The Christ-Awakened Life: Meditation beyond Boundaries

The Christ-Awakened Life

Meditation beyond Boundaries

Chris Kang

The Christ-Awakened Life

Meditation Beyond Boundaries

Copyright © 2023 Chris Kang. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-5915-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-5916-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-5917-4

01/26/23

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language. Textual translations from SuttaCentral are in the public domain and do not fall within the scope of copyright.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Radical Contemplation

Chapter 2: Contemplative Christ

Chapter 3: Meeting Christ on Asian Roads

Knowledge Foundations

Chapter 4: Trinity beyond Substance

Chapter 5: Empowerment and Transformation

Courtyard of Christ Meditations

Chapter 6: Ruach of Stillness

Chapter 7: Ruach of Pulsation

Mind of Christ Meditations

Chapter 8: Silent Mind

Chapter 9: No-Mind

Chapter 10: Natural Mind

Spirit of Christ Meditations

Chapter 11: Resting in Incarnate Essence

Chapter 12: Flowing in Creative Effulgence

Beyond Meditation: Triune Being

Chapter 13: Presencing Triune

Chapter 14: Triune Outpouring

Conclusion

Meditation Exercises: General and Specific Instructions

Bibliography

About the Author

For my darling wife, Elaine, soul companion on the Way.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editorial and design team at Wipf and Stock: Matthew Wimer, George Callihan, Emily Callihan, Jordan Horowitz, Savanah Landerholm, Calvin Jaffarian, and all who have contributed to this book project. They have been gracious and helpful with my queries and requests, and have done a marvellous job of preparing and getting the book into its final shape and form.

From my heart, I give thanks to all my amazing Dhamma teachers but especially my three main ones: Acariya Godwin Samararatne (1932-2000), my primary teacher of mindfulness and loving-kindness, and serenity and insight of early Buddhism; Khen Rinpoche Geshe Tashi Tsering of Australia, my primary teacher of Sutra and Tantra in the tradition of Lama Tsong Khapa (1357-1419); and Lama Alan Wallace, my primary rDzog chen teacher in the profound lineage of Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904).

I am grateful to Wilfred Yeo, for his generosity and wise counsel in the early days of my new life in the Lord; and Irene Alexander, for her gentle wisdom and warmth, and profound words (here paraphrased) that ring so true for me: that all roads may not lead to Christ but Christ can meet us on all roads. I met the Lord on my metaphorical road to Bodhgaya (site of the Buddha’s enlightenment), perhaps bearing echoes of how the apostle Paul met Christ on his road to Damascus.

Most of all, I thank my wife Elaine for her unstinting support and encouragement of this book.

Introduction

Spiritual Paradigm of Meditation

Meditation or contemplation is a word with many meanings. The past few decades have seen huge burgeoning interest in meditation—its theory, techniques and practices, and its applications. Scientific research into mindfulness beyond the context of Buddhism, which formed its basis, has increased exponentially in the past two decades. As humanity grapples with multiple challenges in this pandemic and these environmentally fragile times, the need for inner peace and wholeness has never been greater. Levels of anxiety and depression continue to rise. Uncertainties and upheavals on economic and political fronts raise tensions and induce high levels of stress. Relationships face increased pressures and fractures alongside these aforementioned crises. Religious polarization and intolerance, racial prejudices and inequality, have surfaced as fiery issues in light of recent events in America with related incidences around the world. It is a truism to say we are now living in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous times.

Given this global human predicament, many have turned to meditation or contemplation as a way to work with their own existential and psychological challenges. Mindfulness has now gone mainstream, with many secular stress reduction programs based on mindfulness made available in the health, corporate, educational, professional sport, and military settings, among others. This is a good sign and development on the whole. There is also a plethora of meditation centers and teachers offering a multitude of teachings, workshops, seminars, and retreats for anyone seeking to learn more about meditation and to incorporate meditation into their lives. Often, meditation practice goes hand in hand with some understanding and perspective for life that can be designated spiritual, whether they come in the context of traditional faith traditions or outside them. For example, Christian meditation is practiced within communities like the World Community for Christian Meditation and Contemplative Outreach (strictly speaking, they practice Centering Prayer, which can be regarded as meditative). Insight meditation (vipassanā) is practiced within Theravāda (or Theravāda-inspired) Buddhist communities. Overtly non-religious communities of practitioners may follow the meditative teachings of self-styled teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and other similarly non-aligned teachers. All in all, meditation is much sought after and much needed in a world hungry for meaning, purpose, hope, peace, and unity. A world longing for liberation or enlightenment—in fact, salvation.

Meditation is the focus of this book. Here, I use the words meditation and contemplation interchangeably. By meditation or contemplation, I mean the process of entering profoundly into the nature and potency of consciousness, the essential nature of experience and reality. In this meditative process, there can be systematic and gradual cultivation or design-engineering of mind and body towards what many traditions call awakening (sambodhi) or liberation (mukti) or bliss (ānanda). From a Christian perspective, the ultimate goal of meditation can be seen as transformation into the holiness of God in Christ where one’s entire being is sanctified into Christlikeness. This is an integral part of salvation (soteria) which in practice includes justification (being made righteous in Christ) by grace (unmerited favor) through faith (total reorientation of one’s mind, heart, will, strength, and soul away from sin towards God).

In addition, the meditative process can also be conceived as a direct, immediate penetration into the heart of reality where true freedom, peace, happiness, love, and goodness are found. Rather than a gradual process of cultivation, meditation can happen in a direct, spontaneous, and uncontrived manner where the cave of duality suddenly collapses into absolute truth that is transcendent yet immanent—outside the ambit and confines of conditioned mind yet pervading and seamless with every moment of experience. Thus, meditation is both gradual and sudden, structured and unstructured, systematic cultivation and spontaneous penetration. In any case, meditation while requiring personal endeavor (especially in the gradual path) is, in the final analysis, an act of immediacy and unconditioned effortlessness (especially in the direct path but also in the culmination phase of gradual practice).

In this immediacy of unconditioned freedom, meditation can be seen as the unfolding or inbreaking of grace—unearned, undeserved, unmerited favor—that surprisingly and unassumingly liberates and transforms oneself. Asian spiritual traditions have a word for grace, kṛpa, which connotes gratuitous blessing from the divine often identified with the guru or spiritual master. Biblical Christian tradition sees grace as rooted in the finished work of Jesus the Christ, the savior of humanity who is the incarnate word of God and who is God the Son himself. In either case, notwithstanding theological and philosophical differences, there is an inextricable link between meditation in its consummation and the power of grace. In this book, the contemplative dynamic of grace and practice, the mysterious dance of effort and effortlessness, will form the backdrop of our exploration into meditation where Christ is offered as its ground, path, and culmination.

Apart from this spiritual dynamic of personal practice and emergent grace, this book takes a spiritual perspective that is qualifiedly inclusive and culturally diverse. Inclusive because it makes no presumption of any particular spiritual approach/faith as being the one and only means to awakening or liberation. Rather, all authentic spiritual paths are valued and regarded as effective for awakening. However, when it comes to salvation (a term and concept coming from biblical Christianity), there is nuance and arguably exclusivity. The value and efficacy of meditative practice of all traditions for transforming the mind is not in dispute. What is arguably exclusive about the biblical approach is this: Christ is the only mediator between God and humanity, and his very person and work is the only way to salvation, especially in terms of becoming fully Christlike or growing into the full stature of Christ as a result of inclusion into the loving communion of God.

The experience of entering into and enjoying loving communion of God is unlike awakening or liberation in several respects. Salvation as full participation in and into loving communion of God certainly includes highly desirable qualities that awakening and liberation brings—such as freedom from affliction (partially in the here and now but fully in eternity beyond space-time), blissfulness, wisdom, compassion, joy, and peace. Over and above that, salvation is deeply relational in nature and embraces both distinctive personality and undifferentiated unity in a creative dynamic that goes beyond naïve oneness or manyness. Hence, salvation does not obliterate the individual or negate the personality but transfigures personality into the luminosity of Christ. One’s person becomes more and more conformed to the perfection of Christ’s person who is forever in loving union with the disciple. One can compare this dynamic to a piece of molten iron being melted in and merging with the fiery flames yet retaining a distinctive character of its own. In this book, I see awakening or liberation as part of the process of becoming Christlike but as I have said, the latter goes beyond the former. Becoming Christlike is a profound mystery that is built upon the foundation of faith in the salvific work of Jesus, the incarnate God who is also fully human, enacted and completed on the cross. In the absence of such faith, the saving grace of God in Christ does not operate in the practitioner to result in full transformation into Christlikeness.

Yet, that said, the grace of God is not precluded in the meditative journeys of those who do not consciously accept Jesus as savior God into their hearts. Why? This is because the unbounded grace of God operates beyond our limited human conception and preference. Divine grace can and indeed does work powerfully in nuanced ways to guide, bless, and empower transformation in sincere practitioners of meditation across faith boundaries. One way of articulating this mysterious dynamic is this: all roads do not lead to Christ but Christ can meet us and anyone on all roads. And when Christ meets someone on a non-Christian road, who can say what happens or what potentials are unleashed? Who can dictate where Christ leads this or that meditator into, and how and for what purpose Christ does so? Indeed, the sovereign grace of God transcends our human prejudice and limited systems of belief and judgment. This book celebrates diverse spiritual traditions and paths by embracing whatever is good, true, and beautiful in these systems of meditation. In celebrating multiple perspectives, this book thus seeks to be culturally diverse.

Hence, in this book, I will discuss meditation based on my four decades of open exploration into the diversity and richness Asian spiritual systems of meditation, including various major schools of Buddhism, the pan-Indian and Tibetan system of Tantra, and the nondual tradition of Advaita Vedanta. To this Asian paradigm I bring the biblical Christian perspective, having had a transformative encounter with Christ in 2014 which repercussions continue to reverberate in my life. As a result, this book on meditation is not written from a single point of view, whether Buddhist or Hindu or Christian. It is not meant to be a religious formation text from within a particular faith tradition nor is it a book on meditation from a secular perspective. Rather, this book is in a genre of its own, transcending religious boundaries yet honouring the essence of tradition by foregrounding the underlying spirit of contemplative insight and growth. In so doing, I aim to give voice to the messy and non-linear process of living a full and uncompromised spiritual life, being honest about the ups and downs and open to change, detours, and upheavals even when they might be discomforting. My personal journey of meditation is testimony to the sudden unexpected twists and turns of uncensored meditation, where if one is open to the Spirit blowing wherever and whenever Spirit wills, one might just make discoveries beyond anything one can ask or imagine.

One final note. I write this book out of my own meditative experience and spiritual journey that embraces multiple perspectives and paradigms. When speaking of Christ and his gospel of grace, I am not doing so from any particular denominational or dogmatic perspective, even though I might draw on ideas and teachings identifiable as traditional. Even then, I suspect many traditional Christians may find my ideas and perspectives non-traditional, perhaps somewhat challenging and even iconoclastic. Be that as it may, I believe it is my responsibility to be authentic in my sharing and transparent about my assumptions. If some find this offensive or unpalatable, I can understand and empathize, but I make no apologies for speaking my truth. It is the least I can do. I leave the final judgment to God, for in the final analysis, human opinions are simply that: opinions. They fall like snowflakes that eventually melt into the vast, still lake of the meditative mind. No matter. Never mind. It is far more unpalatable to suppress one’s truth than to speak it, especially when it is spoken to power (of the established religious hierarchy) in love. So, here I stand. And speak.

Be inquisitive. Be curious, be open. For meditation is a journey into consciousness that deserves nothing less. Paraphrasing the great Sufi mystic Rumi, there is a field out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing where we can all meet. Meditation is a journey that opens up to just such a field where moralism and legalism melt away into the pristine brightness of spirit and truth.

I welcome you, dear readers and meditators (or wannabes), to meet me in that field on this adventure of consciousness that is meditation. Meditation beyond rigid religious conventions. Meditation that speaks to the heart of being alive. Meditation that has no name but that celebrates every name of every person with all our intimate and personal histories. Unconventional yet in fidelity to the essence of time-tested traditions, this journey will be well worth your time and effort.

1

Radical Contemplation

For quite a while now, commentators and politicians have been talking about disruptions—technological, economic, political, social, and environmental. It is a truism to say that we now live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. With onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that has drawn the world into a quagmire of public health and economic crises, there is a widespread sense of insecurity and angst about the state of humanity and whence forward for us as individuals and as societies. The talk of the town is digitalization, digitalization, and digitalization, as if digital technology is humanity’s sole hope and only promise of salvation (of sorts). I unequivocally refute this hubristic claim.

Why? For the simple but overlooked reason that human beings are fundamentally conscious, or what religious discourse would call spiritual, in nature. For too long, thought leaders and society at large have assumed matter to be the basic substance of all reality. The ideology of materialism (that all reality is material) is so deeply entrenched that we have been indoctrinated into this paradigm from day dot, through school, and into adult working life. Never for a moment have we stopped to ask the simple question Is that so? By assuming human beings to be