metapunk

Religion is one of those words that means pretty much whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It symbolizes different things to different people, and people end up fighting about it when they’re really talking about entirely different experiences that each of them labels “religion.”

To strict believers, the word summons the rich symbolism and way of life of their own particular tradition. To religious moderates, religion can mean anything from interpretations of scripture which fit liberal politics to more individualistic understandings of spirituality. To critics of religion, the word evokes all the ways in which religion has failed or been misused—holy wars, bigotry, anti-science; abuse of people and ideas.

So if I say the word “religion” to you, chances are you think of all sorts of things that I didn’t intend to evoke. It makes it very difficult to talk about. All I can do is tell you how I personally define the word, and hope that you’ll set aside all those other images long enough to catch my meaning.

So what is religion?

Very simply, when I think of the word religion, I think relation. Religion is about your relationship to the world, society, and yourself.   But what does this mean?

First, let’s check out the definitions over at the American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com. According to most dictionaries, scholars seem to agree that the word comes from Latin, religio, meaning “respect for the gods, or reverence for the sacred.” The origins of religio, however, are disputed. Most modern scholars seem to believe it comes from two Latin roots: re-, meaning “again,” and ligare, meaning “to bind, fasten, or unite.”

Many critics of religion seize upon this idea of “binding” and extend it into “bondage.” Thus, to them, re + ligio means “to return to bondage,” playing on the idea that religion is a form of intellectual slavery. Now, certainly religion has been abused in this way, but personally I think such definitions are just a tad biased, and not a little uninformed.

Instead, I look to scholars like Tom Harpur. In his book, The Pagan Christ, Harpur suggests that ligare, translated more neutrally, means “to connect,” as ligaments connect bones. Joseph Campbell presents a similar interpretation in The Power of Myth, which, according to Wikipedia, may go back to much earlier scholars, such as St. Augustine.

The distinction is incredibly important. “To return to bondage,” is obviously nothing any sane person would want. But “to reconnect” suggests something quite different. Something voluntary; like getting in touch with an old friend. This is not something that controls you, but something you choose to call upon, because that friend means something to you, and you value their advice.

Flow:

Now, skeptics will be asking at this point: “Re-connect, fine, but re-connect to what? How are we disconnected in the first place?” It would be easy at this point to say “God”—but what is God? That’s a question for another story, but for now let’s just say that when you reconnect, you’re re-establishing contact with the wider world—the world beyond what you think of as your “self.”

Most of the time, we’re lost in our own thoughts, desires, preconceptions, anxieties, and judgments. We are disconnected—we can’t hear the world over the endless nattering of our own internal voices. When you reconnect, you’re letting go of all that fleeting stuff, so that you can be in the moment, connected, flowing, relating to the world in an optimal way. You reconnect so you can see the world, other people, and yourself clearly, unfiltered by your ego.

But that feels like giving up control, you might say, and why would anyone want to do that? Well, that’s a personal choice, but unless you do, you miss out on a whole world of perception and creativity and responsiveness. You stay locked in your own head, controlled by your own need for control—and that’s the real bondage. That’s the prison you can’t see or taste or touch that Morpheus refers to in The Matrix. It’s also the difference between unhealthy dogma, and a liberating spirituality.

There’s a bunch of ways to experience such a transcendant state: music and dance, martial arts, yoga, most sports, riding a bike, making love, among others. “Insight” meditation is a good method—it’s traditionally Buddhist, but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to benefit from it. It’s good because if you practice it diligently, you’ll start to experience flow even when you’re not meditating—like when you’re cleaning the yard, or having an argument with your spouse. Suddenly you’ll realize you’re relating to your spouse as if he or she were your younger sibling or your parent, or someone other than who they actually are, and you’ll slip out of that ancient habit and see them again as if for the first time. And you’ll do this with everyone—even strangers on the street. Maybe that’s not what you’re into.

Either way, it’s the flow that matters. How you get there is less important than that you do, at least some of the time. So whatever you do, find some dynamic activity, where your skills and your ability to creatively respond match the challenge of what you’re trying to do, where you lose yourself in what you’re doing for a little while; and do it as often as possible. And find a way to extend that flow into other activities in your life. In other words: go play. Have fun. Make your every day a work of life-affirming art.

Note that very little of this has to do with the age of the Earth, how life emerged, or whether or not there is actually a God. No matter what your beliefs or lack thereof, those are all questions that reinforce some ego-centric thought. They are questions that disconnect you from what is happening in the moment, right here, right now, and lock you away inside your ego again. And in more pragmatic terms, those questions aren’t nearly so important as how we relate to each other—even the people we disagree with—and to the world itself.

Religious Concepts:

What else can we say about religion? Well, from a conceptual standpoint it represents our fundamental assumptions about the world—religion is the lens by which we view everything. It is our central point of reference, and the ways in which we’ve conceptually divided an infinitely complicated world into manageable chunks.

The major sign of a healthy religion is that its practitioners remain aware at all times that they’re seeing through such a lens—that all their impressions are coloured by it, and that at times they have to adopt a different way of seeing. It means being aware of your own biases and seeing them for what they are. That doesn’t mean we don’t have an opinion, but it does mean that most of the time, an opinion is just that—so much hot air and little else—even when it’s our own. Spending more time in flow makes this all much easier to see.

But I digress. Religion is the lens, our window on the world. Keiji Nishitani in Religion and Nothingness points out, to paraphrase, that it’s useless to ask: “What’s the utility of religion?” because religion is the thing that lets you figure out the utility of everything else. It’s our touchstone and our way of making meaning.

Which is really a very broad definition of religion, because realistically just about any worldview or way of life can be considered a system of meaning—a way of relating. But I think this is the only one that really makes sense. Everybody has a way of relating. Everyone has a religion.

I mean, sure, Western Economics may not seem much like a religion, but it is one. It sees the world, and people, in a particular way (specifically, in competitive, self-interested terms). It involves complex and difficult to explain forces, such as the invisible hand and the trickle-down effect, and the karma-like notions of your credit rating and bank balance. It has temples: stock exchanges, banks, shopping malls (temples of consumerism). Each of these temples has specific rituals and proper conduct—like finding whatever item is supposed to bring you happiness, and then receiving the blessing of the cashier to take it home. There’s also that ritual where you line up to use the shrine… er, automatic teller machine… to receive your blessings in material form; much as a nobleman in times long past might petition the Pope for an indulgence.

Fundamentally, economics, or just about anything else, is a way of relating to the world that implies certain beliefs and standards of behaviour. Now as religions go, Economics is a particularly broken and nihilistic one. But it’s important to understand that just about everything you do—every little ritual that you take for granted—indicates how you relate to the world. And that relationship will dictate how you treat the world, and how it will treat you in return.

It’s important to look at that relationship, and the fundamental assumptions it is based on, in order to decide which sort of relationship to the world is the most fulfilling, the most healthy. I won’t say “to decide once and for all” because there is no “once and for all.” In a living, changing universe, we always have to evaluate, and reevaluate our fundamental assumptions and lenses on the world. That’s why we have to reconnect, to understand how we’re relating to the world at any given moment.

Conclusion:

I’ve mainly just been rambling here, but hopefully this post will serve as a jumping off point for future articles on the nature of religion, at least as I see it. Most importantly, I hope I’ve shown why religion is neither a dirty word, nor something special—it’s with us every day, in everything we take for granted, in how we all exist in relation.