Luke, The Force, Letter & Law, What is point of Religion?, Memes, Golden Calf, Meditation

 I have never seen a tiger. I have read about them and seen pictures and videos so that I "know" a tiger, but I have never seen one face to face. In French we might say I "savoir" the tiger, but I have not made its acquaitance of "connaitre" the tiger.

Its easy to dismiss the nature of actually experiencing things. They are "like" what you have been told, but the experience is quite different. Really different, really indispensable in fact. This cannot be stated enough, there is no substitute for experience, and knowledge by itself is a poor substitute. When we see what things are actually like we will always be surprised. This is why meditation is so important, amongst its many features it brings us away from "knowing" things to "being with things" to see them in experience rather than thoughts. We actually overlay the world like the Terminator with a drop down screen of data about the world, that gets so dense that in fact we barely see familiar things any more and only see out thoughts. When we start to meditate and we are told to "watch the breath" this is a thought, and when we execute it we find what we "think" is the breath and then watch the drop down display of "in" and "out" and the data turns up about the state of breath we have been told to watch. It actually takes a very long time to start to see the breath itself and start to discard the "data" about it. Eventually the Terminator switches off the scrolling data and looks fresh, or like Luke in Star Wars raises the Targeting computer and switches to The Force. This is exactly the process of getting acquainted with things. Forget what you know, and look again.

And of course Ego is wrapped up in all of this, cos every action "we do" is understood to originate from a "thought entity called Me" and so is automatically inauthentic. Lifting the Targeting Computer is not an action we can just chose to do, we have not just chosen to be inauthentic and get focused on "thought" and "data", this inauthenticity has been a short cut and a mistake made from a belief that truth lies in the Self, and we know the Self so we don't need to know anything else. I've got Me and that is all that matters. I just need to do some knowing about the world and I am complete. Compare this with genuinely allowing the world in and seeing it for what it really is! The Ego has no interest in this, the World is a threat to the Self, knowing things intimately means dropping the Ego and letting other things exist as they are.

Now when you see a Tiger as it is, when you have that actual experience you are in a way "on your own." Even when you meet other people who have seen a tiger, you do yourself an injustice to see kin ship. That experience was yours and of a time and place that was unique and will be--our of respect for the tiger if nothing else--like nothing else. From this out Ego finds proof of its existence, unique experiences need a unique viewer it argues and immediately destroys the experience.  "I saw a tiger" quickly replaces "there was an actual Tiger" and it becomes all bout Me and not the actual point that it was all about the Tiger. People say these days life is about making Memories. That implies that the point of doing anything is the future looking back, when in fact it is the Now. And in fact its not anyone looking in any direction, its just the Thing itself. Give it that respect at least! To give the world full respect, to lift up the Targeting Computer means to be Unique, but that does not mean a Self. This is the dangerous inauthenticity that always creeps in. I had a Jhana once as a kid, the way I expressed it was "I have just had the most amazing experience" and it immediately became about Me. Irony is usually extremely ironic! Big Alarm Bell here!

Now this same thing is true everywhere especially Religion. There is the Letter of the Law, the Torah or the Koran or the Bible or even the Vinaya Rules in Buddhism. Verses that dictate the shape of the Law. And people who get together under that Flag or Identity follow these laws. I mean what is the use of a religion where everyone does things differently?

You find this with Memes. Dawkins envisages the Meme like a thought that replicates through people's minds. But it depends upon a fertile soil. Jesus makes this analogy. He scatters the seed but it only grows in certain soils (that is minds). Meme's work not just because of their intrinsic "DNA" but because of the society in which they grow and in fact are a good barometer of the Zeitgeist or state of Society. The more puerile and faster the Memes spread the more tragic the society! Interestingly of course Meme itself is a meme, and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts! If it has longevity then Dawkins has shown that not everything is a Meme! And indeed Meme is reserved for that flash in the pan Viral content that appeals quickly to the most people, but by virtue has minimal and only superficial content. Meme also depends upon prior knowledge. The "new information" content of a Meme must be minimal so it impacts quick. "It snowed is July" has more information content than "It snowed in December" not because the sentence is more meaningful but because the prior knowledge is being challenged. And so Memes must appeal to an existing knowledge. If you "get it" then you are already in the knowledge society of that Meme. It becomes a "flag" of membership. Jokes are like this. If you tell jokes to people from other cultures they often will not "get it"-- its a flag of identity, it demonstrates your membership of a society and way of thinking. But to reach the broadest group, it must be quite unlike the Tiger Experience above which is unique, of its time, and special. You can't Meme a chance encounter in the jungle with a tiger. You can Meme a Package Holiday where the Tiger is led out or you are led to the tiger to see it within defined place and time parameters "as advertised." True you are seeing an actual Tiger, but it is within very defined parameters that you have thought about "OK I'll give up a day of my holiday to seeing a tiger, at this price and without too much travel" so when we see it, 99% of it is what we were expecting and its tempting to keen the Targeting Computer down. In the 15mins of sighting of a Tiger that a Package Holiday affords its quite a skill to drop the expectations and the lifetime of knowledge about this Queen of Beasts and to grab a unique experience with it. But we can't try to force that either, it either happens or it doesn't. Perhaps we will only see a movement in the undergrowth and not get the full photo of it on the track and some will walk away disappointed cos the Targeting Computer had something else in mind and we missed the target. Other will be happy with a days driving in the jungle and seeing nothing, they perhaps the most are having the authentic experience and enjoying what is there.

Like Meme's religions are based upon Prior knowledge. I saw an Ethiopian arguing with a Ghanaian about who was God. Not unsurprisingly the Ghanaian said Jesus was God and the Ethiopian said Haile Selassie. How do you resolve that argument? Well first thing to realise is prior knowledge. They were arguing based upon their upbringing and so anyone not born in Ghana and subjected to a lifetime of post-missionary beliefs is not going to have the same knowledge as someone brought up as a subject of Selassie. I never understood football supporting or even wars but its like this. To understand you need grow from that society and have those Memes built into you. In reality you can't argue about the truth: you can't argue about seeing a tiger. But when you tell people about it then you can argue. and that includes yourself.

I thought I saw a Golden Eagle once, and spent an hour watching it. I've never paid so much attention to a Buzzard before! I realised afterwards that what I was looking at was not big or massive enough to be an eagle. So we dismiss the experience because the Targeting Computer was wrong. It said Eagle when in fact it was a Buzzard, so my experience was invalid. Was it? That was a very enjoyable hour that I still remember, and all that was wrong was the name of what I was seeing was wrong. Flip the Targeting Computer up and it was what it was. Okay not so great in the pub telling people I saw a Buzzard compared to I saw an Eagle, but that takes nothing from the hour. At a meeting of the Buteo Society the experience would be received much better! Just as with a Meme whether it spreads is just to do with prior knowledge.

Now to wrap up. If authentic experience is what really matters then what is the point of Religion? What is the point of the two people arguing on the bus about Jesus and Selassie? Couldn't a radical Puritan just put it all in the bin and encourage people to find their own personal religion?

But that token couldn't we just ban all Tiger Sight-Seeing Tours, and in fact burn all books with Tigers in  so that people's minds do not become polluted by inauthentic beliefs?

Book burning! How often has this happened. Ripping out of Icons! How often has this happened.

But isn't there a contradiction here. If 100 people gather under a flag and go and rip out icons in the name of "authenticity" are they just a new inauthenticity? We quickly end up as a hermit in the forest living by our self interested only in private and authentic experience. And indeed there is some truth to this.

And yet you can go and live in a Cave and achieve nothing. I have done this. You just replace the inauthenticity of daily life amongst other people, with your own inauthenticity. You have 100 images of what you want to achieve, of what the Truth is, of why you need Go Private and they are all false idiols.

Of course the Jews faced all this in their distant past. While Moses was putting the Law in Stone, the Hebrews turned to worship a golden calf. Something tangible, something attractive, something like what they thought a god should be like. And Moses ends up smashing the Stone Law. Is this a double metaphor of not only the error of grasping for attractive wanted images of God but for also putting the Law into Stone. I always wondered why the Law needed to be broken. Its to warn against turn it into a false Idol itself. How many religious practitioners fall foul of this. In Islam we can pick out the Sunni sect in its entirety. Take not America, Saudi Arabia is Sunni.

And yet we can just go and smash everything and end up in a Cave again, worshiping yet more false idiols.

The problem we all face is that we start flying with the Targeting Computer: that being Written Law and guidance from Teachers, or a Jungle Guide leading us to the Tiger. But as we learn there come those moments when we find we are not using it. These are very special moments indeed. You cannot be told to do this, there is no Targeting Computer telling us not to use the Targeting Computer! That would be SRH. It must come from "within" -- which is pointless to say, indeed saying anything here contradicts the point. When we flip up the Targeting Computer it must be outside any Targeting Computer. It can't be formalised, we must throw down the tablets and stop worshiping all the false idols we have accumulated.

But we want that experience of authenticity with God so much, we want to be free from idols, we want to smash the stone tablets. But if we do this under direction from some Targeting Computer we are just making it worse. Those unplanned, unplannable moments when we see God are not in the Menu of the Targeting Computer. Now its true that in Star Wars Obi Wan tells Luke to "Use the Force" but we must understand this not to mean that we are being "told to use the Force" cos none of us know what it is. Luke on the other hand is feeling the force at that moment, "Use the Force" makes perfects sense to him at that moment, he is not being "told" to use it like reading it in a book, he is "recognising" that it is there, he is "acquainted with" like it was a Tiger that has turned up, is already feeling the force. He knows what he has to do as a batsman knows how to hit the ball. It comes from within, they are the master of moment. If Luke had missed he would not have cared, as he was the director or writer of what was going on. If the writer decides that a character misses the ball then so be it, that is the story. If Luke has missed then so be it. We feel pressure when we must meet expectations that are not our own. We put the targeting computer down again cos we do not feel confident. This happens in sports all the time. When Harry Kane missed the penalty against France, normally we would do it, but the expectations clearly made him drop the Targeting Computer again. He didn't want to be the writer of this if it went wrong. And ironically as is always the way it then when wrong. But its no use telling him to "Use the Force" if he is not already feeling it. You can't tell a Tiger to turn up.

But I'm very cautious here not to make the classic mistake. This all sounds very like Western Culture. But of course the idea of "being the charge" of your destiny quickly becomes a False Idol cos we build a golden calf called our self and start to worship it, thinking that we carry that around and we are authentic. Was carrying the Arc of the Covenant a moment of inauthenticity? Carrying these heavy stones around everywhere is like having a Targeting Computer. In Raiders of the Lost Arc Indy says that "an army which carries the arc before it is invincible". Are we to question this? The Arc has no power, that is believing that the Targeting Computer can blow up the Death Star by itself. It needs you to blow up the Death Star, it is only a guide, you must do it with or without. Quickly that becomes SRH. You can't tell someone to believe in themselves. If they do not already have power over themselves what power can they summon to get power over themselves!! You can't tell a Tiger to be any more Tiger than it is! All you can do is tell people to ignore unnecessary worries, direct them away from fruitless activity. You would never actually tell someone to carry the Arc or Use the Force if they didn't already have the power. You might say, "okay we're with you; over to you now." I wonder whether Gareth Southgate for all his care and attention to his players and the team in someway does not teach people to just be themselves enough. Perhaps send Harry Kane et al. away on holiday and tell them they are not coming home until the papers are full of their bad behaviour. This is not to encourage bad behaviour, but  to get them used to doing what they want without concern for the consequences. You are potentially the best player in the world, you have done the work, you have that power, we can't improve on that. But you need to own that and take charge of the narrative. Forget the fans, forget the money, forget me, the FA, you play for yourself and you get whatever outcome you want. If you miss the penalty you miss it for yourself. You are in charge. Flip up the Targeting Computer.

But again caution. The wrong person will use that advice to make a false idol out of themselves. This is only true when it comes to the game and playing football. You do not carry this idol before you. I suspect that is the counter error that the likes of George Best or Paul Gascoigne make. Success encourages us to make ourselves into a fixed idol. We start to look at our power from the outside. We start to carry it before us, and it takes us into a desert. And Moses never left the desert because he came to believe in himself rather than God. When he brings water out of the rock he does not tell people it is God but says that He must do it (Numbers 20:10). So big caveat, when we flip up the Targeting Computer we are not replacing it with a new solid ground called MySelf. We are actually removing Targeting Computers all together and just letting the action happen. God is no idol that we can worship, He manifasts through us when we stop worshiping idols (including ourself). And this meets with Buddhism too.

So its no wonder that we live inauthentic lives, and struggle to step outside our false temples, to acquaint ourselves with true life. And its not as simple as doing something like book burning or living in a Cave, there is no formula or anything that we can be told to do. We must wait for quite the opposite time when for whatever reason we turn from all this Display that the targeting computers show up, and see through this to what is really there. Meditation is certainly the most celebrated way of doing this, but even that starts off as a false temple and we must persevere with that until we flip up the trageting computer of even that!

Problem of Consciousness (stub)

So I only skimmed Dennett's Consciousness Explained and that was to get to the root of what he thought. It seemed on that examination he was of the type who thought consciousness was an illusion that arose from self-reference. In other words its the "self" of awareness that makes consciousness. I may be wrong here, cos that was my own thought and I was just confirming he had the same thought.

But to get here he notes that the activity that we wake up for is very much sequential rational processing. We wake up to Know. When a loud noise wakes us from sleep we need to ask what use is the consciousness that gets switched on? Its clearly not "epiphenomenal" because it has a very particular place in the world. We switch it on in particular circumstances. (This is my own thinking but meets with Dennett I'm pretty sure).

So the brain obviously does a huge amount of processing that we are not aware if. We are saved all the minutiae of processing and just get a world present to us. At some point in this chain of processing things enter consciousness. Dennett notes the mess that is involved here and that consciousness is not a discrete level or time with conscious events not really matching experimental reality very well. It all points to consciousness being a "virtual reality" as many have noted. Matrix films work because a simulation of the world is sensorial indistinguishable from the real thing. Dennett goes further to suggest this virtual reality is the product of a Turing Machine that is hosted on the parallel neurons of the brain. Computers he notes are based upon the Turing Machine we simulate in the our own brains that gives us all the sequential thinking that we are so consciously aware of.

That's a precis of what I understood from his book.

Buddhism would agree. All things are caused, and so consciousness (apart from what it actually is) obeys this same law. Consciousness is created and it ceases. We see this again most clearly when we sleep and wake. But throughout the day it ebbs and flows. Sometimes we are alert other times sluggish and virtually unaware. Meditation is an important practice. It focuses the mind and raises consciousness so that the world can be seen more clearly. But importantly meditation is a practice that takes us ultimately far beyond consciousness.

And that is the crux of what I wanted to note here. Don't we habitually think about consciousness the wrong way around. I think even Dennett does not completely undo the Cartesian Theatre. True there is no one "in" the theatre for Dennett but does he go the whole way to say there is no one at all. No one is actually conscious. I will need reread to see that.

But if no one is conscious then what is this "self" awareness that seems so critical? When we are conscious we are not just a candle shining light into the world, that light shines on itself so that it knows itself in that very shining. This seems to be the essence of consciousness. It is this which ultimately points to the intrigue of SRH and why "self" seems to be a more important thing that "other." We are well aware of candles shining their light on other things, but when that light shines on themselves we are attracted to the possibility of "magic." Consciousness seems like magic.

So the reason for the stub here is to note that this is quite possibly a mistake left over from the days we believed in Cartesian Theatre. It is true that within visual consciousness we see the world from the perspective of a set of eyes, but this does not mean that there is someone on top of that seeing through those eyes. That is like painting a picture of a room from the perspective of someone on the other side of the room, and then thinking that there is really someone actually over there. Our brain can paint a picture with all the data without anyone or anything else being added to the situation. Seeing the world is already everything. As noted many times in this blog we seem to want to see the world, and then have a model of "someone" on top seeing the world a second time. A tiger enters the room, we think we are looking at the tiger, but the tiger must have already been seen for us to know it is there. The "looking at the tiger" that we think is secondary and has nothing to do with seeing the tiger which is already there! What is possibly confusing is realising that our brain has done the work "over there!!" not over here where we think we reside. This is Dennett's Turing Machine modelling on top of the world with all the data that has already been gathered.

Consciousness therefore appears to occur at a level below "ourselves." When we turn around and see the tiger in the room chances are we will jump up and get to safety without bothering to "know" what we are doing. Only afterwards do we think back over it and go "wow that was a close thing." But the original present moment action when we first see it is never-the-less consciousness of a type, just without the "putting ourselves in the picture." We ignore that secondary modelling, and just do raw data, and get out of the room.

Anyway the question of a "self" being conscious now seems less important. The candle indeed does shine on other things, and the shining on itself is a secondary add on. It is not the magic bit.

So if consciousness is not about the self, then who is consciousness?

Buddha actually warns against the two extremes here. Its interesting that 2500 years ago there were Hippies around who thought of a great cosmic consciousness. If conscious is greater than myself, its tempting to go the whole way and say the Universe is consciousness and mine is just a part of that consciousness. Indeed this is often said in Hinduism. But we need be careful. This is just swapping myself out for a Great Self. we are still putting a solid personality at the root and so nothing has changed.

The real change is when we realise "no one." In purely logical SRH terms, if we wish to understand ourselves we need go beyond the idea of self and personality. If the Universe is to be really Great it needs be more profound than selves. Not dismissing the Atman and Brahman they have their place, but to really understand we need uproot Atman and Brahman from being core entities. They exist in mutual balance. Some conceptions of God get stuck on the "person in the sky" image, just as some conceptions of self get stuck on "person in the body" image. If we really want to deeply ground ourselves we should look to go beyond this "person in" explanation of things.

So the Problem of Consciousness is mostly a problem of who is conscious and where to place ourselves in consciousness. Once this is resolved Consciousness becomes just the activity of senses and the world. Still remarkable, but then life and the universe in its entirely is all remarkable.

Jesus mentions the SRH :O

24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

Mark 3:24-25

This is SRH.

Although SRH points at this being necessarily true through the avenue of self-reference. As soon as something has a relationship with itself then it has a relationship with a thing which has self-reference.

And whatever function it applies to that thing, is automatically applied to itself via the isomorphism.

An entity stands in authority over the subject. But once the subject is linked to the entity then it becomes a constraint on itself.

A King has power over his subjects. Consider the set of all things a King can do his subjects = A. If the King now becomes a subject this cannot increase A. The power of the king must be constrained to B which is a subset of A.

Now is there something a King can do to himself that he cannot do to a subject? In other words is there something a King can do to a self-referential entity that is himself, as opposed to a regular subject?

Well this is the crux really of both self-reference and Ego.

If a King looks in the mirror, is he looking at a free entity? The problem that emerges is that the King may not like what he sees. In which case he comes to judge himself and that then creates a problem:

Does freedom lie in the right to judge, or to be without judgement?

An old style Pre-Magna Carta King in England is above the Law. They cannot be judged in a court or by anyone on Earth.

And at the same time they have complete freedom of Will without constraint. They can do whatever they want, and their subjects are bound to follow this will.

But SRH. What happens when the King has a judgement about them self? There is a contradiction and the house falls.

So the Todo always for SRH is to find some proof that self-reference ALWAYS leads to a reduction in power.

That the issue raised by Jesus is not just the "divided" but the condition for that which is the "itself". Without self-reference there is no opportunity for division.

And that raises a question about hierarchy and structure.

A body is divided into organs. And when the body is well these are in harmony. But already the opportunity is there for a body to divide against itself. So does this mean that a body has self-reference?

The very activity of a mind in classifying an entity sets up self reference. We say that component parts of an entity combine to create that entity. And we say that an entity is composed from its components. we call those components parts of the self, and since those components combine to make the self we have a self reference.

So emergence is actually essential to avoid a contradiction here. The component parts of an entity combine to create something New, that cannot then refer back to the parts!

Eating a cake is more than eating flour, butter, egg and feeling some warmth. And it must be because if a cake was just its ingredients then you would have 100% complete self-reference and a contradiction by SRH.

Short of time to examine this but all entities would be divided against themselves if there was not "emergence" so that an entity becomes more than its components!

If everything is the same then does not matter what you do????

 So we have a crude grasp of emptiness. We think ah ha all things are just phenomena, of temporary status, they have been caused, they will exist and then they will decay into non existence again. There is no permanent substance there, nothing passing through. If you wait time will erase them completely and transform them into completely different things. There is no fundmental essence behind the phenomena. There is no absolute ground to the universe.

Great I can do whatever I want.

No.

Sometimes we make the right choice. We know that. No complicated thinking, or analysis, we know it was the right choice.

Sometime we make the wrong choice. We know that. No complicated thinking, or analysis, we know it was the wrong choice.

How can this be if all things are empty?

The point is both the right choice and the wrong choice are empty. It does not stop them being right and wrong. The rightness is empty and the wrongness is empty.

But we protest, are they not the same then? Can I not ignore that I did the wrong thing?

No.

It is still the wrong thing, even when it is empty.

The problem that is emerging here is that the "self" the "ego" the thing (we think) that is doing these things is stuck at the level of good and bad.

We think if good and bad are empty then they are the same. But that is only true if we are at eye level with good and bad. If we rise up beyond good and bad, then we can now see them as good and bad, but against a deeper level of emptiness.

So its been put to me like this before. As we deepen our grasp of reality we do not simply remove one coat of ignorance, we remove layers.

When we know that we did something right we are at a layer. Within this layer it is absolutely right. But when we get to the next layer, we can see that behind the "right" is another layer that is neither right or wrong. This does not stop the right/wrong layer being right or wrong! It just enables us to see the rightness and the wrongness as empty.

This is the difference between sunyata and nihilism. It is translated as "emptiness" but its also "fullness." Right is full of rightness, and this fullness is from the next layer of the onion itself empty.

This is a complex way of saying that when the ego attaches to a layer, it has no where to do. When the ego is stuck in the right/wrong layer then like a pin ball its bouncing around between right and wrong decisions.

I mean our lives are like this. We have so many decisions to make and they can all be right or wrong. Some with bigger outcomes than other to be sure. But the problem is that when "we" are inside the ball being bounced around its a very full existence indeed. And it means we are constantly slipping into right and wrong things.

Again this is life. But "we" don't need to be going through the pin ball. It can be happening all by itself. we can eb making our decisions quite happily, without feeling we're on a toboggan run.

In real disaster situation where we need make instant and critical decisions its amazing how it all "just happens." Only afterwards looking back do we have time to "put ourselves in the picture." "Wow did I really do that?" we think. I never knew I had it in me. Of course that can go both ways. Sometimes we look back and think, wow I was a bastard how could I have been so mean. But this denarrativising that occurs after the event, is clearly very different from what happened at the time. And when its a panic situation when we don't have time to put ourselves in the picture is when its most obvious we are not really there anyway. It happens by itself.

Oh that's a worrying feeling for the ego. You're not so important mate. I don't need you! Ouch. Quickly lets renarrativise to make ourselves important. Perhaps a bit of self destruction, like, "well you are a bad person, see you were there when you did this etc". Ah ha, not so unimportant now am I. I can even destroy myself.

So Ego insists on being present and Good/Bad is a great place for it to invite itself in.

But once embedded at this layer of the onion, we can't think without it. Ok you say "good is empty" well that means "I" can just ignore good then, and do whatever "I" want. Ego was sitting quite happily inside "Good", "I am a good person" but when you beat the hornet's nest and turf it out into the open it starts running towards something else like bad. If Good and Bad are empty then why not go and live in Bad. Can do whatever "I" want.

Stupid ego. You know what is good and bad before you even start complaining. And, no amount of running around, or grasping at "emptiness" changes that. The running around is all empty too. Just STOP.

So we know what good is and we know what bad is. We know when we make a good decision, and we know when we make a bad one. Okay ego may try and deny we made a mistake, and may throw up a justifying smoke screen to confuse the matter and try and come out good. We wouldn't be arguing in our own favour if we didn't already know we messed up. Just STOP.

So we know what good is and we know what bad is. Once we STOP and accept that then we are ready for the next layer of the onion. From there we can see the goodness and the badness as not belonging to us but just the decision. Oh I did good today, I got that right: nice feeling, proud, people happy, things good. But none of that needs to belong to anyone. Its good enough just as it is.

More difficult oops I did bad today, I got that wrong: bad feeling, ashamed, people unhappy, things bad. But none of that needs to belong to anyone. That will probably automatically encourage improvement, but right now its good enough just as it is.

This is the next layer of onion. This is how good and bad are empty.

 

This is what was wrong with Richard Dawkins

In 1995 they created the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science (SPPUS) and appointed Richard Dawkins to the post. It evidently got to him cos he gradually worked himself into a positivistic Enlightenment lather and went on witch hunt to root out irrationality, superstition and unproven beliefs amongst the hoi polloi.

Well he got a lot of backing particularly in America from people sick of having Christianity piously forced down their throats. And there is nothing worse for a non-believer than having a believer condescend them.

But a quick look at SRH should have brought Mr Dawkins to a quick stop. What was actually rational about rampaging around the world pursuing the rational? What is actually scientific about Science? Scientists have no more idea why they do what they do than non scientists. So Dawkins never actually stopped to ask the sense of this post he held, and the concept of the "Public Understanding of Science", or why he was the one who should do it, and why no one else was doing it etc etc etc.

And that actually illustrates what is wrong with Richard Dawkins. One thing that Science encourages is a total removal of self, and self reflection. The good scientists is not present in their experiments at all. Science is absolute never about the self, it is anathema to self. If self ever turns up in Science then it becomes invalid. A scientists is here and what they are studying must by definition be on the other side of the glass, testtube or whatever container (be that physical or mental). I mean what use is a science that creates knowledge that is only for me, and where I need be present for it to be true. The very essence of scientific knowledge is that it makes no difference who is present (or who does the experiment) for it to be true, or even in its strongest sense that even with no one present it is still true! 

And there is the problem with Dawkins. He's in a container, with the world outside, pristine and awaiting enquiry from the mind.

So its no wonder he does not understand Religion which is almost the complete opposite. Religion is all about self, all about understanding our place in the world, all about our relationship with things. It is not as some think about persecuting the self and sacrificing ourselves like Jesus. Anyone can die on a cross, indeed two thieves died with Jesus on the very same day. Dying on a cross is a very easy thing to do. Jesus did far more, he forgave from the cross is amazing thing one. And for the faithful he rose again from the dead. That last thing is far outside ordinary experience so will leave that as hot potato. But for the ordinary its easy to grasp the amazing quality of forgiveness for those who are killing you. That is not mindless self destruction, that is maintaining a positive relationship with others even when facing death. Religion is all about relationships. And so can never be science which is about cutting the relationship between the scientist and the world so that only the world remains as pure unpolluted, universal Fact.

What was wrong with Dawkins is he never understood the importance of the near, and how the far is not that important. He thinks that Religion is all about God, is all about abstract factual speculations about the universe, something to discuss over a beer on a Friday. Yes for the religious this is the least important. Christians in particular "follow Jesus" and that means considering what they do right now, right here. About transforming themselves to be like Jesus and fulfil the goodness they lies within them. And while God may be at the root of what they do, it is not something that gets much thought. Its the last thing to discuss not the first. While for Dawkins its the only think to discuss. This is faith. Transformation of ourselves based upon a compass bearing, rather than a map and photo of the destination. No one knows where life takes us, no one knows where Jesus will take us. There is just the compass bearing within us that we follow and wait to see.

Dawkins never realised that he was following his own compass bearing. Nothing in science told him to do what he did. To argue what he did. Science does not have an opinion on how we live, or what we believe. That is an internal compass that Dawkins it seems had switched on by the panel that set up the SPPUS. So it wasn't even his own compass bearing, how unscientific!

Head-in-the-Sand is door to Profound

Someone once said to me during a messy divorce that he felt much better if he just didn't think about it.

It turns out on investigation this is true for literally everything.

Ah say the detractor, but burying your head in the sand does not make it go away, it just puts it off. You will need to bring your head out of the sand one day and face it.

But the advocate will ask, but how does not thinking about something change anything? Doesn't that suggest the problem is not in the thing, but in the thinking!

Oooo wow!

Turns out on investigation something Buddha said in the first line of the Dhammapada. Translated here as

“All experiences (dhammā) are preceded by mind (manopubbaṅgamā), having mind as their master (manoseṭṭhā) created by mind (manomayā).”

 Now thoughts are a tricky thing. They are really, really, really convincing. We take "thought" to be as real, in fact more real than reality. What we think about things really does seem to be them.

But what we see above is that the moment the thought goes peace returns. Reality is Peace, it is the thought that causes the disturbance.

Although that is complex cos the probability is we think Peace and we think Catastrophe, to really uncover Peace we don't think.

So that enters the whole cess pool of "not thinking" with people trying to clear there minds, and sit in blank minded meditation. Hui Neng castigates this attitude saying if there is nothing in a heads it just makes room for bad things to come in. Being brain dead is no solution. That is "head in the sand."

The real approach is this above of see "thoughts" for what they are. Its as simple as entering a movie and spending a hour or so absorbed into the story of someone quite different from us. Leaving the cinema is just returning to another story of another person we call ourselves. They are all "thoughts" we live in the movie of ourselves and there is no way out. We join the monastery and start a new film for ourselves.

Anyway they teach in English classes at school these days to be aware of the impact of your writing on the selected audience. This applies to thought too. We should observe the impact of what our brain says on ourselves, but importantly not to identify with that Ourselves.

There are two "ourselves" there. The small ourself is the one in the cinema at the whim of the mind creating all its ideas about the world. The one in fact absorbed into what is said here. The Big Ourself is the one reading this! Only the small one gets us affected, the big one is quite outside all of this. That Ourself could never fit inside the cinema cos the cinema fits inside it!

When my friend said that he felt better when he stopped thinking about it, his Big Self started to gain the power not to get dragged in. As that progresses the Big Self will not just not think about it, but be able to think about it and stull not be affected. That is Moksha, letting go and freedom.

Where does an English person go to see English people on TV?

UK is a multi-ethnic and diverse place. Possibly amongst the most diverse in the Old World. Obviously the New World is more diverse as its composed from "new" people imported by Capitalists to do work for them. And the New World also has the remnants of the actual natives of this land - at least the ones who survived the genocide and disease.

Much is said in UK about making immigrants feel at home and comfortable in the UK. UK is for everyone.

And in the spirit of this TV channels bend over backwards to include programming that suits the wide range of people living in the UK.

The argument goes that people of other backgrounds like African, Indian, Chinese, Russian etc need to be able to access their own people and cultures on TV. Especially the BBC which is funded by the tax payer and is supposed to represent everyone democratically.

However there is one asymmetry here. Not all people in the UK are equal.

An African or a Chinese or an Indian have 2 ways to access their culture and people. They can watch the BBC and makes demands for inclusivity and equality. Or they can buy a settop box and access programming from their native lands where they will be overwhelmed with people of their own backgrounds and culture.

The asymmetry is where can English people go to access people from their own background and culture? The answer is that there is only UK programming. But if UK programming is obsessed with meeting the demands of the diversity it means that actually people from other countries are being spoiled with choice at the expense of the people with English backgrounds.

It is certainly a complex one. If the BBC was to say that it represents the values and culture of the country in which is was set up and not the values and cultures of other countries then immigrants might say well why are we paying a licence fee.

And if the BBC said well that is okay, people who are not from an English background don't need to either watch or pay for the BBC then you start the process of ghettoisation where areas of the country descend into Little Indias and Little Chinas. This is fine for novelty and vive la differance, but a country that has a shared national identity like Britain needs people to live, vote and work together and not descend into little expat regions of their home country.

So a balance must be sort. But some ethnic minorities appear to think they own the UK and that it exists for their own future and welfare.

It must never be forgotten that at root England is the land of the English and is the place English people can come to experience their own people and culture.

Caveat that "English" is not a discrete entity. For instance the most popular food amongst the English is a cuisine invented in Birmingham by Bangladeshi immigrants. And the most popular soft drink is a leaf infusion originally invented in China but then developed by the British Empire especially in India. And the English religious community is imported from the Middle East via the Roman Empire. It is a global world and England reflects this diversity ALREADY. There is a particular tapestry of international culture that the English call English. And it is different from what other people call their own.

The proof of this is how much other cultures fight to protect their own identities. Particularly the "Black" community (whatever that means given that it amalgamates tribes and cultures from across the vast diverse continent of Africa combined with Caribbean and American Slave cultures). So say "Black" is as absurd as calling people "Asian" to mean all of Far East, Middle East, North Asia, South Asia and Europe all in one people. But if we accept "Black" means something then people who so identity are very keep to protect their identity and culture. And that is exactly the reason why they need to protect English culture.

No one can win this conflict. The more anyone pushes for their own culture, the more they must  acknowledge the identical need in other people.

But in England, the English are the most important because this is where English culture comes from. Africans can go to Africa for African culture, but there is no way they cannot acknowledge that England is the Africa for the English.