God is the Ground

In the 14^th century, Norwich was the second largest city in England, after London. The Bubonic Plague, a pestilence of Biblical proportions, had killed half its residents. Surviving the Plague, and shaped by unimaginable loss, a woman known to us only as Julian of Norwich lived a quiet life as an anchoress to a convent—a lay contemplative committed to solitude, liturgy, and prayer. This life apart from traditional societal demands afforded her the opportunity to write, a rare occupation for any woman at that time. Her writings, eventually released a few centuries later, made her the first published female writer in English history.

            Today the mystical writings of Julian of Norwich are known the world over, especially to anyone interested in the startling intersections between Christian mysticism and the nondual wisdom traditions of the East. And they constitute a grand departure from the more punitive and male-centric theology of her Christian contemporaries.

            In mainstream 14^th century Christianity, God was seen as a cosmic judge and punisher, dividing the damned from the saved. Sin was the great failing that separated us forever from God’s love. But in Julian hands, this paradigm is subverted. Our essential human nature, she argues, exists completely within God. Separation is impossible. Sure, sin is still a problem, and it causes most of our pain, but it’s a problem God has already solved. God’s delight is our liberation. And for Julian, God is simply another word for all that is. “Everything that is, has its being through the love of God,” she wrote. In her mystical visions or “showings,” she experienced Jesus saying, “All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.” No matter how bad things seem, we are already past the place where our problems have power. We just have to realize it.

            For Julian, God is more a presence than a person, a metaphysical reality in which we are already enfolded. When the apostle Paul said that God is where “we live and move and have our being,” (Acts 17:28), he was prefiguring a stance Julian would often express. “God is nearer to us than our soul,” she wrote, “for He is the ground in which it stands.” Like Christian mystics before and since, Julian sees God not as a transcendent being above and outside us, but as the very fabric of reality itself. God then is not to be sought, but simply allowed.

            The extent to which this perspective aligns with the Eastern wisdom traditions cannot be overstated. In the non-duality of the Vedanta school of Hinduism, and in Buddhism, the spiritual path is framed not as a process of becoming something we’re not, but a process of awakening to what we already are. And what we are is part and parcel of the oneness that encompasses all energy, matter, and consciousness. Realization is more a process of subtraction than addition, of removing hindrances rather than adding ornamentation. Our spiritual practices work best when they don’t clutter us up with more information, but dissolve our old ways of thinking.

            And it is from the intersections of Western and Eastern mysticism that New Thought was born in 19^th century America. Across the spectrum of expression in the Unity Movement, Religious Science, and the rest, we see again and again this ancient impulse, that we already are what we seek, and that our longing for God is God’s longing for Itself.

[This piece first appeared in my column "A to Zen" in the May/June 2024 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission. This is my final column for Unity Magazine.]

The Upside Down Tree

 

We came down from the trees three million years ago. They bear us fruit, shade our days, and fuel our fires. It’s no surprise they show up so often in our sacred literature.

            In Norse mythology the world tree Yggdrasil forms the axis mundi, the hub around which the wheel of reality turns. Countless gods across traditions were either born from trees or died on them. The Norse god Odin hung himself on Yggdrasil for nine days, just as Jesus was hung from a cross, the symbolic tree of the executioner. Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree, and the Na’vi of James Cameron’s Avatar held nothing more sacred than the Tree of Souls, the source of both the unity and multiplicity of divinity.

            Although the examples are many, one of the most beautiful is the upside-down tree of the Katha Upanishad, Hinduism’s most compelling wisdom tale.

            In the Katha Upanishad a young spiritual aspirant named Nachiketa goes on a mystical journey to visit Yama the Lord of Death—who better to answer his question, “What happens after we die?” Yama takes the boy under his wing and leads him (and us) through a landscape of metaphors, images, parables, and insights that have enraptured truth-seekers for two millennia.

Throughout Vedanta teaching, and in the Katha Upanishad in particular, we find a dizzying blend of dualism and non-dualism, and from the tension of this paradox springs the dynamic energy that propels the investigation forward. We are at once individual things, and aspects of one thing. The mind will of course resist this conundrum, but the heart feels its way through non-conceptual imagery and wordless awareness. This is where analogies like the upside-down tree wield the most power. In chapter 3, verse 1-2 Lord Yama says:

The Tree of Eternity has its roots above and its branches on earth below. Its pure root is Brahman the immortal, from whom all the worlds draw their life, and whom none can transcend. For this Self is supreme! The cosmos comes forth from Brahman and moves in him. With his power it reverberates like thunder crashing in the sky. Those who realize him pass beyond the sway of death.

            Brahman the formless, eternal, changeless sacred ground of being—ultimate reality beyond all thoughts and forms. Yet in this passage Brahman is also given a gender, and spoken of as though he were transcendent, or outside and above this world of forms. And we also see the term “Self” (Atman in Sanskrit)—the word for the presence of Brahman within all sentient beings. In the end, Brahman and Atman are two words for the same thing, at once transcendent and immanent. All matter, energy, and consciousness—in a word, all of this—is an expression of Brahman-Atman, appearing through the distorting refraction of maya as separate things, all the while maintaining its underlying unity and identity. The upside-down tree conveys this paradoxical unity and diversity at the core of Vedanta metaphysics, namely, that all is one, no matter what our perceptions say. And when we realize this, “we pass beyond the sway of death.”

            The task of every spiritual aspirant is to realize—to make real—this oneness. Intellectual, conceptual understanding falls short. Life, it turns out, is not a theological debate. It is a lived mystery, where words and concepts serve as vehicles whose value is to transport us to the realization beyond all of them.  

[This piece first appeared in my column A to Zen in the January/February 2024 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

The Seven Stone Path

After teaching world philosophy, religion, and mythology for 33 years, I thought it
was time to write a book. Lots of people do it, I thought to myself, how hard could it be?

            Fourteen years and a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears later, it’s done. The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom (Balboa Press, 2023) is available now wherever fine books are sold.

            The book is built around a simple image—seven stepping-stones that form a path to wisdom. The seven stones are acceptance, surrender, engagement, allowance, enjoyment, love, and integration.

            But first we have to explore the word wisdom. What is it? Why do we need it? How do we get it? When we look at ancient sources we come away with the realization that wisdom is not a set of specific doctrines or logical explanations. In fact, wisdom might be content-free. Wisdom is a way of being in the world rooted in honest humility and the admission of ignorance. Only when we say “I don’t know” can real wisdom emerge.

            The wisdom of acceptance, whether through the lens of Buddhism or Stoicism, counsels us to say yes to our current conditions. By practicing acceptance, we are released from the suffering that results from clinging to our opinions, resentments, and judgments. But acceptance does not mean rolling over and playing dead. Quite the contrary. As we’ll see, meaningful action can only arise from accepting things the way they are.

            The wisdom of surrender means moving even deeper in the realization that we are not in charge. By aligning our mind, body, and soul with the wider currents moving through and around us—Dao, Brahman, God, or Spirit—we tap into an organizing energy far more real than our fear-addled ego.

            The wisdom of engagement, rooted deep in acceptance and surrender, moves us into the field of action where, by the melding of our courage and intention, we rise into our rightful place in the necessary work of creating beauty, facilitating justice, and serving others.

            The wisdom of allowance draws us into an even deeper understanding of right action. From Daoist sources and the voices of the world’s mystics we learn how to wield our talents in deeply fluid alignment with the energies already unfolding around us.

            The wisdom of enjoyment reminds us that alongside life’s necessary suffering, it is also our birthright to experience and embody joy. There is beauty and delight everywhere we turn, and missing that robs us of life’s greatest truths and treasures.

            The wisdom of love take us all the way down into the primal oneness of all matter, energy, and consciousness. In the final analysis, our lives are not our own. The universe, or God, has taken form as us, and the longing we feel for truth, beauty, God, and one another is God’s longing for God.

            And finally, the wisdom of integration lifts us across all paradox into Rumi’s field “out past all ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,” where “the world is too full to talk about.” Beyond all contradictions, where words fail us, there lies a final unity, and when we have our being there, wisdom wells up through the cracks of our everyday lives like holy water.

            The Seven Stone Path is made by walking. No one can walk it for us. But we can walk it together.

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Find The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom on Amazon or wherever you like to buy books. 

The Gateless Gate

In all areas of human endeavor we rely on the expertise of others—the dentist, the attorney, the chef. Why would the fulfillment of our spiritual needs be any different? It is only natural that in times of need we turn to spiritual guides for help.

            But therein lies the danger—the illusion that spiritual enlightenment is something we can attain second hand; the mistaken presumption that the footsteps of others can do the walking for us. The Chinese and Japanese tradition of Zen Buddhism is particularly focused on this common error.

One day, 13^th century Zen Master Ekai gathered his monks for a talk. Always eager for knowledge, the young aspirants leaned into the words of their venerable teacher, sure that they would be of enormous value. Ekai sensed the time was ripe for an unexpected lesson.

“The great path has no gates,” he said, “thousands of roads enter it. When one passes through this gateless gate he walks freely between heaven and earth.”

It isn’t difficult to image the monk’s sideways glances, checking to see if anyone understood a word of what the master just said. What the heck is a gateless gate?

            “Zen has no gates,” Ekai continued. “The purpose of Buddha’s words is to enlighten others. Therefore, Zen should be gateless. Now, how does one pass through the gateless gate? Even such words are like raising waves in a windless sea or performing an operation upon a healthy body. If one clings to what others have said and tries to understand Zen by explanation, he is like a dunce who thinks he can beat the moon with a pole or scratch an itching foot from the outside of a shoe.”

            Then Ekai launched into a series of koans—unanswerable riddles designed to confound and ultimately disengage the mind, clearing the way for authentic satori or enlightenment. Later Ekai wrote the following account of the event:

            “In the year 1228 I was lecturing monks in the Ryusho Temple in Eastern China, and at their request I retold old koans, endeavoring to inspire their Zen spirit. I meant to use the koans as a man who picks up a piece of brick to knock at a gate, and after the gate is opened the brick is useless and is thrown away. My notes, however, were collected unexpectedly, and there were forty-eight koans, together with my comment in prose and verse concerning each. I have called the book The Gateless Gate, wishing students to read it as a guide.”

            To this day, Ekai’s The Gateless Gate is regarded as a masterpiece of Zen wisdom—even if it is one of the most exasperating philosophical works ever recorded. At the playful heart of the project is the notion that enlightenment cannot be conceptualized, codified, or conveyed second-hand by anyone—no matter how clever or erudite. All words and teachings can do is shake us awake to an unmediated awareness of our own essential nature. The moment you try to describe or explain it, any nascent awareness vanishes. The more fervent the grasping, the lower the yield. The fact that someone wrote the koans down was frustrating to Ekai, because writing wisdom down often dooms it to domesticity, misunderstanding, and misuse. But we’re grateful to that nameless monk anyway because now, 900 years later, we too can be challenged by these odd and edifying riddles.

All quotes from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings compiled by Paul Reps (Charles E. Tuttle: Rutland, Vermont, 1958) 113-114.

[This piece first appeared in my column called A to Zen in the November/December 2023 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Water Mind, Honey Mind

Great spiritual teachers have a way with words. Jesus, Buddha, Laozi, and countless others use the vernacular of their times to make eternal truths relevant to the context of this moment, this culture, and these challenges. One such teacher is Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981).

In a now classic collection of transcriptions of his talks called I Am That, a vivid portrait emerges of an ordinary man who, through a series of extraordinary experiences found himself in the role of spiritual teacher (guru) to seekers from all over the world. Nisargadatta never claimed special status, and assiduously avoided the trappings of spiritual stardom. He ran a humble tobacco shop in Mumbai, and received visitors in his tiny apartment above the store. A tape recorder preserved the dialogues, and I Am That was born.

            Nisargadatta taught non-duality, or Advaita Vedanta, the Hindu school of thought that claims that all is one. What sets him apart from other Vedanta teachers is the plain language and down-to-earth style of his message. While deeply indebted to his own guru, and respectful of the ancient lineage of which he is a part, his message was clear—teachers point the way, but in the end you are your own best guru. If we are one with the sacred ground of being, then we all carry within us that which we seek. Ceaselessly looking outside ourselves for wisdom only prolongs our confusion.

            “Gurus are like milestones,” he said. “It is natural to move from one to another. Each tells you the direction and the distance, while the sadguru, the eternal Guru, is the road itself. Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” In an age when so many define themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” these words are like medicine. It’s okay to doubt, it’s okay to draw sustenance from different spiritual and religious sources, it’s okay to look back over your life and see a meandering path. Everywhere you went, and in every community you joined, you found milestones to mark the journey into the depths of your own authentic oneness.

            In one particularly striking image, Nisargadatta offers counsel to all of us who struggle with our meditation practice, and the persistent distractions of the thought-stream. Regarding our thoughts, Nisargadatta says, “Your very fighting them gives them life. Just disregard. Look through…It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don’t hold on, that is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours. Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you.”

With the simple image of hooks and rings Nisargadatta quells our default addictive acquisitiveness—the strange habit we have of always holding onto everything as if we owned it. Simply straighten the hooks. Be deeply and intimately present with everything we love, but without the consciousness of ownership.

            In another image, Nisargadatta points to the possibility of true serenity available to us all. “The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey. The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility.” As we move through this next busy week, reflect on your own reactivity to all of the triggers around us. Are we the water or are we the honey?

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All quotes from:

Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That, Translated by Maurice Frydman, Edited by Sudhakar S. Dikshit (Acorn Press: Durham, North Carolina, 1973)

[This piece was first published in my "A to Zen" column in the September/October 2023 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]