Posted inMiscellaneous

Check out “25 Ways To Feel Totally Fucking Awesome”

Most of the time I do feel totally fucking awesome. Now I know why. I'm into almost all of the awesome-feeling ways listed by Chris McCombs on his Hardcore Happiness site. Some, though, I suck at. Like #20, Sleep. Chris advises 8-9 hours a night. My owl'ish wife and I usually only get about seven, often less.  I'm also not so great at #17, Minimize. I've got too much crap. But I enjoy buying more. Books. Longboards. Crazy Shirts apparel. Sandals. I figure it's better than buying crystal meth, hookers, or fast food. Here's some of my favorite tips for…
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Posted inHumor

Jesus appears in a pug’s butthole. Praise Dog!

There's really nothing to say about this awesome (or ass-some) miracle: an obvious image of Jesus appearing in, or as, a dog's butthole. A picture is worth more than any amount of words I could utter in praise of Almighty Dog. (click to enlargenfy) This explains why dogs spend so much time with their noses up each other's asses. They're looking for Jesus!
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Posted inReality Science

Religion: believing we know more than we really do

My wife and I are enjoying "Brain Games," a National Geographic channel program about how the brain works.  Every episode features exercises that viewers can take part in. An episode we watched a few nights ago was called What You Don't Know. Short answer: a lot.  But most of us mistakenly believe that we know more than we really do. So says a summary of that episode: Bet you could explain something as basic as how a zipper works? Or correctly draw something as simple as a bicycle? If you said yes, you likely bet wrong... but don’t worry it’s…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Jay Lake is dying. Honestly. Bravely. Read his blog!

Jay Lake has a terminal cancer diagnosis. He expects to die within a year. I love Jay Lake. Yet I've never met Jay Lake. I probably never will meet Jay Lake. I only heard of Jay Lake yesterday, from a story about him in the Portland Oregonian.  Last night I wrote about him on my other blog. I donated $10 to the Jay Wake pre-mortem celebration of his life/roast that is happening next month. I left a comment on the Oregonian story. I can't believe my comment was, and is, just one of two readers of the story have written.…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Beautiful concentration: expressed in words and an amazing video

This morning I picked up a slender book I hadn't looked at for a while, "Practical Taoism" (translated by Thomas Cleary).  I liked how the translator's preface started out. Taoism, the original wisdom tradition of ancient China, may be rendered in English as "Wayfaring." In this manner of usage, the Way is classically defined in these terms: "Humanity follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Way, the Way follows Nature." In the final sense, therefore, Taoism, or Wayfaring, refers to the pursuit of natural laws. These natural laws are reflected in the body (earth), the mind (heaven), and in…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

I find my fundamentalism-mocking blog post hilarious also

One of the joys of writing thousands of blog posts is reuniting with one of my long-forgotten creations.  Today I saw that a new comment had been submitted on a post. This is hilarious! Love it! Naturally I had to check out what was so hilarious and lovable. Unsurprisingly, after I read what I'd written seven years ago I thought to myself: This is hilarious! Love it! Check out "Top ten signs you're a fundamentalist Satsangi." It will make more sense if you know something about the Indian religious organization I used to be a member of. But the inspiration for…
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Posted inReligions Science

We will bury you!

Here's another churchless guest post from regular commenter "cc." I titled this post as he named his short essay. Hope he's right... that science and evidence-based rationality will supplant religiosity. It's a slow process, though. The United States is highly developed in many regards. But we have a seemingly never-ending supply of religious nutheads. Under certain conditions, science undermines religion and eventually supplants it. This is demonstrated in the developed world  where the scientific method is held in higher esteem than religious faith. In the most highly developed countries, only a minority of knuckleheads revere and refer to holy scriptures,…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Inner speech: who am I talking to inside my head?

I talk to myself a lot. I'm doing that now. I don't really know what I'm going to say in this blog post until a voice speaks inside my head. It seems to speak simultaneously with both my thinking and my typing -- inner speech, thought, and communication all happening together in some mysterious fashion. This feels normal to me. And according to an article in this week's issue of New Scientist, "LIfe in the Chatter Box," most people do the same thing. Here's how the article starts out: Our inner speech turns out to shape our thoughts and decisions…
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Posted inReligions Science

Separating numinous from supernatural

Occasionally "cc," a regular commenter on this blog, sends me email messages. They're as cogent, interesting, and well-written as his comments.  Below is a recently-received message that deserves sharing. One of the things I like most about cc's style is the open-endedness of his thoughts. Usually what he says leaves me with more questions, rather than answers. Or questions about answers. Reading the following message, I was struck by the words numinous and numinosity. "Numinous" usually is considered to belong in the realm of religion, referring to some sort of divine experience.  But the Wikipedia article notes that numinous can…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

I reveal Mystery of the Cosmos: its strange!

Yesterday I achieved one of my lifelong goals: I became a newspaper columnist. Sure, the paper is Salem Weekly -- which actually is published every two weeks, but since this is Salem's alternative newspaper, likely most of the readers are too stoned to notice. And Salem Weekly is free. So I'm a columnist in a paper which gets grabbed out of boxes, sometimes by people who need a foundation layer for their kitty litter. But like I said in a post on my other blog: Still, hey, I'm a columnist! Along with Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman. I'm just one…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Parts of a discarded religion can fit into a new spiritual practice

Reuse. Recycle.  Good advice for handling material stuff. Also practices that can be used with religious stuff. Recently someone emailed me, asking whether I still repeated the mantra I was taught after being initiated into a guru-based meditation practice. Part of my reply was: Usually I don't repeat the RSSB mantra. But sometimes I do, sort of for old time's sake. I figure that I repeated it so many times over the many years, it must have formed some sort of concentrative relaxed groove in my brain. It's kind of comforting to repeat the Five Names. Sometimes I do it…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

“Dirty money” tied to RSSB guru’s Ranbaxy wealth

Like I said in this post, there's a tangled web of financial dealings surrounding the newfound wealth of Gurinder Singh Dhillon and his family.  Gurinder Singh is the current guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based spiritual organization I used to be a member of. Theologically, he is considered to be "god in human form." Financially, his family has become one of the richest in India, thanks to gifting of Religare stock by several relatives (and RSSB initiates), Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. Another post of mine describes the money connections between Religare and the guru. Religare is a company that…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Gurinder Singh’s son become CEO of Religare subsidiary

Money (lots of it) and spirituality (questionable amount of it) continue to mix at Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian religious organization I used to be a part of. Someone just emailed me a link to this news story, "Religare Health Trust names Gurpreet Dhillon as CEO." Religare Health Trust (RHT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Delhi-based Religare Enterprise Ltd (REL), has named Gurpreet Dhillon as CEO of the company. Earlier, Dhillon was working as the executive director and COO of RHT. ...Gurpreet Dhillon is also a second cousin of the billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh who are the…
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Posted inUncategorized

Meditation is good for your genes. So, likely, is patting a dog.

I've meditated every day since 1970, with just a handful of exceptions. That's over forty years. During most of that time I thought I was engaged in a spiritual journey from illusion to enlightenment. Now, I don't believe much, if at all, in that possibility. But I still meditate. Every day. Along with doing Tai Chi at least three days a week, which is a form of moving meditation.  Meditation is good for the body and mind. So those who don't believe in soul or spirit can benefit from meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, mindfulness, and other ways of eliciting the…
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Posted inGod Reality

Praying to a personal God requires us to be a “person”

I'm not big on praying. A few days ago I called it absurd, even in the face of tragedy. Prayers alone have zero effect on anything or anyone. Prayers plus action to change things... that can work. Philosophically, though, praying raises some interesting questions.  Is the entity being prayed to a personal being, or not? Usually we assume that it is, for good reason. Impersonal entities, like a stone, gravity, or a computer, aren't considered to be capable of responding to prayers.  (Nonetheless, I've engaged in quite of bit of dialoguing with computers over the years; particularly Windows machines where…
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Posted inGod

Oklahoma tornado tragedy shows absurdity of prayer

I understand why people pray. I've done a lot of praying myself. It's a natural reaction to appeal to a higher power when a loved one is seriously ill, lives are in danger, or some other unwanted event begs for divine intervention. But while the motivation for prayer is utterly human, so is prayer itself. Almost certainly there is no God watching over us, listening to pleas for this and that, deciding which to grant and which to ignore. I'm thankful for this. Because it would be worse if actually there were a God to pray to, a supernatural being…
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Posted inReality Science

“The hard problem” of consciousness may not exist

This week's issue of New Scientist has a special section on consciousness. Conscious being that I am, I enjoyed reading about whatever the heck my consciousness consists of. The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being made on understanding how the brain works, including what causes something to be conscious rather unconscious. For example: One of the most prominent attempts to turn this experimental data into a theory of consciousness is known as the "global neuronal workspace" model. This suggests that input from our eyes, ears and so on, is first processed unconsciously, primarily in sensory…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I changed a Bollywood actor’s life… turning him vegetarian

Until recently I'd never heard of Shahid Kapoor, a Bollywood actor in India. But it turns out that we have a connection: after reading my book, Life is Fair, Kapoor became a vegetarian. Here's the tale, as told in "The Man Who Changed Shahid Kapoor's Life"  His father, who follows Radha Soami, had been preaching to him for years about the benefits of eating only what is grown in the farms, had no effect on him; but the book converted him. A decade ago Shahid Kapoor turned vegetarian. He got on to a flight with a book Life Is Fair…
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Posted inReligions

Fireplaces are bad for you. Also, pleasant. Like religion.

Here's a thought-provoking You Tube video: someone reading aloud Sam Harris' essay "The Fireplace Delusion."  It's about how we can emotionally and intuitively enjoy something, while understanding reasonably and factually that this thing isn't good for us. We have a wood stove in our house, but we don't use it very much -- for reasons described in the video. Plus, my wife has allergies. However, I enjoy burning wood outside.  I'm not sure how well this fireplace: religion metaphor works. Yet like almost everything Sam Harris writes, it makes you think.   
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