Karen Armstrong accepts TED prize
Karen Armstrong is probably the single most influential author in my life. She writes about religion - comparative religion, you might say.
Armstrong was a nun, and left the convent after years of frustration. After years of getting completely away from religion, she studied the world's major religions from a different point of view. In her words, that study brought her back to a vision of what religion could be.
Armstrong does an amazing job of explaining the basic beliefs and history of the world's most popular religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Her books have really given me a better understanding of the sacred, of philosophy, and of looking within and without to find deep mythic truths.
I was raised in a completely non-religious household, the daughter of two "recoverig Catholics" (one with a Buddhist slant). As a result, I think I lack a lot of the antipathy towards religion that many of my friends, who were made to follow a particular religion, hold. I was allowed to question, read whatever I wanted, and for me the pendulum probably swung even a bit too far in that I had a bit of hunger and wonder about religion that was never satisfied. So, around the end of college I started reading up on comparative religion. I find it fascinating.
To sum up, two of the things I've learned are important to me:
- A sense of sacredness in life - not only in my life, but I think our culture needs more reverence in general
- I aim to put aside time each day to meditate on something deeper than the surface of everyday life. This could be my family, or it could be the nature of reality. Just something more than the daily grind.
I also learned that fundamentalism is (in historical terms) a fairly recent development in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. This puts our current situation and understanding of religion in perspective.
Anyway, here's Armstrong's speech:
Comments
I took a Comparative Religion course taught by renowned anthropologist Melford E. Spiro in college, which was insanely interesting, and included a heavy focus on Judaism as well as Burmese Buddhism and Supernaturalism (ie, "pagan"/folk beliefs). And I took an anthropology course on Modern Witchcraft and New Age thought from Tanya Marie Luhrmann, which was hilarious. In order to give us some insight into her anthropological studies and theories (joining covens, etc., for research; "the ways in which magic and other esoteric techniques both serve emotional needs and come to seem reasonable through the experience of practice"), she had us try out "pagan" meditation techniques and learn how to read Tarot cards. I remember wowing a few friends in college with my new found Tarot reading techniques.
In other words, in her view, Tarot and similar oracle techniques, "work," but not necessarily for the supernatural reasons often attributed to them. Well, she presented this in as unbiased manner as she could, saying that one could attribute supernatural as well as psychological explanations, but you could tell what she was really asserting.
I still have absolutely no idea what my friends thought I got "right" - I remember some looks of shocks between two of them as if I touched upon some inside secret. I didn't feel like I had any particular insight or feeling of knowledge - I was just reading card meanings within the prescribed pattern from notes. And I definitely wasn't cold-reading, because I don't know how, unless that were subconscious as well.
Was it simply their inner minds applying what they wanted to what I was saying, or was it witchcraft?
The dark room, candles and Harold Budd minimalist piano compositions I was playing on my stereo probably helped.