And the method of Under the Influence has been the same from day one: take the architecture of wisdom that exists in other traditions as an indication of the different pieces that a Christian Wisdom tradition would need to develop or relocate amidst its own resources. Additionally, things like dualism, linear views of time, a way of knowing that assumes the permanence of the knower, and an over-emphasis on moral theology—all of these are culturally prevalent and have coopted Christ’s message. The effort is not to make theological fruit salad, here. Where there are differences, they need to be stated. In places where our own tradition is weak, and another strong, we should own up to it. In places where our own tradition is strong, and another weak, we should be humble about it, because we know ourselves and don’t need to treat truth as a credential.
Koans are quite likely to have non-verbal answers. After all, language is a logical tool, and Koans are illogical questions. Though some of Jesus words can function as Koans, we can be quite certain that the Judaism of his day didn’t have a lot of space for us to say Jesus intended them as such. It’s with maddening resignation that Under the Influence admits that the Cross itself is a Koan. It’s a nonverbal, performative answer to an illogical question, which demonstrates that Jesus, the responder, has been emptied of self. Personally, I find myself saying “You spent your whole blessed life using words to teach, and then got quiet when it was time to elucidate the core of your teaching. That’s great, Jesus. Just great.”
I’m being a bit cheeky. With my Lord and Savior. I know. My curiosity remains, though. We can only guess at what Jesus would say the Cross was meant to articulate. If he had done so, though, that message would have the role that the Four Noble Truths have in Buddhism. It would serve as a litmus test of Jesus’ Teaching—identifying the key points with which all teaching must agree in order to be Christian—the way the 4 Dharma seals do in Buddhism.
With a certain amount of fear and trembling, then, I’d like to propose doing two posts. Later, Under the Influence will need to address “The Four Gospel Seals” and the “Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ.” For now, we need to lay a foundation. Today’s post, then, will talk about what I call “The Four Humble Truths” and the “Tenfold Way.”
The Four Humble Truths are: 1. Life is abstraction 2. Recapitulation 3. The Body of Christ and 4. The Tenfold Way. Let’s spend a minute with each of them.
All Life is Abstraction: If life were a movie, remaining at the first theonoia would be a matter of just shutting up up and watching it. Before the fall, knowing God was monistic, not dualistic. Walking with God in the cool of the day, an afternoon activity in the Genesis story, was a symbol of our particular consciousnesses existing, united and un-self-consciously, with Cosmic Consciousness. (The "Jawist Writers” of Genesis 2’s second creation story portrayed both God and Man with what appear to be selves, but that’s because they were writing as selves and projecting it into the story. The snake, too, is a projection: Dr. Jeremy Narby would say it’s a symbol of our own DNA, which receives, in code, both benevolent and malevolent spiritual messages.) The fact is, at the start of our lives, we listened to a malevolent spiritual message, and it caused us to think about being, instead of just being. Catholic mystical traditions agree with other traditions, and prove that analyzing states of mental rest compromises them. The new normal, then, was Abstraction. After the Fall God gives Adam and Eve “Garments of Flesh,” which are both Egos and physical bodies. Egos and Bodies can, and have become tools of abstraction, but can potentially serve the purpose for which they were originally intended: that is, in egos and bodies we can learn to take our life-cues from perceiving reality, rather than thinking or theorizing.
All is in need of Recapitulation: This is a term that means “all things being remade in God’s image.” Of course, since God’s creation isn’t omnipotent, omniscient or all loving, “God’s image” needs to be redefined in light of the Logos. Being “remade in God’s image” is being redeemed, being restored to the ability to remain at the first theonoia. This also means things like “Death is swallowed up by life,” and that “all things must empty themselves, take up their crosses and follow Christ.” The helpful Buddhist term “interbeing” is an important one in recapitulation. People who find Christ’s path end up doing as he did. They conquer death by dying, just as he did. It leads to life, and death will be deprived of its sting if we enter into it with Christ’s same conscious willingness. In part, things that seem opposed are recapitulated by being located, one in the other. Death is found in life, life is found in death. By willingly suffering, we find freedom from suffering. Christ is found in the Father, and the Father in Christ. I am united to my neighbor by realizing we inter-are, and he’s a mirror for me at best. Wounded though it may be, the Church both is Christ, and is a part of Christ.
The Solution is the Body of Christ: All of the ways Paul used this image—as a symbol of the church at large, and appreciation of complementary gifts—still stand. I’d like to suggest that, just as Christ’s historical body was subject to decay, just as “Christ’s body, the Church, has many members” all phenomena pertaining to incarnations are composite. For instance, all thoughts come from, and return to, ego and desire. Our sense of linear time is a product of the mind. This means that all phenomena exist, and are blessed—indeed, they’re the fullness of the body of Christ to which the Eucharist points—but also that they’re impermanent. When the second humble truth occurred to me, I thought of just calling it “impermanence” like the Buddha does. But “The body of Christ” is a good “deconstructor” just as “Logos” is a good meditation on impermanence. Later we’ll talk about “The five sense organs of the body of Christ.” Modernity’s bamboozled Christianity into thinking of things as permanent, and it seemed important to assert impermanence alongside all the things to which it applies. Also, on the level of concepts, buddhists may mean something I don’t, and I want to be seen as honoring the buddha, not coopting and bastardizing his terminology. To understand Jesus' full meaning about the lilies of the field, impermanence is as important to grasp as God's sustenance.
The Way of the Body of Christ is the Humble, Tenfold Way: The prideful misuse of Ego desire were the prime consequence of Adam and Eve’s “selfish, self-conscious” departure from cosmic consciousness. It’s the reason the “garments of flesh” they were given seemed to be a punishment. But Adam and Eve were “persons”—non-oppositional beings— before they were “selves"—oppositional beings. Re-learning that is the true function of the body, the gospel stitched into the very DNA of the garment of Flesh. Even the snake, our DNA, has its own gospel of impermanence: to shed “selves” entirely— until we are a divinized and un-differentiated part of cosmic consciousness again. In any incarnation, the way to do that is humility and the Tenfold Way.
1. Humble Prayer: This prayer comes from, and returns to need for God. It’s the prayer of the Publican who says “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” instead of judging the publican. It's the “Jesus Prayer” of the famous russian pilgrim that placed two words on the breath cycle: “Jesus, mercy.” It’s step one of every addict’s recovery.
2. Humble presence: This is passive volition: being without ego: willingly, not willfully, present to reality.
3. Humble intention: Abbot Timothy Kelly of Gethsemani said “humility is willing not to will.” Humble intention is wanting not to want, removing ego from all aspects of existence.
4. Humble Action: Humble action is the Christian equivalent of Taoism’s wei wu wei, “doing, not doing.” It’s action in cooperation with the Logos that admits the impermanence of all things but acts anyway.
5. Humble effort: This is conscious and willing participation in the Logos, not being willfully driven by forces of Ego or desire.
6. Humble speech: This is “speaking with” people, rather than “talking to or 'at'” a person. It assumes a mutual identification with the broken-heartedness common to all humanity.
7. Humble Work: Engaged in this, students of the way “work for the sake of working, in accordance with their vocations.” It means working non-manipulatively and non-transactionally, according to the gospel. Jesus forgave tax collectors, because he knew they were deluded. But he called them to collect no more than they were due. Jesus forgave prostitutes, because he knew they were deluded. But then he revealed his Way for them: that their body wasn’t currency, and generosity would be their support.
8. Humble Knowing: Perceptions of which “I,” the knower, am an ever diminishing part.
9. Humble Thinking: The humble student’s thought processes are driven by the reality of the gospel, not the insecurity of ego or desire.
10. Humble Belief: One engaged in Humble belief remembers that belief is trust. Beliefs are its intellectual expressions. Remaining at the 1st theonoia, we don’t assuming our conceptual beliefs are permanent.
For those of us who dig this kind of spiritual game, what got us into it isn’t what keeps us here. No jot or tittle of what these truths point to is meant to conflict with the Law, the prophets and the psalms. If I’ve thought humbly, then this is the “the narrow way that leads to life” of which St. Benedict spoke in Chapter 5 of his Rule. If I’ve believed humbly, it’s the “gate for the sheep” that Christ identifies as his own being. If I pray humbly, it’s what produces spiritual experience of the abiding sort, like the ones Alcoholics find in empathy filled church basements. If I’m able to act without getting in my own way, “The Fear of Isaac” might show himself to be God indeed, and I’ll have made a beginning of wisdom.
Koans are quite likely to have non-verbal answers. After all, language is a logical tool, and Koans are illogical questions. Though some of Jesus words can function as Koans, we can be quite certain that the Judaism of his day didn’t have a lot of space for us to say Jesus intended them as such. It’s with maddening resignation that Under the Influence admits that the Cross itself is a Koan. It’s a nonverbal, performative answer to an illogical question, which demonstrates that Jesus, the responder, has been emptied of self. Personally, I find myself saying “You spent your whole blessed life using words to teach, and then got quiet when it was time to elucidate the core of your teaching. That’s great, Jesus. Just great.”
I’m being a bit cheeky. With my Lord and Savior. I know. My curiosity remains, though. We can only guess at what Jesus would say the Cross was meant to articulate. If he had done so, though, that message would have the role that the Four Noble Truths have in Buddhism. It would serve as a litmus test of Jesus’ Teaching—identifying the key points with which all teaching must agree in order to be Christian—the way the 4 Dharma seals do in Buddhism.With a certain amount of fear and trembling, then, I’d like to propose doing two posts. Later, Under the Influence will need to address “The Four Gospel Seals” and the “Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ.” For now, we need to lay a foundation. Today’s post, then, will talk about what I call “The Four Humble Truths” and the “Tenfold Way.”
The Four Humble Truths are: 1. Life is abstraction 2. Recapitulation 3. The Body of Christ and 4. The Tenfold Way. Let’s spend a minute with each of them.
All Life is Abstraction: If life were a movie, remaining at the first theonoia would be a matter of just shutting up up and watching it. Before the fall, knowing God was monistic, not dualistic. Walking with God in the cool of the day, an afternoon activity in the Genesis story, was a symbol of our particular consciousnesses existing, united and un-self-consciously, with Cosmic Consciousness. (The "Jawist Writers” of Genesis 2’s second creation story portrayed both God and Man with what appear to be selves, but that’s because they were writing as selves and projecting it into the story. The snake, too, is a projection: Dr. Jeremy Narby would say it’s a symbol of our own DNA, which receives, in code, both benevolent and malevolent spiritual messages.) The fact is, at the start of our lives, we listened to a malevolent spiritual message, and it caused us to think about being, instead of just being. Catholic mystical traditions agree with other traditions, and prove that analyzing states of mental rest compromises them. The new normal, then, was Abstraction. After the Fall God gives Adam and Eve “Garments of Flesh,” which are both Egos and physical bodies. Egos and Bodies can, and have become tools of abstraction, but can potentially serve the purpose for which they were originally intended: that is, in egos and bodies we can learn to take our life-cues from perceiving reality, rather than thinking or theorizing.
All is in need of Recapitulation: This is a term that means “all things being remade in God’s image.” Of course, since God’s creation isn’t omnipotent, omniscient or all loving, “God’s image” needs to be redefined in light of the Logos. Being “remade in God’s image” is being redeemed, being restored to the ability to remain at the first theonoia. This also means things like “Death is swallowed up by life,” and that “all things must empty themselves, take up their crosses and follow Christ.” The helpful Buddhist term “interbeing” is an important one in recapitulation. People who find Christ’s path end up doing as he did. They conquer death by dying, just as he did. It leads to life, and death will be deprived of its sting if we enter into it with Christ’s same conscious willingness. In part, things that seem opposed are recapitulated by being located, one in the other. Death is found in life, life is found in death. By willingly suffering, we find freedom from suffering. Christ is found in the Father, and the Father in Christ. I am united to my neighbor by realizing we inter-are, and he’s a mirror for me at best. Wounded though it may be, the Church both is Christ, and is a part of Christ.
The Solution is the Body of Christ: All of the ways Paul used this image—as a symbol of the church at large, and appreciation of complementary gifts—still stand. I’d like to suggest that, just as Christ’s historical body was subject to decay, just as “Christ’s body, the Church, has many members” all phenomena pertaining to incarnations are composite. For instance, all thoughts come from, and return to, ego and desire. Our sense of linear time is a product of the mind. This means that all phenomena exist, and are blessed—indeed, they’re the fullness of the body of Christ to which the Eucharist points—but also that they’re impermanent. When the second humble truth occurred to me, I thought of just calling it “impermanence” like the Buddha does. But “The body of Christ” is a good “deconstructor” just as “Logos” is a good meditation on impermanence. Later we’ll talk about “The five sense organs of the body of Christ.” Modernity’s bamboozled Christianity into thinking of things as permanent, and it seemed important to assert impermanence alongside all the things to which it applies. Also, on the level of concepts, buddhists may mean something I don’t, and I want to be seen as honoring the buddha, not coopting and bastardizing his terminology. To understand Jesus' full meaning about the lilies of the field, impermanence is as important to grasp as God's sustenance.
The Way of the Body of Christ is the Humble, Tenfold Way: The prideful misuse of Ego desire were the prime consequence of Adam and Eve’s “selfish, self-conscious” departure from cosmic consciousness. It’s the reason the “garments of flesh” they were given seemed to be a punishment. But Adam and Eve were “persons”—non-oppositional beings— before they were “selves"—oppositional beings. Re-learning that is the true function of the body, the gospel stitched into the very DNA of the garment of Flesh. Even the snake, our DNA, has its own gospel of impermanence: to shed “selves” entirely— until we are a divinized and un-differentiated part of cosmic consciousness again. In any incarnation, the way to do that is humility and the Tenfold Way.
1. Humble Prayer: This prayer comes from, and returns to need for God. It’s the prayer of the Publican who says “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” instead of judging the publican. It's the “Jesus Prayer” of the famous russian pilgrim that placed two words on the breath cycle: “Jesus, mercy.” It’s step one of every addict’s recovery.
2. Humble presence: This is passive volition: being without ego: willingly, not willfully, present to reality.
3. Humble intention: Abbot Timothy Kelly of Gethsemani said “humility is willing not to will.” Humble intention is wanting not to want, removing ego from all aspects of existence.
4. Humble Action: Humble action is the Christian equivalent of Taoism’s wei wu wei, “doing, not doing.” It’s action in cooperation with the Logos that admits the impermanence of all things but acts anyway.
5. Humble effort: This is conscious and willing participation in the Logos, not being willfully driven by forces of Ego or desire.
6. Humble speech: This is “speaking with” people, rather than “talking to or 'at'” a person. It assumes a mutual identification with the broken-heartedness common to all humanity.
7. Humble Work: Engaged in this, students of the way “work for the sake of working, in accordance with their vocations.” It means working non-manipulatively and non-transactionally, according to the gospel. Jesus forgave tax collectors, because he knew they were deluded. But he called them to collect no more than they were due. Jesus forgave prostitutes, because he knew they were deluded. But then he revealed his Way for them: that their body wasn’t currency, and generosity would be their support.
8. Humble Knowing: Perceptions of which “I,” the knower, am an ever diminishing part.
9. Humble Thinking: The humble student’s thought processes are driven by the reality of the gospel, not the insecurity of ego or desire.
10. Humble Belief: One engaged in Humble belief remembers that belief is trust. Beliefs are its intellectual expressions. Remaining at the 1st theonoia, we don’t assuming our conceptual beliefs are permanent.
For those of us who dig this kind of spiritual game, what got us into it isn’t what keeps us here. No jot or tittle of what these truths point to is meant to conflict with the Law, the prophets and the psalms. If I’ve thought humbly, then this is the “the narrow way that leads to life” of which St. Benedict spoke in Chapter 5 of his Rule. If I’ve believed humbly, it’s the “gate for the sheep” that Christ identifies as his own being. If I pray humbly, it’s what produces spiritual experience of the abiding sort, like the ones Alcoholics find in empathy filled church basements. If I’m able to act without getting in my own way, “The Fear of Isaac” might show himself to be God indeed, and I’ll have made a beginning of wisdom.
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