HinesSight

Atheism isn’t a religion, Thom Hartmann

Usually I agree with Portland's Thom Hartmann, Air America's progressive talk show host. But this morning he kept saying that atheism is a religion – that not believing in God is a belief system.

That's ridiculous. It shows that no matter how smart and articulate Hartmann is, he's got some blind spots. Those logic-obscurers likely stem from his Christianity.

Not being a regular listener of Hartmann, I didn't know before today that he's a Christian. But he told a caller that he prays every day. And not to some universal being, but to a personal God.

This probably explains why Hartmann has fallen prey to one of the myths about atheism: that it is a religion. Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I regularly argue with commenters who claim that not believing in God is as much a belief as believing in God.

Huh? I point out that there is a huge difference between (1) not believing, and (2) believing, in the existence of something.

To assert otherwise is to engage in a form of sophistry where words don't mean anything. Sure, you can say that for many people "golf is a religion" or "watching Lost is a religion."

But this just means that they regularly engage in those activities. Like atheists frequently thinking, "I don't believe in God."

By that token, everything that humans do is a religion, rendering the word meaningless. This is one of the points of an excellent piece, "If atheism is religion, 'albino' is a suntan."

The author does a terrific job debunking the notion that atheism is a religion.

If someone asked you about unicorns, would you say "I believe there are no unicorns", or would it be more honest to say "I do not believe in unicorns"? These are two different answers. Nobody disbelieves in unicorns purely as a matter of personal faith.

Again, apply the same reasoning to the Gods of other religions. Example : if you are a Christian, do you believe the Hindu God Ganesh does not exist? Or do you not believe in Ganesh?

If you believe that unicorns do not exist, then may I say that you are a member of the "No unicorns" religion? Is it a matter of faith that unicorns do not exist? Can I come along to your non-unicorn church with you tomorrow?

If you are a Christian, do you believe Ganesh does not exist? Why, then you must be a devout follower of the "No Ganesh" faith!

Do you see where this is going? [ Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit, but it's excellent for getting a point across. 8-) ]

If me not believing in your God is a faith, then you not believing in other Gods is an equal faith. How many Christians do you know who would say they do not believe in other Gods as a matter of faith?

If my atheism with respect to your deity is a religion, then your atheism with respect to other deities is also a religion.

Thom Hartmann, are you listening?

Atheists should be revered, not discriminated against

O' Oregon, I love you because you're (relatively) godless. And now here we have the Brookings Elks Lodge banning a sweet eighty year old woman from the premises because she's an atheist.

This smacks of the Bible Belt, not the Live Green and Mainline Lattes Belt. Deeply disturbing.

Today Oregonian columnist Margie Boulé had a follow-up. In "Atheists run up against 'last bias'" she points out that Americans say they'll vote for all sorts of presidential candidates, but not someone who fails to profess a belief in God.

A recent poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup found that Americans are overwhelmingly willing to vote for a presidential candidate who is an African American, a woman, a Catholic or a Latino. A solid majority would vote for a candidate who is Mormon, who is a homosexual, who has been married three times or who is 72 years old. The only category that did not break 50 percent? Atheists.

As I said in my "Leave God out of the Super Bowl" post, the United States is way behind more enlightened European countries in this regard.

I have some friends who visit Europe regularly. They tell me that there it would be almost inconceivable for a politician to make his or her belief in God a campaign issue. It just doesn't come up. But here, an admitted unbeliever probably couldn't be elected to a major office. This isn't something the United States should be proud of. It's a defect, not a virtue.

The Elks are a good example of how religion contributes to hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness, not morality. The Elks web site claims that they stand for "the principles of Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity." But their charity and brotherly love stops if an elderly woman says she doesn't believe in God.

Crazy. Apparently Billie Sieg would have been acceptable to the Elks if she'd lied and told them that she was a believer. But she was honest. Boulé writes:

Oh, it's not like she stands on street corners, trying to persuade others that God does not exist. She's a quiet atheist. "In today's world a belief in God can take a lot of forms. I happen to be an unbeliever in supernatural deities, but I do believe in Mother Nature" and the holiness of "the world around us."

Sieg sounds like a Buddhist or Taoist to me. I suspect that if she'd responded to the Elks interviewer, "I believe in the god of Buddhism," she'd be enjoying the social activities in the lodge now.

Religious discrimination, after all, is a no-no in American culture. Unless someone doesn't believe in a traditional religion at all. Then it's fine to discriminate against them.

Someday, and that day can't come soon enough for me, this attitude will be seen as the pre-scientific relic of mythology that it is. A-theists are just people who don't see any evidence for a demonstrably unseen God.

Unicorns also are unseen. So a-unicornists are ubiquitous. As are a-fairyists and a-Big Footists.

However, Elks Lodges don't bar the door to people who say they don't believe in unicorns, fairies, and Big Foot – because these entities aren't revered by the majority of Americans.

God also likely is non-existent. At least, there's no proof of God's existence, which puts the supreme deity in the same epistemological class as fairies. Something which makes people feel good, but lacks standing in objective reality.

So we all should bow down to the courageous believers in truth like Billie Sieg and Sylvia Benner who refuse to accept religious absurdities just because they're the majority opinion.

Majorities often are wrong. At one time almost everyone used to believe that the Earth was flat, slavery was justified, and women were second-class citizens.

Before too long students will read in history books about the not-so-good old days when citizens of the United States were discriminated against because they didn't believe in God. And they'll think, How could this ever have happened? What were they thinking?

Not much, sadly. Not down in the Brookings Elks Lodge, in 2008.

How to make time slow down

Time speeds up as you get older. Almost everyone I know says this is true. I sure do. And it's damn unfair.

Why should children, who have their whole lives ahead of them, experience time moving more slowly than semi-geezers like me (I'm 59), who don't have anywhere near as long to live?

I frequently feel like screaming, Hey life! Flip things around! Those kids should be the ones who sense time flying by, while older people get to string out the days they have left.

One of my best friends from elementary and high school died recently. He was, obviously, my age. I was sad to learn about his death from cancer. And I was jerked into a realization that what happened to him could happen to me.

Dying anytime. You never know how long you've got. So slowing down time to make my remaining moments seem like they're lasting longer strikes me as an excellent proposition.

So today I ventured onto Google, figuring that it would be easy to take my first step: learning why time speeds up the older we get.

Once I knew that, I'd be closer to understanding how to slow time down. But I was surprised by the dearth of solid information Google's results brought me.

I found quite a few references to the obvious notion that when we're three years old, another year adds a third to our life experience, so it seems like a long time. But by the time we're fifty, a year is just 2% of the life we've already lived, so it isn't noticed to nearly the same degree – flitting by as a mere 1/50^th would.

However, even though there likely is some truth to this, there's nothing that can be done about it. I can't change how long I've lived. So I Googled on.

And came to a promising-sounding book title: "Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past."

You'd think that the author would have an answer to the "why." But another review of the book by a physician said:

So why does life appear to speed up as we get older? This is a perception that most of us who are older than 50 regularly experience—particularly at anniversaries of varying sorts such as birthdays, holidays, weddings, and residency graduations. The author acknowledges that this question, which involves two highly complex and ephemeral concepts—memory and time—cannot be answered with certainty.

Oh, great. Even an expert on time can't tell me why my life is speeding by faster and faster. Disappointing, but I didn't give up on Google.

I was rewarded with a blog post by someone who, like me, had made the rounds of Internet theories concerning this question. "The Speed of Time" ended with a suggestion that mindfulness – being here now in the present – is a way to make time slow down.

Makes sense. As did the best writing I found on this subject, Steve Taylor's "The Speed of Life: Why Time Seems to Speed Up and How to Slow it Down."

When you've got time, read it. Taylor is a good writer. I liked his take on the "proportional theory" that I mentioned above (as we grow older, every additional period of time is a smaller proportion of our life).

There is some sense to this theory – it does offer an explanation for why the speed of time seems to increase so gradually and evenly, with almost mathematical consistency. One problem with it, however, is that it tries to explain present time purely in terms of past time. The assumption behind it is that we continually experience our lives as a whole, and perceive each day, week, month or year becoming more insignificant in relation to the whole. But we don't live our lives like this. We live in terms of much smaller periods of time, from hour to hour and day to day, dealing with each time period on its own merits, independently of all that has gone before.

Seems true. As does Taylor's preferred explanation for why time speeds up with advancing years:

In my view, the speeding up of time we experience is mainly related to our perception of the world around us and of our experiences, and how this perception changes as we grow older. The speed of time seems to be largely determined by how much information our minds absorb and process – the more information there is, the slower time goes.

He says that things around us come to seem more and more familiar the longer we live. We travel the same streets, go to the same places, talk to the same people, engage in the same activities.

With all this sameness, we begin to ignore perceptions that used to be oh so fascinating. Familiarity breeds disinterest, if not contempt.

One way of increasing the flow of information into our psyches is to do new things. Travel to a different location; take up a fresh hobby; shake up old habits. Good ideas, but the way I see it, this runs the risk of making us a slave to time.

We end up dashing from newness to newness, addicted to the rush of unfamiliar perceptions. Look, the Louvre! I know how to waltz! Golf is fun!

I prefer Taylor's mindfulness approach:

A second way in which we can slow down time is by making a conscious effort to be 'mindful' of our experience… Poets and artists often have this kind of 'child-like' vision – in fact it's this that usually provides the inspiration for their work. They often have a sense of strangeness and wonder about things which most of us take for granted, and feel a need to capture and frame their more intense perceptions.

Read the end of his piece for more on mindfulness. Good stuff. As more perceptions, more information from the outside world, courses into consciousness, time slows down.

I hear the crisp clicking of my ThinkPad's keys. I feel my hands resting on the palm rest. The sound of the heat pump going on outside our kitchen window enters my awareness as I watch these letters appear on my laptop's screen.

Life is always happening all around us, and within us. To pay close attention to it, here and now, that's key to slowing time down.

Mindfulness means stopping thinking and starting to be aware, to live in the here and now of your experience instead of the 'there and then' of your thoughts. It stretches time in exactly the same way that new experience does: because we give more attention to our experience, we take in more information from it.

In other words, to some extent we can control time. It doesn't have to speed up as [we] get older. Some of us try to extend our lives by keeping fit and eating healthy food, which is completely sensible. But it's also possible for us to expand time from the inside, by changing the way we experience the moment to moment reality of our lives. We can live for longer not just in terms of years, but also in terms of perception.

The Tao of napping

It's nice to see that napping is getting the scientific respectability that it deserves. Napping has proven health benefits:

Naps can restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%.

* Naps can increase alertness in the period directly following the nap and may extend alertness a few hours later in the day.

* Scheduled napping has also been prescribed for those who are affected by narcolepsy.

* Napping has psychological benefits. A nap can be a pleasant luxury, a mini-vacation. It can provide an easy way to get some relaxation and rejuvenation.

For quite a few years I've been doing my part to advance understanding in this area. Most days I retire to my napping sanctum sanctorum to worship at the altar of unabashed hedonism.

For that's the purest form of the Platonic Nap – the nap as it exists in itself, not seeking justification through some sort of cost-benefit analysis.

OK, so you can get 34% more performance from a 40-minute nap. If that's your reason for taking a short doze, you haven't grasped the Tao of napping.

As I said in a 2004 post, "My afternoon delight":

I am the devotee of a pure form of Napping Philosophy, formulated over many, many years of diligent unconscious study. To wit, naps are not a means to an end; they are the end: self-indulgence, hedonism, unadulterated unproductiveness.

Thus I find it disturbing that naps are being recommended as a tool for accomplishing more. This is absurd.

It's akin to watching the Playboy Channel in order to better understand the cultural role of women in post-modern Western society. Anyone who takes a nap with a productive motivation in mind is a faux napper.

I beg of you: Please, don't sully the purity of this noble nonactivity. Have a cup of coffee instead.

After almost three additional years of napping experience, I can say that my Taoist perspective on this subject has only gotten stronger. In fact, I even came across a reference to naps in a Taoism-related book I was reading recently.

The gist of the author's point, which fits with my own attitude, is that the very notion of a "nap" is unnatural. Hence, out of tune with the naturalistic philosophy of Taoism (which is closely related to Zen).

"When I'm sleepy, I sleep. When I'm hungry, I eat."

If a nap is viewed as simply sleeping when sleepy, it fits comfortably into an unadorned Taoist approach to life. However, if an unscheduled sleep is called a "nap," and an extra meal is called a "snack," we've fallen into excessive formalism.

It may well be that sleeping at various times throughout the day, not just in one big chunk at night, is part of the natural sleep pattern of humans. For 85% of mammals, this is the case.

So nap on, my fellow Homo sapiens.

It's not only true for us that "I think, therefore I am." Napping leads us to experience a yin-truth to that yang: "When I don't think, I also am."

The Tao of Tajuan Porter

It's confirmed: University of Oregon basketball star Tajuan Porter is a Taoist sage. I'd suspected as much while watching the Ducks beat UNLV yesterday.

Freshman Porter, who's only 5' 6", beautifully manifested wu-wei—effortless doing. A master of wu-wei is said to have "soft and invisible power" over things.

Indeed. St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bryan Burwell said that Porter was "a blur, a wisp and a vapor."

I decided to confirm Porter's Taoist eminence through his own words. Here's what I found. My comments on #12's simple, yet profound, statements are in italics.

On playing in the expansive Edward Jones Dome:
"A shooter is a shooter. You can't worry about the environment. It's two rims and a ball."
a finger pointing directly to the moon

Why the Dome won't distract him:
"Nah, can't worry about that. If you worry about it, you're going to be concentrating too much."
relaxed empty mind imbibes fullness of Tao

After a Pac-10 tournament win over California:
"It's a great birthday present for me. I'm happy we won. And 'Happy birthday' to myself."
in the small pool of self is reflected the grand ocean of reality

Before the Ducks' first NCAA tournament game:
"In this tournament anybody can win. Anybody can get upset. We just have to stay level-headed."
"There's no need to be nervous. (Playing basketball) is something I love to do so I'm not going to be nervous."
water flows where it will; bamboo bends before strong winds

After a key win over Washington State:
"There's always room for someone to step up, and I just did what I could with my opportunities tonight."
nothing special about chopping wood and carrying water

Regarding his Pac-10 leading free throw shooting:
"I don't know how many I've made, but I know I've missed five."
Tao exalts the lowly

Concerning his skills:
"I think I'm a terrible shooter. No, I'm an OK shooter. I still feel like I can shoot better than what I'm shooting now. Every shot I take, I think I should make it."
archer being humbly one with the Way, arrow finds the target by itself

After making the All Pac-10 freshman team:
"That's individual attention. I really don't care about individual attention. I'm just trying to win."
yin

Asked to reconcile that statement with fruitlessly tossing up three-point shots in an attempt to break the freshman record:
"That was just to break the record."
and yang

About his size:
"It can be a disadvantage if you make it one. But you have to find it within yourself to play and not make it seem like you're a liability."
content with Tao's benevolence, eating plain rice

Asked about who would win a three-point contest with Oregon women's team freshman phenom Taylor Lilley (who has a higher made percentage than Porter):
"I would say me because I'm confident in myself. But I would let her win just to keep her confidence up."
yin

Expanding on a Lilley shoot-out:
"I got pride. I ain't gonna let no girl beat me."
and yang

His approach to making shots:
"My teammates find me and I knock them down."
life is as simple as we make it

Next day update: Opening up the sports section, I find more Taoist Tajuan wisdom.
When asked about his impression of Oregon's basketball program before he arrived:
"Didn't even know Oregon was a state until Malik (Hairston) came here."
ah, the sage words of the Tao Te Ching come to mind...

Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles
...I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
...I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.

An agnostic Taoist on Christmas Eve

Well, with just three hours to go on the west coast it looks like Christmas has survived the war against it. Which, of course, pretty much existed only in the addled outlook of Fox News and Bill O’Reilly.

Speaking from the agnostic Taoist perspective, I look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus by enjoying a vegetarian buffet at Salem's Marco Polo restaurant and opening a few presents that I bought for myself that are being wrapped by my wife at this very moment.

As I did earlier today for a few gifts that she bought for herself. This year we decided to downplay Christmas even more than we usually do. Before New Year’s we’ll sit down with our checkbook and VISA card to make donations to some favorite charities. It’s nice, I guess, to have an extra reason to give.

Otherwise, for me the Christmas season has more negatives than pluses. I’ve had to expend some extra calories each time I turned my head to studiously ignore a Salvation Army bell ringer. Trying to tune out annoying holiday music in the stores required an extra expenditure of psychic energy.

Since the War on Christmas inciters make a big deal out of saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” I’ve had to pay special attention to how I respond to well-wishers. I didn’t want to seem on the side of O’Reilly, so usually replied “you too” to whatever greeting a store employee gave me. (My wife went with “Happy Holidays.”)

It’ll be good to get back to “have a nice day.”

My main message this evening is to say Amen to the column by Charles Haynes that appeared in newspapers today. He says:

Religious life in America has never been more robust, visible and free than it is today…If you want to see what a real war on Christians looks like, just look around the globe.

Imagine being a Christian in Saudi Arabia. Imagine being part of a minute minority in a nation where another set of beliefs is actively supported and promulgated by the government. Imagine being marginalized, ridiculed, and put down when you express your own faith.

Imagine that, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of why both Christians and non-Christians should be concerned about where our country has been heading. I read in a recent Newsweek issue that “46% of Americans believe that the U.S. government ‘should advocate Christian values.’”

It should be close to zero percent. I’m a non-Christian. My daughter is a non-Christian. And I’m willing to bet that with such sterling grandfatherly and motherly influences, my soon to be born granddaughter will choose to be a non-Christian.

Still, I don’t want her brainwashed by a Christianist government, just as Christians living in Saudi Arabia would resent having Islam pressed upon their children. Remember: Do unto others…

So let’s all heed Haynes’ Christmas Eve message:

What really bothers some Christian evangelicals is not the lack of freedom—it’s the loss of monopoly. Many of the conflicts in the so-called “war on Christians” appear to be about restoring the “good old days” when Protestant Christianity was semi-established as the national religion.

But pushing for a Christian Nation will not advance Christianity, it will kill it. From China to Turkey to Europe, state involvement in religion is the root of persecution, dissention, and division.

How ironic. At a time when some Christian leaders in America are decrying “separation of church and state,” millions of Christians around the world are praying for it.

What’s God got to do with lost climbers?

Hope I don’t sound heartless when I say to the relatives of the climbers lost on Mt. Hood, “Please, keep God out of your news conferences. Don’t use this tragedy as a platform for your religious faith.”

Today Frank James, brother of climber Kelly James, said on Fox News:

We are waiting and praying. Certainly there is a lot of praying. There are from time to time, tears. From time to time there is laughter…Our faith is strong. Our faith is three-fold. We have faith in Kelly, and Brian, and Nikko. We have faith in the rescuers. And we have faith in God.

There is little doubt that our faith is being refined these days. We understand how serious these weather conditions are. But our faith remains strong. It’s amazing. When you’re in these kinds of circumstances you might think that people would turn away from God. Precisely the opposite has happened. We’ve all turned to God in deeper and more profound ways.

Well, that’s nice, Frank. I just have to be honest. As a devoted agnostic, I share your humanness, because I’m human. But I don’t share your religiosity, because I’m not religious.

I listen to you empathetically when you speak of tears and laughter. However, when I hear you giving a mini-sermon to the reporters gathered on Mt. Hood, it turns me off. Didn’t Jesus advise praying in secret?

This is one of Irregular Times’ Secrets of the Bible.

It seems that these folks are so busy making a show about their Christianity that they've forgotten what their own Bible says about being Christian: that Christian prayer should always be a private matter, conducted without fanfare and without an audience. The words are right there in bold print for any literate Christian to read, but Jesus' teaching about the hypocrisy of public prayer remains a true secret of the Bible.

I hope the climbers are found alive. Yet I don’t believe prayer is going to make any difference in whether this happens. I understand why the families of the lost men pray together. This is a natural human inclination, whether or not it does any good.

Earlier this year I wrote on my other blog that the West Virginia mine disaster shows the absurdity of prayer. The best prayer, one that even my Taoist soul can embrace, is “Thy will be done.” (“Thy” can mean anything: God, Allah, Tao, Buddha-nature, fate, the laws of nature.)

So if God needs to be brought into the public face of a tragedy, anyone can do this in a simple, humble, and universal manner. Just say, “We’re hoping for the best. But what will be, will be.”

My radio interview about the changing face of faith

Last night I channeled myself on a radio interview with two mediums. Marcel and Lenny had me back for another chat about churchless faith on their Achieve Radio program, “In Good Spirit.”

Who knew that in the past few months I was fated to have so much contact with a couple of mediums, after a lifetime of psychic skepticism?

Well, maybe Marcel and Lenny. But I don’t know, since I’m still skeptical.

Which brings to mind my favorite part about the interview: I didn’t say “you know” nearly as much as last time. Before the phone rang to connect me with these guys I gave myself an affirmation: “You will catch yourself before you reflexively say you know.”

It worked. Pretty much. I didn’t mind listening to the archive of the show this morning (click on DEC-6-06-at-9:00PM---In Good Spirit). I made a few inane or incomprehensible comments, but that’s par for the conversational course.

Marcel started off by asking me what I thought about the ascendancy of aggressive atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Julia Sweeney. Their books (in Sweeney’s case, a play and CD) have titles like “The God Delusion” and “Letting Go of God.”

What’s going on here?

I said that I thought this was a healthy reaction to excessive religiosity. Fundamentalists have urged us to get on our knees. Now we’re hearing from the get off your knees crowd. That’s balance. The Tao abhors tilting too far one way or the other.

The most genuine faith is simply openness. A wide-eyed innocent embrace of reality, whatever it may consist of. The fact is, we don’t know. Science recognizes that there is a lot more truth to be found under the thin layer of knowledge that humankind has revealed so far.

It doesn’t make sense to rule out the possibility that reality extends beyond the domain of the physical. But it also is nonsensical to blindly accept on faith that earthly existence is only the ground floor of a grander metaphysical structure.

As I frequently say on my Church of the Churchless blog, I’ll believe it when I see it. Not before.

Yesterday I wrote that for me the changing face of faith “means moving away from looking at life through spread mental fingers, believing in this but not in that, refusing to consider the possibility of X while embracing the hypothesis of Y.”

Listen to the interview for more along these lines. I’m on for about eighteen and a half minutes. I know this because I wanted to check out how much I talked, compared to Marcel and Lenny.

Near the end of the interview Marcel commented that agnostics sure have a lot to say, as he couldn’t get a word in for the last five minutes. Well, this morning I found the archive and I whipped out two digital watches with timers on them.

I talked for nine minutes and fifty seconds. That’s 53 percent of the time, Marcel! A nicely balanced use of the available minutes. About half for the interviewers, half for the interviewee.

Tao is pleased.

Bush administration disrespects Wiccans

What’s the deal, President Bush? Your administration touts the importance of religion, yet the Department of Veteran Affairs refuses to put a religious symbol on the memorial for a decorated soldier killed in Afghanistan.

A Wiccan symbol. Sgt. Patrick Stewart of the Nevada National Guard is the first Wiccan killed in combat. But 1,800 Wiccans are on active duty in the armed forces. And applications for the use of the pentacle on grave markers have been pending for nine years.

I hope the several hundred thousand Wiccans in this country bring down upon Bush whatever karmic consequences he deserves for disrespecting this exemplary nature-based religion.

I’ve got a fondness for Wicca. The Belief-O-Matic test, which suggests what religion a person should consider practicing, ranks “Neo-Pagan” second on my list—right after “Unitarian Universalism.” So I guess I’m an Emersonian sort of Wiccan.

Make sure that five-pointed star within a circle is approved soon, President Bush. We pagans are reluctant to bring out the big guns, but we’ll call on the Big Man Upstairs if we have to.

I’m learning to Tango with life

I got sent to remedial Tango class last Monday night. The guest instructor, Carlos Rojas, observed me dancing with my wife for a while. Then he walked over and said, “You’re not letting her finish her steps. You’re going to dance with Jodi now. Every time you interrupt her moves, she’s going to stop.”

Jodi is Carlos’ tall, slim, charming, attractive, and highly skilled dance partner. With a teacher like that, I didn’t mind getting some remedial instruction. We started dancing. Then she stopped. We started again. We stopped again.

Eventually I began to understand what I was doing wrong. Basically, I’d gotten the idea in my head that leading meant doing what I had in mind. Continually.

After leading a step, my mental focus was immediately shifting to the next anticipated step. I’d lost touch with what my partner was doing. I wasn’t aware of what position she was in when I tried to lead another move. Jodi's frequent stops were telling me that she hadn’t completed her own following step, yet I had already started to lead a new move.

I love how Tango is a reflection of life. My friend Bill, a fellow dance student, has been writing about his own Tango life lessons here and here (read them; his essays are great). I’ve done the same, most recently musing about “The Romance of Tango.”

The fresh insight that I got from Carlos and Jodi is that however I dance with a partner is a reflection of how I dance with myself. Whatever problems I have dancing Tango are intimately related to the difficulties I have partnering with me.

This morning I started to butter a piece of bread. While my knife was still spreading dabs of heart-healthy Take Control, I realized that I’d already begun to think about taking the newspaper upstairs and reading it while I watched some cable news. I was several steps ahead of myself and the day had barely begun.

Yeah, it’s a cliché: “Be here now.” But clichés often contain a lot of wisdom. That’s why they’re repeated so frequently.

You can’t dance Tango properly if you aren’t aware of what’s happening at every moment. As it is happening. Not as you think it is about to happen, or as it just happened. You and your partner are dancing in the moment, not in the future or past. If you lose touch with the moment, you lose touch with your partner.

And yourself. Carlos told us that Tango is the Ph.D. of social dancing because it is so spontaneous. There are no set patterns. Tango flows from the music, the man, the woman, the setting, the mood. It is infinitely creative, ever-changing, unrepeatable.

Just like life.

I have my daily habits. Toast, newspaper, cable news. Then cereal, checking the Internet, emailing. But every day is different. I’m not the same; my wife and dog are not the same; the world is not the same. The daily dance never repeats itself.

So I’m making a resolve to Tango more attentively with the multitudinous partners I encounter every 24 hours. Laurel, Serena, store clerks, birds, sun and sky, blogging, the toilet, food, my car. The list is endless.

One thing at a time. Allow my partner to do his/her/its own thing, as I am doing mine. Don’t rush a move—either my own or someone else’s. Lead, follow, lead, follow. Allow yin and yang to alternate. Do, relax, do, relax. Move to life’s natural harmony, not to the beat of my own self-centered intention.

Carlos said that if your partner doesn’t do what you anticipated, you don’t stop in your tracks and think “What the #&!@?” Rather, her move becomes the next step. And you Tango on.

Just like life.

On Easter, we worshipped at the altar of remodeling

We didn’t have to leave our house to have a holy experience this Easter. Laurel and I spend the morning tidying up the newly tiled “Dog Room.” Some people would call such an area the “Family Room,” but as we revealed in one of our Christmas letters, our life revolves around the original Wonder Pet.

At night Serena sleeps in her dog crate. Or on the futon. Her choice. Now, if she has to urgently pee or poop the mess will be on tile rather than carpet. That actually was a prime consideration in our plan for remodeling the Dog Room. Like I said, we know where the center of our existence lies.

It isn’t in church or an organized religion. Not on Easter. Not ever. Today many people heard, “He is risen.” To us those are three meaningless words. No one knows if they were ever true. Belief is fine, but believing is far distant from knowing.

Our Dog Room rose to life today. That was real. We experienced it. From an empty room, devoid of furniture, we returned it to fullness. I made peace with the mitre box that had been devilishly confusing me (molding and me hadn’t had much of a relationship until this home improvement project brought us together).

Why does religion have to be about far-off times and places? Why is an intermediary necessary to bridge the gap between us and the divine? Why can’t holiness be found in the most mundane activities of daily life. Putting in molding. Carrying furniture. Sealing grout.

As the saying goes, chop wood, carry water. Is there anything else to do?

Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I can sound like a curmudgeon about religion. Most recently, I wrote that “I’m arming for the War on Easter.” (But I’m shooting blanks compared to real anti-religious battlers like PZ Myers; his “Easter mourning” rips Christianity a new one.)

At heart I’ve got no problem with religious belief. Myself, I’ve been there and done that, so I understand the appeal of unfounded faith. What I do have a problem with, a major problem, is when people take their private belief and try to make it public policy. We’re heading toward an American Theocracy, and that scares the shit both out of me and Kevin Phillips, who wrote the book with that name.

Today my wife and I created something concrete instead of sitting in a room with true believers, listening to strange abstract notions about what God might be like. We acted positively this morning.

All too often, religions don’t. The religious impulse gets misdirected into destructive channels. Witness the upcoming GOP agenda intended to mollify the religious right. Constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Limits against abortion. Restricting embryonic stem cell research.

Negative to the core. Life-denying. Irrational. Ridiculous. This is the unholy side of religion. It should be sliced off and sent into oblivion. Superstition, prejudice, and fear of science belong in the Dark Ages, not the 21st century.

What really needs to be remodeled are the minds of the fundamentalists who want to make the United States into a Christian Taliban nation. We’ve got to keep an eagle eye on that un-American agenda.

Zen and the Final Four

Zen moments. That’s what I like the best about sports events. How they marvelously capture some of the deepest truths of life in living, breathing motion right there on my television screen.

Consider the men’s NCAA basketball tournament. Images from a couple of last week’s games are as fresh in my mind as if they had just happened. Take Gonzaga vs. UCLA in the “Sweet Sixteen” round. Final score: Gonzaga 71, UCLA 73.

A heartbreaker. I wanted Gonzaga to win. Badly. Mostly because UCLA already has won too damn many national championships.

Also, I couldn’t help but root for Gonzaga when their star player, Adam Morrison, has such a perfect back-to-the-70’s look (plus, appealing intensity; when I saw him bang the basketball three times against his head, hard, before he went to the free throw line I knew he was my kind of player.)

But at the end of the UCLA game Morrison was flat on his stomach on the floor, crying. And all because of a Zen moment in the final seconds.

Gonzaga had gotten possession back, trying, as I remember it, to protect a slim lead. One of their players had been passed the ball. A tall guy, he was holding it over his head. A teammate was right in front of him. He looked at him. He continued to hold the ball. He seemed frozen.

Then a UCLA player sneaked behind him and knocked the ball loose. UCLA scored. And that turned out to be the game. It hinged on one moment. A moment when I and just about every other Gonzaga fan in the country were screaming, “Get rid of the ball. Pass it!”

Easy enough to say when you’re not on the court. As I wasn’t either in the Washington vs. Connecticut Sweet 16 game. Final score: Washington 92, UConn 98. The game was closer than that. It was a squeaker until the very end.

Here the Zen moment came when a Washington guard stole the ball in the final minute. He had a clear path to the basket. He looked at the basket. And then he passed the ball. Right into the hands of a UConn player. Who dashed down the court and scored. Game over, for all practical purposes. The TV announcers said, “He should have gone to the rim.”

Yes, that moment of indecision was costly. Watching a basketball game from the serenity of my couch, it’s easy to recognize those Zen moments when excess cogitation leads to a bad outcome. I can see that if a player had just acted naturally, doing what he knows so well to do—get rid of the ball when you’re being double-teamed, head for the rim when the lane is open—his team likely would have won, rather than lost.

But who am I to judge? I, like most people, am equally prone to over-analysis. How often in my life have I intuitively known what must be done, and failed to do it? Lots. Basketball games are merely a highly public stage on which familiar everyday dramas are played out.

A moment comes. And then it goes. In the instant of that coming and going, opportunity. Seize it, and it’s yours. Hesitate, and it’s gone forever. In a basketball game there may just be a few of those memorable moments. Zen says that in life at large, every moment is memorable.

Yesterday in the sports section I read about Glen “Big Baby” Davis’ decisive 3-point shot in overtime that sent LSU to the Final Four. He said:

It’s called thinking without thinking. The opportunity was there to make the shot. Most of the time when I’m shooting 3s, I’m thinking about it too much. I was just in rhythm. I felt it was a great shot and I made it.

Thinking without thinking. Seems with “Big Baby” we’ve got a Zen master in the making here.

On not knowing what we don’t know

It’s not often that I think along the same lines as Donald Rumsfeld. But after a mildly embarrassing experience I’ve been pondering the words of our Secretary of Defense that won him the 2003 Foot in Mouth Award:

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know.

My wife, Laurel, has phased down her psychotherapy practice to bare bones. She’s given up her office and, as of yesterday, had her practice phone number forwarded to our home line.

She’d told me to expect some work calls. I forgot about that expectation when the phone rang as I was walking out the door. I rushed inside and answered the call.

“Hello.”
“Hi, this is Sam Jones [not real name, obviously]. Could I speak with Laurel.”

Here’s where my not-knowing started to take off. As soon as I heard “Sam Jones,” my mind associated the caller with an old boyfriend of Laurel’s whose first name was indeed “Sam,” but whose last name was nowhere close to “Jones.”

However, small details like facts don’t mean anything when your mind leaps in a not-knowing direction. A few weeks ago, through a mutual acquaintance Laurel had heard some news about old boyfriend Sam that she’d shared with me. So it seems that when I heard someone ask for Laurel and say that he was “Sam,” it didn’t matter that the last names were different. My mind instantly and confidently concluded that the caller was the old boyfriend.

No doubt about it.

“Why, hi, Sam. Good to hear from you. Laurel is in Eugene right now and won’t be back for a few hours.”

At this point the caller must have begun to wonder if he really was talking to a professional counselor’s equally professional answering service. What was up with this chatty “good to hear from you” stuff?

“OK, um, could you tell me who I'm talking to, please?”

“Why, its Brian,” I reply enthusiastically, wanting to let Sam know that Laurel is still married to the guy whose wedding Sam attended fifteen years ago. “Can I take a message?”

Since my tone of voice had implied that the caller was a doofus for not realizing that the person who he was talking to was Brian, the husband of still-married-only-once Laurel, he understandably spoke with even more confused hesitation now—undoubtedly wondering “What the hell kind of weird answering service is Ms. Hines using now?”

I, of course, assumed that his faltering words were those of an old boyfriend who wanted to speak with an old girlfriend, and had ended up talking with her husband instead. Not an unusual situation, yet still a bit awkward.

“Just tell her that Sam Jones called. My number is ________.”

“Will do, Sam. I know she’ll enjoy talking with you after all this time.”

On this mystifying note (given that the caller had been having recent counseling sessions with Laurel), our conversation ended. I scribbled out his name and phone number for Laurel and laid it on the rug near the front door, our usual message-leaving location.

Since Sam had left a Salem number, my mind then began to multiply further fictions on top of its primal error. How long will Sam be in town…he’ll probably want to have dinner with Laurel to catch up on what’s been going on in their lives…We were thinking of going to Portland tomorrow…Maybe we’ll have to change our plans…Wonder why Sam is calling now after so many years…

When Laurel got home I mentioned that an old boyfriend had phoned. She looked at the message and said, “Jones isn’t Sam’s last name. His name is ____.” Which I knew. Now.

And also then. I mean, my brain knew that old boyfriend Sam’s last name was ____, and that the caller’s last name of Jones was entirely different. But I didn’t know that my mind wasn’t aware that it didn’t know what it should have known. Now I knew what I didn’t know that I didn’t know before, and I was embarrassed.

When Laurel returned the call to her client she explained what happened. Thankfully, he told her that I was so friendly, he didn’t think much about the strange aspects of our telephonic interaction.

Myself, I keep thinking about this whole business of not knowing what you don’t know. What else am I blissfully confident that I’m right about, when actually I’m dead wrong? As Rumsfeld correctly observed, it’s bad enough to know that you don’t know something. But not-knowing rises into another dimension when you are ignorant of your ignorance.

Humility. Uncertainty. Openness. Yesterday’s experience helped me realize that these are virtues we all need to venerate, because we never know when what we think we know isn’t true.

“We” includes the Bush administration. Especially the Bush administration.

With a poetic philosopher like Donald Rumsfeld on the payroll, you’d think that Bush and his cronies would be wary of embracing certitudes that they shouldn’t be nearly as certain about.

Weapons of mass destruction. Deficit-reducing benefits of tax cuts. Evils of gay marriage. Fiction of global warming. The list is endless of things the Bush administration has been, and are, sure about that they almost certainly are wrong about.

Yet we have a President who is extremely unwilling to admit that he ever is wrong. His ability to not know that he doesn’t know puts mine to shame.

Where is the Christian outrage?

Good Christians, where is your outrage? Are you so meek and mild that you’re willing to tolerate the intolerance being committed in Jesus’ name? Will you continue to allow the most extreme right-wing fundamentalist sharks among you to flourish in the ocean of mainstream Christianity?

I’m not a Christian, but I’m outraged by attempts to subvert both science and common sense in the name of theology that nowhere appears in the Bible. This is obvious manmade dogma. If I can speak out against these travesties, why can’t you, good Christians?

Putting creationism in the classroom. The effort to get intelligent design (which is thinly disguised creationism) recognized as an alternative theory to evolution takes us back to the bad old days of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. I thought that we had evolved beyond such specious attacks on science, but the Dover Area School District lawsuit proves otherwise.

Christians want intelligent design/creationism enshrined in the classroom even though there is zero—repeat, zero—scientific evidence in favor of this utterly unproven hypothesis. There is equal reason to believe that the universe is being guided by a Flying Spaghetti Monster as by a willful conscious metaphysical force.

Stifling of Plan B morning-after pill. Last night ABC’s Nightline featured a devastating critique of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) outrageous decision to overrule the advice of its own advisory committee and professional staff. The FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford (who has since resigned), delayed a decision on whether the Plan B pill should be available without a prescription.

Susan Wood, director of the Office of Women’s Health, resigned over the decision. She told Ted Koppel that “science was being overruled by the FDA.” The advisory committee vote was 23 to 4 in favor of approval. One of the four dissenters was David Hager, a Christian ob-gyn doctor from Kentucky.

Hager filed a minority report urging that this utterly safe drug which prevents unwanted pregnancies (and, hence, abortions) not be approved because it might lead to more teenagers having sex. Here’s what he said to an audience at a Christian college five months later:

I argued it from a scientific perspective. And God took that information. And He used it through this minority report to influence the decision. You don’t have to wave your Bible to have an effect as a Christian in the public arena.

Denying global warming. Evangelical Christians are cool on global warming, says Andy Crouch in a Christianity Today essay called “Environmental Wager.” On the face of it there shouldn’t be any reason why Christians would be opposed to protecting the environment. One would think that God’s creation is worthy of respect, since it supposedly was created with a divine purpose in mind.

However, Crouch says that Christians are so ticked off at science because of the theory of evolution, this irritation spills over into over other areas such as global warming: “Thanks to the creation-evolution debate, mistrust between scientists and conservative Christians runs deep. But those scarred by battles with evolutionists might still consider heeding the scientists who are warning us about climate change.”

Opposing gay rights. In my state Basic Rights Oregon is challenging the legality of an initiative (Measure 36) voters approved last year that says only a marriage between one man and one woman is valid. Christian groups led the fight for Measure 36, somehow believing that denying rights to gays will glorify God.

I find Robert Buchanan’s perspective a lot more appealing. And a lot more Christian. He says that Christians limit God’s love when they assume that only certain sorts of people are deserving of it:

Many people have a very limited view of the scope of God’s love. They have allowed their prejudice to replace God’s intention and the message of Christianity. They think that God only came for those who are in a patriarchal nuclear family with a male, female, and children or single celibate people. Sometimes people limit God to those who are of their own gender, color, race, and among their own social status.

As a non-Christian, I do what I can to encourage open-mindedness, tolerance, and respect for scientific facts about reality. It’s discouraging to me that so many Christians aren’t doing the same.

I realize that, according to yesterday’s Oregonian, “a Gallup Poll last fall found that 45% of Americans say God created people pretty much in their present form in the past 10,000 years—a timeline asserted by Christian literalists.”

But that leaves a majority of Americans believing otherwise, most of whom are Christian. Where are their voices? They should be pounding the pulpit and telling the right-wing fundamentalists, “You don’t speak for me!”

I don’t hear this happening. The Christian silence is deafening.

I hope this doesn’t mean that unscientific gay haters are going to inherit the earth. If the meek Christians don’t begin to speak up, that’s a definite possibility.

Fundamentalism and racism, two peas in a pod

If you believe that your religion is superior to every other, it’s easy to believe that your race is superior to every other. Blind faith immune to facts is the foundation of every erroneous belief. So faith is the root of both fundamentalism and racism.

Such is the unoriginal thesis of my Church of the Churchless “Fundamentalism is religious racism” post. I cite research supporting the contention that closed-minded prejudice is a single force that manifests in many forms.

So faith isn’t a good thing. It’s a bad thing. Faith is the pod that allows the peas of fundamentalism and racism to grow.

If you’re faithless, be proud. Faithlessness is the only road out of the dead end of insane “isms” that are tearing this country in particular and the world in general apart.

Science and reason are faithless, having faith only in the tenet that, as the X-Files put it, “The Truth is Out There.” But you have to get outside of the walls of your false prejudices and dogmas to find it.

Faithless Universist group started in Salem

Christians are going too far when they start banning good-hearted atheists, agnostics, and other questioners from coffee houses. That’s outrageous. Why, you’ll have to pry my grande latte from my cold dead hand—and my copy of the Bhagavad Gita from my other one.

When I heard about this discrimination against the faithless via a Universist email, I was inspired to sign up today as a Salem (Oregon) sponsor of a Universism discussion group.

So far I’m the only member. But I just started the group this afternoon and I’m pretty sure I can talk my wife into joining, which will instantly double our size. Plus, Christianity started off slow too. In my grandiosity I’ve started to think of myself as a secular anti-Paul, helping to spread the good news about anti-religion.

The Salem Universists aren’t meeting yet, unless you count Laurel and me sitting down together every evening to worship at the feet of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. If you live in the Salem area, consider becoming a member so we can eventually have real meetings--sign up here.

There are just 1,685 Universist Meet-Up members and 67 groups worldwide, so you’ll be getting in on the ground floor of a much-needed movement. Here in Oregon there are fledgling groups in Eugene and Portland also.

As I’ve written before, I consider Universism to be a wonderfully kindred unfaith to my Church of the Churchless leanings. What the world needs now, more than ever, is less religion.

When the president of the United States calls for intelligent design, which is thinly disguised creationism, to be taught in schools, the need for countervailing forces like Universism is obvious.

We’re all jihadists

Over on the Church of the Churchless today I wrote about how “We all believe in jihad.” I had intended to rant here about how outrageous it is that Karen Minnis and the Oregon House Republicans are hijacking the political process by not allowing important bills like SB 1000 to come up for a vote.

I guess I did a bit of that just now: ranting. But just a bit. For when I looked into my Karen Minnis-hating heart and realized how, in my darker moments, my fantasies about what should happen to right-wing ideologues were growing uncomfortably jihadish, I decided to switch gears and consider how we’re all jihadists.

Meaning, we all strive; we all desire; we all believe that something desperately needs to be changed in the world out there. The difference between us and the suicide bombers is one of degree, not of kind. For more along these lines, you can read my post.

Secret of the Universe, Clue #2

It’s all starting to come together for me now. Oh yes, it surely is. For last night I had a second revelation to go along with Secret of the Universe Clue #1. Now, I just need to figure out what the “it” is that’s coming together.

Whenever we come to our cabin in Camp Sherman I take along my media box, a plastic container that I fill with videotapes, DVDs, serious non-fiction books, unserious mystery paperbacks, and every unread magazine lying around the house.

I never get around to perusing half the stuff in the box, but it relieves my anxiety to know that if there’s a nuclear war while we’re at the cabin, I’ll have enough entertainment on hand to distract me while the radiation does its lethal work. (I worry about strange things).

Anyway, last night I pulled out a stack of magazines from the bottom of the box, settled into a comfy chair, put my feet up on the ottoman, and started to read an issue of TIME. I learned that the insurgency in Iraq was growing stronger and movie studios were hoping for some summer blockbusters. Ho-hum. Familiar news. I glanced at the headlines and kept turning the pages.

I came to a story about Kerry’s campaign. Kerry’s campaign? Something suddenly seemed out of place in the space/time continuum. I took a closer look at the cover. I saw that the issue was from June 2004. It had sat unread in the box for an entire year. And the strange thing was, the national and world news themes were so similar to what is happening now, I didn’t notice that I was a year behind until the Kerry campaign story jumped out at me.

Then I heard that increasingly familiar Here’s-a-Secret-of-the-Universe voice speak to me inside my head: Each “will happen” you’re reading about has become a “has happened.” What will be, in 2004, is what was, in 2005. And next year will be the same.

In other words, right now I’m anxious about will happen during the next year. What right-wing judicial zealot will be appointed to the Supreme Court vacancy? Will there be a meltdown in the LA housing market just after my daughter and her husband buy their first house? Is Al Qaeda going to make good on its promise to strike the United States again? Will Measure 37 claims in Oregon make our rural neighborhood into a Salem suburb?

As soon as I heard the voice inside my head, I realized: “What I’m really worried about are possibilities, not actualities. Dire predictions of upcoming events in the June 2004 issue of TIME don’t concern me now, because I know what has actually happened.” Like Bush being re-elected. I don’t worry about that event happening because it has happened. Now I worry about will happen after his re-election. Like what sort of extremist he will try to get on the Supreme Court.

And so it goes. Every “will be” becomes a “what was,” transformed by the inexorable passage of time. If I could jump ahead and see myself sitting in the same Camp Sherman cabin chair a year from now, July 2006, everything that I’m concerned about happening will have happened. Or not. Whichever, the future will have become past. Frettings about unwelcome possibilities will have become mere memories of unchangeable actualities.

I wondered, “Then why worry? About anything.” I wondered about what I had just wondered about for a little bit more. Then I tossed the old news magazines away and started reading some current issues.

I thought about putting them back in the box and waiting to read them a year from now. But that seemed like cheating. So I read. And, once in a while, worried.

And so it goes.

My satori is near at hand

Clearly my final enlightenment—satori!—is near at hand, for I have bought a book that will lead me there: D.T. Suzuki’s “The Zen Koan as a means of Attaining Enlightenment.”

The clerk at Salem’s Book Bin was suitably impressed with my purchase, telling me “We hope you’ll come back after your enlightenment and share your realization.” I said, “Absolutely. I plan to charge $8 for this dispensation of wisdom, which will enable me to realize a 50 cent profit from buying this $7.50 book.”

Obviously my spiritual motives are pure. So pure that a humble part of me continually whispers, “Brian, you are already enlightened.” I like that voice. I want to trust it. But I don’t want to take any chances with my satori. Though I may already have become one with Buddha nature, I figure it won’t hurt to add to my oneness.

Hence, my purchase of the book. Now, I don’t have a Zen Master, nor do I want one. My Zen transcends spiritual discipline and organized practice, which makes it so easy for me to follow. And also easy for me to confirm my satori, since I don’t have to go through the unappealing process of getting my enlightenment confirmed by someone else.

I’ll decide when my Buddha nature is fully Buddhaized, thank you. And I don’t need a Zen Master to give me a koan either. I’ve got plenty of koans lying right around the house that should work fine to top off my satori tank. Here are some examples of homey koans that defy rational explication.

If our dog has Buddha nature, then why does she always ask to go out just when I have settled down comfortably on the couch?

When my wife’s closet is filled to capacity, how is it possible that she can keep shopping and coming home with more clothes?

After a man has washed the cutting board and returned it to its place still wet, so the board can drip-dry onto the counter, if he does not hear the sound of a woman chastising him, is he still wrong?

And lastly, my favorite koan of all:

If a sentient being already has acquired countless books describing a myriad of spiritual practices, only a few of which are shown here, and each claims in its own unique fashion to convey the truth about ultimate reality, what are the chances of another book making any difference?

Sweating and crying through the National Spelling Bee

There was quite a bit of sweating and crying going on during the National Spelling Bee finals today. Not so much among the contestants—they mostly were calm and composed. I was the one with jangling nerves and teary eyes during the competition.

I’d never watched the National Spelling Bee before. I needed some mindless TV entertainment to pay bills by, so I channel-surfed my way to ESPN. It took me a long time to write the checks once I got hooked on the highly mindful spelling competition. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the children who strode one by one up to the front of the stage and confidently tackled words that I had never even heard of, much less spelled.

You need to know your Latin, Greek, and French roots to be a champion speller, that’s for sure. Otherwise, the finalists had diverse spelling styles. Some would scribble out the word on a placard hanging around their neck before saying their final answer. Others would simply look into the distance and spell a word letter by letter, visualizing it mentally rather than physically.

The top three spellers apparently were all ethnic Indians, at least in part: Anurag Kashyap spelled “appoggiatura” correctly to become the champion (it means “an embellishing note or tone”). Samir Sudhir Patel missed a letter in “roscian” (“skilled in acting”) and earned second place. A girl, Aliya Robin Deri, flamed out on “trouvaille” (“a lucky find”), one of the few champion-level words that I actually knew how to spell myself.

The CNN article above has a “test your spelling skills” link where you can get a mild taste for the competition. Mild, because you’re presented with four alternative spellings for a word that you’re given the phonetic pronunciation and definition for, and merely have to choose the correct one. I got nine out of ten correct, uttering a coarse expletive when I missed #10 and my chance to “rule the hive.”

By contrast, Anurag, Samir, and Aliya were perfectly courteous whether in victory or defeat. These are three hugely impressive children, as were the rest of the contestants. And again, all Indian.

I mention their ethnicity not because it has anything to do with being a champion speller (though perhaps it does), but to contrast what I saw on the stage of the National Spelling Bee with the America that I earlier saw William Simon (a conservative who ran for governor of California in 2002) expounding on C-Span.

Simon was giving some sort of Heritage Foundation talk, judging by the banner hanging behind his podium. He was blathering on, as is his wont, about how the United States is a Christian nation, with 90% of our citizens believing in Jesus. Simon said that religion (Christianity, obviously) should be taught in schools because it is so obviously part of our culture.

A Pakistani audience member rose and told Simon that he couldn’t believe in Christ, but that the Koran contained many references to Jesus and Mary. He wondered what sort of place he had in America, given Simon’s remarks.

It was interesting to see how William Simon changed his tune when faced with a real live non-Christian standing before him, rather than with merely his own abstract political/theological notions. Here he was, having to answer an obviously intelligent, concerned, caring person who didn’t believe how he did.

Simon said that everybody had a right to their own faith or lack of faith, but that 90% of Americans believed in a higher power. A few minutes before it was “in Jesus;” now it was “in a higher power.” Such is the slipperiness of politicians confronted with their own bigotry and desiring to appear more broad-minded than they really are.

I didn’t see any religion displayed on the stage of the National Spelling Bee. Why would I? It didn’t have any place there. Nor does it in our public schools, except in an educational sense. Children should learn about religions in the classroom; but they shouldn’t practice religion in the classroom.

About 74% of the people of India are Hindu; 12% are Muslim; 6% are Christian. Probably the breakdown of Indians living in the United States is around the same, which means that it is highly unlikely that the three spelling champions I watched on ESPN today all believe in Jesus. Yet William Simon and other Christian-right zealots want to have Christianity become the state religion and be practiced openly in the classroom.

Observing the intelligence, poise, and character of Anurag, Samir, and Aliya today, what I want taught in the classroom is what they have learned. It doesn’t have anything to do with religion; it has everything to do with realizing the full potential of being human.

William Simon has much to learn in this regard. Those three children could teach him a lot.

God must be a Buddhist

Laurel and I are finding it difficult to practice Christian compassion. First problem: we’re not Christians. Second problem: it’s hard to be compassionate toward Christians when so many of them act like fools. Case in point, our nation’s Christian-in-Chief, President Bush.

He is threatening to veto legislation that would loosen restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush calls himself pro-life, but he doesn’t want to promote research that promises cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other degenerative brain and nerve diseases.

Bush’s own Christian compassion is constrained inside the tiny box of Christian fundamentalism, where crazy ideas are free to flower without any inconvenient pruning by facts. The legislation he wants to veto lets government-funded researchers work with embryonic stem cells left over from fertility treatments. These excess embryos either will be discarded, or they will be used in research.

It’s a no-brainer: use them for stem-cell research. But unfortunately Christian right voters do have brains, albeit malfunctioning ones.

Bush is afraid that he’ll lose the political support of fundamentalists who somehow have discovered in the Bible a theological foundation for banning therapeutic cloning, which the Bible never mentions. These, of course, are the same people who criticize the Supreme Court for finding support in the Constitution for allowing abortions, which the Constitution never mentions. Go figure.

My personal theological conclusion is that God must be a Buddhist, notwithstanding the fact that Buddhism doesn’t believe in a personal God (if the Christian right can make outrageous leaps of religious logic, so can I). For evidently God has blessed the predominantly Buddhist nation of South Korea with the leading world expert on cloning human embryos to treat and study disease, Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University.

“I want to give humans a gift of healing knowledge,” I picture God saying to herself (my anti-patriarchy wife reads this weblog). “But the United States is filled with too many closed-minded Christians to make wise use of it. So I’ll send a breakthrough in therapeutic cloning to a Buddhist country instead. I love those Buddhists; they don’t try to confine my will within imaginary bounds of their own making.”

More and more it looks like the United States will be getting health care advances from South Korea, consumer items from China, and information technology from India. It kind of makes you want to convert to Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism, since fundamentalist Christianity is becoming a foe of modern progress, just like fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Judaism.

Those big three Western monotheistic religions have an inbred aversion to seeing reality as it is. By comparison, the big three Eastern pluralistic religions don’t. Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism find it easy to absorb scientific facts into their flexible worldviews. This is one reason the United States is heading downhill, socially and scientifically, while South Korea, China, and India are on the upswing.

I’m pessimistic that things are going to get better in this country so long as Christian groups like the Center for Reclaiming America have so much support among the citizenry. I heard the Center’s founder, D. James Kennedy, interviewed on PBS radio recently. He’s scary. Really scary.

Kennedy believes that this country has to be governed on the basis of Christianity. He sounds just like Islamic fundamentalists who want Koranic law in Muslim countries. Except his Koran is the Bible. Otherwise, you could plunk Kennedy down in Iran or Saudi Arabia and he’d feel right at home.

The Center for Reclaiming America presents the untruth that our nation’s founders intended the United States to reflect Christian principles. Given this false premise, it is possible for the Center to make intolerance of non-fundamentalist Christian views into a virtue. A United Nations declaration, “Tolerance…involves the rejection of dogmatism and absolutism,” is ridiculed.

There’s no room for tolerance in right-wing Christianity. For example, it is obvious that creationism is true and evolution false. Why? Because the Bible tells Kennedy so, and there’s no need to consider inconvenient facts—such as the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence in support of evolution.

Naturally the Center also finds support in scripture for “ending judicial tyranny,” by which Kennedy means that judges should make decisions based on their Christian faith rather than the nation’s laws. Yes, I heard him say this in the PBS interview. He likened judges who rule in support of a woman’s right to have an abortion as being akin to judges in Nazi Germany who supported anti-Jewish German laws.

Again, he’s scary. Really scary.

As is George W. Bush. And everyone else who is trying to make the United States into a Christian nation. The way I see it, what is at risk here is nothing less than reality. Christian fundamentalists want us to close our eyes to truths. Truths about therapeutic cloning. Truths about evolution. Truths about persistent vegetative states. Truths about the big bang. Truths about the genetic basis of homosexuality. All kinds of truths.

Carl Sagan warned some time ago that the demons are beginning to stir. He was right. Now the demons are becoming more active. They have to be defeated. Take a stand: don’t go to church tomorrow. Read a copy of Scientific American instead.

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us—then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.” [Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark]

Me and the Milky Way

I’m trying to put my problems into perspective. New Scientist magazine is helping me out. The current issue has a great article on the Milky Way galaxy. This is where I live. You too.

When I consider the big picture, really big, of what surrounds us, earthly aggravations look a lot less immense. In my saner moments, I’m able to juxtapose what gripes me with the galactic point of view. Then I see how miniscule are the mole hills that I’ve been regarding as mountains. [All quotes are from the New Scientist article.]

I’m going to be fifty-seven this year. I’m ancient!
“The galaxy’s oldest stars are roughly 13 billion years old, suggesting they formed less than a billion years after the universe began life in a giant explosion 13.7 billion years ago.”

The earth is overpopulated. I feel cramped.
“The Milky Way is a dense disc of stars, gas and dust some 100,000 light years wide.”

If my book doesn’t sell well, I’m a failure, a nothing!
“In total, the Milky Way contains at least 250 billion stars, possibly as many as a trillion.”

It’s crazy that people disagree with how I view the cosmos, since I know so much and I’m so obviously right.
“Compress the whole of human history into just one year, and you will find that it is only in the last four hours that we gleaned the faintest inkling of the geography of the galaxy we inhabit. It was in the 1920s that astronomers realized that our sun and the stars surrounding it form a cosmic island, just one of countless similar islands dotted across the universe.”

I’m afraid my bald spot is getting larger.
“At the heart of the Milky Way lies a monster…a supermassive black hole—a colossal nugget 3 million times as massive as the sun. It is so immense that its gravity prevents anything, including light, escaping from inside a radius of about 7.7 million kilometers, or about twice the distance from Earth to the moon.”

If the Senate eliminates the filibuster rule this week, the United States is doomed.
“The Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are racing towards each other at a relative speed of 500,000 kilometers every hour, and in 3 billion years’ time, the two giants will run into each other in a catastrophic encounter that will change them both beyond recognition.”

Damn! I’ve gained two pounds.
“Ponder this one next time you make a cup of coffee. If you swapped your teaspoon of sugar for a teaspoon of neutron star innards, it would weigh about a million tonnes.”

We’re wrecking our planet; it’s the only one we have.
“In the Milky Way galaxy as a whole there must be an enormous number of planets…There are billions of planets in our galaxy.”

Sometimes I’m bored with my life. Everything I do seems so familiar.
“Most of the Milky Way is invisible, which has made it all the more difficult to figure out its structure. The motions of stars appear to be influenced by the gravity of vast amounts of mysterious ‘dark matter’ in a giant ball enclosing the galactic disk and bulge.”

My fellow humans, the indisputable fact is that we are small. Very small. And the universe is large. Very large.

If you need more convincing, remember that the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years wide.

Now, let’s further broaden our horizons. Here’s a look at our neighborhood within a billion light years. THis is still just a small part of the entire universe, however. Those clumps aren’t galaxies, or even clusters of galaxies, but clusters of clusters of galaxies—superclusters. It’s estimated there are 3 million large galaxies like the Milky Way within a billion light years.

I feel even smaller.

But attaining a realization of complete cosmic insignificance requires Douglas Adams’ Total Perspective Vortex.

Be warned, though. As Adams says, “if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot have is a sense of proportion.”

Poor us

Yesterday Laurel and I felt sorry for ourselves. You probably won’t feel sorry for us. But then, you’re not us. If you were us, pretty obviously you’d feel like just us. And even though you’re you and we are ourselves, I bet you’ve engaged in some similar feeling-sorryness that appears ridiculous to anyone else but you.

Here’s the deal: wanting knows no bounds. I realize this philosophically. The Buddha clearly explained how desire leads to suffering, and I’ve read my share of Buddhist books. But it isn’t until I’m face to face with a concrete example of how my wanting expands to fit the space available to it (which seemingly is infinite) that I really grasp what a trap I’m in. Laurel too. All of us, except the few with Buddha nature.

This is the view from the deck of the Camp Sherman cabin that we just came back from. We share ownership of the cabin with three other families. It sits on leased national forest service land on the banks of the Metolius River.

In 1997 we were fortunate to learn about a ¼ share of the cabin being put up for sale. At the time a Coldwell Banker realtor in Sisters told us that in the seven years he had been with the firm only one forest service cabin had been listed publicly, and he had never seen a partial share made available. These Metolius River cabins generally are passed down from generation to generation in a family, treasured assets that they are.

Laurel and I love the cabin. We love Camp Sherman. We love the Metolius River. And yet, we feel sorry for ourselves because we don’t have a direct view of the river like lots of other cabins do.

Whenever we walk to the cabin at the very end of the Metolius River trail, nearest to the head of the Metolius (which issues full-blown from a large spring), we envy the view those owners have from their deck. “They’re so lucky to have a view of the river,” we say. “We just look at trees. Poor us.”

I know, I know. This sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But that’s how the human mind works: it always wants more, even when it has a lot.

Here’s a Calcutta street scene. I’m pretty sure most of the people who live in Calcutta wouldn't feel sorry for us if they knew that we have to look at just trees from inside the cabin rather than trees and the river. And yet, I’m willing to bet that if a Calcutta slum dweller were to be transplanted to our Camp Sherman cabin, within a few years he or she would be walking the river trail thinking just like us: “Oh, how nice it would be to have a better view.”

Well, I meditate every morning, as does Laurel. We await our enlightenments, the end of our never-ending wantings. For now, we make do with who we are.

I’ve taken to carrying a lounge chair the 100 feet or so from our cabin to the river, naturally feeling sorry for myself the whole way as I try to balance a chair and cushions in one hand, and a glass of juice, magazines, paperback book, and highlighter in the other. It’s a tough life.

I stagger with my load to the bank of the Metolius and settle in. Looking around, it’s a nice view. I can’t see it from our cabin—boo-hoo!—but they say that suffering is good for the soul.

I vow to endure, somehow, as I sip my cranberry juice and listen to the rushing water. Somewhere in Calcutta a street urchin is searching for food in a pile of trash. And I'm feeling sorry for myself.

We all are Terri Schiavo

I’d like to write about something other than Terri Schiavo. But I can’t stop thinking about her. Why? Because I am Terri Schiavo. And you are Terri Schiavo. We all are Terri Schiavo.

By which I mean: whoever Terri Schiavo is—body, soul, matter, spirit—each and every person is. This is the root reason why her situation is so compelling and produces so much passion. Whatever will happen to her when she dies is what will happen to you and me when we die.

If Terri is merely a material body, then when her body dies she is gone forever. Since her brain is dead, and the brain is the locus of a person’s consciousness, then Terri may already be gone forever if matter is all she is.

However, if Terri is something more than her body, then that “something”—call it soul—will survive the death of its bodily shell.

As Terri goes, so you and I go. Thus even though the impassioned debate over the removal of her feeding tube is couched in political and religious terms, I believe the fuel that is feeding the fire of this controversy is much more deeply personal. To put it bluntly, it’s that death scares us shitless.

Many people won’t admit that they are scared of dying. I will. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I die. I wish I did. I’d like to be sure that my soul will live on after my body is dead. But I don’t know that this will happen. I just hope that it will.

Most Americans, whether they are conventionally religious or unconventionally spiritual, hope like me that there is more to life than bodily existence. The operative word though is “hope.” It is a fact that every person will die. What occurs after death is in the realm of belief.

At least for now. When you and I take our last breaths, the reality of what lies beyond will be right before us. Or not, if we are not.

Laurel and I have strong feelings about how Terri Schiavo’s situation is being handled by the courts, Congress, and her family. So do lots of others.

When Peggy Noonan rails against the morals of the “pull the plug” people in a Wall Street Journal editorial, my blood starts to boil (metaphorically, thankfully.) When I wrote about religious zealots running amok in this case, a man commented that I was driven by hate for anyone who didn’t share my “secular humanist agenda.”

I’m sorry he felt that way. I don’t hate him. And I don’t hate Peggy Noonan. What I hate, really, is death. Not death per se, but the mystery of what happens after death. This uncertainty creates anxiety in all of us. It is part of the human condition.

People deal with this angst in different ways. Some do their best to not think about death. Others do their best to have faith that God, Jesus, Allah, Buddha-nature, Jehovah, the Tao, something or someone, will take care of them after death. Still others do their best to accept the finality of death as the end of their existence.

Yet irrespective of these best efforts, death will come. When it does, thoughts, beliefs, and acceptances will be swept away in the instant of our passing. To be replaced by: reality. Whatever it is. Afterlife. No life. Semi-life. Meta-life. Whatever, we all are united by that moment which comes to every man and woman: the last earthly moment.

When I watch CNN and see the “Save Terri” crowds standing vigil outside her hospice, I see part of myself. The part that wants to cling to life at any cost, that recognizes how precious is the sense of “me” now inhabiting the body known as Brian.

When I watch Fox News and see Michael Schiavo pleading that his wife be permitted to die with dignity, I also see part of myself. The part that wants to soar as soul above the crude confines of materiality, that recognizes how marvelous is the expanse of the cosmos that lies beyond the little knowledge of reality that I have now.

And when I watch the videos of Terri Schiavo, I see myself most of all. Not part of myself, all of myself. I wonder what I would be—no, will be—when my brain becomes mush, worm food. Will “I” still be there? And where is “there”?

Whatever I will be or won’t be, wherever I will be or won’t be, I feel that Terri Schiavo and I are the same. As are you and me. As are we all. Terri’s enduring gift is that she has brought us closer together. That may not seem to be the case at this moment given all the divisiveness surrounding her bedside.

But I believe, or at least hope, that this will be Terri’s lasting legacy: a greater recognition that we are all Terri Schiavo. That whatever our religious beliefs or lack of beliefs, whatever our political inclinations or lack of inclinations, we are all human beings.

Who will die. One by one, yet also as One.

“I Heart Huckabees”

I loved the philosophy in this DVD movie. I didn’t like much else about it, especially the lame title, which features a heart as in “I [heart] New York.” Even Prince has given up on the unpronounceable symbol shtick. The producers of “I Heart Huckabees” should have chosen a title more befitting to the movie.

I don’t know, maybe “The Existential Detectives.” For Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are the centerpieces here. They are two Existential Detectives hired by an environmentalist who is trying to figure out the Meaning Of It All. “All” includes his efforts to save open spaces and his relationship with a spokesman (Jude Law) for Huckabees, a chain of stores which, as Ebert says in the above-linked review, “doesn’t care about the environment, but cares deeply about seeming to care.”

The storyline, acting, and characters in “I Heart Huckabees” didn’t do much for me. However, I got through the 105 movie minutes enjoyably thanks to the philosophical snippets that popped up regularly and roused my interest. I would have enjoyed the movie considerably more if the plot had been dropped completely.

The ideas underlying the plot are compelling. A “My Dinner With Andre”-like conversation about whether the cosmos is (1) a meaningful unity or (2) meaningless chaos awaits another filmmaker. Here Existential Detective Hoffman champions the “all is one” perspective while his nemesis, a French woman played by Isabelle Huppert, puts forth the “all is crap” position.

The phrase “All is crap” doesn’t do justice to the philosophies of Sartre, Camus, and the other existentialists I avidly read during my early college years’ embrace of meaninglessness. But, if I remember correctly, in three words it pretty well sums up thousands of pages of their writings.

Hoffman believes that everything is connected; Huppert believes that everything just is. Where Hoffman enthusiastically sees a reflection of loving cosmic oneness, Huppert (metaphorically) sips her expresso, takes a puff on her unfiltered cigarette, and blows out a smoke-ring with a cynical, “That’s bullshit.”

There are powerful arguments on both sides. That’s what made “I Heart Huckabees” so compelling for me. I wasn’t much interested in how the storyline turned out; I was eager to learn the outcome of the philosophical mano-a-womano. In my opinion, it was a draw. Laurel came away feeling that All is One was the winner.

It could well be that both sides are right: life is meaningless and life is meaningful. Which is true at a given moment just depends on… . Well, if I could replace those three dots with some words, I’d be a happy philosophical camper. I’m still searching for the trail that leads to the campground, so have a long way to go before I’m able to settle into a tent of truth. Sometimes I feel that I’m getting some glimpses of the path ahead, though.

The beginning of “I Heart Huckabees” features some coincidences. Wanting to figure out what those coincidences mean drives the environmentalist to hire the Existential Detectives. They follow him around, observing every detail of his life, on the assumption that if everything is connected, following any single thread of an event could reveal the entire fabric of the cosmos.

After I watched “I Heart Huckabees” I experienced a mild existential coincidence of my own. In the movie a character observes that only 5% of the matter/energy in the universe is recognizable. This is true. Physicists estimate that 70% of the stuff that makes up the universe is dark energy, 20% is dark matter, and just 5% is ordinary matter (“dark” is scientific shorthand for “we don’t know what it is”).

So there I was in my post-movie moment, brushing my teeth before going to bed, reading the February 28, 2005 issue of U.S. News and World Report that I had opened up next to the sink. And in an article called “Mysteries of the Mind” there it was! The 5% solution!

According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness.

Beautiful. The human mind that only knows about 5% of the stuff in the universe is only aware of 5% of what goes on in itself. Let’s see: 5% times 5% is a quarter of a percent. That seems about right—after ten thousand years or so of civilization Homo sapiens is clued in to about 1/400th of what the cosmos is all about, 0.25%.

No wonder life seems so meaningless so much of the time.

But then…there’s the other 99.75%.

Get a grip on that, even some of that, and I suspect life looks much different.

Bring it on.

Taoism talk flows

Yesterday I gave my first-ever talk about Taoism to a Chemeketa Community College class. As befits the subject matter, it flowed pretty well. I rationalized my minimal preparation by saying to myself, “That’s how a Taoist sage would do it—speak from the heart, not from notes.”

Of course, one problem with this approach was that I’m not a Taoist sage. And the heart from which I tried to speak from is filled with all kinds of crap. Some wisdom too, I hope, but largely crap. Which reminds me that somehow I missed sharing with the class a favorite quotation from The Book of Chuang Tzu. Now that it comes to mind, I feel better about what’s in my heart:

Master Tung Kuo asked Chuang Tzu, “That which is called the Tao, where is it?”
Chuang Tzu replied, “There is nowhere where it is not.”
“But give me a specific example.”
“In this ant,” said Chuang Tzu.
“Is that its lowest point?”
“In this panic grass,” said Chuang Tzu.
“Can you give me a lower example?”
“In this common earthenware tile,” said Chuang Tzu.
“This must be its lowest point!”
“It’s in shit and piss too,” said Chuang Tzu.
Master Tung Kuo had no answer to this.

Almost as soon as I walked into the Judson Middle School classroom for the second half of the three hour class I got a question from an earnest student: “What does the te mean in Tao Te Ching?” “Oh, no,” I thought. “Am I expected to actually know something about Taoism?” I started to lose confidence in my whole lesson plan, which basically consisted of reading some mystifying anecdotes from The Book of Chuang Tzu and commenting confusedly on them.

If nobody had any idea what I was talking about, that was OK. After all, Chuang Tzu is known as the “genius of the absurd.” If the mojo (or should I say “ch’i”?) in the class started to flag, I had a copy of my “The Tao of Paris Hilton” and "I become a Taoist" posts ready to roll. One thing I wasn’t ready for was a serious question about the meaning of a Taoist term. Fortunately, the class was on a break and I could wriggle away with a “Good question, I’ll try to get to the meaning of te during my talk.”

But I didn’t try very hard. I think te means “life force,” which seems real similar to “ch’i.” And isn’t ch’i part and parcel of the Tao? Whatever. That’s the beauty of Taoism. Words count for nothing. No matter what you say about Taoism, you’re wrong.

I was pleased that everyone in the class appeared to stay awake right up to 9:00 pm. That was my main goal: not put anyone to sleep. To achieve that end I used several of my tried and true public speaking techniques: (1) when interest seems to flag, tell an embarrassing story about yourself, and (2) if that doesn’t perk up the room, tell an embarrassing story about someone else. Such as Laurel. Well, it wasn’t so much embarrassing as revealing. I observed that Laurel will spend all afternoon tending to the trees she’s planted on our property, then come in and say, “Look at my desk! I’ve got so much paperwork! I should have been inside working on it!”

But if she had done that, I can almost guarantee that come dusk she would be saying, “Look at how nice the day was! I’ve got so much gardening to do! I should have been outside working!” We don’t trust our instincts, was my conclusion. If we feel the urge to do something, and then do it, second-guessing often sets in after the first-impulsing. Taoism discourages such mental musings: “Maybe it would have been better if….”

Chuang Tzu says, “That which one does because it is impossible to do other, that is the Tao of the sage.” Easy to say. Also easy to do. It only is possible to do one thing at a time, so why not simply do that one thing fully, completely, passionately, unreservedly, happily?

Figuring that if I ended my talk on a mysteriously enigmatic note I’d be less likely to get any additional quasi-scholarly questions that I couldn’t answer, I turned to “The Shores of the Dark Waters” chapter. Here’s how it begins. If I took Chuang Tzu’s message seriously, I’d welcome tough questions about Taoism. And answer just as Words-of-Actionless-Action did.

Speed up the Second Coming

Laurel and I found the “Christ Is Coming Very Soon!” advertisement in today’s Salem Statesman-Journal newspaper most interesting. We read it carefully, especially the eight compelling reasons why the Second Coming is right around the corner.

It struck me that all of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, should be doing what we can to hasten Jesus’ return. For the faithful, this will mark the fulfillment of prophecy. For the unfaithful, it will be pretty darn interesting, to say the least—the adventure of a lifetime, if not eternity.

Practically speaking, there isn’t much that most of us can do to pump up four of the eight reasons for Jesus’ coming back to Earth. Israel’s rebirth has happened. Famines, violence, and wars aren’t easy to control, though with Bush's re-election at least one of the three is primed for Second Coming success.

Increasing earthquakes—not possible with present-day technology. Increase in both apostasy and faith: whatever your religious or non-religious conviction, it appears you’re helping out in this area.

So it seems that our focus should be on the other four reasons. These are areas where everybody can do something, big or small, to help assure that the Second Coming will really come.

There’s no substitute for individual initiative when it comes to good works, so the links below are simply some suggestions to get us pointed in the right direction. Which means…

(1) Keep morality plummeting. It’s difficult to pin down immorality, but sex, drugs, and rock & roll are some fine traditional places to look for immoral inspiration.

(2) Keep the explosion of travel and education happening. Plan a trip. Educate yourself. According to the ad “two key conditions…for the Second Coming are that ‘travel and education shall be vastly increased’ (Daniel 12:4).”

(3) Help cults and the occult to prosper. I’d have to get a free report to learn exactly what a cult or the occult is, but I’m pretty sure my Church of the Churchless weblog qualifies as “counterfeit spirituality.” Visit it and speed Jesus’ return.

(4) Help support the New World Order. The ad says that “increased centralization of world financial and political power is a prelude to the soon-coming world power system in the hands of ‘Antichrist.’” Since you can’t have Christ without the Antichrist, please do what you can to support the New World Order.

Thanks for your assistance with encouraging the Second Coming. If it really happens, maybe I can point to this posting as proof of my good intentions and get a little respite from the Last Judgment.

The mystery of suffering

Why do we suffer? There’s no better question to ask, because a search for the answer leads into the deepest mysteries of life, death, God, existence, body, soul, meaning, purposelessness—the whole shebang that philosophers ponder, mystics meditate on, scientists study, and preachers pontificate about.

Bill Long’s recently-published book, “A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job through Mystery,” examines suffering through a biblical lens, the book of Job. Yet Bill, a Salem resident and friend of mine, doesn’t take a traditional religious approach to understanding Job. He starts by laying out a legal complaint against God, Ruler of the Universe on behalf of Job, an individual.

The charges? Breach of contract, negligence, loss of consortium, intentional infliction of emotional distress. The prayed-for remedy? What we all want, relief. Since Bill is both an attorney and a religious scholar, his discussion of the book of Job is systematic and logical while also compassionate and devotional. Committed Jews and Christians who read “A Hard-Fought Hope” will find that Bill speaks their language.

I’m neither a Jew nor a Christian, yet I enjoyed learning about a perspective on suffering that was unfamiliar to me. I might have read the book of Job sometime in my life, but it hadn’t registered with me. So I appreciated how Bill breaks down Job’s response to God’s testing of his faith into well-defined “stages of grief,” so to speak, that comprise his book’s central chapters: “A Torrent of Emotions,” “The Grace of Job’s Anger,” “The Music of Job’s Grief,” “The Power of a Question,” “The Turning Point,” “Wisdom Seeking,” “Listening Differently,” “Living Differently.”

The problem I had with “A Hard-Fought Hope” didn’t have to do with Bill’s writing, which is highly readable, nor with the book’s subject of suffering, which is of intense interest to me—particularly when life doesn’t go the way I think it should (in other words, I’m interested almost all of the time). No, what gave me pause throughout my reading of the 160 pages was this: I couldn’t stop thinking, “Is all this dialogue in the book of Job between a suffering man and the God who makes him suffer anything more than literary fantasy?”

Lots of novelists have written about suffering. Why isn’t their message taken as seriously as the words in the Old Testament that Bill interprets for us? It must be because so many people consider that the book of Job really is a true description of how God sent suffering to a man, and how that man responded to the divine test. Otherwise, Job is just a fictional description of a guy with delusions that a unseen malevolent metaphysical force is out to get him: “He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.” (16:9) “I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces.” (16:12)

Personally, I think the book of Job is fiction. There really isn’t a God who gnashes his teeth, seizes people by the neck, and breaks them in two. But many believers think there is, which to me is the most interesting question about Job in particular and the Bible in general: Why does the notion of an external, supernatural source of suffering hold so much appeal? A short possible answer: Because a God who gives suffering can take away suffering, which lifts the responsibility for eliminating suffering off of my shoulders and puts it in God’s hands.

Near the end of his book, Bill writes: “If only Job could have believed in a God who did not intervene in human life, that would have solved all his difficulties.” Yes, in a sense it would have. Job still would be afflicted by all that he was suffering from, but he wouldn’t have the significant added burden of suffering from a belief that the God he loved so much had singled him out for special nasty treatment.

I know lots of people who believe that many, if not most, of the things that happen to them are for a reason. This isn’t a peculiarly Christian/Jewish doctrine. Some think that angelic beings or spiritual guides are directing the course of their life. Others, an ascended (or descended) guru, master, avatar, yogi, or other entity with a power to alter events. I can’t say for sure that they are wrong. Still, almost all the evidence of both science and common sense points toward natural, universal, and impersonal causes of life’s happenings.

My bet is that the only cure for suffering is what we prescribe ourselves. This is the basic Buddhist perspective, echoed in a little book by Paramhansa Yogananda that I re-read recently: “The Science of Religion.” I don’t agree with everything Yogananda says, but I find persuasive his essential psychological premises: “Desire, or the increase of conditions of excitations of the mind, is the source of pain or misery….Every human being is seeking to attain Bliss by fulfilling desire, but he mistakenly stops at pleasure; so his desires never end, and he is swept away into the whirlpool of pain.”

This may sound rather New Agey. Still, when I consider Yogananda’s well-reasoned arguments, which are more sophisticated than my two sentence summary here, they resonate with me more persuasively than does the book of Job. For Yogananda, Buddhism, and Eastern philosophy in general (plus the mystic neo-Platonism of Plotinus) locate the source of suffering in the human psyche, not God’s will. This means that we should look inward to our own self for answers to why life is so painful, not outward to a being in the heavens.

Still, what do I really know about all this? Not much. What I’ve just said is only one of many options on this interesting and amusing “Why Do We Suffer?” quiz.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any answers at the end of the quiz. Just more questions. Maybe that is the best answer.

Wisdom from a boy with AIDS

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are." These are the words of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy born with AIDS who died at the age of twelve with more wisdom than most of us accumulate in a much longer lifetime.

I heard Jim Wooten recite Nkosi’s mantra as I was driving home tonight. Wooten has written a book about Nkosi and the South African AIDS crisis, “We Are All the Same.” The title is how Nkosi ended his speech to an international AIDS conference.

I don’t know much about Nkosi Johnson. And I’m not one to get teary-eyed over emotional stories like those Wooten was relating on Oregon Public Broadcasting a few hours ago.

But when Wooten said that he wanted to end an interview with Nkosi because he thought the boy was tired, and Nkosi said, “No, you can’t. You haven’t asked me about dying yet”—that moved me.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t like to think about my own death. So I much admire the determination of young Nkosi, who knew that he was about to die, to tell those of us who would continue to live, how to live. Wooten said that Nkosi spoke about death for three or four minutes and advised…

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are."

There’s so much I want to say about these words, but I’m afraid that whatever I try to add to what Nkosi said will only detract from his simple wisdom.

So I’ll stop writing and go cook some tacos. Fully. Attentively. With meatless “meat,” lettuce, tomato, cheese, avocado, tortillas, oil. Should take about fifteen minutes. In the kitchen.

Thank you, Nkosi, for reminding me how to live each moment. For however many I have left.

Church of the Churchless opens its doors

I’m pleased to announce that the Church of the Churchless has opened its doors. This is a spin-off HinesSight weblog devoted to preaching the gospel of spiritual independence.

Until today I’d been plugging away on making the Church of the Churchless a regular website. But frustrations with the website creation software I had been using, coupled with a wave of fondness for the simplicity and power of weblogging, led me to recast all of the content into its present form.

Which, naturally, will evolve. If you want to explore the current Church offerings, entirely logically I suggest you start with the "Welcome" page. This provides an overview of what the Church of the Churchless is all about. Then the posts listed in the "Basics of our faithless faith" portal can be explored.

The world has plenty of religions and spiritual faiths. The last thing I want to do is add to the confusion. That’s why this is a church for the churchless, which naturally includes me. People who don’t belong need a place to belong. That place is inside us, not outside. But we need to be reminded of this. So this weblog is a way for me to remind myself of what I already know, but forget all the time.

Right now I’m reading a book about Skeptics and True Believers. Each group has a strong support system. For Skeptics it is science; for True Believers it is religion. However, what about people like me who are Skeptical Believers? We believe that there is more to reality and the cosmos than what science knows (or can ever know), yet are skeptical that the path of organized religion leads to these higher truths.

Laurel and I keep thinking about forming a group here in Salem that would be a support for the spiritually independent who yearn for a dash more of togetherness to mix in with their otherwise tasty independence. We haven’t quite figured out whether, or how, to do this. So the Church of the Churchless is a way for me to share ideas in cyberspace that might someday also be communicated face-to-face.

HinesSight will continue to be my main creative weblogging outlet. I’ll use the Church of the Churchless as a venue to express most of my mystical/spiritual/metaphysical ponderings, a.k.a. to some, “weirdness.” The thought of which—weirdness—just stimulated the seeds of a Church sermon: “Which is weirder: reality or religion?”

Why, I think I’m going to enjoy being the unpastor of my own unchurch.

Gnat, or not?

I passed by a window on my way to meditating this morning. Outside, a barely visible swirl barely caught my eye. Gnats, merrily gnatting in a swarm above and around the rhododendrons. Newly born, I assume. Exploring a cold new world where their life likely is measured in days, maybe hours.

Each little gnat was flying around doing what it knew how to do: not much. Each little gnat was experiencing what it was able to experience: not much. And there I was looking through the window at them, doing what I knew how to do and experiencing what I was able to experience: how much? This was the gnawing gnat-inspired question that kept me standing there.

I couldn’t stop looking at the gnats (or whatever they were in entomological reality; “gnats” captures their poetic essence). They were in their world. I was in mine. How much difference was there between us?

I was on my way to the cherished unused tiled shower that I have made into my meditation den. There I would read one of my books about the probable nature of the physical universe, or the less probable nature of the spiritual universe, before trying to dive into the depths of my mind and get to the bottom of all this. Seemingly, I am so much more than a gnat! I can read; I can think; I can ponder who I am and what surrounds me.

I pondered that, for sure, there are some two hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. For sure, there are some one hundred billion galaxies in the known universe. Likely, many more galaxies, many more universes. I am one person on one planet orbiting one star. I looked out the window at the gnats. I felt like a gnat.

I pondered that I live in a universe some fourteen billion years old. It probably will exist for hundreds of billions of years more. It may be eternal. Almost certainly existence is, or there wouldn’t be any place for a universe to come into existence. The utmost reality of time and space is on a scale beyond my comprehension. I am 56 years old. I felt like a gnat.

It was a good feeling, once I started to settle into my gnatness. The gnats looked carefree. They were busy, busy, busy, flying around in what looked like circles, but might well have had some gnat-purpose in their gnat-consciousnesses. They didn’t know what the heck everything was all about. I didn’t either. No matter. We were all part of a cosmos so inconceivable, it was a privilege just to be a part inconceiving of it.

I went on to meditate. Yet I knew that I already had.

Mini-secret of universe revealed

Back in the late 1960’s, illicit pharmacology brought me regularly to marvelous “Aha!” insights into the ultimate nature of the universe. The reason I currently neither have a Nobel prize in physics, nor am I recognized as a great spiritual sage, is that the insights were only insightful while in my artificially altered state of consciousness.

They could be shared, though, which lent them more validity than they probably deserved. One moonless night in 1968 a friend and I were rolling rocks off the edge of a ravine in the Santa Cruz mountains, marveling at how long they took to noisily reach the bottom. Moving on to deeper questions, we then stood in the darkness, trying to grok with our mescaline-fueled minds what everything was all about.

We could feel it so clearly. But what was it that we were feeling? We struggled for words to express the plenitude of this psychedelic experience. “The universe is…” I’d say. “Yes, the universe is…” my companion would respond. We almost had it! One more try! “The universe is…” I said again. And then—I swear to god this is true—we simultaneously proclaimed: “a paper bag turned inside out!”

It was so right, so true, so perfect. What a relief! Finally, all the searching was over. No more pouring over the Tibetan Book of the Dead for clues to what lies beyond this veil of maya. It is the other side of this paper bag of a universe! In the morning, none of this made a whit of sense to either of us. Oh well, that’s cool.

Now, thirty-six years later, my cosmic insights aren’t as powerful or as bizarre, but they keep on coming. Mini-secrets of the universe get revealed without any help from chemistry, other than what is bubbling away naturally in my brain. Last night I had one of those flashes while reading an Oregonian article about the effects of Measure 37.

I was immersed in the usual funk I get into when I think about how Oregon’s pioneering land use laws run the risk of being trashed by this ill-conceived measure. For it allows owners to be exempted from a law passed after they acquired their property if it reduces the value of their land. The other option is for government to pay them for this reduction in value, but nobody expects cash-strapped Oregon to be able to come up with the money to do this. Instead, land use laws simply will be waived.

I was moodily visualizing convenience stores popping up in the middle of residential neighborhoods, and gravel pits being dug next to state parks, when a crystal-clear realization broke into my meandering thoughts.

Whatever is going to happen is what has to happen! All right, I realize that this sounds as meaningless as a paper bag turned inside out! But the difference is that my clear-headed 2004 insight still rings true to me, even the day after. What came home to me is that the 60% of people who voted for Measure 37, as for the 51% who voted for Bush, are going to experience what has to happen as a result of their choice.

The universe is going to work things out perfectly. What goes around, comes around. Whatever you sow, you reap. Garbage in, garbage out. Pick your cliché, the meaning is the same: the changes caused by Measure 37 are going to result in exactly the right effects. “Good,” “bad,” these aren’t what I mean by “right.” “Right” means that the universe always keeps itself in perfect balance, and I don’t have to worry my little liberal Green head that anything unjust is going to happen—with Measure 37, Bush’s second term, or anything else.

I felt like a big weight was lifted from my psyche. It isn’t up to me to right supposed wrongs. The cosmos takes care of that.

Soon, Laurel and I hope, a lead petitioner of Measure 37 will find that someone is going to build a ghastly environmental and aesthetic disaster next to his or her home after taking advantage of the Measure’s lifting of a land use law. When I read about this in the Oregonian, I’ll smile.

Everything is going to be all right. I’ll remember that the universe told me that on November 14, 2004. Now, I’ve just got to figure out how this connects to the whole paper-bag-inside-out thing. A Nobel prize could still be in the cards, in my own mind at least.

For want of a zipper, an hour was lost

I’ve always enjoyed the familiar fable that begins with “For want of a nail the shoe was lost” and ends, after the horse is lost for want of a shoe, and the rider is lost for want of a horse, and the battle is lost for want of a rider, with the loss of a whole damn kingdom.

Nail. Kingdom. One so slight, the other so tremendous. What sort of connection could exist between them that causes a single small horseshoe nail to have the power to overthrow a vast kingdom?

Science would call it chaos theory or non-linear relationships, the ability of tiny causes to result in gigantic effects. You know, the butterfly flaps its wings here and a hurricane develops there. Religion or mysticism would call it karma, fate, destiny, god’s will. I suspect science and religion are pointing at the same truth with different fingers.

I’m fascinated with how this principle of “a little leads to a lot” works in everyday life. A woman buys a $1 lottery ticket, wins $60 million, and her life is changed forever. A man takes his eye off the road for an instant to check his cell phone, a child runs into the street, and two lives are changed forever.

My own less dramatic example yesterday started as I stood by our front door after making an eight foot bridge out of a couple of pressure-treated 2 x 6s. I needed Laurel to help me carry the bridge down to a seasonally water-filled gully on our newly-acquired five acres.

I was wearing an old fleece jacket without any zippers on the pockets. I was holding the dog training collar controller in my hand, for I was going to take Serena for a walk around the lake after installing the bridge. (The dog-shocker is needed for those rare occasions when the not-always-obedient family pet threatens to run onto a neighboring property whose owners have threatened dire consequences for even an innocent deer-chasing incursion).

I think about putting the controller in a zipperless pocket. Nah, too likely to fall out. A small still voice inside of me says, “You should put on another jacket.” But a louder and lazier voice bursts in: “Too much trouble. Just clip the controller on your belt.” Which I did.

So Laurel and I pick up the bridge, haul it down to the gully, and test it out. I then take Serena on our usual one-mile walk around Spring Lake and back to our property. I reach to unclip the training collar controller. It’s not on my belt. Shit! It’s almost dark. Double-shit!! I go into the house to tell Laurel what I’ve lost and she says, “The controller isn’t water-proof and it might rain.” Triple-shit!!!

It takes me almost an hour to slowly retrace my steps with a flashlight. I can’t find the controller. Luckily it doesn’t rain overnight. I get up early and start searching in the daylight. And there, just over a log that I had to step over on the way to the gully, it is. I feel as great as I can feel after having wasted an hour searching for something I never would have lost if I had just taken fifteen seconds to put on a jacket that had a pocket with a zipper.

This may sound like a meaningless tale. But I’ve learned something from it. For I can distinctly recall that immediate intuition—“you need to wear a different jacket”—which would have saved me a lot of time and trouble if I had listened to it. I spent today trying to listen more to that still small voice inside my head, and less to the active puffed-up blabber that usually tends to occupy my mind.

I’m going to experiment with turning up the volume on the one, and turning down the volume on the other. So far, I like what I hear.

My suspicion is the mind has an intuitive faculty capable of pretty accurately predicting a whole complex chain of causation. Our rational faculty doesn’t have this capacity. Or, at least, most of us aren’t able to use it properly.

Standing by the door, I could have thought: “I’m clipping the controller on the right side of my belt so I can easily grab it with my right hand if the dog runs away. I’m probably going to carry the bridge on the right side of my body. I’m going to have to step over a log on the way to the gully, which means I’ll have to lift the bridge up and over the log. This could dislodge the controller. I’d better change my jacket and put the controller in a pocket with a zipper.”

But that’s too much thinking. Too many things to keep in mind and try to figure out. Who is willing to pause before every action and ponder the branching possibilities of “if this, then that”? Anyway, if we trust in our intuitive faculty, perhaps we can get a glimpse of a likely future easily in a flash rather than with difficulty over time.

Lots is going on in the brain outside of our conscious awareness. I have no problem believing that some sort of unconscious Intelligence Processor is whirring away continuously, popping up frequent Alert Messages in the form of what we like to call “gut feelings.” “Brian, do this rather than that…go here rather than there…proceed cautiously…now, full speed ahead.”

It wasn’t fun losing an hour for want of a zipper. Yet I may end up gaining a lot more than I lost if this experience motivates me to learn how to tune in an inner advisor who makes a lot more sense than the one I normally listen to.

“Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing”

When is it wiser to not know something? What distinguishes scientific knowledge from spiritual knowledge? Could I cram an Oscar Wilde quotation into the essay right off the bat? These are some of the questions that I pondered when I began to work on “Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing” some years ago.
Download science_spirit_and_the_wisdom_of_notknowing.pdf

It is 24 pages long, so takes a little while to download on a slow connection (you know the mantra that accompanies PDF files: “get the free Acrobat Reader if you don’t have it already”).

This essay is, like so many of my writings, a masterpiece of intellectual brilliance, spiritual inspiration, and crisp writing. Sadly, the essay also is, like so many of my writings, virtually unknown to the world outside of my own cranium.

I submitted it to “Sacred Web: A Journal of Tradition of Modernity” after the editor of this journal asked me to write a piece on the evils of scientism—the cocky attitude of modern science that it has all the answers. The editor had read my first book, “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” liked it, and wanted me to put science in its place again.

The problem was, “Sacred Web” is a promoter of the “Traditional” metaphysical perspective that the editor describes here (scroll down the page to find the editorial). Frithjof Schuon and Seyyed Hossein Nasr are some of the noted writers and thinkers in Traditionalism. I had to familiarize myself with them before I could write the essay.

And the more I learned about Traditionalism, the more I became wary of this approach to religion and spirituality (the intellectually voracious can read an extensive critique by a Muslim here; I agree with his basic points about Traditionalism, but disagree that Islam is the one true religion). For example, Traditionalists have a strange fondness for medieval times, when the Church ruled every aspect of society.

Since Traditionalism has a close connection to Sufism, and thus to Islam, any philosophy that longs for the good old days when fundamentalist religion ruled the cultural roost has to be looked at with a wary eye after 9/11/2001. Especially after 11/2/2004, because the American religious right would exchange hearty high-fives with most of the tenets of Traditionalism—leaving aside the minor detail of whether Islam or Christianity is the traditional religion that we bow down to.

Anyway, the essay wasn’t at all what “Sacred Web” wanted, as I ended up being much more supportive of science than the editor had anticipated. That was rejection #1. I then sent a shorter version of the essay off to “Science and Spirit” magazine, figuring that my title was right up their alley. That was rejection #2.

So now I say, screw this one at a time rejection business, I’ll put the piece up on the Internet for everyone in the whole world to ignore simultaneously. Or not, depending on the whims of Google, Google-searchers, and HinesSight readers. It’s fairly serious, because I had to write it in a quasi scholarly journal style. But it also will be of interest to anyone interested in the via negativa approach to spirituality—emptying your consciousness of what isn’t real so what remains is.

Why did I decide to put it up today after years of languishing on a hard disk? OK, I’ll admit it: I just bought a $20 program that makes PDF files, and I had to try it out.

If a PDF creator has been missing in your life, check out Tracker Software’s free trials. I got the “Lite” version. You just click “print” in Word, choose the virtual PDF “printer,” and, voila, a PDF file is produced. Real simple, real slick. There might be better cheap/free PDF creation software, but so far I like this one.

Please God, no more sky-pointing

Last night I decided that a total eclipse of the moon was more common than the Red Sox winning the World Series, so I dashed inside at 8:00 pm to finish watching the real wonder of the evening. The last innings were as satisfying as I had hoped. For while my Red Sox fandom only began eight games ago, when they were down three-zip to the Yankees, it has been as genuine as it has been brief.

It’s easy to like a team that calls themselves “idiots.” The linked article says, “Last year's Red Sox used the theme ‘Cowboy Up’ in the regular season before they went belly up in the playoffs against the Yankees. This week, Damon declared they were down on ‘Cowboy Up’ and instead were just ‘idiots’ with bad hair and slovenly uniforms who were out for fun on the field. ‘We're all idiots here,’ Ortiz said. ‘We all have fun. We all hug, kiss, grab, whatever.’

Unfortunately, one of the “whatevers” is a curse of modern-day athletics: pointing skyward in a God-praising gesture after scoring a touchdown, making a tackle, hitting a home run, striking out a batter, whatever [linked article is Google cache, to avoid registration]. Watching Red Sox players engage in this irritating ritual was the only fly in the ointment of an otherwise enjoyable World Series.

The worst example I saw featured an individual sky-pointing as a Red Sox “idiot” (in this case, a term richly deserved) rounded the bases after a home run, followed by a communal sky-pointing after he reached the dugout. He and a few other Christian teammates crouched, bent their heads together, and then pointed a bunch of index fingers at, presumably, where they think heaven lies.

I never saw God similarly thanked after a Red Sox player struck out or made an error. The idea that God is aiding the fortunes of one team, and not the other, is obviously ridiculous. Given that, in the big scheme of things, major league sports also is ridiculous, this sky-pointing business wouldn’t be a big deal for me except…it reflects an overall attitude among a disturbingly large number of Christians that God plays favorites.

George Bush clearly feels that God has chosen him to bring freedom to the Middle East, and that the United States has a special God-given mission in the world. This is no different in kind from a baseball player believing that God wanted and enabled him to hit a baseball out of the park, or to strike out an opposing player. Yet if God has the power to bring things that people consider “good,” then God also has the power to bring “bad” things.

In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart put it nicely: “Now I hear you ask, ‘How do I know that it is God’s will? My answer is that if it were not God’s will even for a moment, then it would not exist. Whatever is must be his will. If God’s will is pleasing to you, then whatever happens to you, or does not happen to you, will be heaven.”

Last night I found Johnny Damon’s first inning home run to be the epitome of genuine athletic good character. The long-haired Damon didn’t raise a finger, or even display much emotion. He simply ran around the bases with his head down. When he got to the dugout he exchanged a few hugs and high-fives with his teammates, but he looked like a calm, centered man who knew that all he had done was hit a first-inning home run in a baseball game that was a long way from being decided. And it is a game for God’s sake, not the Second Coming.

Thank you, Johnny, for acting like a real Christian, whether or not you are one. I hope your attitude rubs off on your ebullient sky-pointing brethren.

I become a Taoist

I’ve decided to convert to Taoism. In accord with the spirit of my new faith, I’m taking my conversion pretty lightly. Probably I’ve always been a Taoist. Probably everyone is. But who cares whether what I just said makes any sense or not? This is the nice thing about Taoism. One of the early Taoist sages, Chuang Tzu, is called the “genius of the absurd.”

He’s famous for saying that he dreamed he was a butterfly, then awoke and was himself again. But he didn’t know whether formerly there had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or if now there was a butterfly dreaming that it was a man.

I feel just as confused much of the time. So, rather than worry about it, by embracing Taoism I’m converting a liability into an asset. Taoism, I read today in my formerly unread copy of “Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism” (by N.J. Girardot), is really big on chaos, hun-tun. Chaos is the root of order. Chaos and cosmos are two inseparable sides of the same pancake of ultimate reality.

I don’t quite get everything Girardot is saying here, but I sure like the “grinning gulf” image: Chaos as grinning gulf, the yawning dawn of creation, is therefore the very basis of a cosmogonic process that manifests itself in the gestalt of a trinitarian form—a formless form that because of its emptiness mysteriously links the uncreated one and the created two into a meaningful whole.

He goes on, less intellectually now: The gulf spontaneously created by the primal grin of formless matter is the empty source of the light and sound of created nature and human culture. It is not, however, polite to grin with a gaping mouth at a formal banquet….Even though there are times when a gentleman may feel a sudden urge to scratch and yawn, the ritual rule of civilized decorum rests on the idea that it is the idea that it is the appearance of cool control that counts. Taoists, as I will try to show, tend to grin somewhat idiotically while slurping their soup.

Now, this is a religion-that-isn’t-a-religion for me. Grinning idiotically. Slurping soup. Right up my alley.

Last week I went shopping at the south Salem Roth’s Vista Market. I selected some peaches and grapes. I paid for them at the checkout counter. I was given a credit card receipt that, suddenly, filled me with amazement. I had never realized before how the Vista Market receipt came in three pieces, one to be signed and returned, one plugging discount gas in Stayton or somewhere, and one for me to take home.

I was fascinated with how the two pieces I was given held together so delicately, clinging to each other by one fragile receipt corner. How rare! How marvelous! A VISA receipt of such delicacy! I walked out of the store mesmerized by the marvel that I couldn’t stop staring at.

Crossing the parking lot to my car, I suddenly had a strange feeling. Was I merely a shopper returning home with a two-part receipt, or was the receipt meant to bring me home with some shopping? I turned around, only to run into a green-jacketed Roth’s bagger running toward me.

How felicitous, this meeting! She was holding a bag of fruit, and I wanted a bag of fruit. Great is the Tao.

Am I an increasingly forgetful old fart, or am I a nascent Taoist sage? I’d rather consider myself the latter than the former, which helps explain my conversion to Taoism. Chuang Tzu tells a wonderful story about the benefits of forgetfulness:

Take the case of a drunken man falling from his carriage: though he may suffer injury he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other men, but the injury which he receives is different: his spirit is entire.

He knew nothing about getting into the carriage and nothing about falling from it. The thought of death or life, or of any alarm or affright, does not enter his breast. Therefore he encounters danger without shrinking from it. Completely under the influence of the liquor he had drunk, it is thus with him.

How much more would it be so if he were under the influence of his Heavenly constitution! The sagely man is kept hid in his Heavenly constitution and therefore nothing can injure him.

Ah, to be spiritually drunk 24 hours a day. I’ve got a ways to go. I’m still remembering things that I’ve forgotten. When I get all of the way home without my groceries I will have attained more to Taoist wisdom, and when I can’t recall whether I went shopping or not I will be further on the Way.

Got to keep working on my idiotic grinning. Taoism asks so much of me.

“Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”

If your fantasy is to live an exceedingly simple Buddhist life on a floating temple in the middle of a beautiful lake, this movie is for you. Set in Korea and spoken in Korean (with English subtitles), it was reviewed in Spirituality and Health magazine, which demonstrates its uplifting credentials.

However, Laurel was disappointed that the SSFWS DVD we rented didn’t match her expectations. She thought that the movie would be non-stop Buddhist inspiration, languorous images of water lilies, meditative chanting, strolls through unspoiled nature, that sort of thing.

Yes, SSFWS has much of this, but the central theme is the relationship between an adult Buddhist monk and his protégé, who experiences some rough lessons during his passage through life’s seasons (the movie is divided into five parts, each set during one of the seasons in the title, but many years pass as the young monk grows to take the place of his master—not just fifteen months).

Here’s some impressions “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring” left with me:

(1) I liked how, at the end of the movie, the young monk practiced martial art exercises so assiduously without having any intent to use his skills in any martial way. Rather, he was building up strength and will for a karma-cleansing trek up a tall mountain, dragging a heavy stone behind him all the way. During my traditional Shotokan karate training years we students would be asked by the sensei, “What is the purpose of karate?!” And we would reply, “Perfection of character!!” Exactly.

(2) The next time I get bored because I can’t find a movie on the six channels of HBO that we get via our DISH receiver, I’ll picture myself living on the floating temple. No TV. No newspapers except what food occasionally comes wrapped in. No books in evidence. Very few visitors. Barely any contact with the outside world. “What do you want to do today?” the old monk asks at the beginning of the movie. “I want to go pick herbs!” says the boy monk. That’s the day’s big excitement.

Things perk up when the monk gets older (and testosterone-fueled) and a sick girl stays at the temple for healing purposes. Plus other purposes, it turns out. On the whole, though, SSFWS shows the True Simple Life. Who of us addicted to modern 24/7 media—TV, radio, Internet—could live happily this way? I wish I could, but I’m pretty certain I’d be running screaming to Seoul for a big screen television and high-speed broadband after a few days of herb picking.

(3) Nonetheless, I’d like to fashion a floating temple in the middle of my own pool of consciousness. A place I could retire to whenever I wanted. When the world would become too much with him, the young monk would sit before a stone Buddha and rapidly strike a piece of wood with a stick. Clap, clap, clap, clap. A percussive mantra. Listen to the sound of one stick clapping and all else fades away.

I’ve practiced mantra meditation for more years than I’d like to admit, given how disturbingly slowly I’ve been able to improve my practice. The scenes in the movie of both the old and young monk holding the piece of wood next to an ear and striking it rhythmically gave me a fresh image of what repeating a mantra is all about. Hard to put into words though—that’s why it’s an image.

Yesterday we got a flat tire on the Volvo when we got back to Salem, after driving all the way from central Oregon. Today I was exercising at the athletic club, watching the news while stepping away on a machine, and a news flash came on: “Florida Supreme Court allows Nader on the ballot.” Both events threatened to produce a mini-tidal wave in my previously mostly calm consciousness.

Then…clap, clap, clap, clap. I was able to get my consciousness back to a semblance of a still center in the eye of the worldly hurricane. Those winds outside of us never stop blowing. I’ll be driven crazy if I let myself drift wherever the current of a nail on Commercial Street or a headline on Fox News takes me. Clap, clap, clap, clap. A mantra returns me to the center. Bull’s-eye. Everything moves around that, and I can enjoy the motion without being caught up in it.

There’s an interview with Garry Shandling in the September 20 issue of TIME magazine. Who knew the star of HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show” had such Buddhist depths? Here’s an excerpt:

“You do a lot of meditating?”
“I’ve been meditating for about 20 years—a kind of Zen Buddhist meditation—and never talked about it because no one understood. And now of course it’s become part of our culture and we see Buddhas in storefront windows. It’s weird to me that I do that and happen to be funny. I still can’t figure that part out. It’s feeling the deep impermanence of life and yet seeing the funny, impermanent side of life. Because it’s all a joke.”

Yes. Clap, clap, clap, clap. That helps us hear the punch line. Nails in the tire. Nader on the ballot. From one point of view, the real point of view, it’s all funny. All a joke. I look forward to being able to smile through the entire day no matter what happens.

Clap, clap, clap, clap. What a great show!

The clouds speak to me

During a Metolius River walk with Serena this afternoon I paused to lay on my back in the grass and see what the passing clouds had to say to me.

Right away it was evident they could read my mind. Yes, I do have a question. Might as well ask the Big One: What is the meaning of life?

And the next cloud that came by had the answer: “I” Hmmmm. Quite profound. Hindus say, “Atman (soul) is Brahman (God). Moses was told by God, “I am that I am.” I am God, the clouds tell me. I like it!

Then, a wrinkle appears in my so-easy-god-realization. A hole. Emptiness. Must rid myself of ego to become the divine. OK. Whatever you say, sky. You’re doing the talking today, not me.

I started walking again, so happy that the clouds had given me such an unambiguous message. Henceforth I would pursue my meditation with more vigor and more humility. The heavens had spoken!

But suddenly I looked up and saw…Larry, of the Three Stooges. Clearly. Without a doubt. Is a cosmic joke at the heart of reality? Were the cloud gods telling me to laugh at how I had taken them so seriously?

Then the Id made its appearance in the Central Oregon sky. Elemental phallus pointing me toward…what? Are we born only to lust, to screw, to have children, to die? Could the meaning of life just be the urge of DNA to reproduce itself? Am I that base, that crude, that physical?

Perhaps. For the last image I saw before putting Serena in the car to drive back to the cabin was, unmistakably, very large breasts. Nice.

I happily envisioned spending eternity with the Sky Goddess.

But then I looked in another direction and realized that I had been missing the most obvious truth in the heavens. Still, it was a fun ride sitting still and seeing the clouds go by. Sort of like watching thoughts pass in my stream of consciousness.

Which, of course, was what all this was.

Got a good fried cat recipe?

Here it is, Labor Day weekend coming up, nice Oregon weather forecast, outdoor eating time! And I can’t find a good recipe for fried cat. Damn. Been trying to figure out why Google, for once, has failed me. Best I could do was a song parody, and a warning that if you’re selling fried catfish, a partially burnt out neon sign isn’t good for business. I’m beginning to think that fried cat isn’t a very popular dish.

But fried chicken…over a million search results, and plenty of recipes. Funny. Aren’t cats and chickens both animals? Aren’t both non-human? Don’t both lack the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that American Homo sapiens citizens enjoy? So why do so many people eat chickens and apparently nobody eats cats?

Having been a vegetarian for nigh on twenty-five years now, and having written a non-commercial book (“Life is Fair”) that was published in India about the spiritual rationale for vegetarianism, I’ve given a lot of thought over the years to such questions. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how people dearly love to care for some animals, and dearly love to eat other animals.

For a few days this week we were the quasi-owners of Kitty, the non-creative yet utterly apt name I called this gentle sweet soul who was sitting in our carport when we returned from Indiana. Kitty was hugely happy to see us, even though Kitty and we had never met before. A few pats turned on the purring, and we were instant good friends.

With the dog coming home from the kennel the next day, we didn’t want to encourage Kitty to stay around. So, reluctantly, I didn’t feed her/him. Laurel phoned many of our neighbors to see if Kitty belonged to them. No luck, but we learned that a similar-looking cat had turned up at the house next door about a month ago.

Seemed that someone had dumped a couple of unwanted cats out in the country, as so often happens. Hopefully there is a special (hot) place in hell reserved for these folks. With all the coyotes around here, a tame house cat with no place to spend the night indoors isn’t going to last very long.

When Serena came home, we soon learned that Kitty was disturbingly unafraid of dogs, even a dog lunging at the end of its leash, eager to have some fun with a new cat toy. So Laurel eventually had to spray Kitty with a hose to get her/him out of our yard and Serena-snapping range. As luck would have it, the phone rang not long after a soggy Kitty had darted into the brush.

One of the neighbors Laurel had called was interested in adopting Kitty. They recently had lost a cat to old age, had seen Kitty briefly hanging around their house, and thought she//he would be a good feline replacement. A cat carrier was brought over to our house in hopes that Kitty would make a re-appearance.

That evening, no sign of Kitty. I called and called, using the best name I knew: “Here, Kitty, Kitty.” Bowls of dog food, cat food, milk, and water were put out. Still no Kitty. I felt terrible. After a month roaming the countryside Kitty finally had a lock on a good home, and I visualized the cat now being run over by a car or eaten by a coyote, all because we chased Kitty away with a hose.

Fortunately, Kitty showed up the next morning. The dog food was a big hit, and even the organic non-fat milk was palatable after some finicky sniffing. I fixed her up in the garage and Laurel phoned the adopting family. A half hour later Kitty was bundled up in the cat carrier on her way to a new home. Nice to have a happy ending to an abandoned cat tale.

But there are so many other unhappy endings for other animals, the animals dog and cat lovers unthinkingly eat every day. Do you know how pigs, cattle, chickens, and the like are raised? Do you know how they are killed? Before you go to KFC, or fill up your shopping cart with some fryers, take a look at this Kentucky Fried Cruelty web site.

We’re not vegetarian zealots. I just feel that people who claim to be animal lovers should consider whether they really are, if they eat meat. Meat comes from animals, you know. And animals don’t like to be killed. If you think they do, take out a butcher knife and start to slit the throat of your dog or cat. If you can’t bring yourself to do that, spend a little time pondering the consistency of your philosophical position.

“I love some animals. I have other animals killed for me so I can eat them.” Doesn’t make sense to me. Does it to you, really?

Sacrifice religion for God

It isn’t often that I recommend a 300 page book after reading just 30 pages. But I can already tell that “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason” is a book well worth recommending. I’d been feeling listless all day until I took a first look at Sam Harris’ warnings against religion. Right away I felt energized. Brutally honest words can do that to you, especially when well-written, as Harris’ book is.

I sense that Harris is a kindred spirit. He’s working on a doctorate in neuroscience, so his mind is attuned to the scientific method. And he has a fondness for mysticism, judging by a concluding chapter, “Experiments in Consciousness.” Harris says, “Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognized something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is subject to rational discussion.”

A San Francisco Chronicle book reviewer takes issue with this elevation of mysticism over religion, but I agree with Harris. Consciousness is something directly accessible by every human. And the contents of consciousness also can be directly manipulated by any person who wants to experiment within his or her own psyche.

Sure, meditation is damnably difficult. Few people can successfully conduct the experiments in consciousness described by the great mystics. But at least we are dealing here with something concrete and undeniably real, as contrasted with religious talk of God—which is almost always hearsay, distant reports of what someone else supposedly experienced hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Harris says, “The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.” In the first chapter he suggests an interesting thought experiment: imagine that all six billion people in the world wake up one day with no knowledge of the world. Wisdom would have to be recreated from scratch. Where would we start? How would we relearn what we know now? Which currently widely-held religious tenets would be reincarnated, and which would have died, never to be reborn?

He writes, “When in this process of reclaiming our humanity will it be important to know that Jesus was born of a virgin? Or that he was resurrected? And how would we relearn these truths, if they are indeed true?”

Along these lines, I have my own thought experiment that I often like to ponder. It leads to the same conclusions Harris comes to, but from another direction—from deep outer space. Imagine that beings from a highly advanced extra-galactic civilization make a visit to Earth. The challenge is to communicate with them. Where do you start with a being whose culture, history, experience, knowledge is so utterly different from your own? What common ground do you share? What is the Rosetta Stone that enables you to translate your concepts into their concepts?

Well, it seems obvious that this would be: reality. Earthly scientists likely would have little difficulty beginning to communicate with their extra-terrestrial counterparts. For even if their representation of a hydrogen atom, say, was unlike that familiar to human physicists, it wouldn’t take long to form a common understanding of a entity that exists both on our planet and in a distant galaxy: hydrogen.

But what of God? How would our religious leaders be able to establish any sort of common ground with these beings? Almost certainly they would have no experience of anything akin to our Bible, Koran, Adi Granth, Talmud, Upanishads, or any other scripture. Even more: I like to imagine that they would have no conception at all of religion as we know it. They would only be familiar with a single entity, reality, what exists. What doesn’t exist, but what earthly religions believe exists, would be utterly foreign to them.

So could there be any communication about religious or spiritual matters with these beings? Yes, since both they and we are conscious. In the realm of what we call metaphysics, pure consciousness would be our common ground, not the cultural/historical contents of consciousness that forms the foundation of the religions on our planet.

I like to think that the advanced mystics of Earth and these extra-galactic visitors eventually would have a grand old time sharing their experiences of God, ultimate reality. But there wouldn’t be a trace of religion in these communications of consciousness.

Religion has to be sacrificed on the Altar of Truth to know God. Such is how it always has been; such is how it always will be. Sadly, though, most people would rather worship Belief, which is why Harris’ call for an end to religion won’t be widely heeded.

Plotinus and me: Spirituality is seeing, not believing

One of the worst things about writing is that your thoughts are visible, always to yourself and often to others. This also is one of the best things about writing. Worst, best? To me it depends on how honest my writing is, and how well my words comport with my actions.

I hate to re-read something I’ve written and realize that I don’t believe my own words. Yet, even if I’ve written something true to my beliefs, it is painful to read if I’m not acting as if I believe my purported beliefs. Is there anything worse than hypocrisy? Well, a root canal comes to mind.

But physical pain is direct and true. The mental pain of hypocrisy is more bothersome because it can’t be faced directly. My hurt rankles in a corner of my psyche that I don’t want to enter. No relief is possible when the patient hides in the shadows.

This afternoon I was happily reading some critiques of Ken Wilber’s books, as I’ve been asked to write an essay about how Plotinus’s teachings relate to Wilber’s “integral” philosophy. I was trying to better understand why I frequently pen question marks in the margins of Wilber’s “A Brief History of Everything” even though Plotinus is lauded as a 3rd century exemplar of what integral philosophizing is all about.

I nodded appreciatively when one critique noted that while Wilber claims an intuitive spiritual apprehension is the only way to know ultimate reality, his arguments to support this claim are closely reasoned and highly intellectual. So is Wilber really practicing what he is preaching?

In the same vein, another critique questioned whether Wilber has directly experienced the higher mystic truths that he pontificates about. Wilber doesn’t speak much about his own spiritual experiences, but he isn’t loath to put forward confident and detailed descriptions of God’s nature and criticize others who don’t share his views. What gives him the right?

At first I smugly enjoyed reading these “the emperor has no clothes!” critiques, just as I am rooting for each and every basketball team in the Olympics to beat the unduly cocky (until they lost to Puerto Rico) United States squad. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing the unjustifiably proud and mighty brought down to earth?

But then I felt the boomerang of my smugness circle around and strike me in the back of my head. “Good god,” I said to myself. “What has been rightly said about Wilber could just as correctly be said about me. Haven’t I written almost 400 pages about a mystic philosopher who taught that the highest reality is far beyond words? Didn’t I claim that Plotinus’s teachings are true without ever having experienced the truth of those claims?”

For a few minutes I felt a serious depression coming on. Why the hell did I spend several years writing a book that amounts to nothing more than guesses about God? Isn’t this sort of religious presumption what I railed on about for page after page, arguing for the supremacy of Plotinus’s empirical/experimental approach to spirituality over the usual religious dogma/faith approach?

Doubt was setting in. Which is fine, if doubt is justified. However, I then recalled that the central concluding message in “Return to the One” is that vision is its own veracity. When a mystic sees, really sees, what is seen essentially is identical with the seer—with vision itself. It isn’t belief that leads to God, the One. Oneness leads to the One.

I didn’t feel so hypocritical when I remembered that, unlike Wilber, along with Plotinus I never claim that any rational description of divinity bears any resemblance to divinity as it actually is. And I let Plotinus’s first-hand descriptions of his mystical experiences do the talking, not my own (fortunately, for otherwise I’d necessarily be nearly mute).

I re-read some of my own words. Thankfully, they sounded fine.

“So we arrive at a classic chicken-and-egg situation that has vociferous adherents on both sides of the question. Do our beliefs about life flow from our actual life experiences or do our actual life experiences flow from our beliefs? This question can be framed as a choice between ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ which assumes the primacy of experience, and ‘I’ll see it when I believe it,’ which assumes the primacy of belief.

“…If I’m on a sinking ship, my belief that there may be lifejackets aboard will lead me to look for one in the storage locker. However, that belief won’t produce a life jacket if none are on the ship. When I open the locker, what I see doesn’t depend on what I subjectively believe is inside; it depends on what is objectively there.

“…Hence, the best thought is the concept that leads to no further thoughts, the best emotion is the feeling that leads to no further emotions, and the best perception is the sensation that leads to no further perceptions—at least during the period of contemplation when we seek to experience spirit and the One, the All. In essence, the only belief a spiritual seeker should aim to retain is, ‘I will see it when I stop believing in, and seeing, what is not it.’”

All quotations are from “Return to the One,” by yours truly.

Life as a vapor trail

Lying in my Camp Sherman hammock, a jet flies overhead, lit by the setting sun. Passing through an opening framed by the branches of Ponderosa pines, the jet and its vapor trail leave as quickly as they came. Soon, no trace.

I find myself going back in time two hundred years. I am an Indian staring at the same patch of sky. I see a hawk, not a jet, coursing across the heavens. Now I leap ahead two hundred years. I am a child of the future watching the passage of an anti-gravity hovercraft.

The jet of the present is as far removed from the hawk of the past as is the hovercraft of the future. What could not be even distantly conceived by the Indian is equally far from my current imagination. I am making up an image of the sky transport of 2204 from science fiction movies I have seen and novels I have read. Almost certainly the future truth will be so different from my present fantasy as to make my musings laughable.

“In 2004 this is how they thought our 22nd century would be like,” the unimaginable media of that time will write, or speak, or image, or beam directly into people’s minds. They will marvel at how primitive we were. Jets! They traveled on sub-sonic jets, all jammed together in teeny-tiny seats, taking hours to cross the continent.

For our six days in Camp Sherman we didn’t watch any television. No television to watch, that’s why. But we didn’t even drag out the TV/VCR combination to entertain ourselves with the recorded episodes that I had brought of Six Feet Under, Nip/Tuck, Joan of Arcadia, The Man Show.

The world wasn’t too much with us for almost a week. Nature, supplemented by some books, magazines, and a daily newspaper, filled the psychic spaces that normally are inhabited by the evening news, Nightline, the Daily Show, Air America. We slowed down. Our indignation at the day’s events was at least a day behind, for our news cycle was that much removed from present reality (apart from some brief forays onto CNN.com when I couldn’t resist taking a peek at News Now.)

If life indeed is a vapor trail, and what I care so much about today didn’t exist in the past, nor will it in the future, then why is it so important to me now? The human watching the hawk two hundred years ago wasn’t concerned with George H.W. Bush, John Kerry, gay marriage, Iraq, global warming. And neither will the human watching the “hovercraft” (for lack of a better word) two hundred years from now.

Lying in that hammock, I had an all-too-brief and all-too-blurry glimpse of how the world really is. How it is, at least, when I look at it not through the lens of my constricted, confined, confused consciousness, but with a clarified vision that takes in much more of the territory that extends so far beyond the little corner of the space-time continuum that normally occupies all of my attention.

This too will pass. What “this”? Everything. The 2004 election. War on terror. Me. You. Vapor trails. Summer. Winter. Planet Earth. Our galaxy. Most likely, the entire universe.

This too will remain. What “this”? Ah, that’s the big question. Now we enter the realm of the spirits. It is much easier to point to what changes than to what stays the same.

A hawk flies across the sky. Then, a jet. And now, a hovercraft. Different eyes, different world, same empty sky. Perhaps, a lesson.

A nuclear winter blankets the planet. No birds fly. Nor any machines. No one is around to see the sky. No sky to see, anyway. But something is there where the clear sky was on August 11, 2004, captured by a 55 year old Oregonian lying in a hammock with an Olympus Stylus 300 in his hand.

The day is gone. The man is gone. The camera is gone. The hammock is gone. Earth as we know it, all gone. Something remains. That’s what I want to know: what remains?

Someday, perhaps, I will know the answer. For now, it’s enough to have a glimpse of what doesn’t remain: everything. Sure is easier to watch the evening news with that idea in mind.

Plotinus and me: To think or not to think?

To think or not to think, that indeed is the question—the endlessly repeated question that consciously or unconsciously gets asked and answered almost every waking moment. I spend a lot of time pondering the pluses and minuses of thinking, though not infrequently a still small intuitive voice inside of me whispers, “Are you using the right tool for this investigatory job?”

Thinking about thinking is a peculiarly human enterprise. Even if animals think, that seems to be the end of the road. I don’t see any sign that our dog agonizes whether she is too attached to thoughts of chasing chipmunks and squirrels. Serena just fully does what she does, and when she isn’t doing one thing she is doing some other thing. Seemingly she has no regrets about the past or frets about the future. Her dog mind isn’t divided. I envy her.

Not that I want a dog consciousness. But I’d like to have a truly human consciousness, which to me is synonymous with “soul.” The 3rd century Greek philosopher Plotinus follows right along in the tradition of the great contemplative traditions (such as Buddhism and Christian mysticism) when he says, “The soul experiences its falling away from being one and is not altogether one when it has reasoned knowledge of anything; for reasoned knowledge is a rational process, and a rational process is many.”

As I wrote in my book, “Reason would be a wonderful vehicle if it could get us to our final destination: lasting wisdom and well-being. But the danger, says Plotinus, is that we mistake the movement of all those thoughts in our heads for actual progress.” Just prior to those lines is one of my favorite passages in the book, two sentences that I remember writing without recourse to reason. They just flowed out of me. I’d like to always be immersed in the pool of consciousness they came from.

“When someone responds to a broken silence with, ‘You interrupted my train of thought,’ they are speaking truly. Generally that train keeps on rolling down the track of each person’s consciousness almost all of his or her waking hours, spewing out thick plumes of ideas and prodigious sparks of inspiration, a noisy rolling mental thunder that, strangely, never makes much progress in spite of all its frenzied motion.”

Ever since I started studying yoga and meditation in 1969, for the past thirty-five years I’ve engaged in some sort of mantra repetition. You know, the repeating over and over of some word or words in order to still the mind. A well-known Christian mantra is “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.” The most famous Hindu mantra is “Om,” or “Aum.” In the ‘70s you couldn’t go to the airport without hearing “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare, Hare.”

I’m still trying to figure out what a mantra is good for, which probably shows that I haven’t learned much, spiritually speaking, in those thirty-five years. Or, maybe I have. I’ve mantra’d away like crazy for months on end, and I’ve let the mantra slide for months on end. And in the end? I seem to be the same Brian I was before.

I’m beginning to suspect that a single thought (which describes a mantra, using “thought” as meaning any self-produced content of consciousness) is still a thought. And the thought of a thing is not that thing. Hence, thinking about thinking takes us farther afield from the simple truth of thinking; and thinking anything at all takes us farther afield from the simple truth of undivided consciousness—or “soul” if you like.

Plotinus points out the obvious: Whatever we want, we want that, not a thought of that. And this includes my own self, of course. If I want to be true to my self, I have to be my self, not a thought of my self. Concerning the Good, or God, Plotinus says, “For in general thought, if it is of the Good, is worse than it….But being clear of thought it is purely what it is, not hindered by the presence of thought from being pure and one.”

So I’m trying to learn how to simply live life, rather than thinking about myself living life. I strongly suspect that I could get through the day just fine with, oh, about 5% of the thoughts that normally course through my head. Most of the time I could just see, and hear, and feel, and touch, and smell, and go about doing whatever needs doing without adding an overlay of self-awareness to my already evident awareness.

Really, I should listen to my own advice:

“It isn’t necessary to go through life as a sort of double image: a me that does things and a largely unnecessary hanger-on inside my head who watches and comments on the doer. The internal mental dialogue most people take for granted is akin to a play-by-play announcer who never stops gabbing about what is happening on the field of our awareness. The problem is that I already know what is going on because I’m directly experiencing it. I should be able to simply wash the dishes without an inner voice telling me the obvious: ‘I’m washing the dishes.’”

Less thinking, more living. Now, there’s a mantra. Not to be repeated, but to be experienced.

All quotations are from “Return to the One,” by yours truly.

Church of the Churchless

Fame? Hah. Money? Hah-hah. Creative compulsion? Um, closer. But one of the real reasons I like to write books is being able to have conversations with like-minded souls, such as artist/philosopher/writer Patricia Herron, whom I had the good-fortune to chat with at the south Salem Beanery coffee shop this afternoon.

Right away I knew that we had been around the same spiritual bends. That doesn’t mean either of us is close to our destination, but there was no doubt that we’ve traveled similar courses. It isn’t often that I can talk so smoothly about what is most succinctly described as “far out stuff” with someone I’ve just met. Yet I felt totally comfortable sharing experiences, ideas, frustrations, and god-knows-what-else in our 90 minutes together.

I think Patricia is a candidate for membership in a new church that Laurel and I have often talked about forming: the Church of the Churchless. This would be a place for the placeless, a congregation for those who have no one else to congregate with. We’d have no dogmas, no rituals, no clergy, no sacred texts. We’d just be people seeking metaphysical truth who can’t feel truly comfortable in any existing religious or spiritual organization.

[P.S. in November: this posting was the spark that led me to open a cyberspace Church of the Churchless--the door is open and sermons in praise of spiritual independence have begun to be preached. All are welcome.]

Huge crowds wouldn’t flock to the Church of the Churchless. Most seekers of the divine are happy belonging to whatever they belong to, and believing whatever comes along with that belonging. Then there are people like Patricia, Laurel, and me who can’t be content with ceremonies, concepts, blind faith, hierarchies that come between us and the absolute reality that we believe is not only within us—we’re darn sure it is us.

This morning I started re-reading one of Bernadette Roberts’ books, The Path to No-Self: Life at the Center. Roberts is a modern mystic who seemingly has had some profound transformational experiences and writes about them with great honesty and clarity. She likes to use St. John of the Cross and other Christian mystics to help her understand her inner experiences. Today I came across something I hadn’t thought of before: alone is al-one. “Al,” my dictionary tells me, has an Indo-European root meaning of “beyond.” But I prefer to think of “Al-one” in an Arabic sense, The One.

If the best name for God is the One, as Plotinus and countless other mystics say it is, then a person has to be absolutely al-one to know Al-One. “Alone to the alone,” says Plotinus. That’s not exactly the stuff that most people consider spiritual dreams to be made of, but I’m convinced that it is exactly the path that leads most directly to Truth with a capital “T.”

However, aloneness is scary. Hardly anyone likes to be physically alone for very long, isolated from other people. And mental aloneness is even scarier, existing without the companionship of all the thoughts, emotions, conceptions, imaginations, images, and what-not that usually continually course through our consciousnesses and keep us company. Roberts says that this is a big part of what produces the Dark Night of the Soul—the realization that all of our beliefs are just that, beliefs. Not reality. Not a solid foundation that will support us when death comes. Not direct experience of what lies beyond all that we know now. Just beliefs. Shadows, reflections, mirages, nothing to be counted on.

Strangely, as Patricia and I talked about today, it is Nothing with a capital “N” that we can count on, for real reality is beyond any and all conceptions of it. So if we have the guts to set aside all that we currently take to be real, but isn’t, what is left is… Well, who can say? I’ve haven’t experienced it. But whatever it is, I am almost 100% sure that it isn’t anything that can be put into words, thoughts, or images, or anything else that can be shared with other people.

Mysticism is really strange. That’s why it’s mystical. All the great mystics say that it takes being truly al-one, separated from all that is physical and all that is personal, to realize that we aren’t alone at all, but one with Al-One—the One, God.

Well, I guess this is my first sermon from the Church of the Churchless. Unlike typical sermons, you’re free—no, encouraged—to disagree with it. To stamp your feet, hiss and boo, walk out on it. The only mortal sin recognized by the Church of the Churchless is blind faith, accepting someone else’s words at face value, not using your own god-given reason and intuition to sort out truth from falsehood.

Patricia suggested that I consider submitting an essay for a book that she and some other folks are putting together that examines the Integral theories of Ken Wilber in comparison with literature “from all periods, all cultures and languages.” Hey, I’ve read several of Ken Wilber’s books, and you certainly can drive Plotinus through the wide open door of all periods, all cultures and languages.

I feel another sermon coming on.

Sadly, ego-loss didn’t arrive in the mail

I had been waiting and waiting for ego-loss to arrive in the mail. When the envelope finally was delivered on Saturday you can imagine how excited I was. I’ve been meditating every day for nigh on thirty-five years, and so far I’ve made scant progress in laying aside that devilishly strong “Me! Me! Me!” part of me that doesn’t want to stop thinking about Me, Me, Me.

But I was expecting that one glance at what was inside the envelope was going to produce a short-cut to satori land. For this was a copy of an article that I had written for a spiritual magazine, “RS Greetings,” as noted in a weblog posting a few months back. I’d been told that the magazine was going to publish the article, but I had let my subscription lapse. So a friend told me when the issue came out and agreed to send me a copy of my piece.

What does this have to do with ego-loss? Well, the magazine’s editor had told me that it was now their policy to not print authors' names, so I was going to be Anonymous. Not even that, actually. Just blank. I argued some with her, not so much because I love to see my name in print (though I do), but because this magazine is published by a group called “Science of the Soul.” What kind of a science is it, I asked, that puts forth anonymous “research findings”?

Admittedly, my article was more humorous than serious. Still, I tried to make some substantive points about the nature of happiness, and why material things usually don’t bring us the satisfaction we expect they will. I might have made some errors in what I said. I might quoted somebody incorrectly. I might have misinterpreted some happiness research. I might have drawn the wrong conclusions from the articles I cited.

If I did any of these things, I’d like to know about it from someone more knowledgeable than me. Heck, even if they weren’t more knowledgeable and simply disagreed with me about something, I’d like to know about that too. So I told the editor that their Anonymous policy prevented readers from offering valuable feedback, and from authors learning from those readers. That’s the way of science, open discussion and review of purported findings.

The magazine powers-that-be apparently felt, however, that not publishing authors’ names was spiritually healthy. I guess not being recognized for a charitable article contribution earns more karmic Humble Points than having your name attached to it. OK, I could sort of understand that.

So I was eager to find out what would happen when I opened the envelope and didn’t see my name associated with the article. I’ve seen enough movies to fantasize about what might happen: as I tear open the seal, a bright light glows from within and flows out of the envelope, enveloping me, appropriately enough, in a cozy warm cocoon of enlightenment.

Or so I hoped. Sadly, my first glance was of a misspelled article title that I had labored to come up with. It’s “enlightenment” not “enlightment”! Then, I had an irresistible urge to get a big thick pen and write in my name. Guess the ego-loss thing didn’t work.

So I learned that there is no short cut to enlightenment. Or even enlightment. Guess I’ll have to take the long route, which I probably would traverse a lot more quickly if I took to heart the great cartoon that Bart Goldman drew--included at the end of the article. Bart and I collaborated on a series of cartoons some years ago, he supplying all the artistic talent and me supplying some concepts. Glad one of them finally got to be published.

For those interested, here’s another copy of my “Secrets of Happiness” a.k.a. “My Mini Enlightenment” article. It’s the same as in previous posting, but hopefully formatted to be easier to read.
Download rs_greetings_article_204.doc

Why Jesus couldn’t have been married to Mary

Today I experienced within my consciousness one of those supernova bursts of enlightened understanding that dazzle me with my own brilliance (though not, it must be admitted, with my own humility). For I have discovered an unarguable answer to the controversial question posed by Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code”: Was Jesus married? Specifically, to Mary Magdalene.

No. This is an impossibility. For in the time Jesus spent on this earthly plane he came to be considered as the perfect Son of God by those who knew him most intimately. Hence, ergo, thusly, Jesus could not have been married, as “perfection” and “husband” are utterly incompatible concepts. Ask any wife.

I rest my iron-clad theological case.

I know whereof I speak, for I am married. And so I have been for nigh unto thirty-two years, adding together marriage to Wife 1 for eighteen years and marriage to Wife 2 for fourteen years (I like to take this additive approach so, eighteen years from now, I can reap all the congratulatory gifts for my Golden Anniversary). Now, I certainly do not claim to be the Son of God, though hidden somewhere under all the cluttered crap that clouds my consciousness, my soul may indeed shine with a spark of the divine.

I can, though, imagine what would happen if I were indeed the Son of God and climbed some Oregon Mount to reveal myself through a revelatory Sermon. I’d have to be careful to leave my wife behind at some shopping mall. Otherwise, as soon as I got rolling on my Son of God riff an all-too-familiar female voice would pop up from the midst of my heretofore adoring crowd: “Divine being? Perfect Lamb of God? Hah! Let me tell you what Brian is really like.”

Laurel would climb up onto the Mount, and I’d slump down the other side, knowing full well before she spake what she would spake of. Now, no doubt Mary Magdalene would have her own unique and culture-specific evidence that, while Jesus may be perfect before God, he damn well was a major-league doofus around the house. But I have learned, from my own experience and countless talks with other married men, that it is indeed not only possible but inescapable for a husband to serve two masters: (1) the second-in-command, Supreme Being, and (2) the head honcho, Wife.

So I’d be powerless to do anything but listen to Laurel itemize my imperfections, some of which I am capable of listing here, others of which would spring from the countless scraps of to-dos kept in her Husband Reform Drawer, only some of which, thankfully, have been communicated to me so far.

“Brothers and sisters, let me tell you about this so-called divine being. He leaves cupboard doors open. All the time. He considers that dish towels are to wipe his strawberry-soaked hands with, not to dry his hands with. He empties the dishwasher once every ten times and wants me to issue a press release about his selflessness. This is the mark of a humble servant of God? He drives way too fast on country roads at night, and with just one hand on the wheel, no matter how many times (and believe me, it has been many) I say, ‘Slow down! You’re going to hit some baby animal!”

And that would just be Laurel’s introductory remarks. Pretty soon she would have the crowd spellbound, my (rapidly evaporating) flock hanging on her every word, the women urging her on with cries of “Tell it like it is, sister. Lord, your man is just like my man. Divine being? Shit. In his dreams.”

No, I can’t picture Jesus being married. Even if Mary kept her mouth shut in public, Jesus would get an earful at home. No way would he be able to convince even himself that he was the Son of God.

This is the way it should be, the way it must be, to end this post on a more serious philosophical note. For I am convinced by the writings of the great mystics that whatever God is, God isn't anything familiar to us now. God isn't matter or energy. God isn't body or mind. God isn't a being or a thing. I share the eminently Greek perspective that the personal is far removed from the universal. To be the One is not to be the one we are now. Here's how Plotinus, the wonderful 3rd century Greek mystic philosopher, puts it:

"There one can see both him [God] and oneself as it is right to see: the self glorified, full of intelligible light--but rather itself pure light--weightless, floating free, having become--but rather, being--a god." So nobody, meaning "no body," can be God. Who is weightless? Not Jesus, and certainly not me. I prove that every time I get on our bathroom scale.

Eccentrics make the world go unround

When you attend a meeting of 500 aspiring mystics of both Eastern and Western persuasions, as I did last weekend, you’re bound to run into some interesting people. But there is “interesting” and there is “eccentric,” the latter being a pearl of greater price. For eccentrics, by definition, make the world go unround. They remind us that neat and tidy isn’t nature’s way. Rivers don’t take a straight course to the sea. Trees sprout branches in every direction.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some wonderful eccentrics. Eric was a friend of my youth. A few years older than me, he would ride his bike down the highway and whip it with a riding crop while wearing his authentic white Bengal Lancers helmet with a plume on top. We had great times playing Embassy, dressed up in his astounding collection of British army/navy surplus attire (after the Brits were kicked out of India, it seems that a lot of equipment went on the market in the 1950s). Eric was a true eccentric.

My Uncle Jack played the bagpipes. To people. Also to cows, who would moo in return. And to dogs, who would howl in return. He was a profound practical joker, never growing up even as he grew in years. He was astoundingly direct, even to a fault. Once my mother, Carolyn, and I took a train from California all the way across the country to visit him in Massachusetts. I remember us stepping onto the Boston station platform and hearing Uncle Jack’s effusive greeting in his New England accent: “My god, Carolyn, you’ve gained so much weight!” Uncle Jack was a true eccentric.

After I gave my talk at the Science of the Soul meeting last Sunday, I went backstage and got some congratulations from a few people. One was an English guy a bit older than me who I had corresponded with by email, but had never met. Right away I felt like we had been friends for years, especially after he said, “I liked your talk. You remind me of me.” Exactly.

William Pryor is a writer, an ex-addict, a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, a poet, a publisher. And, I could tell instantly, a true eccentric. In the best sense. Meaning, William, like Eric, like Uncle Jack, is absolutely himself. Not someone trying to play the role of an eccentric, or someone trying to not play the role of an eccentric, or someone not trying to not play…(I’m starting to confuse myself). No, an eccentric is so really true to himself or herself there’s no room for the usual interpersonal bullshit that wastes so much time and puts up so many barriers.

Five minutes after I met William, as we were walking along with Laurel to find a place on the lawn to have a chat, I showed him the copy of my book, “Return to the One,” that I had read from during my talk. I said, “Well, I just got this advance copy, so I wanted to use it in speaking about Plotinus, but at least I didn’t use this spiritual setting to overtly plug my own book.” With that, William started slapping me on the shoulder with the book, yelling “No! no! no!” And laughing.

Touché. Yes, he was right. I did indeed have in mind that by being so seemingly humble (not mentioning the title of the book, not holding it up for people to see, not even mentioning that it soon could be bought), this low-key good-karma approach to plugging still would lead to some sales. I liked how William playfully punctured my pretense. Eccentrics make you comfortable with being as imperfect or as perfect as you really are.

Sitting and talking with him was a welcome change of pace from the preachy “thou shalt” tone that pervaded some other messages I encountered during the weekend. Such as the “No cell phones. No cameras. No PDAs. No voice recorders” signs at the doors of the meeting hall. No one could offer a good reason why cell phones couldn’t simply be turned off. Or why photographs of the Science of the Soul facilities couldn’t be taken. It was just a rule. An opportunity for bureaucracy to try to make an eccentric world into a perfect circle. Which can’t happen. Which shouldn’t happen.

One day I left my cell phone in my hip bag instead of leaving it in my car, as the meeting organizers wanted, or checking it before entering the hall, another option. I felt deliciously rebellious. The next day, to avoid falling into a rebellious rut, I left my cell phone in our hotel room. For the first time, when I walked into the hall, an Indian sevadar (volunteer) looked at me and said, “Cell phone? Cell phone?” I replied, absolutely honestly, “No.” I felt deliciously obedient.

William is on a book tour, promoting his “The Survival of the Coolest: An Addiction Memoir.” I’ll let you know how I like the book after I read it. I hugely enjoyed William himself, so I suspect I’m going to also enjoy his writing.

Not lost in translation

This morning I gave a 45 minute talk to the 500 or so National Satsang Weekend attendees at the Science of the Soul Center here in Petaluma, California. No, I’m not a member of a cult, no matter what my wife says (jokingly, I should emphasize, just as I fondly call her “infidel” with a smile on my face). Aside from my talks, Laurel chooses not to attend meetings of my spiritual group, for reasons I can completely sympathize with.

I look upon spirituality as a science that investigates whatever may lie beyond the physical reality with which we are familiar now. So I resonate to the “science” aspect of the Science of the Soul. But other members take much more of a religious approach, believing that the mere fact of being accepted as an initiate by the Master who heads the organization makes you a Special Soul, marked for salvation while people like my wife are doomed to a lesser quality afterlife.

Today I couldn’t resist making some remarks about this annoying attitude. I said that scientists the world over are united in their search for the truth about materiality. A physicist doesn’t care if a colleague comes from another country, another culture, another religion, another whatever. All that matters is their common commitment to unraveling the laws of physical nature through the scientific method. So science unites people.

Strangely, most religions and spiritual paths divide people, even though they claim to be devoted to the one God, or the one metaphysical reality. Thus, I observed, it is strange that a materialistic enterprise, science, is a unifying force on our planet, while a supposedly non-materialistic enterprise, religion, is a divisive force.

My main theme was the One. This is the best term for God, I argued, because it most clearly reflects an almost universal tenet of mystical philosophies: beneath all the manyness without and within us lies the ineffable, formless ground of being. Call it God. Call it the One. Trace anything in creation back to its source. There is the One.

Since the One is everywhere and everything, though also separate from everywhere and everything (statements like this are what make mysticism mystical), we too are the One. But this won’t be evident to us until we get rid of all the manyness that obscures our oneness. Meditation is the scientific practice that, theoretically, brings this about. (I say “theoretically” because the practice is darn difficult to practice, for me as for most other people).

Yet meditation needs to be supported by a person’s whole approach to life. If this is divisive, as when someone thinks they are part of a special group that has a special claim to special spiritual knowledge, that attitude isn’t going to lead this person closer to unity. I think I got this point across pretty well, though it wasn’t my main emphasis. Mostly I talked about Plotinus’s teachings concerning the One and how we are able to return to this ultimate reality.

This was the first time I’ve had a talk translated. Because many older members of the Science of the Soul group were born in India and don’t speak English well, 45 minute talks given in English get a 15 minute translation into Hindi (or maybe Punjabi, I don’t know which). The translator jotted down five or so pages of handwritten notes while I was talking, came out on stage and sat down next to me after I was done, and proceeded to summarize what I said.

It was sort of fun to listen to the cadences of a language I can’t understand, other than a few words. There were lots of “paramatmas,” which I’m pretty sure means God, or close to it. Heaven knows how some of my slang-infested English got translated, and whether “Stoic” means much to many of the traditional Indians—who also dress traditionally.

Laurel and I love the colorful attire of the Indian women, all the saris in every color of the rainbow. And the Indian food served at lunch and dinner brought smiles to our stomachs. All in all, a pleasant multi-cultural weekend, different sorts of people coming together in pursuit of the One.

Choking on communion

Looking back, I believe it was a sign from God that I almost choked on the wafer that was put in my mouth at my Catholic first communion. When you’re eight or nine years old this is embarrassing stuff, gagging after the priest put the wafer on my tongue. It stuck to the roof of my mouth when I tried to swallow it and wouldn’t go down. I remember hoping to God (still on my knees, of course) that I wouldn’t spit out the wafer and have it end up on the floor, an inglorious way to treat the body of Christ.

Reading a story in yesterday’s Oregonian about Bishop Vlazny’s (he’s the leader of Roman Catholics in Western Oregon) declaration that any Catholic who is publicly at odds with church teaching shouldn’t get Holy Communion, I was incensed enough to wish that I had indeed coughed out that wafer. (Fortunately, I flamed out on Catholicism before I was “confirmed,” so I saved myself the step of rejecting dogma unworthy of being believed in).

Bishop Vlazny’s letter in which he explains his position is worth reading for the insight it gives into the mindset of those who believe that faith in a religious institution is synonymous with faith in God. This belief is used to control members of the institution and stifle independent thinking. It has no metaphysical foundation, and indeed is completely opposed to genuine spirituality.

I thought Jesus taught that no one should worship false idols, or put other gods before the true God. So how is it that Vlazny can say:

“The reception of Holy Communion is a sign that a person not only seeks union with God but also desires to live in communion with the church. Such communion is clearly violated when one publicly opposes serious church teaching. Reception of Holy Communion by such public dissenters betrays a blatant disregard for the serious meaning and purpose of the reception of the Eucharist.”

Clever. Vlazny links the body and blood of Christ to the body of the tenets of the Catholic Church, so anyone who wants to be united with Jesus and God has to accept every serious teaching of the church also. Though Christ said nothing about abortion, or gay marriage, or stem-cell research, a Catholic who publicly rejects the church’s position on these political issues is a failed Catholic and shouldn’t ask for communion.

If I was a Catholic, I’d say, “Fine. I don’t want communion. I want God.” Taking a step away from superstition (who really believes bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus?) and idolatry (putting politics ahead of spirituality) is taking a step toward God. A hundred or a thousand years from now I’m sure that people are going to say about modern Christianity, “I can’t believe that is how they worshipped God in the old days.”

I think science and spirituality are going to move closer and closer together, so the study of whatever lies beyond physicality will simply be the study of non-material reality, not something called “religion.” I have this fantasy of highly advanced extra-terrestrials signaling Earth that they want to exchange knowledge of the cosmos. When their ship lands, and consciousness-communication links are set up, a United Nations envoy says, “We are happy to greet you. Our scientists and our religious leaders are eager to share ideas with you.”

The extra-terrestrials pause and turn to their Super Galactic Dictionary. They are puzzled. “We understand your term for ‘scientist,’ as we too seek the truth about reality. But we do not know what is meant by ‘religious leader.’ Do you mean ‘story-teller’? If so, we have these too. They entertain us with subjective fantasy when we wish to take a break from objective truth.”

Bishop Vlazny is a story-teller, a master of ancient and modern fables. He should be laughed at rather than taken seriously. There is a lot to like about Christianity, but only insofar as it leads to the reality of God, not the falseness of politics.

There is no boat in this photo

I snapped this picture of Spring Lake about half an hour ago during my evening dog walk with Serena. There is no boat in this photo. Yesterday there would have been: a shiny aluminum rowboat upside down at the far end, barely visible, but irritatingly present. Boats left at our communal (common property) lake here in Spring Lake Estates are supposed to be locked to a cable near the picnic area. That rowboat wasn’t.

Every time I walked around the lake it bothered me to see it beached in a place it shouldn’t have been. In my eyes it was a large chunk of aluminum litter. I didn’t know who it belonged to. I made up a note explaining the neighborhood boat rules (which was within my purview, as I’m the secretary for the neighborhood association board of directors). I duct taped the note to the boat. I also added a mention of the need to move the boat in the board meeting minutes I recently sent out.

So that’s why there is no boat in this photo. But the more interesting question is, “Why is there still a boat in my memory?” I mean, “Why couldn’t I walk around the lake today and just see the lake as it is now, rather than a lake that used to have an aluminum rowboat at one end of it?” Will I ever be able to simply see what is really there, rather than what I want to either add to or subtract from what is really there?

The lake was beautiful this evening. The photo hardly does it justice. The lake was also beautiful yesterday, even with the boat beached where boats shouldn’t be beached. Those words “shouldn’t be” were at the root of my several-month-long mild irritation, the length of time the boat that shouldn’t have been there was there. Every time I saw it, along with what my eyes perceived I also was aware of that feeling, “This shouldn’t be.” But it was. “Shouldn’t be” and “was” warred with each other, Ideal vs. Real.

It’s difficult to decide who I really want to come out on top. I think, Real. But there’s such a strong urge toward Ideal in me, I don’t know if I want to let it go. The ideal situation (there I go again…) I suppose would be to see both Ideal and Real, not letting either one obscure the other. Could I walk around the lake, see the boat that shouldn’t be there, make a mental note to deal with the problem, and then simply calmly see what is really there? No irritation. No frustration. No inner voice saying, “That boat is an eyesore.”

Today I saw on CNN part of the now-famous Iraq decapitation video. Like most everyone else, I couldn’t just see what was shown. In my head I also saw images of what the video stimulated. Me being held hostage instead of the man who was actually killed. Or someone I loved. Fantasies of what should be done to the men who did the killing. Imaginations of what wasn’t shown on TV.

What if I could have just seen what was shown? Would I have been more human than I am now? Less human? The same? Is it good, bad, or indifferent to simply see what is really there, and not also feel that something shouldn’t be there that is there, or that something should be there that isn’t there? Does embracing an Ideal keep us from knowing reality as it is, the Real? Or does it bring us closer to the Real?

I’ve got lots of questions. No answers. That’s real.

[for my own arcane weblog reasons, I need to upload a smaller version of the photo also]