The catholic Monk
Thomas Merton had this great line, he said "How is it possible to tell
everybody walking around that they're all filled with a brilliance like the
sun? How is it possible to tell one
another we're all filled with brilliance, a brilliant light like the sun?" And that's the Cosmic Christ position, that
Christ is the light within all things.
And that tradition, the mystical tradition, has not been passed on well
the last century, either in Protestantism or Catholicism, and it's very important to being this
back. This is where the excitement
lives, and this is where we can connect to other deep mystical traditions:
Sufism from Islam, Buddhism from the East, and other traditions as well.
Rob Kall:
I've long believed that - Maslow said something like. "The founders of
religion are very wise and inspired, but as soon as the religion becomes an
institution, it gets ruined." Do you
think there is a way... Pardon me?
Matthew Fox:
There's a lot of truth to that.
Father Bede Griffiths, who I mentioned earlier, said the same
thing. He said, "Every religion begins
with a mystical experience." The Buddha
under the Bodhi tree, Jesus in his context, Isaiah, all of it. But, he said, "When you have these
experiences, then you'll put them in language because you want to tell others
about it, then it gets in a doctrine, because you kind of want to spell it out,
and pretty soon it gets away, because the Left Brain, and the Dogmatists, and
the Canon Lawyers, and the accountants, take over."
So you have to be
continually -- there's a good line in Catholicism, Ecclesia semper reformanda: "The church is always needing to be
reformed." And that is true, you always
have to go back to the inspiration of the original source, snd get away from
this pile of Canon Laws, and church buildings, and basilicas, and Papal
pronouncements. Utterly, religion is
something very simple. It is about the
heart being turned on, to be generous, and to be just, and to be courageous
enough to pull that off; and to be compassionate, and to celebrate.
That's what it
comes down to, and we're at one of these times of history when we have to
simplify, we have to come back to the real meaning, not just of the Christ
event, but of the Buddha event. The
Buddhists have to clean their act up.
The Muslims have to clean their act up.
The Jews have to clean their act up.
The time for the shaking down our religions to get to the distillation
of it, and then linking up with the distillation of each, and create a new
thing, with the help of science.
Rob Kall:
What about Atheism? Where does
that fit in? How do you see...
Matthew Fox: It
has a real place to play, because Atheism helps us to criticize, frankly, the
idols of religion. Like I talked earlier
about Papalolatry, which happens when television takes over the Vatican. So, I think Atheism has it's place for sure.
But there are many
kinds of Atheism, you know, we think there's only one kind. It's like Protestantism, there's all versions
of it. Some Atheism is anti-Theism. Theism says God is up in the sky, and the
rest of us live here. So I'm an anti-Theist
also. I call my perspective
Pan-entheism: Everything is in God, and
God is in everything. That makes me an
anti-Theist. So from that point of view,
I would be an Atheist.
Meister Eckhart,
one of the great Christian mystics, a Dominican like I was, says, "I pray God
to rid me of God." So if that's not
close to Atheism, I don't know what is.
So in a way, questioning our God is something we all have to do, and
Atheists are on that track. Now, you
know, some atheists, some of these people making big bucks by going on
television and publishing books and all - I'm not impressed by the amount of
Ego in a lot of that.
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