We Are A Blend Of Dust And

First Of All, My Persuasion Is What Really Breeds Violence Is Political Differences. But Because Religion Serves As The Soul Of Community, It Gets Drawn Into The Fracas And Turns Up The Heat.

A Religion Made Up Solely Of Heightened Religious Experiences Would Not Be A Religion At All. ...the Major Religious Traditions Address The Mysteries (with Or Without Entheogens), But They Have Other Business To Do: Widen Understanding, Give Meaning, Provide Solace, Promote Loving-kindness, And Connect Human Being To Human Being.

Historically, Religion Has Given People Another World To Live In, A World More Adaptive To The Human Spirit. As A Student Of World Religions, I See Religion As The Winnower Of The Wisdom Of The Human Race. Of Course, Not Everything About These Religions Is Wise. Their Social Patterns, For Example - Master-slave, Caste, And Gender Relations - Have Been Adopted From The Mores Of Their Time. But In Their View Of The Nature Of Reality, There Is Nothing In Either Modernity Or Postmodernity That Rivals Them.

When I Read The Upanishads, Which Are Part Of Vedanta, I Found A Profundity Of Worldview That Made My Christianity Seem Like Third Grade.

We Are Free When We Are Not The Slave Of Our Impulses, But Rather Their Master. Taking Inward Distance, We Thus Become The Authors Of Our Own Dramas Rather Than Characters In Them.