Merry Christmas

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. (It's kind of funny how the phrase "merry christmas" survives as one of the only modern usages of the word "merry." I prefer saying things like "Happy Christmas.") My wife and I went out to the Waffle House for lunch and then we went to see a movie. I also got some recreational reading done, and continued to work on a knitting project that my wife is helping me with... A mockingbird with feathers puffed out against the cold just landed on a branch outside my window... Anyway, I look forward to getting more reading done this week, and finally finishing the knitting project (a hat).

It is strange the way the Christmas season is invested with such significance, how deeply it is burned into my brain and the brains of others. It's just another day, and I don't mean that as a slam against it's religious significance. Most people celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday, and that's the concept that's really burned into my brain. In fact, when I was growing up, I felt like Christmas equated with the receiving of presents in the morning. I would be incredibly excited the night before. (I don't know why, alhtough I still feel it to a far lesser degree.) Then I would rush down in the morning, we would tear open our presents in a frenzy, and then I would feel let down, almost dejected. Not because I didn't get good presents, but because no material goods could possibly fulfill the desire that had built in my heart in the days before Christmas. It's actually just an example of incorrect thinking on my part, but at that point in my life, I lacked the maturity, awareness and desire to modify my expectations and behavior to more closely match reality. Then, after presents, we had dinner with visiting family, and I found this to be incredibly boring and painful. All I wanted to do was be alone, possibly playing video games or reading. It is only recently that I've found being with other people a blessing rather than a curse.

May you have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May you be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

Wee sleekit cowrin timorous beastie

This is one of the two mice we captured when we first moved into our house. La Misma's post on her blog reminded me of the whole incident. Incidentally, I have a grammar question. Should it be "into our house" or "in to our house"?

Buddhism and (Science or Secular Humanism)

I just watched a very inisghtful talk of Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is an evangelical atheist, much the same as I used to be, but I found myself agreeing with almost everything he said. For example, although rocks and tables consist mostly of empty space, they look solid because our brains have evolved to see them as solid, which is the most useful way to perceive them in the particular range of speeds and energies that we live in. If we were made of neurtinos, we probably would have evolved to see rocks as being filled with empty space. He makes a number of interesting points along these lines, about how bats probably hear in color for example. At the end of his talk, he went on to say that a human is merely a complicated machine (no evidence given) and that millions of people were subject to the deluded perception of the universe as having human characteristics. (I think he was trying to say that belief in God was tantamount to this perception, although he didn't explicitly say so.) I agree with this. Even if one calls the totality of existence "God," it is still a misconception to give it human characteristics. So, really, the only thing I actually disagree with is the idea that consciousness is explainable in mechanistic terms. Throughout the whole talk, which is about 20 minutes long, I was thinking how Buddhist it seemed, and I was a bit puzzled at the end comments, which didn't seem to follow logically from the beginning. This is probably becuase Dawkins is arguing against the simplistic religious conceptions that are so common in our culture. For example, the idea that evolution and spiritual belief are inconsistent. He's saying, look, the universe is much more complicated and beautiful than you thought! I say "Hear hear!" However, he then draws the specious conclusion, "Therefore religion is evil." I think he means to say, "Therefore ignorance is evil." He has unconsciously identified a subset of religious practicioners with the whole set.

Christianity and Buddhism

I went up to visit a Japanese Buddhist monastery in the mountains near here. Although they are Japanese, they are not Zen, and I don't actually remember the name of their order. It is quite different than Tibetan Buddhism, but in essence, it is the same. They did a ceremony where they banged on drums and chanted with the goal of world peace. This same group leads an annual walk from Atlanta to Oak Ridge to protest the existence and manufacture of nuclear bombs. The monastery has only two regular residents, a monk and a nun, and I immediately liked them both. After the ceremony, we ate a delicious home-cooked meal that they had prepared. The monk, Brother Izumi, talked a bit about American Buddhism. (By the way, he welcomed us as if we were old friends, even though we practice Tibetan Buddhism.) In any event, he emphasized that Buddhism often reconnects people with their Christian roots, with the true spirit of Christianity. He pointed out that this true spirit is thriving in places like South America. In fact, what Brother Izumi was saying has been echoed by all the Buddhist teachers I've ever heard voice an opinion about the subject. Christianity and Buddhism are not contradictory. My problem is that Christianity is promulgated in a way that gives rise to a lot of misunderstanding and confusion, especially because people cling so much to doctrine. Thus, when I was growing up, I got the clear idea that there is an all-powerful anthropomorphic creator God sitting up their in the sky. Now this concept leads to all sorts of confusion. First, there is the well-known problem that omnipotence is logically contradictory: "Can God create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?" Second, there is the question of why God causes us to suffer, if, he is after all, the ultimate cause of everything. However, many people have come up with a much more sublte idea of God. Spinoza recognized that "there can be no other thing than God." That is, all of us, the world, the universe, are part of God. We are ineseparable from God. The person A.C., who posts comments on this site, has mentioned a similar idea that "we are all thoughts in God's mind." This, I feel, is quite close to ideas in Vajrayana Buddhism, where everything is said to be a projection of mind. All that we see and experience is a projection of mind. But whose mind? A fundamental Buddhist teaching is that at the ultimate level, there is no such thing as separately existing selves. There is only one mind, and we are all inseparable from it. One could call this God, and be very much in tune with some strands of Christian thought. This unity is not usually called God in Buddhist circles because the term God evokes so much preconceived baggage, I think. For example, it seems funny to say "We are participants in God."

Dharma Path

I signed up a week and a half ago for the Dharma Path program which is being offered by Lama Norlha Rinpoche's Monastery in New York. You commit to an hour of meditation each day, two hours a day on weekends. You can listen to the instructional talks as mp3 files. So far it's already been quite helpful. The program lasts seven months, and culminates in a 9 day retreat at the end of June. In addition, I will be qualified to teach up to the level I achieve. The format is different than what I would have anticipated: for each meditation session, sit in tranquility meditation for a third, contemplate our precious human birth (the first thought that turns the mind toward the dharma) for a third, and then finish with tranquility meditation for a third. One does this for 60 hours, and then moves on to the second thought that turns the mind toward the dharma, eventually covering all four thoughts.

I am still acutely aware of my shortcomings. Indeed, yesterday, I had an outbreak of jealousy, and before that I was nurturing fantasies of my superiority, but all I can say is that I'm making progress.