I recently had the unbelievable and quite misplaced privilege to give a presentation at the 2015 Parliament of World Religions. For those who were unable to attend, I wanted to post the in case you were curious enough to give it a read. I want to thank everyone that was able to support this effort and provide your invaluable feedback. It truly was an unforgettable experience! Thanks for reading!
Although it may not be where the whole story begins, the best place for my talk to begin is the moment, a few months ago when I received notice that my proposal to the Parliament had been accepted, and that I needed to submit a 100 word Bio describing myself, my work and any relevant accomplishments. Honestly I had never even written a bio before and had no idea where to start, so I decided that I would use the other bios already posted to the Parliament of World Religions website as inspiration. It seemed simple enough! I’d just figure out what other people put in their bios, and I could use similar information from my life to fill out my own.
I discovered 2 things. One: The Bio should be written in the 3rd person, so that it sounds like someone else wrote it, giving the bio a much more external and objective viewpoint. And Two: I am unbelievably under qualified to be here! Every single Bio started with something amazing like “Dr.”, or “Author”, “Nobel Laureate”, or “His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama”. It was pretty terrifying!
My first impulse was to back out, inform the parliament that there had been some kind of mistake in accepting my proposal and that this time would be much better served to let someone more qualified fill it.
But then I got to thinking about it. About that word “qualified”. It is a very effective term most of the time, in business, finance or sports. Qualification is a very necessary part of making sure that someone is going to be an effective use of your resources, but I didn’t feel like spiritual philosophy fit into those categories and found myself asking, “how does someone qualify as a spiritual authority?”.
There is the obvious case for tenure. Once anyone has spent so much time directly involved with anything, they are bound to learn enough to qualify. But spirituality represents it’s own unique scenario, where someone may spend their lives embedded in it and still fail to grasp the fundamental truths of the system. The other obvious answer was that spiritual authority can be demonstrated through understanding, regardless of how long someone has been engaged in the practice; some people just get it!
This lead me further to examine the nature of religious philosophy as a whole, and that conclusion could be summarized by the word “Abstract”. Abstract is beautiful description of religious philosophy, because the word affords the discipline so much freedom. Freedom to grow and evolve. The freedom to change and adapt to our individual circumstances. By being infinitely flexible and open to the receiver’s interpretation, this philosophy can be molded and shaped to reflect and direct our individual challenges in a way that no other discipline is capable.
And so my conclusion began to take shape, in that religious philosophy is not only accessible to anyone, it is open to everyone! And so it’s authority is not measured by age, or time, certification, or even the ability to cite the applicable material. I concluded that religious authority can only be characterized by the manifestation of it’s doctrine in your personal life. Most of us have likely heard the scripture “if a man smite thee on thy cheek, then turn to him the other also.” I have heard this scripture quoted more than I can count, but I doubt any of you have seen this concept realized in action any more than I have. Despite its undeniable wisdom, it is simply too far a departure from our primitive nature to realistically enact.
And so authority, I concluded further, is attainable by anyone willing to listen to their doctrine and make an effort to apply it’s principles to their thoughts and actions. This conclusion was confirmed, first from a scripture I remembered from when I was a kid. “Ask and ye shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened to you. ” This paired very well with the Buddhist teachings I know that teach us all to listen to our own spiritual authority in our hearts.
So, I have come to believe that the only thing that separates the teachers from the students, is that the teacher has discovered how much more they can learn if they teach what they have already learned to the hungry souls around them. Also, that they believe in what they have to say, and have the audacity enough to say it to anyone who will listen. So, for better or worse, I am here today, simply because I believe in what I have to say, enough to say it in front of all of you, with the daring hope that at least one of you might hear something new, or maybe just reaffirm an established idea that may help you along your spiritual path.
For the sake of context, the primary perspective of this talk is that of a self proclaimed techno-philosopher, if you will, which, for my meaning is a description of this new age that spirituality has been forced to adapt to. This new age has been defined by technology and the effect it has had on our interactions. For example, the Parliament of World Religions began over 120 years ago. In 1893 the leaders from the religions of the world gathered together to discuss their philosophy and their vision amongst one another in hopes of fostering a sense of global unity and interreligious peace. At that time, technology, specifically communications technology was in a much more primitive state than it is today. The primary mode of long distance communication was almost 4,300 years old. Not a lot of people realize that the courrier based postal system that we’re still using was invented in 2,400 B.C. The telegraph was available but with limited coverage. The telephone had been invented, but it would still be 22 years before the first cross continental phone call from New York to San Francisco in 1915. -So the purpose of the parliament was crystal clear. Get everyone together, in one place at the same time and just talk, and learn, and brainstorm to build a vision for the harmonious future of the religious world.
So where are we today? Today not only are there hundreds of thousands of calls made from New York to San Francisco every day, but if we want to, we can just fly there in a matter of hours, have our discussion, then fly back, IN A DAY! We have cell phones in the hands of just about everyone, that can call, or text message anyone else, almost anywhere at any time! We have the internet with facebook, Twitter, email, we can stream live video feeds with 50 people at the same time. We have blogs, and youtube so that people can upload the historical documentation of their entire lives! -But what does that all mean for us!? To me, it is the most beautiful thought in the world to realize that we are all more closely connected than we have ever been in the entirety of human history. We have these tools that are ALL built for no other purpose than to facilitate our interactions, and that is where I believe the spirituality of technology lies, because I believe that of the many functions of spirituality, one of the most important is that it teaches us about the true nature of our relationships and guides us to interact with each other as beneficially as possible. In this way, religion is as much about our relationships with one another as it is about our relationship with God. -To look at the state of technology through that perspective paints an incredible picture, where not only do we all have unlimited access to one another’s lives and stories, but based on the volume of consumption of that technology, the people of the world can’t seem to get enough of each other! And so it is the goal of the techno-philosopher to look at the new age of relationships and figure out how to help to make the billions of interactions that happen on an HOURLY basis peaceful, civil and cooperative.
So, then, the story of what I am here to talk about today is very simple. It begins with a life-long, love-hate relationship with religion, that drove me away from the religion I was raised in and towards, literally, all of the other ones. True to the nature of defiance, I ran as far away as I possibly could. Knowing that my previous religion was anchored in the West, my heart fled to the east.
I have to admit that my primary fascination was with the seemingly magical feats of reality bending accomplishments, achieved through the discipline of meditation. Unbelievable focus, control and concentration. Super-human strength, some even claim supernatural powers like telepathy or levitation. It just so happened that I wanted nothing more in the universe than to be able to levitate! And that’s exactly what I was chasing when I began my pursuit of Buddhism. However, such is the mysterious way that Buddhism very promptly taught me that the greatest magic is not to be found in supernatural abilities, but instead to master the control of your own mind. I found their stories beautiful and the wisdom profound. I was absolutely hooked! And I wanted to know as much as I could, so I read everything I could get my hands on. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. Eventually, however, the material began to get a bit repetitive. There are endless books on the subject but quite a few of them tend to cover the same topics. It felt like everything I had understood was being repeated over and over and everything else was too abstract for me to grasp. It got to the point where I didn’t feel completely fulfilled by it anymore. I wanted to learn something new and exciting again! So I dove more into the history of Buddhism, specifically it’s roots in Hinduism. I found it especially interesting that the story of the Buddha begins with a man trying to be a the best Hindu he could be, in much the same way that the story of Jesus Christ begins with a man trying to be the best hebrew he could be.
That was the first of many parallels I would eventually become obsessed with finding, and not just between these 4 faiths. I found them throughout the religious world. Of all the similarities I was able to discern, there seemed to be one common thread that ran through the heart of every single religion. The concept of love. As intricate as their varied mythologies are, as diverse as their pantheon of holy figures may have been, with the myriad of stories told from earth and heaven alike, they all had one purpose, and one message. There is a force that represents the will of the universe, and whether you call it God, Allah, Krishna, Nirvana, Zeus, or anything else, to grow closer to it, we must practice love for our fellow beings with all of our might!
Once I had this realization in my heart, I had a mission. And like all missions, along with determining where I should go, I also needed to determine where NOT to go. If love was the target, then I should avoid the opposite, but I really didn’t have a good idea of what that was. The obvious answer is hatred. Obviously, if love was the pinnacle of liking someone and treating them well, then hatred was the pinnacle of disliking someone. But I realized that there are so many ways to not love someone, even if you don’t necessarily hate them. A lot of people neglect to love those around them, simply because they don’t know how, or maybe they just forget. Buddhism refers to this concept as ignorance. I feel like that was closer, but the translation never held up for me because in order to ignore something, you have to know that it’s there in the first place. I was stuck trying to define how I felt for a long time, until I came across a quote by the Hindu philosopher J.D. Krishnamurti. The answer to my question was violence. The opposite of love is violence.
Violence is a very well understood and very common concept, but I feel like it is a bit underestimated. When I talk about violence, I’m not necessarily speaking of it in terms of outward verbal or physical aggression. I believe that violence, like most everything in morality and philosophy, is not a black or white occurrence, but rather that it takes place on a spectrum. There are various degrees of violence ranging from the aggressive and apparent, to the subtle. I generally understand that violence mostly takes place due to a lack of understanding, meaning that most everyone generally believes that they are doing the right thing and making the right decision, or at least, they don’t understand that they are making the wrong decision, and so their violence is tragically but honestly justified in their eyes. But that doesn’t change the fact that they believe that they are doing the right thing. With this in mind it is easily understood that no one wants to be evil. Violence then becomes the result only of misguided behavior that either unintentionally harms someone, or, intentionally harms someone for a seemingly justifiable reason. So, of the two types of violence, there is the egregious, or apparent violences. Physical violence, verbal abuse, etc. which we all likely know too well. Then there are the subtle violences, that we have all no doubt been a victim of, but we’ve also likely been a perpetrator as well. Because of their subtle nature, they often pass unnoticed, with the hurt caused by them too slight to mention. At best these subtle violences are so well executed that the victim may even believe that they have caused it themselves or worse, that they deserve it.
The violence I will reference specifically for the point I will try to make today occurs all over the spectrum and so may be the most effective form of violence. It can be outwardly aggressive, or unnoticeably subtle. It is also one that I would venture to say that most of us have been on both sides of, however, our purpose here this week is to reconcile this particular violence. It is the violence of invalidation. This is a violence that is particularly present in our religious culture and that is partially because it can be so subtly executed. I’ve actually already seen it here a number of times!
It is all too apparent that our modern society places great value upon being right. It is an incredibly powerful position to hold for anyone in any sphere, but what’s more powerful than simply being right, for whatever reason, is to prove others wrong. Yet again, there are sectors of society where this jostling for the power of correctness is very useful. For empirical disciplines such as science, or history, correctness is incredibly valuable, in fact those disciplines tend to crumble in the presence of false or incomplete information. However, I hope it is not spoiling anyone’s spirit to put forth that religion is not an empirical discipline. It is by its very nature an abstract discipline built on faith in mostly word of mouth traditions that are infinitely open to individual interpretation according to our own experiences. And that’s precisely where the violence happens. In the endless effort to be right, we hold each other’s abstract religions accountable against an empirical rule set. To do this we read through their traditional texts just enough to find anything we can disagree with. Any inconsistency that we can point out, or any contradiction in the story we can find amounts to the total invalidation of the entire religion and we make sure they know it.
And so I make my first request that you might soften your heart enough to accept the following suggestion. The physicist Neils Bohr once said “if you aren’t completely baffled by the implications of quantum physics, then you haven’t understood it well enough.” I believe this idea fits well into the abstract religion but restated, “If you haven’t found a contradiction or inconsistency in your own religion, then you haven’t studied it well enough.”
So the natural question follows. Does that mean that there are no true religions? My answer is, of course there are. Ok then, well how can we explain the inconsistencies and the contradictions? This question was made especially difficult by a Hindu mantra I knew that had me convinced of the perfection of all of God’s creations. Roughly translated it begins, “This is perfect! That is perfect! That which comes from perfection, is yet perfect!”. So if every religion claiming a God describes that God as being perfect, then how could that perfect God allow for the dissemination of an imperfect gospel? I have 2 answers to this question.
First, I would like to address the nature of imperfection. Simply put, imperfection does not imply invalidation. For example, if I gave you a tape measure and a magnifying glass, I’m fairly certain that you could examine any of the great structural accomplishments of our species and find an imperfection in it at some point. So I ask, just because you find a crack in the mortar of the Taj Mahal, does that mean that it should be demolished? If I were to tear a 20 dollar bill half way down the middle, would you no longer want it if I offered it to you freely? I hate to be presumptuous but I hope your answer is no. So I suggest to you today that imperfection does not destroy value. If anything it should only serve as testament to the reality of a thing. After all, is there anything in this world that is perfect?
My second answer is a bit more complex but I believe it is the more profound of the two. It begins with accepting that each and every religion represented here today contains a flaw of some kind, combined with the belief that the creator of the universe is perfect. How do we reconcile the two? I mentioned earlier that one of the purposes of religion was to guide us in our personal relationships and where that is true, the primary function of religion is to guide an individual toward nurturing their relationship with their God. That religion is a very personal experience, but one that is so complex that it is very difficult to do without the assistance and guidance of others. Unfortunately, at some point, some of us have a tendency to become over reliant on the guidance and assistance of others and before we know it, our religion is no longer a relationship between ourselves and our God, but between us and our church, or our pastor, priest, bishop, monk, perhaps believing that they are our religion, they are our link to God. But, as the Buddha once said “the finger can only point the way to the moon, but the finger is not the moon.” This is an important sentiment. We have to remember that our role as religious leaders in our communities is not to be the moon, but to point our followers toward it. However for those who are not so humble, God has left the miracle of contradiction. You see, at some point in every diligent followers search for truth and salvation, if they search hard enough, they will find one. I’m going to cite an example and as it is the faith I was raised in I’ll pick one from the Bible so that no one has any more reason to be offended than I do.
In the Old Testament, Moses receives the miracle of the Ten Commandments directly from the hand of god, one of which reads, “Thou shalt not kill”. However for most of the remainder of the Old Testament, God commands the entire nation of Israel into a never ending war campaign, conquering city after city, at times even bragging about not even sparing the women and children. These people are not killed for any moral reason, other than that they just so happened to occupy the lands which God promised to the Nation of Israel. They weren’t asked to leave, they were violently and impulsively conquered at the edge of a sword. So there you have it, a glaring contradiction in the Judeo-Christian faith. So what’s the answer? In this case the question is the answer. There is no amount of human logic or moral reasoning that can explain the coincidence of these conflicting ideas, that God forbids the act of killing, and then commands the execution of so many innocent souls.
I want to pause here, and give you a moment to examine your own thoughts. It is absolutely understandable and expected that many of you may be thinking of any and all justifications you know of in defense of these actions. I will admit freely that your justification may very well be more valid than my example. But I must ask that you keep in mind that this is just an example and that my intention is not to address your defense, but instead to set you free of your need for it.
So who do you ask a question that no man can answer? I only know one answer. You have to ask God! You have to pray! For the sake of including all religions here I will submit that prayer by any name exists in all religious practices whether you call it prayer, or contemplation, meditation, pondering, asking, or whether you believe the conduit of any potential answers should be called the holy spirit, your intuition, your connection to the fundamental Buddha nature, it is the same in all religions, again, said perfectly by Jesus Christ when he said, “Ask, and ye shall receive. Knock and it shall be opened to you.” I know that! And I believe it because that’s exactly how I discovered the idea that I am attempting to impart.
I didn’t quite get to the end of my religious story, but the last chapter begins with a man who has chased religion all the way back to where he started. With all of the knowledge and wisdom I’d gained from studying the practices of the east, I took another look at the western religions, and when I got there, I heard the wisdom in the words of Jesus Christ in the new testament, but everything else just seemed like one contradiction after the other. So I asked. Having developed my relationship enough to know that prayer is a viable path to insight, like I had so many times before, I asked. The only difference was, this time, I honestly didn’t expect an answer. But I asked, and then I read until I found another, then I asked again, when suddenly, it dawned on me. My search for the answer, was the answer. I realized that my encounter with contradiction perfectly served it’s intended purpose. It drove me directly to God. I asked, and I received. This sentiment is even echoed in the tenets of Buddhism “Do not believe anything that anyone has told you, no matter who says it. Even if I have said it, do not believe it unless it agrees with the sense of truth in your own heart.” I heard the answer, and I knew it from the deepest places in my heart.
And that’s where the miracle happens! When presented with a moral dead end, you have one place to turn, and that is back the first authority, back to the figurehead of your system of worship. Once you have studied your religion so thoughtfully and to such depth that you find the holes in it, you can only turn back to God itself for the answers at which point your religion regains its intended state, as a relationship between your spirit and its maker, back to its source, back to God.
So I will close with one final suggestion. That the religious are so often offended by the notion of someone pointing out holes in their religion, and that is understandable because for many, religion is the blanket that keeps us warm and safe in what can be such a cold and hostile world. But keep in mind that though it serves well as a blanket, that it was built as net by a God that is all too well known for her mysterious ways. I believe in a benevolent God that wants everyone to have what they want and he has done that with religion. If your intention in examining religion is to find holes, then that’s exactly what you’ll find! But those searching for substance and guidance will find it also, and they can cling to that while those who would only search for holes will be left with nothing to hold on to. And so it is your duty to cling to your faith, and remember that everyone else is only doing their best to do the same. The spiritual life is not always easy, and the path is not always straight forward, and I want you to understand that that’s ok. I do not believe that God intended the religious life, or life at all to be simple. However if you are able to cling to your faith with an open heart, when you are lost, you need only ask for directions. You may not get the answer you want, and you may not get any answer immediately, but you will find it.
Yet another of my favorite parallels between all religions is that there are men, and there is God and we have religion to teach us how to get back to him, but we all have our own path and rest assured that God will do everything it can to help you back to her. -You must understand that this is YOUR path, and that no other person will ever follow it exactly, and that is how this idea is meant to foster true and lasting peace. First it is designed to help you find peace in yourself, because after all, world peace is impossible in a world where no one is at peace with themselves. But also If you understand that you are on your own path, and I am on mine, then no person has the authority to invalidate the path of anyone else leaving us all free to simply walk.
Chrooth 