Category: Uncategorized

ALONE WITH THE ALONE

Buddhist teaching states that even if you are fully enlightened

difficulty and pain are still inevitable – you will experience

aging/illness/death/

sorrow at losing what you love –

youth/health/life

 

you are also going to experience loneliness, a universal feeling –

and when we are not enlightened we naively believe

a sexual relationship will take away our loneliness

but unless there is heart and soul communication

sex just makes us more lonely

 

loneliness is different than solitude –

solitude can correct the tendency of codependents

to look outside themselves for their identity –

solitude provides us with an opportunity

to discover/know/embrace intimacy

with our true self

 

but we have to be careful – to not get sucked in

by our false self – our ego – an illusion because it exists

outside of God’s will/love/reality/life itself

 

still, if we are careful, we will find within

a secret/incommunicable/mystery/sanctuary

which the intrusions of self-assertion and violence

cannot penetrate – but on the other hand

if we are not careful, the ways of the world

can lure us out of our sanctuary

and slay us

 

but souls abandoned to God are protected

from their own ego because they take delight

in nothing but God – normal pursuits/activities

hold no delight – they want to be in solitude

alone with the Alone – the Only One

the Lonely One

who wants only to love and be loved

 

“God has created us for great things:

to love and be loved”

– Mother Teresa

 

 

NOBLE HEART AND SOUL

Religious questions used to be “What do you believe?”

“What happens in the afterlife?”

Now they are “How is belief possible in our secular age?”

“Who do you believe?” that is “Who is your authority

on questions of religion?” – less and less it is

popes/priests/catechisms

and more and more it is

Google/friends/social media

 

but in medieval times, Bonaventure’s theological method

was based on spiritual searching – a quest for truth –

not ideological confirmation of my biases

but something far greater – something

that binds us together despite our differences

 

if Bonaventure were alive today

he would include eastern religions

in his quest for truth because

contrary to most peoples’ presuppositions/biases

the First Buddhist Precept is a celebration of life

a reverence for living life to the full

cultivating compassion and vowing

to never kill anything

 

whereas some secular people kill their own soul

although they have not died physically

they have died the “second death” mentioned in Revelation –

their soul has been lost and destroyed –

they have cast themselves into hell –

a hell of their own making

 

but in Buddhism the “noble heart,” the “bodhichitta”

is always present in us no matter how

selfish/depressed/fearful we are –

like an unblemished jewel the bodhichitta

can always be rediscovered

and heal us

 

similarly, according to Henri Nouwen

the soul can always be refound

in solitude –

the great furnace of transformation –

where constantly happens

a great struggle with the devil

and a great encounter with God.

THE INTEGRATION OF ALL THINGS

Most Christians think dualistically:

human vs God/nature vs grace/male vs female

spirit vs matter/body vs soul/East vs West

science vs religion –

these are not the same but they are all One

with the crown chakra or 4th stage of moral development

the integrated person becomes a paradoxical union of

masculine/feminine; autonomy/relationship;

rights/responsibilities; agency/communion;

wisdom/compassion;justice/mercy –

just like God

spiritual people need to reclaim not only compassion –

pleasure in righting relationships

but also passion –

pleasure in eros and the sharing of it –

both are God’s work:

“Any idea that spirituality means neglect of the body

is profoundly mistaken” – Albert Nolan

after Vatican II many Catholic thinkers

inspired by the Trappist and Benedictine monks –

Thomas Merton and Bede Griffiths –

started integrating Zen and yoga/

vipassana and transcendental meditation

into Christianity

Merton was Catholic because he believed the Church

gave him the greatest spiritual freedom

for it integrated Law and Spirit –

he would not be Catholic if he believed the Church

was just an institution with rules and laws

that demanded external conformity –

he believed the laws of the Church are necessary

but subordinate to the Holy Spirit and Love

and it is in Christ that true freedom is found

and the Church is Christ’s Body/Bride/living by Christ’s Spirit

for the Church to aid an emerging Interspiritual Age

spiritual/religious discussion cannot be separated

from secular/nonreligious discussion

from academic/historical/developmental discussion

from discussion about the new scientifically based cosmology

which integrates everything.

 

YOUR TRUE CALLING

Rosemary Radford Ruether, the great feminist theologian

was one of the first to see patriarchal/dualistic thinking –

that things are divided not one –

causes not only sexism but also racism and environmental destruction

 

theology itself can be patriarchal/dualistic

if it does not paradoxically give up

what it has always asked other disciplines to give up: supremacy –

like all sciences it must submit to the greater wisdom

of evolutionary cosmology – the blueprint of the universe –

the unrelenting progress from atoms to humans to divinized humans –

astronomy blesses us with a scientific revelation of God’s Plan

 

whereas classical thermodynamics said closed systems dissipate energy

and thus the whole cosmos is winding down –

which breeds nihilism – we are ultimately doomed so why care about anything?

but biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, inventor of General Systems Theory

revealed that open systems do not run down

because they get new energy from their environment

 

but systems are not The System that wants to fool us and rule us –

the culture we live in is deceptive and hegemonic –

“We need Christ and the poet/artist/mystic to give us liberated vision –

new ways to see” – Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn

 

the journey to find new ways to see

the departure of the hero on the Hero’s Journey – has sub-stages:

The Call

The Refusal of the Call (and the folly/futility of resistance)

Supernatural Aid

Descent into the Night:

God calls Moses to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt

Moses says “No way, I cannot go, who am I to challenge Pharaoh?”

God says “I will be with you”

Moses leaves for Egypt and the rest is history

 

“The True Calling for all of us is the Present Moment –

that’s why they call it the “Present” – the “Gift from God” –

the bigger miracle is not for one person to walk on water

but for all of us to walk on our blue/green planet

in the Eternal Now”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

 

if you live in the One and the Now

dualistic thinking has no power over your True Calling.

THE FREEDOM OF RELIGION

God can only be in all things if we allow God to be with us

in mercy as well as power

in littleness as well as greatness

in emptiness as well as fullness –

when we are full of ego God empties us

and when we are empty God fills us with Spirit

 

our love of God depends on the emptiness/trials/tribulations

of the world because we cannot get to pure love

until we experience emptiness/setbacks/limitations to our ego

 

if you go into the world with the conscious intention

to not shut anything or anyone out of your heart

you will be constantly challenged by learning

ugly things about yourself that you always repressed –

prejudices that want to keep your heart shut down

 

according to psychologists there are ten lines

of internal development that can go thru stages of growth:

moral/spiritual/psychological/esthetic/physical lines

cognitive/financial/social/sexual/emotional lines

 

and of course psychologists overlook religious lines –

since religion is always ironically a blind spot for psychologists

even though religion pervades every culture throughout history

and religiosity is an inescapable part of our human constitution

and rights of religious freedom are founded on the dignity

of being human which can be established

thru reason and the Word of God/the Bible

 

freedom of religion and freedom of religious development

should therefore be written into every nation’s constitution

as a civil right of all citizens so that no one is forced

to be an atheist as in Marxism/communism

and no one is forced to be religious

as in ancient times when Christianity became

the state religion of the Holy Roman Empire

 

even if Christianity, unlike other “myths” –

“lies that turn out to be the Truth” – even if you don’t like it

that Christianity proposes something greater than immortality –

eternal life with God – since immortality without God and a living body

with senses – and therefore without a life – would be eternal boredom

still, despite what you like/dislike, the freedom of religion must be respected.

 

THE POWER OF PENANCE

The major challenge to Immanuel Kant’s view of religion

as morality came from Friedrich Schleiermacher

the greatest theologian of the 19th century

who conceived of religion not as morality or belief

but as an immediate awareness of our absolute dependence

on God – religion is thus pre-moral and even pre-cognitive

and expressed everywhere in different ways

 

we are absolutely dependent on God

but in human relationships co-dependency is a betrayal

of wholeness because co-dependent people

have no personal center

 

whereas the enlightenment we seek already dwells within us as our center

like a mustard seed/treasure buried in a field/pearl of great price

 

when Jesus said “if you call another ‘fool’ you are in danger

of hellfire,” he did not mean “if you get angry, God will condemn you

to hell,” he meant that “unjustified and indulged anger

is hell” – you put yourself in hell and hell in your self

 

to break through into nondual consciousness

we need to overcome the domination of ego and reason

and forgive ourselves and reality

for being exactly what they are: a mixed bag

of goodness and darkness –

we are all simultaneously sinners and saints

 

even proto-saints like Thomas Merton

who never wanted to be a plastic saint

on the dashboard of someone’s car

finally realized after nine long years as a monk

that penance is pleasing to God

and “enables God to take undisturbed possession

of the soul” because in penance

your ego is reduced to nothing

 

unlike the Pharisee who thanked God “I am not

a sinner like that tax-collector” who at the back of the synagogue

beat his chest and cried out “Lord have mercy on me

a sinner” – Jesus said it was the latter not the former

who went home justified in God’s eyes – for penance tells you

“the old sinful self is not dead”

but absolution tells you

“God’s love is greater than the old self.”

DRAWING ALL THINGS TOGETHER

 

Ken Wilber’s Integral Philosophy includes everything:

“I” equals self and consciousness

“It” equals body and organism

“We” equals culture and worldview

“Its” equals social systems and environment

 

Jesus also included everything:

he saw humans as creatures alongside other creatures

flowers/sparrows/foxes – Jesus saw humans as a very important

part of nature but not above or separate from it:

“All things bright and beautiful

all creatures great and small

all things wise and wonderful

the Lord God made them all”

– United Church of Canada children’s hymn

 

John Macquarrie, the great Anglican theologian, used objective natural law

to challenge the relativism/subjectivism of existentialists –

there needs to be a dialectical tension between subjective authenticity

which Buddhism/Confucianism/and particularly Jesus advanced

and objective/public/universal values derived from nature and its laws –

we need to include both subjectivism and objectivism

 

the Church and its sacraments were meant to be divine invitations

to meaningfully explore how everything is interconnected/related

but sometimes it devolves into just an institution

with rituals that command legal observance

and the objective dominates the subjective

 

it was Ambrose’s ability to subjectively/symbolically

interpret Old Testament passages about violence

Augustine had taken objectively/literally

that began to create cracks in Augustine’s Manichean/

anti-Catholic stance until he was converted to the Church

 

the objective physical sciences may see the movement of evolution

towards greater complexity and consciousness

as biogenesis or cosmogenesis

but in subjective Christian terms it is Christogenesis

the coming to be and unfolding of the Cosmic Christ

 

the Church as the Universal Beloved Community was meant to be

the instrument of, and integral to, Christogenesis

the drawing together of all creatures and all things–

the I/It/We/Its.

WAKING UP TO UNITY

David Bohm, the great physicist, proposed an “Implicate Order”

the undivided oneness/wholeness of all things:

“All things are internally related, which fits well with

quantum entanglement/non-locality/ spooky action at a distance”

 

A basic principle of quantum theology: God/the Divine

is creative energy, which includes and transcends

all traditional theology/everything previously said about God

 

Buddhists get their creative energy/peace/wisdom/joy/bliss

from practicing mindfulness and their joy has the power

to transform others

 

We are not transformed by sitting in a pew for an hour

once a week and listening to a sermon –

people learn any faith by hands-on training

as a novice/apprentice/journeyman/master

 

And Jesus, of course, was a master –

“Jesus inherited his father’s carpentry business

he was a master of the spirituality of business

and therefore was of the middle class, not poor –

out of compassion he became an outcast by choice”

– Albert Nolan

 

We normally begin the journey towards wholeness

by becoming baptized as an infant – by becoming an outcast

of godless society but part of the Beloved Community, the Church

“God can divinize us through baptism” – Gregory of Nazianzus

 

We can become part of the Implicate Order

the Universal Beloved Community

by experiencing God’s grace through all the “sacraments”

through all the “visible signs of God’s invisible love and grace”

which are constantly all around us

and through realizing our oneness with

God/others/nature

 

All we have to do is

wake up from our godless society’s

godless slumber.

 

THE HARDNESS AND EASINESS OF DISCIPLESHIP

Raimundo Panikkar sees the world as in a crisis

of biblical proportions ecologically and humanly –

therefore the Church’s main focus should be on this

not its own inner disputes: sexual morality/ordination of women

these are important but first world problems while 75% of humanity

lives in subhuman conditions of poverty/war/destruction

of the earth and the very air they breathe – smoked out by wildfires/

washed out by floods/starved out by droughts –

the “First World” will only help the “Third World”

if we learn asceticism – giving up endless consumption and greed

 

The Imitation of Christ, a tenth century manuscript

by Thomas a Kempis is asceticism to the max –

an antidote to our contemporary culture’s fixation on

egoism/materialism/hedonism to the max

 

On the other hand, the ego is necessary and not evil in itself

it is our functional self – we need it to survive

the problem is our culture tells us

our ego is the only reality and should control everything

for its own pleasure and enjoyment

without counting the cost to others

On the other hand again, there is plenty in the gospels

to encourage asceticism: pray always/sell all you have/

deny yourself/pick up your cross/die to your ego/

die with Christ/the person who finds their life loses it/

the person who gives up their life for Christ’s sake finds it/

the “world” and the “flesh” as seen by Paul and John were demonic

and Jesus wrestled with his own inner demons in the wilderness

 

After God created humans in a state of holiness/oneness with God

from the start we abused our freedom as sons and daughters of God

set ourselves up against God

tried to find our fulfillment apart from God

 

Yet the first promise of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30

despite all the necessary asceticism was

“Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden

and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you

and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart

and you shall find rest for your soul

for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

 

PEACE THRU INTEGRATION

Science is going thru a major paradigm shift

from seeing nature as mechanical and inanimate/dead

to seeing it as organic and alive

 

The physical sciences noted

the dissolution of energy in entropy

but ignored increasing complexity/consciousness

which is building energy up and up – it is this increase

that gives the whole cosmos its purpose and direction

 

Believers claim the resurrection of Christ integrates

the whole cosmos and all people into God

which is God’s purpose/direction/flow for everything:

union and transformation in God

 

It is good to include all religions and thus integrate everything

in a new way not the old way –

Buddhism can be part of cosmic integration

since it will not block the flow of God’s plan –

doing no harm to ourselves or others

is basic Buddhist teaching on nonaggression

which includes not killing/stealing/lying and the Christian commandments

of not doing harm in our heart/thoughts/speech/actions

 

However, Rosemary Radford Ruether, a great feminist theologian

pointed out that in traditional Judeo-Christianity there exists

a sacralised assumption of a divinely ordered patriarchy/hierarchy

from God to angels to men to women to animals –

this Great Chain of Being invented by men –

was the primary metaphysics for all cultures East and West

before science – and it placed women somewhere

between men and animals

 

No matter how we integrate everything – whether thru science

or religion or science and religion working together –

what people want most of all is to live in peace

 

Peace is all around us – in the world/nature/ourselves

when we live in the present moment – when mindfulness

whether Buddhist or Christian – is in us

the Holy Spirit and peace are in us –

this is not a matter of faith but of practice

and others will sense it and be transformed –

world peace begins in everyone’s heart.