Church of the Churchless

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The good life is the life you already have

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this we are at one with all other creatures. 

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

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

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

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

Cats have no need of philosophy or religion

John Gray is an author who is sometimes irritating (to me, at least) but always interesting. He provokes in intelligent, witty, well-reasoned ways.

My main gripe about Gray is that he often uses a sort of "straw man" argument where he selects the writings of one person to represent a much more diverse way of thinking. He did this in Seven Types of Atheism, which I thought I'd enjoy but instead found annoying for that reason.

But after seeing a mention of his new book in The New Yorker, I eagerly bought a copy of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. I've read the first two chapters of this short book and am thoroughly enjoying it.

Gray says about cats:

That cats acknowledge no leaders may be one reason they do not submit to humans. They neither obey nor revere the human beings with which so many of them cohabit.

Even as they rely on us, they remain independent of us. If they show affection for us, it is not just cupboard love. If they do not enjoy our company, they leave. If they stay, it is because they want to be with us. This too is a reason why many of us cherish them.

I really liked the following passage from Gray's first chapter, "Cats and Philosophy." It is indeed strange that we humans find the world to be such a threatening place, we have to fashion religions and philosophies to soothe ourselves.

No other animal does this, which shows that we have a lot to learn from cats and other wise non-human creatures. Gray writes:

Cats have no need of philosophy. Obeying their nature, they are content with the life it gives them. In humans, on the other hand, discontent with their nature seems to be natural.

With predictably tragic and farcical results, the human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not. Cats make no such effort.

Much of human life is a struggle for happiness. Among cats, on the other hand, happiness is the state to which they default when practical threats to their well-being are removed. 

That may be the chief reason many of us love cats. They possess as their birthright a felicity humans regularly fail to attain.

The source of philosophy is anxiety, and cats do not suffer from anxiety unless they are threatened or find themselves in a strange place. For humans, the world itself is a threatening and strange place.

Religions are attempts to make an inhuman universe humanly habitable.

Philosophers have often dismissed these faiths as being far beneath their own metaphysical speculations, but religion and philosophy serve the same need. Both try to fend off the abiding disquiet that goes with being human.

Simple-minded folk will say the reason cats do not practice philosophy is that they lack the capacity for abstract thought. But one can imagine a feline species that had this ability while still retaining the ease with which they inhabit the world.

If these cats turned to philosophy, it would be as an amusing branch of fantastic fiction. Rather than looking to it as a remedy for anxiety, these feline philosophers would engage in it as a kind of play.

Instead of being a sign of their inferiority, the lack of abstract thinking among cats is a mark of their freedom of mind.

Thinking in generalities slides easily into a superstitious faith in language. Much of the history of philosophy consists of the worship of linguistic fictions. Relying on what they can touch, smell, and see, cats are not ruled by words.

Philosophy testifies to the frailty of the human mind.

Humans philosophize for the same reason they pray. They know the meaning in their lives is fragile and live in dread of its breaking down. Death is the ultimate breakdown in meaning, since it marks the end of any story they have told themselves.

So they imagine passing on to a life beyond the body in a world out of time, and the human story continuing in this other realm.

Throughout much of its history, philosophy has been a search for truths that are proof against mortality. Plato's doctrine of forms -- unchanging ideas that exist in an eternal realm -- was a mystical vision in which human values were secured against death. 

Thinking nothing of death -- while seeming to know well enough when it is time to die -- cats have no need of these figments. If they could understand it, philosophy would have nothing to teach them.

I share a guest post from myself about loving the life you're with

Thank you, me, for giving permission to myself to share on this blog a post I wrote for my HinesSight blog on Thanksgiving Day. I truly am thankful that I am so generous with myself.

So check out "If you can't be with the life you love, love the life you're with." You get extra credit if you're able to identify the source of the saying that I adapted for the blog post title.

Here's an excerpt from the post.

Sure, it's wonderful to be thankful. However, life is difficult. And I hate to break this news to you younger folks, but life gets more difficult as we grow older. 

Not in all ways. In some ways.

Notably, when it comes to health and the pain that often accompanies our problems. Some pain is physical. Some is psychological, such as regret that one's life hasn't turned out as expected way back when.

So it's asking a lot to be thankful for things in your life that aren't welcome. I suppose my love the life you're with sounds similar, but I see some differences between thankfulness and love. Love of life is more inclusive than thankfulness for this and that. 

If our back is hurting so much we can't get out of bed, that isn't an aspect of life we want to have hang around. However, it's possible to view that pain as part of a larger life that we love. Which is sort of how we view our children when they're young.

They can be a pain to deal with, but we still love them for who they are, flaws included.

Acceptance of what is actually present in our life is a big step toward loving our life. Denial, which includes "this shouldn't be happening to me," isn't helpful, though it is temping to indulge in, since we would rather be with the life we love than the life we're with if the latter is lacking some things we value.

Life makes more sense without any kind of god

Here's a guest blog post from someone I regularly communicate with via email. This recent message from the person resonated with me, because it echoes thoughts I frequently have about the absurdity of believing that life has a purpose imposed from outside of us. 

Like, from a god. Enjoy...

Hey Brian, how are you and yours doing?

My family and I are doing well. Lots of folks around us have COVID, but so far, we’ve managed to avoid it.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s interesting what hangs around in my head from religion. One thing that rears its ugly head on a fairly regular basis is the idea of purpose. The idea that my life has some specific purpose and I need to figure it out. Wow. Just typing that out feels like 200 lbs has been added to my shoulders. That’s a fucking heavy thing to carry around!

Of course, life purpose implies someone or something that gives purpose. Most feel it is “god” that does this. Well, now that I’m an atheist, that’s a problem!

You’ve written about this and I’m sure I’ve emailed you regarding this topic before. But it still amazes, and frustrates me, that I still struggle with this.

It seems to me that the idea of some specific purpose in life in more of a western culture idea and only if you have more than a little to a lot of money. You don’t have to go to India or Africa to find starving children, there are plenty here in the US. What is their purpose in life? I can’t imagine that they think about it much. Their main purpose is to get food!

Did early humans worry about some kind of ultimate purpose for their lives? I doubt it. They were just like any other mammal on the planet. Eat, sleep, reproduce. That was likely their main “purpose.”

I know all this, but it’s still hard to shake the idea of some kind of purpose that was so strongly instilled (brain washed) into me. “God has a specific plan for your life! You have to find out what it is and do it!”

I heard that message in one form or another for probably 20 years. I asked god about it on a regular basis. I prayed and prayed and cried and pleaded. You know what he said? Nothing! Ugh! It was so frustrating. Just thinking about all that makes me tense and irritable.

I think it’s funny that the memories of hearing about divine purpose come back to me when my job gets difficult, or life is unpleasant for whatever reason, etc. But it’s not surprising that this happens. After all, religion as a whole is kind of an escape from reality. Or at least the attempt at escaping reality.

You wrote a post right at 3 years ago that I found called No need to have a "calling." Just live your life. I read it before sending this email, and I’ll probably read it again. It pulls me back into reality and helps me relax.

I think it’s interesting that at one point, I would have said that without god, life doesn’t make sense. Now, the way I see it, is that without any kind of god, life seems to make more sense. It just is what it is.

Oh, and your last several posts have been very insightful and helpful to me. All your posts are good, but these last 5 or 6 have been very timely. Thanks again for sharing your ideas, insights, and things that you have been reading.

Talk to you again soon.

An ordinary life is all I need. Being religiously special, no thanks.

There are various reasons why I'm happier after ditching religion some fifteen years ago. Feeling ordinary is one reason. I get a lot of satisfaction from no longer believing that I'm on a special path that leads back to God.

Of course, virtually every religion believes that same thing. 

So religious people are like the children in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Or at least that's what those who embrace religion think.

Supposedly they've been singled out for special treatment by God, Jesus, a guru, good karma, whatever. So the pressure is on to live up to a belief that they're destined to enjoy a life, and/or an afterlife, in a fashion denied to ordinary people.

This leads to constant questioning by the Chosen Ones.

Am I falling short from what is expected of me by the divinity I believe in? Is there more I can do to live up to the moral standards, or commandments, of my faith? What worldly desires stand between me and the exalted spirituality I aspire to?

By contrast, us ordinary people are content with living an ordinary life in ordinary ways. 

We don't agonize about whether we're doing God's will because we don't believe in God. We don't worry about what will happen to us after we die because we don't believe in an afterlife. We don't worry about meeting a divine moral standard because we don't believe in divinity.

Sometimes I'm struck by an overwhelming sensation of gratitude for having found the freedom to simply be who I am, where I am, how I am.

I feel deeply happy to have been deconverted from religious fantasies. No longer do I consider that there is a gap between what I should become and the reality of my present state of being.

Sure, I still have goals. I still worry about this and that. (Such as whether Biden will defeat Trump this November.) My mood goes up and down. 

But all of this takes place against a backdrop of an ordinary life. I feel a stronger kinship with other people, because I no longer identify with a religion that taught its devotees to feel special, being on a path to God-realization denied to others. 

I understand the appeal of feeling special. All I'm suggesting is that feeling ordinary is a wiser way to live.

 

Life is best lived by embracing insecurity

One of the things I talked about in my first book, a shorter and simpler version of which I published a few years ago, is that happenings in the world can be deterministic while also being unpredictable.

This is what chaos theory is all about. Complex systems are made up of causes and effects, yet in such a fashion that it is virtually (and maybe totally) impossible to know what they are going to do next. 

An example I cited in my book is tossing a cork into a stream above some rapids.

Every movement of the cork is determined by the laws of physics, yet there is no way to predict exactly where the cork will end up a few hundred yards downstream, because a slight movement at any point in its journey can lead to big changes in its final destination.

Such is one reason why our longing for security, for predictability, for being assured that what we want to have happen actually will happen, is doomed to failure. 

Another way of looking at security and insecurity is wonderfully discussed by Alan Watts in his book, "The Wisdom of Insecurity." I've written many posts about this book over the years, since it is one of my favorites. You can find those posts by using the Google search box in the right sidebar.

I'm making my way through Oliver Burkeman's book, "The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking." This morning I finished a chapter called The Safety Catch. 

It contains a nice summary of how Alan Watts looks upon our quest for security. Here's how the chapter ends.

To understand the final flourish that Watts has in store, think back to the end of the previous chapter and the challenge it presented to our assumptions about the nature of the self. 

There we confronted the fact that there seems to be no straightforward place at which to draw the line between 'self' and 'other' -- and that the boundary itself, even if we settle on somewhere to draw it, is more of a meeting point than a dividing line. 'Self' and 'other' rely on each other for their very existence.

If that's true, it follows that 'security' is a mistake -- because it implies a notion of separate selfhood that doesn't make much sense. What does it even mean to separate yourself from an ecosystem that is, in fact, what constitutes you? 

The point is not to 'confront' insecurity, but to appreciate that you are it. Watts writes:

To understand that there is no security is far more than to agree with the theory that all things change, more even than to observe the transitoriness of life. 

The notion of security is based on the feeling that there is something within us which is permanent, something which endures through all the days and changes of life. We are struggling to make sure of the permanence, continuity, and safety of this enduring core, this center and soul of our being, which we call 'I'.

For this we think to be the real man -- the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of our feelings, the knower of our knowledge. We do not actually understand that there is no security until we realize that this 'I' does not exist.

This extraordinary passage, once you grasp the point -- and it took me a while -- explains in the most complete sense why our efforts to find happiness are so frequently sabotaged by 'ironic' effects, delivering the exact opposite of what we set out to gain.

All positive thinking, all goalsetting and visualising and looking on the bright side, all trying to make things go our way, as opposed to some other way, is rooted in an assumption about the separateness of 'us' and those 'things'. But on closer inspection, this assumption collapses.

Trying to flee from insecurity to security, from uncertainty to certainty, is an attempt to find an exit from the very system that makes us who we are in the first place.

We can influence the system of which we are a part, certainly. But if we are motivated by this misunderstanding about who we are and what security is, we'll always risk going to too far, trying too hard, in self-defeating ways. Watts concludes:

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the 'I' out of the experience.

...Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate 'I' or mind can be found.

...[Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.

This, then, is the deep truth about insecurity: it is another word for life. That doesn't mean it's not wise to protect yourself, as far as you can, from certain specific dangers. But it does mean that feeling secure and really living life are, in some ultimate sense, opposites.

And that you can no more succeed in achieving perfect security than a wave could succeed in leaving the ocean.

Oregon wildfires reflect the uncertain nature of reality

Religions are prone to all sorts of ridiculous errors, but one of the worst is believing that reality can be tamed. Meaning, eliminating uncertainty, chance, randomness, unpredictability.

It's a psychological truism that we humans are uncomfortable with uncertainty. So we make up stories to fill the gap between what is known and what we have questions about where answers are lacking.

How did existence come to be? Nobody knows. Science is content with leaving this question as a mystery. Religions, though, make up a tale about how God created the cosmos -- ignoring the obvious problem of how God came to be.

(If it is assumed that God always has existed, then it also can be assumed that the cosmos always has existed.)

Here in Oregon, and also in our neighboring states of Washington and California, massive wildfires are burning. Today I saw a tweet by a reporter that said, "Since 1900, Oregon has never had more than 2 mega fires (100K acres or more) in a single year, said Jim Gersbach from ‪@ORDeptForestry‬. Now depending on how you count them we have 3 or 4 all burning at once."

Earlier in the summer it seemed that Oregon would have a mild wildfire season. There were some fires, but they weren't creating  big problems.

Then an unexpected combination of circumstances combined to create a Perfect Storm for wildfires.

Oregon has been in a long-standing drought. Very little rain has fallen for many months. And a rare September snow storm in the Rockies was followed by high pressure in that region that created strong east winds in the Pacific Northwest.

The National Weather Service realized the danger. They designated much of Oregon as being at high risk for wildfires. That turned out to be an accurate prediction. Yesterday I took this photo at 9 am while standing in our almost pitch black driveway. 

Smoke from what now is called the Santiam Fire was so thick, blown by the east winds in the direction of Salem, where I live, that the sun was completely obscured. All that could be seen in the sky was an eerie red glow. Later in the day it was still strangely dark, which made me think darkness at noon.

Thousands of people living in the Santiam Canyon east of Salem had to evacuate in the early morning hours on Tuesday. A small fire in the mountains that seemed to be posing little danger grew astoundingly rapidly, pushed by the strong east winds. This map shows the current size of the fire from satellite imagery.

(Yellow is satellite fire detections 24-48 hours ago. Orange is 12-24 hours. Red is 0-12 hours. So the red dots show where a fire has moved most recently. Note: on a slow Internet connection like what I have, the dots take a while to load.)

So far two people are known to have died in the Santiam Fire, a grandmother and her grandchild, who were in a car trying to escape the flames. Many homes and businesses have been destroyed. And this fire is just one of many ravaging Oregon.

Bad things happen.

This isn't news to anybody. It's the way the world is. If bad things could be predicted with certainty, we could stop them from happening. But usually we can't do that. Sure, meteorologists knew that the strong east winds could fan dangerous wildfires. 

Yet whether this actually would come to pass wasn't known until the winds arrived. And yes, now Oregon is suffering through the worst wildfires in the state's history.

My Tai Chi instructor and his wife have had to evacuate their home. They live near the road that links Silverton and Molalla in the map I shared above. They got out safely, along with their dogs, horses, and goats. That's good news, though better news would be if their house ends up being untouched by fire.

I can hope for that. Yet I can't know that. Life is uncertain. That's for sure. Which is why I started to work on an evacuation checklist yesterday, just in case.

"We must accept there is no grand design" -- physicist Brian Greene

There's only good news in the final pages of physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe." (See here, here, and here for my previous posts about the book.)

Yes, there's no evidence for a grand design to the cosmos. No god fashioned our universe. The laws of nature didn't spring out of a divine mind. They just are what they are.

Which leads to another positive yes: So, yes, it is up to us to determine the meaning that we find in our otherwise meaningless universe.

Greene urges us to look inward for that meaning, since it won't be found by looking outward. Here's how Greene ends his book.

Whereas most life, miraculous in its own right, is tethered to the immediate, we can step outside of time. We can think about the past, we can imagine the future. We can take in the universe, we can process it, we can explore it with mind and body, with reason and emotion.

From our lonely corner of the cosmos we have used creativity and imagination to shape words and images and structures and sounds to express our longings and frustrations, our confusions and revelations, our failures and triumphs.

We have used ingenuity and perseverance to touch the very limits of outer and inner space, determining fundamental laws that govern how stars shine and light travels, how time elapses and space expands -- laws that allow us to peer back to the briefest moment after the universe began and then shift our gaze and contemplate its end.

Accompanying these breathtaking insights are deep and persistent questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? What sparked the onset of life? How did conscious awareness emerge? We have explored a range of speculations, but definitive answers remain elusive.

Perhaps our brains, well adapted for survival on planet earth, are just not structured for resolving these mysteries. Or perhaps, as our intelligence continues to evolve, our engagement with reality will acquire a wholly different character, with the result that today's towering questions become irrelevant. 

While either is possible, the fact that the world as we now understand it, remaining mysteries and all, holds together with such a tight mathematical and logical coherence, and the fact that we have been able to decipher so much of that coherence, suggests to me that neither is the case.

We are not lacking the brainpower. We are not staring at Plato's wall, unaware of a radically different kind of truth, just beyond reach, with the power to suddenly provide startling new clarity.

As we hurtle toward a cold and barren cosmos, we must accept there is no grand design. Particles are not endowed with purpose. There is no final answer hovering in the depths of space awaiting discovery. Instead, certain special collections of particles can think and feel and reflect, and within these subjective worlds they can create purpose.

And so, in our quest to fathom the human condition, the only direction to look is inward. That is the noble direction to look. It is a direction that forgoes ready-made answers and turns to the highly personal journey of constructing our own meaning. It is a direction that leads to the very heart of creative expression and the source of our most resonant narratives.

Science is a powerful, exquisite tool for grasping an external reality. But within that rubric, within that understanding, everything else is the human species contemplating itself, grasping what it needs to carry on, and telling a story that reverberates into the darkness, a story carved of sound and etched into silence, a story that, at its best, stirs the soul.

There's no reason the world has to make sense

I've been reading a book by Steve Hagen that I thought I'd like, because the title was so intriguing: Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense. Unfortunately, it is the book itself that doesn't make sense. 

When I'm not liking a book, I enjoy going back to the Amazon listing and clicking on the 1 and 2 star reviews, the worst ones. I heartily agree with what I found there just now.

-- Drivel. I regret spending the money, and more importantly the time, to read this book.
-- A horrible, tedious book purporting to be an inquiry but more just a tired, pointless use of paper and ink.
-- Great topic and obviously intelligent author but very poorly written - confounding & confusing. A disappointment after his book, Buddhism, Plain & Simple, which it was. Author needs to apply same writing strategy to this book. This is the opinion of highly educated readers.
-- Very repetitious. Says the same thing over and over and over again. If the book was half as long as it is, it would still be too long.

However, I'm forcing myself to finish the book, because here and there I find ideas that resonate with me. Mostly, though, Hagen does indeed repeat himself without making any progress toward answering his key question: why the world doesn't seem to make sense.

I'll probably write another blog post about the book once I'm through with it. For now, I'll address the question Hagen should have asked himself before he embarked on writing this book: Why should the world make sense?

Hagen is a Buddhist. A Zen Buddhist, apparently. He goes to great lengths, none of them very persuasive, to argue that concepts and thinking are our main problem, and that we should simply see what is going on in the world with supposed "pure awareness" or "bare perception."

Pure awareness or bare perception doesn't exist, as I've pointed out numerous times on this blog. (Here's one example.) We're always aware of some thing, not of awareness itself. Someone may think that is possible, but in that case they are aware of a thing they call "awareness." 

Leaving that aside, my main problem with Hagen's book is the problem I have with Buddhism. Or at least, the aspect of Buddhism that believes in something called enlightenment. 

This seems to be what Hagen is after, because he repeatedly refers to Truth and the Real Thing -- which are capitalized to distinguish them from something called (lower case) truth and the real thing. The latter, if my memory serves me correctly, was part of a Coca-Cola commercial.

Or maybe Pepsi. I don't drink either one.

I also don't embrace any organized religion, philosophy, or form of spirituality, preferring to make my own way through life the best I can. But Taoism comes closest to how I've come to see the world.

Namely, simply as I see it. Though I used to believe in a transcendental mystical enlightenment, now I reject that notion and enjoy looking upon life however it appears to me. And I don't have any desire for the world to make sense, because I can't envision any reason why it would.

Make sense.

Big bang. Hundreds of billions, maybe trillions, of galaxies. Likely, countless other life forms in the universe beyond our imagining. Evolution producing us after starting with single-celled life. The human brain being the most complex entity known to us so far.

I could go on and on. We're surrounded by so much wonder and mystery. Sure, we can comprehend some of it -- such as why there is such a toilet paper shortage in the United States -- but there's no way little us can grasp the gigantic entire cosmos.

So whatever meaning we find in life comes from us. It isn't out there waiting to be found. It is here, a unique presence within each of us, our personal sense of meaning and purpose that is unlike anyone else's. 

Some days, the world makes sense to me. Other days, it doesn't. Regardless, everyday I'm able to get out of bed and do what I need to do, think what I need to think, feel what I need to feel. I don't expect that I'll reach a point when the meaning of my life is crystal clear, when all makes sense.

I'm fine with murky.

I'm fine with not knowing what the hell is going on, or why this and that is happening. Stuff goes on. Stuff happens. I enjoy trying to figure out the trajectory of my life, along with that of my state, my country, my planet, but I realize this is a journey with no destination.

Hagen does believe in a destination, along with believers in other faiths, religions, mystical paths, and such. That's OK. Each to their own.

Again, I just consider that Hagen wrote a book with a fatal flaw: the assumption that the essence of the world can be grasped by the human mind. 

We make our own meaning in an indifferent universe

Here's a great question that Lesley Hazleton asks at the start of the Making Meaning chapter in her book, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto.

What do you do when someone tells you about a treasured experience that you know is in all probability untrue? True to that person that is, but not objectively true.

Since people share all kinds of religious and mystical experiences in comments on my blog posts, I'm confronted with this question often. Usually I have the same answer Hazleton chose when a woman told her about orca whales lining up and singing to her as she stood on a low cliff overlooking the ocean.

I chose discretion over honesty because I had no desire to hurt this person by questioning what was clearly so meaningful to her. There can be great beauty in the enterprise of making meaning, that very human desire to find significance in the world. But it seems to me essential that we be aware that this is what we are doing, and that we retain a certain sense of bemusement, even amusement, at our proclivity to translate the world into human terms. Aware, that is, of our own subjectivity.

Life is difficult.

Whatever helps us get through the day, the week, the month, the year, the lifetime -- that's to be embraced, even if it is based on a fantasy. I have no problems with fantasy, nor does Hazleton. But I heartily agree with her that it's important to recognize that the meanings we ascribe to the world are our meanings, not an objective meaning inherent in the universe.

Here's some additional passages from the Making Meaning chapter about how the absence of objective meaning creates a wonderful space for us to fashion our own subjective meaning.

The absence of an "ultimate" meaning of life -- a grand, over-arching explanation of everything -- does not render life empty of relevance. On the contrary, it makes it all the more relevant. 

It means we can no longer use divine intent as an excuse, in the same way fatalists talk of fate. It places responsibility directly on us -- responsibility for how we act, for what we do, for our relations with others, with our society, with our planet. 

It is we who determine meaning by what we do. And part of that meaning is the awareness that we are not and cannot always be in control, that we are indeed subject to chance, to serendipity, to the unforeseen, the unanticipated, the fortuitous. 

I see no reason why meaning and significance should be any less for knowing how vast the universe is, and how small I am in it. Far from being appalled by this, I am excited by it. It allows for life as an adventure, and for the unexpected and under-appreciated value of misadventure -- for wrong turns and dead ends, chance discoveries and unintended turns.

It makes life a matter of open-ended exploration instead of a predetermined slog along a straight line from birth to death.

Instead of what's the meaning of life, then, I'd rather ask what makes my life meaningful. Instead of mission, I'm happy to wake up in anticipation of a new day, with work I want to return to, people I want to walk and talk with. Happy, that is, to wake up with desire, with appetite, and with the bemused acceptance of being human, fallible, and imperfectly rational.

I rejoice in there being no single meaning -- in there being instead a multitude of meanings, an infinite number of ways in which we exercise our subjectivity and imagination, rendering meaningful what is objectively meaningless. Meaning is ours to make, and to choose.

The search for meaning, then, is itself a choice. It offers the hope of a consoling narrative that will stave off the awareness of an indifferent universe. 

It's the go-to defense against the fear of insignificance, against the realization that there's nothing personal in nature -- that it's not about me, or you, or us -- and that whatever narrative we detect in it is entirely of our own making. We make ourselves significant. We persuade ourselves that whales sing to us. Even, as happened to me, that a snow-covered mountain speaks to us.

...I may like to think that I have no illusions about the terms of my existence on this planet, but that itself is merely an illusion: my own pathetic fallacy. Romanticism lingers, a sop to my vanity, to my sense of the centrality of my own existence.

However clearly I think I accept the case with which I could, at any moment, cease to exist, some part of me stubbornly refuses to accept my own insignificance, and sees personal meaning in impersonal forces. I shamelessly insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, on my own significance.

Best wishes for an ordinary New Year

Here's my New Year's wish for visitors to this Church of the Churchless blog, myself, and indeed, everybody.

Be ordinary. Do ordinary things. Feel happy in your ordinariness.

I say this because now that I've reached the wise old age of 71, I've realized that overlooking the ordinary that's right at hand for some supposedly extraordinary thing that's around a corner has some serious drawbacks.

One reason is what I talked about in a post last month, Why you should be happy today, right now, no matter what.

Be happy today, right now, at this very moment and every following moment.
Why? Because our future contains only three possibilities. 

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be better than right now.
So be happy! Life will look even brighter soon.

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be worse than right now.
So be happy! Enjoy life in this more pleasant present.

Tomorrow, or the next moment, could be the same as right now.
So be happy! Life has brought you some stability. 

I'd like to die with a smile on my face. Problem is, I don't know when I'm going to die. Few people do, aside from those condemned to death, those who commit suicide, and a few other types of predictable deaths. 

Since my life, as is true of almost all other lives also, mostly involves experiencing ordinary things with my ordinary self, it figures that being happy with ordinariness offers the best chance of dying with a smile on my face.

Or at least, with an effort to smile. And if even that isn't possible, with neither a smile nor a frown, but an expression of acceptance.

Another reason is that ordinary things bring considerable pleasure when they are enjoyed for what they are, rather than feeling that we're missing out by not pursuing something extraordinary. 

Here's an excerpt from a 2018 post, "Happiness lies in ordinary things." This is a quote from a TIME magazine essay by Meg Wolitzer in a special issue about the science of emotions. 

At this point, being happy is about having the space to appreciate the ordinary things that do in fact make me "happy," though at first glance they might not be seen that way. 

An absence of chaos; an absence of phone calls with disturbing news; an absence of business emails that up-end your day and demand attention right then and there; no acutely ill parents; no fragile children calling shakily from college.

Being able to sit down with a glass of wine and some really good, tiny little olives with your husband; having a nice meal with your kids that's not rushed or fraught.

These seem like small things, perhaps pedestrian things, but I protect them fiercely, knowing that on the other side of an imaginary wall waits the possibility that all of them will soon be gone and that something terrible will replace them.

But I no longer quake in fear.

I used to think that happiness was something a person was so lucky to find that, like Lord Voldemort (a.k.a. He Who Must Not Be Named), it should never actually be mentioned. Now, with happiness taking on a new, modest cast, the fear of losing it is smaller too.

You might think: Good god, woman! This isn't happiness. Happiness has wild colors and flavors; it involves bodies draped across a bed, or things that come in gift wrap. Or even, once in a while, Carvel. Don't you want any of that?

Of course I do.

But being allowed to enjoy some of the more modest pieces of my life happens right now to be my own personal Carvel; my own dachshund, gift-wrapped present, snow day and secret lover. Perhaps for most of us -- or anyway, for me -- happiness has gotten smaller over time, becoming endlessly and exquisitely refined, though somehow never diminished.

Lastly, I'm continually impressed by the marvelous grace and courage of ordinary people. There's no need to look for heroes anywhere else but next door. I'll offer up two examples from my ordinary life.

Here's a Facebook post from a woman I've known here in Salem, Oregon for many years. She's one of the sweetest, gentlest people I've ever come across. When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, even though she'd never smoked, this was a big shock to me and her many other friends.

Yet yesterday she wrote:

What a year! 13 months ago I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I haven’t written about it because I know that many deal with worse, and the world is beset with larger problems than what I face.

But, at the end of 2019 I’d like to share what these harrowing months have taught me.

Despite pain and fear, illness and uncertainty, 6 hospital trips, harsh chemotherapy, infections, being too sick to work - or sometimes even to eat - I have learned gratitude for each and every day. Maybe this is surprising, maybe it isn’t.

I have been amazed at how many have been generous to me, and how many have been kind to me. How many have donated time, resources, advice and food. THANK YOU, thank you!

Also - I can’t remember ever enjoying each day more, or feeling more gratitude for the multitude of sights and sounds, large and small, that make up my life. I can’t remember ever appreciating more the wonders that each day brings.

Scans show the cancer is growing, but I mostly feel pretty good these days, and keep hope alive. While my prognosis is not what I want, I understand that ultimately we all have the same prognosis.

I celebrate knowing you! I wish you a happy and meaningful 2020!

Those words are more inspiring to me than anything I've read in a religious book, or heard from a religious person. They're the words of an ordinary person dealing with their troubles in an amazingly courageous way.

Then, my wife came home a little while ago from her New Year's Eve stint as a volunteer dog walker at our local Humane Society. She told me about a man on her shift who "walks" dogs even though he is in a wheelchair.

This can be difficult for him even on nice days, since some dogs are strong pullers on their leash, so can take him for an unwanted ride before he can get them under control. Today it rained heavily for much of the dog-walking shift. 

He didn't have a jacket with him, so even though my wife helped him find a jacket he could borrow, it wasn't waterproof. And his knees got soaked anyway from sitting in his wheelchair while walking dogs in the rain. Yet this man is one of the more dedicated dog walkers.

An ordinary man. Doing an ordinary thing. Yet in such an admirable way. 

I aspire to being as good a person as the woman with stage 4 cancer, or the man who walks dogs with a wheelchair. I have no interest in emulating saints, gurus, holy men/women, or any other religious personage.

I just want to learn from ordinary people who are able to live their lives with love, peace, acceptance, and courage.

Lessons about thankfulness from our dog

Our oldest dog, ZuZu, died last month. I'm still grieving. So when I looked through my previous Thanksgiving Day blog posts (a holiday here in the United States), it seemed fitting to share a 2013 post, "Our 14 year old dog teaches me about thankfulness."

That dog was Serena, shown above in her younger days on a bank of the Metolius River in central Oregon. Here's most of what I said in the blog post I wrote about her when Serena's health was fading.

She doesn't look like she did in her younger days. But heck, who does? Surely not me. Being almost fourteen, Serena is something like 100 years old in dog time.

Serena is a Shepherd/Lab mix (her sisters looked like black labs; we were thrilled to get a kind-of German Shepherd-looking dog with a laid back Lab personality -- great combination). Her back legs are weak, a common trait in aging Shepherd canines.

Yet she still can go on a mile walk every evening with me and ZuZu, her four year old sister-dog. Not literally; they just look somewhat alike.

Serena chugs along, uphill and downhill, across two creek bridges, around a neighborhood lake, through grassy fields. I fired up an iPhone GPS app a few days ago. We meander along at an average of 1.8 mph. Hey, not bad for a 100 year old. 

Her pooper, which may not the precise veterinary term for what controls her bowel movements, isn't working very well.

Most mornings we get up to find roundish firm dark "presents" in the room where Serena and ZuZu sleep. A tiled room, thankfully, because some days the poop is mushier. Which, in case you're worrying, is all I'm going to say on this subject.

Because its my Thanksgiving Day thankfulness thoughts about Serena that are important. I'm grateful that she's helped me realize the importance of, so to speak, sniffing the heck out of life every single freaking day. 

No exceptions. 

I used to look upon our evening dog walk much differently. That was when both Serena and I were younger, when it seemed like an endless stream of dog walks lay before us. 

If Serena paused too long to smell something, inhaling the scent of what, to a dog, at that moment, is the most fascinating thing in the world, I'd get impatient.

Hey, Serena, I'd think, get a move on; I've got other things to do than watch my dog obsess over a clump of grass that, to my impoverished human senses, looks utterly meaningless.

Now, though, our walks have taken on some of the quality of the Zen "Enjoy the Strawberry" parable.  

The meaning of living fully in the present moment, neither retreating to the past nor anticipating the future, is wonderfully illustrated by a Zen parable about a monk being pursued by a ferocious tiger.

The monk raced to the edge of a cliff, glanced back, and saw the growling tiger about to spring. The monk spotted a vine dangling over the edge of the cliff. He grabbed it and began shinnying down the side of the cliff out of the clutches of the tiger.

Whew! Narrow escape.

The monk then looked down and saw a quarry of jagged rocks five hundred feet below. He looked up and saw the tiger poised atop the cliff with bared claws. Just then, two mice began to nibble at the vine.

What to do?

The monk saw a strawberry within arm’s reach, growing out of the face of the cliff.

He plucked it, ate it, and exclaimed, “Yum! That’s the best strawberry I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.”

If he had been preoccupied with the rock below (the future) or the tiger above (the past), he would have missed the strawberry in the present moment.

I'm thankful when Serena stops to taste her canine equivalent of a strawberry. My dog-expert wife tells me that dogs experience dementia just like people do.

But I prefer to think that when Serena suddenly stands still, staring off into the distance for no discernible reason, she is drinking in the present moment. Just as I should always be doing. As we all should be.

Because even though I'm appeciative that Serena's advancing age and deteriorating health have helped remind me that I'm in the same sinking mortality boat she is, it shouldn't take a 14 year old dog to remind me that we'll never know when the last time will come. 

Probably it won't be very long before Serena and I take our last evening dog walk.

There's a good chance I won't know which one it is. So I want to look upon every walk as our last walk. I want Serena and I to enjoy it like the best strawberry (or chew stick) either of us has tasted in our entire life.

The older I get (I'm 65 now), the more I realize there is only one way to cheat death: making the most of every moment. Not in a frantic skydiving, tango in Buenos Aires, howl at the moon fashion (though there's nothing wrong with this).

In the sense of being present, in the present. 

Serena is. Dogs always are. Serena doesn't know she's old and getting ever closer to dying. She just knows that when her nose senses an enticing odor, it needs to be attended to.

If this life is all there is, what should we do during it?

Poet Mary Oliver asked a great question in the last two lines of "The Summer Day." The poem ends with:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Obviously the question isn't for others to answer. Oliver addresses it to each of us, every reader of her poem. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I'm not sure why Oliver added the Tell me. The question remains the same without it. But I like that Tell me. It forges a bond between the poet and the reader. as does the previous Tell me, what else should I have done?

Frequently I have intimations of my mortality. This isn't just because I turned 70 a few months ago. Death always has been lurking around in my consciousness, sometimes scarily. Of course, death is impossible to ignore, given that everything which lives, dies. 

What I'm talking about, though, when I speak of intimations, is this: I'll be doing something utterly ordinary, when suddenly I'm struck by a vivid awareness of the fact that life is limited and one day I will die. 

I used to believe in life after death, but now I don't. However, that vivid awareness was just as strong -- maybe even stronger -- when I was a devotee of an Eastern form of mysticism that taught an immaterial soul survives physical death. Sure, I accepted that concept. 

But since no one knows for sure what happens after we take our last breath (my bet now is nothing, because we're dead and gone forever), even the most fervent religious believer still has to face the stark reality that this life could well be, as Oliver says, our "one wild and precious life."

Last night my wife and I were watching TV. In the midst of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert a thought unexpectedly popped into my mind: Brian, you're doing to die one day. Should you be spending these precious present moments watching Colbert make jokes about Donald Trump?

It only took my mind a few moments to come up with an answer to my mind's own question. (Weird how the brain engages in conversations with itself.)

Sure. What would be better to do than what I'm doing right now?

Sort of like Mary Oliver, minus her refined poetic sensibilities, I responded to myself with a question that nonetheless contained an answer. 

In my current churchless frame of mind it seems senseless to view any activity of life as lacking meaning. A few hours ago I walked our dog, ZuZu. When we got home, I grabbed a stick from a tree branch where I store our dog's favorite toy, high enough so she can't reach it. 

Like most pet owners, I talk to ZuZu as if she speaks English. "Let's play stick, little dog!" My preparing to throw the stick was all she needed to get excited, the words being superfluous.

We then spent ten minutes or so engaged in her favorite game: not bringing a stick back, reverse fetching. I throw the stick. ZuZu runs and gets it. Then she runs away from me when I say, "Bring it here!" We repeat this until ZuZu lies down, with the stick nearby, for her other favorite activity: being patted.

Is playing stick what I want to do with my one wild and precious life? Absolutely. In fact, I consider that everything I'm doing, including writing this blog post, is what I want to do, given that I am doing it. 

Circular reasoning? No. 

I just have reached a point in my life where I consider that the whole Bucket List thing has no attraction for me, because it assumes that some things are really important to do before we die, while other things are less important. 

In my opinion, and I'm really just speaking for myself, going down that way leads to, if not madness, dissatisfaction. When our doings are divided into less and more important, less and more meaningful, it seems to me that we're always questioning whether what we're engaged in is what we really should be doing.

I think Oliver's first question gets it just right: Tell me, what else should I have done?

Woody Allen talks about the meaning of life, or lack thereof

Thanks to Jen for sharing this Woody Allen video in a comment. Allen says that artists, and I guess we're all artists of life, have to provide reasons for living in a universe that doesn't possess inherent meaning.

Meaning is provided by us humans, not by the cosmos. Allen also observes at the end of the video that everybody needs illusions to get us through the harsh realities of life. I agree. But our goal should be to embrace the wisest sorts of illusions.

(Defining "wise" in this context is what keeps this blog going, along with almost everything else in life -- philosophy, politics, hobbies, relationships, etc. etc. etc.)