Reader's Write: Choosing Your Religion

I got a comment from one of my friends a while back, in January when I had just started this blog and was just leaving for India. For some reason, I really liked the comment and wanted to share it here. I'm not sure that I have much of a response, but here it is anyway.

Darnell Writes: I'm glad you've decided to embrace a foreign culture and religion. It seems like most americans have a dismissive attitude about such things as personal enlightment through non christian means. Though I'm not religous myself, meditation has been proven by conventional medical standards to be very healthy and I've done it from time to time. Sinn said he spent one year at a tibetan monastery and he thought for sure that's where he wanted to spend the rest of his life. Is that how you feel about this?

Thanks Darnell. I was never really raised Christian, and never had much interest for it. Once I got older, though, I came to enjoy some of the stories of Jesus. One of my favorite episodes from the Bible is this one:

Jesus went to the mount of Olives: And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him; and he sat down and taught them. And the scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman taken in adultery: and when they had set her in the midst, They say to him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he raised himself, and said to them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they who heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even to the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

John 8:1-9

Wow! That's one of my all time favorites - a powerful image and sound advice. I'm not sure if I'm really very religious, but I hear a story like that and I feel moved and inspired. In fact, it doesn't even seem like anything religious, just good sense.

Funny though, that some who claim to be Christian might "cast stones" at foreign cultures and religions. Hmmm.... go figure.

I didn't know that Sinn spent time at a monastery, that's pretty cool. I must admit that I did visit a Zen temple in Korea and I remember watching the bamboo blow in the wind, and hearing the giant gong being struck at 5:00 in the morning, and I think I could've stayed there the rest of my life. There is something quite attractive about that kind of simplicity peace and beauty.

I definitely feel fortunate to live in a country (and much of the world) where I'm free to sit around enjoying inner silence in my own way without being persecuted for being a witch or a heretic. It's funny because even Jesus didn't have that, and his "embrace of a foreign religion" didn't seem to go over too well in his day. Let's just say, life is more enjoyable when not nailed to a cross.

Be well, and good luck with your meditation practice.

Daniel