On mustard seeds and bodhi trees

Buddha said that only ethical and moral factors differentiate people, and nothing else. But Buddhism arose within the context of the caste system in India, so the rejection of such markers makes sense. However, just because a religion is "created" (and religion is merely a highly developed and complex way of seeing the wold through a certain lens, so of course religion must be created), doesn't mean it isn't valid. An easier way of thinking about it is as a perspective on the meaning/purpose of life. And it is up to the individual to decide that for themselves.

I could come up with my own purpose and lens, maybe even create my own religion. Or, I could take the well-traveled path of choosing from what's available to me. There's nothing wrong with the latter, especially because I am a product of a specific socio-cultural milieu. I choose my life from sets of options. It would be a daunting task to create an entirely new life--one that has no parallels whatsoever. What we would see as a unique way of living is only in comparison to ways that we know how to live. Something entirely new would be so foreign that we wouldn't see it as "living" or even "human," I think. In fact, such a creation might be impossible, if without societies and people we are "speechless and mindless."

Yet we are not solely products of our environments, for we must have come into such a helpless condition (i.e. being speechless and mindless without others) by way of biology. I am sure there are some creatures who can survive without the nurturing of parents from their birth, and biology has made them so. Our own biology and evolution has made us so. Thus, we are shaped by our environment and by nature.

Leaf of a bodhi tree.

Anyways. More about Buddhism. Distinguishing people by their acts seems to be a much more practical way of looking at the world. Rewarding someone because of their faith has little application to our reality that we live everyday. And if it is solely on the basis of faith that you enter into heaven and are rewarded in the afterlife, Christianity is a religion of displaced reality. What about the here and now? While Christ may exhort them to respect their elders and not to covet or lie or steal, it is not on the basis of works that one enters into heaven. Christians use this as a point of reassurance for converts--even if you're a bad person, you can still get into heaven. For a thinking person, this should not be a point of reassurance.

What we conceive of as "fair" in this life is how appropriately proportionate the consequences of our actions are. And really, what else matters to us? We cannot even be sure of an afterlife; of a heaven or hell; purgatory or pearly gates. These things have been told to us, but we have no empirical evidence. We are beings of sense, are we not? We experience life through our senses, then process the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings and interpret them. That which we cannot know, we do not believe. We can make assumptions based on past experience, but we tend towards doubt if we have never empirically encountered something.

Why should we, as creatures of our senses, bound by reason and experience, force ourselves to be something we're not? Why should we believe in a deity whose being we cannot see, whose face we cannot touch, whose voice we cannot hear? If there was no punishment for unbelief, Christianity would have far less subscribers of its doctrine than it does.

In Buddhism, there is no punishment, only consequences for our actions: suffering. That, to me, is logical, practical, pragmatic, knowable, understandable, and every other synonym you can think of. And why shouldn't a religion/life perspective be these things? Why are religions illogical, non-empirical, difficult to understand, impractical? Living an ethical life should not be forced upon you by threats of hell and eternal damnation; it should be a practical, intelligent choice made by knowledgeable, logical beings.