Superstition | Comet of the Moon(Hale-Bopp) above the American desert,
photographed by William R. Dellings
The voices of ghosts are so familiar,
They whisper to me every day.
You, so young and rich,
Make assumptions with absolute assurance.
I vacillate between superstition and tradition.
You don’t need to question.
Tradition is the oral delivery of rites and customs from generation to generation. Superstition is belief inconsistent with what society general considers true and rational. When tradition and superstition become bound together, it is a sign of trouble. For example, a woman was once taught not to wash her hair on anybody’s birthday. Whenever she protested this, the answer was “Don’t question!” Years later, she leaned that in the old country, letting one’s hair down was a sign of mourning and thus inauspicious on a birthday. What was etiquette in one generation became superstition in another.
Those raised with traditions and superstitions are often torn between the extremes of biculturalism. Their inbred beliefs conflict with current knowledge and quickly changing culture, creating doubt and uncertainty.
There has to be informed revision to all tradition if it is not to degenerate into superstition. The true substance of any tradition will take new form without compromising its inherent character. If not, it will just become the outmoded beliefs of old people, and it will fade into ghostly whispers.
In all religions, there are people who tend to search for an easy route to salvation or enlightenment, which does not involve changing themselves in the process. They will cling to superficial ritual and form, believing that these rites would do for them what they refuse to do for themselves. They try to create the illusion that they could get the article without paying the price for it. It is a terrible superstition causing stagnation and suffering.
You and you alone can salvage your life.
You and you alone can walk the path.
No one else can do it for you.Many Christians, for example, wrongly believe that if they have faith in Christ as a kind of miraculous icon, they would find salvation for their souls without following Christ’s actual path. Christ has pointed at the path they should take, but they have confused his finger with the path. Christ is not a comfortable shortcut. He has given us a perfect example of a way to salvation, a way that can only be followed by the very bravest, for it involves sacrificing the self even to the point of crucifixion. It is living in the spirit of Christ that gives Christianity vitality, not ritual pretense of sacrifice, or prostrating oneself before some icon.
In the same way, many Buddhists would perform what would be symbolic rituals to build up merit. Rituals are no shortcuts to spiritual development. Symbolic acts isolated from real life do not move your spirit forward. Chanting other people’s words of wisdom without application is like pretending to move forward on the path while you are in fact waiting for someone else to take you there. The spiritual essence of the Buddha gives Buddhism vitality and energy, not ritual imitations of virtue.
…One thing is clear. There is no way to escape the inexorable law of karma. The law of cause and effect operates as relentlessly in the world of the spirit as it does in the physical realm. You shall reap what you have sown. Your deeds will come back to haunt you. Even a Buddha does not escape the relentless fairness of causality.
Only a real change in your mind, thoughts, speech and action will change your karma, for karma is nothing but your own action: it is in fact you. Only when you are not serving an ego will you live without creating more sorrow and suffering for yourself and for others.
Superstition —
[From supersisto, “to stand in terror of the deity” (Cicero, “De Nat. deorum”, I, 42, 117); or from superstes, “surviving”: “Qui totos dies precabantur et immolabant, ut sibi sui liberi superstites essent, superstitiosi sunt appellati”, i.e. “Those who for whole days prayed and offered sacrifice that their children might survive them, were called superstitious” (Cicero, ibid., II, 28, 72). Cicero also drew the distinction: “Superstitio est in qua timor inanis deorum, religio quæ deorum cultu pio continetur”, i.e. “Superstition is the baseless fear of the gods, religion the pious worship.” According to Isidore of Seville (Etymolog., l. 8, c. iii, sent.), the word comes from superstatuo or superinstituo: “Superstitio est superflua observantia in cultu super statuta seu instituta superiorum”, i.e. “observances added on to prescribed or established worship”] is defined by St. Thomas (II-II:92:1) as “a vice opposed to religion by way of excess; not because in the worship of God it does more than true religion, but because it offers Divine worship to beings other than God or offers worship to God in an improper manner”. Superstition sins by excess of religion, and this differs from the vice of irreligion, which sins by defect. The theological virtue of religion stands midway between the two. — Catholic Encyclopedia
So superstitions come from an excessive fear of God, an excess of religion. They come from mistaking the form of worship for the path one is intended to follow. But the reaility is, you can’t be a Christian without walking Jesus’ path, and you can’t be a Buddhist without walking Buddha’s path. All the church services and the chanting won’t bring you to salvation, only walking the path will do that.
And you can’t be a Taoist without walking your own path.
I suppose religious superstition became relevant to my life when I asked a Catholic boyfriend why he was eating fish on Friday during Lent, and he didn’t know, so I told him why and he got mad at me. Other than that, I can’t recall it affecting my life all that much.
As to everday kinds of superstition, I have always followed the ones that made sense, like not walking under ladders, since things could be dropped on your head by someone working above you or you could bump the ladder and make it fall on you. I have no fear of the number thirteen, but the number four bothers me, like it does the Japanese. I think it was that Dick Van Dyke show episode when I was a kid where Rob dreamed everyone lost their thumbs and became aliens.
About the photo: I grew up near the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, and often went there for hikes or picnics. Nothing weird ever happened while I was there, but it’s a very nice area. Comet Hale-Bopp holds fond memories for me of comet watching with a dear friend who won’t talk to me anymore. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll steal his thumbs…
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