Faith and Belief

[CobblersApprentice]

Obedience, or surrender.

Lack of response could be lack of surrender.

Or something else. For an emotional lineage, your stuff is pretty heady.

Well, I have already spoken of seeking to dismiss Pure Land simply as an "emotional lineage". It seeks to be an egalitarian lineage, open to people of diverse intellect, which is something else entirely. My first real introduction to it was on another Forum, where someone very well versed in it, took issue with Sangarakshita in his well known "A Survey of Buddhism", who said that the Pure Land teachings were "a transposition of the whole Doctrine (of Buddhism) from the intellectual mode into the emotional."

Myself, I seek to keep in heart the words of one of its founders, Honen, who said that "when a scholar is born they forget the Nembutsu", the Nembutsu, essentially and simply put, a cry of gratitude.

From a Christian perspective, there is Meister Eckhart who declared that should we just give voice to one prayer in our lifetime it should be "thank you"

Recently I downloaded a sample of a book, "Demythologising Pure Land Buddhism". You want "heady". Go for it. Right over my head. I left it as a free sample.

 

[CobblersApprentice]

Ok, but my soul is personal to me, and my relationship to the divine is personal to that, otherwise it doesn't matter anyway, why should I care?

I am not unaware of such a way of being. Relationship is for me at the heart of things. Sadly, the non-dual perspective of the "east" is often dismissed as being "all is one". In fact it is that "all is not two". I had my own issues with this in contemplating some words in a letter of Thomas Merton, written to Aldous Huxley, regarding the use of drugs to induce a "mystical experience". Merton took issue with such a means, suggesting that all true mystical experience should evolve from a "contact of two liberties".

Currently I am drinking of the thought of the 13th century soto zen master, Dogen, who spoke of the "realisation of non-duality within duality", of diversification necessarily following finding/realising an essential unity. Heady stuff!

On the Christian side there is Thomas Merton asking questions of exactly what constitutes the true "person" which as he sees it is not simply the ego self. His discussion, and much else, can be found in "Zen and the Birds of Appetite", available at all good book shops (as is said!)

 

[Thomas]

Just a quick word. This gets my gander up! A traditional "esoterism" ... is not in the hands of any privileged group.

LOL, I agree ... but I tend to forgive Schuon, to some degree, in that every authentic tradition has its esoteric complement. Pure Land is what might be called — if I understand it correctly — the Bhaktic path within Buddhism as a whole (bearing in mind that every expression contains the elements of all)?

And quite often he, and René Guénon even more so, were active in Europe in a time when 'esoterists' were two a penny, Anthroposophists, Theosophists, yada yada yada ...

But your core complaint I am in complete agreement with. In fact my use of 'intellect' was along those very lines, in that it does not mean 'clever' or 'intellectual' in the common sense.

Of the two foremost voices of 20th century expression of the Perennial Philosophy (Schuon and Guénon), both whom absolutely insisted that one had to belong to an authentic religious tradition, I find it telling that Guénon travelled east, he lived quiet life as a devout Muslim in a backstreet of Cairo. Schuon went west, settled in America and founded his own somewhat heterodox circle that became ensnared in accusations of sexual impropriety...

 

[RJM]

@CobblersApprentice
Anyway, the site seems to be working properly again now -- edit function restored.

We believed @StevePame would get it sorted, and our faith in him was justified, lol.

 

[Cino]

Well, I have already spoken of seeking to dismiss Pure Land simply as an "emotional lineage".

Sorry I came across as dismissive.

"Those who think Pure Land Buddhism is an emotional lineage should see this heady stuff that's part of it" is what I clumsily wanted to convey.

 

[CobblersApprentice]

Pure Land is what might be called — if I understand it correctly — the Bhaktic path within Buddhism as a whole (bearing in mind that every expression contains the elements of all)?

Thanks. Getting my "gander up" was my whimsical semi-humorous way of responding. On the above, on other posts I have sought to speak of Pure Land as I have come to understand it.

Relevant here, and for this thread, a quote from a biography of T.S.Eliot:- Eliot feels no compunction in alluding to the Bhagavad Gita in one section of the poem (Four Quartets) and Dante's Paradiso in the next. He neither asserts the rightness nor wrongness of one set of doctrines in relation to the other, nor does he try to reconcile them. Instead he claims that prior to the differentiation of various religious paths, there is a universal substratum called Word (logos) of which religions are concretions. This logos is an object both of belief and disbelief. It is an object of belief in that, without prior belief in the logos, any subsequent religious belief is incoherent. It is an object of disbelief in that belief in it is empty, the positive content of actual belief is fully invested in religious doctrine.

Anyway, for me a total trust in Reality-as-is is necessary prior to all diversification. Otherwise it is a wilderness.

 

[Thomas]

Relevant here, and for this thread ...
Instead he claims that prior to the differentiation of various religious paths, there is a universal substratum called Word (logos) of which religions are concretions. This logos is an object both of belief and disbelief. It is an object of belief in that, without prior belief in the logos, any subsequent religious belief is incoherent. It is an object of disbelief in that belief in it is empty, the positive content of actual belief is fully invested in religious doctrine.

Very much the position of the Traditionalists of the Sophia Perennis — the Primordial Truth is without shape or taste or sight or sound because it utterly transcends all natures and all category, and so those who claimed to have direct access to and participation in the Primordial Tradition were kidding themselves and everyone else... that last sentence nails it: 'the positive content of actual belief'.

 

[wil]

the Primordial Truth is without shape or taste or sight or sound because it utterly transcends all natures and all category

The TOE, the underlying principle that is.

 

[CobblersApprentice]

The TOE, the underlying principle that is.

It certainly does lie low.

 

[wil]

It certainly does lie low.

It has to. It is for understanding, it is what we all stand on, turtles all the way down!

 

[CobblersApprentice]

I was just looking through my cyber notebook and found some words of Samuel Beckett, a man often portrayed as some sort of despairing existentialist. But here, seeking to translate the concluding words of Dante's Inferno ('a riveder le stelle') as "and see the stars again", he allows a tramp-like waif to speak as he contemplates death:-

"There's a way out there, there's a way out somewhere, the rest would come, the other words, sooner or later, and the power to get there, and the way to get there, and pass out, and see the beauties of the skies, and see the stars again"

(From the ninth monologue of Beckett's 1954 "Texts for Nothing")

Strangely inspirational, combining "faith" and "belief".

 

[CobblersApprentice]

It has to. It is for understanding, it is what we all stand on, turtles all the way down!

Made me think of a Buddhist teacher who spoke of our need to rest upon "the firm foundations of emptiness".......or perhaps St John of the Cross:- "If we wish to be sure of the road we tread on we should close our eyes and walk in the dark". For Pure Land, it is the way of "no calculation", things being "made to become so of themselves".

 

[Cino]

Anyway, for me a total trust in Reality-as-is is necessary prior to all diversification. Otherwise it is a wilderness.

So is there a limit to the as-ness and is-ness of reality? Or is this a matter of personal preference?

 

[CobblersApprentice]

So is there a limit to the as-ness and is-ness of reality? Or is this a matter of personal preference?

There can be no limits to Reality irrespective of infinite ways of experiencing it, at least as I see it (!)

I would speak of my own experience rather than "preference".

Going off at a bit of a tangent but related to this, again the thought of Dogen. When speaking of the well known story of someone who had dreamed of being a butterfly then awoke and then wondered which was the dream, was he now a butterfly dreaming he was a man? Dogen had a novel approach - one was as good as the other, all was "illusion" and if ALL was "illusion", ALL was Reality.

Dogen took non-duality to the limit and it can be seen as essentially egalitarian, this irrespective of him often being seen as elitist. Dogen refused to assert that the monastic life was in any way superior to any other, saying "those who say that mundane life is an obstacle to the Buddha-dharma know only that there is no Buddha-dharma in the mundane life; they do not yet know that there is no mundane life in the Buddha-dharma."

Again, from aspiration to nirvana, all was a continuous practice, a circle, circumference nowhere, centre everywhere.

 

[Thomas]

I always remember the story I read of a Zen Master who spoke of No Mind and pointed to a village basket-maker making ... er ... a basket.

"There is No Mind," he said (words to that effect). "He's making baskets, his hands know what to do ... he's not preoccupied with No Mind as a discipline, he just gets on with it."

 

[CobblersApprentice]

I always remember the story I read of a Zen Master who spoke of No Mind and pointed to a village basket-maker making ... er ... a basket.

"There is No Mind," he said (words to that effect). "He's making baskets, his hands know what to do ... he's not preoccupied with No Mind as a discipline, he just gets on with it."

Good morning Thomas, I'm enjoying a coffee in Costa's at the moment, a place where I always feel good, irrespective of all places being the "same". Related to your little story is one of a zen practitioner being asked to grasp emptiness. He stretched out his hand and grasped thin air. "No, no" said his questioner, who immediately reached out and grasped the nose of his companion, tweaking it until he cried out. "That is grasping emptiness". (Dogen commented that the man should have grasped his OWN nose, but apart from that he liked the story)

Anyway, I have unfortunately finished my coffee......

 

[Thomas]

Them Zennies are as tricky as a box of monkeys, ain't they?

I've got a copy of Shobogenzo as a 'dipper' book ... Last time I started, I thought I really ought to pay more attention to this.

Caffe Nero for me ...

 

[CobblersApprentice]

Them Zennies are as tricky as a box of monkeys, ain't they?

I've got a copy of Shobogenzo as a 'dipper' book ... Last time I started, I thought I really ought to pay more attention to this.

Caffe Nero for me ...

Not so much tricky, more incomprehensible. My very own "dipper book" has been "Secrets of the Blue Cliff Record" (with commentary) which goes through 100 "cases". Alas, now on case 25, most remain secrets. But no matter. Yet a couple of assertions by Dogen have caught my mind over the years, that mind is not "thoughts and concepts" but rather "trees, fence posts, tiles and grasses". Strangely liberating to my slightly claustrophobic mentality. Another was that "in the whole of the universe there is nothing that is hidden." In our modern world of Jung and Freud, ids, and the unconscious, again, strangely liberating.
Seeking him out once I found the book "Eihei Dogen - Mystical Realist" by Hee Jin Kim. Reading through, again largely incomprehensible to my mind, yet bits and pieces continued to reverberate over the next couple of years. Now reading through again, wonderfully illuminating, at least to me, bringing clarity to many things.

Caffe Nero? I know someone who sneers at my take-away Costa. He drinks Caffe Nero and admits that he is a coffee snob.

 

[Cino]

I would speak of my own experience rather than "preference".

In your own experience there is a preference for "not the wilderness", is how I understand?

How would that wilderness present itself like? Dissociation?

 

[CobblersApprentice]

In your own experience there is a preference for "not the wilderness", is how I understand?

How would that wilderness present itself like? Dissociation?

I would say yes, dissociation, in as much as the "wilderness" for me is in seeking to become other than what I am, seeking to justify myself, seeking a "pass mark", seeking an accumulation of knowledge to "add" to what I "am". Trusting in grace, faith in Reality, allows rest. From "rest" I find I can continue the "journey" which itself is "home". A paradox in a certain sense, but words fail me.