To be dogmatic here for a moment, it seems to be obvious that we have no soul, no "self."  Just sit quietly and "watch" your thoughts (be mindful).  You can see that all it is is a process of one thought after another, loosely connected, sometimes branching and going in circles, sometimes starting off on a new track, sometimes influenced by an uprising emotion or memory or an external stimulus. 

There is a difference between things that.are processes (where each event occurs in sequence and pushes itself along) and material of even spiritual objects, that have tangible stasis and properties.  A wave is like our mind -- it generally pushes itself along but still is influenced by the lay of the land, by the wind, by passing objects, by interaction with other waves, and so on.  The water that is the medium of the wave moves in little circles as the wave passes, but is not the wave.

What happens at death is of course that the medium the mind has for this process -- brain we suppose -- stops functioning and decays.  What then can possible happen to mind?  It is hard to imagine it continuing elsewhere, without a medium, but of course this is the foundation idea of rebirth teachings.

I doubt there is any meaning in life, and good things we do end up working good largely by accident.  Indeed, there is probably no meaning in the universe.  Only existence, and it is something of a trap.  I express this all as probable, not sure, since on something so significant any kind of assurance is out of reach.

In the meantime we can be compassionate, try to avoid hurting others, and help where we are sure our help will really help.

Of course there are truths in the Bible -- no one doubts for example that there existed a city of Jerusalem or a country of Egypt.  That is like saying there are truths in the Iliad -- but that doesn't prove much -- few today believe in Apollo and Athena and so on.

All texts, even modern ones but even more those from ancient times, need to be read skeptically (not cynically), and texts that refer to outlandish things like talking asses and fire and brimstone from the sky and divine voices from burning bushes need a particular skepticism -- one that says the more "out" a statement is, the more evidence is needed.  Basically whenever an ancient text speaks of miraculous happenings, it should be doubted -- not just the miraculous parts but all of it -- until there is independent non-miraculous support.

This doesn't mean the ancient authors were deliberately lying, but only that they were recording stories that had come down to them in their culture -- just as the stories of Robin Hood or King Arthur came down to the Middle Ages in European cultures and later got written down as fact, when in fact they were myths.

A simple rule I wish everyone would practice, especially myself: one's personal experiences are proof of nothing and extremely weak evidence, and if they are self-flattering to boot they will only produce scorn.

That doesn't mean it is bad to tell personal stories, but only as entertainment or as illustration to help with understanding.  In short they should be treated as anologies.

On its surface banning harmful things sounds like a good idea, and it is always possible to think of things everyone will concede has to be at least very strictly regulated.

However, this requires restricting personal freedom, hiring police and judges and prison guards.  It also requires spying on the public, putting innocent people in jail, or maybe just naive kids and thereby ruining their futures.

In short although it seems bans are the first reaction to harmful things, it should in fact be an absolute last resort in any society that calls itself free.

Self awareness or mindfulness is something we can teach ourselves, but it doesn't hurt to get advice or read up on it.  So many people I fear go through life with little or no self-examination, or when they do examine themselves it is against irrational or even harmful standards, and full of rationalizations to enable them to excuse themselves or to continue doing and believing things that are not rationally based, but instead come from indoctrination or desires.  Religions are a major offender here, in particular when they encourage irrational beliefs based on their authority or tradition or some divine claim or another.

We tend to refer to spiritually advanced people as "old souls"(although of course all souls are really the same age, probably unlimited).  It is something about their personality and their approach to things.

It isn't or at least is not entirely a matter of interest in religion; indeed they may even be anti-religious in the usual sense of organizations.  Nor is it gullibility (those who tend to think "belief" and faith are important, or who want so much for the universe to be a big kindly teddy bear).  They tend to know and do the right thing automatically, without thinking about it and without goodness motives.  They tend to nod and find something in whatever you say that they can agree with, and reinforce that rather than getting negative.  Indeed they seem inherently happy no matter what.

I don't know if I am being too fussy or not, but the "dark side" of the moon is not dark and gets as much light as the side facing us.  The moon is not illuminated by the earth but by the sun, and it rotates relative to the sun.  We would be better calling the "sides" of the moon the front and back sides.

Seems to me anyone who has been in a country long enough to put down firm roots should be deemed legal.  The whole business of rules as to who can enter and who cannot is at root racism anyway and Trump is playing a racist card if he not not actually a racist himself.

If you insist on "justice" and therefore a penalty for the illegal entry, then impose a reasonable fine (let the punishment fit the crime).  America has, just as it also has with things like drugs and gambling, created a criminal class of non-criminals.  If they commit real crimes put them in jail, whether they were born in the States or not.  Twenty to forty million people just cannot be deported, and cannot be allowed to continue festering as a permanent under-class subject to exploitation by real criminals.  Have some sense, Americans, and stop being so self-righteous.

What or who is going to win a given struggle is only in a small way determined by how the forces look on paper.  Motivation, skill, training, leadership, domestic support, what the locals think, and all sorts of other things, including luck, enter into it.  It's the course of wisdom to avoid conflict even if one feels oneself significantly stronger.

Matters of courtesy and respect require common sense, but using examples where common sense makes the rule obviously inapplicable is "slippery slope" fallacy, and, to my mind just someone looking for excuses to engage in racist or sexist, or whatever, behavior.

So, for example, if someone were to whisper to you at a party about someone nearby, "You know, she's a dyke," (a mildly derogatory reference to a masculine lesbian), almost always one would let it pass except maybe change the subject or maybe excuse oneself and find other company.

I would say that being offended by such things, just as being offended when someone is disrespectful, does no good and the only harm is to oneself.  It's like when someone uses a harsh obscenity or commits a grammatical error or other faux pas -- our getting upset only raises our blood pressure, not theirs.

Still, it also seems to me that one cannot let especially bad bits of racism and other such things go unremarked.  This is tough.  It may be a cultural blindness (as what happened to me once when I used the word "spastic" in central England -- it seems this word is taboo in Britain but of course frequently heard in the States without offense.  The thing is, care is needed when protesting to such things, as one is more likely to reinforce the prejudice than anything else.

It may also be deliberate crudity for humor or a thrill or just a bad habit. I tend to avoid associating with such people, especially if they rationalize or complain about political correctness.  They aren't worth my time and I figure they say similar things about me when I'm not there.

We should only follow our mind and what we can see is sensible and fits the evidence, and even then never with  absolute belief or faith but only with well formed opinion.

Following what we find beautiful or makes us happy to contemplate or gives us joy or any of those things is the well-traveled road to regression and disappointment.  Peace and lasting happiness comes from accepting what is and not chasing rainbows and mirages and other things we would like to be the case.

There is such a thing as a sociopath -- a person commonly described as without a conscience -- and I suppose if you put that in the same person with a strong sexual sadism perversion, one would have a product we would easily call evil.

This however doesn't address the point I was making which is more philosophical and not psychiatric.  To call a person evil is a judgment and I think it is not only morally wrong but also unscientific and simply a  mistake to make judgment calls about people, good or bad.  The individual described in my first paragraph is extremely unlucky  to have such an inheritance or development, and needs help and deterrence, but thinking of them as evil distorts the reality.  They act out of internal desires and instincts, not much different from a cat playing with a mouse it has caught rather than dispatching it immediately.

In short I think evil is a word generally best avoided or just used as a form of shorthand to indicate strong personal disapproval but not as a description of something real in the world.

No one is either good nor evil.  Some do more good in this world and some do more harm, and that eventually works its consequences, but we evolve and learn and become (not necessarily for the better) as time passes.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I think mind is a spiritual thing divorced from my body and that goes on after my body dies.  That explains a lot, especially how it is that my mind experiences its existence, such as the terrible itch on the scab on my knee  I got being reckless on a bicycle -- what is an "itch" anyway and how in creation can molecules and electrons moving around generate this experience in my mind?

The rest of the time I realize that if I get Alzheimer's or something like that my mind will dissolve, so it seems a good predictor of what will happen when I die, and even though the experience of "qualia" is a more difficult problem than the typical materialist is capable of understanding, the fact that I see no way to understand it doesn't mean there can't be a way.

Quanta and so on are fascinating but seem irrelevant to all this.  More important is the old criticism of Cartesian Dualism, how does mind move the body?

It enters my mind that if you believe in the Devil or in demons or whatever you admit or presume that "evil" is a real thing, and have the burden of showing that this is so.

Now, lots of bad things happen to all of us.  Typhoons blow, volcanoes erupt, diseases come and we age and die.  None of that, though, is "evil."  It is just what is -- and all have both good and bad aspects to them, depending on viewpoint.

People too do bad things -- they steal and kill and whatever.  Do these things have a good aspect?   I rather think not -- some more subtle perspective is needed -- the harm the criminal does harms the victim and also harms the criminal (in either a karmic way or in the Western sense of accumulating sins).  We know, however, that the criminal is motivated mainly by the same sorts of desires and drives that motivates all of us to do bad things -- they are just less inhibited, perhaps, or less intelligent (they don't get away with it).  I find it hard to say that my impulses -- my ambition, my pride, my libido, my desire to have others like me, and so on.  These are desires derived from the subconscious -- even deeper down -- and evolved as instincts that get modified and made acceptable by our acculturation and morals and so on, and it is hard to say that an instinct evolved for natural reasons (survival of genes) is somehow "evil," even though sometimes it leads to harm.

It's really easy -- never believe anything without good reason for believing it, and the more outlandish the thing the stronger the reasons have to be.  The secret to successfully employing this rule to reach any sort of truth is rigid honesty with oneself and complete suppression of what we would like to be the case in favor of what really is the case.