THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK

"We seem to hear a lot about Buddha these days," said one of our Deanery priests the other day when: the the name happened to be mentioned. That same morning I was reading an article in the paper about a lady psychologist who had been profoundly affected by a Buddhist-led meditation retreat at a place with the not very Buddhist sounding name of Maenllwyd, in mid-Wales (the experience can be shared with you on Radio 4 on Tuesday at 10am, if you are interested).

The week she spent there consisted of silence, meditation in front of a blank white wall, walks, yoga, menial tasks, and silent meals. The one 'splash-out' was afternoon tea and cakes. A lot of that sounded like the regime in a monastery, where people go on retreats. Her retreat, she said, was based on the questions "Who am I?" and "What am I?" and she found a lot of the answer. The result made her more "vibrant, free and peaceful", while "certain things, such as saying the right thing and being ambitious, seem less important". Many people on these meditation retreats "conclude that they don't understand their own minds; some of them have looked to religion, but it hasn't given them any answers."

It is dangerous to generalise, but maybe many of the people who tried religion and failed were in fact trying 'failed religion'. The Christian religion, certainly, must give due regard to the self, the God-given self, that is, not the 'false' self which we often prefer to create. When Jesus says we must "deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him" he is not saying we must obliterate our own beings. Rather we must scrub out our 'false selves'. Jesus himself did this; in Gethsemane, for example, he was genuinely afraid - and he knew it. Christian spirituality, therefore, consists of trying to harmonise the true self and the true Christ. We begin by looking at the true Christ: the Christ who challenges and who lives humanity to the full, not a soppily pious make believe Christ who never existed. We then try to link ourselves to that Christ. Our worship is then part of that link not an escape from it.