Category Archives: philosophy - Page 4

An afternoon out

Posted by on October 19, 2010 No comments

On Sunday I paid a local Theravada temple in Birmingham a visit.  My practise has been done virtually till now and I felt it was time to take the next step.  The lady I was talking to was cheerful, energetic and happy and helpful and was at pains to explain impermanence and the view that Buddhism is psychology.  As a trained psychiatric nurse, she could get right behind this and I hope I get the chance to talk to her in more depth about it.

I listened and took this chance to reboot my understanding, it’s so good to come to things with a beginners mind again.  We get so wrapped up in knowing this and that, with how much we know and understand, we wrap our understanding round us like armour.  No wonder we get upset when it’s challenged.

It’s this sort of thing that moved me away from the local skeptical community, I was all ready to start going to meetings, but on closer inspection and reading of blogs it all started to taste a bit sour.  I started to get the distinct feeling that the point is to be seen to be right, I felt that I saw a lot of ego and little desire to understand.  There was no empathy.  One day I’ll expand on this in more depth, but not right now.

So, I had a nice afternoon and also got to try a Tibetan Prayer Wheel for the first time.  Let’s see where this new chapter leads…..

Is the Grass Greener?

Posted by on October 8, 2010 No comments

A friend made a comment to me today, a colleague was retiring and she felt that it would be nice to be able to retire early.  One thing that came up in the conversation was that rather than compare oneself to those who have it better than you, it can be better for your mental state to remind yourself of those who have it worse.  I understand and agree, technically, with this idea.  But I also feel, looking back that there is a further point to be explored here.

The Buddha makes the point that everyone faces problems in our lives, that even someone who seems much better off than us still has their share of problems.  We can look around us and see the rich, powerful and famous, they seem almost mythical figures, shrouded in glamour.  Yet, one can be bound to the wheel of Samsara with chains of gold as well as chains of iron.

Let’s consider this, celebrities have the above plusses but these things have their downsides.  The price of fame is papparazzi and stalkers, the inability to ever fade into the crowd again.  The price of power is having to wield it and be held responsible for the consequences of using it.  But fortune, who could argue against having millions? Lao Tzu does, arguing that the accumulating of riches makes you a target for thieves, thus bringing it’s own risks

So, I contend that things are far from as simple as they first seem, once you look a little closer the grass on the other side of the fence is often far from greener.

A good quote on Mindfulness

Posted by on October 6, 2010 2 comments

I heard this remark tonight from my instructor regarding the practise of mindfulness, the class was talking about it in relation to Taijiquan.

“We’re Human Beings, not Human Doings”

This is actually a very good quote, and I’d like to say a little more about this subject.  I’ve said before and I will always maintain, that it’s very difficult to penetrate Taoist philosophy deeply without at least some Tai Chi practise.  The (often) not so simple act of playing with the principles physically enables an intuitive view, not an intellectual one, that is a great help.  This also helps a lot with Buddhism.

As we attempted to move each other around, it became more apparent that the act of attempting to do something blocks mindfulness.  In fact in attempting to influence, force, or otherwise get at a result from our actions, we can lose our grasp on the thread of things and we fail.  Even the intent seemed to cause me to lose the thread of what I was doing, all very strange and quite unnerving.

It became clear to me tonight that a large part of mindfulness involves getting your mind out of the way.  So, mindlessness?  No…

The trick seemed to be to be present, but unattached to an outcome in a relaxed way, don’t try to force it.  It reminded me of some of my best meditation sittings, I didn’t focus, I just got out of my own way and let it happen.

There, I can’t explain it very well.  But hey I’ll let it be, and who knows, maybe this can be used as a start?

Moving in cycles

Posted by on September 28, 2010 No comments

I’ve been keeping half an eye on the financial rumblings from the Eurozone of late, things seem to be on the move again and not in a good way.  I have to admit that I was less than impressed with the huge bailouts handed out, both there and here in the UK.  The whole thing seemed to be nothing more than a futile attempt to paper over some very real cracks.  It seems that these cracks are resurfacing, and I am having real doubts that either the UK or European leadership can solve this easily.

Speaking of the United Kingdom, we can finally see the beginnings of house price falls.  This isn’t unexpected, it seems to be happening is spite of the ever more frantic efforts of those in power to prop things up.  I admit that it does lead me to a quiet sense of vindication, but not one I take any pleasure from, more of a resigned sigh.

You see, in 2005 I was pointing out that house prices had to come down, and getting sneered at for my trouble.  This was based on history, we’ve had this cycle before and will probably have it again.   Also, the simple principle that eventually people would be unable to buy what they couldn’t afford, with no first time buyers the whole thing had to falter.  It was also on the Taoist principle that when anything is taken to an extreme, it tends to become its opposite and thus things move in cycles.  Before anyone thinks I’m getting egotistical, I have to balance this by saying that I didn’t see the global or national credit crunches coming, but then few did.

This principle of things becoming their opposites seems to be applying to our global system, and especially the idea of growth.  Growth becomes contraction (or deflation if you prefer), but remember, it’s all cyclic.  What this means is that we can expect contraction, but that the down swing contains the seeds of the next upswing.  This is why I think the out and out doomers are wrong in their assessment, there is a lot of talk of “Black Swans” but what about “White Swans”?  In my view, the doomer crowd are not guilty of a lack of analytic skill, far from it in fact.  I have to say that there are some passionate and excellent writers and analysts there.  But I wonder if they neglect their imaginations.  It is a fact that there are a lot of people who doubted things; transatlantic airliners, nuclear power (including Einstein!), there’s a good list here.  They were all wrong, I imagine that the predictions that civilisation is impossible without Oil and / or growth will one day appear on a list just like the one I linked to above.

Why I am an Agnostic

Posted by on September 21, 2010 No comments

When the Pope left the UK yesterday, our Prime Minister said that he’d given us something to think about.  I agree, for me, the visit has caused me to reflect on my Buddhist flavoured Agnosticism.  I’ve spent quite some time and word count exploring why I’m not a Theist.  But, why am I not an Atheist, why Agnostic?

I have read the various arguments to and fro between Theists and Atheists, Evolutionists and Creationists.  I’ve seen seen lots of pointless name calling, misquoting and other tactics and I’ve started to think it all reeks a little of the school playground.  Everyone is so sure that they know for sure what’s right, so willing to shout about it, so unwilling to accept that they might be wrong. But once you dig into that conceptual certainty, it runs out pretty quickly.

How do I know this?  For my answer, I invite you to try this meditation I learned in Second Life, this is something you probably think you know pretty well.  You might need a mirror for this.

Sit, relax. Look at your face in the mirror, or visualise it.  Ask the question “Who is this?”  Once you answer, keep the answer in mind and, of that answer, ask again “Who is this?”  Usually the answers run out fairly quickly, in the meditation group I was part of, we either went in circles or ran out of answers quickly.  Don’t question aggressively, be gentle.  This is an enquiry, not an interrogation.

In Buddhism, this meditation reminds us of the fiction of the self.  As soon as you try to grasp it, it slips away.  But you could just as easily hold a concept or object in your mind.

This would bring you to the chief reason for my agnosticism, the limits of the human knowledge.  We like to ignore this and pretend anything is knowable, but that just isn’t the case, we are limited beings.  Frankly, there is enough written in the Tao Te Ching to suggest Agnosticism and I have touched on the Buddhist case for this previously.

I’m not the only one to accept this, and I’ll finish my thoughts so far on this with a quote from Thomas Henry Huxley, the man who coined the term “Agnostic”.

“I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori  difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter…

It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions…

That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.”

I’ll revisit a couple of things I said here in more detail another time.

Does it really matter?

Posted by on September 9, 2010 5 comments

I saw the statement from Stephen Hawking last week about his view that the universe didn’t need a divine creator.  This was reported far and wide and as you have probably noticed, this has kicked up a bit of a fuss.

I can’t help but look at this and shake my head and wonder when people will make the realisation that all of this fuss is fruitless?  The Buddha warns us away from these questions, saying that they only cause suffering and angst, from  what I can see he was bang on the money!  Also, Lao Tzu also makes it clear that certain things are simply beyond our knowledge, in fact Taoism tends not to encourage knowledge hoarding.  I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with this, we have no evidence on which to base any speculation on the events prior to the big bang.  In the same manner we have no real idea what things are like outside the universe.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there are a lots of times when the only honest answer is “I don’t know”, and I feel that this realisation is quite freeing.  The recognition of limitations and the acceptance that there are things out there that are beyond our capacity is liberating, in a way it gives you your mind back.

That’s quite something to say, almost heresy in todays society.  We almost worship knowledge and to be the expert on something is considered to be quite the excellent thing.  I am starting to wonder if this is the “Information Age” or the “Information Fetish Age”?

The Tao Te Ching warns us against this in chapter 19:

“End sagacity; abandon knowledge
The people benefit a hundred times

End benevolence; abandon righteousness
The people return to piety and charity

End cunning; discard profit
Bandits and thieves no longer exist

Reduce selfishness; decrease desires

These three things are superficial and insufficient
Thus this teaching has its place:
Show plainness; hold simplicity” [1]

We hoard knowledge, which isn’t a bad thing all in all, but it can breed arrogance if you’re not very careful.  If you’ve seen Star Wars Episode 2 AotC, remember when Obi Wan suggests to a Librarian in the Jedi Archive that a planet is missing, that their records might be incomplete?

“JOCASTA NU: Well, I’m sure you didn’t call me over here for a history lesson. Are you having a problem, Master Kenobi?
OBI-WAN: Yes, I’m trying to find a planet system called Kamino. It doesn’t seem to show upon any of the archive charts.
JOCASTA NU: Kamino? It’s not a system I’M familiar with… Let me see…
JOCASTA NU leans over OBI-WAN’S shoulder, looking at the screen.
JOCASTA NU: (continuing) Are you sure you have the right co-ordinates?
OBI-WAN: (nodding) According to my information, it should be in this quadrant somewhere… just south of the Rishi Maze.
JOCASTA NU taps the keyboard and frowns.
JOCASTA NU: No co-ordinates? It sounds like the kind of directions you’d get from a street tout… some old miner or Furbog trader.
OBI-WAN: All three actually.
JOCASTA NU: Are you sure it exists?
OBI-WAN: Absolutely.
JOCASTA NU: Let me do a gravitational scan.
OBI-WAN and JOCASTA NU study the star map hologram. Episode 2, Jedi Archives Episode 2, Jedi Archives
JOCASTA NU: There are some inconsistencies here. Maybe the planet you’re looking for was destroyed.
OBI-WAN: Wouldn’t that be on record?
JOCASTA NU: It ought to be. Unless it was very recent. (shakes her head) I hate to say it, but it looks like the system you’re searching for doesn’t exist.
OBI-WAN: That’s impossible… perhaps the archives are incomplete.
JOCASTA NU: The archives are comprehensive and totally secure, my young Jedi. One thing you may be absolutely sure of – if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist! “

… and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?

Sources

[1] – Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths in 2006. (www.taoism.net)

Creative Commons

The Big Bang image above is by pshutterbug and is under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

The Blame Game

Posted by on September 7, 2010 4 comments

A thread on Science and morality on the Tea House got me thinking.  Points were made about atrocities, this historical monster was an atheist, and then denials and counter points.  It’s always unsurprising to see these things and to be honest, I find such arguments draining, as you can just spin your wheels for ages and not get anywhere.  So, I thought I’d write a quick post to put my views on this on the record.

The row over atrocities attributed to religion vs those attributed to atheism is getting the cart firmly before the horse and missing the key component .. people.  If someone is going to commit these sort of atrocities they will, they will simply use whatever they have to hand as an excuse.  To blame it on a system is to pass the buck and delude ourselves that Humans aren’t naturally capable of such things.  No, no, it was that nasty opposing system.  Regardless, it still needed people who were willing to do the things.

To realise this is unpleasant as it acknowledges that we all have a dark side, lurking in our psyches.  Now, that really doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, they’d rather deny it and pretend the perpetrators aren’t human.  Which is odd, because I can’t think of any other creature that would behave like that.

That denial is a shame as the only way to effectively deal with this (and I have written about this before) is to acknowledge it and humbly accept it.