Miss Buddha (101 page)

Indian thought, with its wealth of mystical
literature and philosophic defenses of mysticism, brings much to
the epistemology of religious belief; in particular, many Indian
philosophers, while of different schools, have over time held that
mystical experience does, in fact, have objective epistemic value
in revealing a spiritual reality—holding up as a parallel the value
of sense experience in revealing physical reality.

Ethics

As covered earlier, another major branch of
Western philosophy is ethics—the branch that examines human
motivations and actions.

Indian interest in ethics—ranging from the
Buddha’s ethical teachings of enlightenment, to the caste system of
society, and to Mohandas Gandhi’s political philosophy of
non-injury (ahimsa)—is far more widespread than interest in
metaphysics or epistemology. The prevailing philosophy of
non-injury is certainly a persuasive candidate for a universal
ethical prescription to transcend the boundaries of culture as well
as religion.

Naturally, the Indian
philosophies concerning karma also contain a strong ethical element
since these as a rule presuppose rebirth, whether in human or
animal form, and whether in this or in other worlds. Since,
according to karma, the nature of one’s deeds determines one’s
future state, the universe includes the ethical laws of
moral payback
, and Indian
classical philosophers weave numerous variations on such views into
their overall beliefs, whether Buddhist, Vedantic, Logic, and
Carvaka.

For the near Indian certainty that what you
do unto others will in fact be done to you—whether in this or in a
future life, whether now or tomorrow, is the essence of karma, and
a good argument for a non-violent and ethical approach to (one’s
current) life.

Contemporary Developments

Today, hardly any original philosophy is
being written in Sanskrit.

Indian philosophers now write in either
modern Indian languages or in English. Further, the relatively
recent advent of scientific thought and of the modern university
has drastically altered the Indian intellectual community, and
classical philosophy survives mainly in the influences it exerts
among its students.

That said, today, many philosophers—not only
in India, but particularly so—have re-discovered and now champion
important philosophic theses of classical Indian thought, and this
movement may eventually bring a global standing to classical Indian
philosophy comparable to that of classical Greek philosophy.

Tallest among those, and probably their
philosophical father, stands the mystic and guru Sri Aurobindo
Ghose who wrote his elegant arguments for a new Brahman-centered
world, embracing both science and mysticism, in English.

The Path of Philosophy

If one fact emerges from the trace of the
second whirlwind history of this paper, it would be that a lot of
men (and women) have given this world and its riddles a lot of
thought.

How come, though—one can certainly be
justified in asking oneself—are their answers to different?

How can two people, both human beings, both
human minds, both human spirits, look at a problem and arrive at
completely different solutions. Compare, say, Gandhi and Marx.

And how can one school of thought, and its
many followers, arrive at the conclusion that there is no God, and
that all there is to this world is matter, while another as firmly
believes that not only is there a God, but he (or she) has a
thousand different faces.

How can one school arrive at the view that
we should live for ourselves only, and only see to satisfying our
own pleasures, while another school is convinced that we live for
each other and must live for each other.

One school preaches the police state to
control the inhabitants of the realm, while another is convinced
that a society—whether a city-state or a country—can only be
changed (for the better) by changing each individual citizen.

It does seem, however, that once you look
beyond human thought, and approach spiritual experience (mysticism)
that the answers simplify, even unify into one.

It seems that the spirit of man does
recognize that there cannot be but one truth, no matter how many
faces it may sport.

And it does seem that when man tries to
reason his way to this one truth he invariably reasons himself into
a myriad of divergent paths all screaming for relevance and
right-hood, none providing a lasting way.

The Path of Philosophy has not failed to
wholly unify for lack of trying (or suggestions).

The same can be said of Religion.

So, let’s look in that fruitful direction
for a while.

:: Religion ::

Religion could be said to be a sacred
engagement with what is believed to be spiritual reality.

One could also say—and one would most likely
be correct—that were there no suffering in this world, there would
be no (need for, actually) religion.

But there is suffering in this world, and
the need for religion is gravely apparent.

As a worldwide phenomenon religion has
played a part in all human culture and so is much broader and more
complex than the set of beliefs or practices found in any single
religious tradition. An understanding of religion must take into
account what we ultimate believe to be true, as well as the
similarities and differences in religions across all human
cultures.

At all times, and in all cultures, human
beings have made a practice of interacting with what they take to
be spiritual powers, whether in the form of gods, spirits,
ancestors, or any kind of sacred reality with which we believe we
are connected.

Sometimes the spiritual power is understood
as an all-embracing reality, and sometimes we approach through its
manifestation in special symbols.

Sometimes it is seen as external to the
self, sometimes internal, and sometimes both. Humans do—and have
always done so—interact with such a presence in a sacred manner:
that is, with reverence and care.

When asked to name this
complex and diverse realm of human experience, we mostly turn to
the word
Religion
.

The Word and its Many Meanings

Let’s revisit the various meanings of the
word.

The word religion is
derived from the Latin noun
religio
, which denotes both earnest
observance of ritual obligations and an inward spirit of reverence;
it also, at heart, connotes a bond.

In modern usage, religion covers a wide
spectrum of meanings that reflect the enormous variety of ways we
interpret the term. At one extreme, many committed believers
recognize only their own tradition as a religion, understanding
expressions such as worship and prayer to refer exclusively to the
practices of their tradition (mostly convinced that all other
faiths calling themselves religions are in fact shams and, as often
as not, the work of the Devil).

By defining religion as a sacred engagement
with what is taken to be a spiritual reality, it is possible to
consider the importance of religion in human life without making
claims about what life really is or ought to be.

Religion is not an object with a single,
fixed meaning, or even a zone with clear boundaries. It is an
aspect of human experience that may, and often does, intersect,
incorporate, or transcend other aspects of life and society. Such a
definition avoids the drawbacks of limiting the word to Western or
biblical categories such as monotheism (belief in one god only) or
to church structure, neither of which are universal.

For example, in tribal societies,
religion—unlike the Christian church—is normally not a separate
institution but rather pervades all of both public and private
life.

In many traditional
cultures, the idea of
a sacred cosmic
order
is the most prominent religious
belief; a belief to explain such things as why the sun rises each
day and why the moon waxes and wanes. Because of this variety, some
scholars prefer to use a general term such as “the sacred” to
designate the common foundation of religious life.

Religion in this understanding includes a
structure of activities that cannot be reduced to any one aspect of
human experience. Rather, it is a part of individual life and also
of the group dynamic. Religion, viewed from this angle, includes
patterns of behavior but also patterns of language and thought.

Sometimes religion is a highly organized
institution that sets itself apart from a culture, while at other
times it is an integral part of a culture.

Throughout history, religious experience has
been expressed in visual symbols, in dance and performance, in
elaborate philosophical systems, in legendary and imaginative
stories, in formal ceremonies, in meditative techniques, and in
detailed rules of ethical conduct and law.

History of Religious Study

Up through history, but especially over the
past four centuries, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists,
and psychologists have taken various approaches to understanding
religion, mostly approaching the subject not from a sectarian or
partisan standpoint but, rather, impartially: as a subject for
scholarly investigation.

Antiquity

The first recorded Western attempts to
understand and document religious phenomena were made by the Greeks
and Romans.

As early as the
6
^th
century BCE, the Greek philosopher Xenophanes noted that
different cultures visualized the gods in different ways. In the
century following, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded the wide
range of religious practices he encountered in his travels,
comparing the religious observances of various cultures, such as
sacrifice and worship, with their Greek equivalents.

Roman historians Julius Caesar and Cornelius
Tacitus similarly recorded the rites and customs of peoples that
they met on their military campaigns.

Ages of Exploration and Enlightenment

Although a systematic study
of religions as an academic subject did not emerge until the second
half of the 19
^th
century, the groundwork was laid in the three
preceding centuries.

In the
16
^th
century, Western knowledge of other cultures increased
dramatically through extensive exploration and then trade.
Returning explorers and missionaries reported in detail on the
range of religious beliefs and practices they had encountered
around the world.

During the Age of
Enlightenment (early and mid-18
^th
century), scholars took a
special interest in what they termed
natural religion
—the (what they
considered)
inborn
capacity of all humans to arrive at a belief in the existence
of a supreme being and to act on that belief.

The
19
^th
and 20
^th
Centuries

In the
mid-19
^th
century, German scholar Friedrich Max Müller, who has been
called the father of comparative religion, became the most
prominent advocate of historical and linguistic analysis in the
study of religion.

Beginning in the late
18
^th
and
early 19
^th
centuries, the scriptures of many non-Western traditions had
been translated and published, offering a view of faiths that
previously had been inaccessible. In addition, archaeological
excavations had revealed new features—including some scriptural
texts—of previously obscure religions, such as those of the ancient
Middle East.

Presented with this mass of information,
Müller undertook a critical, historically based investigation of
world religious traditions. Although his approach emphasized the
view that all traditions were the product of historical
development, Müller believed comparative study would demonstrate
that every religion possessed some measure of truth.

By the end of the
19
^th
century, scholars were making religion an object of systematic
inquiry. Müller’s comparative approach was adopted in many European
and Japanese universities, and as a result the common features of
world religions (such as gods, prayer, priesthood, and creation
myths) were the subjects of sustained scholarly
investigation.

In addition, field anthropologists had begun
to compile firsthand accounts of the religions of peoples who
previously had been dismissed as savages, a study that contributed
a great deal to the general analysis of the role of religion in
human societies.

By the late
19
^th
and
early 20
^th
centuries, scholars had begun to pose basic questions about
the origin and development of religious ideas, questioning how
religion began and the stages of its evolution.

Some maintained that it originated with a
belief in spirits (animism), then evolved into the notion that
there were many gods (polytheism), and ultimately emerged as the
ideal of a single god (monotheism).

Others held that religion began in a sense
of awe at the impressive activities of nature, in a feeling of
reverence for the spirits of the dead, or in an attempt to overcome
mortality.