Posted inReality

Ultimate reality doesn’t exist, says physicist Carlo Rovelli

When I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization, for quite a few years I gave frequent talks to the RSSB faithful. One of my favorite topics was ultimate reality. I loved those two words. Putting ultimate before the familiar reality produced a wonderful feeling of transcendent potential wisdom in me. Not that I really knew what ultimate reality was. It was an aspiration, a goal to be pursued through daily meditation and the other aspects of the RSSB teachings. Now, I hardly ever think about ultimate reality. Except when it comes up in a book…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Shabnam Dhillon’s “usual address” belonged to RSSB insiders

Someone just sent me information regarding the house in England shown on Shabnam Dhillon's death certificate as her "usual address."  She was the wife of the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Since RSSB headquarters are in India, it was a surprise to me to see that an English house was shown as Shabnam's usual address.  The person also sent along a Google description of when an inquest is performed after someone dies, which happened in this case. A coroner must hold an inquest if: the cause of death is still unknown the person might have…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics

Christian Nationalism defeated in Pennsylvania, but still scary

Politics is divisive and arouses strong emotions. Religions are divisive and arouse strong emotions. Mix politics with religion, and not surprisingly the worst qualities of each can combine in a toxic combination. Such is evident in countries around the world where dogmatic religion fuses with narrow-minded nationalism. Iran. India. Saudi Arabia. Israel. There are others, including the United States. This was personified in the recent midterm election here in the United States by Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania.  Fortunately, Mastriano lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro by a large margin: 56% to 42%. But in the runup…
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Posted inMindfulness

Mindfulness made simple, by my own mind

I like mindfulness a lot. It's become my favorite approach to meditation. But given how many books I've read about mindfulness, I'm struck by how overly complicated this activity can be described. Which I think says more about the economics of the book business than about mindfulness. After all, few people want to buy a book that's just a few pages long. So authors who write about this subject have to say a lot about something that appears to me to be quite simple. Thus here's my exceedingly brief summary of how I've come to view mindfulness. Naturally others likely…
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Posted inAwareness

Once again, pure awareness strikes me as a meaningless notion

I don't expect people to be perfect. Everybody is flawed. To be human is to be imperfect. And since people write books, I don't expect the books I read to be perfect. I just hope for them to make sense. Having finished The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, I can say that this is a very good book about both mindfulness and meditation.  But I came across a few things that made me go, Huh, that doesn't make sense. Notably, some mentions of pure awareness, since I don't see how such can exist, as noted in…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s Shabnam Dhillon’s death certificate (wife of RSSB guru)

Having been an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) for about 35 years, I follow goings-on with RSSB when they come to my attention. That includes news involving the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. On November 26, 2019 I wrote a blog post, "Shabnam Dhillon, wife of RSSB guru, has died." I included a Business Today story about her death which said in part: Shabnam Dhillon, wife of Radha Soami Satsang Beas head Gurinder Singh Dhillion, has passed away in London. She was 57 years old. According to a statement before Delhi High Court, Shabnam went to…
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Posted inPolitics

How the media and Republicans got the election so wrong

Being a political junkie -- someone who has loved to follow politics since my childhood -- I feel like my immersion in the United States midterm election that happened last Tuesday, and whose votes are still being counted, should enable me to draw some philosophical conclusions from what happened. Well, at least I'll give that a try.  The gist of what happened, for those who don't live in the United States and/or don't follow American politics closely, is that the widely predicted Republican "Red Wave" turned out to be a Red Ripple, if even that. Both the mainstream media and…
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Posted inMindfulness

Feel more with the body, less with the mind

When someone asks "How are you feeling?" that familiar question contains within it a lot of profundity. Because how we answer it reveals quite a bit about ourselves. Mostly I take a few moments to think about what I've been doing recently. You know, how well or poorly my day is going. Or week for a longer time span. I'd remember what's been bothering me and what's been pleasing me, then try to describe the net effect of my joys and sorrows. There's nothing wrong with this. But reading "The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness" has…
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Posted inPolitics

Why unhappiness with tomorrow’s election will be universal

With today being midterm election day here in the United States, I may be too obsessed with following election results on TV tonight to write a post for this blog. But a post I wrote yesterday for my political blog, "Everyone will be unhappy with tomorrow's election," has some philosophical undertones. Maybe even overtones.  It ends with: So soon I'll be looking on the bright side. And also on the dark side. Such is life. And politics.
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Posted inMindfulness Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Why I find mindfulness so appealing after 35 years of religion

Having given up on organized religion, an Eastern/Indian variety, after 35 years of embracing the lure of returning to God by traversing supernatural realms, I've become enamored of mindfulness. (See here and here for some previous blog posts explaining why.) Before making another attempt at this, this is how a book I'm reading, and enjoying, "The Mindful Way Through Depression," describes mindfulness. As we said toward the end of the preceding chapter, mindfulness is the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally, to things as they are. It's a way of shifting from doing…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Instead of trying to fix ourselves, it’s better to be just be ourselves

One of the joys of reading for me is finding connections between seemingly disparate books. As I wrote about a few days ago, I'm reading a book about depression and mindfulness. I've also started a book by a neuroscientist, "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Consciousness." Patrick House, the author, says that he doesn't agree with all of those ways, but in brief creatively-written chapters he makes the case for each way in accord with how proponents argue for it. In his first of the nineteen ways, House puts us in the place of a sea creature. It needs fast reflexes…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m reading a good book about depression and mindfulness

Given how disturbing it's been for me to endure four days of non-functionality from Typepad, my blogging service, following a failed data migration to new servers (shared that post on Blogger since Typepad is so screwed up at the moment), I guess it was good timing that I got a book from Amazon about depression and mindfulness.  Not that I'm actually clinically depressed, though I was at one point in my life, about five years ago. What attracted me to "The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness," was a reader review on Amazon that said this was one…
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Posted inMeaning of life Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m a human being having a human experience. How about you?

During my religious believing days -- well, 35 years actually -- I'd frequently hear people talk about "We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience." That quote came from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. So it isn't surprising that he'd have such a dualistic attitude, with our bodily existence as humans just being a step on the way toward a supernatural experience as a spiritual being. But early on in my churchless evolution, I realized that it makes no sense to view myself in that way. So if…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Why this blog is still screwed up

Typepad, my blogging service, is having major problems following a failed data migration to new servers. It takes forever (more or less) for my three blogs to load, including this one. I wrote about this mess and published the post both on HinesSight and also on my rarely used Blogger blog to make it more accessible. So you can read about what's going on with Typepad there.
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Posted inAtheism

John Lennon’s atheism in three of his songs

I love John Lennon's Imagine. But whenever I hear it played at some large event, like New Year's Eve in Times Square, I wonder why it's so popular in a highly religious country like the United States. After all, the lyrics are not only secular, they're anti-religion.  Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today... Aha-ah...Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion, tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace... You...You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope…
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Posted inIndia

Hindu nationalism is affecting Bollywood filmmaking

Nationalism is bad enough, since most people love their country, and it makes little or no sense to claim "our nation is the best." But when it is paired with religious dogmatism, the result is doubly dangerous. The October 17, 2022 issue of The New Yorker has a really interesting story, "When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood." Here's a PDF file if you have trouble with that link. (I'm a subscriber.)Download When the Hindu Right Came for Bollywood | The New Yorker It's unfortunate that India has become so polarized -- the fate of many nations, including the United…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris and Loch Kelly on nondual mindfulness

Today I set aside my doubts about Loch Kelly's approach in his "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness: A Revolutionary Guide For Living an Awakened Life," and continued on with my re-reading of his book.  I liked what I read, by and large. Then I listened to the daily guided meditation by Sam Harris on his Waking Up app. It struck me as highly compatible with what I'd just read in Kelly's book. Which isn't surprising, since both Harris and Kelly embrace a similar Buddhist approach, that of Dzogchen. Here's my transcription of what Harris said. Just sit comfortably. And close…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m giving “The Way of Effortless Mindfulness” another read

This morning I felt like brushing up on mindfulness, one of my favorite subjects, since mindfulness has become my meditation.  Looking through my books about mindfulness, I decided to pick up Loch Kelly's The Way of Effortless Mindfulness. As I noted in a 2019 post, "Effortless mindfulness versus deliberate mindfulness," I liked the idea of putting in no effort. A book by Loch Kelly, "The Way of Effortless Mindfulness," came to my attention via an interview Sam Harris conducted with Kelly and shared on Harris' Waking Up iPhone app that I'm a fan of.  Any book about meditation that has…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Religions

A philosopher’s take on fate, Buddhism, religions

Before the book I've been writing about recently -- Kieran Setiya's Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way -- is put away on a bookshelf where I'll have trouble finding it (my books aren't organized very well), I wanted to share some final observations from Setiya that I found interesting. No such thing as fate. I agree with Setiya that fate doesn't exist, at least not in the sense of events in our life being preordained. I'd say, though, that they're ordained, in that chains of causes and effects control everything in the cosmos outside of…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Hope is the secular equivalent of religious faith

I've finished Kieran Setiya's book, Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. As might be expected, Setiya doesn't conclude that's there some magical bit of philosophy that can be sprinkled over his first six chapter titles -- Infirmity, Loneliness, Grief, Failure, Injustice, Absurdiy -- and renders those manifestations of life's hardness harmless, or at least bearable. The best Setiya can come up with is Hope, the title of his concluding chapter. He warms up to that topic in the Absurdity chapter. Thus the existentialists were wrong: reason may dictate a total reaction to the world, and that…
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