Ordering Reality

A Notion of Sacred Reality

• A notion of sacred reality establishes a boundary between religion and non-religion.
• “Sacred” indicates a reality that is somehow distinct, “set apart,” “other” than ordinary.
• “Sacred reality” includes the God of the Bible, the Qur’anic Allah, the Brahman of Hinduism, Buddhism’s Nirvana, the kami of Shinto.

Manifest in Human Experience

• Although the sacred is “set apart” from the ordinary, it nevertheless may be experienced, thought about, and acted upon.
• Thus, all religion has to do with “the element of the sacred” manifesting itself in various ways: in rituals, persons, and natural phenomena.

1. Muslims = the sacred reality (Allah) is made manifest through prophecy
2. Buddhists = the goal of Nirvana “comes to life” in the life and teaching of the Buddha
3. Navaho = the story of the Navaho people makes wisdom available for those who seek harmony between all things.

What is the Sacred?

General nature of the sacred

• “Sacred” is a complex word because it is used for a wide range of phenomena: places, time, persons, events, and deities.
• But, generally, when people speak of something as sacred, they mean to designate the thing in question as “other than ordinary.”
• In the broadest sense of the term, the sacred is the “extraordinary.”
• The value of using the term “sacred” is that it is not tradition specific.

The Sacred and The Holy

• Often the words “sacred” and “holy” are used as equivalents.
• Thus, the best way to identify the sacred is to identify that which is designated holy.

• The early Israelites were instructed: “Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy.”
• A popular Christian hymn begins “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty!”
• Islamic tradition refers to Jerusalem as al-quds—the holy city, or the city set apart.

Examples

Examples of the Sacred

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life,my lips will praise You. (Psalm 63:1–3)

Examples of the Sacred

Thou [God] art the Imperishable, the supreme Object of Knowledge, Thou art the ultimate resting-place of this universe; Thou art the immortal guardian of the eternal right; Thou art the everlasting Spirit. . . . Without beginning, middle, or end, of infinite power, Of infinite arms, whose eyes are the moon and sun, I see Thee, whose face is flaming fire, Burning this whole universe with Thy radiance. (11:18–20) [2]

[2] (Bhagavad Gita)

Examples of the Sacred

“Its form, O king, cannot be elucidated by similes, but its qualities can. . . . As the lotus is unstained by water, so is Nirvana unstained by all the defilements. . . . As cool water allays feverish heat, so also Nirvana is cool and allays the fever of all the passions. . . . As medicine protects from the torments of poison, so Nirvana protects from the torments of the poisonous passions. . . . Nirvana and medicine both give security. . . . As a mountain peak is unshakeable, so is Nirvana. . . . ” [3]

[3] Buddhism: "The Nature of Nirvana"

The Concept in various cultures

The Concept of Sacred Reality

• Derived from the Latin “sanctus”.
• “Sanctus” means “holy” and refers to something separated or set apart from other things.
• The related terms from the Hebrew (kadosh) and the Greek (hagios) mean the same.
• At minimum, the sacred is distinct from the profane.

Sacred Reality in Various Cultures

• In the Bible, God is preeminently sacred or holy, and everyone else and everything else is holy or sacred only in relation to God.
• In ancient Rome, sanctus applied as much to the place of certain activities as to the activities themselves.
  • Those acts that were sanctified were performed in the fanum or temple; other acts were pro fanum, that is, performed in front of or outside the temple.

Sacred Reality in the Hebrew Bible

• By contrast, the Hebrew Bible uses kadosh to describe God and things set apart by God’s choice: the people of Israel, the land they live in, types of food, modes of human relations.
• There is nothing special about such things except that they are chosen by God or are in some kind of relation to God.

Sacred and Profane

The Sacred and The Ordinary

• The sacred can further be characterized in terms of “the real.”
• The sacred stands for that which provides absolute and objective authority to an otherwise relative and subjective existence.
• The sacred consists of an entirely different order than the ordinary life of human beings, but is manifest through ordinary existence.
• Stones, trees, the sky, bodies of water, various people—all these may be the vehicles of the sacred and thus share in its distinctive reality.

General Concept of the Sacred

• Sacred reality is present wherever something is real by 4 criteria:

• it is "set apart" from everything else in the world
• it is in some sense beyond human control
• it is in some sense vital for the well-being of humans
• it orders human existence