Italian version

Among Comments of readers of “Experience of value”, which recounts the spiritual experience I had after my father’s death, I was struck by Agostino’s:
“A mature religiosity and an awareness of having done everything possible with love transforms death into a peaceful act of life.“
I dwell on the word religiosity, which is not a synonym for religion. A famous Italian dictionary has the following definition:
religiosity: The fact of being religious, religious attitude and feeling, not necessarily related to a particular historical religion.

Religiosity relates to the origin of our individual life within the life of the universe, as well as to questions related to before us and after us, the meaning of life, and the possible existence of supernatural beings or forces. It is what binds our existence to that of the universe, in all dimensions of space and time. Not surprisingly, one possible etymology of the word is the Latin religare, which means precisely to bind, to unite.

Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism (the list is very long) are religions. A religion is a complex of beliefs, theories, principles, and rituals that offers a specific view of human life, the universe, often based on the existence of one or more deities. According to the dictionary definition above, each religion is thus a belief system that gives a specific response to our innate desire for religiosity. In my opinion, Atheism, rationalism, nihilism and materialism are also “religious” beliefs, in that they offer an answer to the desire for religiosity for those who exclude the existence of deities or supernatural entities, as they are not scientifically provable.

I believe that religiosity exists within us, regardless of our willingness and awareeness, by the mere fact that we are part of life on this planet. Our life is the expression of an evolutionary process that began a few billion years ago, and is made possible by the organized and harmonious activity of some 50 trillion cells, within a planet that offers water, food and oxygen, within a universe in which shines a star that gives us energy. This reality is the uniting factor in the consciousness of all living things, from single-celled beings to us human beings, in the seemingly infinite dimensions of time and space. Despite this indisputable and obvious common factor, the history of human beings has so far been marked by bitter divisions, often tragically conflicting, based on the difference in our religious outlook.

The practice of Buddhism of Soka Gakkai has made me discover similarities between Catholicism and Buddhism, and these discoveries strengthen in me the desire to live my religiosity in harmony with all other beliefs. I feel perfectly comfortable if I have to attend a Mass, and I would be perfectly comfortable in a mosque for an Islamic ritual or in a Buddhist temple in Tibet. Last month the pastor came up for Easter blessing: we recited “Our Father” together, animated by the same religious intention despite our different beliefs. In the article Let us enlighten commonalities, I recounted the experience of my friend Paul who succeeded, through behavior animated by a belief in our equality as human beings, in defusing a potential verbal conflict that arose from diversity of religious beliefs.

The articles on this site are driven by my wish to look for points of contact not only between different religions and philosophies, but also between spirituality and science. I have therefore decided to devote two categories to this kind of content: Religions and religiosity and Science and spirituality.

You can send your comment to info@esperienzedivalore.it, I will be happy to respond.