Warning - this is ridiculously long post. Stop where you like.
SteveRives said:
Actually, it is not clear to me that the differences come off as just cultural, linguistic, etc. E.g. Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho contrasts Judaism to Christianity.
I'm not suggesting that everyone agrees about this.
Clement of Alexandria spends a great deal of time distinguishing the Christian religion from Greek and Roman religions.
Fair enough. My comments were only mean to cover the main religions of today.
Many early Christians writers did not see their religion as compatible with other religions.
That's putting it mildly. They didn't even consider their religion compatible with the Gospels of Mary and Thomas, let alone the Essene Gospels of Peace and so forth, and tried to destroy them all. The early Church view is the one that I'm suggesting is not in accord with Jesus's teachings. Many scholars, at the time of the compilation of the Bible and through to today, agree that the New Testament, as presented by the Church, is a mistransmission of Jesus's teachings, by ommission and by misinterpretation, and certainly all mystics hold this view, Christian or otherwise.
The whole Trinitarian doctrine makes Christianity fundamentally incompatible with Judaism and Islam.
But I'm suggesting that this very incompatibility is the result of a misunderstanding of Jesus and Mohammed. Christian mystics and Sufis have always been in complete accord in their cosmological views. I'm not suggesting that your average theistic Muslim and Christian have ever been in complete accord.
At the core, belief in the divine, is different. Why does it matter? What does anyone gain by saying: oh, they are just the same? I don’t see how we have made any progress here by flattening all the religions this way.
We should do for religion just what we do for physics, as William James argued. Strip away the icing and accretions and the mainstream religions can be seen to have the same root. The importance of this is that it is the search for what is true and what is not.
Especially when the facts on the ground don’t match our musings: Assyrian Christians in Mosel (the center of the Christian population in Iraq) are dying (because of their beliefs) at the hands of Iraqi religious followers. If the religions were the same, this would not be the case. Palestinians and Jews would not be killing each other if their religions were the same. If they were the same, they’d be the same, and there would be no way to decide who to kill or whose land to take!
Yes, but this is a misunderstanding of what is being said, which is that these internicene difficulties are caused by a misreading of the prophets, who did not disagree.
For example: Jesus says "Bessed is he whose beginning is before he came into being" - (the banned and 'mystical' Gospel of Thomas). Mohammed says "Die before your death". These two remarks mean the same thing, and that they both appear paradoxical is not a coincidence. Related is Lao-Tsu's comment "Being is born of non-being."
But you started out saying that we need to go away from the canonical teachings of Christianity. The canonical accounts of Christianity are the earliest (we have manuscripts dating to the 2nd century!), and the most widely accepted by the early church (most of the canonical accounts show up as quotes in the early church fathers).
Most scholars, I believe it is true to say, agree that it is likely that the Gospel of Thomas is the source for significant parts of the New Testament, and is possibly even the 'Q' gospel. Many believe that the mystical parts of Jesus teachings were omitted from the New Testament for reasons of dogma, either by the Roman Emperor, who acted as editor-in-chief, or by the compilers themselves, who may have thought they were doing the right thing.
Mary is considered by many to be the one referred to in early texts as as Jesus's favourite disciple, but her Gospel was deemed heretical and destroyed on sight after the official record was completed. (A fragment survives). Some conclude that it was for sexist reasons that she was demoted to being a prostitute with nothing to say, but others conclude it was because her Gospel agrees with the Gospel of Thomas, The Essene Gospels and so on.
Many scholars argue that Jesus was an Essene, a sect of which was the Nazirenes. This is partly because no place called Nazareth exists in the historical records, and partly on the basis of his teaching, which is consistent with Essenism, Taoism, Buddhism and the other 'mystical' religions. Modern Essenes know him as 'Jesus the Nazirene'.
If we go to the founding documents of Christianity, those which spread widely and were used earliest by the religion, we get a picture of Jesus not compatible with other religions. The claims of Jesus in the most numerous and the earliest accounts are exclusive claims.
If you can find a remark from Jesus to support your view I'd be surprised. For Jesus the Kingdom was within everyone's grasp. Of course, this view did not survive inside the sectarianised Church, for reasons Bahoudin gives below.
Your Zen story has a lot of truth in it, but it is a warning about misapplied religions traditions. I am just not sure that it applies to deciding what are core beliefs between religions.
The point being made is that ceremony and rituals are accretions, activities that should not replace the pursuit of the central mystical experience, or, more theistically, not replace the pursuit of experience of the 'godhead' or of union with the divine within oneself. Mohammed warns against even worship. As Jesus says "The Kingdom of Heaven is
within".
Again, like I said in an earlier post, the devil is in the details.
You can say that again. Strip away the details and at the core of the teachings of Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, Lao-Tsu, Meister Eickhart, St. Theresa, and all other Sufi, Buddhist, Advaita, Taoist, Theosophist, Esssene masters is the affirmation "I am God". This is why mystics tend to get branded heretical, even burnt at the stake, by the authorities, who stand to lose their authority.
Here are a few quotes that seem relevant.
"’Religion’ is a European word, and it is a European convention which has led to its employment as a general term to embrace certain human interests all the world over. In latin it was usually spelt ‘rel(l)igio’, and from very early times scholars have been divided as to its basic meaning. Of Roman writers Cicero held that it came from a root ‘leg-’, meaning ‘to take up, gather, count, or observe’, i.e. ‘to observe the signs of a Divine communication or "to read the omens". Servius, on the other hand, held that it came from another root, ‘lig-’, ‘to bind’, so that ‘religio’ meant ‘a relationship’, i.e. ‘a communion between the human and the Super-Human’. Subsequently it seems to have carried both meanings. St. Augustine the Great uses it in both senses. It is, however, most likely that the earlier one (whether or not we dislike it) was the original, since it is the exact couterpart of a Greek word (parateresis) which means ‘the scrupulous observation of omens and the performance of ritual’. Most significantly the historical Jesus is reported as saying ‘the Kingdom of God cometh not with parateresis’, which may mean ‘not by looking for omens will you discern its approach’, or ‘not by ritual observance will you bring it nearer’. He adds ‘the Kingdom of God is entos humon’, which may be interpreted as ‘already realized in your midst’, or as ‘realised inwardly, and not by outward ceremonies’."
A.C. Bouquet
Comparative Religion
Penguin, London (1962) (p 11)
"Mysticism is a term which has come into common use from about the year 1900 onwards. It has since then become terribly overworked. The term itself is derived from a Greek word, mustes, which means a person who has been admitted to secret knowledge of the realities of life and death. It is only that those who have once attained to such a state should desire to prolong it or to reproduce it at intervals. It has been suggested that all mystics, whether Christian, Moslem, Hindu or Buddhist, are agreed on a few fundamentals: (1) that all division and separateness is unreal, and that the universe is a single indivisible unity; (2) that evil is illusory, and that the illusion arises through regarding a part of the universe as self-subsistent; (3) that time is unreal, and that reality is eternal, not in the sense of being everlasting, but in the sense of being out of time."
A. C. Bouquet
Comparative Religion
Penguin, London (1962) (p 288)
"Again, the mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
Erwin Schrödinger
'The I That Is God'
In Ken Wilbur
Quantum Questions
"DEUS FACTUS SUM."
This is the truth at the core of religions. When Jesus says: "Die before your death", he means, in this other non-official interpretation, that underneath our mortal and transitory self is our true Self, and this is, putting it theistically, God.
When he says "The Kingdom of Heaven is within," he means, according to an Essene or a Buddhist, say, precisely the same thing, that within each of us is a state of consciousness that is fundamental, and which does not die. To know this requires exploring beyond ordinary mortal experience, thus Mohammed's "Die before your death". In other words, find out what it's like before it happens.
This is what lies behind the cat story, why Zen teachers warn against mistaking worship and ritual for experiential substance, and against tying up cats instead of meditating. Presumably for the same reason Mohammed warns "An hour's contemplation is worth a year's worship". This would be a strange thing for a theist to say. The trouble with worship is that it tends to involve the worshipper imagining that God is some objective entity apart from oneself, ("Seek not Lo here or Lo there" as Jesus puts it), which leads the worshipper in precisely the wrong direction.
Just for interest and comparison here are a few more. I hope this isn't too much. (I've got some time on my hands - and this is one of my area of interest - don't feel obliged to respond at length). They all say much the same thing. Btw I'm not trying to batter you into submission - honest - just thought it would be helpful to give a wide sample of views.
"This Kingdom is seated properly in the innermost recesses of the spirit. When the powers of the senses and the powers of the reason are gathered up into the very centre of the man’s being - the unseen depths of his spirit, wherein lies the image of God - and thus he flings himself into the divine abyss… where [everything] is still, full of mystery and empty. There is nothing there but the pure Godhead. Nothing alien, no creature, no image, no form ever penetrated there."
Johannes Tauler (14th century)
In Guy Claxton
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
"For some time I would seek Him yet would find my self. Now I seek my self and find Him."
Khwajah 'Abdallah al-Ansari. In a short treatise in Persian titled "Discourses" (Maqulat)
"Because every thought enters the heart in the form of a mental image of some sensible object, the blessed light of the Divinity will illumine the heart only when the heart is completely free from all form. Indeed, this light reveals itself to the pure intellect in the measure to which the intellect is purged of all concepts".
St. Hesychios the Priest
On Watchfulness and Holiness
Philokalia
"… There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not only the Upanishads. The mystically experienced union with God regularly entails this attitude unless it is opposed by strong existing prejudices;…"
Erwin Schrödinger
The Oneness of Mind
In Ken Wilbur
Quantum Questions ( p 84)
"Spiritual seekers are lost children in a conceptual forest created by their own imagination".
Ramesh Balsekar
The Ultimate Understanding
"OK. To begin at the beginning. The basic, most fundamental thing about Buddhism is the so-called enlightenment experience, which is our birthright, our true nature. It is utterly possible and accessible. It’s not just something Buddha experienced; many have realized enlightenment throughout the ages. That’s what all of this business is about, whether you call it Buddhism, the wisdom traditions, or the Perennial Philosophy. Enlightenment, spiritual awakening, illumination, self-realization, satori — these are all more or less synonyms. It means recognizing who and what we are. It means discovering or realizing our true nature. It is coming home; it is not finding something that we never had before. It is right here, always; we are usually elsewhere! It is here, even now."
Lama Surya Das
Online
"The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you."
Jesus
Gospel of Thomas
"One said:
‘What shall I do to be answered?’
El Shah answered:
‘You shall avoid those who imagine themselves to be the People of Salvation. They think that they are saved, or that they have the means to save. In reality, they are all but lost.
‘These are the people, like today’s Magians, Jews and Christians, who recite dramatic tales, threaten and cajole many times in succession with the same admonitions, They cry out that you must become committed to their creed.
‘The result of this is an imitation, a sentimentalist. Anyone can be "given" this spurious type of belief, and can be made to feel that it is real faith.
‘But this is not the original Way of Zoroaster, of Moses, of Jesus. It is the method discovered by desperate men for the inclusion in their ranks of large numbers."
Hazrat Bahaudin Naqshband (revered Sufi master)
In Idries Shah
Caravan of Dreams
Finally a couple of general comment on religious differences from Sufism.
"You may follow one stream. Realize that it leads to the Ocean. Do not mistake the stream for the Ocean."
Jan-Fishan
Sentences of the Khajagan
"There is one God and one truth, one religion and one mysticism. Call it Sufism or Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, whatever you wish. As God cannot be divided, so mysticism cannot be divided. It is an error when a person says, "My religion is different from yours." He does not know what religion means. Neither can there be many mysticisms, just as there cannot be many wisdoms; there is only one wisdom. It is an error of mankind to say, "This is eastern and that is western." This only shows lack of wisdom.
From The Message through Inayat Khan.
Adapted from talks given in the early 1900's.
http://www.spiritual-learning.com/mysticism-1.html
hmmm?!
