Posted inPersonal/Stories

“The Prize,” my ready-to-steal spiritual screenplay idea

I've never written a screenplay. I've only read one screenplay. But I know from watching TV and movies that pitches for screenplays often take the form of X meets Y. And I can do that much. The Da Vinci Code meets Contact. There... million dollar screenplay contract, please. Major movie studios can reach me at the email address in the right sidebar. But actually I'm fine with someone stealing my idea, which is a mixture of spiritual (a la The Da Vinci Code) and far-out scientific (a la Contact), since I'd love to see the movie that I'm unable to…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

1986 murder of two RSSB initiates raises serious spiritual questions

I just came across a LA Weekly story, "A 1986 Murder Cold Case in the Mojave Desert is Finally Unraveling," about the gruesome killing of two members of an Indian spiritual organization that I used to belong to, Radha Soami Satsange Beas.    Here's some excerpts from the well-written piece about the disappearance of Barry and Louise Berman, whose bodies were found almost three years later after heavy rains uncovered a skull seven miles from a remote campground. The late summer of 1988 brought flash flooding to Saline Valley. On Nov. 12, 1988, a hiker stumbled upon a human skull.…
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Posted inBuddhism

Donald Trump has some (mild) Buddhist leanings

OK, I get what this guy is saying in "Donald Trump, Accidental Buddhist." Let's just stress the accidental. Have a read on the New York Times site.  Or, the piece is short, so I've shared it below.        Donald Trump, Accidental Buddhist By BEN DOLNICKDEC. 7, 2017 Donald Trump is the contemporary master of a little-used literary device: the narcissistic third person. On the indictment of Paul Manafort: “There’s not even a mention of Trump in there.” On the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 election: “Perhaps Trump just ran a great campaign?” Even his very first…
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Posted inReality Religions

How deluded are you? (If you’re religious, you’ll score higher.)

The most recent issue of New Scientist has a story called "Delusional You." The online version is differently titled: Grand delusions: Why we all believe the weirdest things. Now, most of us consider that it is other people who are deluded, and that we're an exception, being nicely connected to reality. Which, I suppose, is another delusion. Here's an excerpt from the story. That we are all prone to delusions may not be so surprising. A range of cognitive biases makes the human mind fertile soil for growing all kinds of irrational beliefs. Confirmation bias, for example, means we ignore inconvenient…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Death and non-existence is scary. Not facing reality, even scarier.

I'm afraid of death. This is natural. It is normal for a living being to try to cling to life and avoid death for as long as possible.  But as I wrote about twelve years ago in "Death and the primal fear of nonexistence," I regularly get glimpses into what it means to not exist forever. I don't mean a glimpse into the actuality of non-existence, because I won't be around to experience either that, or anything. What I feel is an existential terror that seems different to me from a fear of dying. It is the stark reality that…
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Posted inMystics Religions

Militants kill 305 Sufis in the name of God. Religions are crazy.

All terrorist attacks are despicable and difficult to comprehend. But when Muslim militants killed 305 Sufis, members of their own religion whose supposed crime is viewing Islam differently -- that's freaking insane.  Back in my true believing days, before I saw the atheist light, for several years I became a huge fan of Rumi. I bought just about every English language book about Rumi and his teachings. Rumi was a Sufi. So this helps explain my outrage at the killings in the Sinai Peninsula.  Here's some excerpts from a New York Times story, "Who Are Sufi Muslims and Why Do…
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Posted inReligions

America versus the Godless Civilized World: we’re crazily religious

I just finished reading a disturbing chapter in Kurt Andersen's book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire." Disturbing, because in America Versus the Godless Civilized World: Why Are We So Exceptional?, Andersen presents facts about our zealous religiosity that sent chills up my atheist spine. These facts weren't totally new to me. But they were conveyed in a way that made it clearer than ever how religiously wacko the United States is -- not only compared to other advanced countries, but even countries with a reputation for religious mania. Here's some quotes from the chapter: According to a Gallup Poll in 1968,…
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Posted inScience

What does it mean if you are, because you have to be?

The title of this blog post sounds like a theological or philosophical question. Actually, it is an outgrowth of a scientific theory, that of eternal inflation.  Which doesn't mean that the price of stuff keeps going up forever. In this context it means universes being created without end. So in an infinity of universes, there is room for anything and everything to happen.  However, even though the question of meaning in an inflationary universe has a scientific origin, physicist Brian Cox says that answers to this question can arise from anyone, which naturally includes you and me. Here's an excerpt from…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation practices only “work” in specific cultural settings

Some people claim that specific sorts of meditation practices are akin to a science that produces the same results, no matter who is doing the meditating or where the meditation is being done. A thoughtful piece by David L. McMahan, "How Meditation Works: Theorizing the Role of Cultural Context in Buddhist Contemplative Practices," casts doubt on this claim. I came across McMahan's essay in a re-tweet by David Chapman of someone else's tweet: I had to jump through some online hoops to download the PDF file. Here it is: Download How_Meditation_Works_Theorizing_the_Role The general thesis seems totally believable to me. People…
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Posted inPolitics

Prayers are useless. Murdered victims were in a church.

Wil Wheaton, an actor, is getting criticism for this Twitter tweet that was in response to a call for prayers by House Speaker Paul Ryan following the murder of 26 people in a Texas church.  Wheaton apologized to offended religious believers, but the points he was making really don't deserve an apology.   First, it is absolutely true that prayers are useless. There's no evidence that praying changes anything in the absence of some physical action. The most scientifically rigorous study of prayer showed no effect on the recovery of people who had heart surgery (prayed-for people actually had more complications,…
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Posted inGod

Ancient religious writings couldn’t predict modern science

My wife, Laurel, has had another faithless letter to the editor published in our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal. The paper titled it, "Newspaper can't be faulted for decline in respect for God." Enjoy: A recent letter to the editor suggested the a decline in "respect for God," even by newspapers, is responsible for an increase in crime (as supposedly evidenced by the space given to sports versus religion). The newspaper is merely keeping up with the times and focusing on fact versus fiction. In this day and age, people are smarter than in the past, (especially younger people) and as…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Pros and cons of faith, nicely expressed

To have faith, or not to have faith. This is a big question. I was pleased to see a thoughtful comment interchange between Spence Tepper and Appreciative Reader on a recent post of mine, "The most amazing thing about religions is that everybody believes they're right." Here's how Spence Tepper views faith: quite positively. Hi Appreciative Reader!Great comments. Thank you for posting a moment of rational thought here.I suggest that everyone, Atheist, blind adherent, "Faithful", or Mystic, has a built in psychological tendency to believe they are generally right. Who doesn't think they are right?And if we are wrong, we…
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Posted inReligions

The most amazing thing about religions is that everyone believes they’re right

Religious people believe in the miraculous. Atheist me finds a different sort of miracle embedded in religiosity: the fact that almost everyone who embraces a particular religion is highly confident, if not absolutely certain, that their particular faith is The True One.  Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and followers of many other creeds (including the Eastern mystical/spiritual teaching I followed for many years, Sant Mat) -- with just a few exceptions each devotee considers that somehow they've been fortunate enough to find the truth about an ultimate divine reality, while billions of people who believe otherwise are sadly deluded. This…
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Posted inBuddhism

No need to have a “calling.” Just live your life.

Someone emailed me a link to a short essay on the Secular Buddhist Association site, "What's your  calling or purpose in life?" I like the author's conclusion: there's no reason to feel that you have a special calling. After all, where would that come from?  The notion of a calling or purpose in life presupposes that such exists somewhere outside of the person's own mind, that somehow we're supposed to identify what we're meant to do with our life as if that was a law of nature akin to gravity or electromagnetism.  Or maybe a better analogy is finding our…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Buddhism doesn’t believe in a soul, which is fine with soulless me

During my religious days I took solace in feeling that I had, or was, a soul that would survive my bodily death. Now, I'm more attached to truth than to fond beliefs, even when they feel good.  So I enjoy many Buddhist writings (just not the ones that talk about reincarnation and other supernatural stuff).  Back in 2012 I resonated with Owen Flanagan's naturalistic take on Buddhism, as I wrote about in "Buddhism says I'm a soulless Heraclitean river. Cool!" So everything is changing. Including me, you, beliefs, brains, selves, Mt. Everest, ants, galaxies, subatomic particles, who is ahead in…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Non-religious people believe in weird stuff also

This isn't a big shocker, really. But it was still surprising to read that people who don't believe in God actually are more likely to hold other unfounded beliefs, like aliens visiting Earth. So says psychologist Clay Routledge in a New York Times piece, "Don't Believe in God? Maybe You'll Try U.F.O.s." People who do not frequently attend church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts as those who are regular churchgoers. The less religious people are, the more likely they are to endorse empirically unsupported ideas about U.F.O.s, intelligent aliens monitoring the lives of humans and related conspiracies…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

How I became disillusioned with a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Today Arjuna left an intriguing question in a comment on my post, "Why I stayed with a religion for 35 years." Hello Brian, I trust you are well? May I ask a question and if you don't wish to reply - please don't. In what ways did you begin noticing Gurinder Singh was just as imperfect as the rest of us? This may help this soul as I need closure on the above question. RegardsArjuna I'm pleased to reply to you, Arjuna. Here's some experiences that come to mind. Understand: my memory about some details of what I'll describe below…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Is God a Taoist? Sure. This dialogue about free will proves it.

My atheist mind goes back and forth between Taoism and Buddhism when I try to decide which secular version of these philosophies appeals the most to me. Since I'm heavy into Tai Chi, which basically is Taoism expressed in human movement, I've got an inclination in that direction. Taoism also resonates with me because its writings often are considerably less serious than the Buddhist variety.  In large part this is because Taoism really doesn't have anything comparable to Buddhism's enlightenment or satori. Nor does Taoism have dogmas akin to the Four Noble Truths. Its a lot more free-flowing, unstructured, and…
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Posted inBooks Politics Religions

Trump administration’s push for religious liberty rooted in “Fantasyland”

The United States is a Fantasyland. And not just any old Fantasyland -- people in this country probably have the most fantastical beliefs of any country in the world.  This is the core message of Kurt Andersen's marvelous book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, a 500-Year History." It's more that 400 pages, but if you want a short overview, check out an Atlantic piece, "How America Lost Its Mind." I've only read the first part of the book. But already it's offered up fresh insights into a familiar topic on this blog, the ridiculousness of giving subjective religious beliefs way…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

We need to honor the brokenness in ourselves. And, in others.

This morning I listened to a wonderful guided meditation on my Calm app about the chips and cracks of our experience. Tamara Levitt ended the meditation with the words I've transcribed below. I couldn't help thinking about how this applies to supposedly "broken people" like the homeless in Salem. Actually, as Levitt says, the Japanese art of Kintsugi shows that healing brokenness results in more beauty, not less. Human flaws produce a tapestry that can't be reproduced, being the product of our unique experience. So rather than extolling those who seem to "have their act together," perhaps we should revere…
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