It was beginning to dawn on me just how much I expect from myself and others, and just how unrealistic those expectations are. This leads to so many problems. I don't really get angry anymore, but I realised I do get frustrated heaps. And I realised much of these frustrations stem from the many ideals I hold onto.

When I fail to meet expectations I set out for myself, in my mind it's as if I've fallen below the minimum benchmark needed to be a good human being. As a result, there's a lot of guilt, self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness. And not to mention the anxiety and agitation which disturbs the mind, like with many other defilements. My mind fixates on the thing, obsesses and ruminates over it. With guilt, it's the repeated reliving of the past that is so bothersome. Fixating on the 'I should have' or 'I shouldn't have' aspects.

I think all this conditioning comes from the environment and culture we're exposed to as kids. I for one have always been very afraid of making mistakes and getting scolded. I was always very obedient for that reason, doing things absolutely right. That's probably where it began -- but I can't even remember at what point I developed such an intense guilt problem; it's just spiraled out of control and at some point the suffering became too much so I had to learn to contain it.

Here are a few important things I've learned from this.

The way it is

During one of my crazy guilt episodes, I listened to this talk by Ajahn Jayasaro. He said something which has stuck with me ever since:

"If we look at ourselves in the past and say, "How could I have done such a stupid thing?" You just have aversion towards yourself. But that is the height of foolishness, isn't it? Because what you're really saying is, "How could I have been that person on that particular day? I should have been somebody else. I should have been a different person. I should have been a better person. I should have been more kind, I should have been more aware." But what could be more foolish than that – to think that you should be somebody else? You are who you are because of all the causes and conditions that have led up to the present moment and you were who you were on that particular occasion because of all the causes and conditions that came into play on that particular day. So recognising things at play, very complex streams of causes and conditions, then we use wisdom to enter into that flow of causes and conditions, and to deal with it in those areas, on those levels at which we are presently capable of doing so."

It's so liberating thinking this way!

This relates to the idea of the way things are -- tathātā or 'suchness'. Things are the way they are because they are meant to be. That's it.

One of my Dhamma uncles here in Melbourne gives this beautiful example. As a father, he would always go to his kids' music recitals. Kids, being beginners at their musical instruments, don't play the most pleasant music. But one day this uncle had the realisation that it is all perfect. Everything about the music was perfect; not in the sense that it was the most perfect-sounding, pleasing tune to the ears -- he was not deluding himself further -- but that it was perfect in that it all sounded how it was meant to sound. The causes and conditions leading up to the instruments being played that way, to produce those sounds, were all there in place. So in that sense, the music was perfect.

I find this is the way to peace, to really accept things as they are. It's not like having anger arise and trying to be okay with it by suppressing it, but knowing, as Ajahn Sumedho always says, "Right now, it's like this." That knowing is very powerful, because there is no judging, no resistance to the reality of the now, no expectation for the moment to be what it is not. It's powerful because we are in tune with reality, with the Dhamma. We are not fighting with it.

There is so much to learn just from this one simple teaching that I don't even know how to begin talking about it (and I'm not saying I'm perfect at understanding things this way but) -- it's huge! The realisation that things are meant to be the way that they are. Who would have thought!

Mettā for all conditions

But then there is the question: how do we progress if we just let things be? How can we improve if we just accept the way things are?

What I've learned is that there's probably nothing more damaging than to approach something with the intention to change it, to try to make it something it's not. We all understand this - imagine you're 30 years old and your parents tell you your job is not good enough, you need to get married, you need to have kids, etc etc etc. Those things are the last things on your mind; it's just not the time!

A very wise Ajahn once said, "Dtong mee jungwa -- we have to be sensitive to the rhythm and timing of things to do them correctly. We clearly can't force many of these issues, but we have to be ready to move when the timing becomes right."

With acceptance of the way it is, we create a lot of space, to breathe, to look, to learn, to understand, to grow. Flowers have never bloomed from the sun yelling at them to hurry up; flowers bloom when springtime comes. Like the Buddha said, it's all a gradual process.

This is mettā, isn't it? It's often translated as 'loving-kindness', which is unconditional love, gentleness, goodwill, kindness, etc. But what I've learned from listening to Ajahn Sumedho is that mettā is really just acceptance with the way things are. That's what love, gentleness, goodwill and kindness is, isn't it? When you can accept anything as it is, not trying to change it, resist it, judge it. Just allowing it into conscious awareness. There's lots of space around it, whatever it is. Giving it the space to be what it is.

That's so important because that acceptance is how we teach ourselves to get to know suffering and our defilements. We must first make friends with it, not push it away... which a lot of people (including me, of course) do! We tend to do it because we don't like how it feels, it's not a pleasant state of mind, we feel uncomfortable. But the First Noble Truth is to know there is suffering. If we don't look at suffering, how will we ever get to know it? If we don't get to know it, how will we ever overcome it?

A few months back, I started having these freak unwholesome thoughts which were driving me crazy. They were really unpleasant and I got so anxious and frustrated when they arose -- I didn't know what to do. I tried avoiding them by suppression -- of course that doesn't work, they just come back stronger. I couldn't just look at them and let them pass because I had fear towards these thoughts. Nothing I did worked because all I was doing was trying to control them and obviously that's impossible because, the Buddha, the Ajahns, the kalyana-mittas, have all said time and time again, they are not ours. They just arise and pass away based on the causes and conditions that come into place -- you don't get to decide when they arise and when they pass away. But no, I couldn't understand that -- I identified too much with the thinking process.

During one of my freak-out sessions I went to Damian, and he said, first of all, have mettā for whatever it is; you are not your thoughts and feelings second...
Two very important things among other things he said. But the thing that got me was when he said, "This is the best thing you've told me so far" and I was like ????

He said it was because I would have to look directly at the experience and learn from it. When I did that, I would overcome it and I would be able to help people in the future who have the same experience. This was something so telling coming from him, because he's been through heaps, and that's why he was so compassionate and understanding.

Then he said something which I keep in my heart:

"... [a story about Ajahn Sumedho dealing with difficulties] He learned a lot from it and it seems you are also! That is the point of the path! So thank these things for happening! It's forcing you to investigate! Don't feel guilty, feel grateful!! Such a great opportunity!"

There's so much wisdom (and exclamation marks hahaha) in this statement! Whatever phenomena that arises is meant to arise -- whether now or later. If it arises now, you have the opportunity to explore it and overcome it, no matter how unpleasant it is. So don't feel guilty that this defilement has appeared in your mind, feel grateful that it has revealed itself - you have the chance to deal with it sooner rather than later! It's such a positive way of approaching problems. Thank you, Damooooo!

It reminds me of something in Ayya Khemā's book, Be An Island:

"Everything we do is an exercise and a challenge. This is our purpose as human beings, our only reason for being here. We use the time on our little planet for learning and growing. We should think of our life as an adult education class. Any other life purpose is mistaken."

Having this attitude is so important -- otherwise, where is joy? To see failures or difficulties as just roadblocks and burdens is to miss the point of life, which is to learn.

Remembering that the world is dukkha

As I said before, because of having lots of ideals and expectations from myself, the slightest mistakes that I made would make me feel very guilty. For example, if I didn't fulfill a promise, I would basically go crazy, thinking the very worst of myself. I think for many people it's pretty easy to forgive themselves but to people who cling on to these crazy ideals about how they should be, you can probably relate to the difficulty.

For months, I'd been working with this guilt and self-expectation by using the teaching of all things as anattā, not self -- that all feelings and thoughts do not belong to us. They arise and pass away based on their conditions. So when we feel guilty about things, we should look at that strong sense of guilt too, knowing that we shouldn't take it personally because it's not our feeling to begin with.

Although that helped me deal with the feeling immediately, it didn't help me manage or understand the guilt. I think society places a lot of emphasis on remorse as a sign that you really regret your mistake and that you know you have done wrong and that this is good. Nah mate. When you feel worthless as a human being because you didn't smile back at someone, that's not a healthy sense of remorse hahah.

So yeah, I didn't really ever overcome guilt because I didn't understand it. Sure, it's anattā, but I felt like I was giving myself excuses for making mistakes. As if everytime I made a mistake, I could just tell myself, it's ok, don't identify with the feeling, and that would be that. It felt like a cop out. (Note this is just me not understanding it well enough!).

Then one day, I was feeling immense guilt about something and I was on the hunt for a talk that would help me and I stumbled across this gem. I don't know if you've experienced this but I tend to hack at a problem for ages and it always resurfaces when I haven't fully dealt with it, until one day, someone wise says something that completely does it for me and all the bulbs light up, everything clicks, and that problem or defilement just shatters immensely and loses a lot of its power on me. That's what it was like listening to this talk.

Ajahn Sumedho uses the jackal as a representation of the inner critic that we have; nothing we do ever seems to be good enough for it, and it's always throwing toxic imperatives at us like you shouldn't have or you need to. Ajahn then goes on to talk about ideals, and this is the part that just does it for me.

"Ideals are beautiful. That's why we attach to them -- it's how things should be. So we're back into the 'should' phases, of how things should be...

If it doesn't live up to that... we become critical, disillusioned. In awareness, we're aware - we're using the situation with awareness, to develop wisdom rather than wasting our lives trying to find some place or somebody that will live up to your ideals. Because you will never do that, that will never happen -- you'll just end up being cynical and bitter. Because the world is not an ideal world. Its nature is dukkha, is unsatisfactoriness, is change. You can't sustain the best as a permanent state. That's just not the way it is -- it's not Dhamma. It's desire -- wanting everything to be perfect. Because we can create images of perfection with our intellects -- the perfect government, the perfect mother, perfect father, perfect monk, perfect monastery. I can create superlative, images, beautiful, wonderful, lovely like paintings...

So ideals are not to be despised -- but put them in their proper place. They are saññā (perception), they are impermanent. You can't sustain an ideal. You can create them but whatever you create disappears, is destroyed, dies -- that's the law of karma: whatever is born dies, whatever begins ends.

So ideals are -- I refer them to like images, like guiding stars -- they give direction. When you're on a journey, you need direction, you need to know which way to go. But you can't travel very far if you're always looking up at the star. You'll fall off the cliff. You need to know where you are in terms of practical terrain, the situation on the ground. So living in a world of ideals, you're always falling off cliffs or falling into ditches, getting stuck in bogs. Idealists are always set up for disappointment, for despair."

I'd been focusing so much on the truth of anattā that I completely missed the dukkha. We often see dukkha as just 'suffering'; like yeah sure life sucks, but there's more. Dukkha is also unsatisfactoriness, in the sense that things in this world, conditioned phenomena, will never be perfect or fulfilling. While our hopes are sometimes fulfilled because of our good karma from the past, there is no ultimate fulfillment, no 'dream life' that can be achieved, because it's just not the nature of things.

And that includes oneself. Ajahn Sumedho says, "Whatever you think you are, that's not what you are." It's all saññā, perception, illusion. It's not reality. To demand an ideal version of yourself, a you that is more than who you really are -- like, look, how can there not be suffering?

This teaching was particularly impactful for me because I've always been a dreamer, always fantasising about all things perfect. What I've realised is that the mind proliferates around its object -- whether it's an object of desire or expectation of a future experience -- talking it up and creating stories about it that are just too good to be true, and when I encounter the object in real life, whatever it is, there's often a let down. Because that's how things are -- they are the way they are, not how you want them to be.

A final word on guilt

What I've learned about guilt is that it is dead-weight. Its only function is to distract ourselves from the present. Society has taught us that guilt is good, but no -- it's just a game and not a fun one. The most effective way to deal with a mistake is to acknowledge it honestly and resolve not to repeat it. This is not running from our mistakes -- it's dealing with it head-on by preventing a repeat without unnecessary emotional baggage.

And if we do repeat it? That's okay. Have a little mettā for yourself. Ayya Khemā:

"... If we look at ourselves in this manner, we will learn to love ourselves in a wholesome way -- just as, the Buddha says, "a mother at the risk of her own life loves and protects her child." If we want a realistic relationship with ourselves that is conducive to growth, then we need to become our own mother. A sensible mother can distinguish between behaviour that is useful for her child and that which is detrimental, but she does not stop loving the child when it misbehaves. This may be one of the most important aspects to consider in ourselves. Everyone, at one time or another, misbehaves in thought, speech or action -- most frequently in thought, fairly frequently in speech, and not so often in action. What do we do with that? What would a mother do? She would tell the child not to do it again, reassure the child of her continual love, and get on with the job of bringing up her child. Maybe we can start bringing up ourselves."

Another way I learned to forgive myself was taught by big brother Ash. He said, the Buddha could forgive Angulimala, who did really horrible things. Now pretend you're a Buddha -- can you forgive your own mistake?

It's not so bad when you look at it that way.

We all just need to stop being so serious

My friends, we just need to laugh a little and stop taking ourselves so seriously. If a tree falls on us tomorrow (unless you live in the city, maybe a building? sorry, touch wood), what was it all for?

This has been a long post but it's sort of my master post on ideals. Bit ironic because I definitely tried to make it perfect by putting in all the things. If you've read up to here, I thank you deeply!

I would like to leave you with this last quote from Ayya Khemā.

"The contemplative life is often lived with a heavy heart. Lacking joy, we may compensate by being outgoing. This does not work. One should cultivate lightheartedness but stay within. There is nothing to be worried or fearful about, nothing that is too difficult. Dhamma means the law of nature, and we are manifesting this law all the time. We cannot escape the law of nature. Wherever we are, we are the Dhamma, we are impermanent (anicca), unfulfilled (dukkha), and have no core substance (anattā). It does not matter whether we sit here or on the moon, it is the same everywhere. We need a lighthearted approach to our difficulties and those of everyone else. No exuberance and outpouring, but rather a constant inward that contains a bit of amusement. That works best. If we have a sense of humour about ourselves, it is much easier to love ourselves properly. It is also much easier to love everybody else."

A brilliant idea by Damo - to share conversations from our little get-togethers. Our 'winter editions' happened to fall on Fridays mostly, and we would light a fire and sit around talking into the night -- we call them 'Friday Night Fires'.

A little snippet that's been really helping me this week. (Hardcore just paraphrasing from what I can remember)

7 September 2018

Damo, Ash and Khema

"When something arises in the mind, immediately it knows it as 'sakkaya-ditthi'*. That's what all the brain-washing has done."

"All the Sumedho talks."

* personality view / self-view


Edit: should have given more context...

The Buddha teaches us that all conditioned phenomena in the world are anattā, that is they are devoid of an essence or core -- their nature is empty, there is no 'self' or 'identity' or 'personality' at the core of things. This seems so contrary to our whole experience of reality, where everything centers around the 'I'. But the more we investigate the mind, the more we realise the things that arise - bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc. - do not belong to us. They arise and pass away at their own accord; we are not at all in control.

But we don't understand things in this way -- we readily identify with all things that arise, taking them as 'me' or 'mine'. This is what leads to great suffering. For example, when a feeling of annoyance arises, we may want to get rid of it immediately, but we cannot - we are not in control, although we may think we are.

So it helps to recognise that we have this sakkaya-ditthi or personality view built into our psyche - and to undo it with conscious awareness, by simply knowing how it is.

Ajahn Sumedho (I can't remember in which talk now - sorry!) speaks about getting to know ourselves as a personality -- knowing that when this happens, you tend to react in such a way; knowing when that happens, you tend to react in such a way. How I understand it is it is as if getting to know yourself as a separate character, a different person made of just this combination of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, body, etc. It helps to de-personalise the whole process, which is quite liberating.

So it's a bit like playing Sims, right? Your character might have a really angry temperament that gets triggered when, let's say, people on the sidewalk walk super slowly. When the feeling of annoyance arises, you know that this is just how it is when people are in your way. That's just how you are, or rather, that's just how this personality is. No biggie. It's not real, just a result of conditioning. So staying with that awareness as a refuge makes the whole thing very light-hearted, like a game. 'I get extremely frustrated when people in front of me walk very slowly. It's like the worst thing you can do in the history of things.' When we look at it and see it as sakkaya-ditthi, de-personalised, it seems laughable, ridiculous almost. Then, we can learn to laugh at ourselves because we know it's just delusion arising from personality view.

Go well, friends 🌻

This semester has been absolutely mental and I'm trying my best not to drown. My friends have been really amazing and supportive so I'm really grateful for them.

Last week I was getting frustrated because I had been studying such long hours that the feelings of purposelessness from A-Levels and IGCSE resurfaced. I was whining to Damian, who said this:

"...It's not your true calling I understand! But the paramis that you need to develop!"

Such a simple little remark but it gave me lots of strength. The imagery of the 10 jars of water being filled up drop by drop came to mind. The grind that life gives us is the fodder we need to perfect all our qualities.

Funnily enough, some of us from uni visited Ajahn Kalyano at the monastery a few weeks back. He asked us how our studies were going. At the time, I didn't know I was headed for such a tough semester so I didn't think much of it, but Ajahn said something like, "With this, you just need lots of patience - khanti." Such pertinent advice.

A few months ago my big brother Ash also shared this Sufi quote with me which gave me life!

"If you're irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?"

We're often so scared of suffering and the feeling of unsatisfactoriness that we don't investigate it. But the mud is where the lotus is - this is so easy to forget.

When I'm going through an issue, basically my entire circle of friends will come to know about it... I'm sorry for being a downer the past few months you guys I love you thank you for your support hahaha

The reason I'm blogging now is because I'm really tired of my Syntax assignment and need a break, so here I am free-writing. But I did mention I had a list, so I've chosen a topic I wanted to write about.

Over the winter, I met up with my dad and brother in Tokyo. We stayed there for 3 days, then went to Okinawa for 5, and then back to Tokyo for another 2 (just my brother and I). While we were there, we took the cab a lot because we spoiled babies weren't used to all the walking in Tokyo haha. 

Anyway, I'm glad we did because, boy, did we gain lots of taxi driver wisdom. If you happen to be going to Japan and can speak Japanese conversationally (and are willing to spend more money cabbing), you're in luck. While the cabbies were quiet for the most part, we met a few gems who would start chatting us up heaps when they realised I could converse.

The first cabbie I remember sent us from Nishi-waseda to our hotel in Shinjuku. He spoke great English -- which is very rare among Japanese people in general, much less a cabbie -- so that itself was a major perk. He appeared to be in his fifties or so, and said he had majored in Psychology in university. The reason his English was so good was because he did a little exchange to Sydney and also worked a desk job in Germany. Also he was previously married to a German woman but got divorced. When I heard all that, I straight up asked him why he ended up becoming a taxi driver. He said he's worked many different jobs but he's happy being a cabbie (though his friends think he's weird). Then he said, "Life is a funny thing."

I found it so special because Tokyo is this concrete metropolitan jungle whose society demands people to be on top of their careers, and especially having had a university education, you're expected to get this amazing DESK job but look at this fine, happy specimen who is none of that and is just living life on his own terms. It was a good day.

The next cabbie we met was when we were trying to get from Ginza to this sport shop in Shinjuku. It was a long weekend coming up so traffic was horrendous so we ended up taking a long time to get there even though the distance wasn't very large. But it was such a great time because we had this amazing cabbie. This guy wasn't as 'exposed' to the world outside Japan as the last, he was more of a typical Japanese who had never left the country before (he actually mentioned this).

He was like super excited to be talking to us because his company had just started giving English lessons to taxi drivers in the morning before work. He could communicate with us a little because of that and that I could speak a little Japanese too got him really chatty hahahaha. 

I remember we were just like sitting in silence when we got in the car, then he starts talking to me a little. After the preliminary conversation dies down, the bloke randomly asks questions like, "Hey did you know why we call the Japanese Yen the Japanese Yen?" So we spend the entire car-ride talking about Japanese history, like stuff about the Mongols invading Japan and that like no one really knows which of the nations came first because the style of battle between the two are quite similar? (No idea if my understanding or memory is accurate). Anyway, my Japanese is extremely limited so I was trying to catch what he was saying and when I started understanding something he would go really into it and use big words that I didn't recognise and I would sort of go like whoa wait and whip out Google Translate, and this would happen repeatedly, and the bloke would start laughing when I really didn't understand the depth of what he was saying. 

But all this talk about history got my dad so super excited because he's a big fan of history, especially about war, and he knew about this stuff so I was trying to translate between them. It was so fun but also a big problem because not only were things getting lost in translation but this guy was making big claims about Japanese history which seemed to be kinda controversial and when I asked him how he knew this stuff he would source a Japanese YouTube channel - like Malaysian uncles for political videos - which seemed low-key dodge.

Anyway at one point he started saying that Japan is all about harmony because the country is basically an island and historically they relied on a lot of external help from other countries. He said this harmony thing was linked to one of the symbols in their country (soz guys this is all really fuzzy right now). What I remember is the conversation turned to 'kids these days'. He started saying that the education in Japan today is sooo different from the education in his day. I think he said people these days don't connect like they used to. I started saying how society is more materialistic these days, always going through the rat-race, and he said yeah that's because young people 'dont know enough'. He said the older generation was taught contentment. He used the words 「足りを知る」which I think is such beautiful Japanese. It literally means 'know enough', 'enough' being a noun here.

He also started saying how we are dependent on other people for survival. Something like if we choose to fend for ourselves only, we succeed; but if we take care of others and if others take care of us, it may not be as successful but it's better. I can't remember the details accurately now but the vibes were like collectivist > individualist.

At this point Ryan started getting restless because we had been in the car for nearly an hour already so I ask him how long more it's going to take, and it's like 5 minutes away. He apologises for the delay and asks us what else we'll be doing in Japan. I tell him we're going to Okinawa in a bit and he goes like, oh so lucky, wish I could go too but I have people I need to take care of.

Later on as we were reaching the destination I asked him why he decided to be a taxi driver. I asked him if it was fun, and he said yes. He then said a whole bunch of things I didn't catch but what I got was, fun comes from yourself, not from things outside. He told me to remember that the two important things in life are 権利 (rights) and 義務 (obligations) (I have no idea why he started talking about this ahahha). Then he said true happiness is being happy even when things are hard (he used the word 辛い).

[He then said something about the origin of the Japanese word for 'happiness' or 幸せ being the 'desire for grace' which Yuzuru later said was incorrect hahahhaaha]

He ended on that note and we thanked him for the great car-ride and told him to keep the change about which he was super happy. Such a simple joyful man!

That car-ride was better than lots of the things we did in Tokyo -- taxi driver wisdom, man. Is there anything more profound?

I don't know why but this is the second year in a row I've spent winter in Japan, which is summer there, which is like totally not the period people should be going to the land of the rising sun. There were heatwaves and floods happening in parts of the country which was like whoa. 

I got to meet Yuki in Tokyo, another language exchange friend who is really really sweet and soft-spoken and pure. We met up with Yuzu twice too which was nice.

Visited the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace in Nishi-Waseda, which is dedicated to the memory of the so-called 'comfort women' during WWII. The place is tiny and run by a few workers and volunteers. I think it's the only place of its kind in Japan, since the issue is incredibly complex and controversial over there. The lady there gave us some explanations but it was in Japanese so highly recommend bringing someone who can translate for you if you go. There were resources in English, but not enough volunteers there that could speak English that they can do an impromptu tour of the place in English.

Also visited Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa, which was cool (fam's like rly into this stuff).

Don't have much else to say about the trip except that I decided not to go on exchange next year after properly exploring Tokyo for the first time. I'd learned all about the society in theory but never realised the place was pretty much incompatible with my way of life. I've been telling people it's like HK on steroids haha I'm sorry

I would go to Kyoto or something for exchange if I could but one of the core subjects required for my major was only available at Waseda (but then again the scope of my research was quite limited) so yeah not really an option. Oh well.

Here are pictures though!!

We looked up and saw oh, so many stars.

"So pretty," said one.

"Is that the milky-way?," marveled another.

"We are looking at the past," one muttered.

How peculiar it is that a group of people, with no seeming relation, can come to meet at a certain place, a certain time, a certain life, under the same sky.

This was for Anthropology in Semester 2. Had soooo much fun doing this and learned heaps in the process - it really challenged my understanding of 'religion', which I mistakenly thought I knew quite a bit about. Very happy that I got to explore with this assignment and happy to share it with everyone. Anthropology has done some pretty legit work on religion, and in my opinion they've really done their research. Hope you learn even a little from this paper!

This essay seeks to investigate the question of whether the definition of religion as belief is adequate in encompassing the full range of experiences and actions we might label ‘religious’. I will argue that while belief underlies many religions as a central feature, belief itself is inadequate as a hard-and-fast definition of religion and is only one of many attributes comprising it. I will begin by outlining the definition of religion as we currently know it. Then I discuss the centrality of belief in religions such as Christianity, Islam, Japanese faith, and Buddhism. To conclude, I will consolidate these ideas in support of my main argument and offer comment to the definition of ‘religion’.

Over centuries, anthropologists and theologists have been conjuring various definitions of the word ‘religion’. A most famous one is by Tylor ([1871] 1920, p. 1), stating that religion is ‘belief in spiritual beings’. Boyer (2001, p. 9) identifies religion as a label we use to ‘put together all the ideas, actions, rules and objects that have to do with the existence and properties of superhuman agents such as God.’ While these definitions point to the concept of theism, it has been argued that such conceptions are largely limited to Western and Abrahamic religions (Kavanagh 2017). Bowen (2013, p. 3) thus proposes a broader definition – ‘something more to the world than meets the eye’. Religion has to do with people’s transcendental ideas of reality and their construction of the world, whether that be in relation to spiritual beings, forces, or none of that at all. This definition recognises diversity in religion across societies, such as the varying degrees to which belief is central to religious traditions (Bowen 2013, p. 4). There are many specific attributes that constitute the multifaceted concept of ‘religion’, such as the preoccupation with supernatural agents, ritual practices, an ethical code, empirically indeterminate beliefs, and so on. There thus appears to be an absence of distinct, set boundaries for what constitutes religion as it may be argued that any kind of behaviour can have a religious attribute (Southwold 1978, p. 362).

A central feature of many religious traditions in the world is belief. Like the word ‘religion’, ‘belief’ carries with it many possible definitions and interpretations. Ruel (2008, p. 100) states that ‘belief’ can refer to ‘belief in’ (e.g. trust and conviction in God) or ‘belief that’ (e.g. the view that the existence of God is true). Propositional or literal belief in the basic tenets or received ideas of a religion is usually an important part of religious behaviour, portraying religion as a cognitive system (Lindquist & Coleman 2008, p. 2 – 3; Southwold 1979, p. 628). Belief, in this sense, seems to be a ‘personal statement, a declaration of moral identity’ (Ruel 2008, p. 98). Mair (2013, p. 448) raises another interpretation of religious belief as a less reflective, habitual form of worship in order to fulfil symbolic expression. This view states that profound, supramundane truths are expressed symbolically and implicitly, through religious practice, and that religious belief is not merely about propositions, but may be about social or ethical commitments. An example is the ritual of darb al-shish among Sufi disciples which utilises bodily impalement as an expression of mystical concepts expounded by God, as proof of faith (Pinto 2012, p. 66). Whether or not belief is a fundamental characteristic of religion may thus depend on how we define it. An endeavour to solve this problem requires us to ask not about the content of belief, but the manner of belief.

In Abrahamic religions, the concept of belief is so central that Western perception of religion has come to assume that all other religious groups simply believe in different objects or agents (Smith cited in Ruel 2008, p. 97). The word ‘belief’ in Christianity relates to the Greek pistis, which expresses that ‘to believe’ in the gods is to have confidence in and obedience to them (Ruel 2008, p. 99). Pouillon ([1979] 1983, p.1) illustrates the three aspects of Christian belief: the existence of God is seen as factual; conviction and trust marks the relationship between a believer and God; God’s word is accepted as the principles of the faith. It thus appears that Christians adhere to both ‘belief in’ and ‘belief that’ at once. In apostolic writings of the New Testament, pistis eventually came to mean ‘to be converted’, in the context that followers heard the message of God and believed. This illustrates how the act of believing is fundamental to one’s identity and worldview as a Christian. The earliest creeds in Christianity were also used in the context of baptism – a physical, ritual equivalent of ‘believing’ as signifying conversion (Ruel 2008, p. 100).

Another religion that has anything equivalent to Christian belief is Islam, which emphasises the ‘five pillars’, foremost of which is faith in God (Ruel 2008, p. 106). However, a key difference is the greater emphasis in Islam on the worship in and obedience to God over the content of belief, through the ritual practices, and adherence to Islamic custom and law. A good example of this is the Sufi ritual of darb al-shish, which is a ‘proof of faith’ for followers (Pinto 2012, p. 63). Successful performance of the ritual involves piercing the abdomen of the disciple with an iron rod, but with the absence of bleeding as a result. This ‘miracle’ that takes place in the body of the disciple is symbolic of God’s love as ‘emotional, sensorial and existential realities’, proving the disciple’s conviction in God (Pinto 2012, p. 66). Unlike the emphasis on cognitive aspects of belief in Christianity, belief in Islam appears to be more symbolic than propositional. However, this propositional aspect in Islamic belief cannot be omitted since it seems to fuel such symbolic belief and religious experiences. As aptly stated by Geertz (1966, p. 3), ‘religious belief cannot be seen as involving pure induction from experience, but rather a prior acceptance of authority which transforms that experience’. Nevertheless, it is clear from the above discussion that the underlying concern behind practices and experiences in these Abrahamic faiths is that of belief.

Departing from strong endorsements of outward religious belief, it appears that Japanese approaches to religion are devoid of strong religious beliefs. Yet, there is great adherence to ritual practice during events and festivals, which tend to involve religious symbolism and transcendental concepts such as purification (Kavanagh 2017). Kavanagh argues that strong beliefs are an ancillary feature of religion in Japan and instead, practice through the performance of various activities, like visiting shrines and saying prayers, is given more importance. However, it may be argued that what Kavanagh seems to be saying is that while belief in the propositions of a religion is not given much importance in Japan, symbolic belief is certainly adhered to. Geertz (1966, p. 3) views belief as a pronounced feature of ritual, as beliefs and religious symbols are expressed lucidly through these rites. While the symbolic meaning behind such practices may not be as profound and transcendental as that of practices like darb al-shish, a closer look reveals that the belief that practical benefits can be gained through ritual practices underlies and is implied in such actions, and is thus a ‘belief in’ those practices nonetheless, whether or not they are accurate to the actual tenets of those religions (e.g. Shintoism and Buddhism). Nevertheless, as this mode of belief is less explicit, Kavanagh’s view of practice and ritualism being more significant attributes of Japanese religion may be acknowledged.

Moving from the idea that belief is central to religion, we now delve into modern evangelist Christianity, which has made unconventional departures from the traditional focus of Christianity on mere belief. Luhrmann (2004, p. 519) describes the religion as becoming more experience-centred, with focus on ritual practices and psychological techniques. It appears that while followers claim that the Bible is literally true, what is taken to be central to their relationship with God is intense, bodily, spiritual experience. These learned experiences include trance, altered consciousness and emotional states, which believers interpret as God’s presence, allowing them to ‘verify’ His existence through inward, albeit subjective, personal experience, and to experience a God more personal, intimate, and more tangibly real (Luhrmann 2004, p. 522). While underlying the faith is propositional and symbolic belief along with conviction in God, the motivation behind the experiential practice is also relational. At Horizon Christian Fellowship in Southern California, the goal of their practices is to foster a relationship with God through prayer, not merely to believe (Luhrmann 2004, p. 525). This is thus a departure from the idea that religion purely revolves around belief, but is also about connectedness.

Another religion that seems to contend the notion of the fundamentality of belief is Buddhism. Original Buddhist doctrines do not encourage propositional or symbolic belief (Mair 2013, p. 451). Buddhist texts (such as the Kalama Sutta) constantly encourage scepticism, investigation and empirical understanding towards all propositions, and as a result is removed from superstition, rites and rituals, appearing scientific (Lewis 1996, p. 263). Belief in doctrines is not given importance in being a Buddhist, and there are no traditions of ‘professing faith’. Instead, the non-theistic ‘religion’ encourages followers to put the Buddha’s teachings, seen as guidelines or advice, into practice for spiritual and mental progress, with the view that they are working hypotheses. These teachings are only to be verified by the practitioner’s direct, firsthand experiential knowledge and insight, resulting in unwavering confidence (Thanissaro 2006). Important parts of the religion include practices like meditation, the study of doctrines, and observation of an ethical code (the Five Precepts) in a practical effort to liberate oneself from the vicissitudes of life (Lewis 1996, p. 247; p. 251). With such features contrary to what is commonly found in religion, it brings us to the question of whether belief is really necessary for all religion.

However, coming to a conclusion is not that straightforward. While these features are characteristic of Buddhist teachings, they may not be qualities seen in what is known as ‘Buddhism’. For example, inner Mongolian Buddhists seem to contend the view that spiritual progress happens through practices such as meditation or ethical conduct, believing that only cultivating faith in Buddhas and bodhisattvas (beings aspiring to become Buddhas) through devotional rituals can allow followers to advance – a thinking incredibly contrary to traditional Buddhist purposes (Mair 2013, p. 454). Sinhalese Buddhists (similar to Japanese ‘Buddhists’ as previously discussed) are also inconsistent in this regard, giving importance to deities in ritual practices, believing that worldly benefits can be granted from these divine beings in exchange for ‘merits’ which followers have accumulated from the performance of good deeds (Southwold 1978, p. 365). Furthermore, Sinhalese Buddhists insist that to be a Buddhist, it is necessary to believe in the concepts karma and rebirth – a concept that is as of yet unable to be proven by conventional empirical methods (Southwold 1978, p. 373).

How has it come about that the actual Buddhist teachings have been completely turned on its head? What, then, constitutes the religion we call ‘Buddhism’? Or a more appropriate question, for that matter: is religion the doctrines or the practices of the followers of that religion? From an anthropological standpoint, where ethnographic representation is taken to illustrate the actual beliefs and practices of actual followers of the religion despite their contention with the doctrines of the religion, we may say that belief, both propositional and symbolic, has become an important part of Buddhism (Southwold 1978, p. 362). Yet coming from a community of practising Buddhists myself, this assertion goes against my identity as a Buddhist, and that of many Buddhists in communities within my knowledge. It may thus be argued that ethnographic studies of a few religious communities are not representative of the entire religion. Instead, it may be that the religion encompasses all varying modes of practices of that religion across different communities.

Taking all this into account, we may have a clearer idea of how to define the ambiguous concept of religion. While belief has traditionally been seen to be central to many religions, whether explicitly or implicitly, it is clearly not essential to religious practice worldwide. As we have seen, there are many other attributes and concepts related to religion. The word ‘religion’ can be assigned to cultural systems which have at least some specific features which we may consider to be ‘religious’, such as a central concern with godlike beings (as in the Abrahamic faiths), an ethical code, doctrines or oral traditions, rituals, a moral community (as in the Asian religions), and so on (Southwold 1978, pp. 370). Instead of referring to any single thing, religion be better recognised as a polythetic subject – to acknowledge that different religions comprise of a number of characteristics or related concepts, none of which are essential to religious belief and practice worldwide (Southwold 1978, pp. 371). Therefore, we may conclude that religion is not synonymous with belief, and that there is no singular definition for religion, as it is so richly diverse and intricately interlinked with the many dimensions of human life, globally.

This was for Psych and in hindsight was probably one of the most meaningful assignments I've ever done.

“Reality is not out there waiting to be witnessed; reality is made by the mind.” 

– Jonah Lehrer

What is reality? We may assume that it is our conscious and lived experience of the world, thinking that we are experiencing reality as it truly is; but if we look closer, we will realise that even on the level of sensation and perception, our so-called ‘reality’ is perturbed and tainted by individual subjectivity. This essay thus seeks to explore and question our experience of the sensory world from psychological and philosophical perspectives, reflecting on visual and mental processes that take place through observations induced by alterations in light throughout a sunset, and of an optical illusion.

The Sun lights the whole world up. Its brilliant white light shines through the prism-like sky, revealing the earth’s curvature. Birds soar pass silver-lined clouds into gradients of blue, white, pink and purple, somehow distinct yet melded together. Away from the Sun span blue skies that meet the ocean at a navy horizon. Blinding rays bounce off the water, concealing its colour, while closer to land glistening waves with dark undersides wash the shore. At eye-level, people stroll along the golden beach, their facial and bodily features clear as the day. Trees and even buildings look alive in the light. I am absorbed and enlivened by this picturesque sight.

As the Sun sets, it evolves into a circle of flames, a golden egg-yolk, then incredulous shades of magenta and neon orange as it falls behind clouds. Light rays peek through, creating a fiery image of a phoenix. More colours dance across the sky – orange, red, blue, yellow and green. As the blinding luminance recedes from the water’s surface, the ocean mirrors the colours overhead. My mind joins in the rapture of light and life.

Retreating further, the Sun’s divine light quietens to a glow. Everything slows down. Vision is softer, less noisy. The rich, vivid world mellows into misty, pastel watercolours, its hues dusting the cotton candy clouds. My heart stills, feeling peaceful and appreciative. Even time pauses to watch this magnificent spectacle.

Then it happens too quickly – the Sun drops and the world’s multicolour clarity moves towards a gloomier, colder monochrome of mere forms. The now blurry hues smash into each other on their way into oblivion. A pale moon and stars emerge, accompanied by unimpressive artificial lights. As darkness ensues, details start to blur. The phoenix disappears. The radius of my vision shrinks and I struggle to make out faraway objects. The water appears devoid of texture and movement; only with faint street lights can its vague ripples of white and blue be seen closer to shore. The sea turns near-black, merging into the night sky, concealing the span of the water. Like the Sun, my spirits lower, not as amused or inspired as before – but with appreciation for having witnessed such a mesmerising sight.

People appear as unrecognisable silhouettes, their movements like hovering shadows. Even the sand has turned suspicious and unfamiliar, its luscious creases now daunting. Trees appear lifeless, only their forms discernible. My eyes start lying to themselves, seeing moving boats in the place of floating buoys. Mist appears in the distance, creating an illusory island. It’s not that there’s no colour; everything is just a hundred shades darker and deader.

All things bright and beautiful have been reduced to mere forms and undertones. As there’s nothing more to see, I leave the cold, gloomy beach.

We interact with reality through our sensations of the external world. This is the stimulation of sensory organs, like when light falls onto our retina in visual processing (Corayer, 2017). While the contact between light and the retina is lost almost immediately, the brain organises and interprets this information that is converted from physical signals to neural activity, deconstructing visual inputs into tiny fragments and then reconstructing them, forming the image that we perceive (Cropper, 2017). What we experience is therefore a result of our own personal processing and evaluation of external stimuli (Corayer, 2017; Cropper, 2017).  Our interpretation of the world could thus largely differ from what is actually going on externally.

We form our unique interpretation of the world through constructs like colour, motion, form and depth (Cropper, 2017). For example, lightwaves reflected from the surface of the object are perceived as colour (Corayer, 2017). However, colour is essentially an unquantifiable experience and interpretation that takes place internally; it does not exist in the world beyond our brains (Stevens, 2013). My perception of the shifting hues in the sky could be distinct from the next person’s, with perfect vision of the same view. Furthermore, we tend to evaluate our experiences by distinguishing and categorising raw data, adding our thoughts and feelings, further tainting reality with our perceptions (Hart, 1987). My observation of the sunset consists mostly of labelling and evaluations, which vary greatly across individuals given their personal and conditional nature. Factors such as past experiences and preferences could easily influence our interpretations (Hart, 1987). Additionally, our reactions to sensations instil yet more impressions in the mind, paving the way for future evaluative perceptions (Hart, 1987). Seeing that our perceptions can so easily be disputed, perhaps they cannot then be ‘real’, for surely reality should be objective, universal and timeless in nature?

Buddhist psychology has approached this issue, as seen in doctrines like the Dependent Origination, where the Buddha explained causality of all conditioned phenomena, stating that perception arises simply as a natural result of the contact between our senses and ‘sense-objects’ (e.g. eyes coming into contact with visual objects) (Nauriyal, Drummond, & Lal, 2006). As raised by Lakoff and Johnson (1999), we may then infer that our perceptions, such as colour, are not purely subjective, since they are not imagined phenomena; there is an objective aspect to it, since colour arises in our mind upon contact of the eyes with physical visual objects. It is thus simply a natural phenomenon arising through the interaction of our internal and external world. 

What we can certainly deduce to be objective, however, is the transience of both the internal and external world. As the Sun began to set, light and my visual image changed. Clarity of sight reduced and colours began to fade. Motion slowed down, depth became harder to perceive, and forms eventually dominated the image. As my visual perception shifted, so too my mental processes. As clarity and colour diminished, my feelings of inspiration and exhilaration reduced to a more subdued appreciation. Later, when surroundings and objects became difficult to discern, I felt somewhat disengaged, finding them less aesthetically appealing. From all aspects – physical, visual, mental, and emotional – the only constant was change. 

Relating again to Buddhism, what we can objectively deduce from reality is that it is transient and impermanent (Hart, 1987). From the beginning of the observation till the complete dissolution of the Sun, just as the physical world was changing, so too my sensations and perceptions. Outside of this specific timeframe, from the beginning till the end of our day, external change is seen in human activity and natural phenomena, while internally, the mind too is ever-shifting. Perceptions, thoughts, emotions and reactions constantly arise and pass away only to make way for new ones. Just as the colours of the sky change, we too change moment by moment (Hart, 1987). This fact is as plain as the nature of life – birth, growing, aging, sickness, and death – but usually forgotten. Knowing this fact itself leads us closer to the (presumably) objective, universal, and timeless reality.

The object of observation is a smooth, solid spread of lawn – but that’s not all there is to it. In actuality, it is a proliferation of Azolla rubra, a floating water fern, on the surface of a lake. The ferns gather together in a spread across the water, creating a texture that appears like the surface of a pool table or a green carpet. As seen in Figures 1(a) and 1(b), hints of red and brown amongst green hues make the surface appear like grass grown on soil. Where fern growth is abundant, there appears to be a separate piece of land (as in Figure 1[a]) or a bank for the lake (as in Figure 2), more concrete from a distance rather than up-close. The surrounding water appears shallow.

The brain sees through the illusion by logical reasoning. While at first it was perplexing when birds appeared to ‘swim’ through solid grassland, the brain realised that there was water beneath the leaves. A closer look revealed that the visual perception of a ‘whole’ lawn was sewn together by small, abundant leaves. Additionally, the brain saw through the ‘breathing’ lawn, reasoning that the patch formed through cohesion was simply moving in sync with occasional ripples of the water. In parts where the proliferation was less intense, light passed through gaps between the ferns and hit the water’s surface, breaking down the image of seemingly opaque, ‘irreflectable’, concrete land; this is more visible in Figure 1(b).

We perceive the illusion because our visual system has been built to extrapolate meaning from stimuli, drawing from past experiences, learning and visual context, in order to interact with and make sense of our environment (Partos, Cropper & Rawlings, 2016). In this case, the brain is accustomed to perceiving grass plains through past input, and given the contexts of its location in a park, and the red and green hues of the abundant leaves, the brain assumed that this was yet another plain. Because of this distorted initial perception of the overall image, the visual percept of depth was misinterpreted as well. As the coagulation of ferns appeared like a lake bank, I was induced to think that the surrounding water was relatively shallow, when it was actually very deep.

This illusion, plainly discovered in our sensory world, may prove helpful to our metaphysical investigation of reality. While the tiny plants are the external reality, the ‘reality’ of the lawn that we see is an interpretation of the brain so although there were indications giving the illusion away, perceptual tendencies and habits of quick recognition lead us to see more than was really there (Lehrer, 2008).  The brain filled in the gaps of its initial abstract impression with subjective interpretations, before we could even make logical inferences, finding meaning where there may be none, occasionally misinterpreting external reality (Lehrer, 2008). Yet, these tendencies to create meaning in the process of sensation is simply its natural, biological function, as discussed previously.

We can relate our perceived reality of this illusion to the idea of a fragmented and reconstructed image in the way the individual ferns gather to form an image of a ‘whole’ land. Buddhism interestingly explores this concept of fabricated reality through the idea that all phenomena can be reduced to elemental forms. The Venerable Nagasena once considered if it was the individual parts of a chariot (e.g. the wheels or its spokes, or the framework) or all parts of it, that was the chariot; he later proposed that there was, in actuality, no chariot. ‘Chariot’ is just a name – ‘empty sound’ (Sujato, 2015). The question arises, then, of whether reality is the part (the fragmented ferns) or the whole (the lawn). Since we see components clinging together, forming a ‘whole’, when they are reduced to elemental form – what is there? Is the image in our case an illusion only because it is contrary to our usual perception of reality? These are interesting to consider.

While the questions explored thus far contest our notion of what reality is, it has been and will continue to be challenging answering them, as these are perhaps the most complicated questions ever asked. However, given that there are apparent, objective truths to our experience, such as the quality of transience in all phenomena, perhaps it is then not so pressing what reality is. As the body and mind are the only mediums through which we experience the external world, it would seem that whether or not we have the entire truth, we necessarily have to accept this as our reality. The question then may not be what reality is, but what we make of it. Since it is subjective to a certain extent, we can alter it through the mind (aptly reflected in the quote in the beginning). Knowing the transience of life, and that our sunsets are numbered, we should thus seek to make the most of and the best of our experience.

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Personal collection of S. J. Cropper, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC.

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