CircleoftheWay
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 65
- Reaction score
- 32
- Points
- 18
Not really sure exactly where to post this, but here will do. Early on in my own rather stumbling "path" I had a brief fling with Alan Watts (literary, not physical.....) and then cast him aside as some sort of New Agey lightweight. However, a few years ago I dipped once more into a couple of his books on zen and was forced to reconsider. After my own indepth reading of such "eastern" traditions his books offered maturity and great insight.
Over the past few months I have been reading - and re-reading - his book "Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship" and find it illuminating.
One passage:-
“Comparative religion” or “comparative theology” has hitherto been a strictly academic pursuit, and the better authorities on the subject have been competent scholars and subtle philosophers. To date they have done such an excellent job that no one can make crass or odious comparisons between religions without making it very clear that he is an ignoramus. To say, for example, that whereas Christians believe the Ultimate Reality to be a loving, personal deity, Buddhists maintain that it is only an empty void, is to show that one understands neither Christianity nor Buddhism. For as we go into the depths of these matters, making full allowance for cultural variations, for differences of language and metaphor, and for all the semantic confusions which they engender, it appears that men’s experiences of “the ultimate” are peculiarly alike. When they get down to negative or apophatic theology — the approach to God by the sculptural method of cutting away concepts — St. Dionysius and St. Thomas are speaking the same language as Nagarjuna and Shankara. At such levels the differences between sophisticated Christian theologians and Hindu or Buddhist pandits are mere technicalities.… But there are other levels.
Really, I am not here to argue or even to champion Alan Watts. In the past, on other forums, I have sought to open threads on the actual experience of Reality (God) and how such differs (if at all) between those who see themselves as theists and those who see themselves as non-theists. This in part taking the lead of Thomas Merton who said that he was more interested in the lived reality/experience of those in the monastic traditions than in comparing religions at the doctrinal level. As Alan Watts says above....there are other levels.
The book I cite of Alan Watts is in one sense simple saying that our "egos", the simple sense of self that we have most of the time, is purely temporal and will cease to be at death. That behind such is the "real self", the Hindu tat tvam asi (“That art thou”), which in effect is playing hide and seek with itself, "knowing" itself by knowing that which is "other".....contrast. It all seems a bit messy but in fact I find it more and more simple, and that such offers a clarity that is new to me.
Really, irrespective of all the guff written about "true self" and "false self" I really find it impossible to believe in any such superficial ego-self as having any final reality in any sense involving linear time. No "reconciliation of all things" involving all such "selves". I love history and reading of so many battles and conflicts involving slaughter of so many, young and old, I simply cannot look at some sort of "final" reconciliation as offering anything other than fantasy. That such egoic selves simply cease to be and "return" to the One Source offers far greater clarity.
What is this thread about? Whatever you like.
Thanks
Over the past few months I have been reading - and re-reading - his book "Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship" and find it illuminating.
One passage:-
“Comparative religion” or “comparative theology” has hitherto been a strictly academic pursuit, and the better authorities on the subject have been competent scholars and subtle philosophers. To date they have done such an excellent job that no one can make crass or odious comparisons between religions without making it very clear that he is an ignoramus. To say, for example, that whereas Christians believe the Ultimate Reality to be a loving, personal deity, Buddhists maintain that it is only an empty void, is to show that one understands neither Christianity nor Buddhism. For as we go into the depths of these matters, making full allowance for cultural variations, for differences of language and metaphor, and for all the semantic confusions which they engender, it appears that men’s experiences of “the ultimate” are peculiarly alike. When they get down to negative or apophatic theology — the approach to God by the sculptural method of cutting away concepts — St. Dionysius and St. Thomas are speaking the same language as Nagarjuna and Shankara. At such levels the differences between sophisticated Christian theologians and Hindu or Buddhist pandits are mere technicalities.… But there are other levels.
Really, I am not here to argue or even to champion Alan Watts. In the past, on other forums, I have sought to open threads on the actual experience of Reality (God) and how such differs (if at all) between those who see themselves as theists and those who see themselves as non-theists. This in part taking the lead of Thomas Merton who said that he was more interested in the lived reality/experience of those in the monastic traditions than in comparing religions at the doctrinal level. As Alan Watts says above....there are other levels.
The book I cite of Alan Watts is in one sense simple saying that our "egos", the simple sense of self that we have most of the time, is purely temporal and will cease to be at death. That behind such is the "real self", the Hindu tat tvam asi (“That art thou”), which in effect is playing hide and seek with itself, "knowing" itself by knowing that which is "other".....contrast. It all seems a bit messy but in fact I find it more and more simple, and that such offers a clarity that is new to me.
Really, irrespective of all the guff written about "true self" and "false self" I really find it impossible to believe in any such superficial ego-self as having any final reality in any sense involving linear time. No "reconciliation of all things" involving all such "selves". I love history and reading of so many battles and conflicts involving slaughter of so many, young and old, I simply cannot look at some sort of "final" reconciliation as offering anything other than fantasy. That such egoic selves simply cease to be and "return" to the One Source offers far greater clarity.
What is this thread about? Whatever you like.
Thanks