The Source

"The Almighty divided Himself into two high spirits - God and Satan"

 The question has been posed:-

Does this imply that 'Almighty' and 'God' are not the same? That's interesting.

So Almighty placed Satan there to accomplish a certain function? So, why is Satan regarded as evil

As I see it the confusion created by all this (at least in the Abrahamic Traditions) goes back to the need of the Jewish/Hebrew tradition to confront another strong Tradition at the time, Zoroastrianism. This posited TWO gods, opposed to each other. Ahura Mazda, the god of light, and Angra Maunyu, the god of all evil.

The Jewish response, found in the Old Testament, is Isaiah 45:7:- I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

As far as my own experience and understanding is concerned, speaking generally, Christianity (particularly in the Protestant Reform - literalist - Tradition) has never actually come to terms with the full implications of this. i.e. That the ultimate Source is ONE, and that that Source has given rise to the opposites - and thus that ALL opposites do not, cannot, "exist" in the same sense as the Source (which is existence/being itself)

I have had to move "east" for greater clarity. With such texts as the Tao te Ching:-

The Way that can be walked is not the eternal Way.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of all things.

Therefore:
Free from desire you see the mystery.
Full of desire you see the manifestations.
These two have the same origin but differ in name.
That is the secret,
The secret of secrets,
The gate to all mysteries.

All this is not academic, at least for me. It implies praxis, practice (the attempt to live fully and truly) and not to rest simply in theory, in continuous questions. To be "one" with the Source, and in being "one" with it, to then allow the diversification of the opposites - yet not being "deceived" by them, or seeing them as eternal verities. To "hang loose" just a bit! It implies compassion and empathy. We are all one.

Unfortunately, most of this is dismissed as "mumbo jumbo", for the birds. Each to their own.

 But the birds don't know they have names.

Relative and Absolute

 As promised (or perhaps "threatened"......) a few further thoughts. Jumbled as usual. Thoughts on morality, the "good", objective and relative and suchlike.

Its probably been gathered by some that I am into what is loosely called "inter-faith dialogue". That being so I have been denounced from all sides. One favorite is "there can be no dialogue between truth and error", with the "truth" obviously being the sole possession of my denouncer! I have been called the "antichrist" by convinced Christian believers, and told by fellow Buddhists to stop "the inter-religious bullshit" (obviously by someone in need of reading a relevant Sutta on Right Speech)

Anyway, I waffle as usual, which is what happens when I get my coffee in McDonalds.

As I work out my own salvation in fear and trembling (as the Good Book has it) my heart rests in dialogue, in the hope of unity. What comes to one will come to all.

Rather than the strident voices of the "One Wayers" I prefer the more insightful voices of the Christian mystics, those such as St John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart. Such have been recognised as "dharma brothers" by many Buddhists, in fact by any who value the Living Word rather than the Word as Text.

Eckhart has said:- “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 recognises such words as pointing to the prajna wisdom of zen, “one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.” Yet it also points to a fundamental division between those who would believe in Buddha, or Jesus, and those who seek to become as Buddha was, or to become Christlike, "one" with God.

As I see it, this relates to the promise contained in the Old Testament that in the fullness of time the Law will be found written on human hearts, and not only upon tablets of stone. I think this can be relevant to this whole unending argument about "relative" and "absolute" as far as morality is concerned. Objective "right" and "wrong", set in stone, embedded in belief in some transcendent Being who also writes books and demands obedience and Who in fact becomes more and more incredible the more we try to think about "Him".

The furthest I have got in my own thought is in reflection upon the words of a zen master, Yun-men, who was once asked what were the teachings of a whole lifetime. He answered:- "An appropriate statement".

For me, this becomes more and more profound. An appropriate statement, or act, appropriate there, then but for no other time. Objective. Not relative. Yet there is a constant "becoming", an advance into novelty. Radical freedom.

In the meantime, of course, as unenlightened, as only stumbling along, maybe we need sometimes to defend the "law" on the "tablets of stone", try not to run before we can walk. As Merton has said:-

Our real journey in life is interior: it is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.

I would quibble over Merton's use of the word "interior" - as a zen guy has said, "if consciousness ends in the skull how can joy exist?" but I am with him.

Just to add, as my coffee is not yet cold, those words of Merton comes from his volume of letters, "The Road to Joy" (letters to old and new friends) Merton had received a letter from the young daughter of an older correspondent, a letter that contained a picture of a house. Merton wrote back, saying how lovely the house looked, but that sadly there was no path up to the door. The young girl replied by sending another picture of the house, this time with a path leading up to the door. Merton then wrote of the road to joy “which is mysteriously revealed to us without our exactly realizing.” Which is my own Pure Land way of hakarai, of no-calculation, where things are made to become so of themselves, for the earth brings forth fruits of herself.

ALL COMMENTS WELCOME - THANK YOU.

The Death and Birth of God.

 An eye-catching thread title. Might even get a couple of views.....

Back in McDonalds, coffee in hand. Well, I have a Blook (explanation elsewhere) that consists of various notes gathered over the past few years in my cyber-notebook. In some sort of order, but not much of one. I love various quotes jumbling against each other, random correspondences, unlikely support for one thing found in another unlikely spot. I suppose, part of the Pure Land way of hakarai (no-calculation) where things are made to become so of themselves beyond the calculating of our minds, its "logic" and its conditioned machinations.

"For the earth brings forth fruits of herself" as the Good Book says.

Anyway, I waffle. This morning a couple of cybernotes from a section on Jung popped out.

The first:-

Viewed in a broader context of Western intellectual history, Nietzsche at the end of the 19th century proclaims the death of God while Jung in Liber Novus presents the rebirth of God at the beginning of the 20th century.


(Ha ha......how's "Liber Novus" for an arcane reference........)

The second:-

With the Red Book identifying the individuation process as the royal road to rediscovering soul and “God,” Jung revises the traditional Christian teaching of imitatio Christi. Simply being a devout Christian does not suffice anymore. Instead, the new form of spirituality requires searching for the inner Christ, who stands for the sacrifice and willingness needed to take one’s own life into one’s own hands while staying faithful to one’s essence and one’s love. As opposed to remaining in an infantile attitude of imitation, the individual is asked to find a place for Christ in his heart and then follow his independent path during a process of personal growth, living his own life just as Christ lived his.

The second quote supports the first. At least as I see it and understand it. I think we have to get away from historical events happening outside of us, disputing them, "believing" in them (or not) Trying to justify ourselves because we "believe" and have opened the gate. The one gate. The only gate. The Narrow Gate.

As I see it, there is no gate. We are within, we are accepted, purely by having been born. This is Grace. To be realised not appropriated by our choices and decisions.

This relates to Universalism. That what comes to one will come to all. All to do, at a fundamental level, with our reality as Persons. A reality far different from Individualism. Yes, we are individuals, but first of all we are persons. Persons can only be in relationship, in inter-being, with other persons. Ultimately, only in relationship with all other persons. Forgetting "afterlife" (ultimate restoration of all things) this holds NOW. In opening to others now, those of other ways, of other cultures, of other times, we surely find Christ......or Buddha......or Tao. Or maybe just our true selves. No one can be left out.

Anyway, as I delved in my Notebook, a few more quotes from the Jung Section. Food for thought, for pondering, in between cracking another few levels of Soda Candy Crush Saga...

All the greatest and most important problems are fundamentally unsolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away – an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

There is a trend away from Logos—the pure intellect that analyzes, judges, and divides—to Eros, which relates and connects, and brings the realization of our interconnectedness and interdependence. This shift touches our depths, opening us to larger dimensions, to the ineffable mystery of life and death, and leading us onto spiritual transformation

The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning.

(This last from "The Red Book", C G Jung)

Last:-

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

Riddles and Promises

 Lovely smile just received from a McDonald's lass as she handed me my coffee. Makes the day so much brighter.

I've mentioned before that I'm trawling my way through Thomas Mann's "Joseph and His Brothers", which runs to over 1500 pages, small font. Quite a challenge with my eyes. But I am now around page 650 or so. Joseph is now in Egypt and gains his first sight of the pyramids. Very atmospheric writing, evoking their size and substance, their age (even then) Yet mausoleums, monuments to death. Built by thousands to "honour" just one man (or "god") and send him on his way to wherever he was going - or thought he was going. In Mann's book Joseph goes on to contemplating the Sphinx, reflects upon its riddle - a riddle of pure silence. Joseph, knowing of the Holy One whose "silence" is of another dimension, rests in the Promise. This really caught me and has given me pause to think. The Promise - rather than the silence. As Pascal has said, the eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.

They have never really terrified me. Possibly the blessing of a mother (and fathers) love early on - a wanted child. But, whatever, I have been contrasting in my mind, and reflections, between the infinite "riddle" and silence of the Sphinx and the still silent Promise. A Promise variously given - that the Law (of Love) will eventually be written on human hearts and not only on tablets of stone. That there will be a "restoration of all things". And of how so many human beings respond - "I know that my redeemer liveth" as the Good Book says. Know despite so much that seems to challenge such hope, trust and faith.

Tragically, many seem to want the Promise to be only as they can envisage it. They set parameters. Defend them against all comers. "Narrow Gates", "Only Names", excluding all who know of other promises, appropriated in infinite ways - as would be the case with that which is infinite itself. The Source.

Faith to me is everything. In fact, not a means to "salvation" (or whatever we want to call it) but salvation itself. Not a final state of "being" but more infinite freedom. Those who seem unable to dislocate Faith from belief, and thus demand "evidence" before any commitment, can go their own way. But as Dogen says:-

Therefore, if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan).

Anyway, it has been a tiring week so far, with grandad duties and hospital visits prior to my dear wifes hip replacement operation. For a 74 year old the grind - mental and physical - takes its toll.

Just to finish. One thing I will never fall away from is the conviction that what comes to one will come to all. This is fundamental. Yes, at any one time there are undoubtedly "sheep" and "goats" but Universalism will have the final word - part of the Promise as I know it and live it and experience it.

Ain't no easy thing

 "Science became an obsession, a portal to understanding reality."

As I see it there is science, its methods, and there is Scientism. Science I see as perfectly neutral. But it can slip into the "understanding reality" where, more often than not, our minds can cease being skeptical and honest and simply insist that "when you are dead you are dead", or "there ain't nothing beyond this" or "if I can't see it or feel it it ain't there", and so on. Which more often than not leaves most with the conditioning of the place of their own times. Yes, if born in an Islamic country, most will become Muslims - just so, if born in the 21st century in the West, most will succumb to Scientism, sceptical of all metaphysical claims, congratulating themselves on their "honesty".

Science is concerned with how the world is, but as Ludwig Wittgenstein has said:-

Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

When we know "how" then there is "why?" The search for meaning and significance.

Looking up Wiki, quite a good summary of the whole question of "Why is there something rather than nothing"?

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that everything in the universe must have a cause, culminating in an ultimate uncaused cause. (This obviously of interest to those who believe in God, as the First Cause. Uncaused. Then the slip into "and He - always a He! - is just like it says here, here and here, according to my Churches creedo!")

Bertrand Russell took a "brute fact" position when he said, "I should say that the universe is just there, and that's all."

Philosopher Brian Leftow has argued that the question cannot have a causal explanation (as any cause must itself have a cause) or a contingent explanation (as the factors giving the contingency must pre-exist), and that if there is an answer it must be something that exists necessarily (i.e., something that just exists, rather than is caused).

Philosopher William Free argues that the only two options which can explain existence is that things either always existed or spontaneously emerged. In either scenario, existence is a fact for which there isn't a cause.

End of Wiki.

I know how often I have posted this, but here it is again. The zen master Dogen from his Genjokoan:-

Therefore, if there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality (genjōkōan). When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality (genjōkōan).

If we find ourselvess with the blessing and grace to actually think on these things - and not be engulfed as so many are with suffering and a simple quest to survive - then we need to find our very own "time and place (and path)" irrespective of "proofs" or "certainties". Our lives are not an "experiment" that can be verified in a laboratory, not a practice. This is IT. We have to give our answer - give it and live it. Honestly. It seems to me a lifetimes work to be truly honest with ourselves; not simply a consequence of "skepticism".

Anyway, I thought I would finish (as I sit in Costas!) with an excerpt from a novel, "Matterhorn." Though a novel it is based upon the authors own experiences in the Vietnam War. Very good.

"Matterhorn" was the name given to this hill in Vietnam that became the battleground for a while, battles depicted as virtually pointless within the storyline, though many died, on both sides. But one passage really got me, where a black Marine, a guy called Cortell, is speaking with a white comrade. Cortell is the "preacher man" in the story and catches a lot of stick from others. Cortell has recently lost a couple of his real good buddies to the war.

Cortell and the white guy, Jermain, are chatting just prior to combat. Jermain asks....."You think we go to heaven when we die?"

"I don't think nothin'. I believe Jesus take care of us when we die." Cortell looked at Jermain. "Believin's not thinkin'."

There is a little more conversation, then Jermain says......"I don't want to go nowhere but back into the world."

"Yeah, I be right there with you," Cortell said. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Ever'one here think it easy for me. I be this good little church boy from Mississippi with my good little church-goin' Mammy, and since I be stupid country nigger with the big faith, I don't have no trouble. Well, it just don't work that way." He paused. Jermain said nothing. "I see my friend Williams die," Cortell continued. "I see my friend Boyer get his face ripped off by a mine. What you think I do all night, sit around thankin' Sweet Jesus? Raise my palms to sweet heaven and cry hallelujah? You know what I do? I lose my heart." Cortell's throat suddenly tightened, strangling his words. "I lose my heart." He took a deep breath, trying to regain his composure. He exhaled and went on quietly, back in control. "I sit there and I don't see any hope. Hope gone." Cortell was seeing his dead friends. "Then the sky turn gray again in the east, and you know what I do? I choose all over to keep believin'. All along I know Jesus could maybe be just some fairy tale, and I could be just this one big fool. I choose anyway." He turned away from his inward images and returned to the blackness of the world around him. "It ain't no easy thing."

Well, I'm not trying to sneak God back in through the back-door. I am a non-theist myself. But "it ain't no easy thing".

I did say before somewhere, about the black slaves in the cotton fields. People who said such things as "gonna tell God all my troubles when I get home". As I said before, anyone who says such people were talking nonsense because God would already know those "troubles" has simply missed the whole point. Logic will never have the last word.

Apokatastasis and Healing

An eye catching title, perhaps particularly ideal for those suffering from insomnia. But for anyone interested, the word "apokatastasis" is used within the Christian Religion for Universalism, the hope for the restoration of ALL things, for all people, for all creation.

This is not something that has arisen over the past few centuries, preached by those who have "fallen away" from "what the Church has always taught", an attempt to "corrupt the plain meaning of scripture." In fact it was a belief, a teaching, very prevalent in the Early Church, taught by several of the Early Church Fathers, taught throughout the Christian centuries, and now gathering pace among many whose fidelity to Christ is unquestionable. Names?

Origen, Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Maximos the Confessor, Silouan the Athonite, and later, George MacDonald and the boldest minds of our era, Sergius Bulgakov, Robert W. Jenson, Thomas Talbott, Ilaria Ramelli, David Bentley Hart, John Behr.

Even the oft stated claim that the doctrine was declared heretical at one time is now called into question by scholars of the Christian Church.

Does any of this matter? Well, that depends upon each of us. I am a non-theist, and have little interest (or belief) in transcendent Beings, creators, any fall of humankind, and therefore of any restoration. The Dharma (Buddhism) avoids beginnings and conclusions, seeing allegiance to such things as being antithetical to the actual living of the "holy life", the path to the end of suffering.

Yet I have great regard for what is called a fully "incarnational" Christanity, of "Christ in us". It really goes without saying that if, in our mind/hearts, we have faith in the eventual restoration of "all things", every last one of us, then our own lives will begin to mirror, to reflect, the Reality of Healing that we trust is in us and around us. This as opposed to believing that eventually creation will be solidified into a two tier system, of "sheep" and "goats", lost and saved, heaven and hell - does it take much imagination to recognise just how a mind/heart will develop that sees things in such a way. 

 Being a non-theist I bring healing to my mind/heart in other ways. To be honest I find that belief in God is cloying and claustrophobic, and given in many ways a weak mind, easily led, the loud voices of the "believers" becomes discordant, a chorus of noise with little meaning, each convinced of their own pictures of Reality.

I've asked before about the "dividing line" between theism and non-theism, and in truth I think there isn't one. That said, some images of God are fairly remote to me. It seems pretty obvious that there will be no time when I am "here" and God us "there" - God is more the ground of Reality in which we "live and move and have our being". Yet I have heard a very well known Christian evangelist say that when "we walk into heaven the only difference we shall see between God the Father and God the Son will be the nail-prints in the Son's hands." This is crass, ridiculous, and yet points to the very literalist way every word in the Bible is interpreted - the word as text, rather than the Living Word. (Obviously, such a literalist grasp of certain things does not necessarily preclude an mind/heart from the fruits of the spirit)

From my own perspective "Buddha nature" points to the immanence, the liberative potential, in the ground of the earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, "ever ready to spring forth and benefit beings. It speaks of and represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of Reality, or the phenomenal world."

The Dharma at best, combines soteriology, epistemology and ontology. As someone else has said:- Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing.

As I see it we all move forward with our mental maps of the world, and within this mental map there are things we think are good, useful, or valuable, such as flowers, and there are other things we think are bad, useless, or worthless, such as weeds. Usually we take it for granted that the fabricated picture of the world in our minds is the world itself. Nothing really wrong with this, and yet our "maps" can become solid, set in concrete, used to "justify" ourselves, projected onto God, who then is deemed to judge the whole earth according to our dictates. This is tragic. 

We are more a constant becoming - as Dogen says:-

"Flowers fade even though we love them, weeds grow even though we hate them."

As finite beings we simply can never really know, in a world of becoming, just which are flowers and which are weeds, and grasping at one and shunning the other, we can lock ourselves into a world that maybe can seem like heaven at times and yet is hell. Letting go of our conclusions and beliefs can be liberating, leaving the mind/heart to find ever greater intimacy with Reality - and to experience it (no matter how much "evidence" to the contrary) as truly healing, life-giving, and fulfilling.

And hopefully we ourselves can mirror Reality, reflect it, be a source of healing to others.