Particularly happy

I am particularly happy in a fleeting way, or maybe a transitory way. These words aren't capturing the sentiment. I'm happy in a way that notices the peculiarly transitory nature of our existence. So while yes, I'm sure the happiness will be fleeting, it feels permanent in a heretofore unknown way. This happiness is a silent laugh at the child playing in the fountain, shivering, but with no plans to get out of the water. Silence and the quality of a traveller (and this is what I don't have a word for) - perhaps these are the revealers of such happiness. Somehow I think Chuant Tzu is correct - that to release our grip on this life reveals the ultimate humor, seriousness, friendship, happiness, and accomplishment. Shhhhh, Jonathan...

Hey brother, why do you want me to talk?

Hey brother, why do you want me to talk? Talk and talk and the real things get lost. Talk and talk and things get out of hand. Why not stop talking and think? If you meet someone good, listen a little, speak; If you meet someone bad, clench up like a fist. Talking with a wise man is a great reward. Talking with a fool? A waste. Kabir says: A pot makes noise if it's half full, But fill it to the brim - no sound. -Kabir ------ Note to my readers: they jus changed the blogger interface and it doesn't work as well with iPhone. That's why these posts keep not having spaces. I'll try to fix on a desktop later, or maybe they will new me to it.

Sitting

My brother, welcome back It's been too long Sitting ripped through me today. I don't want to do it, And yet, I love it. Looking forward to A day in your Presence And my own. Shhh. The words only distract.

A thoroughly unmodern charge

I charge you with love's authority, if you give this book to someone else, warn them (as I warn you) to take the time to read it thoroughly. For it is very possible that certain chapters do not stand by themselves but require the explanation given in other chapters to complete their meaning. I fear lest a person read only some parts and quickly fall into error. To avoid a blunder like this, I beg you and anyone else reading this book, for love's sake, to do as I ask.

As for worldly gossips, flatterers, the scrupulous, tale-bearers, busybodies, and the hypercritical, I would just as soon they never laid eyes on this book. I had no intention of writing for them and prefer that they do not meddle with it. This applies, also, to the merely curious, educated or not. They may be good people by the standards of the active life, but this book is not suited to their needs.

However, there are some presently engaged in the active life who are being prepared by grace to grasp the message of this book. I am thinking of those who feel the mysterious action of the Spirit in their inmost being stirring them to love. I do not say that they continually feel this stirring, as experienced contemplatives do, but now and again they taste something of contemplative love in the very core of their being. Should such folk read this book, I believe they will be greatly encouraged and assured.

----------------------
I don't know if the hot springs or such an introduction feels better.

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!"