BEYOND RELIGION
(Part 1 of 3)
We are heading that way, we must
Let us provisionally and broadly define
RELIGION as “a belief in a reality that is above or other than the self.” "Belief" means that this is a private experience; "reality" means it can be either what we project (a virtual reality) or what is true in itself (true reality). "Above" means gaining a greater power in a good sense. "Other than the self" means it is rooted in our present being but can and should be more than just that.
Such as religion, or aspects or forms of it, have been with us for over 100,000 years. It exists today in every culture, with nearly 90% of the world’s population holding some kind of religious belief.
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THE MIND IS NOT JUST THE BRAIN
The mind scientists of our time generally think that religion is a
BYPRODUCT of the way our brain works. Buddhism, however, does not teach that
THE MIND is located anywhere, least of all the brain. The brain may function like the computer motherboard, but it must be connected with a screen/s (a monitor), some kind of “mouse,” power supply, other components, and, of course, software.
All of this working together makes it possible for me to write this piece and see what I am doing. The mind, then, is not just the body: it is the total working of all our senses: the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and the mind. Buddhists call these the “6 sense-bases.” The mind, so to speak, is behind all our sensing, including thinking. The mind can know itself (reflexive consciousness): this is a vitally important teaching in early Buddhism.
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
We have REFLEXIVE CONSCIOUSNESS:
we notice our self, or conceive of "ourself"; we notice patterns within ourself and in the world outside: this is called learning or “intelligence,” if you like.
We connect A with B: when A occurs, B results. A is the cause, B is the effect. When this patterned thinking develops in “linear” progression: A causes B, which causes C … D, etc, then, we
REASON that “A” must be the First Cause. We name this First Cause GOD, each culture has its name for this First Cause. We create our God who creates us. This is the way most religions, God-based beliefs, go.
CYCLES
Traditional Asian religions, especially the Indian belief systems notices something else. They see that the sun rises every morning from the same direction, the east (unlike in the northern hemisphere). Then, they notice the seasons, mostly a season of warmth, of rains, and of coolness. Again, the northern hemisphere cultures experience the seasons more drastically, facing summer, autumn or fall, winter, and spring.
Either way, there is the seasonal cycle. Traditional Asian religions see the linear pattern as a part of a bigger cycle. There is the cycle of the sun—sunrise, sunset—we call this
DAY. Then, we notice the cycle of the moon—the lunar
MONTH. There, are seasons, that is, a
YEAR. Then, we notice the stars, and speculate beyond the year. There must be a greater cycle of time.
TIME: LINEAR AND CYCLIC
The point of this account is that in traditional Asian religions, time is not seen as linear, but as
CYCLIC: it goes around and comes back. It’s like the face of the clock: times goes round and around. Time has no beginning, no end. Hence, Asian religions tend to have a richer variety of Gods, gods, other beings, spiritual spaces; and how our world came into being, without a First Cause. We call this
SAMSARA (saṁsāra).
We have so far spoken of the “big picture,” a
MACROCOSMIC view of religion. On a smaller or more personal level of religion, the
MICROCOSMIC, we try, at some point (such as when there is a birth, a death, a great disaster, or some inexplicable event), to reason why things happen. We often end up concluding: “Everything happens for a reason.”
REASONING IS HUMAN
Young children, for example, tend to believe that even trivial aspects of the natural world were created with a purpose (for a reason). In a series of studies by Boston University psychologist, Deborah Keleman, noted that when children are asked why a group of rocks are pointy, for example, they say something like, “It’s so that animals won’t sit on them and break them.” If you ask them why rivers exist, they say it’s so we can go fishing.
We grow with this tendency to reason, coming up with more sophisticated reasons as we move on, but they are mostly our own views, our reflexes from past conditionings.
What these children (which we often still are) have been expressing are
VIEWS, that is, conditioned responses: we see things that way, or we have heard it from other children (young and old), or we just hope so. Of course, as we grow older, we realize how sweetly wrong we were, and know better, often enough.
INTENTION
Early Buddhism wants us to examine this “reasoning” more carefully. We will then notice that it is rooted in the way we think. They are not
REALLY what or how things are: we made it all up. This is what is called
DELUSION. It may be sweetly childish or we can be very serious about it. Either way, we have created our own world, in which we live and die.
We tend to feel
GOOD (kind, loving, generous) when we accept others in our self-created world. The Buddha identifies this kind of thinking as “wholesome intention.” Or, we feel
BAD (nasty, angry, selfish) against those who reason differently. This is “unwholesome intention.”
How we
THINK, our intention, decides how well we can get along with others, with the world, how we live or die, what happens or not thereafter. In early Buddhism, this kind of wholesome intentional living is called
MORAL CONDUCT (sīla).
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BEYOND RELIGION
(Part 2 of 3)
Knowing, taming and freeing the mind
PURPOSE
The Buddhist life begins with moral training: understanding the basic nature of our body and mind. Our first or basic purpose is to
MINDFULLY restrain our body so that we can exist and grow with others. Our mind gives us this
MORAL PURPOSE which allows a good society to exist.
Not all other religions see moral purpose as being in our own mind or heart, as being
WITHIN ourself. Most religions tend to see that purpose coming from
OUTSIDE of us, from some external agency, which they usually call
GOD or some universal essence.
In important ways, they believe that we have no choice but to be an instrument of that God-given purpose. The Buddha rejects such a wrong view: we are our own refuge and saviour (Dh 160, 380).
MY GOD IS BEST?
There is a vital difference between these two ways of religious or purposeful thinking. In the God-system, “man proposes, God disposes.” We are ultimately responsible only to God, or more specifically,
OUR God. Often enough, we conceive such a God as being all-loving, at least to us, at some strategic time.
One serious disadvantage with this way of religious thinking is that we do not feel accountable for any bad, harm or violence we show others, especially to those who do not follow
OUR God. In fact, some even feel it their sacred duty to remove or exterminate such aberrations and distractions.
This has been at the root of religious wars for centuries, killing millions of innocent lives, even amongst the most civilized of us, especially so because we have better weapons of mass destruction to defend our faith. Such was Europe's 30 Years' War (1618-1648) between the Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians; 8 million people died as a result.
[See picture below.]
KARMA & MIND
Early Buddhism teaches karma, intentional action which arises in our own minds. It is not always easy to have
GOOD intentions, especially in the face of pains that arise from outside of us, from others, as we see it. However, teaches the Buddha, with moral training, we can prevent
NEGATIVE intentions arise that make our lives unwholesome.
Moral intention, at its best, allows us to live and let live. This is, in fact, what moral living basically means. To instill higher quality in such living, we need to
CULTIVATE THE MIND, since our intentions arise from there. The mind tends to see mostly causes and effects [Part 1]. We need to use our
HEART to arouse positive emotions so that by our example, our life and those of others, too, are
MORE THAN HUMAN: we become divine, supremely good.
NOT GOD, BUT GODLINESS
All religions have some idea of the “divine life.” For most, this comes after death; or this can arise now if and only if we belong to the same
TRIBE with its own building or space for prayer and faith. In this Tribal system of religion, moral conduct and purpose are defined by those who are “above” us or more powerful.
Although such authority are claimed from to come some Holy Scriptures, these are merely words, or The Word, which need to be interpreted by those who speak for God, that is, the most powerful amongst us.
The Buddha rejects such a God-centred class-structured I-Thou tribal religion as being too “inward looking,” self-centred, even Self-propelled. He rejects the idea of any kind of eternal Self or Other (some kind of universal essence) as being purely imaginative, exploitative and destructive. We can see all these negativities in religion, even today.
THE DIVINE LIFE
Rejecting a tribal, self-centred, after-death idea of
DIVINITY, the Buddha teaches the divinity of goodness and awakening
HERE AND NOW. The best and highest kind of God we can and should conceive is that of pure Love, Ruth,* Joy and Peace, goodness at all levels, in all its forms. Since these are qualities, Godliness if you like, we can and must all cultivate them.
*[
RUTH is Middle English for compassion, but only "ruthless" is used today. It's good to bring back the good side of this beautful word.]
RUTH
LOVE is the unconditional acceptance of all life, all that lives. We begin by accepting people just as they are. Then, we notice they are lacking in some ways. We understand that when we lack love, we fall into bad ways, and tend to see what we lack as pain and punishment.
We should show them
RUTH, compassion. We should be kind to them, give them a helping hand to stand on their own, whether they deserve it or not. Ruth breed ruth.
JOY
To coexist with other beings, we must feel and show
JOY, peace, above all, good, towards them. Rejoicing in their goodness, we feel good; then, we are good, too. Good, then, is an active way of seeing and acting beyond the self that limits our minds and darkens religion.
Yet, despite all our efforts and goodness, so much of the world still fall into pain and suffering. We alone can never completely remove the world’s suffering. We begin to understand that this is the way of the world, a cyclic reality of opposites: joy and pain, good and bad. We are at peace with that. In that peace, that cycle does not exist, that is, for as long that there is that peace.
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BEYOND RELIGION
(Part 3 of 3)
Religionless Buddhism, social awakening, individuation
[Before reading this, which is Part 3 of the set, it is good to start with Part 1; the Part 2. Anyway, you can still start here if you can’t wait. Then, you should start reading it as Parts 1-2-3 for the full good effect of this especially important reflection on Buddhism as self-effort.]
HEART OF THE MIND
Early Buddhism places great emphasis on calming the heart and clearing the mind—this is called
MEDITATION. It can be defined as a family of mental exercises that make new or renew connections in the brain that regulates and refines attention and emotion, bettering how we see and feel ourself and the world. In important ways, these are measurable, hence, scientific ways of describing what essentially occurs in our body and being as a whole.
Properly done, meditation frees our attention from our self-centred projective attitude, creating and affirming the world in our own image. We are, truly, authors of our fate. Like any author, we tend to see what we have written as a brilliant masterpiece, that is, is good, indeed, the best. That is, until we stop to look more closely at our own work—reading the proof.
PROOFING OUR OWN WORK
When we carefully read our own works (not to mention those of others), we often see errors of typos, bad grammar, even of facts, so on. This is an essential act of
SELF-DETERMINATION. Hence, the Buddha calls this the 1st noble truth: seeing unsatisfactoriness. It makes us noble, rising above our selfish burden, to have a better view of ourself.
Since we know
WHAT went wrong in our writing, we now work on
WHY or
HOW they are wrong. Know this, we are wiser in righting those wrongs. We do this until the whole work has been
REVISED and error-free, a work of truth and beauty. We then see our work, our mind and heart to have expressed what is a
JOY forever, and we move along this path of inner freedom.
LIVING LESSONS
Early Buddhism training, then, not only makes us see ourself as we really are, but to carefully and joyfully read our
SELF, how we see ourself, without fear or favour. We are a work in progress, a unique masterpiece in the making. What is wrong means it needs to be righted; what is right means upright; a right mind, an upright heart, have no fear, no anxiety; only a wish to grow, to rise above and beyond the fettered self.
This life of
TRUTH AND BEAUTY, of joyful reality, fruits in a longer, healthier, more creative life. We have become
TRUE INDIVIDUALS, free from the Tribe and its selfish God, above the Crowd and its destructive ways. Such individuals living together become a wholesome and productive
SOCIETY, a world interconnected by love, ruth, joy and peace; a moral community of angels without wings; we have no need of wings, since we can just fly on a mere thought.
LIVING FULLY
In this religion-free world, we naturally live by 5 principles.
Harm no one, nor self, nor others, nor Nature.
Work respectfully, diligently, fruitfully, putting people above profit.
Play joyfully, charging life and light into our partner, family, community.
Look up to the common good of truth and goodness.
Live pure in mind, radiant of heart, a beautiful life of true freedom.
This no mere wishful fancy nor pious dribble. We can see aspects of this futuristic community even now, for example, in Denmark’s large welfare state, its social ethic of hard work and its strong dedication to political freedom and individuality. Such a human-centred society will only work and last when it is rooted in the transhuman qualities or divine values of love, ruth, joy and peace. It has to be religion-free; freed from the extremes of Guru and God.
HEAVEN HERE AND NOW
No amount of dialogue, no tolerance, no understanding can free religion from its divisive habits and demeaning of this world. It is a crowded slave-market where Gurus and God-sellers turn and twist our minds into their foolish, fearful and violent purposes, creating hell here and now, and hereafter.
The moral community, on the other hand, enjoys all the wholesome aspects of religion free of its nasty thorns and toxins. It is a our gathering of individuals so that we can, alone and together, truly work for the greater good, understanding that the best is yet to come but surely will be.
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