Billy Bob: Dontcha' know, Susie Q, that all of this is only God? We think that this car here is a car, and this tree over yonder is a tree. But we think these things in the wrong way. Only God is real.
Susie Q: OK, Billy Bob. So what else is new?
Billy Bob: Dontcha' see, Susie Q? We're thinking, and therefore, speaking and acting, in the wrong way. This whole process of wrong living, of wrong thinking, is called 'maya'. Whatever is wrong, must be immediately replaced with what is right!
Susie Q: Billy Bob, so what are you fixin' to do?
Billy Bob: Well, I'm gonna get me some right thinking under my cap. I'm gonna keep in my mind, the idea that maya is not really real, but is something we humans create. I'm gonna keep in my mind, the idea that maya is not really real, only God is really real. Maya is illusion and the source of further illusion. I'm gonna refuse to suffer the slings and arrows of maya, and take up arms against maya's unreality. I won't sleep until my work against the un-real, against illusion, against maya, is completed!
Susie Q: Good Lord, Billy Bob, you done gone off the deep end!
Billy Bob: Silence, woman! The only way to realize reality, is to defeat that which is not real. We're all wallowing in maya like a pig in mud on a hot summer's day!
Susie Q: Billy Bob, your son was harvesting the corn last week, right?
Billy Bob: Uhh...yeah?
Susie Q: And the week before that, he could barely walk home from the bar. Which of these two sons of yours, do you think, represents your son at his best?
Billy Bob: Well, when he was harvesting, he was working and making something of himself, and also helping out with the chores. When he was drunk, he nearly got himself clobbered by a tree. So, I reckon, he was at his best when he was working.
Susie Q: And how did he go from being drunk, to working on the farm, all diligent and all?
Billy Bob: Let me figure here. I took him in, fed him, got his papers in order, signed him up for AA, and took care of his debts. He owes me about $20,000 by now.
Susie Q: So you cared for him, and loved him, and he was able to go from drunk to gung-ho harvester.
Billy Bob: So what's your point, Susie Q?
Susie Q: My point is quite elementary, Billy Bob. You can't fight against maya, illusion, unreality, as if it were some dragon you fixin' to slay. You have to look at maya with soft eyes, willing to go into the trenches with unreality, ready to become bosom buddies with illusion. Love the car, which apparently is different from God; revel in the tree, which apparently is different from God. Only by fully accepting maya, and renouncing the desire to destroy or even change, maya, can you allow maya to fulfill its purpose. Aim your arrows of love towards maya, rather than scheming for maya's dissolution. Love maya! And then see if maya can resist your love.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
Spirituality. Mysticism. Sufism. Vedanta. Christianity. Judaism. Islam. Hinduism. Buddhism. Nature. Empiricism. Holism. God. Buddha. Science. Tantra. The Heart.
Deus non alligatur. God is not bound. Nibbanam paramam sukham. Unbinding is the Highest Happiness. The Heart is Divinity. God is the primal radiance of Divinity. Nature is the primal manifestation of Divinity. The Buddha is the primal realization of Divinity. La ilaha il Allah. Allah is Complete Wholeness.
The President of the United States
Veritas Vincit
Pilgrimage
Dharma
- Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery
- About Independent Catholicism
- Amma Amritanandamayi Devi's Homepage
- Ancient and Future Catholics
- Arunachala Ashrama
- Ask Father Peter
- Buddhism Today WebRing
- Carolina Sufi Groups
- Catholic Answers
- Devi Mandir
- Durga Worship Online
- E-Sangha
- emergingchurch.info
- Hindu Temple of Atlanta
- Kadampa Center -- Raleigh, NC
- Kauai's Hindu Monastery
- Meher Baba
- Monachos.net
- Orthodox America - by Issue
- Sadhu!
- Self-Realization Fellowship
- The Baptist Start Page
- The Bede Griffiths Trust
- The Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi website
- The Divine Life Society
- The Garden of Liberation
- The Sufi Order International -- North America
- Tryskelion - A Pagan Website
- Unity
- Vatican: the Holy See
- Wahiduddin's Web
- Wat Carolina Buddhajakra Vanaram
- Welcome to Jainworld
- Welcome to the Center for Action and Contemplation
- Woman Thou Art God -- Matriarchy, Female Empowerment
Texts
- Access To Insight
- Articles by Shyamdas
- Avesta -- Zoroastrian Archives
- BibleGateway
- Book of Mormon
- Books by Ajahn Chah
- BuddhaNet
- Buddhist Dictionary
- Conciliar Press
- English Translation of the Holy Quran with Commentary by Maulana Muhammad Ali
- Forest Dhamma Books
- IntraText Digital Library
- Jain Texts
- Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary
- Pariyatti
- Quaker Faith and Practice
- SamanSuttam
- Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda
- The Vedic Experience
- Treasury of Truth: Dhammapada
- Vedanta Press and Catalog
- Vedanta Shastras Library
Jyotish
Newtonian-Darwinian-Einsteinian Science
Political Society
Blogs
Discussions
Media
About Me
- Agnikan
- Formal associations with a Baptist ekklesia, a Theravadan sangha, and a Catholic parish; and informal associations with Shaiva, Shakta, and Sufi lineages. What's the final conclusion? God is Love.
Labels
- Animalia (4)
- Astronomy (1)
- Baptists (2)
- Bhagavad Gita (2)
- Bhakti (9)
- Bio-Theology (4)
- Buddhism (54)
- Catholicism (15)
- Celticism (2)
- Chandi Path (2)
- Christian Science (1)
- Christianity (69)
- Cinema (6)
- Dharma (41)
- East (1)
- Elements (5)
- Environment (2)
- Esoterica (4)
- Ethics (1)
- Evolution (6)
- Evolution/Creationism (5)
- Guru (25)
- Islam (8)
- Jainism (1)
- Jivanta (70)
- Jivantayana (10)
- Jnana (4)
- Judaism (6)
- Jyotish (17)
- Last Things (12)
- Mantra (4)
- Mathematics (1)
- Maya (14)
- Orthodoxy (14)
- Politics (13)
- Protestantism (5)
- Psychology (4)
- Relationship (3)
- Sadhana (19)
- Scripture (2)
- Shaiva (7)
- Shakta (10)
- Sonic Theology (9)
- Sports (2)
- Sufism (15)
- Tantra (13)
- Tarot (1)
- Truths (4)
- Vedas (4)
- Warrior (4)
- West (2)
- Wicca (2)
- Women (4)
- Yoga (4)
- Zarathushtra (1)
Foundations
On one level, I'm what you might call a "pre-conciliar Christian Buddhist". That is, within the first three-hundred years or so after the ascension of Christ, the Christian tradition existed without a council defining what Christians had to believe in order to be Christian. One can take the dual commandments of Jesus (Mark 12:28-34) as defining what it means to be Christian:
I was raised in the West, within a Christian culture; and I've taken initiation into the Christian tradition. I've taken this to mean that my spiritual practice in this lifetime is meant to be Christic in its form and action, understanding the Christ-Man and the Christian tradition, especially in its Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, English, and American cultural forms, primarily within a framework of the Dharma and the Buddha.
On any given Sunday, I may attend church, usually either Baptist or Catholic. One could say -- following the Nicene Creed -- that I am of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, even if many of my doctrinal positions do not exist within orthodox Christianity. Fully practiced and lived, Christianity -- whether heterodox or orthodox -- can serve as a field of salvific liberation just as efficiently as any other tradition. Indeed, the challenge and destiny of Christianity is to form, transform, embody, and transmit the teachings of Christ, the Buddha of the West, also known as Yeshua the Nazarene, whose heritage may be temporally traced both through the Vedic, Zarathustrian, Abrahamic, Judaic, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Baptist lineages; and the Sramanic, Jain, Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana lineages.
To affirm Jesus as Lord, is to affirm the Buddha as Bhagavan. Indeed, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" -- the Dharma, the Satya, and the Ayur. Granted, most of my fellow Christians would not agree with such an equation of affirmation. That's fine. The Christian tradition, or even any one particuar Christian church or parish, can contain many diverse perspectives. I have no need to convert others to my ideals, or to undermine the Christian ideals of others.
If someone non-Christians asks, "Do you really believe in x, y, and z", where "x, y, and z" include Christian doctrines and dogmas apparently insulting to reason; the only appropriate question is to ask "What do you mean by 'x, y, and z'?" From a Catholic perspective, take the example of papal infallibility. Who defines "papal", or "infallibility"? In within what linguistic, social, and historical context does "papal infallibility" exist? Analyzing further, one finds that "papal infallibility" is made up of non-"papal infallibility" elements: thus, "papal infallibility" is not self-existing, or eternally true in and of itself; rather, it is a product of various impermanent elements linguistic, social, and historical. As such "papal infallibility" may be a useful idea, within a particular linguistic, social, and historical context, but it is not absolute truth. No dogma or doctrine would be absolute truth. There is no reason to take any dogma or doctrine absolutely seriously, as if taking God absolutely seriously were not enough! It is this understanding of "only-God-is-absolute" that is the contextual matrix within which a true Christian must understand his or her tradition's dogmas, doctrines, and teachings. Many Protestants misunderstand the biblical scriptures, reading them through the lens of sola scriptura. Catholics do a bit better, arguing correctly that scripture is simply one aspect of a larger Tradition. However, both scripture itself, and the larger Tradition, are organic growths out of solus Deus, "God-Alone", or Christian Non-Dualism. The only thing I believe in, is God (Love, Light, Logic, and Life); everything else is debatable.
However, to simply argue for the non-ultimacy of any particular dogma and doctrine is too easy a way out, especially if the one arguing has not him/herself realized non-duality. In such a case, Christian dogmas and doctrines that insult logic can be best understood as symptoms of the ultimate poverty of logic itself, when it is divorced from the Heart.
Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart [causal soul], with all your soul [energy bodies], with all your mind [mental bodies], and with all your strength [physical body].' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."Since God is Truth, and Truth is One, we can summarize these dual commandments as "Love Truth, and love self and others equally". One may, then, love Truth and love self and others equally whether one adheres to any number of religious-philosophical frameworks. I am formally associated with a Baptist lineage, Christianity forms my cultural heritage and environment, and my Christianity finds inspiration from this ancient, and yet always new, pre-council, or pre-conciliar, era. I am also formally associated with Buddhism, and Buddhism forms a basis of my psychology and cosmology. And by "Buddhism" I include the larger Dharmic Tradition underlying the Indic traditions as well as the Abrahamic traditions. I understand Jesus the Christ within this Dharmic context, as a Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, or an Avatar. In this sense, I am "Christic", rather than orthodoxly "Christian". Yet, I accept the label "Christian", or even "Catholic".
I was raised in the West, within a Christian culture; and I've taken initiation into the Christian tradition. I've taken this to mean that my spiritual practice in this lifetime is meant to be Christic in its form and action, understanding the Christ-Man and the Christian tradition, especially in its Semitic, Hellenic, Roman, English, and American cultural forms, primarily within a framework of the Dharma and the Buddha.
On any given Sunday, I may attend church, usually either Baptist or Catholic. One could say -- following the Nicene Creed -- that I am of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, even if many of my doctrinal positions do not exist within orthodox Christianity. Fully practiced and lived, Christianity -- whether heterodox or orthodox -- can serve as a field of salvific liberation just as efficiently as any other tradition. Indeed, the challenge and destiny of Christianity is to form, transform, embody, and transmit the teachings of Christ, the Buddha of the West, also known as Yeshua the Nazarene, whose heritage may be temporally traced both through the Vedic, Zarathustrian, Abrahamic, Judaic, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, and Baptist lineages; and the Sramanic, Jain, Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana lineages.
To affirm Jesus as Lord, is to affirm the Buddha as Bhagavan. Indeed, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" -- the Dharma, the Satya, and the Ayur. Granted, most of my fellow Christians would not agree with such an equation of affirmation. That's fine. The Christian tradition, or even any one particuar Christian church or parish, can contain many diverse perspectives. I have no need to convert others to my ideals, or to undermine the Christian ideals of others.
If someone non-Christians asks, "Do you really believe in x, y, and z", where "x, y, and z" include Christian doctrines and dogmas apparently insulting to reason; the only appropriate question is to ask "What do you mean by 'x, y, and z'?" From a Catholic perspective, take the example of papal infallibility. Who defines "papal", or "infallibility"? In within what linguistic, social, and historical context does "papal infallibility" exist? Analyzing further, one finds that "papal infallibility" is made up of non-"papal infallibility" elements: thus, "papal infallibility" is not self-existing, or eternally true in and of itself; rather, it is a product of various impermanent elements linguistic, social, and historical. As such "papal infallibility" may be a useful idea, within a particular linguistic, social, and historical context, but it is not absolute truth. No dogma or doctrine would be absolute truth. There is no reason to take any dogma or doctrine absolutely seriously, as if taking God absolutely seriously were not enough! It is this understanding of "only-God-is-absolute" that is the contextual matrix within which a true Christian must understand his or her tradition's dogmas, doctrines, and teachings. Many Protestants misunderstand the biblical scriptures, reading them through the lens of sola scriptura. Catholics do a bit better, arguing correctly that scripture is simply one aspect of a larger Tradition. However, both scripture itself, and the larger Tradition, are organic growths out of solus Deus, "God-Alone", or Christian Non-Dualism. The only thing I believe in, is God (Love, Light, Logic, and Life); everything else is debatable.
However, to simply argue for the non-ultimacy of any particular dogma and doctrine is too easy a way out, especially if the one arguing has not him/herself realized non-duality. In such a case, Christian dogmas and doctrines that insult logic can be best understood as symptoms of the ultimate poverty of logic itself, when it is divorced from the Heart.
I heart-embrace all religions, because all religions share a common, socio-cultural genetic code symbolized by the Heart, the Beloved, the Buddha, and Jivanta. I consider myself equally Baptist, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Taoist, Confucian, to mention a few; because they all diversified from the same basic realization, revelation, realizer, and embodiment. "Religion", though, is different from "religious philosophy". Any one religious philosophy (or any one conceptual system of perspective-cosmic) cannot totally reflect reality. Yet, religion -- the totality of life lived in wisdom and understanding, as expressed in various human-cultural manifestations -- serves as a powerfully agapic-karunan diaphany of very reality. There is nothing that anyone has verbally or mentally conceptualized, that is totally and permanently true, but truth can be pointed to, directly or indirectly, and, most importantly, truth can be lived.
The practice and worldview to which I adhere collectively may be called Jivanta, the fulfillment of Life; Christic Advaita, Christian non-duality; Christic Siddhanta, the Christian way of completion; Christanta, the fulfillment of Christianity; Avatar Jesus Buddha Catholicism; Indu Christic, the Christ-consciousness as understood within a Buddhist framework; Hridaya-Yoga, the Way of the Heart; or Bio-Energetic Depth-Transcendence, the essence (Depth, Heart) and culmination (Transcendence, Beloved) of self-awareness (the communion-union of Life-Energy, Buddha-Jivanta). If all of that is too complicated, just call it Scientific-Tantra, the open-ended analytical inquiry of Unbroken Wholeness.
Christ's dual-mitzvot to love God and to love self and others equally, can be translated, into Jivantic terms. To love Truth is to love deeply from, in, and as the Heart; and to love expansively from, in, and as the Beloved. To love self and others equally (and, thus, all living beings, whether animate or non-animate) is to love the energy/matter cosmos of Jivanta; and to love the Buddhas, or centers of actualized or potential awareness. To practice Jivanta is to practice the Heart of all religions, to fufill them in their very essence. To practice Jivanta is to practice the way of the Buddhas, to commune with the Christ, to praise Ahura Mazda, to usher in the Messianic Era, to emulate the Conquerors, to utter the Name of Truth, to pray towards the Holy City, and to install the Bright Guru, the Great Ahamasmi. Different religions and spiritualities are different experimental laboratories for pointing toward truth, different existential adventures into nature and deeper-than-nature; and all of them can offer novelty and sacrifice, and all of them can (and will) be transformed.
Essentially, I am neither merely Christian nor merely Buddhist nor merely both nor merely neither. I practice the Spiritual Science of observation-awareness, problem-recognition, hypothesis-formulation, and solution-testing; this is the genetic code, the tantric-method, the theo-algorithm, the Spiritual Science, by which all religions and spiritualities function. Both my Buddhism and my pre-conciliar Christianity are Spiritual Sciences to which I have concrete, formal connections. I also have equally deep, but non-concrete, non-formal connections to Hinduism and Islam, and am equally Hindu and Muslim. Hinduism represents the Heart; Christianity, the Beloved; Buddhism, the Buddha; and Islam, Jivanta. Though Hinduism represents the Heart, Hinduism is not to be equated to the Heart. The Heart is the source of Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam; and the realizers associated with these religious traditions all realized the Heart and communicated that realization in diverse ways, ways dependent upon their physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural, and social contexts. Any differences among these religious traditions are differences of non-ultimate import; and if there seem to be differences of ultimate import, then know that those differences have been mis-interpreted, mis-applied, or mis-understood. These four faiths together thus symbolize the entirety of humanity's spiritual adventure; they serve as gate-ways to the larger vistas of the almost infinitely creative fields of human religion and bio-spirituality; and this diversity, and reality itself, arises out of the most basic, and highest, Dharma, the Scientific-Tantric matrix, the always-already intimate, always-new and ever-ancient, Tantric-Eucharistic communion-union, satsang-yoga, of rejection and acceptance, skepticism and trust, compassion and wisdom, yang and yin, Adam and Eve, Christ and the Church, Sun and Moon, Shiva and Shakti, Jina and Jiva, Krishna and Radha, the Creator and the UnCreated, the Beloved and the Heart, originally, continually, and finally realized in every single form.
Where are You?
Counting
FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
No comments:
Post a Comment