Again, with the help of Shakyamuni’s friends, Under the Influence notices that there’s more. Today we should talk about "The Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ” and “The Four Gospel Seals.” Eventually, I feel another classic Under the Influencelist coming on, but each will be prefaced slightly, to get as complete a look at the whole elephant in the room as possible.
The "Five Sense Organs of the body of Christ" is an idea that grows out of the more non-dual aspects of the Christian Tradition. Keep in mind that Christianity is an incarnational religion, and incarnations are dualist by nature. That said, God’s name is “I AM,” and his spirit renews and sustains all creation-- our ultimate destiny is Divinization because Christianity accommodates more monistic views of God as well. Posts such as “On Suspension: Holding Non-duality Together” talked about Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection’s "Practice of the Presence of God.” Quite simply, this is paying non-forceful attention to the fact that all of creation, and every responsibility, is an effort, on God’s part, to be with us. The post “A Revised View of Time: Christian Reincarnation Revisited” mentioned Therese of Lisieux’s doctrine that “Christ has no body, now, but yours.” Combined with the practice of the Presence of God, such a doctrine of "alter-christus” does as much as can be done to flex Christianity’s underused monistic muscles.
Just as Therese and Br. Lawrence tried to awaken our own passive volition, our own gentle attention to the truth, The "Five Sense Organs of the Body of Christ" attempt to emphasize the Divine intention constituting the other side of the effort. That’s one aspect of it: for lack of a better image, these things are how the Triune Godhead perceives the world. Jesus historical body, the visible body of Christ that is his wounded Church, the mystical body of Christ that includes all people, known or unknown, who are dear to Christ’s heart—all of these “images” describe part of the whole. And, just as the doctrine of concomitance says receiving the Lord’s Eucharistic body is receiving his blood as well, I would suggest that seeing one part of the Body of Christ is to see the whole Christ. Christ, when asked to show the disciples the Father, said “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” As was stated in “Ecclesiology and Ego, Trinity and Transformation,” the doctrine of Perichoresis, which talks about the cooperation of the members of the trinity, explains why the members of the Trinity are visible in each other, In the same way, the many different “aspects” of the body of Christ are merely microcosms of the whole. To put a modern spin on it, the whole body of Christ, like energy, cannot be created or destroyed. This requires a bit of nuance, that we’ll talk about later—Christ was begotten, not created, but also his death wasn’t fake in any way. But the “Transmutation of Energies” is a helpful idea from Tantric Buddhism. It says that life and death, sin and virtue, up and down: these aren’t opposites as much as different forms of the same energy. This isn’t intended to undermine the reality of Christ’s incarnation, suffering and Death, as Docetism did, but might help explain the cycle of Birth, Death and Resurrection. The “Five Sense organs of the Body of Christ" are Time, Desire, Reality, Thought and Paradox. As we talk, we’d do well to keep in mind that all of the “Sense Organs of the Body of Christ” are microcosms of the whole Body of Christ. Let’s talk about each of them:
Time: Time is the first sense organ of the body of Christ. In “A Revised View of Time: Christian Reincarnation Revisited” Under the Influence asserted that time isn’t linear, it’s a circular double helix. The post said that time is Christ’s Body, and Christ’s Body is time. Christ’s historical existence was a microcosm of the whole, so as to show us that our historical existence is similar. Desire: Owing to imprecise distinctions, desire gets a bad rap in the spiritual world, so let’s make our distinctions razor sharp. “Desire” is Christ. “Ego" and “Attachment” are not, though. So the Humble Tenfold Way mentioned in last week’s post, along with "cultivating detachment” are absolutely pivotal in exonerating desire. Clear of ego and attachment, all desire does what Christ did on the Cross. From his crucified state of suspension, he said “I thirst.” When we’ve heard the Gospel with the ear of our hearts, all of our desires are united and at rest in the one desire to be Divinized, to merge back into cosmic consciousness.
Reality: The post “Staying with Suspension: Christian Thoughts on Wisdom, Cognition and Enlightenment” said that the core of both Contemplation and Enlightenment (understood as the permanent humility of the Crucified, or of Benedict’s 12th step) is remaining at the “First Theonoia” of pure perception. This is reality: a pure, unlabeled and unexamined view of things as they are. The Taoist Term for it is “Pu” meaning “unworked wood, inherent quality, simple.” So—to paraphrase the thought of Thich Nhat Hanh—when Christ took bread, said “This is my body” and broke it for the students of the Way, he was speaking plainly of Reality.
Thought: All thought, when emptied of self and clinging, is, as it were, gravitationally drawn toward the first theonoia. So thought as a natural capacity is a neutral tool. When ego and attachment get ahold of the tool, it alienates us from our true nature, that’s united with God. What St. Paul thought he was using as a metaphor for the Church was actually a non-dual perception of reality, and it is so because he thought humbly. Humble thought is one of the ten dispositions of the Humble Tenfold Way. Fully embodying the Tenfold Way, we live in accord with our true nature as Other-Christs.
Paradox: Up is down, and down is up. Death is life, and life is death. Christ has died, Christ is risen. The Logos made Flesh, with the Father in the beginning, will come again. And now is the acceptable time, when all this is taking place. Accepting the reality of Paradox is an important part of letting the Church’s God-Concept flex both its dualistic or remote muscles as well as its monistic, immanent muscles. Short of that, we’ll allow logic to become what the Wisdom of Solomon called “a prison not made of iron.”
It’s a truism in Judaism to say “What God does not remember does not exist.” Under the influence would not only say “What Christ does not remember is not redeemed,” it would go even further and say “What God does not perceive cannot be Humble” These five things are all ways that God perceives us. If we, in return remember him, remain with Jesus at the first theonoia, we’ll commune with him to the greatest extent possible in this life.
It only remains for us to ask about the Cross: what, indeed, are the core principles it was trying to teach us? What is its message? Let’s outline what Under the Influence calls “The Four Gospel Seals.” When these are articulated simply enough, they’d be four teachings with which every more complex doctrine must cooperate in order to be counted as Christian. Here they are:
Impermanence: All things are impermanent, all reality composite. This goes hand-in-hand with God’s providence. Jesus, speaking of the lilies of the field, says “Not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you?” Isaiah 40:7 says "The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass.” In Matthew’s account of the Gethsemani experience, Jesus lives into his acceptance of this from the moment he said “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want."
Non-self: The “willing not to will” that Jesus cultivated in Gethsemani is the core of his teaching to his disciples. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” Non-self isn’t even an excuse for anxious repression of thoughts of self. Non-self is a radical acceptance of a present moment in which our attachments will be paraded in front of us until they no longer disturb us. As that happens, Jesus will hear his life coming out of our mouths when we say “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.”
Acceptance: There’s an old saying “Suffering is pain that you have not yet accepted.” One might say “It’s fine to sit under the bodhi tree and troubleshoot self-inflicted suffering, but when you sit under the fig tree and wait for the mob with swords and clubs, that’s another matter.” Jesus and Buddha, however, are ultimately alike: nothing, for either of them—neither an angry mob nor a triad of Mara’s daughters--could change the fact that now is an acceptable time. Jesus suffered consciously, with eyes on his own heart—he was not docile--that might have proven him mentally absent from his sufferings. He wasn’t willful—self-will is a steam that eventually runs out, and the messiah would surely have leaned on his omnipotence eventually, as the wicked thief advised. Jesus accepted everything willingly and attentively. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous has an oft-highlighted phrase in its dog-eared pages. “Acceptance” it says “is the answer to all of my problems today.” I read it and it solved part of my psyche’s puzzle. Now I know it’s the teaching of Jesus. It was the christ of contemplation lifted up, drawing me to himself and revealing his wisdom.
Most would say that Jesus' words from the Cross were added for effect by the gospel writer. Intellectually, I have no doubt it’s true. Intuitively, my experience of Lectio Divina renders me less certain. When a person's spent their entire lives poring over a text, its words can serve to spontaneously name emotions. For Jesus, “Eli, Eli, Lama sabachtani” could have been as spontaneous an answer to the Koan of his suffering as Chao Chou’s phrase “the oak tree in the front yard” was to the Koan “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the west?” Jesus words could very well be a proof of the quality of his attention.
Interbeing: This term was coined by Thich Nhat Hanh: it’s his simple re-working of the buddhist teaching “interdependent co-arising of cause and effect.” It calls all causality into question, for one thing. Everything’s just happening. That it’s happening because of other things is debatable at best, outright untrue at worst. For another thing, it’s why the smallest, insignificant action can be part of living consciously. Everything is contained in everything else. This is also the teaching of the Jesus portrayed in John’s latter chapters. “If you have seen me,” says Rabouni, you have seen the Father.” Later, he says “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Interbeing is perichoresis—the non-conflicting interrelatedness of the members of the trinity—overflowing heaven and pervading all creation. "I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Christ is in the stranger, in the breaking of the bread, in the experience of “things as they are” flowing out of contemplation. The working out of our purgatorial predicament—doing our purgatory here on earth—is the “bread to eat that you do not know” which is the will of our Father in Heaven.
When we meet God's gaze in the 5 Sense Organs of the Body of Christ, the act of bearing our own cross teaches us "The Four Humble Truths", "The Humble Tenfold Way", and the "The Four Gospel Seals." If Jesus speaks in the symbolic language of parables, it's to lay bare what's been hidden since the foundation of the earth. If Jesus speaks through Koans, it's in the illogical, coded silence of our own DNA. And if the teaching of this post (and its predecessor) is true, then Christ is speaking plainly, and not in figures of speech. All salvation hangs on cooperation with it! Behold the Cross, indeed.
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