"Buddhist Iconography, Christian Iconography: Buddhist Spirituality, Christian Spirituality," a blog article

[nuntym]

+JMJ+

contemplativeinthemud.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/buddhist-iconography-christian-iconography-buddhist-spirituality-christian-spirituality/

While saints like John of the Cross teach that God will take away our spiritual control and strip us of our sense consolations and spiritual consolations, they never say to deliberately seek an empty mind. For a self-emptied mind means a very powerful self-will – and for Christians, this self-will must be starved, not fed. We cannot empty our mind. And that’s not the point. We can only do the will of God, and God will show us that our mind, our heart, our affections, our will, our memory: all are ill-suited to accommodate God. Then, when we see this, God will dry them up, carve our capacities deeper, and pour himself into them.

I am liking this blog more and more

 

[christofirst]

+JMJ+

contemplativeinthemud.wordpress.com/2014/09/19/buddhist-iconography-christian-iconography-buddhist-spirituality-christian-spirituality/

While saints like John of the Cross teach that God will take away our spiritual control and strip us of our sense consolations and spiritual consolations, they never say to deliberately seek an empty mind. For a self-emptied mind means a very powerful self-will – and for Christians, this self-will must be starved, not fed. We cannot empty our mind. And that’s not the point. We can only do the will of God, and God will show us that our mind, our heart, our affections, our will, our memory: all are ill-suited to accommodate God. Then, when we see this, God will dry them up, carve our capacities deeper, and pour himself into them.

I am liking this blog more and more

I am glad you find this writer to your liking. A few points came to mind as I read his post. To stop at, or to become fixated on the idea of emptying the mind during prayer would be to entirely miss the point of Christian meditation as I have come to understand it. We let go of extraneous thoughts and look within because God is within. But we don’t stop there, because we know that God transcends all things in ways that thoughts and words can never fully express.

In his blog, this writer dismisses the idea of “baptizing” Eastern, non-Christian forms of prayer. I would hold up Fr. John Main, O.S.B., as an example of someone who did exactly that. He learned meditation in the East before he joined the Benedictines, and then saw the similarities with what the Desert Fathers taught - especially Evagrius and John Cassian. Think about what baptism means. When one is baptized, they are no longer what they were before. Similarities remain, but we are reborn in Christ. So it is with Christian Meditation as Fr. John came to teach it.

The blog writer says that praying this way is an act of “powerful self-will”. I would argue that it is an act of surrender. Every time we pray, be it discursive prayer or prayer without form, it is an act of our will, after all, but as Christians we always try to orient our will toward God and His divine will. At least that’s how I see it.

Anyway, thanks for posting. It has given me food for thought (which I will put out of my mind when next I pray) .