[Buddha-l] Eckhart Tolle

[Alex Wilding]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:
> Yes, there are a few of us out here who fare better in Quaker meetings
> and Unitarian churches, where one can while away many a pleasant hour in
> the absence of incense, stained glass windows, statues of saints,
> crucifixes with bloody people hanging on them in obvious agony and
> basins filled with holy water.
Isn't it delightful, how different we all are? Two days ago I went to a
*very* high Anglican Epiphany service with an outstandingly well-trained
choir backed by a highly talented organist, candles, candles and more
candles, nothing short of a fog of incense as the procession went round and
through the congregation, display of the host at the high point of the
service in a magnificent monstrance, and so forth. Loved it. Because in
other moments I like to make music, one friend asked why I didn't join in
some of the better known carols (like "Hark the Herald Angels"), but I've
found that if I start letting the words come past my lips I can't help but
start to engage my intellectual apparatus, feel uneasy about the words, even
more uneasy about the Weltanschauung that could give rise to those words,
and so on. But if I just shut up and don't think too much I can enjoy the
spectacle, the soaring and surging music, the incense, the sense of devotion
in those around... Which is also how, as a committed Buddhist, I don't have
a problem being present at such occasions.
The "purity" of those hard-line protestant places makes me feel, on the
other hand, depressed, cramped and threatened. I feel more "spiritual" (no,
I don't want to get involved in defining what I mean by that) in a bus
station.
All the best
Alex W