The Sweet Spot

If you can believe in God, you can believe anything.  90% of Americans actually believe some version of this preposterous story  -- the mother of all conspiracy theories. This makes Trump's "big lie" look like an innocent fib. It's about casting off from the world of evidence into the rough waters of human imagination. You are sailing into "Earth 2" - the world constructed entirely by human imagination. Anything can be true. People have always been unaware of any difference between the world they inhabited and the magic-filled world of myth. In spite of our conceit about being "modern" this is still the prevailing mindset in for most humans. Even professional scientists can hold in their heads both some version of the "God Story" along with deep understanding of the actual world. But for many, the "real world" doesn't satisfy their need for excitement. Nor does the hypocritical, boring, confusing, self-contradictory world o...

 Buddhism is built on the foundation of the " four noble truths ". Not believing that any "divine" source of wisdom exists, I need to weigh up this foundation against my own experience. The first "truth" is that life is full of suffering, something undeniable in the present day. But right at the start, we see Buddhism throwing out the baby with the bathwater, denying any role to the wonders and joys of life.  The second "noble truth" calls upon us to accept the first truth as the way things are. Also, pretty good advice. You really need to get used to all the awefulness on the news which, incidentally, tends to present mostly horrible news. It is wise to avoid imagining some kind of utopia where everything is (mostly) happy and wonderful. Suffering is not the whole truth. In fact one may argue that it's not the main truth. The third and fourth noble truths basically assert the Buddhist "program" of how to escape suffering - ultimat...

Fire Side Chat Fireside in Naked Sims [07:10:08] (You): zen theme... [07:14:40] (You): which gets expensive [07:14:43] (You): it *is8 [07:14:44] Raju Ronzales: the trickling water, the chimes [07:14:52] Raju Ronzales: *water [07:15:07] (You): it's very peaceful [07:15:23] (You): and you *can* be naughty .... [07:15:39] Raju Ronzales: lol, in a meditative way [07:15:42] Raju Ronzales: thats cool [07:15:45] (You): yes indeed... [07:16:40] (You): I have been interested in zen most of my life ... [07:16:57] (You): but if you chase down its roots it's a bit silly [07:17:24] (You): if you strip out the stuff that makes sense you wind up with something else - I call it zen-tech [07:17:31] (You): zen for the modern world [07:17:35] (You): but even that ... [07:17:43] (You): not sure I should call it "zen" [07:17:52] (You): or call it anything [07:18:06] (You): it's just my approach to life [07:18:43] (You): I can even mislead *myself* by using zen terms and ideas [07:19:1...

 In previous posts, I have pointed out how different life is for us than it was for the "masters". In case I create the impression that nothing of the ancient way is left for me, I'd like to make a brief outline - possibly to be expanded - of what remains. Mindfulness - Decaffeinated Buddhism As it happens, my introduction to "hard core" Mindfulness came from Ronald D. Sieagel - specifically his video course. He relies heavily on references to Buddhism, along with "scientific" studies. His approach is more like a professor than a "master" (like Osho). You can take or leave his various ideas. I don't frequently use the term "mindful" since it has been co opted by the masses to the point it has become meaningless. "I am mindful of ..." is a fancy way of saying "I keep it in mind". However "Mindfulness" (I use capital M) is a body of teaching that has more or less pushed aside Freudian nonsense it the ...

Little remains of the Zen picture of how our experience relates to "reality", and how that experience is an "illusion'. Along with most of the human race I live in the city. I travel by car or jet plane to other cities. Wherever I stay, I am in an environment created by other human beings. My "world is created by other human beings.  This even applies to my thoughts. When I "talk" to myself, I use language, which weaves concepts and relationships invented by others throughout millenia. When I think "in pictures", my ability to visualize depends, for the most part, on my experience in a man-made world. In my own case, this includes the creative patterns and habits of engineering, mathematics and systems analysis - experience totally alien to the vast majority of the human race. In the "Eastern" traditions, "experience" is regarded as an illusion, where there is an underlying reality - vaguely sketched by a system ofs art an...

[07:07:18] Haggis Margetts: We are all just passing through, in a sense. [07:07:37] (You): o yeah, that's a lesson from MIL [07:08:00] Haggis Margetts: Mhm [07:08:47] (You): I changed cell phone providers and now my phone # is lost in cyberspace :) [07:08:52] (You): job # 1 today [07:09:15] (You): calls go straight to voice mail ... [07:09:24] Haggis Margetts: I remember a baseball telecast from years ago...I saw a clip. A play had an injury and was playing anyway. The announcer said 'X is day-to-day' and the other guy paused and said 'Aren't we all?' [07:10:01] (You): some people think of such things 3 or 4 times a year [07:10:20] (You): being constantly aware of it is part of Buddhism/Zen [07:11:02] Haggis Margetts: Humans are the only animals who know they will die. Or one of the few. [07:11:10] (You): you  *can* make your peace with it but it takes time to shake off the happy talk of Christiaity [07:11:41] (You): I think cows get a feeling something bad is h...

  For me, the experience is the essence of Zen. It is a mistake to wander beyond actual experience, for example, into theology and paraphysics. For me, computer technology has provided a wide variety of experiences that are not shared by the general public. Especially in the 2010's computer systems designs was dominated by "Object Oriented Analysis". The kind of "objects" that appear in even a simple system design can be surprisingly rich. One such object is the "interface".  To someone familiar with the old ways of thinking, an interface is the description of a function, stripped of any information about the "internals" of the function. We are all familiar with interfaces now. The icons on our phones behave in useful ways that bear some remote resemblance to a "desktop". They hide the immense complexity of what is going on beneath the surface. Icons on an Android phone behave in very similar ways to icons on an iPhone. Lately, phil...

Tao is the simple bult slippery concept at the heart of Taoism and its offshoot, Zen. Tao has (at least) three meaning s. In the long run you can see why the same word (or ideogram ) is used. It is equally important to understand what Tao is not . It is not an idea, concept, belief or system. To be "Taoist" therefore is to follow the way, specifically the way of nature or the "way" as taught (through example) by the masters. Opening words of the Tao teh Ching ("Bible of Taoism") Frankly, there is a lot of silly stuff in this book. For example, the solution to theft is not to have things of value. The solution to differences in status is not to value skill. The underlying concept is profound: namely that emptiness is useful. Sometimes. Not always. Cups, not minds. It seems to me that this idea and others like it are the source of the Zen idea that we need to "empty" our minds, which seems to be the idea behind "Zazen" meditation. "T...