Everybody Stands On His Own Feet

"Monasticism in the West, for instance, which arose in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era in the deserts of Sinai, Palestine, and Syria, no doubt was affected by the rishis, the forest sages of Indian antiquity, and their monastic heirs, the sannyasis or renunciates. It is well known that Buddhist and Hindu monastic communities existed in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first century before Christ.

The younger religions also influence the older. Christianity’s concept of the social gospel has profoundly influenced Buddhism and Hinduism, traditions that now encourage the growth of socially engaged religious life. And the Christ event has had an even more essential impact on the rise of the bodhisattva ideal, which sprang up in India five centuries after the death of the Buddha and became central to the Mahayana tradition. The bodhisattva is one who vows to selflessly place the liberation of all sentient beings before his or her own.

Many scholars have recognized this influence, but one in particular, the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, does so within the context of spiritual interdependence, suggesting how the advent of Christ influenced the emergence of the bodhisattva:

When the Gospel was preached by the light of day in the countries around the Mediterranean, the nocturnal rays of the Gospel effected a profound transformation of Buddhism. There, the ideal of individual liberation by entering the state of nirvana gave way to the ideal of renouncing nirvana for the work of mercy towards suffering humanity...

Interspirituality and intermysticism are the terms I have coined to designate the increasingly familiar phenomenon of cross-religious sharing of interior resources, the spiritual treasures of each tradition. Of course everyone isn’t participating; really it is only a minority, but its members are the more mystically developed in each tradition, and they each hold great influence.

In the third millennium, interspirituality and intermysticism will become more and more the norm in humankind’s inner evolution. Europeans often say a person isn’t truly educated until they know more than one language. This can also be said of religions: a person is not really fully educated, or indeed “religious,” unless they are intimately aware of more than their own faith and ways of prayer...

We have become spiritually illiterate: ignorant of the realization that life is a spiritual journey, that everything is sacred or a manifestation of the ultimate mystery. We are morally confused, precisely because of this illiteracy. And this illiteracy and confusion have led directly to psychological dysfunction: the breakdown of meaningful communication in the family, and the indifference and insensitivity with which we treat one another. We fear the intimacy inherent in the interactions of society itself.

People regard one another as objects, rather than as the precious beings they are. Our addiction to violence — vicarious and otherwise — is nourished by a steady diet of irresponsible Hollywood images and stories that subtly, and not so subtly, insinuate that violence is fundamental to life. Psychological dysfunction also appears in our frenzied pace of life, with its inevitable fragmentation and tolerance of noise, and in the endless stimulation we require through news, sports, and other forms of excitement. We have become a nation of compulsive neurotics. No wonder the quiet spiritual life has difficulty being heard.

Before we can really understand what interspirituality means in its depth, height, and breadth, we must consider briefly the meaning of the words religious, spiritual, and spirituality. With so many connotations, various contexts in which they are used, and meanings ascribed to them, they require clarification. What do they signify in their fullest sense? Being religious connotes belonging to and practicing a religious tradition. Being spiritual suggests a personal commitment to a process of inner development that engages us in our totality. Religion, of course, is one way many people are spiritual. Often, when authentic faith embodies an individual’s spirituality, the religious and the spiritual will coincide.

Still, not every religious person is spiritual (although they ought to be!), and not every spiritual person is religious. Spirituality is a way of life that affects and includes every moment of existence. It is at once a contemplative attitude, a disposition to a life of depth, and the search for ultimate meaning, direction, and belonging. The spiritual person is committed to growth as an essential, ongoing life goal. To be spiritual requires us to stand on our own two feet while being nurtured and supported by our tradition, if we are fortunate enough to have one.

Thomas Merton stressed this importance of individual strength on the last day of his life, in a talk to Christian and Buddhist monks and nuns in Bangkok. In regard to the Tibetans’ desperate flight from Chinese persecution into exile, Merton told the story of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s frightening experience of being cut off from his monastery. Staying in a village with a peasant family, and uncertain what to do, Merton said, “[Trungpa] sent a message to a nearby abbot friend of his saying: ‘What do we do?’ The abbot sent back a strange message, which [Merton thought] very significant: ‘From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.’

-- Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart