Life on Salinger

I have an urge to write with a dirty mouth that only JD Salinger can remind me of. Why is he haunting me? Did he write my life, or am I living his writings? I was handed Catcher in the Rye in high school, and there was my entire being. There is and was something comforting in finding such a testament to those feelings. Who could explain my frustration, my anger, my judgement in those days? Only Salinger it seems, and not that he really explained or justified it, but the simple act of marking it down was a divine (and I don't use that word flippantly) grace. When the statues and statutes of the world make no sense, it grates on a man's soul - why am I the freak? What's wrong with me? Where is the man who makes sense? Still not forthcoming, one finds the same frustrations in JD Salinger. Knowing how he lived his life, perhaps I shouldn't take him as a guru, not that I was planning to, but something stops and makes you think when someone suddenly illuminates and brings such dramatic and respectful attention to problems you thought were your own unique living curse. It's humbling. What the hell am I living? What are these questions? This divine discontent?

Franny and Zooey is hardly less foul-mouthed than Catcher, yet it's filled with a more mature discontent. I would call it a religious book; it is certainly about the seeking and the inherently judgmental and egotistical pursuit that is the spiritual life, or rather what begins to build the foundation of the spiritual life. Did Jesus lack such discontent? Buddha certainly didn't. He walked out on his family, starting a seven year quest that ended with him sitting under his tree until he gained enlightenment OR his bones scattered. What but discontent could lead to such a decision? And the teaching starts with, Life is suffering (unsatisfactoriness). I think of Jesus sending tables flying through the temple. And yet, this journey ends with him silently accepting all. Kabir: "How humble is God? I wept when I knew..."

So Franny and Zooey is far truer a testament to the spiritual quest, as I have experienced it than any I am told in popular culture or the churches. Jesus came to baptize with fire. He's wielding a god damned ax. I use that profanity and blasphemy with all the angst and frustration I've known since I was a young boy dreaming of fighting with God. And do you know what? I no longer fear the punishment of a wrathful God for using it. Do you know why? Because He placed me into this paradox. He put these desires within me. He gave me the knowledge and judgment to question teachings about Him, until there is only a silent quivering. What sort of God could place me into such straits and then hypocritically punish me for the effects He caused?

Some would talk to me about agency, free will, damnation, salvation... But as I begin to see God as I was taught to see Him - the immutable, the I AM, the omnipresent - there is little room for a mistake in creation. Semantic arguments offer profuse explanation of the possibility of damnation in our small little world. But in such a small world, musn't damnation be proportionately small? If Jesus took on the sins of the world and suffered three days, how minuscule must my be judgment be? If He made me, then my works are His.

"Concerning the Gods, there are those who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say that it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself nor has forethought for anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, of whom were Ulysses and Socrates, are those that cry: 'I move not without Thy knowledge.'" -Epictetus

JD Salinger as a birthday gift

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."

-Franny and Zooey

A little Taoism

I got a new book in the mail yesterday, and I think I'm going to take this one camping. It is The Way of Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton. Somehow it makes sense to take that book over all the others, because it doesn't talk about doing anything. It is about men being men, little else. A passage:

________________

Prince Wen Hui's cook

Was cutting up an ox.

Out went a hand,

Down went a shoulder,

He planted a foot,

He pressed with a knee,

The ox fell apart

With a whisper,

The bright cleaver murmured

Like a gentle wind.

Rhythm! Timing!

Like a sacred dance,

Like "The Mulberry Grove,"

Like ancient harmonies!

"Good work!" the Prince exclaimed,

"Your method is faultless!"

"Method?" said the cook

Laying aside his cleaver,

"What I follow is Tao

Beyond all methods!"

"When I first began

To cut up oxen

I would see before me

The whole ox

All in one mass.

"After three years

I no longer saw this mass.

I saw the distinctions.

"But now, I see nothing

With the eye. My whole being

Apprehends.

My sense are idle. The spirit

Free to work without plan

Follows its own instinct

Guided by natural line,

By the secret opening, the hidden space,

My cleaver finds its own way.

I cut through a joint, chop no bone.

"A good cook needs a new chopper

Once a year - he cuts.

A poor cook needs a new one

Every month - he hacks!

"I have used this same cleaver

Nineteen years

It has cut up

A thousand oxen.

It's edge is as keen

As if newly sharpened.

"There are spaces in the joints;

The blade is thin and keen:

When this thinness

Finds that space

There is all the room you need!

It goes like a breeze!

Hence I have this cleaver nineteen years

As if newly sharpened!

"True, there are sometimes

Tough joints. I feel them coming,

I slow down, I watch closely,

Hold back, barely move the blade,

And whump! the part falls away

Landing like a clod of earth.

"Then I withdraw the blade,

I stand still

And let the joy of the work

Sink in.

I clean the blade

And put it away."

Prince Wan Hui said,

"This is it! My cook has shown me

How I ought to live

My own life!"

A great yogi (Mira)

In my travels I spent time with a great yogi.

Once he said to me,

"Become so still you hear the blood flowing

through your veins."

One night as I sat in quiet,

I seemed on the verge of entering a world inside so vast

I know it is the source of

all of

us.

Writing from Lillian

Here's the contents of an email that I thought I'd share (with permission):

_________________________

Oh the stories of my mind--they are ravenous, they will gather all the brambles as they tumble down the mountain. Better stop them at their very beginning. Better to know the mind that creates the illusion. Better to detach yourself from the false-feel-good-realities. Better to commit to a new love, a new way of being, a new day filled with a deep love, a deep trust in my inner knowing. Best to use your crow's nest and watch it as it goes down, easier to choose your response that way.

Recognize what needs to change to help you along this path of love, muster the courage to change, and the wisdom to know when the time has come--all of this conducted in serenity, in peace and calm because the mind is unattached to the outcomes set forth by the fear mind--the small mind. The intellect wants justification for being here--why me? Why do I possess this knowing? What do I do with it when I arrive, while I'm arriving? My ego feels alone--lonely--a bit upset at the dwindling numbers of those around me committing to this flame and fire--committing to another reality without the knowing of what lies ahead.

To cultivate the self-trust--the trust in my strength without relying on others around me affirming my power, my light, my ability, is a very foreign place to be. I'm used to not moving until someone else says go. I'm used to suspending my intuition when someone else says differently.

I do not have the time to play these games anymore--the miniscule energy leakers of the small fear mind add up. I need all the energy I can handle to sit still when the battles arrive--to be the warrior.

This path is a solitary one I feel. A part of me knows this to be truth, the other part is holding on to my attachments of people around me. The more I lessen attachments to those around and expectations that they will remain, the higher I fly. A tethered bird might as well be clipped of its wings. Although I am hesitant to say, due to thoughts becoming form--a part of me thinks that I would rather be by myself than with others, existing in illusory relationships based off of attachments and fear.

I want those around me to soar to their heights, which means I must unclip the tether I have attached to them, as I wish them to do the same for me.

I have a feeling that someday, when I have reached the heights of my being, I will have the choice to break free, or to come back down to aid in the liberation of others--all in this lifetime. When the end of my physical body is near, I will enter into the final gathering of energy to break free beyond this world, to leave once and for all.

I have a lot of work to do. I have a lot of sitting with my mind. I have a lot of stillness and slowness to cultivate. There are many battles yet to come.

I am resting in my deepest strength. Roots digging to the core, immovable to all that serves the illusion. I must march on in courage because the life I have always feared losing wasn't the true life after all. The fire is getting hotter. As more things melt around me, I notice that which has stayed--nature and its elements, music and its infinite forms of expression, and certain people whose souls seem to be effortlessly gliding next to mine.

I am committed to spiritual reality, to transformation, to the burning away of the veil without the knowledge of what lies beyond.

In the meantime, I'll chop wood, carry water, play music, and laugh hysterically at the divine paradox of this strange, strange life

Camping

I'm going to go camping at Anchor Dam, WY. I'm planning to stay out there for nearly 60 days. The tai chi is nearing completion. About another week's worth of hard work should solidify it in my body, and I can take it into the wilderness to practice.

Yesterday we went to look at the campsite - there is actually a developed campsite, but the wind was ripping through the little canyon. Since the dam hardly works, there isn't much water. The dust and silt was getting lifted by the winds. It looked like a desert sandstorm. We braved this wind and dust for a short walk, eyeing the site from afar. At one point, I walked into a little saddleback where I got my first good view of the campsite. At this point a huge gust of wind ripped through the saddleback, and I was filled with an ominous feeling. Looking at the small grove of trees in the distance where I'm planning to spend almost two months alone filled me with a subtle terror. Not really because of the bears or snakes, because I plan to take all possible precautions, but the thought of being there alone, meditating and practicing Tai Chi.

I've been considering whether I should bring some books, and I'm leaning towards no. Emerson says of many a man, "He knew nothing better to do, so he read." And this is why I would take books - as a distraction. Anything to keep my mind off the things my mind most wants (does not want) to contemplate. So yes, the terror I felt is something akin to many of my earlier Vipassana courses around the second day, when you start asking yourself what you've gotten into.

All that being said, I feel ready for this retreat, and I do have a specific purpose to practice Tai Chi and commune with nature and myself. I've been trying to decide whether to set a more specific intention for spiritual affairs. It's hard to set something, when I still feel so restless inside. I think of the following lines of Kabir:

There are seasons in the mind,
great currents and winds move there,

the true yogi ties a rein to them; a power plant
he becomes.

From Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

A zen master once said, "To go eastward one mile is to go westward one mile.". This is vital freedom. We should acquire this kind of perfect freedom.

-DT Suzuki

Shhh... Stop squirming.

The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations, that our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils.

-Emerson (Spiritual Laws)

_______________

Only love honors God.

That sounds as if it could be true.

But surely everything He

made must be

perfect.

-St. Francis of Assisi

___________________

No one lives outside the walls of this sacred place, existence.

The holy water, I need it upon my eyes: it is you, dear, you - each form.

What mother would lose her infant - and we are that to God,

never lost from His gaze are we? Every cry of the heart

is attended by light's own arms.

You cannot wander anywhere that will not aid you.

Anything you can touch - God brought it into

the classroom of your mind.

Differences exist, but not in the city of love.

Thus my vows and yours, I know they are the same.

I have just peeled the skin from the potato

and you are still contemplating its worth,

sweetheart; indeed there are wonderful nutrients in all,

for God made everything.

You joined our community at birth.

With your Father being who He is, what do

the world's scales know of your precious value.

The priest and the prostitute - they weigh the same before the Son's

immaculate being,

but who can bear that truth and freedom,

so a wise man adulterated the

scriptures;

every wise man knows this.

My soul's face has revealed its beauty to me;

Why was it shy so long, didn't it know how this made me suffer

and weep?

A different game He plays with His close ones.

God tells us truths you would not believe,

for most everyone needs to limit His compassion; concepts of

right and wrong preserve the golden seed

until one of God's friends come along and tend your body

like a divine bride.

The Holy sent out a surveyor to find the limits of its compassion

and being.

God knows a divine frustration whenever He acts like that,

for the infinite has

no walls.

Why not tease Him about this?

Why not accept the freedom of what it means

for our Lord to see us

as Himself.

So magnificently sovereign is our Lover; never say,

"On the other side of this river a different king rules."

For how could that be true - for nothing can oppose Infinite strength.

No one lives outside the walls of this sacred place, existence.

The holy water my soul's brow needs is unity.

Love opened my eye and I was cleansed

by the purity of each

form.

-St Francis of Assisi

____________________

Today, like every other day,

we wake up empty and frightened.

Don't open the door to the study and begin reading.

Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

-Rumi

A vase - Rabia

I am always holding a priceless vase in my hands.

If you asked me about the deeper truths

of the path and I told you

the answers,

it would be like handing sacred relics to you.

But most have their hands tied

behind their

back;

that is, most are not free of events their eyes have seen

and their ears have heard

and their bodies have felt.

Most cannot focus their abilities

in the present, and

migt drop what

I said.

So I'll wait; I don't mind waiting until

your love for all

makes luminous

the now.

Emerson on Swedenborg

I really like the following paragraph. It sums up the way I am beginning to believe in truth and the spiritual state of a man. As I currently understand them, it cuts to the heart of the philosophies underlying teachings of Buddha and Christ.

______________________

That metempsychosis which is familiar in the old mythology of the Greeks, collected in Ovid, and in the Indian Transmigration, and is there objective, or really takes place in bodies by alien will, -- in Swedenborg's mind, has a more philosophic character. It is subjective, or depends entirely on the thought of the person. All things in the universe arrange themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love. Man is such as his affection and thought are. Man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding. As he is, so he sees. The marriages of the world are broken up. Interiors associate all in the spiritual world. Whatever the angels looked upon was to them celestial. Each Satan appears to himself a man; to those as bad as he, a comely man; to the purified, a heap of carrion. Nothing can resist states: every thing gravitates: like will to like: what we call poetic justice takes effect on the spot. We have come into a world which is a living poem. Every thing is as I am. Bird and beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and effluvia of the minds and wills of men there present. Every one makes his own house and state. The ghosts are tormented with the fear of death, and cannot remember that they have died. They who are in evil and falsehood are afraid of all others. Such as have deprived themselves of charity, wander and flee: the societies which they approach discover their quality, and drive them away. The covetous seem to themselves to be abiding in cells where their money is deposited, and these to be infested with mice. They who place who merit in good works seem to themselves to cut wood. "I asked such, if they were not wearied? They replied, that they have not yet done work enough to merit heaven."

Rumi from Lillian

I want the kind of grace from God
that when it hits
I won't get off the floor for days. And when finally I
do stagger into a semblance of poise
I will still need a cane and shoulder to help me walk,
and I will need great patience from any who try
to decipher my slurred speech.

You should forget about knowing the Friend
unless you are willing to kiss the world with
great abandon.

Locked like a pair of dogs openly making love in the streets,
impervious to shouts and pails of water being thrown
and glares from eyes that pass.

Can you become such an
ego-less
king?

Tales of a magic monastery

I got a new book in the mail today. It's a really lovely little gem, written by Theophane the Monk. He used to be a monk in the monastery that I've recently written. I guess he also studied some Buddhism. It's the kind of book... I shouldn't say that. I've never seen a book like this, and I don't think I've ever reacted to a book quite like this. When I read the Gospels, there is recognition and awe at such teachings. I smile at the complex simplicity of it all, but I fear the all-too-clear calling. When I read the Buddhist scriptures, I feel utmost joy because I see a clear and true path. When I read Hafiz, I just revel in his words and absurdities, and with Rumi, I feel as though the dust is cleared from my eyes. With this little book by Theophane, I felt like I had come across my own child. I felt protective and a deep love and happiness. These are the things you feel around your own child, and he probably isn't that awe-inspiring to others. Just the same, this book is written with playfulness, humility, and love - not polish. I don't know who I would recommend it to. But enough talk! Here are two stories.

______________

A visit from the Buddha

Why did I visit the Magic Monastery? Well, I'm a monk myself, and the strangest thing happened in my monastery. We had a visit from the Buddha. We prepared for it, and gave him a very warm, though solemn, welcome. He stayed overnight, but he slipped away very early in the morning. When the monks woke up, they found graffiti all over the cloister walls. Imagine! And do you know what he wrote? One word - TRIVIA - TRIVIA - TRIVIA - all over the place.

Well we were in a rage. But then when I quieted down I looked abou and realized, "Yes, it's true." So much of what I saw was trivia, and most of what I heard. But what is worse, when I closed my eyes, all inside was trivia. For several weeks this was my experience, and my efforts to rectify it just made it worse. I left my monastery and headed for the Magic Monastery.

The Brother showed me around. First, the Hall of Laughter. Everything fed the flame of laughter, big things and small, sacred, solemn, inconsequential. Only laughter there.

Next, the Room of Sorrow. The very essence of bitter tears- those of the bereaved mother, the lonely, depressed. Only sorrow here.

Now the Hall of Words. Words upon words, spoken and written. Alone they must have had some sense, but all together - total confusion. I cried out, "Stop! Stop!" but I was only adding words to words.

Next the great Hall of Silence. Here there is no time.

He took me finally to the Hall of Treasures. "Take anything you want." he whispered.

I chose the heart of Jesus, and with it I'm heading back to my monastery.

________________

What am I leaving out?

I knew there were many interesting sights, but I didn't want any more of the LITTLE answers. I wanted the big answer. So I asked the guestmaster to show me to the house of the Christian God.

I sat myself down, quite willing to wait for the big answer. I remained silent all day, far into the night. I looked Him in the eye. I guess He was looking me in the eye. Late, late at night, I seemed to hear a voice, "What are you leaving out?" Was it my imagination? Soon it was all around me, whispering, roaring, "What are you leaving out? WHAT ARE YOU LEAVING OUT?"

Was I cracking up? I managed to get to my feet and head for the door. I guess I wanted the comfort of a human face or a human voice. Nearby was the corridor where some of the monks live. I knocked on one cell.

"What do you want?" came a sleepy voice?

"What am I leaving out?"

"Me," he answered.

I went to the next door.

"What do you want?"

"What am I leaving out?"

"Me."

A third cell, a fourth, all the same.

I thought to myself, "They're all stuck on themselves." I left the building in disgust. Just then the sun was coming up. I had never spoken to the sun before, but I found myself pleading, "What am I leaving out?"

The sun too answered, "Me." That finished me.

I threw myself flat on the ground. Then the earth said, "ME."