It's the brain, stupid

I felt obliged to mention my previous post to my friend Francisco, who originally introduced me to the idea of meditating in the first place. I'm delighted that he gave me this typically pithy response and even gave me permission to publish it here. (By the way, here's one place where blogging beats journalism -- I don't have to dress up somebody else's wisdom as my own). Take it a away, Francisco.

"Turns out I married possibly the most aggressively secular Japanese girl out there. We just went to Japan last year and Kanako picked up this book on meditation - big best-seller out there - that goes to extraordinary lengths to strip the practice of any kind of Buddhist theology or traditional imagery or supernatural speculation at all.

It's pitched very deliberately, and very savvily, at people like her: folk who suffered through boring Buddhist ceremonies and smarmy sermons and tons of incense all through childhood and who just have no time for chants or mantras or incense or any of the other overtly religious aspects of it as it's practiced in Japan. And...she loves it!

Actually, she's gotten me back into it this year, after a couple of years of not practicing. And it's like getting reacquainted with an old friend. Though, of course, with Kanako any kind of spiritual rumination just gets an impatient roll of the eyes and a sharp just-shut-up-and-sit-there.

Which, in a way, is pretty refreshing. Cuz universal loving kindness may or may not be all that, but sitting there thinking about nothing does things to your head.

So, to paraphrase my wife: **** lord buddha. Nobody needs him. Three thousand years of hippie bla bla bla have built up into an impenetrable undergrowth of bull**** around what must have been his long-ago insight to the point of making it impossible to discern. In the end, it's not about your spirit, it's about your brain.

So that's my aggressively Dawkinsesque new Atheist Meditator's Manifesto. Hey...it works for me."