#057 The common ground of religious experience is Silence.
The common ground of religious experience is Silence.
There is a common thread among all religions is Silence. In Silence one can experience more deeply the ground of their being. This experience is the basis of all mysticism; it is experiential in nature. Silence has no tradition.
In Silence we can meet ourselves, it is the place were all mysticism meets.
The central focus of the mystical experience is realizing our unity with all living things.
- Willigis Jager
This meeting ourselves cannot be adequately described with language but we are stuck and mystics have tried to convey this spirit in a variety of ways each according to their various different traditions, cosmologies, assumptions and the limitation of their language. The experiences themselves are the same only the explanation differs.
“Not This Not That.” You can’t say anything more about God. The mystic in all religions are unanimous on this point. - Willigis Jager:
When asked about God St. John of the Cross replied, “Nada, nada”. “Not This Not That.”
“There is a reality that precedes heaven and earth. It has no form let alone a name. Eyes cannot see it when they seek it. It has no voice and cannot be heard by ears… My worthy friends, if you desire to hear the thunderous voice of the Dharma, give up your words, empty your thoughts. Then you may come to the point of realizing the single being.” - Daio Kokushi:
In Devotional religion, one of the barriers in describing mystical experience is a anthropomorphized and often comical (terrifying) depiction of God. One of the first thing a mystic does is dispels the notion of God as something knowable. Once this is done it becomes easy to see similarities between eastern and western mysticism.
For example:
“If I had a God whom I could realize I would never take him to be God”
“God and I are one in the act of my perceiving him” - Meister Eckart
“This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday, To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me-- A place where none appeared. - Dark Night of the Soul
So we sit in silence with Monks & Nuns, Wild Women, Buddha’s, Madmen and Saints, one being, one sangha, one body.
Silence is bigger then Buddhism or Christianity. In the end those traditions will pass away but silence will go on for eternity.
There is a common thread among all religions is Silence. In Silence one can experience more deeply the ground of their being. This experience is the basis of all mysticism; it is experiential in nature. Silence has no tradition.
In Silence we can meet ourselves, it is the place were all mysticism meets.
The central focus of the mystical experience is realizing our unity with all living things.
- Willigis Jager
This meeting ourselves cannot be adequately described with language but we are stuck and mystics have tried to convey this spirit in a variety of ways each according to their various different traditions, cosmologies, assumptions and the limitation of their language. The experiences themselves are the same only the explanation differs.
“Not This Not That.” You can’t say anything more about God. The mystic in all religions are unanimous on this point. - Willigis Jager:
When asked about God St. John of the Cross replied, “Nada, nada”. “Not This Not That.”
“There is a reality that precedes heaven and earth. It has no form let alone a name. Eyes cannot see it when they seek it. It has no voice and cannot be heard by ears… My worthy friends, if you desire to hear the thunderous voice of the Dharma, give up your words, empty your thoughts. Then you may come to the point of realizing the single being.” - Daio Kokushi:
In Devotional religion, one of the barriers in describing mystical experience is a anthropomorphized and often comical (terrifying) depiction of God. One of the first thing a mystic does is dispels the notion of God as something knowable. Once this is done it becomes easy to see similarities between eastern and western mysticism.
For example:
“If I had a God whom I could realize I would never take him to be God”
“God and I are one in the act of my perceiving him” - Meister Eckart
“This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday, To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me-- A place where none appeared. - Dark Night of the Soul
So we sit in silence with Monks & Nuns, Wild Women, Buddha’s, Madmen and Saints, one being, one sangha, one body.
Silence is bigger then Buddhism or Christianity. In the end those traditions will pass away but silence will go on for eternity.