Lighten Up; a Satori

This morning in my email, someone had sent me an e-card for a Happy Diwali. It was sent anonymously so I don't know who to thank, let alone whether they were sending it sincerely (knowing that I appreciate and am open to a lot of Eastern culture and philosophy) or if they were trying to be play with me (just another holiday) or trying to bait me somehow (cause I'm this big liberal). 

However it was intended, I decided to take it in the spirit of Diwali- a celebration of lights and the ultimate triumph of good over evil and compassion over selfishness. 

We're just about to get into a lot of festivals of lights here in the next 2 months, what with Jewish Hanukkah, African-American Kwanza, and of course Christianity's Advent season leading up to Christmas and then Epiphany (when we celebrate Jesus, our light coming into the world).

Diwali, also known as Deepavali is a five day festival in Fall when many Hindus, Sikhs, and some Buddhists light oil lamps, wear new clothes and enjoy sweets with their families for five days.

The spiritual aspect of Diwali is that participants attain and awareness of their "inner light," the eternal, unchanging true self, your "Atman" or soul, if you like. These Eastern traditions teach that true enlightenment leads to compassion, love and the awareness that we are all interdependent.

These three principles are pretty worthy aspirations. In fact, lets face it, Jesus taught, demonstrated and offers love (John 13:34-35), compassion (Luke 2), and communion (John 17, Acts 4:32)  too.

If there's a difference it's that in Christianity, we know that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 2:23. Let's face it, call me a pessimist, but every human being is by nature fallible, imperfect, selfish and short-sighted. As the psalmist put it, "Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who doesgood, not even one."~Psalm 53:3

There's a lot about the East that is admirable and that we Westerners need to learn from. But the biggest difference theologically is that they're looking for an "inner" light withing one's self, whereas Jesus tells us that He is our light.

“I am the light of theworld. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” ~John 8:12

The Apostle John  had to compete with Gnosticists and other competing teachings that claimed that humans are capable of transcending society and becoming godlike by looking inside (see my series on John's Epistles, "Johnny Poppin"). Our light comes from outside, not inside.

"The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp."~Revelations 21:23

By pointing this out, it does NOT give Christians an excuse to judge, discriminate or hate Hindus or Buddhists. "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness."~1 John 2:9

The thing is, we ourselves don't have our own light inside us, but we should have a light inside. We should REFLECT God's light. It's like God is the sun and we are all moons. If Jesus lives inside us, if He put His Holy Spirit into our hearts, than we can shine like stars (Philippians 2:15).

"For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ." ~2 Corinthians 4-5

If I understand correctly, many Eastern religions suggest that if we fail to reach enlightenment, we will have many more attempts through reincarnation- eventually maybe attaining loss of self by being absorbed into the universe's goodness. Whereas we are offered reunion and fellowship with each other and with our Father as God's children. And we will never have to fear the darkness again.

"There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the lightof the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever."~Revelations 22:5

So, blessed Diwali all my friends, Namaste!

May compassion, love, unity, and enlightenment be yours in Christ.

Buddhist Koan describes Christ

Just so you know ahead of time, this post may be offensive if you're especially sensitive, but I promise, I don't mean to be blasphemous or sacrilegious- just to make an important point why we should appreciate what God has done for us and reflect on how and when we might become humble enough to follow His example for the sake of helping others.

A monk asked Ummon, "What is Buddha?" Ummon replied, "Kanshiketsu!"

Kanshiketsu, literally a "shit-stick," was used in old times instead of toilet paper. Shit-sticks become dirty to clean us. If this is not a Buddha, then what is? Out of gratitude to the stick, we call them Buddhas.

Jesus is our Buddha.

Trust me, I am not making fun of either Christianity or Buddhism. I am neither trying to disparage my Lord, nor abandoning Christianity for Buddhism. Hear me out on this, first read what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21,

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

First of all, Jesus is not just a Buddha (a teacher who has achieved enlightenment, He is our redeemer, He died and rose again so that we can be able to have a relationship with the Living God. But think about 2 Cor 5:21 and compare it to Umman's Koan for a minute. In the basest terms, the Zen master is explaining that prophets of enlightenment carry away our filth and help us to become clean and pure. Jesus does this not merely with our thinking or the angst that impedes on our inner peace, He who never sinned, the only person to ever be pure and acceptable in God's sight, not only took on our filth, but became our filth. Then He took that kanshiketsu to the fire and incinerated it.

So perhaps, if He is willing to do that for us, if He is willing to be a shit-stick...

Maybe ONE; we should be willing to look at the humble things in this world with more honor. We should hold even the sick, weak, poor, alien, broken, and filthy people in this world with more respect. If not because He made them and loves them, then because He died for them too. Everyone is equal, and everyone has the potential for God to use them for His purposes.

And maybe TWO; we should be willing to be kanshiketsu for others. Shouldn't we offer His unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness, to everyone- no matter how different they are from us. No matter how difficult it is to have to put up with other peoples's crap. Shouldn't we be willing to serve others since Jesus serves us in the most fundamental, vulgar, difficult way?

This is what we are called to do as Christians. Although "ambassador" has a much nicer ring to it than "kanshiketsu." But that's the challenge, are we as Christians willing to do what Christ did? Are we willing to be shit-sticks for Christ?

2 Corinthians 5:14-20

Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

Peace, Love, and Understanding

"Compassion can be roughly defined in terms of a state of mind that is nonviolent, nonharming, and nonagressive. It is a mental attitude based on the wish for others to be free of their suffering and is associated with a sense of commitment, responsibility, and respect toward the other." ~The Dalai Lama

"Love your neighbor as yourself... love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you... whenever you did it for the least of these my brothers, you did it for me..." ~Jesus Christ

I wish all of my liberal friends (especially atheists, agnostics, Buddhists and members of other faiths) knew Jesus personally, because He is not just another prophet, and He's obviously misrepresented too often by His supposed followers. He is a loving and living God who sacrificed everything so that we could be in relationship with Him eternally. His grace is inconceivably incomparable.

Meanwhile, I wish my conservative friends (especially all the Christians) knew Jesus more personally, because He is not just a savior and God, He is also a teacher and exemplar who's core practice is in fact compassion and unconditional love for others.

Compassion. What a family value, right? Not rugged-individualism, personal responsibility, personal property, smaller-government, or promoting "American-style democracy" around the world, deregulation, protecting our borders, or tax-cuts for the rich.

Do you think it's possible that advancing God's kingdom does not entail establishing Evangelical Protestantism as America's official state religion, legislating morality, or preparing the the geopolitical world for Christ's second coming through some celestial star-gate at some geographical location? Is it possible, that kingdom living is more about seeking to make our character more like Jesus and doing the kinds of things He did?

Would He rather we acquire control of society economically, politically, and culturally? Or would He rather we produce spiritual fruit like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control?

Seems to me that when we surrender our agendas to Him, empty ourselves of self and ask Him to fill us with Himself instead, we will be closer to achieving a sort of Christian Zen- and that would make "compassionate conservativism" a revolutionary concept, and not just a campaign ploy from 10 years ago that everyone has long forgotten.

Warmth, Compassion, and Empathy

Some of my summer reading this year 'The Art of Happiness' Coauthored by Psychiatrist Howard Cutler and THE Dalai Lama. My friend thought it would be up my alley because (if only as the cheerleading coach) I'm always encouraging people to be positive at the school where I teach.

Needless to say I don't agree with Mr. Lama on everything. I'm a pretty orthodox monotheist, I'm not sure whether he believes in sort of a universal god-energy thing as a Buddhist or maybe if he's a polytheist from the ancient Indian tradition that Buddhism sprang from. He believes that we need to perform on the "field of merit" in order to effect our next reincarnation, I believe that it is Jesus' merit and sacrifice on the cross which secured me eternal relationship with God Himself.

But those distinctions were givens before I ever started reading. The new difference I discovered was that Dalai believes that people are by nature warm and compassionate and all we have to do is to relearn what society has driven out of us. Me, I lean more toward Thomas Hobbes' contention that people are naturally selfish, brutish and in continual conflict. This may come as a surprise to those who know me because I really hate Hobbes, I think he was a jerk that perpetuated social stratification and his writings are used as an excuse for oligarchy and tyranny. Usually I prefer my archaic British political philosophers on the John Locke side, but I digress.

I don't think you have to harp on the doctrine of original sin forever and a day, all you have to do is look around to see that human beings tend to be selfish, sort-sighted and underdeveloped in the being-thy-brother's-keeper department. If they weren't we wouldn't have terrorism, a war on terrorism, irresponsibility in avoiding safety regulations leading to dead miners and ecological disasters, malfeasance and malpractice in the financial sector, politicians being... well, politicians, pedophile priests, cover-ups, divorce, racism, bullying, or extreme partisanship.

Be that all as it may- I actually like this book for the most part, and all differences aside, I think the exiled leader of Tibet is a smart guy with some very valuable ideas. I totally agree with him that we are put on this Earth to be in nurturing relationships with each other. I absolutely love that he thinks that we can choose to be happy and content by being disciplined and deliberate about certain things like appreciating what we have rather than desiring what others have or constantly trying to accumulate more material things, status and power. And I really appreciate his thinking about how we should seek to find what is good and valuable in everyone, consider everyone an equal worthy of kindness and dignity, and that we can give attention, affinity and affection with everyone to some degree if we intentionally practice empathy and warmth.

"I look at any human being from a more positive angle... This attitude immediately creates a feeling of affinity, a kind of connectedness." (Art of Happiness p.68) "My basic belief is that you first need to realize the usefulness of compassion...That's the key factor. Once you accept that the fact that compassion is not something childish or sentimental, once you realize that compassion is something really worthwhile, realize it's deeper value, then you immediately develop an attraction towards it, a willingness to cultivate it."

"And once you encourage the thought of compassion in your mind, once that thought becomes active, then your attitude towards others changes automatically. If you approach others with the thought of compassion, that will automatically reduce fear and allow openness with other people."

To me, that sounds a lot like "perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18)," If you genuinely "love your neighbor" as Jesus commanded, then everyone becomes not just your neighbor, but your brother. Good advice whether if comes from a Lutheran, a Catholic, a Methodist, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Buddhist.