Posted inHappiness

Be as small as possible. Good happiness advice.

"Be all you can be" used to be a long-time recruiting slogan for the United States army. That implied you could be more than you are now, not less, if you enlisted. But there's another way of looking at this. What if being all you can be pointed toward being smaller and less significant than you are now? Before I share some perspectives about this, here's an addendum to my previous blog post, "If God created the universe, why is it so goddamn HUGE?" -- which was a good introduction for the theme of this post. This post by The…
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Posted inScience Universe

If God created the universe, why is it so goddamn HUGE?

Since I don't believe in God, I'm addressing the question that's the title of this blog post to those who do. If God created the universe, why is it so goddamn HUGE? Of course, God believers don't really have the answer to this, even if God exists. I'm just interested in what hypotheses are in the minds of the religious. Because theologically speaking, the Christians in medieval times had a more satisfying perspective on creation. The Earth is the center of the universe. The sun, stars, and moon circle the Earth. God sent his only begotten Son, Jesus, to incarnate on…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Merry Christmas from now not-so-rainy Oregon

I have no problem saying "Merry Christmas" even though the Christ part of Christmas means absolutely nothing to me. It's just a way of expressing a hope that whoever hears those words will have a pleasant holiday season if they're in a part of the world that celebrates Christmas. Every December I write a Christmas Letter, even though my wife and I title it Holiday Greetings. Here's a link to this year's letter. Last night, Christmas Eve, Laurel and I hosted a small dinner for three friends who live in our neighborhood. It was a partial potluck. We provided muffins,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Sometimes it seems strange to have given up on spiritual projects

Change, even when it feels welcome, often has a way of seeming strange just because the old way of doing things had become so familiar. This is why my giving up on spiritual projects sometimes strikes me as such a departure from my previous approach to spirituality. Here's what I mean by a spiritual "project." Not so much a definition as examples that point to what I'm talking about. For most of the 35 years I was a member of an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I'd regularly go to a bhandara (spiritual gathering) of the organization where I…
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Posted inFree will

A British attorney denies free will in saying no to “Could he have done otherwise?”

Sometimes it helps to understand a subtle topic by reading what several different people have to say about it, since all of us resonate differently to the voices of a particular writer. So I'm going to take a repeat leap into the rather murky waters of free will after sharing my previous post, "Giving up blame and shame is a big benefit of not believing in free will." Below is a short chapter from Richard Oerton's book, The Nonsense of Free Will. I've written several previous posts about the book. Oerton is a British attorney, so he often looks at…
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Posted inFree will

Giving up blame and shame is a big benefit of not believing in free will

For most people, me certainly included, blame is a two-edged sword. It can feel good to wield one edge against people we think have done something wrong (or lots of things wrong). Just to pull a name out of my cranium, Donald Trump comes to mind. But when the other edge is used against us, we often feel like we're being blamed unfairly. After all, our intentions were good. Things just didn't turn out as we expected. The same applies to shame. We may think that other people should feel ashamed of something they did, while we resist the idea…
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Posted inIndia Radha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB and izzat – “honor culture”

Here's another interesting guest post about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) from the anonymous person who has shared other messages with me via the Contact form on this blog. Since they don't use an actual email address on the form, I want to say in this fashion that I apologize if any previous messages have been sent to me that I've seemingly ignored. Actually, I never received them, since I didn't realize until recently that the Contact form -- which worked initially when I moved this blog to the WordPress platform after my previous blogging service went out of business…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Sometimes it’s necessary to do everything wrong in order to get something right

Right. Wrong. We all use those words a lot. But often we don't really understand what they mean. Most of us, me certainly included, typically view right and wrong as moral dichotomies. As in, Trump's immigration policy is right; Trump's immigration policy is wrong. But actually that sort of black and white attitude is itself wrong, because life usually is composed of shades of gray. Here's an example. I've been playing Klondike, a solitaire game, for many years on my iPhone. In 2011 I wrote about the philosophical side of the game: "Klondike solitaire -- a fine philosophy of life."…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Most spiritual teachers and gurus are ignorant of their subject matter

I've had lots of teachers in my life. In schools. In sports. In martial arts. In all kinds of other things. The common denominator that unites my teachers, the good ones at least, is that there knew a lot about the subject they were helping me to learn. After all, what's the point of having a teacher if they don't know more than you do about a subject? That question played a large role in my decision to part company with Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India led a guru considered to be God in…
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Posted inConsciousness Neuroscience

If A.I. is thinking, this argues for the materialistic nature of human consciousness

In my last post, "Landscape of Consciousness is an amazing web site that maps 350 theories of consciousness," I said that I strongly believe that materialistic theories where the brain is viewed as the source of consciousness make the most sense and are the most likely to be true. A couple of letters in New Scientist about the above-linked article provide some reasons for materialism. From Andy McGee,  Adelaide, South Australia Further to your exploration of the wide variety of ideas about consciousness, biological consciousness is the only one we know exists. It is most likely to have come from…
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Posted inConsciousness

Landscape of Consciousness is an amazing web site that maps 350 theories of consciousness

If, like me, you're fascinated by the phenomenon of consciousness, have your own favorite notion about what consciousness is and isn't, yet are open to exploring other theories of consciousness, you're going to find the Landscape of Consciousness web site a treasure trove of information and insights. I learned about it from an article by Robert Lawrence Kuhn in the October 25, 2025 issue of New Scientist, "Landscape of consciousness." The online article is titled  "What 350 different theories of consciousness reveal about reality." Here's a PDF file of the article. What 350 different theories of consciousness reveal about reality…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, meets in jail with man accused of laundering drug money

Since I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) for 35 years before becoming disillusioned with the organization, I occasionally get messages from people about their own dissatisfaction with RSSB and the guru who has led RSSB since 1990, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. I share them as an example of how religions and religious leaders can go astray. Recently I was sent a link to a September 23, 2025 story in the Hindustan Times, "Dera Beas head meets Bikram Majithia In Nabha jail." (RSSB is headquartered in the Punjab province of India.) It's a short story, so I'll share…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Personal/Stories

To suddenly realize life is precious because death is inevitable — an atheist blessing

I've had this feeling before. It happened to me today. I'm sure I'll have it again. It comes with the territory of being alive. At least for me. My usual late afternoon dog walk with our Husky mix, Mooka, started off with no surprises. We take the same route every day. It takes us about half an hour, plus or minus, depending on much sniffing Mooka does along the way. We start from our rural south Salem (Oregon) house, walk along some trails on our property and easements on neighboring properties, then up to the road that leads back to…
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Posted inReality Science

Cause and effect may actually rule in the quantum realm, according to a fresh theoretical approach

There's something about a provocative unproven theory in physics that appeals to me much more than a provocative unproven theory in religion, mysticism, and spirituality in general. Probably it's because physicists approach a deeper understanding of reality from a solid factual foundation, while that isn't the case with religion, mysticism, and spirituality in general -- unless the new idea there is completely based on natural, rather than supernatural, notions. So when the November 29-December 5 issue of New Scientist appeared in my mailbox with the cover blaring The Quantum Leap -- A surprising twist on cause and effect reveals how…
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Posted inBooks Mindfulness

In Zen, faith, doubt, and energy are all pleasingly natural, not supernatural

In my religious believing days, what happened during my morning reading time today would have struck me as a message from God. Or at least a message from the universe. Now, I simply view it as a coincidental message -- turning to three books and finding that continuing where I'd left off reading resulted in a similar point of view. Which, I suppose, isn't all that surprising, given that currently I only read books with a naturalistic perspective. I want to embrace reality as it is, not as someone imagines it to be. First I picked up James Ishmael Ford's,…
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Posted inGod Reality Science

I critique how my 50 year old self thought about God from my 77 year old perspective

Recently I wrote, Here I am, once again plugging my "Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing" essay. I noted that since I wrote that essay around 1998, when I was still a believer of the Eastern religion variety, my views have changed a lot since then. Now I'm an atheist, so, yeah, that's a big change from believing in the possibility of knowing God. The past few days I've been reading the 24-page essay, as it had been a long time since I'd done this. Today I finished reading it, so figured this was a good time to critique…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Buddhism’s fourth noble truth can be ignored, because there’s no need to follow a path of liberation

My previous post was "The first three of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths are obvious. The fourth is unappealing." True. But I should have made it more clear that in addition to being unappealing, the fourth truth also is unnecessary. That's why I said that Zen is more appealing than traditional Buddhism, because it doesn't buy into the whole Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration stuff. Or at least nowhere near as assiduously as traditional Buddhism does. Since in that post I'd quoted James Ishmael Ford as saying that he's…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

The first three of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths are obvious. The fourth is unappealing.

Here's the blog post about James Ishmael Ford's book, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual But Not Religious, that got pre-empted by my detour into a recently discovered essay that I'd written more than 25 years ago. I like Ford's style. Warm. Informal. Non-dogmatic. You know, what I'd expect from a Zen practitioner. Early on he speaks about three forms of Zen that lie outside Buddhism. Jewish Zen and Christian Zen are two of them. They don't interest me. Then there's secular Zen, which is the Zen I resonate with most…
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Posted inReligions Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Here I am, once again plugging my “Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing” essay

Half an hour ago I was planning to write a blog post about a new book I've started to read, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual But Not Religious. I'd planned to talk about a few subjects in the initial chapters that caught my eye. This included a mention of Traditionalism -- a rather esoteric branch of spirituality that I briefly threw myself into after an editor of a Traditionalism journal asked me to write an essay for his publication around 25 years ago, maybe even earlier. I wanted to…
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Posted inReligions Science

Can you ever prove that something never happens? Sometimes. Pretty much.

I often like to say on this blog, and elsewhere, "Nothing is absolutely certain." That's why science, our best means of understanding reality, is never 100% certain about anything. That remaining bit of uncertainty, which could be as small as .0001%, or even less, allows for the possibility of error in any and all scientific theories. Which permits science to progress by replacing old flawed knowledge with new less-flawed knowledge. Since nothing is absolutely certain, obviously this applies to medical knowledge. Today I read a Reuters story in our local newspaper, "CDC site adopts anti-vaccine views." Here's a PDF file…
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