What If?

What if?
What if I put all the books away?
Put all the experts away . . .
Put all the traditions and philosophies and religions away for a day . . .

And merely sat with my laptop and wrote what emerged . . .

Is this of any more benefit than reading the Talmud or Soloveitchik or Levinas or the Lam Rim or the Imitation of Christ or St. Therese of Lisieux or Deleuze or Olson or Wilber or Kazantzakis or whomever and whatever I have studied and turned to these last thirty years to better understand myself, the world, God, others and the wondrous dance that takes place between them all.

Clearly, there is clarity and direction that comes from the focus on one area of study, one tradition, one practice, one perspective – one system that can order my life from morning to night, birth to death and help me learn to care for the other and recognize my role in all that occurs . . . this understanding settles me, offers me peace, gives me place in the world and an avenue to help and support and teach others.

Yet, I have resisted that One Path, One System, One Taste – and that has created an isolation and a loneliness and an inability to find avenues to contribute or even explain what the goal of this searching and reading and thinking is for.

What is the goal? How am I growing? I cannot find answers for those questions. I might want to say – “I am more peaceful and understanding with others,” yet that has never been a problem, but instead my nature. Another answer, “I can now talk about and discuss the Talmud and been in dialog (through reading) with a tradition that spans thousands of years.” And so what – are you continuing to study, can you teach, how does that change you in your life here when you are not Jewish?

As I write these words I think that it seems like the Talmud itself tries to justify its study itself – there is a tradition that the study of Talmud is more important than all other commandments and is even better than the World to Come – AND that the goal of all creation is the lone individual with his (or her in modern times) Gemara struggling to define and create their method of observance. IT IS THE GOAL – STUDY IS THE GOAL. Is there any wonder why I am attracted to this . . . but not being Jewish and being over forty years behind the real Talmud scholars and being unable to read the original Hebrew and Aramaic – doesn’t all that say – Why would you do that? God did not command you – you are not Jewish – only the Jews are commanded to study Talmud. If you are serious, convert. If not, move on . . .

But perhaps all systems have answers within them that give the individual within reasons and answers to stay within?

• It is God’s will that Jesus brought with him a message of faith, hope and charity and following this narrow path is the road to salvation.

• The key to enlightenment for you and all sentient beings is understanding the nature of karma and emptiness without that understanding one is trapped, all are trapped in a realm of suffering caused by ignorance, hatred and attachment.

• The study of Talmud helps the individual understand that they are commanded and that every action and interaction has infinite repercussions, and so studying in order to understand those commands and how they effect our daily lives is the greatest commandment of all.

• The AQAL, second-tier system of Ken Wilber explains everything and only if more and more people begin to understand it will the world become a more peaceful place.

• Levinas’s view of the other is so radical that when one understands it and lives it then we will have the justice and will finally walk in the ways of God.

• The rhizomatic nature of reality urges us to give up the fascisms of power and authority that come from systems and to connect to all and everything without judgment or criticism, and through these lines of movement and actions we will create the new and the new will continue to create and create and create infinitely.

• It is the poet that can stand outside and within the flow of life and help others see and experience that flow in new ways. The poet as guide, as prophet, whose words create reality anew.

These and so many other perspectives fill my head and do not help me put the next word down on this screen. Adding more words to any of these views, when there are so many, so many words already there (most unheard and uncared for) – why add to this vast pile of words and books and articles and web pages and conferences? There are experts in every one of these fields who have spent a lifetime understanding it and living it and explaining it – they have used that viewpoint to find their own peace, their own direction, their own answers and now are doing everything they can to tell the world.

Where does this leave me? Do I self-confidently assume that like the person in that famous painting I have stood up and seen behind the dome of the sky, beyond all these systems, even the system of no systems? And with these eyes I now can see that I am right that these viewpoints are simply all competing for the chance to explain it all, to advocate their version, in order that their followers and their experts will be right and have the peace and power that comes with having the answers and having others follow and validate your thinking.

Shouldn’t we choose one, maybe any one of these perspectives and go with it? A postmodern, integral, poetic version of any of these will ensure that we care for each other, care for the earth and understand what is wanted from us as we live our lives each day. Wouldn’t that be a gift to have such clarity and togetherness and reassurance that we are traveling along a path together with the entire world?

But being true postmoderns we can’t have anything so totalizing or systematic, we all know that it will lead to fascism and thought police. Or is this postmodern perspective itself a fascism and totalizing viewpoint all by itself?

So, where are we left? Back to the blank screen, the next moment. Perhaps I have to agree with Walker Percy when he writes, “I suppose I would prefer to describe it [Percy’s Catholic existentialism] as a certain view of man, an anthropology. If you like; of man as wayfarer, in a rather conscious contrast to prevailing views of man as organism, as encultured creature, as consumer, Marxist, as subject to such-and-such a scientific or psychological understanding-all of which he is, but not entirely. It is the ‘not entirely’ I’m interested in -- like the man Kierkegaard described who read Hegel, understood himself and the universe perfectly by noon, but then had the problem of living out the rest of the day” Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land, p. 375 (my emphasis).

As I pray this morning

As I pray this morning I am thankful for all the ways God has given me to explore and love this world . . . whether it is through the words of the Divine Office this morning that speak of Jews and the necessity to flow God’s commandment or its speaking of the centrality of Jesus’ message to all believers of all faiths whom the Church recognizes as also desiring to know and love God through their own traditions and practices.

But what is fascinating is that while I had “planned” last night to study the Talmud this morning – it clearly feels too legalistic and dry at this moment AND I also recognize how drawn I am to the latest photo I have on my desktop – a photo of the Pope in prayer . . .

Yet, at the same time my fertile mind also springs to Deleuze and Berman who look at all these traditions that offer salvation in so many flavors and creations of Power and Control and Fear that reject the very Paradoxical Nature of Life that flows and flows and flows making new, unthinkable connections every where and every moment – new possibilities of prayer and surrender and obedience and creativity within the flow that is life – one moment it leads us in one direction and the next drives us in another – when we embrace this flow, these drives . . . we embrace life . . . and we can embrace others (all others) who flow along with us, because as we breathe in this truth, we breathe in the fact that we are all simply part of these waves – and yet waves are all there is . . .

By embracing our frailty, our fragility, or multi-faceted, infinitely-faceted nature, which is the universe, we can breathe in the flux that is life.

Yet, is it only flux? Is all equal? Is all the same? Is all neither good or bad? This view it seems to me is true at only such a high level of perspective that we no longer are able to live within the details, the rich details of our lives – the details of the moment that makes life so wondrous – we cannot rise too high to see only the waves – we must also be able to dive down deep and recognize the life below and nurture that life that honors life and strives to increase and honor the flow that we each is a part and the whole of . . .

Listening as calling

Days keep moving by – tragedies keep occurring – new lives, new deaths; every moment billions of opportunities, possibilities slip by . . . some lived, some forgotten . . . all foam on the sea.

Amidst this flow I search for something more permanent, more solid than this ever-changing sea of hype, sales and consumption . . . endless wants . . . endless desires . . . this car, this dress, this shoe, this PC, this song, this book, this meditation . . . Are they all simply continuous expressions of endless desire? Desire that cannot be satisfied until it rests in God (as Augustine said) or desires that rest only when one sees behind the force of ignorance that kindles the flames of desire, if they ever waver.

Yet, it is desire that keeps the world alive, moving, creating. My father and my wife’s father have both seemingly lost that desire and one can now only slowly watch as they sink very slowly towards death – without desire why live?

Is it then good desires that are necessary? Desires that create, free, energize others to create more life, more possibility? If so, don’t we owe a pledge of gratitude to the creators of all the information we are bombarded with every day – from Hollywood, to sports, to politics, to blogs, to the internet, to . . .

This incessant stream that cannot be stopped . . . should we say a prayer and be grateful?

OR is the goal (perhaps A goal) to be able to stop this incessant search driven by desire; and dwell in the ever full moment with appreciation – wanting nothing more than “just this” as the Zen monk Ryokan says while playing ball with the children in the village . . .

So many brilliant thinkers out there now and from the past . . . thinking so hard and with so many answers and yet . . .

What is my spot? my role? my gift? my calling?

Not as a leading thinker delineating the best solution to the latest world problem . . . or criticizing actions of the government or corporations . . .

Not as an artist creating images or stories that expand, challenge, transform the audience . . .

Not as a priest/rabbi/monk/lama teaching their flock the pathway to God or enlightenment – toward emptiness, bodhichitta, union with God . . .

But perhaps as a LISTENER, who hears these many voices (not all, of course, that is why we need many, many listeners) and strives to appreciate their individual message, their answer, their view in order to ensure that these diverse views are embraced at least for a moment – not all views can be embraced, of course, since some only strive to separate and dominate . . . yet they still must be heard . . . yet, to listen most carefully to those that strive to create, to enhance, to love this world . . .

Immediately I wonder – what good does that do? What can a listener do? They are so passive! Perhaps a listener can hear new things unheard even by the speaker, by the creator, by each person so caught up in the midst of their lives . . .

listening anew . . .
listening for the new . . .

And I can listen anywhere, to anything and strive to find that novelty, that breath of freshness that each of us brings to the world.

Is this my calling, my possibility? If so, what is the discipline, what must I do next?

Perhaps the message from this calling of listening is that everyone, even everything, every moment has something to teach me, if I listen to each moment with enough warmth and love and interest – like Milarepa sitting on the meditation pillow with his hand to his ear – if I listen with that level of intensity I am sure I will hear something new, I will learn something from every encounter, and in turn perhaps the speaker, the communicator, the writer, who is actually listened to will in turn be transformed as well . . .

from OUT OF THE WHIRLWIND

Either the religious experience flows from a heart filled to the brim with love of God, and from a soul stirred to its inmost roots, or it is non-existent and artificially produced.

The way of every [person] to God must not differ from the trail along which Abraham moved toward his destiny, which had to be blazed through the wilderness of a brute and nonsensical existence. The experience is attained at the cost of doubts and a restless life, searching and examining, striving and pursuing—and not finding; of frustrating efforts and almost hopeless waiting; of grappling with oneself and everybody else; of exploring a starlit and moonlit sky and watching the majesty of sunsets and sunrises, the beauty of birth and also the ugliness of death and destruction; of trying to penetrate behind the mechanical surface of the cosmic occurrence and failing to discover any intelligible order in this drama; of winning and losing and reaching out again; of being able to put on a repeat performance of something which I had and lost; of asking questions and not finding answers; of ascending the high mount like Moses and falling back into the abyss, shattering everything one has received, and yet pulling oneself out of the depths of misery and trying to climb up the mountain again with two new stone tablets.


Out of the Whirlwind, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, p. 171 (my emphasis)