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The spiritual Journey is a series of increasingly fuller detachments allowing embrace of a more extensive range of compassion. For example, St. Teresa of Avila teaches that we must be detached from the joyful feeling of the heart and enter the feeling of the soul. As we move from the heart to the soul, from feeling mingling with being, characteristic of communion with Spirit, to pure being, characteristic of union with Spirit, we are more prepared to experience the interdependency implied in the Buddhist “emptiness” and the Christian “Body of Christ.” Through living from the soul, the point of our contact with Pure Spirit, we no longer have to feel one with others; rather, we know we are one with others. This knowing is not intellectual, which occurs at the level of mind; instead, this knowing is an inner certitude that can only be consistently lived beyond the levels of mind and emotion. And, only beyond mind and emotion can we embrace the paradox that I teach in this writing.
All right, hang in today with me, and do not delete after the following somewhat abstruse quote from The Dalai Lama. After the quote I will proceed to clarify and apply:
The world, according to the philosophy of emptiness, is constituted by a web of dependently originating and interconnected realities, within which dependently originated causes give rise to dependently originated consequences according to dependently originating laws of causality. What we do and think in our lives, then, becomes of extreme importance as it affects everything we’re connected to.
(His Holiness The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom)
The entire process of cause-action-consequence is dependent, or interdependent. Nothing, not even cause, is self-contained, self-defined, and self-existing. There is no independent cause within Creation. Causation, action, and consequence are reliant on many other causes, causes which each and all are dependent on other causes. Therefore, we have the image of a web.
The teaching of “emptiness” is not simply Buddhist, for spiritual truth has to reflect Reality and its articulation in a particular domain of religion or science does not make it true. Emptiness is taught by Buddhist, for the teaching is derived from Reality. So, let me proceed to clarify the term “emptiness” as a religious-philosophical teaching and its implications, alongside Body of Christ.
Emptiness is the Sanskrit sunyata. Nothing and no one is a self-contained, self-defined existence. We are each inter-reliant beings, caused by many causes outside our control and influenced by many factors outside our knowledge. Just think of how many causes had to converge for you to be born into this world. In that sense, even apart from positing Divine Causation, every birth is a miracle; yes, the existence of anything is a miracle.
The Christian teaching of Body of Christ is comparable to the Buddhist teaching of emptiness. The Body of Christ teaching says that you and I are literally an expression of Christ, the Word, in time and space. We are not metaphorically the Body of Christ. When we understand our arising from the Word, the Word being causative Agency, Itself deriving from the Absolute, Final Cause, God, we can affirm, religiously and scientifically, that every person is part of the Body of Christ. More particularly, those who embody the Love of Christ participate in a mystical-metaphysical connection with Christ, which is to become more conscious with maturity in the relationship with Christ, making the Body of Christ to have both an absolute, all-inclusive meaning and a particularized meaning—for the lesser whole derives from the more inclusive whole. To exemplify, my elbow is part of my whole body by being part of the whole of my arm. My arm is not reliant on my elbow to be part of the larger whole. Therefore, I can particularly participate in the Word only consequent of a prior and natural participation that evolves from Reality and through my being part of Creation.
The Dalai Lama clarifies that what we think in regards to this matter of emptiness is vital, and the same applies to Body of Christ. If I interpret Body of Christ in only a particular way, I will translate “God” as a “tribal deity” including only “my group.” Seeing Body of Christ, or Body of Word, in its natural setting allows me to see that all creatures are already from and in God, through the Word, the Creative Effulgence of the Spirit. Salvation, then, consists in my accepting the gracious Grace of that natural position so that I can participate in the particularized expression of being part of the Body of Christ giving witness to the Grace for all persons and beings, in this world and all other worlds.
Christ came—comes—as an expression of the Word (Logos), and he embodied and witnessed to the invitation for acceptance of our natural placement in the Father-Mother, the Creating Agency. In Christ, I can see all creatures as part of the natural Body of Christ. In Christ, I can witness to the invitation for the rational and feeling acknowledgement of the particular Body of Christ, which actualizes the truth of the all-inclusive, universal Body of Christ.
Acceptance of Body of Christ and emptiness is a humbling but freeing experience. Why humbling? Why freeing? Being in the Body, as one member among others, entails that I do not live independently, for each part of the Body shares in all the causes and consequences of the whole Body. I am causing and being caused moment-by-moment. We each participate in the causative Agency of the Word. I am because you are; you are because I am. This is freeing for it liberates from the burden that arises from the illusion of independence and shows that love does not love the other as other; love loves the other in me and me in the other as one.
The Buddhist teaching of Compassion and the Christian virtue of Love are only understood well and lived maturely from the fact and feeling of emptiness and Body of Christ. In this universal Body of Christ, characterized by emptiness, all truths converge in the Truth and there is only one Love manifesting in many loves.
Spiritual Exercise
1. What did you find that you agreed with in the writing? Disagreed with? Explain.
2. How might a term like “Body of Christ” have a different meaning as “absolute” and “relative”?
3. How might theology read differently if it is written from an “absolute” perspective, or framework of Eternal, as compared with a “relative” angle, or framework of Temporal? Explain.
4. What is the meaning of “paradox”? How might the above writing exemplify theology as integrating the wholeness that makes plausible the paradoxical?
5. How might accepting paradox free us from distorted and limiting beliefs that persons and faith communities divide over?
6. How might paradox be misused to avoid some of the demands of religious faith and teach a harmful, radical pluralism (i.e., everyone is right and no belief is better than another)?
7. Write out a one-sentence definition of Body of Christ.
8. How might differentiating between the “relative” aspects of Truth, truths as we experience them daily, and the “absolute” aspect of Truth, enable us to enter into compassionate dialogue with different Christian communions and religious faiths?
Prayer
Dear Christ, within You, the Word, I accept the mystery that contains and rejoices in the creativity of paradoxical Wisdom Herself. Teach me to live in the tensions of Truth, not seeking refuge in the more popular path of facile consistency. Amen.
Prayer
God, You are my Heaven. I Love You, Love. Amen.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
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