Buddhism – Intelligent Christian Spirituality

The Power of Detachment in Relationships

What most people are looking for in a relationship, whether inside or outside of marriage, is someone who is totally attached to them: completely committed and passionately in love.

While we tend to think of detachment negatively, as disinterest, aloofness, or lack of feeling, exactly what we would not want in a relationship, if we look at it in a different way, it is an important virtue in any relationship, whether with God or another human being.

Detachment in most world religions means “inner freedom.” Jesus never used the word but it was implicit in his spirituality: the ability to let go and let God. Detachment is about “not my will, but Thy will be done,” surrendering to the divine, putting your life in God’s hands.

Detachment is a key Buddhist virtue, and Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, believed that in relationship to God, detachment was more foundational than love. We cannot love God fully and unconditionally as long as we are clinging to our ego. Like the rich young man who chose not to give up his wealth and follow Jesus, our ego-attachments can block our love of God.

Detachment is likewise crucial with human relationships. You cannot really love someone if you are attached to your agenda, how they should look or how the relationship or marriage should be. Your list of characteristics of the ideal mate: good-looking, healthy, wealthy, sexy, professional, romantic, etc may prevent you from appreciating someone right in front of you.

The key to any relationship is acceptance, to accept your partner as they are, with all their faults, and to celebrate their differences from you, the things not on your list. Hopefully, they will also be detached from their agenda and accept you as you are with your faults and differences.

The most important thing is to be attached only to God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments is that we should put God first in all things, nothing should come before God. It is crucial to put God before everything, including human relationships. Then you can exist in the single life, in a relationship, or in marriage in inner freedom.

So many people are stressed-out about their relationships. If they are not in a relationship they are obsessed about when they are going to meet the right person. If they are in a relationship they are obsessed about where it is going or if it is going to end in marriage or not. If they are married they often wish their marriage was better, or wish they were not married at all.

It is very easy to let your attachment to a relationship or marriage get in the way of your relationship with God. I have known people who stopped attending their place of worship or gave up their spiritual practices or compromised their morals and self-esteem and basically sold their soul, all in an attempt to maintain a relationship. At that point the relationship has become an idol, that is, they have put it above their relationship with God.

It is important to do your part to make a relationship or marriage work, but it is far more important to put God first, keep your integrity, not make the other person into an idol, and detach from the outcome. If you let go and let God, the outcome will always be better than if you cling to a relationship out of fear of being alone or some ego-need.

The relationship is going to end at some point anyway. Even if you get married it may end through separation, divorce, or death of your spouse. Besides that, God has called some people to be single, it is not God’s will that they be with someone. God has something greater in mind, some charitable work, social justice project, or mystical marriage, that is, marriage to God.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and marriage coach. www.brucetallman.com

Christianity needs to befriend contemporary spirituality

Twenty years ago, Eckhart Tolle’s books, The Power of Now and A New Earth sold millions of copies, and more recently Tolle facilitated what was probably the largest classroom in human history: 1.2 million people simultaneously online.

This great spiritual teacher’s vast popularity has led to the predictable reaction of some conservative Christians who have branded Tolle as a threat to Christianity and a leader of what used to be called the “New Age” movement, which is really simply contemporary spirituality. This is unfortunate because first of all, Jesus said “those who are not against us are for us,” and secondly Tolle can give us fresh new insights into the depths of the teachings of Christ.

A Rabbi once told me that many Jews believe that non-Jewish people who live by the Ten Commandments, whether consciously or not, are on their side. Tolle, while not explicitly claiming to be Christian, is certainly not anti-Christian. If anything, he seems to bring to light things in Christianity that have been buried for centuries.

One could easily argue that Tolle is a latent Christian and capable of helping many people become latent Christians, in that he subscribes to many of the same values as Christians, such as peace and detachment from materialism and consumerism. Also, in A New Earth he quotes Jesus more than anyone else, and the endnotes are almost all references to the New Testament.

Throughout The Power of Now you could replace the word “Now” with “God” and the meaning would not change. His basic message in the book is that we need to live in the present moment, the Now, not in the past or future. Jesus said similar things, for example, “take no thought for tomorrow,” that is, don’t worry about the future or past, live now. He also said the reign of God is “at hand” that is, here and now.

In A New Earth Tolle engages in a brilliant analysis of how the ego causes all our problems and how we must let go of it to live fully. Jesus taught that if you lose your small self you find you true self, your self in God.

Richard Rohr, one of the most enlightened Catholic priests in the world, believes that Tolle could be seen as part of the “Sacrament of the Present Moment” tradition made popular by Brother Lawrence, Francisco de Osuna, and Jean Pierre de Caussade hundreds of years ago. Rohr sees Tolle as no threat to Christianity because Tolle is not teaching doctrines or dogmas, he is teaching practices just as John Wesley taught methods, and Ignatius of Loyola taught exercises, meant to help people overcome their prideful self, the ego.

Rohr also believes that, although Tolle never explicitly states his theology, he is not a pantheist (all things are God), but rather a panentheist (all things are in God). The few times Tolle does speak of God he says things like “God is the One Life in and beyond all forms of life.”

Rohr further believes that Catholics, who have a much longer tradition and are more familiar with mystics like John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, will more easily embrace Tolle than Protestants whose tradition began in the sixteenth century. Tolle in fact adopted Meister Eckhart’s name when he realized he was also called to be a spiritual teacher.

If Christians want to be relevant, they need to respond to the “signs of the times” by engaging contemporary people who are SBNR, that is, spiritual but not religious, in dialogue. What is needed is intelligent Christianity, capable of sifting out the good wheat in the current “zeitgeist,” or “prevailing thoughts of a culture,” and letting the chaff blow away. Otherwise, Christianity may miss the opportunity to understand its own teachings more deeply and seem irrelevant to millions of people outside the church. These people might be more interested in the church if the church was more interested in contemporary spirituality.

Bruce Tallman is a spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. http://www.brucetallman.com

Resolving Religious Conflict: A Path Through Faith Development

Throughout history, there have been conflicts between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: pogroms, crusades, and jihads. There have also been conflicts within religions: Orthodox versus Reformed Jews, Catholic versus Protestant Christians, Sunni versus Shiite Muslims. Religious conflicts are often rooted, at least partly, in different stages of faith, and the cure lies in reaching the higher stages.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. James Fowler of Emory University conducted the first research-based study on how faith develops. Researchers interviewed thousands of believers from all religious traditions and identified six distinct stages of faith.

Stage One, Imaginative Faith, does not cause conflict as most people pass through it by age seven. Stage Two, Literal Faith, normally extends to about age twelve. However, many adults clearly get stuck here, taking stories like Adam and Eve or Noah’s Ark as literal history rather than as faith stories meant to convey a profound theological message about fall and redemption. Since fundamentalists in any religion consider anyone who has different beliefs to be a heretic, this is fertile ground for conflict.

Most religious conflict happens between Stages Three and Four. Stage Three, Group Faith, is marked by conformity. The Stage Three motto is: “I believe it because my religious group believes it.” Faith is a simple matter of following group rules. People in Stage Three defend their own in-group, believing “my church is the only true church” or “Islam is the only true faith.” Anyone who disagrees is seen as their mortal enemy.

Usually, at some point, Group Faith gets shaken up by life’s injustices, conflicting opinions of others, corruption of religious leaders, or new teachings such as those of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which moved many Catholics from Stage Three to Stage Four. Still, some want to revert to the 1950s when the Catholic laity was taught to “pray, pay, and obey.”

Stage Four, Personal Faith, begins when a person asks, “What do I really believe?” Usually, there are a lot of struggles as the Stage Four individual no longer believes things just because someone else says they should. As many questions arise, the Stage Four person often feels like they are losing their faith, but if they keep the essentials, they are going deeper as they begin to own their faith, not just blindly follow the crowd.

People in Stage Four may seem dangerous to the faith of those in Stages Two and Three, whereas people in Stage Four may see those in Stages Two and Three as a threat to rationality and civilization. Again, this is fertile ground for religious conflict.

The solution is to go to Stage Five, Mystical Faith, characterized by the ability to understand another person’s faith from their point of view; and paradox, the ability to simultaneously hold two conflicting points of view. This creates great respect for other traditions. For example, a Stage Five person might think that “Jesus Christ is the only way to God and yet it is quite clear to me that there are also other ways to God. This goes beyond logical reasoning, but I am willing to suspend my judgement about what God thinks about these other traditions while being committed to my own tradition.”

Finally, Stage Six, Sacrificial Faith, means that you are willing to fight to defend the foundational human right of religious freedom and even lay down your life to bring reconciliation between people with differing beliefs. This was Gandhi’s faith, who, in attempting to promote peace between Hindus and Muslims in India, paid for it with his life. A Hindu fundamentalist killed him.

To prevent religious conflict, we need to be aware that differing stages of faith often cause it. We also need to work towards Pope John XXIII’s recommendation: “In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity.” That is, we need to strive for the highest stages where the unfathomable essence of the One God transcends all differences, and we need to be charitable toward those with differing beliefs. After all, God is exceedingly tolerant and loves everyone regardless of their faith stage.

Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and educator of adults in religion. brucetallman.com

Archetypes underlie all religions

Given all the religion-based conflict in the world, perhaps it would help if we tried to emphasize the similarities between religions rather than the differences tha t drive us apart and cause bloodshed. Archetypes provide a valuable common ground since they underlie all faiths.

Carl Jung, one of the great psychologists of the twentieth century, noticed that certain patterns kept coming up, not only in his patients’ dreams, but also in literature, mythology, history, religion, and daily life in all cultures and all ages.

From this he surmised that all humans must share in a level of the psyche even deeper than the subconscious mind that his mentor, Sigmund Freud, discovered. Jung called this deeper level the collective unconscious, and the contents of this part of the psyche or soul he called archetypes.

Archetypes are spiritual energy centers and part of the imago Dei, the image of God that God created in the soul, to guide us to fulfilling lives. Jung and others claim that these primordial images are like instincts in that they subconsciously control everything we think, feel, and do.

Four key archetypes that form the basic structure of the human soul in men and women everywhere are the sovereign, warrior, seer, and lover. Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, Robert Moore, Carol Pearson, Caroline Myss, Robert Bly, and others have written extensively about these four heroic archetypes.

The sovereign is the benevolent leader or person in charge, the warrior is the one who fights for goodness and justice, the seer is the wise man or woman, and the lover is the one who is passionate for others whether it is a partner, friend, the poor, or the earth.

As an example of how the sovereign appears everywhere and in every age, consider that throughout history there have been kings, queens, maharajahs, sultans, tsars, emperors, presidents, and prime ministers in various countries, as well as chiefs in native American, Canadian, Brazilian, Australian, and African tribes. The sovereign is also manifest in daily life in the chief executive officer or manager at work, or the father or mother at home.

There are also anti-heroic or “shadow” archetypes which involve complete possession or complete dispossession by the sovereign, warrior, seer, or lover. For example, if a person is completely possessed by the sovereign archetype, he or she becomes a tyrant. Complete dispossession means the person becomes an abdicator. The other anti-heroic archetypes are the sadist and masochist (warrior shadows), manipulator and fool (seer shadows), and the addict and frigid (lover shadows).

These negative archetypes, working subconsciously, can cause great misery in our lives. In fact, the whole post-911 world can be explained in terms of archetypes in the form of tyrants (George W. and Saddam) and sadists (Osama and other terrorists).

Negative archetypes can also affect church leadership in the form of bishops and priests who are tyrants ruling with an iron fist, abdicators who don’t teach justice, sadists who condemn everyone’s spirituality and morality but their own, masochists who don’t take care of themselves, manipulators who make the laity fearful, fools who subtly block the ministry of any talented lay person, addicts who abuse children for their own sexual pleasure, and frigids who are burned out, emotionally dead, and cynical.

People in archetypal roles have great power because they activate the numinous archetypal energies of our souls. This explains the aura that surrounds seers such as the medical doctor, medicine man or woman, shaman, guru, imam, rabbi, priest, or minister. This also explains why the pope and dalai lama draw huge crowds wherever they go. They have double the fascinating numinous power since they are in both the sovereign and seer role.

The Bible is eternally appealing to the human soul because it is an archetypal book, full of heroic and anti-heroic sovereigns, warriors, seers and lovers. Think, for example, in the Jewish scriptures/Old Testament of King David, Queen Esther, King Saul, Queen Jezebel, Goliath, Samson, Delilah, Samuel, Solomon, Isaiah, Ruth, and the lovers in The Song of Songs.

The New Testament likewise is full of heroes and anti-heroes. There is Peter (the spiritual abdicator and later, spiritual sovereign), Paul (the spiritual warrior if ever there was one), King Herod, Queen Herodias, Pilate (the political abdicator), centurions and zealots, magi (seers), good and bad priests, John the Baptist, Judas (the manipulator), contemplatives (lovers of God) like Stephen and John the beloved disciple, and so on.

Churches use archetypal language all the time, whether they know it or not, when they refer to Christ as priest, prophet, king, and supreme lover. Certainly he was in warrior mode when he cleared the moneychangers out of the temple, and there is a graphic, symbolic description in the book of Revelation (19:11-21) of Christ leading the armies of heaven against the forces of evil. To Christians, Jesus had the four foundational archetypes in perfection.

Since these archetypes are hardwired into the human psyche, they appear in other religions as well. No Muslim would dispute the fact that Mohammed is the sovereign leader of Islam, that he was a physical and spiritual warrior in the wars against the polytheists, and a great seer in receiving the Quran from the archangel Gabriel.

Hindus could point to Krishna as a lover when he danced with the gopi cowgirls, Arjuna as a warrior, and great seers like Sri Aurobindo, Vivekananda and others. All Buddhist monks and nuns would come under the seer archetype, and boddhisattvas would be examples of agape lovers, sacrificing their own entrance into nirvana until all sentient beings are enlightened.

Anyone interested in ministry or leadership in any religion, or in spirituality in general, would do well to familiarize themselves with the heroic and anti-heroic archetypes which have the power to fulfill or destroy any individual, religious tradition, or even whole societies.

Bruce Tallman is author of Archetypes for Spiritual Direction: Discovering the Heroes Within (Paulist Press 2005). See http://www.brucetallman.com.

Understanding Spirituality Through Great Thinkers

Martin Buber was the great spiritual interpreter of relationships

Gustavo Gutierrez of liberation

Karl Rahner of ordinary experience

Paul Tillich of cultural trends

Ken Wilber of everything

Wilber and Tillich:

everyone has a spirituality: an ultimate concern:

– archaic spirituality (food/sex/survival)

– magic spirituality (rituals/voodoo/Santeria)

– mythic spirituality (fundamentalism/literalism/exclusivism)

– rational spirituality (reason/materialism/science)

– pluralist spirituality (postmodernism/relativism/skepticism)

– systems spirituality (deep ecology/Gaiaism/interconnectedness)

– integral spirituality (inclusivism/developmentalism/

inner and communal transformation)

Buber: “Spirituality and life is about community

not the lone individual”

in a Christian society, people produce goods and services

for the good of all/the common good

not for the profits of the owners

all work is done for a transcendent purpose:

building the kingdom/queendom/kindom of God

where all people and creatures are taken care of

However, Christianity is not the only place of God’s rule:

Chakravartin, the universal Hindu king in India

Ashoka, the first Buddhist monarch in Buddhism

Shih Tuang Hi, the first Taoist emperor of a united kingdom in China

all governed by Heaven’s Mandate

under Heaven’s Law

so Mother Teresa taught her sisters

never to try to convert a Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist

by talking about Jesus

or promoting Christianity

but rather by being Jesus to them.

COMMON THREADS IN WORLD RELIGIONS

The world’s great religions, diverse as they are

share a common existential thread:

self-reflection and self-transcendence

to St. Paul baptism means you transcend/die

to the Roman Empire’s violence

maintaining its patriarchy/hierarchy/slavery

hierarchical and biblical authority

the mainstays of Catholicism and Protestantism

have been problematic for feminist theologians

because there are many ‘terror texts’

hard to believe as ‘inspired by God’

because they maintain subjugation/exclusion/

violence against women –

by seeing biblical texts as interactive with the reader

feminist theologians reclaimed the Bible for women

by biblical criticism prioritizing the life-giving/

political/ethical/nonviolent texts

but the vision of the hierarchical Fathers

of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965)

was to help the Church be evermore true

to its divinely-inspired mission:

to effectively serve all people

both men and women

with generosity/empathy/love

and in Buddhism the Three Jewels:

the Buddhist Trinity of Buddha/Dharma/Sangha

(Teacher/Teaching/Community)

are all meant to sow seeds

of love/peace/understanding

throughout the world

and in Taoism the sage Lao Tzu teaches us all

how to accomplish much

without effort

by allowing the Tao, the Hidden Force

motivating the universe

to act in and through us

spreading wisdom and joy everywhere

Spirit hides in all these traditions.

COSMIC SHIFTS IN CONSCIOUSNESS

The only direction of evolution is “convergence” –

which is both positive and creative –

the creation of evermore complex life forms

the “Axial Period” within that positive direction

happened between 800 and 200 years before Christ

in China (Confucius and Lao Tzu)/India (Buddha)/

Persia (Zoroaster)/Israel (Prophets)

all arose and transformed everything

that human beings could be

Hugh and Richard Saint Victor

Christian philosophers/mystics

wrote in the 12^th century that there are three eyes:

the first eye of flesh gives us sight

the second eye of reason gives us meditation/reflection

and the third eye of contemplation gives us true understanding –

the ability to see with the eyes of the heart –

the brothers Saint Victor continued the God-given

unfolding of human consciousness

but in Buddhism and Christianity there has also always been

a “contemptus mundi” – a contempt for the world

however, churches in the postmodern world

can no longer pretend they are the only sources of grace

and that the Holy Spirit is not active in all civilizations

or churches will continue to become irrelevant/fringe groups

the tradition of churches condemning their best thinkers

like Meister Eckhart (who in 1329 was labelled a heretic)

means that the real victim was not Eckhart himself

but Christianity since Eckhart’s “Creation Spirituality “

which is Jewish/biblical/prophetic

was replaced by an anti-intellectual asceticism

which is apolitical/dualistic/introverted not world-shaking

still, conscious evolution goes on –

Christianity finally shifted from the fall/redemption

Era of Peter from Constantine’s Holy Roman Empire

in 310 AD to the 1960s – the beginning of the Era of John

a mystic of the Cosmic Christ

who promoted Cosmic Consciousness

and noted that even Peter was a mystic –

for he repeated three times

“Lord, you know that I love you” (John 21:15-17).

LOVE IN EAST AND WEST

In Buddhism, Warrior-Boddhisattvas

(those who delay entering Nirvana

to help others on Earth get there)

train in: interdependence –

if I hurt others I hurt myself –

it is love not aggression that will save the planet –

others are not different from themselves –

we are all one –

and they train their hearts to open

in increasingly difficult situations

getting in touch with our True Self/God within

enables Boddhisattvas and us to listen/speak/act from the heart

“For without compassion all religious beliefs and practices

are useless and empty” – Albert Nolan

we now have so many tools to help us be compassionate

such as the Enneagram which exposes the hidden worldviews

we have been unconsciously operating out of our whole lives

and thus helps couples to view

their partners foibles more compassionately

and their own foibles more critically

in previous cultures

belief in God had nothing to do

with the modern obsession with weighing evidence

for the existence of God –

God must laugh at our attempts

to weigh God in the balance

as if our thoughts or intellectual choice of doctrines

determined whether God existed or not –

in previous cultures

belief in God

was like a marriage vow –

“I do” commit myself

to love and serve you, my God

mindful presence

spent with the one we love

is the fullest expression of True Love

and mindful generosity

is the greatest gift

we can offer our loved one –

the gift of our True Presence.

TEACHINGS OF THE LIVING CHRIST

The birthing of the universe is miraculous:

one-trillionth of a % faster = universe flies apart

one-trillionth of a % slower = universe collapses into itself

only God could pull this off

only God is able to do all things

including bringing life out of death

as with Christ

according to the Buddhist saint Thich Nhat Hahn

“After Buddha’s death devotion turned

from the Dharmakaya (the teaching)

to the Eternal Buddha (the Teacher)

Buddha became in Mahayana Buddhism

the Buddha of Faith/the Living Buddha

like the Christ of Faith/the Living Christ”

(Living Buddha, Living Christ)

Jesus taught thru the Bible that love takes place

in personal care for:

children: “Let the little children come to me,

and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven

belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14)

parents: “Honor your father and mother

that your days may be long in the land

that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12)

the sick and poor: “Come to me, all you who are weary

and burdened, and I will give you rest –

take my yoke upon you and learn from me

for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11: 28-30)

Jesus also taught thru the Church

“Contemplative prayer is a gift/a grace

that can only be accepted in humility and poverty”

(Catechism of the Catholic Church)

and he taught thru the saints

like Teresa of Avila

that “If you get to the fifth inner mansion

there is absolute certainty

that God has planted Godself

in the center of your soul

and at that point your only desire

is to do God’s will”

(The Interior Castle).

BEING AND LOVE

Our consciousness and therefore our subjectivity

cannot be explained

by science –

it just is –

it cannot be explained

by reference to anything more simple

because it is a fundamental/primary datum

similarly, True Love

cannot be explained –

it just is –

it requires being in the here and now

with your Beloved

practicing mindfulness

letting go of all distractions

making “quality time”

a habit

similarly, the Dharma of Buddhism

requires being here now

but it does not give you security

or a ground to stand on

because it is all about impermanence/groundlessness/

hopelessness – because as long as you hope

for being a better person

in a better place

you never accept who you are

and where you are

right now

you are never in the Here and Now

never in Love

the Enneagram is the face of Love –

it cannot be explained –

it just is –

the face of Christ

the face of God

the face of the True Human

since Jesus the Christ

is both the True Human and God

and has all the Enneagram virtues:

righteousness/compassion/excellence/creativity

wisdom/loyalty/discipline/power/peace

to the max.