Church of the Churchless

Why it makes sense to assemble your own unique spirituality

As I've noted many times before, and surely will note many times again, like right now, it took me just a few seconds back in 2004 to come up with the tag line, or slogan, that's below the title of this blog: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. 

I've never thought of changing those words, because they encapsulate what I consider to be the wisest form of spirituality. To me spirituality doesn't have anything to do with religion or supernatural stuff; it's a quest for the deeper side of life, which means it has no firm definition.

And that's the point of spiritual independence. Each of us should feel free to assemble our own unique form of spirituality.

Of course, many people don't want to do that. They prefer a ready-made religion, mystical pursuit, or whatever, just as lots of people don't want to make their own dinner, so they order takeout or pop a frozen store-bought meal in the microwave.

Which is fine. Being spiritually independent can include surrendering one's independence, if that's what seems appealing.

I enjoy reading and re-reading books about meditation, mindfulness, free will, philosophy, Buddhism, and other writings in the wonderfully vague genre of spirituality. Rarely, probably never, do I agree with everything an author says.

Heck, when I reread the books that I've written, I definitely don't agree with everything the author said, and that guy was me. The reason is that I'm constantly changing, as we all are. What struck me as profoundly meaningful at one point in my life seems absurdly wrong at another point. 

So I try to keep this in mind when I'm reading a new book that Amazon has delivered to me.

Almost certainly I'm going to find appealing much of what the author says, or I wouldn't have ordered the book. However, I also know that the author is going to say some things that will make me put a large question mark in the margin next to the offending statement.

Again, that's because spirituality is highly individualistic. Unlike science, there's no way to tell fact from fiction, reality from illusion, truth from falsehood. Rather than this being a drawback of spirituality, it's a good thing.

For the lack of standards means that every person drawn to some form of spiritual pursuit necessarily has to cobble together their own belief system, rather than having knowledge conveyed to them already fashioned via a textbook, as is the case with science.

Problem is, often people consider that their personal spiritual beliefs should be as unquestioned as a scientific fact. This is wrong. Just because someone is so confident in their beliefs, they seem akin to an objective law of nature, doesn't make that so.

It's absolutely fine to say, "I believe _____, but you're welcome to disagree." Not fine is an attitude of "I believe _____, and you should too, because it's a fact." Frequently that sentiment is justified in science. The earth is round no matter how many flat earthers claim otherwise.

But in spirituality, where we're talking about subjective meaning, not objective facts, no one has a right to demand that someone else believe as they do.

Yet this also means that no one should be barred from challenging someone else's beliefs, given that one form of spirituality my wife and I embrace (albeit in our own individual ways) is to critique dogmatic fundamentalist belief systems that wrongly claim they're 100% true.

Nothing is 100% true. Including what I just said. Every spiritual book, every spiritual teaching, every spiritual teacher -- they all include valuable gems that will be treasured by some people, as well as useless trinkets that will be rejected by other people. 

If I can find a few statements in a book or talk that ring true to me and stick in my mind, it doesn't matter if the rest of what's said strikes me as useless. I don't expect perfection in forms of spirituality because perfection doesn't exist. 

What's important to me is growth, change, open-mindedness, learning, and yes, entertainment.

I just got a new book about Buddhism that, after reading just the early pages, I can tell I disagree with some central premises of the author. However, I really liked the preface. That will stick with me. I just wish the entirety of The Art of Disappearing was written in the same style.

Here's the preface.

Do not read this book if you want to be a somebody. It will make you a nobody, a no-self.

I did not write this book. They are transcribed talks, edited with all the bad jokes removed. I did not say my bad jokes anyway. The five khandhas, which presumptively claim to be me, said them. I have the perfect alibi -- my self was absent from the scene of the crime!

This book does not tell you what you must do to get enlightened. It is not an instruction manual like Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond, which was also written by those pesky five khandhas pretending to be Ajahn Brahm. 

Doing things like following instructions just makes you more of a person. Instead, this book describes how disappearing happens in spite of you. Moreover, it is not just the "outside" that vanishes. The entire "inside," all that you take to be you, that also disappears. And that is so much fun it is sheer bliss.

The true purpose of practicing Buddhism is to let go of everything, not to get more things like attainments to show off to your friends. When we let go of something, really let go, then it disappears. We lose it. All successful meditators are losers. 

They lose their attachments. Enlightened ones lose everything. They truly are the Biggest Loser. At the very least, if you read this book and understand some of it, you may discover the meaning of freedom and, as a consequence, lose all the hair on your head!

I acknowledge the kind assistance of other nobodies, in particular Ron Storey for transcribing the talks, Ajahn Brahmali for editing the work, and all the empty beings at Wisdom Publications for publishing the book.

May you all Get Lost, 

Not really Ajahn Brahm
Perth, Australia

 

Do you agree with my Churchless Creed?

On November 23, 2004 I published my first posts on this Church of the Churchless blog.

Over the succeeding 18+ years those posts in the "Basics of our faithless faith" category still ring true to me, by and large.

I guess this shows that skepticism about dogmatic religious belief and being positive about open-minded spiritual inquiry rests on some pretty damn solid ground. But that's just my opinion.

So I thought it'd be interesting to share what I said in the Our Creedless Creed post and see if anyone has a good reason to challenge any of the points made there. I'll make some brief comments in red about how I currently view the points.

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Note: to make this Creed more readable, some qualifiers have been omitted. So "God" signifies God/ultimate reality/final truth, not just a personal divinity. And "religion" signifies religion/spiritual path/philosophy, not just a mainstream theology.

There is no objective proof that any religion knows the truth about God. If there were such proof, most people on Earth would have converted to that faith long ago and all scientists would be believers.
This seems as true today as when I said it in 2004. But I should have said, "...knows the truth about God, assuming God exists."

Spirituality thus is an individual affair. Proof of any metaphysical realities that exist will be subjective, not demonstrable to others.
Yes, provided that we realize individual proof is not only subjective, but also illusory if the subjective proof is flawed, mistaken, incomplete, or otherwise weak.

Every person has the right to pursue their own spiritual quest without interference, so long as he or she doesn't interfere with the rights of others.
Absolutely. I still heartily agree.

Since the veracity of each and every religion is unprovable, equally unprovable are the moral and ethical tenets derived from any and all religious teachings.
Still seems completely true from my atheist perspective.

Thus morality also is an individual affair. There are no absolute laws of right and wrong as there are absolute laws of physics. Subjectivity rules in ethics.
Wouldn't change a word.

Individual ethical decisions may be formed into a collective codification of societal norms, or laws. These are purely human, not divine.
I'm unclear what I meant by the initial part of the first sentence. Now I'd say "A collective codification of subjective societal norms, or laws, is purely human, not divine."

Science is the surest means of finding truth. Theory, experiment, analysis of data: such are the tools of science, whether directed toward knowing material or immaterial reality.
Basically sounds fine to me, though now I'd make the ending "...toward knowing material reality or any immaterial reality that might exist."

Religious teachings are hypotheses to be confirmed through individual research. As such, they must not be taken as gospel truth by adherents of a particular faith.
Yes.

Religious doubters, skeptics, and heretics should be honored for their efforts to assure that unproven assertions about God are not put forward as solid truth.
Absolutely, especially since I'm one of those doubters, skeptics, and heretics.

Every adherent of a particular religion should say to himself or herself,"I could be wrong." If he or she won't do this, other people can say it for them: "You could be wrong."
Yes. 

This creedless creed of the Church of the Churchless also could be wrong. It needs to be reexamined and revised regularly.
I don't want to change the original post. But maybe I should add a link to a mildly revised Creedless Creed.

Death provides the final answers (if only momentarily). The spiritual quest is to get answers ahead of time. But the big question is, "What are the questions?"
Now I'm not sure that death provides any sort of final answer, since if there is no life after death, that can't be known by dying, since knowledge belongs only to the living. This is a point that could be deleted from the Creedless Creed.

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As a final observation about this Creedless Creed, some might see a contradiction between my saying that (1) spirituality is an individual affair where evidence is subjective, and (2) unproven assertions about God shouldn't be put forward as solid truth.

I don't see any contradiction. What I was getting at here is that I have no problem with someone saying "This is what I personally experienced about... [God, the supernatural, heaven, angels, soul, divine light/sound, or whatever].

But I do have a big problem with someone claiming that their personal experience reflects an objective fact about the cosmos. To make that claim, solid demonstrable evidence would need to be provided. Which, to my knowledge, has never occurred at any time in human history. 

That's why I started off by saying, "There is no objective proof that any religion knows the truth about God."

Our Creedless Creed

Note: to make this Creed more readable, some qualifiers have been omitted. So "God" signifies God/ultimate reality/final truth, not just a personal divinity. And "religion" signifies religion/spiritual path/philosophy, not just a mainstream theology.

There is no objective proof that any religion knows the truth about God. If there were such proof, most people on Earth would have converted to that faith long ago and all scientists would be believers.

Spirituality thus is an individual affair. Proof of any metaphysical realities that exist will be subjective, not demonstrable to others.

Every person has the right to pursue their own spiritual quest without interference, so long as he or she doesn't interfere with the rights of others.

Since the veracity of each and every religion is unprovable, equally unprovable are the moral and ethical tenets derived from any and all religious teachings.

Thus morality also is an individual affair. There are no absolute laws of right and wrong as there are absolute laws of physics. Subjectivity rules in ethics.

Individual ethical decisions may be formed into a collective codification of societal norms, or laws. These are purely human, not divine.

Science is the surest means of finding truth. Theory, experiment, analysis of data: such are the tools of science, whether directed toward knowing material or immaterial reality.

Religious teachings are hypotheses to be confirmed through individual research. As such, they must not be taken as gospel truth by adherents of a particular faith.

Religious doubters, skeptics, and heretics should be honored for their efforts to assure that unproven assertions about God are not put forward as solid truth.

Every adherent of a particular religion should say to himself or herself,"I could be wrong." If he or she won't do this, other people can say it for them: "You could be wrong."

This creedless creed of the Church of the Churchless also could be wrong. It needs to be reexamined and revised regularly.

Death provides the final answers (if only momentarily). The spiritual quest is to get answers ahead of time. But the big question is, "What are the questions?"

Church symbol

[Note: This post refers to a previous Church of the Churchless symbol, shown below.]

Our church's symbol is part of the Ten Oxherding Pictures that express the essence of Zen Buddhism. This picture is number eight in the series. In the words of Kakuan Zenji, it represents an evolved Zen realization:

This "I" (person) which had been seeking, and the essential self (ox), which has been the object of our search, did not exist at all.

Click on the link above to read the whole story of the Ten Oxherding Pictures. What I like about this stage, number eight, is the emphasis on going beyond ideas about spirituality or enlightenment.

"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" Buddhists are fond of saying. And not just Buddha: also Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Lao Tzu, Guru Nanak, every spiritual teacher. And not just these people are to be killed: also the concepts that comprise the shell of their teachings. For only then can the kernel of truth be released.

All this destroying takes place entirely within our own minds, of course. The empty circle above signifies an eminently wise consciousness, one that sees things exactly as they are, not as they are conceived or imagined to be.

There is nothing more important in spirituality than maintaining an open mind. But it is difficult to loose the rigid hold with which most of us cling to familiar dogmas, theologies, belief systems, philosophies.

If deep down the universe truly is One, as both scientists and mystics say it is, then the essence of us is the essence of the cosmos. Crystal clear reality, plain and simple. To realize this, we just need to let go of what isn't real and be aware of what remains.

The science fiction author, Philip K. Dick, expressed this truth wonderfully simply:

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

How do I join?

We all want to belong.

The Church of the Churchless welcomes those who feel like they don't belong, even if they are members of an organized religion or spiritual faith.

You can be a member and not belong. You can sit through a communal service, sermon, celebration, or cermony, and still say to yourself: I don't belong here. You are going through the outward motions of what it means to be a member, but deep down you know that somewhere else is your real spiritual home.

A lot of people feel this way. No one is alone in feeling alone. The big questions we all need to ask are: What am I missing? And: Can any organization give it to me?

Every person has to come to grips with these questions by himself or herself. That said, here are my own pithy answers: Reality and No.

By "reality," I mean a direct experience of what is really, really, real--what lasts when everything else passes away. Let's call this "God" for lack of a better term.

If I am to experience God, where will this occur? Where every other experience of mine occurs: in my consciousness. The same is true for you, and for every other person on Earth. Nothing is real for us except what we consciously experience.

A religious organization provides experiences of--no surprise here--a religious organization. What else would we expect? Well, many people illogically believe that an experience of something that isn't God can substitute for the real thing. It can't. God is God. Ultimate reality is ultimate reality. Everything else is everything else.

So if you want to truly belong to God, to reality, you can't belong to anything else. For that thing will water down your experience of God to a greater or lesser degree. Usually greater, because our natural tendency is to cling tightly to the familiar rather than embrace mystery. And God is the ultimate Mystery.

Bottom line: you can join the Church of the Churchless.
Even more: you must join the Church of the Churchless if you want to know God.

But this joining is wholly within you, not without. There are no application forms to fill out, no dues to be paid, no initiation ceremonies to be gone through.

You are the Church of the Churchless. So am I. And so is everyone who wants to experience reality rather than religion, truth rather than dogma, substance rather than shadows.

Each of us must make a choice. You or I can say, "I am a Christian," "I am a Muslim," "I am a Buddhist," "I am a Hindu," "I am a Wiccan," "I am a Taoist," or whatever other faith we subscribe to at the moment.

The other option is to simply say with conviction, "I am."
Do that, and you have joined the Church of the Churchless.
Welcome. You belong. We have a lot to share.

Just have faith

Faith is wonderful.
Faith is all we need to be spiritual.
Just faith. Faith alone.
So we shouldn't have faith in anything other than pure, naked, empty faith.

What is faith stripped of thought, emotion, perception, expectation, imagination? Whatever it is, that's what we are seeking. Such is the message at the mystical core of every deep spiritual teaching. A few examples:

Christianity: "Be silent therefore, and do not chatter about God, for by chattering about him, you tell lies and commit a sin....Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding....If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance." Meister Eckhart (Selected Writings, Penguin Books)

Judaism/Kabbalah: "God is not what we think It is. God is not a thing, a being, a noun....Jewish mystics often refer to It as Ein Sof, which means Endlessness....Ein Sof precedes thought and it even precedes the Nothingness out of which thought is born. Nothingness is viewed as a level of awareness that is the result of the 'annhilation of thought.'" Rabbi David Cooper (God is a Verb, Riverhead Books)

Islam/Sufism: "Anything that has a beginning and an end is a 'shell.'...There is more to the pronouncement of faith than what is said with the tongue because it too has a beginning and an end....We know then that the 'soul' of prayer is not only its external form but also a state of total absorption and unconsciousness during which all these external forms, for which there is no room, remain outside." Rumi (Discourses of Rumi, Threshold Books)

Buddhism: "If you want to reach the other shore of existence, give up what is before, behind, and in between. Set your mind free, and go beyond birth and death....I have conquered myself and live in purity. I know all. I have left everything behind, and live in freedom. Having taught myself, to whom shall I point as teacher?" Teachings of the Buddha (The Dhammapada, Nilgiri Press)

Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered. Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

This is the faith Henry David Thoreau speaks of in Walden:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living it so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the Devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'" (Where I Lived, and What I Lived For chapter)

Such is a scientific faith, a faith that does not foreclose in advance any possibility about what reality may consist of, a faith not in the unproven pronouncements of some supposedly holy person or book but in one's own direct experience of divinity--or direct non-experience, as the case may be.

Still, there is nothing wrong with belief, so long as our beliefs remain subservient to reality. When reality extends its hand, we should be able to happily surrender even our most cherished beliefs. This will not be difficult if our faith is in the rightness of whatever spiritual experiment we have chosen to undertake, and not in the surety of realizing a particular outcome.

A material scientist adjusts his beliefs, or hypotheses, in accordance with the results of his experiments. He does not design an experiment to produce certain desired findings, for this would not be science. The scientific method is what a scientist has firm faith in; everything else is provisional until proven.

Similarly, the height of spirituality is to just have faith.
Faith that reality is better than any and all beliefs.
Faith that the ultimate reality we may call "God" will be reflected in an open mind...but not a closed one.

Spiritual non-practice

"Practice makes perfect." Usually a true slogan.
But not when it comes to perfecting spirituality.
Here at the Church of the Churchless we don't believe in spiritual practice.
We believe in spiritual non-practice. Let me explain.

Practicing basketball isn't going to make you a practiced piano player. You have to practice the activity you want to become good at, not some other activity. But is this what most members of religions and supposedly spiritual paths do?

No, they assiduously practice worldliness, not spirituality. Don't be deceived by the outward appearance of religiosity; a bank robber wearing a nun's habit as a disguise isn't saintly. Look to the essence of the activity itself.

What does every person do each day regardless of his or her spiritual inclinations? Feel emotions. Think thoughts. Undertake actions. Feeling, thinking, acting: these are the three voluntary (or semi-voluntary) activities of everyday worldly existence (perceiving is mostly passive, as our senses perceive whether we want them to or not, a fact I'm reminded of each time I visit the dentist).

Some people are more inclined to feeling, others to thinking, still others to acting. Recognizing this, the ancient Hindu sages matched up a spiritual activity, or "yoga," with each of these worldly activities. Bhakti yoga leads to God through love. Gyana yoga leads to God through knowledge. Karma yoga leads to God through selfless action.

Love, knowledge, action. These aren't just spiritual choices for Hindus. Everyone--Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Wiccan, whatever--has to decide how their spirituality will be practiced.

But if all you have to choose between is feeling, thinking, and acting, then you're bound to continue practicing what you already know how to do. If you suspect that your spiritual practice is keeping you stuck, you're absolutely right. How can anything new be experienced when you are doing the same old things?

A Christian feels sorrow when he imagines Jesus dying on the cross. And also when his favorite sports team loses a championship series. A Muslim thinks about what she reads in the Koran. And also about what she reads in the newspaper. A Jew does charitable work through his temple. And also volunteers at his child's public school.

Those whose spirituality is limited to feeling, thinking, and acting aren't engaged in any special godly activity. They're just doing almost exactly what they always do and calling it "religious." But it isn't. Not really.

For the root meaning of "religion" is found in the Latin religare, to bind back, or reconnect, the individual with God. If the everyday activities of life could achieve this reconnecting with ultimate reality, we'd all become saints just by living. Yet obviously this doesn't happen.

Genuine spirituality means taking a course opposite to worldly ways. Practice makes us imperfect when it comes to realizing God if we merely keep on practicing how to feel, think, and act. These activities are just baby steps that don't get us very far. What we need is a single great stride that bridges the gap between what we now falsely believe we are, and what in truth we are.

This great stride is the fourth way of the Hindu sages, Raj yoga, the path of meditation. Again, it isn't just for Hindus. There also have been, and are, countless Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other sorts of contemplatives. Deepak Chopra says the fourth path is inclusive:

By following it you are actually following all four at once. Your meditations go directly to the essence of your being. That essence is what love of God, selfless action, and knowledge are trying to reach....The spiritual secret that applies here is this: What you seek, you already are. Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source and realize who you are. ("The Book of Secrets," pp. 42, 48)

Eventually the Church of the Churchless will contain sermons that preach the power and the glory of self-realization through meditation. This is much more a spiritual non-practice than a practice. The less you feel, think, and do, the more you realize higher truths.

Nobody has said it better than an anonymous fourteenth century English country parson: ("The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works," Penguin Classics, pp. 142-144)

...One can feel this nothing more easily than see it, for it is completely dark and hidden to those who have only just begun to look at it. Yet, to speak more accurately, it is overwhelming spiritual light that blinds the soul that is experiencing it, rather than actual darkness or the absence of physical light.

...Work hard and with all speed in this nothing and this nowhere, and put on one side your outward physical ways of knowing and going about things, for I can truly tell you that this sort of work cannot be understood by such means.