Meditation And Memory

Meditation is the present self-consciousness of being.
Memory is necessary for self-consciousness but impedes present consciousness.
Thus, a process that makes meditation possible prevents it.
Human history is lived in this contradiction.
Human beings are potentially enlightened.

Accept that guilt, recrimination, resentment and random memories arise.
Let them pass without thought unless it has a practical application.

Original Karma

What are the biological or psychological causes of the phenomenon called "original sin" or "karma" in different religious traditions?

We were:

(i) active organisms long before we became reflective subjects;
(ii) necessarily immature and uninformed during several years of upbringing and education;
(iii) divisively indoctrinated from an early age;
(iv) often unempathetic as children;
(v) inclined to learn by imitating...;
(vi) not only subjects but also objects of consciousness, therefore sometimes performing for an audience;
(vii) treated in ways that exacerbated problems instead of resolving them;
(viii) arbitrarily endowed with different intelligence levels, aptitudes, interests, strengths and weaknesses;
(ix) often unaware that our world-view is not simply identical either with other world-views or with the world itself;
(x) inclined to identify with one group as against others.

Motives, experiences and conditioning generate unconscious mental processes that affect conscious thoughts and actions. Thus, there were multiple causes of misunderstanding and conflict even before society had divided into economic classes. 

Not Many Atoms Or Souls But One Reality

Some people thought that matter was composed of atoms existing independently of, although interacting with, each other and that consciousness was composed of independent souls, each interacting with a material body. Thus, material objects, including organisms, are transient, composite and interdependent whereas each atom and soul is permanent, simple and independent. Even on this hypothesis, I would argue that, if all that existed was a single soul, then that soul's consciousness would be merely potential because it would have no objects to be conscious of. Further, an unconscious immaterial entity with no external relationships would be a nonentity.

However, consciousness arises from and returns to matter, "dust"; subatomic particles arise from and return to energy. Thus, we are forms of a single being, not independent beings. The properties of every object and organism, including self-conscious organisms, depend on their relationships to everything else. An element that is fluid on Earth is solid on an outer planet. Each of us results from a particular course of history and did not preexist history.

What I Should Have Done

What I should have done while still at boarding school:

become more aware of other people;
become less introverted, insensitive, inconsiderate, selfish etc;
thought about society and politics;
seen through religious indoctrination more quickly;
practised zazen.

However, "should" implies "can," whereas, at that time, I was completely incapable of doing most of these things. "Should" can only mean "It would have been better if..." A completely different upbringing and education would have helped.

If we knew that some adults meditated without any supernaturalist belief, then we would have had the opportunity to inquire further. Years of merely reading about religions in general and Buddhism in particular could have been bypassed.

What We Know Through Science

There are four forces.
Matter is composed of molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles.
Properties of particles differ qualitatively from those of macroscopic objects.
Time, volume and mass differ with velocity.
Light speed is an upper limit for acceleration of mass.
Simultaneity is relative.
Mass and energy are inter-convertible.
Natural laws and inanimate matter generated life.
Species were differentiated by natural selection.
The Sun is the center of the Solar System.
There are planets beyond Saturn.
The Sun is a star.
Stars generate heavy elements necessary for life, then explode, thus spreading the elements through space where they condense into a second generation of stars and planets.
There are many galaxies.
The universe is expanding.
There are black holes.
There is dark matter and dark energy.

Distaste

After decades of practicing zazen, I experience extreme distaste for many aspects of myself, past, recent and current. However, I feel exactly the same distaste for the behavior of some, though not all, of the people that I have interacted with. Blame is inappropriate. Distaste is not.

In particular, Catholic indoctrination reinforced by physical coercion was simply abominable. At least I learned how not to bring up a child or to educate young people. Many good and intelligent people never see through or break from their early conditioning and pass it on to the next generation. Members of each new generation have to think and inquire for themselves. Anyone could have been taken as a child and indoctrinated as a Muslim instead of as a Catholic or vice versa, yet each thinks that, fortunately for them, they have been brought up in the one religion that happens to be true as against any of the many that are so obviously wrong.

I started to inquire, at first by trying to rationalize received doctrines, but was paying insufficient attention to the bastards around me.

Thou Art THAT

Everything that we perceive is the one reality appearing to itself. Each of us is that reality conscious of itself. Thus, reality is always here and now, not elsewhere. But we need to realize that.

We need to realize a reality that is not remote because it is us, although not only us. We also perceive it by observing to the event horizon of the universe. Reality is within us and everywhere outside us and develops by transcending its earlier levels:

consciousness transcends unconsciousness;
self-consciousness transcends sensation;
development and transcendence continue.

Thus, reality is immanent, omnipresent and transcendent. Epithets applied to the supreme being in theism can instead be applied to being as understood by impersonalists and materialists.