It is a bit strange that as I approach 100 blog postings my mind turns to Milarepa and the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I say “strange” because this is the one tradition I have generally shyedaway from, know least about, and it least attracts me. But I do greatly admire and respect what I do know of this tradition, and it is very clear that there is much to be learned from it. In any case, suddenly I found myself inspired to reflect on Tibetan Buddhism as I am nearing that “magical” 100. At one point in my life, when I was spiritually lost, the story of Milarepa helped me get back on the Way. So the next two postings will be in this area of the religious journey.

Now the figure of Milarepa (11th Century) is the most widely known and most beloved figure among Tibetan Buddhists, and he has come to represent an iconic ideal for almost all spiritual seekers. His popularity in the West was enhanced by a classic English translation(also one in French) of a classic biography in Tibetan from the 16th Century. For those who are interested in this tradition the details of his life are rather well-known and need no repeating here. For those not so familiar with his story, they can easily get an account even on the internet. The story itself is fascinating, but its meaning and significance are not so easy to grasp. There is a fascinating account of the biographical tradition concerning Milarepa by Fr. Francis Tiso, Liberation in One Lifetime. It is not an easy read because it is a technical and scholarly treatment of the various biographies of Milarepa. But it show some of the nuances needed to read such a “holy man’s biography.”

There are various barriers to understanding and appreciatingTibetan Buddhism (and Buddhism itself). First of all there is the seemingly strange and esoteric language of Tibetan Buddhism. Secondly, even in this age there are rampant caricatures on both sides—Christian and Buddhist—of each other. This makes it hard for understanding to develop. Christians have a long history of misrepresenting what Buddhism teaches and conventional Christian piety simply has not a clue about what to make of any of it. Buddhists, on the other hand, still have a tendency to take that conventional piety or even something more simple and banal and call it the essence of what Christianity teaches. In other words, there is a certain tendency to set up a “Christian straw-man” and then demolish it by showing how shallow it is. Very few Buddhists are aware of what Christian mysticism really says. Finally, a more subtle problem is the sometime idealization on both sides. Buddhism, the Christian Church(especially Catholicism), Tibetan Buddhism, even Tibet, all these have their “idealizers.” And this also hinders true understanding. Both sides have things they should be ashamed of, and it would be best to admit that at the start.

Everything said above applies also to our understanding and appreciation of Milarepa. The fact that he exemplifies the most profound and intense commitment to a spiritual path does not mean that we abandon a sober eye. From the Foreward to Fr. Tiso’sbook by Roberto Vitali: “…Mid la(Milarepa) represents the greatness of self-imposed marginality taking preeminence over the pomp of self-celebrated authoritarianism. Despite the major role played by monastic life, marginality and seclusion never died out in Tibet: they have remained a vibrant undercurrent which is still resilient despite the many modern changes. It may seem strange to mention marginality when Milarepa is the most celebrated Tibetan of all times. Because one needs to brush aside the stereotypes built over his life that led to his transformation into a symbol and reintegrate a fuller perspective, Tiso’s work shows Mid la under a different light from the idyllic picture painted by his biographergTsang smyon Heruka.”

This kind of statement points in several different directions, but what is important is that it indicates certain kind of tensions within the Tibetan tradition that are not unfamiliar to western spiritual seekers. One of these is between the fully, formally monastic seekers and the non-monastic seekers. Milarepa was never a monk in the formal sense, yet he is the epitome of spiritual seeking. His teacher Marpa was a married layman. It is almost a cliché among westerners that Tibet is a “monastic culture”—largely true and yet there is this other vein that does not fit smoothly into the picture about these intense “non-monastic” hermit types like Milarepa or family men like Marpa. The official hagiography tries to smooth it all out but it still cannot but help show the inner tensions between the “monastics” and “non-monastics”. Interestingly enough this raises the whole question of the value of such questions as: “who is a monk?” This bedeviled our Desert Fathers, and today’s official Catholic ecclesial tradition draws sharp boundaries around thesekind of identities—thereby undermining the spiritual energy needed for Ultimate Realization, if you will, in favor rather of being a member of this or that group.

Now for another quote, this time from Fr. Tiso:
“It is at the very heart of this time of distraction and transition that we encounter the life and work of the great ‘Mad Yogin of g Tsang,” g Tsang smyon Heruka. He was one of a number of tantric practitioners at the turn of the sixteenth century who had acquired the reputation of being smyon pa, ‘mad’ saints. Their madness consisted in unconventional behavior that set them apart from the monks and even from the married tantrics…in their hill town gompas and townhouse bahals. These yogins practiced with great freedom in the lonely and terrifying places beyond the margins of society. Their hermitages were caves, cemeteries, forests, remote parts of the mountains, all places reputed to be infested with dangerous categories of beings…. they were as strange in appearance as they were provocative in word and deed. In reality, they were anything but mad, since they attained and were recognized for a high degree of holiness . They also produced a considerable body of liturgical and hagiographical literature. The Mad Yogin was perhaps the prince of smyon pa authors. His immortal Life of Milarepa is a masterpiece not only of Tibetan, but also of world literature.”

Tibet in the late fifteenth century was characterized by a large number of problems, both political and religious. Attempts at reform were in the air but the resistance of the old monasteries was strong. There were several reform movements but the “mad yogis” were the spearhead of one reform movement and the life ofMilarepa was an important instrument in their efforts. Here is Fr.Tiso again:

“The reform movements in the religious sphere were inseparable from violent feudal warfare that characterized the period. The social disarray inspired a search for new models of religious reform. The impressive group of ‘mad yogins’ represented to many Tibetans what was most essential and authentic in Tibetan Buddhism: a return to the values, practices, and hallowed life-styles associated with the early Indian mahasiddhas and their first Tibetan disciples…. Only a movement imbued with the religious credibility of real holiness could hope to re-conquer the heart of Tibet. The Mad Yogins’ ‘allergy’ to celibate monasticism seemed poised for a counter attack on the dGelugs reform program.”

The chief symbol of this movement was Milarepa who had never been a monk, who founded no monastery, was more like a poet and a saint who quickly became a legend.

As mentioned before, the basic trajectory of Milarepa’s life should not be unfamiliar to anyone from almost any tradition. Milarepa as a young man starts out badly, very badly. Lobsang P. Lhalungpa, the great translator of Milarepa’s Life, tells us this: “The moral consequences of his crimes dawn on Milarepa with heart-splitting agony and a consuming fear of the karmic consequences he must face…. For Milarepa it represents his first awakening to the sense of a deeper order in life a call from another level. This call to what in the text is termed ‘religion’ appears together with a shock of recognition. All along one has been obeying the wrong voice, and this is seen and felt. The second phase of Milarepa’s life begins.”

And here we come to a very important point in spiritual seeking: Milarepa’s desire for “personal salvation” from the consequences of his evil deeds does not come up to the highest levels of Buddhist realization and his teacher Marpa saw that Milarepa was fully capable of that, perhaps “in one lifetime, in one body.” Again, from Lhalungpa: “Milarepa’s drastic renunciation is in sharp contrast with the inward renunciation Lama Marpa had chosen. To both Marpa and Mila as to all Buddhists the sensory pleasures and cares of samsara are no doubt devoid of true benefit. In the case of those who are powerfully self-centered, renunciation of a normal external life may be like a shock treatment, a drastic means toward breaking loose from the grip of self-clinging and thereby leading on to higher awareness, new insights and ultimately into the reality behind appearances. Life and the seeking of the Dharma, whether through renunciation…or through any other means, are incompatible, so long as a personal liberation is desired. Even asceticism, as such, is utterly hollow and liable to be taken for a means to a personal goal. Milarepa’s renunciation aimed at gaining personal liberation and did not come up to the true spirit of Dharma until his inbred motive had been completely changed into the highest aspirations for emancipation on a universal scale according to the way of Boddhisattva… Marpa guided Mila’s journey of destiny along the course marked out by his karma…. Marpa was absolutely clear in his mind that this big-hearted little man whose mind was completely shamed and shattered could not gain the desired transformation by any normal training. Thus, as the condition for receiving the Dharma, Mila was required to fulfill a series of bitterly demanding and dispiriting tasks…. Milarepa struggles under the ordeals out of a need for himself. The son, whose mother declared ‘he has no willpower,’ proves himself to be a disciple of extraordinary patience and tenacity. It is only when he is brought to the brink of suicide that the ordeals are hastily ended… When the ordeals are over, his ‘great sins have been erased’ and his personal need has been mysteriously transformed and is felt now ‘for all sentient beings.’”

So Milarepa’s life becomes first of all a paradigm and an icon of spiritual seeking, but then it also becomes very useful for the propagation of various reform moments within Tibetan Buddhism.

Again, Fr. Tiso:

“The Mad Yogin made use of a great variety of written and oral sources to create a biography that reads like a novel. The impact of this work on the cultural life of Tibet has been comparable to an epic drama. It sets up the life of the homeless yogin as the highest ideal for those who seek to attain Buddhahood ‘in one body, in one lifetime.’ It elevates the mad yogin to the rank of a universal archetype or exemplar for the serious practitioner, and demotes the figure of the scholar monk from its position of primacy.”

Whatever one wants to say of the spiritual culture of Tibet before the Chinese brutalized Tibet, whatever one makes of the various “reform movements” within that tradition, it is important not to varnish the facts of that tradition or of any tradition. Tibet is a “mixed reality”; Tibetan Buddhism, especially as it came West and into the U.S. is definitely a “mixed reality.” But the figure ofMilarepa is an icon for all of us in whatever tradition we happen to be as long as we are true spiritual seekers. It stands as a beacon whether we are monks or lay people or whatever, beckoning us like the mantra from the Heart Sutra:

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!

Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, wow!

 In a sense interreligious dialogue is nothing new.  People from various traditions have been talking to each other for many centuries and borrowing ideas and practices from each other to enrich and expand each tradition.  It has been said that St. John of the Cross borrowed some ideas from the Sufis, and the Sufis imported some practices and methods from the early Christian monks.  Hindus and Buddhists seem to have reached the ancient Hellenistic world and had exchanges with the Neoplatonist thinkers and mystics in the West. Also, Buddhism borrowed stuff from the native shamanic religion of  Tibet, and so on, and so on.  However, in the 20^th Century, interreligious dialogue takes on a new intensity and scope, and there is a felt need to engage “the other” as never before.  We might attribute that to the simple recognition that we all better get along if we are to have a truly liveable planet.  This might be called an “ethical dialogue”–we discover we need to talk to one another and to cooperate on many levels if we are to ward off the dehumanization of our lives by war, violence,  famine, technological and economic manipulation, and finally global warming.  It is the recognition that truly “No man is an island.” 

 

But much more than that has also been unfolding in interreligious dialogue.  Perhaps for the first time there is a felt need on the part of many people in various traditions to encounter and engage “the other” precisely as “other.”  No longer, it is felt, that we can stay within the “fortress” of our own tradition, aloof from “the other.”  Nor is “the other” to be seen as a threat or an entity to be swallowed up or conquered.  No, that very “otherness” is to be respected and maintained and held in a kind of positive tension.  “Difference” is now seen as a gift which needs unpacking and unfolding until we discover its real Truth.  To borrow a term from Eastern Christian iconography, the “difference” between me and you is now to be seen as “the space of the heart.”  It is in this space, which is “our difference” that we sense the discovery of our One Heart.

 

 

Those of us who are members of the Christian West need a deep moment of profound repentance before we can truly engage in this kind of dialogue.  We have not dealt well with “otherness” or “difference.”  When Christian Europeans discovered the New World and encountered “the otherness” of the native peoples, they debated whether these people were to be considered as human beings.  Then they enslaved them or exploited them if not totally exterminating them.  Ultimately this shows a profound fear of “otherness” and a deep-seated arrogance at the heart of Western Civilization that most Westerners even today do not recognize.  It comes covered over with a thick veneer of benevolence dished out from a seeming position of a superiority engendered by all our marvelous gadgetry. It will take profound humility to even recognize this arrogance.  Now whatever problems other traditions carry that might impede this dialogue, their adherents must assess that themselves.

 

 

Interreligious dialogue has taken place on several levels.  On one level people from different traditions have come together to share and exchange views on matters of life experience, on matters of practices and methods, on solutions to practical problems, etc.  This is very good and it fosters friendships and collaborations that are very helpful.  But there is a level that is also very difficult: that of teachings, doctrine, claims made, historical statements, etc.  Here we run up against some interesting problems.  Again we will address the issues only from the Christian side.  Those from other traditions have to address these issues in their own way.

 

 

First of all we will just skip the problem of fundamentalism–it fears dialogue; it wants no part of dialogue.  Now institutional official Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism have fostered dialogue, but it seems so often that a “conversion dynamic” is at work deep down in these well-intentioned encounters.  What happens is that the “otherness” of “the other” is seen as only a kind of preparation for “our message,” and in a friendly way “the other”, given enough time and effort, can be transformed into a mirror image of ourselves. The actual theological position is of course more complicated and more multifaceted, but the gist of it is still a kind of reduction of the “otherness” to a surface reality. Strangely enough a similar problem lies at the other end of the dialogue spectrum.  Here also “the otherness” of “the other” is a surface reality, but in this case we can easily skip “that otherness” because it is merely in words or language, and then we move to a premature proclamation of oneness.  No transformation is needed because we are already one no matter how different and contradictory the teachings may seem.  Here also many are well-intentioned, but in attributing “difference” to mere word play or in the mere inadequacy of any tradition to “grasp the whole,” they miss the point:  “difference” is neither a superficial reality, nor a negative reality, but a gift with which and within which  we should abide together in love and freedom.

 

There probably is a need to mention some lived examples of the above.  Very well known is Thomas Merton.  Much, much less well known is Rabbi Ariel Bension.  He was a Sephardic Jew born in Jerusalem, and he was one of the first Sephardi to study in a modern European university.  He wrote a book that is also not well-known: The Zohar in Mulim and Christian Spain.  Rabbi Bension had intimate knowledge of both Kabbalah and Sufism.  During the last phase of his life he was a rabbi in Manastir, a Sephardic and Sufi center in the Balkans, where Jews frequented the Sufi assemblies of their Albanian and Turkish Muslim neighbors–that is before the Nazis and the Serbs massacred both.  Rabbi Bension died in 1932.

 

 

Somewhere Jesus in the Gospels says: “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”  This is a radical statement as it stands in its naked simplicity–not very comforting to the spirit of our times, nor of any times actually.  But let us broaden this saying even a bit more in the context of what we are discussing.  Each of our traditions is loaded with riches–we are rich in rituals, practices, teachings and doctrines.  Paradoxically enough these may become a real obstacle to our entering “the kingdom of God.”  Here let us listen again to the Sufi Bayazid Bastami: “The thickest veils between man and God are the wise man’s wisdom, the worshipper’s worship and the devotion of the devout.”  In a sense we have to pass “through the eye of the needle”–this is what it means to encounter “the other” (and of course from the theist perspective the Ultimate Other is God!).  As Jesus says, for man this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.  And that means giving ourselves to the process and letting it carry us to a place we never foresaw.  Now that does NOT mean jettisoning doctrines, teachings, etc. when they become inconvenient for what we think is unity.  But it does mean that we begin to feel that we need each other; that we need “the other” precisely as other; that what “the other” brings to the table begins to open up new dimensions of understanding of our own tradition.  This is only the first step.  We take it.  Then we see where the next step will be. We learn to live with “the otherness” of “the other”; we dwell with the “mystery of the difference” even as we open our hearts to “the other.”  Perhaps we will have some hard questions for “the other”; perhaps he/she will have some hard questions for us.  This is where we must not be impatient We may even discover that our own tradition is actually a mystery that needs to be rediscovered by us!  We may find a very big question lying at the very center of our heart, a question about our own identity(cf. Abhishiktananda).   Let us listen to the great German poet Rilke who was writing to a young beginning poet, but whose words are very applicable to our situation:

 

 “I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

 

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lao Tzu:

Thus it is said:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.

Yet it nourishes and completes all things.”

 

 

 

 

T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets:

(summing up the whole program of St. John of the Cross)

“In order to arrive at what you do not know,

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess,

You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not,

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know.

And what you own is what you do not own.

And where you are is where you are not.”

 

 

Abu Said, “Sufism is glory in wretchedness and riches in poverty and lordship in servitude and satiety in hunger and clothedness in nakedness and freedom in slavery and life in death and sweetness in bitterness…”

 

 

No matter what tradition you are following, if you are on the monk’s way, you will be familiar with the language above–it is the language of paradox and contradiction, and it is the only way that one can really speak of the deeper realities.  Now there are at least two critical mistakes to avoid when encountering such statements.  One mistake might be called “fundamentalist”; that is, one takes such statements in a kind of simplistic, literalist sense; one uses them as formulas or recipes in a spiritual cookbook.  The other mistake might be called a “liberal fallacy”–one takes such language as mere wordplay, or logical nonsense, or as a kind of manipulation of language which amounts to saying nothing.  But what is striking is that no matter what tradition you are following some form of this paradoxical language will be there.  No matter how that tradition uses that paradoxical language, it inevitably points to the “ungraspable” nature of the ultimate reality that the tradition is trying to open up for you–that is, it is ungraspable by the rational mind and the ego self.  Because the Ultimate Reality is not another thing in a world of things, the ego self experiences it as nothingness–there is “no thing” there to grasp, to possess, to manipulate, etc.  Yet this Ultimate Reality fills all, sustains all, is manifest by all, and finally it pertains to your deepest identity.

 

 

In Christianity we find many of its mystics and spiritual writers resorting to such paradoxical language as sampled above in the T.S. Eliot quote.  St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhart, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing are just a few of the more illustrious examples.  But what is important is that we find paradox right at the heart and origins of Christianity–in the Gospels and the New Testament.  There we learn that to be “first” one must seek out the last place; that to be “first” one must be the servant of all; that to save your life means you will lose it, and to lose one’s life means to save it; that to be the “greatest” one should be the “least”; that wealth is real impoverishment; that real blessedness can look and feel “real bad”; etc. The average Christian seems numb to the provocative nature of this language–in a sense it has been “dumb downed” to a general “feel good” message. Such language now takes its place among the other cliches and platitudes of pop culture–like Be Yourself…etc….

 

Now perhaps the most powerful of all paradoxes in all the world religions is not in the realm of language but in the realm of symbol: the cross, or in the Catholic tradition, the crucifix.  Here we may note in passing that there are different theological interpretations given to the cross vs. the crucifix.  Suffice it to say that the crucifix is more dramatic and concrete–the image of a man nailed to slabs of wood, dying a horrible death.  The cross can seem a bit more abstract and open to more abstract “readings.”  Before we go any further, it needs to be acknowledged that this symbol has been coopted for absolutely terrible uses.  Afterall the Crusaders carried the cross while committing slaughter of Moslems, Jews and even other Christians.  The Grand Inquisitor carried out his duty of leading people to torture and execution under this sign.  The Conquistadors did their dirty deeds while accompanied by priests carrying this sign.  Right in our own time in Serbia, right in the shadow of churches bearing this sign, Christians(so-called) massacred their Moslem neighbors.  Nevertheless these horrific distortions and betrayals, the cross, or the crucifix, carries the unconcealment of a Mystery that only the language of paradox can approach.

 

When one enters a Catholic church anywhere in the world, what strikes one is the centrality of the crucifix.  It is unmistakeable and unambiguous that whatever this reality speaks of is at the center of that community of worship.  And whatever be the different theological interpretations given to this symbol, it does point to the importance of this one man’s concrete, historical death by execution.  And Christian theology, whatever its various interpretations of this symbol, would always agree that the historical moment this symbol encapsulates is a most profound manifestation of the nature of the Ultimate Reality, which we call God.

 

 

Right from the beginning in the New Testament there are different theological readings of the significance of this man’s horrible death by execution.  But perhaps the most fundamental one and most important one brings us to the heart of the paradox that this moment signifies: God is totally present in the “most ungodly” place and situation.  Everything else flows from this fact–including the Christian Mystery of the Resurrection.  God is within this “nightmare and hell”–not outside as some external agent.  In the place and situation that seems most abandoned by God, in the darkness in which there seems not a trace of divine light or any kind of light, in the moment in which there is not a speck of happiness or hope, right there is the fullness of God present.

 

 

Louis Dupres has reflected most deeply and eloquently on this fact.  He has reminded us of that old American slave hymn, “Were you there when they crucified my lord?”  The slave sang this with his/her lips and knew in his/her heart that truly they WERE there because they ARE there–HE is truly being crucified in them, in their misery and wretchedness.  He is THERE where they are.  But Dupres does not stop with this observation–he brings it home to all of us.  Let us listen to him:

 

“Christian piety has always sought an intimate presence to Jesus’ Passion rather than a mere commemoration of the past….  To be with Him in the present of His agony and rejection when no triumph was in sight, that is to be where he really was.  But to be present to His hour means more than to be present there in feeling.  It means entering into the dark reality of my own suffering, lonelines and failure.  Only in the brokenness and pain of life am I with Him where he continues to live His agony….  Does it ever go beyond the pain of thin-skinned selfishness, the disappointment of vulgar ambitions, the frustration of unpurified desires, and the loneliness of self-inflicted isolation?  How dare I call what possesses so little dignity “suffering”?  Whenever I lift my eyes to the crucified Savior it is mostly to move away from my private misery, certainly not to move into it.

“Nevertheless, Christian piety teaches that very suffering of mine, however despicable and even sinful in its origins, is Jesus’s agony in me.  Comparing my pain with Jesus’s Passion may seem blasphemous.  But all suffering began with a curse.  His as well as mine.  Whether pain has its roots in private weakness and failure, or whether it is inflicted by an entire universe of weakness and failure, the effect remains the same.  To him who suffers, suffering means always failure.  Jesus’s words on the cross–My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?–do not express the attitude of one who is performing a clearly understood, effective sacrifice….

“Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree?”  Was I there in my suffering?  For that is where He is being crucified–in me, not in Jerusalem….  In this world there can be no grace but through redemptive suffering.  To encounter God’s agonizing grace I must walk into the bleak desert of my private pain and humiliation.  Perhaps I shall be able to accomplish no more than silently to accept my inability to accept.  But not more is expected: to confront my bitterness, rebellion, greed, jealousy, rage, impatience is to encounter Jesus’ agony in my own.  I must find Jesus’ agony also in those private worlds of suffering around me, which I am so reluctant to explore and so unable to comprehend.  Here also I am invited to accept, without understanding, Jesus’ agony in the uncouth, the uncivilized, the unlovable.  On Good Friday failure itself has become redemptive.  That Jesus fails in me is the joyous mystery of the union between God and me.”

 

Amen.

 

Here paradox has seemingly reached its limits within the Christian tradition.  But Meister Eckhart will take us further–another time.