Posted inBuddhism

Buddhist belief in past lives is ridiculous, especially for Zen Buddhism

While there's a lot to like about Buddhism -- of any religion it comes closest to being in tune with modern neuroscience -- the supernatural aspects of Buddhism turn me off. Like believing in past lives, whether this be called rebirth, reincarnation, or some other name. Buddhist scholars twist themselves into logical knots when trying to explain how it is that Buddhism, which embraces impermanence and the lack of an enduring self, can also assert that after death, some sort of essence remains of a person that ends up becoming a new person (or animal?). I much prefer secular sorts…
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Posted inAtheism Delusions

What I used to think was God’s grace now seems just like ordinary luck

There's lots of reasons I'm happier being an atheist than a religious believer. One reason is that I much prefer feeling like an ordinary person rather than a special "chosen" child of God. Or of a guru, which amounted to the same thing in the Eastern religion I belonged to for 35 years. (Radha Soami Satsang Beas taught that the guru is God in Human Form.) Among many weird things that I used to do was thank god/guru for mundane things like finding a parking space in a crowded downtown, or being met with a series of green lights when…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Uncategorized

Being fully absorbed in an activity is enlightenment

Usually I hate to stop reading a book after I've started it. Unless it is really bad. I figure that even though I'm not enjoying the book very much, there will be something in pages to come that I'll learn or be entertained by. So I'll read more rapidly, less carefully, as I make my way further into the book. This just happened to me with Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. I go hot and cold with this book as Katagiri shifts from interesting practical advice about living to conceptual Buddhist…
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Posted inReality

Buddhists are wrong about impermanence. One thing is permanent: existence.

As evidenced by my previous post, Buddhists talk a lot about impermanence. So far as I can tell, in Buddhism nothing is considered to be permanent. Everything arises from causes and conditions. Everything lacks inherent existence, which means existing as and for itself. That's the nature of emptiness, basically, interdependence. Even emptiness is empty of inherent existence. Yet... My experience tells me that even though impermanence rules the roost of existence, there's one thing that is permanent -- the roost itself, existence. This is one of my favorite subjects, closely related to, if not identical with, the classic question, Why…
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Posted inBuddhism

Turn toward true impermanence

With some books, I feel comfortable stating their message in my own words. With other books, I don't. Zen titles often fall into that category, because they tend toward subtlety, paradox, indirectness, metaphor. In that spirit, here's some quotations from Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. I resonate with each of them, even though I may not agree fully with some of them. (Zazen is Zen meditation.) It is the momentary structure of time that makes you talk to yourself that way. Impermanence creates a gap that makes your mind blink,…
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Posted inBooks Reason

Being reasonable sounds like a very reasonable thing to me

I learned about philosopher Krista Lawlor's book, Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue, from a New Yorker article by Nikhil Krishnan. "In Defense of the Moderate" appealed to my sense of moderation, but I was conflicted about the degree I wanted to be reasonable in what so often seems to be a highly unreasonable world. Here's  a PDF file in case that link doesn't work for you. In Defense of the Moderate | The New Yorker Reading Krishnan's article, I wondered if being reasonable amounted to surrendering to the most extreme political, religious, and other sorts of factions…
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Posted inArtificial intelligence

The philosophy behind Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

I'll begin with a confession. A practical confession. Because if you read on in this blog post, you're going to realize that I came up with a great title for it, but I'm not going to be able to deliver much on the philosophical content. At least, not in anything more than my limited perspective. Last Wednesday, two days ago, my wife and I picked up the Tesla Model Y Juniper that we're leasing. Last night I wrote about the car in "Meet my end-of-life crisis car: a 2026 Model Y Premium." The photo above shows me standing next to…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality

We are all aliens to each other, since we view the world from different perspectives

In particle physicist Daniel Whiteson’s book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, he speaks about how if alien beings came to Earth and we tried to communicate with them, almost certainly this would be very difficult, given how differently they likely would perceive reality. And without common perceptions, understanding is hard to come by. Assuming, as we progress along our Drake equation, that visiting aliens are mathematical, scientific, and communicative, the next hurdle to a full scientific mind meld is whether we are looking at the same Universe. If aliens have different senses, they will perceive different bits of the Universe --…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Science

Truth-telling is difficult. Lying is easy. Which explains popularity of religion.

Yesterday on my Salem Political Snark blog I wrote "Chernobyl is a HBO miniseries with a lot to say about truth in these Trumpian times." After noting that authoritarian regimes despise truth-telling, I ended the post with: Soviet authorities were fine with blaming the people in charge of operating the nuclear plant. But they did all they could to hide the fact of a serious design flaw in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that led to a manageable problem turning into a major disaster. Admitting the existence of the flaw would undermine confidence in the supposedly infallible Soviet system. In the…
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Posted inReality Science

“Do Aliens Speak Physics?” speaks to the nature of science and human assumptions

If you want a synopsis of particle physicist Daniel Whiteson's book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, an article by Whiteson in the March 14, 2026 issue of New Scientist provides an overview of his provocative question. Here's a PDF of the article. It starts out this way: Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention? | New Scientist Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s all of the fascinating posts critical of RSSB by Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate

Truth-telling is contagious. Not always, but often. When we hear someone speak the truth -- not only their own personal truth, but also an objective truth insofar as objectivity is possible -- we can be inspired to follow in their truth-telling footsteps. That's how I felt after reading the guest blog posts from Anon, someone I've never met and have no idea what their real name is or where they live. This person, like me, is an ex-initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India that is headed up by a guru who is believed…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

What is next for RSSB?

Below is another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. GSD stands for Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru. I'm really impressed with what Anon has shared. It's a brilliant look at some of the alternative futures for RSSB. A must read. What is next for RSSB? RSSB is genuinely facing an identity crisis. Originally it started among humble rural…
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Posted inConsciousness Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Closing the distance between living and meditating to a sliver

For many years, several decades, I considered that closed-eyes meditation was the most important spiritual practice. That was a central teaching of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India led by a guru considered to be God in Human Form. While the guru was very much here in the world, RSSB believed that the real form of the guru was manifested only in higher supernatural realms of reality, which also were the true home of the guru's disciples -- which included me until I deconverted from RSSB in 2005. So ordinary living, while naturally important, was…
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Posted inHumor

Deep (well, sort of) thoughts about Tesla Full Self-Driving and Netflix Kevin Hart Roast

In my never-ending -- except after I die -- quest to suck gobs of philosophical profundity out of the marrow of everyday life, I want to share what struck me about the meaning of our one and only existence on this crazy planet we call Earth after some seemingly mundane experiences. Yesterday I was able to ride in and then drive a Tesla for the first time. Wrote about this momentous occasion on my HinesSight blog in "Driving a Tesla around Salem with Full Self-Driving, I was super impressed." Never shy about quoting myself, I will. Touching the steering wheel…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Uncategorized

RSSB is hard

Below is another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. The clothes metaphor is a creative way of describing how various people can "try on" a religion like RSSB, and have markedly different reactions. RSSB IS HARD. They do tell you this, and many of the books do too. "It's a lofty path" and various similar comments. Yes. It is hard.…
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Posted inConsciousness Universe

Consciousness creates reality. This makes it tough to know what creates consciousness.

Writing the title of this blog post just reminded me of an unexpected "A" I got on a high school English exam. The teacher asked me to explain what "vicious circle" meant. I must have been in a recalcitrant frame of mind, because even though I enjoyed writing essays of that sort, I simply drew a circle on my exam paper with a mean looking expression.  Somehow my paper came back with an "A" on it. Guess the teacher valued creativity over correctness in my case. Vicious circles abound in life. Here's how one definition explains it. A sequence of…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions

Blaming Jews for the death of Jesus shows the craziness of religiosity

I'm a huge fan of Daniel Silva's series of books about Gabriel Allon, a fascinating character who is both a highly skilled Israeli intelligence agent/spy and a renowned art restorer with an ability to paint outstanding original works. I limit myself to reading just four pages from one of the books in this series in bed before I turn off the light and go to sleep, because without that limit I'd be tempted to keep on reading. Silva is an amazing author who has written the best thriller books I've ever come across. And I've read a lot of them.…
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Posted inConsciousness Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

My thoughts often seem like inner speech. But many people think in a different fashion.

In my "Our inner voice is linked to our various selves" blog post (August 2022), I described the decidedly strange experience I had after imbibing an excess of marijuana. Most of us have an inner voice speaking to us inside our mind. It can either be voluntary, as when I read "Most of us have an inner voice" and can hear those words silently echo within my brain. It can also be involuntary, as when I do something wrong and hear "You're an idiot" admonishing me without my consciously willing those words. This inner voice generally is taken for granted.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB hoover tactics

Below is another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. This is a follow-up to Anon's previous guest blog post, "Life after RSSB." If you're interested in the linguistic history of "hoovering," check out this link. Anon uses a few terms that won't be familiar to everybody. Satsang is a spiritual meeting. Seva is volunteering. Sevadar is a volunteer. Satsangis are…
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Posted inArtificial intelligence Consciousness

AI models threaten the view of human consciousness as something special

Often when  science presents us with a markedly improved understanding of reality, the place we humans occupy in the universe diminishes in importance. This happened when the Copernican Revolution displaced Earth as the center of the known universe in favor of the Sun. It happened when Darwin demonstrated that our species didn't appear fully formed at the behest of God but evolved over an immense span of time, as did all life on our planet. And recently I've argued that "We need a philosophical and spiritual Copernican Revolution." Which is why I believe we need a philosophical and spiritual Copernican…
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