September 23, 2005

• Spirituality

  
  

  Tomorrow I'm going to go see the Dalai Lama speak at Rutgers. I've never heard the Dalai Lama speak at length about anything before, so I figure maybe it'll be a good experience for me (and the 31,999 other people who'll be there). My sister and I were raised Catholic, but after high school, she pretty much decided to abandon Christianity altogether and is seriously considering becoming Buddhist, and it's largely because of her that I'm going. For the most part, I have nothing against other religions. I know that often many religions seem to preach the notion that "our religion is the correct one, and if you remain faithful you'll go to heaven/reach enlightenment/etc, while the rest of them will go to hell/be reborn as a bug/suffer for all eternity/etc.", but I never believed in that particular tenet all that much. I think if there really is a God, he wouldn't be so short-sighted as to make only one religion the official one and thereby cause the other 80% of mankind to go be subject to punishment just because of the misfortune of having gambled on believing in the wrong religion. I believe most religions are valid to some degree, in the sense that many of them preach the same things, only in different forms of expression. Ultimately, I think it's your intentions that matter more than just blindly following the rules. The principles behind the beliefs are more important than just unquestioningly throwing your faith into it without really even pausing to reflect upon what it really means.

  • 4:52 pm
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