tariki

An eye catching thread title, perhaps particularly ideal for those suffering from insomnia. But for anyone interested, the word "apokatastasis" is used within the Christian Religion for Universalism, the hope for the restoration of ALL things, for all people, for all creation.This is not something that has arisen over the past few centuries, preached by those who have "fallen away" from "what the Church has always taught", an attempt to "corrupt the plain meaning of scripture." In fact it was a belief, a teaching, very prevalent in the Early Church, taught by several of the Early Church Fathers, taught throughout the Christian centuries, and now gathering pace among many whose fidelity to Christ is unquestionable. Names?Origen, Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh, Maximos the Confessor, Silouan the Athonite, and later, George MacDonald and the boldest minds of our era, Sergius Bulgakov, Robert W. Jenson, Thomas Talbott, Ilaria Ramelli, David Bentley Hart, John Behr.Even the oft stated claim that the doctrine was declared heretical at one time is now called into question by reputable scholars of the Christian Church.Does any of this matter? Well, that depends upon each of us. I am a non-theist, and have little interest (or belief) in transcendent Beings, creators, any fall of humankind, and therefore of any restoration. The Dharma (Buddhism) avoids beginnings and conclusions, seeing allegiance to such things as being antithetical to the actual living of the "holy life", the path to the end of suffering.Yet I have great regard for what is called a fully "incarnational" Christanity, of "Christ in us". It really goes without saying that if, in our mind/hearts, we have faith in the eventual restoration of "all things", every last one of us, then our own lives will begin to mirror, to reflect, the Reality of Healing that we trust is in us and around us. This as opposed to believing that eventually creation will be solidified into a two tier system, of "sheep" and "goats", lost and saved, heaven and hell - does it take much imagination to recognise just how a mind/heart will develop that sees things in such a way? Being a non-theist I bring healing to my mind/heart in other ways. To be honest I find that belief in God is cloying and claustrophobic, and given in many ways a weak mind, easily led, the loud voices of the "believers" becomes discordant, a chorus of noise with little meaning, each voice convinced of its own pictures of Reality.I've asked before about the "dividing line" between theism and non-theism, and in truth I think there isn't one. That said, some images of God are fairly remote to me. It seems pretty obvious that there will be no time when I am "here" and God is "there" - God is more the ground of Reality in which we "live and move and have our being". Yet I have heard a very well known Christian evangelist say that when "we walk into heaven the only difference we shall see between God the Father and God the Son will be the nail-prints in the Son's hands." This is crass, ridiculous, and yet points to the very literalist way every word in the Bible is interpreted - the word as text, rather than the Living Word. (Obviously, such a literalist grasp of certain things does not necessarily preclude any mind/heart from bringing forth the fruits of the spirit)From my own perspective "Buddha nature" points to the immanence, the liberative potential, in the ground of the earth, as well as in the inner, psychological ground of being, "ever ready to spring forth and benefit beings. It speaks of and represents the fertility of the earth itself and the wondrous, healing, natural power of Reality, or the phenomenal world."The Dharma at best, combines soteriology, epistemology and ontology. As someone else has said:- Zen Buddhism developed and cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, ephemeral agent of awareness and healing.As I see it we all move forward with our mental maps of the world, and within this mental map there are things we think are good, useful, or valuable, such as flowers, and there are other things we think are bad, useless, or worthless, such as weeds. Usually we take it for granted that the fabricated picture of the world in our minds is the world itself. Nothing really wrong with this, and yet our "maps" can become solid, set in concrete, used to "justify" ourselves, projected onto God, who then is deemed to judge the whole earth according to our dictates. This is tragic.We are more a constant becoming - as Dogen says:-"Flowers fade even though we love them, weeds grow even though we hate them."As finite beings we simply can never really know, in a world of becoming, just which are flowers and which are weeds, and grasping at one and shunning the other, we can lock ourselves into a world that maybe can seem like heaven at times and yet is hell. Letting go of our conclusions and beliefs can be liberating, leaving the mind/heart to find ever greater intimacy with Reality - and to experience it (no matter how much "evidence" to the contrary) as truly healing, life-giving, and fulfilling.And hopefully we ourselves can mirror Reality, reflect it, be a source of healing to others.

Hi romansh, hope you enjoy your trip. Nothing quite like meeting old friends.

At my age there is only one thing on the horizon......😀 Then, of course, there is the question of copyright! But yes, I do have fun.

My latest Blook Just received my latest Blook, "The Traveling Wilburys". All the lyrics of every song, all illustrated.

I looked up some other Free Will threads here as the subject came up on another forum. I posted the following, which incorporates a few words of JosephM, which I trust he does not mind. My post:- Is God free? Has God got freewill? Or are His acts determined by His having a particular nature? Or, as I prefer to think about it, is Reality-as-is predetermined, or is it more radical freedom, a constant advance into novelty?Often it seems that any answer we give to this whole question (i.e. do I have freewill) is simply determined by our own predisposed conditionings and beliefs. Our "answer" - yes or no - "justifies" us, it's suitable for purpose.On another forum there has often been various discussions of this whole subject, with no conclusion ever being reached. One such thread began with these words (not mine), which I find bear repeating:-The majority of human beings are mostly convinced that they are the author of their thoughts, choices and therefore their destiny. There is no doubt human beings make choices. The question is: Are those choices free choices or inevitable choices that are not free but predisposed by a limited context? If they are limited, then by definition, the choice is not free choice, but an inevitable choice that is bound or enslaved by ones present level of consciousness and the circumstances by which that event occurs.I find that the whole subject of our "level of consciousness" is a better starting point for the subject of freewill. It seems to me that often the accidental conditions of our birth and up-bringing are what determine many if our choices. We certainly do experience "choice" and yet the parameters surrounding those choices are surely there - thus we are not radically free. The question then becomes, just how far, how wide, can we extend the parameters of our freedom?This also involves what we find to be what can be willed and what not. We can will "knowledge" but not wisdom, and we cannot will happiness. Of what does radical freedom truly consist?There are some words of Thomas Merton, found in "New Seeds of Contemplation" that speak of the Gift of Freedom:-The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good. To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom. We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free. Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment. Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.Words worth our own contemplation, and I see them as corresponding to some other words by the Zen Master Caoshan:-When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done.Freedom seems to imply spontaneity, what in the East is called "wu wei", effortless action. Myself, I think such a state of being (or non-being!) can be known. It involves surrender of "self", more a realisation than an attainment. Grace, gift. Never "ours" as such.The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart speaks of our "union" with God, obviously in theistic terms:-In giving us His love God has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can love Him with the love wherewith He loves Himself.D.T.Suzuki, the "zen man", translates this into Zen terms: “one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.”It is my trust and faith that such a "union", and therefore such a "radical freedom", can be known. Meanwhile I simply seek to see my own chains. I find any "advance" is more a stripping of knowledge than an accumulation.

Lovely name! Tiff Shuttlesworth! Never heard of him until I saw a post on another forum where the guy was going on about something called the "Doomsday Clock", all involving the "end-time" prophesies so beloved of some. I looked him up and quite an article on Wiki. Dear old Tiff, yet another making a real good living from what is basically a "modernism" - a North American brand of Protestant Reform Theology, born first of Martin Luther and fueled by the invention of the printing press and mass literacy, A wonderful recipe for replacing the Living Word which blows where it will, with the "Word as Text".Looking up Tiff, and his latest Tweet, he posts:-Without Christ, all of your good deeds can not keep you out of hell. With Christ, all of your bad deeds can not keep you out of heaven.Fair enough, and in fact this is the heart of all our world's Faith Traditions - if the wind is allowed to blow. Here is zen, when the Emperor of China asked the Buddhist missionary Bodhidharma exactly what merit he had earned by all his good deeds. The answer:-"None at all".The self-same point/lesson/sermon - call it what you will. That ethics/morality is only a by-product of what can be called "wisdom" - and the only wisdom is of God (Reality-as-is) and can never be "ours" as such.Browsing through a few Journal entries of Thomas Merton, and he is responding to a passage from Irenaeus.....If you are the work of God wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune time........Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you........lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers......Merton comments......The reification of faith. Real meaning of the phrase we are saved by faith = we are saved by Christ, whom we encounter in faith. But constant disputation about faith has made Christians become obsessed with faith almost as an object, at least as an experience, a "thing" and in concentrating upon it they lose sight of Christ. Whereas faith without the encounter with Christ and without His presence is less than nothing. It is the deadest of dead works, an act elicited in a moral and existential void. To seek to believe that one believes, and arbitrarily to decree that one believes, and then to conclude that this gymnastic has been blessed by Christ - this is pathological Christianity. And a Christianity of works. One has this mental gymnastic in which to trust. One is safe, one possesses the psychic key to salvation......As I see it, what Merton speaks of as an encounter with Christ in faith can be as diverse as the uniqueness of every human being. It cannot be restricted to a formula or a creedal statement, a "belief" of any kind. This is borne out by the evidence of the fruits of the spirit, which St Paul tells us are love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Such fruits are in evidence right across the spectrum of humankind and are not the possession of any religion. Again, a truly incarnational Christianity would recognise the fruits in all and everyone no matter how sporadic and mixed with who knows what. Anyway, Tiff can carry on with his "end-time" stuff. Each to their own. He can keep it........😀

As I see it, the very word empathy suggests reciprocation, a learning from each other. Just as compassion is an exchange between equals. We grow together. Even thinking that we have "something to offer" can be a step too far (ethics being a by-product of wisdom) Relevant quotes (!):- "Praise be to God that I am not good" "The Tao can be shared but not divided"

A little time today, once again sitting in McDonalds clasping a white coffee, quite amazed that it has now been two months or so since the last price rise. Anyway, one good place to start with Buddhism (the Dharma) is with the Theravada texts/scriptures. If absorbed they can provide a hook on which to hang some of the more speculative ideas and teachings of the Mahayana, which can become a bit of a quagmire to the unwaryOne fundamental text is to be found in the Majjhima Nikaya, or "The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha" Sutta 63. The Buddha is speaking to a guy called Malunkyaputta, but could be speaking to anyone who wants to know far far too much before committing themselves to any "path" or "belief system". As Dogen has said elsewhere:-If there are fish that would swim or birds that would fly only after investigating the entire ocean or sky, they would find neither path nor place. When we make this very place our own, our practice becomes the actualization of reality. When we make this path our own, our activity naturally becomes actualized reality.Anyway, here is the Buddha speaking:-Suppose, Malunkyaputta, a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and companions brought a surgeon to treat him. The man would say: "I will not let the surgeon pull out the arrow until I know the name and clan of the man who wounded me; whether the bow that wounded me was a long bow or a crossbow; whether the arrow that wounded me was hoof-tipped or curved or barbed. All this would not be known to that man and meanwhile he would die. So too, Malunkyaputta, if anyone should say: "I will not lead the noble life under the Buddha until the Buddha declares to me whether the world is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite; whether or not an awakened one continues or ceases to exist after death," that would still remain undeclared by the Buddha and meanwhile that person would die.One very modern Dharma writer that I like is Stephen Batchelor, a man who comes in for a lot of stick from more doctrinare Buddhists who insist upon certain beliefs. Referring to the above passage from the Majjhima Nikaya, Stephen Batchelor writes:-Dharma practice requires the courage to confront what it means to be human. All the pictures we entertain of heaven and hell or cycles of rebirth serve to replace the unknown with an image of what is already known. To cling to the idea of rebirth can deaden questioning. Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear.Well, I really like that....... an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of hope and fear. It holds such profound promise, not to mention an implied criticism and rejection of much that passes for Religion in our world. Anyway, more stringing together a few old quotes and thoughts than a Dharma Talk, but I do find a certain therapeutic clarity of mind in tapping this out.

The Illustrated Lyrics of the Traveling Wilburys is on order.

Another page........ It is a good hobby, creative, therapeutic, with an end product.

I have mentioned before the creation of Blooks. Part Blog, part book. Created on free Google Blog space, then downloaded to a company in France called "Blookup" , edited on their website, then they print it off. I have quite a library now.This is my latest, just received. It consists of various posts made on Forums over the past few months, with images added. Various topics, all pretty spontaneous stuff that I tap out while in McDonald's drinking a coffee. I find this all very therapeutic and often I genuinely feel surprised by what I have tapped out, reading it now in Blook form.Anyway, a few photos showing the cover and a sample page. The cover was a choice made that at the moment captures how I often feel myself to be. Not 73 (almost 74) but more a child, even a baby, looking out with wonder at the world.

Yes, sorry, misquoted Keats....in a letter he actually wrote that he had:- never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning I agree with that, in as much as ultimate truth cannot be arrived at by any accumulation of knowledge. Enlightenment isn't accumulative, and is a realisation, not an accomplishment of the rational mind. Or as I like to say, gift. Grace. Sage or not ( 😀) as I see it both "why" and "purpose" come from the same stable. I think I waffled about ultimate "meaninglessness" somewhere else. Just looked for it, here, in relation to the thought of Dogen:- To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness. Anyway, Rom, hope all is well.

Hi Rom, as I am beginning to understand, the "eastern" quest is more the realisation of non-duality within duality. In that sense forms do not "disappear", and simply because no "one" is there, everything, and everybody, is there. I agree with the "beyond concepts", even with speaking of the "ultimate mystery". If it was not a "mystery" it would be a "something", an end product, a conclusion - whereas Reality is a constant advance into novelty. "Not knowing why, not knowing why! That is my support! Not knowing why! That is the namu- amida-butsu!" ( Saichi) Or Eckhart:- "Love has no why" Keats:- "Nothing of worth is known by consecutive reasoning" Really, it gets back to some intuitive things that I have always asserted - that life, truth, reality, can be lived but not thought. Non-duality is not that "all is one" but that all is not two. Another thing entirely. Edwin Arnold ended his poem of the Buddha, "The Light of Asia" with the words:- "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea" - which is wrong, more in keeping with our "self" dissolving as it unites with "our God". It is more that the shining sea slips into the dewdrop, or even better, that the ten thousand things are truly realised for the first time. I see that this relates to Dogen's words in his "Genjokoan" (the actualisation of reality) :- Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization. I realise that this can all seem like much ado about nothing, yet thinking about it, it is! T.S.Eliot:- We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one. Sometimes it just seems that I am just juggling words about, almost a way of no-calculation, yet sometimes there are surprises. But it does seem much like Eliots words, of "knowing the place for the first time", which relates to D.T.Suzuki who speaks of becoming once again the Tom, Dick or Harry we have always been. There is no nihilistic dissolving into an ultimate "Thou". There is a theodicy here, but it is beyond me at the moment. I suspect that it will always be.

The Kyoto School is a name given to a group of Japanese scholars/Buddhists who seek to relate the "eastern" philosophies of Buddhism (particularly Zen) with Western Philosophy. Pretty heavy stuff and maybe a few of the books published could be prescribed by GP's to insomniacs. But there are jewels amid the turgid prose if you dive in.One of the greatest tomes is "Religion and Nothingness" by Keiji Nishitani. Which at heart contrasts the Western preoccupation and allegiance to Being (as substance) with the eastern idea of "emptiness". All good stuff if you like that sort of thing......😀At the moment I am ploughing through an anthology of writings by the Kyoto School, "The Buddha Eye". I have read through this a few years ago, and found a lot over my head, in one ear and out the other, but I'm giving it another try. Some good stuff, as I said.One essay is by the previously mentioned Keiji Nishitani, "The I-Thou Relation in Zen Buddhism". Pretty deep stuff. Nishitani mentions the Jewish scholar Martin Buber, who wrote a famous book, "I and Thou", this from the Western perspective of a "self" confronting another. God, or a fellow human being? Not sure - I do have a kindle copy of Buber's book but failed to get far into it. Way beyond me.Well, Nishitani writes that Mr Buber does not really touch the full depths of human subjectivity. Where Buber stops "is the very point at which Zen exploration begins". His claim is based upon one of the Koans from the Blue Cliff Record Collection, the one called ""Kyozan Roars with Laughter." I always find a bit of laughter attractive, but my sniggers were stiflled somewhat upon reading the koan:-Kyozan Ejaku asked Sansho Enen, "What is your name?" Sansho said, "Ejaku!" "Ejaku!" replied Kyozan, "that's my name." "Well then," said Sansho, "my name is Enen." Kyozan roared with laughter.Well, the joke was lost on me, but I was bolstered by Dogen's claim that where we do not understand, there is our understanding. A claim that I am beginning to understand.Nishitani, using eastern philosophies of inter-being, internal relations and suchlike, brings forth the fruits of the koan. Individual "selves" in opposition, subject confronting subject, are morphed into a fundamental empathic relationship. The "I" is the "Thou", the "Thou" is the "I". Trying to reach more understanding, I was reminded of some words of Richard Tarnas in his book "Cosmos and Psyche":-......the modern mind engages the world within an explicit experiential structure of being a subject set apart from, and in some sense over against, an object. The modern world is full of objects, which the human subject confronts and acts upon from its unique position of conscious autonomy. By contrast, the primal mind engages the world more as a subject embedded in a world of subjects, with no absolute boundaries between or among them. In the primal perspective, the world is full of subjects. The primal world is saturated with subjectivity, interiority, intrinsic meanings and purposes.I would see Nishitani as partly speaking more of the "primal mind". Maybe I'm wrong.Anyway, in my defence I do find myself more open to others, less judgemental. Maybe enough for now, my coffee is finished.

Entering the turgid realms of philosophy, relevant here is the idea of "argument by relegation" (rather than "argument by refutation"), a summary of this to be found in "A Sourcebook of Japanese Philosophy". For those interested:- The preference for internal relations and an interdependence of wholes and parts is also reflected in the logic of argumentation by relegation. Here opposing positions are treated not by refuting them, but by accepting them as true, but only true as a part of the full picture. That is, rather than denying the opposing position, I compartmentalize or marginalize it as being no more than one part of the more complete point of view for which I am arguing. This is different from argument by refutation, a form of disputation very common in the West and, interestingly, also in India. In that form of argument, the purpose is to obliterate the opposing position by showing it to be faulty in either premises or logic. The argument by refutation implicitly accepts the law of the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction. That is, assuming there is no category mistake in the formulation of the position, either p or not-p must be true and they cannot both be true in the same way at the same time. Therefore, in the refutation form of argumentation, if I can show the opposing position to be false, my position is affirmed with no need to say anything more. Argument by relegation, which is much more common in Japanese philosophy, has its own advantages. Logically, it broadens the scope of discussion. Even if I am persuaded that another’s view is incorrect in some respect, it is nevertheless a real point of view and my theory of reality must be able to account for its existence. It carries with it the obligation to show how, given the way reality is, such a partial or wrongheaded view is possible in the first place. Rhetorically, an argument by relegation has the appearance of being irenic or conciliatory rather than agonistic or adversarial, but if we both share the model of argument by relegation, we will indeed be competing over which position can relegate which. Argument by relegation does engage in a kind of synthesis, but the purpose of this synthesis is not to show the complementarity of positions, but instead the superiority of one position over the other. This style of argument is pervasive in Japanese intellectual history and helps, in part, explain the enduring fascination with Hegelian dialectical thought in modern Japan. Well, back to my coffee in McDonalds.

The reconciliation comes from applying the Catholic way of seeking to understand scripture. That is, recognising the historical and existential circumstances/origins of those words recorded in Acts rather than seeing/reading them in the ahistorical manner of the Protestant Fundamentalist tradition. By doing so the "only way" beloved of the Protestant Conservatives becomes very problematic!

From Acts 4:12:-And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved.From the Lotus Sutra, "The Parable of the Dharma Rain":-I bring fullness and satisfaction to the world, like rain that spreads its moisture everywhere. Eminent and lowly, superior and inferior, observers of precepts, violators of precepts, those fully endowed with proper demeanor, those not fully endowed, those of correct views, of erroneous views, of keen capacity, of dull capacity - I cause the Dharma rain to rain on all equally, never lax or neglectful. When all the various living beings hear my Law, they receive it according to their power, dwelling in their different environments..... .....the Law of the Buddhas is constantly of a single flavour, causing the many worlds to attain full satisfaction everywhere; by practicing gradually and stage by stage, all beings can gain the fruits of the way.Can these two texts ever be reconciled. Yes, simply by recognising the difference between the Word as Text and the Living Word, a "word" that blows where it will.Simply by applying the spirit of Christ to the Word as Text, this according to how the Biblical text should be approached and known by those interested in healing the divisions of Religion........To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to "literary forms." For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or of other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture. For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another. (Dei Verbum, III, 12, 2)

Given my own way of seeing things, the poem suggests the way of "no-calculation", where things are "made to become so of themselves", this founded upon the pure faith that the Cosmos, Reality-as-is, is healing. The fisherman is simply proceeding without specific direction or even intent - and in so doing finds paradise. Once again, being me, this suggests the words of Thomas Merton when writing about the way of Chuang Tzu:- For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a "way out". Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost. Merton also speaks of there being "no door", and further, that we should never presume to have the key, even if we thought that there was a door. Obviously, not advice for any who like certainties, or those who insist that they have "found" and that all others must find just as they have! The idea of "no way", of getting lost, rears its head again at the end of the poem, when the fisherman lays a trail on his way out. Alas, no matter how carefully laid, no one can follow it, and all get lost as they try to follow the trail. Another form of getting lost! Seeking to follow a formulae, a creed, the Word as Text, feeling "justified" in having "fulfilled" the demands of the formula, the words, dividing ourselves from those who have failed, or who follow another set of instructions. What price Mercy and Grace? But there is the hope, born of faith, that simply anything, any "river" will bring us to paradise, if even just for a moment.To be surprised by joy, when there comes such beauty and wonder, such a transformation of what we know ourselves to be at another level, that our faith in the natural healing power of Reality is vindicated. If not of "ourselves" then of what? As Eckhart has said:- If the only prayer we ever say is "Thank You" it is enough.

One of my many Blooks is "Song of the Peach Tree Spring" by Wang Wei (8th century) A very enigmatic poem that can have multiple meanings.A fisherman sails up a river, wandering, and sees a few huts amid the cherry blossoms on the river bank, very secluded. It turns out that this is a little village of people who have dropped out of time, secluded from the world. A small paradise. The fisherman is greeted well but finally must leave. He seeks to leave a trail as he retraces his steps but after returning home and telling of his find neither he nor any other is able to find the way back. Yet a touch of hope at the end, with the suggestion that perhaps any river will take us back, who knows which one.My blook includes two translations as poetry, one prose version, some analysis and a few biographical details of Wang Wei. Here is the poem, which I find engrossing. Not least because written first in Chinese pictograms, leaving each translator with the experience of their own mind/heart in order to give birth to new words. I wonder what I would make of it if I learnt the pictograms and how understanding would morph and evolve with increasing knowledge/experience. The Word as text, and the Living Word This translation is by G. W. Robinson and Arthur Cooper, and is found in one of Penguin's little black books, "Three Tang Dynasty Poets".A fisherman sailed up a river he loved spring in the hills On both banks peach blossom closed over the farther reaches He sat and looked at the red trees not knowing how far he was And he neared the head of the green stream seeing no one A gap in the hills, a way through twists and turns at first Then hills gave on to a vastness of level land all round From far away all seemed trees up to the clouds He approached, and there were many houses among flowers and bamboos Foresters meeting would exchange names from Han times And the people had not altered the Ch’in style of their clothes They had all lived near the head of Wuling River And now cultivated their rice and gardens out of the world Bright moon and under the pines outside their windows peace Sun up and among the clouds fowls and dogs call Amazed to hear of the world’s intruder all vied to see him And take him home and ask him about his country and place At first light in the alleys they swept the flowers from their gates At dusk fishermen and woodmen came in on the stream They had first come here for refuge from the world And then had become immortals and never returned. Who, clasped there in the hills, would know of the world of men? And whoever might gaze from the world would make out only clouds and hills The fisherman did not suspect that paradise is hard to find And his earthy spirit lived on and he thought of his own countrySo he left that seclusion not reckoning the barriers of mountain and stream To take leave at home and then return for as long as it might please him. He was sure of his way there could never go wrong How should he know that peaks and valleys can so soon change? When the time came he simply remembered having gone deep into the hills But how many green streams lead into cloud-high woods – When spring comes, everywhere there are peach blossom streams No one can tell which may be the spring of paradise. A few photos of my Blook, front and back cover and a few pages. + 0 · Best · Reply · 1 day ago · Edit ·

Reading some quite good stuff by David Hinton, who is very genned up on ancient Chinese thought. Thought that eventually gave us the Tao te Ching, which when meeting with the Buddhist Dharma from India morphed unto Ch'an. Later, from Ch'an into its Japanese expressions, zen, now rife in the West and sometimes hitting a brick wall, the wall being the typical western idea of the "self" as that which is to be developed, shaped and formed - in ways that the Ch'an and the zen masters would have seen as narcissistic distraction. Enlightenment seen as something to gain, to have. Not as given, gift, to be realised, ours simply by birth. Bestowed by a Cosmos that is a single living tissue that is inexplicably generative, constantly giving birth to the "ten thousand things" AKA the "myriad dharmas".All is change and transformation, each of the ten thousand things in perpetual flight, always on its way somewhere else.David Hinton:-The abiding aspiration of spiritual and artistic practice in ancient China was to cultivate consciousness as that existence-tissue Cosmos open to itself, awakened to itself: looking at itself, hearing and touching itself, tasting and smelling itself, and also thinking itself, feeling itself—all in the singular ways made possible by the individuality of each particular person. This is consciousness in the open, wild and woven into the generative Cosmos: wholesale belonging.Apparently, and this was new to me, there was a phase in ancient Chinese thought where the possibility of going down the road of monotheism reared its head. Something being known as the "Celestial King". Fortunately such was only a phase, so China had no specially chosen people, no "jealous" God who would eventually demand a blood sacrifice to reconcile us to Himself. Phew! A narrow escape!And so we can all be seen as chosen. We are not divided by our choices into sheep and goats, saved and lost, and "eternity" is left to be a constant unfolding into novelty, and not a two tier realm of heaven and hell (where never the twain shall mix - the ultimate dualism which will perhaps always be the end result of a created world totally distinct from its Creator.Who wants to feel at home?

Ah ha! He of the "once saved always saved" variety. A constant theme on Fundamentalist Forums. Arguments back and forth but as usual solving nothing, certainly never deciding anything. Which is the end result of believing that a book has said it all, that we only have to understand it correctly to open up all the doors. Which itself leads to the purely circular "I understand correctly, me being the true christian and thus the Spirit guides me correctly as promised."

Another evolution of certain Christian thought is how the "every hair on your head has been numbered" verse is used as showing how "the Lord" loves the individual human being. This somehow morphs into the so called "aesthetic balance" within Eternity, with "the saved" testifying to, and glorifying, the mercy of God, while "the lost" testify to his justice. A wondrous vision - where the uniqueness of each and every human being is subsumed within what some theologians see as some eternal work of art!

Hi Paul, so unfair! Strange that with the great commandment to love your neighbour as yourself, the perfection of the Christian life is reached when one is able to live in eternal bliss while most of your "neighbours" are in torment.

Salvation from what? Or for what? I peep in occasionally then withdraw. But this thread and its question seemed to align with some rambling I have indulged in elsewhere under yet another screen-name....i.e. "Telegram Sam", this in honour of the glam rock star of the 70's Marc Bolan, who was "born to boogie". Well, whatever, I'll cut and paste my two posts from this other forum as my contribution to keeping this Forum alive (or maybe killing it stone dead given the reception of some of my rambling) Here we are:- Under my thread title of "What is the point' I wrote:- Way back when I broke away from an extreme form of Christianity (the usual "born again" onewayers) I said to one of the brethren that I subscribed to Universalism. ALL were to be saved (whatever "saved" might mean......😀 ) His response was then "what is the point"? If such is so, why evangelize? Why a Bible?Whatever I now think of this man, he had a good question. Why? In fact, why anything at all?The same question, yet in another context, another culture, another Faith, was that of the 13th century zen master Dogen. If the teaching of Original Enlightenment is true, if all is Buddha Nature, then why practice? Why did the Buddha's of old still meditate, still teach, still reach down into samsara with gift bestowing hands, minds and hearts?I always love finding correspondances between our World's Faith Tradition (in fact across all traditions, philosophy, whatever, even atheist) As I see it it brings forth one meaning of the (itself) widespread idea that in "every particular is the universal". Every question involves all questions. Find one answer and all are found. Which may sound mystical mumbo jumbo - perhaps it is - but I see it as pointing towards truth. We all have our life koan (both problem and answer, yet beyond concept)Jumping forward, I think the answer is simply Love. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart once said:-Love has no why.Which kills all questions stone dead. There is no "why" to love. If we love then the questions are over. Only the actions that come forth from our mind/hearts remain.Now, I put love with Universalism. The base is that we are all one. What comes to one will come to all. If our minds divide, if they judge, if in any way at all it is "us" and "them", then there can be no love. The Great Way is beyond differentiationLetting go of my own questions is the difficult part, yet I see now, more and more, the significance of the Pure Land myokonin Saichi, who wrote:-Not knowing why, not knowing why! That is my support, not knowing why! That is the Namu-amida-butsu!May true Dharma continue.No blame. Be kind. Love everything. (A break, before posting this.....) I've been trying to process a few thoughts about all this, but difficult amid certain confusions and demands of my day to day life. Obligations and demands. But really, not much to complain about.But thoughts on "meaning" or the lack of it, of Love having no why. What is the alternative to there being in fact, NO meaning as such? The alternative to our not knowing why?In some quote that I cannot trace there was some guy who said that he would rather pursue/seek Truth than to know it, or be handed it on a plate. I get his drift, and yet this still seems to imply that there is in fact A truth out there somewhere waiting to be discovered. And what when it is? When it is found and known?I think of dear old Spike Milligan who would often at the end of a comic sketch in Q6 simply stand still, hands by his sides, and mutter:-"What do we do now? What do we do now?" Very funny. But after discovering truth, what then? Is our own purpose determined?These questions suggest to me why I find the more "eastern" ways of seeing/knowing more suggestive of answers. Where "Being" is more "emptiness" than substantial in any sense.For Dogen mind was at once knowledge and reality, at once the knowing subject and the known object, yet it transcended them both at the same time. In this nondual conception of mind, what one knew was what one was —and ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united. (I thank Hee-Jin Kim for this summation)Or:- "We are what we understand" and our acts flow accordingly.Hee-Jin Kim again (deep stuff, but I have found it worth pondering in between cracking further levels of Soda Candy Crush Saga).....To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness."Love has no why" (Meister Eckhart)Atheist nihilism meets the Faith Traditions of our world! True seeing, true knowledge is not to believe some Truth. Faith is not belief. Faith lets go, belief clings. Faith unites, beliefs divide.About 20 or so years ago I read a quote, this from a zen guy Yun-men. He was asked:- "What are the teachings of a whole lifetime" and he answered:- "An appropriate statement." I never really understood and yet as Dogen has said, where we do not understand, there is our understanding. I think I can see it now. Each moment is new if within radical freedom, we answer each moment according to our understanding, and the answer we give is absolute, there, then - but for no other moment. Which in a certain way answers the conundrum of "absolute" v "relative".Well, thats it. The grandchildren will be there when I get home. Chaos! Lunches to get, dinners to cook.To anyone stumbling upon this waffle, and perhaps thinking "what a load of crap", that is just the way it is. Complex? No, I think the Bible is correct when it predicts that "a little child shall lead them." Things are very simple, yet sadly we tend to complicate everything. END OF CUT AND PASTE Well, that's it. As I've said before, not much interested in debate as such or even in defending anything I've said. Things move on and I simply find expressing myself therapeutic, which in the way of "no-calculation" is very much the prime objective. It sure beats screaming or jumping in the river, which is often my first instinctive reaction to the ways of this world. Thanks. Hope you are all doing fine.

As you asked for a Progressive Christian view I'm not sure - as a Buddhist - if you are interested in my own perspective. However...... ANY metaphysical speculation is deemed inimicable to the "holy life" i.e. the path to the end of suffering (dukkha), to "unshakeable deliverance of mind", the heartwood of the Dharma. Beyond a fundamental trust in Reality no "belief" is needed. 😀