MeisterEckhart

Some people say: 'Alas, sir, I wish I stood as well with my spiritual life and devotions, that I had as much devotion and were as much at peace with the Spirit as others are, I wish I were like them, or that I were so poor'; 'I can never manage it unless I go here or there, or do this or that. I must get away from it all, go and live in a cell or a cloister.'
--advices from Master Eckhart


Eckhart, spiritual guide and mystic, wrote on the subject of finding peace and comfort in the world. From his view it's dependent upon the fact that the reason for unease lies entirely with yourself and with nothing else, though you may not know it or believe it: restlessness  arises in you as the self-as-it-wills; whether you own it or not.
We may think a person must avoid certain things or people; that they seek other places, people or methods, company or activity.  Yet according to Eckhart, none is the reason why you find yourself held back: it's you yourself in the pursuit of those things which prevents one, 'for you have an inaccurate regard towards things."

Therefore he recommends one start first with oneself. Observe yourself.  In truth, unless you let go first of yourself, whatever you try, you will find obstacles. There will be indecision and restlessness, no matter where you are. 
If people seek peace in outward things, places or methods or in people or in deeds, the elimination of other people, poverty, humiliation, however great or small, is all in vain because it garners no peace. Why? Eckhart would say that its lack is due to the pursuit, rather tyhan opening ones' hand in the stillness of the world many seek forcefully to acquire.

 What does often result is that this chase, the pursuit of the desired result itself becomes the focus, a sort of ends though not one which often results in spiritual or other peace.
Observe yourself, and wherever you find yourself, leave yourself: that is the very best way, because we often find ourselves in ways and places we did not first imagine. Yet we are there, and that may not be a poor place to be. The spirit moves as it will. May we move likewise.

The Feast of Saint Valentine

The name "Valentine", is derived from valens, meaning worthy, and was popular in late antiquity.
Of the Saint Valentine whose feast is on February 14, nothing factual is known except his name and that he was buried at the Via Flaminia north of Rome on February 14. It is even uncertain whether the feast of that day celebrates only one saint or more saints of the same name.

At least three different Saint Valentines, all of them martyrs, are mentioned in the early martyrologies under the date of 14 February. One is described as a priest at Rome, another as bishop of Interamna (modern Terni), and these two seem both to have suffered in the second half of the third century and to have been buried on the Flaminian Way, but at different distances from the city.

Of both these St. Valentines, some sort of Acta are preserved, but they are of relatively late date and of no historical value. Of the third Saint Valentine, who suffered in Africa with a number of companions, nothing further is known.
~excerpt from The Catholic Encyclopedia

The feast day of Saint Valentine, priest and martyr, was included in the Tridentine Calendar, with the rank of Simple, on February 14. In 1955, Pope Pius XII reduced the celebration to a commemoration within the celebration of the occurring weekday. In 1969, this commemoration was removed from the General Roman Calendar. However, it remains one of the Catholic saint days.

The full history of St. Valentine's Day is blurry and nobody really knows who the real St. Valentine was. There are many stories and myths, and there were three different Valentines who were martyred. One was a priest who lived in Rome and was supposedly martyred in 269 A.D. The second, a bishop, lived in Interamna (modern-day Treni) in Italy. There was a very obscure third Valentine who met his fate in Africa. The first Valentine, from Rome, is generally considered the right person and is associated with a charming but also gruesome story:

During the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius II from 268 to 270 A.D., it became important to recruit young men to the army, but the response was low because men didn’t want to leave their wives and families. In reaction to the low interest, the emperor decided to prohibit marriages. But Valentine didn’t accept this and secretly performed marriages between young Christian men and women. He was eventually caught and sentenced to death.

The Roman emperors were firmly against the Christians until the fourth century A.D. and persecuted them because they were considered a subversive group. One of the major stumbling blocks to accepting the Christian church were the many holidays in celebration of the pagan gods, in which the people of the Roman Empire believed. For instance, the Apostle Paul founded an altar in Athens to the deity who was called "Unknown God," and immediately used this unknown God to introduce Christianity into that community. By this means the faith came to be accepted.

How Valentine's path to Sainthood began--the future saint’s jailer may or may not have had a young daughter, but in any case a young girl began to visit Valentine. He may have fallen in love with her or maybe not, but they met frequently. On February 14, the day that he was to be executed, he wrote her a note and signed it, "From your Valentine." And that is supposedly the origin of the custom of writing one’s beloved a note and signing it with that well-known phrase.
~excerpt from hurriyet.com

Here's the gruesome part of the story: Valentine was beaten to death and decapitated. In 496 A.D. Pope Gelasius set aside Feb. 14 to honor St. Valentine, possibly to turn Roman minds from the licentious behavior associated with the pagan holiday Lupercalia.
~excerpt from hurriyet.com

It is kept as a commemoration by Traditionalist Roman Catholics who, in accordance with the authorization given by Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of July 7, 2007, use the General Roman Calendar of 1962 and the liturgy of Pope John XXIII's 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, and, as a Simple Feast, by Traditionalists, such as the Society of St. Pius X, Roman Catholics who continue to use the General Roman Calendar as in 1954.

Saint Valentine continues to be recognized as a saint, since he is included in the Roman Martyrology, the Catholic Church's official list of saints. The feast day of Saint Valentine also continues to be included in local calendars of places such as Balzan and Malta, where relics of the saint are claimed to be found.
~excerpt from Wikipedia

Acts of Liberation

"We must not discriminate." -- Cultivating the Mind of Love by Thich Nhat Hanh

Writing on the Ultimate Dimension, Buddhist monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh points out in this book, Cultivating the Mind of Love, that there is a moment when, for each of us, we wake up to the moment, just this moment. We feel alive and vibrant.
 He writes about French author, Albert Camus who wrote in his novel, L' Etranger, that Mersault, in prison, condemned to die in three days, for the very first time, notices the blue sky. It was a sudden opening, a moment of mindfulness; he realized that he had spent a lot of time, as people sometimes do, feeling frustrated, imprisoned by anger, lust, or by notions that peace and happiness are out there, somewhere, sometime.
At that moment he saw, really saw the blue sky for the first time, it was a revelation to him. Life did have meaning; there were things that mattered to him. He could live his short time remaining deliberately, with awareness of sun and sky. His seeing deeply made his life real; it became his true life.

Hanh notes that many persons walk about in their daily lives as though they were dead, not noticing much or allowing the world close enough to be touched. He insists that these persons must be helped to realize that they matter; this realization is an act of liberation.
The Christian faith teaches that the Christ wears many different clothing; he has many disguises. Often others fail to recognize him in the sick, the poor or the lame. For Mersault God comes to rescue him with a sudden, burning realization of the beauty of Creation in the form of a blue sky. Anything might bring us to awareness of the Avatamsaka realm, we may wake up to this moment, just this moment and see the beauty and peace of it all. "We must not discriminate," Hanh insists.

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.

The Cross: Jesus the Christ in China*

Chinese author, scholar and sometimes dissident, Liao Yiwu, writes in Chinese about a topic of wide concern today, the growing interest in faith-based living in modern China. His book, God Is Red, gives a fascinating overview of the growth of faith in that land despite, and possibly because of, Communism as practiced there.
He asserts that several generations now, people have been living under enforced a-theism. Religion, especially all organized religion of any time is banned, forbidden and punished for the past 60 years, since the Communist Party came to power in 1950. With the help of a competent translator, his book is now available for readers in the English language, the most widely read language on the planet.

Now with this translation and other books also translated into English, Liao Yiwu is available to the many who read English, even though many of his books are banned in his native China. He writes that interestingly, it may be Communism itself which sparked and inspired the move towards religious practice after a generation of believers was forced into submission by the central government.
By creating an enormous void, today those young, new minds are like one big, blank slate, ready to absorb what has been lacking for a half century. Simple, intellectual patriotism is no substitution for spiritual awareness or practice.
Christianity, for one, has been present within the "middle kingdom" since the 10th century CE or earlier, brought there by early Catholic and Orthodox missionaries.

While he concerns himself principally with the growth of Christianity in modern China, he mentions the parallels existing with indigenous faiths and a bit about the Silk road which brought many ideas into ancient China. Meeting a number of persons practicing their faith in what are called "house churches" Liao Yiwu traces their development and their increase within Chinese society.
He writes a number of short stories and life accounts of those who have chosen to take the 'Way of the Cross'. The account reminds one of the early church fathers who were savagely persecuted by the non-believing Romans.

The author names several other English language books and a film, The Cross: Jesus in China. Other book titles are included in his book, such as: China From the Bottom Up; The History of Christianity in Dali; the writings of poetess Liu Shengshi; The Secret Visit by Xu Yonghai; Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China by Lian Xi.

*The Cross: Jesus in China
For more, follow this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3zK5nVyMN4

Jim Elliot, Waiting On God

"Surely God is good to his Israel." Jim Elliot

In 1945 with the world war now behind, the nation turned herself to other matters; a young man, Jim Elliot commenced his studies at Wheaton College, an esteemable Protestant Christian bible college located in Wheaton, Illinois. Apart from Bible scholarship, Wheaton is perhaps best known for its conservative views, prohibiting drinking, dancing and smoking among its students.
As a protestant, Christian institution it offers a solid education in bible learning, Greek, Latin and other modern languages as well as subjects which support christian missionary activities and ministries. His education prepared him well for the experiences which were about to come to him.

Against this backdrop, Elisabeth Elliot edits her husband's journals, including their chronicle of his later work in South America in the high Andes, The Journals of Jim Elliot. She writes in the foreword that what becomes most prominent in these journals is his dedication to his Lord, his ministry and his "consuming thirst to do what he saw as the will" of the Creator.
He reminds us not to "bind down the word of God... it's (the Spirit of the Lord) free to say what it will." He also makes it clear that quiet and solitude are important to develop ones' spiritual, inner life.

While his life was cut short, in his 29 years, he demonstrated a remarkable young faithfulness and other character traits such as determination and sensitivity to the working of the Spirit as he recognized them.
Indirectly, he asks the questions of trust or mercy, faith or belief which many before and many after him have also pondered.
And he addresses the great question of love.
Like many others before, he met his end steadfastly and ignominiously as a Christian, martyred in the wilds of the Andes by members of the Auca Indians, natives to the region in which Elliot felt called to minister.

Contrasting the sincere devotion of Elliot there are those persons, past and present who represent a different face of Christianity. Some may come to accept their particular views, while others may not.
Recently this Simple Mind had the occasion to hear the speech of a radio preacher.
Clearly a person involved in a segment of the Protestant Christian tradition as opposed to the Orthodox-Catholic Christian traditions, he was in the midst of espousing the abhorrence of "meditation as an evil" due to its apparent complicity with the evil spirits and demons of the world.
Using a bible verse and applying an interpretation of said verse, this man claimed that the Bible was clear, that meditation was evil due to its tendency to free the mind of extraneous thoughts, thereby giving evil the opportunity to enter and possess a soul.

Now, is one to accept this thinking because "we say so," or is one to further study its source or implication to determine true motive? Will Relativism or political correctness accept his thinking because it's his thinking, thus one can't judge, or are we to act to discern the meaning and intention of such a claim?

If this claim is true for the limits of the particular individual, then it is not unreasonable to presume that this person is also contemptuous against all denominations of Buddhism, much or all of the mystical Judeo-Christian tradition and Hinduism, for starters. Well, what's does that leave off the list? His speech sounds like an exercise in Calvinism, possibly or Puritanism, also related to Calvinists.

The take away for this Simple Mind is that truly there are those of many different stripes; the prime commandment for the Christian is not to demonize but to "love your neighbor as yourself, to love one another -- even your enemy." Anything less falls short of the disciples which the Christ called for and commanded. A Simple Mind questions this preacher and his (lack of) education. Ironic, isn't it?

The Precious Jewel

"Don't covet the leftovers of others while losing the precious jewel that hangs around your own neck."  --Zen Master Bassui

Prayer versus practice: As many others before and since him, the Zen Master Bassui wrote
"A monk is one who leaves the house of delusion. He is a liberated person. One who recites prayers from the sutras and performs various formal practices but does not have an alert mind and creative mind may well experience happiness and prosperity in his next life; if however one whose mind remains in this dull state, and who commits evil acts... will finally in his own body sink into hell."
So for this reason "foolish prosperity" can be called the enemy of all time."

A liberated person may not always recite invocations from the Sutras and may not perform memorial services, but all those who have contact with this one will eventually become believers in the teaching of liberation... That's why even in the teaching sects, the true purpose is studying the commentaries of the sutras and practicing the teachings set forth to attain Buddahood. paraphrased

Why so? the Simple mind asks. It seems that the Master seeks to instruct in the difference between belief and faith. Many of us see religion strictly in terms of belief. We are instructed and do seek to self-instruct in the tenets and the sutras of any given sect. We seek merit and we seek to learn prayers, yet Bassui insists that the one who is liberated may not always aspire to master these things and yet attain Buddhahood.

How so? It is because as Bassui also observes that belief without the conjunction of faith is insufficient to "leave the house of delusion." One must live those beliefs in a real, concrete way, the way of experience and then faith enters one's practice as community. The community of believers is Sangha. This practice life is as important as any idea one might read. It is "a precious jewel which hangs readily available about each person's neck."

Transformation of Believers

"Religious conflict occurs more from the belief-attitudes than from the religion's beliefs."

The attitudes of religious minded people can determine the perception of a given religion. Generally spiritual minded persons fall into two ends: dogmatic believers or spiritual believers. Regardless of differences in religions, dogmatic believers are often at the core of religious conflict; while spiritual believers more often form the nucleus of inter-religious peace, writes theologian  Choi-in-sik, Seoul Theological University, Korea.

Choi-in-sik, a contemporary theologian, examines the ways believers and religions communicate their messages. Given that dogmatic believers are prone to inter-religious conflict, to realize meaningful dialog Choi-in-sik writes that the primary task is to turn those persons into spiritual believers. A dogmatic person, unwilling, and a spiritual person, unwilling to enter into dogma will have no meeting of the mind nor heart, is Choi-in-sik's premise. And yet we are all dogmatic at least some of the time. How many 'shoulds' and 'should nots' go through our minds when regarding our self or others? Perhaps the spiritual position is something more like 'will' or 'will not', ' is' or 'is not' when turning the hearts and minds of believers.

Twentieth century theologian, Hans Kung proposed an idea of the "true humanity" in which all believers would come to a spiritual point of view. Alternatively Choi-in-sik proposes the image of the "spiritual self" to represent true humanity. A review of the term, true humanity, via an on-line search quickly shows that it is a term of wide interpretation. In this article Choi-in-sik defines the term: "True humanity is the realization and maturation of the spiritual self."
 He further postulates the the conversion of every dogmatic believer into a spiritual believer is possible, thereby making dialog between persons possible.

"When one resolves to live, realizing that the spiritual self is the true self, there denies one self and bears the true cross," writes Choi-in-sik. In other words, that person turns from the merely physical to the spiritual; therefore, to follow the physical self in exclusion of the spiritual self is to lead away from the spirit and to follow the things of men alone. To live by the spirit, one is body-spirit and flesh all at once.

Rama Is Strength for the Weak

"Rama is but a synonym for God." --The Way to God by MK Gandhi

The power of the name. Rama writes Gandhi is his book of short meditations, The Way to God, "is the strength of the weak. This strength is not to be obtained by taking up arms... It is to be had by throwing oneself on his name." So it is, Gandhi writes, that the soul needs the "matchless and pure strength of pure faith."

"There is something infinitely higher than intellect that rules us, even the skeptics." In Gandhi's world, even skeptics come to a place in life where they feel they need something better, more than the mind and its intellect. They need something outside of themselves, he writes. "If one puts a conundrum before me [Gandhi], I say to him, "You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher." One must be humble enough in his view to recognize that despite the human talents and intensive intellect, one remains but a mere particle of the universe. The world is composed more fully of itself than to be merely just that one. Likewise, a mere intellectual regard for life and its element is insufficient. "It is the spiritual conception which eludes the intellect, and which alone can give one satisfaction," insists Gandhi.

Faith transcends reason. Most often when our intellect is in defeat, in despair, it is the sudden rising of faith which comes to our rescue. "I ask that you restore the belief that has been undermined... Start with the faith that is also a token of humility, and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms... [I say so] because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we, in the insolence of our ignorance, deny the law of nature... I then used to hug the name of Rama in my childhood." It was the continuation and the development of faith, for in Gandhi's world his eye may be plucked, his worldly goods taken and still the thief will have nothing. For he has not taken Rama, the power of living faith.

Long Term Commitments Can Be Dangerous

"Our faith must be alive; it cannot just be a set of rigid beliefs and notions."
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Hanh writes, "In the beginning we might have embarked upon the path of Buddhism thanks to a belief in re-incarnation." However, he continues by noting that as the world in its impermanence moves, so must we. Continuing our practice and touching reality as it is, we may find that our beliefs change. Perhaps they are more defined, more refined; perhaps the change is more radical.

Yet we need not fear change because as we find our way through practice, through experience with the reality of the world flowing ourselves to that acceptance, realizing the Amida Buddha more and more deeply, we find a confidence and security that we may have not known before.

Our ideas are more solid, reflecting our core senses. When we form our ideas and beliefs in response to our own experience, more so than the experiences of others, we may for the first time, perhaps, find our voice, our way, our joy. In this state, no one can easily remove our belief from us.

"Making a long term commitment [can be] dangerous." If years and time pass without our continued practice, a continued commitment to living the results of our experiences, one day we may come to discover that we cannot believe as we once did. A great revelation, an epiphany may come over us informing us that our usual beliefs, our usual way is no way. We are plunged into fear, panic, darkness.

"Faith must be alive; it cannot just be a set of rigid beliefs and notions." Open to change, to experience, we open ourselves to the fruit of all--peace, joy, a spacious freedom and love. Sometimes we may think that "faith" is only thinking, only notions. Yet it is more. In our prayers, our meditation, we must put our whole self into action; we must live those actions. Merely thinking, sitting meditation is not enough.

Our actions may be modeled after those of the Buddha, a guiding example. Deeply thinking, deeply seeing the world as it is, the goodness of change will lead to us to our share in creating a more harmonious, peaceful world.

The Sign of the Cross

"The sign of the cross is a Christian practice and is associated with the catholic side of the church --Roman, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran and some United Methodists and Presbyterians. There is nothing in United Methodism that either forbids or encourages the practice.

Since The United Methodist Church is, generally speaking, a product of the Protestant Reformation, it has a piety that tends to be iconoclastic--that is rejecting statues, icons, and many of the catholic practices. Again, this is a church cultural thing and not something that is in print.

All of that being said, I strongly favor making the sign of the cross and do so regularly in my private prayers and when receiving communion (just before taking the elements and just after) and, as a pastor, I made the sign of the cross toward the congregation when blessing them at the end of the service. In order to do that, I had to do some teaching about what it meant and why I chose to do it.

The sign of the cross will, I predict, come to be more accepted in places where we recover a sense of our having been united with Christ in his death and resurrection in baptism. It is a sign often made on the forehead at baptism, when praying for healing and when a person is dying. I encourage you to use the sign as a remembrance and claiming of your baptism and as a sign of encouragement to follow Christ as one of his own. If people are uncomfortable with it and you notice their attention and puzzlement, be a teacher and share with them why you do it. Invite them to feel free to make the sign too.

I believe we need to be free to raise our hands in praise in worship and to not do so. Why not be equally free to make the sign of the cross, kneel, touch water in the font to our foreheads. Worship is about bodies and movement, not just words and thinking!"

The above text is in keeping with the Protestant churchman, John Wesleyan, founder  of the United Methodist Church.Taken from the Book of Discipline

True Faith is Alive

"Our faith must be alive; it cannot just be a set of rigid beliefs and notions."
--Thich Nhat Hanh

Hanh writes, "In the beginning we might have embarked upon the path of Buddhism thanks to a belief in re-incarnation." However, he continues by noting that as the world in its impermanence moves, so must we. Continuing our practice and touching reality as it is, we may find that our beliefs change. Perhaps they are more defined, more refined; perhaps the change is more radical.

Yet we need not fear change because as we find our way through practice, through experience with the reality of the world flowing ourselves to that acceptance, realizing the Amida Buddha more and more deeply, we find a confidence and security that we may have not known before.

Our ideas are more solid, reflecting our core senses. When we form our ideas and beliefs in response to our own experience, more so than the experiences of others, we may for the first time, perhaps, find our voice, our way, our joy. In this state, no one can easily remove our belief from us.

"Making a long term commitment [can be] dangerous." If years and time pass without our continued practice, a continued commitment to living the results of our experiences, one day we may come to discover that we cannot believe as we once did. A great revelation, an epiphany may come over us informing us that our usual beliefs, our usual way is no way. We are plunged into fear, panic, darkness.

"Faith must be alive; it cannot just be a set of rigid beliefs and notions." Open to change, to experience, we open ourselves to the fruit of all--peace, joy, a spacious freedom and love. Sometimes we may think that "faith" is only thinking, only notions. Yet it is more. In our prayers, our meditation, we must put our whole self into action; we must live those actions. Merely thinking, sitting meditation is not enough.

Our actions may be modelled after those of the Buddha, a guiding example. Deeply thinking, deeply seeing the world as it is, the goodness of change will lead to us to our share in creating a more harmonious, peaceful world.