A Mason's Work

In all of the major traditions of the world, both the spirit traditions and the secular traditions,

that evoke the concept of high moral standard, they will inevitably give a name to that role socially.

And so that name in each of the major traditions is aspirational.

It is not necessarily, you don't walk around carrying that title around like I'm the bodhisattva.

That doesn't work.

However, the path and the oath of a bodhisattva or Junzi or that's Adik,

each of these kinds of paths are informative in how we might behave.

And so when you're working in free masonry, I think it helps to put the context of what free masonry is relative to those words.

Sort of paths of an enlightened person in context with the path of a free mason.

They're similar, but there's some nuanced differences that become important.

So first and foremost, it probably makes sense to give you a generalized list.

This is not comprehensive.

And I can't speak every faith of the world or every tradition.

But what I can do is give you a high level kind of picture of what this looks like.

And then you can sort of apply or go research on your own, the right thing for you.

So when we look at these, these roles, again, you know, walking around saying your bodhisattva is probably not cool.

Walking around calling yourself a saint is not great because it turns into some challenges, right.

But that's it. So here we go.

So in myonabuddhism, there is the bodhisattva path.

In Confucianism, there's the Junzi path in Taoism.

They don't really give it a path per se. They just call it a sage.

And this is common in several traditions.

And when you get to the upper orders or conceptual implementation of things like stoicism, they will just refer to the messages.

In platonic philosophy, they call it a philosopher king.

And in the Jewish ethical tradition, they call it Sadiq.

Let's see. In, well, in Nichean sort of philosophy, it's called the ubermensch in Hindu philosophy.

It's the path of the pendant.

Every one of these are all specific. They have the arhat in some of the other bodhisattvas.

They have the Rishi. They have the saint or warrior saint path.

In some of the major Christian traditions, some folks at the night's temple are will kind of take to that as a concept.

And in Islam, depending on your branch, they have the caliph.

And again, every one of these, the murshid, all of these concepts speak to the very specific kind of philosophical, theological sort of wrapping for that.

But every one of them speaks to the calling to be a higher version of yourself.

And the Freemasons are no different. The only difference between all of these things is almost all of them are founded in a spiritual tradition with the exception of the ubermensch and the platonic ancient Greek stuff.

The rest of them are all grounded and deeply rooted in religion with the exception of those Greeks and Freemasonry.

And every one of those practices will bump up into Freemasonry in a way.

So Freemasonry is going to help you deal with some of the practical implications of the moral life.

How do I behave? How do I understand how I behave? How do I meaningfully reflect on the situations that I have in front of me?

And what do I do with those moments?

Now the religious texts will give you some of that stuff.

And in the early days of the year, in a time before cell phones, Freemasonry is a lot more adaptive in a lot of that.

The symbolic language that the constructivist sort of Western philosophy of the way buildings are made, pretend to give itself a ton more credibility in a Western mindset.

Eastern mindsets, things are more grown, they're more organic.

So if you're a text, they may have challenges dealing with some of the systemic structures, at least it's certainly not that it's accessible.

So without trivializing any of them, of course, just understanding the right tool for the job.

So you might find that the symbolic understanding of the 24-inch gauge, you may not have a really deep and meaningful application of that in any of the other religious texts.

And I can't, I'm not an expert in all of them, I've only read a third.

But what I can tell you is Freemasonry is the practical arm of every one of those paths.

So pick the path that's appropriate to your faith, add Freemasonry on top, and watch the sparks fly.

And you'll see that there's just a ton of synchronicity and energetic sort of forward movement that you can get when you combine both your faith and the Masonic principles to align yourself to that higher version.

And it's the bodhisattva path, the pendant path, the sage, the warrior poet, any of these.

And if you have a path that you travel and you want us to talk about it here on the show or provide a roadmap for how you might apply that, you know, in concert with the Masonic principles, I'd love to do that.

So with that, go forth and happy Freemasonry.