Perhaps it's because I'm not a Christian, nor a very experienced Qi Gong-ist, but I don't understand the source of your conflict? That you obtain metaphysical sensation outside of your religion? Is that so bad?
I mentioned in my second post on Christianity and the Martial Arts the idea of syncretism. Many people these days find no problem with cobbling together together their own belief system from bits an pieces of other traditions. When I was agnostic, I felt pretty comfortable doing the same thing. The belief implicit in syncretism as it plays out in the modern world is that there is no single path to truth, that all belief systems are equally valid, and that religious belief is all about finding what "feels right to me." It's closely tied to relativism (truth as a relative reality only) and indifferentism (all belief systems are equally valid and lead to truth).
Syncretism is like taking puzzle pieces out of several boxes, each of which has its own distinct picture of reality, and trying to put them together to come up with an individualistic picture of reality. No matter how beautiful each of those separate pictures are, the syncretized picture is going to be distorted.
Metaphysics is geared toward understanding first principles, God, and Being. (I addressed this question back in September in the study questions for a class I was taking, "Philosophy for Theologians.") To pick and choose among various metaphysics is to accept contradictory and incompatible means to a single end.
If one also considers the differing ends toward which Buddhism and Taoism on the one hand lead and the one toward which Christian faith leads, one can see that they're incompatible. In the case of Buddhism, the aim is to free oneself of personal attachments in an effort to release oneself from the endless cycle of birth and death (Samsara) and to attain Nirvana. There is no God in the sense of a transcendent being to which Buddhists turn for this release. It's a personal path traversed at one's own will.
For Catholics and Christians, this is not the case. The aim in life is to know, love, and serve God. To do this, we cannot rely on our own abilities and strivings but must allow God's grace to work upon us. We must accept this gift of God's grace offered to us through the sacrifice of His Son. We must make our will subservient to His will. And while this life of existence to Buddhists is an illusion that ends with the attainment of Nirvana, for Catholics, this life is not only quite real (although material and transient), it is also our only chance to make a choice, to live for God or not. So anything that distracts us from our goal is an impediment.
Here's where a lot of non-Christians (at least the non-montheistic ones) get tripped up—the concept of God. If He were simply one of many gods immanent in the natural world (as is the belief with the gods of paganism) or simply one divine being of many amid this worldly allusion (as in Hinduism and Buddhism), it wouldn't matter so much. One god would have no more claim to us than another. But we see God as the transcendent Truth, the Creator, One whose very essence is Being itself. To Him we owe everything.
[Technorati tags: Karate, kung fu, martial arts, Christianity, Catholicism]
2 comments:
Thanks for that cogent explanation.
Other martial arts writings have bemoaned syncretic heresies even with Internal Arts, so it's certainly not just religions that have problems, if they are problems, with controlling synthesis of new things. With my educator hat on, I'm very interested in synthesis, and am generally in favour of it. It's how all thinking is created. As a systems guy on the other hand, I'm aware of problems of brought in components. So a cobbled-together system of thought, or martial arts, or an aircraft or whatever, might have unresolvable internal inconsistencies.
Where I was initially concerened was in the notion that a thought system must *necessarily* exclude all other overlapping or even adjacent ones, and perhaps some non-adjacent ones. In an eco analogy: "you claim to be a vegetarian, and yet you drive a car!"
I tend to take issue with thought systems that declare themselves to be competant to solve unknown problems, let alone those which declare their own perfection! But I don't identify as a relativist or a nihilist. I believe that there are things worth struggling for, and ways of adapting the mind and body to do so.
As a proto-Buddhist (read: interested in the Causes of Suffering, but unlikely to want to ever sit in Tibet for years), I guess I'm taking a different path to you, and that's alright with me. See you (or not) at the end of it!
You might argue that some thought is received, not created, and that's a position down a path which I'm not on, having never in the first place had a belief in God.
Thanks again and best wishes.
"You might argue that some thought is received, not created, and that's a position down a path which I'm not on, having never in the first place had a belief in God."
We each have to seek the Truth on our own. I once remember thinking about writing a commentary (back when I was an agnostic and attending a Unitarian Universalist "church") posing the question of how we would respond if the Rapture* actually occurred. Now, I don't believe in the rapture, but the gist of the question is simply if we're faced with incontrovertible evidence of the Truth, would we, out of sheer stubbornness, maintain skepticism, would we turn away for fear of the changes it might require in our lifestyle, or would we embrace the Truth? I was going to call the commentary, "When the Rapture comes, can I have your car?"
Good luck on your journey. If you're ever interested in reasonable proofs for the existence of God, see Peter Kreeft's site here.
*Note that I am NOT saying that I believe in the Rapture. Scripturally, I think there's little justification for it, and it's not part of Sacred Tradition.
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