This is the Buddhism of China and the true ancestor of Zen whose development we mostly associate with Japan. Also the Buddhism of Korea and Vietnam (see Thich Nhat Hanh) derives from Chan–we can also call it Chinese Zen. The different varieties of Buddhism is a phenomenon of interest in itself, but I would like to focus just a bit on Chan because of its peculiar beauty and power and simplicity. It holds some of the most remarkable figures in Buddhist history (like Hui-neng), and it enchanted someone like Thomas Merton for whom it contained the essence of Zen (but also he recognized that practically speaking he had to learn Zen from the Japanese and then he discovered Tibetan Buddhism which brought a very methodical, practical approach to very deep meditation—but after his encounter with the Tibetans he was going to go to Japan and meet some Zen masters there and then onto Iran and meet a number of Sufis there, so who knows how he would have finally landed!)

Guo Jun is an extremely young Chan Master and abbot of a monastery in Singapore, only 41 years old. He came from a humble, poor background but got a college degree in a scientific discipline. He began his Chan studies and practice at age 14 but did not become a monk until about the age of 24. He trained both in Singapore and in Korea, where the Zen monasteries are very austere and demanding beyond anything anywhere else I ever heard of. He himself is a very gentle, humane man in whose person one can see the true spirit and wisdom of Chan. Let us now listen to his own words:

“The breath is always there. It never leaves us. We abandon our breath, run away from our breath, ignore the breath. The breath is always there, waiting for us. The breath is always there, precisely as the present moment is always here. We are born with the most precious thing there is, which money cannot buy. We are born with the breath. From the moment we are born until the moment we die, our most loyal friend is the breath. It stays with us. And yet, so often we neglect this friend and take it for granted. We ignore the breath. We betray the breath. But when we want to go back to the breath, the breath
welcomes us. The breath is our treasure. It gives us courage and support. The breath is our refuge. Keep returning and returning and returning to the breath. Perhaps this sounds easy. It is not. Nothing
that is precious and to be cherished is easy…. It is not easy to always come back to the breath, to come back to the present moment. Still, in
reality it is quite simple. We are born with the breath; we are born with Buddha nature. At the end of the day, it is our choice. We all have a
choice to follow the path back to the breath and the present moment.”

Comment: Do not be fooled or lulled by the simplicity of these words or the seeming “obviousness” of this teaching. It flows from a profound
realization and is presented with a spiritual ingenuity of real depth masked by “everyday” simplicity.

Guo Jun again: “The purpose of Chan practice is practice. It is not this goal or that goal. There is no goal in Chan. There isn’t something in Chan that we want to attain. Rather, through engaging with Chan or living Chan, you discover yourself, you become more aware of yourself. But at the end of the practice, you get nothing. There is nothing for you to get. Don’t think: I want awakening. I want enlightenment. That is my
goal. That is what I am striving for. No! There is no goal. The Heart Sutra says, ‘No goal, no achievement, no attainment.’”

And again: “When our lives are not in harmony we experience stress, pressure, and tension. There is an imbalance. As a result, there is conflict. This is “duhkha,” a Sanskrit word that is central to Buddhism and usually translated as “suffering.” In fact, duhkha has many different levels of meaning. In a basic sense, it simply means “out of place.” The Buddha says duhkha is like a wheel out of joint: it can’t rotate on its axle. The wheel whines and complains as it turns. So, similarly, in our life when we feel out of place, we experience dissonance, whether in body, mind, body and mind, the self and others, or the self and the world. Duhkha can also mean “entrapped.” Sometimes we are trapped in our emotions, or in what feels like an impossible situation or relationship. We are overwhelmed and feel helpless and overpowered. All these conditions cause us to feel out of tune. This could also be thought of as a kind of disconnection or alienation. We’re out of position. There is friction. Our lives are not moving well. It is this position of entanglement that Chan addresses.”

Guo Jun describes the hair-raising discipline of a monastic retreat in a Korean Zen monastery: “The daily schedule was brutal. We woke at 3 am and finished at 11pm. We had only fifteen minutes each for breakfast, lunch , and dinner…. For 90 days we did not take a shower. We had a basin of water that was filled from a bamboo pipe that ran down from the mountain and used a towel to scrub ourselves clean. No break time, no time to relax, no nap after lunch. Sleeping after 11. Waking at 3. Most of us did not even have a room. We sat in the meditation hall on a folded-up cushion, which was also our bed. Each sitting was at least an hour, and we had to sit in full lotus. No movement was tolerated. If the monitors, who were senior monks, saw us move an inch, they’d hit us with a stick. In the morning, after waking up, we had to do 108 prostrations in only 10 minutes. Up and down, up and down…. The Korean terminology for this kind of intensive retreat is kyol che, which means ‘very tight dharma.’ You have to be very fast, very precise, always in the moment. There is no time to think, wander off, and daydream. If you fall behind, you get hit. There is nothing symbolic about these blows. Thwack! You dare not whimper or cringe…you have to bow and gently say, ‘thank you.’ In Korean. And then there is the pain, so much pain. Tears roll down from your eyes the moment you move your legs as you come out of the full lotus. There is so much pain that you don’t know where the pain is coming from…. And then the food. Kimchi all the time, kimchi and white rice. The kimchi smells like rotten eggs. It was repulsive…it made me gag, and I had to force down every bite. It was the only food, so you either ate it or starved! For seven days and nights in the middle of the retreat we were subjected to what is called in Chinese yong men jin jing, which translates as ‘great courageous diligence.’ This was an even more intensive practice than your run-of-the-mill Kyol Che. For 7 days and nights we were not allowed to lie down. Twenty four hours of continuous sitting practice for 7 straight days. We learned how to sleep while sitting, but when you were caught dozing, you were hit. You learned to sleep without moving. Before going into this retreat they warned us that it was called the demon training camp. We called it the cave of the tiger.”
Comment: Guo Jun is wise enough to recognize that this is not for everyone; that in fact few could survive such a regime for very long, and therefore it would be counterproductive. Even in his own case, of all the monks that began this retreat with him only about half survived to finish it—the others all would bail out at some point. What is most remarkable is that for most Chan monks this kind of retreat is only done once or twice in one’s monastic life, but Guo Jun did it a number of times—one year he did it 3 times in that same year. You might think that this is a kind of performance trick of a “spiritual Olympics,” or an attempt to “force” enlightenment as it were. Well, that certainly may be a possibility for some seekers, but it was not the case for Guo Jun. It stemmed more from his supremely intense determination to give himself totally to that Buddhist practice; and even if we do not wish to follow him in that aspect of his life, and he would be the first one to advise against it for most of us, we still can learn that lesson of determination which is an absolutely essential ingredient of all spiritual paths.”

Speaking of enlightenment, Guo Jun has some wise and incisive comments: “How can we tell whether enlightenment has occurred? When does a teacher test a disciple? Does the student say : ‘I’m prepared, now you can test me.’ No, the teacher usually tests the disciple when the disciple least expects it. This is when state of mind is most natural, in its original state…. Chan masters do not say, ‘I have a feeling I’m going to be enlightened soon. Enlightenment is close!’ There is no such thing. All Chan masters became awakened and enlightened when they least expected it. Chan masters don’t think about enlightenment; they don’t think about awakening; they only think about practice, practice, and practice. As a result, they never expect enlightenment, and then enlightenment comes. If you just keep practicing, and you do not grasp at enlightenment or run away from it, enlightenment will get you. All the Chan masters only want to practice; they don’t want to be enlightened or awakened. As a result they became enlightened and awakened. No Chan masters wanted to be Chan masters. And as a result, they became masters of Chan.”

And then there is this provocative teaching: “Sitting itself will not give you enlightenment. Meditation will not give it to you. It will only lead you to the brink. Retreating from the world will not liberate you. Happiness is not found in a secluded forest hut or an isolated cave. Enlightenment comes when you connect to the world. Only when you truly connect with everyone and everything else do you become enlightened. Only by going deeply and fully into the world do you attain liberation. This is the meaning of the star—the sudden illumination of our connection to the rest of the universe.”

Comment: A remarkable statement. The reference to the “star” pertains to the story of Gautama Buddha, who achieved full enlightenment after a whole night of meditation when in the early dawn he saw the morning star. The teaching here seems to contradict that of some other notable figures, like Milarepa, who advised people to “flee the world” and live in solitude. And of course our own Desert Fathers, like Antony and Arsenius, counseled the “seeker” to “flee the world.” The so-called discord is only a superficial difference in emphasis and Guo Jun’s words actually point to the same deep reality which is to awaken to the interconnectedness of all that is real. In a sense one could say “different strokes for different folks” in that some people will get to that reality one way and others another, but that all journey toward that same point of connection. The hermit in his cave is also “going deeply and fully into the world” as Merton was fond of pointing out, and most persons in society are actually evading that reality by trying to ground their lives on their individualistic ego self. It is actually this that we must “flee.” Interestingly enough the modern world mimics this spiritual drive in all the gizmos it provides for “connectedness”—but this is mostly to keep that ego from feeling isolated which it is by nature and to keep up an appearance of being connected to the world. Also, fascinating is the fact that Dostoievesky’s Father Zosima and Alyosha are such prime examples of what Guo Jun points to here! Read that section on the monk in The Brothers Karamazov!

Finally, Guo Jun is not blind to the problems of modern Buddhism: “Over the years in China, Buddhism deteriorated and nowadays among many Chinese, there is the impression that Buddhism is only about praying for the deceased. Tok tok cheng is onomatopoeic Asian slang that mimics the sound of the striking of the wooden block and ringing of the bowls in Buddhist ritual. It makes fun of empty, silly services that became the way monasteries and monks supported themselves by officiating at funeral services, chanting, striking the block, and ringing the bowl. Tok tok cheng. This kind of empty commercialization of Buddhism and exploitation of the importance Chinese people put on funeral practices caused monks to become known as parasitic maggots and worms who live in and feed off the rice of others…. Funerals must be grand in China to signify that you are an important person. There can be thirty monks, all chanting, a full orchestra, lots of food, and offerings of all kinds. The belief is that chanting creates merit that accrues to the deceased and ensures a better rebirth. Professional mourners may be employed who beat their heads and weep, pound the floor and carry on, all for a fee. The monks are very much part of the show, part of ushering the deceased through the ten halls of hell by burning joss paper and hell money (US one-dollar bills are popular; George Washington represents the king of hell who you are bribing to allow you to pass through the ten halls)…. Chan became entwined with these cultural superstitions, and it was enmeshed in the way we Chinese believe that life and death are permeable and interconnected. The folk superstitions of China became the bread and butter of Chan monks and monasteries, much to the detriment of the religion.”

Comment: The problem that Guo Jun talks about here is peculiar to China and other parts of Asia, but Buddhism in the U.S. has a whole other set of problems that are equally an obstacle to a healthy and authentic development of that religion. As I have pointed out in more than one posting, all the major religious traditions are equally seriously afflicted with a kind of obscurantism and superstition and fundamentalism and superficiality. One has to walk carefully and alertly on the religious path in order not to be misled. Simple Chinese peasants and well-to-do, college-educated Americans are equally vulnerable to what is in effect an “appearance” of religion, not the real thing.

One last thing: In India and in South Asia begging for food by the monks was an acceptable practice and so it became part of their spiritual practice. Cultural patterns and practices are always intertwined with spirituality. When Buddhism came to China, it was another story. The Chinese have always looked down on begging of any kind. To live off alms is simply unacceptable. So Chan monasticism developed the notion of work as part of their spiritual practice. And so the monks became self-sufficient to a large degree. This is very much like Benedictine monasticism in the West in this regard at least. Of course modern China is a whole different story and presents so many problems to a real presence of Buddhist monasticism that it can hardly said to even be there in relation to the numbers of its population. Modern China, even as Guo Jun recognizes and admits, is rampant with materialism, greed, commercialism and the drive for monetary success to such an extent that it even dwarfs us in the U.S.—and that’s saying a lot!!

All quotes are from Guo Jun’s book: Essential Chan Buddhism

These words are an actual doctrinal statement of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox, and most conservative evangelical Protestant groups. First enunciated by St. Cyprian of Carthage in the 3rd Century, they have been reasserted by many popes, bishops, and church councils. The kicker is that if you believe in the literal meaning of these words you will be a heretic, at least in the Catholic Church. The term “heretic” has a chilling resonance considering the old history of the church, but today all it means is that “you’re not one of us.” The point is that the meaning and interpretation of a doctrine can and does evolve as understanding grows. What is peculiar and funny about all this, at least for the Catholic scene, is that we never admit we made a mistake or even that we changed our understanding. You can never say that about any doctrinal statement. The words always stay the same; the old meaning/interpretation is thrown into an ecclesial closet never to see the light of day again, and a new meaning is trotted out. That closet has gotten quite crowded over the centuries!

Consider the following comments from the current Catholic Catechism:

“How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Reformulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body” (CCC 846)…. Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC 846)).

But the Church leaves a kind of “backdoor” open. It points out that in fact all kinds of people can be “saved,” even those “outside” the Church. So the Catechism goes on almost quoting Vatican II: “This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church: Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

Frankly, as far as this goes, I prefer the wording of Kallistos Ware, bishop, monk and great scholar of the Orthodox Church:

“Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. All the categorical strength and point of this aphorism lies in its tautology. Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church” (G. Florovsky, “Sobornost: the Catholicity of the Church”, in The Church of God, p. 53). Does it therefore follow that anyone who is not visibly within the Church is necessarily damned? Of course not; still less does it follow that everyone who is visibly within the Church is necessarily saved. As Augustine wisely remarked: “How many sheep there are without, how many wolves within!” (Homilies on John, 45, 12) While there is no division between a “visible” and an “invisible Church”, yet there may be members of the Church who are not visibly such, but whose membership is known to God alone. If anyone is saved, he must in some sense be a member of the Church; in what sense, we cannot always say.”

Ok, all this is surely an advance over saying that all non-Catholics, non-Christians are damned. But it still leaves the interreligious encounter in a quandry Over the years many theologians and religious thinkers have wrestled with the full implications of all these kinds of statements and doctrines and have not really been able to find a satisfying explanation for there are some real problems here. Some of the best thinking, like Karl Rahner’s, resulted in this notion of “anonymous Christians”— to put it crudely, every person is a Christian whether they realize it or not! It privileges the Church in a sneaky way of sorts and that offends adherents of other religious traditions. Imagine telling the Dalai Lama, “You know you’re really ok in our eyes because you really are a Christian deep down!” Well, Buddhists could say every person is a Buddhist whether they realize it or not and we would object to that probably! You can kind of see the problem with that approach. And most importantly that kind of approach avoids truly encountering what another religious tradition has to say about itself, about reality, avoids truly encountering the “otherness” of the other tradition and learning from it, etc. Another variant of this approach is to see various boundaries to the Church. First there is the very visible boundary of the Roman Catholic Church, then the further out boundary of being a Christian, and then an almost invisible boundary of all basically good people of good will, and somehow the Church in its wholeness encompasses all these boundaries, but Catholics will again insist that the “fullness” of the Church is only within the boundaries of the Roman Catholic Church. And the most crucial point of all this is that all other religious traditions are basically inadequate and will find their fulfillment when they enter the Christian fold in a very explicit way.

When Abhishiktananda first came to India, about 1949, and during the first few years there, he pretty much adhered to this theological view which was quite progressive for that day. With the arrival of Vatican II that became the standard interpretation of that doctrine, but Abhishiktananda was changing rapidly due to his openness toward learning from his Hindu brethren and especially due to his own religious experience in the light of the Advaita teaching of the Upanishads. James Stuart, a good friend and editor of his writings, had this comment about one of his essays: “In this article—a contribution to the Theology of Religions, a subject which deeply interested both him and Dr. Panikkar—he makes very clear his dissatisfaction with the widely accepted ‘theology of fulfillment’, which envisaged a final absorption or replacement of all other religions by Christianity. (This had been the assumption of his book Sagesse, which he later tried to tone down in its English version, Saccidananda.)”

By the late 1960s Abhishiktananda had turned the traditional position totally upside down. Now it was no longer the Church inviting Hindus(and others) to the fullness and fulfillment of their spiritual yearnings, but it was the Church and Christianity that needed that experience within Hinduism of Advaita and articulated so powerfully in the Upanishads, it was the Church that needed this gift from India in order to arrive to its fullness and true divine mission. Here is Abhishiktananda from a letter in 1968:

“As I am more and more persuaded, the salvation of the world and of the Church lies in realizing that fundamental experience of the human being, of which the best expression so far seems to have been given by the Upanishads. Any construction that seeks to be solid has to be built on this unbreakable block.”

And then from another letter the whole idea of conversion is jettisoned: “Only this month I have had with me a 22 year old student for his holidays. He comes to spend every holiday with me, and is like a son to me. It is marvelous to have such a deep and close relation with Hindus. But the further I go, the less I see how these real Hindus, despite their admiration for Christ, could ever enter into the framework of Christianity. I cannot see a single one of my friends, young or not so young, who could become a Christian. This sets a terrible theological problem, which begins to trouble our young theologians here. Living as I do more than anyone in both environments at the same time, I see less than anyone how to solve the problem.”

And of course the still more gnarly problem of the relationship of Advaita to Christian mysticism is even more intractable to any conceptual/theological solution. These two do not admit of easy reconciliation/formulation. Toward the end of his life Abhishiktananda believed that no “theology of world religions” could ever be reconciled with Christian claims and at the same time do justice to what these other religions claim. Comparing the words and symbols and concepts of each religion, while a worthwhile endeavor in at least appreciating what others are claiming, will never lead to that ultimate “common ground.” That common ground is an ultimately transcendent reality beyond all words and symbols and it can only be “realized” as a transcendent reality and for this we have this innate capacity that is open to that which is beyond rational, discursive analysis—in the Hesychast tradition this is sometimes called “the heart.” (Abhishiktananda, for example, was critical of his dear friend, Sara Grant, who had made a valiant effort to show the similarity between Sankara and Aquinas following the guidance of her mentor, the great Jesuit Sanskrit scholar De Smet.) Of course the scholar/intellectual who is learned in the claims and symbols of another religious symbol and who is also at the same time a true and devoted spiritual seeker within his own tradition will be in an excellent position to begin to evaluate the words and symbols of his own tradition in the light of that other tradition.

Abhishiktananda’s “solution” is that, for example in the case of Hinduism and Christianity, followers of each way dive deep down within each tradition, within the words and symbols of each tradition, going “all the way” to the ground of their religious tradition and then they will be able to look each other in the face and recognize that “smile” which is truly beyond all words and symbols and doctrines—like the smile of the Buddha which so transfixed Thomas Merton on his trip to Asia. That means “the mystic” has priority over the theological/religious intellectual—but not the “monopoly” in religious encounters. And so of course the real “dialogue” will only take place between people of deep experience who are witnesses of the depth of their own tradition. (Of course Abhishiktananda would also say that at least for the Christian what he/she learns from his fellow Hindu will make this “journey” ever more “powerful”—freeing it perhaps from being absolutized in the Semitic-Greco terms of Christian tradition.) This does not please the theologians for the very dynamic of their profession is to analyze religious concepts. This does not please church officials for it seems to bypass their authority. This does not please the average church goer for it seems to complicate what he/she had learned in a fundamental catechism/evangelism class where the Mystery of God has the stuffings knocked out of it. So it does not please anyone! Except the true mystic who simply seeks the Mystery which dwells in his/her heart.

So here is an extended quote from Abhishiktananda from early 1973, less than a year from his death:

“What a purification from all attachment is this meeting with the East, which compels us to recognize as namarupa all that previously we considered to be most sacred, to be the very Truth contained in ‘words’…. Later we have to be able to recognize the value of the namarupa, no less than we did ‘before’, but we have discovered another level of truth—the blinding sun of high noon. Our time is one of those without precedent in the history of the world, when the worldwide coming together makes us clearly see that we ourselves and our whole tradition and every tradition are essentially conditioned. Every religion is rooted in a culture, beginning with the most primordial and hidden archetypes which necessarily govern its view of the world. All that is citta [thought] is namarupa. And every namarupa has to be laid bare, so that the satyam [Real] may be unveiled. What a savage but marvelous purification! No longer even to say ‘I am’, but to be it to such an extent that the whole being ‘exudes’ it…. And then we have understood. We find ourselves once more Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, for each one has his own line of development, marked out already from his mother’s lap. But we also have the ‘smile.’ Not a smile which looks down condescendingly from above, still less a smile of mockery, but one which is simply an opening out like the flower unfolding its petals…. When religions are too close, like the Muslim, the Jewish and the Christian, we look for common denominators. But when the fancy takes us, we can equally well make an eclectic Hindu-Christian system…. Then we realize that on the level of the namarupa no comparison is valid. Religions are grandiose dream-worlds. But be careful not to call them dreams from the point of view of a dreaming…. The man who is awake marvels at the dream; in it he grasps the symbolism of the mystery. He knows that every detail has its significance. The only mistake is to want to absolutize each symbol. And the difficulty is that no deep ‘drive’ can be expressed without symbols. There is no religion without a culture. There is no Christ, if he is not linked to a time, a place, an ethnic group.”

So the real problem from the Christian standpoint is that we absolutize the normal and inevitable specific symbols and language of that transformation from the Semitic beginnings of Christianity, that specific time and place of the Middle East to its inculturation in the Greco-Roman world of Late Antiquity. What many of us wonder is do we really need to ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE simply repeat that language. In other words, is the language of the Fathers of the Church to be absolutized to such an extent that we cannot find other expressions that come from other cultures and religious experiences as the reality of Christ comes to these cultures and religious consciousness. What if that religious experience is truly authentic and leads to good and holy lives, does it not lead to some kind of “explosion” (as Abhishiktananda loved to put it) when it meets the Christian complex of concepts and symbols? An explosion where all concepts and words and symbols, on both sides of the encounter, are shattered and remain not the same. The interesting thing is that in this encounter both sides are really shy about this, really apprehensive about such encounters, Buddhists and Hindus just as much as Christians.

Before I sign off, just a few notes:

First of all, note that there are three important words in that doctrinal statement I quoted: “outside”—a problematic word to say the least; “church”—a loaded term with many “trap doors”; and “salvation”—my favorite word here and I believe the one that needs a whole treatment on its own because I think it is greatly misunderstood and misapplied within Christian circles. More about that later.

Secondly, I have emphasized the Christian-Hindu encounter and the writings of Abhishiktananda (whom I believe is one of the most important Christian spiritual writers of our time). But what about Buddhism? Many Christian monks have been attracted to Buddhism because their own tradition seems to stifle the “mystic journey.” Many others have delved deeply into Buddhism because on the surface it seems to present less doctrinal challenges to Christianity than say the Hinduism of Advaita Vedanta. But I think that is a surface evaluation. In reality I think Buddhism presents an incredibly more difficult and more comprehensive challenge to Christianity. To simply borrow from Buddhism a “contemplative style” of living or to take up simply some techniques of meditation is not to do justice to the depth, the complexity, and the comprehensiveness of the “Buddhist Way.” It is much more than a mere “science of the mind/consciousness” as some Christians and even many Buddhists claim it is. Maybe we shall return to this later!

A happy New Year to all, and a Blessed Epiphany. Now for your homework: what do you make of the Three Wise Men coming from the East to worship the Christ child?

Like an old dog returning again and again to an old chewed-up bone, I return once more to this topic! Why? Maybe I am so puzzled at a certain phenomenon which I witness among Western Christian monks—mostly Catholic groups like the Cistercians, Benedictines, and even the Carthusians, and of course a flurry of smaller less well-known groups. If you look at the websites of their various monasteries, you will find a certain preoccupation with what I call “tribal identity.” “We belong to this tribe; here is our tribal boundary line.” I hate to put it this way, but that’s what it is in effect. This thing of “being a monk” subtly becomes a matter of wearing a certain identity marker. The point of wearing an “identity badge” becomes extremely important. Now of course it is never explicitly or crudely put in such terms, but the underlying message is there. What is emphasized is being a Cistercian monk, for example, instead of just being a monk. Belonging to this or that group becomes an essential ingredient. In the online self-presentation of too many monasteries there is this subtext of the importance of monastic credentials. It is as if the spiritual admonition, “Know thyself,” and the penetrating question, “Who am I,” became institutional calls for the credentials of the monastic life within this or that particular group. But actually being a true monk can never be that; it must always be something deeper and more universal and ALWAYS transcending every institution, when this is correctly understood.

Now of course no one becomes a monk in some abstract or “universal” way. One enters a particular group with a certain history in a certain time and place with a certain manner of living. Ok. One can also admit that there are teachings and traditions that are a very valid part of learning what it is to become a monk. Note, I said to “become” a monk. We need to stop seeing monastic life as “being a monk”—it is better to see it always as “becoming a monk.” As the great Macarius said, “I am not yet a monk, but I have seen monks.” That way we stop naming ourselves as monks just because we belong to this or that group/monastery. That is only an institutional label. Helpful in some cases; ok in many cases; really detrimental in too many monastic lives.

Ok, so one enters a particular monastic group/monastery and there begins the process of learning. In the Christian context, one enters monastic life because one has somehow encountered the Great Mystery of God and one is drawn to a total surrender to that mystery. One senses that Mystery is within one’s heart, but the average person needs guidance and a certain ambience and environment to grow into a full Awakening to the meaning of that Mystery and that Encounter. This can and does happen everywhere and anywhere under any conditions, but the usual, normal place is what is called “monastic life” however lived. The articulation of the meaning, the goal, the purpose of living in a monastic community can be formulated in different ways but it always points in this direction (as when the early monastic father Cassian speaks of “purity of heart” and “kingdom of God”). There are of course those monks who see living in a contemplative community as almost an end in itself—the community life then becomes not a means to an end but the very point of the life. I won’t get into that debate; suffice it to say that I consider this an unfortunate mistake of vision though often articulated with doses of true theology: Christianity as a communal religion, etc. (For others the celebration of the liturgy is the key point of monastic life—for some Benedictines—and with that I am even less in agreement.)

So the spiritual-seeking person enters a monastic way of life in some particular group that probably has a long history, many traditions, many writings by holy figures of the past who belonged to this group and who will provide some guidance and encouragement along the way. Learning all this and training in these traditional ways is true and proper and helpful. All this is good. But in “becoming a monk,” right from the outset, one’s vision should be directed to a fuller horizon than just simply being identified as a Cistercian or Benedictine, with the almost explicit proviso that if you are not just “like one of us” you are not one of us! “Becoming a monk” is not just exchanging a worldly set of credentials for some supposed spiritual/religious credentials. It is in fact transcending all credentials even as one does live within a concrete and identifiable context. The paradox of monastic life is that in becoming a Cistercian monk, for example, you will learn to transcend the Cistercian credential. Of course our best examples of this are Merton and Abhishiktananda. Not that every monk should follow or needs to follow the example of these two monks—for they are truly exceptional in every sense of the word—but somehow all of us need to learn from the pattern of their lives. Frankly I don’t think Catholic monastic institutions have learned anything deep from these two (and so many other less well-known figures), and in fact toward the end of his life Merton was very clear in not expecting much from the “institution” of monasticism, but he was opening up more and more to the true and deep charism of the monk.

As Merton saw it, institutional monasticism is an inevitable and necessary support structure for the ability to sustain a monastic life for most monks. In that regard it needs care and respect for a traditional way of life. A new monk has to learn a whole new pattern of life, and in this he/she is merely following in the footsteps of so many holy and kindred spirits. However, the institution also tends to become an end in itself and stifles the real and deep development of the monastic charism which can take on all kinds of appearances. In that famous last talk that Merton gave before he died, he was fond of quoting a Tibetan abbot who said to one of his monks, “From now on you are on your own!” And that was Merton’s message to his fellow Christian monks, and the meaning of that is that the institution can only take you so far. The really deep down work of “becoming a monk” is a very personal and transcendent affair of the heart that transcends all institutions even as you will live in such institutions for the most part. But becoming a monk is not equivalent to being a member of such an institution. (By the way one of the symptoms and signs of this problem is when monks believe it’s ok to spend millions on building their structures. Some will surely strongly disagree with this evaluation but it is my firm conviction that you can almost measure the degree to which monks are deluded by the matter of “credentials” by the amount of money they spend on building and decorating and refining their structures. Also of course how much effort they spend on gestures of self-definition.)

There is an old country western song, a plaintive melodious lyric first sung by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson: “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” It expresses a deep lament for a set of lost values that are seldom witnessed anymore but whose embodiment was always the mythical cowboy. Neither my voice nor my artistery is up to the magic of Waylon and Willie, but I also want to sing of “my heroes.” But my heroes have always been Milarepa and Han-shan and their like. My heroes have always been these magical, mythical figures who embody the values of monastic life and transcend all monastic credentials. In their own historical situations they were very marginal figures, never really fitting in with the monastic establishment, but now they are symbols of a monastic commitment that transcends all boundaries and has universal appeal.

Let me conclude by giving Han-shan the last word:

“Towering cliffs were the home I chose
bird trails beyond human tracks
what does my yard contain
white clouds clinging to dark rocks ​
every year I’ve lived here
I’ve seen the seasons change
all you owners of tripods and bells
what good are empty names”

“People ask the way to Cold Mountain​
but roads don’t reach Cold Mountain
in summer the ice doesn’t melt
and the morning fog is too dense
how did someone like me arrive
our minds are not the same
if they were the same
you would be here”

“I’ve always loved friends of the Way
friends of the Way I’ve always held dear
meeting a traveler with a silent spring
or greeting a guest talking Zen
talking of the unseen on a moonlight night
searching for truth until dawn
when ten thousand reasons disappear
and we finally see who we are.”

(Translated by Red Pine)

The Coming…the First Coming, the Second Coming, the Coming…is The Awakening. The language of “The Coming” points to the Awakening. Christmas, when seen deeply, is an awareness and a celebration of the possibility of The Awakening—and for us Christians this begins with the story of Jesus.

I walk into the environs of a huge retail store where almost any item can be bought and which is completely decorated for Christmas. On the PA system they are playing the Ode to Joy. Marvelous. What a mixture, a concoction of the sublime and the superficial, of the beautiful and the crass, of consumerism and the spirit, of light and darkness. This is what the New Testament calls The World. The Awakening takes place within this World. It is the Light that is in the World, but the World cannot see it, cannot recognize it because The World is largely about something else altogether. Next they play “Gloria in Excelsis….” So it goes. The Christmas Narrative in the 2 Gospels is about the “hiddenness” of this Light in the World, of this Light in our hearts which also are a concoction of so many things. Its symbolic and mythic discourse does not take away from the historicity of this one person, Jesus Christ, whose poverty, hiddenness, vulnerability all point to the Real which is at the core of our hearts. Only when the Awakening is realized, even gradually, do we even begin to sense that Light, and then it might have all kinds of different Names ( like in Islam: Mercy, Compassion, Freedom, etc.)

In Christian theology the eschaton, the Second Coming, is the culmination of the First Coming which we celebrate at Christmas. The Second Coming is also elaborated and presented to us in a multitude of symbols and myths, but it all has to do with The Awakening. The eschaton, the “beyond time,” which we cannot directly apprehend through our rational, discursive faculties or through our self-centered ego identity, which we inevitably but uselessly try to imagine in terms of the values and symbols of the present, this eschaton, the “last hour,” is truly this present moment (John 5:25)—so teaches Abhishiktananda. As he puts it: The eschaton, the Second Coming, is my discovery of my own true identity within the mystery of God. This is the Awakening. The eschaton is already here in the present moment.” So it is with The Awakening.

Christmas is a profound mixture of the trivial, the crass and the unspeakably deep, the Mystery. It is fraught with symbols of The Awakening. But it is also mostly filled with a more primitive undeveloped religiosity where “God comes to us from the ‘outside.’” So it is with our usual understanding of Christmas and so it is with much of our religious services. And so we celebrate this “coming”—and why not? For too many of us it is the God who stands “over and against us,” somewhere “out there beyond,” who then comes in the person of Jesus Christ. We celebrate this moment each Christmas and the atmosphere is filled with good cheer, gift giving, warm fellow-feeling, etc. These are but shadows of shadows, so far removed from the really Real, but still there is no need to disparage this because they are also all little, feeble but true signs of The Awakening that beckons to us every moment. (When Uncle Scrooge in Dickens’ story converts from his isolated ego-centered identity to a communion with Tiny Tim and his family we see a hint of that Awakening!) And ultimately this Awakening, for us Christians, is very much tied to the person of Jesus Christ.

So at Christmas we Christians celebrate the Coming of Jesus Christ –but the Gospel of John, the deepest Gospel, and the Gospel of Mark, and the Letters of Paul all ignore this celebration! They all point to the meaning of the Awakening without the symbolism and mythological tropes of the Nativity narratives—but they have their own symbolic discourse. As usual, Abhishiktananda zeroes in on the main point: “And whoever penetrates within himself to the supreme mystery, in Christ, has passed into God, from death to life, from darkness to light, ‘It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me’(Gal 2:20).” Most Christians take these words in a very watered-down way, like some ethical “do-goodism,” “be like Jesus,” etc. But with The Awakening we will realize our deepest identity in these words.

So there is the Coming of Christ, the birth of Jesus, and the trajectory of that life that ends in a hideous death on the cross and then the “explosion”(as Abhishiktananda loved to call it) of the Resurrection, where all Names, all forms, all symbols, all that we can ever recognize explode and we are left with the really Real in its naked Presence and where there is no longer even any “ego I” left to say “Ah, here I stand before God.” No, there can no longer be any of that left, for to borrow from Augustine, God is closer to me than I am to myself. And in the Old Testament it was said that “No one can see God and live” (Exodus). So do not think that you can truly see God in the Nativity scene and still “live”—meaning to really see God there will also be the end of that ego-centered identity and existence. Do not think you will also see God, the true God, in the life of Jesus, and expect that ego-identity to live. What you probably will see is merely a projection of your own religious fantasies, distortions, shortcomings, limitations, etc all dressed up with the word “God.” But the Living God, the Absolute Mystery which Jesus addressed as Abba (and Abhishiktananda was so right in seeing in this the closest Semitic equivalent to Advaita) will only be seen when that ego-centered existence “dies” and is reborn as a completely new reality, “not one, not two” with God. And of course no one can even pretend to see the Living God in the Crucified One—there is no concept, no image, no name, no word, no idea, no notion, no symbol that can take us through that gate. Truly it will be harder for a camel to go through the eye of that needle…! But there will be the Resurrection, and so we become aware of The Awakening in our own hearts.

So this whole life of Jesus, this Coming, is an opening to our Awakening. And what do we awaken to? Here again we run into a lot of symbolic discourse. But there is one Biblical word that sums it all up: Paradise! Neither the word nor the notion appears often in the Bible but it is a very important term. The Christian monastic fathers saw the monk’s life as a “return to Paradise.” This is where human beings begin, where their life consists in this unspeakable intimacy with God—in Semitic terms this appears in the beginning of Genesis as a Garden, referring to a life awake to the advaita of the Absolute Presence within the human heart. This is the whole point of human life. But the word appears in its final and utter nakedness in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus speaks to the thief crucified next to him: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Paradise is everywhere and always. You are never NOT in Paradise, but the Awakening must take place to realize that. I know, I know that is just a bit too glib, too easy to say. When you are not experiencing excruciating pain or sitting in a concentration camp, mouthing words like that is just a bit too easy. Spiritual talk can be very cheap. However, these words must be said, must be repeated…even at great peril of misunderstanding…simply because they are true…perhaps the only Truth that matters. Dostoiyevsky’s Father Zosima spoke this way; so did Abhishiktananda. There can be different nuances of our elaboration and understanding of Paradise, but for Father Zosima it was filled with an atmosphere of endless forgiveness and boundless mercy and taking upon oneself the faults and flaws and misery of others in absolute joy. It is also the Perfect Joy of St. Francis. This is the Paradise Life. This is the result of The Awakening.

One last thought. As we turn toward that Awakening to the Reality of the Eternal Paradise of the heart, we are still very much in a world mixed with a lot of darkness, contingency and confusion. Nothing is here permanent, and it does not take great philosophers to point out that human life is marked by anxiety, by dread, by fear, deep down—this causes human beings to do all the crazy things they tend to do. And caused by what? Ultimately it is a fear of losing, or better,
of having taken away who we are. We are always afraid of losing something of who we think we are. Someone or something will come/happen that will negate who we are. We are ultimately afraid of not even being. And death is perhaps the greatest of these thieves! The ego-centered self is very well aware of its own fraility and its own tendency to collapse into nothingness so it is always in a state of anxiety and dread even as it dresses in wealth and power. But Jesus pointed out to us that we mistakenly worry about the “moth and rust” that can eat away this contingent reality or the thief that can come and steal it. Such an identity is a “false treasure.” When we are Awake to the Eternal Paradise Life of the heart, when no longer “I” live but the Risen Christ lives in me, there is no one that can do anything or say anything to take that away, there is no event that can “steal” that from me. Such is the freedom of the Awake Ones, from some of the Desert Fathers to St. Francis and so many others. Only this unchains us from the determinisms and the confusions of the world. If I “hoard” an identity that needs to be defended, protected, built-up (like the Tower of Babel), that very “I” will end in confusion and eventual nothingness—a life “outside of Paradise.”

Fascinating that maybe the best paradigm of Christian Awakening, St. Francis, was also one of the great advocates of meditating on the Christmas narratives of the Gospel in all their simplicity. This was not a childish thing, a regression to an infantile religiosity of folk tales, etc. No, it was an intuitive sense of the seeds of the Great Awakening that are planted in this Gospel of the Nativity. For Abhishiktananda, it is more in the beginning words of the Gospel of John. So different strokes for different folks! But in either case we have come a long, long way from “I Dream of a White Christmas.”

A Blessed Christmas to all!

Time to revisit our old friend! As I have mentioned on several occasions, I believe that Abhishiktananda is one of the most important religious figures of modern Christianity. He died on December 7, 1973, 40 years ago, seems like a whole age ago. His writings are in all the libraries of the seminaries in his beloved India, but as one theologian told me they are sadly largely collecting dust. Most of the younger Indian theology students are more interested in various forms of Indian Liberation Theology or in some conservative reconstruction of the Christian past. Never mind—his influence has gone far beyond India to so many people seeking a deep contemplative life and especially those drawn to the encounter of Christianity with the great Asian religions. Now granted the number of such people is not great compared to all those who follow pop evangelical writers or mainstream Catholic or Protestant voices, but the importance of someone like Abhishiktananda cannot be measured by numbers of any kind.

Over the years there have been quite a few studies done of Abhishiktananda’s thought, theology and spirituality. Some are good and helpful, some are critical, some are superficially critical, and some are superficially laudatory. Whatever be the case, getting even a bit of his insights is most welcome. His written work does present various problems among which is that a lot of it was written very quickly and in a kind of ad hoc way, addressing some pressing problem or issue confronting him, especially in his numerous letters and in his diary—sources of some of his deepest insights. One is left to wonder how he might have developed these kernels of insight into a more refined contemplative/mystical theology—or if he would have even done that. Another possible problem is the narrowness of his interest, his laser-like focus on one thing: the encounter of Christianity with Hinduism, and even with just one path within Hinduism, Advaita. If your interests lie elsewhere, you might easily miss the importance of what he is trying to relate. However, the biggest problem in approaching Abhishiktananda and the biggest obstacle in getting a handle on his thinking is the fact that he develops as time goes by and his thought has some very serious changes. The Abhishiktananda of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s is not quite the Abhishiktananda of the early ‘50s even though he was already sitting in a cave at Aurunachala even then. Some of his strongest supporters claim that he was “already there” even then, but I think there is a real revolution in his thought as he gets into the 1960s.

What I am getting at can be seen in his book Saccidananda, his only book-length theological reflection, which he started composing about 1960 and finally got published by 1965. By the late ‘60s he had so changed his ideas that he considered this book no longer representing his thinking. However, when it was published it became quite popular in certain circles and also received some critical notice. The publisher wanted him to revise it and to republish it in the ‘early’70s but he said that he would now have to totally rewrite it. However he got talked into a revision of sorts and sent it out and this is the copy we have, but it does not truly represent his most developed thought—if that’s what you are looking for. And the revolution in his thinking that this little book begins has to do with how a Christian views the other great world religions. Abhishiktananda was trained in a progressive but traditional Catholic theology that gave rise to the Vatican II Council. The conservative view at that time looked on all other religions as simply being false if not downright leading to hell. The new view was that God was truly known in some way in all the great world religions, but that they were somehow incomplete and Christianity’s coming would be a kind of fulfillment and completetion of what was lacking in them. At least implicitly Christianity was held as “superior” and as the goal toward which all other religions were moving, but they were seen as holding a partial truth not to be demeaned or dismissed. When Abhishiktananda arrived in India in the late ‘40s he was very close to this position, but already you see in him an openness and a willingness to explore and encounter beyond the traditional lines. Well, by the late ‘60s there is a veritable revolution in his thinking. He turns the whole thing upside down! Speaking from his own deep religious/mystical experience of Advaita, he no longer sees this as being “incomplete” in the old sense of that term. In fact it is Christianity which he insists needs the experience of Advaita in order to come into its own fullness. Needless to say this is not going to fly in Rome!

Let’s do some exploring pertaining to these points by looking at some quotes. First let us listen to what may be his most formidable critic, his old monastic companion from his early days in India: Jules Monchanin, a brilliant and deep man of prayer in his own right:

“Serious divergences between us have cast a shadow over these last years; I think he goes too far in his concessions to Hinduism, and it seems to me more and more doubtful that the essence of Christianity can be recovered the other side of Advaita. Advaita, like yoga and more than it, is an abyss. Whoever in an experience of vertigo throws himself into it does not know what he will find at the bottom. I am afraid he may find himself rather than the living Trinitarian God.”

This is not a simple criticism which can easily be brushed off, and it does not come from someone who doesn’t know theology or who is congenitally conservative and not open to a grand encounter. However, the difference between Monchanin (and so many other Christian intellectuals who could not and cannot follow Abhishiktananda ) and Abhishiktananda is that the latter did venture into that abyss and his reports, at least for some of us, point to a profound discovery and realization. As someone put it: Abhishiktananda moved from interpreting Advaita in Christian terms to understanding Christ in the light of his own Advaitic experience. This is a new realization of the Christ-event and it leaves you wondering about the role of the Church in all this.

In relation to this is the general criticism of all contemplative life and mysticism as simply being narcissistic, a pre-occupation with one’s own self, not really in tune with the “Love Commandment” of the Gospel. Abhishiktananda understood this very deeply and confronted such criticsm vigorously(and this is one indicator that his Advaita experience is truly genuine):

“The act of pure love is what awakes. Advaita, non-duality, is not an intellectual discovery, but an attitude of the soul. It is much more the impossibility of saying ‘Two’ than the affirmation of ‘One.’ What is the use of saying ‘One’ in one’s thought, if one says ‘Two’ in one’s life. To say ‘One’ in one’s life: that is Love.”

This kind of statement is of course at the heart of what the New Testament says in so many different ways. And it is interesting that he puts it in “Advaitic” terms as if to say that this brings a new understanding of what the Gospel is saying. As many other times he says that we do not fully see how much the Gospel holds until we see it through the eyes of Advaita (granted this is not everyone’s cup of tea ).

Abhishiktananda is not fooled by general piety and religiosity, a kind of acting out of superficial religion—which is the real enemy of “love of neighbor”:
“Piety is perhaps the most subtle and also the surest way for the ego to escape pursuit and re-establish its status and dignity.” (Dostoiyevsky’s Father Zosima points to a similar insight.)

Here he is in harmony with that other great Hindu Advaitist, Ramana Maharshi:
“He meditates, he thinks he is meditating, he is pleased with the fact that he is meditating; where does that get him, apart from strengthening his ego.”
And this from one of the great Sufi masters, Bistami:
“The thickest veils between man and God are the wise man’s wisdom, the worshipper’s worship and the devotion of the devout.”

Like all the great spiritual masters of all the great traditions, Abhishiktananda focuses on the problem of identity: “who am I?” He summed up the whole spiritual journey in one marvelous expression: “The absolute surrender of the peripheral ego to the inner Mystery.” For Christians the Mystery has a face as the Gospel presents it in the person of Jesus. But Christian mysticism does not seek for you to “imagine” Jesus in your heart. A Christian Advaita, as Abhishiktananda sees it, moves way beyond praying to a God who is solely extrinsic to uis and is contacted exclusively by our own ideas and our own discursive reasoning. It affirms that the Risen Christ, who has no limitations or determinations, is at the core of our being. There is the “placeless place” within us, within our deepest consciousness—which in the Hesychast tradition is termed “the heart.” So God is not an object to be looked at; nor to be petitioned out of one’s own self-centeredness that is so filled with a bias toward oneself. Now for the pure Advaitist that very central Mystery has no face, just a pure Interiority. It is the “I Am” of God spoken in your heart as the ground of your little personal “I am.”

That sense of “I-ness” that every human being has is certainly real in its own right and level but if one only knows the superficial “I” then even the religious life gets warped. In the modern world this “I-ness” is especially exacerbated by mistakingly thinking that what we are is what we own or what we do or some such extrinsic dynamic. Happiness and fulfillment and the whole point of life then seems to consist in aggrandizing and protecting and embellishing all that. Abhishiktananda knew all about the delusion of all that quite early in his spiritual life, but when he has his heart attack toward the end in 1973, when he is no longer able to do anything, when in a sense he even has to give up “being Abhishiktananda,” then he serenely experiences the “deep I” which no longer is a matter of any extrinsic object or activity. From his Diary:

“Seeing myself so helpless, incapable of any thought or movement, I was released from being identified with this “I” which until then had thought, willed, rushed about, was anxious about each and every thing. Disconnection! That whole consciousness in which I habitually lived was no longer mine, but I, I still was.”

In the Christ-event, then, from Abhishiktananda’s viewpoint, what constitutes true personhood, in Christian terms, is that experience of being from the Father and going to the Father—using the language of Jesus. This is what Jesus communicates. This is where some Christians would say that Abhishiktananda gets problematical: the figure and role of Jesus. For Abhishiktananda Jesus is more the “frame of a window” through which we can see who we really are—not so much the “contents of a painting.” When Jesus says that “The Father and I are one,” this is meant to communicate an experience of Advaita in Middle Eastern, Jewish terms and this is a communication of our own identity that Jesus brings to us. And you begin to see some concerns that some might have when you catch the full implications of a statement like this:

“See Jesus in his infinite mystery, without setting him apart, and if he is the very mystery of every person, why refuse to adore him in each one and to recognize his unique glory in that person…and why demand that people should always and everywhere give to this mystery the name that was given to him when he appeared in Israel?”

This kind of statement makes even some very good people uneasy—because it seems to make the dynamic of evangelization in the classic sense unnecessary. Toward the end of his life Abhishiktananda had arrived at that point. For him a lot of the “Christian message” was namarupa, mythology and symbolism for this universal inner mystery of Absolute Presence. For him the Jesus of the Gospels was the window on this reality but that did not mean that would be the case for someone else. Let us listen to some key statements from him:

“Christ is my Sadguru—my true Guru—and he makes himself the singer of the Presence of this inner Mystery which Jesus called the Father, and of the relationship to the very heart of the Mystery which Jesus called the Spirit.”

“Far more than being the ‘head’ of a religion, Jesus is first of all a questioning of every human being. An examination of each one about his relation with God and with his brothers, as actually lived.”

“Jesus the Advaita, the Only Son of the Father, to whom we are not second, but in whom we are all one Son and in whose Spirit we are One with the Father.”

In each of the quotes above there is much more there than meets the casual eye, and one can understand why traditionally trained Christians would be/can be uneasy with such language. Abhishiktananda is quite ready and willing to take you beyond the boundaries of traditional Christian understanding if you let him. And now listen to this—here he is referring to the Eucharist, which he celebrated all the time in his role as priest and which some point to his “relative conservatism” as if he had still a traditional understanding of this sacrament:

“Every act that I perform is a divine act. Every act performed by any creature, every movement of unconscious or inanimate creatures is a divine act as much as the divine generation itself. God is completely and totally present in each of his manifestations (just as Christ is present in every host and in every particle…)”

For Abhishiktananda, the great words of the Eucharist, “This is My Body,” are no longer relegated to a discrete specimen of bread but pronounced as a revelation of the real nature of all that is real as it flows into the Ultimate Reality. The Eucharist is truly a celebration of Reality but not the only one—“Lead me from the unreal to the Real” chants the Hindu prayer!

Let me conclude with one of his last entries in his Diary, just before his death:

“The Trinity cannot be understood apart from the experience of Advaita, of non-duality. Jesus lived with his Father this experience of non-duality, an experience at once lacerating and fulfilling, all transcending, which carries away and leads beyond all; the gift of Wisdom, deep co-naturality, an explosion which whoever experiences it cannot escape.”

To follow Abhishiktananda beyond the boundaries of traditional Christianity may be hazardous, but then again it may be the “one thing necessary” for some of us.

Henry Giroux, a Canadian, is one of my favorite social critics and public intellectuals (with Chris Hedges of course). I usually catch him on Truthout, and there he has recently written about the corruption of the public university. Not a small matter or something that can be ignored without serious consequences. If our religious institutions are suppose to form and direct our hearts toward the “higher things” of life, our universities are suppose to inform our minds and empower us to think intelligently and critically about our life and our society. But, alas, we are in serious trouble on both fronts!

Giroux’s target here is the university. It has become mostly a shil for corporate America and the maintenance of the status quo. Yes, there are some decent people there and some real scholars, but the institution as a whole has been totally undermined as a bastion of independent thought, as a home for deep thought in the classic sense. Read Giroux’s lengthy, powerful, and devastating indictment here:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university”>http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-neoliberal-university

The nation is abuzz with Obamacare talk! Conservatives and Republicans are absolutely apoplectic about it. Most of what they complain about are either small problems or downright lies and fabrications on their part. A few things are actual, real problems, but what truly bothers them is the increasing role of the Federal Government. They are against that even if that were to produce good results for people. But about such a thing we could have an honest debate in other circumstances—but not now, for the simple reason that BOTH sides are absolutely wrong on this issue (and so many others). The trouble with Obamacare is not a broken-down website or the fact that the government tells you that you must have health insurance. The real problem is that Obamacare is another subterfuge for big business, for the insurance companies to make a ton of money. Yes, Obamacare will help some people; it will also hurt a few people. But you really miss the underlying narrative if you just look at these kind of numbers. No, the U.S. did NOT have a great health care system in private hands as the Right claims—there were (and are) so many serious problems with it, but what the Obama administration came up with is this strange blending and joining of corporate and government elements which is truly toxic—as in the military-industrial complex in another segment of our society. An extensive description and analysis of how this happened and why can be found here:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19692-obamacare-the-biggest-insurance-scam-in-history

. Not too long ago the Pope gave a homily in which he said something astonishing. He used the term “ideological Christianity” and he called it an illness within the Church! Indeed! A remarkable diagnosis coming from the highest office in the Catholic Church. This afflicts all Christians but there is a particular “flavor” of it within Catholicism. As the Pope put it, these people become not followers/disciples of the person of Jesus Christ, but of an ideology which is called Christianity. They are more interested in “being right,” in “being correct,” rather than following the person of Jesus Christ. They avoid the real cost and the real terms of discipleship. The reality of Jesus attracts people to the Church; ideology repels them. (This reminds me of Abhishiktananda saying somewhere how he met a number of Indians/Hindus who very much loved the person of Jesus but who were put off by Church people.) Ideological Christians become hard and brittle judges who believe, well, that they are superior to others who don’t hold the “correct doctrine.” They do not invite anyone to discipleship; they beckon them only to accept that particular ideology. The Pope also said that the cause of this illness was the lack of “true prayer.” I believe by this he meant “contemplative prayer.” I think it is simply impossible to have entered the realm of deep contemplative prayer and be an ideological Christian. This takes you beyond any ritual, sacramental, external, verbal, conceptual system of Christianity.

Now given all this that the Pope said, it is so disappointing to see his actions are very different. Just one example, described in the National Catholic Reporter, has him appoint a bishop for Hartford, Connecticut who seems seriously afflicted with this illness. Defenders of the Pope will say that he doesn’t have full knowledge of the man he appoints, he is simply presented with some names on a list and some information about each of them. Well, I think if he really wants to “make a difference” in the Church, he better find a way to make his actions and appointments correspond to his teachings. For example, he could appoint a woman to the College of Cardinals—at least one!! There is no church doctrine that stands in the way—you do not need to be an ordained priest in order to be a cardinal—Jacques Maritain, who had been a married layman, was made a Cardinal toward the end of his life in order to honor him for his service to the Church. More than words or symbolic actions are needed. Pope John XXIII called for the Vatican II Council in the first year of his pontificate.

One Last Thought: How different things would be if we all lived like Socrates, Jesus, and Gandhi. Very simple really, isn’t it? But all three were murdered—by State and religious interests.

There are many trails, and then there is The Trail. I will be speaking of The Trail symbolically, metaphorically, and of at least one empirical reality—The Pacific Crest Trail.

Anyone who goes out even a little bit into some wilderness area will have some experience of hiking on some trail—and the joy, the views, the exposure to the wild, the wonders, the effort, the challenges, etc., etc. But there are three trails within the U.S. that are extra, extra special: the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail. From “Hiking the Triple Crown”: “…it is the three great north-to-south trails—the so-called Triple Crown trails—that have captured the imagination of long-distance and weekend backpackers alike.”

The Appalachain Trail (from now on referred to as the AT) is 2167 miles long; the Pacific Crest Trail (the PCT) is 2650 miles long; and the Continental Divide Trail (the CDT) is 3100 miles long. Each of these follows one of America’s three great mountain systems; the variety of terrain and ecosystems represented in these trails is nothing short of mind-boggling. Each of these trails has its own challenges and its own attractions, and their distances can make it almost seem “beyond reach”; but “trail dogs” will tell you that most anyone in good health can do these trails—the key ingredient is desire. Of course it is quite possible to do these trails in segments—some people hike only for a few days on one of these trails ; some stay on the trail for a few weeks; and others go the whole way and this usually takes several months. Whatever it be, rest assured that you will learn something about yourself, about life, about reality, when you get on one of these trails.

Among the three great trails, there is one that stands out above the others: the Pacific Crest Trail. Among “trail dogs,” people who have done these trails and many others around the world, the PCT may rank as the very best long trail in the world—characterized by incredible views, enormous challenges, the longest stretches of unremitting wilderness, and ranging from sea-level desert to over 13,000 feet footpaths around glaciers. Within this stretch the PCT overlaps another trail which was established independently, the John Muir Trail (JMT). The PCT with the JMT runs for a bit over 200 miles from the Mt. Whitney area to Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite. The John Muir Trail is generally considered the “Jewel in the Crown” of the PCT. It is the most challenging and the most beautiful part of the PCT. Most hikers need about 15 days to do this segment(but of course some do it in less time but I don’t understand why rush through this beautiful country) and food resupply is very difficult. Also you spend a lot of time above 9000 feet and this causes altitude sickness if you have not acclimatized(hikers who come from LA or the Bay Area who just hop on this trail get it bad if they don’t take the time to acclimatize). But the reward is almost an unspeakable beauty that John Muir wrote about so eloquently—calling this area the “Range of Light.” You encounter numerous peaks over 14,000 feet, glaciers, numerous pristine high mountain lakes, and real solitude—some find it difficult to be by themselves night after night in an absolute wilderness!

Here are some photos of the John Muir Trail as found on Google and taken by various hikers at various times:

https://www.google.com/search?q=john+muir+trail+photos&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=_BF8Uq3UFOniiwLfgoHoCQ&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=623

The popularity of the PCT has increased over the years, but the number of people who do the whole trail is still very small. Around the year 2000, there were about 200-300 people who started on the PCT at the Mexican Border heading north. Only about 50% of those who started made it to the end. Now that figure is more like 800 people who start and the percentage of finishers is much higher. Normally the south-to-north direction is considered the best way of doing it, but many have also done the opposite direction. You generally start in the Southern California desert in April, then you make it to the High Sierras about June, and then you end by the Canadian border before the winter snows come.

Equipment issues are interesting! You will need something like a 0 degree sleeping bag for the High Sierras in June (most of the trail here is over 9000 feet)—at night it will get down to something like 20 degrees(some make it with a 20 degree bag but you might then have to sleep a bit chilly at times); the lightest small tent possible; a bear canister—yes, this is mandatory in the High Sierras because the bears will come after your food if it is simply in the backpack! Usually you can pack about 10 days worth of food in one of these bear canisters—you learn to cut down your needs to the bare essentials (no pun intended!!) What you stuff in the bear canister would make a Desert Father proud of you! Resupplying on the JMT is particularly difficult—there are only about three possibilities and 2 of them require you to detour from the trail quite a few miles. At Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite, those who continue on the PCT can easily get resupplied at a grocery store by the trail or have supplies sent to them to the post office that will hold packages for them. In fact some of the hikers send food packages to themselves at various spots along the trail which they pick up as they get there.

Here are some quotes about the JMT and the PCT from several books:

From The John Muir Trail: “The John Muir Trail passes through what many backpackers agree is the finest mountain scenery in the United States…. This is a land of 13,000-foot and 14,000-foot peaks, of soaring granite cliffs, of lakes literally by the thousands, of canyons 5000 feet deep. It is a land where man’s trails touch only a tiny portion of the total area, so that by leaving the trail you can find utter solitude. It is a land uncrossed by road for 140 airline miles …. The JMT is not a place to hike on impulse. Its length, its remoteness, and its great changes in altitude mean that you must plan your hike if you are going to enjoy it, or even to complete it.”

From Hiking the Triple Crown: “The PCT is a “hiker’s hike,” no question about it. Much of the trail passes through large tracts of wilderness, including the High Sierra complex (the longest wilderness in the continguous states)…. There are no shelters to congregate hikers together, and trail towns are farther apart with fewer hiker-oriented amenities.”

Like I mentioned above, at Tuolumne Meadows there is a grocery store, a post office and a grill where many campers and tourists and hikers take time out for refreshments. Sitting at the outdoor tables is fascinating because you see so many different kinds of people. There are the tourists who are in a hurry to see as much as they can and then hurry home; there are the campers and short-term hikers who are obviously enjoying the wilderness; and then there are the long-term hikers coming off the PCT or the JMT for refreshing and refilling their supplies. You can see from their faces, their bodies, and their eyes that they are in a different space. There is something about being on such a trail that has a deep effect on a person. Many have written that this hike has changed them and their lives—a truly transformative experience. On such a journey, of such length, with such challenges, where you are largely removed from the structures and supports of modern social life, the way you normally live your life and your whole identity comes into question. At the very least you begin to see through the multitude of superficial and trivial pursuits and gadgets of our modern existence. When you are on The Trail, the wilderness is silent about who you are—or better, it speaks in a language you yet do not understand. Perhaps after many, many days of hiking 15 miles, then sleeping on hard ground, then getting up and hiking another 15 miles, then sleeping on hard ground again, when life has been stripped to the bare essentials, perhaps then, just perhaps you might begin to catch a whisper of what the wilderness is saying—it is God’s Wisdom speaking to you, Hagia Sophia, and just perhaps you might begin to hear that voice within your own heart.

One final thought: The Trail is ultimately a symbol and a metaphor for the whole religious/spiritual life. I will leave it to you to work out the details of this connection, and perhaps you will really need to have hiked quite a bit to see the connection, but it is there. Suffice it to say that just as there are not many who take up these long trails, there are also very few who take up the real spiritual journey—there is a price to pay and there is a need for a kind of desire that surmounts all obstacles to see it to the finish. Already in the Gospels there are plenty of indications that not many want to really do this. They are more like “tourists” who want a picture of Jesus, and a label to wear that says:”Christian” or maybe just “religious.”

When you go out into the true wilderness, and not just some “park,” what strikes you first of all is how quiet it all is…the silence of the wilderness is a powerful antitode to all our own noise…internal and external. The wild places are teeming with life, yet it is so quiet…. However, our age being what it is, there is another presence in the wilderness. At least this is true for the Sierras and the wild western deserts: the hum and roar of jet engines far above. The “angels of death” are practicing far above us. They seem to be always there. We don’t hear them in our urban landscapes because they are not allowed over cities, but over the wilds they can do their thing. And it is amazing how they intrude into this holy silence with their machinery of war and death. All kinds of interesting thoughts there….

A few gems from Abhishiktananda:

“There is no part of our life in which we can escape the mystery of God which fills our whole being….”

“There is in the Gospel much more than Christian piety has so far discovered.”

“The supreme ideal of Hinduism: the absolute surrender of the peripheral ego to the Inner Mystery.” (No better definition of the spiritual life as a whole!)

“Christ is my Sadguru—my true Guru—and he makes himself the singer of the Presence of this Inner Mystery which Jesus called the Father, and of the relationship to the very heart of the Mystery which Jesus called the Spirit.”

“Piety is perhaps the most subtle and also the surest way for the ego to escape pursuit and re-establish its status and dignity.”

Just a sample from the thoughts of a person I consider the most important spiritual figure of our time. I don’t think he will ever be canonized, but that is something that I also think he himself would recoil from. When they canonize John Paul II who did so much to create the atmosphere that encouraged the hiding of the child abuse cases, I am not sure that I would want to be in the same “club.” No, the really important people in the Church, like Abhishiktananda and Dorothy Day among many others, they will not get canonized.

Speaking of which, the new Pope has made quite a splash. Certainly the things he has said since his election have generally been quite refreshing to hear considering the recent history of the papacy. But I am not fully convinced this will amount to much. I hope I am wrong! There is that old pop saying: He talks the talk, but does he walk the walk? You really have to watch what he really does, and this will make all the difference. There is of course the possibility that he is truly sincere but that the ossified structures and mentality of the institution will not budge in any significant way no matter what he says. I certainly hope that he is more than just the “kinder, gentler pope”—I hope that he does something more, for example, than just call for a “greater role for women in the Church.” Instead he could make a real dent in the ossification of the Church if he, for example, opened up the diaconate for women. This would not involve any doctrinal revamping (which they fear more than anything else!), just a shift in church practice. So we shall see……

Speaking of dysfunctionality, what about our government, our politics, our economy, our whole country!!!! We are so beyond any reasonable comment….but I have found several voices that sum up our situation quite well….and it is not a pretty picture. If you really think that by just a “correct vote” you can change the situation, you are badly mistaken. We are well beyond that! Here is one such voice:

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19025-beyond-savage-politics-and-dystopian-nightmares

Some words from John Muir:

“The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.”

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening—still all is Beauty.”

“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware.”

Syria has been in the news for the last few months. Real bad news. Whenever I hear about Syria in the media, my mind wanders to another, more ancient Shria. Perhaps it is the Syria of the Sufis in and around Damascus, that most ancient of cities. More likely it is the Syria of the first Christian monks. Very little is known about this fascinating moment in Christian history. Very few in the West seem to care. Most people who do study Christian history/Church history tend to fix the beginnings of Christian monasticism in Egypt with the Life of Antony as a kind of benchmark for dating the “beginning.” However, in Syria Christian monastic life had already been going on for over a century when Antony entered his cave. As a matter of fact, Christianity in Syria was almost totally monastic. This is worth a look, so let us step back a bit.

What modern Western Christians don’t realize (or don’t want to admit) is that early Christianity was a very diverse phenomenon. There were many different “Christianities” to put it awkwardly. Of course one emerged as the dominant form: the Church of Rome, and it proclaimed itself as “divinely established” from the getgo. You know how it is after a war—the victors end up writing the history of the war, not the losers; and of course the victory is then seen as the outcome of “truth” and “justice,” and in some way as inevitable. Similarly here. The “Roman view” of all this history has prevailed but historical scholarship has made a few “adjustments” in that narrative. For example, the Church’s view of the so-called Albigensian heresy has been one of total negativity, as if these people were the epitome of evil and a threat to civilization. This kind of justified their extermination—we call it genocide today! But it was fighting heresy then. In any case, modern historical scholarship shows them to be simply “too ascetical’—celibacy, for example was the norm, not marriage. This movement developed as a reaction in fact to the decadence of the Church around the 9th century. Their real sin, as it were, however, was the fact that they ignored the authority of Rome. This has always been the “unforgiveable sin,” and so all kinds of stories were made up about them and they were eventually wiped out in a blood bath in Southern France.

Getting back to our Syrians, they too were extreme ascetics from our modern viewpoint. Becoming a Christian meant becoming a celibate ascetic, a hermit perhaps, a wandering monk perhaps, or even some more exotic form of life, like a pillar monk, etc. Regular or normal family life, conducting business or a trade was over. And this was due NOT to some “rejection” of the body but to an intense awareness of the Presence of the Divine in what is termed the Holy Spirit. This was a Christianity very much oriented toward the Holy Spirit. And also very importantly this dynamic was also intensely eschatological. In other words the “end time,” the “last days” had arrived and there was no point in that other way of life. They were living the ultimate eschatological life. In many ways you can see that this kind of Christianity was not going to “sweep the Empire,” but it is an amazing paradigm of a different view of Christian life, and to condemn it is simply to be narrow-minded. By the way you can see also that they were not going to compromise with “the State,” with “society,” even if the rest of the Church was going that route with Constantine when Christianity became the state religion—you can see this same tension in the Egyptian desert also.
In Syria this way of life goes back almost to the 1st century, to that time of the formation of the New Testament. Their key document seems to be the Gospel of Luke, which has been shown to radicalize the sayings of Jesus in several key places, compared to Matthew for example. Many scholars believe that the Gospel of Luke comes from the Syrian environment. So this form of Christianity is there from the very beginning, not a later development. An interesting angle: Syria was at the crossroads of travel and trade with Asia. Some scholars believe that maybe these people derived some inspiration from seeing Buddhist monks or the sannyasi of India. That is possible, but alas there is no proof of that. Truly these people resemble more the sannyasi than anything else out there! Imagine a Church where sannyasa would be the norm, not an exception!

One of the most significant early documents of Syriac Christianity is the Acts of Thomas, from very early 2nd century, from the time of the formation of the New Testament. This document does not make it into the accepted canon simply because it may be too radical and uncompromising with the rest of society and the state. It recurrently uses the terms “stranger” and “foreigner” as positive terms for being a Christian. It equates being a Christian with a certain kind of “homelessness.” This has both a social and psychological aspect. The social means that you no longer identify yourself with your tribe, your nation, your state—you are no longer an American, an Indian, a German, etc. This all becomes meaningless, and the State no longer holds authority over you—only insofar as you willingly comply with its laws as they seem to be “for the good.” You can see that this would not be tolerable for any State. But now your identity comes from elsewhere. You are “homeless” in a very profound sense. It is eschatological. The psychological aspect has to do with another kind of “uprooting.” There is a dynamic in us that is always seeking satisfaction of all kinds, from the most shallow to the deepest form. The kind of “uprooting” that the Syriacs are talking about has to do with transcending that—recognizing that this is a “bottomless” task! No end to it. There is “no real satisfaction” on this side of the eschaton. Thus you are as a “stranger” and “foreigner” in this world, totally “homeless” and therefore never “satisfied” with anything in this world and so the seeking of that is illusory. This is similar to what the Buddhists mean by “desire” and samsara.

Gabriele Winkler has written profoundly about this Syriac scene, and I think that soon I will need to re-examine that world!

Recently a friend sent me this quote from Julian of Norwich, and it inspired the reflection below: “First, there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.”

In the last posting we revisited the Foundations & Fundamentals postings of last year as once more we reflected on the Absolute Mystery of God. In this posting we will do some more revisiting of the Foundations & Fundamentals as we reflect on what I called in the previous posting as “The Mercy.” You may be wondering at the unusual wording—why don’t I just say, “The Mercy of God”? There are a number of reasons and these may become apparent as we proceed.

In the last posting I reflected on the Names of God in light of the utter and transcendent Absolute Mystery that God is. To recap: for Pseudo-Dionysius the Reality of God is wrapped in total incomprehensibility, but because God does not, as it were,” stay “ “within Godness” but engages in Self-communication both in so-called inspired scriptures and in a pouring out of this reality which we call “creation,” everything then in this reality somehow conveys God’s Self-communication; and so we can have and do have all these Names for God, and indeed we have all these “words” of God. Thus, from a blade of grass to the person of Jesus Christ(according to Christian tradition) we learn “who” God is. ALL the Names are of course truly inadequate, more or less, to comprehend the Absolute Reality of God, but they do carry a real and true knowledge of God. (To diverge: Eastern Orthodox theology carries this distinction of the essence and the energies of God. We can never ever know the essence of God, but we have real contact with God through the energies of God, which are not just some “effect” of God but also truly God. This distinction is problematical in that it seems to divide God into 2 parts, but Eastern theologians insist that is not the case and in any way the notion is interesting and useful in some ways.)

Now to turn to our Islamic/Sufi friends—they have the most profound theology and a whole spirituality of the Names of God. The Names are innumerable but there are 99 special Names of God. It is a kind of pyramid of higher and lower levels, and the Names toward the top of this scheme are “the All-Merciful” and “the All-Compassionate”—“ar Rahim, ar Rahman.” From Annemarie Schimmel, a great scholar of Islamic mysticism: “The fact that God has been described in the Koran as possessing the most beautiful names forms the basis for a whole theology of the divine names…–though the mystics knew that these names were not proper names applicable to God, but derivative. The usual collection of these names of glorification comprises 99 names. The Greatest Name is hidden,….”

I won’t go into the very subtle distinction between these two Names: the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. We went into that in the first posting on this subject. Let us concentrate on the Name, the All-Merciful. What’s important here is that this “mercy” is not seen as some separate thing/activity apart from God. No, it is more like the very “fabric” of God as it were. It is the Presence in another mode. Nor is this “mercy” a matter of emotive intentionality or a matter of “feelings.” But of course human language of longing, of desire, of kindness, etc. can all be used in reference to God—as in fact the Sufis are very good at this.

The essence of this Name, “the All-Merciful,” pertains to the very Reality of God in all its manifestations, absolutely all! Thus for the Sufi, for the mystic who has the eyes to see it, this Mercy is present in all things and all events and all persons. Thus we can name God everywhere and at all times. Our very being is a manifestation of the Name of God as Mercy. Now this is understandably very difficult to grasp in a lot of situations. Let me refer to and paraphrase a Sufi teaching: There is a veil that covers the reality of God in all the bad, negative things of our reality. It is one thing to see God when we lift this veil; it is quite another thing to see God in this veil. Now this is not to make light of or negate the reality of all the bad things in life. All our anguish, all our mistakes and failings, all our cries, all our struggles, all our pains, all our illnesses, all our frustrations and desperations, etc. are very real, but as we “awaken” to the Reality of God we will see it present in all this, even this—and God’s Name there is Mercy. Can you believe it? Perhaps Jesus on the Cross is the ultimate image of that.

Now let us switch back to the Christian tradition. When we see Jesus, we see this Name, “God, the All-Merciful,” personified; we see the human reality manifesting the Divine Reality, we see what this Mercy is like in human terms. At this point let us turn to the Christian East and the Jesus Prayer. The full prayer runs like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” It is used by those in the Hesychast tradition as a gateway to the deepest realms of contemplative prayer. But there are various levels of this prayer and various realizations of its meaning. It starts out as a kind of “asking,” “pleading” for this “stuff” called “mercy.” It’s as if you were standing in front of Jesus. So there is this image of God in Jesus, then you, and then this “stuff” or “activity” called “mercy”—same thing happens with that other Christian word “grace.” This of course is a crude picture. The Hesychast masters all insist that you must drop all images, all attempts in visualizing, all pictures in the mind, but enter into this Prayer in a kind of “silence of the mind.” Because first the Prayer will unfold the Presence as Mercy in every fiber of your being, in every moment, in every situation—to borrow from and paraphrase Abhishiktananda, “Maybe there is only the Mercy!” But then the Prayer will take you beyond all Names, even Mercy, into the very Absolute Mystery of God where our own relationship to God is concealed. And the journey is forever.

In conclusion, let me go back to our Sufi friends. A saying from Bayezid Bistami: “God spoke: ‘Everybody wants something from Me. Only Bayezid wants Me Myself.’” Bullseye! Indeed! If we seek “mercy” as some gift from God, that is one level of realization, but when we seek only God, then we have God’s Mercy everywhere and at all times. If we seek only God, what is it that we lack?

Over a year ago I did a series of postings on what I called “Foundations & Fundamentals” of the spiritual/mystical path within the Christian tradition, with an eye open to whatever might help us on our way that the other great traditions teach. Indeed, there is much to learn from them. In any case, one posting was entitled “The Mystery of God and the Knowledge of God”—a very important topic. Needless to say we are only skimming the surface of what needs to be said, and so, as promised, we return to this topic again and again. In this posting we will discuss this in three parts: A. the nature of religion; B., the Gospels and the figure of Christ; C. Pseudo-Dionysius. So let us begin.

A. The Nature of Religion.
Among the various things that could be said about religion in general is that whatever historical forms it takes on it seeks to relate the human to an ultimate, absolute Reality. Each of the great world religions has its own set of symbols, rituals, teachings, and practices, all of which are meant to point toward that Absolute Reality, to make one more and more aware of it, and most importantly to embody that relationality in one way or another. (We will set aside Buddhism here because it needs “special treatment” in this regard.) And the embodiment that is most universal, cutting across all the traditions, is precisely “in” a human being. This is what we mean by the terms “holy man,” “holy woman,” “saint,” “mystic,” etc. There is this person in each tradition who is awake, more or less, to varying degrees, to his/her relatedness to the Absolute Reality.

Now there are two things that each of the great traditions can be said to hold in common concerning this topic: 1. The Absolute Reality is also essentially an Absolute Mystery; 2. That relationship to the Absolute Reality is in itself an impenetrable mystery. But even by using the word “mystery” we are in danger of trivializing what we want to express. This “mystery” is not something that can or ever be lifted—it is not due to some insufficiency of our minds that somehow falls away when we die. It is not some “add-on,” a cover as it were, that temporarily conceals the Absolute Reality. No, Mystery is of the essential nature of the Absolute Reality and our relationship to it is to travel deeper and deeper into it. So that relationship is also wrapped in absolute mystery. What that means is that this relationship cannot be “unwrapped” for our scrutiny as some scientific object—that it will always be BEYOND our understanding but which will fill our lives and our being more and more in an unspeakable way. This is very important to note because for too many adherents of the various traditions that relationship seems pretty well mapped out. One reason for that is that we are also made for “knowledge” of this Absolute Mystery. A seeming contradiction because our word “knowledge” almost always connotes a rational, scientific grasp of the reality in front of us—or else it does not get the term “knowledge.” Knowledge of the Absolute Mystery and knowledge of our relationship to that Mystery will be of a totally different kind. Thus, we better be careful about all our “maps”!

Note, I have avoided the use of the word “God.” Those of us in the Christian tradition tend to use this word and overuse it without any sense of awe of the Mystery behind it. It’s as if this Reality were merely an adjunct to our lives, or as if our little minds had a grasp of it. So, “God does this,” “God doesn’t do that,” “God loves you,” “God’s plan,” “God’s reward,” “God’s punishment,” etc., etc. Some of this God-language is important and carries meaning in its own limited way; some of it is misleading; some of it is downright wrong. Without a sense of the Mystery underlying the word “God” we use it at our peril—even if we are quoting Scriptures. Not to jump too far ahead at this point, but it is interesting how very little God-language there is among the great Desert Fathers, the great early monks.

Now we have to encounter another important word in this regard, “transcendence.” There is a lot of overlap between this term and Mystery, but Transcendence in reference to God covers a lot more ground as it were. In a sense God is an absolute mystery because of that absolute and unspeakable transcendence—there is a “Beyondness” to God that is not measureable, not understandable, not comprehensible, not imagineable, not communicable. The Reality of God is so Beyond that it is not even able to be symbolized. Thus the tradition of contemplative prayer in Christianity always insists on the way of negation: silence, abandoning all images in one’s mind, etc. To borrow from the Upanishads, pertaining to that Ultimate Reality, it is always “not this, not that.” And what is most important is that our very relationality to that Absolute, Transcendent Mystery is also wrapped in that Beyondness. In other words, be careful about what you think your relationship to God is, what image or idea you carry in your head, what feelings may connect to that, positive or negative. Whatever you feel or think or imagine about this falls short by the width of the universe!! That very relationship is so Beyond anything we can conjure. It is neither dualism, nor monism, not theism nor pantheism—these are only feeble concepts—we are neither one, nor two—we are beyond that kind of counting! That’s why I enjoy these words from the Heart Sutra (a modern translation):

Gate’, gate’, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, wow!

Now we have to face the fact that even this Transcendence gets trivialized. It simply becomes “God way out there somewhere.” Or it becomes “God is all-powerful and can do anything.” And then we get stupid logical games like, “Can God square a circle?” “If God knows the future,…..” And so on, and so on. And if we are a bit smart and religiously educated we can even play the transcendence/immanence game, trying to create a logical conundrum like a puzzle to solve. Suffice it to say that whatever the term “immanence” connotes is already packed within that term “transcendence” when it is truly expressed.

Let me conclude this part with one positive affirmation. Your life is totally wrapped in the Absolute Transcendent Mystery of God. There is no “outside” to this where you could stand and observe this or make statements about it. Your relationship to that Mystery makes itself known to you through a kind of “unknowing,” which can also be termed as an “awakening.” There are degrees of this awakening, or to put it better, once awake you never cease “becoming more awake” as it were, journeying ever more deeply into the Mystery filled with the Beyond, beyond all comprehension. So—final statement—there is no gap, no distance between you and God. The language of separation is at best a symbolic discourse of human exhortation, modeled on human love. At worst it is delusional. Wherever you are, whoever you are, God is more there than you are, and in fact God is more you than you are yourself.

B. The Gospels and the figure of Jesus
Here we venture into more difficult territory! The Gospels are the central documents of the Christian tradition, and the figure of Jesus Christ and how we interpret him is the pivotal point for all else. Truly this Word is a “two-edged sword,” but not in the traditional sense. On the one hand this Word is a source of and a summons to real wonderment, puzzle, questioning, awe, mystery—all of which beckons us always toward that Absolute Mystery. On the other hand that Word easily gets “captured” and trivialized. A veritable “Jesusology” develops where the figure of Jesus is somewhere out there on whom are projected our longings, our fears, our fantasies, our neurotic behavior, etc. This kind of thing happens in all the great world religions in different ways, but in Christianity this kind of misappropriation of the Scriptures and especially of the Gospels is almost rampant.

What do we actually see when we look at the Gospels? Primarily two things: 1.) A very strange, perplexing form of life; 2.) the person and figure of Jesus. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a whole new way of life is emphasized. The person of Jesus is obviously prominent but when we get to John this person becomes the “whole thing.” In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the parables, the healings, the injunctions and descriptions of a new way of life(like in the Sermon of the Mount) signal a break with our usual understanding of things. Suffice it to say that in our rationally organized social matrix the “last” are not the “first,” etc. It is interesting to see what Christians often do with all this language that steps outside their normal boundaries. For example, the Sermon on the Mount is sometimes presented as a call to a “Super Ethics,” one which of course no one lives up to and so then we have this teaching on forgiveness. Another “ethical” option is to push this into the eschaton, the Second Coming—the language and activity of Jesus presages this final and ultimate action of God. Still another option is to see all this as symbolic (but of what?—here often the “symbolized” is simply some projection of something within us, within our psyche). And finally there is the option where you simply use that language to “get a fix” on Jesus’s identity as “Son of God.” (Of course there are the few saints and holy people who have taken these words literally and truly made much of that.)

Now of course none of this is completely wrong; it’s just that they all fall short of something incredibly profound. All these readings stand at an unspeakable Door that opens on that Absolute Mystery. But perhaps with the Gospel of John you step through that Door, indeed you are almost pushed through it! Indeed, it is in this Gospel that Jesus says, “I am the Door”—and a host of other symbolic identity statements. How to even approach reading these without trivializing or making into platitudes or religious clichés? Consider Thomas Merton’s little meditation on Jesus as Door in the Gospel of John—it can be found in his collection, The Asian Journal. Short but very effective and most importantly evocative of that great mystery underlying this figure of Jesus. And it is extremely significant that Merton can do this kind of reflection within his exposure to the other great world religions. That speaks a ton!

We have not touched on the Pauline Letters or the figure of the “Risen Christ.” That we will have to do in a later posting because that needs a whole treatment in itself. Here I just want to emphasize that the language of the Gospels and the figure of Jesus in them does not take away the Absolute Mystery of God. In fact we can say that the Jesus of the Gospels is not so much a “comfort figure,” a “church creator,” but one who brings that Mystery awfully close to our hearts! In Paul, then, we will discover that Mystery in our own hearts! Lots more to discuss here, and some of it we will touch in the next section.

Addendum: Jesus on the cross, the message of Jesus crucified, the Cross/Crucifix—all this is the central symbolism of Christianity. Nothing else is even close. (For Abhishiktananda’s Christology that is not the case, and that needs a close look.) This is the “last stop,” one might say, in what can be said as Jesus “passes over” into the Absolute Mystery that he came from and now becomes the Risen Christ. All this and the Pauline Letters we will need to reflect on later as we get closer to next Lent.

C. Pseudo-Dionysius
Among the great early Christian figures, this person is lost to history. We really do not know who or what or where he was. There have been many guesses but the only reasonably reliable information places him in the 6th Century and perhaps in Syria. Why is he important? He is the most intense exponent of the absolute incomprehensibility and transcendence of God. Yes, he does have some good company in this regard in Gregory of Nyssa among others, but his focus on the Absolute Mystery is so total that other aspects of Christian doctrine seem to get lost and inevitably his “orthodoxy” has been questioned. No matter. St. Maximus the Confessor endorsed his writings, and so Pseudo-Dionysius became a foundation stone for Eastern Orthodox theology and mysticism. In the West his influence was also wide but more problematical. You can see him in The Cloud of Unknowing, in Eckhart, in John of the Cross. He is used extensively by Aquinas, but perhaps in a mistaken or distorted way, at least from the Orthodox point of view.

There are four works attributed to Pseudo-Dionysius that we have: The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. The latter two are, in my opinion, practically unreadable for most modern Western Christians—I mean they will really have no idea what is going on in the text! (Eastern Christians, hold your peace! You are in the same boat with us but a.) You don’t quite want to admit that; b.) Yes, you are closer to what Pseudo-Dionysius is saying than we are, but once you step outside your liturgy you are there with us in this rationalistic, scientific myopia that cannot see beyond its mental nose!) Now if you were a person living in Constantinople around 600 and went to the Holy Liturgy at the Church of the Hagia Sophia, The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy would be perfectly and lucidly meaningful and fit right in. It is a Neoplatonic vision of the cosmos, the homo religiosus, and Divine Revelation in an incredibly beautiful and unified structure. Everything in it opens us to a new awareness and points toward that Absolute Beauty which is Absolute and Transcendent Mystery. The Neoplatonic universe is one in which we live immersed in rich symbolism and an unspeakable interconnectedness and inner-connectedness. The reality of Church and worship then takes on a wholly different look and feel—and present day Orthodox practice is a pale shadow of that and Western practice is…well, the less said the better….

So let us turn to the two works that are more accessible to us—though definitely not everybody’s cup of tea! Here we also find Neoplatonism and here I can’t help but be amused. When I was studying theology about 30 years ago, it was very “in” to disparage Neoplatonism—it was a real “bad word” in Christian theology! Both in Roman Catholic and in Protestant circles the call was for a return to the “authentic Christianity of its Jewish background.” Orthodox theologians had already for a long time been running away from any “contamination” by Platonism—alas, with not too much success because independent scholars would embarrassingly point out the various Platonic elements in the early Church Fathers. This call to a “pure Christianity” is bogus. This call to some “original Jewish Christianity” was a serious mistake and a diversion from some real problems. At the time of the beginnings of Christianity there were actually multiple Judaisms. Not one. So which one do you want to return to? Certainly the Jews of Alexandria were thoroughly Greek and Platonic. How about Qumran? Not too well-known, but there were folk at Qumran who were translating Plato into Hebrew(in Alexandria they were translating everything Hebrew into Greek!). Even in the Palestine of Jesus there were different versions of Judaism. It is only later that the Rabbinic and Talmudic Judaism suppressed and eliminated the thought-world of all these other Judaisms, and so what we have today is this one Rabbinic Judaism(but the modern period has produced some splintering even here).

Sorry for the digression, but it is important to see that the Neoplatonism in Christianity is not some kind of distortion or obfuscation. Neoplatonism is the rails on which early Christianity rides(Philo and his friends in Alexandria were already doing that). It is an essential feature of the growth and developing self-understanding of this religious awakening. Now our problem is that the Church so emphatically privileges that early language that it becomes impossible to rearticulate and reinterpret that profound religious awakening as laid out in the New Testament and especially in the Pauline Letters. We are afraid to see the very limited human boundaries of these writings. At times we turn this Scripture into an idol, indeed even that! And I don’t mean “make it modern”!! Please! I am thinking of our God-given encounter with all the great world religions. I am thinking of how Abhishiktananda struggled and suffered to “refind” Christianity in the experience of Advaita Vedanta, which was as real to him as the experiences of John of the Cross. Could Advaita be another “set of rails” that Indian Christian experience could ride on(and a few other of us as hitchhikers!)? Frankly I don’t think so—the Church won’t allow it; “conversion” for Indians became a “leaving behind” not a “bringing with” experience; and finally not many want to pay the price that Abhishiktananda paid. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground….”

Back to Pseudo-Dionysius! In his Neoplatonic vision the whole cosmos, this beautiful ordered reality, the whole world and everything in it down to a blade of grass, comes from this Absolute Transcendent Source, and then it returns there. This two-fold movement is matched by a two-fold paradox. On the one hand all of creation, because it flows from God, reveals God (Rom 1:20). On the other hand, no one has ever seen God (Ex 33:20; John 1:18; 1John 4:12). In so far as everything proceeds from God and reveals God to a certain extent, we will always have “names” for God. From our human experience of reality and from the revelation found in Scripture we can “name” God to a certain extent. This is the thesis of Pseudo-Dionysius in his Divine Names. But every name, even the names we derive from Scripture, are severely limited and do not reveal the Absolute Transcendent Mystery of God. This is very important. Because we have all these names for God from Scripture especially, like “God is Good;” “Father;” “Savior;” “Love;” etc; etc., we tend to lose sense of the Absolute Mystery and most importantly we lose the sense that our relationship to that Absolute Mystery is also a Mystery and not ever exhausted by or through any of these names. If that happens, then our prayer becomes shallow and our minds and hearts become sanctuaries of pious idolatry. That’s why the journey in contemplative prayer is always a journey of rooting out these “pious idols,” and going beyond all names into deep silence and Mystery where we and God are in an unspeakable relationship.

A quote from The Divine Names (the Luibheid translation): “Indeed the inscrutable One is out of the reach of every rational process. Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this Supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. Cause of all existence, and therefore itself transcending existence….”

Another quote from The Divine Names (the Luibheid translation): “Truly and supernaturally enlightened after this blessed union, they discover that although it is the cause of everything, it is not a thing since it transcends all things in a manner beyond being. Hence, with regard to the supra-essential being of God—transcendent Goodness transcendentally there—no lover of the truth which is above all truth will seek to praise it as word or power or mind or life or being. No. It is at a total remove from every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, conception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence. And yet, since it is the underpinning of goodness, and by merely being there is the cause of everything, to praise this divinely beneficent Providence you must turn to all of creation. It is there at the center of everything and everything has it for a destiny. It is there ‘before all things and in it all things hold together.’ Because it is there the world has come to be and exists. All things long for it…. Realizing all this, the theologians praise it by every name—and as the Nameless One.”

And one more: “And the fact that the transcendent Godhead is one and triune must not be understood in any of our own typical senses. No. There is the transcendent unity of God and the fruitfulness of God, and as we prepare to sing this truth we use the names Trinity and Unity for that which is in fact beyond every name, calling it the transcendent being above every being. But no unity or trinity, no number or oneness, no fruitfulness, indeed, nothing that is or is known can proclaim that hiddenness beyond every mind and reason of the transcendent Godhead which transcends every being. There is no name for it nor expression. We cannot follow it into its inaccessible dwelling place so far above us, and we cannot even call it by the name of goodness.”

Now The Mystical Theology is an extremely short work of only a few pages. In The Divine Names the emphasis was our “procession” from God—a very Neoplatonic notion—and so the possibility of drawing “names” for God from our experience and the Scriptures—though each “name” is extremely limited in its communication of the Divine Reality. Now in The Mystical Theology the emphasis, and most intensely so, is on our “return” to the Divine Reality, and here there can only be loss of all our concepts and names for the Divine Reality. So Pseudo-Dionysius advises us “to leave behind…everything perceived and understood, everything perceptible and understandable, all that is not and all that is, and, with your understanding laid aside, to strive upward as much as you can toward union with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. By an undivided and absolute abandonment of yourself and everything, shedding all and freed from all, you will be uplifted to the ray of the divine shadow which is above everything that is.” (Luibheid translation)

Pseudo-Dionysius is so intense in this that I think he scares the “willies” out of our basic “Christian-in-the-pew” piety! Here he is again: “Here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive, wrapped entirely in the intangible and the invisible, he belongs completely to him who is beyond everything. Here, being neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united to the completely unknown by an inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing.” (Luibheid translation)

And so it is that it must be emphatically underlined that not only is this Absolute Reality an Absolute Mystery, but our relationality to this Absolute Reality and indeed our very identity is also wrapped up within this Inexpressible Mystery. This realizaton should have great consequences for our spiritual life!

In conclusion, I am reminded of the words of a still more ancient friend, Lao Tzu: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.”

No wonder that when John Wu, a Catholic Chinese scholar, translated the Gospel of John, he wrote: “In the beginning was the Tao….”