Freedom

 Is God free? Has God got freewill? Or are His acts determined by His having a particular nature? Or, as I prefer to think about it, is Reality-as-is predetermined, or is it more radical freedom, a constant advance into novelty?

Often it seems that any answer we give to this whole question (i.e. do I have freewill) is simply determined by our own predisposed conditionings and beliefs. Our "answer" - yes or no - "justifies" us, it's suitable for purpose.

On another forum there has often been various discussions of this whole subject, with no conclusion ever being reached. One such thread began with these words (not mine), which I find bear repeating:-

The majority of human beings are mostly convinced that they are the author of their thoughts, choices and therefore their destiny. There is no doubt human beings make choices. The question is: Are those choices free choices or inevitable choices that are not free but predisposed by a limited context? If they are limited, then by definition, the choice is not free choice, but an inevitable choice that is bound or enslaved by ones present level of consciousness and the circumstances by which that event occurs.

I find that the whole subject of our "level of consciousness" is a better starting point for the subject of freewill. It seems to me that often the accidental conditions of our birth and up-bringing are what determine many of our choices. We certainly do experience "choice" and yet the parameters surrounding those choices are surely there - thus we are not radically free. The question then becomes, just how far, how wide, can we extend the parameters of our freedom?

This also involves what we find to be what can be willed and what not. We can will "knowledge" but not wisdom, and we cannot will happiness. Of what does radical freedom truly consist?

There are some words of Thomas Merton, found in "New Seeds of Contemplation" that speak of the Gift of Freedom:-

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

Words worth our own contemplation, and I see them as corresponding to some other words by the Zen Master Caoshan:-

When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done.


Freedom seems to imply spontaneity, what in the East is called "wu wei", effortless action. Myself, I think such a state of being (or non-being!) can be known. It involves surrender of "self", more a realisation than an attainment. Grace, gift. Never "ours" as such.

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart speaks our our "union" with God, obviously in theistic terms:-

In giving us His love God has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can love Him with the love wherewith He loves Himself.

D.T.Suzuki, the "zen man", translates this into Zen terms: “one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.”

It is my trust and faith that such a "union", and therefore such a "radical freedom", can be known. Meanwhile I simply seek to see my own chains. I find any "advance" is more a stripping of knowledge than an accumulation.

Encounter

 

Speaking of dear old Tiff Shuttlesworth, US tele-evangelist, yet another making a real good living from what is basically a "modernism" - a North American brand of Protestant Reform Theology, born first of Martin Luther and fueled by the invention of the printing press and mass literacy, A wonderful recipe for replacing the Living Word which blows where it will, with the "Word as Text".

Looking up Tiff, and his latest Tweet, he posts:-

Without Christ, all of your good deeds can not keep you out of hell. With Christ, all of your bad deeds can not keep you out of heaven.

Fair enough, and in fact this is the heart of all our world's Faith Traditions - if the wind is allowed to blow. Here is zen, when the Emperor of China asked the Buddhist missionary Bodhidharma exactly what merit he had earned by all his good deeds. The answer:-

"None at all".

The self-same point/lesson/sermon - call it what you will. That ethics/morality is only a by-product of what can be called "wisdom" - and the only wisdom is of God (Reality-as-is) and can never be "ours" as such.

Browsing through a few Journal entries of Thomas Merton, and he is responding to a passage from Irenaeus.....

If you are the work of God wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune time........Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you........lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers......

Merton comments......

The reification of faith. Real meaning of the phrase we are saved by faith = we are saved by Christ, whom we encounter in faith. But constant disputation about faith has made Christians become obsessed with faith almost as an object, at least as an experience, a "thing" and in concentrating upon it they lose sight of Christ. Whereas faith without the encounter with Christ and without His presence is less than nothing. It is the deadest of dead works, an act elicited in a moral and existential void. To seek to believe that one believes, and arbitrarily to decree that one believes, and then to conclude that this gymnastic has been blessed by Christ - this is pathological Christianity. And a Christianity of works. One has this mental gymnastic in which to trust. One is safe, one possesses the psychic key to salvation......

As I see it, what Merton speaks of as an encounter with Christ in faith can be as diverse as the uniqueness of every human being. It cannot be restricted to a formula or a creedal statement, a "belief" of any kind. This is borne out by the evidence of the fruits of the spirit, which St Paul tells us are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Such fruits are in evidence right across the spectrum of humankind and are not the possession of any religion.

Anyway, Tiff can carry on with his "end-time" stuff. Each to their own. He can keep it........

The Second Coming - Dividing Lines Take 2

 As I see it, there really is no dividing line. Given the uniqueness of each, we are all on some sort of spectrum of Reality. Labels are good as far as they go, but they can deceive us into thinking that some people are totally distinct from others - right into the awful absurdity of the "sheep" and the "goats", the "lost" and "saved" - this then projected onto Eternity, a perpetual division.

I tend to see things from the Buddhist perspective of the Turning Wheel - samsara. Forever turning. There are ups and downs, but fundamentally the wheel keeps turning, even revolution is only that i.e. the revolving of the wheel, but with new winners and new losers. So many Buddhist masters speak of a sideways step - this rather than just treading on the wheel, making it go faster and faster!

In my own Pure Land way, Shinran spoke of the sideways step, but with emphasis on the step "out" being also the step back. The "going forth" is itself the return. This in the Mahayana tradition of samsara = nirvana. Its not a matter of going anywhere, more a seeing with new eyes, a new mind/heart.

Strangely, one beautiful insight into this I found in the writings of David Bentley Hart, an American Christian Eastern Orthodox theologian, when speaking of his knowledge of Buddhist bodhisattvas........

I had even come by then to know quite a lot about the Mahayana Buddhist understanding of bodhisattvas: those fully enlightened saviors who could, if they chose, enter finally into the unconditioned bliss of Nirvana, but who have instead vowed not to do so until all other beings have been gathered in before them, and who therefore, solely out of their superabounding compassion, strive age upon age for the liberation of all from Samsara, the great sea of suffering and ignorance. They even vow to pass through and, if need be, endure the pains of all the many narakas, those horridly numerous and ingeniously terrifying Buddhist hells, in pursuit of the lost. But then, in fact, in a marvelous and radiant inversion of all expectations, it turns out that such compassion is itself already the highest liberation and beatitude, and that, seen in its light, the difference between Samsara and Nirvana simply vanishes.

This is good. I often reflect upon it. Meanwhile the wheel keeps turning.

One quite well known poem keeps coming to mind, this "The Second Coming" by W.B.Yeats. Particularly over the past few days with quite a few posts about "End Times" and "Last Days" and "Doomsday Clocks". Some seem to revel in such themes, apparently rejoicing in the prospect of destruction and despair - this just so long as their own arse is spared........

Anyway, the poem:-

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

So in the turning wheel, samsara, does it matter what the nature of the "rough beast" will be? Whatever it is, will it not be simply another variation on the same sad theme? "Us" and "them", "me" and then the rest.

Well, as usual I am waffling. Conjuring up thoughts as I sit with my coffee in McDonalds.

The dividing line - Take 2

 

Christianity is dualistic. Theistic. Buddhism is born from non-dualism. The Dharma knows no creator. In my own Pure Land way, it is not "salvation by faith". Faith (shinjin) IS "salvation".

Yet when reading one or two of the great Christian mystics I wonder exactly where there is a true "dividing line". In the "negative way" God is the great "incomprehensible"....beyond thought. Meister Eckhart in his Sermon on "True Poverty" speaks this way of God:-

Nothing that knowledge can grasp, or desire can want, is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness; and there God shines.

St John of the Cross, speaking of the "final arrival" (to give it a name) writes:-

On that glad night in secret,
for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me more surely
than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
— him I knew so well —
there in a place where no one appeared.

Where no one appeared?

Getting back to Eckhart and the same Sermon, there is:-

Now listen carefully! I have often said, as great masters have said, that we should be so free of all things and all works, both inner and outer, that we become the place where God can act. But now we put it differently. If it is the case that someone is free of all creatures, of God and of themselves, if God finds a place to act in them, then we say: as long as this exists in someone, they have not yet reached the ultimate poverty. For God does not intend there to be a place in someone where he can act, but if there is to be true poverty of spirit, someone must be so free of God and all his works that if God wishes to act in the soul he must himself be the place in which he can act, and this he is certainly willing to be. For if God finds us this poor, then God performs his own active work and we passively receive God in ourselves and God becomes the place of his work in us since God works within himself. In this poverty, we attain again the eternal being which we once enjoyed, which is ours now and shall be for ever.

So, in experience, where is the dividing line between dualism and non-dualism? Between - using other words - "emptiness" and "theism"?

These are not rhetorical questions. I am not asserting anything, not claiming anything. I am seeking the understanding of others.

Just to add, to clarify (or, as usual with me, to muddy the waters further....... ) virtually everything is conceptual. Trying to touch or even live in the world, beyond concepts, simply as a human being with a degree of empathy and compassion, is what the Dharma would call a "Noble Parh."

As I see it, all of our world's Faith Traditions seek to eject us from our inner conceptual world of beliefs and assertions into a world where we live spontaneously, naturally, joining Reality-as-is in it's neverending journey into novelty.

Some have said that certain traditions are more suited to this aim, Buddhism for instance. It is quite a well known quip in Buddhism to say:- "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him!" It is made clear that the path leads to sharing the enlightenment of the Buddha, not to "worship" him. But to say, "If you see Jesus on the road, kill him" does not gel in quite the same way!

I find Thomas Merton a good guide in these muddy waters. Here he writes on this subject:-

But in Christian mysticism the question whether or not the mystic can get along without the human “form” (Gestalt) or the sacred Humanity of Christ is still hotly debated, with the majority opinion definitely maintaining the necessity for the Christ of faith to be present as ikon at the center of Christian contemplation. Here again, the question is confused by the failure to distinguish between the objective theology of Christian experience and the actual psychological facts of Christian mysticism in certain cases. And then one must ask, at what point do the abstract demands of theory take precedence over the psychological facts of experience? Or, to what extent does the theology of a theologian without experience claim to interpret correctly the “experienced theology” of the mystic who is perhaps not able to articulate the meaning of his experience in a satisfactory way?

Possibly no one is interested in all this. But each to their own. For me, to seek to live simply, with empathy and compassion towards all, is worth a little time.

No formulas - Take 2

Thomas Merton:-

If you want to find satisfactory formulas you had better deal with things that can be fitted into a formula. The vocation to seek God is not one of them. Nor is existence. Nor is the spirit of man.

(...or wo/man - I wish the guy had been PC!!)

I like to find correspondences across traditions, various ways in which much the same thought/insight is expressed, come to be actually seen, known and realised - not through the learning and repetition of some creedal formula of belief, but from the actual living of life in all its depth and variety.

As I see it, Thomas Merton's words bring to mind the contention of many zen masters that Buddhism teaches nothing, which leads to the zen koan of "why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" - Bodhidharma being the first Buddhist "missionary" to China.

Reading of Wittgenstein at the moment. Wittgenstein, in speaking to a friend, O.K. Bouwsma, thought that his teaching had done more harm than good, that people did not know how to use it soberly. "Do you understand?" he asked. "Oh yes", Bouwsma replied,"they had found a formula." "Exactly" was Wittgensteins reply.

There are no formulas for finding, knowing, realising "truth" and Wittgenstein insisted that an expression has meaning only in the stream of life. Therefore "truth" (our truth) can only be lived, not thought. Shown but not explained.

It is easy to become a parrot and from this to gain credibility, even reassurance and conviction, from having many of the same parrots around us. But if we seek to live, truly, in the very stream of life, then though it can be lonely at times, nevertheless, it can be truly life-giving. Which for me means full of grace.

Significance

 

Once, on another forum, someone expressed the opinion that a better way of speaking of a "personal God" was to say simply that God expresses Himself as persons. I see that as a good way of understanding, particularly from my own non-theistic perspective. Reality-as-is expresses itself as persons.

In that sense, no one is insignificant. All are expressions of Reality. All have significance.

I think that if we find ourselves capable of thinking on these things (unlike so many whose birth has brought them to famine, destitution and an early death) then we should seek to become a "person" who does seek to give significance to others. Develop empathy, a deeper capacity for compassion, a greater openess, a constantly increasing intimacy with the whole world around us.

My own Faith is that all shall be well and thinking about it (not always a good idea....) it is more acceptance, more that all is well. Simply that all is as it needs must be to bring forth the full compassion, wisdom, potential of Reality-as-is. "For the earth brings forth fruits of herself" (St Marks Gospel)

Which makes me think once more of Dogen, the 13th century zen master, who had his own quest for authentic personhood, his own questions. One question was, given that all have Buddha Nature, all are enlightened, then why practice? Why, in fact, do anything at all!

In zen speak, according to zen stories, he eventually found his own answer, and expressed it in his "Genjokoan" (the actualization of Reality)

Zen Master Baoche of Mt. Magu was waving a fan. A monk approached him and asked, “The nature of wind is ever present and permeates everywhere. Why are you waving a fan?”
The master said, “You know only that the wind’s nature is ever present—you don’t know that it permeates everywhere.”
The monk said, “How does wind permeate everywhere?” The master just continued waving the fan.
The monk bowed deeply.
The genuine experience of Buddha Dharma and the vital path that has been correctly transmitted are like this. To say we should not wave a fan because the nature of wind is ever present, and that we should feel the wind even when we don’t wave a fan, is to know neither ever-presence nor the wind’s nature. Since the wind’s nature is ever present, the wind of the Buddha’s family enables us to realize the gold of the great Earth and to transform the water of the long river into cream.

Faith

A quote:- Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.

 It is a good quote and can be related even to a non-theistic perspective. The philosopher Kant has been called one who saw the human being as the "one who can ask questions that cannot be answered". The meaning of life. Wittgenstein, one of our greatest modern philosophers has developed this, recognising that strict logic as such is simply a succession of tautologies, self enclosed. He said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”.

Some have developed this by making the claim that all metaphysical questions are therefore meaningless, then progressing into Scientism, where the logic appropriate to the development of science is deemed all encompassing. This is not what Wittgenstein meant. He did not deem questions of meaning meaningless, but that they can only be answered in ways beyond logic, in the actual living of life.

Wittgenstein, in speaking to a friend, O.K. Bouwsma, thought that his teaching had done more harm than good, that people did not know how to use it soberly. "Do you understand?" he asked. "Oh yes", Bouwsma replied,"they had found a formula." "Exactly" was Wittgensteins reply.

(Abbreviated from the biography of Wittgenstein by Ray Monk)

There are no formulas for finding, knowing, realising "truth" and Wittgenstein insisted that an expression has meaning only in the stream of life. Therefore "truth" (our truth) can only be lived, not thought.

At a fundamental level, to think on these things, as I see it we must not equate Faith with Belief. They are opposites. Faith has its place, that our own true path, time and place can be found, realised, and known. Beliefs, unfounded, will simply divide us.