In asserting: God* exists, we merely bring down overpowering reality to the level of thought. Our belief is but an afterthought.

The transition from obliviousness to an awareness of God, is not a leap over a missing link in a syllogism but a retreat, giving up premises rather than adding one.

–Abraham Joshua Heschel

*or Brahman, Nirvana, Ground of Being, Absolute, whatever word stands for you

One ought to enter old age the way one enters the senior year at a university, in exciting anticipation of consummation. Rich in perspective, experienced in failure, the person advanced in years is capable of shedding prejudices and the fever of vested interests. He does not see anymore in every fellow man a person who stands in his way, and competitiveness may cease to be we his way of thinking.

At every home for the aged there is a director of recreation in charge of physical activities; there ought to be also a director of learning in charge of intellectual activities. We insist upon minimum standards for physical well being, what about minimum standards for intellectual well being?

–Abraham Joshua Heschel

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.

Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, …to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

–Abraham Joshua Heschel

Old age is something we are all anxious to attain. However, once attained we consider it a defeat, a form of capital punishment. In enabling us to reach old age, medical science may think is has given us a blessing; however, we continue to act as if it were a disease.

More money and time are spent on the art of concealing the signs of old age than the art of dealing with heart disease or cancer. You find more patients in beauty parlors than hospitals. We would rather be bald than gray. A white hair is an abomination. Being old is a defeat, something to be ashamed of.

While we do not officially define old age as a second childhood, some of the programs we devised are highly effective in helping the aged to become children. …Now preoccupation with games and hobbies, the overemphasis on recreation, while certainly conducive to eliminating boredom temporarily, hardly contribute to inner strength. The effect is, rather, a pickled existence.

Is this the goal of existence: to study, grow, toil, mature, and to reach the age of retirement in order to live like a child?

Old age is not a defeat but a victory, not a punishment but a privilege.

–Joshua Abraham Heschel

To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words. …The tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away.

Sometimes we wish the world would cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear-filling grandeur.

Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

–Abraham Joshua Heschel

A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit’s fine hairs, where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves ever deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” they yell, “we are floating in space!” But none of the people down there care.

“What a bunch of troublemakers!” they say. And they keep on chatting: Would you pass the butter, please? How much have our stocks risen today? What is the price of tomatoes?

-Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

Blessing the boats

(at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

–Lucille Clifton

On Writing Poetry

Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there’s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you’re writing your poem, there’s one less scoundrel in the world. And I’d like a world, wouldn’t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I’m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don’t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say “We loved the earth but could not stay.”

–Ted Kooser

I’m sharing this after reading Maezen’s post of today.

In 2006, out of nowhere (and everywhere) a woman contacted me after reading my blog. She had read about my attempts to get pregnant, the miscarriages, the misgivings. She had recently published a book and asked if I would be interested in a complimentary copy. I said yes, although I couldn’t bring myself to read it for quite awhile. Once I was pregnant with Claire, I did read it, devoured it with gratitude and gusto, and I repeatedly returned to that book for comfort and wisdom.

That woman’s name is Karen Maezen Miller. She is a Zen Buddhist priest, a wife, and a mother. I credit her with helping me remain sane and growing into motherhood. After Claire was born and began to exhibit colic, I was panicked and beside myself with agony. Claire wasn’t sleeping. Hub was doing his best but he wasn’t sleeping either. I was terrified I’d do something wrong. Many emails sailed between us — me writing laments, she responding with love. And even though we’d never met, Maezen offered a gift: to come up one weekend and help out with Claire so Hub and I could rest. We talked on the phone to discuss it, and it turned out that this was enough at the time; just knowing the offer was sincere and standing and hearing her voice in the wilderness helped.

I’d seen Maezen subsequently three times; in 2008 she and her daughter visited me and Claire briefly just before Claire’s first birthday; in 2009 at the Mother’s Symposium and 2010 at a one-day retreat. I read her second book. I pondered her thoughts about the importance of having a teacher. And finally, last weekend, I had my first weekend ever away from home and Claire. I drove to Sierra Madre to spend the weekend with Maezen and her family; I also attended a beginner’s meditation class and a dharma talk at Hazy Moon Zen Center. And there it dawned on me that I already have a teacher — Maezen! — and that without realizing it I’d become a student.

It is time to commit. It is time to practice. So I’d like to introduce my new best friend, the “cushion of kindness,” as Maezen calls it. The technical name is zafu. And when I sit on my zafu, this is called zazen. This is where the revolution takes place. Facing a blank wall, alone, silent, counting my breaths, and being awake.

I am not yet in a position of making a formal commitment. That will come when it comes. It is not lost on me that one of my favorite quotes, which I encountered in 1998, is by Hui-Neng, a Zen monastic from the 7th/8th century. “The secret is within your self.” It’s been there all along, waiting for me to look, and see.

The other watershed quote that inspired me to move from Syracuse to Austin in the early 90s was by Sir Edmund Hilary, organizer of a Mount Everest Expedition, and it too rings familiarly as I observe what is changing. The snippet that motivated me I have italicized, but the entire quote is priceless.

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his/her way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: What ever you can do, or dream you can; begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

My next trip to Sierra Madre will probably be later in the summer or fall, when they offer a three-day retreat at the center. So, hello world! My name is Kathryn and I am, at last, “abuddha” (awake).

Time is very precious. Do not wait until you are dying to understand your spiritual nature. If you do it now, you will discover resources of kindness and compassion you didn’t know you had. It is from this mind of intrinsic wisdom and compassion that you can truly benefit others….Moment by moment, we should look at life as if it were a dream unfolding….In this relaxed, more open state of being, we have the opportunity to gain the infallible means of dying well, which is recognition of our absolute nature.

–Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

I tried to answer. A symbol is a small picture that represents a thing that has a certain meaning. The letter T for the “t” sound, for example. Words are symbols. A red light is a symbol, telling people to make their car stop at it, while a yellow light means to slow down and a green one to go. A logo — like the eagle on the side of the mail truck — is a symbol for the company that is called the U.S. Postal Service. A picture of a heart means love. Candy canes are symbols for Christmas.

Then she asked, “What is the symbol for the universe?”

Wow! I told her there are many symbols — religious ones, scientific ones, artistic ones — but that the universe was sooooooo big that no one symbol can completely show what the universe is or means.

That seemed to satisfy her for that moment. More stuff for that growing brain to think about!

So we were listening to a song by Sean Colvin about Mary’s journey to Bethlehem. These days, Claire wants to know what every song is about. She asked about the song. I said it’s about a girl named Mary who journeyed a long way and had a baby in a Bethlehem stable and named him Jesus. Then she asked, “Who’s Jesus?”

Ummm… I said, “Jesus was a person who grew up to teach people to love each other, to be kind and compassionate and to forgive each other.”

That’s sufficient for a three-year-old, right? Then she asked, “What is Jesus’ Daddy’s name?”

Gulp! “Many people think a being named God is Jesus’ Daddy. But Joseph the carpenter was Mary’s husband and raised Jesus as his own son.” I’m the embodiment of finesse, I tell you!

Curiosity sufficiently sated for the moment, she moved on to another topic. She keeps me on my toes!

So, we are born and we grow. We encounter “splits” in our being as we develop and the ego grows. Who we are narrows into mostly mind. We focus on developing language, rationality, competency within our world. Language is so powerful, so immersive, that we tend to forget we are in it. We mistake it, and thought, for reality. Our culture, the biosocial band, is a filter of myths, stories, and worldview that we are born into. We have not only a self, but a self-image. The ego is “an identity that conceives of itself as a separate and inner entity, existing inside the body somewhere in the region of the head, and assumes it is commanding the body from on high.” Singh continues:

We all believe and act as if our identity were something with substance, with reality, and with enduring characteristics. In point of fact, however, our identity is nothing more than who we think we are at any moment in time, a compendium of inner desires, aversions, memories, and tightly interwoven beliefs. Identity is something that exists only in being conceived.

We talk to ourselves incessantly to establish a sense of our existence. We narrate our lives, issue judgments, articulate opinions, engage fantasies, and chatter to ourselves constantly in our heads. We believe our identity is our name, occupation, relationships, diplomas, biography, etc. We are capable of introspection and self-reflection.

When the adolescent ego begins to look at itself, it encounters an existential abyss of fundamental dimension. When it begins to look inside, it knows that it is, but hard as it tries, it can never quite grasp what exactly it is. In some vague and slightly nauseating, slightly terrifying way, the mental ego senses its incompleteness, the flimsiness of illusion upon which it is constructed. The abyss is quickly side-stepped.

And where do we go as we dodge away? We embark upon the identity project.

The identity project, which arises at first out of defensiveness against terror, becomes a lifelong endeavor. We choose a persona (or several over time) and focus on becoming that. It might arise from our profession or relationships. For example, I was a a perpetual student and later a therapist. I was a single woman and am now a wife and mother. We work to solidify and secure these concepts of ourselves. And you know what? We achieve great things in this.

The level of ego is an elevated and encompassing level of consciousness — quite an achievement for our evolving and beloved species. Certainly, hosannas can be shouted for what we have achieved in our identity projects wiht the use of our faculties and talents. We have become capable, technological selves, acting upon the world in ways that further our own evolution. We have quintessentially lifted ourselves by our bootstraps.

And yet, we also create our own dramas, our own suffering. We are embroiled in the soap opera, forgetting that we are not the show. We are more than that, but we have forgotten.

Most of us plateau here, until we are informed that we are terminal and have a short time to live. Then we face the fact that we (as defined by our ego) are not in control. Nor are we complete or whole. While this terrifies us, it is actually good news. We’ll get to go home. And for some of us, we find a way to go home before we leave our bodies, through a dedication to meditation over many many years.

This is an extremely simplified synopsis of the journey into ego in Singh’s book. As I read it, I had an understanding that exploded between my eyes (in my third eye?). I get what Jesus meant. He was trying to enlighten people, to help them understand that this is not all that is, but that as long as we cling to our “treasures on earth,” we’ll not see this. His death was a way of showing what the ego must endure — its annihilation — which is required before we can transcend to unity with the Ground of Being. And I knew this, growing up I understood this, but it was laden with fear and ideas of hell and punishment and worthlessness. Later on it was tarnished by the stupidity of the simplistic “born again” prayers/positions espoused by the churches I was in. It was like buying eternal life insurance. Say these words and all is forgiven, but the focus on “being saved” from my sins and from damnation was misleading and eventually rang hollow for me.

The mental ego must die before true life, whole life, heaven, nirvana is found. And everybody will enter whole life, find unity, because every body dies. Buddha said it. Jesus said it. Many prior and subsequent mystics and philosophers have said it. The message is we each will get there, and we don’t have to wait until we are dying to do so (or to try). We can arrive at enlightenment; we can be born again. What does that really mean? What is that really like? What is transpersonal consciousness? What is connection with the Ground of Being/God/Unity? The ego, the identity we cling to, is deeply established. It must actually confront its fear of death (which pretty much qualifies as hell for me) as we travel the path of return. We will only know as we go.

I don’t even know if I should be writing all this here. It’s not polished. I’m tired and have little time for finesse. But that’s what I’ve got, folks.

Radiant One, You shine within us, outside us —
even darkness shines when we remember.

Focus your light within us — make it useful!

Create your reign of unity now!

Create in me a divine cooperation: from
many selves, one voice, one action.

Help us fulfill what lies within the circle
of our lives; each day we ask no more, no less.

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us as we
release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.

Don’t let us enter forgetfulness,
the temptation of false appearances.

Truly — power to these statements —
may they be the ground from which
all my actions grow.

The above is a translation of the Lord’s Prayer from the original Aramaic. I find it liberating, and fascinating to see a greater truth in this version than in the stilted (though much simpler to memorize) version I grew up with. This was synthesized from a book of various interpretations entitled Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words, by Neil Douglas-Klotz. For a line-by-line comparison, see below.

Radiant One, You shine within us, outside us —
even darkness shines when we remember.
Our Father, Who art in heaven

Focus your light within us — make it useful!
Hallowed by Thy name

Create your reign of unity now!
Thy Kingdom come

Create in me a divine cooperation: from
many selves, one voice, one action.
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Help us fulfill what lies within the circle
of our lives; each day we ask no more, no less.
Give us this day our daily bread

Loose the cords of mistakes binding us as we
release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
who trespass against us

Don’t let us enter forgetfulness,
the temptation of false appearances
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

Truly — power to these statements —
may they be the ground from which
all my actions grow.
For Thine is the Kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever.