Yesterday the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey saying that more Americans are mixing multiple "faiths" these days. In particular, Pew says that Asian and New Age beliefs are becoming more common, even among people who are nominally Christian.

About 22 percent of Christians believe in reincarnation, Pew says. About 25 percent of Americans believe in astrology and think that there is spiritual energy in objects like mountains, trees and crystals. Increasing numbers of Americans say they have had mystical experiences. Americans also are more likely these days to attend worship services in multiple religious traditions, and not just for weddings and funerals.

If you read the survey announcement carefully, I suspect what's really being reflected is increasing racial and cultural diversity in the U.S. I suspect also that Americans are more likely to marry people from other religions than used to be the case and raise their children to have a foot planted in both traditions. It's also likely that Americans are absorbing religious ideas more from pop culture than from churches and temples these days.

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In the current issue of Tricycle, Pema Chodron explains that developing compassion for others requires "unlimited friendliness" toward ourselves.  "When we wish to benefit others, we start by developing warmth or friendship for ourselves," she writes. This points to what, to me, is one of the great paradoxes of Buddhist practice -- working with the self to cut through the delusion of self.

When we first begin to work toward realizing that our seemingly fixed and continuing self is a kind of delusion, it's common to think we have to do away with or run away from this self. But no matter how hard we try, the old, lumpy, stumbling self-thing is still there, getting in the way. Wherever you go, there you are.

Pema Chodron writes that to develop metta for yourself is to develop an unconditional acceptance of yourself. It also means "trusting oneself--trusting that we have what it takes to know ourselves thoroughly and completely without feeling hopeless, without turning against ourselves because of what we see." This is the foundation for compassion for others, she says.

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Via the Worst Horse, we learn that Michael Roach -- someone I have crabbed about in the past -- has a new book out called Karmic Management -- What Goes Around Comes Around in Your Business and Your Life. According to Publisher's Weekly, "the guide lays out a mishmash of Eastern religions and such New Age strategies as visualizing future endeavors with a 100% success rate."

The PW review describes the book as an unfocused mess. Roach is also the author of The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life. From the Amazon review:

Roach, who while being a monk helped build a $100 million business, demonstrates how ancient notions in The Diamond Cutter sutra can help you succeed, and if you're in business that means to make money, a lot of it. ... A cross between the Dalai Lama's ethics and Stephen Covey's Seven Habits, The Diamond Cutter will have you gardening a path to the bank.

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John Sojun Godfrey spent eight years living as a monk in Daitoku-ji, a Rinzai Zen monastery in Kyoto. He says he spent most of that time in silence. There were few discussions of philosophy and doctrine within the monastery, he said.

"I think the assumption is that if you are interested enough in Buddhism to become a monk that you are going to do this (learn the philosophy) anyway," he said. "I also really feel that they (other monks) don't think it's important. I don't feel that it is necessary to be able to explain what we are doing in able to do it

I understand that in Japan, people who want to learn Zen practice are given little direction except how to sit zazen. I once read an autobiography by a Japanese Zen nun, who said that on her first day in the monastery she was told only to go to the zendo and sit with Mu. So she went into the zendo, completely baffled, and finally asked someone which monk was Mu.  (Mu is not a person but the name of a koan.)

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