There are many paths to the top of the mountain

First Thesis:  If A Way says that it is the Only Way, or that you should try to convert others to the Only Way, then it is to be avoided.  There are many paths that will lead to the same place on the mountaintop of enlightenment. 

Certainty is a strange thing.  We all assume that we want it, we strive for it, we think we have it when we are teenagers, yet when we really get it our mental exploration of the universe stops dead, our belief system no longer grows or evolves, and depending on those beliefs we are certain of, we can become very, very dangerous.  More harm has been done in the world in the name of certainty, usually with regard to religious beliefs, than anything else in the history of mankind.  But we must be certain of something, you may say, or else all is just belief and everything is relative.

Yes, the demand for explanation and reasons must stop at some point else we are faced with an infinite regression into nihilism (as every parent of a young child knows).  But at what point do we stop, what beliefs do we take to be self-evidently true?  Is it OK to be certain that there is a God (however we define that concept), that Jesus was the son of God, that Mohammed was his Prophet, that the Bible is the infallible Word of God?  If these are the kinds of beliefs in which you expect your certainty to reside, you are hitching your wagon to the wrong star.  You are in danger of one day becoming one of those very dangerous persons who can justify almost anything in the name of their religion or their philosophical or moral beliefs.

There are two ways that a proposition can be known with certainty to be true.  It can be known to be true based on personal, direct experience, or it can be assumed to be true because we have decided that no further explanation or reason can be offered in its support.  We will talk about the former (experiential truth) in later blogs.  With regard to the latter (self-evident truth), these should consist only of what I call “First Principles”, which are basically epistemological beliefs about how we should obtain knowledge, what constitutes a good belief, what is the place of intellect verses emotion in our belief system, and things like that.  These kinds of beliefs are what I’ve referred to as a “meta-belief system”.  They are on a higher conceptual level than any particular beliefs about religion, morality, politics, or right and wrong.  Most of the major problems of the world arise when people become certain of these lower level beliefs and start to think that their particular religion is the only one that can possibly be correct, that their particular ethnic group or tribe holds a privileged place in the world, or that anyone who doesn’t believe what they believe is bad.

So what does all of this philosophizing mean in practical terms?  It means that you should respect another person’s deeply held beliefs and not try to change them to match your own.  It means that you should realize that there are portions of truth in all of the world’s major religions and traditions, and also falsehoods.  You should recognize that no one person or faith has a legitimate claim to absolute certitude, that most tenets of religion are based not on ultimate experiential truth but on the cultural framework and traditions in which they are embedded.  The most dangerous religions are those that contain as a central tenet the command that their adherents must go out and actively try to convert others to their way.  These are the “Ways” to be studiously avoided.

It is a common metaphor that we are all striving for Enlightenment, Salvation, Oneness, or whatever you want to call it, which can be seen as the top of a tall mountain.  Each of the world’s faiths and spiritual traditions are a separate path to the top of that mountain, taking the acolyte through all of the cultural, religious, and moral traditions from which that particular faith arose.  But, after many years of advancement and personal growth, they all can eventually take you to the same place.  They all can get to the Truth, shorn of any cultural, ethnic, or personal practices that only serve their purpose to a certain point in the spiritual development of the individual.  And when these ceremonies, beliefs, and traditions cease to serve their purpose, they should be abandoned.  As the Zen tradition states, when you forget yourself completely and become an empty vessel, that is when you obtain True Enlightenment and can then fulfill your ultimate purpose for being here.