Jan 302011
 

I, this watching, listening, reflecting point of consciousness, in the depths of meditation experience the will opening awareness to the vast silence in which all thoughts come and go.  Attention traces back along the paths of their manifestation – from words back to images, sounds and feelings.  Through these forms it traces back to pulses of energy filled with potential and emerging from the silence as though born out of nothing.

With continued observation it becomes clear that in the silence, beyond all perception, are mysterious intelligent forces and dynamics composing those emergent pulses. In time it is discerned there are forces and dynamics of different categories, “intelligences” focused on different aims, each leaving a resonance within the pulses it sends.  Through these pulses and the forms into which they unfold, increasing familiarity finds that some of those intelligences are aware of this probing, and some of them desire to communicate and be known.

As intention and openness to communication builds on many sides, the mysterious intelligences respond at times with bursts and floods of energy pulses.  These bursts and floods stimulate imagination to unfold the most dazzling artistic displays in dreams, visions, locutions, and the like, brimming with the excitement and disclosure of newly met lovers. Growing intimacy clarifies the “voices” of various intelligences, each singing at different times in differing degrees of cacophony, harmony, or unison. Patient intention for truth eventually distinguishes within the chorus a certain voice interweaving itself in and through all the others. At first it seems only one among the many, yet it becomes realized as the one to which all others respond, as a choir does to the whispers and motions of its conductor.

With knowledge of the central wisdom and power of the intelligence behind that voice, I resolve to focus attention upon it. I make known my commitment to it and to all the intelligences that might listen, so that those which can still themselves or sing harmonious responses to that voice will do so and thereby assist me in communing with its source.  What follows is an attempt at transcribing some of our communication, freely acknowledging that my abilities to single out that voice, translate it, and understand its meaning are still in development and sometimes in error, or perhaps always so to some degree.

An Allegorical Conversation

Hello. I believe I am welcome to communicate as directly as possible with you, is that correct?

You are more than welcome, much more.

I feel awe in doing so. It is a mixture of excitement, joy, wonder, anticipation, so many feelings, but also fear, I must admit.

Yes, that’s all natural, including your fear. Be still. It passes.

Thank you.  I see that this is my response to the unknown, knowing that I cannot predict or control it. It is my lack of trust in myself to protect and preserve myself.

Yes, that fear and lack of trust stem from your desire to remain much as you are, to not die to the illusion of yourself, and the conflict of that desire with the knowledge of your limitations and the desire to be free from them, to die to the illusion of yourself as you know you must. It is simply part of your present existence that you cannot clearly discern the illusion of you from the essence that you truly are.  You know this.

Yes, I do. I wish it were otherwise.

You do and you don’t wish it were otherwise, which is fine.  In time it becomes otherwise, but outside of time it already is, always was, and always will be.  You know this, and that knowledge is what enables you to be patient with and even enjoy the illusion despite its torments.

Yes, and with that, in this moment, I sense a release from the fear of communicating with you so freely.

That’s right.  You are free to communicate with me as openly, honestly and informally as your most intimate friend, even more so.

Okay, that makes sense.  And, as in an intimate conversation with a dear friend, it naturally calls for devotion.

Yes, and with time the rapport builds.  Though there are phases in which I seem silent and distant to you, even absent, they pass so that you increasingly come to know we are present to each other in all circumstances.

I’m smiling with the thought and feeling of that.

As am I.

Hmm. I’ve wondered if you feel things like I do.

I feel everything, everything you feel, everything every creature feels, has ever felt or ever will feel.

That’s comforting, yet I cannot begin to imagine what that must be like for you.

Once when you were lucid you were asked what would happen if you didn’t imagine anything, and so for a moment you emptied yourself into complete silence and stillness, and then suddenly it was filled with golden light, as if by an explosion.

Yes! I recall it was so alive and full!  It was humming and buzzing and shining with so much energy!

That moment was a glimpse of what it’s like to feel everything all at once.

What do you call it?

Your mind might call it “Life”, “Light”, or “Logos” but your heart is already calling out another name.

Yeah, it’s “Love”, and more than I ever thought love could be.

Yes.

Love is everything. It is the Logos, the Life and the Light. Even the things I don’t always recognize as love must be Love.

Yes.

You are Love.

I am.

I want to know you, so much!

You do know me, and always have known me, and your knowing continues to grow.

Ah, yes, I have known you in so many ways, some of them lesser and some greater.

Yes, but now you know the greatness even in the least of these.

Ha ha ha ha!  Yes!  Yes, you remind me that as a child I learned to see you in the Jesus who spoke such similar words.

“Jesus loves the little children….”  You know the song.

Oh, you bring tears to my eyes!

I love you. You know it is always true.

Yes, yes, my beloved. I’m so grateful. My tears say what words cannot.

I am always with you. I know what is in your heart.

Yes, thank you.  I forget that so easily.  I am so easily distracted and absorbed in the illusions.

It’s okay. You are my child at play in the playground I have given you.  If I had not wanted you to forget yourself in play, I would not have made it so.

But there is not only joyful play here. There is labor and misery and evil here too.  Did you create these?

What I am about to tell you is only one way to comprehend this mystery, yet it is true. I create you and your kind with individuality. Into each of your beings I pour some of my love, my life, will, and creativity, and I seal it with the forgetting of its root, and then send you into the natural world with its laws, which I have ordained.  I do this so that you might be free to participate in creation with me, even to make worlds of your own.

In the forgetting of your root you sense your loss and limitation, yet the heat of my eternal being and the will to become is also there. Thus, believing you are that which is temporary and bound to space and time as you know it, rather than remembering you are that which is eternal and free, you desire to artificially make the temporal into something eternal, the illusory into the real, the relative into the absolute, and therefore cannot help but know the frustration of your desires and the fear of oblivion.

So it is that your ignorance and fear shape your understanding of things, and thus much of your relative reality, into what you call misery and evil.  Yet, I made all of this to be as it is, and though I am not bound to it, I am in it with you, within you and all around you.  I have not only sealed you with the forgetting of your root, but have also endowed you with the potential to break that seal and begin remembering me, and so begin to see love glowing through the veils that are your suffering.

If everything is love, even misery and evil, why should I care what anyone experiences or does?  Why be compassionate and ethical?

There are many ways to answer, and one way is this: Because you can’t really stop yourself.  It is part of who and what you are to want these things for yourself and others, and it would only be compounding the illusions of your life for you to pretend otherwise. This desire is part of what breaks the seal of forgetting your root. It involves recognizing your deepest self in others, for I am in each of you.  It is interwoven with your desire for the truth beyond the duality of evil and good as you know good, in that state where all is known as the Love that has no opposite.

Heaven. It’s about bringing heaven and earth together as much as possible.

Yes.

I believe all of this, but it’s still hard to understand how love can create circumstances that are sure to result in suffering. That seems more like cruelty than love.

From the perspective of separation it must seem to be so, but consider three things: First, I am with you even in that suffering, suffering with you, though in me the suffering is known as love.  Second, I only reveal the truth to you in the ways you are presently able to accept it.  Third, even to one who has awakened to remember and find union with me to the fullest possible extent, the necessity of it all shall remain a mystery, for it is such even to me, who knows it is undeniably true.

Even for you?!  Aren’t you God?!

I am.  Yet “I am” is somewhat like the awakening of consciousness from deep sleep.  It takes little attention for “I am” to know there is a still and silent One that is the transcendent source and substance of all that is possible and all that is impossible.  I am the first-born of That. I am one with That, yet I am not all It was, is or can be.

Ah, in this I hear the answer to why there is something instead of nothing: All we can know of this, all we can communicate, is that it is the mysterious will of the silent One.

Yes.

So you do not have the power to change the essential way of things?

Yes and no.  If I were to change the essential way of things, it would be the will of the One working through me, but the will of the One is for things to be as they are.

I can sense this line of questioning isn’t going to reveal much more to me.

You are free to change the subject.

Thank you. I feel this is a good place to rest, though one more question comes to mind: What if I share this with others? I know some will welcome it, but I know others will not, and I am a little fearful of how it will affect them and how they will respond.

Let go of your fear.  Remember that what they and you really are cannot be harmed, and that my love is always with you, each and all. When you share these words, some might hear it as you do and take comfort, and others might hear it as the babbling of a child and they will smile with grace. Some might hear it as a mockingbird heralding the dawn, as the howling of a dog in the night, the squealing of a hungry pig, or the taunting of a devil.  All hear as they are best able to hear, and they respond accordingly.  Go now and do what you must with love, from love, for love, and you will know me as you have said you want so much to do.

Thank you, Love.  It makes no sense to say goodbye.

Hello!

Nov 292010
 

Here are two dialogues between a Christian mystic and Buddhists.  They are not shared as an attempt to define either religion or to hold one up as superior to the other.  What is important to me is the fraternal meeting of minds, the exposure of mystical and non-dualist perspectives in Christianity, and the  achievement of greater understanding between people of significantly different traditions.

Dialogue #1: The Ultimate Personal Relationship

They were discussing the nature of the Ultimate, beginning at what seemed to be a classic impasse:  The Christian spoke of the Ultimate as a personal God, and the a-theistic Buddhist spoke of the Ultimate as the impersonal principle of Being that gives rise to all things, yet is not contained by all things.

In their discussion, the Christian typically asserted that God is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving.  The Buddhist countered that if this is so, then God would be impossible for a human being to understand, that God must also be all-mysterious.  The Christian agreed, yet held that while God could not be understood, God could still be experienced as the great mystery of life itself.  The Buddhist smiled, apparently thinking that he now had the upper hand in the debate.  He asked the Christian how, if God is all-mysterious, one could rightly refer to God as “personal.”

The Christian had two responses:  First, he clarified that when many mystical theologians speak of God as a person, or a trinity of three persons, they are speaking in metaphors that only address ways God can be experienced by human beings.  Second, he said that since we are persons, it only makes sense that one of the most powerful and meaningful ways of experiencing God is as a person too.  So, while speaking of God as a person may be understood to be a metaphor, speaking of one’s experience with God as a personal relationship is entirely fitting.

Well, the Buddhist furrowed his brow for a moment, looking like a chess player trying to salvage his gambit from an unexpected move.  Suddenly he looked up with an idea.  He said that if experiencing God as a person is only a way of experiencing the Ultimate, then wouldn’t a purer, simpler way to experience the Ultimate be as the impersonal principle of Being?

The Christian asked if the Buddhist was one who thinks of the Ultimate as beyond all oppositions and thus non-dual.  The Buddhist said that he did.  Then the Christian said that if we are going to regard the Ultimate as non-dual, it is just as inaccurate to speak of It as impersonal as to speak of It as personal.  He said that personal and impersonal fall into the categories of either/or, neither/nor as well as both/and when speaking of the Ultimate, or God, and that what makes the difference is simply the kinds of experience one is open to.

The Buddhist was nodding with a blank face for moment, and then he laughed.   He said that now he could finally understand Christianity, but he wondered how many Christians do.  The Christian asked how many Buddhists really understand Buddhism, and they both laughed together.

Dialogue #2: If You Meet the Dharmakaya on the Via Negativa….

Zen Buddhist (ZB): “I would be very grateful if you could explain your interest in Zen.”

Christian Mystic (CM): “Zen is of interest because of its acceptance of this moment, right here, right now, just as it is.  The interconnected complexity of everything is permeated by this simplicity.  This explanation isn’t adequate.”

ZB: “Very interesting.  The shift of consciousness, from that of the periphery, to that of the ‘central’ position of the Mind, is, as I understand it, the essential thrust of the Ch’an-Zen teaching – a Buddhism, without the requirement for ‘Buddhism’, so-to-speak.

“In a sense, the Buddha’s own teaching, even within the Pali Canon, advocates the ‘letting go’ of even the method that gets one to the destination – the Dhammapada uses the allusion of a ‘raft’, and another shore being reached, etc.  One question that intrigues me is this; is it possible to reconcile the teaching of ’emptiness’ (sunyata), with that of the existence of a theistic entity creating and controlling all things?”

CM: “Yes, Zen [and Christian mysticism, for that matter] may be thought of as a tool.  About letting go of the raft, the limitation of this metaphor is the notion of a destination, which is not to say that such a notion is not useful.

“The teaching of sunyata can be likened to the Via Negativa of Western mysticism, in which it is acknowledged that the concept of God as a supremely active and intentional intelligence is only one way to think about and relate to God.  In the Via Negativa we continually strip our minds of such concepts to abide in the utter mystery of God, knowing that such thoughts are only limited creations of the mind or, if you will, fingers pointing at God.  In effect, we acknowledge the emptiness of such notions.  One effect of this practice can be to return back to simple awareness of this passing moment.

“So it is that, among many Western mystics, words about God have much in common with the Buddhist concept of Dharmakaya, which suggests a non-duality that is at once empty and full, no-thing and every-thing, impersonal and personal, unintentional and intentional, etc.  [In essence, “God” is the word we use for the Great Mysterious Truth of reality.]  For one in such a position, relating to God as a theistic entity can become a kind of artistic experience and expression of life.  [It is a way to express our love of the Great Mystery.]”

ZB: “Interesting, and well thought out.

“I am reminded of Matthew Fox, and his Original Blessing book, which deals with concepts such as ‘via negativa’, (as juxtaposed with ‘via positiva‘).  In that sense, a binary system that reconciles into an experiential ‘whole-ness’, realised within the spiritual being.  Allusions to similar systems, such as ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’, ‘yin’ and ‘yang’, are obvious.

“Of course, a ‘reconciliation’ does imply some kind of ‘third’ other, that actually realises the ‘reconciliation’.  The Dharmakaya (body of truth) is one candidate, and this is often presented in the Mahayana as part of a triad – (usually in conjunction with the nirmanakaya and the sambhogakaya).  Whether it could equally be said to be representative of a theistic entity, is problematic.  As none of the bodies of the Buddha originate ‘outside’ of the Mind.

“And this, (I sense), is where the breakdown of language raises its head!  God can not possibly be ‘God’, if God is in any way ‘real’.  As ‘God’ is a construct of the human Mind.  What lies beyond the construct, would in theory, also lie beyond the dualistic schemes that attempt to organise and explain nature in one, convenient philosophical presentation.

“The practice of Zen would eventually require the ‘giving-up’ of notions of ‘God’, and ‘Zen’, as well as any idea of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’.  As you say, a ‘timeless’, and ever ‘present’ moment of perfect being – free from discursive thinking and emotional over-lay.”

CM: “Peace.”

ZB: “Peace to you also.”