I see it in a different light.
All mankind is created by God, including those who experience other forms of spiritual tradition. Their souls also contain the presence of God. There is some spiritual truth in their philosophies, but that is because God has planted that truth in all of us...some stay stagnant in their philosophy and never move forward to the full truth, others do. Even the pagans had a statue for their unknown God. Aristotle taught some truths. These are all little clues that God plants so that mankind can return to Him.
What I thought, when I read that passage, is that however man tries to explain about God is never enough and far from the reality of the spiritual state. The saints lived it. But, they also admitted that words could never express what they saw or heard(in visions and experiences). It's not possible to explain living in the Holy Spirit...words become inefficient....dogmas become heavy.
The "best of all the wisdom traditions", is to me, that seed of truth that God planted in all our souls. There are partial truths in all the traditional wisdoms. Kyriacos is not referring to the whole tradition of Buddhism, but just to that part of wisdom that is similar to the Orthodox faith.
the nature of the final destination is beyond all humanly constructed notions, all dogmas and beliefs
He says, "humanly constructed". The eternal spiritual life is beyond our understanding...all we have now is the dogmas and beliefs to keep us on the right track, but when Christ will come again, these dogmas and beliefs will be transformed to another spiritual level. We will not be living by them but by a state of perfection, as Adam and Eve did.
you'll see that he does not confess the Orthodox Church as the UNA Sancta
He wasn't saying that the Orthodox church isn't the truth. I never got that impression from him, otherwise my warning signal would have gone off...I'm very critical about that. I think he was working through his own spiritual process.
but Buddhism believes that all human systems are delusion, that only true enlightenment is reached in non-being
I understood this as beyond being(in the flesh). We cannot be non-being, if we already exist: then we are already in a state of being. We cannot aquire enlightenment(the aquisition of the Holy Spirit) if we are materially focused, therefore we have to go beyond material.
From an Orthodox perspective, one can say that the system that humans have developed is a delusion when compared to the reality of living in the Holy Spirit. I'm not talking about Orthodox dogma which we need in order to understand what God wants us to believe...I'm talking about how we view life. Have you read the life of Fr. Arseny who was in the gulag? He had an experience when he was near death and he saw those around him in a different light. God let him see their souls. He saw guards with brighter souls than those who would call themselves Orthodox. It was a completely different perspective from how we see things. It changed his view of people.
Moreover, the dogmatic Tradition of the Church is the expression of the deified nous, the voice of the Holy Spirit: the Councils among other things are our expression of what the Holy Spirit has confided to our Church in theandric expression.
I agree. I don't think Kyriacos was denying that fact.
I think if he--Markides--has found any niche it is with the most liberal of Greek New Calendarists.
I think he was seeing a side of the mystical faith of the saints much more than the average Orthodox laity. Besides, it's been a few years and his latest book will be out soon. Since it's about monastism, I think, he is going in a more Orthodox direction.
The book, as a whole, was quite Orthodox-minded.
In Christ,
Joanna
