RELIGION / SPIRITUALITY

As a philosopher, it is hard not to notice the salient and somewhat self-satisfied distinction – widely endorsed in contemporary society and popular discourse – between religion and spirituality. I feel a little like a foreigner to the dispute, which pits the two against each other, leaving reason and philosophy wholly out of account. Far be it from me to impose my own strictures on a live debate, but I am driven by curiosity to comment, and bound by my obligations to truth to try to settle accounts, as it were, and come away with a wholesome resolution. But vested interests have their heels dug in, and there is nothing reason alone can do to quell a spat which neither side would imagine could be resolved by an appeal to reason. Anyway I don’t assume reason has any more final authority than it does original authority in this affair.

So widespread is this judgment, that religion and spirituality are distinct, that it is almost idle not to begin from there, not to take it for granted. To bother to spell out the distinction and examine it closely will no doubt raise the hackles of free spirits everywhere, who will suspect some religionist at work, trying to close down all spiritual exploration except that it conform to his church, her doctrine, his crutch. But I approach this realm of scared silence without allegiance to any preconceived sacred tradition of truth. I approach it undaunted, in a philosophical spirit, wanting to make some philosophical noise, and to examine what substance and grounding there can be to this curious bifurcation, or perhaps to find out whether the distinction is anything more than the breath of the words it takes to say it? Come, let us investigate….

First Slice (knife still dull)

‘I am not religious, but I’m spiritual.’ This statement, on so many people’s lips today, seems comprehensible enough. Religion is organized, spirituality is spontaneous. Religion is a collectivity, where some people (the elect) tell you (the sheep) what to believe. If you want to join, you must conform. So the non-conformist in each of us, the radical individualist happy to fly solo, rejects religion, but does not on that basis give up an inner life, inner meaning, or inner depth. They hold on to their isolated spirituality. Religion is conceived as a system of allegiance, the enforcement of a creed, the exercise of social control. Spirituality by contrast appears as the free spirit cavorting outside all dogma and social convention, unhampered by the expectations of the self-appointed elect. If religion is oppressive, spirituality is liberating. If religion is absolute, in spirituality, anything goes.

For a variety of reasons, this thinking is moribund. If you agree with all this, your thought processes are on auto-pilot. Shake your head. You have to land this baby yourself.

Let me begin with an obvious yet disarming concession. There are of course oppressive religious regimes in the world, and any number of extremist fanatics who only for lack of power fail to deny you your freedom of conscience, religion, and thought. Even tolerant pluralistic societies have become the way they are only through constant struggle against authoritarian, monopolistic, elitist monocultures, and we only remain free through perpetual vigilance. But to equate religion with the fundamentalist tendencies within religions is a serious error of thought. To equate social organization with oppressive thought control is malicious and unphilosophical. Religion is importantly institutional, but social institutions are not necessarily totalitarian straight-jackets, not necessarily even formal institutions (like a particular church).

Of course if we identify religion with the worst manifestations of religion, we will come away with a low view of it. But to do so is already to arrive with a low view, and I would rather not be so uncharitable in thinking, nor so crimped in imagination. It is no less mindless to regard religion as the purely external imposition of doctrinaire belief systems as to saddle it from the outset with evil intent. Of course, a free spirituality where anything goes will seem liberating in juxtaposition to these stringent imprecations. If religion is only cursed and reduced to dogma stuffed down the collective throat, it is no wonder that spirituality, with its nebulous and open-ended hopefulness, seems like a welcome relief.

But religion too must be allowed to remain unharmed within the ambit of spiritual freedom. The religious must also be accorded respect. It is hypocritical (subtly, yet in the extreme) to call the religious sheep and then to pronounce all sheep free. Those who wear their denominations like labels on their lapels need to be welcomed, even at such free-spirited, free-thinking confabs as Café Philosophy. Here atheists have often paraded, like goose-stepping crusaders of reason, denouncing religionists as superficial unthinking conventionalists, blindly bound to tradition, and superstitious to boot. The secular realm commands contemporary public space, and those who are inclined to gloat on a soapbox will gloat, if given the soapbox. I say Café Philosophy exists for the downtrodden amongst the spiritual, and to the religionists everywhere who have a thought, and a doubt, and a will to talk it over in public. The danger today, it seems to me, is that the religious will be pilloried, no longer that the atheist will be persecuted. It is important in our discussions on religion that we allow those who have a religion to bring it forward, in a space with no shame. Or else we ourselves will miss the mark by our righteous irreligion.

There is an opposite problem as well, opposite to gloating. It is the lethargy of freedom, the burden of the ugly duty to think for oneself. “Why think for oneself?”, the popular cry resounds, “when we have daytime TV and talk radio curmudgeons to do your thinking for you.” (If you are really strapped for time and mental effort, there is CNN.)

Individuality in matters spiritual is grounded in the highest principle there is, the freedom of conscience. That said, we tend to take our individuality for granted, in effect to take personal credit for the valiant uprising of free reason against traditional authority with absolutist pretensions, as if we ourselves suffered with Galileo and Voltaire, and fled with Locke to freer lands. We are happy sometimes to inherit our individualism from those who have gone before, without bothering to go through the private effort of struggle and resistance. It is enough to know we have the freedom of conscience; why trouble oneself with exercising it in our capacity as free beings? Let seekers seek, and sleepers sleep.

A curious question for this obsequious and somnambulist reasoning is the degree to which spirituality rides on the coattails of centuries of reasonable rebellion. When science broke away form the church and established by painful struggle its own authority, it was a stroke for free-thinking, for tolerance of view and spiritual freedom. Now we are more apt to criticize science for its own dogmatism and yet to repeat old arguments against old adversaries, rather than taking up the torch for oneself. The enlightenment has already come. I need only flip the switch for my light.

Spiritual freedom is a gift often wasted. Or it is the opportunity cost of making a living. Like our individuality, it is too often taken for granted, as given, as automatic, nothing we have to do anything about. Likewise we all come with a philosophy, accidentally tossed together by upbringing and experience, so we don’t have to do anything to be philosophical. But spiritual freedom is worthless if unused, and philosophy inherited is philosophy unthought, handed-down, philosophy free of reflection. There is no way around it – the path is long. The timid languish.

Now let me end my preaching, and smash some idols on my own.

California Spirituality

It is an unfair imputation, but nevertheless evocative, to locate the epicenter of spiritual relativism in California. Land without history! If traditional authority has got you down, why not do away with tradition altogether? Celebrity is practically all that remains of traditional authority: and who is surprised (if not at the rate that actors become politicians then) at the frequency our politicians are actors. Acting is good preparation for puppetry. But most important of all, of course, is to be able to act religious. I digress. My subject is spirituality, not politics. Still, many of the same principles apply. Secularists don’t do reverence, hence revered yogis and spiritual teachers, upon being transplanted in a secularist society, have no other option but to become celebrities. Who needs tradition when we’ve got fashion! Thus Bikram Yoga. Thus, sexy yoga pants. Within California spirituality, the highest yogic achievement is commercial success.

Spirituality without religion is spirituality without history, without tradition or lineage, in a random context. It is rootless. It is true that tradition can be dead and yet carry on imposing itself. It is true that history is no guarantor of depth, and carries ignorance as well as knowledge forward. But to argue from bad instances is a little like condemning the institution of the family because one had a bad upbringing. Conversely, to value family is not yet to impose a single traditional concept of the family upon everyone. I am not arguing for tradition (hence for religion as opposed to mere spirituality) on the grounds that truth arose early and was sufficiently pickled in this or that institution’s doctrinal vinegar and was only thus preserved down to our own time. We don’t need history simply in order to restore some early or seemingly lost wisdom. Spirituality needs tradition because of the depth and the variety of the actual traditions, and so that the widest variety and wealth of resources, including practices, texts, rituals, are available for now and future spiritual seekers. It is in the name of diversity and pluralism, not to insist on one single canon, that spirituality needs its history, and hence its religiosity.

The spiritual do-it-yourselfer is not likely to get very far. One is not likely to reinvent philosophy without reading past philosophers, any more than if one only reads one philosopher over an over again. If all one does is read past philosophers, one is also unlikely to reinvent philosophy. But if one declares oneself to be a spiritual maverick, and dispenses with teachers and traditions, only to establish one’s own authority, one is destined to be a skeleton in the wilderness. And it will not help to attend weekend workshops of others who have founded and declared their own Way. The wayward leading the wayward make one wary of the Way. But the many traditions there are run deep, though they also go deeply astray. Buyer beware is not part of the commercial ethos. It is unCalifornia, but sound advice.

The question of lineage arises in some traditions. Which is the true Church of Jesus? Which line of Buddhist teachers reaches back unbroken all the way to Sakyamuni himself and preserves his highest, possibly secret teachings? The history of religions is a history of innovators, usurping through radical reevaluation and reinterpretation the claim of legitimate heir to the spiritual throne. The problem with spirituality as individual innovation, as opposed to the dead hand of traditional religion, is that religion itself, understood historically, is a profusion of innovation and imagination. I do not oppose innovation in matters spiritual, as if I were some arch-conservative ultra-orthodox retrograde reactionary. Compared with the multiple long traditions of religious reinvention, the latest spiritual crazes and most fashionable spiritual trends – lo these many decades – are simply a poor source of novelty and insight, and usually amount to little more than people doing their own thing. There is no spiritual transformation, only spiritual entertainment.

The fallacy of appeal to tradition is not corrected by an appeal to popularity (bandwagon) or novelty. My point is only that to jump on board the latest trend in spiritual fashion, on the grounds that the dead hand of tradition stifles growth, is no less absurd than appealing to tradition for tradition’s sake. Tradition has no sake. Traditions change and eventually reinvent themselves, even changing their own pasts. In the end, what our most sacred memories tell us transpired did not take place at all. But it really doesn’t matter if the mother of Jesus was not a virgin, any more than it matters whether or not the Buddha was conceived in his mother’s dream of a White elephant entering her womb. Myths are told and retold, interpreted and reinterpreted, until they are myths that are altogether and entirely new. Yet they remain the same myth, of same tradition, even as the Ship of Theseus remains the same ship, despite centuries of its parts being replaced piecemeal, and though every last bit of it has already been supplanted by new material. The ceremonies in which the ship continues to be used constitute or even consecrate the ship’s identity. So it is for religions. Thus it is for our selves. We change what we invoke, but no other preservation is possible. No tradition stands still. And if it moves too slowly, then let us innovate faster. But this is not the same as a do-it-yourself spirituality. California is not destiny.

Of course, one must walk whatever path one chooses using one’s own two feet. One must chew the spiritual meat with one’s own teeth. The individual as an individual is necessarily involved. One stands alone before God – and without God, one stands even more alone! No authority should be taken on authority, but under advisement, and for one’s own consideration. We seek teachers because we seek answers, but often we want the answers without having to work out the answers. We turn to authorities to save us work, and they do, when they do not entrap us like the demons they curse; but ultimately and in either case, one must work out one’s own salvation. Enlightenment does not come by grace or by the generosity of others. If one turns to religion to avoid spiritual work one has in point of fact turned away from religion. Admittedly, some religions may be happy to have you on those terms.

Final Cut (knife too sharp)

Dearly beloved, we gather together this day in the name of the Spirit of Philosophy, to join our two opposing concepts in holy union, or else to sever them once for all with the holy knife of reason and analysis. If anyone knows any reason why these two concepts should or should not be joined in conceptual matrimony, let them attend and speak out in argument, or forever behold the peace of antonymic bliss. This ceremony is over. Breathe out.