Vouthon recommended **Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness **by Evelyn Underhill. I am slowly working my way through it. The bold is mine.
christianmystics.com/Ebooks/Mysticism_Study_Nature_Development/mysticism.pdf
Yes
As I said previously in a PM, I do feel that Evelyn is often mistaken in her understanding of Buddhism, as were many many Western Christians in the late 19th century and at the very beginning of the 20th. Max Muller had, of course, translated the Dhammpada into German in the 1880s however that aside the rest of the Tipitaka was not readily available to most in the West. Buddhism was viewed as this kind of exotic “Oriental” mysticism by most contemporary Christians and was thus lumped together in the popular mindset with Hinduism and Sufism.
There are thus a few inaccuracies and strange comments by Underhill on “Buddhism”. I hope that one understands that, given that the first edition of this book is from the Edwardian era, it was before the time of interfaith dialogue and there was scarce knowledge among Westerners of actual Buddhism (Evelyn herself had never studied Buddhism but relied upon what other Western Christians told her of “Oriental Mysticism”).
Buddhism does not teach the “annihilation of self”, as Evelyn was wrongly led to believe by her Western sources, nor is it pantheistic but rather it teaches “Not-self” - one could say that self is an “illusion” formed by the developing mind from childhood onwards.
This idea, if I am correct (and I am so often wrong myself when getting my head around these difficult Buddhist concepts
) is not actually completely alien to Catholic mysticism either. Henry Suso spoke of an illusionary “fifth self” which men fashion for themselves (no pun intended). The key distinction is that the Western mystics spoke through the language of Neo-platonism and Aristotelianism - Greek philosophy - which does posit, as Rossum explained earlier, “substances” and “essences” to things.
As Suso explained:
"…Whoever wants to achieve a true return and become a son in Christ, let him in true detachment turn to him and away from himself. Then he will come to where he should be - true detachment…Take note with careful discrimination of these two words: oneself and leave. If you know how to weigh these two words properly, testing their meaning thoroughly to their core and viewing them with true discernment, then you will quickly grasp the truth.
Take, first of all, the first word - oneself or myself - and see what it is. It is important to realize that everyone has five kinds of self.
The first ‘self’, one has in common with a stone, and this is being. The second one shares with plants, and that is growing. The third self one shares with the animals, and this is sensation. The fourth one shares with all other men, and this is is that one posseses a common human nature in which all men are one.
The fifth - which belongs to a person exclusively as his own - is his personality, one’s individual human self, both with respect to one’s nobility and with respect to accident. Now, what is it that leads a person astray and robs him of happiness?
It is exclusively this last *self *. Because of it a person turns outward, away from God and toward himself, when he should be re-turning inward, and he fashions for himself his own self according to what is accidental. He thoughtlessly makes himself a ‘self’ of his own. In his ignorance he appropriates to this ‘self’ what is God’s. This is the direction he takes, and he eventually sinks into sinfulness.
But whoever would really leave this self should have three insights. First, he should turn his thoughtful gaze upon the nothingness of his own self and see that this self, and the self of all things, is a nothing, removed and excluded from that something which is the sole productive force. The second insight is that it not be overlooked that in this state of utter detachment one’s own self rests entirely upon one’s operative being, (as one realizes) after one becomes concious of oneself again and is not utterly destroyed. The third insight occurs as one becomes less and less, and freely surrenders oneself in everything in which one had become involved by looking to one’s creaturely existence in unfree multiplicity, as opposed to divine truth.
Ome surrenders oneself in happiness or suffering, in action or inaction in such a way that one loses oneself completely and utterly, withdrawing from oneself irreversibly and becoming one in unity with Christ, so that one always acts at his urging and receives all things and views all things in this unity. And this…becomes the same form as Christ about whom the scripture by Paul says, “I live, no longer I, Christ lives in me”…
What happens to a drunken man happens to him, though it cannot really be described, that he so forgets his self that he is not at all his self and consequently has got rid of his self completely and lost himself entirely in God, becoming one spirit in all ways with him, just as a small drop of water does which has been dropped into a large amount of wine. Just as the drop of water loses itself, drawing the taste and colour of the wine to and into itself, so it happens that those who are in full possession of blessedness lose all human desires in an inexpressible manner, and they ebb away from themselves and are immersed completely in the divine will. Otherwise, if something of the individual were to remain of which he or she were not completely emptied, scripture could not be true in stating that God shall become all things in all things. Certainly one’s being remains, but in a different form, in a different resplendence, and in a different power. This is all the result of total detachment from self…"
*** - Blessed Henry Suso (1295-1366), Catholic mystic***
Blessed Henry Suso was the most well-known mystic in medeival times. His “Little Book of Eternal Wisdom” was the most popular mystical text of the entire Medeival era. It was reprinted, copied and re-produced en masse more than any other Catholic mystical text among ordinary laity.
The “individual” self or “personality”, as Suso explains, is “made” by man alone ie it doesn’t actually exist but man fashions it for himself and this false, made-up conception of “self” is at the root of human sin and all separation from God. The “self” of all things is “nothingness”.
So we do have a “kind” of belief in “Not-self” which if Evelyn had possessed proper understanding of Buddhism in 1910 and actually been able to read English translations of the suttas, she might have discerned.
You see, I suggested Evelyn’s book because it is a systematic description of key stages but I do not agree with all of her opinions, which though wonderful and deep, do have a time-bound effect.
It is better to read the mystics for oneself and come to one’s own conclusions. Book’s like Evelyn’s are nonetheless helpful when this is not possible, or as a starter.
Christianity was expressed through Greek philosophy because of locality. It can equally be expressed through Indian philosophy ie Sramana, Buddhist, Jain and this would “enrich” Christian thought as Blessed Pope John Paul II once said.
That is the task for us post-60s, Thomas Merton-influenced Catholics
