Hallo, this is Dr. Song at Washington College for the course of “Comparative Religion: Eastern.”

My interest in religions derives from my unexpected, beautiful and transient religious experience at my late adolescence, which was triggered by my practice of transcribing ancient Chinese classics. One of these experiences transpired roughly like this: after I spent some hours in the morning transcribing ancient Chinese Zen Buddhist texts, I walked outside of the library and stepped onto a trail in the university’s campus to stretch myself and breathe some fresh air. There is a small pond in front of me, and the weather was nice, some green trees and colorful flowers flourishing beside the trail. Suddenly, there was a feeling of joy, lightness and transparency which pervaded my entire body. I felt my entire consciousness was connected to everything in my surroundings, and the only language I could use to describe that feeling to my friends at that time was like this: ordinarily, joy derives from the fulfillment of some goal to fulfill; the acquisition of it needs time, and is based upon efforts. However, at that moment, I felt joyful just because “I am there”; in other words, no external things need to be grasped in order to achieve that sort of joy. Because of the joy, I also felt at a deep ease with myself. It seemed that my life was already good no matter what happened to the outside world.

I had other religious experiences because of other types of practices, but regarding the influence, this first one just described is still the cream of the crop. As mentioned, the experience was transformative, yet extremely transient. Because of its transient nature, I was extremely perplexed by two things: 1) What is the experience about? Apart from a purely subjective feeling, does the experience refer to anything that is beyond my feeling? In other words, I was struggled to articulate the meaning of the experience. 2) If the experience is so beautiful and makes me that joyful, why is it so transient? How should I deal with the gap between this ecstatic bliss and the mundaneness of other everyday moments of my life? In other words, practically, I was struggling with how to maintain that sort of blissful religious experience. It has already been almost 20 years since the described experience occurred to me, and in a hindsight, it is mainly the two questions I asked to myself which drove me to continue to learn all sorts of philosophies and religions so that right now, I can sit here, and communicate with young minds about my learning experience of religions.

Learning religions at college is very different from doing it in a church, in one’s own family, or by one’s own. In college, I, as an instructor in religion courses, would expect you can combine two spirits when you learn religions: firstly, the spirit of critical thinking. This implies you need to carefully think through all presented materials, lifestyles, ways of worship and all other religious matters to eventually ask a question to yourself whether these religious matters are true, appropriate or valuable. This spirit is quite consistent with other aspects of liberal arts education, and I hope you can maintain the consistency in all the taught classes in the college. Secondly, the spirit of integrative learning. It implies that you can incorporate what you judge as valuable of those religious matters into your daily life, so as to eventually transform your spirituality and personhood for the sake of living a good human life and continual human flourishing. In comparison, the second spirit is more challenging than the first, since it requires more than thinking. However, in a liberal arts college, we have the resources to facilitate your integrative learning. Through regularly participating the class, and in particular, finishing those immersive exercises and assignments that I design for the course, I hope you can get the best of liberal arts learning of religion in this semester.

Using more details, I hope you can pay attention to three aspects of “religion” that we’ll learn during the course:

Firstly, the philosophical aspect. For instance, when the Upanishad of ancient Hinduism talks about every human being has their genuine self, Atman, which is ultimately united with the essence of the entire universe, Brahman, you need to firstly understand what these terms mean; secondly, what arguments which those Upanishadic thinkers raised to support their claim, and finally, how this claim embeds itself with varying aspects of the everyday life of human beings who practiced that religion. Similar questions can surely be asked regarding other similar claims of other religions.

Secondly, the social aspect. One fascinating feature of all existing world religions is that they are deeply social phenomena, and religions are vastly different from each other regarding their ways of organizing affiliates to live an ideal religious life. For instance, the emphasis upon the lineage of religious authenticity is very strong in Buddhism; some sects in Buddhism were very proud of their uninterrupted lineage of transmission of wisdom directly from the person of the Buddha. However, despite having temples and priests, Hinduism tends to be very loose regarding its social organization, with no central authority, no single set of doctrines, nor any central religious leader. More impressively, the Confucian tradition (another name of which is the Ru tradition or Ruism, which we will learn in details later) does not have any priesthood or monastery system to sustain its religious status in ancient China; instead, it is so intertwined with other seemingly “secular” institutions such as family, school and government that many scholars doubt whether we can call Ruism a religion at all. So, while learning religions at college, we can also learn varying societies that religions are embedded in, and through this, you will have a greater command of inter-cultural competency which would be very beneficial for your career development in an increasingly globalized world.

Thirdly, the practical aspect. According to nowadays’ common use of these two terms, that “religion” is thought of as a different subject from “philosophy” is mainly because religion is rich on individual and societal practices which aim for deep, thorough, and comprehensive spiritual transformation, while “philosophy” is mostly treated as an intellectual endeavor rich on analysis and argumentation. We’ll read many contemplative writings by varying authors in the addressed religions in the East, and since I am personally a long-time meditation practitioner, I’ll also show you how to do meditation in a Confucian style. However, meditation is just one of a gazillion fasions of religious practice that exist in history and in the world. At the end of the course, I hope you can find some way of practice which you feel comfortable to do in a daily basis, and thus, can really benefit your mental and physical health.

Good, this is all I want to say at the beginning of the course, and I look forward to working with you down the road.