Of course God cannot be proven or disproven - because we don't know what "God" means. The word may conjure images of an old man with robes and a white beard, for some he is a fatherly figure: stern but loving, wise and compassionate. But if pressed, even the most faithful will admit that God is essentially beyond our comprehension. To know God is not conceptual knowledge, spiritual truth is understood through the cultivation of wisdom and open-hearted compassion.

In Eastern philosophy, there is much less obsession with semantics than in Western culture. While science and logical reason have been the powerhouse of Western society, they have caused us to lose sight of the mystery of life. The mystery is just that: What is life? Why and what *am* I? Why is anything, and how do I experience it? Such questions may seem pedantic, but I think they cannot be easily dismissed. The basic overzealousness of science is to make the assumption that all of reality can be reduced to its constituent elements, dissected and systematically studied.

While this may or may not be true in a strictly physical sense, the sum total of neurology and biology can't explain why electrochemical interactions and exterior mental correlates such as brain-states are perceived, internally, as experiences. The mind-body relationship is as mysterious now as ever, and may explain in part why so many philosophers and scientists throughout history, such as Descartes down to our founding fathers, were religious in one way or another. The extent to which their religiosity was nonstandard was likely a result of a deeper philosophic examination of their world than their less-educated peers.

Eastern philosophy/religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism, almost universally emphasize personal realization over dogma. Like the teachings of Jesus, conceptual understanding is secondary to action and intention. Not unlike Lincoln's dictum, "When I do good I feel good... and that is my religion." In Jesus' religious tradition, God was the personification of a spiritual ideal - and Jesus commands his followers to "be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." Too often, I'm afraid there is a tendency to idolize Jesus, rather than embracing his admittedly daunting challenge. Jesus preached that the way was narrow, but it was also exceedingly simple, to Love, and to grow in Love, deepening and expanding the capacity to love selflessly and without exception.

Buddhism on the other hand simply emphasizes

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