Self-Transformation

The Past

Religion vs. Spirituality

The Unity of Life

Citizenship

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world. - Francis Bacon

The Moon

"A Brief for the Defense" by Jack Gilbert:

 Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

from Collected Poems

This Moment

Living in the Present

Walking Meditation

"I have arrived. I am home. In the here. In the now. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate I dwell."

Zen Crossword Puzzle

Awaken Yourself

Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good.
~ The Buddha

This quote resonated with me today. I like the emphasis on the repeated attempts and actions of "doing good." It's not like we can decide, once and for all, to do good always. It, instead, is one action after another, a deliberate choice of doing one good deed after another. The Buddha also emphasizes the pleasure we can take in our good deeds, and how this contributes towards bliss. I like

Love and Serenity

 If love grows serenity, cultivate it, if not, cut it off.

Worries

Buddhism and the 12 Steps

I've been reading the book "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps" by Kevin Griffin. It examines the 12-step program in the light of Buddhism rather than the traditional western monotheistic viewpoint. I have found it helpful in finding my way through the spiritual part of the program. If anyone is having trouble with the God part of the program, I recommend this as an alternative way.

Really, Really Cool (check it out)

Copyright 2012. Magnifying the Universe by Number Sleuth.

Lotus

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding, and could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy."

~ Kahlil Gabran

Picking the Lock

“In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.”

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Nothingness

What We Think...

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you As your shadow, unbreakable.

~ Buddha ~

Timelapse of the Milky Way

 A timelapse of an astronomer's paradise, in Chile's Atacama Desert:

The Vernal Equinox

Happy first day of spring everybody!

The March equinox signals the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. It marks that special moment when the sun crosses the celestial equator going from south to north. In 2012, this equinox comes early. It’ll be on March 20 at 5:14 UTC, or 12:14 a.m. Central Daylight Time for us in the central U.S. 

Zen Poetry

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.
But sages don't consider the past.
And they don't worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
 Bodhidharma

Buddhism, Cosmology, and Evolution

An interesting article at Huffpost about the origins and nature of the universe according to modern science and Buddhism. When quantum physics meets Buddhism, interesting things happen:

Quantum electrodynamics is a powerfully predictive theory developed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. It proposes that virtual particles, electrons and photons appear and disappear from a zero-point field, the quantum vacuum that pervades the universe. This is eerily similar to how Buddhist cosmology describes the nature of the cosmos, originating within a luminous space that is the ground of consciousness itself...


As Thomas Berry pointed out, if we restore the fundamental unity of spirit and matter, artificially split apart by scientific materialism, the scientific story of the universe can also serve beautifully as our new sacred story. For Buddhist cosmology, biological evolution presents no problem at all: natural history and spiritual history are two sides of the same coin. The beginningless consciousness of luminous space gave rise to this evolving universe and from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.  

We. Are. Tiny.

Ethan Siegal contemplates our universe:

Although "only" about 250,000 galaxies are shown in the above image, the entire Universe is estimated to have at least hundreds of billions of galaxies, spread out over a spherical region about a million times larger in diameter than our galaxy is. In other words, you and everything you know resides on a tiny, wet rock nearly a million times less massive than the star that powers it, in a solar system one ten-millionth the diameter of our galaxy, which contains at least hundreds of billions of stars not so different from ours, in a Universe filled with hundreds of billions of galaxies, and maybe perhaps more.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen

Japanese Fart Scrolls

Check out this site, if you dare!

...something a bit…unusual. It was an old Japanese scroll about farting. The whole scroll, which is called He-Gassen (“The Fart Battle”) is just about people farting. Farting at other people, farting at cats, farting off of horses, farting into bags; just farting everywhere.

I love Japanese culture!

Words to Live By

Never allow anyone to be your priority while you remain their option.

Lent

Though not Christian, I find the rhythms and structure of the liturgical Christian churches interesting and instructive. This is the season of Lent, which is a period paralleling that of Jesus' time in the desert and is a preparation of inner reflection and outer good works leading to the definitive event of Easter. Even an outsider can always benefit from such practices. Andrew Sullivan, Roman Catholic, put up an interesting post today discussing blogging Lent. He took the opportunity to explore the true nature of his religion and its place in the public square, contrasting it with the politicized christianism which is so powerful now:

I believe this is the way religion should be in public life. Instead of using political power to direct the lives of others through law, Christians should embrace true secularism as a neutral stage on which to explore and explain and witness to their actual faith...
 This is my objection to Christianism, as it is to Islamism. Because it obscures the true message: Jesus led by example and non-violence, not by the coercive power of the state. And the message of the Gospels and of the lives of the saints is exactly this: witness, don't control. Let go of such an impulse. Live the truths, and you will find people coming to you. And if the truths are lies, only freedom will allow you to see past them to deeper truths.
 How many false attachments are we addicted to - celebrity, money, possessions, news, the web. How much greed we see and how much anger we feel. Jesus liberates us from these things that cloud our culture and soil our souls. 

Not surprisingly, this is the message of the Buddha as well. Perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the deep similarities all spiritual traditions have: beyond the organizations and dogmas lies something True if we can only unearth it.
 

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Ego and the Third Noble Truth

Over at Huffpost (a fertile ground for interesting writing on Buddhism), there's an essay by Lewis Richmond about the Third Noble Truth and its relation to ego. He clarified the notion of "getting rid of ego" for me by pointing out that "ego" is a poor translation of what the Buddha was discussing as the root of our problems. Rather, "ego-istic" or "self-ish" appears to be better, in that we all have an ego or self, but that we misuse it by treating it as an unchanging, objective entity that resists change and inevitable loss, ignoring reality and thus creating suffering. We all have an "identity" - and it changes over time and place. Mr. Richmond's words:

There is no need to "get rid of the ego." The ego, the self, the ever-changing landscape of identity -- none of those are the actual problem. The actual problem is that when loss comes we clutch, we tend to respond fearfully and selfishly, with clinging and resistance; we become ego-istic. Paying attention to all of that, examining it closely over and over with the practices of precepts, mindfulness, and meditation, is the nub of Buddhist practice. It is the work of a lifetime. Loss is not all there is. The fundamental spiritual message of Buddhism is upbeat, not downbeat. Joy in the midst of suffering and loss is not only possible, but attainable. That is Buddha's third noble truth: in the midst of suffering, there is release from suffering.

I have often come across the idea of the "authentic self," and I often speak of this. Mr. Richmond clarifies this for me as not some essence which is permanent and separate from life, but as my deepest identity which springs from the deepest notions of Buddhism - that there is something beyond my small self, like unto the relation between the dancer and the dance. Where does one end and the other begin? And where does the dance go when it ends? -


I actually don't know what it means to "get rid of the ego." But I have had cherished good teachers and wise spiritual friends who have transformed ego and identity into a vessel of awakening and compassion, and who dedicate themselves to continuing their spiritual efforts and working for the relief of suffering wherever they can.That is a good identity to have. It's called "Buddha," which means "awake." Buddha is our deepest identity; it is always with us.

Faith, It's Loss, and the Reason Why

Tim Prowse, and United Methodist Church pastor for 20 years, lost his faith and left the ministry. He discusses the process which led him to this decision in an interview with Sam Harris here. An excerpt:

Ironically, it was seminary that inaugurated my leap of unfaith.  It was so much easier to believe when living in an uncritical, unquestioning, naïve state.  Seminary training with its demands for rigorous and intentional study and reflection coupled with its values of reason and critical inquiry began to undermine my naïveté.  I discovered theologians, philosophers and authors I never knew existed.  I found their questions stimulating but their answers often unsatisfying. For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem.  How do we harmonize this fact with the conception of an all-loving, all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly human product and the God it purports does not exist, other church teachings, such as communion and baptism, unraveled rather quickly.  To quote Nietzsche, I was seeing through a different “perspective” – a perspective based on critical thinking, reason and deduction.  By honing these skills over time, reason and critical thinking became my primary tools and faith quickly diminished. Ultimately, these tools led to the undoing of my faith rather than the strengthening of it.

Reason and critical thinking are excellent tools in ferreting out the false and in seeking the Truth. Mr. Prowse discovered that just accepting dogma and the stories in the Bible weren't enough to live an awakened and authentic life. As the Buddha put it,

Do not believe anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything simply because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe traditions because they have been handed down for generations. But after observation and analysis, when you have found that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

 

Religion and the Human Race

Libyan deputy envoy Ibrahim Dabbashi has told the UN's Human Rights Council that gays threaten humanity, UN Watch reports:

Protesting the council’s first panel discussion on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, scheduled for March 7th, Libya’s representative told the gathering of ambassadors today that LGBT topics “affect religion and the continuation and reproduction of the human race.” He added that, were it not for their suspension, Libya would have opposed the council’s June 2011 resolution on the topic.
In response, council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said that “the Human Rights Council is here to defend human rights and prevent discrimination.”

Actually, any rational person (I know, a stretch where religion is involved) would realize that it is heterosexuals that are endangering the human race. Why? Because of their unfettered and selfish creation of more and more human beings which burden an already overpopulated world and super-stressed ecology. What we need is more gays to save the human race from itself.

Hitch on the Catholic Church

While listening to two of my friends speak of the indoctrination they were subjected to as children by the Roman Catholic Church - the terrible and graphic fears of hell, as well as their self-hatred as gay people - I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by hatred for that evil institution. Yes,  I shouldn't give in to such feeling, but I don't think it's unreasonable given the huge load of suffering caused by them. And here is Christopher Hitchens to explain further:

Hitch, you are missed...

Alan Watts discusses Nothing

I enjoy listening to Alan Watts (as well as reading him) because he has a natural and relaxed way of relating difficult ideas. Here, he discusses "nothingness" (or, perhaps, no-thing-ness) as the ultimate basic reality of which we are a part. Of course, as with all things Zen, it has a different and surprising meaning to those of us used to western modes of thought. Listen...

Zen and the Art of Landscape

I find this picture to be particularly beautiful and restful. It was done by Herb Arnold for the Zen Center of San Francisco. Enjoy!

Bluebird by Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Editor notes:

This was published in Bukowski's book "The Last Night of the Earth Poems" circa 1992

Stephen Hawking on God and the Universe

Heaven and Meaning

Paula Kirby at the Washington Post has an interesting article examining how atheists find meaning in a godless universe. She maintains that we don't need an invisible babysitter in the sky to hold our hands and give us direction and meaning, that we can find these meanings out for ourselves and, in effect, give them greater importance without being directed from above. But it's her point about the Christian heaven which I find interesting:


Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.
In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.
Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.

I've often thought that heaven, as described by the Christians, would be horrible: an eternity frozen in myself with absolutely nothing to do or be or look forward to because everything is perfect just as it is - boring, pointless. Hellish, in fact. What is it about life that Christians hate so much? Despising this existence in favor of some theoretical afterlife is an evasion. What we have is the Now. 

A Day in the Life of a Zen Monk

Zen Mind

Getting Beyond the Matrix

John Stanley writes an interesting, brief article where he describes the "believing brain" and the nature of psychopathology. Our brains construct their worlds based on beliefs inculcated in us by society, family, school, church, etc., thus enabling us to exist and move about in our worlds. However, when we are confronted with a reality or new set of facts which challenge this ingrained view, how do we respond? With empathy and the ability to change, or with lack of empathy and rejection of those facts (and, often, people)?

Research by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues has more recently identified the circuit in our brain that generates spontaneous empathy for others' feelings. Unsurprisingly, it is underactive in individuals who commit acts of cruelty. Unfeeling cruelty toward others has traditionally been called "evil." Now we have a precise neurogenetic definition: "zero-empathy" is the root of all evil.


He likens this conflict with the choice Neo had in "The Matrix": remain in the Matrix or take the "red pill" and leave the Matrix to join the greater reality. He uses the current conflict surrounding global warming as an example: corporations place profit above empathy for future generations, thus condemning them to catastrophic environmental collapse in the pursuit of short-term gain. This is, literally, psychopathic - or, evil. The Matrix here is the denial of the greater reality of which we are a part, the denial of interrelatedness, and he calls for choosing the red pill.

It's time to break out of our unsustainable zero-empathy matrix. To be or not to be is now the pressing spiritual question before us -- as individuals, as citizens, as a civilization and as a species.