No 109 of Living Life Series 1
For temple to be meaningful, there must be purpose. For there to be purpose, there must be mission. For there to be mission, there must be goals. For goals to be mission-orientated, the goals must be common for all faiths and beings. For commonality of goals, there must be broad consensus within diversity. For consensus to be achieved, uniformity is not realistic.
Absence of uniformity does mean there will be tendency to dissent but does not rule out consensus. For consensus in broad terms is possible with diversity. The diversity of sects and faiths means tendency to dissent but all such sects or faiths are based on broad basis that there is God and He is good. All fall short of the glory of God and must be reborn till they can be worthy of the glory of God. Beyond these broad commonality, the sects and faiths differ in ways. This diversity is good, enriching and appeals to beings of diverse sways and ways, thus reaching out to more people.
The mission of Lord Bo Tien is to save souls to be worthy of God not through a new religion, for there is already in existence, a rich number of sects and faiths in the world. His descent is to save souls through helping all to see oneness of goals in all sects and faiths. While he had to descend and choose a Chinese temple in Singapore, this by no means suggest that His mission is to promote the Taoist or Chinese temple practice but to show by example how to be more goal directed even in such an institution. To do so, there must be simplicity so all could better evolve to be with the glory of God and achieve oneness in God. Complexity and frivolousness will only detract and blind us from the reality of the same truth. They also accentuate the differences between sects and faiths. Chinese popular religion tends to be poorly organised and tends to pick up a host of practices along the way over the centuries, blinding most adherents to the basic truth.
A temple of Lord Bo Tien must be run with mission goals. It must lead by example for all temples rather than follow in others examples. As such over the years, any temple of the lord has to trim off practices like burning joss paper, and offering meat at the altar. It has to lead the way by building a modern temple building yet reminiscent of cultural roots. The incorporation of English-text prayers and other modification can be further made to the chinese based cultural form of worship. Joss sticks and perhaps even oriental kneeling and sitting on the floor may be reformed in some ways to be in keeping with the times, to be more simple, peaceful and to provoke thoughts and practice to spur more to be worthy of the glory of God. We need to give to God what is due to God and not give to God what is due to our ancestors or to men. What needs to be done is to be pure in mind and soul to be worthy of God. We glorify God through self-cultivation of mind and soul, and not through practices like ancient traditions e.g.burning joss papers. The practice of worship must be so simple and yet impactful to bring us closer to mission goals of seeing the oneness of faiths, and the oneness of God.
Only the wise seeks the fulfilment of ancient wisdom. Yet the profound truth is so simple but difficult to perceive. Why is it difficult to perceive? We are blinded by practices and side issues. We hold on to culture like joss papers and joss sticks. We hold on to the forms of worship rather than to the substance, making the forms the goal rather than going for the substance. We hold on to the differences between sects and faiths rather than to the commonality of oneness of truth in God and why we fall short of the glory of God.
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