religion

Buddha’s Truths Pertain To All Life

Buddha’s Truths apply to all Earth’s creatures, although only humans need to have truth stipulated. For me, this suggests that our desire for truth is a symptom of something we feel missing. For that reason, considering the widest possible scope of these truths gives helpful context for their application – profound sameness, as chapter 56 […]

We All Know We Don’t Know

I enjoy doing yoga on the beach because I can easily pause to look seaward and skyward to soak in eternity, or glance closer in to bond’ with my friends, the sand flies and the seagulls around me. Today I got to thinking how small and insignificant we are — they and me. Then I […]

Who are you? (Part IV)

The social qualities integral to our ancestral hunter-gatherer old way (1) just happen to mirror the core spiritual qualities that the world’s religions promote. That’s no coincidence. Indeed, those innate qualities of harmony we now seek are the very ones we lost when we left the old way for the alluring material benefits and security […]

Who are you? (Part III)

Recent posts, Who are you? and Who are you? (Part II), examine the losses of emotional security and comfort caused when our civilized way of life replaced our ancestral one. Common sense, personal experience, and timely mid 20th century ethnographic research reveals this. (See The Harmless People p.426) This post and the next cover some […]

Who are you? (Part II)

I tried to point out in my initial Who are you? post (p.504) how civilization plays a major role in educating its citizens who they are and who they should be. This contrasts sharply with the natural intuitive way that our ancestors acquired a secure sense of self. Religious stories have been central to every […]

The Word Trap

We are innately attracted to promises of solutions to problems, not to examining the underlying problems. In the wild, that is the healthiest approach because problems there share wilderness simplicity, and the solutions are straightforward. Thus, it was natural for us to evolve the inclination to opt for the simplest view of most any problem, and […]

Cultivating Ego

Google [Rats Experience Feelings of Regret] for research discovering that when a rat realizes it made a mistake, its body and brain show signs of regret (1). Research like this challenges the beliefs of human exceptionalism we’ve been cultivating to support our “illusion of self”— humanity’s collective ego, so to speak. Sure, we are different […]

Civilized Insanity

Cults like ISIS and the Nazis help define true human insanity. Ironically however, the tribal instinct driving such insanity is both sane and universal. It arises in all of us to various degrees. So, what drives the fanatic ISIS or Nazi follower to go over the edge? And what is is the best way to […]

Religion… an Opiate?

Karl Marx famously said, “Religion is the opium of the people”. He went on to identify “religious distress” as the symptom of a social “condition which needs illusions”.(1) Blaming cultural conditions for the dysfunction he saw is putting the cart before the horse. Doing this is as common as it is mistaken. Among other things, […]

Counterbalancing I.Q.

The onion is a good metaphor for one’s lifetime. Each of us peel away layer after layer as daily experiences gradually turn into a lifetime. This maturing process helps to counterbalance any extreme characteristics we were born with. With each decade that passes, we see deeper and become more humble compared to our formative years. […]

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religion