On the day traditionally associated with St Patrick of Ireland, we met online. We had several hymns from a variety of sources, a music video from the musical Godspell, and a pop song from the band Eurythmics. And instead of seven minutes of silence, which we carry out when meeting face to face, we were led into meditational prayer using a prayer poem by John McQuiston.
And so we had a reading from the Rule for monastic living written by Benedict; and a contemporary piece from John O’Donohue in Anam Cara, showing the Celtic imaginative associations between breath and spirit. We also prayed part of a traditional Irish prayer attributed to Patrick, known both as Saint Patrick's Breastplate and The Deer’s Cry.
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As our president suggested, Benedict introduced a detailed, rules-based way of living a simple Christian life in a tight knit community already familiar with Christian scripture and doctrine. Surely, we heard, Patrick had to imagine a wilder, free-flowing way of being Christian, in order to have any influence in Irish society.
No conclusion was drawn in respect of the comparison, and the question – left for us to ponder afterwards – was whether personally we gravitate to a more rules-based way of living our lives of faith, or whether we tend towards a more mystical sense of spirit.
Just to muddy the waters still further, our president also read a short piece from a spiritual teacher from Zen Buddhism who has also made a long study of the narratives of the life of Jesus. This teacher suggests that the stories of Jesus can be read as a metaphor for the spiritual journey of every soul, and has drawn his own conclusions about Jesus’ message:
“Jesus, brought up and living as a Jew, had, I think, a profound understanding that — if you weren’t really careful — that the religion itself, instead of connecting one to the radiance of being, connecting one to that spiritual mystery, actually becomes a barrier to it.
As soon as we get too hung up with the rites and the rituals, and the norms and the ‘Thou shalts’ and the ‘Thou shalt nots’, then all of those things keep us on the surface level of consciousness.
They may have a usefulness. Mostly the usefulness of the exterior parts of religion is to modulate ego human behaviour, to have a good moral sense. To move in the world, in time in space, from a healthy sense of ethics is a very positive thing. It helps to control the deeper and more dark elements of the ego. So they do provide a very important function.
But religion’s roots are in eternity. As soon as religion forgets about its roots — forgets that its primary function and role is to convey to awaken within you the experience of the sublime — when religion forgets that, when it forgets that it’s not primarily about its ethical function, it ceases to be reverence and becomes a power structure.
The first function of religion is to connect you with the mystery of life, with the mystery of existence. That’s why Jesus was so critical of the religion of his time — because he saw that not only was it not connecting people to the mystery, but it was actually an active participant in veiling the mystery of existence; in covering over the kingdom of heaven.”
Resurrecting Jesus by Adyashanti
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Resurrecting_Jesus.html?id=MToKnwEACAAJ&redir_esc=y
