The gifts and gists of the world's Great Faiths

My 2011 holiday season message to urbi et orbi and to all my friends and unfriends, known, unknown and yet-to-know:

The Gifts and Gists of the world's Major Faiths* and an emerging new one, as I see them:

Do unto others as I please - Atheism, circa time immemorial.

Do unto others as my god pleases - Polytheism, since the birth of human "god concept"; and Hinduism, circa 1500 BCE.

Do unto others as Moses would have chosen to do unto each other - Judaism, circa 1000 BCE.

Do Nothing – Taoism, 6th century BCE.

Do unto others as Yourself. – Buddhism, 563BCE.

Do not unto others as you would not have others do unto you. – Confucius, 551BCE.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. – Christianity, 1st century AD.

Do unto others as god’s rejects. – Satanism, circa birth of Christian faith, there is always a Bad One as a counterpoint to the Good One.

Do unto others as Muhammad would have done unto others. – Islam, 570AD.

Do unto others as I know best. – Agnosticism, first coined by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869.

Do unto no other as I would only do unto Myself. - the Religion of "I", the narcissistic new faith of the new millennium.

Do forgive my King James English, but in my usual, self-effacing way, I want to import unto you the solemnity of these pronouncements!

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On this coming holiday season, I wish you all a Joyous Holiday and a Happy New Year!!

For those who observe Christmas, let’s not forget the main message of the birth and life of Jesus of Nazareth: "Judge not, so you will not be judged! Love thy neighbors as thyself, and love God above all else!" For mere mortals and less saintly people like the most of us, the “Love thy neighbors” part is quite a tall order to fill, unless thy neighbor happens to be a supermodel type or a Greek god hunk, whichever your taste leads you. Even then, that loving feeling won't last forever. Especially if she is a high maintenance type or he is a real bad, bad boy and has a bad case of roving eyes. Failing that, at least make peace with each other Or yourself. Don't we claim we are all children of the same god? Or we can go at each other like a fully dysfunctional family with maximum sibling rivalry on display. A la Abel and Cain?

As to "Love God above all else!” what is not to love? He is The Man who holds all the trump cards, in one hand a vessel full of grace, in another, hellfire and brimstones. But thank God that is only the Judeo-Christian tradition, Nicene Council-edited, King James Era English translated Version. The true nature of God can only be understood through personal revelations, with help by learning from experiences of great sages and thinkers, including those in the Bible. Having said that, the messages of Jesus' ministry are undeniably timeless and universal and contributed greatly to the civilization of humanity. Without him, we might probably still be howling at the moon, pillaging in packs, laying with sheep and breeding inbreds.

P.S. Sssh...Let me let you in on a big little secret, my little big holiday present to you, so to speak. I have an insider-trading informant that gives me reason to believe that our current, most Christian and esteemed U.S. Congress is actually practicing Atheism and Taoism. More often Atheism. How scandalous! So un-American! We should indict all its members before the House Committee on Un-American Activities! Since we believe in "Judge not, so you will not be judged!” we will not sit in judgment on the committee proceedings, so let them ... uh ... let them do unto themselves and see how they like them forbidden apples! If they still don't do right by them, then it's time for us to clean house.

Further more, some elements within certain monotheistic faiths are, in fact, practicing Polytheism! How sacrilegious to their own self-appointed mouthpieces of god and self-anointed high priests of their faiths! How especially unctuous to the shamans, the brahmans or the lamas to the children of lesser gods! These religious functionaries think only they have exclusive rights to the "Do Unto Others" litany of sacred rites, injunctions and oracles. Especially dangerous are those clergies who, by proxies or edicts, assume the holy trinity role of the judge, the jury and the executioner.

*My definition of "major faith" is based on their major effect on the current world population.

The real B.S. . . . uh . . . oops . . .I think I have a Rick Perry moment . . . I meant the real P.S.: My above rambling hopefully will be interpreted by my gentle readers as my humorous and illuminating take on current state of U.S. government gridlocks and religious strife in the name of God.

Most, if not all, religions were born during turbulent times of our human history, when seers and prophets were popping up like mushrooms after a great storm. These religions were created to tame the inner beasts within all of us, to establish moral codes and acceptable conducts within a certain culture. Before long, the zealous converts within the new order religious leadership started to create legends and myths around their religion to safeguard the founder’s legacy and to lay claim that theirs and only theirs alone was the true and only faith sanctioned by God. Along the way, the original intents and teachings of the founder got twisted and corrupted for sectarian, political or xenophobic reasons.

Gradually religion becomes synonymous with culture. When I am talking about cultures, I’m not talking about the ones that grow in your overstuffed holiday refrigerators, mind you. I'm talking about cultural traditions and customs, the ways of life. Today's religious conflicts are conflicts of cultures, with some cultures thinking that their ways of life are losing to influences from outside.

If the Roman Catholic Pope were to proclaim in his "urbi et orbi" annual message an edict to cancel Christmas, the world's mercantile industries would be up in arms and sales receipts in opposition, and would denounce His Holiness for practicing Agnosticism. Forget about the military-industrial complex. Let talk about the religious-mercantile complex! This is where the money that makes the world go ‘round. For example, when you buy an electronic gadget in the good ole U.S. of A. at Christmas, you have a design engineered here in the U.S., mineral resources imported from Africa, components made in China, technical support from India and the profits go to off-shore banks in the Cayman Islands. You don't want to step on them hundreds of dollars a shine Gucci shoes or the humble satin-lined fisherman sandals. This Christmas cancellation business might even provoke fierce revolt from Christians and some non-Christians alike; "the most wonderful time of the year" has been associated with so many fond, alcohol-fueled, eggnog-soaked memories. Now, that is culture to you!

I'm not against organized religions; they give some people a sense of belonging, sharing and fellowship. These religious gatherings foster camaraderie, cooperation, reciprocal supports and mutual aids. These are essential spiritual foods that nourish the human souls. These are the stuffs that a healthy society sustains itself and thrive, without them it will not survive. It is the dogmas, injunctions and exclusivity enjoined by the head honchos of some organized religions that breed ignorance, intolerance and suppression of freedom of expressions that are detrimental to the human spirits.

Most religious adherents, however, are sincere and wise enough to discern the true meanings of their founder's messages from those enunciated from the pulpits. “An ounce of mother wit is worth a pound of clergy”, as a proverb goes. So listen to your mother and eat them vegetables, they give you more moral fibers than any clergyman ever can. Uh. . . now I am digressing. Hopefully these genuine followers of their respective faiths will continue to contribute to the civilization and enrichment of their own cultures and future generations. The alternative will be totally unthinkable, short of reverting to the howling-at-the-moon habits as of olden days, the hapless golden days of savage customs of yore. (I did a little Christmas song parody here, didn’t I?)

As for Atheists, I don’t doubt their sincerity. But in the end, their philosophy is an exercise of intellectual indulgence. The human species has come a long way on the evolution tree and finally achieved the self-proclaimed title of Homo sapiens, the rational man. An adult human brain weighs about 3 pounds and takes up a space of about 85 cubic inches on an average man. From this small confine of a structure sprung a civilization that is a marvel to behold. It is capable of building magnificent architectures, inventing amazing tools and composing masterpieces of arts and literature as testimonials to its own greatness. It can achieve all these things because of its capability for symbolic consciousness, the ability to communicate with mutually agreed symbols, i.e. written languages. When recorded down, the accumulated knowledge of past generations passes on to the next.

But all our human languages have their own limitations when coming to describing what even our limited senses are conscious of. Even a beautiful, colorful and continuously evolving language such as English has to borrow phrases from other languages, such as déjà vu from French, face-saving from Chinese, schadenfreude from German and mathematical symbols from Arabic. But when comes to describing non-symbolic consciousness, we are at a loss. Our human mind is only capable of understanding the concept of the four dimensions: the three-dimensional space and time. Beyond that, an average human brain has problems of comprehending them, except by theoretical physicists in mathematical equations. To say there is nothing out there beyond what our human brain can comprehend is presumptuous. Even one of our greatest rational men, Albert Einstein, when presented with the theory of Quantum Mechanics, incomprehensibly murmured, “God doesn’t play dice.” He implicitly acknowledged there is a God. The greatest test is when a plane, completely filled with leading members of the World’s Atheistic Society (an hypothetical one, I hope), is about to crash, I will bet that more than 99.9% of these atheists will drop down on their agnostic knees and pray away, in whatever face-saving languages they comprehend. What a schadenfreude moment! (I know I shouldn’t have gloated on this hypothetical misfortune of others, but here I was at the grace and mercy of my Muse, and she commanded, “Write!” And so I did, for illustrative effect. Another déjà vu instance.)

As for myself, I am open to the teachings of all faiths. Philosophically, I tread the middle path, the Golden Mean, the way of the Tao (harmony with the universe) and the Buddha (self-realization). Not too hot and not too cold, just as Goldilocks likes it, as they say. Where am I spiritually? I am still looking forwards to the adventures lying ahead, strolling leisurely down the roads taken, through hills and dales, climbing every mountain, fording every stream, always navigating guided by my own higher, purposeful compass, occasionally getting disoriented in the woods, sloshing my way through rains and snows, basking in sunshine and cool breezes, never failing to stop to smell the roses, taking in the grandeurs and wonders that is our world, witnessing the myriad interplays that are dramas of life, trying to remember it is not the destination that counts, it is the journey.

For more information about me, please visit my web site at www.pfjchow.com. Thanks.

So, on this holiday occasion, I wish you Peace! Brothers and Sisters, Peace! ;-)

Happy Birthday Anniversary! Jesus of Nazareth!