The Pragmatic Spirituality

According to the French contemporary philosopher André Comte-Sponville, we can be spiritual without the need to believe in a Divine Principle. The important matter, according to the writer, is not about God, religion or atheism but about spiritual life. He states «The spirit is not a substance. Rather it is a function, a capacity, an act (the act of thinking, willing, imagining, making wisecracks…) and this act, at least, is irrefutable since nothing can be refuted without it». Spirit as substance, on the other hand, is easily contradicted and not possible to prove true. What is then spirituality? Comte-Sponville defines it as follows: «Spirituality is our finite relationship to infinity, our temporal experience of eternity, our relative access to the absolute». In his book The Little book of Atheist Spirituality establishes that the sacred does not necessarily implies metaphysical beliefs. The Buddha, Confucius and Lao-Tzu not only did not consider themselves gods or prophets but neither identified themselves with any kind of deity or transcendental form. In consequence the original and pure expressions of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism had more to do with ways of proper living than with rituals or ceremonies, more with meditation than with declarations of faith. Within these three ancient philosophies it is possible to be «religious» without being theist. And within Comte-Sponville’s definition of spirituality lies the «territory» of PRAGMATIC BUDDHISM.