Religion ? .. Do we need that ?

.. However, if we think deeply, religious faith and the concepts of love, compassion, kindness and forgiveness are essentially different. According to Buddhism, when a child is born, he or she has no ideology or religious faith. In a way, we can say that at that time the child is free from any ideology or religious faith. But during that time, the child’s appreciation of and need for human affection is very strong. Without parental affection the child cannot survive. However, the child can survive without religious faith …

…Love, compassion and a sense of forgiveness are, I believe, part of human nature. Faith develops later. With faith one can have a happy life, but without a sense of caring, commitment or responsibility, we cannot be happy or successful ...

Live in a Better Way
Dalai Lama

Reading this book really answer my question of faith, religion and human being. I have been asking the same question of the relation between faiths aka religion and the concept of love, compassion, kindness and forgiveness.

By looking into the war in Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestina or even the Bali Bombing and Marriot Bombing in Indonesia, where all the idea of that war is based on faith, I wonder whether the cause of that chaos is the concept of the religion itself or the understanding of the disciple of that religion or the human itself.

For such a long time ago, I believe that religion is not all the basis to become a better person, a person who has the compassion, kindness and forgiveness. All of those three come from within ourselves and that is something that we carry on since we came into this world.

Like Dalai Lama stated in his book “Live in a Better Way”, even an animal have the concept of love even though their understanding is very limited, but at least it shows that to know the concept of love we don’t need a religion.

The concept of love, kindness and forgiveness comes from our parents, who introduce the concept, who grow and give meaning to the concept to us when we were a baby.

If that concept comes from religion, then there will be no war, there will be no fight, there will be no terrorism, none, zero. Religion doesn’t have that such kind of terms.

Therefore, religion itself, for me, is like a brake, a stopper, when the angry, the un-forgiveness, come to the surface to replace all the good things of our selves. It depends on us, whether we would like to use the brake or we just run through it.

As Dalai Lama stated in his book, faith or religion, is an addition for us, a human being, to have a happy life, because we let ourselves be friends with us, because we let ourselves enrich our inner self through our compassionate things to others.

So, in that case, do we need religion ?

Well, in my case, I still need God, because I’ve met Him several times through His mystifying way and I need religion as my vehicle to meet my creator.