PUTNEY — I don't remember at what age I made the unilateral decision to abandon the notion of God as the ethereal benefactor up in the sky.
I was past my teen years at least. I know because at the precocious age of 12, I informed my devout Episcopalian parents that I was ready to be confirmed.
And so began confirmation classes at St. John's Anglican Church in our small Nova Scotia town. I remember kneeling before the bishop as he blessed me and intoned prayers I have long since forgotten.
The cross I received as a confirmation gift from my aunt - also my godmother - is long gone. I now wear a gold Thai pendant with the image of the Buddha around my neck.
I love the Buddhist religion and the central premise that attachment causes suffering. Even attachment to religion causes suffering. As Gandhi so wisely remarked, “God has no religion.”
* * *
I was introduced to Eastern religions in college by my precocious boyfriend, an acid-dropping rebel whose high priest was either Timothy Leary or Ram Dass, depending on the day. He also read anything written by Richard Bach.
I remember asking him about death once, about how he could be so glib about it. Death, according to church doctrine, is serious business. Wouldn't he grieve horribly when his parents died? I wanted to know. Even thinking about my own parents' demise scared me witless.
“No, I'll be psyched for them,” he responded in his characteristic California surfer-dude aplomb.
“Why?” I demanded incredulously. (I mean, wasn't this sacrilege?)
“Because it will mean they've gone onto a higher plane,” he responded nonchalantly.
It made no sense. What plane was that, I wondered? And how on earth did one reach it?
As I grew older, I became disenchanted with the singing of hymns, the yawn-fest of sermons, and the rote repetition of the Apostles' Creed, which I had once prided myself on reciting whole, from memory, though I always categorically refused to say the part about “being unworthy enough to gather up the crumbs from under [thy] table.” (After all, if this fellow was “the same God,” why on earth did I have to grovel after his crumbs?)
I found I had gradually become a lapsed Episcopalian. The occasional Easter and Christmas would find me sitting in a pew or kneeling on the prayer bench, but more and more I felt like an empty, prayer-regurgitating robot.
The words coming from my mouth were worse than rote rhetoric; they were hollow and empty.
At some point I ventured to ask myself: “What is it that I really believe? Because it sure as hell isn't this.”
* * *
Evangelical Christians tend to bandy the word believer about as though it's an exclusive club to which one must gain ritual entrance, usually by following an ornate set of increasingly complex (and, to my mind, often inane) rules.
If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, why do so many people who call themselves Christians sanction the summary execution of death-row inmates, the barbaric invasion of so-called “terrorist-harboring nations” (with the accompanying and heartless bloodshed of innocent civilians and children), and the cold-blooded, point-blank murder of abortion doctors?
Why is it that the highly misunderstood notion of “Christian charity,” which was never sanctioned by Jesus to be an exclusive old-boys' club, is extended so narrowly and guarded so jealously?
Why, indeed, do so many Christians fear and revile those who appear so different - on the face of it, at least - from themselves?
The answers vary from sect to sect, but share a generic commonality. Jesus, as redeemer and savior, obviously must be a white, Christian male with a rigid, matched set of white, Christian values.
This is the prevailing view, at least, despite overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary. The historical Jesus was, in fact, an ancient Palestinian and more than likely dark of skin. Chances are good that he more closely resembled Yassir Arafat than Glen Beck.
Unfortunately, the warped picture of Jesus' historical person, along with other so-called “literal” interpretations of the Bible, tend to ring with a suspicious twinge of falseness and chicanery.
Further, in message and deed, the Jesus of the New Testament more closely resembles Siddhartha Gautama (who proceeded him by 200 years) than, say, Pat Robertson.
Similarly misunderstood is the profound meaning behind Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.” These words extend far beyond the scope of a limited, ephemeral person.
Indeed, because all separation is in fact an illusion, the actual message behind this psalm has been grossly distorted to a crass fraction of its profound, eternal meaning.
God did not mean: “Be quiet, little insignificant serfs, and listen to my rattling thunder.”
Rather, God meant: “Only when you are still can you know that you are God. The God that resides within every human, animal and mineral. The God with whom we are all one. When the silence speaks and the stillness becomes profound, illusion dissolves and you will know God. You will know God as the breathtaking, uncaused joy within.”
* * *
For years, my close friends had called me an “honorary Buddhist,” based on my philosophical nature and the wisdom I occasionally imparted. Although I hadn't read much Buddhist philosophy, any time I encountered a wise koan (or profound, equivocal statement), I soon learned that Buddha nature played a role.
Years later, standing in the broiling heat of a North Indian day, I shook the hand of the most influential living Buddhist leader of this century. In that timeless, eternal moment, I experienced one of the most profound, beautiful shifts in consciousness I have ever felt in my life. There was no grandiosity about this man, nothing fabricated or false.
He was the Dalai Lama, but also (as he has said many times himself) a diminutive Buddhist monk, slight of stature and unremarkable. A mere mortal who betrayed not the slightest trace of falseness or folly.
Instead, his face betrayed a joyous, infectious - childlike, even - love of the world and the strangers he was greeting.
This welling, overflowing joy came not from some force field beyond, beneath, or below him. Instead, it came directly from the very depth of his soul.
In the moment the Dalai Lama grasped my hand - his smiling, overjoyed face looking in mine - I knew at last that God is not, nor has it ever been, something external. What seemed to emanate purely from him was, in fact, the answer of my own joyous soul, responding to the enlightened power of his presence.
There was no exchange or words between us, no verbal communication of any kind. And yet, I felt more powerfully moved by his sheer presence than by any words he could have uttered.
And I knew this: God touches us, but we also touch God.
* * *
God is the stillness of being, the simple uncaused joy within. We only perceive it as something outside ourselves because of our illusory belief in the nature of separation, the “minimal ser” or “infinitesimal being” that Pablo Neruda wrote of so eloquently.
If we cannot hear God, perhaps it is because we have our ear pressed up against the wrong door.
Before we can hope to open this door, we must first find its portal. And the secret of the portal is this: there is no separation between us and it. It waits for us patiently, throughout eternity.
It waits for the seeker to become the found.