The Short Version

Love, Life, Meaning, Zen, and Science, by Norm Bearrentine

  • Home/Blog
  • Live With Beauty
  • Norm’s Books
    • High School Zen
    • Free Will, the Self, and the Art of Cunnilingus: One Guy’s Tumble Toward Reality
  • Light & Dark Inc
  • Norm’s Photos

Powered by Genesis

What’s the Point? Language In Perspective

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted on 05-11-07: To continue with yesterday's topic. If all the people who are saying, "Stay in the moment," are really saying, "Don't verbalize," what's the point? Our use of language is a major part of being … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain function, causality, choice, conditioning, free will, identity, language

Buddha the Scientist; Faith vs. Free Will

March 4, 2008 by Norm Bearrentine Leave a Comment

Originally posted 05-09-07: I was re-reading the Summer, 2006 issue of Tricycle the other day, and found myself annoyed, again, by an article by Thanissaro Bhikkhu called "Faith in Awakening." What provoked me was this, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: 2008 Tagged With: brain function, causality, conditioning, free will

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.

Categories

Tags

AA (4) Antonio Damasio (2) attention (4) awareness (2) awe (2) brain (17) brain function (2) Buddha (4) Buddhism (5) Buddhist (6) causality (2) choice (1) complexity (2) conditioning (2) consciousness (7) control (2) Daniel Dennett (3) decisions (3) depression (2) Douglas Hofstadter (2) free will (10) happiness (2) ignorance (3) illusion (3) Jean Klein (2) language (3) meditation (6) Michael Gazzaniga (2) Mind (2) mistakes (2) Naturalism (2) perception (5) Philip "Wylie (2) pot (2) reality (4) responsibility (2) Sam Harris (3) science (2) self (3) sensory (3) suffering (2) thoughts (2) Time (2) Tricycle (5) Zen (3)

Archives