Praxis

The value of Dhamma isn't to be found in books. Those are just the external appearances of Dhamma, they're not the realization of Dhamma as a personal experience. If you realize the Dhamma you realize your own mind, you see the truth there. When the truth becomes apparent it cuts off the stream of delusion.

- Ajahn Chah, "Living Dhamma"

Chant Compassion Challenge

Chant, Compassion and Challenge
Now almost one month since our mutual gathering, I continue to walk with a lighter spirit and internal balance. Many gifts offered during various presentations continue to guide and support me. Our new books of Recitations and Invocations remain close at hand and have been used to prepare a daily weekday noon contemplative service with Lectio Divina at its central core.
Daily, I wake up with a song in my heart, literally. The presentation of new chants has been singing in my head and heart throughout every day,----------yes, every day. While shopping for groceries, feeding the longhorns and even while walking the fairways while playing golf, the tunes still play in my head and heart. During previous times of music playing in my head, I have tried to hit the “stop” button for awhile, but this year I have entered into the chants as a gift and a constant reminder of who I would like to be. One chant, offered by Darlene, that returns to me often is:
“Speak through the earthquake, the wind and the fire, o-oh Still, small voice of love.”
While chanting deep in my heart, I pray to become the chant. It has also rocked me from my complacency into a deeper consciousness of the need for compassion in a difficult and suffering world. I am reminded that God is present in all things, even in situations as drastic as the earthquake and its aftermath in Haiti. The outpouring of love and compassion of thousands who have aided is a clear expression of that small voice of love. Yet, this disaster will continue to have impact for years and generations to come.
With the reality of the magnitude of destruction of the country’s infrastructure, the cost of human lives and the ongoing suffering, a proposal was made to members and friends of the order to assume a commitment throughout the year of 2010. I recognize most of you have other outreach opportunities and commitments but I encourage those of you who can, to join us throughout this year in a Haiti Relief Fund. A special account has been established to hold funds through this year or until we can mutually select the best way to contribute to Haiti relief. Checks can be made to Praxis, a non-profit organization, and mailed to OOOW at 458 Wolf Way, Fredericksburg, Texas, 78624. Please note on your check “Haiti Relief Fund” so your contribution will go to this separate account. This account will assist to maintain a quality audit trail for communication and audit purposes.
Please join us in this critical effort.
Speak through the earthquake, the wind and the fire o-oh, so that we may join the chorus with that still small voice of love.
Blessings to all,
Ron Poidevin 2/26/2010

There can be no end without means

There can be no end without means; and God furnishes no means that
exempt us from the task and duty of joining our own best endeavors.
The original stock, or wild olive tree, of our natural powers, was
not given to us to be burnt or blighted, but to be grafted on.
... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

The Hidden Chamber

My beloved, let us pray in a hidden way with humility of heart...

Our Master bids us,

"When you pray, enter your chamber and close your door."

What, then, is this chamber, if not the inner house of the heart,

whose door is kept closed by humility...

Raise up your mind from this kosmos.

Dwell in the Kingdom of your Source,

assembled in the chamber of the heart's hiddenness.

~ adapted from Sahdona the Syrian (7th century)

Notes to Myself

Today, like all days,
there will be ruin and loneliness,
but don’t step back from this
fleeing your sense of emptiness
through the doorway of thought.

For in you lies the hidden treasure.
This world is a spell
and your heart is a mirror of the Essence Most High
molded into human form.

So this day, if you want the treasure
seek it in the heart’s mirror—
that vast ocean of consciousness,
And as you seek the way of love
topple the ego, and then plunge deep
to find your Self.
Remember with joy, this is your world.
In it make music,
knowing that there are hundreds of ways
to kneel in prayer—
hundreds of ways to open the heart
toward the beauty of the Friend.

Perfection

Perfection does not consist in the knowledge of God's order, but in
submission to it. The order of God, the good pleasure of God, the
will of God, the action of God, grace--all these are one and the
same thing in this life... Perfection is nothing else than the
faithful cooperation of the soul with the work of God. This
ultimate purpose of our life grows and increases in our souls
secretly and without our knowledge.
... Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751), "Abandonment to Divine
Providence"

Mindfulness

It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it's not just a set of mental exercises. Meditation is the cultivation of mindfulness and the application of that mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while washing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it must be applied to each and every activity of one's life. This isn't easy.

- Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

Attentiveness

If you seek after truth, you should investigate things in such a way that your consciousness as you investigate is not distracted by what you find, or diffused and scattered; neither is it fixed and set. For the one who is not swayed, there will be a transcending of birth, death, and time. Whether you walk or stand or lie down, Stretch your limbs or draw them in again, Let you do all these things attentively, Above, across, and back again. Whatever your place in the world, Let you be the one who views the movement Of all compounded things with attention.

- Itivuttaka Sutta

Rely upon Christ

To have faith is to rely upon Christ, the Person, with the whole
heart. It is not the understanding of the mind, not the theological
opinion, not creed, not organization, not ritual. It is the
koinonia of the whole personality with God and Christ. This
experience of communion with Christ is itself the continual
attitude of dependence on the Saviour which we call faith.
- Kokichi Kurosaki (1886-1970), "One Body in Christ"

Each a monastery

In addition to the spirit of this time, there is another spirit at work-- that which rules the depths of everything contemporary. The spirit of the depths robbed me of everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme Meaning-- the God yet to come.

The spirit of the depths said, "You should carry the monastery in yourself. The desert is within you. The desert calls you and draws you back... within us is the way, the truth and the life. May each one seek out his own way... The way leads to mutual love in community."

from The Red Book by Carl Jung, p. 232

When tranquility is developed, what purpose does it serve? The mind is developed. And when the mind is developed, what purpose does it serve? Passion is abandoned. When insight is developed, what purpose does it serve? Discernment is developed. And when discernment is developed, what purpose does it serve? Ignorance is abandoned.

-Anguttara Nikaya

Praxis

Practice what you have learned, for theory without practice is like a spirit without a body. One who is content with learning alone is not learned, for the truly learned seeks more than mere words. Divine guidance entails self-mortification, without which contemplation is unattainable.

-Al-Hujwiri

March Assignment for the Order

The members of the Order have set as their task for 2010 the personal exploration of the practices and teachings of Yeshua as the original core from which we work today. That exploration must include both personal understanding through insight, but more importantly, discovery through experience and experimentation for it to be real, for it to work—so you must do both as you undertake this assignment.

It is quite clear that the thrust and focus of the work of Yeshua as Wisdom Master in this world was aimed at the transformation of being and consciousness for ordinary people in the Palestine of the first century. His language and approach was Semitic and particular to the history of the Hebrew people, but his insight and experience was universal, and shared by all the great sacred traditions. We must try to understand both the particularities of the Semitic world as well as the universal quality of his practice and teaching—how did he intend to change the inner and outer nature in the world of ordinary human beings? What was critical for this transformation and change? As you explore the items on the list that we have published, you may need to think through experientially and, perhaps, analytically, what comes first, and what follows? Is there a priority to these items on the list? Must some of them be met and experienced first before the others can be understood, experienced and expressed?

So the first assignment is to prioritize both lists (practices and teachings), and perhaps adding material to them that you find is missing. For example, during the Order meeting Jim’s comments about the teaching on love and compassion not being in that list. I have personally added to the “praxis” list an addition about the right use of language and the tongue. You might wish to do the same. (If you do not have the list you may contact Gail to receive it).

Before you begin, though, explore below in the blog, the January 18th entry, “The Dharma of Jesus.”

I will probably post a further entry for our work in March. We ask you to express your comments, insights, and explorations to one another through Gail and “Chambers.”

More on the Paradox

"In order to worship God, you must know God. In order to know God, you must recognize his unity. In order to recognize his unity, you must deny any possibility of describing how God is present, where he is present, and when he is present.

-Junayd, Tawhid

"Beware, the life of this world is nothing but a pastime, a momentary delight. It is but empty bragging, a pursuit of wealth and children. It is like the vegetation that flourishes after rain and is a source of delight to the farmer, but soon turns yellow and withers away, crumbling into worthless waste. But in the life to come an eternal contentment or a grievous suffering awaits you. The life of this world is only an illusion."
Qur'an, Al-Hadid, Surah 57:20

It fascinates me that Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and to some extent Christianity all directly or indirectly refer to the life of the world as illusion. While I can grasp the concepts of gross, subtle and causal levels of awareness/consciousness when related to the waking state, the dream state, and deep dreamless sleep, and while I understand (or think I do) the concepts of modern physics which hold that all reality is merely a collection of vibrating strings, just how that applies to "reality" that I can touch, taste, see and smell eludes me. Anyone out there who can shed some light on the meaning of "illusion" as used in these various spiritual tracts?

Dazzling Darkness

Enter the Dazzling Darkness
Enter Perfected Light
Enter the Bridal Chamber
Be born into the Light.
(from the Gospel of Philip, Analogues 71-72)

Tribute and Goal

This seems particularly appropriate following the OOOW weekend!

They are completely fulfilled by spiritual wisdom and Self-realization. Having conquered their senses, they have climbed to the summit of human consciousness. To such people a clod of dirt, a stone and gold are the same. They are equally disposed to family, enemies and friends, to those who support them and those who are hostile, to the good and the evil alike. Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights.

-Bhagavad Gita

Light and Fire

In our current world there is a fair amount of discussion about endings--apocalyptic endings, to be exact. In the prophetic traditions of the Abrahamic faiths there is a plethora of images and words that give focus to the sense that history as we have known it will end or change and that something will take its place. For some the "ending" is seen as disastrous, for others it is understood to be a transition to something better, or higher perhaps.

I want you to imagine the words that are common to Christianity: The world will be destroyed in a blaze of fire. This is well known phraseology and is based upon various passages in the Christian and Hebrew Scriptures. Imagine that we take these words literally, which would mean that the earth, perhaps, is going to be destroyed in fire, according to prophecy--bringing to mind, for example, nuclear holocaust, or global warming. Is this the only way to interpret this phrase? I think not.

Imagine that we examine these words a bit more closely and understand them in a more metaphoric, and perhaps positive way. For example, quite rightly we could read the same phrase in this manner: The world as we have known it (the kosmos), will be deconstructed in a burst of Light. If we read it this way, we could understand that the social construction of human society based upon lower levels of consciousness may actually come to an end when there is an eruption into consciousness of a new form of Light which would give humanity a whole new way of seeing and being--in other words, light-understood-as-consciousness will change dramatically and the kosmos as we have known it will finally be destroyed.

I am not saying that this latter way of reading the text is the correct reading, I am only suggesting it is a possible reading, and we may have missed a very important point for a very long time in our anxieties about and interpretations of the future. At the very least we need to keep both options in mind as we move into that future with the help of prophecy.

Pioneering

As I return and reflect on the Gathering of the Order, my deep impression is that we are pioneering together a new work of discipleship following the path of Yeshua, and I am so profoundly grateful to each of the monks, postulants, and friends of the Order for their energy, creativity, commitment, and intelligence as we work together. It is truly inspiring to be in such a company of human beings. We do not know the shape of future things, but we are working with and in this present moment to pioneer a new vision, a new way of being, praying, and living that reflects our commitment to the deep teachings and praxis of Jesus. As I was reflecting on all of this driving home, I arrived to read the new issue of Parabola magazine on Love. In it is an interview with a young Chinese Buddhist monk and Abbot, Master Minghai, doing something very similar in China to what we are doing here—following a different sacred tradition, but entirely in the spirit of our work in the Order. I recommend it to you.

http://www.parabola.org/currenthighlights/to-truly-live-the-teachings

The Vastness Within

The widest thing in the universe is not space, it is the potential
capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is
capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions...
[Christians] should seek for inner enlargement till their outward
dimension gives no hint of the vastness within.
... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963)

It's not easy

"Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desparate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs and torments."

-Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Shared experience

"i walked thru hell and burned my soul...

ashes falling from my hands...

part of me lost forever.

grieving,

i found the others,

burnt and charred like me.

holding on to each other,

i knew-

even hell had a silver lining."

-terri st. cloud