What can Christians and other non-Buddhists learn from Buddhist meditative practice?
Many things, as Thomas Merton showed fifty years ago in his writings about Zen, as Richard Rohr and others suggest today--without becoming Buddhists.
I remain very much a beginner in Buddhist practice and derive most of my insights here from the recent (Sept. 7) post by Richard Rohr, who says our "deepest, truest reality" is our oneness with God.
Although he didn't use the term 'mindfulness,' Merton brought the ancient Christian contemplative tradition into the 20th century by emphasizing inner silence, solitude, and attention to the sacrament of the present moment, or what has been called the power of now. His work and those who have followed him (John Main, Thomas Keating, James Finley, et al.) remind us that the goals of Buddhists are different from those of Christians, but they have much in common.
Being mindful and living mindfully, with full attention to the presence of God in the present moment, is the key mystical element that links the two traditions, Western and Eastern. It is a unitive, non-dualistic approach that replaces dualism--body vs. soul, man vs. the planet, good vs. evil, and God "up there" vs. people "down here"--with an awareness that all things are one. To live and move and have our being in God is to know that we are not separate from God.
Romano Guardini (cited by Finley and others) articulated in a memorable way the non-dualistic, unitive nature of this mystical experience. "Although I am not God, I am not other than God either, " Guardini wrote. From this we can say, although I am not you, I am not other than you; although I am not the earth, I am not other than the earth.
The implications of this way of unitive thinking are enormous: we are all connected to one another, to creation, and to God, however alone we might feel. Without losing our individuality, we exist also in relation to and with others. How then can we hate our neighbors?
In Catholic thinking, the human person is not just an individual, with freedom and rights; he or she does not find complete fulfillment until he or she lives in relationship with others. In other words, we live in relation to others in pursuit of the common good, that which benefits all, not just the isolated individual.
So, simplifying a complex topic, I would say Buddhist practice and Christian contemplation share the goal of seeking unity with God in the present moment. The effect of such a spirituality not only benefits me but reminds me of my connection with others. I am unique yet also united with the suffering of my fellow man.
So the way I relate to myself affects how I relate to others and the world we share and, ultimately, how I relate to God.
Showing posts with label mysticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mysticism. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Monday, April 13, 2015
The Invisible as Real
As a boy, my favorite, most chilling movie was "The Invisible Man," and, when I was even younger, I loved invisible ink and, of course, pretending to be invisible by hiding, disguising myself, or simply closing my eyes, as if my self or person would magically disappear.
The relation between magic and science is part of the fascinating new book, INVISIBLE, by Philip Ball, a British science writer, who uses literature, myth, philosophy, and other fields to illuminate his study. As in his book on the building of Chartres cathedral, Universe of Stone, Ball writes beautifully for the lay reader.
The idea that power resides in the unseen world is basic to all religions, and the world of magic becomes the inspiration of science: they are not opposites, Ball indicates. It is good to learn here that science cannot destroy the invisible, which is real, which is the enduring reality we all strive for. In this way, the invisible is like silence, not the absence of sound but a presence in its own right.
As Kathryn Schulz sums Ball's insights in The New Yorker: "In a universe that is vast and mostly matterless, in which the invisible exceeds the visible by a staggering margin, the extraordinary fact about us is that we number among the things that can be seen."
So much for B. F. Skinner's claim that the goal of science is the destruction of mystery. Mystery is all around us and in us, and examining the invisible opens up questions about the invisible as presence. Clearly, what is unseen is not just de-materialized or disguised.
The invisible may keep itself hidden but it makes itself felt, Schulz says. This is literally how the universe works: "An invisible mass alters the orbit of a comet; dark energy affects the acceleration of a supernova; the earth's magnetic field tugs on birds, butterflies, sea turtles, and the compasses of mariners." The entire visible world, that is, even all that cannot be put under a microscope or other visual device, is made possible by the invisible.
"Our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our universe: all of it, all of us, are pushed, pulled, spun, shifted, set in motion and held together by what we cannot see." (Schulz)
Wow! Just think of all "big things" we cannot see: germs, viruses, molecules, gravity, the earth's interior, the depths of the ocean. It is humbling to learn that scientists can only see a fragment of the universe--and nothing of its purpose and meaning. Hence we have philosophy and religion to show us the wonder of our world and ourselves.
As I learned in my introductory philosophy course, our ideas, feelings, personalities, souls, and selves--most of the things that really matter--are beyond our seeing but nonetheless real, as abstractions are real. Despite the efforts of science to dispel the invisible, it is, like God, all around us and in us and beyond all knowing.
The topic of the invisible leads from magic to science and then, it seems to me, to mysticism: an immersion in the mystery of things beyond the realm of science.
The relation between magic and science is part of the fascinating new book, INVISIBLE, by Philip Ball, a British science writer, who uses literature, myth, philosophy, and other fields to illuminate his study. As in his book on the building of Chartres cathedral, Universe of Stone, Ball writes beautifully for the lay reader.
The idea that power resides in the unseen world is basic to all religions, and the world of magic becomes the inspiration of science: they are not opposites, Ball indicates. It is good to learn here that science cannot destroy the invisible, which is real, which is the enduring reality we all strive for. In this way, the invisible is like silence, not the absence of sound but a presence in its own right.
As Kathryn Schulz sums Ball's insights in The New Yorker: "In a universe that is vast and mostly matterless, in which the invisible exceeds the visible by a staggering margin, the extraordinary fact about us is that we number among the things that can be seen."
So much for B. F. Skinner's claim that the goal of science is the destruction of mystery. Mystery is all around us and in us, and examining the invisible opens up questions about the invisible as presence. Clearly, what is unseen is not just de-materialized or disguised.
The invisible may keep itself hidden but it makes itself felt, Schulz says. This is literally how the universe works: "An invisible mass alters the orbit of a comet; dark energy affects the acceleration of a supernova; the earth's magnetic field tugs on birds, butterflies, sea turtles, and the compasses of mariners." The entire visible world, that is, even all that cannot be put under a microscope or other visual device, is made possible by the invisible.
"Our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, our universe: all of it, all of us, are pushed, pulled, spun, shifted, set in motion and held together by what we cannot see." (Schulz)
Wow! Just think of all "big things" we cannot see: germs, viruses, molecules, gravity, the earth's interior, the depths of the ocean. It is humbling to learn that scientists can only see a fragment of the universe--and nothing of its purpose and meaning. Hence we have philosophy and religion to show us the wonder of our world and ourselves.
As I learned in my introductory philosophy course, our ideas, feelings, personalities, souls, and selves--most of the things that really matter--are beyond our seeing but nonetheless real, as abstractions are real. Despite the efforts of science to dispel the invisible, it is, like God, all around us and in us and beyond all knowing.
The topic of the invisible leads from magic to science and then, it seems to me, to mysticism: an immersion in the mystery of things beyond the realm of science.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Who are we, really?
I have awakened from a dream recently to realize that the person I was in my dream is not my present self but an ageless adult, sort of a composite of how I think of myself, as if I were permanently 35.
And I connected this realization to an earlier post (April 30: Genuine Freedom) and to other musings about the mysterious inner me, the "selfless self of self," as the poet G. M. Hopkins called it.
Who are we at the core of our being? That is the question. Am I the product of my conscious thought, produced by the brain, embodied in my mortal flesh, or am I an enfleshed spirit or, as I was raised to think in parochial school, a soul encased in a body?
Without considering for a moment the immortal center of my being called the soul, I think of all the many couples who, married in their twenties, find that they have drifted apart and become divorced in their forties, because they have changed. What part of them has actually changed? Of course, we are changing and growing constantly biologically; our tastes and behavior and attitudes change as do our values.
But the man or woman of 45-50 who is more mature than the bride or groom of 25, with different interests from his or her partner, remains essentially the same person. The question then is, what can psychology and philosophy tell us about who that person is, that self that might grow but remains essentially true to its original form?
"What are we at our core, before anything, before everything?" This question, posed at the opening of an article by Abigail Tucker (in the Smithsonian 1-13) comes from a researcher at the Yale Infant Cognition Center, where scientists have been studying toddlers and babies to see if altruism is an innate human element. It seems too early to say for sure that the answer is definitively 'yes.' But I cite this example as a fundamental question underlying much of the important work I sometimes read about being done by people with infinitely more knowledge than I have or will ever have about the complexities of the human personality.
I remember, too, a psychologist introducing to a workshop I attended some years ago the distinction between "the pattern" and "the person": when we think a friend or partner or colleague is unbearable, annoying, or otherwise unpleasant to be around, what we are reacting to is the behavior pattern that this person displays. I think of several people I know who seldom listen, talk incessantly about themselves and are clearly wound up emotionally. I shun their company.
Yet these people, beneath the surface, are bright, caring individuals who are lovable--if I can separate myself from the surface pattern to see the real person beneath. A challenging "if." How close this approach is to Freudian or Jungian ideas of the psyche or self is something I do not know, but it helped me understand a basic human issue. Perhaps it is related to the belief of Robert Louis Stevenson and others ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde") who contended in Victorian times that the human person is not one but two--a divided self, half good, half evil.
Although this seems too simplistic today, there remains in us a sense that our real selves remain mysterious. Even as we shun encountering them, we meet them in dreams and see them reflected in films and literature. If other people are hard to understand (and love), we tend to remain hard to understand even by ourselves.
One of the most satisfying examinations of all this, on the spiritual level, for me has been the work of Thomas Merton and in particular the study focusing on his idea of the true self by James Finley: Merton's Palace of Nowhere. Merton, having read very widely, was attracted to Blake as a graduate student at Columbia and then, as a Trappist monk, steeped himself in the mystical tradition of both Christianity and the East.
I will try to sum up some key aspects of Finley's study of what Merton meant by our true identity in contrast to the false self we create as a public persona or mask. The contemplative tradition of emptiness and silence, for Merton, is the highest form of self-realization; it reveals that the person I am is not limited to the individual I am.
Involved here is the loss of the false self when, in contemplation, our being becomes one with the being of God, who is Being itself. The person, that is, transcends everything in his or her union with God. The self that we thought ourselves to be vanishes ("He who loses his life shall find it," as Jesus said) because of love.
And this brings us back to Brennan Manning, whose death last month prompted a brief post here that expresses the same basic Mertonian idea very directly: The true self is the one loved by God; every other identity is an illusion.
Merton put it this way: "Learning to be oneself means learning to die [to the self] in order to live. It means discovering in the ground of one's being a self, which is ultimate and indestructible..." So, for him, the soul is the mature personal identity, the true self. Yet the question, "Who are you when you do not exist?"--the ultimate question we all ponder when we think of death--can never be answered by the mind. It requires what is difficult for many: a leap of faith.
I hope at least some of this makes sense and that it will lead readers unfamiliar with Merton to read him as well as Finley's classic book, which is challenging because the language of mysticism defies the limits of human language. But few questions are as important as who we are and what happens to us when we are here no more.
And I connected this realization to an earlier post (April 30: Genuine Freedom) and to other musings about the mysterious inner me, the "selfless self of self," as the poet G. M. Hopkins called it.
Who are we at the core of our being? That is the question. Am I the product of my conscious thought, produced by the brain, embodied in my mortal flesh, or am I an enfleshed spirit or, as I was raised to think in parochial school, a soul encased in a body?
Without considering for a moment the immortal center of my being called the soul, I think of all the many couples who, married in their twenties, find that they have drifted apart and become divorced in their forties, because they have changed. What part of them has actually changed? Of course, we are changing and growing constantly biologically; our tastes and behavior and attitudes change as do our values.
But the man or woman of 45-50 who is more mature than the bride or groom of 25, with different interests from his or her partner, remains essentially the same person. The question then is, what can psychology and philosophy tell us about who that person is, that self that might grow but remains essentially true to its original form?
"What are we at our core, before anything, before everything?" This question, posed at the opening of an article by Abigail Tucker (in the Smithsonian 1-13) comes from a researcher at the Yale Infant Cognition Center, where scientists have been studying toddlers and babies to see if altruism is an innate human element. It seems too early to say for sure that the answer is definitively 'yes.' But I cite this example as a fundamental question underlying much of the important work I sometimes read about being done by people with infinitely more knowledge than I have or will ever have about the complexities of the human personality.
I remember, too, a psychologist introducing to a workshop I attended some years ago the distinction between "the pattern" and "the person": when we think a friend or partner or colleague is unbearable, annoying, or otherwise unpleasant to be around, what we are reacting to is the behavior pattern that this person displays. I think of several people I know who seldom listen, talk incessantly about themselves and are clearly wound up emotionally. I shun their company.
Yet these people, beneath the surface, are bright, caring individuals who are lovable--if I can separate myself from the surface pattern to see the real person beneath. A challenging "if." How close this approach is to Freudian or Jungian ideas of the psyche or self is something I do not know, but it helped me understand a basic human issue. Perhaps it is related to the belief of Robert Louis Stevenson and others ("Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde") who contended in Victorian times that the human person is not one but two--a divided self, half good, half evil.
Although this seems too simplistic today, there remains in us a sense that our real selves remain mysterious. Even as we shun encountering them, we meet them in dreams and see them reflected in films and literature. If other people are hard to understand (and love), we tend to remain hard to understand even by ourselves.
One of the most satisfying examinations of all this, on the spiritual level, for me has been the work of Thomas Merton and in particular the study focusing on his idea of the true self by James Finley: Merton's Palace of Nowhere. Merton, having read very widely, was attracted to Blake as a graduate student at Columbia and then, as a Trappist monk, steeped himself in the mystical tradition of both Christianity and the East.
I will try to sum up some key aspects of Finley's study of what Merton meant by our true identity in contrast to the false self we create as a public persona or mask. The contemplative tradition of emptiness and silence, for Merton, is the highest form of self-realization; it reveals that the person I am is not limited to the individual I am.
Involved here is the loss of the false self when, in contemplation, our being becomes one with the being of God, who is Being itself. The person, that is, transcends everything in his or her union with God. The self that we thought ourselves to be vanishes ("He who loses his life shall find it," as Jesus said) because of love.
And this brings us back to Brennan Manning, whose death last month prompted a brief post here that expresses the same basic Mertonian idea very directly: The true self is the one loved by God; every other identity is an illusion.
Merton put it this way: "Learning to be oneself means learning to die [to the self] in order to live. It means discovering in the ground of one's being a self, which is ultimate and indestructible..." So, for him, the soul is the mature personal identity, the true self. Yet the question, "Who are you when you do not exist?"--the ultimate question we all ponder when we think of death--can never be answered by the mind. It requires what is difficult for many: a leap of faith.
I hope at least some of this makes sense and that it will lead readers unfamiliar with Merton to read him as well as Finley's classic book, which is challenging because the language of mysticism defies the limits of human language. But few questions are as important as who we are and what happens to us when we are here no more.
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