Background
I am a Zen Buddhist with some Catholic Christian leanings. In this post, I explore some commonalities between Buddhist great compassion and Christian grace. The connection for me was formed when I realized compassion has a presence, it is more fundamental than an emotion. It is something available or inherent in or given like grace to everyone and everything.
I am drawn to these images from a deep need for fairness in the world, despite its unfairness. Growing up in a Protestant church, we were told something quite brutal, that effectively the larger part of humanity was automatically hellbound because they lived in cultures with minimal Christian presence. There are, of course, other reasons on top of this (for example the way queer people like myself were treated). But this sense of shameless unfairness, this was impossible to square with the idea of a loving God. But, through time practicing Zen and the influence of my husband, I have given my toes a pronounced dip back into Christian waters by way of Catholicism.
Grace and great compassion
A previous post recounted how, in a small way, I came to know that being Alright is unconditional. Alrightness sounds bland perhaps, but it should not be confused with alrightness. This Alrightness seeps into the bone and into the marrow. It makes your being whole, all in one moment and then over the span of your life, through good and bad.
If I were to find a mapping for Alrightness (in its great all-encompassing sense) in Zen Buddhist terms, it might be an aspect of, or consequence of, great compassion (although this is certainly not a standard mapping!). From this point I will use great compassion instead of Alright/Alrightness and adopt compassion to mean great compassion. While compassion conventionally means feeling with another, great compassion is a deep kind of shared being (in the real sense of existing) that naturally demands action.
In Catholic spirituality, there is an emphasis on the idea/reality/experience of Grace. Grace is God’s gift to humans, an unconditional forgiveness, an enthusiastic acceptance back into the home of a parent who had lost you to the ravages of the outside world. You realize, in a way, you never left safety behind, like a drowning man who loses faith despite rescue being in reach. Grace too calls us to action.
Grace, a hand reaching. Compassion, a hand held.
Doing what is right
In the previous post, I alluded to polishing the mirror, despite there being no mirror, no dust. In a similar way, a congregation asks Paul whether they should sin more so that Grace might increase? To this, Paul tells his charges that this is a fallacy. Compassion is always there, even if you do not see this, but do you experience it? Grace too is God’s eternal gift, but do you experience/feel it/internalize it when following a life that makes you forget, that does not flow from this compassion/grace?
The response to compassion/grace doesn’t need to be complicated. There is a Zen idea called right practice. According to it, what matters is showing up to your meditation space and practicing with right intention, simply doing it, simply. This isn’t an invitation to solipsism, in Zen the meditation hall is both a microcosm and the entire cosmos. Meditation is both an end unto itself and continuous with a deep compassion in action for those inside and outside.
Your practice has already been perfected for you, express it. You cannot help but express it. Yet, still we practice, still we polish no mirror collecting no dust.
Even given, universal grace, Christian worship continues. If it is done with sincerity in accordance with your knowledge and in accordance with your abilities, it is made right for you. And yet continuing correct praxis remains important.
Reaching out, finding…
the hem of a garment
a home in a mudra
God in the dust too
However, dust, like the proverbial faithful dust bunny, has a tendency to follow us around.
We live in a world of troubles and dust, perhaps feeling worse day by day. Grace and compassion allows us to see past the dust’s seeming into its inner light, without losing sight of its nature. All things, even dust, are no dust. In this world, therefore, we are never dirtied, not in a way that compassion and grace cannot touch. Not in a way that they cannot make us grow. Dust too is part of us, transformed, abiding as it is, comes or goes.
Dust you are and to dust you shall return,*
This is our life, moment to moment.
Ashes to ashes,
We give ourselves completely,
always and everywhere.
Can you see it, the dust blowing at you day after day like a sandstorm? Thoughts and actions stemming from anger, fear, disappointment, depression, desire. Thoughts that intrude, so much dust. It seems impossible that compassion and grace is with us, especially when seen from the depths of human experience.
Grace and compassion tell us that there is no dust, we are clean, though we may not feel so. Our fellow humans, all things, clean.
What is right action then,
in a dustless, but dusty, world?
Practice,
a love that is also practical,
forgiveness of ourselves
and others,
remembering what was already there
and never lost.
Great heart of compassion.
Untold grace unfolds and
delights in even the smallest things.
Footnote
* Dust in Christianity and Buddhism have strong overlap in implied meaning concerning the temporariness of the world seen as we usually see it and, for the hopeless, its apparent futility. But here I am actually taking some liberties in using a related Buddhist meaning, our “mental noise” and projected it onto Christian metaphor. This is not a mistake, just somewhat indirect. Our mental noise (apparently) keeps us attached or detached from this being and that. That attachment carries over from moment to moment, dust begetting dust. We have returned to the apparent futility of the world. Its vanity. Dust and ashes. We need a light touch. Not clinging, not forsaking.
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