As Lent begins, I find myself once more blessing the congregation with these words: ‘Christ give you grace to grow in holiness, to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him’. It seems to modern ears that the very worst thing one could ever do is to deny oneself! Surely it’s all we have, the most precious, indeed, the only thing that we truly have. Our contemporary spiritual instinct is to deny such denial and counter it with another injunction: ‘be yourself’!

I can full understand why people react against this apparent call to meek submissiveness, sounding, as it does, like an invitation to be at the mercy of some greater authority, conforming to external norms and expectations, rejecting all individuality and freedom. And I am sure that religious authorities have sometimes been as guilty of such an interpretation as other human institutions have. But I feel more and more convinced that the call to deny oneself is right at the heart of the spiritual life and I have been helped by some Buddhist insight into what this truly means.

In Buddhist thought, there is no separate self to deny: to deny oneself is deny that there is such a thing as a separate self to deny! Buddhism does not posit a self-existent ‘soul’ with some sort of existence that is, to some degree, independent of the body. Indeed, orthodox Christianity also denies such an anthropology! The Buddhist no-self is a recognition that there is no separate ‘thing’ that is ‘me’. We are always in movement, in process, in becoming and not some kind of solid entity with firmly defined boundaries. Of course, Buddhism does not deny that there are ‘selves’ – that would be counter to the simple observation of the diversity of human forms – but it insists that these ‘selves’ are also ’empty’ of substance. But to say they have no separate substantial identity is not to say that they are unimportant or of no value. On the contrary, this awareness opens us up to the fundamental truth of our connectedness with all other things. All ‘selves’ share this boundless, expansive, creative openness, this ‘void’ that is at the heart of all life.

So in denying that there is a separate self, we are denying the self-importance, self-obsession and aggressive self-protection that can lie at the heart of so much of our human misery. To let go of such a self is to find freedom. And I think that when Jesus said  that we must ‘deny ourselves’ in order to find ourselves, I think he something like this in mind: ‘deny your separation, your isolation; do not cling to such things and you will find life’.

I apologise that this post is nothing like as racy as the menage-a-trois sounding title might imply. It’s really a reflection on a phenomenon that has been occupying my thoughts and studies rather a lot recently, and it is the notion of ‘dual belonging’ in religious life. I part, this stems from my research into the writings of the Irish Jesuit William Johnston, whose own interaction with Zen Buddhism was complex and did not lead him to the position where he could in any way embrace a multiplicity of religious identities. For him, the reason was not polemical or judgmental – he simply couldn’t see a way to let go of his primary calling to a spiritual path that was Christian, formed by many centuries of contemplative experience, an experience which he sought deeply in his own life. He felt the same kind of loyalty to one path in his Zen Buddhist friends, for whom loyalty to a teacher, as well as more primary loyalties to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, was fundamental. Nonetheless, his Christianity was deeply shaped by his ongoing dialogue with Buddhism to the extent that he regarded such dialogue as utterly essential.

But many of Johnston’s friends and followers took a different path, one that wholeheartedly, if not always straightforwardly, embraced the practices and insights of Christianity and Buddhism. Robert Kennedy, another Jesuit, writes powerfully of this blending of insights in his books, of which ‘Zen Gifts to Christians‘ is an excellent example. He describes there how Johnston led him round many Zen temples in Japan in search of wisdom and spiritual rejuvenation.

Looking to another exemplar, Paul Knitter is more reflective on the nature of this dual belonging. Knitter was a Catholic priest and has spent his life teaching theology. He also practises Dzogchen Buddhism and has written extensively on inter-religious matters. He used to describe himself as a Buddhist Christian, but now finds it impossible to separate these identities or give one of them priority. He talks of how some ‘dual belongers’ are Christian for one half of the week and Buddhist for the other, some clearly identify a primary belonging, some are simply uncertain about how these two streams interact. Knitter has a particularly interesting way of describing how it is for him (at least, it’s interesting to theology nerds like me…). He uses the Chalcedonian language about the two natures of Christ to talk about how his own ‘two natures’ interact – constantly influencing each other, constantly moving, but completely united. For him, there can be no division, no dualism between the ‘wisdom’ emphasis of Buddhism and the ‘love’ emphasis of Christianity. On a practical level, this means that he also participates both in Christian liturgy and prayer, and Buddhist ritual and meditation, though he brings all of his experience to each. So he hears Christian sermons through Buddhist ears and meditates as a Buddhist conscious of the divine presence. He describes quite movingly how, for him, ‘Buddhism provides the ontology and Christianity provides the particularity. Buddha makes clear what is going on. Christ shows how it goes on.’

For many Christians, this poses severe problems as it challenges both Christianity’s claim to exclusive truth and the believer’s secure place among the elect. Is this ‘dual belonging’ not simply a loss of nerve in the face of declining Christian influence in the West? Is it simply a giving in to the lure of the mystic East, not recongising the treasures of one’s own tradition in the area of mystical wisdom and loving contemplation? I don’t think so. I see this phenomenon as being a genuine fruit of encounter between faiths and I would not want to dismiss it any more than I would want to dismiss Johnston’s choice to adhere to his one Christian way. These dual belongers offer a particular kind of challenge to religious people to see beyond their tribal loyalties and place the faithful practice of spiritual awakening at the heart of all that they do. They embody the urgency of dialogue in their own person and urge us all to see beyond limited horizons. Their approach also embodies a deep spiritual truth, which is that there is no spiritual growth without loosening our grip on the things we imagine to be essential or, as Jesus put it, no gaining of life without the willingness to lose it.

It is St Clare’s feast day tomorrow and, therefore, another opportunity to remember what an exceptional mystical theologian she was. Too often, she is overshadowed by Francis in the consciousness of most church people, but it would be a mistake to see her only as a follower of her better known contemporary. Although she responded to the same call that drew Francis to a life of radical simplicity, her mystical exploration of Holy Poverty is of a different order from his – more subtle, more contemplative, more carefully developed – though it is no less radical in terms of the life she led. Clare’s letters to Blessed Agnes of Prague are classics of medieval Christian mysticism and explore poverty as a profound expression of self-forgetting, an utter humility in which the true self is realised. Among the many images in these letters, the image of the mirror in the third letter stands out. She is by no means the first to use it and, in the letter, is quoting directly from the book of Wisdom. The image is also known in other faith traditions as a picture of the true mind, clarified of all distortions, simple and pure, seeing all and having no separate identity. In Clare’s writing, the mirror into which we gaze is Christ, poor, humble and loving. In that mirror, we see our own face, and when we see it clearly, we see that it has the same character of the mirror itself – poor, humble, loving. In other words, our own face is seen also as a mirror, also as Christ.

With Clare, though, this is no theory. It is the lived experience of the contemplative who practices a life of spiritual and material poverty. Poverty is not an add-on for her but a lived expression of one’s true nature. Her example brings to mind another exemplar of holy poverty, the Zen monk Ryokan. When a thief came to his simple hut, Ryokan was happy to let him take what meagre possessions he had. As the thief left, Ryokan sighed sadly and said, ‘I wish I could have given him the moon as well.’ The lesson being, of course, that if the thief learns true poverty, he can have the moon as well! Ryokan also wrote on the practice of begging for food, takuhatsu:

The cloud-covered sky
is all open.
The heart of takuhatsu
as it is –
a gift from heaven.

This was Clare’s experience of poverty too, a divine simplicity in which we learn complete openness. This complete openness is shown ultimately in self-giving love. For Clare, this self-giving love is the Mirror that hangs on a wooden gallows. Looking into it with the same openness, our love is inflamed until we cry out:

‘Draw me after you!
I will run and not tire
until your hand will embrace me happily
and you will kiss me with the happiest kiss.’

[Third Letter to Agnes, paragraphs 30ff]

The spiritual life is a path of letting go. People often talk of religion as if it were ‘adding something’ to people’s lives but I like to think of it more in terms of subtraction than addition! Faith, to me, is not a question of adopting new ideas, beginning new kinds of behaviour, taking on a new identity, but a question of deliberate self-forgetting in order that we may more truly live. For much of the time, we run the risk of living our lives at a distance, separated from reality by ideas of what should be happening or concepts of what we are seeing around us. These concepts place a preconception between us and what we see. Even to give something a name is to risk pinning it down to a limited definition. Indeed, one of the most intrusive names can be ‘I’ and all we associate with that. We can find it so hard simply to see what’s there, perhaps because we have not really got to grips with the (empty – see yesterday’s post!) nature of the one doing the seeing…

If there is a letting-go at the heart of all spirituality, then this can be challenging to us when our instinct is to hold on all the more tightly. When things are turbulent, we reach for what we think is dependable and solid. ‘I wish I had your faith, it would be such a comfort in difficult times’ is a phrase religious people often hear. But faith is not that kind of thing. It is not a solid fixture to cling to but an assurance that it’s ok to let go, and God is not a supernatural rescue service, but the very Life we discover in the letting-go. God is not outside the storm stretching out a hand to pluck us to safety. God is the storm, and the sea, and the one buffeted by the waves, and the peace.

The film, Wild, which is based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoire, is a deeply moving reflection on one woman’s pilgrimage along the Pacific Crest Trail in the wake of her mother’s untimely death and the personal trials that follow it. The pilgrimage reveals what all true pilgrimages do, which is that it is only in going on a journey that we discover afresh the place in the universe that we already inhabited. It is rarely a question of discovering something new, something that we did not already possess, and more often a question of learning to see afresh. Enlightenment always has that quality – the discovery of our original face, the realisation of our true nature.

But is the Christian story of redemption not something different? Is it not a case of receiving something we did not already have, like forgiveness, or reconciliation, or grace? Is the Christian narrative not one of rescue rather than realisation? At the end of the film, Strayed says something like (and please forgive this paraphrase, this is how I remember what I heard!) ‘When was I redeemed? I always was.’ This seems to be a novel use of a word that might usually be thought of as denoting precisely a kind of rescue, an intervention from ‘outside’ that sorts us out and gives us what it was that we lacked. But its use here is much more in the territory of enlightenment or realisation. Strayed discovered in her long walk the woman her mother had always raised her to be – it was a question of learning to become what she already was.

I think this is a lovely way of talking about the Christian story of ‘redemption’. When were you saved? Well, there are many ways of answering that question. You could say, ‘Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, when the gardener uttered my name.’ You could say, ‘I was always saved. It was always in the way of God to create life, always in God’s heart to bring that life to the full realisation of the beauty of being alive. It was always true that each created being found its fullness in being truly awake.’

In this account, the death and resurrection of Jesus reveal what has always been true about human life. It is only in giving ourselves over to self-transcending love that we wake up to the truth of who we are. But that ‘giving over’ might be a demanding journey. Like Strayed, it might be a bruising trek through desert heat which confronts us with things we had strived to put out of mind. Like Jesus, it might be that fourteen-stationed crossbar haul through a city’s streets to a hill that demanded everything and then gave it back, shining like the sun.

Thomas Merton wrote comparatively little about the events of Holy Week or, indeed, about the Cross. His spirituality was of a more ‘cosmic’ nature, though firmly rooted in human experience as well as in traditional Christian theological categories. But here is one little reflection that mentions the Cross in his characteristic style. It comes from his extended meditation, Day of a Stranger, which describes a ‘typical’ day in his hermitage:

One might say I had decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered be all the lovers in their beds all over the world. So perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center of all other loves. I attempt to cultivate this plant without comment in the middle of the night and water it with psalms and prophecies in silence. It becomes the most rare of all the trees in the garden, at once the primordial paradise tree, the axis mundi, the cosmic axle, and the Cross. Nulla silva talem profert. There is only one such tree. It cannot be multiplied. It is not interesting.

The Latin quotation in the piece is from Fortunatus’ hymn, Pange Lingua, which hails the wood of the cross as being without compare. The contemplative depth of Merton’s reflection here is extraordinary and needs a little unpacking. I think it reflects his engagement with Buddhism in his suggestion that the ‘point of pure nothingness’ is one – that is, something akin to the Buddha-consciousness or to sunyata – and that it is ‘uninteresting’ – that is, not an object for speculation or analysis but a pure simplicity of being. It is also profoundly Christian in its presentation of the Cross as a cosmic reality. He draws on that ancient tradition of the tree of the garden of Eden being the tree from which the wood of the cross would be taken – paradise is restored in the self-giving of the Christ. And he is clear that our way to engage with this reality is to enter silence in love. This is no retreat from the world, as all the world is contained in this apprehension of reality, and Merton’s engagement with the wider world, its peace, its creativity, its contradictions is highly visible in this essay.

Merton may not dwell much on the drama of Holy Week in his writings, but his contemplative consciousness would be unthinkable if it had not been formed in the shadow of this one tree.