Back again with a here-and-now post…of sorts. A lot of this story is related to my past, so it’s in that mid-zone. I always tell people I am a Catholic by birth and a Buddhist by choice and that’s the absolute truth. However, I am not what I would call a ‘religious’ person. I’m a spiritual person, but not a religious person. I have great disdain for organized religion. I always tell my kids that it’s not God, or Buddha, or Mohammed or whomever your particular deity is that causes the problem. It’s what people do once they get hold of that religion and try to shape it in their own image and likeness.  It’s the organization of it by mortal men (and women) that I take issue with.

From the folks who brought you The Crusades and The Spanish Inquisition

The Catholic faith does not work for me on many levels. Right off the top, the church’s steadfast opposition to anything LGBT will rule Catholicism out. I really do not want my children exposed to the bigotry within those teachings. The incredible hypocrisy surrounding the whole issue of pedophilia is huge for me. I really think it’s over the top to condemn homosexuality when the church has spent years protecting pedophiles. It’s not so much that there are pedophiles in the church. I can see that happening. Becoming a priest gives them access to children and a great cover. Nobody questioned the Catholic church when I was young. Nobody. We didn’t know, but somebody did: Those in power. Instead of cleaning the mess up, they shuffled these sexual predators to new parishes and kept it hidden. I take issue with that. They should all have been prosecuted as perpetrators and accessories. Instead, when the story broke, they painted these sexual predators as homosexuals. I’m very much in command of two words in the English language: Fuck them.

Then, there are the nuns: Terrorists in penguin suits. I’m not sure how things are now, but when I was young we were terrified of them. I remember I wrote a story once called “Nuns with Guns.” I wish I could find it now. They ruled by intimidation when I was in grammar school. (By the time I got to high school, I wasn’t afraid of them anymore.) They also made you terrified of God. One false move and He’d smote you. Half of the problem was the outfit. It was like a klan outfit for the holy. Black and white. No gray. Appropriately enough, just like their teachings.

I was turned off to the Catholic religion for one other reason — a very personal one. This incident happened well before the whole church sex scandal broke. The catholic priest in my parish refused to come and give my dad last rites when he was dying because he had a golf tournament that day. In reality, the Catholic church lost me that day.

A brief foray into Judaism proves my theory of organized religion

For a while, Beth and I toyed with Judaism. We even began the process of conversion by taking the interfaith course in Westwood. The Rabbi teaching the course was a pompous, pretentious putz. It was when he got to Leviticus that I became uncomfortable. If you think the Catholics are tough on gays, try Judaism. During the time we were looking into Judaism, we were also trying to choose a temple to associate ourselves with. This was my second bad experience with the Hebrew vision of homosexuality. I’m not exactly sure what temple we had chosen. I’m thinking it was one on the north shore, since were were living in Beverly at the time. We were sitting in the Rabbi’s office and discussing the whole gay issue when he asked which one of us “plays the man.” Now, that was a real W-T-F moment for me.

I remember just looking at him and asking — in a very exasperated tone — “What?” He sat back and looked at me. “One will obviously be the mother, so who will be the father figure?” You know, ask anyone, I’m a very patient person. I’m loyal to a fault. My friends practically have to try to murder me to get me to dump them. I’m just not patient with this crap. I wasn’t going to try to talk to this guy and get him to understand because he clearly thought his question was perfectly logical. I remember saying to him, “Our child will have two mothers. Neither one of us will play the father. That’s not what this is all about. Thanks for your time. See you later.” I think Beth got up and followed me simply because she wasn’t expecting me to do that.  See, she’s a processor. I know she would have stayed there and tried to reason with the guy ad nauseum. No way. He did not want to “get it.” Sayonara, Judaism.

Those were the only two mainstream possibilities for me. The others, like Mormonism and Christian fundamentalism, have too many whack jobs per square inch for me. They are too overbearing and are always in “high conversion” mode.

Why Buddhism works for me

I chose Buddhism because I like its principles. It doesn’t ask for you to blindly go forward. In fact, it encourages you to question.

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, no matter if I had said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” (Buddha)

That’s what I like about Buddhism. I also like that Buddhists, including the Dalai Lama, don’t for a minute believe that Buddhism is for everybody. The Dalai Lama doesn’t force feed anyone his ideology. He puts it out there. If it works for you, fine. If not, fine. Buddhism also teaches that its followers should never look down on anyone else’s religion. That’s a far cry from what you get with the Catholics and the Jews.

“Here is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart are temples; the philosophy is kindness.” (The Dalai Lama)

This works for me. The whole belief in Karma works for me, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t got issues with the “organized” side of Buddhism. I have issues with it. For one thing, they raise too much money for nonsensical things, like giant statues and ornate religious symbols. I understand the importance of the deities in Buddhism. I get it. Beth and I even have an altar with some deities on it. Medicine Buddha is very big in our household, for obvious reasons. It’s not an alter you pray at, by the way. It’s where you make offerings. But the Buddhists spend too much time raising money to build hugely ornate statues and temples. There is so much more they could do with that money…like feed their monks who basically subsist on nothing but rice, and eat just one meal a day. That’s crazy.

The other thing about Buddhism is the number of wealthier people who are involved in it because it’s seen as “fashionable” to be Buddhist. That’s not really anything that Buddhism itself can control, actually. I used to go to the Kurukulla Center in Medford every once in a while and you could see the hangers on. None of these people upheld the basic tenets of Buddhism. They had attitude. They were snobs. They weren’t nice to those less fortunate than they are. Those aren’t Buddhist qualities in the least. I really never get there anymore and I honestly do not feel as though I’m missing anything. I can be Buddhist here at home. After all, the Dalai Lama says so!