Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m a human being having a human experience. How about you?

During my religious believing days -- well, 35 years actually -- I'd frequently hear people talk about "We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience." That quote came from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. So it isn't surprising that he'd have such a dualistic attitude, with our bodily existence as humans just being a step on the way toward a supernatural experience as a spiritual being. But early on in my churchless evolution, I realized that it makes no sense to view myself in that way. So if…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Why this blog is still screwed up

Typepad, my blogging service, is having major problems following a failed data migration to new servers. It takes forever (more or less) for my three blogs to load, including this one. I wrote about this mess and published the post both on HinesSight and also on my rarely used Blogger blog to make it more accessible. So you can read about what's going on with Typepad there.
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Posted inAtheism

John Lennon’s atheism in three of his songs

I love John Lennon's Imagine. But whenever I hear it played at some large event, like New Year's Eve in Times Square, I wonder why it's so popular in a highly religious country like the United States. After all, the lyrics are not only secular, they're anti-religion.  Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today... Aha-ah...Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion, tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace... You...You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope…
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Posted inIndia

Hindu nationalism is affecting Bollywood filmmaking

Nationalism is bad enough, since most people love their country, and it makes little or no sense to claim "our nation is the best." But when it is paired with religious dogmatism, the result is doubly dangerous. The October 17, 2022 issue of The New Yorker has a really interesting story, "When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood." Here's a PDF file if you have trouble with that link. (I'm a subscriber.)Download When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood | The New Yorker It's unfortunate that India has become so polarized -- the fate of many nations, including the United…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris and Loch Kelly on nondual mindfulness

Today I set aside my doubts about Loch Kelly's approach in his "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide For Living an Awakened Life," and continued on with my re-reading of his book.  I liked what I read, by and large. Then I listened to the daily guided meditation by Sam Harris on his Waking Up app. It struck me as highly compatible with what I'd just read in Kelly's book. Which isn't surprising, since both Harris and Kelly embrace a similar Buddhist approach, that of Dzogchen. Here's my transcription of what Harris said. Just sit comfortably. And close…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m giving “The Way of Effortless Mindfulness” another read

This morning I felt like brushing up on mindfulness, one of my favorite subjects, since mindfulness has become my meditation.  Looking through my books about mindfulness, I decided to pick up Loch Kelly's The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. As I noted in a 2019 post, "Effortless mindfulness versus deliberate mindfulness," I liked the idea of putting in no effort. A book by Loch Kelly, "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness," came to my attention via an interview Sam Harris conducted with Kelly and shared on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app that I'm a fan of.  Any book about meditation that has…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Religions

A philosopher’s take on fate, Buddhism, religions

Before the book I've been writing about recently -- Kieran Setiya's Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way -- is put away on a bookshelf where I'll have trouble finding it (my books aren't organized very well), I wanted to share some final observations from Setiya that I found interesting. No such thing as fate. I agree with Setiya that fate doesn't exist, at least not in the sense of events in our life being preordained. I'd say, though, that they're ordained, in that chains of causes and effects control everything in the cosmos outside of…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Hope is the secular equivalent of religious faith

I've finished Kieran Setiya's book, Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. As might be expected, Setiya doesn't conclude that's there some magical bit of philosophy that can be sprinkled over his first six chapter titles -- Infirmity, Loneliness, Grief, Failure, Injustice, Absurdiy -- and renders those manifestations of life's hardness harmless, or at least bearable. The best Setiya can come up with is Hope, the title of his concluding chapter. He warms up to that topic in the Absurdity chapter. Thus the existentialists were wrong: reason may dictate a total reaction to the world, and that…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Unconditional friendship explains a lot in politics and religion

I'm continuing to enjoy Kieran Setiya's book, "Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way." Every chapter offers up fresh insights into issues that only a skilled philosopher who is dedicated to making philosophy a practical guide for everyday life could come up with. In the Loneliness chapter, Setiya speaks about friendship. As he did in other chapters, Setiya starts with Aristotle, then picks apart Aristotle's perspective, showing where it is lacking. As you can read below, Setiya disagrees with Aristotle's contention that when a friend loses the qualities that make him or her lovable, the friend…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Shabnam Dhillon’s death leaves questions unanswered

Today I was reminded of the death of Shabnam Dhillon, the wife of the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, after someone posted this comment on one of my blog posts. Have tried to post a picture of Shabnam and Gurinder Singh Dhillon - the same picture is with the article below: https://www.bhaskar.com/punjab/jalandhar/news/shabnam-wife-of-former-ranbaxy-promoters-mamie-and-dera-beas-chief-gurinder-singh-dhillons-london-126151220.html A picture speaks a thousand words ... The Happy Couple NOT. The questionable timing of Shabnam's death. Her body was cremated. Will the truth ever come out? Here's the photograph. The timing and circumstances of her death are indeed curious, leading to questions.  Shabnam…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Don’t protest that something should not be, or it is for the best

I've read a lot of books in my seven decades or so of avid reading. What I've learned is that sometimes a book is worth reading for a single memorable thought that sticks in the mind long after the rest of the book has been forgotten. I feel this happening with a sentence that keeps popping up in my psyche several days after I came across it in "Life is Hard," by Kieran Setiya, a philosopher who teaches at MIT. I've boldfaced the sentence below, placing it in the context of where it appears in Setiya's book. Here it is…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I’m quoted in a story about RSSB center in New Zealand

I just got a link to a Newsroom story by Cass Mason about a new Radha Soami Satsang Beas center in New Zealand. Here's a screenshot of how the story starts out, along with a PDF file of the story. Below I'll share critical mentions of RSSB in the story, along with mentions of an interview Mason did with me. Download Sect sets up home at Ihumātao stonefields This is the concluding part of the story. I found the final paragraph amusing, though not surprising. Baruch ter Wal won’t comment on allegations of the RSSB guru's involvement in financial fraud, but…
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Posted inMeaning of life Morality

My new favorite book: “Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way”

I've read countless (more or less) religious, spiritual, mystical, philosophical, and self-help books that basically take an optimistic approach to life. Yes, life is difficult, as the Buddha said. But those books say that it's possible to turn suffering into well- being through a myriad of suggested ways, many of them contradictory. Believe in God. Meditate. Find your true self. Flow with whatever happens. Have a positive attitude. Nothing wrong with all that. Except when it is. Yesterday Amazon delivered into my eagerly awaiting hands a book that Sam Harris recommended on Twitter: "Life is Hard," by Kieran Setiya, a…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness

Tools for reducing undesirable mental chatter

Having finished Ethan Kross' book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It, I want to share some tools listed at the end of the book for dealing with the voice in our head when it gets too annoying. These are the tools that Kross says can be implemented on your own. They're in order of how easily each can be implemented when chatter strikes. A basic theme is that they're aimed at stepping back from the echo chamber of our own mind. The last two involve embracing a superstition or performing a ritual.…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Spiritual practice/meditation

“Open Mind, Open Heart” is an intriguing book about Christian meditation

It's probably surprising to others, and definitely surprising to me, that as churchless as I am, one of my favorite meditation books is Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating, a Catholic priest, monk, and abbot.  (There's a new edition of the book, but I'm familiar with the old one, and the new one is more difficult to read typographically, from Amazon reviews I've read.) I've written some blog posts about the book, which I bought in 2005. Support for the churchless Seeing clearly now Let go. Then let go of letting go. Let it go. So simple.    The…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru mentioned in Business Standard story of Singh Brothers financial misdeeds

Recently India's Business Standard published a good overview of Malvinder and Shivinder Singh's financial problems -- a story I've been following here at the Church of the Churchless because the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is implicated in the fraudulent behavior. And there's nothing I enjoy more than pointing out the pitfall of religious belief and having blind faith in the people who lead them. Well, of course there are other things I enjoy more. Carrot cake, for one. But spiritual hypocrisy deeply irks me, as when Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, preaches that returning to God…
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