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.

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

The Treasure of Not-Knowing

Dawn, December 30, 2024

Wintering

 as finishing in-

  to the end of

    the year—

     Dreaming last night of a friend and mentor (particularly in dream interpretation) who passed over a number of years ago. In the dream, Tom was giving me a new assignment, not surprisingly one that relates to a well-trodden sojourn in the Unknown. Wondering into the trajectory of this theme, I look back over my record of books read this year and into blogs posted. Tracings show immediately in last January’s explorations related to the book of Job, evident also in an early blog post that references Samuel Terrien’s Job: Poet of Existence.

Terrien proceeds to take us through the entire text of Job, just enough commentary along with amplifications from scripture as well as contemporary literature, so that the Deus Absconditus, the ineffable, the mystery surpassing human grasp, eases somewhat through the mist, unsurprisingly by the grace of love.

     The theme continues in Kathleen Raine'sThe Inner Journey of the Poet : “There has been no greater loss to modern Western civilization than the loss of access to the sense of the numinous, the holy” (p. 142). The track then moves through a number of books by Stanley Hauerwas (e.g., Naming the Silences: God, Medicine, and the Problem of Suffering) and further into Rowan Williams (e.g., Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross), David Jasper (The Sacred Body), and Thomas Altizer Self-Embodiment of God).

     In these final days of December, I’m in the closing chapters of Jasper’s The Sacred Desert. Jasper explores many ways of expressing the mystery, none capable of capturing it, but just the approach, like a mirage, shimmers as nearness to God, the Beyond All.  As we yearn for the Unknowable, the Inarticulate, thought and words are destined to fail, and yet we may, by grace, enlighten by the incarnation. Here are a couple of passages from Sacred Desert (pp. 148, 149).

At the same time this journey is itself quies or ‘rest,’ an absolutely empty anatta that is nirvana. This is seen in the perfect horizontal line of the desert horizon, the purity of utter immanence, unbroken and unending: while the death, as the Kingdom realized, is found only in the stillness of one place—the Desert Fathers knew well the value of staying still in their cells. At the same time the stillness is still moving—always the journey. . . It is a perfect coincidence of opposites—the transcendent utterly immanent, and the immanent perfectly transcendent. Totality is then present as absolute nothingness, even beyond the possibility of self-negation. …

In these moments the task of the theologian is radically transfigured, for it has abandoned the language of theology as it has always been understood in Christianity, and finds itself in the deep experience of the poet, and beyond that in a vision in which, we might say the invisible proceeds up into the visible; a necessary death which transforms consciousness in the loss of identity and self. In Altizer’s words: ‘True darkness can then be known as the fruit of compassion, and the actual death of an individual center of consciousness can then be celebrated as the self-annihilating presence of the universal Christ. Now the way ‘up’ will be the way ‘down’… (Jasper quotes Altizer from The Descent Into Hell, p. 241).

 

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).

This Snowflake Spring

Gift of Spring: This capacity to trust in life's renewal. Spring brings reassurance, perhaps most powerfully, through the defining integrity of the ephemeral. Like when our being thrills with the beauty shown in the litter of spent blooms, when we realize the rebirth that’s carried in pollen dust, carried home in spring’s spiraling winds, the spring-cast seeding soon enough to be washed into our mother earth. Throughout this, this full cycle, we all are held—if we but believe it—by our eternal home, the One.

This unique transcendent snowflake ever kissing, dissolving, transforming on the porous covering of heartbeat.

The “eternal-now” flows in this and every manifestation. It’s especially poignant in light’s fleeting snapshot: this Beauty. Each instance names the Name, variously called by all incarnations of  Presence: Nature, Peace, Joy…the one Love, of Whom we all belong.

It’s in this, in each instance, in the unique transcendent spring-snowflake ever kissing, dissolving, transforming on the porous covering of heartbeat.

The ever-changing appearance of form, the almost illusion of any separation from the Creator, in the resonant “Be!” the Real that’s present in every particle of breath, in every sign throughout creation. This.

This: The curious inhabiting of transient place, limitless space, ambivalent time, inarticulable knowing, the indwelling simultaneously moving here/there.

Gleaning from recent readings: 

In his chapter on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, James Olney hints at opportunity in the potentially disconcerting ephemerality of spring with its push toward the Source that gives the ultimate order:

“…experience per se, at least so far as humans are concerned, until given formal ordering and completion in the art work, until given the satisfaction of a new life in structural design, is void of meaning; and that design or pattern is the thing which, relating part to part and part to whole and implying an end in the beginning and middle, demonstrates significance in otherwise meaningless experience. But pattern is not discovered by us—mere details and parts, after all, of the whole design of life—-within experience. Instead we, insofar as we are artists, create the pattern and impose it on experience. Art formalizes experience; form implies an end and an intention, and so a meaning…” (Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, p. 270) 

Richard Rohr in Hope Against Darkness offers a text of Spring, pointing to its wild exuberance:

“The word enthusiasm (en-theos in Greek) means ‘filled with God.’ I’m not encouraging mindless enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm that is based on intelligence and wisdom and that great gift of hope. Hope is a participation in the very life of God. This hope has nothing to do with circumstances or things going well. It can even thrive in adversity and trial. True faith, which always includes hope and love—is a predisposition to yes.” p. 52

 

From the concluding lines of al-Baqarah, a foundation for unity, for hope even in the disintegrating swirl of diverse blossoms that appear so fragile, that seem to be fading, losing the effervescence: 

“The Messenger believes in what was sent down to him from his Lord, as do the believers. Each believes in God, His angels, His Books, and His messengers. ‘We make no distinction between any of His messengers.’ And they say, ‘We hear and obey. Thy forgiveness, our Lord! And unto Thee is the journey’s end.’ God tasks no soul beyond its capacity. . .” (The Study Qur’an, Trans. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E.B. Lumbard, and Mohammed Rustom;  2: 235-236; pp. 124-125) 

These Frosty Woods

Jan 1, 2018 viewed from upstairs study

          For friends who notice the photos I post on Facebook, my love affair with deciduous woodlands will come as no surprise. The view from the upstairs desk mesmerizes me, even taking me from the mystical readings; maybe it’s not a separation but rather a union! These two must be of one spirit. The best pages breathe their origin, the inner fiber of tree; both transmit inspiration.

          My romance with books often gets teased by the spell of Maria Popova’s reviews. About a month ago, she featured David George Haskell’s recent book, Song of Trees. The tease enticed me to chose his earlier book: “The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking, 2012, https://dghaskell.com/theforestunseen/), winner of the National Academy of Sciences’ Best Book Award for 2013, finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award, winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, runner-up for the 2013 PEN E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award…” 

         The book has 43 short chapters, each based on his observations and musings focused around a spot “of old-growth forest in the hills of Tennessee.” Every few days through the year, Haskell watches this forest mandela that is about a meter across. He connects this to Tibetan mandelas (p. xii). My intention is to read his book throughout 2018 and to ask this reading to inspire my walking in our woods. 

         Haskell’s first entry comes on January 1. He features lichens whose “vibrancy contrasts with the winter-weighed lethargy of the rest of the forest.” He continues:

Supple physiology allows lichens to shine with life when most other creatures are locked down for the winter. Lichens master the cold months through the paradox of surrender.” (p. 2) 

          Our woods, some 600 miles northeast from Haskell’s forest, look pretty locked down on January 1, 2018, still frosted with snow, temperatures below freezing all week, dropping to near zero at night. It is cold. Still I look for lichen, trying not to lock down for winter.

lichen on rocks ?

lichen on tree trunk ?

close up of lichen (?) on rocks 

          Haskell enriches his observation about the lichens’ paradox with an anecdote about a fourth century BCE Chinese Taoist philosopher and then elaborates the biological explanation. He comments on their means of survival:

By stripping off the bonds of individuality the lichens have produced a world conquering union. . . the lichen partners have ceased to be individuals, surrendering the possibility of drawing a line between oppressor and oppressed. (p. 3)

hmm...what's this?

Interesting...but sacrifice of individuality? Yikes--but that does sound rather like the Sufi mystics on surrendering the self. 

         While we might celebrate the “winning partnerships,” Haskell keeps us from imagining only unseen rosy hints when he also notes the presence of piracy and exploitation. And yet: “Even piracy is powered by collaboration” (p. 6). 

When you look out (and in), can you see these fascinating happenings?

Next up: “January 17—Kepler’s Gift” pages 8-11. The woods keep calling.

Lessons from the Back Porch

1. It’ll keep. 

2. Follow the path of love (prioritize it above the instruction book, the well-planned intention, the push to look good for others, the way it used to be or the way I used to be…). 

3. The deep beauty values the heritage grain but leans into the hard scars.

These items map backwards, circle around with persistence until a point’s taken, and defy linear logic. So the first one listed (“It’ll keep”) wasn’t earliest but got punctuated later on and more clearly as raindrops spattered bringing about a work stoppage.  

The rain was much appreciated (especially given the recent dry spell) and eased the surrender of ego-drive that wanted to finish the job “on time.” My readiness to let the project take longer than it “should” was also prompted by muscles giving out much sooner than they used to. In younger days, I probably would have driven myself to meet the high standards of quicker completion. My aging body helps me see the foolishness of such standards. A subtext on this lesson is to trust the process. I’m more willing to look closely, slow down, and spend time until qualities such as beauty and truth can be revealed. 

That seques to number 2: “Follow the path of love…” I’m realizing that qualities (love, truth, beauty…) inhere in process, even in grunt-work. This back-porch project tries to prove to me that beauty can be better known even in the apparently inartistic labor of stripping the old sealer from the wood planks. The lesson-giver forces me down on my knees scrubbing away with the recommended stiff-bristle brush, inch by inch. Since I’m a bit stubborn in accepting the lesson, some spots still have not been cleaned even after two or three tries necessitating a return trip to the store for another gallon of stripper. 

In addition to developing sight for the beauty in wood texture that I hadn’t seen before, I’m coming to know better a truth that’s more complex than the understanding that comes from reading: the knowledge of the body. This extended physical labor also pushes me to increase the value I give to embodied knowing. It doesn’t have the style of rational discourse; the voice of the body takes dedicated effort to discern.

I won't discard intellect nor the vital guidance from inspired text. Important words have been teaching me about the masks or veils that have to be removed in the spiritual quest. They’ve explained how humans are at high risk for covering over our true nature, the divine inheritance. The breadth of testimony to this permeates across religions; in The Play of Masks, Frithjof Schuon explores it in Krishna, Shakespeare, Diogenes, Jesus, Omar Khayyam, Eckhart, Goethe, David, and others. 

The masking or veiling can also be very subtle. Alan Godlas elaborates on Rūzbihān al-Baqlī’s teaching that hypocrisy, doubt, and egocentric thoughts must be surrendered to gnosis and love or we risk the “debasement of being veiled.”

My head understands this principle of removing masks/veils, and my intellectual knowing connects with life experiences that have stripped away pernicious illusion. And yet, the knowing in/of my body still needs attending. It’s my body that has to submit, to provide the more powerful perseverance that is required in stripping off highly-resistant veils, like ones that presume to define my identity but in truth carry an ungodly arrogance 

This mind/body dynamic might work like the “true unity” of rider and horse. Of course, I know the mind/body/spirit dogma, but that doesn’t mean that the knowing of/in my body is realized and respected. Probably my body-knowing has been so dominated and devalued by head-knowing that we have to absorb (or remove a mask/veil) related to the truth trying to come through. In this back-porch project, it’s taking repeated cleaning of the wood, involving sweating out at least three caps, shirts, etc. Like the lovely rainfall that halted the “get-it-done” mentality, the sweatouts were accompanied by the revelation of gorgeous textures hidden under the scum of sealers.

This truth coming in seems to be saying that I need to realize each everyday-project, the very business of living, can be and even must become a gateway to the other world. The work and play of each moment is given from God. Remember Rabia’s “Slicing Potatoes”…”putting my hands on a pot, on a broom” (in Daniel Ladinsky’s Love Poems from God, p. 10; performed on the Wilcox/Pettit CD Out Beyond Ideas). My mind may get the idea of this doorway so that I’m partially prepared for a life experience, but my body also has to be readied to join up, to surrender, sometimes to suffer the way.

When I took on this back porch project, the expert presented it in three simple steps: 1. strip the surface using product A, 2. apply the cleaner with product B, (allow time to dry), and 3. roll on the new topping. Voila. Ought to be a 2-3 day deal. I’ve lost count but this must be at least day five and I’m still in step one. 

But you know what. That’s ok with me because the lessons from the back porch are much more significant than getting it done. I’ve become leery of plans and can blame my suspicion on Mr. Burns: “The best laid schemes of Mice an’ Men gang aft agley.” Through the guidance related to veils and by attending to the revelations of labor, by searching for good work instead of results, I’m open to a transformed translation of the “cruel coulter” that strips the layer. I wonder at what kind of plough the divine hand has to employ in order to remove the facade that prevents us from seeing past skin color, income level, vocabulary… How many racist leaders are needed to strip away ethnic pride? What suffering has to happen before the eye of the heart can be opened?

Knowing Education

Henry Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Can there be any better occupation for the gift of retirement than contemplation in such as this book! 

“the form in which each of us receives the master’s thought conforms to his ‘inner heaven’; that is the very principle of the theophanism of Ibn ‘Arabi, who for that reason can only guide each  man individually to what he alone is capable of seeing, and not bring him to any collective pre-established dogma. The truth of the individual’s vision is proportional to his fidelity to himself, his fidelity to the one man who is able to bear witness to his individual vision and do homage to the guide who leads him to it. This is no nominalism or realism, but a decisive contemplation, far anterior to any such philosophical choice, a distant point to which we must also return if we wish to account for the deformations and rejections which the spirituality of Ibn ‘Arabi has so often incurred, sometimes for diametrically opposed reasons, but always  because men have sidestepped the self-knowledge and self-judgment that this spirituality implies.” pp. 75-76

     Imagine an education, a lifework, aimed at making “philosophy and mystical experience inseparable: a philosophy that does not culminate in a metaphysics of ecstasy is vain speculation; a mystical experience that is not grounded on a sound philosophical education is in danger of degenerating and going astray” (p. 20).

     True learning manifests in “symbolic exegesis which ‘carries back’ the literal statements to that which they symbolize and of which they are the ‘cipher,’—taught, in other words, how to interpret the external rites in their mystic, esoteric sense” (p. 50).

     Notions such as these push me back to the horse where spirit and matter merge, in our better moments almost indistinguishable, a moving meditation, always short of the perfections of harmony-beauty-unity, and yet animated and inspired in the flow.


     Postscript. It's interesting that when I opened Facebook to share this post, I was reminded: