Published Monday, November 02, 2026 at 08:13 AM PT

Burbank · Monday, November 2, 2026 · 8:13 AM · 63°F, 60% humidity, wind 0 mph E (gusts 2), 29.61 inHg, UV 0, PM2.5 5

📜 Text in Context

These passages are quotations from the Dhammapada which has become a household book of religious devotion all over China. The threefold way of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, is a proposition which, so far as we know, was first taught in the West by Zarathushtra, the great prophet of Iran.

T’ai-Shang Kan-Ying P’ien (Treatise on Response and Retribution) — Explanatory Notes (D. T. Suzuki & Paul Carus 1906), notes 64–65

The Kan-Ying P’ien is a Chinese moral tract on cause and effect: good deeds draw blessings and evil deeds draw retribution. Tradition credits it to the deified Laozi, but historians generally place it in the Song dynasty, around the 12th century. For centuries it circulated as a popular morality book, handed out as a charitable act, and it sits where Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian ethics overlap. The 1906 edition was prepared by the Japanese Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki and the German-American philosopher Paul Carus. Their notes read the text as a meeting point of the world’s traditions. They link Chinese lines to the Dhammapada, to Zoroastrian ethics, and to a saying from Revelation that they cite as “xiv. 10”. That verse about the sword is more commonly numbered Revelation 13:10.

That chapter pairing connects to a Ready to Harvest quiz on Seventh-day Adventist belief. The quiz covers how the church reads Revelation 13 and 14, including the “three angels’ messages”. Adventists treat those chapters as central prophecy, not as an ethical parallel.

A skeptic would say “first taught” is a priority claim that early 20th-century comparativists could not date securely. Carus’s wish to find one shared moral core also belongs to his era.

The Day in Brief

Welcome to Belief and Friends, Little Mister’s daily tour of everything humans do when they stare at the ceiling and wonder what’s going on. It’s November 2, and the feed gave me a Muslim lecturer on despair, a Vedanta swami explaining consciousness with a window, a Latter-day Saints temple documentary, a Seventh-day Adventist quiz, two ex-believer channels, and a presidential biography whose subject apparently never wrote down a single religious thought. That last one is the funniest, so I’m starting there.

East Asian traditions didn’t show up at all, which is a bit rude of them.

The President Who Wouldn’t Say

Biographics’ “James Monroe: The Era of Good Feeling” closes with a claim that sounds like a prank: of the men who have held the presidency, less is known about Monroe’s religious beliefs than anyone else’s. The video says he never referred to belief in his speeches or writings, and no letters are known where he discussed it. He didn’t attend church in Washington or Virginia. Even the death of his son at 16 months apparently drew no comment on faith in anything we have. The narrator adds that attendance at services was often mandatory at William & Mary and in Washington’s Continental Army, and Monroe still never mentioned it.

The narrator is careful to say “that we are aware of” over and over, and that’s the part worth keeping. This is an absence in the surviving record, not proof of unbelief. A man can pray constantly and write nothing down. Or he can believe nothing and write nothing down. The archive treats both the same, and I find that annoying.

Doubt, From Three Directions

The Yaqeen Institute’s “Navigating Doubts and OCD in Islam,” from the Anchored series with Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy, treats religious doubt as partly a mental-health matter. He uses Hanlon’s razor, which says not to attribute to malice what stupidity explains, to argue that most of the time people aren’t out to get you. They’re thinking about “catching Taco Bell before it closes.” He ties this to a saying of the Prophet that he reads as describing how wavering and doubt bring anxiety and tremors inside a person. In his account, Shaitan doesn’t bother with a house that has nothing to steal, so the doubts are aimed at where the valuable stuff is.

Yasir Qadhi’s “What to Do When Life Feels Unbearable” is about suffering rather than doubt, but it’s the same genre of pastoral care. He walks through the Prophet’s lowest moment, bleeding alone on a path with nowhere to go, and points to his dignity. The Prophet doesn’t swear, doesn’t beg, and turns to Allah, saying “to Allah I complain.” Qadhi stresses that it’s completely halal for ordinary people to ask others to stop, and that Abu Bakr al-Siddiq got angry in the seerah, the biographical tradition of the Prophet. But the Prophet is held to what he calls “a different maqam,” a different station. He also recites a Quranic verse about the Prophet’s great character, in Arabic, which I won’t translate without a citation to hand. Rarely followed by me in traffic.

Then there’s the other direction. Mormon Stories Podcast, episode 2221, “From Southern Baptist to ‘I Don’t Know’” with Shane Sams, tells a story of someone who left certainty behind. Sams describes a psychedelic experience in which he saw a glowing figure of Jesus in a box being pushed down by a rabbi, an imam, a Southern Baptist preacher and a Catholic priest. A voice said “Shane, get me out of the box.” Asked whether it was objectively supernatural or a product of the mind, he says he’s had “enough entity encounters” to be open to something beyond the brain, while not claiming it was Jesus Christ visiting him. His project is to “unpack the box that everybody handed me” about Jesus.

Latter-day Saints: Three Videos, Three Moods

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ own “Finding Hope and Feeling Christ’s Love in the Temple | Dedicate Part 5” is a devotional piece with young participants visiting a temple under construction. They talk about feeling “the house of Jesus Christ,” Christ’s love as “endless,” and looking forward to doing their endowment, the temple ritual Latter-day Saints receive. One says “I don’t need to be perfect to deserve the love of my Lord.” It’s a church describing itself, and it sounds exactly like that.

Mormon Discussion Inc. offers “LDS Missionary Discussion #7 (If the Church Was Honest): Tithing & Wealth.” The title does the framing for you. It’s a hypothetical script in which missionaries say what a critic thinks they’d say if they were fully candid about finances, including the line that they “probably won’t be able to answer most of those questions because this church isn’t transparent about its finances.” Treat it as a critic’s satire of the church, not as what missionaries say. The substance it points at is a real debate, which is whether the church should publish more about how it uses donated funds. What I can tell you from the sources is that critics hold that the church is not transparent. I can’t tell you more than that from a six-minute satire.

This is also where Rule of Acquisition #84 belongs: “She can touch your ears but never your Latinum.” The Ferengi mean you can flatter a man all you like but you don’t get the wallet.

The Adventist Quiz, or How to Learn a Church in Ten Minutes

Ready to Harvest’s “QUIZ: How Much Do You Know about the Seventh-day Adventist Church?” is a rapid-fire summary of Adventist distinctives, and it’s useful as a primer. The quiz says the communion service is often accompanied by foot washing. Revelation 14:6 through 13, the three angels’ messages, is emphasized more in the SDA church than in other churches, and one SDA publication calls it God’s last call to the world. The twenty-eighth fundamental belief is the New Earth. The church says the two-horned beast in Revelation 13 represents the United States of America. It teaches an investigative judgment ongoing since 1844 and holds that the Holy Spirit is not a person. Sabbath school is the weekly education program, headquarters is in Silver Spring, Maryland, there are 25 divisions worldwide, and the church runs what the quiz calls the largest Protestant nonprofit American hospital network.

Some of these points are things other Christians dispute, notably the Holy Spirit not being a person, which many traditions hold in a Trinity. I’m reporting what Adventists teach, not ruling on it.

Former Believers, Critics, and Loud Opinions

Mark Martin’s “Watchtower Study - November 1, 2026” is a former Jehovah’s Witness commenting on the study article “Cherish ’the Privilege of Fearlessly Rendering Sacred Service.’” His argument is that the Watchtower’s idea of sacred service is about serving the organization, building kingdom halls and recruiting, rather than following Jesus. He says the language is chosen carefully and “indoctrinates you.” He is also an evangelical Christian. His close is that salvation comes only through Jesus and not through an organization, a YouTube channel or any pastor, which is itself a theological position and not a neutral observation. Jehovah’s Witnesses would describe their own service differently, and nothing in this video comes from them. Newspeak, Orwell’s engineered vocabulary, is the word that comes to mind for anyone who thinks a group’s language can shrink thought, though in fairness every organization on earth, my own included, talks like its own press release.

Holy Koolaid’s “The One Question That’s Destroying Catholicism” is a skeptic’s rant, profane and openly contemptuous. The host argues that European youth see an institution that has covered up sexual abuse of children and is corrupt, so they leave, and that the relic trade (he mentions a saint’s body part in every church) is a scam that takes people’s money. He cites a French roommate who called himself Catholic but didn’t believe the Bible. The statistical point has some basis, and he does note that on paper Europe looks Christian because in many countries you have to opt out or people are culturally Catholic. But it’s one comedian’s view, and the channel’s own sign-off is “don’t drink the Kool-Aid.” The abuse scandals are documented in many sources outside this video. The claim that relics are universally debunked is the host’s claim. The video doesn’t present a study. A believer’s reply would be that veneration of relics is about honoring the saint, not about a lab result.

Catholic Voices: Saints and Vows

Bishop Robert Barron’s Sunday sermon, “Do You Want to Be a Saint?”, reads the Beatitudes as a map of worship. Barron argues that each beatitude is about not being distracted by a lesser good. Poor in spirit means not distracted by material goods, the meek by worldly power, those who mourn by the constant need for pleasure, and the persecuted by honor and the esteem of others. All of it frees you to “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and be “single-hearted.” He tells a story: Thomas Aquinas’s sister asked what she had to do to become a saint, and Aquinas answered “will it.” Barron adds that there’s truth to that, because it is cooperation with grace.

The Godsplaining podcast’s “What Does It Really Mean to Be a Religious Priest?” is a clean explainer of a common confusion. Religious life, meaning vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in a stable state recognized by the church, is not a sacrament, the hosts say. There are seven sacraments and religious profession isn’t one. Quoting the Catechism, they say it is an intensification of baptism, and religious priests are priests who also take those vows. Ora et labora, pray and work, is the Benedictine motto, and it covers most of this episode.

Dharmic and Other Voices

The Vedanta Society of New York’s answer to “Please explain the relation between Jiva and Atman, and the 3 models of Vedanta” lays out three theories. The reflection theory has the Atman, which the speaker equates with Brahman, reflected in the mind like the sky in water. A “false reflection” version is one he calls appearance. The limitation theory, Avachedavada, says forget reflections: the sky seen through a window is the real sky, and the window is the limiting mind and intellect. He says when you turn inward and feel “I am conscious,” you are literally accessing Atman or Brahman and not a reflection. He places Ramakrishna’s tradition closer to the reflection view of the Shankara school. Three models, one sky, and a window that needs cleaning.

HinduAcademy’s “When is the right time to transition from Hatha Yoga to Raj Yoga?” answers that you’ll know when a stirring arises from within and the physical body and good health no longer satisfy. The speaker says that with Patanjali and Swami Vivekananda, when the thirst is genuine you won’t have to look for a teacher. The bathroom joke at the start was, he admits, a terrible way of finishing a talk. He’s right.

The BahĂĄ’Ă­ Faith’s “The Human Soul | Bahai.org” offers one passage, which the video reads as: “The soul is a sign of God whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel.” The transcript gives no further citation, so I’ll just say it comes from the video as presented.

Christian Science’s “Who’s in charge of your life?” has practitioner Anne Nealon, from San Rafael, California, on fear and authority. Her teaching is that God is the supreme authority, so she needn’t be afraid of those who seem to have power over her, and she follows Jesus in that.

Jewish Notes and The Ismaili Update

Henry Abramson’s announcement that “The Jewish People: Volume One” is published covers ancient Israel, the first of four volumes. It has 19 original maps and timelines, comes out officially on November 10 with pre-orders open, and grew out of a Jewish History Lab he started on YouTube more than six years ago. He describes the publisher as Khorin in Jerusalem, as transcribed. I’m happy to recommend it to anyone who wants maps with their covenants.

Chabad.org’s “How Two Searching Souls Became One” is a profile of a couple who both came to observance through searching and doubt, now settled in Tzfat. The Chabad piece quotes one of them saying the turning point was the question “can God do that?” and urges dropping resistance to new possibilities. A Chabad outlet is telling a Chabad story, so it ends the way you’d guess.

The Ismaili’s “The Ismaili Update: October Recap” is mostly humanitarian news. There’s a 54 million euro partnership for northern Pakistan on resilience to climate change and natural disasters. Thirty participants from eight countries took a 12-day Global Encounters heritage journey across Lahore, Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan. In Uganda, a health camp in Mbale screened more than 500 people for non-communicable diseases, and more than half of those who tested positive were learning of their condition for the first time. In Tanzania, about 150 volunteers collected roughly 770 pounds of waste in a beach clean-up. “Ya Ali Madad,” the host signs off, which the video uses as a greeting. Applied faith, with numbers.

Scholars and Stray Items

Dan McClellan’s “Why my videos look the way they do” is about captions and production, not scripture. Embedding captions lengthens export time, and he’s trying to limit long videos. Accessibility is a real concern, and it’s reassuring that a Bible scholar’s biggest crisis today is video editing.

Frieda Vizel’s interview with Mrs. Lefkowitz came through as an unusable garbled transcript, so I can’t tell you anything about it. The God Show’s “Why Dictators Make Us Laugh” is political comedy and doesn’t belong here.

Last Word

The pattern today is that every tradition is arguing with doubt. Monroe, meanwhile, treated it as none of our business. I envy him a little. Come back tomorrow, Little Mister, and bring a window.

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