The Mystery

Atheism, says Adam Frank, is not incompatible with the sense of life's mystery, of  the magic I've spoken of here. Speaking at a public debate with another scientist, he encounters the other man's refusal to see any hint of mystery in life:


  I had made it pretty clear that, being an atheist, I was not arguing for a "God" of the gaps. Neither was I arguing that limits to knowledge (if they exist) imply we should be worshiping before some choice of deity. Instead I was simply pointing to that fundamental weirdness, that "stranger-in-a-strange land" quality of being human. I was pointing to that mystery because I think its best part of the whole trip.
 We just find ourselves here. With our individual birth we just "wake-up" and discover ourselves in the midst of an extraordinary world of beauty and sorrow. All around us we see exquisite and exquisitely subtle orders played out effortlessly. From the lazy descent of fall leaves to the slow unfolding of cloudscapes in empty blue skies, it is all just here and we are just here to see it.
  Day after day we wake again to find the world still here, waiting for us as we play out our own small dramas with their small triumphs and terrible heartbreaks. And then, remarkably, astonishingly, just here just ends.

This is just remarkable. While reading it, I experienced something that happens so seldom: the recognition of a fellow thinker, a person who experiences life in much the same way myself. I have often spoken of the "Mystery" as that Ultimate Reality I sense and at times experience. Frank discusses this as entirely compatible with the project of art and science, and is something we can experience regardless of our religious affiliation. It is the essence of Awakening.

 For me that is the mystery. No amount of explanation, be it a "Theory of Everything" or a religious theology, will reduce the power of its experience. The primitive quality of feeling, the presence of life and its luminosity, is the mystery and I am damn thankful for it.
 It is the essential and unalterable question mark saturating the verb "to be" that makes science worth pursuing and gives art its potency. It sets our loves and loss into a context that has no context and somehow makes it all bearable.

Quote of the Day

Zen and the Art of Landscape

The magic of Chinese sumi-e landscape painting...

I've put pictures of Zen landscapes here, but little in the way of the artist's rendition of landscape. Here's one in motion, creating an evocative scene with a few sure brushstrokes in ink. Magic!

Gratitude

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
John Milton

My Work

Just a couple of my paintings...

The Universe

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." - Stanley Kubrick

Religion, a Debate

Slate has a brief article describing a formal debate in New York City between atheists and believers about whether religion does more good than harm in the world.  I find this an interesting conversation because it sidesteps the question of whether the religions are true or not, and concentrates on the effect religious belief actually has in the world:

   Chapman and Grayling argued that anything good religion does—encouraging ethical behavior, providing comfort and community, promoting charity—nonreligious groups do, too. But along with the good stuff, religion also consigns women to a second-class status, foments division and conflict, oppresses gay people, encourages credulity, and stunts scientific progress. Of course, not all religious people share the same insular perspectives, but most extremists do, Grayling argued. “The extremists are the most honest of the people who have a religious view because they commit themselves to what their tradition tells them, and they stay closest to the text,” he said, explaining that moderate believers often “cherry-pick” the best parts of their religion, ignoring the rest. “Now, if that’s real religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without it.”

    Wolpe and D’Souza maintained that religion does a vast amount of unrecognized good in the world—unrecognized because media outlets won’t run an article with the headline “Religious Man Feeds Hungry Man.” Religious wrongdoings, on the other hand, are exaggerated and overhyped in the news. Wolpe rattled off study after study showing that religious people are more likely to volunteer and participate in civic life, and less likely to do drugs or get divorced. Apparently, believers are even healthier and live longer. Oh, and if you think religious fundamentalists are evil, they’re nothing compared to the atheists. “The crimes of religion, even of Bin Laden, are infinitesimal compared to the nightmare of atheist regimes,” said D’Souza, naming Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Chernenko, Ceaușescu, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot as a few examples. “[They] have killed far more people, in far shorter of a time, and are still doing it right now.”  The world without religion, the men said, would be a bleak and impoverished place.

It seems to me that both sides are, at least, partially right. This is a complex question and impossible to deal with in depth here. But I think that religion is inherent in what it means to be human, that we can't really escape some manifestation of it, and that it can be a force for good, as least in individual lives. However, organized religion on the large scale lends itself to the establishment and enforcement of power - religious, governmental, social, etc. - and has much to answer for. I think one can be "spiritual" without being religious - which means we can take what we want from religion and leave the rest. It's when it becomes an organized entity that religion has the most potential for evil.

If Awakening is the goal, we must use any tools available. But we must also avoid the very tools that kept us asleep in the nightmare - and it seems to me that religion is too often one, if not the main, tool which works to keep us asleep.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

I found a great site put up by Bowduin College about the Zen gardens of Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto was not attacked during WWII, and is known for its original architecture, particularly the Buddhist temples and monasteries.

   The web site is dedicated to the gardens of Japan, and primarily to the historic gardens of Kyoto and its environs, including Nara...Although many of these gardens are located within Zen Buddhist monasteries, this site is not intended to explore the influence of Zen thought on Japanese garden design, an influence that is often a matter of conjecture rather than historical evidence. Instead, the site is designed simply to provide the visitor with an opportunity to visit each garden, to move through or around it, to experience it through the medium of high-quality color images, and to learn something of its history.

Magic

Altucher has an intriguing post on Magic - short but intensely sweet. He speaks of himself as a kid, desiring, not to be a CEO or a lawyer or a doctor or whatever mundane thing takes over our lives, but to be "be a hobbit. Or a prince of the world of Chaos. Or a minor demi-god on Mt. Olympus. Everywhere I looked I saw opportunities for magic." This child's heart, he maintains, can be regained and maintained in the face of all the debased "adult" concerns. Money quote:


   We forget quickly the sense of magic. The power of daydreams. But the truth is: the world that seems so real when we are adults still contains just as many mysteries, if not more, as when we were kids.

   The key to restoring that magic: just for this second, forget the stresses caused by yesterday. The worries brought about by tomorrow. Right now, this second, picture any scenario you want and imagine it already exists. It takes practice to find it, and the demons from the past and the future will fight you. But ignore them for just this second. Practice.

This is fantastic (in every sense of that word). Magic, in this sense, is not just the trick of the magician or the falseness of magical thinking. Rather, it denotes the enchantment with which the child views the world - a freshness of being and perceiving that cuts through the fear and anxiety and depression and boredom which haunt the lives of so many adults. Altucher's remedy returns us to the Now - freed from the haunting past and fearful future - and gives us the ultimate joy of the imagination which connects us to the Magic which lives in the heart of all sentient beings. As Mencius put it, "The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart." 

The child lives on in us. As Jesus put it, "anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." The kingdom of God - the realm of magic - is only accessible to those who live in their child's heart. Thus, we awaken to the Reality which transcends the real and transforms our lives.

Bach Visualized

Prelude from Cello Suites

The Kiss

A fascinating article on kissing:

A passionate kiss causes our blood vessels to dilate as the brain receives more oxygen than normal. Our cheeks flush, our pulse quickens, and breathing becomes irregular and deepens. Our pupils dilate, which may be the reason so many of us close our eyes. We also activate five of our twelve cranial nerves that spread out intricately to different parts of the face. The nerve pathways guide the way we interpret the world by helping us see, smell, hear, taste, and touch.

On top of that, our lips are associated with a disproportionately large part of the brain. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey even reported that some women could reach orgasm from prolonged deep kissing without genital contact. While this sounds unusual, it likely has to do with the way our lips are packed with sensitive nerve endings so that even the slightest brush sends a cascade of information to our brains that often feels very good. Although we often don’t think of them in this way, our lips are the body’s most exposed erogenous zone.

The kiss is a universal language that transcends time and boundaries. 

The whole article is well worth the read.

Zen and the Poetry of Landscape

 

“To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops,

Shaken from a crane’s bill.”  

Dogen

Fear and Buddhism

A great article by Rev. Zesho Susan O'Connell about fear, its effects and causes, and the Buddhist answer has given me much insight. She reminds us that the Buddha saw fear as at the base of all sentient beings inner suffering, and is fed by our resisting impermanence:

So how does this align with the Buddhist teaching of offering fearlessness to others? What exactly is fear? What is fearlessness? According to the Abhidharma-Kosa, fear is an unwholesome state of infatuation. Another definition is: thinking vividly about what we don't want to happen in the future or dwelling on an unhappy past event. Fear is a mental attempt to control a negative outcome. And I would add that, to me, "worry" is the shark fin of fear. 

It seems to me that all beings - especially myself - suffer from this delusional way of thinking: it is almost part of the definition of "sentient being." However, as the Buddha taught, there is a way of dealing with suffering - in this case, caused by fear.

In order to overcome our delusions around fear we need to practice both calming and insight: samatha and vipassana.
Samatha is practiced in the Zen tradition as "radical acceptance"...Radical acceptance is supported by vipassana: the insight into and confidence in adaptability.
 ...

Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says that "worry is a misuse of he imagination." In his essay on fearlessness he proposes the several ways to constructively use this very same imagination in insightful and adaptive ways: accept the facts with realism; know that we can always do better, that we can limit the damage, find an alternative, and rebuild what has been destroyed; take the current situation as the starting point; know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity; be free of regret. All of this can be easily discerned against the background of a serene mind.

"A Lamp in the Darkness"

I found a short excerpt from Jack Kornfield's book at the Huffpost which I really like. He speaks of awakening to the wonder and love of the everyday, and of going through the experiences of difficulty and pain and coming out the other side to the awareness of which the Buddha spoke:


"The world offers perennial renewal, in the grass that pushes itself up between the cracks in the sidewalk, in the end of every torrential rainstorm and in every newly planted window box, in every unexpected revolution, with each new morning’s light. This unstoppable spirit of renewal is in you. Trust it. Learn that it flows through you and all of life. The ultimate gift of our suffering is to teach us how to properly grieve, heal, and learn compassion. But finally we come to the realization that in any moment we can step out of the body of fear and feel the great winds that carry us, to awaken to the eternal present. It is within our power to experience the liberation of the heart offered to all by the Buddha in these words:"

Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.

Live in joy,
In health,
Even among the afflicted.

Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.

Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
Know the sweet joy of living in the Way.

   This sounds like a book I'd like to check out. Mindfulness is a took which helps us awaken from the nightmare which is both our personal history and that of the world, and he seems to speak of that here. And the words of the Buddha: "Look within." That is the place where stillness and freedom can be found. As they say in the Program: happiness is an inside job.

Tao Te Ching (The Way)

The Way that can be told
is not the eternal Way
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.


- Lao Tzu

Religion and Sexuality

Shorter University has established an official policy banning gay employees:

Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school in Rome, Ga., is forcing its 200 employees to sign a statement declaring that they reject homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't sign the pledge risks losing their jobs.

They also demand their employees several other behaviors they deem "against biblical teachings." Of course, they are a private school and can do as they please. But this illustrates the problem I examined in my post below: modern fundamentalist religion in a panic to keep modernity at bay with a selective interpretation of their holy book and religion. Mind-control, persecution, threats, the abandonment of reason, cruelty - all in the name of preserving something that cannot be preserved. And, of course, gays get it in the neck as usual with the christianist agenda. Of course, why would any self-respecting gay
person want to have anything to do with such pernicious nonsense anyway?

Shorter President Don Dowless told WSBTV that the goal wasn’t to offend people, and that lots of Christian schools have similar pledges. "These are biblical positions," he said.

Interesting how selective the reading of the Bible can be. Here, biblical positions mean exclusion and persecution. Yet, it can also be read, selectively, to mean inclusion and the defense of the persecuted. Why bother with it at all? The beneficial values can be had without all the ignorant crap, after all. 

21st Century Religion

   The Philosopher's Beard blog has a fascinating essay on present-day religion and its discontents. The great thing about this kind of discussion is that it clarifies for me my feelings and views on religion in the west - here, the Judeo-Christian view:

Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men and women. It ordered the flux into the cycle of life: the turning of the sun, seasons, and harvests; birth and death. It explained and justified the social order: why one man is born to wealth and power and another to be a serf. It told us with all the force of a mighty and all-encompassing metaphysics what our lives really meant, and how we should act, think and feel. But no more. Religion has been brought low by its old enemies, philosophy and politics. Religion persists and is even popular. But it is now in the mind, a matter of personal belief projected outwards. In short, religion is now secular.

    I focus here on the trajectory of the Abrahamic style of theological religion (other forms of religiousish behaviour require their own accounts). This kind of religion rests on a metaphysical unification of the divine, the social-order, and nature. It gives us an enchanted world and a guarantee that we know our true place in it. The enemies of theological religion have always been philosophy and politics because both present inherently secular ways of grappling with the nature of the world that bypass religion. Their rise has shattered both enchantment and Truth. Religion still creeps about the place, but in a thoroughly subordinate role.
Indeed, this explains what has happened to religion in the west, and the current frenzied attempts to recall the unified view the past (read, Medieval Europe) offered. Still, as he points out, this attempt is doomed: modern philosophy and science has replaced this all-encompassing role with a more coherent and accurate view of how the world works. In this secular age, belief has been fragmented and individualized - even the fundamentalists are affected (thus their rigidity).

But what we have gained from the loss of unified view where belief was felt as well as known, is, in my view, the possibility of a grander and deeper (and more accurate) experience of reality. It has opened us up to many other possibilities for our worldviews and spiritual experience. I can, for instance, investigate Buddhism without fear of official punishment for heresy or civil prosecution (a "religion" which eschews rigidity and forced unity and actively seeks out and accommodates "chaos"). I can also express my sexuality without the fear of religious-inspired persecution (oppression, imprisonment, torture, the stake). I rejoice in the downfall of the Judeo-Christian hegemony and its reduction to creeping about the place in a subordinate role! Who needs dictatorship and mind-control? We are now free to investigate reality without the blinkers and bridle of religion.