IB World Religions 1.1.5. the Language of Religion: the Sacred, Myth, Ritual, Symbol and Metaphor Notes

1.1.5. The Language of Religion: The Sacred, Myth, Ritual, Symbol and Metaphor

The sacred and the profane

1. Religions divide the world in a way ordinary language does not. Emile Durkheim described that division as the line between the sacred, which is set apart and treated with awe, and the profane, which is everything ordinary.
2. The line is not drawn by the object itself. Water from a tap and water from the Ganges are chemically the same, and Hindus treat the second as holy because of what they hold it to be.
3. Mircea Eliade called a moment in which the sacred shows itself a hierophany, and argued that such moments organise a community's whole map of the world.
4. Sacred space is marked out and entered on conditions. Shoes come off at a mandir, a gurdwara and a mosque, the Kaaba sets the direction of Muslim prayer, and Jerusalem is holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims at once.
5. Sacred time works the same way. Shabbat, Ramadan, Lent and Wesak are cut out of the ordinary calendar and governed by rules that do not apply on other days.
6. People and objects can be set apart too. Sikhs treat the Guru Granth Sahib as a living Guru, Catholics reserve consecrated bread in a tabernacle, and many Muslims will not touch a Qur'an without washing first.

Myth as religious language

1. In the study of religion, myth does not mean a false story. It means a sacred narrative that carries a community's convictions about origins, order and destiny.
2. Myths answer questions that plain reporting cannot. Genesis, the Vedic Purusha Sukta and Taoist accounts of the Tao giving rise to all things each address why there is a world at all.
3. Communities differ over how their own narratives should be read. Some Christians read Genesis as historical account and others as theological narrative, and both groups treat it as scripture.
4. Myth is retold rather than merely preserved. Divali in many communities retells Rama's return, Pesach retells the Exodus, and Holi retells the rescue of Prahlada, so each narrative is performed annually.
5. Reading a myth only as a factual report misses what it was made to do. Its work is to state what a community holds true about the world's meaning, in narrative rather than in argument.

Ritual as enacted language

1. Ritual is patterned action that a community repeats and invests with meaning. It states in movement what doctrine states in sentences, and it usually reaches a child first.
2. The pattern carries the message. Wudu before Muslim prayer, achamana before Hindu puja and hand-washing before a Jewish meal all say that approaching God requires purity.
3. Rituals mark the shape of a life. Naming, initiation, marriage and funeral rites appear in every religion in this course, though what they contain varies enormously.
4. Repetition is the point rather than a weakness. Daily salah, the Sikh nitnem and weekly Shabbat work by returning, and adherents describe the returning itself as what forms them.
5. Ritual also builds the group. Praying in rows, sharing langar or receiving prasad puts a belief into bodily form that everyone present performs together.
6. Doctrine and ritual explain each other. The Christian Eucharist enacts a belief about Christ's death, and denominations that differ over that belief differ over the rite as well.

Symbol and metaphor

1. A symbol is something that stands for a reality larger than itself and, for the community using it, shares in that reality. The cross, the Khanda, the Om, the Star of David and the crescent all work this way.
2. Symbols do not translate cleanly into statements. Traditions keep the object precisely because a sentence would say less than the object does.
3. Metaphor makes the same move in words, describing one thing in terms of another. God is called shepherd, king, father, mother, light, rock and refuge across the traditions that speak of God.
4. Metaphors are chosen and limited deliberately. Calling God a rock says that God is dependable, and no worshipper concludes from it that God is mineral.
5. Traditions police those limits very differently. Jews and Muslims restrict images of God sharply, Christians hold that God took human form in Jesus, and Hindus use murtis as a focus for darshan while distinguishing the image from what it makes present.

Words for God

1. Traditions that speak of God share a stock of technical adjectives. Omnipotent means all-powerful, omniscient means all-knowing, omnipresent means present everywhere and omnibenevolent means wholly good.
2. Two further words carry most of the weight in this course. Transcendent means beyond and independent of the created world, while immanent means present and active within it.
3. Most theistic traditions hold the pair together rather than choosing between them. Jews, Christians and Muslims describe God as utterly beyond creation and as nearer to a person than that person is to themselves.
4. The vocabulary is applied in different ways. Muslims name Allah through the ninety-nine names, many Jews will not pronounce the divine name at all, and Sikhs call God nirgun (without attributes) and sargun (manifest in creation) at once.
5. Hindus divide along the same line. Advaita Vedanta speaks of nirguna Brahman beyond all description, while bhakti traditions worship a saguna deity with name, form and story.
6. Some traditions do not use this vocabulary at all. Theravada Buddhists and Jains describe the goal without a creator God, and the Tao Te Ching opens by saying the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.
7. All such language stays stretched. Every tradition that uses it also says the words fall short, which is why the sacred, myth, ritual, symbol and metaphor keep doing work the adjectives cannot.