In Ireland, if they ask you what religion you are, say, Buddhism.
-Daniele Luttazzi
To know religion of a person who says we have to listen to profess faith, but we must find his brand of intolerance.
-Eric Hoffer
Where there is an altar there also exists a religion.
-Joseph De Maistre
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
-George Bernard Shaw
Going through the car near a Buddhist temple / shrine decide to stop. And 'Sunday and there is' a party for which the children of 3/5/7 years should be in this temple with traditional Japanese clothing (kimono winter, summer yukata). I did not understand what children do, but the richest parents rented a religious leading up to the temple where the ancient murmuring a few words, he blesses them. To complete the work the children will have to pull a bell which I imagine would avert the feared evil spirits.
I am surprised to see such small children have those characters that will grow into adulthood: the child-man dressed in suit and tie and has a serious look impassive and holding the hand of the girl-woman even made up with lipstick Looking around while waiting for both the photograph is taken. Here it is Japan! In the eyes of the child and the child there 'already aware of a life dedicated to work and absolute respect for the rules. Our children tear the strength to pull the bell rope or playing hide and screaming under the stone statues of monks, gets on your clothes and all those things that would make a child's right to do. These little guys are not.
While I was lost in these thoughts inside the temple know that there are people who pray. But what do they pray? Here, as in all religions there are dozens of superstitions and rituals designed to explain what you do not understand and to ward off evil, so you must double-tap your hands before praying, and then hit a bell, bow and kneel before a priest (bonzo? monaco?) that sings hymns in a language that even old Kanako barely understand.
And I, from the outside, I watch them.
I observe them trying to understand why pray, surely they believe strongly in their religion and how to perform every ritual must be followed, with absolute sincerity and humility.
beginning in me lies an evil thought and feeling, here I am in a land of people who have beliefs absurd and ridiculous superstitions. But I do not know that it is all fake? As if I were in some remote African tribe intent on the worship of totems, looked as if the American Indians dancing in a circle so that the rain goddess bless them with his holy water.
repress this feeling.
Who am I to know what is true and what is false? In Europe there has been slaughtered for centuries, it was invented unimaginable torture and burned thousands of men, has fallen into a theocratic darkness for almost a thousand years and what are the questions (cases) that was put in all this time? Here are just a few: Jesus is the Word? And if it is the Word, is emanated from God in time or ahead of time? And if it emanated from God is co-eternal and consubstantial with him, or a similar substance? E 'separate from him or not? E 'created or generated? It can generate itself? It has the virtue of the authorship or production without fatherhood? And the Holy Spirit, is created or generated or produced, or proceeding from the Father and the Son proceeding, or both? And how, having precisely the same nature and essence of the Father and the Son, can not do the same things as those two people, that he himself? What is the Soul? Does it exist? And if it exists and 'material, intellectual, spiritual, extended?
I do not understand anything, no one has ever understood anything, and this is the reason why there has been slaughtered and the earth is bathed in rivers of blood.
I read the Bible. It took me six months to do it. And there 'nothing like that. Not if they find any trace in the apocryphal writings nor in the early church fathers.
I'm not Christian, are not Muslim, not Hindu Buddhist them (although each of these religions has a piece of wisdom that should not be ignored and I had not see that well), but I'm not even an atheist and I'm not agnostic. An atheist says, "God does not exist." All right, let it show and it was over. What is Man? Why are these particular immutable laws which rotate the planets and atoms? Why is there life? What was there before the Big Bang? There is therefore a desire in all this? Or is it just the unknown that makes us believe to be higher and some clever?
The fact is that I could write a book with dozens of unanswered questions, with scores of theological and philosophical assumptions, with dozens of charges, with dozens of tests, without coming to anything. For years I could burn my brain trying to figure out if it exists and what is the nature of God because everything exists as it is and I realize I'm the exact starting point.
But man is not made to live like a brute ...
With great irritation and disgust I see Messrs cardinals, bishops and priests (but not all, fortunately, although anyone who thinks otherwise has no power to do anything) in Italy , do everything to impose their will to those who do not think like them, and look at you with the same eyes with which their ancestors looked burning and torturing "the wicked": with the same certainty of being right, infallibility, in the Truth.
What is Truth? All believe they are in truth but I say: " watched by men who say they have no doubts"
believe that truth is something common to all men. Voltaire says: "morality is God, the dogmas of men . At any time and place are such that men and beasts, they know that crime and theft are vile things, and that virtue and doing good things are right and admirable. What is observed in Japan, such as going to the temple every month to pull the strings, is foreign to the rest men so it's not a superstition, prejudice.
In this regard I quote yet again, for his idea of \u200b\u200breligion, under theist, his philosophical dictionary: " ... [the theist] does not embrace any sect because they all contradict each other. His religion is the oldest and the largest, because the simple worship of a God has preceded all the systems in the world. He speaks a language that all people want, but they did not mean to each other. (...) He believes that religion is neither the opinions of an unintelligible metaphysic, or in equipment rooms, but in worship and justice. Making well, here is his religion; be subject to God, here is his doctrine.
The Mohammedan's cries: "Woe to you if you fail to make the pilgrimage to Mecca!"
"Woe to you," says the priest, "if you're not a trip to Our Lady of Loreto" Loreto
He laughs and Mecca, but it helps the poor and defends the oppressed . "."