Lotus and Lily Field Notes

Listening right now to “Illinoise” by Sufjan Stephens.  There is something special about this guy.  I just heard “Casimir Pulaski Day” and the sweetness of the banjo and quirky delightful horn arrangements and lines like “and He takes and He takes and He takes” in reference to a friend with bone cancer–not quite pissed off at the Almighty, but not covering over the difficulties either.  I find Stephens’ story fascinating: his parents gave him his unusual name because they were followers of Subud at the time; he has since converted to Christianity.  I know little about the details of his faith, but what comes across in his music is a warm open sensitivity to the quirky possibilities of life that makes the oft-maligned old faith look pretty good.
Listen to this music makes me glad to be alive, open to creative possibilities for myself, and less stuck on issues of names and forms, allegiances or resistances for or against any particular tribes.  What a nice gift!

One other personal note: a huge relief today, as a workplace complication I had been dreading was suddenly smoothed out very nicely.  I am hoping, hoping, this will free up some emotional energy and enable me to focus more of my time and attention on this blog and the creative projects of various kinds that inspire me to write it.  What shapes those will take–not known yet.  Electronic fantasies on chant, or barbarian kings and their Psalms, or the mystical garden of the Song of Songs, or more adorations of the divine mother, or some combination thereof.  Although you wouldn’t think so from the title, Sufjan Stephens’ “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us” fuels all these musings and helps generate a beautiful sphere of hope.

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It’s getting clearer and clearer to me that in terms of worldview and philosophy Buddhism really can’t be beat.  But I was born and will remain a “cultural Christian,” from my evangelical roots (not as intense as Jesus Camp, but not completely unrecognizable either) to  my current immersion in the contemplative liturgical scripture-infused world of chant.”Cultural Christian” is a riff on the “cultural Judaism” I learned about from hanging out with Hebrew students at UC Berkeley as an undergrad.  (See some manifestations here and here.)  I know that Christian identity is different from Jewish identity, but I feel some kinship with these good souls who recognize the incredible richness of their tradition, don’t want to abandon it entirely, but don’t subscribe to its philosophical or religious tenets.

There is one lone Wikipedia entry, a brief stub, on Cultural Christianity, which succinctly states, “The term usually is used pejoratively by other Christians to describe these individuals, whose spiritual understanding or practice they see as underdeveloped or superficial.”  Pooh.  Just when I thought I had a good thing going .  Yet another reputation to salvage?  (Peter Brown’s The Rise of Western Christendom makes clear that name-calling has been an excellent Christian strategy for millenia: from “pagan” (the equivalent of “hick” or “rube”) to “Arian” to “Nestorian”, it’s a classic technique.  OK, not just Christians enage in this, but we’ve been pretty good at it.
Still, the concept fits me pretty well: it describes my reliable passion for certain “classical Christian “artefacts and my very tenuous and unstable relationship its core concepts (Buddhism just says it better for me, almost all the time).  Something to keep playing with in the endless identity game.
As always when we have a really good Peregrine rehearsal: I’m in love with Gregorian chant all over again.  This evening it came at a particularly rich time, after several nights hearing the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche expound on Buddhist wisdom (and somehow I snuck in there a viewing of Jesus Camp, which stirs up a whole host of its own personal issues about which more later, if all the conceptual planes circling my airport ever manage to land).

But into this maelstrom comes that inimitable, unforgettable, aesthetic spiritual transformative musical experience of singing chant really well with people I’ve been singing with for years.  It just all opened up and was sublimely perfect.  At moments like this, I really don’t care what identity I have.  It just feels great to be alive.

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A few days ago the hard drive on my relatively ancient laptop (4 years: how technology underscores the notion of impermance!) started making disturbing buzzing noises; the sounds have become so alarming that I am putting the poor machine out of commission.  On a related note of identity-challenging experiences, I just returned from 4 days with my parents in California.  No one, but no one, is better equipped to totally dismantle the frameworks of one’s sense of adult competence than one’s parents, and mine play their role with great skill, for which a grateful gassho and metta-bow.

Anyway, these two events have put a damper on my blogging activity for the last week or so.  Hope to get back to it soon.

I am musing on the role of evangelism in religions; both Christianity and Buddhism has healthy components of this activity.  Where does one draw the line between a healthy commpassionate desire that all beings obtain liberation, and an arrogant presumption as to what that liberation ought to consist of?

Of course, these thoughts are completely random and have absolutely nothing to do with certain recent experiences in certain Sunday morning evangelical church services attended in fulfillment of certain filial obligations…

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My friend John Malcomson commented on my one year anniversary post:

I just thought of a great event title:
Christian-Buddhist? Buddhist-Christian?
A Spirituality Beyond Labels

What do you think?I love the “beyond labels” idea (especially juicy in this marketing-saturated age!).

But it makes me wonder: then why use “Buddhist” or “Christian” at all? I see a lot of advantages in being “two, not one”, but maybe we need to get to “not one, not two”.

In any case, the topic seems like as good a reason as any to get an event together….

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Here are my wife Victoria’s notes on the first of a series of Lotus & Lily meetings on how we organize ourselves for the future.  Politics *is* spirituality, and the organizational aspects of religious life are fascinating and revealing: the perfect dance of incarnation as finite human beings attempt to embody their visions in the context of social interaction and group dynamics.

There are lots of interesting nuggets in the following; I present it here for whatever spiritual merit it might offer, but also to provide an insight into the ways one group is exploring what it means to be together.  Pretty wonderful, actually.

(Parenthetically, I am just back from a good week working in Ohio.  It was very, VERY COLD (-1) and snowy; I am deeply grateful for 45 and rainy in Seattle.  It feels just like Hawaii.  But my workgroup feels more and more like a sangha–precious precious to see new people joining us and to feel the energy start to coalesce.  Not clear how stable it will be, but I welcome the pleasant sensation of growth and health there as well.  Is it something in the stars?)

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Yesterday marked the beginning of our self-examination and rethinking of Lotus and Lily as a group.  This discussion is happening through a series of Lotus and Lily Steering Council meetings scheduled for Spring 2007.  We started the series by dedicating this first session to looking at the big picture–the purpose and vision of Lotus and Lily.

I volunteered to take notes on the conversation, which you’ll  find below

May the compassionate beings of Buddhism and Christianity smile upon and bless our efforts,
Victoria

We started promptly at 6pm and by staying on schedule we had enough time for all our regular activities, besides a planning meeting from 7:15-8pm.

We started the discussion by reviewing the written statement that appears on the opening page of the Lotus and Lily Yahoo Group website.  Then we each took turns commenting on the statement and describing our hoped for vision of Lotus and Lily.

The idea of Lotus and Lily being a group that equally embraces Buddhism and Christianity was affirmed.  A number of people—but not everyone–even went further and said that they would like to have a greater integration of Christian and Buddhist practices, rather than keeping them equal but separate. 

There were calls for us to use time at our gatherings more efficiently, energetically, and creatively.  If we’re not always having Steering Council meetings at future gatherings, then there could be some time available for additional activities.

Clearly, members want Lotus and Lily to be a place for their own Buddhist-Christian spiritual practice, and for support of that within a group setting.  But mention was also made of several ways in which the group can be a resource and offer service to the larger community.  We can contribute to peacemaking and societal healing by simply letting the larger community know of our existence.   With so much of the contemporary world being affected by inter-religious polarization and conflict, we can raise society’s consciousness about greater possibilities for interfaith harmony.  By offering a welcoming and open environment we can help make Buddhist practices (especially meditation) more accessible to the Christian community.  Also, we can contribute to the healing of American ex-Christians who have become Buddhists.

Several people said they’d like to see the group’s prayer practice become more intentional and focused in terms of growing the varieties of prayer practices, and clearly invoking sacred Christian and Buddhist presences during the course of prayer.

Three areas of general agreement clearly emerged from the discussion:

1)      We’d like our mission statement to more clearly state that people can elect to be members of Lotus and Lily and still maintain membership(s) in other churches and places of worship.  We invite people to creatively explore how to fit Lotus and Lily into their lives.  Participation in Lotus and Lily is not necessarily to the exclusion of other religious/spiritual affiliations.  It’s up to the individual.

2)      We’d like to grow the group and to have more members.  This would bring more energy to the group, allow the work of running it to be more fairly distributed, and to keep it afloat when some members are sick, traveling, or are otherwise unable to attend or participate.

3)      The group does not currently miss or feel the need for a spiritual teacher or leader.  We are happy to define Lotus and Lily on our own terms, rather than having the shape of the group be defined by, and be a function of, the character of a specific teacher.

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It has been nearly three weeks since I wrote last.  Attributable to many things: dark, cold and blustery winter weather, the holidays, a whole lot of Gregorian chant gigs around Christmas, working on a new Peregrine CD, fascinating-yet-demanding work getting ready for our St. Michael retreat, tons of place-of-work stuff going on.

Three weeks.  It feels like I nearly lost the thread of writing a blog, but the impulse seems to be gradually resuscitating itself.
I have been thinking more than I usually do about New Year’s resolutions.  Here’s what I’ve got:

1. Eat more fruit.  Research shows that people who eat more fruit are less likely to experience vision issues in later life, and since I already have vision problems and am steadily creeping toward later life (hmm, how unusual is that?), it seems like a good idea.
2. Meditate more.  I am aiming for an hour a day, which will entail a serious lifestyle shift if I can keep it up.  After five days I’m doing OK, and it already feels quite different to inhabit my skin.  This commitment is part of a larger sense of gradual shift toward a more consciously Buddhist way of living.  All right, fine, I give up.
3. Blog better.  I think I’ll be writing less often but hopefully in a more useful way.  After nearly a year of doing this I think I have the hang of the basic discipline, but I still puzzle over the right way to use the medium.  “Right way” in the “right livelihood” sense: skillful means, beneficial to sentient beings, not reinforcing but liberating the bonds of ego.  That in itself is something of a contradiction, since it seems like blogging is an inherently narcissistic form of expression.  So it’s an interesting challenge.

It’s not that there aren’t other virtues beside these three that are worth pursuing, but I figure a Holy Trinity is easy to remember.  Fruit.  Meditate.  Blog.  So any mountain climbing or sky diving or other inner or outer pyrotechnics
will either happen spontaneously without effort or intention, or will take place in some other year, or will continue to exist in someone else’s life path.

It’s funny how as I get older the scope of my life seems to grow narrow and yet become more rich and satisfying.  I think I’m becoming a somewhat more boring but a substantially happier person.  OK!

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Wulfila keeps serving up good stuff, this time a reflection on multiple religious identification as practiced in Latin America.  His reflection is based on Timothy Knab’s War of the Witches, which has to do with contemporary practitioners of Aztec religion in Mexico, right alongside the practice of Catholicism.  Wulfila comments:

…people [in Mexico] operate as orthodox Roman Catholics in one context, and in other contexts rely upon traditional beliefs and customs, but they don’t generally attempt to create a systematic theology that will reconcile both systems of beliefs or decide which one is “really” the true picture of the world – they just move from one language game to another in response to cues in their environment that tell them one heuristic will be more useful than another in diagnosing and curing their particular problem at the time. This may be somewhat unsatisfactory to someone of a more philosophical bent, but it seems like a very effective strategy for moving between radically different conceptual paradigms with minimal cognitive dissonance. In which case, the Midwestern Christian shaman would simply go back and forth between paradigms as needed, making no effort whatsoever to reconcile them.

Buddhism and Christianity certainly are radically different conceptual paradigms.  Perhaps the effort to harmonize them (on which I spend rather too much time) is less useful then cultivating the fluidity and openness to migrate between paradigms with “minimal cognitive dissonance.”
I met a passionate researcher of the occult last year, Alfred Vitale (I have lost track of you, Alfred!  but you can read one of his papers here).   His notion is that occultism is the creative absorption and synthesis and re-expression of  practices, beliefs, rituals, wisdom, from many disparate  spiritual traditions.   This idea stays with me as an evocative vision of the creative possibilities of  spiritual experience (though the term “occult” sets off lots of “kingdom of the cults” alarm bells in my limbic brain).

Those of us out here on the edges, creatively synthesizing, whether we are “occultists” or “dual practitioners” or just playing with cognitive dissonance–maybe we need to get together.  At that dinner I wrote of last night, one of my colleagues and I were scheming the creation of a “Checkered Career Club: the Association for People Who Don’t Belong to Any Associations”.  This was in the context of sitting at table with a lot of library administrators and professors, and noticing that we didn’t have any such tidy professional identity on which we could hang our hat.  But the notion is equally powerful, equally compelling, in the realm of religious identity.  Occultists of the world, unite!

I’ll keep throwing out these manifesto-like phrases: perhaps someday they will coalesce into something substantial.

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Maybe this isn’t quite enough reason to start a “famous Buddhist-Christians” list, but this little news tidbit from the New York Post is quite wonderful:

TIGER SAVES AWKWARD MOMENT

TIGER Woods got ambushed by an evangelical guest of Nike on Oct. 9 during an exclusive golf outing for top business and entertainment executives. According to our spy, 30 people – including Clear Channel Radio CEO Mark Mays, Louis Vuitton North America chief Daniel LaLonde and Details magazine editor Daniel Peres – gathered at the Trump golf course in Los Angeles for the 2006 “Tee It Up With Tiger Woods” event, which included a private golf session and lunch with the living legend. “During the lunch, there was a Q&A session with Woods, and most people were asking about their swings or golf questions,” our source said. “Until some guy – a guest of Nike – stood up and said, ‘Have you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior? And if not, prayfully, would you?’ ” The source added, “You could have heard a pin drop. People were mortified. But Tiger was as unflappable as he is on the golf course and responded, ‘My father was a Christian – of course Christianity was part of my life – but my mother is Asian and Buddhism was also part of my childhood, so I practice both faiths respectfully.’ “

Thanks John Malcomson, probably the most stalwart Buddhist-Christian I know, for passing this along.

There must be an awful lot of people who grew up in Buddhist-Christian families just like Tiger’s. I know nothing about that phenomenon, but would sure like to learn. I’m sure the experience is radically different for them than for those of us who grew up with one and sought the other as a sort of antidote or healing balm.

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Thanks to my sister Margaret Marcuson for passing along this article by Sallie Tisdale in Tricycle magazine about a Zen Buddhist-evangelical Christian dialogue. Given the splintered American religious landscape, the courage and willingness to acknowledge differences embodied by both parties in this relationship is truly remarkable and inspiring.

One of the challenges of following a dual-practice path is the difficulty in participating in the various forms of religion-to-religion dialogue. Most of these events have “a this, a that, and a t’other”–usually in the persons of the local rabbi/imam/minister/priest. The discussion typically doesn’t have a lot of room for “a-this-and-a-that-with-a-dollop-of-t’other” types. One gets farther in the interfaith world by making a dramatic, and somewhat glamorous, declaration for another tradition than by striving for a less-than-tidy integration.
In the context of the article above, it’s probably less challenging to the evangelical frame of reference to be confronted with the robes and shaved head of a Zen Buddhist practitioner (even a Western one) than to be confronted with a befuddled son like myself who doesn’t quite leave and doesn’t quite stay and acts more like a coyote than anything identifiable as friend or foe.

Perhaps I use my presumptions as an excuse to avoid re-engaging with the evangelical community I came from. Or it may be that an inability to participate in faith-to-faith dialogue is just one of the consequences of a life lived in-between.

Interesting work, trying to position the place of the dual-practitioner in the religious landscape. Since our identity seems to be about resting in uncertainty, it’s not surprising that this place is difficult to locate.

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Last weekend I attended a truly marvellous event: the dedication of a new Japanese Buddhist temple in Fall City, near Issaquah, WA.  Here’s the web site (though it’s all in Japanese).

There were four or five priests and eight or ten monks from Japan in attendance, and they did the service up right, with lots of yummy shomyo chant, ringing of bells, processions, and some excellent shakuhachi music.  Definitely a hometown crowd, though: everything was in Japanese and it was clearly an event for the Japanese community.  I saw a couple of marginal-looking Caucasion husbands, a photographer, and the wonderful flutist Gary Stroutos, who provided a lovely but too-brief bit of Native American flute during the recessional.

So naturally I felt like a fish out of water, and was led to muse once again on the powerful role religion has as a confirmer and upholder of cultural identity.  I know underneath all that is the most beautiful wise teaching about interdependence and liberation–my encounter with Shingon Buddhism a little more than a year ago was what finally led me to enter into formal Buddhist study, Tibetan-style.  But there is, on the surface, a very powerful, maybe necessary, but to my mind problematic function of creating a comfortable zone of conventional experience to hang out in, to avoid the questions, and to validate all the assumptions that bind us in illusion in the first place.

Man, have I been on this rant for a long time: I would have said just about exactly the same thing about my home church when I was 17.  Thirty years ago.

I love religion: it is so beautiful and is the gateway to so many amazing possibilities.  And I hate religion: it is the land of the safe and the home of the smug.

And yet: there truly is no way out.  Most of the forms I truly care about are tied up in it: the chant, the symbolism, the philosophy, the rhythms of ritual.  And when I step away from those forms, I get even *more* crazy, even *more* hungry, even *more* restless.

It’s neurosis like this that leads one to be a Buddhist-Christian: not completely in anything, not completely out either.  Standing on the threshhold–camping out there even–and knowing that’s OK and not OK at the same time.

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This weekend I participated, if only rather briefly (a couple of hours) at a practice intensive at Nalanda West.  As I play around with next steps after the completion of my Buddhism class there, this seemed like a useful thing to do.  I was pleased to be able to sit still in a rather unstructured environment for two hours, without freaking out, without making up too many unseemly stories about cults or brainwashing or selling out.

Years ago as an undergrad, feeling upset by approaching graduation, I was wisely counselled by a friend that I was experiencing that moment of dis-ease when one comes out of a narrow ravine and encounters a wide-open plain.  Completing my Monday night class has some of that feel to it.  There’s a where-do-I-go-from here quality to this moment, both delicious and terrifying.  It makes me feel young–not necessarily in a good way.
Maybe as part of this feeling of adolescent uncertainty, I’m reading a terrific juvenile novel for the first time: A Wizard of Earthsea (in part because it’s mentioned in the book The Dharma of Dragons and Demons as a prime exemplar of Buddhist philosophy in fantasy fiction).  I was struck by this passage:

“And so the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, even the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do….”

That has a ring of truth about it, and there’s the paradox of my experience: I turn it one way, and all seems inevitable and destined and obvious–there really is no other choice–and I turn it the other way and I feel foolish and helpless and utterly confused, having nothing but choice and consequently paralyzed.

So I tell myself this story: I am part Buddhist and part Christian, but maybe mostly Coyote, opportunistically looking for the way to wiggle through, out of the current scrape and into the next one.  And yet even that picaresque adventure has, it may be, an inevitability about it.

I take comfort in that identity, one that bundles up the chaos of my journey into coherence.  Though Buddhism makes it clear that these bundles of identity are really the whole problem, at times like these, with Fall falling fast and me feeling up to my eyebrows in complications and uncertainty, a perceptible sense of barely hanging on–at times like these a good myth is warm comfort.

As I understand it, the Buddhist teaching of the two truths means that one can climb the  mountain of relative understanding in order to get a glimpse of the valley of ultimate unconditioned nonduality.  So I embrace my coyote, embrace my earthsea wizard, just for now, just to get over that next hill there.  Where, I promise you, I will let it all go.

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Slowly I find myself pivoting around to a new orientation.  I don’t really trust the little micro-shifts in my psyche: I suspect myself of histrionics (if you know me, you might know why).  But I think I have gained enough patience–or maybe it’s just the natural slowing-down that comes with growing older–to be able to pause in a somewhat objective manner and see that things really are shifting.

Of course the stories I make up from time to time to describe these movements maybe completely bogus.  But by noting them down I find myself able to examine what’s happening with a little greater clarity.  Labels and identities are the trickiest of business.  But it may be that in the exploration of labels some deeper truth can be shaken loose and allowed to percolate in consciousness.
So this shift I’m noticing is related to the post I made a couple of days ago about my dawning recognition that Buddhism is decisive for me.  Dawning for some months, or maybe years now, and confirmed quite profoundly by the last 15 months of study and meditation at Nalanda West.  That doesn’t have to imply anything, I suppose.  But as with marriage or buying a house or any other decisive event, there can be a value in marking the occasion somehow.  I’m thinking about doing that.

Five years ago I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, a major milestone in my subterranean journey of discovery.  Something I needed to do to put some old demons to rest, to open up a new chapter.  And now I am feeling this gleam of possibility that a next step may be for me to “take refuge”, the Buddhist equivalent of baptism, or at least a somewhat parallel statement of identity.

And as I lay out the cards of my life,shuffling and rearranging them the way I used to shuffle and rearrange a very cool set of vintage football cards my cousin once gave me, this notion of adopting in some formal way a Buddhist identity may have some sort of ripple effect across the rest of my spiritual ecosystem.   It’s fascinating and energizing to think about that!
Though I am loath to employ this blog as a confessional, this shift seems momentous enough, enough a part of the ongoing reflection on the connections between Buddhism and Christianity in my thought and practice that is the focus and purpose of my writing here, that it seems necessary to reveal this little piece of personal insight.
And of course, whatever terms get applied to this or that particular bit of experience, it all comes down to this: I journey a little further, and watch and listen, and then take a few more steps.  There’s nothing for it but to watch and wait and proceed with eyes open.

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I am so impressionable.  When I’m doing a lot of Buddhist meditation or study, my heart just opens to the dharma ad it seems just perfect.  When I chant Psalms more regularly than usual (as I have the last couple of evenings, getting comfortable with the material for this weekend’s retreat), then the majesty and intimacy of David’s loving, terrifying, ever-present God seems all the more real and compelling.

It’s probably a good thing that my normal daily practice includes a modest amount from both traditions, thereby keeping me off the Glamour Wagon and in a sensible and realistic state of mild confusion.  I have been lectured at by many people from both sides of the Buddhist-Christian fence (and from other back yards as well) about the folly of dilletantism, yak’s heads with cow’s bodies (the Dalai Lama’s bon mot), and other skeptical views of this perpetual in-between-ness I find myself drawn toward.

But really, I’ve become just convinced, and no less so by virtue of the last year’s worth of Buddhist studies, that being in this unsettled, uneasy, trans-religious space is entirely healthy and positive.  Well, at least I’m convinced today.  Because part of the point is simply not to be convinced at all, to reside in a place of non-conviction, so that the currents and whirlwinds and eddies of experience can say what they have to say–and I’m not drowning them out by my preconceived notions of what kind of breeze is blowing.

So Buddhist-Christian-hood is, in the end, merely a metaphor, a convention by which I can trick myself into staying unbalanced, even when my outer self and some districts of my inner self are desperate for identity.  I am, in fact, not a Buddhist-Christian at all.  I would say I am nothing at all, but that is simply too definitive.  Even “I am” is way too precise, poses too many problems, eliminates too many possibilities.

Into such a consciousness, the chanting of Psalms that push so forcefully on the notion of a real God out there, and a real I to relate to It, is sort of exhilarating, in a strange way.  Something like wrapping up a glob of chutney in a wad of bubble gum and chomping away.  Certainly very stimulating.  Maybe a little crazy.  But quite possibly a very useful method for shaking up the conceptual status quo that I in my animal self and my personal psychology am so addicted to.

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A few days ago Victoria and I watched Witness to Hope, a documentary about the life of John Paul II.  I have mixed feelings about the pope (I will probably always have mixed feelings about all popes, whoever they happen to be) but it was an intriguing presentation, particularly regarding his early life as a devout Catholic growing up in super-devout, religiously focused and homogenous Poland.  As often happens when I get a glimpse into a religiously focused community, whether it is Buddhist, Orthodox Jewish, New Thought (see yesterday’s post), seeing this aspect of the film stirred up a tremendous sense of longing–jealousy, really.

As I wander my occasionally weary, occasionally joyful way through the magnificent chaos of the contemporary American religious/spiritual scene, possibilities extending every direction, it is just so impossible for me to hunker down into the nice cozy safe warm confines of such a religous world as I see in the Cracow of the early 20th century.  It is so impossible for me to cultivate the kind of burnished, profound, fully convinced faith that Karol Wojtyla acquired in that environment.  It’s impressive; it’s not available;  it’s as simple as that.  Whatever faith I’m able to generate or receive within my life circumstances (and yes, within the net of choices I have woven for myself) is going to be provisional, vulnerable, held in delicate balance while standing on one foot.

So I guess that’s just another reason why I wouldn’t make a good pope.  But I do wonder what kind of person the first pope born in the 21st century, where the maelstrom of multiplicity is in full force, will be.  To what degree will he by necessity close his eyes to the emerging chaotic unfolding of spirit?  And what kind of church he will lead?

This whirling obtuse post fueled in part by a vision of Karol Wojtyla’s precious impossible naive ironclad faith–fueled also in part by residual echoes in my brain of the most potent and delicious and unsettling session with the New Thought folks yesterday.  I continue to be reminded of how important, how cataclysmic, was my encounter with the power of thought when it first hit me a decade ago.  Whew.

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This afternoon I met with my occasional (but most appreciated!) mentor from Nalanda West, a Minnesota Lutheran who ended up at Buddhist (Naropa) instead of Christian seminary and has since become a profound but cheerful Buddhist practitioner. We’ve had some excellent conversations about practice and attainment and discovery, and today was a particularly memorable session. We were exploring the nature of my emerging Buddhist-Christian identity, and I had a moment where I realized that “Christian but relaxed” might be a perfectly good way to describe what I am (better: what I aspire to be). But immediately there came upon me a deep feeling of what I can only call shame at the label “Christian.” Swept away with emotion at that, and realizing that however useful “B-C” might be as a label for the world at large (I think dual identity is sort of a cool revolutionary way to play with religious affiliation), I nevertheless grasped the immensity of my hangups with the statement “I am a Christian”–and realized, with a shock of inevitability, the possibilities in applying naked awareness to just that.  “I am a Christian” as a mantra to reveal and unfold and release layer upon layer of grasping and clinging.  Identity is a game, but what is it that makes this particular part of the gameboard so deeply challenging for me?

Anyway, those were some of the words that transpired (I can’t remember them all)–but what was memorable was that a certain point I had one of those moments, like when you’re walking along the beach in ankle-deep surf and all of a sudden you’re in up to your neck. I lost my bearings, didn’t know who I was, had that sort of drugged yet clear yet blissful sensation that comes along once in a while. Another image: standing at the edge of the Mokee Dugway in Utah.

Behind me: all the conventional bullshit I have used to construct my identity, whether the “I’m a Christian” identity or the “I’m not a Christian” identity or the “I’m a super-fancy Buddhist-Christian” identity. Before me: limitless sky, limitless space, pure being.

Aha. So this is what all the shouting is about. I must say it is handy to have just a smidgen of direct experience to spice up all the studying.

After a bit more conversation I had to call it to a halt: I couldn’t take in language or articulate language, which all seemed like nonsense to me.

But then we kept talking: about study and practice and the basis of all of it in relaxation, in trust, in settling in to what is so in the most ordinary way possible, right in the midst of all the elaborate constructions of “religion” and “dharma” and “gospel” and whatever else we might amuse ourselves with along the way.

A blessed conversation, right there on the lovely balcony of lovely Peet’s in lovely Fremont.  And now I sit here bathed in gratitude for the gentle unfolding of my story: once again the universe sees fit to let me in on a few of its secrets in the kindest way imaginable.

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I was contemplating my post from a couple of days ago about the Two Lovers and found myself with another metaphor: being a Buddhist-Christian is like learning to ride a bicycle.  Bikes have been very much on my mind lately: a friend lent me one of his crappy old mountain bikes and I’ve been sailing around town having a grand time–getting on a bike instantly makes me feel twelve years old again (in a good way).  So I’m now looking to buy a Bike of My Own.

What I’m thinking of, though, is that early phase of bike riding, when you wobble this way and fall down, wobble that way and fall down, handlebars swiveling wildly to and fro.  And though it’s been a matter of years, rather than a few days, learning to ride this dual-practice bicycle is very much like that.  These days, I have the very occasional moments of equilibrium, when the two paths feel exquisitely in balance and the synergy is working perfectly.  Frequently, I am struggling with Christianity’s dualism, thereby dualistically putting it into a box and trying to shut it away.  Back to playing checkers again.  And at times (less often, lately–but stay tuned, I imagine it will be back) I get swept away by the beauty and drama of the Christian story, and swerve over that way for a while.

Still, thinking about it this way, I can imagine myself someday, having overcome the hurdles of apparent impossibility (remember how it was when you first got on that bike?  how it seemed impossible?)–gliding along, wind in my hair, legs pumping with great joy, and getting…well, maybe getting nowhere in particular, but getting there in style, and full of that twelve-year-old bliss-in-the-moment.  That sounds like something worth aiming for.

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Sometimes the blogging road, and the life it reflects, isn’t exactly smooth.  Holding the Buddhist-Christian space takes a good deal of energy and attention, and between my somewhat-too-frantic recent chant gigging and strains at work and this recent cold I just haven’t had the sort of brain cells free to articulate those lovely, lovely thoughts my vast audience has come to expect .

On the other hand, what sort of a spiritual path is it that you can only stay on when the weather is calm?  At times like these I find myself thinking, “just give me a nice clean white lace surplice, or a saffron robe, and only one major religious system at a time to spend my life studying.”

What a weenie, eh?

What I keep coming back to, though, even at times like this, is what I truly love: 

I truly love the Buddhist vision and the path it leads to.  It makes more sense to me every day.  Following this path makes me a happier and saner person.  If I had a healthier psyche, or a less twisted ego, or perhaps just any sense at all, maybe I would simply follow that path (there’s certainly plenty there to occupy anyone’s time and attention!).

But that’s not all of the love story.  I am helplessly in love with Gregorian chant, and therefore I stay engaged with (almost in the romantic, going-steady sense) the Christian vision.  The music is beautiful and compelling and I can’t stay away, and am furthermore compelled not just to sing it but to teach it, to share it, to advocate for it.  And that puts me in front of people who look at me as a Christian and who are themselves, many times, Christians, and I just have to deal with that.  I must admit that at times I would much rather be a Bob Dylan specialist.  But though I love Bob (I do, I do), he doesn’t wrap himself around my heart the way “Sub tuum praesidium” or “Salve Regina” have done.

“Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool, loving both of you is breaking all the rules.”  Ah, Mary McGregor, I never knew you were a Buddhist-Christian… (actually, follow that link and read her story: it’s very resonant, in a pop-culture kind of way).

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This has been a crazy week, place-of-work-wise.  The image of sniffing the hairy armpit of the global corporate beast comes to mind–I think I’ll just leave it with that pungent metaphor and move on to the Buddhist-Christian aspect of the whole adventure.

It was a time of workplace difficulties sort of like this–only much, much worse–about 10 years ago that got me interested in the dharma in the first place.  At the time I felt, “if I am dependent on circumstances to make me happy, then–at least based on what’s happening right now–I’m just not going to be happy.”  And I felt the urge to look for a deeper and truer place of happiness, and read Rick Fields’ How the Swans Came to the Lake, and have been exploring the dharma ever since.

Anyway I’ve been reflecting on this current echo of that challenging time for me, running up against the needing-circumstances-to-be-happy obstacle, reflecting on this invitation through my Nalandabodhi class to consider the Bodhisattva vow, reflecting on my vows to the church and to Jesus as a teenager, when I was baptized at my parents’ evangelical church, and my confirmation in the Episcopal church five years ago when the bishop placed his hands on my head and, in some sense, connected me to an apostolic lineage.

When it comes to Christian commitments I think I’m covered.  I have the distinct impression that the Jesus I invited into my heart at four years old is hanging out there still, but we’re both pretty comfortable with his role as an unobtrusive silent presence.  At various points I have expected that to change, but it’s been remarkably consistent over the decades.  You never know, of course, when he might decide to get all apocalyptic and insistent.  Could happen, but if so we’ll just have to work something out.

I do not have any sort of Buddhist commitment, though.  No empowerments (even the freely available ones), no refuge, no boddhisattva vow.  Since my Christian commitments have all come about through some sort of effort to negotiate through the dramas of growing up and becoming an adult (yep, even my confirmation at age 41), I can kind of talk myself out of the seriousness of these things, view them as contingencies of my personhood (“social passes”, almost) rather than something deeper than that.

Buddhist commitments feel different.  Not just because they’re culturally different, but mostly, I think, because in fact I really “get”, and really believe in, the worldview, the way of living, that lies behind such a commitment.  That makes it a much bigger deal–harder for me to rationalize myself out of but also scarier to approach.

But when (as happened this week) things get tough here in good ol’ samsara, and I start to panic and stress and forget myself and act out old patterns of anger/fear/hostility/manipulation/etc., I start to wonder if maybe a deeper thumbprint of Buddhist committment would be helpful.  Maybe even necessary.

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My Buddhism classes at Nalandabodhi have reached a stage I have been expecting and somewhat dreading for months now.  We are discussing the Bodhisattva vow, which has this intention: ”I will establish all beings, without exception, in a state of present happiness and ultimate happiness, and I will free all beings, without exception, from their present suffering and and from all suffering.”

I knew I was going to trip over this, or at least stumble, when I got to it, and that’s what’s happening.  In class tonight I found myself feeling uncomfortable and resistant.  My main practice was to take very careful notes (I highly recommend this for both boring and difficult lectures!) and just keep breathing and find a place of patience for myself.  But this material challenges me in several ways:

1. There’s an aspect of belonging, of being in the “in group”, that presses up against my religiously wounded self.  I just carry a certain amount of neurosis brought about by the conditions of my childhood and my reactions to them, and stuff like this, vows that get you into the group, well, it just pushes my buttons.
2. I do wonder, a bit, about the plausibility or even the presumption of the vow itself.  I will rescue all beings?  Isn’t that hubris of the highest order?  Isn’t that a bit, um, evangelical?  Though I can perhaps render the vow into a form that feels more acceptable to me: “May I participate in the enlightenment of all beings” (from a Buddhist point of view, it can’t really be about “me” anyway), it’s still irritating.
3. But what is surprising to me is another resistance that is emerging.  There is some primordial voice in me that keeps saying, “It’s not right for you to vow to liberate all beings from suffering–that’s not what God wants.”  Ah, the Old Testament voice, the apocalyptic voice, about which I just recently ranted.  But contemplating the bodhisattva vow does bring such thoughts out.  There’s something in my heart, I am discovering to my chagrin, that doesn’t want to let go of those dualistic ideas: there are ways that are right and ways that are wrong, getting off track brings punishment, and I better not get in the way of that.  Ugh.  Boy do I hate to discover that.  Not quite sure what to do about it.

Interestingly, part of our teaching tonight was something called the “Seven Branch Prayer” (how menorah-ish is that?).  It’s a process of purification and confession that is a preliminary to taking the vow.  Tonight I find myself feeling very compromised by the deep structures of judgment and separation that are my cultural inheritance.  Will I make it to the bodhisattva vow?  At the moment I have no idea.  But it does seem that my Buddhist-Christian path is bringing some profound tensions to a heightened and fairly uncomfortable state.

No way to go but forward.

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I am giving a talk tomorrow night at Lake Burien Presbyterian Church on “Gregorian Chant as Spiritual Practice”.  I frequently give day-long workshops on the topic, but those usually consist of teaching a group to sing a Vespers service, while this is a personal reflection on the ways I use chant in my own personal practice.  I’m excited about the opportunity, and thought I would do some drafting and thinking here (where else but in pulblic, anyway?).

This also gives me a chance to articulate some of what’s behind the statement “my practice is contemplative Gregorian chant” that is (at least for now) on the lotuslily.net home page.

Why do I use chant in my daily practice?

• It grounds my practice in my body.  Breathing and gentle vocal vibration are profound and healing activities.  In one sense it wouldn’t matter at all what I sing: the singing itself is so freeing and joyous.
• It is aesthetically beautiful, both musically and liturgically.  Both these dimensions are very important to me.  I came to Gregorian chant through medieval polyphony, drawn in by its astonishing acoustic characteristics.  Only gradually over many years have I been drawn into the rhythms of the liturgical framework, which is perhaps the most astoundingly rich and complicated literary and poetic construction ever devised.
• It helps connect me to all those who have chanted in the past.  This is actually quite important to me.  I have an active sense that I am drawing on the wisdom of my chant-ancestors, and at the same time that I am somehow helping to bring their own aspirations and intentions to more complete realization.
• It slows down my relationship with sacred texts, so I can more easily breathe them in.  For my particular version of monkey mind, anyway, this is immensely helpful.  You can only sing so fast, and chanting is slower than regular singing, so there’s plenty of time to stretch out into possible meanings or just the spaciousness of the sound.

Here’s what I do most days, when I have the time:

• Recite the Tibetan Buddhist Four Reminders.  Here’s one translation.
• 15 minutes of sitting meditation
• A few minutes of reading dharma texts (mostly the Nalanda West study materials at this point)
• Chant “Deus in adiutorium meum intende” (traditional opening of the Latin Divine Office)
• Chant a Psalm for the day from Benedictine Daily Prayer using one of the eight Gregorian psalm tones
• Read a scripture text from BDP
• Chant a responsory from the Nocturnale Romanum (one of my real treasures–available from Germany)
• Chant one of the “Laudate” Psalms (Pss 149-150) using one of the St. Meinrad Abbey psalm tones
• Chant “Benedicamus Domino”
• Do a Buddhist dedication of merit

Tomorrow at the church I’ll just be talking about the “Christian” part of my “Buddhist-Christian” practice, so I’ll just note here that I have experimented with a more integrated (B-C-B-C) approach, and find this way takes me deeper and is less distracting, at least at this point.

Much of the chant is scripturally based, and I find this to be an important part of my practice: it’s a way to connect with my own very bible-oriented spiritual formation. While I by no means rest easy with many of the texts I chant, there seems to be something deeply necessary about staying with them.  Maybe I chant them rather than saying them because there’s just too much resistance otherwise.  It has in fact been a big step and a somewhat recent innovation for me to read, rather than sing, a bible passage along the way.  Kind of scary, kind of exciting.  And I like the way the chant surrounds and infuses and informs that reading.

My practice combines elements from the monastic Matins (pre-dawn) and Lauds (dawn) services as described in the Rule of St. Benedict.  Even though I’m often doing the whole thing in the light of day, I like the symbolic movement from darkness to light this entails.

I normally use the texts/chants from the appropriate church season (just now in the 3rd week of Lent).  Although my practice is a narrow slice of the whole rich panorama of liturgical chant (much more chant in these services that I don’t sing, and chants from Mass and the other six services in the divine office), there is again an evocation of the whole in what I do that is quite pleasing and satisfying.  I gave up a while ago on being able to ingest the entire rich feast: that will just have to wait for another lifetime!

It’s worth mentioning that the form described above is relatively new, emerging for me just in the last few months out of the pieces of many explorations and experiments over the past several years.  And I am open to continued dynamic change: my practice remains an open, creative, spontaneous response to present possibilities.  But I am also gaining insight into the value of stability (getting wiser? older?); I’m a bit more willing to stick with things when my curious mind tries to imagine more interesting new possibilities or I have to wade through a bit of ennui.

Tomorrow night I’ll be teaching a bit of chant as I share my experience of the forms above.  It should be fun!

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