Zen Buddhism<\/a> do the United States? What good\u00a0is my religion to the people who don\u2019t practice it? What kind of positive impact does it have on poverty, injustice, and climate change?<\/p>\nWhen I think like this I get confused pretty fast, because I really don\u2019t know. I\u2019d like to think my religion contributes something positive to the global system in some way, but it would be awfully difficult to demonstrate.<\/p>\n
But then I take a couple deep breaths and ask myself, \u201cWhat good is religion?\u201d I become aware of the energy center in my lower abdomen. And then I feel very clear.<\/p>\n
The good of religion is that it keeps many of us from going crazy. Crazy with despair, depression, isolation, anxiety, a crushing sense of meaninglessness, or some combination of all of these. Crazy enough make us take desperate actions, sink into addiction, numb out with distractions, succumb to greed, devalue life, or at the very least walk through life on an aimless path while feeling only half alive.<\/p>\n
This kind of craziness is not just a problem for\u00a0people who have experienced unusual trauma or who suffer from diagnosable mental illness. It\u2019s a problem for all of us because being human is really hard. The world can be a tough, scary, ambiguous and confusing place. We\u2019re smart enough to see what\u2019s coming, and to understand what\u2019s happening on the other side of the planet. We\u2019re also smart to enough to imagine how things could be better, and we\u2019re well aware of how reality doesn\u2019t measure up.<\/p>\n
Zen Buddhism saved my life. I don\u2019t know if I actually would ever have killed myself. Probably not. But even in young adulthood I was filled with despair and a sense of meaninglessness. Every day felt like a burden punctuated with little moments of pleasantness. I couldn\u2019t make sense of anything for myself. When I encountered Zen \u2013 meditation, mindfulness, Zen teachings, a Zen teacher, and community \u2013 my suffering was given context. It didn\u2019t go away, but it was ennobled. I had a path, direction, guidance for how to live, inspiration, and social support.<\/p>\n
Zen is my worldview. Everything I\u00a0experience or do takes place within this overarching, stabilizing, ennobling, sanity-making context. I imagine the same is true for sincere devotees of all authentic religions.<\/p>\n
What good does this do the rest of the world? Well, frankly, you all benefit a great deal from the fact that I\u2019m not crazy. We all benefit when someone is relatively stable and happy, and has a sense of dignity, meaning, connection, purpose, and support. As opposed to when someone is desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb. It\u2019s not rocket science. Those who are desperate, angry, isolated, afraid, or numb\u00a0tend to hurt themselves or others. Sometimes they want context for their lives so badly they find it organizations that breed hatred and violence instead of finding that context in religion. True, sometimes the line between these two types of groups gets blurry \u2013 but that only highlights the importance of stable, time-tested, respectable religions with strong moral foundations.<\/p>\n
At the Zen temple where I was trained it was considered very important to provide a spiritual education to children and young adults. We went about this activity passionately, and have one of the largest Zen children\u2019s programs in the U.S. We measured the success of the program not in the number of Buddhists we churned out (which, honestly, was not that many) but in the number of young adults who graduated from our program with an appreciation for the potential value of religion in their lives. Any<\/i> religion. If one of our graduates decided to embrace Wicca or Judaism or Christianity we would celebrate because we knew they had found the refuge and support elsewhere that we had found in Zen.<\/p>\n
Not everyone needs religion, but many of us do. Our religion offers us a tradition \u2013 in many cases the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years of sincere practitioners or believers. It offers us structure and context for our lives. It gives a sense of deeper meaning and purpose. It challenges us to become wiser, more compassionate, and more generous. It connects us to community.<\/p>\n
Religion is simply the most powerful, organic, stable and persistent social security system in the world.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I contemplate the GOOD of my religion, I immediately start to think about some kind of grand scale. Like, what good does Zen Buddhism do the United States? What good is my religion to the people who don’t practice it? What kind of positive impact does it have on poverty, injustice, and climate change?<\/p>\n
When I think like this I get confused pretty fast, because I really don’t know. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2173,"featured_media":894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[12,22,36,53,81,60,65],"class_list":["post-889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spiritual-practice-suffering-compassion","tag-active-hope","tag-despair","tag-group-process","tag-perspective","tag-religion","tag-spiritual-practice","tag-zen"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Written as part of a Patheos symposium in response to the following prompt: \u201cWe all know the media mantra, \u2018What bleeds, leads.\u2019 Bad news sells, and there\u2019s nothing like a juicy religious scandal to drive traffic. Yet, for every sordid religious story, there are any number of quiet stories of charity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and service. In our obsession with bad news, are we missing of the GOOD of religion? How is your tradition contributing to the flourishing of the world?\u00a0<\/em>How has your faith, in big and small ways, theoretical and very concrete, served humanity and the world for good?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n