Walking the Wall

NOTE: This is a very long ramble, an attempt by me to sort out a jumble of things I have been mulling over, not an attempt at coming to any profound conclusion–meaning, it’s likely terribly boring to most. 

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about religion and spirituality lately, a lot of mulling and chewing and a bit of reading as well–and to be clear, I think that religion and spirituality are two different things that often intertwine, but not always. Religion, to me, is an organized religious group whereas spirituality is more personal (again, for myself). One of the definitions of spirituality is "the quality or state of being spiritual"…okay…that doesn’t say a lot. The truth is, I think that spirituality means different things to different people. For some, it is a way to find redemption, some turn to it for salvation (physical, mental, spiritual), others find comfort in the traditions of religion, or the sense of community with a group of people. I don’t think there are any right or wrong reasons to turn to spirituality (however, I think religion can be used wrongly–to control people or to uphold one group of people over another, for instance). For myself, I think that my spiritual journey is a seeking for connection, connection between myself and the world and other people. I don’t ascribe to the heavy burden’s of some religion, and I don’t ascribe the the "unbearable lightness of being" that symbolizes to me the opposite of strict religion–my path is someplace in the middle, and I struggle with a need to define it.

I’m an analyzer, I think anyone who knows me well will agree with that, sometimes I over analyze things, but that is something I’d rather be guilty of than the alternative of never thinking deeply at all. It isn’t surprising that I’m a literature major, there is no greater thrill for me than taking a piece of writing and chewing on it, digging into it, delving into it’s layers and meanings. But sometimes it can be discomfiting to me, on one hand I think that the western world is too  obsessed with labeling things, placing them in neat boxes and black and white, good or bad categories–but I find that it unsettles me that my sense of spirituality is not defined. I miss not having a spiritual vocabulary that connects me to other people of like mind, I miss the connection of other people, the sense of belonging to something larger than my self–the connection–at the same time as I greatly enjoy the freedom of the unrestricted spiritual path.

While I have a level of respect and appreciation for Christianity (as a whole, the root of Christianity, not a particular type of Christianity), and can see the beauty and the underlying truths in it, I do not see myself ever walking that path again. I know that this is painful for my family, but spirituality is deeply personal and can’t be (or rather, shouldn’t be) false or forced, there is no point and only heartache found in anything but a truthful spiritual walk. There are so many beautiful things in various religions, I love the old hymns of the Baptists, I love the candles lit as prayers of the Catholic faith, I love the act of the Namaste greeting of the Hindu–greeting the divine in each person we meet…but nothing seems to really fit in any form of organized religion. I have problems with religion smothering, distorting, and otherwise loosing focus on what is truth and what is simply tradition.

I have been studying the core beliefs of Buddhism and just like Christian based religion, Buddhism has been greatly changed over the course of time and through incorporation with various culture’s other religions until it doesn’t seem to much resemble its origins. I was confused by all the different types and the cultural issues until I realized it wasn’t any different than Christianity (something I understood) in that just as a full blown Roman Catholic mass is very far removed from Jesus sitting and speaking to the people around him, teaching them–so is, for example, the rites of a full blown Tibetan Buddhist ceremony far removed from the simple, profound teachings of Gautama Buddha to his students. (I use those as examples only because while watching the movie Kundun I was struck by the similarity of the two). I am reading a booklet called Handbook for Mankind by Buddhadasa Bhikkhu who writes that "the Dhamma, the genuine teaching that once was paramount has become so overlaid by ceremonial that the whole objective of Buddhism has been obscured, falsified and changed." I think this is true of many religions.

I became interested in Buddhism some time ago, from various places, most especially Joseph Campbell’s "The Power of Myth" and the ideas of compassion that Buddhism incorporates, "Compassion, " writes Campbell discussing Buddhism, "is the awakening of the heart from bestial self-interest to humanity. The word "compassion" means literally "suffering with" (201). Further, when reading The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (which is on my summer "to finish" list), while traveling through where Gautama Buddha (Gautama was his name, Buddha is a title, or state of being as I understand it) was born and raised, he writes:

In what became known as the Four Noble Truths, Sakyamuni (another name for the Buddha) percived that man’s existence is inseparable from sorrow; that the cause of suffering is craving; that peace is attained by extinguishing craving; that this liberation may be brought about by following the Eight-fold path: right attention to one’s understanding, intentions, speech, and actions; right livelihood, effort, mindfulness; right concentration. 

Recently I’ve been reading through a book called "Buddha his life and teachings" by Osho that has wonderful insights into the beauty that is both the truths and the mythology of Buddha. When talking about the day he became enlightened and he remained silent for seven days, "all of existence waited breathlessly to hear him, to hear his music, to hear his soundless song, his words coming from the land of the beyond–words of truth"  he acknowledge the poetry and beauty of the story, "The story is tremendously beautiful. Up to a certain point it is factual and beyond that it becomes mythological, but by mythological I do not mean it becomes a lie. There are a few truths that can be expressed only through myths" (44). This idea goes hand in hand with Campbell’s life work in showing mythology not as merely stories, not as lies, but as humanity’s way of trying to define a deep and abiding truth that is impossible to define in concrete language.

Two of the biggest "aha" moments for me has been the understanding that in Buddhism there is no need to go off in the mountains and live as a monk. When he came back to his family after having left them without understanding it was never necessary–his wife asks him if he could have found what he needed here at home.

Guatama Buddha replied, "I could have attained it here, but I had no idea at that moment. Now I can say that I could have attained it here in this palace; there was no need to go to the mountains, there was no need to go anywhere. I had to go inside, and that could have happened anywhere" (Osho 42). He goes on to tell his disciples what he had learned from his wife’s question, he says, "But now I can say that wherever you are, if you are courageous enough to risk everything for being alert and aware, enlightenment is going to happen" (43).

The second, and most powerful for me to pure Buddhism, though, is the sense of balance. I read somewhere in all my various readings that I can’t directly point to one source, that while Gautama Buddha had tried the life of luxery, of complete satisfaction of every desire, surrounded only by beauty–and he then tried the life of deprivation, poverty, fasting, removing himself from life; neither was right. That it was in walking the middle path that he gained enlightenment. Balance has long been what I personally strive for. "Every extreme has to exclude the other extreme; every extreme has to be in opposition to the other polarity. The negative is against the positive, the minus is against the plus, death is against life. If you take them as extremes, they naturally appear as opposites. But the man who can stop exactly in the middle immediately transcends all the extremes and the middle together. … The extremes are not opposites, not contradictories, but only complementaries" (Osho 92).

Anyway, that is a very long ramble into what has been going on in my mind. I don’t claim to be a Buddhist or am even set at that path, just that I have been exploring it and, if nothing else, have certainly gained some insights and respect for the core of this path. I really do believe that at the core of many, if not all, religions is an attempt to understand Truth–the sadness is that humanity works so hard to muddy the waters and superimpose all kinds of hoopla and strictures that pulls the focus away from that seed of Truth.