Faith

Faith is the dominant monotheistic religion of the Rim in Sol System. The Supreme Being of Faith is The One, whom was revealed by Vinaii Roshi during the Foundation Period as the central figure of worship of all true Earth religion.

At right is the most common symbol of Faith, instituted by Vinaii himself. Faithful are identifiable by this symbol worn around the neck or inscribed on personal belongings.

Faith is wholly preserved through oral tradition. This oral tradition is organized primarily into the Twenty One Revelations. Other sources of belief for the Faithful are Vinaii's example in life and his other sayings.

## Beliefs

### The One

The One is entirely transcendent in creation but wholly immanent for those who have Faith. The One is the only divine power, devoid of human characteristics but made human through an infinite series of manifestations. The One manifests to humanity whenever mankind is in need of refocusing until the One was rejected in the death of God's Salvation on Earth. The One is manifest to the Faithful through Love. Each person can directly experience and communicate with the One without intermediary.

Discussion of the One beyond direct experience is futile. Philosophy and speculation are wholly rejected.

Each Faithful is considered a manifestation of the One both by nature and by adoption. The natural was disturbed through Death, Ignorance, and Sin. Adoption is the destruction of these things unto the restoration of the correctness of the One's manifestation in each person. This process is perfectly displayed in the Life, Truth, and Way.

### The Life, the Truth, and the Way

When asked about salvation by his earliest followers, Vinaii spoke of an individual on Earth and called him the Life, the Truth, and the Way and described his accomplishment of salvation. He said that he revealed the same things that Vinaii did and was killed for it, but that this death was necessary to atone for the sins of humanity. He was raised to life and lives today.

It is generally agreed that Vinaii was speaking about Yeshua of Nazareth.

### Ethics

Apart from the Twenty One Revelations, Vinaii taught two ultimate ethical commands as being the heart and center of all real religion.

* The Supreme Command: Hear, O People! There is One Love and Love is One! This shall be your whole Being. You shall be One in this Love!
* The Single Rule: As to you, to all.

### Prohibitions

Vinaii laid four universal prohibitions on all Faithful. Further prohibitions are matters of individual conscience for each individual Faithful.

* Committing any of Vinaii's teaching to writing is forbidden. The use of already written scripture is not proscribed. However, Vinaii forbade the use of his teaching as scripture "lest you forget what is already written on your hearts and minds and should forever be on your lips and mistake the writing for Life, welcoming Ignorance."
* Murder or consumption of anything killed violently; this extends in practice to a general prohibition of violence.
* Lying or intentional distortion of information; this extends in practice in the positive form as a general emphasis on education.
* Rebellion against Love or acting in a manner unconscionable to another human. This extends to a general emphasis on active, continuing peacemaking.

These prohibitions are separate from the Twenty One Revelations but both are complementary of one another.

### Twenty One Revelations

Vinaii's original revelation is detailed in a list of twenty one truths. He taught the Faithful that they have no need to write them down; adhering to a written tradition would only distort the pure truth of the original revelation and could never communicate the actual truth of the revelations. The Revelations themselves are not facts to be intellectually known; rather, they are beginning points for a continued progression of real experience of the One. They are divided into three groups of seven correlating to the Life, Truth, and Way. To know each of the truths in their fullness and reality is to know the Life, Truth, and Way. To know all of the Revelations is to know the One.

#### Life

1. Being
2. Knowledge
3. Union
4. Vital warmth / fire
5. Resurrection
6. Rebirth (samsara)
7. Return (exaltation and dissolution)

#### Truth

1. The present state of all things is illusory; it does not really exist
2. All men are saved; now we must be Faithful
3. Love is the whole of the Life, Truth, and Way and is total. On this all things hang.
4. There is more to salvation than we can ever know in this life; therefore, endure to the end.
5. The One can neither be attained nor cast off but was, is, and is to come.
6. The World-to-Come already is.
7. The only thing we can ever truly rely on and be certain of is the One.

#### Way

1. Eightfold path
2. Conformity to nature
3. Meditation, action, and devotion (active yoga)
4. Prayer
5. Recitation
6. Evangelism
7. Charity

## Practices

Vinaii made the traditional religion of Earth intensely personal without incorporating virtually any of what he called "innovations" of Architecture. Faith exists in the mundane and does not seek for ritual or mystical experience. Daily life for the individual is an opportunity for the experience of the One. Conversion, then, is simply a profession of Faith as it is known to the Faithful. A professor of Faith seeks to practice the Life promised by God's Salvation for himself and every being and overcome Death, eliminate Ignorance by the knowing of the Truth, and practice the ethical Way of life that destroys Sin.

The individual is the ultimate unit of Faith. No priesthood or organisation exists.

All teaching is handed down orally, per Vinaii's prohibition on penning his teachings.

There is nothing to be accomplished in Faith; "it is finished, it is done". The Faithful only give the reality of this finished done fact in their service to others. This embrace of service is called enlightenment.

Each Faithful prays towards Earth as the centerplace of human devotion and the place where salvation was accomplished.

All Faithful are sober, following Vinaii's example.

Many Faithful incorporate practices from old Earth religion into their Faith.

## History

### Vinaii

Vinaii Roshi is the son of criminals exiled from Earth during the Zero Day Accords. He was born, lived, taught, and died during the Foundation Period. He was born on Europa in **SY 28** and was quickly orphaned; the reason for his orphaning is unknown. He professed Buddhist beliefs for much of his life and worked as a hard laborer. He was largely illiterate.

In **SY 96**, he became the leader of a small community of Buddhist monastics on Neptune and acquired the title Roshi and began miraculously writing. He began the first of his teachings with the Supreme Command and the Single Rule as the new basis for the life of his community. His community broke with greater Buddhist tradition when Vinaii taught that Love was an actual conscious being analogous to the monotheistic God of other religious traditions. He drew on the Gospel of the Buddha and the Tripitaka for support for this belief but quickly abandoned the appeal to scriptural tradition in favor of a direct experience of the Divine.

About the time of the Freitaika Rebellion in the Main Belt, Vinaii changed his name from his birth name to Vinaii. It is unknown what name he was born with. He claimed this name was divinely revealed to him. Unique among founders of religion, Vinaii grew with his community through a series of progressive revelation. He never thought of himself as anything beyond simply one of the Faithful.

He repudiated the Terran Humanism of the Consortium as entirely blasphemous.

Vinaii did not claim the title of Prophet, though his earliest followers applied this title to him. While he did not reject it, he did not encourage it; he taught that all humans are capable of realizing what he had and receiving the same universal revelation. All Faithful compose a brotherhood and nation which should never be broken along discriminatory lines.

Vinaii taught until **SY 117** and revealed one of the Twenty One Revelations per year. The Revelations were given in the order presented above. Before his death at the age of eighty nine standard years he destroyed his own writings to demonstrate unattachment to this world, giving also his great prohibition on committing his teaching to writing.

### The Gurus

In **SY 117** at Vinaii's death, there were twenty two Faithful. Each of them undertook great missionary efforts and Faith spread like wildfire throughout the Rim. These teachers were called Gurus. Many of them are still alive during the First Trilogy Era and continue to undertake active missionary efforts. Through their work, Faith has become the second most popular religion in Sol System and the dominant religion of the Rim.

## Sects

While the vast majority of Faithful exist in a loosely organized, non-heirarchial community with no priesthood or authority apart from the Gurus, at least one sect of Faith exists. The Army of Eastern Kamijing practices a syncretic religion largely based on Faith that also embraces certain parts of Architecture, especially the spiritual experiences of early Makers and adherents on Kamijing. While not particularly dogmatic, each AEK member is expected to practice this; externally, it is heavily inspired by ancient Shinto practices and also represents in some ways a return to the Buddhism from which Faith was founded.

The practice of Eastern Faith as it has come to be known largely takes place in private, with each devotee's construction of a traditional Shinto shrine that is understood to be a dwelling place for The One, whom they use the Asiatic term 'Ichkami' (literally: one spirit) for. Burning incense, prayers, and meditation are the common practices.