There’s nothing more I want to be than a religious teacher. In the humanities, a liberal, perseverant, and disciplined education is paramount to a successful experience of the art (that is why I’ve always been suspicious of postmodernism and positivism). Also, given that religion, despite having been with us since the dawn of humanity, remains so mysterious to so many people, the importance of religious education (and I’m not just talking about Catholic schools and Sunday class) is grossly understated.
In many ways, what makes a human, human, is the courage and wisdom to accept their own death when it comes. True religion’s purpose, contrary to popular belief, is not to lessen death’s harsh reality, but to provide a path to the infinite where death does not mean one should give up or stop his moral and spiritual cultivation. Death is, quite literally, no excuse to stop working for the good.
The people who turn to religion because they think it will lessen their apprehension or fear of death are not truly educated in its meaning. Consolation and nothing more is for cults and false messiahs. There is a powerful distinction between they and the religious teachers who have taught us things beyond the ordinary and mundane.
Totally agree. What Buddhism attracts me is exactly the kind of attitude towards death it suggests people to take: face it, accept it as a fact of life one cannot avoid, but then live a full life before it dawns upon us. Same as other human sufferings, physical or otherwise: they are part of life and unavoidable, so fact them, accept them, but live on to transcend the sufferings.