Random Ramblings

The 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 read two chapters today because the first one was mainly a review of the 5 precepts. The second one was more about putting the teachings from both traditions into practice.

“In the Greek Orthodox Church, the idea of deification, that a person is a microcosm of God, is very inspiring. It is close to the Asian tradition that states that the body of a human being is a mini cosmos. God made humans so that humans can become God. A human being is a mini God, a micro-theos, who has been created in order to participate in the divinity of God. Deification is made not only of this spirit but of the body of a human also. According to the teachings of the Trinity in the Orthodox Church, the father is the source of divinity who engenders the son. With the word logos, he brings about the spirit that is alive in the sun. This is very much with the non dual nature of Buddha, Dharma, and sangha.

“Alphonse Daudet wrote about a shepherd on a mountain who made the sign of the cross when he saw a shooting star. The popular belief is at the moment you see a shooting star, one soul is entering heaven. Making the sign of the cross is a form of taking refuge in the father the son and the Holy Spirit. When you believe that something is the embodiment of evil, you hold out across to chase it away. In popular Buddhism, when people see something they think of as unwholesome. They invoke the name of the Buddha. These are all practices of devotion. When you shine the light, darkness disappears. We may understand this as a kind of fight between light and darkness, but in reality, it is an embrace. Mindfulness, if practice continuously, will be strong enough to embrace your fear or anger and transform it. We need not chase away evil. We can embrace and transform it in a nonviolent, non dualistic way.

“When we invoke the Buddha's name, we evoke the same Buddha qualities in ourselves. We practice in order to make the Buddha come alive within us, so we can be released from afflictions and attachments.” And then there's the same story that he's told in other settings about this lady chanting the Buddha’s name for years who didn't transform her behavior and so one of her neighbors who noticed she was always angry started calling her name over and over and over again and when she yelled at him he was like well how do you think the Buddha yells what you've been calling his name for a bazillion years. And he says the same thing can be true with Christians who call the name of Jesus but don't transform their practice.

“Finally, he talks about the dual practice he was raised in in Vietnam where in addition to Zen, they also practiced pure land Buddhism. Quote a pure land is a land, perhaps in space and time, perhaps in our consciousness, where violence, hatred, craving, and discrimination have been reduced to a minimum because many people are practicing understanding and loving kindness under the guidance of a Buddha and several so this offers. Every practitioner of Buddha's way is, sooner or later, motivated by the desire to set up a pure land where he or she can share his or her joy, happiness and practice with others. I myself have several times tried to set up a small pure land and share the practice of joy and peace with friends and students... in France it is our Plum village practice center.... A pure land is an ideal place for you to go and practice until you get fully enlightened.... but pure lands are in permanent.... in Buddhism, the pure land is a kind of university where you practice with a teacher for a while, graduate, and then come back here to continue. Eventually, you discover that the pure land is in your own heart, that you do not need to go to a faraway place."

It is Monday of Holy Week, so I’m still reading Living Buddha, Living Christ. Today's chapter was on communities of practice, comparing sometimes the monastic traditions of Christianity and Buddhism, and sometimes the sangha and the church. It covered a bunch of themes. For example it talked about how in both communities creating the monastery as a space of peace and reflection where lay people could come to be inspired for their life was important. It also talked about how in both cases, the gathering of people served as a body for the community. Jesus said, “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am.” In Buddhism it takes at least four persons practicing to be called a sangha. It also talked about the need for both the church and the sangha to embody the spirit of their religion, to take Buddha and Jesus as the model of practice and to practice the true teachings. Basically, the overarching point was that churches need to embody the spirit of Jesus and the sangha needs to embody the spirit of Buddha.