Underhill initiated me into the mystical tradition within Christianity (although she also threw in a few non-Christian mystics as well, from Pagans like Plotinus to Sufis like Rumi). She gave me a language for my own impossible-to-put-into-words experience of the mystery we call “God” and introduced me to so many of the great mystical writers who I continue to cherish to this day: folks like Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, John Ruusbroec, and so many others.
Here’s a quote that really captures Underhill’s wisdom: that mysticism is more than just a theory, but an embodied, experiential reality:
Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates, the science of union with the Absolute, and nothing else, and that the mystic is the person who attains to this union, not the person who talks about it. Not to know about, but to Be, is the mark of the real initiate.
Sixteen years or so after discovering Evelyn Underhill, another friend in a different city suggested I read Living Buddha Living Christ. It was a time in my life when I had spent a number of years exploring Neopagan spirituality, and knew I was interested in Buddhism, but I remained deeply in love with the western mystical tradition that Underhill represented. I didn’t know how to put all those pieces together, and barely had anyone in my life with whom I could talk about such things. So along comes Thich Nhat Hanh. It was the first of his books that I read, although certainly not the last. Unlike Evelyn Underhill’s rather intellectual approach to her subject, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote straight from the heart, not bothering with all the philosophical and theological arguments that can e bandied about to affirm (or deny) a bond between the two great world teachers. Here’s just one example of the crystalline clarity of his deeply compassionate vision:
We can touch the living Buddha. We can also touch the living Christ. When we see someone overflowing with love and understanding, someone who is keenly aware of what is going on, we know that they are very close to the Buddha and to Jesus Christ.
Obviously, there have been many books that have made an impact on my spiritual life; a few others that come to mind include Margot Adler’s Drawing Down The Moon, Ken Wilber’s A Brief History of Everything, Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Heart of Centering Prayer, Ram Dass’s Be Here Now, and (for all its many flaws) the anonymous Meditations on the Tarot. And that’s just a start — this list doesn’t even begin to include the great mystical classics of previous centuries! But I think Evelyn Underhill and Thich Nhat Hanh remain two of the most important books in my journey, because they represent the two vectors of my own spiritual path: mysticism and interspirituality.
I wrote The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, in part, as a love letter and thank you note to Evelyn Underhill. So I was wondering the other day, if I were to write a similar “thank you” book in response to Thich Nhat Hanh, what would I want to call it? Naturally, I could just echo his book with a title like “Joyful Buddha, Healing Christ” — embodying two qualities that I believe belong to both of these wisdom teachers, but of Jesus has a particular reputation as a healer, while so many artistic depictions of the Buddha show him smiling or even laughing: hence, joyful.
But I realized I couldn’t stop there. For me, my love for western wisdom is encapsulated in my appreciation of Jesus and mysticism, while my love for eastern wisdom is signified by the Buddha and meditation. But I also have a long appreciation for indigenous, shamanic and pagan spiritualities. And those traditions all seem to have a common appreciation for spirituality as embodied and earthy. and holding all this together: eastern, western, and primal traditions of wisdom — is the heart, increasingly recognized even by western science as a center of intuition, knowing and even cognition that may not have the same kind of neurological density as the brain, but serves as our embodied “center” for deep wisdom at a level beyond mere language and logic.
So suddenly my title is up to five elements: “Joyful Buddha, Healing Christ, Singing Heart, Thriving Body, Living Earth” — whew!
It may not work as a real title for an actual book, but now I was on a roll. Once we weave together the compassionate wisdom of both Jesus and Buddha with the deep knowing of the embodied heart and the stable foundation of the good earth, the natural question (at least for me) is: how do we live such wisdom? And so I found four other principles emerged: “All are One, That You Are, Love is Real, God is Love.”
All Are One: the experiential reality of mystical non-duality: we are not separate from God, nor are we separate from one another. The wisdom of deep silence reveals to us that we are all related, and we are all indeed one.
That You Are: this classic affirmation from the Chandogya Upanishad is the foundational expression of mystical union or radical non-duality: oneness is not just some abstract philosophical principle, it is a lived experiential fact. All things are one with God, and that you are as well: right here and right now.
Love is Real: What do we believe is the moral principle that organizes all things: is it love, or is it power? We know what the likes of Machiavelli and Nietzsche would say — and frankly, the cynicism that thinks love is not real but only power exists is far too prevalent in our culture today. Love understands that sometimes powerlessness is the way to truth, to healing, and to life. But power will never understand this, and to anyone whose life is only about power, love seems to be an illusion: powerlessness, vulnerability, and gentleness are rejected merely as the weak absence of power. But if we give our lives to love, we know that love is real, and we know that love gives us a power that is deeper and more real than the dualism of power and weakness.
God is Love: What does it mean to believe in God? Talk about a question with endless possible ways to answer! But I always go back to the one time in the Bible when God is defined: “God is love.” When we affirm love, we affirm God. Of course, whenever we try to make God into anything other than love: the God of wrath, the God of punishment, the God of fear — we reduce God into an idol of power. Only the God who is love — vulnerable, gentle, yielding, generous love — is truly God, and truly real.
So there you have my admittedly long-winded response to Living Buddha, Living Christ:
“Joyful Buddha, Healing Christ, Singing Heart, Thriving Body, Living Earth, All Are One, That You Are, Love is Real, God is Love.”
It may not be great poetry, but it’s a way to integrate mysticism and interspirituality. And that’s good enough for me.
A little while back I wrote a blog post called “Five Approaches to Interspirituality.” In this post, I compare interspiritual practice to having a relationship with more than one country (such as the USA and England). People can have different ways of relating to more than one country, and I pose five such “ways,” comparing spirituality to being a tourist, an immigrant, an ambassador, and so forth.
At the end of that post, I pose this question:
Certainly there are other ways to engage with a faith tradition different from your own. Do you have any ideas as to what that would look like?
This week, a reader took me up on that query, and sent me this reply (edited slightly for clarity):
In your blog post entitled “Five Approaches to Interspirituality” you pose at the end a question that’s been percolating in my mind for days.
My answer at this moment in time is – Pilgrim – being curious as I enter a different landscape noting
what I see – coloursscapes
what I hear – soundscapes
what I feel – texture+touch
taking from the ambassador model consciously retaining what I know, moving into, and embracing what is unknown until it becomes what it is to be.
So now we have a sixth model of interspirituality: the Pilgrim. While in some ways I think this is similar to my idea of “tourist” interspirituality (where someone occasionally dips into a faith tradition other than their own, for example a Christian who likes to read books by the Dalai Lama), I love this idea that visiting the “country” of another faith is a kind of sensory immersion. So it’s more than just a reading a book; it’s actually going there, but with a spirit of seeking spiritual renewal, new insights, and allows “the unknown” to become at least more known.
Pilgrimage is such an important spiritual practice, for so many of the world’s great faith traditions. Christians have been making pilgrimages to the Holy Land for centuries, and for many Catholics, a journey to Rome, Lourdes or Fatima can be a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual event. It’s not just a Christian practice, either: a pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the central spiritual practices of Islam. And for the U.S. baby boomer generation, traveling to India or Japan in search of eastern spirituality was practically a generational rite of passage.
Here in Atlanta there is a group called Interfaith Community Initiatives that runs a program called “World Pilgrims” which involves gathering people from different faith traditions and traveling to sacred sites of one or more such faiths, going as a group to reflect together not only on the diversity of faiths in our world, but also the beauty of our common humanity. Although I myself have never been on one of their pilgrimages, I know several people who have and they report having profoundly meaningful journeys.
So if you are the kind of person who enjoys reading about faiths other than your own, consider taking the next step. Go visit a mosque, or synagogue, or zendo (and if you’re not a Christian, check out a basilica or a cathedral). Try making a retreat at a retreat center that is operated by a faith tradition other than your own. Attend an iftar dinner or visit a gurdwara. Even if your primary reason for traveling is business or vacation, see if you can add in a day or two for pilgrimage purposes. I’ve never been to Japan (it’s on my bucket list), and I guarantee you that visiting shinto shrines will be on the agenda when I do. Many lands have hosted more than one religious tradition over the ages, so check out both current and historical sacred sites when you visit a country.
Be a pilgrim, and one that explores beyond the boundaries of religion: and when you do, follow the advice of the reader who said: “embrace what is unknown, until it becomes what is to be.”
Obviously this covers a wide terrain. First, what it doesn’t cover are efforts that members of one religion may take to convert, suppress, or attack the adherents of another. So Christians who are out to convert Muslims are not engaging in an interspiritual practice. But a Christian who genuinely is interested in Muslim spirituality, and would like to integrate one or more Muslim practices (say, for example, keeping the Ramadan fast) into their faith as a Christian, is engaging in interspirituality.
Interspirituality could be as simple as reading a book to learn about another faith tradition, or as significant as a sustained effort to fully embody the observance of two (or more) religions on an ongoing basis. To illustrate this, I’d like to use a metaphor here. An interspiritual practice is like having a relationship with more than one country.
Let’s say you are an American, but you have a relationship with Japan. You might love Japanese culture: your house is filled with bonsai, and you catch every new anime movie as soon as it hits the theaters. You might travel to Japan as often as you can afford it, just to spend time shopping in Tokyo or visiting Shinto shrines in the countryside. Maybe you work for a multinational corporation and you visit Japan regularly on business. Or you might be an activist who works with your Japanese counterparts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Maybe you get a job with the foreign service to work in Japan as an official representative of the United States; or — this would be the ultimate — you seek citizenship in Japan, without relinquishing your American citizenship, resulting in “dual citizenship.” At this point you fully belong to both countries (United States law specifies that a person does not automatically lose US Citizenship when becoming a citizen of another nation, unless they explicitly renounce their prior citizenship).
Now, let’s take this metaphor and apply it to interspirituality. Following my Japan-USA metaph0r, I’m going to write about interspirituality between Christianity and Buddhism. But the same logic could apply to any interspiritual engagement, involving any 2 or more traditions. Here are at least five approaches to interspirituality. Maybe there are more?
1. “Tourist” Interspirituality. Here a person is anchored in one faith, and has only a mild interest in another. An example might be a practicing Episcopalian who likes to read books by the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh or Pema Chödrön. Once in a while she might attend a service or a program at a nearby Buddhist center, but her spiritual center of gravity remains primarily Episcopalian.
2. “Expatriate” Interspirituality. This one is common in our society today. The expatriate is unhappy with his “home” faith, and reduces or cuts off involvement with it. He then goes exploring, but may never fully engage with another faith either. Expatriates like to say they are “spiritual but not religious” and understand spirituality in a global or multi-faith context.
3. “Immigrant” Interspirituality. The immigrant is like the tourist, only in reverse. Immigrants move from one location to another. So they might let go of Christian observance and join a Buddhist sangha. Their identity is Buddhist and that’s how they present their religious/spiritual identity to others. But they still have a casual relationship with their “home” faith, even if it’s just attending holiday services when visiting Mom and Dad.
4. “Ambassador” Interspirituality. Like a member of the Foreign Service, ambassadors very consciously retain one spiritual identity while just as consciously engaging with another. Often this is done on a professional or leadership level. Here you find the Catholic priest who makes an annual retreat at a Zen monastery, or a college professor who practices one faith while researching and teaching about another. Ambassadors often become involved in explicitly interfaith or interspiritual programs, like Monastic Interreligious Dialogue or the Parliament of World Religions.
5. “Dual Citizen” Interspirituality. Finally, it is possible that interspiritual practice and identity becomes so essential to a person’s journey that she must simply fully embrace both traditions (in my example, a Christian takes refuge as a Buddhist). While this is challenging (it’s hard enough being an active and supporting member of one faith community, let alone two) and can be tricky on a cognitive level (after all, each religion contains its own customs or dogmas that cannot easily be reconciled with the teachings of other faiths), to a person who genuinely discerns they are called to walk this path, anything else would be unthinkable. Here the Christian remains a Christian, and yet also becomes a Buddhist. It’s not a blending of the two into some sort of new age mishmash; rather it is a respectful and committed practice of engaging fully with each faith in its own integrity.
Certainly there are other ways to engage with a faith tradition different from your own. Do you have any ideas as to what that would look like?
Note: This post, in a slightly different form, originally appeared on Patheos.
I read lots of serious books: books about Christian theology, spiritual direction, the history of mysticism, and the psychology of meditation… that sort of thing. I’m not complaining — I love pretty much everything I read (actually, at this point in my life and career, if I don’t love it, I quickly stop reading it, because there’s always something else clamoring for my attention).
Enter Saint Young Men — a Japanese seinan manga series about Jesus and Buddha, living incognito as roommates in modern-day Tokyo!
If you’re a white American boomer (like me), you may not be familiar with manga, which is basically the name for Japanese graphic novels. Manga is a hugely successful segment of the Japanese publishing industry, accounting for annual sales over 600 billion yen (over 4.6 billion US dollars) — in the USA alone, manga sales clock in at about $250 million per year. Manga is segmented into genres targeted at audiences by age and gender, such as shōnen manga (aimed at teen boys), shōjo manga (teen girls), seinen manga (adult men) and josei manga (adult women). Like comics and graphic novels published in America, manga titles are often published in serial format, so popular series can run for multiple volumes. They cover all the genres you might expect, such as romance, science fiction, fantasy, magic, adventure, martial arts, and more.
A couple of months ago, I posted something on social media about my interest in Christian-Buddhist interfaith dialogue, and a friend replied by asking if I were familiar with Saint Young Men. I told him I wasn’t, but the next time I visited my local bookstore, I would check it out.
When I combed through the sizable manga department in my local Books-a-Million, I came across almost an entire shelf devoted to the Saint Young Men series. The English-language editions of this series is published in attractive hardcover omnibus editions, each one containing about 15 chapters or episodes — reprinted from their original publication in monthly manga magazines in Japan. Eight of these English-language omnibus editions currently are in print, with three more coming over the next year.
I bought the first two volumes, took them home — and after reading them, ordered the entire series. And pre-ordered all the forthcoming ones.
“Why Do So Many Artists… Choose to Depict Me at my Fattest?!”
Jesus: “It cracks up the archangels every time!”
Buddha: “Because they have no taste in comedy!”
You have to be willing to suspend your disbelief and accept the basic backstory: up in heaven, Jesus and Buddha are buddies, and so they decide it might be fun to return to earth, only without drawing attention to themselves. So they find an apartment in Tokyo. But even though their intention is to fly under the radar, they can’t help but be themselves, which usually results in no shortage of unexpected and often downright funny scenarios. With his long hair and Johnny Depp goatee, everyone thinks Jesus is a hippie, while the Buddha is continually worrying about his waistline and fending off the attention of women who find his elongated earlobes surprisingly attractive. But it gets stranger than that. They walk through a hospital emergency room, where people think they are having a vision of these deities — and therefore must be on the verge of death. Jesus has an annoying habit of turning water into wine at the most awkward of moments, such as when they are about to get into a public bath. And both of them have to be on guard against “divine” hijinks like levitating, glowing, or receiving unexpected visits from angels and other heavenly beings.
Of course, in between trying to keep their divine status under wraps, these two holy guys still have to negotiate all the normal pressures of life in our time, from placating a difficult landlady to negotiating their shared (and limited) budget.
One time the Buddha comes down with a cold, and it turns out that Jesus is hopelessly inept when it comes to nursing him. Exasperated, the Buddha mutters “Do you mean to tell me you’ve never taken care of a sick person?” To which a straight-faced Jesus replies, “Actually, no. Sick people generally get better as soon as I get close to them.”
Much of the humor of the series is based on trivia from Christianity and Buddhism. As the two “saint young men” navigate their shared lives together, various details — from the mottos on their t-shirts to the banter they share with each other — are peppered with allusions to their teachings, their famous disciples, and folklore from either of the faiths that bear their names. Thankfully, at the end of each chapter footnotes are provided to help the casual reader catch the sometimes subtle references to the spiritualities that Jesus and Buddha represent.
As I read these books, I laughed at the humor, smiled at the banter, and marveled at how playfully loving both Christianity and Buddhism are depicted in these stories. Only someone with the most uptight of theologies would find these books anything other than a heartfelt tribute to how Christianity and Buddhism offer contrasting yet sympathetic ways of making sense of our strange and complex world. And for anyone (like me) who is genuinely interested in exploring how Buddhism and Christianity shed light on each other, this charming and amusing manga series offers endless food for thought.
Hikaru Nakamura, creator of “Saint Young Men”
Saint Young Men is created by Hikaru Nakamura; she is not to be confused with an American chess player with the same name. It’s hard to find much information about her online; she only has a brief entry in Wikipedia and pictures of her (or interviews in English) are pretty hard to come by. She is active on both Twitter and Instagram, but of course most of her posts are in Japanese. Here’s a recent Instagram post from her (and yes, she posts a “Happy Birthday Jesus” image on December 25!):
Saint Young Men is available wherever manga is sold. If you would like to support this blog, please use these links to buy your copies from Amazon (I’ll receive a small commission for each purchase made through these links):
Last week, the George Harrison estate released a new, “official” video for Harrison’s 1970 masterpiece, “My Sweet Lord” from his magnum opus All Things Must Pass. It’s a playful and fun video, with a kind of goofy X-Files plot, featuring a star-studded cast (Mark Hamill, Fred Armison, Vanessa Bayer, Weird Al Yankovic, Rosanna Arquette, Joe Walsh, Kate Micucci, Claudia O’Doherty, along with Harrison’s wife and son, Olivia and Dhani, and his former bandmates Jeff Lynne and Ringo Starr; conspicuous in their absence: Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan). Of course, the song is the real star, as it should be, and like all great Beatles (and solo Beatles) songs, it seems timeless, sounding as fresh and joyous today as it did a half century ago.
If you haven’t seen the video, take a break and give it a watch.
As fun as this video is, I think it rather misses the point of the song. I wrote about “My Sweet Lord” in the spring of 2020 when I blogged about the break-up of the Beatles as a metaphor for the fragmented spirituality of our age. At the time, I commended the optimism and unapologetic spirituality of this song as a welcome alternative to John Lennon’s cynicism, Paul McCartney’s sentimentalism, and Ringo Starr’s escapism. I think that still holds true, as a commentary on the Beatles, but today I just want to reflect on “My Sweet Lord” on its own merits.
“My Sweet Lord” is the national anthem of interspirituality.
Let me explain. Harrison, as a devotee of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who gave the world transcendental meditation), could have easily written this song as a simple hymn of bhakti devotion to Lord Krishna, and left it at that. And certainly the song could be sung in a kirtan, with its devotional lyrics, sung in a kind of call-and-response to Harrison’s lead:
Hare Krishna
Hara Krishna
Krishna Krishna
Hare Hare
Hare Rama
Hare Rama
Maheśvaraḥ
Guru Sākṣāt
Para Brahma
Tasmai Srī
Guru Namah
And so forth, all song as a counterpart to Harrison’s joyous love-song-to-God: “I really want to see you, Lord, I really want to be with you, I really want to see you, but it takes so long my Lord…”
He could have left it at that. But there was one little detail, earlier in the song, that to my mind anchors this song as an interspiritual anthem. Before all the bhakti lyrics, the backing singers chant Hallelujah in response to Harrison’s vocals.
Hallelujah! Hebrew for “Praise the Lord” — a word that is as anchored in the devotional spirituality of Judaism and Christianity as much as Hare Krishna embodies the spirit of bhakti yoga.
In other words, Harrison has written a song that deftly brings western and eastern spirituality together into a single expression of love for the divine, transcending our religious and cultural boundaries.
What blows my mind is that this song was wildly successful. It was a number one song in America, Britain, and other countries around the world; the single sold a million copies in eleven days. It was the first solo Beatles song to become a #1 hit and remains one of the best-selling solo Beatle songs of all time. But it wasn’t just Harrion’s Beatles-cred that made this song a “radio juggernaut” (in the words of Harrison biographer Gary Tilley) — the song was the perfect expression of the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, when books like Ram Dass’s Be Here Nowand Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi— not to mention the works of writers like Alan Watts or Christmas Humphreys — were bestsellers in the west. It was “the dawning of the age of Aquarius” and young people especially were interested in the spirituality of the world, not just the religion of their upbringing.
A half century later, that seems like an innocent, idyllic time. As the 70s progressed, Christians responded to the rise of interspirituality in both conservative (the charismatic renewal) and progressive (the contemplative movement) ways; eventually it seemed like consumerism co-opted the spirituality of the hippies into the crystalline mercantilism of the 1980s-era new age movement. As our society has moved ever more steadily toward consumerism and pervasive entertainment, it seems that interspirituality has become marginalized — more of a “special interest” worthy of its own Facebook group, than a groundswell of cultural consciousness capable of catapulting a song like “My Sweet Lord” to the top of the charts.
So when you watch the video, enjoy its silliness, epitomized by Ringo Starr throwing popcorn on a hapless Fred Armitage. The song is a joyful song, so a little bit of silliness is not entirely out of place. But it’s also a venerable song now, half a century old, and it’s a reminder that once upon a time, and not so very long ago, being interested in a spirituality that transcended religious boundaries was mainstream. That’s the legacy of this song, which unfortunately this video seems to miss entirely.
I recently received a letter from a reader of this blog who grew up an evangelical Baptist, and when to a conservative Christian school, the kind of place where if you doubted that God created the world in seven days, people were worried for the state of your eternal soul. As an adult, he discovered Christian mysticism and writers like Richard Rohr (and yours truly), and opened up a new dimension to his spiritual life, exploring resources and traditions as diverse as Paul Knitter’s Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian and A Course in Miracles. And this led to his letter:
So my question is where do you draw the line? The reason I ask is last night I was reading and stumbled across the concept of Magick. Didn’t explore much and don’t have much experience with these types of things. In boarding school I had a couple wiccan friends and some weird experiences led me to just shut the book on that type of thing. Its not something I want or need to add it just got me thinking.
Honestly, I am not sure where I fall on the topic of spiritual warfare (maybe a different but related topic). However, I get a “sense” of things being not right around certain topics like a warning sign but also am aware these could simply be neurochemical firings tied to childhood. I also know that my past experience says I should not live in fear while only being comfortable with unknowns that are a certain range outside my existing comfort zone which is ever expanding. I also know what stays in the dark maintains its power.
He finished his email by summarizing his question in two parts:
1.) Insight into safe boundaries for non-traditional spiritual practice;
2.) thoughts on spiritual warfare.
What a rich question, the first part of which I suppose might be on the mind of many spiritual seekers, not just those with conservative evangelical upbringings.
Let’s take them in reverse order.
“Spiritual Warfare”
“Spiritual warfare” is not a term I hear too often, in the circles I move in: among mainstream-to-progressive Catholics, or contemplative Christians across the denominational spectrum. I tend to associate this kind of language with conservative evangelicals and charismatic/pentecostal Christians — basically, anyone with a particularly robust theology of Satan and demonic power at work in the work, actively trying to seduce Christians away from the truth.
Don’t get me wrong: I recognize that evil exists, and followers of Jesus Christ are called to struggle against it. But where I probably depart from how many conservative evangelicals and charismatic Christians view evil, is that I tend to see the evidence of evil less in terms of metaphysical categories like “demonic activity” and more in terms of psychological or sociological concerns, manifesting in toxic relationships, abusive behavior, and systemic evils such as economic injustice, racism and sexism.
In fact I would argue that when we spend too much time worrying about demons or the devil, this can actually distract us from facing evil as it really manifests in ordinary people’s lives. Here’s a thought experiment: imagine you have two children, and one of them likes to play with ouija boards and the other one is very observant of Christian religious behavior. The “Christian” child, it turns out, is a bully, whereas the “psychic” child is compassionate, the type of kid who tends to befriend the outsiders in their classroom. To me, there is no question which one of these children is in greater spiritual “danger” — it’s the bully. And to the extent that parents might be obsessing over the psychic child while ignoring the antisocial behaviors of the good Christian child, then the parents are actually part of the problem.
(And let me be clear, I’m not particularly a fan of ouija boards — but I see them as far less dangerous than belief systems that are anchored in reward/punishment, insider/outsider worldviews).
Now, back to the question of spiritual warfare. I think there is a place for the language and metaphor of “fighting for what is right” which therefore implies “fighting against what is wrong.” But I think maybe we need to be careful about how quickly we label certain things as good or bad. When Christians reactively and unthinkingly label everything that is foreign to their own religious practice as automatically “demonic” or “evil,” I worry that what is really going on is a kind of psychological projection, or even scapegoating. By labeling other religions or even occult/magical activity as demonic just because it is different is to run the risk of violating Jesus’s commandments to love everyone and to refrain from judging. I think when we encounter religious ideas or practices (or practitioners) who are different from ourselves, we need to discern the condition of their heart (or the hearts of their teachers/leaders). I believe spiritual warfare is most appropriate when we are fighting hatred, or prejudice, bigotry, resentment, judgmentalism, abuse, exploitation, oppression, those sorts of things. That’s where “spiritual warfare” is needed. But we also have to acknowledge that these “enemies” can exist within Christianity (even within our own hearts) just as surely as they might be found in the hearts of others.
It’s harder to be discerning of the spirit of people’s hearts, rather than just the external circumstances of their lives. It’s very easy to be prejudiced against someone because of their skin color, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious practice, or socioeconomic status. We can “read” all these things in how a person presents themselves to the world. But Jesus calls us to love both our neighbors and our enemies, which means no matter which “tribe” a person belongs to, we have no choice but to love them. So if we are going to struggle against evil, we cannot look for evil on the outside, but rather we have to take the time to get to know a person’s heart — and to respond to how their heart engages with others.
Which is one reason why I think Jesus talked about removing the stick out of your own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s eye. Most of us have so much work to do on our own hearts, that we really don’t have time to get worked up about what’s going on in anyone else’s heart!
Setting Safe Boundaries for Spiritual Exploration
So now we come to the question of how to set safe boundaries for non-traditional spiritual practice. Alas, the quick answer to this question is that there is no quick answer!
Interfaith and interspiritual work takes on so many different forms — just consider not only how many different religious traditions there are in the world, but also the diversity even within any one tradition (in Christianity, we have Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Evangelical, Charismatic, Reformed, with too many sub-variations to list). Interspirituality will look different between a Catholic and a Zen Buddhist, a Methodist and a Neopagan, or an Evangelical and an Orthodox Jew. So really, it’s impossible to take about all the many ways that such interfaith exploration can be a blessing — or can have problems emerge.
So let me just offer a few orienting guidelines from my own experience.
I believe the single best way to prepare ourselves for interfaith or inter spiritual exploration is to be knowledgeable and grounded in our own tradition. It seems to me that too many people abandon Christianity to become Wiccans or Buddhists or Muslims (or, for that matter, agnostics or atheists) but they really are not very knowledgeable about the religion they are rejecting. Often we are only exposed to people who themselves know very little about the faith they are teaching. That’s tragic, but it’s a reality. But even if you are not rejecting your home faith, taking the time to understand it well gives you the tools necessary to appreciate what’s similar — and what’s different — about the other faith(s) you are exploring.
There’s a difference between “learning about” or “learning from” another religion, and actually becoming a practitioner of that religion. Some people (like Paul Knitter) advocate actually becoming “dual practitioners” — joining and adhering to two faith traditions simultaneously. Others, like Mary Margaret Funk, advocate learning about (and from) other traditions, but not actually joining them (that is, undergoing any rite of initiation). I think marriage provides a healthy analogy: think of monogamy and polyamory. Polyamory is the idealistic belief that it is possible to ethically have a romantic relationship with multiple partners. I’ve never been polyamorous myself, but I know some poly folks, and I think it takes a lot of energy to maintain multiple healthy relationships (most folks have a hard time even keeping one relationship healthy!). To me, being a member of more than one religious or spiritual group would be like having multiple romantic partners. Maybe some people can pull this off, but I suspect a lot of people might come to the conclusion that the benefits are not worth the amount of energy involved to do this well.
Like it or not, different religious or spiritual traditions have different worldviews, and different beliefs about human nature, the problem of evil, what happens after we die, etc. It’s important to acknowledge this. Let’s face it: we can’t even get Catholics and Protestants to agree on everything; and so that becomes even more pronounced when we talk about entirely different religious traditions. I’ve met a lot of people over the years who talk a good talk about “all religions are one” but if you dig deep it soon becomes apparent that they favor the teachings of one religion over the others. Or, they are the “pope” of their own pick-and-choose spirituality. I’m not trying to judge: I think this is human nature. To truly dig deep in multiple traditions (say, Christianity and Buddhism), we either have to have a healthy dose of humility (understanding that I’m a bear of little brain), or are comfortable with uncertainty and unknowing (what happens after we die? It’s a mystery) or else we are probably going to consciously or unconsciously favor one tradition over the other. Again, I’m not trying to judge anyone’s conscientious choice: but I do think we all have a responsibility to understand with clarity the choices we make.
Because of this, blending spiritual practices is probably easier than trying to reconcile belief systems. I love to meditate with Buddhists, and to attend classes on meditation taught by Buddhists. But I tend to shy away from trying to understand topics like karma or reincarnation or nirvana. Why? It’s easy to integrate meditation (a practice) with Christianity, but it’s darn near impossible to integrate Buddhist ways of seeing with Christian ways of seeing. Again, this is just what has worked for me, and someone like Paul Knitter might have a different perspective. “The quick answer is, there is no quick answer!”
I realize I haven’t even begun to answer this question of how to set appropriate boundaries. That’s because I think ultimately it varies from person to person. So let me end by suggesting that everyone who is serious about deep spiritual work needs to be able to discuss this work with others — or at least one other. A spiritual director or companion, a confessor, a community of monastic associates or centering prayer practitioners — finding a community of people with whom we can work through the challenges and opportunities of interfaith or interspiritual exploration is, I think really essential. I know we are rapidly becoming a nation of people who love spirituality but reject religion: and yet I think at its best, spirituality is meant to be social and communal. So find some sympathetic friends you can share your journey with. They will help you to set the boundaries that are right for you.
Christianity has a long history of contemplative practice.
But many scholars and spiritual teachers within the faith recognize that in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Reformation, the church (at least in the west) largely lost its contemplative heart.
Theologian Robert Davis Hughes III addressed this topic in his book Beloved Dust. Hughes wrote that after the Reformation, “spirituality, especially the more contemplative or mystical side, is marginalized as dangerous to the forces of good order.”
The Reformation, on one level, was a fight over authority: is the leadership of the church the final word on earthly religious authority, or is the Bible? In such a debate, contemplatives and mystics, who find at least some sense of authority in the authenticity of their own experience, are indeed likely to be seen as “dangerous to the forces of good order”—by all parties.
And if the marginalization of contemplation began in the church, the rise of science and modernity meant that the spirituality of inner experience became even more suspect. Is it any wonder that dictionaries (like the Oxford English Dictionary) began defining “mysticism” as, for example, “self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought”?
While the late 19th century saw some resurgence of interest in the interior dimension of spirituality, thanks to the work of psychologists like William James or theologians like Friedrich Von Hügel, the 20th and 21st centuries will probably been seen in ages to come as the age of the renaissance of contemplation in the west.
But our age is the also the age of interfaith encounters.
Indeed, ours is the first era of human history when so many different faith and wisdom traditions have become so readily accessible even to the average person, at least in urban centers (and more recently, through cyberspace).
What is interesting to consider is the ways in which these two spiritual megatrends—the rebirth of Christian contemplation in the west, and the rise of interfaith dialogue and encounter—seem to be interrelated.
The Buddha and Christ: if we refuse to see them as foes, it is easy to see them as friends. (Photo credit: Shutterstock)
Let me offer a bit of anecdotal evidence.
Several years before entering the Trappist monastery, Thomas Merton (while still a graduate student at Columbia) befriended an Indian scholar named Mahanambrata Brahmachari. As recounted in The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton was bemused when his Hindu friend insisted that he read Augustine’s Confessions along with The Imitation of Christ. “He seemed to feel as if he were in possession of a truth that would come to most Americans as news,” wrote Merton. “As if there was something in their own cultural heritage that they had long since forgotten: and he could remind them of it.”
But Brahmachari was hardly the only non-Christian to influence the spiritual life of a Christian contemplative. Tilden Edwards, the Episcopal priest who founded the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, did so after spending two months on retreat under the spiritual guidance of the Buddhist Rinpoché Tarthang Tulku. Edwards recounts in his book Living Simply Through the Day how he asked the Rinpoché to be his teacher, only to get this surprising response: “I am your Tibetan priest-friend, Tilden. We are priest brothers. You don’t need to be a Buddhist student. You can learn everything I have to offer and use it within your own tradition. There is nothing to gain by crossing over. It is all there available as a Christian.”
Meanwhile, other Christians took the radical step of travelling to lands far from their home so that their Christian faith might be illuminated by the wisdom of other paths. Bede Griffiths, Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda), and Sara Grant were three European Catholics who journeyed to India, becoming friends and students of Hindu sages like Ramana Maharshi and Ram Swarup—and adopting many Hindu customs and practices, while retaining their core identity as Christians.
Centering prayer—the method of Christian contemplation popularized by Trappist monks Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, and William Meninger—while anchored in the Christian teachings of the desert fathers and mothers and the writings of the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, also was very much intended, at least in its early years, as a western alternative to eastern practices such as Zen or T.M.—which has, ironically, led to it being denounced by some ultra-conservative Christians for being too “eastern” a form of meditation.
Would the Christian contemplative renaissance have happened as fully or as quickly without the kind of inter-religious cross-fertilization that these examples exemplify?
There’s no way to tell. But perhaps it makes sense to say that Christians today who find meaning and value in contemplative spirituality really do owe a debt of gratitude to many non-Christian spiritual teachers, who, instead of seeking to convert Christians to their faith, instead helped Christians to rediscover the treasures in their own.
I was having a conversation with a group of American Christians. I told them that in the Chinese version of John’s Gospel, the WORD was translated into “Tao.” They asked me for the definition of the Tao. I replied that the Tao cannot be defined and they laughed. Apparently they don’t understand Christian theology very well. They don’t know that God cannot be defined either. It is beyond human intellect. The rational mind simply fails to grasp that such things exist. This is a blind spot in modern culture.
Instead of “You had me at hello,” for this post I’ll say “You had me at Tao.”
I’m so sorry that Ken had this experience of people laughing — but that’s evidence of our cultural “blind spot” he refers to. It’s the same blind spot that is uncomfortable with silence, that thinks religion is all about holding the correct propositions about God (and little or nothing else), and that regards mysticism — especially apophatic mysticism — and contemplation with suspicion.
Christians, of a certain mindset, simply refuse to acknowledge that God is profound, unspeakable mystery. In doing so, they play into the hands of militant atheists, who — finding the notion of God irrational rather than trans-rational — argue loudly that belief in any type of God is therefore a sign of feeble-mindedness.
So hurray for Chinese, and for “In the Beginning was the Tao.” And it gets bonus points for its delicious invitation into Christian-Taoist interreligious dialogue.
Incidentally, there’s a book called Christ the Eternal Tao by an Orthodox writer, Hieromonk Damascene. He presents Lao Tzu (author of the Tao te Ching) as a kind of precursor to Christ. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know much about it, but it seems to explore this same terrain.
If we can’t define it, can we at least explore what it means to call the Logos the Tao? I couldn’t resist googling the word, and the Oxford Dictionary’s entry for Tao came back at me. But rather than seeing this as a definition, let’s regard it as an invitation — to step deeper into the mystery.
(in Chinese philosophy) the absolute principle underlying the universe, combining within itself the principles of yin and yang and signifying the way, or code of behaviour, that is in harmony with the natural order. The interpretation of Tao in the Tao-te-Ching developed into the philosophical religion of Taoism.
So we see here a number of points where Christ can be discerned. An “absolute principle underlying the universe” calls to mind Colossians 1:15-17:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
The principles of yin and yang? In Christ there is no male and female — Galatians 3:28 — which could just as easily mean that Christ encompasses all that is good in both male and female.
Signifying the way, the code of behavior, in harmony with nature? “I am the way, the truth, and the life” proclaims Jesus in John 14:6.
But back to Ken’s main point, and here we have to turn to the opening words of the Tao te Ching:
The word that can be defined is not the real Word.
The logos that can be defined is not the true Logos.
Most Christians, as Ken Leong found out, will laugh at this. But anyone who has spent some time with the mystics will nod in recognition.
From Evagrius, to Pseudo-Dionysius, to Richard of St. Victor, to The Cloud of Unknowing, to St. John of the Cross, all the way down to Bruno Barnhart and Ramon Panikkar in our time: generation after generation, the mystics have recognized that God ushers us into the abyss, the brink of mystery, the place where language simply stops working and only silence can teach us who God truly is.
When we enter the silence, in the wordless adoration of contemplative prayer, we may (by grace) catch a glimpse of this God-who-cannot-be-defined. We may, by grace, encounter the Word who cannot be spoken.
And if nothing else, we just might come to grips with the fact that the blind spot is there, and as soon as we start thinking and talking again, it’s back online.
Which is why we need the grace of contemplation in our lives, each and every day.
I love the Beatles, and like many Beatles fans, I think The White Album is one of their great masterpieces. And one of the best songs on The White Album is, without question, “Dear Prudence.”
But did you know that the song was influenced by the music of the Gypsies, Transcendental Meditation, and the daughter (and sister) of Hollywood celebrities?
“Dear Prudence” was written in early 1968, when the Beatles were in India, while John and George were studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yoga. It was written for a woman named Prudence Farrow (Mia Farrow’s sister) who was there meditating as well, and became so immersed in her meditation practice that she rarely left her room. Hence John Lennon wrote a playful song for her, where he sings, “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?” The music was inspired, at least in part, by a Gypsy style of guitar picking that John learned from the folk-rock musician Donovan, also studying with the Maharishi.
While on the surface the song could be seen as a playful rebuke to excessive spirituality — Prudence, don’t waste your time meditating, come out to play! — at its heart “Dear Prudence” makes a powerful statement for an integral contemplative perspective: where Prudence (and by extension, anyone who listens to the song) is “part of everything” and is invited to “look around, round, round” and see the beauty in all things. The song is a reminder that there is really no line separating “spirituality” from the rest of life: it’s all connected. The point behind a contemplative practice, after all, is not merely to lose ourselves in meditation; but rather to find, through the disciplined attention of silent awareness, that we really are “part of everything” and it’s all beautiful — and so are we. In other words, contemplative practice fosters a contemplative way of life, in which we learn to see with, and through, the eyes of love at all times — not just when we are “sitting.”
The Beatles eventually became disillusioned with the Maharishi and left India. Prudence went on to become a T. M. teacher, eschewing the limelight and devoting her life to the study and practice of spirituality. Fast forward to 2015, Prudence now is a Yoga and T.M. teacher based on the Florida Gulf Coast, and has written a memoir called Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song. I haven’t read the book yet, but the other day I stumbled across a wonderful recording of a recent interview with Prudence. It’s quite enjoyable — not only as a bit of Beatles trivia, but surprisingly rich in its spiritual insight as well. Clearly, Prudence is more than just a member of a Hollywood family with a Beatles song written about her — she is an articulate and insightful woman with a clear understanding of the value of meditation and spiritual discipline.
In the interview, not only does Prudence talk about her childhood in Hollywood, but also recounts the Irish Celtic heritage — full of myth and folklore — that informed the life and spirituality of her mother, actress Maureen O’Sullivan. The interview also explores how Prudence’s childhood formation as a Catholic both inspired and challenged her when she began to explore eastern spirituality. It’s a delightful interview, a nice mix of Hollywood and Beatles lore, spirituality, and even some reflection on interspirituality. The book is now on my to-read list, but the interview itself is well worth the 45 minutes it takes to listen.
How, exactly, does Christian mysticism relate to all the other “mysticisms” of the world (Kabbalah, Sufism, Taoism, Vedanta, Zen, etc.)?
A reader of this blog writes:
I have been reading your Big Book of Christian Mysticism: on page 64 you say that “Ultimately … no absolutely clear distinction can be drawn between Christian and non-Christian mysticism.” This concerns me, because you *do* seem to say in other parts of the book that there *is* a clear distinction between the two (for one, Christian mysticism is practiced “in Christ,” and while Eastern forms of mysticism seek to empty the mind, Christian is a ‘thinking’ form of meditation [pg. 218]). So, did you come to a different conclusion while writing the book, or would you still hold that Christian and non-Christian mysticism are basically the same?
Thank you for your question. I think the issue really has to do with the distinction between “Christian mysticism” as a unique expression of Christian spirituality, and “mysticism” as a more general term referring to deep spirituality regardless of its context. To parse out that distinction, let’s look at prayer.
Any religious or faith tradition that believes in one or more gods will involve some sort of prayer — that is to say, efforts to communicate with the deity. Jews pray, Christians pray, Muslims pray, Hindus pray, theistically-minded new agers pray, even some Wiccans and other pagans pray, depending on their understanding of deity.
So prayer is an element of spirituality that transcends religious identity. And certainly there are deep similarities between say, Christian prayer and Jewish prayer. But there are also profound differences. Christians pray in, through and to Christ, while Jews and Muslims do not. Each tradition has its own language and literature of prayer, and while there is some overlap (both Christians and Jews pray the Psalms, for example) there is also much that is unique to each tradition.
And when you consider the difference between the religious traditions founded on Abrahamic monotheism, and other traditions (like Hinduism), the language, practice, and theology of prayer becomes even more varied. So much so that many Christians might not feel comfortable participating in a Hindu puja.
So is prayer a universal human activity (or near-universal, since non-theists do not pray) — or is prayer merely an umbrella term for a variety of human religious activities, many of which are incompatible at a fairly deep level? Different people with different values will answer this question differently, but I think it’s a “both/and,” not an “either/or” scenario. Prayer is universal, and prayer is varied. Both are true.
The same holds for mysticism. On one level, mysticism is an umbrella term for the spiritual heart of all the world’s great spiritual and religious traditions, holding that at their heart — at a level deeper than cultural or mythological or cognitive expression, mysticism points to something universal, nondual, inclusive, and unifying, a deep place of spiritual expression where love marginalizes dogma, compassion trumps cultural identity, and unity matters more than the human capacity to judge others.
On the other hand, Christian mysticism is not the same thing as Zen, or Sufism, or Kabbalah, or any of the other great “mystical traditions” in the world. and to say that they are the same is to be willfully ignorant of the many teachings and values that define differences between the traditions.
As I write these words, I recognize that many readers of this blog will be more comfortable with the “all mysticism is the same” perspective, while others will be more comfortable with the “each mysticism is unique” perspective. Wherever you may fall on this continuum, I invite you to consider that this is yet another mystical paradox, and that both of these perspectives have a deep truth to them — even though, on the surface, they seem contradictory.
So Christian mystics anchor their faith in Jesus Christ, and the other mysticisms of the world do not share that faith. That seems to be an irreconcilable difference. And yet, the Dalai Lama and Thomas Merton regarded each other as brothers, finding a place where they could relate out of love and compassion, all0wing their cultural and religious differences to fall away. Love conquers all. And yet, when the Dalai Lama talks to Christians, he doesn’t tell them to become Buddhists or even interspiritualists; he encourages them to be good Christians.
Now, to directly answer your question: “did you come to a different conclusion while writing the book, or would you still hold that Christian and non-Christian mysticism are basically the same?”
I would still say that mysticism, in its most general sense, points to a place beyond cultural and religious identity where we recognize the unity of all humankind, the primacy of love, and the sanctity of all life. At the same time, I would still say that Christian mysticism refers to a distinctive expression of Christian spirituality, grounded in mystery and silence and joy, that embodies what St. Peter called “partaking of the Divine nature” and Christ’s insistence that we “abide in him as he abides in us” (II Peter 1:4; John 15:4). Mysticism is universal; Christian mysticism is distinctive. Both are true. It’s a paradox.
To finish with a quote from the book: “as soon as you try to put it into your own words, mysticism unfolds itself into a variety of paradoxes and seemingly contradictory truths that leave you as confused and befuddled as ever.” (p. 25)
Sorry I can’t be any clearer than that. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Conyers GA (Photo by Haven Sweet, used by permission)
Autumn in Georgia is a mild and lovely season, marked by golden sunlight, cool mornings and temperate days. And even if we can’t boast the shock of gorgeous color that grace the trees in states like Vermont or Minnesota, we have enough yellow poplars and white oaks and other trees to remind the Georgia Pines that winter is coming. The first year of my formation as a Lay Cistercian, the colors at the monastery were particularly vivid — not only the native trees, but two ginkgoes that stood on either side of a short flight of steps leading from the church to the guesthouse. As the yellow ginkgo leaves fell, it seemed like the sidewalk had been carpeted in a luminous gold.
But the beauty of nature is not all that I remember from that fall. One conversation from my novice class particularly stands out. We were reading André Louf’s The Cistercian Way. Although written for monks, the book offers insight into the spirituality and life of contemplative monastics that anyone might find inspiring. I certainly was enjoying both the book and the class and looked forward to our monthly gathering where, with my eleven fellow-novices, I would reflect on the unique gifts of the Cistercian tradition and their meaning for my life.
Our topic on this particular fall day was asceticism, and one passage from Dom André’s book came up for discussion: “A genuine interior life can grow only through the body. This is true of every system of spiritual development inside or outside the Christian religion.”[i]
In our conversation, one of my fellow novices related this passage to her daily practice of yoga. Immediately, another woman in the class expressed her discomfort with the idea that a Catholic, or indeed any Christian, could ever engage in yoga, since it originated within Hinduism. “Blending un-Christian practices with Christianity just strikes me as being disobedient to God. What do you think?” she asked, directing her inquiry to our instructor — who was a substitute for our regular novice master that month — a grandmotherly woman who had been one of the first Lay Cistercians at our monastery, and was well-known for her gentle, but strictly orthodox, expression of faith. I held my breath, concerned that her answer would either upset me, or the woman who asked the question.
“Here’s how I see it,” the teacher began. “Some Christians discern a call to explore the teachings and practices of other faiths. That’s certainly not true for all Christians,” she hastened to add. “I certainly don’t have any sense of being called in that way. But some do. Now, if you don’t have a call to learn about other faiths, then by all means, don’t go there. But if you do, then you should be faithful to your call. And all of us need to learn to respect the fact that different people express their faith in different ways.”
Humbled by her gently-stated wisdom, I realized — perhaps for the first time — that my spiritual calling involved two dimensions: a calling to deep loyalty and fidelity to my faith as a contemplative Christian, along with a simultaneous calling to learn of the wisdom and beauty of other wisdom traditions. I would say “all” wisdom traditions, although I do not feel drawn to all equally: I sense a greater affinity with Buddhism and Neopaganism than with Sikhism or Baha’i. But even the paths I am not intuitively drawn to still interest me, and when I meet a Sikh or a Baha’i, I’m as interested in their stories as in the stories of any Catholic or Presbyterian I encounter.
So — called to deep fidelity to one path, and deep engagement with interspirituality and interfaith dialogue. Is such a “dual calling” even possible? Some might question it, but, to borrow the words attributed to Huston Smith when a woman objected to him calling himself a Zen Catholic: “here I am.”
A Long and Meandering Path
My journey to interspirituality has taken a long and meandering path. I think it started with rock and roll; specifically, with the 70’s prog-rock band Yes and their 1973 album Tales from Topographic Oceans, which many critics hate but I happen to think is their magnum opus. It’s a concept album, based on an idea that lead singer Jon Anderson found in the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Because I loved Yes and loved the album, I bought the book and devoured it. And an entire world opened up to me: the world of spirituality outside of Christianity. I was a Protestant teenager in a small city in the south; “interfaith” to me meant being nice to the Jewish kids in my school. I had learned about other religions in my social studies class, but Yogananda’s book was my first foray into the spirituality of other faiths, seen from the inside. Reading it did not make me want to give up being a Christian or become a Hindu. It just made me realize that there was something deeper than just the external observance of this or that religion could provide.
A year or two later a friend gave me a copy of Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism, primarily about Christian mysticism — and it opened up the world of deep Christian spirituality for me in a manner similar to how Yogananda’s book introduced me to the idea of world mysticism. About this time I went off to college, and being both geeky and an introvert, I found that books became my spiritual companions, friends, and confidants. On the Christian side, I was reading folks like Morton Kelsey, C. S. Lewis, Evelyn Underhill, and Thomas Merton; on the interfaith side, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, Starhawk, and Baba Ram Dass. And then there was Matthew Fox, who was a Christian priest but kept talking about other faiths; for that Matter, Merton in his later writings did the same. In graduate school I discovered the Shalem Institute, where I studied Christian meditation, while also encountering the work of the Tibetan Buddhist Tarthang Tulku.
More twists and turns ensued. Drawn to Neopaganism, I alternately tried being a type of hybrid “Episcopagan,” — since I was an Anglican at the time — and turning my back on Christianity to study (and write about) Paganism exclusively. But despite the many flaws of the institutional church, the beauty and splendor of Christianity, especially in its mystical and contemplative expressions, would not let me go. My love for Jesus Christ and his teachings, and the wisdom of his followers like Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart and Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, simply was knit into my spiritual DNA. I soon came to realize that I could no more stop being a Christian than a gay person going through “ex-gay therapy” can stop experiencing same-sex attraction. But the other dimension of my spiritual identity retains just as strong a hold on me. Even after I returned to Christian identity and practice after my period of exploring Neopaganism, I continued to yearn for spiritual nurture that I could only find in non-Christian contexts: whether that meant studying meditation at the Shambhala Center, finding meaning in the myths and legends of the pre-Christian Celts, or participating in interfaith meditation circles such as are held in Atlanta every Sunday night.
I feel vulnerable as I write these words, for I know that plenty of folks on both sides of my spiritual identity will find much to reject in who I am. On the Christian side there are those, like my friend at the monastery, who see Christians “dabbling” in Buddhism or Sufism or Neopaganism as a type of spiritual adultery; while on the other side is the entire “spiritual but not religious” community, who find meaning and purpose in a self-directed program of mystical inquiry — but who chafe at the boundaries and commitments that any one religious tradition might want to impose upon them. I stand in the middle, seeking a spirituality that is radically faithful to the Christian tradition while radically open to wisdom and truth wherever it may be found. And while I may have my critics, thankfully I am not alone.
The Rock and the River
In the 1960s the Anglican theologian Martin Thornton wrote a book called The Rock and the River about Christianity and what he called “modern thought” (but today would be considered post-modern). Writing at the height of the “death of God” controversy, Thornton attempted to make an irenic statement: Christians can hold on to the truths of their faith while being fully engaged with the concerns of the present age. He compared “traditional (Christian) spirituality” to a rock — stable, unchanging, firm. Meanwhile, the kaleidoscopic flux of contemporary philosophy he likened to a river, ever changing, dynamic, endlessly flowing. Thornton’s basic argument: that while some might insist that the rock is a good thing and the river something dangerous, or alternatively, that the river is “current” while the rock hopelessly ancient; Christian spirituality at its best involves a dynamic synthesis between the unchanging rock and the dynamic river. Citing Psalm 78:20 (“he struck the rock so that water gushed out and torrents overflowed”), Thornton suggests that a truly Biblical understanding of faith encompasses both that which is immutable and that which is always evolving.
It’s not the best of analogies (what immediately comes to my mind: most streams teem with life while a stone is basically inorganic), but it does point to the tension between what the Benedictine tradition calls stability — a commitment to a particular place, a particular community, and a particular set of values — and the reality that, as Jefferson Airplane once bluntly sang, “life is change.” As a spiritual virtue, stability suggests that change is something we should resist, avoid, or deny. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church to the latest evangelical statement about Biblical inerrancy, much Christian thought is geared toward a strict conservatism: if the Gospel is true, one mark of its truth is that it never varies. But while that might work in the abstract realm of pure thought, in the messy reality of material life, the human experience is all about change.
Heraclitus observed that one cannot step in the same river twice; and likewise, a core principle of Buddhism is the sheer impermanence of all things. But even the Benedictine tradition with its loyalty to stability has room for the changeableness of things. St. Benedict insisted that his monks practice hospitality; indeed, they were to welcome strangers and guests with the same honor and respect they would offer to Christ himself. As anyone who has ever offered hospitality to houseguests knows, welcoming the stranger into one’s home leads to a kind of small-scale chaos: having visitors will disrupt your routines, your space, and perhaps even your values. Granted, healthy hospitality must include boundaries; you are welcome to stay in my home, but you don’t get to take my belongings with you when you leave. Yet isn’t this the risk of hospitality? To invite another person into your home is to invite an element of chaos, of discord, of change. It is to place the stability of your ordinary life at risk, even if only temporarily.
Thornton’s analogy of the rock and the river sheds light on how to navigate the spirituality of remaining faithful to Christian tradition, while also living in the reality of the twentieth century. Fifty years later, we can take his basic metaphor and apply it to an even larger challenge: how can a person remain faithful to the “rock” of his or her “home” spiritual identity (Christian or otherwise), while simultaneously embracing the “river” of interspirituality — encountering, learning from, and even practicing with, the wisdom and practice of other faiths?
The Buddha and Christ (image credit: beachlane/shutterstock)
The Choice of Not Choosing
For me at least, the key lies not in choosing between the rock and the river, but in avoiding the temptation to make that kind of an exclusionary choice. Too much rock without any river seems to point to fundamentalism: a closed religious system where any kind of outside information or values is summarily rejected, leaving only an internal feedback loop where anything that is foreign is regarded as dangerous, if not downright evil. But on the other hand (and to my mind, equally unacceptable) is the scenario of too much river and no rock: this leads to what Ken Wilber has described as “aperspectival madness,” or anchorless relativism: which begins with an honorable desire to respect and embrace all culture and wisdom, all theology and philosophy, but soon collapses under its own dogmatic assertion that no perspective is any better than any other — which may run the risk of leading from boundary-less relativism to unfettered skepticism, culminating in a kind of self-centered nihilism, where no truth, no meaning, no value can exist — other than what I deem worthy or important, of course. If fundamentalism is anchored in a kind of strict authoritarianism where the decrees of my religious tradition are absolute and cannot be questioned, the opposite danger of relativism seems to collapse into a kind of tyrannical narcissism, where all that matters is my own opinion, my own preferences, my own appetites. It’s just as tyrannical, only I get to play the tyrant for myself.
Having said this, let me hasten to recall the wisdom of my novice teacher on that autumn day several years ago: each of us must respect the dictates of our own inner calling (which, hopefully, we sort out with the support of a trusted friend or spiritual companion). Some people really are called to a spiritual identity that happily and healthily remains anchored in just one religious expression. Others may experience a call to be what Rabbi Rami Shapiro calls “spiritually independent.” I don’t mean to criticize how anyone may experience his or her spiritual calling, as long as such a calling can foster true growth in love and compassion. But for me, clearly, I cannot simply abandon the rock or the river. I am faced with the challenge of learning to embrace both.
So what does “embracing both” the rock of religious identity and the river of interspirituality look like? How can I (and others who may experience a similar calling) create a healthy center, where both religious stability and interspiritual hospitality can be embraced — and integrated — in a meaningful, sustainable, and workable way? I think we have to acknowledge at the outset that diversity is the key; in other words, different people may find that healthy center point in different places. In her wonderful book Growing in Love & Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation, Susan J. Stabile looks at how different Christians have engaged with Buddhism in different ways:
Roger Corless, for example, viewed himself as a dual practitioner of Buddhism and Catholicism. Despite his belief that there were irreconcilable differences between the two, he…believed he could be present to both traditions. Similarly, Paul Knitter (who does refer to himself as a “Buddhist-Christian”) talks about “double-belonging”… Although his primary source of identity is Christianity, Buddhism is central to Knitter’s spirituality.[ii]
Stabile, who was raised Catholic but spent many years as a Buddhist before returning to Catholicism, goes on to contrast her own spiritual identity with that of Corless and Knitter. “‘Double-belonging’ doesn’t fit for me. Thus, I tend to describe myself as a Christian whose Christianity is very much informed by my years as a Buddhist.”[iii]
While Corless, Knitter and Stabile are each navigating the question of integrating just two specific wisdom traditions — Christianity and Buddhism — I believe their experience can be generalized to anyone seeking to integrate fidelity to one path with engagement with interspirituality, whether that means one or more additional paths. Corless’s idea of “dual practice” implies holding both (or all) traditions lightly; Knitter’s notion of “double-belonging” suggests a more engaged relationship with each path; and Stabile’s wordy self-description of “a Christian…informed by my years as a Buddhist” speaks to a specific understanding of holding one path as central, even while acknowledging the contribution of others.
Contemplation is the Key
Like Corless, Knitter and Stabile, each of us must chart our own course, and perhaps articulate our own understanding, of how best to integrate fidelity to one path (or more) while also embracing interspirituality. But I think in addition to this acceptance of diversity, the other key element necessary for this kind of spiritual exploration is some form of contemplative practice.
I explore the wisdom of the world's religions not to water down my faith, but to deepen it.
There’s a joke — I have no idea where it comes from — that if you gather theologians and philosophers from different religious traditions and put them together in a lecture hall, the more they engage with one another, the more hostile they will become to each other’s views. Meanwhile, gather monks and nuns from different traditions and put them in a monastery together. They will simply sit in silence together, and then embrace each other as brothers and sisters.
I know from my own experience participating in an interfaith meditation group, that sitting in a circle with Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Baha’i, and others: if we begin with twenty minutes or so of silence, then the following hour of conversation will be gentle and inclusive. Of course, each of us will “use” the silence in a way consistent with our own background and tradition. Centering prayer is not the same thing as shamatha meditation, and that’s okay. What unifies us is the contemplative stance: the willingness to enter into silence with humility, and unknowing, and compassion. That, I believe, is a key not only to interspirituality, but also to fostering meaningful interfaith dialogue.
I’m writing these words in the dog days of summer, but soon the days will grow noticeably shorter and the hot Georgia summer will yield to the mellow days of autumn. The trees will change color, and each one will present a different hue. How wonderful it is that so many colors dance before us in those final days before winter. Wouldn’t life be diminished if every tree were the same? Isn’t it a good thing that poplars are poplars, oaks are oaks, ginkgoes are ginkgoes? And isn’t it a blessing that they stand together in the parks and forests where their diversity of colors can bring joy to our eyes? I think we can learn a lot from the trees, as we seek to be the persons we are called to be, while engaged with others whose paths are unlike our own. Our diversity, like the colors of autumn, is a beautiful thing.
[i] Louf, André. The Cistercian Way (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1983), p. 82.
[ii] Stabile, Susan J. Growing in Love and Wisdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 18-19
Are you interested in exploring the richness of dialogue and interspiritual practice between Christianity and Buddhism? If so, then here’s enough literature to keep you going for a while. Each of the books on the following list has some sort of connection with both Christianity and Buddhism.
Some of these titles are academic studies, some the writings of monastics, others geared toward the laity. Some are books by Christians about Buddhism, or by Buddhists about interfaith dialogue; by Christians who find meditation a helpful adjunct to their primarily Christ-centered faith, or by persons who identify as “dual practitioners,” seeking an authentic path that is simultaneously faithful to both the Gospel and the Dharma. One or two are by Christians, about Christian spirituality, but informed by the author’s Buddhist practice.
Thomas Merton and the Dalai Lama, 1968. Copyright of the Merton Legacy Trust and the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University. Used with permission.
This list is rather weighted toward the Christian side of the conversation. I would love to include more Buddhist authors and more Buddhist perspectives on Christianity, but I’m not as familiar with the Buddhist side of this conversation. While the most popular topic of these books is meditation, some are more narrowly focused on matters such as theodicy or psychology.
I have only read a fraction of these books myself, so I offer them here with no endorsement other than my own interest in the subject. I have tried to avoid listing books that promote one religion at the expense of the other; but since I have not read all the following titles, it’s possible that books like that have been listed. Please keep in mind that interreligious dialogue is a messy business and it is inevitable that the books on this list will represent a variety of perspectives on both Christianity and Buddhism. The bottom line: you are advised to read with a discerning mind. (more…)
