Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

"Bhoga is Yoga", goes an old Indian saying, or
roughly translated, "delight is religion". Sexual
pleasure and ecstasy provide a foretaste and
preparation for the experience of "mahasukha",
The Great Bliss of Liberation".

- from “Chop Wood, Carry Water”


“Delight is religion”. Now, there’s a fresh idea! Think what the religious world would be like if the job of liturgy planners and worship leaders was to find ways to foster great delight that would lead worshippers to the Great Bliss of Liberation. Sounds good to me. I think that if I had concentrated – or, more to reality, been allowed to concentrate – on Religious Delight as my work, people would probably have been not only drawn more to Religion, but to the God of Delight as well.

And we don’t have to stop at Religion. Life is a lot of things, but think how the quality of Life would be improved if “Delight is Life” were one of the core principles for living! It wouldn’t take long to break down a lot of the inhibitions that have taken a death-grip on Life, to change the basic commandments from “Thou shalt not” to “Thou shalt”! Oh, I can hear the rising disapproval of the Puritans even as I write. Many of us have been taught to be leery of pleasure and ecstasy. (I won’t even mention the S__ word.)

Well, I’m not advocating complete anarchy and hedonism, either in Life or Religion. But maybe a good dash of them would make for a better World in a lot of ways?? Maybe a blossoming of Love, generosity, openness, acceptance?

Think about it!

Brian+