If my last article was an exhortation for people to take their time to become more educated about the topic of religion, this next article is the natural outgrowth of learning and growing – to take responsibility and act maturely.
Those were the themes I had in mind as I chose the picture above as the banner for this article. A photo of young Buddhist monks being presented at the temple for their ordination, these young monks will most likely spend their days reading scripture, traveling from monastery to monastery to learn from different teachers, and eventually settle down into one particular community, taking responsibility for the life of their monastic community and overall well-being of their home.
This is how most of us enter our faith tradition, as young children, unaware of the tradition or the teachings we are about to embody for the rest of our lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing; people baptize and initiate their children into various faith/wisdom traditions each and every day with the best of intentions that following the particular teachings of that tradition will help make them a good person. However, initiation into a certain faith can also be the result of an unquestioning adherence to family tradition and societal norms. The latter is not necessarily bad either, it just comes off as lazy.
I can hear what some people may be saying as they read that last paragraph.
“Not everyone has the time to learn as much about religion as you think they should learn.”
“Maybe they like the tradition they entered into, there’s noting wrong with that.”
“Why am I reading this article when I could be doing a hundred other more productive things with my life?”
Well, dear reader, you hit the nail on the head with that last one. As for the first two statements, I do not disagree. I am neither asking people to devote their free time to constantly reading books about religion and culture, nor am I asking people to abandon the faith and traditions they grew up with. Yet, there is a precedent set within the great wisdom traditions themselves, a precedent of introspection and dialogue that should be met as often as possible. The majority of believers do not want to engage in any sort of dialogue with their faith or what they believe. But if you are going to church, temple, or meditation every day without asking the hard questions, well…
Then you may not have any faith at all.
This is a question of profundity as much as it is a question of authenticity. Spirituality lends itself to profound experiences and profound conundrums, but it is whether we face the questions the profundity of the universe puts on us that defines the authenticity of both our beliefs and our being. As I said in the previous article, we need to educate ourselves, and in educating ourselves to have an open mind. Only by having an open mind are we bound to have an experience that is the antithesis of quiescent faith – we start to have a relation with the world. As the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton writes in his posthumous work Love and Living:
“The purpose of education is to show us how to define ourselves authentically and spontaneously in relation to our world – not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of ourselves as individuals. The world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: that is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living and fruitful relationship with each other in it. The world is, therefore, more real in proportion as the people in it are able to be more fully and more humanly alive: that is to say, better able to make a lucid and conscious use of their freedom.”
We could take this as a more theologically fanciful way of saying “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but that is not what Merton is trying to say. Spirituality/Religion/Faith/Shopping at Target is a realm of being and understanding we can only start to truly be involved with when we engage in the dialogue/dialectic it presents to us. Being in dialogue with your spirituality is to hold up a mirror to yourself – to engage with yourself and your own questions is to engage with God.
Therefore, the wiggle room for “God told me to do this,” or “God said stealing that Porsche was okay because that man did not really need it” (he didn’t really need it anyway, no worries, you’re in the clear) becomes nonexistent. As in, there’s no room for that bullshit. The realm of religiosity or spirituality does not afford us the convenience of leaving everything up to a higher power or say he was the reason we did everything in the first place. The primary issue with this way of thinking is that it lends itself to determinism, which, fine, I guess it’s totally not my fault I ate that whole pizza by myself, it was supposed to happen anyway. Secondly, this is the highest mark of a lack of maturity or growth. The practices and precepts people of faith follow are not there so we can rely on Christ, Buddha, Jehovah, or Guru Nanak Dev. They are there to help you become a fully realized, and possible even an awakened, person.
We have a responsibility to ask the difficult questions. We cannot be afraid to evolve and change as people. This fear of understanding just how quickly and abruptly we may change is what usually makes people slink back from engaging with difficult questions in the first place. However, it is fear itself that metastasizes into the traits that faith routinely works against. Fear leads to ignorance, ignorance leads to hate, and hate ultimately leads to suffering. If you want to become a Sith Lord, that’s cool, then I just laid out the path to your ultimate success for you without having to watch the prequels (you are very welcome, no thanks needed). As I said in my last article, we need to have open minds, and that means we must be open to change and open to the unknown. Only when we confront the situations of our life with open hearts are we able to radically respond in new ways and radically renew our relationship with the world.
The best example I can muster is one that the Father of Existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) brings up in one of his more famous works, Fear and Trembling. In this work, Kierkegaard uses Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as his main character. Usually taken as a model of great faith and fortitude, Kierkegaard gives us an altogether different individual. The Abraham we encounter in Kierkegaard’s writing is one that is constantly plagued by doubt and consternation as to the reason why his new deity has asked him to travel so far from civilization, only to give him a son in his old age so that he may sacrifice him as an offering to the divine.
Abraham follows through with carrying out the task (until he is told he does not have to sacrifice his son, that it was all a test), but all the time he is fearful of what may happen if he does not listen to this god and constantly questions the wisdom and sanity of what he is about to do. In this individual, in this model of the “dark night of faith,” we see a figure who is plagued by doubt and change and an inability to comprehend what he is about to do. But he takes responsibility for his actions and carries them out, wracked with guilt before the change of fortune at the end.
Life, and life lived through faith traditions, is messy. We do not always have the answers we may want or seek, but we must ask the questions necessary for not only our survival, but our growth as a people. Constant questions can drive anyone crazy, and that is not the point of this article, but we must learn to be mature and reasonable people in the midst of opaque and existential phenomena in our interior lives. We cannot pretend the situations and frames of mind we find ourselves in from time to time are enjoyable, or that there will be an invisible force alongside us to always get us out of a jam. The best way to grow is to engage with whatever faith you may hold, because only by communicating with the principles and foundation of our being are we able to possibly find the Truth we may have always been searching for, even if we never knew what we were looking for in the first place. You may be surprised what you find when you learn to shoulder the weight of what our faiths may entail.
“Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.” – Rumi
Zen Millennial 