Posted inBooks Personal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Who’s afraid of this big bad blog?

This Church of the Churchless weblog doesn’t strike me as scary. Not like a big bad wolf. Pretty much all I do is say it as I see it. My most frequent utterance is “I don’t know.” For variety I try to express this un-profundity in alternative ways, but they all end up pointing at my metaphysical cluelessness. My musings wouldn’t be threatening if it weren’t for a secondary theme: “I don’t know, and there’s no proof that you do either.” It’s the sentiment after the comma that strikes at the heart of organized religious pretension. I have to assume…
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Posted inScience

Wisdom from Carl Sagan: A pale blue dot

This is Earth from 4 billion miles away. In his book, “Pale Blue Dot,” Carl Sagan mused upon the meaning of this photo taken by Voyager 1 as it sped out of the solar system. As senseless war rages in the Middle East and other places around the world, I urge you to take a few minutes and read his words: "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Top ten signs you’re a fundamentalist Satsangi

I enjoyed reading “Top ten signs you’re a fundamentalist Christian.” That stimulated me to jot down my own list for Satsangis, a.k.a. followers of the contemporary Sant Mat movement. It’s a work in progress. If you're acquainted with this philosophy, feel free to add on to the list via a comment, if you like. I need to point out that when I say “you,” a few years ago I could have said “I.” For I know whereof I speak with this list, having been a fundamentalist Satsangi myself for many years. Now I’ve seen the light. And I like to…
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Posted inGod Mystics Plotinus

Simple spirituality

I’m attracted to simplicity. My mind is complex, like most minds are. So in spite of this, or because of this, a great big “Yes!” resonates in my psyche when I come across seriously simple summations of spirituality. (Guess I should make that a “Yes-s-s-s!”) “God is love.” Pretty good. But that’s too simple for me. And overly Hallmark cardish. I prefer Meister Eckhart’s way of putting it. A wonderful blend of simplicity and profundity. The eye with which I see God is exactly the same eye with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Saying “the end” to Sant Mat fairy tales

I’ve got nothing against fairy tales. But there’s a time and place for them. Like, when my daughter was a pre-schooler and she was ready for bed. They don’t belong in religion, as comforting as they may be. Of course, some would say that religions are nothing but fairy tales. Faced with the ogres of death, suffering, and meaninglessness, humans have conjured up magical spiritual “princes” who ride to the rescue of the soul. All you need to do is believe. I’m open to the possibility that there is more to spirituality than fantasy. Yet I’m also convinced that before…
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Posted inMystics Spiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

The glory of being spiritually lost

If you feel like you’re spiritually lost, be thankful. Smile. Laugh. Dance. Your lucky star is shining brightly on you. You’re way closer to the mystery we call “God” than those who believe that they’re on a well-marked path to the divine. There’s no such thing. I’m not confident of much when it comes to religion and spirituality. But I’m quite sure that the road to God doesn’t have any white lines down the middle of it. You can’t see, feel, hear, smell, or touch it. The surest way to know if you’re off the track is to say, “Ah,…
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Posted inBuddhism Christianity/Jesus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Buddha enlightens Jesus about the self

A meeting between Jesus, the Christ and Siddhartha Gotama, the Buddha. I’d love to be able to sit in a corner and listen in. Maybe even throw in a question or two. Obviously so would Carrin Dunne, who wrote “Buddha & Jesus: Conversations.” Carrin said that she is a Christian with a growing interest in Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. I enjoyed this short (112 page) book, which was loaned to me by Warren, my Taoist marital arts teacher. He said that he felt Gotama gets the better of the arguments. I agree. Dunne’s book was published in 1975. I note…
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Posted inScience

Poised on the pivot point of uncertainty

Tilting one way or the other. That’s easy. Maintaining centered balance. That’s difficult, whether we’re talking about physical, mental, or spiritual activity. Last night, as I wrote about on my other weblog, I went to bed thinking that I probably had Lyme’s disease. A rash had appeared on my back, circling the site of a tick bite. It was Sunday and too late to do anything about it. So I tossed and turned, pondering what lay ahead if I indeed had Lyme’s disease. I couldn’t shake the anxiety that came with my tilt toward the Yes, you do. Then, sometime…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Taoism/Tai Chi

Musings on the Metolius

It’s easy to get into an meditative mood while walking along the banks of the Metolius River. It becomes an instant river about a mile upstream of our central Oregon cabin, gushing out of springs that carry water from distant sources. Since the upper reaches are mostly spring fed, the Metolius’ water level doesn’t change much throughout the year. Vegetation is able to grow on logs and rocks that, with the passage of time, become islands of life. This evening, on my ritual dog walk, thunder clouds were starting to form. Per usual, Serena, the dog, and Brian, the human,…
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Posted inReligions Wu Project

Religious knowledge totals exactly zero

Zero: it never fails to astound me that this is the sum total of genuine religious knowledge accumulated throughout human history. There have been so many worshippers, so many devotees, so many seekers of divinity. And the demonstrable metaphysical facts that have been accumulated from all of this effort? None. Absolutely none. There is not a single shred of objective evidence that reality consists of anything more than the universe we know now. If there were, such a fact would have been trumpeted in banner headlines across every newspaper in the world. Core scientific theories would have had to be…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How I wrote a holy book

Did you know that I wrote a holy book? Yes, indeed. Brian Hines, the unpastor of the Church of the Churchless, is the author of “Life is Fair.” It was published in India by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) in 1999 with a first printing of 25,000 copies. When I first got a copy of the book I enjoyed looking at the back page. There was “Life is Fair” listed in the Books on Sant Mat in General category, right along with such classics as “The Path of the Masters” by Julian Johnson. I wrote the book because I was…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Living in the now

What if this is all that there is? This. Right here, right now. A succession of moments in the physical world. After we die: nothing. No more “this.” As I so often repeat here at the Church of the Churchless, I don’t know. I sure hope there is life after death. As Woody Allen put it, “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work I want to achieve it through not dying.” But here’s another Woody Allen quote: “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to…
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Posted inScience

Worshipping at the altar of science

I don’t go to church. Who needs fantasy when reality is so much more compelling? When it comes to conveying the mystery and majesty of the cosmos, the fanciful tales found in holy books pale in comparison to findings of modern science. For example, I’ve read a lot about emptiness in Buddhist writings. Nothingness comes in for a lot of mention also—not only in Buddhism, but in the mystic teachings of every religion (“nada, nada, nada,” says St. John of the Cross). Yet this eleven-mile wide web page really hit home to me how little of something, and how much…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual nomads

Over at the wonderfully named Ambivablog, amba is “Calling all spiritual nomads.” Her piece is well-written and thoughtful, as befits a blogger with an impressive literary resume. (I’d love to be able to say about myself, “wrote a lot of reviews for The New York Times Book Review.”) I was pleased to note that amba says that Church of the Churchless is a new favorite blog of hers. Same back at you, my churchless sister. I thoroughly enjoyed your spiritual nomad piece. Especially the musical chair analogy. Say “Religion” in this strange new world of ours, and I see a…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

Let go. Then let go of letting go.

I’m attracted to simple spirituality. That’s probably because my mind is complex, like most people’s minds are. I need to balance myself out. Yin and yang. So when I come across a believable one-sentence summation of spirituality, it catches my eye. And my heart. This is from Thomas Keating’s wonderful “Open Mind, Open Heart,” one of my favorite books. I think it can be said that the essential point of all the great spiritual disciplines that the world religions have evolved is the letting go of thoughts. Yes. On this Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Taoism can agree. (I’m not…
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Posted inReligions

On being spiritually lost

Today I learned that I’m heading for the Sixth Level of Hell, where heretics are sent. Well, it could be worse. Fraudulent, malicious, pandering, and treacherous souls end up in levels seven, eight, and nine. I’ll be living the good afterlife by comparison. To find out how doomed you are yourself, head to Dante’s Inferno Test. After answering a few questions (be honest or you’ll make it worse on yourself!) you’ll know what’s in store for you, hell-wise. Funny thing is, I don’t feel spiritually lost. I realize that my Sixth Level of Hell score is based on Christian rules…
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Posted inBuddhism Personal/Stories

I get a glimpse of Tango Zen

Monday night at my Tango class the instructor taught us a pretty complicated move. Muy Tangoish, so it was cool. But difficult for our four-month-old Tango brains to grasp. My wife and I gave it a try, though. From the man’s perspective: Step, step, trap her foot, turn her to left, stop her, cross step, side step, move her around with waist turn, trap her foot, step forward into centering position, step, step, step. Well, it looks better on the dance floor than on a computer screen. However, at first I struggled to get the moves down. Then we started…
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Posted inGod

How can you be sure there is no God?

Good question. Easy answer: I can’t. I don’t know if God exists. Here’s another question. “How can you be sure there is a God?” The correct answer is equally easy: You can’t. You don’t know if God exists. So we’re really in complete agreement. I don’t know and you don’t know. On this, agnostics and the faithful are as one. At least, they should be. Such is the well-reasoned conclusion of the convincing “How can you be sure there is no God?” essay that I recently read on the Ex-Christian.net web site. Unfortunately, most believers deny the reality of their…
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Posted inFundamentalism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Eastern fundamentalism

Last night someone said to me, “So you were part of an Eastern form of fundamentalism.” For a moment I was taken aback. Me, a fundamentalist? On this weblog I like to foam at the mouth about the dangers of fundamentalist religious attitudes. (By the way, did you hear the one about a man who walks into a bar and sits down between an alligator and a born-again Christian woman?) Fundamentalism takes many forms, and is defined in various ways. Scott Bidstrup says: In my view, a fundamentalist religion is a religion, any religion, that when confronted with a conflict…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I’m alive. Wow!

I’ve been having a strange sensation recently: I’m alive. It’s accompanied by: One moment I won’t be. Amazing. What’s even more amazing is how many days there have been out of the total I’ve lived (21,065) when I didn’t have this sensation. I took life for granted. I didn’t envision my own non-existence. Maybe it’s taking getting older and passing the 21,000 day mark to begin to appreciate the marvel of being able to appreciate anything. I’ll be walking the dog, or standing in Tai Chi class, or getting out of bed in the morning, and suddenly I’ll be struck…
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