REFLECTION FOR JULY 2012

AN ANNOUNCEMENT!          

With the help of a patient friend I have set up a BLOG and you will find my MONTHLY REFLECTIONS on it. The BLOG ADDRESS is:

                                   petermillarreflects.blogspot.co.uk

The August Reflection will be the last one circulated in this present form. After  August I hope that you will remain receiving the Reflections through this BLOG.

Following last month’s reflection on Coping with Illness I received several responses. Many of these messages were very moving and brought home just how many of us are facing illness of one kind or another. These messages also reminded me of  those who daily care for those who carry weakness and pain in their bodies. That support is surely is “a work of love” - a work of God.

THE WISOM OF THE DALAI LAMA

Recently I had the privilege  of listening to the Dalai Lama during his visit to Edinburgh. The Usher Hall, one of the largest concert halls in the city, was packed with people of all ages. After his talk, young people from local schools asked him many questions. He also presented an award for compassion to a 17 year old Edinburgh school pupil who has done much to raise awareness about schizophrenia from which her mother suffers.

Some Christians feel that we cannot learn anything from other religious traditions. For me that only leads to a real impoverishment of the soul, and the years I spent in India, a country where several faith traditions exist side by side,  gave me a great appreciation of other pathways to the divine: to a deeper spiritual awareness and understanding. The late and much mourned Bede Griffiths, one of the great spiritual voices of our time, was right when he said that living in India had allowed him to discover “the other half of his soul.”

I have always admired the Dalai Lama. For  70 years he has been in public life:

he has endured all kinds of human sorrow and for decades been harshly condemned by one of the largest nations on earth, yet he remains a man of extraordinary compassion, humour, wisdom and light. No wonder that in our often spiritually bankrupt western countries, thousands flock to listen to his words and to be inspired by his example of selfless love. He does not preach, but makes clear we  share the quest for a more compassionate humanity.

Throughout the world, The Dalai Lama, although himself a Buddhist, addresses the fundamental question of a secular ethic for modern societies. A question also addressed today by Christian theologians such as Hans Kung in Germany. Such an ethic is concerned with these questions. How do we live  with moral values, with compassion, with a greater awareness of our inter-connectedness in a world which is often subject to, if not controlled by technology? 

He does not speak in the abstract, or in terms of doctrine. He begins with where we are as humans: often bewildered; often seeking to do good but in that very doing being misunderstood; often under stress in our personal relationships; often carrying various forms of grief; often afraid of the future; often blaming some kind of god for what goes wrong; often falling into addiction because reality may be too harsh to face. 

Given all these many voices clamouring for attention in our minds, the Dalai Lama says that “mindfulness” is therefore crucial. Being aware of the moment and of what that moment holds. Not the past, nor the future, but this present time which may carry within it both joy and sorrow, pain and laughter. As we say in the Christian tradition, “This is the day which the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Not in some other day - but in this day. This moment, this hour.  The only moment of which we are actually aware. 

And in this present moment can we encounter reality with a mind which is not constantly wavering and restless, but rather accepting the moment for what it is - a time to live wisely and fully? To accept our vulnerability along with our strengths. To live calmly with the fact that life is short and that much of it is a mystery. To be able to be joyful knowing that we have many more questions than answers and that as Richard Holloway says in his latest book “Leaving Alexandria” that the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. 

Along with my Bible, I also read a little of  the wisdom of Buddhism, the path upon which the Dalai Lama has trod for seventy years with such amazingly joy-filled faithfulness. In a part of the Buddha’s teachings we read this:

Cast off selfishness, false desire, hatred and greed but cherish faith, watchfulness, energy, contemplation and vision.

As we look around at the world it would be a truly impoverished soul who did not discover both wisdom and challenge in such words. And wise souls in every religious tradition enable us to grow spiritually and to live serenely. That is why the One who holds us all put them in our midst on earth, not just in heaven!