Most religions have 'advanced' or 'higher' practices that are more left field. Ones that tend to be placed on the 'mystical' book pile. Teachings often erroneously referred to as 'hidden' or 'secret' ,but are really only reserved. These 'mystical teachings' usually represent the ĺiving breathing soul of a religious tradition. That they are withheld from common knowledge and use, is significant. They are meant to be rare treasures, but as we know the promise of gold, however distant, can also stimulate greed and covetousness. To bring out the avaricious gold hunter in us all.
Mystical teachings tend to turn what you thought you knew about a tradition completely on its head. Whatever is knowable as divine or transcendent, becomes this absolutely unknowable thing. Whilst that daily spiritual practice you thought really necessary, can suddenly appear to have no value, if viewed absolutely. Because ultimately it is a provisional teaching, thoroughly transitory by its very nature.
I've become quite intregued lately by the degree of coincidence in trajectory of differing religions 'mystical' traditions. That so many of them ascend into this territory of the unknowable. Whether it's- the Tao which can be known is not the eternal Tao - the Shunyata that escalates its emptiness to the point of emptying emptiness of itself - the Zen concept of thusness, of abandoning any self consciously directed, goal orientated path towards Enlightenment - the apophatic Christian Mystical traditions where the cuddly notion of the bearded patrician, the interventionist God, is completely abandoned. Everything becomes an series of statements of what God is not. And what God is definitely not, is gendered, or even a being you can make requests of. Whatever the tradition, the graspable knowableness of a religion vanishes up itself. And on this most critical of horizons, dissolves into the vast unknowable ocean of nothing in particular.
In past eras such 'mystical' or 'advanced' teachings would never be mentioned to a person who was thought not yet ready for them. In fact it was often considered detrimental to a person's spiritual progress to do so. What was once a carefully guarded initiation, is now available in book form or on the Internet, or worse still, dispensed like a sweety to suck on at the end of a public talk.
We have an easy unfiltered and casual access to what are basically 'higher' teachings. Instinctively we recognise them as important, even though we'll most likely misunderstand or misapply them. The temptation to believe we can skip adhering to our foundational practices and simply head straight to the nub of it all, can prove irresistible. Why waste time on things that require application, time and devotion, particularly when you have to let go of them in the end? Why not go straight to the heart ? Save time and effort. This is where hard graft finds itself in an unseemly tug of war with instant gratification.
There is a story from The Lotus Sutra about The Magic City. A group of travellers sets out on a long and dangerous journey. Knowing many of them might be inclined to give up, their leader and tour guide conjures up The Magic City. Telling them this is their destiny, what they are heading towards, its just over the horizon. Having heard about the Magic City they all want to get there. After weeks, months and years pass The Magic City still has not yet been reached. Many travellers lose faith in their objective, turn back, or fall by the wayside. Eventually those that stick with it do reach The Magic City. At this point the leader clicks his fingers and makes it all disappear. Confessing to them that the Magic City was simply a skillful ruse to help them maintain their focus and confidence, so they did not lose faith in their journeys purpose. Enabling them to get to a place where they can do without such imaginary destinations.
Buddhism refers to its own foundational teachings as The Raft that gets you to the farther shore. The place where it's raft of practices and teachings becomes redundant. And Buddhism is not alone in having this inbuilt structural redundancy. In the story of The Magic City the disciples are only told of their leaders deception of them at the end, once they've reached their goal. Would it not then be intrinsically unhelpful, if not demoralising, to know about this 'deception' right from the moment of embarking on your spiritual journey,? How would you respond? How would that feel? For once you know, you cannot unknow.
Whether its a Magic City, Enlightenment or The Promised Land, however we mythologise or imagine the goal, destination or purpose of our religious faith, its an inaccurate, if not illusory, comprehension we are dealing with. So when an atheist says - religions they're all made up and a comforting fantasy - well, in a way they are. They are an instrumental truth, not an absolute one.
Magic Cities are of necessity illusory, and to simply highlight that does miss the point of them big time. Underneath these foundational myths lies the ocean of unknowing, that an atheist too has no answer, conception or understanding to effectively encompass it with.
For a believer the way to miss the point is to mistake the myth of The Magic City for a real place. To believe in its literal existence. What the story is informing you of, is that our beliefs are only ever useful inexactitudes. Partial truths that gesture you roughly in the right direction. The degree to which you rigidly hold yourself to those beliefs, will not necessarily speed your progress. No one gets far on a spiritual journey without a provisional faith that there is some sort of top to the mountain that you are climbing. Even that the mountain itself is real.
Faith, I find, is perpetually in a productive, but often slippery, interactive dialogue with our doubts. My religious doubts usually arise from the desire for a sense of something tangible, of having made progress, for an achievable goal, for a conclusion to the journey I'm travelling, banging their head against reality, the hard resistant wall of unknowing. I have had to learn to be more equanimous towards the unknowable nature of where faith itself may be leading me. That makes holding to its amorphous nature challenging. Hence. I guess, the need for The Magic Cities in the first place.
This is a humbling place to find myself in. To know that I don't know. My ego bristles with being held in the trap of my not liking it.
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