The End of Religion

Netanel Miles-Yépez

Religion as we have known it is breaking down. The evidence is everywhere we look. It is in the despicable rhetoric and violence of politically oriented religious extremists, far and near. It is in the scandals and abuses plaguing our current ecclesiastical structures. It is in the surface tension between the ‘religious right’ and modern culture, in the growing indifference of that culture to religion, and its occasional disgust with it. And yet, it is not religion itself that is so evidently coming apart in all of these examples, but an old and outworn idea of religion as an-end-in-itself, as an idol that has—for far too long—been mistaken for its maker and its goal. It is that idol which is now being broken. Religion will go on; it is how we relate to it that will change, and must change, if we are to reclaim its genuine usefulness to us.

Over a century ago, the Russian philosopher, P. D. Ouspensky explored the symbolism of “The Tower” in the Tarot deck as an important metaphor for religion. The tower, he said, was begun in a time before memory, as a monument to the sacred, a reminder of the true tower in each of us, its every level representing a level to be climbed on the inside. But even before the foundations were fully laid, some of the builders began to “believe in the tower of stone they had built,” and to teach others to believe in the same. To them, the tower was itself sacred, and they soon tried to control access to all its doors and windows, and to occupy the summit and the very ‘rights to heaven,’ as they saw it. They even began to fight over these rights in their confusion. Thus, of all the people of the earth, the worshipers of the tower were the most surprised when heaven spoke from beyond its walls in the form of a lightning bolt, sending its priests sprawling to the ground, where they lay helpless amid the rubble. Now, says Ouspensky, all who look on its ruin and see its broken summit—open to heaven as it always should have been—know not to believe in the tower.[1]

As the metaphor suggests, the real issue is one of remembering the original function of the tower, of maintaining one’s awareness of the true meaning and purpose of religion, i.e., that it is a reminder of the sacred. The problem is, it is just so easy for us to forget that religion is not sacred, but merely a vessel for the sacred. Although, truth be told, I wonder how many people ever made the distinction in the first place. I don’t think I would be going out on a limb to say that religion is not well understood in our culture. Often, it is assumed to be ‘right and necessary’ by the religious, or ‘backward and unnecessary’ by the secular; but how many people really know anything about it in itself, about its function, or how it works? How many people, religious or secular, can actually give a working definition of religion? Perhaps if we really knew something about the true end of religion, we might better understand why religion as we have known it is currently breaking down, and more importantly, get a glimpse of what is currently evolving—namely, ‘the religion of spirituality.’

But let me back up a step and propose a working definition of religion:

Religion is a sociological construct meant to take us back to the primary experience from which it arose; it enshrines an ideal and provides one with a structured approach to spiritual awakening or transformation.

That is to say, religion is what follows in the wake of the spiritual luminary’s breakthrough experience; it is what happens after Muhammad receives his revelation, or the Buddha his awakening; it is what their disciples cobble together from reports of those experiences, using them to make a ‘map’ to lead themselves and others back to the source experience. As the Buddha himself taught: religion is like a raft one makes and uses to cross a river; once you are on the other side, you needn’t carry it around on your back.[2] It is just a means to an end, not the end itself.

We must always remember then that the map is not the sacred territory; it must be used by us (with its original purpose in mind) and not the other way around. As my teacher, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, once put it (while commenting on the abuses of various religious extremists), “Good religion puts itself in the service of God; bad religion puts God in the service of religion.”[3] It is the latter that usually has us so upset with religion, that causes us to question its foundations, and which is the cause of all that seems to be breaking down in religion. But this is religion misused and misconstrued. It is a false religion that puts the sacred in its own service. False religion is to true religion what the cancerous cell is to the healthy cell. It is this imposter that provokes our most vehement objections, and which now has us looking up at a broken tower and boldly declaring, “A new day for spirituality!” as we wave goodbye to the “old-time religion.”

(Part one of a three-part series on The Religion of Spirituality.)

Latlaus Sky

Notes

[1] P. D. Ouspensky, The Symbolism of the Tarot: Philosophy of Occultism in Pictures and Numbers, tr. A. L. Pogossky, New York: Dover Publications, 1976: 48-49.

[2] “The Raft Simile” in the Pali Alagaddupama Sutta.

[3] Heard directly from Schachter-Shalomi after he gave a Yom Kippur sermon at Makom Ohr Shalom in Los Angeles, California, in which he used this formulation for the first time, ca. 2009.

Invitando a las Almas de los Muertos

By Netanel Miles-Yépez

Translation by Lucia Gastaldi

Cuando era un niño mi abuelita me ponía a dormir y decía sus oraciones conmigo, todas las noches orábamos por mi madre, mi hermano, mis tíos y cada uno de mis primos. Y cuando terminábamos de orar por los vivos entonces orábamos por los muertos, por sus padres, sus hermanos, por  mi abuelo que estaba en el cielo y por mi primo quien había sido asesinado. Recuerdo como me sentía, era como si estuviéramos cumpliendo un propósito sagrado con estas oraciones, al ofrecerle algo necesario a las almas de los difuntos  yo dormía más tranquilo. No fue hasta que me hice mayor que me di cuenta de que la mayoría de la gente que conocía no le rezaba a sus muertos. Los muertos eran simplemente muertos para ellos. O era una especie de paraíso donde los muertos no necesitaban nuestras oraciones o un infierno donde nuestras oraciones no les podían ayudar. Pero el cielo de mi abuela no era un lugar fuera de alcance donde los muertos no tenían nada que ver con nosotros. Su cielo era el lugar de las almas, donde nuestros ancestros y seres queridos vivian juntos, un lugar donde nosotros podíamos seguir hablando con ellos para ofrecerles nuestro amor y pedirles ayuda cuando lo necesitáramos.

Es esta creencia, esta visión del mundo espiritual que da vida a El día de los muertos en la cultura mexicana. Cada año el 2 de noviembre corresponde al  día de todas las almas, en la iglesia católica mucha gente cree que los muertos hacen un largo viaje de regreso desde mundo espiritual para estar con nosotros aquí en la tierra. Por lo tanto la gente va  al cementerio a lavar y decorar sus tumbas, muchas veces llevan comida al cementerio para pasar tiempo con sus difuntos.

En México se llevan a cabo grandes fiestas en el cementerio hasta el anochecer,  la gente canta y baila en medio de velas colocadas en la tumba. En las casas se realizan altares y hacen ofrendas de comida y otros objetos in honor a nuestros seres queridos para hacer que su viaje valga la pena.

Aunque la ofrenda puede verse como un altar para culto religioso, en realidad es un monumento espiritual y un lugar de comunión. Es el punto focal en nuestras casas para saludar a nuestros seres queridos a veces hay cerca una vasija con agua y una toalla con la cual ellos pueden refrescarse de su largo viaje. En el altar se encuentra a menudo el pan de muerto, pasteles dulces en forma de huesos, sal y algo para que ellos beban. Si a ellos les gustaba el tequila en su vida como a mi abuelita se puede encontrar también en el altar.

Los altares que se realizan y las ofrendas son realmente tanto para ellos como lo son para nosotros. Son el símbolo de la comunión con los difuntos. Se dice que los difuntos consumen de la comida la sustancia espiritual y la comparten con nosotros. Al mostrar sus fotos les recordamos que no los hemos olvidado. Al hacer ofrendas de amor les demostramos que aún están presentes en nuestros corazones y les pedimos que sigan estando presentes en nuestras vidas, les pedimos que nos guíen a través de su visión de las dificultades de la vida e intercedan por nosotros desde el otro lado. Por lo tanto el día de muertos es un día de los más sagrados y los más humanos de nuestros días festivos. Nos recuerda de lo preciosa que es la vida y lo sagrado de nuestras relaciones con la gente que amamos. Y al menos recordamos que la muerte no puede robar nuestra alegría si la aprovechamos y mantenemos la conexión con la muerte.

The Other Side of Fear

By Netanel Miles-Yépez

By the time I was thirteen, I had become deathly afraid of speaking in public. I really don’t know why I was so afraid. Before that, I'm sure I had fairly ordinary fears about it; though I was able to do it, and was even a little proud of the ability. But now, the very thought of it was enough to cause a panic attack. My heart would beat wildly in my chest. I would break out in a cold sweat and become dizzy. My anxiety was so intense, I didn’t know if I would survive it. I felt as if I might collapse or go entirely blank, which seemed equally terrible. And what would happen then? Death? Derision? I couldn’t think beyond the fear.

Looking back, I wonder if the biological changes of puberty had somehow catalyzed an earlier trauma and caused me to shy away from attention. Whatever the cause, I had a serious problem and soon began making the usual excuses about ‘forgetting’ to do my assignments at school. I skipped classes for days at a time so that it didn’t look as if I was only missing the ones when I was required to read or give a presentation. Not surprisingly, my grades dropped. I had always been quiet, and wasn’t generally considered very smart, so no one seemed to think it a cause for serious concern.

Once, in tenth grade, I had an English teacher who was kind and encouraging, and I thought I might try to face-up to the situation. Part of me really wanted someone to recognize that I wasn’t as dumb and as timid as people thought. We were asked to memorize a short passage from a book or a play and to recite it for the class. I was beginning to read Shakespeare then, so I decided to memorize a monologue from his Julius Caesar, part of which I can still recite. Looking at it now, it's interesting how often the word ‘fear’ is mentioned in that particular monologue. “I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d than what I fear.” Maybe I wished that I could speak so openly of my own fears. I certainly hoped that I would give this speech and be rid of them.

The night before, I rehearsed every word perfectly and was amazed at what I understood and how I could evoke the drama in the words. I felt a momentary sense of triumph . . . Then, almost immediately, I was seized with terror. A fear of failure gripped my heart and I knew I would never do it. In despair, I punched a hole in my bedroom wall and slumped to the floor, sobbing. The next day, I pretended that I hadn’t bothered to do the assignment and accepted the failing grade as if it were unimportant to me. Needless to say, I barely graduated high school.

Although I enrolled in community college after graduation, I quickly withdrew after just a few classes. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and there really wasn’t any money for it. So I got a job in a bookstore and began to spend all my free time reading. After a few years, it became clear that I wanted to study religion, and I now had more than one reason to go back to school. I had fallen in love, and my fiancée was about to transfer to the university. So we got married and I enrolled in a community college in the same city. But I continued to avoid public speaking. Throughout my time in community college, and later at the university, I managed to keep my head down and avoid talking. My grades were good, but I still trembled at the thought of being called upon in class, or even having to make a comment on anything. It wasn’t until grad school that things began to change.

The Naropa Process

In 1998, I applied to enter a master's program at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where I knew it wouldn’t be easy to hide my fear any longer. The program description stressed “engagement” and a “process-orientation” that let me know there would be a lot of talking. Nevertheless, I was determined to go there. I decided to take it as a challenge, though I’m pretty sure, somewhere in the back of my mind, I probably thought that I might just be wily enough to avoid any actual “processing” out loud. If I actually thought that, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

During the two-day orientation, there was a luncheon at which we introduced ourselves to the people at our table, then a support group meeting of 7-10 individuals from the incoming class to which we had to introduce ourselves at length again, and then a meeting of 20 or so new students in the major, at which we had to talk about what had brought us to Naropa. Somehow, I got through all of this tolerably well, and was just beginning to relax a little when I entered Shambhala Hall for a last session with all the incoming students. We all sat down in a large circle, perhaps a 100 or more of us. Then a microphone was brought out and handed to a student directly across from me in the circle. Immediately, I felt the panic set-in. We were asked to say a few words about what we hoped to take away from our experience at Naropa.

The long semi-circular journey of the microphone to place where I was sitting felt like an eternity in hell. Desperately, I tried to think of what I might say, but nothing came. Finally, as the microphone made its way to the person sitting immediately to my right, a voice suddenly whispered inside—Tell the truth. It was clear that personal disclosures were honored at Naropa, and although I wasn’t terribly comfortable with the idea, I decided to ‘out myself.’ The microphone was passed to me. Nervously, I took it and looked around at the blank faces staring at me. Then, somewhat tremulously, I said: “I have to admit . . . this situation terrifies me. I’ve always been afraid of speaking in public; but this is what I’ve come here for—to challenge myself, and to explore new territory. I look forward to doing that with all of you.”

Almost immediately, I felt an up-swell of support from everyone in the room. A wave of compassion rolled over me. It had worked. By admitting my fear, I had bypassed all the judgments that might be made about my obvious nervousness (especially if I had pretended it didn’t exist and stuttered my way through a lame introduction). It was my first real success and was followed by many smaller ones in the days to come. Naropa simply isn’t a place where you can avoid speaking up. In one venue or another, you are going to have to talk. Gradually, I got somewhat used to it. At first, I mentioned my problem whenever I had to speak in class; but it wasn’t long before I was able give up that particular crutch as well. It just wasn’t necessary anymore.

As graduation approached, just under two years later, I was asked to give a guest lecture in another department. It was an Art History class focusing on South Asian Art. As I was then considered a minor authority on Hindu iconography, I was asked to give a talk to the students. Immediately, the fears came up again and I hesitated. I was fairly certain I could do it, but it was a new situation for me and I was afraid. Finally, I agreed, and a week later found myself sitting on a stool and giving an hour and a half talk. The students seemed interested and I left relieved. What I didn’t know then was that just a few days later, I would face a much more difficult test. In fact, it was quite literally a test. It was my last exam at Naropa.

Netanel Miles-Yépez with with Karma Lhuendup at the Naropa Institute in 1999 in Judith Simmer-Brown's Vajrayana Texts Seminar.

The Warrior Exam

Now, if you’ve never heard of Naropa, then you need to know something about its founder and how things work there. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987) was one of the earliest and most significant Tibetan Buddhist masters to teach Buddhism in America. He was also one of the most radical. Not content with simply transplanting Tibetan Buddhist cultural and religious forms in American soil, he actually wanted to create a new fusion of East and West, blending the best aspects of education in each. Thus he founded the Naropa Institute in 1974 which eventually became the first accredited Buddhist-inspired academic institution in the United States.

At Naropa, you could find a recognizable version of university academics, but often presented in a different context. Instead of sitting in rows of desks or at tables, we sat in circles—sometimes on chairs, sometimes on cushions—and began each class with a respectful bow toward the center of the circle. We also studied different academic subjects, some of them represented perhaps for the first time in the West. We studied Buddhist texts and philosophical schools, and even had a class called “Meditation Practicum.” And in some of these classes, we were required to take what were called, “warrior exams.”

The warrior exam is based on the Tibetan Buddhist debate tradition which resembles a kind of ritualized intellectual combat. In it, the ‘defender’ sits amid a circle of Buddhist monks or nuns and fields questions from an intellectual ‘challenger’ or attacker standing before him or her. Each question or 'attack' is accompanied by gestures that suggest the stringing of a bow and the shooting of an arrow. The defender only departs the field of combat when the attacker catches the defender in a contradiction, a stalemate is declared, or the attacker is sufficiently satisfied with the answer. From this tradition, Chogyam Trungpa developed the warrior exam, believing that there was something in it that might evoke the deepest ‘warrior’ qualities of the person being questioned. He also saw it as a container in which a psychological transformation might be accomplished. That is to say, it was meant to be a place for a person to face their fears.

After almost two years at Naropa, I had been through a number of warrior exams (in fairly intimate classroom settings), and no longer had much fear of them. In fact, I was becoming so comfortable with them by the time I graduated that I barely gave them a second thought. So as I entered the little cottage classroom for my final warrior exam on my last day at Naropa, I was unconcerned.

We had been given the questions to review the week before. This is usually a sheet of 10 to 15 two-part questions, some of which are fairly simple, and some quite difficult. Since you don’t know which question you will get, you have to study for all of them and prepare oral answers for each. Well, I had glanced at the questions when I got them, and seeing that I knew the answers, never thought to look at them again. It was not a particularly difficult class and I thought it would be a breeze.

During a Naropa warrior exam, the class sits on the floor in a circle, often with each individual on a Japanese meditation cushion called a zafu which is placed on a larger flat cushion called a zabuton. In the center of the circle are two sets of cushions facing one another with two bowls between them. In one bowl are folded slips of paper on which are written the names of all the students. In the other bowl are the questions. First, the name of a questioner is selected, then the questioner draws the name of a person to be examined. The examinee then selects a question from the other bowl. If he or she is happy with that question, they will then hand it to the questioner so that it may be read aloud to the class. If for some reason they would prefer to answer a different question, they may reach into the bowl again. However, this question must be answered. After it is read aloud, the examinee answers all parts of the question to the best of their ability with as much detail as possible. When they are finished, the questioner may ask a follow-up question or may signal their satisfaction with the answer. Then, the instructor or other students may ask their own questions until they too are satisfied with the examinee’s understanding. If they are, the examination is over and the two persons in the center bow to one another.

After a couple of rounds like this, my name is selected from the bowl. I step into the circle and sit down opposite my questioner. We bow to one another and I calmly reach into the bowl for my question. I pull out a little white strip of paper, unfold it, and to my surprise . . . cannot think of the answer. No matter, I simply put it aside and draw another question. I unfold the new slip of paper, and to my horror . . . find that I cannot think of the answer to this question either! I can feel the blood rushing into my face and the beginnings of moisture on my forehead. I look down for a moment and then hand the paper resignedly to my questioner who reads the question out loud. There is a moment of silence before I say, “I don’t know.” I can see the surprised looks on the faces of my classmates. By this time, I had acquired a reputation for being one of the more ‘bookish’ persons at Naropa and was commonly thought to ‘have all the answers.’ But in this moment, I have none, and I actually see my questioner’s mouth drop open a little when I say it.

Feeling the panic rising, I make a decision. Inside, I know I have the answers to these questions; I just can’t seem to access them. I think to myself, I’m not going to fail this exam just because I’m having a memory lapse! I’m determined to give some kind of an answer. Into the already tense silence, I speak up: “I honestly can’t think of the answer. I know it’s in me somewhere; I’m just drawing a complete blank. So . . . I want to ask a favor . . . If you’ll hang in there with me for a little while, I want to try and talk my way through the question until I can find the answer.” I look at my questioner. Unsure of what to do, she looks at the instructor who nods his assent.

Making myself as calm as possible, I say, “Please read me the question again.” She reads it again and I repeat the first part aloud. Then I start to take all the words apart, thinking out loud and passing through all the Buddhist concepts to which this might refer, giving brief definitions of each and dismissing them one by one. Then I begin to look at how I might answer the question without reference to Buddhism or the specific text to which the question refers. Still, I haven’t got it yet. I’m missing something. I ask my questioner to read the second part of the question. I listen intently and go through the same long process. Then, suddenly, everything I had temporarily forgotten floods back into my mind and I can feel my face lighting-up. Everyone knows I have it now. The relief in the room is palpable. I build on my earlier explorations and give the most thorough answer I can possibly give. I explore parallel concepts, give the arguments for and against the position and paraphrase the words of the text . . . For a moment, I even consider giving the exact location of the answers in the text, but figure that this would be showing off. But after faltering so badly in the beginning, I don’t want to leave even the slightest doubt that I know and understand the answer thoroughly.

When I finish, I look at my questioner. She says with a smile, “I’m satisfied.” I then look to the instructor and my classmates who all nod their satisfaction. Then someone begins to clap and the others join in. I bow to my questioner and take her place as questioner.

In that moment, I knew that a significant chapter in my life had come to a close. This was the situation I had always feared, that I would come up short, panic, go blank and prove that all my personal fears about myself were true. It had actually happened. But something else had happened that I had not anticipated. I had lived. I didn’t collapse, and the world didn’t stop. I had forgotten what I knew, certainly! But I was still there and able to make decisions about what to do next and how I felt about what was happening to me. That was the power I had left. I realized then that we don’t often look beyond the terrible moments we fear. We almost never ask ourselves, “What is on the ‘other side’ of this fear?” We tend to think that this is where the story ends. ‘Fade to black.’ But my story hadn’t ended. I was still there and could act on my own behalf. In many ways, I was now free. My fears were realized and my world had not come to an end. It isn’t pretty, but when the worst has already happened to you, what more is there to fear? So I asked myself, “What comes next?” And the only answer I wanted to give was, “No more running.”

In the years that followed, I was asked more and more frequently to give talks on particular aspects of religion to local groups or at different colleges. And in doing so, I discovered that I had something of a vocation as a teacher. Still, there were many times when the old panic got hold of me just before a talk and I would have to remember that I had already lived through the worst. On other occasions, I had to deal with different permutations of the fear; for instance, that I would give a bad talk. One night, forced to give a presentation on a subject for which I had little interest, I gave a very poor performance. The next day, I said to a dear friend who had been there, “That was pretty bad, wasn’t it?” With characteristic directness, she said, “Yes, it was.” I laughed out loud. Somehow I felt okay about it because I had now survived that fear as well.

Today, I still feel nervous before speaking to a group, especially if I am caught off guard or find myself in a new situation. But I am no longer embarrassed or ashamed of the fact. I am aware of the momentary tremor and simply accept it. I tell myself, “I belong in this moment,” and then I ask the question on the other side of the fear, “What comes next?” And there is always an answer.

A Review of God’s Prayer: A Sacred Challenge to Humanity

By Netanel Miles-Yépez

One day, several years ago, Israeli scientist and Jewish spiritual teacher, Michael Kagan, sat down to pray, carefully laying his tefillin, just as he had done on so many other days. But as he was about to take up his prayer book on this particular day, he suddenly heard the words—“Are you ready?” Ready for what? he thought. “Ready to write,” came the response. Somewhat bewildered by this ‘other voice,’ he argued that it wasn’t appropriate to write while wearing tefillin. But the voice insisted, “Write!” What could he do? He found a notebook and began to write the words that immediately poured through him from a voice protesting our abuse of God’s creation, of the planet and our fellow human beings. It carried a reproving message for the three children of Abraham—Jews, Christians and Muslims—and called upon these siblings of the same Divine Parent to stop their fighting and come together to fulfill their purpose on Earth, to complete God’s “perfectly imperfect” creation as true partners in God’s plan! Whose voice was it really? Who can say? Kagan himself does not claim to know. But what is clear is this—its message is uncomfortably compelling, utterly necessary today, and as difficult to ignore as it is to hear. This is not a book to be reviewed, but a message and a challenge to be shared and contemplated:

Children of Adamah, know this:
If you disappear off the face of the planet,
no one will grieve for you.

The birds will sing free,
the forests will grow back;
The seas will be renewed,
the fish will repopulate the seas.

Those creatures that
you have enslaved will suffer,
but that is the way of the enslaved.

No one, no thing, will grieve your passing.
Do you hear that, O false kings and queens?

But I will cry.

You are My partners.
I love you.
If you fail, I fail.
But the world will live on.