Posted inMorality

“I’m right” vs. “I like” morality

It feels so good to be right. Or rather, to believe that we're right – which means that other people must be wrong. This is a big reason religion is so popular. It offers a pleasant sensation of self-righteousness. There's also a simpler way of feeling good. To just feel good. Janis Joplin sang it. You know feeling good was good enough for meGood enough for me and my Bobby McGee. We can just say "I like," rather than justifying our preference with an "I'm right." What a difference it would make if Christians said, "I like feeling that Jesus…
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Posted inPlotinus

Marcus Aurelius’ meditations move me

In my previous post about death and Stoicism, I didn't give my main Stoic man, Marcus Aurelius, the blog time that he deserves. So yesterday I found my well-thumbed copy of his Meditations, a hard to find 1964 translation by Maxwell Staniforth, and re-read some of Marcus' marvelous observations on living a good life. And dying a good death. I'm putting this post in my "Plotinus" category because both of these philosophers, one of whom I've written my own book about, shared a fundamental Stoic philosophy. Which moves me. Now, that's sort of a contradiction, because Stoicism holds (along with…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Embracing a Stoic view of death

Like I said at the end of my previous post about dealing with death, there isn't much to add to the philosophic options given to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans. After all, there are only so many different ways of looking at reality. The ancients ran though them all. Metaphysical. Natural. Atomistic. Holistic. Rational. Mystical. So when I found myself leaning toward a "nature knows what it's doing" attitude toward death, it didn't take me long to realize that I was walking on well-trod Stoic ground. I love Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Aurelius was a Roman emperor who penned…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Death shines under a full moon

Walking the dog last night, I turned around when we got to the path that leads to Spring Lake. A full, or almost full, moon had risen above the tree tops. Clear and cold. No sounds. Moonshine on the fir trees. Beautiful. I spoke to whoever the heck it is I talk to on such occasions. "Thank you. For letting me be alive. To be aware of this moment, right here, right now." But my gratitude had a flip side. And it made an appearance almost immediately. Because I couldn't help going on to envision my death. No more dog…
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Posted inBuddhism

Meditation is useless

I like it when a practitioner says, "There's no point to what I'm doing." Especially when he's talking about a supposedly spiritual practice. For me, this is the dividing line between fake religiosity and genuine whatever. (I tried to think of a better word than whatever, but couldn't). You just do it to do it. Meditation. Prayer. Worship. Study. Whatever. Zen and Taoism appeal to me because they extol uselessness. In "The Tao of Paris Hilton" I said: And let us also learn to appreciate Paris more by studying this passage from "The Book of Chuang Tzu," where a long-lived,…
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Posted inBuddhism

From Sant Mat to Buddhism

I'm not a Buddhist. I don't know what I am, belief-wise. So I suppose that could make me a Buddhist. Buddhism isn't big on beliefs. Hakuin, an 18th century Zen master, extolled doubting in a fashion that is worlds apart from faith-based religions like Christianity. If you keep on doubting continuously, with a bold spirit and a feeling of shame urging you on, your effort will naturally become unified and solid, turning into a single mass of doubt throughout heaven and earth. The spirit will feel suffocated, the mind distressed, like a bird in a cage, like a rat that…
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Posted inBooks

There’s nothing wrong with me (or you)

Last Sunday a friend loaned me a copy of "There Is Nothing Wrong With You" by Cheri Huber. The title appealed to me instantly, since it's so obviously right. I mean, most of the time it's crystal clear to me that I'm absolutely fine. It's other people who are all screwed up, the way they don't behave like I want them to. Problem is, they feel the same. So the conventional wisdom is that the world is made up of six billion humans chanting a mantra of "I'm right and you're wrong." This certainly seems to be the foundation of…
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Posted inPolitics

Huckabee wants Constitution to be “God’s standards”

Only in America. And Iran. Few countries in the world would entertain the idea of founding their constitution on a religious standard. Sadly, I live in one. It's astounding. A leading contender for the presidency of the United States, Mike Huckabee, says: I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to…
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Posted inScience

Skepticism isn’t “blind faith”

Religious believers like to say that agnosticism or atheism also is founded on faith – faith that there's no evidence for God. So skeptics are as filled with faith as the faithful. That's ridiculous. It's the sort of word play that led Donald Rumsfeld, the incompetent Secretary of Defense, to say "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" in reference to Iraq's unfound weapons of mass destruction. Well, I see no evidence of a unicorn in our living room right now. There's just my wife and our dog, neither of whom looks like a horse with a horn coming out…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Let it go. So simple.

Most people think that being spiritual or religious means holding on to something or someone. That's what they think faith means: clinging to unproven beliefs or an unsubstantiated savior. "Jesus died for our sins." "Guru is God." "There is no God but Allah." There's no end to religious dogma. An amazing variety of thoughts and world-views are contained in the minds of true believers. If you can conceive of it, likely someone has faith in it at this moment. So how is it possible to choose which of these countless belief systems is worthy of acceptance, given that they contradict…
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Posted inMorality

Morality doesn’t need a middleman

Doing good. We all want to do it, aside from a small number of people with a highly me-centered worldview. For I see the essence of morality as act toward others as you'd want them to act toward you. When there's no sense of mutuality, of relationship, of reciprocal give and take, morality (such as it is) is reduced to act toward others however you want. It's all about me, me, me. So goodness, like Tango, takes two. Otherwise, it's selfishness. However, most religious believers want to complicate morality by adding in a middleman. God. Or a stand-in for God,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

More evidence Sant Mat is a religion

Yesterday Jay Lou left a comment on one of my posts that started off, "I don't want to be rude to you. But if you can't say anything good about something then don't say it at all." I was surprised by that sentiment. I seem to recall an elementary school teacher saying something similar back in first or second grade, but adults rarely, if ever, speak that way. It struck me as remarkably unscientific. Yet it was pretty obvious that the commenter was a devotee of Sant Mat (likely the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch), a spiritual path that I…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Believers, let’s have a faith-off

Everybody's familiar with a face-off. It's a confrontation. Well, I'm challenging religious believers to something similar: a faith-off. Bring it on. Your best philosophical stuff. Let's see who can be reasonably considered to have the most faith – churchless me, and those who share my antipathy to dogmatism, fundamentalism, and other "ism's," or those who profess the traditional religious commitment to a belief in the reality of things unknown. In my utterly biased opinion, it's no contest. Those, like me, who proclaim a faithless faith are head and shoulders above the crowd of religious believers. For open-mindedness is a much…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Conversing with a churchless Christian

Periodically I have a pleasant email conversation with Steve, a Christian who rarely goes to church. I like how Steve is willing to consider the blasphemous and ungodly musings posted here.

Interestingly, it was two years ago today that I shared a thoughtful message from Steve in my “Why I’m not a Christian.” Since, Steve has been a regular Church of the Churchless visitor.

On New Year’s Day he emailed me again. Steve spoke about the lack of change he observes in the content of this blog – both my posts and the comments of other people. I found this intriguing.

Because I both agree and disagree with him.

I expressed my yin and yang reaction to his message in a reply. Which led to Steve…(make a guess) changing.

Cool. I like a guy who walks his own talk. Wish I could be as self-consistent. Anyway, our email conversation follows, mildly edited. My favorite line from Steve: “Maybe the conversation itself is the goal.”

Join in, if you like. Has anything you’ve read here changed your mind about something? Or spurred you to lead your life differently in some way?

(the conversation between Steve and me is fairly lengthy, so I’ll make it a continuation to this post)

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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

I’m a Bright, see me shine

I'd heard of brights before, but didn't know that it was possible to become a Bright (with a capital "B") until Tao, a frequent Church of the Churchless visitor, mentioned the brights web site in a recent comment. This evening I learned enough about bright-ness to conclude that I could sign up as an official Bright. You can be a lower case "bright" just by considering yourself to be such. But registering on the brights web site turns you into a honest to God nature "Bright." Slipped up just now. Hope my reference to a supernatural entity doesn't void my…
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