Spirituality vs. Religion

[Photo by Shen Shi'an]

In a recent conversation with my friend over at Jesusfollowers Journal, he had responded to a comment of mine regarding spirituality and religion with the following thought (I'm paraphrasing):

The difference between spirituality and religion is subtle, and arguable.

Actually, there is a very sharp distinction between spirituality and religion, spirituality being the much more important of the two. In order to describe spirituality, let me borrow a term utilized by C. S. Lewis. Spirituality is mere compassion, mere love, mere patience, mere forgiveness, mere harmony, mere concern for others' well-being and happiness.

"Mere" is a key term here, and the primary reason why spirituality trumps religion. The true purpose in life is to develop untainted compassion for all beings, love others as yourself, be patient, caring, helpful, and calm. Work toward others' happiness, and thereby your own happiness as well. By "mere" I mean "essence" or "nature." When one practices spirituality, one practices reaching toward the heart of true compassion, true love, true forgiveness. To be able to display mere compassion for another is not just to be compassionate toward another, but to BE compassion itself. Touching that true nature, that suchness, that essence, that mere-ness of compassion goes beyond just surrounding oneself in compassion. Instead, one becomes the heart of compassion altogether. That is the practice of spirituality.

Religion is different. Religion is concerned with faith in one tradition or another, with an acceptance of some definition of reality. The practice of religion is not necessary to the practice of spirituality. That phrase is so important, let me say it again.

The practice of religion is not necessary to the practice of spirituality.

Of course practicing the right religion for you can enhance the development of your spirituality. For people who truly practice their faith with their entire being, maintaining openness and love for others, religion enhances their compassion, their love, their patience. For many people religion seems to have the opposite effect, fostering intolerance, conflict, and aggression. The point here is that we have a matrix of possibilities:

Spiritual and Religious	Spiritual and Non-Religious
Non-Spiritual and Religious	Non-Spiritual and Non-Religious

I think the upper left quadrant--spiritual and religious--is the ideal, not because it is inherently better than the others (which it's not), but because people in that quadrant tend to have the greatest number of tools available to them to live well for themselves and for others. Not only can they draw on their spirituality, they can draw on the lessons of their religion to help them improve their spirituality.

The spiritual and non-religious person is in the second best position--second only due to the fact that they do not have the myths and practices of a religion to use toward developing their spiritual qualities. However, this by no means reflects on the people falling into this category. Many spiritual and non-religious people are much more compassionate, loving, caring individuals than those in the upper left quadrant.

The lower left quadrant comes next. This is stereotypically the quadrant of fundamentalists. To have religious belief, but to not have that reflect into your life as a stronger level of compassion, love, tolerance, acceptance, and patience shows that you are off-track. Any religious practice that does not result in increasing compassion, tolerance, forgiveness, love, patience, and caring is either (a) worthless and harmful, or (b) being practiced incorrectly.

The lower right quadrant is last, and stereotypically houses materialistic, egotistic individuals, people for whom caring and love are a foreign concept.

Bringing us full circle, we all must work to develop our spiritual qualities. If we find a religion that suits our nature, we can use its teachings to further our development. But if not, that's ok. We don't have to drape a mental model over reality in order to develop our spiritual qualities. We can simply practice mere compassion, mere love, mere patience, mere acceptance, and thereby touch, become, converse with, see, or merge with God--whichever of those understandings resonates with your being.

Go Where There Is No Path

[Photo by Margaret Maloney]

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson was a brilliant man and a wonderful naturalist. His essays display a calm insight that is as penetrating as the Midsummer sun. Very few people would argue that blazing one's own trail, as Emerson exhorts above, is excellent advice. But I want to examine it from another angle--can this be applied to spirituality? Are our traditional religions the only beneficial spiritualities? Or can we maximize our relationship to the world, the three great kingdoms (Plant, Animal, Mineral), and our spirit through a path of our own making?

Following a traditional religion has many advantages, the primary one being that they are philosophically sound, having evolved through cultural immersion over thousands of years. They have a certain consistency by which contradictions are rare. That, to me, is quite interesting because we have a number of traditional religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others, and while they are built upon greatly different underlying philosophies, each is internally consistent and logical. Sometimes they're based on a slightly different system of logic than Western Aristotelian logic, but regardless, they have a logical congruity. An additional benefit of a traditional religion is its track record. These systems of belief have repeatedly proven effective for many of their followers, giving meaning to their lives and a guide by which to live.

But all is not perfect in our land of traditional religion. The primary problem of religions today is dogma. Our traditional religions provide a great backdrop for life. But all too often, followers don't expend the energy to think critically about life and the meaning given to it by their religion. Rather, they fall back on the word of their chosen religious authority figure and close their minds to real wisdom--learning to see for themselves the truth of their religion.

Emerson's quote comments wisely upon our spiritual lives. If you create your spirituality out of your experiences and the meaning YOU see in life, then you will likely have to deal with philosophical inconsistencies. But is that really a problem? I don't think so. We can never know everything from our tiny place on this tiny planet orbiting our tiny sun in one tiny arm of the spiral of our tiny galaxy. We have to learn to accept paradox. And even if you end up in a traditional religion after making your own trail, you will have discovered the truth of your religion yourself, by creating your beliefs through your life rather than accepting them as hand-me-downs from our ancient past. So I argue that Emerson's way is the only way to true spirituality, regardless of where you end up.

The people who come to religion from the outside, who choose a religion and then adopt its beliefs, are in real danger of losing the greatest thing we have on this planet--our capacity for wisdom. Blaze your own trail. Observe your life in mindfulness and see what presents itself. If nature calls to you as divine, sacred, then treat it as such. If God reaches down to you from the heavens and makes contact with your heart, grab hold of his hand and don't let go. If the wonderfully interdependent nature of all things becomes apparent to you, penetrate with unwavering insight their original nature. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, spirituality, Ralph Waldo Emerson, religion

Inherent Nature, Good or Evil?

[Photo by Alexandra Moss]

In a comment here, a friend of mine wrote, "Though I do believe we are all capable of 'good,' I tend to think we are more evil than good and society forces us to sublimate it and/or different religions/spiritual praxes condition us otherwise."

What I find particularly interesting about this statement is that we really cannot know for certain if that's ture, or if we are inherently good. Maybe we're not inherently anything! And of course, what do we mean when we use the terms, "Evil" or "Good"? She noted, "I know it reflects a sad state of mind and heart." But I really don't think so. We are all making the best choices and drawing the best conclusions we can, given the evidence with which life presents us.

She quoted the book of Genesis: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood." (Genesis 8:21) I think it's accurate to say that this is a common Christian view presented in the Bible, that we are fallen and can only be made holy (whole?) again through Jesus. Obviously, other religions hold different views (i.e. Buddhism).

I truly do find it fascinating how we all view things so differently. You can say that we are more evil than good and we have to fight for altruism to shine forth in our lives. I can say that we are all ultimately perfect, but the defilements of anger, greed, and delusion obscure it—which is a product of our own making. The thing is that, from an observational standpoint, we see the same thing! People usually have to work at being altruistic and compassionate. You say that's because inherently, we're not nice. I say that's because our innate compassion and love are just veiled through our own doing.

She wrote, "You've got to fight to be good and do the right thing. It ain't easy. But it's worth it." You sure as h*ll hit the nail on the head with that one!

1-Minute Contemplation: What is the basis of our existence? Are we innately good or innately evil? Why? What do we even mean by "good" and "evil"? Are these arbitrary definitions? Or is there some ground upon which these terms are based?

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, evil, good, religion, Christianity, Genesis, heart

Joseph Campbell on Myth and Religion

[Photo by Kevin ]

A quote from the late Joseph Campbell:

"Myth is other people's religion. Religion is misunderstood myth."

1-Minute Contemplation: What does this quote mean to you? Is it accurate, in your opinion? If yes, how? If no, why not? What about your closest friend or relative? What would they think of Joe's opinion?

Technorati Tags: Joseph Campbell, myth, religion, quote

Is Your Chosen Path Fruitful?

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In the Silabbata Sutta, the Buddha asked his disciple Ananda whether every holy life is fruitful. Ananda responded (which was ultimately praised by the Buddha) that if one's holy life of precept and practice results in one's unskillful mental qualities increasing and one's skillful mental qualities declining, that practice, that holy life, is unfruitful. He continued that a practice in which one's skillful mental qualities increase and unskillful mental qualities decrease, that is a fruitful path.

What did Ananda mean by skillful and unskillful mental qualities? Well, the Abhidhamma, a compendium of Buddhist psychology, goes into complete detail. But, honestly, you can use your common sense and get it mostly right. A few examples of unwholesome qualities: shamelessness and fearlessness of wrongdoing, greed, hatred, conceit, sloth, worry, etc. A few examples of skillful, or wholesome, qualities: faith, mindfulness, compassion, love, appreciative joy, etc.

1-Minute Contemplation: Take a moment to reflect on your chosen path. Does your path have a name like Buddhism, Christianity, or Wicca? If not, no matter, it does not need one. Do your spiritual practices, be they prayer, meditation, writing poetry, communing with nature, or communing with a pantheon of gods & goddesses, result in an increase in skillful mental qualities and a decrease in unskillful ones?

If your practices are fulfilling the criteria described by Ananda, then you are on a fruitful path. If not, then perhaps you should re-examine your path. If you are Christian, but find that your practices are not improving your skillful qualities, that is not reflective of Christianity (as others have greatly benefited from that tradition), but rather is reflective of the fact that Christianity just may not fit your mental disposition. Just as diversity in species is required for the Earth's ecosystem to survive, diversity in religion is required for the many dispositions and personal experiences of people in the world.

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, Buddha, Ananda, mental qualities, wholesome, unwholesome, religion, path, spiritual

On Complexity, by Dave Pollard

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Dave Pollard has written up an excellent piece on how and why we, as people, seem to hate complexity and "solve" complex problems with simple solutions that are not really solutions at all. It is well worth the slightly long read.

Technorati Tags: Dave Pollard, infinite, complexity, infinity, religion, solutions

Gratitude

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I'm especially grateful tonight for a comment on my post on Memetics that showed me that I did not clearly convey my feelings in that post about the benefits of Christianity and all religions. Their memetic structure has nothing to do with their inherent benefit to their followers; it simply provides a means to analyze the manner in which a religion propogates throughout cultures. I have since posted two comments (and welcome much further discussion!) that hopefully clarify my high regard for the religion when it is consciously chosen as fitting a person's experience.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, gratitude, memetics, memes, religion

Memetics and The Parable of the Mustard Seed

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Jesus asked, "How can I describe the Kingdom of God? What story should I use to illustrate it? It is like a tiny mustard seed. Though this is one of the smallest of seeds, it grows to become one of the largest of plants, with long branches where birds can come and find shelter." (Mark 4:30, NLT)

In this parable, Jesus seems to be reassuring his early followers that, despite their small numbers in the vast, Pagan Roman empire, God's kingdom will experience an explosion of growth, ultimately providing the umbrella under which all people can seek shelter. As we see today, his prediction of the spread of Christianity has proven correct. How has this religion achieved such dominance in the West?

Christianity, like all religions, has spread through employing effective memes. Arguably, the memeplex of Christianity has employed some of the most efficient replicators of any religion.¹ Evangelism, common among many religions, is one meme employed ferociously by Christians. Christian missionaries travel the world, providing many needed functions to help the local people, and also spreading the word of God to all they help. There is no better means by which to spread your idea than by embedding in the idea itself the responsibility to witness to others.

As the number of Christians grew, another strategy meme naturally arose as a product of evangelism—repetition. The more Christians there were that were evangelizing, the more non-Christians heard the message. "[As] any advertising executive would tell you: repetition sells."² Repetition is also prominent in the religion's rituals, as it is in most religions. Repetition of the core teachings implants the ideas more deeply into a practitioner's psyche.

Christianity employs a division of people into two categories: saved and unsaved. Believers in Christ have been saved, and non-believers can always be saved if they commit to Christ. This dichotomy utilizes three effective memes. Saved status provides the follower with both security and belonging. An eternity of separation from God is a frightful thought to people who have chosen to consider this belief structure, and committing to Christ immediately secures one from this fate. Second, it fulfills the same role as street gangs unfortunately do to many youths today; it gives the followers the feeling of belonging to something greater than themselves. Additionally, the meme of simplicity increases replication of the Christian memeplex—it is an easy process to become saved; there is no long list of steps that must be undertaken; one must simply succumb to Christ's divinity.

One final meme I'd like to discuss is the "window of opportunity" meme. Again, any salesperson will tell you that "limited time offers," "one day sales," and "store specials" increase the probability that a customer will purchase the product affected by the offer. Christianity teaches that we have a single life to live as humans, a single life in which to decide that Christ is our savior, or not. In essence, it's a limited time offer, and if we don't buy now, the offer expires.

Many more memes than the ones I've described here have all-but-ensured that Jesus's prediction would come true—Christianity has sprouted from a tiny mustard seed into a huge, wide-reaching plant. All religions that utilize fit memes have also experienced similar growth at certain times in history, including Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Paganism. Memes, being cultural units of transmission, are subject to changing culture and, hence, their levels of fitness will change as the cultural environment in which they spread changes. Catholicism, for instance, has experienced difficulty in recent times with its traditional views on such things as female priests. Modern culture is beginning to place greater emphasis on the reason meme, that rules should make sense, than on the tradition meme. As a result, Catholicism suffers, as one of its primary memes, tradition, becomes a poorer replicator in the primal soup of modern culture. As long as the culture is responsive to the memes employed by Christianity, it will continue to flourish as a successful religion. As the culture changes, as all cultures do, Christianity will be forced to adapt or decline.

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¹ The current rise of Islam raises some interesting questions as to what has changed in the culture to make Islam's memes replicate so much more effectively than in the past.

² Brodie, Richard. Virus of the Mind. Integral Press. 1996

Technorati Tags: mustard seed, meme, memetics, Christianity, replicator, religion, Jesus, Christ, parable

DaVinci Code and Symbology

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I went to see the DaVinci Code last night (I read the book a few weeks back). My basic impression: not as good as the book—but what movie ever is? However, it was still worth watching, although there were some serious deviations from the book that they did not flesh out thoroughly. While the book & movie are labeled as fiction, they contained enough historical references and truths for people to mistake entirely fictional aspects as true. One of my best friends, an Evangelical Christian pastor (and history major in college) has told me that people from every class of life have already quoted to him as true several events as portrayed in the book that are patently false from a historical perspective.

I think Joseph Campbell said it best, as he so often did: "One of the great calamities of contemporary life is that the religions that we have inherited have insisted on the concrete historicity of their symbols." The value of this book is not that it is presenting to us an alternative history to Christianity. The value is in showing people that the historical truth of the stories of religions are of little importance compared to their symbolism.

Religions speak to us because they answer, in symbolic, poetic form, questions that we cannot logically answer any other way. Back in the time when Genesis was written, science was not capable of determining any truths about the beginning of the universe, so religion answered that question. Today, many aspects of nature that originally required religious explanation are now modeled by science--weather patterns, meteor showers, eclipses. Does this make the old religious stories about these events meaningless? Yes, from the standpoint of understanding the events as external natural occurrences. No, from the standpoint of gaining insight into the similarities of such events to aspects of our psyches. The story of Genesis, which science has easily disproved as a literally true explanation of the evolution of the planet, still has much value through its ability to instill in Christians a wonder and awe of God and his unconditional love. Religious stories still have value to our psyches, are still necessary aspects of our mental makeup, that should work in conjunction with science, not as directly opposed to it.

Our psyches, our mental consciousness, our emotions, are things that science has not been able to explain yet. Hence, these are the topics for which religion still holds the most value. We do not truly know how consciousness works, why (if there is a why!) we have it. Archetypes abound in our minds, reflecting in our actions and thinking, and we're almost always fully unconscious of that fact. Religion provides the symbols that help us explain, and work with, such subjective aspects of ourselves. The ancient Greeks, to name just one example, had a thorough mythology to represent the archetypal substance of our minds.

Back to the DaVinci Code, the value of the book is to show people that, for a religion to have meaning, the symbology of it must correspond to one's experiences, must instill awe in the practitioner for the world around him, and provide a satisfactory explanation of his experiences that he cannot find elsewhere. The problem is that people don't seek out and enact these symbols in their lives anymore—we have too much to worry about, to much to do. We cannot just be given symbols and have that have any real value to us; we must make the symbols our own, seek out the meaning of the symbols in our lives. The value of the DaVinci Code is that it shows people that the Sacred Feminine is an archetype within us, despite some people's denials, that requires an associated symbol in our religions. In the book, ***SPOILER WARNING***, they chose not to publicly release the historical truth that Jesus' bloodline still exists. They chose to allow people to discover for themselves the need for the Sacred Feminine in their own lives, in whatever symbols speak to them, as individuals.

Technorati Tags: DaVinci Code, symbols, Joseph Campbell, mythology, religion, Christianity, Sacred Feminine, Greek Mythology, Genesis