Wondrous doubt in Buddhism (Batchelor)

Krista Tippett (onbeing.org), Stephen Batchelor; CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly

Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism speaks to the mystery and vitality of spiritual life in every form. For him secularism opens to doubt and questioning as a radical basis for spiritual life. Above all, he understands Buddhism without transcendent beliefs like karma or reincarnation to become something urgent to do, not to "believe" in. Batchelor is a former Buddhist monk, teacher, and writer. His books include Buddhism Without Beliefs, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, The Faith to Doubt, and most recently, Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World.

TRANSCRIPT

Batchelor: Many of my critics would be quite happy for me to stop calling myself a "Buddhist."

And even some of those who like my work feel that the Buddhism gets in the way. But I disagree profoundly with that.

The rootedness in tradition is central to me. And I see Buddhist tradition -- I suspect like other traditions, also -- as not something which is static and fixed and somehow preserved in formaldehyde, but it is something that is alive. 

Host Krista Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.[Music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating]. Stephen Batchelor is the author of numerous books, including The Faith to Doubt, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist and, most recently, Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World.

He grew up near London and traveled to India in the early '70s, where -- he has often written -- he was immediately captured by Buddhism. He spent a decade as an ordained monk, living, studying, and writing in Tibetan Buddhist and Zen communities in Asia. I spoke with Stephen Batchelor in 2016. More + AUDIO

Humor as a Tool for Survival (audio)

Lily Percy, Krista Tippett (OnBeing.org); Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

Anthony Weiner (Piraro/bizarro.com)

Humor lifts us up, but it also underscores what’s already great.

It connects us with others and also brings us home to ourselves.

And like everything meaningful, it’s complex and nuanced: It can be fortifying or damaging, depending on how we wield it.

But as a tool for survival, humor is elemental.

On Being explores this idea with a rabbi who started out in drag, comedians, an NPR host, writers of sci-fi/fantasy, social commentary, and the TV show Veep.

What is humor? Truth in real life? (French comic artist Emma/theguardian.com)

INTERVIEW
Transcript (onbeing.org/programs)

Stealing? (GregPalast.com)

Host Krista Tippett: If there’s one thing we can perhaps all agree on in our struggles and in the everyday mundane, it’s our need for the release and balm of laughter.

Humor lifts us up...This was the animating idea On Being’s Lily Percy had for a shorter-form podcast we’ve just launched [called COOL, "Creating Our Own Lives"].

This is a glorious taste of the voices she captured this hour, ranging from a rabbi who started out in drag, comedians, an NPR host, writers of sci-fi/fantasy, social commentary, and even the TV show Veep.
 
Lily Percy: The idea of humor as a tool for survival is so personal to me, I wanted to start by talking to someone that I knew and admired, reporter and former NPR Politics Podcast co-host Sam Sanders.

Sam has a very dry sense of humor. If you follow him on Twitter, you know that already. But what makes his voice unique is the thoughtfulness and warmth that go hand in hand with his jokes.
 

"We cats didn't invent the Internet to share it with this." (P. Byrnes/The New Yorker)

 
Ms. Percy: You grew up in Texas, and you know what it’s like to be surrounded by difference. I mean politically, religiously, socially, culturally -- every kind of difference. And you also grew up in the church. And I wonder how much those things have really influenced the way you cover right now and the way you see things.
 
Sam Sanders: Yeah, I mean I think that there were things that I kind of feel affected my worldview. One, I was raised in the San Antonio, Texas area. San Antonio is a city that is majority Latino.
 
Ms. Percy: What, what? [laughs]
 
Mr. Sanders: Yeah. Oh yeah. [laughs] More + AUDIO

• David Sedaris: Why aren't you laughing?

In Defense of the Trumpian "Julius Caesar" (newyorker.com/culture)

Buddhism and the poet Rilke (audio)

Joanna Macy, Krista Tippett (onbeing, 8-14-16); Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

A Wild Love for the World

Ledecky swims, wins at Olympics (AP)

Buddhist scholar, philosopher of ecology, Joanna Macy’s path wound from the CIA to Tibetan Buddhism [not unlike the current Dalai Lama], to translating the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. On Being takes that exquisite poetry as a lens on Macy's wisdom on the great dramas of our time: ecological, political, personal [even sexual]. Now in her 80s, Macy says we are at a pivotal moment in history -- with possibilities of unraveling, or of creating, a life-sustaining human society. More + AUDIO

GUEST: Joanna Macy is a scholar of Buddhism, translator of Rilke, and philosopher of ecology. Her translations include Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, A Year with Rilke, and the recently re-released In Praise of Mortality. She is the co-author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects.

Loss and Laughter: Becoming Wise (audio)

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly; Krista Tippett (OnBeing.org, May 19, 2016)

"This week, on 'The Amazing Race to Enlightenment,' can Jim and Suzy achieve right mindfulness? And will Barb and Candy be eliminated for relentless clinging to the self?" W

The Big Question: Does My Life Have Meaning? (Parker J. Palmer) Trying to answer the existential question of life's worth is inevitable but flawed. With words from Czeslaw Milosz as guide, a look at the question we need not answer and the ultimate definition of love.

  

The Problematic Idea of Success After a lifetime of learning and loving and losing, here are a few -- five, to be precise -- practical lessons to you and recent college graduates about what it means to lead a successful life.

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Death Is Stupid, and Other Lessons Children Teach Us About the Inevitable End Using a children's book on death as scaffolding, a case can be made for kids teaching adults how to work through grief and death better.

 

• AUDIO: play episode (iTunes) - download MP3
• Get Published on On Being and/or Becoming Wise

The Losses and Laughter We Grow Into (Krista Tippett) Kevin Kling is part funny guy, part poet, part playwright, and part wise man. A treasured figure on the national storytelling circuit, his voice inhabits an unusual space -- where a homegrown Minnesota wit meets Dante and Shakespeare. Born with a disabled left arm, he lost the use of his right one after a motorcycle accident nearly killed him. He shares his special angle on life's humor and its raptures -- and why we turn loss into story. More

• Poetry Radio Project: archive of poets and poetry heard on the show, from Wendell Berry to Mary Oliver, Rilke to Rumi
• The Disease of Being Busy

Krista Tippett's new book: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. Her U.S. tour will stop in 12 cities, including Minneapolis/St. Paul, Chicago, Austin, St. Louis, Tulsa, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland. And check out the new podcast, Becoming Wise!

VAGINA

Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Eve Ensler, Krista Tippett (onbeing.org)

These new uniforms breathe much better than the old ones for better cycling (Telegraph).

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What the?!

One day the neuroscientists asked the Tibetan Buddhist monks to come into the lab to meditate. The monks only having a vague idea of what the scientists were after agreed and came in.

What's this supposed to measure? (RF)

But as they were about to be fitted with helmet like neural sensors to "scientifically" observe consciousness or the analogues of awareness, they all laughed and asked, What are you doing?

The scientists dutifully explained that the flexible helmets were built with an array of metal sensors that would touch their scalps and pick up minute electrical fluctuations in wave-like patterns... No, we know all that! the monks exclaimed. But why aren't you putting the sensors over our hearts?!

Tibetan monks in meditation (Laura Murphy)

Dumb scientists, dumb Americans, dumb the whole Western world -- don't you know the seat of consciousness is experientially at the heart? YOU can test that. Sit in meditation and locate the "mind door." It's greenish and reflects conscious experience just around the heart, not that goo-crammed cranium. When will popular-science catch up? We know that secret (black budget)-science already knows.

Hey, guys, you can't say [CENSORED]!

New science: The experiment that "proves" the brain is the source of consciousness is applying mild electrical stimulation to the exposed brain. When this area is touched, one relives a memory. Did you know there are more neurons all along the lining of the gut and others in the heart. Why not apply mild electrical stimulation there? Know what will happen? Same thing as the brain!

The body is holistic, consciousness holographic; every cell knows, and every cells contains the same instructions. Knowing is not limited to the body or any seat of awareness: the sensitive tissue in the eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin, or heart. Want to suffer from severe depression? Let doctors remove a portion of your colon, where most of the serotonin and other neurotransmitters are. Want to knock someone out? Punch him/her in the heart or head. But be careful as it could kill the person, who is likely to go unconscious and into shock or arrythmia. Science is not very scientific, never living up to its own ideals. It's almost as bad as religion in this regard.

What is consciousness?

But isn't it interesting that we all believe what we are told by science? "Consciousness"  (vinanna, manas, cittas, mano, a PROCESS defined in exacting detail by the Enlightened One in terms of five phenomenal groupings and particles and mind-moments) is in the head, between the ears, behind the eyes? Poppycock! The ancients had it right, as do most children. It's in the heart, the heart. Where is the origin of the world? Well, not the heart; that's the center of conscious experience. The origin of the world is... mmm, we'll let Eve tell you:

• AUDIO: play episode
• Download MP3
• Buddhism understands consciousness; science does not
• The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness

France to Facebook Corporation [which, in league with FBI, spies on Americans]: We'll tell you what counts as "porn" on social networks; you won't tell us (independent.co.uk).

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The Body After the C-Word

"The Tepidarium." Why the Dickens do we despise Victorian art? (dailymail.co.uk).

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Salomé (Gustave Moreau, 1876)

Eve Ensler has helped women all over the world tell the stories of their lives through the stories of their bodies. Her play, "The Vagina Monologues," has become a global force in the face of violence against women and girls.

She herself also had a violent childhood. And it turns out that she, like so many Western women, was obsessed with her body yet was not inhabiting her body. But she did not know she was not inhabiting her body -- until she got cancer. More
 

The Disease of Being Busy Our overscheduled lives leave little time for contemplation and reflection. How do we enable each other to pause and reflect together and ask how our hearts are doing? (Omid Safi)

Pussy Riot in a courtroom cage, circa 2012, with Nadya T. on right (nytimes.com)

The Tree of Contemplative Practices An illustration of contemplative practices showing the breadth of meditation and mindfulness within traditions. It certainly opens up one's understanding about how these disciplines take root and manifest themselves in our lives, no? (Trent Gilliss)

LIVE VIDEO: A Civil Conversation with john a. powell (Mariah Helgeson)

Helen Fisher — Love and Sex and Attachment

Wrestling with the Questions, and Why It Matters So Much Experiencing the ineffable is a winding path, a journey with as many pivots and tacks as straight lines. And sometimes you find your course in a dentist's chair, contemplating why the this matters and realizing you just need to show up (Marty Kaplan).

• More Episodes
• Beautiful Miss Russia says Pussy...
• NASA's Dawn spacecraft now orbit dwarf planet Ceres
• Oldest fossil belonging to the genus Homo, dating to the late Pliocene Age around 2.8 million years ago, discovered in Afar, Ethiopia

Science on Human Frontiers

On Being’s special series, "Science on Human Frontiers," delves into new wisdom about the complex mysteries of the universe. From string theory to the search for life on other planets to the science of well being, we explore how science is informing what it means to be human and how we can live.

The American Consciousness: The Fabric of Our Identity
Human identity is more fluid than ever before. How do we live gracefully in this moment of change, helping to shape it? How do we nurture common life, even as we are reinventing it? With Imani Perry, Richard Rodriguez, Michel Martin, and Nathan Schneider.

Love, Sex, and Attachment (video)

Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Helen Fisher, Krista Tippett (onbeing.org)

Love and Sex and Attachment

Meeting my match (pinterest.com)

"Americans love romantic love. We just love romantic love. But we don't pay much attention to attachment," says Helen Fisher, chief scientist at Match.com.

In her TED talks, which have been viewed by millions of people, and the scientific research she does for Match.com, she uses science as a sobering, if entertaining, instrument to see and understand what feels like the most meaningful encounters of our lives.

She is a leading anthropologist/explorer on the new frontier of seeing into our brains during sex and when we are in love. And she reveals how we can take this knowledge as a form of power -- to give conscious new meaning to the thrilling and sometimes treacherous human realms of love, sex, attachment, and marriage. More

• AUDIO: play episode/download MP3

In the Room The whole interview includes fascinating insights from this biological anthropologist that did not fit into the radio hour. Arranged marriages create the conditions for love and romance to happen, brain science gives nuance to the term “animal attraction.”

Helen Fisher

Prof. Helen Fisher, Ph.D. is a Visiting Research Associate and member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She is also the Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site Match.com. Her books include Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray, and Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.

Famous Amy Fischer, teen lover (CBS News)

Juvenile accused of running child porn Instagram site Pembroke Pines police are asking parents in South Florida to check the online accounts of their children after three juveniles were accused of creating an Instagram account to solicit and post explicit photos of other minors. They arrested two boys, ages 12 and 13, and a girl, 13, on Thursday, following a 10-week investigation. They face charges of electronic transmission of child pornography.

• Police kill teen in shootout then make him suspect in family
• VIDEO: Las Vegas mother Tammy Myers shot in road rage incident after mother-daughter driving lesson

Police keep killing with impunity. But he was drunk with a rock in hand. Kill. (cbsnews.com)

 
To Instruct Myself Over and Over in Joy

Parker J. Palmer, Feb. 11, 2015

Cynicism beckons to us with ease at times. But how do we remain open to the good within and around us? Here is a reminder to keep hope alive when the demon inside us bites down, plus lyrical lines from Mary Oliver.
 

 
To Live As If I Believed: The Thin Spaces of Children's Literature

Anastasia Hacopian, Feb. 15, 2015

When age and experience dwindle our capacity for wonder, the books of our childhood may be our salvation and our "thin places" where the boundary between the material and the magical opens ourselves to wonder all over again. 

  

Science on Human Frontiers
On Being’s special series, "Science on Human Frontiers," delves into new wisdom about the complex mysteries of the universe. From string theory to the search for life on other planets to the science of well being, we explore how science is informing what it means to be human and how we can live.

The Disease of Being Busy Our overscheduled lives leave little time for contemplation and reflection. How do we enable each other to pause and reflect together and ask how our hearts are doing? 

Dark Browns, Peaches, and the Wisdom of Children Children ask questions that challenge the best of parents. They also expose the weaknesses of our responses. A set of reflections from a black South African mother and activist who is confronted by the truth of her daughter's words and embracing the "weirdness" of their "dark brown and peach" family. 

The American Consciousness: The Fabric of Our Identity

Human identity is more fluid than ever before. How do we live gracefully in this moment of change, helping to shape it? How do we nurture common life, even as we are reinventing it? With Imani Perry, Richard Rodriguez, Michel Martin, and Nathan Schneider.

Letting Our Suffering Speak and Be Public 

Omid Safi, Feb. 12, 2015

Islamophobia. The killing of three American college students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina has shaken the Muslim community to its core. Omid Safi remembers the extraordinary human beings we lost and the pain that may lead to a new civil rights movement.

New iPad App. Work with Us. Omid on Grieving. Harry Potter Teaches Us About Reckoning with Evil. More Than an Icon, a Man Executive editor wraps up the week with stories on thinking about MLK differently and the horrors happening in the news. Trent Gilliss also shares the new On Being iPad app and some openings at On Being for you to consider. More

Loving Our Enemies (Salzberg and Thurman)

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Sharon Salzberg (sharonsalzberg.com), Prof. Thurman (bobthurman.com), Krista Tippett (onbeing.org)

The Buddha in meditation in Japanese temple near Vulture's Peak, Rajgir, India (_leonid)

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Embracing Our Enemies and Our Suffering

Father Bob and Uma Thurman

Two legendary Buddhist teachers shine a light on the lofty ideal of loving our enemies and bringing it down to Earth.

 

How can that be realistic, asks "On Being" host Krista Tippett, and what do we have to do inside ourselves to make it more possible?

 

In a conversation filled with laughter and friendship, Burmese Theravada insight meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg (Insight Meditation Society) and Tibetan Vajrayana teacher and translator Prof. Robert Thurman (Tibet House) share much.

Radio host Krista Tippett (onbeing.com)

The focus is on practical wisdom about how we relate to what makes us feel embattled from without as well as from within. More + AUDIO

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, co-author of Love Your Enemies, and the author of other books including Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation and Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace.
 

Robert Thurman is professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and the president of the Tibet House U.S., co-author of Love Your Enemies, and author of other books including Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within and Inner Revolution.


Love Your Enemies: How to Break the Anger Habit and Be a Whole Lot Happier

Love Your Enemies (BAM)

When people and circumstances upset us, how do we deal with them? Often, we feel victimized. We become hurt, angry, and defensive. We end up seeing others as enemies. And when things don't go our way, we become enemies to ourselves.

But what if we could move past this pain, anger, and defensiveness?

Inspired by Buddhist philosophy, this book introduces us to the four kinds of enemies we encounter in life:

1. the outer enemy, people, institutions, and situations that mean to harm us;
2. the inner enemy, anger, hatred, fear, and other destructive emotions;
3. the secret enemy, self-obsession that isolates us from others;
4. the super-secret enemy, deep-seated self-loathing that prevents us from finding inner freedom and true happiness.

In this practical guide, we learn not only how to identify our enemies, but more importantly, how to transform our relationship to them.

Love Your Enemies teaches us how to "break free from the mode of 'us versus them' thinking" "develop compassion, patience, and love," "accept what is beyond our control," "embrace loving-kindness, right speech, and other core concepts."

 

Throughout, authors Sharon Salzberg and Robert Thurman share stories and exercises for achieving finding peace within ourselves and with the world. Drawing from ancient spiritual wisdom and modern psychology, Love Your Enemies presents tools that are useful for all readers. More