If the great religious traditions are ultimately pointing toward the same ground of being, why have they so often been sources of division and violence?
The answer, I think, lies in what happens to a teaching over time. When the founders of these traditions were still alive — the Buddha, Christ, Ramakrishna, the Prophet — their words carried the living charge of direct experience. But traditions have a tendency to calcify. As they pass into the hands of those who have not themselves touched that fundamental consciousness, the signposts get mistaken for the destination. Words that were meant to point beyond themselves become doctrines to be defended.
Fear enters. Politics enters. And religion — which began as an invitation into direct experience — becomes a tool for control. The message shifts from we have found something true to we have the truth and no one else does. From there the distance to othering, exclusion, and sanctified violence is shorter than any of us would like to admit.
The basic teachings — love, acceptance, the direct knowing of the divine — get buried under the weight of what was built in their name.