How dead is Religion today?

What to believe and what not to believe? We think that the theme “God” is something to have faith for. But I think that we must learn to follow our instincts, or better, our logical thinking (it’s the same) when we need to believe in something greater than matter. I’m sure that there is something more to it, than just the Universe as it’s explained and known by science. For me, “God” is just an image, a representation of something that the mind cannot grasp. I believe that everything that divide us from the totality of Life is negative. If we believe in something “bigger” then we must believe that we are “smaller”. That would be the wrong approach to the question. To worship is already divisive. And it’s something merely divisive and in a way, it’s part of our “ego-trip” – we like to dwell in this duality, as if we could take great power from that, and also, great love from a divinity which is basically an invention of thought.

I think that humanity in the past had the need of creating gods to worship and fear. That’s an inherent part of us humans – it’s a psichological need, as well as a means to expand our love for other beings (gratitude). I think that Men in the privitive ages had to find a response to his visions and feelings for the Greatness of Life. I believe we had that even then. So we invented the image called “god” in order to relate to it and convey it to others. To grow faith for our instincts and visions, intuitions and insights – that’s what we need to expand. Because the traditional creeds won’t give us anything anymore. The source is extinguished. When the founders are dead, the enlightened ones that opened someone’s mind are dead, then the mess begins.

Religion cannot provide us with the tools – the tools we need to expand our consciousness and to embrace the Universe. I think that the quantic physics are going to fill that gap and will help us to understand that matter, the atomic dimension, consciousness and all the rest are a mere information stored in the Universal mind. Sooner or later, science (through quantic physics) are going to realize that reality. Matter as information, or thought.

I think that, this way, science will come closer to a religious thought. I think it will fill the need that we all have, to be in contact with that which is holistic and sacred. Sacredness will be something like entering a whole dimension of understanding – or comprehension. This will be, necessarily, the new form of religion for the next decades or centuries. A form based in comprehension of the highest way of connection. And it will be brought by science, because science is based in facts, not in faith, so when these machinery is understood in its highest way, it should bring a new breaktrough, or revolution in our minds.

My favourite reading is Jiddu Krishnamurti.

meditation day 1

here I am working at the kitchen of the Zen Center, and watching all the guests (monks or lay people) in the zendo right beside my room sitting in their zafus hours and more hours!!! We kitchen crew are supposed to be “practicing the way” too. That’s to say, meditating in a way too. But in fact, I don’t do it. I’m just thinking about the clock and the end of my work for today. Then I could rest. I feel tired and sleepy. I didn’t feel so sleepy the weeks before… There are quite a lot of pretty and interesting women as guests, but I could not talk to them because they should be silent most of the time. I don’t want to be appointed as a bad guy for trying to approach women in retreat. Really, nobody wants to be singled out from the crowd and be appointed with an accusative finger. Me neither. I didn’t do anything wrong!!!!

Or maybe I shouldn’t even look at them! Just with the corner of the eye maybe… They don’t exist. They are not there. We work in silence in the kitchen. These are the orders. So, I chop quietly my vegetables. I don’t even look at other people’s work. But this entails a certain uneasiness. A certain tension. This happens at the table in the dinning room too. I don’t like it. It should be taken easy and not with so much stiffness. I’d like to be making and hearing jokes, to laugh at somebody’s stupidities. That’s a way of laughing of ourselves, and not taking us so serious.

Uffffh!!! my work for today is done. Everything is useless (that’s how I feel) and meaningless. I know it would eventually change, but it lets me exhausted to think about the eternal struggle for the $$. This critical view of mine has its origin in my mind, I know. I know that actually, everything is perfect as the Universe itself. The stars are almost eternal, the atoms inside matter are almost eternal… They might be short as a breath for God, but for us it is as if they will last forever. We might see one or two of them (stars) die, not more.

For me God is not that image we are used to imagine. It’s something implicit in matter, but not explicit anywhere else. He does not rest on a cloud. It can be a thought or the big Thought. The mind and the big Mind.