Buddha, S.J.

A saint for the East or the Portuguese expansion into the East?

2026-07-22T02:21:57.452+05:30

Originally posted May 21st, 2010

After many years of Jesuit training, I took as a matter of faith that Francis Xavier was the first multi-cultural saint, having spent 11 of his 46 short years in the East. Nothing could be farther from the truth. His mission was closely tied to the Portuguese colonization of India, begun in 1498 by Vasco da Gama. Xavier arrived in Goa on May 6th 1542, along with Portuguese explorers, seamen, soldiers, and merchants—the first or second wave of occupiers. As a Jesuit, he vowed to spread the gospel of Jesus, but he was so fully aligned with European/Portuguese plans to dominate the East that it creates a very messy picture. Pope John Paul the Second, of Blessed Memory, was not around to hound Jesuits who delved into politics, though the army of God five hundred years ago was firmly in the pocket of the colonial, military-industrial, slave-trading complex. The exact opposite of Bob Drinan or Fernando Cardenal Martínez.

The history of any revolution or period of innovation is hard to read. I am skeptical of any authorized version, particularly a story of the human and divine interacting. Though the Roman church and the Jesuits insist that Jesus came to save all humankind regardless of race, or language, or tradition, when I look at the cultural artifacts of Xavier's mission, the architecture and iconography, I see a different story.

Portuguese governance of the territories they occupied in India lasted from 1505 through 1947. After Gandhi, these scattered coastal enclaves, known as Portuguese India, or Goa in popular parlance, began to be taken over by India. The pace accelerated in 1954, when peaceful Satyagrahis' attempts at forcing the Portuguese to leave were brutally suppressed.

This postcard commemorates the Saint issued by Portuguese India in 1946, a year before Indian independence.

The following images are presented as evidence that Xavier was, and is still, a very European saint. The photographs are of Bom Jesu (1695 C.E.) and the Se Cathedral in Old Goa. (Photography by Garry Demarest.)

Xavier’s casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesu.

The nave of the Basilica of Bom Jesu

Close-up of the main altar in Bom Jesu

Another altar in Bom Jesu

Se Cathedral, Old Goa.

The nave of Se Cathedral.

Xavier is still part of the life of many Indian Christians, many generations removed from his appearance in Goa more than 450 years ago.

This is an older church in Old Goa that predates the current Basilica of 1695.

Roman Catholicism didn't completely conquer the hearts and minds of the local peoples. It is still India. Christianity can never be more than a competing cult.

The Creation of a European Saint in Baroque Art

Nicolas Poussin (1595-1664)

The Miracle of Saint Francis Xavier

Saint Francis Xavier by Andrea Pozo (1642-1709), lay brother of the Society of Jesus, 1701, Oil on canvas, Kiscelli Museum, Budapest.

Peter Paul Rubens 1617/1618  

This monumental painting was displayed alternately with The Miracles of St. Ignatius of Loyola on the high altar of Antwerp's Jesuit Church.  

St. Francis Xavier stands preaching to a crowd of people. Some of the miracles he performed as part of his missionary activity in Asia are vividly depicted, both as a testimony to the Counter-Reformation and as preparation for the beatification of St. Francis Xavier in 1619. A man is summoned back from the dead, the blind and lame are healed, and in the temple an idol is falling, broken, to the ground.

Depiction of one of the miracles of Francis Xavier.

André Reinoso, The Miracle of Saint Francis Xavier (1619) at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Lisboa / Museu de São Roque, Lisbon, Portugal

Images from Japanese Art

Traditional screens. Images of the great Portuguese trading ships. Jesuits, or priests, are among the passengers.

And finally some of the sweeter images of Xavier. Although my analysis has portrayed Xavier as a very European figure, that is not to say that his influence was entirely negative. (The tonsure on Xavier might indicate that he has been incorrectly identified with one of the Franciscans who followed the Jesuits in Japan).

the active, realistic loving of this one moment in all time.

2026-07-21T10:06:25.818+05:30

NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD

"call me trimtab"

Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, May 20, 2007

Just a few weeks ago, in response to a straightforward question from my Zen teacher, I circuitously stumbled across the work and thought of Bucky Fuller. 25 or more years ago, I spent a weekend in a hotel ballroom with him and 200 others. I can still recall the light of his presence. A few years ago, at the Project Artaud Theater, I was again stunned by his originality and the depth of his insight on one of multiple visits to a one-man show, “R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe” by D.W. Jacobs.

Though I might have put Bucky aside, I was more than happy to revisit and rediscover his Universe.

Today, in a world once again torn by war, I read what he wrote 67 years ago and was very moved. For me, if I am honest with myself, Baghdad is really an abstraction, not the horror it is to the families of killed soldiers, innocent men and women caught in the crossfire, or Jihadists with a cause to die for. I have been in a”froth-spitting squall on Long Island Sound,” but I have never been to the kind of War as the Second Great War, nor Viet Nam, not even an ill-advised invasion. Still “in the face of what is involved,” I am struggling for an adequate response.

I reproduce some of Bucky’s words here, not only the famous “God is a verb” passage, but a portion of the rest to create some context and because I like it. There is much more if you care to read. His books are available from the Institute that bears his name.

from NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD

by R. Buckminster Fuller

Late tonight

(April 9, 1940)

I am just sitting here

for one of the many reasons

people find themselves passionately isolated.

(The cause is rarely noble.)

In the midst of my overly

self-emphatic thought

I say, suddenly,

(as most of us do):

imagine, realize, the preposterousness of your chagrin

in the face of what is involved

in the newspaper headline

on the chair over there.

OSLO KEY BASES TAKEN BIG SEA AIR BATTLES ON

World Telegram 7th Sports.

. . . . .

It’s no longer a phony war

but I don’t think about that

nor do I think much about Oslo.

I think of such of aviators and sailormen as

are in command of their faculties

on both sides at this moment.

Though you have been out in

a froth-spitting squall

on Long Island Sound or

in an ocean liner on a burgeoning sea

you have but a childlike hint of

what a nineteen-year-old’s reaction is

to the pitch black shrieking dark out there

in the very cold northern elements

of unloosening spring

off Norway’s coast

tonight

15,000 feet up

or fifty under or

worse, on the smashing face of it and

here I see God.

. . . . .

A sufficient light within

a seemingly opaque back object

may suddenly convert that object

into a brilliant vari-colored lantern.

. . . . .

Here is God’s purpose-

for God, to me, it seems,

is a verb

not a noun,

proper or improper;

is the articulation

not the art, objective or subjective;

is loving,

not the abstraction “love” commanded or entreated;

is knowledge dynamic,

not legislative code

not proclamation law,

not academic dogma, nor ecclesiastic canon.

Yes, God is a verb,

the most active,

connoting the vast harmonic

reordering of the universe

from unleashed chaos of energy.

And there is born unheralded

a great natural peace,

not out of exclusive

pseudo-static security

but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.

Naught is lost.

Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

. . . . .

And I’ve thought through to tomorrow

which is also today.

The telephone rings

and you say to me

Hello Buckling this is Christopher; or

Daddy, it’s Allegra; or

Mr. Fuller this is the Telephone Company Business Office;

and I say you are inaccurate.

Because I knew you were going to call

and furthermore I recognize

that it is God who is “speaking.”

. . . . .

And you say

aren’t you being fantastic?

And knowing you I say no.

. . . . .

That is the active, realistic loving

of this one moment in all time.

Cultivating Resistance

2026-07-21T04:22:26.879+05:30

Originally posted January 1st, 2017

This is the path forward that I choose for the nightmare that we are about to head into!

Clarion Alley, San Francisco

I do not intend this as a snide “I told you so.” It is a simple statement that today’s situation, 9 years later, is as terrible as what many of us expected, and the Battle is far from over.

This is the path forward that I choose for the nightmare that we are about to head into!

Nanquan Cuts the Cat (Parts 1-3, complete)

2026-07-09T04:34:08.912+05:30

Book of Serenity, Case 9; Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

May 13th, 2026.

At least nine Jesuits have been authorized to teach the koan curriculum, which is by far the largest representation of any specific religious order among Zen teachers, but there haven’t been any Jesuit commentaries on the koans. Today, the opening of Parliament in the UK began with a ceremonial search of the Palace of Westminster's basement, a nod to the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which is also known as the Jesuit Treason. I will take the occasion to write a thoroughly Jesuitical* commentary.

The Koan:

The priest Nanquan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nanquan cut the cat in two.

That evening, Zhaozhou returned from outside and Nanquan told him what happened.

Zhaozhou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head, and walked out. Nanquan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”

___________

A Jesuit Commentary:

1. Equivocation

In my view, this is one of the most consequential koans in the curriculum. Outside the “No,” Mu koan, I’ve spent more time wrestling with this case than any other I’ve tackled.

How did this koan earn a place in three of the collections?

It’s no plate of milk. Many Zen students are repulsed. It even seems to condone violating the first grave precept. The title is “Nanchuan Cuts the Cat,” not “Nanchuan Plays with the Idea of Killing a Cat.” And it doesn’t even settle the moral question of cat killing; that’s not the point. But it doesn’t evade murder and death either: Nanchuan actually kills a helpless, innocent cat who has no say in the matter. We don’t know if it was a cute little house kitty or a nasty old street cat, but for sure, there was splattered blood and two halves of a dead cat.

Most introspection begins with an inner battle. I am no opponent of grandmother Zen. I normally give myself plenty of room for fluid inquiry. However, I will begin this commentary by focusing on another aspect of the story: its language. The request for a response becomes a demand: “If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” I have a say in the matter, a word, or maybe even several. All we know with certainty is that some monks, probably with too much time on their hands, got into an argument about a cat—a few words, a question, perhaps an insult, perhaps a confused answer or no answer, anger, then silence searching for an appropriate response, and finally a dire consequence. It’s easier to leave the koan’s argument without form and content, but (at least in my experience), koans don’t work like that. We fill them with our shadows.

In 2009, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced a play by one of my Jesuit classmates. Father Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” was very well received, as I would expect. Bill is a talented, inventive writer and committed Christian. However, I’m not going to borrow much other than the title and the predicament: the setting is England during the reign of James the First; the situation is the plight of the Jesuits who were sent to minister to Roman Catholics in a militantly Protestant country, and the martyrdom of 34 saints and 149 blesseds, even one bearing my surname, Blessed William Ireland, S.J. They were part of a larger movement of “recusant” English Catholics, waiting, hiding and organizing the reestablishment of religion under the Pope. They were divided over tactics; they were hunted down; many were arrested; many would die, and ultimately, they would fail.

The title “Equivocation*” refers to a contemporaneous manual that outlined a highly controversial defense strategy for Roman Catholics to survive the "bloody questions." The Jesuit missionaries were coached, and in turn coached others to use ambiguous language or a "mental reservation," misleading answers that would not reveal the identities of their fellow Catholics. As scrupulous religious people, they had to sort out the moral consequences of lying. Priests had the additional burden of guarding the seal of confession. If anyone refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy, recognizing Elizabeth I, and subsequently James I, as the head of the church, they became “recusants,” and faced severe penalties—fines, property confiscation, and imprisonment. It could include high treason, the punishment for which was horrific: execution by being hanged, drawn, and quartered*.

We do not know the author of “Equivocation,*” though there is a definite Jesuit turn to the argument. In fact, this is the origin of the less-than-flattering definition of “Jesuitical” as someone who uses crafty, deceitful, intricate arguments designed to mislead, dissemble, or dodge direct answers. We know that a copy of the treatise was found among Father Henry Garnet’s books, the Jesuit superior in England, when he was arrested after the failed Gunpowder Plot, also known as the Jesuit Treason of 1605. It was used against him in his trial.

Garnet was a very refined, highly educated priest, a trained musician, and an unlikely leader of a terrorist plot to kill the King, a large number of nobles, and MP’s. Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated to this day with fireworks and the burning of effigies of the man caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the House of Parliament. Fawkes and Garnet knew one another. Garnet had been seen meeting with Fawkes. Garnet claimed that he’d been trying to persuade Fawkes to find a nonviolent tactic for finding accommodation for Roman Catholics.

We don’t know for certain whether or not any Jesuit actually plotted the terrorist attack, though I think it’s highly likely. Shakespeare knew about it and had an opinion. In Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the drunken porter, acting as hell’s gatekeeper, welcomes a parade of condemned souls into the castle, including an “equivocator that could swear in both scales against either scale,” . . . the "open and broad lying and forswearing."

When Garnet defended himself, his words seemed to match the circumstances, but canceled out other words. The Privy Council used the handbook that outlined this type of argument, “Equivication,” as evidence to condemn Garnet. The resulting action was swift. He was executed on 3 May 1606, three days after the verdict. Toothless grannies pushed to the front row at his public execution with clean napkins to mop up the martyr’s blood as a talisman.

These events happened more than 400 years ago. How could they enter my life in a real way if I didn’t share something with the martyrs? I have no enthusiasm for converting the Church of England. In fact, I’m quite sympathetic towards the beauty of the language and form of its liturgy. There is a high probability that I am related to Blessed William Ireland, but it still feels worlds away.

When my teacher gave me the koan, the cat’s dark shadow began to appear very slowly in my own life—the fight between the monks became the execution of Jesuits who had been trained at the English College in Rome or Douai. Yet it became personal. We sang the same Te Deum that the 16th-century Jesuits sang when they learned of a Jesuit’s execution in London. We celebrated their feast days. We’d heard stories of their torture and death, which were presented as heroic qualities we should emulate.

___________

Notes:

*Although many Jesuits of other eras might have entertained the idea that a consistent spiritual and moral tone might be identified as “Jesuitical,” I am afraid that I only use the term to refer to my 11 years in the Society of Jesus. I’ve worked with the koan under a teacher’s guidance on at least 4 occasions without any access to anyone’s commentary. This last time was quite different; connections with my Jesuit training kept me company. At times, it became very difficult. What follows are field notes from that exploration.

Equivocation is a critically acclaimed 2009 play written by American Jesuit priest and playwright Bill Cain. The play premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The definition of equivocation is “the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.”

*Michel Foucault uses a brutal public execution involving drawing and quartering in the opening pages of Chapter 1, "The Body of the Condemned," in his seminal 1975 book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. While the traditional English sentence was precisely "hanged, drawn, and quartered," Foucault specifically details the French variation of the punishment inflicted upon the regicide Robert-François Damiens in 1757. Damiens was condemned for attempting to assassinate King Louis XV.

___________

2. Obfuscation and Silence

When I entered the Jesuits in 1966, the Second Vatican Council had just ended. The Catholic world was experiencing the exuberance of John the 23rd’s throwing the windows open. A General Congregation of the Jesuits had just elected a Basque priest, Father Pedro Arrupe, as our new Father General. He was charismatic. We younger Jesuits felt he could lead the largest and most educated religious order in the post-Council era. He’d been less than 10 kilometers from the epicenter of the Atomic blast in Hiroshima, a horrific event that weighed heavily on my generation of Americans, including most of the men who entered the Jesuits with me

Arrupe’s predecessor, Father Jean-Baptiste Janssens, had been elected two years after the defeat of the Nazis. We’d heard his reputation as a strict disciplinarian. We also knew that he’d worked with the clandestine Benedyk Grynpas network during the occupation of Belgium, but for some reason, that was rarely acknowledged. He forged baptismal certificates for Jewish children, but never required that they be baptized. He taught them to say the Hail Mary, but only so they could pass a Nazi interrogation if caught. He hid a large group of Jewish children in his own residence. He quietly encouraged other Jesuit houses, monasteries, and convents across Belgium to hide Jews. He undoubtedly knew the 43 Jesuits who died in the camps and the more than 100 other priests who were murdered resisting the Nazi regime. He’d been their superior. He knew that if he were caught by the Gestapo, he would be executed, but he did the right thing. He was honored with the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Knesset of the new State of Israel in 1954.

I didn’t have to go back to 16th-century England to find examples of heroic men of conscience. Most of my superiors, teachers, mentors, and spiritual guides had been trained by this very courageous man. Many had worked with him directly, but he never wore his resistance like a badge. If he ever spoke about it, we never heard it. The job of piecing together the Jesuit order after the war, coupled with managing the largest influx of “vocations” in the order's 500-year history, was enormous, equal to responding to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust. It was another task of matching actions with words and sacred promises, but without the real threat of execution

The stain of antisemitism in the Catholic church is extremely troubling; the record of the institutional Church during the Third Reich has become the topic of a heated debate. There is one group that claims that Pope Pius XII did his duty and maintained absolute neutrality, but to others, he appears cowardly, even sympathetic to the aims of National Socialism. The role of Father Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, the head of the Jesuits during the war, is equally mixed. He certainly saw reports about the extent of the mass murders. Claims that the Nazis were skillful at hiding their atrocity feel like an excuse. Both Pacelli (Pius XII) and Ledóchowski have been described as “benignly” antisemitic. Many old noble European families were. It was part of an ancient class stratification that Americans don’t understand. How could priests, bishops, and popes keep silent unless they were hedging their bets, or even being sympathetic to the Nazis?

After months of wrestling with a vague, undefined flight between Nanquan’s monks of the eastern and western halls, it was no longer speculative. A question whose answer determined life or death was right in my face; it was a question that cut so deeply there was only silence, or an answer whose horrific consequences were impossible to escape.

In my mind, I convened a Board of Examiners—three professed senior priests—to interview the monks of the western and eastern halls—a typical Jesuit tactic. I asked if the English Reformation had been a power grab among 16th-century monarchies, was the Jesuit mission doomed from its conception? Was the sacrifice of the English martyrs even justified? When I extended that hypothesis into the ambiguity of the Catholic response to Hitler, I was told that I was being revisionist in my reading of history. It reeked of the same equivocation that Father Garnet was accused ot. I couldn’t recind the sainthood of the English Jesuit martyrs, though opposing the cause of Eugenio Pacelli might be justified, depending on a more careful review of the historical record. The hard fact that both the Jesuits and the College of Cardinals, right after the War, elected men, Janssens and Roncalli, who were named Righteous Among the Nations, tells me that they wanted to land on the right side of history.

However, my questions missed the point of the koan. I wasn’t being asked to speculate: if a group of Jewish kids showed up at my door, and I knew that helping them would put me in the same grave danger they faced, would I rise to the moment? Right now is not five centuries ago.

The tone is correct. It didn’t have the urgency and the immediacy required, but at least I had managed to put breath and blood into the argument between the eastern and western halls, one that carried the weight of life and death. The koan ends with Zhaozhou taking off his shoes and putting them on his head. We are told, in a scholarly tone, that this was an expression of grief in ancient China.

Could I go through a painful experience of dealing with questions about my entire religious life and end with a funeral joke? I’d caught a few laughing Zen students take off their shoes and prance around, with no sense of how profoundly their world has been turned upside down. But there it was, a note about an ancient Chinese funeral ritual in the marginalia, handed down through at least a dozen roshis, and brought into the dokusan room where we dealt with the question.

I’ve never seen convincing evidence supporting the theory of ancient Chinese funeral rites. I searched Google. Did this practice, display, or joke exist in China during any dynasty? I did find some customs that stretch Western norms. In Taiwan, the bereaved family hires strippers and pole dancers if the obsequies go beyond three days. The motivation is not otherworldly. If the attendees are entertained, they don’t go home, and the priests maintain their minyan, or quorum, for the ceremonies. But we were being asked to believe that it was normal for Chinese mourners to dance with their shoes on their heads. This is at least suspect.

There is a more straightforward answer: Up is down. Down is up.

___________

References:

Rebellion of the Righteous: Jesuit Partisanship for Jews. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, James Bernauer S.J.

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, John Cornwell

The Jesuits and the Third Reich, Vincent A. Lapomarda.

The American Jesuits, Schroth, Raymond A. Published by NYU Press

The American Jesuits: A History. NYU Press, 2007. Project MUSE.

___________

3. A Funeral

July 30th, 2026

"Where is your word when you give your word?" —Werner Erhard

After working on this koan for more than one month, the case was still far too removed from my experience to pass a Zen Master’s criteria. A koan will not ask for an opinion about the moral order or the horrific punishment for recusant Catholics during the first decades of the English Reformation, nor can it coax a life-saving response to the Gestapo during the Second World War. The imagination is not reliable for creating anything other than imaginary heroes.

I felt stuck in a very theoretical dilemma. I went to bed night after night, stupidly hoping that my dreams might save me. Then one day, I woke up with memories of three men at Maitri Hospice who had taken their own lives. That started a flood of memories.

I remember WW* quite clearly. I liked him, though I cannot say we were friends. He told me that there were only a few men whom he considered good friends. He was insistent, but he seemed to fit in that category of men I’d call loners. In gay neighborhoods, there are more than a few men who are always alone, keeping their own company by choice, habit, or temperament. They don’t avoid gathering spots, but when I see them sitting alone in the dark back corner of a bar, I wonder if they are nursing grudges. In WW’s defense, I never heard him say cruel or angry words about others, and he did smile, yet he seemed somehow joyless.

I did know that WW had at least one loyal friend, a friend of Issan, who arranged for him to live at Hartford Street. In the two buildings, there were four small attic rooms. I had one, a Zen priest had another, and the others were usually kept open for Zen students. During the pandemic, there were very few Zen students, especially gays, who wanted to live so close to death. WW had HIV; he’d just been diagnosed with AIDS, though his prognosis was more than 6 months, which put him outside the criteria for hospice. He had nowhere to go. He moved in. He tried to fit in, though I could see that it was difficult. I am sure that he was grateful.

Someone told me that WW had been a member of a strict Catholic monastic community for a few years, perhaps as a postulant. He left; I am not sure who made that decision, and I did not ask. With a few bucks in his pocket, he took a bus to the nearest big city. He ended up in a gay sex club and contracted the virus. That story pulled together a lot of what I’d observed. I’d known several Jesuit lay brothers who had similar effects. I could imagine feeling that life had been unjust, converting sero positive, coming from a cloister where safe sex and HIV were not talked about, where any talking was discouraged, perhaps even forbidden.

WW asked me if he could use the living room to meet with his sister and another woman, perhaps a niece, who were coming to San Francisco. Of course, I said yes. I met his sister and another woman, and drew the pocket doors closed. A few hours later, their reunion ended abruptly. It had not gone well. The women left without saying goodbye. WW went upstairs to his room in a very angry mood. As he passed me, he said they’d used a childhood name he despised. He said firmly that he wanted to be left alone. He did not come to dinner. The next morning, he did not come down for breakfast. Then he skipped lunch.

I went up to his room. The door was closed. I knocked, and WW repeated that he wanted to be left alone; that he was “fine.” When he didn’t come down for dinner, I took a tray upstairs and knocked on his door. He thanked me and told me to leave the food outside the door. The next morning, when he didn’t appear for breakfast, I went up to his room and found the dinner untouched. I knocked and asked if he needed anything. He said that he just wanted to be left alone. Two days became four. The same pattern repeated.

The hospice nurse told me privately that she had to report WW. I reminded her that he was not a hospice patient. I asked Steve for advice; we invited the hospice social worker to join us. One of Issan’s founding principles for Maitri was that each person would have as much control over their lives as possible, as long as we weren’t breaking the law or otherwise acting unethically. If WW had just decided that he’d had enough and wanted to end his life, he had the right to refuse food and drink. In the early 90’s, the questions about the compassionate end of life were unsettled, but even the Catholic church accepted voluntary starvation as a morally acceptable choice.

Part of the background conversation for me was the reality of the possibilities for care. If WW were forced into a psychiatric ward, which seemed the only possible path if our hospice nurse reported him, he would be medicated, and then, after a short time, released. At that point, he would most likely stop the anti-psychotic medication, and, with housing uncertain, live in drug-infested single-occupancy hotels, park benches, alleys, or doorways until he died. There were far too many men in that situation to rule it out. I am sure that was also part of WW’s inner calculation,

And yet, objectively, WW’s situation was ambiguous. He had not made a clear request to refuse food. I had no guarantee that he was of a sound mind. He began to refuse food after an argument. If I were going to defend WW’s right to shut his door, not see anyone, and stave himself, I had to check myself to be sure I was not making assumptions, which was hard when talking through a closed door. I asked Steve to go up and try to talk to him. He did and told me that from what he could tell, yes, WW was competent and able to make decisions. Even if we were uncomfortable with unresolved anger mixed into his motivation, it was not our place to try to arbitrate, nor could we resolve it for WW.

We were a small household of 14 people. More than half were also HIV-positive and faced the same certain death as WW. It was impossible to keep his decision secret. I decided to tell the truth, but keep the conversations brief. I could not add dealing with the anxiety of the hospice patients on top of trying to listen carefully to WW. The hospice social worker, Steve, and his wife, Angelique, took up that responsibility; yet an uncomfortable silence still seemed to descend over our entire house.

I had to call WW’s sister and tell her. I asked if there was anything that she wanted to do, to come back to SF and try to have a conversation, or if she wanted me to ask WW if he would talk to her on the phone. She told me she had to talk to her parish priest before she made any decision and would get back to me. She called later that day and told me she had resolved to let her brother take whatever action he had decided on, and yes, she would talk to him if he wanted to. She was also OK with him not wanting to talk. She asked me to ask WW if he wanted to see a priest. I did, and WW said that he did. I called the priest at Most Holy Redeemer and explained the situation. He came right over, and I showed him up the stairs. I do not remember the length of the meeting, and, of course, I asked no questions. When he came down, he said goodbye and left quickly. For some reason, I remember that goodbye as uncomfortably brief, not what I expected.

I continued to bring up a tray with food, knock on WW’s door, and ask if he needed anything. He repeated that he was OK. Then, it was either Monday or Tuesday morning, I heard nothing. I forced the door open and found WW’s body. I called the medical examiner and answered the usual questions. I called his sister. By mid-afternoon, two men, dressed in black, arrived from a funeral director in his family’s hometown. We accompanied WW’s body respectfully down the stairs and out to the waiting hearse. The traditional rites of passing began.

My whole world had been turned upside down. I don’t remember everything I was feeling. Is this too complex? Sometimes even the predictable is complex. Now, decades later, I wonder if this ambiguity leaves the whole situation and my conduct in the same grey area? Although I might have tried to clarify a few things, I know that I managed to do what WW wanted.

I was exhausted and certainly in no mood to imitate an ancient Chinese funeral custom. My world seemed unrecognizable. For a whole week, every action I took, every decision I made, had not followed any familiar pattern. I had touched something very profound.

Zenshin was there. He liked WW immensely, and WW returned those feelings. I will ask him to sing the verse:

“Walking Beside the Kamogawa. Remembering Nansen and Fudo and Gary’s Poem”

By Philip Whalen

Here are two half-grown black cats perched on a

lump of old teakettle brick plastic garbage

ten feet from the west bank of the River.

I won’t save them. Right here Gary sat with dying Nansen,

The broken cat, warped and sick every day of its life,

Puke & drool on the tatami for Gary to wipe and scold,

“If you get any worse I’m going to have to put you away!”

The vet injected an overdose of nemby and for half an Hour

Nansen was comfortable.

How can we do this, how can we live and die?

How does anybody choose for somebody else.

How dare we appear in the Hell-mouth weeping tears,

Busting our heads in ten fragments making vows &

promises?

Suzuki Roshi said, “If I die, it’s all right. If I should

live, it’s all right. Sun-face Buddha, Moon-face Buddha.”

Why do I always fall for that old line?

We don’t treat each other any better. When will I

Stop writing it down.

Postscript: Always remember the 20th commandment of the Brahmajala

Sutra. Always practice liberation of living beings.

Let's begin WW's Funeral with the traditional Catholic Entrance Hymn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W86XH05Nk6g&list=RDW86XH05Nk6g&start_radio=1

Antonio Salieri De Profundis

___________

*WW: Even though he’s been dead more than 30 years, I have disguised his identity. I left facts and conversations where necessary to fill out the picture and clarify the situation, or, in several places, to point out that his situation was not entirely clear.

Nanquan Cuts the Cat, Part 3

2026-07-08T22:16:38.782+05:30

3. A Funeral

Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

July 30th, 2026

"Where is your word when you give your word?" —Werner Erhard

I did know that WW had at least one loyal friend, a friend of Issan, who arranged for him to live at Hartford Street. In the two buildings, there were four small attic rooms. I had one, a Zen priest had another, and the others were usually kept open for Zen students. During the pandemic, there were very few Zen students, especially gays, who wanted to live so close to death. WW had HIV; he’d just been diagnosed with AIDS, though his prognosis was more than 6 months, which put him outside the criteria for hospice. He had nowhere to go. He moved in. He tried to fit in though I could see that it was difficult. I am sure that he was grateful.

Zenshin was there. He liked WW immensely, and WW returned those feelings. I will ask him to sing the verse:

“Walking Beside the Kamogawa. Remembering Nansen and Fudo and Gary’s Poem”

By Philip Whalen

Here are two half-grown black cats perched on a

lump of old teakettle brick plastic garbage

ten feet from the west bank of the River.

I won’t save them. Right here Gary sat with dying Nansen,

The broken cat, warped and sick every day of its life,

Puke & drool on the tatami for Gary to wipe and scold,

“If you get any worse I’m going to have to put you away!”

The vet injected an overdose of nemby and for half an Hour

Nansen was comfortable.

How can we do this, how can we live and die?

How does anybody choose for somebody else.

How dare we appear in the Hell-mouth weeping tears,

Busting our heads in ten fragments making vows &

promises?

Suzuki Roshi said, “If I die, it’s all right. If I should

live, it’s all right. Sun-face Buddha, Moon-face Buddha.”

Why do I always fall for that old line?

We don’t treat each other any better. When will I

Stop writing it down.

Postscript: Always remember the 20th commandment of the Brahmajala

Sutra. Always practice liberation of living beings.

Let's begin WW's Funeral with the traditional Catholic Entrance Hymn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W86XH05Nk6g&list=RDW86XH05Nk6g&start_radio=1

Antonio Salieri De Profundis

___________

Nanquan Cuts the Cat, Part 2

2026-07-07T22:10:06.033+05:30

Book of Serenity, Case 9; Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

May 13th, 2026.

2. Obfuscation and Silence

Arrupe’s predecessor, Father Jean-Baptiste Janssens, had been elected two years after the defeat of the Nazis. We’d heard his reputation as a strict disciplinarian. We also knew that he’d worked with the clandestine Benedyk Grynpas network during the occupation of Belgium, but for some reason, that was rarely acknowledged. He forged baptismal certificates for Jewish children, but never required that they be baptized. He taught them to say the Hail Mary but only so they could pass a Nazi interrogation if caught. He hid a large group of Jewish children in his own residence. He quietly encouraged other Jesuit houses, monasteries, and convents across Belgium to hide Jews. He undoubtedly knew the 43 Jesuits who died in the camps and the more than 100 other priests who were murdered resisting the Nazi regime. He’d been their superior. He knew that if he were caught by the Gestapo, he would be executed, but he did the right thing. He was honored with the title of Righteous Among the Nations by the Knesset of the new State of Israel in 1954.

I didn’t have to go back to 15th-century England to find examples of heroic men of conscience. Most of my superiors, teachers, mentors, and spiritual guides had been trained by this very courageous man. Many had worked with him directly, but he never wore his resistance like a badge. If he ever spoke about it, we never heard it. The job of piecing together the Jesuit order after the war, coupled with managing the largest influx of “vocations” in the order's 500-year history, was enormous, equal to responding to the plight of Jews during the Holocaust. It was another task of matching actions with words and sacred promises, but without the real threat of execution

The stain of antisemitism in the Catholic church is extremely troubling; the record of the institutional Church during the Third Reich has become the topic of a heated debate. There is one group that claims that Pope Pius XII did his duty and maintained absolute neutrality, but to others, he appears cowardly, even sympathetic towards the aims of national socialism. The role of Father Włodzimierz Ledóchowski, the head of the Jesuits during the war, is equally mixed. He certainly saw reports about the extent of the mass murders. Claims that the Nazis were skillful at hiding their atrocity feel like an excuse. Both Pacelli (Pius XII) and Ledóchowski have been described as “benignly” antisemitic. Many old noble European families were. It was part of an ancient class stratification that Americans don’t understand. How could priests, bishops, and popes keep silent unless they were hedging their bets, or even being sympathetic to the Nazis?

After months of wrestling with a vague, undefined flight between Nanquan’s monks of the eastern and western halls, it was no longer speculative. A question whose answer determined life or death was right in my face; it was a question that cut so deeply there was only silence, or an answer whose horrific consequences were impossible to escape.

In my mind, I convened a Board of Examiners—three professed senior priests—to interview the monks of the western and eastern halls—a typical Jesuit tactic. I asked if the English Reformation had been a power grab among 16th-century monarchies, was the Jesuit mission doomed from its conception. Was the sacrifice of the English martyrs even justified? When I extended that hypothesis into the ambiguity of the Catholic response to Hitler, I was told that I was being revisionist in my reading of history. It reeked of the same equivocation that Father Garnet was accused ot. I couldn’t recall the sainthood of the English Jesuit martyrs, though opposing the cause of Eugenio Pacelli might be justified depending on a more careful review of the history. The hard fact that both the Jesuits and the College of Cardinals, right after the War, elected men, Janssens and Roncalli, who were named Righteous Among the Nations, tells me that they wanted to land on the right side of history.

I’ve never seen convincing evidence to support the ancient Chinese funeral rite story. I searched Google. Did this practice, display, or joke exist in China during any dynasty? I did find some customs that stretch Western norms. In Taiwan, the bereaved family hires strippers and pole dancers if the obsequies go beyond three days. The motivation is not otherworldly. If the attendees are entertained, they don’t go home, and the priests maintain their minyan, or quorum, for the ceremonies. But we were being asked to believe that it was normal for Chinese mourners to dance with their shoes on their heads. This is at least suspect.

There is a more straightforward answer: Up is down. Down is up.

___________

References:

Rebellion of the Righteous: Jesuit Partisanship for Jews. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, James Bernauer S.J.

Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, John Cornwell

The Jesuits and the Third Reich, Vincent A. Lapomarda.

The American Jesuits, Schroth, Raymond A. Published by NYU Press

The American Jesuits: A History. NYU Press, 2007. Project MUSE.

I’ve written three sections that will appear separately. Here’s the first. https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2026/07/nanquan-cuts-cat.html

Syncretism, Syncretic Occultism, Carlos Castaneda and the Monetization of the Occult

2026-07-07T12:38:02.288+05:30

Dated June 21, 2023, in my notebook

Claudio Naranjo, Carlos Castaneda, and a raccoon share a moment.

When asked by an interviewer if Don Juan Matus existed (as well as straightening out some inconsistencies in his biography), Carlos Castaneda replied, "To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics ... is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all."

What I take this to mean is that the Yaqui sorcerer don Juan was a convenient fiction made up by an anthropology student with a vivid imagination and a few too many peyote buttons. But Castaneda was a compelling storyteller, and we all believed it — and bought his books. It is not surprising that he and Naranjo became friends. He visited the early SAT groups, and perhaps used Naranjo’s SAT group process to create his own Tensegrity, “the modernized version of some movements called magical passes developed by Indigenous shamans who lived in Mexico in times prior to the Spanish conquest."

One deep root of modern Western Enneagram teaching lies in the small world of Latin American esotericism and its deep, though convoluted, connection to native shamanism. Claudio Naranjo’s own story is tied up with that of Oscar Ichazo, who was never very clear about his sources — usually some version of the story of stopping for lunch at an ordinary wayside ristorante in Argentina and the waiter handing him a note from a group of ordinary-looking men inviting him to their table where, while sipping afternoon aperitifs, they exchanged the latest in their research of the inner workings of the human psyche.

Another partially verified story is Naranjo’s journey to Arica Chile where, after some vague initiation into a mystery cult, and receiving instructions from Ichazo in his role as an esotericist who, by the way, was guided by his Kabbalist spiritual guide, the highest Archangel Metatron, Naranjo went out into the Atacama Desert for 40 days, the driest place on the face of the earth (drier than the place where Jesus stood down the devil in his 40-day retreat). There, he told us that he had undergone a rebirth experience and that, having been trained as a medical doctor, he could recognize all the stages of an embryo's formation, the organs beginning to function, etc. I remember wondering how high he was when he told that tale, probably as high as he was when being reborn, something about his intonation and phrasing.

But I did believe that Don Juan was real until the raccoon encounter.

Claudio told us this story by way of introducing Castaneda.

Naranjo’s house was down on the Berkeley flatlands. I can see the house clearly in my memory and almost remember the exact address — 14 hundred-something Alston Way. It was not all gentrified in those days, but a modest, even run-down neighborhood of California bungalows. There was a small creek that ran at the back of the property, and Claudio had thrown up a shack, his study house, on its edge. Carlos and Claudio were doing some kind of drug, and a raccoon came and sat by the screen door, watching them in what they perceived to be a rather intense way, or so they said. Castaneda was sure that the raccoon had been taken over by a spirit being to deliver a message. The contents of that message were also apparently an occult secret.

Guys, you were high and tripping out on a raccoon looking for a yummy garbage dinner. I'm not using science to invalidate your sorcery. I am suspicious of the drugs.

Nanquan Cuts the Cat ({Part 1)

2026-07-06T23:11:13.352+05:30

Book of Serenity, Case 9; Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

May 13th, 2026.

The Koan:

That evening, Zhaozhou returned from outside and Nanquan told him what happened.

Zhaozhou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head, and walked out. Nanquan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”

A Jesuit Commentary:

Equivocation

In my view, this is one of the most consequential koans in the curriculum. Outside of the No koan, I’ve spent more time wrestling with this case than any other that I’ve tackled.

How did this koan earn a place in three of the collections?

It’s no plate of milk. Many Zen students are repulsed. It even seems to condone violating the first grave precept. The title is “Nanchuan Cuts the Cat,” not “Nanchuan Plays with the Idea of Killing a Cat.” It doesn’t settle the moral question of cat killing; that’s not the point. But it doesn’t evade murder and death either: Nanchuan actually kills a helpless, innocent cat who has no say in the matter. We don’t know if it was a cute little house kitty or a nasty old street cat, but for sure, there was splattered blood and two halves of a dead cat.

We do not know the author of “Equivocation,*” though there is a definite Jesuit turn to the argument. In fact, this is the origin of the less-than-flattering definition of “Jesuitical” to mean someone who practices crafty, deceitful, intricate arguments designed to mislead, dissemble, or dodge direct answers. We know that a copy of the treatise was found among Father Henry Garnet’s books, the Jesuit superior in England, when he was arrested after the failed Gunpowder Plot, also known as the Jesuit Treason of 1605. It was used against him in his trial.

When my teacher gave me the koan, the cat’s dark shadow began to appear very slowly in my own life — the fight between the monks became the execution of Jesuits who had been trained at the English College in Rome or Douai. Yet it became personal. We sang the same Te Deum that the 16th-century Jesuits sang when they learned of a Jesuit’s execution in London. We celebrated their feast days. We’d heard stories of their torture and death, which were presented as heroic qualities we should emulate.

___________

Notes:

"Part 2. Obfuscation and Silence" is now available here: https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2026/07/nanquan-cuts-cat-part-2.html

A 250th Freedom Day Post: Tempest in a Teapot!

2026-07-05T10:34:33.838+05:30

Happy 4th of July. Today I joined our President and kicked over the bucket of paint in the Reflecting Pool. It soaked a lot more than the odd bits of junk that were lying around waiting for me to feel motivated to clean them up, maybe next week.

I was thinking about the fashion sense of the Society of Saint Pius the 10th, those weird, ugly fiddleback vestments that our priests used to wear, and some still long for, a bit, I guess, like Mormon underwear. For my generation, our families were integrating into the predominantly white Protestant culture; what our priests wore said we were Catholic, probably either Irish or Italian, probably white, with mostly well-behaved kids, and even priests and nuns in the family, at least back on the old sod. After only a few generations, we were gaining enough majority in the ward to grab some political power from the uppity Yankee fat cats and their cigar-smoking cronies, the sons of bitches, down at city hall. Finally, some fat chickens for the cousins and me.

Or at least that's how the story usually goes after a bottle of Jamieson. I’m starting to sound like Eugene O’Neill. Leave Joyce for the Jesuits to pick apart with that brainy cousin, bonehead, the one who’s probably gay. I’ll stand with the likes of Flanagan, the priest who just tells us to toll the beads and trust our Lady, forget what the Protestants say about her in their neat white meeting houses on the town square. And I will support Father O’Halloran’s fund to build a Catholic school. I’ve heard that they’re starting to make jokes about our priests wearing dresses at their fancy dinner parties. The up-and-comers want us to make O’Halloran wear pants when he walks his dog. I say he wears what he wants as long as he moderates his hell talk to a brush fire when he launches into it at the 11 o’clock.

Tempest in a Teapot!

At one time, for some odd reasons which are self-evident, I became obsessed with several ultra-conservative offshoots of the Roman Catholic Church. I wrote about having dinner with a bishop in the Old Catholic Church in America after I left the Jesuits in the mid-70s. I also wrote about Benedict’s problem when he lifted the excommunication of the neo-Nazi SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson in 2009. I’ll give you license to make up your own mind. Just because my attention has drifted doesn’t mean that you need to follow my change of heart.

The dates of Jesus' birth and death are only estimates. Why nail your spiritual operation to one specific day out of the 738,000 days (or over 2,028 years) since the birth of Jesus? The Society of Saint Pius X seem to have arbitrarily pulled December 4, 1563 out of the hat, the closing of the final session of the Council of Trent, or perhaps it was July 18, 1870, during the First Vatican Council in the constitution Pastor Aeternus, when Pius 9 got what he wanted—the word of the Pope reverberates in Heaven, or perhaps August 20, 1914 when Pius 10 left us with his war against Modernism in limbo. But one thing was crystal clear: the final design of the fiddle-back chasuble was indelibly etched in fashion history. Pick an auspicious date to start a real religion. Dress up and cement your creed in time.

While there is no official or exact count for all Christian denominations worldwide, sociologists and researchers (such as the Center for the Study of Global Christianity) estimate that there are over 45,000 distinct Christian denominations or sects worldwide. How to choose our enemy? One criterion might be that they believe something that differs from what you and your peeps believe. That’s a popular choice. Another might be the size of their army.

I find SSPX a bit of an outlier for the Papal enemies list. It must have been their history, having been courted by Pope Benedict with special treatment. Even though, according to Leo, AI is the Devil’s workshop, I had some fun with it. Let’s run the numbers.

In the photo, Alfonso de Galarreta, Bishop of the Society of Saint Pius X, ordains four bishops for the SSPX without the approval of Rome. The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has approximately 1,500 formal members (including bishops, priests, seminarians, brothers, and sisters). Additionally, the traditionalist Catholic society claims a global following of roughly 500,000 to 1 million lay adherents. Robust numbers compared to what follows.

By contrast, the older Old Catholic Church of Utrecht—through its global federation, the Union of Utrecht—has far fewer members worldwide, ranging from 58,800 to 115,000. They also question the authority of the Pope, though on slightly different grounds than the SSPX, but they’re ancient history, having stepped out of the Roman fold at the end of Vatican I, October 20, 1870, when the question of infallibility was settled, according to mainstream Roman ecclesial history. My advice to Leo would have been to follow the example of your recent predecessors and not pay any attention to the anachronistic theatrics of SSPX/

The Palmarian Catholic Church is an independent traditionalist sect not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. They have their own popes (the current one is Pope Peter III) who reside in the town of El Palmar de Troya in the Andalusia region of southern Spain. After the death of Pope Paul VI in 1978, Clemente Domínguez claimed that he had been mystically crowned Pope of the Catholic Church by Jesus Christ and was to reign as Pope Gregory XVII from El Palmar de Troya. There are an estimated 500 to 1,500 Palmarian Catholics worldwide today. Small change. Piddling army.

The origins of the Palmarians as a distinct body can be traced to the alleged Marian apparitions of Our Lady of Palmar in Andalusia, Spain, beginning in 1968. Two men became particularly associated with this movement over time: Clemente Domínguez y Gómez and Manuel Alonso Corral. The former was known as a charismatic visionary and seer, while the latter was the intellectual éminence grise. The messages of these visions were filled with traditionalist Catholic pushback to the liberalising changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council and alleged a Masonic infiltration of the Roman Catholic Church.

But don’t think that heretical “Catholic” churches don’t have legs. Arianism survived the Council of Nicaea and the fall of Rome. It flourished as the state religion, with its own churches and bishops, across Germanic kingdoms, including the Vandals in North Africa, the Visigoths in Spain, the Ostrogoths and Lombards in Italy, and the Burgundians, who lived in the Rhineland as well as what is now southern France, until the 9th century. The photo is the mosaic ceiling from the ruins of an Arian Church baptistery in Ravenna, Italy, where Gore Vidal and his partner, Howard Austin, lived most of their lives together and entertained Nureyev. Gore, Howard, and Rudolf were not Arians but believers numbered in the hundreds of thousands to millions; these churches died out by the 9th century without Roman pushback; five or six hundred years is a good run.

Today, Arians might accost you in Bart stations and bus stops; some might even knock on your door. The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus is a created being subordinate to God rather than part of a coequal Trinity. There are approximately 9.2 million active "publishers" across more than 240 countries and territories. The denomination defines membership based strictly on active participation in its formal preaching work, rather than self-identification or simple.

Photograph by Henry Lithgow

Supporters of Smiling Cardinal Raymond Burke include the 13,500-member Sovereign Military Order of Malta, but attendance at his “faithful apostolates” such as Michigan’s Call to Holiness Conference fluctuates wildly. Apparently, he thinks he can handle a bigger crowd. He rarely smiles. Did Lithgow use some secret formula?

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a worldwide baptised membership of more than 23.6 million people. I included the Seventh-day Adventists because they were founded on William Miller’s prediction that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on October 22, 1844, the biblical Day of Atonement for that year. When that didn’t happen, they called it the "Great Disappointment," and turned their attention to the prophecy of Ellen Gould White, became teetotaling vegetarians, and started to keep the Sabbath. That became a formula for success.

Another American startup, Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist, does not publish its membership numbers. The church's Manual specifically instructs members not to divulge these figures. However, demographic surveys estimate worldwide membership to range from 100,000 to 420,000.

I totally support praying in whatever language a church, a nation, or an individual prefers. The Roman Church seems to concur and would probably support Latin if SSPX didn’t carry so much doctrinal baggage. The Esperanto Eucharistic liturgy (Meso in Esperanto) has been officially approved by the Vatican for use in Catholic churches and has been available since the mid-1990s. Good luck finding a church or a linguistically able priest.

To summarise my research:

SSPX: 500,000 to 1 million

The Old Catholic Church of Utrecht: 58,800 to 115,000

The Palmarian Catholic Church: 500 to 1,500

The Arian Churches between 325 and cc 800 C.E.: several hundred thousand to millions

Jehovah’s Witnesses: 9.2 million

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta: 13,500

The Seventh-day Adventist Church: 23.6 million

The Church of Christ, Scientist: 100,000 to 420,000

Conclusion: for strength in numbers and longevity, have a full Ecumenical Council declare your founder anathema, avoid large real estate investments in Andalucia, and Pope Leo is wasting a lot of time on the SSPX bishop ordination.

But take heart, the seminaries of the SSPX might preserve the correct use of the gerundive (as in quod erat demonstrandum) for several more generations, but as a serious faith movement, they’re toast, a curious anachronism that will die out for lack of fashion sense as long as no one feeds their publicity addiction. That’s what they crave, confusing words with faith, devotion, and prayer.

I know, I can hear someone out there whispering, “Then why did you waste your time writing two pages against SSPX if they’ll be as out of fashion as blue suede shoes in a few years?” Because it was fun.

_____________

Let this sink in America, I dare ya.

2026-06-29T03:38:00.005+05:30

Blood sport is next.

Thumbs up or thumbs down.

Caesar Donny will not be in the lineup himself but will, I’m sure, offer gratuitous, racist remarks about Michelle Obama.

250 years of democracy, and we are reduced to this?

This took place at the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The grass on the Ellipse has been completely destroyed. Coupled with the demolished East Wing, it's a total disaster.

Benedict's retrograde problem with a neo-Nazi bishop

2026-06-16T04:46:00.000+05:30

Originally published August 17th, 2009, in my blog “Spiritually Incorrect.”

Father Tom Reese is a well-spoken man and well-trained in theology, but an objective critic he is not. His first loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church has blinded him to the atrocious behavior that is being condoned by lifting the excommunication of neo-Nazi Bishop Richard Williamson of the Society of Pius X. He states the problem with Benedict’s papacy is that his organization does not have a modern PR office that would break the news of rehabilitating four Pius X bishops, including Williamson, to the world, the liberals in his own church and the worldwide Jewish community. No PR Vatican Secretariat, no matter how up-to-date and informed, could ever make a case for this blunder.

Any self-respecting PR person would say, Benedict, you are the Pope, damn-it, and you have chosen the wrong issue and the wrong message. Emphasize your organization's core mission and make it the centerpiece of your actions. The backward-looking vision of the Society of Pius X has a man like Williamson in charge of their priestly formation. It is a distorted faith that does real harm to people who struggle to alleviate the suffering in the world. Jesus did not say, go to the Pharisee and try to make peace before he goes off and starts a rival sect. He began condemnations of their theology with the words: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees!”

I understand the awkward position in which Benedict finds himself, perhaps not to the extent that Reese understands it, but I can follow an argument. The Roman Church has argued that the form of consecration ensures that its bishops inherit their authority from the original 12 Apostles of Jesus. And by “form,” Roman Catholics mean that the correct words, prayers, and ritual actions for consecrating a new bishop are uttered and performed by a bishop who has been initiated, or ordained, in the same manner. So the Pius X bishops are really bishops according to doctrine, as are, I might add, all the bishops of the old Catholic Church, who are still quite numerous in Germany and have at least four bishops in the US. I met one. The problem, according to Reese, is what Benedict is to do with these bishops so that they do not become loose cannons (my words).

I would bet pennies to dollars that not one in a thousand Catholics knows or cares about the doctrine of the apostolic succession as understood by the hierarchy, and by extension, only one in a thousand would pay any attention to the Pius X bishops when they opened their mouths. These intricacies only interest an extremely small group of scholars, liturgists, linguists, and canon lawyers, and are absolute trivia to most faithful Christians who look to their bishops, and especially the bishop of Rome, to be faithful servants of the Word of God and the Teaching of Jesus. For example, according to the rite composed under Pius XII, the consecrating bishop must use the words: “Complete in Your priest the fullness of Your ministry, and adorned in the raiment of all glory, sanctify him with the dew of heavenly anointing.” I am not going to dispute the beauty of the language, but the fact that this prayer was uttered when the excommunicated bishops were consecrated somehow necessitated a bow to the position that the Nazis did not murder more than 6 million Jews, dissidents, gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled is a horrendous distortion of the values that people should expect from any religious authority.

Is there a way that Benedict could have rid himself and the Church of these troublesome bishops? Of course. He could have simply let their movement die off or become a small fringe group of fanatics—a sensible option. Or if he felt that he had to take some action, following Fr. Reese’s argument, he could have declared them heretics and schismatics. But I fear that he has far too much sympathy for their position. And that is the danger. The conditions on our small planet are far too fragile to allow any hate mongers the publicity they crave.

And so I am still left with the question: where did Benedict get this dumb idea in the first place? I say it is because the leadership of the Church has lost sight of its mission. It has become so remote and isolated that its main concern is defending and legitimizing its authority rather than spreading the message Jesus taught. Sadly, this is the result of Benedict’s looking back to Pius IX and the 1st Vatican Council, and burdening the message of the Gospel with distracting arguments about liturgical propriety, the validity of holy orders, and the ordination of bishops. That view will just focus our attention on the human weaknesses and failings of the followers of Jesus, rather than the simple and direct way that He spoke to us.

3 comments:

John Sumser said...

Very clean and well put. The church has lost its way in a fairly short time. To be futzing around with folks like this simply cements the views of the unchurched. We all left because they were more interested in who was in charge than the flock itself. Shepherds are supposed to shepherd, not spend their time pursuing the vanities of position.

Thanks, Ken

4:01 PM

Kilian Fritsch said...

By the logic of consecration, would not the women consecrated as priests and bishops, beginning with the Danube consecration, be considered validly ordained and consecrated?

2:52 AM

Ken said...

I say yes, of course. I am not a canon lawyer, but I'm sure that the P2 Benedict cabal will find one to refute me. However, I think that the women priests and bishops of the Episcopal and Anglican communions would also qualify, as they have had Old Catholic bishops join in their rites of consecration for years.

2:58 AM

Catholic Zen teachers: Both/And

2026-05-27T17:37:18.229+05:30

Catholic Zen teachers and the ever-present peril of heresy — whatever do you do with dogma?

I overheard part of a recent conversation about Celtic spirituality and transubstantiation. It led me down this dark path: Original Sin vs. Original Blessing.

This is an abbreviated story of a rather well-known and certainly much-admired Canadian nun, Sister Elaine McInnes. Sister Elaine was a member of a small religious community based in Toronto, Our Lady’s Missionaries. She was also a fully authorized Zen Master. Her Zen teacher was Yamada Koun Roshi of the Sanbo Zen school. Yamada also trained several Jesuits, Father Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, Father Wm Johnson, Father Ama Samy, and Ruben Habito, who was a Jesuit when he began his study with Yamada. Father Wiligas Jager, an Austrian Benedictine monk, also worked with him. In other words, most of the teachers in what has become a Zen practice aimed at Catholics and other Christians in the West began their Zen path in Yamada's small zendo in suburban Kamakura.

After her work with Yamada, Sister Elaine was assigned to the Philippines during its 1980s revolution, where she established meditation programs in prisons. Then she went on to lead prison projects in the UK for many years, and finally, she started another prison meditation project when she returned to Canada. She was presented with the Order of Canada. A remarkable woman. One of my teachers, John Tarrant, also in Yamada’s lineage, remembers meeting her. He said, “She was a kind, no-nonsense kind of woman.” Oh, I almost forgot, she had been a professional concert violinist, Juilliard-trained. She played in the Calgary Symphony Orchestra for five years before becoming a nun. She was already well past 80 when I tried to meet with her in Toronto; she had begun the last part of her life in a small, secluded suburban convent. When she died in 2022, she was 98.

I’d read somewhere, perhaps an interview in a parochial newspaper, that when asked what she thought about man’s essentially fallen nature, Sister Elaine responded without a pause, "Oh, you mean Our Original Blessing.” My headline: “Canadian nun, accomplished musician, Zen roshi, walks unafraid into dangerous prisons to teach meditation, and takes on Saint Augustine with a chuckle.” What was her faith in humankind that allowed her to cross that line? An act of will, hopeful idealism, blind courage, or real experience? This is what I wanted to talk to her about.

I can find no consistency in human nature. I cannot say if men and women are originally blessed, intrinsically fallen, beset by demons, or have a latent tendency to anger and destruction that erupts from time to time. Is a belief in “Original Blessing” foolhardy, or what it takes to do heroic works of compassion? The experience of post-war Japan and Hippo in the fourth century, attacked by the Visigoths, might have some similarities, but how could followers of Jesus hold such opposing views? The weight of our tradition comes down on the sin side. It puzzles me.

Pope Benedict, when he still went by the name Joseph Ratzinger, did a 7-day Zen retreat with another Jesuit from Sophia University in Tokyo, Father Kakichi Kadowaki. At the time, Joseph Ratzinger said he found sesshin very inspiring, but later, as Pope Benedict, he condemned another priest, Zen Master Wiligas Jager, and forbade him from publishing or teaching the same practice. I remember asking Father Pat Hawk, another Roshi, a Redemptorist who’d trained with Bob Aitken, about Jager. Pat smiled and said he thought Wiligas was an animist. Ah, again that touch of Celtic spirituality.

My past twelve months have been filled with heresies. First, I revisited Arianism when we celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Then, studying Augustine when Pope Leo was elected, I found myself thinking about the Manichaeans, the light and darkness of gnosticism, and then, for no apparent reason, the heresy of Pythagoras, the duality of body and soul. What do any of these heresies have in common? Not much, really. But then, when Celtic spirituality came up in the conversation, it triggered something. Each heresy begins by believing but then exaggerating, or extending blanket assumptions about how the world works based on observation, not Revelation. There may be difficulties with the observation, but I think we can assume that the heretics thought they were seeing the world as it is: the gnostics saw that darkness follows light; Pythagoras observed that the sun seemed to revolve around the earth; Arius tried to reconcile the idea that Jesus was divine yet had a human body. Something earthy got mixed in with the transcendent, and then, when the official institution did its referee shtick, it always favored the transcendent. But what gets lost in the referee’s call is the observation, as well as the joy, that rocks and clouds remain parts of the wonder of our world. They are. It’s that simple.

Then along comes a priest who reminds us that our Celtic fathers and mothers were Christians who dug their fingers into the dirt and grew potatoes. What is true is comforting, and connects us with something beyond theologians' “filioque” and transubstantiation. I say “Amen,” but the logician in me does not have to exclude anything. I can say, “Both/and,” and say it loudly. Sister Elaine may lose to Augustine in doctrinal debate, but she wins hands down when the choice is between raising children as a Blessing rather Cursed as sinful by a vengeful god.

Go back to your cushion and wait for the next move. Or set up a meditation in prison project.

Sr. Elaine MacInnes in April 2016

Front row from left: Sr. Elaine MacInnes, Yamada Koun Roshi, and Jun Maron
at a Zendo in Manila, Philippines, in the 1980s.

Is life over when it’s over? (Originally posted, Friday, September 17, 2021)

2026-05-26T09:45:50.400+05:30

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)

"Each one of us, not only human beings, but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable". ~Alan Watts Sensei

My friend, Michael Papas was a guest student at Tassajara during the Summer of 1980. He recalled a talk by Issan Dorey that he says was a real downer. “I can’t repeat any of it, and the memories of the specific content are vague, but I didn’t find any good news in it at all!”

Afterward, he asked Issan, “If things are so bad, why don’t we just kill ourselves ?”

Issan's answer came quickly, “Because it wouldn’t help.”

My friend is a long-time Zen student. He says, “It was a great answer, obviously. It has stayed with me for more than 40 years. I thought of it many times in 2016 when my wife left me, and suicide seemed like the only way to stop the pain. But truthfully, back then, having children was my main reason for sticking.”

_____________________

Today I read Jonathan Shockley’s post “How Druid Heights Became an Alcoholism Cover for Alan Watts,” and I did ask myself: Are there really any good reasons for living and reasons for dying?

Why should we think that Zen is in trouble simply because there are flawed people who practice and flawed people who teach? Certainly, punches and counterpunches are distracting, especially in a scandal, but they are not off-limits. In my view, idolizing revered teachers also limits the practical possibilities for anyone who sets foot on the path. This presents its own set of problems, which I might explore at another time. Zen is devised for humans, not gods.

Many years ago, I went to a meeting with several of Claudio Naranjo’s senior students on the “Vallejo,” the Sausalito houseboat where Alan Watts talked and drank, womanized and created legends. It is common knowledge that he was an alcoholic, but I have no knowledge of sexual excess. From both my reading and firsthand reports, however, I can say with certainty that he did go on and on. He wrote and published 25 books before his death; 40 more have appeared since. That is the stuff of legend, and an enormous contribution.

I also visited the couple who lived in the rustic cabin in Druid Heights near Muir Woods, where Watts died. One report is that he slumped over his desk, drunk, and died, though some say he made it to bed that night. The story is vague, as are a lot of stories about alcoholics. We will never know the truth because we don’t really need to know. But his desk was kept in the same condition as it had been when he died as a kind of shrine to assist his passage to the Pureland, or Byzantine Heaven, or some New Age version of Limbo. Hesitantly, I asked my host if I could sit in the chair where Watts sat when he wrote, the chair he might have died in. My host, a legendary craftsman, said, “Of course. This way is open to anyone.” I imagined that I heard a faint echo from the Master.

Phil Whalen told me he loved listening to Watts on the old Berkeley KPFA. Many of the people who first gathered around Suzuki Roshi did. For some, it was their initiation into Zen. Watts read widely and wisely, even if at times he speculated wildly. David Chadwick recounted in his biography of Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, that when a student of Suzuki's disparaged Watts by saying, "we used to think he was profound until we found the real thing." Suzuki fumed with a sudden intensity, saying, "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva.” Suzuki did not disparage the ox who tilled the soil, even if all the rows were not perfectly lined up. That would come later, and in some cases, the insistence on plowing perfectly straight lines got a bit out of hand.

At that dinner in Mandala House, I remember a lively conversation with a beautiful woman who was very close to a dear friend who was also present. The woman's son by another marriage, a bright, handsome guy, had driven across the Santa Cruz mountains to be with his mother. Not long after, he died in a car wreck on a treacherous part of that same highway. His mother chose to join him. She took a huge number of sleeping pills and never woke up again in the same house, perhaps the same room where Watts died.

I never met Alan Watts, but I met his ghost. I also carry with me the memories of many other men and women who left life with a troubled past. Though I might think I understand some of their reasons for living, I cannot claim to know the reasons for their dying.

_________________

Issan Dorsey, Roshi, died on September 6, 1990. He was 57 years old. I can think of no good reasons for his dying. If he were still alive, he would be 88 years old today. Watts was only 58 when he died, and his legend spans decades. I might complain that they both died too young with so much left to contribute. I might sing that tired old tune “only the good die young,” but I’d add that sometimes the good die young because they were bad, or at least not as good as we would like to believe.

Michael, thank you for sharing Issan’s kind answer. It still has life.

A Mistake of Immense Proportion

2026-05-13T10:32:00.001+05:30

by Jacob Needleman

Since the beginning of recorded history, man has been haunted by the intimation that he lives in a world of mere appearances. In every teaching and spiritual philosophy of the past, we find the idea that whatever happens to us, for good or ill, is brought about by deeper forces behind the world that seems so real to us. We are further told that this real world is not accessible to the senses or understandable by the ordinary mind.

But, and this is a point that is not usually understood, we live in a world of inner appearances as well. We are not what we perceive ourselves to be. There is another identity, our real self, hidden behind the self that we believe ourselves to be.

It is only through awakening to this deeper self within that we can penetrate behind the veil of appearances and make contact with a truer world outside of ourselves. It is because we live on the surface of ourselves that we live on the surface of the greater world, never participating—except in rare moments which do not last and which are not understood—in the wholeness of reality.

It is this all-important second aspect of the ancient wisdom, the aspect that speaks of our inner world, that modern thought has been blind to. And the question about the meaning of life is inextricably linked to the need for contact with the real self beneath the surface of our everyday thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Without this contact, the external world of appearances assumes for us the proportions of an overwhelmingly compelling force. We cannot see the real world because we are not in contact with the deeper powers of thought and sensing within ourselves that could perceive it. Because of this, it is inevitable that we experience the external world as the strongest force in our lives. This is the meaning and the origin of materialism.

The error, or, to use Christian language, the “sin” of materialism, has at its root nothing to do with greed or possessiveness. Nor does it involve, at its root, some philosophical view about matter and spirit in their usual meanings. No, the error of materialism is an error of reality perception, based on a lack of experiential contact with the inner world. What we know as greed and possessiveness, with their attendant traits of cruelty and human exploitation, are results of this ignorance of the inner world. We turn to the superficially perceived outer world for that which can only be obtained through deep access to the inner self.

Materialism is not a “sin”; it is a mistake.

But a mistake of immense proportions and with deadly consequences. It is like searching for water on the surface of the moon to search for meaning in the external world. Like grasping a picture of food and trying to eat it. Not only meaning, but also health, safety, service, love, and power can be obtained only through turning to reality. The unreal world can never yield these things to man.

Jacob Needleman is an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar. This reading was excerpted from his book, Money and Meaning of Life, which is also summarized in this interview on Bill Moyers.

https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=1088

Why I hate Hemingway

2026-05-12T07:46:00.009+05:30

A friend whom I admire and love very deeply once suggested that Hemingway was perhaps the greatest of American writers, but in danger of becoming unappreciated. He used spare language. I hadn’t read him in two decades, so I went out and bought The Sun Also Rises at the Green Apple second-hand book store in the avenues, and began. I have a confession: after page 12, I began speed reading, hoping to end the pain as quickly as possible. I gave up drinking years ago, but if there'd been a bottle handy, I might have begun self-medication.

That old goat—he was young then—used Paris as a stage set. Maybe that whole Lost Generation did. America was getting too complicated and too heartless to coddle their mixed-up lives. They were starved, and America was getting too greedy to slow down enough to read and take in the complexity of words, much less their lives. Their words. Gertrude, herself of few words, and her clique have trained those of us who love words to visit Paris as often as we can afford the luxury, so we can feel guilty, and, always facing that thick and solid writers’ block, continue to be stymied because we’ve used every excuse money could buy to avoid the language of our hearts. All over again and then again. Guilty for using too many words for love. Make sure to buy those overpriced cards with sticky colors that hang from the revolving racks along the Seine. That is really as close we’re going to get to the Parisians because we can never really be French—we’ve been warned over and over. They won’t let us, but we can still dream. When we hit the grand lotto and buy that flat, we can wake up every morning, knowing that we don’t belong, but if we could belong, this would be the place to do it. Be stymied in style.

In the end, I feel like you and all you self-righteous ex-pats have bullied and flattened my emotional life. But back to Hemingway, that all-American bullied my emotional life. Me, personally, when I opened his book. I repeated myself. I must be carrying a grudge. I used too many words. It struck deep. What is it? I love Paris too. I’ve visited many of the same places. The tour guide in me can pull up some data or hearsay that explains why this is there, and that there seems somewhat off because it’s where someone whose name will never be forgotten, but I can’t remember, was murdered or made a saint or perhaps both, while over there is that famous view that one of the kings so fancied that he made sure that only those he favored could join his viewing party. Until he lost his head over there. And this is where De Haussman needed to keep the line straight. If you think that’s urban beauty, do I have a surprise for you. The man had only a ruler and a straightedge on the desk when he laid out the plan; he couldn’t add up numbers when it came to paying the bills, but I shouldn’t make the story too complex. Before we let it get too real, let’s distract ourselves: here is the best place to buy the authentic onion soup because the real cheap guide books assure us that the owners are actually not crafty thieves and pickpockets; there are some who need to steal from you to pay the landlords, who are the only people making a buck anyway. And the writers of those cheap tourist guides need to pay for dinner too. Maybe we’ve just lined up for an endless game of emotional pickpocket to keep our fantasies alive.

It’s like that, Paris. Emotions run deep. If you don’t believe me, go visit the home of Balzac in the 16th, which was way out of town when he himself tried to throw up a wall to escape the tyranny of the French. But don’t read him. It gets too real at a slow and leisurely pace.

They’re like that, the words. Back to Hemingway, M.F.K. Fisher famously observed that Ernest used words with such precision that each one seemed "to have been savoured and then spat out," as if he were testing their weight and texture like a piece of food or wine. I’ll go with the spat-out part. Writing in the most legendary part of the Left Bank, carefully, meticulously, that’s the way he treats language. He claims—I hesitate to use the word protest, although that’s accurate, but I needn’t be too fussy, maybe a bit too theatrical for a man who preferred bull fighting over opera: he says he was looking for the simplest, most direct word pointing. He would spend hours circling, underlining, substituting, crossing out, never satisfied, questioning because “it’s not exactly right,” but give him time, while he, the perverse old pickpocket, is frisking you for that last centilla of emotion he can rip off to throw in the ring. No wonder I think I have to speed-read his books. Anything less would be a death sentence.

I imagine he lined up poets, read them, and pronounced sentence.

Lorca, that silly little queen. He had no guts; he cowered. Just shoot the little pansy. But my enemies did it for me, which should give me second thoughts if it doesn’t exceed my word allotment.

Whitman, falling in love with ambulance drivers, glad I missed you and your mystical perversion of the mother tongue. Who the fuck gave you the right to make up so many words to show that it's all one world? You get hung. May you sputter and teach us all a lesson.

Dali, a total weirdo, Gertrude kept him around to keep the rest from wildly exuberant explosions of self-indulgence. He should be choked with coarse pubic hair.

This has stopped being fun, which is what Hemingway must have said at some point, too.

Ernest Hemingway, 1952.Photograph by Earl Theisen/Getty

The Gift of Tears—For my Mother, Leona Carroll

2026-05-10T21:55:00.000+05:30

It is May 10th, 2026, Mother's Day, and I am reposting this piece that I wrote in 2007 about my mother, Leona Carroll Ireland. I dedicate it to you, Mother, and to all our mothers.

I woke up this morning missing my mother, who has been dead for several years. Given the contentious quality of our relationship for most of our 60 years together, I am surprised that oftentimes I find tears in my eyes when I think of her. I still remember phone calls where she slammed down the receiver, long periods of not speaking—her cold punishment for my seemingly uncooperative nature—her steely resolve that by the force of her will, I was going to get straight somehow, and marry. We were locked in a stalemate for almost 20 years.

Then, a few short years before she died, I got really lucky, or was blessed, when I was able to touch the pain her actions tried to mask. That took away their power to hurt and allowed me to experience a kind of love that I could not have imagined.

This is what I write about this Mother’s Day morning.

"A painted cake doesn't satisfy hunger."

There is a famous story in Zen about a monk, Hsiang-yen, who, by most standards applied to monks, was a failure. He worked away in the monastery of his teacher, expecting nothing—and he got nothing; he sat long hours in meditation—nothing; he did rounds of begging—right, again only scraps; he got thrown out of the hojo every time he presented himself before his teacher to check out how he was doing because he didn’t seem to be absorbing much. A hopeless case.

After many years of getting nowhere, when his teacher died, convinced that realization was beyond his capabilities, he retired to a remote temple where he tended the teacher’s grave. One day, the story continues, as he was raking the stones in the orderly zen garden (I like to imagine the ones you see in the fancy books with perfectly ordered lines in the rock), a small stone bounced off the garden wall with a Ping! Just that sound, and in a tumble, his mind gulped in all his training in a single instant. And he got his life.

Even someone who has never practiced long days of meditation can understand the appeal of Hsiang-Yen's story. Everyone I know has some dilemma like this in his or her life. For me, my relationship with my mother was a huge conundrum.

I have flown to Tucson to be with my mother after her first serious heart episode. It is decided that she get a pacemaker; that the doctor electrically jolt her heart, and, hopefully, restore a normal rhythm. Then the elements of a really bad melodrama started to unfold—my father disappeared for several days when he can’t take anymore, my mother brawled with her sister and a pretty buffed nursing attendant as she tried to put on her clothes to leave to go out into the street and hail a cab to take her home given that no one in her family seemed willing to obey her command and return her to a normal life. Eventually, a really well-trained and compassionate case manager was the voice of calm, and the mother agreed to the procedure. The drama to follow can be a quick note in the margin—further refusal on the operating table; family crisis; harsh words exchanged in anger; the heart specialist looks like the 14-year prodigy, Doogie Howser, M.D., on the TV (I’m not kidding. He really did look like a teenager). I started to laugh, . . . this kid is going to thread electrodes through the arteries to my mother’s heart? What is she going to think? She thinks he’s cute and refuses his treatment. Back to square one. That evening, we will try again.

Before her surgery, she can have no food; even water is restricted—only small ice shavings. I hold a plastic cup and gently spoon the shavings on her tongue. She chews, sucks, and swallows with smiles. I hear the ice click against the side of the plastic cup as I scoop it up. I use every bit of all my long zen training just to be with my mother for what might be her last moments of life—just her, just this spoonful, just this ice, just my breath and hers, just her pleasure in ice and water. It is very sweet, and I feel like the good son. If nothing else about Zen, it does train you to be present in the moment. And that moment will have to be enough for this particular gay son after many long years of feeling outcast and abused. Yes, I decide it will be enough.

The medical procedure went as well as any scripted denouement on the Doogie Howser TV show. You couldn’t hope for more: the patient got well; the family crisis was temporarily resolved when the stubborn mother agreed to go to the nursing home; the father returned, shaken, humbled but unharmed, forgiven and loved; the gentle sister has taken over managing the mother’s care. And I boarded Frontier Airlines to return to San Francisco.

After the exchange of pleasantries, I discovered that my seatmates were going to San Francisco to be reunited with their birth mother, whom they had never met (how could I make this up?), and I told them that I had been at my mother’s sickbed.

We are in flight. Staring out the window as we flew over the Rockies, across the desert, and into the sky over Death Valley, I lapsed into a brown study, mesmerized by the world's wonder. The flight attendant offered me a second Diet Coke with ice. My orphaned seatmates passed the offering from seat to seat. I took a big gulp, and as I swirled the ice around the cup, it clinked against the edge. In an instant, my mind tumbles and I am no longer "me" in a plane over Death Valley, but I am in my mother’s life—I mean, really, not some theoretical proposition—all of it, her hopes, her pain, her struggles, her fear, her birth her death, and I burst into tears and sob. My orphan seatmate understands something about finding mothers: she just reaches out and gently touches my arm, holding me connected to the breathing world as my mind flies away. Did I thank her enough? Any trace of resentment, regret, bitterness, or recrimination about the way my mother treated me at any time in our lives together evaporates. She is just my mother, and I am finally able to enter into the mystery and wonder of being a son.

The plane lands in San Francisco. I mumble good-bye to my seatmates, where the mother that gave them birth is waiting at the gate. I wish them well, and I walk back into my life, praying that everybody be lucky enough to find out who their mothers really are, to be able to step into their lives, and cry when they are gone.

My Personal "Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana"

2026-05-02T22:49:00.005+05:30

Here is an index of many pages. They are links, and I have sorted them. If a title appeals to you, just click. I will not be hurt if you close it immediately. Most were written as part of a conversation with a group of former Jesuits, Los Companeros.

"Finding God in All Things" by Bonnie Johnson Shurman

A Buddhist Looks at the Arguments for the Existence of God

A Meditation on Meditation by James Ismael Ford

An Open Letter to Hans Küng

August 6th, 1945, Carrying the Flame

Beware of Lounge Chair Zazen

Big Changes for Jesuit Spirituality

Bob Drinan and I design a future for the Jesuits

Buddha, S.J., Francis Xavier meets a Zen Roshi

Call it by its correct name: Lying

Calling Out the Archbishop

Christology, Science Fiction, and Nicaea

Christopher Hitchens vs. the Blessed Venerable Unassailable Saint Mātā-ji, aka Mother Teresa

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

Did I miss Holy Week completely?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell—A Jesuit Strategy

Drinan and I design a future for the Jesuits

Driving in India as Spiritual Practice

Enneagram Bibliography

Father God, S.J.

Foggy Father Ed McKinnon

Further Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts

Goa, Saint Francis, and Me

Head versus Heart, Faith and Reason, Reason and the Emotions

How does the past become the past? Therapy, Jesus, and Zen

How this Jesuit became Buddhist

I have dinner with an Old Church Bishop

I met Frederick Copleston

Ignatius’s "Discernment of Spirits" as Emotional Intelligence

In memory of Tom Marshall, S.J

In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline

Is the Catholic Church a sinking ship?

Looking at The Particular Examen of Saint Ignatius with Fresh Eyes

Looking for Faith, a Contrary position

My friendship with an Anglo-Catholic Bishop

Notes on Jesuit Zen Adepts & other Christian Zen Masters

Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment

Rebel Mentor, A Conversation with Robert Brophy, Ph.D.

Reflections on the Feast of the Assumption

Reforming the Roman Curia is like trying to teach an elephant ballet

Roshi Ignatius on Planting Buddhism in the West

Schism Schmisum--

Sister Jacinta, the Reality of Women Priests

Sister Kuon Elaine MacInnes Roshi

Stepping Out From Under the Shadow of God

Suntne Angeli?

Taking about talking about God

Taking the Next Step: A Note on Activism as a Spiritual Practice

The Beginnings of a Christian-Zen Bibliography

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris Fire: A Return to Faith

The Christian Church and Slavery

The Clang Birds

The Cosmic Coincidental Control Center may be at work.

The Dynamism of Desire, A Book Conversation

The House that Aristotle built and Aquinas renovated

The Indian Tomb of Jesus

The innocent world of the cloister—celibacy, sex, and art

The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram, Bob Ochs, S.J.

The Meanderings of Francis Xavier

The Pope's baritone

The Realm of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius

Trapped by Life

Ty and I sing at a Latin high mass

Vatican 1 was a colossal mistake.

What Compels Belief?

What would Kaiser be writing these days?

When the Sirens of Holy Hill called to me

Women in the Church

Writing that Can Change the World

Yogi CM Chen, Bob Ochs and Me

Inclined Toward Love: Notes While Doing the Spiritual Exercises

2026-05-02T12:51:00.029+05:30

By Ken Ireland and Morgan Zo Callahan 

This essay is dedicated to the memory of two men who played a key role in our understanding of the Ignatian exercises: great friend and mentor, Bob Holstein, still inspiring us here on the ever more connected Earth, and dear friend, Curtis Bryant, S.J. May they Rest in Peace and Enjoy Eternal Happiness.

Iñigo was always rather inclined toward love; moreover, he seemed all love, and because of that, he was universally loved by all. —Luis Gonçalves de Camara, a close associate of Ignatius

I might think about a tiny bug or flower and imagine how many other living and non-living things conspired to bring it to life and sustain it.... I consider that all the good that I see and know comes to be as a share in the divine good. —St. Ignatius, “Contemplation to Obtain the Love of God.”

We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient to be on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time. And so, I think it is with you that your ideas mature gradually—let them grow; let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today, what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

This study covers the following topics:                    

*The Principle and Foundation

                    *Examen of Conscience (Examination of Consciousness)

                    *The Call of the Temporal King

                    *Application of the Senses

                    *Three Kinds of Humility and Curtis’s Story

                    *The Election and the Discernment of Spirits

                    *Consolation and Desolation, “Interior Movements”

                    *Exercises that adapt to the needs of everyone

Situating Myself in the Universe

Making the Spiritual Exercises according to the Nineteenth Annotation

In July of 1998, Bob Holstein gathered a small group of men, Morgan being one of them, most of whom were former Jesuits, to do the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius in the long form that is described in the Nineteenth Annotation of Ignatius’ final text.

When we read the actual text of the Exercises, we are amazed that they have withstood the test of time. This thin volume has been printed more than four and a half million times over more than four centuries, making it one of the most influential works about prayer and meditation in the Western world. It is not merely a self-help book and so Ignatius’ directions for the retreat director are as precise, detailed, unembellished, and as dry as any instructions that have ever been written.

Among Jesuit “best practices” are creating spiritual retreats, sermons, and teaching materials in other languages, for other cultures and times, yet based on the Exercises. A good result would be that these adaptations lead to a prayerful, intense, and experiential connection with the Lord Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, and his teachings. The Jesuits have met with some success with these projects all over the world. We have attempted to record our own meditations, prayers, and reflections both outside and during this nine-month period and final summary weekend at the Loyola Institute of Spirituality in the same open, innovative, and creative spirit. We bow with reverence to Jesus and Ignatius for the life-enhancing principles imparted to us, even though we find ourselves at this stage of life more in tune with Buddhist practice, informing an Ignatian one.

The intensive thirty-day retreat Ignatius lays out in his manual requires five hours of spiritual exercise each day in a setting of silence and separation from the day-to-day world. Ignatius himself added the Nineteenth Annotation retreat for people who want to do the Exercises, but since they have active lives, they cannot leave for such an extended period. The Nineteenth Annotation retreat takes thirty-four weeks with at least an hour of prayer and meditation—much listening—and the Examen of Conscience each day. Here’s what Ignatius writes about the Nineteenth Annotation:

Nineteenth Annotation: A person of education or ability, who is taken up with public affairs or suitable business, may take an hour and a half daily to exercise himself.

Let the end for which man is created be explained to him, and he can also be given for the space of a half-hour the Particular Examen and then the General and the way to confess and to receive the Blessed Sacrament. Let him, during three days every morning, for the space of an hour, make the meditation on the First, Second and Third Sins, pp. 37, 38; then, three other days at the same hour, the meditation on the statement of Sins, p. 40; then, for three other days at the same hour, on the punishments corresponding to Sins, p. 45. Let him be given in all three meditations the ten Additions, p. 47.

For the mysteries of Christ our Lord, let the same course be kept, as is explained below and in full in the Exercises themselves.

[All quotes from the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius cited in this essay are taken from the translation of the Autograph of the Exercises prepared by Fr. Elder Mullan, S.J. We have left each section cited exactly as it appears in its entirety.]

Bob Holstein called Morgan and said, “Come on, take this Nineteenth Annotation retreat; I know you’re studying a lot of Buddhism, but maybe they can interplay.” It had been some thirty-five years since he and Ken had undertaken on the discipline of an Ignatian retreat, and we both had more than a few misgivings about re-emerging in already-rejected ideas of original sin; the guilt that our personal sins caused Jesus to be crucified; absolute, eternal Hell; the put-on “spiritual enthusiasm” of wanting to be a soldier who fights bravely, even fanatically, in the service of the Lord Jesus.

Holstein was confident that the man who would be “directing” the retreat, Don Merrifield, S.J., had a very open approach to the Exercises; Holstein said Merrifield thought that the Exercises could be given to Jews, Buddhists, and other religions as well. He wanted to create new and relevant expressions that weren’t to be based primarily in the counter-Reformation theology of Ignatius’ time. OK, Morgan thought, I’ll at least talk with Merrifield and read something about his approach.

Don Merrifield told us with a broad smile that he was “playing around” and "benefiting from" Latin American Liberation Theology, "because our times behoove us to enter the politics of oppression, to connect prayer and meditation to the poor.” Don said that he had been studying nature mysticism and was very simpatico with Pierre de Chardin. He assured us that we didn’t need to take as the truth that we personally caused Jesus’ sufferings, or believe all of Ignatius’ theology, time bound in the sixteenth century, or from our early training in the post-World War II, 1950s catechism.

We would do the “four weeks” of the Exercises over thirty-four actual weeks; we would generally be on our own, though some spiritual direction would be available if we requested it; there would also be some group meetings at Loyola Marymount University; and our group e-mailing would serve as a kind of self-generated spiritual direction.

There was to be one final weekend training at Loyola Institute of Spirituality in Orange, California. Holstein and the Loyola Institute of Spirituality were interested in training men and women who had completed the Exercises to lead prayer groups, retreats, or counsel using the principles of the Exercises. Holstein felt that spiritual direction was not only for the ordained—lay people might be equally as gifted spiritual directors as the ordained and should be recognized as such.

Before we began the Exercises, we each set goals with Don, which determined the logistics for our retreat. We each wanted to adapt the experience to our unique selves as well as to our American cultural lives. Some of us chose to ask for some spiritual direction.

Each day we would do an Examen of Conscience and a contemplation from the Exercises—putting ourselves into a story or “scene” from Christ’s life; for example, Jesus healing the sick and the lame; speaking directly to the abuse of religious power that burdens people, confronting religious leaders and religious hierarchies who create fear, and fall prey to the negative human proclivity to have power and domination over other humans. We wanted gustare et sentire res internum, to taste and feel the inner communications of the Spirit, by making ourselves present through imagination and fantasy to events in Jesus’ life. We would open ourselves to thoughts, affections, feelings as we came to know Jesus interiorly, immersing ourselves in the stories of the New Testament. Then we would let our understanding be applied responsibly and intelligently to how we lived our lives. Sometimes, we would just imagine being out in a solitary desert, quietly sitting in meditation and prayer with Jesus, feeling an expansive Presence. We contemplated Jesus’ appeal for us to love each other, even the most down and out, contemplating Jesus in prison today, in the hospital, being homeless, among those alone, forgotten and hurting. We would also do metta meditations, praying that all of us be happy and without hatred and conflict. (We usually spent one to two hours a day doing the Exercises, but sometimes there was only enough time to do the Examen.)

The eminent scholar of the Spiritual Exercises, Joe Tetlow, S.J., says the Spiritual Exercises could be fruitfully given to non-Catholics and non-Christians. In many of the great traditions, there are “transcendent” (Impersonal, Unknowable, Uninterested) as well as “immanent” (Loving, Personal) Gods, and, according to some sages such as Ramakrishna, one can come to full life by surrender to either a personal God or an impersonal God, or just to be lifted outside ourselves within the sense of the wonder of Being. So, we were enthusiastic about the possibility of doing the Exercises without overemphasizing theistic/creator/original-sin theology. We told Don Merrifield we'd like to start without any religious preconceptions of what we were supposed to learn and know about Jesus. We’d do exercises to really try to imagine and understand who Jesus was, in the stark desert, being tempted, fasting, being transformed, being with women, the poor and rich, angry at religious exploitation of people, saying the Father is greater than he, teaching, being fierce, being tender, being a son, being a critic of religious tyranny which oppresses people, saying there’s no love unless we love ourselves and all others. 

The retreatants examined their conscience each day—much like doing a simple observation of mind, body, feelings, emotions, afflictions, joys, and “re-ordering” our intentions when we see clearly our “inordinate attachments,” usually for money, sex, power, being overly greedy to be popular and rich. We would check in with a spiritual director to talk about and get feedback on what we most truly desire for our lives. The director helped us to get in touch with our own hearts and feelings and how to discern which feelings and yearnings were coming from our intimate connection to our unique bodies, minds, and hearts. We discriminate between the genuine and a put-on self.

The flow of the Exercises moves from disordered, attached, excessively selfish living to seeing in Jesus’ life a model of a loving life, and practicing compassion for all, identifying the suffering with Jesus in our world today, and finally to live all as gift, making individual elections, modifications/adaptations in our lives/reformations/personal transformations, as the inevitable changing, sorrows and happiness come and go.

The first week considers the examination of one’s conscience, thoughts, words, deeds; our sins and personal hells. We begin the second week with a meditation on the spiritual kingdom of Christ and then move on to contemplate Jesus’ life, his infancy and hidden life, his contemplative and prayer life, his public life. We do meditations about choices we make in our lives based on imitating the qualities of Jesus; in the third week, we contemplate Jesus’ suffering and death and consider rules for how we nourish ourselves, how we formulate rules for eating and healthy daily living skills; in the fourth week, we contemplate the resurrection of Jesus, and we make the contemplation to “attain the love of God.”

During the nine months of the Nineteenth Annotation retreat, we discovered that Ignatian and Buddhist approaches can be complementary. We even reflected on the similarities of the individual six-year period of spiritual seeking of the prince Buddha, putting on the monk’s robe and seeking true happiness, and the proud knightly warrior-lover Ignatius, donning coarse clothes of a monk, seeking, and finding the true Lover. They both had temptations and mystical experiences, as well as learning that extreme asceticism hurts the body and the spirit. They both completed their spiritual seeking and founded religious orders based on spiritual practices, which continue to this day.

The Principle and Foundation

The Exercises begin with an examination of what Ignatius calls “the Principle and Foundation.” These are Ignatius’ exact words.

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use them as much as they help him on to his end, and ought to rid him of them as far as they hinder him as to it.

For this it is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to the end for which we are created.

The Principle and Foundation is not what Ignatius would call contemplation. It is more a “thought experiment.” Given this principle, what follows? This is not living one’s life based on a private revelation but rather on certain principles that are open to discussion, verification, interpretation, disagreement, and even rejection. However, Ignatius has also laid the foundation for the most famous and insightful of his principles: that love is best expressed in deeds and not words. Further, love is the mutual sharing of good.

When, for example, Ignatius next says that all on the “face of the earth” are for men and women to help attaining the goal of saving one’s soul, it is open to an understanding that we don’t agree with: the implication of a superiority of the human animal and a right, almost an obligation, for us “to subjugate” the natural world. Re-orienting the principle that states our relationship to all the rest of creation is essential to humankind’s survival on earth.

We are all part of the natural world; barefooted, grass and soil support us. We’re all the living rainforests in the world, as fellow retreatant Bob Brophy said. Brophy suggested we be aware that “a clear difference between our present perceptions and those of Ignatius’ day is the demand that we de-center mankind—we have lost confidence that humans are the unique purpose of the kind of cosmos that we see through the Hubble telescope. Among the "many mansions” possible on other planets, there may be races who have reached Teilhard’s point of noösphere (the calling forth of evolved mind) long ago.… And in our day of ecological awareness, we are being taught by nature and its God to respect and wonder at the kinds of creatures, at our entire living universe, a humbling of this human-centeredness. All this is God’s goodness exploding in beauty.… Finally, we have shifted our sin-consciousness or consciousness of 'disordered' acts partly from “personal” sins of lust, pride, anger, laziness, etc., to an apprehension of “systemic” sin. It is almost impossible in life not to cooperate in evil by taking advantage of and allowing structures to remain that systematically exploit the poor, the earth, rainforests and oceans, air, and soil … this is the world as God gives it to us now.”

We're making these Exercises with no belief that Jesus necessarily loves us and cares for us as an individual. We think Jesus gave us the message to love each other in our present lives. God is ineffable, yet there’s a profound presence and depth to explore within life on our earth, speeding sixty-seven thousand miles an hour around the Sun. Einstein, like Spinoza, said God is remote, uninvolved with our human world, one infinite substance we call Nature which follows necessary laws, immanent but not transcendent. Though God may not necessarily be as involved in our world as we like to project, Einstein’s idea of God was full of awe and wonder, a deep respect for an impersonal mystery. Some colleagues and friends share a similar view of God.

Three bows to the wonderful unknown! We feel more respect for ambiguity, chaos, imperfection, and paradoxes, obviously as many factors in life as are clarity and the notion of an ordered universe. We reflected on a Vedic text: “That in which all these worlds are fixed, of which they are, for which they all arise, for which they all exist, because of which they all come into being and which they truly are—That alone is the real, the truth. May we adore That at Heart.” Could the Exercises be of benefit to realize this? Could the Exercises make some sense in our contemporary world? 

And finally in the Principle and Foundation, Ignatius wisely concludes we should give up inordinate, clinging, harmful preferences in the world, whether we’re famous or not, rich or not, whether we’re enjoying spiritual consolations or not; and concentrate on being who we are, understanding the purpose for which we have been created, and finally to be happy through giving and receiving love within ourselves, for others, the environment, and for our world.

We think that this is not an ontological statement that to reach God, a man or a woman ought to be detached from a world that is inherently evil. Rather, we think that the entire emphasis here is on spiritual practice. Listen to what Ignatius writes in the twentieth annotation:

From this isolation [imposed by the Exercises] three chief benefits, among many others, follow.

The first is that a man, by separating himself from many friends and acquaintances, and likewise from many not well-ordered affairs, to serve and praise God our Lord, merits no little in the sight of His Divine Majesty.

The second is, that being thus isolated, and not having his understanding divided on many things, but concentrating on one only, namely, on serving his Creator and benefiting his own soul, he uses with greater freedom his natural powers, in seeking with diligence what he so much desires.

The third: the more our soul finds itself alone and isolated, the more apt it makes itself to approach and to reach its Creator and Lord, and the more it so approaches Him, the more it disposes itself to receive graces and gifts from His Divine and Sovereign Goodness.

Father Merrifield wrote the following as his adaptation of the “First Principle and Foundation” of Ignatius.

“I begin by situating myself, as best I can, in the overall scheme of life. I sense myself alone before the mystery of my existence and the mystery of the existence of the entire universe. Turning from all immediate consideration, all busyness of mind and spirit, I focus on the wonder of it all, even on the wonder of being able to wonder. Reflecting on the Genesis accounts of creation, I find myself, like Adam, newly sprung into being, clay of the earth into which the Shaper of all has breathed spirit and life. I am formed through the clay from which I came, one with the earth and all its wonderful panoply of living things, mountains, seas, rhythms, cycles, and beauty. Shaped from the same stuff as all these, over eons, I am amazingly made, a delicate and yet strong bio-system, living in a balance with all else and surviving through the myriads of interactions with all creation, including of course, my fellow human creatures. But my fellows and I are somehow strange amidst all these other creatures, sprung from the same clay. We have had a life breathed into us from another realm that adds another dimension, Spirit. In us, this clay becomes open to limitless horizons.”

We begin the First Week of the Exercises and agree not to have any expectations about what the process will be about. We want to let the Spirit lead as She may. We practice daily Examen of Conscience (some today call Exam of Consciousness) where I pay attention to my thoughts-feelings, words, actions, my real, most basic motives.

This is the right time to say something more about the "Examen." Traditionally, the “Examen” has been used as a way of trying to remove the imperfections of character, if not the outright tendency towards sinfulness. Each day, for three periods of approximately fifteen minutes at set intervals, a person doing the Exercises or a person who is using the "Examen" outside the context of a retreat, makes a thorough inventory of all his or her thoughts, words, and actions since the time he or she last made the "Examen" to scrutinize all behaviors in the light of his intention to break a specific bad habit or avoid sin.

We found this form, this context for self-examination, to be less than satisfactory. We borrow from the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. We examine our intentions, thoughts, words, and actions and feel them interiorly. First, we want to be good human beings—free from hurting oneself and others—with a primacy of my own conscience and intelligence—not hypnotized by either guru or Pope. We discover that we are an ongoing process towards a bright wakefulness based on just the way humans are negative thoughts lose their power in the face of a joyful spirituality

And finally, we extend the examen of my consciousness to all beings, as a society, as we relate to our environment and to our local and global politics. We “purify” our thoughts, speech, and intentions. Thus, we minimize emotional distraction, which can overwhelm my particular and undivided expression of a loving life.

The first week deals with our distorted view of the world and the universe. It is often called the “purification” stage of the spiritual process. Much as in Buddhism, sila, moral correctness, is a foundation of meditation and wisdom. We find the first week to be the opportunity to sit down and be honest with ourselves, inside and out, in our intentions, words, and actions.

“Sin” is missing the mark of the living, loving heart. There’s no need to dwell on guilt and shame, even though there remain emotionally negative thoughts about our human nature, including trauma to be healed. As Faulkner says, “the past isn’t dead for us; it isn’t even past.”

Our first week is a reflection on the feelings of greed, jealousy, anger, even hatred in myself, to “see it,” but also let it go. We must deal with losses and death, the impermanence of one's body. Ignatian retreats may stress that we should want to feel shame, embarrassment, confusion, and sorrow that our sins have tortured Jesus. For many of us, we no longer find any of that helpful or true. We torture Jesus in our contemporary world by hurting those Jesus said would represent his presence on earth: the oppressed, the poor, the abused children, the forgotten, and the discarded people.

The culture and theology of Ignatius’ time have their own way of expressing sin, hell, impermanence, and death; Ignatius’ genius is that essential spiritual insights can come from the Spiritual Exercises, even for a non-theistic Buddhist. We've found some first-week exercises helpful in counteracting obsessive lust and vanity.

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Ignatius begins the second week with the famous contemplation of God’s kingdom and the Incarnation. It begins with an examination of a personal response to a command from an earthly king and then asks the person who is making the Exercises to use those same feelings and listen to the Gospel as a call into the service of the second person of the Holy Trinity.

Here are Ignatius’s instructions for beginning the contemplation.

The Call of the Temporal King

It helps to contemplate the life of the King Eternal

First Point. The first Point is, to put before me a human king chosen by God our Lord, whom all Christian princes and men reverence and obey.

Second Point. The second, to look how this king speaks to all his people, saying: “It is my Will to conquer all the land of unbelievers. Therefore, whoever would like to come with me is to be content to eat as I, and also to drink and dress, etc., as I: likewise he is to labor like me[6] in the day and watch in the night, etc., that so afterwards he may have part with me in the victory, as he has had it in the labors.”

Third Point. The third, to consider what the good subjects ought to answer to a King so liberal and so kind, and hence, if anyone did not accept the appeal of such a king, how deserving he would be of being censured by all the world, and held for a mean-spirited knight.

As we do this contemplation, we are struck by how much of Ignatius’ life experience is reduced to a few words and distilled, allowing us to experience—as much as we can, as twenty-first-century Americans who cherish democracy—what Ignatius felt as he underwent his conversion.

In 1491, Ignatius (Iñigo) Loyola was born into a wealthy family, the youngest of thirteen children, in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa in northern Spain. It was the time of discovery, the New World of the Americas, European wars, corruption in the church, and the stirrings of Humanism. As a young man, he was a page for Juan Velázquez, the treasurer of the kingdom of Castile. The free-spirited Iñigo developed a taste for royalty, gambling, swordplay—and, most definitely, the ladies. He was ambitious, romantic, “sinful,” vain, and anti-religious.

At age thirty, as an officer defending Pamplona against the French, Iñigo was wounded. A cannonball broke one leg and damaged the other. It was a severe injury—he would limp for the rest of his life. While recuperating, he read a life of Christ and a book about the saints, it is said, because he was bored and that was the only reading material to be found in the castle. By nature, exuberant and whole-hearted, he allowed Jesus’ life to deeply penetrate his being. He felt an inner tranquility, as he would lose himself in Jesus, and an equally ardent desire to reform himself.

When he could walk again, he set off for Barcelona with the intention of becoming a pilgrim and going to live in Jerusalem, where Jesus had lived. He stopped at the Benedictine shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat to leave his sword and knife at the altar as a sign of his intention to change his life. As he prayed there, he began to experience a series of mystical visions and intuitive insights which he knew he had to follow, and he took shelter in a cave along the Cardoner River in the town of Manresa, where he stayed for ten months. The principles and practices he created as he underwent his spiritual transformation were the seeds for the Spiritual Exercises.

There are similarities between Ignatius and the Buddha. The onset of the Buddha’s spiritual crisis is told in a story: the scene, dawn in the palace of Prince Gautama Buddha. After a night of revelry, the rich connoisseur, the admired and accomplished presumptive prince, notices the unattractive sleeping poses of the alluring women who had been dancing for his enjoyment just a few hours earlier, and he sees through the enchantments of the evening. He begins to feel, somehow, empty while living his “perfect” life. All the wonderful entertainments and sumptuous occasions with dancing women, copious food and drink somehow no longer satisfy the Buddha, Ignatius—or us. Both Iñigo and the Buddha begin a quest: We must get to the true Source of life that will bring us peace and happiness.

We can make this contemplation with enormous benefit. We can further expand it into a world where human nature also shows, as I read in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and his stories, how we all get into “name, fame, and gold.” How we love ourselves in a narcissistic way, our eyes/ears always wanting to receive flattery. Our tightening ourselves around our money, power, positions and the contrast between that urgency and the message of the teachings of Jesus.

The rest of the Second Week is filled with contemplations of the accounts of the earthly ministry of Jesus. Here are two counsels, “preludes” in the language of his manual, that Ignatius gives for beginning these contemplations, the “Application of the Senses” and, then, as usual with Ignatius, an inquiry into what actions follow from prayer.

First Prelude. The first Prelude is a composition, seeing the place: it will be here to see with the sight of the imagination, the synagogues,[5] villages and towns through which Christ our Lord preached.

Second Prelude. The second, to ask for the grace which I want: it will be here to ask grace of our Lord that I may not be deaf to His call, but ready and diligent to fulfill His most Holy Will.

Before we begin to share some thoughts about the Application of the senses, however, we would like to point to another place where we found a parallel between the instructions of Ignatius and that of many of my Buddhist teachers. Ignatius writes: “Before entering into prayer, I should rest my mind for a while, either seated or walking; and I will reflect on where I am going and why.” (Spiritual Exercises [SE], 239) It is about intention, not achieving a particular result. Many people who begin to use the imagination in contemplation question whether they are “doing it right.” For Ignatius, the “soul is not satisfied and filled by knowing a lot of facts but by feeling and tasting things in the depths of the heart.” (SE 2) When relaxed and focused, Ignatius suggests one’s inner Source will communicate directly and intimately with the individual person as “speaking as a friend speaks with his friend.” (SE 54). And we know that our friends have different voices. The Exercises allow us the necessary time to listen to one’s own personal, living mind and heart through meditation, contemplation, and reflection. We don’t even worry about what we’re supposed to hear. Taking time to listen to oneself in a friendly way is spiritual exercise.

Contemplations, meditations, and prayerful reflections using the technique of concentrated imagination have a certain dynamic: Getting in touch with our genuine desire for total freedom and realizing that such freedom for making decisions and taking action requires making ourselves spiritually “indifferent.” Ignatius makes his notion of “indifference” clear in the Principle and Foundation. It is not a listless state of not caring, but an active state of being open without as many self-prohibitions and prejudices as possible.

By contemplating Jesus, in the imagination, the mind’s eye, one may feel that his or her heart has been opened by “encountering” Jesus, and that his teachings about kindness, fairness, prayer, speaking out against injustices, feel real in a defining way. One of our contemplations was imagining John the Baptist with Jesus. We see how they dress, smell the water; hear the insects buzzing around Jesus’ shoulders. We tune into John’s preaching; so wild, crazy in his quest for God, in his garment of camel’s hair and a leather skirt around his waist, his food of locusts and honey—how sweet that honey must have been. We can taste it. What courage to face up to the Pharisees, while baptizing Jesus: … the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting, alighting on him. We can feel it.

As we contemplate the life of Jesus, we try to place ourselves as best we can in the living conditions of the time Jesus lived. Even in his parables, we can become the prodigal son welcomed by his father, unconditionally loved, even after we’ve squandered our money and time. We can live this emotionally—our father just loves us; he’s not angry or berating us. He wants us to eat, talk, and share life with each other, to continue growing together.

We view Jesus teaching us to be gentle peacemakers, to serve everyone, most especially the poor, to value meditation and prayer; before his horrific execution, what we call his “passion.” We see him washing the disciples’ feet. Though we're going back in history, applying our senses and imagination, we're simultaneously exploring what’s going on in our life, currently, asking what we yearn for, here and now.

We're seeing Jesus before any religious authority or organization tells me who Jesus is and what Jesus wants me to do. We're looking, as best I can, with unbiased “eyes of my imagination” within stories of Jesus. We experience Jesus as a man of unconditional loving, brave activism, a critic of religious authority that is abusive. His humanity is divine.

Such exercises—as a witness or as a participant—of contemplating the life, suffering and death, resurrection of Jesus allow us to be with a divine mystery, to participate in a spiritual experience of giving one’s heart and energy in response to a deep listening from within. We allow ourselves the space and attention to touch our deepest, most creative desires; to feel and accept our fears, hurting, with gentle embracing; to be with the goodness, energy, and wisdom which we innately are. We are what we wake up to. 

At this point in the Exercises, Ignatius introduces his notion of the “Three Kinds of Humility.” This is from the text of the Exercises:

First Humility. The first manner of Humility is necessary for eternal salvation; namely, that I so lower and so humble myself, as much as is possible to me, that in everything I obey the law of God, so that, even if they made me lord of all the created things in this world, nor for my own temporal life, I would not be in deliberation about breaking a Commandment, whether Divine or human, which binds me under mortal sin.

Second Humility. The second is more perfect Humility than the first; namely, if I find myself at such a stage that I do not want, and feel no inclination to have, riches rather than poverty, to want honor rather than dishonor, to desire a long rather than a short life—the service of God our Lord and the salvation of my soul being equal; and so not for all creation, nor because they would take away my life, would I be in deliberation about committing a venial sin.

Third Humility. The third is most perfect Humility; namely, when—including the first and second, and the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty being equal—in order to imitate and be more actually like Christ our Lord, I want and choose poverty with Christ poor rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather than honors; and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, Who first was held as such, rather than wise or prudent in this world.

We didn’t benefit much from thinking about, praying over, or meditating on these three kinds of humility. In fact, we had totally rejected self-punishment as a spiritual practice. We would not seek out physical pain, humiliation, or insults to be like Jesus. It had the flavor of masochistic, self-destructive behavior. However, we can reach out to those who are suffering, even to ourselves, and learn how Jesus forgave and loved even when he was hurt so much, and I would later learn that this spiritual practice is really about how we react, how we respond when we suffer physically or if we are insulted and humiliated.

Knowing Curtis Bryant, S.J., Morgan's close friend from high school, and the generosity with which he shared his life struggle finally allowed us to go more deeply and make sense of Ignatius’ counsel. Our friendship allowed us to grow into this insight. Together, we would learn a way to unite our own suffering with that of other people in the world who are suffering, connecting with them, and working with the intention that they be happy. [Curtis died from cancer on November 18, 2003, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California. Our telling his story is also our respectful eulogy for a wonderful, magnanimous man.]

Curtis was a licensed psychologist. In his fourth year of theology studies, he took a Clinical Pastoral Education course at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., and he knew that therapy and counseling would be “the backbone of my life in the future.” He went on to earn a Ph.D. at the California School of Professional Psychology, Berkeley, in 1983.

Curtis and Morgan talked about Ignatius' "Three Kinds of Humility," these three levels, traditionally taken as expressions of Christian commitment: the first level, not committing grave, mortal sins, and avoiding evil; the second level, developing indifference to honors, wealth, not even intending to do a minor, venial sin; and finally the third level, seeking to emulate Jesus who was poor, insulted, taken for a fool. Curtis said the notion of sin—in the sense of self-condemnation and exaggerated guilt—is both psychologically and theologically unsound, not reflective of our spiritual understanding in the light of what we know about the workings of the human mind, and the church did not have a wise and compassionate perspective regarding sexuality, sin, and guilt.

Curtis lived openly and bravely as a gay, celibate priest. We spoke about the prejudice towards gay people and saw that the church’s teaching on homosexuality was cruel and ignorantly discriminatory. We both felt that the church’s people call women to be priests, no longer to be second-class citizens in the church. We'd share stories about Buddhist communities that were facing the same prejudices. We discussed how difficult it was to be gay; how scapegoated gay men and lesbians were in many Muslim and fundamentalist Christian communities.

In 1996, Curtis had landed what he thought would be a life-changing job, working just under the Cardinal as the Assistant Vicar for Clergy for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He had it made. He was proud to show Morgan his posh office, but most of all, he shared his intention to promote emotional-psychosexual development for priests. He also knew that he could help priests who were involved in the terrible sexual abuse scandals that were shaking the Catholic Church to its core, using the best psychotherapy available.

Then, in 1998, one imprudent incident, one phone call to the Cardinal, and boom! Curtis was shown the door. No longer Assistant Vicar with the cool office and impressive title, Curtis was devastated. But he said that with time, he understood for the first time a way to practice the third kind of humility. We could not and should not pray for insults and humiliations to be united with Jesus, but suffering still exists. He didn’t deny his suffering but was able to form healthier perspectives around it. Once he let go of his extreme disappointment in losing a high-ranking job, he felt more compassion toward others who have very hard times. He said finally his suffering was minuscule, and he could finally name his pain of going from being a “somebody” at last, and then being indecorously dumped. He saw through his attachment to name and fame. He said, “This suffering has helped me grow spiritually, connect to others, and I’m happier.”

Curtis began to pray: “Let these feelings of humiliation and hurt be of benefit to others, as was the life of Jesus.” Yes, our suffering unites us to the Christ here today, those suffering loneliness, misunderstood, those in terrible poverty and violence. We cannot ignore the fact that nine million people die from hunger and related causes each year. (UN World Food Program)

We, in some small way, take that suffering into ourselves and send out vibrations of loving care to those suffering in poor, squalid conditions. Curtis and Morgan talked about how we didn’t cause Jesus’ suffering, even in some remote sense; rather, we were inspired to acknowledge how we create so much of our own suffering by refusing to love, by being attached to honors and power and also are hurtful to each other in order to achieve such honors and to fulfill our own desires. As in Buddhism, compassion for oneself and others, love is the foundation. We understood Jesus died for his own love. We don’t need to add to it by making ourselves guilty.

Curtis told me how he felt freedom from not caring anymore about having a great reputation and enviable position. He said he could be proud and build on the excellent work he had accomplished during his short stint at Catholic corporate headquarters, L.A.

And what a sense of satisfaction he found going into private practice as a psychologist; we had spectacular lunches together, conversations, and tasty food, at times wine, but again the open Curtis spoke freely about his need to mostly abstain from wine. But wine or not, what laughter and freedom from talking to each other without any secrets from each other! And some insight into the third kind of humility.

The Election and the Discernment of Spirits

One of the distinctive characteristics of the Exercises is what Ignatius calls making an Election, the choice to enter a deep commitment to a way of living commensurate with what you learn about yourself. God is in the Love. Our love is reflected in our deeds, what we do, not what we say or pretend to do. Love is in the doing and the mutual sharing of love.

After the distinction of three levels of humility, Ignatius has a long examination of the kinds of choices that someone on the spiritual path might have to make and gives advice as to how to get to a good decision. He counsels the person making the Exercises to achieve some degree of indifference so that the soul is free to use “its natural powers freely and tranquilly.” [It is the only place in the Autograph, the edition of the Exercises which has Ignatius’s marginalia, and the copy he used when he gave the Exercises, where we note his emphasis: “I said time of quiet.…”]

Here is one section from Instructions on making an Election; the list includes the most distinctive Ignatian methods, “discernment of the spirits,” as one of several options:

THREE TIMES FOR MAKING, IN ANY ONE OF THEM, A SOUND AND GOOD ELECTION

First Time. The first time is, when God our Lord so moves and attracts the will, that without doubting, or being able to doubt, such devout soul follows what is shown it, as St. Paul and St. Matthew did in following Christ our Lord.

Second Time. The second, when enough light and knowledge is received by experience of consolations and desolations, and by the experience of the discernment of various spirits.

Third Time. The third time is quiet, when one considers, first, for what man is born—namely, to praise God our Lord and save his soul—and desiring this chooses as means a life or state within the limits of the Church, in order that he may be helped in the service of his Lord and the salvation of his soul. I said time of quiet, when the soul is not acted on by various spirits, and uses its natural powers freely and tranquilly.

In the first “time,” we might be intimately connected to our Source, God, whose nature is to shower gifts continually in the form of our universe together unfolding, evolving, ever changing. The spiritual exercises open our awareness that all of life is gift, and that it is holy in its essence. Through practice, first paying attention, learning to relax ourselves and establishing a modicum of inner peace, spaciousness; reflective wisdom may then arise, an attitude of finding more enjoyment in being truly “persons for others.”

We see through and into ourselves, in tune with our hearts, reflecting about wisdom of Jesus, of Buddha, not “inordinately attaching” to anything, appreciating, not pushing anything away, understanding likes and dislikes, distastes; responding to the yearnings of our heart, allowing ourselves to be influenced by the life and teachings of Jesus or whatever our religion or flavor of a religion we may live; we begin “finding God in all things,” in all people. Ignatius says our first aim is to serve God and that we should not use anything nor deprive ourselves of anything, apart from that natural purpose. Non-theists may change this to say our first aim is to serve, without “inordinate attachments.”

We were interested in how the making of an Election fits with our understanding of psychology but also wanted to “reform” our expectations in work, family, and friends; to pay a bit more attention and caring to them, what Ignatius would call an Election of Reformation of Life. We wanted to take the time to see if we could live more from our hearts and intelligence, breathing-blessing more life in relationship to being a teacher, a writer, a family man, a friend, a volunteer in programs for those less fortunate. We didn’t necessarily want to change the circumstances of living, but, through an interior effort, to refocus intentions and actions within our daily life as it has already unfolded for us. During this period of making our Election, we find that each day feels fuller and more curious and interesting, with a sense that life—with its “good” and “bad”—is an unexpected gift.  We are grateful.

However, if a person needs to decide, and the methods of “election” are not producing results, Ignatius advises him or her (as any good coach or psychologist might do today) to list the pros and cons of a specific decision to gain clarity. There is nothing in Ignatius that hints of neglecting the use of reason or common sense. He even suggests that we consider the examples of men and women we hold as role models. But his unique contribution to the process of election, or decision-making, is the “discernment of various spirits.”

“Interior Movements”: Consolation and Desolation

Ignatius asks us, as he practiced himself, to use not only our intellects, but also our imaginations, emotions, and feelings to discover what we most truly want and desire, what we yearn for, and then to find out that those feelings are “God’s will” for us, and then to live from those deepest yearnings “without inordinate attachment.”

Ignatius observed from his reflective and devotional reading that he was becoming peaceful and felt an inner satisfaction—apart from “worldly” lusts and desires. He was growing within himself. He also noticed when he gave into his thoughts, such as “winning over some noble woman,” he would be agitated, restless, and unsatisfied. His “discernment of spirits” would later describe the process of being able to discern/discriminate/understand within oneself, in silent awareness, what brings one a contented peace and, in contrast, what is disturbing one’s calm. How can we be in touch with our true needs and desires for happiness? In discernment, Ignatius would recommend that one pay attention to one’s feelings, seeing if they bring a sense of calm/satisfaction (as “water filling a sponge”) or if they bring conflicting/unsatisfactory states (as “water on a rock”) unable to enter us and feed us with spiritual nourishment. Discernment of spirits leads to an understanding of what constitutes authentic satisfaction and the true self, and to awareness of when we identify with a “false” self.

Consolation and Desolation describe our inner lives. Consolation is great enthusiasm for the love of God. We see everything and everyone as in the context of God; it may include tears of sadness for infidelity to that love. When we find tears of joy or extreme happiness in serving God and just being a loving person, there’s a deep peace and in living life. It comes naturally and is not merely psychological; it comes from being connected with the Spirit.

Desolation is the spiritual darkness we go through, a terrible heaviness or doubt about the goodness of one’s own life; a lack of love felt in our lives, a confused restlessness. We may feel emotions of greed, excessive selfishness, hatred, dullness of mind, and a reluctance to serve others.

Of course, if one is suffering from clinical depression, then this is based on affectivity and in the chemistry of the person, and so must be addressed by psychology and medicine rather than by the discerning heart alone.

Desolation is contrasted with depression in that desolation is a spiritual experience (part of a spiritual journey); depression is an affective mental disorder, rooted in our biochemistry and affectivity. However, depression can be used for a spiritual effect (such as to understand others). Or depression can negate any taste for spirituality. Desolation isn’t as pervasive as depression; it doesn’t usually lead to not being able to function, which depression can often occasion. Those with desolation don’t usually suffer the “somatic” effects of depression, such as not being able to sleep, excessive fatigue, being unable to concentrate very well, and having to withdraw. One can be desolate spiritually but mostly content in other areas of life. The spiritual desolation is often associated with “an inordinate attachment” the person may recognize, but can’t let go, not being spiritually free yet. The spiritual desolation may be an unexpressed anger toward God, or being abandoned by one’s Source.

Depression is often described as inwardly turned anger, repressed anger toward others, oneself, and God too. Some depressed people may or may not be into spiritual discovery. Ignatius advises that in desolation, just tell God, acknowledge how you feel, be open to help, to learn, to change, don’t just be alone and keep things inside, and also be willing to help others, even when you’re having a hard time; keep time for prayer and reflection. When you’re feeling consolation, be thankful and joyful; also store such experiences in your memories. Such full memories will soften one’s inevitable feelings of “being down.”

As Buddha also observed, emotions, feelings, and conditions come and go. Ignatius advises that when we are feeling our best, in consolation, at peace with ourselves. That’s when we should use that energy to devote ourselves to our most intimate, deepest, and practical desires for our lives. Ignatius writes about what we might profoundly yearn for in “The Contemplation to Obtain the Love of God”: “… an intimate knowledge of the many blessings received, that filled with gratitude for all, "we may in all things love and serve the Divine Majesty.” (Louis Puhl, S.J., Second Prelude of Contemplation to Obtain the Love of God)

Finding God in all Faces, finding exercises that adapt to the needs of each individual

For Christ plays in ten thousand places

lovely in limbs

and lovely in eyes not his

to the Father through the features of men’s faces.

—G.M. Hopkins

We completed the Nineteenth Annotation Retreat with the fourth week's Contemplatio ad Amorem, “the Contemplation to Attain the Love of God.” It is now part of our practice to be sensitive to yearnings within and to discover how to translate them into daily life, living with awareness and joy and a disposition to serve others, attuned to the continuing gifts of God. At times, this experience is as bright as the rays of the sun. We are part of the universe working together to bring life, God, accompanying and “laboring with us” in everything that is. “Consider all blessings and gifts as descending from above.” (Louis Puhl, S.J. 237). Love of God is a mutually shared friendship; we ask “for an intimate knowledge” of all blessings, so we can be truly grateful. To see how we are doing, we ask ourselves if we can embrace life with less hatred/anger, greediness, and without fear of embracing the gifts of life with full gusto.

After the retreat, some of us took training for prayer leaders and spiritual directors for the Exercises at the Loyola Institute of Spiritual Training in Orange, California. The sessions were led by Sister Jean Schultz and Allan Deck, S.J.

Sister Jean begins our sessions with silence, focusing on the breath (breathe in expanding lungs and belly--hold--exhale fully), centering our energy in our hearts, listening from the silence within, paying attention to the individuals who were speaking to us in our particular lives at the time: the elderly, the teenager, the person with AIDS, the poor, our families and friends. The practice shares many characteristics with the Zazen of Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the prayer for the release from suffering that is the aim of the Metta meditations in Theravada Buddhism. We sense that enrichment of both our practices, Buddhist and Ignatian, is already beginning to take hold of us.

Father Allan encourages us to be spiritual friends with those we counsel, being able to give guidance when really asked for. The first quality for a spiritual director is gentleness, a very present enabling quality to let the person express his or her spiritual need, most important questions, deepest cherished desires, afflicting emotions as well, relaxed—but very honest and rich—spiritual conversation. The director gets out of the way, not imposing, guiding the individual to rediscover and deepen their wishes/actions for life, at whatever the changing stages we may be in. The truest direction will come from within the person herself or himself. The spiritual counselor helps the person by listening to the learning and experiences going on within the retreatant, answering questions as best as one can.

The Exercises teach us to listen from a peaceful, inner place when we are making decisions or thinking about some important matters. We are still exploring and deepening that practice. Sometimes in meditation, we have the insight that theologies aren’t nearly as important as genuine spiritual practice that always includes tolerance and civil kindness—so many views, so many chances to grow, as long as we keep out the preachiness and the combative, religious “either-or” thinking of some communities.

Those of us interested in the Spiritual Exercises today can adapt exercises to individuals, to our culture, and to a pluralistic theology. I’m open to doing the Ignatian Exercises, accepting them as an efficacious way even for those who may not identify with being Catholics or Buddhists or even believe in a personal god such as Jesus. There is a fluid, mystical imagination and a rational, reflective underpinnings that allow the Exercises of the sixteenth century to spill beyond its rich Christian roots. In Iñigo’s time, Catholicism would never have permitted the enriching ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue possible for us today, in a way that may alleviate some of the world’s problems, sadly, many of them coming from religion itself, and its abuses of spirituality and power.

Sometimes spirituality—including the Exercises—is used to imply that the human person is not, at root, divine, but is inherently a sinner, “born bad.” Yet the Exercises, or any genuine spiritual practice, provide a direct experience of the peace that comes from knowing what’s within our hearts, our own most cherished dreams; knowing and realizing for ourselves whether we are already that which we’re seeking. We know, through meditation and The Examen of Consciousness how we, in our thoughts, intentions, projections and actions somehow “block” and shrink from the love, the life “locked” within us. We're encouraged to learn that some theologians in the Catholic Church acknowledge the primacy of one’s conscience and intelligence, based on the fundamental goodness of the person and respect for varying individual-cultural images of God, personal or impersonal.

We discussed our experience of doing the Examen, which was to help us pay more attention, ponder carefully, open ourselves to a “meditative” review and feeling of body, mind, spirit, and heart. We particularize whatever afflictive, negative expressions of sin (missing the mark of love) are active in us, deflecting the course of our lives away from harmony, balance, and a pervasive feeling of gratitude for being alive, a human being. We share how we “subtly” undermine our own true happiness and discern the importance of good judgment, wholesome plans for one’s life.

We meditate on forgiving ourselves for hurting ourselves and others; we accept the forgiving of others towards us, and we forgive all who hurt us. We give up the idea that “sin” requires “hurting back,” even if we have a broken heart. What’s really going on in our deepest emotional lives? Feel it, reflect, become aware of the spaciousness around it, and let that expansiveness reveal the wisdom and perspective we may need at this time of our lives.

When we were struggling with Ignatius’ "Three Kinds of Humility," we did a Tibetan meditation called tonglen (which means “giving” and “taking”). On the inhalation, one takes in the suffering of the world, as concretely as possible, the suffering, sickness, and death of any human. On exhalation, one breathes out, radiating peace, the desire to be for others, release, and joy. The practitioner uses personal suffering, not trying to deny it, but rather to feel compassion for the suffering of others, in our lives together; to unite with others to bring others joy, peace, and happiness.

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. --Rumi

When we do "The Contemplation to Obtain the Love of God," we give up being anything less than what we are inherently and organically. We release the guilt of “I’m not good enough” while realizing that we are what we’ve been searching for so desperately. We are open to giving up “Original Sin” and “Eternal Hell,” while recognizing that St. Ignatius lived in a theology that matched his times. We can give up “literalness.” We understand that the meaning of Jesus’ teaching on Hell is important; the literal words are helpful, but point to spiritual insight, yet if we cling to literalistic interpretations and push other ideas away—as we see so achingly today—we see the dog days of dogmatism ever-thriving. Let’s not miss the joy of Christ playing in “ten thousand places.”

May all our intentions, actions, and words be directed to deep understanding, real joy, and unselfish service!

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess

2026-05-01T03:54:00.002+05:30

by Rick Fields

Thus I have made up:

Once the Buddha was walking along the  forest path in the Oak Grove at Ojai, walking without  arriving anywhere or having any thought of arriving or not arriving

and lotuses shining with morning dew miraculously appeared under every step soft as silk beneath the toes of the Buddha

When suddenly, out of the turquoise sky, dancing in front of his half-shut inward-looking  eyes, shimmering like a rainbow or a spider's web transparent as the dew on a lotus flower,

--the Goddess appeared quivering like a hummingbird in the air before him

She, for she was surely a she as the Buddha could clearly see with his eye of discriminating awareness wisdom,

was mostly red in color though when the light shifted she flashed like a rainbow.

She was naked except  for the usual flower ornaments Goddesses wear

Her long hair was deep blue, her two eyes fathomless pits of space and her third eye a bloodshot ring of fire

The Buddha folded his hands together and greeted the Goddess thus:

"O Goddess, why are you blocking my path. Before I saw you I was happily going nowhere. Now I'm not sure where to go."

"You can go around me," said the Goddess, twirling on her heels like a bird darting away, but just a little way away, "or you can come after me. This is my forest too, you can't pretend I'm not here."

With that the Buddha sat supple as a snake solid as a rock beneath a Bo tree that sprang full-leaved to shade him.

"Perhaps we should have a chat," he said. "After years of arduous practice at the time of the morning star I penetrated reality, and now..."

"Not so fast, Buddha. I am reality.

The Earth stood still, the oceans paused,

the wind itself listened --a thousand arhats, bodhisattvas, and dakinis magically appeared to hear what would happen in the conversation.

"I know I take my life in my hands." said the Buddha. "But I am known as the Fearless One --so here goes."

And he and the Goddess without further words exchanged glances.

Light rays like sunbeams shot forth so bright that even Sariputra, the All-Seeing One, had to turn away.

And then they exchanged thoughts and the illumination was as bright as a diamond candle.

And then they exchanged mind And there was a great silence as vast as the universe that contains everything

And then they exchanged bodies

And clothes

And the Buddha arose as the Goddess and the Goddess arose as the Buddha

and so on back and forth for a thousand hundred thousand kalpas.

If you meet the Buddha you meet the Goddess. If you meet the Goddess you meet the Buddha.

Not only that. This: The Buddha is the Goddess, the Goddess is the Buddha.

And not only that. This: The Buddha is emptiness the Goddess is bliss, the Goddess is emptiness the Buddha is bliss.

And that is what and what-not you are It's true.

So here comes the mantra of the Goddess and the Buddha, the unsurpassed dual-mantra. Just to say this mantra, just to hear this mantra once, just to hear one word of this mantra once makes everything the way it truly is: OK.

So here it is: Earth-walker/sky-walker Hey, silent one, Hey, great talker Not two/Not one Not separate/Not apart This is the heart Bliss is emptiness Emptiness is bliss Be your breath, Ah  Smile, Hey

And relax, Ho

And remember this: You can't miss.

We dedicate any merit that might come from reciting, posting, and spreading this sutra to Bonnie Johnson, who now bridges the worlds of both the seen and unseen. In your presence, Bonnie, we were so aware of who we were that we saw the possibility of being so much more--extending love's embrace. You showed us the way of Jesus through your kindness, gentleness, the care with which you treated us, all your friends, family, doctors, caregivers, yes, even the care with which you treated your disease. May your teaching go on and on throughout all the worlds to come. May you be with the saints forever.

from: Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism &; Ecology

Smokey the Bear Sutra

2026-05-01T03:40:00.004+05:30

Originally posted May 5th, 2010, but reposted now because the work is far from done.

Please join me in chanting the Smokey the Bear Sutra for all those working for a green earth! Use any tune you like, or none at all. Sing in the shower, on the street, in a coffee house, or in your room. In my own practice, I visualize Mary, Star of the Sea, standing at Smokey's side, offering guidance and protection. This is not obligatory. But it is obligatory that you find your own way to join this work.

By reciting this sutra (and matching my actions with its words), its merit:

It will help save the planet Earth from a total oil slick.

Will enter the age of harmony between man and nature.
Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women,
and beasts.
Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a
sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

After we chat and pray, let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that we have fulfilled our obligation. Take Action!

SMOKEY THE BEAR SUTRA

by Gary Snyder

A handsome, smoky-colored brown bear standing on his hind legs, showing that he is aroused and watchful.

Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war;

His left paw in the mudra of Comradely Display--indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that of deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma;

Wearing the blue work overalls symbolic of slaves and laborers, the countless men oppressed by a civilization that claims to save but often destroys;

Wearing the broad-brimmed hat of the west, symbolic of the forces that guard the wilderness, which is the Natural State of the Dharma and the true path of man on Earth:

all true paths lead through mountains--

With a halo of smoke and flame behind, the forest fires of the kali-yuga, fires caused by the stupidity of those who think things can be gained and lost whereas in truth all is contained vast and free in the Blue Sky and Green Earth of One Mind;

Round-bellied to show his kind nature and that the great earth has food enough for everyone who loves her and trusts her;

Trampling underfoot wasteful freeways and needless suburbs, smashing the worms of capitalism and totalitarianism;

Indicating the task: his followers, becoming free of cars, houses, canned foods, universities, and shoes, master the Three Mysteries of their own Body, Speech, and Mind; and fearlessly chop down the rotten trees and prune out the sick limbs of this country America and then burn the leftover trash.

Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic. Smokey the Bear will Illuminate those who would help him; but for those who would hinder or slander him...

HE WILL PUT THEM OUT.

Thus his great Mantra:

Namah samanta vajranam chanda maharoshana Sphataya hum traka ham mam

"I DEDICATE MYSELF TO THE UNIVERSAL DIAMOND MAY THIS RAGING FURY BE DESTROYED"

And he will protect those who love the woods and rivers, Gods and animals, hobos and madmen, prisoners and sick people, musicians, playful women, and hopeful children:

And if anyone is threatened by advertising, air pollution, television, or the police, they should chant SMOKEY THE BEAR'S WAR SPELL:

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

DROWN THEIR BUTTS

CRUSH THEIR BUTTS

And SMOKEY THE BEAR will surely appear to put the enemy out with his vajra-shovel.

Now those who recite this Sutra and then try to put it in practice will accumulate merit as countless as the sands of Arizona and Nevada.

Will help save the planet Earth from total oil slick.

Will enter the age of harmony of man and nature.

Will win the tender love and caresses of men, women, and beasts.

Will always have ripened blackberries to eat and a sunny spot under a pine tree to sit at.

AND IN THE END WILL WIN HIGHEST PERFECT ENLIGHTENMENT

...thus we have heard...

(*may be reproduced free forever)

*And this have I done!

L'incendie de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris : un retour à la foi

2026-04-19T01:35:00.012+05:30

Il y a sept ans cette semaine, un moment que je n'oublierai jamais. Le lundi 15 avril 2019 à 18h18, des flammes ont jailli de la toiture de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris et, au cours des heures suivantes, la forêt datant des XIIe et XIIIe siècles a été ravagée.

J'ai suivi avec une grande minutie la reconstruction de ce lieu sacré. Cela a changé ma vie.

Plaidoyer pour un christianisme spirituel

J'ai écrit ceci le 25 décembre 2022.

Je cherchais une réponse à ma question: rester chrétien, ou peut-être simplement m’identifier à l’Église de mes parents, sans pour autant accepter tous les excès doctrinaux et l’insistance sur l’adhésion. Je me disais que si je prenais du recul par rapport à mon esprit hypercritique, si je me détendais et observais simplement la situation, un argument convaincant pourrait se présenter. J’aime la musique et l’art de l’Église. Ils sont une véritable source de nourriture spirituelle. Peut-être pourrais-je pleinement embrasser une forme d’agnosticisme spirituel.

Le 15 avril 2019, alors que je regardais en direct les images de l'incendie catastrophique qui a failli détruire la magnifique cathédrale Notre-Dame, j'avoue avoir pleuré. Je suis francophile; j'aime Paris; quand j'étais étudiante dans le nord de la France, j'ai visité la cathédrale à de nombreuses reprises. Voir le feu embraser tout le transept m'a anéantie. Cela m'a profondément touchée, au-delà du chagrin et du choc.

Puis, je me suis souvenu d'une autre catastrophe. Voir les tours jumelles de Manhattan brûler et s'effondrer, les pertes humaines et cette destruction gratuite et extrême étaient horribles. J'étais moi aussi dévasté, mais différemment. C'était un attentat terroriste. J'éprouvais un mélange d'horreur et de peur.

Les tours jumelles et Notre-Dame étaient des symboles emblématiques des grandes villes. La construction des tours jumelles a débuté le 6 août 1966 et elles se sont effondrées lors des attentats terroristes du 11 septembre 2001. Le pape Alexandre III a posé la première pierre de la cathédrale Notre-Dame en 1163. Sa construction a duré des siècles; la dernière grande restauration a été entreprise par Viollet-le-Duc au milieu du XIXe siècle.

J'ai suivi les travaux de remplacement et de rénovation des tours jumelles et de Notre-Dame. Le processus de conception de la reconstruction à New York a, comme on pouvait s'y attendre, suscité de vives controverses. Experts et promoteurs immobiliers ont été sollicités. Des débats ont eu lieu sur la conception, la reconfiguration du site, l'intégration d'activités commerciales, les liaisons de transport et le souvenir des victimes. Bien qu'il s'agisse toujours du World Trade Center, il serait différent. Le processus était typiquement américain et, du moins en apparence, se voulait démocratique. En France, le débat portait sur l'opportunité d'autoriser des modifications lors de la rénovation. Au départ, certains ont suggéré un nouveau design pour la flèche, une innovation moderne lors de sa reconstruction au milieu du XIXe siècle. Rapidement, le Sénat français a adopté une loi exigeant que la reconstruction soit fidèle à son "dernier état visuel connu ". Ils reconstruiraient la flèche exactement comme elle était, au millimètre près, en utilisant les matériaux et les techniques de construction spécifiés par Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, les seuls aménagements étant des améliorations pour la technologie moderne, l'électricité et la sécurité du bâtiment, ainsi que de nouveaux plans pour la place devant la cathédrale, le parking souterrain et les bâtiments adjacents sur l'Île de France.

Les Tours Jumelles et Notre-Dame ont toutes deux pris feu et se sont effondrées en l'espace de quelques heures, l'une entièrement détruite et une grande partie de l'autre. C'est là leur seule véritable similitude. À New York, un nombre considérable de personnes ont péri. À Paris, il n'y a eu aucune mort. L'une a été causée par un attentat terroriste, l'autre par un accident ou par négligence. L'une était un bâtiment commercial, l'autre un lieu sacré. J'ai été profondément bouleversé par ces deux tragédies. Je les ai vues se dérouler en direct à la télévision. Bien que j'hésite à interpréter mes réactions émotionnelles face à une catastrophe comme un chemin vers la foi, l'analyse de celles-ci s'est révélée instructive.

Pour prolonger ma métaphore théologique, la reconstruction du World Center était comparable au concile de Trente, en réponse au bouleversement culturel, politique et intellectuel massif de la Réforme, et la rénovation de Notre-Dame s'apparente à une méditation attentive, à une prière sur la source de notre foi.

J’ai suivi la rénovation de Notre-Dame, épluchant internet à la recherche du moindre article, du moindre débat et de la moindre découverte au fur et à mesure de l’avancement des travaux du chantier du siècle. Lorsque les plans de réaménagement de l’espace intérieur pour l’adapter aux pratiques liturgiques actuelles ont été dévoilés, Alexandre Gady, historien de l’art, a déclaré: "Curieusement, ce n’était pas le clergé qui parlait du sacré ce matin; c’étaient des historiens comme moi qui défendaient les monuments historiques. Notre-Dame est sacrée, non seulement au sens catholique, mais aussi parce qu’elle nous unit, qu’elle nous parle et qu’elle raconte notre histoire."

D'autres critiques affirmaient que le clergé parisien, trop zélé, était déterminé à transformer son attrait touristique en un Disneyland spirituel.

Si tous ceux qui aiment Notre-Dame, qu’ils soient catholiques pratiquants ou non, qu’ils appartiennent à d’autres religions ou à aucune, qu’ils aient contribué financièrement, en temps ou en talent à la préservation de ce précieux artefact de notre patrimoine spirituel, ou qu’ils aient simplement envoyé leur amour, si le résultat est un remake lisse et astucieux de Disney du roman de Victor Hugo…Notre-Dame de Paris. Je saurai alors que nous sommes véritablement au crépuscule de la civilisation occidentale.

Qu'est-ce que j'en sais ?

La veille de Noël, j'ai commencé à regarder une petite vidéo sans prétention," Au cœur du Vatican, épisode 1," sur YouTube. Soudain, un homme très beau, doté d'une voix magnifique, s'est mis à chanter. Mark Spyropoulos est un baryton britannique d'origine grecque qui a intégré la plus ancienne chorale du monde, la chorale personnelle du pape, la Cappella Musicale Pontificia.

Mark a commencé à parler de chanter le Credo de Nicée en solo pendant la messe télévisée suivie par des millions de personnes. Un jour, il a réalisé combien de personnes l'avaient entendu faire cette profession de foi. Il l'avait chantée à chaque messe papale pendant trois ans.

Il a cité le Credo in Unum Deum en latin."Je crois en un seul Dieu."Il a poursuivi:" Je n’ai pas chanté: "Nous croyons en un seul Dieu”."C'est lui, Marc, qui a fait une profession de foi très personnelle. Il s'est demandé: croyait-il vraiment en un seul Dieu? Et qu'est-ce que cela signifiait au juste? "Je ne sais même pas. Parfois, j'ai l'impression d'être un imposteur. Je viens de réciter le début du Credo de Nicée devant le Pape et le monde entier; je devrais pourtant être sûr de ce que je dis. Parfois, je sais ce que je chante, et parfois non."

"Si vous me demandez si je crois en Dieu, je réponds que je ne comprends pas la question. Qu’entendez-vous par Dieu? (J’entendais son interlocuteur lui souffler: Dieu tel que défini par l’Église catholique) Ce sont des questions fondamentales."

"Je suis baryton. Qu’est-ce que j’en sais?"

Et cela s'est transformé en une sorte de crise de foi personnelle. Mis à part la plaisanterie entre initiés, il n'en savait vraiment rien. Puis il a raconté une histoire de révélation personnelle assez touchante; je crois que c'était en chantant un morceau de Bach, la version de 1747 par opposition à celle de 1745, celle que Francis préférait. Apparemment, Francis est un patron très impliqué dans les moindres détails.

"Eh bien, qu'est-ce que j'en sais? Je vais vous dire ce que je sais. Je peux vous dire que lorsque je suis plongé dans cette musique, je me sens en contact avec quelque chose."

En chantant, il réalisa qu'il croyait véritablement en une force supérieure à lui-même. Il était en réalité bien plus éloquent que mon argumentaire jésuite.

Projet d'archives Medici, Programme musical. Vox Medicea (dirigé par Mark Spyropoulos).

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris Fire, a return to Faith

2026-04-19T00:45:00.005+05:30

Seven years ago this week, a moment I will never forget. At 6:18 pm on Monday, April 15, 2019, flames erupted in the roof of the Cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris, and over the following hours, the 12th- and 13th-century forest would be destroyed.

I followed the rebuilding of this sacred building meticulously. It changed my life.

The Case for a Spiritual Christianity

I wrote this on December 25, 2022.

I was searching for an answer to my question about remaining Christian, or perhaps just identifying with the church of our mothers and fathers, without accepting all the doctrinal overreach and the insistence on adherence. I thought that perhaps if I took a step back from my hypercritical mindset, relaxed and simply observed the landscape, a convincing argument might present itself. I love the church's music and art. They are a real source of spiritual nourishment. Perhaps I could fully embrace a kind of spiritual agnosticism.

(Thibault Camus/AP)

On April 15th, 2019, as I watched the live coverage of the catastrophic fire that almost destroyed the magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame, I confess, I was in tears. I am a francophile; I love Paris; when I was a student in northern France, I visited the cathedral many times. Watching the fire engulf the whole transept, I was devastated. It touched me on a very deep level, beyond grief and shock.

Then I remembered another catastrophic disaster. Watching Manhattan’s Twin Towers burn and collapse, the loss of life, and the extreme wanton destruction was horrific. I was also devastated, but in a different way. It was a terrorist attack. My feelings were mixed with horror and fear.

Both the Twin Towers and Notre Dame were iconic markers on the skyline of major cities. Construction on the Twin Towers began on August 6th, 1966, and they fell after a terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001. Pope Alexander III laid the cornerstone for Notre Dame Cathedral in 1163. It took hundreds of years to build--the last major restoration was by Viollet-le-Duc in the mid-19th century.

I followed the work on replacing and renovating both the Twin Towers and Notre Dame. The design process of rebuilding in New York was predictably contentious. Experts and property developers were called in. There were debates about the design, reconfiguring the site, accommodating commercial uses, providing transportation links, and remembering the victims. Though still the World Trade Center, it would be something different. The process was very American and, at least in form, attempted to look democratic. In France, the debate was about whether to allow any changes during the renovation. Initially, some suggested a new design for the spire that was a modern innovation when it was rebuilt in the mid-19th century. In short order, the French Senate passed a bill requiring that the reconstruction be faithful to its “last known visual state.” They would rebuild the spire exactly as it was, to the millimeter, using the materials and construction techniques specified by Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the only accommodation being improvements for modern technology, electricity, and building safety, plus new designs for the square in front of the cathedral, underground parking, and adjacent buildings on the Ile de France.

Both the Twin Towers and Notre Dame caught fire and fell within several hours, one completely and large portions of the other. That is really the only similarity. In New York, a huge number of people perished. In Paris, no one died. One was caused by a terrorist attack and the other by accident or negligence. One was a commercial property and the other a sacred space. I was shaken deeply by both tragedies. I watched them both unfold live on TV. Though I hesitate to trace my emotional reactions to a disaster as a path to religious belief, examining my responses has been revealing.

To extend my theological metaphor, rebuilding the World Center was like the Council of Trent in response to the massive cultural, political, and intellectual shift of the Reformation, and renovating Notre Dame is like a careful meditation, a prayer on the source of our faith.

I’ve watched the renovation of Notre Dame, searching the internet for every report, argument, and discovery as the work progressed on Le chantier du siècle. When plans were revealed for redesigning the interior space to accommodate current liturgical practice, Alexandre Gady, art historian, said, “Curiously, it wasn’t the clergy talking about the sacred this morning; it was historians like me who defend historical monuments. Notre Dame is sacred, not just in the Catholic sense but also sacred in the way it unites us, that it speaks to us, and that it tells our history.”

Other critics said that the overzealous clergy of Paris was set on turning their tourist attraction into a spiritual Disneyland.

If all the people who love Notre Dame, whether or not they are committed Catholics or not, whether they belong to other religions or none, whether they’ve have contributed money, time or talent to preserve this valuable artifact of our spiritual heritage, or simply sent their love, if the result is a slick Disney remake of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame I’ll know that we are really in the twilight of Western civilization.

What do I know?

On Christmas Eve, I started watching this bit of fluff, “Inside the Vatican, episode 1” on YouTube. Suddenly, a very handsome man with a magnificent voice began singing to the world. Mark Spyropoulos is a British baritone with Greek roots who found himself in the oldest church choir in the world, the personal choir of the pope, Cappella Musicale Pontificia.

Mark started talking about singing the Nicaean Creed solo during the televised mass that goes out to millions upon millions. One day, he realized how many people had heard him make this profession of faith. He’d sung it at every papal mass for 3 years.

He quoted the Latin: Credo in Unum Deum. “I believe in One God.” He went on, “I didn’t sing, ‘We believe in One God.’” It was he, Mark, who made a very personal profession of faith. He asked himself: Did he really believe in the One God? And what did that even mean? “I don’t even know. Sometimes I feel like a fraud. I’ve just declared the beginning of the Nicaean Creed in front of the Pope and the world; surely I should be sure of what I’m saying. Sometimes I know what I'm singing, and sometimes I don’t.”

“If you ask me if I believe in God, my reply is that I don’t understand the question. What do you mean by God? (I could hear his interviewer prompt him: God as defined by the Catholic Church) These are massive questions.”

“I’m a baritone. What do I know?”

And it became a kind of personal crisis of faith. Aside from the musical insider joke, he really didn’t know. Then he told a story of a rather beautiful personal revelation; I think it was while singing a Bach piece, the 1747 version as opposed to the earlier 1745, the one that Francis preferred. Apparently, Francis is a hands-on boss when it comes to certain details.

“Well, what do I know? I'll tell you what I know. I can tell you that when I am immersed in this music, I feel in touch with something.”

Singing, he realized he truly believed in a power greater than himself. He was actually far more eloquent than my Jesuitical argument.

Medici Archive Project, Music Program. Vox Medicea (directed by Mark Spyropoulos).

The Enneagram — “Histoire de Jour”

2026-04-15T03:56:00.002+05:30

Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2022

"What's your soup du jour today?" "Cream of tomato, just like every other day."

Yuval Harari says it would be nearly impossible to get 20 baboons to organize a coordinated effort that would produce a widespread effect. But homo sapiens has created narratives that allowed our species to organize large-scale efforts to subdue and exploit every inch of the universe we can reach. This is our propaganda for the superiority of the human race. If 20 baboons had been able to organize themselves and create a convincing narrative, we’d be living in ”The Planet of the Apes.''

In the history of religions, the creation of a supernatural narrative spearheaded the invincible superiority of monotheism. Modern scholarship has shown that the story of the Exodus was fabricated by the rabbinic and prophetic leadership after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Narrative of the Good News was created and propagated by mostly Gentile Jews after the death of Jesus. About 600 years after Jesus, the Prophet was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and set the world on course for a more militant form of monotheism. In another part of the world, stories about the Buddha's enlightenment touch on another side of the human psyche that propelled meditation into legitimacy. The Bhagavad Gita played a pivotal role in the 19th and 20th-century Hindu revival by modernizing its teachings into a practical, accessible philosophy for social action and national identity.

The Origin of the Enneagram

As one of Claudio Naranjo’s first students when he introduced the Enneagram, the nine-pointed diagram that he’d learned from Oscar Ichazo, I’ve become very interested in what’s become known as the Western transmission of the Enneagram. I’m fascinated by competing narratives about its esoteric roots. (I’ve written about it before). This is the exact phenomenon that Harari describes: proponents of particular Enneagram styles have crafted creation narratives to bring their products to market. One universal side effect of enlightening mankind through the Enneagram is that it separates you from your money.

This brand of histoire de jour is, at best, self-serving, pieced together from bits and pieces of hearsay evidence, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Here is a preposterous statement on the first page of Helen Palmer’s website for her Narrative Tradition: "With a history of centuries, the Enneagram is arguably the oldest human development system on the planet. During the past decade, the system has undergone a renewal of scholarly attention within the context of current personality typologies."

In the interest of the scholarly attention that Ms. Palmer lauds, here’s a clear, distinct, verifiable historical record of the beginning of the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram.

In the late Spring of 1975, in a large living room of a nondescript house on Berkeley’s Arlington, Kathy Speeth organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. Approximately 15 therapists interested in the Enneagram who were not members of Naranjo’s SAT group attended. Among them was Helen Palmer. She’d heard about the Enneagram from Naranjo’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember these presentations very clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of Naranjo's SAT group. Speeth and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people with the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions (the identical format of the Narrative Tradition). There was one evening for each of the 9 major fixations.

Naranjo began the sessions with psychological descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored to an audience of trained professionals rather than the conversational tone he normally used when directing a student’s personal work in SAT. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the professional/technical language distorted the feeling of each point.

There’s the Narrative Tradition's “history of centuries” condensed to about two weeks of evening presentations, and I was present! Voila

Call it by its correct name: Lying

2026-04-14T01:45:00.015+05:30

Don’t believe a word coming out of the mouth of Rev. Paula White-Cain or Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron!

A former Jesuit friend heard Ms. White-Cain’s comparison of President DJT to Jesus and thought she sounded as if she really believed it. In her role as DJT’s spiritual advisor, she adopted a sincere, he felt, emotional tone that raised the question: “Who gets to decide when spiritual direction is wise, and when it is unwise?” OK, let’s consider the subjective mechanism of White-Cain’s assent and give her the benefit of the doubt. But we also have to consider what she is assenting to. What she says about Trump is so outrageous it borders on insanity; most mainline Christians would call it blasphemy. I call it a lie. The dictionary definition of a lie is “a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth.” What my friend seems to be saying is that if Paula is telling us what she sincerely believes, she is relieved of the obligation to prove her statement true. I disagree. In fact, because she is speaking from the platform of the highest elected official in the land, she opens herself to the highest level of scrutiny.

Objectively, she’s lying. Whether or not she believes what she’s saying, she intends for us to believe what she says.

The Reverend White-Cain is no outlier. She belongs to a branch of the American Evangelical Pentecostal Church known as the Prosperity Gospel. Once upon a time, I was fascinated with these brothers and sisters. I read widely. Napoleon Hill wrote “Think and Grow Rich,” a central text of the movement, in 1937. New Agers practice a form of mantra called affirmations; for example, “I deserve abundance” opens the generosity of the universe and makes us rich. A black prosperity preacher with the wonderful name Creflo Dollar (his real name is Creflo Augustus Dollar Jr.) preached a sermon, "If I want to believe God for a $65 million plane, you cannot stop me," after his Gulf Stream Jet was involved in a runway collision. The bulk of his fortune apparently came from his early insistence that followers pay a 10% tithe. He was subsequently investigated by a Senate Committee chaired by Chuck Grassley (who must have softened his qualms under the influence of the current administration).

The prosperity preachers’ roster includes the former star of “The Love Boat,” Gavin MacLeod, to give it a Hollywood slant, but other names have become familiar due to the mega-church TV phenomenon: Oral Roberts, Reverend Ike, Jim Bakker, Robert Tilton, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and Joel Osteen.

Some point to the role of Trump’s first pastor, Norman Vincent Peale, as central to his theology. Trump’s parents were members of Peale’s “Positive Thinking” Marble Collegiate Church. If I were to look at the glamorous rhinestone and sequined liturgical garb of White-Cain, I’d conjure up the wildly popular Aimee Elizabeth Semple McPherson of the famous Foursquare Church in Los Angeles in the early part of the last century.*

Rev. White-McCain traces her spiritual lineage to the predominantly black Pentecostal Church. Her mentor was Bishop T.D. Jakes, of Higher Ground Always Abounding Assemblies. He was converted to Oneness Pentecostalism, which affirms the Divinity of Jesus. White-McCain also acknowledges Nicholas Duncan-Williams, Archbishop and General Overseer of the Action Chapel International (ACI) Ministry, as a spiritual guide. Headquartered in Accra, Ghana. Duncan-Williams is a proponent of spiritual warfare prayer. (Real Exorcism stuff, demons, devils, fallen angels, and what we recognize as Santa Maria). The lack of African-American and African representation on stage at the White House is not surprising given the transactional nature of White-McCain’s theology. When racists seize control, just blend in.

It is totally offensive to tie our immoral president to the gospel narrative of the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection. Supporters of the materialistic prosperity gospel have completely abandoned common sense and whatever critical thinking skills have not been devoured by their greed. That might be the price of an actual office in the West Wing, with a budget and staff, but I have to admit that this is an opinion, a strong one that I try to back up with more facts than hearsay, but still an opinion.

The sanctification of capitalism is very American, and perhaps inevitable. The Jesuits Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa examined the origins of the prosperity gospel in the United States and described it as a reductive version of the American Dream and the Protestant work ethic (La Civiltà Cattolica). I would further argue that it is not an impossible leap to associate our tax-cutting billionaire POTUS with the Second Coming. A “new thought” Christian, Og Mandino, wrote the influential “Greatest Salesman in the World” in 1968. Though Mandino was not a prosperity preacher and does not directly reference Saint Paul’s evangelization of Jesus's message, many people have used this analogy to sanctify the role of the salesman. My own preference would be Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” or Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt,” given the thin veneer of our greed and the depth of our unhappiness.

Nonetheless, here we are wondering how this apparently sincere, composed, sequined lady preacher can stand in front of a national audience and claim Trump was “betrayed," "falsely accused,” and that his political resurgence mirrored the resurrection, saying, “Because [Jesus] rose. . . you rose up." She declared, "No one has paid the price like you have paid the price," . . . that because of divine victory, "you will be victorious in all you put your hands to."

I was shocked and dismayed, and when I went online to search for her exact language, I pulled up a broader picture of other notable divines who graced the stage alongside White-Cain and the new Messiah, I was even more shocked. There he was, one of my favorite Catholic ecclesial right-wingers, Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron! The blasphemy is not confined to a small subset of Pentecostal preachers but has infected the Catholic hierarchy.

Pope Leo has made it known that he is unequivocally against Trump and Netanyahu’s war. As the former head of the dicastery that nominates bishops, Leo knows he can’t revoke Bishop Barron’s consecration unless he were convicted of a heinous crime, such as Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick's sexual abuse.

Is Barron’s sharing the stage with the Rev. White-Cain and our new Messiah President blasphemy? He took the microphone and intoned a few words; he didn’t go so far as to second Trump’s messianic nomination or ask to stick his hands in the stigmata, nor did he add his own “Ata ratta ambu rata,” but he remained silent during White-Cain’s remarks, called the afternoon "a great joy, great privilege," and lauded Trump for gathering faith leaders to celebrate Holy Week.

Where was the fire-and-brimstone condemnation of his “Word of Fire” podcast? Bishop Barron didn’t object. It was the perfect opportunity for him to simply leave the stage or say, “I’m sorry, Paula, but this is not the Good News that I have pledged my life to proclaim.” But he just stood there, the picture of abject cowardice, and kept his mouth shut. I checked Canon Law to see if he could be censured for heresy or blasphemy. Canon 1369 (or Canon 1386 in some interpretations) allows for the punishment of individuals who, in public speech or media, utter blasphemy, gravely injure public morals, or express contempt for religion. Barron might have avoided penalty by keeping his mouth shut, but in my view, his presence and silence sent a strong message.

__________________

"In America, you call it the alt-right, in Germany, we call it 'why Grandpapa lives in Argentina now'" —Angela Merkel

When my friend says she is not lying, he presumes that a person couldn’t muster her level of sincerity, passion, or conviction if he or she were making a false statement, a series of misstatements, or conscious fabrications. I would argue that she doesn’t recognize that she is lying and that her belief system is predicated on a seemingly coherent set of lies and unchallenged assumptions. That’s pure cult behavior.

Is this an impossible position? Of course not. If it were not possible, or if forgiveness were not within our reach, we could never forgive the millions of Germans who supported the Third Reich and turned a blind eye to the antisemitism that was one of the tenets of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Can masses of people believe a lie? The Nazis used subterfuge. Germans who supported Hitler might say, “We thought we were voting for something else,” or “We were swept up in a mass movement.” The existence of the death camps was hidden. To a large extent, this is true. Trump is fostering this kind of lie right now. He’s following the maxim of his mentor, Roy Cohen: “never apologize, never admit fault,” and he will continue to lie, believing it becomes a new reality, and if he firmly inserts his lie into the public conversation, he succeeds.

White-Cain provides spiritual cover. She treats Trump’s lies as truth and cloaks them in the language of the Gospel. In the current etiquette of public discussion, we are not allowed to scrutinize belief statements rigorously. You might say politely to the Mormon missionary or Jehovah’s Witness who has rung your doorbell, “I’m sorry, but I am not interested,” or, as I say, “Sorry, but I’m Buddhist.” It would be more honest if I invited them into the sitting room, poured coffee, and began an inquiry into how they know that Joseph Smith actually dug up golden tablets, which were then interpreted by the Angel Moroni.

But I prefer not to invite that level of intimate conversation. I have zero interest in that level of inquiry, and frankly, Mormons can do whatever they want in their oddly built temples as long as they don’t bother me. I also don’t want to get into any sectarian or proselytizing argument. That’s way beyond my pay grade, and in a pluralist, diverse, and tolerant society, it is best to avoid conversations that might incite conflict or disagreement about subjects that might spark animosity, ill will, or physical confrontation. In the past, these kinds of incidents have been fought over for hundreds of years.

My former Jesuit friend says: “My theological epistemology and Paula's theological epistemology—or, in other words, the theological method by means of which I believe one can acquire knowledge about the mind of God, and the theological method which Paula thinks gives her knowledge about the mind of God—are radically different, one from the other.” I hold my sanity as a precious gift to be cherished and guarded: the ability to follow an argument, to pay attention to what other people are saying, to honor them, to check that I am listening carefully. It’s hard work. I have to monitor myself; one of the reasons I still schedule meditation into my daily routine after at least 50 years, and I do not claim infallibility.

But when confronted with an absolute lie, unlike our hier to the Apostles, Bishop Barron, you won’t find me muttering a few words that don’t rock the boat. Ms. White-Cain’s business model is a “Buy Your Ticket to Heaven” Ponzi scheme. She claims to receive no salary for spiritual labor on Trump’s behalf, but you can be sure that her rolodex has been stuffed with a whole new crop of potential investors to defraud. I am puzzled by Barron’s motivation. With Cardinal Dolan, it was easier. His connections to Kenneth Gerard Langone are well-known and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps Barron is lining himself up to inherit Dolan’s rolodex. Regardless, there has to be a payoff.

So we might end up with something like Hamlet’s question: “So then, who gets to decide what's wise and what's not wise?” I say we have to trust ourselves and take action.

__________________

Notes and references:

*Note: The Prosperity Evangelicals are not the Church of Religious Science (often associated with Ernest Holmes’s Science of Mind), and are distinct from the Church of Scientology and Christian Science, which are other American sects/cults.

LIE Definition & Meaning: noun · a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth

I have been very much influenced by these two works: ”Lying” by Sam Harris and “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life” by Sissela Bok

Trump’s Ten Commandments by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Steven Tian

Fear, Rage, and The Trump Tapes by Bob Woodward

Women in the Church

2026-04-03T15:34:00.005+05:30

Holy Thursday, 2026

On March 10, 2026, the Vatican's General Secretariat of the Synod published the final report of Study Group No. 5, titled "Women's Participation in the Life and Leadership of the Church". I have become a fan of “Jesuitical,” a podcast by America Magazine, which is run by mostly younger, articulate Catholics, with a very equal gender representation. Here is the link to three of the women struggling with their response to a very disappointing document. https://youtu.be/X-SxGiEQDjs?si=JmuvADu--xxkjfFn. I follow with my own comment.

I say unapologetically that sex was the reason I left the Jesuits and the Church. Of course, most of the impetus for my decision was the fact that I am gay and refused to take the position of “intrinsically disordered.” But my reasons also included the systematic exclusion of women from real decision-making. After Francis's huge push for synodality, the patriarchy now wants to say that there are roles for women; this is where their power and their status lie; stay tuned.

Let’s examine the flip side of this argument: if a man has talent as an administrator, or churchman, or academic, or an artist, or a poet, this can become a source of their sense of intrinsic worth. If they are good at it, they can make valid, binding decisions with regard to workflow, scholarship, the performance of cultic functions, the value of art, and poetry. Although this is sometimes true, what is more normal, certainly within the confines of the church, is that men, whether a bishop, priest, professor, painter, or wordsmith, make binding decisions not because they merit their status (though some may); it’s because only men are members of the exclusive coterie at the top. Women are excluded.

You can’t have it both ways. The fact that two millennia ago, men ruled and women were relegated to menial positions simply reflects their social status. It is not the universal unalterable order of the universe. Perhaps it is time for the patriarchal church to wither away.

I have written about my personal experience. “Sister Jacinta, the Reality of Women Priests.”

https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-reality-of-women-priests.html

Buddha, S.J.

A saint for the East or the Portuguese expansion into the East?

The Creation of a European Saint in Baroque Art

Images from Japanese Art

the active, realistic loving of this one moment in all time.

NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD

Cultivating Resistance

Nanquan Cuts the Cat (Parts 1-3, complete)

Nanquan Cuts the Cat, Part 3

3. A Funeral

July 30th, 2026

Nanquan Cuts the Cat, Part 2

Syncretism, Syncretic Occultism, Carlos Castaneda and the Monetization of the Occult

Claudio Naranjo, Carlos Castaneda, and a raccoon share a moment.

Nanquan Cuts the Cat ({Part 1)

A 250th Freedom Day Post: Tempest in a Teapot!

Tempest in a Teapot!

Let this sink in America, I dare ya.

Benedict's retrograde problem with a neo-Nazi bishop

Catholic Zen teachers: Both/And

Is life over when it’s over? (Originally posted, Friday, September 17, 2021)

A Mistake of Immense Proportion

Why I hate Hemingway

The Gift of Tears—For my Mother, Leona Carroll

My Personal "Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana"

Inclined Toward Love: Notes While Doing the Spiritual Exercises

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess

Smokey the Bear Sutra

L'incendie de la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris : un retour à la foi

Plaidoyer pour un christianisme spirituel

Qu'est-ce que j'en sais ?

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris Fire, a return to Faith

The Case for a Spiritual Christianity

What do I know?

The Enneagram — “Histoire de Jour”

The Origin of the Enneagram

Other enneagram enthusiasts have fabricated other stories and sources.

Call it by its correct name: Lying

Don’t believe a word coming out of the mouth of Rev. Paula White-Cain or Bishop Robert Emmet Patrick Barron!

Women in the Church