My Buddhist Philosophy

January 10, 2009

When I tell people I’m Buddhist I can see that they begin to conjure images of chanting monks and hours of meditation. You will rarely find me meditating, I’ve never embarked on a silent retreat and have never been in the presence of a monk. Buddhism is not about ceremony or inflexible standards of worship, as with deity-based religion. Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy encourage us to follow our own path toward enlightenment, regardless of where that journey may lead.

I never identified with a world controlled by organized religion – of men spouting scripture, seeking to control our lives, our actions and even our thoughts. To me the world was more than that. I believed in an existence completely devoid of the idea of sin and judgment…of eternal damnation and the fires of hell. The hypocrisy of organized religion – the wagging fingers and blind acceptance of the impossible, labeled by “believers” as an exercise in faith, were my own personal hell.

The concepts of heaven and hell, of God and The Devil, were foreign and unnatural to me. Do we not create our own experience? Do we not follow our own paths to happiness? Do we not have the right and the responsibility as sentient beings to experience the world and interpret for ourselves the meaning, the nature and the purpose of our existence. The very idea of conforming to an image based on organized religion’s warped interpretation of “the word of God” was offensive on a fundamental level.

The notion of a single, all-powerful, omnipotent being having control over my every experience was equally disturbing. If the evolution of my life has already been decided, what joy is there in living? And if I stray from this pre-determined path, I was expected to accept that a life of sorrow, tragedy and despair were all that awaited me. These were the beliefs of weak-minded people – of lost souls so afraid of making a decision or taking a wrong turn or accepting responsibility for their own choices that bending to the will of a faceless and voiceless deity was somehow preferable. That was not my truth…not my belief…not the narrow and thoughtless experience I sought.

And what, you might ask, of faith? Faith is not an exercise of simply believing in the impossible. I don’t have to believe in the existance of a God in order to have faith. My faith is not based on sermon or scripture. The question is not “what would Jesus do?”, rather “what shall I do?” Spirituality is not reserved only for those who quote from the book of Chorinthians or Exodus or John. How many men and women recite the words, “For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son…”, with no sense of love and compassion – no grasp of empathy and devotion?

Belief is not associated with Sunday church service or singing from a hymnal. True spirituality lies in a desire to find a connection between ourselves and the world around us – that which we see with our eyes and that which we can’t. Our lives are not meant to be an exercise in following a path determined by religious leaders who seek to control our actions and censor our thoughts. Instead it is a journey of self-discovery, of curiosity, and of learning what it means to have a fundamental sense of compassion and genuine appreciation for all that surrounds us.

In my years I’ve often struggled to find quiet, but I have not struggled to find peace. My sense of peace comes from an understanding that my life is my own creation – made up of my choices and unique interpretations. My experiences belong only to me. Those experiences continue to shape my world and help me grow. I cannot control the world around me, nor would I want to. I can, however, control my reactions to the world and my response to circumstance.

Understanding that has allowed me to be at peace with the knowledge that the only thing we can count on is the impermanance of life. Whether good or bad, all circumstances change. Pain is a part of life, as are joy, sadness, happiness, love and loss. The goal is not merely to survive the bad and relish the good, but to learn something valuable from each experience that you can take with you no matter where life’s journey takes you.

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