Behind The Mask ~ LIFTING THE VEIL
Outside, on a clear
night, more than in the daytime when the stars are
hidden from us, we can feel the infinity of space.
Apart from the beauty of it—which is merely
our own subjective judgment or opinion—what
does it do to us? How do we feel? Appalled and intimidated
by the inconceivable vastness that surrounds us on
all sides, we have created religions and philosophies
to console us in our tinyness and give meaning to
our brief lives. Have these attempts to make sense
of things withstood the test of time, however? That
which might have satisfied us hundreds of years ago—does
it continue to do so? Are we content with such explanations?
Or are we sufficiently mature to say, "I don’t
know", and courageous enough to face the fact
that this life might be all that there is for us?
I am not saying it is, mind, but can we face the possibility
that it might be?
For thousands of years—yearning for
personal immortality—men have sought a meaning
to life, but might it be that there is no meaning
other than that which we ourselves give it? What is
the meaning that you try to give life by your living?
We must, I feel, constantly review our living, keeping
in mind our aims and values. We worry about the meaning
of life only when we are not sure what to do with
our lives, when we are not actively participating
in life as component parts. It is like when someone
has been out of work for a long time, though he might
have diligently sought for work: having been unable
to find anything, he might eventually conclude that
he is not employable, and lose his vital sense of
self-worth.
He came to see me one afternoon, this tall
Australian, and said his name was Tom, and that he
felt confused and adrift since he lost his Catholic
faith eight years before, and had found no replacement
for it. He complained that, though he was quite successful
in business, he had so far found no meaning in life,
and had become aware of the existence of evil in the
world which he felt should not be there.
Awakening from illusion can be, and often
is, somewhat of a shock, and some people wish they
had remained asleep, for illusion is warm and comforting,
like the mother’s womb, and frees us from a
great deal of responsibility, which we have to face,
along with the harsh facts of life, if we wake up.
Is it that some of us wake up too soon—in the
middle of a pleasant dream, as it were—and resent
it? It would seem so.
Does your religion ‘deliver the goods’?
In order to answer that question, you must first understand
your religion and know what it claims, promises and
holds out as an inducement, otherwise you will never
be sure if you are living in a castle-in-the-clouds—a
mental construction—or not.
If we begin to question what we’ve
been taught for centuries, and lift a corner of the
tapestry that has been draped before us, to peep behind,
we might find that it conceals something quite different.
Are you ready to look? Dare you? Be warned first,
lest you see that which, in your complacency, you
do not wish to see!
The ‘truths’ that religions
put forward should not be viewed as things irrefutably
demonstrated and established for all time, not to
be questioned, but as things to be discovered and
realized by the individual. To adopt and conform to
a system or set of theories in its entirety, and regard
it as true, is a mistake, for it is not, and cannot
be true for us unless and until we have verified it
for ourselves by our own experience, and for this
there can be no substitute. Just as no-one can eat
for us and satisfy our hunger thereby, so no-one can
vicariously discover truth for us; that is something
that each person must do for himself. For example,
how do we know that sugar is sweet if not by our own
experience? It is not enough to be told so, to be
assured that it is, or to believe it.
The following four paragraphs are extracted
from Thich Nhat Hanh’s highly readable rendering
of the story of the Buddha in his book, OLD PATH,
WHITE CLOUDS:
"The Buddha once said that if a person
is caught by belief in a doctrine, he loses all his
freedom. If he becomes dogmatic, he believes his doctrine
is the only truth and that all other doctrines are
heresy. Disputes and conflicts all arise from narrow
views. They can go on forever, wasting precious time
and sometimes even leading to war. Attachment to beliefs
and opinions is the greatest impediment to the spiritual
path. Bound to narrow views, one becomes so entangled
that it is no longer possible to let the door of truth
open.
"To illustrate this, the Buddha told
a story about a young widower who lived with his five-year-old
son. He loved his son more than his own life. One
day, he left his son at home while he went to work,
but while he was away, a band of brigands robbed and
burned the whole village and kidnapped his son. When
the man came home from work, he found the charred
corpse of a young child lying outside his burnt house;
he took it to be the body of his son. Overcome by
grief, he cremated what was left of the corpse. Because
he loved his son so much, he put the ashes in a bag
which he carried with him wherever he went.
"Several months later, his son managed
to escape from the brigands and make his way home.
He arrived in the middle of the night and knocked
at the door. At that moment, the father was hugging
the bag of ashes and weeping. He refused to open the
door even when the child called out that he was the
man’s son. He believed that his son was dead
and that the child knocking at the door was some neighborhood
child mocking his grief. Finally, his son had no choice
but to wander off on his own. Thus, father and son
lost each other forever.
"The Buddha concluded: If we are attached
to some belief and hold it to be the absolute truth,
we may one day find ourselves in a similar situation
as the young widower. Thinking that we already possess
the truth, we will be unable to open our minds to
receive the truth, even if truth comes knocking at
our door".
When people adopt and embrace a system in
totality, there is often a tendency to try to make
everything conform thereto, and if something does
not, then it, rather than the system, might be regarded
as being at fault. This is notoriously so with new
converts or those ‘born again’; it is
common for them to come with a zeal that is usually
lacking in those who have been born into and raised
according to a particular religion, and who have therefore,
for the most part, accepted it without question. Such
zealots might object that our knowledge of life is
insufficient to measure, judge, confirm or disprove
‘revealed religion’ by (and by ‘revealed
religion’ is meant religion that is based upon
so-called ‘divine-revelation’ or the ‘Word
of God’). But is it, really? Have not many of
the claims of ‘revealed religion’ been
debunked by discoveries and proofs to the contrary?
Just one outstanding example of this: the Christian
Church had for centuries taught that our planet was
the center of the Universe, around which everything
else turned, and when the Italian scientist, Galileo,
stated that this was not so, he was persecuted by
the Church authorities, made to recant his ‘heresy’,
and put under house-arrest until he died. It is only
within the last few years, under Pope John-Paul II,
that the Church has acknowledged its error and ‘very
kindly’ exonerated Galileo, 350 years later!
It is the Church that needs Galileo’s pardon,
not the other way around!
There are numerous other extravagant and
preposterous claims made by religion, but which are
considered fundamental and indispensable, like virgin
births, resurrection from the dead, infallibility
of the Pope, etc., which cause religion to be held
in contempt by many people, and its adherents regarded
as simpletons. The lives of countless people are built
on such fallacies.
We must not be too sweeping, however, and
deny that there is beauty in religious forms and ceremonies—something
impressive in the pageantry and solemnity, the melodious
and inspiring hymns, the sonorous chants, the gorgeous
priestly vestments and trappings, and the profuse
symbolism. In every way, in every country and time,
man has lavished his best on expressing his religious
feelings, and the resultant art, architecture and
music are truly magnificent testimonies of man’s
devotion to his beliefs. But, while marvelous edifices
were built, and priests maintained in luxury, the
masses starved in the shadows of the churches. The
marvelous buildings remain, while both the priests
who lived in luxury and those who starved in their
shadows have long ago gone back to the elements, but
what does it all mean? Is there substance behind all
the symbolism? Is it anything more than expression
of ignorance or fear of what we do not understand,
of attempts to propitiate, cajole or bribe the imagined
gods, spirits, or personified forces of nature? If
man had not feared such things, his creative energy
would no doubt have been expressed in other forms,
for we can see that religious structures are not the
only beautiful structures in the world. Therefore,
people who are not the least religious in the formal
sense can enjoy and appreciate the art and beauty
of churches, temples and mosques without subscribing
to the beliefs that inspired them. A thing of beauty
can be enjoyed by all, regardless of religious or
political affiliations, or lack of such.
If, when the Industrial Revolution had begun
in Europe, the West had had a religious philosophy
to suit the times, instead of a set of supernatural
concepts that science was in the process of tearing
to shreds, things would probably have gone in quite
a different direction. As it was, however, there was
a reaction against religion in the West that continues
until now (it is known as Materialism), and Karl Marx’s
famous dictum: "Religion is the opium of the
masses", was eagerly embraced by many people
and applied indiscriminately to religion as a whole,
rather than to that aspect of it which laid stress
on the ‘afterlife’ as a palliative for
the ills and misfortunes of this life and was used
by the rulers and priests to keep people ‘in
their places’. We can understand why Marx denounced
the corruption, venality and amassing of wealth that
went on under the cloak of religion, but was he against
those aspects that stressed practical morality, charity,
social involvement and justice? Or had these been
relegated to the attic by people in power, in favor
of supernatural and unverifiable things, and no longer
formed a prominent part of religion? Thus, when religion
was shunted aside and rejected in totality as anachronistic,
‘the baby was thrown out with the bath-water’,
and the succeeding system became more monstrous and
oppressive than that it replaced. And now that Communism
has suddenly collapsed, great numbers of people, taken
by surprise, and not knowing how to use their new-found
freedom, turn back to their old superstitions and
are spiritually little better-off than before the
time of Communism. The ‘morality’ of the
Communist system was imposed on people by the State,
instead of something they chose through understanding.
And the morality that people embrace when they turn
back to religion is also an external morality, undertaken
through fear of God, desire for Heaven, and so on.
But how long will they obey an external authority
without wanting to rebel?
Buddhism, too, is priest-ridden and afflicted
with superstition. Using our imagination a little,
it is not hard to understand how the Buddha’s
final exhortation to "Work out your own salvation
with diligence", and not to look for a refuge
outside of oneself, was not very appealing to the
masses of the people—most of whom were illiterate
and uneducated at that time—because the masses
in any age tend to look outside of themselves for
help and salvation. It was not long, therefore, when
the Buddha was no longer around to discourage this
inevitable tendency, before He came to be thought
of as super-human or divine, rather than as someone
who had developed His human potential and had shown
others the way to do this, too. It then became more
important—and easier, of course—to worship
Him as a savior rather than to practice what He had
taught. Today, many Buddhists are under the erroneous
belief (but it is nothing new, having gone on for
a long time), that explaining the Dharma is the prerogative
of monks, and that only monks, in fact, are able to
fully understand Dharma, while ‘ordinary householders’
are not. Now, that is something that the Buddha never
taught; He never made understanding of Dharma conditional
on wearing a yellow robe and having a shaved head.
While He did design the way of life of the monks to
make it easier for them to follow the Way (free from
the emotional entanglements of family life, the necessity
of earning a living, and so on), He never said that
anyone who is not a monk or nun could not understand
the Dharma or become enlightened. Dharma is not narrow
and restrictive like that, but is open to anyone with
a heart and mind who will make an effort.
Imagine how this world would now be if Christians
had tried to apply what Jesus was talking about and
Buddhists had tried to experience what the Buddha
tried to indicate, instead of merely believing. We
can be sure that it would be quite different than
it is now.
Once in a while it is good—and necessary—to
step back a bit and detach ourselves from our search—to
unyoke the oxen from the plough, as it were, and let
them graze a little—for by so doing, our vision
might be refreshed and renewed, and things seen in
clearer perspective. It should not be considered a
waste of time to do this but rather an investment,
because if we stand long with our noses against a
picture that covers an entire wall, we may forget
the complete picture and see only the few details
and colors before our eyes.
So, Tom, take a look around you, and you
might realize that you are not the only one with troubles
in the world, you might realize that this is the common
condition and has always been like this. The reason
you didn’t see it before is not because it wasn’t
there, but because you were living under illusion,
convinced that ‘God’ was in control of
everything, and that therefore everything should be
alright. And now that you have discovered that everything
is not alright, what can you do about it? Nothing?
No, there is something that you, and we, and everyone
can do, if we realize that most of the suffering and
all of the evil comes from people like us and that
therefore it is unnecessary and can be avoided. And
if we consider that religion is something that inspires
us and helps us to become active participants in the
world, and put something back into it, instead of
as a means of getting more out of life than we have
already got, it will take on quite a different meaning,
and we will probably find things coming to us as a
matter of course, without looking for them. If, however,
we focus on ourselves in isolation—as many of
us do—we will indeed feel despondent and lost,
for the fact is we belong, like pieces of a jig-saw
puzzle that have their places in the overall picture,
and can only be understood in context—can only
understand ourselves in context—not as separate,
isolated units.
It is therefore, in the midst of the ecological
mess that we have inherited and added to, that many
of us are awakening to the fact that we are connected
to and dependent upon other things—indeed, everything—and
are not, as we hitherto thought in our ignorance and
arrogance, independent and in control.
There is no need for belief in all this—people
have been shackled and blinded by belief for aeons,
and where has it got us?—but of seeing clearly
how things are.
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