Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mindfulness meditation is much better than mystical mumbo-jumbo

I've meditated every day for about fifty years, starting in 1970 when I was in college and began studying yoga with a crazed Greek guy whose Christananda Ashram blended Christian and Hindu philosophies in a decidedly weird fashion (for details, see here).  After giving up on the Greek yoga teacher, for the first 35 years of so I followed the meditation practice enjoined by the Indian religious organization I belonged to at the time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas. It had a strong mystical bent, being focused on concentrating one's attention totally within the mind/brain, with the aim of detaching consciousness…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Deep thoughts about a typo in my new book

I'm eager to write about a newfound typo in my recently published book, "Break Free of Dogma," for a couple of reasons. One is that this gives me another chance to plug my book, which is prominently displayed at the top of the right sidebar.  Also, I've got some deep thoughts about the typo that I just discovered in the book. It came to light today after I gave some copies of the book to my fellow Tai Chi students. Handing a book to Jeremy, I told him that several of the mini-chapters refer to Tai Chi, such as the…
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Posted inReality Religions

If God is beyond thought and language, then shut up if you’re religious

I'd like to rephrase in a more blunt fashion what I quoted Donald Hoffman as saying in yesterday's blog post. Here's Hoffman. If a system of thought, religious or otherwise, offers a claim that it wants taken seriously, then we should examine it with our best method of inquiry -- the scientific method. That is taking it seriously. Some topics -- such as God, the good, reality, and consciousness -- have been claimed to transcend the limited scope of human concepts and thus the methods of science. I have no quarrel with someone who claims this and then, being consistent,…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science is our best method of knowing reality

Here's a basic fact: science is well-suited to understanding the nature of reality. Religion, on the other hand, is a very poor way of knowing reality. So religious belief must bow down to the scientific method if a believer makes a claim about God, soul, spirit, heaven, life after death, or some other supernatural subject.  Below are excerpts from a book that I've finished reading, "The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes." In a concluding chapter, Donald Hoffman, the author, makes some great points about the primacy of science in separating fact from fiction.  Because…
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Posted inComments

Let’s take a break from “message board” commenting

As I've noted before, and surely will note again, I try to strike a balance in my comment moderating between keeping comments on-topic (of the blog post they're associated with) and free-floating comment conversations, which sometimes veer into "message board" sorts of frequent back-and-forth talk. Things have gone too far in the message board direction, with an excessive amount of personal attacks, insults, and such. So if someone's comment hasn't been approved today, don't take it personally. This is just my way of bringing back an added dose of civility, respect, and relevance in comments. I just added a new…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 23 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks devoid of substantive content are an exception. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Reality is here and now, not there and then

If we aren't in touch with the reality of what is actually present before us, right here and now, there's little point in conjecturing about what might be, there and then. This is my main problem with religiosity. Like a magician, religions do their best to distract our attention from what is really going on, so they can astound us with supposed miracles: A rabbit popped out of a hat! A woman was cut in two! is similar in kind to God so loved the world he sacrificed his only begotten son! and Heaven awaits those who have faith! Atheists like…
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Posted inReality Science

“The Case Against Reality” seems more right than wrong

It's rare that I find it difficult to put down a non-fiction book because I'm so eager to read the final chapters and grasp the author's concluding arguments. Such was the case, though, with The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. I hadn't planned to spend so much time reading the book this morning, but I carried on until I'd read all but a technical appendix. Hoffman's Big Idea is this: evolution selects for fitness, not truth. If a living organism perceives reality well enough to be able to pass on its…
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Posted inIndia

More evidence of Hindu nationalism in India

It's amusing how some commenters on a recent blog post where I shared an opinion piece about India trampling on the rights of people in Kashmir (who are mostly Muslim) are claiming that Hindu nationalism is "fake news."  Actually, Hindu nationalism is real, and dangerous in the same way that Christian nationalism in the United States is. For more evidence, here's a New York Times story, "India Plans Big Detention Camps for Migrants. Muslims Are Afraid." Excerpts: NEW DELHI — More than four million people in India, mostly Muslims, are at risk of being declared foreign migrants as the government…
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Posted inHappiness

No lions? Then relax. Especially if you’re a zebra.

I've been saying "No lions" to myself quite often the past few days. Not because there aren't any lions in my life, because there also aren't any elephants, black holes, or starfish in my immediate vicinity, and I don't go around commenting on their absence via my inner thoughts. Rather, recently I started reading Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, a book by Robert M. Sapolsky. First published in 1994, it's been updated regularly, with the current 3rd edition coming out in 2004. Naturally I checked the index under "ulcers" to see if Sapolsky talks about the research that implicates H.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB volunteers punch someone in the face at Haynes Park

Hypocrisy is rampant in every religion. When love is preached from the pulpit, hate often is in the minds of believers. When humility is set forth as a virtue, egotism frequently is on actual display. Here's an example from Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an Indian religious organization led by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years before I saw the light and deconverted. What follows is the tale of a frequent commenter on this blog, Osho Robbins. He's a bit of an iconoclast, since he enjoys going to RSSB meetings, including those where the current RSSB guru…
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Posted inIndia

Hindu nationalism, Modi, and Kashmir

I make no claim to being an expert on either the history of India or current happenings in this vast, complicated country. But news stories I've read about India's crackdown on Kashmir, which historically has enjoyed a large degree of independence, certainly are disturbing. As is the rise in Hindu nationalism, which bears some disturbing resemblance to the cries of fundamentalist Christians in the United States, "This is a Christian nation!"  Which is untrue. Just as it is untrue that India is a Hindu nation. At any rate, I just came across a Washington Post opinion piece by Kapil Komireddi,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Fortis files suit to get money that reportedly went into Dhillon family pockets

Today a commenter on this blog shared a link to a Business Standard story that can only be read in its entirety by subscribers. But since it deals with a subject that's I've written about frequently -- the financial scandal involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- I'm sharing a screenshot of the abbreviated story.Scroll down for my take on it. Rs 520 crore is about $72 million, with Rs 403 crore being about $56 million.This action by Fortis was anticipated back in May, as discussed in a LiveMint story,…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

My “Break Free of Dogma” book is live on Amazon

Today's visit to our mailbox was both exciting and a bit scary. I knew that Amazon would have delivered a print copy of my new book, Break Free of Dogma, which consists of 93 posts that I selected from the early years of this blog, 2004-06.  But even though the cover and interior design files uploaded without a hitch, I couldn't be sure the book would look as good as I expected until I ripped open the Amazon package. Delight! Here I am, doing the obligatory author-selfie thing. I chose to have a painting of my mother when she was sixteen…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Osho Robbins talks with Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Osho Robbins is a frequent commenter on this blog who enjoys asking the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, probing questions. Me, I'm not into gurus anymore. But I realize that many people who visit this blog are interested in what Dhillon has to say. So below is what Robbins shared in several email messages. Since I was a member of RSSB for thirty-five years, I'm familiar with the organization's traditional teachings and books. Thus I was struck by a seeming contradiction in what Robbins says below. On the one hand, Dhillon told Robbins that what's…
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Posted inReality Science

Calculus is cool. Spiritual, even. Infinity rocks.

Astoundingly, I'm enjoying a book about calculus, Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz. The subtitle is the reason: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe. Hey, I'm all in on having the secrets of the universe revealed to me. Especially when the cost was a mere $16.52 to have Amazon deliver the book to my doorstep.  I started this post with the word "astoundingly" because I was forced to take a calculus class in the first year of my Systems Science Ph.D. program studies way back when. (I completed the course work, but then gave up on being called Dr.…
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Posted inUncategorized

Three of my favorite mindfulness sayings

Last year I noted that "Mindfulness has become my meditation." That's been true for quite a few years. For a long time, over three decades, I was a believer in a mystical form of meditation aimed at detaching one's consciousness from materiality and letting it soar into non-physical spiritual regions of reality. Sounds good. But it was a fantasy. There's zero demonstrable evidence that supernatural domains even exist, with less than zero evidence (assuming that's possible) anyone has gained access to them.  But this world is real. Sure, there's valid doubts about how accurately the human brain is able to…
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Posted inFree will

Fated to become who we are, each of us is marvelously unique

I'm fascinated by the subject of free will. Or more accurately, the lack thereof.  As noted in countless (more or less) blog posts I've written about free will, the arguments in favor of determinism strike me as much stronger than a belief in some sort of magic free will fairy dust that, poof!, somehow makes it possible for us humans to transcend our genetics, experiences, culture, education, upbringing, and so much else that has caused us to become the person we are now. My latest foray into this subject is Hannah Critchlow's book, "The Science of Fate: Why Your Future…
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