Humanity collectively venerates its great traditions. This is the reasoning of tradition: it has inherent value, it transmits important ideas from one generation to the next. This is what makes it worth venerating. Mankind has any number of spiritual traditions; over the course of thousands of years, many have sprouted, flowered, withered, and died. Many have set seed. It's easy to forget this, unless one is standing in the ruins of an ancient temple somewhere, which might be a temple from a completely forgotten religion, such as Göbekli Tepe in Turkey—a temple so old we know absolutely nothing of the people who built it, or how they worshipped. Yet it's certain that in the end, they were people much like us, with the same loves and fears; and some tangible vestige of their practice undoubtedly resides in today's religions.
Aside from what are ultimately a handful of obscure shamanistic practices still in the hands of what remains of tribal peoples around the world—an objectively dwindling population—there are only a few Great Traditions extant on the planet right now, yet almost all of them undoubtedly spring from these much earlier, and to some extent unknown, roots, which reach all the way back into the Paleolithic: Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and their satellite practices.
All of these traditions are venerated; all of them come into relationship together in our time, beginning in individual men, and then in cultures. They've been the cause of great wars; they have also been the cause of some of the greatest human achievements in philosophy, art, and music. Like all human things on the planet, their influences are polarized, and they create friction as well as harmony. Yet our traditions are venerated by everyone except atheists—and the atheists are few, no matter how shrill their tiny voices may seem in modern Western societies.
Strangely, it's veneration itself that creates the friction. For some unexplained reason, men who venerate one thing will sometimes hate the other; they are often unable to see that the other is exactly like they are. Hence the fear and loathing many fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Muslims have for one another. They all belong to Abrahamic religions; their root traditions are identical (all originally derive from the Old Testament); and each one shares a deeply conservative view of society, with remarkably similar values, which they intensely insist are radically different from one another.
All of this contradictory behavior springs from an inherent wish for the good. So it's the veneration—the deep respect, the adoration—of these valued traditions that are transmitted that actually causes conflicts the traditions advise should not take place.
This does not make veneration bad. Veneration in itself is a right thing. But in venerating the past, venerating the tradition, perhaps men forget that their traditions must be alive today. They must not just be alive today; they must be alive immediately, that is, right now.
If my religious practice, my tradition, says that I must not harm my fellow man, and I wish to venerate it, I can't make up exceptions to that rule. Right now, I must not harm my fellow man. Right now, I must have the most compassionate attitude I can. Right now, I must show mercy to my enemies. And I forget that.
For some strange reason, the idea that tradition takes place right now doesn't seem to quite make sense to us. Tradition is in the past, somehow—it's what already took place, not what is taking place. Isn't that what the word means? But tradition is actually forming itself in this instant, and it is always forming itself. It's not some dead thing that already took place—and it can't be frozen into ice cubes and dispensed in cocktails later, when we finally decide that it's a good thing and should be used.
So spiritual traditions have to meet now, in the hearts and minds of men and women. Men and women can only venerate and honor their traditions by affirming them now.
It seems to me that all of the Great Traditions share a number of Great Principles, which are supposedly inviolable: Love. Compassion. Mercy. These principles are supposed to overshadow, to stand above, and to inform every other action. No matter what exception a man wants to graft on to them, they are supposedly superior to it.
To be sure, the complexities of the world make it difficult to remember this. But every Great Tradition, is, in the end, an inner tradition practiced by a man or a woman. So veneration begins with an inner action.
And every Great Tradition meets in any instance when men and women, even two of them, meet together. You may be reminded of what Christ said:
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them. (Matthew 18:20.)
The words may come from Jesus, but they belong to every tradition.
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