Panentheism

 I was quite encouraged yesterday when I downloaded a sample of a book by Simon Schama, "Citizens", which is a rather large tome on the French Revolution (not the various current ones.......but the one beginning in 1789) The encouragement were these words found at the very beginning:-

Historians have been overconfident about the wisdom to be gained by distance, believing it somehow confers objectivity, one of those unattainable values in which they have placed so much faith.

I knew at once that I was in safe hands. What fool today still believes in "objectivity" or - perhaps worse - thinks they have attained it? Anyway, I waffle as usual.

Panentheism. Another "ism" to add to so many more. But it was partly the subject of a book I have just finished on the work and thought of Carl Jung. The thrust of the book was to argue that "meaning" is inherent in Reality, and not just projected onto a blank screen by our minds (our minds being totally distinct from mass/extension)

(Which jogs the words of a zen guy from my own mind:- "If consciousness ends in the skull, how can joy exist?")

Well, the book was by a Roderick Maine and was rather good. He sought to show how Jung's investigations and various writings supported the idea of inherent meaning. Which led onto Panentheism.

Panentheism:- a particular view, or family of views, of the relationship between God (the divine) and the world (nature, the cosmos, the universe). Composed of the Greek words “pan” = all, “en” = in, and “theos” = God, the term “panentheism” means literally “a doctrine [“-ism”] that everything exists in God.” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the belief or doctrine that God includes and interpenetrates the universe while being more than it.”

Thus, God is not "wholly other", sitting above it all, impassive. But mingles with us - in Jung's thought, with the unconscious, the archetypes.

It is the "while being more than it (i.e. the Universe)" that distinguishes it from Pantheism, which claims God and the Cosmos are totaly interchangeable. Panentheism therefore leaves room for mystery, which was important - at least to Jung.

Classic Theism - the wholly other God who brooks no rivals - has (Maine and Jung claim) led to the inevitable death of God.

The Bible does not say ‘All Gods are One’ but rather that God is One and ‘Thou shalt have no other gods …’ It does not establish a connection but rather draws a distinction....Ultimately this distinction is one between God and world. The subsequent story of disenchantment or the progressive elimination of magic from the world has been elaborated from different perspectives by various scholars—for example, in relation to the history of Western philosophy, the development of secularity, and the historiography of Western esotericism. In a nutshell: from the establishment of the exclusivist monotheism of the Bible, to the antipagan and antimagical polemics of both Catholicism and Protestantism, to the deism and rationalism of the Enlightenment, to the atheism and agnosticism of the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been overall an increasing separation of God from the world, an ever-purer sense of God’s transcendence, to the point where God has been so far removed from the world of experience as to have become for many, as famously for Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), an unnecessary hypothesis.

Sadly, the Christian Incarnation, its central claim and witness, has more often than not been reduced to a brief visit by God to this world. Walking about for thirty years or so, sometimes on water just to show how distinct He is, then leaving us again. This so as to "come back" at some indeterminate time, this time in "judgement" rather than with offers of mercy. Well so much for the unchanging, impassive, wholly other God whose "mercy endures forever".

For Panentheism, God is truly "with us", even "as us", while leaving us with a degree of mystery, being more than us as we are now. As Jung says:-

.....we must sense that we live in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplicable; that not everything which happens can be anticipated. The unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole. For me the world has from the beginning been infinite and ungraspable.

Or as someone else once said, "Man is the animal who does not know who or what we are, and that is what we are" (or something like that.....)

Well, to round off (sighs of relief from those who still remain.....) the generic definition of panentheism:

God’s being not separate from the cosmos, God’s being affected by the cosmos, and God’s being more than the cosmos

Jung elaborated (while not himself identifying with it) this equation of psychological with (specifically Christian) theological concepts in a letter to the Reverend David Cox (25 September 1957):-

instead of using the term God you say “unconscious,” instead of Christ “self,” instead of incarnation “integration of the unconscious,” instead of salvation or redemption “individuation,” instead of crucifixion or sacrifice on the cross “realization of the four functions* or of wholeness.”

* Briefly, sensation perceives that a thing exists, thinking judges what it is, intuition perceives what its possibilities are, and feeling judges its value.

My coffee is cold.

Abduction - Charles Sanders Pierce

 No, not alien kidnapping, that's another form of abduction. This is the abduction proposed by a guy called Charles Sanders Pierce around the 1900's. This "abduction" is another option to induction and deduction, the two main forms of logic. Abduction, in this context, is often referred to as “to the best explanation”.

Abduction conjectures the most promising explanation for a statement based on what would need to be the case for that statement to be true or “a matter of course”. I suppose that Catholic guy G. K. Chesterton was dabbling in a way with abduction when he claimed that our world was "just the way you would expect it to be if Christianity were true." Not very convincing really, and I'd see that as more "bias confirmation" - let's face it, our world is actually just the way it would be if Buddhism were true.....

But I ask, what truly is the more promising explanation for there being anything at all rather than nothing?

"That the world is - that is the mystical" said Wittgenstein.

I must admit that for me the simple truth that there is indeed something rather than nothing genuinely screams meaning/significance. Following on, that I as a human being can actually reflect upon such things would seem to indicate that the meaning/significance does embrace and relate to the human mind/heart. I say this not as any argument in favour but simply to say how I feel/think about it. i.e that there IS something (rather than nothing) implies meaning. We do not live in a Chaos, but a Cosmos (maybe James Joyce had it right, in a word he created for Finnegans Wake, chaosmos....) Life is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but holds infinite possibilities.

Today, the trinity of "time/space/causality" rules for many. Such is "enough". We simply project our meanings upon a canvas that does not actually give a jot (ultimately) for our hopes and dreams. Many are post-enlightenment rationalists - many presuming all the questions posed in the past by our religious Faiths are fundamentally meaningless. When you are dead you are dead. Grab it while you can.

Me, I dislike conclusions. Even precise definitions. And to be honest, when I look back through history, and actually take time to listen to the various voices of my own time, it is those who have supported, and do support, the idea of a "hidden ground of love" beyond (or maybe better, within) our Cosmos who I find myself respecting. I am not desperate in any way whatsoever to defend this, it is simply how my own mind/heart thinks, feels and relates to the world around me. It makes sense, it brings together so much of what I have learnt about so many things. The rationalism of Scientism, which rules for many, that so often pours scorn on Faith, comes across to me as simplistic and empty.

Anyway, I like to learn a new word every day. Today......."abduction" (not actually new, but another meaning of it) Tomorrow perhaps........"verbosity"!

Nietzsche and the death of God

 From what I know of Nietzsche I tend to think that he has been much misunderstood, and not only because he is often seen as some sort of precursor of the Nazi's. As Ernst Krieck, a prominent Nazi ideologue, sarcastically remarked "apart from the fact that Nietzsche was not a socialist, not a nationalist and opposed to racial thinking, he could have been a leading National Socialist thinker." It was his sister, who did in fact "think racially", who, in dealing with his unpublished writings after his death, did great damage to his reputation.

I'm often lost when reading philosophical works, and prefer the biographies of various thinkers. This puts flesh and blood onto their words, which often sends me off on a tangent from how they are normally perceived.

There is a very good biography of Nietzsche, by Sue Prideaux called "I Am Dynamite". Yes, he was dynamite! His thought has influenced many of the 20th centuries greatest thinkers, many of whom could be called "spiritual", even defenders of theism. They recognise the actual direction and intent of his writings, beyond the headline grabbing "God is Dead" nonsense.

Here is Sue Prideaux:-

Instead of emphasizing a kind of human essence which all human beings share and which must be actualized (and from which one might derive ethical standards), Nietzsche stresses the uniqueness of each individual, almost as if each of us is a species unto ourselves. Accordingly, the conditions for flourishing and self-actualization will vary widely from one person to the next.This in turn means that individuals cannot rely unthinkingly on their own socialization or inherited traditions in order to determine how best to actualize their own potential, since the customs and traditions in question are not sufficiently tailored to the individual case. Consequently, the discovery of the means to self-actualization must be left to the individual’s own experimentation.

Can no one else see how this would relate to the promise of God to write his Law upon the human heart rather than on tablets of stone? The promise of redemption? That "Christ came that we might have life"?

Describing Nietzsche's viewpoint further, Sue Prideaux writes:-

One must be fleet of foot; one must dance. Life was not simple. If, one day, man would dare construct an architecture corresponding to the nature of the soul, that architect would have to take the labyrinth as the model. To give birth to a dancing star, one must first have chaos within. Inconsistency, changes of mind and urges to wander were a duty. A fixed opinion was a dead opinion, a made-up mind was a dead mind, worth less than an insect; it should be crushed underfoot and utterly destroyed.

Can no one else relate this to the difference between the Word as Text and the Living Word? Surely we must call into question ideas of good and evil as eternal absolutes rather than as fleeting conventions? What is "good" is ever new, it can unfold in each moment, "good" then, for that moment - and "absolute" in that moment only.

Nietzsche said that he distrusted all systematisers and avoided them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity. As I see it, this is much the same with theology, no matter whose, that seeks to turn the spirit that blows where it will into some creedal, dogmatic "one way" assertion where allegiance to just "one name" dictates just who can be "saved".

Dynamite!

Bodhisattva Vows

 

 I suspect many fall by the wayside in the middle of some of my more absurd waffle and find something better to do. Anyway, in thinking of "us" and "them", of the many who just appear to be sheep and those who seem to think more deeply, the thought I had was that surely what is being described as being a part of our own age is what has always been the case? That is, given any culture, society or generation, it is only a very few who genuinely seek a "way" beyond what could be called the norm created by that ages conditioning, its presumptions and various givens?

Maybe it takes different forms, but numerically it falls the same way. Those who "think" and those who have had most of their thoughts thought for them (say that quickly.......)

In our own age, Carl Jung has spoken of the "spirit of the age" and in contrast, the "spirit of the depths". He is quite eloquent in speaking of these two "spirits", and also speaks well of just how difficult it is to shake off the spirit of the age, and begin to truly hear the spirit of the depths - one that is ageless and yet, paradoxically, ever new.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.


(Romans 12:2)

Well, the spirit of our age tends to pour scorn upon the Bible. Who wants outmoded fables when science has given us so much useful technology. Who sweats any longer about threats of spending eternity gnashing their teeth? When you are dead you are dead. Yet it can be a great adventure to actually take note of some of its verses, to look up once or twice from the mobile phone that science has given us and actually look at the world around us and try to think more deeply about "who am I" and "what does it all mean".

As I've said before, I am a non-theist. I look more to Buddhism and the "east" rather than towards the Abrahamic Faiths. When I try to reflect upon those "others" who only seem to accept the age they were born into, I am inspired by such things as the Bodhisattva Vows, one of which is:-


"Sentient beings are infinite - I vow to save them"

As another has said, taking such a vow seriously - just as Christians take many verses of the Bible seriously - reveals its impossibility of fulfilment. If all others are infinite in number then all can never be saved. Investigation of all the other Bodhisattva Vows reveals that they are all beyond fulfilment, at least by any finite person. Those who take the Dharma seriously must take it from there.

So really, what I am saying is, if we do look around us and see the apparent superficially of so many lives, shallow and ungrounded, what should our reaction be? Congratulate ourselves that "I am not like them"? Or maybe take the vow, and perhaps begin to see, truly, that in fact we are like "them" in so many ways. To begin to live the difference between compassion and pity. Pity looks down, compassion reaches across. Our own darkness becomes the light by which we see and know others.

The moon in a dewdrop

 A poem by Dogen:-

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane’s bill.

A short commentary found on a website:-

In Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism of all Japanese schools including Zen, the moon stands for Buddha-nature. So the poem teaches a familiar truth that the moon (Buddha-nature) is completely reflected in every one of the countless dew drops (all things) without discrimination, namely one in all, all in one. This understanding is accompanied by a sense of fragility and impermanence within nature – strongly present in Japanese culture independently of Buddhism and reinforced by Buddhist teaching. Dogen gives us elegance and complexity in a 31 syllable form.

Hee-Jin Kim, a modern Zen scholar, takes this further, bringing out Dogen’s sensitivity to history as well as to nature. He draws attention to the word ‘shaken’: each dew drop holds a full yet shaken reflection of the moon. Dogen lived in what was seen as a dark and ill-starred time in Japanese history. Many Buddhists thought that even their path was compromised and talked of degenerate dharma (mappo). Kim understands Dogen as resisting this ideology of despair whilst fully aware of the collective turmoil. On this reading, the poem asserts that timelessness is experienced within, and only within, momentariness, even when the times are stressed.

So many in the West misunderstand the entire idea of "maya" (illusion) simply because of a dualistic way of apprehending Reality. From a non-dual perspective there can be no ultimate distinction between "illusion" and "reality". ALL is real. We are what we understand.

Well, that is enough waffle for now. I was reading a short section of Dogen's "Genjokoan" (the actualization of reality), the translation found in the "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye" - it really struck me, a beautiful translation - and I have read many.

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not crush the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

A nice image above. As Dogen expressed it, it is a question of realising non-duality within duality. Diversification, after touching the Source, the ground of reality, is of another order to diversification pure and simple - which can lead to confusion and aimlessness.

Related to all this is the ending of Edwin Arnold's poem on the life of the Buddha, "The Light of Asia". It ends with the line:-

The dewdrop slips into the shining sea

....as some sort of summary of nirvana. Totally wrong, and even the opposite i.e. "the shining sea slips into the dewdrop" is not much better.

Dogen, as far as "realising non-duality within duality" emphasises that individuality is not lost at all. As individual unique human beings we do not "dissolve" in some pantheistic mulch, but as D.T.Suzuki says elsewhere, we become once again the same Tom, Dicks or Harrys we have always been.

There is no theology in the Bible

 

The 20th century philosopher 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.

Reflecting on all this, as I see it there is no theology taught in the Bible. This is the mistake made by those who build an "only way" upon just one verse. For the spirit to "blow where it will" there can be no one formula.

As an example, take the doctrine of Original Sin. This is not taught as such in the Bible. It is part of a theology derived from the Bible. The doctrine entered the Christian mainstream via St Augustine (4th century) who taught that even unbaptised babies would be denied the full joys of heaven.

Given Original Sin as truth, as doctrine, what to make of the words of Jesus from St Matthew's Gospel:-

"Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven"

Obviously such words can be interpretedin such a way as to leave the Original Sin doctrine intact - one has only to turn to the various writings of Protestant Fundamentalists to find "explanations" and justifications for holding fast to the teaching. Yet what is gained by seeking to funnel the Living Word into a word writ on stone, not allowing it to fly free.

They do Him wrong who worship and know God in just one particular way - they end with the way rather than God

(Meister Eckhart)

End with what are no more than a string of concepts, and not the living waters.