Nothingness for Love

 

May 6

“As you proceed along the Way, you will attain a state of everydayness…
Why leave behind your proper place, which exists right in your own home, and wander aimlessly off to the dusty realms of other lands? If you make even a single misstep, you stray from the Great Way lying directly before you. . .
Form and substance are like dewdrops on the grass, destiny like the dart of lightning—vanishing in an instant, disappearing in a flash.” (p. 5, The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, trans. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe.)

The next section in The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo tells of Dogen’s “pilgrimage in search of the Dharma in Japan and China” (p. 7). 

     This text and other recent readings open wandering amid the paradox:  A) the lifelong search for the Way, and Z) right alongside is realizing “the Great Way lying directly before.”  Of course, the answer is Love, God is Love. Here, there, everywhere, there’s only the One Love. But what a great mystery this makes in living it out!

     From life’s journey supported by fabulous readings, perhaps there’s come an absorbing of  “nothingness.” Accepting the mystery of love conjoins with my inability to say “I love” because love transcends my naming-containing it as if I could give love. And yet by getting lost/found in submission to the I/not-I, a possibility seems given for love-coming-through. God loves. With this realization, the not-I opens for a flow, like a space through which the wind is moving. 

     Also around 3:32AM, I note the movement through life’s journey by “not” (again, the theme of recent recent readings and posts).  Early on, a detour (an about-face?) happened in this life journey when forced to admit I’m not a preacher (despite Mother’s wish) yet I’m given (a thanks-for-trying prize) a devotion to rhetoric and a (different?) career path. Then drawn by love’s hand into the mytho-poetic but soon enough comes hard knock of not : Not belonging there and not a poet. Yet provided a surprise-gift of a dedication to teaching-story.  In addition, Fate decrees: Not a city dweller nor university professor but this propels to woodland stewardship in our cosmic ecosystem. 

May 6

Another no/not was to a dream design combining quantum storytelling with natural horsemanship. Instead a blog writer reading theology and musing in the middle of the night.

Way. No way. Dewdrop journey from
Fundamentalism but
Disillusion with hellfire conversions into
Relativity. Multiplicity. Philosophy &
Analytical psychology to
“Follow your bliss,” Joseph Campbell; 
Mythopoetics with Robert Bly & Gioia to
Teaching Story— 
Poetry, especially Rumi—but not a poet so
Sweat lodge & “Day for Men” for twenty years…
Then to Sufi healing but not a healer. And
Confronted by the “Death of God”— 
Return to Jesus, theology of the cross.
From Existentialism to Oneness to
Emptiness & Nothingness. Thus
The Way. Is. no-way

May 7 dawning 

Only Now Time

May 4 3:38.39A

“… all the time systems imagined one after another in ever more encompassing spheres are all simultaneous” (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 218)

   On transmission 

The soft gaze essential 

For centered riding 

Where edges blur

Two…One…All.

Peripheries linger

Sprinkling rainbow drops 

Of time-taken-ambiguity 

No beginning No ending 

Like Love layers Now

And our, each unique,

Meandering movements

Winnowing these atoms 

Like alchemy 

Seeking making gold 

Or spinning time

As if to catch fairy dust

AKA Holy Spirit photo ops

Revelations going gone 

Moon glow. Sifting shards

For night refraction—

Making hay while stars shine 

Straw into gold, by God!

Circles of time—let’s pay

Attention and not lose

Out wasting time 

Sift memories 

Reflections Dream Learn 

Illumination. Heat seeking

The heart. Rainbow end 

In shifts across time’s 

Distillation 

May 4 6:10.37A

“… all the time systems imagined one after another in ever more encompassing spheres are all simultaneous. Consider the rotation of the earth about the sun within the solar system, the whole of which, in turn, moves about some other center. And then imagine an ever-widening circle of such patterns continuing on out into infinity. It makes sense to speak of the earth’s involvement in all these movements simultaneously at each moment of time, at each ‘now.’ 

…To think of kalpas—to which the name ‘Aion’ may also be fixed with its twofold meaning of time and world-time—as a great, manifold time system suggests a mythical representation of time. But the ‘meaning’ of this representation can be interpreted as a recognition of an infinite openness at the bottom of time… The true Form of time may be called its essential ambiguity.”(Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 218-9)

May 4 6:47.47A

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. 

Home Ground

 

     The recent full moon allows a glimpse of a special world, especially around three AM, offering a space-time which blends nicely with continued reading in Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness. Nishitani probes the possibilities of oneself, particularly if explored in relationship to the field of śūnyatā where one engages the void, the emptiness where our contemporary culture often brings the risk of a severe loss of meaningfulness. But this space or place also, perhaps, gives us a best chance of leaning into the other world. “Being” here/there may also be “identified with ‘true reality,’” (p. 294) and thus offers companionship to endure/engage the stress of existentialism.

“‘Not being self in being self,’ on the other hand, means that on the field of śūnyatā the selfness of the self has its being in the home-ground of all other things. On the field of śūnyatā, the center is everywhere. Each and every thing in its nonobjective and ‘middle’ selfness is an absolute center. To that extent, it is impossible for the self on field of śūnyatā to be self-centered like the ‘self’ seen as ego or subject…

As a being in unison with emptiness, then, the self is one absolute center, and, to that extent, all things are in the home-ground of the self. And so far as our self is at the home-ground of all things, that is, on the field of śūnyatā, all things are also at the home-ground of the self. Such a circuminsessional interpenetration, as we  said before, can only come about when all things, including ourselves, are in a nonobjective, ‘middle’ mode of being. As we also noted there, through this circuminsessional interpenetration, all things are gathered together, and as such render possible an order of being, a ‘world,’ and consequently enable the existence of things as well. . .

… This assembly is the force that makes the thing in question be, the force of the thing’s own ability to be. In that sense, we also said that when a thing is, the world worlds …  (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 158-9)

     Reading Nishitani, for me at least, is challenging; and this post dares not presume much more than to invite a person to read his work for oneself. Nishitani makes clear the necessity for the individual to enter alone: “Just as no one else can see for us or hear for us, so too none of our actions can be performed by proxy. All actions imply, as it were, an absolute immediacy” (p. 166). 

     While this journey into self has an inevitable aloneness, support does come from guides, from long ago and today. Rumi, in particular, resonates with the theme. For example, from his Discourses:

“At this time the world subsists through heedlessness. If there were no heedlessness, this world would cease to be. Desire for God, memory of the other world, ‘inebriation,’ and ecstasy are the architects of the other world. 

If everyone were attuned to that world, we would all abandon this world and go there. God, however, wants us to be here so that there may be two worlds. 

To that end He has stationed two headmen, heedlessness and heedfulness, so that both worlds will flourish.” (Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin, trans. W.M. Thackston, Jr., 1994, p. 114.)

An earlier translation of this passage by A.J. Arberry offers additional entry into the mystical edge:

“Now this world goes on by reason of heedlessness; if it were not for heedlessness, this world world not remain in being. Yearning for God, recollection of the world to come, intoxication, ecstasy—these are the architects of the other world. If all these should supervene, we would to a man depart to the other world and would not remain here. God most High desires that we should be here, so that there may be two worlds. So he has appointed two sheriffs, one heedlessness and the other heedfulness, that both houses may remain inhabited.” (Discourses of Rumi, 1961, p. 120)

     We are also fortunate to have contemporary companions on the way. David Whyte offers “Sweet Darkness” including an opportunity to listen to his marvelous voice as he presents the poem and adds his rich commentary. 

     The work of Jim Palmer also stands out in relation to this theme. For example, he elaborates the “language of existential health.”

Existential health is the set of capacities that allow a person to engage the conditions of existence directly, without distortion, avoidance, or dependency on external authority. It describes the difference between having beliefs, identities, and frameworks, and actually being able to live in a grounded and coherent way. It is often misunderstood as a philosophy or worldview. It is not what you think about life. It is how able you are to meet it. Where existential health is underdeveloped, people rely on external structures to stabilize what they cannot hold internally. Where it is developed, a person can remain oriented even in the absence of clear answers, fixed meaning, or guaranteed outcomes.

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).

Planting a Tree Oneself

 

Sunrise, April 8

Wonder how many have written

On planting a tree

Oneself sifting soil

Grain by grain, 

Brushing back leaves of the ancestors, 

Temporarily extracting stones—

They’ll hold the borders—

For sugar sap to rise years hence 

As memories too rise up—

Perhaps across to that other world 

For those who planted sweetness 

They’d never taste—

Here. Take this falling leaf in,

Your current, and read/write 

Revelation from your own digging/

Planting. 

One self cannot separate other, indeed cannot know the Unknowable but better leans toward, falls, fails into. Yearning tries to complete the true-self yet succeeds when holding open access to and from the Source. The self/other dynamic frustrates and celebrates being/becoming. 

“The incarnation of the divine in the human is the disappearance of transcendence in immanence… ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart…something that comes at every moment and at every moment has not yet arrived.’”    [p. 60, Mark C. Taylor, Nots; quoting Nietzche, The Will to Power, Kauffman, trans. p. 98-9]

Yearning, grief, desire, mystery—such forces carry the energy to move beyond the known, to transgress the limited self that’s too bounded by reasons, prohibitions, dogma and/or bones. Spirit goes mysterious ways out past right/wrong, either/or, heaven/hell…

Late afternoon, Apr 5