so one's mind/soul could enter higher realms of mystical consciousness.

Now I realize that this wasn't what genuine meditation really is all about. A book that I've gotten back to reading, "Altered Traits:  Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body" has helped me understand this. 

I bought this book in September 2017, wrote a rather critical blog post about it in April 2018 ("Awareness is a process, not a thing") and recently read a couple of additional chapters that make me feel considerably more positive about the book.

Here's some highlights from those chapters, which describe what happened when the brains of some highly experienced meditators, both Buddhist monks and others, were examined through modern scientific devices: EEG and fMRI. The key theme here is Open Presence.

Researchers found that the brain waves of Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan monk, were off the charts when it came to his ability to almost instantly enter a state of compassionate meditation. But those spikes diminished, yet didn't disappear, when he went into a rest period. Thus his brain had acquired a lasting trait, not just the ability to enter into temporary states of consciousness.

When another researcher tested whether Mingyur could generate an elaborate visual image or had extrasensory perception, he flunked both tests. Here's a passage from Altered Traits about this.

Mingyur, it turned out, had done no practice with visualization since the long-gone, early years of his practice. As time went on, his meditations evolved. His current method, ongoing open presence (which expressed itself as kindness in everyday life), encourages letting go of any and all thoughts rather than generating any specific visual images.

...As for "extrasensory perception," Mingyur had never claimed to have such supernormal powers. Indeed, the texts of his tradition made clear that any fascination with such abilities was a detour, a dead end on the path.

Which is exactly my experience, though I make no claim to being anywhere near as experienced with meditation as Mingyur is. What we're trying to do in meditation is experience reality as it is, not as religious fantasies make it out to be.

An eighteenth-century Tibetan text urges meditators to practice "on whatever harms come your way," adding, "When sick, practice on that sickness... When cold, practice on that coldness. By practicing in this way all situations will arise as meditation."

...Mingyur Rinpoche, likewise, encourages making all sensation, even pain, our "friend," using it as a basis for meditation. Since the essence of meditation is awareness, any sensation that anchors attention can be used as support -- and pain can be very effective in focusing.

...Each yogi (including Mingyur) was compared to a meditation-naive volunteer matched for age and gender. For a week before they came to be studied, the volunteers learned to generate an "open presence," an attentional stance of letting whatever life presents us come and go, without adding thoughts or emotional reactions. Our senses are fully aware, and we just stay aware of what happens without getting carried away by any downs or ups.

When the yogis and volunteers were tested to see how they reacted to a 10-second slight warming of a firey device, followed by a 10-second blast of hotness, the control groups' pain matrix in the brain reacted almost as strongly to the slight warming as it did when the high heat came on.

So their "anticipatory anxiety" caused them distress even before the real pain arrived. By contrast, the experienced meditators showed little change when the plate warmed just a little.

Interestingly, though:

But during the actual moments of intense heat the yogis had a surprising heightened response, mainly in the sensory areas that receive the genuine feel of a stimulus -- the tingling, pressure, high heat, and other raw sensations on the skin of the wrist where the hot plate rested. The emotional regions of the pain matrix activated a bit, but not as much as the sensory circuitry. 

This suggests a lessening of the psychological component -- like the worry we feel in anticipation of pain -- along with intensification of the pain sensations themselves. Right after the heat stopped, all the regions of the brain matrix rapidly returned down to their levels before the pain cue, far more quickly than was the case for the controls.

For the highly advanced meditators, the recovery from pain was almost as though nothing much had happened at all.

Pretty inspiring. This shows that the human brain/mind is capable of more than most people are able to express, or experience. Yet this capacity isn't supernatural, divine, or godly. Here's some final quotes from Altered Traits.

We can only make conjectures about what state of consciousness this reflects: yogis like Mingyur seem to experience an ongoing state of open, rich awareness during their daily lives, not just when they meditate. The yogis themselves have described it as a spaciousness and vastness in their experience, as if all their senses were wide open to the full rich panorama of experience. 

Or, as a fourteenth-century Tibetan text describes it,

...a state of bare, transparent awareness.

Effortless and brilliantly vivid, a state of relaxed, rootless wisdom;

Fixation free and crystal clear, a state without the slightest reference point;

Spacious empty clarity, a state-wide-open and unconfined; the senses unfettered...

Sand mandalas are a symbol of impermanence, that nothing lasts

Today the Daily Calm guided meditation by Tamara Levitt on my iPhone app was about mandalas. I've transcribed the last portion of what Levitt said, because I found it inspiring. 

It's so true. Nothing lasts. Everything is impermanent. Our wanting to make the impermanent permanent isn't the only source of suffering, but it certainly contributes to our dissatisfaction with life. 

The image below came from a web page about sand mandalas. It describes the process used to create them in the Buddhist tradition. Here's the transcript:

Today we’ll be discussing the transient nature of all things.

In Buddhism there is a tradition of making beautiful mandalas out of vibrantly colored sand. A mandala is a geometric work of art created on a large flat surface and composed of thousands of tiny deposits of colored sand arranged in a stunningly intricate pattern of concentric lines, curls, and shapes. 

A mandala is meant to symbolize the complexity of the universe. And its creation is a meditation in itself. 

Traditionally sand mandalas are carefully created by a group of monks often working over a span of many hours, typically taking days to complete. There’s a remarkable attention to detail and striking beauty. Yet as soon as the artists complete the mandala, they destroy it. 

The stunning composition of brightly colored sand is ceremoniously brushed away and taken to a river to be carried off by the water. You might ask, why would the makers of a mandala exert such extraordinary effort into it, only to willfully destroy it.

Well, it is to remind themselves of the lesson of impermanence, that nothing lasts. 

This lesson is contrary to human nature. Our instinct is to resist change. We try to keep our kids from growing up too fast. We fight a natural aging process. And we hold on to romantic relationships long after we’ve realized it’s best for us to move on. 

But impermanence is an unavoidable law of nature. 

And the more we resist change, the more difficult we make our lives. As Thich Nhat Hanh stated, it is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

So keep the sand ceremony mandala in mind as a reminder to embrace the transient nature of life.

Do your best not to cling to the things you want to last. Rather, experience them as fully as you can, as they happen, and gracefully let them go as they naturally come to an end. 

Completed mandala being brushed away

Attention isn't what meditation is all about

I'm in book bliss.

Someone emailed me with a book recommendation, "The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness," and I'm loving what I've read so far -- the first couple of chapters.

Here's a few early thoughts about the book.

First, it confirms my belief, which isn't shared by some religious fundamentalists (Eastern mysticism variety) who've been frequent commenters on this blog, that there are many forms of useful meditation. 

In fact, the inward looking, world-denying, mantra-focused type of meditation favored by Sant Mat/Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which I embraced for 35 years, is much different from what is likely the most common form of meditation in the world: mindfulness based on Buddhist principles.

This is clear from the opening pages of The Mind Illuminated. The primary author, John Yates, lays out in summary form the ten stages of meditation practice discussed in the book. The final stage, Stage Ten, is described in this fashion:

When you have mastered Stage Ten, the many positive mental qualities you experience during meditation are strongly present even between meditation sessions, so your daily life is imbued with effortlessly stable attention, mindfulness, joy, tranquility, and equanimity.

Since Yates bases the ten stages on his study of ancient Buddhist writings, which often are largely incomprehensible to the modern reader, Stage Ten is firmly in line with Buddhist teachings. Yates writes:

The modern road map offered in this book combines experience, tradition, and science. It is a synthesis based on firsthand experience, and expanded on through the shared experiences of many other dedicated practitioners. To make sense of my own meditations and find guidance about where my practice should go next, I turned to my teachers, the Pali suttas, and the commentaries of several Buddhist traditions. 

Over and over, these traditional sources gave me the information I needed and provided an appropriate context to fit the pieces together. By integrating this information and my own experiences with the insights of psychology and cognitive neuroscience, I've "reverse engineered" traditional meditation instructions to create a contemporary map of meditation.

So there is no mention of God; no mention of supernatural entities; no mention of heavenly realms separate from this world.

Instead, Yates writes clearly about how the human mind works, and how meditation can help it function better. It's great how the book is based, as noted in the quote above, both on Buddhist tradition and current neuroscience. 

Second, in my reading this morning I was struck by the wisdom of clearly distinguishing attention from awareness. A Glossary in the back of the book defines these terms.

Attention: The cognitive ability to select and analyze specific information and ignore other information arising from a vast field of internal and external stimuli. Attention is one of two forms of conscious awareness. Peripheral awareness is the second: we pay attention to some things, while simultaneously being aware of, but not attending to, others. 

Awareness: As used in this book, awareness always has the same meaning as peripheral awareness. It never means attention, nor does it refer to covert or non-conscious awareness. 

Any meditation approach that doesn't combine the benefits of attention and awareness is like a bird trying to fly with one wing. Both are needed. When we drive a car, we can't focus all of our attention on staying in our lane and keeping a safe distance from the car ahead of us. 

We've got to have peripheral awareness also. What if a car unexpectedly runs a stop light at an intersection? What if a child chasing a ball runs into the road? There are so many things we need to be aware of, other than what our primary focus is.

This is why mantra meditation, where a word or words is repeated (usually soundlessly) as a focus of attention, is very limited. Repeating a mantra was emphasized by the RSSB teachings that I followed for so many years. And not only during the time of meditation, but as much as possible throughout the rest of the day.

I eventually realized that this had some major drawbacks.

I found that when I put too much attention on the mantra, I distanced myself from the reality of what was around me. Like, the person I was talking with, or nature, if I was out on a walk. I also observed that many RSSB devotees acted a lot like robots, lacking spontaneity, naturalness, social awareness. 

They were so focused on keeping their attention from scattering out into the world, they were clueless about what was happening in the world -- the exact opposite of mindfulness, which requires a wise balancing of attention and awareness. There's a time to be focused on one thing, and there's a time to be aware of the entirety of what surrounds us.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about The Mind Illuminated as I read more of it. For now, I simply can say that I highly recommend it to anyone who is meditating, or wants to meditate. 

Spiritual illusions are as deceptive as worldly illusions

I enthusiastically embraced spiritual illusions for 35 years.

I believed in God. I believed that God could be found by following the teachings of divine incarnations, God in human form. I believed I'd live on after my death. I believed in an eternal heaven beyond time and earthly tribulations. I believed spirituality required following certain commandments.

This sounds like I was a Christian, right? No, wrong. I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Eastern form of religion known as Sant Mat. Its headquarters were in India, and the organization was led by a guru.

Eventually I came to realize that what I believed was real actually was an illusion. I simply wanted to believe so badly, it took three and a half decades for the truth to break through the dogmas that I held on to so tightly. 

Today I finished reading "No Self, No Problem," a Buddhist book by Anam Thubten that talks a lot about illusions. My first post about the book is here.

I liked the book a lot. I don't agree with everything Thubten says, such as the supposed ability to go beyond pain and suffering by realizing that the notion of a permanent self is an illusion. But I agree with him that our sense of being, or having, a self that's independent of the goings-on in our brain is the most important illusion to come to grips with.

Why? Because our exaggerated sense of ego is the cause of many of our problems. (Thubten might say all of them, but I wouldn't go that far.)

A key reason I deconverted from religiosity to atheism is what Thubten speaks about in his book. Just because someone is on a supposedly "spiritual" path doesn't mean anything. They can still be ignorant, self-centered, and full of themselves. All that changes is that now they believe it is OK to be that way, because God is on their side.

Below are some additional excerpts from the last chapters of "No Self, No Problem." Like I said, I think most of what Thubten says is true. Meditation for me now is exactly what he speaks of: doing as little as possible so I can be in contact with what is true to the greatest degree possible.

I'm no longer aiming at self-realization, because along with modern neuroscience and Buddhism, I no longer believe that my self exists (at least, not as a detached conscious observer separate from the physical brain). And I no longer aim at God-realization, because I no longer believe in God.

This makes me a semi-Buddhist, I guess. But since Buddha himself wasn't a Buddhist -- Buddhism came along long after his death -- I suppose I'm in good company. 

Here's the excerpts from Thubten's book.

When we come to the spiritual path we have to be very cautious. We have to be certain that we are not adding another illusion on top of the illusions we already have. When we look into our consciousness we see that we have many illusions.

Everything is an illusion, especially this notion of "I."

The story of my life is an illusion, my birth, my relationships, and so forth. They are all a story just like a movie. If something happens to my brain, much of this story will be immediately forgotten. Therefore in the ultimate sense it is not truly existent. It is illusion.

We have to be careful when we come to the spiritual world so that we do not fall into the trap of accumulating new illusions. Believe it or not there are very beautiful illusions along the path, the journey, and the practices. Sometimes celebrating illusions can be very entertaining but the problem is that sooner or later illusions collapse.

...Here in the West many people like Eastern illusions because they have already become disillusioned with American illusions. Now they are going around trying to buy Eastern illusions. These new illusions may work for a while because we don't have any heartache associated with them, no bad memories.

But ultimately we must dissolve every illusion: American illusions, Eastern illusions, European illusions, and finally our own illusions.

What is our main illusion? The illusion is that I am real. I am truly existent. This final illusion is the one we want to hold on to.

...We are all carrying this imaginary self around day and night. We are trying to secure it at any cost. Sometimes, the spiritual path that we are on might be just another way to enforce it.

Obviously people have been using the notion of God or eternal life as a way to solidify this illusion. Eternal life in heaven somewhere means that this "I" never has to die.

The idea of surrender itself can be very beautiful. It is the direct doorway to the truth. It is the powerful art of dropping the self right away. 

People often have the tendency to surrender to something or someone outside of themselves. Surrendering to the guru is not true surrender, because then you become the surrenderer, which is another version of self. For that very reason, Buddha discouraged people from surrendering to his personality. Of course, we always surrender to his wisdom. 

The problem is that when we surrender to his personality we don't surrender to his wisdom. He told devotees not to take even his words on blind faith. He said we should question them before accepting them as such. 

...So meditation ultimately stops everything. We stop pushing that rolling snowball and we stop pedaling the bicycle. We don't do anything because there is nothing we can do. From that moment on, we are no longer in charge. The truth is in charge, From that moment on truth is going to voluntarily destroy the foundation, the basis of all sorrow, all misery. 

Truth does that work for us. All we have to do is stop everything. That is what meditation is all about. 

In the ancient times, spiritual seekers used various methods to practice meditation, Yet, there is only one meditation. That is a state of nondoing. When we stop trying to get somewhere and let go of all of our inner exertions, surprisingly the ineffable truth reveals itself to us.

Then that's it. There is nothing else to be found.

...We have a egoic mind that is trained and habituated to do something, to construct this world of illusion. Ego is working very hard. Ego is always talking. Ego is making up stories for the sake of perpetuating all of the stories of the notion of "I." "I" am meditating. "I" am truly existent. "I" am truly meditating and now "I" am getting somewhere. "I" am chasing enlightenment. 

This very thought is just ego's way of perpetuating itself.