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

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

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

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

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

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

The priestly life … is deceptive and illusory to me.

Of such prisons I have no need.”

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

I forgot the monastery outside.”

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

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

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

Thoroughly Knowing the Absolute is the Absolute Practice.

I am a yogi who knows all three.

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

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

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

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

Reflecting on this my heart is full of grief.

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

My native land is like a den of vice. …

My past life drives me from behind;

cooking and household duties pull me on.

This world is but a play:

the endless toil of housework,

the struggle for a living,

the leaving of one’s gracious parents,

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

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

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

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

Thinking thus, I feel sad and weary.

So now this maiden will devote herself to the Dharma!

Now she will join your disciples!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Choose a place for meditation that is

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

Without stones and dust, protected against

Wind and rain and pleasing to the eye.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

A. The One and the Many

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. One of Merton’s favorite Sufi sayings:

“On the heart of Poverty three renouncements are inscribed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not enough has been written about the hermit life and solitude.  Way too much has been written.  Both are true.  Paradox is the name of the game in the hermit life–through and through, in every way.  In solitude you do not escape paradox; you go right into its heart.  Discomfort with solitude and discomfort with paradox are simply two sides of the same coin.  So the hermit certainly looks like an isolated individual, so all alone indeed.  Ah, but perhaps he/she is the one most in communion with all!  The hermit certainly seems to be running away from life, but, alas, maybe he/she is the one who is most intensely running “toward” life.  To borrow a bit from T. S. Eliot:  To the crowd that is running away from the center, the one headed in the opposite direction will surely seem like he is the one running away.

The hermit life is truly one of the most beautiful ways of living there is. (And of course there have been “crazy” hermits in the past who have given that life a dubious name at times!) But also truly it is not everyone’s “cup of tea.”  Why?  Many different answers, reasons, various and diverse formulations of what may be one simple answer, etc.  Those within the Christian setting will speak of a “calling.”  Thus, one “is called” to be a hermit.  Perhaps, but this can be very superficial and used to rationalize all kinds of things.  There is really only One Call–God calls you into being, from total nothingness God calls you by a name that only God knows and it is your true name and it is this Call which constitutes your little life and an intrinsic part of that Call is your freedom which then shapes your history.  To be attentive to THAT Call, to respond to it with our whole self, to say a deep “Yes, Here I am” (the point of the 1^st Commandment) is the whole point of it all.  Then comes the flip side of this, as it were—we call to God in the depths of our frail being, we call God by a name that only we have and know, each one of us, and allowing THAT call to resonate through our whole being and life and history is what we seek.  Somewhere in all these words you will find the hermit life.

But why are there not more hermits?  Even among Buddhists and other religions this is not an age of hermits.  Modern Western culture now permeates the whole globe, and it needs to said that this culture is the most antithetical to the values of the hermit life; that it is the most deaf to what the hermit life says about human existence; and that the hermit has never before been more misunderstood and the meaning of the hermit life more distorted.

The fact that there are some people living as hermits is almost a miracle.

Think about the average person in our society.  He or she pursues the “American Dream”–meaning a certain level of prosperity, of affluence, etc.  Even going to school now for most no longer is a pursuit of knowledge or wisdom but rather a preparation for a career in order to make a good living.  The idea of happiness that this culture proposes would not be recognized by almost any wisdom tradition.  But the hermit does not pursue the “American Dream” or anyone’s dream–he/she simply meets life in its utter simplicity.  This is one of the things that makes the hermit life “hard”—its radical simplicity, it encounters life with its simple needs—like our Zen friends would say:  When hungry, eat; when thirsty, drink.  Just “chopping wood and carrying water.”  The hermit does his chores; makes his meal; listens to the wind in the trees; perhaps meditates; watches the moon in the evening; listens to the owl at night, etc.  From the standpoint of our culture this is a deprivation of experience, but the hermit knows better.  It is ALL here.  Yes, there is a real poverty in that life, but this poverty is like the Burning Bush all alive with the Presence of the Divine.

But lets get one thing clear:  the hermit is not some “spiritual insider,” some “special spiritual person” who has all these spiritual experiences.  He will experience all the tribulations of the human condition.  Prayer and meditation may at times prove to be difficult and distasteful.  No special experiences here; nothing to feed the ego.  When he begins to feel the weight of his solitude at times, just the simplicity of making a cup of tea in the quiet will console him.  The gentle simplicity and beauty of ordinary life–this is the life of the hermit.

But now we must get to the real core of the hermit’s activity—an activity that will seem like no-activity, as if he were doing nothing, yet it is a great and noble and extremely important task: the gentle welcoming of our own frail humanity.

First of all, let it be noted that our kind of society and social life is so (deliberately) constructed that it always will seem that what we need most is somehow, somewhere “out there”–that what will make us happy is “out there”; and then there is of course someone “out there” who will sell us that which is lacking in our life, or we will go out and “achieve” that one thing still to be pursued.  But the secret of the hermit life is that “the one thing necessary” is “right there” wherever we are.  Because the hermit is not driven by these manufactured compulsions and manipulations of the media and pop culture, he has a special gift and role to play in such a society.  But of course this also explains why he will look so odd, so “out of step,” certainly “marching to a very different drummer” than the rest of society, etc.  So the hermit simply welcomes his poor, frail humanity, and sees it with the eyes of the Book of Genesis at the dawn of Creation:  “and God saw that it was good….”  And indeed the hermit’s solitude then becomes a kind of “Paradise” as the old Christian hermits used to say.  A Paradise disguised by the utter simplicity of simple needs and basic life.  Many others understood this also in their own terms.

But secondly, the hermit, in welcoming his own frail, poor humanity, also bears the burden of all his inadequacies, limitations, frailties, mistakes(yes, even those), etc.  And again, our cultural, social lives are organized such as to keep us distracted from such things–provide entertainment, distractions galore, instilling a need to “feel better” than someone else, judging others endlessly, etc.  The hermit begins to be liberated from such things–thus he begins to give up the “heavy burden” of judging others (note Jesus’ words) and takes up  the “light burden” of his own humanity as it comes from the hand of God moment by moment.  Again, paradoxically enough, this makes the hermit such a good exemplar of compassion and forgiveness and peace.

And one last thing:  the hermit lives in his/her historical situation with its wars and rumors of wars, with its seemingly endless conflicts, where the nature of things seems to be to seek the victory of one party or group over another.  And the hermit may face several serious temptations in this regard.  One is to see himself as being “above”  or “beyond” all that.  He lives in a kind of etherial realm where the ambiguous pulls and calls of social life do not reach him.  This is really an illusion.  The other temptation is to become swept up by some historical movement that pulls him into a superficial solidarity with certain people and “against” others.  The hermit cannot be a “true believer” of any party or any movement.  Yet he is “on the side” of all those who are poor, exploited, tortured, abused, the downtrodden, the tired and weary of life, the hungry, the lonely, those who are killed for grand military objectives, those who have been objects of hatred and prejudice, those who are filled with self-hatred, etc, etc.  Yes, the hermit is on their side, everywhere and always.  In the hermit’s quiet peace, in his lack of self-assertion, in his relinquishing possession, greed, rapaciousness, in his own simple humanity without any labels he will be a witness of another kind of world.

So here we are in Lent.  Consider the following quotes:

“I did not know then how much was ended.  When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped  and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.  And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard.  A people’s dream died there.  It was a beautiful dream….the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.  There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

Black Elk

Black Elk was a Lakota shaman and holy man, and here he sounds very much like an Old Testament prophet.  Sounds like Jeremiah or the voice of the Book of Lamentations.  Black Elk uttered this “prophecy” concerning the infamous Wounded Knee massacre in the 1890s.  So in a sense there is a great difference between the Old Testament prophets and Black Elk–he laments what WE have done to his people–in effect destroying them.  Today’s Indian casinos are not a contradiction of what Black Elk prophesied but the very confirmation of its truth–but more about that in a later blog.  In any case, the Old Testament prophets cry out about the destruction of their own people due to their own evil choices, infidelities to God, treachery, mistreatment of their own poor, etc.  It is a destruction they have brought down on themselves.

Nevertheless Black Elk’s vision also does apply to us.  Because what we(our ancestors, our government) have done to them, we have actually done to ourselves. And our superficial, fragile prosperity conceals the “sin” at the core of our collective identity.  The Sacred Hoop is indeed broken for us too.  And Lent is a time of remembering that also.  We carry a burden of what our ancestors have done, and its ramifications and manifestations are with us every day.

It is very difficult for us modern Westerners to deal with our so-called “group identity”—we see only our individual identity and even that in a very superficial way.  In all of modern literature, I think only Dostoievsky’s Brothers Karamazov gives even a hint of what that is all about.  It is certainly much, much more than simply “belonging” to a group–it has to do with our essential oneness and interrelatedness.

We may have a strong (or I should say an “exaggerated”) sense of our national or church identity–these do give us a sense of security and belongingness, but rarely do you find also with that a recognition of that group’s sinfulness and a recognition of a deep need of  what the monks call “conversion.”  Those of us who are Catholics and citizens of the U.S. are especially prone to this.  For a long time being a member of the Catholic Church automatically established you in this all-holy club that could do no wrong.  Things don’t look quite that way anymore.  Just consider this whole problem of sexual abuse going on in the church.  For many, many Catholics this “problem” is seen as “unfortunate,” as something the Church has a handle on, as “being behind us,” as just a matter of a few “rotten apples” in the bunch, etc.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The problem has not been dealt with in any effective way, and in fact it seems that the Church is also guilty of concealing the full extent of the problem.  Note the recent exposures by the Grand Jury in Philadelphia a few weeks ago.  The Church is deeply sinful as an institution, and it is a bit too much for most Catholics to  admit this to themselves.  The Church is in deep need of its own Lent, its own “conversion.”  If you still have doubts about  this, consider this link from Richard Sipe, who is a former Benedictine  monk and a sociologist who has studied sexual problems among Catholic religious and priests:

http://www.richardsipe.com/reports/2011-02-22-us-bishops.htm

And let it be remembered that this particular problem is only one of a number of problems with the institutional church;e.g., the alliance with so many right-wing dictators in Latin America, the squashing of Liberation Theology, the  systemic relegating of women to secondary roles, the total silence on what corporate America is doing to the middle class here, etc., etc., etc.

And what about us as a society, as a nation, as a people?  There is a deep crisis concerning our very identity and the very nature of our prosperity.  Lent is a time of coming to terms with who we are, what we have become, and a “conversion” to our true identity.  And believe me our national problem is not trivial, nor “fixable” by some adjustment in  economics or politics.  Please consider this quote from a recent issue of Adbusters:

“Imagine the problem is not physical.  Imagine the problem has never been physical, that it is not biodiversity, it is not  the ozone layer, it is not the greenhouse effect, the whales, the old-growth forest, the loss of jobs, the crack in the ghetto, the abortions, the tongue in the mouth, the diseases stalking everywhere as love goes on unconcerned.   Imagine the problem is not some  syndrome of our society that can be solved by commissions or laws or a redistribution of what we call wealth.  Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our government are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead–that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness.”

Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid

This also sounds like the voice of the Old Testament prophets, and it has a connection to Black Elk.  From this perspective we can see how badly we are in need of Lent, and how Lent is a lot more than just “giving something up.”  Another Native American shaman points us in the right direction:

“Crying for a vision, that’s the beginning of all religion.  The thirst for a dream from above, without this you are nothing.  This I believe.  It is like the prophets in your bible, like Jesus fasting in the desert, getting his visions.  It’s like our Sioux vision quest, the hanblecheya.  White men have forgotten this.  God no longer speaks to them from a burning bush.  If he did, they wouldn’t believe it, and call it science fiction.

Your old prophets went into the desert crying for a dream and the desert gave it to them.  But the whte men of today have made a desert of ther religion and a desert within themselves.  The White Man’s desert is a place without dreams or life.  There nothing grows.  But the spirit water is always way down there to make the desert green again.”

Lame Deer, 1970

Lent is right around the corner.  Let me offer a few scattered seeds for beginning a reflection on the importance of Lent.

1. Lent is a specifically Christian reality, a certain period of the year that is connected to Baptism.  It was originally a period of preparation for Baptism.  Later it became a paradigm of the Christian monastic journey.  But how is this so?  Is it in that popular Lenten exhortation to “give something up for Lent?”–monastic life seems in the popular imagination, even of monks, to be characterized by “giving things up.”  But what’s the point of “giving things up?”  And what does that have to do with our Baptism?

1. In a comparative religions context, Lent might seem  something like a Zen sesshin–a period of intensification of practice.  This is a superficial resemblance.  A certain kind of intensification may be a part of the dynamic of Lent, but it is hardly the heart of it.

1. More than any intensification, more than any “giving up,” Lent is all about remembrance. Everything else is built on this foundation.  It has enormous implications.  According to the Bible we are creatures who journey from forgetfulness to remembrance.  The whole Old Testament resounds and echoes with the call: “Remember…..”   Remember what?  Remember who you are; remember where you came from.  Remember who it is whom you call “God.”  Etc.

1. In Plato’s writings there is a very important word, anamnesis, which roughly translates as “remembering.”  For Plato, the essence of knowledge, the most fundamental kind of knowledge was more a kind of remembering than a bringing in “from the outside” something new.  In other words we have everything within us that we need to know–it is just that we have forgotten this, and so there is needed some kind of process to be healed of this forgetfullness and live in remembrance and so fully.

1. There are two kinds of remembering.  One is what is popularly considered as remembering.  You recall things from the past.  The reality is a past reality–you merely have a kind of mental image of it and a psychologicl/emotional evocation of that past event/person,etc.  This is not quite the “anamnesis” of Lent, although that element should not be counted out either.  But there is another, less well-known aspect to remembering, “anamnesis.”  When we do this remembering we actually make present, make alive to our awareness that so-called past reality.  The celebration of Passover has a sense of both kinds of remembering.  But what is most important is that when the Jewish family celebrates Passover, it actually makes present to its awareness the actuality of that Freedom which Yahweh led them into and which is their gift then and there in that very celebration.    Needless to say those of us who are Catholics immediately think of the Eucharist.  This is almost totally the second kind of “remembering.”  Jesus does say in the Gospel: “Do this in memory of me.”  In a sense the difference in theological interpretation given to the Eucharist  by different Christian bodies has a lot  to do with what kind of “remembering” they think the Jesus intended.

1. Another moment of remembering:  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23: 42).  These are the words of the thief nailed next to Jesus on the Cross.  And Jesus makes present the reality this poor man is seeking:  “This day you will be with me in Paradise.”  We are all that thief.

1. Another moment of remembering:  On Ash Wednesday we are told:  “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  The smudge on our forehead is a wonderful symbol of all that we call reality in our forgetful lives.  So we are summoned to remembrance.

1. Remembrance is a critical part of repentance.  But here we must be careful about what we mean.  This remembrance is not a morbid and continual dwelling on whatever wrong we may have done.  Rather, like with the Jesus Prayer, we simply dwell within the mercy of the All-Merciful One, and we make no  distinctions between our personal wrongs and the wrongs of our neighbor.  As Father Zosima tells us in the Brothers Karamazov, we are one in this mysterious reality of sin.

1. Idolatry is a form of forgetfulness of who God is.  Paradoxically it is religious people who are most prone to idolatry without even realizing it.  This is a problem of worshipping an image of God that we have constructed for ourselves.  The Church  is very prone to idolatry–thus it is summoned to repentance, to remembrance.  “Gather all the people before Me….”  It is an awesome thing to stand in the  Presence of the Mystery of the Living God.

1. The work of Lent:  Remember who you are; remember who God is.  And thus you will remember mercy, compassion, freedom and peace.  This is the essential work of Lent.  Happy Lent to all.

1. Abortion

This week has been another anniversary of the infamous Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the U.S. about 1972.  It is also a time when many anti-abortion forces get together to march, to demonstrate and to proclaim the wrongness of that decision.  These people are mostly very conservative, both church-wise and politically.  If you look for any liberals/progressives on that side of the issue, you will not find many, if any at all, and that is really sad.  The issue has polarized the body politic and the faith community in such a strange way that it is difficult to talk about.

Since 1972 something like 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S.  This includes everything–from the disposal of zygotes, the fertilized ovum-sperm cell, to an almost fully formed baby who is killed by having its head crushed or its spinal cord cut.  Not many could actually stomach seeing the actual medical procedures if they had to, and you wonder if their advocacy of abortion would be so strong.  However, even abortion-rights defenders often say that they are not so much “pro abortion” as they are defenders of a woman’s freedom of choice, to decide for herself if she wants an abortion.  Thus their banner reads: “Pro Choice.”  These are very often very well-meaning and well-intentioned people—they are not really “killers” as some anti-abortion people would have it.  However, once the situation is analyzed in terms of “rights” it becomes a lost cause—meaning we can never resolve it in those terms.  Once we put it in these terms: the rights of the mother to choose what to do with her own body vs the rights of the unborn one to life—well, that is an impossible dilemma to resolve.  But “rights language” is practically all that our ethical and political ethos knows.

Just to scratch the surface of the multi-faceted complexity in this issue, consider this.  The so-called “right” to an abortion is built on a so-called right to privacy for the mother–legally and constitutionally speaking. Choice is the fundamental value. What is here avoided is the status of the fetus.  Do we have personhood or human-beingness here, or do we not?  And who decides that and on what basis?  And what gives the right to anyone to choose to take the life of another person?  At one point in our history the Supreme Court had ruled against the personhood of Black People, thus justifying slavery and later segregation.  In 16^th Century Spain there was a vigorous debate whether Native Americans were really human beings.  This seems outrageous today, yet we as a society seem to have no trouble in denying personhood and human-beingness to the fetus.  On what basis?  Even if we take an “agnostic position”–we are not sure when the fetus “becomes” a human person–we should be much more circumspect about supporting abortion or choice.  Naomi Wolf, a vocal feminist, has said that abortion is an evil, but at times a necessary evil.  Perhaps a problematic way of putting it, but at least an honest way.

Now on the other side of this issue are all the conservative church people and political people who have championed the “pro-life” cause.  What is tragically sad is that to the extent they are on the good side of this issue, they are terribly wrong when they latch this issue to a whole mindset that allows for an authoritarian church life and a political and economic order that leads to the destruction of  truly human well-beingness.  Very often these people seem not to be bothered by the death penalty, by our proclivity for wars, by a selfish, self-centered, greed-driven economy.  Very often these people ally themselves with the Republican Party, but as one commentator put it, each election cycle the Republicans speak out against abortion; what they deliver is tax cuts for the wealthy.  But these people keep coming back to that.  One begins to suspect that a lot of conservative Catholics and evangelicals have their anti-abortion views mixed up with a whole bunch of reactionary, anti-liberal views.  It is part of a culture war that is taking place in our country.  What is truly ironic is that statistically the number of abortions went down in this country during the Clinton years, while it went up during the Reagan and Bush years.

1. Holiness and Sanctity

What a complex subject—just a few thoughts and questions.  Recently there was the announcement that Pope John Paul II will be beatified—a step on the way to being declared a saint in the Catholic Church.  I am sympathetic to anyone who has problems with all this.

First of all a clarification: holiness and sanctity are not exactly the same thing.  Holiness is a state of heart and mind which are more and more attuned to the reality of God; it is not a static thing, but a dynamic growth in the life of God.  In another tradition one might want to call it “an enlightened life,” etc.  Sanctity is the public display of that life, a public acknowledgment that one gives witness to that life.  The community begins to see someone as being a “bearer of the Spirit” and so begins to call that person a “saint.”   Now none of this means that the person is perfect in any sense, even a spiritual or religious sense.  They may in fact have a lot of real flaws in their personality.  However, there are flaws and then there are FLAWS!   Mother Teresa took money from and associated with some very nasty people–kind of giving them a “cover” for their nasty deeds.  And her spiritual director for many years turns out to have been a major child molester.  Strange stuff indeed!  But then go back in time and what about someone like St. Bernard calling for the killing of Moslems and being recognized as a saint.  And there are so many others that you have to wonder about this church mechanism of “proclaiming  saints,” and claiming to be “infallible” in doing so.

Now about this JPII stuff.  I am sure he was a decent person and a sincere follower of Christ.  However, there are many indications that he was preminently concerned with the institution of the Church–to an unhealthy degree.  There has been evidence, some of it just came out recently, that during his pontificate there was a definite policy of keeping child-molesting priests hidden from civil authorities.  This was done to protect the image of the Church.  It’s not that he didn’t know–that is not possible given the evidence that has come out–he just chose the reputation of the Church over the well-being of the victims of all these priests—and all over the world.  Proclaiming such a person a “saint” is a bit of a problem.

I think we should just ignore all this “saint” stuff and leave holiness in the Mystery of God.  There definitely are many holy people around, some hidden, some not so hidden, but what’s most important is our own seeking and thirsting for holiness.  Be wary of adulation and a kind of religious “fandom.”  Recall the Gospel, Luke 18: 18:  “And a ruler asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’  And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”

1. State of the Union

This country is in deep, deep trouble–politically, economically, socially, and, yes, even religiously.  Just a few comments.  Listening  to the President’s State of the Union message and the commentators afterwards made me think how bad off we really are.  This President sounds good, especially in contrast with the absolute craziness, the absolute irresponsibility, the absolute awfulness of the “other side”–the present-day Republicans.  He seems like the “most reasonable” man in Washington wanting to work with everyone.  He has positioned himself in a kind of political center in order to win the 2012 election.  However, “left,” “center,” and “right” are not static, fixed positions.  The fact is that this country is moving toward the right whether it realizes it or not.  What is considered the “center” now would have been considered “right” some years ago.  The center itself is now fairly far right in terms of the political map of some years ago. This started with the “Reagan Revolution” –the beginnings of the dismantling of the New Deal and a tremendous redistribution of wealth toward the top 5% or so of the population.  President Obama is more like Eisenhower or Nixon(except for Nixon’s paranoia and lack of ethics) than he is a traditional Democrat–yet in the national media and in the popular image he seems like a “liberal” or a little to the left of center.  What you have to do is look beyond his rhetoric and at what he actually does and look closely at his language.  Let us take some examples:

1. Language:

1. President Obama had adopted the Republican narrative about the Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is no questioning of the war.  The Bush justification of the war has been accepted.  The fact that we were “lied” into Iraq seems to have no consequences, opening up the possibility of this happening again and again.  The two wars have cost us trillions of dollars—there would be no budget deficit otherwise and we could provide health care for all the American people.
2. The Republican narrative about the economy has also been very quietly imbibed.    Please note this comment from George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at UC Berkeley:

“Conservatives are trained not to use the language of liberals. Liberals are not so trained. Liberals have to learn  to stick to their own language, and not move rightward in language use. Never use the word “entitlement” – social security and medicare are earned. Taking money from them is stealing. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. They are part of contracted pay for work. Not paying pensions is taking wages from those who have earned them. Nature isn’t free for the taking. Nature is what nurtures us, and is of ultimate value – human value as well as economic value. Pollution and deforestation are destroying nature. Privatization is not eliminating government – it is introducing government of our lives by corporations, for their profit, not ours. The mission of government is to protect and empower all citizens, because no one makes it on their own. And the more you get from government, the more you owe morally. Government is about “necessities” – health, education, housing, protection, jobs with living wages, and so on – not about “programs.” Economic success lies in human well-being, not in stock prices, or corporate and bank profits.”

Note what President Obama said about social security.  He said he does not want to “endanger” the benefits of current retirees.  But that leaves open the question– what about future retirees?  He said he will not allow the “slashing” of benefits.  But that leaves open the possibility of a compromise with the Republicans and “reducing” benefits.  “Reducing” is not “slashing.”  See how tricky that language is.  A true, old-fashioned Democrat would have said that social security is completely “off the table”, end of story.  It is NOT the problem with the budget or the deficit.  It does need some help because both sides have raided the social security fund to pay for other things.  And if people who make over $100,000 a year had to pay into social security–now they don’t!!!–there would not be ANY problem with social security.  But Obama did not say that.  And his “sliding” language is just one little indication of a problem.

2. Actions:  Note President Obama’s most recent appointments:  Immelt has become one of his chief economic advisors–he comes from GE and was one of the chief architects of their outsourcing of jobs from the US to China and elsewhere.  This man is not the friend of American workers or the middle class.  Then for his chief of staff  he chose a former lobbyist for financial companies like Goldman Sachs.  Very troubling.  The corporate oligarchy is slowly getting a stranglehold on the American economy, and we are in big trouble.  Another example: Obama proposes the availability of high-speed internet for all Americans.  Good, but his Justice Dept and his Administration allow the merger of Comcast and NBC, which many media experts say allow for an increased monopoly control over what we will have access to in all media.  So we will get it “fast” but that “it” will be under the control of a few “corporate interests.”

1. Finally….

An amazing science story.   We have a tiny fuzzy image of a galaxy that may be something like 14 billion light years away.  Amazing.  Just think….light travels at 186,000 miles a SECOND, and the light from that galaxy that reaches us now, started out something like 14 BILLION years ago.  Mind boggling!  How awesome, how amazing, how large the universe is!  And who is this God who has made such an amazing reality!!   No need to sweat the small stuff!!!!