Hardcore Zen:

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Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth about Reality

© 2003 by Brad Warner
Published by: Wisdom Publications 206 pp.

not your grandmother’s zen book

You won’t find Hardcore Zen at the bookstore by looking for a cover with a pretty “Zen” picture. This one is about showing us what we don’t want to see; in keeping with that spirit, the cover features a toilet. Brad Warner uses many expressions of the kind which Captain Kirk described as “colorful metaphors” in Star Trek IV, some of which are really striking, “like a pit bull [on] a postman’s ass,” to quote Brad. This ain’t your grandma’s Zen book.

A friend asked me a couple of years ago what I found so valuable about Buddhism, and I replied that Buddhism seemed obsessed with reality. Brad seems to agree, and the difference between reality and “religion” is a running theme throughout the book.

Brad is a married American Zen priest living and teaching in Tokyo, whose day job is making Ultraman monster movies. In keeping with that theme of learning from reality, Brad teaches Zen from his own life, and the book is about one-third autobiography, and two-thirds hard-hitting Zen lessons. He discovered Zen while a punk-rock musician studying at Kent State University (at the same time I was there, BTW). From there he went to Japan, and found employment in making cheesy monster movies, a Soto Zen master, and a wife. Hmm, did I say hard-hitting? Isn’t Zen supposed to be something like a spacious room covered with floor cushions, perfumed with incense, New Age music rippling through the air, and a copy of The Art of Tea on the coffee table? No, it isn’t; It’s about discovering your true nature, and Brad’s mission is to shock us into realizing how desperately we avoid our reality, even with most of what we consider “spirituality.”

Hardcore Zen does have some flaws. Sometimes Brad seems to condemn whatever awakening experiences and traditions which are not like the Zen ideal. My suspicion is that although enlightenment is only one thing, all who experience it do so differently, and will use different terms to describe it.

a brilliant introduction

But if you can take an occasional jibe to your tradition, you’ll find that Warner Roshi is an excellent teacher. His explication of the Heart Sutra is the best I’ve ever read, and his chapter on the “The World of Demons” by itself is worth much more than the price of the entire book. Brad explains how practicing zazen lifts the lid on the things we’ve tried to hide from ourselves, and often reveals what we didn’t want to see: makyo (our psychological demons). This extremely helpful chapter gives excellent advice on how to cope when we start seeing ourselves as we really are instead of how we’ve told ourselves we are. Beyond that, this chapter also has the most lucid explanation of the “no-self” concept in Zen, which can be helpful even to those who have been practicing Zen for years.

The next chapter, “In My Next Life, I Want to Come Back as a Pair of Lucy Liu’s Panties” (I wonder what his wife thinks of that title!) follows, with the clearest explanation I’ve ever seen on how the Buddhist concept of rebirth differs significantly from the general idea of reincarnation. Brad shows how our concepts of the afterlife are usually far off the mark because we don’t understand this present life, which happens in the present moment.

“No Sex with Cantaloupes” (great chapter titles, huh?) is a delightful perspective on personal and social Buddhist morality through the ten training precepts, with an emphasis on its importance: “There are nitwits out there who’ll tell you Buddhism, particularly Zen Buddhism, isn’t concerned with morality, that it’s enlightenment that really counts. They’re wrong. Enlightenment is crap. Living morally and ethically is what really matters.”

That leads into another “hardcore” message: the waste of searching for “enlightenment.” Soon after I realized that enlightenment is real, and there actually are people who maintain a constant awareness of non-duality, I succumbed to the disease of enlightenment-seeking, and from which my own teacher had been trying to cure me. Something clicked in me when reading this:

Zazen isn’t about blissing out or going into an alpha brain-wave trance. It’s about facing who and what you really are, every single goddamn moment. And you aren’t bliss, I’ll tell you that right now. You’re a mess. We all are. But here’s the thing. That mess is itself enlightenment. You’ll eventually see that the “you” that’s a mess isn’t really “you” at all. But whether you notice your own enlightenment or not is entirely inconsequential. Whether you think of yourself as enlightened or not has nothing to do with the real state of affairs.

This is an extremely important point which all the thousands of enlightenment seekers in the world would do well to take to heart. The bottom line, Brad says, is that reality is real. Enlightenment isn’t escaping from it, but going into it, and finding the treasure inside every part and every moment. Hardcore Zen ends with a compelling appeal to practice zazen, the concentrated practice of looking at reality. Zazen can change us, and the world, from within, by destroying the self-interest that comes with the myth of self. He closes with some clear, simple instructions for beginning Zen meditation, written with the confidence of a master who has himself been transformed by this practice.

The Dark Night of the Soul

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by St. John of the Cross, adapted by Loreena McKinnitt

Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest

Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead.

(Chorus)

O, night thou was my guide!
O, night more loving than the rising sun!
O, night that joined the Lover to the beloved one!
Transforming each of them into the other.

Upon that misty night
In secrecy beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
Than that which burned as deeply in my heart.

That fire ’twas led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where He waited still
It was a place where no one else could come.

(Chorus)

Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely for Him
He fell into His sleep
beneath the cedars all my love I gave.

From o’er the fortress walls
The wind would brush His hair against His brow
And with its smoother hand
caressed my every sense it would allow.

(Chorus)

I lost my self to Him
And laid my face upon my Lover’s breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the morning’s mist became the light.
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair.

*Arranged and adapted by Loreena McKennitt, 1993

The Bourne Identity

Jon
poster

It’s certainly not a perfect adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s popular thriller, but director Doug Liman’s production of The Bourne Identity (with Matt Damon and Franka Potente) remains a decent yarn about a character who doesn’t know who he is. (It fails as a thriller, though, because the audience is always way ahead of the protagonist.) Yet it’s a great metaphor for a situation that applies to all of us.

Amnesia as the simple loss of personal identity is rare, but it remains a perennial subject in novels, film and television. Why? I suspect its universal appeal is because loss of identity is a universal phenomenon. After all, when you were born, you had no “identity.” You came from somewhere, but where? You were someone, but who? This was the amnesia with which we all came into the world.

Jason Bourne is a man in trouble. He is pulled out of the ocean by a fishing trawler, and treated for two bullet wounds in the back. Obviously someone wanted him dead, but who? He has no idea who his would-be killer is, and his problems are much more immediate—he can’t remember his own name, or anything about who he is. He begins investigating himself from external clues, and finds he owns a safe-deposit box full of wads of cash in different currencies, along with numerous passports, each with a different identity.

But within hours, you met your parents. Like the passports in Bourne’s safe-deposit box, they gave you a name, and a start in the world. As you continued to grow up with your family, they gave you your story, and that, they told you, was your identity. It told you what was right and wrong, which country was yours, and what beliefs were yours, and if you were “good” or “bad” as well.

Jason soon learns that he’s still in a fight for his life. He endeavors to find his real identity—not just a name, to stop the madness he’s trapped in. He learns that he is fluent in many languages, and has shocking skill as a deadly fighter. He finds a woman who comes to his aid, and depends on her to help him to stay alive, and piece the clues together.

Just receiving a name and a story from our family wasn’t satisfactory to most of us anymore than it was to Jason. After childhood, the time came when many of us refused to accept our identity from our parents. We tried for a while to find out who we were by ourselves and with our friends. We looked at our skills and activities, likes and dislikes, friends and enemies, and found some labels that seemed to fit for a while: jock, brain, stud, babe, bitch, fighter, wimp, winner, stoner.

But looking at his skills, actions, and tastes doesn’t give Jason his identity. He is still unable to determine why people everywhere are trying to kill him. However, in reading a newspaper article, he learns the vital truths about his past: he’s a CIA assassin, a professional killer. And the people who want him dead are none other than his former colleagues. (BTW, the audience has known this since almost the beginning, so this is not a spoiler!)

Like Jason, we look to our past story and our present conditions to know who we are. You were hired by the company five years ago, so you’re a worker for Acme Widgets. You have three kids, so you’re a mother or father. You love your spouse, so you’re a good husband or wife. You love your country, so you’re a patriot. You believe in God, so you’re a Christian or Muslim or something else.

I don't want to do this anymore!

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these roles. But are our roles and life-situations truly us ? Who are we when companies lay off employees, when families split, and when loved ones die? What remains? Who are we, independent of our circumstances?

Jason gets a glimpse of his true nature when he stops looking to his past and his role. In one wonderful moment in the film, he looks into his heart and says, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Spiritual teachers tell us that we need to stop taking our identities from others and find our “true nature.” Nothing external to us can be our true nature. How could it be? Jesus asked, “what would it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose their true self (soul)?” Zen masters ask their students “what was your original face, before your parents were born?” What were you before you were born? What will you be after you die? What is constant about you? If there is anything unchanging, it must be here, right now. Finding and living from your true nature—that constant, sacred core of your being—is the ultimate self-knowledge.

We come from that which was never born. Ours is “The Unborn Identity.” Around the world, we call our true source by many names—God, Father, Brahman, Nirvana, and others. But understanding it mentally is no more helpful than reading it as a name on a passport. For this task, don’t accept the quick labels and lengthy descriptions of your mind. Look within your heart. Ask “Who am I?” Keep asking until you know, and know from the Ground of your Being.

images © 2002 Universal Pictures

Pleasantville

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Eden Revisited

Pleasantville poster

https://www.frimmin.com/2004/07/05/the-matrix-saga/In film, the exploration of an unreal world is often a vehicle for exploring spiritual truths. This was most famously done by The Matrix Trilogy. However, a year before The Matrix appeared, a delightful fantasy named Pleasantville offered its own insights. Pleasantville is a wonderful story that entertains on more levels than a millionaire’s wedding cake, from being the simple fantasy of modern teens trapped in a 50s sitcom, to a marvelous retelling of the Garden of Eden which might provoke you to look again at the questions you learned to ignore when you first heard them in Sunday School.

Pleasantville tells the story of David, a nerdy high-school student (Tobey Maguire) obsessed with a “gee-whiz” 50’s sitcom called “Pleasantville” (perhaps inspired by Father Knows Best). When David gets into a fight with his sex-obsessed sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon), they both soon find themselves transported into the world of Pleasantville by a strange TV repairman (Don Knotts).

Trouble in Paradise

Once in Pleasantville, David and Jennifer find they are living the lives of the main characters, Bud and Mary Sue, complete with their characters’ families, friends, and after-school jobs. Although David is amused by living in his fantasy world, Jennifer is horrified to be trapped in a black-and-white world where no one knows a thing about sex. Not one to live by a script, she seduces her boyfriend, bringing free will and the “knowledge of good and evil,” into Pleasantville. And a rose turns red, bringing color into Pleasantville for the first time.

David is horrified that Jennifer has begun sabotaging this paradise, and warns that she’s “messing with their whole universe.” Jennifer’s answer is “maybe it needs to be messed with.”

And maybe it does. Pleasantville is a stagnant ideal of perfection—the weather forecast is always “high 72, low 72, another beautiful sunny day.” The high school basketball team never loses—in fact, the players never miss a shot. They actually can’t miss, even if they try! Firefighters have nothing to do but save cats, and mothers nothing but to cook, play bridge, and adore their families. But as Rabbi David Cooper writes, “without the potential for perfecting, perfection itself would be imperfect.” Pleasantvillers have no sin, no strife, no worries. There are no achievements because there are no challenges. There is no passion, and no love has ever been tried and proven. There is no “knowledge of good and evil”—all books are blank, all conversations vapid, and all roads lead nowhere.

Since the seed of the “knowledge of good and evil” has been planted, it begins to grow. The changes of growing awareness, of people being stretched beyond the roles of their Pleasantville characters, are shown as color. A girl’s tongue turns pink. A jukebox playing rock and roll has colored lights. A couple falls in love and cease being black and white.

picture of a couple in color

David himself changes Pleasantville, although only accidentally at first, by letting Mr. Johnson, his boss (Jeff Daniels) know that not everything has to be done the same way every time. Soon Johnson dreams of painting, and falls in love with Bud’s mother (Joan Allen). A turning point comes when David stops fighting knowledge, and starts spreading it. When he tells the stories of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, suddenly the books in the library fill up with words. And as he falls for Margaret (Marley Shelton), he becomes even more dedicated to helping the evolving awareness of the town, and he refuses being sent back by the repairman who wants to prevent further damage to the “reruns.”

But change comes with a price. Whether it’s the basketball team losing, rain and fire threatening the perfect environment, or a marriage collapsing, the changes seem most unpleasant for the many of Pleasantville’s citizens. Negative effects range from heartbreak, to riots, bigotry, and legal persecution.

New colors and new feelings

As Jennifer is somewhat of a serpent figure, introducing temptation, David becomes a Christ figure, fighting the bigotry and violence rising in Pleasantville, and urging the citizens to use their free will for beauty and good.

The Myth of Perfection

There’s a natural human tendency to resist change and long for a perfect place and time. In religion, we see it in the past in Eden, and in the future in Heaven. It’s just being here, now, that we can’t stand. This isn’t just a Christian phenomenon. Gnostics taught that the world is so evil that the Creator had to be a false god, and many in Eastern religions seek enlightenment in order to no longer be born into “conditioned existence”.

The genius of Pleasantville is that it gets us to look at the Eden story closely, and ask some serious questions: Was free will a mistake? Wouldn’t it have been better if Adam hadn’t sinned, and mankind stayed innocent? Wasn’t God ultimately to blame, since he knew everything that would happen?

Until I began studying Christian mystical theology, I, like most Christians, assumed the Fall was a bad thing. Even C.S. Lewis, in his paradise story, Perelandra, seemed to feel a Fall must be averted on the new world by any means possible. But an unprejudiced look at the Genesis story shows God felt otherwise: An omniscient God, knowing full well what would happen—disease, death, despair included—put two curious moral infants, completely ignorant of good and evil, in reach of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and said “don’t touch”. Just for good measure, he made sure the tree would be the central feature of the Garden and it would come complete with a cunning serpent to persuade them to eat the “forbidden” fruit.

We know what happened. and since then, we’re inclined to believe that the world is “lost”, that somehow things “got away” from God. We wonder if free will was a mistake and we mistrust it. We’re conditioned to not recognize that this was the divine plan all along.

The night I joined the Catholic Church, I remembered being surprised by the words of the Exultet, the great Easter Vigil hymn that proclaims:

O happy fault! O necessary sin of Adam,
that gained for us so great a Redeemer!

This idea is called the felix culpa (happy fault), that Adam is to be thanked for his sin bringing the divine light of Christ to the world. In C. S. Lewis’ science-fiction novel, Perelandra, the Fall is averted on that world, but there is a mention that “the greater thing” cannot happen there. Without this fall from pure innocence, there can be no redemption. Recognizing this upholds a radiant faith, that not now, not ever, and absolutely never has God lost nor will he lose control of this world, for even when we work outside his will, we cannot live outside his plan!

The fruit we deal with is not evil, but the knowledge of good and evil. As Pleasantville suggests, an innocent can have no real knowledge of good. The knowledge of good and evil is necessary to be able to choose the good. Otherwise, we are automatons, scripted characters living perfect, scripted lives. There’s a powerful metaphor for awakening here. We need to become conscious, aware of the fact that we are alive, aware of our awesome ability to choose, aware that God lives in us, and that we live, breathe, and have our being in him. Only then can we truly live as Jesus told us to, as cunning as serpents and as harmless as doves (Mt. 10:16).

Want to remember Adam and Eve this year?

St. Adam of Eden, March 10, Catholic;
Sts. Adam and Eve, December 24, Orthodox.Source: The Old Hermit’s Almanac, by Fr. Edward Hays

See also Dave Bruce’s excellent visual review!

Unfold Your Own Myth

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Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?
Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down
and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,
and opens a door to the other world.
Solomon cuts open a fish, and there’s a gold ring.
Omar storms in to kill the prophet
and leaves with blessings.
Chase a deer and end up everywhere!
An oyster opens his mouth to swallow one drop.
Now there’s a pearl.

A vagrant wanders empty ruins
Suddenly he’s wealthy.

But don’t be satisfied with stories,
how things have gone with others.
Unfold your own myth,
without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you. . . .

from The Essential Rumi,
© 1995, Coleman Barks, translator

The Power of Now

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a new classic

The Power of Now cover

We live in an explosion of spiritual writing. In addition to tons of recent books on Christian inspiration, there are breakthroughs in scholarship, archaeology, and an ocean of writings on meditation, the New Age, and Eastern religions. In the flood of information, it’s only natural to wonder—What do I read? What will help me with something I don’t already know? What will be forgotten in five years, and what will endure?

Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now is a superb book already being hailed as a classic. Although nothing changes about enlightenment itself, Tolle has a wonderful new gift for teaching it. Dramatic teachers of enlightenment have sometimes described their transformation by the Divine Presence in startling terms, saying “I am God,” and such, which might highlight the profundity of their transformation, but does little to help their disciples to understand the way in. Other teachers, such as Thich Nhat Hanh, say almost nothing about enlightenment per se, and instead concentrate almost exclusively on the way in, mindfulness. Tolle strikes a middle ground; although he places greater emphasis on the means, he does not play down the profundity of his enlightenment. And no wonder! Enlightenment actually saved his life. He was near the point of suicide when suddenly he came to the realization of the false self and the true self, and awoke the next morning to a world of wonder which he’s lived in for years now.

time is mind

Eckhart’s genius as a teacher lies in his insights which may never been as clearly worded as before. The core of Eckhart’s understanding of enlightenment is that the “mind” (in the sense of conventional thought, feelings, sense of separateness and ego) is inextricably tied up with time (past and future). The way to get out of the activity of mind—the false self—and into the awareness of true reality is to step out of time, into the Now.

The Now is not part of “time,” but is simply how eternity is experienced by finite beings. The time is now. It is always now; it always has been now, and always will be now. The concept of past and future is a function of the mind, recalling past Nows and anticipating future ones. The past gives a sense of identity, (and thus the sense of being separate from God), as well as resentment, regret, and other emotions. The future gives hope for better things in the future, as well as fear and anxiety. Both sides of time remove us from the present moment, which is the only place where we exist, and where God exists. Salvation can only happen in the Now.

a brilliant clarity

Are questions and objections starting to surface in your mind? Great. The entire book is arranged in a Q and A format, answering questions such as yours. And Tolle’s answers are always lucid, understanding, and genuine, with the conviction of someone who knows and is not just guessing. Furthermore, Tolle’s suggestions are practical. Although like many enlightened teachers before him, (Jesus, the Buddha, St. Francis, Peace Pilgrim) he lived homeless for some time after his transformation, he later returned to the world of work, and gaining insight on how to use the Power of Now in day-to-day life. A particularly insightful chapter is “Enlightened Relationships” which goes beyond all popular surface psychologizing, to the real issue, (almost never discussed), that underneath it all, we want others to do what they cannot: bring us into ultimate happiness, and they can’t, only realizing our own connection with the Ultimate directly can bring us into that level of fulfillment. Because of that, relationships need to be worked on from the standpoint of the present and being, but from projecting the other with impossible demands.

Another important aspect of Tolle’s contribution to the enlightenment literature is a neutral language. Eckhart occasionally uses phrases from Christian and Buddhist spirituality, but prefers to use neutral words which are as objective and clear as possible. For instance, he says “Being” and “the Unmanifested” instead of “God,” to avoid the problems caused by our conceptions of God interfering with encountering the Ground of Being. Phrases like “realizing your connection with Being” are much less likely to cause confusion than terms such as “becoming God,” from early Christian mysticism. The non-dramatic language helps us accept that enlightenment is obtainable, and its neutrality is equally accessible to people coming from different spiritual traditions, as well as those coming to spirituality for the first time.

portals into the unmanifested

Of course, simply reading The Power of Now won’t make you enlightened. As Tolle would say, only “intense presence” can do that. However, throughout the book, he gives numerous exercises to touching the Presence. (One of which, feeling the inner energy body, is very like S. K. Goenka’s vipassana method and quite similar to the practice in the short 13th-century Christian classic, The Book of Privy Counseling.) Another “portal” is to listen to the silences between sounds. Tolle gives numerous other examples of how to make everyday life, as well as meditation time, into spiritual practice, no matter where one is on their journey. His idea is to cultivate the conscious, awakened state of mind, and gradually make it your dominant state of being. Tolle knows that Awakening isn’t to be sought, but experienced. Now.

His insights are sometimes startling in their profundity. He has a succinct definition of enlightenment: “your natural state of felt oneness with Being.” His answer to whether love is a portal to the Unmanifested is, “No, it isn’t….Love isn’t a portal, it’s what comes through the portal into this world.” How true, since God is love.

Do you want to go beyond devotional spirituality? Do you want the Presence of God to transform you into That likeness? Read this book or listen to the audio version again and again, and practice the techniques continually. As of this writing, I think I’m getting a glimpse of the other shore.

Buddha

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by Karen Armstrong,
© 2001 by Karen Armstrong
Published by Penguin Books 205 pp.

an insightful biography

book cover

Karen Armstrong, the author of the best-sellers A History of God, The Battle for God, and Islam: A Short History, is known for her reputation as a lucid and insightful historian of Western religions, with a particular expertise on Islam. Leaving the interplay of monotheistic history might seem like a departure for her, but it really isn’t. Even in A History of God, Armstrong referred often to happenings in the Buddhist world to give an even wider perspective to Western religious history. Apparently, she has an inside connection; she dedicates this book to Lindsey Armstrong, her Buddhist sister.

There are many excellent biographies of the Buddha available, especially coming from a faith perspective, such as Thich Nhat Hahn’s Old Path, White Clouds. However, Armstrong predictably applies her historian’s ability to capture the sense of the time and presents Siddhatta Gotama (aka Siddhartha Gautama; Armstrong uses Pali forms consistently in this book) in the context of his time and culture. She begins with a frank assessment of the difficulty of a historian’s work in capturing Gotama’s life. Although the massive Pali canon bursts at the seams with his conversations and accounts of events in his life, they are conspicuously stylized for recitation, and they deliberately avoid revealing his personality. Furthermore, they were not committed to writing until hundreds of years after his death, so a historian must use them judiciously. Nevertheless, Armstrong dives into the accounts, separating the oldest accounts from later ones, and embellishments from history. Her style might seem somewhat repetitive to someone familiar with Buddhism, but she wants to build a clear understanding with a reader who knows nothing on the subject. Generally, her style is clear and fresh, only occasionally does her perspective get in the way, for instance, in psychologizing Mara the tempter’s appearance as Buddha’s subconscious “shadow.”

looking around the buddha

Armstrong’s greatest accomplishment here is in looking around the Buddha to give the reader a sense of the social and political situation in upper Ganges basin, the family life of a prince of a major tribe, and the interweaving threads of his family and companions throughout his life. For instance, we find that becoming a sanyasin, a renunciate monk, was not at all uncommon. Armstrong shows us that thousands of young people throughout the region were sick of the structure of their society and resolved to “go forth” as renunciates, rebelling against a world-system that seemed evil and meaningless by dedicating themselves to finding the key to total liberation from it. For them, total liberation meant never having to return to this realm where ultimately sickness and death prevail. So pervasive was the dissatisfaction with the state of things, that Armstrong says these mendicant monks were seen as “heroic pioneers” and were “honored as rebels” by society as a whole.

The account of the six years between Gotama’s “going forth” to becoming the enlightened one is particularly fascinating. We learn surprisingly specific information of the teachers he had, the philosophies they upheld, the disciplines he practiced, and why he ultimately found all of them lacking. From there, we learn of his dedication to the practice of mindfulness, the discovery of the Eightfold Path, and his enlightenment.

Much Buddhist writing is simply dreary. Unenlightened Buddhists not only lack the experience which they seek, but they may not have the environment of joyous enlightenment around them to fuel their quest with joy. Non-Buddhists who write on Buddhism routinely misinterpret vital but difficult concepts such as nirvana, anicca, and anatta, sometimes even believing them to signify a quest for annihilation! (Amazing the persistence of such ignorance.) Armstrong is the first writer I’ve come across who successfully communicates the incredible joy the Buddha radiated, which drew tens of thousands of people to his radical way of life. People saw something passionate and compelling in him! In short, this book will certainly give readers new insight into the Buddha, and might give many new insight into Buddhism itself.

The Lord of the Rings

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The Mythical Journey

When thinking about the spirituality of The Lord of the Rings, it’s important to keep in mind that Tolkien explicitly stated it is not an allegory, a story with a unequivocal symbolic meaning. Rather, LOTR is a myth, a story with a wealth of symbols, more of a flashlight than a map. Here are some of my thoughts about some of its key symbols, and their significance for those on the mystical path.

Above all else, LOTR is a story about the journey. Our journey is filled with grace, light, peace, and hope—the spiritual path is easy—(except for when it’s not). The Lord of the Rings presents the path as shared struggle. It’s a trek from the blissful, peaceful land called The Shire (symbolic of our home in God) to battle the forces (mostly spiritual) which are seeking to dominate Middle Earth with their lust for power.

Here, absolute power can be gained through the One Ring. This ring has its roots in Plato’s Republic, which describes a ring that could be used to render the wearer invisible and visible at will. Boromir, a prince of Middle Earth, who repeatedly becomes seduced by the Ring’s strange temptation, shows the particular situation of leaders regarding power. The temptation is to think that with more power, more good can be accomplished. But history shows that fighting wars to exert power over an enemy seldom leads to lasting peace. No exertion of power can change the spirit. Plato and Tolkien both came to the conclusion that the Ring’s power would certainly be used for evil, corrupting even the best people despite their initial intentions, and so the wisest of the free peoples of Middle Earth refuse the Ring.

But the question remains “is there something wrong with power itself?” After all, can’t power be used for good? Certainly, but the ego wants power to change things to suit itself, catering to its fears, attachments, pride, and indifference to the spirit and the needs of the world. True spiritual power comes from humility, which is to say, by not seeking it at all. More than most tales, LOTR depicts the internal part of the struggle as well as the external—Frodo’s struggle is less against those who are trying to seize the Ring, and more against his own weakness against temptation. Our journey is a struggle to overcome our own ego, with its desire for power and control.

Another compelling symbol is the hero. It isn’t an immortal elf-lord who must destroy the Ring, but a frightened, mortal, little hobbit. And in our lives, instead of waving his hand over the earth and vanquishing sin and temptation, God entrusts us frightened, mortal, little creatures to be her hands and feet in the world, and build the Kingdom of love. And through it all, we must consistently refuse the temptation to build this Kingdom by force. The Kingdom of God is love, and comes only through Kingdom living, living by love.

Another question that comes up frequently is if there is a Christ figure in LOTR. The simple answer is no, there are several Christ figures in LOTR. Arwen prays that all of the grace she has may go to healing another. Like Christ, Gandalf and Aragorn make sacrifice themselves to help his friends, while battling the forces of darkness. And Frodo follows a call away from a pleasant life at home into danger and ever-greater suffering on behalf of the Shire and Middle-Earth. It is a deep teaching of Christianity that although there is one Lord, there are many Christs.

Great myths to continue to speak to us in changing ways even in changing circumstances. What is the Ring I’m carrying? Who are my friends in the Fellowship? Am I willing to “unmake” the Ring by surrendering my ego?

The epic

Every twenty years or so, an epic movie or series comes along that inspires a generation. I’m thinking of Gone with the Wind in the ’30s, Ben-Hur in the ’50s, the first Star Wars trilogy in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and now the Lord of the Rings at the beginning of the 21st century. It is that good. The script (by Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, and director Peter Jackson) took what must be some of the most intimidating material there is, and interprets it brilliantly. Jackson avoids the mistake Chris Columbus made with the first two Harry Potter films of filming whole scenes literally, and instead reshapes the whole vast arc of the myth into a moving and exciting drama, comprehensible for a newcomer to the tale, while not compromising the sense of the richness of Middle-Earth lore.

What is most impressive is that Jackson’s Lord of the Rings not only succeeds, but in my mind surpasses Tolkien’s masterwork. Whereas Tolkien could be somewhat impersonal and meandering, Jackson makes this a compelling character-driven saga with a brilliant sense of dramatic pacing. There is less of “the Road going ever on and on,” and more of a band of very vulnerable and fallible people weighted by a terrible mission. The sense of the Ring’s sheer evil, and the irresistibility of its temptation is brought home far more powerfully than in the book. So is the tragedy of the sacrifices that the characters are called upon to make: Bilbo’s sorrow for leaving and burdening Frodo with the Ring’s evil; Gandalf, like Christ, laying down his life for his friends, and perhaps most of all, Boromir’s death in battle, which seldom leaves a dry eye in the theater.

In fact, every change that Jackson makes seems to be a change for the better—when Frodo is wounded, we know the extent of his danger, and the suspense is powerful somehow even on the third viewing. In the book, he just seemed to be vaguely ill, and only after he was completely healed, was the true danger he was in revealed offhandedly. The pacing and dramatic logic is vastly superior. In the book, seventeen years(!) elapse before Gandalf returns to tell Frodo that the Ring must leave the Shire immediately. Much more logically, the film has Gandalf rushing back after a brief, single-pointed mission to research the truth of the One Ring, a focus on immediacy and urgency that permeates the film. There is also an omniscient point-of-view now, which allows cross-cutting between the Fellowship and Saruman.

Language and dialogue are also more natural. Few lines come from the book unaltered, so middle-class hobbits and warrior men no longer sound like British professors. The Elvish language of Sindarin is used subtly and beautifully in those communities. Aragorn and Arwen make their tryst speaking in the beautiful language of the elves.

In the book, battle was usually described in one or two undramatic paragraphs. Not so here. Although there’s no gore, battle is awful and terrifying, a manifestation of the evil that has infected the world, as indeed it is in our world as well. There are no cheery Star Wars-like dogfights on the Death Star here. Warriors are brave because they have the resolve to face their fear, not because they’re nonchalant or reckless.

And there is beauty. I’d say LOTR is worth seeing at full price simply for the majestic New Zealand scenery alone—fjords, meadows, rivers, and breathtaking mountains. The warm hominess of the Shire is so pleasant that you can easily understand why hobbits are loath to leave their beautiful country. And the elegance of Rivendell and the haunting radiance of Lothlorien at night are superb, reminiscent of the artwork of Arthur Rackham in his Wagnerian Ring cycle illustrations.

The casting is perfect. Elijah Wood’s strangely huge eyes perfectly express the awful sense of burden and fear that Frodo carries. Ian McKellen brings Gandalf’s heart and wisdom to life. Billy Boyd plays Pippin as the center of the comic relief with a charming naivety. Ian Holm brings forth Bilbo as the curmudgeonly but deeply loving old man who’s pondering the meaning of his life as he nears its end. Orlando Bloom plays the elf Legolas with an constant and unselfconscious dignity and grace that befits the immortal race of Middle Earth, and Liv Tyler presents Lady Arwen with power, tenderness, love, and beauty.

The photography is awesome. Most amazing of all is that the hobbits—all played by fully grown men—never seem to be over four feet tall, whether they are sitting, walking, or standing, alone or with humans, or the even taller elves. Throughout, close-ups and long shots are used ingeniously to involve us with the characters in their quest. Effects donot overwhelm this story—they serve it, brilliantly and judiciously—the emphasis is always upon the characters.

It is reported that at the end of his life, St. Thomas Aquinas said, “All that I have written is but straw compared to that which I have seen.” I believe Tolkien might have felt the same way about the massive mythical world that dominated his creative life. Thanks to Peter Jackson and the thousands of others who partook in this effort, I think we can come closer to seeing what Tolkien saw.Movie stills © 2001 New Line Cinema Productions Inc.

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ

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the healing of mother earth and the birth of a global renaissance

©1988 by Matthew Fox
Published by: HarperCollins, 278 pp.

tying it all together

When I encountered this book in the late 80s, I knew that God was leading me to a different kind of faith than I had encountered in my churches. I had read several other books which began pointing me into this wonderful direction of the Wild Things of God. Walking on Water, by Madeleine L’Engle, was the book that let me know that there was a more holistic, deeper way of being Christian, The Mustard Seed Conspiracy by Tom Sine showed me that it was something which involved action and justice, and Richard Foster’s The Celebration of Discipline revealed that it had been growing throughout Church history. But this one tied it all together, and gave a name to the thing which had been tugging at my soul for several years: mysticism.

When I say this book “ties it all together,” I’m making an understatement. It’s almost easier to describe what The Coming of the Cosmic Christ is not about, for Fox relates this cosmic Christian perspective to everything. Fox, a Dominican Catholic priest at the time of its writing (now Episcopalian), became uniquely prepared to write this book through his previous works. His earlier books ranged from his translations and commentaries on the wild mysticism of Meister Eckhart (Passion for Creation) and St. Thomas Aquinas (Sheer Joy) to his revelation of compassion as the central theme of Biblical Christianity (A Spirituality Named Compassion), and his treatment of the four essential paths of Christian mysticism in Original Blessing. Passion for Creation (originally titled Breakthrough) was called “the most important book on mysticism in 500 years,” by one writer, and few who have read this groundbreaking work would quickly disagree. Yet The Coming of the Cosmic Christ is the one almost certainly to be remembered as his masterpiece.

the death of compassion

Fox divides the book into five sections, beginning with a vivid image which came to him in a dream: “Your mother is dying.” Using this image, he examines how Compassion is dying as seen by all contemporary crises throughout the world: Mother Earth is dying, hope is dying, the youth are dying, and native peoples, cultures, religions, and wisdom are dying. The news is sobering. Fox pulls no punches on summarizing the world-wide extent of social decay, environmental destruction, political oppression, the devastating tolls of wars and million-dollar-a-minute military spending, religious intolerance, and increasing despair. However, he reminds us that although compassion may be dying, it is not dead! There is still hope, and it is ours to bring to the world.

the answer of authentic mysticism

In the second section he examines what mysticism is, and what it isn’t. Fox shows mysticism as something cosmological, showing the place of the person within all creation, and believes that when true cosmology, true awareness of one’s place in the Universe is absent, persons and cultures will often substitute “pseudo-mysticisms” to fill the void, such as fundamentalisms (of any religion or ideology), militarism, alcoholism, and the brain-numbing worship of popular celebrities. He further shows how Jesus embodies all the characteristics of a true mystic, and is the founder of Christian mysticism.

The third section, titled “The Quest for the Cosmic Christ,” is an inspirational survey of the mystical tradition from the Bible, through Christ and the apostles, through the Church Fathers, the medieval mystics, up to modern-day mystics. This “Cosmic Christ” is not “another Christ,” but simply the living Christ, the compassionate Word, rooted in Jesus, and living today.

The fourth section shows the suffering of Christ continuing in the suffering of the poor, the victims of war and greed, and the sufferings of Mother Earth. They too are Christ, since Christ is the One “in whom all things hold together,” and Jesus identifies himself with “the least of these” on earth.

a vision of the second coming

The fifth and final section is by far the longest. Titled “A Vision of the Second Coming: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance,” this is a manifesto of social mysticism. Fox believes that true mysticism is not, and cannot be, a private affair. It is by nature redemptive, as Christ is, and so we must become Christ, enacting the resurrection of the living Cosmic Christ in our beings and then our actions, to transform society and bring healing to all its suffering, broken parts through love, imagination, peacemaking, and environmental, moral, and social justice. Fox shows, with conviction and enthusiasm, how restoring the mystical mind of compassion (the Christian work of love) can bring a global renaissance to the entire world, including every aspect of society, from religion to sexuality, from peace-making and disarmament to mentoring the young. Remaking the world will require unparalleled creativity. Fox says: “The living cosmology ushered in by the Cosmic Christ will do more than redeem creativity itself; it will propose creativity as a moral virtue—indeed as the most important moral virtue of the upcoming civilization“. Fox urges us to begin a great work, the same great work that Jesus challenged us to 2000 years ago: to live and build the divine Kingdom.

This book is almost certainly the most comprehensive on what a modern mystical Christian worldview can be, and one of the most comprehensive books I’ve seen on anything, period. There are plenty of books on the trends of evil in this world system, plenty of calls for peacemaking, plenty of appeals for spiritual renewal, but Cosmic Christ addresses all these issues and more, with information, insight, and inspiration.

That said, this really isn’t an introduction to the mystical path. For one thing, it’s not an introductory book, but a scholarly examination (with hundreds of footnotes) of the need for a radical change through the world. Secondly, Fox never discusses the personal entrance into the mystic adventure. Too often, he makes it sound like mysticism is another world-view, rather than the transformative encounter with divine Reality. He never mentions meditation or contemplation, and he is quite vague on how exactly to be changed in order to change the world. But this is a different kind of mystical writing: shouting like a prophet for us to embrace a social, global mysticism through action and love. Fox’s courage and genius in proclaiming the urgency of following Jesus’ teachings and building his Kingdom of compassion is beyond inspirational. Simply put, this book changed my life.

Centering Prayer:

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Renewing an Ancient Christian Prayer Form

by M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.
©1980 by Cistercian Abbey of Spencer, Inc.
An Image Book, published by Doubleday, 254 pp.

an introduction and guide

Father Pennington builds upon the spiritual practice of The Cloud of Unknowing, and makes it not only perfectly understandable, but irresistible. He starts off from a place to which none of the other classics (at least which I’ve read) on contemplative prayer ever went, a historical overview on contemplation. He briefly recounts how strains of silent prayer, or contemplative prayer, developed and intermingled from the “Desert Fathers,” the earliest Christian monastic tradition, the lectio-meditatio-oratio-contemplatio tradition of later Western monasteries, the “Jesus Prayer” and hesychast traditions of Eastern Christianity, the Cloud of Unknowing, up to the Carmelite saints of prayer, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. He also gives an overview of how these traditions continued into modern times, and how growing awareness of Eastern methods of meditation increased interest in Christian meditation to the Christian laity everywhere. This of course, is all preliminary, but interesting.

Next is the presentation of “Centering Prayer,” what he calls a new “packaging” of contemplative prayer. It’s the approach of The Cloud of Unknowing, but distilled into three simple “rules.”

Rule One: At the beginning of the Prayer, we take a minute or two to quiet down and then move in faith to God dwelling in our depths; and at the end of the prayer we take several minutes to come out, mentally praying the “Our Father” or some other prayer.

Rule Two: After resting for a bit in the center in faith-full love, we take a single, simple word that expresses this response and begin to let it repeat itself within.

Rule Three: Whenever in the course of the Prayer we become aware of anything else, we simply gently return to the Presence by use of the prayer word.

Pennington’s rules for centering prayer are helpful and brief. I found that I was soon doing centering prayer, rather than just thinking about doing it. Nevertheless, there are many challenges: distracting thoughts, consistency of practice, fitting centering prayer into the larger whole of one’s day-to-day living, service, and the larger whole of one’s spiritual life, for instance. The majority of the pages here are about these concerns—this is a how-to book for busy Christian laypeople, and Pennington beautifully addresses all of these items and more.

Fr. Pennington writes from the perspective of having given workshops and retreats on centering prayer for several years, with experience of helping thousands of people overcome these obstacles. Furthermore, he also brings his perspective as a religious priest, with years of ongoing training in daily deep prayer. The result is a how-to book, describing a practical method for the most elusive of all spiritual disciplines.

ancient and modern voices

Yet on my second reading of Centering Prayer, I find I prefer The Cloud for its emphasis that the true method of contemplation is essentially love, far more than it is a prayer word. There is an analytical tone to the book, which is helpful in some respects, but it seems to me now to quench the infectiously loving and passionate spirit of contemplation as exemplified by the author of The Cloud. The Cloud is far more open, far more passionate, far more joyful, and at least after a decent time of becoming familiar with this “contemplative work of love,” more helpful. And as one continues on the path, Privy Counseling may well become the most treasured of all three of these works.

However, I’d urge anyone interested in Christian meditation to read both modern books like Centering Prayer or Open Mind, Open Heart, and classics such as The Cloud and Privy Counsel. Also, check out the Centering Prayer website at http://www.centeringprayer.com.