Essay #35:  Awakening to Enlightenment:  the Concept of ‘Father-God’

It has been written that “straying from enlightenment, a man finds a happy land to be a sea of suffering…but awakening to enlightenment, he discovers a sea of suffering to be a happy land.”  Moreover, “We know from this that suffering and happiness are not two different moods and that straying from, and awakening to, enlightenment are not two different frames of mind.”¹

We must ask what “straying from enlightenment” and “awakening to enlightenment” really mean, for in them are contained both the germination of the seeds of “mind” and also the decay of those seeds.  Straying thus represents the origin or the beginning of the endurance of mind, and awakening represents the diminution and ultimate extinguishing of that endurance.

In the stage of life we are currently in—embodied and living on Earth—we, all of us, find ourselves already in the midst of both straying and awakening.  We cannot really ponder these things from “outside the system,” as it were, or even from the vantage point of total and complete enlightenment, which is the province of very few human beings and perhaps none alive now.  Rather, we must perform the highly strange and imaginative act of seeing ourselves beyond the grip of those forces which create our mind while being very much shaped and governed by them.

The difficulty of this act can hardly be overstated.  We constantly run into trouble not only because the forces which create and shape mind are continually at play in us but also because the so-called “solutions” that we come up with to the problem of individual or selfish mind are themselves shaped by and reflective of these forces.  Perhaps the most well-known solution to the sinfulness or small-mindedness of man is the concept of a “Father-God.”  The Father-God is posited as the perfect answer to the imperfect nature of man.  The Father is posited as all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent, and completely loving.  A quick reflection shows these qualities to be extrapolations from our own limited abilities to perceive, to know, to love, and to transcend the localizing boundaries of space and time.  The latter are particularly troubling, as they limit the reach and extent of all of our qualities, opening the way for turf battles over qualities positive and negative alike.  In fact, as we sought to demonstrate in the previous essay, the localization of mind does not precede turf battles, it arises concomitantly with the fires of the mind, which are the very makings of turf battles.  Of course, by “turf battles” we mean any efforts by the mind to extend and enlarge its territory (by the force of attraction) or to repel anyone or anything that would detract from its territory (by the force of aversion).

In the Father-God is represented for man a solution to the problem of the selfish individual mind that collapses under the weight of the fires of the mind just as soon as it is posited.  For the Father-God, though said to be omnipresent and omniscient—which cannot by definition be qualities of any individual being—is at once treated as an individual separate from man.  Indeed the identification of man with God has long been considered heretical by all mainstream religions which posit a God, and claims to it have historically been answered with severe punishments.  Today it is not so much punishments which are evidence of its unacceptance but rather the widespread popularity of petitionary prayers of all kinds.  The very nature of petitionary prayer is to make an appeal to a personality, force, or being apart from oneself in an effort to influence that being.  Moreover, what is sought is some response to the prayer, which response is not taken to be automatic but rather to depend on the will of the being to whom the prayer is being directed.  The common understanding, then, of the prayer, “Not my will be done, but Thine,” is that God is a being separate from man whose will is also separate from man’s will.  Whatever may be believed about man’s or God’s ability to cross the boundary between them, the existence of such a boundary is never in doubt in mainstream religion.

What is said about the ontological nature of this boundary is, however, distinctly less important than its impact on the endurance of mind.  For in the Father-God solution, the externalization of qualities opposite to those which stoke individual selfish mind does not—and furthermore cannot—free the mind from those selfish qualities no matter how intense or heartfelt the appeal to the external God may be.  This is the core of our trouble seeking enlightenment from a relatively unenlightened position.  We have great difficulty not projecting our unenlightened framework onto the enlightened solution we are trying to envision.  This is why it was said in the passage quoted above—quite perceptively—that “straying from, and awakening to, enlightenment are not two different frames of mind.”  One might be inclined to believe that awakening to enlightenment would be a very different frame of mind than staying from enlightenment.  But it was said they are one and the same.  What makes them the same is the point of reference of the individual unenlightened mind.  For that mind, both straying from enlightenment and awakening to enlightenment occur under the same duress of the fires of the mind.  It is easy to see how the fires of attraction, aversion, and ignorance might come to play in straying from enlightenment.  It is less obvious how these same fires are at work in the process of awakening to enlightenment.   Yet we are seeing precisely that in the collapse of the Father-God solution to individual mind back into individuality.

It is both touching and worthy of compassion how the mind oppressed with ignorance, greed, lust, anger, hatred, and other isolating qualities would seek to escape from them through a being believed to have infinite knowledge, boundless generosity, freedom from cravings, complete peacefulness, and endless love.  It is understandable how such a vision of enlightenment could arise in response to human suffering.  As we acknowledged in the prior essay, no individual mind is without some degree of bodhicitta, that is, the manifestation of Universal Mind.  To that extent, it will always be prompted to seek an egress from the countless confines and sufferings of individual mind back to the unlimited fullness of Universal Mind.  It is also understandable, given the very framework of individual mind against which we are struggling, that the vision of enlightenment should loop back towards individuality and become encapsulated, as it were, in a Father-God.  Therefore, even in the process of awakening to enlightenment, we can identify the fires of the mind and their effects.  The Defender-God whom we would have strike down our enemies or at least render them impotent is an expression of the fire of aversion writ large.  The Savior-God who would lift up the righteous and bring them home is an expression of the fire of attachment to what one perceives as one’s own.  And the often unassailable belief in these images and in the being behind them is a manifestation of the fire of ignorance that remains, in the end, one of the greatest obstacles to enlightenment.

We do not take lightly this criticism of the Father-God concept.  It is but one example of how the human vision of enlightenment becomes refracted by the very glass we look through from our station as embodied individuals in space and time.  Similar refraction has occurred in the formation of all manner of social institutions, political parties, and utopian communities throughout history.  However, the religious ideal culminating in liberation through a divine being or beings represents perhaps the most universal human vision of enlightenment.  It is and has been cherished by vast numbers of persons.  Therefore, we ought to be particularly careful in critiquing it.  We ought to say straightaway that the impetus for enlightenment contained in this vision is grand and noble.  A great many persons who aspire to it may quite fairly be said to be awakening to enlightenment.  This is not a detraction, but an acknowledgment.  We acknowledge in many religious seekers for whom the Father-God was or is an important pole star a deep and abiding wisdom.  We may further appreciate such seekers for both their theological and scholarly wisdom and for their practical wisdom in crafting, appropriating, and refining images and symbols in order to make of them useful tools for further awakening.  The wise use of symbols is perhaps not an insignificant part of human ingenuity altogether.

At the same time, we must caution against taking symbols too literally.  An old adage cautions against mistaking the finger for the moon it is pointing to.  Notwithstanding the noble impetus to enlightenment contained in the vision of liberation through a divine being, the vision itself is flawed and flawed irreparably.  It is flawed in the same way that the finger is flawed as a substitute for the moon.  The finger exists on a totally different plane and is bound by a different set of constrictions.  It is useful only insofar as it removes itself in the course of issuing its referral.  To whatever extent one’s attention remains fixated on the finger, one has missed the moon, for the finger’s utility is fully exhausted by its reference; it has no utility in itself.  By this analogy, the utility of the image of the Father-God would lie solely in its guiding reference to a state of enlightenment that lies beyond itself and not in the image per se.  But many will argue that the qualities represented by the image—such as love, compassion, and wisdom—are themselves components of enlightenment, so that this image is far closer to what it represents than the finger is to the moon.

This argument has some merit.  Love, compassion, and wisdom are indeed qualities that most would associate with enlightenment, at least abstractly.  Grave difficulties arise, however, once these and other such qualities are encapsulated by the image of a Father-God.  For if that image is to be at all meaningful, the Father-God must be given a history.  He must become particular, even more so relational if he is going to serve as the focus of petitionary prayer and other forms of worship.  Of course, once the Father is made particular and individual, such qualities as love, compassion, and wisdom no longer exist universally as components of enlightenment but individually as manifested in this particular God and revealed in his history.  That history itself, as contained in scripture, at once becomes a kind of benchmark of the qualities themselves.  Worshippers, for example, seize upon particular passages from the Bible as illustrations of wisdom or love.  Unfortunately, as often as such passages are cited by some, there are others who express reservations, or raise questions of interpretation or historical context.  Many of the judgments and punishments meeted out by the God of the Old Testament, for example, serve as examples for some of a wisdom that clearly distinguishes between the righteous and the unrighteous.²  To others, however, these same judgments and punishments seem excessively harsh and illustrative more of anger than of wisdom.

Nor are conflictual passages limited to the Old Testament.    In the New Testament, for example, Jesus claims, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).  To Christians this is much more than an expression of divine wisdom, but even as an expression of wisdom it has been rejected by mainstream Judaism for centuries.  Jews generally do not believe that Jesus was in possession of a kind of wisdom that alone granted access to the Father.  For Jews, such a claim to wisdom by an individual was and is considered heretical in the extreme.  Jesus, posited as both individual and divine in fact epitomizes the intractable difficulty of the Father-God solution to the problem of mind.  For to the extent that we take the “I” in Jesus’s statement quite literally, then precisely to that extent are we unable to attain the truth and the wisdom that he lays claim to which supposedly lets one access the Father.

Love, compassion, and wisdom may indeed be components of enlightenment.  Yet as soon as they shrink from universal qualities into qualities manifested by an individual—however exemplary that person may be—we may find ourselves awakening to enlightenment but will be barred from it to the very extent that it has become encapsulated in the individual we have chosen in the form of those qualities.  Any individualization of compassion, wisdom, love, and other such qualities, renders them conditional, with their conditions ultimately determined by the fires of the mind.  We are certainly not saying that individual expressions of such qualities should be scorned,–quite the opposite, for it is just such expressions which encourage awakening to enlightenment.  Nevertheless, the closer we approach to enlightenment, the less the qualities of enlightenment will be conditioned by individual expressions.  This is perhaps paradoxical but true.  As bodhicitta attains closer and closer to Universal Mind, the perception of differences between individuals conditioned by the fires of the mind drops further and further away as oneness is revealed.  Multiple minds are increasingly encountered as distinctions without a difference or as emphases in a larger field.³

 Indeed, this is most likely what Jesus meant by saying “I am the way and the truth and the life.”  He did not claim to have or to possess the way, the truth, and the life.  We should read that sentence as if way, truth, and life subsume I, and not the other way around.  We may recall the illustration of a sponge immersed in an ocean to see more deeply into Jesus’s meaning.  Jesus was “full of truth” (John 1:14) in the way the sponge is full of the ocean.  As far as water or life is concerned, Jesus is the ocean.  That is, from an enlightened viewpoint, he knows that he is nothing other than Universal Mind.  The sponge, which symbolizes his body, localizes Universal Mind into an emphasis.  Considering only the water in the sponge, that is, mind or consciousness, Jesus as an individual consciousness is a distinction without a difference compared with other individuals.  Considering the sponge or container, which symbolizes his body and blood, he becomes for us a highly conditioned individual of a particular place and time.  In that guise, he is vulnerable to become an object of all the fires of our mind, which have created and which sustain our own individuality.  In other words, we are able to—and unable not to—project all manner of desires, aversions, and beliefs upon Jesus just as we do upon the vehicle of our own bodies and the bodies of others.  This projection can ultimately cause the qualities of enlightenment in the individual Jesus to collapse for us back into re-representations of our own narrow views of life, truth, love, compassion, wisdom, and so on.  This is exactly what happened as the enlightened Jesus was laid hold of historically by Christian religious traditions, orthodoxies, and theologies.⁴   It is extremely ironic that Jesus himself warned against any such attempt to encapsulate or individuate enlightenment through the very symbols that have become the most widespread historical pillars of orthodoxy, namely, the bread and the wine.  He warned his disciples to be very careful to transcend—or aim to transcend—his individuality even as they looked to him as an example to help them awaken to enlightenment.

Jesus specifically referred to the breaking of his body and the shedding of his blood at the last supper as a vehicle for enlightenment.  The concept of enlightenment was couched for him in the words “forgiveness of sins.”  “Sins” at that time meant primarily errors of judgement and not moral or character flaws, which was a much later association.  Therefore, Jesus was teaching that the body and blood he was giving up were ultimately impediments to enlightenment—not as evils in themselves but as expressions of individuality spawned by the fires of the mind.  Jesus often spoke of such fires as greed, lust, and self-adulation and tied them to the passions of the flesh.  Thus it is ironic that the body and blood Jesus spoke of shedding have become so adored and celebrated by his followers in the ritual of the Eucharist.  This ritual itself perfectly expresses the conundrum of the Father-God solution to the problem of mind.  For it is by taking into themselves the body and blood of Jesus—the very pillars of his individuality—that his followers seek to liberate his spirit within themselves.  Their intention may be noble.  However, to the extent that they are bound by his body and blood and conditioned through articles of faith or dogma to Jesus’s individuality, they will always at most be awakening to enlightenment.  Jesus did not intend to place followers forever in his orbit.  He may have said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”  However, he meant himself the individual to be just that—a remembrance—and less an active principle conditioning individuality.  To turn to another metaphor, if gravity were the principle conditioning individuality and causing universal love, wisdom, compassion and so forth to fall back to earth and assume shrunken forms, then Jesus was all about achieving escape velocity and teaching his followers to aspire to a much bigger trajectory.  It might seem that he was encouraging them to enter orbit around the Father-God.  However, in this regard he left no more explicit prayer than this:

     “Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.” (John 17:21)

This does not sound like a description of any kind of orbit or even of a hierarchy.  It sounds more like the description of an inner trajectory along which individual differences are dissolved and not encouraged.  Jesus prays for the end of separation from the Father.  He does not beseech him as a distant God who needs appeasement or petitioning.  Rather, he describes himself as someone whose individual will has been dissolved into the will of God, a God who, in turn, “always hears him” (John 11:42).  For Jesus, the language of enlightenment is all about merging and oneness, not about separation and difference.  And he powerfully invites us into the same co-mingling with the Father that he himself enjoys.  Jesus never speaks of the Father as an individual person, certainly never as one of the three persons of the Trinity.  In his most distressed moments, Jesus does appeal to the Father as if he were a person who could alter his fate.  And yet it is this same God that he accuses of forsaking him on the cross.  We, too, in the grip of our strongest passions and our greatest aversions recoil in defense of our individuality and call out to whatever might rescue or protect it.  But the higher principle that Jesus acceded to was that a greater will, a Greater Mind, was at work than his individual will and mind. “Thy will be done” is his recognition of that Mind.

Remembrance, then, should not inspire a cloying faith, a narrowing of insight to conform to some dogma imposed from without.  Jesus addressed his followers as “friends” and commended them at the last for being capable of doing greater things than he had been able to accomplish.   Jesus ultimately meant remembrance to be part of an awakening to enlightenment,—less a remembrance of him personally than a remembrance of what lies behind the breaking of the body and the shedding of blood.  He told his disciples that the “Advocate” would come to them in the aftermath of this breaking and shedding (John 16:7).  Through this Advocate would come new knowledge (John 16:13).  There are good reasons to take this Advocate or Spirit as the Universal Mind uniting all sentient beings and to consider the new knowledge that Jesus alluded to as the welling up of bodhicitta in these same beings as both the awakening to enlightenment and the promise of enlightenment itself.

The Buddha taught the Anatta Doctrine as an antidote to all the ills that befall us when we become consumed by the fires of the mind in the service of an illusory “self.”  In the same way that we are able to apply awareness and begin to discern the illusion of the individual self, we may apply awareness and discover that the concept of the Father-God conceals even more than it reveals.  That is, various qualities of enlightenment begin to reveal themselves in their individual incarnations in persons.  Sooner or later, however, we discover that these qualities are also conditioned by the myriad qualities that condition and define the so-called “self.”  This is just where trouble begins as perceptions of difference begin to invade and pit groups of qualities one against the other.  Awakening to enlightenment, we begin to draw back from those perceptions and to experience more of the universal nature of enlightenment and its qualities.   The concept of the Father-God may assist us on that journey insofar as it draws us out of the narrowest conceptions of ourselves towards something unifying and uniting.  Now just as we became aware of the conditioning that threatened to sully a universal awareness and unifying qualities with perceptions of individuality and difference, we can back away from the concept of the Father-God as it threatens to become a re-representation or projection onto a divine being of the perception of individuality that earlier held us back.  In other words, it is up to us now to become aware of what Father-God conceals.  It is up to us not to allow Father-God to deter the absorption of bodhicitta further into Universal Mind by reinvigorating the illusion of the self:  that of a divine self or person and, by separation and reflection, that of our individual selves.  Father-God conceals this possibility through its emphasis on personhood.   We are naturally accustomed to and attached to personhood because it has become for us such a habituated conditioning upon our awareness.  However, this does not mean our awareness cannot become less conditioned.  It can.  And that is part of the growth of wisdom.  Regarding Father-God, increased awareness does not imply only the jettisoning of a faulty concept.  It also implies the discovery of something truly grand and wonderful concealed within the Father-God concept.  This is nothing less than the Universal Unconditioned Mind that is us and unifies all sentient life forms on the planet.

 

Notes:

1. Hung Tzu-ch’eng, Mindfulness: A Chinese Garden of Serenity – Reflections of a Zen Buddhist, Chao Tze-chiang, translator (1959), p. 12.
2. Cf. Deuteronomy 28:15-64, for example, for a lengthy list of punishments God promises to meet out to the unrighteous.
3. Mind as emphasis was perhaps first described by the Christian existentialist, Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973).
4. There is a growing bibliography of modern works that attempt to separate Jesus, or at least parts of Jesus’s teaching, from the cloud of Christian traditions, orthodoxies, and theologies that has obscured him from us. A representative list follows.

• Matthew Fox, Original Blessing (1983) and The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (1988)
• Paul Knitter, Without the Buddha, I Could Not Be a Christian (2013)
• Brian McLaren The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (2016)
• J. Philip Newell, Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation (2008)