"Zen is not a philosophy or mysticism. It is simply a practice of readjustment of nervous activity .. Here we encounter the purest form of existence. It is the hushed silence of the snow-clad Himalayas. Or it can be likened to the eternal silence of the fathomless depths of the sea" KATSUKI SEKIDA " Guide to Zen " OSHO  " Creativity " You can also watch Osho for hours on you-tube. You can download all you have time to read in PDF form here . SHUNRYU SUZUKI " Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind " JAMES H. AUSTIN Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness Sekida gives us a more traditional guide book, 50% concerned with how to sit and breath and 50% concerned with a pretty detailed analysis of "samadhi" -- the state of mind to be achieved in Zen meditation. With great reluctance, I will steer clear of the easy jokes about the professors of nothingness like Osho and Sekida.  While it's easy to get bogged down ...

While the Western world was setting out to discover a new way of thinking and a new way of exploring the Universe, the marriage of Taoism and Buddhism that begat Zen was already centuries old. Like all religions, Zen freezes doctrine and sets it beyond debate, investigation or refutation. Centuries ago, the dogma of Zen has become the property of revered masters. In Zen as in all other religions, thinking is handed over to the professionals, to defer to the "masters". Those who are interested in Zen are called disciples of the masters, not students. Masters are not teachers -- their role is to get the disciple to dismiss all theories, all experience, all problem solving. The Zen literature consistently places the disciple in the role of the fool -- a dramatic contrast to Western philosophy, founded by Socrates, who had a much more respectful attitude toward his students. Of course dismissal of all human knowledge and all conceivable worldly goals this is a huge project, wh...

"Theology is Crap" Osho calls Zen " The Path of Paradox ". Perhaps that's the most compact way to describe Zen to someone who is totally new to Zen. Zen challenges all our assumptions about reality, religion and the way we think of ourselves. Osho himself  personified this challenge (he died in 1990). His main advice was to "shut the fuck up, just be". Yet he wrote dozens of books and he has hours of lectures on You Tube. I think it's best to see Osho as a clown -- a court jester -- I don't think he'd be insulted by this advice . Zen is fun and  funny.  Historically speaking, Zen has roots in Buddhism (itself rooted in "Hinduism") and Taoism. Anyone who has dabbled in these two sources will immediately recognize the historical echoes. For someone who has never looked into Zen, it's also important to realize what Zen is not. From Taoism, it recognizes the difference between reality and talking about reality. Accordingly, Zen...

I have quite sure that we will be sorting through the legacy of the great Scottish Philosopher  Alasdair MacIntyre  for centuries. For the moment, let me mention just one of his ideas, elaborated in " Dependent Rational Animals ", which points out that no philosophy of Man makes sense unless we recognize that we are deeply dependent on each other in every way, from birth to death. Like many great ideas, it seems obvious at first but it is so easy to forget this, both on an individual level and in our wider investigations. An example of the "wider investigations" is the project of History. MacIntyre would say (and there are still those who disagree) that history is always told from the social and political point of view of the historian. In other words the "past" is pretty much an allegory of what we presently regard to be the important issues. Let me leave this point and come back to the individual level and what I believe to be the very life blood of soc...

Theory: The core of evil is the denial of accountability. This idea runs beneath the surface of many religions, but is seldom stated so clearly. We are all familiar with the idea that God or Karma will "get back at you" through some magical weighing of the cosmic scales. In the long run, you will be paid for the good you do and the evil you do. We seem to really need to believe this, since we cannot bear the fact that evil people are *not* punished and innocent people constantly. This *cannot* be the way the Universe works. But, of course, this is *exactly* the way the Universe works. We can't change the way the Universe works but we can change the way we *see* it and salvage an important ethical principal. As citizens of a Universe that doesn't give a shit about us, many moral positions are possible. Here I confine myself to the attitudes of people who would be judged to be are evil under a wide variety of ethical frameworks, including the religious one but even the ...

July, 2013 At the risk of over-simplifying, every so often, we should attempt to identify a few broad concepts that seem to sum up the priorities of a wise person. Compassion . Perhaps the best word for "love" or agape  in the Christian sense (1 Cor 13) and a common thread of all religions. Among other things, compassion allows us to escape the prison of our own lives and destinies. The term includes such things as tolerance , which seems to be essential to creation of a peaceful and law-abiding society and for support of an open dialogue on all issues, which is the essential condition for progress of any sort. Enlightenment. In some religions, most notably Buddhism and Hinduism, enlightenment is put forward as the main goal of life. I think this can easily broadened from the traditional inward-looking mystical journey to including the Scientific endeavour: learning everything about everything. Most important is the acquisition of skills of broad applicability, ...

I am unimpressed with Buddhist metaphysics. In spite of the claim often heard that Buddhism is not a religion, I never seem to get very far into Buddhist doctrine without running into its metaphysics. Most recently, I was charmed by the idea of "samsara" -- which seemed to me a useful concept -- all the distractions of the world that keep us from enlightenment. However, any discussion I can find of the subject is all about the wheel of life and reincarnation. I'm also impressed by the idea that our suffering is self-imposed and that we can escape suffering by changing the way we think about our lives. This is a pretty obvious idea, really but the Buddhists seem to wrap it up in religious practice and doctrine. Not all of our problems can be solved this way and certainly not even the problems that arise solely in our minds can be solved this way. There are, after all, strong claims of modern medicine to address genuine illnesses, "chemical imbalances", injuries a...

For me and many others, the debate about the existence or non-existence of the Christian God has pretty well burned out. I  I was skeptical when I first heard the idea at age 5, but I've always hoped that somebody would explain it to me. After 61 years, I think I'm entitled to move on. -- ME Sagan – Varieties of Scientific Experience Among the leading advocates of Skepticism, Sagan was unique in his wide-ranging and sympathetic knowledge of religion. In this collection of talks, Sagan takes on the religious mind-set in a very broad and comprehensive way. He is also perhaps the most convincing advocate of what he calls the "God of Einstein" aka the "God of Science", which is a strong theory based on observation -- the mother of all theories that underlies Science itself--the "faith", if you will, that the Cosmos is logical, consistent and, to a  surprising  extent, understandable by the mind of Man. Whatever our sympathies for Christian tradition ma...

Carl Sagan's "Varieties of Scientific Experience" provides an excellent introduction to the subject for  those unfamiliar with the "God of Einstein". In a nutshell, Einstein concluded that: The universe seems to be governed by consistent "laws" many of which turned out to be were (somewhat surprisingly) discoverable and comprehensible to the mind of man. Such laws appear to apply equally throughout the observable universe (again something that did not need to be true  but apparently is  according to our observations) There is no special frame of reference -- a fact that follows from the universal applicability of the laws of physics, most famously known as Einstein's principal of relativity. This does not imply the existence of a personal God with all or any of the attributes assigned by Western theology, such as omniscience, omnipresence, responsiveness to prayer etc. I agree with Carl Sagan, one of the most articulate proponents of Sk...