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Friday, January 31, 1997

RELIGION:

Connection with beliefs can be built by personal experiencesBy Patricia J. Gentry

I read Chieh Chieng's article "Questioning religious devotion" in the Jan. 16 issue of the Daily Bruin with great interest. He expresses beautifully the quandary many people seem to feel regarding their faith. The established organized religions do provide fellowship, and their rituals can provide comfort and demarcation for life's passages and transitions. In this service, they are not without value; however, when it comes to deeper spiritual needs, many people experience the emptiness and confusion that Chieh Chieng expresses so well. But, there is a way that we can achieve a deeper spiritual connection that will not only give us a personal basis for religious belief but can even reconcile us with the organized faith of our birth.

The myriad of faiths of our world have sprung from enlightened individuals who were able to touch, in the deepest recesses of their own being, the essence of a presence that cannot be fully described in words. Such individuals are called "mystics." This does not mean they are mysterious people; a mystic is a person who has had an original experience of God. Not that "God" is the only way to describe the experience. It is just one of the names that has been given to it. It cannot be truly and completely rendered in words. The mystic, Lao Tzu, said, "The Tao that can be named is not the real Tao." The mystic touches the invisible fabric of the universe and discovers the oneness that expresses itself as all of creation.

The language used to explain deep spiritual insight is the language of paradox and metaphor. This tends to make all sacred scripture somewhat unintelligible and misleading if read literally. Unfortunately, the further the founder of each faith recedes in time, the more literal the interpretation of the teachings becomes. It has been said that two fundamentalists belonging to separate religions will always argue, but the mystics of those same religions will understand each other perfectly because they have shared the same inner vision.

Mystics have tried to teach us that we must pursue our own inner vision, our own original experience of God.

This is not found by following rules and rituals by rote but by seeking our own connection to the divine in the silences of our own souls. If we have never tasted chocolate, no amount of description can ever tell us what it is really like.

Sometimes, our place of worship can seem like an empty box of candy that is always being redescribed to us. God, like life, can be like that proverbial box of chocolates: you don't know what you are going to get. But once you have tasted it for yourself, you know what you have. Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21). Similar references are found in all the sacred literature. When we seek this original experience for ourselves, our scriptures become clearer and our place of worship more meaningful and fulfilling.

Another purpose religion serves is to allay our fears about the vicissitudes of life. In times of personal need, when our lives, finances and relationships seem to be going wrong, we often turn to our place of worship for comfort and prayer. Prayer works.

There have even been recent scientific studies on the benefits of prayer ­ as an aid to healing, particularly ­ that appear to confirm this. But it is not supposed to be a way to avoid all of life's ups and downs.

Some of us may enjoy going to Disneyland and riding on Splash Mountain but, when it comes to our own lives, we want the I-5 stretching from the foot of the Grapevine to Stockton on a clear and pleasant day. Unfortunately, life is usually more like Splash Mountain. Many of us spend a great deal of time worrying about the future. The tragic thing about this is that, even if the dire events we imagine never materialize, we have still spent our entire life in fear. Take the example of two people about to ride on a roller coaster.

The first person does not want to be there, resists, hangs back and has a miserable experience on the ride. The second person approaches the ride with a willingness to let it do whatever it is going to do and to meet it with courage and a sense of fun. That person has a great time. The ride is exactly the same. The twists and turns are identical for both people. What makes the difference in their experiences? Attitude.

If we approach life with a willingness to meet its challenges with the best that we have in us, life will be fun, rewarding and worthwhile. And our faith will carry us through all the ups and downs.

Another value of religion is that it encourages service.

Albert Schweitzer said, "There is no higher religion than human service." He also felt it was the only way to be truly happy. Places of worship can be excellent centers for community service because they provide a meeting place for similarly motivated people to meet and combine talents.

But service has a deeper side. Service is doing anything with love. It doesn't matter if you are running a homeless shelter or dishing up hamburgers at Lu Valle Commons; if you are doing it with love, you are serving.

Kahlil Gibran said, "Work is love made visible." If you work with love, you will do your work well, and that will bring you the added benefits of reward and recognition ­ two things that almost always prove elusive if sought purely for themselves.

If we seek our own original experience of God in the silence of our own being, are willing to meet life's challenges with the best that we have within us, and find a way to serve and do our work with love, we will create for ourselves a personal experience of religion that will be more than a religion that is about Jesus or about Buddha. Rather, it will be the religion of Jesus, Buddha and all those who have reached within and touched the face of God.