This was a spontaneous episode, so there was no homework. You’re welcome.
Charles Taylor quotes, from A Secular Age:
So what I want to do is examine our society as secular in this third sense, which I could perhaps encapsulate in this way: the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others… Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place… An age or society would then be secular or not, in virtue of the conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual. Obviously, where it stood in this dimension would have a lot to do with how secular it was in the second sense, which turns on levels of belief and practice, but there is no simple correlation between the two, as the case of the U.S. shows. As for the first sense, which concerns public space, this may be uncorrelated with both the others (as might be argued for the case of India). But I will maintain that in fact, in the Western case, the shift to public secularity has been part of what helped to bring on a secular age in my third sense. (3-4, emphasis added)
And…
I may find it inconceivable that I would abandon my faith, but there are others, including possibly some very close to me, whose way of living I cannot in all honesty just dismiss as depraved, or blind, or unworthy, who have no faith (at least not in God, or the transcendent). Belief in God is no longer axiomatic. There are alternatives. And this will also likely mean that at least in certain milieux, it may be hard to sustain one’s faith. There will be people who feel bound to give it up, even though they mourn its loss. This has been a recognizable experience in our societies, at least since the mid-nineteenth century. There will be many others to whom faith never even seems an eligible possibility. There are certainly millions today of whom this is true. (3, emphasis added)
Peter Santenello’s YouTube channel (eventually George will say his name correctly on the show…)
The Shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”
Theodore Kaczynski (yes, “the Unabomber”) described something he called “the power process” in his “manifesto” (the one that got him identified and caught). He believed — and was probably not the first to do so, or say so — that “[e]veryone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” Effort is required, but so is a reasonable chance of success. Yes, George has read “Industrial Society and its Discontents” (published in Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. “The Unabomber”); reading someone is never an indicator of agreement or endorsement. It is merely evidence of curiosity.
“Om Shanti” explained from the perspective of Western Yoga.
The Wisdom of No Escape on using meditation as self-improvement, emphasis added:
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It’s a bit like saying, ‘If I jog, I'll be a much better person.’ ‘If I could only get a nicer house, I'd be a better person.’ ‘If I could meditate and calm down, I'd be a better person.’ Or the scenario may be that they find fault with others; they might say, ‘If it weren't for my husband, I'd have a perfect marriage.’ ‘If it weren't for the fact that my boss and I can't get on, my job would be just great.’ And ‘If it weren't for my mind, my meditation would be excellent.’
But lovingkindness — maitri — toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that's what we study, that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.
Interlude: Religious feelings (part 1)