Circles, Horizons and Depths

"Nature centres into balls,
And her proud ephemerals,
Fast to surface and outside,
Scan the profile of the sphere;
Knew they what that signified,
A new genesis were here."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

"The eye is the first circle," Emerson observes, "the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms. One moral we have already deduced in considering the circular or compensatory character of every human action. Another analogy we shall now trace, that every action admits of being outdone. Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens."

[Emerson, "The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson," p. 252]

In a classic series of sermons, the great 20th-century theologian, Paul Tillich, observed, like Emerson, that there is a fathomless depth to our being, a depth so great and infinite that it is the ultimate Ground of Being.

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth," Tillich notes.  "It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth." 

"The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being," he continues, "is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God."

[Paul Tillich, "The Shaking of the Foundations," Scribners, pp. 56-57.]

Thus, our lives are circumscribed by the orbits of the stars and the horizons of time and space, but beyond each such horizon we see there exists yet more distant horizons, including some we can never see. Similarly, there are depths within that delimit our knowledge of who and what we are; yet, they, too, are infinite and each depth yields to a further depth; and even underneath the depth which we must take to be the ultimate of all depths, a lower deep needs open. Such is the nature of the universe and our Being within it.

Reflections on Emptiness and the Void

Thomas Merton: On "Desert and Void"

"The uncreated is waste and emptiness to the creature - not even sand, not even stone, not even darkness and night. A burning wilderness would at least be something. It burns and is wild. But the uncreated is no something. Waste, emptiness, total poverty of the creator. Yet from this poverty springs everything. The waste is inexhaustible, infinite zero. Everything comes from this desert nothing. Everything wants to return to it and cannot. For who can return nowhere?"

"But for each of us there is a point of nowhereness in the middle of movement, a point of nothingness in the midst of being - the incomparable point not to be discovered by insight. If you seek it you do not find it, if you stop seeking it is there. But you must not turn to it. Once you become aware of yourself as seeker, you are lost. But if you are content to be lost you will be found without knowing it, precisely because you are lost. For you are, at last, nowhere."

Thomas Merton: On 'Form and Nothingness'

"The perfect act is empty. Who can see it? He who forgets form. Out of the formed, the unformed. The empty act proceeds with its own form. Perfect form is momentary, its perfection vanishes at once. Perfection and emptiness work together, for they are the same - the coincidence of momentary form and eternal nothingness. Form, the flash of nothingness. Forget form and it suddenly appears, ringed and reverberating with its own light, which is nothing."

"Well then, stop seeking, let it all happen, let it come and go. What? Everything - i.e., nothing."

Contemplative Practice and Disciplining the Mind

"You tell me nothing new; you are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind is extremely roving; but, as the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall them, and carry them to GOD as their last end."

"When the mind, for want of being sufficiently reduced by recollection at our first engaging in devotion, has contracted certain bad habits of wandering and dissipation, they are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our wills, to the things of the earth."

"I believe one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before GOD. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer: many words and long discourses being often the occasions of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before GOD, like a dumb or paralytic beggar at a rich man's gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the presence of the LORD. If it sometimes wander and withdraw itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that: trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract the mind than to re-collect it: the will must bring it back in tranquility. If you persevere in this manner, GOD will have pity on you."

"One way to re-collect the mind easily in the time of prayer, and preserve it more in tranquility, is not to let it wander too far at other times: you should keep it strictly in the presence of GOD; and being accustomed to think of Him often, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings."

-- Brother Lawrence --
("The Practice of the Presence of God," VIII Letter)

That the undisciplined mind is restless, and goes where it will, is recognized in all religions. Indeed, disciplining the mind may be the central purpose of religion, as through disciplining the mind we attain to a higher and deeper consciousness in which we attain to the divine. "The mind is indeed restless, Arjuna," says Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, "it is indeed hard to train. But by constant practice and by freedom from passions the mind in truth can be trained. When the mind is not in harmony, this divine communion is hard to attain; but the man whose mind is in harmony attains it, if he knows and strives for it."

"(E)very mind, no matter its present nature, can ultimately be disciplined and transformed" observes Swami Prabhavananda in his commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, "(and) can be, in Patanjali's phrase 'one-pointed' and fit to attain to the state of perfect yoga." However, as he later notes, disciplining the mind requires both practice and effort.

"(T)he thought-waves cannot all be controlled at once," Prabhavananda observes. "First we have to overcome the "painful" thought-waves by raising waves which are "not painful." To our thoughts of anger, desire and delusion we must oppose thoughts of love, generosity and truth. Only much later, when the "painful" thought-waves have been completely stilled, can we proceed to the second stage of discipline; the stilling of the "not painful" waves which we have deliberately created."

"The idea that we should ultimately have to overcome even those thought-waves which are "good," "pure" and "truthful" may at first seem shocking to a student who has been trained in the Western approach to morality," notes Prabhavananda, "but a little reflection will show him that this must be so."

"The external world, even in its most beautiful appearances and noblest manifestations, is still superficial and transient," he notes. "It is not the basic Reality. We must look through it not at it to see the Atman."

"Certainly," he concedes, "it is better to love than to hate, better to share than to hoard, better to tell the truth than to lie. But the thought-waves which motivate the practice of these virtues are nonetheless disturbances in the mind. We all know instances of admirable, earnest men who become so deeply involved in the cares of a great reform movement or social relief project that they cannot think of anything beyond the practical problems of their daily work. Their minds are not calm." 

"The mind of the truly illumined man is calm," Prabhavananda concludes, "not because he is selfishly indifferent to the needs of others, but because he knows the peace of the Atman within all things, even within the appearance of misery, disease, strife and want."

 [Prabhavananda and Isherwood, " How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali," pp. 23-24.]

Heroism in Religion and Philosophy

"Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed although he has not prayed even once in his life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stands in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others."

-- Swami Vivikenanda --
("Teachings of Swami Vivikenanda," pp. 174-175.)

We live in times which call for heroic action - inwardly and outwardly heroic - and yet we live in times where religions seem to be in ever deeper conflict, and in which philosophy and science are held by many religionists to be irrelevant to their worldviews. What will it take, one wonders, for an ever smaller world to pull together? What will it take for whole masses of individuals to put the interests of others before their own narrow self-interests? Is self-abnegation  widely possible in a world that faces crisis?

"I think we are actually at a point in time that is very unique," observes spiritual teacher, Adyashanti. "Here we are, and it is very possible that in your and my lifespan we will actually experience the fulfillment of literally not being able to sustain certain things. We will run out of energy, we will run out of environment. We have weapons of  destruction that are so extreme that we can wipe ourselves out. It is very possible in the lifetime that we are living in, that we could actually come (to) see a conclusion, that non-sustainability will actually happen and we will have to deal with that. And I think we have been evolving towards that for a very, very, very long time. And, here we are."

"It is no wonder," Adyashanti observes, "that there is fanaticism breaking out in all sorts of religions and fundamentalists in all points-of-view, whether it is religions or philosophical (viewpoints). People are just dividing themselves. There are people that want to save the world, and people that want to destroy each other. They are all there. And it will be very interesting to see what happens. Because there is often at the 'point-of-no-return' - at the point of the most dramatic tensions in life and extremes -  (that) is the very place that dramatic change and transformation can happen."

"I don't think that it's anywhere guaranteed that the change and transformation will happen," he notes. "We don't know. But it is going to go one way or another, and it's not going to be very long from right now before it goes one way or another."

"We are running out of options other than to wake up," he warns. "It is starting to become, possibly, a biological necessity of survival. And when it gets to that point, it really starts to get people's attention."

"We may destroy ourselves if we cannot actually wake up to the fact, to the living experience, that we are really the same," he points out. "It is not good enough to have the philosophy that we are really the same, because that philosophy breaks down when push comes to shove."

When the fruits of different religions and philosophies break down, is that the point at which we realize that they, and we, are essentially the same?

Rumi: The Sufi's Tavern of Love

"In the tavern are many wines," writes poet, Coleman Barks, "the wine of delight in color and form and taste, the wine of the intellect's agility, the fine port of stories, and the cabarnet of soul singing. Being human means entering this place where entrancing varieties of desire are served. The grapeskin of ego breaks and a pouring begins."

"Fermentation is one of the oldest symbols for human transformation," he points out. "When grapes combine their juice and are closed up together for a time in a dark place, the results are spectacular. This is what lets two drunks meet so that they don't know who is who. Pronouns no longer apply in the tavern's mind-world of excited confusion and half-articulated wantings."

"But after a time in the tavern," Barks warns, "a point comes, a memory of elsewhere, a longing for the source, and the drunks must set off from the tavern and begin the return. The Qu'ran says, "We are all returning." The tavern is a kind of glorious hell that human beings enjoy and suffer and then push off from in their search for truth. The tavern is a dangerous region where sometimes disguises are necessary, but never hide your heart, Rumi urges. Keep open there. A breaking apart, a crying out in the street, begins in the tavern, and the human soul turns to find its way home."

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi" p. 1.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * * 

THE DRUNKARDS AND THE TAVERN

I'm drunk and you're insane, who's going to lead us home?
How many times did they say,
"Drink just a little, only two or three at most?"

In this city no one I see is conscious;

one is worse off than the next, frenzied and insane.

Dear one, come to the tavern of ruin
and experience the pleasures of the soul.
What happiness can there be apart
from this intimate conversation
with the Beloved, the Soul of souls?

In every corner there are drunkards, arm in arm,
while the Server pours the wine
from a royal decanter to every particle of being.

You belong to the tavern: your income is wine,

and wine is all you ever buy.
Don't give even a second away

to the concerns of the merely sober.

O lute player, are you more drunk, or am I?
In the presence of one as drunk as you, my magic is a myth.

When I went outside the house,
some drunk approached me,

and in his eyes I saw

hundreds of hidden gardens and sanctuaries.

Like a ship without an anchor,

he rocked this way and that.

Hundreds of intellectuals and wise men
could die from a taste of this yearning.

I asked, "Where are you from?"
He laughed and said, "O soul,

half of me is from Turkestan and half from Farghana.

Half of me is water and mud, half heart and half soul;

half of me is the ocean's shore, half is all pearl.

"Be my friend," I pleaded. "I'm one of your family."
"I know the difference between family and outsiders."

I've neither a heart nor a turban,

and here in this house of hangovers

my breast is filled with unspoken words.

Shall I try to explain or not.

Have I lived among the lame for so long

that I've begun to limp myself?
And yet no slap of pain could disturb
a drunkenness like this.

Listen, can you hear a wail

arising from the pillar of grief?
Shams al-Haqq of Tabriz, where are you now,

after all the mischief you've stirred in our hearts?

(Translation by K. Helminski, A, Godlas, and               L. Saedin)

[Kabir Helminski, "The Rumi Collection," pp. 32-24]

Thomas Merton: Contemplation and the Contemplative Life

The aspiration for enlightenment - "direct awareness," as Trappist monk, Thomas Merton describes it, below - is, if anything, far stronger today, than it was in the early 1960s when Merton wrote his classic work of comparative contemplative traditions,"Mystics and Zen Masters." Merton's observations about the difficulty of attaining what Christianity would generally describe as "mystic union," and Zen Buddhists would describe as ""satori," points out the helpfulness of grounding one's practice on, if not in, one or another of the many varied religious or contemplative traditions. It also requires, Merton posits, a deep understanding of the world's anguish, a state that has manifestly increased in the past fifty years.

"(D)irect awareness," writes  Merton, "is a gift, but it also presupposes the knowledge and practice of certain traditional disciples. Thus, we can say that contemplation is both a "gift" (a "grace") and an "art." Unfortunately, we must also admit that it can almost be said to be a "lost art." And for this lost art there is certainly in the world today a definite nostalgia, not unmixed with vague hopes for the recovery of this awareness. But the nostalgia and the desire do not of themselves suffice to make the nostalgic one a contemplative."

"Needless to say, the contemplative" Merton points out, "is not simply a person who, by vocation, is juridically isolated and cloistered. The mere fact of breaking off communication with the world and of losing interest in it certainly does not make one ipso facto a "contemplative." On the contrary, it would seem that today a certain openness to the world and a genuine participation in its anguish would normally help to safeguard the sincerity of a commitment to contemplation."

[Thomas Merton, "Mystics and Zen Masters," pp. 203-204.]

* * * * * * * * * * * * 

In the attached video, highlighting Merton's writings, this most contemplative of writers has the following to say about contemplation, its source, and its importance to man's psyche:

"Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is the vivid realization that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that source. It knows the source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes beyond both reason and beyond simple faith.  For contemplation is a kind of spiritual vision to which both reason and faith aspire by their very nature, because without it they must always remain incomplete."

"Yet contemplation is not vision, because it sees without seeing, and knows without knowing. It is a more profound depth of faith, a knowledge too deep to be grasped in images and words, or even in clear concepts. It can be suggested by words, by symbols, but in the very moment of trying to indicate what it knows, the contemplative mind takes back what it has said and denies what it has affirmed. For in contemplation we know by unknowing, or, better, we know beyond all knowing or unknowing."

Fr. Richard Rohr: "The Cosmic Christ"

"There is no such thing as 'merely natural,'" says Fr. Richard Rohr, a decidedly modern Franciscan friar featured in the attached video interview. "That is the meaning of the incarnation - that the physical world is, yes, the hiding place of God, but also the revelation place of God. It is only hidden for those who don't know how to see. There is nothing natural for those who have learned how to see. Everything is supernatural."

"Whenever," he says, "we are moving toward connection, communion - one author calls it 'cosmic allurement,' that everything in creation admires itself in the mirrors that are all around it - whenever you allow that 'allurement' to happen and you build bonds and bridges instead of boundaries, you are furthering the second coming of Christ. You are building up the body of Christ. Whenever you separate, hate, fear, deny, enclose yourself in a little self-pitying corner, you are actually backtracking on the glory of God. You are not revealing the mystery, you are in fact denying it."

"Here's where science is helping us so much today," says Fr. Rohr,"that the intuitions that religion always had are now being confirmed. If there is one God, there's one truth, and there's one reality. Religion and science have to end up saying the same thing, and that's happening now."

"The Cosmic Christ, which is the light that fills all things since the beginning of time," Fr. Rohr points out, "invites us into bigger worlds by love, by something bigger, more beautiful, more attractive, more seductive. And that's the function of beauty, that's the function of truth, and that's the function of all goodness."