Is Religion Necessary?

Art is Life,
Music is Truth,
Television is furniture.
(Source of original quote unknown.)

I was speaking to an artist who does beautiful and very unusual work at a book sale. That is what he quoted to me. We were speaking because it turns out that we had a lot of the same interests. I am learning to paint, we both have been in the martial arts and love traveling. I smiled and replied:


"Television is up to you, it is about what you dial up."
---Evonne


He laughed, knowing we do watch what we wish to on television when we are adults and get out of it according to what we tune to. I have seen many great arts on television that I would have never experienced otherwise. I saw the San Francisco Ballet Company performing Cinderella on tape for instance. Seeing those large mean playing the ugly stepsisters was an inspiration. :-D

Lots of stuff is behind television. We see so much of it, we simply take it for granted. Great artists draw those cartoons. We see those pudgy little Rugrats running around and don't give it a thought. IT IS DIFFICULT TO ANIMATE RUNNING! People study live models in motion that their cartoons are drawn after. The process is painstaking. Great and gifted artists make the music that gives the feeling to many of our movies that we take for granted. If you ever watch a very pensive scene with the music turned off, you may not feel the tension at all. The music replaces the vibration that we would feel in real life had we really been there watching! Artists design and paint the backdrop of the scenes that also affect us. How real or unreal is it? Is it beautiful? Does all the bright reds and yellows give us tension? Are the angles just slightly askew to create tension? That is all done for us by all those artists in the background bringing the picture to life. Television involves writing. Who wrote the screen plays? Who read and interpreted the book? Who read the screen plays and the books and became the characters? Television is a victim of "too much." There is so much choice on there, that some people just pass it off as garbage. Those who look deeper find wonderful stuff and can ferret out all the greatness. Air and water are plentiful too. We should take care with them.

Television reminds me of religion too. Is it necessary? There certainly is a lot of it. We have freedom of religion now so we have the opportunities as adults to explore the "truths" tucked within many of the religions. I find that most religions contain gemstones within their words and actions. There have been some great non-religious people, but I normally find a religious influence in their lives although they may have departed from it. Others start out with no religions and discover it riding the wave to great heights becoming our famous teaching Masters, sages and saints or whatever the particular religions call them.

Some seem to transcend religion lifting above it into the simple truth. I notice that some religions give us keys to transcend them. After we see more clearly, I believe we lift into a more simple way of being that is simply closer to the truth of what we really are. Some of these keys are hidden and you may not agree with me. Buddhism tells us if we see the Buddha, we must kill him. :-) At first that struck me as a very violent statement and I don't believe a Buddha ever said that, but someone else. But when I think about it, it is something in our minds. A Buddha is not really a person. A person is a type of temporary vehicle that we may be right now but we won't always be a walking talking human. People come and go from this earth. If we really see the Buddha, we are ready to lift off to a place where perception is different and time does not amount to even as much as a blink of an eye. We are perhaps simply essence.



To look at this question, I asked myself, "What is it that we are becoming." Well, I don't really know. Perhaps we will become another person if reincarnation is true. Some think that we will become angels:

I died as mineral and became a plant.

I died as plant and rose to animal.

I died as animal and I was human.

Why should I fear?

When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die human,

to soar with angels blessed above.

And when I sacrifice my angel soul I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

---Rumi Jalaluddin





What if we are becoming a universe?

Ordinary death is getting rid of one life so that you can live again; nirvana is getting rid of all lives so you don't live as an individual, you start living as the universe, you start living as God. Then there is no need to come back to the body, to the mind, to the ego.

---Zen, The Path of Paradox by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh




If we are really becoming a universe, we will probably not be going to Sunday School or catechism anymore. Religion is one of the paths to something higher. For me it is a great help. Religion is one of the places where the great thinking has been preserved. I can go to the references and see people who have had the same experiences that I have and have gone way past that. Knowing they went very far and reading how they interpret the event is of great help and consolation to me.

People have their own forms of religion. People have had paths of music, art, and literature that have brought them way past the point of what we can grasp as normal human potential. Their lives have not always been easy since they are so much more than "ahead of their times." Their paintings don't sell, they seem to be a little towards insane, and may even have some difficulty adjusting or getting accustomed to the way the world really is. Glen Gould comes to mind. There are a few good movies about his existence as a great man of music. He quit the piano concert scene and went into a very private life with his music, only doing interviews through the radio over a telephone. He felt that with the new technology his music could be shared more perfectly on recording.

When our sciences (I include religion as one of the sciences) become more cohesive, I think our world will be a much better place. I like how the Dali Lama embraces science. He is definitely ahead of his time. When science, religion, government, and economics converge, I think the world could be a much better place. Each has something to add to the other. If you are interested in this subject, you might enjoy this publication which is available as a free pdf download at this link:


http://www.blogger.com/app/
Worldwatch Paper #164: Invoking the Spirit: Religion and Spirituality in the Quest for a Sustainable World
Gary Gardner



I do understand that anything we touch can go in one direction or the other rather than remain in balance. We can be horrible, manipulating religion for war, false justice and any other number of things. We can also be impossibly good and all live like very religious people to the extent where we forget to have children and take care of our physical selves.There is a marvelous rabbinical myth that the ancient sages once actually captured Yetzer ha-Ra personified. The Yetzer ha-Ra roughly translated is our "evil" impulses. These great leaders were going to slay Yetzer ha-Ra but they realized that procreation and creativity would cease in the world. Instead, they blinded the Yetzer in order to weaken its power and released it. The rabbinic commentary on Genesis reads:

Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman said: The words "behold it is good" refer to the impulse to good, and the words, "behold it is very good" (Gen. 1:31) refer to the impulse to evil. But how can the evil impulse be called "very good?" Because...were it not for the evil impulse, a man would not build a house, take a wife, beget children, or engage in commerce... (Genesis Rabbah 9:7)

If we did not have religion, we would find what is there somewhere else. It is our nature to attempt to discover what is higher than ourselves. It is inside of us and we wish to find our "treasure house." I believe that is part of the purpose of being here to grow. We would ask others, form groups, and have practices passed down through families assisting us with this. Perhaps we would be like the villages where people living close to nature have their every action being something spiritual so they never forget their place in nature and the thankfulness for receiving it.

Is religion necessary? I believe it is an important stage of development that we would find somewhere, organized or not. We all are searching for the truth and trying to find the station and tune it in.