Eschatolog

Love is Beyond Definition

Sometimes people ask why, in my book, "Love and Its Disappointment" there is no attempt to define love. The reason for this is that I hold to the view that love is the alpha and omega of life. A definition establishes the boundaries, reasons for or causes of something in terms of other things, but love does not reduce to other things in this way. Love is the reason not the result. This is when we think of love in its most general form.

When we think of specific instances of love, ranging from the most trivial to the most all-encompassing, there are, of course, contributory conditions. We find some things loveable and others not so. One way of thinking about spiritual practice can be to see it is a progress toward finding the loveableness of an ever greater range of things, a progress that leads to life becoming ever more blissful.

The incidence of love in our own lives is thus a "two way street". On the one hand we can become more loving and more able to love more things (people, situations, scenes, objects). On the other hand, when it comes to relationships, there is a huge factor that we call "compatibility". We cannot control whether or not we will meet "the right person". 

If one is attracted to another person a relationship might begin. It might be romantic. The term "romantic", of course, implies both intense pleasure but also elements of delusion. Our romaniticism blinds us to the elements in the emerging relationship that are not going to work in the longer term. Thus it is that relationships that start with good intention often fall apart once the initial romantic phase fades.

Real love, therefore, does require particular conditions in which to flourish. Even in this case, however, it is a tough job trying to define what these are. An element of mystery remains irreducible. This is because love is profound and much of its working is unconscious.

There is a good deal of self-help literature that suggests that it is possible to find one's way through this maze in a rational way and that there are strategies that can be applied to "keep one's marriage alive" or to deepen one's relationship or to negotiate one's way out of trouble. The problem with this kind of thing is that real love is indefinable, unconditional and unilateral. Anything done because it was part of a trade is not really love in the fullest sense. Love is not a matter of getting one's need met, it is a matter of giving unconditionally and receiving appreciatively. If the relationship continues one-sidedly it is likely to come undone sooner or later. Correcting such imbalance by negotiation may produce a workable alliance, but it does not constitute love.

Love is undefinable because it is unconditional. In real life, nobody actually is totally unconditional, but love is. Love transcends persons. It may work through us, but it is purer and higher than we are. We may exerience it, recieve it, be touched by it, and know that it is the very meaning of our existence, but we cannot possess it, control it or define it.

 

Unconditional love?

Take the issue of unconditional love. Is unconditional love a reality? Objection: Love requires an object, and an object is a condition. Possible solutions: (1) Love without an object - is this a contradiction of terms? (2) Love without condition as to object, i.e. universal love. Objection: Does love not create conflicts of interest? To love a specific object may be to defend it against others. Possible solution: For love to be unconditional the lover needs to have sufficient wisdom to act in a way that is optionally beneficial to all beings. 
This solution depends upon believing that there is a "good" that is best for all and that even if this results in the destruction of some individuals it is actually best for those individuals in such a situation to be destroyed. That is to say, it implies a view of the universe inwhich there are no fundamental conflicts of interest - what is good in an ultimate sense is good for all and the corollary is that sometimes it can be good to be sacrificed.
The alternative is to believe that there are in reality conflicts of interest, that the universe is actually a place of conflict and conflict is real. What is for the good of one is not necessarily or always for the good of all others. This, of course, accords with common sense, though common sense is not always a good guide to ultimate truth.  

The four daughters of wholeness

Eschatalog has been dormant for a few years. The world didn't end, so I'm resuscitating and revamping it. This is a place to discuss the purpose of it all, beginnings and ends, eternity, the questions of wholeness and ultimacy. This does not have to be abstract. For instance, why are wars becoming fewer and economic crises more severe? Does this have anything to do with impending eco-disaster? Does it matter? Does anything matter? What does God think about it? Would/does he think about it? 

Recently I have been thinking a good deal about wholeness. Meaning comes from situating information (in the broadest sense) within a larger frame. For the frame itself to be meaningful it must itself fit within something larger. Eventually you get to eternity, infinity, original mind and unconditional love, which are, perhaps, the four daughters of wholeness. 

Intuitively, I feel that eternity is the eldest daughter. Time precedes all and probably succeeds all as well. One can imagine time in which nothing happens but one cannot imagine anything or nothing happening without time. So time is closest to ultimacy (and so is the first and not the fourth dimension). Time generates being (and non-being) and so we have space to infinity and once we have these two we can have meaning, so I guess mind is the third in line. Meaning generates beauty (and ugliness), and so love arises, and with it bliss and despair and the longing to return to wholeness. Thus there is the unquenchable thirst which can issue as delusion or enlightenment.

This kind of thinking is out of fashion, which is one reason why I'm doing it, I guess.  So if you want to chat about ultimacy or log onto eternity, come and join me.

 

Death of a Killer

How should a Buddhist feel about the death of a person like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? The worldly attitude is to say good riddance. This man organised the killing of large numbers of mostly civilian people in Iraq and now he too has been violently destroyed by an American bomb. Many promient people have expressed satisfaction.

Buddhists, however, have a different attitude because they have a different background theory about how the world works. Just as physicists wil ltell us that the destruction of the physical body by fire does not actually eliminate the matter nor the energy that, when conjoined in a certain pattern, constituted that body, so Buddhists believe that the moral force of a life is not destroyed by the mere physical death of the person who embodied that force. Karma is the equivalent in the moral domain of the law of conservation of energy in the physical one. Zarqawi's karma continues. Whether it will reassemble into a recognisable human personality package is an open question, but destroying the evil doer does not eliminate the evil from our world.

When the Buddha meets a mass murderer he does everything he can to convert him into a harmless one, just as he does with anybody else. Buddhas are not gods. They are inspiring and persuasive, but they do not create the universe nor can they miraculously change a person against that person's will. They seek rather to rouse a new gathering of the person's faith.

Zarqawi did not have much of a life. Starting off as a small time criminal he got swept to prominence by being caught by a big wave. That wave was the need of the USA to find some shred of credibility to support their completely false pretention that there was a direct link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in order to shore up their case for the illegal invasion of Iraq. By naming Zarqawi as the link person (apparently without any evidence) at the United Nations, Colin Powell thrust Zarqawi into the limelight. Now, three years later they have killed him. This would all seem like a sick joke if so many other people had not also been killed along the way. As it is it is just to grievous for anybody to laugh.

The world will not be free of the karma of Zarqawi until all those who helped to make him into the symbol and the disaster that he was learn to be harmless ones and there is no immediate prospect of that. Zarqawi still walks this earth in the skins of all those who made him what he was. Some of them live in the Middle East and some in Western capitals. None of us is entirely innocent.

Buddha Makes a Point

A correspondent recently sent me a piece he had written in which he tries to make some sense of the supposedly Buddhist concept of "non-duality". It was a pretty good effort, but the task is a thankless one.

Carried Away by the Samadhi of Equality

What is the meaning of equality in Buddhism? What does the samadhi of equality indicate? On the one hand we are inclined to see spirituality as a mountain to climb, but at the same time, we read that, in the Pure Land, there are no such mountains. On the blog Beneath the Clouds there is an item called "Equal to Enlightenment". This is

Irreversible Commitment

Today Prasada and I attended a discussion of the Hsin Hsin Ming, an early medieval Ch'an text. The discussion took place at Lotus Lake Dharma Center in Talahassee where we are visiting. I had not read this text for a while and it was interesting to come at it after an interval. The author of the text, Seng Ts'an (d.606), an older contemporary of Pureland master Tao Cho (562-645), attempts to strike directly to the essential point of what religion is about and this is what makes the text popular, fertile and intriquing to many. This central point, it is easy to see from a Pureland perspective as what we call faith. The author says as much in the section of the text we examined, but this is by no means apparent to the average reader who encounters the text in a Western framework. Two of the issues that came up in our discussion were:

Don't Let's Keep Buddha Waiting

Danny Fisher recently sent me a very nice piece of writing that is the product of his having interviewed a number of people, including myself, about the apparent tension or possible contradiction between monsticism and social engagement. This kind of question is very important for the person who feels a desire to do the best possible with their life and "not keep the Buddha waiting", yet is unsure whether

Faith as Portayed in Nikaya Buddhism

The Majjhima Nikaya is generally thought to be a fairly early Buddhist text, certainly well pre-Christ. Here I review what it has to say about faith.

Sutta 22, the Alagadduupama Sutta is a very significant sutta containing the rebuke of Arritha, the famous similes of the snake and the raft, the refutation of non-Buddhist views, and the teaching of non-self. It concludes with the final verse: "The Dhamma well proclaimed by me is clear, open, evident, and not patched together. According to this Dhamma - clear, open, evident, and not patched together - those who have faith in me, those who love me, are all on the way to heaven." This seems pretty clear.

A Theory of Nembutsu

The nembutsu has a long history in Buddhism. The word literally means "buddha in mind" and it has come to mean verbal recitation of the words "I take refuge in Amitabha Buddha" in one language or another. The form that we commonly use is "Namo Amida Bu". The nembutsu has been used as

All Sentient Beings

I am very touched by the comment added by Gina to the Hunger Strike item at the Amida Order weblog. Joan is going on hunger strike to bring attention to the death and torture suffered by vast numbers of animals in for the most part completely fruitless experiments in university laboratories - in this instance in Oxford. Joan is in her eighties and so it is no small challenge to her to undertake this. I shall be going to Oxfod to join her myself on Friday and Saturday.

Lack & Transcendence

David Loy sent me a copy of his book, “Lack and Transcendence”. Here I am sharing my response to some of his ideas in the book. David’s key concept

Living in Grace-Land

Thankyou, Andi. Gassho. I appreciate you coming back on this thread. I appreciate it because it was not bound to happen, so I receive it as a gift - something from yourself. The issue of "self" is, of course, subtle and complex. In the ordinary sense, we are

What is the "I" that has faith?

Andi Young responded to my item "Faiths of Different Colours". I thought it was worth bringing out of the comments and making a full post out of it. So here it is... "Thank you for your response to my post. I appreciate this dialogue--what a wonderful way to bridge the "conceptual" gulf. When I talk about faith and

My Solitude is Not My Own

The title is a quotation from Thomas Merton, who also wrote: "The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream". Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King both died in 1968. At the time they were planning to spend a retreat together, but

Faith of Different Colours

There is a very nice post at Ditch the Raft about Great Faith. Reading this made me aware of some of the different qualities of faith. The faith written about is clearly recognisable to me, but it is interesting to see it expressed in opposite terms to those I would use.

Studies in Lack

It occurs to me that my thinking in the last couple of years has been profoundly influenced by David Loy's work, A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack. Whatever David intended by this work, the theme that I have taken from it is

Peace Passionate

Contemporary approaches generally seek to make spirituality conform to a deepening of appreciation of ordinary quotidian reality. Medieval spirituality, however,

In the Face of Love

Siona writes: life is excessive. Each moment - and this (as it is with too much I want to say) has the potential of sounding trite - is so inordinately full, so unbearably rich, that to dare to see and seize that is itself excessive. Experience demands

Fire Hydrant Spirituality: Inner Peace has an Optimum

Genkaku writes:
If you hang around spiritual endeavor long enough, maybe you will think, as I do, that all of us who take up practice are sometimes like a bunch of dogs circling some fire hydrant.

Buddhist Army Chaplains - No thanks

We have had some discussion recently about the issue whether there should be Buddhist chaplains in the army. This drew the following comment from a correspondent called Michael:
I noted with interest your views on Chaplains and the Army. Speaking as a graduate from the RMA Sandhurst and with five years of commissioned service, including two minor wars, I can assure you that a Buddhist Chaplain would be a hopeless contradiction.

What is Nembutsu?

What is "Namo Amida Bu". Namo Amida Bu is the Buddha prayer or nembutsu. "Namo" is the little, vulnerable, conditioned self calling out. "Amida Bu" is the Buddha on the Other Shore calling back. Whenever we conceptualise anything, there is always an "other shore", a beyond.

Doubt

Doubt occurs naturally to anybody who thinks. If we think upon matters of ultimate concern we will have big doubts. For this reason, many religious groups advocate that one should not doubt and this leads them commonly to also advocate that one should not think.

Between Faiths

Buddhism is a missionary religion that, nonetheless, does not have as a core aim the conversion of all. Multiplicity of faiths is valued and buddhists have on occasion been instrumental in defending other faiths when they were threatened. As the Dalai lama asserts, the diversity of faith communities is fitting to the diversity of human personalities and cultures.

Distinguishably One

In the system of Swedenborg, god is love-wisdom. Love and wisdom are "distinguishably one" meaning that you can talk about each separately but you never get one without the other. Wisdom without love is

With the Touch of Love

A poem sent to a friend on the anniversary of their friend's death.

Death is the time
When time condenses
When all time inhabits
Each precious moment
Completely

And when the dead are passed away
They remain
Touching
With the touch of love
From afar.

What Religion is for

The function of a religion is to provide
(a) a mythic structure - a spiritual form and vocabulary - that facilitates the exploration of the religious feeling as eidos, and
(b) a church body that enables the living out of that mythic structure thereby facilitating the exploration of religious feeling as morphos.

Immeasurable Life

In The Sutra of the Buddha of Immeasurable Life the Buddha says:
"Do not give rise to doubt after my parinirvana. In the future, when the time of the extinction of the sutras comes, out of compassion and pity I will cause this sutra in particular to survive and remain for one hundred years. Sentient beings who encounter this sutra will all, in accord with their aspiration, attain the other shore."

Religious Feeling

Einstein wrote: "You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a religious feeling of his own... a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all systematic thinking of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection."

Following an Angel

St Frances of Rome died on March 9, 1440. She was 56 years old. "The angel has finished his task" she said, "he beckons me to follow him." She was a follower of St Francis of Assisi. In 1411, her son, who had died age nine in the plague, appeared to her in a dream and described the splendour of heaven. After that she was always guided by an angel.

From Existence to Essence

Existentially, we are here. Somehow it is in our nature to ask, "Why? How? what does this mean?" Thus the search for essence proceeds from the particular nature of our sentience in the context of our existential situation. Perceiving finitude, we conceive infinity. Perceiving imperfection, we conceive perfection. It may be the perfection of good or of ill. Not only does our sentience seem to invite ideals and limit cases that lie outside the range of actual experience, but all the things that do lie within our experiential range seem capable of exhibiting a halo of more than "ordinary" significance. And, just as the physical things of our world give every evidence of having an existence that lies outside of our mind, so these essential phenomena seem to give evidence of a world of meaning that exists prior to any exercise of personal will.

All Time is Equidistant from the Ultimate

The meaning of history is untouched by the modes of past and future, by birth and death. Transcendence, therefore, can be defined neither as the beginning of time nor as the end of time, nor as the negation of time. It can be indicated only by the symbolic concepts of origin and ultimate, which do not mean either the first or the last moment of time, but something transcendent to which all modes of time are equally related. - Paul Tillich