The Christian And The Christian Life
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I have boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (I Corinthians 13: 1 – 3).
St. Paul’s famous hymn on love echoes the advice and wisdom of the Mahäyäna sages. Love, the great heart of compassion, is a necessary element of true spirituality. Knowledge alone is insufficient – the arhat is inherently a flawed model because the arhat resides with the self, seeking the salvation and satisfaction of the self alone. While trying to overcome all attachments, the attachment to the self has not been eliminated, and so it is a true impasse to enlightenment. To be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, requires us to overcome the selfish inclinations of the ego, and to actively engage in the world with the same kinds of acts of justice, compassion and love that Jesus has done. Our path to liberation will, like Jesus, require us to follow a path of doing. Wisdom and meditation are components of an awakened awareness in Christ, but compassionate activity is what opens us up from the defiling attachments which hinder our progress.
A Christian should take many components into consideration and blend them together into a spirituality that is at once contemplative and mystical, but also active and engaged in the world. As non-attachment is important, even an attachment for liberation or enlightenment must be put in its place by selfless activity in the world. The bodhisattva principle seeks to help others, even at the expense of one’s own life. “Even if he is indifferent about his own body and life, he takes great trouble or effort only for others.”[1] The Christian is called to be active in the world as co-workers with and for Jesus.[2] In our work and Christian life, we should follow the spirit of self-giving, the spirit that seeks for the salvation of others, over and above ourselves. St. Paul manifested this beautifully when he wrote of his love for his fellow Jews, and that he was willing to be cut off from Christ if it would help them: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh (Romans 9:2 – 3).”
Yet, it is without question, to do this, we need time for personal meditation – not only a meditation on the suffering of others which leads us to opening ours heart to them, but also meditation aimed at opening ourselves to God and his enlightenment. There must be a way for us to experience reality, to understand the limitations of our egotistical shell, and to see beyond the imputations we have put upon ourselves and the world. “There must be a radical detachment from the self, that is, from all selfish attachment to the world, the flesh, and the ego. The self, the jivatman must be surrendered.”[3] Mediation must be undertaken, it must be practiced, in order for us to come to understand ourselves, to understand our mind and how it works. We must come not to only realize conceptually the imputations our mind makes unto the world, but we must experience this process at work, and root it out.
As we progress in our practice of meditation, if we progress in being mindful of the world around us, the more open we are to reality, to seeing the world as it is, to seeing the suffering of others, and becoming capable of understanding what we can do about it. Its purpose must never be meant solely for selfish gain, but for how our heightened awareness can therefore be put back into service for others. “If mindfulness is cultivated in our daily life, if concentration and insight are cultivated in our daily life, we become more open, more tolerant, and our faith and love grow stronger within us.”[4] The desire to help others requires us to become more open, to become more spiritual; but as we become more spiritual, it returns to us the desire to go out and help others. The two are both needed, and yet, as St. Paul says, love is higher than knowledge, and acts of charity have priority to meditational insight.
The Mahäyänasüträlañkära confirms the priority of charity to meditation. The theme of chapter XVI is on the perfections that are achieved on the path to nirvana. The perfections are listed in order, and they begin with charity, then continue with moral character, then forgiveness, then energy, then meditation, and finally, at the end, knowledge.[5] Commenting upon this order, Asanga writes:
It is stated in this order, charity, etc., for three reasons. It is produced in this order in first and the other. Being indifferent to pleasure, one is engaged in the moral training; once a man of character, he becomes more capable of forgiveness; once he becomes capable of forgiveness, he undertakes energy, having undertaken energy, there originates samadhi: once the mind is in samadhi, one has adequate knowledge of principles.[6]
Charity is first, and it allows us to have a good moral character. The defilements are weeded out by it. First, the gross, and less subtle defilements are removed, and then slowly, as we progress, the more refined and difficult ones are eliminated. We are purified first in the externals, and later internally. Charity cleanses the soul, so to speak, so that with its development, which is the development of love, comes the development of a true moral character. One who is moral gains such an insight into forgiveness that they are capable of forgiving others out of their heightened love and morality, knowing it is the right thing to do.
Virtuous behavior begins to clean out the consciousness from all the harsh seeds of retribution we have developed along the course of our existence, and so begins to open up our energy, our ability to meditate and our ability gain insight into existence. Yet what is true in the big picture, what is true in the overall path, is true in part on the short journeys we take forward along the path: that is the more one becomes charitable, the more moral the character that will develop – up to and including, the greater insight one will gain from meditation which will allow one to once again live and work in charity.
Meditation therefore is not only for those who are far along the path, but it is for all, but it must be understood that on the level of priority, it is inferior to charity. Thus it is said, as the path is a path to experiencing selfless activity, of non-attachment to the world by the grasping of the ego, it is the path begun with charity, and “charity is the road which leads to non-attachment to objects, with the student of non-attachment, and gaining strength in it.”[7]
And what else is that charity but love, love which finds its place in us, because, as Balthasar has said elsewhere, the heart of God has been opened and given us all his love, and it is now for us to take it up and follow; grace is found in love.
[1] Maitreya in Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära, Trans. Dr. Surekha Vijay Limaye (Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992), IV.23, p.54.
[2] cf. I Cor 3:9
[3] Bede Griffiths, Return to the Center, (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1977), 142.
[4] Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home: Jesus and Buddha As Brothers (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), p.93.
[5] See Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära,. XVI, 8-13.
[6] Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära, XVI.14, p.293.
[7] Ibid, XVI.6, p.289.
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Save for the last sentence, and a few bits of editing, this comes from my MA Thesis — something which, though I’m not entirely satisfied with (for many reasons), nonetheless I think has a lot of good in it, like this bit.
Good stuff — but don’t be too hard on those arhats –the early Buddhist (or possibly pre-Buddhist) brahmaviharas (putting forth the energies of loving-kindness, compassion, sympthetic joy and equanimity) betoken a lot of humanity too. Christians can learn from all these kinds of thinking, which are often very close to the Gospel of love, mercy and forgiveness.
Spirit of Vatican II
I wrote this in relation to a Christology applying insight from Yogacara, so the arhats being discussed here are in the light of Mahayana’s systematic presentation of the Buddhadharma, which of course, is filled with all kinds of fiction.
If I’m understanding this, which is not a given, I can confirm from almost seventy years of experience, that love is primary for growth in the Christian life. Love of the other must come before denial of self; I know, I have tried to do it the other way around. I spent a year in a monastic novotiate on the basis that what was most repugnant to me would be most pleasing to God and therefore most effective for growth in the Christian life. You have to start by praying for compassion. The hard heart needs the joy of giving to help it soften. The discipline of fasting needs the help of the joy of giving (one fasts in order to have the resources to give)at least to begin with. Self denial without compassion is very close to masochism. The will was never meant to bear the whole burden alone, it needs the support of the warmth of heart, at least for a beginner like me.
Dcn. Brian Carroll,
There are many things going on in here. You are right in saying not all kinds of self-denial relate to love (some are nihilistic, for example), but, I would say love for other requires self-denial. And so it is best to point out that there is the need for that love for other, to make sure it is the right kind of self-denial. However, the focus is here is that such self-denying love is necessary for us; we should look for and hope for the betterment of the other, work for them, instead of looking out for #1. This explains why the life of the Christian should be, in one fashion or another, a life in action, of service for others (as long as it is in love). But the question then comes, what about the one who is giving out? Do they have no time for themselves? The answer clearly is no. While their work is a work of love, meditation (or education, or the like) is important– the one who is spiritually nourished is the one who has something to give. But the two should not be seen as separate, so that one’s private devotions is seen just as that, privately, and for the elevation of the self alone. Rather, it should be seen (and done) for the benefit of all through the person who engages them.