[Buddha-l] Re: Christian meditation and eastern symbolism

[Joy Vriens]

Hi Michael,

>     Joy, is meditation in silence possible - beyond the artifices of
>     music, speech, and thought?

Difficult question. We can always look at what happens during 
meditation, but meditation always happens in a context. To allow the 
possibility of syncretism, one would have to focus on silent meditation 
without an active engagement in thoughts, images and concepts. Is the 
output of silent meditation in that case independent of the input of 
everything that lead up to it?

I recently read yet another old stuffy book "Les grands mystiques 
chrétiens" (the ones I prefer) by Henri Delacroix. It was a historical 
and psychological study on some great Christian mystics (Theresea 
d'Avila, Madame Guyon, Suso). He only picked those mystics that wrote 
themselves about their personal experiences in order to have first hand 
access to their experience and their interpretation of it. 
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the experiences are very much 
dependent on the thoughts and beliefs of the experiencees, their 
personal background, the general framework in which the experience took 
place and the post-experience processing in order to make it fit in with 
the general framework. In some periods, the latter was of vital 
importance in the literal sense of the word... E.g. Suso had become very 
careful in his phrasing after what happened to his teacher Eckhart.

La mystique sauvage by Michel Hulin, is an attempt to isolate the 
oceanic feeling from a religious background, by studying descriptions of 
experiences by non religious authors that could be considered as cases 
of oceanic feeling. If thoughts, images and concepts are dropped, 
boundaries fade away, and whatever is felt can only be "oceanic", i.e. 
without boundaries. But as any experience, it can't stand on its own, it 
has a setting.

Is the experience one of pure being and can pure being be isolated from 
"artifices"? I am not sure but the question seems to keep my interest.

>     Do we need to retreat to the monastery
>     to find it?

No, but some sort of silence is needed.

> If we try to control or master the mind to find that
>     place of emptiness, are we not exerting a force, pushing the mind to
>     work, to cause brain wave interference patterns that disturb the
>     calm water of our potential stillness?

Dropping the very wish to act in vue of a result, desinterested action, 
action free from the 3 spheres, non-action etc., including the artifices 
as manifestations of the stillness, the concept of stillness in motion 
etc. are all tricks to want to achieve something without really wanting 
it.

>  What good are dreams? They
>     only wake us out of silence!

Perhaps accepting non-silence would make another good trick :-) Tantrism 
tried that one but in such ritualised forms, that the ritualism took over.

> How can we even begin to understand the
>     silence before the dreams began? "A seeker of silence am I" Khahil
>     Gibran.  There may be no science of silence.

Perhaps it's like with philosophy, we can only seek wisdom. Perhaps only 
moments of wisdom and moments of silence are possible and we should 
happily accept those that are without it.

>     Yes I believe in a "unique au monde" inner spiritual voice that
>     unites us all impersonally -as a way that cannot be named - one
>     cosmic breath that bespeaks us to follow most unwittingly, a path
>     mapped out by gurus, mystics, priests, potentiates, charlat! tans,
>     marchbanks, fools, saints, poets, theosophists and lamas - all on
>     blind trust.  Elephants in the dark.

Nicely said, thanks. I try to see all religious affirmations as 
projects, dreams, instead of focussing on their reality, feasibility etc.