By Jake Sallerson
I associate myself firmly with the Buddhist and Taoist principles. The one important distinction I desperately try to convey when I say this is I do not perceive these entities to be religions; instead they are philosophies.
Let’s do some basic definitions. Faith: a belief in something too abstract to put into words. Religion: the practice of something (example, to do something religiously is to do it often or repetitively). Practice: the act of applying action to a belief. Belief: the acceptance or acknowledgement that something exists. And, finally, philosophy: the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline (Google definition).
These terms are often not the root cause of societal incontinence and are instead perceived root causes. I say "perceived" because the way in which we actually apply these words to concepts is inaccurate. If you don't believe me, I'll give you an example.
When someone asks you your religion, and you say Christianity or Judaism or Islam, etc., you have actually committed a definitional and cardinal error in answering this way because those are faiths, not religions. To answer the question of "religion" with a "faith" convolutes the understanding and a great deal is lost in translation. Due to this convolution of understanding things like internal judgment/ hostilities, discrepancies, and arguments tend to occur.
But what would happen if we were to rephrase the question, what is your faith? Or, what spiritual understanding most resonates with you as an individual? Suddenly, the question has lost all capacity of comparison, judgment or argument to occur. We cannot tell someone that their beliefs are wrong, because we ourselves are not the almighty and, therefore, do not know the answer. However, when it comes to religion, the practice of something, the physical act as it were of applying faith to action according to a set of rules, then, well, then you have the basis for judgment, attack, argument and disagreement.
In a given philosophy, things are both more and less concrete and both more and less abstract. We can almost scientifically prove our understandings through our experiences of life in a given philosophy. Ultimately, this prevents the capacity or ability for someone to argue against us individually for aligning with it. Now, of course, there are likely schools of thought out there not associated with the well-being of all, but you have to pick your battles I suppose.
My point in all of this is, the way we apply our understanding regarding the context to concepts of or definitions of ideologies we associate with is wrong. Societally speaking, it is wrong. Yet this is the reason we have so much controversy regarding our many religions. And, if we just adjusted on a very basic level how we choose to interpret and implement our own understanding and usage of these concepts, the controversy would dissipate almost instantly.
The same theory of recognizing how we interpret and understand politics could be changed so as to create harmony and should effectively eliminate the hostility of the dividing aspects so enumerated in the current inappropriately titled field of politics. If we change some very basic applications of our own understanding of it, then we can revolutionize the modern understanding of what we each inherently know and understand to what politics and religion should be.
The question of course is what do we change?
Primarily we must change the way we perceive and interpret our own laws. Right now we perceive them as religions instead of faiths or beliefs as we think we are supposed to. What we need is to recognize them for the set of philosophical ideals they were intended to be. Of course, I am speaking metaphorically regarding our conceptual understandings of religion and faith found at the beginning of this piece, but that shouldn't distract you from my very serious and accurate point. We fail to understand how we are supposed to interpret or implement our own constitutional, governing laws.
As a result, we leave it up to the so-called experts or politicians who do the governing for us. They are our ministers and our priests, our voice to the almighty as it were. Except America ... the idea of this country was you were supposed to be your own minister. You were supposed to connect directly with the higher forms of power and be directly involved in affecting the outcomes.
If your faith asked of you to communicate directly with higher forms of consciousness rather than having some middle man do the work for you, yet you chose instead to elect some other person to do it for you, don't you think all the spiritual understandings designed for you to experience would not only be lost in translation, but also that you would not receive the nourishment of what the intention of you being directly connected with the almighty had to offer?
Our involvement in government is no different. And the longer you choose to abstain from directly connecting with the intended notion applied to the very first marks on paper that set out what this country was to represent, then you are starving yourself from the nourishment from the very thing that makes this country unique and special – you along with your direct, and exceedingly necessary involved participation of, to, and with it. What say you?
Sallerson lives in Warren.
