Wrongs

This morning David Stringer read me a poem he had revised, and after I asked, he sent it to me. It struck me as the perfect piece for ending the year 2008. In pagan rites New Year's eve was accompained by bon fires--that symbolically burned away the evil in order to usher in a new year. Perhaps this image is exactly right as we let go what we should never hold on to in the first place, and allow the new to unfold. Blessings to all in this burning.

Wrong has no sustaining
power – it cannot forever

be. It hasn’t enough
shadow to sustain its

lifelessness. It is pretense,
leaning on a past, refusing

to let go and be forgiven.
It will not be forgotten.

It is life’s long howl against
the self. It is the barrier,

broken belief. See sorrow
stealing from tomorrow,

clutching to choke promise.
Lies, prevarication quibbling

at the corner of truth. Regret
is its bloodthirsty revelry.

--Te Anu, New Zealand, 17 February 2006

Yeshua's Primary Question - Part 5

Ironically, what does serve as the bridge between Heaven and Earth are these very "lesser loves". As Rumi so deftly pointed out, the elixir is hidden in the poison. Mystical Jewish thought proclaims that humanity's unique position is our capacity for dialogue. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz describes the unique aptitude of humanity by contrasting it with the angelic capacities:

The real difference between man and angel is not the fact that man has a body, because the essential comparison is between the human soul and the angel. The soul of man is most complex and includes a whole world of different existential elements of all kinds, while the angel is a being of single essence and therefore in a sense one-dimensional.

Angels are monological beings. They can speak with only one true voice. Each individual angel, according to kabbalistic thought, has a unique voice but can only speak that particular language. Hence, angels cannot really communicate; they pronounce and proclaim, but they can only do monologue. Of all God's creation, only humans are multilingual in the sense I am describing. We can speak and even translate from many voices, both from above and below. We have the ability to stand in the doorway as conduits of Love between these two seemingly separate worlds. These many "Earthly" voices that care called Legion are not evil in and of themselves but become so as they are fractured, divisive, clung to, and disharmonious. We lose our fluency when our gift of harmonizing is forgotten or obscured. The result is a cacophony that we know as "self". Koan work is not to flee from this chaos, but to enter into it. By our kenotic presence to these many "lesser loves", agape necessarily emerges.

Like Eskimos with their very rich and textured language for snow and ice, we can language our love in its full panoply, but realizing that the palette from which we paint is Conscious Love. The palette itself is useless without the rainbow spectrum of colors it holds. The koan directs us to be the vessels that can know, in a trans-rational way, all the loves we hold and bear.

This Day and Everyday

This beautiful Sanskrit Proverb from Gail Wiggin

Look to this day,
for it is life,
the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
the realities and verities of existence,
the bliss of growth,
the splendor of action,
the glory of power--

For yesterday is but a dream,
and tomorrow is only a vision,
but today, well lived
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Everyday Miracles

The miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine — which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.

— Wendell Berry

Yeshua's Primary Question - Part 4

Honing in on this koan of "What love is this?", the presupposition of definition raises its head. How, exactly, do we define love? And therein lies the rub. As many writers have noted, English is a very impoverished language when it comes to love. I can just as easily say "I love coffee" as I can say "I love my family". While the surrounding context gives a nuanced meaning, our vague and over-exercised usage of the phrase reflects our equally clumsy handling of the full spectrum of this word's definitions. Moreover, all Wisdom traditions have recognized various levels of maturity and degrees of love's ripening. The Greek language of the Christian canonical texts renders four levels of love (agape, philia, storge, and eros) with agape being the highest and most sublime. This issue over the hierarchical use of love was even a struggle for the early disciples. In John 21:15ff, Jesus asks Peter the primary question "...do you love me more than these?". Jesus' question uses the Greek agapas, while Peter responds in the form philo. Jesus puts forth the same question a second time, using the same form agapas, and Peter once again responds with philo. On the third round of this exchange, Jesus uses the same form phileis, as if to concede to the limited capacity of Peter.

This cataloguing of love can be quite ornate and complex, with more than the four forms described above. However, a long standing trend in the West has been to separate love into two main camps: the saintly (if not sterile) agape and the "taint-ly" lesser forms of self directed/self absorbed love. Yet, I wonder if this reductionist division has been more hurtful than helpful. Certainly, most of humanity's passions and desires are self-directed, mercenary, and operate more from our reptilian brainstem than not. Even under the guise of religious pursuits, the modus operandi still remains what Richard Smoley in his recent book Conscious Love calls transactional love, a form of love that is really just actuarial bookkeeping that ensures my accounts receivable are in good stead be they here on Earth or in some mythical bank vault called Heaven.

Yet to decry all worldly endeavors as vain and evil not only smacks of Gnosticism but undermines the Semitic traditions at their foundation. The immanence of spirit is as equal a component as it the transcendent. To opt out of the incarnation, leaves our spirituality thread bare and less human rather than more. Embodied love without the body is no love at all. Moreover, this isolated transcendent stance of agape-alone creates a performative contradiction. If God/Agape alone is real, does not my shouting down of these "lesser loves" in fact reify my belief in them? My resistance to the false self perpetuates its existence (at least in my own mind) no matter how loudly I proclaim its illusory nature. Both Jacob Needleman in his The Wisdom of Love and Smoley argue that this conscious, intentional, sustained Love (i.e. agape) "is most emphatically not a wholesale rejection of the love of the world". In fact, it is quite the opposite (For God did so love the world...). This higher love is really only made manifest in the midst of our quid pro quo paradigms, as it infuses and permeates the messy multiplicity of our ordinary existences, just as Jesus described the Kingdom of God being like leaven hidden in the measures of meal (Luke 13:21). In short, the "give me agape or give me death" stance only worsens the divide between spirit and body and does not bring forth the Good News.

Yeshua's Primary Question - Part 3

In the Western canonical scriptures, stories and parables have been the better known vehicle for this second form of questioning. These stories have not had the "Alice in Wonderland" flavoring of their Zen cousins, but have still been quite effective in throwing the listener off balance and inaugurating an inner journey. Many examples of this type of questioning exist; for instance, two that have been helpful for me are: What neighborhood is this? (from Luke 10) and Do I have a right to this anger? (from Jonah 4).

Yet amongst the many examples in the Gospels, do Yeshua's teachings offer a primary koan, a tap root, apophatic question that substantiates his teachings, life, and message? This chief question, as with all koans, must not generate a cerebral-oriented, quick draw answer. Rather this question must be a thread that can be pulled endlessly; a thread whose unraveling actually unravels me, the questioner.

Yeshua's primary question, his central koan for me is "What love is this?" (John 3:16). In his recent comments about the future of Christianity, Rollie Stanich of the Integral Institute writes,

"What does Christianity bring to the table, to the great banquet of the world's religions? In a word: Love. The message is incorruptible and unmistakable... The heart of Christianity - its central moment - is the (Way of Embodied Love)."

Understanding this embodiment of love is challenging and controversial. To get a sense of this koan's profound depth of actualizing the Way of Embodied Love, some teasing out of its meaning is warranted.

Remembrance of the Seed of Light

(A Liturgy for Midwinter Eve)

In this deep night, O God,
when all life sleeps and everything is cradled in the womb of darkness.
A candle spark is set against the night
and burns, a single flame of hope
that at the last all will be saved from death
and the whole creation set ablaze with light.

This is a feast of light
The birth of life in God
A candle spark against the night,
creation set ablaze (chanted).

This seed has fallen to the earth and wrapped in flesh,
and those who open up their heart as womb
have made a place for God to be alive in us
who’ve lived in barrenness so long.
God-bearer and kindler of this hope
our faith undoes the awful slip of death
our trust makes ready an open space
for love and charity to come
to live in us in time
and in the hearts of all.

Awakened, a new born voice
cries out Good News, and heaven echoes back the cry.
For God has come to take the lead of time
and make of it a precious thing beyond our deep imaginings;
A body and a blood formed newfrom earth and sky.
From seed to marriage feast this lamp shall light the way,
Till all shall pass through death to life divine,
as infinite and never-ending.

Our birth day is a feast,
for all who come to earth in innocence
must die aware and fill the cup of life
and break in body and in blood
to feed the world as bread
and lift the living cup to dying lips.
We each must pass through gates of death
to open up a path for all to enter heaven’s realm
and know the everlasting Father and the Mother of us all
who bore us into life
and bears us back again through resurrection.

This is the turning point,
and we must move to face the light
returning to our source and home in God.
Yet our return is long
and takes us out upon a path
where we shall struggle with the night within
and turn it into blessedness.

Now at this hour we take and eat
we lift and drink in deep remembrance
of You whose way becomes for us
the secret that now stirs within.
And comes to birth within as sacrament
and spirit-blessed, new food, new light
a taste that ignites in all the longing to return. AMEN
--L. Bauman: Blessed Christmas to all!

Non-Duality

What is meant by nonduality, Mahatmi? It means that light and shade, long and short, black and white, can only be experienced in relation to each other; light is not independent of shade, nor black of white. There are no opposites, only relationships. In the same way, nirvana and the ordinary world of suffering are not two things but related to each other. There is no nirvana except where the world of suffering is; there is no world of suffering apart from nirvana. For existence is not mutually exclusive.

-Lankavatara Sutra

Peace

The winter woods are white now
Quiet and peaceful.
I left my cabin today
For a walk through the woods
And snow.
Big white flakes, filling deer
And coyote tracks.

A pileated woodpecker
Hammers an old pine tree
Sustenance. My dog looks at me
with eyes that wonder if he should investigate or ignore.
I stop to listen and watch.
He does too.
Then we walk on together,
Through the white, white
Falling snow.

The longest night of the year
Behind us now. A new year just ahead.
A fresh new year, just ahead.
What will it bring?
Change, change.
Change will come with this New Year.
Keep growing, keep moving.
Keep learning, keep stretching.
Keep walking these woods.
This next year—hard work, challenge
And then a return
To peace, deep peace
In these woods.

In celebration of the Great Dance of Life,

Rod MacIver

Yeshua's Primary Question - Part 2

From Rex Spear

The second domain of Wisdom questioning is a non-cognitive enterprise. This arena confronts, confuses, and even frustrates our normal, rational thinking systems. While it is non-rational in that sense, it certainly is not pre-rational nor irrational. In fact, the purpose of this type of questioning is to move us into a trans-rational ethos. The quintessential form of this type of questioning is the Zen koan. Classically, a koan has been painted as a bizarre and often semi-violent exchange between master and student, with the most renowned koan in the West being the perplexing “what is the sound of one hand clapping?”. Yet to see the koan as simply a ridiculous oddity undermines the effectiveness of this tool. In his wonderful book Bring Me the Rhinoceros, Zen teacher John Tarrant introduces koans with the statement, “An impossible question means a journey”. An inner journey is exactly what a koan tries to initiate. As a further description, he states that:

Koans are not intended to prescribe a particular kind of happiness or right way to live. They don’t teach you to assemble or make something that didn’t exist before. Many psychological and spiritual approaches rely on an engineering metaphor and hope to make your mind more predictable and controllable. Koans go the other way. They encourage you to make an ally of the unpredictability of the mind and to approach your life more as a work of art. The surprise they offer is the one that art offers: inside unpredictability you will find not chaos, but beauty.

The Wisdom tool of koans offers an initiation to a deeper knowing that goes beyond yet includes even our highest rational thinking.

The Weight of History

For many years I studied history—Middle Eastern history in particular. I remember often walking out of class at the University of Tehran carrying the burden of it in my being. It weighed like lead on my soul—almost crushing. So much horror, so much chaos, so much suffering humanity has been through! Periodically I come back into that state of mind and heart. It is not an easy state, but I was reminded recently that this may be part of the Work, the spiritual work of some on behalf of humanity.

Anselm Kiefer, an artist whose work has appeared and the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas has said, “The idea of Heaven can elevate us only if it can carry the weight of history.” For me this is a profound insight, because we are here, I believe, to allow the divine sympathy and compassion for the world to make us vulnerable to all of its pain, no matter how difficult this may be.

In addition, the path the Master of the Christian tradition took was precisely this, and in the midst of it he was heard to utter a cry of despair, and yet passing through he moved toward a form of transcendent overcoming. We too, sooner or later, are mortally wounded by the world’s suffering, but it is because “Heaven” bears it with us (as illustrated by the Master’s Compassion), this way of vulnerability and death becomes for us a path toward resurrection.

Yeshua’s Primary Question - Part 1

Rex Spear, a physician from Bozeman, Montana, and a fellow-pilgrim, has sent me some good material on the questioning that we have been doing of late. Here is Part I of some of his important insights.-- LB

Reflecting on this theme of questioning, I believe (using rather broad strokes) questioning in our practice work can be seen in two general flavors. The first is a very necessary cognitive assessment. With it we try to look at, among other things, our levels of maturity, perspectives, biases, goals, value spheres, and how we generate meaning. For me, some very helpful questions in this arena have been:

· What is of ultimate concern?
· What or whom do I value most?
· From what level or voice am I deriving meaning at this moment?
· What beliefs am I consciously or possibly subconsciously entertaining at this given instant?
· What endpoint am I striving for, and how are the means to that endpoint biased?
· What am I trying to protect, and what am I trying to prove?
· What am I avoiding at this moment?

Each of these questions does have a tangible answer, though the answer may be quite vague and hidden at first. As mentioned, this type of questioning is a very necessary but, in isolation, an insufficient part of praxis/living. If left here, our growth halts at this parsing of our inner selves. To move into the Mind of Christ, we need another form of questioning. Fortunately, our rich Semitic traditions offer inroads into this second type of inquiry.

Creativity

A characteristic feature of human beings (and of being human) is our capacity for creativity. We create things. We engineer and make things. We love bringing new things into being. The domain in which we work, perhaps, does not matter—we just do them. But think about this. Some of us are given the opportunity to bring things into being on more than one level, in more than one domain. We might possibly think of ourselves as “spiritual engineers,” or “artists of the Spirit.”

There is the domain of chemistry, engineering, physics, etc., which we call the “hard sciences.” There is biology, medicine, psychology, ecology, which are the so-called “soft sciences.” Then there is language, history, politics, religion, art and culture, which we call the humanities—not understood as sciences at all, though perhaps they are. All these are part and parcel of the human world we inhabit and work creatively within—except for one thing—the deep inner experience of what it means to be human infused with the mysteries of love, compassion, wisdom, insight, joy, and intimacy between persons both human and divine. It is this latter domain of creativity that we might call “divine science” or even “creative alchemy.” We are alchemists in the domain of Spirit—this is a true domain of creativity with its own substances, materials, colors, fragrances, tastes and possibilities. Here we are learning creativity in a new way.

Divinity

The world is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first,
nature is incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on,
there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine beings
more beautiful than words can tell.

—Walt Whitman

Questions from Thomas

Linda Diehnelt sent me an email this morning reminding me of the questions in the Gospel of Thomas that are direct and germaine to the topic. Here is her good message:

I have enjoyed the "stirring" up you have done with your questions on the blog.  Two of the logions that reverberate with questions  for me are Logion 11:  

" . . . . So then, when you too emerge back into the Light, what will you do?"   

And Logion 88: 

" Yeshua says, The angels and the prophets will come and bring you what already belongs to you, and you will give to them what you have to give.  But ask yourself this:  When may they come and receive back from you what already belongs to them?"  

This particular logion has always fascinated me, but I have not really meditated on those questions.  Maybe now is the time. (What is it I have to give?) (What do I have that belongs to them?)

I agree, Linda. Now is the time. Thanks for this.

Merton

Forty years ago yesterday Thomas Merton passed from this life. He lived and died prophetically, and his voice still carries across the years and continues to encourage and speak to the modern mind. From two sources I received important reflections on his contribution to the spiritual world we now inhabit, and I would like to share these. The first are two quotes:

"...Like his formal writing, his correspondence -- with leaders of every major religion, with atheist philosophers, with nuns and poets and Joan Baez -- reveals two facets of the man that captivate many of us: a soul too large to build walls against other faiths and a heart on 24-hour alert for human suffering.... He wrote ferociously against racism, colonialism, nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. The irresistible question: What would he offer about today's strife?

"I think we could safely say Merton would not be a person who would stereotype the religious other," Cunningham said. "If he were alive today, he would be trying to understand Islam more deeply." He would warn, Cunningham surmised, against the disastrous consequences of cultural ignorance that America brought on itself in Iraq.

That's what prophets do. What governments tend to do is to ignore prophets and then proceed to prove them right."

Here is the link to that article: link

Here is another link is through this address: http://ncronline3.org/drupal/?q=node/2820. Copy it into your address window. It was sent me by Sister Miriam Cecile Ross.

More Questions

Leslie Morgan has sent these good questions to add to our list:

Do you want me to do something "down here?"

What do you want me to do?

Why does it matter?

These might relate to the previous post in some way very serendipitously. LB

The Chosen

As Christians we have lived in the West with a doctrine called “predestination” which has been taught to be an election of certain people to salvation and others to damnation. This doctrine has not only confused people, it has become an abomination, a horror—signaling a cruelty and an injustice that appears to be tolerated by nothing less than the Divine itself. If this is God, then many, fair-minded people want nothing to do with either Christianity or the God it professes and so flee the faith. This reaction is understandable and justified.

A support to this doctrine appears to be not only Paul’s teaching in Romans and elsewhere, but even Yeshua’s teaching concerning those who are chosen and those who are not. Do not his words support the cruel doctrine? On the surface it might appear to be so, but here is where an understanding that is more Abrahamic in nature, shared by the larger seeing of the Abrahamic faiths helps us to find not only balance, but clarity that can make sense of these words.

Coming to us from a long line of seeing that extends from the Hebrew experience with the Persians, and later with the teaching of Jesus, and then on into the Islamic teachings of Spirit, there is the understanding that something else is afoot. The teaching is this: there is war in heaven (and on earth), and malignant powers seek to consume and destroy. On the other hand there are powers which challenge, control and destroy evil in order to transform it all into good—this work is accomplished by an “angelic force” of messengers who enlist our support (recruit us into the Army of Light, as it were), and these beings who “choose to resist” are the “chosen ones.”

Not everyone is fit for or fitted to this struggle. Not everyone enlists in the Army of Light—but those who do are given special teaching and training, special strength, and “permission” to do this difficult work. If you work as aid and adjunct in this struggle, then you are considered the “chosen” (elected to the Work). Otherwise it is not your business, however, the force of the work done by the soldiers of light, brings benefit to all—those who we might call the ordinary civilians and citizens of heaven and earth.

The question is, then, do you dare to be chosen?

Question from Shams

Ed Clifford sent me an email telling me "how Sham's put it on page 113 of Rumi's Sun: The Teachings of Shams of Tabriz (translated by Refik Algan and Camille Adams Helminski)."

Who am I and what is my essence?
Why have I come here and where am I going?
Where is my origin?
What am I involved in right now and towards what must I turn my face?

A response has been left on the previous post that relates to Yeshua's question about who he is in our minds and hearts. Do other's of you have a set of questions?

Questions

Every so often it is important in the wisdom tradition to ask ourselves the fundamental questions that confront us in this life, on this planet. For example:

What is it that we are doing here?

Is this it?

Is this series of events that we experience day after day all there is?

Are we more than managers of facts, data, ideas, words, pits of matter, material objects?

Is there a larger universe?

Is there something more going on than we realize in this one?

Are we part of something greater that is unfolding?

If we are, what?

How do I stay oriented and balanced in the swift moving stream of time to that which is Transcendent?

If we can ask such questions, and find answers that deeply speak to us, then we can move forward with some sense of destiny and purpose?

The Tree of Life

A friend from Montana, Rex Spear, who read the recent posting on the blog concerning the Image of the Tree, sent me this insightful comment linking various images of the Tree across traditions, in particular the Tree of Life from the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah.

In the Tree of Life, the last or bottom sefirot is Malchut, which is often interpreted as both the completion and ultimate receptacle of the other sefirot. The name of God linked to this sefirot is Shechina, which means God's presence in this human world. As the ultimate receptacle of all the other sefirot energies, Malchut is the bridge between God and the world.

Yeshua is, in one sense, a completed, perfectly ripened, and the "term" (as in term pregnancy - see below) of the Malchut that "bridges" the gap between immanence and transcendence, with the latter predicated on the former. As a dervish standing in the doorway of Heaven and Earth, Yeshua boldly states that the way up is the way down. Or perhaps even better said, Malchut gives birth (resonant both with Kabbalistic and Eckhartian thought) to the yoga (linkage) of Brahman and the world, nirvana and samsara, heaven and earth. The Good News is that we can become impregnated with and into the "Tree of Life" as well, constantly birthing much needed healing (Tikkun) to the Kosmos and Aeon.