“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Mt3:17 Baptism

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Mt 17: 5 Transfiguration

“You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Mark 1: 11 Baptism

“This is my Son, the Beloved.” Mark 9: 8 Transfiguration

“You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Luke 4: 22 Baptism

“This is my Son, my Chosen,…” Luke 9:35 Transfiguration

What to make of these profound words? Where to begin? From the standpoint of classic Christian Christology, these are words that point to Jesus’s identity. Church teaching and doctrine uses these texts as “proofs” of Jesus’s divinity. The classic language says that, yes, Jesus is fully human, but also he is fully divine. Thus he has two natures—whatever that means. And we “become divinized” “through grace.” Christian mystical experience always strained against this language for something deeper, but it lacked the courage and the language to express it in any other way. It was inevitably limited by the Hebraic and Greek namarupa of the early Church—this was the only language available to them. Abhishiktananda, who began his monastic journey with the classic language, broke out of these limitations in his encounters with the Advaita he learned and experienced in India. Christian theology as formulated in the West is inevitably dualistic, but Abhishiktananda pushed Christian mystical theology and spirituality toward a profound non-duality. Eventually his articulation became, at least in the eyes of some, “non-orthodox” if not downright heretical. If he had lived and published all his thoughts, he probably would have faced some kind of ecclesial censure given how the church has developed in recent decades. (See the discussion by an Indian Jesuit, George Gispert-Sauch, in an essay in the book “Witness to the Fullness of Light,” pp. 98-101 of a theological dissertation by an Indian priest, Santhosh Sebastian Cheruvally).

Abhishiktananda pushed at the boundaries of Christian language and formulations because his own experience compelled him to do so. Let us use an analogy from geology. The Himalayas are the product of enormous forces pushing against each other under the crust of the earth. This is called plate tectonics. Two huge plates, the Pacific Plate and the Eurasian Plate, are in collision and the point of contact produces this tremendous push upward that creates those mountains—but it does take millions of years. So it was with Abhishiktananda—within his heart there was a kind of spiritual plate tectonics taking place. The Christianity that he was formed in and the Advaita of the Upanishads in India collided in his heart and produced this enormous pressure that lifted him above everyone else so he could see farther than all others. Truly Merton’s influence is greater and very important, but I believe that Abhishiktananda is the deepest and most important religious figure of our time, but it may be a very long time before we see what he saw standing on that mountain of his heart. No matter….we shall try to see what we can through his eyes as much as possible….before our own eyes open up. So let us reflect on these incredible Gospel lines.

I still remember my 8th grade nun drawing on a blackboard with chalk a container and then “filling” that container with chalk dust. That was you, or rather “your soul,” and the white stuff was “grace.” She never explained really what grace was, but to be sure it was something good to have. To be in a state of grace was important for “salvation.” To have an empty container was to be in a state of sin, and so on. And you got this grace by going to Mass and keeping the commandments and so on. Of course this simplistic and really erroneous view is not what real Catholic theology taught. When I was older I learned from Karl Rahner that “grace” is not some kind of “stuff” but the Divine Reality itself. The language of grace is only another way of speaking of God’s Self-communication to us. Much better, but still basically dualistic. You still have this basic “human as container” notion where God “comes into” this “container.” The mystics always sought deeper expressions of what they experienced but Church doctrine always kept this fundamental dualistic fence around all such expressions. Abhishiktananda, toward the end of his life, totally transcended this limitation through the help of Advaita, which he saw as a Divinely given encounter which would eventually transform Christian theology and spirituality and recast it in terms beyond the limitations of the namarupa of its Hebraic and Greek origins.

For Abhishiktananda the human reality was not some kind of “container” to be “filled” with the divine reality—even if it is called “divinization.” All such language and those pesky little words like “in” are simply the fragments of namarupa pointing to the Ultimate Mystery. For Abhishiktananda the Ultimate Reality, which we call God, is also the Ultimate Mystery which can never be fully grasped in any language, in any set of concepts or in any set of symbols and it is always already THERE, or else you would not even exist. And human identity is lost in this selfsame Mystery. The human-divine reality is “neither one, nor two.” It is not “one” in the sense of “monism”—which is a caricature of much Asian religious thought—in which there is no “difference”—it is as if Jesus had said “I am the Father.” This would simply be another conceptual reductionism. But Jesus did say, “The Father and I are one.” This is not a numerical “one” but a pointer to a communion that is beyond all concepts and all understanding. Thus the Christian vision of advaita, in Abhishiktananda’s understanding, is the unspeakable mystery of non-duality within the Trinitarian Communion of the ultimate Christian namarupa of “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” In other words, we do not enumerate 3 different entities in the Christian mystery of the Trinity; nor does the human being stand as still “another entity” in relation to these 3. The relationship is “not one, not two.”

For Abhishiktananda religion was not a matter of “keeping commandments,” of God rewarding you for being good, etc.; and then God rewards you by coming “into your heart” and favoring you with “various graces.” No, the fundamental dynamic of all religion for him can be summed up in one word: Awakening. This Awakening is a growing awareness of that Mystery of Presence of that Ultimate Reality in the presence of one’s own existence, not apart from it. As Augustine expressed it, “God is closer to me than I am to my own self.” It is an Awakening to an unspeakable intimacy that no words or concepts can comprehend and which is always there.

In his own Awakening, Jesus was limited in his expression of it by the namarupa of his Jewish culture and religion. He was, of course, like a devout Jew fully aware of what his scriptures pointed to: the utterly Absolute and Transcendent Mystery which is the source of everything and which no human lips could name. But Jesus has this Awakening, which Abhishiktananda characterizes as an “explosion”—which is depicted in the three of the Gospels as his “Baptism.” When Jesus comes out of the water “the heavens are torn open”(in Mark—in Matthew and Luke, it is the more gentle “opened” but in Mark you get the more radical nature of the event); “the Spirit descends on Jesus; and a voice is heard. All these are the namarupa of this Awakening within Jesus of his non-duality with that Absolute Transcendent Mystery which he now calls “Abba, Father.” A term of great intimacy. And this because he hears within himself, within his own being, that Absolute Transcendent Mystery calling him into being, “You are my son.” Indeed. “That you are,” Tat tvam asi, as the Upanishads would put it. And the Holy Spirit, then, is the Sign and instrument of this “impossible” and unspeakable non-duality within a Communion. In the Transfiguration pericope this is further confirmed and then tied to the Paschal Mystery, the death and Resurrection of Jesus. More about this in a later posting.

Toward the end of his life, Abhishiktananda saw this Awakening in Jesus as the paradigmatic event. Everything else in life leads up to it and comes out of it. There is no place and no time that is “not suitable” for this Awakening. You could be a hermit living in the desert or a person with responsibilities in the urban jungle—no matter, this Awakening is what your whole life is all about. Apart from it, it is as Shakespeare put it on the lips of Macbeth: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And this Awakening is not just a momentary thing, though there are “special moments” when one as it were steps into a new awareness. But once started this Awakening goes on into Eternity – the Ultimate Reality of God can never be grasped but our being will know more and more of this reality and this will be an endless and unspeakable bliss. It is this for which we exist, and this bliss is already there at our fingertips in our very being: “You are My Son.”

Now a question arises: how much does one “privilege” the Christian language and symbols expressing this Awakening—the language of the New Testament and Church doctrine? Catholic teaching privileges it “absolutely”; Abhishiktananda, in the later years of his life, “relatively.” Absolute privilege means that you take this language as being absolutely true for all people and all times and places, and all religious expressions that “fall short” of this language are fundamentally inadequate and need to “convert.” Put more positively, all other religious expressions are incomplete and inadequate expressions of precisely what this language says, and the whole point of the Church is to “evangelize”—in other words to lead all people toward this “fuller” expression of the Mystery. In the last years of his life, Abhishiktananda no longer held that position. The experience and language of the Upanishadic rishis led him to see a “fullness” there, not an “inadequacy” in the manifestation in them of that Absolute Transcendent Mystery which we call God. I would certainly agree with him in that regard, only adding that my own convictions in this are also bolstered by the unspeakably profound experience and language of the Sufi mystics. For Abhishiktananda then, the role of the Church is precisely to point to that Awakening in all human beings, to be a witness of that Awakening, and, yes, to express it in terms of Jesus Christ but not exclusively. To be sure, for a Christian, the namarupa, the symbols and the language of Christianity should be maintained. One does not go deeper, one does not effect Awakening, by treating this language in a haphazard way, a kind of willy-nilly slave to linguistic fashion. Thus, a Christian mystic will still pray “to the Father, in the name of the Son, and through the Holy Spirit.” But he/she will understand this through his/her experience of non-duality within that Trinitarian Communion and thus in a completely new way. We shall return to this in another posting.

1. Maha Kumbh Mela.
If you are a spiritual seeker, India is a very special place and very enticing in its spiritual allurements. But recent news from India has not been very good lately. India, like a lot of large countries, is not immune from some very serious problems, both ancient and modern. But there is also lately some inspiring news from India. Every few years there is this gathering of India’s holy men and ascetics and gurus. This takes place in northern India every 3 years, and every 12 years there is this major gathering in Allahabad by the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers. HuffPo has some marvelous photos from this year’s gathering, which is supposedly the “world’s largest religious festival.”

Ash-smeared, naked sadhus make quite a scene. The images are not all edifying! But there is no denying the religious and spiritual intensity of these people and this gathering. No doubt the fakes and charlatans are there; no doubt the “weird” is also there. And there is much that is simply bewildering…like the use of cell phones and internet by people who have “renounced everything”. And one wonders about the emerging and growing middle class in India, which supports these sadhus with donations. How much of this is simply a kind of cultural reflex which will not endure under the increasing onslaught of modernity? How much of this is motivated by a need to keep “spiritual appearances” while pursuing the benefits of greed—India spends more money and uses more gold for jewelry than any other country in the world. You want to have the sadhus around to make it all seem very spiritual while the rest of society goes quite a different direction. This also took place in many Catholic settings with Catholic monks serving that role.

But then there is that silent sadhu who slips out of his forest dwelling or his Himalayan cave, in silence, without any self-promotion, partakes of the festival, then silently slips back to his abode. India has many such as these—the real ones, the silent sacraments of the Real. Of course we have our own large “religious gathering”—it’s called the Super Bowl, the sacrament of the unreal!

2. Two new books of some interest. One is a new history of the Vietnam War: “Kill Anything That Moves.” It lifts the fog of war and reveals how really, really bad we were—literally millions of civilians were killed. My Lai was not an aberration but a regular occurrence. This is a thoroughly researched work that does not allow the military to hide what happened.

On quite another note, there is a new book out by the Catholic historian, Garry Wills: “Why Priests?” It is so new that I haven’t seen it yet, but reading about it is intriguing. It presents a rather radical position—that the priesthood in the Catholic tradition is a totally “made-up” reality, fabricated by early church people who were more interested in power maintenance. Wills tries to show that there is no continuity between the modern priest and the apostolic church. It is purely a function of power, clerical power held very tightly. To someone who has grown up and has been educated within the Catholic tradition, this sure does sound radical and truly unbelievable. If someone else were saying this, I could easily dismiss this line of thought. But Garry Wills is a true and good historian and a longstanding Catholic. So it is not so easy to dismiss what he says. Just reading what has come out about this book makes one want to see more of his argument. It may have a revolutionary effect!!

3. Has anyone seen the story from Russia about a family of Old Believers who hid out in the Siberian wilderness for almost 50 years—they never even knew about World War II, they were so isolated? They were Old Believers, a sect of the Russian Orthodox, who thought that even the main Orthodox church had compromised with modernity. These people did not approve of any accomodation with Stalin, and so they headed off for the Siberian wilderness. It is so vast that it’s not hard to get lost there. Anyway, they lived there in isolation, like some radical hermits, totally cut off from the modern world. Until some Russian geologists surveying their area stumbled on them.

4. For a bit of diversion I have been reading about mountain climbers—especially in the Himalayas—and rock climbers. Fascinating folk. The kind of focus and determination required to do one of these world-class climbs is something that is badly needed in any spiritual journey. As Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to summit Everest, put it: “One does not conquer the mountain; one conquers one’s self.” What’s really inside you, what you are truly made of, all that becomes apparent as you hang on a ledge thousands of feet up!!

5. And finally there is this charming story of an urban hermit, actually a homeless person who turned his homelessness into something positive.

For some reason these days my thoughts turn to Ishi. Perhaps because he died on a March 25 day(in 1916)—it was March 25 when I made solemn profession as a monk. Very, very few people know the full story of this remarkable person. This inspite of a reasonably good book by Theodora Kroeber, “Ishi in Two Worlds,” which Merton read when it first came out, was deeply affected by the story, and wrote an essay on it. But Merton’s essay and book titled “Ishi Means Man” is seldom read—by contrast Merton’s most other stuff has sold in the millions. So let us ponder this amazing story a bit.

First a bit of history and geography. Around 1800 anthropologists estimate that there were something like 300,000 Native Americans in California. Already that number was way down from what had been there before the Spanish came. But by 1900 there were only about 20,000 left. Most had died from being exposed to white man’s diseases; but many also were just simply massacred in numerous acts of genocide—especially from the Gold Rush era on. These massacres took place all over California: at Yosemite, in the Central Valley, in the Sierra Foothills, on the Coast. Native Americans were killed as if they were wild animals. They were in the way of “Progress.” When the Native Americans fought back, the retaliation and retribution was always a hundred fold.

From a Humboldt Times editorial in 1860: “It is as impossible for the white man and the wild Indian to live together as it is to unite oil and water.”
And from the Red Bluff Independent editorial, a more explicit statement: “It is becoming evident that extermination of the red devils will have to be resorted to.”
And from the Chico Courant: “It is a mercy to the red devils to exterminate them…. Treaties are played out—there is only one kind of treaty that is effective—cold lead.”
As you can see from this sample, the genocide of the Native Americans was mainstream policy, not just the work of a few crazed extremists. As the historian Douglas Sackman points out in his book, “Wild Men,” “In 1855 a white man could show up in Shasta City with the severed heads of Indians and receive five dollars for each one…. Indian-hunting militias submitted their expenses to the state government. Such men were paid over a million dollars in 1851 and 1852 alone. The State of California subsequently appealed to the federal government to cover these expenses, and for the most part it did. The blood money was paid out to further what Anderson called a ‘general clean-up’ of all Indians who ‘infested’ the land.”(p.32)

Ishi, who was born sometime around 1860, was a member of the Yahi tribe, whose ancestral home was in the beautiful wilderness area that lies today in the Lassen National Forest, east of Red Bluff and north of Oroville. In the 1870s a series of massacres took place that wiped out his tribe. No one knows for sure how long Ishi lived in incredible solitude in an area that is even today so remote that it is hard to get to. One day in 1911, in desperation because he was starving, he walked out of his wilderness into the outskirts of Oroville. Eventually he was taken care of by anthropologists at UC Berkeley and died from TB in 1916. There is a Trappist monastery at Vina, California, just a couple of hours away from the Ishi Wilderness area. I wonder if they realize the blood-stained ground that is under their feet.

Ishi was a veritable “Last of the Mohicans” as he was the last of the Yahi. Today some believe that in fact Ishi was of mixed blood, maybe a member of two tribes. In diminishing numbers the Natives who lived in that area were often forced to intermarry to survive. Regardless, he was totally “uncontaminated” by white culture when he came out of the wilderness. The anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber, gave him the name “Ishi” which in Yahi means “man,” a human being. What is especially interesting is that in Yahi culture you do not ask someone their name; it is a kind of secret. This Merton found amazing and haunting. Ishi’s real name was never known; something that he carried in his heart. Merton found this to be a sacrament and symbol of that “secret name” by which God calls us into existence out of infinite love. It is a name known by God alone. Speaking of identity(see previous posting), Ishi is simply a human being. One’s real identity is lost in the Mystery of God.

Here is what Theodora Kroeber said in her book: “Personal identity for man in modern Western civilization resides first of all in the family name to which he is born. At birth, or within a few days after, there is added the personal name bestowed by the parents, confirmed by the religious rite of baptism, and made legal and official by its formal recording in the books of the county clerk along with the family name and the exact place and time of birth. It is both a public name and the name by which individual is known to his family and friends….
The stranger whom the dogs held at bay outside the slaughter house was nameless; his jail name became ‘The Wild Man of Oroville.’… Reporters demanded to know his name, refusing to accept Kroeber’s word that the question was in the circumstances unmannerly and futile…. A California Indian almost never speaks his own name, using it but rarely with those who already know it , and he would never tell it in reply to a direct question. The reporters felt, not unnaturally, that they were being given ‘the runaround.’ …the museum people were themselves saying they must have something by which to call the Yahi…. Kroeber felt more pushed than did his nameless friend who remained relatively detached not understanding most of what was said, and standing quietly by Indian custom so far as he did understand. Said Kroeber, ‘Very well. He shall be known as ISHI.’ He regretted that he was unable to think of a more distinctive name, but it was not inappropriate, meaning ‘man’ in Yana, and hence not of the private or nickname category. Thus it was that the last of the Yahi was christened Ishi, and in historic fact became Ishi…. He never revealed his own private Yahi name. It was as though it had been consumed on the funeral pyre of the last of his loved ones. “

And Theodora Kroeber again: “…the commonest initial inquiry of a white traveler made to a strange California Indian took the form, ‘Who are you?’, to which the usual Indian answer was, ‘I am a person.’ What else was he to answer? It was a rude question, whether rudely meant or not. One did not say one’s name, certainly not to a stranger. One belonged to the people. One was a person. As for the saltu, Ishi’s name for the white race, it means a being of another order, a non-human, a pre-human….”

Merton found it fascinating that Ishi simply means Man, a human being. He could not help but comment on our destructiveness toward these people. We are participants in the destruction of mankind itself; in destroying the Yahi, we were destroying ourselves. Sad and tragic that this is going on all around the globe. Merton was also haunted by the solitude of Ishi. There was a depth of solitude there that was almost unspeakable. Ishi, like Merton himself, was not a natural loner—he liked the company of people; but both a physical solitude and a deep spiritual solitude was to be his “home.”

Kroeber has this to say about the early Native Americans of California:
“The California Indian was, in other words, a true provincial. He was also an introvert, reserved, contemplative, and philosophical. He lived at ease with the supernatural and the mystical which were pervasive in all aspects of life. He felt no need to differentiate mystical truth from directly evidential or ‘material’ truth, or the supernatural from the natural: one was as manifest as the other within his system of values and perceptions and beliefs. The promoter, the boaster, the aggressor, the egoist, the innovator, would have been looked at askance. The ideal was the man of restraint, dignity, rectitude, he of the Middle Way”(p.23).

There is not much more to add to this sad story. But every monk and every spiritual seeker should see his/her solidarity with Ishi. Not to mention the changes we need in how we look at our national history and identity. What has happened to the Native Americans is almost unspeakable. Those who survived the genocide were not given their own homeland, like the Jews in Israel, but herded into reservations where their whole world, both inner and outer, was gutted out. It is a very sad, a very unfortunate, a very tragic fact that the Native Americans never had their own Gandhi. The Ghost Dance movement was totally ineffective because it was totally spiritual and never developed a social strategy to combat “the white devils.” The Chiefs who handled their matters in the 19th Century mostly believed in negotiating with the white intruders. The resultant treaties were not worth the paper they were written on. So many Native Americans completely lost their inner orientation and their native spiritual gifts and tried to become like “whites.” So many sold out and endorsed casinos and coal mining on the rez, etc—all of course for the so-called economic good of the people. Instead of going deep within themselves and totally rejecting white values and killer culture, so many simply tried to be “white” and of course mostly they failed and so the despair. The kind of violent confrontations that AIM promoted in the 1970s was also futile and just what “The Man” wanted because whitey can deal with that quite effectively. The solution for the Native American is almost diametrically opposite of what its current leadership is pointing to. But, alas, this is just another white man speaking!!!

Identity is a burden. Strange way of putting it. Culture and civilization are almost inextricably linked to this dynamic at various levels of our being. Our self-conscious mode of existence makes us claim, “I am this” or “I am that”….”I am…….”—fill in the blank any way you want. I am healthy. I am beautiful. I am wise. I am an American. I am a Christian. I am wealthy. I have gone to an elite school. I drive a Mercedes. I am good at…. I am devout. I am a monk. I am one of the poor. Etc., etc. We invariably make such claims as our identity one way or another. Because we are in history and social beings with self-awareness, we develop these various “markers.” There is this mysterious mirror of sorts that we constantly look into to see who we are. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the….of them all?” Indeed. Some of these identities are obviously very superficial, others seemingly very deep, and some are “truly me”—so you think.

It is not the truth or factuality of such a statement that is in question. We are in fact a certain “somebody” with some markers of various sorts and in a sense we belong to a certain group and share certain features with other members of this group, but all this becomes a real burden when such an identity statement becomes another possession that will need protecting, guarding, holding onto—in other words that this is my core reality, the “real me.” But in fact all identities that we can look at and claim are “loseable” and therefore a source of a very deep anxiety because we believe we stop existing once they are “not there”—especially the so-called deep ones. Also the bewildering thing is that this burden will be the same no matter how I fill in the blank. “I am a hermit who spends his time praying.” Or: “I am a businessman who spends his time making as much money as I can.” Really, “good identity” or “bad identity” does not matter in a sense. That dynamic of claiming to be “this” or “that”, to be “somebody” is in itself the burden that needs to be addressed.

Pop culture thrives on this dynamic. There is a fancy slick magazine with a big ad: BE SOMEBODY. Perhaps you will recall that old movie, “On the Waterfront.” The Marlon Brando character is lamenting to his brother about how his brother had betrayed him, “I could’ve been a contender. I could’ve been somebody.” Within the context of society, it is truly death to be nobody. In order to be “somebody,” society gives you a number(actually many numbers); it points at you with a certain name and a certain description; it invites you to be unique through its various accouterments; it urges you to promote yourself through a resume; it holds up a mirror of pop culture for you to look at yourself and hopefully to gain approval; etc. etc. This identity thing is the most addictive thing there is. And here I will repeat my favorite quote from Kurt Vonnegut: “A guy with the gambling sickness loses his shirt every night in a poker game. Somebody tells him that the game is crooked, rigged to send him to the poorhouse. And he says, haggardly, ‘I know, I know. But it is the only game in town.’” The identity game seems to be the only game in town. So it is played, and so much of modern life depends on this playing. Thus we end up inevitably being “losers.” The game is fixed. We can’t help but lose. Thus that burden of the deep anxiety because all “possessions” will invariably be lost.

There are these “thieves” who can come and steal away these kinds of possessions: illness, criticism, getting old, a failure in some endeavor, etc. etc. But the biggest and most comprehensive and most unavoidable thief is Death. No identity that shows up in that mirror can survive this thief. I say “unavoidable” because in fact so much of modern psychic life is energized by a fear of death, by a denial of death. Who am I after I lose all these identities? Now every spiritual tradition addresses this issue in one way or another. We have already touched on this subject in a previous posting in the series: Foundations & Fundamentals: The Self, and really all over the place because this is such a central topic in any serious spirituality. The identity game must be left behind; the mirror must be shattered; the knot of identity must be undone and dissolved. But how? Social identity will always be there one way or another, but it is the sense of self that is at stake. If our sense of self is misidentified as one of these “loseable” realities, we are lost in this game. A kind of liberation is called for.

Recall the language of apophasis, as in apophatic theology and apophatic mysticism. It speaks of the ultimate unknowability of God, of God as Ultimate Mystery. Whatever we say of God, there has to be a kind of unsaying because God is not this or that. In other words the identity of God is not graspable by us in any way, but we will gain more and more of this knowledge through eternity and yet never reach the end. The most radical apophatic mysticism can be found in Christian mysticism from Pseudo-Dionysius to John of the Cross and in Hindu mysticism in the Upanishads. The “neti, neti” of the latter text is a radical “unsaying” of whatever it is that we affirm of God. Now if we push this a bit further, we will see that our own identity, in its truth and essence, is lost in the Mystery of God, and that also is not graspable as some kind of social identity. Thus there is a very real apophasis of identity for us. Our true identity which nothing and no one can take away is lost in the Mystery of God where we are “neither two, nor one” with Him. The reality is unsayable.

Think of Jesus in the Gospels. All kinds of identity statements there—the game is being played with great vigor: Son of Man, Son of God, Son of David, prophet, Nazarene, “Joseph’s son,” “messiah,” “the one who is to come,” etc., etc. But in the midst of all these “sayings of identity” there is interwoven a kind of “unsaying of identity.” The whole pericope about the Temptation in the Desert is a kind of purging of false or superficial identities. Ultimately this leads to the Cross where all superficial identities and so-called deep identities are wiped out. And the Gospels have this repeated invitation to “this Cross,” the “narrow gate,” the “eye of the needle,” etc. It is too often assumed that the dispossession that Jesus talks about is simply external things. These are there but they are more like a pointer to the fundamental dispossession of identity that is truly a huge burden on our being, which we hardly recognize until the moment of liberation.

When Jesus invites his disciples to be “like little children,” he is not inviting them to an infantile regression or to make pious faces(as Merton would put it) in a kind of make-believe humility. The child in that social setting was not the same as the child today—he/she had absolutely no social standing until they entered adulthood. The child was literally a “nobody” until he/she entered adulthood through some initiation. Thus this is an invitation to a kind of “nobodyness.” Or at the very least of a true stripping of all these social facades that we hold so dear. Then there is the place in the Gospels where Jesus invites us to trade the kind of “treasure” that “moth and rust” can eat away or a thief can steal away for the “treasure” that cannot be so affected. Among other things this is an invitation to a new sense of identity, to one that cannot be lost to any thief or process. Finally he also invites us to lay down our “heavy burden” and pick up his “burden and yoke” which is easy and light. Again, it is a shift in our awareness of who we really our. Our real identity is in Christ, or in our oneness with Christ in our hearts and this is untouchable by any thief, even death. As St. Paul tells it, put on the mind of Christ. Consider now this quote from Paul (Romans 8: 35-39):

​“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul is pointing at our real identity which is one with Christ, which makes us inseparable from him and so plunged into the total Mystery of God which in the language of the New Testament is called “Father,” “Abba.” The Ultimate Mystery is brought “home,” brought into an intimate relationship of unspeakable unity. No matter how eloquent Paul is about all this, I still think our Sufi friends put it as well if not better. Consider this quote from Bukhari(81:38): “When I [Allah] love my servant…I become the hearing with which he hears, the seeing with which he sees, the hand with which he grasps, the feet with which he walks, the tongue with which he speaks.” The “I” which we treasure so much, dress up so much with so many identities, which is such a big burden then, becomes extinguished as it were; and the “I” of God takes over the whole being. We dare go no further in our language!

Recent Notes

1. THE OTHER ISLAM—that is the title of a fascinating book by Stephen Schwartz, a journalist and executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism.
The story Schwartz narrates covers a lot of ground both in time and place, but his primary concern is to relate how the Sufi movement fares today around the globe. Islam as a whole, as a great world religion, is quite a varied phenomenon, and Sufism as well is not a uniform movement. The story tells of saints, of holy people, of good people, and alas it also has its villains, and among the chief “bad guys” is the Wahhabi movement centered in Saudi Arabia among the Sunnis. Powered by the oil wealth of the Saudis, the Wahhabis emerge as the nastiest and most virulent fundamentalist movement in all religions. It is from them that the Taliban and Al-Quaeda have been born and a host of other lesser known violent religionists. Westerners might not know it, but the Wahhabis hate Shia Sufis more than even the Jews or the Christians. That’s how crazy things can get. They forment all kinds of violence in their fanatical religious zeal—even against their fellow Moslems, and the sad fact is that most Westerners do not understand the nature of the problem. The U.S. is, afterall, an ally of Saudi Arabia, so our national media hardly points out that most so-called problems with “fanatical Moslems” comes not from Iran or Iraq but from Saudi Arabia.
What is really interesting is the presentation of the various kinds of Sufi presence in the Balkans in Europe(where fanatic Christian Serbs murdered so many of them), and in far-off and “mysterious” countries like Uzbekistan and Turkestan, where paradoxically some of the most progressive Sufis live. Not to mention the Sufis of Iran, and perhaps the most surprising, the Sufis living in Israel.

2. John Daido Loori, an American Zen teacher: “So, what is the self? What is it that sits here? What is it that thinks and feels? What we usually call the ‘self’ is this bag of skin; we consider everything inside the bag of skin to be ‘me’ and everything outside of it to be the rest of the universe. When we separate ouselves from the rest of the universe, then, obviously, everything we need is out there, outside our self. And so, the consequences of the illusion of self are desire, thirst, craving, need–which in turn form the roots of suffering.”
The essence of advertising and the main engine of what drives our economy is based on this “disease.” So what would happen if the majority of people were liberated, enlightened?

3. The post-election blahs have begun. The Republicans are as crazy as ever and border on extinction. Anyone who thinks the Dems have answers to our problems simply are not listening to their language carefully enough. The future is not very promising as long as our political discourse is limited to what these two parties have to say.
A new movie out—Zero Dark Thirty—ostensibly tells the story of Bin Laden’s killing. Notwithstanding that it is by a talented woman director and makes a big point to show a woman CIA analyst as a chief character responsible for finding this villain, the fact is that this movie is a horrible piece of propaganda. In an almost off-hand way it justifies the use of torture—apparently an important piece of information was obtained that way—and so the move is a propaganda piece for torture. Anything to keep us “safe.”
Again some of the best commentary on our current social situation comes from Noam Chomsky—as in this link:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13279-noam-chomsky-post-election-we-need-more-organization-education-activism

4. The recent shooting of the children has provoked various kinds of responses. Although the call for greater gun control is quite understandable and certainly a good cause (afterall why does anyone really need assault type of weapons?), the problem is that this provides only a diversion, a diverting from what really ails us. You can see it also in the way the story is told: “Evil has visited us.” The problem is “something out there” which threatens us. Never mind our drones that kill quite indiscriminately in addition to their so-called target; never mind the insane wars in which hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, women and children included. These are, of course, killings out there somewhere where our supposed threats lie in wait to destroy us. It comes as a shock(mostly to white, well-to-do folk) when the killings emerge from within “our world.” Who could have guessed we are capable of this kind of thing. Surely the person is a deranged anomaly, something we can put a “fence” around and contain as we go on killing other folk. We supposedly can fix “the problem” with a bit of gun control. Unfortunately “the problem” is that we are “killers” and have been so from the beginnings of this country. To borrow a phrase from the ‘60s: killing is as American as apple pie. From the landing of Columbus, when he pillaged, raped, enslaved and murdered thousands of Native Americans, to the Pequot War right in Connecticut around 1638 where a bunch of English colonists and some Indian allies butchered a whole Pequot village of women and children—they actually burned them to death, and the Indian allies of the English abandoned them in disgust because they had never seen such blood-lust. And then, to Wounded Knee, when that brave American cavalry gunned down a whole village of Lakota in the 1890s. And so it goes…. Richard Slotkin has written a masterful trilogy documenting our national obsession with guns, with killing “the other” who poses a “threat.” The first book was titled Regeneration Through Violence. In detailed fashion he analyzes the spirit of “violent solutions” that became the driving force of American colonization and expansion. He goes on in the next two books The Fatal Environment and Gunfighter Nation) to explode the myth of the West. Of course these are social and psychological views of “the problem” and while badly needed and helpful they do not push all the way to the heart of the matter.

5. An obscure but significant story showed up in the National Catholic Reporter a while back. It appears that there is this spirituality center in Wisconsin, a retreat center of sorts, a place of prayer, run by two Catholic sisters but with a clear ecumenical identity. They are open to people of all religious traditions and incorporate various prayers, sayings, and teachings from all these traditions. Now it is reported that the Catholic bishop of that area has written a letter to all Catholic institutions telling them not to participate in the spirituality of this center. In other words Catholics should not make retreats there, and whatever these sisters publish about prayer or spirituality should not be used in any parish, and the sisters are not allowed to give any talks in the diocese. And so on. Interesting. This is almost beyond comment. This kind of bishop and this kind of church can exist and go on for a very long time, but it will be lifeless and dead and simply exist through a kind of external “wall-building”. And there are many people who psychologically need these kind of walls in order to affirm themselves. But to borrow from Robert Frost: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

6. Modernity invades a country and the culture changes and it doesn’t look good for contemplative monasticism. Old story; new setting. Here is the link to the New York Times with the sad details:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/thai-buddhist-monks-struggle-to-stay-relevant.html?_r=1&

7. Let us end with one of my favorites, Han Shan (“Cold Mountain”):
​What is the saddest thing in the world
​the rafts of sin people build to reach Hell
​ignoring the man in the clouds and cliffs
​with one thin robe for the shores of his life
​in autumn he lets the leaves fall
​in spring he lets the trees bloom
​he sleeps through the Three Realms free of concern
​with moonlight and wind for his home.

And:
​Cold Mountain owns a house
​with no partitions inside
​six doors open left and right
​from the hall he sees blue sky
​wherever he looks it’s bare
​the east wall greets the west
​nothing stands between them
​no need for anyone’s care
​he makes a small fire when cold comes
​cooks plants when hunger arrives
​he isn’t like the old farmer
​enlarging his fields and sheds
​creating nothing but hell-bound karma
​once begun it never ends
​think this over well
​think and discover the key.

And finally:
​Idle I called on an eminent monk
​amid ten thousand mist-covered mountains
​the master himself pointed the way home
​the moon held up its lone lantern.
​​​(all translations by Red Pine)

Lesson: do not mistake the finger “pointing the way home” for the home!

There is a Sufi saying that goes something like this:  Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God.  This has to be understood within the context of a basic Islamic prayer ritual, the call to prayer five times a day. Now like any devout Moslem the Sufi will turn toward Mecca during that time of formal prayer.  It is a spatial orientation which has both historical roots and symbolic importance.  A human being becomes involved with many things in the course of his/her day both in body and in mind.  So it is good and important to “reorient” human attention toward the Ultimate Reality.  The Moslem does this five times a day by turning his body toward Mecca and his mind and heart toward God.  The Sufi does this also, of course, but his inner dynamic is to be “turned” in that “direction” at all times and all places.  In fact, when pushed to its final realization, there is no more “turning” because there is no more of the ego “I”—it is totally taken over by the “I” of God.  There is no more “the face of God” because the Ultimate Reality is no longer a dualistic “thou” out there. Again, from the Sufis:  When we reach perfect servanthood, it is God himself who says “I.”  As Abhishiktananda would say,  the Sufi, in his “turning” transcends the “nama-rupa,” the forms and names, of his religious path—not by doing away with them but by penetrating their inner meaning.

 

In Christianity our “turning” is primarily “temporal.”  In Advent we are invited to turn “toward the future,” toward the so-called Second Coming.  I say “so-called” because the nature of the Second Coming is a real bone of contention within Christianity.  Fundamentalists and conservative Christians seem to hold to a literal meaning when history ends at some moment in time and Jesus returns and so on following the Biblical language.  Those who read these texts with more nuance and recognize its symbolic language, its mythopoetic quality,  still look toward the future, but this time we might call it an Absolute Future, a moment when there will be a summation of all history in the person of the Risen Christ.  A time of fulfillment if you will—we have a partial realization of God now; in the “future” comes a “fullness.” So it is a season of hope, of expectation, of yearning and reaching for that Future. But the deeply contemplative person will still be puzzled and bothered by this language—it seems to place the reality of Christ somewhere “out there”.  Listen a bit to Abhishiktananda:

 

“Advent…in which I took such delight twenty or thirty years

ago, now says so little to me, even though its poetry contains

infinite echoes, far beyond the disappointing words.  Who is

coming? And from where?  In order to experience Advent as in

time past, I should have to be able to remove myself from the

blazing Presence, and dream that it was still ‘coming’.  Not a

‘waiting’, but an awakening should constitute a Christian

liturgy.”

 

The deeply contemplative experience is to abide continually in the Absolute Divine Presence, and so the Christian contemplative struggles to make sense of this “turn” toward the future of any kind.  What are we to do?  What are we to make of all this?  The “turning” is perhaps an “awakening.”

 

The other great “turning” that the Christian is invited to is toward the so-called First Coming, the feast of Christmas, the mystery of the Incarnation.    Here too the language is problematic and even covered over with all kinds of extraneous symbols, myths and “decorations.”  Thus, Santa Claus, gift giving, Christmas trees, etc., etc., have nothing to do with this but now it is inextricably connected to it.  So it complicates this “turning” back to that moment in time.  But if we strip away all the “nama-rupa,” all the symbology, all the extraneous stuff, we find ourselves turning toward the Mystery of God in this person of Jesus Christ.  What we are to make of this will depend on our theology concerning the reality of Jesus, and this thicket we are not going to enter in this particular posting.  Suffice it to say that Abhishiktananda, to take a crucial example, changed quite radically in his understanding of the Christ event toward the end of his life.  Some in the Church would even say that it was no longer “orthodox.”  Be that as it may, what is important is that we are continually answering that question that Jesus himself asked in the Gospels:  “Who do men say that I am?”

What is truly interesting is how the Eastern Church handles this material.  It certainly admits the language and the symbology of the Second Coming, but it almost seems to downplay the Nativity, Christmas Day.  It’s big liturgical moment is Epiphany, where you have this mythopoetic depiction of the Three Wise Men coming to be in the Presence of God in the person of this child.  “Epiphany” really means a manifestation—in fact the three feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and the Baptism of Jesus are termed a Theophany: a manifestation of God.  So the Eastern Christian is invited to turn toward this manifestation of God, and in the hesychast tradition that becomes one with a turning toward the heart in which God is one with us.

 

Another interesting thing:  the New Testament writings are very unequal and divided over the emphasis they place on these “Comings.”  For example, Paul has significant Second Coming language but he seems not to care at all about the First Coming.  If we had only his letters, there would be no Christmas!  Among the Gospels, Mark and John both lack First Coming language and almost totally absent in Second Coming language except in a very nuanced and hidden way.  On the other hand, both Matthew and Luke have rich details in both cases.  So these accounts do vary in the emphasis they place on which “turning” is important.  This is not to say that we can pick and choose, but that there is a difference in emphasis, and a contemplative may find himself/herself more at home with John, like Abhishiktananda did.

 

One final point: my favorite turning: the thief nailed to the cross next to Jesus turns to him and says, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus replies: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”(Luke 23: 42-43)  This is perhaps the truest, most fundamental turning.  It is done by a person who has no resources, no self-image left, no “goodness,” no merit, no “good works,” no value, no status, no religious identity, no spiritual practice—except this one: he “turns.”  And he turns toward Jesus, and that is ok and not some kind of crude dualism or superficial piety.  He turns toward Jesus because in history, in time and place, we need to turn somewhere, and Jesus is given to us, the “Gift of Godness” that manifests the Presence of God within us regardless of our condition in time and place.  When we recognize that in our hearts, we can say with our Sufi friends:  Whichever way you turn, there is the Face of God.

On the Internet you can find this very interesting and challenging presentation by the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi.  He is a monk of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, and the title of his talk is:  “Whatever Happened to the Monastic Sangha?”  Here is the link to the whole talk.

http://awakeningtruth.org/blog/?p=181

The problems Bhikkhu Bodhi presents are in one sense peculiar to the Buddhist tradition, but in another sense they raise questions and challenges for all within the monastic traditions and contemplatives in general.   First of all comes the problem of the presence, or one should say the lack of presence, of the monastic sangha (community) within American Buddhism.  The monastic sangha  has been traditionally the “torchbearer” of the Buddha’s message, but in the U.S. the most prominent teaching roles in several Buddhist traditions have been taken over by the laity.  The Sangha as custodian of the Dharma almost vanishes.  True enough, the situation in modern Asia has its own problems.  In the Theravada countries and in Japanese Zen there are many temple monks who are merely ritual enactors, but there are the so-called forest monks who still are serious practitioners of meditation and renunciation.  Lay Buddhists still support these monks as in pre-modern days and still look upon them as custodians of the Dharma, but they are also very serious students and practitioners.  They are fully informed about Buddhist teaching and doctrine as a full religious tradition and not just a technique of meditation.

According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, modern Western students of Buddhism come from a very different stance of consciousness.  They come with what he calls “existential suffering,” or a fundamental lack within themselves.  This is their primary motive, and in this case the Dharma takes on a role as “existential therapy” to fill a hole at the bottom of their hearts.  Here is an acute quote:

“They are seeking above all a practice that they can integrate
into their daily lives in order to transform the felt quality of
their lives.  They aren’t seeking explanations; they aren’t seeking
a new religion; and generally, they aren’t seeking a new system of
beliefs.  They come to the Dharma seeking a radical therapy, a
method that will provide them with concrete, tangible, and
immediate changes in the way they experience their worlds….
And most Buddhist teachers…are presenting the Dharma as
exactly that.  They are presenting the Dharma as a practice, a way,
a path, that will help ameliorate this disturbing sense of
existential suffering.”

In the Theravada branch of Buddhism, the primary practice that is taught is intensive mindfulness meditation—Vipassana.   In the U.S. this is primarily a lay movement which shows no evolvement into any monastic sangha.  The natural trajectory should be a movement of some kind toward monastic renunciation, toward “homelessness.”  According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, the main reason for this is due both to what the modern Westerner is motivated by and by what he/she is taught.  They are basically cheated out of understanding their condition truly and deeply, their samsaric predicament, and of being able to really follow Buddhism to cure what “ails” them.  Here is another powerful quote:

“If one keeps on feeding them adaptive presentations of
the Dharma, feeding them teachings and practices that
are designed to enrich their lives, but does not steer them
towards the ultimate truth that transcends life and death,
steer them towards a vision of the face of the Deathless,
then one is not serving as a fully responsible transmitter
of the Dharma.”

Bhikkhu Bodhi points to the book Buddhism Without Beliefs as an example of the problem—a presentation of Buddhism without the traditional Buddhist doctrine, as if such a thing were really possible.  The basic equation is: Dharma equals mindfulness meditation equals bare attention.  The really devastating thing is that mindfulness meditation as a therapeutic technique becomes simply a subtle reaffirmation of samsara—certainly not a liberation into ultimate truth.

Bhikkhu Bodhi again:
“Mindfulness meditation is thus being taken out of its original
context, the context of the full Noble Eightfold Path—which
includes right view…and also right intention as including the
intention of renunciation and right morality as including various
factors of restraint over bodily and verbal behavior…and it is
being taught as a means for the heightening and intensification
of experience simply through being attentive to what is
occurring in the present moment.”

One outcome of all this is the decline of the monastic path because renunciation is now no longer an essential step on the path but just  one option among others.  If that were the case, the question rises up why did the Buddha establish a monastic order of celibate monks?

Now for those of us who are not Buddhists there are in all this many interesting questions, parallels, and insights.
1.    For those engaged in interreligious dialogue or wishing to engage other traditions, we note here the problems associated with trying to “import” a practice from outside its traditional context.  Practices without the associated doctrine can simply be a distortion of what you are trying to do.  Yet we also must point out that doctrine always needs “unpacking” as it were and not merely conceptual adherence.  Whether it be Christian theology or Buddhist Dharma, the danger of fundamentalism lurks or a more subtle kind of blockage which makes progress in a truly deep sense very difficult.  The obvious example of all this is Abhishiktananda, who had to struggle for years with trying to make his Advaita experience reconcile with his native Christian language.  It is not simple or easy.

2.    Catholic contemplative monks have also experienced a dramatic decline in the modern West.   In earlier times these monks were put on a pedestal of sorts and idealized to an extreme degree at the expense of lay believers.  How often they were not even oriented in a contemplative direction, but that life was considered “higher.”  Today they are often presented as exemplars of orthodoxy by various ultraconservative groups.  Otherwise it is a shrinking population—the genuine contemplative life is not well understood inspite of the writings of such people as Thomas Merton, and the role and meaning of renunciation is simply incomprehensible in our culture.  Thus the reality of monasticism is a confusing if not devalued reality for many lay Christians.  Within Christianity the real dynamic of religion very often turns into some kind of external activity or a question of morality.

3.    The role of the laity in both Buddhism and Christianity presents some questions and problems.   The celibate life as potentially a more effective means towards the realization of the ultimate goal is prevalent in many religious traditions.  Interestingly enough the same tension does not seem to exist in Hinduism because the classic scheme is a trajectory of a person journeying through the various stages of life: student, married householder and finally ending up as a renunciant, a sannyasi.  And the tradition is so free about this that a person can jump straight into the sannyasi category when he is moved to do so, but at least it is quite understood that one living as a householder is merely living at a certain stage, and either in this life or in another one will move on to another stage.  The problem for women, however, remains unresolved, with women not seeming to get the same treatment—women sannyasi are not exactly prominent within Hinduism!

4.    There is a very important exception  to some of these limitations: the Sufis of Islam.  Islam says very explicitly that it does not have such a thing as monasticism.  The Sufis are not monks.  Nor are they put on a pedestal or considered as “torchbearers” of any orthodoxy.  In fact they are held in suspicion and hostility by various elements within Islam.  But what’s important for consideration is that a Sufi can be either celibate or married–some of their greatest holy men were married; but they all understand the role of renunciation and detachment in the mystical life.  And this is precisely what is their focus—simply the reality of God.  It does not really matter in the grand scheme of things whether you are a hermit, a married person,(the problem of course is that in the practical scheme of things when you are married your attention goes largely to the dynamics of family life, like St. Paul himself said), a wandering ascetic, a scholar, a merchant, etc.–you will be plugged into one dynamic that leads to fana, “extinction” of the ephemeral ego, and reintegration into a new identity in God.  That is a better way of looking at all this rather than as some select group being a “torchbearer” of the central doctrine.  The title of my next posting is a Sufi adage and a perfect place to end this reflection:  Wherever you turn, there is God.

The great Sufi master, Ibn ‘Arabi, speaks of people who have real knowledge of God and so of God’s Self-manifestation. This knowledge is something way beyond reason and its articulations. Interestingly enough, Ibn Arabi at one point calls such a person a “worshipper of the Instant”(‘abid al-waqt). This is a person who worships every manifestation of God at every moment. In the words of Izutsu: “…each Instant is a glorious time of theophany. The Absolute manifests itself at every moment with this or that of its Attributes. The Absolute, viewed from this angle, never ceases to make a new self-manifestation, and goes on changing its form from moment to moment. And the true ‘knowers,’ on their part, go on responding with flexibility to this ever changing process of Divine self-manifestation.”

The first comment to make is that this is another way of approaching that reality which the hesychast tradition calls “continual prayer” or “pure prayer.” So this “continual prayer” thing is not so much something that we do, but more like an awareness, a watchfulness, an attentiveness to the Self-manifestation of that Absolute Reality which we call God and which goes on to make all the instants/moments of our existence. But both the Sufi and Christian traditions would also say that this is not a passive awareness, but more like an “interior prostration” within each moment, a sense of worship as the Instant unfolds into another Instant, a doxology of the Present Moment for it comes directly from God, a sense of abiding with awe within each Instant because in effect each Instant is the “Burning Bush.” But also we realize that we ourselves are part of that Instant, not some separate entity looking on from the outside. The Divine Self-manifestation takes place within us just as much as “out there.” Thus there is no duality here because our very awareness of the Divine Self-manifestation is simply also that very self-manifestation. Thus the “event” ‘out there,” our awareness of that event, and our response to that event is all part of that Divine Self-manifestation. The only thing that matters is how we bring that mysterious thing which we call our freedom into alignment with that Divine self-manifestation, which in its turn is also another aspect of that very theophany. Our very hearts are on fire like the Burning Bush through which God manifested to Moses.

So this brings us to that familiar theme of the Awakening of the Heart, but we won’t explore that for now. What needs to be underlined, however, is the main obstacle to this “worshipping of the Instant.” And that is, of course, the ego self. For the ego self each instant is in relation to it and at its service. Thus if the instant is pleasureable, pleasing, comforting, causing gain and increase, well, that instant is then affirmed as “good.” However, if the instant brings loss, discomfort, pain, etc., then that instant is to be shunned or “cured” of such things. Modern life presents many, many such “cures.” Or the Instant is only a kind of stage on which the ego self acts. Whatever transpires, whatever is seen, whatever is experienced is merely a “prop” for the ego self and of course something “out there”—the ego living as an atomized reality closed to the Divine Self-manifestation—this is the real root of evil in the world—a kind of blocking or attempted blocking of that Divine Love. When the heart awakens it sees all, including its own suffering, as part of the Divine Self-manifestation in Love, and this is a great mystery for suffering is not something we view in any positive light. It is good not to preach this to people who are experiencing suffering for it might be badly misunderstood(then again, someone might have a real breakthough when they see their suffering in this light), but when our hearts awaken, we will understand the meaning of this to a certain extent.

Every spiritual tradition talks in one way or another of the “death” of this ego self if the heart is to awaken or “become enlightened” or better yet to realize its enlightened state. The Sufis make it more radical and more sharp when they call for “fana”—“extinction” of the ego self. This is not a suppressing of one’s own psychological self, but a level of awareness far beyond the psychological ego, so that for all practical purposes it is “extinguished.” A whole new level of awareness will emerge, and this too has many levels that one needs to inhabit and then go deeper through deeper “extinctions,” etc. We will conclude with a few lines from one of Thomas Merton’s favorite Sufi poets, from whom he adapted some translations . The poet is Ibn’Abbad, also from medieval Spain, from the same environment that produced John of the Cross:

“For the servant of God
Consolation is the place of danger
Where he may be deluded
(Accepting only what he sees,
Experiences, or knows)
But desolation is his home:
For in desolation he is seized by God
And entirely taken over into God,
In darkness, in emptiness,
In loss, in death of self.
Then the self is only ashes. Not even ashes!

To belong to Allah
Is to see in your own existence
And in all that pertains to it
Something that is neither yours
Nor from yourself,
Something you have on loan;
To see your being in His Being,
Your subsistence in His Subsistence,
Your strength in His Strength:
Thus you will recognize in yourself
His title to possession of you
As Lord,
And your own title as servant:
Which is Nothingness.

Amen.

1. There is a novel out that is quite remarkable in some ways.  The book is by Dave Eggers, and the title is A Hologram for the King.  The story illustrates the absolute insanity,unreality,  incoherence and lostness of our global modern society.  Normally I would not have noticed this novel, but a book review by Chris Hedges (my favorite social commentator) drew my attention.  Actually for many of us the novel may not be needed for we already sensed the reality it addresses, but the book review is worth a read to say the least, and here is the link to it:

 

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11205-the-hologram-financial-speculation-and-casino-capitalism

 

Here is an interesting quote from the review:

The book works because of its authenticity, its close attention to detail and Eggers’ respect for fact. I spent many months as a correspondent in Saudi Arabia where the novel is set. Eggers captures in tight, bullet-like prose the utter decadence, hypocrisy and corruption of the kingdom, as well as its bleak landscape, suffocating heat and soulless glass and concrete office buildings. He is keenly aware that the outward religiosity and piety mask a moral and physical rot that fits seamlessly into the world of globalized capitalism.

 

Hedges implies but does not elaborate the deep irony of this picture.  True the novel is set in Saudi Arabia where an American technocrat/businessman is trying to make a deal, but the story is really about us and our culture.  What is interesting is that the veneer of both places is one of “religiosity” and righteousness.  Saudi Arabia is well-known for a kind of fundamentalist Islam and incidentally for a deep and long-standing hostility to the Islamic mysticism of the Sufis.  Behind the religious veneer Eggers unveils a truly horrid reality that has nothing to do with true Islam.  Here, of course, our leaders drape themselves more or less in simplistic Christian rhetoric and everyone pretends that we are a “Christian country.”  But behind this veneer there is not a trace of real Christianity but bloodlust, greed, and the hunger for power and wealth.  In a strange kind of way both countries and cultures, so different in their cultural languages and so-called theologies are similarly “rotten at the core.”  We do have a problem!

 

 

1. Speaking of the Sufis, I have been reading this Japanese scholar who is simply incredible in his presentation of Ibn ‘Arabi, the great Sufi master from the Middle Ages.  His name is Toshihiko Izutsu.  I do not know what his own religious affiliation was but he is a master of Arabic and Islamic sources.  He did the first translation of the Qur’an from Arabic into Japanese decades ago and even today it is considered an accurate and superior translation.  He has taught at McGill University in Montreal and for many years he was in Tehran at the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy.  He finished his days back in his own country of Japan at Keio University in Tokyo.  He died in 1993.

 

What makes him especially interesting, besides his deep knowledge and respect for Islamic mysticism, is that he combines this with an extensive knowledge and interest in early Taoism and Zen.  He has written scholarly works in both of these areas also.  He illustrates how comparative religion and comparative mysticism should be done because he is also very obviously a person of deep experience of the Mystery that all this tries to articulate.

 

Ibn Arabi, what can you say!  One of the truly great masters of Islamic mysticism and a giant among all religious thinkers in all religious traditions.  What little I have been able to read of him in English has been very illuminating and uplifting, but I grant he is not everyone’s “cup of tea.”  Already as a youngster in Islamic Spain he was gifted with deep mystical knowledge, and as he became an adult he became a prominent philosopher-theologian.  Definitely his work is not of the “bhakti type”—and Sufism has both in abundance.  His development and elaboration of Sufi mysticism is unequaled, but it might not be what everyone wants to read!  Nevertheless, hopefully one day we will reflect on Ibn’Arabi and on his insights some more in this blog.

 

With the possible exception of people interested in comparative spirituality or the Hindu-Christian dialogue, most Westerners are not aware of Ramana Maharshi.  Yet he is perhaps India’s and Hinduism’s most luminous holy man of the modern era.  We will not go over the details of his life here, but simply point to a very important aspect of his “way.”  What makes him striking is that he never had a guru, never took formal sannyasa, and ended up with a very simple teaching that downplayed the role of asceticism and meditation—though he himself had practiced that arduously when he was a young man.  His mature teaching and what he focused on with laser-like attention was simply this question:  Who am I?  He did not recommend that anyone should go on pilgrimages, become renunciants, practice long hours of meditation, etc.; but simply that they raise this question in everything they do, feel, think, see, etc.  And the answer, of course, is not going to be some conceptual thing, a collection of words in one’s  head, still less notions or images in one’s consciousness;  but what one is looking for is a kind of realization.   Not easy at all!  In fact he did not even insist on this teaching to many who came to him for instruction, but only if they were ready for the “royal way.”

 

Now lets think about this for a while.  We have been visiting this point in one way or another in several postings already.  In modern society identity is at a premium because you become initimately involved in establishing it.  In traditional societies it is more of a “given,” like membership in a tribe, one’s role in a structure, one’s place in that social matrix, etc.  Now you work at it, so there is more anxiety about it.  Then there is a whole psychological element—your feelings about your identity in this modern society, your image, and here is where the modern world really gets you.  “Image” is almost everything.  This is what sells a lot of things!  And it can get you in religious life even more because it is so subtle.  Religious self-images are as problematical as any other, leading to a false sense of self in a most pernicious way.  So Ramana’s “way” leads to a kind of stripping of all these “identity answers.”  So then, what is left.  Ah, precisely, WHO is left?  THAT is the real question—after all else vanishes…..

 

Now for many Christians they will say, ok, but what does this have to do with Christianity?  You are advocating a spiritual path from Hinduism that seems to be totally alien to Christianity.  Actually it is my contention that not only is this question and its “methodology” if you will not alien to Christianity, but it is one of the foundational elements of Christian mysticism.  Can’t prove this in a short blog posting, but we can point to some such indicators.  The first thing to say, however, is that Christianity (like Hinduism) is an enormously complex and varied phenomenon, and there are many expressions, schools and “ways” manifested by its adherents.  I know this will sound arrogant a bit, but there is a “top of the mountain” in all this, and many folk simply for one reason or another do not strive for that top.  Usually it is because no one shows them the “way.” They become stuck, enamored of their personal piety and good works, and that is ok, even praiseworthy, for there are so many decent, good people who strive to be true followers of Jesus.  It is sad, however, that no one seems to be saying to them, “Friend, go up higher!”   The voices who speak for this “peak” expression are people like Eckhart, Tauler, John of the Cross and quite a few others.  In our own time I would easily put Abhishiktananda on that same level.  Anyway, what we will turn to are folk who come at the very beginnings of Christian monasticism and mysticism: the Desert Fathers.

 

Like I have said before, the language of the Desert Fathers is not particularly attractive to us moderns.  It is not effusive in its expressions; and almost banal in its claims; and at times shockingly exaggerated and seemingly unreal.  There is very little of what moderns would consider “mystical language” there!  Yet I would claim that this fundamental question, “Who am I?”, is present implicitly in so many of their stories and sayings.  And the evidence that many of them reached “that realization” at the end of  that process is also evident in many stories. Their language needs deciphering and decoding, but once you get the sense of what they are pointing at, their language becomes less objectionable. This is not to imply that there is some “secret teaching” there, but only that their Semitic and Greek cultural context only allowed them certain conceptual frameworks for expressing their experience.  I would contend that at least for some of them this experience was akin to that of Ramana Maharshi, but in a language that is barely discernible from our perspective.   One has to dig underneath.  Actually that would also be true of Ramana’s language if we were going to examine it also.  Let us now consider a few of the Desert sayings and stories.

 

 

Consider this one:  “Abba Poemen said to Abba Joseph, ‘Tell me how to become a monk.’  He said, ‘If you want to find rest here below, and hereafter, in ALL [my emphasis] circumstances say, Who am I? and do not judge anyone.’”

Seems like an easy one to understand, but it is incredibly subtle.  Here we seem to connect with Ramana’s words directly  I won’t claim that these words are exactly equivalent to Ramana’s words—that is not likely—but that Abba Joseph’s experience is akin to  that spiritual dynamic which Ramana is teaching as the way to a great realization.  And even when the words are very different, it is precisely that question which lurks underneath so many of those stories and sayings.  And very often what the Desert monks emphasize more than Ramana did is what happens if you ignore that question or if you actually “get it all wrong.”  In old photography language, they often provide you with a negative which you can develop into a positive “photo” by applying the right ingredients.    Here the “negative” is this mechanism of judging which is intrinsic to the phenomenal ego self, but which impedes one’s ability to “become who you are.”  The phenomenal ego exerts all this effort and energy in making comparisons and “judging” because it is a precarious, transient reality and this is one way to seemingly ensure existence.  “I judge; therefore I am!”  When you stop this process, it seems from the standpoint of this phenomenal ego as if you had gone out of existence!  Of course The Question is a fundamental spiritual method of undermining the judging process because it gradually cuts off all the ways the phenomenal ego identifies itself and uses these identities by judging to prop itself up—a kind of lifting yourself up by your bootstraps approach!  Hard, tedious, actually impossible to do!  This is the “heavy burden” that Jesus speaks of in the Gospels—he says to lay down our heavy burdens and yokes and take up his, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.  To put on the “yoke of Christ” is to be liberated from all the pseudo-identities that our ego strives to maintain, and that IS hard work!  Our true identity lies on the other side of The Question, and for us Christians it is “in Christ.”  Or in another tradition we would say that being “no-self” is truly a light burden—compared to all the selves which we carry around!!

Incidentally, note that the origin of this Desert story centers on the question of monastic identity!  How do I become a monk?  This is really also a question of “who is a monk?”  Very important point for Western monks who spend so much energy on “being Benedictines, Trappists, Camaldolese, etc.”  Needless to say that historically and empirically speaking one has to be “something”, and that is perfectly ok and normal –one does not live in mid-air as it were but immersed in a certain historical time and place which gives one certain credentials–but the point is that one’s true identity as a monk is founded on The Question—the one that empties out all empirical and phenomenal answers.  So you would think that a monk would of all people be the one who is most free of all these external identities and credentials even as he carries the garments of one identity or another ever so lightly.   So you would think…..

 

Now consider this Saying from the Desert Monks:  “Abba Bessarion, at the point of death, said, ‘The monk ought to be as the Cherubim and the Seraphim: all eye.’”  Note again how the origin of this saying is in that pervasive concern of the Desert Fathers: what is the meaning of monastic life? who is a monk?  how does one become a monk? etc.  And here we have again a very subtle point being made.  To be “all eye” is to be pure awareness, pure consciousness….  Note the connection with the angelic beings who are pure spirits of awareness and consciousness, who judge nothing, who make no evaluations and see all as God sees them.  The eye is not an instrument of judging, comparing, evaluating, condemning, rather it is pure awareness.  And somehow this is the core meaning of being a monk.  To be “all eye” will be at the end of that road that begins with The Question:  Who am I?  Again, we see this is the fundamental monastic practice and goal, which can also be termed as “purity of heart.”  “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”  Indeed.  And recall Eckhart’s  remarkable dictum: “The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.”  But for this to be realized we need to engage The Question—at every point of our life.

(By the way, to illustrate how The Question can be buried in the most mundane of Desert sayings, here is an illustration:  “Whenever Agathon’s thoughts urged him to pass judgment on something which he saw, he would say to himself, ‘Agathon, it is not your business to do that.’  Thus his spirit was always recollected.” Agathon in effect is saying “Who am I?” as various thoughts about evaluating other people arise, which slowly turns that mechanism off, and he stays “recollected,” meaning his awareness of the Presence of God is not diverted into an identity “fortification,” which really all that those kind of thoughts are. )

 

 

Then there’s several different stories involving monks and robbers!  Mostly there is a kind of humor about them as the robbers are usually bewildered, thrown off their program of robbing, and usually converted to a good way of life.  And there are versions of such stories among the Zen monks of China and Japan also.  Almost invariably the story shows the monk in question helping the robbers in, perhaps even to rob him.  Like maybe the robbers forgot to take something, as the robbers are leaving to run after them with the forgotten item!  These stories have several layers and levels, and one of them turns these kind of stories into parables about this whole identity thing.  We have this automatic mechanism going on inside us, which gives us a sense of “I am this,” or “I am that.”  No matter how lowly or insignificant these may be, they still give us a feeling that we are “this” or “that”.  No matter how transient or ephemeral or fragile these things are, they begin to constitute who we are in our own mind’s eye.  Thus we become very protective and anxious about these things.  But life is full of “robbers” who come after these things.  A sickness takes away good health; somebody’s hurtful word diminishes our self-esteem; somebody slanders our good name; we get fired; we get a Ph.D. but the early promise of a great career vanishes in mediocre work; no one appreciates our efforts; we are rejected by a spouse or a parent or a friend;  we don’t get a promotion;  somebody literally robs us, etc., etc., etc.  When in all such circumstances we raise The Question, Who am I?, we become the monk who holds the ladder for these robbers, who feeds them because they are probably hungry, and who runs after them when they are leaving because they forgot to take something valuable.

 Recall this saying: “Abba Isaiah said, ‘Nothing is so useful to the beginner as insults.  The beginner who bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day.’”  The Question abides within this saying – “insults” are the “thieves” who come to take something of what one considers one’s identity away.  There are only several options after you experience something like this: you either become hard and brittle in suppressing your emotions in the face of such an onslaught, or you give in to your emotions, or you begin to question the very nature of who you are in the face of this experience.  To be clear—this is not about stopping the flow of emotions, which is how too often these Desert sayings get interpreted.  The suppression of feelings is not a solution to anything and it does not work.  If you are cut, you will bleed.  But by raising The Question, we begin to become more free from identifying with these feelings and the circumstances around them.  That freedom allows us to push The Question deeper until we realize who we REALLY are.  And Who we really are cannot be touched by any such robbers, and until we realize that we will always be living in a state of fear, anxiety, tension, “armed to the teeth” at times in order to protect our reputation, our name, our supposed identity.  And yes even prone to various kinds of violence, like hatred and revenge—under the guise of seeking justice of course.  Does this all sound unreal?  Perhaps.  Like I said several times, I wouldn’t want to preach this in the usual parish setting!!  But the Gospel is also clear about this—Jesus points us in the direction of a “treasure” that neither moth nor rust can eat away nor any robbers steal away.  That treasure is our real identity of which his life is an unconcealment.

 

“It was said of Abba John the Persian that when some evildoers came to him, he took a basin and wanted to wash their feet.  But they were filled with confusion, and began to do penance.”  First of all, Abba John knew WHO he was!  Secondly, “doing penance” means a change of heart, a conversion, a turning away from one’s false identity, etc.

 

Now consider these two closely related stories:

“Abba Matoes said, ‘The nearer a man draws to God, the more he sees himself a sinner.  It was when Isaiah the Prophet saw God that he declared himself ‘a man of unclean lips.’”

“He also said, ‘When I was young, I would say to myself: perhaps one day I shall do something good; but now that I am old, I see that there is nothing good about me.’”

Here again we have to fight against a misinterpretation which simply leads to the replacement of one image for another.  What the sayings are pointing to is that the deeper one’s realization of one’s closeness to God becomes actualized, the more sensitive one becomes to the automatic stirrings of the phenomenal ego self which invariably always chooses everything in relation to that self-identity. In a very real sense every real “sinful act,” to use traditional Christian language, stems from that fundamental orientation toward self-affirmation, self-aggrandizement, self-expansion, etc.  This dynamic is the result of, again using traditional Christian language, the Fall.  But the ego self is not the source of goodness.  As even Jesus said to someone, “Why do you call me good?  Only God is good.” In a very real sense, as we have already pointed out in previous postings, the ego self is practically a “nothing” anyway.  It is part of the psychology of being human, but it is not our true and deepest identity which manifests itself in humility, poverty, forgiveness, peace, self-sacrifice, etc.  Modern people mistakenly believing that their ego self is their true identity work very hard at the enhancement of this ego which becomes all-important because they confuse that with the true well-being of the human being as person in total and continual communion with God.  That’s why the personalism of Christian mysticism (and others also) can seem so “inhuman” to modern people—because of that fundamental mix-up.

 

 

Can you see The Question working within these stories and sayings?:

“Abba Poement said that a brother who lived with some other brothers asked Abba Bessarion, ‘What ought I to do?’  The old man said to him, ‘Keep silence and do not be always comparing yourself with others.’”

“He also said, ‘If you take little account of yourself, you will have peace wherever you live.’”

“A brother came to Abba Theodore and spent three days begging him to say a word to him without getting any reply.  So he went away grieved.  Then the old man’s disciple said to him, ‘Abba, why did you not say a word to him?  See, he has gone away grieved.’  The old man said to him, ‘I did not speak to him, for he is a trafficker who seeks to glorify himself through the words of others.’”

“Abba Poemen said to Abba Isaac, ‘Let go of a small part of your righteousness and in a few days you will be at peace.’”

“A brother went to see Abba Poemen and said to him, ‘What ought I to do?  The old man said to him, ‘Go, and join one who says, ‘What do I want?’ and you will have peace.’”

 

Then there is this fascinating account:

“Abba Macarius said this about himself: ‘When I was young and was living in a cell in Egypt, they took me to make me a priest in the village.  Because I did not wish to receive this dignity, I fled to another place.  Then a devout layman joined me; he sold my manual work for me and served me.  Now it happened that a virgin in the village, under the weight of temptation, committed sin.  When she became pregnant, they asked her who was to blame.  She said, ‘The anchorite.’  Then they came to seize me, led me to the village and hung pots black with soot and various other things round my neck, and led me through the village in all directions, beating me and saying, ‘This monk has defiled our virgin, catch him, catch him,’ and they beat me almost to death.  Then one of the old men came and said, ‘What are you doing, how long will you go on beating this strange monk?’  The man who served me was walking behind me, full of shame, for they covered him with insults too, saying, ‘Look at his anchorite, for whom you stood surety; what has he done?’  The girl’s parents said, ‘Do not let him go till he has given a pledge that he will keep her.’  I spoke to my servant and he vouched for me.  Going to my cell, I gave him all the baskets I had, saying, ‘Sell them, and give my wife something to eat.’  Then I said to myself, ‘Macarius, you have found yourself a wife; you must work a little more in order to keep her.’  So I worked night and day and sent my work to her.  But when the time came for the wretch to give birth, she remained in labor many days with bringing forth, and they said to her, ‘What is the matter?’  She said, ‘I know what it is, it is because I slandered the anchorite, and accused him unjustly; it is not he who is to blame, but such and such a young man.’  Then the man who served me came to me full of joy saying, ‘The virgin could not give birth until she had said ‘The anchorite had nothing to do with it, but I have lied about him.’  The whole village wants to come here solemnly and do penance before you.’  But when I heard this…I got up and fled here to Scetis….”

 

And there is an almost exact equivalent of this story among the Zen monk stories!  Here we see the true and mature monk who has gone a “long way” on the road of The Question, and so he is able to respond to various  attacks on that superficial identity of “anchorite,” “monk,” “holy man,” etc. with great equanimity and peace—without indulging in some kind of fantasy that the girl is not guilty of doing something wrong.  It is simply that her “wrong” does not take away one iota of his true identity, only the images are affected.

 

One last story: “Once Paesios, the brother of Abba Poemen, made friends with someone outside his cell.  Now Abba Poemen did not want that.  So he got up and fled to Abba Ammonas and said to him, ‘Paesios, my brother, holds converse with someone, so I have no peace.’  Abba Ammonas said to him, ‘Poemen, are you still alive?  Go, sit down in your cell, engrave it on your heart that you have been in the tomb for a year already.’”

In death we lose all the superficial identities that we have accumulated, that we value so much, that causes us so much unrest, etc.  So in a sense Ammonas is inviting to Poemen to consider the same situation that Ramana did when he was a youngster: exactly who am I when I die? What is left after all is taken away?  Note also that in the Desert no feeling or thought was too trivial to open up the door to The Great Question!

 

One last thought:  Father Zosima in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov teaches that everywhere we are and at every moment it is Paradise if only we had eyes to see it.  Indeed.  The entrance to that Paradise is with The Question: Who am I?  Because no ego self can enter there!