Saturday, March 29, 2014

Original Blessing

I completely disagree, which inspired this little rhyme:







Church on Sunday is a fossilized vision,
CPR for a heart-dead religion.
Words dried in ink on pages,
Is not true Tao, say all the sages!

Spirit breathes, it flows, It waltzes in the weather.
It’s found in children’s laughter; not bound in antique leather.
Tired old rituals just make you yawn and nod
While Shakti excites as the Ever-Living God.

So on Sunday, stay in bed and practice Tantra,
Let "O God, I'm coming!" be your honest mantra.
May all lovers feel the real spiritual delight
Of "Jewel in the Lotus" of Immortal Light.

So allow me to introduce my own concept of church
(In the hope that eager readers will start their own research):
I simply worship the Goddess, Who smells and tastes divine.
She gladly blesses me in these hungry prayers of mine.

From morning until noon in the Heaven of Appetite
We dance and we spoon to the fires we ignite.
I kiss her as my liturgy; I lick her as my hymn.
I enter in her temple, which makes her come again.

At last we find our naked souls languishing in the Garden
Where all our roughness and our sins have healed and been pardoned.
Sexual Love is the Original Blessing, not the original curse!
And the congregation of our church is the total universe.

Indeed, Shakti is making love through all the streams of living.
Through birth and death and everything, she is now-ever giving.
The Goddess is not modest! Prudes would scream themselves hoarse
If they knew—truly knew—how Orgasmic is Our Source.

Monday, March 10, 2014

'Self' Emerges




What does it mean to say "self" is an emergent phenomenon? Here's an explanatory excerpt from my novel Orchard of My Eye:

“Neuroscientists tend to think of ‘self’ as an emergent phenomenon, like team spirit. Let’s say a group of guys get together to play soccer. They pool their talent and skills, enthusiasm and so forth—they interact—and team spirit emerges. Follow me?”

“Right.”

“So the experience of team spirit is real enough while it appears—it’s felt by all the team members and even by others—but team spirit has no vital essence that survives the breakup of the team. Team spirit has no ‘soul.’ As soon as the team disbands—poof!—the phenomenon, or process, called team spirit no longer exists.”

“Okay.”

“Now, did team spirit go somewhere? North, South, East, West? Off to heaven?” he asked. “No. It just stopped arising. Another specimen of it will emerge whenever the necessary ingredients come together.”

“Two guys, a football game, and a six-pack of beer,” Aria said.

“In the same way, the self—the sense of ‘yourself’ as an independent entity—is an emergent process. The self emerges from the synergism of the senses, language, memories, and so forth. These simpler parts interact to give rise to a working sense of selfhood. But the self has no essence that exists independently of these senses and thoughts and all the little algorithms busy making something wonderfully complex out of simple parts.”

“What about the soul?”

“No such entity.”

“So you’re saying the self is just an illusion. This is Buddhism you’re throwing at me, Nat.”

“Actually, this is neuroscience I’m throwing at you. And no, I did not say the self is an illusion. Like ‘team spirit,’ it’s very real when it exists, even though it isn’t eternally real at all.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“In other words, it’s real enough to say, ‘I feel angry,’ and ‘I am an American,’ and ‘I blew my driver’s test,’ and ‘I can’t stand licorice.’  It’s also correct to say, ‘do not exist aside from a temporary, emergent phenomenon. There is no abiding substance that is self.”

“Yep. Zen Buddhism. Thought so.”

“Not just Zen. Others have said the same thing. The Greek philosopher Epicurus said, ‘Death is nothing to us, because when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.’”