When I would grumble about something to Ming Zhen, she would inevitably get to the point where she reminded me “everyone has sinned, and has been sinned against.” It was her way of telling me to be quiet – to stop complaining or thinking I am better than or less than any other being. This knowledge, although simple to read and even memorize, is not easy to practice. In this essay, Ming Zhen asks us to study the ego-self before the ego-self grabs hold with either attraction or aversion. A hard task indeed! For a very long time, we spiritual seekers find ourselves in a mess after we have grabbed something with the energy of attraction or aversion. These two energies are the harbingers of the three poisons of the soul – namely, greed, hate and delusion and all the various concomitants; the endless array of associated collateral. (i.e., worry, resentment, pride, envy, jealousy…)
Ming Zhen calls it being buried in our egos. I understand her to say as she says in Beckett’s quote, a dead mind. Dead in the sense its shape has taken on a name and form of becoming a such and such which we all know is deadly for any spiritual adept. To continue to see the sins of others is a fool’s view – and to worry about the other’s view of you is equally foolish. I can hear Ming Zhen laugh as she once again reminds us, “everyone has sinned, and has been sinned against.” Amen.
I have taken the liberty as editor for ZATMA to edit this essay towards a focus of helping us all to look at our ulterior defenses and to remember her way of telling us to be quiet.
Everyone has sinned, and has been sinned against.”
__________
Say what you will, you can’t keep a dead mind down.”
Samuel Beckett, More Pricks Than Kicks
People buried in their egos – victims of their own poisonous anger, lust, or ignorance – find release only when they can spew that venom onto others. It’s the only catharsis they get. We hear them on moonless nights, stalking the land, targeting anyone within spitting range.
We need to remember this is us each and every time we find ourselves spewing venom.
To avoid the mess during these Nights of the Living Dead, the rest of us have to find a Refuge – and wait for sunrise. We are able to avoid the mess when we stop ourselves from discharging our own poisons. Then, if we are disciplined, we are able to seek Refuge. The Big Spiritual refuge of turning towards the Precious Buddha Mirror of our true image.
It helps to understand – if not the source of others venom – at least the display of it. Sometimes we encounter it “in kind” and sometimes “in degree.”
The “degree” is easier to see. We all feel that we’ve imposed ethical limits upon our behavior, limits that constitute a boundary between acceptable and unacceptable actions. “He is a terrible man. He beats his wife for no reason at all. (Pause) I beat my wife, too, but I make sure she deserves it before I strike her.”
In prison ministries we often see a rationalized hierarchy of crime. “I may be guilty of armed robbery, but I’ve never raped anybody!” Sometimes the hierarchy stumps us. A man who is serving three life sentences for multiple murders can say, with perfect equanimity, “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a thief.”
Often, we find ourselves declaring such nonsense, as “I’d never do such a thing.”
No, it is difference in “kind” that gives us trouble. It is a matter of identity. Identification with a false self; a made-up identity. A change in kind is an apparent change in genus and species. We think we’re seeing one kind of animal, but in reality, we’re seeing its natural enemy. This is not quite the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” motif. The wolf knows he’s a wolf and the woolly garments are a conscious disguise. If caught with his toes or his tail showing, he knows he’s been busted. The wolf is not deluded enough to growl and bare his fangs and insist that his accuser is a vicious sheep hater – the only reason he could possibly have for calling him a wolf. This kind of response is a purely human one.
In such a self-absolving defense tactic, the person unconsciously assumes an identity opposite to that of his true victim, i.e., the person he can righteously accuse of having the very same faults as those that got him buried in the first place. If he is a fearful coward – one that would betray his country at the slightest inconvenience, he may emerge from his interment as a martinet, swaggering with stick and sneer, exhorting his subordinates to commit acts of cruelty upon some ‘cowardly’ enemy, deriding his men as wimps and unpatriotic pansies, and punishing them harshly if they are in any way reluctant to inflict such injuries. If there’s one thing he hates, it’s a coward.
Have any of us ever made such statements – in a ridiculous piety. Or perhaps its opposite?
Again, it is in the exaggerated response that we find a clue to the nature of this inversion.
It is when we do take time to reflect upon moral issues that we need to consider the motivation of those who so vehemently question other people’s morality – and this includes our own outcries as well.
Buddhists who’ve been buried in their own egos often get their disinterment passes by shouting that somebody in the vicinity is violating a Precept. It never occurs to them that they are shifting a burden of guilt onto someone else. Whether the transfer is hissed or shouted, the theme is always the same: the assumed superior stance of one person over another.
THE REFRAIN COMES AGAIN –
Everyone has sinned, and has been sinned against.”
Pointing accusingly at other people’s offenses requires scrupulously clean hands. This is a universal principle in law except, perhaps, in the judicial proceedings of the Cosa Nostra. When two men rob a bank, intending to split the loot, and one of them runs off with all the money, the victimized robber cannot charge him with theft or seek redress of his grievance in the civil courts.
Seeing that our hands are dirty requires a degree of self-awareness that we usually don’t possess.
As the Buddha said,
The faults of others are easily seen, but one’s own faults are seen with difficulty. One winnows the faults of others like chaff, but conceals his own faults as a fowler covers his body with twigs and leaves.”` (The Buddha, Dhammapada, XVIII, 252.)
Reminds us of Adam and Eve who made a poor effort to cover their shame with a leaf.
Ordinary flaws, those convenient hypocrisies we devise to get out of uncomfortable positions or to gain personal advantages, are far easier to recognize than the ones that are not just covered by twigs and leaves but are buried beneath them.
If we haven’t yet used a defense mechanism to dig ourselves into a pathologic hole, we can try routine Buddhist self-help techniques. Success depends on luck and on having attained a certain proficiency in meditation. There is a line that is crossed when fascination becomes emotional involvement. Whenever we notice that we are aroused – by either attraction or aversion – we can try to analyze our response. Unfortunately, by the time we are emotionally “hooked” we have passed the point of disinterested observation and our conclusions are likely to be prejudiced.
Hsu Yun noted that the best time to become aware of our connection to a person or object is at the very beginning, when fascination has not yet progressed to emotional involvement. Initial actions and reactions are rather like the experience of seeing a dog pass a narrow window. By the time we’re aware that a dog is passing, we note only the dog’s body and then its tail. In order to identify the dog, we have to put a head on it… to go into our subliminal data banks and retrieve information of which we originally were not quite conscious. This task is referred to in the mondo concerning the master and the novice who asks when he will achieve enlightenment.
When you came here tonight,” the master asks, “on which side of the door did you leave your slippers?”
Naturally, the novice does not have the meditative proficiency necessary to recall details that his brain recorded, but which he made no conscious attempt to remember. Just as a journalist learns to ask the relevant questions, “Who?”; “When?”; “Where?”; “Why?”; “How?” and so on, we have to try to connect various stimuli, to establish a causal link, and try to determine the critical point – the point at which our interest was aroused. We often find that we make the same kind of mistake over and over. We can never “catch” ourselves before we fall into the trap. We need to be able to reconstruct the chain of impulses, the actions and reactions, the events that led us into the troublesome situations.
It’s only when anger, lust, and ignorance progress, unimpeded by constructive and corrective review, that we find that the defensive foxhole becomes a trench, and the trench a spiritual grave.
__________
The Take-Away by Fashi Lao Yue
In order to clarify the teaching, we need to call upon the Roman god, Janus. As many remember, Janus is the god of many things: beginnings and gates, transitions, time, duality and endings symbolized by having two faces.
When conflicts arise, Janus is the god involved; when conflicts end, he is the god involved. Making him the god of war and peace. It is safe to say that he represents the god of all duality which is the heart of this teaching. We have a tendency to split things along the classification of good and bad.
When we set ourselves in a position for one-side, we have lost half our face. We act out one side of Janus’s faces, forgetting the other side is true as well.
Most of the time we do not want to be reminded that we are dualistic; we hide one side of the face in favor of the other rather than recognize we have two faces. We dislike this so much we find it a real insult to be called ‘two-faced.’
We want to be single-faced – pure. Not knowing that purity is our real nature, we wish for it and pretend we are it. But time and time again we split towards a preferred tendency. Some of us prefer, for example, to begin something rather than end something or the other-way-round. There is an endless slough of how this plays out in our daily life.
In order for us to realize our real nature, we must recognize our tendency to split and make efforts to integrate our awareness. When we are far enough along on the spiritual path, we see the oneness in such a way that everything is our real nature and we surrender our human tendency in humility.
Author: Ming Zhen Shakya
If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching,
My teacher, more times than I can remember, would say to me at the end of a teaching, “I don’t give a rat’s ass.” It was a teaching that overshadowed whatever she had said beforehand. That’s how powerful it was. That’s how important it became. Today and every day it remains a radiant guiding light for how I live in the Dharma. Let me explain.
Delivered with zeal and at the end of an array of spiritual truths, she’d say, “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” which remains a long remembered and potent teaching on its own. What it did and still does, is it allows the teachings to be given free of any Zen stink. The teachings are in their own right liberated from any persuasion or hook of the teacher. But a teacher can taint them. The Dharma of her punctuated saying, “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” is a clearing of taints and was given in the most direct, intimate way. Said in such a way, my teacher demonstrated and exemplified a cornerstone of Zen practice. What is that cornerstone?
Don’t get entangled.
She, her ego was not invested in me, my ego in any way. She was not trying to sell me, persuade me, engage me, convert me, flatter me, deceive me, trick me or convince me. No inveigling. It is much like the old idiom, “take it or leave it.” It gave the message that this is the Dharma and there’s nothing else to say. Leaving me free to decide, to choose to hear, to study, to continue or not. It was the Zen message of “Don’t seek from others, (not even me) because if you do, you’ll be further away from who you really are. It is the ultimate teaching of Chan Master Dongshan, “You go it alone now. You are not IT. IT is actually you.”
MIng Zhen Shakya was enormously generous both in her availability to give the teachings and in her delivery of the Zen Dharma. There was a certainty in the direction of the teachings presented but never a confining, imprisoning one. She, long ago, had gone beyond the opposites of right and wrong.
Anytime I was wobbling she’d give me a royal fleur de lis of teachings from the Buddhas and ancestors and would wrap it up with this one from her. “I don’t give a rat’s ass.” After so much generous, erudite and affable Dharma she’d wind it up with telling me she didn’t give a rat’s ass whether I took the teachings to heart or not. It may sound cold-hearted, but it wasn’t. It was an intimate way of making the teaching free. She had no hooks or claws into me of wanting me to be this or that. She neither pulled on me nor shoved me away; she was without entanglement. She lived the Dharma of the not giving a rat’s ass. All for the benefit of those who were lucky enough to make her acquaintance and seek her wisdom.
We all tend to have ideas of what a Zen teacher should be or say, such as lofty, well versed, kind, compassionate, gentle ( the list is endless); but in every case it is some deluded image we conjure up. Meeting an awakened teacher is not the same as our imagined or deluded image of a Zen teacher.
If anyone thinks or believes of her as coarse or crude, you’d be likely to hear her say, “I don’t give a rat’s ass.” That is a piercing arrow through your deluded image of how you think a Dharma heir should be.
The Dharma of the Rat’s Ass is quite a mouthful of Dharma; it pierces delusion.
Author: FaShi Lao Yue
A Single Thread is not a blog. If for some reason you need elucidation on the teaching, please contact the editor at: yao.xiang.editor@gmail.com
I felt an overwhelming sense of power – like God must feel when he’s carrying a gun.”
— H. J. Simpson’s apology upon being expelled from
the National Rifle Association for misusing a firearm.
God packing heat. A novel concept? No, not really.
Simpson, with genius often mimicked but never matched, has called attention to a problem that confronts the spiritual whenever the spiritual confronts the merely religious: God made in the image of limited man.
May we disparage Mr. Simpson’s apology, scoff at his pedestrian view of majesty, deride his ignorance of the attribute omnipotent? No. Infinity gives us all a little trouble. Whenever it’s necessary to anticipate the divine intent and the means by which that intent may be effected, we all shrink the boundaries of omni and enfeeble the implications of potent. We cut God down to size. What is Thor without his hammer? Wotan without his spear? Manju sin sword? And even Great Shiva… does he not carry a trident? So God, like a cosmic Wyatt Earp, walks about with a Buntline Special on his hip.
But God would have used a churchkey to open his can of Duff and a remote to turn on his TV. That’s where H.J. Simpson made his big mistake.
Not only do we impose human constraints upon divine power, we often usurp the rights to that power altogether, making God’s supernatural abilities somewhat superfluous. God’s power always seems to come with irritating conditions – those precepts or commandments or yamas and niyamas. Why subject ourselves to all those messy rules when we can direct destiny with just a little magical dabbling?
We also tend, while we’re at it, to restructure other divine prerogatives and abilities as well. Though every religion insists that God is omniscient and omnipresent, each restricts him to knowing only what its scriptures allow him to know, or forbids him to stray from its borders except, of course, to punish alien non-believers. And depending upon the fashion of the times, God’s Constitutional judgments are either rigidly confined to strict constructionist interpretations or else they are so liberal as to permit absolutely any conduct. To stay in power, a god has to stay en vogue.
It is only when each religion’s mystics – those who appreciate divinity at an advanced, visionary level – alone or in concert with the mystics of other religions consider divine attributes that we find a less parochial view of things Almighty.
Two “realms of experience” are open to us: the material, samsaric, public world of society; and the spiritual, nirvanic, private world of the individual. Religion’s purpose is to keep peace in the communal world, to mete out reward and punishment for actions that are beneficial or detrimental to the samsaric common weal. But each religion presents a mystical ladder, a series of steps by which we may individually access the spiritual world and enjoy direct contact with divinity. In this nirvanic, solitary state good and evil do not exist. And old news is no news. The two realms have nothing much to do with each other.
It should come as no surprise, then, that advanced Zen is no different from any other belief system that provides a regimen for such advanced forms of worship. Whether Daoist, Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Native American, Buddhist or any other established form of religion, “advanced’ means “mystical” and mystical is most readily discussed under the generic term Alchemy. Few subjects are as misunderstood.
Originally, Alchemy came in two branches. One probed the nature of matter in the causes either of pure scientific knowledge or, more often, of profitably transmuting base metals into precious ones. This experimental branch became chemistry and we shall exclude it from this discussion.
The other branch concerned itself with spiritual states. The alchemist strove always to attain that gold which nowhere appears on Mendeleev’s chart. (“Our Gold is not the common gold.”) These aspirants considered the mysteries of matter as directives for attaining spiritual transcendence. They sought psychological liberation, a methodology of self-discovery and emotional independence from societal demands, a process which Carl Jung called “Individuation.” In this form matter had allegorical significance, the alchemist operating under the assumption that as things were in the starry macrocosm so they were in the human microcosm. Gods were planets, metals and, most importantly, rulers of the various instincts to which the human psyche made obeisance. The planets may have been out of reach, but their earthly, chemical representatives were quite handy; and, things equaling the same thing being equal to each other, the alchemists assumed that by altering one, the other was affected. Let’s circle this subject a bit.
While the results that the alchemists sought were achieved around the globe by various civilizations using various methods, the particular form popularly called ‘the Alchemical Opus’ originated by blending two ancient cultural approaches to the divine: the Greek and the Egyptian. The earliest document known to us on the subject is Egypt’s Book of Thoth or its later Graeco version, the Hermetica of Hermes Trismegistus.
Because we are indebted to Greek and Roman culture and mythology – and for no other reason – we employ the gods of their pantheons as the psyche’s governing principals. Athena/Minerva is the goddess of wisdom; Hestia/Vesta and Haphaestos/Vulcan of spiritual transformation; Ares/Mars of belligerence; Aphrodite/Venus of male sexual desire; Artemis/Diana of stalking; and so on.
Universally, metals and fire had always possessed sacred characteristics. Smiths, after all, were the world’s first priests. But in Egypt the spiritual content of another substance had been exponentially amplified. The Egyptian belief in the afterlife did not involve heaven and hell or reincarnation as it is now understood; instead, the dead, providing that their physical remains were properly infused with this divine substance, could experience their own apotheosis and become one with the Atum, divinity, itself, and would, in the extended process, come to be, to know, to interact with the heavenly personae, Isis and Osiris, Horus, Re and Nut, et al, in the “other” world. This embalming substance was a sodium salt called Natrium – from n.t.r, their word for “god”; and the corpse was stuffed with it. The divine spirit which resided in this blackening chemical substance transferred itself to the desiccated flesh, preserved now for all eternity.
It is foolish to contend, as many commentators do, that the Greeks failed to apply scientific methodology to their assumptions about matter and declined to subject their theories to experimental verification. We know that Plato, for example, considered the universe to consist of such elemental substances as earth, water, fire and air; but this is largely a mystical explanation and for mystical purposes it is still sufficient – as a look at Kundalini Yoga’s Chakra divisions and the Daoist regimen will indicate. But buildings like the Parthenon or ships like the massive, complex trireme were never constructed without clear insight into matter and force. The Greeks had armor, jewelry, navigational instruments and nails; and none of these objects was ever created without considerable trial and error.
The Egyptians, too, are said to have been so interested in the affairs of the dead that they neglected completely the affairs of the living. Proof of this is supposed to be demonstrated by the archeological dearth of ordinary dwellings. The pyramids may have been constructed without mortar, but a small house, if made of archeologically fortuitous stone, would have required it. Egypt not being a heavily forested country and mortar usually requiring the ashes of wood, it should surprise no one that the common man built his home of adobe, a not exactly permanent building material in the Nile’s narrow flood plane. The wealth of prosaic objects – for hunting, farming, animal husbandry, and textiles indicate scientific disciplines which can only have had their beginnings in cottage industry; and we have no cause to suppose that those cottages were in any way the settings for unhappy, earthly domestic life.
It is also worthy of note that when a Greek died he more or less automatically found himself in the Elysian Fields, a dull place where he became a “shade” among other shadowy figures; but an Egyptian, as part of the post-mortem fuss, had his spirit ruthlessly cross-examined by the gods. Even saturated with Natrium, he still had to claim exemplary behavior as a living person in order to be acceptable as a dead one.
The idea, then, that chemical change could affect spiritual development came about a few thousand years ago. For as long as the nature of matter was mysterious and quite beyond human comprehension, it was endlessly fascinating and, being so, agreeably yielded to being impregnated with seminal notions of divinity.
Thus, Greek and Egyptian techno-theology served mostly to unite the characters of the gods and planets with the use of otherwise ordinary substances and to reinforce the idea that what circulated through the heavenly Macrocosmic orbits, circulated through the human Microcosmic orbits; and further – and this is the critical element – the salts which circulated through the body did not have to be the embalmer’s Natrium – a lifeless fluid for the dead, but were salts contained in living seminal fluid. The alchemist had found a way to take control of his own destiny.
He knew which other materials – those sacred metals – he could work with. The Sun was gold ; Mercury, mercury; Venus, copper; the Moon was silver; Mars, iron; Jupiter was tin; and Saturn, lead. As it was in the one, so it was in the other. Let a man be lustful and he was likely, then as now, to be affected by things venereal; let him be swiftly changing and he was mercurial; let him be belligerent and he was clearly under the influence of Mars. (And was it so long ago that certain soldiers strove to distinguish themselves in battle so that they might be awarded an Iron Cross?) The moon would make him lunatic; the Tin Man was ever the jovial friend; and the slothful or phlegmatic person was obviously saturnine. It was nice to have a sunny disposition but better yet to be intelligent for, as Apollo would surely agree, such a one was truly bright. As to the precious seminal fluid, he representationally used antimony or a salt, ammonium chloride, both of which he recorded using an asterisk (star regulus).
Now, instead of passively consulting soothsayers or goat entrails to obtain dubious predictions, divine substances could be manipulated, applied, and transformed to guide and to fulfill the alchemist’s will, and all this would be done with a meditation regimen involving interior body control and psychological accommodation. The complete discipline assured his right to experience the ecstasy of divine intercourse. He now had, in a manner of speaking, a ladder by which he could independently climb up to celestial heights.
Experiments with lead, silver or mercury helped an alchemist to overcome or to enhance those characteristics which he sought to alter, providing, of course, that they didn’t kill him in the process. (Alchemists often ingested the metals or inhaled noxious fumes.) Acids and bases, acting upon the metals, produced an enormous variety of results, each of which allowed the alchemist to regard a change with the requisite fascination, permitting an easy slide from concentration into meditation. Allegorically he “internalized” the chemical reactions and became sufficiently introverted to draw the macrocosm into the solitary world of his laboratory. As if he were staring into a hypnodisk, he became entranced by chemical alteration; but regardless of whether the state he achieved was hypnotic or meditative, no other human being controlled it. He and only he was privy to the drama enacted within his own collective unconscious.
As one thing complemented or inspired another, the meditative visions organized themselves, permitting classification and consensus, the necessary objectification for study. Attributes could be assigned to various material elements or compounds and the resultant lore – plus, of course, the means of handling the often volatile substances – could be discussed in scholarly treatises.
Still we wonder how matter and spirit were so easily fused.
Divine power, being beyond human imagination, did not always conform itself to earthly expectations. The Other world was so filled with unpredictable events and mysteries that other laws must surely govern it; and the human mind quickly enacted the needed legislation. Laws of Magic regulated the conduct of the known with the unknown and provided for a point of transit between the two worlds.
This “other” nirvanic world, may have been home to mystical adepts and, naturally, the dead; but the non-initiated living had to accept its existence on faith. The Unknown is always seductive and intriguing; and when people have, by definition, no knowledge of it, they have no choice but to suspend credulity and accept the descriptions and verdicts of soothsayers. A fortune teller could stare into the sheen of an animal’s liver or a crystal ball and see the future. He could turn a card and determine a child’s paternity.
In order to appreciate Alchemy we first need to consider Sympathetic Magic.
Sympathetic magic is based upon two laws: the Law of Similarity which says that like produces like, and the Law of Contagion which says that things which have once been in contact continue to act upon each other at a distance – long after physical contact between them has been severed. Frequently these two laws are simultaneously applied.
We can best appreciate sympathetic magic in the Voodoo Doll. According to the Law of Similarity, an image of a person is constructed and then, let’s say, a pin or knife is stuck into the effigy’s leg, and the person in whose image the effigy was created suffers a corresponding injury to his leg. Heat applied to the effigy will cause the model to become feverish. In the right hands, the fellow can become the ‘teaching case’ for a medical college’s entire course of study.
Similarity can be combined with Contagion to create an even higher degree of efficacy by taking something that was part of the victim – hair or fingernails or even cloth that contains his sweat, and mixing it into the effigy and then inflicting the desired damage. This, to the great relief of look-alikes, leaves no doubt about the identity of the intended victim.
These laws operate in a more subtle fashion when we consider the miracle-producing abilities of relics and such material objects as “pieces of the True Cross”- splinters of wood which have had direct contact with the body of Christ. Likewise, the teeth of the Buddha, retrieved from his crematory ashes, have been enshrined in grand stupas which have themselves become the sites of huge temples. The power of such relics cannot be underestimated. Such an enormous demand for them exists that ten sequoias could not account for all the pieces of the True Cross in existence today just as schools of barracuda could be dentured with all the Buddha’s teeth preserved around the world.
The mummy of the Sixth Patriarch is venerated and miracles are said to have been occasioned through the intercession of his bones which, themselves, are said to behave in miraculous ways. During the 1960’s Cultural Revolution, one of the Red Guards struck the seated mummy with a rifle butt, scattering the bones onto the floor. (I have had college graduates tell me that they knew for a fact that the bones bled real blood at the impact and that the particular Red Guard who struck the mummy died an immediate and inexplicable death, shame somehow having inspired his demise.)
Miraculous medals, icons, statuary, and various artworks are created to assist in the invocation of the divine presence; but whenever it is actually possible to touch the object – as a statue that may be rubbed or kissed or as a pendant miraculous medal which hangs against the skin, the effect is accordingly magnified.
The Shroud of Turin is believed to contain the imprinting blood and perspiration of Christ. It is not just an old piece of linen. Though people are no longer permitted to touch the Shroud, still pilgrimages are made to establish direct eye-contact with it. It is important to note that despite carbon-dating which insists that the shroud is of medieval fabrication; it is still venerated. A fervent believer will readily accept the explanation that the wrong part of the Shroud was tested, or that extraneous substances skewed the test results, or even that God has deliberately permitted a negative result in order to test the faith of the believer. And who can argue with this?
We find here the great strength – or weakness – of faith. Once one miraculous occurrence is accepted, the possibility for all miraculous occurrences is established and, because by definition the miraculous is beyond human understanding, people cannot differentiate between the claims. Force equals mass times acceleration only in the material world. Mass, by definition, does not apply to spiritual things and is therefore zero. And if we admit that the laws of physics can be cast aside or rendered meaningless as they in fact are in the “other” non-material world, we can attribute to divine fiat any force. A blanket exemption from rational consideration is given. Since no population suffers a lack of charlatans, persons in authority must determine the validity of otherworldly occurrences and claims – in accordance with the terms of their own religion. To the uninitiated, there is no way to distinguish between unknowns: the blanket of possibility smothers all consideration.
In this same way, for example, hedonism ceases to be useful as an explanation of human conduct because it gives the blanket motivation of pleasure to all actions. The masochist submits to punishment because he enjoys receiving it – just as the sadist enjoys inflicting it. The mother suffers to protect her children because she enjoys the exercise of maternal responsibility – just as the mother who abandons her children does so because she enjoys the freedom from such responsibility. The miscreant errs because he enjoys the pleasure of sin, the saint is benevolent because he enjoys the pleasure of righteousness. There is no willful behavior that defies hedonism’s explanation. In explaining everything, it explains nothing.
We find an astonishing example of accommodating the prerogatives of the “other” world in the remarkable Papal selection process of the College of Cardinals. After the white smoke ascends the chimney, there is great jubilation; and all the pre-selection wrangling – the machievellian intrigues, deceits, manipulations, inducements, and factional disputes are immediately forgiven, all having been regarded as not only essential to the process, but divinely ordained to assure the very result that was obtained. To an outsider, such infighting would seem designed to thwart consensus – but not to those involved in the process.
Because like produces like, we repeat a sequence of events that seems to us to be links in a concatenation of dependent events. A tennis player faces a difficult opponent in a tennis match. He happens to be wearing a green cap. He wins the match and associates the victory with the cap. He plays another match and, naturally, he wears his lucky green cap, the tennis-playing power of which is confirmed if he again wins. Not until he eventually loses is the cap divested of its manna.
A professional hockey team defeats a difficult opponent after a recording of Kate Smith singing God Bless America has been played. Thereafter the team insists that this recording be played before every game. They attribute their victory streak to this specific mantra, an incantation phonographically reproduced.
Each of us trusts that if we repeat a certain sequence of actions in a precise way we will insure the prescribed result. This is the Law of Similarity: like produces like. This is the force of ritual. And when it is combined with Contagion – human contact with the divine which if had only once is sufficient to repeat or maintain itself endlessly, we have created a sacred ritual to which we give full force and credit.
When priests who have been ordained in great world religions cannot support each other’s views of the unknown or of the great God who presides over the unknown, we can hardly look with disdain upon the proponents of pseudo science and witchcraft and cultish creeds. In every city we find psychic hotlines; fortune tellers; astrologers; Tarot readers; palmists; spirit channelers; and spiritual guides of every professional cast. When wrong, as they usually are, they are safe from retribution. (Not until the advent of the 900 number have civilized people considered restoring the practice of burning them at the stake.)
Even a form of the ancient belief in geomancy is revived by Feng Shui ‘priests’. Obvious failures in interior decoration are given sinister characteristics, just as obvious corrections are attributed to spiritual prowess usually reserved for those who are proficient with dowsing rods. Feng Shui consultants will counsel an executive not to sit with his back to the door, a positional stratagem for which they cannot take credit – the Mafia having discovered it long ago.
Before tossing the dice, a gambler faithfully repeats a mantra, perhaps, “Come to papa!” He blows upon the dice because of the law of Contagion. His breath has a divine component: breath is life and he seeks to transfer the divine element, the prana or chi or manna from his lungs to the dice.
Again, because like produces like, and because in Chinese the word for death is also the word for the number 4, some hotels in Las Vegas, for example, in consideration of their Asiatic clientele, eliminate both the 4th and the 40th floor. Non-Asiatic often fear the number 13 to an even greater degree.
We are all conscious of spiritually charged substances: the font of holy water is not a bowl of ordinary H20 just as the water from the Ganges has purifying effects far beyond its ordinary laving ability. Sin is washed away. Maytags and Mississippis cannot do that.
Thus, not only ancient people, but all people are susceptible to the wiles of charms, to the laws of Sympathetic Magic. And, especially since it concerns alchemy, astrology, too, obeys these laws.
Because the earth rotates on a 23.5 degree axis as it revolves around the sun, certain star clusters are seen annually to rise above the horizon, drift along a zodiacal stream and then descend into the underworld. Their rising might bring annual flood or drought or might deliver the year’s most clement weather. At the rising of one constellation we might find that flocks of sheep or cattle reproduce, or birds migrate, or trees flower or fruit. Not only flora and fauna but human affairs, too, seemed signaled by the appearance of these constellations. The Law of Similarity kicks in, abetted by imaginative literature. Personalities and other psychological characteristics can be assigned the bearers of such signals. And seven special spheres – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun and Moon which keep even more impressive schedules, are the abodes of the gods, themselves. For as long as the dwelling and that which dwells within it are effectively conjoined, the Law of Contagion will take effect: These planets, having been in direct contact with their eponymous divinities, have certain characteristics and wills of their own that may be studied in order that those divine actions which effect mortal man might be predicted. Forewarned is forearmed. And when these planets transited the various zodiacal constellations, what could the observer not learn from the encounters? They, too, influence, man’s psyche and portend disaster or success for his worldly efforts.
There is no way to correlate the numerous systems of nomenclature used by the various alchemists. Their terminologies varied enormously not only because of time and place and custom, but because of the central mystery of the mystical path: spiritual androgyny called Divine Marriage, The Union Of Opposites, or The Rebis Experience; and the regimen that was frequently employed in an attempt to reach that state: the imagined circulation of retained seminal fluid called “Clearing the Channels” or “The Microcosmic Orbit”.
Few people then and probably fewer now understand the transsexual nature of this Union of Opposites. Always there was a suspicion that the celibate mystic was homosexual or bisexual and that his peculiar preference to withdraw from society indicated some subversive activity. Frequently, he was suspected of corrupting anyone who got close to him. St. John of the Cross became a Bride of Christ (i.e., attained androgyny) and wrote marvelous poetry in the guise of a woman. He was incarcerated in a monastery and brought before the altar every day so that each of his fellow monks could flog him. Officially he was charged with refusing to wear shoes. (He wrote most of his exquisite poetry while in his cell.) Shams of Tabriz, the spiritual beloved of Rumi was murdered by Rumi’s son because the latter feared that Shams had made his father a homosexual. (Rumi emerged from mourning’s isolation to write magnificent love poetry in Shams’ name, The Divan of Shams of Tabriz.)
Mystics, for a variety of reasons, were so often persecuted in Christian Europe and the Islamic Middle East that inadvertently these regions, by forcing their mystics to go “underground” created the setting for the creation of glorious literature. The merely enlightened can write great poetry. But the mystical writings of Christianity and Islam remain in a class by themselves. Glorious is too puny a word to describe the works of the great Catholic and Muslim mystics.
China and India never persecuted their mystics. The regimen, with certain omissions of information which was conveyed privately by master or guru to student, was written down and distributed. Perhaps it was this openness and accessibility that made the regimen so susceptible to the corruptions of overt sexuality. The excesses of Tantric sexual practices in Buddhism and Hinduism and of Dual Cultivation in Daoism had a negative, stultifying effect. Those who use women as if they were articles of laboratory equipment have already violated basic ethical constraints, prohibitive of spiritual advancement.
In celibate orders the ancient regimen was followed; and we find today, intact, the great monasteries and ashrams in which true Yoga is practiced.
(which features a woman’s regimen that did not require any special alchemical discipline)
Karma Yoga: The Active Practice of Zen[1]By Ming Zhen Shakya
Revised, Remixed, Edited by Lao Di Zhi Shakya, 2017
Introduction
Our Zen program is not separate from our work. We do not have to postpone or forfeit an activity to go and sit on a cushion or whirl in dance or pore over scriptures in order to practice Zen.
Karma Yoga is the discipline that will deliver the practitioner in the midst of the activities of living.
A very strong promise, but let’s be clear about this at the outset: of all the Yoga forms, Karma Yoga is the most difficult to attain. To some of us, it comes as talent comes… we acquire the ability without any effort at all and without being sure of exactly how we came to do what we do. We are Zen’s “idiot savants.” (I happily include myself in this group). When people ask us how many hours a day we spend practicing Zen, we get a glazed look in our eyes and stand there wondering what the correct answer is. As we stare into dusky space waiting for a light bulb to go on, the question may be clarified: “How many hours a day do you put on your cushion meditating?” Then we are relieved and joyfully answer, “None!” Who has time to sit on a cushion? And where did anybody get the idea that sitting on a cushion was a Zen prerequisite? Zen means meditation and meditation does not require a cushion. But let’s leave this subject for another essay.
The Orient has given us eleven unique methods for apprehending the divine. These eleven yoga forms may be divided into two groups: those which emphasize using the mind and those which emphasize using the body. Naturally, there is always a degree of technique-blending and so the operative word here is emphasis.
With dangerous brevity, I’ll get ready to duck and list these eleven schools: The six “body” schools are: The Islamic Persian Sufi (dance); The Hatha Yoga (asanas); The Bhakti School of Devotional Practice (ritualized worship); The Laya School of Kundalini Yoga (chakra control); The Mantra School (chanting); The Mahayana Daoist/Buddhist Northern Zen School (rigid posture zazen). The five “mind” schools are Raja Yoga (ethics/meditation); Jnana Yoga (scripture study); Karma Yoga (non-attachment); the Theravadin Buddhist School (renunciation); and the Mahayana Daoist/Buddhist Southern School Zen (engaged meditation).
All of these schools have common elements, such as breath control and certain control exercises for mind and body. All of these schools require knowledge of at least a few scriptures and commentaries. None of these yogas is superior to any other, and each has its own perils.
Considering how much time we spend working and doing, it becomes proportionately valuable to possess the great contentment that Karma Yoga provides; but we must be careful not to make a less than comprehensive attempt. Not only is Karma Yoga the most difficult to attain, but the penalty for back-sliding is, of all the yogas, the most painful to bear.
If we back-slide in our Sufi practice, we risk getting dizzy when we resume whirling. If we neglect our Hatha Yoga routine, we may be a little stiff when we start stretching again. But if we interrupt our Karma Yoga practice, we may find that even in a brief space of neglect, we can create conflicts that will follow us into the Bardo. Resuming a Karma Yoga practice after a single day’s interruption is usually not so easy as resuming a chanting practice after years of silence.
Dharma Up Close
A Closer Look
One day Majnun, whose love for Laila inspired many a Persian poet, was playing in a little sand heap, when a friend came to him and said: “Why are you wasting your time in an occupation so childish?”
‘I am seeking Laila in these sands,’ replied Majnun.
His friend in amazement cried:
‘Why? Laila is an angel, so what is the use of seeking her in the common earth?’ ‘I seek her everywhere,’ said Majnun, bowing his head, ‘that I may find her somewhere.’
– CXXXVIII, The Wisdom of the Sufis , compiled by Kenneth Cragg
Karma Yoga is unlike any other yoga because it is not done separately from any other activity; and it is not done, as is japa ( repetition of a mantra), as a background for any other activity. It is the activity, itself.
In Karma Yoga, we do some bit of work… wash the floor… type a page… fill in forms…wash the dishes….grocery shop….. with an ulterior motive. We are seeking something that has nothing to do with what we are doing, yet is the reason for everything we do. Majnun was not playing with sand to amuse himself or handling it in order to build something. He was seeking Laila. He was trying to find the divine in the material.
In the Karma Yoga view, a problem arises when we think that we can categorize our activities as being sacred or profane, that we can then, after separating them, apply different standards to our performance, that we can say,
“This is what we are working for, the end result” and “This is the means by which we can attain that end.”
It is as if someone says that he believes that God is omnipresent and omniscient yet is slovenly and greedy in his workplace but attends his church spotlessly attired and purposefully generous. In fact, he has no creed at all. When we believe in the One, the Indivisible, we cannot conveniently cut out sections, exempting these parts from consideration of the Whole.
Our Buddha Self is omniscient because, being inside us it is privy to our every thought and deed; and it is omnipresent, because where we are it is.
Zen is a religion. It has a supreme being, a whole spiritual matrix from which methodologies merely arise or associate themselves. Zen may seem to be only a ‘way of life’ because, as in any religious system, it prescribes an ethical regimen which is designed to help us get along in the world. But beneath the ethics is a belief-system. A very natural superstructure of deportment rises from the supernatural substructure, the foundation of Divinity. When we speak of our Holy Bodhisattvas, our Lordly Buddhas, our splendid, young Maitreya we speak of such divinity, and we see all our activity as service to those who reveal themselves in the mystical adventure, the divine drama that is enacted in Zen’s Trinitarian Ground.
Karma Zen is difficult to begin because we not only have to unlearn old, ingrained or automatic ways of doing the most ordinary things, but we require a fundamental and immediate change in attitude, one that is predicated on faith. Any kind of yoga can cause a change in attitude, a revalorization of the people, places and things of our environment, the period of change slowly proceeding from isolated Zen exercises to the gradual infiltration of Zen’s ‘way of life’ into our personality. We become a Zen person. But Karma Zen begins with its finished product in evidence. It has to be practiced without any reassuring progression of trial and proof.
In the beginning, it is as if we are two people, a drowning man and an observer who wants to save him. If the helper is not a strong swimmer possessed with life-saving skills, they will both likely drown. This is no yoga for the weak-willed or emotional soul.
Before attempting to secure union with the divine, we need to believe (have confidence from a glimpse) in the existence of the divine. Then, we conform practice to belief. There are not many rules, but the few are hard to follow.
It should go without saying that anyone who attempts Karma Yoga is already familiar with the Eightfold Path and the Seven Deadly Sins. Saint Gregory outlined the Seven Sins back in A.D. 600, and they are still a valuable checklist for gauging our daily activities. Every form of yoga requires that we adhere to a code of behavior that avoids pride, anger, lust, sloth, gluttony, jealousy, and greed.
What, then, is the method for attaining union? Union is Samadhi; but the progression is Concentration, Meditation and then Samadhi. So we begin with concentration. First there is focus: attention. Yes, it’s the old mondo. The novice asks, “How can I achieve Zen?” “Attention,” says the master. “What do you mean, ‘Attention’?” replies the novice. “Attention! Attention!,” shouts the master, “Attention means attention!”
Before we can attain the concentrated state, we need to be constantly aware, that is to say, on guard, against anything that might interfere with our ability to concentrate.
Emotion is the greatest obstacle to concentration. When we are excited or angry, i.e., when we are projecting archetypes, our responses are “gut-level” – not rational, and this translates as distraction. It is for this reason that surgeons don’t operate on their own children: their emotional involvement might compromise their scientific judgment. Since the best way to deal with a problem is to avoid it, we don’t fall into emotional traps.
Right Speech is the step on the Path in which we most easily falter. (For more details about Right Speech violations, consult Chapter 13 of The Seventh World of Chan Buddhism)
To the beginner of a Karma Yoga regimen, no opinions (except for those that are directly job-related) may be requested or given.
What is the real reason we offer opinions or seek them?
When we initiate the subject, it’s easy to trace our motives. Perhaps we are on a little egotistical foray, introducing a topic in which we feel particularly competent so as to demonstrate our superiority; or we’re filling air-space with static drivel; or , less nobly, we’re trying to expose someone else’s ignorance. Especially when we’re in Karma Yoga training, the moment we feel the impulse to state or to ask for an opinion, we quash it.
When we’re asked for our opinion, a bit more in the way of discipline is required.
People often act as if each of us is obliged to have an opinion on every subject known to man. We are so pressured to produce an opinion that if we don’t already have one in our philosophical storehouse, we immediately manufacture one. In Karma Yoga ‘to opine’ is to invite disaster.
Yes, as we would invite a krait into our sleeping bag, we should welcome opinions into our realm of consciousness. Since none of us wants to share a bed with a venomous snake – present company excepted, all of us should avoid giving or asking for opinions.
Often, the request for an opinion masquerades as a request for information. But seldom does the quest for knowledge occasion the request. An example may help to clarify this. Recently I was asked if I thought that my state should enact legislation that would permit Gay and Lesbian marriages. The woman who asked me had cloaked her question in the innocuousness of inquiry, as if she were seeking information, but it was hardly a secret that she had already taken a stand on the issue. What she was really trying to determine was whether my views (assuming I had any) agreed with hers. If they were consonant, she would put her imprimatur on me and my ministry; and if they were dissonant, she’d make me regret the day I learned to talk. Such was the value she placed upon the power of opinion, hers in particular.
What she was interested in, then, was not my view about Gay and Lesbian marriages as such, but rather whether she could identify me as an ally or an enemy. But I was not obliged to enter the conflict, and I declined to comment. Immediately she attacked my competence as a minister, asking, “How can you be an effective religious leader if you don’t offer guidance to your flock?” I said that I did not consider myself a religious leader and that the people who belonged to our Sangha had not yet expressed a fear of being stampeded over the cliff-edge of the Gay and Lesbian Marriage issue. They did not require a shepherd.
This assertion did not endear me to her and she immediately accused me of not caring what people thought about me. I overlooked the instantaneous multiplication, that this single woman had become society, itself, and tried to explain to her that my religious service requires that I not care what people think about me. I do not do what I do in order to gain love or fame or anything else. My duty is to serve the Dharma, to write about it and to teach it in the way I understand it. Period.
She persisted. She, knowing that I performed marriage ceremonies, vehemently insisted upon knowing whether I would marry a homosexual couple or not[i]. I reminded her of her original question which explicitly acknowledged that it was not legal for homosexuals to marry in our state. In her emotionalism she saw herself as an irresistible force. It remained for me to remain an immovable object. I don’t know how she spent the rest of her day, but I returned to my duty.
Am I qualified to give expert testimony on the subject? No. Am I obliged to abandon my other areas of service to study this issue and to oppose or support someone to whom the question is important? No.
Sometimes the request for an opinion appears to be casual and convivial, but in actuality is not. One person will ask another for his opinion about a movie, a book, or a restaurant and, particularly if the opinion is favorable, will then see the movie, read the book, or eat in the restaurant and be unconsciously prepared to dislike it. All he wants is a recommendation that he can oppose, definitively, as evidence of someone’s incompetence or inferior taste. Some people are so contrary that a certain way to ensure that they will dislike something is to recommend it to them or vice versa.
After abstaining from offering opinions, the Karma Yogi In Training (KYIT) should give some thought to the deeper question of the validity of any samsaric judgment.
It is not enough merely for us to keep our mouth shut and withhold opinions. We have to consider the Karmic aspect of Karma Yoga. Any event is always the result of many factors. An infinity of causes form the karmic net of any moment’s circumstance; and we cannot remove a single knot from that net without affecting the lines that lead to it and from it.
Upon what criteria are opinions based? If we eat at a restaurant and are later asked our opinion of the food, what subjective criteria are involved here? In terms of karmic consideration, not only does the food change from moment to moment, or day to day, but the consumer changes, too. Ultimately, the consumer is describing how he thinks he felt at the time he ate one meal as it was presented at that one, specific time. Perhaps when he entered the restaurant he was not really hungry or perhaps he already had indigestion. Perhaps he was starved and would have eaten tripe and gizzards with gusto. What mood was the reader in when he read the book? What previous books contributed to his appreciation or dislike of it? And movies? A critic may deride a film as being “derivative” – but to someone who is unfamiliar with those productions from which it is derived, it will surely seem original. What value is his opinion? Even restaurant, book and movie critics, whose business it is to render judgments, who may testify in a courtroom as experts, do not always agree on the quality of the object they are reviewing.
It is the ego that sets itself up as the arbiter of taste. As KYIT we cannot allow ourselves to give such free rein to our ego. If we trust the judgment of a certain professional critic, we should consult that expert if we desire advice. We should then see the movie, read the book, taste the food. If it is agreeable, we ought to be grateful. But in any event we ought to try to “accentuate the positive,” to focus on those parts that were enjoyable. Deriding or denigrating anything is usually an exercise in egotism. When someone says, “I don’t know anything about art, I only know what I like,” the subject is then “I” not art.
There is no way to calibrate the sense of freedom that adherence to this Right Speech/No Opinion rule provides. It is exhilarating. Zero opinion means zero misunderstanding and manipulation. Without having to defend ourselves against those very charges that we helped to create, we avoid anger, resentment and embarrassment – all those emotional states that impair our ability to concentrate.
If, then, as Karma-Yogis-In-Training we are asked to give an opinion, we say, “I’m sorry, but I have none to give.” If necessary we explain that we’re involved in a spiritual regimen which prohibits us from rendering opinions. We are nice about it, but we are immovable.
At a work place, when opinions are part of the job, we need to respond responsibly. If asked, for example, “Which story board best conveys the concept?” we formulate a criticism based soundly on knowledge, insight and experience and purge our comments of emotional, personal elements. “This sucks,” is not a critical analysis of a work. “You’re incompetent,” is not an appraisal of a product. We are firm but respectful and confine our opinion to the specific criteria that apply to a work, foregoing the pleasure of psychoanalyzing the other or antagonizing him until he is forced to plot revenge against us.
We are so often tempted to assert ourselves, to rise to the occasion of leadership. We want to emulate our heroes and in this desire we make ourselves vulnerable to the brainless whims of emotion. Catchy pronouncements grab us and toss us into precipitous action. We consider Plato’s sage pronouncement, “The penalty that the wise must pay for failing to lead is that they must be led by inferiors,” and without asking, “Who is wise and who is inferior?” we decide that our course is clear. We see ourselves as leaders, as a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, and step forward into the limn light. But Gandhi and King were not spiritual trainees. They were not wise because they took a stand; because they were wise they took a stand. Despite the seeming rectitude of a cause, we need to amass some wisdom, not to mention self-discipline, before we consider ourselves wise enough to lead others.
The Karma-Yogi-in-Training also needs to rid himself of the notion that any work can be evaluated according to some scale of importance. In Karma Yoga we cannot assign value to what we do, appreciating it because we consider it significant or noble and disparaging it because we consider it beneath our station, disgraceful, or foolish. If any worker, such as a gardener, lifeguard or CEO is seeking Laila, it does not matter what he appears to be doing. A sales clerk is a sales clerk and it does not matter whether the clerk sells Cadillacs or Hondas. Further, the person who sells cars is no more nor less noble than the person who sells bicycles. The sales clerk (and this is the attitudinal discipline of Karma Yoga) is no more nor less noble than the customer. It takes a firm mind to appreciate that the CEO of a major corporation is no more nor less noble than a janitor in the building over which the CEO presides.
It does not matter how others regard us. They are not involved in a Karma Yoga regimen. What matters is that we discipline ourselves to regard with equal respect all others, that we make no distinctions whatsoever between people. There is a practical aspect to this occupational egalitarianism. By offending no one we eliminate resentment against ourselves; and without having to respond to resentment, we are free to concentrate on what is right before us.
We turn away from worldly pursuits – none of which can deliver spiritual satisfaction, and concentrate on spiritual improvement, spiritual renovation. All of the Seven Deadly Sins[ii] need to be reviewed each day for signs of stress fatigue; all of the steps on the Eightfold Path need to be swept free of debris. But the step that needs most of our labor is the one that is most befouled: Right Speech.
When we remember that in all work we are seeking Laila (the Divine), this is Karma Yoga
To Begin the Karma Yoga Practice
“The true beginning of the spiritual life is the desire to know Sophia (Wisdom, Prajna).
A desire to know Her brings one to love her;
Loving Her enables one to follow Her will;
Following Her will is the sure path to immortality;
And immortality is oneness with God.”
— Solomon, from Two Suns Rising, edited by Jonathan Star
It’s impossible to read an account of any religion’s Karma or action yoga without encountering the most sober and profound tributes to a wisdom goddess. Especially when we consider traditionally masculine religions such as Buddhism, we’re always astonished by the depth of devotion we find in tributes to deified feminine wisdom. We expect scriptures written by men in celebration of manly gods to be virile expressions – strong, aggressive, and self-reliant. But curiously we find that when poetic lines are dedicated to male divinities they are often fluffy stuff, grandiosely written in praise of creation, or maudlin in complaint of affliction, or petulant in a foot-stamping insistence that God should smite some poor souls that the male poets couldn’t quite handle on their own.
But if the literature dedicated to paternal gods seems always to remind the gods of what they could and should do for mankind, the literature dedicated to maternal divinities is quite different. The goddess is seldom asked to act except to impart wisdom or to enable the individual to do for himself those actions which “could and should” be done. Tributes to goddesses are offerings of self.
Always we find that strange and intimate connection between the goddess, the worker, and the work (all work), a sacred collaboration. Homer, preparing to recite the demanding lines of the Iliad, begins his labor, “Sing, Goddess, of the wrath of Achilles, Peleus’s son.” And then he lets the Goddess sing through him during the course of his long and arduous recitation.
Goethe, in the terminal lines of Faust, cries out, “Virgin, Mother, Queen! Goddess on thy throne! …the Eternal Feminine lures to perfection.” Goethe’s perfection.
What is it then that these men see and grasp that so eludes the average man?
ParamaShiva – Great Shiva who is the totality, the One…divides himself into Shiva, pure consciousness, and into Shakti, universal energy; and Shakti is the Great Mother. It is her head’s curly ‘strings’ that radiate through time, itself. She is the power and he, the law that power obeys.
“The man through whom the Dao flows freely…” says the scripture and we instinctively know that this is the complete man, one whose pure yang consciousness has been infused by the radiant Yin. And this complete man is, indeed, an extraordinary individual. Lao Tzu reiterates in verse XX of the Dao de Jing (The Way and its Power),
“The multitude all have a purpose… I alone am different from the others and value being fed by the Mother.” (D.C. Lau’s translation/Penguin Classics.)
Something or someone needs to inspire us, to urge us to take control of our lives, to believe in us and to support us as we struggle to believe in ourselves. We must tap into that latent power if we are to reverse the spiral of discontent.
“Ah,” says the Buddha, “One man may conquer ten thousand men in battle; and another man conquer only himself… but this man is the greater victor.” True, we say. So very true. But how do we accomplish this singular victory?
The Eightfold Path’s way is well known to us. We understand the rules. But from where does the power come to effect the change?
The answer lies in a shift from a passive obedience to external dictates to an active reliance upon this interior force.
Shadrack, cast into the fiery furnace, relies upon God’s saving power to deliver him … or not. An earthly king commands Shadrack to come out of the fire, and he obeys. But from the Lotus Sutra we find a different solution: an acknowledgment of an inherent feminine or androgynous power:
“Were you with murderous intent thrust into a fiery furnace, One thought of Guan Yin’s saving power would turn those flames to water!”
Jonah, caught in the belly of the whale, cries out for help; and an exterior Paternal God considers the appeal and renders a decision: “And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.” (Jonah 2:10) But, again, from the Lotus, we find a different approach:
“Were you adrift upon the sea with dragon-fish and fiends around you, One thought of Guan Yin’s saving power would spare you from the hungry waves.”
Perhaps we relate so readily to a feminine divinity because the model of mercy has been fashioned by our own mothers. We so often see our mother as the intermediary between us and an intransigent father; or perhaps we feel that if we try and fail, no awful Paternal Wrath will come down upon our heads. Men are inclined to fear being judged as harshly as they have judged. A female overseer is bound to be more forgiving.
The word. The name. The visual identification of the archetype. The concentration that invokes the image and the transcendental power. This is what is necessary.
And so we find that Mahayana followers, not content with the mere lines of the Prajna Paramita Canon, that body of scriptures that virtually defines the Mahayana, flesh out those literary bones with the beautiful form of the goddess herself. Buddhists do not merely recite the lines in dusty libraries. They go to Prajnaparamita’s altar, put flowers there, and kneel. As Athena sprang full grown from the brow of Zeus, so Prajnaparamita and the Bodhisattva of Compassion, too, spring into existence as the utterance of sound from the Godhead, Amitabha/Amitayus – Infinite Light, Infinite Time. The divine word has taken on divine and lovely form.
It all seems so very strange. And yet it is there….the artwork that is not merely decorative but functional, those temple sculptures that bear witness to the presence of that divinity which exists within ourselves. Piously we say, “When we bow, we bow to the Buddha within.” Yes, and to the Bodhisattva, too.
What do we do when we have to do something we detest but are compelled by circumstance to continue in it? Providing we can accept the fact of this interior divinity, we apply the techniques of Karma yoga. Naturally, the changes in our attitude and deportment are always beneficial, but if they are only mechanically enacted, cosmetic, they will not be sufficient. They need to be organic. We have to be able to concentrate so thoroughly that we can hold an inner dialog with this personified force, and we have to possess enough faith and trust to obey the wisdom that is imparted to us. This is no place for superficial Zen men. This is a place for believers, for devotees.
Majnun sought Laila as a devotee of Laila. His labor was of no particular consequence except as it provided him with the means to realize her. This realization and the indescribable peace, joy, truth and freedom it brings, this transcendental experience of sheer bliss and liberation was what he sought. For this, he sacrificed his labor.
Karma or action union requires the adoration of the Eternal or Mysterious Feminine: as Shakti, or the Holy Mother, or the merciful Guan Yin; as Tara, Sophia, or Prajnaparamita. The devotee dedicates his labor to the divinity of Mater, the uterine material. The Shakti within Shiva.
First we have to accept responsibility for our problems and start with what we have and where we are. We may not cast blame upon others, for this prolongs the distress by focussing our attention outwards. Just as the source of correction lies within ourselves, so the responsibility for that which requires correction must be seen to lie within ourselves. Pride and Anger guard the gates of heaven against us; and for so long as we suppose that others are to blame for our troubles, and not we or our reactions to the problems caused by others, we will get nowhere.
It is not always boredom or discontent that moves us to action. Often it is disgust, creeping or sudden, that impels us to change:
After years of working, a man achieves success in his career and an enviable domestic life: wife, kids, house, cars, dog. Success confers a lordly status upon his ego and lets him believe that he has earned the right to be free of conventional restraints. “…where there are no bonds, where there is the madness of license, the soul ceases to be free,” says Tagore. “There is its hurt; there is its separation from the infinite, its agony of sin.”
And so the man, indulging himself in worthless pleasures or in the illusions of his own importance, neglects what he should have guarded. He loses his family and cries, “Another man now sleeps with my woman, plays with my kids, mows my lawn, and tosses a Frisbee to my dog. My lifetime of sweat has given this man the good life while I have nothing to show but a leased car, an efficiency apartment, and a bunch of canceled support checks.” Sniff. Sniff. He no longer sees the point of working at all.
An educated young career woman stifles future growth by an obsession with gross materiality – the wardrobe, the hairdo, the vehicle, the residence. She works to pay the expenses of working, competing with associates for such spurious sigils of achievement. The process of decadence sets in: more and more is required to achieve less and less. And as that “more” consumes her energy, that “less” is evident in her failure to keep informed, qualified and competitive in her career. She, too, is trapped by her own self-indulgent priorities.
But if there comes to these two people a moment of clarity, a single moment in which they see their error and decide to revalorize the people, places and things of their lives, they are in an ascendant mode and have begun to reverse the spiral.
The first rule of karma yoga requires us to simplify our lives and to understand that our material existence is always of secondary consideration.
Laila, for example, as did Layman Pang and his daughter and so many other saints and holy persons, showed complete humility, a poverty of material goods. Laila would have told the young career woman to remove the warpaint and fashionable dress and to array herself in less ostentatious attire, using the time and energy thus saved to pursue things of real value. (Laila, in fact, used the metaphor of nakedness. “I cover myself with only one long plain shawl which goes up the left side of me, around my neck, and down the right side, equally;” she said, “and every day when someone complains about my dress, I put a knot in the right panel, and when someone compliments me about my dress, I put a knot in the left panel. Then, at the end of the day, I weigh both sides. They always weigh the same.”)
It might be helpful to appreciate that often the changes we seek to effect in our lives are so drastic that we inhibit our ability to perform them because we fail to identify ourselves as trainees. People, baffled by our new attitude, tend to react negatively towards us until they become aware that we’re seeking spiritual goals. We encourage their acceptance of our unaccustomed behavior by wearing quasi-clerical garb: subdued garments and a bracelet of wooden beads usually suffice.
As to the necessary internal image of divinity, curiously, once a sincere commitment is made to follow the Karma Yoga path, an initial dream or vision of a wisdom goddess is often experienced. This peculiar initial dream often occurs when people begin psychoanalysis or other emotional therapy. In the absence of a visionary encounter, we can browse the shops for statues or medallions, remaining passive in our gaze and never… never letting our ego tell us that something is too cheap or too gaudy or anything else. No judgment may be rendered as regards the effect the item will have on those around us. This must be a purely personal selection, one that cannot be accomplished if we even begin to consider public appreciation of it.
Once we have an image, and again it does not matter whether the image is of Guan Yin, Parvati, Mary, Sophia, the White Buffalo Spirit, or even of ancient Egyptian and Grecian goddesses, we concentrate fiercely on it. This can be done in bed or during a break between tasks or even sitting on a meditation cushion. The important aspect of this is the decision to concentrate on this interior image and not to let our attention indulge itself in frivolous, ‘time-filling’ distractions. (The depth of concentration required is such, however, that we should not attempt it while driving.)
We scan our mind, probing this inner resource of strength until we touch the font, the stream, the current of force. It is a strange but compelling feeling, one that will seem uncomfortable at first; but when the novelty wears off, it becomes delightful. In fact, we run a danger of enjoying it so much that we become smugly independent and hold ourselves aloof from ordinary men. A few days worth of euphoria is quite enough.
The desired result is to relax and let the Dao flow freely; and if the morning freeway traffic does not flow so well, we will not much care about cars or clocks. And there, clasping the wheel, we might chant the Bodhisattva’s name, recite her Dharani, and greet the day joyfully while others around us snarl into their cell-phones and suck on their cigarettes, breathing so much sound and fury.
But if we begin at our daily activity placid and self-assured, in disposition gentle, how do we respond to the aggression we encounter by others that comes our way: the unreasonable request; the contemptuous remark; the venomous sneer; the hurtful snub; the unjust accusation; the theft of our ideas or parking space?
We freeze our reaction.
This does not say that we count to ten and stall our anger. Such an insignificant pause is too often a prelude to submission, a planting of contempt down into our psyche’s earth, that Muladhrara chakra, the bowels of earthly reaction. The anger will grow there and if we don’t know that by now, we’re beyond those numerical “count to ten” nostrums.
Neither do we allow ourselves to vent our anger and denounce the person who has troubled us. Instead we hold our anger “in our throat,” in accordance with the dictates of our interior Bodhisattva. Her voice will speak to us in firm but gentle tone, reasoning, and urging us to reason: “The more importance you give an insult, the greater must your response be. Weigh this insult, and consider its source, its cause and its effect, and then consider the source, the cause and the effects of your own response.” Uh, oh. Now we have to think.
Always, we are confronted with this choice: Swallow our venomous anger; spit it out; or hold it in our throat. If we engage our mind and consider the various aspects of action and reaction to the anger, the anger will simply descend to the throat. This kind of holding confers immunity to the venom; and every religion accounts for this harmless consequence. In Eastern religions it is either Shiva or Avalokitesvara who is addressed as “Nilakantha” (the Blue Necked One), blue-necked because in loving defense of us, he or she takes the poisons of the world into himself and holds them there harmlessly in the Vishuddha region, the region of speech. It is for this reason that the Vishuddha chakra is violet in color.
Likewise every Mahayana Buddhist sings the great Dharani to Guan Yin .. the more famous Japanese version, Dai Hi Shin Dharani, begins “Namu kara tan no tora ya ya:” the original Sanskrit of which is, “Namo Ratna Trayaya” (Hail to the Triple Treasure.) The third sentence in that Dharani says, “Having adored him, may I enter into the heart of the blue-necked one known as the noble, adorable Avalokitesvara!”- who is more famous in his androgynous, feminine form, Guan Yin.
Says the Lotus Sutra, “Had you imbibed some fatal draught and lay now at the point of death, One thought of Guan Yin’s saving power would nullify its poison.”
We decide then to postpone making a decision, to set a statute of limitations on the process, to check our watch and note the time and then to give ourselves, depending on the severity of the insult or injury, twenty-four or forty-eight hours to let the yin and yang forces rebalance themselves, and to allow ourselves the time to give the miscreant back his humanity. And then, when we are in full command of our resources… calm, and cool, and with our brain in gear, we move to address the injustice or the action that inspired it. (Cold blood is ever so much more efficient than the hot variety. When inflated and heated by indignation, brainless, air-headed anger, vented verbally or in some precipitiously written letter, has a way of making us step off our own self-constructed cliffs without benefit of parachute.)
We elevate and channel the indignation until it is tempered by thought. Lower energy centers (the Svadhisthana and Muladhara) are unconscious centers. Assuming we don’t bark angrily – the usually disastrous fire response, whenever we allow our responses to environmental situations to remain down in these areas, we unconsciously resort to schadenfreude or passive-aggressive tactics – secret feelings of satisfaction at the distress of others or subtle sabotage and “unintentional” errors. The emotion must be raised. In the rear of the brain is the moon center, the light which tempers yin feelings. In the front of the brain is the sun center, the light which tempers yang determinations. Physical kriyas, chakra or Microcosmic Orbit meditations, help to accomplish the raising of these gut-level responses to the light of conscious consideration. (A complete regimen will soon be offered by Yin Zhao Shakya on our ZBOHY website.)
We remember Hsu Yun’s favorite expression, “Let it be…” and like the woman who attained the Holy Fruit by keeping this thought firmly in her mind, we hold the venom in our throat – neither swallowing it nor spitting it out – but storing it temporarily, giving ourselves the time to react constructively and to convert the venom to medicinal purpose. We say only, “Let it be. Let it be…” The effect is stunning.
The voice inside us steadies us. “Don’t go down that road again. You know every stone in it. You’ve stumbled over them all. Stay here with me. Hold your ground. Neither advance nor retreat. Wait. Be patient. Let it be.”
As we become more entrained to the goddess’ voice, establishing a dialogue, it is as if we automatically hear her cautioning us to remain humble and not to let our piety carry us into haughty realms. The advice may sometimes sound a bit cynical, but it is usually ennobling and always practical. If we are singled out for praise, the voice says, “Refuse to accept the credit for yourself for in doing so you cause anger and resentment to rise in the hearts of others. Do not be the occasion of such injury to them.”
Then the voice continues, “Be the occasion of good feelings. Demonstrate that in my name you have cultivated a generous spirit.”
And so, as reluctant as we are to accept praise, that quickly do we advance to accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. That little voice inside us will tell us to apologize immediately for error, and when we do, we’re often astonished to see how quickly we ennoble others.
The idea of conducting a dialogue with an interior, archetypal presence is fundamental to the spiritual experience. We tend not to take this possibility seriously, however, because we so often hear accounts of conversations with deities in which the mortal speaker is instructed to make money or board a comet trailing spaceship. At other times we regard it as a fictional device, as Virgil to Dante. But Carl Jung, who in his fruitful correspondence with D.T.Suzuki helped to formulate the structure and dynamics of Zen psychology, writes eloquently of his own interior dialogues with an archetype he named Philemon. “Psychologically,” writes Jung in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, “Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru.” Jung relates a conversation he had with a “highly cultivated” friend of Gandhi’s who spoke reverently of his own guru with whom he had a gratifying teacher/student relationship. The guru was revealed to be none other than Shankaracharya, the 9th Century commentator of the Vedas who is credited with founding the Vedanta movement. Jung, remembering his own dialogues with his own wise, interior guru found the information both illuminating and, especially since Shankara had been dead for centuries, quite “reassuring.”
We should not doubt the possibility of generating an abiding relationship with a wisdom Goddess; but we should also not suppose that this is something that is easy to accomplish. It requires a clear, unemotional mind and an intense ability to concentrate and, of course, an intense desire to achieve it.
Karma Yoga does not encourage positional stagnation. We should be ambitious and desire to advance in our lives. Ambition is not the problem, it is how we implement desire, the ethical or unethical, the selfless or selfish means by which we strive to advance.
Finally, if we consult with our interior Guide, we’ll hear the sobering words, “Do not desire money and power in order to make yourself desirable, for then, to your horror, you will discover that you are desired only for your money and power. Succeed, but retain your humility by surrendering the fruits of your labor to me while regarding the success of your labor as praise of the Lord.”
This, of course, is the essence of Karma Yoga: striving for excellence but detaching ourselves from the results. It is as if we work as anonymous volunteers. If the project succeeds, we’re glad to have helped. If it fails, we know we’ve done our best. If we eliminate ourselves from consideration of the results, from gain or loss, we then eliminate our ego, and no value attaches to praise or blame. We are free and need not grovel for compliments or cower from criticism. And when we speak to the divinity within ourselves, saying, “This is all that I have to give, it is not much, but I will do it as best I can and I will do it for you,” we are set free from the bitterness and pain of Samsara and get at least a foot in Nirvana’s door.
In Karma Yoga, ALL work is a form of prayer. As such it is important that we understand the kind of attention that is required. Just as prayer said by rote – the mind absent because the thought is elsewhere – is meaningless recitation and not prayer at all, so work or activity done while the attention is focused on music or in daydreams or in some hypnotic blur is not Karma Yoga.
Attention means complete awareness, absorption in the task, but not becoming entranced by it.
Non-hypnotic absorption, full and alert concentration, elevates consciousness into exalted spiritual realms. There is intense, total focus upon the work, the sustained elation of worthy purpose; and, as if we fully intended anonymously to donate the work to some charitable enterprise, i.e.., to detach ourselves from the results of it, we proceed, immersed in the work. When the task is finished, we release it. No longer part of us, it is gone; and no pride or shame attaches us to it. We have put it into a Goddess’ hands, and we pray only that it is worthy to be there.
Baba Ram Dass who in his secular life was Richard Alpert, a former Harvard professor, used to tell the story about a lecture on spiritual transcendence he once gave to an audience of mostly academic types – learned men and women from such disciplines as psychology, theology, and philosophy. Encouraged by this array of intellectuals, Ram Dass, in clear but sophisticated language, began his exposition.
Sitting conspicuously in the front row was a grandmotherly lady; and whenever Ram Dass made a point that should have provoked an affirmative response from his audience, this lady and only this lady immediately nodded. When he resorted to sly, “insider’s’ wit, this lady and only this lady laughed. Clearly, she was the only one in the audience who understood what he was talking about. At the end of the lecture he came down from the podium and questioned her.
“Are you a teacher?” he asked.
“No. No,” she replied.
“How is that you understand this subject so thoroughly,” he asked. “What do you do?”
“Oh,” she said simply, “I knit.”
And on that Karma pearl we’ll quit.
Remixed, Revised by Lao Di Zhi Shakya, 2017
If you have comments or questions, please content: laodizhishakya@gmail.com
Perhaps because so few can bring themselves to swap sentimental attachment to their well-mapped landscape for the terra incognita of Detachment – or as it is more commonly called, Holy Indifference, or Ego Death, it will be interesting to see how McCormack uses his Zen acquired insights to cross that border.
Detachment first requires Humility. Pride goeth before a fall, we’re reliably told; and indeed, we find the landscape on the earth side of Nirvana littered with those who take pride in their achievements – their vaunted piety and superior knowledge, and the credentials that evidence such excellence. It surprises no one that they can spit out the muck to speak with absolute authority on the subject of Enlightenment.
Those who make it to the frontier survey the smoking ruins of their lives and have the decency to drop to their knees and say, with tears and agony, Mea culpa. It’s not a particularly notable admission. Usually, as their personal histories reveal, they’re the only ones left standing.
At the border, McCormack presents his passport. He doesn’t know whether or not it will be stamped. He knows only that he has at least earned the right to present it. He extends the precious book with Dublin wit as in his The Portrait.
I’d like to paint you.
Go ahead, I said.
Having a woman paint me
Would be a rare treat.
When she was finished
She showed me a painting
Of a dog licking his balls
And he had eyes that
Reminded me of someone.
There are other essentials. Detachment requires us to get our emotional teeth and claws out of the people and things of the material world and to get their teeth and claws out of us. For so long as we derive our sense of self, our identity, in terms of our relationships to other persons or things, we bind ourselves to the future and to the past. We attach our ego, like an umbilical cord, to whatever is “other”‘ and we reduce ourselves to fetal creatures who are dependent on those “others” for our sustenance. Attachment, therefore, is to possess or be possessed by someone or something outside ourselves.
“My” establishes that dependency. We forfeit our right to appreciate anything for what it is, and bestow upon the “other” the right to determine when we shall be happy and when we shall be miserable.
We enjoy baseball. Fine. But when it is “my” team that is playing, we surrender our enjoyment to the prejudices of winner and loser. It isn’t baseball any more. It is self-esteem, self-satisfaction, or else it is the whipping boy upon whom we hurl our anger and contempt.
Attachment says, “My team is better than your team.” This isn’t love of the game. It’s jingoistic nonsense, a vicarious participation. I have given “my” team the power to make me happy when it wins and to make me miserable when it loses. In this way we are bound to hope and reverie, future and past. The second hand sweep of our wristwatch tells us that time is inexorably moving, future-past, future-past. For those who are attached, there is no “now.”
Only when we are not prejudiced, when we have not prefixed a person or a thing with “my”, when we can observe with eyes that are not veiled by ego, can we observe clearly in that state of Holy Indifference. One does not have to be a balletomane to appreciate the beauty of any well executed double play. It is only when we attach ourselves to a specific team that the beauty of, say, a 4 to 3 to 5 play becomes dependent on whether “my” team is on base or whether “my” team is playing defense. And it is the same with everything we believe that we possess. It is always future gain and loss, or past gain and loss; and we oscillate between the poles of future and past until we’re stricken with an existential motion sickness, a “Sickness Unto Death.”
What do we attach to? Some things admit no other description. McCormack uses the word “my” exactly 10 times in his book of poems. Ten times and only once per use: “my mother”; “my father”; “my girls” (daughters); “my brother”; “my mind”‘; “my hand”; “my finger”; “my back yard”; “my window”; and “my pages.” Already we see him removing those tentacles of inane prejudice that suck our souls into monstrous oblivion. We find no “my friends:” or “my country” or “my religion.” Sentiment is leeching out of him. He wants to love for what it is and not for what it does for him.
Of course, Holy Indifference has its own Mount Everest. The moment we luxuriate in the Now we hear Kunti’s voice in the Mahabharata. “When one prefers one’s children to the children of another, war is near.” There is a reason Zen is a cauldron of boiling oil over a roaring fire, and achieving its goal, Detachment, is that reason.
What is true is Real. The Real World is defined as that which is unconditional, universal, immutable, and eternal. Eternal is to be outside of time; and this can occur only in the “ego-absent” immediate moment.
How do we arrest the flow of time and enter the Eternal Moment? What is the Wall that we must surmount? Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Where is the Light that leads us out of darkness.
McCormack brushes aside facile explanations. Why did Bodhidharma come from the West? Sure, just as we assign directions – heaven is above and hell is below, the ancient mind sees hope in the east and fulfillment in the west. Student at dawn, master at sunset. He came to teach us The Way to surmount the Wall that lies on the other side of sunrise, to awaken us. The answers come from that “spiritual West.” But such explanations do not help us gain the goal.
It cannot be mere coincidence that someone who Quests finds himself in West Berlin during the 1980s. There is East and West and Wall and Ego Death and, though he did not know it when he arrived, there is Light in a museum.
As he first enters the Western sector he encounters the bombed out Kaiser Wilhelm Church which has been left as it was in 1943 to be a war memorial. In West Berlin, 1988, The bus takes him to:
The center of the half-bitten city
Where a headless Church
Prayed with its wound open
To the sky and history,
Unlike our own entombed vaults.
He grapples with the enigma of Time. We’ve all been there. The boring dead-end job versus the need to earn a living. Sometimes we find ourselves so desperate to get free of the painful monotony that we become an animal who’s foot is caught in the jaws of a steel trap. Freedom requires us to gnaw off our foot.
McCormack does just this, In Pizza, West Berlin, 1988, he gets yet another dreary assembly line job:
I worked in a pizza factory
Where no Italians could be found.
His challenge? To put olives on the rolling belt of three-at-a-time pizzas.
I went mad for eight hours a day,
Until they moved me…
And like the trapped prey,
…I put my finger into a machine, That slices cheese, and me.”
Time, Light, and the Wall. The Berlin Wall would be demolished in 1989, but in 1988 McCormack is still trapped in samsaric illusion, searching for the Way to spiritual liberation. And then, in an awesome conjunction, he discovers the spiritual fulfillment of West, the Eternal Moment, Ego Death, and a golden Light.
In Rothko, Orange his own ego death merges with the artist’s, imagined then and there. For, as he prowls the exhibitions of an art museum –
“Seeking, – something
After finishing another eight hour shift
In a West Berlin factory
Filling cardboard boxes with
Empty shampoo bottles.
In front of me
The orange space
Squeezing sorrow from me.
In a West Berlin Museum,
Near to the Wall,
Rothko killed himself.
I don’t know if the painting killed him
Or he killed himself
While the painting watched.
I didn’t know.
Outside, the towers watched,
Men in grey watched
1988 became 1989.”
https://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/mark-rothko/orange-and-yellow(1).jpg Rothko’s Orange and Yellow
There is a problem, central to religious life, which the Bible, with exquisite brevity, states for us in Luke Chapter 10: verses 38-42:
Now as they were traveling along, He entered a certain village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.
And she had a sister called Mary, who moreover was listening to the Lord’s word, seated at His feet. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.”
But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about many things;
But only one thing is needful, and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Clearly, these verses operate at several different instructional levels. There is the obvious one: The first and greatest need is God, and no other need takes priority over this one. Mary was serenely seated at the Nirvanic feet of God. She had what was truly important. But Martha, instead of fixing her attention on the Divine Presence or on her service to that Presence, squandered her attention on Samsaric illusions.
Zen Buddhists, especially, can understand the situation. We plan to sit in meditation and just as we get our incense lit and balance ourselves nicely on our cushions, we become anxious about the mailman. Will he be late again today? Or we realize that we can no longer put off making the decision: should we have rice or pasta for dinner tomorrow night? We try to focus our thoughts on the chant our mouths are uttering, but all we can think about is an encounter we’ve recently had with a rude store clerk. Yes, we understand Jesus’ admonition. Nobody gets “worried and bothered about many things” the way a Zen Buddhist does.
But these words of Jesus have deeper meanings. Our attention is immediately drawn to His intriguing choice of terms: He speaks of ‘one needful thing’ which is evidently composed of several ‘parts’. We need to think about this. And we need also consider the difficult problem which the event, itself, presents: When do we work to serve those who seek our help; and when do we retire, seemingly to ignore their needs, in order to study or meditate or attend to other things which we believe are, at that moment, more important? How do we resolve the conflict between satisfying spiritual or personal needs and doing those chores that civilized life requires us to do? In order to eat, food must be prepared. Somebody has to do the work.
And so we wonder… Why did Jesus refuse to ask Mary to help Martha? Is Martha some sort of second-class devotee? Is it perfectly all right to let her do all the ‘scut’ work while her sister Mary gracefully reclines at the Master’s feet? There seems to be something unjust in this refusal. After all, we reason, Mary will get up to come to the table to eat. She will be dining, too.
On the surface, the Bible would seem to contradict Zen teaching. “No work, no food,” is always our monastic dictum. Were this anyone but Jesus speaking, we’d quickly reply, “Hah! My master would’ve hit Mary with his stick and sent her scurrying to the kitchen.” But men of Zen do not lightly dismiss a Bodhisattva’s pronouncements. So we scratch our heads and maintain a discreet but darkened silence, waiting for the Buddha’s lightbulb to start shining in our brains.
While pondering several seemingly unrelated events recently, I accidentally switched on a light which I believe illuminates these other meanings.
Not too long ago I had invited two bachelor members of my congregation to my home for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m a terrible cook, so the inducement wasn’t the food… it was the viewing of two classic French films which were subtitled in English.
My VCR and TV are back in my bedroom which is a very small place. In the room, besides the incidental bed, are chests of drawers, file cabinets, bookcases, CD and tape player with their stacks of CDs and tapes and, of course, my whole computer mishmash including desk and printer, etc. etc. Most bathrooms have more available floor space. Add to this some opened butterfly chairs and two people in the room defines congestion. Three constitutes gridlock. But what the heck. Bachelors don’t require refined accommodations.
We planned to eat buffet style while we watched the films because, frankly, my kitchen table is also a small affair, suitable for assembling puzzles of less than five hundred pieces… and really all that it is used for.
At the appointed hour, one guest arrived. He had work to do later that evening and so, after an hour of waiting in vain for the other guest to show up, we began to eat and watch the films. Then the other guest called. He said that he was with his landlady, an older woman, who was sickly. She was from the Orient and didn’t speak much English, but he was fond of her, and since it was Thanksgiving and she was alone, he wanted to do something nice for her. Would it be all right if he brought her to dinner? I said no.
I told him that he could take all the food he wanted home to her, but that in my cramped bedroom I had no room for three guests .. not even if they insisted upon being stacked vertically. Further, since the lady was unfamiliar with English, she could hardly comprehend a French film with flashing English subtitles. To entertain her and him, I would have to go to another room and leave my present guest in the bedroom alone to watch the movie. And this I would not do. If he had given me advance notice, I might have made other arrangements. I said I was truly sorry but that I had a responsibility to my present guest. Though obviously annoyed, he said that he’d be along shortly, but he never came at all and in fact never even came to another congregation meeting.
I received some criticism for this decision. Many people thought I should have been more generous. But I felt comfortable with my refusal although, I admit, I wasn’t exactly sure of why I felt justified in refusing.
Months later a friend of mine called to discuss a problem she was having. Her mother-in-law belonged to a religious organization which performed charitable acts such as giving rides to disabled or infirmed persons. One such person, an elderly man who was a kidney dialysis patient, lived in my friend’s neighborhood, and her mother-in-law, after talking it over with her son and obtaining his approval, recruited my friend’s services in driving this patient to the clinic for his frequent dialysis treatments.
Initially, my friend had protested that the new task would prevent her from doing her own Girl Scout volunteer work, but her mother-in-law dismissed her protests by saying that the kidney patient’s need was far more important, a matter, after all, of life and death.
My friend acquiesced and tried to comply graciously, but the task soon became an intolerable burden. She had children, and on the days she drove this patient into town and waited several hours for his treatment to conclude, her husband took the children out for pizza. Everybody – except my friend – thoroughly appreciated the arrangement. She was profoundly resentful. “Even without my Girl Scout projects,” she said, “I still have housework to do, and nobody helps me with it. They go out for pizza and have a good time. I come home to do laundry and mop floors. And when I complain, I’m criticized and told to be more generous and charitable. I feel like Martha”, she cried. “They get the good part – the pleasure. I get the work.”
Suddenly Luke, Chapter 10, verses 38-42 began to reveal this other meaning. The problem wasn’t work versus idleness. And it was considerably more than sitting in meditation versus attending to life’s nagging chores. It was a problem and solution characteristic of the religious life, itself. Recalling that the Bhagavad Gita addressed this very problem, I went to my bookshelf and searched for the text.
I also remembered years ago when I worked and my children had to help me clean the house. While I mopped or polished, they’d constantly come and ask me to help them find this, or reach that, or sort this; and I’d have to stop what I was doing to go help them until, annoyed by the interruptions, I’d shout, “Don’t help me by asking me to help you!” This, in a way, was at the core of the problem posed in the Gospel of Luke.
My Thanksgiving Day guest wanted to do something nice for a woman; but what he wanted to do nice for her was to bring her to me and let me do something nice for her. He was right in wanting to help her. But he was wrong in trying to pressure me into helping him to help her. I had my own “helping” agenda to fulfill. He wanted to be good and kind. Fine. Then to the best of his ability he should have been so.
My friend’s mother-in-law volunteered to perform a kind and generous act. Fine. But what she did by way of being kind and generous was to “volunteer” my friend, to impress her into service, to embarrass her into acting charitably.
These two people had decided that their charitable agendas were more meritorious, more worthy of attention, than the agendas of others, that they had a right to induce another into spending his time and resources in order to fulfill theircommitments. And in making this determination they showed that they had become, in Buddhist terms, “attached” to their image as charitable and resourceful persons. In other words, what was important was that their projects succeed and, by extension, that their reputations for being generous and efficient remain intact.
In Chapter 3 of the Song of God, the Vedanta Society’s beautiful translation of the Bhagavad Gita, there is a dialogue between Arjuna and Krishna in which we hear an echoing reference to that one necessary thing that exists in several parts. Arjuna asks Krishna, “Tell me one definite way of reaching the highest good.”
Krishna responds, “I have already told you that in this world those who aspire may find enlightenment by two different paths. For the contemplative is the path of knowledge: for the active is the path of selfless action.” And he goes on to explain this other path. “The world is imprisoned in its own activity except when actions are performed as worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action sacramentally, and be free from all attachments to results… When a man has found delight and satisfaction and peace… he is independent of everybody and everything. Do your duty, always; but without attachment! This is how a man reaches the ultimate Truth; by working without anxiety about results. Your motive in working should be to set others, by your example, on the path of duty… It is better to do your own duty, however imperfectly, than to perform the duty of another person, however successfully.”
Martha invited Jesus into her home. She offered him a meal. Fine. But she should have performed her actions sacramentally, as an individual making an offering of her own individual labor, without worrying about the results, without demanding assistance.
Acting from love and performing our duty as we understand that duty… is having “the good part.” The one “needful” thing that Mary was doing was worshipping her Lord in her way. Had Martha performed her own service with as much love and attention and without anxiety or complaint, she would have done the same. The “good part” would also have been hers.
What, then, should we learn from these scriptures? We should learn never to sacrifice the Rare to the commonplace, never to work merely to enhance our public reputations and private bank accounts but instead, in our hearts, to offer our labor as service to the Divinity that exists in every man. If we perform our labor sacramentally, we will not lie or cheat or neglect to perform it well. And if we do not accomplish the results we sought, or if we fail to be paid, we will know that we, too, in serving God, received the good part which cannot be taken away from us.
And we also should learn never to press other people into fulfilling our charitable commitments or to let others press us into fulfilling theirs. But if we do freely undertake a charitable task, we should perform that task with loving attention, as if it were a religious ritual, a communion of our soul with God’s… which, in fact, it is.
Serving God with love and humility! This is duty. This, I think, is Christian Charity. This, I know, is Buddhist Dharma.
All religions at their base level – the level at which they intersect the plane of ordinary citizens – are merely civilizing media. They post their Commandments, Precepts, Yamas and Niyamas; and through the nearly foolproof means of threatened punishment and promised reward, impose law and order on a community. Nobody has ever improved on the system.
While we notice many differences between the participants and practices of various religions – especially at the fanatical extremes of the base level – we also see that each religion has a mystical ladder by which individual members may ascend to spiritual heights. And, astonishingly, the people who climb and the methods they use to ascend are strangely identical. On mystical ladders, all saints are saints and all holy books holy.
Why, we may wonder, are the people at the bases so dissimilar while those who attain spiritual goals, those exalted mystical states, are so similar – indeed, identical to the point of being interchangeable? The answer is simply that geography and culture have everything to do with religion but nothing to do with spirituality. A human being’s ability to experience divine grace is genetically encoded.
And the methodologies for attaining such spiritual exaltation are predicated upon the same universal physiologic facts.
An old Hasidic tale illustrates the point:
It happened that a great Rabbi was scheduled to visit a small town. As was the custom, the religious elders would meet with him and present him with their spiritual problems and he would answer all their questions. The Rabbi’s visit was regarded as a great honor and so, feeling the pressure of so significant an event, each elder struggled with the daunting task of formulating a proper question, one that would not only help him to overcome an obstacle but would also reflect his piety and maturity and intelligence and scope. What question should he ask? What question? And how to phrase it?
On the appointed evening, into this agony of competitive self-doubt came the great Rabbi. He was used to situations like this.
He entered the temple’s library and allowed himself to be seated in the place of honor at the head of a large table. The elders sat around the table, but after the scraping of chairs and the adjusting of robes, there was silence. They stared at him not knowing what to say.
Suddenly, the great Rabbi began to hum an old Hasidic song. The elders looked at each other quizzically, and then courteously they began to hum, too. And then the great Rabbi began to sing the words of the song; and they, too, began to sing. Soon the great Rabbi stood up, and as he sang he began to stamp his feet and clap his hands to the rhythm. And so did they. And then he sang and raised his arms and snapped his fingers and danced in little circles around the table; and they merrily followed him dancing and singing and snapping their fingers as they circled round and round.
And after they had all sung and danced so joyfully together, they returned to their chairs.
The Rabbi cleared his throat. “I trust that all your questions have been answered,” he said.
If we ignored differences in architecture and dress, would we have seen anything different in a Sufi meeting of Dervishes, whirling to the music in a transcendental moment? No, and not with the Spinners of the Grateful Dead, either. And if we looked at the participants of an Amerindian Pow Wow, wouldn’t we find the same rhythmic beating of the feet and turning round and round to the drum’s demand? Yes.
The engaging power of a humming sound we have many times heard when “Mu” or “Om” is chanted in our ashrams and Zendos.
As to the song, there, too, we find the same exhilarating cadence of breath and phrased tempo when, for example, the great Dharani to Guan Yin is recited in unison by temple congregations. A group of monks singing a Gregorian chant may sing with seemingly less verve, but always with the same depth of emotion.
And the clapping of hands and stamping of feet, and arms and voices raised in song… this could just as easily have been a Revivalist Meeting or a choir of Gospel singers.
People are people and when they seek to unite their spirit to God’s, there is a limited number of ways they can proceed. The question is, why do these ways work at all?
The late and much missed Itzhak Bentov, a mechanical engineer by profession and an observer of spiritual expression by avocation, gave the problem some thought. He studied and measured the effects of self-generated harmonic motions upon the meditating body. Using as his subject a person who is sitting in an apparently motionless posture while practicing deep, controlled breathing, Bentov identified five separate wave motions which, through rhythm entrainment, beneficially amplified their effects, conducing to the meditative state.
The principal resonating oscillator – the pulsating heart/aorta system, entrained four other systems and produced a fluctuating magnetic field around the brain.
According to Bentov, the beating heart and the standing wave produced in the long “stretched” aorta create an oscillation of about 7 Hz in the skeleton, including, of course, the skull. This movement causes the brain to accelerate up and down, actions which generate acoustical plane waves that reverberate at KHz frequencies. These waves drive standing waves within the brain’s ventricles which in turn, noted Bentov, “stimulate the sensory cortex mechanically, resulting eventually in a stimulus traveling in a closed loop around each hemisphere. Such a traveling stimulus may be viewed as a ‘current’, and, as a result of these circular currents each hemisphere produces a pulsating magnetic field. These fields are of opposing polarities.”
He illustrates the pathway of these stimuli as follows:
Cross section of the left hemisphere of the brain. (Illustration taken from Bentov’s Micromotion of the Body as a Factor of the Development of the Nervous System Published in Kundalini, Evolution and Enlightenment, edited by John White, Anchor Books.
After citing his experimental results, Bentov concludes, “Thus by meditating in a quiet sitting position, we slowly activate five tuned oscillators. One by one these oscillators are locked into rhythm. This results eventually in the development of a pulsating magnetic field around the head. When this occurs one may simultaneously observe other characteristic and automatic changes in the functioning of the nervous and circulatory systems. It is the purpose of meditation to bring about these changes…”
We get an image of these circulating waves engulfing the brain and immediately we recall the term “vritti” to which Eastern meditation literature so often refers. Vritti is a whirlpool, a little brainstorm that produces an idea and has a purifying, clarifying effect. And indeed, anyone who has experienced Satori speaks of the sensation of his brain revolving backward in his head, turning half-way round, as the ego is engulfed, totally submerged beneath the weight of a divine hand, or shriveled to nothingness by the scintillations of a divine glance. Chakra activation is likewise experienced as whirling energy.
There, too, is that peculiar sensation of the soft light at the back of the head gently pulsating, and the tremendous glare of the frontal white light that stops the breath and obliterates everything except itself.
But the great Rabbi danced as our beloved Rumi danced and now we wonder to what degree forceful rhythmic movement affects the spinal cord. Can this vital pathway be entrained to produce spectacular transcendence – the euphoria that leads to rapture and ecstasy, to Samadhi or Divine Union? Hmmm. How do the body’s various rhythmic activities resonate with this celestial harmony?
We know that there is a runner’s high. After ten minutes or so – even on a treadmill – a person may enter a zone in which time is cancelled and mundane thoughts vanish and there is only the feet’s rhythmic beating on the hard surface, a percussion wave that travels up the legs and spine to the brain. Many runners run only for this reason: to recapture again and again those moments of entry into eternal, “outside of time,” precincts.
And the sexual charge of Samadhi, the exquisite delirium in which the pleasure centers of the brain are clearly and unambiguously accessed, this, according to ancient Chinese lore, is connected to the activation of the Kidney Meridian, the beginning point of which lies immediately behind the ball of the foot. In the marvelous Chinese film, Hang The Red Lantern, when one of the wives is chosen to join the master in his bedroom, a servant comes into her room and gently beats the soles of her feet, stimulating that sexually critical point. This, too, is the rhythmic sole-beating of the dance.
The repeated striking of the buttocks such as a yogi may practice when he takes the Mahabheda posture, or the little man tou cushion’s anal pressure which exaggerates the blood’s pulsations at the base of the spine – it all seems magically to tie together, the foot fetishes, the flagellations, the rhythmic recitations of mantras, the cadenced breathing -all comprising an array of methods which human beings of every culture may employ to ascend to spiritual heights.
Bentov scientifically explained why sitting in meditation works. We turn our attention inward; we concentrate on the beating of our heart or the pulse in our Hara – that point deep in the abdomen where the aorta bifurcates; we mentally repeat the Buddha’s name or intone “Om” holding the “m” as our lips gently close and vibrate; we measure the inhalation and exhalation of our breath; and one by one the systems rhythmically entrain and gather the strength to carry us up, rung after rung, to the final step of Unity.
This kind of communion is best attempted when we are alone; and then it is indeed sweet beyond description.
But for gatherings or for overcoming obstacles in the meditative path, there is the great Rabbi’s advice: to hum, to sing, to clap our hands and dance, to circle round and round as the Dipper circles the Pole Star. There is the divine gift: music.
Perhaps the last Psalm, 150, says it best:
Praise the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness.
Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals.
by Ming Zhen Shakya, OHY
I wish I didn’t enjoy my prison ministry so much. If it were less agreeable I could make myself seem like a martyr for making the trip out to Jean every Wednesday.
But the fact is, I like going there. It keeps me on my toes. Every cleric is a philosopher of sorts and prisons are often the true enclaves of philosophy. The men don’t have an awful lot to do in their free time. So they think and then discuss what they think and then, I think, lay intellectual traps for me to see what I think.
The subject of heaven and hell came up recently. One of the men quoted Milton to me…. or threw him at me, I should say. “‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,'” he challenged. “Geez,” I said, responding with the standard comeback, “What makes you think that if you go to heaven you’ll be a servant but if you go to hell you’ll be a king?” And he countered with a certain, histrionic flair, “If? If I go? I am in hell.” And after the others stopped grunting in affirmation, I said, “Well, Your Majesty, there you may be, but not for the reasons you think.” And then I had to start thinking about reasons and as I say, it keeps me on my toes.
Fortunately, he had picked the best known passage in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Had he been more esoteric in his reference, he might have made me switch subjects… after all… I haven’t read the whole of it. He probably had… but then it would pretty much take a prison term — I’d better quit before I offend Milton lovers.
“Well,” I said with a sizzling riposte, “just before Satan said that, didn’t he say something about the mind being its own place and inside itself could make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven?” This equally famous line constitutes, you see, the core belief of Zen Buddhism. We can’t help it if Milton put the line in Satan’s mouth. Satan surely can get a few things right. As they say, even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
Then, to illustrate the point I was trying to make, I invited the men to play a kind of game and tell me what I was describing: I said, “I see a group of buildings surrounded by a high wall and a locked gate. The inmates wear uniforms of plain, coarse material. They eat simple food, prepared without garnishment or sauce. They rise early and retire late. Everywhere they go and in everything they do, they are subject to someone’s absolute authority over them, and to endless rules and regulations and punishments for breaking same. They are expected to work for many hours a day and to keep silent for many other hours. They have virtually no freedom of choice. They sleep in rooms called cells, and when they retire to their beds at night, they are alone… for no female companionship is allowed them. OK,” I said, “What am I describing?”
I didn’t fool any of them. “A monastery,” they all answered, and we laughed because it is funny the way a monastery headed by an abbot and a prison headed by a warden are so strangely similar in design. But there the similarity ends. The obvious difference between monks and convicts is that the former desire to live under such conditions and are usually happy and the latter are forced to…and are usually miserable. The conditions are the same. The state of mind… the desire… is different.
Zen has a very pragmatic approach to the subject of heaven and hell. We recognize them as two states of mind that can be experienced in the present moment. Regardless of whatever happens at the end of life, Nirvana and Samsara, our earthly states of Heaven and Hell, can be experienced right now while we’re still breathing.
According to Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, life in the world of the ego, which we call Samsara or Hell, is bitter and painful. No argument there. And the Second Noble Truth is that the cause of this bitterness and pain is egotistical desire. And isn’t that the difference between monks and convicts? One group wants to be where they are and the other doesn’t. The question is why… specifically why do monks want to be there? If you ever spend any time in a monastery, you’ll likely ask yourself that question a few times a day.
But the answer is really quite simple. The monks are seeking heaven and they’re trying to qualify for gaining it. They’re turning their attention inwards – away from the world – because they wish to become One with the King who reigns there, in that Kingdom that lies within. And before they can do that, they must learn to serve that King with unconditional love, in egoless humility and purity. The convicts were still living in the world of desire.. the one presided over by Satan or Mara – to use his Buddhist name.
What is the nature of this desire that in seeking its satisfaction they, and we, create such hells for ourselves? Back in 600 AD Saint Gregory listed the Seven Deadly Sins and they’re still very much alive and well – even after Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman got finished with them. Those seven universal expressions of egotistical self-indulgence have lost none of their virulence: pride; greed; jealousy; lust; sloth; gluttony; and anger. The mind that is infected with any or all of these Seven Deadly Sins is attached to, i.e., is emotionally engaged by desire or aversion to the people, places and things of this, the ego’s, world. This ego-mind wants to be loved and admired, to be feared and respected, and to indulge itself in a variety of sensory pleasures; and it doesn’t much care what it has to do to get what it wants.
If Zen’s goal had to be stated in a single word that word would be non-attachment… freeing the mind from its fixations on the things of the outer world and turning it inward, to its relationship with God or the Buddha Self. And it doesn’t matter whether you are housed in a monastery or a prison since the accomplishment of this goal depends not on the nature of the real estate, but on the nature of the heart.
I’ll close this little Dharma talk by relating one of Zen’s favorite stories:
There was once a very proud and powerful king who fancied himself a philosopher. After much disputation and argument, mostly with himself, this King reached the conclusion that there was no such thing as heaven or hell. These were mere superstitions, he decided, and he therefore decreed that henceforth there would be no further talk of heaven or hell in his kingdom. Anyone who defied his Royal Will by even mentioning them would be severely punished.
One day a holy man visited the kingdom; and despite numerous warnings, this holy man began to preach about heaven and hell. Naturally when the king heard about it he was furious and ordered the man arrested and brought to court.
“Everyone knows that my conclusions are correct,” the king said to the holy man. “Why do you persist in preaching a doctrine that is so obviously false?”
The holy man sneered and laughed at the king. “Do you expect me to discuss philosophy with a buffoon like you?” he asked.
Instantly the king was on his feet! Enraged, he shouted at his guards, “Seize him!”
Then the holy man raised his hand and said, “Sire… Sire… Please… One moment! Understand! There is a hell and right now you are in it!”
Suddenly the king understood! He saw himself standing there, burning with rage, consumed with violence and contempt; and he understood that hell wasn’t a place where the body burned, but where the spirit burned.
And horror-struck by his own actions, he sat down on his throne and trembled and covered his face with his hands. And when he finally looked up again, he was filled with love and gratitude, and the wonder of enlightenment.
Quietly, he said to the holy man, “And to think of your great generosity in teaching me this! To think how you risked your life just to enlighten me to this truth! Oh, Master! Please forgive me.”
And the holy man said, “And you see, Sire, there is a heaven, and right now you are in it.”
Archimedes was stymied. The greatest mathematician in the world had a problem that baffled him. How could he determine whether an intricately wrought crown was pure gold or gold adulterated with a base metal? He knew what a given quantity of gold should weigh and that the same quantity of adulterated metal would have a different weight; but how could he determine the quantity of material in the crown? He couldn’t cut it up into measurable pieces. What to do? What to do?
As every troubled thinker does, Archimedes decided to take a hot bath. And it was then, as he sank into the water and the liquid sloshed over the sides of the tub that the concept of displacement occurred to him. Two things cannot occupy the same space. He might not have been able to measure the space the crown occupied by measuring the crown, but he could easily measure the amount of water the crown displaced. He could quantify the material! Jubilant and still naked, he ran through the streets shouting “Eureka!” I have found it! I have found the answer!
How do we tell false from true and penetrate surface to probe core? Insight requires the hard work of disciplined thought and observation; and most of the time we’re too tired, or lazy, or distracted to bother. So we laugh or gape or, if we do feel an emotional response, we look at the reflection of what we’ve projected onto the surface and coo adoringly or cast the glancing shadow of our own malice; but usually we see nothing but what it suits us to see. We don’t care to look behind the mirror.
From the trove of oriental wisdom comes a famous parable which illustrates the meaning of dharma, the nature or natural order of a thing, the design ‘plans and specs’ to which the thing conforms. Regardless of any superficial characteristics it may present, everything has its dharma, its true, interior nature.
In the parable, an encounter between a venomous creature (a scorpion) and an innocuous one (a holy man) is observed by an uncomprehending man who, though he thinks he understands what he sees, has no real insight. He cannot penetrate the surface to plumb the depths of meaning.
Several years ago, in his film, The Crying Game, Neil Jordan brought a version of the parable to the West’s attention: A soldier, while making love to a woman, is captured by rebels who hold him hostage. Hooded, his hands bound behind him, he is guarded by a calm and gentle man who tries to make him as comfortable as possible.
The soldier, fearing execution, plays upon the guard’s compassionate nature by evoking manly sympathies. By action and word he poses the Archimedian problem: what is our true nature? Are we what we appear to be?
On the surface they would seem to be opposites. Racially, one is black, the other white. Politically, one is a soldier in service to the ruling power, the other a rebel in arms against it. But underneath these surfaces, do they not share a common nature? Do they not love, play, joke, urinate, and do all things that make them human? Are they not equals? The captive displays a photograph of the beautiful woman he loves and asks the guard to visit her and to convey the final thoughts of his undying love. It seems little enough for a condemned man to ask.
But the soldier further attempts to compromise the guard, to seduce him with voluptuous praise. There are, he insists, only two kinds of people in the world: “those who give and those who take” – the implication being that they are both good ‘giving’ men who give because it is their nature to be kind and compassionate. “You will help me,” says the soldier, “because it is your nature to be kind. You won’t be able to act against your nature.” And then, to illustrate his point, he relates the parable of the encounter between a venomous and an innocuous creature, in this version, a scorpion and a frog:
A scorpion, desiring to get to the other side of a river, asks a frog to carry him across. The frog is reluctant because he fears that the scorpion will sting him; but the scorpion dismisses the possibility saying that it wouldn’t be in his interest to sting the frog since then they’d both drown.
“The frog,” says the captive soldier, “thinks it over and then agrees to the deal.”
But mid-way across the river the scorpion stings the frog who, shrieking in pain, asks the scorpion why he has done this; and the scorpion replies, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.” The theater audience laughs. It’s a clever explanation… the divine blueprint, the genes and chromosomes of scorpionhood. Yes, the guard will likely yield to the imperatives of his nature and help the soldier.
But if we are seeking insight, immediately we are confused. There is a problem here. Neil Jordan has dunked us in the Archimedian tub. First, there is the flaw of contract. There has been no “deal.” What is the necessary consideration? What benefit would the frog receive from ferrying the scorpion across the river? None was stated. If we are to believe that he is acting out of simple kindness, why then is the guard’s adherence to his own nature being likened unto the scorpion’s? He is being asked to act as benignly as the frog, not as detrimentally as the scorpion. Something does not jibe. We sink into the bathwater and await enlightenment. In television’s small claim’s court program, Judge Joe Brown, we recently heard another version of the parable. The judge, after deciding a case in favor of the defendant, responded to the plaintiff’s claim that her faithless and irresponsible lover had unduly enriched himself at her expense, by turning to the camera and lamenting, “It’s always this way. A person falls in love with someone who keeps breaking promises and acting badly. But the person keeps on forgiving the bad conduct. And then, when the relationship finally ends, there’s the inevitable complaint of breach of contract. ‘I gave this and I was promised that…’ On it goes. It reminds me of a story,” the good judge recalls, “of the woman who finds an injured snake on the road. She brings it home and nurses it until it recovers. But as soon as the snake is healed, it bites her. She says, ‘How could you bite me after I did so much to help you?’ And the snake says, ‘Lady, you knew I was a snake when you brought me home.’” The spectators in the courtroom laugh. A snake can’t help being a snake. Yes, the woman’s got nobody to blame but herself.
But something is wrong with this scenario. And once again we are sloshing in water, trying to understand, squinting to see truth. Do we assist only those distressed persons who post a bond, who give us a surety, a guarantee of reward, or payment-in-advance for our trouble? What is the judge trying to teach us? That we should be indifferent to the sufferings of others or restrict our charitable assistance to those who are certifiably impotent? Wouldn’t we rather be the Good Samaritan and risk ingratitude – or worse, than be the kind of person who ignores a signal of distress?
Perhaps a look at the original parable will help to clarify the problem:
A holy man is sitting by a river into which a scorpion falls. Seeing the creature thrash helplessly in the water, the holy man reaches down and scoops it up, placing it safely on the ground; and as he does this, the scorpion stings him.
Again, the scorpion falls into the water; and again, the holy man rescues him and is stung for his trouble.
Yet a third time the scorpion falls into the water and is saved by the holy man; and yet a third time the scorpion stings him.
Standing nearby is a man who has been observing this indignantly. He approaches the holy man and angrily asks, “Why do you keep rescuing a scorpion that keeps stinging you?”
The holy man gently shrugs. “It is a scorpion’s dharma to sting,” he says simply, “just as it is a human being’s dharma to help a creature in need.”
In the holy man’s demeanor and his explanation, we understand the parable. He has acted without egotistic desire, without expectation of reward or compensation, without entering that realm of conditional existence that is, for a spiritual person, assiduously to be avoided. He has acted in perfect freedom, doing what he considers is the right thing to do, without fear of consequence because he knows that his happiness does not depend upon exterior events or eventualities. He is an individual, independent, needing nothing or no one. He is responsible only to his God; and because he respects God’s designs – all His blueprints for life, he acts without singling himself out for special consideration.
And this equanimity is possessed by the guard just as it is prescribed for the plaintiff.
In The Crying Game we’ll indeed discover that the guard is the counterpart of the holy man. He, too, acts innocuously, without contract, without expectation of reward. It is the seductive soldier who is the poisonous scorpion; and, regardless of how he promises to conduct himself, he will act in accordance with his own ego-nature’s self-interest. All his talk of brotherhood, of a shared, generous nature was calculated to manipulate, an allurement to conscience. It was not what it seemed to be. In fact, he has secretly untied his hands and, relying upon the guard’s sense of decency – which surely will not allow him to shoot a man in the back – he breaks free and runs away, leaving the guard to face summary execution for having allowed his prisoner to escape.
And then we recall… as Judge Joe Brown would have had us recall… that we had indications of the soldier’s character at the outset of the film. Didn’t we witness his infidelity in the opening scene? Wasn’t he betraying ‘the great love of his life’ at the time he was captured? And later, didn’t he lie and conceal relevant truth when he cleverly aroused the guard’s interest in the photograph? His faithlessness and duplicity were already a matter of record.
Judge Brown, in his examination of the Plaintiff’s case, also established this point. At the outset of the relationship, the evidence of character, of nature, was there; and the plaintiff chose to ignore it, preferring to see what she wanted or needed to see. Only in retrospect, was each gift of money a loan. But why, the plaintiff was asked, when the man had not repaid the first loan did she give him a second? And, when he also failed to repay that did she give him a third and put her credit cards at his disposal for the fourth and fifth, and so on. The woman had an ulterior motive, one with which we all can sympathize, but one that had nothing to do with business agreements. She wanted to be loved and appreciated. In fact her gifts were bribes, inducements to yield the love she sought. But her image of herself – and her explanation for her actions – was that she was a kind and generous person, one who couldn’t ignore someone’s needs. She said that she helped because it was her nature to help. But if this were true, why was she demanding repayment?
In the absence of any evidence of agreement to repay, the Judge had to find for the ungrateful defendant. And so he spoke of a woman who had nursed a snake and who had not been prepared to accept the consequences of snake-handling.
The soldier’s and the Judge’s version of the parable are not intended to explain anything. They merely serve to warn, to caution us against accepting self-serving assurances and self-gratifying suppositions – and never to discount dharma. Yes, we are free to help an injurious person as often as needed, and to forgive him as often as we wish; but we cannot expect him to reform himself in accordance either with our hopes or with his manipulating promises. We are not asked to refrain from helping a scorpion, but only to remember – to remain aware – that it is a scorpion we are helping.
And implied in this awareness is the need to determine why it is we are helping him. Did we profess kindness as a means of huckstering a holiness which, in truth, we did not possess? Did we require love and appreciation so much that we were willing to purchase it? Is our ego such that we imagined that we could convert a scorpion into a canary, a serpent into a lapdog?
And if it is true that we have lavished so much attention upon someone who was so unworthy, so snakeish, what does that say about our powers of perception, not to mention taste? The ego’s desires are like beads upon a mala, an endless concatenation of fondled expectations. If ungratified, we experience disappointment; if gratified, we drop the bead and palpate the next desire.
In a social context, if we act purely to help someone, we do so without quid pro quo arrangements. If we are repaid, fine. If not, fine. Where there is no contract, there is no remedy – nor need of one.
In The Crying Game‘s final scene, the guard, asked to explain his self-sacrificing nature, repeats the parable of the scorpion and the frog. But he does this entertainingly, without guile. He exaggerates the shriek of the frog and dramatizes the scorpion’s response. In perfect simplicity, unaware even of his own humility, he likens himself unto the scorpion. He can’t help his nature – which we know is unconditionally loving and expansive.
The plaintiff, upon whom humiliation has been imposed, will likely shrivel. She’ll no longer grovel for snake love, but we must suppose that until she can look within herself and discover her own egoless self-worth, she’ll continue to see reflected love or hate in those upon whom she has cast her imaged desires.
Archimedes did not allow himself to be deceived by appearance. He tasked himself with the hard work of achieving insight which required simply and monumentally that he solve a problem in measurement.
The crown was not what the goldsmith said it was. The metal was gold alloyed with cheap copper. In the process of ascertaining this, Archimedes had discovered a great, eternal truth.
With what joy did that old man run naked through the streets.
