Posted inHappiness

If there’s a universal happiness method, this might be it

Time for some grandiose thinking, an activity I excel at. Not that my grandiosity leads to grand ideas or wisdom, but, hey, it's the grandiose effort that counts. Tonight's Big Ponder is centered on the question, is there a universal method for being happy?  My first reaction was absolutely not. For if there was, seemingly we wouldn't have such a plethora of ways people seek happiness. The "self-help" category on Amazon would shrink to just a small number of books, each advising pretty much the same approach to being happy. Complicating my pondering was another issue.  Is happiness really what…
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Posted inScience

Marvelous putdown of supernatural nonsense

I really like this comment by Appreciative Reader.  To make the comment easier to read, I've italicized the quotes from a comment by someone else and left Appreciative Reader's responses in regular type. Being wordy myself, I admire succinctness in philosophizing, even though I'm rarely capable of it. Nice going, Appreciative Reader. "Empirical science is only concerned with the origins and evolution of the material universe" There is evidence for no other. "Our five senses which allow our minds to compare, contrast and analyze material forms are aimed outwards, toward the material universe." There is evidence for no other. "The…
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Posted inBooks God Science

“The God Equation” is about Einstein’s impersonal god

I bought theoretical physicist Michio Kaku's latest book, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, after seeing him interviewed by Stephen Colbert.  I enjoyed the book, though I agree with some Amazon reviewers that it doesn't really break new ground. But since my understanding of the old ground is shaky, I enjoyed Kaku's take on familiar topics. Particle physics. Relativity theory. Quantum mechanics. Big bang. The search for common ground between how relativity and quantum theories view reality. String theory. Spoiler alert: physicists haven't yet come up with a viable Theory of Everything. String theory is the…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

More thoughts about Tai Chi and martial arts

This is a follow-up to my previous post, "Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us."  I probably should have been more explicit about what I meant by a lot to teach us. What I meant to focus on, with semi-success, was the general applicability of internal versus external approaches.  Let me attempt a fuller explanation now. A few commenters observed that when it comes to fighting ability, an Ultimate Fighting dude (or dudette) almost certainly would kick the ass of a Tai Chi practitioner, even one skilled in the martial side of Tai Chi. I agree. But this…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us

For about thirteen years I trained in the external martial art of karate. For the past seventeen years, since 2004, I've trained in the internal martial art of Tai Chi. Yes, Tai Chi is a martial art. At least, it can be. Tai Chi Chuan is martial. (Chuan is translated as "fist" or "boxing.") Most Tai Chi instructors aren't interested in the Chuan part, and don't understand it well. I've been fortunate to learn Tai Chi from someone who started practicing it after many years of hard style martial arts experience, so he is expert in how Tai Chi can…
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Posted inReality

Have faith in the mystery of what we don’t know

Today Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog who, pleasingly, uses his real name when commenting, left a marvelous comment on a recent post of mine.  You can read it below.  What Tepper said reminds me a lot of what Alan Watts wrote about faith in one of my favorite books, The Wisdom of Insecurity.  Here's part of the Watts quotation from that book that I included in a 2008 post, "Real and false faith." We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind…
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Posted inCoronavirus India

India’s worsening Covid crisis partly due to religion

Since for 35 years I was a member of a religious organization headquartered in India, I have a special interest in how that country has been doing during the Covid pandemic. Recently I've been seeing dire stories about rapidly increasing Covid cases and deaths in India.  The reasons for the deteriorating situation are complex, but a big part of the blame seems to be related to factors that have been evident here in the United States, especially during the time Trump was president. Namely, poor leadership from those in charge of the country; declaring victory over Covid prematurely; allowing large…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Ending the spiritual search

It's a bit difficult for me to tell when my spiritual searching began. Was it when I tried to figure out in high school the deeper meaning of Bob Dylan's enigmatic song lyrics? Was it when I devoured Sartre, Camus, and other existentialists during my early college years?  Maybe. But for sure it started when, in 1969, my wife-to-be and I began learning hatha yoga and meditation from a crazed Greek guy who melded Christianity and Eastern philosophy in a decidedly weird fashion.  Ever since, I've pursued some sort of spirituality.  For several decades I spent about two hours a…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 37 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is…
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Posted inMiracles Science

How animals navigate would be a “miracle” if people did it

After thirty-five years of believing in weird mystical stuff, I've become a naturalist. I'm still open to the possibility that there's more to reality than what's evident in the natural world, but lacking solid evidence of that possibility, my bet is that it doesn't exist. Yet in no way do I feel a diminishment of cosmic awe. There's plenty to be amazed at without imagining a realm beyond the physical. A story by Kathryn Schulz in the April 5, 2021 issue of The New Yorker provides a good example of this. My mind was blown by "Where the Wild Things…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

QAnon, like religion, doesn’t care about truth

Last night my wife and I finished watching the sixth and last episode of HBO's "QAnon: Into the Storm."  I've written two previous posts about how QAnon bears a lot of resemblance to religion. (See here and here.)  QAnon devotees are like religious believers. Neither cares about actual truth, while both pretend that they understand reality in a deep sense that eludes ordinary people. I found the HBO series fascinating. It shows us the people behind QAnon -- the computer geeks who administer the sites where Q posted his "drops," often enigmatic and usually totally wrong observations about politics and…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A message from someone who woke up to RSSB deception

Getting a message like this one makes me feel like all the work I put into this Church of the Churchless blog is worthwhile.  RS stands for Radha Soami. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based religious group I belonged to for 35 years. Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current RSSB guru.         Dear Brian I pondered upon your website quite a few years ago, and I thought this guy has lost it. He has lost the 1 valuable thing in life, the guru...   Fast forward to now.  I have been RS follower and initiate…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Behold… my uncluttered office. Miracles do happen!

I wish I'd taken a "before" photo of my office before I was forced to move everything out so it could be painted after wallpaper was removed. Just believe me when I say that while some people might consider that I have too much stuff in it now, the post-painting makeover is an astounding de-clutterization. Which makes my wife happy. You can marvel at the New Look via a post on my HinesSight blog, "My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me."
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Posted inMystics Reality

Truth is all-important, in mysticism and everywhere else

Sometimes a comment is left on one of my blog posts that leaves me with a WTF (what the fuck) feeling. Meaning, I can't begin to understand where the commenter is coming from. Here's a recent example that starts off with a quote from a post of mine. >>If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it<< WHY? WHY do they need to prove it? No mystic owes anything to anybody. Wow. The answer to that all caps Why is one-word obvious. Truth. Truth is why a mystic needs to back up their claim of finding…
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Posted inMystics Reality

If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it

I've been enjoying the recent comment conversations between some of the Church of the Churchless regulars. Meaning, frequent visitors to this blog. Having featured a comment from "Appreciative Reader" in a blog post a few days ago, I generally find myself agreeing with this person's perspective. Which I'm not going to attempt to summarize, since that perspective is nuanced. Instead, here's my take on a theme that features in the above-mentioned comment conversations: how someone can tell the difference between genuine and spurious mystical experiences. My first assumption -- which seems inarguable to me -- is that while mystics and…
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Posted inComments Mystics Science

Narratives and cognitive structures aren’t “traps”

What never fails to amaze me is how religious believers and mystical enthusiasts will use the power of their human mind to criticize other people who use their human mind to criticize religion and mysticism. The plain fact is that there's no way to communicate with other people except through mental capabilities such as language, reason, and such. So unless someone wants to remain in their own private internal world -- and everyone who comments on this blog has indicated this isn't what they want to do -- narratives and cognitive structures are the only way to interact with others.…
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Posted inDelusions Politics Religions

QAnon is the religion of right-wing crazies

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of HBO's "Q: Into the Storm" because we find QAnon both ridiculous and dangerous. Ridiculous, because QAnon faithful believe in absolutely crazy stuff -- such as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats operating a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant. Dangerous, because so many followers of Trump in this country accept the QAnon insanity, including that mass arrests of Democrats will take place and the Orange One (Trump) will become president again. I can't recommend the HBO series because it is much more boring than…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Buddhism can help silence your inner critic

I enjoy reading movie reviews. The people who write them are called critics. When they criticize a movie, or streaming show, that I was considering watching, often I'll decide to see something else instead. So critics can be wonderful. However, there's also a critic who is uncomfortably close to me. In fact, it is me. Or at least, a part of me who isn't shy about pointing out my screw-ups, mistakes, and such -- often in a caustic manner that leaves me feeling bad about myself. I don't mind getting feedback about things I could have done better, whether from…
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Posted inBuddhism Consciousness

Motive of a mass murderer wrongly assumes conscious will

One of the things that comes through loud and clear in the many modern neuroscience and psychology books I've read is that we humans are lousy at knowing why we act a certain way. Experiments on split-brain patients, for example, where the connection between the two brain hemispheres has been severed, shows that even when the left side of the brain (which controls language) is unaware of the reason the right side did something, the patient will make up a "why" story that has no basis in fact. We don't like to admit that we don't know. So the brain…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Delusions

There are no essences, just interpretations

We humans want to make more of reality than is actually there. We believe that things have more substance, more independence, and more of an unchanging essence than is justified. This is the message of my previous post about the relative nature of the quantum world. And as I noted in that post, it fits with a core tenet of Buddhism -- emptiness. Buddhism emptiness doesn't mean a void, or nothingness.  It refers to the fact that nothing has inherent existence. Nothing has an unchanging essence. Nothing stands alone, complete in and by itself. In the book I've been writing…
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