The
word “contemplation” connotes that area in which the Eastern influence upon
Christian spirituality is most visible. This is true even when the word itself
is not heard. The influence is evident in the greatly increased popularity of
various forms of meditation, and of Asian meditation methods. We have found nonduality
at the core of the Eastern traditions. Contemplation, understood as nondual
consciousness and experience, is the deep pivotal point at which the Asian
influence is most decisive. This point generates the central viewpoint from
which the unity of other currents of Eastern influence may be seen.
The
understanding of contemplation has changed in the Christian West during the
past half century, under the influence of the Asian traditions. Fifty years
ago, a standard Roman Catholic guide to the spiritual life might define
contemplation as “gazing with love upon God,” or “the experience of union with
God.” Today we are more likely to understand contemplation not so “objectively,”
but as unitive experience or, in Eastern terms, nondual experience. Similarly, “meditation”
half a century ago was still considered, in the West, as a deliberate
reflection upon revealed truths. Today most people understand meditation not as
discursive thought but as a practice of silent deepening which transcends
thought. Here I shall consider
contemplation in the latter sense, as we have come to regard it under the influence
of the Asian traditions: as unitive experience, nondual experience. Further, we
can understand contemplation not as exclusively “supernatural,” but also as the
natural realization of a human potential, and therefore as essentially universal
in human spirituality as is life or consciousness or love.
Excerpt from Purity of Heart and Contemplation: A
Monastic Dialogue Between Christian and Asian Traditions. Edited by Bruno
Barnhart and Joseph Wong (New York: Continuum, 2001)
pp. 303-304, Bruno Barnhart, “Christian Self-Understanding
in the Light of the East”
