Replies

Thanks Jennifer. I can’t answer your question, but if you want to reach out to Dr. Odin to ask for his suggestions on further reading, I just posted his email address in a new thread in this session.

Thanks for starting a great thread, Charles! I really appreciate all that you have unpacked here.

Reinder, you’d probably find more on Griffin’s thoughts on religious pluralism in this text, the book from which the Odin chapter came.

Sheri

You’re very welcome Elizabeth! I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed his talk.
And I appreciate your sharing about the availability of the intro to his book. I’ll check it out!
Sheri

Thank you Bill. I feel your pain about finding sympathetic churches!

Thanks for these thoughts, Jason, and for bringing in Faber’s article!

Thanks for this Michael. It is true that one must tread lightly when trying to compare aspects of different traditions. In my own work comparing Whitehead and Jung, I argued that there were what I called “functional resonances” between the two systems. So concepts could be compared in terms of how they function without claiming them to be identical.

Have you read Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hahn? it’s been a while since I did, so I can’t say here what it said. I also very much appreciated Paul Knitter’s Without Buddha I couldn’t be a Christian. You might check those out.
Sheri

Hi Kent,
Yes, I think it was Father Bede Griffiths who told Sheldrake that he could find everything he was looking for in India by returning home and going deeper into his own tradition. Very interesting thoughts on the effects of place too.

If you’d like to contact Dr. Odin, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. His email address is steveo@hawaii.edu.
Sheri

Hi Ben,
Thank you for these thoughts. I’d like to respond to this, “This loss of ego is something that process thought’s emphasis on creativity and objective immortality would wrestle to incorporate.”
If we understand process thought as teaching that there is only objective immortality and no subjective immortality, I believe we can read that to say that there is no ego that remains. All of what every person actualized, the outcomes of our lives, are held in God everlastingly, but we can think of that as the value of what we contributed is what is kept as objective data, not the person/ego that actualized those moments. Now, each person does have a kind of “field of force”, a kind of legacy, that can be kept alive in the memories of loved ones, but I’m not sure we can say that is their ego being kept alive.

I’ve not yet read Griffin’s book on Life after Death, so he may find ways to express this differently. And maybe he does argue for a continuation of subjective personality.

Jace,
Thanks for these thoughts. I really like how you’ve tied Samsara to inner nirvana and the verse from Luke about the Kingdom. Nicely done!
Sheri

Thanks for these thoughts, Kyle. I resonate with what you’ve written about the caste system, and the idea of becoming hollow for God.
One thing to think about regarding the self is that the Hindu atman is not the ego self that, yes, must die in Christianity. The atman is more like the imago dei, or the Christ Self in every person. It is the living image of God, the true Self, within. Or the Buddha nature, in my understanding.

These ideas on Karma and Samsara are very compelling. I also find the evidence of reincarnation to be strong.
If you are still having problems with your posts, you might reach out to Richard Livingston who emailed everyone about the course initially. I wonder if you might be leaving the page before the Submit process has completed? It does seem to take a good while when I post comments.

Yes! That’s such a wonderful description of bhakti. And it absolutely ties in to process theology’s view of our relationship with God.

thanks Elizabeth! I’d love to hear what he thinks too!

Thanks for these additional thoughts, Elvi!

I meant to add that Process & Faith recently had a wonderful event with Rosemarie Anderson talking about her new book The Divine Feminine Tao Te Ching. The recording isn’t quite ready yet, but it will added to the P&F YouTube channel shortly.