Inter-religious dialogue
To carry on inter-religious dialogue in Asian and other contexts, we may perhaps be as profoundly and deeply moved by including the writings of “real” spiritual masters, in other than Greco-Roman contexts – e.g., Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian philosophers of East Asia, for instance, whom early Jesuits felt were as appropriate for China, as Plato and Aristotle were for Rome, are crucial to inter-religious understanding.
We would like to suggest other than pre-Christian Greek thinkers, i.e., the works of Asian teachers, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Zhuang-tzu, and the various Buddhist masters of spiritual cultivation, are relevant to inner cultivation as well as to inter-religious dialogue. Ricci was all for Confucius, but other great Jesuits wanted Daoist and Buddhist philosophers included, as relevant to Christian, as well as other inner cultivation practices.
The “catholic” (.e., universal) mind is the mind open to everything true. In the words of Thomas Aquinas (& Aristotle, Jewish Maimonidies, Islamic Avicenna), “Omne ens est verum” “Every being is true.” It is the very nature of mind as such to recognize the “true” (ie factual existence) of all nature/creation. Augustine was particularly concerned with those philosophers who resonate with the “koan” found in Christianity. “Everything that is true,” is precisely the point for inter-religious dialogue. Daoist Lao-tzu, Zhuangzi, as well as the I-ching follow Ignatius’ and Gregory of Nyssa’s 4 steps to unitive experience. Spring’s 元 primordial purifying/ ploughing, is the purgative way; summer’s heng 亨nourishing with sacred image, is the kataphatic illuminative way; “li” 利 autumn cutting is apopathic emptying way; winter’s zhen 貞 unitive way, is when God/Dao writes on the soul in flaming characters.
Anyone concerned with inter-religious dialogue must, I think, begin with finding what is common to all religions as a point from which to initiate discussion. This common point is, we propose, the “3rd” was of apophatic emptying (kenosis).
In most of Asia, for instance, “religion” does not mean a belief system with a creed, but rather, the rites of passage (the “7 sacraments”) and the annual festivals and customs. 3 forms of teachings, Confucian for human-to-human relations/ethics, Buddhism for compassion, and Daoism for human relationships to Transcendent (*Wuwei) Dao gestated nature, are taken as 3 teachings (not religions) that comprise one culture. The philosophers of these 3 systems were seen by the early Jesuits as teachers, like Plato and Aristotle, providing a fertile field ready for the seeds of faith, compatible with Christian spirituality. It is not necessary for Asians of any religious system to read Plato or Aristotle to be “true” Christians, Confucians, or Muslims, except when taking university level philosophy courses.
The obvious starting point for all inter-religious dialogue is a universal spiritual experience. The via apophatica, a no-judgment, no concept, no image of the Transcendent, is a common starting point for Daoist, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic dialogue. “Noche Oscura”, the Agony in the Garden, “why hast thou forsaken me”, are shared aspects of Transcendent God awareness, from Jesus’ own prayer experience, in Christian teaching.
The famous quote from Augustine, “Our minds were made for Thee O Lord, and will not rest until they rest in thee,” suggests that our minds “rest”/cease in God’s presence. The common point for dialogue here is the “heart fasting, sitting in forgetfulness” of the Chuang-tzu (Zhuangzi, Ch. 4), and the 3rd step “annihilation” of selfish focus of Buddha’s 4 noble truths. Theresa de Avila, Zohar’s Kabala, Attar’s “Conference of the Birds,” further describe a seven stage process through the experience of apophasis.
Modern “western” philosophers tend to see Aristotle’s Metaphysics as portraying a “god” who does not “need” human love or worship. Our dialogue might perhaps suggest that this may be a misreading of Aristotle’s text; the meaning in the Greek version of Meta.12/6-9 is simply that God’s gestation-creation can only be motivated by “love”, not “being alone,” since the transcendent ultimate Act already has “absolutely” all that Absolute Itself needs – to exist, “tw `eivai” is a verb,” as the Zohar, and Sufi Attar assure us.
Another point for dialogue, from human-ethology (and other modern scholar’s view) is the data, which shows that the very brain structure of the atheist and the religious believer are different, ie location in the brain of atheist, vs believer activity are different. The apophatic way would suggest that the cessation of all sense-derived negative judgment in the mind is necessary before the human psyche can evolve to a stage where Divine or Absolute Presence can be recognized, for believer or atheist, a state also known as “wisdom,” or “belly centered” rather than heart (selfish) or judgment-mind focused, in Daoist cultivation.
One of the best sources for dialogue is the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius de Loyola. In the 1st and 2nd week of the Exercises, conceptual imaging is required for spiritual cultivation. In the Via Kataphatica image and word are crucial, ie, special to each religious tradition, and therefore not open to dialogue. In the 3rd an 4th week, the Via Apophatica, ie, the cessation of judgment and desire, leads to union. Thus reason is sublimated in the 3rd and 4th week. Please look at the illustration that Juan de la Cruz puts at the beginning of his work, “not” philosophy, “not” theology, for direct contemplation of Divine Presence. We must read and do the Spiritual Exercises again, for dialogue in this context. Teresa de Avila said explicitly that only those trained in the Sp. Exercises could be adequate spiritual advisors in prayer.
Another point for common discussion is that a “Trinity” aspect of the Absolute is an essential part of all spiritual traditions, ie God/Dao as gestating, mediating and indwelling is basic to all spiritual cultivation experience. The Incarnation is also one of the most easily understood doctrines to ordinary people, not involved in the Neo-platonic and Gnostic heresies of the 4th-10th centuries. Thank God for Francis of Assissi, who saw how easy it was to Love Jesus as a child, or feel the suffering of Mary holding her crucified son. Renaissance art is one of the greatest vehicles for dialogue in Asia. “Art as Sacred Image Encounter,” is the very foundation of the 2nd, and 3rd weeks of the Exercises.
Another point for discussion: Greco-Roman influence on Christianity is enhanced and complimented by the Asian prayer of “total body” experience. Intellect knows, heart loves, belly is for intuitive awareness of presence, “gut” feeling; God is here, right now, creating me, every largest and smallest thing in nature, given to me, — again found in the “Contemplatio ad Amorem” of Inigo de Loyola – a Spanish spiritual context where Kabala, Sufi, and Catholic mysticism flourished in proximity to each other. The whole point of Ignatius’ exercises is that the WHOLE BODY, all the senses are used to pray, not just the intellect.
Could we not say, as well, that faith does not need reason to believe, ie, “blessed are you because you have not seen, and still believe.” Reason diminishes the spiritual experience of immediate “now” awareness of presence. In this sense, what is in the intellect is essentially always in ”past” tense, having passed from the sound emitted by the speaker, or written word seen by the eye, through the senses of the hearer/seer, into the brain and then into intellect judging and storing, ie the “idea” itself is irretrievably in past tense, just as the heart/will is always in future tense (until the willed object is attained and contemplated). Thus wisdom as “now” experience of Divine Presence cannot happen as long as the intellect and will are active. All Christian mystics, including Paul 1st Cor., assure us of this. “The eye cannot see, the ear cannot hear, the mind cannot conceive,… the Divine Image.”
Professor Jim Schall SJ, Georgetown University scholar observes: “Much modern rationalism, under the guise of method, wants to limit reason to what is now called “scientific” reasoning. This step narrows the meaning of reason and excludes large portions of reality that the method cannot touch because it limits itself to the measurable in terms of quantity. If God and the soul are not `quantities,’ this method cannot deal with them.” This is, indeed, very true! Could we not then say that both science and reason in the presence of God, Divine Love, Beauty, are both irrelevant? God as Love, or living presence, felt interiorly, totally renders useless the use of mind or reason; it is equally out of the range of observed measurement that defines science, as well as “Christian” reasoning that judges ill of all others who disagree with one or another interpretation of biblical meaning.
In this sense, modern atheism is a phenomenon especially dominant in European thinkers, tired by centuries of “matter and body hating” neo-platonic clericalism, which condemns all bodily feelings as impure, even when directed towards prayer experience. As Nietzsche predicted, (confirmed by Marx, Feuerbach, and today’s science based agnostics), “if God is dead – Christians (and immoral clergy) have killed Him.”
A phenomenon found universally in inter-religious dialogue includes this physical experience of Divine or Absolute presence. Margeurite de Porete’ was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310 by “dogma” minded Dominicans, because she wrote a book called “A Mirror for Simple Souls” in which she paraphrased John’s epistles on Divine Love as something that all Catholics should physically experience. Ignatius was jailed when he first taught the physically seeing, feeling, sensing, touching the mysteries of Christ’s life in the Exercises. Plato’s seeing of the material body as somehow “evil” or to be separated from the body at death to return to the “spiritual” realm, negates one of the basic Christian doctrines, ie, the body is also going to heaven (found in the late 1st Century “Apostle’s Creed”).
Thus, the physical feeling of “devotion” in the presence of sacred image, followed by “apophasis” or the emptying of all image and desire, and then the experience of “union” as immediate presence, are common phenomena that act as the basis for dialogue with religions that at one time or a other were “at war” with each other. It is the apophatic (no word) rather than the kataphatic (faith prescribed word-image) that must define peace bringing dialogue between the World’s great, and less known religious systems.
Michael Saso. Nov. 27, 2009
Copyright, Mystic, Shaman, Oracle, Priest: 2009
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