by Heinrich Dumoulin
10-The Estern mind and the Western mind are complementary
to each other. Human culture can only be brought to
perfection in an exchange between the two hemispheres.
Stillness and motion are the two poles of all activities
of human life. Only if stillness and motion are
co-ordinated, can man attain his complete consummation
in the equilibrium of his powers.
3-The Second Vatican Council in its "Dogmatic Constitution
onn the Church" regnized the possibly of attaining
salvation outside the institutional Church and without
an explicit belief in Christ (No. 16) and thus removed
a longstanding barrier to interreligious relations.
18-The negative way of the Far Eastern religions should not
be misinterpreted as nihilism. It consists in inducing man
to break through the categories of logical thinking and
to attain superrational enlightenment. The highest
intuitive knowledge cannot be expressed in human words
and concepts.
13-The harmony of the human personality rests on the accord
of internal and external faculties, the oneness of the
spiritual and corporeal, of soul and body.
24-Teilhard sensed the universal interaction of reality.
All things are linked with all things. All reality is
divine and demands from man a religious response. The
divine does not exist outside the realm of man, but is
present everywhere, and man endowed with the sense of
the holy, can see the divine light shining through all
existing things.
45-Zen mediatation can enrich Christian spirituality
because it is aware of the unity of body and soul
in man and effectively practices "prayer with the
body.
55-"Pascal's word "Thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst
not found me!
79-"Both the positive and negative way are based on Holy
Scripture. The divine being which has revealed itself
to us is ineffable, beyond all predications and can
equally be called non-existent as well as existent,
since it is the plentitude of perfection and
transcendental Nothingness.
132-The pearl and the treasure are one's own self. Gnosis
is self-knowledge actually means "to recognize oneself,
to rediscover and regain one's true self which has been
obscured by ignorance.
149-"The personal and the cosmic do not contradict each other.
Man and the ever-converging and personalizing cosmos are
evolving toward the supreme personal unity, namely,
toward the omega point, Christ.
159-In breaking through to Nothingness, all is realized in
Nothingness, just as Nothingness is realized in the all.
"Peering into the darkness where nothing is recognized,
but present in this darkness is precisely what the person
seeks... and sees nothing of the essence of this abyss,
but from this abysmal darkness the lava of presence glows
- and that is what is existentially decisive and
motivating.
167-"Christians are more and more aware that all analogies and
images referring to God are inadequate, for divine nature
is without analogy, imageless, ineffable and full of
mystery. Experience is grounded in the infinitude of
the divine nature itself.
173-Transcendence and immanence are in no way to be separated
from each other, for they essentially interpenetrate.
180-Just as Christ emptied himself to God, God should not
be understood as aloof, but as taking on non-being
because of his love and creates the world. Self
renunciation is God's very essence. The deposit of
God's love in the act of creation a "condescension",
a "humiliation", or a "servitude.
193-"God's unfathomable mystery, in which things which are
opposite in our universe coincide. Man has to speak
about God as suffering AND rejoicing, unchangeable
AND repenting, acting AND resting: He is darkness
more a-light than light.
197-Paradox of strength in weakness characterizes religious
man. HAVING FAITH IS THE "VICTORY" which overcomes the world
and propounds the ideal of kindness and non-violence.
198-Man knows that his way of knowing truth the truth is
imperfect and that he is not the sole possessor of truth,
but that others hold truth as well. Man is not alone on
his passage between the two shores for he also
experiences a solidarity with all men and derives a
security from knowledge of the two shores.