Yes, I got a prroblem with "certified" miracle stories...

Anyone else have a problem (emphasis mine)?

CHAMPION, Wis. — In France, the shrine at Lourdes is surrounded by hundreds of hotels and has received as many as 45,000 pilgrims in a single day. Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico, draws millions of fervent worshipers a year.

Now, a little chapel among the dairy farms here, called Our Lady of Good Help, has joined that august company in terms of religious status, if not global fame. This month, it became one of only about a dozen sites worldwide, and the first in the United States, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said she was visited three times by Mary, who hovered between two trees in a bright light, clothed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist and a crown of stars above her flowing blond locks. As instructed, Ms. Brise devoted her life to teaching Catholic beliefs to children.

On Dec. 8, after a two-year investigation by theologians who found no evidence of fraud or heresy and a long history of shrine-related conversions, cures and other signs of divine intervention, Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay declared “with moral certainty” that Ms. Brise did indeed have encounters “of a supernatural character” that are “worthy of belief.”  ...

Catholic leaders described the decree in Wisconsin as a bolt of joy at a trying time for the Catholic church, which is troubled by revelations of sex abuse.
“This is a gift to the believers,” said the Rev. Johann Roten, director of the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton...



Over the 20th century, some 386 major apparitions of Mary were reported at a level beyond local rumors, said Father Roten, who has been an investigator in purported sightings. About 75 of those were studied, and at most a dozen were recognized as valid, he said. Increasingly, he said, the church makes use of psychiatric examinations and brain scans to see if people making claims are mentally healthy and not having hallucinations.
That kind of examination was not possible, of course, for Ms. Brise, and Bishop Ricken said that his panel of three theological specialists had considered a host of indirect factors in concluding that her sighting was credible, following guidelines set by the Vatican in 1978.

By all reports, he said, Ms. Brise was humble and honest and faithfully carried out Mary’s mandate to serve the church throughout her life. In one striking sign of a divine presence, he said, the shrine’s grounds and the terrified crowd who gathered there were spared the flames of the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, which devoured the surrounding lands and homes and caused more than 1,200 deaths. Her account of Mary’s apparition and message was consistent with accepted cases.

I mean, it's just not sporting, is it?

Good for the Hindu American Foundation!

I see that the Hindu American Foundation is leading a campaign called "Take Back Yoga."

The campaign, labeled “Take Back Yoga,” does not ask yoga devotees to become Hindu, or instructors to teach more about Hinduism. The small but increasingly influential group behind it, the Hindu American Foundation, suggests only that people become more aware of yoga’s debt to the faith’s ancient traditions.

That suggestion, modest though it may seem, has drawn a flurry of strong reactions from figures far apart on the religious spectrum. Dr. Deepak Chopra, the New Age writer, has dismissed the campaign as a jumble of faulty history and Hindu nationalism. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said he agrees that yoga is Hindu — and cited that as evidence that the practice imperiled the souls of Christians who engage in it. 

 Well, if Deepak Chopra is against it (and his excuses seem ridiculous based on the HAF's website) and Albert Mohler's discouraging Christians from engaging in it, I think the HAF is probably onto something here.  While like any group like this (including those Buddhists who look for science to "prove" Buddhism) there's the share of HAF claims that seem a bit over the top.  For example, I have read that Hinduism also owes debts to Jainism and Buddhism; Hinduism also evolved as reactions to these religions as well. 

But when it comes to the commoditization of practices, that, for want of a better term the word "spiritual" may be used (much as I loathe the term), I think a religious identification can't really hurt.

Beliefs, Wishes, Delusions

I had written a few months ago about Kessid Church and how it seemed a bit deceptive of them to have what was in effect a fundamentalist church that was "fed" new members by a health club.  Well, the chickens have come home to roost for Kessid Church- follow this link and watch the (flash - not iPhone/iPad friendly) video on the page from about the 15:00 mark.

I hadn't seen the comment left on my blog post until now:

As a Christian I can Assure you that even Jesus Christ was against organzied "religion". Christianity is about loving God, loving others and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to the rest of the world. Mumon you seem to be very leary of any group that doesn't fit into your fundamentalist "box" [sic]. How is promoting Gods genuine love corrupting Vancouver and the greater Clark County area? If anything Christianity is bringing back moralistic ideals to an already declining society. I welcome you with open arms brother, you don't have to like me or my beliefs but know that regardless how angry you are right now, God still loves you! :)  

Now I wasn't in the least bit "angry" of course when I wrote that post, or the e-mail to that church.  But I think it's likely that this is what was in the minds of the folks at Kessid Church when they started their venture: They thought they  were "promoting God's genuine love" and "bringing back moralistic ideals to an already declining society."  (I am always intrigued by how conservatives are inevitably using adjectives with "-ic" on the end of the word when there's a perfectly good alternative, nearly identical, that's shorter and means exactly the same thing.  Can somebody tell me why they do that?  But I digress.)

They likely thought they  were "promoting God's genuine love" and "bringing back moralistic ideals to an already declining society."   The hubris behind such a statement is breathtaking to me. They were promoting "God's" "genuine" "love."  Anyone who believed differently from them was not.  And they had morality on their side.  They had a guy who could suspend not only disbelief, but the laws of physics, economics, biology, and mathematics for His People.  We other skeptical schmucks were "stuck" with reality.

"Nobody could have predicted" then, that such hubris might lead some folks to think that such a belief might lead them to make rash choices, such as that the cash flow from a health club could pay the freight on a budding megachurch.  And this in a place - where two other outfits had failed before, one in an economic boom time.  And this in a time when the region's economy was in free-fall, in the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. I do hope the place taking over the club, though succeeds.  Not that I'll join them, but I do hope the area comes back; Vancouver WA is still in a real-estate depression, relative to boom times.  But the complete insanity of what these guys did; it's breathtaking.   We've had some economic successes locally recently, but these have generally been places that have folks behind them who know what they're doing because they've done it before.  The Kessid guys were evidently utter, rank newbies, by comparison.

It is clear from watching the video to which I've linked that these guys were young,  enthusiastic, and utterly without the sort of business-sense needed to build a resilient operation.   That is why I sent them an e-mail, empathizing with their loss, reminding them of Buddha's parable of the mustard seed,  and hoping they would understand that in one's endeavors, skill is often more important than belief.

I hope  they will come to realize that it was the hubris and greed of taking their beliefs for reality, and becoming to attached to those beliefs, and the "wants" behind those beliefs that is related to their debacle.  It would make them ultimately healthier, happier, and  better able to really be  part of our community, which includes people of all types.

And to provide a bit of contrast on the topic, here's some folks trying to live on one dollar a day. While they too seem young, idealistic, and perhaps slightly naive, I think their feet are more on the ground and they are more connected to reality, at least as we are aware, than the Kessid crowd.

Update: Evidently they did keep the "center" separate from the church.  Except - and if you read the article and comment tellng me, "See! They used a manager!"  please  remember the folowing:  they made a blunder so colossal words fall short: by calling the thing "Kessid Center."   Consciously or unconsciously,  this  harebrained branding scheme  a) conflated the center with the church and b) conflated the center with a weird, foreign-sounding word  (even though it's Hebrew for something good, I'm told).  The latter effect of course would drive away nativists, and the first one would drive away Progressives.

But then, it seems like a good idea to keep church and workouts separate.

Knowledge of religion...and my advertisers...

Much will undoubtedly be made of the latest Pew survey reported here (see for example P.Z. Myers' somewhat disjointed and way too inside take on the story).  What I find more interesting is that what is labeled as "knowledge of religion" largely does not relate to what is believed or practiced.

For example the questions involved were of the form, according to the NY Times article I first cited:

Among the topics covered in the survey were: Where was Jesus born? What is Ramadan? Whose writings inspired the Protestant Reformation? Which Biblical figure led the exodus from Egypt? What religion is the Dalai Lama? Joseph Smith? Mother Theresa? In most cases, the format was multiple choice. 

 That's a pity because its those beliefs and narratives (like golden plates and Moroni for Mormons or Mother Theresa's views on poverty and family planning) that are really where the rubber meets the road in terms of religious belief.

That brings me to point out some things about some of my advertisers.  I don't do a lot of strict filtering of advertisers for my blog.  To the extent I know how to do so, I keep the Scientologists off this website as well as some commercial advertisers who might get in the way of my professional ethical responsibilities (it's a long story and I won't get into it here).  But those that are left...hey, if they seem somewhat odd, feel free to find out more about them!

Take for example, Maharishi University of Management!  They teach something called "Maharishi Vedic Mathematics!"

Even though modern mathematics has achieved enormous success in all areas of life, it appears to be fragmented and incomplete. It lacks a solid foundation and breaks down when faced with the ultimate infinite. In fact, the work of twentieth-century mathematician Kurt Gödel gives mathematical proof that mathematics is not complete and can in fact never be complete. As an example, mathematics cannot even handle concepts such as “the set of all sets.” The result is that most mathematicians choose to ignore the foundations of mathematics and work in isolated, fragmented areas with no vision of the whole of mathematics.

Maharishi’s Vedic Mathematics, on the other hand, is a complete field of knowledge.

At Maharishi University of Management, students gain direct experience of the infinite field of pure knowledge through their practice of the Transcendental Meditation program. Your study of mathematical infinity is followed by personal experience of infinity. Your study of mathematics is complete and personally fulfilling and cultures the ability to spontaneously handle all possibilities in life.

 If I were to say that  Gödel 's proof is heavily dependent on the relationship between sets of cardinality  ℵ₀ (e.g. the set of natural numbers) and c, (e.g. the set of numbers on the real line) it may or may not mean much to you, but what it ultimately means is that there is no reason to have recourse to funny metaphysics pretending to be math to the uneducated.

I won't block MUM because I think, even if my readers don't know the beauty and nicety of transfinite mathematics, you do know what to do when you see my advertisers on this page! 

Ditto for "Eckankar."  This is a Buddhist blog, one heavily infused by existentialism, skepticism, and a post-modern outlook.  And as such, I can only scratch my head as to why the Eck folks would want to come here to advertise.  What do they think I'd make of "Gopal Das"  who "teaches at the Temple of Golden Wisdom on the Astral Plane?" 

James Ure recently wrote about how the Kalama sutra encourages investigation for one's self (and I tried to add, but it hasn't appeared, that this is also mentioned in the Mahaparanirvana sutra).  The latter states, in one form, with the Buddha addressing Ananda as he is dying:

Therefore, Ananda, be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as your island, the Dhamma as your refuge, seeking no other refuge.

"And how, Ananda, is a bhikkhu an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; with the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge?

 "When he dwells contemplating the body in the body, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world; when he dwells contemplating feelings in feelings, the mind in the mind, and mental objects in mental objects, earnestly, clearly comprehending, and mindfully, after having overcome desire and sorrow in regard to the world, then, truly, he is an island unto himself, a refuge unto himself, seeking no external refuge; having the Dhamma as his island, the Dhamma as his refuge, seeking no other refuge.

One needs not to know about folks on Venus or astral planes in this business.

So, yeah, go learn about other religions, cults, belief systems, etc. if you wish. Do your homework.  Overcome desire and sorrow.  Help others.  There's really more important things to do these days  than accumulate a collection of factoids about belief systems.

Those final bits, are to me, far more important than whether Job was the suffering guy or whether the Dalai Lama's Buddhist.

What's wrong with "Buddhism is a religion?"

Other than what non-Buddhists assert about it, which I think incorrectly identifies Buddhism as a practice oriented religion, as opposed to a creedal-based one, I can't think of why one might not want to say Buddhism is a religion.

But Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche says:

A lot of people prefer to think of Buddhism as a religion. It's easy to see why, when Buddhism abounds with religious trappings: the rituals and the chants and the golden statues sitting on the shrine. Buddha himself never wanted to be deified in any kind of icons; at the beginning, he told his students no icons, no worshiping. But it's said that he had a very devoted student who kept pestering him, requesting his permission to make a statue of him, until finally the Buddha gave up and allowed the first image to be made. And now we have all these elaborate golden icons that look like they were dug out of an Egyptian pyramid. It's nice to have these reminders, but we must remember that's what they are: reminders of something, an example to be followed, not idols to be worshiped.

If our goal is to turn Buddhism into a religion, that's fine -- in America we have freedom of speech and the Bill of Rights. We can make Buddhism into a religion, or a branch of psychology, or a self-help program, or whatever we want. But if we're looking for enlightenment, we won't find it through relating to the Buddha as a religious idol. Like Siddhartha, we'll find real spiritual awakening only when we begin to leave behind our fixed ideas about religious practice. Seeing the Buddha as an example and following his example -- recreating, in our own lives, his pursuit of truth, his courage and his open mind -- that's the real power of Buddhism beyond religion. 

 The good Rinpoche is evidently ignorant of this definition of religion:

any specific system of belief and worship, often involving a code of ethics and a philosophy: the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, etc.

Now admittedly the "belief" part of Buddhism is a bit less than the monotheist variety, but it is there, smack dab with a code of ethics and a philosophy.

But I think the good Rinpoche really misses the point when he says,

It's nice to have these [images of the Buddha as] reminders, but we must remember that's what they are: reminders of something, an example to be followed, not idols to be worshiped.

The Romans didn't worship their gods that way, and I don't know any Buddhists who do.

The author further goes on to say that the Buddha got to seeking the truth after he abandoned his religious practices, but this is incorrect: the Buddha was able to seek the truth after he let his religious practices penetrate the tiniest interstices of his existence.

And that's the only way a religion - or a "spiritual" practice - is going to help you anyway; in the same way you won't get good at tennis if you don't play..

This is what they do with used fitness centers in my area...

A Bally's fitness center closed way back in September of last year.  That was a net benefit for me, as I convinced my wife to let me join the Lacamas Swim and Sport club, which has much better facilities than Bally's had anyway. I'm told it's owned by triathletes, so they kind of serious and non-corporate about how they do things.

But my wife was hoping the Bally's center would revert to another owner who would re-open it.  Well, they did, kind of.  They are becoming apparently "Kessid Church" and "Kessid Center," a part of Kessid Church.

"Kessid Church" had been meeting here, which looks a lot like their "vision" (a scheme is not a vision, as Leonard Cohen sang) of what "Kessid Church" or, uh "Kessid Center" should be.

What's truly fascinating to me is not that Yet Again Some Other Fundamentalist Cult has tried to open shop in my neighborhood (we Pacific Northwestern folk are among the most "unchurched" folk in the country, don't you know), but that unlike most cults, they absolutely refuse to disclose what they believe or practice, other than a couple of generalities:

At our core we hold two important ideals: Intimacy with God, and being “less than.” Our Kessid logo is symbolic of both these principles. The red line represents intimacy with God. Through His blood, we can receive pure forgiveness. The acceptance of Christ’s forgiveness allows us to become a part of His family. This is our direct line between God and us. It connects us to Him in a bond that can’t ever be broken. When we allow Christ to examine our souls we are revealed for what we really are, and both our beauty and brokenness are exposed. “True intimacy is not without Judgment, yet, it is just the opposite. It’s about being completely known scars and all, without loosing even one strand of beautiful” -Anonymous. Here we are forgiven and released!



Most importantly, we believe that intimacy with God comes before all forms of ministry. If we can always strive for intimacy with God, the outpouring will be Holy Spirit led and feed ministry of all kinds. The < in the “K” represents the “less than” sign. In everything we do we want to do it with a humble and quiet spirit. “It’s about being content to let others discover the layers of our talents without having to boast about them. It’s a lack of arrogance, not a lack of aggressiveness in the pursuit of achievement.” – Bruna Martinuzzi. Kessid wants to be a church who does ministry without applause. This means we can do amazing things through Christ for our church and community without having to tell people how great we are.

Oh, I left out one other bit before that:

We want to infect the community and existing organizations that help serve our area, with our time, talent, and resources. 

I'm fascinated by this.  These guys clearly have your typical fundamentalist background, but they feel compelled to soft - pedal it.  They are, I think, outstanding communicators given their age - they're true believers you can be sure of that.  Luckily they have a contact page!

So, uh, I plan on writing them with a few questions...

• Why do you feel that you can't list your beliefs or Church lineage structure or heritage with any greater degree of specificity than you do on your website? Is your acceptance of that heritage so weak you are afraid people won't like it?
• You say  that you would like the Kessid Center to be open to the community and promote healthy living and lifestyle for all ages.  Would that mean you would be OK with Zen Buddhists visiting your facility? Practicing Zen Buddhism there? 'Cause we Zen Buddhists try to take our Zen Buddhist practice wherever we go.
• Seriously, though, you folks seem committed, and that might be a good thing, provided you're not fans of the Republican Party, or other right wing groups.  How do we live together? I personally have no illusions that I can dissuade you from your belief system, though I would love to tell you what my practice is and how it helps beings.  But with the world the way it is today, maybe your behavior is indicative of how we should proceed.  You folks are Christians.  I'm a Zen Buddhist.  Many others are atheists, agnostics, and other paths.  Isn't the stated path relatively unimportant? Shouldn't it be? Most likely we're all alone here, and no one's going to rescue us.  How can we survive when we all think everyone else's belief system is bullshit?  Shouldn't in such a case we merely proceed to get along forgetting such ideologies and "-isms?"

I'll be posting their response here.

The right tool for the job

Nathan at Dangerous Harvest does the "pox on both your houses" bit on atheism versus theism.  I disagree.  He says:

Talk of heaven and God-daddies in the sky always has felt like a screwy attempt to deal with human psychological dramas to me. There are terrible things occurring on Earth, so there must be a God waiting to punish us for our misdeeds, and "he" must be separate from us, otherwise "he'd" be tainted.

And frankly, talk of atheism can quickly stray into something screwy as well. Human reason is the highest power. Only that which is scientifically confirmed is real. There is nothing beyond the material...

Both ends of that spectrum dull the shit out of me, and are, as far as I'm concerned, completely lifeless - deader than the worn out logs currently floating down the flooded Mississippi. 

 There's nothing screwy at all about the proposition that that which is observed, measured, quantified, and probed in the meat world we inhabit pretty much stays there.  No ill-informed appeals to quantum physics metaphysics are needed.

Likewise, there's nothing really screwy about saying there's "nothing beyond the material," because that's the world we inhabit. 

Furthermore, from a viewpoint of non-duality, all three of these positions are not complete.

"Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt."

So says P.Z. Myers, in his lambasting of the "On Faith"  folks at the Washington Post commenting on this report on "non-believing clergy."  As a Rinzai guy, let me add in my 2 cents...

One pastor in the report recounted:

“My first few years of doing this were wracked with, ‘God, should I be doing this? Is this ---? Am I being ---? Am I posing? Am I being less than authentic; less than honest?’ … And, I really wrestled with it and to some degree still. But not nearly as much.”
“I will be the first to admit that I see Christianity as a means to an end, not as an end unto itself. And the end is very basically, a kind of liberal, democratic values. So I will use Christianity sometimes against itself to try to lead people to that point. But there’s so much within the Christian tradition that itself influenced the development of those liberal values, you know. They didn’t arise through secular means. They came out of some religious stuff. …I could couch all that in very secular language. If we were in a college setting, I would. But we’re in a religious setting, so I use the religious language.”

Myers says about this report by Daniel C. Dennett:

Unfortunately, the WaPo couldn't just put up Dennett's bombshell on its own: they've surrounded it with a confusing cloud of commissioned articles to answer the question, "What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination?". Most of them are believers, except for Rebecca Goldstein and Tom Flynn and Herb Silverman, and most of them are making excuses. You just knew that someone would make the inane argument that "doubt is part of faith." No, it's not. Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

 Of course the WaPo panelists present a "conventional" view of the faith/doubt issue

à la Larry King, and for "inclusive" purposes there's that guy Deepak Chopra...

Q:What should pastors do if they no longer hold the defining beliefs of their denomination? Do clergy have a moral obligation not to challenge the sincere faith of their parishioners? If this requires them to dissemble from the pulpit, doesn't this create systematic hypocrisy at the center of religion? What would you want your pastor to do with his or her personal doubts or loss of faith?

Religion poses many tests of conscience. This isn't a drawback. If anything, it's one of the reasons organized faith exists. But of course there are extremes of opinion about how acceptable it is to disagree with church doctrine. My insistence that religion must teach people how to think about God for themselves would be seen as extreme -- or even heretical -- by those at the opposite end of the spectrum. We've witnessed the tide of tolerance ebb and flow in the Catholic Church. We've seen gay Episcopal bishops advance in a liberal climate only to cause a schism among conservatives.

 Needless to say neither the WaPo panelists, especially Chopra, nor P.Z. Myers  reflect the views of Zen Buddhists, which is the point of this post. Great doubt and great faith must coexist for great enlightenment.  You have to doubt the faith, you have to have faith that the doubt will lead somewhere.  The question is key.

With this viewpoint, you simply cannot lose your faith, nor can you blindly believe. Dammit, that guy long ago said "Rely on yourself.  Do not rely on others.  Rely on the Dharma.  Do not rely on others."  Which of course leads to the questions: What is the Dharma? What am I? Am I different than the Dharma? Am I the same? Is this gibberish?

But, like all phenomena, Buddha nature is "stuck" to it - permeated through it like a dye on a fabric, as some teacher said.  Even if I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and what not, or even if I picket all religious institutions or lack thereof, or even if I just watch TV for weeks on end munching on potato chips, it's all there.  Now there's consequences, of course, to all behaviors, including behaviors of pretending to believe, which is recommended by certain folks ("Fake it 'til you make it" is a slogan in certain religious quarters).

But there is no escape.  The authentic "position" or "stance" in which one carriers out one's life, and the emptiness of all of it (including emptiness of emptiness) remains the same.  You cannot not be who you are, even if you are pretending to be something.  The "essence" of Sartre's waiter performing as a waiter did not annihilate the emptiness of the phenomena of the waiter-in-life.

So, basically, we practicing Zen Buddhists don't have the problem alluded to in the report or panel responses or Myer's response.  And when Chopra says

My insistence that religion must teach people how to think about God for themselves would be seen as extreme -- or even heretical -- by those at the opposite end of the spectrum.

 and when Myers says

Faith is the blunt instrument used to crush doubt.

I have to call them both out.  Great doubt and great faith must coexist, and nobody can tell you how to do that or not to do that, and all the rumination, pretense, or lack thereof simply cannot change the nature of our existence in this life.  Great doubt and great faith are natural functions and conditions of our existence, and to privilege one against the other is to "oppose our reality."

And that's my 2 cents.

Haiti's Earthquake: one of "All Things Dull and Ugly"

According to Richard Dawkins and Wikipedia, "All Things Bright and Beautiful" was the inspiration for "All Things Dull and Ugly":




The words:

All things dull and ugly
All creatures short and squat
All things rude and nasty
The Lord God made the lot

Each little snake that poisons
Each little wasp that stings
He made their brutish venom
He made their horrid wings

All things sick and cancerous
All evil great and small
All things foul and dangerous
The Lord God made them all

Each nasty little hornet
Each beastly little squid
Who made the spikey urchin
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scabbed and ulcerous
All pox both great and small
Putrid, foul and gangrenous
The Lord God made them all

AMEN.

And so it is with the Haiti earthquake...or, uh, you know what I mean: the problem of why there are nasty things in the world isn't a problem of "theodicy" (why a "deity" "allows" "evil" in the world) or a simplistic "karmic" "their previous lives made them ask for it" or some such nonsense.

We know full well why the Haiti earthquake happened and why there was tremendous loss of life, and for all of that we should act out of great compassion. True, purposeful action and dumb luck saved and killed many, but the only thing karma's got to do with this is the inevitability of birth and death. So we don't need a "conversation about religion" in this matter, we need to make sure Haiti is healed.


And Ms. Jennifer Butler: I realize it is a strong stance you take to side with a good deity rather than an evil deity, and I applaud you for that.

But consider the possibility that your non-coreligionists might also "intervene" in the same way as the "faithful," and you'll be well on your way to being a more moral person.

Is Buddhism in the West Narcissistic?

Mark Vernon, writing in the Guardian/Observer seems to think so.

The retreat was led by two teachers. They topped and tailed the sitting sessions with a few helpful words, and were also on hand lest any participants develop problems, an important safeguard as prolonged silence can be unsettling. One of them also gave a talk on the second evening, and she explained the central Buddhist doctrine that meditation is designed to address: the reality of suffering.

Suffering here is meant in a broad sense, everything from the faintest feeling that something is wrong, to the profound injuries that human beings inflict on themselves and each other. It's a worldview that is humanistic and tragic. The first of the Buddha's noble truths is that life is suffering. It's called a "noble" truth since that realisation is also the first step towards an ennobled life, namely one in which the suffering can cease.

That's where meditation comes in. It's a technique designed to develop mindfulness, the awareness and acceptance of suffering existence. Meditation itself needn't always be painful. It might be pleasant, even elating. But the aim is neither to cling to experience, nor to reject it, but rather to know it as it is. Hence, the "insight" in insight meditation. "To understand all is to forgive all," the proverb says, and the Buddhist version would be, "To understand all is to let go of all". It just takes practice...

The raison d'être of Gaia House is the wellbeing of the those who come to stay in it. That seems like a pretty good raison d'être, and it is. However, it comes with risk. Meditation-as-therapy flirts with narcissism when it is devoted to observing yourself, for that can lead to self-absorption and self-obsession. It's a danger inherent in any community devoted to a particular task, though perhaps more so in one that lacks a reference point beyond the individuals taking part.

Religious houses in a Christian tradition would be different, in theory at least. Ultimately, they don't exist for the wellbeing of the occupants, but for the glory of God...

In some ways, columns like this are more insidious than Brit Hume's remarks, because they seem to paint an accurate picture of what Buddhists on meditation retreats actually do.

It seems, from the guy's other columns, that he is at best a dilettante in the practice of Buddhism, and so apparently hasn't got to the point - after you do the meditation "to feel better for a while" - where you get the awareness that there's no "you" apart from the 10,000 things.

And finally, by painting Western Buddhism as all about meditation as therapy, Vernon is taking a stone and calling it "Buddhism" while not paying attention to the mountain from which it came.

Not Dead Yet: The Religious Right

Brad Warner takes the opportunity to take Pat Robertson's recent cynical and absurd remarks over Haiti (something to do with Satan) to proclaim that the religious right "ain't nothin." At the moment that's more or less true, but I'd like to expand a bit on a comment I made at his blog.

Here's some points to consider, Brad:

1. Follow the Money
Pat Robertson made this remark no doubt because he knows damned well that his audience is not well informed. I mean, his contributors give money to his organization and he likely takes a cut, and profitted mightily from his relious TV business. And he's making sure the gravy train continues for his offspring. How much is Robertson worth? Hundreds of millions of dollars. So, Brad? Pat Robertson wasn't talking to you. The religious right might be dead to you, but I assure you it's not dead to the Tea Party movement and I'll have a blog post on that in the near future - I'm hoping it's a "scoop" as they say.

2. Memes: The Nasty One is Dormant
Brad, ever hear of the concept of a meme? It's like an "idea virus," and it can be said to respond to evolutionary pressures. Some memes are good memes and some seem to be quite harmful. It's TBD as to why, other than strict evolutionary baggage, a "Kumbaya" meme hasn't emerged as virulent as an SS Stormtrooper meme, and how come when cynical people try to create a Kumbaya meme, they wind up creating Up with People.

But I digress.

Virulent memes can be like virulent viruses; an ancestor of the current H1N1 virus was the one that killed tens to hundreds of millions in 1918-1919, and they can crowd out healthier memes in the same way as E. coli can give you some bad intestinal effects at the expense of the healthy bacteria that abide in your gut.

So it is with the religious right. Although Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and all the creationist guys are highly marginalized, they are still clawing for a comeback in Texas through the schools, and they still have a ridiculously disparate influence in Washington due to "The Family", and they have infiltrated the US military in ways that are detrimental to unit cohesion and readiness (Google "Military Religious Freedom Foundation."

Yes, Brad, Falwell's dead, gays are coldly tolerated outside of Texas, and even medical marijuana's legal. But, in the world of Christian fundamentalists and "evangelicals," and theocrats, Sarah Palin is a martyr. And a hockey mom with lipstick.

And the meme which is relatively dormant right now could emerge more virulent than ever because cynical folks like Pat Robertson and Brit Hume will act in the spirit of IGMFU. (Trivial digression: Christoper Plummer - one of the most highly underrated actors of my lifetime - patterned his performance of a cynical minister in 1987's "Dragnet" after Pat Robertson. I haven't seen it written down anywhere, but just watch the freakin' movie! And get out your goat leggings.)

3. Liberty Requires Vigilance
PZ Myers, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, Larry Flynt, the guys at talk2action, the folks who brought talkorigns.org to life, Stanton Peele and lawyers acting on the basis of his work, the internet infidels, and countless others and contributors, and demonstrators and political activists pushed the religious right to its current state. But by no means is it permanently rendered harmless. Impermance will dictate, of course, but the only way to prevent a disaster of our negligence and laziness later is to be aware and dilligent now and in the future.

The Pope ©???

When the Catholic church starts to incorporate intellectual property law into its practices you know they're just adding one more problem to the mountain of problems they already have.

Among them, entirely new things about which to be ignorant!

The Vatican made a declaration on the protection of the figure of the Pope on Saturday morning. The statement seeks to establish and safeguard the name, image and any symbols of the Pope as being expressly for official use of the Holy See unless otherwise authorized.

The statement cited a "great increase of affection and esteem for the person of the Holy Father" in recent years as contributing to a desire to use the Pontiff's name for all manner of educational and cultural institutions, civic groups and foundations.

Due to this demand, the Vatican has felt it necessary to declare that "it alone has the right to ensure the respect due to the Successors of Peter, and therefore, to protect the figure and personal identity of the Pope from the unauthorized use of his name and/or the papal coat of arms for ends and activities which have little or nothing to do with the Catholic Church."

The declaration alludes to attempts to use ecclesiastical or pontifical symbols and logos to "attribute credibility and authority to initiatives" as another reason to establish their “copyright” on the Holy Father's name, picture and coat of arms.

Not only have they now put their institution on a par with Scientology, but they have opened themselves up to parody and ridicule, which (ask any lawyer; I'm not a lawyer) is immune to assertions such as the above.

Brilliant move, fellas.  And it just gave PZ Myers another way to figuratively flip the bird at these folk.

The inevitable "Some Christians are Buddhist" article

USA Today is an idea way past its prime. It's a media outlet for people who are staying in hotel rooms in the US alien to their hometown. So it's not surprising that blandness, superficiality, and lack of detail rule the day.

And it's also not surprising that conservative ideas tend to hold sway; thus their article today about how some Christians hold "Eastern" and "New Age" beliefs...

In a Catholic church? Chances are that one in five members believe in reincarnation in a way never taught in catechism class — that you'll be reborn in this world again and again.

Elements of Eastern faiths and New Age thinking have been widely adopted by 65% of U.S. adults, including many who call themselves Protestants and Catholics, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released Wednesday...

And, according to the survey's other major finding, devotion to one clear faith is fading.

Of the 72% of Americans who attend religious services at least once a year (excluding holidays, weddings and funerals), 35% say they attend in multiple places, often hop-scotching across denominations.

They are like President Obama, who currently has no home church. He has worshiped at a Baptist church, an Episcopal one, and the non-denominational chapel at Camp David...

Well, they're not all Hindus, Buddhists, and Ramtha-followers, are they?

No...

[Polling outfit] Pew says two in three adults believe in or cite an experience with at least one supernatural phenomenon, including:

•26% find "spiritual energy" in physical things.

•25% believe in astrology.

•24% say people will be reborn in this world again and again.

•23% say yoga is a "spiritual practice."

Mohler calls these "the au courant confusions," attachments to the latest fashionable free-floating beliefs...

"People have always mixed religions, either in ignorance or willfully," says Stephen Prothero, director of the Graduate Division of Religious and Theological Studies at Boston University.

Despite the late Pope John Paul II's warnings to explicitly avoid Buddhist and Hindu practices, Prothero says, "American Catholics are so used to not caring what the official church tells them on birth control, divorce, premarital sex and other points that they don't think they are un-Catholic when they believe and do what they please."

Combating syncretism has troubled popes for centuries, says the Rev. Dan Pattee, chairman of the theology department at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

The problem with borrowing spiritual ideas is that "the life-giving truth becomes compromised as we understand it as Catholics," Pattee says

"They don't think they are un-Catholic when they believe and do what they please."" is about the same thing as saying "They're not doing what we tell them to do."

That's the real issue for many of these people: they aren't able to control these people.

Although I'm all for religious tolerance, there simply is no way given my outlook and learning that it's possible for me to be any kind of Christian. Just no way. Christianity's texts themselves make claims to rest upon their historical truth as a foundation for their moral truths, and it just can't be historically (or morally) accurate, especially from a Buddhist standpoint.

Would I welcome a {Christian, Hindu, Muslim...} into a zendo/temple? Of course. It's not really my business to ask questions. On the other hand, if someone makes a claim that "all religions are the same," or makes syncretist appeals in a dialogue, I am not going to pretend agreement. There are aspects to Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions that contradict Buddhism.

Just as I won't pretend that Buddhism is not a religion, and I won't pretend that Buddhism is the same as other religions, I think it's important to note the differences.