Nikolai1

Hi forestofemptiness, Love is a spiritual achievement, whatever form it takes. But for most people, who are still stuck at the idea of themselves as individual selves in time and space, love is only felt for specific objects, be it people, possessions, countries. It is a earth-changing leap when the lover discovers that there is a object of love, though not seen by the senses, that is omnipresent and whose love for you is deep and never fading. Love for mere people, we now see, was nothing other than a preparation for this higher, truer love. Lovers of God, whose spiritual life is experienced through the ineffable emotions, don't tend to think and discuss what they feel at any great length. As far as I can tell, persons of this type are pretty much completely lacking on The Tao Bums, as you would expect (though I'd be interested to hear from any!) I think its also true that people who take the intellectual approach, which is the main merit and virtue of Buddhism, find the besotted lover of the Divine pretty hard to understand. It's tempting to dismiss them. But when you think about it, the warmth and the peace and the beauty that all seekers find before long can easily be likened to love.

A few posts back I described the path, for all spiritual seekers, to be a movement from the sense of being a self living in time and space, and moving towards a selfhood that is free of such limitations and sees time and space, individuality and mortality as an illusion. From the small ego, to the divine principle is the journey described by all world religions. It follows that the person who is still very much focussed on time and space will be focussed on those particulars (intellectual, behavioural, ethical) that are peculiar to his time and space. As we transcend our own limitations through spiritual growth, we become able to recognise the idolatrous attachment to things in time and space wherever we see them, no matter what the individual's race, culture, religion. Thus it follows that a quiet retiring Anglican vicar, tucked away in the green pastures of the Mendips, untroubled by heavy parish duties, and with no remaining vices except his Christmas sherry and his tattered book of cricket stats, could, by being a devout man of prayer and contemplation, offer authoritative spiritual direction, wherever his superiors send him. In Bombay, his pure and attentive burning of the cow dung, and the meditative blending of the ash with his spittle will impress the brown-faced devotees as he smears the vibhuti on their forehead. Padding into the Japanese zendo in his self-darned socks, he will instinctively seize the kyosaku from the monitor and know at a glance who should be struck and who should be spared. Displacing the squaw at the left-hand side, and with the pipe in his hand, he will sit cross-legged and his peaceful words will soothe the bellicose Chief and his counsel of reconciliation will be listened to and the next day followed. By cultivating ourselves, we give ourselves the authority to cultivate mankind! It is true that once our spiritual needs become genuinely ignited, and transcendence of selfhood begins, there are as many paths as people. But all the world religions concur on three ever converging approaches: devotion of the heart, the truth-seeking of the mind, and the self-emptying of pure contemplation. The devotee in loving adoration surrenders themselves willingly to their God, and wants nothing more than to become nothing in themselves so that the will of their Beloved can express themselves more purely through them. They do not, as our good Archbishop did 'a few days ago', find themselves jogging across the common, waving their water bottle in admonishment at the heavens saying ''this is all very well, but isn't it about time you did something, if you're there," The seeker after truth yearns to understand God with their head, and they will try everything, think everything, read everything in order to fulfil their thirst. They will talk the heavens away in the process, and when those family and friends will listen no more, they go on to the internet and stay up late writing long messages to complete strangers at the other side of the world. And they find answers eventually! They learn that from the earliest days of Judaism, God was understood to completely transcend any of our known categories of thought. The read that desperate attempts were made to instill this in the common mind, which is all too ready to reify things. To give God a name was forbidden, the transcendental nature of God was symbolised in every synanogue by what was contained in the sanctum sanctorum, the holy of holies. What was it? Empty space. They get excited when they hear that once in the Bible God agreed to define himself to Moses. So we rush to the Book of Exodus and find only this. 'I AM THAT I AM'.! Although the impossibilty of defining God either for or agianst is a central theme in Christian theology through the centuries, the lucky few find their way to Buddhism, where the dangers of impaling oneself on one of the twin horns of things 'existing' or 'not-exisitng' is given central place in the teaching, and the need to somehow find a middle way is absolutely impressed on us. What the authentic spiritual truth seeker does not do is openly say he doubts, as the Archbishop does, that he sometimes doubts of God exists, as if the questioned could ever be settled. And finally the contemplative, the hero who battles steadfastly with his intransigent thinking mind in order to allow God the silence and space to, if only for a moment, reveal himself in however a still, small voice. Such a person does not for a moment mistake his inane grumblings while out running with Prayer. He would not cheapen the word by associating it with such banal behaviour. No doubt, a Church, like a nation, gets the leader it deserves, and if the Anglicans as a whole do not recognise a problem with their leader then maybe we shouldn't criticise. But it shames a shame, and an absurdity, that this is the man whose every word, written or spoken is recorded by a team of scribes and presented on websites, newspapers and pamphlets as 'spiritual counsel'. It seems a shame that of those Anglicans worldwide whose spiritual needs are urgent and genuine get served first, as a matter of form, the words of a leader who is clearly in a more retrogade spiritual state than themselves. It seems a shame that we have a figurehead whose poems about the death of his old Mum would certainly get a publishing deal, while the Anglican African (where most Anglicans live) will only get enlightening counsel if there hapens to be a wiser person on his village or the next village. We don't have to be English to say all this...all we need is to be human beings with compassion for the spiritual welfare of other human beings.

I certainly think he wanted to appear down to earth. I also think he spoke with full sincerity. But the genuine spiritual director does not wish to pretend to be less holy, just to make others feel better. All they want is for their pupil to find God. He does not say 'hey, we all doubt God, but its OK.' He rather says, doubt is a phase we all must go through, but there is Truth, certainty and peace waiting for us at the end of it. The overwhelming majority of Christians are just regular people, no more spiritually minded than atheists, just regular people living their life in the common sense world view of 'eat, drink and be merry for soon we shall die.' Their religion is just something they have learned to say about themselves, like a box to tick off on a form. Attending a church service just gives them something positive to feel about themself, the kind of self-satisfaction one gets when, say, completing a crossword. Those who start to awaken to spiritual truth are rare; but when they do they will find everything they need within the Christian tradition. There is no need to change their profession. Christianity is rich, beautiful and whole exactly as it is. Its quite clear from this website that people of all sorts of backgrounds find many Christian writers to be deeply inspiring, myself included. The expectation for priests to be celibate is a deep poison at the heart of the Catholic Church and causes priests to resort to desperate actions that disgust all people, and make average churchgoers ashamed and faithless. I think once you recognise that the error lies with the institution, you can start to feel more forgiving to individual perpetrators, who are victims of corporate ignorance. But all this must be looked beyond if you want to find the real jewels in Catholicism

True, but they have also believed that there is a portion of themselves - the soul - which transcends time and space. The spiritually immature Christian's level of consciousness is very much occupied with their existence in time and space: body not soul. The spiritually mature Christian's level of consciousness is spiritual. The kingdom of heaven is even more to them than some happy posthumous state. It can be directly realised; it is 'within us' or 'at hand'. Within the religion, it is the spiritually mature who have captivated the hearts and minds of the people and directed them. They have been turned into saints, Doctors of the Church etc. It is quite clear the that the present Archbishop's troubles are very much here on earth, he does not feel the comfort and peace of 'heaven within him'...and therefore asks God to take away his troubles!

The prayer tradition in Christianity is so rich and varied that it includes pretty much everything. But the aim of the Christian life is the same as all the world religions: union of the individual self with the Divine principle. Progress along this path occurs in stages: Obviously those that are furthest from this goal are those who are most wedded to the idea of an individual mortal self in a world of time and space. Such people's aims, hopes and dreams will only make sense within this worldview. The prayer of such people will be petitionary. They will ask and request God to give them want they like ,and need and spare them what they don't like and need A slightly less egocentric petitonary prayer is also very common, praying in order to secure the earthly needs of those they care for. A quantum leap in spiritual growth is when the immense peace and joy of God is first felt. With this comes the recognition that anything can be tolerated in this life if the peace of God happens to be with you. Prayer for these people now becomes very different. One does not prayer for specific outcomes, but for the grace to tolerate any outcome, whatever God wills it to be. One might prayer for peace and fortitude, in case of the bad, or gratitude and humility in case of the good. The next level comes when you realise you want nothing from God, you ask for nothing, not even his peace. You prayer simply in order to join with Him. This empty mental prayer is the prayer of the mystics, many of whom are the most influential figures in Christianity. Of course, when it comes to the spiritual life, very few reach the heights of union with God, and the lowest petitionary prayer is probably the most representative prayer of the Christian movement. What is surprising though is the Archbishop of Canterbury is openly confessing to be at a pretty low level of spiritual maturity. Michael Sternbach said: Once you have experienced God directly, either transiently in the form of grace, or permanently in the state of union. It can feel pretty nigh on sacrilegious to revert back to the prayer style of the mortal in time and space. You feel morally degraded by the attempt, even if it occurs to you. In fact, you would even hope that God wouldn't answer such a request because you feel that to have it granted would weaken you spiritually. I'm sure there are many people who can associate with this. God's will is all you want, and what that is is left for him to decide. Our experience of God changes the form of our prayer - the two develop in concert. I find it psychologically impossible that the Archbishop would talk in this way about prayer, if his experience of God were mature.

So true!! I think the OP is talking about the feeling of alienation that can develop when you realise that you are searching for something different from 99% of the population, but haven't found what you're looking for. Meeting like-minded people doesn't ultimately help that much. They can confirm the importance of the search, but to be honest you already know that. Like filofill says, conversation soon runs dry. Alienation only ends when you have achieved your goal. And once this has happened it doesn't matter who you are with - you love and adore them all.

Lots of people said the same as you, but Sri Ramana considered self-enquiry to be a special case where the 'technique' is indistinguishable from the goal that the technique aims for. This is the same as the Zen notion that practice and enlightenment are one and the same thing. If we are dwelling in the I AM feeling then there is nowhere left to go, nothing further to achieve. But we should remember that self-enquiry was one of two 'second-best' approaches (along with surrender to an external creator God) The first best, and most powerful approach was simply being in the vicinity of the realised sage. The immense peace one experiences is the better and higher than any other means. This is why Sri Ramana went hours and hours without speaking, not even answering questions most the time, but was always until his dying day available in full view to anyone who wished to see him.

I only said that the virtues of the sage go largely unnoticed, Is this too cynical? Or do you think that the sage gets a consensus of approval? Can you think of a sage who has?

Many things happened to him, which he refused to turn into 'techniques'. For example, at age 16 he quit his studies, and walked out of the family home without saying where he was going. Yet he expressed the strongest disapproval whenever one of his devotees expressed a wish to renounce the world and become a wandering sadhu. He spent many years following his 'death meditation' in a silent samadhic trance, and would not respond to any questions - and even wrote a note to his own mother. But he disapproved of sitting meditation, saying that ' it is for the merest novice' and saw vows of silence to be pointless. In essence, he considered any deliberate, goal-orientated technique as stemming from the exact mentality that needs to cease. Any deliberate yoga or meditation therefore defeats its own object. All the behaviours, meditations, death-like experiences, renunciations will happen very sweetly and naturally of their own accord so long as one first goes immediately to the experience to which they aim: knowledge of the true self. To try and reverse this sequence is acting egoically and is doomed to failure. This is why he did not recommend that anyone try to imitate his death meditation.

The same thing happened to me as in the Taomeaow's story. I was in Tooting in London and a stranger in a turban started giving me very specific advice on a problem that I was at that moment thinking about. He then wanted money, but there was nothing at all in my wallet, so he wandered off slightly displeased. But it was a very strange occurence.

But its also very likely that the sage would consider themselves useless, a la Krishnamurtis J and UG

You know all this talk about useless sages was ironic anyway. My main point is that the sage is seen as useless by those who don't understand him: and that is most people.

Unfortunately, it is a fact that the woman would rather her child live than the interest rates rise. The worker who therefore keeps her child alive is doing more important work, as far as she is concerned, than her own at the finance house. neither you, me, nor anyone can seriously dispute this.

Although it might not sound like it, I totally believe that she did the best thing for her and I do not judge the decision. But we're talking here about how spiritual development in a person changes the ways in which they are able to behave. Spiritual cultivation gives people the strength to effortlessly make the choices that are the best all round. But my friend, unfortunately, was conditioned into making a choice that leaves her feeling guilty. That guilt is necessary and meaningful for her, and is also something that the sage has the skill to avoid.

Another verse from the Bible SRM constantly quoted was 'I AM THAT I AM' from Exodus 3:14. He said it summed up his whole teaching and the whole truth. I would love to hear how people interpret it.

Let's say that the universe presented my friend with two choices of occupation: 1) to look after her daughter at home 2) to work in the admin team of a finance company. To choose one path is to exclude the other, and the path not chosen must be covered by another person instead. But the immense difference in the two paths is only highlighted if we imagine, as a thought experiment, that the path not chosen could not be covered by another. The two outcomes are: 1) the baby girl suffers extreme mental suffering, followed by extreme physical suffering, followed by death. 2) the finance company becomes less efficient. Workers who could concentrate their energies on, say, finding new business, are having to do more of their own admin. The upshot is that the previously competitive interest rates will therefore rise, perhaps by as much as one tenth of a percentage point. My friend, chose to devote her energies to maintaining the good interest rates for the motorcycle dealerships. Although, it may not be fully conscious, this decision has left and must leave a moral stain. At some level she knows that all the industries, factories and finance houses could perish to dust as far as she is concerned, so long as one task in the world is performed and performed well: the care of her daughter. And yet, she also knows that she has chosen to hire someone else to do this momentous work in her life, while she attends to work she knows to be almost infinitely less important. The guilt she feels over this cannot be erased, however unconscious. We should not judge her, and there is no need to judge her. Despite the social conventionality of her decision, even the social kudos she gets as a working mother, there is one painful truth that won't go away. If she was a happier, healthier, more rounded individual she would be able to do the work she knows to be the most important. This brings us back to the sage. The sage, or any spiritually developed person would not 'go crazy with boredom' at having to spend all day with their daughter. Such as person is at peace and content with whatever life throws at them. This puts them in a position to be able to choose that occupation which gives them the most value, confidence and self-efficacy. They are able to apply themselves in the direction they know to be the most important. My argument here wouldn't be worth anything if my friend did not agree with the relative values of the work. But she does. And as a society we all do. It happens to be a hallmark of wisdom to be able to discern what needs doing the most and to do it. This is why the work we do is a very true indicator as to our spiritual condition. Judging is of absolutely no use. But neither is denying the legitimate and valid guilt that she suffers as a consequence. The guilt is correct and good. It is the siren song of her better self, and it is the spur and the goad to make her that person. The spiritual life is worth nothing unless it leads to a person becoming happier, confident, effective and at peace.

Hi billb It wasn't someone I met down the pub, but this idea is expressed by many teachers. When challenged on his inactivity, Ramana Maharshi used to retort: 'how do you know I'm being inactive?' The point is, categories like 'usefulness' belong to the everyday world of time and space. The useful thing is always geared towards some favourable outcome in the future. And if you can not or will not abandon categories of judgement like 'is this useful?', then the sage must be described as being useful in a different realm to time and space. What happens when we stop thinking in such terms? Then the sage becomes neither useful nor useless, in the same way that the universe is neither useful or useless. The universe just IS. What I find most interesting is those individuals on the path to sagehood, the spiritual cultivators. What they discover before very long is that a lot of what the everyday world considers very useful and important, no longer seems so to this aspirant. Everyone is striving and chasing things, people, situations, status in order to make them feel a certain way about themselves, to feel at peace with themselves and admired by others. The person on the spiritual path, no doubt through their particular practice, has found this peace and love within themselves - they no longer need to get it from other people and things. Their motivation to strive and win starts to ebb away. They start to become more and more useless in the world. In the everyday world, a good outcome to you is so often a bad outcome to someone else. If you gain some money, then that money is only of use to you if someone else has a lack of money and wants to trade with you. Or, if you achieve something great at work, its good for your company but of necessity bad news for your competitors. If we already have, on the inside, the good feeling that money gives us...why would we continue a practice that deprives it in our competitors? If money still works for them, if it still gives them a thrill, then they are welcome to it! This is not an appropriate attitude in the average business. Its the attitude of a useless person, and one they are best rid of. This is why I said in the OP that our work is the index to our spiritual development. I am not saying that some work is more 'moral' than others. I am simply saying that the will cultivated man and woman naturally gravitate to work that is commensurate with their own needs. This is the meaning of right livelihood, not as a moral choice. The spiritually developed person naturally gravitates towards work where there is less personal material gain (for they have already gained, in essence, all that the material world can offer) and instead the gains are felt by others. This is the only kind of work that seems rational from now on. Care work is an obvious example, but it could be anything. Not long ago i got talking to a woman who with a pretty young baby. She said she wanted to stay at home but after a few months was so crazy with boredom that she had to return to work. I asked her what work she did, and she was an administrator in a company that sold shopping finance to motorcycle shops. This behaviour shows spiritual underdevelopment. She was unable to face the quietness and monotony of a kind of work that, she cannot deny is absolutely crucial. She, and anyone else on this planet would rather the stocking finance activity were rather puth on hold than the care of her own child...but still she could not do it. There is no doubt in anyone's mind which is the more useful work. Instead, she paid someone else to do the crucial work, and decided herself to throw herself back into busyness. This happens all the time, but it can't be judged. If she wasn't lacking on the inside she would have stayed home with the kid.

First off, can I just say that my partner is a busy and productive person who does just as much around the house as I do. We have three young children so life is pretty busy for us both. In fact we both we both start at the same time in the morning (7am) and neither of us really stop until about 9 in the evening. But when I think about the kind of things we do, there's a big difference. As the man I do, on a regular basis, every single aspect except one thing: breast feeding. And, as our children are now all past that, there is no breastfeeding in the house anymore. My partner, however, does not do, and has never done, a whole rage of things. She has never cut the grass, she has never chopped wood, she has never changed the snow tyres, she has never changed a light bulb, nor put up a picture, nor even, to my recollection, hammered a nail in the world. She wouldn't have a clue how to change a fuse, repair a puncture, mend the furniture, or even assemble something from Ikea. So it seems, that as the man, while no busier than my partner, I am a lot more versatile and do a much wider range of things. Is this a common experience? Am interested in your thoughts and please vote in the poll. Thanks! PS - this is not some kind of complaint about my partner! I'm perfectly happy with the situation, but at the same time find it quite curious!

If we absolutely insist on the notion of productive work, we must say something like: 'Even though the sage appears inactive, he is performing work in realms that we don't understand.' Actually you hear this statement quite a lot. But why can't the sage be meaningless? Is there any meaning to the earth revolving round the sun? Or must we, in summer, say that the earth is revolving in order to trim back back the bushes, in winter say that the earth is revolving in order to bring the bush back to life.

Yeah, just curiosity. I don't feel its unfair, if anything its more interesting to have all the variety. If I'm resealing the roof, she's looking after the kids. If I'm trimming back the berry bushes, she's looking after the kids... When the kids came though, I felt very strongly that I should be the modern man and play a part in every thing that needed doing. My partner felt nothing equivalent and even though there have been many times when I would have liked her to cut the grass, she has point blank refused. I'm definitely a man who has taken the feminist critique on board and stopped being like the men in times past. There is nothing I don't do. My wife has not taken any equivalent critique on board. I wonder whether this is a modern trend or if my wife is just old-fashioned.

Can I just remind everyone that I'm not talking about how the workload is shared. I'm talking about versatility. For example, if we go away for a week, is our partner able to cover our duties, or do we come back to things to do because they were unable to do them?

For anyone who wants to contribute, I'd be interested to know the kind of things you can not and would not do, and likewise your partner

Of course, we're the same: for example, my partner does most of the laundry and I do most of the cooking. Its just paned out that way because of our inclinations. But I'm talking about this versatility thing. There are many, many things that my partner can not and would not do. For me there is only the breastfeeding. I wonder if this is a pattern in society, which is why I put the poll on. In fact I'll add an 'equally versatile option' if you think that fits you best.

All I'm saying is that if you want to cultivate yourself, you're definitely going to get a lot of criticism for doing so. I think of lot of us have the same hope as Daeluin expresses: But the reality is: for many, perhaps most of the people, the sage is just a useless, simple-minded waste of space. If we think that there are important, purposeful things to be accomplished in this world, then the sage is not your kind of man. What has really brought this home to me is reading about Ramana Maharshi, surely India's most loved saint of the 20th Century. While some people adored and worshipped this man as quite literally a living God, others simply could not justify the fact that he spent his whole life sitting on the sofa, saying and doing very little indeed. Even Paul Brunton wished that Sri Ramana would go out and be a man of action in the manner of, say, Gandhi. And then I idly turn to the Chaung-tzu, and even by Chapter 2 we read: 'while the ordinary people rush around, the sage seems stupid and ignorant'. In Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching we have the sage lamenting this in himself: I'm telling you, if we want to carry on with this cultivation lark, we have to get used to being thoroughly unfit for nearly all of what gets called useful and practical work, And we'd better develop a thick skin too, because in this day and age people only recognise outward fruits and will strongly criticise anyone who dares to abstain from work and do nothing that the world calls productive.

The ignorant person measured 10cms of growth in April, then multiplied that by 52 to give a yearly growth of over 5 metres. He was not wise, and did not understand that anything that grows so quickly in April will have vanished by December. This is an all too human error. We often panic, and take action which is not ultimately needed.