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.
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