I've produced yet another long rant on philosophy, this one concerning what Eastern thought, oneness and Bruce Lee have to do with Christianity. Or rather, what it has to do with Christianity in my head, since it doesn't actually have anything to do with it in the real world.
As always, I tend to write these sorts of things in a stream of consciousness style; usually I'm just realizing these things as I'm writing, so I apologize for any irrationalities that may occur.
I've been reading Bruce Lee's The Tao of Gung Fu for my Kung Fu class (obviously). I'd always thought of Bruce Lee as a "Hollywood martial artist"; in other words, more actor than warrior. But the more I actually learn about him, the more impressed I am with him as a person and a martial artist.
He's extremely intelligent and, while I've only read three chapters so far, his book is fascinating. In the second chapter he talks about "oneness" - a concept which lies at the heart of Chinese philosophy. Whether you look at Taoism or Buddhism or the Chinese language itself, you find this belief that cause and effect are one and the same thing. Words like "opposite" are replaced by "complementary" because ideas like dark and light, north and south, masculine and feminine all define each other. Without feminine masculine cannot exist; thus femininity causes masculinity which causes femininity.
Once you understand these things it makes sense why there is no "creation story" in Buddhism, why the yin/yang represents the harmony of complementaries rather than the eternal conflict of opposites (as Heraclitus might've proposed), or why the Buddhists believe in reincarnation, that life - not just the individual's life, but all life - is a cycle.
Mark Moy's (rather cheesy) riddle about the two enemies, where one throws a hundred punches and the other blocks a hundred times and is 50% successful, the question being how many times did the attacker get hit, actually ties into this philosophy of oneness. In some martial arts there is a dislike for softness and in others a dislike for hardness; but it is only a combination of the two that is ever truly successful. Like in the riddle, no matter how many times you block, you can't properly defend yourself until you strike.
This philosophy relies on harmony and moderation, and requires a monistic way of looking at life. It seems more complete to me than most other philosophies I've encountered; Bruce Lee is right in his belief that Western philosophy is far too focused on dualism.
I think that those three concepts, harmony, moderation and oneness tie together what's good and true in other philosophies. That everything seeks to be in balance, that balance is harmony, and that harmony is oneness, and that oneness is the Way, and that the Way is God. Jesus said, "I am the Way, the truth and the life." I believe that by approaching Eastern philosophy from a Christian perspective I can draw closer to God. How simple is it to replace the Way with Jesus? There is so much wisdom to be found in Eastern thought; the sheer beauty of it alone is enough to convince me of its worth. Where beauty is, truth is.
Of course, by that I'm referring to something greater than the physical and more tangible than the metaphysical. Beauty, like love, defines itself by its lack of definition. It is its own force and cannot be contained. I believe that beauty, truth and harmony are what make up the oneness that is God the trinity.
It's my belief that most religions and philosophies contain pieces of the truth, given to people by God; because God is universal and exists in all things, then truth must also be universal. I think that Christianity is the most complete revelation of the truth, but that doesn't mean that we should completely disregard the wisdom that exists in other faiths. After all, would it be fair if people who never heard of Christ or the Bible went to Hell simply because of their ignorance?
Of course not. I think that God reveals himself to all of us, and those who choose to listen and obey his laws will be saved.
So in places where Judaism or Christianity didn't exist, God revealed himself in other ways - in pieces of the truth in Buddhism or Hindu or Islam or the many "pagan" religions all over the world.
While this may sound like a universalist theory, and in some ways it is, in the end it isn't. While pieces of the truth may exist in other religions, that doesn't mean that they are the Way. Only Christ is the Way; and only by following him can we enter into Heaven. Some will come to him through the Bible and Christianity, but I think that those who never heard the gospel can still be saved because Christ, God, will reveal himself to them in other ways.
The more that science progresses, the more that we understand how the world around us is full of God's presence. Science is really just beginning to catch up with what religion's been saying for years. "Oneness" can be found everywhere: just study biology to see how every living thing exists in a web of life, where everything is connected to everything else. Even matter and energy are one and the same when you get down to it. And in all of these things is God.
I don't think Christianity is really about dualism at all. It's not good versus evil, God versus the devil. That implies that these forces are opposites, which makes them equals. God is greater than Satan. Where God represents oneness, Satan is separation from oneness, otherness, dualism; Satan is strife and chaos and opposition. God is harmony and balance and oneness. Anything which becomes separated from that oneness with God invariably dies.
God is eternal because he is an unbroken circle of life and death, birth and destruction. He is both hard and soft. But Satan and that which is evil exists outside of that cycle in eternal strife.
The closer we become to God, the closer we become to that oneness, and in doing so we begin to live in harmony with the forces around us. This is how to attain true peace; this is how to abandon the self and live in communion with God.