The Catalog of Good Deeds

Physical Exercise

Yoga was first presented in the Western world as a kind of "physical exercise", a method of relaxation and psychological calmness. Its basic difference from the usual physical exercise lays, inter alias, in the characteristic immobility. Many yoga exercises have some positive effects on certain people –something, nevertheless, that occurs with the exercises of other systems as well. Generally speaking, though, these exercises belong to a framework of Hinduistic concepts and are stages of a wider total, a more general spiritual progress. In their full development, they aim at something more than the limits of physical well-being. What precedes and what follows yoga exercises –that many people are not aware of- is closely related to systems of "meditation" and experiences, full of Hinduistic philosophical-religious theories and axioms, mainly the teaching on reincarnation.

And to become more descriptive: as genuflections (the "metanoies" [kneeling] of our monastic tradition) are not simple movements of the body, but are related to a more general belief and express a specific mood and disposition of the soul seeking spiritual goals, in the same way –always keeping due allowances - the more complex yoga exercises are connected with Hinduistic representations and aim at spiritual, religious experiences.

Union, merger

The word "yoga" is one of the words of the Indian vocabulary that has many meanings. Etymologically, it means "merger", "union", "connection", "exercise". It is widely used by the Indians in order to determine the secret bond of man with the transcendental reality as well as to define the way, the path and the methods leading to this "union", to the "liberation" of the human being from the multiform bonds and the illusions of this world.

"Yoga" also comprises the various directions and methods shaped by the Indian tradition throughout the centuries in order to achieve the redemption of man and the union with the Absolute. The three basic types of Indian religiousness in order to achieve salvation, knowledge and devotion are correspondingly called "Karma-yoga", "Jnana-yoga" and "Bhakti-yoga".

The same word is used for the definition of one of the six classical "orthodox" schools (darsanas) of Hinduism. The confusion created, therefore, in the Western world by the many meanings of the word "yoga" is intensified.

Briefly, classical Yoga, as a School, recognises the existence of an eternal God, Isvara (Lord), but does not accept that he interferes with human issues. These ideas about such a God cannot, of course, be identified in any way with the Christian theological teaching.

Basic stages of Yoga

Yoga practice is taught in a long series of lessons. Although there are many variations created over time, the most common stages of these meditation methods are eight: (a) self-restraint: compliance with certain dictates, such as avoidance of sexual relations, theft, miserliness; (b) self-cultivation: aiming at calmness, purity, consistency to the exercise etc.

Following these two stages, the student is initiated and their teacher (guru) gives them a new name and a ritual phrase (mantra) which they must repeatedly chant in order to accelerate the progress to salvation. (c) Control over the body: the special postures of the body aim at exercising control over the vital energies of the human organism; (d) Control of breathing: through the application of these exercises, the breathing rhythm is decreased, the body and mind enter a state of peace and all the mental strength of man is prepared for the final stages of yoga; (e) Control of the senses: by fixing the gaze on an object, the yogi (the one who practices yoga) tries to gain control over their senses; (f) Concentration: the control of the attention aims at creating a barrier isolating the person from the surroundings and inner fantasies. The Hinduistic tradition has created various techniques in order to achieve this, such as the following: the repetition of the Hinduistic sacred syllable " OM " silently or in a long-drawn out chanting rhythm, focusing on particular forms and others.

The last two stages lead to the final objective of yoga which is: (g) Meditation, focusing and perception; (h) Enlightenment, liberation. The yogi believes that absolute meditation achieves unification, merger with transcendental reality. The person reaching the final stage is freed from the existential sphere and manages to find salvation.

While in the first stages, some elements of consciousness are maintained, in the last one, the yogi is led to a state transcending even self-consciousness. They are disassociated from colours, smells, sounds, feels and are not conscious of themselves or anyone else. Their spirits are "freed" –as the initiated ones say- from memory and oblivion. This is considered knowledge, enlightenment.

It is, finally, a technique aiming at the connection with the Absolute. For this technique the central Christian truths about Christ the Saviour, Grace, unselfish love, the Cross-Resurrection have no meaning.

There are various orientations, branches, shades and applications of yoga. The different yoga schools do not have the same approach. Furthermore, there are numerous yoga groups operating in Europe and America which have peculiarities and special characteristics frowned upon by India gurus. As a rule, though, all these systems of meditation, exercise and spiritual experience follow the thought categories and religious conditions of Hinduism which are radically different from the teachings of the Christian Gospel in basic issues, such as the ideas on God, the world, man, death, salvation and others. They mainly lead to a terrible and dangerous confusion and comparison which denies the essence of the Christian message.

Yoga in a Christian framework

Some Western intellectuals studied the possibility of isolating some of the yoga rules in order to be used in a Christian framework. This attempt, however, to dissociate these exercises from the Hinduistic theories with which they are united seems like an attempt to separate the human muscle system from the neural one. A new original creation is required in order to achieve their freedom from the intense Hinduistic atmosphere and ethos.

In such a case, the Christian application of yoga would mean a kind of exercise that would facilitate man to reach a deep silence; not only from external noises, but mainly from the internal shocks created by desires, concerns and fantasies; a silence through which the human spirit could hear the messages of the Holy Spirit more clearly by experiencing humiliation. For this, however, there is no need to seek methods that have been used with the opposite result: absolute autonomy of the human spirit and extraordinary confusion. According to Christian faith, spiritual life and completion are gifts of the grace of God and not an achievement of an independent human-centric technique. Furthermore, for us, the Orthodox Christians, there is the entire hesychastic experience of Eastern Christianity which under certain Christian conditions reached the holy spiritual life in Christ, peace and "hesychia" (quiet) in love.

Yoga in Greece

Various yoga centers have been on the increase in recent years in our country. Our knowledge, though, and ideas about yoga are still poor, general and confused. Yoga is publicly presented as a "kind of physical exercise" and, usually, only exercises for the muscle and neural centers, breathing exercises and other similar ones are presented. This means that from the aforementioned stages, they are restricted to the third one, control over the body, and the fourth one, control of breathing, while sometimes they advance to the fifth stage, control of the senses, and the sixth, concentration. Many private schools somewhat try to take the religious Hinduistic character away from these exercises so that they can be more easily accepted by the average Greek person. Others try to convince that yoga never had and still has no religious character and they simply talk about "science", "spiritual knowledge", psychosomatic exercise. Regardless, though, of what peculiar and dignified words are used to cover reality, it is a fact that the entire orientation of this Indian technique was and is religious or parareligious. The ones initiated in yoga "meditation" are guided to a clearly Hinduistic orientation. Guided by the Vedes and the other sacred Indian texts (Upanishads, Puranas, Sutras and Tantras) and mainly by a "teacher" (guru), they aim at assimilating and experiencing the theories on the law of karma, which determines reincarnation, and on the law of samsara, which determines the recycling of reincarnation, seeking salvation (moksa) from this world which is not real (maya) by following "paths" defined by the Hinduistic tradition, such as karma yoga, Jnana yoga and Bhakti yoga (mentioned in the beginning of the article), and their many variations, such as mantra yoga, hatha yoga, raja yoga and others.

This "religious core" is not mentioned and is hidden with general phrases by the various articles of association of Yoga Centers. They claim, for example, that their purpose is to "model men physically, intellectually and spiritually". The texts offered for publicity usually appear under an allegedly simple social and philosophical guise; they are usually associated with sayings of ancient Greek wise men or even... of fathers of the Church. For the ones though, that know this issue in depth, their theories and ideas are transparent like plastic sheets that allow their deeper Hinduistic character to emerge.

Furthermore, the magazines that have been translated into Greek show their religious and philosophical points of view (e.g. the "Yoga" magazine includes an unbelievable mix of Hinduistic teachings; even invitations for participation in Hinduistic celebrations, such as the one in honour of Sivararti, 15/2/80 ). The aims described in the articles of association of these societies are full of proselytizing enthusiasm, such as "the spread and dissemination of Yoga to all people regardless of sex, nationality, religion and social class", the "creation of solid foundations for the application of Yoga in everyday life".

Religious freedom and deception

The Greek Constitution, of course, establishes "the freedom of religion and religious conscience". This does not mean, however, that the various groups are allowed to deceive the Greek people with disingenuous statements about their identities and the aimed objectives.

The Orthodox Church -agent of the eternal truth of the living Logos of God- has been facing, for centuries now, every kind of measuring up with various religious - philosophical human fabrications, calmly and without fear. However, it has the right to demand from any competent authority, especially from the Mass Media, to clearly show the face and the background of the "gurus" of the various foreign religious ideas. The claim that they want to prepare us so that "we can operate responsibly and creatively within the society" (as it is written in the articles of association of some Yoga Center ) with theories and methods that have delayed the development of fine Asian peoples seems to be a ridicule.

At the same time, though, all of us that bear a small or big responsibility within the Church need to realise that in an era of free transfer of ideas at a global level, it is natural for the unrestful inquiring spirit of the Greek people to show curiosity and interest for new ideas in our country either of western or eastern origin. Therefore, the clergymen, theologians and Christian intellectuals need to be well trained in order to provide the Greek people with dispassionate information. Finally, the best resistance to the various spiritual trends is still the continuous, dynamic offer of the whole range of the Orthodox tradition and the personal and social experience of this tradition.

Source: http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/

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A truly beautiful woman is lovely both inside and out—and it’s the outer part that should cause parents some concern regarding the wonderful young women in our culture. The popular fashions many young women wear suggest that they’re being guided by a lie, which says: Girls should be able to show whatever body parts they want to show, and no male person should admit being affected by this display. If one spends just a short while observing girls wherever they may be—at the mall, in school hallways or at sporting events—it’s obvious that many of them are wearing fashions that send out a provocative use me message.

Today, many young women struggle with their parents for their right to dress in troubling styles, some of which, not that long ago, would have been seen only on women in prostitution. Sometimes these styles seem to be the only ones available—even for 4-yearolds! Sadly, many of these fashions degrade God’s crowning creation—women—and the real Madonna—the Virgin Mary—and put our beautiful young girls in harm’s way spiritually, morally and physically. Evil is real, and the devil enjoys nothing better than disfiguring the human person as an image of God any way he can—and what better way than to attack chastity through a lack of modesty?

Even girls who have no intention of having pre-marital sex, but who dress as though their bodies were somehow disconnected from their good moral convictions, are sending a confused message: Don’t get excited by the body parts I’m showing because they are only for my future husband. But why, then, display them? A boy has no right to use a girl’s body for sexual gratification, and a girl has no right to use a boy’s fantasies and natural circuitry as a means to get male approval. In effect, many girls harass their male peers by wearing fashions that invite the wrong kind of attention. Such girls are saying, Look, but don’t touch! Which leaves boys to wonder: Why do you want me to look then? Cover yourself up and help me to think about you as a person, rather than as an object.

To misuse one’s body and then act surprised at the response such behavior generates is dishonest. Too many girls have learned too well the message of false feminism: It’s my body and I can do what I want with it. But Jesus said, This is my body and I give it up for you. He came to show us the right order of things, which is self-donation. In self-donation I sacrifice what I want—a boy’s approving looks and comments—for his greater good: the invitation to communicate with me as a whole (from holy, meaning deserving reverence) person, not just a part (or parts) of me.

Young women need to hear about the impact fashions have and the language fashions speak. They need to be encouraged to think about the role that fashion plays in expressing who they are and what they stand for. They need help to weed out the use me fashions from their wardrobes. And they need to be affirmed in the truth—that they are daughters of the King, and as such are whole persons meant for holiness and respect, not parts to be misused for pleasure and ridicule.

By Celeste Thomas

Celeste Thomas works as a speech and language therapist in Aurora, Colorado Public Schools. She also has a 20-year history giving chastity talks to teens.

Source: https://denver.goarch.org

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I was a little surprised when Archbishop Chrysostomos recently wrote me with some critical words about my experience of Jesus Christ as my personal Savior within the context of the Orthodox witness....It seems to me that accepting Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior is what Christianity is really about....I find Jesus in Orthodoxy and I can find no reason to look at His saving Grace any differently now that I am Orthodox than when I was a Protestant. I am saved in Orthodoxy and rejoice in my Savior (Luke 1:47)....Could you explain why my language was described as missing the mark or off the mark—whichever? (P.L., IL)

We have asked His Eminence to respond to your comments and question:

In corresponding with you some time ago, I had occasion to chastise you for approaching the Orthodox Faith with a certain superficiality and without addressing the wholeness of the salvific experience that one finds in Orthodox theology. I will reiterate and expand on what I told you, hoping that you will reflect on these matters carefully. Firstly, as I pointed out to you earlier, the concepts of personhood and salvation in the Orthodox Church have absolutely nothing to do with these notions as Protestant Evangelicals understand them; and secondly, the separation of human salvation and the witness of the Church into two elements, if not the separation of salvation and personhood themselves, is wholly foreign to Orthodoxy. Salvation is the realization of personhood in Christ, through theosis (divinization by Grace), and Christ is not only the Church itself, as Father Florovsky has so clearly demonstrated from a Patristic standpoint (see, for example, his brilliant essay, Le Corps du Christ vivant: Une Interprtation orthodoxe de l Église Universelle [The Body of the Living Christ: An Orthodox Understanding of the Catholic Church] in the collection, La Saint Église Universelle [The Holy Catholic Church] [Neuchatel-Paris: Delachaux et Niestl, 1948]), but the very source, as Perfect God and Perfect man (Teleios Theos kai Teleios Anthropos), of our restoration to the image of God, or salvation.

I have often emphasized this point about the existential and wider dimensions of religious terminology in the Fathers of the Church, by recounting an astonishing incident in one of Father Florovsky's seminars, in 1976, at the Princeton Theological Seminary. In the course of a certain lecture, a seminary student—frustrated, I suspect, at the philosophical depth of Father Florovskys discussion of a certain Patristic point (in fact, he was, as I recall, discussing Origen)—raised his hand and rather boldly asked, What does all of this have to do with accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? There was a long pause, after which Father Georges, with a piercing glance, looked up at the student and said, with the frail voice that in those days betrayed his advanced age: Young man, I was converted to Jesus Christ, not to Protestant Evangelical piety. He then continued his lecture, without another comment. He no doubt thought that the matter was closed; his clumsy student, no doubt, understood nothing of what Father Georges had said.

That one confrontation has always encapsulated, for me, the vast distance which separates the experiential theology of the Fathers and the doctrinaire theology of Christian apologetics (what Father John Romanides, as we shall see below, calls polemical or dogmatic theology, without implying anything pejorative by the former word), if indeed one can dignify pietistic clichés such as the one in question—however sincerely proffered—with the word theology.

Let me elaborate on what I have said, by touching on the Orthodox meaning of the person and the relationship of personhood to salvation within the context of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas. In this way, you will see vividly what I mean when I refer to your pietistic notion of personal salvation as superficial. It is, in fact, only by carefully defining our terminology in the language used by the Fathers—language rising out of their experience of God and the restoration of human personhood in Christ—that we can fully understand the profound dimensions of Scriptural references to Christ as our personal Savior and the experiential nexus between the person and salvation in Christ. When we turn to the living witness of the Fathers, we capture a fullness of Christian teaching that is neither related to the Evangelical understanding of personal salvation in Christ, nor in any manner captured by that understanding, save in the undoubtedly well-intentioned strivings of those who seek the ineffable within the tragically limited boundaries of an existential mystery reduced to a verbal affirmation.

I will begin my comments by translating and quoting two sections from a number of very insightful passages written by Metropolitan Ierotheos of Nafpaktos about St. Gregory Palamas theology and the theology of the Orthodox Fathers in general, which give us a grounding in understanding the experiential dimensions of true theology. These passages are found in His Eminence's excellent essay, He peri prosopou didaskalia kata ton Hagio Gregorio Palama (St. Gregory Palamas Teaching on the Person), in which he approaches the question of personhood somewhat differently—and with a different and more expansive aim—than I, but whose observations are wholly consistent with what I have to say.

Speaking of the theological methodology of St. Gregory Palamas, Metropolitan Ierotheos writes: St. Gregory Palamas was a synthetic theologian, in the sense that he knew all of the theology of the Orthodox Church and unceasingly directed its application to the needs of his age. The Holy Fathers of the Church always theologized in a synthetic and productive manner. This means that, having personal experience of God, they confronted the theological currents of their age from within their experience, which was, in actuality, the experience of the Church, employing even the nomenclature of heretics, but endowing it with a different content and a different meaning.

Addressing directly a theology of experience derived from the vision of God, His Eminence notes that: Theology as a vision of God is one thing, as St. Gregory Palamas indicates in a number of places, and a theology which aims to express this experience in contemporary terms is quite another. Father John Romanides, in order to underscore the difference between these two different theologies, refers to empirical theology [a theology of experience] and dogmatic—polemical—theology. The first entails the vision of the Uncreated Light of God in the human Nature of the Logos, while the second entails the effort to convey this experience in the confrontation of heretics who [merely] philosophized about these serious matters of the Faith.

Keeping in mind these general principles with regard to the source of genuine theology (empirical theology), let us examine what St. Gregory Palamas says about the person. To begin with, we must say something about the Orthodox understanding of man. Man exists both in essence and in hypostasis (and the word hypostasis is one which Palamas seems to prefer over the word person, having drawn much of his language in this regard from both St. Basil the Great and St. John of Damascus). The essence of man (bear in mind that this word derives ultimately from the verb to be, as Metropolitan Ierotheos reminds us) describes his state of being, which he shares with all others. His hypostasis (person), however, is that which distinguishes him from others. (Needless to say, one should not naïvely confuse the terms used here in describing the human being with the Hypostasis and Essence of God, which have wholly different meanings and which apply to God alone. The Essence of God is ineffable; and the Hypostasis of God is uncreated, while that of man is created.)

The human person is the hypostatic manifestation of the human essence, the realization of who a human being is as an individual: being, again, common in his essence but individual in his hypostasis or person, as St. Gregory Palamas affirms. It is primarily the human person to which the therapeutic and salvific methods of Hesychasm, as the spiritual teachings of Palamas are called, are directed. The cleaning and enlightenment of the individual human mind, the purification of the human heart, and the restoration of the passions (which have been misdirected and perverted, as a result of the Fall) constitute the Hesychastic way of life. And the way of life that effects these things leads to the restoration of the individual, the human person, who freely turns from a life of sin to one of synergy with God. In short, one can say, though risking theological difficulties in overstating this point, that the restoration of the human being in Christ centers on the person, on the restoration of the person, and on the cure of the process of disease which separates the individual from the full realization of his potential in Christ.

In the purest anthropology of the Fathers, expressed perfectly in the Hesychastic teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, we come to understand that the essence of man, his being, has been restored through the divinization of human nature by the Incarnation of Christ, Who, in His Resurrection, lifted human existence above what it was even before the Fall. The personal salvation of the human being lies in his free acceptance of the potential for restoration in Christ, his ascetic struggle to free himself from the taint and illness of sin, and his restoration of the human person, his hypostasis, through the vision of God. And this vision of God, according to St. Gregory Palamas, is communion with God, the divinization of the human person (theosis), and his union in energy with Christ. In this divinization by Grace, man comes to an intimate knowledge of God. His mind cleansed and enlightened, his heart purified, and his passions cleansed and directed towards the love and attainment of holiness, man finds salvation.

And once more, this salvation is personal, centered on the distinct human being who draws on his essence—renewed in Christ—and who, in his person, becomes a small Jesus Christ within Jesus Christ, to quote one Church Father. So it is that Jesus Christ is our personal Lord and our Savior. In this profound sense of the personal, and in an apocalyptic encounter with redemption (for salvation is closely united to spiritual vision and to the noetic revelation and knowledge of God), we find, through experience, what the more fundamentalistic Protestant Evangelicals understand only in empty form. We know through the attainment of true personhood in Christ, which is the enlightenment or salvation of man, what these seekers know only intellectually and in terms of a theology of affirmation and commitment crippled by the unrestored senses and passions.

It behooves me to note, here, that God transcends all human categories of thought, all human conceptualization, and even our understanding of His existence. The personal experience of the redemption of Christ, therefore, occurs beyond the dimensions of the human intellect, as I said above, since the true encounter with Christ is an encounter with God Himself. This encounter is the result of our union with God's Energies, and thus occurs noetically and spiritually, through the mind made new in Christ, the heart transformed by Grace, and the person restored to the image of God in union, by Grace, with the God-Man. Divine vision is, in effect, vision beyond vision, just as personhood in Christ is beyond the personal as we understand it, since the fallen personality is not a true person, but the product of passions and fallen proclivities.

In conclusion, I should emphasize that the therapeutic path towards the restoration of personhood in Christ is, and must be, focused, of course, on the life of the Mysteries, which are the very life of the Church and which cannot be separated from the Church in any manner whatsoever: among other things, the emptying-out (kenosis) of sin through confession and the infusion into our hearts, joints, and reins of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. The spiritual faculty of man, the noetic faculty, having been displaced from its natural place in the heart, as St. Gregory Palamas teaches us, must be brought back into the heart, back to its natural place, so that the human person can be restored and, cleansed by the Mysteries, rise above his own nature, attaining what is above nature, transcending human nature through union with Christ. As a result of this, the human being transcends even his own person, his restoration in Christ touching on all mankind. Gaining the gifts of the Spirit, he sees all things clearly, not only for himself, as St. Gregory writes, but revealing what he sees to others, and thus helping them to gain their salvation through the vision of God. In this sense, Christ is not only our personal Lord and Savior, but He is also the Universal Person, Who renews us each individually and, so made manifest in us, reveals to us a far greater dimension of personal salvation than we can imagine.

Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/ac_personhood.aspx

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