A brief theological question.......

[diamondsoul]

Originally Posted by Brett A

I was raised without religion or spirituality. I've spent some time in my life having a relation to something, can't call it God in the typical sense. The closest i can come to explaining it is in the words of an old friend; "The universe loves symbolic gestures".

The theistic religious/spiritual view makes no sense to me beyond being the construct of man in an effort to eff the ineffable.

I think the non-theistic religions really are onto something. The concept of god is not necessary to a purposeful, virtuous life of service.

The non-theistic religions can be just as silly, and triumphalistic, as the theistic ones.

Reading the story of Hui Neng is an eye opener. He had to flee for his life from a Buddhist monastery and started his own sect, Chan, because he wasn't in the proper social class to be accepted as a head monk.

http://sped2work.tripod.com/huineng.html

Buddhism is as rife with intrigue to do with lineage and power as any other organized religion. I well remember seeing two groups of Zen Buddhist monks in South Korea beating each other over the heads with placards and sticks over who was going to be their new head monk. Silly folks.

Rob Preece, a practising Buddhist, wrote this insightful piece about this tendency in organized religion. The tendency to circle the wagons around an orthodoxy and to exclude all those who are progressive or innovators:

http://www.mudra.co.uk/mudra_individuation.html