Dragonnet - Words of the Wise

"I am concerned about the relationship between 'spirituality' and 'religion' and the way those terms are being used because it's become increasingly common for spirituality to indirectly denigrate religion. People used to make a distinction between religion and religious institutions, and that is a valid distinction. But then spirituality came along, and everything spiritual was good and everything to do with religion was bad. Religion became equated with dogmatism and moralism. Of course, there are institutional problems with religions. There's not a single institution that doesn't have a dark side. Would you dispense with learning becasue of the institutional problems of universities? . . .

"These are interesting times, very promising in many ways. We may have started to work our way out of our excessive secularism. We seem to be realizing that materialism, secularism, reductionism, and consumerism are inadequate premises on which to lead our lives - that they drain the wonder and the mystery out of life and experience and are dead ends. Buddhism is helping with this and carries the force of being a very old religion. 'Spirituality' can't get traction in history the way religions - spiritual containers, if you will - can. That's why, for all its sins, the Christian churches have been able to play crucial roles in, say, the civil rights movement, or in keeping the U.S. troops out of Guatamala and El Salvador.

"One of the important roles that Buddhism has played in the West is that the West took the esoteric or mystical aspects of Buddhism our of the monasteries and made them available to the laity. This helped revitalize interest in the mystical aspects of Christianity and Judaism. In some cases, it furthered the return of contemplative practices in those religions that had fallen into neglect. Mystics all speak the same language. They understand each other. Buddhism has brought new life to the Abrahamic religions, and this has been a wonderful contribution."

An interview with Huston Smith in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 2001


		"Words of the Wise"
		"I am concerned about the relationship between 'spirituality' and 'religion' and the way those terms are being used because it's become increasingly common for spirituality to indirectly denigrate religion. People used to make a distinction between religion and religious institutions, and that is a valid distinction. But then spirituality came along, and everything spiritual was good and everything to do with religion was bad. Religion became equated with dogmatism and moralism. Of course, there are institutional problems with religions. There's not a single institution that doesn't have a dark side. Would you dispense with learning becasue of the institutional problems of universities? . . . "These are interesting times, very promising in many ways. We may have started to work our way out of our excessive secularism. We seem to be realizing that materialism, secularism, reductionism, and consumerism are inadequate premises on which to lead our lives - that they drain the wonder and the mystery out of life and experience and are dead ends. Buddhism is helping with this and carries the force of being a very old religion. 'Spirituality' can't get traction in history the way religions - spiritual containers, if you will - can. That's why, for all its sins, the Christian churches have been able to play crucial roles in, say, the civil rights movement, or in keeping the U.S. troops out of Guatamala and El Salvador. "One of the important roles that Buddhism has played in the West is that the West took the esoteric or mystical aspects of Buddhism our of the monasteries and made them available to the laity. This helped revitalize interest in the mystical aspects of Christianity and Judaism. In some cases, it furthered the return of contemplative practices in those religions that had fallen into neglect. Mystics all speak the same language. They understand each other. Buddhism has brought new life to the Abrahamic religions, and this has been a wonderful contribution." An interview with Huston Smith in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 2001
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