Flourishing as a spiritual quest

Text by Don Foran (The News Tribune)

Trappist monk (like Merton) and Buddhist monk in conversation (Snowlionpub.com)

A friend recently gave me an audio tape of Thomas Merton -- the celebrated monk, writer, and ecumenist -- lecturing. In 1964, near the end of his 10 years as novice master, Merton had the young monks read Faulkner's story "The Bear."

During that session, Merton probably floored his audience when he said, "To strive to become spiritual is a waste of time."

He went on to say that each monk's task would be "to become you, fully yourself."

I am struck by his words, partly because the truth of them is something I’ve rarely heard articulated from pulpits or even in classrooms.

The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing in 1878, said something very similar in what has come to be known as his “Kingfisher Sonnet”:

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Selves – goes itself, myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

That is what Merton meant. And if Merton scholar Thomas Del Prete is correct, “To become a person in Merton’s Christian and contemplative view involves very much becoming aware of one’s fundamental relatedness to others... More>>

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Seven principles to shape our lives
While the Unitarian Universalist religious tradition is noncreedal, that is, there is no creed in which every member is expected to believe, there are principles that frame our shared values. Our first principle speaks to an understanding that highlights a particular way of being in relationship with all people by calling our congregations "to affirm and promote: The inherent worth and dignity of every person."

Three perspectives of spirituality
In human affairs I view spirituality from three perspectives: personal development, relation- ships and social action. At heart, spirituality is one and indivisible. We are one ultimately with the source [whatever that is for us] and sustainer of all creation.

Our spirituality needs a unified approach
In human affairs I view spirituality from three perspectives: personal development, relationships, and social action. At heart, spirituality is one and indivisible. We are one ultimately with the source and sustainer of all creation. The three primary points of view reflect the need to bring consistency and integrity to culture. Peacemaking is at the core of this perspective. I offer experiences from India, where I portray Gandhi...

Chinese Gov't Wants You to be Catholic

It's hard to imagine the Dalai Lama or even Thomas Merton happy with these events.

Angry Cardinal Zen decries new loss for Church freedom in China
(CatholicCulture.org, Dec. 14, 2010)
The Chinese government has lost face. How? By preventing Liu Xiaobo from accepting his Nobel Prize, using force to bring about the Patriotic Assembly of Catholic Representatives, fraying the unity of the Catholic community in communion with Rome, writes Cardinal Joseph Zen.

In his analysis of the latest developments in China, Cardinal Zen angrily rejects the claim of noted Catholic Sinologist, Fr. Jerooom Heyndrickx that the Church is moving toward unity in China.

The government is merging the “official” and “underground” branches of Catholicism. The cardinal questions why the Vatican’s Congregation for Evangelization has not been more emphatic in denouncing Chinese abuses of religious liberty.

The Future Chinese Pope

Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)
This is perfect. The Godless, human-rights-abusing, Communist government of China wants Catholicism as its official religion.

Why would any government want it -- other than to have a time-tested way to control a population? The corporate offices of the Holy See (a.k.a. the Vatican) represent 1,000 years of corporate power and domination. It's an extremely rich secret society, a kind of country unto itself, with more and more followers paying tribute ($) to it from all over the world.

Who will the CIA install as the new Chinese pope? Probably Beijing's hand-picked Panchen Lama -- in the event co-opting Tibetan Buddhism doesn't work out.

The sun never sets on the Catholic Church. It's already the largest religion in the world. Add a billion Chinese subjects (including Tibetans, Uighurs, Genghis Khan Mongols, and countless mountain tribes), and what we'll get is what the Nazis and Mussolini always dreamed of having.

By its own admission, its governing body is a strict hierarchy, a religious monarchy, sometimes a bishop-driven oligarchy -- anything other than a democracy. It would sooner welcome anarchy (as it has seen around the loss of so much wealth from sex abuse allegations).

Well, so much for Axl Rose's "Chinese Democracy." Now it'll never be released. One can only hope the Chinese Catholic Church will be less tolerant of the "sexual indiscretions" (the child molesting) of its European and American counterparts. Like Southpark cartoonists suggest, the homosexual pedophilia does not seem to be a fluke: it seems to be part of the Catholic clergy's secret culture.

Catholicism was once a splendid contemplative tradition adopting the best practices of the mystical East, where sainthood is realized through samadhi. There are still remarkable individuals working inwardly in abbeys and outwardly in street-level missions doing much, much good and paying no attention to politics or the Pope's shenanigans. Its long list of contemplative luminaries include Theresa of Avila, St. Francis, St. Claire, Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa of India, and to a much lesser degree Peter's dad, the American-Catholic Everyman.

NOTE: We love Catholics. More than a few of us were born "Catholic." In fact, we love everyone sincerely committed to any religion (or committed to not having one, like our friends who post wise billboards). But the hypocrisy of the Vatican, its predatory clergy, and its geopolitical moves that have nothing to do with practicing according to faith, that we won't be silent on. We are all affected. And "religion" is a smokescreen used to divide us. If not here, where else would Buddhists and Catholics learn about the underlying motives of the Corporation that moves the world?

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Ancient Maya: First American Buddhists

BOOK: How the Swans Came to the Lake:
A Narrative History of Buddhism in America

(Shambhala Publications, 492 pp., 1986)

WISDOM-BOOKS.COM SYNOPSIS: Far more than a history of Buddhism's arrival and growth in America -- a development which led to the sudden rise of the ancient Mayan culture -- this highly readable account is packed full of interesting stories and anecdotes, and includes a wealth of material on the spread of Buddhism to the West from the time of Alexander the Great onwards.

This book gives the definitive treatment to the impact Buddhism has had on American thought, and it is a goldmine of information on early Buddhism in Europe. It covers the early Western Buddhist pioneers, plus those who profoundly influenced and paved the way for its appearance in the West.

Included are: the Greeks in India, King Ashoka; the Gnostics; Sir William Jones and the Royal Asiatic Society; Emerson and Thoreau; Whitman and Walden; Edwin Arnold; Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society; the Chinese and Japanese immigrant communities in the States; the Pali Text Society; the World Parliament of Religions; D T Suzuki; Sokei-an; Nyogen Suzuki; Alan Watts; Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac and the Beat Poets; Shunryo Suzuki; Philip Kapleau; Chogyam Trungpa; Tarthang Tulku; Geshe Wangyal; Thomas Merton; Jack Kornfield; Joseph Goldstein and Thich Nhat Hanh; and many others.

"Heroic in scope and of undeniable importance" -- L.A. Times.

iRead excerpts on Amazon