I don't know if you discussed this on the forum, but sometimes I think why I was under the spell of nonduality for such a long time, even though I was Christian, and why some Christian are. So few of my thoughts, and you are invited to share your own.

(1) Nondual people sound like they have access to some kind of extraordinary experience which is the highest of all and which solves life's problems (feel free to project your own dreams on this experience... ). So I felt like I'd like to have share in this hidden treasure. But Christianity says the same: we have a treasure that is the best. Why the nondual treasure seemed better for me for a long time?

(2) Perhaps, because they say: if you meditate daily for 10 years or so, you will have this and maybe even earlier you will catch glimpses of that. It might be a grace, but when you meditate, you can invite this grace. Then we can evaluate your experience and tell you if this is the real thing or no. So the whole "system" of practice, experience and confirmation seems very sound and solid to me (Wilber even compares it to a "science", where you have some practices, some intellectual experiences and then a confirmation by a community).

Christianity says that the experience of God doesn't depend on you and it's a gift, that you cannot really know if you are in a state of grace or no, that there are other, more important things that "the Experience" etc. So maybe the system was what appealed to me in a first place, given my type of mind?

(3) The third thing, is that nondual people judge other experiences as "illusory" or "not there yet". It's a temptation to judge other people's experience from the heights of nondual enlightenment. And the criteria are quite simple, so anyone can judge their own experiences too.

Nondual guys sometimes say: "Well, you think that now, because you don't have the nondual experience yet. When you do, you will change your mind." This kind of talk made me think that there's an esoteric dimension or elite, and if I'm not in it, I'm subject to illusion and even my reason is somehow infected ("conceptual mind"... ugh...).

(4) The fourth thing is that meditation really worked for me and seemed to confirm the nondual system. I practised, I had experience, my life was better, so this all must be true. But I didn't see that probably it was grace that made all this changes in my life, and grace doesn't need the instrument of meditation to act. <br />Many people around me meditated and nothing happened. I desired to be good and this hardly comes from meditation per se. And I had experiences of nondual state quite early, after 5 years of meditating, so now I think it was rather a gift from God that an outcome of meditation. Maybe I'm wrong. <br />I thought that the fruits of the Spirit come from grace via nondual meditative practice, whereas now I think it's rather from grace and from practice, which are two different things, that were simultaneously present in my life and worked together to my great benefit and to a great confusion of my mind .

There are some beliefs associated with nonduality, which I took for granted and find it hard to get rid of.

(1) God=Reality instead of God=Transcendent Someone - tendency to non-personal image of God, in a Bernadette's sort of way.

(2) oneness is always better than the many (simplicity is better than complexity) - what about the Trinity then? a bit redundant for my taste?

(3) God is beyond concepts (too much thinking about God is baaad) and religious symbols are infected by "mythic" consciousness. Well, Jesus seemed to be pretty much infected by it..

(4) things that "come and go" are worse than what doesn't come and go (transitional experiences are no good, only the nature of the mind which is ever-present is a solid experience) - well, contemplation for the most time IS a transitional experience, that comes and goes. Divinization definitely "comes" and we can only pray that it won't "go" - thanks to God's generosity...

I could think of some more, but maybe you have some ideas?

(Turns out Mt himself had a few more good points. See this link for details)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Phil,

Very succinct and on the mark, mateusz. Your point #3 in the first listing is an especially insidious dynamic, as it tends to place those who claim to have realized nondual awareness in a caste beyond critique. Even the dumb things they say and immoral things they do become regarded as "crazy wisdom," designed to help the rest of us unenlightened folk let go of our restrictive ideas about reality and ethics.

Re. that which doesn't come and go . . . I think there are only two possibilities, here: God, and one's own spiritual awareness. As you noted, however, the experience of God changes all the time, although through faith we can affirm that God is constantly with us. That's not what the nondual folk are after, however, so what we're left with as the unchanging, foundational constant is . . . (drumroll) . . . one's own pre-reflective awareness. Anyone can get in touch with this for a few moments (just-look, don't think), but it's natural for human consciousness to also engage volitionally and intellectually, both of which presume some kind of ontological duality. So I guess it's not stretching things much to say that spiritualities that emphasize ontological nonduality are emphasizing an un-natural kind of consciousness.

All that said . . . there is something good about being more attentive, reducing un-necessary thinking, and, hence, getting a deep feel for the interconnectedness of creation. Such disciplines are already present in the Christian tradition, but the East has developed them to a higher degree, for sure, and so we can learn from them provided we live faithfully in the context of our own covenant.

I was convinced that enlightenment was the closest we could get to God. For me, the experience of swimming in unity consciousness absolutely closed off any possibility that there was more to discover of God. It was more than charming or alluring; it was a new, I thought, awakened consciousness that couldn't get any higher.

Even though I didn't seek enlightenment or even know what it was really, I first experienced it just after a few months of very little meditation and 1/2 day after I received shaktipat from Swami C. in Swami M's ashram in NY. I was sitting in the ashram cafeteria with a half-eaten banana in my hand watching the people go by and BAM! It was literally as if a veil was removed from my eyes and I could literally see that all of reality was one undifferentiated mass of consciousness. It was like seeing that all of existence was made of love. There were no differnces between any two people or objects...like seeing the raw stuff of the universe, like directly perceiving the internal code that gives things their being-ness. I thought, OMG, I cannot live like this! I actually had the thought: how am I going to make it through graduate school! ha ha.

This opening to seeing God in creation was so complete, it paradoxically kept me from being very open to Christianity, which I felt had to be missing something since it didn't talk of God like I'd now seen him. Like you, Mateusz, it was clear to me that the system worked. The Vedas were right on. In fact, I used to read from the Vedantic literature and instantly 'go' to the reality about which I read--that's how open I had become to this reality.

But like I've said elsewhere, in our ordinary consciousness, there is this illusion of our being separate from the rest of existence (that can be overcome by kundalini enlightenment or just plain graced intuition in some). However, there is the deeper illusion of our being one with God in the state of unity with our spiritual foundation, what Phil and others call the ground of being. This latter illusion is more difficult to combat than our thinking we're separate existences but more vital to overcome in that it can be deadly barrier to knowing our purpose on this planet.

This is the blind-spot that I believe w.c. refers to in the other thread. While swimming in unity consciousness, it is impossible to see ourselves as separate from the universe. As yes, that is God that we're seeing/experiences, in the sense of His creation, but we cannot see from His pov. So, yes, I AM THAT, but THAT is not where I'm called to remain and fulfill my destiny.

I've thought that even if the new agers are right in presuming the I AM of Moses is the I AM THAT of the Vedas, why would we need Jesus? He would be superflous; yet Jesus is the completion.

What Christ wants to accomplish in us is far greater than enlightenment because in the Baptized believer, a New Creation is underway, a new reality that is not known whatsoever in enlightment. Praise you Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Pardon my preaching.

Peaceful rest to you, dear ones.

That's a very beautiful and wise post, Shasha. Thank you for that. Preach away!

Shasha:

Yes, thanks for sharing that personal experience; it really does highlight the difference between immersion in cosmic energies which don't have their own source (hence all seems the All), and how only grace can give us the perspective of being both so rich and yet creatures at the same time. And, it sounds like the allurement of the Garden of Eden: to seek the tree of life as though we are that source ourselves.

I've shared this before, but once, while suffering from sleep apnea, my awareness merged with the Witness, or with Witnessing. There was no fear, or preference for life or death. And I would have died had my throat not opened back up a bit. Had this occured before receiving the Holy Spirit, then my past Buddhist and Hindu practice would likely have taken over, and I would have pursued the Witness and found Genpo Roshi's teaching a kind of ultimate end. But this Witness perspective was only similar to the Divine by extrapolated effects, or the cosmic backdrop common to all created things, which Shasha describes.

But for all the talk of simplicity, the nondualists are still struggling not to struggle. Ever notice how that works? Non-duality being inherently unstable - a natural state of awareness as mateusz points out - there is no resolution from within its own power. They struggle not to struggle because only grace can set the soul free from its self-orientation. So the nondualists, in practicing nonduality, are still immersed in self-seeking. But they can't, or won't, see this, since the seer is, in effect, God for them.

To feel intimately connected to cosmic presence, like what Shasha is describing, is intoxicating. But it is never, ever, stable. Nobody lives as cosmic consciousness continually. Even Ramana Maharshi got pissed off at people, by some accounts. And then, to justify that, we get into ridiculous and dangerous notions of "crazy wisdom."

What you're describing is inevitable, know? Given the limits of consciousness, nonduality is the closest we can come, without grace, to a sense of God. We imbibe the effects of a dynamic world continually being upheld beyond consciousness, which is why nondual mind is called ground luminosity, rather than consciousness. I was just watching Genpo Roshi's youtube tape on Big Mind, and this is where the digression from form to emptiness leads: Big Mind both exists and doesn't exist. Not to belabor what I've written, but it does seem to boil down to a blind spot. But since we don't see our blind spots, and since nonduality is blinding to its source, all descriptions end in the paradox of existence/non-existence. Not seeing its limits, all forms must arise as "me," and the ultimate presence must be somehow mind and not mind, even though this presence isn't omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent. Even Big Mind must exist/not exist, or there would be Cause where it can't be found: in creation. "Cause" can only be communicated via supernatural grace. If Big Mind exists, substantially as its own cause, then it must be creating out of nothing rather than just co-arising with the universe. If it creates out of nothing, then it should be able to create, say, a horse with a lion's head, just as easily as breathing. And if it simply doesn't exist, then it can't be a temporary source of blissful immersion into cosmic energies. So it certainly exists, but not as its own cause. We see this logically, and experientially through grace. But we're not even in control of our bowel movments, for Pete's sake, and yet we're the formless One out of which the universe of form arises! But the intoxicating flush of kundalini reinforces the continual search, or no-searching search that cannot release itself.

"God knowing us from within His own uncreated Being, prior to our own creation and the appearance of consciousness, is a transcendental presence/supernatural grace (able to create out of nothing; hence our faculties cannot acquire that state of being as consciousness); as such, we can't see Him sustaining our being within His being from His uncreated pov. So as our being inheres in what we cannot know, non-dual awareness can only see its sustained being as its own mirror, but not as being sustained by His uncreated Being."


Here's one of Genpo Roshi's instructional tapes. Without grace, we are one with the oak tree, even though we create neither the oak tree or ourselves, which is the greater source of awe. From the self-limiting perspective of nonduality, we coarise with the oak tree, as we're all created. But being created isn't seen in non-duality, so we are therefore the Source. Nondualists are limited to how nondual awareness is similar to the Divine, but without opening to Grace, the created affects are all that is accessible to them.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXrqNQD2CA

Terminology...
----------------------

A question if I may, possibly na�ve, but the terminology above is not immediately clear to me: What do you mean by nondual people, nondual system, nondual experience and nondual enlightenment? Is there more than one kind?

One little point if I may (re: your point no. 3 above): The Sanskrit word maya, to which many refer, is often translated as illusion. Far more accurate, IMHO, is to render the concept as perception.

HP, the term "nonduality" here is used in reference to spiritualities that promote enlightenment/advaita as the ultimate mystical experience. This would be primarily Buddhism, the Vedanta branch of Hinduism, and some forms of New Age spirituality. The experience emphasized posits no substantive distinction between the human and divine, the one-ness of all creation -- a kind of pantheistic system. Those who teach this maintain that it is a "higher" mysticism than "dualistic" ones that affirm an ontological distinction between God and creation. . . that such duality is an illusion created by the Ego to perpetuate its existence. See http://www.successconsciousnes...at_is_nonduality.htm and similar sites for more description.

Hmm... I have heard the Gnostics, and their heirs such as the Cathars, referred to as dualists. I thought the Christianity that "won out" (Catholicism, Protestantism, etc) was, at least by comparison, nondualist.

Is this then a completely different usage of the terms dualist / nondualist?


Edit: Succinct article. Thanks for the link.

Some of the Gnostics were probably close to what we're calling "nondualists" here. Apostolic Christianity is dualistic, in comparison -- it recognizes God and creatures as two orders of being, and each creature a being who possesses real existence, which is given by God. Metaphysical dualism of this kind thus affirms the possibility for relationship between creatures and God, sin as breaking such relationship, and love as the right relationship between God and creatures.

Isn�t Gnosticism referred to as "a dualist heresy..."?

I�m wondering if the words are, perhaps, being used in two different ways?

Right, HP, different uses of dualism. We're speaking about metaphysical nonduality (e.g. pantheism) and the Gnostic dualism refers to an opposition between matter and spirit.

We've cited this reflection by Fr. Thomas Keating on another thread, but it deserves honorable mention here as well:
- http://www.cacradicalgrace.org.../01_Apr-Jun/keat.php

Johnboy (from the forum) took the part of "defense attorney" for Keating, but methinks this to be a confusing piece, and sounds like it's saying that Buddhist experience is deeper than Christian contemplation.

This sounds like Bernadette Roberts, I think if I read Thomas Keating over again a few times I may get what BR is talking about, or maybe not...I thought that dualism also referred to a fight between easily defined evil and good ( sort of like the Left Behind series) and came from the Zoroastrians.

Yes, traditional meaning of the "dualism" in the West refers to even more than just dualism, but to the pair of opposites which are "spirit/light/good - matter/darkness/evil".
This is sometimes ascribed to Plato, erraneously in my opinion, since Platonic tradition sort of avoided strong dualism by creating a hierarchical chain of being - matter is not an evil force independent from the light, but is a shadow cast by the light - at least in some mature expressions of (neo)Platonism.
Eric Dodds (I recommend his "Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety" for these questions) argues that stron dualism is of a Middle East origin, Persian perhaps, and was invading Greek culture from 6th century B.C. when first appeared an idea that the soul is a spark of light emprisoned in the matter.
I think that this kind of dualism is indeed not Greek and this is the source of Gnosticism.

Gnosticism is the strongest dualism spirit/matter because there is was between the two elements, and the matter is an independent, hostile element.The soul should escape the matter and join the Father that lives in an inaccessible light, not caring about the material world.

Neoplatonism is a weaker stance because the matter is totally dependent, it's evil only because it lacks good, it's a shadow of goodness or a mirror-void for forms (Kabbalistic ideas W.C. refers to in another thread are taken from Plato's "Timaeus"). Yet Platonists think that the soul is only temporarily in the body and that the soul is sufficient and better off without the body which is only a cloth for it. This is how I understand yoga and some parts of hindu philosophy as well - reincarnation etc. is involved too.

Christianity has metaphysically overcome dualism, because matter is not a shadow of light but purposefully created out of nothing as something good. The soul is not sufficient but needs body, and in Thomistic philosophy human is not a soul with the body but an embodied soul. But even though the idea of resurrection which was blasphemous and ridiculous to both Gnostics and Platonists has overcome dualism, there was and is a temptation within Christian tradition to put the body against the soul, at least MORALLY. Like St. Paul - the flesh is at war with the spirit. I think we should carefully approach this to avoid forms of Gnosticism.

So this is Western dualism and there's no literal "non-dualism" here, just integrative vision of human nature.

But there is an Eastern notion of non-duality which historically is also interesting.
Advaita, as far as I know, referred to the non-duality of human soul (atma) and God (Brahma, Paramatma). This is Shankara's stance. Dvaitistic, dualistic schools of philosophy like Ramanuja, maintained that the soul and God are two beings, though can be united by love and consciousness. As far as I know this is the proper meaning of advaita in hindu tradition.

In Buddhist tradition however, there can be no advaita in the sense that the soul and God are not-two, because there is no God, and no soul, to begin with. So Wilber, I suppose, using advaita to mean the Buddhist non-dual is streching the meaning of the term or changing it.
In "Shin Jin Mei" from 6th century A.D. a Zen patriarch says that if you want to express the nature of reality you have to say "not-two".
But "not-two" is not about soul and God, us and the Absolute, but about EVERYTHING. The subject and the object are not two, two objects are not two, two subjects are not two - the idea and the experience is that there is no "twoness" at all, because "oneness" is not enough. If everything is one, we can imagine the many as an opposite of the one. But the one and the many are "not-two" as well. This is Zen teaching. Not-two is just a koan which destroys any attempts to go away from the simplicity of the present moment.

So non-dual we speak about is Buddhist non-dual joined with Hindu non-dual into one non-dual non-duality Soul and God, subject and object, the tree and the sun, whatever you take it is "not-two". But non-dualists like Wilber tend to emphasize that there is no subject-object duality which they of course take to mean that there is no soul-God duality.
Even if my non-dual times I thought it's a bit fallacious, since if God is subject and not an object, we can imagine subject being one with objects, but not necesserily subject and Subject being non-dual since human subject knows nothing about God's Subject.

Anyway, I think that the mainstream of non-duality today is about the natural, ever-present, effortless, empty state of awareness in which there is no self/subject and no world/object, but JUST THIS. And some call this JUST THIS God, some call it human mind, some I don't know what.

But I suppose this is an attempt to merge Taoism, parts of Hinduism and Buddhism together in one "perennial philosophy". For example, it's generally not talked about that in Hindu tradition and in the upanishads there is a lot of "dualism" and advaita vedanta is just one school of philosophy. In one of the late Upanishads (supposedly sacred texts for the nondualists), there is a phrase that know the Atman (God) can only the one whom the Atman chooses. This doctrine of "grace" is hard to harmonize with the ever-present teaching that is popular nowadays: "don't think! Look!"

If anyone specializes in the hindu philosophy, correct me if I'm wrong on this

mateusz:

I wonder if St. Paul is thinking of the body when he speaks of the flesh. Scholars seem to generally agree he is thinking of a weakness in all the faculties of the soul, athough not something inherently bad. The physical body in particular is referred to in the Greek as sarx.

As I recall he uses "sarx" for "the flesh" and "soma" for "the body", and in fact the flesh seems to be different from the body in that sense. I think, however, that our interpretation of the flesh is a fruit of our time and our culture, but probably Paul wasn't fully conscious of its implications. In early Christianity there was a strong movement towards the denial of physicality, e.g. St. Anthony (of course 2 centuries after Paul) didn't wash himself no to see himself naked and other things of the sort. I don't know if Paul can be placed in this movement, perhaps not, but his texts were certainly interpreted as "against physicality" by many of the Church Fathers.

I suppose in Paul there are two ideas: one is the sanctity and goodness of the body (the temple of the Spirit etc.), the other is the body as a seat of sinful desires. When he says that the body must be transformed in order to possess the kingdom because the flesh will not possess it, he may be thinking that our present body is somehow impure, even if essentially good.
This impureness of the body due to original sin could be overemphasized by those who developed extreme ascetic practices in the 3rd and 4th centuries.
I'm not a biblical scholar, so I can be wrong about this.
Anyway, Paul should be aware that when he was opposing the spirit and the flesh in Romans the Greek and the Romans immediately connected this to soul/body distinction of Plato and other philosophers. Why he used the word "sarx"? Plotinus for example in the 3rd century wrote that the sould should purify and peacufully sore above the "impure sarx". So sarx for Greeks could mean the same as soma. Maybe Paul changed the meanings, but was it clear to his readers and listeners?
Interesting questions. These are just my musings, nothing I'm sure of...

maybe we should discuss the idea of sarx (false self) versus soma (human body as a temple of God)? any useful links on this?
I remember father Keating is talking about this in his "Mystery of Christ", somewhere.

I quickly found this:

http://www.romanity.org/htm/ro...g_to_st._paul.01.htm

which follows W.C. understanding of sarx and denies Greek connotations.
(a chapter on the anthropology or look for "sarx" on the page). Don't have time to read it now, but come back to it later.

when you google "Paul sarx soma" there is a lot of texts which basically are in agreement, as W.C. said above.
another interesting thing is a book "Soma in biblical theology" that can be found in amazon.com and there are some pages of the book available.

So theologically situation seems to be pretty clear, but still... why we use the words like body and flesh to refer to sin in general? it's a powerful message that can be and was misunderstood.

Indeed. What I'm reading among scholars is that flesh is to be understood, in the Pauline sense, as our tendency to sin, yet not something bad in itself. That's a fascinating and helpful distinction for me. So yes, Christian ascetism is hard to account for where flesh would be rendered as Paul seemed to intend.

"maybe we should discuss the idea of sarx (false self) versus soma (human body as a temple of God)? any useful links on this?"


That might be worthy of its own thread.

The way I learned "sarx" is that it means flesh in the most literal sense -- the material stuff that will rot away with death. Soma (corpus) means the living body. Some of the links above and another such as this one give evidence to a more complex situation, especially concerning how these terms are used in the New Testament.

Interestingly, when in John's Gospel (6: 55) Jesus says that his flesh is real food and his blood is read drink, the Greek term used for flesh is "sarx." Some exegetes have taken this to mean that he is emphasizing the literal physicality of his presence to us in Eucharist.

yes, and in the Gospel of John, first chapter, we read: kai ho logos sarx egeneto... and the word became flesh... Today at the mass I heard in Paul that Jesus was "made sin" - maybe the similar meaning, but I think that John just thought about the matter/the body - Incarnation. One of my Greek professors today said that John's Greek is not very correct in general - so maybe he didn't "feel" it that well...

I've just looked up the 1 Cor for the sanctity reference and Paul indeed writes: "doxasate de ton theon en to somati humon" - so "glorify God your soma", the whole preceding chapter uses "soma" (it is soma that becomes one with the prostitute's body in fornication). But, interestingly, when Paul quotes Genesis, he writes: "esontai hoi duo eis sarka mian" - "they will come to be one body" and Genesis says "sarka" from "sarx" while describing innocent bodies of Adam and Eve, where there is no original sin involved! That's intriguing. So basically outside of Paul's theology there is no clear difference between soma and sarx in meaning. And probably for Greek speaking citizens of that time it was the same. In Polish, by the way, we don't have to words for the flesh and the body, we have only one word, so in our translations of the Bible, the difference is entirely absent! If this is that important, it should have more effect on Polish Christians than on English speaking, where there can be "good body" and "evil flesh" .

BTW, there must be some statistics already done about the frequencies of soma and sarx in Paul and the contexts of usage. That might be interesting to look up.

OTOH, "the flesh" in the contemporary interpretation of Paul comes close to the Buddhist idea of "the contracted self" or "the ego" (in a distorted sense) being the cause of sin, not the body. Buddhists often say it is not the body that is our problem but the false self that is abusing body and its needs. Why then in Christianity there was no change from the flesh towards the mind being the source of sin? The hostility to the body had to have been quite powerful to prevent the clarification that was achieved in our times as to the meaning of the flesh, not being really the flesh, but everything that opposes the spirit and draws us to sin.

I wonder what would it mean in Paul's context that logos egeneto soma, the word became body? Is the word became flesh, sarx, the same idea as that Jesus was made sin so that we could become God's justice? This is a deeper insight, that the Word enters our nature distorted by sin, without comitting sin, of course, but fully identifying with "the flesh". But how the Word could identify with the flesh, if the flesh is "all that opposes the spirit and draws us to sin"?
What do you think about that?

mateusz, it's obvious there are inconsistencies in how these terms are used, even within the Pauline writings. I think it comes down to one of those instances where you just have to know what he means, although the consequences for our view of the body have often been negative.

I suspect the Buddhists are correct in saying that the passions are disordered because of the false self, which is a good way of preserving the view that the body itself is not the problem, per se. Nevertheless, we can't deny that the passions of the body -- wounded as they become -- function as though they have a life of their own. E.g., with addictions, these passions are out of control; the mind can no longer govern them. There is a physiological basis to much of this, and I'm not sure the Buddhists are onto that.

mateusz:

I'll have to check this with other sources, but Protestant Pauline scholar Gordon D. Fee sees Paul utilizing a sense of sarx that has little to do with the body itself, and so the need to appeal to the Buddhists in this case might not be as warranted. Here is a passage out of Fee's book "Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God,":

"Paul also uses sarx, however, in a more unusual sense, derived in part from intertrestamental Judaism, but marked by his own basically eschatological view of life in the world. Flesh for him denotes humanity not simply in its creatureliness vis-a-vis God, but in its fallen creatureliness . . . where by nature each has turned to his own way . . . the flesh represents "another law in his members" that rises up to defeat the law of God and thus render the law helpless. That "other law" is his own "sinful nature." (p.129)

There is much more in Fee's treatment of Paul's letter to the Romans, but in general there is little scholarship I'm aware of that views Paul's use of sarx as mainly about the body; rather, it is about the tendency to turn our wills away from God, i.e, human frailty, weakness. So while the bodily passions lend themselves to this conflict, the source seems much more in the mind/heart of the person, even though the Greek used outside Paul's vision would suggest a more bodily source.

Phil, you're right pointing out that body is not entirely "innocent" in the sense that sins like lust and gluttony are "based" on the bodily needs, unlike pride, vainglory, sloth or anger. we can imagine a severe ascetic who is in full control of his bodily urges but filled with anger, envy and pride. And we can (somehow, harder?) imagine someone who is not inclined to anger and pride, but is addicted to sex and eating. But, it seems, there are less sins based on body than on our emotional needs.

It's probably the power of sexuality that makes us think that the body is a problem. And the first 3 ages of our Christian era were really obsessed with sexuality, to the degree that even procreation is somehow wrong or "better die than feel pleasure" (originally said by Antistenes back in the 4th B.C.).
Now we're again obsessed with sexuality, but we have more healthy attitude towards the body and we know our bodies better - physiologically, psychologically (Reich, Lowen etc.), spiritually (kundalini).

Looking up seven deadly sins, I found something amusing:

"Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of six ways to commit gluttony, including:

* Praepropere - eating too soon.
* Laute - eating too expensively (washedly).
* Nimis - eating too much.
* Ardenter - eating too eagerly (burningly).
* Studiose - eating too daintily (keenly).
* Forente - eating wildly (boringly). "

It pretty much describes my daily meals, so...