Author: Jon

Writing as Meditation

JonLeave a comment

In her famous book Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg describes how her roshi instructed her to begin using her writing as a form of meditation. Recently, my teacher, Kitabu Roshi », gave me a similar assignment, especially through writing poetry. He also instructed me to not write from my mind, but spontaneously, like freewriting, to let the Spirit direct me.

I’ve written a lot of poetry, and I used to have a couple of dozen original poems on this site. Most of my stuff was this outrageously joyful mystic rave in full keeping with my “holy fool” personality. What’s been coming since beginning poetry as meditation is new to me. It’s pretty unfiltered, it shows me what’s there, whether I want it to or not. Some is still the Frimster’s shout, and some shows the deep cries of my heart, and some is a little different:

Subjects
...
My self mailed me an email
To explain myself to me.
The hours I spent teaching me
what I myself don't know.
 
 Norfolk Upanishad
 
I sit listening
Listening to the sound of Your spirit
and hear my thoughts.

But they are not mine.
I do nothing to make them come,
can do nothing to make them stop,
bubbles in the ocean.
I'm never so rich as when I have nothing.
Listening in the dark to what comes, what goes.
Listening in the heart to the beat, the pulse.
It's not I.

 I do not think to live
Something lives which is greater than me
Auricle, ventricle, expand, contract.
Squeezing life from matter.

Hear it in your head
Hold it in your heart--
The sound of life.
One life.
That One's you.
And me.
Pulsing
Everywhere.
Every one.
One.

 © jon zuck, january 16, 2005, norfolk, virginia

On a related note, Meredith and Akilesh have a wonderful post » on their blog » which discusses a passage from the journal of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the minister/poet/mystic, at the “precipice” of going into no-self. I highly recommend reading this post in depth. This is probably the most concise and lucid description of what I call “awakening” spirituality, and Akilesh’s metaphor of “the precipice” is a wonderful explanation of the point that leads from mere mysticism into the transformation of consciousness, theosis, fana, or enlightenment.

I most definitely relate Meredith’s statement about coming to the precipice, but not yet being able to jump into the void. Boy, can I relate to that! Everyone, please give yourselves a treat and read that post!

WIE on What the Bleep?

JonLeave a comment

What Is Enlightenment? » magazine has an excellent review » of What the #$*! Do We Know?, the movie which I had considered a mixed bag of entertaining, popularized science on the one hand, and grossly deficient pseudo-mysticism on the other.

WIE’s writer Tom Huston explains in great depth the missing pieces glossed over by the Ramtha students’ film, from the alternate views of the nature of quanta (e.g. probability waves is only one interpretation), to the insufficiency (and egocentric motive) of the New Age platitude “we create our reality.”

Mystical practice is traditionally aimed toward the mind-shattering revelation that there is actually only one reality and one self, and this revelation is said to liberate the individual from his or her attachment to personal desires. So if we’re pursuing the manifestation of our desires by consciously manipulating the quantum field, and thereby attempting to re-create reality itself in our own image, how spiritual can that be, really?

He concludes with a very intriguing suggestion about the cause of the film’s popularity:That we should even feel the need to overcome the doubt of the scientific materialist worldview indicates how all-pervasive it actually is, and how thoroughly steeped in it most of us are. In fact, the very need to base our belief in the transcendental Divine on the findings of science seems indicative of the strange spiritual desert in which we currently find ourselves. . . .

There’s some powerful wisdom in these words, which applies to a lot of us, from those who strain to prove prophecies with current events, and the Creation with fossil records, to those segments of the current “spiritual” subculture that lack a vision of their own.

Why is it so hard to just rest in God?

My Science Experiment

Jon1 Comment

I’ve been reading a book called *Eat Fat, Lose Fat,* by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig. It emphasizes natural, organic foods, and the historic importance of *lacto-fermentation* as a means of preserving foods and making them digestible. Fallon also suggests that its *easy* to home-brew natural, organic sodas with kefir powder or liquid whey and distilled or filtered water.

What the heck! I decided to try brewing some berry squeezin’s. Only thing was, I couldn’t find either liquid whey nor kefir powder. So I tried a Spirulina whey protein mix from a health food store, and let it sit for two days. Results:

1. Carbonation happens. If anyone ever doubted that carbonation would happen, let them rest assured, that distilled water was quite carbonated tonight!
2. There’s an art to doing this.
3. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing!

It took me a long time to scoop the sickly mush out of the jar (and out of the sink, and off things near the sink, etc. etc. Did I mention carbonation happens?) The residue in the jar did look kind of like Cherry 7up, but ahem, a small taste was enough. It needed more sugar, but I wasn’t going to waste that when there was still some purple algae in there. Perhaps I’ll give it another whirl sometime later. Yeah, with REAL whey!

Carry on, my whey-ward son,
There will be peas when you are done.
Lacto weary head to rest,
Don’t ferment no more!

What can I say? That’s Jedi life in the real world.

Living is dying

JonLeave a comment

I’ve been feeling a lot of pain recently, largely because the tsunami affected me very deeply. Although I’ve never been to Asia, I’ve long felt a strong resonance to the lands that were hit by the tsunami, especially Indonesia. Today I learned a former colleague of mine is dying. My thoughts tonight:

 Death surrounds me.
I can deny it as well as you,
but I cannot hide and I cannot forget.

A wave washed away my home,
though I live a world away. I die.
They told me Sharon is dying,
a cancer in her brain--I die.

Every moment, my body sheds a million cells—
Just living is dying!
Every day, the world sheds a million souls
for living is dying.

I feel I'm in a tapestry, pulled one way,
then the next,
then in all directions at once.

For living is dying.

Holy Days and Holidaze

JonLeave a comment

It’ s almost bewildering to me that we’ve made our “sacred” holidays into such secular rushes of madness. The three saints days which have penetrated our cultural calendar–those of Sts. Valentine, Patrick, and Nicholas, have almost lost all memory of these living lights, as has All Saints Eve. And the celebration of Christ’s birth barely survives the whirling madness of the modern American Christmas.

I try fighting it in small ways, but I’m fretting about how to wake up at 3:30 tomorrow morning to board a flight , and making plans to cut my hair, wash my clothes, and board my cat. Most of my shopping is done–not all–and it’s not that I have that much–I’m just a really bad shopper! Once again, Trev’s posts here and here say it better than I can.

I’m looking forward to seeing my parents whom I haven’t seen for quite some time, spending quality time with them, and lending a hand. I’m looking forward to the Christmas Eve Mass I’ll go to with my folks. As I take care of the necessary details, I need to remember this. That this is the Christ-Mass–not just in church, but our whole lives are the burning candle of the Christ light. Sometimes this week, I haven’t been burning very brightly. I need to quiet down, focus, meditate, and remember this light of the world–in a manger in Bethlehem, and in myself.

>You are the light of the world…
>Let your light shine before others.
>Jesus, Matthew 5:14-16

3 Book Titles that Made Me Laugh

JonLeave a comment

* How to be Like Rich DeVos
* A Course in Miracles in 5 Minutes
* Jesus: the Last of the Pharoahs

I kid you not, I saw all of these tonight at B&N and Borders!

In other news, last night I saw my teacher at our weekly Zen satsang. He helped me a lot with understanding the nature of conflict and spiritual warfare, within the universal Oneness of God. I checked out Trev’s blog when I got home, and found that someone else had been having similar questions, so I posted a comment, which Trev made into an entire entry. I might expand it into a static page later on.

Thanks for Sharing!

JonLeave a comment

Thanks to all of you for sharing so openly and supportively!

Darrell–for reminding me that the Creed, as well as all worhip, is poetry.

Gnostic Tom–for your extensive work on the Buddha and the Christ.

Ann–I definitely feel you. I know about the “rewriting” thing!

Meredith–for focusing on the common core of sacredness in all things.

Trevor–Man, you hit the nail on the head. I had been thinking the day before you posted, the only problem is “only!”

Laura–Yep, it’s all about That One beyond all discussion, about whom we should all just fall dumb. But we keep blathering anyway, because Isness seems to like it!

Larry–Thanks for the encouragement and support!

Polyreligious? Your Turn

JonLeave a comment

Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
Jesus

My spiritual life has seen a lot of changes. After my Baptist childhood, I had a “born-again” experience in my early teens, and began to see my life with God as a spiritual adventure, which I lived in a wide variety of Christian environments, from Methodism, Messianic Judaism, and the Charismatic movement, to the Disciples of Christ, Lutheranism, and Catholicism.

In addition, ever since my college years, I’ve been learning as well from other religions, and in the last several years, it’s become much more than academic. I study with a Zen master, and sometimes pray in temples as well as my own church. I read the *Upanishads*, *Tao Te Ching*, and *Dhammapada* in the same light which I read the Gospels.

I sometimes don’t know whether to think I’m a part of all religions or apart from all religions. All I can say is I hear the voice of God in a lot of places, and I want to see and know everything as part of God’s self. (I like your self-description of “freelance panentheist,” Darrell!)

But it isn’t easy for me. Being both introverted and single, I find it a lonely path. I’m often misunderstood, and sometimes I can’t effectively reach out to others because they find me too “far out,” or heretical, to hear me. I’ve had the experience of sometimes feeling like an outsider in my church. If I’m paying attention, the Creed can be difficult. I stand silently during it, or recite it with my own wider-than-usual interpretations in mind!

So I’m wondering what it’s like for you… Do any of you have similar problems, or is that all far behind you? Do you sometimes feel torn? Misunderstood? Even guilty for going farther than what your friends or family consider to be “within bounds?” Have you had to make a “clean break” with some of your past religious environments? What do you do to integrate the different traditions and experiences you learn from within your life?

Double Triple Celebration!

JonLeave a comment

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception for Catholics, the first day of Hanukkah for Jews, and *Rohatsu* (Buddha’s Enlightenment) for Buddhists (at least in Japan). I’ll probably go to Mass tonight. Wish my Zendo had a service right after that I could go to also!

Joy to the world, the Lord is come! May the Light shine in the darkness!

Changing Life, Changing Site

JonLeave a comment

I just rewrote and restored three old pages to the site. Buddha, by Karen Armstrong, also her wonderful and brilliant A History of God, and, now, back by popular demand, my old page The Lotus and the Cross: Common Threads in Buddhist and Christian Spirituality.

See, the old pages **are** being restored! It just takes time; my perspective has changed so much in the last couple of years that almost every page of my site has to be rewritten to some degree. For instance, I’ve been studying Zen now for a year, and that makes a big difference. It may not sound like much if I say that the main change is that I’m shedding conceptual beliefs, but if you’re as wrapped up in them as I was, it’s pretty significant.

As I was developing this site from 1996 until around 2000, I still had the very mistaken notion that mysticism would give “the Answer,” that replacing some beliefs with better beliefs would bring me to God’s truth. That’s like saying the number ten is closer to infinity than the number nine!

Over the last few years, I began to realize that God’s reality is inexpressible, but I couldn’t find the right way to convey the change in my perspective on my site, which had over 140 pages by early 2003. Finally, I took down almost everything, started blogging my current thoughts, and restoring old pages, slowly, in their own time. More are coming, but this is all for today.

That’s Jedi life in the real world.