4. Praxis
Our society is well aware of the need for daily physical exercise to maintain effective athletic, or even good "everyday", performance. However, we as a western society (and in some forms of evangelical society not least) can be rather skeptical of any kind of daily consciousness-type exercise to optimize performance. Obviously, the Christian will tend to ask if prayer and Bible-study does not adequately provide just such a "limbering" or "conditioning" (in the healing sense) of the personality. Well, the answer is probably kind of "Yes" and "No". It is, again, a pietistic notion and pitfall that mere reading of the Bible, (or praying, indeed) will bestow automatic spiritual benefit. We don't get that idea from Christ. Neither do we get it, for example, from James who of course tells us in his inimitable blunt style to be "doers of the Word and not hearers only". Or as the NIV has it:
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does." (James 1:22-25)And just by-the-by, it is interesting that the following verses mention the matter of speech and self-control -
"If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless" (James 1:26). He picks up this theme again in chapter 3 - "We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body... All kinds of animals...have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue" (James 3:2-8).So then, a glance in the mirror maketh us pretty not! We must pick up the face-cloth and comb and attend to our appearance. We must act. On a daily, routine basis. Grime sullies our face. Stress sullies and disfigures our thoughts, our behaviour, our speech. Are there daily routines we can look to? Are there stress-reducing approaches which are at all explicit in the Bible? Psalm 1 gives us one answer. It is Zen-like in its call for daily meditation, but distinctly un-Zen in its emphasis on Book, Law and Word. The latter is at variance with Zen in emphasizing verbal truth. For Zen (at least in its "universal one-ness" guise), words are obfuscation and distraction, and words pretending to metaphysical content are most suspect -
"The wind is soft, the moon is serene.Calmly I read the True Word of no letters" (Zenkei Shibayama, A Flower Does Not Talk: Zen Essays )
Ray Grigg quotes the foregoing in his very interesting book 'The Tao of Zen', but later adds -
"A commonly held misimpression of both Taoism and Zen is that they reject the use of words. They use words but they clearly understand the effects and the limits of them....The challenge, of course is to use words and not use words, and never to mistake the word for the thing. Philosophers in Chinese history became aware of the distinction between the reality of direct experience and the fiction created by the metaphorical spell of words. Their insight had a parallel in the Greek logic of Zeno's paradox, in which a runner who continues to cover half the remaining distance to a destination will never arrive...'One can in fact say things that sound right, but mean nothing at all'"(Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc, 1994)
"And it is human nature to use words. Denying them is like denying walking or eating or loving. The trick is to use words without creating a metaphysical construct that takes on a life of its own. Both the Taoist and Zen traditions have an oral and written literature. But the wisdom their sages offer rests on the understanding that the choice cannot be between words or silence; it can only be both words and silence. Indeed a silent wordlessness would become an absolute, merely another metaphysic." (Ibid, p 197)
"'Words are the fog one has to see through,' as one saying puts it." (Ibid, p 194)
Words, of course, differentiate aspects of reality, specify that "this" is not "that", and that "now" is not "then". The one-ness of Zen comes from transcending all differentiation, all specification, all paradox. Words distract from the physical "now", leading to abstract speculation which, for Zen, is inherently futile and delusive. Thus the question of a Zen initiate may well be answered not with words, but with a sharp slap or kick, to jolt him with a shock back into the realization (enlightenment) that the physical here and now is all the Truth there is. Zen is praxis.
The Christian relationship to words is fundamentally different, though there are surprising correspondences also. One correspondence is apparent in the letter of James already referred to above. James puts great weight on action rather than words as an index of an authentic grasp of the Truth. Then we think at once of passages such as: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
Some sense of the degree to which the Buddhist may feel comfortable with James is evident in the following excerpt from a book review by Amos Yong (Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia, USA) in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34/2 (2007). The review is of "The Wisdom of James: Parallels with Mahāyāna Buddhism" by John P. Keenan -
The Christian relationship to words is fundamentally different, though there are surprising correspondences also. One correspondence is apparent in the letter of James already referred to above. James puts great weight on action rather than words as an index of an authentic grasp of the Truth. Then we think at once of passages such as: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
Some sense of the degree to which the Buddhist may feel comfortable with James is evident in the following excerpt from a book review by Amos Yong (Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia, USA) in the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 34/2 (2007). The review is of "The Wisdom of James: Parallels with Mahāyāna Buddhism" by John P. Keenan -
This Mahāyāna reading of James unsurprisingly culminates at one place (among others) in the discourse on teaching and the untamed tongue in the middle of the epistle (3:1–12). From the Mahāyāna perspective, the problem of the tongue is neither merely its capacity for abuse nor only the possibility of false teachings, even if both are matters of concern. Rather, the problem more simply put is that verbal constructs emanate from the tongue. Insofar as discursive and prejudicial discrimination is dependent on words, to that same extent James’ concern can be understood with teaching itself as “an act of language-formed delusion” (p. 217 n4). Keenan thus suggests the virtue of one of the main heroes in the epistle, Job, is the exemplary silence that characterizes his faith (pp. 159–63; cp. 5:11–12 and Job 42:1–6).
This understanding of Job dovetails not only with the broader observation, perennially noted by James interpreters, that the letter is devoid of doctrinal claims, but also with the fact that “James never identifies any conceptual content for the wisdom God gives” (p. 40).
All of this is in line with the Mahāyāna tendency to subordinate conventionally articulated doctrinal teaching, because of its emptiness, to practical wisdom. But the Mahāyāna teachers themselves recognized emptiness is neither an end in itself nor to be grasped as such, since this would be to reify an abstraction. Hence recognition of the emptiness of conventional language leads the sage beyond speech to the embodiment of practical wisdom that is capable of transforming the world. Similarly, with James, “It is not that one should not think, but that one should not think within the framework of friendship with the world [cp. 2:23, 3:13–18, 4:4], within the measure of the world, where distinctions between rich and poor are very important, where the classes of society are almost metaphysical entities” (p. 138).
On Keenan’s reading, then, the letter of James emphasizes “an operative wisdom that discerns needs and responds compassionately” (p. 119). In this framework, the goal of teaching is not discriminatory knowledge (of the world’s) but rather an understanding that leads to merciful compassion. But could we not also see the Mahāyāna tradition in light of James such that, if James is divinely revelatory, then the letter itself judges human thoughts and actions?
If God is the ultimate judge, as Keenan rightly refuses to interpret away, then the insistence that James writes in the wisdom tradition of Torah interpretation and practice suggests it should be read as a prophetic tract through which divine imperatives and judgment appear with illocutionary force. In this case, a more dialectical and dialogical relationship between the New Testament and Mahāyāna Buddhism would see mutual illumination and transformation: the text of James is opened up through the Mahāyāna hermeneutic on the one hand, even as Mahāyāna discourse is itself called to accountability before the ultimate law and judgment of God on the other.
(John P. Keenan, The Wisdom of James: Parallels with Mahāyāna Buddhism, New York and Mahwah, NJ: The Newman Press, 2005)
And a thoughtful Calvinist is unlikely to have too much problem with the following sentiments of Lu K’uan Yu (Charles Luk) (1898-1978) -
"As long as people are beguiled by words, they can never expect to penetrate to the heart of Zen. Why? Because words are merely a vehicle on which the truth is carried. Not understanding the meaning of the old masters and their koans, people try to find it in the words only, but they will find nothing there to lay their hands on. The truth itself is beyond all description, but it is by words that the truth is manifested. Let us, then, forget the words when we gain the truth itself. This is done only when we have an insight through experience into that which is indicated by the words."
For all the "truth-beyond-words" tenor of that last quote, it is significant that in the midst of it Lu K’uan Yu states that "words are merely a vehicle on which the truth is carried" and "it is by words that the truth is manifested". This is a necessary clarification by him, since any unqualified assertion that "the truth cannot be put into words" would be patently self-contradictory, and turn Lu K’uan Yu's very act of writing into a futile, even counter-productive, exercise. Of course, the anti-word koans are also comprised of words. So though Zen takes great pains to point beyond words, it is in practice not absolutist in this regard, recognizing the degree to which silence can be misconstrued even more than words.
I would say, nonetheless, that the Christian worldview, while also being wary of the deluding potential of words ("for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" 2 Cor 3:6), is far less equivocal about endorsing words as viable vehicles of truth. Darwinian dogma would of course have words appearing far down the line (or up the tree?) of human evolution. For Darwinism words are refined grunts, with no transcendent reference - no 'lexicon' or 'grammar' in the heavens to arbitrate meaning. But the Bible has God walking and conversing with Adam "in the cool of the day" and explaining to him the purpose of his life. Words are thus 'grounded' in God, and humans (made in His image) had verbal revelation from God from the outset.
The Bible tells us that the Logos created the cosmos and sustains it by His "word of power" (Heb 1:3). And here we have another unlikely correspondence. Zen of course warns against peering at the finger instead of at the moon to which the finger points. Christians would concur in that sense, but also recognize that words per se also point to the Word. And the Moon itself points to the Word (the Logos) - to Him Who commanded "Let there be light!".
Compare this with Psalm 89:36,37 - "His throne is as secure as the sun, as eternal as the moon, my faithful witness in the sky!". One French translation renders this charmingly - "Tant que la lune sera là, fidèle témoin, derrière les nuages" (en français courant).
For the Calvinist, Christ the Word, the Logos, is not a metaphysical speculation. He is concrete reality. Indeed, as God, He is the only absolute concrete reality. All else derives its meaning from Him, is an echo of Him, is a shadow, a type, a referent of Him.
Cornelius Van Til insists we must think concretely. "Truth", "Beauty", "Justice", "Logic", for example, are not simply human concepts. Yet neither do they have "out-there" self-existence (see also Dooyeweerd below). They are in fact modes of meaning sourced in God. Thus they are not, as Darwinists in their fundamentalist materialism would have it, "emergent properties" of reconstituted stardust called "Man".
Likewise, language is not "accidental". It is not, as it were, the cosmic wind soughing from the Void. Rather, linguistic meaning derives from God. Herman Dooyeweerd [see Friesen site / Basden site], in fact posits a "Linguistic" or "Lingual" modality as an irreducible aspect to reality. Our preceding observation that even Zen cannot entirely discount words would seem to add support to the tenability of this.
Interestingly, the first satanic act in Scripture was the murder of words (logocide?) - "Hath God said?" (Gen 3:1) (cf John 8: 43-47). Ultimately, words have currency because the Creator has used words to communicate truth. (For an extended consideration of the issue of the plurality of languages from a Biblical point of view please refer to the article "Creative Tensions:Personal Reflections of an Evangelical Christian and Gaelic Poet" [PDF]). There is also available an interesting analysis of the influence of the Christian worldview on early Chinese writing in a pdf file called "The Lamb of God hidden in the Ancient Chinese Characters".
Now, to return to Psalm 1. This psalm without doubt counsels us to think on Scripture often, and at least daily (and nightly!). But we see from James that Scripture does not teach that we should do nothing else but read Scripture (ie spend our lives simply staring in the "mirror"). Christ Himself did not give us such an example. Scripture teaches that we should rescue and rebuild the Earth to the glory of God. To pick up again on that Zen "finger and moon" image and modify it slightly (with the Scripture as "finger"), we might say that James warns us against "peering at the finger rather than at the Earth to which the finger (of Scripture) points" (Gen 1:28, Matt 28: 18-20, Mark 16:15, Acts 1: 8).
The Mirror (the Pointing Finger) is indispensible. But James is reminding us that true piety does more than stare at Scripture. True piety acts on it. So, I suggest that Scripture allows that our mind may be employed in various modes, all of which should be compatible with "meditating on His law day and night". My Hebrew is elementary indeed, but I note with interest how this verse (Psalm 1:2) seems structured so that our eye jumps back from "בְתֹורָתֹו יֶהְגֶּה" ("law meditate") to "בְּתֹורַת יְהוָה" ("law of the LORD"). Thus calling our musings away from any detached abstraction and back into the presence of the One Who Lives.
I would say, nonetheless, that the Christian worldview, while also being wary of the deluding potential of words ("for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" 2 Cor 3:6), is far less equivocal about endorsing words as viable vehicles of truth. Darwinian dogma would of course have words appearing far down the line (or up the tree?) of human evolution. For Darwinism words are refined grunts, with no transcendent reference - no 'lexicon' or 'grammar' in the heavens to arbitrate meaning. But the Bible has God walking and conversing with Adam "in the cool of the day" and explaining to him the purpose of his life. Words are thus 'grounded' in God, and humans (made in His image) had verbal revelation from God from the outset.
The Bible tells us that the Logos created the cosmos and sustains it by His "word of power" (Heb 1:3). And here we have another unlikely correspondence. Zen of course warns against peering at the finger instead of at the moon to which the finger points. Christians would concur in that sense, but also recognize that words per se also point to the Word. And the Moon itself points to the Word (the Logos) - to Him Who commanded "Let there be light!".
Compare this with Psalm 89:36,37 - "His throne is as secure as the sun, as eternal as the moon, my faithful witness in the sky!". One French translation renders this charmingly - "Tant que la lune sera là, fidèle témoin, derrière les nuages" (en français courant).
For the Calvinist, Christ the Word, the Logos, is not a metaphysical speculation. He is concrete reality. Indeed, as God, He is the only absolute concrete reality. All else derives its meaning from Him, is an echo of Him, is a shadow, a type, a referent of Him.
Cornelius Van Til insists we must think concretely. "Truth", "Beauty", "Justice", "Logic", for example, are not simply human concepts. Yet neither do they have "out-there" self-existence (see also Dooyeweerd below). They are in fact modes of meaning sourced in God. Thus they are not, as Darwinists in their fundamentalist materialism would have it, "emergent properties" of reconstituted stardust called "Man".
Likewise, language is not "accidental". It is not, as it were, the cosmic wind soughing from the Void. Rather, linguistic meaning derives from God. Herman Dooyeweerd [see Friesen site / Basden site], in fact posits a "Linguistic" or "Lingual" modality as an irreducible aspect to reality. Our preceding observation that even Zen cannot entirely discount words would seem to add support to the tenability of this.
Interestingly, the first satanic act in Scripture was the murder of words (logocide?) - "Hath God said?" (Gen 3:1) (cf John 8: 43-47). Ultimately, words have currency because the Creator has used words to communicate truth. (For an extended consideration of the issue of the plurality of languages from a Biblical point of view please refer to the article "Creative Tensions:Personal Reflections of an Evangelical Christian and Gaelic Poet" [PDF]). There is also available an interesting analysis of the influence of the Christian worldview on early Chinese writing in a pdf file called "The Lamb of God hidden in the Ancient Chinese Characters".
Now, to return to Psalm 1. This psalm without doubt counsels us to think on Scripture often, and at least daily (and nightly!). But we see from James that Scripture does not teach that we should do nothing else but read Scripture (ie spend our lives simply staring in the "mirror"). Christ Himself did not give us such an example. Scripture teaches that we should rescue and rebuild the Earth to the glory of God. To pick up again on that Zen "finger and moon" image and modify it slightly (with the Scripture as "finger"), we might say that James warns us against "peering at the finger rather than at the Earth to which the finger (of Scripture) points" (Gen 1:28, Matt 28: 18-20, Mark 16:15, Acts 1: 8).
The Mirror (the Pointing Finger) is indispensible. But James is reminding us that true piety does more than stare at Scripture. True piety acts on it. So, I suggest that Scripture allows that our mind may be employed in various modes, all of which should be compatible with "meditating on His law day and night". My Hebrew is elementary indeed, but I note with interest how this verse (Psalm 1:2) seems structured so that our eye jumps back from "בְתֹורָתֹו יֶהְגֶּה" ("law meditate") to "בְּתֹורַת יְהוָה" ("law of the LORD"). Thus calling our musings away from any detached abstraction and back into the presence of the One Who Lives.
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