The Psalms as mirror and inner voice

The Psalms are not my favorite example of sacred literature. I am just not a fan. My reaction to them was one of the red flags that kept me questioning my connection to mainstream Christianity. I simply do not find them comforting, empowering, or inspiring but I do tend to find them tiresome or offensive.

The Psalms in Hebrew and Latin. Manuscript on parchment, 12th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First, understand that I do appreciate that the Psalms are sacred poetry. I've read various books by Thomas Merton including three with a heavy emphasis on the Psalms (Contemplative Prayer, Praying the Psalms, Bread in the Wilderness), I've read Psalms: A Spiritual Commentary by Basil Pennington, I've read Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I've read The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, Prayers from the Darkness: The Difficult Psalms by Lyn Fraser, and so on.

Second, I read these books while studying as a novice oblate with a Benedictine community and wrote reports examining and reflecting on them and the discussing my thoughts and reactions with a Benedictine to further delve into meaning and response. This was not casual reading.

Third, prior to and during the novitiate I regularly performed the Daily Office and chose a schedule for the readings which completed the Psalter once per month. I did this for over a year and a half. I am  familiar with the Psalms themselves.

My relationship to the Psalms then isn't based on a casual acquaintance, nor is it based on a fundamentalist or literalist mindset. I realize that there are cultural and historical differences with the writers of the Psalms and today's readers of these ancient poems, and that poems are not to be read as prescriptive theology. Yet I am still not fond of them and don't connect with them.

And now I'm going to suggest what value they can possess for anyone on a spiritual path, whether or not they identify with the Bible or the Abrahamic religions.

Wrestling with traditional Christian scripture and prayers

So here's the thing.

There are many wonderful people who have come to such profound insight into the Divine, and through this to a solidarity with the core insights of other religions, by practicing with traditional Christian scriptures and prayers.  They have inspired me, and I mention them often: Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. Thomas Keating, Fr. Richard Rohr, Fr. Bede Griffiths, Br. Wayne Teasdale, Br. David Steindl-Rast (to name a few).  So for reasons discussed elsewhere I joined a politically tolerant, theologically inspirational Episcopal parish with a strong anglo-catholic flavor ("high church liturgy"). The Anglicans, including the Episcopal Church, recommend their version of the Daily Office to both priests and laity alike, religious and secular.  So this sounds like a good idea.  Many in the Anglican tradition simply don't do any of the Daily Offices at all, let alone on a regular basis.  And when they do go to Mass, the reading from the Psalter (the Psalms) tends to be edited so that the harsh portions are left out.  So I will offer some background on my views as well as examples of why this practice hasn't been working out as well as I had initially hoped.

It should be recalled that I see no reason to defend the Bible as something it isn't but rather to appreciate it for what it is.  It is an attempt to record people's understanding of their encounter with the Divine Mystery.  This means appreciating things such as historical and cultural context in the use of language and thus not missing the point of why something was phrased a particular way rather than assuming it would have been said the exact same way if it were written today.  Otherwise much of the power of the texts is muted and we risk misunderstanding that can be profoundly damaging. The necessary process of maintaining the vitality of such texts and their commentaries produces a perpetual tension between between received wisdom through tradition and insights from ongoing revelation.  I don't have any need to deny that there is all manner of ugliness recorded in the Bible, often framed as the will of God, nor should anyone be surprised to find such things.  The human path to peace and wisdom is filled with wrong turns and dead ends because of our shortcomings and poor choices.  Our hearts, the deepest parts of our selves, are often hard, narrow, and crowded, which causes plenty of distortion in discerning who God is and what God wants.

Thomas Merton on the how to approach the Bible

Image via Wikipedia

You may recall my mentioning the late Fr. Thomas Merton as offering a mature and approachable vision of God and Christianity. He was asked to write an introductory essay for what was to be a special Time-Life edition of the Bible. This essay was edited and published under its original title, "Opening the Bible". The following excerpts come from pages 12-18 of this volume and highlight seemingly timeless concerns about how to approach that sacred text.

Nor does Merton pull any punches or shy away from controversial or troubling aspects of wrestling with the Bible. See for yourself how this introduction to the essay seems to be written in response to some very contemporary complaints, reservations, and objections.

From the very start, then, we must clarify the meaning of the Bible's basic claim to be the "word of God." We must understand that this claim does not mean that the Bible is an entirely unworldly book, a message from eternity, a contemptuous dismissal of the world in a promulgation issued from "out there" beyond the confines of time and space. The Bible is not a denial of the world, a rejection of man, a negation of time and history and a condemnation of all that has been done by man in his world and in history. Nor is the Bible something that is meant to be superimposed on the world, man and history from the outside, an added revelation of an extra hidden meaning, something beyond man's everyday concerns and his ordinary existence, something that has to be accepted even though superfluous, and given preference over the ordinary familiar reality which seems to us more important.

In other words, the basic claims of the Bible are not to be interpreted in terms such as these: "Yes, there is an ordinary world in which you live your life with your fellow men. But this world is wicked and you are insignificant. While continuing to live in it and obey its rules, you have to carefully learn a whole new body of truths which will seem to you senseless in incomprehensible, and you must add this superstructure of strange ideas on to what you see and know by your natural reason. You must now live in two worlds at the same time, one visible and the other invisible; one comprehensible and the other incomprehensible; one familiar and the other frightening and strange; one where you can be yourself and one where you must strive to be unnaturally 'good'; one which you instinctively take to be real, but which you must repudiate for the other which is truly real, though to you it seems totally superfluous.

This divisive and destructive pattern of life and thought is not the Bible message at all. The message of the Bible is precisely a message of unity and reconciliation, and all-embracing and positive revelation from which nothing real is excluded and in which all receives its full due and its ultimate meaning. One-sided distortions of the Bible have made it seem partial, and have restricted it to narrow, exclusive areas of "the sacred" and "the devout", as if to understand God's message one had to shut out God's world and man and history and time. As if faith meant the formal acceptance of the irrational and the absurd. As if one had to live by reason and common sense while at the same time repudiating and ridiculing them.

When viewed in this way the Bible becomes a kind of an enormous cinder lodged in the eye of the world, blocking all normal vision and substituting pain, darkness and tears for the joy of daylight. In saying that we must expect to be outraged by the Bible, I am not trying to maintain that we must let it insult our intelligence. The Bible may be difficult and confusing, but it is meant to challenge our intelligence, not insult it. It becomes insulting when it is distorted by fanaticism and foolish religiosity; but we must not blame the Bible for the distortions imposed on it by others.

This is a really important message that contradicts the expectations many of us hold because of how it has been presented to us. The Bible is intended for the here and now. Dealing with this common misconception, he moves on to another - whether the the Bible is still relevant to the here and now of modern times...

Nevertheless, and quite apart from the question of theological faith (which is a special problem in itself), modern man may find himself wondering, in all honesty, whether the Bible is even readable. So much of it is archaic. So much is seemingly exotic, utterly alien to life as we know it. True, our own civilization is still full of resonances from Judeo-Christian culture, therefore from the Bible. True, that in "searching the Scriptures" we may find, if not Christ as a living reality, at least some echoes of familiar ideas. But should we read the Bible merely for the comfort of discovering the source of a few religious cliches?

...

In order to read the Bible honestly we have to avoid entrenching ourselves behind official positions, whether religious or cultural, whether for or against the Bible itself. The book is surrounded by every possible kind of myth and superstition, whether religious or anti-religious, theistic or atheistic, scientific or anti-scientific. The reader is plunged into a field of conscious and unconscious tensions even before he opens the book. He has to take this into account, too, and try to live with it. It is nothing new, and it is not even peculiar to modern man. It was known even in the so-called ages of faith when the Bible was set up, not against Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, but against Homer, Virgil, and Sophocles.

Jerome, the fourth-century monk and translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), faced this problem in his own peculiarly ambivalent way. He knew that the Greek and Latin classics were in fact better than the Bible merely as "literature," and that there were far different reasons for reading the Bible. Yet nevertheless the quality of the Bible is something quite peculiar, because the literary qualities of the authors (hence too of the understanding of the reader) is more than literary. It is religious, sometimes even to the point of being "prophetic" or "mystical" or "eschatological." Yet the prophetic and eschatological qualities of the experience are grounded in ordinary life.

In other words, even to appreciate much of the Bible as literature one has to come to terms with the fact that it gives literary expression to an experience that is more than aesthetic. Not only is it beyond literature, it is also in a certain sense beyond "religion"--beyond the doubt and cleansing awe of initiation into ritual and mystery, beyond the healing and transforming sense of moral transcendence.

And then of course, there is the question of what kind of authority the Bible claims to hold:

The Bible claims to contain a message which will not merely instruct you, not merely inform you about the distant past, not merely teach you certain ethical principles, or map out a satisfying hypothesis to explain your place in the universe and give your life meaning--much more than that, the Bible claims to be: The Word of God.

But what is this "word of God"? Is it simply a word of extreme and incontestable authority? Does it impose on man an outrageous doctrine which as no real meaning for his life, but which has to be accepted under penalty of going to hell? Once again, this utter distortion of the Bible is the result of fragmentation, division, and partiality. The prophets themselves protested, in God's name, against the perversion of the word of God in the interests of sectarianism, nationalism, power, politics. (See Jeremiah 23:23-40.) To set up some limited human interest as an absolute to be blindly believed, followed and obeyed even unto death is to set up a "dead word," a destructive and idolatrous word in the place of the "living word" of God. "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12).

The basic claim made by the Bible for the word of God is not so much that it is to be blindly accepted because of God's authority, but that it is recognized by its transforming and liberating power. The "word of God" is recognized in actual experience because it does something to anyone who actually "hears" it: it transforms his entire existence.

With these issues out the way, the essay goes into much more depth about the message and meaning of the Bible. Whatever your beliefs or views on religion, I recommend reading the rest for yourself!

Oh, They've Encased Jesus in Carbonite

[Yes, this post is long by blog standards and in a world of twittering and texting, but I've examined the matter and breaking this up into smaller posts really screws up its flow and cohesion, so suck it up and wade in... :o) ]

People have long used images like keeping God in a little wooden box, so I thought I would use an image more familiar to my generation. Jesus is alive, and in perfect hibernation. Frozen forever in a familiar form, easily pictured and understood. Come and kneel - pray before the Carbonite Jesus. He always looks the same, an image inert in time and space - oh how we love thee, Carbonite Jesus.

For those not familiar with my reference, Jesus was a first century Rabbi in Palestine who was executed for sedition. A holy man and reported miracle worker, many of his followers would claim he was/is the son of God. The other reference is to a process by which Darth Vader planned to immobilize his son, Luke Skywalker, for transport his master Emperor Palpatine in the film The Empire Strikes Back.

What is known about the teachings of Jesus emphasize the Hebrew prophetic tradition of emphasizing that obedience to God is to love God and to love others, and that the other Jewish laws must be understood in this context. Hence Jesus took up a call similar to the prophets recorded in the "Old" Testament to be humble and to identify with and serve the weak and the powerless. After his death his followers reported he had been resurrected (not resuscitated, merely bringing his old body back to life). Further, many of his followers claimed he had ascended to Heaven.The early Christian community argued over whether he was a man who had become a god or who had achieved union with God and therefore divinity, or whether he was just God pretending to be a human in a flesh suit. Later his followers would reject both ideas, suggesting he was fully human and fully divine as an aspect of the Trinity. The specific details were left as a mystery of faith. Still others argued whether he arose in his old body, a new body, a body of matter, a body of spirit, or something else. The early community simply said he was resurrected and left an empty tomb. The specific details of his bodily resurrection were left as a mystery of faith.

Many of his followers saw his death and resurrection as an indication of God's solidarity with humanity, an opportunity to participate in divinity as fellow children of God. Trusting in the insights offered by the Gospels and following the example of Jesus were seen as a means of salvation, of transcending a limited life characterized by alienation from an appreciation of the intimate presence and unyielding love of God. Early on, following Jesus was often to defy tradition and what was comfortable and conventional, to be liberated in a way that even death could not taint or corrupt. Such joy and freedom saw Christianity spread and eventually become a state religion, and after this marriage of tradition and politics it became a world religion.

Throughout the centuries as Western history marched on, Christianity became the primary religion of Europe, subject to the influences of politics, bureaucracy, tribalism, racism, regionalism, and eventually nationalism. As the currency of power and control it attracted both noble and ignoble leaders and challengers. Councils were held to formalize and standardize the religion, schisms formed, reformations erupted, and in the background of war and peace and justice and injustice was the crucifix, the cross, and the statues and paintings of Christ and his family and followers. Like all religions and human institutions, the hopes and fears of hundreds of generations became woven into the theologies and practices of those receiving the tradition.

But what ever became of Jesus?

I don't think that provincialism or tribalism is a great way to assess the universal validity of something, so after I left conservative fundamentalist Protestantism and went in and out of anti-spiritual/anti-religious atheism, I got to know a lot more about other world religions as well as some indigenous/Earth-based traditions. I studied Buddhism broadly and centered my specific focus on East Asian (especially Japanese) forms of Mahayana Buddhism, though I had and keep a soft spot for the incredible writings and teachings of figures like the 14th Dalai Lama. And like the hundreds, possibly thousands of others in this kind of situation, having matured a bit about the nature and importance of religion and spirituality, and how it is (in)appropriately expressed in various ways, I naturally got interested in interfaith efforts and insights. This led me to find figures and ideas in historical and contemporary Christianity I hadn't been aware of before, especially the contemplative and mystical dimensions and the broader view of the value of the Gospels and the liturgies of the more sacramental forms of Christianity and the power of practicing forms of devotion.

These authors* - Br. Wayne Teasdale, Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. Thomas Keating, Br. David Steindl-Rast, and those like them were/are not trying to rewrite Catholicism or Christianity, but rather express the vision of Church and Christ and God that they had received from the Church and presumably from their devotion to Jesus. In addition I benefited from reading about the encounters and dialogues between accomplished Buddhist teachers and their Christian counterparts, as well from as those who had journeyed from one tradition to the other (and sometimes back again). The result may strike some as trying to recast Jesus and his ministry or his relevance to their theological views on life and death. That is not my intent.

Instead, the question that starts to take shape has to do with the essentials or fundamentals of Christianity. Obviously, the Orthodox, Roman Catholics and their primary offshoots can point to their catechism or the set of creeds to which they adhere, and the Fundamentalists were so named because of the pamphlet their ideological forebearers produced outlining what they viewed as the fundamentals of proper Christianity. I appreciate the importance of trying to have standards about important teachings so that they can be faithfully passed on and properly received from generation to generation, and I have no wish here to denigrate such efforts. Obviously, they were useful in guiding the spiritual development of past saints and visionaries often lauded by those who favor the mystic/contemplative dimensions of the Gospel like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, etc, as well as those contemporary Christian authors mentioned before.

But that only begs the question - are such traditions meant to guide and influence spiritual growth or to curtail it and box it in? How much latitude is there in interpretation and what is the value of practical personal experience? These questions have stirred controversy and dissent note only throughout the history of Christianity but also throughout the history of every major world religion. And is the goal of a religion merely to perpetuate itself intact from age to age or is it to remind us of the transformative insights and experiences of its founder(s) so that others may be guided and inspired in their own spiritual journey? I take the latter view.

Again, the earliest and most consistently enduring valued aspects of the Gospels (as far as I can tell) include the belief that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is an indication of God's solidarity with humanity and an opportunity to participate in his divinity as fellow children of God. To know God not as a distant, alien ruler or tyrant but as Abba - our Father. That trusting in the insights offered by the Gospels and following the example of Jesus are a means of salvation, of transcending a limited life characterized by alienation from an appreciation of the intimate presence and unyielding love of God. That following Jesus often means to defy convention and tradition in order to be liberated in a way that even death could not taint or corrupt.

This is what my intellect, my heart, and my conscience tell me is the most relevant and essential aspects of the Gospels and the Christian tradition. Everything else either points back to these basic beliefs or attempts to explain, rationalize, or justify them. Some of these additional efforts are useful for many, some are useful for a few. Some are logical and consistent with the values expressed in the basic beliefs mentioned above, others or inconsistent or tangential, either because they are anachronisms, culturally inappropriate, or because they came from a human need to control and exclude along tribal, regional, racial, economic, ethnic, or political lines.

Both Jesus and his apostles chose different ways of speaking to the people's understanding, to bridge the definitions/perception of divinity and humanity they work with. In Buddhism this is known as skillful or expedient means - sharing an essential truth in a way that is suitable to the audience. There were many stories that kings and rulers used to justify their legitimacy. Many of the ways of telling Christ's story inverted these standard tropes - for example being born in a manger. In other cases well-understood symbols were crossed or exaggerated to try to make a particular point to the audience. This was also true of the stories told after Christ's death.

Take substitutionary atonement. It works up to a point as a metaphor, but if it doesn't get you to the bigger picture, it leads to the strongest forms of Calvinism, of extreme judgmentalism and exlucisivism. The way I understand that particular theological model is that we are all already embraced by God but we cannot see it or accept it. It is our duality of thinking, of God and not-God, of exaggerating the objective reality of good and evil, that keeps us from accepting this truth and resting in God. This way of thinking, of a cosmic struggle, of us and them, is clearly expressed in the most concrete of terms in the Bible as the view of God alternates between a jealous and insecure sky-deity and an all-embracing Source of all that is becoming.

But that doesn't mean we are just supposed to accept that view without further thought or reflection, as the flat-thinking folks would have us believe. I believe it does however, when combined with what Christ taught, ask us to follow through. Christ had to die because we are the ones who see a distance between ourselves and God, because we give our faith to such distinctions. We are the source of alienation, and we don't know how to truly love ourselves and each other, to forgive ourselves and each other, to heal and allow ourselves to be healed. It isn't God's sense of justice that must be satisfied - it isn't God's sense of isolation and intrinsic autonomy that has caused the perception of a rift between ourselves and God (that is, it isn't God's sin) - it isn't God who ate from the fruit of the tree and divided the world into good and evil -it is our own doing. That is a fuller picture of how to appreciate substitutionary atonement in my humble opinion. In our sin we don't just act bad, we fail to achieve our full goodness - our full potential.

So what does all of this suggest about what happened to Jesus? From a panentheistic point of view, everything is Divine. A wave is made of water, but it isn't the entire ocean. If you get rid of all of the waves, eventually there is no more ocean, so to get to know the ocean, become familiar with the waves. The ocean itself is too vast to comprehend in an intellectual sense, but we can still go float in it and experience it directly (which is especially meaningful when we realize we are part of the ocean). The other half, that we can know the ocean by knowing a wave, is important to your question. It is reflected in the Jewish teaching that Jesus taught was supreme - that to know and love God is to know and love others. The Gospels paint a picture of someone who embraces and embodies this Wisdom and lives the teaching every day, every moment, including his willingness to give up his life.

Jesus reminds us we are not lost and dies to make sure we know we are found - that any possible reason we might cling to that we think would keep us from God is no longer an obstacle. Details about his divinity and his resurrection are generally considered mysteries of the faith. Points where we can never receive a complete or satisfactory answer and which are therefore left as a matter of faith. Panentheism, for example, is just as good an analogy as any but like all such systems it is ultimately incomplete and just a useful guide marker on the spiritual journey. Yet we also have the ascension. In this Jesus returns to God/goes to Heaven. To the heart of Creation, which is constantly unfolding. To the Ground of Being and the Source of Becoming. In other traditions this might be referred to as the non dual coexistence of Shunyata and the Pure Land, the Dharmakaya, the Tao.

In this sense, historically, as the stories of the resurrection and ascension spread and became incorporated into The Way (which would later become better known as Christianity), and symbolically, Jesus in the Christian tradition comes to be understood in cosmic terms, as the face and substance of the phenomenological aspect of reality (or of form, to use the Buddhist equivalent). Hence, as folks such as Fr. Keating like to describe it (adding in Mystic/Buddhist subtitles), the Father (Ground of Being/Source of Becoming) empties himself into the Son (the phenomenological or historical dimensions of existence), and the Son empties himself into the Father. Or as the Heart Surtra frames it, form is no other than emptiness**, emptiness no other than form - form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form. They are not really two, but one. Of course in Christian tradition there is a trinity that is one, not a duality. In such a scenario the third part of the trinity is in found in the act of transformation itself - that which helps to define the other two elements and which demonstrates they are simply different aspects of the same. Hence it is supposedly what we "receive" when we realize our own connection to God through the person of Jesus.

There are loads of implications for what it means to have the symbol of love and peace and God's solidarity with Creation being at the heart of Creation as it is constantly formed and reformed. Many of have been pondered ceaselessly, and others likely have yet to be realized. But among them is the denial that "the world", as used in a pejorative sense in the Christian tradition, simply means the physical world, because Christ is at the heart of it. (Again, I think it is the false world we make for ourselves in our delusion, samsara; I also have a thought on what this could mean for sacraments like the Eucharist.) It would also entail a respect for all things inspiring peace and love, since these also must come from Christ. Hence Christ can be heard when a Buddhist chants Nam(u) Myoho Renge Kyo, or Nam(u) Amitofo/Amida, or Om Mane Padme Hung, and in that moment the Buddhist cultivates a respect for all living things or an awareness of his own connection to a larger reality filled with wisdom and compassion. Hence Christ can be seen when a professed atheist works to teach poor children to read out of respect and love for humanity.

But too often, however we have heard of Christ, either from a traditional or non-traditional perspective, as a King, as a Redeemer, or even as a dashboard Buddy, we tend to lock him into a fixed and familiar form. To follow him is often reduced to following a rigid prescription of activities using the right materials and affirming the right beliefs without question, and to reject him is to reject this setup. To grow our understanding of God and Jesus by going beyond the Bible and the cross or whatever we have attached to our fixed image of Jesus is unthinkable, even when this doesn't mean rejecting the Bible or the cross, even when this enhances and builds on our understanding of the Bible and the cross. Clark Strand suggests in his book (How to Believe in God) that often such folks are half-believers, that is, they aren't secure enough or deep enough into the insights of their own faith to be able to appreciate other perspectives. They limit God and they limit Jesus to working only within the familiar and traditional confines of the religion humans created to honor and follow Jesus, which in a way is tragically ironic. This isn't an insult towards the Church, but an observation of successes and failures of the institutions of the Church (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, etc) in creating and correcting such phobia of anything that doesn't officially "look" or "sound" properly "Christian".

[Anecdote: I recently observed a Protestant Fundamentalist reacting with horror to a Catholic suggesting that those who don't truly know Christ and his saving grace can still realize salvation because the truth, if not overt Christianity, is written in their hearts. The Fundamentalist was, at least in his typed reply, almost apoplectic. I would, theoretically at least for the sake of argument, go a little further (given this premise and assuming a less limited view of Jesus) and suggest that even ex-Christians, who knew all the theology and felt joy and power in their lives, who believed all the creeds etc, may not have fully known or understood, in a personal way, what Jesus really represents and who he is. This is not a lame attempt to say they were never really Christians, etc, but rather to suggest that any Jesus or God we can truly and completely dump in our heart of hearts and live without doesn't seem like it would be the complete and full legit article, does it? And the ones who go to Hell are supposedly the ones how are truly aware of Christ and the fullness of his grace and mercy and reject him anyway. This in turn to me implies again the universalist view of Christ. Rather than suggesting that these people are going to Hell because they don't believe in Jesus, we can argue they are not because they haven't actually rejected Jesus. That the point of such a teaching would actually seem to be that no one can possibly reject the actual full and genuine experience of the grace of God, whatever package it comes in (or conversely we could say that so long as we do reject such grace the state we live in would be Hell). And that the package doesn't have to come stamped with a little Cross and a Bible verse. I didn't mention these potential extrapolation of their debate though as I was afraid the one fellow might blow a gasket!]

Each of us has the temptation to take what we think about some revelation we perceive as being from God, in this case the life, example, and status of Jesus, and turn it into an idol. Something convenient. Something comfortable. Something we think we can control. Each of us at some point or another has given into this urge, even if we never used the language of religion or spirituality. And for those whose understanding of God is centered in the person of Jesus, we have all taken our turn at freezing him in carbonite. But Christ's message above all was about liberation, whether couched in terms of salvation or redemption, and perhaps one of the most difficult things one can do if one is inspired by and wants to follow Jesus is to let go of the confining certainty of a few scraps of dogma and scripture for the entire package of tradition AND the living Christ.

It's always best to use practical concrete examples, and great case in point can be found in this recent story about the concern over an Episcopal priest who practices Zen, in which people focus on form and emptiness and generate compassion for all living things...

Unofficial tallies show that an Episcopal priest who practices Zen Buddhist meditation and holds controversial theological views will not likely be consecrated as bishop of the Diocese of Northern Michigan.


James Tonkowich, president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, however, argued, "The issue is not whether meditation is good, it is what is being meditated on."


"While church leaders may respect other faiths, their vow of Christian ordination has always meant an exclusive commitment to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith."


Responding to criticisms of Thew Forrester's Buddhist meditation, Rustin Kimsey, retired bishop of the Diocese of Eastern Oregon, said, "[W]hen did the way in which we are deepened into the presence of God become a litmus test for being a follower of Jesus Christ?"


Source

Excellent question, Bishop Kimsey, excellent question.


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*It should not be assumed that because these or other author's mentioned may have helped inspire or flesh out the theology and Christology presented here that they would actually agree with my views.

**form refers to phenomena, including anything we can perceive with our senses or conceptualize in our minds; emptiness refers to lack of intrinsic or inherent qualities, that is, it refers to the fact that all form is inter-dependent and transient. Emptiness also refers to potential, the potential upon which existence is based. Hence all forms are interconnected through cause and effect by way of emptiness. The upshot is that all things, including all people and every moment, are fleeting and unique, irreplaceable and therefore valuable beyond measure; it also implies a fundamental equality of all people as well.

Western Buddhists - stay or go home?

Tricycle's Blog recently quoted a sentiment I have run across several times, including a few times from this one individual...

Many Westerners attracted to Buddhist practice have abandoned their own spiritual traditions. They reject the churches and clergy of their own traditions because they feel constricted and uncomfortable with the attitudes and practices they have encountered there. They have suffered within their own tradition and so have sought another. They approach Buddhist practice with the hope of replacing their own tradition and may wish to break away from their own tradition forever.
According to Buddhist wisdom, such wishing is in vain. A person severed from her own culture and traditions is like a tree pulled out by the roots. Such a person will find it hard to be happy. Buddhist practice can offer effective means to heal, reconcile, and reunite with one’s blood and spiritual families, in order to discover the precious gems in one’s own traditions. Thanks to the practice, people will see that Buddhism and their own spiritual tradition have many things in common, and therefore it is not necessary to reject their own spiritual tradition. They will see that there are things that need to be transformed in Buddhism as well as in their own tradition.
–Thich Nhat Hanh, from Teachings on Love (Parallax Press)

I replied with the following...

If you aren’t ready or able to see the use of returning to your religion of ancestry, then do not. The advice doesn’t just say “Go back.” It says to be healed first, implying growing and dealing with the attachment, confusion or pain previously associated with that ancestral religion and to use the insights from Buddhist practice to find what may have been previously overlooked in your old faith. I would venture to suggest that such reconciliation, in part or total, would eventually be necessary an inevitable even if one stayed on the Buddhist path. Just because you can’t appreciate that being possible now doesn’t mean it cannot happen. No need to force or rush anything or to presume where your path will lead. It will be alright and guide you just where you needed to be. :^)

The thing is, I can see how my experience with Buddhism has impacted my view of Judaism and Christianity, opened my eyes to the contemplative and mystical dimensions of Christianity and neglected but traditional forms of exegesis. The ideas of apparent paradox, the importance of the tension between literal and figurative meanings, the value of ahistorical truth, etc, have been amazing on my appreciation of Christianity. I share the excitement and enthusiasm of people like Clark Strand in (re)discovering the wisdom and compassion of the Bible, even if I am not on his level of insight (see my review of his book on the subject). Books like Going Home: Jesus and the Buddha as Brothers as well as the work and writings of Christians like Br. Wayne Teasdale, Br. David Steindl-Rast, Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. Thomas Keating, and those saints (official and unofficial) who inspired them along with authors like Marcus Borg, along with strong social justice movements for peace and the welfare of all (such as liberation theology) tell me such insights and views are not flukes nor are they extinct in Christianity. And my apophatic contemplative mysticism provided a viable theological foundation.

But I am not finding it easy to decide to go with Buddhism or to go with Christianity. It's hard to find Buddhist communities to practice with, and my cultural (if not karmic) affinities tend to be Western and therefore Judeo-Christian. But then, my ideal Christian community, which would be the size, scope, and liturgical/historical richness and community of the Roman Catholic Church mixed with the interfaith respect and progressive values of the Unitarian Universalist, does not exist, and the idea of just where I would fit is hard to say. On the other hand, many Buddhist communities would have no problem with a new member with Christian affinities. But I don't "know" the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas like I do the Hebrew prophets, Jesus and his parents/disciples, etc. Maybe it would help if a teacher were to say "They aren't equivalent, but this Bodhisattva is like Peter and this Enlightened Being is like John the Baptist and this historical figure is like Moses..." Because even if you try to take these alien figures seriously as part of the service, it needs to be sincere, not just politely going along.

So anyway, as I wrote recently, if you want to pitch your group or congregation, I am open to suggestions.

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

Christian Buddhists? Buddhist Christians?

I have found the question of the compatibility (or lack thereof) of Christianity and Buddhism to be very contentious in certain circles, so I thought I might take the topic out for a spin. So can you be a Christian and a Buddhist? Of course. And absolutely not. Given the choice between the two answers, which would you prefer? But before you decide, let's take a closer look at how we can arrive at these two mutually exclusive answers.

Let's start with the rejection of compatibility. That's not too hard to understand. You start by presuming that being a Christian requires the following beliefs:

1. there is an anthropomorphic Supreme Being, that is, a Creator God who has a will and a consciousness with a personality; more or less this God is like a human being without all the faults and with unlimited knowledge and power; as a perfect Being this God is changeless and eternal.
2. this same God made the Universe at some point in the remote past and either directly created or set in motion the creation of human beings who were initially in total union with the divine will.
3. sin is separation from direct union with the mind/will of God
4. original sin is the story (interpreted figuratively or literally) of how humanity became separated from God, that is, how they came to neglect an inherent awareness of the Divine.
5. 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; this was accomplished by Christ acting as a substitute for all those who deserved eternal separation from God because of either original sin (which is inherited) or their own sins (acts separating them from/going against their sense of the Divine).
6. Jesus was crucified, laid to rest in a tomb, and experienced a bodily resurrection after three days, eventually directly ascending to Heaven, the realm beyond the mortal world where the heart of God dwells.
7. only by believing these stories and accepting the grace of God offered through Christ can a person's soul escape eternal torment/annihilation.

On the other hand, you assume that being a Buddhist means believing teachings which state:

1. everything is impermanent (so a changeless, eternal God as required above would not be compatible with this view) because everything is empty (of intrinsic existence); this is also argued to go against the concept of an eternal soul if a soul is also supposed to somehow be eternal and fixed.
2. even heaven and hell realms are temporary (and possible figurative/metaphoric) and reflections of our choices, i.e. karma; there is no appeal to a Supreme Being to change our karmic consequences.
3. everything is interdependent via the concept of dependent co-arising, so again, there is no existence outside of this connected web of causality and presumably no place for an eternal, changeless Being.
4. one may experience many lifetimes before being liberated from the cycle of birth and death (this can be seen literally or figuratively), which conflicts with the idea in traditional Christianity of living one life then being judged for eternity.
5. the narrow exclusivity of the previously described beliefs of Christianity doesn't fit well with the idea of following the teachings of a different religion.

The conflict, then, between a traditional Christian view and a common Western Buddhist outlook, is fairly obvious. A deeper or more comprehensive comparison and analysis is certainly possible, but even at such a superficial level as has been outlined here one can apprehend why Buddhism and Christianity are often said to be mutually exclusive. Yet there are people who write books comparing the saying of the Buddha and Christ, as well as those who claim to benefit from a syncretic belief involving Jesus and the Buddha (and perhaps other teachers). To appreciate why this may be so, let us consider the distinction of being a Christian Buddhist and a Buddhist Christian.

The distinction between a Christian Buddhist and a Buddhist Christian was not really relevant for discussing why the two sacred traditions are incompatible - no matter how you mix them it doesn't work. But what about those who do mix it up? Presumably, the latter label takes precedence, i.e. a Buddhist Christian would be a Christian first and a Buddhist second (and vice versa). A Buddhist Christian can still adhere to most of the aforementioned list of traditional Christian beliefs while simultaneously picking and choosing certain aspects of Buddhist teachings and practices, such as meditation. A Christian Buddhist can likewise adhere to Buddhist teachings (including but not limited to those listed above) while simultaneously picking and choosing certain aspects of Christian teachings, such as the admonition to love others as ourselves.

Then there are what may be called non-traditional Christians (which traditional Christians, and even many Buddhists, would likely not recognize as being "true" Christians). Many of their beliefs have been on the wrong end of history and have been declared heresies and false teachings, or in some cases are simply in the minority/ignored by most practicing Christians. Yet in the ongoing dialog with eastern mysticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc, many of these beliefs are being reconsidered and in some cases resuscitated. Sounds good. Let's get a brief sketch of what that *might* look like:

1. "God" is a term for the endless potential from/in which which all existence/universes spring, known 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 in which God was fashioned in our own image as an anthropomorphic Supreme Being, that is, a Creator God who has a will and a consciousness with a personality; more or less this God is like a human being without all the faults and with unlimited knowledge and power; as a perfect Being this God is changeless and eternal.
3. creation is a perpetual act of the Divine in which all of existence participates, arising and dissolving in a continuous flow of what can be and what is.
4. sin is separation from direct union with the mind/will of God; rather than 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 and 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.
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; 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.
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.
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.

In the case of such Christians (or those who share at least some of these variations from the traditional views), at least for those who will allow them to use that label, it is fairly clear that they can not only find compatibility with Buddhism but even a deep connection between the fundamental principles of Buddhism and their faith in Christ, especially the life of Jesus and the idea of the bodhisattva. It is just as clear how Buddhists might also find a connection with this form of Christianity. As I am not an expert in the history of Christian theology, I cannot argue whether the more traditional view is somehow more authentic to the original teachings of Christ as opposed to the panentheist/universalist view, but I am aware that there is a long thread of such thought in the Church, especially in the more contemplative orders/traditions which practiced mysticism to experience conscious union with the Divine. From what I have heard, there are contemporary theologians/philosophers which have explored such ideas of Christ and God (Paul Tillich comes to mind), so whether or not it is considered orthodox, it is a view that has both a history, is relevant to modern theology, and is actively practiced (see for example the works of Thomas Merton or Wayne Teasdale).

Speaking of being outside of conventional/"traditional" Christianity, the Unitarian Universalists were essentially founded in such an extreme ecumenical revelation and expansion of Christianity and now embraces members who identify as everything from Wiccan to Jewish to Buddhist to atheist. So I will let a UU/Christian have the last word here on the concept:

Who is Jesus Christ to me? He is both a teacher of the Way, and the Way itself. For one who has always had a hard time grasping the concept of God, let alone developing a working definition of God, Jesus both points me toward a definition of God and then lives that definition. Jesus Christ is the freedom that laughs uproariously at the things of this world, while loving me dearly for being human enough to lust after them. He is my soul’s safety from all harm. He is the avatar of aloneness, a compassionate and unsentimental narrator of the soul’s exile on earth, and proof of the soul’s triumphant homecoming at the end of the incarnational struggle. He is not afraid to put his hands anywhere to affect healing. He mourns, and weeps, and scolds, and invites. He is life more abundant and conqueror of the existential condition of fear.

“By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. There are indeed degenerate branches on the tree of Christian life, but this does not keep me from Christ. There are even disagreements among Unitarian Universalist Christians about the appropriateness of this or that perspective, practice, or teaching—debates that I regard mostly with affection, if occasionally with irritation. We have so much else to do.

My daily Christian practice, although it changes frequently and is augmented by wisdom and practices from other traditions, consists mostly of clumsy efforts to love my God with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. That’s work enough for this lifetime.

I call myself a Christian because I am a disciple of Jesus Christ—not just Jesus-that-great-guy-and-teacher-with-the-long-hair-and-sandals but Jesus the living avatar of the great God and Jesus the Christ of Easter morning.

How Jesus claimed me

One Unitarian Universalist's religious journey.
By Victoria Weinstein

Buddhism and the Divine

From a book I recently finished reading...

When the Buddha was asked if God exists, he responded by smiling and simply holding up a lotus flower. I believe that the Buddha's enigmatic response holds immense significance, but its meaning must be gleaned from the Hindu tradition, out of which the Buddha taught. When the Buddha responded to this important question, he was drawing on his knowledge of the great Chandogya Upanishad. This oldest of the 108 Upanishads was composed 1,200 years before the Buddha's birth, and in its oral tradition, may be a thousand years older:

In the center of the castle of Brahman, our own body, there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus-flower, and within that can be found a small space. We should find who dwells there, and we should want to know him. And if anyone asks, "Who is he who dwells in a small shrine in the form of a lotus-flower in the center of the castle of Brahman? Whom should we want to find and know?" We can answer: "The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars; fire and lightning and winds are there; and all that now is and all that is not; for the whole universe is in Him and he dwells within our heart."

This Upanishad, I suggest, was the very text the Buddha had in mind. The Buddha was communicating a simple truth: God does exist but is a matter of experience accessed through meditation. The Buddha was directing his listeners' attention not simply to this text, but more basically to the experience of looking within, to the lotus of the heart, where the Divine dwells.

-Wayne Teasdale, A Monk In The World, pp.194-195

Three quick points:

• For those who don't like "Him", I think it would work just as well with "this One" instead
• Based on his writings, Teasdale's view of God is dynamic via process theology and often sounds more like the Tao or a personification of shunyata (emptiness) rather than an all-powerful static superbeing concerned with titles and honors.
• Teasdale isn't saying Buddhism is just a branch of Hinduism, but rather that the Buddha's cultural references would be rooted in this literary tradition

Given these considerations, what do you think of this idea?

Might be a good responsive reading for an interfaith congregation.

Then I ran across a Beliefnet article from a Trappist monk, James Finley, who studied with Thomas Merton and with a connection to the Christian interfaith dialogue with the sacred traditions of the East. The essay, "Your Journey Into God", is an excerpt from his book Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God. Much of the excerpt sounds like a Buddhist monk talking about Bodhi or awakening to the Highest Perfect Wisdom...

"The path to God is like that. God is already here, all about us and within us—the very source, ground, and fulfillment of our being. But, subject to the limitations of ego consciousness, we tend not to experience the divine mystery..."

for example, or even...

"As you sit given over to this simple intention of being present, open, and awake, neither clinging to nor rejecting anything, you are likely to experience just how inept we human beings are at doing such a simple thing as being simply present in the present moment..."

Do you find this inspiring? depressing? suspicious? Do you find it easy to accept this as a valid aspect of Christian practice? Buddhist practice? Does the validity of the practice rest on being "properly" Christian or Buddhist?