Here’s a frequently told story about Hillel, one of the most influential historical figures in Judaism:
Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: “Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.” – Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
Compare that account to this well known hadith of Muhammad, who founded Islam:
A Bedouin came to the prophet, grabbed the stirrup of his camel and said: O the messenger of God! Teach me something to go to heaven with it. Prophet said: “As you would have people do to you, do to them; and what you dislike to be done to you, don’t do to them. Now let the stirrup go! [This maxim is enough for you; go and act in accordance with it!]” - Kitab al-Kafi, vol. 2, p. 146
The Golden Rule occurs in just about every major religion. But the similarity is interesting: A stranger confronts a wise man. The wise man replies with the Golden Rule, then advises the man to go and learn the rest.
I wonder what other religions and cultures explain the Golden Rule in this way, too…
Ok, technically, Professor Roberto Unger calls them “the 3 religious orientations to the world”.
In his view, the major religious traditions fall into one of 3 groups. These groups have separate and distinct ways to understand our world and our individual and collective purposes within.
I came upon his theory in the below YouTube video and had the proverbial mind-blown moment (actually, moments, very plural) and was compelled to share:
I can only give a very simple, laymen’s description of his system, but I think you’ll find it fascinating.
The 3 orientations are:
1. Overcoming the world = Buddhism
2. Humanizing the world = Confucianism
3. Struggling with the world = Christianity
Or as I think of them:
Buddhism = Air (floats away, detaches, avoids)
Confucianism = Water (works around, negotiates, softens)
Christianity = Fire (changes, transforms, engages)
Buddhism teaches you to overcome the world. Buddha thinks the ultimate goal of a person’s life is to go beyond the world, to detach and remove yourself and rise above the suffering, the emotions, the vicissitudes of daily existence. Through this process you will reach nirvana. That’s why I compared Buddhism to air. It floats, it’s there, but you can hardly feel it.
Confucianism humanizes the world. What matters to Confucius is our society and its system of roles and responsibilities, created and maintained by us. There are 5 big roles in Confucian thinking: parent-child, older sibling-younger sibling, ruler-subject, husband-wife, and older friend-younger friend. What gives life purpose and meaning is to perform our given roles as well as we can. In a sense, life is a play, and our job is to know our character’s responsibilities and perform them well. That’s why I see Confucianism as water. It’s about flow and harmony and respect.
Christianity struggles with the world. Professor Unger believes this orientation (if not Christianity itself) will grow in prominence relative to the previous two. Struggling with the world is about effort, engagement, and conflict. It says, life can be better, but it is up to us to make it so. That’s why I see this orientation as fire: fire transforms, fire burns hot, fire can destroy a forest but in so doing can also nurture life and provide warmth and cook food.
So if we think about the world’s enduring religions, where do Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism fit in? I didn’t even know people saw Confucianism as a religion or a spiritual orientation, but I’m sure Professor Unger has a good answer to that. I should ask him…
PS. An update on the above question, straight from Unger’s book draft: The struggle with the world has spoken in two voices. One voice is sacred: that of the Semitic salvation religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The other voice is profane: that of the secular projects of liberation. These projects have included the political programs of liberalism, socialism, and democracy as well as the romantic movement, especially the global popular romantic culture, with its message of the godlike dignity of ordinary men and women and the unfathomable depth and reach of their experience.
I wanted to share some conclusions from this Pew Research report on the world’s religions:
Islam is catching up to Christianity and, if present demographic trends persist (an important “if”), Muslims will become the world’s largest religious population before the 22nd century.
Among the major religions, Hinduism and Christianity will keep pace with population growth, while Buddhism and Judaism will decline.
The unaffiliated (including agnostics and atheists and the spiritual but not religious) will grow in America and Western Europe, but will actually decline as a percentage of the world’s population. It’s driven, in part, by two realities: we’re older, and we have fewer children. In the bubble that is my social and career circles we assume that the world is leaving religion, that atheism is winning, that to some degree people are ‘coming to their senses’. The numbers say otherwise. And I believe that’s a good thing. I’ll explain why in future posts.
This note was also interesting:
China’s 1.3 billion people (as of 2010) loom very large in global trends. At present, about 5% of China’s population is estimated to be Christian, and more than 50% is religiously unaffiliated. Because reliable figures on religious switching in China are not available, the projections do not contain any forecast for conversions in the world’s most populous country. But if Christianity expands in China in the decades to come – as some experts predict – then by 2050, the global numbers of Christians may be higher than projected, and the decline in the percentage of the world’s population that is religiously unaffiliated may be even sharper.
Plato, speaking philosophically for Greek religion, presents the body as a tomb. The Hebrew Scriptures contrast the created world with a holy, righteous, transcendent Lord. For Hinduism the world is maya, only marginally real. The Buddha likened the world to a burning house from which escape is imperative. An apocryphal account has Jesus saying, “The world is a bridge; pass over, but build no house upon it.” The Koran compares the world to vegetation that will be quickly harvested or turn to straw.
And yet, as different as they might appear, all religions surface the same underlying reality:
Things are more integrated than they seem, they are better than they seem, and they are more mysterious than they seem; something like this emerges as the highest common denominator of the wisdom traditions’ reports.
“A Question of Membership” is a case study published by Harvard’s Pluralism Project.
It describes a Zen Buddhist Priest’s efforts to become a member of a Reform synagogue in New York and is a fascinating story of personal faith, pluralism and its tensions, and how hard choices are made within Judaism.
Part A describes the initial meetings between Sherry Chayat, who was raised in a Jewish family and later became a Zen Buddhist priest, and Rabbi Sheldon Ezring of Temple Concord.
“One of the problems with being a Rabbi, and especially a Reform rabbi, is people think you can say ‘yes’ to everything, so you can’t say ‘yes’ to everything.” He explained, “I’ve had people come to me to convert, and I ask, ‘You’re Christian, so do you believe in Jesus as the Messiah?’ And they say ‘Yes,’ and they say, ‘I still want to convert.'” Ezring added: “And I have to say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, I can’t help you, because belief in Jesus as the Messiah is what makes you a Christian.'”
He added: “She was a Jew practicing Buddhism, and she wasn’t only practicing Buddhism, she considered herself a Buddhist priestess. If you are a priestess, you’re not practicing a philosophy, you’re practicing a religion.”
Part B details the advice Rabbi Ezring received from the CCAR, the American governing organization for Reform Judaism, and Rabbi Ezring’s ultimate decision and his reflections on that decision.
To be sure, there is no conflict between Judaism and meditative practices — after all, Jewish tradition itself is familiar with it. But we see a conflict when it comes to the world-affirming view we hold and that of a world-denying Buddhism.
One of his current congregants wrote a book about meditation, and recently led a Moon Rite, yet Ezring doesn’t raise the issue. “I don’t want to get involved in those issues at this point in my life, because I’ve passed the stage I want to fight every windmill. I’m just, I’m not Don Quixote these days.”
Part C covers Sherry Chayat’s life and upbringing and her reaction to being denied membership in Temple Concord. Today she is a major figure in American Buddhism.
“I would sit outside next to a tree and just let everything go, and kind of allow a river to flow through me. And I felt at one, at peace, and outside of the little bubble of misery that I had been in.”
“And to be a Zen priest means that I have given my life to this practice of Zen, of meditation, of waking up and of helping others to do the same. It doesn’t go against Judaism. And some people say, ‘Well, do you believe in God?’ Well, I believe in what we might call the ground of being or the ultimate or the supreme wisdom. I don’t have to call it God but I can call it God. It doesn’t bother me to call it God.
A fascinating study. I believe there is some truth to many if not all faiths, and powerful unifying themes among them. If you know of other resources like this, please let me know. Thanks for reading!