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Faith and Practice
Apr. 18th, 2025 08:12 amThe last chapter of Living Buddha, Living Christ had three main themes: (1) the importance of embodying faith, because true faith is not a system of beliefs or concepts but something experiential; (2) even the tools of faith (like prayer, chanting, etc.) are practices for beginners, and may some day need to be abandoned; and (3) the ultimate level, of both Buddhism and Christianity, is beyond all concepts. Number 3 means that people who have been practicing for a while sometimes experience a dark night of the soul, but that's not because there is no truth; it's because they've been too caught up in the conceptual explanations of the ultimate (whether we're talking about nirvana or God or emptiness) and they need to return to the truth that is only captured in direct experience of mindfulness/experience of the Holy Spirit. This is part of the reason many mystics use apophatic theology; you can't really say anything directly about the divine nature, just what it is not.
I liked this passage: "I like the expression quote resting in God. Quote when you pray with all your heart, the Holy Spirit is in you, and as you continue to pray, the Holy Spirit continues in you. You do not need to do anything else. As long as the Holy Spirit was there, everything is fine. You are resting in God, and God will work in you. For transformation to take place, you only need to allow the Holy Spirit to stay in you. The Holy Spirit is the energy of God that shines forth and shows you the way. You can see things deeply, understand deeply, and love deeply.... mindfulness, the capacity to be here, to witness everything deeply that happens in the present moment, is the beginning of enlightenment. The same is true of the Holy Spirit. Buddhists say that every one has the seed of mindfulness in the deepest level of his or her consciousness, that the practice helps that seed to manifest. This seed of mindfulness is the presence of the Buddha in us, called Buddha nature, the nature of enlightenment. Christians say that God is in everyone's heart. The Holy Spirit can be described as being always present in our hearts in the form of a seed. Every time we pray or invoke the name of the Lord, that seed manifests itself as the energy of God. The Kingdom of God is in us as a seed, a mustard seed. If we cannot accept this, why do we say that God is within us.”
I liked this passage: "I like the expression quote resting in God. Quote when you pray with all your heart, the Holy Spirit is in you, and as you continue to pray, the Holy Spirit continues in you. You do not need to do anything else. As long as the Holy Spirit was there, everything is fine. You are resting in God, and God will work in you. For transformation to take place, you only need to allow the Holy Spirit to stay in you. The Holy Spirit is the energy of God that shines forth and shows you the way. You can see things deeply, understand deeply, and love deeply.... mindfulness, the capacity to be here, to witness everything deeply that happens in the present moment, is the beginning of enlightenment. The same is true of the Holy Spirit. Buddhists say that every one has the seed of mindfulness in the deepest level of his or her consciousness, that the practice helps that seed to manifest. This seed of mindfulness is the presence of the Buddha in us, called Buddha nature, the nature of enlightenment. Christians say that God is in everyone's heart. The Holy Spirit can be described as being always present in our hearts in the form of a seed. Every time we pray or invoke the name of the Lord, that seed manifests itself as the energy of God. The Kingdom of God is in us as a seed, a mustard seed. If we cannot accept this, why do we say that God is within us.”
