Religion

I just shaved my head for the first time in weeks. It got me thinking about my religious practise (or lack thereof), as the wannabe monk that I once was.

My mother once asked me "You're not religious, are you!?" Of course I am. I've been a practising Zen Buddhist since 1988, the year I started secondary school. I was once a co-founder and a very active member of a Buddhist sangha. I started one of the first Internet mailing lists about Zen practise, Universal Zendo, before leaving it to better hands in the mid-90s. I even seriously considered becoming a Zen monk after secondary school.

I still wonder from time to time what would have happened if I had been a monk for a few years instead of immediately attending university. Perhaps, at least, I would have had the maturity to actually study something worthwile?

In my sangha in Hudiksvall we kept in touch with two Zen masters: John Daido Loori rōshi of the Zen Mountain Monastery and Robert Aitken rōshi of the Diamond Sangha. We mostly considered ourselves a part of the Diamond Sangha network, but I was seriously considering spending some time at the Zen Mountain Monastery after leaving school.

I moved away, but practise continues. But what does it mean?

My mother's question, if taken to mean "What do you believe in?"

I believe in the wisdom of the Shakyamuni Buddha. Buddha said that although life is filled with pain and suffering it is possible to transcend this pain. He then went on to suggest a system of therapeutic practises with a focus on altering judgement of the stream of consciusness and to realise, and utterly experience, that our image of the ego is hurting and wrong.

I recently tried to read Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's brain - Buddhism naturalized. I really wanted to like this book, but it's hopeless. I can't stand the way he writes. I couldn't finish reading it. But the basic idea, that Buddhism can be distilled into something without religious overtones, might be right. He seems to miss the importance of zazen and koan practise, though.

Zazen and koan practise, some of the best kinds of religious magic, probably up there with sex magick, is absolutely crucial to get you to actually experience the dharma. It's not a ritual, at least as I understand rituals. It's a practise that does something hard to grasp to you.

I have yet to read Kabat-Zinn's Full catastrophe living but I hear it's good. He's in the same business as Flanagan, but might be more enjoying to read.

My religious faith, for what it's worth, is that this system just might work. Or, to put it another way, here's what dear old Lord Omar had to say:

Before I was a Discordian, I took life much too seriously. When you take life too seriously you start to wonder what the point of it all is. When you wonder what the point is in life, you fall into a trap of thinking there is one. When you think there is a point, you finally realize there is no point. And what point is there in living like that? Nowadays I skip the search for a point and find, instead, the punch lines.

— Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst, Pvt., USMC (Ret.), aka Kerry Thornley, one of the founders of Discordianism and Zenarchy.