Direct experience

Last night during Lynn's Paris group we discussed the levels of spiritual reality and/or spiritual consciousness. The following quote from the Buddhist tradition seems to me to express the "direct experience" level.

"If you really want freedom, happiness will arise. From happiness will come rapture. When your mind is enraptured, your body is tranquil, you will know bliss. Because you are blissful, your mind will concentrate easily. Being concentrated, you will see things as they really are. In so seeing, you will become aware that life is a miracle. Being so aware, you will lose all your attachments. As you cease grasping, so you will be freed."

-Digha Nikaya

Nature of God

Everyone can see the effects of God's mercy. But who, except God himself, understands the essence of his mercy? Most people cannot understand the essence of any of God's attributes; they only know his attributes through their effects--and also through analogy. Only mystics have eyes to see the essence of God's attributes.

-Rumi

Essence

"The time has come to turn your heart into a temple of fire. Your essence is gold hidden in dust. To reveal its splendor you need to burn in the fire of love."

Rumi

Nobility

There is a line in the Gospel of Philip that I have not fully grasped, perhaps, until now. It reads, “So when he revealed himself to his students in glory on the Mountain, he was no longer small, but grew great and enabled his students also to become great, so that they might perceive his nobility” (Analogue 14). The word “nobility” was not clear to me. Why that word?

We often speak about “the nobility,” or persons “noble born;” that class of royalty that is perceived as special, or carrying a inherited lineage in our world. We talked also about someone simply being “noble,” that is they carry in their person a certain quality which we identify as somehow higher or richer than the norm.

In Jean-Yves Leloup’s Compassion and Meditation he identifies nobility with the Buddhist concept of “noble being” or the Original Self—that aspect of ourselves which lies deeply at the root of our being and comes, ultimately, not from ourselves, but from the Divine Source within us.

Yeshua revealed that inner Source, that ground of being, that nobility—and made his own students discover and see it in themselves. When we stand on that ground and draw from that reserve, we become “noble beings,” manifesting the truth of our deepest nature. Leloup says that we are truly rich to the extent that we are in touch with that place within ourselves and are capable of generous self-giving from that treasury (87).

The Dharma of Jesus

It is very clear that the "teachings of Jesus" are in fact, as in Buddhism, a form of Dharma--that is, a careful balance of both theoria and praxis. Understood in this way these are like the conundrum of the chicken and the egg. Which comes first? You can never really say, for they are each in a feedback loop to the other. Does "insight" come from practice, or does practice grow out of insight? You would have to say, both, for they are always in dynamic relationship to one another.

What Jesus teaches, however, can never be grasped if it is not practiced. You can have ideas, of course, about the teachings of Jesus (very strong, doctrinal ideas), but until you "become the truth of it" -- living the truth of his teachings, practicing the truth, you cannot know the truth. It is curious, but this is the way of the Dharma of all the great wisdom Masters.

Shekhinah

The old Hebrew word shekhinah is the word for Divine Presence which signifies the beauty and light of the Divine Reality that exist in and behind all things. This presence is everywhere, though hidden from sensory awareness except through the mirroring patterns of it that we see all around us in the natural world.

At the beginning of Hebrew tradition this shining Presence existed for the people to see, but they were afraid of it, so God "hid it" in the Ark of the Covenant which was veiled in the old traveling Tabernacle and later in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. All of this is used as profound religious symbolism not for an external structure, but for the inner temple of our own being. Hidden in the depths of our own interior Holy of Holies is an Ark where the divine beauty and Shekhinah still shines.

We can go there and know that place.

The Orthodox Paradox

"When you worship, you are aware of your separateness from God; you are the subject and He is the object. The more you worship, the more you acquire this sense of separateness from God. Union with God comes when this sense of your separateness from God is stripped away."

-Qushayri, "Risalah" (Muslim)

This is an unfortunate paradox, but one I suspect is true. Our traditional forms of worship tend to focus on a God "out there" and separate from us. This certainly begs the question of how best to "relate" to God or, better, to commune with God in such a way that avoids the separateness. Certainly meditation is one way and contemplative prayer another, but it is difficult, at least for me, to avoid wanting to make a connection to God which in itself emphasizes the otherness. If I don't have a real sense of connection all the time, attempting to create the connection involves the sense of otherness. It's a real paradox for me.

"Rabi'a," Hasan asked, "how have you attained such a degree of holiness?" Rabi'a replied, "buy losing in him all that I have attained." Hasan asked, "How do you know God?", Rabi'a replied, "You want to know how to know God. I know God, without knowing how to know him."

A Jewish Parable

This parable is taken from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's book: Pebbles of Wisdom.

Hasidic rabbi Simcha Bunim explained that every person should visualize evil as though the devil were standing over him with an ax, ready to chop off his head.

Upon hearing this, one of the disciples asked, "And what if a person cannot see himself in this way?"

Rabbi Simcha replied, "This is a clear sign that the devil has already chopped off his head" (30).

A Tibetan Parable

Jean-Yves Leloup tells this parable in his book: Compassion and Meditation.

Two brothers raise yaks. One of them was ambitious, always wanting more yaks, no matter how many he had. The other was always content with what he had, and at the moment he had only one yak. One day the two brothers met, and the one with the large herd said to the other:

"My dream has always been to possess a hundred yaks. But I only have ninety-nine. Could you please give me yours?"

"Of course," the other replied, "take it!"

Grace

As is so often the case, the most basic and most beautiful of ideas and terms from early Christianity have been turned into complicated theological propositions that are hard to grasp and even more difficult to practice. Such is the basic term “grace.” My early memory of the theological meaning taught me was that grace meant: “unmerited favor.” God gave us favor (or grace) even though we were unworthy and didn’t deserve it. We, therefore, should be almost ashamed, grateful for sure, and relieved to receive it. And on it went… Now I see this is a totally misguided and inadequate explanation.

Grace is simply loving generosity of spirit. The spirit and temper of Divine Reality is abundance and generosity. God loves to give unstintingly. This is in the very nature of the Divine. To be generous is to be Divine.

You have known generous people, of course, whose hearts and lives simply give and give—such is their inner constitution (their inner nobility). That is grace! That generous self-giving heart and attitude that wants to give itself away for the good of others without precondition or hesitation is grace. And that is the way God is, and that is eternal love always, which is always there for us, and teaching us this grace. It therefore has implications for the way we live.

As Jean-Yves Leloup says this may explain one of Yeshua’s more difficult sayings: To the one who has, more shall be given. To the one who has not, even that little bit shall be taken away. He says, “What this means is this: to those who have charity, the capacity to give, openness of heart, everything shall be given. But to those who have not this capacity, everything shall be taken away because they have lost the gift.” Perhaps, then, until they can relearn it.

January 2010

It is interesting that this first month of the New Year, 2010, actually comes as as name from our pagan past in the Roman empire. January is a designation for the Roman god, Janus who we recognize as the god with two faces. Actually the name January and Janus are derivations from the Latin januae which means “gate” as in the god who is both the “opener” and the “shutter” of heaven’s gates. January (Janus) shuts the gate on last year and opens to the new year and to the Solar Light which will now increase forward until Summer Solstice. So Janus (January) was also the god of time, who was worshipped at the beginning of each New Year, and thus we follow Roman custom to this day, perhaps unbeknownst to us.

More deeply, January is for those who follow a Christian path an “opening into Light.” Perhaps, though, it would be better to say an “awakening” into Light. In the middle of winter's darkness we wake up to what is; to what is Real, and in that state we begin to see the world not as a veil that hides the features of the divine Light, but reveals it. Asleep the world is simply a veil thrown over the face of Reality. Awake, the world is a mirror manifesting in its myriad forms the face of God. Therefore, in this month, as in all months, as the Psalm says, “We walk into your wakefulness” (Psalm 121).

Non-dualism

An object has a reflection: when looking we see two images, yet there is only one thing. Likewise this world is a reflection of the Supreme Lord. we may see two, yet only one exists.

Jnaneshwar

Love is the basis of religion

It is in love that religion exists and not in ceremony-in the pure and sincere love in the heart. Unless a man is pure in body and mind, his coming into a temple and worshipping is useless. The prayers of those who are pure in mind and body will be answered, and those who are impure and yet try to teach religion to others will fail in the end. External worship is only a symbol of internal worship, but internal worship and purity are the real things. Without them, external worship would be of no avail.

-Vivekananda