Personal/Stories

I don't believe in God. But I do believe in Christmas letters, even with the word "Christ" in Christmas. However, my wife and I prefer to call it a Holiday Greetings, in part because some years I don't write it before Christmas. This year, though, I was amazingly early -- a secular Christmas miracle.  The theme is how an asterisk should have accompanied our usual reply of "Fine" to the query of store employees, "How're you doing?" In our Holiday Greetings we add the asterisk: Fine* Here it is in both PDF and JPEG formats.Download 2021 Christmas Letter PDF

Yesterday I got a probable diagnosis of glaucoma, an eye disease. I wrote about this in a post on my HinesSight blog, "Not so fun day: I probably have glaucoma." One bit of good news is that this was detected in an early stage, since I get an annual eye exam because I wear contact lenses and am severely nearsighted. Another aspect of getting the likely diagnosis is that it's given me an opportunity to observe how my mind has been dealing with the news. Which really is just another way of saying, How I have been dealing with the…

Writing a few days ago about how walking on the edge of a roof is great mindfulness training got me thinking in a couple of related directions. One is that how risky something is usually is a combination of objective fact and subjective interpretation. The other is that the first thing I did after coming up with the name for this blog back in 2004, was decide on a subtitle. Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence The two ideas are related, in my own mind at least. I want people to make an informed decision about what sort of spirituality,…

Even though lots of people believe otherwise, we are physical beings living in a physical world. (If you disagree, share your factual evidence in a comment on this post. Hey, maybe a Nobel prize awaits you if you're able to prove that we're non-physical beings living in a physical world, or maybe two Nobel prizes if you can prove we're non-physical beings living in a non-physical world.) One reason I enjoy Zen Buddhism so much is that Zen is deeply rooted in physicality. Chop wood, carry water. Focus on the breath while keeping the spine straight in meditation. Students getting…

It's my birthday tomorrow. I'll be a super-young 73, using my personal definition of super-young. (I'm reading a humorous book about growing older -- Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old --  that says two answers to the question "When does old begin?" are "Old age is my current age +4" and "Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Never today.) At any rate, I'm in pretty good shape. As evidence I present this photo of me in the Big Meadow at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where my wife and I own a 1/4 share in a vacation home. That's…

Might as well share a post I just wrote for my HinesSight blog. Here's how I introduced it on Facebook. l'm feeling kind of philosophical. (OK, a common feeling fof me.) Decided to write about how life only is predictable when looking backward, and not even then, really, because the events that seemed to cause our life to turn out a certain way could easily have been different. I use how my wife and I met as an example of how uncertain life can be.   https://hinesblog.com/2021/09/life-is-only-predictable-looking-backward/

Yesterday I finished a 2,500 word essay for the consideration of 180 Medical, the firm that supplies me with urinary catheters. After I got a message from 180 Medical saying that they welcome essays about how people experience using a catheter, I wrote back saying I'm interested in this, having written a bunch of blog posts about my life with a catheter.Download 180 Medical essay PDF (I've also copied in the essay below.) A marketing specialist with 180 Medical read some of those posts and suggested I write about my catheter-related depression and anxiety. It took me quite a while…

"Oh, no! Where did the rock go?" I looked out a window of our house and felt an impending sense of doom.  Quite a few years ago someone we'd hired to do yard work had found an interestingly shaped angular rock about 18 inches tall (our landscaping has lots of rocks). He set up upright on a larger rock, then balanced a small rock on the tip of its decidedly sharp end. Ever since, I'd carefully replaced the small rock when deer, our dog, strong wind, or some other force dislodged it. But I'd never worried about the larger angular…

Fairly often I get comments on this blog that amuse me, because they're so wrong.  Someone will say, "Brian, you're obsessed with... " Bashing religion. Criticizing gurus. Talking trash about Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the religious organization I belonged to for 35 years. That's laughable.  Every couple of days I write a post for this blog. It takes me an hour or two. Otherwise I rarely think about the subjects that get discussed here on the Church of the Churchless. I've got many other things that need attending to, most of which interest me more than the Big Cosmic Questions.…

For quite a while a couple of pieces of paper have been sitting by my computer, emblazoned with what I'm sure is very wise advice that I scribbled down.  Only problem is, it's been so long since I penned those scribbles, the inspiration that I wanted to convey through them has faded.  But I still grasp the gist of my pithy platitudes. So here they are. (Now I can throw those pieces of paper away... finally!) Reality is neutral. Pretty straightforward. I'm speaking here of the reality that exists outside of human minds. Which, given the vastness of the universe,…

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post soon after my sister died, "Memorial service shows sad side of religion."  I'm re-sharing that link for the reason I expressed on Facebook just now. Carol Ann, my sister, died in December 2009. For ten years before her death, starting in 2000, her only daughter (Cathy) refused to let Carol Ann or her husband, Bob, have any contact with their two grandchildren. This hurt Carol Ann and Bob immensely. It was a source of great pain for them.   A primary reason for this sad estrangement was the fundamentalist religion embraced by…

Regret is one of the more interesting emotions. Assuming that is what it is, an emotion.  I find that regret isn't like happiness, sadness, anger, love, or any of the other emotions with an obvious feeling component.  Regret is more subtle. It's like a raw ingredient for other emotions such as sadness or anxiety. Cooked in a certain way, regret can turn into an unpleasant emotional stew, though by itself regret often is rather cerebral. The foundation of regret is feeling that I should have done something differently, even though at the time I did that thing, it seemed like…

Hey, I didn't set out to write a philosophical Mother's Day blog post, but what emerged has enough philosophy in it to justify sharing here. In "My mother lives on in the back of my books" I talk about how we don't really need to think or feel our way toward being close to our deceased parents, for they live on as us in large part.  This is possible because the boundaries of our "self" are decidedly fuzzy. There isn't a firm boundary between us and everyone else, since who we are depends on our genetic heritage and experiences, both…

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."

Easy to remember our anniversary when it is St. Patrick's Day. I shared some photos of our 1990 wedding and my ghastly-botched attempt at a marriage proposal in a HinesSight blog post, "Been married for 31 years today. But I'm not great at proposing." From the photos you'll see how much marriage has aged me. Or...wait, maybe it is aging that has aged me. 

For many years, at least seventeen, but really even longer, I've been steadily discarding bits and pieces of the religious beliefs (Eastern variety) that held sway in my mind for thirty-five years. I've done away with overt religiosity, but subtle remnants remain.  For example, at times during the day for a short period I like to repeat a Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu.  And while mindfulness doesn't strike me as being at all religious, sometimes I go beyond simply paying close attention to what I'm doing and imagine that mindfulness can lead to benefits such as fewer problems in my…