Quote from the Book of John on Authentic Living

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

John 10:10

Goals, Guarantees and Absolution

(Taken from an old journal entry dated Thursday November 17, 2005)

I'm going to leave the "goal / guarantee" topic for now and think about forgiveness... There are so many things, embarrassing moments, that I constantly think about. These things I have done in the past. Sometimes the remote past that I cannot let go of. I need absolution bit I don't know how to get it. I need to absolve myself but I just can't seem to be able to do it. Perhaps meditating on this will give me some answers.

(Taken from an old journal entry dated Friday November 18, 2005)

Do goals, guarantees and the need for absolution all relate in some way? Goals and absolution relate in that they both are concerned with the self and making the self better. I suppose there are no guarantees that goals will be achieved or absolution will be attained. The link here is the nagging doubt of life (aka suffering or existential anxiety).

What can be done about it? I guess I hold out hope that meditation will open some doors. I don't know.

I'm beginning to think about Lent. One vow I'm considering is to wake up at 5:00am and either exercise or work on TT. Of course this will be in conjunction with not drinking. I'm also considering reading Aquinas...

Commentary:

Reliving embarrassing moments is not as much of a problem as it used to be. I think I can attribute this to being more aware of my mind and how it functions. Embarrassment is a form of anxiety usually centered on past events or the present situation but in both instances there is a perceived awareness of the disapproval of others. At this point I am better able to distance myself from those thoughts or observe them and this seems to have robbed them of most of their power to recycle themselves and generate more anxious feelings.

The absolution I spoke about had to do with forgiving myself. In these situations my embarrassment and related anxiety were a form of self punishment for the wrongs that I had committed. I had to forgive myself in order to stop punishing myself. I've often thought that the Catholic confessional was a ritualized way of allowing the self to forgive the self. Many things about Christianity seem to be external metaphors for internal truths. Perhaps these metaphors are easier to digest than the actual reality of the situation at first. That is of course if the metaphor is true. I'm not entirely sure about that but it is of interest to me.

Finally, I see that there are glimmers of hope for me to escape these prisons I have created for myself. One is meditation and the other is Lent (which in a way is really a drawn out period of meditation). These seem to be the keys to the prison somehow. At least I am drawn to them as such. The jury is still out on that one.

Morality, Meditation and Anxiety

Morality causes anxiety. When the mind perceives that a moral code has been broken then punishment must be meted out in the form of anxiety. Under normal circumstances the self and the mind are one so that when the mind produces anxiety the self feels it. Meditation (on the other hand) alleviates anxiety by putting distance between the self and the mind whereby the mind cannot so easily infect the self with anxiety. Now, it could be said that an anxious self tends to act immorally. For example, one reaction to anxiety is to take action to get rid of anxiety. The most common tactic is to distract the self in some way and the most effective distractions are typically the most destructive. Alcohol comes to mind here. Another reaction to anxiety is to become irritable and to lash out at other people. So, from this perspective, meditation is a moral act even though its immediate effect is to insulate the self from the punishment it seemingly deserves. In the long run (theoretically) the act of meditating will promote moral behavior by reducing anxiety. So in a round about way, meditation produces moral behavior by avoiding the punishment for imoral behavior. Or something like that. This reminds me of the wheel of suffering or samsara. Perhaps it is a miniature version.

Your Father Who Sees in Secret

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. (Matt 6:6)

There is a sense in Christianity that thoughts matter and "improper" thoughts (e.g., coveting and lust) are sinful and morally wrong. Now, my understanding of Buddhism (and I make no claim to be an authority on the subject) is that thoughts are random and unavoidable and it is best not to get caught up in them. So, under one system these thoughts are crimes requiring a system of justice to mete out punishment and under the other, the thoughts themselves are in a sense their own punishment. Is there some way to reconcile these two positions?

I've often thought that the external, personal deity of Christianity is a metaphor for the actual thing. On one level this makes sense because God being outside of creation is probably not bound by the rules of creation and any attempt to define Him would probably define Him as an entity less than He actually is. This reminds me of a statement my freshman year roommate made to justify his non belief in an omnipotent god. "Can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it?" This question, I think, points out the limited nature of speech to describe the divine more than it offers an insight into the divine. So, what we cannot define with words, we describe with symbols.

The question then becomes, who is this Father that sees in secret? Is it an external entity sitting on a throne? Is it a deeper part of the self? Is it something else entirely? I think the answer to this question might serve to reconcile the Christian and Buddhist concepts of thought. But I really can't be any more specific than that. It's a cop out, I know.