“The Christian life of virtue is not only a life in which we strive to
unite ourselves to God by the practice of virtue. Rather it is also a
life in which, drawn to union with God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, we
strive to express our love and our new being by acts of virtue. Being
united to Christ, we seek with all possible fervor to let him manifest
his virtue and his sanctity in our lives. Our efforts should be
directed to removing the obstacles of selfishness, disobedience, and all
attachments to what is contrary to his love.”

–Thomas Merton ( Life and Holiness )

………………

“Before I began my study of Zen,

mountains were just mountains,

 and trees were just trees.

During my study of Zen,

mountains were no longer mountains,

and trees no longer trees.

When I became Enlightened,

mountains were once again mountains,

 and trees once again trees.”

“Perfection is therefore a question of fidelity and love–fidelity to
duty first of all, then love of God’s will in all its manifestations.
Love implies preference and preference demands sacrifice. In practice,
then, the preference of God’s will means setting aside and sacrificing
our own will. The more a Christian renounces his own will to do the
will of God in loving submission and carefree abandonment the more he
will be united to Christ in the Spirit of divine sonship, the more truly
will he show himself a son of the heavenly Father, and the close he will
come to Christian perfection.”

–Thomas Merton (Life and Holiness, page 36)

There is a language older by far and deeper than words.

It is the language of Bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain

on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, of gesture,

of symbol, of memory. We have forgotten this language, forgotten

it for so long we do not even remeber that it exists. If we are

to survive, we must again remember this language.

We must relearn how to think like the planet.

I remember walking into a cold January afternoon several years ago.

My breath hung white in the air, and two dogs danced at my feet.

I heard in the distance the clamour of geese, then stood speechless

to watch a huge V fly low over head.  I opened my mouyth to say something

- I didn’t know what it would be – and heard my voice say three times

“Godspeed.” Suddenly and for no reason I could understand, I burst into tears .

Then ran into the house.

Walking back outside later and staring into the now empty sky,

I realized that in speaking not only had I been wishing the geese well for their

journey south but they had been using my voice and my breath

to wish me just-as-well on my own-just-as-difficult- journey – this journey

of opposition to the culture that is destroying life on this planet.

The tears,it came clear to me, had been neither for sorrow nor joy,

but for home coming, like a sailor that has been too long at sea,

and who spontaneously bursts into sobs on feeling those tentative

first steps back on solid ground, back at home.

If we are to suvive, we need the planet’s help, just as it

needs ours. To dismantle the walls we’ve so laboriously constructed

to constrict our broken hearts, we must step away from our isolation

from the rest  of the world. There is a whole world

waiting for us, ready to welcome us home.

They have missed us as sorely as we have missed them.

It is time. Return. Godspeed.

–Derrick Jensen

consider this…..

which is better a tree or a piece of paper?

Which is better some sand or a glass window?

Better is subjective….

those that cling to non dualism like to deny dualism…and vice versa
both are however stances, beliefs, ideas, maps…..concepts

A map of london is a map of London
A picture of London is a picture of London

If we say that the map of london is non dualism, as it contains the whole of london
then we could say it is good, and perhaps better for one that wanting to travel around london

A photgraph of London is dualism, for example, because London s probably too big to fit onto one photograph. But a photograph is useful for a specific part of London, for example if we wish to visit piccadilly circus, a photograph of the stone liions would be good, to help us identify it, this is something we cannot find on a map.

So we have dualistic and non dualistic views of London.

Both are useful
But both are maps, models, conceptualisations
Neither IS London….

London thus, Like God, Like Islam, Like Judaism, like Buddhism, like….
is Dualistic and Non Dualistic…
It all depends on perspective.

Or as the famous Muslim Kahlil Gibran said:

We see things as we are
Not as they are.

…

The Yellow Emperor went wandering

To the north of the Red Water

To the Kwan Lun mountain.

He looked around

Over the edge of the world.

On the way home

He lost his night-colored pearl*.

He sent out Science to seek his pearl, and got nothing.

He sent Analysis to look for his pearl, and got nothing.

He sent out Logic to seek his pearl, and got nothing.

Then he asked Nothingness, and Nothingness had it!

The Yellow Emperor said:

“Strange, indeed: Nothingness

Who was not sent

Who did no work to find it

Had the night-colored pearl!”

from “The Way of Chuang Tzu,” trans Merton

(*Night-colored pearl: original nature; spiritual enlightenment)

Spiritual practice is essentially prayer. There are three forms of prayer: first, canonical prayer, for instance the Lord’s prayer; second, personal prayer, whose best model is given by the Psalms; third, the contemplative prayer of the heart; this is mystical spirituality, which requires certain conditions. The story of the “Russian Pilgrim” offers an image of it; also Hindu texts about japa-yoga, methodical invocation.

–Fritjhof Schuon

………

Having unalterable opinions with an air of self-confidence, rejecting society with distaste for the people involved in it, and engaging in intellectual discussions while cursing and slandering others are merely signs of self-righteousness. That’s what the scholars in the mountains and valleys do – those people who remove themselves from the world and would prefer to either grow old and withered or drown themselves in a deep river.

….

The people in the villages have a saying:
“Most people place importance on profits. A person of principles places importance on his reputation. A person with high ideals values devotion. The sage treasures his essence.”
Therefore, pureness can be called that which isn’t sullied. Genuineness can be called that which doesn’t depart from spirit. One who has the ability to place the most importance in genuine pureness can be called a True Person.
–Zhuangzi Chapter 15: Unalterable Opinions

The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“No matter what the situation, you cannot neglect Buddha, because you yourself are Buddha. Only this Buddha will help you completely.” “Our teaching is to live, always in reality, in its exact sense….To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on which we are working in each moment. We cannot even study Buddha’s words. To study Buddha’s words in their exact sense means to study them through some activity which you face moment after moment.”

–Suzuki Roshi ( Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (Shambhala Library)

As the mystical side of Islam developed, it was a woman, Rabi’a al-Adawiyya (717-801 A.D.), who first expressed the relationship with the divine in a language we have come to recognize as specifically Sufic by referring to God as the Beloved. Rabi’a was the first human being to speak of the realities of Sufism with a language that anyone could understand. Though she experienced many difficulties in her early years, Rabi’a’s starting point was neither a fear of hell nor a desire for paradise, but only love. “God is God,” she said, “for this I love God… not because of any gifts, but for Itself.” Her aim was to melt her being in God. According to her, one could find God by turning within oneself. As Muhammad said, “He who knows himself knows his Lord.” Ultimately it is through love that we are brought into the unity of Being.

Women & Sufism
Camille Adams Helminski

Well some would say Sufism came before Islam, it certainly has its roots prior to Mohammed.

Sufis of course are entrenched in Islam. No real serious Sufi would renounce Islam, its tenets or burn the Qur’an.

Islam of course often finds problems with Sufism and accuses it of not being monotheistic enough and of course Sufis have supposedly often dealt with the Djinn.

SO what we have here is the usual esoteric and exoteric struggle.

The exoteric (for the many) denies the esoteric (for the few)

We find this in Christianity, mainstream Christians often run screaming from any form of Mysticism and contemplation. Christianity of course has a long standing history of this

Judaism has oral torah or Kabbalah as it is often known. This esoteric path of unification with the divine has been seen as blasphemy, occultic and full of naughty things that more exoteric religious and non religious Jews run screaming from. Of course stories such as the Golem do not help the esoteric “cause”

So we find in Islam exactly the same dilemma.

Of course then we also find people that embrace the esoteric but think they need to distance themselves from the exoteric. With investigation one will find that the esoteric is entrenched and a part of the exoteric. The two are inseparable and are one living body. The esoteric thus becomes a deeper part or deeper understanding of the exoteric, kind of like what is below the surface on an ice berg.

Thus the exoteric often denies the esoteric. The esoteric really has no need to do this. Mainly as it approaches the ultimate truth, and understanding that God transcends any religion… and that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are meaningless words.

So IS Sufism a part of Islam?

Yes

“I believe in the religion
Of Love
Whatever direction its caravans may take,
For love is my religion and my faith.”

–Ibn ‘Arabi

The wind blows
It doesn’t decide to blow one way
or another
the wind blows

Academic Nonsense, Science, and Torah

by

Gershon Winkler

It was recently brought to my attention that a respected so-called Old Testament scholar and author in The Netherlands recently made an earth-shattering discovery that she will be presenting at Radboud University in The Netherlands. Wow. What a discovery. She claims that the first sentence in the Book of Genesis “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth” is not a true translation of the Hebrew. (No kidding! We don’t translate it that way, either!)  Rather, she has done some “fresh textual analysis” that suggests that the great book never intended to imply that God created the world. Actually, she says, the Earth was already in place when God made humans and animals. Someone else must have created the universe itself long before God came on the scene and added a couple of people and animals and a shrub or two. She derives all this from her analysis of the etymology of the Hebraic word “bara,” customarily translated as “created.” It doesn’t really say that, she claims. “Bara” she insists, means to “spatially separate” and if you read the first line of Genesis with that translation, she posits, you will realize that God only spatially separated the heavens and the earth, which in turn implies that the heavens and the earth were already extant and that God only added a few features to what was already there as opposed to having created the universe from scratch, ex-nihilo (The Telegraph [UK], October 8, 2009).

        Mind-blowing. I have been up all night trying to understand her theory and how it proves anything but the sad state of academia. Scholars who have no idea of the vernacular or intention of our Torah have for centuries been drawing theories about its content and have had the audacity as well to present their “findings” at international scholarly conferences. Perhaps I might compose a definitive critique of the science of Neuropsychology since I am totally unlearned in that field, and present it to some Conference on Psychiatry in Vladivostok. Not being a historian, I might also write a thesis about American History, that George Washington is a myth invented in the early 20th century to boost patriotism in anticipation of the Spanish American War. Or that Theodore Roosevelt was really Captain Kangaroo (similar mustache).

        Even though there is some truth to the professor’s “discovery” that “bara” means a lot more than “created,” it certainly is not anything new to those of us who have a knowledge of Hebraic and Aramaic etymology and who have studied the classical commentaries on the Torah writ by ancient and early-medieval rabbis. More importantly, however, it proves nothing about her cartoon theory.

        In the Kabbalaistic writings, the unknowable, unpeggable, un-namable mystery behind the origin of existence, which we glibly refer to as “God”, created space first, within which to create matter, thus spatially separating creation from itself, so to speak. As the ancient Kabbalists put it: “Were God to fill the universe, the universe could not exist; and were God to not fill the universe, the universe could not exist. The space of the universe is thus both filled with God and void of God, in the sense that it is just sufficiently void of God in order to enable the possibility of existence, and just sufficiently filled with God in order to enable existence altogether. Thus is God at the same time hidden and revealed, hidden and revealed” (Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 39b). “Behold the Sacred Ancient One, they wrote, “the mystery of all mysteries, is separate from everything and yet at the same time not separated from anything, for all is joined within God and God is joined within all. For God is everything, the Ancient of all Ancients and the most hidden of all that is hidden; who is without shape and yet with shape — with shape in order to sustain the universe, and without shape because God Itself is not subject to the Realm of Existence, having created it to begin with” (Zohar, Vol. 3, folio 228a).

        It is sad that so-called professors of the so-called Old Testament continue to present our rich and ancient Torah as some kind of naïve, literal writ, which then places Torah in direct conflict with Science. And many of our people consequently become confounded, not knowing which to subscribe to, Torah or Science. To them I say: theories such as that of the professor are laughable to both Science and Torah alike. It is a shame she didn’t bother consulting with the People of the Book regarding the Book of the People.

        There is no conflict between science and Torah. Nowhere does the Torah imply the universe was created in six days as we know it. After all, we measure time by our spin around the sun, and the sun does not appear on the scene until the fourth “day”! The thirteenth-century kabbalist, Rabbi Yitzchak of Acco theorized the age of the universe to be around 14 billion years old! (in his work Shoshan Yesod Olam). This was written into our tradition eight centuries before modern science arrived at a similar estimate! The ancient rabbis describe the universe as originating with God’s Light, which condensed to form matter (Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 30b and Vol. 2, folios 75b-76a; Midrash B’reisheet Rabbah 3:1). Or as Einstein would put it millennia later: E=MC2.

        Lucy and the recently discovered earlier human ancestor are wondrous discoveries. But do you not also see how each discovery claims to be THE earliest until another is discovered, and then another? And often these discoveries are rebuffed by further investigation but the public is not informed of such.  In the early 1900’s, for example, museums around the globe took turns boasting an exhibition of a stooped, ape-like man, dubbed the Neanderthal Man, I think, with the claim that the missing link in the evolution of humans from apes had finally been discovered. And as we know, this stooped, ape-like man was etched in stone in all of our school textbooks to this day. Soon after, another fossil was discovered, labeled Proconsul Africanus, and was immediately heralded by scientists as the progenitor of both apes and humans, and immediately entered into school textbooks as well. But to the dismay of both scientists and textbook publishers, in 1958 the Congress of Zoology in London declared that (1) the stooped ape-like man was really nothing more than the remains of a modern-type fellow affected by age and arthritis, and (2) the intriguing fossil Proconsul Africanus proved to be that of an ordinary ape! (Time Magazine, July 28, 1958). Have the textbooks been revised to reflect these and other such shifts in scientific discoveries? Of course not.

        Yet, unbeknownst to most of us, the ancient Jewish mystical tradition reminds us that the Genesis story of our Torah is not meant to necessarily imply the beginning of all beginnings but rather the beginning of this world as we know it, of humans as we know them, and so on, and that there was an earlier series of universes, of earths, of people and creatures unknown to us today — except perhaps from fossils. We call this the Torah of Shemitto’t — the cycles of times preceding those of Adam and Eve. According to many of the early Jewish mystics, there were full pre-Adamic human civilizations that had arisen long before homo sapiens walked the earth, and that they were eventually destroyed. As the third-century Rabbi Avahu taught: “God created worlds and destroyed them, created them and destroyed them, until this one came into being” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 3:14). The Talmud alludes to 974 generations that existed prior to Adam and Eve (Talmud Bavli, Chagigah 13b).

        Science and Judaism are not in conflict. Science and Torah are more in cahoots with one another than you might think. It is Scientism, that clashes with the notion of God and spirituality, not Science.

        ”I think that part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon that cannot be explained, even with unlimited time and money,” wrote scientist Dr. Robert Jastrow, who once served as the Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Activities. “There is a kind of religion in science…..This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under the conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual, when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications…..” In conclusion, he writes: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries” (published in The New York Times Magazine, June 25, 1978).

        Perhaps the 12th-century Rabbi Moshe ibn Maimon (Maimonides) said it best: “The primary source of confusion in our search for the meaning of the universe as a whole, or even of its parts, is rooted in our mistaken assumption that all of existence is for our sake alone. For if we examine our universe objectively, we will discover how very small a part of it we really are. The truth is, that all of humankind and all the species of life-forms on our earth are as nothing against the backdrop of vast ever-continuing cosmic existence” (Morah Nevuchim [Guide to the Perplexed], 3:12).

        Einstein once summed it up this way: “The most beautiful and most profound emotion one can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all true science” (quoted in Newsweek, July 23, 1979).

Amen!

Visit the website of Rabbi Gershon Winkler at: http://walkingstick.org/ 

or peruse more of his teachings on www.examiner.com/x-16088-Ancient-Jewish-Wisdom-Examiner