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Friday, December 30, 2005

Possible Buddhist School Lineage

I've been reading a textbook I have on the history of religion, as well as a number of Buddhist websites and Wikipedia articles, trying to understand the historic relationships between the various Buddhist schools. I made this chart in an effort to work out what I was reading (click on it to enlarge, then hit your 'back' button to return). However, I have no idea how accurate it is, so please take it with a grain of salt. I am also posting a reference to this page on the forums (in the Buddhist forum of course). Click here to see that forum page. Hopefully folks there can tell me if my chart is accurate. If not, I'll probably correct by editing this post.

Edit, January 20, 2006: I did receive good input from both the comparative religion forum, as well as, which can be seen here. The picture now on this entry is an updated one from the original which it replaced (based on that input).

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Happy Winter Solstice!

My wife and I recently attended the annual Winter Solstice party, traditionally hosted by the Humanists of Houston, but lately has been a joint project of the Houston Freethought Alliance. The HFA is a collaboration of the Humanists of Houston, the Houston Church of Freethought, the Houston Atheist Society, and the Humanist Association of Montgomery County Isaac Asimov Chapter.

Over 75 attended the gathering at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Much food, fun, and fellowship was had by all. Our good friend and HCOF Director Art Fay did a good job of organizing and planning as well. It was good to see all our Humanist, Freethinker, and nontheist friends again.

Houston is fortunate to have a thriving community of freethinkers who can share their experiences - we look forward to a new year with them!

Note about this picture: This was a composite image I made from pictures I got from Art Fay. There are a lot of good and important folks not present in the composite, but I was limited by space and didn't have all the pictures when I made this. The goal was just to give a general overview of happy faces - sorry to anyone not present!

Friday, December 23, 2005

Privacy Is Not A Right

...Aparently. According to a recent article in The Independent, soon Britain will be putting into place a system of cameras that can recognize car license plates. Computers will then keep a record of every single car and where it travels, going back several years. Further software analysis of the data will be able to tell the government which cars associated with which the most. In addition, the system will keep track of who is late on registration fees and other such details.

If the British government looks at driving in the same way as the U.S. government, then they view driving as a "privilege - not a right". This seemed perfectly reasonable back when cars were first coming out and still fairly rare.

But this perspective has developed over time to have a number of modern consequences that would otherwise be unthinkable in other areas of our life. For example, the government can deny motorists the right to drive in certain areas, can take away driving 'privileges', can monitor and search, conduct roadside checkpoints, demand to see our 'papers' at any time (which we are required to carry) and so on. Many of these activities would be viewed as totalitarian if applied to people walking on the sidewalk.

Unlike the days when motor vehicles were 'special', the ability to drive is now crucial to mobility in many areas of both nations. Evidently, this evolution has happened slowly and insidiously with the growth of automobile use and dependency. That being the case, our very mobility and means of livelihood has now ended up a "privilege" in the eyes of the government.

Given the modern role that driving plays in today’s world, retaining this 'privilege, not a right' policy on driving would be harmful enough to our liberty. But to make matters worse, this entire matter that has evolved concerning automobiles has a degrading and perverting effect on all of our other rights. When you take the unusual as a privilege, and then it becomes usual, it tends to make citizens and government alike start to treat other usual activities as a privilege instead of a right.

For example, once people get accustomed to the privilege-based restrictions and governmental powers associated with their car or their driving, they then think, "what's the difference between having a checkpoint on the road or on the sidewalk?" or "what's the difference between requiring me to carry my ID inside my car, or inside my friend's house?"

You have whole generations of people, myself included, who grew up in a world where cars were not a special privilege, but a common and crucial element to our mobility and freedom of movement. Yet, we also grew up in a world where the government treats that mobility as a privilege. The result is a world the founding fathers would have considered nightmarish, and we go along with it because the mantra of "driving is a privilege" has been such a long-running theme. In the meantime, we grow up accustomed to a government with powers far beyond those intended - all because of the quirky evolution of our perceptions regarding one invention, which later evolved into a necessity of civilization.

Back to the article, here is an example of how clueless even the writer is...

"But others concerned about civil liberties will be worried that the movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely recorded and kept on a central computer database for years." (bold mine)

They will be "worried" that the movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely recorded? How do you "worry" about something that you're being told IS happening? There is no "worry" it will happen - it's happening, period.

There's no question that they're going to catch some more bad guys with this. But, in order to circumvent this billion-dollar system, all a criminal has to do is put a fake or stolen license plate on his car right before driving out to commit the crime. Meanwhile, all of the law-abiding people are having their privacy violated and being held to the grindstone over nitty-gritty details such as registration being a day late. "Is the benefit worth the cost?" is rarely a question governments will ask when the cost involves only loss of liberty. It's up to people to ask that question.

When it comes to other uses this system might have in more secretive agencies, Chief Constable Frank Whiteley said,

"The security services will use it for purposes that I frankly don't have access to."
One can only imagine.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Your Brain Knows Before You Do

This is one of a few examples of studies I've heard about which show that our consciousness doesn't wear the pants in the brain. In other words, our brains usually decide things, and then send a memo to us (the consciousness department). We think we made a decision, but it was actually made a few seconds earlier in an unconscious region of our brains. In this case, it seems to work the same with recalling a memory...

CLICK HERE for the Livescience article.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Mirror Neurons & Compassion

I've recently stumbled across this nice article about mirror neurons at the Boston Globe website. It seems that these special neurons are basically motor neurons that activate, not only when we do things, but when we see other people doing them. Scientists believe that they may play a key role in our sense of empathy (feeling what others feel) and maybe even in our appreciation of metaphor and language. They also believe there may be a link between mirror neurons and autism (basically a lack of ability to think of others as beings like ourselves).

The article did mention that it might be possible to either increase or repair mirror neurons, but it also mentioned the possibility that other neurons might be able to adapt to that function (the brain tends to be very flexible in that regard).

This made me wonder about those violent criminals who seem to lack a sense of empathy and their reform. While it seems to be successful sometimes, many of them seem so far gone that it is almost a lost cause. Perhaps they should study the mirror neuron activity of such criminals over time as they go through therapy and conditioning to increase their empathy.

Some people get brain injuries that lead to motor function loss and through therapy other parts of the brain slowly take over those functions. Perhaps other neurons similarly taking over mirror functions is what happens when some violent offenders later grow to genuinely regret their former actions?

I was also reminded of my recent and current readings on compassion in Jesus' teachings and Buddhist philosophy. It seems that a healthy development of empathy is an important part of compassion. The very notion of 'mirror neurons' reminds me of the Buddhist and Hindu concept of Indra's Net. It represents the interconnectedness of all things (a key reason why compassion is so important). It is a web and at each intersection is a jewel which reflects (mirrors) all the other jewels, just as our mirror neurons mirror the experiences of others to us.

There goes my metaphor-seeking mirror neurons!

Globe Article: click here

About Indra's Net: click here

Thursday, December 15, 2005

There IS A Spoon Damnit!

I don't know why I let myself get into these debates over subjectivism and postmodernism. I always have difficulty not being testy. Anyway, I've done it again and it can be read here...

Jeffrock's LiveJournal

Now You Can Google Me

I'm not sure how useful it will be, but you can now search my blog by scrolling to the bottom of the page and using the Google bar! I was having trouble finding an old post of my own a while back so as my blog grows this might be more handy. What the heck, it's free.

Edit, January 25, 2006: I have since removed this feature after reading about Google assisting the Chinese communist dictatorship with its censorship practices. See here for more detail.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

ISO The Real Buddha & Jesus

Earlier I posted about reading The Gospel of Jesus. This book sought to reconstruct what Jesus probably actually said, as opposed to what's been heaped onto him and twisted around since his time (much of this perversion being found in the Bible itself). It seems Jesus' original teachings were quite reasonable and surprisingly fresh and enlightening in many ways.

Lately, after reading The Dharma of Star Wars, I've been reading about Buddhism for purposes of comparing how it addresses the passions with how Stoic philosophy handles them. In doing so, I am continuing to find that just about everything I've ever been told about Buddhism is wrong.

What's most interesting is how it was wrong. Having grown up in a Christian culture, it seems that every concept in Buddhism presented to me was summed up with a caricature that made use of Christian models of reality, and then twisted them in a simplistic way.

I was therefore surprised to find that some takes on reincarnation don't involve souls moving between bodies. Some concepts of Karma involve more Natural conceptions of cause-and-effect, rather than a cosmic supernatural bookkeeping system of some sort. Likewise, "Nirvana" is not simply another name for "Heaven", but an entirely different concept altogether.

However, it all makes sense to me now that this is how Christians might misunderstand these things. It reminds me of the common Christian misunderstanding about Humanism, which assumes that other philosophies have a similar structure to Christianity and suggests that Humanists "worship humans". (note: I'm sure other religions and traditions have similar misunderstandings about Christianity too)

Fortunately I wasn't quite this ignorant about Buddhism by the time I came to my recent readings, but I was still lacking a lot of key information that I'm happy to have now. As with Jesus, it seems that the original teachings of Siddhartha Guatama (Buddha) were quite pragmatic and down-to-earth. But one must peel away thousands of years of misconception, alteration, and misrepresentations to get at them.

Another interesting thing is that, in both the cases of Christianity and Buddhism, the perversions took the very same form. In both cases, the words of the teacher were pretty much ignored and in there place was a distracting glorification of the teacher himself. This glorification included thoughts of special powers and abilities, and eventually the good sense of the teacher's words were burried under distracting outside fantasies about the supernatural and the afterlife - all enshrined with various rituals, personalities, and power structures.

Ironically, in both cases the teachers themselves specifically admonished against these things. Buddha was a sort of atheist who would not recommend going to the Brahmins as priests. He had no use for prayer or sacrifices and didn't teach about the universe being infinite (or not) and about the afterlife, because he felt these things were not fundamental to religion. To him salvation was to be found in spiritual self discipline[1]. Jesus, meanwhile, never seemed to claim that he was a half-god or god in human form, or a substitute for sacrificial offerings (this doctrine is basically "Paulianity" and came later). He admonished others who called upon his name but didn't do as he instructed in his teachings[2].

I think I'll continue to try and uncover what Guatama actually taught, and by that I mean even going back to before Theravada Buddhism as much as possible. Then I can come up with a comparison between this, Jesus, Taoism, and Stoicism. There's just too much good stuff there and I'd like to see what I can mine from each in a comprehensive and consistent manner.

[1] A History of the Worlds Religions. By David S. Noss.
[2] The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. By James M. Robinson.

Monday, December 5, 2005

The Shimmering Voice

by DT Strain

There is a voice that shimmers
in the deep dark light.
It calls me hither,
destroys my sight.

There is a voice that shimmers
in the deep dark light.
It sounds so sweet,
so warm, so right.

It soothes me over
and brings me in
and pierces flesh
and covers sin.

There is a voice that shimmers
in the deep dark light.
it leads me toward
its blinding bright;
its peaceful sword;
its praise of might.

To step away
from deep light dark
would cast me out
of comfort's ark.

T'would set my sail
toward unknown shores
where doubt consumes,
where questions roar;
where fully free,
unfettered mind,
I'd finally be
from deep dark's bind.

There is a voice that glimmers
in the deep dark light,
that offers hope
through foggy sight.

To lose that hope
and take a breath
of unspoiled air,
of certain death;
to live for life
instead of fear
of deep dark's light
still drawing near
would be worthwhile,
a noble choice,
and silence at last
the shimmering voice.

Saturday, December 3, 2005

Recommended Reading

I just finished something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I made a list of all the books on my "special shelf" and put it on my philosophy site. If you'd like to see some of the books I like most, you can see the list HERE.

Thursday, December 1, 2005

Seeing Order & God in the Woodwork

Daniel Gilbert has written a very interesting article titled, "The Vagaries of Religious Experience" at The article can be reached via this link.

In it, Gilbert explains why people tend to attribute things to a god and several other tangent notions. There are loads of fascinating references to interesting social experiments that make the article a real treat. I especially liked this bit...

"A Necker cube is an ambiguous object, which is to say that there is more than one way to see it, and our brains happily jump between these different views, trying one and then switching to another. But experiments show that if we are rewarded for seeing the cube one way rather than the other — rewarded with a jellybean, a dollar bill, or a friendly pat on the back — our brains begin to hold on to the rewarding view, and the cube stops changing. The lesson here is that things can be viewed in many ways, but human brains like the most rewarding view and thus they search for and hold on to that view whenever they can."

Thanks much to Paul at the International Stoic Forum for making me aware of this.

Terrel Pough & Being Good

It has recently been reported that two men have been charged for murdering 18-year old Terrel Pough. Terrel had recently been featured in People Magazine for pulling his life together in order to provide for his daughter, Diamond. As People reported Recently...

"A former street-tough kid, Pough was raised by his maternal great-grandparents and never knew his own father. His life changed, however, when he learned at 15 that his then-girlfriend, Charmaine Houston, also 15, was pregnant. Although Pough and Houston drifted apart, Pough pledged to support their child... Pough was determined to find a good job in construction so he could provide greater opportunities for Diamond."

When I saw the arrests reported on television on the morning news, the reporters portrayed the irony of the event and the sense of futility was apparent in their tone. I thought that there must be many people out there struggling in harsh conditions who may be wondering, "what's the point of trying if this sort of thing can happen to people like Terrel?"

While it's true that bad neighborhoods and low-income areas have higher crime rates and are more dangerous, the fact is that any of us can die at any moment, for any number of reasons. There has always been a common frustration at these series of random events beyond our control. It was this which inspired Shakespeare's character Macbeth to bemoan that, unlike films and books, our life is instead "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Many ancient Stoics, like folks today who live under dangerous hardships, lived in a world where life was often short, brutal, and cheap. They too saw life as a tragic hurricane of events larger than ourselves, which we are helpless to control.

But the Stoic response to this fact of life was to first recognize that it is this flow of events which allows us to exist in the first place. All things which we consider good and bad flow from that great flux of events. Other traditions and teachers have noticed this as well. Jesus of Nazareth pointed out that it rains on both the just and the unjust. The Buddhists refer to this tapestry of life as "Indra's Net". They would also note there is no way to win the "if only" game. Stoics would say that everything that is, is because of the Way of Nature, and there is no other way things can be, than how they are.

But secondly, and more importantly, the Stoics go beyond recognizing what we can't control and focus on what we can control. Stoicism teaches us that the only thing we can really control is our inner choices, and the only valuable thing we can ever call truly "good", is our choice to be virtuous. All else (family, friends, possessions, status, career) can be taken from us in a heartbeat.

If folks out there are thinking that all of Terrel's efforts to better himself to provide for his daughter were wasted or futile, then they should consider what effects his virtuous efforts really had, and will continue to have. Consider the support already provided to Diamond. Consider Terrel's inspiration to other young people like himself. Consider the inspiration Terrel's efforts and his fate has had on others to lend a hand to Diamond and her family. Consider what an inspiration Terrel will be to his daughter in years to come. Lastly, consider the fact that Terrel's life, while it lasted, was improved by the joy and pride inherent in doing the right thing and living a good life.

The Stoic Epictetus said that virtue was both necessary and sufficient for happiness. While a lot of events beyond our control can effect our lives, we control how we respond to those events, and that response goes back into that tapestry - usually continuing on to have effects larger than we imagined. Nothing can ever change the fact that we chose virtue when faced with the choice.

I never knew Terrel Pough, but I suspect that his years, obligations, and interests probably kept him from ever learning much about ancient philosophers. Be that as it may, the irony and pain of tragedy is eternal to all human beings and the wisdom found throughout the ages is therefore applicable today as well. Many of these thoughts, I'm certain, Terrel did understand, for as he himself once said, "If something ever happens to me, no one can ever tell her that her dad didn't take care of her."

I happened upon information for making donations on for those wishing to, and thought it would be a good idea to pass on the info...

Terrell Pough Memorial Fund
YouthBuild Charter School
1231 N. Borad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122

Diamond Houston Fund
c/o Sovereign Bank
8319 Stenton Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19150