I have a friend who's a Tibetan Buddhist, and she and her family are the most religious people I know. They pray a lot -- in the case of her old mother and mother-in-law, from morning to night, literally, in preparation for the next life. (I don't understand the preparation, but it's very time-consuming and appears to be, and is called, prayer. To me, if they're praying, it's religion and not philosophy!) They burn incense and special candles and refer to the Dalai Lama as "His Holiness" whenever they talk about him, which is often. They believe in spells and curses and various gods and goddesses (the name of one I remember is "Tara"), and in all sorts of things that I would call "magical."
If they were Americans, they would strike me as religious fanatics, but I understand that a lot of what is striking me that way is perhaps simply cultural.
Still, if people pray a LOT, they're religious, it seems to me.
These are educated people, btw. |
