I often think that questions are more important than answers. Words (remembering that "the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao") are part of the created order of things, and therefore fundamentally circular. Questions, consisting of words, cannot help but contain or at least suggest their own answer. However, they do perhaps tell us where we are, our current conditioning.
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| Our questions? |
A question:- "Where will you spend eternity?"
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| An image of eternity? |
An even better question might be:- "Where are you spending eternity?" given that samsara and nirvana are "one". But then, as T S Eliot asks, how can time be redeemed? Another question!
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| T S Eliot grapples with his questions |
Leaving all that aside, are words suited at all to any quest for "answers"? Or are they only useful for an "appropriate statement"? ("the teachings of a whole lifetime" according to Yun-men), useful as part of our response in each moment to the unfolding Reality in and around us?
More quotes on the same theme:-
"The present has no extension but intensity" (Lama Anagarika Govinda)
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| Lama Govinda |
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (Wittgenstein - and hopefully about something that could be spoken of)
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| Wittgenstein prior to being ABLE to speak at all, yet perhaps not silent |
Well, after all those quotes I get back to what I have suggested myself many times in days long gone, that life can be lived but not thought; or rather, Reality can be lived but not thought - at least not as far as explanations go.
Anyway, enough of this. My brain is beginning to ache. To get back to the "Where will you spend eternity" question, this was in fact the question raised on a placard used by a group of "born again" Christians I was once acquainted with; a question posed often by one of this groups more vocal members, a man who said once that while he knew that God was a God of Love, God was also "a God of wrath and judgement and that's what I like to talk about". And, oh boy, did he like to talk about it! The trouble was, he never seemed to know when to stop.
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| Perhaps a typical sermon |
Once, in a Hospital Ward, where many were lying in bed, stretched out, with tubes running into noses and out of other places, he chose to open his sermon with the observation that Jesus "spoke more about hell than he did about heaven" and he then proceeded to expand upon his theme with great enthusiasm and evident relish. In the hospital ward he had a captive audience but often he gave voice to his spiel on sunday street corners, seeking to call all to repentance.
His opening gambit went along these lines:-
"People say that they will be happy to go to hell because hell will be where all their friends are" (Here he would pause, to chuckle, to demonstrate that he too had a sense of humour despite all evidence to the contrary) "But hell is where God is not, and friendship is a God given gift. No my friends (friends?) you won't have any friends in hell." Again he would pause to allow the full depths and subtleties of his theology to sink into the ears of his listeners. Sadly for him, not being in a hospital ward, his listeners by this point would often have been reduced to a stray dog or cat, all two legged beings having disappeared down the nearest side alley or some other safe haven well out of earshot.
I was once, in my dissolute and misspent youth, a member of this man's congregation. One fond memory of that time was when a rather drunken man staggered by us as the sermon had reached the point where we are told that "those with the Son have life while those without the Son have no life" (1 John 5:12). As the drunken man stumbled by he just said the one word "bastards", directed at us, and then went on his way. I remember we all tut-tutted at his expletive. Then he turned slightly, looked back and shouted "we ALL have the Son".
So, there are sermons and there are sermons. Those who have ears to hear let them hear.
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