“All religions are the same: Religion is basically guilt, with different holidays.”

--Cathy Ladman

“Prayer is like a rocking chair: It’ll give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.”

--Gypsy Rose Lee

“When you go to war over religion, you’re basically killing each other to see who has the better imaginary friend.”

--Richard Jeni

I have kept…

“Now that I’ve shed my skin completely, One true reality alone exists.”

Zen saying

Zen monk: “How should I escape birth and death?” Zen Master Shih-kung: “What is the use of escaping it?”

“In this world, we eat, shit, sleep and wake up.  After that all we have to do is die.”

Inkyu

Once again it’s Groundhog Day, which was nothing more than a rather witless locally-oriented celebration (and an American…

Hi, I'm Phil Jarrett, the author and copyright holder of the sequence of poems posted on my blog today.

Someone got me thinking about growing up in poverty in West Virginia so I published the toys you never won growing up in Chespeake, West Virginia on the Kanawha River in the 'Fifties.  and that one led to a poem after the Sego Mine Murders The Ghost of These Dark Hills.  After came the one about my spiritual journey from the hard work and drudgerly…

if i could see the flowers growing

as van gogh once saw flowers grow

then these poems would twist and writhe

upon the page in torment slow

splash and swirl with yellow passion,

hock and spit a madman’s green

vomit blues and blacks…

“Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.”

--George Bernard Shaw

“It’s an incredible con job, when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death.  Even corporations, with all their reward systems, don’t try to make it…

“There is nothing that is too obvious of an absurdity to be firmly planted in the human head as long as you begin to instill before the age of five by constantly repeating it

with an air of great seriousness.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most obvious conclusion is that they are all wrong.”

-- Christopher Hitchens

“Society attacks early, when the child…

“Long as You Know You’re Living Yours”

Song title, Keith Jarrett

"The world is impermanent.  One should constantly remember death."

Nyogen Senzaki

“In this world, we eat, shit, sleep, and wake up.  After that, all we have to do is die.”

Ikkyu

“Please enjoy your only life!”

Jakusho Kwong

“The power of a man’s…

Okay usually you get people that just like "historic Jesus" or think the concept is neat, or like the happy feel good hippy junk he preached about.

But no, I cannot stand Jesus, not at all.



Why is this?

Well it can be summed up as: He is an inconsistent, hypocritical, asshole.



Without getting too theologically involved, lets take the trinity, in which you believe "God" and "Jesus" (not their actual names but the most frequently used aliases the followers use when…

“All religions are equally sublime to the ignorant, useful to the politician, and ridiculous to the philosopher.”

Lucretius

I sometimes think that prankish college students with nothing better to do are responsible for at least some of the more outrageous letters to advice columnists.  That may be one explanation for the following letter and response.  Another is that the writer and columnist are absolutely serious,  the latter buying into…

I really like to just think. Let your mind go and let the thoughts flow through your mind.

I also do this to help me go to sleep. It's hard to explain what happens, it's like I release

control of my thinking process and my mind starts going "What if this", "What if this",

"What if this", "What if this", "What if this", "What if this", then maybe a good thought

comes through and I say whoa, lets think about that for awhile. This may sound crazy

but its worked for me…

Death and the Lack of Alternatives

“If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.”

Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

“There is nothing that is too obvious of an absurdity to be firmly planted in the human head as long as you begin to instill before the age of five by constantly repeating it with an air of great seriousness.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

“Hardest of deaths…

Let me begin by saying these fools speak as if they have some sort of special knowledge. The only thing they possess is being alive after Christopher Hitchens died. I find their bold faced arrogance immoral and distasteful.

These quotes are from The Christian Post. …

My parents are pretty confusing when it comes to their religious beliefs. Neither of them are hardcore or anything, and I think they simply believe because they never really (seriously) considered anything else. My mom usually speaks about God (when she does) in a general way, while I think my dad would be a tiny bit more "Christian-y" about it. My father can easily poke fun at Christianity and bring up silly questions (such as whether or not Jesus knew about pizza at the time he was alive,…

When it comes to morals it seems that Christians never get above the belt-buckle unless it is to peer behind a brassiere. Genes for sexual obsession passed down from the Catholic Church evidently have not mutated over the centuries as Christian leaders remain overly concerned with who's doing who, how they are doing it and if there are any naked people or pictures anywhere near.

To be sure there is a need for watchdog organizations and laws keeping dangerous sexual predators, perverts…

I've never been affected at all by people around me dying, but I've also never had anyone this close die. So now I'll learn how I deal with death.

All of the relatives are posting messages on Facebook saying "prayers coming in from here" and "more prayers coming from here." I know I shouldn't be insulted by this. He was a Christian and probably would be grateful for these (if he weren't unconscious and all), but it all just seems so silly, like they aren't taking it…

“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.” ~Issac Asimov