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OrpheusAgonistes -> Which religious beliefs still influence you? (5/17/2010 5:01:30 AM)
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Lady Angelika made a post a long time ago about Buddhism vs Taoism and my efforts to formulate a response have been kicking around in my brain since. At various points, I considered myself both a (suburban) Buddhist and a (college campus) Hindu. Neither belief system resonates with me today, but particular teachings from each do continue to shape the way I see the world. The same is true for Christianity, and a few other belief systems I've toyed around with here and there. Now of course there are plenty of bright people who hold firmly to a particular set of beliefs from a particular established religious school, and more power to them. To be able to say "I am not just a Monotheist, not just a Christian, not just a Protestant, not just a Lutheran, but a Christian Protestant Lutheran who adheres to the doctrines of the Missouri Synod," (or whatever, you get the gist) is a clarity I will likely never know again. For the rest of us, who are doing our best to cobble and patch together some kind of worldview from the soggy, discarded scraps of so many goneaway truths, I'm curious--What are you conscious of having kept from belief systems to which you no longer subscribe?
Mine, in part:
Christianity
I don't believe in the idea of double predestination, the Preterite vs the Elect, anymore, but it continues to shape the way I see the world. The idea that the fortunate were singled out before their birth, and that the doomed were also singled out before their birth, and that no amount of effort can ever really change one's predetermined role continued to be a dark and disturbing force in shaping my worldview long after I'd abandoned Christianity. It contributed to me seeing the world as a constant class struggle in my teens and early 20s. It was one of the reasons I tended to break down the world into various two-faction scenarios--haves and havenots, men and women, liberals and conservatives, hedgehogs and foxes, Us (whatever that meant) and Them (whatever that meant)--always engaged in a grim war whose only outcome could be mutual annihilation. I was a lot of fun at parties.
I do still believe in the idea, articulated by doomed activist and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of "cheap grace" vs "costly grace." Simply put, this is the idea that God gives grace (redemption, forgiveness of sins, salvation) freely, but that people who never experience the terror and sacrifice of real devotion and conviction only get the "cheap" and ultimately useless version. Someone crassly summed this up as "There's no free lunch," but I disagree. To me, this is a more elegant doctrine. It says that lunch is, in fact, free. You pay what you choose to pay. There is no inherent advantage to suffering and paying purposelessly, no romance of pure suffering, either. But when you find something you want, you have to be willing to suffer somewhat into its consummation. What is worth having is worth infinitely more than you pay for it, but until you've paid something for it it's worth nothing at all.
Buddhism
Buddha's Fire Sermon still haunts me. I think it was exactly right--everything is on fire, and the only escape is a cessation of desire and the willingness to be still. "Being still" is almost impossible for me, and the ability to quiet my various urges and lusts has always been "all you can do is laugh" difficult. And yet I think Buddha, in this sermon, got everything absolutely right. I've always assumed that someday, I'll be a Buddhist. This will probably be the day after I realize I'm no longer attractive to women anyway, so why not?
Hinduism
The idea from both Buddhism and Hinduism that "rebirth" is a kind of punishment has always resonated. I love life just fine, but at the end of the day, enough will have been enough. DC Berman once sang "And you can live again/But you'll have to die twice in the end." My dad spent some time in India when he was younger and when the New Age reincarnation fad came along, he just laughed and laughed and said he hoped some of the people he'd known back then were making a fortune bilking American yuppies and wearing shit-eating grins the whole time.
The idea of samsara is still one of the biggest influences on how I see my own life. In my bastardized version, it's come to mean simply that hell is repetition, that patterns of behavior persist much more strongly than we ever realize when we're trapped inside them, and that only audacious action (or non-action) can break the vicious circles in which we all sometimes spin ourselves. Nabokov once wrote that "The spiral is mystical, perhaps because a spiral is a vicious circle that has been freed and allowed to follow its own inclinations."
Lila is also a powerful force in how I try to live. A spirit of play, and the recognition of life as a series of games, is the only thing that keeps me somewhat sane at times.
Of all religions, Hinduism's mythos inspires the least belief in me, but its underlying philosophy and gestalt inspires the most conviction. I also find some of the sacred texts (the Gita and the Upanishads in particular) to be among the most beautiful. Plus, Siva and Kail were mythology's hottest couple.
I'm cutting it off here, because I've talked too long and I'm more interested in knowing what other people think. I'm leaving off my own list, among others, Gnosticism (not just helpful for understanding Bowie lyrics), Judaism, Discordianism, and Sufism all of which have, at one time or another, had their own influences.
Also, one last caveat to anyone who actually has a proper and devout belief in any of the doctrines I've talked about--I mean no disrespect at all and nor do I pretend to have accurate summarized anything except for the haphazard, ad hoc understandings of these doctrines that I continue to hold long after belief in their underlying core systems has burnt itself out.
Edited because I typed "Hinduism" instead of "Taoism" in the intro to the post because I'm a bit of an airhead this time of morning.
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