If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but I do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I have boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing (I Corinthians 13: 1 – 3).
St. Paul’s famous hymn on love echoes the advice and wisdom of the Mahäyäna sages. Love, the great heart of compassion, is a necessary element of true spirituality. Knowledge alone is insufficient – the arhat is inherently a flawed model because the arhat resides with the self, seeking the salvation and satisfaction of the self alone. While trying to overcome all attachments, the attachment to the self has not been eliminated, and so it is a true impasse to enlightenment. To be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus, requires us to overcome the selfish inclinations of the ego, and to actively engage in the world with the same kinds of acts of justice, compassion and love that Jesus has done. Our path to liberation will, like Jesus, require us to follow a path of doing. Wisdom and meditation are components of an awakened awareness in Christ, but compassionate activity is what opens us up from the defiling attachments which hinder our progress.
A Christian should take many components into consideration and blend them together into a spirituality that is at once contemplative and mystical, but also active and engaged in the world. As non-attachment is important, even an attachment for liberation or enlightenment must be put in its place by selfless activity in the world. The bodhisattva principle seeks to help others, even at the expense of one’s own life. “Even if he is indifferent about his own body and life, he takes great trouble or effort only for others.”[1] The Christian is called to be active in the world as co-workers with and for Jesus.[2] In our work and Christian life, we should follow the spirit of self-giving, the spirit that seeks for the salvation of others, over and above ourselves. St. Paul manifested this beautifully when he wrote of his love for his fellow Jews, and that he was willing to be cut off from Christ if it would help them: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh (Romans 9:2 – 3).”
Yet, it is without question, to do this, we need time for personal meditation – not only a meditation on the suffering of others which leads us to opening ours heart to them, but also meditation aimed at opening ourselves to God and his enlightenment. There must be a way for us to experience reality, to understand the limitations of our egotistical shell, and to see beyond the imputations we have put upon ourselves and the world. “There must be a radical detachment from the self, that is, from all selfish attachment to the world, the flesh, and the ego. The self, the jivatman must be surrendered.”[3] Mediation must be undertaken, it must be practiced, in order for us to come to understand ourselves, to understand our mind and how it works. We must come not to only realize conceptually the imputations our mind makes unto the world, but we must experience this process at work, and root it out.
As we progress in our practice of meditation, if we progress in being mindful of the world around us, the more open we are to reality, to seeing the world as it is, to seeing the suffering of others, and becoming capable of understanding what we can do about it. Its purpose must never be meant solely for selfish gain, but for how our heightened awareness can therefore be put back into service for others. “If mindfulness is cultivated in our daily life, if concentration and insight are cultivated in our daily life, we become more open, more tolerant, and our faith and love grow stronger within us.”[4] The desire to help others requires us to become more open, to become more spiritual; but as we become more spiritual, it returns to us the desire to go out and help others. The two are both needed, and yet, as St. Paul says, love is higher than knowledge, and acts of charity have priority to meditational insight.
The Mahäyänasüträlañkära confirms the priority of charity to meditation. The theme of chapter XVI is on the perfections that are achieved on the path to nirvana. The perfections are listed in order, and they begin with charity, then continue with moral character, then forgiveness, then energy, then meditation, and finally, at the end, knowledge.[5] Commenting upon this order, Asanga writes:
It is stated in this order, charity, etc., for three reasons. It is produced in this order in first and the other. Being indifferent to pleasure, one is engaged in the moral training; once a man of character, he becomes more capable of forgiveness; once he becomes capable of forgiveness, he undertakes energy, having undertaken energy, there originates samadhi: once the mind is in samadhi, one has adequate knowledge of principles.[6]
Charity is first, and it allows us to have a good moral character. The defilements are weeded out by it. First, the gross, and less subtle defilements are removed, and then slowly, as we progress, the more refined and difficult ones are eliminated. We are purified first in the externals, and later internally. Charity cleanses the soul, so to speak, so that with its development, which is the development of love, comes the development of a true moral character. One who is moral gains such an insight into forgiveness that they are capable of forgiving others out of their heightened love and morality, knowing it is the right thing to do.
Virtuous behavior begins to clean out the consciousness from all the harsh seeds of retribution we have developed along the course of our existence, and so begins to open up our energy, our ability to meditate and our ability gain insight into existence. Yet what is true in the big picture, what is true in the overall path, is true in part on the short journeys we take forward along the path: that is the more one becomes charitable, the more moral the character that will develop – up to and including, the greater insight one will gain from meditation which will allow one to once again live and work in charity.
Meditation therefore is not only for those who are far along the path, but it is for all, but it must be understood that on the level of priority, it is inferior to charity. Thus it is said, as the path is a path to experiencing selfless activity, of non-attachment to the world by the grasping of the ego, it is the path begun with charity, and “charity is the road which leads to non-attachment to objects, with the student of non-attachment, and gaining strength in it.”[7]
And what else is that charity but love, love which finds its place in us, because, as Balthasar has said elsewhere, the heart of God has been opened and given us all his love, and it is now for us to take it up and follow; grace is found in love.
[1] Maitreya in Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära, Trans. Dr. Surekha Vijay Limaye (Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992), IV.23, p.54.
[2] cf. I Cor 3:9
[3] Bede Griffiths, Return to the Center, (Springfield, IL: Templegate Publishers, 1977), 142.
[4] Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home: Jesus and Buddha As Brothers (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), p.93.
[5] See Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära,. XVI, 8-13.
[6] Asanga, Mahäyänasüträlañkära, XVI.14, p.293.
[7] Ibid, XVI.6, p.289.
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