Philosophy of ReligionDr Tom Kerns
Philosophy of Religion
One Proposed Format for
A Structural Phenomenology of
The Great Spiritual Traditionsby Tom Kerns
Prologue Any Phenomenology of the Great Spiritual Traditions must keep in mind Bergson's distinction between static and dynamic religion, for the two sorts of religious life have rather different attitudes, rather different emotional tenors, and rather significant differences in origin and source, as Bergson has so well pointed out. In keeping with that distinction, this phenomenology sees that the essential elements found in the living forms of the Great Spiritual Traditions, can also be found, calcified, in the static forms of those traditions.
The term "great spiritual tradition" is not yet defined. Its meaning will unfold in the course of outlining the essential elements to be found in those traditions For now, the term simply includes all those great traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and the Primardial Traditions that have - in one way or another - held to the existence of a Something More, or Something Deeper, in the cosmos, and have held out the possibility of our attaining a lived relation with that Something More.
One Now the task of a phenomenology is to bracket out the accidental peripheries of a phenomenon and to focus only on its essential core. I suggest that there are four essential and common elements at the core of the great spiritual traditions: 1) the element of community of believers; 2) the element of saint or holy person; 3) the element of path; and 4) the element of weltanschauung. Each of these four essential traits has its counterpart in the static or calcified forms too, as we will see. Here follows a brief note on each of the four.
I. One of the obvious essential elements of a great spiritual tradition is its character as community, specifically as community of believers. Persons who believe, that is, persons who feel the existence of the Something More and wish to establish a living relationship with it, come together as a community that nourishes and enriches each person's belief, and serves as an encouragement and an aid in his or her attempt to establish a relationship with the Something More. Whether this community is in the form of a small spontaneous group without any official status (e.g., the early Christians in the catacombs), or an established organization heavy with structure and official status (e.g., an organized church), or something between those two extremes, the community of believers seems to be a necessary and essential element both in the origins and in the continuing forms of the great spiritual traditions.
II. A second essential element is the concept of saint or holy person. This concept is embodied in Hinduism in the form of the guru, in Buddhism in the form of the boddhisattva, in Sufism in the form of the shaikh, in Native American traditions in the form of the medicine man (or brujo, or sorcerer), and in other traditions in the form of the shaman. The holy person is one who, in some measure, lives in an immediate relationship with the Something More, and furthermore can be a sort of mediator or helper in helping to establish another's relationship with that Something More. This may occur because of the holy person's special powers, or it may occur as a result of his or her charismatic radiance. In Sufism, for example, the shaikh is seen as an embodiment of the Something More, as one who lives his life in the more less conscious immediacy of the presence of Allah. He, like Hinduism's guru, is an embodiment of the Path, the way to the Something More. Furthermore, in emulating him, the devotee can himself begin to live in the immediacy of the Something More. In Christianity, by emulating the life of the saint, and by consecrating one's life to God after the manner of the saints, one approaches more nearly to the life that is in harmony with God's will. There is something of the concept of teacher here, but the holy person is much more than teacher. S/he not only teaches about, but is himself or herself part of, the way toward. In some traditions s/he serves primarily as mediator, but the function in both cases is, at least partly, to aid others in establishing their lived relationship to the Something More.
III. A third element in the great spiritual traditions is the element of path, or way. The path is the way toward the Something More, and commonly consists of at least two distinct parts, (a) the way to live, and (b) the practices for communion with the Something More. These two can be distinguished only conceptually, for in living them out they are, from one point of view complementary, and from another point of view, the same thing. For conceptual reasons only - we distinguish in order to unite - they are here discussed separately.
(a) The way to live consists of the moral principles that ought to guide the spiritual seeker's way of relating to other persons, to the world, and to oneself. This aspect of the way usually consists of directions about what sorts of outward and inward actions, and what sorts of outward and inward attitudes, are necessary for the seeker if s/he truly wishes to live in relationship with the Something More. This is the ethical dimension.(b) The practices for communion with the Something More consist of the specific methods and rituals for establishing a communion. Included in this category are the various sorts of yogic and meditation practices in the Asian traditions, the various sorts of sacraments ("effective signs") and prayers in Christianity, dances and chants in Native American traditions, and in fact all the kinds of ceremonies and rituals which have as their purpose to in some way establish a felt movement toward the Something More. In this connection it is worthwhile to note that the very words "yoga" (from the same root as the English "yoke"), and the Latin "religare" (from the same root as the English "ligature," and "link") both suggest a kind of linking or connecting with the Something More. This is the second meaning of the element of path (Tao in Chinese, Torah in Hebrew) and together with the first completes the concept of path in the great spiritual traditions.
IV. A fourth element in the great spiritual traditions, and perhaps the element that is commonly most evident, is the element of weltanschauung. It is the attempt to understand, to make sense of, all the improbably chaotic and varied elements that make up the texture and fundaments of human life. The struggle to make sense of things, to bring order out of the chaos, to discover an overall pattern of relationships and purposes and to come to terms with the essential foundations of the cosmos, such is the impulse that sends people on their search for a world view. The great spiritual traditions, in tune as they are with these deepest hungers in the human soul, struggle too with the search for an understanding, and it is in this search that the elements of a weltanschauung begin to emerge. And whether that understanding be as complex and highly differentiated as the architectonic of St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae , or whether it be as simple and pure as the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tse, the hunger of understanding finds its fruition in these weltanschauungen of the great spiritual traditions.
Two These elements in the great spiritual traditions have been described here in the form they take when they arise in a dynamic form, a form still alive with the vital energies of growth and emergence toward Something More. All four elements, however, too easily decay into the calcified forms of what Bergson termed "static religion." Much like a living organism tends to become hard, brittle and sclerotic when it withers and is no longer flexible and motive, so too can this or that expression or sect of a great spiritual tradition become sclerotic and calcified when the energy in its bloodstream slows, attaches itself to the external structures of the vessels, and hardens. Then the living organism takes on a static rather than dynamic form, it becomes cold and brittle rather than vibrant and flexible, and the inner character of each of the four elements changes radically:
I. The living community of believers becomes mere "institution." As a living body decays and disintegrates, it leaves behind only its skeletal structure, its rigid supports. So too, as a community of believers becomes less alive and dynamic, it begins to lose its warm, moving and living organs, and leaves only the institutional structure and the rigid forms. A community, when it decays, becomes merely an institution.
II. As community decays into institution, the concept of holy person degenerates into mere "hierarch," i.e., an element of the institution, a person distinguished not for charisma or holiness, but for the position held in the institutional structure. Or, in another direction, the concept of holy person may degenerate (like Goethe's Faust) into mere necromancer, the magician, worker of miracles. These two degenerations represent not so much the adding on of a degenerate element, but rather a subtracting away of the true and vital elements, leaving only the external form, the visible. Or rather, the skeletal elements that before were deemphasized and almost hidden from view, now when the organism dies, stand out visibly in grotesque relief, and thereby falsify the essential nature of the concept of holy person.
III. As the living community degenerates into the calcified institution that is only its external form, the concept of path also degenerates. The path as (a) way to live, degenerates into what Joseph Fletcher calls "authoritarian morality," and what Bergson calls "static morality." This again represents the mere external trappings of morality, a morality without a soul. The path as (b) practices for communion, at the same time degenerates into mere rite. When sacrament, prayer, spiritual practice and ritual lose their inner soul, they calcify into mere formal rite, and the path becomes a path without a heart; perhaps effective in some ways and for some persons, but still without a heart. Path becomes mere technique.
IV. And as these three elements degenerate and harden, so too does the fourth. Weltanschauung becomes mere "catechetics." It is on this fourth element that Western religions have often focused their attention and, in their most sclerotic moments, have branded as heretical those who did not properly affirm the required catechetical formulae. The living spiritual search does not dogmatize so much as it tentatively probes, now asserting, now questioning, struggling in a heuristic way toward what is most real and true. The fruit of such a laboring search, i.e., the teachings of the great spiritual traditions, only begins to harden into catechetical dogma when the heat of the search cools and loses its vitality. Then security, rather than God, becomes the primary focus of attention and energy.
Three It must be only too obvious that some of what passes for religion today (in most religious traditions) is only the hardened skeleton of static religious forms. Nor is today unique in this, for such seems to have been the fate of the human spiritual search since the beginning of recorded history. There simply seems to be a strong tendency in living organisms to go down toward decay, death and rigidity. Perhaps the best that a living organism can do is to recognize the ferocious strength of that tendency and say, with the poet
Do not go gentle into that good night,...
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan ThomasFor there is, after all, another tendency of living organisms: the tendency toward life, toward renewal and growth, and toward the transformation of earth into fire.
(first published in the Plexus newsletter, Sept 1975)
Discussion Questions:
Select any two ideas in this essay that you consider to be important or of some interest to you.A. Describe each idea clearly, using a quotation or two to support your interpretation.
B. Explain, for each of the two ideas you've selected, why you consider that idea important or of interest to you
Please post a separate message for each of the ideas you choose (to make it easier for others to respond), and post your messages into the classroom for week six.
So each of your messages will have two parts: A) an explantion of what the idea is, and B) an explanation of why you consider that idea important or of interest to you.
Please try to complete this portion of the week's assignment by Friday or Saturday so that others will have an opportunity to respond to what you have written (and so you can respond to what others have written).
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