Blog Stats
- 2,861,028 readers since June 2008
Recent Comments
- Philosophy homework help - Nursing Essays Center on Feminism for Beginners
- Philosophy homework help - Coursework Heros on Feminism for Beginners
- Pat on Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
- Answer the questions | Philosophy homework help | Writings Gate on Feminism for Beginners
- mike on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- Ray Léonard on In praise of Chateauneuf (Voltaire’s godfather and tutor)
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Green on What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Joshx45 on Feminism for Beginners
- Roger lynn mason on Blogging UFOs: What Do You Make of Professor Robert Jacobs’s Bizarre UFO Testimony?
- geoenergymath on On the Far Right, Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney Are Not Conservative Enough!
- John Mack on Would Friedrich Nietzsche have admired Ayn Rand?
Top Posts
- Emily Dickinson, Lesbian?: Her Letter to Susan Gilbert, in June of 1852, Might Tell Us Less Than You Think
- Clit Rubbing Bonobos: A Clue to the Evolutionary Origin of Human Homosexuality?
- What, Exactly, Is Wrong With Bestiality?
- Walt Whitman: "To be indeed a God!"
- Huell Howser Impersonator
- About Santi Tafarella
- What is an Etiological Narrative? And Might Confusion About Its Nature Be the Source for Fundamentalist Religion?
- The Santi Report (My Version of a Drudge Report Page)
- Daniel Dennett: the Vanquisher of "Deepity" Religion---and Poetry?
- The Communion Wafer is Not Just a Cracker---But PZ Myers Shouldn't Lose His Job for Saying So
-
Recent Posts
Recent Haiku Tweets
- @abrahampiper Yahweh as a frustrated deity, much to be pitied! Abraham Piper's insight here, if thought about as a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 9 months ago
- RT @tbonier: More than 80M votes cast and we're not done yet. Thoughts: - It's too late for an "October surprise" to have a significant imp… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: 1. Want to thank @DanielNewman for using his HUGE platform for this work. I want to clarify what this is. In the voter… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Tell me again about how old and feeble Joe Biden is??? twitter.com/ProjectLincoln… 1 year ago
- RT @RachelBitecofer: Remember when you had a chance to choose country over party and you chose party @SenatorCollins? Well, @ProjectLincol… 1 year ago
Tag Archives: Hinduism
Is Atheist Sam Harris Sexy? Nagarjuna’s Opinion–And Thomas Aquinas’
Sam Harris is sexy, right? Perhaps you agree. But think again. How you answer this question says a lot about your orientation. Not your sexual orientation. Or at least not just your sexual orientation. It reveals something about how you … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged aquinas, atheism, Buddhism, emptiness, Hinduism, non-dual, Sam Harris, Tao Te Ching
18 Comments
Practicing Angry
Hmm.
Penguin Withdraws and Destroys Scholarly Work on Hinduism
A pretty disturbing incident of censorship is taking place right now in India. A retired school teacher has been campaigning for the banning of a book, and Penguin is relenting, pulping its remaining copies. You can read the whole sorry … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged book banning, censorship, Hinduism, India, Islam, Pakistan, religion
20 Comments
The Religion Tree: A Poem
THE RELIGION TREE I. The leaf doesn’t fall far from the tree, and we are all leaves on the same tree, and will take our leave from here. II. The yellow leaf signals fall, the green leaf, pride before the fall. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Nietzsche, poetry, religion, taoism
Leave a comment
An Incarnation of Shiva
_________
The New Hitler Youth of India
With India’s rise on the global stage, it would seem valuable to know the attitudes of its most elite educated teenagers, and Dilip D’Sousa at the Daily Beast reports that a not inconsiderable number of them harbor fascist sentiments: My … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged antisemitism, fascism, herderianism, Hinduism, Hitler, India, Islam, nationalism, Pakistan, the future
7 Comments
The Saintly Ramana Maharshi
The real deal (mostly): _____ And: _____ And here is the book containing Ramana Maharshi’s talks that you might find interesting.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Atman, Brahman, Hinduism, monism, philosophy, ramana maharshi, yoga
Leave a comment
Baloney Detector
How well does a belief that you currently subscribe to hold up under these 10 questions? Do I have any actual evidence for the thing I say I believe, and what is the extent and quality of that evidence? If … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheist, baloney detector, critical thinking, Hinduism, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, Michael Shermer, muhammad, Politics, reason
4 Comments
The Religion Tree
Using the metaphor of a tree, in the following poem I try to boil down the essence of the human predicament (which I take to be suffering, change, and death) and the response of each major religion to it (including the atheist … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, God, Hinduism, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, poems, poetry, taoism
Leave a comment
If You’re Angry, And Words Fail
Don’t shoot! Try gesture: . Or, how about this? (Buddhist equanimity.) . The above painting is from a Laotian monastery. It’s an image of the Buddha leading monks through a treacherous path. He is silent and calm, walking through … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anger, Buddha, Buddhism, grace, Hinduism, life, light, love, meditation, revenge, truth, yoga
Leave a comment
Neurons That Fire Together Wire Together: The New York Times Says 8 Weeks of Meditation, 30 Minutes a Day, May Change the Brain
More study is needed (obviously), but the New York Times, in its Health section, has a startling article on meditation’s apparent ability to literally change how the brain wires itself up, and that after only 8 weeks of very modest (30 minutes a day) meditation … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, fitness, Hinduism, meditation, neurons, neuroscience, psychology, quantum physics, the brain, vipassana, yoga
16 Comments
The Internet: Where Religions Come to Die?
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged apologetics, atheism, Christianity, God, Hinduism, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, psychology, reason, science
3 Comments
Talking about Love Some More
It seems to me that George Harrison’s song, “Within You, Without You,” says a lot of true things in a short space. Here are the lyrics: We were talking about the space between us all, and the people who hide … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, dialogue, george harrison, Hinduism, Jesus, life, love, meditation, muhammad, talking, yoga
Leave a comment
A Swami for a Sunday
Swami Satchidananda is my all-time favorite Hindu guru. His name consists of a combination of three terms that, taken together, sum up rather nicely the Hindu spiritual quest: that which is (sat); that which is consciousness (chid); that which is bliss (ananda). … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Bhagavad Gita, death, flow, gurus, Hinduism, life, meditation, philosophy, Swami Satchidananda, yoga
1 Comment
Saudi Woman Links to International Have a Meal with a Muslim Day (Sept 17, 2010)
At her Twitter feed, the brave Saudi feminist, Eman Al Nafjan, who blogs at SaudiWoman, linked to International Have a Meal with a Muslim Day, which I take as an endorsement. And I’ve also been informed that an imam in Baltimore … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, dialogue, food, Hinduism, international, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, muhammad, Muslim, Muslims, the Enlightenment
7 Comments
Herderian Religious Cleansing, 1930s style, in Malaysia and the United States
Here’s an image of a book burning in Berlin, May 10, 1933: And here’s an image of a burned out synagogue after Krisallnacht (November, 1938): These two images are what anti-Enlightenment Herderian political action so readily devolves into. And now here … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Christianity, freedom, ground zero mosque, herder, herderianism, herderites, Hinduism, Islam, religious intolerance, tea partiers
1 Comment
Maybe God Wants to Be Left Alone
Here’s a little double bind to contemplate: if we do not know the will of God, or whether he exists, and yet we nevertheless seek to discover answers to these questions, we might be annoying God. Why? Because God may not like people … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Buddhism, Christianity, God, Hinduism, Islam, Jesus, Judaism, Mohammad, monotheism, prayer, the lord's prayer, will of God
2 Comments
Why We Should Build Human Solidarity on Reason, Not Race, Faith, or Nation
Reason, to my mind, is a human universal (though some do it far better than others). In other words, barring intellectual disability or brain injury, human beings have a universal capacity for reasoning with others: we can deduct, induct, experiment, … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged anglo-french enlightenment, atheist, Buddhism, critical thinking, enlightenment, God, Hinduism, human universals, Islam, Jesus, reason, Voltaire
16 Comments
The Tortoise Shell, the Umbrella, and Hindu Meditation
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna (Barbara Miller’s translation, pt. 2 stanzas 55-58): When he [the yogi] gives up desires in his mind, is content with the self within himself, then he is said to be a man whose insight … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Arjuna, aversion, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, desire, freedom, happiness, Hinduism, krishna, meditation, vipassana, yoga
1 Comment
Prometheus Unbound 