Just before I became ill earlier this year, I began a series with the above title. I'm on the mostly mended side of that illness and want to pick up the theme again.
I start with a silly story. A jaded westerner finds himself in the Himalayan mountains on the trail of a world famous hermit guru. After much struggle and suffering, the traveller reaches the cliffside cave of the wise guru where he is welcomed and made to feel at home. After taking some refreshment and resting from his arduous journey, he asks the old man the question he's harbored in his heart for years, "What is the meaning of life, O wise one?" The hermit pauses, and ponders, and finally answers, "Why, that is easy, my son......the meaning of life is this: life is a bowl of banana pudding!" The westerner finds himself agitated, and then angry at the apparently flippant answer given by the guru. "That ridiculous!" he shouts and proceeds to heap insults on the old man for his folly. The guru looks bewildered and hurt by the pilgrim's response. Then he says, "So maybe it's tapioca?"
Banana or tapioca? God or Darwin? Mother Theresa or Kim Kardashian? We live at a time when the very idea of God (and what it might mean to follow God) has come under fire. Perhaps more seriously, the idea of God has become simply irrelevant to many people. Even among nominal believers, old certitudes about God seem gutted, without the weight and heft they had for the generations just past. Religious themes that used to dominate much of western culture and society have been crowded out or marginalized by things like celebrity "news", masses of data of all kinds and too many distractions.
Some people deal with this massive shift in religious attitudes by hardening their positions. A good many religious folks adopt the fundamentalist impulse; in a time of uncertainty and moral drift, having answers that are black and white brings such believers clarity, comfort and inner assurance. A similar position, I maintain, would be that of militant scientism, wherein people tend to see "scientific" method and perspective as having absolutely all the answers to life's questions. Neither position satisfies me intellectually or spiritually.
What makes sense to me these days is a deep conviction that when I say "God" I'm affirming not only "a" truth, but the very condition necessary for there to be truth in any meaningful sense of the word. What's real, or bedrock in our pictures of reality? Theologians and philosophers have suggested the best answer is mystery. By that they don't imply an unsolved puzzle, but instead something so deep and unfathomable that no word or concept could hope to do it justice. The best thing one could say about God? No-thing at all. No thing, but rather the ground of all being, as Paul Tillich termed it (drawing on centuries of thought and intellectual/spiritual humility).
Our disappointed pilgrim in the silly story still deserves a better answer than the guru gave him. As we'll see in some future entries, there are some interesting and thoughtful possibilities that might satisfy him much more.
Some conceptual teasers: the sacred; source; creator/creative force; love; the deepest energy; connection; power; spirit; truth and/or the foundation of truth. What's your best synonym or metaphor for God?
Tao works for me or "That which cannot be named."
ReplyDeleteKeeping silence might be another way of expressing it.
Tao is at once the universal pageant of the constellations and the budding of each new leaf in the spring. It is the constant round of life and death and all that falls between. It resides in us as we reside in it. It is the source as well as the end of our being. It neither judges nor condemns but continually blesses, in all moments, an unending cycle of change and renewal.
It is a belief in life, a belief in the glorious procession of each unfolding moment. It is a deeply spiritual but decidedly non-religious way of life. It involves introspection, balance, emotional and spiritual independence and responsibility and a deep awareness and connection to the Earth and all other life forms. It requires an understanding of how energy works in the body and how to treat illness in a safe, non-invasive way while teaching practical ways of maintaining health and avoiding disease and discomfort. Taoist meditation techniques help the practitioner enter deeper or more expansive levels of wakefulness and inner strength. But most of all it is a simple, natural, practical way of being in our bodies and our psyches and sharing that being with all other life forms we come into contact with.