baqa

Deafened by the voice of desire
you are unaware the Beloved
lives in the core of your heart.
Stop the noise,
and you will hear His voice in the silence.

Imitating others,
I failed to find myself.
I looked inside and discovered
I only knew my name.
When I stepped outside
I found my real Self.
(Rumi, Rubaiyat #181, 77)

In my work and study I often run into some broad sweeping criticisms of Western Christianity. (And I must admit, I’m getting a little tired of it, always being the one to defend Western Christianity!) One of the criticisms is that Western Christians are too focused on our “cult of the dark night” and all our Sturm und Drang, as opposed to other mystical traditions that seem to be bursting with light and serenity. I’ve even read criticism of a master of the spiritual life such as Gregory the Great for dwelling too much on the pain and effort of the approach to God, and focusing too much on how the soul has to fight its way out of the darkness that is its natural element. Maybe that’s true––historically we have often fallen into the trap of getting caught up in Good Friday and forgetting about Easter Sunday––but only up to a point. We have to remember, for instance, that St John of the Cross wrote his mystical verses about the dark night while he was trapped in a prison cell, and put there by his own brothers; and that Gregory the Great was forced into the papacy while the Roman Empire was collapsing, the Emperor had abdicated, Rome was infected with famine and pestilence, floods and earthquakes, Greeks and the barbarians were invading, and he had to take over, when all he wanted to do was be a simple monk. There actually was a lot of “storm and stress.” The amazing thing is that either of them continued to hope at all. So we could also say the opposite is true too in our modern era, as I’ve heard it said, that the dark side of modern popular spirituality is that there is no dark side to modern popular spirituality. It’s easy for us to talk about light and serenity while we sit sleek and well fed in hot tubs and air-conditioning, when the lot of many in our world is great darkness, innocent, unmerited suffering and abject poverty.

Even without tremendous suffering (if anyone can possibly avoid it), still in the course of our lives, in the course of the evolution of our consciousness, in the course of our coming forth from God like a word shouted across the span of the sky, we accumulate layer upon layer of persona, layer upon layer of habit, layer upon layer of compulsion and enslavements, not to mention layer upon layer of innocent cultural conditioning. And all those things can, and often do, hide our real self. At some point it all has to go, whether we are Buddhist, Hindu or shamans; every tradition teaches this. This is the grain of wheat that falls into the ground and dies. If there is a perennial philosophy, a sanatana dharma, then surely this is one of Jesus’ contributions to it. That if that grain falls into the ground and dies, if the husk of our being is shucked off, it will yield a rich harvest, something new will be born, our real self hidden in God. Jesus’ story impels us to believe that our fundamental being, our real self cannot be annihilated, even if the husk is shucked off by abject suffering or by the subtler but no less profound progressive stripping that is the invitation of the spiritual life.

Maybe we can see this in a different light when viewed through the prism of another tradition. There is this mysterious concept in Sufism known as ‘fana, usually translated as “annihilation,” annihilation of the self or of the ego, though some argue that that is too strong of a word. Even though the Sufis always maintain a distinction between the Creator and the Creature, still they teach that the goal of the spiritual life is a loss of a sense of a separate self in the union with God. This is a great theme of the poet Rumi, and––talk about Sturm und Drang!––what anguish he went through at the loss of his beloved friend Shams that led to Rumi’s own dissolution of self before his real enlightenment. But, equally important, it doesn’t end there in that ‘fana. Because ‘fana is followed by baqa–revival, a re-vivification, a return to the self, but a return to an enhanced self. To our surprise, union with God and the so-called annihilation does not destroy our natural capacities, but fulfills them! When the obscuring egoism has been stripped away, we discover the divine presence at the heart of our own being, and from this we experience greater self-realization and greater self-control. In this baqa-revival, we come bounding back from the ‘fana–annihilation more fully human, the ideal human-ness that God intended all along. Karen Armstrong suggests that what Sufis are describing is the same state that the Greek Christians call “deification.”

And I am suggesting Jesus’ resurrection as the ultimate baqa, surviving the abject suffering of his body, his physical being; and surviving also the stripping of all the layers of his psyche, everything he held dear, anything he could have possibly held on to as a self-identity; and even of his spiritual being, his own sense of union with God. He comes bounding back, the Song of Songs says, Leaping the mountains, bounding the hills.

I keep threatening that I’m going to write a book and call it: “Nothing Gets Left Behind.” Pedro Arrupe in a reading we heard the other day referred to “humanity’s integral salvation.” Our natural capacities not destroyed but fulfilled, our humanity enhanced. In other words, nothing gets left behind. And that begins already now. Don Arrupe says, “The destination of humankind [is] to the joint participation in the future salvation,” but it “starts right now here on earth,” and so it “has to be put into practice here and now in every dimension of our human existence.” This is what it means to be an Easter people. We get it all back enhanced, but we only get it back after we’ve let it all go, risked its annihilation, after the dark night. And so John of the Cross says, “Now that I no longer desire them, I have them all without desire.”

Perhaps this is what we haven’t accented enough, the baqa–the revival of our vivified enhanced humanity, even in this life. As hard as it is, we simply must believe that there is a freedom here in this way, this stripping away of all that obscures our real self, this kenosis of Jesus, in this discovery of divine presence–– the love of God at the heart of our own being. When we stray off the path, or when we are tempted to despair of our progress even after many years of struggling, when we are feeling as if we have made little progress, Easter reminds us that we simply must believe that in following the way of Jesus, this is where we are led, to our own hearts, to our own enhanced humanity, to this truth, the truth of who we truly are––and that is the truth that can set us free, the real moksha, the real liberation from the cycle of life and death, and that would lead to our baqa–revival, and we come bounding back re-vivified, a return to the self, the enhanced, deified self that God intended all along.

We have to do it at some point in our lives––at the final moment perhaps––, stand naked and poor before Ultimate Reality, and face the god of death. So we may as well do it now. Because of Jesus, the god of death doesn’t have to be named “Satan,” anymore; he’s no longer the tempter, because Jesus’ story tells us Death no longer has the victory, Death doesn’t really have any sting, because our real self hidden in God cannot be annihilated. So Death becomes Yama instead, as the Katha Upanishad calls him, our teacher, who tells us that the death we have to undergo in this life is learning to choose the good over the merely pleasurable (2:1), and tells us that…

…by the yoga of the study of the self,
the wise will come to know that which is hard to see,
that which is deeply hidden,
that which lies in a cave of the heart and rests in the depths,
the ancient deity––and pass beyond joy and sorrow.” (2:12)

And that would be the ultimate baqa, the final liberation.

sweet surrender

Have you ever heard of a sea which flows from fire?
Have you ever seen a fox become a lion?
The sun can transmute a pebble,
which even the hand of nature can never change,
into a gem.

I am that precious stone,
my Sun is the one by whose rays
this tenebrous world is filled with light.
(Nasiri al-Khusraw)

28 march 09, Singapore

I’m back safely tucked away at St Mary’s Singapore, taking the long way home. John Wong is so kind and funny: I said to him yesterday how anxious I was to get home and he said, “Cyprian, how many times do I have to tell you? You are home!” Indeed when I arrived back here the other night he greeted me with, “Welcome home.” And I am awfully comfortable here.

The few days in Sydney were good fun. I stayed with Martin Low, another Franciscan friend of Leonard et al here in Singapore. He and old Brother George live at the Asian Center in Ashfield, just east of town, a neighborhood that was quite ethnically mixed as evidenced by both the folks walking around and the markets and restaurants: Asian and Indian, Bangaladeshi, Korean, and even a Polish market on one corner. George and Martin installed me in my room, acquainted me briefly with the trains, gave me a map of the city and left me to my own devices. I wandered around all day Tuesday, arriving at the Circular Quay, which is right on the harbor and gives an immediate view of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, two of the most famous landmarks of this beautiful city. Then I wandered up into the City Centre, found St Mary’s Cathedral, to which I returned three more times, dozens of cafés and fruit stands, besides all the marvelous architecture. I also took the Manly Ferry north out of the harbor, about a half an hour ride. From there it is a quick walk across the Corso, a wide mall filled with shops and restaurants, and then to Ocean Surf Beach, which may as well have been the coast of California with all the volleyball nets and surfers. Wednesday I wandered back downtown again, mainly to meet an old acquaintance, a Jesuit named Richard Leonard, for lunch at a place under the harbor bridge. He is the superior of the Jesuit house there in north Sydney and also well known for his work in cinema. As a matter of fact he does reviews for the Australian Bishops Conference and for the Jesuit-run America magazine. We did talk about films a bit, mainly comparing note on “Slumdog Millionaire,” which I treated myself to in the theatre some time ago and “Doubt,” which I saw on the plane. He has reviewed both of them recently. As President Reagan said about his encounter with Pope John Paul: “We met and exchanged ideas, and his, obviously, were much better than mine.”

Wednesday night was my event for the Asian center back in Ashfield. We had gone back and forth trying to decide what for me to do there and wound up listing it as something like “Liturgical Spirituality and Meditation-Spirit, Soul and Body: The Universal Call to Contemplation,” but Martin really wanted me to do liturgical music with them. Basically what I did is write out a list of mostly liturgical songs that have substantial theology behind them and therefore possibly (probably) long introductions. As a matter of fact, I have been wondering what to do with my talk for NPM this summer, and now I have figured it out. For example, the introduction to “Streams of Living Water,” once I talk about John 7:37, Ezekiel 34, John 2, and Romans 5, usually takes upwards of five minutes; the introduction to “Lead My From Death,” even longer. It worked out well, a nice crowd and they bought up every CD I had brought down with me.

Thursday before leaving I took one more trip into the City Centre, another visit to the dancing light of St Mary’s, and a tour of The Rocks, the area right on the harbour that was first settled by the white settlers in the late 18th century, and was saved by environmentalists etc. from destruction some years back. And then off to the airport. It had never occurred to me (distances are terribly relative by now) that the flight from Sydney to here in Singapore would be almost eight hours! I’m definitely taking the long way home.

Yesterday morning, as arranged, I had a good long session with Nawaz Mirajkar (check out his website: www.nawaztabla.com) at the Temple of Fine Arts, which is basically a school of Indian music and dance. When I was passing through between Bangkok and Jakarta earlier this month, (on Ash Wednesday, as a matter of fact) Leonard and I had lunch with Farid at a well known vegetarian chain restaurant named Anna Lakshmi. Next door to it was this school and Farid was keen for us to visit it. We met the director and she gave us a tour of the various studios and introduced us to different teachers. One of them was this Nawaz, who almost immediately upon meeting me said, “I want to make music with you!” He is excited about the idea of mixing tabla and guitar; we both mentioned Zakir Hussein’s album “Making Music” with John McGloughlin and others as being our favorite album ever. And so we set this meeting up via e-mail. We had a great session together; he, like out friend Steve Robertson, studied with Zakir himself, and he is as good a musician as any one I have met. I got to try a few new pieces out with him. I was a little tired, and the swollen hand thing that always happens in Singapore was operative, and the Collings was rebelling in a new environment, etc, etc, and yet, somehow I managed to drop into the moment and we had some pretty exciting selfless moments going places together musically. At one point I wasn’t able to sing because I was laughing with delight at what he was playing, a kind of a fluttering Persian technique on the low drum (bhaya). We talked about doing something either live or in the studio together, even the possibility of something in September back here in Singapore, but it is a long way between here and California, so we’ll let it go for now and see what the Universe has in store. I definitely know what I want to do with this new album now.

Then we visited Farid’s wife who is in the hospital with a good case of denghy fever, a mosquito born illness more common now than malaria. Leonard also treated me to a session with his chiropractor. Then last night we had a nice gathering at a very hip restaurant called “Raw,” run by a guy named Xavier from Puerto Rico and his partner, near St Mary’s. It’s a low key artsy co-operative kind of place. When John asked him about vegetarian offerings, he simply told us that he would take care of us, so Leonard just asked him to bring us whatever he thought. So he did. It was much more like a party at someone’s house than eating out. About 16 of us gathered, folks I have met and spent the most time with here. It was a nice way to end my time rather than trying to greet them all separately.

And I fly out this afternoon. I admitted to the oblates when I was giving them my presentations that I actually don’t end things well. I was referring to talks––that they usually end with dot-dot-dot… rather than, “And so…” I think it’s better that way, resisting the tendency to wrap things up and tie them in little bows, like a raga. John Main writes about his visit to Gethsemane in 1976, at which time he gave a series of talks to the monks there about meditation, but even more importantly, it was then that he discerned that he was to spend the rest of his life leading people in meditation. This trip has been interesting for me, work-wise, because I had a similar moment in 2004-2005, as I finished my tenure filling in for Mark at Holy Cross, knowing that from then on out I wanted to concentrate on this: Universal Wisdom and the Universal Call to Contemplation, through music and meditation. I have been resistant and reluctant even doing any work in liturgy or liturgical music because of this, that I want to keep my energy focused there. There are only so many hours in the day, days in a week, weeks in a year, years in a life––and we should make the best use of them. Already there are concerts and recordings, besides composing and practicing, retreats and conferences besides studying and writing, and all of that aside from the hours needed to devote to spiritual practice itself. All that to say that, I think that on this trip the work has stayed close to that center, and I can feel it sinking deeper roots as I gather broader experiences. I still am mystified as to where it all is leading, how long to continue to travel and work in this way, but I feel good, and I feel even more plugged into the anima mundi, the soul of the world. Certainly it will be good to have a little of the other kind of stability now, the solidity of the cell both in the woods of the Santa Cruz mountains and with the brothers in Big Sur.

… There’s nothing that binds me and nothing that ties me to something that might have been true yesterday. Tomorrow is open and right now it seems to be more than enough just to be here today. I don’t know what the future is holding in store. I don’t know where I’m going and I’m not sure where I’ve been. There’s a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me. My life is worth the living, and I don’t need to see the end.

You’ll have to figure out where that comes from.

dot-dot-dot. . .

some sydney sites

Not much to report from Sydney except that I am well rested and making my way slowly back. I got here on Monday night, had all day Tuesday to go touristing shamelessly. I try to go incognito as much as possible. Here is one of my outfits...

* * *

Here are my most favorite sites (if obvious). The Sydney Harbour Bridge (for $150 or so you can actually climb to the top and cross it).

____________________________________

And of course from every angle I couldn't get enough of the Opera House, with its buoyant sails opening up to the world.

________________

These were taken on a ferry ride around the harbour all the way to Manly Beach where I hung out for a few hours at the Corso and the Ocean Surf Beach.

__________________

And I was so taken with St Mary's Cathedral
that I went back four different times.
I found the shadows and light of the place comforting in a way I needed for some reason.
It was like being in London and Florence at the same time.

* * * *

Leaving Australia today for Singapore. And God-willing home on Saturday.

empty yourself completely

Sit in your cell as in paradise.
Put the whole world behind you
and forget it.
Empty yourself completely
and sit waiting,
content with the grace of God
(St Romuald)





Tasmania, continued… After the visit to Mount Wellington, it was onto Mary Knoll Retreat Center, which is located on a peninsula south of the bustling city of Hobart. Again, since Paul had pointed this general location out to me from Mount Wellington, I was expecting us to be in the middle of nowhere, and apparently at one time this place was pretty isolated. But now it is surrounded on three sides by a comfortable bedroom community with all kinds of normal middle class things all around it. But it is that fourth side that really gives this place it’s charm––a steep hill leading down to the beach, Derwent Beach. You can hear the waves crashing all day long, especially now in the early morning as I type this with my patio door cracked open. It’s a humble little retreat center, much used and homey, run by one solitary elderly Presentation sister. Drasko has arranged for me to have one of the three self-contained “hermit” units. I had pretty much all day yesterday to myself again before the oblates arrived last night, and spent a good part of the day reconnoitering the area––I’ve been three times to the beach already and had a leisurely exploratory run along the cliffs.

A quick summary of the first night of oblate retreat… For those of you reading who don’t know what an oblate is: an oblate is someone with a special bond of friendship with a monastic community who tries to live the monastic charism in a way modified to go with life in the world. Our congregation, the Camaldolese Benedictines, is a bit unique in that we have hundreds of oblates, of various religious affiliations, scattered all over the world, including a substantial number here in Australia. These oblates have the reputation for being a particularly intense lot, with two different groups of them setting up something like intentional communities, one led here in Tasmania by the same Drasko with another ex-Camaldolese named Christopher who is now a priest of the Paulist congregation, and another led by a colorful jovial priest named Michael Mifsud of Queensland, Victoria, who has taken canonical hermit status under his bishop, and whom I have met several ties in the States and in Italy.

I have prepared two pretty substantial presentations, one on the life of Saint Romuald himself, and the other on the three fold good (solitude-community-missionary martyrdom) by way of some of the early Camaldolese personalities––the five holy martyrs, Andrew and Benedict and Saint Peter-Damian. But I had an intuition to start with something I do very rarely. I checked with Drasko first to see what he thought and he agreed. Since many of them were curious about who I was (as a matter of fact I was being flooded with questions already during dinner), and since so much of what I have to say about Camaldolese spirituality depends on my own experience of it, I spent the first session last night telling them my vocation story. I touched just briefly on my early years in seminary and the experience with the Franciscans in uptown Chicago, “squandering” my twenties on music and confusion, but mainly concentrating on the years since my entry into New Camaldoli in 1992, meeting Fr Bede, the simultaneous immersion in Western and Eastern spirituality, first trips to India, the ten years at New Camaldoli, and then the whole story of these past six years. I really have nothing else to offer of any value but who I really am and what I really do, and, as I said, my own take on our charism is going to be shaded by all that.

I kept asking along the way as I was telling my story, “Is this too much detail?” but they kept saying, “No,” and listened very attentively. It wound up being a good move, and many of them related to my own quest for a “new way to do this whole thing.” Also a surprising number of them are students of the writing of Fr Bede, about which I was delighted; as a matter of fact more than one already said to me that Fr Bede and our involvement in east-west dialogue was their main attraction to being a Camaldolese oblate. So, I’m where I am supposed to be. One of the attendees is a young Anglican priest from Denmark, named Hans, who is a reasonable look alike for my friend Stefano in Florence, and like Stefano is a real student of the East. He and I already spent all of dinnertime last night immersed in conversation. So I am looking forward to the days ahead.

Without repeating my whole story here, let me just share with you how I ended, with three statements that would not have made sense without the biographical detail, but hopefully have set the stage for the conversations that will follow:
• First, in 2002, when I was with Don Emanuele, our prior general at the time, finalizing my decision to take an exclaustration in his office at Camaldoli, I said to him rather broken-heartedly, “I’m sorry, Don Emanuele. I hoped that monasticism would be a big enough container for me.” And he said to me, “Ma Cipriano, monachesimo non è un contenitore; è un’energia! Monasticism isn’t a container; it’s an energy.”
• Second, when I was writing a series of letters to Don Bernardino before he was elected as prior general (though expecting he would be), he wrote to me two things: “Once you have gathered the strands of your monastic life, which will be few, you will seek to remain faithful to them. Stability will reveal to you and to others your monastic being”; and he also wrote, concerning the institution, “The tie with the institution then comes last, because it will come to you and you will have to recognize it when it draws near…”
• And last, when we had renegotiated my status in the congregation to simple “leave with permission” that allowed me to continue living and working as I was indefinitely, Bernardino gave me a stiff talking to and told me to continue living exactly as I was, not to change anything, not to try to start anything new, to watch my balance between work and solitude, being alone and being with others, and––these were the wise prophetic words that so moved me––“this will be your stability now.”

Somewhere between the energy of monasticism and the stability that we have chosen and committed ourselves to lies that creative tension of monasticism. The tendency, or at least my tendency, is always to want to resolve the tension. But it seems as if staying in that tension, like riding a wave, is where we are all called to be.

* * *

tues, 24 march 09, Sydney

I flew here to Sydney last night, after the oblate retreat finished at lunchtime yesterday. I must say I think it was a great success. I had some doubts, as we were going into it, about the expense and energy it had taken to get me there to the remotest corner of Western civilization, hoping that it was going to be worth all our whiles––it was, as a matter of fact, all things being equal and with due reverence to all the other wonderful work and ministry I have been involved in these past seven weeks, it was the highlight of my trip. I only realized after a few hours how relaxed I was, in the way I am relaxed at Big Sur, laughing and joking and friendly in a way that doesn’t come out of me naturally in other environments. I really felt as if I was among family. It was also very nice to celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours and Eucharist, and have good long periods of silent meditation with others.

I had a major presentation each morning Saturday and Sunday, the first on Romuald and the second on the three-fold good. I kept referring back to the lessons that I drew from my own story the night before, first of all, not to try to resolve the tension of Romuald, who was so insistent on putting everyone else under the yoke of obedience and yet he himself, as Bruno of Querfurt says, was “always a wanderer, now here, now there...” Peter Damian explains it this way: “Romuald could not bear to remain sterile. He felt a deep anxiety and a longing to bear fruit for souls, and kept searching for a place where he could do so. . . he was never satisfied with anything he did. While he was busy with one project, he was already planning the next.” Like what Shirley du Boulay says of Abhishiktananda: “a very busy hermit.” Instead of putting Romuald into a box or a pigeon-hole, I suggested that we see him in a constellation of other monks––the various types of hermits, wanderers, “clouds and water monks,” and sannyasis in the firmament, but also assume that he himself had a rule of life that he stuck to as well throughout. I think we can safely say that Romuald recognized the need for everyone to be yoked in obedience to someone––something other than oneself: as he really wanted to yoke himself to the Rule when he was in the monastery and all the other monks were lax; as did yoke himself to Marino; and I think we can safely assume that he was by then yoked to his own rule of life. For the ordinary monk it takes a rule and a master; an abbot and way of life. This is why the early Camaldolese were known as the “sensible hermits who live under the Rule.” That great formula of Aurobindo really spoke to them too, I think: that an ordinary person needs four things: the Sruti or recorded revelation (in other words, Scripture), the Sacred Teacher, the practice (he says, “of Yoga,” which of course is all encompassing of sadhana), and, of course, Grace. Scripture, a teacher, a disciplined practice and grace.

Then as far as the three-fold good is concerned, I kept focusing on the fact that it was first of all, as Robert used to say, not just sipping tea with the Anglicans in the drawing room, but that it is some kind of wild card, some kind of total abandonment of our self to the Spirit, total availability. And secondly, it is not something we can grasp or grab at or claim for ourselves. As is even taught about martyrdom and every other charism, it is a gift, something given to us. I think that they have been all been looking for something a little more solid in our tradition to hold on to, and they resonated with my story (they kept telling me over and over again) and these two things like cats in front of a saucer of milk. I did find it kind of ironic and humbling to be the one speaking for the Camaldolese charism, and even got pretty emotional when I was giving them a blessing at the end of the retreat “in the name of Don Bernardino and Prior Raniero,” but articulating it all for them was a good reminder and confirmation to me of how closely I am tied to our charism, and what my own particular yoke of obedience is as well.

In the meantime I had wonderful walks and talks, especially with the above mentioned Hans, with Michael Mifsud, long time student of Fr Bede and oblate chaplain here in Australia, and a young man named Michael who was visiting Drasko and Christopher exploring the possibility of joining their fledgling community. This latter was staying in the hermitage next to mine and we wound up spending lots of time together over tea and meals, tripping over each other going from one topic to another. I never realized how much this theme that Bernardino gave to me would serve others: gather the strands of your life, commit yourself to them, and your dedication to that commitment will reveal your monastic being, and this will be your stability. And so we can put together yogi, artist, nutritionist and student in a unique curry: but commit to it, and that commitment will reveal your stability.

After the retreat was over Drasko and Christopher took me back to their place, and told me more about their hopes for the future. Drasko has specifically been mandated by the diocese to found a place for young people to be able to have a monastic experience, a type of temporary monasticism. He has the possibility of a few locations, a parish center in north Tasmania, the house in Hobart down south where he and Christopher are living their common life of work and prayer now, and a rural property 50 km. outside of town where they hope to build a rural hermitage. They both spent nearly two years in formation at New Camaldoli, and still base their lives around our charism. As far as I can see in every way as much Camaldolese monks as I am. We had a great time together, talking, praying and meditating in their beautiful simple little chapel, then having a thali at an Indian restaurant around the corner before they took me to the airport. We too could have talked on for hours. They are both so well read, and Drasko is a fine and articulate theologian, so I was picking their brains about some thorny issues I have been running into that are a little out of my depth. (Mostly coming from finally reading Karen Armstrong’s “History of God.” I am loving her scholarship as always, but am so annoyed at her blatant blind spot about Western Christianity. She never misses an opportunity to give a passing pot shot or elbow in the ribs, and seems to assume as facts only views from the far left of Christian scholarship. Anyway, that’s another story… and Drasko was much more a match for her than I am.)

I am making my way home now. I’m here in Sydney until Thursday with only a small presentation to do tomorrow night and the rest of the time for sightseeing. (I’m under direct orders to do so from Master Ong.)

the silent land

I describe Australia as the silent land. Even in the great cities one senses a silence different from anywhere else. It is, I am sure, the vastness of the continent that overpowers all the man made structures...
(Ian Player)


Someone who has been following this blog wrote to me with a nice gentle correction, about which I should have known better myself. He said he was curious about my impressions of Australia particularly my sense of the newness of this country. He agreed that the time of recorded history since European settlement of this land is quite brief and young in comparison to America and certainly Europe where ages past are obviously still present. However, he invited me to reflect on

…Australia as an ancient land with at least 40000 years of indigenous history which is not necessarily present in any built up way but present in the land and the ongoing culture of these peoples. So the European history of this land is only possible in some ways because it comes on the back of something much much older culturally and geographically. I occasionally catch glimpses of this when being with the land more fully including in the cities. It is an old silent mysterious presence something articulated better than I by a South African photographer, Ian Player:

“To my friends I describe Australia as the silent land. Even in the great cities one senses a silence different from anywhere else. It is, I am sure, the vastness of the continent that overpowers all the man made structures...” (Wilderness: The Sacred Landscape, 2004).

And then he wonders if this isn’t Christ as Hagia Heyschia, Holy Silence speaking through the land, something the indigenous peoples have surely sensed for millennia?

I thought this was beautifully put and I hope that he does not mind if I add this here. It also has put words on something that has only been inchoate for me here in Australia, especially down here in Tasmania where the silence is so overpowering. I kept having flashes of Alaska probably due to the vast open spaces that lie between the little human habitations. Even the big cities are dwarfed by the sweeping untamed lands. And I have been particularly struck in various places before an event takes place where there is an honoring of the land, and a naming of the peoples who had lived there before. There does not seem to have been the wholesale destruction of the aboriginal culture and peoples here as there was in America. There was some to be sure, but not to the same extent and the aboriginal culture still survives and even thrives in the outback. That is to be envied because, as my brother above here wrote, the indigenous peoples’ sense of the pervading sacredness of the land is something we surely would do well to recover in this new axial period.

My last event in Adelaide, with my bags literally packed and waiting at the door, was to sing for 300 students at Sacred Heart College itself in the performing arts center right across the parking lot from the brother’s house where I was staying. In spite of it being the nicest performing space I had had yet in terms of stage and sound system and lighting, given my own experience of young Australian audiences, I was prepared for the worst in terms of participation, which is so central to the music I do. I had also been warned by one of the teachers that the kids were many of them un-churched and would be for the most part non-participatory. I decided on the spot, as I told Barbara later, that I wouldn’t put a heavy religious trip on them then, but try to go from the known to the unknown. I sang the Circle Song for them, and then Awakening, I guess just trying to draw them in with the music, and then did a few participatory songs with them, and they actually did sing along just fine. They also were pretty attentive and applauded more than politely.

After about a half an hour I launched into a bit of a spiel. I have a new twist on it again, thanks to our new president. I had a very small graduating class at St Charles Borromeo Seminary High School––we were only 18, and the whole school never topped 100 while I was there. So I always get kind of excited when I meet people my age and I like to ask them, “What are we supposed to be doing now? Did anyone tell you?” So it was quite a wake up call for me when I realized that our new president was three years younger than I was. If I ever wondered about what people of my generation were supposed to be doing right now, now I know––we’re supposed to be running the world. If I ever doubted when my turn was going to be––it’s now. It’s our turn. And so I told the kids the other day, It’s going to be your turn soon, maybe sooner than you think, maybe sooner than it was our turn. So my message is this: Wake up! Wake up! There are real serious issues we are facing as a race, and everything you do affects the whole world either for the better or for the worse, and the only real answer to those issues is a spiritual one. Something like that. I think it went pretty well.

* * *

Saturday, 21 march, 09, Tasmania

Tuesday I flew farther across Australia to Melbourne and from Melbourne south across a vast amount of sea to the island of Tasmania. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was not what I expected. I landed in Launceston (“LAWN-sess-ton”) a tidy little 200 year old town on the northern edge of Tasmania divided by three rivers. I guess the farther south I go I keep expecting things to get more and more rugged and less populated, but sure enough there were comfortable modern homes and Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was the guest of Paul and Gordana Crowe in their beautiful home that would certainly win Martha Stewart’s approval. And Gordana, who is an exceptional cook, took it upon herself to try out a handful of new pretty fancy vegetarian recipes on me. Paul is a candidate to be a Camaldolese oblate, and friend of Drasko, the former monk of New Camaldoli who is the head of the oblate community down here.

I had a great day wandering around Launceston. Early in the morning, following Paul’s directions, I went for a run out of town to the Cataract River Gorge. I ran about a mile into the gorge and was about to turn around when I suddenly saw some movement ahead of me. (Luckily I was uncharacteristically wearing my glasses.) It was a kangaroo. Actually, it wasn’t a kangaroo, it was a wallaby––an Australian marsupial that is similar too, but smaller than, a kangaroo (of the family Macropodidae of several genera and numerous species including the agile wallaby [Macropus agilis])––but I thought it was a kangaroo, until a woman came up behind and I asked her, “Is that a baby?” (because it was small) and she said, “No, that’s a wallaby.” It seemed to be a female and she had a beautiful little face and we sat there and stared at each other for the longest time. I finally sat down on a stair and continued the long loving gaze at her when someone else came up from behind me. It turned out to be Julien, a young French intrepid explorer who had come over on a ferry and spent the night in his car there at the gorge and now wanted to practice his English with me. We had a brief friendly conversation comparing notes, and then I said goodbye to him and my first marsupial (you never forget your first marsupial…) and jogged back home.

I had a session with the small WCCM community later that morning and then headed out on my own for the afternoon, camera in hand. Alas, the wallabies had vanished, but the coffee shops were open. And the next morning Paul and I headed farther south straight down the middle of the island toward Hobart. We stopped halfway for lunch at a little place called Campbell Town, and again I was surprised by how developed and even hip the place was. We ate at a trendy little café with delicious vegetarian food. Once we got to Hobart, but before taking me to the retreat house where the oblate gathering was to be, Paul drove me up to the summit of Mount Wellington, a spot about 4000 feet above sea level with a view of the southern shore of Tasmania, the estuary of the river pouring out of Hobart and opening up to the ocean. It was beautiful up there, with low-slung eucalyptus trees permanently hunched over clinging to the mountainside by the winds, and dramatic outcroppings of rocks thrust up from the earth all around.

impenetrable ego-persona

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,
and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and
poke-weed.
(Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" #5)

17 march, 09

I’ve been staying in Adelaide, Australia now since last week Wednesday. I am a guest of the Marist brothers here, in a very comfortable house on the campus of Sacred Heart College. I have had fine accommodations all along the way, but for some reason I have felt especially comfortable in my room-cell here, quiet and dark, wireless internet and enough room for my yoga mat and guitar. The brothers have been so friendly and hospitable, even kind of anticipating my needs. There has been regular work, not a grueling schedule but at least a little something to do every day. Thursday I did an hour and a half session with about 150 Year 11 students at a prestigious Jesuit secondary school outside of town, which went very well. That same night I did a concert for a small crowd at the local Uniting Church, and the next day another for a nice sized audience in the hall of the cathedral downtown Adelaide. Then Saturday two long sessions for the Meditation Community of South Australia (WCCM).

Barbara O’Hallaran and her team from that group have been the ones to set all this up and Barbara was also the one who made contacts with other WCCM folks around Australia as well, enabling me to work my way across the country. She, her husband Justin, and her committee have been great. They had planned to take me on a jaunt out to a park to see koalas and kangaroos Sunday, but on Saturday morning Barbara offered me instead the possibility of just having a day to myself, which I opted for and so had a lazy day, Mass with the brothers here, off to the gym, big festal lunch with the brothers, who were celebrating some birthdays, then a walk down the coast to the touristy hang out about a mile away, and another quiet evening at home working on my upcoming talks.

I did a presentation at a girls’ high school yesterday. It was the most beautiful chapel I had been in yet this trip, reminded me of the upstairs chapel with choir stalls at Camaldoli that I love so much, with a wonderful acoustic. I was pretty up for the girls’; they were attentive enough but participation was an absolute minimum. The teacher was embarrassed by it, but by now I am used to it. I have talked with so many people about this phenomenon here in Australia––I think that it is worse than in the states. What is it? Have we bred engagement out of young people? Is it I-pods and computers and television and absolute passivity? Many folks say that it is such a sense of self-consciousness, a highly developed impenetrable ego-persona that simply cannot come down. I think that last bit with the addition of the others is the closest to the truth. Why is it so different at a place like Mount Madonna, where they are typical middle class western kids?

I have one more performance today here at Sacred Heart College this morning, for three hundred Year 12s. Bro Patrick here at the house took me up there last night to “have a bit of a gossip” with the Year twelve male boarders, mainly because he wanted me to play guitar for them and them for me. It was a nice enough visit and I was glad that I knew a few Jack Johnson songs.

Here are some things I have learned or realized about Australia and Australians:
• It is and really feels like it is a newer place than America.
• The cities that weren’t founded as penal colonies but by free settlers are very proud of that fact.
• The country is almost as big as America but there are less people in it than in Delhi.
• Aussies themselves have told me on several occasions, with what seems to me to be a mixture of dismay with a wee bit of pride, that Australia is “secular,” “godless” and even “hedonistic.”
• Aussies seem to like us Americans and certainly know our music and films as well as our history and politics well.
• They on the other hand do not think we know how to make either tea or coffee.
• They seem to have gone from instant coffee to espresso without much intervening automatic drip––a standard coffee here is a “long black” which is what we would call a caffe Americano.
• When you are pouring properly steeped tea out of a pot you should put the milk in your cup first.
• There are internet cafes, but they is no food in them;
• there are regular cafes but there is no internet in them.
• There is also no cable television here yet, but they don’t seem to be clamoring for it.
• American football, soccer and Football Aussie rules are three distinct games. The latter is a combination of Irish hurling and an Aboriginal game, and is very fast and so far confusing to me, and the Aussies are wild for it.
• The double “s” in “Aussie” is pronounced like a “z.”
• Australians are fiercely proud of their history and have struck me so far as very open, friendly people.

On to Tasmania.

the mind-body split

Hence it is that some mystic writers do call this perfect union
the union of the nothing with the nothing,
that is, the union of the soul which is nowhere corporally,
that hath no images or affections to creatures in her;
yea that hath lost the free disposal of her own faculties,
acting by a portion of the spirit above all the faculties,
and according to the actual touches of the Divine Spirit,
and apprehending God with an exclusion of all conceptions and apprehensions.
(Augustine Baker, Holy Wisdom)

sat, 14 march 09

Before I left Perth I raided Meath’s library, which I told him was very much like my own only better. I am kind of fascinated with this idea of healing the body-soul split toward a more holistic spirituality. (And incidentally Christian anthropology as I understand it and Christian mysticism at its most sublime have a lot to offer to this argument.) I often quote Sam Keen’s warning against those who speak of “having a body,” that this might be another dualism sneaking in, what may be considered an “enlightened dualism.” In one of Ken Wilber’s early books he says it right out:

Biologically there is not the least foundation for this dissociation or radical split between the mind and the body, the psyche and the soma, the ego and the flesh, but psychologically it is epidemic. Indeed, the mind-body split and attendant dualism is a fundamental perspective of Western civilization…. Even St. Francis referred to his body as ‘poor brother ass,’ and most of us do indeed feel as if we just sort of ride around on our bodies like we would on a donkey or an ass.

Then he goes on to say that this strange boundary line between the mind and the body is not at all present at birth. But as individuals grow in years, and we begin to draw up and fortify all kinds of boundaries between “self” and “not-self,” we also start to look at the body with mixed emotions. And by the time we have matured we have generally “kissed poor brother ass good-bye,” and the body becomes foreign territory, almost (but never quite) as foreign as the external world itself. (And, unfortunately, as Sam reminds us, “how we are in our bodies is how we will be in the world.”) The boundary line is drawn between the mind and the body, and the person identifies squarely with the mind, and we come to live in our heads as if we were a miniature person in our skull, giving directions and commands to the body, which may or may not obey. (No Boundary, pp. 6-7)

However, in this early version of the Spectrum of Consciousness, he suggests that as we mature psychologically and spiritually the boundary between self and not-self keeps moving and begins to dissolve:
at first we identify as our persona and “not-self” is our shadow, all that lies hidden and denied;
then our “self” is our ego and “not-self” seems to be the body;
at another stage of growth we learn to recognize that the total organism including the body––KW calls it the “centaur”––is our self, but our environment is still “other”;
after this level transpersonal bands start to develop and the boundary starts to break down, leading us to both greater interiority and deeper communion, until we reach a stage of “unity consciousness” when we realize our one-ness (may I say communion?) with all things.

Does an individual self remain to be in relationship with all these things? This, of course, is where the traditions disagree.

It is a shame that I have spent so little time with Aldous Huxley’s “Perennial Philosophy,” but I did at Meath’s only to find out that he agrees:

…the relations subsisting between the world and God, and between God and the Godhead seem to be analogous, in some measure at least, to those that hold between the body (with its environment) and the psyche, and between the psyche and the spirit…

Mind affects its body and four ways
• subconsciously, through that unbelievably subtle physiological intelligence “entelechy”
• consciously through deliberate acts of the will;
• subconsciously again by the reaction upon the physical organism of emotional states having nothing to do with the organs or processes reacted upon;
• consciously or unconsciously in certain supernormal manifestations

And aside from the body, matter itself can be influenced by the mind (psyche) in two ways, by means of the body and by means of a supernormal process. The clearest example he gave is of “nervous indigestion”: emotions are directed toward events or persons in the outer environment but in some way or other can adversely affect the physiology. Huxley says this applies to tuberculosis, ulcers, heart disease and even dental problems, but how many other ways have we learned? And of course, in terms of the supernormal he mentions faith healing, levitation, and extrasensory perception. And so (I love this):

…if a human mind can directly influence matter not merely within, but even outside the body, then a divine mind, immanent in the universe or transcendent to it, may be presumed to be capable of imposing forms upon a pre-existing chaos of formless matter, or even, perhaps, of thinking substance as well as forms into existence. (Perennial Philosophy, pp. 26-28)

And I hadn’t really paid attention or even thought about the 16th century Benedictine mystic and master Augustine Baker since my novitiate under Peter-Damian, but he caught my attention again when I learned how much John Main was influenced by him. While at St. Anselm's, Fr John suggested to a troubled young man that he read Baker’s book Holy Wisdom. The young guy's response to it was so enthusiastic that Fr John himself was reread it. And inspired by that Fr John and the young man began meditating together in the manner he had learned from Swami Satyananda years before in Malaysia. Augustine Baker’s frequent reminder of the emphatic insistence of St. Benedict lays upon Cassian’s Conferences sent him to them seriously for the first time, and in chapter 10 of Cassian, he found the roots of meditation in the Christian tradition. What Cassian had learned from the desert fathers and what St. Benedict learned from Cassian was what John Main had learned from a Hindu monk three years before becoming a Benedictine monk.

So I perused Holy Wisdom for the first time, thanks to a very old edition in Meath’s library:

…there is a mystic contemplation which is, indeed, truly and properly such, by which a soul without discoursings and curious speculations, without any perceptible use of the internal senses or sensible images, by a pure, simple, and reposeful operation of the mind, in the obscurity of faith, simply regards God as infinite and incomprehensible verity, and with the whole bent of the will rests in Him as (her) infinite, universal, and incomprehensible good. This is true contemplation indeed, and as rest if the ed of motion, so is this the end of all other both internal and external exercises; for therefore, by long discourses and much practice of affection, the soul inquires and tends to a worthy object that she may quietly contemplate it, and (if it deserves affection) repose with contentment in it. (Chap. I.6, p. 504)

And this, which is a favorite section of Meath:

By reason of this habitation and absolute dominion of the Holy Spirit in the souls of the perfect (those who have wholly neglected, forgotten, and lost themselves, to the end that God alone may live in them, whom they contemplate in the absolute obscurity of faith), hence it is that some mystic writers do call this perfect union the union of the nothing with the nothing, that is, the union of the soul which is nowhere corporally, that hath no images or affections to creatures in her; yea that hath lost the free disposal of her own faculties, acting by a portion of the spirit above all the faculties, and according to the actual touches of the Divine Spirit, and apprehending God with an exclusion of all conceptions and apprehensions; thus it is that the soul, being nowhere corporally or sensibly, is everywhere spiritually and immediately united to God, this infinite nothing. (Chapter VI.8, p. 545)

While I am egg-heading, I decided that I needed to be a little more clear and concise in my presentation to the young people about what I man by the Universal Call to Contemplation and what I am up to tamping the world with my new Calton guitar case. So I came up with three points which served me pretty well in my presentation the other day at a prestigious Jesuit high school here in Adelaide.

“This is what I want to leave you with:”

1. That God or the Divine is not just outside of us, but also dwells within us, and that every human being is capable of having an experience of this indwelling divine, the indwelling presence of God. It is a way of interiority, which at first glance goes against our grain because we live outside of ourselves. As St Augustine said famously in his Confessions, “You were within me, but I was on the outside and it was there that I looked for you. Upon entering into myself I saw what was beyond my soul, beyond my spirit––your immutable light.” And the path to having an experience of that immutable light within us is the way of meditation, the way of interior prayer.
2. We mean by this also really every human being, not just Christians. This is an assumption that this experience of unity with God is first of all the inspiration for all authentic spiritual traditions, and it is that experience that gets expressed and embodied in various languages, cultures, rituals, and dogmas and doctrines, which begin to look different one from the other as they form. But the experience of unity with God, the indwelling presence of the divine, is also the height of the spiritual experience after the arduous journey of living the spiritual life. We know this because what we find when we read the great mystics of the spiritual traditions is that the language used to express the experience on the other side of ritual, culture, language and doctrine has great similarity. So we find here a meeting point, a place of dialogue with other religions, finding out first of all in what way each of these traditions is a legitimate expression of that original experience, and sharing one with the other what we have in common about the path to realizing that union with God.
3. Both this path of interiority and this dialogue, this conversation between religions are essential building blocks and stepping-stones for world peace. First of all because we cannot build peace in the world unless and until we are at peace in ourselves; and secondly it is at this level of conversation that actually find some agreement with other traditions, being able to respect their legitimate experience, their different expression of it, and their path of return. This enables us to share with each other insights about this experience and the ways that we have found that can help us to achieve union with God. As a great theologian wrote: “No peace among nations without peace among religions; no peace among religions without dialogue between the religions.”