4/22/22

I visited St. Andrew today. The gospel reading was John 2:13-18:

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Today was also Earth Sunday, and much of Pastor Robyn's reflection was centred on the need for hope, specifically hope that our environment can be redeemed, and listening for the voice of God calling us towards the best ways we can aid in bringing that about. Pastor Robyn also mentioned the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dire warning released this month that our carbon emissions have to peak three years from now, and be cut back by almost half eight years from now, to avoid the worst impact of climate change or else we will experience "unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, and widespread water shortages." And while the reflection utilized the other reading for today from Jeremiah 32 more, in which Jeremiah listens to God and buys a field while in prison during a siege, I thought the reading from John was just as fitting.

When Jesus speaks about what he sees in the temple, greed turning a sacred space into a marketplace and destroying it, it's not a stretch to compare the temple to the Earth (a sacred place) and the merchants and money changers to capitalism and the way it's turned the world into a marketplace. And the greed capitalism engenders is consuming the health and vitality of the planet, much as the greed of the merchants and money changers consumed the spiritual health and vitality of the temple. Jesus also compares his body with the temple, and the hope of the resurrection is equivalent to the hope in our renewal of the world. But just as Jeremiah needed to heed the voice of God by having hope in the future and acting while in the midst of a time of trial and suffering, we, too, must do the same.

Our hope in the coming new Earth must be followed by action conditioned not by worldly greed but by a revolutionary love of self and others.

4/16/22

Easter Sunday. The story of a miracle. An empty tomb. Disbelief. Surprise. And finally, a celebration. But what does it all really mean? That some extraordinary person escaped death for some cosmic, salvific purpose on our behalf? Maybe. But maybe it also means that the ideals that Jesus stood for, lived, and preached cannot be killed, that they're always alive even in dark and difficult times. Ideals such as compassion for all, even our enemies; egalitarianism; forgiveness; a commitment to peace over violence; a devotion to mental and physical healing; justice characterized by reconciliation rather than punishment; a preferential recognition of the suffering of the poor and marginalized and a desire to relieve it; and all of that flowing from a fount of unconditional love. As I wrote a few years ago:

Jesus had a mission, to seek and to save what was lost (Luke 19:10). And when Jesus went out, he went out to teach, to heal, to feed, and to share God's love by loving others, which in itself is a radical thing. But his faith, his love, and his compassionate action were threatening to many, from those among the elite to even some among the common people. And they all eventually tried in their own way, whether out of fear, ignorance, misunderstanding, ill will, or attachment to tradition, to take away these treasures he possessed. But try as they may, he wouldn't give them up, even under the threat of death. He held tight to his faith, his love, and his compassion for all of humanity, all the way down to the least among us, and he willingly suffered death on the cross rather than lose them to fear, hatred, selfishness, and inaction. In essence, his life wasn't just about himself, it was ultimately about his relationship to others, to the whole world, and to God. His life was an example to us, a mandala, a living tapestry meant to inspire and hearten us. His life was like a lamp shining forth the bright light of hope into the future in order to guide us and help us not lose our way to the kingdom (or kin-dom) of heaven, that joyful world we wish to one day see, born out of love in action.

And it's ultimately those ideals and our hope in that better world we’re continuously striving towards that lives eternal. The empty tomb means that greed, anger, hatred, ignorance, or even death don't get the final say. It means our contributions to this world aren't in vain. An inspirational leader may die or be killed, but the movement lives on. And I think that's one of the reasons Easter is traditionally when people are baptized and welcomed into this universal community. It means committing ourselves to living these ideals and creating a world in which they reign without distinction. But it won't happen by magic. It won't happen without us changing our own hearts or the world that we've been given to shape.

4/15/22

Today is Good Friday, which commemorates the death of Jesus, a child refugee, labourer, and activist who sided with the poor and marginalized, a person who was convicted and executed by the state for transgressing socio-economic norms and teaching a radical form of love, egalitarianism, and forgiveness that pushed against both the political and religious authoritarianism of his day. And just as Jesus was killed by the state, so too are the poor and marginalized of today. Just as Jesus was innocent, so too are so many who are killed in the name of justice or out of fear and prejudice and protection of systems of power. His death represents theirs and vice-versa. And just as Peter denied Jesus three times, ultimately being complicit in his death, so too are we complicit in the deaths of all of those we deny or ignore or even condemn with glee, whether misguidedly or through a heart poisoned by greed or hate. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the majority of those who grieved and stood by his side were women, who themselves suffered unjustly and were ignored, abused, marginalized, and exploited. If we lament the death of Jesus but not the death of people like Patrick Lyoya or the multitude of black women and men killed by police, then we do not truly understand the passion of Jesus. If we do not see our own betrayal and complicity and seek to atone for them and reshape our world into something better, then we do not truly understand the passion of Jesus. And if we do not oppose the power structures of society that exploit and persecute and oppress the poor and marginalized, whoever they may be, then we do not truly understand the passion of Jesus. And that's a shame.

4/14/22

Holy Thursday. In the midst of holy week I find myself feeling as lost and as sad and as unmotivated as ever. I've sort of let my melancholy take the reins these days. Kind of fitting I suppose considering the lead up to Easter, which is pretty full of melancholy itself. Nevertheless, I've been trying to seek out things that give me some spiritual nourishment, hoping that something will stick. One thing I read today that I found rather interesting, for instance, was Richard Rohr's definition of suffering as "whenever we are not in control" in his most recent daily meditation:

God is the only one we can surrender to without losing ourselves. It’s a paradox. I can’t prove it to you, and it sure doesn’t always feel like that, but I promise it’s true. Francis and Clare lost and let go of all fear of suffering; all need for power, prestige, and possessions; and all need for their small self to be important—and they came out on the other side knowing something essential: who they really were in God and thus who they really were. Their house was then built on “bedrock,” as Jesus says (Matthew 7:24). Such an ability to really change is often the fruit of suffering, and various forms of poverty, since the false self does not surrender without a fight to its death. If suffering is “whenever we are not in control” (my definition), then we can understand why some form of suffering is absolutely necessary to teach us how to live beyond the illusion of control and to give that control back to God.

I think there's a lot of truth to that.

I also saw a couple of things in Marcus Borg's The God We Never Knew (which I happened to pick up from a Goodwill the other day) that I quite like and can relate to, such as the affirmation that what we call God is both transcendent and immanent, the idea that God is more than the universe and also dwells within it (i.e., God is "a nonmaterial layer or level or dimension of reality all around us"). For example, there's this paragraph where he writes about Paul Tillich's rejection of supernatural theism (think bearded man in the sky far, far away who sometimes does some magic but mostly in the past):

Tillich attacked the God of supernatural theism by arguing that God was not a being but "Being-Itself" or the "ground of being." He denied that God existed (and affirmed instead that "God" is) by pointing out that "to exist" means to stand out from the ground of existence as a separate being. "Things" (stones, stars, people, and so on) exist by being separate things. God does not exist in that sense; rather, God is. Tillich attacked "the God of theological theism" (supernatural theism) as "bad theology." According to Tillich, this point of view is wrong because it sees God as "a being beside others and as such a part of the whole of reality." But God is not a part of reality but is "ultimate reality."

The bit about ultimate reality, in particular, reminds me of how much in common I see between this panentheistic view of God and things I've read elsewhere in other religions and philosophies. A couple of days ago, in fact, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the commonalities I see between various religions and the ideas of thinkers like Plato and Spinoza. We'd previously talked about how much of early Christianity was influenced by Plato and neoplatonists, despite much of that being lost to the more literalistic and fundamentalist understandings of Christianity that have come to predominate popular culture and experience. And this time I mentioned some of the commonalities I saw between Plato, Spinoza, Buddhism, and Taoism after discussing the Republic, the allegory of the cave, and his idea of forms over the phone:

For example, to me, Plato's comment at the beginning of 546a in his Republic, which itself may have been derived from Heraclitus, mirrors the Buddha's maxim regarding origination and cessation at SN 56.11 (and this I think is similar to Spinoza's modifications or the causal determinism and variety we experience in the world). Then there's 571d-572b, which sounds similar to the Buddha's advice regarding the practice of virtue, restraint, and moderation and the cultivation of meditation and discernment in an effort to 'touch the deathless' (amata). (I find similar parallels between Socrates' dialogue in Plato's Symposium regarding immortality and the idea of forms and the Buddha's discourses regarding the deathless, as well.)

The beginning of Plato's third argument supporting his conclusion that the happiest and most just individual is the one who rules over him/herself like a king/queen (with virtue, moderation, and reason) sounds Buddhist-esque with the 'motion' of pleasure and pain in the soul bringing the Buddha's teachings on kamma (i.e., intentional actions with pleasant, painful, and neither pleasant nor painful results) to mind, while the 'state of calm' intermediate between pleasure and pain is equivalent to Buddhist equanimity (upekkha). And while for Plato the soul is something immortal that reincarnates, and many Buddhist schools reject the idea of a permanent soul or self (although some treat what the Buddha called "consciousness without feature," vinnanam anidassanam, in places like MN 109 as effectively being the same thing), he gives an argument later on in Book 10 (612e-613b) that resembles parts of the Buddha's teachings on kamma and rebirth in MN 136.

Even more interesting, however, is 582b-d, where "that which is related to what is always the same, immortal and true" and "that which is related to what is never the same and mortal" are akin to nibbana (unconditioned, ultimate reality, etc.) and samsara (conditioned, cycle of birth and death, etc.) respectively. The allegory of the cave at the beginning of Book 7 immediately comes to mind here, where Plato uses the image of the philosopher turning the soul (mind) away from the darkness of the visible realm (samsara) towards the light of the form of the good (nibbana). I think for the Buddha, the cave is representative of our senses ruled by sensual desire (kamacchandha) — i.e., appetite for sensual pleasures and our addiction to the acquisition of those pleasures (Sn 4.1, Ud 7.4) — whereas the the light of the sun is representative of the "luminous mind freed from incoming defilements" (AN 1.49-52), i.e., a mind that's realized nibbana or ultimate reality.

And there's also the Tao. The first chapter of Ursula Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching, which someone else introduced me to as their favourite, is as follows:

The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.

Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.

So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.

Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.

Le Guin's Notes:

A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible. It contains the book. I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you see it rightly, it contains everything.

The first thing I thought of while reading this was the juxtaposition of a mind that's seeking out of craving and desire and attachment (much like the Buddha talks about, or a mind ruled by the appetitive part of soul via Plato) vs. a mind that's characterized by non-attachment in the Buddhist sense (AN 4.10), with the parts about 'name' reminding me of how name and form (nama-rupa) — our tainted conceptual understanding of our experience of mentality-physicality (or mind and body, finite experience of extension and thought, etc.) and the sense of self we construct around it — arise through the process of dependent co-arising (SN 12.67). And, conversely, the seeing of the truth of 'things as they are' and the nature of the unconditioned, nibbana, Spinoza's substance or God, the truest reality, etc. arises from the cessation or letting go of our impermanent sense of individual self and the unfolding of transcendental co-arising (AN 11.2, SN 12.23). This is why I think Buddhism talks about so much about what's not-self (anatta), Christianity talks about dying to self, and Sufi Islam talks about dying before one dies (fana), etc., in order to release us from our attachments to our finite modes of being and apprehending the infinite.

In other words, you can't condition the unconditioned, but you can condition an end to conditioning, thereby opening up to the experience of the unconditioned already present and hidden in plain sight. Hence, the unwanting soul sees the hidden, i.e.:

"For a person who knows & sees things as they actually are, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I feel disenchantment.' It is in the nature of things that a person who knows & sees things as they actually are feels disenchantment.

"For a person who feels disenchantment, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I grow dispassionate.' It is in the nature of things that a person who feels disenchantment grows dispassionate.

"For a dispassionate person, there is no need for an act of will, 'May I realize the knowledge & vision of release.' It is in the nature of things that a dispassionate person realizes the knowledge & vision of release. (AN 11.2, Thanissaro)

And I think Le Guin is right that this chapter contains everything, much like how the footprint of the elephant encompasses all others. And in the same vein, that's why I consider myself a perennialist in the sense that I see all of our various religious traditions as smaller footprints encompassed by a larger, universal truth we're all struggling to apprehend. Just different fingers all pointing towards the same moon (i.e., the Tao = the Dhamma = nibbana = God = substance = reality = form of the good, etc.).

I think being Eastern ways of thought, Taoism and Buddhism make this comparison even easier. For instance, Tao is a word that's used to describe both the nature of things as they are and the way that's in line with the nature of things as they are. This, I think, is akin to the Buddhist term Dhamma, which is also used to describe the nature of things as they are as well as the way that's in line with the nature of things as they are. (Christianity itself was also originally called the Way, which I don't think is a coincidence.)

God, nature, substance, or whatever else we want to call it from the Western POV is synonymous, as these are all-encompassing terms denoting the totality of being, the One. The morality of kamma = the will of God = the ethics of Plato and Socrates, etc. Certain intentions and actions will have certain results, which may be more or less harmful, more or less salvific, etc. And words like nibbana, the unconditioned, etc. are simply ways we try characterize the underlying nature of reality — i.e., the ground of being, the existence of which is neither dependent upon nor determined by anything else — that we may glimpse with unrestricted awareness (AN 10.81). (Spinoza [much like Tillich] goes so far as to argue/prove that the essence of God/nature/substance is existence, one that's inherent, infinite, and not created externally, the truest reality.) So, for example, where Buddhism talks about "consciousness without feature" or "touching the deathless element," the experience of which is said to be unshakeably transformative and ends the round of birth and death, Christianity talks about union with God and "partaking of the divine nature" and how it leads to life everlasting—both of which illustrate the infinite and transcendent nature of ultimate reality which is nevertheless immanent and can be experienced in the here and now a la panentheism.

When we remove ignorance (what the Buddha defines as ignorance of the four noble truths) and see the world free from attachment and unclouded by ignorance, touching this deeper layer of reality, we are awakened. Our darkness has been enlightened. We step through the door to the hidden and perceive the oneness that lies on the other side. This is what becoming enlightened or awakened or supremely rational or union with God or stepping out of the cave means. But people have a habit of getting stuck on the words and concepts and grasping them as the true reality rather than pointing towards it. They see the proverbial finger and its ornaments (representing here various religious traditions and their doctrines) and focus on that, missing the moon they're pointing towards that we're all able to see when our eyes are not shrouded and we are looking in the right direction.

And I see myself as somewhat getting it and on the right track, but still stuck in the cave. People like the Buddha, Plato, Jesus, etc. are those who have freed themselves (or have been freed somehow) and have stepped outside of the cave, and then try as best they can to free others and lead them outside too. I was told about the sun and the reality of the world behind the shadows I see and I'm receptive to the message, but I still have a hard time grasping the nature of that reality and I'm also having a difficult time turning myself away from those shadows on the wall, because they're the only things I've ever known (or at least can remember knowing) and the source of the enjoyment and pleasure I'm addicted to. Those shadows may be unreal, impermanent, ephemeral and distract me from appreciating what's real, eternal, infinitely existing, but I still don't truly know any better and grasp at them anyway despite myself.

I see a lot of ignorance and weakness in that, and it upsets me that I still let myself be so drawn to the world of sensual pleasures that we've devoted ourselves to and nurtured as a society knowing that there's something deeper and more real that's within my grasp. And I don't know if it's because I don't know how or maybe don't want to wake up, but I definitely have a sense that I'm dreaming or trapped in the cave per Plato or mesmerized by the magic show per the Buddha or stuck in the dark per Jesus. I'm just not sure what's holding me back from waking up or stepping outside.

And I definitely think that feeling of being distracted from, or blinded to, something deeper and more real is a big part of my melancholic state. Maybe it's because I feel like I'm a failure for not trying harder or being happy or "enlightened" or just a better person than I am, full of seemingly endless faults and failings. Or maybe it's something more profound, like the fear that, despite my belief in something more, there isn't anything underlying reality. Or worse, that there is but it in no way is conscious of or concerned about my existence, making life meaningless and painful for no reason. Whatever the case, I managed to goad myself to go to the Maundy Thursday service at St. Andrew tonight and found myself tearing up after the individual absolution and feeling deeply the passage:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34)

I want more than anything to one day understand that kind of life and to truly embody it.