Religion as community definitely seems to be key - maybe we should say the CHURCH or the TEMPLE as community-builder or -provider

Religion in its roles as puritan buzzkill, culture-stifling profit monster, etc, just bugs the hell out of me. On the other hand, I can get behind Jesus in most contexts. Also the basic impulses of Buddhism. I'll meditate, sure, it does me some good, and I do try not to covet my neighbor's wife too blatantly (common sense, like feng shui) or change money in the temple. I guess, if pressed, I would call myself an acosmic pantheist

It occurred to me fifteen years ago that all "religions" were trying to crack the same nut, if you wipe aside the profit- and influence-based horseshit (how bout them folks in Manila protesting in favor of sanctioned birth control?)... Then I got onto John Coltrane and ran into the idea again, that all spirituality derives from or aims to the same Source if you can get past quibbling about the details

I know one "christian" who denounces the church til he's blue in the face, then tries to sell you on christ while telling his lesbian friends what awful sinners they are, insisting that blacks and women have the same opportunities as anyone in america today, and dating multiple women just to play them off each other and ruin both their lives for as long as he can string it out. He's one of the most effective self-promoters I know. Gross

I've been twice to the Great Stupa Of Dharmakaya That Liberates Upon Seeing, in Colorado, and I wondered both times if the gains made by bringing americanism and buddhism together (with the idea of spreading compassion and loving kindness to a country that needs both) were equal to the potential losses (ie a withering of the big vibe that drives buddhism in the first place - incidental to that, I went to see the Murakami exhibit here in LA a coupla days ago, with me were my american girlfriend and her Taiwanese mother. We all had mixed responses to the show. Mom's one criticism was that she didn't know if it was a proper application of Buddhism - mixed in with the giant vicious mickey mouse caricatures and spouting nipples and laughing flowers and mushrooms were a number of gigantic and I have to say fairly beautiful distortions of traditional buddhist iconography)

For me, the spirit is The Beam and I find it first and foremost in sound or my perception thereof, my meditative interaction with my instrument, and the movements through space and time of my self, my loved ones, and my musical bleshees, though I can contemplate it in anything, even things I hate... This does not always help my mood.

But that is OK. I don't think it is healthy or apropos to be in a good mood all the time, and that might be where a full-on RELIGION does its damage, by telling people that if they do or don't do a, b, and c they can then be in a pretty good mood most of the time because they're going to heaven or coming back as a man (heard somewhere that that's how the hierarchy goes, due to the male's lesser biological attachment) or maybe not coming back at all or at least not going to hell or (worse?) feeding worms with their bodily tissues

If the closest many people come to feeling spirituality is through Religions, Inc as they exist today, then I am sad for those folks. Anyone dig the scene in I Heart Huckabees around the dinner table 2/3 through the movie, where the one dude says, "Go stand in a field at sunset!" and the kids keep saying, "what happens in the field at sunset?" and dude keeps saying "Everything!" and fine up-standing god-fearing dad keeps saying "Nothing!" ...?

right, I'll cool it now. End of rant