Loving Kindness

You have probably heard about the Buddhist monks protesting in Myanmar. Today, I read this article which revealed that many of these protesters are chanting the Metta Sutra as they walk. Metta is loving kindness and for the last year I've tried to incorporate a practice called Metta Bhavana into my meditation. Metta Bhavana is a technique that helps you cultivate a better mental aptitude for compassion. It can be a powerful experience and I've seen its effects on my life. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I've seen its effects on the lives around me. When I've been disciplined enough to practice, it has allowed me to experience and react to many of the day to day issues in life in way that might otherwise have resulted in pain or anger. I've only begun using this tool but I've seen it work enough in small ways to image how a lifetime of practice could result in radical transformations of entire nations. I find it encouraging to know that practitioners of this ancient technique are able to follow their convictions to the point of passionate non-violent protest against oppression.

The Metta Sutra - The Buddha's Teaching on Loving-kindness

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.

Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.

Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

Mark Driscoll This Wink Is For You

This is a south park wink (background) in honor of the rants of Mark Driscoll who claims McLaren, Pagitt, and Rob Bell are now all heretics.

See more winks here and here.

The Devil Made Me Do It!

Is the source of evil a demonic angel, the seed of an original sin, a psychological abnormality, or simply the product of our untrained minds?

Richard Beck has concluded his blog series on “Everyday Evil”. His conclusion suggests, what I’ve always stressed, that religion must contain practices to transform us at a psychological level. This is very much in tune with the Buddhist practice of meditation and its focus on transformation and development of compassion through mindfulness. This idea goes against the traditional Christian theological view that an external devil is the agent of evil and an external God is the agent of change. I posted this article by Pema Chodron last year, but I thought I would reference it again.

Sitting practice teaches us how to open and relax to whatever arises, without picking and choosing. It teaches us to experience the uneasiness and the urge fully, and to interrupt the momentum that usually follows. We do this by not following after the thoughts and learning to come back to the present moment. We learn to stay with the uneasiness, the tightening, the itch of shenpa. We train in sitting still with our desire to scratch. This is how we learn to stop the chain reaction of habitual patterns that otherwise will rule our lives. This is how we weaken the patterns that keep us hooked into discomfort that we mistake as comfort. We label the spinoff "thinking" and return to the present moment.
Read the full article...

It makes sense to address the psychological issues that are underneath our own problems rather than using the excuse “the devil made me do it” and focusing blame in a demonic cartoon character. Buddhist philosophy has helped me understand this practical aspect of faith which is applicable to all religions. In the Christian tradition, we have historically credited the holy spirit for this change and that has created a more hands-off approach on our part. But for me, the "holy spirit" is the anthropomorphic symbol of the life changing effect of living in a community of faith. We allow the fellowship and practices of that community to produce the fruits of compassion as modeled by Jesus and the early Christian community. In the end, I think both traditions have the same ideas about transformation, but I appreciate the fact that Buddhists seem less trapped by the literalization of their symbols. A symbol can easily become an object rather than a method for change. I agree with Richard Beck that we need practical methods to create change.

Postmodern?

Last Saturday night my home group discussed definitions of Postmodernism and its relationship to religion. I thought I would try to expand my views here even though I feel this topic has been beat to death. Most people define Postmodern thought as a rejection or reaction to modern scientific thinking. It is commonly viewed as a skeptical view of truth or a view that all truth is relative. I disagree with this popular definition.

First, we should note that modernism was the way people had come to think since the age of enlightenment/reason. It is a scientific view of the world. Modernity had a dramatic effect on religion since it was a time when science and religion fought for the truth about everything. Religion felt it was loosing its hold on truth (and therefore losing the battle for power) so it fought back with its own laws (doctrines) that looked and smelled just like science with all the trappings of rigid authoritative systems and theological claims. The modern mind thinks in terms of experiments, laws and repeatable patterns so the modern minds of religion in the last few centuries tried their best to build a case for religion on the same principles. The result was fundamentalist apologetics and that fatal flaw has led to wars, distrust, abuse, and may yet destroy religion completely.

In my mind, postmodernism is not the rejection of absolute truth. Instead, it is the full embrace of everything we learned during the modern era about truth. We have absorbed all of modernity's lessons about how to do science and how not to do religion. Both insights have been valuable and we learned from our mistakes. Rather than reacting to science with a fight for truth, postmodern people of faith no longer see science as something new, dangerous, or destructive to faith. A scientific understanding of the universe is now a normal part of how we think and operate. We’ve accepted modern science and its love of skepticism and questioning, and now we have moved on with the idea of finding a new place for religion. We realize now that every great discovery in life begins with the question "Is the current way really the best way?" The battle between religion and science for absolute unchanging truth is over and science has won! Science won precisely because it never claims to have the final answer. Science always questions itself and continues to learn while religions are built on the celebration of the way things were. Religion will never again be the holder of truth about how the universe works and God will never again be the unexplainable and shrinking gap in our current understanding of the universe. We may not have all the answers but science is the best tool for that job. Religion was destined to fail when placed in that role and during the modern era, religion lost its ancient job of holding truth. Now in a postmodern world, religion will no longer have any claim to knowledge of the creation of the world, the origin or man, or the ability to predict the future.

Does that mean that religions are finished and God is dead in post modernity? I don't think so. It does mean that we finally have a chance to put religion into a role where it can succeed and God is no longer held in a human box of understanding. In the postmodern world, religion is no longer where we look for truth about the universe but where we look for inspiration, critique, transformation, and motivation. That is where it has always served mankind well. In this place, religion is a big winner. In this place, God is not a shrinking set of truths but instead God is a growing source of transformation.

Pressure to believe

This video is already making its way around the blogosphere but I wanted to comment on it and find out what others think about how this effects our belief systems. In his posts on "Everyday evil" Richard Beck, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University and blogger at Experimental Theology, raises the question about how religious communities develop using our physiological conditioning to conform.



I have 2 main questions. How much of what we believe is due to our subconscious desire to agree with our faith community? How much of what we often label "the conviction of the holy spirit" is the internal tension (tugging) that is created by this same drive to conform and respond as expected?

Whatever is happening in that video is magnified when applied to religious settings. I have experienced peer pressure in religion and I've seen it used to shape beliefs and produce particular physical responses to an emotional stimulus. It makes me wonder if most of what we have claimed as belief is due to the pressure to fit in with a faith community. Most of my life, I've felt like the people in this video who are shaking their heads and grimacing as they subconsciously agree with the group against their better judgement. I don't feel like churches do this intentionally, but it is nevertheless a powerful subconscious force that enables us to build beliefs in hard to believe things and create conditioned responses to sacred rituals.

You may think I'm claiming religion is evil and God doesn't exist, but I'm not. I am a big advocate of religion and I do believe in God even if it isn't the image of God I was taught in Sunday school. I'm simply suggesting that when we explain an aspect of nature as an externally manipulated event then we create all sorts of problems for later generations who are likely to find out what we label as an external miraculous force is actually a reaction to a chemical released by our brains. It isn't any different than explaining an earthquake as punishment for the sins of a city then scrambling to discredit science when an archaeological dig discovers that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were built on a fault line. If we make God equal to the gap in our current human understanding then we end up with a God that is constantly shrinking.

There is a silver lining to this issue because these same physiological forces can contribute to positive behavior which could allow our society to exist peacefully, but I think religious leaders should be more sensitive to what is causing people to fall in line. We have all felt that tugging feeling to perform by responding to worship experiences in the proper way and agreeing with the things that are taught in groups. I don't think there is anything wrong with peer pressure. It may be something that saves our lives by helping us shape our behavior in a way that affirms life and protects us from harm. I don't think religions should stop doing this, but I wish our religious leaders would correctly label the "spirit" that is doing the tugging.

It is hard to shake thoughts and beliefs that are deeply rooted in our psyche. At times it feels almost like an external force is pulling or pushing us to conform. Maybe that is exactly why we have traditionally described God as an "external force". Is it possible that much of what we mean when we use the term "God" is the collective will of our faith group which is proven here to be a very powerful force? If that is true, then I can certainly affirm that I believe God is real, that God has positively directed my life, that I'm committed to God, and that I deeply desire for God to be the driving force in transforming my life.

A relationship with God - Is this idea healthy?

It has become trendy in Christianity to talk about our relationship with God. However, I’m not sure that it makes sense to use the term “relationship” to define how we experience God. The problem with this term is that it is pre-loaded with our human understanding of what it means to have relationship with another human being and carries all the baggage of our faulty human relationships. Think about some of the aspects of healthy and unhealthy human relationships:

• Healthy relationships need a certain amount of honest revealing of our character, past experiences, goals, and motives to each other. The depth of the relationship depends on the amount of disclosure by both parties. Any clouding or misinterpretation of facts about our self, either intentionally or unintentionally, will create unhealthy relationships and lead to mistrust. This is probably why we attempt to describe God (theology) in order to establish a relationship. We have no precedent for relating to something that we we don't know so we manufacture knowledge for the sake of relationship.


• Clear, open, and frequent two-way communication is necessary. How long would a relationship last if phone calls were not returned for days, weeks, or ever. Could a relationship last with sketchy standards for open free-flowing communications.


• Physical proximity is vital. Without “face to face” interaction, healthy relationships cannot form or mature beyond a certain point. In a state of separation our imagination often runs wild and creates a false sense of reality. Long distance or Internet based relationships are modern examples of how relationships are unhealthy without physical proximity. This is probably why we create houses of worship so we can simulate physical proximity to God.


• The mutual need for relationship is crucial. If one person’s need for the other is not appropriately reciprocated, then an unhealthy dependency is inevitable. Dependent Personality Disorder or Codependency can manifest as the result of an imbalance in relationship needs. This is obviously a problem with traditional images of God.

Isn't any relationship with God going to face challenges in all four of these areas? If we attempt to explain our interaction with God based on our understanding of human relationships like a father or a king, then it feels like we are setting ourselves up for failure because God isn't literally our father or our king. Should we assume that the Bible's use of human relationships as metaphors for connection with God imply that those metaphors completely exhaust the meaning of our connection with God? The image of a father has all sorts of issues and the idea of having a king is down right distasteful to most modern western people. The goal of the bible is not to tell us which metaphor we have to use for all time but rather to suggest how certain people connected to God at certain points in history. For them, the idea of a good king who protects them and institutes justice and peace was a beautiful concept. That won't fly today.

Applying one of these metaphors to our connection with God becomes unhealthy if taken too literally and this mistake accounts for many of the problems with religion. We have traditionaly built an image of God that is destined to manifest unhealthy malformed relationships.

I am leaning toward other language to explain God and lessening my grip on any particular set of metaphors. We might try to imagine a fish that is sustained and suspending in life-giving water just as we are sustained in God. It might also make sense to think about the types of relationships we find in modern Chemistry. When Hydrogen “relates” to Oxygen it forms a wonderful transformation on a molecular level in order to form water. Another example is to imagine how DNA “relates” to life. Francis Collins, a Christian and physician-geneticist who was a leader in the Human Genome Project, calls DNA the “language of God”. This may be close to what Paul Tillich means when he talks about God as the ground of all being. In that sense, I would agree with the author of Genesis who tells us in creative poetic metaphor that God speaks life into being.

I hate brands!

In her well written book "No Logo", Naomi Klein highlights the impact of globalization through the financial rise and ethical demise of multi-national corporations. I've been enjoying the book, but my reason for hating brands is less about the implications of labor abuse in third world nations and more about the sickness of "image" that is embedded in our society.

I absolutely hate brands and branding and I do my best to avoid buying anything that is sold based heavily on its branding. There are no pictures of fruit on my computers and I will not wear a shirt with a visible logo. If you want to sell me a product then don't push it at me with a naked woman or lay it on the hood of a sports car or try to make me think I'll be cool if I own it. If I do happen to end up with a branded product (by gift or by accident) I remove and/or mutilate the brand logo. I thought I was alone in my mission so you can imagine I was hooked when I saw the nologo logo on this book.

Pop culture and fashion are so foreign to me that I once thought New Balance was an "off-brand" of shoes because I happened to buy mine for $15 on clearance. I never shop so I had no idea it was a recognized brand. Two weeks ago, a friend informed me that I was in fact wearing a trendy fashion item that normally sells for 3 or 4 times that price and is coveted by college students. I was upset so the next day I removed the logos with a razor blade. I'm sorry that I bought them, but the damage is done. At least now I'm no longer giving them free advertising and you'll be happy to know that the shoes look 100% better without the big N.

I run a business and I do advertise but there is a big difference between advertising to find customers that need my products and services versus creating a need by implying that consumers will become rich, famous, and sexually appealing if they will slap my logo on their ass. If you are selling shoes then advertise the damn pair of shoes not the promise of a better lifestyle! My solution to this problem is that every commercial using image to pimp their product should be required to add a disclaimer at the end. This disclaimer should read like the side effect disclaimer at the end of an ad for a new drug. Maybe something like...

"The lifestyle depicted in this ad will destroy your marriage, friendships, and values and leave you a shell of human being. The probability of drug addiction, promiscuity, jail time, and suicide will be increased by 72%. You will be just as lonely after you buy this product and the only thing that will change is your credit card bill."

Faux News...

This picture will only make sense to those readers that were at the beach with me last weekend playing trivial pursuit while it rained. For everyone else I'll leave you with a story about how my father-in-law once sat in front of a TV watching Fox News and said to me with a straight face... "we should destroy the al jazeera network because it is misleading all those Islamic terrorist".

Propaganda

The big propaganda machines are brainwashing and bankrupting our culture's values and priorities. PR firms manipulate our news and turn our wants into needs until we are deep in debt and feeling even more empty than before. Here is a short video from PRWatch.org.

Fear Stops Here...

Another great message from Rev. Billy with the Church of Stop Shopping