Reclaiming the Ancient Practice The term “non-dual” will seem new to Western Judeo-Christians, but for centuries (and even longer in the East), the mystics of all religions have tried to lead people to a higher, or non-dual level of consciousness. It is a much more subtle way of knowing where we can see that things “are not totally one, but they are not two either.” (You are supposed to be startled by that! Christians learned this from the Trinity.) The radical union of things was recognized along with their appropriate distinctiveness. Non-duality is at the core of three of the world’s greatest religions—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. I am convinced that Jesus was the first non-dual teacher of the West. Jesus lived in the Middle East and spoke Aramaic, which is actually closer to the Eastern mind than the Western mind. However, his words were first translated into Greek, and then spread to the West where thinking was influenced by Greek logic. We have mostly tried to understand Jesus’ teaching with a dualistic mind, which probably explains many of our problems! The dualistic mind just does not get us very far. The Christian contemplative tradition was consistently assumed, implied, and even taught in Christianity for at least 1600 years. We find it in the Desert Fathers and Mothers, in the Celtic spirituality of Ireland, and in many of the European monasteries. The Franciscan experience of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a flowering of non-dual thinking, as was the preaching of the Dominican Meister Eckhart. Carmelites Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross in the sixteenth century were the last great supernovas of non-dual teaching. But few of us later knew what they were talking about. We just pretended we did. With the Protestant Reformation and even more with the ironically named “Enlightenment,” non-dual thinking largely went underground and has not been systematically taught for the last 400 or 500 years. However, the two great teachers of non-dual consciousness, great love and great suffering, have nevertheless allowed individuals to break through to non-dual, contemplative consciousness, without always knowing that was what they were enjoying. It was Thomas Merton who almost single-handedly brought back contemplation as a science and practice in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Now we have the language and skills to actually teach it again. - Richard Rohr There are several opportunities to try out a spiritual practice at Ascension; see the weekly announcements for specifics.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 14:58:05 +0000
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