•What Good Is Religion, Anyway? A Buddhist Perspective
Apr 11, 2015 9:07:30 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2015 9:07:30 GMT -5
What Good Is Religion, Anyway?
A Zen priest tries to save the world.
Written as part of a Patheos symposium in response to the following prompt: “We all know the media mantra, ‘What bleeds, leads.’ Bad news sells, and there’s nothing like a juicy religious scandal to drive traffic. Yet, for every sordid religious story, there are any number of quiet stories of charity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and service. In our obsession with bad news, are we missing of the GOOD of religion? How is your tradition contributing to the flourishing of the world? How has your faith, in big and small ways, theoretical and very concrete, served humanity and the world for good?”
When I contemplate the GOOD of my religion, I immediately start to think about some kind of grand scale. Like, what good does Zen Buddhism do the United States? What good is my religion to the people who don’t practice it? What kind of positive impact does it have on poverty, injustice, and climate change?
When I think like this I get confused pretty fast, because I really don’t know. I’d like to think my religion contributes something positive to the global system in some way, but it would be awfully difficult to demonstrate.
But then I take a couple deep breaths and ask myself, “What good is religion?” I become aware of the energy center in my lower abdomen. And then I feel very clear.
The good of religion is that it keeps many of us from going crazy. Crazy with despair, depression, isolation, anxiety, a crushing sense of meaninglessness, or some combination of all of these. Crazy enough make us take desperate actions, sink into addiction, numb out with distractions, succumb to greed, devalue life, or at the very least walk through life on an aimless path while feeling only half alive.
This kind of craziness is not just a problem for people who have experienced unusual trauma or who suffer from diagnosable mental illness. It’s a problem for all of us because being human is really hard. The world can be a tough, scary, ambiguous and confusing place. We’re smart enough to see what’s coming, and to understand what’s happening on the other side of the planet. We’re also smart to enough to imagine how things could be better, and we’re well aware of how reality doesn’t measure up.
Zen Buddhism saved my life. I don’t know if I actually would ever have killed myself. Probably not. But even in young adulthood I was filled with despair and a sense of meaninglessness. Every day felt like a burden punctuated with little moments of pleasantness. I couldn’t make sense of anything for myself. When I encountered Zen – meditation, mindfulness, Zen teachings, a Zen teacher, and community – my suffering was given context. It didn’t go away, but it was ennobled. I had a path, direction, guidance for how to live, inspiration, and social support.
Zen is my worldview. Everything I experience or do takes place within this overarching, stabilizing, ennobling, sanity-making context. I imagine the same is true for sincere devotees of all authentic religions.
What good does this do the rest of the world? Well, frankly, you all benefit a great deal from the fact that I’m not crazy. We all benefit when someone is relatively stable and happy, and has a sense of dignity, meaning, connection, purpose, and support. As opposed to when someone is desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb. It’s not rocket science. Those who are desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb tend to hurt themselves or others. Sometimes they want context for their lives so badly they find it organizations that breed hatred and violence instead of finding that context in religion. True, sometimes the line between these two types of groups gets blurry – but that only highlights the importance of stable, time-tested, respectable religions with strong moral foundations.
At the Zen temple where I was trained it was considered very important to provide a spiritual education to children and young adults. We went about this activity passionately, and have one of the largest Zen children’s programs in the U.S. We measured the success of the program not in the number of Buddhists we churned out (which, honestly, was not that many) but in the number of young adults who graduated from our program with an appreciation for the potential value of religion in their lives. Any religion. If one of our graduates decided to embrace Wicca or Judaism or Christianity we would celebrate because we knew they had found the refuge and support elsewhere that we had found in Zen.
Not everyone needs religion, but many of us do. Our religion offers us a tradition – in many cases the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of sincere practitioners or believers. It offers us structure and context for our lives. It gives a sense of deeper meaning and purpose. It challenges us to become wiser, more compassionate, and more generous. It connects us to community.
Religion is simply the most powerful, organic, stable and persistent social security system in the world.
Read more: www.patheos.com/blogs/myjourneyofconscience/2015/04/02/what-good-is-religion-anyway/#ixzz3X0enmaua
A Zen priest tries to save the world.
Written as part of a Patheos symposium in response to the following prompt: “We all know the media mantra, ‘What bleeds, leads.’ Bad news sells, and there’s nothing like a juicy religious scandal to drive traffic. Yet, for every sordid religious story, there are any number of quiet stories of charity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and service. In our obsession with bad news, are we missing of the GOOD of religion? How is your tradition contributing to the flourishing of the world? How has your faith, in big and small ways, theoretical and very concrete, served humanity and the world for good?”
When I contemplate the GOOD of my religion, I immediately start to think about some kind of grand scale. Like, what good does Zen Buddhism do the United States? What good is my religion to the people who don’t practice it? What kind of positive impact does it have on poverty, injustice, and climate change?
When I think like this I get confused pretty fast, because I really don’t know. I’d like to think my religion contributes something positive to the global system in some way, but it would be awfully difficult to demonstrate.
But then I take a couple deep breaths and ask myself, “What good is religion?” I become aware of the energy center in my lower abdomen. And then I feel very clear.
The good of religion is that it keeps many of us from going crazy. Crazy with despair, depression, isolation, anxiety, a crushing sense of meaninglessness, or some combination of all of these. Crazy enough make us take desperate actions, sink into addiction, numb out with distractions, succumb to greed, devalue life, or at the very least walk through life on an aimless path while feeling only half alive.
This kind of craziness is not just a problem for people who have experienced unusual trauma or who suffer from diagnosable mental illness. It’s a problem for all of us because being human is really hard. The world can be a tough, scary, ambiguous and confusing place. We’re smart enough to see what’s coming, and to understand what’s happening on the other side of the planet. We’re also smart to enough to imagine how things could be better, and we’re well aware of how reality doesn’t measure up.
Zen Buddhism saved my life. I don’t know if I actually would ever have killed myself. Probably not. But even in young adulthood I was filled with despair and a sense of meaninglessness. Every day felt like a burden punctuated with little moments of pleasantness. I couldn’t make sense of anything for myself. When I encountered Zen – meditation, mindfulness, Zen teachings, a Zen teacher, and community – my suffering was given context. It didn’t go away, but it was ennobled. I had a path, direction, guidance for how to live, inspiration, and social support.
Zen is my worldview. Everything I experience or do takes place within this overarching, stabilizing, ennobling, sanity-making context. I imagine the same is true for sincere devotees of all authentic religions.
What good does this do the rest of the world? Well, frankly, you all benefit a great deal from the fact that I’m not crazy. We all benefit when someone is relatively stable and happy, and has a sense of dignity, meaning, connection, purpose, and support. As opposed to when someone is desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb. It’s not rocket science. Those who are desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb tend to hurt themselves or others. Sometimes they want context for their lives so badly they find it organizations that breed hatred and violence instead of finding that context in religion. True, sometimes the line between these two types of groups gets blurry – but that only highlights the importance of stable, time-tested, respectable religions with strong moral foundations.
At the Zen temple where I was trained it was considered very important to provide a spiritual education to children and young adults. We went about this activity passionately, and have one of the largest Zen children’s programs in the U.S. We measured the success of the program not in the number of Buddhists we churned out (which, honestly, was not that many) but in the number of young adults who graduated from our program with an appreciation for the potential value of religion in their lives. Any religion. If one of our graduates decided to embrace Wicca or Judaism or Christianity we would celebrate because we knew they had found the refuge and support elsewhere that we had found in Zen.
Not everyone needs religion, but many of us do. Our religion offers us a tradition – in many cases the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of sincere practitioners or believers. It offers us structure and context for our lives. It gives a sense of deeper meaning and purpose. It challenges us to become wiser, more compassionate, and more generous. It connects us to community.
Religion is simply the most powerful, organic, stable and persistent social security system in the world.
Read more: www.patheos.com/blogs/myjourneyofconscience/2015/04/02/what-good-is-religion-anyway/#ixzz3X0enmaua
