Buddhism
So there I was, floating around in spiritual turmoil, trying to find some grounding point. Then a couple friends wanted to see the movie Kundun, which was showing on campus. It's the life story of the Dalai Lama. There were a lot of obscure Buddhist rituals and practices in the movie, and I got curious as to what their purposes were. So I started looking up Buddhism, not planning on following it, but simply curious about aspects of it. Well, you can guess where that went. After I finally was able to find some books that explained what the heck Buddhism was, I became interested in it as a possible spiritual path for myself.
First of all, Buddhism is not a theistic (god-oriented) religion--Buddhists generally don't believe in a god, but mostly they don't care about asking whether or not there is a god--it just doesn't matter. I'm not going to explain Buddhism in detail because I'm not at the level to teach someone else about it, and also because that would take forever. There are many different "sects" of Buddhism (like in Christianity)--I practice Zen--but all have a few beliefs in common: the Dharma (or Dhamma), Karma, enlightenment, the value of meditation, and rebirth. The Dharma encompasses the teachings of the Buddha, the path to enlightenment; karma has to do with the rule of cause and effect; rebirth is continuous death and birth; and enlightenment is what one strives to atttain--awakening, the absolute Truth, the end of the cycles of rebirth.
One of the main points of Buddhism is to live a life of love and compassion for all beings, to recognize that everyone has Buddha-nature (the ability to become enlightened like the Buddha). That guy you can't stand? Well, at his core, you and he are the exact same. Hating him is hating yourself. Buddhist also says that everything is impermanent and always changing. It stresses morality (like Christianity, it's not a good idea to cheat on your boyfriend or steal your neighbor's TV). I'm being extremely general here, but you get the idea (and if you want more info, read up on it).
Oh, and I just want to clarify the deity issue--Buddhists don't worship Buddha as a god, and they don't pray to idols of him. The Shakyamuni Buddha was Siddharta Gautama, he lived about 2,500 years ago, and he was the first being to become enlightened and teach others how they, too, could become enlightened. The Buddha statue is honored because the figure reminds Buddhists to follow the words of the Buddha, and that the ability to become enlightened exists within them, as well.
Is there really such a thing as enlightenment? Does EVERYONE really possess this potential? Every religion must have an aspect of faith, and enlightenment is the faith part of Buddhism. However, this is not a passive religion, where you can just go to the Zen Center/Buddhist temple once a week, listen to a talk, and obtain enlightenment after a while (or after a few lifetimes). It takes work, lots and lots of really hard work. And why do I do this work? To obtain the ephemeral, legendary enlightenment that I've only read about, that might not exist after all?
No, I do it because I've glimpsed the edges of what it could be. It took me 21 years to realize that I'd never seen below the extremely shallow depths of my own mind. Yeah, I'm talking about SESSHIN.
Sesshin? In brief, a Zen meditation retreat lasting anywhere from 2-7 days, consisting of at least 10 hours of zazen (silent meditation) a day. This is HARD. Really, really, really HARD, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But the end result is that you glimpse your mind, quieted, for the first time ever. You glimpse the faintest hints of all the things you have yet to realize and understand. You are in pain, but all you want to do is keep sitting, because you want to know what else there is to find. This is, of course, only a brief and vague description of sesshin, because you can't really describe it all that well. It just IS.
Even with all the work that's required of me, in Zen I have found what I've been searching all these years for. It's a feeling of sorts that I've 'come home', that a new and undiscovered path has opened in front of me, a relatively faint path that I don't want to lose, that I can't afford to lose. That's why I keep going to sesshin after sesshin, even though I'm always plagued with fears that I can't do another one, that it will be too hard this time. But I have to go; I have no choice anymore--there is an essential question inside me that requires an answer. Through zazen it will come...eventually. Therein lies the core of Zen faith. Not in a god, not in salvation, not in afterlife, but in oneself. Or, even better, beyond oneself, in no-self.