Life journey

I took Christianity as far as it would take me. Suffering has long been a question as I read an entire book on the subject when I was in college or just after college. I remember that I still didn't understand it. 

That feeling of being in the wilderness is a theme of Christianity, especially in this modern world. I feel like that wandering has ended up for me here in Buddhist practice. A place where I don't worry about God, it is just not an important question. If there is a God, it doesn't need to hear from me or need or want constant worship and attention. I'm sure I could find a place where this is said better, but instead of worrying about the questions of life, I want to live what is happening now, rather than having questions so much. It just feels like Christianity has become more about belief and theology, so when it comes to how to live, there are many guesses in various Christian books but the Bible has a confusing mix of some good ideas with lots of recorded things that should not be followed as an example. I have found more answers in Buddhist practice than in all the Christian spiritual disciplines that I have studied.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

From Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck, page 176 - 177

Only when we move through the experiential level does life have meaning. This is what Jews and Christians mean by being with God. Experiencing is out of time: it is not the past, not the future, not even the present in the usual sense. We can't say what it is; we can only be it. In traditional Buddhist terms, such a life is being buddha nature itself. Compassion grows from such roots.

- - - 

To do the work of practice, we need endless patience, which also means recognizing when we have no patience. So we need to be patient with our lack of patience: to recognize when we don't want to practice is also part of practice. Our avoidance and resistance are part of the conceptual framework that we're not yet ready to look at. It's okay not to be ready. As we become ready, bit by bit, a space opens up, and we'll be ready to experience a little more, and then a little more. Resistance and practice go hand in hand. We all resist our practice, because we all resist our lives.

The Loner's Search for Community

December 24, 2021

I was thinking lately about how I used to walk to and from school myself. I never was one to join or depend on a group, I guess. I have distinct memories of walking home from high school and being able to stop at the library on the way. I would often just go to the biography section that was all together in the Dewey decimal system of our local library.

This idea of community is something I found briefly in the Jesus movement. I think there was a powerful sense of belonging but gradually I realized I didn't share many of the beliefs and was not interested in following a charismatic leader. When I got to college, the group I thought I was a member of separated themselves from me when they saw that I wasn't buying in to everything. I think at college there was a general sense of community with the small student body though I never thought of myself in those terms it did provide community.

Also remember how much I looked into intentional communities, reading books, magazines and other ways of finding out information before the days of the internet. I had three weeks at Holden village. At the end of that experience I had made arrangements to meet the a family at their farm in West Virginia. While I was there I continued to seek out a future intentional community and may have visited some. I think my next adventure was a long summer job in construction in Illinois. I had access to college bookstores when I traveled while working and I probably picked up some on intentional communities. Somehow I found out about movement for a new society and spent 2 years there. I think how I would have benefited with a little bit more of a mentoring relationship, with someone talking to me about what I was doing and where I was going. Eventually my main community ended up being a Christian church that my spouse attended for most of her life. Now I figure I'll be there for the rest of my life but would like to find a Sangha for extra support and learning and fellowship.

I have been given this existence, to accept what has come into my lifetime - Jane Hirshfield Dec 19, 2021

The Bowl by Jane Hirshfield

If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten.

If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked.

If a shoe is put into the bowl,

the leather is chewed and chewed over,

a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgotten.

A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.

Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness,

it eats them.

Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry.

The bowl cannot be thrown away.

It cannot be broken.

It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless,

and, big though it seems, fits exactly in two human hands.

Hands with ten fingers,

fifty-four bones,

capacities strange to us almost past measure.

Scented—as the curve of the bowl is—

with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop.

—2014

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Interview: On Being by Christa Tippet

The esteemed poet Jane Hirshfield has been a Zen monk and a visiting artist among neuroscientists.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

I have been given this existence, these years on this Earth, to accept what has come into my lifetime — wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness. I must take them. I must find a way to live in this world. You can’t refuse it. And along with the difficult is the radiant, the beautiful, the intimacy with which each one of us enters the life of all of us and figures out, what is our conversation? What is my responsibility? What must be suffered? What can be changed? How can I meet this in a way which both lets me open my eyes the next day and also, perhaps, if I’m lucky, can be of service?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

So there’s an example poem in there, which I love. It’s by the Japanese poet Issa. And he says, “On a branch / floating downriver / a cricket, singing.” And that is both, I think, you know, a portrait of something probably actually seen, but it is also a portrait of our entire existence. This is our situation. We are probably in peril. We’re on a branch in the middle of a river. It’s not a good place for a cricket to be, especially if there are some rapids ahead. And yet, what does the cricket do? It sings, because that is its nature, because that is what it has to offer, because it delights in this moment in the sun, because it is on a branch and not yet drowned. And so I feel like our entire lives are in, you know, that haiku, 17 syllables in the Japanese.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Within the worldview of Buddhism, both are true: there is suffering, and it is our job to try to end it; and the perfection of things as they are is already here around us. We cannot escape from perfection, we cannot escape from suffering, most of the time. And they are not separate. How we feel them is the weather of this moment and the spiritual tenor of who we are at this moment in our lives.

But I hope there is no human being who has not had one moment, at least, when they stood in the world, undone by awe and radiance, and the small self vanishes, and you understand the world as immense and yours, and not yours.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Differences between Buddhism and Christianity in Biography online

Both religions stress ethical living, compassion/love to other people.

Both taught to overcome the forces of hate through the power of love. The Buddha ‘hatred cannot be overcome by hatred.’ The Christ ‘Love your enemy’

Like Buddhism, Christianity also encourages followers to take steps to improve their well being. 

Both religions encourage their followers to be charitable towards the poor.

Both Jesus Christ and the Buddha sought to reform existing social/religious practises which had denigrated into ritualistic forms with no spiritual meaning. Christ criticised the money lenders in the temple. Buddha criticised the caste system and hypocrisy of the Brahmins.

Both were egalitarians. Buddha accepted all castes into his sangha. Christ taught his philosophy was not just for a small race.

Shared values. The Five Precepts of Buddhism (abstention from killing, lying, stealing, sexual immorality) would be welcomed by most Christians.

Buddhism and Christianity were both founded by great Spiritual Masters who sought to offer a path to salvation. The terminology they used was often quite different. Also, given the different circumstances they incarnated in, they taught different paths and emphasised different approaches to spirituality.

Neither the Buddha or Jesus Christ wrote down their own teachings. In both cases, their teachings were written down many years after they had left the world. This gap between their teaching and the written version means there is always a potential for error and misunderstanding of their teachings. Also, as the new religions developed they evolved in different ways.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Comparing and Contrasting Zen Buddhism

with Christianity © 2015 by Saint Mary’s Press

Koans and Parables

In Zen Buddhism, koans are short sayings that are intended to derail our ordinary ways of thinking about things in order to enable us to see things radically differently. Some of Jesus’ parables share a similar intention. Jesus sets up a situation that his hearers would tend to assume would resolve in a certain way, and then he resolves it in a way that surprises and perhaps even offends the everyday sensibilities of his hearers. One good example is the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). In the culture of those who heard this parable from Jesus’ lips, the Samaritan was despised and ostracized. In the parable, he is the one who does the will of God, the one who acts with compassion, the one who emerges as a decent human being willing to take risks in order to help another person. The parable invites Jesus’ hearers to rethink their usual ways of looking at Samaritans and at who does the will of God. 

There is also a contrast between koans and parables in that the intent of the koan is to frustrate thinking in order to facilitate the direct experience of truth. The parable, however, hopes to revise our thinking along lines consistent with Jesus’ message about the nature of the Kingdom of God.

Life after Death

Zen Buddhism is very much focused on this world, this life, and the here and now of every day. It neither affirms nor denies the existence of life after death. Christianity, on the other hand, strongly affirms the existence of life after death and the importance of preparing for eternal life in this world.

Seeing the World in a New Light

Zen Buddhism invites and enables its practitioners to see the world in a new light. The “new light” of Zen is the direct experience of the everyday world, unmediated by thinking, concepts, and opinions.

Christianity also invites its followers to experience the world in a new light. For Christians, the “new light” is seeing the world as God’s creation and daily life as significant because it is how God’s

purposes are fulfilled in the world. Jesus invites Christians to see everyday reality in light of the coming Kingdom of God.

Zazen and Prayer

Zazen, or sitting meditation, is the primary form of religious activity for Zen Buddhists. Prayer occupies a place of importance for Christians as well, including corporate worship and the celebration of the Sacraments (especially for Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians). Zazen has been described as sitting quietly and doing nothing other than just being. Although Christianity also has a tradition of meditation and contemplation, prayer for most Christians tends to be more active in the sense that it often involves verbal prayer as well as listening for the urgings of the Divine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

"If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten." "I have been given this existence, these years on this Earth, to accept what has come into my lifetime..." As I have more and more understanding of the Zen Buddhist worldview and seek to practice the way, I am not abandoning my Christianity. I am sure this would also be the advice of a Buddhist master. While there may be opportunities for retreats and maybe even a small Sangha, I will be in a Christian environment for rest of my life. I list some similarities that I found on online above because in most situations the differences will not be an issue. Probably only an astute, well informed, spiritual leader would actually perceive at some point that I have a different worldview then mainstream Christianity. I just don't think it will come up most of the time. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my experience of teaching Sunday school has shown me that most Christians are heretics in the sense that they don't understand or adhere to the belief system that theologians have so carefully developed. In the church, I have been in the presence of deeply spiritual people that can't easily find their way around the books of the Bible or accurately tell the stories that are found there. I guess I'm working it out here in my own head though it may never come up. I also don't feel it would be helpful to my friends who have their own struggles. There are other ways I can help, and as Jane Hirshfield says, "and also, perhaps, if I’m lucky, can be of service..."

The Paradox of Awareness

Are the tension and pain real? Something is there, but what is it? One night recently I was walking along the ocean with the moonlight shining on the water. I could see a shimmer of light on the ocean, but was the moonlight really there? Did the ocean really have anything on it? What is that color? Is it real or not? Neither is quite correct. For my perspective, the moonlight was on the water. But if I had been closer to the surface, I wouldn't see any moonlight on the water. I would just see whatever I would see at that point. There is no such thing as moonlight literally on the water. As for clouds in the sky: if we are in a cloud, we call it fog. We likewise give a kind of false reality to our thoughts. It's true that we always live within a certain perspective. Practice is about learning to live in that relative reality, and enjoying it, but seeing it for what it is. Like the moonlight on the water, it's there - from a certain relative perspective - and it's not real, it's not the absolute. Even the water itself has only relative reality. When there is no light on the water, we see the water as black. I have had dinner at a restaurant by the ocean and watched the water turn from blue to dark blue to darker purple, and finally it can't be seen at all. What is real? In absolute terms, none of it is real. In terms of our practice, however, we must begin with our experience, with this meticulous work with awareness. We need to return to the reality of our lives. We have pains and aches, we have troubles, we like people or we don't like them: this is the stuff of our lives. This is where our work with awareness begins.

The Paradox of Awareness page 156 - 7 Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck

Solitude: Krista Tippett and Stephen Batchelor

"To be alone, to be at home in ourselves, is something we're all drawn to and yet terrified of." Finding ease in aloneness: Krista Tippett interviewing Stephen Batchelor in On Being

I remember in college when I took an interdisciplinary class called Man, Men, and Nature, I was uncomfortable with the thought of keeping a journal that the instructor would read. When I think about it, it's kind of odd that I could write anything I wanted so where is this uncomfortable feeling coming from? Somehow the journaling tool, that might possibly reveal an inner life, was scary.

 

Stephen talks about opening up a non-reactive space where we can respond to the world, and respond to our own needs as well, that's not driven by familiar habits that are often rooted in fear, attachment, and egotistical confusions. We empty our minds of greed, hatred, and attachment; We don't empty our mind of love,  generosity, and wisdom. When greed, hatred and attachment crowd our minds, we don't have room for anything else that could conceive of an alternate response.

Rahab: A Prostitute or an Innkeeper?

Rahab: A Prostitute or an Innkeeper?

Claude Mariottini

Emeritus Professor of Old Testament

Northern Baptist Seminary

Based on Josephus’ view that Rahab was an innkeeper, one author came to the conclusion that Rahab was a successful business woman and that the word “harlot” was used as a pejorative because of her success. He wrote:

It is our considered opinion, based upon what we have read in the Bible and in the Writings of Josephus that Rahab made fine clothing (the reason for all the flax that she had on her roof, enough to hide the two spies in). Her customers, often having to travel long distances to purchase her fine linen needed to be put up. Rahab also ran a [sic] inn, and she often put her clients up in her inn. Why did people of that time label a successful business woman “a harlot?” Maybe her business did better than their business.

The reason Josephus was trying to play down the fact that Rahab was a prostitute was because of the role she played in Jewish history. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Rahab was one of the ancestresses of the prophet Jeremiah.