…you cannot accurately determine anything about someone’s beliefs based on their religious label. And I have to say even when two people share the same label, say Buddhist, and practice within the same tradition, one can’t really know what the other person believes in or even practices! For example, a room full of people meditating, all from the same tradition, may each have completely different ideas about it… Only a problem when those ideas come between people. That is nowhere more so than when families are made up of two or more faith traditions.
The following is, I believe, a quote from a book called Being Both. It’s about interfaith families.
Whether or not two people have the same religious or nonreligious label, they are never going to share identical beliefs, practices, culture, family history. Both partners could be Reform Jews and one could be an atheist, the other a mystic. Or both partners could be secular humanists, and one loves to celebrate a huge Christmas and the other, not so much. Or both partners could be Protestant, but one sees Jesus as the Messiah and the other sees Jesus as more of a teacher or rabbi or even as a metaphor. What we teach children in interfaith community religious education is that you cannot accurately determine anything about someone’s beliefs based on their religious label.
I’d replace ‘discard’ with ‘let go of’. No doubt the quote is intended to address the perennial problem of clutter. An encouraging thought and a direction to take for the popular past time of de-cluttering and its companion minimalism in all its forms. But I’ll take this quote out of the external world and into the internal, reflective realm of meditation and contemplation. Both formal zazen and everyday meditation.
Yes obviously it is necessary to organise our thoughts and feelings, to get our ducks in a row for all sorts of practical reasons. However I’d like to suggest that its worth questioning oneself as to just HOW necessary it is. For what purpose? Truthfully.
Yes sometimes posts here can disturb and be thought-provoking with little offered in terms of answers. I’d like to suggest that it is the disturbance itself rather than the thoughts provoked which can be usefully ‘let go of’. Just a thought.
Quickly forget those Jade Mountains posts! Come back soon.
There is a post on Field of Merit site called The Non-Ferocious Way which I wrote yesterday.
We set great store by being sharp, being focused, being brightly alive. In short being THERE or better, HERE. In Zen practice and any other kind of practice for that matter being one who trains hard is better than being known as a slacker! But what does it mean to train hard, in practice. Are there particular times or circumstances when training hard is what’s asked of us or is the instruction itself a bit of a red herring? Did the intended meaning get lost in translation?
I’ve not got too much more to say on this for the moment so hope you get something out of what I wrote.
May the merit of this post be offered to all those who find the colour has gone out of their life and faith is fragile.
Practice Within The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives
