The Scope of Doctrine

Speaking in my previous blog of Discussion Forums, once I was engaged in earnest debate (!) with two worthies who appeared to insist upon the centrality of Doctrine, who insisted upon its importance in what they saw as our "spiritual lives". I opened a thread on "The Scope Of Doctrine" and asked my questions. The pair did not seek to participate, one even insisting that he simply did not understand my questions. I then posed the very same questions on another Forum, and all seemed to understand. Which makes me wonder. 

That said, my thread went something along the lines of the following:-

There was a Buddhist Theravada monk who said that "at the moment of emancipation, effort falls away, having reached the end of its scope". The actual scope of effort, given the centrality of Grace in so many Faiths, has often occupied my mind. So too the scope of doctrine, creed and "belief".

A Theravada monk, perhaps pondering the scope of effort

One of the most famous of all Buddhist parables, as found in the foundational texts of Theravada, is the Parable of the Raft. The meaning is that the Buddhist teachings, in all their scope, are for "passing over, not for grasping".

Perhaps time for grasping tightly?

Thinking along those lines I would like to weave my way through a few quotes from a Christian deeply interested in Buddhism, Thomas Merton. Not interested merely in an academic sense, but as a practice. He often spent time in the woods and in his Hermitage in Zen meditation.

Thomas Merton outside his hermitage

Here is the first quote, written by Merton in a letter before he entered the monastic community........

But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything, including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life: and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big C, or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate. Certainly not in books. I can go on writing them, for all that, but one might as well make paper airplanes out of the whole lot.

A few of Thomas Merton's books

This was before he took a vow of obedience to the authority of the Church and its representatives, a Vow which he took very seriously all his life. Yet I believe the words quoted and their meaning stayed with him to the end, though evolving.

Here is a second quote, this concerning his meeting with D T Suzuki, written long after his entry into the monastic community.......

I did feel that I was speaking to someone who, in a tradition completely different from my own, had matured, had become complete and found his way. One cannot understand Buddhism until one meets it in this existential manner, in a person in whom it is alive. Then there is no longer a problem of understanding doctrines that cannot help being a bit exotic for a Westerner, but only a question of appreciating a value that is self-evident. (My own emphasis)

A kitten appreciates Suzuki's self evident value

Let me move on to a letter written by Merton to the very same man, in the 1960's..........

I want to speak for this Western world.................which has in past centuries broken in upon you and brought you our own confusion, our own alienation, our own decrepitude, our lack of culture, our lack of faith...........If I wept until the end of the world, I could not signify enough of what this tragedy means. If only we had thought of coming to you to learn something..............If only we had thought of coming to you and loving you for what you are in yourselves, instead of trying to make you over into our own image and likeness. For me it is clearly evident that you and I have in common and share most intimately precisely that which, in the eyes of conventional Westerners, would seem to separate us. The fact that you are a Zen Buddhist and I am a Christian monk, far from separating us, makes us most like one another. How many centuries is it going to take for people to discover this fact?......

"If only"

Once again, for me the relevance to the scope of doctrine is self-evident. A human being who had been formed and raised within doctrines and teachings alien to Merton, not of his own Church, is nevertheless seen as a true brother with no reservations. 

What seems obvious to me is that there are simply many things that are important, the scope of which is infinite. Words are not the thing itself, but using words........empathy, mercy, love, compassion, communion. It also seems obvious to me, searching the pages of our history books and looking around our world, that those who live those words, who walk the talk, come in all shapes and sizes, are of all Faiths and sometimes of no particular Faith at all; that their paths have been diverse - that the "one way" is in fact indefinable.

To end with Thomas Merton. In a letter to Suzuki he speaks of the similarities of grace within a non-theistic, non-dual tradition, with that of Christianity.......

we are in paradise, and what fools would we be to think thoughts that would put us out of it (as if we could be out of it!). One thing I would add. To my mind, the Christian doctrine of grace (however understood - I mean here the gift of God's life to us) seems to me to fulfill a most important function in all this. The realization, the finding of ourselves in Christ and hence in paradise, has a special character from the fact that this is all a free gift from God. With us, this stress on freedom, God's freedom, the indeterminateness of salvation, is the thing that corresponds to Zen in Christianity. The breakthrough that comes with the realization of what the finger of a koan is pointing to is like the breakthrough of the realization that a sacrament, for instance, is a finger pointing to the completely spontaneous Gift of Himself to us on the part of God - beyond and above images, outside of every idea, every law, every right or wrong, everything high or low, everything spiritual or material. Whether we are good or bad, wise or foolish, there is always this sudden irruption, this breakthrough of God's freedom into our life, turning the whole thing upside down so that it comes out, contrary to all expectation, right side up. This is grace, this is salvation, this is Christianity. And, so far as I can see, it is also very much like Zen.........

A finger pointing - what is important, the finger or the moon?

Well, there we are.

Related Quotes:-

Wittgenstein 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." 

(Abbreviated from the biography of Wittgenstein by Ray Monk)

Wittgenstein insisted that:- 'An expression has meaning only in the stream of life.' 

(Ray Monk, from his biography of Wittgenstein)

In the beginning was the deed. 

(Goethe, from "Faust")