Tag: buddhism

A Sect of One

May 16th, 2026

“It can sometimes seem that each of us is a sect of one.” -from The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah

Note: I will be quoting the Appiah frequently in this essay. Assume the quotes are from him unless I specify otherwise.

Kwame Appiah is a philosopher who writes about how we as humans identify ourselves and how others identify us. His book is not long, but he touches on a large number of topics. He has written individual chapters on certain types of identity. One chapter is just about religious identity. That is a subject that might easily require an entire book of its own, but Appiah manages to make a variety of intriguing observations using relatively few words. This particular chapter interests me because I have noticed some of same things he has in the course of my life.

One of the main points that Appiah makes is that a religion is not primarily a system of beliefs, although we have been convinced that is so. He maintains that religion rests on a tripod of foundations: belief, practice, and community. Each aspect of religion interacts and supports the others. This is not a new idea. The Buddhists talk about taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and to me that sounds like the same thing. Right belief (orthodoxy) has to be accompanied by right practice (orthopraxy). Right practice can mean all sorts of things: what we eat or wear, what ritual we follow, what moral codes we use to guide us. Right practice is what we do, as opposed to what we believe. The actions of the community are what unifies us. My Buddhist friends would call that “together action”. Oddly enough (perhaps this my Catholicism speaking), this triune set of pillars reminds me of how the Holy Trinity works.

Appiah does not discount the importance of belief. Our beliefs guide our actions and influence who we consider to be members of our community. Almost every Sunday, I go to Mass with my wife and grandson. Everyone in the congregation stands during the liturgy to recite the Credo (Latin for “I believe”). The Nicene Credo is packed with theology, and we all proclaim that we believe everything in that profession of faith. Some of the articles of faith in the creed are honestly a bit of a reach. Was Mary really a virgin? Is Jesus “begotten” of the Father?

If somebody will ask me if I really believe everything in the creed, I would probably reply, “Yeah, sure, why not?” That is not a rousing endorsement, but it all I can muster up at this point. Appiah said that “an avowal of faith is a performance as much as it is a proposition”. In fact, he describes the reciting of the creed as “a pledge of allegiance”. It’s a sign on solidarity. The praying of the creed at Mass is “together action”. It has as much to do with orthopraxy and community as it does with orthodoxy.

Now, if a person does not believe everything that their religion proclaims, is that person not a member of that community? This goes back to identity; I know at least one person who does not believe in the god of the Torah but identifies as a Jew. He would be deeply offended if I told him he was not a Jew. His Jewish identity is grounded in his tradition, his family history, and his moral code. He doesn’t need the theology.

Likewise, I know Buddhists who are atheists. They have no need to believe in God (or gods). As John Lennon once sang, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” That’s an fascinating idea, but not a very catchy song lyric. The point is that Buddhists can engage in right practice without a theology. Especially in Zen, the belief system is minuscule. The goal (if there even is a goal) is to go back to the mind before thinking and just do it. And do it as a community (sangha).

Religious identity looks different from different vantage points. A person who views members of a religion from a distance often sees a monolithic group of people. As the observer gets closer to the group, they can see the differences among individuals. I found that out in a Bible study years ago. Most of the members of the group were Evangelicals. I came to the study with a stereotype in my head of what these people were like. I was correct in a few ways, but mostly I was mistaken. Each person in the group was unique, and each had a particular viewpoint on scripture. In effect, I discovered that “Evangelicals” is a nonsense term, just like “Catholics” really means very little.

I have always been interested in other faith traditions. So, I have spent time with Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs, practitioners of indigenous traditions, and a wide variety of Christians. It has often amazed me how I can have friendly discussions with people whose religions are quite different from mine, but I sometimes get into fierce arguments with coreligionists. It seems like the closer people are with regards to belief, the more eager they are to dispute even the tiniest variations of doctrine. It’s like family fights. The intensity of the quarrels increases as the parties share more in common. I suspect it is a conflict about identity. Who is the true believer and how do we decide who is in the group and who is banished?

I think of myself as a Catholic, who has managed to incorporate aspects of Judaism and Buddhism into his practice. (I blame “Nostra Aetate” for my adventures in religious studies). Well, that is my identity. I have no idea how others perceive me, and I really don’t care that much.

Hopefully, I won’t get ostracized at Mass.


Absence

April 26th, 2026

A young man, who is a close relative, cut off all contact with me about ten months ago. I haven’t I heard anything at all from him since he broke the connection with me. I don’t expect to hear from him anytime soon, and maybe that is for the best. As I think back on our last conversation, this separation was probably necessary and inevitable.

I spoke to a neighbor about this young man, and he told me about his son, who had left without a word one day and never communicated with his parents for ten years. It was not clear to me from what my neighbor said if he and his son ever reconciled. He did tell me that his son died.

The discussion with my neighbor made me think about the long estrangement I had with my own family. I left home at the age of eighteen to go to school at West Point and pursue a career in the U.S. Army. I was gone for twelve years. I visited my family when I could, but that was at most maybe twice a year. When I was stationed in West Germany, I think I went a couple years without seeing them at all. We stayed in contact, although at that time it was mostly through snail mail. I believe I was on good terms with my family, but we were far apart and our lives were on very different trajectories. We missed big chunks of each other’s lives. I wasn’t there for my dad’s first heart attack. He wasn’t in Germany for my wedding. During those years, I became an Army officer and a helicopter pilot. I lived all over the United States and spent three years in Europe. I married a German woman and eventually left the military to work in the trucking industry. When I finally returned to my hometown, I was thirty years old with a wife and a baby boy. I also arrived with some trauma and a drinking problem. I was not my parents’ little boy anymore.

Reestablishing family relationships proved to be difficult. I wasn’t ready for all the changes in my family of origin. They definitely weren’t ready for me. At the risk of stating the obvious, things were not the same as before I left. I was a different man, and they were also different from what I remembered. My father and I had a number of bitter arguments, and I am convinced that some of the strife was due to the fact that we were fighting with someone who no longer existed. I couldn’t recognize that the person yelling at me was a stranger to me, and that person couldn’t understand it either.

In Buddhism there is the idea that all aspects of who we are as individuals are transitory. The physical changes in our bodies as time passes are obvious, but people change internally too. We evolve emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. Fifty years ago, I went to West Point, and I am not much like that scared and idealistic young man anymore. The Buddhists talk about the Five Skandhas, the shifting sands of our being. They are defined as follows:

“The five skandhas are essentially a method for understanding that every aspect of our lives is a collection of constantly changing experiences. There is no one aspect that is truly solid, permanent or unique. Everything is in flux. Everything is dependent upon multiple causes and conditions.” from the Encyclopedia of Buddhism.

Even when living with somebody every day, there are those changes. Sometimes, they sneak up on a person. Our grandson, Asher, is five years old, and he seems to be with me almost constantly. Even so, some mornings I wake and look at him and wonder who this little man is. He literally grows up overnight. He changes as I gaze at him sleeping in bed. His skandhas are very active.

I may meet my young man again, or maybe I might not. If I do see him again, I will be meeting him again for the very first time, because he will be a different person, and so will I.

Not Home for the Holidays

November 30th, 2025

“All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?” – from “Eleanor Rigby” by the Beatles

Three of us sat at the dining room table for Thanksgiving dinner: Karin, Asher, and me. Our holiday meal was simple. We had chicken, a green bean casserole, zucchini fries, and a yogurt dessert that Karin had dreamed up. I think Asher, our nearly five-year-old grandson, actually ate mac and cheese, but at least he ate with us. Karin and I have three children. None of them were able to be with us on Thanksgiving. Our tiny gathering in no way resembled the Normal Rockwell painting from The Saturday Evening Post in 1943. I suspect that almost no Thanksgiving dinners look like what Rockwell idealized.

Thanksgiving is a strange beast. It is officially a secular event with all the trappings of a religious holiday. It commemorates the first Thanksgiving in 1621 when Pilgrim colonists in Massachusetts shared a feast with members of the Wampanoag tribe. The original gathering has a symbolic and mythical status. The current holiday is supposed to be an occasion for people to share food with others and express gratitude for what they have. It is also an opportunity to overeat, binge-watch TV, and then buy unnecessary consumer goods the following day. Thanksgiving is a day full of contradictions. As such, it is profoundly American.

Karin and I said a Christian prayer before we ate our meal with Asher. Then we recited a Japanese Buddhist verse that we learned from our friends, Senji and Gilberto, long ago. We chanted “Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo” three times, and then we joined hands with Asher and said, “Froelich heisst beim Abendessen: Guten Appatit!” (a German phrase that Karin learned as a child that roughly translates to: “Happy means at dinner ‘have a good appetite'”.

Years ago, before Asher entered our lives, I used to go with a small group of people from the American Legion to visit patients in the psych ward at the local VA hospital. We went there every Tuesday evening for a couple hours to spend time with the vets. Around the holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas, the ward was packed full of patients. Holidays that emphasized being with family and friends were particularly painful for veterans who had no loved ones. The loneliness that these vets could somehow keep in check during most of the year overwhelmed them, and they wound up in a hospital ward loaded up with strangers who felt equally forgotten. I’m glad that I had the chance to spend a few hours with these men and women. We shared our common humanity for a little while, and I learned things from them.

Our culture and our technology encourage us to remain isolated. We need to be physically together at least once in a while. I give thanks for Asher and Karin for being in my life every day. I look forward to being with others too.