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

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

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

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

infinite echoes, far beyond the disappointing words.  Who is

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

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

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

‘waiting’, but an awakening should constitute a Christian

liturgy.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

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

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

Here is an interesting quote from the review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now consider these two closely related stories:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then there is this fascinating account:

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

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

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

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

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

In Catholic circles the term “hidden life” usually refers to the life of someone like a Carthusian monk or a cloistered nun. Basically these people leave normal social existence and enter into a way of life that is totally oriented to the Divine Reality (at least so it is said), and their life is formally and institutionally supported by the Church. They become “unknown” as it were in the larger social world, only known by their families and maybe some close friends. It can be a profoundly holy life—and I have seen it in the eyes of a Carthusian lay brother who had that smile that Ramana Maharshi had that seemed to emanate from a transcendent place; but that term “hidden” has a lot more packed in it than that.

I find that term “hidden life” very fascinating. It can take on a variety of colorations and a whole panoply of embodiments. However, my point is that, whatever be its concrete “manifestation”(and here we already encounter our first paradox for how can something “hidden” be “manifest”), it is a very important element of anyone’s spiritual life if they are serious about the Reality of God. Truly it can even be said that the “hidden life” is “what it’s all about”!

If we don’t freeze our view of the hidden life on the two institutional figures above, we will see a remarkable range of embodiments of this “hiddenness.” Consider within the Catholic tradition the example of a Joseph Benedict Labre who was rejected by all monastic groups and lived as a beggar in the streets of Rome; consider the Zen master who left his monastery and lived as a tea peddler in the streets of Kyoto; consider the Sufi dervish whose poverty and rags conceals his intimacy with God, or conversely the Sufi who is ensconced in a palace but lets not one possession take hold of his soul. Consider the many stories in Jewish mysticism of the hidden zaddik who might be a butcher or a shoemaker, etc. Consider the unknown hermits who populate various landscapes and are totally unknown by any institution and in fact may not even be able to explain their way of life to anyone. And so on, and so on. Do we detect a certain trajectory and a certain dynamic in this “hiddenness”? Perhaps a few words from Abhishiktananda will help us even more–here he has been discussing the luminous figure of Ramana Maharshi (and someone like St. Francis) whose luminosity is an exception and paradoxically not only not the sign of his holiness but actually hiding the essence of his holinesss; and so this should not fool us into thinking that this is how God works among us and within us:

“Most of the greatest [holy people] he keeps hidden in his ‘secret garden’, allowing no one even to guess the secret of their intimacy with him. An English monk can wander through India ‘in search of a yogi’, going from pilgrimage to pilgrimage, from ashram to ashram, questioning to right and left …then come back home and publicize his disappointment. He will in fact have met only those whose reputations have been blown up by propaganda or who confidently introduce themselves as saviours of mankind. India certainly is not without other souls as great as was Ramana Maharshi, but their greatness generally goes unsuspected, especially when they are met by chance by foreigners or by those who are merely curious. Very often these great souls escape to the outward solitude of forests and mountains in order to conserve the solitude within–always supposing, that is, that they have not chosen to hide themselves more surely still in the midst of the crowd.”

First of all, in order to clarify something that Abhishiktananda mixes up a bit, it is good to distinguish the “hiddenness” that we choose as it were, like entering a monastery or some other choice; and to distinguish that from the “hiddenness” that is simply and totally the work of God in us and around us. Yes, in a real sense these two are “one,” but for the sake of discussion, reflection and clarity, it will help if we keep them separate. And what I want to point to most of all is that “hiddenness” which is the work of God, God’s doing as it were–not our project, not our doing, not something that we planned, not something that we wanted all along, indeed might be something that we really don’t want at all!

There is a beautiful line from Genesis (5:24): “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him.” For many this is merely a circumlocution for the fact of Enoch’s death. But for Merton (who loved this line) and for many others this line points to something else. Let’s cut to the heart of this whole thing: the essence of the hidden life is getting lost in the Mystery of God. It is not so much the physical situation but the heart that totally surrenders to the Mystery of God, gets lost in it, and in the process uncovers the abyss and mystery of its own identity as it is found in the Mystery of God.

The Gospel speaks of a treasure hidden, buried in a field. One who is aware of that treasure needs to “give all” to take hold of the field that holds that treasure. This “all” is not a numerical “all”, a sum of things, but the sense of who one is, that “I” that constitutes one’s phenomenal identity of daily life. One has to surrender that to the Mystery of God in order to uncover the mystery of one’s own identity, which is a treasure far beyond anything conceivable in the phenomenal world.

Modern society has as one of its foundational principles a kind of cult of personality. There are many complex factors involved in this development, some of them good, some not so good, others very bad. As an example, the development of the value of the human individual person has been one of the good things. But along with that came an enormous obfuscation of our true identity. In fact, identity itself became problematic. In modern society it is based on “credentials”—something I have discussed previously in various postings. So you go around saying, “I am this person,” or “I am that person,” and so on. So now you are almost no more than the sum of your credentials. Or the person with “more” “valued credentials” is more valued, more happy, more this, more that—ultimately it is their identity. This obscures a person’s true identity to an astonishing degree. The pursuit of credentials becomes the point of life—at times measured by money, power, sex, etc.—even matters of religion can become credentials, and all the more toxic because they are so subtle and so seemingly “right.” All the time a person’s true identity is the hidden secret of their life. It is never something that the person can see or grasp or get hold of in any way for manipulation or “to use it” for some purpose—in other words it CANNOT become another credential. Every person’s secret identity is lost in the abyss of God, and it is only by plunging into THAT abyss that we “become who we are”—to use a modern pop psychology phrase that has so much unintended meaning! This is the real “hidden life” that begins for every person once they have some inkling of their real identity. A person’s real identity is hidden, is a secret that they do not have ready access to unless they are willing to “lose” all their credentials. In fact, in death that is exactly what happens. Then you see who you really are and your oneness with God.

A person’s real identity is so hidden that it is not available to the “brutalities of the will”—a Merton phrase. One cannot “use it”—it will seem like a “nothingness,” like a no-person, like no-thing, etc. If you get the inclination to say, “Ah, there is the ‘hidden life’” — or even worse, “Now I am living the ‘hidden life’”—trust me, that is not it. The “hidden life” is not some generic life that has certain characterisitics. It is either YOUR “hidden life” or it is nothing because it means the essence of YOUR identity which is hidden in the Mystery of God. THAT you will not be able to point to and sit back and admire and turn into another credential. No more than you can do with the very reality of God.

Do not try to name the secret Name that is at the center of your being. There are many things that it is good to try and figure out, but this is not one of them. When Adam the first human encounters all the creatures God has made he is called upon to name them. But it is God himself who names you at the core of your being, calls you by that secret name which is buried in the abyss of that Mystery which we call God. Now the next step is simple: Be that Mystery. You are that Mystery….to echo our Hindu advaitists. The hidden life.

To understand the story of St. Francis entitled, “Perfect Joy,” you need a sense of the meaning of the hidden life. To understand the sayings of the Desert Fathers you need the same. To truly see what the Sermon on the Mount is all about, you need a sense of the hidden life. Otherwise there will be serious distortions.

Again invoking our beloved Sufi friends and that great quote which I have used so many times: It is one thing to know God when the veil is lifted. It is quite another to know God in the veil itself. The hidden life.
God’s life and presence is the most truly hidden life. So the hidden life is an icon of the Presence and Mystery of God. And where else is this hiddenness most manifest than with Jesus on the cross? How can God be more hidden than that? And yet how manifest is God at that moment for those with eyes to see that….

It is summertime and a good moment in which to reacquaint ourselves with some old spiritual friends.  On the monastic path it is often not so much of “going forward” all the time but more of circling around and around certain fundamental truths until it dawns on you what they are saying.  So here’s just a few for consideration.

Lao Tzu

Thus it is said:

The path into the light seems dark,

the path forward seems to go back,

the direct path seems long,

true power seems weak,

true purity seems tarnished,

true steadfastness seems changeable,

true clarity seems obscure,

the greatest art seems unsophisticated,

the greatest love seems indifferent,

the greatest wisdom seems childish.

The Tao is nowhere to be found.

Yet it nourishes and completes all things.

The paradoxes of Taoism are more powerful and more comprehensive than even those of John of the Cross or of the other apophatic mystics. Notice how it all depends on “seems”–a matter of perception.  So who is doing the perceiving?  Thus the ego cannot traverse the path of the Tao—can’t even see it!!  

 It is a shame that Taoism never really develops but deteriorated over the centuries into a kind of  pop magic-religio concoction.  Apart from Lao Tzu (whose historical reality is even doubted–but then somebody wrote this!) and Chuang Tzu and a number of poets and mystics, Taoism at its roots remains a mysterious way–not surprisingly preferring to be nameless most of the time and of help to those who are on the Way without any name themselves.

Another great old friend is the Sufi Master Ibn Arabi.  Here he details the four stages of development in a Sufi:

(as condensed by Nasr)

1. At the level of the law(shariah) there is “yours and mine.”  Individual rights and ethical relations.
2. At the level of the Sufi path (tariqah), “mine is yours and yours is mine.”  Dervishes are brothers and sisters–open their homes, their hearts and  their purses to one another.
3. At the level of Truth (haqiqah), there is “no mine and no yours.”  The advanced Sufis at this level realize that all things are from God, that they are really only caretakers and that they “possess” nothing.  Those who realize Truth have gone beyond attachment to possessions and beyond attachment to externals in general, including fame and position.
4. At the level of Gnosis (marifah), there is “no me and no you.”  At this final level, the Sufi has realized that all is God, that nothing and no one is separate from God.

What can you say?  What can you add?  It is so simple and lucid, and also at the same time beyond any real comprehension.  For it is easy to mouth these words, but quite another to know their reality.  Another thing  note their universality–just as with Lao Tzu there is nothing here that is incompatible with the Gospel; indeed, it seems more like a fulfillment of the Gospel!  I suppose most religiosity operates at Level 1.  One would hope that Christian monasticism can at least bring a person to Level 2, at least to the level of your basic Dervish community!  With Level 3 we are at the more individual, personal level, heart level, and this is the beginning of true mysticism.  Lived rightly (and that’s a big IF!) one would hope that the monastic way would bring a person to that level eventually.  As for Level 4, well, very few make it.  The great modern Sufi master, Shaikh al-‘Alawi, said that only one in ten thousand Sufis get to this level.  Or as Han-shan would put it:  “Try and make it to Cold Mountain!”

From the venerable Ramana Maharshi:

We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term.  But how can one real-ize or make real that which alone is real?  All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal.  All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this.  When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.

Ah, if only it were that simple!  The “unreal” is not some “ghostly” mirage or delusion.  It is actually our daily world when we see it apart from God—when we see it only from the standpoint of our ego self.  The hurly-burly busy world of our urban centers is truly unreal in that in all that frenetic activity no one realizes that God is right there and that’s all that matters.  If that realization should hit everyone, then all that activity would stop–what’s the point of it?  The basis of civilization and culture would change.  Human beings would spend their time in prayer, contemplation, reflection, adoration of the Real, working just enough to maintain life….the world would be one big monastery!  Not that present monasteries aren’t caught up in the “unreal”! 

And we must never forget Merton:

“I am the utter poverty of God.  I am His emptiness, littleness, nothingness, lostness.  When this is understood, my life in His freedom, the self-emptying of God in me is the fullness of grace.  A love for God that knows no reason because He is the fullness of grace.  A love for God that knows no reason because He is God; a love without measure; a love for God as personal.  The Ishvara appears as personal in order to inspire this love.  Love for all, hatred of none is the fruit and manifestation of love for God–peace and satisfaction.  Forgetfulness of worldly pleasure, selfishness and so on in the love for God, channeling all passion and emotion into the love for God.”

No need for comment here.

Then a very rare, little known figure from the Middle Ages, Marguerite Porete who wrote a thing called “The Mirror of Simple Souls”:

“If that soul had all the knowledge of God ever possessed or to be possessed by any creature, she would deem it nothing compared to what she loves, which never has been and never will be known.  She loves in God that which is in him and has never been imparted more than she loves that which she had already received from him or will ever receive. The soul is not drunk on what she has drunk, but on what she never has drunk and never will drink.  It is the beyond that has intoxicated her.  It is with this that without drinking she is inebriated.  She is free, all-forgetting, all-forgotten, out of herself.”

This is one of Abhishiktananda’s favorite quotes, and he makes that word “beyond” one of his favorite words.  The Abyss of God is fathomless, limitless, infinite; and to plunge into it endlessly, ever being drawn “beyond”, ever deeper into an endless bliss….

Oh yes, by the way, poor Marguerite was burned at the stake as a heretic.  A woman claiming this kind of intimacy with God…could be dangerous.  The fact that she wrote things down  may indicate that she somehow was educated, and some scholars believe she was an influence on Eckhart.

Ancient Greek saying:  “When the gods want to punish us, they grant us our desires.”

“Brother Ancient Greek, you are not far off from Buddhahood.”

And to conclude, to those who are puzzled by enigmatic spiritual sayings and wonder what they mean, here’s a piece of advice:

Concert pianist Vladimir Horowitz tells about the time he played a dissonant contemporary composition at a private gathering.  When he had finished, someone asked, “I just don’t understand what that composition means, Mr. Horowitz.  could you please explain?”  Without a word, Horowitz played the composition again, turned to his questioner, and announced, “That’s what it means!”

                Philip Kapleau

Consider these words from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (2: 2-8):  “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

A classic text in Christianity of what is sometimes called “kenotic spirituality.”  Actually it is a foundational text for all Christian spirituality, and one could really say that kenosis, in one form or another, appears in all true spiritualities.  This self-emptying is an important dynamic in all religious paths even as it may have different nuances, totally incommensurable layers of background text and narrative,  and radically diverse indicators and symbols.  Thus, the Buddha sitting in calm meditation with that inimitable hint of a smile and Christ in agony on the cross are two very different symbols but both lead us into the realm of kenosis, and we won’t speculate about their relationship any more than that.  We will limit ourselves to some random reflections on kenosis as foundation for the Christian spiritual path, but as usual we will keep one eye on our Sufi friends and on Abhishiktananda’s Christian advaita.

Within Christianity, Russian Orthodox spirituality has a very strong “kenotic element.”  The “fools for Christ,” the radical nonviolence of some of its holy people, the strong hermit tradition, a sense of the value of suffering….all these point in that direction.  Paradoxically (at least for some) this spirituality is also known for its beautiful emphasis on the Resurrection and for a strong sense for what might be termed “spiritual beauty.”

Kenosis…what can it possibly mean?  We term it “self-emptying.”  The words from the New Testament quoted above are not at all self-explanatory.  They have been interpreted in some seriously different ways.  But it is obvious that the radical kenosis of Jesus Christ is meant to serve paradigmatically for all human beings.  But also, kenosis is not “something we do,” a project that the ego self can undertake, another spiritual practice among many others, etc.  Rather, with our Sufi friends, all we need do is be attentive to “what is.”  Truly it will take us where we need to be.

Adam, the Biblical prototype, the first human being, is called the “icon” of God (in the image of God, etc.).  Jesus, the so-called new prototype is termed as “in the form of God” (morphe theou).  There are very deep implications on how one reads these two phrases.  Some scholars claim that the two terms are interchangeable; that they basically refer to the same thing.  Others say, no, “morphe” refers to the very essence of God and “icon” obviously does not.  From the standpoint of a mystical spirituality, these kind of arguments are a waste of time, though not without some interest.  From the standpoint of a nondualistic Christian mysticism, like Christian advaita, as in Abhishiktananda’s latest Christology(as opposed to his earlier ruminations), what this phrase would seem to mean is that what God is, Jesus is.  “That thou art,” in a Christian perspective.  Obviously not in his arms and legs, etc., but in what makes Jesus truly Jesus, this is in the morphe theou.  In the Greek thought-world everything has a morphe, a form—so there is the form of a dog, the form of a cat, the form of a rock, etc.  The form is what makes something to be that which it is.  There is form and matter.  Matter is the stuff; form is what makes it to be this particular stuff as opposed to some other stuff.  So that is where this word is coming from, but that does not necessarily mean it has that  precise a meaning.  But we can infer still that somehow this morphe theou means that what the reality of the Ultimate Mystery is, Jesus is truly that.  “That thou art.”  He manifests that Reality in the purest, most translucent way.  There is absolutely nothing in Jesus that obscures that reality—and yet it can be said to be “concealed” on the cross—that most cruel form of execution that only the worst criminal or worst enemy would get.

Abhishiktananda was often fond of pointing out that the meaning of such a text is way beyond any textual/verbal analysis, and it requires a certain spiritual experience to really get at its core.  But this text is very rich and loaded with meaning in almost every word and phrase, and it would be satisfying and interesting and beneficial to do a detailed, word-by-word analysis and reflection, yet  we will skip that for the time being and simply “underline” some key signposts as it were as the text wants to take us to a place we might not be aware of.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus….”  Abhishiktananda tended toward the end of his life toward a Christology which focused on the awareness within Jesus of his relationship to that Ultimate Reality which he called “abba.”  Abhishiktananda claimed that this was the only way the Semitic mindset could get at the advaitic experience of Jesus–in that experience of “sonship” and in the language of “the kingdom of heaven.” There is much to recommend in that reading, and this text certainly seems to point in that direction.  However, this text also seems to be taking us to a place where no “advaitic experience” seems possible:  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me….”  The kenosis of Jesus on the Cross is a concealment of all religious experience.  At the very end there is only surrender to what seems like utter emptiness—“Into your hands….”

So the text proceeds: Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped.”  Indeed.  “Equality”–very loaded word here, but we shall focus on “grasped.”  Whatever you want to make of “equality with God,” it is not something that can be “grasped.”  Why?  Because only the ego self, the phenomenal self “grasps.”  And our God-identity cannot be grasped in any way.  This text should also remind us of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness where in fact his God-identity was presented to him by the Tempter as indeed something to grasp and hold onto as a credential.  So we are invited to follow Jesus in his kenosis where our own God-identity unfolds, not as a “something we grasp” but as pure gift and grace and love..

The Buddha teaches along these lines:  if your house is on fire, you get out of that house.  And your house is on fire, so…..   Jesus in his kenosis opens a door.  In fact he says, “I am the door…”   The whole point of a door is that it is an empty space.  Jesus in his kenosis reveals the Great Emptiness, which is not-empty because it is not a something alongside other somethings, but that which is infinite and unimaginable Love(and this is something radically new in human awareness).  Al-Hallaj was ecstatic as they crucified him….without any ego he proclaimed “I am the Truth.”  “That thou art.”  But let us listen once more to Merton’s remarkable meditation on this “Door”:

“The door of emptiness.  Of no-where.  Of no-place for a self, which cannot be entered by a self.  And therefore is of no use to someone who is going somewhere.  Is it a door at all?  The door of no-door….  The door without sign, without indicator, without information.  Not particularized.  Hence no one can say of it ‘This is it!  This is the door.’  It is not recognizable as a door.  It is not led up to by other things pointing to it:  ‘We are not it, but that is it–the door.  No sign saying, ‘Exit.’  No use looking for indications.  Any door with a sign on it, any door that proclaims itself to be a door is not the door….  The door without wish.  The undesired.  The unplanned door. The door never expected.  Never wanted.  Not desirable as a door.  Not a joke, not a trap door.  Not select.  Not exclusive.  Not for a few.  Not for many.  Not for.  Door without aim.  Door without end.  Does not respond to a key–so do not imagine you have a key.  Do not have your hopes on possession of the key….  When you have asked for a list of all the doors, this one is not on the list.  When you have asked the numbers of all the doors, this one is without a number.  Do not be deceived into thinking this door is merely hard to find and difficult to open.  When sought it fades.  Recedes.  Diminishes.  Is nothing.  There is no threshold.  No footing.  It is not empty space.  It is neither this world nor another.  It is not based on anything.  Because it has no foundation, it is the end of sorrow.  Nothing remains to be done….  Christ said, ‘I am the door.’  The nailed door.  The cross, they nail the door shut with death.  The resurrection: ‘You see, I am not [that kind of] door.’  ‘Why do you look up to heaven?’….  I am the opening, the ‘shewing,’ the revelation, the door of light, the Light itself.  ‘I am the Light,’ and the light is in the world from the beginning.”

St. Francis is perhaps the purest example within Christianity of Christ’s kenotic path.  Read his account of the “Perfect Joy.”  Every time I read it, I get totally flattened—it is so radical.  Easy to misread.  It is not about “trying real hard” to “enjoy” getting insulted, rejected, etc.  Some real bad spirituality abounds in this regard!  No, it is rather living from a very different center than our phenomenal ego self with all its desires and wants and grasping…it  is living from the place of the no-self, the Self of the Upanishads…it is an exemplum of what is said in Luke 17:33(and other similar texts):  “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life will preserve it.”  As Abhishiktananda points out, this is at the heart of Christian advaita.  The life of communion, of unity beyond understanding, of unbounded love, of infinite bliss, is not found by expanding the ego self to infinity, but paradoxically through the narrow gate of this kenosis.

A. The recent activity on the part of the Vatican with regard to American women religious is just another dismal chapter in a rather long, sad story, now extending almost 50 years. After 4 years of “study” and investigation, the Vatican issued a document accusing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious of numerous “grave” breaches of doctrine and practice–sounds serious! This group represents about 80% of American Catholic sisters. What happens next, no one knows, but it sure doesn’t bode well for the sisters. What the Vatican’s male authoritarian spirit has done to these sisters over the years is truly wrong, but what these sisters have done to themselves is also unfortunate.

A few facts and some history: With Vatican II there was this call for a renewal of religious life, and our American sisters took to this with a great deal of zeal and energy. This is a complex history with many sides to it, I am sure, and so I will not go into it here in this brief note. Suffice it to say that for all the good things that they did or tried to do, some of their choices were not the wisest, and perhaps their vision got clouded because of the battle with male authoritarian structures. At times this battle seemed to become an end in itself. I still recall the IHMs in Los Angeles and their battle with Cardinal McIntyre(a true dinosaur of a cardinal by the way!)over the wearing of the habit, among other things. This became symbolic of a whole relationship with church authority, and in the course of things they left formal Catholic religious life as a group. Now of course so many other sisters stayed and fought and compromised and adjusted, but truly there was a great change in American religious life for women by the mid 1970s. And the changes were very uneven and often neglecting the real contemplative heart of all religious life. In fact the activism of the ’70s and ’80s was marked by a strong suspicion of “inner spirituality.” I remember very well in my first year at the most progressive seminary in the US and fresh out of the monastery’s environment, being confronted by a modern progressive nun about the validity of “my way of life.” I was taken aback that anyone, much less a nun, would question the validity of contemplative life–it was like she had questioned my breathing!!

But I also recall the four American women religious who were brutally murdered in El Salvador about 1980—I still think of them. Their kind of work for the poor, which was not just a “hand-out of charity” but a challenge to the power of the wealthy, would have been almost inconceivable before Vatican II. In a sense they were also challenging the Church about where it stood in this regard. When they said that the Gospel does not present “neutrality” as an option, they were labelled as “marxists” and you know what they do to those kind of folk…. Anyway, even with this kind of heroic stance and the heroic efforts of so many other sisters in various ministries, no young women were attracted to this life. That is an undeniable fact. What was wrong/what is wrong? It seems that one has only two possible choices: either you can say that the whole culture is so godless, anti-religious, so pervasively enticing with self-fullfillment dynamics that the example and voices of religious life become impossible to see or hear. The secularization of society is so thorough that the religious dimension of life itself becomes almost invisible. Considering our situation today this is a very plausible explanation given some adjustments. However, the other explanatory choice may be that there is something missing in that religious life, that it no longer addresses the heart of the young person who seeks to transcend their stagnant secular self. This is not a pleasant alternative to ponder for the sisters concerned but it is there as a possibility. Maybe it is some combination of both. In any case, consider this: in 1975 there were 135,000 sisters in the American Catholic community. Already many had left after Vatican II, so this seemed like a new foundation for a new beginning. However, in 2011 there were only 56,000 sisters. A huge drop. And this is the most staggering statistic: there are today more sisters over the age of 90 than under the age of 60! Surely this is not what “renewal” was suppose to lead to!

Now some might say that what’s keeping people from coming to these groups is precisely that they are so much under the thumb of male authoritarianism. Again, partly true, but that doesn’t explain why some traditional groups are doing so much better number wise than these so-called more progressive, more renewed groups. It was often said in the ’60s that religious groups had to change in order to attract young people. Well, they changed, and young people stayed away in even larger numbers! Conservative Catholics point to this as a “sign from Heaven.” I can’t speak for other countries, but one does hear about the flourishing of vocations in Third World countries, and these tend to be very traditional kinds of situations. There may be a whole lot of complex reasons for this phenomenon, but suffice it to say that here in the US sisters’ groups that favor such things as habits and traditional communal structures and living together are attracting more young people. These are superficial things on their own, but I think what they really seek in all this is that somehow their lives are oriented toward something “beyond” their social existence. The symbolization and ritual expression of that “beyond” is needed at the beginning especially and yearned for in the heart even in a very inarticulate way. Thus a group that may actually be regressive and reactionary in its ecclesiology and theology and its authority structures and maybe even neurotic in its lived experience, still will find people drifting into it’s circle because it offers some sense of a life that is oriented “toward the beyond.” And guess what, every human heart has that yearning buried deep within. Needless to say there is also that dubious thing of an “unassailable certainty” that these groups offer, and also a feeling of a kind of superiority that is unhealthy but magnetic and able to draw people.

Now what the Vatican has done seems not only petty and vindictive toward these American nuns, but the sad fact is that it was also totally useless and unnecessary. The frank and sad fact is that they are dying out. American religious life for women as represented by the LCWR is not only an “endangered species”–it is for all practical purposes done, finished. But instead of feeling sad we should remember that really these women are a harbinger of some bigger change and movement, that God is the Ultimate Reality behind all this, that what is to come we cannot foresee. And the authoritarian machinery that ground them down over the years, well, that too is a very human fabrication. And recall that other very symbolic human fabrication of recent years, the Berlin Wall, how it somehow when the time came seemed to crumble on its own…..

B. Speaking of religious groups, I have been reading Abhishiktananda’s little essay, “India and the Carmelite Order.” As usual, truly brilliant….but…. And with Abhishiktananda how often that is the case: “truly brilliant….but….” In this case the “but” has to do with his vision of the Carmelite Order. I don’t know what he was seeing in 1964 in India, but the Carmelite Order in the US in 2012 is a mere shadow of what he projects. I suspect it is one of his grand idealizations–more like what he hoped they would be in his vision of that charism that linked Elijah to John of the Cross and thousands of hermits in between. Yes, there are some exceptional individuals in the Carmelite Order, even here in the US, but the Order as a whole leaves a lot to be desired.

C. We all know that Jesus is called “the Word of God,” in the New Testament. Though this is the classic rendering of the original Greek, it nevertheless is actually a very poor translation–even though there is no real alternative. The same is probably true of all the other renderings in all the other modern languages. Jesus is called the Logos of God, and the Gospel of John begins with the echoes of Genesis in the background: In the beginning was the Logos…. Now to translate “logos” as “word” is to seriously impoverish the term. It is not incorrect to translate it as such, but it is also an incredible diminishment of the symbolization and reference power that the word “logos” carries. It is one of the richest words in ancient Greek. Think of that tradition of thought and usage from Heraclitus, through Plato and Aristotle and the Tragedians, and the poets and common usage, all the way to the Gospel of John, a period spanning over seven centuries, think of how much “weight of meaning” that word is by then carrying. If you truly know ancient Greek, you won’t want to translate but simply call Jesus the Logos of God. And then there is the incredible, “and the Logos became sarx…” It reveals a new meaning to the human condition. I wonder if one could say the Logos became maya.… Just wondering…. Adopting and adapting the Sufi saying: It is one thing to know God “beyond” the veil; it is quite another to know God in the veil itself.

But we have something else to consider: Jesus is also the Silence of God. (We are not talking about the so-called “silence of God” that 20th century existentialist thinkers were so focused on.) Abhishiktananda loved this statement, and of course it comes from St. Ignatius of Antioch in one of the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament. Also, in his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius says that the one who truly possesses the word of Jesus is also able to hear his silence, “that he may be perfect,” meaning complete, fulfilled, etc. So there is a “beyond” to the words of Jesus, and this we will discover in the “silence of Jesus.” Much to ponder here. On the one hand, there is the Logos bringing a horizon of Silence, indeed also bearing within itself Silence; on the other hand there is also the Logos of Silence itself. Much, much to ponder.

D. There is this remarkable quote by Abhishiktananda in his essay on “India and the Carmelite Order”: “The prophets of Yahweh were the heralds of the Word; the rishis of India, the privileged witnesses of the Silence of God. Had they met, probably neither Elijah the Prophet nor Yasnavalkya, the Rishi, would have recognized or understood each other for, humanly speaking, they were approaching each other from totally opposite slopes of the holy Mountain. Nevertheless both of them were precursors of Christ.”
What a statement! I wonder if Abhishiktananda really has a sense here of the full implications of what he is saying!? Usually it is said that ideally speaking interreligious dialogue should take place on the basis of the true and deep experience of each side. However, who could be said to have a deeper experience of their respective traditions than Elijah or Yasnavalkya; and it seems, from what Abhishiktananda says here, that had they met they wouldn’t have even been able to recognize each other’s religious experience. So what is the real basis, the real ground of all dialogue. Interesting. So something else is needed beside their own individual spiritual experience, or else even the most holy person can get “locked inside” their own tradition. Note that Abhishiktananda says that “both of them were precursors of Christ.” Indeed, but NEITHER of them would know THIS Christ. He is always the “third” in every encounter, in every dialogue, in every movement toward communion. Or perhaps we should say it is the Holy Spirit given by Christ. Isn’t a “third” always there in every communion whether it be in word or in silence?

E. Speaking of silence(!), let me quote again that marvellous poem by Gekka Gensho:

Making the busy streets my home
right down in the heart of things
only one friend shares my poverty
a scrawny wooden staff;
having learned the ways of silence
amidst the noise of urban life
taking things as they come to me
now everywhere I am is true.

Gekka lived in the 1700s in Kyoto. Having been a Zen monk for 40 years, he left and became a layman selling tea and writing poetry. That last line is a direct quote from Lin-chi, from the 9th century. We are invited to “learn the ways of silence.” This is the Zen way of dealing with the “veil.” Now my beloved Han-shan, a hermit from the Tang Dynasty of the 7th century, reversed the process. First, for years he was a busy man, a government bureaucrat, an intellectual, and a practitioner of popular Taoism– until one day he left everything and became a hermit. Here is his own account of it:

In my first thirty years of life,
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn’t make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I’m back at Cold Mountain:
I’ll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.
(Gary Snyder translation)

Either way is good! Both are True Men of No-Rank. If you look for them by way of credentials and in the world of credentials, you will not find them. Like the monk who asked to see where Anthony was and could not see him, they are there where Anthony is. Amen!

Let us take a look and reflect a bit on the sayings and stories gathered under the name of Anthony. Since he is considered the “patriarch of Christian monks,” these sayings and stories have a certain added authority and significance. (We will ignore the Life of Anthony by Athanasius as this would complicate our task.) But first let us emphasize a few preliminary points:

a.) No one should feel that they must “like” the Desert Father sayings and stories. They are not everyone’s cup of tea, and there is no sense trying to force oneself to like them. But whether you’re not sure about them or whether you feel very much attracted to them, still a certain of amount of work needs to be done to “decode” their language. And then an enormous treasure-house of spiritual wisdom will open up.

b.) In the previous posting, in a kind of introduction to the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, I suggested that we look at an image of a bunch of concentric circles–as pictured below:

I suggested that this was the most apt visual representation of what is going on in the Desert Father sayings/stories. A mistake is to read them as “pointers,” as directional signals of some kind, pointing you in the way to go spiritually. Read them that way and you will eventually become disconcerted, puzzled, discouraged, even maybe disgusted with a seeming absurd triviality, and so on. However, these stories/sayings are not meant as formulas, as recipes, as directions, as a “cookbook” for the spiritual life, as “how to” manuals. You do not “line up your spiritual sights” along some seeming straight lines that they give you. Rather consider each story as a kind of circle in a large pattern of concentric circles about a common, mysterious center. The sayings/stories more or less “circle around” that center, some closer to the center, perhaps very close; some far from the center, perhaps very far indeed. With a little bit of spiritual wisdom you will begin to sense which stories/sayings are the close ones and which are the far ones. Now what is interesting is that in one’s growth and deepening and truly having an awakening of the heart, one will eventually be surprised at times to discover that what you thought was close and what was distant at the beginning of your spiritual journey, might now seem a bit different. So there is a kind of personal, subjective element there also. What you see in these stories may partly depend on where you are on the spiritual journey. Things can change! There are such surprises, a few.

c.) One implication of the above is that no story/saying should be isolated and read and interpreted in an isolated way. What is most important is the overall pattern of the sayings, and while one can and should focus on certain sayings, as we shortly will be doing, it is important to keep in mind the overall pattern and its Center.

Let us now plunge into that group of stories gathered under the name of Anthony(using Benedicta Ward’s translations). And let us begin by quoting from a letter that Abhishiktananda wrote to his sister just a few weeks before his ultimately fatal heart attack: “The other day in a Hindu ashram, I met a Christian monk who also lives in total poverty and goes from ashram to ashram, happy all the time, whether he has something to eat or not. Naturally he has no job. He doesn’t even have the formal status of sannyasi, but he is the most authentic Christian Indian monk I have met, though no one knows him. It is solitary monks such as this who will one day bring about the true Indian Christian monasticism….” Such was the journey of Anthony though in some ways the externals of his life were so different.

Consider Saying #38, the very last one: “And he said this, ‘If he is able to, a monk ought to tell his elders confidently how many steps he takes and how many drops of water he drinks in his cell, in case he is in error about it.'” Now a saying like this can really turn people off–on the surface it smacks of absurdity and obsession. And if someone just reading this would try to imitate it, soon he/she would become a thorough neurotic very likely! A saying like this should not bother us or concern us except to note that this is language within the context of a deep spiritual father/guru relationship which calls for a thorough uprooting of “self-possession.” It indicates the seriousness of that relationship as it extends over all one does and all one is–in other words we are not just talking about “spiritual direction” as generally practiced in the modern West. Such language makes sense only within the context of the non-dual guru-disciple relationship, and such a relationship can be very precarious and demanding as other stories illustrate also and there are plenty of warnings about “playing” at this or “pretending it.” Apart from that, though, one should not bother much with such a saying unless the Spirit has led one into such a relationship and then one’s guide will appropriately interpret the implied demands in such a life in an appropriate way for oneself.

Another view of this relationship can be found in Saying #27: “Three Fathers used to go and visit blessed Anthony every year and two of them used to discuss their thoughts and the salvation of their souls with him, but the third always remained silent and did not ask him anything. After a long time, Abba Anthony said to him, ‘You often come here to see me, but you never ask me anything,’ and the other replied, ‘It is enough for me to see you, Father.'” Here we begin to feel that we are “swimming in the depths”! The spiritual father/guru can and often does instruct the person coming to him. He can serve all kinds of functions as a matter of fact, depending on the circumstances and the condition of the person coming to him. Again I refer to that beautiful depiction of Fr. Zosima in Brothers Karamazov. A person may be coming just for some advice, but what they receive is a “taste” of what is at that Center. The authentic spiritual father will break through the duality of that master-disciple relationship not through “chuminess” or pretense but through his own realization of that Center. The same Center that is in the heart of the disciple; the same Center that is in the “in-between” them. And no words, no matter how profound, how learned, how pious can ever convey that Reality. Thus: “It is enough for me to see you, Father.”

Let us now consider Saying #1: “When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do no leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?’ A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, ‘Do this and you will be saved.’ At these words Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.” The very first thing we need to underline in this story is the word, “saved.” This is one of those very important words that keeps appearing in the Desert Father sayings, but note the peculiar resonance it has here(and in all the other locations it appears). I mean what kind of “salvation” are we talking about here? Evangelical Christians should feel a bit apprehensive because “salvation” here doesn’t seem to rely on “believing in Jesus,” etc. Yes, there is mention of “sinful thoughts,” but the emphasis is on the mere presence of such thoughts…it is the very flow of such thoughts that seems to be the problem. So the concern here is not so much for a “theological salvation” as for something much more existential, something experienced here and now. So what does that mean? Anthony is trying to live a life totally oriented to God, mind and heart attuned to the Ultimate Unnameable Mystery. There is a vector, a direction for that orientation which remains beyond conceptuality–thus it is not easily graspable by the mind or the emotions. And we are afterall body and mind and psyche and all that implies, filled with mostly unruly feelings, emotions, desires, fears, neurotic tendencies, chaotic responses, etc. etc. All this will tend to scatter our focus. And believe me we will not be successful in merely forcing a kind of imaginary attentiveness. Largely this inner chaos is the result of having a kind of “mistaken identity,” of answering the question “Who am I” in everything we do and say and think in an illusory kind of way. This is one of the points of the Awakening of the Heart, and there is a whole pedagogy that goes with that, some very simple, some not so simple. Thus, for example, the devout Muslim(and Sufi) will face Mecca five times daily in prayer. It is not that God is in Mecca and not right there where the Sufi is, but that his body is learning and reinforcing that “inner directionality” and attentiveness that is called for that leads to the Great Awakening which abides in his prayer. So our story here teaches us first of all that we will be “afflicted” by our inner chaos which will then turn us in all kinds of directions and that slip us deeper and deeper into inner chaos where we are at the mercy of whatever feelings rise up; secondly that we will need to learn how to deal with that; and third that it may involve some very simple, practical steps that lead to this “salvation.”

And here is another story about “being saved”–Saying #19: “The brethren came to the Abba Anthony and said to him, ‘Speak a word; how are we to be saved?’ The old man said to them, ‘You have heard the Scriptures. That should teach you how.’ But they said, ‘We want to hear from you too, Father.’ Then the old man said to them, ‘The Gospel says, ‘if anyone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.’ They said, ‘We cannot do that.’ The old man said, ‘If you cannot offer the other cheek, at least allow one cheek to be struck.’ ‘We cannot do that either,’ they said. So he said, ‘If you are not able to do that, do not return evil for evil,’ and they said, ‘We cannot do that either.’ Then the old man said to his disciple, ‘Prepare a little brew of corn for these invalids. If you cannot do this, or that, what can I do for you? What you need is prayers.'” What a remarkable story! A whole book could be written on this story alone! I will touch only a few bases here. So we have a few “beginners” in the spiritual life(meaning “us”!!) and they want to know “how to be saved.” The first thing to note is that they seek instruction and direction from a living person, a book will not do, even a holy book: “Speak a word….” Indeed Anthony does something that Evangelicals would largely approve: he still points them in the direction of the Scriptures. Basically he is saying, you have all you need right there in the Holy Book. They don’t deny that assertion; they merely say: we want to hear from you TOO! The words of the Book have to pass through the lens of a true life in order for us to see what they really mean. There are words, and then there are words! We want to know what “you” made of those words…. (By reference, note again the earlier story where we had the visitor say to Anthony he didn’t even need his words, all he had to do was to see him!—guess which story is closer to that mysterious Center?!!) Now comes a difficult point to make: ideally speaking the spiritual life is best learned from another human being who has made that journey and is well on the way. But for most of us such figures are simply not available. We get along with a little bit of help from our friends, perhaps with a bit of help from someone more experienced than ourselves. Very, very few have an “Anthony figure” in their life. Does that mean that they are cut off from the depths of the spiritual life. Hardly. Let me use a Hasidic story told by Martin Buber to make a point: Long time ago there was a deeply mystical Hasidic Zaddik who, whenever his community was in peril, would go to a certain spot in the woods and pray some kind of mystical prayer and the community was always saved. Long after his death, when that community was again threatened, his disciples would go to the same spot in the woods to pray that prayer but somehow they forgot the exact words but it was enough that they went there and the community was saved. Still many years later, again in a time of danger, the disciples of the disciples decided that they would seek Heavenly help in the same manner. However, they not only forgot the words of the prayer but they also forgot the place in the woods. They stayed home and simply repeated the old story, and the narrative concludes, “And it was enough.” The community was saved. Something similar holds for us. We very likely do not have contact with a living example of “Anthony,” but if we “repeat” his story it will be enough! Such is the importance of these stories and the value of penetrating their meaning. Now the next thing we can note is exactly what Anthony gives them. Truly he does not veer from the Scriptures; he does not speak on his own authority, but note what he chooses from the Gospel. Nothing about belief or faith, but a very concrete existential demand about turning the other cheek–from the Sermon on the Mount. So Anthony is truly evangelical but in a way that many miss. Here it all depends on how you read the Sermon on the Mount. If you read the Sermon as a container of idealized ethical norms or a depiction of some far-off goal of human behavior that might be achieveable with heroic effort, you will miss what Anthony is getting at. If however, the Sermon is a depiction of a humanity that is “God-filled” and totally God-oriented and one with God, then this will be an existential sign of such a humanity. Or what theologians might call i: the Risen Life. Or as Paul put it: I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me. So this is a concrete manifestation of that life.

Now note that the newcomers do not really understand what Anthony is presenting to them, and their reply is on the level of ethical behavior and the quest for sufficient willpower to do something “hard.” They are at least very realistic and honest about their condition. So Anthony takes them by the hand as it were and leads them down this path of “effort” until they fully recognize that on their own they have no resources for such a life. At that point he is ready to start instructing them in that which will bring them into the heart of the Gospel. He says, “Lets eat, and then I will tell you about this reality of prayer.” That last phrase which is a summons to the reality of prayer can be read in a superficial way as a kind of plea/petition for God’s help in living the life, but I think there is something much more profound going on. The prayer that Anthony is pointing to is not just saying words to God but that life and communion with God which ends in being lost in the Mystery of God–and that life which manifests itself in “turning the other cheek.” And there’s so much more to this story but we will proceed on.

Consider now Saying #28: “They said that a certain old man asked God to let him see the Fathers and he saw them all except Abba Anthony. So he asked his guide, ‘Where is Abba Anthony?’ He told him in reply that in the place where God is, there Anthony would be.'” I hesitate even to touch this story, so profound it is. Just a few notes. First of all this story should not be taken as putting Anthony on a pedestal in comparison to the other Fathers of the Desert. It is merely that he is the model, the paradigmatic one, and so really what we indicate through him and his behavior and his words is “the point of it all.” Truly each of us is meant for that “place” where Anthony is, “where God is.” Note now that there is a kind of “invisibility” about all that. If you look for this place by way of names and credentials, you will see nothing. Recall that Scripture tells us that “God is a consuming fire, and none can behold God and live.” This does not refer to the simple biological life of the flesh, but what is consumed by that fire is that selfhood which we think we are, that “I” that we think and pronounce throughout the day. The Awakening to God in the depths of our being brings about a very real apophaticism of identity then, the true self is a no-self, the hidden unnameable Self lost in the Absolute Unnameable Mystery(recall that unknown Christian monk Abhishiktananda mentions in the quote above).

Now consider Saying #15: “The brothers praised a monk before Abba Anthony. When the monk came to see him, Anthony wanted to know how he would bear insults; and seeing that he could not bear them at all, he said to him, ‘You are like a village magnificently decorated on the outside, but destroyed from within by robbers.'” A seemingly very mundane saying. But an astute principle of spiritual discernment and one of amazing universality. I have read very similar observations by Gandhi, by a Tibetan lama, by a Zen master…. They all tend to point to the fact that the most important person in your life may be your so-called “enemy,” the person who gives you the hardest time, the one who really dislikes you, the one who hurts you, etc. It is this person, or rather your real response to this person that actually gauges your spiritual state—certainly more so than any heaped up praises or adulations of friends. And there are numerous other Desert Father stories and sayings that illustrate this same point. And they all basically point to one thing: once you have a handle on that question, Who am I?, once your answer is attuned to the Real, then neither praise nor insult will throw one off balance.

And just one more story for our reflection—Saying #24: “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 every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.” A truly remarkable saying! I have already mentioned this saying in an earlier posting where I commented on Fr. Tiso’s reflections on monasticism, interreligious dialogue and Panikkar. This story is so good and so important it deserves a fuller visit here, and we will take it word by word, phrase by phrase(and really most of these sayings deserve such attention but I have just barely indicated some passing points and reflections). First of all, “It was revealed to Abba Anthony….” The point the story is going to make is not something that Anthony, as holy and clairvoyant and insightful as he is, can figure out on his own. It is not only not obvious to be sure; but especially it needs “revealing” because it is a reality “of God.” And “the message” coming directly from God renders it even more authoritative as if even having the name of Anthony attached to it was not enough, so important it is.

The next thing to note is Anthony is “in the desert” and there is this doctor “in the city.” A kind of line is drawn, a distinction is made; two different places are indicated. To be sure the difference geographically speaking may have been very small, or it may have been very great. No matter. What matters more is that these two places indicate certain ways of life with certain characteristics. The so-called desert is already the established place of people called monks. Lets remind ourselves that we are not talking about formal religious orders, cloisters, even rules and customs. And the city is the place of “non-monks.” The story presents this distinction, and then deconstructs it. The story says the doctor in the city was “equal” to Anthony in the desert. What an astonishing thing to say in the context of this literature! (There’s a few professional monks living today who could use that kind of illumination!)

Note now that the story does not directly name in what way the two were “equal.” It is a bit more subtle because it is pointing at a profound reality. First of all it tells us that this person is a doctor, meaning he has a profession, a place in that society and economy. People know him as a doctor; he has a social identity. In that regard he is not like Anthony who is out there in the desert, supposedly lost to human view(as the myth would have it). The contrast is implicit and part of the equation. The difference is real and undeniable. The story does NOT say that Anthony should come into the city and be like the doctor; or the doctor leave his practice and go out into the desert. Their unity and their “equality” is at a much deeper level–a much bigger point is being made. Next to note is that this doctor is not acclaimed for his austerity or asceticism. When you look at the whole text of sayings you see that austerity, asceticism, renunciation, etc. play a fairly large role in the identity of these people. It’s almost astonishing how “easy” this guy’s life is! Some of the hardened old guys of the desert would consider this doctor a real slacker and not give him much hope. That’s why a “revelation” was needed to see the true reality! Anyway, all the story says is that this doctor “whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor.” His divestment is very modest indeed; it is not the radical renunciation of a sannyasi. He meets his basic needs, and then he gives the rest to the poor–we hear at this point a resonance of the Gospel with its call concerning the poor. Now we come to the climactic point: “and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.” If you think this is merely a liturgical reference you really have missed the point of this story! Rather, these words refer to that which makes these two men “equal.”

Now this is an “every day” matter—these words are not merely “throw-away” words, as in “every day I drink juice,” kind of indicating frequency. No, these words are more like saying “all the time,” as in “continual prayer,” as in abiding in the Presence. The Biblical image of the angels and the Sanctus is limiting only if we are crude literalists or lack any sensitivity to poetic language. Otherwise this language points us in the direction of Abhishiktananda’s advaita, the Further Shore, the Ultimate Mystery. Or rather, as I indicated at the beginning of this blog, the language circles around that Mysterious Center which is the Source of all we are and do.

Now to illustrate further the significance of this story, we will have recourse to another important story outside the Anthony collection: “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 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.'” This story is a classic treatment of the perennial question of “what does it mean to be a monk?” It is an incredible treasure trove of spiritual insights, but the only thing I want to point out here is that it points us in the same direction (or circles around at the same level!) as the Anthony story but with different Biblical symbolism. What makes the Anthony story more remarkable is that it deconstructs that line we draw between “monks” and “non-monks,” that line between those two mythical places, the city and the desert, and it focuses us on the ultimate point of it all, the Absolute Mystery at the Center of our hearts where we sing with the angels, “Holy, Holy, Holy…”