Religio

Religion is a monster. Several decades before the birth of Jesus Christ, Lucretius, Roman poet and thinker, describing religio as horrible creatures which oppressed the humans.

.... Throughout the country,
human life is damaged crushed
under the heavy burden of religion,
which showed its head from the heavens,
threaten people with a scary face.

Lucretius wrote it in the opening of De Rerum Natura ("On the Nature of Things"). He wrote it when the Roman republic raged by revolution and counter-revolution, between the years 145-130 BC.

To this day, we hardly know anything about Lucretius, except his work. We can only predict how the atmosphere of the period which he described as "tumultuous period of our homeland," and how religion played a role.

De Rerum Natura describes how dark the human desire and passion for the renowned and powerful, a dark and hopeless. As people climb to the top honor, they are always in danger. "Jealousy, like a bolt of lightning, sometimes throw them from the top to fall to the bottom of rotten Tartarus".

In view of Lucretius, ambition and jealousy will end to empty point. Sisiphus carrying heavy rocks to the top, but every time the stones were thrown back to the mountain's foot. Each power --- as shown in Roman history --- coming to an end. So, "Human," Lucretius said, "If they have to choose, they should "stay silent", rather than to have the power and the crown."

What is offered by Lucretius actually is the teachings of Epicurus -- a Greek thinker -- his idol. For Epicurus, the purpose of life is pleasure, in a special sense: a peaceful quiet enjoyment will be obtained by eliminating the excessive desire.

Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness - Epicurus on Happiness. Documentary inspired and hosted by Alain de Botton, based on his book The Consolations of Philosophy.

But people are afraid. Humans are afraid to die. In those fears -- unfounded fear, because the death should be accepted as part of life -- people gather a lot of treasure, even if it is obtained by "bloodshed among fellow citizens". Greedily, they redouble their wealth, they heap the slaughter upon slaughter.

In De Rerum Natura -- which consists of six books -- written by a desire to free his time of all that. "We must drive out fear in this life, this darkness", Lucretius wrote, "Not by sunlight or by the arrows of glowing days, but by reasoning and natural gaze."

Using the reason, studying the nature. Lucretius, just as Epicurus, was the forerunner of modern science and philosophy of "all-substance". He described the plague -- which is described with very terrible in Book VI -- was not as a misfortune of the sky, but rather as a result of "particles floating around human which brought the disease and death." For him, there is only "atoms and the void," substance and space. Atoms can not be destroyed. Each destruction is actually just a change of the shape. Atoms (Lucretius referred to them as primodia, elementa or Semina) intertwined to form endless combinations, and continuously moving, without prepared final form.

So, death is not the breaking point. There is no afterlife. The hell exists in this world as a result of ignorance and greed. Heaven on earth in the form of Sapientum Templa Serena, "Serene Temples of the Saints".



From his long poem, it can be seen Lucretius was not an atheist. But for him, God or gods, do not get involved with our lives. They are not the creator of creatures, not the causality of events. This nature runs its own wheel of life.

So, there's no point being pious as instituted by religion. "Piety is not because we often bow our veiled head towards the rocks," as written in De Natura Rorum. "Not because we go to all the altar, not to prostrate at the God's temple, not because we wet the altar with the blood of sacrificial animals."

Piety is our ability to look at all things "with a peaceful mind". Peace of mind -- to banish the terror and gloom soul -- grows if people can fend off "the prophets threat". Lucretius declared that he wrote De Rerum Natura to "liberate the human mind from the shackles of religion that ensnare".

With such an attitude, then it is not surprising if in the later centuries -- after De Rerum Natura text discovered in 1417 -- emerging the defense and rebuttal, especially from the Catholic Church. But it is also not surprisingly when his views were greeted by people in the age of "Enlightenment", which celebrated the  freedom of thought, an era which -- as said by Kant -- supported by Frederick II. The Prussian ruler, who was friends with Voltaire, said in 1741, "Religion is the old-fashioned monster."

But religion never dies. Maybe because Lucretius is not entirely true that religion "directs the people to the disaster and abomination". Perhaps because the Lucretius enlightenment project is failing.

In 1771 Voltaire made an imaginary correspondence which talking about Lucretius. In the correspondence mentioned that Lucretius committed suicide. We recall De Rerum Natura which opened with a shimmering spirit then ended with bleak description about the Plague that hit the Athens.

The philosopher never found the "Serene Temples of the Saints". What he saw only a hell of ignorance, greed, though occasionally there was a glimmer of independence.
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Matthieu Ricard: The habits of happiness. What is happiness, and how can we all get some? A French Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal., Born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie, France, the son of the late Jean-François Revel, a renowned French philosopher, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard has devoted his life to these questions, and his answer is influenced by his faith as well as by his scientific turn of mind: We can train our minds in habits of happiness. Interwoven with his talk are stunning photographs of the Himalayas and of his spiritual community.