Devotion
There are two ways in which world religions bring a person into a state of felicitous wholesomeness, where there is a temporary cessation of the Three Poisons of Greed, Hatred and Delusion. The first is bhakti, which is Sanskrit for devotion, piety, worship and faith. The second is taking refuge in oneself.
The former is the path of all religions save Buddhism, which carries as its standard the latter. Allow me to explain further with the proviso that this is a broad generalization that will merit the usual NAxALT.
Other sources will say that anatta – the doctrine of Not-Self – is the one doctrine that makes Buddhism distinctive. Suggested here is that anatta is harmonic with seeking refuge in oneself. For reasons discussed later, this is only true if the Not-Self rather than the No-Self understanding is held. It's perplexing that the Buddha urged his disciples to take refuge in themselves if there is No-Self as many folks in the West maintain. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Devotion is dual, consisting of the devoted and the devotee, a subject and an object. In religion, this is expressed as the worshiper and the worshiped, the creature and the creator, the I/Thou. German preserves the concepts of formal and informal You, Sitzen and Dutzen. "Du bist mein Sohn" doesn't require any fluency in German to understand for an English speaker. The du is the familiar form of "you"; the archaic thou in English shares a common heritage with it although it is seldom used outside of the older variants of the English Bible. To use Martin Buber's language (and it's been decades since I read him), there is a true transformative dialogue between two different beings that is expressed in I/Thou. Devotion may be thought of by monotheists as an elevated form of this dialogue in which the Divine is addressed with the intimate, even tender, thou.
In devotion, there is a god (or gods) who deserve filial respect and this is showed through worship and sacrifice. God created us and provides for our continued existence and like any Father or Mother, is owed recognition in return not because he needs it, but because his creatures do. Something lost on (many) atheists is that we are all dependent on others and we sacrifice for them and they for us. Set aside whatever notion of Deity you may have and recognize that monotheism teaches what we already are: Dependent creatures who must sacrifice to others for the preservation and flourishing of life. All life is made possible by sacrifice, so even if you are a vegan, recall that the Lord Buddha was very aware that such a diet still involves the death of countless creatures. Bhikkhus are forbidden in the vinaya from digging in the earth because it causes death and suffering.
This is a sketch of what is meant by devotion here.
I look at devotion now from the perspective of mental states and the recent papal prohibition of the Latin Mass, the form of ritual worship codified by the Council of Trent and made the standard of Latin Christianity for four hundred years.
Trent did not produce a new form of Christian worship, choosing instead to make minor reforms while eliminating regional drifts and localized, eclectic usages which had crept in during the medieval period. The bulk of the liturgy was already defined and had been in use for centuries prior to the Reformation. With the challenge of Protestantism, there was a need to shore up the liturgy, to make it an effective means of drawing back the sheep wandering in the pastures of Luther and Calvin. The Tridentine Mass – or in other words, the Mass of Trent – was promulgated by St. Pius V, going on in the ensuing centuries to inspire great works.
In the past few decades, the Tridentine Mass was effectively banned throughout the world and a new, far more radical rendition delivered following Vatican II in the 1960s. It seemed to get a reprieve under Pope Benedict, but this was short lived with the promulgation of Bergoglio's Traditio custodes in 2021. In the months following its promulgation, dioceses throughout the world began cancelling the Latin Mass, effectively breaking the back of the small (but growing) traditional communities sprinkled throughout the West. In a faith with over 20 different liturgical rites of great historical lineage, there was no room any longer for Pope Benedict's so-called "extraordinary form" of the Roman Rite. Any of the self-governing churches in communion with Rome should be very concerned about the future of their own liturgies.
For most humans, the devotional mindset in religion is natural, a reflection of complex psychological and evolutionary factors found in mammalian dominance hierarchies. The Lord provides, the Lord protects, the Lord punishes. The Lord sits at the top of the food chain, watching over us and observing how we care for ourselves and one another. He dwells in our hearts, reminding us of his commandments and promises of hope. Whether near or far, the I/Thou relationship always stands and nowhere more clearly than in devotion and acts of piety. Clergy are part of this food chain and are there as pastors to help guide the flock.
Tampering with liturgical worship is a big deal. Scholar of Hinduism Gavin Flood notes that within Hinduism, some of the core Vedic rituals have endured for three millennium with very little alteration. These liturgies are quite elaborate, involving multiple priests, complex rubrics, many worshipers and music spread out over hours. Vedic liturgy is a high calorie affair that requires a commitment most moderns in the West cannot imagine giving to anything, although football comes close for the true devotee (fan - fanatic). One must sacrifice in traditional agrarian societies just to show up at worship. This does not compute for the modern Westerner who lives off DoorDash meals eaten single serving style in an urban domicile.
In the West, when the Novus Ordo supplanted the older, more baroque usus antiquor received from Trent, it was scrutinized and found wanting by many who took their faith seriously and who had been nurtured by its predecessor. The Novus Ordo of Pope Paul VI was not simply an updating, but rather a full-on rewrite of most of the Mass guided by academics who wanted to go back in time to recapture something vaguely conceived as representing the "spirit of early Christianity." The Latin Mass was overgrown with centuries of ornamentation, barnacles as it were, which obscured the simplicity and energy of the apostolic and post-apostolic periods.
One argument given by Cold War-era liturgical reformers was that the triumphalism found in the Latin Mass was impractical in a world where the Church was undergoing renewed persecution globally. The Iron Curtain had dropped and no one could foresee just how far the political forms of secularism and atheism would spread. The simplicity of an early Church Mass worked for the beleaguered followers in the early years and could do the same in the new post-Christian world.
Ritual is transformative in the sense that it has the power to bring the egoic mind out of its normal self-obsessed chaotic mental chatter. Anytime the mind leaves behind its normal preoccupations, it can be said to have entered super mundane territory. Certain branches of Hinduism and especially Buddhism emphasize the cultivation (bhavana) leading to samadhi, a highly focused form of concentration in which the mind is temporarily free from the suffering imposed by the Three Poisons. Most of us who meditate quickly learn that our inner life is driven by the push-pull of craving and aversion. Samadhi can lead to more exquisite forms – the jhanas – which are alternate states of consciousness marked by clarity, presence, awareness and enhanced power of perception. This beam of perception when directed at the body, at the thoughts and sensations, peels away the layers which go into constructing the I. This deconstruction, far from being psychologically traumatic, is a positive practice which leads to a reduction in suffering. Very few humans ever seek out samadhi and will thus, never know any other way of being mentally. For meditators, this is a very unhappy thought.
Most folks just gloss over the Third Noble Truth, which states that there is a path leading to the end of suffering. Assumed is that it refers to death and the state of Nibbana for the arahant. However, the Buddha is clear that peace and cessation are to be found in this life, right here, right now.
Unlike devotion, especially as found in public liturgy, the practice of samadhi does not require sacrifice in terms of grain/animal offerings, time spent traveling to a temple, tithing to a priesthood, etc. It's a free gift that anyone can learn to give himself with some basic instruction. It offers no shortcuts although generosity is one of many factors (along with sila) which can accelerate its progress.
For religions like Christianity, liturgical worship attempts and may even succeed at facilitating a temporary abandonment of Self on the part of worshipers. However, this is only true of the older forms like the Tridentine Mass, which were carefully constructed to engage on a contemplative level. Liturgical worship is sensual, ordered towards drawing the ego away from its usual inner haunts. We read stories about St. Ignatius of Loyola, who was famous for weeping while celebrating Mass, a likely sign of altered state effected by the ritual. It's the case that even a temporary cessation of identity can bring a profound relief.
It is very hard, impossible even, to see St. Ignatius or Padre Pio being able to achieve the same altered states under the Novus Ordo.
The Novus Ordo Missae of Pope Paul VI did a grave disservice to the psychological fabric of the West. By eliminating the contemplative in favor of the active – an inversion of the traditional theology of Christendom in which the former is given pride of place – Paul single handedly removed a route, albeit a flawed one, that could lead people away from ego obsession and into super mundane states of consciousness. The liturgical reforms after the Council placed an emphasis on active participation (or at least, this was the way they were sold to the Catholic world) on the part of clergy and laity. The parties no longer faced East together, the direction from which Jesus would come at the end of days to judge the living and the dead. Instead, they faced each other, producing yet another occasion for the flowering and growth of ego awareness. Priests became entertainers, more aware of themselves and thus more inclined to all the trappings of personality and identity.
"Good morning everyone! Welcome to St. Bart's! So glad to have you! Today Jenny Smith will be doing the reading, Bob Oberholz and his family will be presenting the gifts..."
This is pedestrian chatter, banal to the core and, to use Christian language, "worldly." It leaves the mind in its default setting of mundane, occupied with the kind of bougie stuff you would hear at a PTA meeting. Western religion since the Reformation has become increasingly verbal, focused on rhetoric, exhortation and, in its worst form, garrulous chatter. The word "sermon" took on the tainted meaning of long, boring moralizing on a theme. The onslaught of the monkey mind finally breached Catholicism with the promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae. The celebrant was now required to say the whole Canon of the Mass aloud so everyone could hear it and "actively" participate.
Ritual is criticized by the Buddha in several passages and attachment to it is ranked as one of the fetters binding creatures to samsara. There is one sutta in the Pali Canon in which devotees are described going down to the river for ritual cleansing and the purification of sins. (Sound familiar?) When asked, the Buddha says that such actions have no effect on the people doing them. In other parts of the Pali, he seems to acknowledge that there can be a positive benefit from rituals conducted with a certain mindset.
At least in its primordial expression, Buddhism is pretty far from having anything like a liturgy or rituals. The sangha was enjoined to come together for recitation of the dhamma, to preserve the teachings for the alleviation of suffering. But as for high masses, Eucharistic devotions, processions, baptisms, chrismations, there were no Buddhist counterparts listed as part of the early community's practices and, had there been, would have stood in stark opposition to the fetter known as Clinging to Rites and Rituals.
If Enlightenment was the treasure sought, the belief that a ritual could purify enough to attain this state was Wrong View and would actually work against the aspiration. In the West, heaven is the goal and it is achieved by God's choice, but he does require certain rituals for inclusion in his eternal presence, post-mortem. Buddhism does not look down on Christianity or any other authentic path which directs towards the heavenly realms. Most practitioners are content to strive for this themselves, seeing Nibbana as a very difficult prize to win.
In Buddhism, looking for another person to save you or for a ritual to eliminate the taints so that you can see the Three Marks in their fullness and thus escape the cycle of wandering is unthinkable. You are the delusional being and even if the Buddha were standing before you speaking to you in your language, he could only help you, not save you from the reality you have created for yourself in this form.
As suggested here, temporary relief of the stress caused by ego possession can be found in ritual. The ritual will neither reveal the Four Noble Truths nor bring one to stream entry, but will provide a temporary respite from the normal objects rooted in sense desire and ego proliferation, what the Buddha called I-making and my-making. The center of ritual worship found in the Latin Mass - the Eucharist – represents sacrifice for the well-being of others, compassion, a desire to end suffering for those under election ("which will be given up for many") and so on. A sustained focus on altruistic ends for an hour or more per week is a wholesome way to spend time if one believes.
Through its consumption, the slain victim provides an increase in the normal and supernatural virtues which make life theoretically more bearable and peaceful. Insofar as it effects these conditions temporarily in the hearts of believers, ritual can be said to reduce (but not eliminate) suffering. Particularly in the case of Catholicism, whose older theology linked the Eucharist to the pious zeal behind the establishment of hospitals, universities, orphanages and the care of the poor and abandoned, the role of ritual has been a great benefit to the world. Christian philanthropy has far exceeded anything found in other world religions.
The flip side of ritual is that it can lull one very easily into the false belief that one has arrived at the path and can simply keep doing the same thing over and over again. The symbols easily obscure the substance and become ends themselves. Both the Brahmins of Buddha's time and the Pharisees of Jesus' world serve as warnings of the inherent unreliability in seeking refuge in created external goods no matter how lofty in presentation.
What is not really accounted for in Christianity prior to Vatican II was the corruption of ritual to the point it where its benefits vanish. True Believers will argue that the Eucharist in its Novus Ordo form is still an effective means for channeling grace per se, as a magical object which leads to spiritual transformation regardless of the efforts made to downplay it by the very organization whose mission is to protect and promote it. Most Catholics no longer profess a belief in the traditional teaching on the Eucharist and the customary practice of frequent confession has been abandoned for all intents and purposes. Hence, the preliminary psychological disposition to want respite from self-obsession is no longer in play. Defocusing the role of ritual penance went hand-in-hand with the desacralization of the Eucharist. You are okay just the way you are, pumpkin!
What are the effects? If you live in the West, they are all around. A loss of meaning, a resurgence in sensuality, aloofness, hostility, mental illness, bizarre forms of self-harm that are protected and promoted... the list goes on.
