I Need It To Be Real

"I believe in science. I believe in evolution. I believe in Nate Silver and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Christopher Hitchens. Although I do admit he could be a kind of an asshole. I cannot get behind some supreme being who weighs in on the Tony Awards while a million people get whacked with machetes. I don't believe a billion Indians are going to hell. I don't think we get cancer to learn life lessons, and I don't believe that people die young because God needs another angel. I think it's just bullshit, and on some level, I think we all know that, I mean, don't you?... Look I understand that religion makes it easier to deal with all of the random shitty things that happen to us. And I wish I could get on that ride, I'm sure I would be happier. But I can't . Feeling aren't enough. I need it to be real."

         -Piper Chapman (Orange is the New Black)

How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World

Science has long advanced in part due to its rejection of religion as it uncovered information inconvenient for believers and their institutions

Mar 14, 2014 |By Mitchell Stephens

 

Editor's Note: Excerpted with permission from Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Create the Modern World, by Mitchell Stephens. Available from Palgrave Macmillan. Copyright © 2014.

Science’s contributions to the spread of disbelief is the least controversial segment of the virtuous cycle for which I am arguing in seventeenth-century Europe. For science’s methods are clearly troublesome for religion. The devout, to begin with, are not wont to view their precepts merely as propositions to be controverted or confirmed. The orthodox, as a rule, are used to arguments being settled by authority, not experiment. The hope belief offers does not always stand up well to observation and experience: life sometimes works out okay; sometimes it doesn’t. Faith, particularly of the “certain-because-impossible” variety, and reason have long been tussling. Miracles are notoriously miserly with evidence. Revelation does not lend itself to experimental verification. And the mystical, by its nature, fails to produce facts.

When it is employed, the scientific method, consequently, has a way of uncovering information that is inconvenient for religion. Conflicts are inevitable with ancient holy books—most of which do end up proclaiming something or other on “how” the earth works or “heaven goes.” Scientists in these centuries diverged from Scripture at their peril. Galileo learned that. But in the end the greater cost would be borne by the holy books. Catholic leaders did indeed have reason to fear that, in taking Copernicus’ theory seriously, Galileo might encourage people to take the Bible less seriously.

The Bottom Rung

In the same vein as Studs Terkel's Americans,  Liao Yiwu offers first hand accounts of the working life of lower-class Chinese in Post Maoist China, with an English adaptation of Interviews with People from the Bottom Rung of Society. The English version, titled The Corpse Walker, contains twenty-seven of the original interviews in English translation. Anyone interested in the lesser known side of the "new" China and its burgeoning free-market economy, would do well to read this wonderful offering. It includes interviews of a pimp, a teacher, a Safecracker, and a Falun Gong practitioner, as well as many other similar stories of the denizens of the lower rung. China is a quickly changing country, and is of course still adapting to a Communist Totalitarian Government embracing free market economics and all the promise and hope it potentially will bring to the masses. Of course China has always had dissidents, but with a shrinking world and mass media, and much more access in and out of China, thjose of us living outside of China are more and more exposed to the works of art and literature the government of China openly attempts to suppress, destroy, and ultimately pretend that creative dissent does not exist.

Liao Yiwu is certainly a hero. He has spent much time in prison, custody, interrogation, detention, and continuous surveillance. This has not deterred him in any way. He continues to write and, with help from sympathetic friends outside as well as inside China, publish works in Chinese, via Taiwan, as well as English from publishers in the West. I am certain he knows how many of us here in the United States and many other Western countries wholeheartedly support him in his efforts.

Infinitely Lite

Early in the morning on the day we were leaving Jackson Street in Oakland, I was down on the street, loading our bags into the car. I heard a commotion coming down the sidewalk in my direction. Not totally out of the ordinary for a town like Oakland. I was surprised and unexpectedly accosted by a Chinese Buddhist nun, who was yelling out to any  and all people she passed along the way. She was aggressively suggesting that everyone should chant or recite “Amitabha Buddha,” “A Mi To Fo” in Chinese. When she turned her attention to me,  and saw that I was standing there observing her, she of course approached me still repeating, even admonishing aggressively that I to should say the Name. She also added that I should attempt to follow a vegetarian diet. Of course she couldn’t have known me or my own deep and long history with Chinese Buddhism: the time in monastery in the jungle on a mountain, and the long nights, months, and years of study. And the hundreds of thousands of recitations of that very Name. Or my own profound experience of Recitation Samadhi experienced during a marathon seven day straight retreat of continuous Name recitation. She certainly couldn’t have known, or even accept that I probably knew more about Buddhism then she herself knew.

After speaking together for a while, she suggested that I come to visit her temple on Harrison Street.The name of which escapes me now. She said to come to the 2^nd floor. I spoke a few words of Chinese to her (I actually remember very little Chinese these days; although my pronunciation is still quite good) I pretended that I could speak and understand more than I can. She laughed and said “You no tell me you speak Chinese.” We stayed there for a time talking, then parted ways.

She was wonderful, fanatical. Not at all how I would aspire to be, but for her very walking down the street in Oakland, yelling out the name of the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life, was an unexpected reminder of the thousands upon thousands of recitations I have myself made, back when I had a faith, when I took refuge in the idea or hope that something extraordinary hidden from our deluded view, existed and was in fact more real than reality.

Then there is this whole idea of a Pure Land, a “heaven” if you will, to begin with. It is certainly easy to see that this life is an illusion – on so many – maybe even on every, level.  But does that suggest that minute experiences of bliss or clarity imply a specific locale or reality like a Sukhavati, complete with trillions of Enlightenment Beings, led by an Absolute omniscient Pure Being of Limitless Life, Limitless Light?

In her poem, Death Sunyata Chant: A Rite For Passing Over, the Beat writer Diane Di Prima starts out by quoting Sogyal Rinpoche, himself quoting from “Hidden Adept” of Tibet:

Everything is illusion

But I am confident all is well

She then begins, saying:

If there is a Pure Land

We release the spirit

Send it flying

Into the Buddha’s heart

Everything is illusion

If there are angels 

Will they carry you

Singing

Into the Presence?

I am confident

If the flesh is light and the fire

is a lover

If the ashes are scattered at sea

on the wind or planted in the earth

If all the five elements

Are Wisdom Dakinis

And I am confident that all is well.

Maybe. For many, faith that such a place exists, and faith at all, for that matter, is a necessary component to hold one together in a world that is clearly illusion, populated by the delusional. Indeed, is walking down the street in Oakland calling out and demanding that all must subscribe to any one delusion that irrational? Some of us need it to be more real. At least a little bit.

Is it irrational? Or is it wonderfully irrational… but so right at the same time?

Oakland's Son

Jack London Square on the waterfront in Oakland. The only thing that remotely reflects anything related to Jack London, is this statue of him. Such a great writer, adventurer, and man-of-the-world deserves a little more recognition than a eponymously named tourist trap and a somewhat interesting statue.

It was early morning on this day, and nobody but the workers that make the place a happy place were about. A nice marine layer, the screech of gulls, and the always pleasant smell of ocean.

I don't know what else to say here. I like Jack London's work and felt obligated to at least visit the statue while in town. Given the mostly hellish nature of Oakland these days, at least there is still a little something to reminisce about. Plus, a visit seemed natural given all the other Literature related stops I've made on this trip.

Jack London.com

City Lights Bookstore

A few days back I had a chance to stop by City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. On the edge of Chinatown, this is one of the best independent bookstore remaining in the United States. The Beat vibe is still somewhat present, although it seems to have become more of a tourist attraction than a center of ideas and art. It still boasts a great selection of books, including the Beat section that occupies the entire top floor. It was kind of a bring down that most of the people clogging the aisles weren't filling their minds with ideas, but filling their devices with shots for their Facebook page. This country has turned its collective back on art and literature.

I hate to sound the snob, but these people are in serious need of a healthy dose of psilocybin and a bottle of good rye. Then curl up with some Burroughs and Kerouac. 

I purchased copies of The Beat Book - Writings from the Beat Generation, Edited by Anne Waldman, and Pulp by Charles Bukowski for the road. I also picked up pictures of Jack Kerouac and Albert Camus for the office.

City Lights Booksellers and Publishers

The National Steinbeck Center

The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas California is the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single author. In the 1970s, a group of local Salinas school teachers got together and lamented that John Steinbeck was the only person recognized the world over, born and raised in Salinas, but never embraced by Salinas and her citizens. They established the Steinbeck Center Foundation in 1983, and after years of campaigning and fund raising, the Center was completed and  dedicated in June of 1998.

Steinbeck was vilified by the local farmers after the publication of Grapes of Wrath, feeling they were portrayed in an unfavorable light. They publicly burned his books, and more or less drove Steinbeck permanently from Salinas. So the area’s inhabitants never much cared for Steinbeck the man, and so never considered him a talent to be recognized or embraced. He eventually landed in New York City, and spent most of the remainder of his time on the East Coast.

This is truly an amazing museum. There are all types of exhibits that showcase his work and philosophy, both fiction and non-fiction, and his contribution to Hollywood. It also houses the largest archive of Steinbeck works.

Any fan of literary fiction, the history of California, and the great John Steinbeck owes it to themselves to visit this center at least once in their lifetime.




  

The National Steinbeck Center

Cannery Row Just Now

I'm standing on Cannery Row looking across the huge expanse of water towards Santa Cruz. I can hear the bark of sea lions in the dark, the incessant call of the gulls, the gentle surge of water to and fro breaking on the rocky bottom that famously lines the Row.

The ocean is so alive here.

Although the canneries and fishing fleet, the men and the fishmonger wives, the smell and trains and all the rest are all gone, and so much has changed, I can still feel what Steinbeck felt, and the sea is unchanged.

My brother's reply: 

"Some things never change. Men will always find a way to eek out a living. Then, as now, often on the fringes of legality."

Henry Miller Memorial Library

Just visited the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur. It lived up to all of my expectations. I purchased a copy of Tropic of Cancer by Miller, as well as a copy of Desolation Angels by Jack Kerouac. I didn't have a chance to stay as long as I would have liked, but I had something to do, and in the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur is..... Where Nothing Happens. 

 I will definitely return to Big Sur again and again. A powerful and inspiring place.

"Develop an interest in life as you

see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

'I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive."

Henry Miller Memorial Library

Henry Miller Quotes

Novel, Truth, and Experience

These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies - captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly.           ---Ralph Waldo Emerson