Spirituality Shaped Leonard Cohen
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I did later play in a band which performed a rendition of Everybody Knows by Cohen and his frequent collaborator Sharon Robinson https://don.dream-in-color.net/music/mp3/01%20Everybody%20Kn...
I never had the chance to see him perform live or meet him (although again, later in my life, I lived about a mile away from him in Los Angeles and didn't know it at the time). The Live in London concert video is a must-watch. Cohen just exudes charisma in his performance. Even though I'd heard the audio dozens of time from owning the corresponding album, when I finally saw the video performance I was drawn in like nothing else.
My taste is somewhat eclectic so the only thing of him I knew ( and liked ) was 'Everybody knows' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k ).
Incidentally, why is WP writing about him now?
In contexts like this I can't tell what definition(s) are at play.
Obviously there is some crossover between the two - spiritual teachers might be a bit religious and vice versa.
Some verses in the bible that indicates that the "chrisitian" religion is _not_ based on man made ideas, but instead flies in the face of them:
> "If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person's religion is worthless."
> "Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world."
I think that using an argument of "spiritual" vs "religion" is a justification, not a fact.
Whilst I think it's fair to say that the general perception is that religion is something more formal and perhaps more organised than spirituality, no such strict distinction holds a broad consensus in academia.
Perhaps relevant, is to consider that we even studied capitalism and communism. So not only is it unclear where religion ends and spirituality begins, but neither is it straightforward to isolate the boundary between religiousness and secularism.
Personally I think "spiritual" is generally used as an implicit value judgement to distance something religious from "religion". It's that implied distancing which, to me, is the most relevant. Leonard Cohen's Zen teacher was involved in widely publicised sex scandals. Just because somebody leans more on the spiritual side of the spectrum doesn't automatically distance them from the more traditional trappings of religion. However, I would say that implicitly distancing yourself from something does tend to ironically bring you closer to it.
Spirituality is one aspect of religion, dealing with the meaning of existence, etc. It's has a more personal and philosophical connotation. You could have two people be members of the same religion, but have different spiritual existences.
At least that's my take on it. The terms can be somewhat fluid, though.
In my humble opinion, spirituality is to religion what 'passion for fitness' is to a gym. A gym is an organisation with rules, employees, a boss, location, history, etc. Some people go there in order to get a 'healthy person' identity, meet friends, and to make sure that their body image fits the attractivness metrics of the society in which they live. The actual experience of pushing iron and sweating is an inconvenient.
“Religion is for people that believe in hell. Spirituality is for people that have been there.”