Yoga and Christ

In Christianity, we can see the inspiration of service in its full glory. There is service in Buddhism, there is service in Islam, but there is nothing like the great orders of service that Christianity produced. I had never noticed it but a foreigner from the Far East said to me, “Your hospitals have the names of saints don’t they? St. Bartholowmews, St. Mary’s. Great orders of service, great orders of education. It’s wonderful.” When you read the biography of some brilliant left wing leader such as Mugabe, it often says he was educated at a Jesuit college. One can say that Jesuits have educated half the world. For instance, there are two great hospitals in Tokyo, Sei Roka (St. Luke’s) and Sei Bo (St. Paul’s). They are both run by Christian nuns. The Japanese law in days past was that there must be Japanese doctors at the head of …

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Men of the world try to help suffering as their feelings dictate, supplemented with a little bit of reason, and perhaps tradition. But until there is a considerable power of meditation, it is often found that the acts do not have the expected results. Bhavana practice is meditation and practice of action together, not just meditation alone or action alone. It is not creating a vague idea of compassion to all that suffers. This kind of practice can be depressing, because yogi can be overwhelmed at the hopelessness of individual efforts to relieve what he sees as an ocean of suffering. Nor is bhavana taking some pattern of action, like the parable of the Good Samaritan, and forcing oneself to follow it as a duty. This also leads to inner disturbance from the parts of the mind which are unconvinced. The English saying ‘Cold as charity’ is a cruel illustration. …

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The evening of the third day after Friday, the day of the crucifixion, and it is the day when Christ made the first of a number of appearances to his disciples. They were not expecting anything of the sort-in fact when Mary Magdalene and others first reported what they had seen, the closest disciples did not believe them. Mary herself had not been expecting it; she talked to a man whom she thought must be the gardener. He must have been wearing the clothes of a gardener, and he would not have been wounded in hands and feet and side. The two disciples whom Christ accompanied from Jerusalem seven miles to Emmaus, explaining how the sufferings of the Messiah had been predicted in the scriptures, felt their hearts on fire with what he said, but they did not recognize him. The Gospel says distinctly that he was in a different …

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The steps in yoga, says Patajali’s Yoga Sütra, are: Faith, Energy, Memory, Samādhi meditation, Prajñā-knowledge, That rules me out’, replies the sceptic; ‘one cannot believe to order. I don’t accept these things in the first place.’ ‘You are not asked to believe’, replies yoga, ‘it is suggested only that you experiment.’ Yoga makes its own experiments. It investigates consciousness directly, and does not depend on inferences from experiments on material events. It gives methods which can, and must, be tried. Without actual trial, yoga would be no more than a rather unlikely theory. A few things are assumed for a time, as working ideas, but they have to be experienced directly before they are finally taken as true. One such assumption is that there is an all-powerful, unlimited, creator and controller, who projects himself in limited forms to help seekers to realize him. The forms may be human, such as …

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In Christianity and Islam, many early converts were the relatively disadvantaged women and slaves who gained much. In Buddhism on the other hand, the early converts were mostly Brahmins, who had everything to lose. The uneducated simply could not understand doctrines like no-self. When it went to other countries, Buddhism first converted the king or a minister. Thus in China some early monasteries were often well endowed, magnificent palaces where new priests had to he ceremonially ordained before the relics of the Indian founder. Gradually the temples became all-important. Only Zen, though it had temples, refused to give them sacred significance: they were just convenient places for teaching and training. When the anti-Buddhist persecutions came, the Emperors struck at the ordination centres. In no long time, the sects ceased to exist, because no new priests could be ordained after the burning of the temples. Only Zen survived: master and pupils …

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In Dante’s Paradiso the Poet is transported to a heavenly realm resembling a vast eagle, in whose eye he sees standing Moses and other prophets. A doubt occurs to him, as it has occurred before in different forms. A man is born on Indus banks, And none is there that speaks of Christ Nor reads of Him nor writes. And all his inclinations and his acts As far as human reason sees are good. And he offendeth not in word or deed. Where is the justice that condemns him? Where is his blame, if he believeth not? Moses meets this with what may be called hand-waving arguments, brushing aside the objection as proceeding from narrowness of vision and of faith. However, the assumptions behind both question and answer, in fact the whole imagined situation, show narrowness of vision. There is a humorous but telling example of the same thing. A …

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St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians warns against degeneration into a human personality cult. Paul hardly ever quotes the words of the human incarnation: he taught the cosmic Christ: The whole universe has been created through him and for him. He exists before everything and all things are held together in him. Through him God chose to reconcile the whole universe to himself… (Colossians 1.16) Some eastern teachers, and especially Zen teachers, believe that this Great Christ is the true message of Christianity. One Zen master, who knew these passages, used to say: ‘Why do they have a dead body hanging up outside their churches? Why do they not teach realization of the Great Christ?’ He himself, as a Buddhist priest, made reverent prostrations daily before the image of the Buddha; but like other Zen teachers (and like Paul), he warned against becoming stuck in symbols. One of them said …

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All bodily mortifications and other exercises are useless but as they serve to arrive at the union with God by love. He had well considered this, and found it the shortest way to go straight to Him by a continual exercise of love, and doing all things for His sake. The most excellent method he had found of going to God was that of doing our common business (as far as we are capable) purely for the love of God. . . . That our sanctification did not depend on our changing our works, but in doing for God’s sake what we commonly do for our own. Knowing by the light of faith that God was present, he contented himself with directing all his actions to Him, doing them with a desire to please Him, let what would come of it. -from the account of Brother Lawrence given in “ …

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Man ignores this spiritual Reality within him and seeks satisfaction in the outer world. As St. Augustine wrote so many years ago : “ Men go abroad to wonder at the height of the mountains, the lofty billows of the sea, the long courses of rivers, the vast compass of the ocean and the circular motion of the stars, and yet pass themselves by.” No matter how far man goes in demonstrating his mastery over the outer world, his soul will remain unsatisfied so long as he ignores the spiritual side of his nature. Permanent peace and satisfaction are only to be found by discovering the nature of his own real Self. This is what the saints and mystics of all ages have taught, and their message is as true to-day in an age dominated by science and technology as it was in the age of the Upanishads.

The Hindu Scriptures are called the Veda or, as they are divided into four sections, the Vedas, the word Veda meaning knowledge. Each of these four sections, namely the Rig-Veda, the Tajur-Veda, the Sama- Veda and the Arthava-Veda, consists of Mantras (hymns), Brahmanas (liturgical treatises), Aranyakas (meditations for forest dwellers) and Upanishads (philosophical works). According to Jacobi, the earliest hymns may be eight thousand years old and, according to Ruben, the Upanishads were produced between 700 and 550 b.c. The word Upanishad means to sit (sad) close by (upa) devotedly (nt) and later came to mean secret. Therefore these works comprise, it seems, secret instruction given by a teacher to competent pupils sitting near him. It must be explained that in the ancient world it was considered inexpedient to broadcast wisdom too openly, lest the ignorant should misunderstand it, misinterpret it, quarrel about it and make fun of it. Presumably …

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The  words of Christ: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” St. John’s words: “He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen cannot love God whom he hath not seen”. Our goal is Infinite Love. True love itself evokes love. So the great love of God finds its echo in our own hearts and awakens our awareness of the Infinite that is in all. Before this great love we can do nothing but prostrate ourselves. The Prophet Mohammed said:- “God saith, the person I hold as beloved, I am his hearing by which he heareth, I am his sight by which he seeth. I am his hands by which he holdeth and I am his feet by which he walketh”. In St John’s Gospel, of Christ meeting the woman from Samaria at Jacob’s well and saying to her: “Give me to drink.” You will …

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The future St Anthony the Great, the first of the Desert Fathers, was born about 250 a.d. in a rich Egyptian family of noble descent. His parents died when he was 18 or 20, and he was left with one sister the heir of great estates. He had been a serious child, and since youth had listened attentively to the teachings of the Christian Church. Jesus’s answer to the rich young man to go and sell all that he had and give to the poor and follow Him had imprinted itself on his mind. So on his parents’ death St Anthony distributed his lands to the people of his village and sold most of his other possessions for the benefit of the poor, but he kept back a little for his sister. Eventually he gave this away too and handed over his sister to be brought up by some nuns. …

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IT is a well-known fact that modern psycho-analysis is expensive, lengthy and not always successful. It is therefore surprising to read of a certain case-history, described by Professor Jung as being completed in two visits. The patient was young, pretty and highly intelligent. She was the daughter of a rich Jewish banker, and yet in spite of these favourable circumstances, the young woman said that she had suffered from an anxiety neurosis for several years. Questioning her about her ancestry, Jung discovered that her grandfather had been a Rabbi, who belonged to a deeply religious sect, called the Chassidim. These were Jews who strove to become living channels of God’s Grace. Jung felt that here was a clue to his patient’s neurosis, for she had probably inherited this strong religious tendency, but was unaware of its implications. That night Jung dreamed of his patient. In the dream he was handing …

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Shankara explains ‘overlooking or disregarding sin’ as having as little to do with sinful people as possible during the training period. This is a negative practice, and it may be asked why it is mentioned as a ‘refinement’ of the mind. He says: If it were not mentioned, the mind would go to association even with people who are habitually unrighteous. From the taint which arises from having dealings with them, the mind would become unfit for the practice of Friendliness and the others. Let not sin arise in oneself from engaging in undertakings which depend on habitual wrong-doing. This is why indifference is mentioned in this context. Disregard of sin does not mean standing aside from the suffering of a victim. But it does mean to be free from the mixture of self-righteousness and animal fear and rage which calls itself ‘indignation’. And yet, how can anyone think of, …

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 I wanted to say something about studying texts from the Yoga point of view and rather than use an oriental text which is not familiar to us I will use a short passage from the New Testament. This makes most of us Christians, lay Christians, slightly uncomfortable. It says, “sell all you have and give it to the poor.” It’s a bit like, “turn the other cheek.” I may lead a good life but I have no intention of selling all I have and giving it to the poor or turning the other cheek. If you meet Jewish people or Muslims, some of them have got a certain stance. You can be a good Jew or you can be a good Muslim. They will give one 40th of their income to charity, as well as following the other directions. They are not expected to impoverish themselves. A good Jew has …

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