Socrates or Buddha? On Being
Spiritual But Not Religious
I’ve found that Buddhism is best. But that does not mean
Buddhism is best for everyone. That’s clear. It’s defi nite.
The Dalai LamaAnger is the mood I usually sense. Or if not anger, then frustra-
tion. Sometimes sadness. I’m referring to the occasions when I
talk about having quit being a priest, having left the church. It
might be after an event at a book festival, or during one of the
classes I teach, on matters such as how to fi ll the God-shaped
hole. Individuals approach, a little angry, frustrated or sad to
ask more about my experience and share theirs. Typically they
have a link to institutional Christianity in their past, perhaps
through parents, perhaps via school. And they’ve rejected it. It
may be that church values did not chime with their values of
inclusion or quest. It could be that the religion of their youth
strikes them now as overly negative, obsessed with guilt or
purity. Sometimes, they’ll have had a vexed personal experience.
There’s the man who married a divorcée, which led to his parish
priest excommunicating him. There’s another who studied for
a PhD in quantum physics, and realised that her wonder at the
subatomic world sat uneasily alongside the wonder she was sup-
posed to show at the biblical miracles of Jesus.
It’s a traumatic experience because once such doubts set in,
it’s not just a change of preference that’s at stake, as if one had
gone off cornfl akes in favour of a cereal with a little more bran.
To be religious is to take a holistic attitude towards life. It is to
be involved in a comprehensive story about the world and the
way things are. Once a trickle of concern is unleashed, it tends
to become a fl ood, and to ask one question feels like questioning