Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

Just this — a simple yet profound Zen saying

Zen Buddhism is known for focusing on the natural world rather than abstract concepts. Chopping wood and carrying water are favored over devotion to God and similar thoughts divorced from everyday reality. Just this. A simple yet profound Zen saying. Just this breath in meditation. Just this step in walking the dog. Just this seeing of the full moon. Just this sensation of a hot bath. There's nothing lacking in just this, nothing to strive for, nothing to hope for, nothing to pray for. The present moment is complete. Undeniable. Impossible to argue with. Beyond doubt. Religious notions of faith…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A message for those thinking of leaving RSSB, Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I just received this message via the Contact form for this blog. It was so well said, I'm sharing it as a blog post. It relates to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years. This is for anyone who is unhappy and is thinking of leaving RSSB. If you are here to attack free speech, this is NOT for you. This is mainly for the Indian kids born and raised in the western world who inherited this from their family from Day 1. Just remember your ancestors…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Science

Why keeping an open mind on the divine is a stupid idea

Sometimes intelligent people can say some really stupid things. I know this as an experiential fact, because I'm intelligent and I've said some really stupid things. In conversations. In books I've written. In my blog posts. When I do this, it's entirely fair for other people to criticize what I've said. That's why I feel equally justified in calling an essay in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, "Why You Should Keep an Open Mind on the Divine," a stupid idea. Brooks starts off by quoting Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man to orbit the Earth: “Sometimes people are…
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Posted inFree will

If hurricanes, trees, lions, and brain-damaged people don’t have free will, why believe that most humans do?

A massive hurricane just struck the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Aside perhaps from a few extreme pantheists who consider that consciousness exists in every part of the universe, nobody believes that the hurricane could have freely chosen to head in a different direction, at a different strength. A tree falls in a forest, crushing a family enjoying a picnic. Only those who take the Lord of the Rings movies literally, where trees have the ability to talk and walk, would argue that the tree bears responsibility for it falling, because it could have decided to remain standing. On a nature…
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Posted inArtificial intelligence Neuroscience

The real danger of A.I. isn’t that it becomes like a human mind, but that the human mind already is like A.I.

Artificial Intelligence, A.I., is a big deal nowadays. I just heard a financial expert say that if the burgeoning investments in A.I. are subtracted from growth in the United States, that growth would be flat. Meaning, A.I. is driving the upturn in the stock market, as well as capturing the public's imagination. Much of that imagining involves fears that before too long, A.I. will surpass the human mind in general intelligence. And not by a little. By a lot. Then, who knows how super-intelligent A.I. systems will behave? Will they turn on their human creators once they attain a mind…
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Posted inIndia Spiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual sickness arises from meditating too assiduously. Or viewing India as a promised land.

Most people view spirituality and meditation as a good thing. Often, it is. But almost always, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. Too much eating leads to obesity. Too much exercising leads to muscle/joint problems. Likewise, too much meditating, or meditating in the wrong way, can lead to ill effects. That's one of the messages in the "Spiritual Sickness" chapter in Scott Carney's book, The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain. I'd never heard of lung, the meditator's disease, until I read this passage in that chapter. In 2002, she recited mantras…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

No free will brings great news: You are innocent of your past mistakes

There's plenty of reasons not to believe in free will. The most important and basic reason is that free will is an illusion. Robert Sapolsky made strong arguments for this in his book, Determined. I wrote quite a few posts about this wonderful book. A summary of his arguments in Sapolsky's own words can be found here. But once we accept the reality that free will doesn't exist, a question arises: What does this mean for how we live? In one sense, not much. For the illusion of free will is so strong, even Sapolsky admits that almost always, he feels…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Regret seems useless to me, especially if there’s no free will

I regret quite a few things that I've done in my life. Everybody does. At least, everybody that I know. But recently it dawned on me that regret is almost always a useless emotion, whether or not we possess free will. (I'm convinced that free will is an illusion.) I'll illustrate why I feel this way with a simple example. This afternoon I left home a bit later than usual for the drive to our athletic club, where I exercise on Monday before going to my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem. I mildly regretted not leaving on time, since…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

To look at life and deeply feeling one day it will end — for me that’s the essence of spirituality

Everyone has their own personal approach to spirituality, even if it is to say, "Spirituality is a load of crap, I have no interest in it." I'm sympathetic with that attitude, because I've become increasingly reluctant to use that term, spirituality. It's difficult to find substitutes, given that the word is so commonly used to denote looking for meaning in life in some sort of non-materialistic fashion. I mean, an avid gambler finds meaning in placing bets, but few people would consider that a spiritual pursuit. I suppose it doesn't really matter if there isn't a coherent widely-agreed upon definition…
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Posted inScience

Provocative idea: there are only two branches of science, physics and evolution

Science is our best way of learning what is true about the world. Those truths, obviously, include us humans, since we are part of the world. So this makes science not something to be admired from the outside of the human condition, but as something that points to the essence of you, me, and everybody else on our planet. This is one reason why I ordered Mark Vellend's book, Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics, soon after I saw a mention of it in one of the science magazines I subscribe to. Evolution…
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Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

The dry clarity of one who no longer lies

This morning I felt in love. With a chapter in Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning. I knew that I wanted to share it in a blog post tonight. But it was a long chapter. I doubted I could type all of it into a post. So I started typing, figuring that at some point my fingers would tire, the time would grow late, and I'd have to pick and choose what to share, and what to leave out. Yet as I got into the rhythm of Saltzman's writing, needing to pay…
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Posted inReligions

I’m opposed to religions. But what really is “religion”?

During the 21 year lifespan of this blog, I've devoted many posts to criticizing religions and religiosity. I'm fine with exploring the Big Questions of Life. It just seems to me that there are much better ways of doing this than through a religion. Here's a bit of a complication, though. My wife, a fellow atheist, subscribes to the print edition of the Sunday New York Times. A few days ago she gave me a page from the Opinion section of the October 5 issue that contained The Problem Lurking Beneath Our Church-State Debates. That's a gift link, so everybody…
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Posted inMindfulness Reality

What if this here and now is our true home?

You know what's really strange? That the title of this blog post sounds strange to so many people. I mean, all those people, who once included myself, who consider that this world we're living in here and now actually isn't where we are supposed to be. That Other Place, that Mystical Destination, that Promised Land -- religions and philosophies disagree about what it consists of, but for billions of humans it is a real thing, a goal to be pursued. So Christians yearn for heaven, or the Second Coming here on Earth. Hindus hope that their eternal soul, Atman, will…
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Posted inBooks Happiness Meaning of life

Top ten list for a psychologically rich life

In his book, Life in Three Dimensions, psychologist Shigehiro Oishi lays out in a convincing manner why the customary divisions of a good life into happiness and meaning fail to capture an important additional area: psychological richness. (See my first two posts about the book, here and here.) This notion of psychological richness resonates with me. Most of us, certainly me included, can recall experiences that didn't make us happy, nor were they meaningful, but they were interesting and important nonetheless. They added depth to our life, exposing us to a side of life that we hadn't been aware of…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Truth is so important, it must be defended with zeal (but not zealotry)

Today I had an interview with Ken Adams, the host of a show on KMUZ here in Salem, a community radio station. You can hear all about it in this link of the podcast, which appeared after the live broadcast was over. (Well, sort of live; Ken and I recorded it yesterday, because I don't function well at 8 am.) I'll also include the audio file directly, in case the link ever goes away. Our subject was the findings of an investigation into the misdeeds of the Salem Mayor, Julie Hoy. I filed a complaint with the Oregon Government Ethics…
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Posted inReligions

Why asking ‘Is it a cult?’ may not be the best approach

I'm pleased to share a guest blog post from Graeme Docherty. Recently Graeme emailed me with thoughts about a subject I'd been writing about, which led to us exchanging several messages. When he asked if I'd be interested in a post he'd like to write about Scientology, I said "sure." After all, I have no direct experience of Scientology. Here's what Graeme wrote. Below it I'll share my reaction to his essay. Why asking ‘Is it a cult?’ may not be the best approach When investigating the topic of cults, sects, and religious groups that are deemed to be separate…
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Posted inDelusions Spiritual practice/meditation

Becoming is a fallacy. Instead, simply be, without the coming.

In my thirty-five years of belonging to an Eastern religion headed up by a guru, I heard lots of statements like this. Some came from me. "I'm going to become enlightened." "I'm going to become a more devoted disciple." "I'm going to become a better meditator." "I'm going to become God-realized." "I"m going to become a knower of ultimate reality." There's nothing wrong with having aspirations, goals, intentions. However, there's a problem with becoming in the realm of spiritual practice. It can easily become the proverbial carrot in front of a donkey -- always just out of reach, no matter…
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Posted inDelusions Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t let your spirituality be second-hand. Know truth by yourself, for yourself.

I've almost finished reading Robert Saltzman's book, The Ten Thousand Things. I highly recommend it to anybody who is open to embracing an approach to life that is both really simple, and also really radical -- if like me, you've spent much of your life exploring second-hand spirituality. By second-hand, I mean learning how other people have explored what life is all about. At various times I've had a great fondness for Rumi, medieval Christian mystics (especially Meister Eckhart, Alan Watts, modern Hindu sages, and many other people who have written about how they approached the Big Questions of what…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB medical relief society spends over $14 million on fancy house in India, seemingly for the guru’s use

It bothers me when a religious organization that claims to be about spiritual advancement and helping others spends large sums of money on maintaining the lavish lifestyle of the organization's leader. It bothers me even more when the organization is Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in India and led by a guru. Well, actually two gurus at the moment, one of whom is Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who has held that post since 1990. That was when the RSSB guru who initiated me, Charan Singh, died. Charan was truly humble and unassuming. Gurinder is very different, having taken…
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Posted inAtheism Christianity/Jesus

Here’s some thoughtful messages to me from a churchless Christian

John is a Church of the Churchless visitor who exchanges emails with me from time to time. He's my type of Christian: the non-believing kind. Meaning, he still has some connections to Christianity through his still-believing wife, and John doesn't trumpet his atheist de-conversion to his friends and family. With his permission I've shared some of his messages before. Now I'm doing it again. John writes well and has a nice way of putting things. Thoughtful, down-to-earth, light hearted. Here's a couple of recent messages from John. I added the links to the blog posts he mentions. Hey Brian. I…
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