 Perhaps the best place to begin one's search for non-duality is in the random advice in the above photo: be weird... Non-duality, along with mindfulness are "big news" these days: you might overhear a conversation about non-duality in a Starbucks coffee shop... or of mindfulness in a yoga conference... Meanwhile, the farmer who's praying for rain before she loses her crop or the kindergarten teacher trying to figure out how to help a single mom, struggling with three jobs, get her kid to school on time might not have the where-with-all to seek either answers or hope in ideas of non-duality or of mindfulness...
However, the "advice" of the sidewalk just might be capable of nudging us into something different: like a change of perspective... after all, perspective is durn-near everything. For starters, let's pretend that for both the farmer and the single mom, as for the conversationalists in Starbucks and the kindergarten teacher, they each have a basic "Christian" orientation: so it might not then be a radical leap into, "Christ is all-in-all". Now right there, you have it: the summary principal of both non-duality and of mindfulness: a mystic unity underlies everyone and everything... Both non-duality and mindfulness teach be weird: in every instance, one plus one does not equal two, but only one: every separation is a perspective: perspective is what allows us to differentiate, to navigate, life in this world; perspective is an essential life-skill. However, again, perspective is always relative. And always, the Real Reality is one plus one equals one... always... "Split a piece of wood -- I am there. Lift the stone, and you will find me there." (Gospel of Thomas 77: 2 - 3) And, "The wise seek refuge in me, seeing me everywhere and in everything." (Bhagavad Gita 7: 19) The poet T. S. Eliot wrote, "In order to arrive at what you do not know you must go by a way which is the way of ignorance." This is, of course, just another weird way of affirming with Leonardo da Vinci, "This is the real miracle, that all shapes, all colors, all images of every part of the universe are concentrated in a single point." One plus one equals one... Be weird is the crucial stimuli for a change of perspective: unknowing opens the door to wisdom (which is different from "knowing")... The wise relax into the weird: Christ is all-in-all: the single point of Unity, of (shall I write it?) a Divine Oneness... You can call this Divine Oneness the Quantum Consciousness, the Goddess, the Christ, the Tao, Mother, Buddha Nature, Krishna, Allah... but what you cannot do (though we all know that many religionists try) is to have it only your way! Perhaps the great clarifying gift of Islam is the simple profundity of "There is Nothing other than the One, and the One alone is Real." (One plus one equals one!) So, now we have to take the last step in the lessons of Be Weird... in order to remember Only One: we must separate from ourselves everything (idea, opinion, habit, perspective, religion, politics, etc.) that separates us from any and every other! If you need it simpler still: there is the Gospel, the Tao of Unity: practice loving... or as Ram Dass says, "Be Love Now"... Non-duality and mindfulness both are the honest choice of loving... moment-by-moment... because that is all there is... or as St. Teresa of Avila said, "All the way to heaven is heaven"...
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 "The whole Gandhian concept of nonviolent action... is incomprehensible if it is thought to be a means of achieving unity rather than as the fruit of inner unity already achieved." -- Thomas Merton (from Gandhi On Non-violence)
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to the mountain; and as he sat down, his disciples drew near to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, and he said, Blessed are..." -- Gospel of St. Matthew 5: 1 - 3) "Existence decorates itself with identity and meaning, just as it decorates itself with mountain ridgelines and sea-mist, cities and rainbows. And yet (how can it be?), as soon as existence begins to know itself, it is lost to itself. Existence rustles. It wants to know itself; and in the end, it cannot. It can only elude itself." -- David Hinton (from Existence / A Story) In nearly all of my meditations and "ponderings" these days, I circle back to the Beatitudes of Jesus. These same beatitudes are arranged so as to introduce that which most Biblical scholars consider the core teachings of the Master, the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel (the Sermon on the Plain in Luke's). Regardless of what the experts might or might not say, even the marginally perceptive among us should conclude that the beatitudes are something special... The Tao of Lao Tzu is most often translated into English as Way... which is, interestingly, also the name given to themselves by the earliest followers of Yeshua bar Alaha... Jesus... David Hinton, master translator of the Tao into English, is also the author of Existence / A Story (see again his quote above). To the degree that anyone among us is honest, we must necessarily conclude that to even exist at all is a very mysterious event: or rather, a mysterious culmination of an interconnected trillions of "events" stretching back to the very beginning of cosmic existence... Existence tissue is Hinton's choice for transcribing his insight into the mystery from which we have risen in the miracle of evolution. The various schools of mysticism and metaphysics, for the most part, all teach a similar conclusion that mystery creates in order to discover, or know, Itself. The "certain" among us say something, for the most part, almost entirely different: Mystery is God: God is All-Knowing: and God had no need to create, but has done so, solely for our potential benefit... therefore, right belief is an absolute necessity... "The concept of 'the heart' might well be analyzed here. It refers to the deepest psychological ground of one's personality, the inner sanctuary where self-awareness goes beyond analytical reflection and opens out into metaphysical and theological confrontation with the Abyss of the unknown yet present -- one who is 'more intimate to us than we are to ourselves'." -- Thomas Merton (from Contemplative Prayer) Why now do I veer off into "the heart"? It is only in and through "the heart" that we can consciously enter into Mystery... the Existence Tissue from which we proceed and into which we will all, inevitably, return. Many Christian mystics have identified with the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary: with is here the operative word: with the Hearts of Jesus and Mary... not distant... and not, ultimately, separate: but with... With implies nearness, perhaps even close enough to touch, certainly close enough to fall in love with: to surrender one's very own heart into... With also implies a process, steps, or a... Way... Tao... all of this veering into cosmology circles back into the very practical: you say that you want entrance into Mystery? There is no clearer path than that of the Beatitudes... do you really want in? Here, then, is the path: practice simple living, compassion, humility, justice, mercy, integrity, nonviolence, and an activated loving: in your homes, in your work-places, in your schools, in your economic, cultural, and political institutions, and most importantly in the opinions and myths that you construct for yourselves or that you participate in... in other words: Don't just be another brick in the wall!  If one is not listening for the heartbeats of God, why be able to hear at all? Listening is key to the spiritual life... as it was to our ancient forebears in the complex task of survival...
Are we not though, right now, also confronted with an equally complex task of survival? Thousands of living species are going extinct every year in a massive die-off which further strains all life, and every relationship, on the Planet... Listening is also key to our collective dreams of peace on Earth and justice for All... we have to become willing to hear one another's story that we might learn to share one another's pain... This is the great lesson that I learned in our Soup kitchen: food was just an excuse to get folks to come through the door. Our real task was to invite conversation: to enter, with reverence, into one another's story. Folks would self-heal to the degree they could shine some sort of light into their own darkness... and be welcomed to look into the darkness of another heart... While I do not believe that "healing" is necessarily the be-all and end-all of relationships, soup kitchens, spirituality, or of social work and activism, it is nevertheless in making conscious our multi-layered-unconscious that makes our burdens bearable (even if just barely)... Listening is the gift of the opened heart... Living-while-broken is oftentimes the best that we can do: but with folks around who choose to stay in conversation is loving-in-action, and not "just" love in dreams... this, living-while-broken, slowly becomes New Life, and new life always brings with it, Community... "Where two or three are gathered", so said Yeshua the Poet of Nazareth. Each of these small circles of listening become the enfleshed, newly vitalized, Body of Christ... It is the Mystery of the Tao riding the tiger of life... And it is the Sacred Affirmation of I see you and I am amazed! It is precisely here, in this to-the-roots-amazement, that we and God give birth to each other... |
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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