Holidays, books and lives draw to their close.
The curtain rings down on some theater piece.
The brass, string, and percussion sections close
In on their tonic and concordant close.
When all loose ends infallibly are tied.
-Anthony Hecht
The Dalai Lama has said that human beings can do without religion, but they cannot do without love, compassion, and tenderness. For this reason, he makes a distinction between the religious and the spiritual. Being spiritual suggests developing those loving and caring human qualities, independent of any dogma, be it religious, political, or philosophical.
When he deemphasizes the importance of religion in contrast to spirituality, the Dalai Lama doesn't mean to negate religion. He simply wants to distance himself from "designer" religions, or from rote practices devoid of holiness and, even more so, from not so innocuous zealotry-religionism. Wayne Oates, one of the founders of the pastoral counseling movement, spoke of this problem by telling the story of a young man who gouged out one of his own eyes because Jesus said, "If your eye offends you, pluck it out." Of course, this kind of literalness was never intended in the scriptures, but concrete religiosity may promote such extreme acts. What is intended is lectio divina, a meditative reading of the scriptures. There are those who think they are religious because they mechanically practice all the rituals, although they remain not even remotely spiritual. As Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat observe in Spiritual Literacy:
People go to religious services and yet continue to pollute, take excessive profits, encourage wars, oppress, foment political division, maintain racial injustice, and promote their own moralistic agendas at the expense of a deeply moral responsiveness to a world in trouble.
Such religionism frequently ends up superseding the intended spirituality of religions, by emphasizing theology and fundamentalism. For Martin Buber, true religion is experiencing God; the-theology-is talking about God. He goes on to say that the difference between them is the difference between having dinner and reading a menu.
Tribal prejudices are natural social phenomena; when religions are used to harden already existing tribal conflicts, the opposite of what the Divinity intended occurs. Over the centuries these tribalizations of religion have been perpetuated with even greater differentiation. Even within one sect, there are numerous subsects. America's increasing religious pluralism especially raises the specter of "McReligion," and its followers end up being "neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring," says Winifred Gallagher.
Out of these distortions and compromises, spirituality, the very purpose of religious divinity, has suffered. Every religion has an element of ritual piety. The original meaning of ritual (ritus in Latin) is correct action-not compulsion. If practiced in their intended purpose, they will prevent people from the immediacy of religious experience. In extreme determination, discipline makes one obsessed, not spiritual. Making the analogy to a ship at sea, John Gribbin says that a compass needle on a ship always points to the north magnetic pole, but that doesn't mean the ship is always sailing north. Devotional discipline can be a symptom of legalism, work righteousness, obsessive-compulsive neurosis or, worse, moralism.
Robert J. Ringer, in Looking Out for Number One, describes "the Absolute Moralist" as looking deceptively like any ordinary human being, who spends his life deciding what is right for you. If he gives to charity, he'll try to shame you into "understanding" that it's your moral duty to give to charity too (usually the charity of his choice). If he believes in Christ, he's certain that it's his moral duty to help you "see the light." In the most extreme case, he may even feel morally obliged to kill you in order to "save" you.
Although religion is primarily intended to serve the spiritual needs of its members, it has many other functions. One has to make an effort to distill the spiritual nature of religion without negating its procedures and ceremonies, and prejudices.
The basic teachings of the Western and Eastern religions, as civilizing forces, are indistinguishable. They all advocate honesty, kindness, faithfulness, loyalty, and the like. As we are told in the Vedas, "There is that one God they call by so many names."
One useful image of the common ground of all religions was presented by the Christian Bede Griffiths, who had spent most of his life in India. In a video interview made shortly before his recent death, he spread out his hand, saying religions are like separate fingers, quite distinct from each other. If you trace them to their source, however, you see that they all come together in the palm of your hand. Similarly, the thirteenth-century German mystic Meister Eckhart called God an underground river of wisdom with many wells tapping into it. All religions urge cultivation of spiritual depth: spirit in Christianity, life in Judaism, light in Islam, power in Taoism. They teach sacred existence, that spirituality is a measure of our humanity, and they all steer to deep waters and seek self-finding in an order not to be self-centered.
All religions believe in the spinning of Gandhi, or the tent making of St. Paul. They all praise the feeling of oneness with the world, the wholeness in its primordial unity, and express the idea of holiness in nothingness. They urge us to seek the perfection inherent in ourselves: generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, love, and compassion. The religions may say to do "this" at least and be good, but ultimately they mean to know "it" and be godly.
T. Byram Karasu, M.D. is author of The Art of Serenity
