Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Free food is a Sikh thing, not a RSSB thing

For those interested in Sikhism and a related Northern India religious faith -- that of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- take a look at a short New York Times video about the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar (thanks to my friend Randy for letting me know about it). I wasn't aware that the practice of giving out free food via a "langar" is a traditional Sikh custom. This is done on a large scale at the Radha Soami Satsang Beas headquarters in Beas, Punjab. But apparently the Golden Temple is an even bigger langar purveyor. This just goes to show…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Keep open a crack in your belief system

Ah, it feels so good to let in the light, to freshen the atmosphere, to relieve the pressure of a claustrophobic enclosure. Not anywhere outside -- within our psyche. All we need to do is keep open a crack in our meaning-of-life belief system, that conglomeration of thoughts, feelings, intuitions, knowings, and what-not which enable us to get out of bed in the morning, move through life with a sense of purpose, and offer us some answers to what's it all about? Nothing is 100% certain. Including what I just said. Hey, there might well be something that is 100%…
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Posted inPolitics

What God is Glenn Beck talking about?

I've been underwhelmed by the religious'y "Restoring Honor" Glenn Beck rally held in Washington D.C. yesterday. Beck's big message was faith, hope, charity. Wow. What a non-big, and vague, theological surprise. Our country would supposedly do better if people had more faith in something (God, presumably), had more hope in something (not sure what), and were more charitable (beneficiary of largesse left undefined). After reading some news reports of what was said at the rally, I'm left with significant philosophical questions and political worries. On the philosophy front, I'm wondering what God we're supposed to turn back to, as Beck…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

“Am I a Who?” better question than “Who am I?”

I'm a cliche. But then, who isn't? My philosophical approach to life falls squarely into the cliched "I'm spiritual but not religious" vein that we hear so much about nowadays -- using spiritual in a decidedly non-supernatural sense. So even though I've forsaken organized religion, I continue to enjoy pondering questions that are increasingly appearing to me as imponderable. Such as, "Who am I?" In one of the comments that make up an interesting interchange on this post, Mike Williams said: "If I realize that there is no 'self', then why would I think of a 'journey' being completed? I…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spirituality should be like sex: crazily personal

For me, the crazy thing about religion, spirituality, and mysticism is that they aren't crazy enough. People try to justify their attempts to understand God, divinity, and the supernatural through reason, arguments, explanations, apologetics. Yet since the dawn of recorded history, and likely long before, human beings have tried to prove that some spiritual notions deserve to be elevated above others. The net result: there is zero, absolutely zero, evidence that any particular metaphysical dogma, belief system, faith, ritual, or practice is demonstrably true.So there's no reason to offer up reasons for accepting this form of spirituality rather than that…
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Posted inReality

Ultimate truth is a fool’s goal

Back when I was giving supposedly inspiring talks back in my true believing days, I used the term "ultimate reality" a lot. It just sounded so, well, ultimate. And real. I enjoyed thinking that one day it'd be possible to know the final truth of the cosmos, what the whole amazing deal is all about, the answer to all possible questions. In short, the Aha! understanding that would demolish the noncomprehending Church of Holy Fuck! It now seems to me that ultimate truth is a fool's goal. And I readily admit that, in retrospect (the best perspective to view one's…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation without God works just as well

I don't believe in God. Yet I also don't know that God doesn't exist. I just see no compelling evidence for God. So, like space aliens, I choose not to believe in something about which rumors abound without demonstrable proof of them being true. I do believe in the value of meditation. I've meditated almost every morning since I was twenty years old. Given that I'm sixty-one now, meditation has been part of my daily activity for two-thirds of my life. I enjoyed meditating when I was churched, and I still enjoy it in my churchless phase. A book that…
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Posted inPolitics

“Ground zero” mosque dispute fanned by supernaturalism

When I read the facts about the Islamic mosque planned for a site a few blocks from "ground zero," a.k.a. the spot where the World Trade Center towers once stood, it's difficult to understand what all the fuss is about. There already is a mosque four blocks from ground zero. So what's the big deal with having one two blocks away? Plus, the proposed development actually is a cultural center, which will include a mosque. As a Washington post story says (registration may be required to read it): The plan is for a cultural center that would contain a mosque.…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Almost all spiritual paths lead up Mount Ego

For about thirty-five years, from age 20 to 55 (I'm now sixty-one), I meditated assiduously in accordance with the tenets of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- an India-based guru-centered organization whose teachings claim to be able to unite the soul with God. However, what I learned from my immersion in the deep waters of organized religosity is applicable to almost every sort of spiritual path (to mix watery and earthy metaphors). True believers generally feel that they're becoming less selfish, egotistical, and me-centered through their devotion to...whatever or whoever. God, guru, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, cosmic consciousness, Great Spirit, etc.…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Live in here and now. Also, there and then.

I've got a fondness for Buddhism, and it's sister faith, Taoism. I especially like how Buddhist and Taoist teachings emphasize the here and now, this present moment. For example, Buddhist "guiding teacher" Rodney Smith says in his book, Stepping Out of Self-Deception: Spiritual fulfillment can be defined as a complete abiding in the here and now. This is a refreshing philosophical antidote to sacred and secular then-and-there'ness. Both religious dogma and materialistic advertising promise that we'll be truly content only if we obtain something in the future and/or in another place. Jesus awaits in heaven. A guru awaits on some…
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Posted inReality Religions

Here’s the reason religions don’t agree

I used to be a proponent of the "perennial philosophy." This is the notion that there's a basic agreement about the nature of metaphysical reality. Aldous Huxley wrote a book by the same name, saying the perennial philosophy is: The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent ground of all being; the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the…
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Posted inReality

A mountain is what it is. Just like life.

The trajectory of my once-spiritual life has been heading away from other worldliness for quite a few years now. If there's one thing I've come to know about religiosity, it's that there's almost certainly nothing to know. I don't believe in a Cosmic Jokester. But I'm a lot more inclined to worship this non-existent being than an imaginary God. After all, think how much power the Cosmic Jokester has (assuming she exists, which she almost certainly doesn't). This prankster is able to make billions of people believe there is more to life than what is apparent here and now on…
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Posted inGod Morality

Take the Battleground God test (I aced it!)

TPM (The Philosopher's Magazine) has an interesting online test called Battleground God. It shows how rationally consistent your beliefs about God are. Can your beliefs about religion make it across our intellectual battleground?In this activity you’ll be asked a series of 17 questions about God and religion. In each case, apart from Question 1, you need to answer True or False. The aim of the activity is not to judge whether these answers are correct or not. Our battleground is that of rational consistency. This means to get across without taking any hits, you’ll need to answer in a way…
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Posted inMorality Politics

Judge’s gay marriage ruling is putdown of religion

Out here on the left west coast people are pretty tolerant and open-minded, by and large. For example, in a few months Californians are going to vote on legalizing marijuana. Oregon probably will follow in 2012. So I was surprised when a ban on gay marriage passed in California a few years ago. Now that a federal judge, Vaughn Walker, has declared the ban unconsitutional, it's becoming more obvious why voters were taken in by the spurious arguments of Proposition 8. Religion is the main culprit. A front page story in yesterday's The Oregonian contained these telling quotes: Walker, in…
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Posted inBuddhism

What I love about Buddhist meditation

Reality is made up of yin and yang, seeming opposites that actually aren't. Atoms wouldn't exist without positive and negative charges, so neither would we. Thus when I wrote recently about my main gripe with Buddhist meditation, I knew that I wanted to balance that negativity with some positive props. After all, a bunch of Buddhism-themed books reside in my morning meditation area. I enjoy them a lot. Except when they get into my gripe zone, explicit or implicit claims that human consciousness somehow is able to enter into a state of pure observing -- either of the inner mind…
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Posted inBuddhism

My main gripe with Buddhist meditation

I've reached a point in my churchless evolution where most religious, spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical writings now irritate me more than they inspire. Even my big collection of Rumi books sit dustily on a shelf -- though I went through a period not long ago when I couldn't stop immersing myself in Rumi's enticing prose and poetry. Buddhism is a sometimes exception. Sometimes, because my attraction to Buddhist literature depends on how non-Buddhist it is. I like "Kill the Buddha" stuff, where the author urges us to throw away Buddhist dogma in favor of our own personal experience, even if…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Some thoughts on divine dying

I've been enjoying the spirited commenting on a recent post, "Attempt to kill the RSSB guru, Gurinder SIngh, fails." One interesting discussion topic is whether, if the guru indeed is GIHF (God in human form) as the Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings proclaim, anyone could succeed in killing a divine being. Someone pointed out the obvious: that Jesus is viewed as the Son of God by Christians, yet his central reason for living was to die. Michael Parenti talks about this in his book, "God and His Demons" -- which takes a strongly skeptical look at religiosity. Nothing less than…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Wear religious and spiritual beliefs loosely

Ever eager to find profundity in anything connected with my dearly beloved iPhone 4, I took a look at a self-portrait I snapped yesterday -- using my phone's forward-facing camera held at arm's length -- and realized how much it had to say about my preferred approach to religiosity. My wife detests this shirt, which I recently bought from The Territory Ahead after they enticed me with a Sale! email. As soon as I opened the UPS package, Laurel said "you should return it." It wasn't her style. I usually trust my wife's taste in clothes, which almost always is…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Attempt to kill the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh, fails

I just got an email message from a friend about an attempt in Vienna, Austria to assassinate Gurinder Singh, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in the Punjab, India.I was an active member of RSSB for over thirty-five years and volunteered several times for security work at large meetings in the United States and Canada where Gurinder Singh gave talks.At a Honolulu session in the 1990s I remember getting the job of peering into trash receptacles and such to search for explosive devices. This seemed sort of unnecessary to me at the time. After reading…
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