Being Fully Human.

Spirituality as the most basic human experience... Being!



In Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trunpga described the difference between the non-theistic approach of Buddhism the theistic approach of the world's major religions as follows:

"The approach presented here is a classical Buddhist one- not in the formal sense, but in the sense of presenting the Buddhist approach to spirituality. Although the Buddhist way is not theistic, it does not contradict the theistic disciplines. Rather, the differences between the ways is a matter of emphasis and method.The basic problems of spiritual materialism are common to all spiritual disciplines. The Buddhist approach begins with our confusion and suffering and works toward unraveling their origin. The theistic approach begins with the richness of God and works toward raising consciousness so as to experience God's presence. But since the obstacles to relating with God are our confusion and negativities, the theistic approach must also deal with them... According to the Buddhist tradition, the spiritual path is the process of cutting through our confusion, of uncovering the awakened state of mind."   

So both traditions are working toward the same discovery... Truth. In the theistic tradition this is described as "the richness of God," and in the non-theistic approach it's referred to as the awakened mind. Such an experience transcends concepts, language. In the video below Fr. Thomas Keating describes it as "pure being." In Orderly Chaos, Chogyam Trungpa describes such an experience as the experience of Dharmata, "which means being in itself, or constantly being." 

Alan Watts, with brilliance and humor, brings all this discussion to fruition...