Aum Shinrikyo and post-religious age

In 1995, an unbelievable event occurred. Members of the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, launched a sarin gas attack in crowded subways in Tokyo, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000 people. At first, they were members of a small religious group seriously seeking the “meaning of life.” However, they began to consider our society to be evil place, and planned to destroy the whole world in order to reconstruct a clean one. I was shocked by their action because I felt I shared many of their aims. This event made think again the relationship between life studies and religion, and I published the book How to Live in a Post-religious Age in 1996. In this book, I confessed that I am a man who cannot believe in any religions, nor believe in scientific materialism. I want to seek “spirituality” and the “meaning of life” outside of religion. I called this “the third way between religion and science.”

Does this attitude lead to the denial of religion? No. My position is an agnostic one. I do not affirm or deny religions. I have had discussions with various religious people, and I found that we can talk about spirituality and the meaning of life without using religious language. If we respect each other’s worldview and do not force one’s own presuppositions on the others, we are able to have a deep discussion with each other concerning the issues of life, death and nature. [190/191]

Life studies should be a project where people of faith and people without religion get together to communicate with and learn from each other. I conceive of life studies as a project where people with religion seek to think about life without using dogmatic words, and people without religion seek to think about spirituality and the meaning of life using ordinary language. I think this should be the basis of life studies.

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Cross-cultural Approaches to the Philosophy of Life in the Contemporary World
(2004)
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