 Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion
Sacred Pleasure... cannot even begin so long as one is caught in the crushing wheels of suffering... nor can it begin while anyone is still victimized by the crushing violence of obsolete theologies and the spiritual judgments theyconsistently give rise to : we need a Jubilee break from violence, oppressive theology, and judgment (say, how about fifty years worth)... Every religion has its fundamentalist "wing"... which would forever and always keep pleasure "grounded" in reproduction lingo... (how many of us humans must there be before there just might be enough!?) Likewise, every religion (is this true?) begins with a bias against women... and the men who presumed superiority over the spirituality, insights, and wisdom of women (and who also, very conveniently, wrote all of the Holy Books of religions) both resented and were afraid of the natural earthiness and the sacred capacity of women for nearly unlimited orgasm... This insult to ump-teen generations of women has carried over into a judgment against other men: men who have a natural physical-spiritual hunger for pleasure with other men... Indeed, pleasure itself is invalidated in nearly every "traditional" theology: to delight in the pleasure of sexual orgasm, of intimacy, with the person (s) of their heart's choice, is sin to the justifiers of hate, manipulation, and domination... To be a woman: to be gay: to be lesbian: to be bisexual: to be queer in any way from the dominated norm is sin... It would be needlessly silly to list the examples of thousands of years of male religious violence and oppression... World history, and most especially, the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is little more than a history of the worship of the Unholy Trinity: Profit, Privilege, and Power... The Unholy Trinity is the "god" of religion: pain is made perfect in abject submission to male power, male privilege, and male profit... It is always violent: whether by means of usury, slavery, or burning at the stake: the Unholy Trinity is the obsessive fetish of male-created religion... On the other hand, there is Jesus: the Mystic-Master of the Transformation of Consciousness! An honest reading of the Gospels reveals Jesus to be a radical feminist, an earthy-aware being, and one deeply commited to a preferential option for the poor: a person not in submission to power, not in service to profit, and completely uninterested in privilege... That Jesus was male, was incidental to his being: and precisely because incidental, he was a free man: a human being liberated into his Divine Possibilities! It isn't so much that we need a female image of the Divine, but perhaps that we should be free from all images! What is, after all, an image but a work of imagination? Now, imagination, like sex, is holy... but it is also limiting, isn't it? And the problem with men and male-driven theology is the need to manufacture a god, and supporting theology, that sustains the myths of the Unholy Trinity... Jesus would have both you and I free: free to live the exploration of our possibilities as human beings... Jesus' interest in sex is that it should cause no harm: responsible adults intimate with other responsible adults: this that, here or there: it doesn't matter so long as there is no harm... It is the height of arrogance that people who marginalize women, justify greed, and in recent ump-teen decades raped thousands of kids, should possess the theological gall to condemn other people who are simply motivated by desires of intimacy in creative ways that are not the "norm"... So what?! Finally, there is the mystic-image of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion... Shouldn't the Christian, the Jew, and the Muslim hunger to be known as the religions of compassion: by the practice of compassion towards neighbors, strangers, and enemies, all alike? Kuan Yin is Jesus in disguise... just like the homeless man in the gutter...
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 Beginning The Dive...
Hail Mary full of grace, bless us we pray... bless the Divine Unity in all People, and bless too, the Oneness of all Creation... Om Mani Padme Hum... (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)... Diving into prayer is as easy as eating a luscious piece of pie... or kissing your lover... or jumping from a high flying airplane (without a parachute, of course!)... There is no high or low, no better or worse, no deeper or shallow... If ... Prayer simply is... it is like a bubbly bath and dry-bone desert, both, at the same time... it is as normal as being born and making babies... And there is no better comparison than that of dying... "Huh?" you ask. And add, "but nobody ever really wants to die!" Ah, but there is the rub! We, likely as not, would never admit it, but we all do, in fact, very much want to die! Certainly later rather than sooner, but life without the lurking adventure of death would be something other than life! And that we could not bear... Exactly so, there is the living adventure of prayer... Cowards pray for shit, for answers and victories... On the other hand, there are the boldly intrepid who yearn to experience and delight in the love they already know dwells without limit in their heart... This is the beginning of prayer... To be sure, there are any number of wants, needs, and preferences: the Universal Consciousness that is the Root of All Manifested Existence "knows" all of this: already immutable "laws" will continue, without evident concern, in motion... "pray" all you want, but the dice has already been rolled... some will win, some will lose... and in the end we will all die... so, prayer is not about getting or in losing... it is an entirely different beast... Prayer is the path of identification... if you are really wanting to stay in the ego, in your identification with your "little self" of personal history and confirming story, you can! The Universe will not stand in opposition! Be yourself! But on the other hand, you just might be among the boldly intrepid, and you already realize that you were made for something other than simply ego identification... This is the promise of prayer... With whom and with what do you wish to identify? Mary, the Mother of Jesus, chose exactly that, but more: she chose to be Mother to all of the poor little ones throughout time... Her identification with Jesus liberated her from ego identification: she became who she was meant to be by surrendering her ego-self to the intention of the Sacred Cosmos that she be Mother of All Sentient Beings... Don't you wonder what the intention of the Sacred Cosmos is for you? This is the path of prayer... Very much as with Mary, Buddhism teaches a path of ego-liberation, a blossoming of the "little self" with the intention of the Sacred Cosmos by means of the Bodhisattva Vow: to willingly re-incarnate, perhaps an infinite number of times, to serve the liberation of all sentient beings, before entering heaven oneself (indeed, one "becomes" all selves, if you can wrap your head around that!) Such a being is Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of Compassion... This is the fruit of prayer... Identification is key: regardless of the name that we were given, we were never supposed to "stay" Bob, Jane, or even Kamala forever: while yet alive, we are supposed to disappear... "Disappear into what?" you ask... By now, I think you already know the answer: disappear into who you really are, as in a mirror of the Sacred Cosmos... disappear into an activated compassion, disappear into a practiced justice, disappear into serving equality, disappear into nonviolent peacemaking: disappear into whatever way in which you are needed... Disappear into "Hail Mary"... Disappear into Kuan Yin "Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail, Jewel of the Lotus)... This is prayer as a disappearing act...  His Holiness, the Dalai Lama
It is perhaps true that the most intense spiritual challenge any person will likely face, is that of gifting another with forgiveness... I am not writing or thinking about "forgiving" the little annoying hurts that are in the "everyday" category... Rather, I am laser-focused on the hurts of a brutal nature and intent: those times in which one's very being has been transformed by an all-consuming grief and anger: such as, when someone pledged and lied about an "eternal love": only to indulge in a steady psychological and spiritual annihilation of the now abandoned heart... There are many kinds of pain. We all trip and fall in a playground as toddlers. We fall ill. We have teeth pulled. We fear failure in school. We never get picked for a ball team. Parents die. Children die. We lose a job. And on and on, round and round, there is a steady shattering of hopes and dreams: our spiritual urge fades in the face of an uncaring, seemingly disinterested, Universe: we live (if it can be called such), as it were, waiting for the next shoe to drop... And, of course, not one shoe, but many drop! Disrespect and outright lies that deceive, disrupt, and destroy are a dime a dozen... Exhausted by deception and violence, Lao Tzu fled his home for the unknown lands of the far west of China... Similarly exhausted by deception and violence, the man who came to be known as the Christ, fell under the weight of a cosmic cross... While evident exhaustion, deception, and violence link these two sagely masters, even more so does their mystic viewpoint and teachings... Both point to the necessity of transformation: of consciousness, lifestyle, and relationships... always, from the personal to the social... We only begin our transformation, when we can acknowledge our condition: where does our pain originate: where do we hold our pain: how do we cope with our pain: how do we try to bury our pain: why do we unleash our pain-burden in the ways that we do? These are a few of the questions that dog everyone -- anywhere on the path... We are never finished with this work... even a spiritual master, such as the Dalai Lama, has to return to his work everyday... and don't kid yourself into thinking "enlightenment" makes any aspect of this work "easy"! The deepest dive that any of us can attempt -- and perhaps complete -- is that of forgiveness... Forgiveness is not some sort of "sanction" or "authorization" for the harm that one being caused another: rather, it is a nonviolent confrontation with the harm received: and a nonviolent confrontation with those who caused said harm... Reconciliation is a laudable goal, but more importantly, self-compassion and self-liberation are the immediate need: only when self-compassion and self-liberation are effected can there be the possibility of personal transformation: and not into forgetfulness, but rather into an identification with the Christ, with the very deep and clear waters of the Tao... Deeper yet, is following forgiveness with compassion... Celtic spirituality mirrors that of the Tao: the Celtic heart may access thin places in which the Tao (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) is experienced pansacramentally... In other words, the theological theory of the Oneness of the Transcendent and the Immanent is experienced in a sacramental communion... Forgiveness is the process of un-packing the pain, and practicing non-attachment in the real Reality of a cosmic inter-being... Admittedly, this is heavy stuff... and if there is one word that encapsulates this idea, it is compassion... Another deep Celtic insight mirrors that of Lao Tzu and the Taoist: return to the Mother... the Mother Principle roots all mystic insight into the opening of the heart... open heart, open hands... there is only One practice and that One practice is Compassion... Lao Tzu outlined the characteristics of both the Way-Path and the Sagely-Practitioner... Later, Yeshua, the Poet of Nazareth, incarnated the Being-Consciousness-Bliss of the Truth beyond Idea, and the Love before Need... Lao Tzu wrote, know the male, keep to the female... and Yeshua said, love one another as I have loved you... both, indicate the royal path of becoming as the Mother... (St. Francis said that we are supposed to become the Mother of God! How do you like that?!) Who is the Mother? Or perhaps, one could even ask what is the Mother? Lao Tzu writes of the mother of all beneath heaven, nurturing mother, valley spirit, and dark female-enigma... Our Lady of Guadalupe, unknown to both Lao Tzu and the Celts, emphatically insisted, I am your Mother to a humble Indian and by spiritual implication, to all of humanity... In Buddhism, there is an absolutely and weirdly wonderful idea of the Bodhisattva: one who renounces the bliss of heaven to re-incarnate, life-after-life, in order to serve the ultimate liberation of every sentient being: and only then, will she entertain her own entrance into heaven... She is Mary... or Tara... or Kuan Yin... and ultimately, She is all and none: She is Form and Void both: this one or that one is the Same: the embodiment of Divine Love... Beyond the world of ideas and thought, there is the Nameless, the Oneness, the Mother... Do you see? Forgiveness empties the Cup of Self-Isolation... just as Compassion re-imagines Cup as Cosmos and Self as Holy Water for all who become aware of their thirst... Now, we're into the Actual Territory of the deepest dive...  Ancient Cave Art of the Divine Mother For millenia, before the various manifestations of the "Sky God", the Mother was matrix: source, sustainer, destroyer, and resurrection... Her representations in cave art are now well known, though still under-appreciated. Cynics minimize the images as those of a "fertility" nature, and for those modern few who are more attuned to the "divine feminine", they seldom plumb the depths of the erotic mysticism implied in this ancient art... The "everyday sacred" and the Way of Divine Pleasure is the invitation extended by these images...  The Goddess of Wilendorf
If one were to ask, "Who would you identify as the greatest, most Christ-like, Christian saint of all time?" (This question has been asked many times of many people.) The answer most often given, by both Christian and non-Christian alike, is St. Francis of Assisi. Francis, of course, is often a friendly face in gardens (as a simple concrete or plastic statue). He is well known for his poverty, zeal in re-building the crumbling ruins of chapels, and for his care of lepers. Lesser, he is admired for his devotional prayer and life "at the margins" of both church and society... but nearly no one, besides myself, considers him an exemplar of an erotic mysticism... To be unaware of his erotic mysticism, though, is to miss the essential point of his spiritual evolution (rEvolution)... as a little brother of Jesus... To be a fully functioning Christian (human!), one simply must evolve: grow, develop, and change: the Franciscan viewpoint is that of, and into, a truly radical personalism, informed by a corresponding radical sense of pansacramentalism: the Divine awaits in the everyday encounters of person-in-life... Francis, like the overwhelming majority of fellow believers, then and now, was for the greater portion of his life oriented by the traditional theological constructs rooted in the Fall of Man and Redemption by Christ... "My leper brothers and sisters" became for Francis the means for complete ego-annihilation... Francis lived the Fall and the Redemption, both... but he didn't stop there... As Jesus taught, so too, Francis began to teach, primarily through conversation and example, and eventually he tagged along with the Christian crusade of his time, to "wrest" the Holy Land from the Muslim "infidels"... He was, to put it mildly, shocked and spiritually devastated by the wanton violence of the Crusaders: replete with endless raping of women and young girls, the plundering of the possessions of sacked Muslim cities, and the horrific executions of Muslim faithful... all in the Holy Name of Christ... There are stories of Francis conversing with the dreaded Sultan and being given a free pass to visit anywhere he wished in the Muslim lands (for it was obvious to the Sultan that he had finally met a Christian)... Eventually, Francis returned home to the hills around Assisi, to the cave of earth and trees that he called his little portion... But, he had contracted diseases and an eye-ailment while in the Holy Land, these, combined with his dark night of the soul, brought him to the bitter point of a certain and a lingering death... in brutal agony, his soul withered... still, his pledge of poverty had him lie naked on the barren earth... and the mice that ran over his body at night broke his spirit and will to live... It is precisely in this moment of utter spiritual and physical devastation that Francis evolved into the beyond of the Fall and Redemption story: and into the divine mystery of an erotic mysticism that united the Old Religions with the religion of the Christ... Francis awakened from his dark night into the brilliance of a brand new view: a radical awakening into the wonder of what the ancients knew intuitively: Oneness is our essential nature: the Divine and Nature and the Human all meeting in the Paradise of a Loving Mutuality... Everyday Holy, with every moment an open door into a new sacred encounter, is the rapturous-revelation that is the Song of St. Francis (the Canticle of the Creatures)... expanding into every aspect of his life (our lives): a lived pansacramentalism that re-members the awe and wonder inspired by the nature-fertility-Mother-faith of the ancients and, like a master-gardener, Francis grafts the spirit of pan with the Christ-gift of everything sacred (a sacramental encounter of the Divine Being-Consciousness-Bliss with Nature and the Human)... The Song of Francis is the embrace of space / time / consciousness with everyone and everything... The Divine Beloved (Being, Consciousness, Bliss) is available (vitally yearning) for sacramental encounters in all of the minutes of our days... Why then, do we live and struggle endlessly, living as empty shells of abandoned or negative possibilities? Why should our political, economic, cultural, and religious "debates" (lives) be so vapid and mealy-mouthed? I mean, seriously, God is Alive, and Magic is Afoot... so why can we not get Real...? These reflections are not coming from a mind or spirit of philosophical abstraction. Rather, they are as it were, simple hungerings informed by thirty years of work and life with the homeless, many years of interior desolation, and then the sudden grace of discovery: infolding from eighteen years, as of today, of a pansacramental marriage with "my heart", Michelle... Pansacramentalism is a worldview, certainly, but it is at the very same time, an innerview that is both a response to the evidence of the Divine Presence, and an affirmation of the dignity exposed by the simplicity of daily awakenings: home, children, friends, work, play, sex, warmth, rest, conversation, study, reading, more conversation, meditation, celebration, contemplation, more sex... and on and on in the Sacred Circle of Holy Communion... ordinary time, the Way of Divine Pleasure... |
AuthorRobert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in California. He is living now almost within shouting distance of the Twin Cities. He is a poet, artist, writer, and long-time Companion of the Way still dreaming... Archives
May 2022
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