This past Sunday at New
Seeds Priory, we were visited by two gentlemen (a couple), who stayed after the
conclusion of our Contemplative Celtic Eucharist service and shared some
conversation with me. I had met one
member of this couple when I stopped by a local dharma center to introduce
myself and share information about the Priory.
After visiting the Priory website, he and his partner decided to join us
for services. During our after-Eucharist
conversation, the second member of this couple asked some very weighty,
insightful questions…I felt a little as if I were being interrogated. But I took it all as an opportunity to
clarify and articulate just what it is this New Seeds Priory is all about with
someone who was perhaps genuinely seeking a meaningful community in which to
participate and find place and have a voice. It
was a good conversation. It wasn’t until
the end of this conversation that this fellow revealed himself to be a retired
episcopal priest!
He emailed me today to
thank me for sharing service and for entertaining his salvo of questions. (I think I passed the test!)
What follows is an
excerpt from my email reply to this retired priest. I share it with you because it offers what I
hope is a clear and concise explanation of what I want New Seeds Priory to be
about…
“One thing I would like
to share with you about my Christian-Buddhist practice that didn’t segue into
our conversation is my understanding of the Diamond Sutra, or at least one
portion of the Diamond Sutra. The sutra is a dialogue of question and
responses between Buddha and the disciple Subhuti (much like our exchange on
Sunday!). In one exchange, Buddha explains to Subhuti, ‘That which you
call the Highest Truth, may not be the Highest Truth. It is only what you
conceive of as the Highest Truth, therefore you call it the Highest
Truth.’
“In a nutshell, I take
this to mean that no matter what we think of as the highest truth, it is still
only our conceptualization of what
the highest truth is. As a Christian, I see that this teaching is true of
almost everything the Church has offered me as “the truth”. As Christians, we have a two thousand year
inheritance of other people’s conceptualization of “the highest truth”, from
Paul to the Gospel Authors all the way to today, with each author or
commentator interjecting their own political, theological, or societal agendas. I’ve come to see that no matter how much
authoritative weight one wishes to throw behind biblical scripture, it’s still
just someone else’s conceptualization
of God and of the teachings of Jesus. If
I’ve learned anything in my few years of study and experiment, it is that God
is ineffable and well beyond my finite conceptualization, and that my conceptualizations
are a means of putting God in a neat little box. How can God fit in my box or anyone else’s
box? (For our sharing on Easter Sunday
here at the Priory, I offered my point of view on the Easter story as an
allegory for how God, no matter how we may try to conceptualize God, will not
be contained by our boxes!)
“The practice of
Buddhism, Zen in particular, is to have an experience;
a direct, clear, awake, experience.
Mindfulness training is about becoming fully awake and fully present
with the reality of each moment, without conceptualization, without agenda,
without a preconceived meaning or outcome.
In this regard, the practice of Zen is not a ‘religion’, but rather a practice of empirical spirituality.
“So what I hope I’m
doing is creating a space at the Priory where people can feel free and
comfortable in letting go of their theological boxes and move beyond the
theological conceptualization they were given by ‘the church’. I want people to feel free to drop their
doctrinal conditioning and engage in an experiment and have their own direct,
empirical experience of ‘the highest truth’.
To do this, I hope to open a door for people to participate with
Christianity not as a list of doctrinal ‘beliefs’, but as a spiritual
practice. A practice grounded in
humility, love, service, forgiveness, and mercy. I like to think that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was headed
in this direction when he speaks of ‘New Monasticism’ and ‘Religion-less
Christianity’. Participating as a ‘New
Monastic’ with the Lindisfarne Community is my way of experimenting and hopefully
making a small contribution to continuing some of his work.”
I am wishing you a
pleasant and cool evening,
fr. Scott+
