DON CUPITT'S NOTEBOOK (4) MYSTICISM AND TRANSIENCE ( another in our series of talk out/fines) REASON AS LONGTERMISM Civilization requires people to work under rule for long periods to complete large-scale projects.
And perhaps too it has to have fictions of unchanging truth, value and authority. That which lasts longest and is least corruptible has the highest value : gold, diamond. The transient is regarded as relatively shallow, selfish, hedonistic and 'materialistic' ! The pleasures of sense are considered to be not truly satisfying to the soul.
AUTHORITY AND OBJECTIVITY Religious and social authority always tends to be 'realistic' : it represents itself as going back to the beginning, as unchanging, as metaphysically-backed, and as teaching objective truth. What is 'real' or 'natural' is what is entrenched, part of the order of things and not negotiable. Thus the more authoritarian the religion, the more 'realistic' it is in its doctrinal claims. It offers the absolute security of absolute knowledge of absolute Reality.
MYSTICISM AND AUTHORITY Authoritarian, realistic religion seeks security and tends to be fetishistic. It fears time and loss.
Mystical religion, by contrast, emphasises that all religious views are relative and all images inadequate. It finds salvation not in security and staying still, but in non-attachment and moving on. It is light-footed and evasive. It tries to use language, not to fix Truth, but to liberate us from the desire for Truth, Reality etc. All things slip away, including the self. There is no real self, and there is nothing to cling to. Let go. When we become completely non-clinging, we will become anxiety-free, compassionate, self-less.
TRANSIENCE AS THE VOID In northern Buddhism, the Void = universal transience, the slipping away of everything. Fully to accept this is liberation - though not as doctrine, but as practice that leads to 'traceless Enlightenment'.
NAGARJUNA : Nirvana (religious deliverance) is not something beyond Samsara, the cycles of birth and death. They coincide.
DOGEN : Impermanence is Buddha-nature. (And consider Japanese art). Compare in the modern West, our love for late Impressionism, abstract painting, music.
JESUS AND NON-REALISM Many Buddhists have expressed admiration for Jesus' teaching, especially such sayings as : "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath", "Take no thought for the morrow", "Resist not evil", "The Kingdom of God is within you". There has always been a possibility of anti-longtermism in Christianity. Blake suggests we may conjoin humanism with a mysticism of the fleeting. 14 SOF Magazine 8, Winter 1991-92 ONE VIEW OF TRUTH Harold Steel Pilate : You are a king then ?
DON CUPITT is Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion in the University of Cambridge and a member of the SOF Steering Committee.