γρηγορειτε και προσεθχεσθε, ινα μη ελθητε εις πειρασμον, το μεν πνευμα προθυμον η δε σαρξ ασθενης.
This is Mark 14:38. It says "watch and pray, so that you do not fall into trouble: on the one hand the spirit is ready, but the flesh weak." Some of us out here are concerned with the possibility of bringing Buddhism and Christianity together. And so just a quick note here on one little verse that jumped out at me as I was doing my Greek homework. Keeping watch, as it says here, is practiced in most of the Buddhist sects I know. Zen made much, and continues to make much if it is authentic Zen, of simply sitting and observing and learning how create distance between what is happening to you and with you. This distance, as neurologists and brain researchers are now figuring out, takes place in your frontal lobe where the brain does its long range planning and finds control for all of its operations. Questions about possible conflicts over what it means to pray and what it means to meditate are nullified here. Watch AND pray! Just do it and forget about whether its Christian of Buddhist. Your brain needs it. You need it.
"the flesh is weak but the spirit willing" to me sounds like one of the four noble truths. Suffering exists, it is all pervasive in fact. But it can be overcome. That little running-back back there behind the line of scrimmage just needs one good block and he's gone. That was an idiot analogy. Yes. But a potentially life transforming opetation, provided we watch and pray long enough and jump into it with both feet.
2 comments:
Cool solution: watch=pray=watch. Yesterday the Orthodox celebrated Pascha, which is nothing if not a celebration of Waking Up. The Buddha, of course, is Awake. I've thought for years that Christian Resurrection and Buddhist Enlightenment are at least related, and may be equivalent.
I at first felt some unease and thought maybe I was ripping this quote out of context and possibly forcing it. But after what you said here, it makes me think: what possibly can be wrong with being awake and watching carefully and dispasstionately what is happening around you and to you? Richard Rohr said something very interesting in the book I just finished. He said of the Resurrection, that in the NT it never says "he arose" but rather "he was raised." I know that Orthodox tradition may differ here, but the NT may coincide with Buddhist tradition in a sense here by showing us that waking up is by very definition not a process that involves the self. It is not only a process in which the self is lost, but THE VERY process in which the self is overcome. so, indeed, watch and pray!
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