[Buddha-l] the advent of the meditation machine?

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007 00:19, Joy Vriens wrote:

> Perhaps before looking for its roots, we could determine what are those
> "religious feelings" and what exactly is religion?

Religious feelings include such things as the urge to stop thinking, to vote 
for people who promise to protect everyone from imagined dangers, and to turn 
over more of one's money than one can afford to an organization that builds 
monuments to conspicuous consumption. (As a native speaker of Dutch, Joy, you 
may not have heard of conspicuous consumption. It means being obviously 
afflicted with tuberculosis.)

> Or perhaps it would be 
> easier and simpler to discuss what religion is not. For starters, I would
> suggest religion is NOT spirituality.

That goes without saying. If ever there was a word in search of a meaning, it 
is "spirituality." As far as I can tell, it has no meaning at all and 
therefore applies to nothing. So if spirituality is nothing at all, then 
surely it cannot be what religion is.

> (Still traumatised after walking into York cathedral and seeing statues of
> admirals and ex-voto dedicated to the British colonial army siding
> undistinguishably with saints and other religious figures).

I know what you mean. I'm still trying to recover from being born in a country 
where children are taught to worship the flag and where heavy-jowled 
non-denominational Protestant preachers sweatingly shout in huge churches 
packed with thousands of slobbering and quivering faithful that it is every 
Christian's duty to urge their political representatives to bomb Iran (with 
nuclear weapons if necessary) and to support Israel so that Jesus will come 
and send all those Jews to hell and to turn in professors who preach peace. 
(Peace, you see, is a major threat, since it could delay Armageddon and thus 
the "second" coming of Christ. It would be the second coming, of course, only 
for those who believe there was a first coming.) For those of you who are not 
familiar with waht I'm talking about, there was a good program on it 
recently. See http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/profile.html

As some guy from Minnesota once said "It's easy to see without looking too far 
that not much is really sacred." (It's no accident that the word "sacred" is 
an anagram of "scared." Religion is socially sanctioned fear. Religious 
feelings are located in the adrenaline glands. And that pretty much tells the 
whole story.)

-- 
Richard Pea Hayes
Dangerously Unpatriotic Professor
Department of Philosophy
Member of Religious Studies Council
University of New Mexico
http://dayamati.blogspot.com