[Buddha-l] Christian meditation and eastern symbolism

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Michael J. Wilson schreef:

> When I read this "whole imagery of the Trinity" in meditation it 
> reminded me of three things.  In Nepal on a trek  in the Himalaya, not 
> far out from Kathmandu, I stayed overnight in a guest house.  When I 
> looked at the white painted wall of the one of the rooms outside, I 
> saw what looked like a Tibetan "Wheel of Life" tangka painted. Not too 
> unusual as most Sherpas had a Tibetan form of buddhist religion.  On 
> closer inspection I realized it was a "Christian Wheel of Life" with a 
> distinctly chrisitan symbology, that Holy Trinity perhaps being one of 
> them:. the life of Christ clearer being depicted in the 
> storytelling. Then I remembered that there is a small, totally 
> non-intrusive "ashram", but chrisitan religious centre, in Sarnath 
> (major buddhist pilgrimage place near Varanasi where Shakyamuni Buddha 
> first turned the wheel of Dharma.  You would never see this place from 
> the street but peering in through the gate yo! u can see a statue of 
> Jesus, in our common western conception of him, sitting in a lotus 
> form of meditation.  I also recall that the Swiss christian hermit and 
> mystic Nicholas of Cusa used to practice a "medallion" meditation, 
> which involved christian symbolism.  I can't remember it now but the 
> medallions represented "stages of the cross". Medallions are circles 
> though, aren't they, or wheels of life?
>  
> Michael J. Wilson
>  
>  
>
> You said:
>  
> It shows that Christianity or more precisely Catholicism has not changed
> a bit, but uses the same negative dogmatic attitude against any form of
> prayer or meditation that doesn't contain the whole imagery of the
> Trinity as in the past against its own more mystically enclined currents.
>
> quote:
>
> 12. With the present diffusion of eastern methods of meditation in the
> Christian world and in ecclesial communities,! we find ourselves faced
> with a pointed renewal of an attempt, which is not free from dangers and
> errors, "to fuse Christian meditation with that which is non-Christian."
> Proposals in this direction are numerous and radical to a greater or
> lesser extent. Some use eastern methods solely as a psycho-physical
> preparation for a truly Christian contemplation; others go further and,
> using different techniques, try to generate spiritual experiences
> similar to those described in the writings of certain Catholic
> mystics.(13) Still others do not hesitate to place that absolute without
> image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhist theory, (14) on the same
> level as the majesty of God revealed in Christ, which towers above
> finite reality. To this end, they make use of a "negative theology,"
> which transcends every affirmation seeking to express what God is, and
> denies that the things of this world can offer traces of the infinity of
> God. Th! us they propose abandoning not only meditation on the salvific
> works accomplished in history by the God of the Old and New Covenant,
> but also the very idea of the One and Triune God, who is Love, in favor
> of an immersion "in the indeterminate abyss of the divinity."(15) These
> and similar proposals to harmonize Christian meditation with eastern
> techniques need to have their contents and methods ever subjected to a
> thorough-going examination so as to avoid the danger of falling into
> syncretism.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The first missionaries to enter in Tibet thought there had been 
missionaries before them which had taught the Tibetans the Catholic 
rituals. They could not imagine that the Tibetans had gotten their 
rituals otherwise. The anthropologist Levi Strauss however once devoted 
a large part of his 'Anthropologie Structurale' to reject the idea that 
when two ideas or symbols are alike, one of them has to be a 
transformation of the other. Similar ideas arise in different places all 
the time. Since it's not very complicated to attach a lot of meanings to 
the number three one can expect to find it in different cultures. 
Moreover the number three is very importnat in Kashmiri Shaiva and hence 
in certain forms of Buddhist Tantrism.
By the way the number three is not important in original Christian 
theology, it has been borrowed from Plato (the Idea of the Good, the 
Logos and the Demiurg).

-- 
Regards

Erik


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