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Islam teaches us that religion is in the nature of man. To be human is to be concerned with religion; to stand erect as men and women do is to seek transcendence. Human beings have received the imprint of God upon the very substance of their souls and cannot evade religion any more than they can avoid breathing. (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Our Religions, 444)

I had to find my way to the place where I could stand side by side with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, and know that the authenticity of his experience was identical with the essence and authenticity of my own. (Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart, 120)

The goal of this course is to study several different religious systems and to try to learn something about the way each one interprets the Absolute. In addition, we will try to discover how they answer the "big questions" of human life: Why are we here? Where are we going? What should we do? The two quotes above should give you some idea about how I approach this subject.

At the center of human religious experience is a deep-seated conviction that there is something more to reality that we can see and feel. This conviction may be unreflected and unspoken, but it shows up in most human beings at all times and in all places. Over and above this feeling, there have always been some humans who have religious experiences--moments in which they feel they have made contact with that "something greater." From this experience, all theological reflection grows. Religion without this feeling is reduced to empty ritual and concept--arguably the primary form of idolatry. And this experience without reflection is reduced to superstition and wish fulfillment. In reflection, then, the experience is articulated and a religion grows. But how do we know what a religion is?

Religions may be studied in many ways. Anthropologists or sociologists may observe followers' rituals, prayers, and way of life. Psychologists may talk about the human needs that the beliefs are fulfilling. My own personal point of contact is the assumption that human beings are created with what Huston Smith, the author of one of the texts for this course, has called a "God-shaped vacuum" in our hearts. This is the "imprint of God" mentioned in the quote by Nasr and the base of the "authenticity of . . . experience" mentioned in the quote by Thurman.

In every culture, in every period of history, we find a belief in some idea of a higher power. People are drawn to better conditions and see things out of joint and imagine how they might be better. This tropism toward the "better" is a budding manifestation of the religious urge. In practical terms, the study of various religions helps you learn from the many different sources that have spent serious time and effort dwelling on the implications of this sense of the sacred.

Having said that, I will be quick to state that this course is not intended to convince you that one system is "better" than another nor to convince you that all religions are "equal" (whatever that would mean), but to familiarize you with several different traditions and how they view the Absolute. From there, you can make your own conclusions as to whether and how what you have learned impacts your own life.

I'd like to begin by unpacking the quotes with which I opened this introduction. In the first quote the Muslim scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr reminds us that human beings are religious creatures. We cannot live without religion: It is inevitable that we ask questions about our own existence, that we ponder the meaning of our lives, and that we seek for the God who created us. This theme is also echoed in most of the religions we will study: we have a natural tropism toward the sacred. To attempt to deny this is to attempt to deny an essential fact of our humanity.

The second quote is from Howard Thurman, an African-American minister, theologian, poet, and mystic. It is taken from his autobiography, originally published in 1979. Thurman was convinced that the Absolute made itself manifest in many different ways to different people. While he lived his life as a Christian, he was always most concerned with encouraging people to seek the spiritual depths to which their own tradition could lead them. His spiritual work was not directed toward converting people to Christianity, but toward creating deeply spiritual human beings.

This is a theme which we will find in some, but not all, of the religions that we study. Some religions insist that conversion to their view of the world is a required first step; others stress particular spiritual exercises but do not require specific metaphysical assumptions. Keep an eye out for this part of the "mission" of each tradition as we study it.

These two themes, then, inform my own understanding of the world's great religious systems. First, we must face the fact that we are creatures who seek knowledge of and participation with the creator and ground of our existence. Second, we need to recognize that, at the deepest levels, our spiritual experiences all converge in some way in a common ground, which is that Absolute that we can never adequately describe.

I have chosen to use the word Absolute to describe the highest point of reference in each of the religious systems you study. The word is problematic, but so is any other word you might choose. The problem comes from the fact that some systems are theistic (i.e., they believe in a personal god), some are nontheistic (they do not), some are both (as in Hinduism, which has a nonpersonal Absolute and which incarnates as a personal god at various times in human history), and some are neither (as in Buddhism, which does not give a positive definition but only a negative definition of its ultimate point of reference). With these restrictions in mind, the choice of a term became somewhat arbitrary.

But not completely arbitrary. There are two things I want this term to convey. First, the word Absolute does refer to the highest point of reference within the system. This cannot, then, be a secondary manifestation or a particular belief or practice. It must be the part of the tradition to which all else refers. In theistic systems, for instance, it would be God--there is nothing "beyond" God to which God can be referred.

The second reason for using this word is that you will be attempting to find that within each tradition that is agreed upon by adherents of the various divisions within the tradition. You will find as you go along that nearly every tradition is actually a collection of various points of view within a larger framework. For instance, Christianity is not simply Christianity: It is Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. And within even those divisions, there are subdivisions. This is the case with all of the traditions you will study. But they all have in common some characteristics, which are what I hope you keep in mind when you see the term Absolute.

A Note about the Traditions Chosen

Before we proceed to the material itself, I would like to make some comments about why I selected the particular traditions that are included in this course. The traditions were not chosen because they were the biggest, the best, or more true than any others. Likewise, traditions that are not represented were not left out because they were felt to be less important or less valid. The selections were made for two practical reasons: the availability of good introductory material and my own familiarity with each of them. I hope you find that these traditions give you a good general idea of the range of possible religious responses to the Absolute as human beings have encountered it.

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