Lotus and Lily Field Notes

As a high schooler in Bible quizzing, I went to tournaments with Canadian participants and fell in love with the glorious national anthem.  Ever since there I love going to the Country with the Other Flag.  V and I are going there tomorrow for a few days of getaway and rest.  Unlikely I’ll be blogging, but who knows when inspiration and public-access computers might coincide.

Anyway, here’s another little bit of electronic music to tide my readers over in the lonely hours while I’m gone (warning: this music made my cat’s ears lie back; I like it a little better than he does, though).

By the way, an excellent Lotus & Lily group tonight.  Among our discussions we agreed that we really need to have a group viewing of the Life of Brian.  It seems perfectly in synch with Keenan’s interpretation of Mark.  “Blessed are the cheesemakers?”  “I think he’s really referring to the whole dairy industry.”

Comments(2)

My dear wife, Source of Much Good Information (and of course much else!), forwarded me a link to a fascinating article on the Trinity by Cynthia Bourgeault. This metaphysical analysis of the Trinity as Unmanifest/Manifesting/Manifested is immensely useful and provocative. It does bear some similarities to (though is far more carefully thought through than) the “Emptiness/Manifestation/Possibility” formulation I use to translate the doxology in my chant teaching. Bourgeault contrasts the trinity with archetypal dualities (the yin-yang principle would be one example; another is the God-Satan polarity) as follows: “Twofoldness leads to cyclic recurrence. All progression, or forward motion through time, operates under the Law of Three, its very asymmetry creating the necessary forward impetus.” A little later she adds that the binary model “can sustain at a given level but lacks the ability to drive into the new.”

What strikes me about this (maybe, to be candid, I should say “what rubs me the wrong way about this”) is the presumption that “the ability to drive into the new” is what the game is all about. “Behold, I make all things new” may be the linchpin of the Christian world view: linear time, cosmic drama, continual unfolding of newness. The East has it differently: the eternal now, the collapse of all drama into bliss, the analytical explosion of all categories, including “old” and “new” and “different” and “same” into the vast field of emptiness.

“Behold I make all things new” sounds a bit like a late-model Ford, the latest reality show, the tasty new cheese-jalapeno-cinnamon snack: it’s the religious expression of the hunger for new experience that pervades our culture and (in a Buddhist analysis) generates a concomitant increase in suffering.  But taking away the cultural context all together, there is still the “forward motion through time”, which is a pretty literal translation of “samsara”.
It seems clear to me that dualism makes a lot of trouble (the Terrible Two, we might call it). Dualism, as Bourgeault suggests, leaves us stuck in a permanent and unsatisfactory us-vs-them state. But it may be that the dynamism of the ever-new, endlessly unfolding Threeness is equally problematic: could it be that it just generates a fancier and more enticing version of suffering?

It’s extremely useful to come across such a clear articulation of the metaphysics of the Trinity.  But I find myself unconvinced by the fundamental assumptions behind the analysis.  I guess at heart I’m just a Monist kind of a boy.

Comments(0)

I am a Pandora freak. It’s one of a number of music-matching services, and I like it best of the ones I’ve tried.  I love the way it lets me plug in a song and hear a range of similar tunes, using a fascinating concept called the “Music Genome Project”. Alas, no Gregorian chant (or classical, or world music). But for the whole eclectic range of my interests, from Elvis to Booker T to the Who to Radiohead to Beth Orton, it is a wonderful playpen.

So I was listening to Pandora tonight and came across a song called “Boys Don’t Cry” by a group called Plumb (on Pandora it’s very typical to be hearing music you’ve never heard, but like very much). I liked this song so much that I hopped over to Amazon to read about the group, and came across this comment by a reviewer:

“Plumb doesn’t use ‘Christian-ese’. Jesus is all over this CD in that the lyrics show a mature knowledge of his teachings, even though his name is never mentioned in the songs. And to some, due in part to our own clumsiness in communicating it in other times, the message may come across better that way.”

True, I would not have guessed that the song I heard, “Boys Don’t Cry” is a Christian song. (If you’re curious, here are the lyrics.) I must say that on a first reading I don’t really get the “mature knowledge of the teachings of Jesus” thing. They’re good, interesting lyrics, but where does Jesus say “pay attention to your kids”? Seems to me he was more in the “let the dead bury their dead” space much of the time.
I like the reviewer’s comment above a lot, because it suggests that Christianity, like the dharma, might be practiced more as a subterranean influence that manifests in unexpected and sometimes unnamed ways. The influence happens out of our reach, maybe even out of our consciousness. Perhaps this is farther than the reviewer intended to go, but that’s where I’m going: Jesus transforms lives when consciousness of Jesus has been swallowed up in a wider and deeper awareness, one that is not limited to little, teensy conceptual buckets like “Jesus” or “Buddha” (and even smaller ones like “Christianity” and “Buddhism”).

So maybe there are Christians that name Christ, and then a little further down the path there are Christians that no longer name Christ, and maybe, most advanced of all, Christians that don’t even know enough, or maybe know too much, to even think of Christ at all. And at that point, does it even make sense to be called a “Christian”?

Comments(0)

A co-worker of mine turned me on to what looks like a very cool book by Leslie Savan called Slam Dunks and No-Brainers : Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever. The subject is “catchphrases and buzz words spread by the media that are, she says, replacing thought with preprogrammed verbal responses.” Savan deconstructs the trivial expressions that pepper our expression with shortcuts and code and well, “no-brainer”ness. But as my colleague and I talked about the book, the culprit behind the “no-brain” mentality slowly shifted, at least in my mind, from “the media” to “capitalism” to “the human condition.”

I’m certainly intimately familiar with this more general human phenomenon from my own religious upbringing. It was in my high school days that I began to identify the easy, “no-brainer” shortcuts in the religious language of my church community. “Jesus is Lord,” “I’m redeemed,” and so forth–there are thousands of permutations–distance us from genuine experience with conventional formulations.

Buddhism does an excellent job of cultivating a skeptical attitude toward language (or perhaps, it’s better to say “Buddhism contains within it the potential for a skeptical attitude toward language”). I don’t doubt that Buddhist communities (being composed, for the most part, of admittedly unenlightened beings) have their own formulaic propensities as well.  But when a core assertion is the inherent emptiness and interdependence of all phenomena, it’s maybe just a little bit harder to get wrapped up in the thing-ness of language.
This all seems germane to Lotus & Lily’s upcoming discussion of John P. Keenan’s commentary on the 8th chapter of Mark.  In that chapter, Peter professes that Jesus is the Christ. To which Jesus responds by giving “strict orders not to tell anyone about him.” However this might be conventionally understood (and it seems to me that even within conventional contexts this passage is a little puzzling) Keenan uses the passage to draw out some interesting implications:
“The point does not lie in identifying who Jesus is, and so he neither accepts no rejects Peter’s statement because it does not mean very much. Who Jesus is comes clear only in the unfolding events of his dependently co-arisen course, in the events of his passion, death, and resurrection, and even then it has no fixable definition.”

And further, “Peter’s confession is indeed the central turning point in the narrative, because it calls into question the very need for definitions….There is no ready-made essence of christ, no imagined understanding of who Jesus is. Only then, in the emptiness of all essence, can one confess that Jesus is Christ.”

Verbal confessions are not, as Keenan would say “the point”.  Fixed formulations are not the point.  The point, Keenan emphasizes again and again, is “conversion”: the shift of consciousness from fixations and obsessions and delusion into a  present-moment awareness of that which exists beyond names and forms.

In my Buddhism classes every week, we grapple with the question of path, of journeying toward a more awake state, using (of course) our own verbal apparatus and the conventional linguistic apparatus of Buddhist teaching as we do so.  It’s absurd, comical, impossible.  And yet there is somehow a mysterious progress being made anyhow, perhaps by force of intention, perhaps because of the inherent-beyond-words wisdom of the tradition, perhaps because, underneath the language, there is a “directly pointed out” form knowing: not referred to but experienced with immediacy and directness.

I’m reminded of the experience I had at Easter in 2001 when I was confirmed in the Episcopal church.  As part of that ceremony the Bishop, Vince Warner, anointed me with oil.  A not inconsiderable part of the power of that for me was the fact that, at least according to the tradition, that physical touch of consecration has been handed down, bishop to bishop, from Peter Himself, and of course, before him, from Christ.  Amidst the muddle of my Christian identity and practice, resistances and obsessions, the sense of being directly contacted in this way has been quite helpful.

In a sense, this mode of understanding is a “no-brainer”.  But, unlike conventional language, rather than turning the mind all the way off, perhaps direct contact, in whatever form, Buddhist Christian or otherwise, turns the whole person all the way on.

Comments(0)

At our Nalandabodhi class on Monday we were talking about the quality of determination and its importance to the spiritual path. Among the questions we were mulling is the relationship between determination and aggression: it’s easy enough to fall into “attack” mode, attacking the body, attacking the ego, attacking the journey.

Because I now have my beautiful bicycle as a new and wonderful teacher, I came up with an analogy I’ve been finding useful. The spiritual path is like riding a bicycle uphill. When I first got my bike, after a hiatus of about 25 years of bikelessness, I found myself approaching a hill (of which Seattle has plenty, let me tell you) with a certain amount of tension and anxiety. I would start pedalling furiously, run out of gas about halfway up, and wind up having to “get out and walk”, gasping for air and with aching legs.

Though I’m no cycling stud and probably never will be, I am starting to take a different approach: start out slow, take my time, and gradually find a rhythm that works and that I can sustain. Surprisingly, after a while the hill seems to get just a bit easier, as though I am somehow drawing strength from the work rather than having the work sap my strength from me.

It may be that spiritual formation has a similar quality: it doesn’t come all at once.  But given time and rhythm and patience, it begins to be a source of strength and nurturance, rather than being an oppressive burden.

Both Christianity and Buddhism have their notions of sudden enlightenment, instant salvation.  While these experiences may be true and real, I am partial to the water-dripping-on-stone analogy for progress.  It takes time, and going too fast causes many more problems than going too slow.

At least, that’s what my bike has been telling me.

Comments(0)

Let’s see, I’m riding my new bike around and reading I John in the mornings and using that experience to practice the Tibetan Buddhist lojong practice of “taking difficulties onto the path,” and mulling over the Mahayana Mark for Lotus & Lily this Sunday (“Jesus is not the Christ, therefore Jesus is the Christ,”) and earlier this evening I enjoyed watching American Idol for the first time, and while I’m writing this I’m listening to the little ditty I created with Reason a few minutes ago. And all in all feeling pretty pleased with myself, and figuring the Deep Thoughts can just wait for another day. Which in a sense is of no use at all, and on the other hand is fine, just fine.

There’s a Guan Yin posture called Royal Ease that suits my mood today. Just wait until tomorrow, when it all falls apart…

Comments(1)

Just so no-one can accuse me of being obsessed with the Book of Revelation, here are few thoughts on the Lotus & Lily group’s upcoming session on The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Interpretation.

And Jesus said to them,”…Do you not yet understand, still not realize?  Are your hearts hardened?  Have you eyes and do not see, ears and do not hear?” (Mark 8:17-18)

Hardness of heart.  Another one of those phrases that sticks in my brain from Sunday School days.  Like Pharoah refusing to let the Israelites go, the disciples are here represented as getting stuck in a stiff and unpliable way of being that prevents them from understanding.  Keenan says, “the point is not that one excludes new images or insights, but that one clings to and reifies images, whether old or new.  Hardening of the heart is the externalization of meaning into images and ideas, as if they were cages of reality.”

Ah.  So it’s not being rebellious against the will of the Almighty?  Hmm…this will require a shift in my own thinking about the term “hardness of heart”.  I must say, I like it: it gets us off the chessboard (God:good:white squares; rebellion:bad:black squares) and into directly relating with suchness, beyond images and concepts.

The above passage takes place within a fascinating narrative sequence which moves from the feeding of the 5,000, to Jesus’ refusal to give the Pharisees a sign of his power, to the present passage where he castigates the disciples for missing the significance of the miracle of the feeding.  It’s been easy enough for me to read this passage and get annoyed at Jesus (yes, I know, it’s shocking!) for being inconsistent and unreasonable.  But Keenan helps me impute a bit of Zen-style wisdom teaching here.  The point is not miracles or no miracles; the point is to help train the mind beyond its habitual grasping–to shock it, in a sense, into a new state of awareness.  Again, I like it.

Comments(0)

A couple of people (thanks, John and Victoria!) pointed me to a new book coming out on the Book of Revelation (a topic of current interest on this blog):

“Revelation ~ Awakening the Christ Within” (ISBN 0977851702); An interpretation of the Book of Revelation as the Christian book of death and rebirth, is now available for preorder (pub June 1) at vesicapress.com or amazon.com.

Comments;
“…a revolutionary interpretation of this ancient text as an esoteric manual of spiritual awakening” -Timothy Freke, coauthor of “The Jesus Mysteries” and “Jesus and the Lost Goddess.”
“A bold, powerful, deeply considered disclosure of the spiritual meaning of the biblical Book of Revelation” –Saniel Bounder, author of “Healing the Spirit/Matter Split.”

Hard to tell where this is at from a Buddhist perspective, but it certainly seems worth checking out. I would love to discover that my crabby comments about the BoR over the past couple of weeks can be taken up into a more expansive and integrative interpretation!

Comments(4)

The last few weeks I have been reading portions of the Book of Revelation in my daily practice, and just completed it this morning. Its vivid and extravagant imagery could make a Tibetan Buddhist happy, and might make fodder for a mighty fine tantric practice. Even given its grim dualism (it’s practically continuous: angels and demons, the whore of Bablyon and the woman clothed with the sun, the chosen few and the suffering damned), there is rich imagery to stimulate an imaginative response, which is at least part of what tantric Buddhism is about.

The part that’s missing, though, is the phase in tantric practice where all the imagery is dissolved into pure white light. The Book of Revelation doesn’t do that. Right up until the end the good guys stay good and the bad guys stay bad: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righeous still do right, and the holy still be holy.” (22:11)

From a Buddhist perspective, dualism is a game–at times a useful game, as in the practices of “relative boddhicitta” I’ve been learning about at Nalanda West. A practice such as tonglen, giving blessing and good karma and taking on suffering in exchange, is recognized as a thoroughly dualistic practice. But within Buddhism it’s explicitly understood as just a tool, a skillful means to trick and entrap the mind–in fact, to make use of the mind’s dualistic tendencies to transcend those very same tendencies.

John P. Keenan’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark proposes a similar understanding of Jesus’s teaching. But it’s hard, if not impossible, to see the Book of Revelation that way.

Whatever else it might be, for me reading Revelation is a trip down memory lane. Evangelicals love the book (think of the success of the “Left Behind” series) and we read and thought and talked about it all the time when I was a kid. There may be no book that more perfectly captures the ethos of my religious milieu. It’s no wonder that I get a little wound up and take things to extremes!

This passage in particular (21:23, 27) stirred up the Sunday School memories:

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb….But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

The Lamb’s Book of Life! Wow, does that take me back! I sweated a great deal about whether my name was in there or not; it was clear that I wasn’t to be fooled by the apparently innocuous, even fuzzy, qualities a Lamb might have. If I wasn’t on the list things were not going to go well for me.

Reading Revelation makes me think about the church people I grew up with, but it also makes me think about the author and the people he wrote it for. There is an unmistakeable anxiety, a millennial wishfulness that brings to mind the extreme Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism of today. Perhaps there’s some room for compassion for the text and its creators, and its readers both ancient and modern. Maybe there’s a way to recognize the dualism and make use of it (skillful means, remember?), and transform it–not in a condescending way but with good grace and good cheer and an open heart.I mean, how hard could that be?

One other story I have to tell:

My dear wife was raised Catholic and, like most Catholics of her generation (and umpteen generations before them), she grew up untroubled by any particular knowledge of Scripture (the missal and the catechism were perfectly good enough, thank you very much). So when I mentioned the passage above to her, the one engraved on my heart and brain, she thought I’d said “the lama’s book of life”. Now there’s a book I’d very much like to see myself written up in!

Comments(1)

Last night I participated in “Chant: An Interfaith Crossroads” at Seattle Unity Church with Devorah Gottesman and Gina Sala.  I have done a fair number of interfaith hootenanies in the past several years (including the legendary Mystical Chant happenings at St. Mark’s from 2000-2002, and the sublime 24-hour chant for peace at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Oregon).  Lots of good stories to tell about all those events, from the afore-mentioned sublime to the patently ridiculous.  Someday I hope to write a book called “Tales from the Interfaith Frontier”.

Last night’s event was something pretty special, both for what it was and for what it was to me.  What it was: three potent chant practitioners (well, two of them anyway, plus one white-boy piker) sharing and interweaving the music of the Jewish, Hindu, and Christian traditions.  The crowd was small, maybe 75, but there was a very good sense of connection in the room.  Certain moments were exquisite.  After taking turns with invocations, we each spent about 20 minutes exploring our own roots (in various, more and less traditional ways), and then concluded with an improvised collaboration, singing snippets of chant in Hindi/Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Latin in turn, building on one another’s energies in a very satisfying way.

A favorite moment for me, and certainly germane from a Buddhist-Christian perspective: as we were trading chants in the improvised section, Gina sang a bit from the Gospel of John (was it “I am the vine and you are the branches”?)–very characteristic of her effervescent and somewhat unpredictable performance style!  So I felt I needed to migrate away from the Latin chants I had been doing (I didn’t want it to seem like the Christians were monopolizing things, as they usually do).  And wound up with Joan Borysenko’s version of the Buddhist metta prayer:

May you be at peace.
May your heart remain open.
May you awaken to the light of your own true nature.
May you be healed.
May you be a source of healing for all beings.

And that’s the way it ended.  Very nice.  I was very happy to get a Buddhist word in there.

Much more to be said about the vibrational, energetic, cultural possibilities and implications of our gathering to make music from different religious traditions together.  To me, each of these events is one small piece of a very large project that will probably take centuries to unfold.  It’s a privilege to be part of such a massive and centrally important project.  In its own way, this blog is part of the same work;  from time to time, though, it’s most excellent to gather with some folks and party about the possibilities.

For me personally, the evening was a big, big stretch.  I am unaccustomed to standing on a stage surrounded by drummers and a bassist and boom mikes and cords everywhere, singing into a mike myself, seeking to hold the exquisite fragile energy of Gregorian chant in the midst of a great deal of energetic activity going in many different directions at once, not least of which is the work of two gutsy experienced performers.   And just to make things a bit more interesting, I chose the occasion to debut some ambient/electronic backing tracks I’ve been fooling with.  Pretty modest, a first step only, but that added quite a bit to my, well, fear factor.  Nope, I don’t usually do that.

So for my willingness to step out and take risks, I give myself a big A+.  And the results were generally pretty good.  The crowd was happy, and I was happy.

By the way, to get ready I did a couple of vocal coaching sessions with my long-time chant collaborator Bill McJohn, who is a phenomenal undiscovered talent as a coach, which didn’t surprise me a bit–it was lovely to be able to prepare with his help.  I’m also grateful to the ever-professional Erin McGaughan of Unity for pulling the event together and holding the space with enthusiasm and aplomb.

And finally the other thing I debuted was my new Virgin of Guadalupe shirt, which I got at a wonderful Latino clothing store in Burian, WA.  It was very helpful to stabilize me and keep me grounded in the midst of this high-energy and fairly buzzy scene.  Nice!

Comments(0)

This verse has been running through my mind lately.

“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I come home lately from my Buddhism class, feeling irritable and impatient, having all my buttons pushed, and wonder if it’s all worth it.  And then I go out into the perpetual train wreck of life, the striving and desire and consequent suffering, the delusive conventions, the roller coaster of emotions.  And I think, “Where else will I go?  Where will I find a better way to relate to what is so?  How else could I find a more useful set of tools?”  The dharma is becoming, for me, the word of eternal life.  It just continues to make sense, to illuminate and liberate my experience almost every day.  Never mind the fuss and bother of whether or how I fit into this community or the other teacher or the way that meditation hall burns its incense.  Where else will I go?

Comments(0)

Sometimes it just works great: we had a wonderful discussion at Lotus & Lily last night on the “Mahayana Mark” material I’ve been posting about the last few days.  For many of us, anyway, there was a sense of wonder and hopefulness to find buried in the Gospel text a teaching about emptiness, impermanence, and the possibility for liberation.  Something like a TIbetan Buddhist terma, buried for centuries and just waiting to be discovered.

By contrast, Nalandabodhi classes have been dry for me lately.  I feel hungry to practice, not discuss; I love reading the texts we are studying but what feels like endless discussion is leaving me cold.  Though I could easily have imagined myself as a clappy-happy sangha member just a few weeks ago, my pilgrim soul, or my cussed stubbornness, or something, is rattling around in a dissatisfied way.  We shall see.

It reminds me of this story: five years ago this Easter I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, Seattle’s St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle to be exact.  It was an important experience going to confirmation classes for several months, having the opportunity to re-encounter and re-engage with “the church” in a very supportive and expansive environment.  I do like the “Episcopal triad” of faith, reason, and tradition.  A couple of weeks before the confirmation service I was talking to one of my friends at the Cathedral about the process, and hit upon a useful metaphor: “My path at this point” I said, “takes me into the Episcopal church.  I don’t know where that path will lead me, but the important thing is not where it leads me but that I keep following my path.”

At the time I felt hopeful that, for the sake of comfort, security, and a sense of accomplishment, the path would stay within the general vicinity of the Episcopal Church USA, taking me into deeper and more satisfying interactions with the religion of my youth in new and meaningful ways.  But I was also well aware that it was just as likely the path would veer off again, outside the dotted lines, leaving me once again in terra incognita.

And sure enough, after that romantic interlude it wasn’t too many months later that I had a vision in the desert; there came another close encounter with Buddhism; and the path under my feet took me away from the church once again.

Not sure if that’s happening now, but it might be.  I am watching, and waiting, and wondering.

Comments(0)

One more set of thoughts about Keenan’s “The Gospel of Mark: A Mahayana Interpretation” before the Lotus & Lily discussion tomorrow.

Consider the story of the calming of the sea, Mark 4:35-41.  The story ends with the disciples saying, “Who can this be?  Even the wind and the sea obey him?”

I vividly recall considering this story in my high school days, when my involvement in bible quizzing led me to memorize most of the gospel of Matthew.  I identified with the disciples in their awe: “Who is this man?” translated to “Wow, what an amazing supernatural guy!  I’d better commit my life and heart to Him!”

But Keenan, who never gives the disciples a break, flips this around: “[The disciples'] response is fear for their own well-being and, consequently, a view of Jesus as a messiah who might deliver them from such fear.  And so the sea he is really trying to calm remains troubled by fear and self-clinging.”  And again, “The calming of the sea is yet another parable, suggesting that faith affords one security over the sea of demonic chaos by abandoning security.” (136)  Abandoning security: not focusing attention on Jesus as a wonder-working savior who makes everything right, but on his radical call to individuals to calm the stormy seas inside ourselves.  In this context, Jesus’ comment “Why are you such cowards?  Have you still no faith?” is not to be understood in the conventional sense, which would be “Don’t you get that I’m here and You’ll Never Walk Alone?” (note to seekers of high-quality kitsch: you must click that link).  Rather Jesus is saying “Don’t you know that this storm is simply a mirror of your own confused thinking, and that you have within yourselves the ability to cut through this illusion and calm the sea within yourself?”

Zowie–that is a powerful transformation of the conventional understanding!   It cuts through the pious niceties like a buzzsaw.  I like to think that’s just the way Jesus would want it.

Comments(0)

The DPR (as the Nalandabodhi gang likes to call the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche) is on a roll: here’s a good thought from the study curriculum:

“It’s not that you go to Buddha or a bodhisattva and tell them, “I’ve sinned, please forgive me.”  There is no such necessity in Buddhism.  Why?  Because they can’t forgive you anyway, they have no authority.  They are powerless.  You are the only person in charge of this.  If there is anyone who is going to forgive you, it’s going to be you.  And how?  Though developing more awareness.  Forgiveness is nothing but awareness.”

I can imagine people in the Christian tradition I grew up in saying, “see?  He even admits it: Buddhism has no real power–offers no real forgiveness.”  But I say (OK, it’s a bit of  schizophrenic dialogue, since it’s really just happening inside my own head) “But look at the wisdom of the definition: forgiveness is awareness.  When we wake up to the true nature of reality, untangle the threads of karma, of causes and conditions, then the knotted-up experience of guilt falls away and liberation blossoms.”

I find the “forgiveness is awareness” formulation particularly rich because forgiveness is a foundational concept in Christianity, as awareness is a foundational concept in Buddhism.  But in order to connect the two, there is this question of relationship: forgiveness is relational, while awareness takes place within the individual.  No Bodhisattva can forgive you–that’s emphasizing the interior aspect.  “But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9, imprinted on my brain from probably 3rd grade sunday school)–that’s emphasizing the relational aspect.  Personally I find the former liberating and thrilling and spacious; I find the latter confining and limited.  I know there are plenty of others that experience it as freedom and salvation.

Interior versus relational: that may sum up a key distinction.  So can “forgiveness is awareness” be turned around, from a Christian perspective, to read “awareness is forgiveness.”  I think that, however profoundly we might define “awareness”, that doesn’t quite ring true within the Christian framework.  Seems like there has to be a gift in there someplace.  If Buddhism is about the sharing of gifts (and I think it is), then it’s not to be found in this context.

Comments(0)

Considering there’s a whole magazine dedicated to the question “what in enlightenment?”, I’m not sure this post is going to live up to its title.  However, the question comes up over and over again in Keenan’s “Mahayana Mark” (and in Lotus & Lily, for that matter).  The notion of Jesus as teacher of enlightenment is, I think, central to Keenan’s work: every healing story and teaching episode, and even the passion itself, is seen as a finger pointing to the possibility of awakening to the true nature of reality.

Talking (once again) about the contrast between Jesus’ awareness and the disciples’ blindness, Keenan remarks, “Other-dependent conciousness is characterized by a twofold process: its initial proclivity to grasp images and ideas as it seeks security in a radically impermanent world and, upon awakened conversion, its recovery of the original purity of joy and zest in celebrating that very impermanence.” (134)

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche provides a helpful explication of the three-fold nature of enlightenment in the Nalandabodhi study curriculum:

• Realizing the true nature of emptiness – (the dharmakaya or “truth body”)
• Manifestation of enlightenment in the form of joy, bliss, and luminosity – (the sambhogakaya or “enjoyment body”)
• Manifestion of enlightenment in this-world solidity – (the nirmanakaya or “created body”)

All three of these terms are present in Keenan’s formulation.  But I must say that, despite this passage, at times I think Keenan’s philosophical approach to Mahayana Buddhism fails to emphasize that middle term, the luminous and joyful aspect of enlightenment.  This could be because of his primary source for Buddhist understanding, the Japanese Buddhist writer Gadjin Nagao’s Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy.  This is a book Keenan translated himself and I’m not familiar with the author’s background or specific orientation.  It may be that the joyful/luminous aspect is particularly found in the vajrayana, tantric stream of Buddhism which is so prominent in Tibet (where my current teacher comes from).  Not sure about that (I’m in over my head, Buddhist philosophy-wise) but sometimes Keenan’s version of enlightenment seems a bit dry and careful.  I find myself missing the (literal and figurative) passion, the sense of abandon and risk I find in the story of Jesus, the wildness of John the Baptist, the wonderment and strangeness of the miracle stories.

One of the things that has become clear to me from my Nalandabodhi studies is that the path to enlightenment has many different overlapping, and at times contradictory, layers.  There is room in such a world for the primarily philosophical.  But as I work through Keenan’s book again, I long for a multiplicity of Buddhist commentaries on Christian scripture, teasing apart layers of depth, celebrating the diversity of the 10,000 gates to the dharma in the kaleidoscopic panoply of metaphor, story, wisdom and blindness that infuses the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

OK, I’m digressing.  But if Christian scriptures contain coded in their pages somehow the story of enlightenment, how will we liberate its meaning?

Comments(0)

A few days ago I rewatched the film Walk the Line, about the lives, music, and (mostly) love of Johnny Cash and June Carter.  There’s a lot to like in that film, but all in all I found it sadder than I had the first time, though it’s got good Buddhist cred in the samsara-life-is-suffering sense.

But an early scene in the film has me thinking.  The young John Cash is talking with his brother Jack as they lie in bed in their Alabama sharecropper’s shack.  John says to Jack, “You must know every story in the Bible.”  And Jack says, “well, if I’m going to be a preacher I need to know all those stories.  How are you going to help people if you don’t know what story to tell them?”  I get this picture of Naaman or Jacob or Nehemiah or Zachaeus being prescribed like traditional medicinal herbs.  It resonates with my Protestant Bible-believing soul.  Who knows?  Maybe it would work…

Though both Buddhism and Christianity certainly have their stories (and as I have posted elsewhere, the Buddhist stories might be better), I think there’s a case to be made that stories are more fundamental to Christianity.  After all, the Main Event is just that, an event: a story that saves.  The Buddha’s story of enlightenment is a good story, an important story, an inspiring and instructive story: but then Buddhism heads off into the land of philosophy and practice.  In Christianity stories have a sacramental power to heal and to save (or, by contract, to consign to eternal flames).  Philosophy and practice might suffer, but the stories are always there.  Something about hearing Jack Cash say that was moving and hopeful, maybe, or foolish, maybe. 

I’m reflecting on stories also because of John Keenan’s explication (in the Gospel of Mark: a Mahayana Interpretation) of the parables of Jesus: stories presented in the context of a profound mistrust of language, language pointing beyond language, language subverting language.  In his introduction he says, “By his use of metaphor and irony, paradox and ambiguity, all surrounded by an abiding opacity which veils both the beginning and the end, Mark accomplishes in narrative what Nagarjuna was effecting through dialectics: the emptying of expectancies and a tensing of consciousness which may work to trigger awakening.” (17)

Stories as sacraments.  Commenting on Mark 4:34, “He would not speak to them except in parables”, Keenan notes that Jesus’ teaching “was not without content.  That content of his word, however, is not presented as a viewpoint about reality or a perspecdtive on life…Jesus’ speaking brings the experience of the kingdom to manifesting speech, without presenting a verbal account of things.”  Speaking in parables, bringing about experience.  Like the touch of the guru, a direct transmission of direct truth, through stories.  A little later on, in the episode where Jesus walks on the sea, the story becomes embodied in Jesus himself: “it is a miracle story aimed at inner wisdom transformation.”

Comments(0)

Nalandabodhi class tonight: a practice session and discussion about tonglen.  Why does exploring this work make me so cranky?  When you study something for a year, I’m finding, you get to confront your resistances and frustrations at a whole new level.  I just breathe in, breathe out, let go, wash away my sins and the sins of the world, all at once.  How hard can that be?

Sometimes I wonder whether Buddhism or Christianity has the most insanely megalomaniacal vision of the world.  Why do I struggle so much with Jesus as the savior of the world, when in Buddhism we are all invited to be world-saviors?  Is that crazy or what?  At least he has heavenly credentials.  What have I got?

I had some idea earlier today about some other sweet thoughts to post here, but can’t find them any more, so am going with this fairly crummy and unspiring post instead.  A day or two ago I mentioned Chogyam Trungpa’s notion that tonglen could me that we let go of our authenticity and take on hypocrisy instead.  So this is my contribution to that work.  Ugh.

Comments(0)

Some reflections on Keenan’s Gospel of Mark, as Lotus and Lily gets ready to meet next Sunday to continue our conversation about the book.

The section we’re focusing on has mostly to do with parables, in particular parables of seeds, planting and growth. 

I have to admit that parables have always made me somewhat uneasy, specifically because of their multivalent and metaphorical meanings.  Don’t get me wrong: I adore multivalent and metaphorical, when it’s Shakespeare or Melville or Dylan.  But it doesn’t square particularly well with the positivist, rationalistic, sundrenched evangelical faith of my childhood.  In my hermeneutic tradition, parables were to be handled with care, strictly allegorized when mentioned at all.  I think theologians must prefer John’s Jesus with his philosophical pronouncements. 

Keenan has been helpful in encouraging me to take a second look at the parables, as for example when he comments on Mark 4:27-28, which reads: “Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know.  Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”

Here’s Keenan: “The mind in which the kingdom grows is not engaged in minute observation and judgment about the meaning of the parables.  Rather, while one is engaged in other things, awareness grows spontaneously, from stage to stage, without the person’s being aware of it at all.”  (Keenan, p. 129)  Hmm, that doesn’t sound like what my pastors used to say.  But I must say, my own practice today, chanting a Psalm and reading a scripture text, then letting it go to move into silent meditation, and then getting on with my day, feels a lot more like planting a seed and letting it alone.  This particular advice is in fact rather helpful as well, when it comes to the sometimes intense and sometimes, well, even a little burdensome Tibetan Buddhist notions (think: tonglen) I’ve been working with.

Imagine: the unfolding of the kingdom has an inherent naturalness, spontaneity, and grace about it. Keenan says, “Grace comes spontaneously in the abatement of all attempts to manipulate things.” (130)  This could apply to Lotus & Lily itself, and the whole Buddhist-Christian project – even wrestling with this rather gnarly text.

A few pages later, however, the other shoe (you just knew there was going to be another shoe, didn’t you?) drops:

“Although the seed grows spontaneously, it must be both planted and tended.” (p. 131) Oh.  OK.  But tended with an empty mind, without expectations.  Fertile consciousness, but which releases its need to try to manipulate or control outcomes, but which also stays awake to what’s happening there under the ground, in the garden.

Comments(0)

I am spending quite a bit of time with the Tibetan Buddhist teaching of tonglen, “giving and receiving”, which can be summed up by these two slogans: “gain and victory to others” and “loss and defeat to myself”.

Like a lot of other Buddhist ideas, this one at first struck me as odd and even a little sick.  But now that I’ve waded a fair way into the philosophy and ethical ideas of the tradition, it makes quite a bit more sense.  The notion, ultimately, is to loosen the bonds of attachment, the “self-cherishing” that makes us uptight and generally crazy almost all the time as we frantically try to hang on to identity, hang on to material reality, hang on to all the things that are, by their very nature, slipping away.

So there’s this dead easy practice of breathing in others’ suffering, breathing out all our good karma and blessing–just wishing, wishing, wishing for the benefit of others and that whatever difficulties they might encounter would show up right here, right with me, in a very literal way.  But I’m finding that doing it, even a little bit, is really turning my world and my own expectations and thought processer upside down.  Almost a perfect inversion.

So I’m pushing around this notion of giving and receiving, and as I do so I’m reading a very good text by Chogyam Trungpa called Training the Mind, which is all about this exact tonglen practice. And as usual Trungpa explains things in exquisite detail with precision and good humor, and there really is just no escaping it.  So here’s what he said that really got me today:

“We want to give our genuineness out to others and we want to invite their hypocrisy into us.  That is much more than just exchanging pain for pleasure.  It is the greatest way of exchanging ourselves for others, and it is needed in the world very, very badly.”

Yikes.  I’ve been walking around today, since reading that, with this almost constant awareness of how I play the game: I’m very into my own genuiness; I’m hypersensitive to others’ hypocrisy.  So I’ve been trying it out, just offering my genuineness (assuming, ahem, that it’s really there) and letting all those obvious hypocrisies–the ones I am just so expert at identifying and *judging* with such supernatural swiftness–letting them completely invade me.  And then out again to others as genuineness, something concrete they can actually use.  And of course what really seems to be going on is that this process simply opens you up and busts all your adhesions to self-righteousness and judgment (two things at which I am unfortunately very skilled).

One good day is, of course, a perfectly good thing.  We’ll see about tomorrow.

Comments(0)

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.

Comments(0)