Some people asked me if having multiple altars at home that belong to different paths is okay. For example, I have seen a person who believes in Taoism, Buddhism and some other religion at once. He has a big room spared for religious practice, and he placed three altars in the room like a religious mahjong paradise, with him being the fourth player. I felt weird looking at that setup, but maybe there is a need to bring some clarity to people in this blog post since you might not know why it is not okay yet.
Having an altar means you worship a god or some gods because the altar is a place to connect and communicate with your gods. By doing so, you are telling the god that you belong to his path and are loyal to his path. What do loyal means?
Let’s say you have a house with four bedrooms, and you decided to have four wives or husbands, each of which has their room. You go into room A and say you love this one, then go to room B and say you love this one, while they are all in the same house and see you going around saying you “love” them. What does that sound like?
Your gods are looking at you, saying how “loyal” and “faithful” you are to them, then to another religion, and then to another. It’s a lie, and you are lying in front of the god’s face. God #1 would claim you as their people; then god #2 would fight back and say, no, this is my guy, and then god #3 would fight and say you are their disciple. So which side are you on?
You might not realize how bad it is, but gods do fight! When all the gods cannot agree, they all turn against you at once because you are the betrayer and the one who brought them to a big fight. They would not have to go through the hassle if you did not invite them to the house.
When you die, the gods are supposed to take you to their place for the religion you belong to, but since you have 3 or 4 paths now, you will be ripped into pieces to “distribute” yourself to all four or five paths. Imagine your body is tied to five horses, and all the horses just run outward to tear you apart.
Religion is about trust, faith and determination, expressed through loyalty, commitment and dedication. You must stick to one to avoid ending up with none. That’s the fact.
Some people say that their lama master is okay with them having other paths at the same time. You got to look at your master, then. Are they doing multiple paths simultaneously? You realized that all the serious masters or religious teachers are only one path, right? If multiple paths were a good idea, why didn’t these master study multiple paths and praise that idea? Look back at the grandmasters and even the founder generation, who runs on multiple paths. Let’s say, did the pope go multiple paths? Did Dali lama go multiple paths? They can say it is “okay” because they don’t care about your future. You are not their close disciple anyway. If you were a real disciple they teach, I am sure you would have your butt kicked after you ask that question.
Multiple paths are not okay, then how is multiple paths altar okay? Different religions have different energies; they will crash if you put them together in the same place. Mixing religions or even different sects in the same religion is not okay, and if you try to do that, you will end up with nothing but a disaster. Maybe you are not sensitive enough to feel the problem at the moment, but eventually, it will show itself, and the worse time is when you die; you will be eating your own medicine when all these gods are going after you to “separate” you into pieces.
If you are not ready to be loyal to one, you should learn to be. Loyalty is important in life. Who would like a disloyal worker/lover/husband etc.? Without loyalty, no one will have an honest relationship with you. What’s worse is that you will also start to be disloyal to yourself, and your whole life will feel shallow and hollow because even your spiritual planetary body will be disloyal to you, not giving you the vision and guidance you need in life.
Ordain today to learn more about virtues and be a better person. Most importantly, you can focus on one path that has answers for you all the time so that you won’t have to hop around different religious paths trying to fish for answers everywhere.