Sacred Paths of the West

Theodore M Ludwig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317344292
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

This text combines study of the dynamic historical development of each religious tradition with a comparative thematic structure. Students are encouraged to discover and explore the nature of religious experience by comparing basic themes and issues common to all religions, finding connections with their own personal experiences. By sensitively introducing descriptive material within a comparative thematic structure, this text helps students to understand how each religion provides, for its adherents, patterns and meanings that make up a full way of life.

Part 1 Exploring the Sacred Paths

Introduction

Religions, to the surprise of some, have not faded from importance in our world today. Everywhere we look, we see religious traditions, beliefs, and practices intertwined with the cultural, political, and economic activities that make up the human enterprise. That is the way it has always been, but as our global village draws ever closer together today, the need to recognize and understand the role of religions becomes vitally important.

Beginning to explore the religious traditions of the West is an exciting, though somewhat daunting, venture. There is so much to see, to sort through, and to comprehend. We are dealing with the deepest hopes and dreams, the most careful thoughts and views, and the most cherished rituals and practices of people all over the world. We are venturing onto the holy ground of others, and a humble, respectful, and grateful attitude is most appropriate.

As we begin this exploration, we need to be aware that we carry preconceived ideas and judgments with us. We may, perhaps, have a certain amount of knowledge about at least one religious tradition (our own, for example), and based on that we have some notions about what religion is. One major hurdle in understanding the religious traditions of the world is getting beyond the normal tendency to look at the religious practices of others through our own filters of understanding, our own unchallenged views and experiences.

Another hurdle comes when we become inundated with the mass of detail and diversity of forms within the Western religions. It is easy to become confused and bewildered, losing any coherent sense of what religion is all about. What are we looking for? The answer to that question may seem very different with each new culture that we encounter.

To help get our bearings for this exploration in the sacred paths of the West, it will be beneficial, here at the beginning of our study, to stand back and reflect more generally on the nature of religious experience, on the main themes and forms through which religious experience typically finds expression. Such an exercise can broaden our narrow vision of religion and open new windows of understanding. Thus, in Chapter 1 we begin our exploration with some reflections on the nature of religion within human life. With a preliminary, working definition of religion we then take soundings from the various religious traditions to set up a collage of themes and forms of human religious experience. It is true, of course, that each particular human community has its own unique practices and meanings, and one should exercise great care in making cross-cultural comparisons. Yet we can recognize that humans through all times and places have always experienced similar life concerns related to birth and death, family and community, survival, and all the rest. And so their attempts to construct meaning through ideas and actions—that is, their religious expressions—can be linked together in a provisional way. In this manner, we can set up a tentative structure to guide our explorations into the sacred paths of the West.

Our look at prehistoric human religious developments in Chapter 2 is somewhat brief and tentative, and rightly so, since archaeological data from ancient sites, before any written records, do not give a clear picture of religious feelings and meanings. We may feel a sense of adventure as we reflect on the immense ages during which the human species developed on this planet, surviving, experimenting, and creating cultures. Perhaps there will awaken in us a sense of indebtedness to our forebears who struggled to live, created religious meanings, and bequeathed their physical and spiritual powers to us. We need to remember that the “world religions” of today are very recent phenomena on the vast scale of humankind’s religious history. We will observe how, after the last ice ages and the agricultural revolution, the ancient classical civilizations finally began to develop, providing the fertile basis from which the world religions of today began to take shape.

As we look at the tribal, indigenous peoples of the world in Chapter 3, we recognize that many of them have faded from the picture as viable human communities in modern times. These peoples have been co-opted by modern societies and often incorporated into world religions. Yet the themes and structures of religious life can often be seen clearly in these tribal religious traditions and practices, for they tend to make little separation between religious activities and the other aspects oflife. Encounters with the sacred are expected as part of“normal” life experiences. Their sacred stories and their ritual practices still resonate as authentic human constructions of meaning. We can value the heritage of these tribal peoples, understand the struggles they have experienced, and sense the excitement of revitalization in some of these indigenous communities today.

Perspectives on the Religious Path

DOI: 10.4324/9781315662831-1

The human adventure can be viewed from many perspectives—and indeed there should be many perspectives, since there are many dimensions to human life, and there is not just one human story but many stories. Common to these stories is a searching for wholeness and meaning, for some connection to the larger continuity of human life. That searching has often been expressed in what we call religious structures, ideas, practices, and experiences. In this book, we are setting out on a venture of understanding—understanding some of those religious traditions of humankind. To do this, we need to explore their main ideas and teachings, their rituals and art, their societal structures, their whole ways of life. In all of this, we want to get to know the people who practice these religions and live their lives by them.

As we study different religious traditions of the West, we will also be attempting to understand some fundamentals of religion itself as a key human dimension, with similar themes and structures across cultural lines. All religion has to do with fundamental human issues and concerns. Who are we?—the basic question of identity— is crucial to our journey in life. What sense is there in life? How can we find the life that is real and fulfilling? Questions such as these reach to the depths of life concerns that are felt, vaguely or forcefully, by all human beings. Does life actually have meaning—any real meaning—or do we just live and die in the small frame of a pointless, accidental cycle of the universe?

Of course, there are many dimensions of being human, many concerns that are not directly religious ones. We are concerned about our physical makeup, our biological structure, our reasoning capacities, our languages and forms of communication, our historical memories, our forms of society, our psychological makeup, and much more. But no matter what aspect of human existence we happen to look at, deeper questions of meaning and purpose are close at hand: Is there any sense or direction in the living of our lives? How can we be happy and secure? What responsibility do we have for fellow humans? Wrestling with such questions of meaning in their deeper aspects involves us in religious thinking and experiencing. Religion in this sense is not limited to any one dimension of human existence. Rather, it has to do with the overall meaning of human existence: Why is everything the way it is? What is the rhyme or reason behind all this?

Behind all such questions is a fundamental one: How can people be in touch with what is ultimately real, that unlimited source or sources from which they derive life and meaning? It is to that which they feel is ultimately real, the unlimited source that people within the various religions direct themselves in many different ways. We designate this focal point of the religions as the sacred, the ground of ultimate vitality, value, and meaning. The modes of experiencing the sacred, and the responses to this experience, are many and varied; these are the forms and expressions that make up the religious traditions of the world.

Studying Religious Experience

Two General Approaches Studying religious experience, like studying any other dimension of human life, always involves a kind of dual stance. That is, we are observers of people as they practice their religious traditions, looking from the outside and constructing our ideas about why they are doing what they are doing. But we also attempt to see and understand their experiences as they themselves do, looking from the inside, as it were, seeing their own intentions and the meaning they derive from their religious practices. Scholars of religion have elaborated theories of religion and methodologies for studying religion that focus on one or the other of these approaches, and they still debate how these approaches are to be evaluated. Both approaches are important and necessary, and both approaches have specific limitations.

In looking from the outside, the academic study of religion necessarily involves observing, describing, evaluating, organizing, and interpreting the data of religious practice. A major goal is developing theories that explain why these religious practices have developed and what function they fulfill in people’s lives. Theories and methods from sociology, anthropology, political science, historical study, and many other disciplines are useful for interpreting religious data. Scholars pay particular attention to issues of class, power, and authority, as reflected in religious practices.

In looking from the inside, the study of religious practice pays close attention to what the people themselves say about the meaning and purpose of their religious practices. The attempt is to describe the phenomena as carefully as possible without evaluating them according to some outside norm or explaining them in terms of cause or function. Interpretative theories focus on meaning, value, and expectations as expressed by the people themselves. Scholars pay particular attention to issues of understanding the religious practices.

It is true that some scholars of the religions have opted exclusively for one or the other of these general approaches. Some would say that the purpose of religious studies is to create materialistic explanations of religion. That is, they would use social scientific methodology to develop theories that explain religious activities just like any other human activities, bringing out the social, psychological, political, economic, and other dynamics that motivate people in their religious practices. On the other hand, some have argued that scholars of religion should simply describe the phenomenon of religion as it actually exists and as it is interpreted by its practitioners, without imposing value judgments or explaining it on the basis of theories taken from the other human sciences.

This scholarly discussion is complex and ongoing. We might observe here that, while both of these approaches can contribute much to our overall understanding of the religions, each approach taken exclusively also has obvious limitations. For example, explaining religion strictly from the outside could lead the scholar to put forth explanations that would be unrecognized and rejected by the practitioners of that religion. But a strict insistence on describing only the meanings and interpretations put forth by practitioners would foreclose the valuable insights that can come from comparative religious studies and from other humanistic disciplines.

However these approaches are evaluated, it is clear that both the outside and the inside perspectives are important for an integral, rich understanding of the religions. In this book we take the stance that, for readers just beginning to explore the religions, the important first step is to get to know the world’s religious traditions and the people who live by them. So the emphasis will be on the actual stories, teachings, and practices of the people of each religion, presented as much as possible as understood by the people themselves. Of course, we also make much use of the outside perspective in explaining the historical and social contexts of the religious traditions, in structuring our investigation around particular themes, and in attempting to understand them in the context of our own knowledge and experience.

The Task of Understanding So our main goal in this exploration is understanding the religions. But that is not an easy task. Whereas many of us may have our own religious tradition, none of us belongs to all the religions. Therefore, we necessarily find ourselves in the position of being outside looking in at the intimate practice of someone else. In doing so, we miss the inner compulsion of commitment and the special meaning the religion provides for the practitioner. Furthermore, our view cannot be completely “objective,” for our own personal presuppositions and beliefs stand in the way and color our perspective.

It is important, then, that we consciously make a deep effort to understand these religious traditions of others. To “under-stand” is to stand under what gives meaning to the other. It means to stand in her or his religious stance, to look at the universe of religious symbols from the perspective of being on the inside. This is not easy to do, and it is always an incomplete accomplishment. One cannot fully understand Hindu religious experience unless one is a Hindu, and the same is true of Buddhist and Shinto and Christian religious experience, as well as all of the others.

It is possible to understand at least in an incomplete way, however, if a number of important measures are taken. First, an attitude of respect and openness is necessary, a recognition of the value and importance that the religion has for the other person. Second, a conscious effort must be made to become aware of our own presuppositions, since they color our views of the religions of others. By becoming aware of our presuppositions, we can “bracket” them to some extent so they do not hinder us from entering into the worldview of the other religion. Third, it is helpful to refrain, at first, from important critical tasks such as evaluating the truth or appropriateness of religious ideas and practices, or explaining why the people follow such practices. There is a time for engaging in responsible evaluation and explanation. But it seems important first of all to understand, and a rush to evaluate and debate truth or to develop explanatory theories can stand in the way of understanding. Fourth, a willingness to learn from the religious experiences of others and to integrate the new information and insights is an important component of the process of understanding.

Understanding does arise from comparison. And so there is also a certain value in being able to look at several religious traditions from the outside, as it were, if this is done sensitively and with understanding. By comparing various elements in different religions, and especially by comparing what is unfamiliar with elements familiar from one’s own experience, it is possible to see basic structures of religion more clearly. We can see recurrent questions and concerns about life and death, and we can survey the persistent themes in the responses provided in different religious paths. We can see common practices that give structure to life and society and, thus, develop deeper understanding of the common human needs that give rise to the various religious traditions of humankind. At the same time, seeing what is common sets the stage for reflecting on the unique characteristics of each of the traditions.

Grouping the Religious Traditions It is a bit bewildering to look at the great variety of religions in the world, past and present. Each tribal group has its own distinctive way of life, which is its religion. And even the highly developed major religious traditions of the world are quite numerous, each with its unique ideas and practices—and there are significant divisions within many of these traditions. So that we do not get lost in the overwhelming variety of ideas, rituals, and structures found in them, it is helpful to consider some ways of grouping the vast array of religions.

There are various ways of classifying and grouping the religious traditions, based on what we as observers consider significant and helpful. Each classification may well reveal and highlight important dimensions of those particular traditions; at the same time, other significant aspects may be obscured and overlooked. One might approach the religions with an historical scheme, for example, putting emphasis on the continuities and discontinuities as cultures developed over time. Another simple framework would be to locate some religions as indigenous and ethnic, whereas others would be considered cross-cultural or universal. A genetic or family resemblance model is particularly helpful for comparing the religious traditions; one example of this would be putting religious traditions into family groupings depending on whether they emphasize polytheism, monotheism, or monism. Another possible taxonomy would group religious traditions into geographic cultural circles, such as those arising in India, those arising in East Asia, and those arising in the Mediterranean world.

For the purposes of our exploration in this book, we will draw on several such classification schemes as helpful for interpretation and understanding. Our main consideration will be the so-called world religions, those that have impacted beyond local cultures. But we will also give some consideration to the local, tribal, indigenous peoples who exist today (or existed until the recent past) in areas of Africa, Melanesia, Australia, the Americas, and many other places. In the major part of the book, we will follow a geographical framework, focusing on the religious traditions arising in India, those of East Asia, and those arising in the Mediterranean world. We will note how the religions in each of these geographical areas display certain family resemblances even while having their distinctive features.

For example, religions arising in India (South Asia) share a historical development in the first millennium B.C.E. and a set of common perspectives on the world and the path to follow. These religions include the traditions known as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism (Sikhism developed much later but shares some of the same perspectives). These religions tend to have a nondualistic (or monistic) worldview, the idea that somehow behind or within all the multiplicity of forms and forces in this universe there is one unified sacred reality. These religions do have gods that are important, but at a deeper level it is felt that the inner soul of reality or the truth of all reality itself is the sacred ultimate. They agree that human existence is part of the process of samsara, that is, birth and death over and over in an endless cycle. According to this perspective, th...