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A Sagely Word
No one ever attains true solitude, so long as he has not discovered the solitude of God himself. Only then, when self has been left far behind and has completely vanished, he experiences nothing except God alone, the infinite Alone, the One whose solitude none has ever shared, … He who has never felt the burning touch of the divine aloneness, … has never sounded the abyss of his own self or the abyss of God; he does not know the full reality either of agony or joy.
Yet, paradoxically, it is those who have experienced this awful aloneness who most truly and completely enter into communion with their fellow men. … For he has found them, no longer where they outwardly appear to be, but in the place where they really are (i.e., ‘the eternal birth of the divine Word’).”
(Abhishiktānanda, In Spirit and Truth: An Essay on Prayer and Life. A Roman Catholic and 20th Century monk who served on mission to India from 1948 to 1973. He sought to articulate and live a theory of the cosmic Christ among the East Indians. He claimed that only Hindus and Christians can appreciate each others’ Scripture by reading in the Spirit, and only those in the Spirit can see the limitations within all traditions (Hindu-Christian Meeting Point). Thus, his Christology, which is a spiritual cosmology, I call a Christmology.)
Commentary
In a New Yorker cartoon appears two Zen monks, robbed and with shaved head, one old, one young. Sitting cross-legged, side-by-side on the floor, the younger one has a perplexed look. The older monk, turned toward him, speaks, “Nothing happens. This is it.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are)
There are three ways to live in history, writes Eugene H. Peterson (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places). The three are intimidation, exploitation, and the gospel way. These three ways I render retreat, manipulation, and mindfulness.
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1. Retreat
Retreat is a special temptation for anyone on a spiritual path. We can seem so small before forces contrary to our values and Practice. At times we might imagine, largely out of a subtle paranoia, an extent of such oppositional forces that is not accurate. Likewise, we can interpret the natural world as obstructive of our spiritual quest. We might fail to see God at work, here-and-now. In Peterson’s words concerning some persons, “They are left with a feeling that God is involved only in the privacies and domesticities of their inner lives—what they think of as their souls.” This is a cocoon way of life; this is old-fashioned Gnosticism in a new-fashioned suit. This hide-away-spirituality might be based on sincere felt-need or fearfulness.
This temptation to retreat is applicable to contemplatives, persons in spiritual formation, as well as those prone to attraction to fundamentalist cults, as well as fundamentalist churches—most often ones not aligned with any larger communion—that tend to see themselves as the chosen ones and the world as going to damnation. Many so-called “churches” lining the streets of USA are, in practice, cultic. They are places of retreat from the minions of darkness and, usually, have a strong, charismatic leader promising eternal reward for those who remain true.
A “Christian” cult, even if it has the title “church,” is still a cult. A “Buddhist” cult, even if it has the title “sangha,” is still a cult. A “Muslim” cult, even it has the title “mosque,” is still a cult. No religion is immune to being cultic. And a cult has similar traits: we have the only way to God, the others are evil and the enemy, they are damned and we promised life forever, we must live apart from the damned ones. Such dualism arises from fear. Fear, projecting itself, must find the enemy. Fear, projecting itself, creates enemies.
Certainly, many of us feel, at times, like being a runaway. And we who meditate can feel like never coming out of meditation, when we feel so restful and safe, so confident and loved unconditionally. Note what Jeremiah, a Hebrew prophet, says, not because he does not love the people he serves, rather, because his love for them brings such sorrow into his life.
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