Posted inBooks Consciousness

We’re conscious because we are beast machines

I'm enjoying Anil Seth's book, "Being You: A New Science of Consciousness." Consciousness is fascinating. Without it, we are nothing. Without it, we know nothing. Without it, we experience nothing. So, yeah, consciousness is pretty damn important. Here's passages from the Prologue. They offer a good feel for the approach Seth takes in his book, which is based on a solid grasp of modern neuroscience.  The book jacket says: "Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, and codirector of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science." This book is about the neuroscience of…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Delusions God

Atheists more likely to believe in paranormal than religious people

Just in time for Halloween, a few days ago the New York Times had a story, "Many Americans Say They Believe in Ghosts. Do You?" No, I don't. I also don't believe in God. But lots of atheists do believe in paranormal phenomena, according to the story. There are a number of different ways to quantify belief among Americans in so-called paranormal phenomena. One way is to ask a selection of people representative of the population if they believe in ghosts. In a 2019 IPSOS poll, 46 percent of respondents said they did. Another is to ask what they fear.…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Great Zen advice: be natural, not intentional

During the 35 years I was an active member of an India-based spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), I observed a lot of unnatural behavior.  I did this myself, though not to the degree that I observed in many others. They would put on what they thought was a virtuous demeanor, though from what I could see, it just looked fake, artificial, pretentious.  The RSSB teachings decried the "five deadly sins" of lust, anger, greed, attachment, and egotism. So some members of the group took this to mean that they should look as if they had overcome these supposed…
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Posted inAwareness Happiness

Know that you know a lot less than you think you know

I subscribe to The Atlantic, so I'm going to take the liberty of copying in a great piece from the online The Atlantic, "How to Know That You Know Nothing."  (Maybe it's available to non-subscribers, but not knowing for sure that it is, I thought I'd take the advice put forth in the piece and realize that since I'm not confident that I know, I might as well share it this way.) This shows that Harvard psychology professors can sound a lot like Zen masters. Which isn't really all that surprising, since Zen possesses a lot of psychological wisdom. Enjoy.…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Genuine spirituality is very simple. Not like religion at all.

Here's what I've come to realize after over fifty years of searching for spiritual truth. For most of that time, I had things completely backward, because I didn't understand how simple genuine spirituality really is.  I've got lots of company in that regard.  At first, almost everyone approaches spirituality, or religion, like everything else in life. It's viewed as something to be desired, then worked for, then hopefully attained. This is how we get a college degree. This is how we get our first real job. This is how we get married. This is how we have children. This is…
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Posted inBuddhism Meaning of life

U.G. Krishnamurti and Zen have quite a bit in common

As noted a few days ago, I'm taking another look at U.G. Krishnamurti through his book, "Mind Is a Myth." I read a few pages every morning, along with a Zen book by Shunryu Suzuki I'm re-reading, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" -- the title of which shows that Krishnamurti and Zen aren't totally in sync.  But there's definitely some commonalities.  They both can be outrageous.They both aren't afraid to defy conventional ways of thinking.They both focus on the physical world.They both have no interest in supernatural fantasies.They both advise to live in the present moment. Zen, at least in its…
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Posted inAtheism Books

I take another look at U.G. Krishnamurti

Back in 2009 I wrote a blog post about U.G. Krishnamurti, calling him intriguing, irritating, inspirational. That was based on reading some of his Mind Is a Myth book, which has an appealing copyright notice. My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody. The book is still available online. But recently I got a paperback copy after being reminded of the book when a passage was quoted in something…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” is a classic that I like a lot

Recently I wrote about how always trying to improve yourself is foolish. Since this makes a lot of sense to me, I'm attracted to Zen Buddhism because it shares that perspective, by and large. This attraction is long-standing.  One of my favorite Zen books, The Supreme Doctrine, has been in my hands since 1969, when I couldn't bear to return it to the San Jose Public Library while I was going to San Jose State College. Another favorite is Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I have the 1973 first paperback edition. A few days ago I started re-reading it after a long…
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Posted inReality Science

The chance that you know something others don’t is very small

After over fifty years of pursuing spirituality in one form or another, I've come to one firm conclusion. I'm nothing special. And neither are you. Nor is anybody else. Now, I'm not saying that everybody is the same. Obviously every person is different. We all have different thoughts, emotions, talents, likes and dislikes, appearance, and so on. What I mean is that we're all material beings living in this material world, to sort of quote Madonna.  So whatever we know about the world, almost certainly other people possess the same knowledge. Most of us like to think that in some…
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Posted inBooks Miracles

A Bayesian argument against miracles

For quite a while I've been interested in Bayesian reasoning/statistics, even though I've never understood this subject very well. Now I'm reading Steven Pinker's new book, "Rationality." It has a chapter on Beliefs and Evidence that focuses on Bayesian reasoning. Which is, basically (this is an introduction to an online tutorial): Bayes' rule or Bayes' theorem is the law of probability governing the strength of evidence -- the rule saying how much to revise our probabilities (change our minds) when we learn a new fact or observe new evidence. "Prior probability" in the Bayesian perspective is our credence in an…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

Always trying to improve yourself is foolish

This morning I meditated, as I always do. Via my iPhone I also listened to a Buddhist speak about Buddhist teachings, as I sometimes do.  What surprised me, sort of, is that afterwards I felt somewhat worse. It was as if trying to improve myself led to me feeling like I'd temporarily gone backward on the improvement front.  As soon as I went back to simply living my life -- having lunch, going grocery shopping, listening to CNN and MSNBC as I drove around in my car -- my mood improved. For quite a while I've been toying with the…
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Posted inAtheism

Why atheism makes sense even if theism doesn’t

Even though it's true that usually people aren't described by their unwillingness to believe in imaginary things -- there aren't afairyists who proclaim their skepticism about the existence of fairies -- the situation is different in regard to God. Below I've shared an excellent comment from Appreciative Reader that was left today on a recent post of mine. The comment explains why even if the notion of God is incoherent, which of course it is, there's still good reason for atheists to object to the belief in God held by billions of people.  After all, believers in fairies don't try…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 41 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Happy birthday to me, from me

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…
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Posted inAtheism God

Why it makes no sense to ask for evidence that God doesn’t exist

Over the years I've written numerous blog posts about the near-impossibility of proving a negative such as God doesn't exist.  This isn't the way both science and common sense work. We don't ask for evidence that invisible fairies aren't making our cars move. Since cars have engines, or motors if they're electric, there's lots of evidence in favor of engines/motors, so no need to deal with the invisible fairy hypothesis. Same is the case with God. Or at least how atheists look upon God.  Below is how Armin Navabi addresses this issue in his book, "Why There Is No God:…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Thoughts on a good death

Over on my HinesSight blog, yesterday I wrote "My wife's sister died today. It was a good death." I'll copy it in here. We're all going to die. That's 100% certain. Death follows life with a cosmic inevitability. The big question is: Will we die a good death? This morning my wife, Laurel, learned that her older sister, Lynn, had died last night. Naturally there were tears. But not much sorrow. Because Lynn died a good death.  In fact, a very good death. Exactly the way most of us would want to go, Laurel and I definitely included. Lynn and…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science is repeatable. Religions aren’t.

There are lots of reasons to choose science over religion. Chief among them, of course, is that science comes up with solid knowledge about reality, while religion doesn't.  But I find science's repeatability to be an especially appealing feature of science.  Meaning, if somehow all scientific knowledge were to disappear from the face of the Earth, while leaving humanity intact, there's little or no doubt that this knowledge eventually would be rediscovered.  In other words, science is repeatable. It's methods aren't dependent on one-of-a-kind happenstance, like Einstein being born at a particular time and place with certain aptitudes.  If Einstein…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A message from a disillusioned RSSB initiate

UPDATE: I should have noted in the original post that I strongly support Covid vaccine mandates, so have no problem with a religious group having vaccinated and non-vaccinated people sit in different locations. That protects the vaccinated, who are still at a small risk of getting Covid, from those who aren't vaccinated.  It always makes me feel good to hear from someone who has come to see the downside of belonging to a religious organization. Today I got this message regarding the organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in India. Gurinder Singh…
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Posted inFundamentalism Politics

Cult of Trump shows danger of blind faith

Here in the United States we're facing a scary prospect in upcoming elections, especially the next presidential election in November 2024. A recent Forbes story captures the problem in its headline: "Poll Finds Most Americans Think An Election Will Be Overturned Because Of Partisan Sour Grapes." In a CNN/SRSS poll of 2,119 U.S. adults released Wednesday, 51% of respondents said it is somewhat or very likely that some elected officials will “successfully overturn the results of an election” in the U.S. in the future “because their party did not win.” That belief was held by 49% of Democratic respondents and…
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