Tuning In

May 3, moon at morning

When awake mid-night 

As in any time attuned 

Look not for clock-time 

The Lord of both worlds 

Calls always “Now!”

Listen for in tone ing 

Home making

Of that harmony 

Eternal recurrence 

Of the Order 

Not for food-sleep-pleasure 

Nor for calendar bank account 

But to home in 

Always returning

“Original Countenance”

And Remember we are 

   there 

Sooner 

   moving more slowly 

Mindfully 

For fewer dragons 

   Disturbed 

 

May 3, 5:59A

 

Being in time. I’m wondering about the baseline … perhaps it’s a sense of center. The “original countenance.” Nishitani says “The dropping off of body-and-mind is self-presentation of the original countenance.” 

“…all things coming forward to practice and confirm the self is no different from defining the dropping off of body-and-mind as being the practice of Zen. The dropping off of body-and-mind is self-presentation of the original countenance. The original countenance is present at the point that the world worlds, where ‘one’s treasure-house opens of itself and one can use it at will.’ It is the place of self-joyous samadhi. . . On the whole, this is the meaning of ‘observance.’

… in the Existenz of the dropped off of body-and-mind (that is, of true emptiness)… a standpoint of absolute freedom. By means of its own dharma, this Existenz maintains dharani over all phenomena in the dharma-like nature, or suchness, within this world of transitoriness and uses them for its own enjoyment. Hence, when the self as body-and-mind is born, it is a birth that is a unbirth; and when it passes away, it is a passing away that is a non-passing away. (pp. 199-200)

May 3, 5:56A

 

Returning Home

The moon remains 

Now full…clouded…unseen… 

Still-less. 

Return home empty-handed. 

Still-full. 

“Empty-handed” comes from continued reading in Nishitani:

“In short, Existenz as a ‘coming home with empty hands’ and a birth-sive-unbirth is Existenz on the field of śūnyatā as samsara-sive-nirvana, the field of the birthplace that is self-identical with the unbirthplace. This field embraces all things on their home-ground, where they become manifest as they are in themselves. If the term ‘embrace’ be thought to incline too much toward a spatial sense of unity, we may paraphrase it: that all things are severally what they are in themselves directly implies that they are all collected together. Such is the field of emptiness.” ((Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 192)

     The coming-home-empty reminds me of the homecoming reception of the “prodigal son” (Luke 15), especially by the elder brother. Taken in the way a dream can be seen in which all participants are characters within the dreamer’s psyche, both brothers (as well as the father) may represent dimensions of the self (as well as other relationships). The quotation from Rumi cited last time (“God has stationed two headmen, heedlessness and heedfulness, so that both worlds will flourish”) containing both the “heedless” as well as the “heedful,” might apply to the two brothers. Might the hostility of the elder who can be seen as suppressed/repressed anger due to being too contained by the external directives (like the root-bound tree too confined in limited space), “safe” from the wilderness where discernment of authentic voice suffers the edge where the true hones against the wasteland, sharpening a sensitivity more than can be developed in the homeland. 

Living with Unknowing

     Last night’s dream must’ve figured from recent readings (especially Religion and Nothingness by Keiji Nishitani, translated by Jan Van Bragt) and doings (particularly planting maple trees whose roots were wound far too tightly inside far too small containers, much too restrictive for the continuous development essential for ascension). The dream featured folks playing a sort of game where individuals attempted to articulate words that yearned toward but not quite able to reach into sufficient meaningfulness. Perhaps the divine purpose within the activity meant to enjoy the spirit of the attempt without getting trapped by the demands of clarity and rational thought. Nishitani seems to lean into such notions, including the attempt to “prehend,” the attempt to grasp or lay hold of:

“But when the concept of substance, which was supposed to express the selfness of things, and the concept of subject which was supposed to express the selfness of the self, strike against nihility at their very ground and are there negated, they make a leap forward onto a field where the things and the self they were out to prehend manifest their selfness. This means that, on the field of nihility, neither things nor the self are objects of cognition and, hence, can no longer be prehended or expressed conceptually (as logos). They are no longer determined either as substance or as subject. We seem no longer to be able to say ‘what’ they are. . .   With that, the existence of things and of the self are both transformed into something utterly incomprehensible, of which we can no longer say ‘what’ it is.” (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 136)

     Looking out into the tree (whose colors transition between matter and air, my reflections wander into the poem that’s held a favorite position for over a decade. Antonio Machado in “Llamo a mi corazon” penetrates into the garden with the “viento” which I consider as holy spirit that wafts along dreams and visions, that whispers its blessings and demands upon the responsive heart and soul. 

     The full poem with Robert Bly’s translation has been treated in previous posts including Distilling Distraction: Contain the Longing (Oct 4, 2014); Mining the Resonant Field with Mantras & Story Moments (Nov 4 2016, including a link to a video in which I recite the poem and give brief commentary); and Winter Containment (Feb 3, 2022).

     My experience today with Machado’s marvelous poem owes much to the remarkable writings of Mark C. Taylor (see previous blogs, most recently Planting a Tree Oneself ), Nishitani (just cited above), and works noted in other recent blogs. Especially, I have gratitude for a responsive shift to the closing of this poem. Usually the emptying of the garden feels almost heart-breakingly poignant (“Mi corazón sangraba”) as the wind takes away the waters of the fountain, the yellowed leaves, and the withered petals: 

          Me llevaré los llantos de las fuentes,

          las hojas amarillas y los mustios pétalos.

          Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba…

          Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto?

Now I’m thankful that a somewhat lighter possibility flits through. Perhaps as Nishitani indicates, the field of emptiness promises a marvelous transformation beyond the too-tightly contained self. The emptied garden makes a space brimming with the hope of movement into “the field of ecstatic transcendence…” (p. 151).

Thinning Veils

November 1. Dawning

These days almost refuse to go unseen. The pink gold of dawning light penetrates through where just-fallen leaves so recently shaded, through where clouds covered seconds before, revealing how the color spectrum’s right now breaking open…all this almost as with a Halloween spell and/or with the holy demand that must not be denied. See! Look through the worlds. Know like a prayer that crosses the materialistic blinders and receives admission into the eternals of truth, beauty, love…

November 1 pathway of early light

So many of my favorite writers are sharing this time of light breaking through. From Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations:

What some call “liminal space” or threshold space (in Latin, limen means a threshold) is a very good phrase for those special times, events, and places that open us up to the sacred. It seems we need special (sacred) days to open us up to all days being special and sacred. This has always been the case and didn’t originate with Christianity. Ancient initiation rites were intensely sacred time and space that sent the initiate into a newly discovered sacred universe.  What became All Saints Day and All Souls Day (November 1–2) was already called “thin times” by the ancient Celts (as were February 1–2: St. Bridget’s Day and Candlemas Day, when candles were blessed and lit). The veil between this world and the next world was considered most “thin” and easily traversed during these times. On these days, we are invited to be aware of deep time—that is, past, present, and future time gathered into one especially holy moment. 

November 1 Dawn

Of course, for those who learn to see, liminal time is the eternal now, Rumi’s “breeze at dawn,” telling secrets. As suggested in the top photo, my favorite space for contemplating this comes in the woodlands. Krista Tippett links these liminal days with forest time: 

Suzanne [Simard] trained my vision and imagination down to the ground, where features of the natural world that we’re only now taking seriously are stitching the life of the forest and the life of the planet together: mycelia, fungi, mosses. It turns out that a forest is a single organism wired for reciprocity and mutuality. The oldest hub trees — which she calls Mother Trees — are incessantly sensing “who is rich and who is poor, who is healthy and who is sick.” They communicate, send warning signals, and deliver nutrients — you can hear this with a Geiger counter — by way of carbon and nitrogen and phosphorus and water and chemicals and hormones. One of Suzanne’s most astonishing findings is that these networks of communication and sustenance closely mirror what we’re now able to see in the neural networks of the human brain.
I’m letting all of this enliven my understanding of what it means to stay grounded and vital and whole in this time. For this too is the generative story of our time: We’re on dazzling, revolutionary territory of seeing the workings of vitality inside the body of the Earth and inside ourselves. 

Today, November 1st, “The Morning” (shared from The New York Times) features Melissa Kirsch on “Quality Time” reminding us that we’re only one more twilight from the end of Daylight Savings Time:

The hour between dog and wolf, or “l’heure entre chien et loup,” if you prefer, is, I think you’ll agree, the dreamiest way to refer to twilight. (I will entertain arguments for “the gloaming” and “the violet hour,” but I don’t suspect litigants will get very far.) It’s that time just after sunset when the atmosphere is still partly illuminated by the sun, when the light is ambiguous and the sky can’t choose between blue and black. Night hasn’t yet fully fallen and we are in the borderland between day and dark. One might be forgiven, in this threshold moment, for mistaking a dog for a wolf, for mistaking safety for danger, for feeling slightly off.
Daylight saving time ends tomorrow. That first Sunday in November is a full day suspended between dog and wolf. We’re still grasping at the corn-silk tendrils of summer just as winter gets more insistent. 

October 31 sunset across the cornfield

Longing and Certitude

“... and there’s not a trace of doubt…” Even a monkey-mind acknowledges the longing for certitude. Such longing itself testifies to the presence of God, but how easily this affirmation, the longing instead gets misconstrued as abandonment and taken as an elevator down to despair. 

     Mystics and other seekers of God have tried for ages to tell us that our conception, the picture we hold of “reality,” determines what we know and how it’s revealed.  A person’s construction depends on whether he or she is committed (a) to things of this world or (A+) to God’s World. It takes a special faith to discern Truth in a culture shadowed for centuries by the legacy of “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am), a world entrenched in the “scientific method.” How demanding it is to live in reliance upon the Word Who speaks in a whispered stillness that’s often heard only by the individual in his or her unique aloneness, often inarticulate and unconfirmed by anyone else. And yet, how thrilling! How awesome the inner temple of God!

“… the answer [to the more superficial aspects of human’s condition], as Ghazali had discovered for himself, lay only in internalizing the formalities of religion through ‘tasting’ (dhawq): personal religious experience… the only way to certitude” (p. xviii, Introduction by T.J. Winter to Al-Ghazali: The Remembrance of Death and the Afterllife)

     Neither the furthest reaches of human thought nor one’s hardest effort can reach the Divine; for the assurance of God’s presence rests upon God’s grace. When left to the human mind, doubt is certain. The great Divine cannot be known through human resources alone.

“How far apart is the one who seeks proof through God from the one who seeks proof for God! The one who seeks proof through God acknowledges the due that he owes, and affirms the matter by reference to its original existence. One seeks proof for Him only because one has not reached Him. Otherwise, when was it that He became absent, such that one would need to seek proof for Him? And when was it that He became distant, such that one would need to follow the tracks of created things to find him?” (p. 240,  Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari, Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Sufi Treatise on the Secrets of the Divine Name).

     When I enter the wholeness of the ephemeral blossom of life/death, when nested into the beauty of early sunlight igniting the yellow and red poppies, the inner light reflects God’s Majesty. This conjoining of the Immanent and the Transcendent, the yielding to paradox, breaks open the false self, the prison of human arrogance, the pride of self-sufficient intellect. That which is true can only be found in the One, in God; for Truth is one of God’s names. In surrendering completely to God’s Sovereignty, we may be admitted, by God’s Grace, to the Unity, to the full mystery of Love, Peace, Justice, Mercy, Beauty, and the full spectrum of Life/Death.

“Thus, dear disciple, if you wish to be among the people of union, you must gather the beautiful names within your true self. For the secret of the names lies in their gathered totality. God says: ‘He taught Adam all the names” [Qur’an 2:31], and the totality of the names is the secret of union of the everlasting presence.” (p. 230,  Shaykh Mohamed Faouzi al-Karkari, Introduction to Islamic Metaphysics)

     Richard Rohr’s meditation this week elaborates the textures of longing drawing especially on Teilhard de Chardin and Saint John of the Cross. Quoting from Teilhard:

“God does not offer Himself to our finite beings as a thing all complete and ready to be embraced. For us God is eternal discovery and eternal growth. The more we think we understand God, the more God reveals Himself as otherwise. The more we think we hold God, the further God withdraws, drawing us into the depths of Himself.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu: An Essay on the Interior Life (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 119. Note: some changes made for inclusive language.)

“John of the Cross describes the doubt that disrupts a soul in the dark night, when all sense of knowing God is absent. Mirabai Starr translates from John’s classic work Dark Night of the Soul:

‘The deep suffering of the soul in the night of sense comes not so much from the aridity she must endure but from this growing suspicion that she has lost her way. She thinks that all spiritual blessing is over and that God has abandoned her. She finds neither support nor delight in holy things. Growing weary, she struggles in vain to practice the tricks [prayer practices] that used to yield results. . . The best thing for the soul to do is to pay no attention to the fact that the actions of her faculties are slipping away. . . . She needs to get out of the way. In peaceful plentitude, let her now say “yes” to the infused contemplation God is bestowing upon her. . . . Contemplation is nothing other than a secret, peaceful, loving inflow of God. If given room, it will fire the soul in the spirit of love. [John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. Mirabai Starr. Riverhead Books, 2002), 67, 68–69, 70.]

Presence Here and Now

 

April 18, 2022: the most photo-compelling day of all—at least in these parts, at least in recent memory… a day not even necessary to leave the comfort of the house in order to frame the visions of beauty. 

Perhaps this date gifted a reminder of the guidance: “Be here now!”  While travel to the exotic

Oct 28, 2018

  

may expand horizons and spark imagination;

True Signs Apr 28, 2018

  

a vital window to the spiritual life comes home in being present to each individual’s gift from the Divine, the True Self. 

     Absorbed In yesterday’s amazing display, my being thrilled in the awesome manifestation of the images containing wholeness:  light and dark,

lime-green spring holding bleak winter—a holy embrace.

Often beauty takes breath away with rainbow-hued dusk 

Winter Containment

  

in morning-lit webs of life

Now we see Dimly

   

in the contours tracing the pathways we travel; 

Contours. Jun 1, 2021

 

and yet, perhaps more importantly, holding steady in the present sometimes sends revelations through the worn boards of the barn, and

and like the grace of aging well, in the lichen-covered, decaying, no-longer functional, or then 

Certainty

from an always-open doorway.

And Beauty is but one of the names of God. The Presence manifests in Long-Suffering (cf Ann Bedford Ulanov, The Wizard’s Gate), 

in giving to the struggle for Justice, and, of course, through longing further in the almost unendurable, soul-stretching hands of Love.

“Jesus said: I am the light above everything.

I am everything.

Everything came forth from me,

and everything reached me.

Split wood, I am there.

Life up a rock, you will find me there.”

[Gospel of Thomas 77. Cited in:

Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, p. 45]

Winter Containment

While not a big fan of winter, this season perseveres in proving the value found in stripping down to the basics, the beauty revealed in moving toward the essence. Spiritual teachings stress the hard truth of suffering that is necessary in order to remove the superficial and to recover the True Self; for example, “die before you die,” “to thine own self be true,” and “He who knows himself (or his-self, his soul, his mind) knows his Lord.” The latter phrase is provocatively elaborated in an article by Dom Sylvester Houédard, “Notes on the More Than Human Saying: ‘Unless you know yourself you cannot know God.’” For example, he writes:

“The authentically Semitic act of gnosis (daath, yada ‘to know’) is always the fruitful experience of the one living God as Lord and so as obliging us; e.g. knowledge of God’s goodness to us imposing on us goodness to others. It is the certitude of faith fruitful in deeds; the knowledge that produces likeness and makes us like what we know, that deifies and makes us deiform.”

Houédard also links to the Creation and to “the essence prior to the creating word”:

“Whoever wishes to know the divine breath must first know the cosmos for he who knows himself knows his Lord who is manifest in him. (The ‘distress of the Divine Names at the non-manifestation of their effects’ prior to the creating word of command, is not only why the obligating command is for us to show the effects, but indicates that the divine and uncreated energies are themselves an eternal manifestation of the essence prior to the creating word: the former is developed by Eckhart, the latter by S. Gregory Palamas.)”

         Along these lines, Antonio Machado’s Llamó a mi corazón  has long been a favorite, memorized and often recited in Spanish and with Robert Bly’s English translation. The second end rhyme (viento/quiero) capsulizes the essential quest, the human/divine drama; and the entire poem radiates with images of the True Self. 

Llamó a mi corazón, un claro día,

con un perfume de jazmín, el viento.

 -A cambio de este aroma,

todo el aroma de tus rosas quiero.

Quiero translates as “want, wish, or love”; viento as “wind.” And as the ensuing lines tell, this wind speaks to the soul, calling to account for the tending of the garden: The human accountability for nurturing the divine spark poignantly noted with the longing for the aroma of the roses, the watering of the flowers, and heartbreak over the lost inheritance. As often shown in revelation, this wind carries the holy spirit, the breath of God, the communion to and from the Self.

     Like a compass needle, my directional finder points to “true self,” perhaps always, certainly as years advance. Far back in the beginning, only twenty-seven verses into the Good Book, we’re given our inheritance and destiny: “made in the image of God.” And yet, the currents of life confuse the signal system, or maybe the pathway back home takes threads of many colors, making the unique texture of each creation. 

In any case, the current clue that seems to be key to getting there comes in this teaching: “to know yourself is to know your Lord.” That magnetic pole star has been featured across religions and through varied major writers.

Readings resonate as soul guides, especially ones on gnosis/mysticism, suffering, and wholeness. As the season of winter draws inward, space has opened to engage volumes that previously seemed too demanding: C.G. Jung’s Aion, The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, Barbara Hannah’s Striving Toward Wholeness, and writings by St. John of the Cross, including Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross.

The swirl, stirring up muddy stuff from the bottom, among readings, dreams, and weather, seems to compose in the effort and evidence of holding together opposites. Barbara Hannah writes:

“In the empirical Self of psychology, light and shadow form a paradoxical unity, but in the orthodox Christian concept the archetype is split into two irreconcilable halves…

This inevitably involves us in a crucifixion of the ego between these two irreconcilable opposites. Of course, there can be no final extinction of the ego, for that would destroy all possibility of consciousness. The ego has to submit, however, to a continual crucifixion between the opposites, to those dreaded conflicts in duty…" (pp. 28-28, Lectures on Jung’s Aion).