Thought Piece... Doubting our Religion: Worth It?

Thought Piece... Doubting our Religion: Worth It?

In any religion, be it Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism or Judaism, people have questions and doubts towards the most controversial and deep topics one can think of. Life and death, the afterlife, the soul, the body, the mind, Gods, Lords, and Kings; these are all topics of conversation among those who doubt and questions the teaching and laws of ones own religion. It is perfectly normal and fair to question what we don’t fully understand. After all, being in PLS, we are taught that the “unexamined life is not worth living”, so there obviously would be no problem with questioning something if a proper answer was not given to us. This is exactly what happens in The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha. We learn all about the three sections, and twelve divisions that properly lead us towards nirvana, and steer us away from a meager life. The teachings that we learn from Buddha convey peace, love of humanity, and distaste for material possession. Ultimately nirvana is the goal, “Which is to be conceived not as a sheer extinction but as a state naturally produced by the destruction of tanha—a state marked on the positive side by a sense of liberation, inward peace and strength, insight into truth, the joy of complete oneness with reality, and love toward all creatures in the universe.”  This ultimate prize is one that seems to be quite pleasurable, but there must be certain questions along the way. There must be doubts in the minds of those who follow Buddha, just as there are doubts in the mind of those who follow Jesus, Mohammed, and any other prophet or disciple of God.

            In the section entitled, Questions Not Tending to Edification, we hear concerns towards Buddha’s position on metaphysics. “These theories which the blessed one has left unexplained has set aside and rejected—that the world is eternal, that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite, that the soul and body are identical, that the soul is one thing and the body another…” Questions of this sort are common among those who truly want to understand their religion. The afterlife, after all, is a very important part of one’s life, and ultimately their existence. We hear some frustration from the narrator when he says, “And the fact that the Blessed One does not explain them to me does not please me, nor suit me. There fore I will draw near to the Blessed One and inquire of him concerning this matter.” We see the narrator s in a sense, giving his religion a chance. We see that if he does get answers to his questions he will “live a religious life under the Blessed One”. “But if he does not get the answers he is looking for, “I will abandon religious training and return to the lower life of a layman.”

It seems as though this man is looking for immediate results to his questions about the metaphysical and his faith in general. This is something that I find hard to understand. I live a life that gives me gradual answers towards questions about my faith. I find questions like the ones that are asked on pages thirty-two and thirty-three are answered over a lifetime. Why do answers of such a complicated and deep matter want to be answered so quickly? How is this different from our own religion? The teachings of the Buddha steer away from eagerness, it seems as though the narrator lacks any sort of patience, and because of that he is ready to give up everything he knows. Is this worth it? Or is it better to understand your religion over a lifetime? Would it be better to know the answers to any question about your religion immediately? I believe that this gets rid of any concept of faith, and faith seems to be the most important part of the Catholic religion. We can find a million reasons not to believe in something, and sure there are answers that we will never know. But is that worth giving up all your faith for?

 

 

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