Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. I've always had an interesting relationship with the concept of a church,

synagogue, temple, what have you. Growing up, my dad and I only attended a synagogue

maybe once a year for Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays, during which you fast and ask

God for forgiveness for all your wrongdoings in the past year.

As a kid I was confused why everyone at the temple was reciting the same prayer.

I figured each would talk to God, confess their sins and promise to do better, but everyone read the same thing from the

same book and the same tone, and the next day you eat again and supposedly all is forgiven.

It felt very impersonal.

When I was 13, my family and I moved from our small town in Israel, where the synagogue was tiny, to San Francisco, where I was to have my bar mitzvah, and the synagogue was this massive cathedral with Long Isle and massive altar with pews for days.

By that age I had already told my father I don't buy into the whole organized religion concept

so we made a deal that if I just do this Bart Mitzvah thing for him, then he'll never make me go to temple again.

On the day of my Barmitzva, the double doors open to the temple and I saw all the men in the pews on the right side and all the women behind a dividing wall on

the pews on the left side all chanting the same prayer and I had this vision of a

massive brain hanging below the tall ceilings with hundreds of tubes running from the big brain

plugging into every person's head. It was a visual of the same concept I had

about three years prior that religion lacked individuality or personal relationship with God.

Since that was also the year we moved to the US and I found out about all these other world religions,

all carrying a similar message but constantly fighting about which one is right or superior.

Later in life I discovered Unity Church, Unitarian Universalism, Centers for Spiritual Living,

and I'll never forget how Reverend Sky at Unity of

Hawaii explained what they believe. You know how churches have stained glass

windows like massive Tiffany lamps and while each religion's stained glass window

...