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Sunday, April 16, 2006

Today is a holy day for a lot of people. I hope today passes by in peace, though it looks like some parts of the world never sees that reprieve.

Religion is a very, very odd concept. Growing up, we learn to offer incense to our ancesters twice a day on a daily basis. On special occasions, we may offer it three times, in addition to offering food and using special incense. We went to the temples from time to time to offer incense, particularly at times of significant undertakings - a family member about to embark on an overseas trip, and we want him/her to arrive safely, or a child is about to start the school year, and we want him/her to do well. We worship idols, figures embodying the wise and the noble who came long before us, hoping they'd hear our prayers and help us wade through our mortal lives, if only a little bit more successfully. Those were simply the things that we did, and other people did too - to give thanks to your ancestors, for without them, you wouldn't be here, and to send good thoughts and hope that the good thoughts will come to fruition.

Only after I came to this country did I find out that religion is spelled with a capital R, and it's serious with a capital S. I had never seen a country so obsessed with religion and its rituals. Getting baptized, going to services, Easter, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, confirmation, converting, rejecting religion, being born again...these are really momentus events. I had never seen anything quite like it; even after living in this country for so long, I am still trying to wrap my mind around these things and ask: Why?

Where I grew up, vocabulary differences aside, the concepts I mentioned just aren't that big of a deal. One of my cousins converted to Christianity upon marrying her husband. She just did. Not even sure they had a church wedding. No controversy in my family. We know they go to church, and we still go to our temples. We never secretly pray for her or her family to convert back to Buddhism. When we gave my grandfather a Buddhist funeral two years ago, she, her husband, and their kids came to participate. They never took the incense but held their palms together in respect, just as we would do if we didn't have incense in our hands, and bowed at my grandfather's portrait and read the Buddhist scriptures just as we all did during the ceremony.

Here, in many people's eyes, they're probably bad Christians and broke all sorts of rules, but all they did was pay respects to a relative.

Another cousin of mine, on my mom's side, converted to Christianity several years ago after battling with depression. He met some friends who happened to be Christians and who helped him out of it. My cousin now works with his church, I think. My uncle and aunt have no problems with it. His siblings have no problems with it. They're all living in the same house, a house where there is an altar to the deceased ancestors on my mom's side, including my maternal grandmother. As long as my cousin is happy and hasn't joined some odd cult, said my aunt and uncle, they're happy that he's happy.

So you did, and you don't now, or you didn't, but you do now. No questions involved, no fuss, no hang ups, no rude awakenings, no "recovering so-and-so," no nothing.

Maybe it's just the way we were brought up, maybe it's just a different culture, maybe it's a different mindset altogether. Maybe it's the fact that nothing was ever drilled into our heads as if it's some immutable truth, so no one ever had to struggle to reconcile inconsistencies. Having a religion is simply not as important as living life as a good person. Pretty much no one judges you by how many times you went to the temple this month or how much you donated to it. No one requires you to pull out all the stops to worship and to make offerings if you're simply busy and don't have the time. No one ever expects you to be able to recite scriptures because that's the monks' job, or what you do in your own home (in fact, people look at you weirdly if you do start quoting scripture), and really, it's irrelevant to how you actually behave yourself. No one ever judges you by the religion with which you identify, or the lack thereof. But, people do judge you by how hard you work, how well you do in school, whether you respect your elders, and whether you choose to be a productive member of society or a criminal. You don't ever hear things like, "She's a bad < insert religion > because she doesn't believe there are 18 levels of hell," but you do hear things like, "He's a bad person because he kept borrowing money from his relatives for gambling and never paid it back."

All I've seen in my years is that the more rigid the dogma, the more likely there is trouble, for both oneself and for others.

Maybe it's the definition of a "good person" with which people seem to have problems. It's not difficult, though. Just look at the world around us; it is easy to extract common traits from all cultures and beliefs. They usually revolve around one or maybe two things.

There is a saying in Chinese, 舉頭三尺有神明 (there is divine essence three feet above the head). It is used as a cautionary phrase, but very matter-of-factly, as in, if you're thinking about doing something, remember that there is a deity watching closely. Or maybe for the less divinely-inclined, it's just your conscience. You know what you're doing, even if no one else knows, and you have only yourself to answer to.

As the Dalai Lama says, "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

I think this is all one really needs.