Father Francis Tiso has written a very interesting and thought-provoking essay in Dilatato Corde:  “Raimundo Panikkar on the Monk as Archetype.'”

The essay actually covers three different topics, which kind of converge within his own personal experience:  a. Panikkar’s ideas; b.  interreligious dialogue; c. the emergence of so-called “new monks.”  The emphasis is on the interreligious dialogue, but underlying all this is the question of monastic identity in our time.  What I would like to do is throw out some thoughts,  some varied reflections bouncing off his ideas but heading in a different direction, and some divergent opinions and evaluations of the current monastic phenomenon.

1. Right off the bat I should say that I do not hold the same positive view of Panikkar’s ideas in this regard that Fr. Tiso does.  I respect Panikkar for what he was trying to do–and that is actually more important than the results he achieves–but I do not think that his notions about monasticism are convincing–in fact they may be misleading.  The so-called “monastic archetype” is an intellectual construct which helps one, more or less, to deal with what is and has always been a “messy reality”–an attempt to find some kind of unity within very diverse examples of monkhood and to push the boundaries of our understanding of monastic identity.  Good enough.  But it is a construct; there “ain’t no such animal in the zoo.”

And a “zoo” it is with all kinds of “animals” in it, exotic and ordinary, large and small, attractive and very unattractive, dominant and very shy, etc., etc.  If you want to “extract” some archetype from this bewildering array, ok, but really there is no need of that intellectual exercise and it can be very, very misleading.  What is slightly more pertinent is to observe the amazing variety of monks, the remarkable diversity of life-styles of monks over the ages—simply as an empirical phenomenon.  From that standpoint we can see that always there were “new monks.”  And always there was tension, even hostility, between the so-called established monks of the large orders and the perennial so-called new monks who lived on some fringe or other.  This also always lead to a preoccupation about monastic identity:  who is a monk, what makes one a monk, what does it mean to be a monk, etc.  A big mistake, but alas, inevitable.  Because what is really needed, especially now, is the affirmation of the human being as mystic, as  someone with a fundamental orientation to/participation in the reality of God or however one wants to name that Absolute Reality–and a very strong focus on that.   Every person that you see at the supermarket is really a mystic at heart if we understand this term properly–yet they are thoroughly and completely distracted and diverted from this reality. Strangely enough, paradoxically enough, a preoccupation with monastic identity can also distract us from that most fundamental reality.  Fr. Tiso points out that for Panikkar, in the last stages of his thought, “the archetype of the mystic converges with that of the monk”–the mystic is constitutive of the human. Again Fr. Tiso on Panikkar:  “…it is clear that the real ‘universal archetype’ towards which his thought progressed is that of the mystic, conceived as a human person engaged in a deep inquiry with reality as a whole.”  This is a much more welcome line of thought.  Also, Fr. Tiso refers to the monastic archetype as “grounded and experienced as an opening to the ineffable divine milieu.”  I think I see what he is getting at, but what I want to avoid in an emphatic way is any conflation, confusion, or convergence between the two terms: “monk” and “mystic.”    The emphasis always has to be on “being a mystic” rather than on some monastic identity or vague unifying concept like “archetype”(and I unashamedly use the word “mystic” trying to rescue it from the claptrap of pop new ageism!).  When you grow up don’t you want to be a mystic?!  Ok, if that term grates on your ears, try this phrase by Abhishiktananda:  “the absolute surrender of the peripheral ego to the Inner Mystery.”  So maybe you’re a monk; maybe you’re not—does it really matter in light of THAT?

1b.  Panikkar defines monk: “By monk, monachos, I understand that person who aspires to reach the ultimate goal of life with all his being by renouncing all that is not necessary to it, i.e., by concentrating on this one single and unique goal.  Precisely this single-mindedness (ekagrata), or rather the exclusivity of the goal that shuns all subordinate though legitimate goals, distinguishes the monastic way from other spiritual endeavors toward perfection or salvation…. If, in a certain sense, everybody is suppose to strive for the ultimate goal of life, the monk is radical and exclusive in this quest.”

Not bad, but a close analysis would bring out a number of problems.  Just one example:  “all that is not necessary to it”—who or what determines what is or is not necessary to reach the ultimate goal?  If it is a monk or monastic tradition, they will give one answer; if it is a non-monk, they might give a slightly different answer.  And from what perspective do we determine this “not necessary”?  And even what does the word “necessary” mean anyway?  Many, too many, there are in monasteries who, strange to say, get lost in their monasticism–and there are so many “not necessary” things even there, in their practices and observances, chant, liturgy, etc.,  in their “seeking of an identity.”  They are good, decent, devout, religious people, and they are official monks but, depending on how you interpret Panikkar’s words,  they may fail to fit his definition.  Jesus tells Martha: “Only one thing is necessary.”  Indeed.  And this pericope has been used as a kind of monastic/contemplative paradigm.  However, paradoxically enough, it is the monk who can get just as easily lost in the multiplicity of his “monastic stuff”–while at the same time believing that he/she is focused on the “one thing necessary.”  One can see that the hermit may have a great advantage here in this regard—less “monastic stuff”!!

More Panikkar:  “The thesis I am defending is that the monk is the expression of an archetype which is a constitutive dimension of human life….”

So there is a “monk” within each person?  Again, sounds attractive, but there are a lot of problems with that.  Official monks like this schematization(and his definition above) because it inevitably puts them on top of a pyramid.   Some lay people accept that and become “monastic groupies”—hanging out on the fringes of monastic life, providing the needed affirmation for the official monks that they are “special” while the lay people are a kind of “watered down” version of monastic life, a partial realization of that archetype of which they are a “full realization.”  Obviously no one puts it that way, but I have seen it with my own eyes.   This is not what Panikkar means, but it is where that leads to.  Others simply walk away from this scheme.

1c.  Consider the Sufis.  They may be the best model of what I am talking about and what we may badly need.  First of all, there is no organized monastic tradition in Islam.  And neither do they easily fit any of Panikkar’s definitions or criteria concerning monastic life/the monastic archetype.  Much simpler just to look at their empirical reality–they come in such an amazing variety, all kinds of “sizes and shapes and colors”!  Some live in solitude, some live in various kinds of brotherhoods, some are wanderers, some are married, some are celibate, some are scholars, some are artists, some are businessmen, some are lowly workers, etc., etc., etc.  What makes them Sufis is that total orientation toward the Divine Reality within the parameters of Islam.  To call them “inner monks” or “hidden monks” or something like that, to say that they are actualizing the monastic archetype is simply importing and overlaying an unneeded category.  The Sufi is the human being as actualized mystic par excellance(though there are Sufis who would object to the use of the term “mystic”)!   If you want to say that the Sufi is also some kind of actualization of the monastic archetype, then in fact you have converged and conflated the terms “mystic” and “monk” and in my opinion that leads to a serious confusion.  Anyway, the evolution (shrinking!!) of Christian monastic life may yet lead us in the direction of the Sufis.  I can forsee a time when we will have “Christian Sufis”(with apologies to our Islamic friends for borrowing their word!), living an incredible diversity of lifestyles, but all with one focus to be “on the Straight Path,” toward “the total surrender of the peripheral ego to the Inner Mystery.”  All else, everything, absolutely everything else is negotiable except the Glory of God.

2. Let us recall that famous saying of Karl Rahner(long before Panikkar):  The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not be.

Indeed.  The monk of the future will be a mystic or he/she will not be.  The human being of the future will be a mystic or he/she will not be.  I think we are heading(if not already there) where the stakes are that high, and the outlook is not positive.

3. Between 1887 and 1890 Vincent Van Gogh painted 30 self-portraits before his suicide, almost one per month for each of the last 3 years of his life.  This was a very troubled person who was desperately seeking to get some kind of handle on his own self.  I fear that Catholic religious, including monastics, have been doing something like this since Vatican II.  Who are we?  What makes us, “us”?  “Back to the charism of the founder.”  Etc.  Ok, the sclerosis of Tridentine religious life had to be broken up, but unfortunately so many seem to have become fixated on that identity.  And when that happens, lines/boundaries begin to be drawn where there is no need of drawing such things.

4. Let us recall a famous Desert Father saying:  “It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city.  He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and everyday he sang the Sanctus with the angels.”

What a remarkable account!  Every single word is of utmost importance in understanding what this is saying. First of all, this is something “revealed” to Anthony–not something that he figured out, or just a kind, benevolent sentiment.  No, this has the “authority of heaven” behind it.  Furthermore, it is revealed TO Anthony, the father of Christian monasticism.  So this account also has the authority of Anthony attached to it—a double dose of authority; I should say that it’s making a very serious point!  Now we come to the most important word: “equal”.  What does this mean?  The doctor is “equal” to Anthony in what sense?  Following Panikkar, is it the case that the doctor and Anthony are manifesting the monastic archetype each in his own way?  A possible interpretation, but I don’t think so.  Is this doctor the first “new monk”?!  Perhaps! Is he the first “Christian Sufi”?!  Probably. Note something very interesting: none of the major monastic “observances” or practices are attributed to this doctor.  He is not even a particularly intense ascetic—it says he took care of his basic needs, then what was left over he gave to the poor.  Granted some of the desert monks did something like that, but this is certainly not one of their signature works.  There are so many other stories and sayings that emphasize what are the distinguishing marks of the desert monks and the doctor is not given any of them.  Now the story brings us to the conclusion and the key insight—this doctor “sang the Sanctus with the angels.”  In other words, he lives in the living Presence of the Divine, he is in communion with God.  He and Anthony are both “equal” in the sense that both are mystics in the Rahnerian sense of the word.  How the doctor got “there” we are not told because it really does not matter.  There is no program for this kind of thing!  Not even monasticism!  Official monks are not privileged people with regard to religious experience.

As Monty Python would say, And now for something completely different, or rather from a different tradition—Jack Kornfield writing:  “Dipama Barua of Calcutta, one of my teachers and a revered Buddhist elder, exemplified this spirit for me.  She was both a meditation master at the highest level and a loving grandmother.  When I visited her apartment she would teach in a practical and modest way.  Around her was a palpable sense of stillness and profound well-being.  It was not the well-being of outer security–she lived in a tiny apartment in one of Calcutta’s poor neighborhoods.  Nor was it the well-being of rank and position—she was mostly uncelebrated and unknown.  Though she was a remarkably skilled teacher, her selflessness bloomed in her smile, in her care for others, in her openness to whatever was needed .  She was both empty and radiantly present.  Dipama’s heart seemed to pervade her whole body, the whole room, all who came into her orbit.  Her presence had a big impact on others.  Those who lived nearby said the whole apartment block became harmonious after she moved in.  One day a student complained that ordinarily his mind was filled with thoughts and plans, judgments and regrets.  He wondered what it was like to live more selflessly.  So he asked Dipama  directly about the alternative, ‘What is in your mind.?’  She smiled and said, ‘In my mind   are only three things: loving-kindness, concentration, and peace.’  These are the fruits of selflessness.  With selflessness there is less of us and yet presence, connectedness and freedom come alive.  Selflessness is not a pathological detached state, disconnected from the world.  Nor is it a state where we are caught in a new spiritual identity, ‘See how selfless I am.’  Selflessness is always here.  In any moment we can let go and experience life without calling it ‘me’ or ‘mine.'”

What would be most interesting would be the interreligious dialogue between Anthony’s doctor and Dipama—but now we are dreaming…..

5. Let us follow up with another Desert Father story, one of the greatest of them all:  “Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts.  What else can I do?’  Then the old man stood up and stretched out his hands towards heaven.  His fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all fire.'”

Lot has his monastic observances, his practices, his monastic lifestyle, his sadhana, but he is fortunate in that he has not settled into that as a “comfort zone” and anchor for a kind of identity:  “I am a monk, and I do this and that.”  Rather, he feels that marvelous “gravitational pull” toward the divine mystery that confronted Moses in the Burning Bush:  “I am who am.”  Abba Joseph invites him to participate in that ineffable divine identity which has no boundary.

5b. Speaking of the Desert Fathers, we have this from Merton:  “If we were to seek their like in twentieth-century America, we would have to look in strange out of the way places.  Such beings are tragically rare….  With the Desert Fathers, you have the characteristic of a clean break with a conventional, accepted social context in order to swim for one’s life into an apparently irrational void.  Though I might be expected to claim that men like this could be found in some of our monasteries of contemplatives, I will not be so bold.  With us it is often rather a case of men leaving the society of the ‘world’ in order to fit themselves into another kind of society, that of the religious family which they enter.  They exchange the values, concepts and rites of the one for those of the other….  The social ‘norms’ of a monastic family are also apt to be conventional, and to live by them does not involve a leap into the void–only a radical change of customs and standards.”

6. Father Paisios of Mt. Athos, one of the great Orthodox spiritual fathers of our time, gave this piece of advice to Western monks:  “Disorganize!”

This reminds me of one of Will Rogers’ quips:  “I don’t belong to any organized political party.  I am a Democrat!”  I think we can steal that one from Rogers:  I don’t belong to any organized religious life.  I am a monk!

If you want a monastic identity statement, well, that’s one.  Did anyone ever think that organization is actually bad for the real monastic charism?  Merton seems to have given some such hints, but gosh….  The relative flourishing of the hermit life in our time points in this direction.

7. Historical examples of people who proved “problematical” in terms of “official” monastic identity:

Ramana Maharshi in Hinduism—never had a guru, never took sannyasa, never a part of any monastic group, etc—yet one of the great Advaita mystics of our time.

Milarepa, Tibetan Buddhism, yes, a hermit, but never part of any official monastery or monastic group.  It is very clear that some monks of his time felt hostility to him.  And the tradition later tries to tame him into an “official figure.”  Marpa, his teacher, was a married layman.

Hui-neng, one of the greatest of Chinese Zen Buddhists, was a lay worker in a granary associated with a monastery and not allowed to mix with the monks–until he is discovered as a Master, and has to flee for his life because there are monks who would kill him!

Francis of Assisi–yes he can be called a monk!  He was adamant about not being a Benedictine, the dominant group of his time,  because it meant being pinned down in a cultural form that went against his spiritual vision.  So he went his own way; later we have the Franciscans, about which he was not so approving either.  Francis has to be liberated from the Franciscan image of him!

And there are so many others.

8. Official Catholic monastic life is shrinking, slowly but surely.  There is an interesting analogy with global warming.  There are “deniers” in both camps.  But the glaciers are melting, and monasteries have smaller numbers of people.  Yes, people can point to huge snowfalls here or there, and ultraconservative groups drawing large numbers of candidates, but the overall pattern points in one direction.  Just as the snowfall in some areas has increased precisely because of the overall warming, so have these ultraconservative groups flourished because of a very critical change in the cultural and intellectual atmosphere that is not good.

People, and in some cases it looks like “lots of people,” come to monasteries and tell the monks how good and important they are and what a great place the monastery is.  That’s ok—hospitality is an important aspect of monastic life.  But if monks take that as some sign that a spiritual renewal is right around the corner, they are greatly mistaken.  Just playing the numbers game:  more people come into one average Walmart SuperCenter in one 24 hr period than come to all the Trappist retreathouses in the US during an entire year.

We live in very perilous times, and I don’t mean physically(though that too in some cases).  We live immersed in a culture of narcissism.  We live in an era of enormous electronic communication, yet our capacity to communicate about life in depth seems diminishing. (Just as an exercise read the letters of people during the American Civil War and you might be astonished how even very ordinary people could express themselves with such eloquence and depth.) All signifiers now partake of the mode of advertising and marketing–Merton saw this coming in the 60s.  For homo consumerus only that which is bought and sold can be called real.  It is not a climate which is going to be hospitable to monastic values or monastic presence.  On top of it all, the deep incoherence, the genuine insanity, and the rampant greed concealed within our social and economic matrix is finally bubbling to the surface in many ways, and we are in for quite a ride in the near future.  To say that the monk/monasticism is an unambiguous “sign” “pointing” to the “transcendent” is untenable.  Even spirituality and “contemplation” have become commodified, religious hucksterism is rampant, and what’s most important, “the sign,” “the signifier” only points to itself or to another sign.  Recall that old Chinese curse: May you live in an interesting age!  Well, this is an interesting age and it is going to get even more interesting, but maybe we can amend that curse:  May you live in an age of hermits!  The hermit is the “refusenik” par excellance to this kind of degradation of human life.  Maybe only the hermit will flourish in this coming age.

9. Within his essay Fr. Tiso refers to Merton’s final talk in Asia.  He mentions in passing Merton’s comment where he positively evaluates what some young revolutionaries said to him:  “We are the true monks.”  Fr. Tiso mentions that the participants, mostly senior monks, monastic leaders, reacted negatively to Merton’s positivity.  That I am not surprised about, but I am surprised that maybe Fr. Tiso misunderstood what Merton was getting at.  He does not naively accept what they say—he simply says he accepts their challenge because it points in an important direction: every monk is or should be in a dialectical/critical relationship to the culture in which his monkhood evolves.  According to Merton this is an important credential for being a monk, and these young people put their finger on it.  This is not something peripheral or tangential to monastic identity but an essential ingredient, though it may be expressed in very different terms in different eras and cultures.  Unfortunately too many monastics are in a compromised position with the “dark side” of their society no matter how “rigorous” their spiritual practices are.  Wealth, power corrupt, surprise, surprise—sometime it’s not even that, just a comfy life with a bit of adulation!

10.Suggestions: (more or less whimsical)

1. Try a kind of “apophatic” approach to monastic identity.  Lay off definitions and trying to get at the essence of it.  You know it when you meet it–wherever that may be.  In some special cases you might find yourself in a kind of spiritual Catch-22 situation:  you will need to be already “enlightened” in order to see this monk in order to learn from him/her.  In fact this person may not even recognize themselves as a monk!  He/she is like one of the ‘hidden zaddikim” of Hasidic legend.  When God conceals you, you are REALLY CONCEALED!
2. Put a moratorium on all conferences, gatherings, lectures, etc.  Let everyone go back to their caves or wherever and for 10 years chop wood, carry water and sit facing a wall.   Nothing but silence.  Not even Twitter or Facebook.  Then we all get together at an appointed spot and the first person to say “archetype” gets whacked by a stick-wielding zen monk.  Then we all laugh.
3. To borrow from Chuang Tzu:  what we need now more than ever is “the true monk with no title.”  The No-monk monk.  You might find this person almost anywhere, even in a large organized monastery with lots of initials after his name!
4. For the next 10 years drop all titles of “guru,” “spiritual father,” “teacher,” “master,” etc.  All spiritual guidance or advice is for free from “a friend.”  See where that takes us.  This is specifically an antidote to the religious hucksterism of our time.

11.  From Merton:

“The contemplative is one who is, like the servant of Yahweh, ‘acquainted with infirmity,’ not only with his own sin, but with the sin of the whole world, which he takes upon himself because he is a man among men and cannot dissociate himself from the works of other men.  The contemplative life in our time is therefore necessarily modified by the sins of our age.  They bring down upon us a cloud of darkness far more terrible than the innocent night of unknowing.  It is the dark night of the soul which has descended on the whole world.  Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers.  For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin.  It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreallity and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.  The contemplative life today must be a life of deep sorrow and contrition, but a pure sorrow, a healing and life-giving repentance such as we find in some of the characters of Dostoyevsky.”

Merton wrote this about 1960, and there has been much speculation how he would have revised that after he came back from Asia.  Whatever be the case, and however it may reflect the mindset of the early 60s, we are still very much in the same boat.  The mystic of our time will be a person marked with infirmity, perhaps having struggled with addiction, with failed relationships, with loneliness, with great economic stress, etc. etc.  A person like that may not even recognize themselves as being on the very doorstep of a profound mysticism.  Perhaps they need just a little nudge!

12. And the final word is from Ryokan:   “What is this life of mine?

…………………………

Neither layman, nor monk.”

Recently the pop rock artist, Amy Winehouse, died from perhaps a drug overdose.  Regardless of the actual cause, she had already given many indications of drug abuse, so whether it was accidental or deliberate or even if it was just the heart giving out after years of abuse, that is not the critical issue here.  She was the bearer of a great pain that cried out for numbing.  A sad fact for any human being, but she also was an extraordinary talent within her own field of endeavor.  What is peculiar is how many of these great young talents have done themselves in precisely at age 27:  Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and so many others, and now Amy Winehouse.  Someone may be saying to himself, Well, that is too bad, but these people trashed the gift of life in trivial pursuits and there are more important things to ponder at this point.  Indeed, perhaps true.  But I want to come back to that pain I mentioned.  It is the most fundamental pain a person can experience–you might say that it is the pain of being a human being.  Concretely and existentially this pain may have all kinds of manifestations or apparent causes, like failed relationships, betrayal, a troubled career, economic stress, loneliness, emotional chaos, etc, etc.  But underneath this potpourri of negative human dynamics, there is one foundational pain that pervades one’s heart but has so, so many names.

To understand this better, let us approach it from another angle.  Somewhere Abhishiktananda relates that the essence of Hinduism (and really all religion) can be summed up as follows:  “the total surrender of the peripheral ego to the Inner Mystery.”  Very well put (but I am sure a person could find something inadequate about that statement).  Now imagine if someone knew nothing of that “Inner Mystery,” had no sense of it, had no access to it, etc.  That one’s whole sense of reality, of one’s being, of one’s identity consisted in that “peripheral ego.”  That is more than scary; it is terrifying.  Why?  Because that peripheral ego is almost a nonentity, practically a “nothing,” a totally insubstantial, feeble reality, a construct that is equivalent to a “house of cards,” or a toothpick construction that comes tumbling down with the slightest breeze.  “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”  All the major religions point to this in their own terms, but they also point to something else, which in the theistic traditions we can call the “Inner Mystery.”  But imagine if that is nowhere on the horizon of your awareness…..  The cold, hollow wind of nothingness blowing through your heart….no matter what clothes you throw on that peripheral ego!     Finally death is the last word that declares it to be nothing–and ends the pain.

But that is precisely the condition of modern human beings.  All our social values, our economy, our structures, are organized around a kind of numbing of the impact of the emptiness of the peripheral ego.  Certainly it is not about helping or encouraging or facilitating the discovery of the Inner Mystery of each human being—that might make them less of a consumer and we know where that leads to….  Entertainment, games, the voyeurism of celebrity, econonic success, etc, etc., all this to push back against that feeling of nothingness which is the essence of the peripheral ego. Indeed, fame and celebrity itself is a kind of cry of “I am, I am,” but this “I am” is built on a foundation of sand  in the words of the Gospel, really a foundation of nothingness and emptiness in the true existential sense.  The real “I am” is grounded in the I AM of Absolute Reality, of God.

Now the artist, of whatever kind, has a more sensitive heart, so he/she will feel the impact of this even more so.  That pain will not be abated by art, more likely enhanced by it.  Art does not provide an anesthetic, or a “medication of forgetfulness” concerning our nothingness—more likely it puts it under a magnifying glass! (The role of art can be quite ambiguous in this regard.)  I am reminded of that great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, who also drank himself to death, but at one point he wrote a poem for his dying father with lines that repeated over and over this theme:

“Dear father, do not go gentle into that night,

But rage, rage against the failing of the  light.”

Ultimately this “rage” leads ironically enough to self-destruction because it is totally futile.  Consider finally another artist, Ernest Hemingway, who committed suicide in his old age by shooting himself.  Here is a poem by Merton about that moment:

“Now for the first time on the night of your death your name is

mentioned in convents, ne cadas in obscurum.

Now with a true bell your story becomes final.  Now men in

monasteries, men of requiems, familiar with the dead, include you

in their offices.

You stand anonymous among thousands, waiting in the dark, at

great stations on the edge of countries known to prayer alone,

where fires are not meciless, we hope, and not without end.

You pass briefly through our midst.  Your books and writings have

not been consulted.  Our prayers are pro defuncto N.

Yet some look up, as though among a crowd of prisoners or displaced

persons, they recognized a friend once known in a far country.

For these the sun also rose after a forgotten war upon an idiom

you made great.  They have not forgotten you.  In their silence you

are still famous, no ritual shade.

How slowly this bell tolls in a monastery tower for a whole age,

and for the quick death of an unseemly dynasty, and for that brave

illusion:  the adventurous self!

For with one shot the whole hunt is ended!”

Hemingway was a master of modern English narrative, but in so much of his writing and in his life he promoted this image of the he-man,  a certain kind of masculinity and ideal humanity that was embodied best in the image of the “great hunter,” the “great adventurer,”  among some other images.  This was the clothing Hemingway threw on his peripheral ego, and when in the feebleness of old age this image could no longer be sustained, well, the pain could only be ended in one way…..

Merton also translated and adapted from Sufi material, and here is piece of advice for a Sufi novice:

“Be a son of this instant!

It is a messenger of Allah

And the best of messengers

Is one  who announces your indigence,

Your nothingness.

Be a son of this instant

Thanking Allah

For a mouthful of ashes.”

Hemingway could not “welcome” that messenger that announced his own nothingness in the feebleness of his old age, in his failed relationships, in his inability to write anymore.   As great an artist as he was, he had no inkling of the abiding Inner Mystery in his own self.

And approaching this from another angle, here is another poem by Merton:

In Silence

Be still.

Listen to the stones of the wall.

Be silent, they try

To speak your

Name.

Listen

To the living walls.

Who are you?

Who

Are you?  Whose

Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)

Are you (as these stones

Are quiet)?  Do not

Think of what you are,

Still less of

What you may one day be.

Rather

Be what you are(but who?) be

The unthinkable one

You do not know.

O be still, while

You are still alive,

And all things live around you

Speaking (I do not hear)

To your own being,

Speaking by the Unknown

That is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them

To be my own silence:

And this is difficult.  The whole

World is secretly on fire.  The stones

Burn, even the stones

They burn me.  How can a man be still or

Listen to all things burning? How can he dare

To sit with them when

All their silence

Is on fire?”

And lest there be any confusion, we need to include religious life itself as a possible locus of fixation upon the peripheral ego.  Taking up religious practices can simply be another set of clothes for the peripheral ego.  Here again is Merton adapting from translations of Sufi material–again from Advice to a Sufi Novice:

“He who seeks Allah will be made clean in tribulation,

His heart will be more pure,

His conscience more sensitive in tribulation

Than in prayer and fasting.

Prayer and fasting may perhaps

Be nothing but self-love, self-gratification,

The expression of hidden sin

Ruining the value of these works.

But tribulation

Strikes at the root.”

This brings us back to Abhishiktananda’s “the total surrender of the peripheral ego to the Inner Mystery.”  The Sufis are very concrete and thorough!  Incidentally, the above material is taken from the writings of one of the greatest of Sufi figures:  Ibn Abbad, who lived in Spain and in North Africa during the Medieval Period, and some say he may have been a secret influence on John of the Cross.  We shall conclude with another excerpt, related to our theme, this time from Ibn Al Arabi, an even earlier Sufi figure who was a contemporary of Averroes, the greatest of Arabic philosophers:

“When the body of Averroes was brought once more to Spain, and

when the people of Cordova were gathered to watch its return

to the city of burial,

The coffin containing his remains was mounted on one side of a

beast of burden.  And on the other side, for counterweight, what

did they hang but all the books Averroes had written!

I too was watching, in the company of the scholar Benchobair, and

of my disciple, Benazzarach, the copyist.

Tuirning to us, the young one said, ‘Do you not observe what it is

that hangs as counterweight to the Master Averroes as he rides

by?  On one side goes the Master, and on the other side his

works, that is to say the books which he composed?’

Then Benchobair explained: ‘No need to point it out, my son, for

it is clearly evident!  Blessed be thy tongue that has spoken it!’

I took careful note of this word of my disciple, and I set it apart for

future meditation, as a reminder of this event.

For this was the word that held the secret of the occasion, the seed

of truth, shown to the disciple, at the burial of Averroes.

I planted the seed within myself thus, in two verses:

On one side the Master rides: on the other side, his books.

Tell me:  his desires, were they at last fulfilled?”

Amy, requiescat in pace.

Let’s face it–living in a real community is a very difficult thing to do.  Building a community is even more difficult!  Yet this is what some have proposed as the only solution to our dire times.  Most recently Chris Hedges, in a short essay detailing how bad things look to him, proposed that our only hope lies in a kind of resistance movement emanating from what he calls small “monastic communities.”

 

According to him there is no political solution to our dilemmas and our deeply incoherent ideologies and our pervasive corruption.  Resistance and a new vision has to come from elsewhere, and he locates it in small monastic communities.  It is interesting that he appends that qualifier “monastic.”  Not sure exactly what he means, but I think I get his sense.

 

To be sure, this is nothing new.  Just in the U.S. alone there have been all kinds of communal experiments over the years, stretchting back to the beginnings of this country.  And if you look at Christian monasticism as a whole, St. Benedict’s founding of his community, for example,  was in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire.  Now getting back to our own time, there were certainly many community experiments in the 1960s and most of them died almost overnight.  Some lasted longer than others, and there is no reason to say that any given community can only be considered a “success” if it lasts “forever” or a very long time—like a Benedictine monastery.  But the phenomenon is still marked by so much deterioration, failure of leadership, loss of focus, slipping into a cultish mode, becoming authoritarian, etc. etc.  that it’s hard to call it a successful phenomenon.  In a sense if you look just at this period from 1960 on, the impact on the larger society has been almost zero.  That doesn’t mean the experiments were not worth trying, or that certain individuals from these communities did not benefit in some way by being members, but for the overall thing there is not much to show.  So what is the problem.  Actually the problems are numerous, and there are very, very few communities even of the small number that survive more than a generation that deal with these problems in a way that enables them to grow or just to keep going.

 

This brings us to the point that Hedges is making I believe.  By “monastic” he doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone should become monks–hardly–but that the community should have some kind of religious/transcendent focal point, viewpoint, axis, whatever you want to call it. “Monastic” cannot simply mean any  kind of gathering of people around some idea or issue or value.   A community that is simply being established or built as an “anti-” something will certainly not have a chance of even accomplishing that before it evaporates.  Even being against  all things one should be against—-like pollution, war, consumerism, exploitation, etc, etc.— is not an adequate glue for a community.  But taking it one further step:  it is also not sufficient to build a community around any ideology, even a good one, or around any cause no matter how noble:  peace, sharing, environmentalism, hospitality, etc.  These are all excellent values and may be a very significant part of any community, but, hard to believe, they are not “the” solid foundation that a community needs.  What is really needed is a real religious tradition that guides the development of the community, provides it a focus, and gives it a foundation and resources to deal with the inevitable problems that all human ventures have.  And what Hedges points to, at least implicitly, is that only from these kind of solid communities can we expect to create a resistance movement against all that degrades human life in our society.  Now it should quickly be added that there have been plenty of “monastic” communities, both Catholic, Buddhist, and others, that have also deteriorated into some grotesque caricature of what their religious tradition is all about.  When you look at those examples, you will see that the “monastic” part is more like “window-dressing,” a kind of costume, rather than the substance of a real religious tradition.  Or perhaps in many cases of such failure it was a matter of badly interpreting the tradition or misunderstanding it.

 

 

A model for what Hedges is calling for would be a Gandhian ashram of sorts.  Gandhi, of course, is “the” icon of resistance.”  However, not everyone is fully aware of Gandhi’s deep religious roots, and what role they played in enabling him in his resistance–the movie on his life shows almost nothing of that.  He is known for espousing nonviolent resistance to injustice, but for people who took up nonviolence especially here in the U.S. very often it was simply a social tactic of confrontation to coerce some change that was called for.  For Gandhi, nonviolence was not a tactic but flowed out of a deeper sense of self, indeed, a different sense of self, of who one is.  Once nonviolence was used simply as a tactic it deteriorated into something else, became grossly misunderstood and misapplied–and then devalued by the society at large  By analogy, this often happened in the case of community building.

 

Now let us consider Person X coming to a community of sorts.  X is bringing a lot of stuff  to this endeavor—and I don’t mean material things.  More like life experiences, tendencies, habits, values, talents, quirks, fears, neurotic behaviors, and most of all and most importantly a false sense of self and a serious inability to see THAT fact or begin to understand it.  (This “falseness” may in fact be covered over with all kinds of religious language, or what’s even more problematic, it may be so deeply associated with one’s sense of identity that only some dramatic moment can begin to dislodge it.)  All the major religious traditions recognize that fact as a given (in their own terms) and have the resources for dealing with that, helping the person move toward a deeper, truer sense of self.  When a person comes to one of these communities, they are, whether they realize it or not at the point of entry, seeking to be a “different person” than what their society has told them they are.  Needless to say they will articulate many things, some incoherent, some obscure, some very lofty and idealistic and profound, but most of it will be a cover for a deep dissatisfaction with the sense of identity that one gets from the larger society.  That’s why these “monastic” communities all have some kind of initiation and testing process—to see if the person is willing and able to move beyond their own words and views, whether they are willing and able to engage in the process that will take them somewhere much deeper than they can see at that moment.  And by doing this they will then effect  a positive change in the world in whatever way that suits their capacities and talents, etc.  Incidentally, recall Thomas Merton’s famous last talk in Asia just before his death, when he at first is talking about Marxism and the attractions that held for a number of very idealistic young people in Europe in the 1960s.   Then  Merton mentions just in passing that Marxism really  only probably works in a monastery.  The gist of this is that one needs a profound inner transformation in order to really live by the values that authentic Marxism seems to be calling for and that these cannot be forced on a person or people from the outside by law or by force.  And the proper “laboratory” for this transformation is the monastic community.

 

 

Consider now a recent piece by Chris Hedges.  In his usual manner he paints a broad picture of our social ills and our predicament:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_collapse_of_globalization_20110328/

 

But what’s important for our purposes is that he gives a glimpse of what lies underneath these problems: a cult of the self, an idolization of self-interest, a culture of narcissism, a thoroughgoing self-absorption.  This is so strong, so pervasive, the “poison” seems so normal and is so intoxicating (recall in Greek myth how Narcissus falls in love with his own image which he sees on the water’s surface and drowns) that one wonders if there is any hope, any possibility of “liberation” and “resistance.”  Ultimately this is what a “monastic” community should provide and what all the major religious traditions point to, regardless of how well or how poorly any given community applies these resources.  Of course, in the theistic traditions, the person entering will be “seeking God,” but all this is only a jumble of words until the nitty-gritty of life and self are addressed.  That’s why you will often find simple practices like name-changing and common, boring  work for a long time as an initiatory period, as a way of beginning that “liberation” from a false sense of self leading to a real “seeking of God.”  In any case, let us look at Gandhi’s favorite scripture quote, from the Bhagavad Gita, which was often read in prayer at his ashram:

 

“He lives in wisdom

Who sees himself in all and all in him,

Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed

Every selfish desire and sense-craving

Tormenting the heart.  Not agitated

By grief, nor hankering after pleasure,

He lives free from lust and fear and anger.

Fettered no more by selfish attachments,

He is not elated by good fortune

Nor depressed by bad.  Such is the seer….

 

When you keep thinking about sense-objects

Attachment comes.  Attachment breeds desire,

The lust of possession which, when thwarted,

Burns to anger.  Anger clouds judgment

And robs you of the power to learn from past

Mistakes.  Lost is the discriminative

Faculty, and your life is utter waste.

 

But when you move amidst the world of sense

From both attachment and aversion freed,

There comes the peace  in which all sorrows end,

And you live in the wisdom of the Self.

 

The disunited mind is far from wise;

How can it meditate?  How be at peace?

When you know no peace, how can you know joy?

When you let your mind follow the siren

Call of the senses, they carry away

Your better judgment as a cyclone drives

A boat off the charted course to its doom….

 

He is forever free who has broken

Out of the ego-cage of I and mine

To be united with the Lord of Love.

This is the supreme state.  Attain thou this

And pass from death to immortality.”

 

 

 

These words were the true source of Gandhi’s social revolution, and these words, or its counterparts in the other great traditions, are the true foundation of any real community.  Otherwise you have merely a club, and there is a great difference between the two.

 

 

 

There’s so many religious/spiritual traditions, so much variety, so many ways of taking that journey!  If you are so inclined, it is like the proverbial kid in the candy store—everything looks so inviting.    But most serious spiritual teachers will tell you to get rooted in one particular tradition, to be a serious practitioner of one way.  What you really don’t want is to dabble in several traditions, taste here, taste there, and so on.  Also, what you really don’t want are these “self-constructed” traditions (typically “New Agers”) where you take elements from the different spiritual traditions and lump them together as you see fit, taking of course only those elements which you like.  The results usually range from the superficial to the simply weird.

 

However, when a person is thoroughly rooted in one spiritual tradition, it is not only legitimate but a genuine positive development of growth to explore other spiritual traditions and see what one can learn from them, especially as they enhance the possibilities of your own tradition, or to see these possibilites in your own tradition with fresh eyes.  There are of course also the special vocations that are called to explore very deeply another tradition without losing that “anchor hold” of their own tradition, to live on the boundary as it were between the two.  The obvious two names in this regard are of course Merton and Abhishiktananda, just as a starter.

 

For Christians who are not contemplatives in the general sense of that term, in other words whose Christianity is one of “external discipleship” even as it involves prayer, etc., Zen Buddhism seems a very alien thing.  For those, however, who have ventured onto a contemplative path, Zen can hold some serious attractions and possibilities.  It seems less daunting than the obviously more complex Tibetan Buddhism.  It has a tendency to “clear the ground,” “clean the path.”  Or just like a gust of fresh wind into a stale closed-up room, it suddenly reinvigorates you.

 

The most important thing about approaching Zen is not to begin with metaphysical words or concepts like “God” or “self” or “reality,”etc.  And that goes for any such statement about Zen by any Buddhist or any Christian or anybody!  Look at Zen directly.  First look at what is right in front of your nose.  Then look at who is looking at what is in front of that nose!  That is the right spirit in which to begin to get an insight into Zen.  Look directly at the stories and sayings of Zen.   They contain the “whole thing” and you will sense that as you listen to their words.  And you will be intrigued by this and drawn to a deeper place.  (Or it may mean nothing to you and then you will go on your way in peace!)

 

 

Consider:

 

A monk asked Ts’ui-wei about the meaning of Buddhism.  Ts’ui-wei answered:

“Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you.”  Some time later the monk

approached Ts’ui-wei again, saying, “There is nobody here now.  Please answer

me.”  Ts’ui-wei led him out into the garden and went over to the bamboo grove,

saying nothing.  Still the monk did not understand, so at last Ts’ui-wei said,

“Here is a tall bamboo; there is a short one!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zen saying:  No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.

 

 

 

 

Zen saying:  No seed ever sees the flower.

 

(Comment:  Can’t resist reminding you what Jesus said about the grain of wheat having to fall into the ground and die, etc.  Christians have a tendency to want to “have their cake and eat it too”!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wu-Tzu:

 

Talking about Zen all the time is like

looking for fish tracks in a dry riverbed.

 

 

 

Zen Master:

 

My magical power and miraculous gift:

Drawing water and chopping wood.

Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.

After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.

 

 

 

 

Story about Hakuin, one of the great Zen Masters who lived  in 18^th Century Japan and is credited with being the “Father of Modern Rinzai Zen”:

 

 

In a small hut, Hakuin lived a quiet life devoted to monastic purity.

When the young unmarried daughter of the village grocer

became pregnant, she named Hakuin as the father.  Her outraged

parents went to Hakuin and charged him with the deed.

Hakuin simply said, “Is that so?”

 

When the child was born, once again the parents came to Hakuin.

They handed him the baby and demanded he take responsibility

for raising it.  Hakuin said, “Is that so?” and took the baby in his arms.

Dutifully he began to look after the infant.

 

A year later, the young woman could bear it no longer.  She confessed

that the real father was a young man who worked in the

nearby fishmarket.  The parents went to Hakuin once more,

this time making deep apologies, and asked him to return the child.

Hakuin said only, “Is that so?” and gave the baby back to them.

 

(Comment:  Truly Hakuin was closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than most followers of Jesus!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some wise observations by a modern American Zen student:

 

” Most people who come to the Zen Center don’t think a Cadillac will do it,

but they think that enlightenment will.  Now they’ve got a new cookie, a new

“if only.”  “If only I could understand what realization is all about, I would

be happy.”  “If only I could have at least a little enlightenment experience,

I would be happy.”  Coming into a practice like Zen, we bring our usual

notions that we are going to get somewhere–become enlightened–and get all

the cookies that have eluded us in the past.

 

Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object.

But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for

something outside it, that something becomes an object and must be limited too.

So you have something limited looking for something limited and you just end up

with more of the same folly that has made you miserable.”

 

Charlotte Joko Beck

 

(Comment:  Indeed, and this would hold true in many ways for those who come to Christian monastic life also.)

 

 

 

Zen saying: If you want to climb a mountain, begin at the top.

 

 

 

A real Zen flavor to this saying by Thoreau:

 

A gun gives you the body, not the bird.

 

 

 

 

From a history of Zen in the 20^th Century by Heinrich Dumoulin:

 

“Paramount for Zen praxis is the warning, often repeated to pupils, not to seek extraordinary experiences, combined with encouragement of the most intense effort.  This paradoxical combination is rooted in Buddhist tradition.  Since its earliest days, Buddhism has urged prudence in dealing with supersensible mental gifts.  In Zen the serene and patient attitude toward unusual experiences is based on the conviction that enlightenment is not the fruit of one’s own endeavor but the apprehension of the True Self or one’s original nature—in religious terms the Buddha-nature—that reveals itself when the moment has come, the moment of maturation that withdraws itself from the power of the practitioner.  Impatient expectation is a hindrance.  The attitude known as taigo-Zen (Zen that expects enlightenment) is generally rejected in Zen.”

 

 

 

 

From French Jesuit Yves Raguin:

 

“Being a child of the Father, I learned from Christ to be simply attentive to my inner mystery, knowing that I cannot see my face as God’s child, unless the Father enlightens me by his own Spirit.  The practice of Zen meditation taught me to stay in pure attentiveness  before my inner mystery….  In fact it is the practice of Zen which helped me to understand that the final step is not to follow Christ or to imitate him, but to be animated by him because he lives in us.”

 

This is very good, and it can lead us in several fruitful directions, but what I will simply emphasize now is the insufficiency of “discipleship” or “imitation”—they are authentic way-stations as it were, but not an end in themselves, and certainly not the deepest place one is called to.  Unfortunately too many very good Christians get stuck there.  All that Pauline language about Christ “in me”—I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me—kind of slides right on by as if it were only metaphorical or merely words or just some image suggesting some degree of closeness.  No the Risen Christ is our inmost reality, and whatever helps us recognize that and realize that is truly welcome.

 

In light of the above, consider this:

 

” Two monks were washing their bowls in the river when they

noticed a scorpion that was drowning.  One monk immediately

scooped it up and set it upon the bank.  In the process he was

stung.  He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion

fell in.  The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung.  The

other monk asked him, “Friend, why do you continue to save the

scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?”

 

“Because,” the monk replied, “to save it is my nature.”

 

 

Here Buddhism and Christianity meet, in silence, at a very, very deep level.

 

 

 

 

Let us conclude with some modern Zen humor:

 

Q:  What does a Zen monk say to

a hot dog stand vendor? (Tofu dogs of course!)

A:  Make me one with everything.

 

Q:  What does the vendor say when the monk

asks for change for his twenty-dollar bill?

A:  Change comes from within.

 

Ok, ok, so they’re not THAT funny!

This will not be a rehash of well-known facts about the life of this incredible Tibetan holy man. These are easy to find.  But his lifestory is filled with many historical facts, legends and myths, and all are important in understanding what he was all about and his significance both for Tibetan Buddhism and for all of us, yet not all the details get the “visibility” or the interpretation that they should.    The hagiography of any saint always needs careful reading—especially “between the lines”!

 

The first important thing to say is that there is a certain “anti-institutional” flavor to Milarepa’s spiritual path,  which kind of gets glossed over in the “official version” of  his various representations.  Milarepa was flourishing around 1100 in Tibet when that area was experiencing a profound shift in religious culture from the old Bon religion to the new one of Buddhism imported from India.  Interestingly enough in Europe at about this time it was the period between two great Western Christian saints:  St. Romuald and St. Francis, and the latter himself is also somewhat of an anti-institutional figure who has been domesticated by  ecclesial  history.  It is interesting that all three have a certain orientation to solitude, more or less.  In Francis’s case poverty was the chief value but solitude played an important role.  It can be said that the solitary one and institutional religion seldom fit together comfortably or without tension.  This can be seen in the Christian West from the Desert Fathers on.

 

Returning back to Milarepa, it is important to underline that Milarepa was a layman, not a traditional Buddhist monk, not a Buddhist bhikku.  He never belonged to any monastery or monastic group.  There were already Buddhist monasteries in Tibet at the time so he could have joined them, and there are stories that once his spiritual life was beginning to become known,  there were established monks who felt threatened by him and tried to show him up in their knowledge and their spiritual superiority.  Needless to say they not only failed but he “converted” them to be his disciples.  In any case, one can sense a real tension between the solitary Milarepa and the first rudiments of established Buddhism in Tibet.  Furthermore, Milarepa’s great teacher, Marpa, who was so instrumental in importing Buddhist texts into Tibet from India and translating them into Tibetan, well, he also was a layman, a married layman was Milarepa’s guru!

 

At this point let us note that within Tibetan Buddhism, the Kagyudpa School or lineage claims Milarepa as within their “ambience.”  In actuality this is done retrospectively, and this is perfectly fine–as long as we simply see the whole thing as a guru–disciple lineage that follows a certain line.  Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, Gampopa, etc, etc.  But when the thing becomes formalized along some pretty strict institutional lines and is even called a “sect” of Tibetan Buddhism and when one sect hardly speaks to another, I think we have something that would not have really mattered one iota to Milarepa.  This is an outrageous thing to say for a non-Tibetan like myself, but in a sense Milarepa has to be “liberated” from the Kagyudpa label just as much as St. Francis has to be liberated from the Franciscans!!

 

If Milarepa deliberately rejected a formal institutional role for himself, he also included the institution of monasticism and priesthood in this rejection.  Monasteries are on his list of the “six deceptions”!!  Note this little quote:

 

“Monasteries are like a collecting-station for hollow drift.

The priestly life … is deceptive and illusory to me.

Of such prisons I have no need.”

 

Then he goes on to say:  “Having made a monastery within my body,

I forgot the monastery outside.”

 

Another rather interesting anti-institutional flavor to Milarepa’s spiritual journey is his relationship with women.  All the great world religions have problems in this regard in usually relegating women to some inferior position or as subservient to men.  Milarepa, like Jesus, does not really solve “the problem,” but in the case of both of them in their encounters with women they show the way to a transcendence of the restrictions of social norms and they empower women to overcome the narrowness of religious institutions.  In Buddhism itself, it was Ananda, one of the first disciples of Buddha, who convinced the Buddha himself to admit women into “the path”–thus you had Buddhist nuns from the beginning, but one still has the feeling that they “are riding 2^nd class.”  Milarepa is much more direct and radical.  In one story he meets a young girl of about 15 with whom he has an exchange.  She is intrigued by what he is all about and wants to learn.  He tells her:

“Living in a rugged, deserted, and solitary hut is the Outer Practice.

Complete disregard of the self-body is the Inner Practice.

Thoroughly Knowing the Absolute is the Absolute Practice.

I am a yogi who knows all three.

Is there a disciple here who wishes to learn them?”

 

She becomes his disciple just like that, no formal “nun stuff”–and the story says that she achieves perfect enlightenment in this lifetime—just like Milarepa!  Another encounter with another young girl of 16 is even more interesting.  This time Milarepa, on another one of his journeys, stops at a well begging this girl for some food.  She rebuffs him and walks away toward her home.  He follows behind her.  She still ignores him.  He plops down outside her doorway overnight.  She has a special dream during the night, and the next morning she goes out and tells Milarepa the following:

 

” Please listen to me, Great Repa Yogi, accomplished One.

Looking at human lives, they remind me of dew on grass.

Reflecting on this my heart is full of grief.

My friends and relatives are as merchants passing in the street.

My native land is like a den of vice. …

My past life drives me from behind;

cooking and household duties pull me on.

This world is but a play:

the endless toil of housework,

the struggle for a living,

the leaving of one’s gracious parents,

the giving up of one’s own life to one’s betrothed.

Sometimes I think to myself: Does it make sense? To freely give yourself with your parents’ goods to someone who for life enslaves you as a servant?

At first a lover is an angel, then a demon, frightening and outrageous,

In the end he is a fierce elephant who threatens to destroy you.

Thinking thus, I feel sad and weary.

So now this maiden will devote herself to the Dharma!

Now she will join your disciples!”

 

Now this sounds like a REAL feminist!!  She is not too keen on her arranged marriage, and she doesn’t ask Milarepa for permission to join or to be accepted as a disciple.  She says she’s in; that’s it.  Milarepa has hardly anything to teach her; he merely gives his seal of approval as it were to her going off and being a hermitess.  What’s really funny in this story is something that is not fully evident until you stop and think about it:  she is fully in charge of the situation at all times in this story.   Years later they meet again, and she is one of the accomplished ones.

 

 

Finally, just a minor but interesting point.  Milarepa often calls himself a mendicant, a beggar.  He moves around quite a bit.  It is said that he inhabited something like 26 different caves during his life!  Usually he did not eat meat–he did not want to kill animals–but there are several stories where he does eat meat when offered it by some hunters who find his cave.  Like one of the great Desert Fathers, he considers the demands of hospitality more important than his own “purity” or the formalities of a monastic rule.

 

Let us conclude with a humorous but sharp observation by Milarepa:

 

” “When you run after your thoughts, you are like a dog chasing a stick: every time a stick is thrown, you run after it. Instead, be like a lion who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to face the thrower. One only throws a stick at a lion once.”

 

 

 

 

 Realization of what?  Realization of the ultimate reality that one’s tradition holds up as the goal of it all:  this is what it’s all about.  Now in the Christian Desert Fathers there is a very famous saying by the great Abba Moses: “Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.”  This “everything” is obviously not a collection of information, nor even wisdom in any ordinary sense, nor even some profound insight or great idea, etc.  No, it is what is sometimes called the “Great Realization”—though you will not find that kind of language among the Desert Fathers.  There is almost no “mystical” language among these venerable figures, but many signs of a mystical spiritual life (correctly understood) are present in their simple words and in their existential actions and lives.  Consider the following words of Abhishiktananda:

 

“The act of pure love is what awakes.  Advaita, non-duality is not an intellectual discovery, but an attitude of the soul.  It is much more the impossibility of saying ‘Two’ than the affirmation of ‘One.’  What is the use of saying ‘One’ in one’s thought, if a person says ‘Two’ in his life?  To say ‘One’ in one’s life: that is Love.”                                                          Indeed.  And this the Desert Fathers profoundly exhibit.

 

Now the word “cell” in that saying is a very interesting word, and it has several layers of meaning but each layer is interconnected to the others.  It is first of all an invitation to live within a certain confined  physical space.  That space, we are assured, will become the place of manifestation and thus of the Great Realization.  Similar insights are found in other traditions where that space can be denoted by “hermitage” or “cave,” etc.  Consider the following from the incomparable Milarepa:

 

“To stay in a hermitage is, in itself, to help all sentient beings.  I may come to Tibet; however, even then I will still remain alone in a hermitage.  You must not think that this is an ill practice.  I am merely observing my Guru’s orders.  Besides, the merits of all stages on the Path are acquired in the hermitage.  Even if you have very advanced experiences and Realization, it is better to stay in the land of no-man, because this is the glory and tradition of a yogi.  Therefore, you also should seek lonely places and practice strict meditation.”

 

Milarepa, of course, has a very austere reputation–one who lived in incredible conditions, perhaps not everyone’s “cup of tea”—not even nettle tea which is all he usually consumed!  And the Desert Father “cell” or cave was also usually a very austere place.  But we have these wise words from the Upanishads:

 

“Choose a place for meditation that is

Clean, quiet, and cool, a cave with a smooth floor

Without stones and dust, protected against

Wind and rain and pleasing to the eye.”

 

Not so bad afterall!  But seriously, let us reflect a bit on this “place of realization.”  As we noted, it is first of all a physical space: a cell, a cave, a trailer, a cabin, a room, etc.  It is where the monk abides–if not 24/7, pretty close to it.  It is characterized by solitude and silence.  Not a hangout, not a place to crash, not just a functional place, but shockingly enough it seems to be “an end in itself”—just live in that solitude and silence and let it take you where you have never been before!  Now very, very few are so blessed and privileged as to be able to actually physically live in that way.  But not all is lost for the rest.  For “the rest” are also “called”, “given” the Great Realization—-everyone at all times everywhere stands at the entrance of the Gates of Paradise.  While doing dishes there is no point of dreaming of a cave along the upper Ganges—Paradise is right there at the sink,  Enter….  So the “place of realization”  then is seen as the place where your two feet are!  The relation between the monk’s cell and Everyman’s (woman’s) place is extremely important and deep and not easy to see or understand—but it is absolutely true.  In a sense, everyone is called to “sit in their cell and their cell will teach them ‘everything.'”  The monk in his cell is truly Everyman(woman), but he/she has taken concrete steps to facilitate a certain awareness and aliveness to the Presence that is always there, to the Great Realization of Oneness.  The existential values that help this awareness, or at least some of them, are solitude, silence, poverty, simplicity, meditation, etc.  What happens to the average person “in the world” is that he/she gets lost in the nitty-gritty of historical existence, in the give and take of what the phenomenal ego undergoes/does/desires, in the social values of wealth, success, reputation, etc.  Indeed a person can even get lost in the “good things” which they do.  So everyone needs to learn from the monk in his cell—and indeed that monk can also get lost and scattered in trivial pursuits and become unfaithful to his journey.  So what is to be learned?

 

First of all let us note a physical characteristic of the monk’s cell—it is a circumscribed space, an enclosure of sorts, a space of limitation, of a very concrete finiteness. That is merely a representation and an embodiment of a more fundamental limitedness which is simply our human condition. It is important to attend to that “limitedness,” to live within it with a certain attentiveness.  That concrete finiteness is always there within our humanity, but it becomes more manifest as we experience our inadequacies, our failures, our “sinfulness”(why the Desert Fathers never hesitated to call themselves “sinners”), our frustrations, our inability to be satisfied, our losses, etc., etc.  The Desert Fathers did it marvelously–in all circumstances; and you can see it in their stories and sayings.  It comes out in their key words like: silence, poverty and dispossession, perseverance, humility(especially that), repentance, hospitality, prayer, etc. etc.  If you read their stories and sayings carefully,  you will see how they are “attending to the limits” of their situation.  This is crucial in understanding what they are up to and who they are, so let us turn to another tradition for a bit of help.

 

Bodhidharma, the first Patriarch of Zen who brought Buddhism to China, sat in meditation facing a wall for 9 years.  That iconic image should teach us much.  In a sense he was “sitting in his cell” and finally his cell taught him “everything.”  That wall is our finiteness, or better, the finiteness of our phenomenal ego self that trashes about with fears, confusions, desires, hang-ups, going with whatever is the latest stimulus, etc.  The ego self wants to be divine, infinite, fully satisfied, but there is one little catch—death is around the corner, a dissolution of that very identity that is so carefully and assiduously constructed.  If you have ever seen a spoiled little child in a market start screaming when he/she doesn’t get what he/she wants, that is the picture of the ego self as death negates all its “achievements,” all its “accomplishments”, all its constructs, all its gains.  So the ego self will tend to suppress the thought of death, its dissolution, and “play” at being divine.  So many of the stories in the Bible relate to that:  the serpent’s temptation to Eve, the builders of the Tower of Babel, Satan’s temptation to Jesus in the desert, etc.  The amazing thing is that every person is one with God in the core center of their being, sometimes called “the heart” –this comes as pure gift, not a construct of our doing.  Death cannot touch that reality—in fact that may be said to be the ONLY reality.  Again, from the Gospels:  Jesus asks us why lay up treasure where moth and rust can eat them away or a thief can steal them—this is ultimately the fundamental reality of Death, and that kind of treasure is what the ego self loses itself in.

 

 

So that “wall” is everywhere, every place where our two feet are–whether it be the monk in his cell or a person doing his dishes or taking a walk. (Thus the wandering monk is also facing that same wall and can be said to be “in his cell.”)  You are facing that wall.  So the amazing thing is that this is precisely the place of realization!  The Buddhist equation holds:  nirvana=samsara — when you see it right!  Indeed, when one sees right through that wall!!  On the one hand, the mountains will still be mountains(as Zen teaches us) and carrying water will still be carrying water, but on the other hand it will all be different.

 

Now we need to push our understanding of the place of realization a bit further.  If our very personhood, no matter its circumstances, is potentially the locus of the Great Realization, it is because that realization unfolds at the core of our being, the center of our being, in the Sufi and Hesychast tradition, the heart.  The monk abiding in his/her cell symbolizes and lives out Everyman(woman) –including the monk himself–abiding within his/her own heart.  We see through the wall only from the standpoint of the heart. Otherwise the cell, the human condition,  becomes intolerable in its limitations–a veritable prison cell, and modern consumerism will sell you the “drugs and toys” to keep you distracted and entertained while you “sit in your cell and learn nothing” but churn away in desire and endless dissatisfaction.

 

Here we may very well learn most from our Sufi and Hesychast friends.  But a modern rendition of what “the heart” means is provided by Thomas Merton, and this quote is given approval by the great scholar of Hesychasm, Kallistos Ware:

 

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our mind or the brutalities of our will.  This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.  It is so to speak, His Name written in us.  As our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship, it is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven.  It is in everybody.  And if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.  I have no program for this seeing; it is only given.  But the Gate of Heaven is everywhere.”

 

And Kallistos Ware:  “In this passage, Merton does not actually use the word ‘heart,’ but surely he is referring with insight and precision to what the Christian East means in its ascetic and mystical theology when it refers to the deep heart.”

 

The Great Realization will always be explicated in different language by different traditions, and it may be argued that not all these point to exactly the same experience.  However that be, in terms of the Christian East and Hesychasm (and very much Sufism), the Great Realization is best approached through the language of the heart as above.  Here we arrive at the “ultimate” place of realization when we arrive at the heart.  And the nature of this Great Realization begins to be delineated through what is called the Prayer of the Heart.

 

In Hesychasm, the heart is the locus of the Divine Indwelling.  As St. Paul says:  “God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts , crying, ‘Abba, Father,'”(Gal 4:6).  So in the heart we are one with Christ and drawn into the unspeakable mystery and awesome transcendence of the Trinitarian relationships.  So much so that St.Paul could say: “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me”(Gal 2:20).  The Sufis would put it in a more concrete, existential way:   I see  what I see with God’s eyes, I hear what I hear with God’s ears, I touch what I touch with God’s hands, I walk where I walk with God’s feet, I smell what I smell with God’s nose, I speak what I speak with God’s voice.

Rather bold but marvelous way of putting it!  And we can perhaps push it one more step:  when I truly pray it is God who is praying in my heart.  This is the true Prayer of the Heart.  As Kallistos Ware puts it, we come to the realization “where prayer becomes part of us, not just something we do, but something we are, and it can lead us to the point where we are no longer conscious  of the subject-object dichotomy, no longer conscious of ourselves praying to God, which leads us to the point where God is all in all.”  As Cassian put: “Prayer is not perfect when the monk is conscious of himself or of the fact that he is praying.”  For the Great Realization means our surrender to that Total Gift of Christ praying to the Father in our Heart and the totality of our life being swept up in the doxology of the Holy Trinity—Glory be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit–whether we are sweeping the floor or in deep silent meditation.  This is a surrender way beyond any words or concepts.

 

But let us conclude with this brief saying by John of Gaza about his fellow hermit, Barsanuphius:

 

“The cell in which he is enclosed alive as in a tomb, for the sake of the Name of Jesus, is his place of repose; no demon enters there, not even the prince of demons, the devil.  It is a sanctuary, for it contains the dwelling-place of God.”

 

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A. The One and the Many

 

The title refers to a classic philosophical problem, a dilemma that intrigued ancient Greek philosophers.  It goes something like this:  from the standpoint of appearances the world seems radically characterized by diversity–“the many.”  You look around and you see dogs, cats, birds, rocks, trees, water, fire, butterflies, your own self, etc., etc., etc.  But if there is only “difference” it becomes difficult to make sense of the world.  For you need some commonality, some “sameness” even to affirm “difference.”  For example, are you “the same person” now as  you were 20 years ago?  You probably would answer, “yes” and “no.”  From the standpoint of radical diversity, from the standpoint of “difference” as the fundamental principle of reality, you could only answer “No, I am not the same person I was 20 years ago.”  Heraclitus, one of the philosophers who held that position, did say that you never step into the same river twice.  But other Greek philosophers began to intuit another principle at work in reality.  For example: take a piece of raw gold ore, refine it, melt it down, pour it into a mold, hammer it out and maybe you have a chalice or some decorative piece.  Is that which we call “gold” different in each instance or is there some continuity, some underlying unity?  Another example: take a seed and plant it, once grown into a tree cut the tree down, use some wood to make furniture, some is burned to make heat.  From the seed to the furniture or the ashes there is some unity that undergoes these transformations and underlying these transformations.  This they called the principle of unity–it is also at work in reality, and it is this which allows us to make sense of the world.  Unlike the principle of diversity, the principle of unity is not obvious to appearances—one has to intuit it through a kind of philosophical intuition.  It is a kind of breakthrough in rational reasoning that the Greeks achieved, but it left them in a great dilemma because the two principles are actually self-negating.  They cannot exist together in the same entity at the same time because they cancel each other out–and yet that is precisely what is needed to be faithful to the world we experience.  So some philosophers simply opted for one principle over the other:  Parmenides opted for Unity–All is One.  Thus difference was considered merely an “appearance”, practically an illusion and not truly real.  Others opted precisely for “difference”–like Heraclitus–“Otherness” is All. There is nothing that is “the same” in reality–it is only a function of our words that anything seems the same.  It was not until you get to Aristotle that the problem is solved sort of, and he shows you how the two principles do not negate each other by introducing a third principle which actually holds them together and leads to his proof for the existence of what he calls “God.”

Now all this is simply by way of preparation for what I really want to discuss: the diversity of spiritual paths.  That bit of philosophical history might help us if we refer to it by analogy, as a kind of very rough paradigm of the way we need to proceed to even see  the problem clearly.  First of all, it is very obvious to everyone that there is an enormous diversity in spiritual paths.  The diversity in this case is two-fold: diversity of methods, and diversity of ultimate goals as presented by each tradition. It is not only that there is Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc., each with its own spiritual methods, with its own claims,  and with its own  expressions of the ultimate goal,  but even within any one of these traditions there are also some amazingly different variants.  And just like with the ancient Greek philosophers, people tend to take one of several possible positions in the face of a deep dilemma.  Some will radicalize this diversity and claim that all these traditions are totally different and have nothing in common.  The problem here is that often this is accompanied by a claim of one’s own superiority or dominance as “the” tradition.  These people see little need to talk to the “other” because there is nothing they could possibly learn.  They tend not to want to explore that “otherness” and see what it might bring.  At the other end are  folks who opt for a kind of radical unity—it’s all the same. A variant of this is simply pointing to a diversity of methods, but of the same goal:  One Truth; Many Paths.    And sometime that alleged sameness is established by simply picking and choosing the elements from each tradition and each experience that fit with one another and ignoring those that don’t.  Also, even here, sometime is found a claim to superiority of a given tradition, but usually in a more refined, subtle manner.

Again, the people who tend to opt for “sameness” also tend to stress the value of “experience” over and against conceptual constructs which tend to go in the “difference” direction.  There are two problems with that: 1. the spiritual experiences among various saints and mystics has an amazing variety even with some common elements among them.  An example:  many Orthodox do not recognize anything valid in the spiritual experience of St. Francis.  Is it simply because of their hardheartedness and stubborness or is it because they simply do not recognize their spirituality in St. Francis.  I think it is a bit of both.  And what happens when you cross the BIG religious divides and look at the experiences of various holy people in their own traditions.  To claim that it is all the same is to overlook some significant differences.  2. The relation between conceptual framework and the “spiritual experience” needs a lot of careful study, and yes, lived experience.  At this point let us just simply point out that one’s spiritual experience is shaped by the conceptual framework that one lives in.  The conceptual framework is not simply a ladder or a boat that one can throw away once one reaches one’s goal–at least not this side of the grave.

At this point, if we are truly open and truly honest to what we have, we find ourselves in a similar dilemma as the ancient Greek philosophers.  The “cheap” solution is to opt for one side or the other of the dilemma—the deeper thing is to hold on to both at the same time!  Unfortunately we do not have our religious Aristotle to solve our problem–and perhaps that’s good–but we do have a “word” from our Hasidic friends to help us out and encourage us:

There were two Hasidic brothers who both deeply thought about the things of God and the mystical path.  It seems that in a discussion they were having they discovered that they held a contrary view on a very important point.  Neither one could convince the other of his rightness and the wrongness of the other’s view.  The argument reached a frustrating point of no longer being fruitful in any sense.  One of them suddenly got an idea.  “Let us go to so-and-so and we will lay out our positions and he will decide which one of us is right.”  They agreed; they went to their friend, and their friend listened to them deeply and was troubled.  “I don’t see a way out of this.  Both of you can’t be right; one of you must be wrong, but I can’t tell which one it is.  But let us go to the Rabbi, he will determine this.”  So off they went to the Hasidic Master and presented their dilemma.  He listened to them intently.  Then he turned to Brother A and said, “You are right.”  Then he turned to Brother B and said, “You also are right.”  Then the friend exploded in exasperation, “But they both can’t be right.”  And the Rabbi turned to him and said, “You know, you also are right!”

(Caution: This story may be hazardous to your orthodoxy.)

All of the above is by way of a kind of prolegomena to a future reflection on the thought of Abhishiktananda, one of the most remarkable spiritual figures of the 20^th Century.

B. St. Thomas Aquinas:  “At the end of all our knowing we know God as something unknown; we are united with him as with something wholly unknown.”

The problem with Christian piety (and theology) is that too often it does not take seriously enough those amazing words of Aquinas—it is too often that Christian spirituality does not embrace the Mystery of God, but only a kind of pretend “mystery” which is easily controlled by a clerical church.  And furthermore this cripples the Christian encounter with the great religions of the world.

1. One of my favorites, Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi:  “It is not a question of knowing God when the veil be lifted, but of knowing Him in the veil itself.”

1. And finally a word on “nakedness” from Merton:

“The inmost self is naked.  Nakedness is not socially acceptable except in certain crude forms which can be commercialized without any effort of imagination(topless waitresses).  Curiously, this cult of bodily nakedness is a veil and a distraction, a communion in futility, where all identities get lost in their nerve endings.  Everybody claims to like it.  Yet no one is really happy with it.  It makes money.

Spiritual nakedness, on the other hand, is far too stark to be useful.  It strips life down to the root where life and death are equal, and this is what nobody like to look at.  But it is where freedom really begins: the freedom that cannot be guaranteed by the death of somebody else.  The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or the devil or poverty or failure.  If you discover this nakedness, you’d better keep it private.  People don’t like it.  But can you keep it private?  Once you are exposed….  Society continues to do you the service of keeping you in disguises, not for your comfort, but for its own.”

1. Louis Dupre:  “Negative theology means far more than that we find no adequate names for God.  It means, on a practical-spiritual level, that there exists no failproof method for reaching God, and hence that my only hope lies in the humble awareness of my inadequacy.  My lack of faith, my pschic limitations(including the ones that spiritually incapacitate), the radical worldliness of my age, this is the dark cloud I must enter deliberately if I am to find God at all.  It is the cloud of my own estrangement, my own waylessness.  No spiritual life can take off without passing through an intense awareness of the emptiness of the creature.  This is the lasting message of all negative theology, especially of Meister Eckhart’s lesson of absolute poverty.

The message seems far removed from the aspirations of a culture predominantly bent on self-fulfillment and self-achievement…  Current secularism has questioned far more than the doctrine of God.  It has jeopardized the possibility of lifting our minds and hearts beyond the objective world we know and control.  The very attitude toward existence required for the idea of God to make sense has vanished.  We have become the efficient, objective and responsible inhabitants of a well-organized closed world.  Amazingly enough, deep down men and women still nurture the aspiration of breaking through the enclosure into the free space of transcendence.  To realize this aspiration, however, they must first become aware of their own moral and spiritual predicament.  A precondition for spiritual life is the willingness to enter into our own radical profaneness, to recognize the practical atheism by which we conduct our affairs and to admit that it is not only the name of God we have forgotten but also the natural piety which alone enables man to speak the name truthfully.  The aspirant to spiritual life must learn a new attitude before he learns new concepts or practices.  Unconditional trust without knowing what it is we trust, willingness to let go without knowing whether anyone will ever catch us, preparedness to wait without knowing whether we will be met.  Total looseness and unconditional trust are the virtues negative theology teaches us to cultivate.  There could be no more appropriate lesson for our time.”

 

 

1. “The highest form of jihad is to speak the truth in the face of an unjust ruler” Saying of Prophet Muhammad

2. From the current issue of Adbusters—a sign of the times: “Roxxxy is the world’s first sex robot. Her hair style, skin color and personality are customizable. She has tactile and aural sensors that allow “her” to respond appropriately to conversation and stimulation. She can talk about football or moan orgasmically when the time is right. With her embedded wireless modem, she can access the internet and download personality updates and new knowledge. She weighs 27 kilograms, making her easy to store. She can grip your hand, move her head up and down and her hips back and forth. Roxxxy costs $7000. And yes, she has an off switch.” Comment: Walmart will eventually sell this robot a lot cheaper. Walmart’s Motto: Save Money. Live Better

3. Cost of keeping a no-fly zone over Libya: 2 million per week

Cost of arms that NATO SUPPLIED to Qadaffi over the last 3 decades: 10 billion

Money Qadaffi had in US banks before his assets were frozen: 29 billion.

Funny how Syria was destroying its own citizens just like Libya was doing, but nobody either here or in Europe seems to care. (A few other countries engaging in such activities also.) Oh, I forget, Syria has no oil. Hmm, Libya has oil. Iraq has oil. Iran has oil. Afghanistan has one of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Do I see a pattern here? Do we ever attack or invade any country that has nothing in the ground, even though it might be doing horrible things to people?

4. Maybe the only antidote to the madness of our world—a quote from one-time Secretary General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold:

“Understand through the stillness. Act out of the stillness. Conquer in the stillness.”

If one correctly understands this “stillness”, this is the essence of hesychasm. Understanding it wrongly or inadequately results in the ego wrapping its arms around a kind of stillness and enjoying it as a new kind of experience, albeit a kind of spiritual experience.

5. One of Merton’s favorite Sufi sayings:

“On the heart of Poverty three renouncements are inscribed:

Quit this world. Quit the next world, and quit quitting.”

6. Narcissism vitiates all spirituality and all relationships. Narcissism disguises itself as a kind of positive message: “You are at the center of the universe.” Indeed. Every person is at the center of reality, but not any ego self is anywhere near there. The ego self cannot enter through the Gate of Paradise–only the True Person can. Now one of the problems of modern spirituality is that it often does not understand how modern technology enhances the dynamics of the ego self. An essay in the NY Times is a remarkable reflection of the problems that modern technology presents to human relationality, how it tends to pull us toward the surface of reality and fix us there. Only a little further extrapolation would give us an idea of how that would affect spirituality. Here is the link.

Incidentally, Dostoyevsky would readily agree with this writer about the connection of suffering and real love.

Unforgiven is the title of a very great Western.  Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, it is easily one of the 10 best Westerns of all time and one of the top 100 movies of all time.  It has the feel of one of the great Greek tragedies, both in the depth of its themes and in the complex unfolding of character and story.  Now one may rightly wonder what is a Western doing in a blog focused on the spiritual journey, especially the monastic path.  Actually the Western, as a work of art whether it be in the form of poetry, song, painting, literature or movie, is like any genuine art an opening into the deeper realities of life.  There is a lot more “religion,” in Unforgiven than in most movies which try real hard to tackle religious subjects.  Furthermore, understanding the Western is a key to understanding the United States.  This is our mythic language, what Homer and Hesiod were for the Greeks, and in coming to grip with our myths we gain in understanding both our deep problems and our real strengths.   It is also important to remember that the myths can come in simple, childlike stories which one leaves behind in childhood and which are actually superficial—like the “Grade B” western movies of years ago, or the cheap “dime novels” which still grace the racks of pop booksellers but now cost a lot more than a dime.   But this was true even centuries ago, and someone like Homer or Sophocles or Shakespeare turned these “pop” stories into material to reveal much deeper human realities.  Unforgiven is like that—Eastwood has taken this genre with its “bad guys vs. good guys” view of the world and turned it into a deep reflection on the ambiguity of our seeking of justice.

So what is the theme of Unforgiven?  Justice, the nature of justice, our seeking, our thirst for justice, the ambiguity of justice, a hint that there is “something here greater than justice,” what constitutes “badness” and “goodness,” and who are the “bad guys” and who are the “good guys” and can we continue to look at the world that way and not cause great harm?  Etc, etc.

The story begins with an initiating incident, a “tipping of the scale,” a tear in the fabric of a seemingly just world, etc.  This is also the way things begin in the great Greek tragedies which are mostly on the theme of justice and the human social order vs. an individual’s response to that breaking.  In this case in the town of Big Whiskey, Wyoming there is a brothel, and one rainy night a drunk cowboy badly scars one of the girls in the brothel in a fit of rage and anger over something she said about him.  He cuts her face in several places.  This is bad enough in itself, but of course she is in danger of not being able to make a livelihood as a whore because now she is not as attractive.  The women of the brothel band together into a unity and demand justice.   This is perfectly understandable and perfectly ok.  The seeking of justice, the need for justice, is built into us–it is part of God’s life in us.  Even a little child will reveal that in his/her own situations:  “That ain’t fair.”

Now enters the sheriff, Little Bill.  He is a former gunslinger himself, now reformed, and now a representative of “law and order,” a symbol of the state, society, civilization, etc.  He is determined that his town be a civilized, orderly place and things need to be “set right” when some disturbance occurs.   Here develops the first crisis in the story.  It is not apparent what the ladies of the brothel would consider justice, what they expect from Little Bill, but it is very obvious that what he gives them is woefully inadequate, and this really begins a remarkable tragedy.  Little Bill’s notion of justice seems to be circumscribed by economics, dollars and cents, and he makes the cowboy bring a couple of horses in payment for what he has done.  However, and this is very revealing, the horses will go to the owner of the brothel, not to the wronged girl.  Little Bill sees the monetary value of the loss for the owner in that this girl will no longer “produce” what she used to.  There is nothing personal or deeply human about his seeking of justice, and certainly nothing transcendent in that notion of justice–it is purely economic.  The ladies of the brothel spit on this, and then secretly they put their money together and seek to hire a gunfighter to kill the cowboy.  Now we see their seeking of justice has evolved into anger of enormous proportions.  They themselves see themselves as still seeking only justice, but this has evolved into something quite different even though the language may be similar.  It might be called “revenge,” but for some people this is simply another form of justice.  Justice as revenge, or revenge as a form of justice is actually a very popular notion, but this story illustrates its radical destructiveness to all concerned.  Then, there is the first important observation to make–there is such a remarkable interconnectedness between these kind of bad moments: one act of injustice leads to another bad thing and then there is a third and now we are helplessly caught up in a kind of “stimulus/response” mode that simply escalates into a greater evil than the original wrong.  This is the stuff of Greek tragedy.

Now enters the main character of the story:  William Munny, also a former gunslinger like Little Bill but a lot worse.  Years ago Munny was a murderous outlaw, known as a cold-blooded killer even of women and children, a man who showed no regard or mercy to anyone.  But when we see him now he is a pig farmer in Kansas, having been one for something like 10 years.  Apparently somewhere he met a woman who loved him deeply, who saw something good in him (and this is so understated that we can easily miss the pathos of that), and this transformed him in a remarkable way.  Sadly she died from a disease, but he had several children with her, and he remained extraordinarily loyal to her—later on in the story when one of the whores offers him a “freebie” he declines because he “is a married man”—she is astonished that any man would be so loyal.  The movie truly helps us get at least a glimpse of the goodness that this woman saw in this murderous outlaw.  Anyway, he is not doing so well as a pig farmer but trying hard.  A young would-be gunslinger shows up at Munny’s farm and invites him to take up the invite from the ladies of Big Whiskey—they are offering a $1000 reward for the killing of that cowboy.  Munny’s pigs are dying from a disease, and he is desperate to survive and if he goes with the young gunslinger it is only in “pursuit of justice” for this wronged woman.  He persuades one of his old cohorts to join him and the party of 3 set out for Big Whiskey.

Meanwhile in Big Whiskey Little Bill has become aware that these women have put out this “invite” all over the Western States and that a lot of gunslingers will be tempted to come and get that reward by killing the cowboy.  He is determined to not let that happen.  It is not clear what his motivations are, but he is simply one of those “law and order” people who doesn’t tolerate any disruption in his sense of “law and order.”  In this case, Little Bill engages in radical gun control—no guns would be tolerated in town.  Any gunslinger that comes into town has to turn his guns in immediately.  Seems like a very reasonable and even wise posture, but Little Bill shows another side, a darker side underlying his seeming attempt to be an agent of civilization and society.  When English Bob, the first gunslinger, shows up, Little Bill brutally beats him senseless in order to send a message to any others that might be coming to avenge the woman.  At this point another observation is needed—the question is who are the “bad guys” and who are the “good guys” and what constitutes “goodness” and “badness” if we simply go by what is lawful or unlawful.  Some uneasy questions.

We will skip a number of important scenes and subthemes in the story and move toward the conclusion.  Munny’s party ends up killing the cowboy and collecting the reward, but his cohort, Ned, ends up being caught by Little Bill’s men, tortured and then killed.  When Munny finds out about this, he reverts to his old murderous persona.  All through the story he says several times, “I ain’t like that no more.”  But now even his dead wife’s love and hold on him breaks and he reverts.  He returns to the town of Big Whiskey on another rainy night, just like when the story started.  He finds Little Bill and his posse in the tavern below the brothel, planning their chase for Munny.  He guns them all down in a murderous gunfight.  At a certain point when Munny has Little Bill at the end of a gun barrel and is about to kill him, Little Bill says, “I don’t deserve this.”  Possible meaning: “This ain’t justice.”  But Munny with great clarity says, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with this.”  Indeed.  Munny has the appearance of a man pursuing justice, but actually it is only revenge, and the unstated question remains: is revenge really justice?  Just think, Munny starts out on a mission to seemingly seek justice for the maiming of a woman.  Granted he is doing it for money, and granted that what is called for seems very much out of proportion for the initial act of injustice.  But at the very end the story depicts only a bloody murderous act of revenge.  Is this an unmasking of what we call “justice” and society has a bloodlust for revenge, or has a legitimate need for justice been perverted into revenge?

Among other things, Unforgiven illustrates what a dangerous and problematic mix it is when justice in the social order mixes with the dark things of the heart.  For a society, a state, a social order, a civilization, to have a notion of justice is necessary and good.  At this level, justice functions like an umpire in a game, etc.  To minimize disturbances in the social order so that people can pursue human happiness and the human good as they conceive it, some notion of justice has to be part of the social fabric so that personal distortions of any kind do not escalate into more destructive modes and can lead to a total deterioration of social well-being.  But this is exactly what happens in Unforgiven.  And this leaves us wondering about the nature of what we call “justice”…  There are very dark things in the heart that sometimes become manifest as we seemingly go in pursuit of justice.  Furthermore, Unforgiven illustrates the interconnectedness of events—one act of injustice, leads to another, leads to another, and before we know it we are far from the authentic reality of justice.  Is there a way of breaking this chain?  Yes, but the answer lies elsewhere than in the realm of justice or law or order.

And here we find a hint of this in Unforgiven in the person of a character that never shows up visibly on the screen but she is mentioned several key times in the story, including the very end.  She is a mysterious, calming presence even in her absence throughout the story.  She is the dead wife of William Munny.  But she is very much alive as a redemptive, fragile presence in the midst of this mad frantic seeking of justice. Even in her death, she is very much alive to Munny.  He talks to her, refers to her regularly. She was able to see something in Munny that no one else saw, and so was able to love him, and this love transformed him in a remarkable way.  Even when he falls and reverts again to his murderous ways, he is able to come out of that fog and at the very end of the movie it simply says that he moved to San Francisco with his children and did well as a merchant—in other words he is able to pick himself up and move on because of her love for him.  She is a hidden Christ-figure in this story because she sees him in a way that the eyes of justice cannot see him—with that you see only a murderous cold-blooded killer.  Or perhaps she is the symbolic presence of Sophia, that feminine presence of God’s Wisdom of whom Merton wrote so eloquently.  Actually she is both. She sees him the way God sees him, and this gaze and this knowledge that God has of us transcends justice.

We are at the end of this reflection.  Now you may be wondering what happened to Bin Laden.  Didn’t the title above mention him?  What are you going to say about him?  In one sense, nothing.  In another sense I have been talking about him all along.  But let us add just one postscript.  Michael Moore is right: Bin Laden is dead but he has also won.  In the first place we, the U.S., helped create him in the 1980s as a killer of Russians.  Then he turned on us and committed monstrous acts of violence against us.  He lured us into 2 needless wars, costing trillions of dollars, distorting our economy and more importantly costing the lives of thousands of young Americans and hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We have been at war for something like 10 years—it took us only 5 years to defeat BOTH Germany and Japan.  Bin Laden is dead, but the people who actually got us into these wars are flourishing in our country.  If human justice were the only reality, we might despair.  But there is “something greater here,” something much greater in our hearts than human justice.

A. Death.  A few days ago the President of the University of Nevada died suddenly—he was having dinner with his wife and he suffered a massive stroke and that was that.  Dying is such an amazing thing–so simple, so universal, so undeniable, yet so mysterious, so opaque, so final.  Modern life doesn’t want to reflect on or even to see this reality, but exactly some such exercise of awareness and reflection is at the heart of all spiritual traditions.  There we tell ourselves various stories about the meaning of death and what if anything lies “on the other side.”  There are also people of no religious views or even of anti-religious views, and these have their own accounts of the meaning of death.  But what if we just drop all these stories for a while and just look at the naked reality of death.  Its opaqueness is disturbing.  We see nothing, we know nothing beyond this facticity of death.  Exactly what, if anything lies beyond the reality of death?  Both believer and non-believer are in a sense on the same footing here in that death itself yields no answer.  Both the so-called believing community and the non-believing community bring forth various stories to give an account of the meaning of death.  Granted that the non-believer seems to have an easier time of it in a sense, maybe claiming that THAT is that and there is nothing else, lights out, end, etc.  However, the non-believer does not know that with absolute certainty…..what if THAT is not the end….  There is no remedy for the opaqueness of death.

Now those of us who are in the Christian community present a story, through the lens of faith, that death is not the final word.   In fact, in celebrating Easter, as we are doing now, we make quite an emphatic point that the Mystery of Christ’s Resurrection is the real answer to the Mystery of Death.  However, and this is a BIG however, how we so often trivialize this.  It becomes very “messagey” to enable us to live as “kinder, gentler consumers.”   The Mystery of the Resurrection as arising out of the Mystery of Death loses its revolutionary force, its ability to turn upside down all  social values that are connected to keeping us asleep about our real nature.  We have a tendency to “picture” the Mystery of the Resurrection as a kind of “undoing” or reversal of death.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We never really confront the fact that no matter the Mystery of the Resurrection, death is THE end of the “maintenance of the self,” into which  so much energy is piled and around which so much of our culture is built.  Another problem is that we tend to project our own distortions and hang-ups into the Mystery of the Resurrection.  What  Reality are you going to encounter as the last light fades from your eyes?  Do you really think it will be some “finger-wagging God” who will scold you for being “bad” and then “punish” you.  There are plenty of stories to that effect.  Do you know how to read these stories?  Or will they serve as a vehicle for instilling fear, manipulations, projections, etc.  The old inquisitors used to threaten their so-called heretics with hell if they didn’t confess and recant  something that nobody had any real understanding of anyway.  Just an extreme example of what is probably more common among church-goers than anyone cares to admit.

Light an old candle and watch it burn out.  Where does the flame go to after it goes out?  The opaqueness of death permeates our whole frail reality.  Now to find the Mystery of the Resurrection there!

B. The nation is going through all these paroxysms concerning the national budget and the so-called deficit and the national debt.  Seems odd a bit to discuss this in a blog focused on spiritual realities, but this is actually quite a moral issue and it reveals who we are, our values and priorities, and if things continue to unfold the way they are heading there are going to be a lot of people suffering quite a bit.  The Republicans, or at least those who call themselves Republicans today(Eisenhower, for example, would not belong in this group), want to slash government spending that most affects the poor and the middle class.  Their real goal is dismantling all the achievements of the New Deal.  The President is not inclined in attacking this problem in this way, but he does yield to Republican demands and threats way too much.  The unfortunate thing is that both parties have done their share of hurting this economy over the last few decades.  The Dems gave you NAFTA, which helped outsource jobs out of the country(and they continue making these trade agreements which are not in the headlines but which are not to the benefit of the American worker); and Dems also signed on to various tax breaks for the wealthy. The Dems also signed on(during the Clinton era) to deregulating the banks and financial institutions which led to the economic meltdown. Of course the Republicans decided to have two wars that they did not pay for—and that’s just a starter.

Consider this:  we have over a 100 military bases all around the world, and our defense budget is larger than Russia’s, China’s, France’s, Germany’s and England’s all put together!  And yet in the President’s deficit reduction plan all he suggests is 30 billion or so a year for the next 12 years(of course the Republicans have not even that)—we spent more than that in one year just in Iraq, so the military-industrial complex is only seemingly touched.

Consider this:  Of the top 34 richest countries in the world today, we, the U.S.A., are dead last in spending for social welfare in terms of percentage of Gross Domestic Product, GDP—7.2%   Canada, for example, is around 24%.  Yet somehow this is portrayed as the problem area of spending.  The media is dishing this stuff out, and people are being brainwashed into a distorted view of reality.

Consider this:  Bank of America and GE, two of our largest corporations, paid no income taxes last year. Huge oil companies like Exxon even got a tax refund in hundreds of millions. Carnival Cruise Lines made billions last year but paid a tax rate of 1%.   Hedge fund managers, who are basically gamblers, some are making a billion a year.  The top 1% in this country are having a panic attack that they might be asked to pay a little more in taxes.  Suggestions from the Left are being made that we simply go back to the Clinton-era tax rates, when we actually were running a surplus.  During the Eisenhower–Kennedy eras the tax rates were much higher and we were actually much more prosperous economically speaking at the middle-class level.   But the wealthy and their minions are calling for a TAX CUT for the rich and corporations.  Take a look at this short article by Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/how-the-wall-street-journ_b_851285.html

Consider this:  The President worries me.  Not only does he yield way too much to this present bunch of Republicans, but then he appoints a commission to study ways of debt reduction and they suggest attacking social security and medicare.  He knew when he appointed these people that this was the view of some of these folk.  By the way, that is why this commission is now popularly known as the “Cat-food Commisssion”—old people will only be able to afford cat food for food after these people get their way!  He also appoints some very dubious people to be his advisers, like the former CEO of GE as his chief business adviser.

Consider this:  the current popularity of the philosophy of Ayn Rand among top Republicans and top businessmen today is very troubling.  It shows a complete loss of a sense of the common good, of the fact that we are not an individualized, atomized reality but interconnected.  It is a glorification of the values of egotism, self-centeredness, selfishness, etc.  With this kind of philosophy, capitalism becomes viral and toxic and destructive.  For an antidote see the film, “I Am.”

Consider this:  Even a dog knows when he is being kicked.  But the poor and the middle class in this country seem to be so unaware that they are being kicked in a big way.  Time for a revolution, but they keep electing the kickers back into office!  So food stamp programs are going to get cut; school lunch programs are going to get cut; job training programs are going to get cut; unemployment benefits are going to get cut; etc, etc, etc.

Consider this:  Mother Jones had an article recently with all kinds of charts showing the nature of our economic problem, which leads to a picture of a huge injustice, which is afterall a huge moral and religious problem:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

One last note on this topic:  Marie Antoinette is famous for her put down of the French underclass when told they could not buy bread:  “Let them eat cake.”  A few years ago the wealthy New Yorker, Leona Helmsly, said that “only the little people pay taxes.”  Seems like the Republicans are listening to these women.  Come to think of it, with Sara Palin and Michelle Bachmann, women are very prominent in this movement, and it just goes to show you, radical feminists did not get it right when they said that things would be different if women were present in “high places”.  There’s something called the human heart that has to change for real change to take place.

C. Our environment keeps getting trashed, and this insane economy feeds off this.  It is the one year anniversary of the big BP accident in the Gulf of Mexico–and there are still all kinds of signs of how trashed that body of water is.  Yet due to the insanity of our tax code, BP is actually making money because of this incident.  Is the government putting a halt to this risky kind of drilling?  No.  Are we in desperate need of oil?  No.  Obama himself said that the supply of oil is fine; the reason prices are going up and hurting the little guy is because of speculators.

D.  This is the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and some people are reflecting on what led up to that war and what each side was thinking at that time.  One thing that stands out for me is that BOTH sides used the Bible to justify their positions and in their views of slavery.  The Abolitionists in the North used the Bible to attack the reality of slavery even to the extent that violence was necessary to dismantle it.  The South had many distinguished leaders that used the Bible to defend their adherence to slavery.  People who just quote the Bible to make their point forget that the same book can be used by another person to go in quite a different direction.  To use the Bible, even in a moral issue, is a tricky business and requires the additional use of reason and common sense.

1.  This is the best piece of social criticism that I have read in a long, long time.  It is spiritually/religiously grounded without explicitly(unnecessary) “churchy” language that could turn off non-believers.  This is the voice of a prophet like Jeremiah.  It is Chris Hedges speaking in front of a demonstration in front of a Bank of America in New York City:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blocking_the_gates_to_the_temples_of_finance_20110418/