Guiding Traditions
There are a number of great traditions
that have long inspired human values and ideals (click on list item):
- Examples:
- Religious
traditions:
- Christianity;
- Judaism;
- Islam;
- Hinduism;
- Buddhism;
- Various political / economic / socialist / humanist
and other movements; and
- Other traditions.
- Typical features of such traditions:
- An understanding of perfection
which
elevates the tradition's ideals, frequently:
- personifying the ideals;
- externalising and socialising the ideals;
- making the ideals absolute, necessary and
sufficient for fulfilment;
- recognising outstanding followers;
- Instruction for
followers:
- A relationship or means for
connecting the tradition and its ideals with a follower's personal experience;
- A code of morality and standards for
judgement;
- An assurance or hope of fulfilment;
- Methods for revealing the tradition to followers, and
for drawing
in others, while preventing dilution by "competing" traditions.
- A repository of wisdom, multiple levels of
narrative for relating it, and
mechanisms for interpreting it;
- Infrastructure for maintaining the tradition's
integrity and incorporating change.
- Significance
of the great guiding traditions:
- We recognise their
contribution:
- The sound but diverse wisdoms presented by
them;
- The cultures they have shaped and by which they
have been influenced;
- The significance of personal engagement with
one's own tradition, whether inherited, adopted or specially fashioned.
- We also recognise the scope for and history of great perversions
(superstitions & exploitation) in the distorted human practice of
these guiding traditions.
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