Hearing the Sounds of the World

There was a Bodhisattva who attained englightenment by concentrating intently on every sound he heard, so Shakyamuni Buddha called him Kannon.   If you know the substance of the mind Buddha, the very instant you hear a sound, search for this one who hears.  – Bassui, in Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen

There was a time when I aspired to be a scholar.  I suppose that aspiration began when I first found Sufism and read the ancient Sufi mystics and studied the words of my own teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan.  I read other scriptures, too, and mystical texts, and then I became a college student–rather late in life–and then a grad student and then–worst of all!–a Ph.D. student.  Buddhism always attracted me, and I read and read, but somewhere along the way, I lost my scholarly aspirations and just read and, often, wrote.  I have lost my taste for appearing to know what I’m talking about, and I admit I often don’t, but I know what moves me, and sometimes I want to share that.  So here (after my neurotic apology for poor scholarship) is what the footnote accompanying the above text says:

Kannon is a simplication of Kanzeon, which means “hearer (or receiver) of the voices (cries) of the world.”  Sometimes Bassui uses the term Kanzeon and sometimes Kannon.  (168)

You see, I can’t even be bothered to do a proper reference!   Anyway, there is, in the Buddhist cosmology, a rather loose and–to me–confusing system of Buddhas and Boddhisattvas, and a line of descent (and ascent) that I only vaguely understand and I have run across any number of versions of Kannon, including the female Boddhisattva, Quan Yin, “she who hears the sounds of the world.”  The story about her–sometimes him–is that having attained enlightenment, she was invited into the absolute God, but at that moment, she heard a baby crying somewhere in the universe, and so she decided she should stick around until all sentient beings had attained liberation.  Pretty codependent, eh?  The perfect example of women’s tendency to believe we are responsible for the happiness of all those within our various spheres (and I suppose if you’re a Boddhisattva, your sphere is rather large).  In theory, and in my experience in reality, that principle continues to operate, and it might be said that ultimately, it is the female principle in all of us, realizing our interconnectedness; that we can’t truly go anywhere unless we take everyone else along with us.  Clearly, this is not a popular concept amongst those yet to awaken, but it lies dormant and less-than dormant in all of us.  It appears in virtually all of those religious traditions we know much about:

“The Cross is not a shadow of death, but a sign of progress.” (Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity in the World, 1933, IX, 108)

And of course, to vow to save all sentient beings really is what the cross is about, yes?  To willingly take on the burdens of an unawakened humanity, that the universe might continue to grow and flourish.  Just now, I am having difficulty seeing all that growth and unfoldment, and perhaps it is when we reach those places that such willingness to lay our lives on the line for our ideals is the most important of all.  The writings of St. John of the Cross refer to “the dark night of the soul,” and alchemically speaking, this is the necessary cycle we all go through when we separate the transient from the eternal.  It is a dark night indeed for our mistaken constructs about who we are, and it feels like dying. I’ve been following this contemplative path of mine for nearly 40 years, and recently, a dear friend pointed out to me that there comes a point when we have to accept that the practices and teachings themselves become a limitation and must be dropped for an authentic meeting with the divine Being.  A dark night, indeed, when one realizes that ultimately, the dearly loved icons and ideals are meaningless in the face of the truth.

There is a story which explains this subject very well. It is of a king who had a parrot which he loved so much that he kept it in a golden cage, and always attended to it himself. The king and queen both paid such great attention to the parrot that everyone in the palace was jealous of it.

One day the king was about to go into the forest where the parrot came from, and he said to it, ‘My pet, I have loved you, and kept you with all the care and attention and fondness that I could; and I should like very much to take any message you wish to your brothers in the forest.’ The parrot said, ‘How kind of you to have offered to do this for me. Convey to my brothers in the jungle that the king and queen have done their very best to make me happy, a golden cage, all kinds of fruits, and nice things of all sorts; and they love me so much. But in spite of all the attention they give me I long for the forest, and the desire to dwell among you, free as I used to be before, always possesses my mind. But I see no way out of it, so pray send me your goodwill and your love. One only lives in hope. Perhaps some day my wish will be granted.’ The king went into the forest, and approached the tree from which the parrot was taken and said to the brothers of the parrot, ‘O parrots, there is one whom I have taken from among you to my palace; and I am very fond of him, and he receives all the attention I can give. This is your brother’s message.’ They listened to the message very attentively, and one after the other dropped to the ground and seemed dead. The king was depressed beyond measure. Spellbound, he could not understand what it was that he had said that should have affected the feelings of those parrots so much. The loving parrots could not bear his message. And he thought, ‘What a sin I have committed, to have destroyed so many lives.’ He returned to his palace, and went to his parrot, and said, ‘How foolish, O parrot, to give me such a message that as soon as your brothers heard it, one after another they dropped down, and all lay dead before me.’

The parrot listened to this, and looked up gently to the sky, and then fell down too. The king was even more sad. ‘How foolish I was! First I gave his message to them and killed them, and now I give their message to him and kill him also.’ It was all most bewildering to the king. What was the meaning of it all?

He commanded his servants to put his dead parrot on a gold tray, and bury him with all ceremony. The servants took him out of the cage with great respect, and loosed the chains from his feet; and then, as they were laying him out, the parrot suddenly flew away and sat upon the roof.  The king said, ‘O parrot, you betrayed me.’ The parrot said, ‘O king, this was the aim of my soul, and it is the aim of all souls. My brothers in the jungle were not dead. I had asked them to show me the way to freedom, and they showed me. I did as they told me, and now I am free.’

There is a Sura in the Qur’an which says: ‘Mutu kubla anta mutu,’ which means, ‘Die before death.’ A poet says, ‘Only he attains to the peace of the Lord who loses himself.’ God said to Moses, ‘No man shall see Me, and live.’ To see God we must be non-existent.  –Inayat Khan, The Alchemy of Happiness

Recently, our family watched the recent, acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire.  I couldn’t really see what all the hoopla was about, but I thought it was important for us Westerners to see just how prosperous most of us are in the face of true poverty and alienation from security of any kind.  And yet:  Indians are said to be among the happiest people in the world!  I tend to think that the more Eastern civilizations are immeasurably richer than we are in the truly important things this world–and the next–offer, and this is why they are such an example to us of real wisdom and happiness.  Unfortunately, the entirety of this film shows that they would increasingly rather try it our way for at least a time, for which I am sorry; but I was moved by the example of a people who live lives that few of us in this culture can even imagine, and continue to prosper spiritually and intellectually.  Perhaps the lesson here is that we are so much stronger than we can imagine, and each annihilation is an opportunity to move from strength to strength building, as Pir Vilayat often said, “a beautiful world of beautiful people.”

On the Urs

Pir Vilayat’s Dargah, Basti

When my Friend is away from me, I am depressed;

nothing in the daylight delights me,

sleep at night gives no rest,

who can I tell about this?

The night is dark, and long…hours go by…

because I am alone, I sit up suddenly,

fear goes through me…

Kabir says: Listen, my friend:

There is one thing in the world that satisfies,

And that is a meeting with the Guest.  – translated by Robert Bly

Following is a letter to members of the Sufi Order International by PirZia Inayat Khan, Pir Vilayat’s son:

Beloved Ones of God,

It gives me great pleasure to greet you on this auspicious day, the fifth Urs of our cherished guide and teacher, Pir Vilayat (may God sanctify his holy secret).

I remember visiting my father in the hospital following his stroke.  I will never forget his words: “I will not be able to travel any more, but I am working on seven levels of light, and I will be with them that way.”

“Them” was clearly a reference to us, the initiatic community of the Sufi Order, to whom my father had dedicated his long life.  He had traveled constantly for our sake, but now he recognized, ruefully, that this would no longer be possible.

Yet he refused to abandon us.  Instead, he said, he would be with us through his work with light.  At the time of his stroke he had been working on an article on the levels of light.  Did he mean that he would be with us through his writings—or did he mean that he would be with us through his own work with light on seven planes?

My intuition tells me that he meant both.  He is with us when we read his inspired words or listen to recordings of his ecstatic meditations.  But there is still more to his legacy.  Even now he is reaching out to us from the inner planes, working to bring us closer to our true selves by means of seven degrees of light.

The best tribute that we can make to Pir Vilayat is to pledge ourselves to the continuation of his sacred and joyous work and to live in the constant awareness of the divine light.

With love to all,

Pir Zia

How to Fall Out of Love

When I was in college many years ago, I had the misfortune–or so it seemed at the time–of falling in love with one of my professors, a man who was older than me and was also married.  In addition, of course, there was an uneven power balance, since I was his student and dependent on his good opinion of me, although I realized later that this didn’t matter as much as I’d thought; his feelings for me were strong also, and caring makes all of us vulnerable.  However, to become involved with someone under these circumstances was not an option for me, nor for him, and we struggled with defining and living our relationship according to our ideals for all the years I was in school.  He had his own problems to deal with (a failing marriage, as I learned later), and our struggles were separate ones.  For me, it was simple:  I simply could not manage to fall out of love with him.  I’m sure it’s a common human experience, and I’m also sure that we all have reasons for our attachments.  Sometimes, I learned, they can be very good reasons, and I suspect it’s even harder to let go when the soul has a purpose in what it presents itself with.

I read a book, during that time, by a behavioral psychologist, called How to Fall Out of Love:  it provided instructions in classic behavioral learning techniques, and suggested methods of “thought-stopping” to bring about the release of obsessive thinking about the other person.  One of these, for instance, was to fasten a rubber band around one’s wrist, and whenever thoughts of the love object arose, to snap the rubber band, causing pain and interrupting the thought process.  Another technique involved fantasizing about the loved person, but imagining him, say, covered with excrement or mucous; something like that.  All this made sense to me, but none of it worked, and I asked myself why.

As the time drew near for me to graduate and move on, I was still enmeshed in my obsessive love for this man, and I grew desperate.  I had no reason whatsoever to think this relationship would ever succeed or could in any way be good for me or for him.  But eventually, it began to dawn on me that perhaps I might want to consider the meaning of the relationship, and rather than running from my feelings, perhaps I should work with them, open to them, accept them.  So I decided to make suffering my semester’s project:  whenever the pain of loving arose, that tense obsession with this person I loved, I would suffer:  I made a practice of going to the department where he taught and sitting somewhere in the vicinity of his office, and then I would suffer.  I would think intensely about him, feel the pain of loving, and draw it in and out of my heart on my breath for as long as it took to resolve itself.  From that time, it took me about six weeks to fall out of love:  I began to understand what this love had meant to me.  I began to see our connection for what it was, and in this case, it was and is a profound connection.  I stayed with my feelings, my pain, the glory of such love, and I opened myself intensely to this profound attachment.  Rather than fighting it, I eventually was able to be curious about it, open to it:  and eventually, like a sore place that is massaged kindly and gently, it became, rather than a painful obsession, just another part of me.  I lightened up.  I moved on.

This person and I continue to be very close to this day.  Our lives have moved in very different directions, and I am very glad indeed that the relationship never became “a” relationship:  we were not meant to be together in this place and time, and I would eventually meet someone who was and is the love of my life.  Behavioral theories tend to make such emotions ridiculous, but the “theory” I developed allowed this feeling to be all it wanted to be to me.  I learned a profound lesson about loving and letting go in the name of love.  I have noticed, over my life, that once I have loved someone, that love never entirely goes away; it becomes assimilated, but it continues to exist, and that is a blessing.

It is only all these years later than I am reminded of this experience as I work with various attachments and painful emotions, learning to stay with them, inquire into them and open to them, rather than running away from them.  I feel myself lightening up, again:  my energy increases, and life is more interesting and less problematical.  This reminds me of another book I liked years back:  Guilt is the Teacher:  Love is the Lesson.  Perhaps love is every lesson, if it is well-learned, and perhaps the core of learning that lesson is to love oneself kindly and with acceptance.

Seeing Fear

When we give up the hope of doing it right and the fear of getting it wrong,  we realize that winning and losing are both acceptable.  In either case, we have nothing to hang on to.  Moment by moment we are traveling to the other shore.  –Pema Chodron, The Places that Scare You

Right on schedule, it is summer here in the North Carolina Piedmont.  I seem always to have lived in places where the seasons do not arrive and depart with any particular regularity; but here, they seem to:  we always have a short, seldom-really-cold Winter, a long, cool, reasonably dry (where humidity is concerned, that is) Spring, and right on schedule, June 1, the humidity and heat slouch in.  Bona fide thunderstorms, with lightening and heavy rain are regular occurrences, and I, at least, have little desire to live outdoors again until September 1, when the weather tends to start to cool off again.  I find the climate here mostly acceptable, except for those summers:  I do not enjoy humidity, and having lived in Alaska, I am even more adamant about my expectations for the Weather Goddess than I was before I lived in a place with no humidity and no fleas, although abundant with mosquitos the size of Buicks.

But here we are:  it is now early June, and the view from my office window is now blocked by trees heavy with foliage; and thick undergrowth, blocking the pretty barn, rail fences and pasture that were visible during the rest of the year.  This has its own beauty:  the lethargic, still majesty, as the limbs of the trees move lazily with the breeze, simply seeming to be.  The air, when we sit on the porch, is thick and fuggy , and we do not much like it.  I remember when I was a child, prior to central air conditioning, we lived with such weather and viewed it as our lot in life.  I can remember tearing off on my bicycle during the early mornings when it seemed cooler, without a thought for the heat.  But I also remember, when my parents built on a room for themselves with a wall air conditioner, thinking the atmosphere therein was heaven.  We, as humanoids, seem to keep battling with nature, trying to tame it to our satisfaction, and somehow this reminds me of my own inner battle, which I have been observing this morning.

Fear.  I suppose it is something different for all of us, and for me, it is, simply, that I will never be able to meet my expectations of myself.  I am the classic perfectionist, and I often defeat myself, or at least hold myself back, by the deeply entrenched belief that I will never get it right.  As a student of psychology, I can remind myself of the usual explanations of this:  that I internalized a parent of my own making, since my own parents were too caught up in their battles with their own devils to pay much attention to me, and I had little competent parenting.  To a child, or at least to a child like me, what this means is that, a parent being necessary, I had to create one with the aid of my own childlike knowledge of the world and internalize it in my own psyche.  That parent was like a policeman, and it judged and ordered my life mercilessly.  I also learned to accept and absorb the universal, amorphous guilt for all things, beginning with my parents’ compulsions to project their own hatred of themselves onto me.  Thus, I suppose I’m speaking not just of fear, here, but of compulsive, crippling guilt, also.  But I do think that, while these issues can be explained by such transient occurrences, they are but shadows of  larger, planetary ones that emerge as life lives itself endlessly.

So here I was, this morning, settling down to practice, when I became aware of that physical, fluttering, inescapable sensation of fear that paralyzes me so often, particularly when I am alone.  I am in the habit of running from it in my psyche, which only makes it loom larger and draw closer, and I decided, as I have been taught, to face it bravely, with a spirit of inquiry, refusing to run, and see if that helped, as it does when I am able to stay present to it.  And, of course, when I am able to do that, it immediately begins to deflate, like a tired balloon, and quickly becomes of a size appropriate to inquiry.  We humans tend to activate that “fight or flight” response so unthinkingly, so quickly, in such situations, no doubt because of the primordial need to do so when the world was young and so were we;  and that very response has, perhaps, morphed itself into one concerned with inner processes, as our physical safety, as humans, has grown over time.

As I began to breathe more easily, and to consider my fear dispassionately,  I noticed that, for me, fear is grounded in my panic at the thought of not being perfect, of not being thought perfect; that not everyone will love me, that I might say or do the wrong things or fail to do the right ones.  It is, of course, a deep fear of failure.  I think it is a fairly human tendency, although some of us are more able to accept ourselves then others, but it is one that I feel is a central life task for me, in the overcoming of it.  This is one reason why Buddhist philosophy has been particularly helpful to me, being a product of this Judeo-Christian cosmology that forces Original Sin on humans from the get-go.

Recently, I read an anecdote about the Dalai Lama who, in addressing an audience, was asked about guilt.  Evidently, he had a long conversation with his interpreter about this, because he didn’t understand what guilt is!  There is, evidently, no like concept in the East for that painful emotion that drives us Westerners so mercilessly.  There is a difference between remorse, a feeling of regret for not having done the right thing, and guilt; perhaps it is the difference between a sort of musing self-examination and a clear indictment, which I am prone to.  The Dalai Lama, and other Buddhist teachers, remind us that there is a middle way to psychological health, wherein we pause to be fully present to emotions that cause us pain, and consider the true nature of mind, flawless, innocent and pure.  Perhaps it is a process of separating the eternal from the transient.   I have heard it said that the dharma has moved from the East to the West, and while I think such terms are open to much interpretation, I can see, intuitively, how this may be entirely appropriate, given the preeminence of spiritual endeavor in the East, compared to that of worldly pursuits here.  It seems to me that to be human is, at its core, a very similar experience across cultures, but we all seem to have our particular “assignments;” and perhaps, when things get out of balance, we have the opportunity to bring things into balance again, by sharing what we have learned.

In this culture, we speak of faith as an antidote to fear.  Inayat Khan said that the true meaning of faith is self-confidence.  I am currently reading a book by Lenore Friedman, called Meetings with Remarkable Women. It contains pieces about female Buddhist teachers who have been influential in illuminating Buddhism for this culture.  She quotes Roshi Jiyu Kennett:

There is no savior in Buddhism.  You have to do it for yourself.  No one else will meditate for you.  At the time of death you will judge yourself.  The lord of the House will never judge you.  That Which Is, simply is.  The ability to die in peace means the ability to live in peace.  The Cosmic Buddha has no hell to hold over us.  We make our own hell.  The only judging that is done is done by ourselves–and thus we hide ourselves from the Cosmic Buddha.  Everyone possesses Buddha nature (or, as the Christians call it, the soul).  It is only hidden from our view because of our opinions of ourselves.  . . .  The art of meditation removes that separation, so that we can return to our basic nature and truly know it.  Meditation has nothing whatever to do with self-improvement.  It is an extraordinarily deep, prayerful experience, and its purpose is to become one with the Cosmic Buddha–or, if you like, have an experience of God.  –Roshi Jiyu Kennett

It occurs to me that, if I am to be my own judge, I’d better relinquish this created, harsh, mean judge who rides on my shoulders and in my psyche, weighing me down to the extent that I allow it to.  Those of us who practice some form of contemplation learn very quickly that, despite our mind’s tendency to attempt to maintain control, there is a peace that surpasseth understanding that is available, that escorts us into the high realms of the psyche and reveals a reality that heals and nourishes and furthers the unfoldment of all life.

How Could You Not?

 

Looking at your face

now you have become ready to die

is like kneeling at an old gravestone

on an afternoon with no sun, trying to read

the white chiselings of the poem

in the white stone.  –Galway Kinnell

If you, my friend, have never read the poems of Galway Kinnell, you must rectify this immediately; that is, if you want to know that it is possible, even here, to produce something that is wholly perfect and sacred and of this world, even in the next.  I always think of his poems during the passages of my life, and I discovered one today,  just as I am going through the passing of her mother with a dear friend.

 

It is a day after many days of storms.

Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;

small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower

visible against the firs douses the crocuses.

We knew it would happen one day this week.

Now, when I learn you have died, I go

to the open door and look across at New Hampshire

and see that there, too, the sun is bright

and clouds are making their shadowy ways along the horizon;

and I think: How could it not have been today?

In another room, Keri Te Kanawa is singing

the Laudate Dominum of Mozart, very faintly,

as if in the past, to those who once sat

in the steel seat of the old mowing machine,

cheerful descendent of the scythe of the grim reaper,

and drew the cutter bars little

reciprocating triangles through the grass

to make the stalks lie down in sunshine.

Could you have walked in the dark early this morning

and found yourself grown completely tired

of the successes and failures of medicine,

of your year of pain and despair remitted briefly

now and then by hope that had that leaden taste?

Did you glimpse in first light the world as you loved it

and see that, now, it was not wrong to die

and that, on dying, you would leave

your beloved in a day like paradise?

Near sunrise did you loosen your hold a little?

How could you not already have felt blessed for good,

having these last days spoken your whole heart to him,

who spoke his whole heart to you, so that in the silence

he would not feel a single word was missing?

How could you not have slipped into a spell,

in full daylight, as he lay next to you,

with his arms around you, as they have been,

it must have seemed, all your life?

How could your cheek not press a moment to his cheek,

which presses itself to yours from now on?

How could you not rise and go, with all that light

at the window, those arms around you, and the sound,

coming or going, hard to say, of a single-engine

plane in the distance that no one else hears?  –Galway Kinnell

Although the young might not agree with me, I am learning, as I grow older, that it has marked benefits, and one of them is the process of dying.  The reality, of course, is that we are continually dying from the time we are born, and it is as much a part of life as the act of birth, but it is only with the growth of age and, hopefully, wisdom, that we come to really appreciate it.  As Albus Dumbledore, in Harry Potter, remarked, “To the enlightened mind, death is but the next great adventure.”  And so it is, as far as I can tell.  As my soulfriend Carol is reminding me, the death of another is also the death–and birth–of large chunks of one’s own selfhood too.  And we are having the opportunity to examine and appreciate this just now, as her very elderly mother has begun that final journey, the one we take after all the small ones, and the one that begins the next phase, which I suspect is considerably easier in terms of facility.  But it is not easy for the one who experiences herself as being “left,” and it is not easy to watch the one who is “leaving” go through what often looks like terrible suffering.  But it is instructive, too, and if we pay attention, and if the one dying is even the least bit awake, we learn that what we call death is really birth, which begins the cycle of dying again.  In this culture, we think of it as a linear process, but I am more and more convinced it is circular.

 

Death is nothing at all,


I have only slipped away


into the next room.

I am I, 
and you are you;


whatever we were to each other, 


that, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name,


speak to me in the easy way


which you always used,


put no difference in your tone,


wear no forced air


of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed


at the little jokes we shared together.


Let my name ever be


the household word that it always was.


Let it be spoken without effect,

without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all


that it ever meant.


It is the same as it ever was.


There is unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind


because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you,


for an interval, 
somewhere very near,


just around the corner.

All is well.

–Henry Scott Holland

I have experienced the deaths of several beloved teachers in recent years, and these, no doubt because they were very awakened souls who were dying, convinced me that death really is like that:  a new office, another room. . .  But my experience of these beings in this new state convince me that much falls away in terms of actual and imagined burdens:  my dearly loved teacher Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan is, these days, simply radiant with enthusiasm and encouragement.  He was like that when he was here, but he had to deal with all that we do deal with on this plane:  sorrows, resentments, the ego that is so necessary for ballast here, and he doesn’t seem encumbered by those now.  How exciting and encouraging this is!  As I grow, these experiences, this connection with the infinite realities of the universe(s), all convince me that life here and hereafter improves vastly with each leap into the unknown that we make.

But I digress, as always.  I wanted to say something about the powerful and poignant death of our mothers.  These thoughts come from a wholly feminine perspective, because having lost both my parents in recent years, I can say that the death of my father did not have the impact on me that the death of my mother and other women in my family did.  My case is different from Carol’s, because I was not close to my parents:  both of them were personality disordered, probably from profound wounding and trauma they experienced as children, and my mother was a severe alcoholic.  To this day, I wish I could have been more tolerant of their problems, but of course as such parents will, they did me a great deal of harm and not only facilitated my becoming who I am now, but made it fairly hellish to get here, and there is still considerable work to be done.  ”Toxic parents” is the phrase commonly used in these situations, but I gave as good as I got in many ways, it is just that they were supposed to be the parents, not me:  but my story is not remotely uncommon, and I have almost grown dispassionate in the telling of it.  In fact, I have almost grown bored with it.  Praise Godhead from Whom all blessings flow!

In my soulfriend’s case, while she had the usual conflicts that arise between mothers and daughters in the individuation phase, she loves her mother greatly and is experiencing great grief in watching her ascent and letting her go.  What a blessing!  For me, who was mostly relieved when both my parents moved on, it is a marvel to see this.  And yet. . .

 

My mother, poor woman, lies tonight

in her last bed.  It’s snowing, for her, in the darkness.

I swallow down the goodbyes I won’t get to use,

tasteless, with wretched mouth-water;

whatever we are, she and I, we’re nearly cured.  –Galway Kinnell

Recently, I was chatting with the salesperson at the cosmetic counter where I occasionally cave in and buy a few overpriced products, and we were remarking on exactly this topic:  how our mothers live on in us, whether we want them to or not.  She quoted someone, some famous personality she couldn’t remember, as saying that at some point in our lives, we look down at our hand and see our mother’s hand coming out of our sleeve.  The age spots.  The thin, shriveled, but strong fingers, which either do or do not resemble our mother’s physically, but viscerally remind us of that in us which will repeat and evolve itself  for generation after generation.  And this is where Carol and I are one with all women, for the great, dark feminine principle is the world-soul Goddess that thinks herself and grows herself and weaves herself all through the thoughts and dreams of her mind which we ourselves are.

My mother died in the Springtime when we lived in Alaska and she in Florida.  During that summer, not only did her sister, the favorite aunt who cared for me when I was a child and offered a counterbalancing sanity to my mother’s overall insanity, but the adopted and very mentally ill sister I had been estranged from for years, both died as well.  ”The Family from Hell” is the phrase oft-used (and only half-jokingly) among social workers and mental health professionals, and that was my family. . .  and it is, today, part of me.  And during that one summer, it was as if there was a “die-off” of the entire feminine in my family, leaving only my daughters and I.  I am afraid that someone reading this might think “oh, you poor thing,” in reading my own account, but that isn’t necessary:  what was necessary, after all the resentment and rage and grief and other emotions I went through in growing away from these women had worn itself out, was to begin to learn, accept and facilitate the part of that dark goddess that had birthed itself in this branch of her being.  And in the end, to give as much respect, grief and honor as I could accord to her/them.  

So, as I sit with my soulfriend while she goes through a very different experience, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that despite our clinging to the experiences and the connections that bring us to this larger realization that we are thoughts in the mind of these archetypes that bring us into being for the purpose of the evolution of God(dess) in humanity, we have the opportunity to not just grieve and rage at the apparent, but to savor the growth in divine awareness that is evolving through us.  As I said to Carol in an email, “I was thinking, last night, that when we really know the loss of our mother is imminent, it is not only our grief over this person who literally birthed and raised us….it is that a part of ourselves is departing, a great, dark chunk of the feminine that is deeply ourselves…  I think that, in reality, that the part of ourselves that is our mother  is actually preparing for a great leap which leads to an even greater incorporation into our beings, but it is like any new phase of realization:  it begins by feeling like death. Even though my relationship with my mother was not a loving or even kind one, it is clear to me that the mother within never dies.  The soul has so many dimensions and each has a journey, but they live on in us, too,  and I can remember when that concept did not make me happy; but I now see that we have to come to terms with it, and I suppose with other deaths, as well.”   But I think it is the death of our mothers and the other women who raised us that affects us most profoundly, as that part of us that has never left the Great Mother prepares to continue its journey.

But these are all very cerebral ideas until we realize them in our gut, and even then we are left with our current reality, which is that we are human beings, and can’t be anything else . . . until we can.

 

. . . one day the streets all over the world will be empty–

already in heaven, listen, the golden cobblestones have fallen still–

everyone’s arms will be empty, everyone’s mouth, the Derry earth.

It is written in our hearts, the emptiness is all.

That is how we have learned, the embrace is all.  –Galway Kinnell

Pain as the Teacher

 

I was stunned at the number of people who suffer from it. After a year and a half of being in bed and having my nearest and dearest family and friends around me — and that was sort of it — I felt very cut off from the outside world. I wasn’t working and I couldn’t read and I certainly couldn’t go on my computer, let alone Google something like “pain” or “neck pain.” I had an overriding sense of my uniqueness and isolation. I thought I was the only one, right? How could someone else be going through this? And it felt like a very lonely, isolating and dispiriting experience from the rest of the world. It was only after starting to write the book and being at the … well, being at the hospital first, all of a sudden I was around 60 or so other people with the same problem. That was the first eye-opener; “Oh, there are other people like me and, wow, they even have it worse than I do.” Most of them have it worse, and for all kinds of different reasons. I suddenly had the sense of, “I don’t have a monopoly on pain or on hardship or on family problems or on life-changing incidents.” All of a sudden I felt like my issues were small potatoes compared to the rest of them. . . .   I did start doing a little bit more research and found that there are 50 to 75 million other people in America living with debilitating, chronic pain — which is defined as pain that goes on longer than six months continuously. And then I started finding out that my experience — having to leave work, finding myself isolated and lonely, finding myself depressed, finding myself unable to cope with my family and domestic responsibilities, etc. — was just a common experience that nearly three-quarters of the other people with chronic pain experience also.  – A Life Lived in Chronic Pain: A Conversation With Cynthia McFadden and Lynne Greenberg, http://www.wowowow.com/entertainment/chronic-pain-body-broken-lynne-greenberg-cynthia-mcfadden-interview-266575?page=0%2C1

Presumably, my own current experience of pain will be a finite one, but the interview above was meaningful to me, and I intend to read Lynne Greenberg’s book.  She is a woman whose neck was broken in her teens, during a car accident.  Considered healed, she lived a wonderful life for some 20 years, until a sudden experience of intense pain alerted her that something was wrong, and indeed, it was: evidently her neck had not healed at all, and was still broken.  Since then her life has changed completely, as she has sought healing, but today she lives in chronic, intense pain and is unable to work; and barely able to be a parent.  

What struck me so intensely about her very honest words is that pain means isolation:  because we cannot truly feel the pain of another, the best of us offer sympathy and support, while the rest of us offer…dismissal.  What can we do, we think?  And on we go, hoping it never happens to us.

I go regularly to our local hospital for physical therapy now, and I am so struck by the number of people who are living in pain, often alone.  In terms of my own condition, for instance, I am told that many people who live alone go through this, and the thought of that is chilling:  I have a loving husband and daughter who stand ready to make my load lighter and my pain less, who love me and wish me well…  and so many people don’t.  

May all people be well.

May all people be happy.

May all people be free.

Soul-Making

 

Yesterday was my three-week anniversary for my total knee replacement surgery.  I was told that I would begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel by then, but I can’t really say that’s true.  I find it most interesting that, prior to this surgery, the patient is given practically no education as to what to expect, and when questions are asked, “everyone is different” is the standard reply.  Presumably, this is so that the patient will not be scared away and the doctors can continue to perform these very lucrative surgeries.  As you can see, I have little respect for allopathic medicine as it is practiced in this culture, even though I realize that it is sometimes the best choice.  I was pretty sure this was the case here, and I’m still fairly sure, I just wish I’d been told what people are telling me now:  give it a year to really feel great, they say.  Prior to the surgery, I was never able to uncover more than clinical depictions of the surgery, although I admit I may not have tried very hard.  The other day, I came across a “forum” for people who’d had TKR surgery, and it was filled with tales of woe.  I think that if I had seen it ahead of time, I might not have had the surgery.  I remind myself, however, that the people who had good experiences are probably out dancing and playing tennis.  It’s the ones who have problems who write these epistles. I hope not to be one of them, selfishly, but I certainly know how they feel.

If you are reading this, you might ask, is it that painful?  Well, not exactly…  It’s just difficult.  First of all, one’s routines are severely upset, and the smallest thing is now difficult, whether it’s getting into a comfortable position to sleep or brushing one’s teeth.  THE KNEE is always there, and it’s usually uncomfortable.  There are numerous exercises to do, and they help a lot with pain and mobility, even more than the various opioid drugs that are given, which mainly serve to make one feel befuddled and dopey.  They don’t really control the pain, they simply alter one’s perception of it.  I wouldn’t want to be without them, because they help me want to move, which is important.  But my energy level is zilch, and I suppose the thing I resent the most is that I thought it would be better by this time.  ”Everyone is different,” they keep telling me, which I interpret as “we’re not going to tell you the truth, because if we did, you’d run screaming.”  

It is rather difficult to find God these days, and as a person who depends deeply on an inner life, that is the most awful of all.  I realize that the idea, here, is to find God in a bottle of Vicodin (hey, it works for House!), despite my vague feelings of guilt about taking these necessary meds, but between the lethargy they induce and that same vague guilt, it isn’t easy.  Of course, there are those moments when S/He/It breaks through it all and says “I’m right here!” As near as my jugular vein.  At these times, one has to find the melody between the lines, between the notes, even.  It is like examining a piece of woven cloth to find the most hidden but necessary thread.  It’s probably good for the concentration, and when found, I am profoundly reassured.

It occurs to me that, just as my Buddhist practices of tonglen and my Sufi practice of Ya Shafee Ya Kafee (invoking the Healer and the Remedy) remind me to use my suffering for the relief of the suffering of the world, so in this particular season, the annihilation and resurrection of the Living Christ provide the ultimate example of how to use my own suffering in this process of soul-making.

Active submission is being receptive to the intelligence of Spirit and living accordingly. Its opposite is the neurotic anxiety and compulsive living that is accepted as normal today. Active submission, the natural state of the essential self, dissolves selfishness, transforms anxiety and fear. At the same time, because it establishes a connection to Spirit, it unlocks our finest and noblest capacities. Because we have cut ourselves off from Spirit, we have swelled with false pride and thrown the world out of balance: Our bodies and minds, our relationships, and our whole ecology is suffering the consequences. The human being has capacities which are unsuspected today and which can only be known through a balance of spiritual submission and energetic activation in relation to our life in the world. –Kabir Helminski, http://www.sufism.org/books/sacred/alien.html

And in this, I suppose, is yet another form of the dhikr.  Either God has a peculiar sense of humor, or God makes available to the seeker the deepest experience of love.

Pushing Through

Oy, da pain….! Only my enemies should know such pain…. –The Bubbie, in Crossing Delancey

I’m in Day Three after coming home from the hospital after my first total knee replacement surgery.

I am not having fun. I just want to go on record as saying that right now.

Not only am I not having fun, I am beginning to lose my belief that there will ever be such a thing as fun again.

Not only am I not having fun, I am no longer a spiritual person who believes in seeing the meaning in all experience, in order to be lifted–along with the rest of humanity–to a higher plane of existence and limitlessness. I would, in fact, just settle for a decent night’s sleep, one in which I did not have to spend hours trying to re-teach my body how to settle into a position that will not hurt and will allow me to leave it behind for awhile.

My hair has not been washed in nearly a week.

My new knee is swollen to the size and appearance of a Scottish haggis. Apparently this is “normal.”

I do not enjoy taking the opiates that have caused such a frenzy of addiction and judgment in our culture. They probably have their uses, and this is probably one of them, if only because I am more willing to go through the rehabilitation exercises and movement required to make this thing work, but I do not find them fun.

I gather that some people do. Damn.

My mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage. The aforementioned drugs cause this, and cause such dryness that I wake up with my mouth glued shut in the night. I imagine I may have friends out there who think this might not be such a sad state of affairs, but friends….it is not fun.

We are having a lovely, but sometimes rainy Spring here in the Piedmont, and this, for some reason, causes my house to smell like an old catbox.

We do not have a catbox. We have a cat, but she knows her place.

My house looks more and more like a hospital emporium, with stacks of generic stuff in every room, while I try to figure out how to live through this time. My poor husband, my guardian angel, tries to keep up with my carping and ongoing demands, while sorting through it and maintaining some semblance of order and peace, both of which are very important to me.

I am not a nice person. I am a greasy, cranky old woman who is increasingly disinterested in any of the support mechanisms I thought would get me through this.

Tell me, why do people have cable TV? Nearly one hundred channels, and not one damned thing worth watching.

I can’t sit at my big computer (I’m on my iBook at the moment, kicked back in my armchair with my leg supported by a stack of pillows), because my leg is too stiff to fit under it. No fun for me.

I have fantasies of gangrene, death, unremitting misery. I feel like Billy Crystal, who in When Harry Met Sally mentioned that he was such a dark personality that he always read the end of a novel before the beginning, because if he died before finishing the book, he’d know how it came out.

My inherently Jewish soul emerges in this night of pain, beckoning me to suffer well and to keep a sense of humor about it.

I am not sure I am doing this, but there doesn’t seem to be much else to do, so I keep trying.

If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. — Job 14:14 Bible: Hebrew

Nothing to do but wait. And wiggle my toes.

Amen.

Back online…sort of!

Here is a brief groupmail that went out to friends and family today.  I’m a bit loopy at this point, but all goes well.  I’ll write some more when I am a trifle more coherent….

David carried me home today (as they say here in the South), and it’s good to be back under my own roof, but I have an entirely new set of problems with living that I didn’t have before this.  I’m glad I went through it, and I am assured that all went very well indeed, so well that on the first day, after surgery, my doctor was so impressed with my bold attitude (”so when can I have the other one done?” he reports me asking, right after I admonished him “now don’t screw up.”  Evidently, he enjoyed all this.  The only bad part is that it caused him to decide I didn’t need the morphine IV drip most patients get, and the other pain control measures, feeling that the epidural would carry me through after the spinal injection wore off.  It is an amazingly elegant protocol for surgery, keeping me very balanced throughout, but the aftermath–without drugs–is not to be recommended, and by that first evening, I was on the drip and feeling vastly reassured.  Things went well after that, and I am supposedly healing well, but a hospital is no place to do that, let me tell you.  It is like convalescing in the middle of a convention of some sort, with something going on everywhere around one.  One tends to get forgotten rather easily, especially when one is in some sort of predicament, i.e., waiting to be helped out of the bathroom, for instance.  As well, the body doesn’t quite seem to know how to do what it once did, and  rather like having a baby, one must re-teach such activities as sitting up and bowel movements.

I have suddenly retreated into the far North (my head) and my legs and feet have seceded to the deep south, another land entirely.  I do sincerely believe in the body’s ability to heal itself, but it is not always the kindest of healers, and it utilizes its needs to make one re-learn one’s own basic abilities.  Why just today, I find I can perform such daring feets as a pleasant stroll down the hallway with my walker, and my personal favorite:  straightening my knee entirely.

On the unit, one would hear occasional stories of a patient who had had both knees done at once, and that these were not nice people, evidently.  I can only imagine, but I think I will be in good shape for doing the other knee, after this one heals.

To all of you who sent flowers, made phone calls that I actually picked up amidst my morphine haze, and sent cards and the like, much gratitude.  The emotions are so sharp during times like this, and these gestures of love are so healing.  To my darling David, who made himself my loving support in all things and allowed himself to be snarled at and leaned on, often simultaneously, and still seems to love me, as I do him, well….this is just what love it all about, that’s all.  It just is…you know?

“Blessed is he who sees the star of his soul as the light that is seen in the port from the sea.”  Inayat Khan

About being Healed with Steel

Surgery is limited. It is operating on someone who has no place to go. – John Kirkin, M.D.

I have clung to ideals of natural diet and healing since my teens.  I have steadfastly believed that the body, with a little help from its “friends,” was entirely capable of healing itself.  

I go in for surgery tomorrow morning.  I have no place else to go.  I have had to turn to this because, despite my best efforts:  diet, exercise, supplements, herbs, homeopathy, etc., etc., etc., throughout nearly ten years, my joints have continued to deteriorate, and now my knees, at least, are so damaged that I honestly believe this is the best decision, and that it is one I probably should have made sooner.  I have problems in other joints, but these are the ones that cause me the most psychic and physical pain:  For many years, I have had dreams of walking down a road, slower and slower, finally being unable to go further, and this has acted itself out in my life here on this planet.  I have, in recent years, had what Freud called “wish fulfillment” dreams:  dreams of running, standing, dashing here and there, and these dreams cause me to think that this is a clue my true being wants me to notice.  ”You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” and I want to tell my children, my friends, my beloveds, “don’t let this happen to you!”  

The question, of course, is whether we really do have the control over this kind of thing that we think we do.  It has occurred to me that all this preoccupation with herbs and the like might be, for me, more a function of my need to control than anything else.  If I just do A, B and C, perhaps the inevitable won’t happen, I think…and, sometimes, it works, and other times…it doesn’t.  It didn’t in this case, and I ask myself, out of the same need, what I did to cause it.  After all, to think that I am the dupe of a heartless universe that accords me no control whatsoever over what happens to me is unbearable:  I’d rather think that I caused it, and I can “cure” it.  Some of this, of course, is the impression this Judeo-Christian culture with it’s inherent blaming attitudes leaves on most of us in this part of the world:  ”Shame on you!  If you’d just eaten more vegetables, lost weight, done more exercise, etc., none of this would have happened!”  

I am more and more influenced by Buddhist thinking, which I am coming to believe is the consummate psychotherapy for our Western culture, and I am learning to consider these matters without coloring them with my “stories,” most of which arise out of the world-view I was raised with.  If I consider my current predicament without adding the blame and the many explanations I might accord it, I find that I have more energy for healing and inspiration.  

I am also finding that when the chips are down, one is empowered in this kind of thinking, which allows for more openness to larger explanations and even a larger support in adversity.  ”Cling to Allah in prosperity and surrender to Him in adversity,” as the Hadith of Mohammad (peace be upon Him) says, and that understanding can take many forms.  In that surrender can so often be one’s greatest experience of greatness, both within and without.  I am very aware, these days, of the vast support network that is here for me, and to the extent that I am able to release what binds me to limitedness and open to vastness, I can make use of that network.  Thus,

I take refuge in The Buddha The Dharma and The Sangha 
I take refuge in The Guru The Yidam and the Dakini 
I take refuge in The Bodhisattvas The Protectors and The Tantras 
Homage to all of you 

As long as there is suffering 
As long as there are sentient beings in the 6 realms 
May I never attain Enlightenment 
And never cross over into Nirvana

The problem that I have, and that most people have, is continually understanding that I am one of those “sentient beings.”  Being loving and compassionate with me is not something this culture–and my own personal background–has made easy for me.  But I am grateful for the opportunity of this moment to learn a further lesson in loving the cosmos as myself–and vice versa.

 

When we look at the surgical world, no doubt wonderful operations are being done, and humanity has experienced great help through surgical operations; yet it is still experimental, and it will take perhaps a century longer for surgery to mature. It is in its infancy just now. The first impulse of a surgeon is to look at a case only from one point of view, and to think that this case can be cured by surgery. He has no other thought in his mind, he has no time to think that there is another possibility. If he is a wise surgeon, he gives a word of confidence; yet he knows that it is an experiment. It is a person he is dealing with, and not a piece of wood or a stone that can be carved and engraved upon. It is a person with feeling, it is a soul which is experiencing life through every atom that it has, a soul which is not made for a knife. Now this person has to go through this experience, fearing death, preferring life to death. Very often what happens is that what was considered wrong before the operation, is found to have been right afterwards. No doubt something wrong has to be produced because the operation has been performed. And an operation is not something that is finished; it is something which has its action upon the nerves and then upon the spirit of a man, and then its reaction upon life again. Do we not see that after an operation a person’s whole life has become impressed with it? A certain strain on the nerves, a certain upset in the spirit has been caused. The care of the surgeon continues only until the patient is apparently well, outwardly well; but what about the after-effect of it on the spirit of the person, on his mind, its reaction on his life? The surgeon does not always realize this, he is not concerned with it. 

 

Cure means absolute cure, within and without. By this it is not meant that surgery has no place in the scheme of life. It is a most important part of the medical world, but at the same time it must be avoided when it can be avoided; one must not lightly jump into it.  –Inayat Khan,  Healing and the Mind World, c. 1920s

It is this kind of thinking I was “raised” on, in the sense that my spiritual mothers and fathers gave me the real parenting I needed, and it is this thinking that I have to assimilate within the clear impulse of this moment.  ”If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him,” as the saying goes, and I must “shatter my ideals upon the rock of truth,” as Inayat Khan also says.  

I take refuge in all the masters, saints and prophets who form the body that governs the universe.  I take refuge in the archangels, angels and elementals that uphold, serve and heal the planet.  I take refuge in the Spirit of Guidance of which all these comprise the body of Reality, the Being of God.  May all beings be well.  Including me.

Arthroplasty

I have been living with an autoimmune disease for some years now, and it has taken its toll on my joints, particularly my knees.  I am one of those people who has extreme control issues:  in this case, the assumption is that I can control my condition myself and don’t need allopathic medical science to do it with, thank you very much.  I went through years of supplements, glucosamine, homeopathy, yoga, meditation, and lately, what I call my “beans and greens” diet, i.e., a mostly vegan diet that stresses vast amounts of green vegetables and little protein.  It has worked, in the end, better than anything, and cost a helluva lot less money.  But it hasn’t made my joints grow back.  So much for my belief that I can control this!

Last week, I went for x-rays, and my doctor said that my knees are in the upper ten percent of the worst knees he’d ever seen.  Well, he’s young, but that did make me gulp.  He seemed particularly surprised that this was happening at my age, which is a young 57.  [Gulp]

So I am going to bite the bullet, as it were:  I am going to have both knees replaced, and I am going to start with the one that is worst, the left.  I’ll be having surgery in less than two weeks, and I will admit that I am terrified.  On the one or two occasions I’ve had surgery in the past, I’ve had, well…interesting…experiences with the anesthesia.  Not fun at all.  However, it seems that nowadays I can have an epidural and a sedative, which may be much better.  Sort of like having a baby, I suppose.  I am also told to expect significant pain, and it will take me awhile to recover, during which I will have physical therapy and the like.  

I thought I would post here about this process, because there may be people out there who are considering this procedure and might like to know someone who is going through it.  I certainly felt that way.  

What I can say, at this point, is that I am very aware of what Inayat Khan said about such things:  ”shatter your ideals upon the rock of truth.”  Increasingly, I am finding that what seems apparent to me is not necessarily what is transpiring.  In this case, it seems that I am being given an opportunity to adjust my judgments about allopathic medicine and also to find out for myself that I am stronger than I think I am.  I began this process with I had my second child at home.  Home birth is a great experience in empowerment.  The difference is that you get a prize at the end of your birthing experience, and after knee surgery, you get to become strong through pain and difficulty.  What a gift!

I’ll keep you posted.

Irony

I live in the Piedmont Region of North Carolina these days.  After living in such places as Alaska and Massachusetts, I have had considerable difficulty acclimating to the steamy, hot summers and the pretty-much-nothing winters.  Over the weekend, my husband and I went for a drive to take pictures of the various huts and barns from long ago that still stand in abundance in the countryside around us, and we marveled at the also-abundance of daffodils, which started to bloom in mid-February.  Perhaps you can see them in the photo above.

They got their comeuppance, though, when we got up to this, this morning:

 

Is this an example of God’s sense of humor?  We have been longing for snow for months, and had pretty much given up…

 

SNOW 

Let Thy knowledge cover my heart 

as the snow covers the ground. 

Let my heart melt in Thy light 

as the snow before the sun. 

Let my heart show the purity of snow 

in the path of righteousness. 

Pour on me Thy eternal life 

as snow on earth. 

Make my heart delighted 

by the snowfall of Thy knowledge of Truth.   –Inayat Khan

 

 

Sufism in Pakistan

An interesting article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7896943.stm

My own particular brand of Sufism isn’t much interested in “dope” as part of the ecstatic process, but I know a lot of people who feel that such substances did contribute to their spiritual awakening…although as Sufi S.A.M. said, “drugs will only take you so high.”

We are three, you are three

 

When I was a doctoral student, I used to attend graduate residentials that were held at a wonderful place called Santa Sabina, in San Rafael, California.  Although the first time I went there it was for this very earthy, academic event, but I learned immediately, because of the wonderful, holy atmosphere of the place, that Santa Sabina was something very different than I’d thought it would be.  At that time–and perhaps now, as well–it was a Catholic convent on the campus of Dominican College in San Rafael, a convent that was no longer a convent, but had been turned into a conference and retreat center.  It hosted many different kinds of groups, from the one I first attended to contemplative retreats for numerous spiritual groups.  Its atmosphere was beautifully universal:  Mary shared space with Buddha in the Garden, and the entire place echoed with an atmosphere of peace and holiness.  After that first visit, I always arranged to stay there for a few days when I was in that part of the world, and I came to know and love the women who ran the place.  It was my “home away from home,” in the highest sense of the word.  I haven’t been able to go there for many years now, but I carry it in my heart, always.  It may well be the place I have felt most at home on this planet and in this world.  

One morning when I was there many years ago, I found myself in conversation with an elderly nun, one of the last of those who still wore the habit, a very wonderful soul.  She told me a story, and I have tried to remember that story for many years, until I just found it in a book called Soul Food, by Jack Kornfield and Christian Feldman, a collection of transformative stories from many different traditions.  A wonderful book.  Here is the story:

 

         When the Bishop’s ship stopped at a remote island for a day, he determined to use the time as profitably as possible.  He strolled along the seashore and came across three fishermen mending their nets.   In pidgin English they explained to him that centuries before they had been Christianized by missionaries.  “We are Christians!” they said, proudly pointing to one another.

 

         The bishop was impressed.  Did they know the Lord’s Prayer?  They had never heard of it.  The bishop was shocked.

 

         “What do you say, then, when you pray?”

 

         “We lift eyes to heaven.  We pray, ‘We are three, you are three, have mercy on us.’”  The bishop was appalled at the primitive, the downright heretical nature of their prayer.  So he spent the whole day teaching them the Lord’s Prayer.  The fishermen were poor learners; but they gave it all they had, and before the bishop sailed away next day he had the satisfaction of hearing them go through the whole formula without a fault.

 

         Months later the bishop’s ship happened to pass by those islands again and the bishop, as he paced the deck saying his evening prayers, recalled with pleasure the three men on that distant island who were now able to pray, thanks to his patient efforts.  While he was lost in the thought he happened to look up and notice a spot of light in the east.  The light kept approaching the ship and, as the bishop gazed in wonder, he saw three figures walking on the water.  The captain stopped the boat and everyone leaned over the rails to see this sight.

 

         When they were within speaking distance, the bishop recognized his three friends, the fishermen.  “Bishop!” they exclaimed.  “We hear your boat go past island and come hurry hurry to meet you.”

 

         “What is it you want,” asked the awe-stricken bishop.

 

         “Bishop,” they said, we so, so sorry.  We forget lovely prayer.  We say, ‘Our Father in heaven, holy be your name, your kingdom come. . .’  then we forget.  Please tell us prayer again.”

 

         The bishop felt humbled.  “Go back to your homes, my friends, he said, “and each time you pray, say, ‘We are three, you are three, have mercy on us!’”  –from Soul Food:  Stories to Nourish the Spirit and the heart, by Jack Kornfield and Christian Feldman, Harper San Francisco, 1991

 The sister who told me the story told it just a trifle differently.  When the fishermen (which is how she referred to the three men, and told the story as if they said their prayer from their boat on the often dangerous and frightening high seas) came flying across the surface of the water and spoke to the Bishop, they confessed that they could not remember the Lord’s Prayer as he had taught them.  They said that they could only remember their original prayer:  ”Three in a boat, Three in Heaven, have mercy on us.” 

The old nun paused here, and her face twisted into an ironic grin.  She winked at me as she told me what the Bishop said to them:  ”Keep it up.”

I will always remember this woman’s last words to me:  ”We all need more faith.  That’s all we need.  More faith.” 

Dhikr

 

         The Sufis have a contemplative practice called the dhikr.  I am spelling it this way because that is the phonetic spelling of this Arabic word that I am most familiar with; others might spell it zikar, or any one of numerous spellings.  I add this because I have been chided by self-proclaimed experts before, and if that’s what they think is important, so be it.  It is the essence of the teaching and where it takes me that I find meaningful.  I have forgotten most of the “Sufi Lore” I learned when I was a spiritual infant, and I gather this is considered important among my brethren, but… no matter. 

         This reminds me of one of my favorite “soul food” stories, one told by Alan Watts in his wonderful book Tao:  the Watercourse Way, where an old woman (probably) explains how she attempted to give the Tao to a very important man of great intellect.  She comments that he had the intellect but not the Tao, while she had the Tao, but not the intellect, so she had to find a way to convey the ineffable to him by breaking through his intellect and ego.  She succeeded eventually, but as I recall the story, it was only because she really, really had the Tao, and the patience inherent to women who bring up small children and turn them into useful adults. 

         I make no claims as to whether I do or do not have the Tao, nor do I call it enlightenment, realization, God-consciousness, or any of the names we as various religious communities and cultures give to what Maslow termed the “peak experience.”  But I will say that I am at least far enough along not to put much importance on whether or not I pronounce my wazaif (aka mantras) in the prescribed way, nor how long I “sit” daily.  It has been many years since I was able to assume the lotus posture, nor do I own a fancy bench for my meditations, one that stabilizes me in order to be able to concentrate on what I’m attempting to do.  I do recommend some of these things early on, because learning to meditate is just about the hardest thing most of us humanoids ever do, and whatever helps one to get to the point where one looks back and laughs at it all is worth looking into.  But I digress…as usual.

         Dhikr is possibly the central practice of most Sufi Orders, and of course there are many ways of doing it and saying it and chanting it and singing it.  It is the core of the Dervish ceremony, of course, there is a great deal of lore out there about its practice and the miracles it brings.  All I can do is tell you about it from the perspective of what it has given to me over nearly 40 years of practice.  

         My teacher, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, pointed out early on that the most apparent difference between dhikr and wazifa—or mantra—is that the practice of a mantra is about experiencing and enjoying the divine qualities of whatever it is we call God. Dhikr, on the other hand, is beyond that:  it is about coming to the reality of God, beyond the qualities, beyond worlds and universes and beings…  Dhikr is the way God is.  And if one is going to come to That,  one must go beyond all these things and into the Absolute…where one finds oneself emerging.  It occurs to me, as I attempt to think about all this, that Dhikr is somewhat akin to the Samadhi practices of the Yogis, to contemplative Buddhist practices, to the Kyrie Eleison of the Hesychasts, and to the early Chassidic practices that eschewed form for meaning.  I have no doubt that there is some form of it in all contemplative practice.  Really, I suppose, it just depends on one’s intention and one’s  travel plans when one embarks on this journey.  If done well, however, it is not child’s play.  It is an advanced practice, and should be undertaken only with the help of a trusted guide.  Of course, having said that,  we must then give thanks for “all those, whether known or unknown” who have bravely, and with sincerity and commitment,  taken the journey when it was there to be taken.  However, I suspect there is always a guide where the intent is true.  I have found this to be true in my own practice, again and again.  The Sufis say there is really only one Teacher, the Spirit of Guidance, and that This permeates all seeking.  Perhaps key to a safe and successful journey—or rather, this particular leg of the journey—is sincerity. 

         I experience dhikr in approximately four stages, each of which is its own world of understanding.  First is what some would call the abasement, or the dark night of the soul, in the alchemical terms my teacher loved and taught:

 

“La illa ha…”  There is no God, there are no beings…

 

            In that dark night of unknowing, as St. John of the Cross called it, one turns away from and relinquishes all one’s concepts about reality.  Classically, this is done sweeping the head in a sort of clockwise circle, a gesture of negation:  “all that I thought to be true about the world and God and reality…was a lie.”  One is annihilating one’s concepts (not oneself).  That comes next.

Bringing the head down to the chest,

“Ill’a”

 

One stabs one’s own heart with a lance of light from the third eye.  It is a symbolic crucifixion, wherein one annihilates—again, not oneself—but one’s concept of oneself.  “All that I thought I was and am, none of it exists, and none of it matters.”  There is a sense of having destroyed all one’s concepts about oneself and the world and God, and what is left?  The alchemists call it “dissolution,” in the classic formula, where what is gold is separated from what is lead.  Out of this, a sun rises, a flower blooms, the resurrection takes place:

 

“Allah”

 

Having realized what one is not, there is a new birth, because in the annihilation, a new seed is planted, the seed of a new soul.  The crucifixion of Christ beautifully represents this, and there are numerous similar stories about Sufis and other mystics who undergo this process.  Al Hallaj, for instance, who was dismembered because, while in the state of God consciousness, he said, “I am the truth.”  Finally,

 

“Hu.”

 

And that is the fragrance that persists after the flower has long gone to other seed.  It is what our lives are about:  the dhikr sings itself through our days and nights, and it is the meaning within it all.  I find that it is both the symbol and the reality of this journey I’ve undertaken, and it sings itself through each new adventure that comes.  It evokes the words and pictures for a new kind of story, and helps me to forget the stories I have fabricated to make my life bearable, so that there is now the possibility for a new song, a new story, a clear playing field. 

I have friends who are Sufis and also Buddhists or Jews or Christians (Father Frank, are you still out there?); sometimes we laugh and say that we are “Bufis,” or “Jewfies,” and that is all quite as it should be.  The outer forms of religion are just that:  outer forms.  Words like dhikr or mantra or prayer all express our chosen methods of travel.  In the culture I grew up in, it was all about dying and being reborn, and I find that meaningful, if properly understood, but I might also think that it is about sleeping and awakening.  Recently, when working with dhikr, I have, in the second stage, when my third eye meets my heart, perceived an enchanting desert scene:  it is twilight, and the colors of the landscape are all pinks and mauves and fawns.  Stars twinkle overhead.  I stand on a soft, dusty road, walking into that twilight, and somehow I know that I am waiting at the other end of it…and yet:  is there an end at all?

 

The Message is a call to awakening for those who are meant to awaken, and a lullabye for those who are still meant to sleep.  –Hazrat Inayat Khan