I personally have found both Buddhism and Christianity to be immensely helpful in my journey.
When considering religion, I find it incredibly important to distinguish between the original message, vs. the excreta that remain when that message is passed through the digestive tract of ordinary humanity's biases.
There are exceptional individuals who manage to see through to the heart of things - such as Jesus, the Buddha, and many many lesser known ones. They bring their message to the masses because it's vital to do so. The masses lack the capacity to truly connect with what the great teachers have described to them. They hear the words, but don't feel the tune in their hearts - simply because they just aren't quite there yet.
Because of that, all the plagues that already bedevil mankind corrupt the original message of love and service, and the corruption goes undetected - and can even become part of the official dogma of the religion. An example of this is tribalism - us vs them thinking and intertribal conflict over the control of resources - which is profoundly embedded in the psyche of the human animal. That is the primary cause of crusades and such; religion simply serves as a readily available marker of who is "us" and who is "them."
It's as if someone who visits and spends time in Paris were to write a guidebook and give it to people who have never been there, who then begin studying the guidebook and teaching it to others. After a few generations, even if one of them were to go to Paris and attempt to say something about it from experience, that person would be told how wrong they are because that's not what the book says. It's a sad but inevitable state of affairs.
Yet, at the heart of the religion remains the pure message from someone who had been pure and whole enough to actually reach and enter the spiritual heights he/she spoke about. That's what's worth focusing on, and will never lose its value.
When considering religion, I find it incredibly important to distinguish between the original message, vs. the excreta that remain when that message is passed through the digestive tract of ordinary humanity's biases.
There are exceptional individuals who manage to see through to the heart of things - such as Jesus, the Buddha, and many many lesser known ones. They bring their message to the masses because it's vital to do so. The masses lack the capacity to truly connect with what the great teachers have described to them. They hear the words, but don't feel the tune in their hearts - simply because they just aren't quite there yet.
Because of that, all the plagues that already bedevil mankind corrupt the original message of love and service, and the corruption goes undetected - and can even become part of the official dogma of the religion. An example of this is tribalism - us vs them thinking and intertribal conflict over the control of resources - which is profoundly embedded in the psyche of the human animal. That is the primary cause of crusades and such; religion simply serves as a readily available marker of who is "us" and who is "them."
It's as if someone who visits and spends time in Paris were to write a guidebook and give it to people who have never been there, who then begin studying the guidebook and teaching it to others. After a few generations, even if one of them were to go to Paris and attempt to say something about it from experience, that person would be told how wrong they are because that's not what the book says. It's a sad but inevitable state of affairs.
Yet, at the heart of the religion remains the pure message from someone who had been pure and whole enough to actually reach and enter the spiritual heights he/she spoke about. That's what's worth focusing on, and will never lose its value.
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