Today, two years ago, August 27, 2024, my son's birthday, I became an ordained Thai monk for an intense seven days.
Before the Ordination Ceremony, your eyebrows and head are shaved. You are up by 5 AM for morning chants and a 7 AM Breakfast, then meditation and selfless service.
You have lunch before noon and do not eat again until 7 AM (intermittent fasting)
Any food you eat must be given by the people. I did this in honor of my beloved wife and son, and the Sacred Teachings of Lord Buddha, which my beloved wife carried and lived, and which I passed on to my son.
I feel the same love and respect for Abraham, Moses, Lord Jesus Christ, White Buffalo Calf Woman, the Peacemaker, Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Sweet Medicine, Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the Blessed Beauty, the Prophet and Messenger of God Muhammad, and all the other Sacred Teachers—including those whose names have been lost to history—whose spiritual teachings have uplifted, guided, healed, and united our human family.
For myself, every spiritual teaching that truly uplifts our human family comes from the same Sacred Source. Whatever awakens love, compassion, justice, kindness, respect, honor, forgiveness, truthfulness, courage, generosity, and unity carries the fragrance of that one Source. The languages may be different. The ceremonies, sacred stories, prayers, and outward forms may be different. The Teachers may have come to different peoples in different lands and at different times. But wherever a teaching binds the human family together, restores right relationship, protects the sacredness of life, and calls us to walk with humility upon Mother Earth, I recognize the movement of the same Great Mystery—the Maker of All Good Things.
No one people possesses the Sacred Source. No single religion, institution, nation, or human being can place boundaries around the Great Mystery. The Sacred has always spoken to the human family in many languages and through many peoples. Every nation has received spiritual guidance according to its place, its history, its responsibilities, and its capacity to understand. Some of those teachings were written in books. Others were carried through ceremony, song, story, dance, prophecy, sacred objects, and the living memory of the Elders. A teaching does not become less sacred because it was carried orally, and a people do not become spiritually incomplete because their Revelation was never placed inside a written scripture.
For this reason, I do not believe in proselytization. The spiritual relationship between a human being and the Higher Power—however that person understands, names, or experiences that Sacred Reality—is holy. It belongs to that person and the Sacred Source. No one has the right to intrude upon it, manipulate it, condemn it, or attempt to replace it. We have no right to tell another person that the path through which they receive love, strength, healing, and guidance is inferior to our own. Whenever religion uses fear, pressure, material inducement, cultural domination, or claims of spiritual superiority to gain followers, it violates the dignity of the human spirit.
The only rightful way to share a spiritual path is to live it. If we believe in love, then let us become loving. If we believe in justice, then let us act justly. If we believe in compassion, let us stand beside those who are suffering. If we believe in forgiveness, let us forgive. If we believe in unity, let us stop creating divisions. Our lives must speak before our mouths do. By walking the path, we make the path visible. By embodying our teachings, we allow others to judge the tree by its fruits. No argument can replace a life of integrity, and no sermon is more powerful than a human being who consistently walks with humility, courage, generosity, and love.
The spiritual traditions of humanity should never be used to separate us into the chosen and the rejected, the saved and the condemned, the superior and the inferior. The Sacred Teachers did not come to build walls between the children of one human family. They came to awaken us, heal us, guide us, and restore us to right relationship—with the Sacred, with one another, with Mother Earth, and with all our relations. Their teachings call us beyond hatred and fear into the recognition that the hurt of one is the hurt of all, the healing of one strengthens the healing of all, and the well-being of each is inseparable from the well-being of the whole.
Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to disappear from the face of Mother Earth. It should awaken the spirit and bring life and light to every human heart. If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred, exclusion, and division, humanity is better without it, and withdrawing from such a religion may itself be a truly spiritual act. A remedy is meant to heal. If it only deepens the wound and spreads the sickness, it must be set aside. Any religion that does not produce love, justice, compassion, and unity has abandoned the sacred purpose of religion.
This is where I stand: every spiritual path must be known by the life it creates and the relationships it restores. If it teaches us to love more deeply, serve more selflessly, act more justly, forgive more freely, protect the vulnerable, honor every people, care for Mother Earth, and recognize the sacred dignity of every member of the human family, then it comes from the Sacred Source. If it produces hatred, superiority, oppression, fear, violence, or division, it does not matter how ancient its name, how beautiful its buildings, how many followers it claims, or how loudly it speaks—it has departed from its sacred purpose.
The final measure is not what religion we profess, but what kind of human beings we become. The truth of our spiritual path must be visible in our conduct, our relationships, and our service to life. We do not prove the sacredness of our beliefs by persuading others to adopt them. We prove it by the love we embody, the justice we uphold, the healing we bring, and the unity we create. That is the path I choose to walk. That is the spiritual teaching I recognize. That is what it means to live as one human family—all peoples, all traditions, and all our relations, bound together by one Sacred Source.
I have taught my beloved son these same teachings, and I am very thankful to him for living them in deeds and actions, not empty words.
As Lord Jesus Christ taught us:, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” —John 14:2, King James Version
