Trinity Sunday

Notes on Trinity Sunday sermon.

Theologians on Trinity. Defies explanation.

The point is not to know. The point is to experience. (Also see last year's Trinity Sunday)

Not interested in how or why. Interesting but doesn't propel us forward in our faith. How have we experienced the Trinity? Comforted by God the parent. God the Christ is Teacher and redeemer. God the Spirit is Sustainer, breath of fresh air. For example: Very rare but knows when the spirit moves within her.

- - - - - - - - - - 

But the Divine Nature is equally present in each phase of the operation. In our own experience we can see the interdependence of the three bypostases; we should never have known about the Father where it not for the revelation of the Son, nor could we recognize the Son without the indwelling Spirit who makes him known to us. The Spirit accompanies the divine Word of the Father, just as the breath (Greek pneuma; Latin, spiritus) accompanies the word spoken by a man,. The three persons do not exist side by side in the divine world. We can compare them to the presence of different fields of knowledge in the mind of an individual: philosophy may be different from medicine, but it does not inhabit a separate sphere of consciousness. The different sciences pervade one another, fill the whole mind and yet remain distinct. Ultimately, however, the Trinity only made sense as a mystical or spiritual experience: it had to be lived, not thought, because God went far beyond human concepts. It was not a logical or intellectual formulation but an imaginative paradigm that confounded reason...... Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians continue to find that the contemplation of the Trinity is an inspiring religious experience. For many Western Christians, however, the Trinity is simply baffling This could be because they consider only what the Cappadocians would have called its kerygmatic qualities, whereas for the Greeks it was a dogmatic truth that was only grasped intuitively and as a result of religious experience. Logically, of course, it made no sense at all.

Trinity: The Christian God, page 117, from The History of God by Karen Armstrong

- - - - - - - - - - 

The pastor wanted us to write down our experience of the Trinity. Are we awake enough?

For me - none. I like the question about being awake. In Buddhism, this is not some additional question but central and basic. I keep noticing the ways the Christian teaching that I respond to the best points to Buddhism. Buddhism is full of paradoxes, here is how one website describes it. The cause of suffering is delusion. Delusion arises out of dualistic thought, including the dualism involved in desiring enlightenment. How can you affirm the distinction between delusion and enlightenment (necessary to get you on the path) and deny that duality which keeps you deluded?

“Original enlightenment.” You are all Buddhas right now. The problem is that you think you have a problem. The goal is to recognize that you have always been Buddha. The process is one of subtraction: getting rid of that distinction between being deluded and being enlightened.

“Perfect and complete.” (This is not an alternative to original enlightenment, only a corollary to it.) Our delusions make us think that life can be better. This leads to desires and attachments. The goal (and the process) is to realize that this moment or any moment is perfect and complete as it is.