Horse first, cart later, perhaps. Cloud reflections 5.
Chapter four of the Cloud of Unknowing is a crucial one.
In Chapter three we learned the basics of the simple practice of contemplation. We were encouraged to life up our heart in love for God, forget everything else, and feel a naked intent onto God.
(By the way, I think I am done with my awkward attempts to bridge the gap between a contemporary post-modern, “enlightened” take on this text and the rawness, the frankness and the power of it’s original language. I know I have probably lost many readers who come to this blog for so-called contemporary language and insights, and a liberally correct spiritual viewpoint. That is the risk I took when I chose the text. Just a heads up. That voice may, or may not, return to this blog; in either case, it was never “me” anyway.)
In Chapter four we find a brief recap and a description of what a mature practice feels like:
“When contemplation is genuine, it’s nothing but a sudden impulse coming out of nowhere and flying up to God like a spark from a burning coal.”
The Cloud works in spirals. The author teaches the nuts and bolts, then comes back at it from different points of view, then comes back to the central practical teachings of brass tacks contemplation.
What is the central teaching here? And why are we bothering?
One main theme we have explored previously on this blog has to do with Valley versus Mountain spirituality (please see the postings on this category). The Cloud has a lot to say about these two dimensions, phrasing the discussion as active versus the contemplative life. The Cloud does present pithy quintessential Valley teachings.
Let me give you a sense of Valley versus Mountain spirituality by confessing some recent personal feelings that were stirred up and which gave way to a couple of instances of unskillful speech on my part.
Here’s the story. There was some excitement was generated a few months ago during the teachings of classical Buddhist abbhidharma here in Honolulu by a talented and learned visiting teacher. Someone asked me my personal take on those teachings and I remarked, frankly, that they gave me a headache.
I admit, this smacks of a bad attitude, and I own that part of it. It was not necessary for me to say this, and served no good purpose.
But let’s see what was underlying this put down.
Deep, mature spirituality is a search for lasting, transformative fulfillment now. The paradox of this search is, as I have been trying to say a hundred different ways, simply the discovery that what we are searching for has already been given.
Let’s say there are overall two ways of going about this search for this lasting fulfillment now. One way emphasizes mastery of heady, abstruse formulas and jargon, on a path which is presented as incredibly arduous, best suited for career ascetics. This is pure Mountain spirituality. Orthodox Theravada Buddhism is mostly Mountain path.
The other approach teaches in simple, easy to understand language, how to cultivate a love affair with uncreated grace, which is our birthright, at the deepest levels of our longing.
This is Valley spirituality. It does not require white knuckles, orange robes, a head full of concepts or a bag full of techniques. The only technique, if you have to have one, is our unmitigated, un-improvable, always already present moment awareness. The only destination is here. The only meditation center we need to visit is the heart.
We can also call the first path the way of self-perfection, and abbhidharma is a good representative teaching of this path.
We can also call the second path the way of union (with the divine mystery, God, or whatever phrase works for you). The Cloud has great representative teachings of this second path.
My point is that these are two very different journeys.
Private self-perfection is all about control, and conquering defilements.
The second path is all about finding God in the disorder and chaos of daily life without needing to control, conquer or change it.
Some of the most poignant teachings I have ever encountered on Valley vs Mountain were given in 12th century Japan by Shinran, and have become the living heart of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist tradition.
Richard Rohr in his new book decsribes this second path as a falling into union. We just allow it; we give ourselves permission to love God.
But it is not a doing, we didn’t do anything—we were done to! (he writes).
How to give up control? That’s a big part of this second path.
Loving God is really a brilliant way. I like to call it a skillful means, to use the Buddhist term (upaya). This avoids the whole concept of a “you” trying to get somewhere or have a certain experience.
You suddenly realize you are in Someone Else’s embrace, as Rohr puts it. But you don’t need to bother analyzing who this Someone Else is. Just leave that alone, realx the ego’s grip, and ease into this ever-present divine embrace.
We put the horse of practice before the cart of figuring it out.
That’s what the Cloud tell us over and over—you can’t think your way to God.
In theological circles God is recognized as a divine indwelling.
We don’t try to recognize this divine indwelling, as there is really nothing you can do to attain it, as it is already attained!
Instead we practice it.
Horse first, cart later (maybe).
Then you will see it. Or not. Doesn’t matter.
So this second path asks us to walk in trust, often in the darkness (of unknowing).
Take a risk.
As the author of the Cloud says so clearly (loose collection of excerpts from Chapters 3 and 4)
darkness means absence of knowledge—when I speak of darkness s and of a cloud I don’t mean the clouds you see on an overcast day or the darkness in your house when a your candle fails.
No one can fully comprehend the uncreated God with his knowledge, but he can in a different way, fully grasp him through love.
Truly this is the unending miracle of love.
That one loving person, through his love, can embrace God, whose being fills and transcends the entire creation.
This marvelous work of love goes on forever, for he whom he loves is eternal.
To experience this love is the joy of eternal life.
Have a great, loving week!
Tom
To love the one thing I cannot think (Cloud reflections 4)
In chapter 6 the author writes “I know you’ll ask me ‘How do I think on God as God, and who is God?’ ”
This is one reason I love this book so much. It’s honest. It’s like a friend chatting over a chamomile tea .
I love it becasue he answers his own question this way “I can olny answer I don’t know.”
He goes on to say “Your question takes me into the very darkness of the cloud of not knowing that I want you to enter.”
He drives his point home a couple of sentences later:
“You can’t think your way to God. ”
When we give up searching with our intellect we can begin to reach out with our heart.
Who or what do we reach out to?
We reach out to our self.
The author doesn’t stop there.
He goes on to say “That’s why I am willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think.”
When we stop searching for love, for serenity, for release, with the mind, we open to the mystery of life itself.
Our lives are a mystery. It doesn’t take an intellect to open to the mystery, but it takes a heart to embrace it. To love it. Loving it we love into a deep place.
God.
It’s so simple.
(There’s that three letter word again.)
Let me stop, and let Thomas Merton take it from here, from his book The New Man (sic) (bolding are mine):
“Self-realization in this true religious sense is then less an awareness of ourselves than it is an awareness of the God to whom we are drawn in the depths of our own being. We become real, and experience our actuality, not when we pause to reflect upon our own self as an isolated individual entity, but rather when, transcending ourselves and passing beyond reflection, we center our whole soul upon the God who is our life.”
We pass beyond reflection by letting all the images our mind evaporate into the cloud of unknowing.
Merton goes onto write:
“The recovery of the divine image in our souls, insofar as it is experienced by us at all, is an experience of a totally new manner of being. “
As the author says in the Cloud, this is: “to love the one thing I cannot think.”
We cannot know this mystery.
We can only open to it in loving surrender.
Have a great week.
Get-togethers to resume in 2010
I appreciate all the emails I have received expressing your support during this break.
I have been using the time off to reflect (a little more than usual) on the usual stuff–life, death, and the curious in between states.
I have also given myself permission to continue my incessant exploration of spiritual practices and perspectives. I have been accused of dilettantism in spiritual matters; to those who have suspected as much I reply: guilty as charged!
Katina and I would like to start hosting the weekly meetings again. As the holidays are coming up, and with an eye to capitalize on the New Year’s resolution surges/ urges, we will be resume the get-togethers in 2010 on a bi-weekly schedule (note: every two weeks, not twice a week!).
The first meeting will be January 6, 2010. We will meet on the first and third Wednesdays of the week; same time, same place.
We are looking forward to a great 2010 with y’all.
Warmly,
Tom and Katina
how to save the world–cloud reflections 3
Huston Smith in his book Why Religion Matters claims we find ourselves in the twenty-first century facing a number of profoundly disturbing crises threatening the global environment and economy; however perhaps at their root, he argues, lies a spiritual crisis. We have written science a blank check, he writes, for science’s claims as to what constitutes knowledge and justified belief. We have dumbed down the importance and even the viability of the religious dimension of our lives. For me personally, this is a profound crisis. But there are more urgent matters to explore.
To folks who have asked me why should an aspiring Buddhist study this Christian text I have a simple answer. To study this text is for many a journey to the very heart of the profound crisis threatening our planet. Yes, reading from a wide range of spiritual sources increases our understanding of the nuances of the path we all travel. But I feel the Cloud challenges us to feel, not think, on an overtly religious level. Feeling in this way allows us feel the many ways we may be stuck in our spiritual evolution, on an individual, as well as on a cultural level.
I do not consider myself a Buddhist, Vedantist or Taoist. Even labels such as nondualist are awkward. I am, though, an unabashed religionist.
Studying The Cloud of Unknowing (or similar texts) with out hearts, no our minds as it instructs us to do, can heal this crisis and help us recover this lost religious dimension.
It can heal our heart, heal our culture and heal our world.
We need to recover and appreciate the religious dimension of our lives. Doing this may save our planet. What’s stopping us?
Religions.
As Pogo observed, we have met the enemy and he is us.
We are in the midst of a culture war. The culture war’s troops are heavily reinforced by religions.
Millions of us have massed the troops of our psyches against each other over issues of environmental policies, gay rights, abortion, the list goes on. This culture war, and the war on terrorism, are both rooted in the deep spiritual crisis Huston Smith noted.
We are hardwired to aspire, to long for something more. The human heart comes alive somehow in reaching beyond itself. Religion points out a direction in which to point our heart. Let’s sidestep the snare of never-ending questions for the moment to allow naming this direction God.
The author of the Cloud states clearly in chapter four that we cannot know God with the intellect. He tells us “don’t in any way approach contemplation with your intellect or your imagination … they won’t help you…”
The longing that excites the soul is God by whatever name you wish to use. The human mind cannot come anywhere near understanding or comprehending God (with the intellect or the imagination, as our author never tires of telling us).
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke suggests we think of God as a direction and not an object. The Cloud teaches us that the direction we turn is inward. The power we use to guide this inward turning is love. “To the power of love … he is uniquely known, because a loving soul is open to receive God’s abundance.”
God this, God that. Why God? What’ the deal with God? I hear many of you say.
This thought, and the thoughts of the culture warriors on all fronts, share something. It points to where we are stuck. The Cloud helps us get unstuck. But the stuckness needs to be seen before the Cloud can heal.
The best way to appreciate our stuckness, I feel, is through the writings of the evolutionary/ developmental theorist and mystic Ken Wilber, and writers he has inspired, such as Jim Marion.
Ken Wilber makes the startling observation that the culture war is being fought between people whose consciousness is stuck at what he calls the mythic level on one side and with those whose consciousness has moved beyond the mythic level to the rational (and higher) levels of consciousness on the other side.
People stuck at this mythic level of consciousness can also be called fundamentalists. They see God as a separate being, who is judgmental, who dictated their revealed scripture, who lives in the sky and intervenes when people correctly petition him. They see themselves as good and nonbelievers as evil. They believe God is on their side.
The Death of the Mythic God, by Jim Marion, does a wonderful job of analyzing our current political and spiritual crisis in these terms. In the introduction, Jim mentions the remarks made by Lieutenant General William Boykin, former president Bush’s (dubya’s) undersecretary of defense for intelligence when he referred to a Muslim leader he fought in 1993 in Somalia, remarking “I know that my God was bigger than his.”
What’s curious is that fundamentalists (stuck at this mythic level of consciousness) absolutely cannot get the main idea of their monotheistic religion–that there is only one God. The three great monotheisms proclaim over and over again that there is only one God. Fundamentalists, ethno centrists to the core, can’t go there because they are developmentally stuck in a kind of concrete operations mode.
If we are to take a step into the unknowing the Cloud speaks of, we need to first see how we are stuck in particular forms of knowing.
I was surprised some of the emails I received in the first two weeks of this series, hinting at a little anger at times, for getting diving into overtly religious waters with this text.
Let’s use this as an opportunity to reflect on ways we have aligned ourselves with thinking about religions which may show the relevance of the mystic/ rational friction Wilber and Marion describe. Persons at the rational level move beyond this concrete thinking and think and feel more universally, and can see the needless suffering caused by adherence to archaic models.
But moving from the mythic level to the rational level is just the beginning of the journey. Sadly most of us don’t make it this far. And most of us that do remain stuck at this rational level.
The current debates between atheists and Christian apologists are lamentable examples of this low level friction. I call it low level because they are both stuck in their respective (lower) levels of development if you apply Wilber’s model.
There is, as they say with nearly all important human endeavors, good news and bad news.
The good news is it just gets better and better once we are over the mythic/ rational hump.
The bad news is the God issue does not get clearly resolved until we reach a good distance beyond the rational stage. And it remains a burning question for most of us all along the way (even, and perhaps especially, if we ignore it, I think, as many of us choose to do).
Let’s briefly lay out the stage model, and see what happens when we fast forward a little. (I’ve taken this presentation of the stages, with some modifications of my own, from Jim Marion’s The Death of the Mythic God).
We all start at the (1) archaic level of infants, progress to the (2) magical consciousness of young children, then most of us get to the (3) mythic consciousness of pre-adolescents and stay there if we form the identity of a religious fundamentalist. Some of us get prodded and encouraged into (4) the rational consciousness of teenagers and young adults. A very few will venture into the (5) vision-logic consciousness of cutting edge spiritual pioneers (or “gnostic intermediaries” to use Jung’s term) teaching in universities, writing books and exploring the spiritual dimensions of the sciences and other areas. If we are very fortunate we pick up a book like The Cloud of Unknowing and dive deeply intro the (6) psychic consciousness of beginning contemplatives, then with effort over time move into the (7) subtle consciousness of advanced contemplatives. With some intuitive inner and outer guidance, work and luck we may dip a toe into the (8) causal (or as Jim Marion calls it, Christ) consciousness, finishing our journey in the (9) nondual consciousness that realizes one’s identity with God. Mystics all over the world have documented with uncanny detail and agreement a similar development process.
Beginning at level 7 the God deal stops being such a burden. It simply is. At this stage it’s my feeling that rather than question the existence of God and assert our own narcissistic agendas, God, the cool inner DJ, turns the tables. We assert God’s existence and question our own narcissism.
As one mystic observed: God’s in, I’m out.
But this absolutely is not the mythic God, nor the impossible God of the rationalists. It is a God, as the Cloud says, that cannot be known.
Yet He is us and we are toast.
Much remains to be said about all of this, but let’s take it little by little.
Please use the comment feature on the blog to ask questions.
Continue the simple practice of meditation taught in our text. Choose a one syllable meditation word, and dive into the practice.
(Note: so far we are just looking at salient points in the first four chapters, next week we’ll look into the next few chapters).
Have a great week.
the source wants you–cloud reflections 2
This week’s email comes in two parts: the first is a brief description of the practice of meditation as taught in The Cloud of Unknowing, and the second is a response to a question I received in an email about this book selection.
The meditation technique taught in The Cloud
The anonymous fourteenth century author the tells us the technique he is passing on to us is 1000 years old. He instructs his students to choose a single word, one syllable, but it should be meaningful to them. The word might be “God “ or “love.” He tells us to hold the chosen word gently in your mind so that it will remain there no matter what happens.
Whenever wandering thoughts come up, respond by silently repeating the single syllable word you have chosen.
The author tells us we can use the image of a cloud. There are actually two clouds he mentions. We enter the Cloud Unknowing (which I sense represents non-thought as understood by Buddhism) by consigning all extraneous thoughts and images to a cloud of forgetting under you with “a naked intent” of love using the chosen word.
That’s it.
Simple, yet challenging.
The email question
“I am curious about this book recommendation…as a non-religious person who was not raised Christian….and is generally turned off my God discussions…will I still find value in this book?”
This question deals with the heart of our text. The Cloud of Unknowing, you should know right at the start, is concerned with how beginner in spiritual discipline can attain union with God. If you are turned off by God discussions, this book will push so many buttons so fast and so often that you will in all likelihood wish you had never bothered with it.
That’s one scenario for someone who is bothered by God discussions who encounters this book.
I would suggest that if you are bothered by God discussions, and you are drawn to meditation, and the insights which derive from its practice, about which Buddhism speaks in an unrivaled way, this would the perfect book to read.
This question begs to be unpacked and examined. I hope the person who asked me this will forgive me if I read into the question more than is actually there.
Let’s begin by looking into the notion of being turned off to things. Buddhist philosophy speaks of klesas, which one of my teachers referred to collectively as the bag of poison and pain we all carry around with us. Klesas come in three flavors: greed, anger and delusion. Klesas are unconscious seeds that sprout whenever we meet circumstances favorable to their germination. Let’s say we are prone to irritation when faced with the perceived incompetence of government officials. The tendency toward anger is said to arise from a large subconscious storehouse of anger which becomes triggered when we encounter example of government waste, fraud or ineptitude in legislation (to give you just a tiny hint of this).
Buddhist insight meditation is designed to drill into the deep subconscious storehouses of klesas and to give one skillful ways to drain their noxious contents. To do this work consistently and skillfully over many years is to tread the path of purification, a necessary prerequisite for the application of life transforming insights into the nature of reality.
What exactly is happening when we are “turned off by God discussions?” Should we as spiritual seekers not be turned off by these discussions? Dos this mean we turn in to mauve Jell-O (to borrow the phrase from Alan Watts), and go around with a vapid smile on our faces? Do we forfeit passions, rationality, and personality into some meditational Veg-O-Matic?
These are all common fears the ego throws up to get us to stop meditation and spiritual practice. Should we not be turned off? I don’t think that we “should” anything.
I suggest that as we examine our mind and engage in the purifying practice of meditation, done skillfully, the experience of being turned off to anything or anybody gradually drops away. In this process we don’t turn into mauve Jell-O; in fact we often allow the blossoming of previously constricted aspects of our personality. If we used to be a rascal this process turns us into playful, irascible fools (but nice ones).
I suspect that if we are turned off to God discussions we are perhaps reacting to aspects of a prevalent, fundamentalist (Christian, Islamic, or Judaic) perspective which is understandably offensive. For the sake of brevity, we don’t need to list all these fundamentalist aspects, as they are well known to all of us.
The discussions of atheism vs. theism, the improbability of the existence of God, the contradictory and often sadistic nature of Abrahamic (Christian, Judaic and Islamic) scriptures, I feel all miss the point.
Let’s set aside for the moment the concrete discussions of fact vs. fantasy. Let’s see what happens if we say for a moment all these discussions do not matter.
What happens when we allow for a moment the inner conflict which may ensure for many of us when we read a text like this, riddled as it is with references to God, to be solved by this simple mind stretch–that whether a God exists or does not exist does not matter.
Whether God exists or does not–I don’t have a clue on this level. I acknowledge that my intellect is fond of processing thoughts such as it’s all just wishful thinking, it smacks of magical projection, and there is no need for such a concept.
But meditation has shown me something priceless–that I am not my thoughts. Thoughts happen, for sure, but they are increasingly seen as just happening, products of a lifetime (or lifetimes) of conditioning.
Let’s go a step further: what if instead of taking the bait of thinking/ arguing about God (as a hold-over from a primitive worldview, for example) we take a purely functional attitude. I don’t know what else to call it.
The functional attitude toward religious practice I propose goes something like this: take a practice and do it and see what happens, and rate its merits not on philosophical sophistication but on its effects on you.
Religion is something you do that changes you for the better.
If the change is a good one and you like it and others in your life like it, then you could say it’s a good religious practice.
This attitude toward religious practice allows me to engage in the most philosophically naïve and off the wall bhakti and vajrayana practices (with outrageous visualization, symbolism and implications) without the slightest intellectual qualms because I can see all those thoughts as simply arising and passing in the sky like nature of mind.
Rather, the concern is what can this practice do for “me” (a bundle of kleshas, a finger snap in eternity, a foolish being bound by karma).
This attitude also begs us to examine all the views and opinions we hold so dear, which often lead to intolerance and aggression. Here I need to say that Buddhist fundamentalism is just as insidious as the Abrahamic variety.
As you can see, there is way more to say about this. Looks like the bulk of these weekly emails may be taken up the implications of this question (it’s fine with me, I enjoy writing about this).
OK. Let’s say were good up to here. The next question could be “So what’s so great, from a this purely functional perspective, about engaging in a God oriented meditation practice?“
Let me count the ways.
Wait, there are too many to count.
For starters, its not just you and your breath anymore.
Its you and the Source.
Last week I shared a quote from the writing of Raymond Sigrist that mentioned how naming the Source somehow gives us the possibility of having a relationship with it.
Please have a look at that quotation again in last week’s post if you have not read it. Here is the gist of it:
“The mystic seeks an intimate relationship with an ineffable source of love and peace, whatever that source may be. And experientially, it turns out that by “personalizing” the source, giving it certain archetypal names, like “God,” “the mother,” “Corn Goddess,” “the one,” the “friend,” and even the “nothing;” the mystic is able to more intimately and effectively participate in the relationship. It appears that naming the unknowable source, and treating it as if it were a being with whom one can have a personal relationship, catalyzes the manifestation of its gifts.”
Raymond goes on to say:
“The apophatic mystic is interested in mystical efficacy; she has no interest in theology. Naming or not naming the source of devotion is a purely pragmatic decision. It solely depends on whether or not such a naming deepens her experience of the love and peace of the mystical source.”
Sigrist calls this a pragmatic approach, I call it a functional one, but it seems we both talking about the same attitude towards practice.
The Cloud’s anonymous author reflects the apophatic or negative spiritual tradition which emphasizes that God is beyond our thoughts, concepts and images.
Mary Margaret Funk, a Benedictine nun and author of many truly useful books on Christian contemplation, states
“this path very specifically taught by the Unknown author of the Cloud of Unknowing is for those attracted to the mystery and not inclined to go through images of Jesus, or Mary or through the life of Jesus Christ as devotion … this attraction is … beyond the images and stories … This is a negative path: we unthink what we think about God so that God emerges in our thoughts as God is and not whom we wish or fabricate God to be.”
This week: get to know the first few chapters of the book, and try the technique. Please email any questions and I will do my best with them. If you want me to answer anything in next week’s posting, please let me know.
Have a great week.
A rainmaking cloud–cloud reflections 1
In the first line of the introduction to her brilliant new translation of a 14th century classic text of timeless wisdom, Carmen Acevedo Butcher writes “This book you now hold is a rainmaker for anyone whose soul has ever felt dry as a bone.” The text is The Cloud of Unknowing.
I have personally found the work immensely rewarding. It is one of a handful of books that I instinctively turn to when indeed my soul feels dry as a bone.
And who has not felt this from to time?
I think I feel this way most of the time.
First, some practical matters:
I will attempt my best to post weekly emails as we work through the text.
You could simply read these and follow some of the suggestions I offer in them for contemplation.
If you have some interest in the text and some spare money I would highly recommend purchasing the book I will be using: The Cloud of Unknowing, by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Shambhala, 2009.
If this book is too pricey, the version by Ira Progoff Is also very good.
If money is a problem there are some free versions available to be read online.
Now some reasons why you would want to bother with this project:
I have found that reading from a variety of sources adds depth to my personal spiritual practice. The Cloud speaks from a world view which perhaps may be foreign or initially cumbersome (14th century Christianity), but exposure to this world and its unique insights I feel can cause a resonation in perhaps previously un-sounded strings.
The work speaks simply and forcefully. It was written as a guide book to the inner life, and it seems it was written for a young person who was struggling to find his or her sea legs this sometimes rough journey.
It teaches a simple contemplative method aimed at emptying the mind. I have found it mirrors the insights of Taoist contemplatives, whose writings were unlikely to have been available to the author of this work. I am thinking here of Zhuang Zi is and the practice of learning to embrace “not knowing.”
As Lao Zi said, “The adept unlearns more and more every day.”
But what is it about this book that is any different from the plethora of books on mindfulness?
The central idea here is one of apophasis: emptying the mind. Yes, many books speak of emptying the mind. The Cloud holds your hand. It walks you through the steps and points out rocks in the dark over which most of us stumble.
Finally, the most intriguing reason: it uses very powerful religious language. I will not ignore the elephant sitting smack in the middle of the room in the minds of most of us. God.
I have spent weeks listening to the so-called new atheists on internet mp3 files march up and down the field playing the same tunes over and over again. Of course, it is unlikely there is an actual God as understood by the likes of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. The problem with their books is they over simplify Christianity then attack it as morally and intellectually reprehensible.
It is clear to me they never read The Cloud of Unknowing. To say nothing of practicing what even one page of this work asks us to do. They clearly have never read Tillich, Bultmann, 0r Ricoeur.
I think this is a long overdue conversation, and The Cloud is a great way to break the ice–with a little rain.
Let me end this week’s post with a few thoughts from some highly evolved minds (pun intended) on this point:
“Here we pray God that we might be free of God.” ~ Meister Eckhardt.
Here are two paragraphs on apophatic mysticism by Raymond Sigrist (all boldings are mine) which may illumine some aspects of this work as a satrting point.
“The mystic seeks an intimate relationship with an ineffable source of love and peace, whatever that source may be. And experientially, it turns out that by “personalizing” the source, giving it certain archetypal names, like “God,” “the mother,” “Corn Goddess,” “the one,” the “friend,” and even the “nothing” the mystic is able to more intimately and effectively participate in the relationship. It appears that naming the unknowable source, and treating it as if it were a being with whom one can have a personal relationship, catalyzes the manifestation of its gifts. In practice, we say that this personalizing simply works well, despite the realization that the names given cannot plausibly provide an accurate description for a mystery that remains ever dark to the conscious mind.”
One final point from Raymond Sigrist:
‘Apophatic practice requires discarding all assumptions. The apophatic does not assume there is a God; does not assume there is not a God. Does not assume the world makes sense; does not assume it does not make sense. Does not assume there is evil; does not assume there is no evil. Does not assume she herself is the only thing that exists; does not assume she is not the only thing that exists. Does not assume the fundamental way her world works will stay the same; does not assume it will not stay the same. Does not assume it best to have no assumptions; does not assume it best to have assumptions.
And the apophatic makes no assumptions as to whether it is best or not for other people to make assumptions.”
As we begin this journey together this week I would encourage you to read the first few pages of the text, and to keep these observations in mind.
I will talk about it with you on this blog next week.
Feel free to comment.
Have a great week.
Weekly meetings suspended, new schedule to be announced at some point
Aloha Sangha’s meeting schedule will be going through major re-thinking. We have been meeting weekly, but due to personal pressures and the “full catastrophe” of family life, we are presently suspending the weekly meetings. I will be taking some time off to breathe, and envision some type of seasonal arrangement where we might have a series of weekly sessions during one season, followed by a break, then another weekly series for some unspecified duration. Please subscribe to this blog or send your email address for our email address list so as to get an idea of future plans. Thanks so very much for your overwhelming support over the years!
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
“We meet at this appointed time.
You’ve read where it says that
Lovers pray constantly.
Once a day, once a week, five times an hour,
Is not enough. Fish like we
Need the ocean around us.
Do camel-bells say, Let’s meet again
Thursday night?
Ridiculous. They jingle
Together continuously,
Talking while the camel walks.
Do you pay regular visits to yourself?
Don’t argue or answer rationally.
And dying, reply.”
From The Illumined Rumi, p. 122
All traditions claim they have the answers. But those answers must somehow come from within. Answers that come from books or someone else don’t satisfy, they are empty answers. They are somebody else’s answer.
So we die to ourselves, our small selves, as Rumi suggests, and are reborn, in a sense, in present moment awareness.
H.M.L. Poonja is said to have remarked to one of his students: “You visited the travel agent, bought the ticket, packed your bags, now why do you keep getting out of your seat to push the plane? Buckle up and enjoy the ride.”
So much of this work is about undoing. Not pushing the river. We enjoy the ride of the present moment.
It’s about releasing resistance to experiencing what is. Subtle agendas so easily creep in to our practice. We release them, too.
All we can take care of is this present moment. We simply surrender (and die) to what is.
Meditation is a path of coming home to who we are right now, not getting some mystical or altered states or changing into some fabulous new person.
Joy, freedom, truth, beauty is always right here. We relax back into inhabiting what we are, being who we already are.
At first we need to establish a regular practice, we pay regular visits to ourselves, as Rumi instructs. Later, we pray constantly, as Rumi suggests, by releasing into the present moment no matter what that’s like.
What keeps us trapped are the deeply seated habits of manipulating and resisting our present moment experience.
Our lives are like a cocoon in which we try really hard to stay comfortable and cozy and safe. Yet it’s stale in the cocoon. We recognize at some level that we have an ache in our heart that we are holding back somehow, we are not living up to what we are spiritually capable of, by reinforcing this cocoon of the small, fearful self.
Many of us deeply sense this pervasive sense of lack.
This sense of lack is perpetuated by our identification with thought. I can’t remember now who made this remark, but it’s on target: thinking is the ego’s foot soldiers.
We identify with thinking as belonging to us.
At best, thinking is an approximate symbolic representation of reality. The problem is that we often let thinking take the place of reality.
In meditation we clearly see how thought diverts our attention into the past or the future. When we mature in the practice we learn to rest in the present moment, in the heart of reality.
That’s why the core instruction in our practice is to simply recognize thinking as thinking and return to the moment to moment experience of body sensations or sound. Sounds and body sensations are unfolding in the heart of reality.
We just rest backwards into what is. What we seek is what we are.
This essential backward step, as they say in zen, is described beautifully by the poet David Whyte in his poem Tilocho Lake:
“In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.
Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,
the true shape of your own face.”
David Whyte, from Where Many Rivers Meet
Twenty minutes more or less
”My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.”
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), in part IV of his poem “Vacillation” from The Winding Stair and Other Poems, (1933)
This poem for me speaks of being surprised by rapture, when the soul is at ease perhaps, or not, of moments where for no apparent reason, we find ourselves relishing the sweet taste of pure, causeless joy.
The poet is sitting in a crowded London shop, could it like sitting in a coffee shop in our day, alone with our thoughts, thinking of the passage of time. His fiftieth year had come and gone. He was reading a book, it seems, and now he has left the pages to allow his mind to wander, to look around, and to take in the sights of the crowded shop. The open book and the empty cup no longer have much pull, as they rest on the marble table-top.
Then his body of a sudden blazed. His mind is no longer wandering, no longer seemingly melancholic. And his happiness in that moment was so great that religious tones now appear-he felt in his bones that he was blessed and could bless.
Twenty minutes more or less, to me sounds timeless, and a bit playful.
We could read into this all sorts of things, and it doesn’t matter, really, what actually happened. What matters for me is the evocative quality. Of feeling our aliveness break through the slumber of our humdrum days. We sense this in so-called special moments, of noticing a child’s first tooth, or a sunset, a birth or a death.
Meditation turns special moments on their head. For twenty minute so we explore how it is we succumb to the tranquilization of the trivial, the numbness of the mundane. It turns out we don’t need special moments to do this. All moments are seen as special.
For twenty minutes or so we enter the timeless, we take our seat in eternity.
The poet speaks of his body being ablaze. It’s interesting he doesn’t mention his mind. At the beginning of this excerpt he is self-centered, melancholic. For twenty minutes his body comes alive.
Let’s not underestimate the power of our simple practice. We sit, we become aware of sounds, and then we settle the mind into the sensuous, lush undulations of body sensations. We shift from being a witness to our life to living our life moment by moment within the fold of our life. Within the beating, rising and falling heart of experience itself.
For twenty minute more or less we morph into reality itself, bare, bottomless, and beautiful beyond description.
We allow our body to live its life. And it responds by suddenly blazing into life.
The gateway to the blaze of bliss is simply the willingness to feel. To feel the body just as it is, moment by moment. We can call this willingness to feel openness.
This week I spoke a little about openness, with a little help from the dictionary. One definition of to open is to unclose so as to allow passage. Another is to unlock, to remove the covering. Two others which are particularly appropriate for us are to make known what is happening and to burst and discharge, as in an old wound.
Openness is not a goal; rather it’s a relationship to what is happening as its happening. And since what is happening is already happening, there isn’t much room here for accomplishments, effort or special feats.
I feel we could summarize the whole spiritual path with the acronym O.I. A. – openness, intimacy and acceptance. In the next two weeks I would like to explore with you the remaining two aspects of intimacy and acceptance.
Why I Meditate (After Allen Ginsberg) by Wes Nisker
“I meditate because I suffer. I suffer, therefore I am. I am, therefore I meditate.
I meditate because there are so many other things to do.
I meditate because when I was younger it was all the rage.
I meditate because Siddhartha Gautama, Bodhidharma, Marco Polo, the British Raj, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Alfred E Neuman, et al.
I meditate because evolution gave me a big brain, but it didn’t come with an instruction manual.
I meditate because I have all the information I need.
I meditate because the largest colonies of living beings, the coral reefs, are dying.
I meditate because I want to touch deep time, where the history of humanity can be seen as just an evolutionary adjustment period.
I meditate because life is too short and sitting slows it down.
I meditate because life is too long and I need an occasional break.
I meditate because I want to experience the world as Rumi did, or Walt Whitman, or as Mary Oliver does.
I meditate because now I know that enlightenment doesn’t exist, so I can relax.
I meditate because of the Dalai Lama’s laugh.
I meditate because there are too many advertisements in my head, and I’m erasing all but the very best of them.
I meditate because the physicists say there may be eleven dimensions to reality, and I want to get a peek into a few more of them.
I meditate because I’ve discovered that my mind is a great toy and I like to play with it.
I meditate because I want to remember that I’m perfectly human.
Sometimes I meditate because my heart is breaking.
Sometimes I meditate so that my heart will break.
I meditate because a Vedanta master once told me that in Hindi my name, Nis-ker, means “non-doer.”
I meditate because I’m growing old and want to become more comfortable with emptiness.”
