The title of this entry is a basic hwadu in Korean Seon (Jap=Zen) Buddhism. I realize this blog is Quaker but this question came to me today. It was prompted by Meister Eckhart's statement that I read before Meeting "Whoever has three things is beloved of God: the first is riddance of possessions; the second, of friends; and the third is riddance of self." (Meister Eckhard (from Whom God Hid Nothing. David O'Neal, ed.). It makes me think of Jesus' statement. Jesus told us, according to the author of John's gospel, and reflected in the other gospels in a different context "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (John 12:25 see also Mark 8:35 with parallels in Matthew and Luke).
What does it mean to hate one's life? I take it more to be disdain or disinterest, or Eckhart's central virtue, detachment. Jesus is contrasting love of life, attachment to life, and its contrary which is not hate so much as disinterest, detachment. This is guesswork as I wasn't there and the Greek we have is at best a translation of the Aramaic and the English is a translation of the Greek. Detachment rather than hate rings true to me, and I would think to Eckhart.
So who am I, and who is it that must die. Here I make a distinction between the true self and the false self. When working in prisons I dealt with men who had developed a shell of protection. These shells were made up of traditional ego defenses. cynicism, anger and other social pathology (and yes I even felt there was evil in some cases). The self present to the world, the false self, the protective shell with all its spikes and spines had to be peeled away to allow the true self to emerge. Unfortunately this rarely happened; the environment worked against it.
So what does that have to do with who I am? I am not that of which I
am disinterested. That is the false self and is that which must fall away. The true self is what
Buddhists say is our Buddha nature, and it is what George Fox told us to
answer (address) as that of God in everyone (each of us). It is the soul described as by Juan de Yepes Álvarez in his poem "The Dark Night of the Soul." As for me, in Meeting yesterday I had the image of a nut with the soft fruit inside, or of an egg that must crack to allow the emergence of the new born.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Friday, January 20, 2012
What Quakers believe
Often when I would teach Quakerism 101 (consisting of six weekly one and a half to two hour sessions) at meetings (congregations) in the Philadelphia area (liberal meetings) I would ask the class what Quakers believe. The usual responses were "Quakers believe there is that of God in everyone," "Quakers believe in continuing revelation," "Quakers believe in peace," and "Quakers believe in the inward or inner light." There were others but these were most common.
I'm going to examine the "peace" statement first. Some years ago Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had produced banners which had the A.J. Musti quotation "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." These were hung along 15th Street outside Friends Center, and along Arch Street outside the Arch Street Meeting House. I had some difficulty with this. Peace was Christ's gift to his disciples (John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."). This is not to say God does not give us peace in other ways and through other intermediaries, but there is a way to peace. Liberal Quakers tend to orthopraxis (right practice or action) as more important that orthodoxy (right belief). Our testimonies (including peace, but also integrity, equality, simplicity and stewardship) testify to our beliefs; they are our beliefs only in the sense that we believe they are what God requires of us.
Almost always near the top of the list would be that "there is that of God in everyone." This has almost become a liberal Quaker creed. It comes from George Fox's admonition “Be patterns, be examples ... then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you." It is what will happen when one does what Fox encourages them to do. It is not put forward as a belief to be ascribed to; yet that is what it has become. My main objection to it as a statement of Quaker belief is that it is misleading taken out of context. It could be taken to mean we all have a little piece of God in us while I take Fox to have meant we all have that in us capable of responding to God. It also fails to distinguish us from many other belief systems (I remember a Sikh saying namaste means "that of God in me greets that of God in you."
The point about continuing revelation is valid, and important, but also dangerous. It ties in with the testing of a leading which has been an issue for us since James Nayler rode into Bristol on the back of a colt much as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and we know the trouble that brought on him and the society. It does distinguish us from other Christians who believe revelation ended with the last apostle.
The light is, to my mind, the most to the point. We ask Friends to hold us in the light. But also, the light is identified with the eternal logos made man in Jesus in the prologue to the Gospel of John, particularly verse 9, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world" <NRSV> cited by Robert Barclay as the Quaker verse. It has the advantage (and disadvantage) of being used without the Christian baggage for those who have trouble with that. Above I mentioned the alternate "inner light" or "inward light." This distinction parallels that of "that of God" suggesting we all have a little piece of God (inner light); inward light is light coming from outside. Do we own this light of does the light enlighten us? It also goes back to the writings of early Friends where it was an important image, particularly in exposing out shortcomings.
Many people are used to seeing a religion in terms of beliefs. Beliefs have to be primary, but liberal Quakers don't quibble over what those beliefs are (within reason) as long as they lead to right action, orthopraxis.
I'm going to examine the "peace" statement first. Some years ago Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had produced banners which had the A.J. Musti quotation "There is no way to peace, peace is the way." These were hung along 15th Street outside Friends Center, and along Arch Street outside the Arch Street Meeting House. I had some difficulty with this. Peace was Christ's gift to his disciples (John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you."). This is not to say God does not give us peace in other ways and through other intermediaries, but there is a way to peace. Liberal Quakers tend to orthopraxis (right practice or action) as more important that orthodoxy (right belief). Our testimonies (including peace, but also integrity, equality, simplicity and stewardship) testify to our beliefs; they are our beliefs only in the sense that we believe they are what God requires of us.
Almost always near the top of the list would be that "there is that of God in everyone." This has almost become a liberal Quaker creed. It comes from George Fox's admonition “Be patterns, be examples ... then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you." It is what will happen when one does what Fox encourages them to do. It is not put forward as a belief to be ascribed to; yet that is what it has become. My main objection to it as a statement of Quaker belief is that it is misleading taken out of context. It could be taken to mean we all have a little piece of God in us while I take Fox to have meant we all have that in us capable of responding to God. It also fails to distinguish us from many other belief systems (I remember a Sikh saying namaste means "that of God in me greets that of God in you."
The point about continuing revelation is valid, and important, but also dangerous. It ties in with the testing of a leading which has been an issue for us since James Nayler rode into Bristol on the back of a colt much as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and we know the trouble that brought on him and the society. It does distinguish us from other Christians who believe revelation ended with the last apostle.
The light is, to my mind, the most to the point. We ask Friends to hold us in the light. But also, the light is identified with the eternal logos made man in Jesus in the prologue to the Gospel of John, particularly verse 9, "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world" <NRSV> cited by Robert Barclay as the Quaker verse. It has the advantage (and disadvantage) of being used without the Christian baggage for those who have trouble with that. Above I mentioned the alternate "inner light" or "inward light." This distinction parallels that of "that of God" suggesting we all have a little piece of God (inner light); inward light is light coming from outside. Do we own this light of does the light enlighten us? It also goes back to the writings of early Friends where it was an important image, particularly in exposing out shortcomings.
Many people are used to seeing a religion in terms of beliefs. Beliefs have to be primary, but liberal Quakers don't quibble over what those beliefs are (within reason) as long as they lead to right action, orthopraxis.
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