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Who is the Magician? Tricks of the Brain

March 5, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 08-21-07: An excellent article in the New York Times today, "Sleights of Mind," by George Johnson. It covered several topics of great interest in understanding human experience: "...the cognitive … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: awe, cognitive principles, free will, human experience, illusion, Michael Gazzaniga, narrowness of perception, reality, sensory, truth

Who’s in charge? Facing Reality

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-15-07: A few days ago I talked about Clark Strand's article in the Fall, 2006, issue of Tricycle. He's writing about his take on a variety of Buddhism called "Pure Land," whose adherents recognize … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: AA, awe, brain, Buddha, Buddhism, Buddhist, decisions, intention, motivation, Naturalism, powerless, Pure Land, responsibility, self, surrender, thoughts, Tricycle, Zen

What This Site Is About

When I realized that the idea of god was a joke, I thought that was the end of the story. Later I found that Christianity had shaped my values, and while some were worth keeping, many had lost their foundation—the meaning of life, for example. Something similar happened when I realized that the idea of free will was a joke, and I’ve spent the decades since both those realizations discovering and editing what Julia Galef calls the “orphan beliefs” they left behind. It’s a tricky business, and this blog has been a chronicle of my efforts to puzzle it all out, including reviews of related books. I hope you find it helpful.

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