Salvation in History

"I think, therefore I am."   -- Rene Descartes, French philosophe

Not the least of accomplishments, the late Pope John Paul II was an artist, an actor, an able statesman for his Polish homeland, exhibiting both bold love for the people, and courage against their Communist oppressors; as well, he was a highly articulate Pastor, tending his flock as priest, bishop and later as Pope, the spiritual leader of the world's Roman Catholic Christians.

Despite his high scholarship and extensive intellectual abilities, it is sometimes less known that John Paul possessed a formidable intellect for the humanities, the sciences, mathematics and philosophy of all kinds. He had a great interest in astronomy. In one of his many works of literature and philosophy, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul chooses as his subject, salvation in history. Why does the Christian story of Jesus seem so complicated? Is God really so loving? What about other faith groups who look to their traditions for wholeness, peace, for salvation, for unity? John Paul II (JP II) muses that the answers are long, yet he endeavors to make them simple in this essay for those who are not philosophers, to better carry the message of salvation, as he sees it.

"To be redeemed in salvation, is a profound question." Many faiths' practice for spiritual redemption; it is not limited to Christians. Jews and Buddhists are two other faiths that come to mind. In history, salvation in the west finds its modern roots in the teaching of the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe. John Paul writes, "I put Descartes at the forefront, because he marks the beginning of a new era of European thought, and because this philosopher, who certainly is the greatest France has given the world, inaugurated a great shift in philosophy: 'I think, therefore I am'...the motto of modern rationalism."

"The objective truth of this thought is not as important as the fact that something exists in human consciousness." Descartes inaugurates the modern development of the sciences, including those humanistic sciences, ushering in the new, modern age of western thought.

The French Enlightenment ushered in the "cult of the goddess of reason." To those minds shaped by a naturalistic consciousness of the world, God is decidedly outside of the world. "God working through man turned out to be useless...to modern science, to modern knowledge...which examines the workings of the conscious, the unconsciousness. The Enlightenment, thus, put God, the redeemer to one side."

Consequently, man, divorced from traditions of faith, of spirit, is now expected to live by reason alone. The collected wisdom of the ages, ever present in traditional society is cast aside in favor of reason alone. The presence of a divine Creator, a loving intellect that knows the heart of his creation, that so loved the world, does not need God's love.

The modern world is self sufficient; thus this world must be the world that makes man happy. Yet in the world today, man continues to suffer in body and mind, in poverty and neglect, in loneliness and greed, this world suffers alienation, aimlessness, anxiety, poverty, and suffers alone. Science has not been its help.

"This world,' says JP II, 'in which knowledge is developed by man, which appears as progress and civilization, as a modern system of communication, in a structure of democratic freedoms without limits, is today a world in which man suffers." The world is not capable, despite its reason, to make man happy, to free him from his sufferings, his pain, his death; it cannot save man from evil, illness or catastrophes. Still, now today, the world needs, wants to be saved, to be redeemed and renewed.

Immortality is not part of the world; that is why the Christ speaks in the Gospels of God's love which expresses itself in the offering of his son, so that man may not perish, but have life, eternal. He came that man might be free in love, to lift him and embrace in a redeeming love. For love is always greater than any force of evil."

"The Easter story is the culmination of the story of the "return," of redemption possible and available to all humankind. The history of salvation "not only addresses the question of human history, but also confronts the problem of the meaning of man's existence. It is both a confrontation of history and metaphysics; the encounters between man and God in the world, the divine mysteries of souls constitutes the modern Church." --paraphrased.

Gathering Communities

We gather together to work, to learn, to grow; we gather into communities, towns, universities. People everywhere, they live in groups, they live in families; they cherish their friends and they spend time together, supporting and enjoying their ways and their company. We get sick, we go to hospitals to help us recover.
What all these things have in common, with each of us in our everyday lives, is that inescapable fact that humanity, as a species, seems hard wired for gathering.

 Into groups we collect and revel. Together. It all seems so natural. Why, by working together, supporting and accomplishing worthwhile tasks, what could be better?
The person who lives stalwartly alone, who is friendless, who has very little or no community to speak of, that is a person often pitied and eyed suspiciously. We exclaim, "are they ill? Why are they such loners?"
This all makes simple sense. It seems so natural to gather, to enjoy the company of our brothers and sisters, our loves and loved here on earth.
Yet when the matter turns to named things such as 'religion', many of us recoil. Why? Well, it seems we don't think to belong after all. Some don't want to belong. Thus reinventing the 'spiritual' wheel is okay.

In fact, it's better than okay. It may be for these persons, the only way to demonstrate their will to 'pull themselves up by the bootstraps.' Many among us think, in spiritual terms, that there are aliens around us, to be avoided at all costs.
Infected with perhaps a strong sense of humanist enlightenment, a person with such notions eschews anything of community within the context of faith.

Yet if a faith community is true, existing for a higher purpose, for the common good, then it is, it must be and it will do something. Let me say this again: Churches, mosques, temples, ashrams and so forth exist because they do something for others.
If they do not, they they exist not for long. Communities survive and thrive because of the activities of each of its constituents. What each of us contributes to the good of all, is the community.

It is this fact that escapes many in the blog-sphere. Simply talking isn't sufficient, nor are kind thoughts or nice words and graphics. Communities must do something, and religious communities continue and persist for this very simple reason!
 Join the collective, engage in acts of social justice. Learn about yourself from another's eyes.
Help a friend. Be a community, be a support.

Confucius, the Meaning of Ren and Yi

"If what you don't want for yourself, you shouldn't to do others, then you would like others to do for you what you would indeed like for yourself." --Confucius (also K'ung Fuzi), ancient Chinese philosopher

While "the gentleman understands Yi, the small/mean man understands Li," wrote Confucius, Analects IV:16.
Here in the United States many of us grow up with the occasional, "Confucius said..." and sometimes responding with laughter. But what did Confucius really say? Why does it matter at all?
In his book, The Ways of Confucianism by David S. Nivens, Philosopher and Sinologist, writes that Confucius remains important now as then, forming a sort of moral compass with principles to guide one in positive and fruitful pathways.
The practice of Confucianism is heavily invested in what is virtue, being Ren and doing Yi. In other words, one is mostly to be concerned with Xiao, honor, along with Ren love, charity and Yi, right conduct.

Nivens takes these base ideas and draws them out over the milenia of Chinese practice. He investigates virtue in the form of  De, the power or charisma of a king or ruler who practices without force or violence. Insisting this is key to understanding the philosophy of Confucius he compares the practice of De with an example, "Humans typically feel gratitude for gifts. However in some societies, this feeling becomes magnified so that my gratitude to you comes to seem like force... De was originally this "force" kings acquired through their willingness to make sacrifices to the ancestors and to the spirits..."
However, here it 's important to be cognizant of the difference between gifts given freely and those given to obtain a measure of force. True De is in contact with humility, generosity and virtue, generally.

To do good in Confucius' view, one must be in possession of this virtue, free of simple, unrestrained self-interest. In contrast, Chinese philosopher, Mozi in an attitude of "consequentialism," takes the tack of an extreme voluntarist, or one who willingly 'scratches your back, so you will scratch my own.' Mozi then is the quintessential anti-Confucianist.
Confucius argues that virtue is every one's business and everyone is to strive within this virtue. Thus Confucius also falls into the business of enforcing the bolstering of, what the West calls, the 'weakness of the will.' "So the problem of weakness of the will enters into Chinese moral philosophy in general," writes Nivens.

 Nivens, a scholar in his own right, posits some interpretations of the ancient Chinese texts rather than mere erudition of them.  Within his book, he examines Neo-Confucianism through the study of Wang Yang Ming, another influential, early Chinese Buddhist-influenced  philosopher. "For Wang, self-cultivation is a matter of escaping the obscuration [enigma] of selfish desires, and attending  instead to the voice of one's true self.
Because one's true self is in identification with the universe... self cultivation results in the unity of all things [harmony]." So in Wang's Neo-Confucianist view, harmony with the universe, openness in mind and heart to the nature of things, the persistence of spontaneity and joy, even while in mourning, is expressive of the action of one's true, authentic self.

Living Awake and in the Truth, Part 2

Simple Mind is away from the computer. The following appeared here earlier this year, January 2, 2009.

Assumptions--are just that, assumptions.
To the Simple Mind, we are aware that things change, and in fact it is desirable because if they did not there would not be the opening for learning, for the new, a relief from what pains us, or hope. We would remain angry, fearful, resentful, confused. Pray for impermanence.
Working with this precept, we no longer try to escape the experience; rather like a scientist, we wait and observe our self, our reaction, our perceptions and what exists in this moment around us.
Reactions, like emotions, are automatic, they just happen. But what we choose to do isn't a happenstance. The will chooses and then we act. This is a freedom that we take so as to make best use and advantage of our circumstances.

What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of gossip? What about that?
Sometimes we want to feel part of a group or an event by talking ill of another person, or deliberately excluding others, to feel more special or bonded -- us against them. Gossip is when we say things about others that are potentially harmful or slanderous to that other person -- with full knowledge of this in our mind.
This is distinguished from speaking about others with the intention of sorting out our thoughts or feelings, or problem solving.

Then there are the instant reactions that lead us into hurtful speech or action. What about when we feel insulted? How about when an emotion demands our attention?
Before beginning earnest practice, maybe we just walked away or changed the subject to avoid what we judged distasteful. Maybe we excused ourselves with the thought that "they deserve it, anyway."

Sometimes we counted to 10 or went for a walk before answering that insulting remark, that hurtful phrase. These tactics likely stopped or controlled our reactions, but to really move beyond, to move to a Simple Mind requires a different response. A response that perhaps to this point in our lives we are unfamiliar with.
We must through practice, in awareness, dismantle our habitual thoughts and patterns of behavior. These are habits which cause us to suffer; those perceived thoughts, the imagined self which keeps us in the dream.
When we gain in awareness, then our deepest beliefs and fears may be faced honestly and squarely. We respond to what is so, to reality as it is by experience, not driven by fear, anger or other passion. Our response is what is required, according to our will, our desire to be as we are.

With this precept, our practice becomes meeting life in all its possibilities, in its newness, and its sometimes strangeness.

And while certainty, feeling "sure" is seductive, and it can make us feel safe, prayers for change, for impermanence are part of the Way. As a Mahayana practitioner notes, 'when a flower dies, we don't cry, because we know flowers are impermanent.' Understanding this, we will suffer less and be joyful more. Impermanence is not negative!
Does it then, in the Way, mean that we have to lose all that we care for? Of course not; the community remains and is important. What is also important is that we not cling so tightly to persons or things, that we fail to recognize the nature of change.
So, to gain in skillfulness and practice of the precepts, we must turn to experience, the present moment as our guide, and not simply notions or intellectual ideas.

As Joko Beck has said, "when we experience for ourselves the transitory nature of beliefs, then it no longer has us in a strong hold. We can be freer from our requirements--freer to speak truthfully." Isn't it odd how those we care for most deeply, those who have meaning to us in our daily lives, are those for whom we most often hold deeply, and those whom we entrench in our faultfinding?

This is one of the ways in which we may avoid ourselves.
We are dishonest with ourselves first before the other. By focusing not on our own experience, but on what we think must be the experience of another, we criticize, nit-pick, fault. Sometimes, most often, those negative attributes are really our own.
Our own views may thus be frozen; we may not be acting from awareness of our selves-- what are we feeling, what is my perception/experience? If we do not take the critical self view, like that of a scientist, examining our own functioning, our own organism, faultfinding gains a hold. We react to something that may not even be real at all-- at least not real beyond our own mind, and then we suffer the consequences when the world rebuffs us, as it must.


Other ways of avoiding or not being truthful are several:

*Do I add to the story my own facts, interpretations or opinions as though they are true?

Try seeing yourself as the other person whom you spoke about. How do your words fit now? What is your experience?

*Do I keep silent? Do I comment when in a group about something I know, or do I allow it to pass by?

What is your intention in keeping silent? What is your experience? Do I take some advantage from not speaking?

As you practice, keep in mind that in the Simple Mind, speaking truthfully is neither better nor worse.

Living Awake and in the Truth part 2

Assumptions--are just that, assumptions.
To the Simple Mind, we are aware that things change, and in fact it is desirable because if they did not there would not be the opening for learning, for the new, a relief from what pains us, or hope. We would remain angry, fearful, resentful, confused. Pray for impermanence.
Working with this precept, we no longer try to escape the experience; rather like a scientist, we wait and observe our self, our reaction, our perceptions and what exists in this moment around us.
Reactions, like emotions, are automatic, they just happen. But what we choose to do isn't a happenstance. The will chooses and then we act. This is a freedom that we take so as to make best use and advantage of our circumstances.

What do we do when we find ourselves in the midst of gossip? What about that?
Sometimes we want to feel part of a group or an event by talking ill of another person, or deliberately excluding others, to feel more special or bonded -- us against them. Gossip is when we say things about others that are potentially harmful or slanderous to that other person -- with full knowledge of this in our mind.
This is distinguished from speaking about others with the intention of sorting out our thoughts or feelings, or problem solving.

Then there are the instant reactions that lead us into hurtful speech or action. What about when we feel insulted? How about when an emotion demands our attention?
Before beginning earnest practice, maybe we just walked away or changed the subject to avoid what we judged distasteful. Maybe we excused ourselves with the thought that "they deserve it, anyway."

Sometimes we counted to 10 or went for a walk before answering that insulting remark, that hurtful phrase. These tactics likely stopped or controlled our reactions, but to really move beyond, to move to a Simple Mind requires a different response. A response that perhaps to this point in our lives we are unfamiliar with.
We must through practice, in awareness, dismantle our habitual thoughts and patterns of behavior. These are habits which cause us to suffer; those perceived thoughts, the imagined self which keeps us in the dream.
When we gain in awareness, then our deepest beliefs and fears may be faced honestly and squarely. We respond to what is so, to reality as it is by experience, not driven by fear, anger or other passion. Our response is what is required, according to our will, our desire to be as we are.

With this precept, our practice becomes meeting life in all its possibilities, in its newness, and its sometimes strangeness.

And while certainty, feeling "sure" is seductive, and it can make us feel safe, prayers for change, for impermanence are part of the Way. As a Mahayana practitioner notes, 'when a flower dies, we don't cry, because we know flowers are impermanent.' Understanding this, we will suffer less and be joyful more. Impermanence is not negative!
Does it then, in the Way, mean that we have to lose all that we care for? Of course not; the community remains and is important. What is also important is that we not cling so tightly to persons or things, that we fail to recognize the nature of change.
So, to gain in skillfulness and practice of the precepts, we must turn to experience, the present moment as our guide, and not simply notions or intellectual ideas.

As Joko Beck has said, "when we experience for ourselves the transitory nature of beliefs, then it no longer has us in a strong hold. We can be freer from our requirements--freer to speak truthfully." Isn't it odd how those we care for most deeply, those who have meaning to us in our daily lives, are those for whom we most often hold deeply, and those whom we entrench in our faultfinding?

This is one of the ways in which we may avoid ourselves.
We are dishonest with ourselves first before the other. By focusing not on our own experience, but on what we think must be the experience of another, we criticize, nit-pick, fault. Sometimes, most often, those negative attributes are really our own.
Our own views may thus be frozen; we may not be acting from awareness of our selves-- what are we feeling, what is my perception/experience? If we do not take the critical self view, like that of a scientist, examining our own functioning, our own organism, faultfinding gains a hold. We react to something that may not even be real at all-- at least not real beyond our own mind, and then we suffer the consequences when the world rebuffs us, as it must.


Other ways of avoiding or not being truthful are several:

*Do I add to the story my own facts, interpretations or opinions as though they are true?

Try seeing yourself as the other person whom you spoke about. How do your words fit now? What is your experience?

*Do I keep silent? Do I comment when in a group about something I know, or do I allow it to pass by?

What is your intention in keeping silent? What is your experience? Do I take some advantage from not speaking?

As you practice, keep in mind that in the Simple Mind, speaking truthfully is neither better nor worse.