What is a "religion" (to me)?
People sometimes ask me if I’m religious given my interest in meditation and Buddhism. The most superficial answer is “yes”. However, there are no two people in the world that practise the same religion in the same way, in terms of their behaviours in the world. What is a “religion” anyway? Let’s unpack that word.
The etymology of the word “religion” is the Latin word “religare”, which means to “bind fast”. I imagine this was originally used within the context of Christianity and one’s relationship to God. However, I’ve come to think of this word as a set of tools (or “psychotechnologies” as John Vervaeke calls them) that bind together and integrate the various components of a person’s psyche.
Human behaviour (i.e thought, speech and actions) seems to be governed by habitual patterns. These patterns may be consciously or unconsciously driven. If you want to find out what someone values, you don’t just look at their speech. You look at what they actually do. And obviously, if you’re examining yourself, then you can also look at the thoughts in your head. When you’re performing this analysis, you’ll know you’re on the right track if you can use these observations to reliably predict future behaviour. These are the set of things a person truly values that’s binding the different forces in their psyche together.
What is the optimal set of values that one should live by to reduce one’s suffering? Clearly, there seems to be a rough ranking between different values. For example, a lot of literature, mythology and history would suggest that prosocial values (within the context of that specific culture) are generally more beneficial than antisocial values. Through a cultural evolutionary process spanning thousands of years, I believe that the world’s major religions have attempted to grapple with and deliver their latest answer to this question. And this dynamical process of evolution is still very much in motion today.
Essentially, if you’re alive you’re “worshipping” something whether you want to or not. For example, that could be money, love, power, prestige, transcendence, peace, etc. And the pursuit of the objects of your worship will drive you to specific ends. A “helpful” religion is a collection of tools and practices that allow us to transform our psyche in a coherent way towards a beneficial object of worship.
Having these “values” or “objects of worship” seems to be the entry fee for participating in life. It can get freezing cold out there, especially if your psyche is bound incoherently. And you need a jacket. I’m not confident that I can construct a jacket from scratch to fit my life before I die. I don’t think I can outdo the thousands of years of human thought that’s gone into any of the existing jackets. But I’m also not pessimistic about my ability to modify and patch an existing jacket to fit my life and temperament. I considered all the jackets on offer and found Buddhist ideas to be the most palatable from a scientific worldview. So I thought I’d try it out to see how far it’d take me in the cold.