Fw: [thomasmerton] theological distinctions

[Guest guest]

- White Wolfe

Mira

Wednesday, June 06, 2001 10:33 AM

Fw: [thomasmerton] theological distinctions

- Patrick Collins

thomasmerton

Wednesday, June 06, 2001 7:31 AM

Re: [thomasmerton] theological distinctions

DEAR MARK, Your melding of so many different traditions to that point

Merton described as "the underlying connections of opposites" is

truly amazing and thrilling for me to read. Thanks for that gift to

us all. Patrick Collins White Wolfe wrote:

dear brothers and sisters.... .....i am a former student of mystical

theology...i have read many but not all of the recent posts

discussing various theological point of view....read many beautiful

and eloquent statements....ultimately.....almost all theological

debate is a result of a lack of awareness that language and words are

mere symbols or shadows of reality.....to say that Christ is the Way

is evocative to one who lives inside Christian tradition....to a

Chinese peasant it is nothing but gibberish....words mean to each of

us is something slightly different.....words are mental constructs

pointing at reality.....for me Christ is nothingness....a word that

means something like non-dual notions of reality cannot be contained

in words.....Jesus the Christ....is a phrase that refers to the

Crucifix....an image that resonants the infinite compassion of the

sacred heart of the noble warrior in each of us.....yet, it is not

that, it something more....it is the icon that reminds us that the

distinction between the sacred and the profane, the redeemed and the

unredeemed is a false one created by language....the divine manifests

itself in the material world endlessly and without effort......love is

always arising....contemplative prayer brings us into direct contact

with reality as it is.....it is the golden hammer that beats form

(mental constructs) into nothingness.....it brings us into union with

reality so that ultimately we arrive at a place where there is nothing

to say except.....i am in the beloved and the beloved is in me....i am

infinite compassion...or as my spiritual ancestor St. Ignatius

says...."I come from nothing. I am nothing. I return to

nothing."...or even better as our Nisaragadata says....I am

That.....it is the realization that Buddhists talk about when we use

the word inter-being....am i my brother's keeper?....of course, my

brother and i are one....would i condemn myself to hell for holding a

false belief and not understanding myself as i am?.....then, why would

i condemn another whom i do not understand realizing that i do not

even understand myself....there are none lost in reality....neither

pagan or christian.....go sit and practice....go contemplate...."all

manner of things are well" (Dame Julien).....it is not God who made

man in his likeness....it is man who made God in his

likeness....Jesus came to radically destroy the mental concept of the

God of the Old Testament.....Jesus as my Lord and Master calls me to

continuously destroy all mental constructs that arise with the sword

of charity.....another of his wonderful names is Manjuri, the

bodhissavta who comes to us carrying the sword of compassion to slay

all our false mental concepts of what is and what is not and that

divide us one from another.....love is our center....all else in

nothing but love weaving the yarn of reality into endlessly new and

wonderful blossoming flowers.....Awake!...leave dead mental contructs

to the dead....'let the dead bury the dead'......we are alive.....we

are love....i hear the Beloved laughing, do you?.......^^~~~~~

further up and further in, white wolfe "Christ came on earth to form

contemplatives" Thomas Merton Your use of is subject

to the

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