Christ and the Way of Non-Self

As often happens to me during Meeting for Worship, this morning I found my thoughts turning to Jesus. In particular, I found myself reflecting on Jesus’s statement that one must lose one’s life in order to gain it:

“Then summoning the multitude together with his disciples, he said to them: If anyone wishes to go after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For he who wishes to save his life shall lose it; and he who loses his life for the sake of me and the gospel shall save it. For what does it advantage a man to gain the whole world and pay for it with his life? What can a man give that is worth as much as his life? He who is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous generation, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels.”

(Gospel of Mark, 8:34-38)

And again in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: If anyone wishes to go after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For he who wishes to save his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake shall find it. For what will it advantage a man if he gains the whole world but must pay with his life? Or what will a man give that is worth as much as his life? The son of man is to come in the glory of his father among his angels…”

(Gospel of Matthew, 16:24-27)

The first ministry that was offered in Meeting for Worship today was about how Third Haven encouraged this Friend to love God with all his being:

“But when the Pharisees heard that he [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together, and one of them who was versed in the law questioned him, making trial of him: Master, in the law, which is the great commandment? He said: That you shall love the Lord your God in all your heart and all your spirit and all your mind. That is the great commandment, and the first. There is a second, which is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments all the law and the prophets depend.”

(Gospel of Matthew, 22:34-40)

Here’s the point: one cannot worship God if one is too busy worshiping oneself. If one is too caught up in ego, in the life one wants and feels one deserves, one cannot love the Lord with all one’s heart, one’s spirit, and one’s mind, because one is too caught up in one’s self.

But what does losing one’s life and one’s love of self have to do with the second commandment, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Buddhism has two core teachings (in addition to the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path), that of emptiness and compassion. Here is how the logic works in Buddhism: when one finally realizes that the Self is merely an illusion of the mind and does not have an independent, permanent existence, the distinction between Self and Other vanishes. Thus, one can literally love your neighbor as yourself, because there is no longer a difference between the two.

To be able to love God as He deserves–with all your heart, mind, and spirit–one must give up one’s life and one’s attachment to one’s self. (As Jesus says in many of the Gospels, “No one can serve two Masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”) And in the process of losing one’s life and sense of individual self, one can come to another realization: that we are, all of us, children of God, equally worthy of His love, and as worthy of our own love as we ourselves are.

The first step, though, in both Buddhism and Christianity is to give up the idea of one’s individual self. And this I struggle with. I’m very attached to Me. I have such a tendency to turn my spiritual growth into accomplishments that bolster my ego: “Look how many times I’ve read the Bible! Look at how I’ve taken my Vows at such an early age! Look how spiritual I am!”

I want to love others as myself, to follow where God leads me, to truly KNOW the way of emptiness and compassion as taught in Buddhism, but the truth is that I am too bound up in love and pride of my own Self.

Trials

I wish I had something enlightening to say, but the truth is that my life is so full of drama right now (my sister’s in the hospital and Sugar, my 16 year old cat, is having some thinking outside of the box issues) that I can barely think, let alone find coherent thoughts about God and faith. I am trying to follow God’s will, but I’m not sure I have the patience or the attention span necessary for real discernment right now. It’s more that if it’s an urge to do something, especially something I’ve been putting off doing, that doesn’t diminish with time or gets stronger, then I grudgingly do it.

I wish I could say that in this time of trial in my life that I feel God holding me up, but a more apt metaphor would be that maybe God’s the plywood I’m holding onto as I am lost out at sea. That doesn’t make my faith sound very strong, but it’s the truth.

I am struggling to remember to be patient and compassionate because those things don’t come naturally to anyone and my emotional energy right now is really dangerously low. My tolerance for people being so self-centered that when they call, they never ask how I’m doing (if you’re wondering if I’m talking about you, then it’s not you)… Or how she called a couple of weeks ago to vent to Rob because she was “having a bad day” when that was the very day my sister was admitted to the hospital. My instinct is to scoff at her “bad day” and make fun of it.

I’m not perfect, but that’s no reason not to aim towards always treating others with compassion. It’s just that being compassionate is a lot harder right now than it normally is.

But the truth of it is that the people who are the most challenging to behave compassionately towards are no less worthy of compassion than those to whom I find it easy to be compassionate.

My ex, Andy, is an atheist who believes that all faith boils down to people needing something to believe in when life’s not going well. I don’t know if it’s easier to have faith when life is trying or not, but I’m pretty sure it’s harder to act from faith when life is trying. At least, it’s harder for me.

Please hold me and my family in the Light, all.

Groundless

During Meeting for Worship, I offered up to God the following prayer:

Lord, I feel like I’m a fish out of water, flopping around on the shore. Please help me flop back towards your Living Waters instead of further inland.

That is pretty much how I feel right now. I feel very groundless and very uncomfortable. The Pema Chodron books I’ve read over the past couple of months encourage this feeling, encourage getting comfortable with groundlessness and uncertainty instead of fleeing from it with distractions or by making a storyline out of life. I’ve tried hard to keep that in mind these last couple of days.

But this also seems contrary to my Christian instincts of reaching towards God as my center, and I worry that theism and Buddhism cannot coexist. I’ve found such inspiration to be a kinder, more compassionate person from the Buddhist books I’ve been reading; but what if those practices contradict my belief in God?

Bodhichitta is a Buddhist term for “the awakened heart of loving-kindness and compassion… openness, ultimate truth, our true nature…” It’s beginning to remind me a lot of what Quakers call “that of God”. The goal of Mahayana Buddhism, or one of them at least, is for every person to become united with their inner bodhichitta. This reminds me a lot of one of the goals of praying and/or worshipping in the manner of Friends: for each person to be able to connect to God. But I worry that I am imposing my Christian and Quaker beliefs onto something that should stand on its own. Perhaps by trying to merge the two (three?) faiths, I am doing a disservice to both.

This worries me, and I don’t have clarity yet about it. What I do know is that reading books about Buddhism, especially those written by Pema Chodron and her guru Choygam Trungpa, have inspired me to be a more compassionate, more friendly person in ways that reading Christian or Quaker books haven’t. Jesus showed me the way, but it feels like the stones on the path of my life are Buddhist more than Christian. Maybe the ground underneath is Christian and the borders are Quaker? Maybe I’m taking that metaphor too seriously.

Sugar, my 16 year old Siamese cat who I’ve known since she was a day old, is dying. She might not die in the next month, or even the next year, but she is dying. And it sounds almost silly to say that, because really we’re all dying… but she is acutely dying in a way that everyone else that I know and love aren’t. The hardest part for me isn’t giving her biweekly subcutaneous fluid IVs. The hardest part is trying to get her to eat. Every hour or so, I offer her food. And I watch her lick it a few times. Then, she turns around, and I put the food in front of her again. And she licks it a couple more times. We repeat this process until she starts cleaning herself. All this takes about 15-20 minutes, and she eats maybe a tablespoon worth. (She has kidney disease and will be progressively getting worse for the remainder of her life, however long or short that may be.)

I am trying to focus on the fact that she’s still alive. I am trying to enjoy her company and shower her with as much love as she’s shown me. But when I am truly honest with myself, what scares me the most isn’t her impending death. What scares me the most is that I’m not sure I’m strong enough to watch her go through this. (I’m starting to think that adults stop having pets and start having kids because they’re tired of watching the ones they love die.) I’m not sure I’m strong enough to do what I’ve been doing for the last 10 days every day for the rest of her life. But I love her, and failing her like that isn’t an option.

She reminded me last Thursday, when I was shoving food in her face repeatedly, that what she needs most now isn’t food, but love. She nuzzled up against me and started purring. She is teaching me patience and reminding me of the importance of love.

There’s no easy way out of this.

Shadow

I’m struggling with Prednisone-induced melodrama. I feel like I’m tied to a yoyo string and just watching my inner emotions go up and down, but on the outside I seem fine. And, to be fair, it’s not just the Prednisone. I’m still struggling with the death of my Grandpa. I haven’t been to Meeting regularly for a while and feel like my connection to the place and the people is starting to slip away.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to have Jesus as a savior and whether it’s important or not to think about him in that capacity. If Jesus has shown me the way to God, does that make him my savior? If he’s the one whose life most inspires mine, is he my savior? If he’s the face I give God when I feel the need to give him a face, does that means I’ve accepted him as Son, however subconsciously?

I feel pulled at the seams, I guess, and very distant from God right now. There’s a t-shirt popular with evangelicals that says “Feeling far from God? Guess who moved.” (Or something like that.) That makes sense logically, but I’m not sure that’s entirely fair. I am trying to get God back in my life, to feel that connection I felt so recently… but it just seems like all I’m able to grasp is darkness and shadow.

I miss Him. And I miss my Meeting. It feels like life’s conspired to pull me away from my Meeting, and I’m really not happy about this. In particular, it feels like my health is robbing me of my spiritual home… It’s hard not to feel anger at this.

In a little over one week, I will be having surgery to remove the titanium rod and screws leftover from the surgical fusion of my right wrist done almost 7 years ago. It is difficult to explain the significance of this surgery to me. The metal has always been uncomfortable. It’s been causing pain for well over a year. It feels like a black hole in my hand. It makes touches uncomfortable. I can’t wear a watch, or gloves. Bracelets have to be loose, when I can tolerate them at all. It’s kind of like the metal’s been holding my hand hostage for these 7 years.

Ozzy just popped on my playlist, with “I Just Want You”. Ironic that this really sums things up for me right now:

“Each night when the day is through, I don’t ask much: I just want you.”

Right now, God, I just want You. I need You. Just pick up the yoyo that’s become my life and hold it in Your hands until the string that is my emotions stops occillating. Without You, I have nothing.

My Walls Are Crumbling

Walls crumbling means that you lose your defenses. What allows you to feel safe and secure in your own world falls away. You, like your wall, crumble to rubble.

But the wall falling means you can see things you couldn’t before. You’re a part of this world, all the sadness, the sorrow, the intolerable pain. But also all its joy.

And you let God in.

My walls are crumbling. I am being broken open.

Broken

I just read this revealing post and part of it brought me to tears:

The idea of hearing God and being opened to the Spirit only after one has known great suffering and pain is an idea with very Biblical roots. After much prayer I have come to see brokenness as being broken open to God, having one’s inner walls torn down to experience God’s love and grace, and to be torn from the roots to find freedom in the Lord. As I was praying on brokenness in meeting this Sunday, two things kept coming to me. The first thing was a variation on a line from the prayer I had just written; “let us know suffering so we might find your strength Oh God and ours”.

For the last couple of weeks, my health has not been very good. I’ve felt exhausted, spiritually and physically. I’ve felt like there’s a great chasm between myself and God and that I don’t have the energy to cross. I felt like I couldn’t be strong in my faith when my health was wavering, even though that hasn’t always been the case. I’ve felt too tired to work towards God. I even started questioning whether He really existed or was just a figment of my imagination.

I’m still broken. I don’t feel encased in God’s divine Light like I did a couple of weeks ago when I was following the Leading about my sister-in-law. I took that lack of encasement to mean that He was distanced from me, which made me question rationally whether he was ever really there at all.

For months a huge part of my attempt to deepen my faith has been reading: reading the New Testament, reading books by Quakers, reading books about others’ faiths… I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my faith: what I believe, am I living up to that faith, what is my responsibility to share my faith with others… I’ve done a lot of doing: I’ve prayed, I’ve gone to Meeting regularly, I’ve followed the Leadings I was given…

I’ve been keeping busy. I’ve turned my faith into something Productive, something that needs to be “worked on”, something to check off of my internal To Do list…

It’s time for me to stop doing and start simply being.

I am broken spiritually right now. I am questioning. I am feeling lost. And I am going to do absolutely nothing about it; for how can I be broken open to God if I am constantly trying to repair the cracks?

Pain.

It is just plain hard to feel inspired when my neck, head, and jaw feel like they might pop off at any moment. (Details on my livejournal, for anyone interested.) Sometimes, pain forces me, brutally, closer to God. The fact that I have a nail drilled into my right wrist makes me feel physically connected to Jesus. But days like today make me just want to burrow my head underground, like an ostrich, until the pain ends.

It’s so bad that I can’t think. It’s like there’s a constant humming in my brain. I know that, theoretically, God could help me with this pain, but I don’t really believe it. He knows how much it’s hurting me already. It’s there for some sort of reason. But I still wish I could burrow my head underground until the reason was made clear.

And sometimes I feel like I figure out the reason, but the pain doesn’t stop yet. It’s like, okay, this is reminding me not to take my pain-less (not pain-free, they don’t exist) days for granted. Lesson learned. Can You please take the pain away already?

The Need to Do

I want to do more. I want to help people who need help and comfort those who need to be comforted. But I don’t know how possible this is. I’m tired. And my body aches more and more recently… even eating hurts. I donate as much money as my husband will agree to, but I’m not sure if throwing money at a problem is a good way to solve it in the first place. I’m not sure what the real solutions to problems are.

I want to know if this desire to do more, this feeling that I’m not doing enough, is from God or from my ego. All I see sometimes are my limits: financially I don’t have a job, though I do get SSDI; physically, well, there’s very little that I can’t do for very short periods but nothing I can do for long. And I also see how very lucky I am. I have a house, a wonderful husband, health insurance. We can afford to pay our medical bills (though we couldn’t without the health insurance). What would have happened to me if I’d been born in Haiti or somewhere in Africa, where I wouldn’t have had access to the medications that save my body from itself? (Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder, meaning my white cells attack my joints because they’re… confused. Or over-zealous.)

I want to share because I’ve been so blessed, but I don’t know how. Volunteering isn’t an option; I can’t even commit to an hour a week. Donating I do as much as I can. What else is there?