While I happened upon this discussion late, I liked it very much. Both men are intelligent, passionate and polite.

In their exchange Harris, author of The End of Faith, establishes a definition:

I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not.

Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul, goes with this:

Agreed. As the Pope said last year, I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth.

Of course, it continues on.

Despite their eloquence, however, I’d have to say that they miss the holiest (if I may) of all points. The problem is not that either one of them is necessarily right or wrong, it’s that they are both looking at the reality that both faith, and faith-in-God, point to as something outside of this very experience. It seems that Harris clings to the notion that God is a lie that exists out there in the minds of those people. Sullivan clings to the idea that God is the name and form of omnipotent truth. Either way, both cling to a version of their personal truth and are thus establishing the very boundary of separation that will keep the mind in control of the search. This is what Buddhist teaching suggests will build the inertia of attachment. And attachment causes fundamentalism to arise no matter whose “truth” it is that one seeks to defend.

There is much more as both Harris and Sullivan carry on. Enjoy.

On beliefnet.com today Deepak Chopra blogs:

In any system of organized religion, belief trumps first-hand experience. Such an experience, when it is truly spiritual, brings a sense of universality, far beyond our concepts of race and creed.

Interesting echo of the section from p. 72 in AiTL, titled Anger and Dogma.

Over at the Huffington Post, Steve Posner wrote a great piece last week on the convergence, and divergence, of politics and faith:

Churches are among my favorite places to meditate. Even in the middle of a bustling city, whether it be morning or evening, in the American midwest or northern Italy or southern Spain, I can always find a quiet place inside a church where I may sit comfortably and freely meditate in silence. I have never once been asked about my religion by any priest or minister, or asked whether the meditation I was practicing used the mantras of India or the prayers of the Vatican

Whether I am praying, meditating, or reading the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, or the scriptures of any other religion, it does not matter to any of the priests or ministers. All they expect from me is that I respect the church’s quiet space. Such is the national consciousness of the West, one which allows us to seek self-realization in the manner and place of our own choosing. This is why Obama’s spirituality is patriotic.

This proves it… meditation would be good for Judge Judy.

An earthquake rocked L.A. yesterday, fortunately causing little damage. It managed to scare the usually unflappable Judge Judy, but a group of monks meditating at a Thai temple were unfazed.

Aloha from Kauai.

I’m sitting here doing a little reading on the net while my wife and daughter sleep away an eventful day of helicopter riding and playing at the beach. We also walked into a shop that specialized in Buddhist paraphernalia. Everything you might need to get your practice off on a traditional footing. I commented to my wife how far away I felt from all the stuff. Just give me a cushion. And yet it was so beautiful. Then my baby daughter pulled a fan off the shelf that had the Heart Sutra inscribed on it. One side Japanese, one side English. I put it back in its place. My daughter protested. My wife laughed and I had a bit of a flashback to my morning routine as a monk. 

All the chanting seemed like such a goofy thing to do, and yet I was always thrilled at the last line of the Heart Sutra: gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha!

Loosely translated this means: gone, gone, gone beyond, gone way beyond, may Enlightenment be so! 

Indeed. May it be so for each of us. And may each of us also see that the Witness isn’t the end of it all. In fact, Ken Wilber suggests in a recent post on Integral Naked that Dainin Katagiri Roshi told him:

… the Witness is the last stand of the ego.

This point couldn’t be more important to those who’ve been on the cushion a while. The Witness, or what I’ve called the Eighth Sense, and Wilber cites as the Hindu term turiya, is fundamental in any process of Awakening. But it isn’t the final stop. In fact, the Witness can recognize itself as an ever-so-slight contraction of our personal realm of consciousness since even in the experience of seasoned practitioners, the Witness can still flirt with the edges of egoic grasping. 

I write about this in Awake in This Life:

More than a feeling, a sense, or an intuition, the Ninth Sense is the fundamental quality of the entire Mountain of Spirit as well as its climbers. It is the exact Awareness in which all experience, including the Witness, arises and falls. It is the essential, impersonal, quality of feelings, sensations, and intuition, just like light is the essential, impersonal, quality of any image we might see projected on a movie screen.

I go on further:

Whatever name we choose to point to this awakened spaciousness that is infinitely inside and outside of all things, it is never anything other than the awakened totality, the Deep Singularity, of everything all the time. It is always available to us in each breath, at each tragedy, at each of our kids’ successes and failures, at each of our lonely moments, in darkness, and in the inextinguishable, blinding light of the expansive and clear Truth of Being.

The Ninth Sense is Spirit, and it expresses itself in everything and in every way as everything and every way.

This Ninth Sense, or what the Hindu tradition calls turiyatita is shows itself as that which is beyond turiya, beyond the Witness. At the realization of the Ninth Sense the Witness and all that is witnessed begin to merge. Put simply, the Ninth Sense is beyond the experiences of our five gross bodily senses (taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound), as well as our two subtle mental senses (thoughts, and time), as well as our causal experiences of simple witnessing awareness. 

Wilber suggests that the recognition of the Ninth Sense shows up like this:

… rather than having an experience, all you’ll sense is a vast sense of freedom.  Freedom from objects, freedom from experiences, freedom from time.  Whatever it is that you experience, that is precisely what you are not. 

And in this freedom, you push, but without pushing; you rest, but without resting; you cleave, but without cleaving.  There is the sense of consciousness, but without an object,  of emptiness—though empty of that, too.  The way is neti, neti: not this, not that.  You will never reach a moment of time that is it.  For it is something that is always already there. 

May it be so.

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In tonight’s talk, Michael discusses the incomplete nature of what he calls small self being. When our orientation is kept down by the fire of our addictions to egoic thinking and movement, we lose a felt sense of stillness that has the potential to awaken us in any situation. He also goes on to speak of stillness as a way of uncovering a peace that doesn’t leave us even in the face of grand challenges.

This was a nice surprise.

On CBS Sunday Morning, Green Gulch Farm was featured as a way to escape. Of course, if you’re really doing the practice, it’s not about escape, but about facing everything and avoiding nothing. (p.201)

Read the article here.

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In his blog post, Tom Stine notes:

The only “criteria” I have for awakening is seeing, truly seeing, beyond the self, the “I”, the “me” that everyone thinks they are. When that is seen through, completely through, it is as if one has awakened from a dream, a dream of self. One then knows oneself as the Unborn as the Buddha would have said. Or we can say Emptiness, Spirit, the Formless.

However, as one great Zen master pointed out, “to encounter the Absolute is not yet enlightenment.” This awakening has to penetrate the entire being. When it does, the person knows through and through the truth: there is only One. Wherever they look, they see One. And this One has the appearance of form but is in fact Formless, Empty. When they look inside themselves, they see Nothing, Emptiness, the Absolute. All is Emptiness, all is One.

As much as I liked the content of this post, in my experience it is precisely here that both students and teachers can potentially get into trouble since this interpretation puts us just past the half way mark of the climb, so to speak. We haven’t come back into the world until we can see and know “the many” both for what it is, and what it is not.

Stine rightly points out that each teacher will approach this differently, but if any of us consciously expresses our living from the One in ways that are deeply integrated, the Many spontaneously shows up as neither distinct nor singular.

I talk about this in Chapter 3.

All boundaries fall away in [the] conscious meeting of Infinity. There is neither this nor that, we might say. All is once and forever the One and the many, all at the same moment.

Neti, Neti! Neither this, nor that!

The implications of this are huge and particularly interesting to egos that are looking for an Omega-point in this process: When am I done? Is that teacher fully awakened?

Stine goes on to say, in a follow up post that discusses Adyashanti’s view of the process

“To encounter the Absolute is not yet Enlightenment.” … The veil parts, but then more is seen through over time. To be certain, this process has been my experience. And yet. And yet, is that even true? While it may appear that a process is occurring, it also seems, to those who reach the endpoint of this process, as if the process never occurred.

There is some great stuff here, and I think Adya pretty much nails the unfolding process of Awakening nicely. But there’s never an endpoint. There are deeper and deeper levels of resonance, but no Omega to this unfolding. None of us is ever absolutely done, fully cooked, totally baked, or completely educated.

From Chapter 6:

None of us will ever be finished with this work. We won’t arrive at some endpoint and be done attaining stillness, since the Universe will keep moving, always showing us that there is more to meet. More grace and resistance to observe and then release.