The Zen Trinity...

Lately I've been on a Zen kick.  The Zen/Dao thing has been a constant in my life.  In many ways I am a Daoist Christian.  My Bible is marked at certain passages (especially in Ecclesiastes) with a 'DDJ' indicating parallels with the Dao De Jing.  It was in the context of the Dao that my spiritual awakening first began. 

Anyhow, there are a series of 'comic' books of Chinese philosophy by illustrator Tsai Chih Chung and translated by Brian Bruya that are brilliant in their simplicity.  They are, ironically enough, very Zen.  One of them, Zen Speaks, was, aside from the Dao De Jing, my first book on Zen/Daoism.  It's a first edition and, though a bit beat up, I still leaf through it on a regular basis. 

I find that Zen provides some penetrating insight into Christian theology without having to compromise.  In fact, in meditating upon this in church today I realized that it is possible to parallel the Trinity in Zen thought.  Granted, there is the "personal" or "relationship" element in Christian theology that is lacking in Zen.  In Zen there is no "person" with Whom to have a relationship as in Christian theology.

However, there is a parallel that can be made.  Instead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in Zen there is the One, the Sage (or, perhaps, Mind) and the idea of 'emptiness' that is the essence of Zen practice.  In this emptiness is everything, the "insight" that comes in a flash causing us to act according to our original nature.  One who has reached this level of understanding is a Sage, persons who, over time, have become mythologized.  In the One is the origin of everything, from which everything flows.

This parallel is obviously sorely lacking in the person of Jesus but as Christians are to be Christ-like and Christ is a 'Sage' in the sense of acting according to his true nature, so too is the person who practices Zen attempting to be Sage-like in his actions, operating not according to self but acccording to 'emptiness' and thus his original nature.  The parallel is that a Christian in surrendering his everything allows the Holy Spirit to act through him, much like emptiness in Zen allows the person to operate in the manner of ziran (tzu jan), self-so or operating according to the way it is.

Again, this is not an exact parallel.  In Zen there is no purpose, no goal to achieve, no concern with accomplishing God's will or such "personal" notions.  These things, if operating in this emptiness, will occur naturally and thus according to the way they are supposed to be.  No higher purpose just the way it is.

I would, however, make the case that when we operate according to God's will we are acting in the way it is supposed to be.  This is the way it is.  All that means is that it is not forced, it is not polluted by the imposition of our will or selfish motive on our part.  It may not have the glory of attributing something to a personal God who we believe cares rather than the more impersonal approach in Zen.

Having walked these two paths in some parallel over the past fifteen years has enabled me in many ways to be open to Christian doctrine, especially when it comes to things (e.g. the Trinity) that don't at first make sense.  But by being open, empty if you will, I have come to a deeper understanding of the Trinity that is theologically correct. 

Zen is a mindset and one that might benefit many a Christian who tries to "force" his or herself to accept propositions that simply do not fit thus leading to a spiritual walk that is less than peaceful.  I wouldn't tag myself a Zen or Daoist Christian as a badge, no matter how much this may (or may not) be true, but I find nothing wrong with investigating other truth claims.

"But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good..." (1 Thessalonians 5:21, NASB) 

In context this probably applies to truth claims of Christian doctrine but expanding this beyond this particular context it easily extends toward any truth claim.

Time, Precious Time...

It is Memorial Day weekend and I do not work either job today. We have been working five ten-hour days at job one with the occasional Saturday as well. Add to that working midnights Friday and Saturday at job two and I log lots of hours on the clock, 74 hours last week for example. Believe me, I am grateful to be employed.

But half of my life that week was work. Factor in six to seven hours of sleep, an hour and a half a day of drive time and, for the week, about twenty hours of "free" time were left to eat and relax and do other things people living in suburbia do...

So no work this weekend. Eight hours of sleep. Time to relax and eat, do some personal errands, meet a friend for lunch and actually enjoy and appreciate a cup of coffee. With perfect Ohio weather today is a day to appreciate.

Time is a gift. And for the moment, each moment today, I am grateful. Grateful that we have food on the table, a roof over our heads, family in good health and freedom to think. Yes, today is a good day. Every day is a good day but it is crystal clear today.

Don't get me wrong, I learn to make the most of any situation. But there are some days, necessary days, when the realization of the gift of time is like breath in the lungs.

Before and after events...

We all have those moments where we measure time as before and after an event. Some are more significant than others. I'm not really talking about such things as having children, losing your virginity or even getting your driver's license.

No, I'm talking about things like dropping acid for the first time, the first time you heard music that ripped your soul out or various religious or spiritual experiences, perhaps being baptized or taking the shahada, those moments that changed the way you viewed the world.

I was fortunate enough to have one of those moments today, this one of a religious nature. Often they come in the strangest of ways and places. I haven't been doing anything overly "spiritual" as of late though I do believe in the Zen-like idea of being present as a form of spirituality, something I've always struggled with actually doing.

I have, however, been intensely focused on several daily facts of life: budgeting, doing the dishes and work, primarily the latter, the other two primarily focusing or grounding rituals. I currently work in a labor job, not exactly where I thought I'd be at 40 years old. However, the diversity of experience of my career path and, especially, the diversity of duties at my current occupation in a stamping and tool and die facility keeps it from being truly monotonous. And I'm grateful to be employed.

After a 25% wage cut several months ago, being taken from salary to hourly, the pendulum has swung and I've been reaping the benefits of an hourly wage as we've been working 10-hour days, five and six days a week for the past few weeks. Add to that an extra 16 to 24 hours at job two on the weekend, my weekly log has been ranging from 56 to 80 hours at work per week.

Between working, sleeping and eating there isn't time for too much else. It would seem that the most "spiritual" thing I do all week is an hour and a half at church once a week. However, as with most things, it is our attitude that determines what comes of a situation.

Recently, I've been running a laser cutter to make special parts for a project slated to start in the next few weeks. It takes upwards of three minutes per part to cut so after prepping I have roughly two minutes of dead time. I could sit and stare or watch the cutting or do nothing. As I learned a long time ago, always have reading material at your disposal. I often choose the longest line at the grocery store and pick up a magazine to read. Very Zen.

So I have on hand Henry Corbin's The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Seriously. I've been on a Henry Corbin kick lately; well, not lately, as I've immersed myself in his works more and more over the years. This isn't your mother's comparative religious studies. When you read his stuff you will really see how religious ideas are transmitted through history. His writing is dense and packs a whallop, ideas and concepts and terms coming at you at rapid speed, the kind of writing where one chapter can take you days to digest. The work is hard and requires effort but when that 'aha!' moment comes it borders on ecstasy.

Ecstasy. At work. So in between parts I'm reading this book and, having begun to make sense of his works after reading Cyclical Time and Ismaili Gnosis for about the fourth or fifth time, it is becoming more and more clear. I've tried to read Man of Light book before but it just didn't make sense. Suddenly, today, at work, running a laser machine, I began having one epiphany after another. Here, in this book, in words, is a clear exposition of where I've been but haven't been able to put into word. It was a moment, though certainly not in as glorious a setting, that paralleled another 'aha!' moment whereby everything changed.

To put it into words, of course, is a struggle. Over the past few years, as I've wrestled with the Jesus question, I've begun to have visions and ideas about who he is, one recurring them being that Jesus is who we are. He is a mirror into which we see ourselves and through which we see who God is. He is, in essence, our truest self. As we journey through life he is there, from the highest highs and the lowest lows, from heaven to hell, he is there, leading us on and up.

I can quote some Scripture that would seem to verify this view but for some reason the "sense" I get in the various churches we have attended is that worship of him is not this. The sense I get in church is that he is "other" than us, even though he lives in us through the Spirit, and our worship of him is because he is the Other. I get that and don't disagree. Yet I can't seem to shake the feeling that he is somehow who we truly are. He is that Figure we all seek.

He is to some degree the repository of all our hopes and dreams and ideas of perfection, of who and what truth is, the best of man accumulated into a corporate view of this Figure of Jesus. Yet he remains somehow objective and reflects back to us the truth of our attempts at projecting onto him our own views of truth.

And as a Figure he continues to grow in me. I can't help but think my trajectory is beginning to leave the traditional bounds of Christianity. This doesn't make me "mystical" (a tag that has become cliche and void of content) or somehow better or different than anyone. My biggest fear is to find myself immersed in the "all relgions are the same" stew of religious gobbledygook where Man is the measure of all things and I sound like I'm shlepping New Age Amway.

This is perhaps the reason why I'm drawn to those religious scholars where the fancy letters after their names, though they certainly have them, are not touted as somehow giving them clout. The intellectual rigor and 'spirit' that bursts forth from their words speaks for itself. Henry Corbin is one of those scholars. Read his works and then read many of modern apologetic or comparative religious works today and you will notice the difference. There really is no comparison.

Perhaps it is my addictive, obsessive self longing for unique, for attention, for "mine". But, truly, I want to know who he is. It is the fundamental question for a Christian. And many of the answers in today's Christian landscape lacks depth. This is perhaps why I have always been drawn to the study of other religious traditions.

I enjoy the church we attend. It's "earthy" and practical and simple. The core focus is love. This is not the wishy washy kind of love but the hard stuff, dying to self. However, while it helps balance out my overly analytical view of the world, it leaves my intellect longing. The simple "Jesus is the only way" approach doesn't mean much to me. If he is the only way, then, as Christians, the issue isn't about being right but displaying why. In the meantime, I still passionately study other faith traditions. It highlights what is unique (and not uniqe) to Christianity yet keeps my spiritual worldview broad. God's light shines in the strangest of places.

In reading Corbin today, it hit me hard. My leanings have become 'gnostic' in nature. My view is not uncommon and shares ground with the gnostics from all traditions through time. Corbin's Man of Light breaks down this Figure I've come to see in stunning detail. It came as a relief. The 'aha'!' moment was that in reading him he is explaining not only where I am but where I am going.

Stop and smell the roses...

Along with being a spiritual mutt, I have also been a career mutt. It has certainly been an adventure. In late 2004 I was hired as executive director of a local treasure, Stambaugh Auditorium. It is a magnificent structure. Never one for the spotlight, I was even interviewed for radio and had a photo spread in the local paper to put the facility back in the public eye.

I was working as a manager of an Aldi grocery when I saw the ad for the auditorium. I wasn't really looking and gave it a "what the hell" try. After three interviews with various members of a board of directors I somehow managed to get the job. I should have listened to my mother who asked: "Are you sure you can handle those people?" I thought she meant the celebrities with all their brown M&M riders (maybe that's where the brown M&M in my dream came from...). She meant the board of directors. Moms are wise.

The auditorium was built in 1929, long before speakers and amplification equipment. It is one of those rare venues where every seat is perfect and a whisper on stage can be heard in the back of the hall. But, with modernity, amplification comes with the territory. A set of JBL speakers had been placed in the hall but they weren't installed well and had been sitting unused for quite some time. A temporary hodgepodge of speakers acted as amplification and it was generally quite ugly and not very functional.

So, having talked to the stage manager who had been there for almost forty years, give or take, I learned that the JBL speakers should still be under warranty. A phone call and an appointment later, I met with a JBL rep. He wanted to hear how they sounded and asked if I had a CD. I happened to have Paul Oakenfold's Global Underground New York mix, a favorite of mine I used almost daily while stocking groceries at 5 a.m. at Aldi.

So I popped it in and moved it right to Junk Project's "Composure". Give it a listen. It is awesome.

Now imagine an empty concert hall, acoustically perfect and a set of rockin' JBL speakers. It was a magnificent experience. Not quite a rave but truly magical. The concert hall is the photo on top.

In my naivete I had visions of DJs performing on the stage, DJ as art form. Seems the board had visions of opera. We were certainly not a match. At the time of this appointment I was a sinking ship. I lasted 5 months and 31 days there, just enough so as not to collect unemployment. One of the board members with whom I clashed stepped down to take the position when I was gone. She didn't last six months either. Nor did the next director. I wonder what the problem was. Hmmm....

Upon reflection I realize that had my attitude been different, the result may have been different. But it was one of those positions where, within a few short weeks, I knew I was in the wrong place.

Having gotten to explore every nook and cranny in the building and listen to Oakey "live" and see the inner workings of concert promotion and set-up the adventure wore out rather quickly (and sitting through board meetings where board members almost, quite literally, threw temper tantrums was horrifying...).

Reminds me of a Zen story. This is from Zen Speaks: Shouts of Nothingness, a delightful but profound "comic" of Zen wisdom:

But it is still a really nice building and music (like the track above) sounds amazing in the hall.

My grandma's words would ring true: it all works out in the end.

Zen Christian connection...

Just musing on this at work today. I have plenty of time. Imagine putting a part on a machine press, pushing a button, taking the part off and putting it in a box and doing it over and over again for eight hours. The mind tends to drift. Fortunately, it drifts toward positive things.

My epiphany at the top of Yosemite Falls was in the context of immersion in the Dao De Jing. Not exactly Zen but I was well on my way.

I have healed in the context of the Christian path and was thinking about the similarity/difference. From my Christian point of view, I think of it as the light shining in darkness and exposing it, a bright light yielding insight and clarity that comes in a flash. Though I can't process the entirety of it, I "see" it.

In the context of the Dao or Zen, it isn't a light, as such, but a moment of insight and clarity that comes "in a flash." No light. It just is.

In Zen we find there is no "thing" there. It is a stripping away of the layers and layers and years and years of accumulation, of attachment and desires.

In Christianity there is some "thing" there and that "thing" is a Person. We might say we find some "one" there.

But is this 'person' merely a projection of our deepest needs and desires collectively? Is it personalizing the impersonal? Or is there a real person there to whom we conform?

Is this what makes people uncomfortable (or comfortable)?

In Christ, our nature is replaced, admittedly broken.

In Zen, there is no new nature, merely dusting off the original one. There is no admittance of broken. There is nothing to be separated from. There is no relationship.

So there is a point in which experience, at the depths of two traditions, seem to bare similarities. And yet there are differences. The two opposing poles of similarity and difference swirling around the strange attractor beyond which can only be experienced.