So I’ve been Christian most of my life (all but the ages 19-24 or so), and I’m very, very involved in my church. I’ve also been practicing Zen meditation for the past 5 months or so. (Our Roshi is also a Jesuit priest.) However, after spending the last 10 years reading various sacred texts with my best friend, we are both so in love with the Upanishads that I sort of want to say that I’m also Hindu. But converting to Hinduism is apparently an incoherent concept…
My openness to this idea was partially influenced by The Life of Pi, which I read about 8 years back. The main Character, Pi, is Hindu, Muslim, and Christian.
Is anyone else multireligious?
A lot of asians, getting serious about a “western” religion, see no reason to abandon the religion of their background. So you have Hindu Anglicans… and Zen Lutherans!
You might think “But don’t Christianity and Buddhism contradict each other?” but don’t each of us hold beliefs that contradict each other? Most Christians ignore half of what Jesus said; the different sects depend on which half you focus on.
I could only be considered religious in the absolute loosest sense of the word, but in that sense I’m an agnostisc Taoist 12 stepper with Pagan features.
There is so much wisdom in all the religions of the world that you’d be mad to restrict yourself to learning from only one. Conversely, there is also so much stupidity in all the religions of the world that you’d be just as mad to uncritically buy in any one of them wholesale. I see no reason not to be a cherry picker on the great buffet of myth.
I’m another “believe in everything” person along the same lines as “Yes Virginia”. Although science with some generous help from imagination is the best way of investigating physical reality, the concepts and constructs inside our minds though not physical are no less real or important.
Someone asked me if I believe in God - I said sure, I believe in all of 'em. Point me at a god, I’ll believe in it.
Turned out this was not the answer they were looking for.
Though I might call it “the great buffet of Seeking”. “Myth” seems to presuppose that you know it’s not really true, and I’m trying to be humbler than that.
I really don’t want to get into a ‘debate’ (which usually means condescending lecture) about it, but I resonate between new age and various forms of humanism (agnosticism, atheism, apatheism). I would say I lean most towards secular humanism and apatheism, even if there was a deity it doesn’t matter. God/religion doesn’t purify my drinking water, manufacture my antibiotics, grow my food or keep criminals off the street. So who cares about ‘learning lessons’ or ‘getting to heaven’ or whatever else.
I tend to believe consciousness survives death, but every time I read up on new age religions the level of irrational BS and unethical behavior pushes me out in frustration. I could make a post about it, I hate it.
I really miss the old school new age writers like ruth montgomery who said things that were easily falsifiable (she said the world would turn on its axis in 1999, that god created 5 adam and eves, one of each race, etc). Nowadays new agers seem to have figured out how to be vague enough to not be falsifiable.
I knew someone who was Jewish by birth and family but practiced Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism (Chanting). She saw no conflict as the Buddhism wasn’t marketed as a religion but as a “life improvement” scheme, and one seemingly didn’t contradict the other.
Chanting sure looked a lot like a religion to me. You had to have an altar (cardboard with florescent lights), you repeated mindless words from a book you didn’t understand, you asked an unseen, higher power for stuff you wanted, and you got it.
Even if they are both religions, there’s no inherent reason two religions must contradict each other, and in fact I’m not aware of any conflict between Judaism and Buddhism. Judaism just requires that you follow a certain set of rules, and I don’t think Buddhism requires you to break any of those rules. One of the rules is that you can’t worship any other gods, but as it happens, Buddhism takes no stance on the existence or nonexistence of any gods. Buddha is a very wise human, not a god.
We may be splitting hairs on what constitutes a god, but sitting in front of an “altar” repeating phrases in an unknown language and “praying” for something to happen to an unseen “paranormal entity” looks an awful lot like a religion to me, god or not.
Hm, I have a good friend who claims to be a Jewish atheist, actually. Jewish culture, but doesn’t believe in God, really. She loves the customs though.
Personally, I tend to hover between some sort of Christian/theist (non-denominational Protestant, if such a thing exists), and then agnostic. It sort of depends on my mood and the way I perceive the world, if that makes sense. For instance, there are days that I’m just amazed at how gorgeous and astounding everything is, then there are others that I can’t believe 100% that a creator would allow people to suffer in horrendous ways.
