Blog Archives
The Ninety-Nine Names of God
Interior wall and dome ceiling of the Sheikh-Lotf-Allah mosque in Isfahan, Iran
The Muslim theologian Abdal Hakim Murad says “Sometimes we see in the world manifestations of the divine beauty and grace – and that’s preponderant – sometimes we see in the world manifestations of the divine rigour and wrath. And this is one of the big differences between our (Muslim) understanding and, say, the Christian understanding. The Christians say “God is love” and immediately they can’t explain the meningitis virus or whatever, and this is a major source of loss of faith amongst them.
“Now we say that Allah is indeed Rahman [intensely merciful] and Rahim [most compassionate] and He is Al-Wadood [the loving], and He has those beautiful attributes and they do predominate and at the end, when good and evil are finally differentiate, we will see that the Rahma [divine mercy] predominates over the divine wrath. Nonetheless we also believe that Allah is Al-Jabbar (The Overwhelming), Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger), The Judge (Al-Hakkam), and that’s one reason why Islamic theology hangs together so well when confronted by the paradoxes of evil and suffering in the world. We believe that the world is the endlessly subtle interaction of ninety-nine names that includes names of rigour as well as names of beauty.”
“. . . which also means that the perfected human being, the Adamic human being, sometimes (and predominantly) manifests mercy and forgiveness, but sometimes can manifest rigour as well, which is why the Prophet (saws) forgave the people of Mecca, but he also went to war against them. Because he is the true Khalifa, he has those names and he also has within himself something of the Rahma, and he has within himself something, also, of Al-Muntaqim (The Avenger).
“The true representative of Allah (swt) on earth is not just the woolly-minded, kind, benevolent saint who always turns the other cheek, but sometimes has to uphold Allah’s rule in the world through those names as well, and that’s part of the completeness of Sayyedina Muhammad (saws), that in him we can see manifested (so far as is possible for created mortal human beings) all of the names of Allah, not just the names of beauty and the names of mercy.”
Forgiveness
January 2008
As many of us come from a Christian background, one of the main things we consciously or unconsciously expect from a religion is forgiveness. Christianity’s starting point is our imperfection, our inability to keep moral laws (mitzvah), the fact that we are ‘sinners’. Christ embodies God’s forgiveness. His role is to restore our relationship (Covenant) with God despite the fact that we are unable to keep moral discipline ourselves.
I think we can say with some confidence that some of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s disciples have trouble keeping moral discipline. Some of us are ‘sinners’ who need forgiveness. We need to forgive ourselves, and we would like to be forgiven by others. When forgiveness from others is in short supply it can be difficult to have the confidence to forgive yourself.
The opposite of forgiving yourself is blaming yourself. It took me a long time to stop blaming myself for my failure to keep my moral discipline and fulfil the mission my spiritual guide had given me, of setting up Dharma Centres in Mexico. Learning not to blame myself doesn’t mean ignoring the faults that led to my downfall. For me it means looking at the wider context, and understanding that my downfall was a dependent-arising, and my own faults were just part of the story.
Given the type of person I was, with the limited skills I had, it was almost inevitable that I would fail. But as Hazrat Ali said, “failure is my greatest teacher”. I have learned a lot about myself as a result, and I have been forced to look at some of the parts of myself that I least wanted to see.
I think that one of the real challenges for Buddhism in the West – not just the NKT – is whether it can incorporate forgiveness. If it cannot, then maybe it will not flourish here. As with all these things, we are the ones who have to make it happen, we can’t be waiting around expecting others to do it. We need to forgive ourselves and others. If we can truly practice forgiveness then us `sinners’ can make Buddhism in the West great. Christianity is a religion for sinners which has produced great saints. Can Buddhism be the same?
A few years after I disrobed I had a dream. The dream was set 500 years in the future (about 2500CE). Kadampa Buddhism was flourishing. A group of historians were reviewing the different phases of its development. They concluded that the first generation, the Old Kadampas, were saints. The second generation, the New Kadampas, were scholars and yogis, and the third generation, the New New Kadampas were criminals! They had succeeded BECAUSE they were able to come to terms with and deal with their impurity — they had not made the mistakes of denial and holier-than-thou pretence.
Wishful dreaming on my part, no doubt. And there are many New New Kadampas practising purely to whom the word criminal certainly doesn’t apply. But to those of us who are ‘criminals’ I think we have a great part to play if we can really learn to forgive ourselves and others.
Politics of Soul 