critical thoughts on institutional religion

god is not the wholly-other. nor is god the wholly-same. god is the wholly-between. 

we cannot know god, nor can we experience that which is not a part of nature. every experience we have is a natural event. but we can meet one another other in dialogue, and live our lives in the uncertain faith that our embrace is the god of our ancestors. 

it is in this sense that for martin buber, institutional religion is a social-political distortion of that which at its origin was a primordial moment of spiritual inception. primordial moments of spiritual inception occur at that moment and that place of a genuine dialogical encounters. a dialogical encounter can be with any being, sentient or insentient. each can be a thou in its own peculiarly magnificent way. and it is in this light that i wish to offer a critique of institutional religion. 

george orwell said that saints ought to be be held guilty until proven innocent. i agree. for there is a primordial poetic relationship with beings of life, but often times saints distort that event by creating religions around those poetic experiences. founded religions do not celebrate god, but rather their own institutional self-image and likeness. 

it is my view that zen is a primordial spirituality, and buddhism is an attempt to codify and institutionalize the original moment and place of awakening. same is the case in regards to sufism and islam, the poetry of the hebrew prophets and normative judaism, the sermon in the mount and institutional christianity, and other attempts at covering with religion that which should be dis-covered through relationship. to recover primordiality, what buber called moments of inception, or zen calls beginners mind, is a primary task of all genuine spiritual life.
but it's important to note that in the context of dialogical philosophy what is referred to as the realm of the spirit, needs to be understood as our deep experiences of the poetic. all is nature and nothing outside of nature exists for us to reach. what we believe to be experiences of the transcendent, are, in fact, our deepest and most meaningful experiences of the poetics of nature. 

i argue that religions build an institutional structure around a primordial experience of the poetic. that structure helps circumvent the primordial poetic event, and add no content to the primordial experience. it does however create a caste of beneficiary clergy. meditation practices existed in south east asia much earlier than the event under the bodhi tree, and what developed from thereafter was a teaching that became a religion, as is the usual pattern for all historic spiritual traditions. buddhism is regarded by its followers as a religion, and as such, the principle that religions usurp a primordial experience to establish clerical institutions over and around it, applies in this case as it does in all others. the founder did not invent a religion, he spoke of his personal experience of enlightenment or salvation. what followers did afterwards has nothing to add to enlightenment or salvation. these are the contents our minds have attained in primordial experiences through infinite encounters with all that exists, but these extraordinary dialogues have been misunderstood as experiences of the transcendent. we must know that the poetic insight is of the realm of the here and now. the wise monk who smiled at the buddha's lotus did not require any ritual, ceremony or worship: not before nor after. as the buddha said when asked about his belief in god: what has god got to do with your own personal salvation?

that is to say: our minds and bodies are capable of extraordinary feats of i-thou dialogue. often times in a way that bypasses our immediate conscious wills. it is a dialogue we enter into with each other and with the messages nature speaks to us. it is not a one-time event that shines brightly over all future events in our lives. we must enact those moments of inception as they happen at every moment and in every place. and this is the poetic experience that stands as the foundation of all spirituality. the realm of the poetic is of the nature of the body and the mind. in other words, by us turning away from each other and from nature, and pointing instead to heaven and other beyonds, we engage in the creation of religions of idols rather than communities of man. and it is in this process that we miss the source of being which calls for us to create ever anew both our own humanity and all the gods that come to life in every new embrace. 

a true dialogue can only be practiced with the whole of our beings. and it is for this reason that dialogue has the calling to become a moment of poetic inception. this poetry of the whole-being does not need manifest in artistic creations or religious rituals, it often does not have a body, for in it all bodies are contained. but we sometimes erroneously ascribe the contents of our dialogical experiences to events of accession to realms of transcendence. we refer to this as spiritual experiences. and for this we begin to prophesy rather than embrace the neighbor. nothing is transcendent to the immediacy of our encounter with all that exists. it is in our i-thou meeting with a being that we experience the truest forms of moments of poetic inception. there is no deeper insight than the poetry of the quotidian. indeed, our most beautiful living experiences are simply the poetic manifestations of the dialogical encounters with each other and with nature. 

we begin as early as cognitively feasible to introduce our children to the faith contents of our religions. this is clearly one factor in the continuous spread of institutional religions across a diversity of humanity. but i want to submit that the central religious contents we inculcate in so many tender minds are primarily those of sin and fear. in other words, we instill in our children the basic belief that heavenly rewards depend entirely on internalizing the fear of punishments that will accrue to the sin of disobeying the will of the gods. but we should teach our children and ourselves otherwise: no sins and no fears. no heaven and no hell. there is the beauty of nature and the embrace of the neighbor. and the god that exists is in the love of a beloved and in the deeds of our embrace.

clearly, religious beliefs and all the magnificence and theatrics of its ritual proceedings are too imbued with motifs of love and compassion. but they have failed us. they have failed to help humanity become more loving and more compassionate. the contrary seems to be the case. yes, we should leave our kids alone. 

and this is the proverbial chicken and egg of the spiritual life: what preceded what? was it the primordial experience of encounter with a being of life that subsequently, and for a variety of psychological, cultural or political reasons, became institutionalized as a religion, or it was the institutional religion, which in the process of its development, and from within its own internal theological frameworks, gave rise to practices of enlightenment and salvation? my view is that whether the founders of religions experienced a "peak" transcendent spiritual experience or not, or whether those peaks are, as i believe, nothing other than mischaracterized deep poetic moments of inception, it is clear from all historic records that some founders did indeed intend to establish institutionalized religions. from early on, the founders gave us theologies and temples and rituals and elaborate systems of hierarchical priesthoods. but there were others too: those poets who taught us that we can find infinity in a drop of water and eternity in a passing moment of time.

all forms of spirituality are similar in their essence, for all that is in the seeker's heart is the desire to attain and cling to the "source of being". the diversion into separate religions occur when seekers chose to join a given theological denomination, one in which they find a contextual interpretation to their experiences, or a confirmation to their beliefs. it is at that moment precisely, when true spirituality is transformed in ways detrimental to its core essence. 

jesus, buddha and the sufis.

whether intending to found or reform or sustain an existing religion, the founders were intrinsic members of existing antecedent religions. in that sense, their personal spiritual experiences were rooted within the theological beliefs and practice modalities of their religions of birth. jesus did not come to establish a new religion, only to fulfill, in his own words, an existing one. jesus was a practicing jew. buddha initiated a reformation of hinduism, but his belief system was rooted in, and consistent with hindu spirituality. zen came to reform buddhism and to remain within it. jesus came for the same reasons in regards to judaism. mohamned, in contrast, is a more complex political-military-religious figure. his discourse was more of a restorative content in regards to already existing religions, rather than a task of reformation. sufism came to reform islam and to remain within it. many reformers, such as mahatma gandhi, who was a practicing hindu, aimed to remind their coreligionists of the better contents found within their shared religious systems, but not before exposing many of their negative principles and practices. it is possible, as history shows, to reform many religious practices, but not so religious beliefs. 

we can say that some forms of sufism and zen are primordial religiosities not tied theologically to any specific religion. it is said that maimonides' son referred to himself as a jewish sufi. but observing the rituals and sacraments of sufis we realize that from a practical and historical perspective, sufis base their faith in what they consider to be the religion revealed by prophet muhammad. the practices of zen are likewise rooted in the hindu-buddhist traditions. one of the disappointments that come to be in regards to primordial or natural practices, is that moment when they cease the dialogue with the beings of life, and convert themselves into systems of religions. this they do either by joining a parent religion or by becoming one themselves. sufism, being a denomination within islam, believes that there is no allah but allah and muhammad is his prophet. in other words, the prophet's path to allah is the only true path. zen, being a denomination within buddhism, believes in a version of karma and reincarnation and in special guru-student mind transmissions. in other words, the buddha's path to enlightenment is the only true path. our spiritual task therefore, is not to reform or to recover, but to return to the primordial source of of moments of inception.

what is the true measure of the authenticity of a spiritual practice? a practice which consistently fails to enact itself as peace and justice on earth cannot be said to carry within itself words of revelation. for spiritual practices must be embodied in the relationships between one another and with nature. we observe that the vast lands of the great faiths of mankind are not realms where peace and justice prevails. this we must do: to the extent we are capable, we must redirect faith in god as peace and justice on earth. for we know that only compassion can carry the seeds of salvation. there are no prophets, there are no holy books or sacred places, there is only the embrace of the neighbor. what the embrace will reveal is a true revelation. what the embrace will deny must be learned as a teaching.