Sunday, March 25, 2007

healthy spirituality

Spirituality ought to make us feel good. that's the whole point. We ought to feel supported, encouraged, hopeful, and joyful; bouyed up by spirituality that strengthens and sustains us. That's healthy spirituality. Too many spiritual systems have just the opposite effect.

I was speaking with a woman recently who tried to convince me that Buddhist spirituality taught that we shouldn't judge, that the universe didn't care about dualities like right and wrong, and besides all of this was an illusion created by our own thoughts. Well yes, and no. Buddhism does teach us to avoid forming emotional attachments to impermanent objects. Buddhism does teach that we should practice equanimity as we move through our lives. But the first Noble Truth of Buddhism is itself a judgment: "There is suffering." Suffering is judged as a bad thing. The Buddhist system is designed to overcome suffering. Buddhism surely doesn't say that there is no difference between an act of compassion and an act of violence. Buddhism doesn't teach that it makes no difference how one behaves.

The problem I had with this woman was not that she misunderstood Buddhism. If her non-Buddhist beliefs were leading her to joy I would be happy for her and leave it at that. But I didn't see joy in this woman. Instead I saw her struggle to hold on to beleifs she thought she was supposed to embrace, but actually didn't feel. Her idea that everything was ultimately an illusion wasn't leading her to liberation, it was leading her to a sense of nihilism, a self-proclaimed spirituality that said nothing matters, it's all going to vanish to nothing soon enough, and the universe would be better if we did vanish.

How sad that we do this to ourselves. How expecially sad that we do it in the name of spirituality.

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