A good place to begin is that previous belief system. Those of you who have known me since high school remember the days of Central Catholic Connor: an abrasive, annoying, arrogant, argumentative bastard. I do not mean to imply that Catholicism is responsible for those attributes of my past self; that remains squarely on me. However, the faith that was taught to me since I was in grade school has immense flaws. For one, Catholics like to talk about Scripture and Tradition. From the latter half of that equation flow various flaws yet to be corrected. For one, the concept of Purgatory is one which was effectively made up to sell believers linear Earth years off one's sentence in the afterlife. Yet the Church insists on continuing to teach it as if Purgatory were as real as the sun or the moon. Nebulous "Traditions" like this one are passed down to new believers and if you do not have blind faith in them, well... you're right out, a "doubting Thomas" who is surely destined to rot in hell. I always went along with these various practices, rooted in my faith that the "original" Christian Church was the correct one, and that Christianity was the best Abrahamic religion because it was like Judaism but newer and better, and also because Islam was "bad" for some reason. I was never really able to articulate why, of course, but I knew that of the three faiths spawned by Abraham, Christianity was totally the best one and that Catholicism was totally the best denomination. Oh, and no religions except those of Abraham were valid, because so many people around the world believed in them, except maybe Buddhism because meditation is "cool." Everything I've said in the last few sentences brings me great shame. I suppose that last one is still true, but to think that I clung so desperately to these Catholic beliefs I now understand as being utterly wrong is painful to say the least.
The Scriptures are another point of contention for me now. So many passages in the Bible can be used to defend the indefensible. You may have heard about our Attorney General invoking Romans 13 to reinforce the lawful nature of the current administration's abhorrent practice of separating families at the border. The same passage was used to defend slavery before and during the Civil War, and indeed could be used to defend the laws of any tyrannical rule as ordained by God. Various passages from Leviticus are also dated, to put it mildly. Here are just a few things banned in Leviticus: Eating fat, touching a carcass of an "unclean" animal, letting your hair get unkempt, eating any animal with 4 legs and paws, tearing your clothes, having sex with a woman on her period, having sex with a man "as one does with a woman," lying about anything, spreading slander, seeking revenge or holding any grudge, cross-breading animals, planting different seeds in the same field, eating fruit from a tree within 4 years of planting it, trimming your beard, getting a tattoo, not standing in the presence of the elderly, mistreating a foreigner, cursing your parents, working on the Sabbath, and selling land permanently. The punishments range from God being vaguely angry with you to literally being stoned to death.
Chances are, you've probably done at least a few of the things outlined above, and other items on that list have not been relevant for centuries. Yet, the Church still insists that the ENTIRE BIBLE, from cover to cover, was inspired by the Holy Spirit itself and is still relevant in its entirety. You know, except for the parts that we don't care about. Or the parts that haven't been enforced for a while, like Leviticus. Because Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law! ... or something. Within Christianity, there is also this inherent repression of all things dark or evil. Christianity, as it were, is all yang: you must suppress your evil, staying good so you'll end up in heaven rather than hell, darkness is the enemy of light, man is inherently superior to woman (a view some denominations are rightfully eliminating, but Catholicism still insists that a woman is incapable of being a priest) and so on. As I will discuss later, that worldview is inherently wrong. You cannot have one of those opposites without the other. That's not to mention that pretty much anything can be construed as sinful with a cherrypicked Bible passage, most notably any sexuality that isn't 100% straight.
Suppression of one's thoughts is a tactic that never seems to work; the classic example is to say, "Don't think of a pink elephant." Inevitably, the image of the pink pachyderm will enter your mind's eye. The more you push against your thoughts, the more they will dominate your mind. Through the practice of meditation (something the Church does not, has not ever, and likely never will endorse), I have become much more at peace. The essence of meditation is awareness. By becoming aware of your breath, maintaining conscious control over a process usually just running in the subconscious background, and allowing your thoughts to flow freely, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you. Personally, I like taking a deep breath in through my nose, holding it for a few seconds, and letting it out through my mouth. All the while, I try to just listen to my thoughts, not pushing against them or letting them dwell. Rather, I just let them come naturally and then allow them to float down the river. I prefer to meditate outside, surrounded by nature. This practice is something I never would have learned had I stuck to only prayer, which has its own flaws.
Here I should also note that Christianity is the Santa Claus of religions - end up on the "nice list" when you die and you go to the North Pole to be with God in eternal happiness; end up on the "naughty list" and you go to the South Pole to be with Satan, where you will experience some kind of unclear suffering forever. There is no mention anywhere of what happens to all the various plants, animals, and other living things of this Earth when they die. Nor is there any reason within that faith to be a good person outside of the promise of eternal life. If that's what works for you, what makes you behave like a good little boy or girl, then by all means please continue. It is also of the utmost importance of Christians to spread the message of Jesus - after all, if he died on the cross for all our sins, and belief in him is necessary for eternal life, then we ought to spread his message. As with many other aspects of that religion, this has enabled people to commit truly horrific acts in the name of their God, most notably during the Crusades. In our modern day, missionary work has all but ceased, save for the (admittedly virtuous and valuable) mission trips that help out less-fortunate nations. For a vast majority of Christians, spreading the word of the Lord takes an extreme backseat to the affairs of their day-to-day lives, though it is purported to be a central tenet of the religion. In reality, it has been nothing but a convenient way for the Church to grow and sustain itself.
This is not to mention that it's been a little more than 2000 years since Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth, and frankly it does not seem very likely that he's coming back. If he did, he'd be added to the pile of maniacs who thought they were the second coming of Christ. No one would believe him for a second unless he was indeed capable of breaking the laws of physics, turning water into wine, or raising the dead. I remember a conversation I had after classes ended with one of my friends in grade school. He said something that's stuck with me since then: "It's been a while since God did any miracles, hasn't it?" If he really were ever-present and all-powerful, you'd think we'd hear more from the angels or see more of his miracles at work. At some point, one must stop to consider if there are other options besides the dominant religion of the West.
Suppression of one's thoughts is a tactic that never seems to work; the classic example is to say, "Don't think of a pink elephant." Inevitably, the image of the pink pachyderm will enter your mind's eye. The more you push against your thoughts, the more they will dominate your mind. Through the practice of meditation (something the Church does not, has not ever, and likely never will endorse), I have become much more at peace. The essence of meditation is awareness. By becoming aware of your breath, maintaining conscious control over a process usually just running in the subconscious background, and allowing your thoughts to flow freely, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and the world around you. Personally, I like taking a deep breath in through my nose, holding it for a few seconds, and letting it out through my mouth. All the while, I try to just listen to my thoughts, not pushing against them or letting them dwell. Rather, I just let them come naturally and then allow them to float down the river. I prefer to meditate outside, surrounded by nature. This practice is something I never would have learned had I stuck to only prayer, which has its own flaws.
Here I should also note that Christianity is the Santa Claus of religions - end up on the "nice list" when you die and you go to the North Pole to be with God in eternal happiness; end up on the "naughty list" and you go to the South Pole to be with Satan, where you will experience some kind of unclear suffering forever. There is no mention anywhere of what happens to all the various plants, animals, and other living things of this Earth when they die. Nor is there any reason within that faith to be a good person outside of the promise of eternal life. If that's what works for you, what makes you behave like a good little boy or girl, then by all means please continue. It is also of the utmost importance of Christians to spread the message of Jesus - after all, if he died on the cross for all our sins, and belief in him is necessary for eternal life, then we ought to spread his message. As with many other aspects of that religion, this has enabled people to commit truly horrific acts in the name of their God, most notably during the Crusades. In our modern day, missionary work has all but ceased, save for the (admittedly virtuous and valuable) mission trips that help out less-fortunate nations. For a vast majority of Christians, spreading the word of the Lord takes an extreme backseat to the affairs of their day-to-day lives, though it is purported to be a central tenet of the religion. In reality, it has been nothing but a convenient way for the Church to grow and sustain itself.
This is not to mention that it's been a little more than 2000 years since Jesus of Nazareth walked the Earth, and frankly it does not seem very likely that he's coming back. If he did, he'd be added to the pile of maniacs who thought they were the second coming of Christ. No one would believe him for a second unless he was indeed capable of breaking the laws of physics, turning water into wine, or raising the dead. I remember a conversation I had after classes ended with one of my friends in grade school. He said something that's stuck with me since then: "It's been a while since God did any miracles, hasn't it?" If he really were ever-present and all-powerful, you'd think we'd hear more from the angels or see more of his miracles at work. At some point, one must stop to consider if there are other options besides the dominant religion of the West.
It is tempting to assume that your choice lies between Christianity, with all its various flaws and lies (of which I have only scratched the very surface) and atheism, but this is not the case. Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and many other Eastern faiths are discarded wholesale by countless Americans who go through their lives raised only on the Bible and Christianity, scattered and divided as the various Christian denominations are. We could learn much from Pi Patel, titular protagonist of Life of Pi, a boy who in the early stages of his life was all at once a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian, learning as much as he could about all three faiths. Blind subservience to one and only one ideal, whether it's a religion or not, is incredibly limiting in the face of the grand mystery in which we live. Refusing to acknowledge potential flaws within your belief system, especially when confronted with evidence to the contrary, is not only stubborn but outright foolish. Returning to American society, we do indeed have "freedom of religion," but Christianity is often socially-enforced, especially in the South. The natural reaction is this: those who do not agree with everything within Christianity often say, "You know what? Screw this, everything is an accident. My existence begins and ends with me. Our lives are a cosmic fluke. There is no God or even any higher power." I don't think that's quite accurate either, hence the journey of discovery I have taken in the last few years.
That journey began with me finally setting aside the Catholic faith in which I was raised. The reason for this initial break started with the local church my family had gone to since before I was born - St. Bernard's Parish in Mt. Lebanon. It's a gorgeous building, with Roman-style roofs and magnificent stonework. The interior is beautiful as well, with some of the best stained-glass art I've yet seen in America. The acoustics within the Church made every note of every song and every word read from the pulpit boom around the entire congregation. It certainly instilled that sense of "wonder and awe," particularly when I was a young boy who attended the attached school. In St. Bernard's School, I was educated in the Catholic faith and the subjects all American children learn. It took me until even after high school to separate all the lies from the truths. I really wish they hadn't "confirmed" me as a permanent member of their flock.
What really did it for me was when my brother got expelled for making a YouTube video. I don't want to get into all of that right now, and he still got into a perfectly fine high school (unfortunately, it's another Catholic school) and overall it had similar effects on his life that it had on mine. Namely, we both stopped being Catholic. The reason for this was that after he published the video and got kicked out of St. Bernard's School, the supposedly warm and welcoming pastor of the supposedly warm and welcoming religion sent us a letter. Within that letter was a request that we never showed up to another service at that particular parish again. We were not excommunicated by the Pope himself or anything dramatic like that which might have happened in the olden days of Catholicism, but the effect was the same. It was clear that our family was no longer welcome at Sunday Mass.
It pains me to say that after it was clear that the Catholic faith no longer wanted me, I still clung to many of the tenets of the religion. I vaguely believed in a higher power named God. I vaguely believed that Jesus had been sent by said higher power and died for all of our sins. I vaguely believed that he would eventually return, and if I behaved virtuously I would join him in life without death. The cracks started appearing when I heard a little about Taoism. Namely, a few articles online about yin and yang struck my fancy. When I looked at the world all around me, I began to see certain patterns emerging in the form of harmonious opposites. Day and night, the sun and the moon, light and darkness, good and evil, man and woman, etc. The starting point, the foundation of Taoism seemed centered on these opposites, while the starting point of Christianity no longer seemed reasonable to me after re-reading the Bible and thinking about what I had been taught over the years. Did I truly believe that an ever-present, all-knowing single entity split into three parts sent his only son to die for the world after getting very involved in the affairs of the ancient Hebrews? No, I most certainly did not, but I went along with it for fear of ending up on the naughty list and burning in hell forever. It was refreshing to know that there was a religion out there that did not rely on extensive pantheons or blind faith in a nebulous higher power. However, my departure from Christianity was a difficult one, and I simply transferred that blind faith to yin and yang, the two opposing yet harmonious forces at work in our universe.
To those of you who knew me in this "duality" phase: I am truly and genuinely sorry. I did not read the Tao Te Ching (if Taoism has a "Bible, it is the Tao Te Ching, written by Lao Tzu ~2500 years ago) for almost a year after beginning to see yin and yang all around me. I just saw the world as it was and began to believe in the concept at the foundation of that "religion" while observing it in various aspects of reality. Even the molecules that make up everything have positive and negative charges, after all. It's difficult to put into words why I avoided reading the text at the heart of my new belief system. Perhaps I was afraid my limited pre-conceptions would be utterly destroyed (which they were, but this was likely for the better). What I did not yet understand are the actual foundations of Taoism, which I will now attempt to explain. As I will no doubt fail to convey the nature of the Way with my clumsy words, I recommend that all of you read at least the first three chapters of Ursula Le Guin's rendition of the Tao Te Ching. My other favorite chapters are 11 and 75. Le Guin's version is excellent not only for its masterful rendering of the original Chinese text into English, but also for her titles and footnotes. My favorite comes at the bottom of chapter 75: "How many hundreds of years ago was this book written? And yet still this chapter must be written in the present tense." While that applies most especially to that part, the same could apply to much of the book. If you are a Christian and your faith is unshakable, then don't worry. I'm sure the infinite wisdom contained within the pages of the Tao Te Ching will not shake it at all. If you're an atheist, then there would be no harm in reading it either. I only ask that you keep an open mind. If you do, I'm sure you'll find it a source of truly profound wisdom, much of which could help you in your day-to-day life, even if you don't come to identify as strongly with Taoism as I have.
At its core, the book of Lao Tzu relies fundamentally on the concept wei wu wei. Do not-doing. Action by inaction. You do nothing, yet everything gets done. The closest most Westerners get is that tired cliche, "If you love something let it go." As Lao Tzu and Le Guin say together in Chapter 2, "just letting it go / is what makes it stay." I know I told you to read that chapter just a few sentences ago, but if you stubbornly refused to click the link, I'm going to make you read some more of it now, because within it is the true nature of yin and yang: "For being and nonbeing / arise together; / hard and easy / complete each other; / long and short / shape each other," and so on. Light cannot shine without casting shadows. Life must always end in death, or more accurately, death can only come after life. The color white cannot exist or be described without its opposite, black. Day inevitably gives way to night. The moon reflects the light of the sun. In this harmony, even between that which we think are opposites, lies the truth. What we may think of as divided and separate is actually one and the same. The foundation of Taoism is not duality, but unity, a sense that all within the universe is one, and those of us sharing in life on Earth are just small parts of that greater whole. Again, this starting point is infinitely more logical than the book of Genesis. To see it at work, just watch the sunrise and see the shadows cast as night turns to day once more, or meditate in the woods and feel the energy of all the lives around you. Reality is not only what we can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. Even in our own bodies are microscopic living beings, surrounding us, binding us, within and around us all. We all share in life and death, we humans and plants and animals and microorganisms and all other living things blessed enough to find ourselves here on Earth. The Tao Te Ching, in most of its translations, almost never mentions the words "yin" or "yang." They are merely ways to give name to that which Lao Tzu says cannot be named, forces at work within our universe, the mystery of mysteries. It all "merges into oneness, / not bright above, / not dark below." (14)
As I hinted at above, Taoism is such an incredible religion because it is barely a religion, leaning more towards being a philosophy than anything else. There is no blind faith required, no pantheons of gods or saints. The Tao Te Ching stays just as relevant now as it was when it was written, with no passages that remind me of Leviticus, that dated Hebrew moral code, and no chapters that can be used to justify wars or slavery. Its calls for virtue do not rely on fear of eternal damnation. As Le Guin says in one of her many wonderful footnotes, this time at the bottom of Chapter 2, "To believe that our
beliefs are permanent truths which encompass reality is a sad arrogance. To let
go of that belief is to find safety." Taoism is a celebration of this vast mystery rather than an attempt to discern the exact workings of everything, and ironically it is the religion most compatible with modern science.
One of the fundamental lies that has been taught to the children of the West is that we come into the world on probation, that we must then act in a certain way, think in a certain way, be a certain way, in order to experience the richness and fullness of life. This is simply untrue. Rather, we come out of the world, just one part of the vast universe, where we are free to live as we choose. Only once you realize that light must cast shadows, that day must end in night, that life must end in death, that the self cannot exist without the other, can you begin to wake up. That last opposite is of particular importance. We live simultaneously in two states of being - how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us. Like all these other inherent opposites, one cannot exist without the other. How we act affects how others perceive us, how they perceive us affects how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive ourselves affects how we act, and the cycle continues. You cannot have one without the other, you see. The self and the other are inextricably linked, as are all appearances of yin and yang. In short, the dual opposites that first attracted me to Taoism cannot exist without one another, and as such, all "clear back to the great oneness" (65). Again, that which we think is divided and separate is really one and the same.
To conclude this entry, I think another apology is warranted. I tried to convince many of my friends that Taoism was the truth before ever hearing of the Way. I probably embarrassed myself greatly and negatively influenced how others perceive me, which in turn led to a negative perception of myself. It is my hope that this post at least helps that a little. More importantly than these temporary perceptions is that I now actually understand at least a little of the Tao, and can try to bring its truth to others. I beg you all to remember that you are free to explore all the religions of the world, as the wisdom of others can help you better understand yourself and your ideology. The meditative practices of Buddhism would be immensely helpful to even the most devout Christian, for example. You are free to see the world and live your life however you may choose, free to live life as your authentic self, surrounded by all the other lives around you. I believe that Taoism contains profound wisdom and several fundamental truths of the universe that are not found in any other major world religion. A new chapter of my life now opens. I hope you'll join me in it.
