One of the problems of conventional Ways [1] is their reliance upon certain texts (original or derivative), which texts come to be regarded as either sacred, or as possessing wisdom, or both. For, almost invariably, all such texts require interpretation [2] and/or come to used a source, if not the primarily and authoritative source, of information about, and a guide to, a particular Way. This reliance upon texts applies both to revealed Ways – such as Christianity and Islam, with Scripture (Christianity) and Quran and Ahadith (Islam) – and to non-revealed Ways, such as Buddhism and Hinduism [3].
What is common in respect of all Ways based upon or centred around certain texts, is that there invariably arises, over a certain period of causal Time, a particular attitude, both personal, and collective (among the community of adherents or believers), with this attitude being one of, if not veneration of the texts themselves, then of reliance upon them so that they are preferred over and above the πάθει μάθος of individuals: that is, preferred over and above the slow and the natural and the numinous (the living) accumulation of personal insight, understanding, and wisdom.
In addition, the interpretation of such texts – and/or the emergence or the writing of new texts concerning a particular Way – has, almost invariably, led to schism or schisms within a particular Way, with such schisms often being, at least in respect of revealed Ways – violent in nature, and leading to accusations of heresy.
These two features – the particular attitude of reliance upon and/or veneration of texts, and the emergence of schisms due to texts – may be said to represent the religious attitude itself. And it is this religious attitude, among individuals, and collectively – among a community or communities of adherents or believers – which is the fundamental problem of all conventional organized Ways.
However, in its genesis, a particular Way often does not possess nor require the cultivation of this religious attitude, this religious approach. Indeed, some Ways, in their genesis, may be quite opposed to such an attitude, such an approach, which attitude, which approach, often leads to the veneration, if not the deification, of the founder (known or perceived) of the Way.
One, particularly modern, manifestation of this religious attitude is in the desire, by adherents of a particular conventional Way, to find the results of modern science in such texts. Thus, there arises the desire to find, or to prove, that such texts prefigured, or indeed contain, certain scientific notions or certain recent rational explanations of natural phenomena, and this desire is often based upon a need to show or to somehow “prove” that the founder of a Way, or the supra-personal supreme Being of a Way, possessed a knowledge of such newly discovered matters.
Thus, and for instance, ancient texts are scoured to show that there was some ancient knowledge, and understanding, of such things as life existing elsewhere in the Cosmos; and/or there was some ancient knowledge and understanding of planets orbiting stars; and/or some ancient knowledge and understanding of what we now refer to as evolution, and the origin of diverse species; and so on.
This is, in effect, a re-interpretation of particular texts, where certain modern terms are mistakenly projected onto ancient or old words to give them a modern meaning, with this re-interpretation often being required by individuals, subsumed by the religious attitude, in order for those individuals to continue to believe in, or to continue to adhere to, what has become a particular Way reliant upon such texts.
The Problem of Reliance
Reliance on texts – revealed, venerated, or otherwise – is a fundamental problem because it not only removes wisdom from the personal experience of the individual, but it also tries to prescribe, to define, to restrict, the numinous.
Fundamentally, the religious attitude is itself a problem because it is a reliance on those abstractions that often derive or have been derived from an initial numinous experience, and which abstractions denude, undermine, or disrupt or conceal, the numinous itself.
For the truth is that wisdom is only – and only ever can be – personal, individual, and unique, and cannot be abstracted out from πάθει μάθος into some abstraction, religious or otherwise, or be found in some text, revealed or otherwise. That is, wisdom is a function of acausality – of acausal Time, of what is living – and not the result of some cause-and-effect; not the result of adhering to or striving to adhere to what someone else, somewhere at some moment in causal Time, has transcribed, tried to describe, or might even have revealed or dis-covered in some manner.
Thus, wisdom is natural, within each of us, nascent - a potentiality to be discovered by and through the immediacy of personal experience. All some texts may do – and should do – is point us or guide us toward this of necessity interior discovery, which occurs in its own way, in its very own species of a living Time.
Furthermore, such an individual discovering of wisdom, by means of πάθει μάθος, leads to a knowing, an understanding, of humility – that is, to a placing of ourselves into that natural Cosmic perspective which forms the basis of Reality itself [4]. And it is such a natural and indeed spontaneous humility – beyond words, terms, abstractions – which is the practical antithesis of the religious attitude itself, and indeed which is a necessary precursor for our own individual change and evolution.
Similarly, the numinous itself is presenced, and can be found, within each of us, and within those natural things, those living things, such as Nature and the Cosmos, a personal love, and empathy, which arise, and which have arisen or unfolded, in their own way according to their basal acausal nature, sans any and all causal abstractions.
DW Myatt
2455304.093
Notes:
[1] By Way is meant a particular numinous Way of Life, distinguished from a particular philosophy (academic or otherwise) by virtue of the adherent of or believer in such a numinous Way finding therein a presencing of the numinous sufficient to make them aware of, or feel, or come to know, a distinction between the sacred and the profane.
I have used Way in preference to the more common and in my view, inaccurate and now often pejorative term, religion.
[2] By interpretation here is meant (1) commentaries (academic, theological, and otherwise); (2) explanations (critical, and otherwise); (3) translations; and – most importantly – (4) a seeking of the meaning of (a) both the text (in whole and in parts; and both esoteric and exoteric) and (b) of the words and terms used.
[3] In Buddhism, the primary texts are regarded as: (1) for Theravada Buddhism, the collections referred to as Tipitaka/Tripitaka; (2) for Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Tipitaka (in some cases, depending on interpretation) and the various Sutras, including the collection often referred to as The Perfection of Wisdom; (3) for Tibetan Buddhism, the various Tantric texts, plus some of the Tipitaka (in some cases, depending on interpretation) and some the Mahāyāna sutras (in some cases, depending on interpretation).
In Hinduism, there is the Bhagavad Gītā and the literature of the Vedas.
[4] See, for example, the essay Humility, Abstractions, and Belief.
