Analyzing my religious beliefs

I’ve been thinking a lot about religious beliefs recently, and one of the first questions that arises is what distinguishes religion from philosophy? I would say religion has a supernatural or supernormal aspect. It is something involving entities or intelligences that are more powerful than us, which we can supplicate through ritual and prayer, and who have the power to intervene on our behalf. The Christian God certainly has this property. The so-called pagan Gods of the old Roman empire had this property. The Buddhist system which I spent a large part of my life in also has this property. Philosophy, on the other hand, is more of a rational method of inquiry and an attempt to understand the world. Probably there is a philosophical component to other religions. There is certainly one in Buddhism. The teachings of the Madhyamaka school and the Buddha’s original emphasis on anatman (no-self) are examples of this. The nice thing about the philosophical components is that they are subject to analysis and introspective exploration. The religious components are more problematic. While claiming a great degree of objectivity, asserting things like monks walking through walls or floating through the air, modern instantiations of religion turn out to be entirely subjective when analyzed with a critical lens, especially if I limit myself to what I can personally verify.

In more detail, for the religious components of Buddhism, I set myself the following test. Have I personally witnessed or experienced anything which had a definite or probable supernatural origin which, crucially, would be convincing to someone else not already predisposed to believe it? I have had multiple powerful experiences as a Buddhist, one even comparable to Saul’s vision on the road to Damascus, but looking at all of them, they have each been subjective and potentially explainable as a product of my own mind. I have not witnessed people floating, people putting thumbprints in rocks, evidence of foreknowledge, or anything along these lines. All of my religious experiences were entirely subjective, usually some type of interior vision with a somatic component like the feeling of energy moving in the body. Many of these experiences were deeply meaningful, but none stepped outside what you might consider the conventional laws of physics, and none of them would convince another person outside the system. So I must conclude that, no, despite the power of these experiences, none of them are truly evidence of the religious component of Buddhism. I think a good theory is that religious visions are a simply part of human psychology.  

So I find myself in the same place that many people have found themselves, trying to separate out the useful kernel of Buddhist teachings into a more secularized form. That is essentially the modern mindfulness movement. I guess I am late to the party. My initial thought when composing this text, was that having lived and experienced the religious side, I am coming to a more informed decision about things. That is, I wanted to say that my skepticism was somehow more genuine than the skepticism of those who had a priori doubt about the veracity of Buddhist religious beliefs. However, upon further reflection, I think I am just reproducing the standard hostility toward atheists and skeptics. Something along the lines of “I am a skeptic for deeply considered reasons. Those others are doing it due to their own character flaws.” This is of course deeply unfair and self aggrandizing. So let me say instead that skepticism of the supernatural is not a personal failing but a rational and normal state.

I heard the following sentiment attributed to William James. It is important to disbelieve things which are false, but it is also important to believe things that are true. For me, the Buddhist philosophical teachings and many of the meditative practices still hold a lot of value. Despite the fact that the Madhyamaka teachings don’t seem to make a lot of sense on first hearing, and many people have a strong antagonistic reaction toward them, I think they have something profound to say about our world. The various forms of meditation serve as a vehicle of exploration of our internal landscape and a method of sharpening our focus. So even though I have come to the conclusion that the religious aspects of Buddhism are not objectively true, I still feel that there is a lot here which is good and useful both as a framework for understanding reality, and as transformative practices for training the mind.