[Some useful perspectives on overcoming the human condition (or not) - personal info redacted . "Christian" seems holds a reasonably popular and liberal view of Christianity - she's not a fundamentalist, but thinks the Bible somehow has all the answers. She is certainly not familiar with the Bible, but thinks she is -- a common situation of "believers". As many believers do, she demands that opponents "read the Bible" to learn what it "really" says. This attitude generally comes from enthusiastic but selective Bible study, not from the in-depth start-to-finish study typical in a University level course in the Book and associated historical context. You just can't know what you don't know ...] She's also not an American, so is probably unfamiliar with with the litany of crimes that America has committed against humanity in the years since World War II] [09:13] (You): 2 names -- officially "diary of a christian skeptic" [0...

For quite awhile now, I have been using the word "Zen" to characterize my world view. It best sums up where I am "coming from" but can be confusing, both to the vast majority of folks who have no idea what Zen is as well as folks who do . The lack of a term for a follower of Zen makes for some confusion. Of course the term "Christian" can mean almost anything, so the term serves to muddy the waters more than clarify. There is no Zen equivalent to words like "Christian" or "Muslim". Zen is not based on belief so there is no such thing as a "Zennist". It is similar to the term "Yoga". We don't speak of people who practice yoga as "Yoggists" - Yoga (or "physio") is just a "healthy" practice. Zen is Yoga for the mind. It purports to be the cultivation of a mental outlook that deals most efficiently with the human situation. It has deep roots in Buddhism and Taoism, but the "ism...

The core of Zen is attention. Paying attention. Being in the moment. Of course there is more to it than that, but that's where you need to start. Puppies are a popular metaphor for the unruly mind in Zen teaching. Puppies cannot multi-task. They are always in the moment but their attention is all over the map. One second it's your shoe, the next second it's the sound of a kibble hitting a bowl ... I am in the midst of training my mind and a puppy, so the analogy frequently comes to mind. When "sitting" zazen  or any other kind of mindfulness practice (not strictly "meditation") the mind tends to wander. The key is to pull it back to the moment, usually by concentrating on the breath (maybe counting breaths) or stepping into some discomfort such as my recent back pain. This is the idea of Zen  remembrance -- remembering to come back to the present. When "driving mindfully" (which is just attempting to drive with full attention), I picture random...

For people raised in the "Book" traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), it's hard to imagine a religion without God. But God is not really central to phenomenon of religion. Religion is, at its core, a suspension of disbelief, a surrender of personal freedom of thought to authority. Religion has (quiet justifiably) a very bad reputation among "Western" people, who value (but not necessarily practice ) freedom of thought and opinion. In the "West", religions often don the robes of "Science", but still retain the telltale reliance of authority, revealing their toxic reliance on the religious instincts of human beings. * Buddhists often claim that Buddhism is not a religion, but a philosophy. In a way, this is true if all you know is the (heavily interpreted) teachings of Gautama Buddha. But this is to ignore the present reality of Buddhism. For example, in Sri Lanka the Buddhist majority brutally suppresses minorities in a way that his hard ...

A few things that have deeply impressed me in the last few weeks: Samsara - the movie. If you still have a pulse, this will blow your mind. It's visually stunning but also deeply disturbing. It may challenge your most cherished assumptions about what it is to be human. Much of what I have to say in this piece will make a lot more sense if you take a break to watch the movie - it's on Netflix for example. The Orenda  - an instant classic about the horrors of early French conquest of what is now Canada. Easily the best Canadian book of 2014. Maybe the best book period. There is a lot of overlap between the themes in Samsara and those in Orenda. The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being  - Basically an on-line "how to" course in Zen philosophy and practice. There is a lot more to Zen that what's in this course. For me, the difference the course made was to encourage me to actually put Zen into practice. None of what I write here would have made ...

Once we take a break from the distractions of daily life (" Samsara "), we are left with the ultimate question ... What (if anything) am I? Religions, great and small, hand us a pre-packaged answer to this question. The answers are all transparent fictions, but we hold on to them desperately, in part precisely because they are so flimsy, but for many other reasons -- most notably the lack of plausible alternatives. Perhaps the most popular packaged answer involves a metaphor. We are asked to imagine that we are really a kind of "soul" or "atma" just "wearing" our physical bodies. The soul is detachable and can wander off once the body dies, perhaps to haunt the living or perhaps to move on to a realm supposedly more "real" than what ordinary un-enlightened folks think of as the real world. Once it peels off it's fleshy coat, we imagine the ghostly version of ourselves to be very much like the original - having hands and feet - even...