Holte's corner

Samadhi and Devekut

One of the fascinating things occurs when one compares religions earnestly. I was discussing "Samadhi" with someone who found the phrase "annokutarra Sanmyaku Sambodai" perplexing, when I happened on an explaination of the term, on a "Donmei" website. The author, a follower of the controversial lineage of Shabettai tsvi and Jacob Frank, has equated the two states in some of his public writings. This is based on Hindu practice, which seeks unity of the adherent with "brahmin." for them Samadhi is the experience of the universality of the ultimate -- the universality of "god." This oceanic experience is expressed in hebrew in the famous prayer "Shmah Israel Adonai eloheinu adonai ehad,"[hear Isreal, the lord is our God the lord is one." and of course in Islam in their famous and oft misused cry, "God is one." But it is a similar word.
Thus this author makes the point that the point of Samadhi is to realize that "God is one."

Others make the point that the realization of Samadhi is the realization that all things form a unity. And it gets better when one studies the Hebrew. The word for eternity and universe in hebrew is the same word. In a sense "God" is the consciousness of the Universe. Not any demiurge or image of a floating entity but the "creation" and "wisdom" and other properties that are the properties of Universe. We live in the sixth day of creation, and we also live in the first, the second, the third, fourth and fifth. Our consciousness Is the consciousness that is part of and intertwined with the whole.

Looked at it that way, the resistance of Buddhists to trying to use Judeo-Christian terms to explain their religion seems a bit more empty. After all, the point of the "ultimate" being one is not that individual priests and mullah's have it 'in with God," or that individual "testements" or stories, are infallible, but that the spiritual experience is a universal and that much of what we see dividing ourselves from such experience is pure and simply delusion. This has been a point of Judeo-Christian and Sufi teachers for centuries. What divides us from experiening this is our own fear and clinging to "transcient" or "incomplete" views. In otherwors; twisted teachers, our own stupidity, and not "getting" the sages enough to argue with them and recognize their limitations.

The result is that people practice various religions with a shallow, even callow, attitude and none of us get very far in gaining a peaceful world.

My correspondent quotes from the Gospel of Thomas:

"Jesus said, If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?' say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself....' If they say to you, 'Is that you?' say, 'We are its children, and we are the elect of the Living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?' say to them, 'It is a movement and repose.' " (Saying 50)"

He then tells us:

"The Vedantist calls this "certain hidden place" -- this "movement and repose" -- Samadhi, the Kabbalist calls it Devekut, and the Zen Buddhist calls it Satori -- the effects of which the latter describes as, "Before Satori, chop wood carry water; after Satori, chop wood carry water."

and then he quotes: "Sri Ramakrishna put it this way:"

"What is Samadhi? It is the complete merging of the mind in God-Consciousness....In [the Samadhi attained through devotion] there remains the consciousness of 'I'.....God keeps a little of the 'I' in his devotee even after giving him Knowledge of Brahman."(op. cit., p. 312)"

So annokutara sanmyaku Sanbodai, pure and most profound enlightenment, is at the same time the perfect realization of the object of faith; "oneness" with the divine universe.

Chris

Posted by cholte at October 23, 2004 07:21 PM