The worshipping of statues - and other possibilities

 There was this old zen master who only spoke pigeon english and he was showing this newly enlightened westerner around the monastery. At every statue of the Buddha he would stop and then bow deeply. The westerner looked on with a certain disdain. After a few such bows the westerner exclaimed:- "I say, isn't that a bit below us now? As for myself I think I would just as soon spit at those statues as bow to them." To which the old zen master said:- "OK. You spit I bow."

Another perspective from an episode in Thomas Merton's life, on his pilgrimage to Asia.

Merton is in an area in Sri Lanka known as Polonnaruwa which contains many statues of the Buddha and his disciples. He records in his Journal:-

The vicar general, shying away from "paganism," hangs back and sits under a tree reading the guidebook. I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. Then the silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional resignation but of Madhyamika, of sunyata, that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything - without refutation - without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures.................looking (at them) I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The queer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded.....The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, and really no "mystery". All problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya.....everything is emptiness and everything is compassion.

I once quoted this passage on another Forum and an ardent Christian said:- "You do realise that he was looking at rocks". Myself, I then quoted William Blake, that "we are led to believe a lie when we see with, not thru the eye".

It is all context. We are what we understand.

More words of William Blake from his letters, (from memory)....

To the eyes of a miser a gold coin is far more valuable than the sun and an old bag worn with the use of money of far more divine proportions than grapes hanging on the vine. The tree which brings tears of joy to one man is just a green thing that stands in the way of another. As a man is so shall he see.

As I see it, it is not essentially a matter of levels of attainment, or higher and lower. The zen master Dogen emphasises rather the commitment of each human being. No one can possibly judge another mind/heart, no matter what - or how - they see.

As a commentator on Dogen has explained:-

However lowly one’s symbols and practices as we see in, say, a peasant’s religion, one is entitled to enlightenment if and when one uses them authentically. Here is the egalitarian basis for a claim that Dōgen’s religion is a religion of the people.

Always accept the flower

The secular way

 Whatever impression might have been gained from my often rambling posts full of quotes from the various religions, I am totally secular in my life and in how I relate to others "in the flesh" (so to speak....)

It is basically an accident of circumstance that I relate so much to religious writings and imagery - when quite young I was involved with those who could be called "ardent believers" () and it has followed that my route out of the morass has been via "religion" , and all our world's faith traditions have played a part. It is how I think, for better or worse. But in essence I am totally secular.

I do find Buddhism the richest tradition, in all its variations, particularly the Pure Land Tradition - which from all my reading remains the most profound expression of "grace" found. Many would perhaps associate Grace with an "offer" of mercy from a transcendent God. Being secular, I associate the word, ultimately, with freedom of mind - and this in the non-dual way of the eastern faiths. Pure trust in Reality-as-is, which in fact and experience, leads to freedom.

The Pure Land way is fundamentally secular and has no priests or masters - ideally very egalitarian. Its dojo (training ground) is in family life, around the kitchen sink, not in Church or temple.

Which is why I am automatically drawn to such stories as that of Dogen, as he searched for his own path, time and place (and freedom of mind) in his travels in China. When he asked an old cook who spent his whole day cooking for the novices in a monastery, "would'nt you rather be studying and practicing the Dharma?" And the old cook just laughed his head off! It took Dogen quite a few more years before he understood why.

And here is the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart:-

Indeed, if a man thinks he will get more of God by meditation, by devotion, by ecstacies or by special infusion of grace than by the fireside or in the stable that is nothing but taking God, wrapping a cloak around His head and shoving Him under a bench. For whoever seeks God in a special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden it it. But whoever seeks God without any special way gets Him as He is in himself, and that man lives with the Son, and he is life itself."

But whatever, sorry, if anyone thinks that I am pushing "religion" of any sort, then I am being misunderstood (though I admit that I can understand exactly why) Words are very fluid to me.

Finally, I actually think that virtually all religion is a betrayal of this world, the only one we have ever known; betrayed for some imagined other. I genuinely seek never to betray our as such.

That's it. Now I will post this as a blog and add pictures! It is what I do. It is therapeutic. I still have mental health issues. I'm nothing special

Proselytizing

 A few posts recently on the subject of proselytizing. Obviously a touchy subject. Live and let live is the cry, yet if we feel we have found something truly valuable it seems right in some ways to wish to share it.

"The Tao can be shared but not divided"

The Dharma, Buddhism, has its own scriptural exhortation to spread its message:-

Go forth, O monks, to bless the many, to bring happiness to the many, out of compassion for the world; go forth for the welfare, the blessing, the happiness of all beings.........Go forth and spread the teaching that is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle and beautiful in the end.

(From the Theravada scriptures)

Maybe we can only truly share ourselves? There were the words on one young girl who was new to Buddhism, who said something like "when I was a Buddhist, no one listened, but when I was a Buddha they liked me."

Well, maybe so, but trying to act like a Buddha can be pretty demanding...........if not impossible.

One of the reasons that I like Thomas Merton is that he was rarely, if ever, didactic. He wrote as he saw it and left it up to you. In a letter written to an Indian lady he said:-

I hate proselytizing. This awful buisness of making others just like oneself so that one is thereby "justified" and under no obligation to change himself. What a terrible thing this can be. The source of how many sicknesses in the world. The true Christian apostolate is nothing of this sort, a fact that Christians themselves have largely forgotten. I think it was......Tauler (or maybe Eckhart) who said in a sermon that even if the church were empty he would preach the sermon to the four walls because he had to. That is the true apostolic spirit, based not on the desire to make others conform, but in the desire to proclaim and announce the good tidings of God's infinite love. In this context the preacher is not a "converter" but merely a herald, a voice, and the Spirit of the Lord is left free to act as He pleases. But this has degenerated into a doctrine and fashion of "convert-makers" in which man exerts pressure and techniques (this awful business of "modern techniques of propaganda") upon his fellow man in order to make him, force him, bring him under a kind of charm that compels him to abandon his own integrity and his own freedom and yield to another man or another institution. Little do men realize that in such a situation the Holy Spirit is silent and inactive, or perhaps active against the insolence of man. Hence the multitude of honest and sincere men who "cannot accept" a message that is preached without respect for the Spirit of God or for the spirit of man.

(I just wish the guy had been a bit more PC.......)

But whatever, Merton explained his attitude elsewhere, in a Preface to one collection of his writings:-

I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably have not learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt................In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don't need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way.

But, as for the vulture evangelists, who - however they try to hide it - always imply that eternal torment (or at least the gnashing of teeth) awaits anyone who rejects their message........well, I would not want any of them to come within 10 miles of my grandchildren.

The value of heresy

 Read this today:-

Although not by any means every heresy has been an advance in Christian understanding, almost every advance in Christian understanding has been heretical or heterodox – until, that is, it was eventually adopted by the church.

(John Hick, "The Fifth Dimension)

I see this to be true beyond Christianity. Christianity itself was a "heresy" of Judaism, Buddhism of the fundamental teachings of the various Hindu strands. And in Christianity itself, the Protestant Faith was a heresy to the Catholic Church.

And as John Hick suggests, once the "heresy" has been adopted for long enough, and by enough people, it becomes its own "orthodoxy" which then itself begins to declare any deviation a heresy!

Thus the "true" Christians (self- proclaimed) who condemn those who disagree with them, simply demanding agreement! Heretics themselves at one time.

But as the faithful say....."The Lord knows his own"

One great heretic is Julian of Norwich (14th century) who was one of many females suddenly giving voice to the Spirit around that time. One or two ended up on the stake, which is sometimes the price paid for challenging the status quo. Julian was the lady who taught that "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well". Let's face it, you can't allow such universalist nonsense! It would really effect crowd control......

Another lady, Margery Kempe, having her own visions, went to see Julian to ask if they were genuine. Julian advised her to fulfil the promptings of her soul as long as they didn’t conflict with the worship of God or the well-being of her fellow Christians; for if they did then they sprang from the workings of an evil spirit and not a good one. The Holy Spirit never prompts anyone to act unkindly; "if he did he would be acting contrary to his own nature, for he is pure love".

Fine words. It was again Julian who wrote:-

If there be anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.

......which are much the same as the words of the "father" of Pure Land Buddhism, Shinran (13th century) from his "Hymns of the Pure Land Masters"):-

My eyes being hindered by blind passions,
I cannot perceive the light that grasps me;
Yet the great compassion, without tiring,
Illumines me always

Really this is all the faith you need. At least, I think so.

T.S.Eliot, who was very conversant with the Christian mystics, ended his "Four Quartets" with words that contain the vision/words of Mother Julian. I have quoted them before, but I love them.....

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Conceptual justifications

As said by another:- "Nagarjuna also said no philosophy can lead one to enlightenment"

Yes, for me that is the key. The conceptual "justifications" we make for ourselves by identifying with particular philosophies, beliefs, theologies - all are ultimately barren. The closest you can get to the right attitude, from my reading, is in the Parable of the Raft from the Buddhist Theravada Scriptures....the Dharma as a means, not an end in itself. The various teachings, conceptions, are for crossing over not for grasping.

The dialectic is like the opposites in many ways. In the Christian tradition, at least on its mystical side, the ultimate reality that they call God is, in itself, beyond all the distinctions in terms of which we could make either assertions or denials about it. It lies outside all our categories of thought. Nevertheless it does somehow affect us, both as the ultimate ground of the universe and in our actions within the world.

Rather than an "ineffable Source" I prefer the eastern terms of "emptiness" (sunyata) and the subsequent "form is emptiness and emptiness is form" of the Mahayana Tradition.

This may all seem gobbledygook but it is not really so. When the mind sees the conflict in reason, when the mind/heart sees the pointlessness of conceptual thought as a means of discovering, or uncovering, Truth, then it really has nowhere to go but the present moment, unclouded by preconceptions. Therefore there falls away all "I-thou" relational spirituality, and the true "thou" is whoever we meet, whoever we see, as we live through our day. Reality unfolds, ever new. A constant advance into novelty.

Not really complex, in fact more like the experience of a child. Yet a child who has passed through the furnace of suffering and come out the other side.

Possibly adding to the gobbledygook..... Yet I look towards the plurality of our World's religious traditions, always seeking genuine correspondences between our Faiths.

Thinking myself on the words above regarding justifications and the present moment, I thought further of the NT passage in St Matthew Chapter 22 of the Christian NT:-

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

This brings to mind the words of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart:-

“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.”


....a saying that the "zen man" D.T.Suzuki responded to by saying:-

“one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.”

and likened to the prajna wisdom of his own tradition, zen.

Surely it is good to see such correspondences? That such would be the living truth of a Reality, a Source, an Ultimate Ground that was truly Love?

Rather than argue for an "only way" linked solely to the tradition that we ourselves were born and raised in?

The reification of faith

 Well, the word "reification" will certainly drive many away, but no matter. Some actually enjoy seeing a new word. They look it up. It is called "learning".......We live and learn, or perhaps not.

I was once browsing through a few journal entries of Thomas Merton, and uncovered the following. It relates to "belief" and "faith", a subject that cropped up elsewhere. Merton is responding to a passage from Irenaeus. (A passage, by the way, that my own understanding and experience associates with the Pure Land notion of "being made to become so - of itself - without/beyond the calculation of the devotee, where no working is true working")

Here are the words of 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......

Myself, I think it sadly becomes easy to "lose the traces of his fingers" in today's world where the incessant cacophony of discordant voices drown out any chance of wisdom.

But, whatever, 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......

It would seem to me, if one recognises the Word of God as that which lights ALL who come into the world, as that through Whom ALL things are made (as said in St John's Gospel) then the "presence of Christ" spreads far wider than mere allegiance to, and acknowledgement, of the Biblical word and any "requirement" claimed to be found therein. The Living Word that "blows where it will" is of another dimension.

The message of Grace can be found in all faiths, at all times, in all places.......for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. And such is a gift, pure and simple....

Faith does not arise within oneself
The entrusting heart is given by the Other Power

......as said by the Pure Land "saint" Rennyo.