Talk:Folk religion/Comments

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Religious Distinctions: Wordly Meaningful or Meaningless?

Segmentations of religions have taken place within the academic arena for quite sometimes but are these seemingly intelligent formulations representative of the religious nature? A simple question such as” What is Buddhism?” or “”What is Taoism?” has attracted numerous researches and debate for decades. Hitherto, there is still no universal consensus thereto. This, often than not, led to the terminologies of “Religious”, “Philosophical”, “Orthodox”, and “Folk” Buddhism and Taoism and etc. What are the values behind these segmentations? Personally, I am of the view that such distinctions are generally meaningless because they do not reflect the true nature of the holistic subjects under study; rather they merely create a divide within a faith.

A religion is a system of belief that involves elements of faith and self-transformation of which are paramount ingredients thereto. People seek refuge in religion for a variety of reasons, ranging from cultivation to seeking protection during bad times. In other words, it gives us comfort and hope. In this sense a religion is a belief system with a set of comfort values that may not be conclusively and scientifically proven as right or wrong, or rather true or false. Religious essence is further reinforced through rituals that may either be conscious, subconscious, or even unconscious.

Rituals are often thought to be mystical or superstitious which in actual fact they are not necessarily so. Rituals are holistic acts, not necessarily having to be sorcery, even it be the latter, it is a matter of preferred practice. The simple daily Buddhist ritual include kneeling before Lord Buddha and other divine beings, bowing with a five point posture, and reciting of the mantras. Or alternatively, the lighting of joss-sticks, holding them up to our foreheads, lowering them to our chests, and finally placing them into the joss incenser. Or it could be a combination of both the afore-stated. Furthermore, when offerings of flowers, fruits, and food are made, they are equally acts of rituals.

On the other hand, philosophy is a set of thoughts that may be translated into values which may or may not be applied in our lives. This set of thoughts may be thoughts of our own or those of others that we pick up from some theories, doctrines, and etc. and uphold as correct and thus affianced. Therefore, for example, the teachings of Lord Buddha would be a form of “applied philosophy” by which we uphold, applied to our lives, and through which we hope to improve. The distinction between a philosophy and a religion is at times obscured as many people are incapable of differentiating them, and indeed they have no way of differentiating them when religion becomes entrenched as part of their lives, which is why some would say that Buddhism or Taoism is a way of life. However, in actual fact, philosophy is that set of thoughts and ideas and may or may not be applied to our behavior whilst Buddhism is and should be very much our behavior (I am referring to Buddhists in this instance)!

Religion, Buddhism in this instance, with rich philosophical values is translated into two primary courses, namely thoughts and actions. Like Taoism, Buddhism espouses practice that unconsciously or subconsciously becomes “a way of life”, and that makes us a Buddhist. When people wished to be called a Buddhist but are not ready to acknowledge the religious essence, I would not argue that they are not, but I would simply say that they are non-religious members of a religion and vice versa. I therefore see no reason for such unnecessary delineations.

Chen LongFa 06:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC)