Mystics and doctrine?

[catholicscot]

BTW Did I tell you that I also am from Scotland? (I say UK because I am vehemently opposed to Scottish Nationalism and want to stress that Scot and Brit are not oppositional terms).

That was a splendid post my friend. I hope that many read it, since they would learn an awful lot from what you have to say.

I particularly like your conclusion:

Quote:
These mystic peaks, however, only qualify to be called enlightenment in the sense that the knowledge of the fact that we really know nothing is the fullest enlightenment that we can have. The idea of Union transcends the notion of satori. It is an entering into the Divine life and it’s entering into us. As conversion is relationship so Union is consummation.

Thank you. The Scots do turn up pretty much everywhere, for good or for ill.

In another recent blog I made the point that in some senses humility is another way of saying truthfulness. The perception that we are insignificant as a perfectly accurate summation of what we really are. The mystic Union, grounded on humility, I think takes that perception into a transcendent level where the knowing our insignificance and the knowing that we are loved despite it disappears into a direct experience of these truths.

 

[Jeanne1184]

I have limited knowledge of the doctrines, but I think you have it about right. Catholic mystics put a higher focus on seeking to experience the divine presence and probably pray that God will help them understand the doctrines. The church has a rich history of mystics but I think the present church is ambivalent; there does not appear to be any discipline to follow; or a someone to go to for instructions.

Saint Thomas’s mystical experience recorded in Thurston and Attwater revision of Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, is described in this way:
"On the feast of St. Nicholas [in 1273, Aquinas] was celebrating Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work the Summa Theologiae unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” "

It would appear that in the last 2 years of his life, St Thomas total focus was on experience.

Thomas Aquinas is one of the best examples of how one cannot ‘reason their way to God’; Reason alone will never be ‘enough’. There is a blind spot in Reason that only the Holy Spirit can expose and rectify.

1 Cor. 12:3 - “…no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

GK Chesterton said the same thing: “You can only find Truth with logic if you have already found Truth without it.” Use all the logic one wants - after one finds the Holy Spirit; until then, logic is necessarily faulty.

Latest technology to cure disease? Who would need it if one had the Holy Spirit: “Rise and walk; your sins are forgiven you.” The New Testament precepts are simple - Truth is Simple. St. Paul doesn’t sound anything like Aquinas.

That Aquinas’ works are still so oft quoted today despite his experience of Holy Spirit finally getting ‘a Word in edgewise’ over his vain imaginations and Reason, is a remarkable thing. He calls his life’s work “straw” - and he isn’t believed when he finally speaks Truth.

I don’t have any problem with St. Aquinas being called ‘saint’ - but for his Awakening, not his works. I believe that only the Holy Spirit could have cut through the intellectual pride with such utter finesse to render Aquinas to a state of 'Knowing, beyond doubt." It is the Indwelling/Fullness of the Holy Spirit that made the apostles and disciples ‘saints’ - and nothing more nor less, to me.

Of course, that’s just the view from here…

 

[fhansen]

Thomas Aquinas is one of the best examples of how one cannot ‘reason their way to God’; Reason alone will never be ‘enough’. There is a blind spot in Reason that only the Holy Spirit can expose and rectify.

1 Cor. 12:3 - “…no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”

GK Chesterton said the same thing: “You can only find Truth with logic if you have already found Truth without it.” Use all the logic one wants - after one finds the Holy Spirit; until then, logic is necessarily faulty.

Latest technology to cure disease? Who would need it if one had the Holy Spirit: “Rise and walk; your sins are forgiven you.” The New Testament precepts are simple - Truth is Simple. St. Paul doesn’t sound anything like Aquinas.

That Aquinas’ works are still so oft quoted today despite his experience of Holy Spirit finally getting ‘a Word in edgewise’ over his vain imaginations and Reason, is a remarkable thing. He calls his life’s work “straw” - and he isn’t believed when he finally speaks Truth.

I don’t have any problem with St. Aquinas being called ‘saint’ - but for his Awakening, not his works. I believe that only the Holy Spirit could have cut through the intellectual pride with such utter finesse to render Aquinas to a state of 'Knowing, beyond doubt." It is the Indwelling/Fullness of the Holy Spirit that made the apostles and disciples ‘saints’ - and nothing more nor less, to me.

Of course, that’s just the view from here…

Faith and reason simply don’t conflict. But reason can support faith, and vice versa. If you read Aquinas you’ll eventually come away with the understanding that his faith was already informing his reason. God gave us reason for that very purpose; we seek understanding by our natures. To say that Aquinas’s experience rendered the rest of his work as straw is to understand that, relatively speaking, the experience of God is infinitely superior to teachings *about *God. But we still need the teachings about God in order to point the way to Him. In the end both: faith and reason- are gifts.

 

[ZenFred]

CatholicScot,

I thought your third part of Who Needs Buddha in your blog was fantastic and really got to the core of some stuff.

“Firstly, making having such an experience a primary goal of life leads to practices of self discipline, self control, benign (if detached) compassion…” and the whole paragraph that follows is right on, thanks for saying it.

The paragraph after that is really interesting…
“Secondly, satori certainly sounds like a final snapping of the threads. A reaching of the point where one is definitively, so far as it is ever possible for frail humans to do anything which they don’t subsequently undo, detached from the desire for things or for sensual pleasures as an end in themselves…”

Yes, I would say for me it is a death-like experience. One of the zen teachings say that we are beyond life and death because we have already experienced death and are already dead through our practice. I feel like if there is no God and no afterlife, then Zen is the only helpful religion because it teaches you to not be attached to even living.

Unfortunately the experience (kensho) of satori is temporary, after I stop meditating or become distracted during mindfulness it fades. I think even just knowing intellectually that is there is very helpful but it is easy to lose sight of in the disillusions of the life. Because the ego is so stubborn and the mind is so dependent on illusion, there is a need to return again and again to that centernedness of satori. Just like Christianity talks about daily dying and rising with Christ. So there is not a stop to “growing” because there are deeper and deeper understandings of the detachment from desire, liberation from suffering, and contentment of not needing to grow or achieve or go anywhere. It takes effort to just truly sit

"The idea of Union transcends the notion of satori. It is an entering into the Divine life and it’s entering into us. As conversion is relationship so Union is consummation. "

This was very interesting! I agree that reality of satori must transcend the notion of “satori”. If you call enlightenment, enlightenment then its not and calling it satori is a mistake. It should be something transcending, entering into and into us, all-consuming and yet none of those things.

So i thought your blog worded things beautifully and I’m not sure where I actually disagree if at all. I say I’m both a “Christian” and a “Buddhist” but really there labels don’t mean anything and I’m neither. I* experience the indescribable and to call it God, Satori, Christ is on some level a mistake. Maybe I’m drifting more back to Zen, but I don’t know.

*We all experience this at some point in our lives and I think most religious people experience it often, I don’t think being Zen makes me special or have spiritual super-powers.

-Fred

 

[billcu1]

One thing is for sure here in any spiritual teaching of mysticism. You can’t get anywhere thinking you know everything. Humility is the key. There’s really nothing to know if you really understand things. Knowledge will pass away and everything except charity. The highest form of love that I know and I tell people about is mentioned in 1 Corin. 13. I love those first few verses and I don’t know if the finite mind can understand those things mentioned there. But it takes grace to understand it. I know of many mystics but two of my favorites from the church is John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

 

[catholicscot]

CatholicScot,

I thought your third part of Who Needs Buddha in your blog was fantastic and really got to the core of some stuff.

“Firstly, making having such an experience a primary goal of life leads to practices of self discipline, self control, benign (if detached) compassion…” and the whole paragraph that follows is right on, thanks for saying it.

The paragraph after that is really interesting…
“Secondly, satori certainly sounds like a final snapping of the threads. A reaching of the point where one is definitively, so far as it is ever possible for frail humans to do anything which they don’t subsequently undo, detached from the desire for things or for sensual pleasures as an end in themselves…”

Yes, I would say for me it is a death-like experience. One of the zen teachings say that we are beyond life and death because we have already experienced death and are already dead through our practice. I feel like if there is no God and no afterlife, then Zen is the only helpful religion because it teaches you to not be attached to even living.

Unfortunately the experience (kensho) of satori is temporary, after I stop meditating or become distracted during mindfulness it fades. I think even just knowing intellectually that is there is very helpful but it is easy to lose sight of in the disillusions of the life. Because the ego is so stubborn and the mind is so dependent on illusion, there is a need to return again and again to that centernedness of satori. Just like Christianity talks about daily dying and rising with Christ. So there is not a stop to “growing” because there are deeper and deeper understandings of the detachment from desire, liberation from suffering, and contentment of not needing to grow or achieve or go anywhere. It takes effort to just truly sit

"The idea of Union transcends the notion of satori. It is an entering into the Divine life and it’s entering into us. As conversion is relationship so Union is consummation. "

This was very interesting! I agree that reality of satori must transcend the notion of “satori”. If you call enlightenment, enlightenment then its not and calling it satori is a mistake. It should be something transcending, entering into and into us, all-consuming and yet none of those things.

So i thought your blog worded things beautifully and I’m not sure where I actually disagree if at all. I say I’m both a “Christian” and a “Buddhist” but really there labels don’t mean anything and I’m neither. I* experience the indescribable and to call it God, Satori, Christ is on some level a mistake. Maybe I’m drifting more back to Zen, but I don’t know.

*We all experience this at some point in our lives and I think most religious people experience it often, I don’t think being Zen makes me special or have spiritual super-powers.

-Fred

Thank you for the encouraging response. My blog gets so little feedback that I’m never sure whether I’m talking nonsense or not.

I* experience the indescribable and to call it God, Satori, Christ is on some level a mistake.

This, of course, is the kind of statement that can get people jittery and is one reason why mystics often get into trouble. Set in one context it can be perfectly orthodox but taken apart from that context it can be misleading. I think Christians would insist upon the necessity for taking our relationship with Jesus as the gate through which we must enter such experiences. These encounters as peak experiences are transient but the friendship of Christ is an enduring presence which sustains us at all times. In these experiences it is predominantly the aspect of the Son as Logos rather than as the Son of Mary with which we have to deal but at all times He is both Logos and Son of Mary and that for the very good reason that our Salvation depends entirely on the Incarnation.

Talking of Salvation I am tentatively thinking of another blog, Who Needs #Buddha 4, Heaven, and I am interested on your thoughts about Nirvana, which I don’t think is a concept much used in Zen, or more generally what it is that the Buddhists you know think lies beyond the cycle of life and death.

 

[Jeanne1184]

Faith and reason simply don’t conflict. But reason can support faith, and vice versa. If you read Aquinas you’ll eventually come away with the understanding that his faith was already informing his reason. God gave us reason for that very purpose; we seek understanding by our natures. To say that Aquinas’s experience rendered the rest of his work as straw is to understand that, relatively speaking, the experience of God is infinitely superior to teachings *about *God. But we still need the teachings about God in order to point the way to Him. In the end both: faith and reason- are gifts.

To me, it currently appears that Reason doesn’t care whether one believes in Jesus Christ or is an agnostic/atheist or an alcoholic or convinces someone suicide is the only way out of the tangled web - or Reasoning that has brought same-sex marriage into mainstream. Each is a ‘reasoned’ approach’. It seems that Reason is mixed with the mind of the flesh and there’s no telling where it will take one.

“We must have a Fixed Point in order to judge our course.” (Blaise Pascal) Reason is not the ‘Fixed Point’. More like Reason is that which “seemeth right to a man but leads to death”.

Thinking vs. Reasoning

Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.” ― Martin Heidegger

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” ― Martin Luther

Can’t find my notes on this for the writer but he said, in essence, that the more dogma in a (non-specified) religion, the less Truth. How much is Reason and how much Truth?

“Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.” ― Carl Lotus Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers

“Rousseau identified reason as the disease for which it pretended to be the cure.”
― Robert Zaretsky

Granted, there are a great many writers who celebrate Reason, but I’ve become a skeptic in this regard. I don’t think Reason brought Aquinas to his revelation, but more likely Surrender when Reason proved no longer tenable. He appears to have had a spiritual experience that surpassed what Reason could offer. I wonder if post-Experience writings will some day show up and we will see the stark difference in his thinking? It seems very odd that he wrote nothing afterwards.

I don’t think we need to hear more about God than what is presented in the New Testament - we just need to know the way to Experience the Holy Spirit for ourselves. That’s what the kids today often say - they want to know for themselves that Jesus is True, not what others say about Him.

Perhaps Reason is always subjective whereas Thinking is objective (sans emotional attachment).

 

[catholicscot]

To me, it currently appears that Reason doesn’t care whether one believes in Jesus Christ or is an agnostic/atheist or an alcoholic or convinces someone suicide is the only way out of the tangled web - or Reasoning that has brought same-sex marriage into mainstream. Each is a ‘reasoned’ approach’. It seems that Reason is mixed with the mind of the flesh and there’s no telling where it will take one.

“We must have a Fixed Point in order to judge our course.” (Blaise Pascal) Reason is not the ‘Fixed Point’. More like Reason is that which “seemeth right to a man but leads to death”.

Thinking vs. Reasoning

Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.” ― Martin Heidegger

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” ― Martin Luther

Can’t find my notes on this for the writer but he said, in essence, that the more dogma in a (non-specified) religion, the less Truth. How much is Reason and how much Truth?

“Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.” ― Carl Lotus Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers

“Rousseau identified reason as the disease for which it pretended to be the cure.”
― Robert Zaretsky

Granted, there are a great many writers who celebrate Reason, but I’ve become a skeptic in this regard. I don’t think Reason brought Aquinas to his revelation, but more likely Surrender when Reason proved no longer tenable. He appears to have had a spiritual experience that surpassed what Reason could offer. I wonder if post-Experience writings will some day show up and we will see the stark difference in his thinking? It seems very odd that he wrote nothing afterwards.

I don’t think we need to hear more about God than what is presented in the New Testament - we just need to know the way to Experience the Holy Spirit for ourselves. That’s what the kids today often say - they want to know for themselves that Jesus is True, not what others say about Him.

Perhaps Reason is always subjective whereas Thinking is objective (sans emotional attachment).

Since Martin Heidegger’s suspicion of reason led him to become a member of the Nazi party and welcome the coming of Hitler to power then I would be a bit cautious about quoting him favourably in this context. Reason alone is every bit insufficient to have a good grounding in Revealed truth as Scripture alone however we cannot fully grasp the content of Revelation without using both.

St Thomas used the tools of reason to explain what the ramifications of Revelation were so that we could understand as much as possible about the truths that flow from Revelation. In this he did a good and necessary work. He did not and the Church does not suggest that such an understanding is the same thing as or equivalent to a direct apprehension of God. Both the Angelic Doctor and St Augustine, another great reasoner, had such moments of apprehension but that does not in any way detract from the value of their work. Humans are intelligent rational creatures and if they cannot explain the contents of Revalation to themselves in an intelligent and reasonable way they are unlikely to feel the need to embark on the kind of path that might by the Grace of God lead them into such blessed moments of direct encounter with Him.

 

[Jeanne1184]

Since Martin Heidegger’s suspicion of reason led him to become a member of the Nazi party and welcome the coming of Hitler to power then I would be a bit cautious about quoting him favourably in this context. Reason alone is every bit insufficient to have a good grounding in Revealed truth as Scripture alone however we cannot fully grasp the content of Revelation without using both.

“If it’s the truth, what does it matter who said it?” I don’t recall where I heard that, but it has come in handy for not allowing Ego to dismiss something useful just because it didn’t ‘like’ the person saying it. If something is true, it stands on its own - all Truth comes from the same Source regardless of whose mouth or pen it flows from - and Grace/Insight falls on everyone. If Charles Manson had said the quote from Heidegger it would, for me, deserve the same scrutiny (no more, no less) than if C.S. Lewis had said it.

The only purpose I see in crediting someone with ‘ownership’ is so that one can see if further gems or contexts are available while Spirit was flowing in them. Some are ‘one-hit wonders’ (published, that is) but how valuable I have found some of the ‘singlets’.

In looking to see what war crimes Heidegger may have committed to give you the emotional slant above, I did come across another intriguing bit about him:

Martin Heidegger taught an entire course