Lotus and Lily Field Notes

My hiatus from the Nalandabodhi class has been filled in part (in addition to adventures in American Transcendentalism and running feuds with the Book of Judges) by reading the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s book Wild Awakening, about which I have commented briefly here a few days ago.

A few days ago I was reading about the notion of guru devotion in Tibetan Buddhism (as a Nalandabodhi friend says, until the 50s it was known in the West as “Lamaism”, or worship of the lama). One one level, and as described in the book I’m reading, this is quite accurate. What struck me in this reading is the sense that devotion is a strategy for opening the heart and letting go of the ego, creating a sense of vulnerability that helps propel one past the confines of the limited self.

I get that, I think. I also feel cussedly resistant to the idea. Part of it is growing up in the strongly cult-averse religious culture I grew up in. Low-church Protestantism has all sorts of subtle manipulations in it, but I must say that it is pretty determined to avoid overt hero-worship or submission of any kind.

Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II was “hopelessly devoted” to Jesus. And some folks in Guyana were “hopelessly devoted” to Jim Jones. But can one make such a plunge without sacrificing all semblance of safety?

But can one get to the center of Truth without sacrificing all semblance of safety?

I have had my own peculiar devotional relationship with Jesus, from the moment when I was 4 and asked him to come into my heart (odd, I know, but such is the language of the evangelical), through various phases of adulation and resentment, to the current situation, which feels more like an uneasy truce or an unfulfilled relationship than a proper devotional state.

But here the “DPR” (as the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is known in Nalandabodhi circles) has very helpful advice.  The devotional relationship is, by its nature, rather unstable with quite a few emotional ups and downs.  By its nature: that’s very useful.  And really, to think about it, not very surprising.  What is more unstable than a relationship?  And why would a devotional relationship be different than any other kind?

I know this is just kind of a lame swipe at an important and deep topic, one I think about a lot.  Consider this a sketch upon which, one hopes, more useful comment can be based.

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At times I feel like I’m walking around with a separate headphone earpiece in each ear, each tuned to different stations.  On occasion the two stations synch up in amazing and cosmic ways; other times it feels like a bunch of noise–or maybe like I’m the victim of some sinister psychological experience to test…the…limits…of…sanity.

So this morning I was reading the beginning of the story of Samson, one of the most folk-tale-like stories in the Bible.  Magical doings of the first order, laced with a deadpan (one might almost say Jewish) humor, as when Samson’s parents are visited by an angel: at the end of the visit the angel disappears in a flash of light, and the husband turns to the wife and says, “Gee, I guess that was an angel!”

My Buddhist reading this morning was from the other end of the universe: an exploration of advanced metaphysical reasoning all of which has the purpose of thoroughly deconstructing all of reality–and then (of course) deconstructing the deconstruction.  Part of this technique is called “vajra slivers”, which is a rather irresistable phrase.  Someone should write a song…
Story and logic: I’ve said before that these two words might best typify the heart and soul of the Christian and Buddhist traditions.  Two radio stations: amidst all this apparent dissonance, I do wonder if somehow they’re playing the same song.

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I’m just starting work on the music for the Nalandabodhi “Spiritual Perspectives and Dying Well” conference in August.  A group of singer and harpist friends will be working together on a presentation of  music for the dying process from the Gregorian chant tradition.  Should be very cool

I have actually been thinking quite a bit lately about death; it’s something that has become such a core part of my Buddhist practice of the “Four Reminders”, the second of which says: “Death comes without warning; this body will be a corpse.  At that time the dharma will be my only help.  I must practice it with exertion.”

Maybe it’s my time of life (yesterday was my 47th birthday) but these days I find it deeply meaningful and satisfying to reflect on mortality.  I think both Buddhism and Christianity are particularly fascinated by it, maybe more so than most other religions.  Of course, all religions have a place for death and provide rituals for dealing with it.  But the central role of ego-death in Buddhism, and the centrality of Christ’s crucifixion in Christianity, make the two of them particularly morbid (and I don’t mean that in a bad way!).

It might seem ironic that my growing interest in and awareness of death comes in parallel with a clear experience of striking deeper roots of happiness than I can remember, and discovering a more satisfying, connected, and creative life than I could have imagined.  Did one experience cause the other?  Are they both arising in a synergistic parallel?

Dying well.  That is a very fine idea, maybe the best and most hopeful one there is.  Of course my two favorite traditions have their radically different takes on the topic, but in a sense both offer a sense of freedom in relation to death (whether though ultimate conquest–the Christian vision–or the Buddhist vision of skillful management and relinquishment of control).  I think this conference is going to be a lot of fun.  That’s right, maybe evenas fun as a funeral.

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Yesterday at my parents’ church in Sacramento I was privileged to hear one of the best evangelical-style sermons I’ve heard in years, delivered by Doug Stevens of Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church.  The sermons was billed as a response to the Da Vinci Code–and despite all my own crabbiness about that phenomenon, I gritted my teeth in expectation of some sort of hidebound orthodox response.  Instead, Rev. Stevens put forward a thoughtful and, I thought, courageous call to avoid the extremes of winning arguments or making an easy peace or running away.  He spoke on the passage in I Corinthians 9 where Paul says, “to the Jews I became as a Jew, to the Greeks I became as a Greek…” and talked about the thrill of being present in the moment, “unscripted”, as he said, to the workings of the Spirit in channeling our energies toward bringing forth blessing (and, of course, salvation, that illusive and delusive final end point to the process.  but that’s what one would expect, in my parents’ church, even from the best sermons).  In the end he didn’t talk about the Da Vinci Code at all, really, but rather described an encounter he had with a suicidal young man, how he listened, how he made space to be present to the situation, how he didn’t preach or push but just paid attention to what was needed and then, with care and humility and skill, responded.  It was truly a beautiful description, and I must say that the hair stood up on the back of my neck and that whole vision of spirit-led and spirit-filled life with which I was raised, that animated my spiritual passion through most of my teenage years, came pouring back in a delightful and joyful way.

What might be the best part of the whole experience is that I never, not at the time, and not now in reflecting on it, found myself freaking out and pushing the experience away or rushing toward it (hmm, maybe that’s just the point of what Rev. Stevens was saying).  But just letting it be.

Sort of like the way, during the whole weekend of parental 50th anniversary family dynamics, I didn’t need to resort to intoning mantras under my breath (as I have done in the past) or fantasize about acting out in some immature way (as I have done in the past), or just gritting my teeth and getting through it (as I have–usually–done in the past).  I somehow serendipitously managed to stay present and awake, to take in what was happening, to truly embrace my mom & dad and the whole situation with good grace and ease.

Interestingly, though to say the least it wasn’t a particularly Buddhist weekend, it was in a profound sense a most dharma-filled weekend.  On the twisty turny topsy turvy path toward maturity, or awakening, I find myself feeling a sense of accomplishment.  Things really seem to be easier.  My outlook has shifted.  It’s pretty subtle, but you know, when you are confronted with your parents and all their craziness and all your craziness in response, and you can just sit there with it and notice it and let it be what it is–that’s progress.

And when you can hear an evangelical preacher deal it out with wisdom and courage, and you can just say “amen” with no strings attached–that’s progress.

The last couple of days have been a whirlwind: I got back from California yesterday, we bid farewell to two lovely Lotus & Lily members who are moving to Brazil (!) at our meeting last night, and Victoria flies down to California for 10 days tomorrow.  Coming up are preparation for our summer chant retreat (now completely and totally booked, with 28 participants!) and an exciting August concert of chant music and harp at Nalanda West, part of their multifaith conference on death & dying.

One of Rev. Stevens’ points about the Apostle Paul was that he would have loved to be around and in action right about now, when all the certainties have been overturned and there’s this vivid chaotic spiritual marketplace and no-one has a clear corner on truth.  I like that a lot.  I like getting the good old feisty Paul back.  Sometimes, the old bastard is just damned inspiring.  As irritating as he can be, one could do worse than to walk in his footsteps.

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Things are a bit crunched this week: I’m headed to Sacramento on Thursday evening to help celebrate my parents’ 50th anniversary.  Little blogging likely while I’m gone.  Lotus & Lily meets on Sunday–if my flight’s on time I’ll be there to join in what should be a juicy discussion about Keenan’s “Mahayana Mark” commentary on the “little apocalypse” in Mark 13.  Very rich, interesting material, including Jesus’ pointing to “Love God/love neighbor” as the core practice of the kingdom of God, and the beginning of Keenan’s brilliant exposition of the quite pointed treatment of last-days prophecy as presented by Mark.  Mark’s Jesus tells us “sure, go ahead and fantasize about the end of the world.  But the only point in doing that is to get right back to the fundamental work of WAKING UP in the present moment.”  Very clever indeed.  Too bad it has been overrun by the (to my mind) far less skillful treatment of the same material in Matthew and Revelation.  But taken alone Mark presents a wise and useful outlook, one that is in fact quite helpful in our own apocalyptic times (today’s version: North Korea may launch a missile that could land right here in comfy old Seattle).

Just wake up, Mark says:  just wake up.

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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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Among the many twists and turns of my spiritual journey was a brief, intense, and profoundly influential period at Seattle’s Center for Spiritual Living, nearly ten years ago now.  CSL is part of the New Thought movement, a profoundly American spiritual phenomenon that has its roots in the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson and has been deeply influential over the whole realm of “New Age” spirituality and much mainstream American “positive thinking” as well.  New Thought is fascinating historically, but is also probably the most well-organized progressive/metaphysical spiritual movement in contemporary America.  Many interesting ties with Buddhism, though probably rather more Hindu than Buddhist in its emphasis on the “Divine Spirit” that lies behind all things.  For me personally, my encounter with New Thought was a pivotal phase in reorienting me toward my own spiritual journey, and was a proximate cause for helping me turn my attention more deliberately toward Gregorian chant as a spiritual, and not just a musical, phenomenon.
My New Thought experience was brought to renewed life today when I went to Seattle Unity’s Sacred Music Leadership Forum.  Unity is another New Thought institution which I’ve mentioned here before.  The event was almost entirely attended by Unity and Religious Science (the CSL “denomination”) music leaders.  I thought there might be a more diverse group there, but in fact it was quite a lot of fun to hear from folks about their experiences in their congregations large and small.  The organizer of the event, Erin McGaughan, is a truly wise and wonderful leader and teacher.  She was kind enough to include a slot on the program for me to talk to the group about chant, and the ways chant forms might have a place in their communities’ spiritual life.  We had a lively discussion, and though in general New Thought music tends toward the upbeat/gospel/contemporary, there seemed to be a general interest in the possibilities inherent in musical forms that involve slowing down and being present to the stillness.

I have taking my chant story to a lot of different venues; each of them has its potentials and its limitations.  New Thought adherents in general tend to be somewhat hostile refugees from Christianity, and also to be decidedly non-traditional (I guess that’s why they call it “New” Thought…).  Nevertheless, from today’s encounters I felt more uplifting and stimulating energy than the dreary sense of disconnect that has happened on other, seemingly more promising, occasions.  A few interesting possible connections emerged.

And I confess to feeling some long-forgotten stirrings of fondness for the carefully coded language of the movement: “Spirit expressing through me,” “as I think it, so it is” and so forth.  Amidst our fragmented and belabored religious landscape, there’s a sweetness and purity of intention that is really quite lovely.

In my encounter with the Center for Spiritual Living a decade ago I ended up turning away because what felt like an insufficiently rigorous attention to problem of ego in New Thought philosophy.  With my newly acquired Buddhist glasses–which give me a great deal of rigor (at least potentially) around the ego issue–I find myself feeling less uncomfortable with that.  I would call the NT teachings very useful tools for getting to what my Tibetan friends would call a relative level of truth.  Shunyata, the absolute emptiness of Mahayana Buddhism, doesn’t really get play–but good tools for relative truth are precious, and good tools that sprang up on American soil and have an American flavor might be very useful indeed.

So I am grateful to the 30 or so passionate New Thought music leaders I met and communed with today.  I think their work is an important and very interesting strand in the tapestry of current sacred music activity, and I feel delighted and honored to renew my acquiantance with that particular “scene”.

And who knows?  Maybe there’s some chant teaching I can offer to help provide these fine folks with some useful nurturance and support.

By the way, one of the most interesting possible outcomes of the day was the potential for this group to form a “sacred music leadership” nucleus that might attract chant practitioners (for example, the kirtan and zikr folks) to become part of a more explicit and conscious community of practice.  Given the currently fragmented and disconnected state of these activities outside of the narrow “silos” of each tradition, that would be something special indeed.

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This Saturday I’m participating in another event at Seattle Unity, put together by the lively and thoughtful Erin McGaughan.  The Sacred Music Leadership Forum is a gathering of music leaders from a variety of what I would call “alternative” spiritual communities, mostly (I think) of the Unity/New Thought orientation but possibly stretching beyond that.  I hesitated at first but then thought, “Wait a minute–I guess I *am* a sacred music leader,” both within my circle of chant students/retreat participants but also at St. James, St. Mark’s and beyond.  So it’s taking a bit of a shift of self-identity, or maybe a bit of waking up, to get me there.

You just never know, but I do look forward to meeting a new group of folks and seeing what happens.  I might talk a bit about my electronic music, maybe offer a bit of chant: we shall see.

Hmm.  Sacred music leader.  Interesting…

On the Buddhist front, during my hiatus from my Monday night class I am re-reading the beginning sections of the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s book Wild Awakening.  A lot of very familiar material from the class; one of my favorite sections has to do with his comparison of the dharma to pure, clear water that might be contained within a porcelain teacup or a glass mug or a styrofoam cup: different cultural containers, but the same pure water within.  It is a question of ongoing fascination to me what form the dharma will take on this North American soil.  At any rate I appreciate my teacher acknowledging the relativity of the Tibetan “container” up front.  A grounded honesty that I find consistently in his teachings and that helps his presentation feel safe and approachable and useful.  Which draws me in and then allows me to engage with the profound challenge presented with ever so much subtlety and gentleness.  Very nice indeed.

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Feeling fancy today, I thought I would try to sketch out a framework for the transformation of Christian texts into Buddhist teachings:

1. Direct appropriation. Not easy to do, due to the near-perpetual reliance upon God-talk in the Christian Scriptures. However, holding an expansive & empty view of “God”, some of the clearer teachings of Jesus could be a starting place.
2. Translation. Nan Merrill’s Psalms for Praying is a good example. She substitutes “Love” for “God”, which is pretty darned effective, and repositions “the enemies” that are so challenging in the Psalms as internal obstacles–kleshas, if you will. The Psalms lend themselves relatively well to this kind of poetic rethinking; other texts are more difficult to uproot from their native soil.
3. Archaeology. An effort, along the lines of the Jesus Seminar, to reconstruct the “original face” of scripture. Tricky business. And there’s still all that God-talk.
4. Incisive re-reading. This is what Keenan does, I think, in his Mahayana intepretation of the Gospel of Mark. Not so much an archaeological or translation activity as a creative rereading in light of an alternative perspective. At times Keenan has to shoehorn the text a bit to fit it into his paradigm, but it’s generally pretty potent and satisfying. Not many texts will lend themselves to such intense revisioning. Paul is tempting, John seems impossible.
5. Tantra. This is a huge arena of possibility, and not one I understand all that well. (So of course that makes it very attractive!) The basic idea, I think, is to engage with a text, not because of its surface meaning, but because of its energy content and potential. So even the most blood-soaked and violent texts, the vengeful longings of Psalms and Revelation for example, or–to cite another challenging example–even the most theologically challenging “sustitionary atonement” texts–are rich resources for energetic harvest and transmutation by the practitioner. One of our Lotus & Lily friends told the story last weekend about growing up in church and, from the agae of 12 or so, quietly refuting the Nicene Creed under her breath: “I don’t believe in God, the Father Almighty…” I love this charming story so much–but I think the tantric idea would be to give up this resistance and to plunge directly into the heart of the delusive notion of monotheism. Within that maelstrom of activity and energy are all the resources one needs to be propelled toward enlightenment. Just embrace it all, believe it all, accept it all–because all that Christian nonsense, as much as anything else in this universe–contains the energy you need to power yourself toward enlightenment.

Reading scripture is a tricky, multi-dimensional process. I don’t know whether this sketchy outline is useful as a starting point, or whether such a starting point is helpful even as a concept. I do know that I keep reading, and I keep my eyes on the page, and I keep waiting, and listening, and wondering.  At one time or another, and maybe simultaneously, all these come into play.

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Maybe you can explain it.  Here’s another little ditty.

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“History,” Stephen said, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

-James Joyce, Ulysses

One of the distinctions between Buddhism and Christianity that I have long reflected on (not that I’m the first to do this) is the difference between the social-historical milieu into which Siddartha Gautama was born and that of Jesus of Nazareth.  The overly simplistic version says that the Buddha was brought forth into the world in nearly ideal circumstances to present teachings and have them disseminated clearly: an orderly, settled, calm Vedic world that didn’t attach a great deal of importance to history in the first place (evidenced by the complete absence of any historical writing from the period). In the midst of this calm environment, he was able to simply and accurately dissect the bases of consciousness, and articulate this vision to a largely receptive audience.  Jesus, on the  other hand, came into being in the midst of the “nightmare of history”: a poor child in an occupied, fraught, and violent land, a land oozing with the fantasies of revenge and elaborate theologies of good and evil to explain all the blood spattered among the unyielding stones.  What could a prophet do in such an environment?  Compromise, or die.  Whether by choice or circumstance Jesus ended up dead, and regardless of the facts of the resurrection it is the death–brutal, shocking, seemingly pointless death–that set its stamp on the Christian religion, setting into motion centuries and centuries of violence, crusades, the inquisition, etc., etc.

No question that Buddhism has been the justification for plenty of violence; but it seems to me that these occasions are more blatantly and obviously contradictory than the Christian variety, which has its antecedents in Joshua and Revelation and many points in between. And as if to demonstrate that contradictions don’t last, Buddhist kingdoms have regularly collapsed on themselves, from Ashoka to the Afghan kingdoms to those of western China.

OK, its oversimplistic.  But I am convinced that Christianity lives in the shadow of history in a way that Buddhism, more or less explicitly, does not.  So being in a Buddhist-Christian space means being at the intersection of the historical and the ahistorical, the timebound and the timeless.  Impossible?  Contradictory?  Absolutely!

To come back to the Stephen Dedalus quote with which I opened: as a Westerner and  Christian there is no possibility of waking up from this nightmare of history; as a Buddhist, there is nothing to do but wake up.  But I think both the Buddhist and the Christian would agree that the “from which” of the quote is a bit mistaken.  The Christian vision is to embrace the nightmare with love; the Buddhist vision–or at least the Bodhisattva vision–is to release, abandon, and empty out the nightmare, but then return to embrace it again anyway.

So in this profound sense there is little difference between the path of the Buddha (with his long, long, careful seasons of teaching) and Jesus (who had to speak quick and cryptic and at times almost violently, eager to transmit the wisdom as rapidly as possible under challenging circumstances).  The question may lie in how well that message was received and understood by those who passed it along.

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At Lotus & Lily tonight we got into a lovely passionate discussion about the phrase “the Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (about which I ruminated a few days ago here).  There was a shared resonant energy about “ransom” and its implications (“o Lordy, won’t you please take care of me?”); Buddhism says: “nope, you’re really going to have to take care of yourself.”  Ravi Zacharias may not think that’s appealing, but our group was of one accord in preferring it.  What a nice bunch of folks to be working with!
Along the way somebody brought up the series of audio recordings by Cynthia Bourgeault, “Encountering the Wisdom Jesus“, in which, apparently, the death of Jesus is described as a form of self-emptying love, a pointless act that by its very pointlessness points the way to emptiness (the example given was O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi).  This sounds like familiar ground, promising territory to explore.

Speaking of new and interesting discoveries, the work of Bernadette Roberts seems very much worth exploring further as possible Buddhist-Christian “root texts”.  A Catholic mystic who fell, somewhat inadvertently, into the experience of no-self, she remains within the Christian tradition but recognizes that Buddhism may have the best language for describing what happened.  Another one to put on my list…

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Lots going on internally and externally, but reporting on it (and sadly, any comments on Keenan for this Sunday’s session) will have to occur within the bliss of silence.  We are heading out of town to La Conner and Bellingham (for my niece’s graduation) so this corner of the blogosphere will be in shunyata mode for the next couple of days.

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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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Geez, that is one sticky movie. I find myself having many wistful thoughts about what might have been with this film, what toxic mythologies might have been exploded, what liberating possiblities might have been opened up. The profound question skirted by both film and book is, “Well, if Jesus wasn’t the Only Son of God, what was he?” I don’t think “a family man” (even if true) is a very helpful answer. I guess we’ll have to wait for “Mahayana Mark: the Movie”–because Keenan’s interpretation of Mark is loaded with powerful ideas about just who Jesus was, or wasn’t, and what that might mean.
“For the Markan Jesus, the son of man is simply a man, come not to win a prime position for self, but to serve all and even to abandon all the structures of the self, to die so that others might live. And that is why Jesus is the eschatological bearer of the kingdom.” (p. 254)
This puts “dying that others might live” into a totally different context, one very resonant with Buddhist notions of bodhisattvahood. I’ve learned a bit about the Tibetan practice of “feeding the spirits”, which is basically the meditative act of one’s own body to demons for the sake of their liberation. Well, not exactly “for their sake”–the Buddhist notion is resolutely one of individual responsibility for liberation: even a Buddha can’t liberate another being. It is, rather a surrender of self because the self must be surrendered, in order to move closer to what is truly real, and to empty out one’s own negative karma.

Creepy as that might sound, it’s actually a potent representation of the bodhisattva vow–and very similar in kind to Keenan’s understanding of Jesus sacrifice. Not a cosmic saving event, but a necessary self emptying that points the way to liberation.

Yet in Mark there is still tough language to be dealt with, such as this: “For the Son of man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Though the “not to be served but to serve” puts a stake through the heart of all the “Jesus is Lord” language–still it is easy to get wrapped up (not in a good way) in the “give his life as a ransom for many.” As Keenan says, “This indeed is a frequent pattern of ancient and modern thinking: ascribing the evil we experience not to our own delusion or attachment to idols, but to God who punishes that delusion and idolatry. Thus one dies to assuage God’s wrath.”

Exactly, and thereby one becomes the Lord of All, before whom every knee shall bow–and that’s a blind alley. OK, so Keenan dances around the question for a page or two, then says, “[Jesus' dying] is a price paid to selfhood, so that, shocked by the deconstruction of all imagined hope, one might break through and be freed from bondage.”  And concludes with “In the Zen phrase, it is the attainment of one’s original face, one’s true humanness.  Ransomed means recovery of our pristine human condition.”

I love the emphasis on emptying out, the clarity of a Jesus whose act of becoming not-Jesus on the cross is the bodhisattva act that opens up realms of possibility for his followers.  Turning the dharma wheel, upon the wheel of time, just like the Buddha.  And just like the Buddha, not to do it *for* us, but to do it *as* as.  Way-shower, not do-for-er.

And certainly not Dad in pipe and slippers, bouncing little Sarah on his knee while Mary whips up a frittata in the kitchen.  I mean really…

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I love my home. I am listening to Mother of Compassion by Lisa Thiel, who is chanting “Namo Guan Shi Yin Pusa” at the top of her lungs(in a very lively and fun way), looking around my cramped office at the Gregorian chant manuscript pages and the Buddhist monk figurine (with a cell phone) and Chinese Kung Fu figurines and my Nancy Pearl librarian action figure and the Renoir postcard of a guy that looks sort of like me (at least V thinks so), and the stacks of chant books and piled-up audio equipment and the perpetual pile of receipts and bills to be dealt with–and I’m loving it all.
I think this mood is in part attributable to the fact that I managed to slide through my Nalandabodhi lojong test with a modicum of success, and in fact, as usually happens (almost in direct proportion to my degree of anxiety beforehand) I left the class feeling blessed and honored to have the glimpse of–OK, I admit it–some really, really good and useful teaching.

It is a bit of a relief, however, that our classes are on hiatus for a month, while Nalanda West has its annual sangha retreat. I can use a breather–BUT have decided to continue through at least this next five-week series, not take a longer vacation as I was considering seriously a few days ago.  The subject is “vajra slivers”: I have no idea what that is, but who could resist?
The Da Vinci Code is really sticking with me. My earlier judgment of it as a silly, miscast movie remains intact–but I am bemused by the notion of alternate views of Jesus. Keenan certainly has such an alternate view–though, as he says, the important thing in his interpretation is not what *actually happened back then* but the opportunity for wisdom that confronts us in the present moment as we encounter him, or at least Mark’s view of him.

The Christian world is intent on fashioning meaning out of history–that’s the whole orthodox Christian game in the first place. So the conspiracy theorists and the fundamentalists are pushing the same pieces around on the historical chessboard (making a game of it, so to speak). I think dharma, and wisdom, knows no time, and therefore that game becomes unnecessary. Keenan’s reading of Mark is, at times, startingly divorced from history–but I think that is its great strength. The miracles, the Transfiguration, the crucifixion, the resurrection: these are not events, but moments of insight into the nature of being: pointers to a reality that exists right now. “And except in parables he did not teach them.” The whole bloomin’ gospel is a parable.

One more thought (feeling prolix, made buoyant by that end-of-term feeling, as well as the ginormous chocolate chip cookie I treated myself to after class): I’ve recently had a close encounter with the First Epistle of John, as part of my daily wrestling match, er, devotional reading, of the Bible. My response can be summed up in one word: yuck. Dualism par excellence. There are some fine words in I John: “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” “Beloved let us love one another, for everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” But these thoughts are are always (always!) presented in the context of the evil, reprehensible opposite. There are sons of darkness. There are those who hate and are murderers. Those are not to be loved: the circle of love extends only to those in our inner circle. It is just this attitude, perhaps more than any other, that drove me out of the church during my teen years. No, no, no: the ethics of love (and yes, this is Lojong Love) is to love all: all sentient beings without limit. Anything less than that creates a kernel of dualism that ends in disaster. Clearly, even Jesus taught this, in the sermon on the mount and elsewhere.  Even (as we’ll be exploring soon in Keenan’s commentary on Mark) Jesus’ apocalyptic visions of the end times are not what they seem in this regard.  But whatever learning there is for me in John’s epistles, well, that will take a more enlightened consciousness than I’ve been able to muster so far.

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That’s actually a pretty good Buddhist song title, isn’t it?  I’d have to ponder the lyrics to find a dharma-ready perspective, though.

I’m feeling grumpy about lojong practice, though.  I don’t think it’s just because I have a test about this “seven point mind training” tomorrow at Nalandabodhi.  I can’t help but feel that creepy sensation of diminishing returns in the Monday classes lately.  Am I coming to another one of that apparently endless series of forks in the road that seems to characterize my spiritual path?  Do I need more direct guidance from a teacher?  Has the class’s energy shifted?  Or am I just cussedly resistant to getting down into the details of the practice of compassion?

I can’t help but think that this might be caused by my internal biological clock, which is hard-coded to go off at roughly 12-month intervals.  The alarm is now jangling like crazy, urging me to get off my butt before I get stuck, and find some new adventure to explore.I will give myself some credit for hanging in there and letting these questions slowly percolate (more like, say, hard candy  in the soft ball stage, than a bubbling pot of broth).  I’ve been in this rather uncomfortable emotional space with the class for a couple of months now, which for me is probably some kind of record. It’s hard to say what will emerge: a new vision for forward motion in a new way, fresh energy to persist in the path I’m on, more dreary waiting and unclarity (yum, my favorite ).

Keenan’s Mahayana interpretation of Mark is full of examples of what might be called the “emptiness of the way” (“the pathless path” has a nice ring).  The disciples are shown stumbling around in a fog; over and over again, they just don’t get it; they constantly have the rug pulled out from under them–and Mark seems to be saying, “This is the path, get used to it.”  Or as Jack Nicholson said, “What if this is good as it gets?”

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A most interesting Buddhist-Christian kind of day. This morning was a lovely retreat hosted by some Lotus & Lily members–a quasi-sesshin with sitting meditation and walking meditation. I don’t usually sit for that long, and it was very good. Things come up when you give them time like that. It took me most of the morning to get to “take difficulties onto the path”, but that by itself was time well spent.

This evening V and I went to see The Da Vinci Code. The nub of it for me is this: symbols never mean just one thing. Still, it was an entertaining if somewhat laughable thriller/whodunit. Mary Magdalene gets short shrift as pretty much a baby-making machine, though. Too bad the film (and the book) couldn’t have tipped their hat to her reputed role as a wise senior student of the Master instead. That could have made the whole thing much more interesting. I think both the Dan Brown zealots (I’m sure they exist) and the highly offended orthodox Christians look pretty silly getting exercised over this stuff.

Tom and Audrey seem confused by the material, as this photo indicates:

I hope to get back to Deep Thought Blogging one of these days.  Getting back from vacation and putting my life in order is taking a bit of doing.  I have a Nalandabodhi text on Monday night for which I feel ill-prepared.  It’s on the subject of Tonglen, a systematic form of Tibetan Buddhist mind training that I’ve commented on occasionally here.  For some reason, I’m not sure just what, the topic and me are not getting on all that well.  When I was at the Graduate Theological Union years ago, I nearly flunked an Old Testament Theology class through non-attendance.  I find similar resistances creeping up on me.  I’m doing my best to “take difficulties onto the path” (one of the tonglen slogans) but the wheels of my Buddist study vehicle are getting a bit creaky.  Not quite sure how to proceed, or whether to proceed, or what will happen next in my Buddhist journey.  You’ll be the first to know.

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After a lovely few days in Vancouver I am having that excruciating experience of being reminded how bloody complicated my “normal” life is. Why in the world do I carry around the 50 zillion things I carry around? I know that in time I will slip into the more-or-less comfortable rhythm of it all, and my busy mind will probably get back to dreaming up another few zillion new and different things to distract me from the discomfort of the first 50 zillion.

But in this moment I have just a touch of relative clarity: liberation is just one thing.  Not complicated in the least.  But, wait–maybe liberation isn’t a thing at all, in which case 50 zillion is no more or less of a problem than five things, or two things, or even one thing.

It’s funny: Buddhism simply doesn’t let you off the hook.  Absolutely no whining allowed.  Just be with what is and enter into it fully.  That’s all.

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