never so glad to be disappointed

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An email to the practice leader of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Zen Sangha :

Josh,

You wanted me to write you a summary of comments that I made after a recent dharma talk. Instead, I will take some time to expand on them.

I turned to Zen in some desperation and despair. I was hoping that with rigorous practice I could escape from my painful emotions, and from a general sense of malaise. Under your supervision, these hopes have been dashed. I felt disillusioned and disappointed to learn that Zen was not promising a magic bullet to end the unsavoriness of my life's cares. I was even more disappointed to learn that Zen was actually inviting me to embrace these aspects of my life, that rather than driving out my demons, it was laying a place for them and cooking for them in the home of my heart. But this disappointment was no news to you. You commented wrily that the reason why the Buddha is so often depicted laughing is because of the success of his mischievous "bait and switch" tactics. And then I too had to laugh.

It does seem that Zen's exalted promise of enlightenment evaporates into merely an encounter with what is. Not getting anywhere, not even moving from where one is -- what kind of enlightenment is that? Brought up in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, I am used to long marches in the wilderness, surviving on the hope that someday I will arrive upon some promised land, or that the kingdom of God will land on earth with all of the surprise and strangeness of a martian spacecraft. But this! Not getting anywhere, not even moving from where one is? It was very disappointing.

Yet I have never been so glad to be disappointed in my life. Learning to embrace the unsatisfactory elements of my experience, watching the light of awareness melt the fixed wax of my fantastic desire for happiness, I now see that the last thing I needed was something that would keep my hopes up, something that would spur me on to another manic crusade. Zen is good medicine, strong medicine, the medicine of disappointment. It disappoints, gradually, but the warmth of its kindness also dries the tears of our discontent. What we have in place of our phantom hopes, our castles in the clouds, is real and enduring, a true, close, tender encounter with all that it means to be human. Safe and contained within the great stillness, we can laugh and cry more freely, more abundantly, with greater abandon. Finally, we can save ourselves from the distracting effort to make our selves or the world something other than what they are. For this relief, much thanks, and may we all be disappointed into deeper and deeper peace.

Sincerely,
Kevin

planetary prophetology

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In this webcast, Pir Zia Inayat Khan, the leader of the International Order of Sufis, enunciates a vision of a "planetary prophetology", a spiritual framework that actively embraces the splendid variety of religious texts and practices throughout the world and throughout time. This vision is far richer, deeper, and clearer than the cold porrige of tolerance and political correctness that is often served up today on NPR and in UU churches. But it is not new or modern at all from a historical standpoint. For, as Pir Zia shows, it was fully enunciated by Sufis such as Ibn Al Arabi as far back as the 12th century. It is astonishing to hear tell of spiritual teachers steeped in the Islamic tradition translating the Upanishads, and saying that these writings provide a commentary on the Koran. It is still more astonishing to hear tell of one of these Sufis making an apology for gurus who adore the images of gods, finding harmonic resonances in this practice with certain Sufi meditation techniques. It really begins to seem as if what we are fumbling in our age to half-heartedly piece together has already been woven into a beautiful tapestry by these past masters.

One of the most compelling quotes that Pir Zia draws upon in his lecture is this one by Ibn Al Arabi:

He who restricts the [divine] Reality to his own belief, denies Him when manifested in other beliefs ... He who does not resrict Him, thus does not deny Him, but affirms His Reality in every formal transformation, worshipping Him in His infinite forms, since there is no limit to the forms in which He manifests Himself.

It is compelling because it raises the question of where and when we will allow ourselves to perceive and recognize the divine. This question does not merely concern us in our religious beliefs and practices. In every creature and in every situation, we are constantly faced with the divine, and yet because of our limitations we rarely recognize its presence. Ibn Al Arabi is pointing the way towards a profound spiritual practice in which we can gradually open our minds and hearts to the perception of the divine throughout all of our experience.

Pir Zia is a scholar like myself, and you may find his bookish approach a bit inaccessible. It is ironic that in the course of this lecture which draws upon so many old and rare books, he also speaks about the importance of drawing fresh and new revelation from a direct experience of the divine. At some point Pir Zia and I will have to stop putting such old clothes on our insights and speak them as we receive them, fresh from the source. That time has not yet come. But it is getting closer.