Aimless sounded just right, a perfect (non)guideline for my day. It’s the only day this week I will be without company at home. My todo lists for reading, writing, home bookkeeping, etc. have become so gnarly I can’t figure how to start prioritizing. And my 70th birthday tomorrow seems a good enough excuse to take a day off to drift and reflect on life, and on some of the deep inspiration I have found recently online and in print.

One additional blessing for me about Upaya Zen Center is their Dharma Podcasts. Being practically housebound, I consider it something of a miracle that I could listen to all the talks and discussions from very recent retreats taught by world-class Buddhist teachers without leaving my dining room table. I was especially inspired by John Dunne’s teachings on Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (The Way of the Bodhisattva). Dunne is so bright and sharp, and I’m tickled by the quirky speech mannerisms he absorbed from studying with Robert Thurman. His depth of knowledge of the Sanskrit and Tibetan texts, and his emphasis on the western scientific and philosophical implications, accelerated my exploration of how these various traditions are converging on a nuanced view of the deepest nature of reality.

I had read the Bodhicaryavatara a few years ago, but I was baffled by chapter nine, the very technical Wisdom chapter. Dunne’s course inspired me to get the Dalai Lama’s commentary on chapter nine, a book called Practicing Wisdom. I usually thought of Shantideva as being only about compassion. But Dunne emphasized the wisdom aspect, and especially the message that reality isn’t as solid and real as we think. He followed the thread from the early Buddhist ideas of impermanence and non-self through to the Mahayana idea of emptiness, or sunyata.

This had a strong resonance with a cluster of similar ideas I had been recently seeking out in Western science & philosophy. First, the sociology of knowledge and the social construction of reality. Second, 20th century particle physics, in the context of philosophy of science, the inquiry into whether or not science describes reality or can provide any certainty about the way things are.

I’m supposed to be searching for the shift of consciousness needed to support The Great Turning from the industrial growth society to a sustainable civilization. Instead I’m reading all this seemingly random esoteric philosophy. But I see now that I am being drawn to sources that strongly suggest Reality isn’t as solid and real as we experience it and think it is. That’s a prerequisite for being able to change what seems to be an absolutely overwhelming world situation.

Now I have a better sense for why I am reading
Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be by Walter Truett Anderson,
Conventional Reality and Social Construction (a blog post by Tom Pepper),
Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy by The Cowherds,
and listening to
John Searle’s Philosophy 138 – Philosophy of Society on iTunes U,
and the Great Courses CD called “Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It” taught by Steven Goldman.