My friend Zach Young has started a new spiritual blog recently, Monakhos. Why not stop by and welcome him to the blogosphere?
Technorati Tags: blogs, blogosphere, spirituality, Zen, Christian mysticism
Emptiness, clarified
A friend of mine left a comment on my post on The Mystery of Emptiness and said that the term emptiness bothers her, and she’d like for me to clarify it. Well, how could I resist?
In the past, I’ve used the word “God” quite liberally on this site… in plain and simple language, That is what it’s about. Yet, I find after this latest glimpse, whch I wrote about in, The Suck, I want to write more carefully, and avoid words which easily give false impressions. False impressions are unavoidable, but “loaded” words like God can’t come to anyone without years of conceptual and emotional baggage that prevent communication.
So when I want to write carefully, I make up pronouns like This and That, and It. Eckhart Tolle usually uses the words “Being” or “the Unmanifest” instead of “God.” Other teachers say “the One,” “Consciousness” or “Awareness.” Kabbalah calls This Ein Sof, Endlessness. Zennists speak of Emptiness, the Void, and No-Thing. I agree with Julie–there is something unsettling about those last three. Our mind wants Something, not Nothing.
In that poem, I tried to show something of how wonderful pure Emptiness is. All Creation streams from It, like an empty glass that you can drink from forever without it running dry! Yes, it doesn’t make any sense, and that’s what’s so amazing!
Emptiness cannot be clarified, because it is the essence of clarity.
Emptiness writ large, is spaciousness.
Emptiness writ small is no-Thing.
Emptiness held by a form is capacity.
Emptiness holding a form is boundlessness.
Emptiness explored is void.
Emptiness manifest is everything.
Emptiness loved is God.
Emptiness can be quite frightening when you’re attached to Somethingness. As that falls away, It feels very different, like a white movie screen the Universe is projected upon. Or it’s like an empty canvas holding all possibilites, which you approach with a brush, whittling away the potential images until the one you paint is the one it presents.
Meister Eckhart wrote that when our soul is pure and empty, God cannot fail to shine in it, just as the sun cannot fail to shine on a cloudless day.
I’ll stop with a thought from Lao-Tzu:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole which makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that maks it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
Something there is…
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
The Wall. If there was a receipe for fueling the resentment that in turn fuels terrorism, this is it.
I’m thinking of how enlightenment teachers emphasize that waking up is necessary for us to stop the madness of war, violence and oppression. Karma is rather simple to understand; you don’t have to be enlightened to see it. Resentment unresolved leads to violence, which leads to violent responses, which lead to more resentment. . . and the wheel keeps on turning on the axis of attachment, hatred and ignorance.
Sarah Walker, a Columbia seminary student created a beautiful, thought-provoking, photo essay on the wall from a Christian point of view: The Gospel according to . . . The photos are by Adam Cleaveland, a Princeton seminarian who spent last summer in Bethlehem, and whose blog pomomusinngs
Technorati Tags: justice, Palestine, wall, awakening, Gospel, Israel, Cleaveland
The Mystery of Emptiness
The Mystery
From a seed,
which once didn’t even exist,
comes the redwood
which massively does.From
n o t h i n gcomes
EVERYTHING.This is the mystery,
the source of all mysteries,
the source of all.Does Emptiness scare you?
Good!
but go further.Fall in love with it.
—jon zuck // norfolk, virginia // february 14, 2006
Technorati Tags: spirituality, emptiness, sunyata, God, creation
End of the Spear
End of the Spear isn’t a masterpiece on a par with The Mission, but in spite of its low budget and naive manner, it is a very moving story of the power of love to conquer fear, hatred, and violence.
It’s based on the true story of the missionaries who made first contact with the Waodani people of Ecuador, at a time in which they were so involved in revenge killings they were in danger of annihilating themselves off the map. Soon after their initial contact, all five of the missionary men were slaughtered by the Waodani. Yet two years later (in the movie it looks like a few weeks later), Dayumae, a Waodani girl who had lived with the missionaries’ families, returns to the tribe, and brings with her some of the wives of the men who were killed.
Dayumae presents the Gospel in the most simple and profound words:
Oenagongi had a Son: Even though he was speared, he did not spear back.
I love this gospel! I would like so much to hear it proclaimed in America! (In fact, Mincayani, the leader of this Waodani band, eventually came to America with Steven Saint (the son of the missionary he killed) telling how their tribe renounced violence. Are we listening?
I found the “path of the spear” timeline on the official site to be almost as good as the movie itself (and more informative). (Note also the link to Beyond the Gates of Splendor, a documentary of this story which has received better reviews from critics.) Another excellent stop is the Wikipedia article on the Huarani/Waodani people.
Lila made visible
Talk about synchronicity. I write a poem on Lila, the divine game in the human world, and today I discover a most creative video of it from a Godlike POV. It’s a montage of video feeds from around the world, creating, well, the world, mirroring how our individual experience comprises the world.
Thanks very much to Jonny Baker for posting about it.
Technorati Tags: spirituality, lila, world, God, humanity
Lila
Lila
How skillfully
I have hidden myself from me!Layers within layers,
folds within folds,
Easter eggs within Christmas stockings
nested in hidden Jacks-in-the-box.So I enjoy unwrapping, playing:
Hide and Seek,
Cowboys and Indians (Bang! Bang! You’re dead!),
and Love.The three games I never tire of.
I am eternal child.? jon zuck // norfolk, virginia // january 31, 2006
Technorati Tags: spirituality, lila, maya, awakening, realization, enlightenment
A paradox
A paradox I’ve noticed is that since I’ve stopped believing in the world, I love it more. It’s like the little shift of last week opened a space and love filled the void.
It’s a slightly different kind of love than I’m used to feeling. There’s nothing forced or effortful at all. It’s not “powerful” or dramatic in any way. It’s not really even felt at all. It’s just there. Maybe this is why the Buddhists use the word compassion more often than love. (I still like the word love better.)
But it’s there, and it’s noticed when I’m quiet.
Parable of the Iceberg
Here’s a wonderful parable in Amigo,an online enlightenment magazine. Are you an iceberg? Do you want to become water? Get ready for some hard work! 🙂
It’s really ironic…
That one of the most positive things that’s ever happened to me, gets memorialized in my blog with the single most negative post I’ve ever written! And to think it was the first time I ever used the F-word in my blog!
In short, what felt Sunday and Monday like horrible emptiness and aloneless, feels so full of grace that I can’t really describe it. I was at my teacher’s satsang tonight, and being in his presence felt like being “slain in the Spirit.”
It is beautiful, at once full and empty, the essence of everything and nothing. A spaciousness that courteously recedes when I think and work, and reveals its presence when I rest.
God really has a great sense of humor.