Christian Nonduality
Christian Nonduality
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Bird Photos by David Joseph Sylvest
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One: Essential Writings in Nonduality - a review
It has been a little more than a decade since my life was graced with two new friends, Thomas and Cynthia Lynch, who were introduced to me through the courtesy of Leonard Swidler, co-founder of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies. The Lynches came bearing a book that has been instrumental in forming my ecumenical outlook, The Word of the Light (Hara Publishing: 1998). This book gifts us all with a scientific, scholarly treatment that uses the Gospel of Thomas as a hermeneutical lens (a clean lens that is unblemished by religious or secular politics) through which to interpret the Light found in the fundamental writings of all of the great traditions, the wisdom that is indubitably common to Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.
Mohandus Ghandi's grandson, Arun, wrote: "Dr. Thomas D. and Cynthia E. Lynch have endeavored to show humankind the oneness of all religions of the world. I know this scholarship will not be wasted. It will takes us a step nearer the realization that faith, like the sun, enlightens and enriches everyone equally."
Now, certainly, The Word of the Light was not the only scholarly vehicle around for engaging such ecumenical impulses. The reason it still stands out is that it was structured in such a way that holistically engaged its reader --- empirically, logically, practically and interrelationally, which is to suggest that it not only engaged the head but also the heart, that it not only invited one's assent but also initiated the willing into the unitive experience, meditatively. Thus the book was friendly, accessible, practical and an awakening experience --- an awakening to our solidarity that compassion might naturally ensue.
Books like The Word of the Light do not come along very often, but, a decade later, humankind has been gifted again by Jerry Katz of the Nonduality Salon (an Internet community), also in the form of an eminently accessible and practical book, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality (Sentient Publications: 2007). It, too, orients one to an awakening to our radical solidarity and an experience of profound compassion. The book, as a paragon of the way anyone might approach nonduality, which is to say without either a rigid metaphysical or religious dogmatism but with an eminently eclectic perspective regarding both its cultural manifestations and practical applications, leaves one with the initial impression that it is just a tasty morsel suggestive of what could be a bountiful banquet if only Katz and similar-minded authors would keep writing and writing and writing. He makes clear that it is a brief, even if comprehensive survey. If one pays careful attention, though, the more lingering impression Katz would leave us with is how bountiful the harvest of compassion could truly be if each of us would only set out on the path of desire for nondual realization.
From lurking at Nonduality Salon and reading One, I have gathered the clear impression that nonduality is being approached with great circumspection, which is to say, with both appropriate epistemic imprecision and ontological vagueness, as necessarily inheres in the matter at hand. That's the first clue that one will not be engaging a facile treatment, superficial apologetic or hidden agenda, much less any type of hermeneutical axe to grind. Rather, the book seems to invite the reader's engagement on the same terms as any good poem, which is to say, as a gift to be opened by the reader, herself.
This review should be easy enough in that I have inked up so many of its pages, paragraph by paragraph. However, to overread my own interpretation into these writings would, in some sense, equate to a taking of the gift that it can be for you. What I would like to do, instead, is to provide a hermeneutical framework for the Christians, who might engage this book, and maybe for Westerners, in general, also.
There is a real tendency for Western minds, in general, Christian minds, in particular, to engage the thought of the East from an ontological or metaphysical perspective. Now, I'm not going to deny that there might even be some heavy metaphysical lifting going on in much of Eastern thought, for that denial, in and of itself, would entail falling into the trap that I am trying to help you avoid. So, just imagine, if you will, when you read the wisdom gathered on the pages of One, that it is not so much trying to gift you with another way of interpreting or processing reality as it is trying to invite you to another way of seeing or experiencing reality.
Put another way, it is not so much an exercise in discursive analysis as it is a cultivation of a more authentic awareness. It does not promote cognitive insight as much as it promotes conceptual clarity with a concommitant affective cleansing, which will result from ensuing detachments (broadly conceived). To the extent you do encounter a passage that is metaphysically jarring, let me suggest that you just gently substitute images of interrelatedness and intimacy whenever you encounter something that otherwise implies an unnuanced identity (see FOOTNOTE). Let me also point out that there is WAY more nuance to be enjoyed than many might otherwise be able to see from any cursory reading that is immersed in an habitual dualistic mindset.
Let me suggest, now, in more philosophically rigorous language, receive what seem to be metaphysical assertions as epistemic stances or what seem to be ontological descriptions as more so a relating of phenomenal experiences. After all, there is no room to presume that folks --- who, self-described, would kill the Buddha --- are returning from ineffable experiences only to clearly effable about reality, or that they are telling us tales about, what they claim to hold in-principle as, untellable stories. Something else is going on, which is an invitation into an experience and not an initiation into a philosophical system.
In One, you will encounter real people with profound existential longings (comparing favorably to your own) and authentic phenomenal experiences that point to a deep interconnectedness of all Reality. This interrelatedness is ineluctably unobstrusive, which is why so few see it, but utterly efficacious, which is why all experience it, even unawares. Because we are dealing with phenomenal experiences and existential realizations and not, rather, philosophical arguments, category errors and confusion will abound for any critic who chooses to engage these writings through dualistic Cartesian lenses rather than, instead, engaging the wisdom that is there to be had, even in, maybe especially in, paradox and uncertainty. As Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM observes regarding so much of Buddhism, we are being gifted with practices and not conclusions. I would add that we are being gifted with stories of experiences of unitary reality and not ontologies.
One recurring theme, for example, is the triadic movement from 1) phenomenal appearances (illusions) through 2) interpretive critique (broadly conceived, such as lingustically, psychologically, etc) and back to 3) a new awareness (often an awareness of self and other that is so conventional and common sensical as to, ironically, be unconventional and uncommon, given so many of us succumb to the fogging of our lenses, save for occasional contemplative glimpses).
My favorite surprise was the story of Ohiyesa, a Native American known by the Anglicized name of Charles Alexander Eastman. Every tradition was enthralling and every personality engaging as Katz also surveyed nondual "confessions" from Advaita Vedanta, Sufism, Judaism, Taoism, Christianity and Buddhism, as well as perspectives from psychotherapy, education, art and cinema. There are comprehensive notes and citations.
In reflecting on the writings of Bernadette Roberts as were presented in the book, which might be of special interest to those in my particular orbit, my only caveat is that one might best employ the same type of interpretive lenses for her account as I recommended for the other traditions. After significant reflection, my most generous interpretation would be that her experiences might correspond, generally, to what theologians have distinguished as primary and secondary objects of our beatific visions and further distinguished as essential (both subjective and objective) and accidental beatitudes, all which I would receive as epistemic stances and phenomenal experiences and not in terms of ontological conclusions. Absent a metaphysical glossary, these writings do not invite philosophical parsing, so one might otherwise more safely presume that they are a very generous gift in the form of a very depthful personal sharing that is some of the most poignantly beautiful (the pain was so very palpable and the Eucharistic oblation so very sincere) and poetic story-telling of one of the most profound nondual experiences (of tremendous existential import) ever to be related (quite courageously) within our modern Christian tradition.
Do yourself a favor and unwrap the gifts that are uniquely yours in One: Essential Writings on Nonduality.
FOOTNOTE: I see no sense in looking to the scriptures (or scriptural
commentaries or other secondary literature) of the great traditions
for robustly descriptive metaphysical insights but I do find them
evocative of some great analogical and metaphorical notions that, in
the end, can only be considered vaguely referential. They do venture
well beyond the edge of philosophy, epistemologically, which is where they truly give the mind its due. No one likes to parse,
philosophically, more than I do AFTER disambiguation of concepts and terms. It is not enough to rely, much less insist, on others'
conventional word usage. Rather, when we encounter something that is especially jarring, hermeneutically, we should extend the author a charitable interpretation and benefit of the doubt until we have clarified their meaning.
commentaries or other secondary literature) of the great traditions
for robustly descriptive metaphysical insights but I do find them
evocative of some great analogical and metaphorical notions that, in
the end, can only be considered vaguely referential. They do venture
well beyond the edge of philosophy, epistemologically, which is where they truly give the mind its due. No one likes to parse,
philosophically, more than I do AFTER disambiguation of concepts and terms. It is not enough to rely, much less insist, on others'
conventional word usage. Rather, when we encounter something that is especially jarring, hermeneutically, we should extend the author a charitable interpretation and benefit of the doubt until we have clarified their meaning.
For example, Richard Rohr writes: "Although Tolle is not a Christian teacher, we must not assume that makes him an anti-Christian teacher. Today we need whatever methods or help we can receive to allow the Christian message to take us to a deeper level of transformation. Our history, and our guidance of Western history, shows this has clearly not been happening on any broad scale. This is an opportunity for us to understand our own message at deeper levels. It would be a shame if we required him to speak our language and vocabulary before we could critically hear what he is saying—that is true and helpful to our own message."
Further clarifying insights can be found in the following excerpts from Heinrich Dumoulin's Understanding Buddhism (Weatherhill, NY & Tokoyo, 1994) as translated and adapted from the German by Joseph S. O'Leary. Emphases in bold are my own.
Further clarifying insights can be found in the following excerpts from Heinrich Dumoulin's Understanding Buddhism (Weatherhill, NY & Tokoyo, 1994) as translated and adapted from the German by Joseph S. O'Leary. Emphases in bold are my own.
Turning to the question of God, I shall dwell on the enigmatic silence with which the Buddha responded to metaphysical questions, and show that this can be seen as one of the several ways in which Buddhism gives witness to divine transcendence. (pg 2)
Worldviews described as pessimistic are of three kinds: ontological, existential and theological. Pessimistic philosophies of the first kind --- nihilism or Manicheanism --- declare the being as such is empty of value and meaning, that the foundations of the universe are askew. The Buddhist diagnosis does not entail anything of this sort, for it either refrains from raising questions of metaphysical ontology, or it does so only in a soteriological context, and then answers them in a way that cannot be called pessimistic.
Speaking of Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostum: These great theologians provided a solid basis for the thought of Psuedo-Dionysius, who also drew heavily on the thought of the Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus. Are the similarities between Eastern and Western mysticism due exclusively to a convergence on the level of spiritual experience, or was Christian negative theology prompted by an encounter with Asia? There has been much discussion of possible Indian influences on the Middle Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas which these theologians had absorbed, particularly in connection with Plotinus's mysticism of the One. Emile Brehier spoke of the orientalism of Plotinus and of deep affinities between certain aspects of Plotinian doctrine and the Upanishads. It is hard to dismiss the belief that the stream of negative theology, preserved and expanded in Christian mystical thought down to the present time, has one of its sources in that distant encounter with a form of Indian spirituality closely related to Buddhism. Though the channels of interactions remain obscure, these early interactions between Eastern and Western spirituality are a haunting theme in the history of religions and loom in the background of the present encounter between Buddhism and Christianity. (pp. 5-6)
Such reductive interpretations [of nirvana] cannot explain the language in which nirvana is evoked in radiant images of bliss, peace, security and freedom. The literal meaning of the word nirvana is extinction, but this can give a misleading impression. When the Buddha was asked about the state of the Perfected One after death, he pointed out that even in this life his state is "deep, immeasurable, unfathomable as is the great ocean. When the fire is quenched, one does not ask in which direction it has gone, east, west, north or south. This is not because the fire no longer exists, but because, as an Indian audience would have gathered, the fire has returned to a non-manifested state as latent heat. Likewise, the nirvanic state is beyond our grasp, but it is not nothingness. (pg 29)
Modern Theravada Buddhism adopts no single clear stance towards the question of non-self and selfhood, and the complicated development of the Abhidharma philosophies impedes an unambiguous formulation. One both finds the denial of any kind of self, and the acceptance of a self. The position attributed to the Buddha himself rejects both nihilism (uccheda-ditthi) and substantialism (sassata-ditthi). The radical deniers of any kind of self can with difficulty avoid being found in a nihilistic position in the end, while the acceptance of a self leads easily to a substantialist metaphysics of being. The Buddha avoids both by his silence. (pg 37)
The true self, as my act of existence, is trans-categorical, not graspable in concepts, ineffable. To actualize the true self, one must undergo a dying of one's ego. Such an experience of self is an experience of transcendence, an opening to absolute reality, though the transcendence is represented in an impersonal, cosmological language rather than a personal, theological one. (pg 43)
This down-to-earth faith is far removed from the abstract pessimism which Westerners often associate with Buddhism. Thus the basic human experience, whereby one breaks through the bounds of the ego to open oneself to an all-embracing, protecting, and helping Power, works itself out in Buddhism in a distinctive style. Knowledge and nescience, transcendent faith and this-worldly confirmation, blend here in a rich varioety of forms. (pg. 63)
This defining ideal of Buddhism [compassion] is embodied in the Buddha, the bodhisattvas, and the Buddhist saints. The philosophical systems developed in Mahayna Buddhism were unable to provide a satisfactory philosophical illumination of this topic. Christian love, which has also found a convincing embodiment in countless lives, cannot be explained in philosophical terms either, though its foundations in divine transcendence are clear. (pg 86)
Christian Nonduality
http://twitter.com/johnssylvest
Bird Photos by David Joseph Sylvest
johnboy
