The Christmas Summons

"Sunrise is an event that calls forth solemn music in the very depths of a man's nature, as if one's whole being had to attune itself to the cosmos and praise God for the new day, praise Him in the name of all creatures that ever were or ever will be. I look at the rising sun and feel that now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors have seen, in the Stone Age and even before it, praising God before me. Whether or not they praised Him then, for themselves, they must praise Him now in me. When the sun rises each one of us is summoned by the living and the dead to praise God."
--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Many blessings to all on this sunny Christmas Day!

Merton on ABC

ABC's Nightline recently featured a three-part interview with the Merton Institute's Jonathan Montaldo and Morgan Atkinson, producer of the documentary Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton. Includes lots of great photos of Merton and Gethsemani, and good introductory discussion on Merton's life and work.

Let Your Life Speak

"A saint is capable of loving created things and enjoying the use of them and dealing with them in a perfectly simple, natural manner, making no formal references to God, drawing no attention to his own piety, and acting without any artificial rigidity at all. His gentleness and his sweetness are not pressed through his pores by the crushing restraint of a spiritual straight-jacket. They come from his direct docility to the light of truth and to the will of God. Hence a saint is capable of talking about the world without any explicit reference to God, in such a way that his statement gives greater glory to God and arouses a greater love of God than the observations of someone less holy, who has to strain himself to make an artibrary connection between creatures and God through the medium of hackneyed analogies and metaphors that are so feeble that they make you think there is something the mattter with religion."
--New Seeds of Contemplation

I must confess that I have a judgmental prejudice against people who make an outward show of religion. This is a flaw in me, and I am also vulnerbable to the charge of hypocrisy, given that I write a blog about spirituality. I am acutely aware of this vulnerability, and hope that I write for good reasons, and certainly not because there is some special holiness about me (as those who know me well can attest otherwise).

My point is that I shouldn't feel such glee at reading Merton's words, because I have my own set of flaws, but I can't help but appreciate his point. I live in the so-called "Bible Belt," where trite, bumpersticker theology abounds. I have no doubt that the outward show of religion notwithstanding, folks around here have no corner on the holiness market compared to places where religious expression is a more private matter.

I always felt that the Quakers had the best overall advice for saintliness: "Let your lives speak." And leave it at that.

The Reason for the Season

"Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another 'thing' and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see."

--New Seeds of Contemplation

Today my pastor--one of the best homilists anywhere--noted the now-annual hysteria of people who freak out this time of year because we need to put "Christ" back in Christmas. As if we are a totally pagan nation with no religious reference point for this grantedly commercialized holiday. My pastor went on to say something very striking and profound: "Jesus is not the reason for the season," he said. "We are."

His point was that God intervenes in the experience of human life to redeem and transform it. Christmas is not about God in the clouds or God who transcends the messiness of human experience. On the contrary, Christmas is about the God who descends into our very lives, who meets and encounters us in the very human world of our jobs, our families, and the mundane, boring, broken, and yes, commercialized, securalized, and religiously pluralized world that we live in. God comes for us, in God's mercy and grace and love, so that this messy life of ours might be redeemed. We are the reason for the season.

Merton's point seems to be a similar one. As contemplatives, we do not detach from "things" so that we can know God. We detach from our false, alienated self so that we can encounter God in the things of this life.

Family Matters

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”
--Matthew 1:1

“Jesus embraced humanity. Mysteriously, the word became flesh and accepted all that came with it, out of love. What about my family tree and all of its baggage? Sometimes I find myself wanting to run from it, excising all of that messiness that courses through my veins. I can’t do that, though. Sure, I’m not fated to anything. I can be transformed, I can take a different turn in the road. But total rejection? Not possible. It’s all a part of who I am. With God’s help I can discern, move forward, and even accept. Out of love—I can accept.”
--Amy Welborn

The older I get, the more I see how I am shaped by the dynamics of my family, my ancestors for generations past, for both good and ill. I work ardently on both the wounds and blessings my family has bestowed on me, and I think I’m making progress sometimes, and then one day I’m startled that I am this old and still dealing with the same family issues I dealt with as a child. I suppose I always will.

I have nothing of the sort of family of origin wounds that some people bear. I have without doubt been more blessed by my family than wounded. And yet, the wounds cut to the core of my personality. Maybe this is yet another way that all humans are united, one of the things in which we differ more by degree than by kind. When we touch on those dimensions of the human experience that unite us, that’s where we also touch on the presence of the Divine. These things that make us essentially human are the places where God redeems us, reveals himself, heals us. This redemption in no way replaces or changes the essence of those experiences, including our family dynamics, but it makes it possible to experience wholeness through our families, not in spite of our families. All things are brought together again in love.

Season of Darkness

“Inexhaustible light, dawning to remove the shadows that surround us,
wake our faith from its slumber.”
—from today’s Universalis Morning Prayer

Winter has nearly reached its greatest depth of darkness. I struggle with the lack of light this time of year. The darkness makes me feel sluggish, withdrawn, cranky. Whatever inner darkness I happen to be dealing with is always amplified by the outer darkness this time of year.

And yet, in a few days the darkness will reach its peak with the winter solstice, and light will start to break. This dawning of greater light coincides with the full ripening of Advent into Christmas, and the promise of Light that will vanquish all darkness in the fullness of time.

Yesterday was “Rejoice” Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent. My pastor gave a good talk on rejoicing in the midst of darkness and turmoil and doubt. His words echoed an article I recently read about the 17th century Carmelite Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, who gave us a wonderful prayer technique called “Practicing the Presence of God,” in which we simply rest perpetually in an awareness of God’s presence, returning our attention and mindfulness again and again to that still place within us where unwavering light shines at all times.

May this season’s darkness prepare our hearts of perpetual Light.

The Writer's Silence

Today is the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death. I have tried to slow down a bit today, observe a little more silence and quiet, in his honor.

Frederick Smock, writing in last Sunday's Courier-Journal, reflected on a constant theme of Merton's life and one which presented a paradox for such a prolific poet/writer as Merton:

Life is a journey toward silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not just the lack of
distractions.

As a writer (or sorts) myself, this wisdom gives me pause. I do babble on sometimes, and to what end? This was a koan Merton lived with all his life. I think what he concluded in the end was that he had to write because he was a writer, it was the way he made meaning of his life and
experience, it was ultimately the way God made him.

A contemplative writer faces the special challenge of responding to this gift/compulsion of writing in a way that is selfless and authentic. Can we be still enough, silent enough, to allow words to arise from a place deeper than the external self that writes for all manner of selfish reasons? Can we listen to the Word itself, and let our own tiny words rise up out of that infinite Source. Our words are always incomplete and partial, but if we rest in silence, we may perhaps offer up something that reflects the enormity and magnitude of the Word Beyond Words.

I think maybe this was and is Merton's prayer for himself, and for us.

The Advent Promise

Feast of St. Nicholas

“He who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes…on the day the Lord dresses the wound of his people and heals the scars of the blows they have received.”
--Isaiah 30:20, 26

I love this image of God gently dressing our wounds. The concept of woundedness and brokenness has become very important to me in recent years. I think I have slowly gotten more in touch with my own existential wounds, and I see them less as a problem and more as a natural by-product of life. We are all wounded and while these wounds will always shape the way we look at the world, they do not have to alienate us from each other, from our deepest selves, from God. In fact, the whole message of the Christian Gospel is that God is recklessly, wildly pursuing us, trying with all his might to make us his. Isaiah reveals the kind of love God will show us when we finally stop our struggle and acquiesce to his embrace. The wounds and scars of life will no longer define us.

The Gift of Contemplation

"The only way to get rid of misconceptions about contemplation is to experience it...For contemplation cannot be taught. I cannot even be cearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized."

--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

In Chapter 2, Merton goes on at some length discussing "what contemplation is not," first by noting its ineffable character, and then naming numerous things that it specfically is not, such as mental reactions, ideas, emotions, trances or ecstatic spiritual phenomena, or special psychic powers. What complicates matters is that contemplation may sometimes be accompanied by some or all of these things, but that is not contemplation itself.

Merton notes that having a quiet, peaceful disposition may not make one more likely to experience contemplation, as many active, passionate people also have tasted of these things. Even being prayerful or religious doesn't guarantee it, though "they are almost necessary preparations." But he does say that one kind of "active" person is not disposed to contemplation, and those folks should probably not even think about it:

Such people, given to imagination, passion and active conquest, exhaust themselves in trying to attain contemplation as if it were some kind of object, like a material fortune, or a political office, or a professorship, or a prelacy. But contemplation can never be the object of calculated ambition.

And therein lies a lot of the frustration of my own spiritual life. Until very recently, I have strained after spiritual understanding as an object, and found myself frustrated again and again. And I have known many other spiritual "seekers" in that same, self-inflicted predicament.

What has changed for me? I think I will alwasy face that temptation to materialize the spiritual life (and there are worse kinds of materialism, to be sure), but something fundamentally has shifted in recent years. Two books have impacted me deeply: The Sacred Romance and The Shack, but in many ways I was ripening to this new kind of self-understanding for a long time. Grounded in the realization that I cannot attain wisdom through calculated ambition, I began to see my seeking as a kind of frantic effort at control, rooted in a deep existential fear that I was not good enough, that I was fundamentally flawed. And of course, I am fundamentally flawed. I am human. But what I am slowly coming to believe is the Gospel promise that we are loved and complete in spite of our brokenness.

After almost four decades of life, I am finally starting to have a little bit of faith. The freedom that comes with that faith is an overwhelming relief, and it leaves me free to explore spiritual pathways without having to obsess about the final destination. I am free from the burden of awakening, because, as Merton says, "It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God Who chooses to awaken us."

The Question and the Answer

"The life of contemplation implies two levels of awareness: first, awareness of the question, and second, awareness of the answer. Though these are two distinct and enormously different levels, yet they are in fact an awareness of the same thing. The question is, itself, the answer. And we ourselves are both. But we cannot know this until we have moved into the second kind of awareness. We awaken, not to find an answer absolutely distinct from the question, but to realize that the question is its own answer. And all is summed up in one awareness--not a proposition, but an experience, 'I AM.'"--Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

What is Merton talking about here?

How am I the question? My life longs for meaning, clarity, continuity of purpose. I live through all these extended "selves" that I present to the world--in my work, in my roles as husband, son, friend, in my writing, my activities as a citizen, the questions I ask myself and others. There is a kind of fragmentation of the true self in this process, and I long for wholeness, my life in fact begs for it. Living my life as a question is not unique to me. I happen to live "out loud" in a manner and volume different from many people, I suppose, but I think the basic features of my inner life--this sense of fragmentation and longing for unity and completeness--is common to all of humanity. Perhaps many are unable to hear the gentle whisperings of their own hearts, but those quiet stirrings are still there.

How am I the answer? Perhaps because the the true self knows that it is meant for wholeness, can actually apprehend it, can smell the faraway fragrance of joy and wholeness and love, and this is why we experience fragmentation when we live out all of the partial "selves" we present to the world. We ask the question because we already know the answer, though we are terrified to believe--we are meant to be sons and daughters of God.

In this sense, the question and the answer are one. Contemplation is our most natural state, our source and our destination.

The Season of Watching

First Sunday of Advent

"Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come."
--Mark 13: 33

"God is likely to come into our presence at just about any moment, and we do well to be watchful for such moments. God in each person we live and work with. God in each stranger we pass on the street. God in the earth and the cosmos we so often take for granted. God in a crowded theater and in the privacy of your own home. Be watchful, be ready. Cultivate eyes ready to see God in any and all places, any and all circumstances...Overwhelming grace when you least expect it."
--Mitch Finley

Thus begins Advent, the season on watching, of expectation, the season of contemplation.

Infused Faith

"Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being...It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source."
--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

I recently picked up Merton's New Seeds again to study it thoughtfully. It was one of the first Merton books I read, probably just under 20 years ago. I remember reading it breathlessly then, rapidly, with awe and wonder. It moves me just the same now that I am more mature and weathered in my own faith and understanding, but I resist the urge to plunge through it this time, opting instead to meditate with it one sentence, one paragraph at a time.

Merton begins with an extended reflection on what contemplation is. The definition is extremely important, because as an adjective (as in "contemplative spirituality"), the word describes a particular, unique state of being that is, according to Merton, the summit of all spiritual life, the essence of faith itself lived this side of the grave. According to Merton, contemplation is not an intellectual or emotional experience, though it holds intellect and emotion within itself. In fact, contemplation embraces the totality of human experience, while transcending any particular form of intuition or experience.

Contemplation is awareness of God, and it is something that I speculate all people have experienced, though they might not have had the vocabulary to name it as such. Understanding Merton's meaning of the word, I can say I have been blessed to experience contemplation myself, probably on a regular basis. I emphasize that I am "blessed" with this experience because one of the things Merton emphasizes, along with many other saints, is that contemplation is a grace. It is not something we earn or achieve. It is something that comes to us, though it is not simply available to a chosen few, but is the birthright and destiny of every soul.

Contemplation wraps itself around me in those fleeting moments of human experience when I intuitively feel my own, infinite connection to all other people, when I am suddenly stunned by the tragic beauty of life, the vast interconnection of all things. In those moments, I am keenly aware of my own human brokenness, along with the brokenness of all creation, but I am also aware of a loving Presence, a sense of underlying wholeness and completeness that heals my individual woundedness and the wounds of the entire universe. I experience a kind of unconditional love that embraces all beings and being itself.

The experience is not an emotion, per se, though it is usually accompanied by a host of emotions and thoughts, especially gratitude and humility and compassion. And it usually passes pretty quickly. It is a foretaste of the fulfillment we are destined for in eternity, and it is a consolation offered to all people. It is exquisite, undeserved, and partial enough to leave us filled with a yearning for more. It is God's self embracing us, promising completeness beyond our wildest imagination. When we experience it, we experience infused faith, a confidence of heart that is beyond intellectual assent or emotional response.

While contemplation is not something we can achieve, as the essence of spiritual experience itself, it is worthy of study and observation, and as I understand it, it can sometimes be the fruit of a life well lived. I pray today that my meditations on this book bring more abundant life to myself and others.

The Mystery of Who We Are

"The angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life...Nothing accursed will be found anymore."
--Rev. 22:1-3

We buried my wife's aunt on the day after Thanksgiving. Like any good funeral, it was a day of both hope and sadness. After the Mass, we processed to the cemetery, a short walk down a country road from the church. The November sky was overcast and the wind was blustery, forcing us to huddle as we walked. I gazed down the road ahead at the long procession of loved ones, lead by the pall bearers gently carrying the departed.

We walked in silence, and I was suddenly struck by the image of all of us walking, not to our aunt's grave, but to our own. The feeling echoed a moment during communion a few minutes before, when I followed brother-in-law and nephews up the aisle to receive the Body of Christ, and I was acutely aware of the mortality of us all, that some day we would bury each other, one by one, until it was my turn, and then my nephews would follow, and every single one of us will pass from this body.

As I watched our collective procession to the grave, a great ocean of emotion stirred within me: sadness, for myself and for everyone else, a sense of loss and grief, but also a great sense of hope. Just as we were walking to the grave together, we had walked to communion together, a family united by God's grace and love. We are one in our brokeness, in our woundedness, and especially in our mortality. But we are also one in God's redemption, one in our love for each other, one in our faith and hope that we are intimately and inextricably connected far beyond the connections of family and social ties. We are the Body of Christ.

Being the Body of Christ does not spare us from the sadness of pain and loss, the surrender of what we want for ourselves. Jesus' own life gives abundant example of this. So we are, without question, walking to the grave together, and the suffering and grief that attends that passage. But we are most surely walking beyond that point--together--into a wholeness, a completeness, a glory and joy far beyond our meager imaginations. That is the mystery of life, the mystery of death, the mystery of Eucharist itself.

The Harvest

Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria

"Another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud, 'Use your sickle and reap the harvest, for the time to reap has come, because the earth's harvest is fully ripe.'"
--Revelation 14:15

Today's scripture readings are full of apocalyptic imagery. These kinds of passages usually leave me feeling uneasy and skeptical, wondering more about the human authors' agendas in writing such world-shattering visions than on possible legitimate spiritual messages. Lately, however, I have responded to this kind of scripture with interest and awe, and can see the hand of the Spirit reaching out to us through even these difficult readings. I don't know why my heart has changed in this way. Perhaps I am longing for a harvest of some sort.

Yesterday I shared a conversation with a friend who lost her young brother to a car accident recently, followed moments later by the news that a beloved aunt in my wife's family had passed after a short but brutal illness.

The message in scripture seems to be that God did not intend the pain and suffering of this temporal world and that He is rapidly bringing it to fulfillment. These tragedies are not the final word on the human experience. In due time, and by ways far too mysterious for our meager minds, God is restoring us to a wholeness and completeness that was His original intent and our ultimate destiny.

The Gospel of Judas

“Will you lay down your life for me? Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow before you deny me three times.”
—John 13:38

This scene from the gospel, where Jesus predicts Peter’s denial, comes just paragraphs after he predicts Judas’ betrayal. Judas gets all the attention for his violation of Jesus’ trust. He’s the one whom history has condemned. But Peter, the apostolic hero, the first pope, betrays him too in a particularly dramatic way. Poor Judas was overwhelmed with his guilt and could not find his way to redemption, at least not in this life. Peter did, and went on to walk the hard disciple road. But Judas and Peter were brothers in their betrayal.

And so are all of us. Judas has garnered media attention this Easter with the publication of a book on the apocryphal Gospel of Judas. I have no opinion on the thesis of the book, but I’m glad Judas is finally getting some limelight. For me, Judas is an archetypal figure. We are all Judas. Who among us has not betrayed God, has not betrayed our truest, deepest self? Judas did not carry out his betrayal for the thirty pieces of silver. His frustration with Jesus was because he did not meet his expectations (Judas wanted a revolutionary leader who would drive out the Roman occupiers). Who among us has not lost our way because God or the world did not meet our expectations?

Reading this entire passage from the gospel, you can feel how much Jesus loves Judas, especially in the simple act of sharing the bread with him. It’s almost a communion ritual, as Jesus hands him the morsel and says, in effect, “What are you going to do now?” What, indeed, are we going to do?

This Little Clod of Dirt

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
—Luke 9:23

“Though more people than we realize carry real crosses of poverty or illness, the crosses most of us must carry are the seemingly trivial little crosses of accepting ourselves and those around us as the flawed creatures that we are. Carl Jung spoke of the humbling process of ‘climbing down a thousand ladders’ until he could reach his hand to the ‘little clod of earth’ that he was.”
—Aileen O’Donoghue

Yesterday began the season of Ashes, the Lenten journey to Easter. There’s a kind of depth to Lent that makes it my favorite liturgical season. I felt relief yesterday to be marked with ashes and reminded that I am dust and to dust I shall return. This is the season of getting down those ladders to the little clod of earth that I am, as Jung says.

And what do we find there in that little clod? Is it only dirt? This is the risk of Lent. This is why these forty days are more than an extended exercise in morbidity and remembrance of our impermanence, and is rather an adventure of self-discovery. The process of rediscovering ourselves is liberating because we can let go of all the things we mistakenly thought we were, and get down to the essence of what we really are: dirt, the fabric of the universe, the substance of the stars, the same stuff that is redeemed and made whole on Easter.

Lent and Easter are one thing, just as we are one thing: flawed, broken, simple, dirt that is nevertheless the living body of the Divine.

Now is the Time

"Behold, now is a very acceptable time; now is the day of salvation."
--2 Corinthians 6:2b

"People often say to me: 'Pray for me.' Then I think: Why are you coming out? Why do you not stay in yourself and hold on to your own good? After all, you are carrying all truth in you in an essential manner. That we may so truly remain within, that we may possess all thruth, without medium and without distinction, in true blessedness, may God help us to do this. Amen."
--Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

I don't believe Eckhart is telling us not to pray for others, or to ask for others' prayers. I think he is suggesting that we often miss our own essential blessedness, we mistakenly assume that wisdom will come from outside of us, when in fact, pure awakening is our natural state, and an awakened mind--and a redeemed mind--is our birthright.

The One

"Where the creature stops, there God begins to be...The smallest creaturely image that ever forms in you is as great as God is great...because it comes between you and the whole of God...But as the image goes out, God goes in...Go completely out of yourself for God's love, and God comes completely out of God's self for love of you. And when these two have gone out, what remains there is a simplifed One."
--Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart

I read Eckhart and my mind is nearly brought to a standstill. Just to try to intellectually grasp the meaning of his words is a challenge. The issue, of course, is that one must experience what Eckhart is trying to describe. Intellectually, it is so paradoxical and mysterious, the words just back one into an intellectual corner.

The "smallest creaturely image" that Eckhart describes seems to correspond with any thought or feeling in the mind that we grasp or turn away from. In other words, any phenomena that we take to be separate, unchanging and permanent, including elements of what we think of as our "selves." These "images" stand as a direct obstacle to awakening and realization of the Truth. But when we cease to grasp or turn away from these images, they are no longer obstacles, and the boundaries between me and not-me fade away. There is just the One.

As the Lenten season begins, may we all let go of that which separates us from the One.

Beyond Why

“If anyone went on for a thousand years asking of life: ‘Why are you living?” life, if it could only answer, would only say this: ‘I live so that I may live.’ That is because life lives out of its own ground and springs from its own source, and so it lives without asking why it is itself living. If anyone asks a truthful man who works out of his own ground: ‘Why are you performing your works?’ and if he were to give a straight answer, he would only say, ‘I work so that I may work.’”
— Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

Eckhart was a Thomist, a thinker in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. Everything has an essence, and its nature is to be what it is. The nature of Life is to be living; the nature of Being is to Be; the nature of Love is to Love. When we get past all the clinging and aversion within our minds, we arrive at our own essence, the “Ground” as Eckhart calls it here, which is the Ground of all things. And from this source, we don’t have to ask a lot of “why” questions. Things just are as they are.

This same Ground has been inspiring spiritual thinkers since the dawn of human awareness. Consider this passage from the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

There is No Way

“It is out of this inner ground that you should perform all your works without asking, ‘Why?’ I say truly: So long as you perform your works for the sake of the kingdom of God…you are going completely astray…when people think that they are acquiring more of God in inwardness, in devotion, in sweetness and in various approaches than they do by the fireside or in the stable, you are acting just as if you took God and muffled his head up in a cloak and pushed him under a bench. Whoever is seeking God by ways is finding ways and losing God, who in ways is hidden. But whoever seeks for God without ways will find him as he is in himself.”
—Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

I can’t read the medieval German in which Eckhart wrote these sermons, but I would love to know the German word for “ways” that he uses in this passage. The Meister seems to be giving sage advice about the tendency of spiritual seekers to get attached to particular methods (ways) of spiritual practice. We confuse the method for the outcome. As he notes, the Truth is just as easily revealed by the fireside and in the stable (in others words, in our normal, everyday, secular life) as in these pious spiritual practices.

The wonderful paradox of so much teaching from the monks, nuns and hermits of the contemplative tradition is that you don’t need to be a monk, nun or hermit to “get it.” In fact, that’s the essence of mysticism: the Divine is revealed in the ordinary, in everything, everywhere. There is nothing to “get.” It’s already here; it’s what we’re made of.

And how do we act when we see things just as they are? We are able, as Eckhart says, to perform our “works” without asking “Why?” Without an agenda for how things ought to be, we are able to respond to whatever this moment brings with clarity and spontaneity. As Zen Master Seung Sahn used to say, life is not complicated: “Green light, go.”

The Birthing Ground

“As truly as the Father in his simple nature gives his Son birth naturally, so truly does he give him birth in the most inward part of the spirit, and that is the inner world. Here God’s ground is my ground, and my ground is God’s ground. Here I live from what is my own, as God lives from what is his own.”
—Everything as Divine: The Wisdom of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 5B

Meister Eckhart is considered one of the greatest stars in the constellation of Christian mysticism. Born around 1260 CE in Germany, he was even more thoroughly steeped in the medieval Christian worldview than the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, who followed Eckhart into the contemplative stream some century or two later. But Eckhart presents an understanding of spiritual experience far deeper than the conventional religious ideas of the Middle Ages.

Eckhart’s language is dense, mysterious and shot through with paradox. But what emerges from a careful study of his teachings is a rich experience of silent, meditative insight that blurs the boundaries between the contemplative practitioner and the Ultimate Reality, which Eckhart identified as the “Godhead.” This Godhead is not what we normally conceive of as “God.” Eckhart says our normal idea of God is but a feeble human attempt to understand something that can only be experienced.

Here, in Sermon 5B, Eckhart explains that the Christian teaching of the Incarnation is more than just an historical event. The Christ is born deep within the human spirit, and it is to this birthing ground that gives rise to Christ-consciousness that Eckhart draws our attention. And the startling revelation that emerges when we look into this inner landscape is that there is only oneness. The boundaries between the finite and Infinite vanish.

It is interesting to study Eckhart’s sermons alongside The Cloud of Unknowing. There is no evidence that the author of the Cloud was familiar with Eckhart and his teachings, but the parallels of experience they describe are striking. Whereas the Cloud describes a method, Eckhart focuses primarily on the experience that emerges when the method is put into place. The Cloud describes the pathway; Eckhart describes the destination.

Here on the Way to There

I've been reflecting a lot this last week on a conversation I shared with some family members last weekend about death and what comes after. I ended up going to the shelf and plucking off a book that I bought awhile back and never read, Here on the Way to There: A Catholic Perspective on Death and What Follows. It's by William Shannon, who is a Thomas Merton scholar and writer on the mystical/contemplative tradition within Christianity, and it has several interesting insights.

In the end, I don't think there's any need to try to "figure out" any of this. Sometimes we're tempted to think that when we die we're just dead and even if that's true, it doesn't really change much. I think that's one distinct possibility. But I think there are many other possibilities as well. The consensus of all the world's great religious and philosophical traditions is that reality is really just a flow of events (and that fact has enormous implications). Nothing is fixed and unchanging, and there is no reason to assume that the flow stops when we're dead. In fact, to assume that it does is perhaps the pinnacle of arrogance and conceit: we think we've figured out the universe, including what happens (or does not happen) when we die.

All of these possibilities are just conceptual overlays we try to impose on an experience that is too big to be contained in any belief or description. Where does that leave us? Open to any possibility. This is not just a philosophical position, but a way of being: open to whatever arises in the next moment, without clinging to what just was, without aversion to what is emerging, without any idea of what should be. Just completely open. This, to me, is faith.

Faith is not certainty of belief. It is quite the opposite. Faith is that complete and total letting go into whatever comes next, without needing to manipulate our experience in any way. This is the way I want to live, and the way I want to die. And if I do, then any idea I have about what happens afterward is just an amusing fantasy, perhaps an artistic imagining of possibility, sometimes helpful but not of any eternal consequence.

My prayer (affirmation) for myself and for everyone is that we might meet each moment, including the moment of death, with such absolute freedom and openness of heart.

Direct Looking

"‘Direct path’ teachings are really aimed at those who are spiritually ready. And being spiritually ready doesn’t really have anything to do with your spiritual resume...By readiness I mean we are ready to go to the core, we are ready to go to the root of the cause of suffering, the elimination of suffering, and the nature of what we really are. The direct path teachings are not for everybody. They are in stark contrast with the way we are used to dealing with things. To go the root of problems is not so much to deal with the problem, because the direct path doesn’t really tell us what to do about [problems]. They are really not about managing our conditioned self; they investigate who it is that actually suffers."
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

Adya elaborates on this point elsewhere in the audio retreat that makes up Spontaneous Awakening. The direct path is sometimes viewed in contrast with more gradual pathways to awakening, which focus on moving into ever-deeper stages of insight and understanding until all identification with the local self drops away, and we see the Truth of What Is. However, there is a risk in using this kind of language (like using any language) that we begin to absolutize these terms. There are not really two paths.

The essence of this teaching is that moments of total, unpartial awakening are available to us all the time. Which is not to say that we don't slip back into the trance of thinking there is a separate self (taking our "selves" seriously, if you will). But once you have seen the self for what it is, even if you momentarily zone out again, you won't ever be the same. Every time awareness arises again, the truth of selflessness and interconnection will be clear.

Adya is trying to get us to stop the habit of "spiritual bypassing," or trying to use spiritual practice to "deal" with ourselves, as if there was ultimately a problem to be dealt with. This is the most fundamental way in which his path is "direct." We drop all the mental manipulation and obsession with our problems to look directly at what it is that is doing the manipulating, what it is that is obsessed. What is revealed puts all the other business (direct/indirect, problems/solutions) into proper perspective.

The "nothing" that is there

“Behind this dog and pony show called ‘me’ there is the ‘nothing’ that is there. And everything is about avoiding the nothing that is there. Hell, ninety-nine percent of spirituality is about avoiding the nothing that is there. It’s dressing it up, putting somebody else’s face on it, lighting incense to it, singing to it…doing everything but to actually, experientially fall in to the nothing that is there behind the mass called you and me. Only by letting go into that do we find out what we really are, so that in the end we find out we really are the nothing that is there.”
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

This kind of language, if taken seriously, tends to scare the hell out of people. My experience is that when most people first come in contact with the teaching of no-self, they are absolutely petrified by the implications. This was certainly my reaction, and even now when I peer deeply into the emptiness at the center of my own being, the ego still shudders a bit at first in recognition of its own transient nature. Adya makes an excellent point about the ways in which spirituality helps us avoid our true nature. We have this deep intuition of our nothingness, but instead of looking at it we objectify the nothingness into something we can worship, and therefore something that is not really a part of us. This makes it less threatening to our egos.

Our egos, that part of us that we take to be “me” and “you,” are very, very real. We misunderstand the teaching of no-self when we think that we are saying the personality and our bodies and our memories, etc., are illusion. They are very real. But they do not exist as independent entities separate from other egos. All of reality is an interwoven tapestry of experiences. “Emptiness” or “no self” is another way of recognizing this. Where “I” end and “you” begin is not a real boundary. The sense of separation is a result of our limited understanding. The “nothing” that Adya describes is that lack of boundary we discover when we bring pure awareness to our experiences. He could just as easily have said “everything.” Only by letting go do we find out what we really are, so that in the end we find out we are really “the everything” that is there.

What you really are

“To look into our own true nature is very intimate. This isn’t about following somebody else’s story, it’s very much about you…How do I look at what I am? And then you see everything you keep taking yourself to be. What are my stories about myself? Only when you start looking this way can you see that everything you take yourself to be is not completely intimate. Because there’s always something closer, there’s something noticing: Oh, I take myself to be this and this and this. ‘Well, I feel such and such a way.’ Okay, that’s what you feel. What is it that feels such and such? You can’t answer that in your head. See, it gets very quiet.”
--Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

This is the method of self-inquiry that Adyashanti teaches, alongside Awareness meditation. Though he presents them as two things, they are really one. Awareness is just deep looking to see what it is there. When awareness is applied to the landscape of the mind, it’s what Adya calls “self-inquiry.” It’s looking to see what is looking. And what is looking turns out not to be who you thought: it’s not your “personality” or any of the things you “take yourself to be.” It’s just wide open, infinite space. It’s the primordial silence. This is who we truly are, and from this space there can be no limitation, no grasping or aversion, no fear.

Deep calls unto deep

“This awakening to the truth of who we are is a spontaneous occurrence…you can’t manipulate your way to awakening…it tends to happen when our self-will takes a vacation. Even the will that says “I must awaken now” takes a vacation. As long as you are trying to make it happen, it has a hard time happening, doesn’t it?...And even though it just happens, it’s not a haphazard event…it’s not quite that simple…there’s another catalyst that’s very necessary, and that’s our willingness to look very, very deeply. This is the catalyst of inquiry…the most important thing is to be actually interested in “what am I?”
—Adyashanti, Spontaneous Awakening

I have grown a bit ambivalent about this practice of journaling, especially in the practice of journaling and then deliberately sharing it with others. Perhaps it’s ambivalence toward the use of words themselves.

Words have played a strangely paradoxical role in my own process of awakening. As Adyashanti says, you can’t manipulate your way into awakening, which means in part you can’t talk your way, think your way or write your way into awakening. And my own experience confirms this, because I tried mightily to awaken in just this way, to no avail. And when the process of awakening actually began for real, it had nothing to do with talking, thinking, writing or anything else. But on the other hand, it took lots of words to get me to that point, and so the words served a useful purpose. The words pointed the way, even though they did so imperfectly, until the words were left behind.

And then the paradox: now I see that the words were never left behind, though my relationship to them changed. Words remain, even in the state of deep awareness, because words are a part of the whole human experience, just as ego remains even in the deepest awareness. Truth is completely undivided, which means it contains everything.

So ego is still there, just as Awareness is there (and always has been), and perhaps ego still plays a role in the writing of this journal. The ego has always gotten a little trip out of the way the journal moves others to think, or feel, or respond. And that’s fine. Because the deeper purpose is also served: the awareness that functions through this ego is simply calling to the awareness that functions through other egos, waking up to itself.

The Science of Awareness

"While these traditions [the various schools of Buddhism and Hinduism] do not offer a unified perspective on the nature of the mind or the principles of spiritual life, they undoubtedly represent the most committed effort human beings have made to understand these things through introspection...Buddhism...in particular has grown remarkably sophisticated. No other tradition has developed so many methods by which the human mind can be fashioned into a tool capable of transforming itself...While Buddhism has also been a source of ignorance and occasional violence, it is not a religion of faith, or a religion at all, in the Western sense...

[I]t remains true that the esoteric teachings of Buddhism offer the most complete methodology we have for discovering the instrinsic freedom of consciousness, unencumbered by any dogma...Though there is much in Buddhism that I do not pretend to understand--as well as much that seems deeply implausible--it would be intellectually dishonest not to acknowledge its preeminence as a system of spiritual instruction."
--Sam Harris, The End of Faith

Harris' take on Buddhism as a science of the mind reminds me of Stephen Batchelor's groundbreaking book Buddhism Without Beliefs, which took on the more "religious" elements of traditional Buddhism, including the belief in reincarnation. His position raised the ire of many Western Buddhists, especially those affiliated with the Tibetan traditions, but he gave voice to the many people who were practicing meditation but had no particular interest in the more esoteric cosmologies of classic Asian belief.

Because ultimately, Buddhism is not about belief, it's about the careful analysis of human consciousness and the liberation that comes from dwelling in the awareness that transcends our individual personalities.

Marginalized Mystics

"As for the many distinguished contemplatives who have graced the sordid history of Christianity...these were certainly extraordinary men and women: but their mystical insights, for the most part, remained shackled to the dualism of church doctrine, and accordingly failed to fly...they serve as hallowed exceptions that prove the rule--mystical Christanity was dead the day Saul set out for Damascus."
--Sam Harris, The End of Faith

There are so many thought-provoking elements to Harris' book, but I am not concerned with discussing them all here. He is certainly subject to criticism for many of his statements, which I believe Mr. Harris must relish. My main interest, however, is his discussion of moderate and "mystical" strains within the Western religions, and Harris' interest in spiritual experience in general.

Harris recognizes the rich contemplative tradition within Christianity (a tradition that has been the subject of much of this blog), naming Meister Eckhart and Rumi (as representative of Islamic mysticism), among many others, as heroes of this school of thought. However, Harris also points out what is obvious to any historian of religion. These mystics have been completely out of the mainstream of Christian thought. In many cases (like Eckhart's), they have been branded as heretics. In others (like St. John of the Cross), the institutions these contemplatives founded have flourished, but their approach to spirituality has been largely ignored by the institutional church. And this should come as no surprise. There is nothing church authorities would detest more than common laypeople having direct experiences of the divine, seeing through the paper-thin illusion of beliefs and doctrines, and gaining independent insights into the nature of their being and Being itself. As much as those of us dedicated to contemplative spirituality might hope and dream, it is virtually impossible that such ideas will come to be the core teaching of the Christian churches (and the same is even more true for Islam).

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of New Jersey, Catholic priest-turned-Episcopal/new age mystic Matthew Fox, and many, many others have argued persuasively that the only way for Christianity to remain relevant in this dawning century is if it embraces its own contemplative tradition. Harris says it's unreasonable to think that it will.

But what if it did? What if, by some strange turn of events, Christianity did one day embody the teachings of the mystics as its core approach to spirituality and hundreds of millions of Christians learned and practiced the contemplative path? Would it not essentially cease to function as a monolithic institution? What would the "church" look like? It would be highly-decentralized, loosely-organized groups of free-thinkers who supported one another in the practice of their spirituality, professed nothing that could be defined as a doctrinal belief or creed, and whose use of religious language and imagery would be largely for its poetic and aesthetic value.

Again, given the degree of fundamentalism in the Christian churches today, this is nearly impossible to imagine. However, this vision of "church" looks remarkably like the model of modern Buddhism as it is currently taking shape in the West. And Harris says the Western Buddhist model is exactly the what is needed today to allow a reasonable, experiential approach to the study of human consciousness.

The End of Faith

"Many of the results of spiritual practice are genuinely desirable, and we owe it to ourselves to seek them out...Such experiences are 'spiritual' or 'mystical,' for want of betters words, in that they are rare (unnecessarily so), significant (in that they uncover genuine facts about the world), and personally transformative. They also reveal a far deeper connection between ourselves and the rest of the universe than is suggested by the ordinary confines of our subjectivity. There is no doubt that experiences of this sort are worth seeking, just as there is no doubt that the popular religious ideas that have grown up around them, especially in the West, are as dangerous as they are incredible. A truly rational approach to this dimension of our lives would allow us to explore the heights of our subjectivity with an open mind, while shedding the provincialism and dogmatism of our religious traditions in favor of free and rigorous inquiry."
--Sam Harris, The End of Faith

The Hobo's hiatus clearly did not last long, as this weekend I picked up a book that was recently given to me as a gift and now I can't put it down and can't stop thinking about it. Sam Harris' book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, is a riveting look at how organized religion poses the single most dangerous threat to human reason--and by extension human freedom--in the world today. Harris raises questions that are especially challenging to religious "moderates" who have shed any allegiance to the literal teachings of the monotheistic religions but continue to participate in formal religious observance and to maintain a claim to religious labels. Harris suggests that the spiritual experience that moderates are usually seeking (as opposed to religious belief, which is the currency of the fundamentalists and the religious institutions themselves) can be sought and explored with a historical nod to the religious traditions but without necessarily claiming any religious labels or ambiguously using religious language, customs and beliefs. In other words, we don't need religion anymore to explore the spiritual dimension of the human experience; in fact, religion is a stumbling-block to a reasonable, open investigation of such issues.

About a year ago some guy came up to me on the street in Washington, DC. He was doing some kind of research study on religious belief, and wanted to interview me. The first question he asked me was straightforward and predictable: "Do you believe in God?" I laughed because no one has asked me this question in a long time, and I haven't been able to answer it with a straight "yes" or "no" my entire adult life. I went into a lengthy explanation of my belief, which in the abbreviated version is: "If you mean, do I believe in God in the conventional sense, then no, I do not; no such God exists, in my opinion. However, I do think that humans apprehend a dimension to their lives that is far vaster than the limited, alienated sense of 'self' that we normally associate with our personhood, and because we struggle to get our minds around that, we tend to personalize and anthropomorphize that sense of mystery, and then we call that God."

It's not that I believe in that God as opposed to the other one. I guess my answer was more of an explanation for why some people believe in God, and why that belief has some genuine, experiential foundation. I "believe" in the foundation itself (because I, too, apprehend something larger than "Gary"), I suppose, but I do not believe in the "God" that religion has made out of that experience. Yet, I have continued to go to church and think, write and talk using conventional religious language, even when doing so has been torturous to my intellectual integrity.

Why is this so? I think primarily because I adore the mythology, the drama and the poetry of religious expression. It is a language I can speak very fluently, and I find that using it helps me relate to the world and especially to others who speak "religion" as well. Meantime, I counsel my friends who have seen through the facade of religious belief that it's really all just a poetic game, a way of expressing the Unexpressible because sometimes the heart just needs to give it expression. Unless they have a particularly poetic streak themselves, these friends are deeply unsatisfied by my response. Likewise, those who are conventionally religious can't make any sense at all of my religious participation, since I don't really appear to believe in any of it.

Harris appears to be saying that for the future of civilization and my own integrity, I would be better off to make it clear what I do not believe in, as these beliefs will remain fundamental to the religious institutions and organizations that preserve and perpetuate the religion itself. If suddenly the Church as a unit embraced what I truly believe, it would cease to exist as an organization. Harris seems to think that would be a very fortunate outcome. We would continue to look back on religion as a source of wonderful human expression of our greatest ideas and aspirations (just as we view the myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans today), but we would no longer find it necessary to maintain the institutions of power that gave rise to such myths and that have done so much damage in their name.

Moment of Silence

The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me.
--Meister Eckhart

My postings here have slowed to a trickle in recent weeks, and now I have officially decided that I am putting the Hobo Journal on temporary hiatus. I am spending more time looking inward, into places that do not translate into the kinds of words that make sense for a "blog." My journaling will probably continue (it's nearly a twenty-year habit for me now), but only for myself, at least for the time being. Thanks for stopping by, and when I have something to say again, I'll put up a few words.
-G

The Lens of Concentration

"Parallel waves of sunlight falling on a piece of paper will do no more than warm the surface. But that same amount of light, when focused through a lens, falls on a single point and the paper bursts into flames. Concentration is the lens. It produces the burning intensity necessary to see into the deeper reaches of the mind."
--Bhante Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English

Whenever I start working with the basic mechanics of meditation, there is no better resource than this little book by the Sri Lankan monk Henepola Gunaratana, abbot of the Bhavana Society monstary in West Virginia. Several years ago I had the chance to do a metta retreat with Bhante G at Bhavana Society, and last year sat a five day retreat with his former student Matthew Flickstein.

There are two qualities of mind that we cultivate in medation: concentration and insight. They function in tandem, as Bhante G explains in the passage from which the quote is taken. In my own practice, I am focusing once again on concentration, and I see the afflictive states of mind emerge in even this most basic function. When concentration wanders, I've begun to notice the subtle but deep way in which I berate myself for losing concentration. This is foolishness, as the nature of the mind is to wander and grasp. It would be like berating our ears for noticing sounds. Yet, this is what the mind is doing, so I cannot judge the judging, either. So, I am bringing mindfulness to the judging, but using concentration to quickly refocus the mind back into the present moment. The judging is a way of clinging, and when we truly return full-force to the present, the clinging is broken for a time and the mind can rest.

perihelion--
the cold January sun
seems so far away

Back on the cushion

I am formally meditating again, as regularly as I can. Not sure what triggered the motivation to get back on the cushion, but it’s probably just the cycle of interest that has contributed to my on-again, off-again practice for the last dozen years or so. I have felt my understanding of the practice, and of my own mind, open up considerably in the last year. I had some breakthrough moments on retreat last spring. Just the memory of that little glimpse of clarity has stayed in the back of my mind ever since, gently, quietly calling me back.

Self-judgment is a dominant theme in my practice, though it took me years to see it. I kept judging myself as a failure because I wasn’t getting free of all my hang-ups. This, even though I knew good and well that the practice is not about getting rid of hang-ups. Nevertheless, I judged myself for being so messed up, I quit sitting numerous times because I felt so miserable. I finished each meditation feeling worse about myself. In a particularly sad way, I turned the practice into just another method to beat myself up. Finally, a moment emerged when I saw the judging for what it is: another impermanent phenomenon of the mind. When I started just watching the judging arise and pass away, it lost most of its power. Still, two years after this realization, sometimes I tremble at its tremendous force when it rises up in the mind.

It has helped to view meditation as an act of compassion toward myself, a way of loving myself more. I try to see the act of watching the mind as compassion itself, embracing and letting go of everything that is “me.” This compassion, in turn, has encouraged self-confidence. The little hassles of the day and the little stumbles I make seem puny and unimportant in comparison with the vast, luminous Buddhanature from whence it all arises. There is nothing I cannot handle from this perspective.

I have tried especially to peer into the constantly discriminating element of the mind, which is the generic energy that makes up the self-judging faculty. The dualistic mind judges every experience as good, bad, or indifferent. Catching the mind and watching it dispassionately while it goes through this judging cycle helps loosen its grasp and dominance. I am also continuing to experiment with “choiceless awareness” practice, which is the radical meditative technique Matthew taught us last year on retreat that involves not meditating on anything, but just watching. My concentration seems pretty weak for this practice, though, so I should probably devote more energy to focusing the mind first. I just find myself so eager to “just sit,” the concentration practice seems to get in the way. Just need to watch that too….

Applying the Teachings

Pema Chodron: What would you say, in a nutshell, that we should do about the confusion?

Dzigar Kontrul: Listen to the teachings, study them, and contemplate them. Then, allow the teachings to illuminate your experience, rather than trying to bring your experience in line with the teachings. It’s important first to have the teachings illuminate your experience, so you can see what’s happening clearly before you actually try to put them into practice.
—from the Shambala Sun interview, January 2006

Here Pema Chodron is asking about the universal confusion experienced by all of us regarding our true nature. It’s the confusion that causes us to constantly feel alienated and unfulfilled. It’s our habitual pattern of judging all our experiences as good, bad, or indifferent, and the accompanying suffering that unfolds as a result.

I love Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche’s response. He takes it for granted that we know what the teachings on liberation say and how to access them. The power in his answer is that he warns us not to use them as a yardstick to judge ourselves, which would just be an extension of our confusion. I appreciate this, because self-judgment is a major afflictive emotion for me, and I often get frustrated with spiritual practice because I judge myself unsuccessful at living out the teachings that I know can set me free.

What I hear Rinpoche saying is that we should just look at our minds, and calmly watch the patterns of experience unfolding in our minds, and see how those experiences compare to the teachings. Do the patterns in my mind confirm what the sages of old have been saying down through the centuries? When I experience moments of clarity, what are the causes and conditions that give rise to the clarity? In this simple approach to practice, we become scientists dispassionately observing our subject, watching its behavior, drawing conclusions and learning from the present moment as each moment unfolds. There is no struggle; just continuous learning.

God himself is born!

And so we see, God is not

until he is born.

And also we see

there is no end to the birth of God.

--D.H. Lawrence

The Birth of Something Different

Into this world
this demented inn,
in which there is no room
for Him at all,
Christ has come uninvited.

But because He cannot
be at home in it, because He is
out of place in it,
His place is with those
who do not belong,
who are rejected
by power because
they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied
the status of person,
tortured and exterminated.

With those for whom
there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.

He is mysteriously present
in those for whom
there seems to be nothing
but the world at its worst.
--Thomas Merton

Some people professing to follow Christ have made a big deal out of people saying "Happy Holidays" this year instead of "Merry Christmas." These folks would do well to read Thomas Merton's poem and be reminded of what following Christ really entails.

What is Heaven?

I knew it would be frustrating, but nevertheless I felt a compulsion to watch Barbara Walter's television special on Heaven the other night. The draw for me, of course, was that she planned to interview His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism.

Walters actually did a pretty good job of having a lot of different religious viewpoints represented, but I was frustrated that the messages we heard from so many of the clergy, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, was that our popular images of heaven ought to be taken literally. They didn't say this specifically, but it was clear that they did indeed take all the typical images of the afterlife at face value. I was disappointed that no contemplative perspectives were offered which would say, "Perhaps these images that we have inherited from previous generations who have speculated on the afterlife are far too limited to really convey the reality of what lies beyond this life?" Maybe we talk about streets of gold, or heavenly mansions, or being reunited with our loved ones, because these are the best images we can come up with using our limited human minds to describe an experience beyond words and description?

For example, many of those interviewed expressed their belief or desire to be reunited with their loved ones after death. I long for that as much as anybody, but perhaps that reunion is far vaster than what we typically imagine. What if there will be a time when we can know our loved ones far more intimately than we have ever known them here, when all of the barriers, whether physical, psychological or spiritual, will be broken down, and we can see each other the way God sees us? And better: what if we can see every other being who has ever lived at this same intimate level? What if we could experience the love of every being at a level exponentially greater than anything we've ever experienced on earth? Basically, we would experience the vast interconnectedness of all life without the barriers of "self." We would not just "see" each other in heaven, we would know all others on a level beyond anything before, so that we experience only Knowing and Being?

In Walters' interview, the Dalai Lama expressed the traditional Tibetan belief that "heaven" is actually part of the six different realms of existence, and that it is a place of peace and comfort similar to what the theistic traditions describe. However, he was careful to point out that "reaching" heaven just means we can continue our spiritual journey with fewer of the hindrances and obstacles of this realm. The point is not being someplace, but being a particular way. Again, the point is the experience of interconnection, compassion and understanding. This will of necessity require us to let go of all images, concepts and ideas that we have clung to, including our ideas of heaven.

winter solstice --
the pear tree
finally shakes its leaves

Monastic Humor

“There was a man in our [monastic] community who was always prompt, studious, generally serious, and obviously destined for a role among the hierarchy. He was a perfect target for monastic humor.

One night he arrived at his room to find life-sized statues of a male and female saint lying next to each other in his bed. On another occasion, just to add a spice of humility to his habit of promptness, some of his more thoughtful confreres unscrewed the handles on his door, so that when the bell for vespers rang, no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get the door open.

What is the humor within the joke here? Don’t saints sleep together? Don’t we know from Pygmalion that statues have their own private lies? Aren’t we always locked in when we have important things to do elsewhere?”
—Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life

We want our lives to be so neat and tidy. We want everything to fit, and nothing to be ambiguous, messy and certainly not flawed. But enlightened living is not having it all together. It’s seeing that it’s all a big mess, and being able to embrace the mess with humor and with love.

Sacred Time

"In monastic life time is not measured by a clock. The day may be set out according to the parts of the Divine Office, a set of psalms and songs chosen according to the remembrance of the day--a saint, a liturgical season, a holy event...Qualities of time are also evoked by chants...We all have music that is tied to special times, and is therefore a means for celebrating the seasons of the soul. We could all learn from monks to disregard our watches and find other more imaginative, creative ways to mark time."
--Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life

Perhaps the most unique and fascinating alternative to our normal way of marking time that I've ever encountered is the ECOlogical calendar, which was developed by artist Chris Hardman. Reflecting the theory of All Time, the ECOlogical calendar is a colorful, poetic and extremely naturalistic tool for marking our place in the history of the universe. On the ECOlogical Calendar, years are marked since the dawn of the universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago (that will put things into perspective). Names of the months and days of the year are given poetic names that reflect the astrological, geological and ecological phenomena that are nature's holistic signposts marking the changes of the seasons. My birthday, for example, which is on Jan. 4 on the Gregorian calendar, occurs in the month Celeste and is called "Sunclosest" in the ECOlogical calendar, reflecting the ironic phenomena that though the Northern hemisphere is cold and dark this time of year, the Earth's actual proximity to the sun is relatively close (it's the tilt of the Earth that creates the seasons; in that sense, I guess the ECOlogical calendar does reflect a Northern hemisphere bias!).

At any rate, tools like the ECOlogical calendar are useful for reframing our normal way of viewing time and nature, and help correct centuries of anti-environmental sentiment that the world's religions have unfortunately reinforced. With their emphasis on the impermanence of the physical world and the afterlife, the great religions have often left believers with a sense that nature is unimportant, even fallen or corrupt. The Franciscans offer a long-standing alternative to this anti-nature attitude, emphasizing the sacredness and sacramentality of the physical world. Such a perspective will be essential if Christian practitioners hope to maintain a relevant place in this rapidly-changing environmental context, and a relevant and centered view of humanity's place in universal time.

Bells of Mindfulness

“Mundane withdrawal from the busyness of an active life can create a spirituality-without-walls, a spiritual practice that is not explicitly connected to a church or a tradition. I have never forgotten Joseph Campbell’s response when he was asked about his daily yoga practice: laps in a pool and a drink once a day. Anything is material for retreat—cleaning out a closet, giving away some books, taking a walk around the block, clearing your desk, turning off the television set, saying no to an invitation to do anything.

At the sight of nothing, the soul rejoices.”
—Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life

Perhaps the greatest modern saint of simple, mindful living is Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk who was nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since the end of the Vietnam conflict, Thay, as he is called by his students, has written dozens of books and become the world’s ambassador for mindfulness.

Thay recommends very simple practices for waking up the present moment. One of his easiest strategies is to try to utilize normal, everyday sounds as “bells of mindfulness.” When we hear these sounds, we are encouraged to stop whatever we are doing, take a moment to smile and breath, and absorb whatever is going on around and within us. The ringing of the telephone, for example, instead of sending us scrambling to respond to yet another demand, can become our bell of awakening, and we can momentarily resist the urge to answer, collect ourselves back into the present moment, and then pick up the phone with compassion, wisdom and understanding.

There is a doorbell at my place of work that automatically rings when visitors enter the building to alert the staff that someone has arrived. It rings several dozen times a day. Thich Nhat Hanh would probably point out the reliability of this bell of mindfulness, and encourage me to use it for mini, instant retreats whenever I need to return to the present moment.

The Soul at Work

“Monastic buildings show us how an intense interior life may generate an outward form of art, craft, and the care of things. Out of a simple life has come an extraordinary heritage of books, illuminated pages, sculpture, architecture, and music. The cultivation of the inner life overflows in outward displays of beauty and richness.

Maybe it’s a mistake to think of the monastic life as a withdrawal from the active world. We might see it more as an alternative to the hyperactivity that is characteristic of modern life. Traditionally, the monk is extremely active, and on many fronts: actively engaged in nurturing the inner life, actively committed to a communal style of living, and actively producing words, images, and sounds of extraordinary meaningfulness and beauty.”
—Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life

It seems such a stretch for me to imagine cultivating more awareness, more soulfulness, and more meaning out of my work life. My work environment seems the antithesis of monastic thoughtfulness and care. Home life, on the other hand, seems richly soulful to me. It is here at home that I am surrounded by the symbols that give my life meaning, by relationships that nourish and recreate me, where I can nurture little rituals of mindfulness, gratitude and joy.

It’s no wonder we feel so alienated and disconnected every day, when such a wide gulf exists between work and home. Is it just me? Does everyone feel this chasm? I think many do, and it accounts for the fragmentation and unease we experience regarding our work lives.

This is a challenge we must take up. We must find intentional ways to bring soulfulness and meaning back into our vocations and our workplaces. But I hardly know where to begin. To even use this kind of language at work seems slightly embarrassing. What will others think of me? Will they think I’m some kind of religious kook? What kind of strange looks and comments would I get if I closed my door every day and hung a sign that said, “Please do not disturb; meditation in progress”? And the truth is, in my work environment, which is so crisis-oriented, I fear I could not respect my own commitment to “soul time” even if others did. I’m lucky to even have a door to close. In many workplaces you’d have to go to the bathroom to get a minute’s worth of solitude.

I don’t know the answers, for myself or others. But I do know that we need to ask this question in an intentional, deliberate, and thoughtful way. Work is killing us, when it should be cultivating great joy and meaning in our lives. Perhaps today I will start with a tiny little experiment, one I’ve tried in the past with some success, when I can remember to do it. Today I will endeavor to slow down my pace (the speed of my physical activity as well as my thoughts) a mere ten percent. Reducing the pace ten percent actually takes far greater mindfulness than reducing it by half or coming to a complete stop. What I sometimes find is that in doing so, I can increase my productivity by more than ten percent, although that’s not the point. We’re not trying to become more productive; we’re trying to become happier, more holistic human beings.

Tending the Culture of Emptiness

“Early Christian monks went out to live in the desert in order to find emptiness. Modern life is becoming so full that we need our own ways of going to the desert to be relieved of our plenty. Our heads are crammed with information, our lives busy with activities, our cities stuffed with automobiles, our imaginations bloated on pictures and images, our relationships heavy with advice, our jobs burdened with endless new skills, our homes cluttered with gadgets and conveniences. We honor productivity to such an extent that the unproductive person or day seems a failure.

Monks are experts at doing nothing and tending the culture of that emptiness.”
—Thomas Moore, Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life

I don’t remember when I first became enamored with monks and the monastic life. It must have been in college, because I had no personal or cultural reference point earlier than that. When I became interested in Thomas Merton and in Buddhism, I quickly sought out monks and monasteries to see for myself what that life was all about.

Perhaps what has fascinated me the most over the years about the monastics I’ve come to know is how wonderfully human they are. Like me or you in every other way. What makes them different is their deep intentional commitment to live out of that space of emptiness within, to honor silence and solitude as the ground of a healthy, spirit-filled life.

Thomas Moore is best known for his many books on caring for the soul, but this little volume, Meditations on the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, is without question my favorite. In it, Moore reflects on the twelve years he himself lived as a monk, and the way in which his daily life is still shaped by that experience of “doing nothing.”

My prayer today, for you and for me, is that with grace, nothing will happen.

The Pillar of Cloud

“An elder said: The monk’s cell is that furnace of Babylon in which the three children found the Son of God; but it is also the pillar of cloud, out of which God spoke to Moses.”
—Wisdom of the Desert

A wonderful little teaching here on what the contemplative life is all about. Being a contemplative is not about being morally perfect, doing good deeds, austerities of the mind and body, etc. It is about using daily life as the stage for a direct encounter with the Ultimate Reality. The monk’s cell is the fire of Babylon and it’s the pillar of cloud.

We may not be monks, but some of us are surely called to be contemplatives, and therefore we could easily transpose the words “your bedroom,” “your office,” “your car” for the words “The monk’s cell.” We, too, are to enter the pillar of cloud.

Nearly a millennium after the Desert Fathers, the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing used the same imagery to describe the deepest states of meditative prayer. When we sit in quiet, compassionate acceptance of whatever arises and falls in our minds and hearts (which is the essence of meditation), we can after a while discern a vast, open ground from whence all the thoughts come and to which they return.

It’s as if you can watch your thoughts and feelings arise and fall in the mind and then, without ignoring them, direct your inner gaze just behind or beneath them. The author of the Cloud describes it as “looking over the shoulder” of the thought, feeling or idea. What you see beyond them is…nothing. This nothingness is variously describing as a dark cloud, or a deep pool, or even a blinding light. But the great mystics, who have persisted with their prayer until they are existentially immersed into that cloud, have testified that it is in fact the heart of God (another metaphor). Words can’t describe it, but the experience of entering the cloud is to transform one’s understanding of who and what we are. It is to see the whole world as the furnace of Babylon and the pillar of cloud.

The Hundred-Year Perspective

“It was said of Abbot Agatho that for three years he carried a stone in his mouth until he learned to be silent.”
—Wisdom of the Desert

There is a terrific scene in the Bernardo Bertolucci film Little Buddha in which a child asks a Tibetan lama the meaning of impermanence. “See all these people,” the lama said, “and all the people everywhere in the world today. In a hundred years, we’ll all be dead. That’s impermanence.”

For some reason I awoke in the middle of the night last evening with a vivid sense of my own mortality. This was not particularly unusual or disturbing. This happens to me from time to time, and I usually see this kind of mindfulness as a gift. I feel fortunate to be reminded that I am often focused on the wrong things.

All the people with whom we have conflict and with whom we play out our human drama, and all the sources of our stress and difficulty, are just as impermanent as we are. All the things that cause us mental suffering and anguish are fading phenomena. One hundred years from now, very little of the specifics of what we do will matter at all. That we were stuck in a traffic jam, that we had the flu this week, that we had some problem at work, none of this will matter in a hundred years. For that matter, where we worked will probably not matter in a hundred years.

But this shouldn’t be interpreted with nihilistic despair. To the contrary, there are indeed many things we do which will matter a hundred years from now. The peace and justice we create in the world, the legacy of compassion and understanding that we demonstrate toward others, will create a ripple effect that will bear fruit for centuries to come. Perhaps we could say that what we do matters less than how we do it. Or, put another way, perhaps we should view our daily activities from this hundred-year perspective, and look for those small deeds that will in fact last that long, and not worry so much about the things that will be forgotten tomorrow—or even five minutes from now.

Abbot Agatho’s practice of silence is a wonderful example. Clearly, he did speak occasionally (we have the great legacy of his simple teachings in books like Wisdom of the Desert). But by practicing silence most of the time, he learned to make his words count when he did speak, and didn’t waste his breath or time on making noise that would quickly be swallowed up in the abyss of impermanence. And here are the words that were left, still counting nearly two millennia later.

Forever Beginners

“They said of Abbot Pambo that in the very hour when he departed this life he said to the holy men who stood by him: From the time I came to this place in the desert, and built me a cell, and dwelt here, I do not remember eating bread that was not earned by the work of my own hands, nor do I remember saying anything for which I was sorry even until this hour. And thus I go to the Lord as one who has not even made a beginning in the service of God.”
—Wisdom of the Desert

What a tremendous desert koan! And I can’t begin to fathom what it means.

Perhaps Abbot Pambo is saying that renunciation and silence—essential though they may be—are incomplete without compassion and service toward others. Contemplation must be responded to with action in the world? Or looked at another way, perhaps his efforts to be self-sufficient and independent of the world of “men” reinforced his ego (false self) on some level? Perhaps receiving from others’ hands and saying things for which we are sorry are necessary parts of our spiritual growth.

But maybe this saying is a revelation of Pambo’s great humility, and his recognition that grace is a gift freely given, that we ultimately cannot accumulate enough tally marks of good works and holy words to get credit for our service to God and others. Even after a life of solitude and silence, Pambo knew he was still a complete novice in work of the spirit, as we all are. And the miracle of grace is that we are loved and embraced though we remain forever beginners on the path.

Three Marks of Understanding

“Abbot Joseph of Thebes said: There are three kinds of people who find honor in the sight of God: First, those who, when they are ill and tempted, accept all these things with thanksgiving. The second, those who do all their works clean in the sight of God, in no way merely seeking to please others. The third, those who sit in subjection to the command of a spiritual [director] and renounce all their own desires.”
—Wisdom of the Desert

It is interesting that Abbot Joseph did not put any of these spiritual paths in rank order. Gratitude, good works (compassion), and renunciation (wisdom) are all presented as equal means to living an enlightened life. Perhaps these three gifts are all separate manifestations of the same experience? All three reveal the fundamental interconnectedness of reality.

We are not separate entities, though our existential loneliness and fear reinforce the illusion that we are (they are actually a by-product of this illusory thinking—the lack of “right views” and “right understanding,” as the Buddhists would say). From the contemplative perspective, all reality interpenetrates every particular phenomenon. This is the “true self” in contemplative terms. When the false self is abandoned and the true self is revealed, the resulting experience is marked by vast gratitude, compassion and wisdom. These three marks are the signs of real understanding.