Category Archives: Eastern religion

A Few More Thoughts About My Ignorance

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After confessing my “ignorance” yesterday, I must qualify this declaration to some degree.  I know a lot of “stuff” as the result of being, in some sense, only an “observer” in life and not an “experiencer.”  Just as my sweet-heart Emily Dickinson quipped over her version of this character flaw, “Life is over there…on a shelf.”  I have read voraciously in my life, having discovered in my first days in elementary school that words offered so much to my frightened and lonely soul.  I have a modest library today, though impressive in its character; but each volume has passed the “smell test” and found lodging in my heart.

Yes, I am one damn smart “son of a gun!”  I was so smart that my daddy called me, “Son”…to use an old joke from the 60’s! Recently I decided that all of this wisdom and erudition was so valuable that I put it all in a paper bag, took it down to McDonalds, and tried to buy a Senior cup of coffee.  “Oh yes,” they said, “we’ll take the bag of your verbosity…but the coffee will still cost you a dollar!” I took my cup of coffee, turned to find a table where I would open my copy of G. W. F. Hegel’s “On Art, Religion, and Philosophy: Introduction to the Realm of Absolute Spirit.”  But as I made my turn, I could not help but notice that the cashier took that paper bag of my brilliance and dropped it into a trash can! Facetiousness and self-deprecation aside, I recognize that I am intelligent and erudite.  But as noted yesterday, all of this leaves me profoundly “ignorant” in a very important respect; for words are but “pointers”;  or as the Buddhists have told us, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”  The great Catholic scholar and author, Thomas Aquinas, in his early fifties after having gone through a mystical experience didn’t write another thing the rest of his life, noting, “It was all straw.”

This vein of wisdom began to seep into my heart in my mid-thirties, burrowing gently but determinedly into my thick skull when the pain of alienation was setting in and poetry began to find a place in my heart.  This “still small voice” was at first a simple murmur but in the past three decades it has become a loud voice, providing the view point through which I approach my world, seeing metaphor where I had before only seen “fact.”  Yes, “the letter kills, but the spirit maketh alive.”  I close with the words of the brilliant Irish poet, William Butler Yeats who sums it up for me, “Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I waved my leaves and flowers in the sun.  Now may I wither into the Truth.”

Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

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We “see through a glass darkly”.  That is the best we can ever do but we have a deep-seated and potentially evil dimension of our heart that wants to see with clarity and assuredness.  This is simply “being human” and to become the best human possible is to recognize this truth and humbly accept that it applies to “me” also.  Here I write from this position of great limitation and am always beset with self-doubt–”Is this necessary?” or “Why bother?” or “What’s the point?” or, “Ain’t you got something better to do?”  It would be much easier if I had simply guzzled that kool-aid of my youth and thus have the comfort of knowing….so to speak…”Thus saiith the Lord” in all my blathering.  I think this is called “existential insecurity” but if one actually “exists” here in this world, that is, actually “dwells” here as the finite creature that we are there must be some degree of insecurity. 

But thinking gets in the way of any such humility.  By virtue of this Divine gift we have been subjected to the temptation to take our cognitive apparatus and its product–thinking, too seriously.  We have then glommed onto a body of thought with which we are intoxicated to the point that we are incapable of any humility, believing in our belief rather than the Ground upon which we and within which we are rooted.  This takes faith and faith is risky, entailing much more than clinging to the product of that “cognitive apparatus.” The cognitive trap that I am addressing is a prison from which one can escape if he is willing to pay the price, and the price was summarized by T.S. Eliot as, “…a condition of simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  This price tag for myself has been the simple understanding and experience of recognizing this “trap,” a recognition which begins to loosen the bars of our imprisonment.

My country is currently demonstrating this entrapment with Trumpism.  Hordes of Republicans “believe in their belief” of Trump; the resulting  enthrallment by a cognitive apparatus gone awry cannot end without tragedy.

A Further Sojourn Into Hannah Arendt’s Prophetic Work

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I continue to explore the work of Hannah Arendt from which I shared in in recent posts.  And, from this blog-o-sphere that I participate in I have received nice feedback as well from friends I know in real-time.  Arendt’s work details how the absence of critical thinking will leave one mired down in the unacknowledged recesses of the mind and heart.  This venture into the heart’s machinations is disillusioning and frightening. Arendt offers us a powerful exploration of totalitarianism and its impact, individually and collectively on critical thinking. Without it a mind-set emerges and marches on, grim faced and determined to cling to preconceptions and biases that harm themselves and others, lacking any “interior dialogue” or self-talk.

In my morning sojourn through the cyber world today, I discovered related wisdom that I would like to share.  The first is from Gene W. Marshall in his book “Jacob’s Dream,” in which he writes from what I would describe as a post-modern view of Holy Writ:

Spirit freedom is not the same thing as the so-called free will that is often written about. The ego (as I have defined it) has free will but the ego’s definition of free will is limited by the ego’s definition of itself.  The ego is a construction of the human mind.  This construction may allow for the presence of some elements of our essential Freedom.  But because it is a human construction, the ego also restricts the full expression of our Spirit Freedom. (As I noted in last week’s blog, “We want only what we want.” and cannot see beyond our narcissistic view of the world. “The world is my oyster”!)

Here, Mr. Marshall’s thought leads us directly into the abyss that I shared from Arendt’s observations about Hitler and totalitarianism.  My vein of thought was very convoluted and even involuted as I tried to put into words that which cannot be put into words. This effort can take us into a murky world which is very “Zen like,” a state of being which I used to formulate in terms of “the working of the Holy Spirit.” And this biblical formulation still has merit for me.  The Apostle Paul described this process as the “Spirit” furrowing into the depths of our heart where we can “discern the thoughts and intents” of our heart, individually and collectively. (I recall a note by Rumi pointing this truth out in 13th century Iran, “Out beyond the distinctions of right doing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”)

In the on-line journal, “The Mind Matters” I also discovered this morning a paragraph from Andre Gorz that is relevant:

For society is no longer to be found where it institutionally proclaims its existence…Society now only exists in the interstices of the system, where new relations and new solidarities are being worked out and are creating, in their turn, new public spaces in the struggle against the mega-machine and its ravages; it exists only where individuals assume the autonomy to which the disintegration of traditional bonds and the bankruptcy of received interpretations condemn them and where they take upon themselves the task of inventing, starting out from their own selves, the values, goals and social relations which can become the seeds of a future society.”

Gorz, who was a Marxist philosopher, captured the dynamic dimension of a social body and described bringing it to life, paralleling the process of a“human body”…an individual… self-reflect ing itself into “coming to life.” His term, the “interstices of the system” in sociological thought parallels our own individual heart in which components are roiling about in an effort to come to grips with our interior life, aka those “thoughts and intents of the heart’ that the Apostle Paul wrote about. This process can produce “life”, aka “Life” that is beyond the pale of the perfunctory life that our world offered us as a child. This makes me want to scrutinize further the bromide from my youth, “being born again.””

I know that my thoughts here are again convoluted and involuted.  I am trying to summarize that life is more than we know it to be.  I am more than I “think” that I am and I live in a world which is more than it “thinks” it is.  I am exploring a dimension of life that is mysterious and incomprehensible.  I can never “figger it out,” I can only pay attention to what is going on in my heart and what is “going on” out there as I “chop wood and carry water” for another day. Presently, I can only “pay attention” to the glory of a beautiful doggie lying here beside me, the cup of coffee I’m sipping, and the crackling of the fire in the wood stove. Shortly, the morning will begin to dawn and I will saunter outside into the cool of the morning air, pay homage to the plants and flowers that are thriving, and bow before the majestic tapestry of morning stars that linger before disappearing for another day. One poet described this as the mystery before which we can only, “glory, bow, and tremble.”

 

Mother Earth, Taos, N.M., and a Talented Local Poet

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A year ago I met a lovely poet, writer and “empath” who, for lack of a better term I would describe as doing “soul work” with animals and humans.  I received a blog post from her yesterday morning which beautifully conveys the passion and wisdom that she brings to the table anywhere she goes.  With her permission, I am sharing a link to her work along with an excerpt from a recent post of hers. Here you will see her love of life, including Mother Earth, and this little corner of this earth, Taos, NM.

A week or so after Earth Day, the days have begun to feel warmer here in Taos, even hot just after midday and into mid-afternoon. So Blue and I ventured to where the shadows of trees would cool and protect us as we walked together. These delicate flowers were thriving in the protection of the Ponderosa pines in the forest we found ourselves in. Whenever I can, I will take a pause to sit or even lay on the Earth, perhaps my favorite kind of meditation. After sitting awhile, then my eyes were drawn to these beauties.

Here in Taos, we still have a month or so before the clouds will gather enough precipitation for rains to begin falling as part of the monsoon season in northern New Mexico. The cloud beings that gather in these parts are favorites of mine. I literally feel the uplift of their presence and feel, oddly, as if they are my very own playmates! (What do they hold within themselves?)Cloud beings seen ‘dancing’ and touching the thermal rise of the mountains, here looking toward Taos Mountain and the Sangre de Christos a few days before Earth Day on April 18th.This time of year, early springtime with things warming up some, we see the apricot trees starting to come out in full bloom. I see this as another kind of precipitation, that of life force and nectar and flower essence. I often pause and thank the trees for their beauty and renewal, once again, calling to the inner reaches of my own essence to hint forward.

Every year with every season, I notice differences and fluctuations, subtle shifts within my own timing that most often are stimulated by that unique elemental dance before and around me. Grasping that I am part of all life, life being life, what a potent way to wake up to what is moving for me within the internal landscape as my own earth and skies! There I can also experience what is budding or coming to fruition literally and creatively.

And, here is a link to her entire blog, including the rest of this post:  

https://lifebeing.life/ 

 

 

The Deadly Elixir of Group Think’s Certainty

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I just got a “like” from a blogger, one of which I am particular proud.  For this man is one of the “godless heathen” that my Christian tradition eschews….a Muslim.  I am pleased that a lot of the “hits” I get on this blog are from people of different spiritual traditions who see, who “grok” something in my blatherings that they find of value.  For spirituality has the pitfall of evolving into a death-trap in which only those of “like mind”…and therefore, “like biases.” are accepted.

I had that comfort as a child; a “comfort” which was mitigated by the realization that, “Oh, there is something not right about this.”  Somehow I knew from early on that the Grace of God, aka “the Grace” of the Universe, is inclusive and not ex-clusive.  This intuitive understanding was present from the early days of my life and instilled into my heart a deep experience of alienation, that I did not belong.  And I didn’t “belong” for “belonging” involved accepting unquestioned premises in which my young and innocent heart could not imbibe.  This was the onset of alienation, from which can emerge complete madness as the pain of alienation initially elicits terror.  It is this terror that elicits a demand for certainty,  a “certainty” which group-think always offers.

I am learning the value of just “being here.”  The ultimate purpose of life is not to find a place in a chaotic world that is often mad…and certainly is now in my country, at least; this ultimate purpose is to just be here.  Ram Dass called it “being here now” and Eckhart Tolle more recently described it as, “The Power of Now.”  “Being here” is, to borrow from T.S. Eliot, a “condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.”  Or as Janis Joplin put it so eloquently in the 1960’s, “Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose.”

Elif Shafak’s Perspective on Western Faith

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Elif Shafak is a Turkish novelist whose Sufi faith is a powerful influence in her life and in her writing.  In this excerpt from The Forty Rules of Love she sheds a valuable light on faith from her tradition in which she can see unity where in the West often we see only difference, where our “distinction drawer” is too much in control.  (The italicized material will be my observations.)

Instead of losing themselves in the Love of God and waging a war against their ego, religious zealots fight other people, generating wave after wave of fear.  Looking at the whole universe fear-tinted eyes, it is no wonder that they see a plethora of things to be afraid of.  Wherever there is an earthquake, drought, or any other calamity, they take it as a sign of Divine Wrath—as if God does not openly say, “My compassion outweighs my wrath.”  Always resentful of somebody for this or that, they seem to expect God Almighty to step in on their behalf and take their pitiful revenges.  Their life is an uninterrupted state of bitterness and hostility, a discontentment so vast it follows them wherever they go, like a black cloud, darkening both their past and their future.

This is a picture of the ego in firm control, using their purported “love of God” to wreak havoc on the world, including those most dear and close to them.  When the ego is tyrannizing our world, it desperately functions as a distinction-drawer keeping parts of our human experience separate from our awareness and projecting it “out there.”

There is such a thing in faith as not being able to see the forest for the trees.  The totality of religion is far greater and deeper than the sum of its component parts.  Individual rules need to be read in the light of the whole.  And the whole is concealed in the essence.

But the ego is a constellation of rules that seeks to “rule” our world, that is impose order upon it to make it consistent with our need for order and perfection.  Its goal is to know all of the rules, never forget one of them, so it can always be right.  It builds for us what W. H. Auden called, “A life safer than we can bear.”

Instead of searching for the essence in the Qur’an and embracing it as a whole, however, the bigot singles out a specific verse or two, giving priority to the divine commands that they deem to be in tune with their fearful minds.  They keep reminding everyone that on the day of judgment everyone will be forced to walk on the Bridge of Sirat, thinner than a hair, sharper than a razor.  Unable to cross the bridge, the sinners will tumble into the pits of hell underneath, where they will suffer forever.  Those who have lived a virtuous life will make it to the other end of the bridge, where they will be reward with exotic fruits, sweet waters, and virgins.  This, in a nutshell, is their notion of the afterlife.  So great is their obsession is with horrors and rewards, flames and fruits, angels and demons, that in their itch to reach a future which will justify who they are today they forget about God…..Hell is in the here and now.  So is heaven.  Quit worrying about hell or dreaming about heaven as they are both present inside at this present moment.  Every time we fall in love, we ascend into heaven.    Every time we hate, fight, or envy someone we tumble straight into the fires of hell.

The ego does not want us to live in the present moment.  It is a creation of this time/space continuum that we have been confined within by the biblical “fall” leaving us comfortable only when immersed in memories of the past…good or bad ones…or hopes of the future.

Is there a worse hell than the torment a man suffers when he knows deep down in his consciousness that he has done something wrong, awfully wrong?  Ask that man.  He will tell you what hell is.  Is there a better paradise than the bliss that descends upon a man at those rare moments when the bolts of the universe fly open and he feels in possession of all the secrets of eternity and fully united with God?  Ask that man.  He will tell you what heaven is.

Why worry so much about the aftermath, an imaginary future when this very moment is the only time we can fully experience both the presence and absence of God in our lives?  Motivated by neither the fear of punishment in hell nor the desire to be rewarded in heaven, Sufis love God simply because they love Him, pure and easy, untainted and unnegotiable.

And when you love God so much, when you love each and every one of his creations because of Him and thanks to Him, extraneous categories melt into thin air.  From that point on, there can be no “I” any more.  All you amount to is a zero so big it covers your whole being.

This “love of God” is a challenging notion as it is so easy to be trapped into loving only some idea of God, some culturally contrived notion of God, which has nothing to do with the experience of Him/Her/It/Whatever.  And here I pause as I’m at the threshold of silence, where all words become futile.

But when the “idea of God” is seen, and experienced for what it is, that being an idol, the theological teaching of God’s immanence and transcendence can become meaningful to one.  Yes, God is “out there” as well as “in here” and this intuitive insight can best be said as simply, “God is.”  And this God who we now see and feel “is” comes with a parallel development, the discovery of our own simple, bare, “is-ness” in what would be otherwise a cold and barren universe.  We discover our “zero-ness” which is so big it does cover everyone and everything, uniting us all.  In the Christian tradition we call this “the Spirit of God” which the Apostle Paul described as Christ and noted “by Him all things cohere.”

Jesus Said, “Let Go of Your Stuff!”

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My “literary license” has here been employed but I think that “let go of your stuff” is a good paraphrasing of the teachings of Jesus.  For example, this was conveyed in his observation that it would be easier for a rich man to enter the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven.  And in another place, he responded to a query re what one must do to have eternal life with the response, “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor.”  Now, I don’t think these words were to be taken literally but were merely his ways of pointing out how deeply attached humans are to their possessions, their “stuff.”  And his teaching that we find our self only in losing our self is another example of the same them.  This detachment from the material world was, and is, a motif in Eastern spiritual teachings as eastern thought reveals less of an investment in the object world.

 

In my culture, interpreting the teachings of Jesus as “Let go of your stuff” would real ring dissonant with most people.  For, we are very attached to our “stuff” and attached to such a degree that we can’t understand the notion.  Asking anyone to see this attachment is like asking a fish to see water.  And this attachment issue also pertains to spirituality for in the West we tend to approach faith as just another item in the category of “stuff” and so we glom onto it and proceed to exploit the hell out of it just as if it were like any of the rest of the “stuff” that we are so attached to.  And, in most cases it is!  And this is actually just a form of addiction and even if the object of our addiction….the substance is something purportedly noble…it is still an “addictive substance” in our case and thus is used to avoid reality.  And this is the reason that so much of modern day religion appears to be absurd to anyone with a capacity for critical thought as they can readily see that it has nothing to do with anything other than practitioner himself.  This is what Karl Marx had in mind when he described religion as “the opiate of the masses.”

 

Shakespeare understood this sin of misplaced concreteness so well, that sin of taking for real that which is only ephemeral.  He saw that our investment in “stuff” reflected a disregard for our subjective experience…our heart…in preference for an inordinate investment in the object world.  His conclusion was “within be rich, without be fed no more.”

Here is the entire Shakespearean Sonnet:

 

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Thrall to these rebel powers that thee array?
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.