The Prosperity of Perfection

"The soul prospers in the failure of perfection."--Thomas Moore

While we may perceive events as either immanent or as transcendent, the soul of a person knows no time but its own. When relating to others, it isn't always easy to open one's soul to another, to risk opening the self, hoping that another person will be able to tolerate a sometimes rational, and sometimes irrational nature. It may also be equally difficult to be receptive to the revelations of others.

The light of Oneness not withstanding, there is great temptation to separate, to judge, to make comparisons of these oddities of soul. Yet this mutual vulnerability is one of the great gifts of love.
To give another sufficient space in which to live and express one's soul in both its reason and unreason, then to further risk revelations of your self, in all its potential absurdities is a great gift.
The courage required for this is not easy; it is infinitely more demanding than making either judgment or comparison. While most of us contain ourselves fairly well, the soul and its ways eventually surface bringing forth the unexpressed that we sense stirring inside.

We all have to some extent, a sense of the fearfulness of such an enterprise. Oneness by its nature asks that we move aside, that we move beyond moments with others to a place that may ask for a share of soul in its whole form.
In the story, In Praise of Folly, Erasmus says, "it is precisely in their foolishness that people can become friends and intimates. For the greatest part of mankind are fools... and friendship, you know, is seldom made, except among equals."

As modern thinkers, we may present to the world a well developed intellect, a sense of proportion, still the soul is more fertile in its own imagination, in its own earth, finding value in sometimes irrationality. Perhaps this is in part why great artists and inventive minds seem a bit eccentric or mad to the average onlooker.
At times when seized by strong passions, our greatest anxieties often comprise the fear of being seen by others as foolish. We fear in love, in passion, that we appear irrational, foolish even, but that is exactly the point.
The soul is not the least concerned with reason or intellect. It operates more deeply, and more persuasively. So then, love in wholeness calls for acceptance of a Soul's less rational outposts, sometimes recognition that a heart may contain both love and contempt.

We need not only to know more about ourselves, but also we need to love more of ourselves, in an unsentimental way; that is the way to equanimity. Tolerance like patience matters because, "honoring that aspect of the self that may be irrational or extreme is the basis for intimacy," writes Thomas Moore.
With proportionately fewer expectations of perfection, less judgement, less and less are we separated by false notions. We come to recognize that the soul, in its meanderings, tends to move into new and positive areas in spite of, and because of the oddities expressed. Perfection plays no part here.
 In Oneness a beloved may be surprised by these developments, but not undone by their unexpected appearance. The soul, as a creative being, does prosper in the failures of perfection.

Entering the Stream, Oneness Without Forms

"...always practicing freedom from thought... always remain unpossessing... Understanding that false thoughts are empty and null, he therefore says the universe is not the universe." -- The Sutra of Hui-Neng, Grand Master of Zen, translated by Thomas Cleary

Rain water does not come from heaven... [but] it causes all living beings to be refreshed... merging into one body. So starts the introduction to this Diamond sutra as spoken by Zen Master Hui-Neng in the translated version by Thomas Cleary. "The wisdom of Prajna is neither great nor small... These differences are due to the differences in the delusion and enlightenment of the minds of all living beings."
 
Recalling that all sutras and teachings have been set up on the basis of human beings, it could not be so without them. They can be based only on the nature of intelligence. Human beings then, are not Buddhas; the moment they become enlightened, human beings become Buddhas. Thus even though there are four states of realization, their forms are originally non-dual. The origins of this teaching while most often identified with the meditation school or the Mahayana sects of Tibet is universally known among Buddhist thinkers.
Can a Stream-Enterer think, "I have attained the  fruition of stream-entering?" Stream enterers go against the stream of birth and death. They are unaffected by objects of the senses, such is their devotion to their practice. Stream-Enterers are ones who enter the stream, yet do not enter into anything. The translator, Cleary, writes in his book on the Diamond Sutra,  "Stream enterers detach from coarse afflictions and thereby enter into the stream without entering into anything." They are like a Matador in a bull ring, the bull charges them, but they make a slight turn and the bull rushes by. The man and the animal are in the ring together, but neither is affected by the other. This is a concentrated practice. "Stream entering is the first fruition of practice."

Greek Orthodoxy and the Holy Trinity

"God is not only the supreme, inconceivable reality, but also the principle of all realities.... he is the Oneness of all creation" --Greek philosopher, Plotinus born in 205 C.E. (A..D.)

The Orthodox Christian view of the Holy Trinity is essential to both Orthodox Christians, and to Roman Catholic Christians alike. Unlike newer, protestant Christian sects, the earliest church not only was a Jewish church in its foundations and practices, but also a church that developed with the idea of the "three in One," a common description for the mystery that is the Holy Trinity. The Greek philosopher, Plotinus, was another important influence in the development in monism, (the idea of the Oneness in the Christ) within Church thought.

Some early movements in Greek thought, after the sixth century B.C.E., "emphasized man's ability to work creatively upon his environment and to assert himself... material wealth, power, along with knowledge and intelligence were not considered a universal good," writes Demetrios Constantelos in his book, Understanding the Greek Orthodox Church. Rather it is primarily the realm of the divine that defines the limits of mankind. However human knowledge and power are limited; often humanity finds itself trapped into bondage of many types as a result. Thinkers like Socrates and Sophacles made distinctions between the natural world and the man-made world. A further distinction over the fullness of time developed in understanding between the everyday world and the eternal world, a division that Plotinus later addressed in his work.

For the most part, Greek thinkers rejected rationalism and abject materialism; some emphasized the greatness and fullness of created beings, man in particular. Long held in Greek intellectual tradition, it had been the case to consider both the physical and metaphysical aspects of creation as one and whole. This thought carried on into the Christian church. Thus to violate divine rule was, in the Greek mind, to insult and devalue the Creator. Life was to be lived with "progressive knowledge of things divine... on the whole, the dignity and infinite worth of the human person, as he who personifies the heavenly God on earth."

As Orthodoxy developed, and as the early Jewish Christians fell away from the synagogue into their newly formed communities, the ancient notion of monism (monotheism), developed further into a belief that saw no separation between the physical and the spiritual, the natural and certain truths divinely revealed to humanity. Thus, life, in the Orthodox view sees a balance, an equilibrium between the many forces of the world as both inherent and desirable.

In the realm of Christian mysticism, Greek influence is no less apparent. Her (the Church) teachings regarding the Oneness, the return to the deity through salvation are central to the mystical way. Saint Irenius said, "In his unfathomable love, God became what we are, that he might make us what he is." This personal God is therefore understood as one in essence, but three in persons.

This is the foundational understanding of the mystical workings of the Holy Trinity. God is the source; Spirit is the sanctifier, the blessing; the Son is the one living, who works on earth to bring the light of the father-source to all created beings. Intellectual efforts are often made to explain the Trinity; often these words are not helpful. God is the unfathomable; yet he may be known however, through his love, his spirit.

Orthodoxy accepts this mystery as beyond human reasoning. It is then a matter of both faith and experience in the life of a follower of this Way. So in the Orthodox Christian mind, we are all sons and daughters of the One God, The One Spirit, blessed and sanctified in the Anointed One, the Christ.
simplemindzen.blogspot.com