You seem very much preoccupied with lessons
you have learned from grief and regret, pain and suffering
[...]
[My] recent propensity to be somewhat subsumed with a
certain sadness [arose] from not only pondering on such
questions as pathei-mathos, the causes/alleviation of suffering,
and the nature of religion, expiation, and extremism, but also
from understanding, from feeling, just how much suffering I
personally have caused during my extremist decades and knowing
that had it not been for the tragic death of a loved one some
six years ago I would most probably have continued my career as
a suffering-causing extremist.
Also, having spent decades trying to idealistically inspire
people or manipulate them, and being manipulative either for
allegedly idealistic reasons (some political or religious cause)
or for purely selfish reasons, I finally came to know just how
easy it is to make excuses for ones mistakes and unethical
behaviour, especially in relation to some ideology or some
political or religious cause. Having good intentions, I
discovered, is not a valid reason to cause suffering, although
believing one acted from good intentions does and can salve
ones conscience. For I came to the conclusion that idealism
itself was one of the fundamental causes of suffering, and that
ultimately it is matter of us taking individual responsibility
for ourselves and all our actions; for the suffering we cause,
have caused, or can cause. To shift that responsibility onto
others (as in some chain-of-command) or onto some political
cause or some faith is just, in my fallible view at least,
unethical. As is positing or believing in some supreme deity who
will decide matters for us (and judge us and others) and/or who
has, apparently, laid down what is right and what is wrong.
There are somewhat complex and difficult questions here (or at
least they seem complex and difficult questions to me).
Questions such as if there is no God/supreme-deity and no
mechanism such as karma and thus no rebirth then how to
understand suffering and what do reformation of ourselves and
expiation mean, and do they even have, or should they have, any
meaning sans religion? How do we sans religion and ideology
decide, know, what is ethical and what can motivate us to act
ethically? What is innocence? Horrid things happen every day to
people who do not deserve them. Every minute of every day
somewhere some human being suffers because of some deed done to
them by some other human being. Should that concern us? If so,
why, and what could/might we do about it, and will what we do
cause more suffering?
What I have termed the philosophy, the way, of pathei-mathos
that is, my now much revised numinous way is just my attempt
to answer such questions. And an attempt born from me accepting
the truth about myself and my suffering-causing past. To do
otherwise, I feel and felt, would have been to somehow in some
way demean to not learn from that tragic recent death of a
loved one. To, instead, continue with the arrogance, the hubris,
of my past.
Perhaps it would have been easier for me to just accept the
answers of some existing Way or of some religion. Certainly, a
religious expiation could have eased the burden, relieved and
relieve some or most of the grief, felt. A burden, a grief,
which certainly has fuelled and infused my writings these past
few years and some of which writings are my rather feeble
attempts at a non-religious but hopefully still numinous
expiation.
[...]
Reply 2
Perhaps all we can do is try and communicate, in some way (but
gently) that wordless (empathic) knowing of another human being
to others. A wordless humanizing knowing that I have come to
appreciate many men seem to so often lack or believe or feel is
far less important than their macho posturing and their love of
and seeming need for conflict, control, competition, and war.
Perhaps if women were more assertive, empowered, accepting of
themselves, and perhaps if men appreciated women more and men
(heaven forfend) developed within themselves certain muliebral
qualities there might be less suffering in the world.
[...]
In my personal experience at least there is and was a positive
aspect to Catholicism, as there is (again in my view and my
experience) a positive aspect to most if not all conventional
religions from Islam to Judaism to Buddhism to Christianity.
This is, they have the propensity to remind us of the need for
humility by setting certain limits regarding our behaviour, and
by in some way and in their own manner making us aware of the
numinous, the sacred. Which is why, over the decades, I have
learned to respect them and their adherents while accepting that
their answers, their way, are not my answers, my way.
In respect of the sacred, for instance, I still find that one of
the most beautiful expressions of the numinous is Catholic
chant: Gregorian, Cistercien, and Vieux-Roman. Indeed, one of my
favourite pieces of music is now, as it has been for decades,
Rιpons
de Matines pour la fκte de Saint Bernard. One of my
treasured memories is, as a monk, singing the office of Compline
and then, in the sublime silence of the church, going to the
Lady Chapel to kneel in contemplative wordless prayer on the
stone floor in front of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Such peace, such purity, in those moments. Another treasured
memory is, decades later and when a Muslim, travelling in the
Western Desert and with my Egyptian guide stopping to face
Makkah and pray Zuhr Namaz while the hot Sun beat down and a hot
breeze blew sand to cover part of my prayer mat. Again, a purity
of silence no one else around for perhaps a hundred miles
and a wordless warm feeling of connexion with something pure and
far beyond and balancing our human hubris: to place us into the
necessary supra-personal perspective.
Perhaps on balance the positive, humanizing, virtues of such
religions now outweigh their negative qualities? Certainly, it
seems to me, that most of the worst excesses of for example
Christianity are now and hopefully historical (and one thinks
here of excesses such as the Inquisition).
Another simple personal story; one from among so many in
relation to other religions and their positive attributes. Once
I happened to be travelling to [...] an area which colonial and
imperialist Europeans formerly described as part of 'darkest
Africa' [...] Part of this travel involved a really long journey
on unpaved roads by bus from an urban area. You know the type of
thing an unreliable weekly or sporadic service in some old
vehicle used by villagers to take themselves (and often their
produce and sometimes their livestock) to and from an urban
market and urban-dwelling relatives. On this service, to a
remote area, it [seemed to be] the custom before the journey
could begin for someone to stand at the front and say a
Christian prayer with every passenger willingly joining in. It
was quite touching. As was the fact that, at the village where I
stayed (with a local family) near that grave, everyone went to
Church on a Sunday, wearing the best clothes they could, and
there was a real sense (at least to me) of how their faith
helped them and gave them some guidance for the better, for it
was if they, poor as they were, were in some way living, or were
perhaps partly an embodiment of, the ethos expressed by the
Sermon of the Mount, and although I no longer shared their
Christian faith, I admired them and respected their belief and
understood what that faith seemed to have given them. Who was
who am I to try and preach to them, to judge them and that
faith? I was I am just one fallible human being who believes
he may have some personal and fallible answers to certain
questions; just one person among billions aware of his past
arrogance and his suffering-causing mistakes.
You just seem so sad
and its such a pity to waste time
being sad when there are a million and one reasons not to be.
In a strange way a certain sadness seems to keep me focussed,
balanced, and human, preventing sans religion the return of
that arrogant, hubriatic, violent individual who incited and
preached hatred, intolerance, violence, killing, and who was
responsible for causing much suffering.
[...]
Not that long ago I was reminded of a veteran of the First World
War I had briefly known during my first year as a nurse as I
cared for him as he recovered from surgery and then, later on,
lay dying. He came back from that war a changed and quiet man
who abhorred war, with a desire to just live a simple, normal,
life. So he married, became a father; a grandfather; his world
his family. But he never forgot those years; their tragedy; the
loss of so many of his comrades; the horror and in his words
the futility of it all. He had a real dignity, partly because of
that inner sadness that so seemed to suffuse him. He had also,
many times, felt himself to be an interloper among people. This
knowing of him, and his dying, moved me; causing me to consider
and reconsider certain questions. But of course this feeling and
such insights did not last, and within six months having
ceased to be a nurse my hubriatic, warmongering, self had
reasserted itself, yet again.
Thus consciously recalling my own pathei-mathos, and that of
others, and feeling the sadness that is part of such a learning,
is I feel somewhat necessary, at least for me and for now.
Reply 3
As I type this I am listening to the orchestral version of
Ravel's Pavane pour une Infante Defunte, and the beautiful
music, your message, remind me yet again of our strange human
condition; of our ability, our potential, to do what is fair, to
be kind and to love, and also of our propensity to hate, to
resort to violence, to be barbaric, as if the suffering of so
many for so many millennia meant nothing, with nothing learned,
except by a few.
A while ago, when I chanced to be travelling in England the
train stopped at a station to allow new passengers to embark, I
noticed a group of some four young men, in their early twenties.
Yet even had not two of them been wearing (what I am informed
are called) 'hoodies' embroidered with the name and symbol of
their organization I would have recognized them. For forty years
ago that would have been me, there, at such a place on such a
day as that. A young man enthusiastically on his way to some
political demonstration, or some meeting; proudly, defiantly,
displaying his allegiance to his extremist cause, and standing,
walking - holding himself - in such a way that you know he is
ready for, even eager for, a fight.
This distant, momentary, and regardable encounter caused this
ageing man - a wheen beyond three score - a certain sadness.
What value, then - what purpose - my writings these past few
years? For it was as if the pathei-mathos of that aged man, as
that of so many others - our knowing of the human cost and
consequences of hatred - had little or no effect. The same
prejudice; the same propensity and need for violence; the same
disruption of so many non-harming innocent lives; the same lack
of empathy, understanding, love; the same intolerance and the
same spewing forth and distribution of ignorant propaganda. Only
the names, the people, the symbols and the flags, change; year
following year, decade after decade.
I well knew the perceived enemies of these latter-day types: the
people hated, reviled; the subject of the speeches, the
propaganda, of their leaders. I well knew how they hated, and
why. I well knew the slyness of their leaders, of how they
desired to describe, to positively portray, themselves - and the
excuses made regarding violence. Above all, perhaps, I know so
well the ignorance, the intolerance, the inhumanity, on which
their beliefs, their cause, was founded, and which ignorance,
which intolerance, which inhumanity, was indeed their cause,
whatever the words, whatever the name, whatever the flag,
whatever the year.
Not long after that impersonal encounter I did personally try to
rationally engage with a few supporters of that organization, in
an effort to correct - from personal experience - at least some
of their prejudices about Islam and Muslims. To no avail, of
course, so deep, irrational, was that prejudice, so strong the
hatred of their perceived enemies; so alien to them was any
vestige of humility. And would I, some forty years ago, have
listened to some old man pontificating about his experiences,
his life, his learning? I doubt it. For I then, as they now, had
that certainty-of-knowing, that arrogance, that is one of the
foundations of extremism, of whatever kind.
Perhaps my political opponents of decades past were right and
that the only effective way to deal with such people of
intolerance, hatred, violence, and prejudice is to oppose them
'on the streets' and take every opportunity to reveal them for
the bigots they are... But I no longer have any definitive
answers, having only a certain certitude about my own unknowing.
I was wondering what your impressions were of living in
communities like this
Such [Muslim] communities gave me some of the most memorable
moments of my life. Some of the most wonderful - some of the
most human - people I have ever met. Being with - living with -
Muslims (both Sunni and Shia) taught me humility, the ignorance
of my past political beliefs, and how the Muslim way of life can
be and certainly has been (on balance) an influence for good,
just as Christianity (on balance) is and has been, and just as
Judaism is and has been. But of course all religions, by their
nature, have problems in respect of fallible human
interpretations...
I felt really at home with, among, devout Muslims - those trying
to follow the guidelines of Quran and Sunnah (or in the case of
the Shia, being Taqlid of a Mujtahid). There was, and is, so
much to admire about the Muslim way of life, from the modesty of
women, the reverence for the Prophet, the cultivation of
humility, the necessity of Wudhu, praying five times a day, the
reliance on only Allah, fasting in Ramadan, the real feeling of
belonging to the Ummah, the avoidance of intoxicating
substances...
Of all the religions I have personal experience of, I found
Islam to be perhaps the most human. In the Quran and Sunnah our
weaknesses are laid bare, and in Shariah there is a guide to
living in a balanced, a human, and a numinous, way.
One of the most difficult decisions of my life was leaving Islam
[...]
living with them forces one to ask a lot of
questions about freedom and personal choice versus duty to a
community.
Such questions, in my fallible view, are important for an
understanding of Islam, and thus important vis-a-vis resolving
the conflict, both real and perceived, between Islam and the
West, although were I to go into pedantic mode - as is a bad
habit of mine - I should really write 'the conflict between the
Muslim way of life and the ways of the West'.
It seems to me that the ways of the West value and give
precedence to personal choice and to ideations such as 'freedom'
(personal and otherwise), whereas the Muslim way is to value and
give precedence to, to try and humbly submit to, the will of
Allah as revealed by the Prophet in the Quran, and as manifest
in Sunnah and Shariah. The only real personal choice a Muslim
has - by virtue of being Muslim (of accepting the Shahadah) - is
to submit to Allah, or not to submit to Allah, and thus freedom
for a Muslim means living in a community under the guidance of
Shariah, since Shariah is the path to Jannah, and Jannah is the
Allah-given goal of this life and Shariah means that often (or
mostly) the community, the Ummah, comes before one's own desires
and before some posited, ideated, abstract, personal 'freedom'.
Problems arise, and have arisen, at least in my fallible view
and in my experience, because of two things. First, for despite
all the rhetoric in Western lands about freedom and tolerance
and diversity there is the belief, both conscious and
unconscious and held by an awful lot of people, that the ways of
the West really are superior to the Muslim way of obedience to
the will of Allah and the pursuit of Jannah. Second, certain
Western governments keep interfering in the lives of Muslims,
both in the lands of the Muslims and in the lands of the West,
disliking or intolerant of or fearing as they do Shariah as the
only law in Muslim lands, and - in the West - certain Muslim
customs (such as hijab, the Adhan, and minarets) and the growing
numbers of Muslims (resulting in the need for more Mosques).
Reply 4
[...]
To have such [youthful] certainty might make life easier and
perhaps - in my case - as enjoyable as I remember those now long
gone decades of youth and early manhood. I, as I am sure many
others do and have done, have occasionally day-dreamed about
returning to some such time in the past with the understanding
and the knowledge gained in the intervening years and so perhaps
act differently and (at least in my case) thus avoid causing the
suffering so caused then.
But I do believe that my lack of certainty now is - even at the
cost of a certain sadness - a good thing for me, as it prevents
that arrogance of my youthful self from returning and seems to
somehow better enable me to appreciate, to feel, the numinous
and thus the distinction between what is good and what is bad.
Hence I find myself in the curious position of now possibly
understanding and appreciating the wordless raison d'etat of
Catholic monasticism, manifest as this is in a personal
humility; a humility that during my time as a monk my then still
hubriatic self could not endure for long. Which recent
understanding and appreciation led me for a short while at
least, and only a few years ago, to wistfully if unrealistically
yearn to return to that particular secluded way of life. And
unrealistic because for all that understanding, appreciation,
and yearning, I no longer had the type of faith that was
required, the type of Christian faith I did have when I had
lived that monastic way of life. A lack of faith I really
discovered and felt when I went, during that not-too-long-ago
period of yearning, to stay once again and for a while in a
monastery...
You really do seem to have been born with an overwhelming
urge to fix the world, don't you? Is that why you're so sad?
Because you can't fix it?
Unfortunately, I do seem to have been cursed, for some forty
years, with idealism and with a hubriatic, fanatical, belief in
what I deludedly believed was 'a good cause'. Which idealism and
which belief caused me, as an extremist, to inflict and
contribute to suffering; to incite violence, hatred, prejudice,
intolerance.
But my sadness now is because of that extremist past; because of
my arrogance; because I did cause such suffering; because I for
so long incited violence, hatred, prejudice, intolerance.
Because I did what was wrong, and cannot undo the harm done.
This sadness - this knowing of my own mistakes, this knowing of
my own arrogance, this knowing of the harm I have done - means
that I have no desire whatsoever to try and 'fix the world'.
Rather, it means a deep personal remorse, a desire - however
silly it might seem to others - for expiation. It means I do not
like myself - as a person - knowing what I did, what I was
capable of, and maybe still am capable of. It means I have to
remember - every day - my mistakes, my uncertitude of knowing,
and what is good, numinous, beautiful, innocent. It means living
a quiet and quite reclusive life.
Which sadness and which remembering were part of the genesis of
my philosophy of pathei-mathos. Of my feeling that perhaps we -
as compassionate individuals aware of our fallibility and past
mistakes - should not concern ourselves with what is beyond the
purveu of our empathy. Which in practice means the living of a
private, a very personal, life where we do not concern ourselves
with things we admit we do not really understand and have no
personal knowledge of; that we do not meddle in the affairs of
people we do not know and do not interact with on a personal
basis; and that we only ever get involved in valourous defence
of someone unfairly treated or unfairly attacked if we
personally encounter such a situation or such an event.
[...]
It seems to me that a fair way to tentatively evaluate a
religion, a way of life, is by a personal knowing of many of
those who believe in that religion and who also try to follow
its tenets, as opposed to just dryly studying its 'sacred books'
or its theological doctrines. But of course I could be wrong,
for my forty years of extremism certainly reveals my judgement
to be often - or mostly - flawed.
I did read the Quran [...] but something
about it seemed harsh and unforgiving.
Did you read the Quran in Arabic, or one of the English
interpretations? Most interpretations do not really capture the
often poetic expressions of the original, although some try to,
as for example:
"This present life is only like water which We send down from
the clouds so that the luxuriant herbage sustaining man and
beast may grow; until when the Earth puts on its lovely garment
and becomes adorned, and its people believe that they are its
masters - down then comes Our scourge upon it by night or in
broad day, laying it waste as though it had not blossomed
yesterday. Thus We make plain our Signs to thoughtful men." 10:
24-25
(Interpretation of Meaning)
"Allah (alone) has power over, and is the (sole) master of, all
things. The creations in Heaven and Earth, the very change of
Night to Day, are Signs for those gifted with intelligence,
those who whether sitting, standing or reclining on their sides,
give praise to Allah and who frequently recall these creations
in Heaven and Earth, (saying): 'You who are our Rabb - You
created all these things for a purpose; the achievement is Yours
alone.' " 3:189-191
(Interpretation of Meaning)
Personally, and in my experience, I think the Quran needs to be
understood, studied, and appreciated, in relation to Ahadith, to
the Sunnah. In the context of the lives of ordinary Muslims and
of the history of Islam, and thus in the context of Adab - of
the manners, the morals, the culture - of those Muslims who do
undertake the obligatory daily prayers, who do fast in Ramadan,
who do believe in Jannah, and who do try to avoid what is haram.
[Therefore] in this context - of the affects and consequences of
the Quran and the Sunnah - I do not agree that the Quran seems
harsh and unforgiving.
[...]
Correspondent #3
(2011)
Views Regarding Islam
Although I no longer consider myself a Muslim, I retain a
great respect for that particular Way of Life, as I do for
several other Ways I have personal experience of, such as
Christianity, Buddhism, and Taoism. And a respect for two
basic reasons. First, because I feel that those and many other
Ways - for example Judaism and Hinduism - have been and are a
means to remind us of the numinous, of the error of hubris, of
the need for a certain personal humility. For they all,
diverse as they appear to be, can enable us to glimpse or feel
or know that supra-personal perspective which inclines us or
can incline us toward living a more moral life, expressed as
such a life often is in personal virtues such as compassion,
self-restraint, honesty, modesty. Second, because I am acutely
aware of how fallible I am, that I could be wrong, that I have
been wrong in the past, and that my answers to certain
philosophical, theological, and moral questions (as evident
for example in my philosophy of pathei-mathos) are only my own
often tentative and certainly fallible answers.
As for my reasons for leaving Islam, they were intellectual,
theological, and personal.
Personally, I was greatly affected by the suicide of my
fiancιe in 2006; a tragic event which changed me
fundamentally, forcing me as it did to honestly confront
myself, my failings, and my selfish life-long passion for
abstractions and ideologies over and above empathy, a personal
love, and a personal loyalty.
Intellectually, I had concluded - as later tentatively
expressed in writings such as
Religion and The Numinous
Way: Three Essays Concerning The Nature of Religion -
that many or most Ways eventually became religions [1] and
thus, irrespective of how they might enable us to feel and
appreciate the numinous, they were or they became beset with
problems of dogma, doctrine, and exegesis, especially if as
many of them did they relied on or were based on certain texts
regarded as sacred or divinely inspired or authoritative.
Which problems led to, in my view, the positing of new
categories, abstractions, and which abstractions human beings
were expected to strive for, or conform to, and which striving
or expected conformity often resulted in a particular personal
attitude antithetical to pathei-mathos and empathy, because
what was or came to be valued over and above pathei-mathos and
empathy was the wisdom said to be contained in scripture or in
some text or in some interpretation or in some dogma or
doctrine propounded by some theological authority. There was
or there developed a clash of interpretations, categories,
dogma, and doctrine, which resulted in schism, reforms, and
often gave rise to practical conflict and thence to human
suffering.
Theologically - that is, in respect of matters divine - I had
come to consider that it was a personal empathy that should be
the basis for ethics as well as being a primary means - sans
abstractions - of knowing and appreciating the numinous, rerum
divinarum et humanarum. And that pathei-mathos possessed, as
Aeschylus suggested, a numinous authority which replaced the
authority of texts, faith, and belief.
However, this process of personal change, of intellectual and
theological reflexion, occurred over a period of many years,
only ending in 2009. It was, as I mentioned in Myngath, a
profound inner struggle which "revealed to me the most
important truth concerning human life. Which is that a shared,
a loyal, love between two people is the most beautiful, the
most numinous, the most valuable thing of all."
Anti-Muslim Organizations
Reluctant as I am and have been for some time to give my
personal opinion about such political organizations - given my
own lamentable history of extremism and my many errors of
experience spanning some four decades - I cannot quite escape
the feeling that perhaps by not criticizing such groups, when
directly asked and on the basis of my personal experience and
knowledge of extremism, I am somehow not doing something I
morally should do. For I have - on the basis of my
pathei-mathos - concluded that such groups, and the views and
the actions they encourage and incite, are most certainly
morally reprehensible and therefore can and should be
criticized and opposed for otherwise the bigotry, the
extremism, they represent and express will assuredly continue
and cause suffering [...]
So, for what it is worth, here is my personal and fallible
opinion in respect of the anti-Islamic organizations you
mention. Apropos of such groups, I do wonder what their
leaders, their organizers, and their members know about Islam
- how long they have studied Islam (including Shariah) and if
that study was of a scholarly nature - and what practical and
personal experience, if any, they have of Muslim communities,
Muslim families, and the Muslim way of life in general.
For it seems to me - judging by their rhetoric, their
propaganda, their literature, and their behaviour at meetings
and demonstrations and toward Muslims - that they have little
knowledge of Islam and no personal and practical experience of
the Muslim way of life, and that therefore despite what they
say or write (or may even believe about themselves) their
views about Islam and Muslims are based on, and express,
prejudice, intolerance, fear, arrogance, harshness, and
hatred. That is, such organizations are themselves of an
extremist nature, incite extremism and bigotry, and recruit
and encourage extremists and bigots, where by an extremist I
mean
"a person who tends toward harshness, or who is
harsh, or who supports/incites harshness, in pursuit of some
objective, usually of a political or a religious nature.
Here, harsh is: rough, severe, a tendency to be
unfeeling, unempathic. Hence extremism is
considered to be: (a) the result of such harshness, and (b)
the principles, the causes, the characteristics, that
promote, incite, or describe the harsh action of
extremists."
The intolerance and the prejudice of bigotry is based on, and
thrives on and encourages, ignorance and fear. In the case of
such organizations an ignorance of and a fear of Islam, of the
Muslim way of life, and of Shariah.
For instance, have the leaders and the organizers and those
who bankroll such organizations read the Quran in Arabic? Have
they studied the Sunnah - at the very least the collections of
Bukhari and Muslim? Have they studied Al-Adab Al-Mufrad? Have
they studied Islamic jurisprudence and discussed Shariah with
a Qadi? How many conversations about Islam have they had with
learned Imaams? Have they lived in a land where the majority
of people are Muslim? How many times have they been guests of
Muslim families and so shared meals and personal conversations
and thus empathised with Muslims? How many Muslim women have
they interviewed or asked about Hijab - about why they wear it
and how it makes them feel?
If they have not done all those things then they are, in my
view, fundamentally ignorant concerning Islam and the Muslim
way of life, and thus they speak and write and demonstrate in
public about what they personally are uneducated,
ill-informed, about and about those whom they have not
personally interacted with in a courteous way. Thus their
opinions, their views, are those of bigots, and their
behaviour is uncivilized - that is, the behaviour of people
who are unlearned, ill-informed, uncultured, uncourteous,
hubriatic. They are also hypocritical, for these leaders and
organizers - and those who bankroll them - are virulent in
their praise of 'Western civilization and Western values'
without, it seems to me, realizing that they themselves with
their ignorance, their hubris, their intolerance, their
prejudice - their bigotry - are excellent examples of the new
barbarians assailing Western culture.
For what does Western culture mean to such home-grown
extremists? The culture of Homer, Sappho, Aristotle, Cicero,
Livy, Mary Magdelene,
Hillel the Elder, Abelard,
Thomas Aquinas, Joan of Arc,
Dante Alighieri, Isaac Newton, JS Bach, Jane Austen, TS Eliot,
Mother Teresa, Niels Bohr, Martin Luther King, and many many
others? The culture of a classical education and of
scholarship, of a Christian humility and compassion, of
chivalry and manners, of humanism, of fairness, of tolerance,
of freedom of religion, and of equal and impartial justice
under the law? Certainly not - judging by the views, the
behaviour, and the extremism of those unlearned, ill-informed,
uncultured, uncourteous, hubriatic extremists.
Note, Post Scriptum:
[1] I have endeavoured to make a distinction between a Way
and a religion.
" By the term Way or Way of Life is
meant a weltanschauung shared among or accepted by a
number of people where there is distinction made between
the realm of the sacred/the-revered/the-numinous and the
realm of the ordinary or the human, but which: (i) is not
codified in writings or books but which is often or mostly
transmitted aurally; (ii) has no organization beyond and
does not require any organization beyond the
communal/local level; and (iii) whose ethos and rites and
customs are inclined toward maintaining the natural
balance the natural healthy harmonious relation between
humans, life, and the sacred and not toward avoiding
the punishment of some powerful deity/gods or some
supra-personal power(s).
One essential difference thus between a religion
and a Way is that a religion requires faith and belief
(and thus words, concepts, and dogma and organization
and conformity), whereas a Way tends to be
empathic/intuitive and more a customary, unspoken, way
of doing things and which way of doing things not
being organized and by its ethos neither requiring
organization nor conformity varies or can vary from
place to place.
Thus, religions tend to be or tend to manifest
what is masculous whereas Ways in the past tended to be
or tended to manifest what is muliebral.
Some religions began as spiritual Ways, but
evolved over long durations of causal Time to become
religions."
FAQ Numinous Way. (Last Modified:
30/May/2012)