Professor Wesch started with the Buddhist story of THE MUSTARD SEED

The reputation of Buddha Shakyamuni had spread far and wide. Not only was he renowned as a great, compassionate and fully enlightened human being, but also as a skilled teacher and a miraculous healer who could even bring the dead back to life. One day, a woman approached him after a teaching begging that he do something to restore her dead child to her. The Buddha listened patiently to her plea and saw how great was her despair. He said to her, "Mother, if you bring me just one mustard seed from any household in which no person has died, then I shall revive your child." The woman was greatly encouraged by the Teacher's words. She traveled from door to door throughout her own village, but could not find even a single residence in which no one had died. She went out of town, wandering to this hamlet and that in search of the tiny seed that the Buddha had requested. Days later, muddy and footsore, she returned to the place where the Buddha and his followers were passing the rainy season.
She was ushered into the Teacher's presence worn out, but not discouraged. "Master, try as I might, I could not locate the token you requested as an offering. But I have come to understand that death visits every household and eventually, every single one of us. I would like now, to 'enter the stream' and work towards the liberation that the teachings provide."


Religion responds to BIG QUESTIONS:
Why death?
Why life?

The world is much more than what meets the eyes. We experience great sorrows - and great elation. We experience death - We fall in love - and sometimes we have what for lack of a better word we might call "the religious experience" --- all of these experiences are beyond words. And then there is the world itself. Where did it come from? It too is beyond words. You can say it is the Big Bang - but what was before that - You can say it was God, Allah, Spiderwoman of the Hopi, Afek of the Nekalimin, any number of thousands of Gods that Humans put their faith in ... but is that just a word we place on something unexplainable? Ultimately the ground of our being is a mystery - as humans we name it by many names ... You have probably heard of several religions - Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam ... there are in fact no less than 5000 religions. Each one as adamant as the others that they have the right answer in their pocket. Great diversity - yet remarkably similar as well.

How do we explain this diversity?

Main Point:
Worldwide we find that religion expresses, explains, and legitimizes cultural practices, values, and the socio-political order.

In other words, it FITS into the barrel.
And if the barrel changes - so does the religion.
All religious beliefs transcend culture in some ways too.

Example: UNILINEAL DESCENT GROUPS - CORE VALUE ON FAMILY GROUP (DESCENT GROUP)
Dobu and Sir Ghost

PAPUA NEW GUINEA - RELATIONALISM
Animism - Sinik and "relating to the world" a video was shown illustrating this.

Wesch tells a story from the Blackfoot in North America about buffalo and the song of life

INDIA - HINDUISM ... INDRA'S LESSON

"There is a wonderful story in one of the Upanishads about the god Indra. Now, it happened at this time that a great monster had enclosed all the waters of the earth, so there was a terrible drought, and the world was in a very bad condition. It took Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts and that all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt on the monster and blow him up. When he did that, the waters flowed, and the world was refreshed, and Indra said, "What a great boy am I."

So, thinking, "What a great boy am I," Indra goes up to the cosmic mountain, which is the central mountain of the world, and decides to build a palace worthy of such as he. The main carpenter of the gods goes to work on it, and in very quick order he gets the palace into pretty good condition. But every time Indra comes to inspect it, he has bigger ideas about how splendid and grandiose the palace should be. Finally, the carpenter says, "My god, we are both immortal, and there is no end to his desires. I am caught for eternity." So he goes to Brahma, the creator god, and complains.
Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace. The lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the sleeping god, whose dream is the universe. So the carpenter comes to the edge of the great pond of the universe and tells his story to Brahma. Brahma says, "You go home. I will fix this up." Brahma gets off his lotus and kneels down to address sleeping Vishnu. Vishnu just makes a gesture and says something like, "Listen, fly, something is going to happen."

Next morning, at the gate of the palace that is being built, there appears a beautiful blue boy with a lot of children around him, just admiring his beauty. The porter at the gate of the new palace goes running to Indra, and Indra says, "Well, bring in the boy." The boy is brought in, and Indra, the king god, sitting on his throne, says, "Young man, welcome. And what brings you to my palace?" "Well," says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon, "I have been told that you are building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built." And Indra says, "Indras before me, young man- what are you talking about?"
The boy says, "Indras before you. I have seen them come and go, come and go. Just think, Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes, and a world comes into being, governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies, the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. And Indras? There may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those Brahmin, let alone those Indras."

While the boy was talking, an army of ants parades across the floor. The boy laughs when he sees them, and Indra's hair stands on end, and he says to the boy, "Why do you laugh?" The boy answers, "Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt." Indra says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by the way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach until you are asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats.) And so the boy points to the ants and says, "Former Indras all.Through many lifetimes they rise from the lowest conditions to the highest illumination. And then they drop their thunderbolt on a monster, and they think, 'What a good boy am I.' And down they go again."

This story illustrates some core values of Hinduism:
Cycles - Reincarnation, Agriculture
Each person has their place (Caste)
Subdue individuality - Be humble. These are the Virtues.

Cycles appear in many myths associated with planting and agriculture due to the cycle of seasons. Note the use of 432 in the story above. 432 also appears in stories throughout Indo-European speaking regions and still exists within the cycles that dominate our lives today - the clock (60 seconds * 60 minutes * 12 hours = 43,200 units in one cycle). Sumerian flood legend. Noah's flood. Viking end-of-the-world story.

A few more examples:
Mayan – cycles like the Hindu tradition - AGRICULTURAL (CORN) El Castillo Temple
91 steps x 4 sides + 1 = 365
52 years in a cycle / blocks at the base
Equinox - Snake - Kulkulkan (head at base)
Origin at "Snake Mountain"
Snake represents cyclical REBIRTH (sheds its skin)
Hunab Ku - Creator God
First humans were made of CORN (reflects corn agriculture)
13 compartments in 7 levels - different god in each -
Cycle: Agricultural (Corn)
Order and Organization - Reflected in levels and compartments (imitate bureaucracy) The current Katun will increment just a few years from now (13.0.0.0.0 will be on December 21st, 2012)
Interestingly, the Mayan religion is no longer practiced by Mayans, but has been adopted by some US Americans practicing New Age Spirituality:

New Age Spirituality

• Individual selects own beliefs from many world religions
• Main Idea: All is one, and all is spiritual
• Emerged in late 1960s, early 1970s
• 20% of all Americans have some new age beliefs
  

Pantheism
The belief that the universe and all within it is God (I used the example of "God" in Los Angeles, a man who is a pantheist who actually legally changed his name to God in recognition of his belief that everybody and everything is God.)

To reiterate the main point of this lecture, worldwide we find that religion expresses, explains, and legitimizes cultural practices, values, and the socio-political order. In other words, it FITS into the barrel. And if the barrel changes - so does the religion.