Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview with Seán ÓLaoire
My guest is Father Seán ÓLaoire. He was born in Ireland and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the National University of Ireland. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1972 and spent 14 years working in Kenya. He is multilingual. I think he’d say he speaks about five languages and has an MA and PhD in Transpersonal Psychology. He’s a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice and is the Co-Founder and the Spiritual Director of a nondenominational community called Companions on the Journey, based in Palo Alto, California. He’s the author of five books and co-author of a sixth, and just for kicks, I’ll read the five books: So one is in Swahili, which I’m not going to try to pronounce; that was his first one. Another is Spirits in Spacesuits: A Manual for Everyday Mystics (2003); Souls on Safari (2006), also translated into German; A Sensible God, published in 2008; Why: What Your Life is Telling You About Who You Are and Why You’re Here, published in 2013, and he co-authored that with Matthew McKay and Ralph Metzner; — it’s translated into Korean — and then Setting God Free: Moving Beyond the Caricature We’ve Created in Our Own Image, published in 2021. That’s the one that I just listened to over the past week or two, and I enjoyed it a lot. And that’s probably what we’re mostly going to be talking about today, the topics covered in that book, but I told Seán that he should feel free to bring up anything he’d like to discuss, and we’ll talk about it, and of course, any questions that you all send in, we’ll talk about those, too.
SOURCE: https://batgap.com/sean-olaoire/
“What, in God’s Name, is Christ Consciousness?” (Part 2) by Seán ÓLaoire
Jesus told many parables whose purpose, I believe, was to help the listeners differentiate between the ego and the soul. For example, he tells of a rich man who, before he went away on a long trip, set a manager in charge of his property and workers. The rich man delayed in coming back, so the manager figured he had gotten lost or had died. So, he began to regard the property and the workers as his own – and started to get drunk and abuse them. How to interpret this? I don’t think that the rich man was God and that the manager represented the typical sinful human, whom God would punish. Rather, I believe, that the rich man represents the soul and the manager represents the ego. Very often, we mistake our egos for our souls and neglect our incarnational missions.
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PODCAST: Learning How to See with Brian McLaren — Episode: “Find the Flow” (feat. Jacque Lewis)
What would it mean for us if we happened to live during the decline of the old humanity when a new humanity is in the painful, fragile process of being born? What if some of us are in the process of trying to resuscitate the old, while others of us are conceiving, gestating and giving birth to the new? What if the growth of the new movement, the new humanity, the new social creation or construction depends on the old one losing its hegemony? As I write those words, I can’t help but feel a flood of resonances with the Hebrew scriptures. I feel echoes of Isaiah speaking of God doing a new thing. Something fresh springing forth so that there will be good news for the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, freedom for the incarcerated and oppressed. Oppression of the poor is one of the hallmarks of the old humanity.
David Godman interview - Buddha and the Gas Pump (excerpt on Maurice Frydman)
David: Maurice Frydman is one of the most extraordinary people I have ever come across and virtually nothing is known about him. Because of his connection with Ramana Maharshi, Krishnamurti, Gandhi, Nisargadatta, the Dalai Lama, I kind of view him in my own mind as the Forrest Gump of 20th century spirituality. He was in all the right places in all the right times to get the maximum benefit from interactions with some of the greats of Indian spirituality, and at the end of his career he was just about the only person that Nisargadatta certified as a jnani.
So in between all these trips to India’s major gurus, he was a Gandhian; he worked for the uplift of the poor in India; he worked with Tibetan refugees; he edited extraordinary books. I am That is probably one of the all-time spiritual classics. This man for me is, how shall we say, a shining beacon of how devotees could and should be with their teachers. He was just an absolutely extraordinary man. Oh, and he went out of his way to cover his tracks, to hide what he had actually accomplished in his life.
So I have enjoyed the detective work of looking in obscure places and digging out stuff that he personally tried to hide, not because it was embarrassing, but because he didn’t like to take credit for what he had done. So I see this as an opportunity to wave the Maurice flag and say, ‘Look, this is one of the greatest devotees, sadhaks, seekers from the west who has been to India in the last 100 years and I think more people should know about him.’
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“What Is ‘The False Self’”? (excerpt) THE IMMORTAL DIAMOND by Fr. Richard Rohr
I begin this chapter with a positive quote, so I can describe the False Self properly and avoid the usual connotations of false. Your False Self is not your bad self, your clever or inherently deceitful self, the self that God does not like or you should not like. Actually your False Self is quite good and necessary as far as it goes. It just does not go far enough, and it often poses and thus substitutes for the real thing.
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“Consolation for My Cancer” by Claire Gilbert (+) Nomad Podcast Interview w/ Ms. Gilbert
In March 2019 I was diagnosed with Myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow. I have been in treatment ever since, in an attempt to send the cancer into deep remission.
You have to submit to the treatment. Thank heavens I am, at Guy’s Hospital, among world class haematologists and oncologists and clinical nurse specialists who are easy to trust. That helps. But I don’t really understand the science and it is utterly counter intuitive to allow a substance to be infused into your body that makes you feel dreadful when you had felt - because the cancer was found early - perfectly well.
SOURCES:
“Prayer and Identity” by Beatrice Bruteau
The way into the spiritual life is a matter of radical transformation. The further we progress along it, the more radical we realize the transformation has to be. The whole work of prayer is to cause, to control, and to appreciate certain transformations. Fundamental to these, so far as I see at present, is the sense of identity. The work of prayer is to transform our sense of identity. The Letter of James in the New Testament contains this passage:
If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being not a hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing. (James 1:23-25)
We can apply these words to our work in prayer. The prayer state, when developed, should be, first a mirror, and then a real environment, of our natural face. It is a matter of looking, with perseverance, into the perfect law of liberty—what I will later call creative freedom — until there is no more question of our looking away and forgetting our true identity. Insofar as we are not prayerful, we are at present in a state of forgetfulness; we do not know who we are.
SOURCE: http://webhome.auburn.edu/~silvesb/smicha/Bruteau.pdf
“Jesus and Buddha: Two Messengers of Light” from the Red Wing UU Community
Two sons of Wisdom, two sages and prophets
Two World teachers with hundreds of millions of followers.
Two moral and spiritual revolutionaries who changed everything in their times and much in ours.
Their ministries even altered how their cultures measure time: Christian calendars start with the death & resurrection of Jesus Buddhist calendars begin with the death & paranirvana of Buddha.
I will be offering side by side comparison of the teachings of Jesus and Buddha on 3 key points:
“The Way of the Heart” by Cynthia Bourgeault
From the Christian esoteric tradition, a path beyond the mind
Put the mind in the heart…. Put the mind in the heart…. Stand before the Lord with the mind in the heart.” From page after page in the Philokalia, that hallowed collection of spiritual writings from the Christian East, this same refrain emerges. It is striking in both its insistence and its specificity. Whatever that exalted level of spiritual attainment is conceived to be—whether you call it “salvation,” “enlightenment,” “contemplation,” or “divine union”—this is the inner configuration in which it is found. This and no other.
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“Nourishing Yin” by Jeannie Zandi
Would you like to go on a journey into yin? If so, you might find a space where you won’t be disturbed, where you feel safely held, and can soften and open without being disturbed.While your eyes are closed, I invite you to let your whole body soften. Let your attention sink into your felt experience. You might take a few long breaths, focusing on the exhale, to let the whole body settle and gentle. Notice the weight of the body sinking into your chair, into the earth, and let your root soften open to the earth, as much as it can. Let your belly be fat, invite your solar plexus to soften with breath, the heart to soften, the hands, the face. Let every expression droop off of your face. Just here, soft. Let breath travel around your body, softening as it goes. Soften all around the things that are tight, letting them be here, letting them float along in your soft pool of being, little nuggets of tenseness floating in this soup of being. This is the call of yin, the voice that invites softening, sinking, receptivity, availability. The voice that calls us downward, to relax and dissolve, to give into gravity.
“Embodiment: The Wedding of Creature and Spirit” by Jeannie Zandi
When we float in presence, without requirement to figure out or handle anything, resting as noticing awareness, we let our breath slow, our bodies soften, as we dissolve into oceanic being. From there we let everything be idle as we soothe and soften, unincorporated, a field of vibrating isness. The simple fact of our own existence, the simplicity of “I am…” allows us to vacation from everyday concerns, enjoying our existence for itself.
Tao Te Ching (Chapter 8) — a Commentary by Galen Pearl
Tao Te Ching – Chapter 8
Water is the most prominent image of the Tao in the Tao Te Ching. We saw this first in Chapter 4 where several characters used to describe the Tao had water radicals or roots. Here the chapter begins by explicitly comparing the Tao to water.
Before we talk about that, however, I want to introduce you to a character that is repeated in this chapter 9 times!
“Reflecting on Reflecting” by Thomas Moore
One of the key activities of the psyche is to reflect on events and experiences. If we have no reflection, we act on passions and impulses that then do not have the advantage of being processed by the mind, references to memory and history and personal and social culture in general. It is this cultural background that civilizes us, which means we can live in community because we can process our feelings and enthusiasms. Reflection makes our strong emotions available for life with others, so that we live by emotion and reflection as two coordinating activities that support each other.
Tao Te Ching (Chapter 6) — a Commentary by Galen Pearl
If Chapter 5 is one of the most misunderstood chapters in the Tao Te Ching, then Chapter 6 is one of the most enigmatic. And one of the shortest. Just 26 characters, it has spawned pages of commentary. Like the blind men and the elephant, everyone sees different facets of meaning. When we can release the need to have a single, “right” meaning, when we can let the meanings swirl in mystery, then we enter the true meaning beyond words, the mystery beyond understanding. And it is beautiful.
Tao Te Ching (Chapter 3) — a Commentary by Galen Pearl
This chapter is divided into two parts and a coda. The first part highlights the cause and effect relationship between creating or perceiving disparity and the resulting discord. The second part is often interpreted as giving advice on how to govern others, but personally I think it is about how we govern ourselves.
“The Life Story of Thich Nhat Hanh” presented by Plum Village
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Exiled from his native Vietnam for almost four decades, Thich Nhat Hanh has been a pioneer bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and establishing an engaged Buddhist community for the 21st Century.
“The Openness that Holds It All” by Amoda Maa
The innocent longing to come home – what we call the spiritual search – is so often hijacked by an unconscious psychological agenda for comfort and perfection. Along with the desire to end the suffering created by ego’s tenacious story-telling comes a hope that this ending means we no longer have to feel what we don’t like to feel.
“The Wandering Taoist” — story by Solala Towler (transcript from YouTube)
The cold wind blowing off the western desert ruffled the beard of the old man riding slowly atop the water buffalo. It whipped around his traveling cloak and made him shiver deep within his robes. He tried wrapping the cloak a little tighter around his shoulders but it did him little good. It was a bad time of the year for traveling, but that could not be helped. The stolid beast plodded on slowly toward the frontier.
A horse would have been faster, but this beast was steadier, more surefooted in the mountains and ate very little. He supposed it was a bit of reverse vanity that prompted him to travel on so humble a mount, the last vestige of the once proud royal archivist.
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“The Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Religion” by Seán ÓLaoire (Transcript and Video)
In the summer of 1963, in between the end of my junior year in high school and the beginning of my senior year in high school I spent seven months in a little village in West Cork called Cloghroe. Cloghroe is an area in which Gaelic is still the mother tongue. I spent the summer visiting all of the older people in the village and collecting proverbs from them. At the end of the summer I collected 432 proverbs that got published in the school as the little booklet of proverbs. What I learned then was that stories are the archived wisdom of any culture. You want to go to the wisdom of any culture, listen to their stories, their mythology, and if you want to get the the essential distillation of the stories go to the proverbs — these extraordinary one-liners.
“This is Water” — Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace (full transcript and audio) - Courtesy of Fs Blog
This was David Foster Wallace‘s 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. It’s rich in wisdom, insight and heart. It has never been more apropos than now…. The speech was transposed and into book form entitled, “This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.”