Today, I switched the name of this blog back to the original. It started as "Diary of a Christian Skeptic". That seems to capture what I am doing. From time to time, other issues have seemed to be "central". It turns out that I have found many "central" issues. The average person has heard more about the Zen of Peanuts than the Zen of Bodhisattva . At the time of writing, I have begun to regard my mention of "Zen" ideas as convenient terminology, since most people have only a vague idea of what Zen means. Even serious practitioners differ on the fundamentals. This is not a lot different from the way people use "spiritual" or "Christian". In any case, what I wish to share is my own experience on the path, whatever the path may be. Is it the path to "enlightenment"? How would I know? 

Jacob Chansley (with The Horns) Got 41 Months in Prison Totally Repudiated Q-Anon Etc It is a total mystery why some people refuse to get vaccinated or why an entire political party seems to be living in an alternate reality. As I write, thousands of health care workers in New York have refused to get the first jab in order to go back to work. And the "audits" keep coming. What the f*k is going on? To understand human behavior, you must stand back. Compassion must always be the starting point. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Through long effort, I reduced my own FI (f*g idiot) score from 9 (MAGA hat) to 5 (seriously confused). Along the way, I have had bizarre ideas about "reality" and acted on them. Sometimes with tragic results. Anti-vaxxers don't have a monopoly on stupidity. When I was about 5 years old, I grew skeptical of the stories everyone seemed to believe about some fat guy at the North Pole delivering presents for all the children of the world...