Wonders never cease

An intensive course on Asian religions opened up a whole new world for cultural Christian DAN SIMPSON

Earlier this month I completed a course on Asian religions at the Chautauqua Institution, taught by a well-informed, skillful teacher, Jeannette Ludwig of the University of Buffalo. Classes dealt with Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, a tall order for five days.

My own personal religious background could be only described as sketchy, intermittent, and sometimes inclined toward attention to local gods. In the course at Chautauqua, I was particularly interested in Hinduism and Buddhism. I know a certain amount about Islam already, having lived for years in Libya, Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, each with significant Muslim populations.

I started out as a child attending my father’s church, the Christian Church or Disciples of Christ. I never joined because it believed in baptism by immersion, and, despite persistent invitations to come forward, the idea of being dunked in front of the congregation left me cold — and dry. Then I suffered a miraculous conversion to Presbyterianism when the local church started a boys’ choir. I switched over, basically to sing. In college, I didn’t go at all. When I taught in an Anglican school in Nigeria after graduation, one of my duties was to take prayers once a week. I love the Anglican/ Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, especially, “That the hope of the poor not be taken away.” My wives have been Episcopalian to varying degrees.

Asian religions as presented by Professor Ludwig were full of wonders for me. I can see why, for believers, any one of the three could become a “be all and end all.” There are four rules of a religion. First, God is in charge. Second, concomitantly, you are not the center of the universe. Third, you are responsible for your actions. Fourth, the universe is orderly. Nice thoughts. The universe is not orderly, by the way, in my view. If there is one, I see God acting sometimes as a naughty boy stepping on ants on a hot sidewalk.

With respect to Islam, a religion that Americans have become obliged to understand to some extent, Professor Ludwig explained the differences among Sunnis, Shi’a, Alawites, Sufis, Salafis and Wahabis. Muslims operate with a different line of history from Christians. Islam started in 622 A.D. in the Arabian peninsula. Mohammed died in 632. The Arabs took Jerusalem in 638. The Christian Crusades began in 1095. The fuss in France over what Muslim women can wear on the beach is silly, according to me, although the idea of France as a secular society goes way back and is

rooted in bloody ground.

Dearborn, Mich., is the American city with the largest Muslim population. American Muslims number 5 million to 7 million and are growing as an electoral element. Muslims are expected to give to charity 2.5 percent of the wealth they accumulate in a given year, usually during Ramadan, the month of fasting. The big question remains, who speaks for Islam? Then, we could also ask, who speaks for Christianity? Or does anyone?

Hinduism is also fascinating, and equally important for Americans to understand. (Have you wandered out to Monroeville in the past few years?) India is 80 percent Hindu. Its population is four times America’s, living in one-third of the area. We are — or, let’s say, I was — full of mistaken ideas about Hinduism. It is not polytheistic. The gods we see in the temples are symbols, not unlike the saints we see in Christian churches and windows. Hindus do not worship cows, but cows are seen as one step away from rebirth as a person as well as a very useful animal in rural India, for everything except its meat. I’ll refrain from comment on Americans’ and Europeans’ attitudes toward dogs and cats, kept out of the cooking pot.

The theology of the Hindu faith is enormously complex. When I asked Professor Ludwig, after she tried to explain it to the class, whether most Hindus understood it, she said certainly not. We asked about castes, India’s faith-based class system. It, according to her, is breaking down in India’s cities, but still dictates, roughly, that Indians should not eat with or marry outside the one of the four castes or the fifth “untouchables” group that they are born into. The social mobility that lies at the core of Americans’ ideas of economic inequality would be very difficult to carry out in India. Then, again, try J.D. Vance’s new memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” to look at American society in that regard.

Buddhism caught my interest most of all, because of the world’s religions, I know least about it. A recent trip to Southeast Asia, including to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, taught me that there are three schools of it — Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism — with each prevailing in one or more countries or other. The first question, what is the difference? In Theravada Buddhism, the way of the elders, the original Buddhism, the monks meditate. In Mahayana, the monks and the lay population meditate. Vajrayana Buddhism is Tibetan Buddhism. The Theravada are strongest in the countries closest to India. Buddhism is derived to a degree from Hinduism. The Mahayana are found nearer China.

Buddhism does not have castes, an important difference from Hinduism. Nor is man believed to have an eternal soul, unlike Hinduism and Christianity. The quest is for enlightenment, the abnegation of self. Forget about fame, “huge fortunes” and “trust babies.” Instead of passages from the Bible, preceded on “The Greatest Story Ever Told” by heavenly chords, Buddha’s teachings begin with a much more modest, “Thus have I heard.” A Buddhist living a good life can build up “merits.” There are also little devils, called “nats,” around, a bit like Nordic trolls.

Vajrayana Buddhism will face a crisis when the current Dalai Lhama passes away and the Chinese try — as they probably will — to mess around with the succession. He has lived outside of Tibet, in India, since 1959. The services of the “nats” will be seriously required at that point.

I can easily see the use of all of these faiths and their variations in dealing with the realities of the lives of the people of the countries where they are extant. Each one, with the possible exception of rigid Hindu attachment to castes, puts forward an approach to life than can result in reasonable behavior.

My own “credo,” what I consider to be reasonable behavior, is, more or less, don’t kill people, enable them to lead a decent life — rising above “economic inequality” — and live in tolerance with their differences. Right now I am thinking fondly of Gandhi’s first deadly sin, “politics without principle,” and the god Shiva dancing with his foot on the demon “ignorance.”