The word religion comes from the Latin word religio, which means a bond. It suggests a binding to the divine, which engulfs one's whole being
It is tempting to think that we understand religion because it is so ingrained in our cultural outlook. However, it's useful to contemplate and reflect on the true aim, goal or purpose of religion.
Sometimes people regard religion as belief in God or gods, so religion becomes identified with the theistic attitude of a particular religious form or convention. Often Buddhism is regarded by theistic religions as an atheistic form, or not even a religi on at all. It's seen as a philosophy or psychology, because Buddhism doesn't come from a theistic position. It's not based on a metaphysical or doctrinal position, but on an existential experience common to all humanity - the experience of suffering. The Buddhist premise is that by reflecting, by contemplating, and by understanding that common human experience, we can transcend all mental delusions that create human suffering.
The word religion comes from the Latin word religio, which means a bond. It suggests a binding to the divine, which engulfs one's whole being. To be truly religious means you must bind yourself to the divine, or to the ultimate reality, and engage yo ur whole being in that bond, to the point where an ultimate realisation is possible. All religions have words like "liberation" and "salvation." Words of this nature convey freedom from delusion, complete and utter freedom, and total understanding of ulti mate reality. In Buddhism we call this enlightenment.
Understanding the Nature of Suffering
The Buddhist approach is to reflect on the experience of suffering, because this is what all human beings share in common. Suffering doesn't necessarily mean a great tragedy or a terrible misfortune. It just means the type of discontentment, unhappiness , and disappointment that all human beings experience at various times in their lives. Suffering is common to men and women, common to rich and poor. Whatever our race or nationality, it is the common bond.
So in Buddhism, suffering is called a noble truth. It is not an ultimate truth. When the Buddha taught suffering as a noble truth, it was not his intention for us to bind ourselves to suffering and believe in it blindly, as an ultimate truth. Instead, h e taught us to use suffering as a noble truth for reflection. We contemplate: what is suffering, what is its nature, why do I suffer, what is suffering about? An understanding of the nature of suffering is an important insight. Now contemplate this in your experience of life. How much of your life is spent trying to avoid or get away from anything that is unpleasant, unwanted? How much of our society is dedica ted to happiness and pleasure, trying to get away from anything unpleasant and unwanted? We can have instant happiness, instant absorption, something that we call "non-suffering"; excitement, romance, adventure, sensual pleasures, eating, listening to mus ic, or whatever. But all this is an attempt to get away from our own fears, discontentments, anxiety, and worry, things that haunt the human mind until it is enlightened. Humanity will always be haunted and frightened by life as long as human beings remai n ignorant and don't put forth effort to look at and understand the nature of suffering.
To understand suffering means that we must accept suffering rather than just try to get rid of it and deny it, or blame somebody else for it. We can notice that suffering is caused, that it is dependent upon certain conditions: the conditions of the mind that we've created or that have been instilled into us through our culture and family. Our experience of life, and that conditioning process, start from the day we are born. The family, the group that we live with, our education, all instill into our min d various prejudices, biases and opinions, some good, some not so good.
Now, if we don't really look at these conditions of the mind and examine them for what they truly are, then of course they cause us to interpret our life's experience from certain biases. But if we look into the very nature of suffering, then we begin to examine things like fear and desire, and then we discover that our true nature is not desire, is not fear. Our true nature is not conditioned by anything at all.
Venerable Ajahn Sumedho
To be cont...
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