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=== Sinclair’s View of Religion ===
'''B:''' At the Revitalized Buddhist founding commemorative lecture on the fifth, there were an awful lot of police present,…

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…keeping a very conspicuous watch. Was that because of Revitalized Buddhism’s third principle—the slogan “Down with Capitalism”?

'''A:''' Exactly. When I was summoned to the police station over the notification for the meeting, that was what they told me. They were not particularly concerned about the destruction of the established Buddhist institutions. What concerned them was the anti-capitalist movement. If the content of our Revitalized Buddhist movement consisted merely in destroying the established religious institutions and unifying Buddhism, that would amount to little more than destroying a number of robots and manufacturing one enormous robot in their place. The real problem is that, unless the Revitalized Buddhist movement becomes a movement against capitalism—the modern devil that is mercilessly turning human beings into robots through the religious institutions—it cannot truly be called a religious movement that engages actual life. That is what I believe.

'''B:''' I can understand what you’re saying, but surely religion and economic movements are, by their very nature, separate fields?

'''A:''' That is a reasonable point, at least at first. But I believe that true religion should not divide things into two, economics on one side and spirit on the other; it should demand the idealization of life as a whole. Genuine love between a man and a woman cannot be satisfied with Platonic love; only where flesh and spirit are united can love attain fulfillment.

On this point, Upton Sinclair writes in his well-known book Is Religion Worth Believing?<ref>Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was an American socialist writer and political activist. The passages quoted here are from his The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918), a socialist critique of organized religion as an ally of economic exploitation. Seno’o encountered the work in Japanese as Shūkyō wa shinzuru ni taru ka 宗教は信ずるに足るか (Is Religion Worth Believing?; trans. Sakai Toshihiko et al., Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1920). The English here translates the Japanese passages quoted by Seno’o rather than substituting Sinclair’s original English wording.</ref>

Religion, in the true sense, is the most fundamental of spiritual impulses: an ardent love of life, a sense of the preciousness of life, and a desire to nurture and foster life. In this sense, every thinking human being must be religious. In this sense, ‘religion’ is the eternal power of self-renewal and the true nature of humanity itself. In this sense, I have not the slightest intention of attacking religion. Indeed, I wish to make clear that religion, understood in this sense, is something that simply cannot be attacked.

But the word ‘religion’ has also been given another meaning, and as a result we have been deprived of the pleasure of using this word in that straightforward sense. For most people, the word ‘religion’ does not mean ‘the soul’s desire to grow’ or ‘the pursuit of righteousness as though hungering and thirsting for it.’ Instead, it means the historical forms in which that desire has appeared, and…

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…the doctrines, ‘revelations,’ creeds, and rituals it has acquired; a system under which the moral impulses of the people, the love of children, and the aspirations of youth are exploited and turned into a source of privilege and commercial profit for the clergy. ‘Religion’ in this sense is the natural ally of parasitic income and of every form of oppression and exploitation.

Can we not clearly understand from this the difference between true “religion” and distorted, so-called “religion”? ''Thus the actual path followed by the true religious person, who “hungers and thirsts after righteousness,” naturally diverges from the ideological dream-world in which the half-paralyzed pseudo-religionist dances, taking fixed doctrines and revelations, creeds and rituals to be religion.'' Sinclair’s next words express almost exactly my own present conviction:

I am certainly no shallow materialist. I am not so superficial as to think that human beings can be satisfied by meaningless rationalism. I know that the symbols of the old religions arose from the human heart. They arose because they corresponded to certain desires of the human heart. And I also know that, together with those desires, the symbols of a new religion suited to the needs of the present age can be discovered. If I am trying here to tear down an old, dilapidated building, it is not out of a blind impulse to destroy, but because I am an architect who wishes to build in its place a new and sturdier structure.