Goal #66) Study a World Religion: Buddhism
July 10, 2010 2 Comments
Disclaimer: This article describes my personal journey to understand religion and is not intended to offend, attack or question anyone for their personal beliefs. I encourage open and honest dialogue about this challenging subject but reserve the right to edit or delete comments which are not conducive to the conversation.
Heaven, Hell and God are all concepts which I’ve never been able to convince myself to believe and as such I’ve always had an atheistic view towards religion (though I prefer not to use the word ”atheist” to describe myself as it implies an acknowledgment of what I consider imaginary). And though I can find value in the teachings of the Bible or Qur’an, I view God (by any name), Heaven and Hell as being as real as ghosts or UFOs. Creationism seems like a weak explanation for the origin of man, especially considering the scientific evidence supporting evolution.
Traditional Western religions, therefore, are a hard pill for me to swallow.
Six months ago, I realized that I’m going to die and death was no longer a nebulous concept for which I had only a superficial understanding. This revelation caused a lingering sense of despair, leaving me questioning the meaning of life. Knowing that I couldn’t turn to God for comfort, the answers to my questions would have to come from somewhere else.
While in the airport waiting for my connecting flight, I was browsing around a bookstore where I found a book about Buddhism. Flipping through the pages, reading a little here and there, I realized almost immediately that the ideas in the book matched many of my own opinions. Page after page I felt like someone had taken the thoughts from my mind and written a book with them. It all made sense. I bought the book and spent the next two hours reading.
Religion should come natural to the person practicing it and in the past I’ve tried to embrace the unknown, or “have faith”, but always found myself feeling at odds with what I consider to be ”truth”. I shouldn’t have to force myself to believe in something. And while I feel strongly that religion provides an abundance of benefits to humanity, I believe meaning and purpose in life can be achieved without God.
Buddhism falls in line with many of my personal beliefs; there are no Gods to worship, I am not required to put my faith in anything that I don’t understand or can’t comprehend and seeking Truth is at the core of Buddhism. Thus, Buddhism will be the world religion which I study in detail. Though I have no plans of becoming a monk, there’s much I can learn which will expand and solidify many of my own beliefs.
Are you religious? Have you ever found yourself facing the same sorts of questions as I am? How were you able to overcome these uncertainties, or have you?
About Steven
My feelings reguarding religion are similar. I have come to the conclusion that religion is not my thing and I am fine with that. I have no problem with others’ beliefs as long as they are not pushing them on me. I have not questioned my beliefs (or non-beliefs) until recently. My own mortality was not the reason though. In the past year I have lost two very close friends. These two people were close to my children and saw them on very very regular basis (at least once a week). When these friends died I strugged with how to explain death to the kids. It would have been so easy to say, “They are in Heaven with all their loved ones and happy”. I do not believe this so I had to do something else. I explained it very matter of factly to the girls and they now are probably the only toddlers that can give you a definition of cremation, haha.
It lead to many disscussions between my partner and I about what we wanted the kids’ attitudes reguarding religion to be. I am not concerned about them learning cuss words at school, I am concerned about them learning about Jesus. If the girls grow up to be devot Catholics, great. I want them to be happy but I do not want them to grow up with that in-grained guilt and fear of god that we grew up with. As a child that questioned religion I felt that something was wrong with me even though my parents were supportive of it. Christianity is such a part of a culture that you are programs to feel bad if you deviate from it. I want my children to be free to come up with their own conclusions about religion. So in order to try and give them options and differnt ideas than the mainstream we have bought a Buddist children’s book and are planning to soon purchase other children’s books we have founds on muslim and jewish religions. We talk to them openly about different religions and what the bible is. It’s all still very much above their heads (they are 4 1/2 and 3) but I think that it is important to put all these ideas and theroys into their little developing brains. This year at Christmas time I intend on lighting a menorah and explaining what it means. I am striving to be as un-biased and open to discussing Christianity, which can be difficult for me but for the sake of the girls I will try my hardest. I hope that they grow up and make their own decision and choose the religion or non religion that is right for them, whether I agree with it or not.
I am a religious and spiritual person (I grew up Methodist). I grew up going to church every Sunday, which sometimes felt like a chore. I am glad that I grew up in church because I think that helped shape my morals and what I believe in. I don’t think that people have to go to church in order to form good morals – a lot of it is how someone is brought up. I no longer go to church, at least at the church that I used to go to, because it began to make me feel uncomfortable. I also no longer categorize myself as a Methodist – I just consider myself a Christian. I enjoy learning about other religions (even if they are different from my beliefs). A lot of times, I find characteristics in other religions that I believe in as well. I don’t try to push my religion on other people (basically because that can push them farther away), but I do try to show people based on most of my actions (I’m not perfect).
As for being in a position where I have questioned my religion, I don’t necessarily think I have ever questioned it, but I certainly have let it fade away into the background. There was quite a bit of time where I wasn’t praying anymore (I tend to say a prayer each day) and I wasn’t really paying attention to my spirituality anymore. I just wasn’t thinking about it. It wasn’t that something happened that made me stop paying attention to it, but when I started to get increasing worse migraines (which I have dealt with for the last 3.5 years) this past February, I somehow ended up reading some books by Max Lucado, a Christian writer. There always seemed to be a quote or comment in each book I read that just hit me like a rock. There was one quote about God being a Gardner and us being parts of his garden and I was hit with this quote ” The person so healthy, suddenly sick – was it to remind him to rely on the Gardner?” It kind of got me thinking about where my life had gone.
I think that at a time in everyone’s life, we feel like something is missing, whether it be spiritual (in any religion) or not. I think we all can get away from what we believe in and it’s all about coming back to what makes you strong and happy. Regardless of what we believe, we should always remember that people are entitled to believe in whatever they want and that everyone deserves to be happy.