Advaíta and Prayer
O Lover,
In this summer of ’23 I have been becoming more familiar with the theme of advaíta (neither-two-nor-one, non-seconded, non-dualism) from the Hindu Vedantic tradition. Bernard McGinn in his Modern Mysticism guided me into Henri Le Saux, OSB/Abhishiktanánda whom I am now reading. My initial brush (once removed) with the latter was in Palestine fifty years ago via Murray Rogers, a close India friend of the Christian/Hindu. The definitive biography of Murray and Mary Rogers, Mary Cattan’s Pilgrimage of Awakening, is replete with references to Abhishiktanánda who aspired to be vis-à-vis You as both Christian Benedictine and Hindu sannyási.
The challenges raised by the theme of advaíta are neither uniquely Hindu nor modern. Particularly during the early Renaissance the writings of both Low Country Beguines (e.g., Hadewijch & Marguerite) and Rhineland mystics (Henry of Suso, Tauler, Ruusbroec & Eckhart) spoke of experiencing You in a unítas indistinctiónis manner beyond differentiation and dualism. While this mystical blossoming was largely suppressed, ignored, or reduced to the theological transcendence/immanence paradox in the subsequent Christian tradition, the issues raised for this trekker in the cosmic Christ of the Christian scriptures (e.g., the Johannine Prologue, Paul’s Colossians) have become unavoidable.
The distillate of all of the above, O Lover, has seemingly formed a single urgent question: what is prayer in a worldview in which all of us finite beloveds are being drawn into Your “all in All” (I Cor 15:28), anticipatorily/eschatologically, yes, but increasingly so in the present as well? If You are not some this or that, even the acme, but the Grunt (“Ground”), the Abyss of all such, Being-Itself, enveloping/permeating/transcending the subject/object structure rather than confined within it; if You are closer to me than I am to myself; if my true identity is the self embedded in You; what is prayer? Even as I keep my vow to pray to You for the duration, does not that discipline, whether adoration, praise or intercession, presuppose distinction, separation, betweenness? Within my trekkerhood are those seemingly answering the latter query in the affirmative, and abandoning prayer. I myself am pulled in two directions, itself probably a promising portent.
On the one hand, while I am slowly moving beyond the fragile fiefdom of two, a relocation energized by prayer that You “come to my assistance” in that regard, I am aware that at the level of instinct I experience much of my life dualistically. It is seemingly in the space “between” where I am most often ambushed by You, often involving mediation via family, friends, nature, birth or death. I experience my (post-Enlightment) finitude as strongly inclined to differentiation, and that will not change entirely in the short time I have remaining. Yet, against this background, the moments and too-brief seasons of awe invariably nudge me toward Your Oneing. Here in my anecdotage I am praying that You open me to this new way of holding . . . everything, this even while I continue various disciplines, devotions, paradigms, and blog postings (. . .) not yet weaned from the old.
Relatedly, I continue to address You as personal and understand much of prayer as inter-personal—after all, Your “Lógos became human” (Jn 1:14)—even while aware both that You surely are not a person in the way that I am and that all of my love experiences with other creatures have a personal, and thus “between,” dimension. While You surely are not limited to human personhood, I am; indeed, this capacity is arguably the loftiest that I possess. Is not this very blog evidence of my sequesterment in “betweenness”? Stated otherwise, while on this side my compass is set on You, the neither-one-nor-two, the party declaring thus is but a work in progress, one oscillating between old and new, torn between longing for the convergence and oneing of all things in Your Christ, and yet not having shed propensities of sense, intellect, and imagination. To paraphrase the father of the child Jesus was about to heal: “Lord, I embrace Your omni-encompassingness; do aid me in my lingering attachment to differentiation” (Mk 9:23).
On the other hand, if the journey is into unfolding indistinctiónis, the subject/object structure grounded in You rather than confining You, You Reality Itself beyond enumeration, then it would seem that prayer is, increasingly, You praying to You, O Lover. Paul writes of Your Spirit interceding to You for us of the stymied in ways beyond words (Rom 8:26). And is not then my role in that prayer one of resonator, of manifester, of Your intra-Triune Perichorésis (“circular dance of Love”)? Indeed, is not the entire cosmos a sounding box via which You are singing the Glória? This approach, while not answering all questions, not least those involving petition and intercession, yields on all fronts to the tsunamic Mystérium of Your “all in All.” The core of prayer for me is jubilation that You are who You are as laid bare in the Christ (among others), and that axial vector powers all the traditional surfaces of prayer.
And so I rest my case impaled on the above painful yet not unpromising paradox. And I thank You, O Lover, that Your presence in India’s Vedantic tradition is contributing to my awakening.
