“My husband is an atheist and I’m agnostic.” I started habitually and continued explaining, “My family isn’t religious, but we lean Buddhist. I find it hard to believe with all my heart in anything. To be honest, I feel that there is something incredibly beautiful about all religions, until it is used to control people.”

She nodded.

I’ve always feared feeling too much. Love, hate, fear, anger, happiness, sadness… you name it, any feeling that can get extreme, I avoid. Religion brings out a lot of feelings. I tried one religion twice in junior high and at university. The group activities built a sense of community that I loved, feeling controlled made me recoil, believing that my loved ones were going to hell because they grew up in a different environment was frightening, the injustice of a baby born with original sin made me angry, singing with the choir gave me a high, and of course the cognitive dissonance of it all caused me existential depression. Fun times.

As is my way, I chose to escape it.

“As humans, I think we need to believe and have faith. But I dislike how the powerful manipulate that need, using it to gain money and control.”

She continued to give me a safe space to articulate my thoughts with a warm smile and encouraging nod.

When I was a child, we went to Buddhist temples. My Chinese birth-date falls on the day celebrated as the birthday of Guan Yin, or the Goddess of Mercy. So I was always told that I had yuan feng (rapport, destiny) with Guan Yin. The smoke of the thick sweet intense was not comforting to me, as I associated it with death.

The chanting of the monks sounded more eerie rather than comforting. I just could not believe something that I didn’t understand.The chanting and meditation were supposed to do good things, like help us pass exams or prevail over illnesses. In my youthful arrogance, these asks were just so… selfish and meaningless. Ling shi bao fo jiao was a phrase that often popped in my head: last-minute throwing oneself at the foot of Buddha, begging for help. It smacked of not doing your work and then asking to be taken care of. That was how I used to feel about prayer.

“The more I see, the more I realize that we need both faith and hope.”

She smiled and replied, “Yes, I agree completely.”

This conversation shed light on how much my ambivalence towards a greater power has robbed me of one of the most potent ways we get through difficult times. Knowing that we are never alone, that something or someone will ALWAYS be there to support you with love, that this something or someone has helped countless other people through dark times, that there is ALWAYS hope – – what a powerful feeling.

Faith is having trust in the existence of something without physical proof that it is there. Hope is having the trust that we will get there even though we aren’t there yet. Faith is saying it’s here. And hope is saying it’s there, and we may need to get through some tough times with hard work, but we will get there, together.

I once scoffed at faith, because it seemed so naïve. But now I realize that faith goes hand in hand with hope. While hope keeps us doing the hard work until we see results, faith keeps us going without the proof.

In this world of instant gratification, Google, and credit cards, many of us haven’t learned to excel in life by building all the small pieces that become the strong foundations of integrity, trust, compassion – in relation to ourselves or others. We no longer can hold that feeling of need or want without desiring it to be quenched and resolved right away. We are unable to stand that feeling of emptiness because it feels so hopeless. That is to say, the narrative in our heads is “here we go again” rather than “I know how I want to handle this one.”

Religion and politics give answers. Religion and politics give us rules, but also hope that other people are doing things to fix the bad stuff. The problem is that religion and politics are run by… human beings – and human beings… are not perfect. And therefore – while we will see wonderful things done by people in religion and politics, we will also see terrible things done by them.

With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion. Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
                                                                 - Steven Weinberg (via Twitter)

Being the critical thinkers we were taught to be (or rebellious beings as so many of us are), we often believe that the terrible part completely taints the whole, and we throw out the baby with the bath water.

My question is: Is it possible to extract only the positives involved with religion and politics without the negatives?

For me, that ignited a newfound desire to try to do that with the Heart Mantra associated with Guan Yin. I’ve always struggled with a bad memory and a fear of showing the world my secret flaw that has made everything I do so hard. I cannot use memorization to get anything important done.

But faith and hope encourage us to do things that are good for us even when it’s difficult. Like dealing with stress. Like changing bad coping mechanisms. Like quitting the addictive allure of a soothing but unhealthy activity or substance.

I burst out, “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. I eat. It’s my drug, it’s my coping mechanism to deal with stress. It’s my addiction.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to suggest to you to pray for self-discipline.” She suggested in response.

Prayer. That used to be a triggering word for me. I would flinch a tad because it seemed like such a futile activity. “Sending prayers and thoughts.” Or, You are imposing your beliefs on me by telling me that your God will answer your prayers to help me. But over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that we all have the right to label the power of intentional thoughts with whatever words work for us. I tried using “Sending you warm thoughts and healing hugs” which doesn’t quite comes across as well as prayers to a greater being, but it was what I was comfortable with.

But when she asked me to pray, I thought, Wait a minute, I have a prayer that is mine! It is my birth right. I just never wanted to memorize it because I couldn’t memorize a short mantra while kids from Taiwan used to memorize hundreds of history BOOKS. I felt shame and guilt about this. I tossed it aside because I didn’t believe in the power of the mantra, nor did I believe that I could do it. Which one was the real reason? No matter, they both contributed to my wanting to run away.

So, now, I am starting a new journey.

I have broken down the mantra into small pieces, four phrases a day (and if it takes me two days, I’ll be kind to myself and shift everything over by another day). I will memorize this mantra and use it as a prayer when I’m anxious. I will use it to pray for others. I will use it to pray for self-discipline when I want to overeat. I will use it to give me strength from a greater power. I will turn to my mantra to remember that I’m not alone and that I can do this.

Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra

Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajna paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.

Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.

Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight … no realm of mind consciousness.

There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance… neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.

With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Without hindrance, there is no fear. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.
All buddhas of past, present, and future rely on prajna paramita and thereby attain unsurpassed, complete, perfect enlightenment.

Therefore, know the prajna paramita as the great miraculous mantra, the great bright mantra, the supreme mantra, the incomparable mantra, which removes all suffering and is true, not false.

Therefore we proclaim the prajna paramita mantra, the mantra that says: “Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha.

Sources: Translation by a team of translators who participated in the Soto Zen Translation Project, highlights and links from The Heart Sutra Part 1: Introduction to the Most Common Mahayana Text – The Zen Studies Podcast