Onwards and Upwards

As I continue to develop my own ideas and writing, I have decided to relocate my blog over to Wordpress under a different title with a slightly different focus. While this blog has traversed the private to the public, the personal to the academic, I have decided to focus less on posting introspective writing and more on academic considerations.

I will keep this blog online in the event that I use it later, anyone wants to access some of my older posts, and so that I can continue to comment on blogspot blogs.

If you are interested, you can check out my new blog at Philosophy & Polity.

Thanks to anyone who has read over the past few years!

If You're an Authority, I'm an Authority

Over at Hardcore Zen there has been a lot of discussion in the comments section (and a few comments from Brad) about the role of spiritual authority in Buddhism and spirituality in general. In light of this, I decided to post a response paper I wrote sophomore year for the course "Postmodern God" since it deals with some of these very topics. Enjoy!

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College is the time when, as young people, we have flown the proverbial coop. With a safe distance between us and our upbringings, many take the opportunity to reconsider what we have been taught by our parents and society. Many also take the opportunity to reconsider the role we play in our own spirituality: are we authorities or observers? Often times, as it is in my own experience, we are not content to be merely another drop in the bucket of some congregation. Instead, we search for ways to validate our own mystical and spiritual experiences and beliefs while still being able to fit within the framework of a socially-accepted lifestyle. Michel de Certeau offers a postmodern development on spiritual understanding when he advocates that a plurality of members and authorities is the only way to arrive at a spiritual truth – which would seemingly open the door to mystical experiences that break rank with the usually dogmatic views of organized religions. This serves to validate the air of questioning that surrounds the college life of any introspective student – to question the authorities that one has known, to interpret the event and subsequent interpretations to create a new space is to give birth to spiritual truth. First I will elaborate on Certeau’s view of how authority plays into religious truth, and then I will offer an example of how this viewpoint has helped me progress in my own spiritual development as a practicing Buddhist.

Certeau’s Plural Authority and Mysticism

“Authority in the Plural” is the third of four aspects of Christianity that Certeau outlines in his article, “How is Christianity Thinkable Today?” While discussing plural authorities in Christianity, Certeau says, “Considered precisely as authority, neither the pope, nor Scripture, nor any particular tradition is sufficient to itself. The others are not part of it; as different, they are necessary to it…The plural is the manifestation of the Christian meaning,” (1). No one authority represents the truth of the Jesus-event, and it requires all of the sources and authorities to comprehend and represent Christianity. Again, Certeau says, “This connection of witnesses, of signs or different roles announces a ‘truth’ which cannot be reduced to unity by one member, or by a particular function,” (2). Amassing all of the elements into one super-structure, or attempting to reduce them into one single element does not serve to better the interpretation or encapsulate it – it only limits the reinterpretations that can occur, and thus limits our understanding of the significance of the original event (3).

Truth, as Certeau conceives of it, can only be approached with a plurality of authorities. In fact, this is where spirituality gains its meaning: “The gesture of making room for the multiplicity of Christian languages in relation to the invisibility of the Spirit inaugurates a structure of communication where a plurality of members (or of authorities) is the only revelation of spiritual meaning,” (4). Of this he says, “With [making room for multiplicity] begins a history in which, each time, to “permit” means to “disappear” and, at last, to die. Whether it be in a personal itinerary, pedagogical transmission, educational task or social organization, the mark of spiritual truth is henceforward the effective relation between the fading away of a singularity and that which makes it possible,” (5). In effect, Certeau is saying that spiritual truth only begins to appear when the singularity dies. With a single authority, a single interpretation, there can be no spiritual truth. This opens the door to embracing mystical experiences as a reinterpretation of religious traditions and benefits college students by validating the type of questioning that we often engage in and any conclusion we may arrive at that is contrary or differing from religious authorities.

My Spiritual Progression
 Having been a practicing Zen Buddhist for several years, my encounter with Hindu mysticism (Advaita Vedanta) radically reframed some experiences that have occurred throughout my practice. Where in Buddhism I had practiced with the view that I was sitting to help bring the mind and body into a better balance and to alleviate the suffering of other sentient beings, Advaita had no conception of this – it did not make sense to speak of other beings, or of helping them, or of aligning my ‘self’. While Buddhism is not nearly as adverse to un-selfing experiences or ideas of unity as some other religions, Advaita definitely serves to pull this experience apart. The Advaita conception of no-self is radically different from that in Buddhism. As I struggled to understand how the meaning of my experiences could differ so much between being framed in a Buddhist sense and in a Hindu sense, I was reading the work of Advaita/Buddhist author Wei Wu Wei who said, “The methods of the Masters are illustrated by the saying: ‘To acquire understanding at the hands of others is to close the gates of self-enlightenment.’”(6). It was this attitude that has led me to investigate my own role as an authority in spirituality.

What I believe Wei Wu Wei and Certeau are each saying is that relying upon a spiritual authority and his or her interpretation begins to stagnate spiritual experiences, which in turn (to take a leaf out of Certeau’s book) keeps us from pushing forward and ultimately towards the truth. I have since opened myself up to new interpretations of the spiritual texts I read, and have taken an active role in interpreting my own experiences instead of appealing to some group or individual who supposedly has a monopoly on the truth. I believe that, in doing this, new space is created and we open up new opportunities for dialogue and advancement.

Gotama Buddha was supposedly a Hindu Brahman who did just that – refused the current interpretation of spirituality and claimed that there was a different way of viewing it. Now there is an entirely separate avenue of thought based upon his spiritual insight. Similarly, Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who sought to re-write the old laws with new ones and press the boundary of man’s relation to God, which has clearly had lasting effects. When more people of my generation begin to ask questions of their spiritual authorities and interpret their own spiritual and mystical experiences instead of appealing to organized religion, there will be a richer and continually advancing spiritual dialogue because of it. “It is to say that a spiritual authority may be recognized according to the nature of its relationships with other authorities in a plurality of authorities,” (7). By increasing the number of spiritual authorities that exist and converse, we open the door to the advancement of spirituality itself.

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Citations
(1) Michel de Certeau, How is Christianity Thinkable Today?, in The Postmodern God, ed. Graham Ward (Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. , 1997), 148.
(2) Certeau, 148.
(3) Certeau, 149-50.
(4) Certeau, 151.
(5) Certeau, 151.
(6) Wei, Wei Wu. Ask the Awakened: the Negative Way.( London: Routledge, 1963) xvi.
(7) Certeau, 151.

How Political Science is Failing Us: Have We Lost Our Focus?

This post has been moved and is now hosted at Philosophy & Polity.

The Utility of Research and Political Science

This post has been moved and is now hosted at Philosophy & Polity.

A Long Absence

It has been so long since I've been able to write here. I had very nearly forgotten that I had a blog at all. I think the last post I made was almost two years ago. So much has happened, so much has changed. There are even some things that have stayed the same. I doubt anyone has stopped by here for quite some time, and probably won't for some time to come...

Ah, the reason for my departure.

John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you're making other plans, so I suppose life itself has kept me from writing. I am in the junior year of my college experience - plenty of good stories, but all in good time - and I only have one more year before I am officially a college graduate. I have been so busy with my studies, but I am learning so much. I feel as if I have grown tremendously, and some memories from the past that were once so clear have faded into obscurity. There are some things I think I will always remember, and some things, when I detect the shadow of their absence, I wish I had not forgotten. So many experiences in the last two years have lead me to question my self in ways I had hitherto never believed possible, and yet I know I have only scratched the surface.

My identity, who I thought I was, seems to be chipping away. During the busy day, when appointments dominate my mind and the whole of my mental energy is directed toward pushing myself further, harder, I almost become lost. But at night, in the stillness at the dark edge of sleep, I feel closer to my true self than ever before. I feel as though I am groping in the dark, so close to what I am searching for but helpless to find it. It is there, beyond the scope of my perception. A barely audible whisper amidst my churning, howling mind. The Vedas say that the True Self is present in deep, dreamless sleep, and that the waking world is an illusion.

When I wake up it is back to the world of appointments, juggling obligations and various relationships. But always in the back of my mind is that whisper.

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I would like to post some of my papers from school up here. There are a few I am particularly proud of, and maybe posting them will help me get back into the habit of updating on here. But again, the hindrance is a lack of time versus material. There may be some formatting issues but I will burn that bridge when I come to it.