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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/18/2010 9:03 AM (GMT -6) |   | Loder. Transforming Moment. pp. 85-87
The power of the Holy is not pious wishing, but solid truth, as illustrated by the case of Julia de Beausobre, author of "The Woman Who Could Not Die" and "Creative Suffering." She was taken into a Russian prison and subjected to severe and systematic torture. Her sadistic training officer was a master at breaking down every defense; yet she continued to search for ways to find meaning in her absurd situation. When she tried to fight back, she whetted his sadistic appetite. Finally, she prayed and found herself asking the right question: "What are you [God] doing in this situation?"
Praying in this way, she found herself "permeating the situation with consciousness." By such permeation, she began to look at the training officer with a new awareness of the dynamics of his selfhood. Yet if she became even subtly sentimental toward him, or overly indulgent of his perversity, he brutalized her all the more. Furthermore, if she became self-pitiful, or overindulgent of her own plight, he did the same.
The upshot was that she gradually found a place between indulgence on either side, a fine edge of serenity which she said was founded on a divine "Rock." This place was the Presence in her, on which the core of her personality was founded and of which she was a part. This shining center of herself, she learned, was strengthened and brightened with ever new act of brutality. She found herself so grounded on and so much a part of the Rock that she grew perfectly quite despite the pain. Realizing he could not disrupt here serenity, the training officer lost interest. This was not only merciful but redemptive, because the Presence of the Holy in her freed the sadist from his obsession and freed her for centeredness in God.
The root significance of the Hebrew word Qadosh ( "holy" ) is "separate." There is no compromise of that separateness in saying that in the midst of the deepest extremity a sense of the Holy in us cries out for a manifestation of the Holy beyond us. This describes the quality of the Presence of the Holy as that which is indeed separate but not unknowable; rather, it is separate and remaking us in its image.
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De Beausobre experienced the Presence of the Holy as that which grounded her selfhood beyond her context of nothingness. Thus, she experienced the fourth dimension of human being that is always intuitively present; in her case, it was manifest directly, or "revealed" in the face of nothingness, was transformed and the whole matter became redemptive.
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Sounds like De Beausobre got in touch with the "point of pure truth" that Thomas Merton talked about...
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It its so to speak his name written on us, as our poverty, as our indigence, and our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond , blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions or points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…The gate of heaven is everywhere.
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/18/2010 9:38:48 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/18/2010 9:09 AM (GMT -6) | | From here...
The Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra specifically contrasts its doctrine of the self with that of the Astikas in order to remove the reifying notion that the self was a little person or homunculus, the size of a grain of rice or of one's thumb, sitting in the heart of the being, thus: "mundane [philosophers] mistakenly imagine it to be a person (puruṣa) the size of a thumb, the size of a pea or a grain of rice that dwells shining in the heart." This, the Buddha says, is a misconception of the nature of self, for "that opinion of theirs is a mistaken opinion, one that is transmitted onwards from person to person, but it is neither beneficial nor conducive to happiness." The self of which the Buddha speaks is said by him to be the "essential intrinsic being" (svabhava) or even "life-essence" (jīvaka) of each person, and this essential being is none other than the Buddha himself - "radiantly luminous" and "as indestructible as a diamond".
Moreover, the Buddhist tantric scripture entitled Chanting the Names of Mañjuśrī (Mañjuśrī-nāma-saṅgīti), as quoted by the great Tibetan Buddhist master, Dolpopa, repeatedly exalts not the non-self but the self and applies the following terms to this ultimate reality:
"the pervasive Lord" (vibhu)
"Buddha-Self"
"the beginningless Self" (anādi-ātman)
"the Self of Thusness" (tathatā-ātman)
"the Self of primordial purity" (śuddha-ātman)
"the Source of all"
"the Self pervading all"
"the Single Self" (eka-ātman)
"the Diamond Self" (vajra-ātman)
"the Solid Self" (ghana-ātman)
"the Holy, Immovable Self"
"the Supreme Self"
In the Ghanavyuha Sutra (as quoted by Longchenpa) this immutable, universal and salvific Buddha essence (the true self of the Buddha) is said to be the ground of all things, but it is viewed by fools as something changeful and impermanent, whereas in fact it is stated by the Buddha to be the very opposite of such impermanence:
... the ultimate universal ground also has always been with the Buddha-Essence (Tathagatagarbha), and this essence in terms of the universal ground has been taught by the Tathagata. The fools who do not know it, because of their habits, see even the universal ground as (having) various happiness and suffering and actions and emotional defilements. Its nature is pure and immaculate, its qualities are as wishing-jewels; there are neither changes nor cessations. Whoever realizes it attains Liberation ...
The Buddha in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra insists that the self of the Buddha (the Buddha-nature which is present in all beings) is everlasting, pure and blissful and is most definitely not transitory and impermanent:
The Buddha-Nature is the Eternal, Bliss, the Self, and the Pure ... The Buddha-Nature is not non-Eternal, not non-Bliss, not non-Self, and not non-Purity.
The Buddha-nature is in fact taught in such tathāgatagarbha sutras to be ultimate, conceptually inconceivable, immortal reality.
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Tom, I'm thinking analogies, again...with respect to Mahayana Buddhism...
"svabhava" of a thing <=> "logos" of a thing
Buddha-Nature <=> God the Logos
Sunyata/Emptiness <=> "Void" grounded in sustaining activity of the Spirit of God the Logos (basically the affirmation that Creation is absolutely dependent upon the divine immanence grounding it, thus having no "inherent existence" )
Bodhi <=> Knowing the reality of "Void" and Divine Ground and self-relating from that perspective <=> theoria
In other words, if you were to get a Mahayana Buddhist monk and a hesychastic Christian ascetic talking about Creation in relationship to that which is ultimate...you'd have AMAZINGLY similar ontological categories.
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/18/2010 9:37:19 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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