Monday, February 19, 2007

Monday, February 19, 2007

The big picture

First, my aim is to speak from within my own experience. After many years of exchange with others on spiritual matters, it strikes me that this is the most vital responsibility each of us takes upon themselves as we meet each other face-to-face in mutual effort. Granted, in this case face-to-face means reader-to-blogger, but the responsibility still stands.

This idea of speaking from within our own experience seems so important to me that I considered writing a blog just on this subject alone. One average thought that legitimately originates from within one's own experience, from within one's own organism, one's essence, is worth 10,000 brilliant ones imported and grafted on to this structure we call personality.

So wherever possible I try to speak about my life and my work as simply and as honestly as possible. I cannot always be smart or clever or probably even honest, but I can do my best to offer you what I have, no strings attached.

Now, as to the overarching theme. I formulate it thus:

What is Nature?

Of course this is a huge question, and we can comfortably agree there is absolutely no possibility of answering it in a blog, or anywhere else, for that matter. However each of us can contribute to the investigation of this question, and in my investigation of spiritual questions, worldly questions, and questions of biology, I continually tend to seek the common threads that bind them together. Above all, I am looking for a piece of fabric that speaks to me about what we are and why we are here.

There is something vast and mysterious taking place within biological life on this planet. Life, in all its variety, functioning as vessels, taking in the trillions of billions of unique conscious impressions of life. If one pauses for a moment to understand the number of impressions being ingested -- yes, that's correct, ingested --and processed on this planet in any given moment, the idea is immediately staggering.

What is this process? What is it creating?

Consciousness is a single living organism; it appears as many different organisms to us, but both our imagination and our perception are limited by our scale and the brevity of our lives. This single organism has been developing and changing itself for billions of years through a process that we call evolution. It contains life and death within itself; in that fact alone it appears to have qualities better ascribed to Gods than to nature. And here, perhaps, the animistic religions had it right-- something resides within nature so much greater than ourselves that to call it God seems reasonable, even if, in order to do so, we have to transport ourselves to the level of galactic clusters and beyond to appreciate just how vast nature really is, and how far beyond any understanding man can ever develop.

In Dogen's "Sutra of mountains and water" (Sansuigyo) he expounds on the relationship between nature and Buddhist thinking. They are intimately related. Christ drew analogies from many sources in nature for his parables; again, it seems impossible to separate the questions of Christianity from the questions of nature. And Gurdjieff, with his vast structural analysis of the cosmos and everything in it, tied us inexorably to the questions of what nature is and what our place in it is.

For many years, it has been my belief that a careful study of organisms, both our own and others, can reveal relationships that will tell us a great deal about the various levels in the universe and how they interact.

We are much better equipped to understand the levels below us than the ones above us; perhaps that goes without saying, but I believe it needs to be said in a world where everyone wants to reach upwards to God before they check to see where their feet are on the ground. We are given this animal nature we dwell within quite specifically in order to explore what it means and to use it as a tool for our development. We need to develop an intimate relationship with it and understand it in as many particulars as humanly possible. It may be that in our animal nature and in our very mortality itself lie answers to questions that we believe we have to seek from the Angels.

Angels are vastly superior beings whose presence alone, were it not for their reassurances, might cause us to go mad. They are very busy with matters that will never concern us at our level, which is why they do not visit men often- you'll notice that they visit men almost exclusively when they are sent- and generally have little to say to them when they do. It is sheer arrogance on our part to seek their counsel or assistance.

On top of that, it is probably best we do not. Take note that in Gurdjieff's cumbersome but stunning classic "Beelzebub's tales to his Grandson" angels actually caused the original erroneous conditions on planet Earth- so much for any dreams about the infallibility of higher states of being- and the higher beings of Beelzebub's race resident on earth who tried to correct them botched the job in one way or another.

It is even more sobering to consider that in the end, it turned out that God had to go to the extreme of incarnating as a human and having himself nailed to a cross in order to fully understand just what was necessary to repair the damage that we humans have done to ourselves.

That is not to say Angels are without mercy, au contraire. Compared to us their mercy is infinite. But it is not a mercy we can understand, because it is unconditional, and everything about us begins with conditions.

Here on this planet, I do not wait for the Angels. I'd like their help, but cannot rely on it. I see that it is true that I am helpless, and- without the Grace of God- alone.

That Grace expresses itself within the context of nature and my impressions of it. In this organism, with this beating heart and these breathing lungs- if there is a God, this is where He will find me, within this vessel.

So if I am not examining the vessel -- examining its nature, examining its makeup, examining its contents -- I cannot know how prepare a place in my heart for God.

So there are the three legs of the stool:

To speak from within one's own experience,

And if you are thinking here that this man's reach surely exceeds his grasp, you are correct.

Mea culpa.

Dogen's water

In Christianity, water is understood to have the ability to become wine if a man reaches a certain level of understanding. The allegorical meaning of this, to me at any rate, is that the impressions of life, which flow into us like water, filling this vessel of our body, can begin to convey something much richer and more intoxicating into us. When the blessings of God fill us, this water of life becomes wine. The famous Sufi poet Rumi understood this well; too often he speaks of the presence of God as an intoxicant, a rapture, a magnificent experience of the ordinary which lies beyond the understanding we usually carry in us. So the idea of life as a rapture is not just an idea we find in Christ's love; the Muslims understand this the same way.

Let's take a look at what a Buddhist says about this sacred substance of water, which can be understood as the fundamental substance of our life.

Here is a quote from Dogen's sutra of mountains and water. I quote this text from the Shobogenzo, as translated by Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, 1994.

"In general, ways of seeing mountains and water differ according to the type of being that sees them: there are beings which see what we call water as a string of pearls, but this does not mean that they see a string of pearls as water. They probably see as their water a form that we see as something else. We see their string of pearls as water. There are beings which see the water as wonderful flowers; but this does not mean that they use flowers as water. Demons see water as raging flames, and see it as pus and blood. Dragons and fish see it as a palace, and see it as a tower. Some see water as the seven treasures and the mani gem; some see it as trees and forests and fences and walls; some see it as the pure and liberated Dharma nature; some see it as the real human body; and some see it as the oneness of physical form and mental nature. Human beings see it as water, the causes and conditions of death and life. Thus what is seen does indeed differ according to the kind of being that sees. Now let us be wary of this. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistakenly assumed the various images to be one object? At the crown of effort, we should make still further effort. If the above is so, then practice and experience in pursuit of the truth also may not be only of one kind or of two kinds; and the ultimate state also may be of thousands of kinds and myriad varieties."

Okay, that's a long a mouthful of words. Some words, however, are worth more than the other words, and Dogen's words happen to be superior in almost every case.

Here he is speaking of water on a number of different levels, and explaining to us that this allegorical term means different things according to the level of being one is on.

In particular, he is speaking of water as the energy, or prana, that saturates all of reality and gives rise to everything that is. Because Dogen almost always speaks of practice- not theory, no matter how much people want to read theory into his words- he is speaking here of various practices, inner practices which involve the experience and transmission of energies.

The string of pearls is an esoteric practice involving forming a specific kind of connection between centers. Seeing water as wonderful flowers has to do with the practice of opening your inner flowers, which I have spoken about before on this blog. The inner state of dragons and fish, who experience the majestic palaces and towers of inner silence, is yet another type of experience. In fact Dogen cites seven different kinds of experience here, each one of which probably relates to a center. All of them are worthy of diligent investigation.

He goes on to say "when we keep this point in mind, although there are many kinds of water, it seems that there is no original water, and no water of many kinds. At the same time, the various waters which accord with the kinds of beings that see water do not depend on mind, do not depend on body, do not arise from karma, are not self-reliant, and are not reliant upon others; they have the liberated state of reliance on water itself."

What is this water he speaks of? It is nothing other than what Christians call the energy of the holy spirit: that rapture which descends from above, penetrates all, and contains everything within it. It is "our Father."

No matter what tradition one comes from, no matter what practice one undertakes, no matter what form one believes in, when one comes to this point of work, there has to be agreement.

To me, the value of the Dogen text is that it places an understanding of the rapture of this sacred water firmly within the practice of weaving a connection between the inner centers.

Yes, perhaps I am obsessive: this is a subject which I will continue to return to over and over again. In order to understand this, we must abandon the analysis: we must instead turn all attention inwards and intentionally seek a very fine "something" that exists within the body and can be used for that purpose. There is a great deal of assistance available for taking in the right kind of food if we learn to use our attention in an inward manner. This is the kind of work that turns water into wine.

If we want to receive the presence of God we must prepare a place for it. That place has to be a vessel, and the vessel has to be able to hold a little water.

The potter who shapes this vessel does not work like an ordinary potter. He undertakes a very physical kind of work, using a different kind of mind. He does not use the mind that makes noise or the mind that resides in silence. He does not use the mind he knows. He uses the mind of the unknown-

shaping a vessel precisely designed to receive what is needed

-where it is needed.

And even then the work is not done, because every pot, in order to be durable,

must be fired.

Love to all of you today, now let's get back to shaping clay-

the absolute

When one looks this word up in the Oxford English dictionary, one finds that it has a bewildering number of definitions. Some of the definitions include the idea of something being perfect, completely sufficient unto itself. Another way of understanding the word is that it means "unconditional."

So we could take this word as meaning "perfect, sufficient unto itself, existing before conditions." Already to me this sounds like some kind of a distillation of Zen Buddhism. Yet this is the very same word that Gurdjieff used so frequently in describing what we generally call, in Christianity, God.

It's a big word, there's no doubt about it. And it turns out that we sell it short; we know little about the many different definitions it has, the many different ways that it manifests itself in usage; in fact, it turns out that we probably don't know what it means at all. Which is all too appropriate for a word that in some senses stands at the crossroads of all the world's major religions.

Not to mention the world of physics.

I'm going to use the word in a particular sense today in order to describe something we ought to be aware of, yet rarely are.

Over this past weekend, I found myself in a particular state of organic awareness that grows out of what one might call a cellular awareness of breathing. This state is not about recognizing the mechanics of breathing but rather the chemistry of breathing, that is, what is in the air that enters us.

Gurdjieff had a great deal to say about breath and air; he frequently explained that it contained the material needed for the growth of what he called the "kesdjan," or astral, body. I cannot say much about that, except to remark that some of the damndest strange things arise if one takes on the practice of intentional and conscious breathing of air.

Anyway, back to the point. This particular state I refer to above generally calls one to a greater awareness of one's mortality.

We are not aware of the fact that we are going to die. We claim we are, but the only place that this awareness resides is within our ordinary mind, which is a tiny fraction of our total being. This particular fraction specializes in theory, and has little connection to the emotional or physical parts which could, if they were working properly, also sense that we are mortal. Many of you who read the works of Gurdjieff are familiar with his idea that only a constant sense of our own mortality could call us to legitimate spiritual work. He said this, I believe, largely because any such "constant sense" would have to be born of all three centers- not just a resident of the part of us that construct theories about what we are, what we should be doing, and so on.

When the breath connects to the organism in a different way, the fact that one is in a piece of meat that is going to die becomes much more obvious. Dogen speaks a good deal of how we are "bags of skin and bones." I think he- and other Zen masters- were discussing the development of an awareness of this organic sense of mortality.

Now, you might say to yourself, "damn, that idea sounds depressing." But it is not depressing at all. If the sense of our mortality is developed through a connection between multiple centers in the correct manner, it is simply a fact that leaves little room for fear. I know whereof I speak, simply because when I was younger I always feared death greatly, and there are parts of me that still do. This understanding of death which I speak of is a different kind of understanding.

And why do I bring all of this up under the title of the absolute? Because, quite simply put, we are absolutely going to die. Every moment that passes by us is an absolute moment: it is as it is now, and it will never be again. Death is built in to time as intricately as cells are made up of molecules. One could say, without stretching the analogy much at all, that the entire universe is made up of an infinite number of deaths that proceed simultaneously everywhere. This may be a bit of insight as to why Gurdjieff called time "the merciless heropass."

In the same way that death is built into the universe, it is built into us. We have no real sense that every breath we take is a countdown to the one last breath of our lives, because we live in a theoretical part. We need to become much less theoretical in order to understand our mortality. Let me stress- the only way to do that is through a connection to inner centers with a more practical understanding.

The centers that regulate breathing -- the instinctive and moving centers -- are eminently practical. If we stop breathing, we die right away. Being in charge of that kind of activity conveys a real sense of urgency. The parts that do that work. They work because they have to work, and they know it.

We don't bother working because we don't know we have to work. And that is the problem in a nutshell.

If we can develop a connection to the centers that do know we have to work, maybe we can get somewhere. For as long as we dwell in theory, rather than in sensation and breathing, we are unlikely to believe we have to work in any organic sense.

Within the context of active, organic mortality, we can discover a sense of acceptance and we can immediately begin to understand our lives less conditionally. By that I mean we see ourselves less in the context of the conditions our theories impose upon us and more in the context of the facts regarding how absolute life is.

Every moment where we encounter the absolute nature of a moment in life, we value it better, we learn more, and our sense of humility can grow.