Lotus and Lily Field Notes

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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Here’s a plan for the Lotus and Lily group to read through Keenan’s Gospel of Mark: a Mahayana Reading. By exploring the book in seven sessions, those who wish to read Keenan’s entire book (more than what I’m proposing) will probably have enough time to do so (see option #3 below), while the group as a whole will focus on specific selected passages that give a flavor of the whole.

Session 1 – April 9
Introduction (Keenan pp. 21-43)

Session 2 – April 23
*Passage for discussion from Mark 1:1-3:6
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp 52-61
(Entire passage Mark 1:4-13)
(Entire passage from Keenan pp 47-100)

Session 3 – May 14
*Passage for discussion: Mark 4:26-41
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp 128-137
(Entire passage Mark 3:7-5:43)
(Entire passage Keenan pp. 101-148)

Session 4 – May 28
*Passage for discussion: Mark 8:11-30
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp. 190-200
(Entire passage Mark 6:1-8:30)
(Entire passage Keenan pp. 149-200)

Session 5 – June 11
*Passage for discussion: Mark 10:32-52
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp 250-260
(Entire passage Mark 8:31-10:52)
(Entire passage Keenan pp. 201-260)

Session 6 – June 25
*Passage for discussion: Mark 12:28-13:2
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp 292-303
(Entire passage Mark 11:1-13:37)
(Entire passage Keenan pp. 261-332)

Session 7 – July 9
*Passage for discussion: Mark 16:1-8
*Passage for discussion: Keenan pp 389-397
(Entire passage Mark 14:1-16:8)
(Entire passage Keenan pp. 333-397)

For each session after the first one there are several options:

1. Read the “passage for discussion” in Mark. This passage will be the focus of our discussion and reading it will orient you to what we’ll be talking about.
2. Read the “passage for discussion” and associated commentary in Keenan. I’ve tried to keep the commentary to 10 pages, which I hope won’t be too burdensome to anyone.
3. Read the entire passage for the session in Mark. This approach would mean you’d read through the entire gospel by the end.
4. Read the entire passage for the session in Mark, and associated commentary in Keenan . That’s 50 pages of commentary per session, which is doable for the ambitious but will take some exertion…
5. Take a break, read Thich Nhat Hanh, and breathe. And enjoy the conversation at the meeting.

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This has been a good week: after my great long walk last night (from which I came home glowing) I came home tonight from a lovely Peregrine rehearsal, getting ready for singing Gregorian chant for the 5th Sunday of Lent at St. James Cathedral (Catholic) this Sunday, and an evensong for St. Mark the Evangelist at St. Mark’s Cathedral (Episcopal) next month.

Let me just say that, questionable philosophy aside, sometimes-reprehensible ethics aside, simplistic psychology aside, unfortunate historical consequences aside, there is just nothing so wonderful as the rhythms and movements of the liturgy, nothing so beautiful as the chant that infuses it, from the details of the melodic structures to the beautiful rendering of profound and mysterious texts to the breathtakingly brilliant cycle of times and seasons into which it all fits.

OK, that’s not an entirely objective assessment.  But when the chant is going well I am just entranced by its beauty and resonance.  I don’t know why.  Call it love.  Call it my karmic obligation.  But sometimes that crazy love, crazy karma, really really works for me, and then I am at least temporarily in bliss.

Ordinarily I am suspicious of bliss, wary of glamour, always listening for the other shoe that will inevitably drop.  Buddhism is particularly good about keeping focused on the other shoe: impermanence, suffering, the wheel of samsara.  Some people find that depressing: I find it realistic and actually quite a relief.  And in fact, at moments like this, when I feel infused with the most delicious glory, it’s maybe almost better to experience it more like a falling leaf or a cherry blossom than as a glittering pile of golden bricks that will some how impossibly last forever.

So I taste this sweet Christian glory with a careful Buddhist tongue.  It’s the most interesting flavor.

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I’m back late from a nice l-o-o-o-n-g walk (2.5 hours) from my house up to Green Lake and around and back, with my good friend Bob Boiko, covering the usual topics of our late-night walks going back 15 years: technology-information-management-Buddhism-youth-age-more-Buddhism-creativity-writing-reading-and I’m not sure what else. 

I have been feeling grateful for my good male friends Bob and Daoud and Henry, not so many but really good ones, and also both grateful and sad for the many many lost ones like Brian and Will and Steve and Fred and Clint and many more. 

Last night at Nalandabodhi, in that terrible wonderful session on bodhisattva vows, our teacher talked about the value of being able to connect with dharma friends to share the successes and failures of the dharma path.  I appreciate that, but for now anyway I feel very happy with my own personal and very informal dharma friends, the ones who have known me before and the ones who know me now.  On walks like the one tonight, I really feel like I am on The Way.

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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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In addition to whatever pontificating (or its Buddhist equivalent: Lama-nating?  Roshi-nalizing?) might take place here, this blog will also be a staging point for the Lotus & Lily work around the “Mahayana Mark.”  I will continue to post, and encourage comments (especially from novice commenters, ahem!) on specific content about the book, and I’m in the process of putting together a proposed reading plan for us.  For any readers that aren’t in the physical Lotus and Lily group in Seattle, a litle forebearance.  I think there will be rich discussion along the way.

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Lotus & Lily met tonight for a first session to discuss Keenan’s Gospel of Mark: a Mahayana Interpretation.  Actually we met to discuss whether to discuss the book, because there has been some concern about its challenging nature, given its presumption of an understanding of Mahayana Buddhism, literary-critical theory, Biblical studies, and theology (as one person said about the excerpt we read to start out with, “I felt like I was back in graduate school.”)  Rigorous indeed, but it was great to hear how enthusiastic so many people in the group were about the idea of plunging into this difficult territory, and we agreed to proceed for a few sessions–even those who are more oriented to the devotional and inspirational agreed that it would good for us to journey together with the material for a while.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been very concerned about the appropriateness of the book for our group ; but during that time I have also continued to be aware of its tremendous potential to serve as a foundation for our Buddhist-Christian endeavor, along the lines of one of those great commentaries (like Chandrakirti or Tsongkhapa’s) that articulate root texts (like those of Nagarjuna).

So could it be that Mark can become our Buddhist-Christian “root text” as expounded by our Chandrakirti, John Keenan?  That’s a delicious thought to contemplate, full of amazing implications for study and practice and community life too.  But before I get too wound up about that, first we need to dig into the work together.  We’ve agreed to explore representative sections over several sessions, not reading the entire commentary but choosing selections from the major sections of Mark.  Some in the group may want to read the whole thing; some may choose to use the opportunity to read through the gospel; others might just want to read the sections we’re going to focus on.

One member of our group has offered to help write study questions; others will bring their expertise in theology and languages and Buddhism;  others will be present to listen and reflect and keep us grounded in the practical (a very important activity too!).  There certainly needs to be a popular version of this material, something for Buddhist-Christians everywhere (and we know you’re out there!) to sink their teeth into, but in a more accessible way.  Perhaps this group’s work can be the beginnings of such an effort.

Oh boy–what an exciting journey!

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At times, wading through the snarl of Buddhist and Christian, sutras and gospels, bodhisattvas and messiahs–it just all seems too much.  Like trying to combine corn chips and potato chips, or beer and wine (ouch!), or salsa and kimchee.  On days like those (and this has been one of those days), it is a relief to just fall back on something basic, like…letting go. 

So, today I’m letting go.  is that a Buddhist thing to do?  Probably.  Christian?  I dunno–but for today I’m saying, “Yeah, sure.  Just let go, and call it good.”

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I love Buddhist stories: Zen stories about heaps of flax and Tibetan stories about Bengali tea-boys and essential stories like the Buddha’s Four Sights seem to me to point like an arrow right to the heart of the truth: impermanence, an embrace of suchness, a sensitivity to a nuanced and subtle fragrance.

Stories in Judeo-Christian scripture cause me to struggle and squirm: they are sometimes violent and frequently dualistic.  Joshua and the battle of Jericho, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, the apocalyptic vision of the saved and the damned: I don’t buy the ideology or philosophy behind them.  I don’t feel that deep, balanced wisdom, but rather accounts of our projected fantasies and fears and hopes, fully validated with the imprimature of scriptural authority.  Those Bible stories: big, big trouble.

But as much as I may love the Buddha-nature-soaked stories of monks with begging bowls, dakinis and mountain-top-dwelling sages, and the wisdom those stories represent for me–despite all that philosophical correctness and profound, unvarnished wisdom–those stories doesn’t speak to me down in my guts the way those Bible desert stories, the stories of Jacob and Jeremiah and John the Baptist, kings and battles and miraculous healings and water springing from rocks, speak to me.  Somehow Bible stories penetrated my being deeply and thoroughly as a child, found a place in my heart that they seem utterly unwilling to relinquish.  They hold a place within my own particular psychic structure that Buddhist stories, however wise, simply can’t occupy.

So I’m left with the continual, annoying, difficult work of struggle, re-translation, re-purposing, re-configuring.  I will be with Moses as he approaches Pharoah and shudder over the carnage of the first-born to come, and Samson in his moment of blind defeated despair, just before crushing a whole temple-full of Philistine innocents to prove the glory of God, and Paul in his triumphal escapes and shipwrecks, certain through it all of the triumph of Christ.  I don’t like it.  I know there are better and more helpful and more true stories, a whole Asia worth of them.  But those Asian stories aren’t my stories, and these Bible stories are.  As much as my parentage and my noble and ignoble deeds in present and past lives, these stories are my karma, what I have to work with.

So that’s what I do: I work with them.  And am unspeakably grateful that I am no longer left alone with those stories as I was for so many years: I have the perfect companion of the dharma to help me understand and reflect on them, bring wisdom to them, and find in some way, at last, to find peace in their presence.

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As I mentioned yesterday, I have beeen enjoying singing the chant responsories from the Nocturnale Romanum as part of my daily exploration of Christian liturgy (which serves as an interesting counterfoil to my daily Buddhist practice).  These are beautiful, elaborate chants that are part of the matins service (the lengthy pre-dawn session of chants and readings prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict).  This being the third week of Lent, the responsory texts are taken from the story of Joseph in Genesis.

The account of Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers, who sell him into slavery in Egypt, his subsequent unjust imprisonment and redemption through his remarkable ability to interpret dreams, his elevation to a position of prime importance in Pharaoh’s court, finds its culmination in a dramatic scene where he confronts his brothers, come from Palestine seeking grain during a famine, reveals himself, and forgives them, wanting only to know if his old father is still alive.

I think there’s something to the idea that good dramatic literature is the province of the West: it’s not something that a Buddhist frame of reference has nurtured very much.  It could well be that such earth-bound dramas map well to the dramatic–and dualistic–context of Judeo-Christian spirituality, while the all-embracing nature of the Buddhist view is less interested in cultivating a high degree of poignancy.

Emotion is a key spiritual value in the West: it plays an important role in both Catholic and Protestant traditions.  But it seems to me that the brilliantly described emotion of Joseph, overcome when he sees his younger brother Benjamin after many years apart (Genesis 43:30), can be just as easily hitched to the skillful means of tantra: using emotion to obliterate emotion; using dualism to obliterate dualism.  Not a practice that has been developed yet, but perhaps it will be someday.

When I chant the text “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.  Is my father still alive?” the door to such a practice seems to open wide.

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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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Feeling better today.  I actually wrote something last night, but it was entirely forgettable and I’m glad that some sort of technical glitch meant that it didn’t get published.

It occurs to me, following on my recent experiment with virus farming and its consequent disturbance of my mental state, that occupying a space between religious traditions is not for the faint of heart.  It’s hard work, very satisfying but hard, and takes a lot of presence of mind, flexibility, and plenty of resources.  I think you have to be fairly high up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to take it on.

I sometimes imagine myself old and infirm, doddering up to the communion rail, gratefully receiving the host because my body just aches too damn much to mess about with all this in-between stuff.  Sort of like Franz Liszt.

On the other hand, Huston Smith is hanging in there with his well-constructed multifaith lifestyle quite nicely at age 86, thank you very much.  So maybe this sort of stuff gets to be habit-forming over a period of years.  Which can come in handy when you have a bad cold.  I shall keep working at it.

Tonight I felt well enough to go to the latest class at Nalanda West, and was glad I did.  We are exploring the relationship between causes (what you’re given) and conditions (what you do with what you’re given) in the cultivation of compassion.  I love this topic, find it very difficult, and was most reassured by our teacher pointing out that “if you wrestle with these topics, you’re on the path.”  She also defined “path” as “the intersection of view and experience”, using the helpful image of magical stepping stones that appear as you step forward onto them.  What a marvellous image of “we walk by faith and not by sight.”  Once again, image trumps dogma as the Buddhist and Christian traditions continue to exist most harmoniously in the realm of metaphors (like feasting).  Buddhism loves “path”, Christianity is referred to in the Book of Acts as “the Way”.  So all we’re really doing (you, me, Pope Benedict, the Dalai Lama, Huston Smith) is walking down the road.  Sometimes we whistle, sometimes we stumble.  And keep on walking.

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The title of this post comes from Romeo and Juliet, a line spoken by Mercutio as he dies, a victim of the brawl between the two feuding families. 

My scripture reading practice during Lent has been the Exodus story, and this week I have been working my way through the story of the plagues of Egypt.  It is really very dark and disturbing reading.  Rivers of blood, infestations of frogs and flies, disease, boils, and culminating in the mass murder of children.  After Moses warns Pharaoh of this last plague, the death of every firstborn child in the country, he adds, “But not a dog shall growl at any of the Israelites–not at people, not at animals–so that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.”

The classic art of Biblical understatement.  Um, yes, I’d call that a distinction.  “Your kids die, while we get to play with Fido and not get bit.”

There is probably no idea I struggle with more in the Judeo-Christian tradition than this “the Lord makes a distinction” business.

The Buddhism I have been studying makes lots of distinctions (Tibetans are famous for their collections of “the three thises and the six thats”), but the most central one is the distinction between relative truth (a realm in which distinctions do operate) and absolute truth (a realm in which all distinctions, indeed all utterances, cannot be held to be true).  I know this sounds a bit like that old saw, “the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.”  But I find this particular distinction a most helpful one for penetrating and pry apart the difficult bundle of thoughts and emotions I encounter when I reflect on things like the plagues of Egypt and what they imply about chosenness.

It may be that an absolutist sense of being chosen is a form of skillful means that allows individuals and groups to develop the self-esteem and faith necessary to lead them onward, in the course of time.

But the violent fantasies that often accompany chosenness, plagues and apocalypses and all the rest, might just as well cause us to linger in a realm of distinctions that places us under judgment.  So in that sense the Holy Scripture isn’t being quite straight with us: by killing some and sparing others, God is not making a distinction between Egypt and Israel, because those actions place both of them in the exact same world: the world in which distinctions are made.  In that world, both are subject to judgment and special treatment for good or ill–and though that makes a difference in a way, from a Buddhist perspective the rewards of heaven and the punishments of hell are just two forms of the same poison. 

When we hold this world of distinctions to be the real, true, and ultimate world–as the prince says at the end of Romeo and Juliet–”All are punished”.

A plague on both your houses, Israelite and Egyptian alike.

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A tidbit from John P. Keenan’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, regarding chapter 9, verse 40 (“Anyone who is not against us is for us.”)

“Mark himself gives no clear definitions [of Jesus].  His Jesus shies away from self-definition, reinterpreting traditional themes in terms of the concrete actuality of his lived life.  The messiah is not the glory figure of his disciples’ imaginations, but the one who undergoes the sufferings of a lived life.  Jesus is not the messiah.  Rather, the messiah is Jesus.  In typically Mahayana terms, ‘Jesus is not the messiah, not the messiah, and that is why Jesus is the messiah.’”

Not the messiah?  And therefore the messiah?  That sticks deep.

We long for a messiah with a name, a definitive revelation that will lift us out of the conditioned partiality of our existence.  It must be Jesus.  It must be the church, it must be our sangha or a boddhisattva, or something else–anything, as long as it carries with it a glorious definition we can cling to.

Mark doesn’t give us glory, but rather a self-emptying cipher, a figure that shuns definition and rejects our propensity to glorification, and points us again and again to the emptiness of the question: “who do you say I am?”

Growing up evangelical, I learned to run like Hell to the answer: “You are the Christ (the answer to all my problems), You are the Messiah  (who’s going to come and fix everything), You are the Glorious One (who will satisfy my every need for glamour).”  How refreshing to just pause, instead, and linger over the deliciousness of the question.  What a revelation, to let it resound in its glorious emptiness.  The messiah deserves nothing less than all of that.

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Here are some good words from my wife Victoria, in response to a post on the Yahoo Christian-Buddhist list (which has been ever so active: over 100 posts the last seven days.  She lays out many different modalities of Buddhist-Christian interaction, in the context of our Lotus and Lily practice group, and makes some great points.  I especially like the point that in the West we are averse to multiple religious identities, while in places like Japan that is quite ordinary.

…there are many flavors in the Buddhist-Christian/Christian-Buddhist nexus – from scholars of religious studies who write on the topic but are not practitioners of either religion, to friendly interfaith dialogue between practioners of one or the other religion, to people who identify with one religion but borrow practices from the other [this usually shows up as Christians who do Zen meditation (for more on this subject see http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_6_36/ai_58170180 )], to people who are best described as dual practitioners (people who are actively engaged with both religious traditions at the same time, and are interested in how they complement each other).  The last case best describes the members of Seattle’s Lotus and Lily group.  As a group we are apparently a great rarity.  As part of our quest to locate similar dual practice groups my husband and I attended (and spoke at) last year’s international conference of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, as well as the Society’s national (U.S.) conference.  Surprisingly, we didn’t find out about any other dual practice groups.  That’s probably partly because the Society is largely composed of scholars, and scholars seem to suspect that true dual practice is an impossibility.  That’s understandable given that they’re so deeply committed to ideas and the life of the mind.  There’s not a perfect correlation between the two religions, and as scholars they take those philosophical differences very seriously.  On a more fundamental level the paucity of dual practitioner groups may be connected to the idea that in Western culture you’re supposed to either be one thing–or the other.  Unlike Asian cultures, “and/both” logic is not part of our mainstream culture.  (For an example contrary to this, look to Japanese society’s ease with being both Buddhist and Shinto.)

Dual practitioners are those who are not discouraged by intellectual differences.  (Could this be because our heart and intution creatively guide us through what the mind can’t logically reconcile?)  They find themselves as Buddhist-Christians (or Christian-Buddhists) as a result of how they choose to experience the world.  Currently they are hard to locate because they are scattered individuals, not self-organized communities. The volume of Buddhist-Christian literature is impressive; scholars have done a lot of very good work.  And religious leaders have reached out in interfaith dialogue.  But it seems to me that for the Buddhist-Christian/Christian-Buddhist movement to continue to flourish and be sustained the next step is for lay pracitioners to step forward, unite, and offer each other mutual support.  That’s what Lotus and Lily is all about.

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A great resource for discussions of the intersections between Buddhism and Christianity is this Yahoo group.  In the sparsely populated landscape of explorations of the two traditions, it is an important oasis.

An item was posted there recently that I found quite stimulating, and to which I’d like to offer a response, because it touches so intimately the questions of lived experience that I ponder almost every day:

…a  “Christian-Buddhist” is a person in transition, as “Christian Buddhism”  or “Buddhist Christian” are ultimately contradictions of terms…

I do find myself wondering at times if this is true.  I’ve mused on that topic on this blog–more precisely in terms of the Buddhist and Christian engagement with the concept of “God”.  But I am not ready to agree so readily that the terms “Buddhist” and “Christian” are contradictory.  They are both too rich, too laden with multiple layers of meaning, and ultimately, too intertwined with the realities of individual lived experiences, millions of them, over thousands of years.  Are they contradictory?  How can we really say?

One cannot be both a good Christian and a good Buddhist. As a person progresses spiritually, they will have to go one way or the other.

One of the wisest teachings I’ve come across in my own Tibetan Buddhist studies is that it is not possible for us to assess another’s spiritual progress.  The individual is a rich matrix of causes and oconditions: what “spiritual progress” means for anyone is outside our certain grasp.

“Christian Buddhism” is a transitional state –a useful one, perhaps,  but transitional, and to a large extent it can exist as a state only because the believer probably has only a beginning understanding of Buddha dhamma. As – and if – the understanding of dhamma deepens, it will push out the Christianity. In the same sense, if the understanding  of christianity deepens, it will push out dhamma.  

Unless they’re not contradictory but complementary, in which case they both can nurture and strengthen one another.

It’s like being on a fence–maybe you can balance a long time between  the two, but it would be hard to argue that fence-sitting is a stable  end-state.

And in what sense is a “stable end-state” what we are after?  It’s precisely the “on one foot” nature of being a Buddhist-Christian that makes it such a helpful path.

I recognize that stability is a virtue (part of the Benedictine monastic vows), but to my mind that’s something quite different: a stability that allows one to open to the spaciousness of possibilities, to be present to the movement of the Spirit in each moment.

It’s understandable that those of us with dual identities or dual practices can be viewed as fence-sitters who need to make up their minds.  I think of myself, anyway, as intending to walk a middle path that keeps me ever alert, ever open, never comfortable.  Will that ever be more than an intention?  I can’t be sure–but I take courage from my conviction that Jesus and Buddha would approve.

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Got back from Sacramento this evening–my flight was delayed so I wasn’t able to make it to the Lotus & Lily group meeting tonight.  But after a full morning being at my parents’ evangelical church, my Buddhist/Christian quotient may be complete for the day.  As usual I find that Buddhist practice is very helpful for guiding me through that experience. 

Thanks to my dad’s request that I join him I found myself singing with the choir this morning.  As I was up on the platform singing “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun/Does His successsive journeys run” with the rest of the choir, there was a moment of great clarity and ease, a centered calm that went down to my toes.  It was quite a remarkable grace, actually, since it’s just this theological notion of Jesus-trumps-all that hasa given me a great big headache for about 30 years.  But I found that as long as I kept offering the words into an empty space, a luminous ripeness of possibility, then all was well.  My father was there on the risers with me, still singing at 82, my mother was in the congregation, happy I’m sure to see her son and her husband singing together, and there were a whole lot of other happy people singing along.

In that situation the immeasurable quality of Joy (one of the four I’m studying in my Buddhism class: the others are love, compassion, and equanimity) was uppermost in my mind, which calls for an open-hearted celebration of the good as it manifests to all beings, without jealousy or resentment.  That’s a very helpful for me to be present to the happy (“clappy happy”, Bono called it in a recent interview) culture of evangelicalism.  Let the path be what it needs to be for all beings.  Embrace the warm good intentions for harmony and peace and perfection that lie behind those words.

There is at the same time room for discrimination as well: it’s very clear to me that evangelicalism concretizes the poetic and becomes attached to the feel-good (e.g. this sunday school chorus: “I’ve got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay…and if that isn’t enough, it goes on “and I’m so happy, so very happy, I have the love of Jesus in my heart…”).  I don’t think it’s violating the principle of the Immeasurable quality of Joy to notice that much of this celebratory energy masks a profound suffering.  Buddhism offers that perspective as well.  

I like the way I was able to be present to all that this morning, all the joy and all the unspoken suffering, and to find, at least for this morning, a still point of Buddhist-Christian peace and awakeness in the midst of it.

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As a way to cultivate compassion and appreciation, Tibetan Buddhists suggest we think of all beings as having been our mother in some previous incarnation.

As a way to cultivate humility and adoration, Christians suggest we think of the divine infinitude as our Father.

It looks like we have the nuclear family covered!

I will be visiting my own earthly mother and father (those physically incarnated paradigms of ultimate Buddhist and Christian connection) for the next couple of days, so may not be blogging.

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As part of my Nalandabodhi study this week we are asked to do a structured meditation on the Four Immeasurables (equanimity, love, compassion, joy).  Using the teaching of Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher, we spend 10 minutes on each of these qualities.

It’s the first of these, equanimity, that is the source of my reflections today. 

The image given for truly boundless impartiality is a banquet given by a great sage.  When the great sages of old offered feasts they would invite everyone, high or low, powerful or weak, good or bad, exceptional or ordinary, without making any distinction whatsoever.

Does this remind you of anything?

And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples–for there were many who followed him. (Mark 2:15)

Or this:

“Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.”  Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. (Matthew 22:9)

It’s a startling parallel.  It points in part to the potent universality of sharing meals as a form of peacemaking.  I’ve found my own meditations with the “invite your friends, enemies, everyone to a banquet” image to be very helpful, very powerful and transformative over the past few days.

 And yet…

The gospel passages aren’t exactly the same as “truly boundless impartiality”.  Not exactly the same, no, since the quote above, from the parable of the wedding feast, is preceded by “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.”  And later, a guest without a wedding robe is thrown out: “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 

Aw heck, we were off to such a great start.  But in the dualistic realm of Biblical discourse (from which the texts hardly ever stray) the utterly expansive, all-embracing equanimity of Buddhist teaching never quite shows up.  There’s just too much of the “enemy” from the Psalms, the “children of darkness” from John, the spirit/flesh, saved/lost, sheep/goats, chosen people/Gentiles, Israelite/Canaanite dichotomies that press on one from everywhere in the tradition.

I can well believe that Jesus meant something different, and that words were put into his mouth, but since what I live with and wrestle with is the tradition and not (just) some reconstructed pure Jesus-idea, that is not a solution.

It’s frustrating, challenging and painful, all the more so because this equanimity notion seems to contain such potent seeds of reconciliation and clarity and openness.

And what is there to do, anyway, but…

just sit
at the banquet
with the whole thing
just as it is
and let it be so

So I will sit with Jesus at the banqueting table, and with Patrul Rinpoche.  I will sit with those gospel writers who perhaps misinterpreted what The Man was saying, and all those orthodox commentators who perhaps distorted things still further.  I will sit at the banqueting table with fundamentalists who believe it all, and liberals who might twist things to their own ends, and modernists who just hate the whole thing.  I will sit with my Buddhist sangha members, and the fundamentalist and uptight and self-righteous Buddhists I’ve met, and the ethnic Buddhists who seem an awful lot like the smug church people I grew up to despise.  I will sit with them, at the feast of the great sage in my mental exercise, and we will eat together.  Together we will let this great mystery of the two and not-two, one and not-one, just resonate among us.  And think of it as a little nice dinner music.

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