Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Creation Museum displays Christian credulity

Just when I've been thinking, "summer is here, living is easy; maybe I shouldn't hammer religion so hard," the Creation Museum has to open its doors and make me wish I had a hammer of Biblical proportions. Oops, bad choice of words. Because the problem with the Creation Museum — a huge one — is that it treats the Bible as gospel truth rather than manmade fables. So if Genesis says that the Earth was created just a few thousand years ago, then dinosaurs must have co-existed with Homo sapiens, no matter what science has discovered. This ridiculous monument to…
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Posted inReligions

Going beyond “I am a (fill in the faith)”

It was the kickoff to a great coffee house conversation today: "So, Brian, would you say that you're still a satsangi?" Meaning, a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)—an India-based spiritual organization. I've had this sort of talk before. It leads to all sorts of interesting spinoff questions that apply to anyone of any faith. What does it take to deserve to be called a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, or any other persuasion? I started with an obvious answer. "I was initiated into RSSB thirty-six years ago. Guess that means I'm a satsangi." Hans, my philosophical discussion…
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Posted inWu Project

Me finding myself. And Van Morrison.

It happened again today. Searching for the meaning of existence via the Great God Google, I looked into the mirror of cyberspace and saw my own truth looking back at me. Not surprisingly, I agreed with myself. Which, naturally, raises the question: "If what I'm searching for is what I already know, what the hell am I doing Googling?" I'd been thinking about Tai Chi. Which got me thinking about Wu Chi. Which reminded me of a web site that had a reference to using "Wu" as a mantra – the sound of wind whistling through tree tops. Whoooooooo. Whoooooooo.…
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Posted inGod

Atheists crush Christians at “Does God Exist?” debate

Naturally, it was no contest. There's no way a couple of fundamentalist Christians were going to best the Rational Response Squad on an ABC Nightline face-off over scientific evidence for the existence of God. (These are the guys who talked me into condemning myself to hell for a free DVD.) I haven't watched all of the video of the debate, You Tube'd versions of which are available at BSAlert.com. But I've seen enough to agree with the proposition that "the match was a slaughter and Ray and…Kirk [the Christians]...were left bleeding and wounded." Ray and Kirk weren't supposed to use…
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Posted inPolitics

Christopher Hitchens rips on Rev. Falwell – and religion

The recently deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell probably was nice to his dog. But there isn't much else good that can be said about him. So yesterday I hugely enjoyed listening to an Air America replay of Anderson Cooper's interview of Hitchens on CNN. Hitchens starts off snarky and sarcastic. Then warms up from there. Exactly what a fundamentalist hate-monger like Falwell deserves. Alive or dead. The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get…
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Posted inBuddhism

Finding my original face in packing for a weekend trip

My mystical-spiritual aspirations used to be really grandiose. I was going to grasp the secrets of the universe; soar through higher metaphysical regions of reality; get drenched in divine light and sound; merge with the Ultimate until there was nothing of me left but One. Yesterday I managed to pack for a weekend trip and keep my calm. That's what counts as spiritual progress for me now. Call it what you will, it's undeniably real. I could feel the difference between the usual flappable-while-packing Brian and who I was twenty-fours ago. Thank you, Kosho Uchiyama. I've been trying to absorb…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Meditation is waking up to life

I'm a long-time meditator. Been on the cushion daily for about thirty-eight years. I'm still trying to figure out what meditation is all about. Concentration? Relaxation? Getting in touch with myself? With God? All of the above? Something else entirely? My practice has consisted mainly of repeating a mantra—trying to stop many complex thoughts by holding onto a single simple thought. I'd also attempted to do nothing except be aware of what remained in my consciousness when I wasn't doing anything. Except trying to do nothing. Which is still something. And there's the rub. I've been of the mind that…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Why I’m justified in complaining about Sant Mat

Ander's comment on a recent post has me fired up. Along with a strong cup of 100% Kona coffee that I brought back from Maui. Just used up the last bit of it. Can't think of a better caffeine-fueled activity than responding to one of Ander's baseless statements: Its funny how u even proclaim the fact that u never actually practised for a long period of time more than 2 hours of meditation. Let along 4 or 5 or 10 that would be the appropriate hours after the 30 years on the path. The fact the u complain about sant…
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Posted inBooks

Finding my Way in the Bodhi Tree Bookstore

A few years ago I made my first pilgrimage to Hollywood's Bodhi Tree Bookstore, one of the wonders of the metaphysical book-selling world. I went again yesterday, leaving my month-old granddaughter and her mother (my daughter) cooling their heels in a neighboring restaurant. Wise place to wait. Slower the service, the better. When I enter the Bodhi Tree Bookstore, I'm not going to be emerging for quite a while. Wandering through the store's sections is a voyage of spiritual self-discovery. The patrons, me included, appear darn serious as they browse the shelves. After all, we're not looking for a book…
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Posted inMorality

When it isn’t good to do good

Before I put away the RSSB newsletter that was the focus of my last post, I wanted to address the curious case of when doing good isn't really a good thing. At least, if you've adopted a fundamentalist mind set. I'm familiar with that mental condition, because it was an integral aspect of my psyche for many years. What happens is that your religious faith becomes the lens through which life's experiences are filtered. Everything takes on the hue of the dogmatic teachings that you've assimilated. So in Sant Mat (my experience has been with the Radha Soami Satsang Beas…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Sant Mat doesn’t make much sense to me anymore

I used to enjoy reading the "Western USA Regional Newsletter," published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), because I wanted to have my spiritual beliefs confirmed. I still enjoy reading Vince Savarese's monthly message in the newsletter. For the same reason. Whereas before I focused on how much sense the RSSB teachings (also known as Sant Mat) made, leaving blurry all of the paradoxes, contradictions, and unanswered questions, now I zero in on the absurdities. They've always been there, of course. I just did a good job of ignoring them for some thirty years. In this regard I was like…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Christians admit their religion is based on hate

I'm pretty harsh on Christianity, along with every other faith-based religion that asks us to believe in things unseen and a god unknown. But it takes a Christian to really reveal the dark side of Christianity—a true believer whose world view is so blinded by an egocentric conviction that he's got all the answers, he doesn't see how deep is the moral morass into which he's sunk. Such a man is Rick Scarborough of Vision America, an organization that claims to be "restoring the original American vision." This supposedly includes the right to discriminate against, hate, and vilify people who…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Turn back, if you’re on the wrong road

My statistics instructor in graduate school cited this Emerson quote frequently, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." He stimulated me to look up the essay on Self-Reliance and read what comes next: …adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though you contradict every thing you said today. Yesterday I ran into an old friend at the…
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Posted inReligions

Viewing life through a narrow bandwidth of ideology

About time to leave Maui. Hawaiian shirts have been bought. Waves have been boogie-boarded. Some tropical photons have managed to make it through SPF 30 and gifted me a take-home tan. I'll let a Maui resident, James Miner, do much of the speaking today. He wrote an intriguing letter that was published in the Maui News last Saturday—a philosophical cut above the usual letter to the editor fare. It speaks to me on several levels. Over on my other blog I wrote a few days ago that Maui overdevelopment makes for sad sights. That's part of what Miner is getting…
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Posted inBuddhism

Rocks in the thought-stream are natural too

As so how often happens on this here Church of the Churchless blog, a comment to one of my posts diverts my stream of consciousness in a fresh direction. In this case, one that I'd already been meandering toward. Edward's response to my "Flowing with waves while sitting on the beach" made me think Oh, yeah, so true. His comment had a delightful Edwardian neo-Zen flavor to it that led me sit up even while I was lying down (on the sand). Lately, I have been having difficulty seeing some thoughts as unworthy, ("get out of my way,") and others…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Flowing with waves while sitting on the beach

I've been paying a lot of attention to waves recently. That's par for the course on Maui, especially if someone is an avid boogie boarder, like I am. The first few days after we arrived, there were some decent—though not exceptional—waves breaking on the left side of Napili Bay. I had some stimulating rides. Nothing like my "washing machine" experience back in 2004, however (which is good). Today, like yesterday, the surf has been boogie board unfriendly. Fairly large, but not breaking cleanly. So I've been working on catching waves from the beach—thought waves, which can be done anywhere, really.…
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Posted inWu Project

Soul is superfluous

Usually spirituality is associated with "soulfulness," whatever the heck that means. I used to believe that I knew something about soul. Now, I don't. Perhaps because soul is superfluous—it's an notion that is so much a part of most cultures, we take it for granted that a human being consists of something above and beyond the physical. Before leaving for Maui I bought Nicholas Fearn's "The Latest Answers to the Oldest Questions" at a Powell's Books outlet (one of the world's great bookstores; don't miss the main store if you visit Portland, Oregon). Interestingly, the first chapter I read on…
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Posted inBuddhism

Dalai Lama is on Maui too. Is compassion contagious?

At the moment the Dalai Lama and I are on opposite sides of Maui. He's on a two day speaking tour in Paia and Wailuku, and we're condo'ing it on Napili Bay. We're opposites in more ways than that, obviously. Yesterday the Dalai Lama spoke about compassion, saying "Compassion is the universal message of all traditions." I often come up short in the compassion department. Tuesday morning, a few hours before the Dalai Lama's free talk at Maui's War Memorial Stadium, my wife took me to task for being self-centered and (one of her favorite ex-psychotherapist terms) "having a sense…
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Posted inWu Project

If I’m not an “I,” what am I?

My admiration for Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop," the subject of my previous post, is evidenced by the fact that I just carted the 410 pages to Maui—adding the weight of this hardcover book to my 50 pound suitcase limit, every ounce of which I'm going to need on our return trip after our usual rampaging through Lahaina t-shirt shops. But I wanted to ponder my strange loopiness some more while on vacation. At the moment I'm listening to Napili Bay waves, rather than Oregon rain, but the same "I" seemingly is doing the listening though its body…
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Posted inWu Project

You’re a strange loop (and that’s OK)

Via Douglas Hofstadter, I've got some soul-shaking news to pass on to you. You're a strange loop. So am I. As is he. We all are. And it's not a bad thing, once you get used to the strangeness and loopiness of our rarely recognized condition. I'm most of the way through Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop." His new book is an elaboration of themes creatively discussed in "Gödel, Escher, Bach," which I read a long time ago—with difficulty. Hofstadter has come a long way, both personally and professionally (he's a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University). His…
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