God is emptiness (the transcendence of God)

This is part of a series reflecting on God-talk and Buddhist terminology. It is an opening to dialogue, not a final word on the subject.

Emptiness. If you are ever going to get tired of hearing people talk about a Buddhist concept this has to be a front runner.

If you spend time reading about emptiness in popular magazines and books or popular websites, you will learn that some older translations into English included "void", and that this negative impression still remains with emptiness.

In attempting to correct this, other images are sometimes suggested. Emptiness refers to a lack of something, but what? One expression popularized by Tibetan Buddhists is that things don't exist "on their own side". Chan/Zen Buddhists favor "lack of intrinsic existence". Pure Land Buddhists, Nichiren Buddhists, and others have similar variations on this theme.

Another way to approach the matter is to turn the negative into a positive. If something does not exist under its own power or will (emptiness), but is instead made up of and connected to other things (dependent co-arising), then everything must be subject to change (impermanence) and hence can only exist because they are not permanent and independent objects (no-self). The capacity for change, the formless ground from which phenomena emerges, can be thought of as the essence of potential itself. The power of possibility. 

That sounds much more affirming and exciting than talking about what things are not. Yet it is precisely in emphasizing what things, including our basic categories of perception and thought, are not that emptiness does its best work. This is probably because emptiness itself is not a thing at all, but an insight about things.

Simple, right?

God, bad and ugly

Image via Wikipedia

This is the fourth and final part of a long essay. Parts one and two and three are also available.

If we look at religion beyond the caricatures and stereotypes of ignorance and intolerance, acknowledging that these are based on very vocal and visible religious institutions and individuals, then we can admit that these are part of what religion can become without assuming that this is the truest or most revealing part of what religion is. (We might also see that prophets and other religious figures were generally combating this tendency toward religious fanaticism, but again, let's leave that for your own investigation.)

We can look at the communally artistic way that religion or the religious aspects of culture deal with the most profound existential dilemmas facing our curiously sentient species and ask what value there may be in exploring these questions by weaving them into a shared tapestry of meaning and social affiliation.

We can speculate about the human (or at least the Western) tendency to organize our perception and behavior (and thus our explanations and cultural constructions) along an axis with freedom, ambiguity and uncertainty on one end and structure control and clarity on the other. Might this also apply to our notions of spirituality and religion when it comes to the aspects of our cultural systems that deal with major existential questions?

We can allow for the possibility that the questions and concerns driving nonbeliever and the irreligious are not so different from those who seek God or engage in religious activities. Or even that there may be a useful dialogue, if not a degree of synthesis, available to such seemingly divergent perspectives.

And still we can ask, how exactly does God fit into all of this? 

No, no... it panENtheism. Getting our Gods straight.

Image via WikipediaAs regular readers will know, I don't write hear to proselytize or proclaim my own beliefs or convictions or to convince anyone of anything; rather I write to explore ideas. One of those ideas is an increasingly popular way of looking at God called panentheism.

Every so often I run into various notions of what panentheism means, some of which sound like reasonable variations on a theme and others which seem to miss the point. I can't claim ownership of the concept. Can you? But we can still put a basic definition/description out there from which we can work.

Here is a quick and dirty run-down of some of the more common/popular concepts of God which can be compared to and contrasted with panentheism:

Theism can be thought of as emphasizing God or Spirit (or whatever takes the ultimate place in a universal ontological scheme) as being personal. It also emphasized the transcendent nature of God, how distant God is from us in terms of holiness, or wisdom, or what have you. Yet God is directly involved in the working of the universe, intervening through miracles and communicating through divine inspiration to prophets.

Taken to a simplistic extreme we basically have the old bearded guy sitting on a throne in the sky who see and knows all and who wills all things into existence. Even the more nuanced forms still present God as a Big Mind in which reality floats like a series of thoughts.

Basically, this is the way of relating to God as a super-human. God is more or less like us except much more intelligent, moral, powerful, etc. God is the superlative human written large. This is the God that philosophers and heretics have claimed we made in our own image. 

This is both the God of poetry and metaphor and also the God of deadly and inane literalism.

Spiritual suspension of disbelief

Image by janoimagine via FlickrSo, what do you do if you are trying to find, reconcile your problems with, increase the depth of your spiritual path? There are many possible answers, and no one can list or describe them all.

However, a major stumbling block is the suspension of disbelief.

When you read a novel, attend a play, or watch a television program or a movie, even when playing some video games, part of you agrees to react as if it were really happening. If you are unable to suspend your disbelief even a little, then the program can become tedious--perhaps straying into boredom, annoyance or frustration.

This can also be an obstacle when you are trying to search out the meaning and insights of a sacred tradition, and in fact, it can snuff out any chance of really appreciating that tradition or its wisdom before you've even really started exploring it. In that situation your future efforts have already been sabotaged and the pattern of your expectations has already been set.

For example.

The benefits of letting go of God can include coming closer to God

[The following is taken from a larger conversation originally conducted elsewhere. It has been edited for congruity and sensibility, including some new text, but the integrity of its original meaning is left intact.]

People sometimes mention letting go of God. But what does that mean? Was God in your pocket? Maybe on your iPod? Did you set God out with the trash? What you let go was an idea about God. A conception of God. A way of relating to God.

People will often keep struggling to hold on to this perspective, but intellectual honesty often wins out because there were things that didn't work with their expectations and assumptions, including their interpretation of what God and religion is supposed to be and what is valid or invalid in assessing such requirements.

I cannot go into everything I've written on the matter, but I went through the same thing, as have thousands of others. For whatever its worth, here are a very few of the things I have encountered and pondered along the way:

We know Jesus, and the Buddha, and the rest too well

Or to put it more accurately, in many ways we don't really know them at all.

I have alluded before to something that many theologians have known for a long time, something I didn't come up with on my own, that in many ways Jesus was a radical.  That isn't to say he was a raving ideologue, or some kind of Jewish anarchist.  From the depictions we have of him he favored quiet, peace and rest as well as good times with friends and family.  He also appears to have been very observant, going to the temple, singing the Psalms, and reading from the Torah.  Yet he saw past clinging blindly to the letter of the law and ignoring its spirit, in which he revealed its source and intent: love for God and for neighbor.  No interpretation of religious law that defied this mandate could be genuine and no secular law that ignored it could be just.

Then there were the early churches.  I've heard they initially shunned the iconography of the cross.  It isn't surprising.  The cross in that era was a sign of shame, terror and agony.  It was the visible symbol of what happened to those who defied Rome and its Emperor.  To look at a cross was to look at the power of the largest known empire in the world and its dominion over your life.  To have taken up the cross as their own symbol, the members of the church would have been doing what so much of the Gospels did, inverting familiar signs of power and meaning.  It was an act of defiance.  What you proclaim as death we proclaim as life.  What you intended to cause despair has become a source of hope.  But how can that symbol carry the same impact today?

Is God a person or just some vague cosmic force?

Is there, in fact "one all-powerful force controlling everything"?  Perhaps a "mystical energy field" that controls your destiny?  Is there some great big guy in the sky who is watching your every move from a throne and ready to judge you if you don't think or act the right way?  Or is such talk based on "simple tricks and nonsense"?

There are times when someone else has said something so well, it is better to let them speak on the matter and add a bit of commentary.

Let's talk read some Kung.

Ajahn Punnadhammo ponders "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

An interesting take on the premise surrounding Stephen Hawking's new book The Grand Design and the general issues surrounding can be found at Bhikku's Blog, written by Canadian born Theravadan monk Ajahn Punnadhammo.

There is a lot of truth to what is written there, especially the point about the limits of the human mind in speculating on such matters is something too often missing from the discussion of such issues.  Yet it is valuable to take a look at some assumptions made as well for comparative purposes, in this case to my own reflections on the issues raised by the press coverage of Hawking's book. 

Because Bhikku Ajahn Punndhammo (referred to as BAP hereafter) uses theism to compare and contrast a Buddhist view, it is helpful first to distinguish between the uses of the term.  In some circles, it refers to the idea that there is any meaning or point to existence other than the most limited, superficial and subjective notions.  Closely related to this (and often connected with it) is the notion that there is a source to existence which isn't explained strictly in terms of what humans describe as and refer to as natural laws.  In such cases, many Buddhists and forms of Buddhism would be labeled theistic.

Quantum tempest in a celestial teapot

So Stephen Hawking by some accounts is the new heir apparent to the French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. For those who don't recognize the name, here is a reported exchange between Napoleon and himself regarding one of Laplace's propositions:

Napoleon: "M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator."

Laplace: "I had no need of that hypothesis."

LaPlace felt previous ideas regarding the nature of God and its relationship to the mechanics of the universe were unnecessary.  Indeed, the idea of making God into a puppeteer pulling the strings of the universe developed in response to the rise of empiricism and science under the belief it would allow for the kind of "proof" of God that had previously been unavailable, largely irrelevant, and in some cases blasphemous. It was based on the idea of God's necessity to explain the currently unexplainable in the workings of the material world.  

God, Christianity, Buddhism, Shin, Ichinen Sanzen and more

What follows are replies in a discussion which started with a non-Orthodox modern Christian over an article about an Orthodox view of Jesus.  It is long.  Some of it covers things I have written here before.  Other material is new or incorporates previous thoughts and concerns in new ways.  Many Christians and Buddhists will have a problem with it, especially if they aren't familiar with how I used certain words and concepts and the material I have been posting here for years.  That is OK.  This isn't an argument or provocation which needs to be attacked or defended.  Thank you for understanding.

On the concern that the article suggests we will lose our identities if we are absorbed into Christ


Can't the same be asked of any language suggesting union with God? I have never seen anything in the usage of such language that suggests that this means loss of individuality but rather its ultimately fulfillment. Jesus talks about people being with God as He and the Father are one, so I'm not sure why this is problematic.

On the implication from the article on the role of the Church

Many folks would say "If you aren't going out to save people what is the point?" But the Gospel simply means good news and the commission is to share that news. Being an ambassador and building a Church to share this news doesn't have to equate with setting up an institution to save people (which first involves convincing them they are damned). The news that you are welcome, accepted and loved beyond measure isn't trivial nor is it easy to accept. The Church and its ambassadors would have plenty to do just living as if these things were true and sharing that acceptance and love with others.

Does it make sense to believe in God?

Image via Wikipedia

All "gods" in the sense that atheists use the term are in fact human-made. That is no surprise. All words reflect human mental constructions pointing to some idea or experience.

Even the lesser gods of polytheism reflect something humans perceived not only about the world outside of themselves but the world within. But if atheists think to little or narrow of God, we have theists to thank for it.

Any God that can be accepted or rejected is not God. What is accepted or rejected are images, depictions, and descriptions of God. To paraphrase Fr. Rolheiser, God's existence does not depend upon the quality of our imagination. The deep knowledge of the heart which carries an awareness of the Divine cannot truly deny or reject itself.

Instead we may ask, "Does our notion of the Divine bringing us closer to a greater awareness of the Source and a deeper appreciation of our participation in and as an aspect of It?" In this instance Source refers to what the philosopher Tillich refers to the ground of Being -- the focus of ultimate concern.

That is, God is not another thing, even the biggest or best of a category of things. God is instead freed from such limitations, even as this description itself falls short of completeness. God is allowed to be both immanent and transcendent, beyond what we can conceive and as closer than our own breath, source and sustainer of all that is.

The (non)existence of God -- more on why God isn't a superior hypothesis

Image via Wikipedia

Many  contemporary theological issues at the non-specialist level continue to swirl around the notion of God-as-hypothesis, which is derisively framed by the irreligious as the shrinking God-of-the-gaps and coincides with the idea that religion in general and theism in particular is a failed primitive science.

Is that a fair or accurate assessment?  How else might one consider this issue?

Again I am quoting a small bit from the Faith & Theology blog, because it is just that good and coincides so well with the themes I've been exploring here, albeit in a more professional and erudite fashion than my amateurish knowledge and experience can offer.   By all means for more go there and get a deeper and richer discussion of these matters, but for now:

A hypothesis is either probable or improbable – but the existence of God is neither probable nor improbable; indeed the non-existence of God is inconceivable. A deity who might not exist is contingent and therefore not worth the name of Yahweh (Exodus 3:14). Kierkegaard drives the point home: “God does not exist, he is eternal.” That is the truth behind the unfortunately named ontological argument (Anselm’s “proof” is, in fact, a prayer). At least it is for believers, who, if they engage atheists on the field of probabilities, are acting in bad faith, i.e., in either a fraudulent or downright idolatrous manner. The Creed does not begin “On balance, we believe …”

A visitor also chimed in with a quote from God Matters by Herbert McCabe:

"[I]t is clear that God cannot interfere in the universe, not because he has not the power but because, so to speak, he has too much; to interfere you have to be alternative too, or alongside, what you are interfering with. If God is the cause of everything, there is nothing he is alongside. Obviously, God makes no difference to the universe; I mean that we do not appeal specifically to God to explain why the universe is this way rather than that, for this we need only to appeal to explanations within the universe... (pg 6)

To repeat what I've written before:

All "gods" in the sense that atheists use the term are in fact human-made. That is no surprise. All words reflect human mental constructions pointing to some idea or experience.

Even the lesser gods of polytheism reflect something humans perceived not only about the world outside of themselves but the world within. But if atheists think to little or narrow of God, we have theists to thank for it.

Any God that can be accepted or rejected is not God. What is accepted or rejected are images, depictions, and descriptions of God. To paraphrase Fr. Rolheiser from The Shattered Lantern, God's existence does not depend upon the quality of our imagination. My own phrasing is that the deep knowledge of the heart which carries an awareness of the Divine cannot truly deny or reject itself.

Instead need to ask, "Does our notion of the Divine bringing us closer to a greater awareness of the Source and a deeper appreciation of our participation in and as an aspect of It?" In this instance Source refers to what the philosopher Tillich refers to the ground of Being -- the focus of ultimate concern.

That is, God is not another thing, even the biggest or best of a category of things. God is instead freed from such limitations, even as this description itself falls short of completeness. God is allowed to be both immanent and transcendent, beyond what we can conceive and as closer than our own breath, source and sustainer of all that is.

Some assume "God" is an extra layer or texture spread over existence like jam on bread. God isn't an extra or an add-on. Whatever you are aware of is your level of awareness of God. If you are only aware of yourself, don't underestimate that. There are those who plumb the depths of existence through learning, meditation, praise, etc, but they are technically not "closer" to God than you. They may be more appreciative, and that could translate into a greater benefit, but they aren't somehow more "special".

God isn't a superior hypothesis or a better idea - (seeking/experiencing) God is an entirely different orientation to existence. God isn't a thing, a being, or any other phenomena. God is like a shorthand for discussing the totality encompassing existence, its sustaining power and source.

If we assume ("choose to believe in") God, then everything is part of that revelation.

Hang-ups to seeking God, Part 3: God isn't a superior hypothesis

Some assume "God" is an extra layer or texture spread over existence like jam on bread. God isn't an extra or an add-on. Whatever you are aware of is your level of awareness of God. If you are only aware of yourself, don't underestimate that. There are those who plumb the depths of existence through learning, meditation, praise, etc, but they are technically not "closer" to God than you. They may be more appreciative, and that could translate into a greater benefit, but they aren't somehow more "special". Again, if you want to know God at a deeper level, get to know and cherish others:

"Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man."
-Johann Kaspae Lavater, Swiss poet

And the thing is, speaking from my own experience, you could even be given or discover a logical metaphysical system that is better at explaining things than atheism, but that doesn't mean you'll just be like "Oh, OK, I'll accept God now."

God isn't a superior hypothesis or a better idea - (seeking) God is an entirely different orientation to existence. God isn't a thing, a being, or any other phenomena. God is like a shorthand for discussing the totality encompassing existence, its sustaining power and source. That is what some are getting at, like Tillich, when he talks about true Depth of existence, the object of Ultimate concern or the Ground of Being.

What I am suggesting is that if we assume/choose God, then everything is part of that revelation. On the surface, it may appear that "God" and "no God" are identical. This is not so. Let's make you an archeologist. If I give you an ancient bone with marks and squiggles on it but you assume it was before Homo had occupied the area where the bone was found, you might dismiss it as the effect of root etchings. If you think Homo may have been there early, you would be open to analyzing it as potential symbolic markings and do additional tests. In the same way, if you assume "God" then you aren't just going to keep seeing that same old same old the same way.

From a purely philosophical perspective, which is unfortunately where such discussions spend too much time, to switch orientation from "God" to "no God" is no more onerous or burdensome that switching from "no God" to "God". Each adds and subtracts an assumption. One suggests there is a greater depth and interconnection and meaning to existence, while the other dismisses this as wishful thinking.

If we are talking about recognizing a greater depth to our existence than the surface level suggests, an orientation towards a more expansive set of possibilities for experiencing life, then sure, that's something that goes along with "God". The whole "God"/"no God" issue is a basic axiomatic assumption, a metaphysical orientation.

On the other hand, for some, switching to the orientation of "God" from "no God" does add a sense of obligation, a sense that they were born for a purpose, and hence that even if their vocation and lifestyle is humble and modest, they are a part of something grander, something that compels them to love one another and comforts them that there is more than just expediency and cost-benefit analysis underlying ethical and moral decisions. Of course, there are those who claim to be on the "God" side who act as if there is in this sense "no God" (except the petty idol of their own flaws they have made) and there are those who state they are on the "no God" side who act as if there was a God (including that aforementioned sense of depth and possibility).

"Christ does not save all those who say to Him, 'Lord, Lord.' But he saves all those who out of a pure heart give a piece of bread to a starving man, without thinking of Him in the least little bit. And these, when He thanks them, reply: 'Lord, when did we feed thee?' An atheist and an infidel, capable of pure compassion, are as close to God as is a Christian, and consequently know Him equally well, although their knowledge is expressed in other words, or remains unspoken. For 'God is love.' "
-Simone Weil, French philosopher, Christan mystic, and social activist

Depth but not depth - a look at atheist spirituality

Does the concept of atheistic spirituality sound hollow or flimsy to you? Does it sound substantive? In a recent episode of the televised medical drama House, the eponymous lead character and his team of fellow diagnosticians were attempting to solve a case involving "cancer but not cancer". That is, something which in some ways acted like cancer but which did not give the usual tell-tale signals of cancer. I hate to give out spoilers to those who may have recorded the episode, so if that is you, come back after watching it.

Go on. Take your time. I don't mind waiting.

Better? The problem and the solution seemed like it might be apt in considering the exploration of spirituality and how this is connected to atheism. In the episode of House, several people who received transplants from the same organ donor suddenly start dying of traumatic organ failure. The link is obviously the donor, but donors are screened for diseases, which the team verifies were correctly ruled out. Cancer, when it metastasizes, can go global and affect a variety of tissues and organs. But there were no typical tumors found in any of the dead recipients. The remaining live recipient also shows no abnormal masses. The donor had no signs of cancer either. It isn't cancer. Yet none of long shot alternative diagnoses, for which the show is famous, pan out. So it has to be cancer, but it isn't cancer. They are looking for something then that "is cancer but not cancer".

It turns out the cancer was stem-cell cancer. The stem cells would randomly land in areas where growth or healing was occurring and differentiate partially into the type of tissue in their immediate vicinity. But because they weren't fully differentiated, they couldn't actually do the work of they tissue type the were mimicking. They were also structurally weak, so that when the organ or tissue came under any kind of pressure, it ruptured, leading to the death of the patient. That is, the cancer cells weren't a problem right away because they weren't spreading or forming tumors and in general the surrounding tissue was picking up the slack. But when the critical moment came, the poser tissue wasn't up to the job.

Turning back to spirituality, various sacred traditions speak of depth. Of existence being more than what tends to breeze by our senses. This depth includes an orientation towards what the theologian Paul Tillich referred to as the object of Ultimate Concern. He was clear though that terms like object were misleading. He also referred to this as Being, or the ground of existence. Hence rather than being an object alongside of other objects, he was talking about that which unites all of existence - that from which existence springs and to which it flows. To use a Buddhist analogy, the water (ground of being) from which we see waves (phenomena) spring. Quoting Tillich from The Shaking of the Foundations,

"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."


(emphasis added)

There are those who either claim to be nihilists when it comes to such depth or whose arguments about existence and meaning leave room for nothing else, even if they do not explicitly acknowledge it. For everyone else, even if they claim to be irreligious or aspiritual, they act as if there is depth, even a depth they don't consciously claim to believe in. Then there are those who quietly or loudly proclaim a belief in such depth, but who give no other evidence of such a conviction. The true nihilists, whatever label they may outwardly wear, seem to be a really small minority given how a majority of humans live. It is likely then that many self-professed atheists are simply prejudiced against the language of the sacred. However, they believe in an intelligible reality which appears to contain some kind of regularity. They are impressed with what is sometimes referred to as the horizontal dimension, stretching forward into the future, back into the past, and out into the distant edge of the furthest galaxies. But many are less aware or concerned with the vertical dimension - the eternal present in and beyond all the phenomena of time and space. Moreover, in their rush to be "not" theists, they tend to present their beliefs as the opposite of what theists discuss. Hence, even though it need not be a part of the atheists' assumptions of a Godless universe, they include notions such as "the world has no ultimate meaning or order" or "the universe is a cold and cruel place". Apparently while these qualities are not acceptable to assume in a Godless universe, other qualities (i.e. intelligibility, order) can be assumed to be possible without God because they are more obvious to the casual observer.

That brings us back to atheist spirituality. On the one hand, this can refer to those profess atheism but who also have desire to seek what Tillich's expressed as depth. Being allergic to religion, they attempt to find ways to reconcile the standard atheist notions of no ultimate meaning and a universe with only the superficial appearance of an underlying pulse or greater pattern with the search for their own personal connection to the attributes of someone who recognizes depth in themselves and the world of which they are a part. This can be frustrating - like trying to reinvent the wheel without wanting to believe in roundness. Then there are those who essentially believe in the kind of depth Tillich describes without assuming that it must be limited to any culture or religion's conception of God or a Higher Power. However, in such cases they may cease to think of themselves as atheists in the commonly understood sense and try to locate some term to describe their orientation that lies outside of the conventional representation Atheist vs. Theist or Agnostic.

In any event, if we momentarily take those who consciously sense and respond to such depth out of the atheist column, even if they object to being removed, then the difference between atheism and everything else becomes much clearer, as does the notion of atheist spirituality. Nihilism and spirituality are antagonists. If you try to fill that gap or longing for depth with Yoga, Buddhism, Quakerism, Humanism, or something else but are still rooted in a nihilistic frame of reference, then what results is "depth but not depth". The same is true for those who claim a depth they don't really know or grasp, their shallowness hidden under a facade of religiosity. Like the poser cells in the transplant recipients, it may look good but it isn't doing anything of true value. Folks may not notice because other aspects of their lives are picking up the slack. But when that critical moment comes...

Contemplative Prayer and God

Contemplative prayer "can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized." It is "the experiential grasp of reality as subjective, not so much 'mine' (which would signify 'belonging to the external self') but 'myself' in existential mystery..." and "the humble realization of our mysterious being as persons in whom God dwells, with our infinite sweetness and inalienable power." It is not "mere inertia, a tendency to inactivity, to psychic peace", it is not "trance or ecstasy, nor the hearing of sudden unutterable words, nor the imagination of lights", and neither is it "the emotional fire and sweetness that come with religious exaltation" nor "the sense of being 'seized' by an elemental force and swept into mystical liberation by mystical frenzy." One shouldn't expect "an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. Contemplative prayer is not a form of 'spiritual anesthesia.' " In fact "the contemplative suffers the anguish of realizing that he no longer knows what God is." Rather one discovers that "there is no 'what' that can be called God" and instead God "is the the 'Thou' before whom our inmost 'I' springs into awareness."

-originally quoted from New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, pp.6, 8, 9-13, 15; excerpts taken from Prayer for People Who Think Too Much by Mitch Finley

"It is just this idea of religion which makes any understanding of religion impossible. If you start with the question whether God does or does not exist, you can never reach Him; and if you assert that He does exist, you can reach Him even less than if you assert that he does not exist. A God whose existence or nonexistence you can argue is a thing beside others within the universe of existing things... It is regrettable that scientists believe that they have refuted religion when they rightly have shown that there is no evidence whatsoever for the assumption that such a being exists. Actually, they have not only not refuted religion, but they have done it a considerable service. They have forced it to reconsider and to restate the meaning of the tremendous word God. Unfortunately, many theologians make the same mistake. They begin their message with the assertion that there is a highest being called God, whose authoritative revelations they have received. They are more dangerous for religion than the so-called atheistic scientists. They take the first step on the road which inescapably leads to what is called atheism. Theologians who make of God a highest being who has given some people information about Himself, provoke inescapably the resistance of those who are told they must subject themselves to the authority of this information."

-Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, pp.3

"God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him."

-Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, volume 1, pp.206

Authenticity (and a review of 2007)

I write quite a bit, and most of it scrolls away before many people get a chance to read it. I mostly get hits on this blog from search engine requests (mostly Google) that happen to contain some words or phrases I use on my blog. I also get a few hits from people coming from blogroll links as well as some much appreciated (semi-)regular visitors. So the odds of someone reading this site when a post that speaks to them happens to still be near the top of the page is ridiculously small. Looking back at much of what I have written since 2005, and focusing specifically on what I posted in 2007, a common theme that emerges is authenticity. So here is a brief and absurdly inadequate selection of examples of this theme taken from the last calendar year for those who haven't been slavishly following everything I post. (Yes, then, even edited for brevity's sake what follows runs a little long - it isn't meant for a quick straight read...)

Last January the issue of authenticity was clear when I wrote about Buddhism in Stereo(type). Other than the familiar caricatures I poked and prodded, two more subtle sub-themes emerged - 1) the point of practice is in the heart not in the formality, and 2) something can be lost by trying to make a strictly rationalistic/atheistic version of Buddhism. These issues can point to underlying attachments resulting in clinging to such views...

That said, there is nothing wrong with theory or formality of practice in the right place at the right time, which brings us to another nouvea Buddhist stereotype. These folks think that religion sucks, that spirituality sucks, and that the Buddha's basic insights can and should be liberated from any and all cultural baggage as a strict humanistic philosophy. The fact that so many valuable lessons that go beyond words and reinforce the basic teachings are captured in the literary and liturgical traditions are lost on them. That isn't to advocate slavish obedience to all tradition in Buddhism or deny various cultural influence, but there is a productive middle way here. Such animosity suggests attachments to experiences involving the concepts of religion and spirituality. The lack of a nuanced view of sacred traditions (these parts may be beautiful and inspirational, those parts may be harmful or distracting) is often a tell-tale sign of someone who has had a negative association with a particular branch or branches of groups affiliated with one more sacred paths, and has therefore cast a blanket judgment on all of them. This needn't be an outright condemnation. It can also manifest as an unease or desire to avoid sacred rituals or ceremonies, even icons such as a crucifix or a statue of the Buddha. Often the best way to be liberated from this hangup and be freed from the entanglement of leftover unresolved issues surrounding religion and spirituality is to try practicing it a little. Not necessarily as a full-on "believer", but just to experience a different context, a fresh context for a new and healthier perspective.

Again, these themes/sub-themes aren't new to the blog, but they continued to color the posts more vividly throughout the year. This perspective includes a third sub-theme, which in fact subsumes the other two sub-themes and rephrases or recasts the overall theme. This other facet is the underlying vision of interspirituality, which includes common experiences and insights between different religions even when on the surface they (and some of their followers) seem to clash. This includes accepting and incoporating my own experiences with Christianity. The concern for how different traditions may be expressing shared insights appears early on from a February post titled Just as you are. This post dealt with the work of Paul Tillich and how his concept of the Ground of Being may be relevant to all forms of spirituality. In particular the section quoted and discussed deals with the notion of grace and of of being settled in an absolute sense even when in a relative sense life is still as hectic and uncertain as ever. This last idea forms a kind of fourth leg to the table we are building to support the dissection of what authenticity is in Buddhism.

This dissection picks up that same month with Cause it's how your are supposed to feel,

What, in the various testimonials and dharma discussions and the like, is actually genuine? And, what does/should Buddhism or any other life philosophy, spiritual path, or sacred tradition say or offer to someone who is "down" and just not feeling it, so to speak?


...let's turn to Buddhism, and the Dharma, and Buddha-nature. How many of the people who prattle on about it, or who talk about experiencing frequently, are really "getting it"? How many just hope they are, or wish they were, or think they might be because they have an intellectual assent to the teachings and a regular formal practice? It seems to me that "getting it" is kind of an on or off thing - you do or you do not, there is no try. But at the same time, I don't think "getting it" is and end, either, but more like a constant companion and reminder that stays with us even when we are in the doldrums. Maybe that's why we tend to personify "getting it".


Yet if we can "get it" and still at times find ourselves to be out of sorts, frustrated, or discouraged, then what is our companion reminding us then? What is that message, whether embodied or transmitted through a life philosophy, spiritual path, or sacred tradition, for someone on the outs?


I can't speak for you. I can't speak for "getting it" on your behalf. The next time you are down and out, I guess you will get another shot at hearing the message yourself.

Do you surrender all? was written in March following a short "borrowed" passage from a UU minister's blog (appearing in Just making up my own religion as I go along), which deals with the effects of cynicism and indecisiveness on liberal or progressive spirituality. The surrender post is itself a series of quotations of my previous posts on the topic, so I will let the reader peruse those as desired, but the issues is what surrender means in Buddhism and in some forms of Christianity or other religions - whether it refers to being a mindless sheep or surrendering the ego, and if the latter, what does that really mean?

The embracing a Christian heritage theme saw a few more posts in April, such as Who can celebrate Easter?, Christian Buddhists? Buddhist Christians?, Velvet Jesus, and Don't taint my Buddhism with comparisons to Christianity. Also during that month, the busiest posting month last year, I continued to look for authenticity be reminding myself (again) that Contemplating death gives gratitude for life. It's one of those lessons that makes sense but that I suspect few of us have really fully confronted and assimilated. I also posted a sequel to a 2006 post on the effects of trying to "tidy" up Buddhism to make it presentable to skeptics or make it nothing more than secular humanism with a statue (Humanist Buddhists? Buddhist Humanists). It's also a good summary/quote mine of other posts I've made on a particular topic.

May was also a busy posting month, and the general theme of authenticity was in clear view with a post titled The substance of spiritual practice. I try to address the issue by writing:

The subtle misconception is that a spiritual practice is intended to solve such particular problems. However, it is more accurate and useful to see such issues as symptoms of a more profound underlying cause. As noted, Buddhists tend to see it as a result of a false sense of separate, intrinsic existence and delusion of separation. But that's an academic abstraction, not the living experience and wisdom of the underlying truth upon which the principle is based.

Spiritual practice is not simply a glorified 'self-help' process or support, however, personal transformation is part and parcel of such practice. And it isn't something you can fake or compensate for by how often you impress others or try to impress yourself with your daily acts of devotion or piety. It is being completely honest, more honest that we can usually comfortably deal with. Beyond the sense of identity we keep deep, deep down. That one is a good person. A bad person. An important person without whom the world couldn't keep spinning. An insignificant person whose life is of no appreciable consequence.

It can be scary thing sometimes being that honest and open, listening to the deepest spaces of the heart, but it can also be liberating.

I try to follow this kind of thinking with Effortlessness - simple yet challenging by writing that "perception and intellect are limited - not bad, not something to be shunned or minimized, but also not relied on to grasp the Truth being described. I think to some looking at Buddhism from the outside such admonitions may seem like forms anti-intellectualism or anti-rationalism, given the focus on using various combinations of our intellect and our perceptions to form our basic maps of reality (memory, imagination, etc). But even so, it doesn't take much to demonstrate that both the intellect and perception, while important and useful, are woefully limited." I tried to refine this more by re-writing the traditional refuge prayer in May the Buddha find refuge in me. This line of thinking is also evident in Emptiness and compassion, where the nature of compassion is discussed not as helping but as responding. I try to convey this thusly:

If we still subconsciously or overtly think of people in terms of discrete entities, that even attempts to "help" will be rooted in those misconceptions. This can occur at many levels. Imagine, for example, if someone has a flat tire. You ask if you can lend a hand, and the person ignores you. Or flips you off. Or maybe the person accepts your offer but criticizes you and needles you about the poor job you are doing the whole time. When rooted in duality, you might get angry. How dare this person not appreciate the "help" you so kindly offered. You expect a reward, even if only an acknowledgment that you spoke at all, let alone offered assistance. The interaction is not truly selfless.

Of course this, like much I write, is borrowed wisdom recast in terms of my own experiences and my own form of expression, but it somehow rings true, as do the quotes I begin citing repeatedly in various posts by Lila Watson: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together."

Another post in May, What is expected? What is required? foreshadows a later concern with nature of the efficacy of practice and what we are willing to give to our practice. This is taken up in June through July as a series of posts based in an interspiritual consideration (which then moves primarily to a Buddhist perspective) on Pondering the meaning of liberation from suffering (see also part 2, part 3, part 4, and part 5). While I do not wish to boast, the posts do cover a lot of ground, and they leave us with another dilemma in terms of our authenticity:

We all bear each others burden of suffering in our response to the call from the Source, whether we name it God, Tao, Shunyata/Dharmakaya, etc, whether we encounter it in the person of Jesus, or Amida, etc. Because in seeing our deep interconnection and our true nature, how can we turn our backs? This relationship simultaneously functions as a call to action and the strength to answer the call.
But is that it? We hear and answer the call - we respond to the plight of others. Our suffering can be transformed into liberation and serve as a motivator to act to relieve the suffering of others as well, but is that all we can do? Is it enough?

In Buddhist terms, when we talk about being mindful, or about being engaged, or about exemplifying the four immeasurables of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, what is the impact? Or to put it another way, when we talk about interdependence, what are we really saying? Is the extent of the benefit of our attitudes and practice limited to our mundane interactions (i.e. I write something, it inspires someone else, it causes that person to do great things, which then benefits still more people, and so on)? Or are we connected on a deeper level? If I were stranded on a deserted island and everyone had forgotten about me, but I still kept practicing, would that in and of itself still benefit any sentient being, even if I were never rescued and no record of my life or activities on the island were ever recovered?

I also continued exploring some similarities over the summer between certain concepts in Christianity and Buddhism, especially after an engaging dialogue with a Roman Catholic priest in the spring (Bracing for Buddhist evangelism). For example, examined the similarity between the Four Immeasurables of Buddhism and the concept of Divine Love in Christianity (a.k.a. agape or caritas) in a post fittingly titled Love, love, love... . Ironically this led to some confusion over what I meant by the term love and how it can be (mis-)used. After further contemplating quotes by a Shin teacher and a Chan monk on the importance of death as a spiritual teacher in September (An encounter with spiritual death) and still realizing I had not fully recognized or made use of any such encounter, my concerns over authenticity became stronger and more pointed, as exemplified in To learn and actualize the teachings of just a single Buddha. The concerns are directly expressed with a sense of urgency:

After some trial and error and false starts many practitioners can start to get the hang up the deeper meanings and common insight of emptiness, no-self, nirvana, dependent coarising, etc, and even become quite eloquent in discussing the profound simplicity and philosophical range of such teachings. And each new appreciation of another facet of these teachings and how they all boil down to very powerful common premise can bring a wave of the excitement that comes from deepening your insight. For those who are good learners of systems, models, generalized trends, etc, who like big picture questions and ask what principles underlie the processes observed in society, nature, or the universe itself, many Buddhist teachings are like a gold mine of intellectual treasure to be mined, refined, and processed. But learning of and talking about and even sounding like an expert with regard to such teachings isn't enough. Hence another frequent topic for this online journal is the difficulty of actualizing these teachings, not just the parts concerned with meditation, but ethics and wisdom as well.

There is the rub. This can be especially frustrating when one hears or reads about the experiences of others - how the same phenomena (people, trees, cars, pizzas) are still "there", but a major change in perception has taken place. The way in which these people reportedly relate to phenomena (not just perceptually) is radically transformed, but on the other hand, it is not always that "peak" experience practitioners sometimes expect, some kind of rapturous epiphany. Hence having such expectations can be said to do more harm to our Dharma practice than almost anything else because they lead to frustration and disillusionment, which is, after all, what Buddhism suggests is the source of much of our dissatisfaction with life to begin with! Not only does having a yardstick to "measure" our practice in contradiction to the notion that we don't need to "gain" anything to "achieve" enlightenment, it sets up the very kind of unnecessary and unrealistic expectations we are trying to lose.

Yes, but...

That's right. There is a "Yes, but..." Why? Because there is a difference between thinking "I need to reach this goal to become a fully realized Buddha..." and "Is there a way to tell if the path I am practicing is genuine and efficacious?" In other words, am I really actualizing the teaching of the Buddha? In a sense, one actualized them in doing them, yet there is the question of intention and transformation. Power can be defined as the ability to bring about transformation, so when someone claims certain practices and teachings are powerful, meaningful results should be in evidence for those embracing such practices and teachings. Part of the transformation in all spiritual paths is transforming the heart, allowing it to open and expand. Rather than just going through the motions in a hollow fashion, there is a reasonable requirement that Buddhist practice should be done with the proper intentions. In the Mahayana traditions, this is explicitly spelled out as the liberation of all sentient beings.

An attempt to confront such concerns followed in November with Dharma Dieting:

I suspect that many of the same problems that plague would-be weight dieters also plague would-be suffering dieters such as myself. Old habits. Doubts about where you can really do it. Lethargy and lack of energy/enthusiasm. The prospect of giving up things you enjoy and trading them for things that appear less pleasant or interesting. And in the middle of it all, lack of commitment.

I have tried before, and believe that I failed. I tried again, and failed. Repeatedly. I started to wonder if the effort is worth it. After all, I tend to have such enthusiasm each time I start, then it runs down, my confidence deflates, and my efforts become erratic and eventually fizzle out. I tried again, and failed.

But does that mean that the method or the goal is flawed or just not suitable for me? It could. It is also possible I simply didn't give the program a chance to work. I asked a very wise and patient person about this, and he suggested the same thing. The power of bad habits, the lack of confidence, and the lack of enthusiasm may simply be interfering with the successful application of the Buddha's insights and recommendations that keep them from being effective in producing good results.

This pointed me back to the same things I have been writing for years and hearing from various sources - about nirvana in the midst of samsara not in spite of it, which was encapsulated in the brief post You have permission to be happy.

This concept and its importance to the questions of authenticity I was pursuing then became more focused in December with posts like Sitting as surrender:

So does clarity, focus, and insight come from realizing enlightenment or are they necessary in order to realize enlightenment? Well, your guess is as good as mine, unless you are Fully Awake, in which case you would probably just smile at the question. My response would be - "Yes and no...to both." Which then brings us back to whether one set of guidelines or practices for awakening are universally more effective, or if their usefulness is context dependent...

However, all of this did get me thinking about the image of the sitting Buddha and the context of his sitting in the mytho-historical depiction of his life. He experiences on extreme of lavish material and sensual wealth, and then the other extreme of severe material and sensual deprivation, and then he finds a cool comfortable spot under a tree and sits down. What is often emphasized here is the avoidance of extremes and the importance of the Middle Way. I am not writing against that, but as far as the imagery goes, I see something else. He tried to find happiness and fulfilment by his own efforts and false expectations going in one direction, and then he did the same thing in the opposite direction, and then he finally just let go. He submitted. He surrendered. I am not suggesting he wimped out or just gave up in exasperation, but after all of his searching, he simply came to experience something very profound and yet very simple. Would he have figured it out had he not tried so hard? I don't know - possibly not. It may have been a case of realization by negation and deduction (it ISN'T this, ISN'T this, and ISN'T that, so it must be...AHA!). Or maybe it was simply when he stopped trying and started simply being that he finally "got it." I don't claim to know - who can?

But image-wise, that is how I tend to see seated meditation. It isn't about who can be the best statue or focus the longest on a particular spot or bodily function. Nor is it a complete practice unto itself. It is creating what some theologians refer to as thin places, or circumstances under which the reality and presence of the Divine are more readily apparent even to the less attuned. Sit, stand, chant, or pick your nose - am I still struggling? Not physically, not mentally - beyond that. Relax. Let go. Surrender.

I try to clarify this in a sequel, A little more on sitting as surrender:

This kind of deep existential dissatisfaction is the kind of thing being sacrificed or jettisoned.

And I personally feel that it is this type of dissatisfaction that Buddhism, via the example of the Buddha, is supposed to be addressing. I think it is this type of dissatisfaction that, from what I have gleaned from the various accounts of his life, the Buddha himself shed when he finally sat. When he sat and, we might speculate, when he realized something that awoke an infinitely sublime quieting and peace beyond the deepest doubts of his life, a tranquility not apart from any particular thing but which embraces all things. I obviously cannot know this, but I sense that this is what the imagery and teachings of Buddhism point toward. We can debate whether this really reflects the original intent of the Buddha himself, but regardless, such a tranquility amidst suffering, or nirvana within samsara, is worth knowing. At least it is to me.

Clarification: I am not suggesting there is nothing else “to do”. In fact, it would be closer to the other way around. That is, such meditation, whether done while seated, while standing, while walking, while brushing our teeth, etc, doesn’t get us anywhere, it just reminds us where we are. The result to which I am alluding then, the peace in the turmoil, is not “the end” either (a concept which, when related to our practice, we could all do without). Again, that is about remembering what, who, and where we are. Nor is it escapism – it is not a static blissed-out obliviousness to the world around us.

There is still work we can do, but not for the “sake of” attaining such abiding confidence. The work of the Bodhisattva path, as this ego-centric, un-ordained, and overly outspoken lay Buddhists currently understands it, rests on this all-embracing affirmation that is beyond any beyond concepts like attainment. That work rests on it, it abides with it, and the Bodhisattva finds the will and energy to do this work through it: to cultivate ethics, concentration, and wisdom through the Eightfold Path, to embody the six paramitas, to uphold the foundation of the three Pure Precepts.

Here I see the intersection of various practices and schools. The cross-roads between self-power and Other-power in Shin, the simplicity and clarity of Chan/Zen, the embodiment of the Gohonzon in Nichiren Buddhism, the deity practices of Tibetan Vajrayana, and even the Eucharist of Christianity.

This is followed by an examination of my own practice (in Practice makes perfect, except when it does not), a re-emergence of a topic (faith) not covered as much since 2006 (in Faith is not a fix) and relating it to my thoughts about peace in the turmoil, and a (continued) examination of the value for Western-raised Buddhists in learning about contemplative Christianity (in Manifesting God).

Other posts at the close of 2007 also spring from the theme of authenticity and invite visitors to contemplate the issue themselves - Fighting the good fight and Not taking sides... ask what authentic spirituality means in conflict, and the latter asks whether we are really serious about practicing what we preach:

Here, however, we have a specific example of someone, Thich Nhat Hanh, who did just what I was mentioning. He chose to see Bush as his brother and to appeal to his humanity and his divine/Buddha nature rather than simply mocking him or using angry accusations listing his personal failures and their consequences. So what do we make of this and similar letters, speeches, and other forms of communication? It is certainly something that we can appreciate coming from Thay as he is a world renowned peace activist and Buddhist teacher, but do we really believe that letter, assuming it was received and read, made a difference? And is effectiveness the primary yardstick in cases like this? Do we read things like this and "forgive" Thich Naht Hanh for his simplicity and directness (but also see it as a little naive) because of his status and image? Or is he on the right track, and if so, in what way should we follow his example? ...

Or to be really blunt - does such wording make the author sound like a spacey, out-of-touch, overly naive optimist who needs a reality check and to get involved in really making a difference rather than expressing futile sentimentality? Again, I know many or probably most of you might not think that about Thich Nhat Hahn, or if the letter had come from the Dalai Lama, but what if had come from a New Age guru running a crystal therapy center? Or from a Wiccan college freshman taking a course on globalization? Or from your own desk (assuming you are not a New Age guru running a crystal therapy center or a Wiccan college freshman taking a course on globalization)? That is, if you respect Thay's letter and approach, is it because you respect him or because you respect his letter and approach?

The final three posts of the year, What is your genuine interest in religion or spirituality?, The poor, the sick, the criminal, and the outcast, and Letting go of expectations not efforts, reflect an effort to process what I have been writing and considering regarding authentic practice.

After so much writing about trying to really "get it", I was much encouraged when I read (and later quote) the following perspective that originally appeared the Real Live Preacher blog...

Here are some signs of spiritual enlightenment:

• The embracing of paradox.
• The love of mystery in the presence of unanswered questions.
• The acceptance of your small place in reality.
• The willingness to engage in spiritual exercises without knowing how they will work or even what it would mean for them to work.
• The increase of the love, grace, forgiveness, and patience visible in your life.

And perhaps this review of my questions and seeking demonstrates why I recently chose to share this quote from a blog I found by someone trying to build a Shin temple in Romania:

Many Buddhist practitioners are like a man staring at the sun, but with his body in a hole full of shit. He is always looking at the sun, but he never realizes that his body is drowned in shit. Here the sun represents the ideal – Buddhahood to be attained through his own powers. This ideal is of course very beautiful and the practitioner always like to stare at it and to take delight in many beautiful words about Enlightenment, emptiness, Buddha-nature, that we are all Buddhas-to-be, etc. The hole of shit is his true reality of the here and now, his deep karmic evil, his limitations, attachments and blind passions that cover all his body and mind...

I often meet with people that talk a lot of the fact that we all posses Buddha-nature and because of this there is nothing that we have to do, but just realize this truth in our mind. They are always full of wise quotes from Buddhist masters and sages of the past from various schools, about Buddha-nature, emptiness, etc. Usually this kind of people try many types of practices, always going here and there, never being totally satisfied with any school or teacher...

Yup, that fits me to a T. Which is why one the shortest posts of 2007 may also be one of the most apt:

"Even the half-hearted hypocrite can sometimes stumble out of his arrogant stupor and accidentally bump into the simple Presence of the wisdom and compassion he normally gives the appearance of actually seeking."

Using dangerous words - talking about religious language

I recently read a new book titled Dangerous Words: Discussing God in the Age of Fundamentalism, and then posted an excerpt and recommendation on a friend's message forums. It attracted a response from an intelligent person who had a take on the issue, and even though we disagree on many points, he helped me articulate my own views a little better. That is what is being presented here - my replies. The first paragraph is new, and the rest is my half of the dialog stitched together into a single short essay, hence it may seem a little repetitive at times or to jump a little in tone or emphasis. I apologize for the unevenness. In any case, here it is, an ultra-concise (and therefore surely inadequate) summary of my general take on religious language (i.e. spiritual language, language of the sacred, etc).

Some people get antsy around religious language, becoming either confrontational or squeamish. A common objection is that we must deal with feelings and experiences that are highly subjective, and for some, this constitutes a weakness or inferiority of such experiences. But does that make sense? Should we resort to myopic view like the extreme end of scientism, where we discount anything that cannot be physically measured and reproduced?

Logic doesn't actually exist in the sense of being able to touch it or scan it. Neither does love. But I don't disqualify them from the category of "what is". I simply realize that they don't fit in the domain of things that are objectively, physically documented in the same way as minerals, vegetation, or brands of cola.

Nor does it do any good to say "We see reactions in the brain" when people feel or think a certain way or "We can hypothesize how neurons would process these things", because that still misses the mark. It would be like saying that "light" is the name we give to a reaction in the eye. In fact, "sight" is made possible by the eye, and actually takes place as we understand the experience in the brain, yet light is not just a "trick of the brain".

Nor should we be arrogant enough to suppose then that everything else we experience in our "heads" or "hearts" must in fact just be an artifact of biology because we don't have machines to locate or define other phenomena that we currently can only experience and not mechanically break down and describe. I am not arguing for any particular thing to be literally true, here, I am simply suggesting that we should be cautious in our dismissiveness.

Nor is it all about unquestioning devotion to a holy book. Lots of people who aren't fundamentalists put stock in books that they feel come with solid credentials, including sacred texts. The real difference in my view is that a non-fundamentalist can appreciate that religious language does not need to be literal language, and yet at the same time a religious person who is not a fundamentalist realizes that not all truths are in the domain of literal (a.k.a. historically-bounded) truth.

This comes in part from the realization that everything in this world is experienced in our heads. Everything. It cannot be otherwise. Our brain is the seat of our local consciousness. The only thing we can actually be sure of is the existence of our own awareness, an expression of such consciousness. The rest we must assume. That is the whole point behind the scientific enterprise - a methodology which attempts to make the most reliable possible statements about natural phenomena. But that doesn't make that which is not scientifically demonstrable "untrue" or without value. If one is going to go by their experiences, rather than just the received collective authority, as you mentioned earlier, then we must be open to the entire range of experience, even those which are highly personal or rare, even singular.

My point isn't the ontological status of phenomena, which is always a secondary assumption based on the metaphysical model we choose to employ. Instead, it is that our first, best knowledge of anything is our direct experience. Assumptions about how to pigeon-hole our experiences (natural vs. supernatural, this subcategory versus that subcategory) are not neutral. Our theories, models, and theologies are stripped down, simplified versions of the full richness of the actual, which can never be fully described or explained. Hence, understanding how our use of language shapes our perception of reality, whether or not one considers oneself "rational" or "atheist" or otherwise, should be a deep concern.

Nor am I referring specifically to "supernaturalism", which is really a way of trying to make literal interpretations of the metaphorical. However, that is irrelevant to what I am suggesting anyway, as 1) I personally don't use a dualistic universe model and 2) I am discussing the importance of being open to the potential of any given experience. My light/sight analogy isn't a justification for leprechauns or unicorns or Zeus. I am, however, pointing out that there are phenomena which can and do lie beyond the boundaries of strict empiricism as defined by "can I see it and measure it" and that they have value. In addition, my light/sight analogy is pointing out precisely that there can be phenomena we currently (and possible might only ever be able to) experience directly and subjectively and not subject to scientific study. That is, prior to our contemporary understanding of light and the optic nerve, which is still lacking, if someone could have monitored brain activity they may have presumed "light" was a made-up concept. That does not mean light is somehow supernatural. Even in science, people often make the greatest theoretical breakthroughs years before they can actually test them (Einstein comes to mind). Again, the point I am making, as a way of discussing the book I am recommending, is that religious language is useful for expressing experience and phenomena that are outside our standard matter-of-fact descriptions. Such language points us toward something, it doesn't define or prove that something in the way fundamentalists often suggest.

I am not strictly referring to "God", either. I am referring to things which we can experience but which we cannot go out and measure physically and reproduce visibly in a controlled experiment. However, there are common experiences which are reproduced on a personal level throughout history. I do not rush to presume what they must or must not mean in a conclusive and final way because I am aware of the limitations in the way we produce, refine, and store knowledge.

Nor am I suggesting different epistemologies for different classes of phenomena or experience. We can use light again as a helpful example. I assume we have all heard the wave-particle duality of light before: if we measure it one way, it acts like a particle. If we measure it another way, it acts like a wave. If someone were to try pin us down - is it a WAVE or is it a PARTICLE?- we would have to say it is both and neither. A literalist would be maddened by that. However, it isn't a reflection of a fault on the part of some aspect of reality, but rather our ability to describe that aspect. Our concepts of wave and particle are not fully adequate - which is why quantum physics has attempted to reconcile the duality, at least partially, by defining such duality as the result of an equation ("wave function"). Yet this is still not fully satisfying and is more predictive and than explanatory. In the same way, there are many experiences we cannot process according to our preconceived notions and categories into plain descriptive language, but instead only partially through myth and metaphor. This doesn't make these experiences "not true" or "not meaningful", but it does mean they can only be fully understood directly, not indirectly.

Someone could suggest this is"watering down the concept of God", but that assumes that Being is only significant in relation to the expectations or descriptions given it by a particular culture's religious language. In some ways, all people are talking about the same "God" and in some ways they are not. This was the subject of a much-borrowed ancient analogy of blindfolded men touching an elephant in the court of the King. Some men touched the legs, and said the elephant was like a tree trunk. Other touches the tail and said it was like a snake. Still others touched the snout, the tusks, or the ears, and came up with their own descriptions. Similarly some touched the sides and said it was smooth, vast, and featureless. Does that mean that if we try to go beyond any one description that we are not exactly talking about the same thing as someone who clings to a view based entirely on one aspect? Yes. Does it mean we are necessarily talking about totally different things? No. Again, it is a matter of the differences in how we relate to Being. So, if one simply talks about the source of the laws of physics, that is fine, but it is like talking about the sides of the elephant. It is not "wrong", just incomplete. The trouble, as always, is that in the absence of other categories in our heads, we intuitively substitute other images and feelings to stand for things that otherwise have no referent. So rather than looking for a literal meaning ("Being is a lover--huh????") , we have to beyond literal to understand the experience to which the imagery is pointing (deep intimacy).

Someone could also suggest this kind of discussion makes the word "God" meaningless. In the exclusivist literalist sense, the word does become meaningless. But what about people who are not exclusive literalists? Nor just because you liberate a word from one tight, narrow little meaning does not then in turn imply that the alternative is that it can mean "anything". That is the same logic used by opponents of gay marriage. Their reasoning is this: if you take away the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, it could mean anything, like a union between a man and a hamster or two women and a sex toy. This is fallacious. A reasonable alternative is available: marriage as the union between two consenting adults. In the same way, a non-fundamentalist view of God is not an arbitrary "anything goes". And the idea/word "God" does still possess value - the term is still a placeholder for a constellation of interrelated experiences and concepts that has no equivalent in our (and many closely affiliated) culture(s).

For a very brief glimpse into other ways of seeing the issue, here is a list of suggested guidelines recommended at an interfaith conference:

The Snowmass Conference's Guidelines for Interreligious Understanding


1. The world religions bear witness to the experience of the Ultimate Reality to which they give various names: Brahman, the Absolute, God, Allah, (the) Great Spirit, the Transcendent.


2. The Ultimate Reality surpasses any name or concept that can be given to It.


3. The Ultimate Reality is the source (ground of being) of all existence.


4. Faith is opening, surrendering, and responding to the Ultimate Reality. This relationship precedes every belief system.


5. The potential for human wholeness -- or in other frames of reference, liberation, self-transcendence, enlightenment, salvation, transforming union, moksha, nirvana, fana -- is present in every human person.


6. The Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships and service to others.


7. The differences among belief systems should be presented as facts that distinguish them, not as points of superiority.


8. In the light of the globalization of life and culture now in process, the personal and social ethical principles proposed by the world religions in the past need to be re-thought and re-expressed.


-from Speaking of Silence: Christian and Buddhists on the Contemplative Way by Thomas Keating

If one really wanted to get a better understanding of such ways of knowing and their roots in the sacred traditions of the world, there are many good sources. For these kinds of language issues there is of course the book Dangerous Words by Gary Eberle, and after that an ideal book to start next would be The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale. Probably selected passages from Paul Tillich's writing on ultimate concern would be helpful as well.

Of course all such discussions and philosophies are irrelevant outside of experience. Because religious language, including God-talk, is dynamic. It is understood in the doing, not in the discussing. Just as many people "know" a lot by reading a book on the topic but couldn't actually "do" what they were reading about to save their lives, one cannot make sense of religious and spiritual language without being engaged in what is being discussed.

God, religion, sacred texts and such things

What do I think about God, Jesus, religion, etc?

I am not suggesting you should necessarily care, but when in course of writing entries for a blog one finds oneself feeling like repeating the same information over and over, it is probably time to make a basic post outlining the issue for convenient future reference via web link. In this case I have written about some of this stuff before so this a more recent summary entry, a place I can redirect people to save us all time, and it may in the future be included as a reference for a newer summary. It's a bit long and you may find it boring in some places, so only go through what you find necessary or helpful or interesting. With that caution in mind, let's get going...

Sacred Texts

I see scriptures and sacred texts as revelations of the heart. So, there will be factual errors, historical and cultural biases, and conflicting perspectives. These writing are poems, parables, and personal narratives mixed with history and cultural values. If one strictly evaluates such writings on the basis of verifiable historical accuracy, one is missing out on quite a bit. Ahistorical truth refers to lessons which do not required the account in which they are embedded to be historically verifiable and accurate (for example, one doesn't have to show that the race between the tortoise and the hare actually happened to understand the value of the tale). So, given historical, cultural, and societal biases and looking at certain stories from this frame, there is a great deal of wisdom contained in many of the sacred texts of the world regardless of one's view about God or whether one belongs to a particular religion. But I have no time personally for claims of inerrancy, especially the literal variety.

For more on this search the entries for terms such as "ahistorical".

God

I also consider my position to be post-theism. That is, I do not require nor arbitrarily reject God language. The closest thing to established Western views of God I hold are akin to Tillich's object of ultimate concern, or what some may refer to as apophatic mysticism. In Eastern terms the closest references are non-personified and found in expressions such as Tao or Shunyata. So as far as some Super Creator from a particular human-made mythology - no, I do not believe in that. But neither do I embrace scientism, ontological naturalism/reductionism, nihilism, or the "absurdity of existence" schools of existentialism. To me, Being (notice the capped 'B') is beyond conventional conceptualization or descriptions, for example living/nonliving, finite/infinite, transcendent/immanent. That's why one employs terms like apophatic or ineffable.

Now, some people find this kind of description frustrating, like it is some way to put Being beyond scrutiny, or worse, when some people make very "effable" (cataphatic) statements about God or what not then retreat to " it's ineffable" when the questions get hard. In my view many constructions of "God" or "ultimate concern" are attempts to familiarize it and make it easier to discuss (and in some systems to predict or even control). Then there is the idea that to really open one's heart to the possibilities of our Being, it's hard for most, at least initially, to do so with a seemingly impersonal "force". Hence some personified construction may be useful initially as a place-holder. It is of course very easy to take such images and put them into service as symbols of power and control. I am opposed to such usage and the oppression which it can engender, as well as the fact that such placeholders tend to be shaped by the social psychology, cultural ecology, and political history of the people's making such imagery (polytheism versus montheism, for example).

If you want to get more specific examples, how my views have changed, or read more general discussion of the topic, search the entries here for terms such as "God" and "Ultimate Reality".

Religion

So, given what is written above about sacred texts and God, what about religion? A working personal definition I have for the term is "A mediation of spiritual insight and conventional cultural knowledge through traditions employing myth and ritual." In order to understand it better it helps to know my working definition for spirituality - "Being connected to something in a sense of transcending our own personal limitations, a dedication to something greater than ourselves offering a sense of purpose or fulfillment." I have written quite a bit about how I use the term religion, including in the entry that talks about the goals and perspective of this blog. I think this entry and that entry might also be helpful for further clarification.


Jesus & Christianity

So, taking Jesus as an example of how this works in my perspective, this entry is very helpful! If you are still curious, then this one and that one are also helpful expansions on that foundation. And even more helpful might be this one here - from it one can get a glimpse of what Christianity might look like adopting the kinds of definitions and concepts that I am discussing here (I think it resembles the Christianity called for by Bishop Spong)...

1. "God" is a controversial term because of the place it holds in our language and the deeply personal nature of the experiences and stories in which it is relevant. In this context it represents the endless potential from/in which which all existence/universes spring, known in various cultures and traditions as I AM, as the Tao, as the essence of shunyata and tathata expressed as the dharmakaya, and other hopeless attempts to name the ineffable, which is simultaneously transcendent and immanent.


2. In an attempt to grasp and make this Source familiar, myths arose using metaphorical and poetic language in which God was fashioned in our own image as an anthropomorphic Supreme Being, that is, a Creator God who is more or less like a human being without all the faults and with unlimited knowledge and power. Yet all traditions have elements, in particular revelations from mystic seekers, which speak of Being beyond human labels such as "personal" or "impersonal".


3. Creation, rather than viewed as a singular event, can be seen as a perpetual act of the Divine of which all of existence is composed and in which all of existence participates, arising and dissolving in a continuous flow of what can be and what is.


4. Sin in this scenario is separation from direct union with the mind/will of the Source; rather than a literal view of sin as a blood curse inherited from the disobedience of Adam and Eve, it is a description of how certain actions, speech, and thoughts lead one away from the truth of the fundamental inter-connection of all things. In this ignorance we forget our own inherent completeness as an individual within a greater whole.


5. Original sin is the story (interpreted figuratively) of how humanity became separated from God, that is, how they came to neglect an inherent awareness of the Divine, or again, our interrelated to all that is. This is a personal story that is replayed over and over in the life of every human being, not simply and event that occurred in an actual garden.


6. The story of the Gospels is the story of how God became manifest in the human world as Jesus Christ in order to bridge the gulf that came to separate humanity from the Divine; in this view it is an ahistorical (its value goes beyond its historical reality) story providing an exemplar of the the proper relationship of humanity and the Divine. That is, to be "crucified and resurrected with Christ" is to follow his example of spiritual maturity and realize the same uncompromising love for all of humanity. In remembering our inherent union with the Source, we are reconciled to it and completed by it.


7. The story of Jesus being crucified, being laid to rest in a tomb, and experiencing a bodily resurrection after three days, is a part of the larger ahistorical teaching; the truth of the story lies in the heart, not in what cannot be verified or rejected empirically. In this sense Christ is met in opening our hearts to all people in service and love, not simply by reading a book, saying the proper spell or prayer, or belonging to the right religion or denomination.


8. The message of Christ is one of reconciliation with God and the abundance of undifferentiated grace; the plight of the unsaved is a depiction of the suffering of those who have not been reconciled to God, whether it be through religion or not.