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.