Buddha, S.J.

The Path of Libertation

2012-01-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

May ALL sentient beings have happiness!
May ALL sentient beings be free from suffering!
May ALL sentient beings never be separated from the joy that is free from suffering!
May ALL sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion!
(The Four Immeasurables)

I anoint the Earth with fragrant water
And adorn it with Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun and the moon...
Imagining it a Buddha field,
I offer it that ALL beings may enjoy this pure realm!
(From Tibetan Buddhist Ngondro Mandala offering)

Birdbrain harpoons whales and chews blubber in the tropics
Birdbrain clubs baby harp seals and wears their coats to Paris
Birdbrain runs the Pentagon his brother runs the CIA, Fatass Bucks!
Birdbrain writes and edits Time Newsweek Wall Street Journal Pravda Izvestia
(Allan Ginsberg, Birdbrain)

Check out the Buddhisn 101 series presented by the Gay Buddhist Sangha.
http://www.gaybuddhistsangha.org/calendar/
Please join us if you can.

Issan and the founding of Maitri

2012-01-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

What follows is an interview that I recently did with Marlin Marynick for his book about AIDS, Undisclosed: Secrets of the AIDS Epidemic.

I'm a gay man in San Francisco. I've been living here since 1974. I'm a former Jesuit--I’d been in Berkeley studying theology--and when I came out, I stayed. I did all the crazy kind of things that people do when they first come out--particularly the men of my generation who were just beginning to do the things we were really capable of in spite of all the discrimination against us. I drove a cab for a number of years, and I started a wood shop, perfect for a guy with a degree in theology, but I didn't really feel much like practicing any religion. When I met Harvey Milk, I joined the fight for gay rights. I had a partner, and we tried to build a life here in gay Mecca.

Then, all of a sudden in the mid-80’s, our friends began dying, huge numbers...first it was called gay cancer, then it was called grid...nobody really knew what it was. It was terrifying. Towards 1987-88 I felt that I had to do something, although this was also a process of me overcoming my own fears, of dealing with them. I had many friends that were diagnosed, and everybody was dealing with fear and loss and the not knowing what we were really dealing with. (For the record, I also have HIV).

In 1988 I met a gay Buddhist priest, Issan. Friends had told me that he was remarkable guy, but my first impressions were that he was actually rather ordinary, far more effeminate than any of my gay friends, and not in any way “spiritual” as I understood the word. Issan, “Tommy” Dorsey, did have an unusual path to a Zen. He had been a professional drag queen, and a heavy drug abuser, which was not terribly out of the ordinary for gay San Franciscans 40 years ago. He was also a very bright, funny, human being, and he had just started an aids hospice. (He himself died there of the disease on September 6, 1991--he’d contracted HIV from his partner, James). I was blessed to be able to be with him during the last few years of his life, and helped him create Maitri Home and Hospice for People with HIV.
I moved into the Zen center on Hartford Street to practice meditation, to get away from a relationship that was ending, and to put some perspective around all that. Very quickly after I packed my bags, my partner and I closed our furniture business, we made and sold furniture, and ended our relationship. So there I was living in this Zen center-hospice, and I started doing some general carpentry work, fixing bathrooms, getting rooms ready for the men who would live with us. It just was the next thing to do, right in front of me. This quickly lead to finding money to pay for the building materials; then more organizational stuff; and by 1990, I followed Steve Allen as executive director of the hospice. Looking back, it was something that my Jesuit training, and everything, prepared me for though I didn't have much experience with non-profits and no experience in health care.

Back then people with HIV-AIDS died quickly after being diagnosed... 3 weeks, 6 weeks, a few months, perhaps a little bit longer in rare cases. It felt like we were picking up bodies off the street. Some months 100 men died in San Francisco, in our neighborhood, the Castro. You'd walk down the street, pass someone you knew who looked pretty healthy. Then you'd see him 2 weeks later and he’d aged 40 years. Within a year or two I said to myself "Oh my god, where did my friends go." No one knew what to do, or how to behave around those infected--these were friends. Of course a lot of us were afraid of catching the disease, because no one knew how it was transmitted, although we had our suspicions, no one really knew. No one knew if it was poppers, or kissing, or if it really was sex and drugs and rock and roll. That didn't appear on the horizon for a while because no one wanted to give those things up. Sexual freedom was part of our emancipation, or that’s what we though. Denial was a big part of the epidemic’s horrifying spread through the community.

Issan said that the only real thing that we could do was to take care of what was in front of us, take care of life as it presented itself. He said HIV was like a guest who’d come and knocked at the door, and couldn’t be turned away. When one member of the small meditation community, JD, became so sick that his partner Pierre could no longer care for him, despite the misgivings of some in the community--Issan could be very firm, even stubborn, when he was sure of the next thing he had to do--he moved JD into the bedroom next to his. And he began looking after his immediate needs, which included martinis after evening meditation, spicy hot dogs, and cable TV. It was a very simple concept--just take care of people in the most basic way and sustain a normal life for as long as possible. And be as happy as you could--no matter what.

And then something unexpected happened, JD did not die quickly. The symptoms of the disease worsened, he could no longer walk, was bed-ridden, but when a supporter gave Maitri a motorized wheel chair, JD became a teenager with a hot rod, missing meals, staying out past curfew. He found a new boyfriend who was also disabled, and they began to spend the night together. We moved him from the second floor to the street level front room of the second building where he held court. Four or five other men would be in his room watching campy movies on VCR at all hours. He stocked his small refrigerator intended for medications with soda and beer, and in the front window a hydroponic wheatgrass farm, for health, of course. All this really tested some zennish sensibilities, and the CNA staff. But despite complaints, Issan remained firm in his support for JD. When JD returned one day from Oakland--he’d taken BART across the Bay--with an iguana, no one believed that he would actually take care of it himself. He did. In fact he smuggled his pet onto a plane when he went back to Florida to spend his last days with his mother. The story of the lizard squirming around under his shirt while JD locked himself in toilet at 30,000 feet became the stuff of legend. I think that JD’s story is also a real example of what kind of life is possible when your guests are not bound by some rigid rules for how you expect guests to behave.

Even if people couldn’t see the compassion what Issan was doing, most everyone trusted him enough to give money. Another friend of his bought the building next to our small Victorian house, and we bought back the lease. That gave us rooms for another 5 people. Within a year we had 8 beds for people with HIV-AIDS plus 6 people to take care of them, Issan, Phil Whalen a zen priest, as was Steve Allen, and his wife, Angelique, Michael Jamvold, myself, and David Bullock. We shared a life together--we meditated, had fun. We worked hard and cried.

Maitri was a ragtag operation, and we learned we would create a Buddhist hospice piece by piece. I began to spend time helping people get their paperwork arranged for the end of their life, getting everything straightened out with their partners, and their families, taking care of the kinds of things that come up towards the end of life. I asked social workers and lawyers to help and everyone I asked stepped forward.

What also started to become clear, we were charting new territory. We were the only Zen center in the United States to put meat, chicken and sausages on our vegetarian, Zen, table. People with HIV needed protein. There were a lot of other things that broke rules, both in Zen terms, and hospice-wise. When we had to take care of getting the drugs adjusted so that people could have a fairly comfortable life, we got help from Visiting Nurses and Hospice (Steve Allen worked out a contract with them to provide a full-time nurse and certified nursing attendants using moneys already allocated for care from the city). As I started to investigate how we could get money for hospice, I discovered that for most insurance, and federal funding, people had to have a 6 month diagnosis to receive assistance and they couldn't take any drugs which would prolong life. Issan said that’s crazy because he wanted people to live and enjoy life as much as they could for as long as they could. There was a new, experimental drug called Foscarnet which prevented, or at least retarded, blindness caused by CMV retinitis. It had to be given intravenously. The nurses from hospice were not allowed to do that with hospice patients so I recruited a small group of volunteers who learned to how to do administer it. Then several patients wanted to sign up for drug trails of the new HIV drugs that began to appear. It would probably have been prohibited in more formal hospice settings, but somehow, I convinced VNA to not report any person at Maitri who got into a drug trail.

The partner of my friend Michael who was dying called Maitiri,“the house of death” when I suggested that he move Michael in. I was pretty offended. I saw what we were doing as creating a house of life. While I was trying to figure out how to keep the cable TV from being shut off, and lamb stew on the table, there were times I thought I was running “animal house.” There was lots of humorous, funny things going on all the time. Yes, people were dying, in the 2 + years I was there 82 people died in those 8 beds, and I was with almost every one of them. I won’t deny that it tested my defences, that it was trying, and stressful work. There was always a poignancy about life at Maitri. But when death is simply part of life, it becomes more easy to sustain what we think of as normal life.

Bit by bit, we did put something together, and what we created is now the longest surviving aids hospice, “home and hospice for people with AIDS,” in the city. The morbidity rate from HIV/AIDS has gone down enormously, thank god. Only a few people actually die in the hospice now, so the current staff deals with things like drug addiction, and adherence to medical protocol for the antiviral drugs, respite care, things that Issan would have encouraged us to to do to make life as normal and happy for as long as it lasts. What we did in the early days of the epidemic and what continues to be done now is really extraordinary.

By the time he died, I realized that Issan was a truly extraordinary man. He was far more than an extremely funny sense of humor. He’d worn a skirt, or as he used to say, "I still wear a skirt but I renounced the heels." His speech was always in entirely plain language. But he really was a Zen master. When this drag queen, substance abuser par excellence started to sit meditation with Susuki roshi, he sat down and looked at the bottoms of his feet, and said to himself, oh my god, they are dirty...and he started to clean up from drugs, and meditate. He also discovered what was important for his own life. In official Zen, he went as high as any man can go. For me he was an absolutely extraordinary, terrific human being.\

To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page..

The science behind: When will Hell freeze over?...

2012-01-27T13:39:00.000-08:00

Dante Conversing with Farinata degli Uberti by William Blake

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. It is so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well. Many thanks to my friend Andrea Tosi for forwarding this to me. It made my day!

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

"As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

"With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

"This gives two possibilities:

"1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

"2. If Hell is expanding at a faster rate than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

"So which is it?

"If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

"The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'"

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

Originally published on July 21, 2008 in my blog “spiritually incorrect.”

Calling out the Archbishop

2012-01-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

If I were Obama, this is how I might answer you, Eminenza Revma, but if I were the President, I couldn’t be this snarky. But I’m not Obama. I'm just a gay man and a citizen of these United States. Once upon a time I was also a Catholic and a Jesuit.

I don’t know you and might even like you given the right social setting, church or meditation hall, provided you didn’t insist on being right. No, I’m just saying that. I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t give me the time of day, and I doubt that I'd be a "good gay" and kiss your ring. But I’ll still try not to insist on my position without being too self-righteous.

Dear Most Reverend Eminence Archbishop Dolan, shepherd of many Catholics whose votes you can’t dictate:

Sorry that I couldn’t find the time to get back to you and answer your provocative questions before now. As you’ve probably watched the green backs in the collection basket dwindle, you know that I’ve got real money problems to deal with too.

I hate to be so upfront, but the tone of your letter was more than a bit defensive--this is when you weren’t being midly hostile ramping up to outright antagonistic
.
I can sympathize with you--really. It sucks to have your authority blasted by people who can buy TV time, or even own stations and networks, but such is life in a democratic society. When you were elected, if my statisticians are correct, you received 128 votes against your opponent’s 111 on the third ballot. I wish I only had 239 bishops to deal with. But you guys, and you are still all guys right? are making a real stab at democracy, so I applaud even small steps. It’s a major shift from the days when you could handle the opposition by sending them all to Hell, or burn them. I can’t just allow those who disagree with equality in marriage to break away and start their own religion. We already fought a civil war. But you had the Reformation which was a war without too much blood.

Don't take this as a low blow, but I have to point out that one of your complaints, that the government’s stance on contraceptive devices and the use of condoms to prevent HIV goes against what you preach, would definitely not stand if put to a vote of the faithful. It doesn’t take a statistician to see that they’ve voted with their penises, if not their feet. That collection plate take will eventually catch up with you.

Sometimes the reality of leadership is a hard road. And I'm not trying to strike a note of reconciliation to get the sympathy vote. I am obliged to make room for all points of view. My oath of office forces me to leave the eternal questions to my private time, or when I leave office, though my opponents are using them right now to weaken whatever authority I have left as president. I can only hope that your comment about creating a constitutional crisis was just an observation--that there was no threat implied in your language--I wouldn’t want to alert Homeland Security.

I recall that you call upon a Higher Power, or perhaps that is reserved to the Most Holy Father some of the times when he opens his mouth. I’ve tried the Higher Power thing too in some of my speeches, but my opponents have a real knack for that sort of thing. I feel at a disadvantage.

There was one statement that really caught my attention: “If the label of ‘bigot’ sticks to us—especially in court—because of our teaching on marriage, we’ll have church-state conflicts for years to come as a result." Apparently you think that this is a solid argument because you repeat it: "It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing.”

Ok, let’s get real. You can hold any position you want, but the courts seem to be beginning to recognize that all men and women have a right to marry, regardless of sexual orientation, and the majority of the citizens of this country seem to be coming to the same conclusion. Everything changes, opinions change, and the teaching of your church on some matters has changed.

I mean really changed. Your church has been around for a long time and your memory shouldn’t be so short. Slavery is mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Sometimes it’s about regulations for slave owners and sometimes it’s used as a metaphor. I’ll let scholars fight about the exact meaning. However, it has not escaped my notice that St. Augustine taught that slavery was part of the natural harmony of the universe, and that at least one early synod (Gangra 340 CE) condemned abolitionists. As late as the 15th century popes owned slaves as well as accepted human beings as presents and gave them to friends in high places. That means that for about three quarters of the history of Christianity, slavery was accepted with hardly a second thought at the highest levels of your religious institution. I don’t need either the courts or innuendo to point out that you were on the wrong side of history on that one. If those attitudes existed today, you'd be loudly condemned outright. It might be considered “bias and prejudice.”

Love to welcome you to the right side of this battle. It’ll be lots of fun.

With all due respect,

Barack

Finding God in All Things

2012-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011

Bonnie Johnson would have been 68 today. I am among the many people who loved her and miss her kind and warm presence. She was an extremely generous woman and expressed her love as wife and mother, daughter, grandmother and friend, in a way you could count on.

More than a decade ago, when she was first diagnosed with leukemia, her husband Daniel Shurman told me that she was interested in doing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and asked if I could suggest a book that she could use. She did the Exercises, and I was blessed to be her guide. But it was her enormous spiritual gift that allowed her truly embody the Teaching of Jesus, and then to share it with others, just as the Lord asks us.

During the years that her cancer remained in remission, she continued to explore the path that her Lord, through Ignatius, opened. She continued to live her life in prayer, exploring and digging further, following her own inspiration and gifts. This mystical bent was always balanced by the consummate professional and the scholar with common sense.

She found a possible link between Ignatius and Julian of Norwich via an informal association of seekers who called themselves “the Friends of God.” She wrote about Julian, Ignatius and the Friends when she was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is dated March 8, 2005.

Thank you, Daniel for being the kind of husband who inspires, and for introducing me to Bonnie.

To thank Bonnie for the gift of friendship, I am going to post the paper, “Finding God in All Things,” here.

We miss you, Bonnie. and your gentle presence. We are enormously grateful for the gifts you gave us. May you sing with the angels.

I have given this paper the same title as William Barry’s book: Finding God In All Things, A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius (Barry 1991). I was reading the book when Julian of Norwich was assigned in class. The similarities between Julian’s writings and Ignatius’s were striking to me. Both Julian and Ignatius write of multiple sensory experiences with God occasioned by life-threatening illness. Before I understood that Julian was born 150 years before Ignatius, I considered that her visions, like mine[1], might have been delirious manifestations engendered by Ignatian-style guided meditations. When I realized that she lived long before Ignatius, I abandoned the paper I was writing on the general topic of asceticism to delve deeper into parallels, coincidences, and possible connections between these two late medieval mystics.

The theological proposition of this paper is that the writings of Julian in circa 1400 and the writings of Ignatius circa 1525 are representative of a distinct spirituality: God as Friend. God as Friend is a paradigm shift from the dominant spirituality from the 4th century: Deity of Christ; it is distinct though related to two paradigms which were soon to emerge in the reformation: Salvation by Faith Alone and Incarnational Participation. At the end of this paper I will argue that the paradigm of God as Friend is finding new relevance in our time, hence bringing a renewed interest in both Julian and Ignatius.

In my search for a “social network” connecting Julian and Ignatius, I learned about an informal group called “Friends of God” from one of the many websites devoted to Julian. The name for this “association of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay [also men and women], alludes no doubt to John 15:14-15[2] … Friends of God appears to have had its origin in Basle between the years 1339 and 1343, and to have thence extended down the Rhine even as far as the Netherlands” (Walsh 1909). I am skeptical that Julian herself had any direct connection with the informal network of German mystics, but there is indirect evidence at least that many of them had access to her writing. One version of Julian’s Short Text (the so-called “Amherst Manuscript”) also contains writings of Friends’ mystics Marguerite Poerete, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec (Holloway 1997). The manuscript had been in the Brigittine Syon Abbey; it was owned by the Lowe family and through them found its way to the Low Countries and Rouen (Holloway 1996). While there is no direct evidence of who might have read it and when, there is enough indirect evidence to conclude that Julian’s ideas were circulating among German mystics following her death circa 1425. The German mystics influenced Ignatius through the Carhusian and former Dominican monk, Ludolf of Saxony (Gieraths 1986). Ignatius is known to have read and re-read a four volume Spanish translation of Ludolf’s Life of Christ and to have been profoundly influenced, even converted, by what he read there (Ignatius 2000, p. xiv; Loyola 2000, p. xiv).

The references to Julian’s writing in this paper come from a “Long Text” version translated from the manuscript found in the British Museum. As I read Revelations of Divine Love (Julian 2002), I noted about sixty passages expressing ideas similar to those found the Spiritual Exercises, far too many passages to discuss here.[3] I am concentrating on five concepts that point parallel notions of God as friend; in particular, I am limiting myself to the best examples that reveal similarities in their views of how people carry on friendship with God various media/modes. I use quotations from the work of each to document my argument that friendship with God is created and maintained through intimate communications which take at least five different forms: imagery, senses, colloquy, consolation/ desolation, and prayer. In the conclusion of the paper, I also point similarities in how they describe the nature of this friendship in their discussions of sin, love, goodness, choice, and the indwelling of God in our nature.

Communication is the sine qua non of any friendship. To have a concept of friendship with God, therefore requires that there be some form of media which constitutes that communication. For both Julian and Ignatius, imagery is the most important media and the Passion is the most important topic of that imagery. In examining Julian and Ignatius’s imagery of Jesus’ Passion, such in the illustrative passages below, it is easy to dismiss their perspective on friendship. After all “Body of Christ” imagery was a common theme of medieval piety yet friendship with God was not. I have little knowledge of other writers in the “Body of Christ” genre, so I cannot say that the friendship imagery of Julian and Ignatius is unique. What I observe in their imagery, however, is its intimacy. Both show intimacy with Jesus’ body; this use of imagery signals closeness, friendship.

… All the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefore, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ as it was shewed (Julian 2002, p.).

… Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus hear me. Within Thy wounds hid me (Ignatius 2000, p. xlv).

Simply imagining another in a prayerful way can also create a close relationship with the one imagined with the need for conversation as we typically understand that term. A few months ago my husband and I were contacted by a friend to provide direction to on-line medical information for a friend of his with a rare bone marrow disease. We started to email with both Jim and his wife about Jim’s illness and potential resources in Palo Alto. Mostly we prayed intensely for Jim and also for his wife; we never spoke with them even by phone. When Jim died unexpectedly from a heart attack, both Daniel and I were devastated; we still cry at the thought of Jim. We had lost a dear friend, one whom we knew only through imagery, email, and prayer. It was a dramatic Julian-Ignatian lesson for me: I felt so close to this person and that closeness was entirely the product of my imagining his circumstances and my daily prayers for him. Knowing Jim in this way helped me to experience God in a fresh way; I learned how I can know God without human encounters just as I had known Jim without these encounters.

Imagery in Julian and Ignatius is not only visual, it is also multi-sensory.

I HAD, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth (Julian 2002, p. 197). And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it (Julian 2002, p. 90).

The Fifth contemplation will consist in applying the five senses to the matter. … seeing in imagination the persons, in contemplating and mediating in detail the circumstances in which they are… hear what they are saying… smell the infinite fragrance and taste the infinite sweetness of the divinity … touch, for example by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand (Ignatius 2000, p. 45).

Communicating with ones Godfriend goes beyond merely experiencing God through ones imagination and senses; both Julian and Ignatius converse directly with God. Throughout the Julian text, she is posing questions to God, and God is answering her, for example: “AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well…”(Julian 2002, p. 61); the result of this is conversational. Ignatius uses the term “colloquy” to refer to conversations with God (and also with Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit on occasions): “The colloquy is made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another” (Ignatius 2000, p. 24). These two examples exemplify a pattern of “shewing” vs “exercise” that I find over and over as a distinction between these two books: Julian shows her communication with God; Ignatius instructs the maker of the exercises to perform these same kinds of communications. Thus, “revelation” in Julian becomes “exercise” in Ignatius.

God has special kinds of communication with Julian that I would call, following Ignatius, “consolations” and “desolations.” In Ignatian spirituality, consolidations and desolations are the movements of the spirit—“internal movements” by which we can discern God’s will in our lives. Those making the exercises are taught how to listen or feel for these movements and thereby to guide their lives in accord with God’s will. Again, we see that Julian experiences these interior movements but makes no methodical use of them. Ignatius’s biography describes how he initially experienced them much as Julian did and then learned to put them to use in his own communications with God.

AND after this He shewed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me. …This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life that scarcely I could have patience to live. This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself (Julian 2002).

God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty (Ignatius 2000, p. 119 section 330). ...When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. For though God has taken from him the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors, nevertheless, he has sufficient grace for eternal salvation (Ignatius 2000, p. 116, section 320).

On the topic of prayer, Julian and Ignatius could not be more similar. Yet, it is not as simple to point to parallel passages as with the preceding topics. For them, prayer is not just a “doing” – not just a message we send to God, in the form of a petition, for example. Rather, prayer is a way of being in which ones very foundation, ones “ground” is God and therefore prayer is fitting ourselves to that Ground of our being. Julian puts it this way:

OUR Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth. By whom, He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself; Blessed may He be! For this is our Lord’s will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self (Julian 2002).

“Grounded in God” has several implications. First, that prayer is about the will of God and our place in that will. From this the next implication, only implicit in the statement above, that God is eternally present and has already “answered” our prayers in our very existence, our salvation, and in all that we enjoy: “The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it. Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me” (Julian 2002). Julian cautions us not to go looking for this or that way that God might have answered our small petitions, but to understand that God is answering even the prayers we have not yet asked. So how then should we pray? We should pray that “our will be turned unto the will of our Lord.” The true end of our petitions is that we become like God, indeed that we are at one with God.

William Barry describes the same understanding in Ignatius in his chapter entitled, “Grounded in God: The Principle and Foundation” (Ignatius 2000, pp. 33ff.). God is up to one action; we can experience the creative action of God which is always at work (Barry 1991, p. 39); Ignatius draws out the implications of our place in God’s one action in the Principle and Foundation: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things… Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a short life. … Our one desire and choice should be what is conductive to the end for which we are created (Ignatius 2000, p. 12, section 23). In other words, it is about God’s will; our prayer is our participation in that will. We are engaged in the world of God’s creating and God is already answering the prayers we have not yet made.

We have seen in both of these late medieval mystics a central concern with our relationship with God and how that relationship is continuously created through various media. The relationship is one of love. While both mystics write extensively on sin, theirs is not the sin of the medieval church or of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, Julian comes as close as one might in her day to saying that her Church is misguided in its notion of sin and salvation (Julian 2002, p. 104). Ignatius’ first week of the Exercises is devoted to examining ones sin, but the point is not to berate or belittle the maker of the Exercises. Rather, the grace of the first week is the experience of love. “Ignatius expects that God will reveal our sins in such a way that we will actually be consoled. We are to have an increase of faith, hope, and love, be moved to tears of sorrow for our sin, but also to tears of love for a God who has been so good to us” (Barry 1991, p. 51). The heart of the message from both Julian and Ignatius is the goodness of God, the love of God, and the freedom which God gives us in the hope that we will choose to put God at the center of our lives, and participate in God’s mission.

Both mystics are saying that we must look in the world and in ourselves to find God. Their piety is finding God in all things, starting with finding ourselves IN God. “For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned” (Julian 2002, p. 133). This is such a contemporary message; it is not surprising that both mystics are being read more in our time than in any time of the past, including their own.

I have argued here that both Julian and Ignatius provide us with kataphatic paths to relationship with God as friend, one in which we are constantly called to God’s mission, but never coerced or threatened. We are called to examine our own sins, not the sins of others; we communicate with God who already God loves us and forgives us already. This is a contemporary theme. These are mystics for our time.

Notes:

1 Since this is not a “personal reflection paper,” I will not discuss further my own experiences. Suffice to say that the parallels I find in Julian’s writings to my own experiences were the motivation for my choosing this topic.

2 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father.”

3 References to “Pages” in Julian are to the original manuscript pages; references to Ignatius are to pages in the Vintage-Random House version with section numbers referring to Ignatius original sections.

References

Barry, W. A. (1991). Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius. Notre Dame, IL, Ave Maria Press.

Gieraths, G. M. (1986). "Life in Abundance: Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican Mystics of the 14th Century." Spirituality Today 38 (August): Supplementary Book.

Holloway, J. B. (1996) The Westminster Cathedral/Abbey Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html.

Holloway, J. B. (1997) Godfriends: The Continental Medieval Mystics. http://www.umilta.net/godfrien.html.

Ignatius (2000). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. New York, Random House.

Julian (2002). Revelations of Divine Love. Grand Rapids, MI, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Walsh, R. (1909). Friends of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online Edition, K. Knight. 6.

Mindfulness Is Not a Part-Time Job

2012-01-13T13:54:00.000-08:00

(L to R) Shunko Jamvold, Del Carlson, Angelique Farrow, Steve Allen, Issan Dorsey

A Dharma talk by Issan Dorsey-roshi

This transcript appeared in the newsletter of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship in January of 1995, four years and five months after his death from AIDS.

Someone said to me the other day, “Aren’t you always working on something?” Yes, we are always working on something, but hopefully it’s not up here in our heads, filled with words to obscure it. I was talking with a friend recently about the phrase, “coming to reside in your breath-mind,” and working with the phrase, and how useful it is to me. I thought it was interesting that I’d never really heard it before, and was just now beginning to work with it. I realized that I actually just heard it deeply.

This has been with me since I first started practicing. It’s a whole way of working with your mind--and I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. I hope you won’t have to wait for 20 years before you you begin to to hear how to work with this thing called mind in [your] zazen meditation.

Now, people who come to practice, immediately sit much easier that they did when I first began to to sit at Sokoji Temple years ago. I remember everyone sitting with their legs legs bent up. They’d sit for five minutes, then they’d lie down and moan. But now people come and it’s like we already did that part for them. It’s as if we have a shared body that has already gone through that preliminary stuff, and people are already able to experience some aspect of zazen practice and how we practice together.

We have to be willing to explore and experiment. First we have to have a sense of humor and a willingness to explore and experiment with our lives and our uncomfortableness. We know that sometimes we can sit for a few minutes, or even a few days, and at some point it gets pretty uncomfortable, and it’s uncomfortable for us not to invite our thoughts to tea, and reside in our breath-mind.

“Don’t invite your thoughts to tea” is an expression of Suzuki-roshi’s which I’ve always found useful. You know these are just words, and we have to remember that every human concept is just delusion. Still, we use words and provisionally talk about our experience. Lately I have been exploring this way of thinking with a friend who has AIDS dementia; the virus is living in his brain. I’m thinking and working on it and talking with him about it because the virus that is attacking so many of us now ends up being in the brain. So is there some way for us to experience that? I don’t know yet. My question is: how to be with people who have dementia and how to experience the dementia that we all have anyway? It’s called delusion. Mind is always creating confusion, joy and pain, like and don’t like, and depression. But there is also a “background mind.” That is what my friend and I have been discussing.

Sometimes when I’m talking about uncomfortableness, I talk about the five fears. One of the five fears is the fear of unusual states of mind. How can we come to have appreciation and respect for this fear and not just some resistance, so that we can enter our fear, allowing these new areas of uncomfortableness? When we can enter each of these new spaces, we can begin to look at truthfulness.

Why do we have to sit? Really there’s no reason to sit. If we’re completely sincere, then there’s no reason to sit. I’m not completely sincere so I have to keep sitting to check. Even if we’re involved with unskillful actions, the one quality we should strive for is truthfulness. Truthfulness takes a total commitment to see all aspects of ourselves and our unskillfulness. If we can embrace the totality of ourselves, we can embrace the totality of others and of the world. Our tendency is to think about things before we do them. Even when we see a beautiful flower, we say, “Oh what a beautiful flower.” “Beautiful flower” is extra. Just look at the flower with no trace.

Suzuki-roshi wrote, “When we practice zazen, our mind is calm and quite simple. But usually our mind is very busy and complicated, and it is difficult to be concentrating on what are doing.” This is because when we act, we think, and this thinking leaves some trace. Our activity is shadowed by some preconceived idea. The traces and notions make our mind very complicated. When we do something with a simple, clear mind, we have no shadows and our activity is strong and straightforward.

So, even with zazen practice, it gets so complicated. We’re dissecting every aspect of what’s going on, reviewing and comparing. How do we keep it simple and straightforward? How do we come to know this basic truth of practice and Buddhism? The teaching and the rules can and should change according to the situation and the people we’re practicing with, but the secret of practice cannot be changed. It’s always truth.

We teach ourselves and encourage ourselves by creating this space, the meditation hall, so we can begin looking at our mind. “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.” “Where is your breath-mind?” I used to say, allow this kind of mind to arise. But now I’m saying create background mind.

This practice is simple: watch your breaths and don’t invite your thoughts to tea. But not inviting your thoughts to tea doesn’t mean to get rid of thinking. That is discrimination. So, there’s no reason to get rid of thoughts, but rather to have some blank, non-interfering relationship with them. Don’t make your mind blank, but rather have some blank relationship with the thoughts. Begin to see the space behind and around the thoughts, and shift the seat of your identity out of your thoughts and come to reside in your breath-mind. We develop our intention to reside in our breath-mind by first bringing our intention to to “breath as mind,” and then by shifting the the seat of our identity from our thoughts to our breath.

This all ties in with how we use this space, this laboratory. We should have a willingness to explore with our lives, and this is our laboratory right here--how we use the meditation hall and how we use what happens outside of it. Mindfulness is not a part time job.

To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page.

“Next Question” please

2011-12-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

about being gay and Buddhist

originally publsihed October 23, 2006

Here is the remnant of a tired, oppressive conversation that just refuses to die. It runs something like this: despite what anyone says and despite any appearances to the contrary, we queer folk are really OK. Believe me--I really, absolutely, don’t have to wear a dress.

I went to the website of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship in Singapore a few weeks ago, and clicked on a link to a talk by the Venerable George. There we were, stuck again, and this time nailed by the authority of the Dalai Lama:

“When the Dalai Lama was in the US, a lot of journalist likes[sic] to ask him about his views on gay monks and gay Buddhists. He told them, ‘Some are monogamous and some are predatory, just like heterosexuals, next question?’”

And then I was subjected to some pious words about how great it is to have bad karma because it gives us so many opportunities to practice. My heart sank.

There’s nothing objectionable in the short quote from His Holiness, or George’s answer--I am certain George exactly matched the nuance of the questioner. I’ve met George and found him an engaging, balanced, and well trained monk. But the sole focus on the prohibitory precepts leaves so little room for the expansiveness of practice that a gay person’s spiritual life could die before it begins to breathe on its own. The reality is that, for most queer folk, being predatory has never been a concern--being subjected to a peculiar set of sexual judgements, however, seems to be part and parcel of our lives.

This myopic view is frustrating, and if I take it to heart, I could be outraged or offended. The never-ending cycle of sexual considerations is never satisfied which is not surprising. But more troubling, it does not point to liberation.

It really is time for a “new question,” and let’s get creative and redirect our energy and practice to re-frame the entire conversation.

I want to step back and try a different portal -- Art!

Watching Ric Burn’s PBS documentary Andy Warhol, I felt that I understood Warhol, his gayness, his art, his insight, in an entirely new way. And in the same moment, I also saw one of my Buddhist heroes, Issan "Tommy" Dorsey, as never before--again unexpected. Although I had known and lived with Issan in the last three years of his life, confident that I had fully experienced his zen, art opened another door.

And this became the place where I began to dig into myself to explore sexuality and practice.

At eight Warhol wrote a fan letter to Shirley Temple, she returned a signed photograph, and he wanted to be Shirley. The commentator said this began his fascination with ‘fame’ -- not his homosexuality. He began his Marilyn Monroe series on the night she died. His self-portrait in drag shows a connection so deep that we begin to see how his portraits of Monroe allow us to see her in an unexpected way, a glimpse that would have remained hidden without his art.

[I spent the better part of two days in 2002 at the Warhol Retrospective at MOCA LA. It was almost overwhelming to see so much of his work together. I am going to post some of the work I saw here. Online can only give a taste of its power.]

Was there ever a question that Warhol was not gay? Of course not. Was there ever a possibility that he could be other than gay? I’m not going to waste time with a really dumb question. Can this apply to gay men who aren’t effeminate and don’t do drag? Of course. Just sit down and begin to see who we really are, say who we really are, and we won’t waste the Dalai Lama’s time either.

In the “real” world, “passive” men, a word often used to describe Warhol, get chewed up and spit out. At major openings where he was definitely the star, he tended to fade into the background. But he missed nothing, observing, recording, understanding who people were, what made them tick, seeing their deepest needs. Then he used the simplest, most straight forward means that he’d mastered--photography, silkscreen, printmaking--and we saw a depth and detail to the people and objects in our world that we never would have noticed if left to our own devices.

Issan Dorsey was no wall flower. He loved to perform, to make people feel at home, to laugh-- far different than the reports of Warhol’s being stand-offish. Warhol’s drag was an artistic, perhaps personal, experiment. Issan loved drag as a spectacle, even beauty, though undoubtedly it was connected to understanding himself.

I knew Issan’s spontaneous humor first hand. It was genuine and infectious. We are told that Warhol could be funny at times, with friends. I have a feeling that Andy was guarded, or that the people around him as he ascended the celebrity ladder protected him in much the same way that they protected him from drugs. Issan too had a small army of fierce protectors. I know several of the temple guards personally. He welcomed their good intentioned efforts when he needed them, but he kept a large arsenal of one liners to fend them off when best intentions became meddlesome and oppressive.

Both men had complicated relationships with drugs, their own drug use and that of their addicted friends. Warhol said publicly that a half of a diet pill was enough for him. Issan loved drugs, but took great care to check that appetite for the sake of his practice. Both were comfortable with drug users and did not shy away from any part of the drug scene. Both men saw lovers and important people in their lives overdose and die. Both, in some ways, preferred the downbeat company of druggies to the polished world of art collectors, museum curators, high-church Buddhists, or the “A-Gay List.” I saw Issan totally at home in both worlds, with anyone and everyone in the room, blending discordant personalities, and invisibly negotiating ancient animosities. I talked with him on several occasions where I felt as if he were walking with me through the dangerous mine fields of my own mind, easing my own fears.

Paying attention to details, being interested in others with no judgment or preconceptions, all point to an ability to get inside someone else's skin with compassion and love (and I am thinking particularly of the dark places that we try to hide). Does it come from sharing a deep sense of being an outcast? Does it originate in “passive” observation? Is it transmitted by the gay gene as well as working with skilled teachers?

I have no answers. There are no easy answers. But this exploration is far more interesting to me than checking myself against standards of sexual conduct which prejudice gay men and women.

I will sit, I will look at art, and I will make art.

No matter how repetitious they may appear, each can of Campbell soup is a unique experience. What can be more Buddhist?

For those with eyes to see, let them open to our ordinary world.

To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page.

Robert Baker Aitken Roshi (June 19, 1917 – August 5, 2010)

2011-11-18T16:10:00.001-08:00

Originally published August 14th, 2010

I would like to add my name to the list of Bob’s former students who are paying tribute to him. I would also like to extend to his son, Tom, my deep sympathy. I remember so well the time we first met, Tom. Your dad took Ken MacDonald and me aside after sesshin and said, “Do you two have time to fly out to Big Island and meet Tom, my gay son.” Ken and I did just that. I have a picture of the three of us standing on the fresh lava flow that stood about 3 or 4 feet high along the edge of your driveway in Kona. Though I never visited your dad in the cottage you built for him close to that same flow on the ocean side of your property, I knew that it had to be beautiful and fit his needs perfectly—as did your care for him during his last years.

But getting back to tributes, for me the most enduring way to memorialize Aitken Roshi is to honor and carry on his teaching. And so, Roshi, I thank you first for faithfully passing on the traditional koan Teaching to my teacher, John Tarrant, and the other teachers in your lineage. This is a great gift to the world, and in itself would be more than enough to command our admiration and respect.

But there is more. I also want to thank you for stepping outside the tradition where you saw the need, where the “System Stinks” as your sign proclaims. Your testimony in support of same-gender marriage before the Hawaiian Commission on Sexual Orientation and the Law in support of same-gender marriage (October 11, 1995) showed me your very down-to-earth understanding of the Way and its expression in our world. And when you agreed to allow me to revise your remarks and publish them during the “No on 8” campaign here in California not quite two years ago, with Tom acting as our intermediary, I learned another essential lesson—I had to make the dharma my own before I could embody and articulate it. Bob, I promise you that I will continue that work.

To honor your teaching, I have republished the piece we worked on together, “A Zen Master looks at Same-Gender Marriage.” (I am also including a link to the Spanish translation, Un Zen Master Enseña sobre el mismo Género Matrimonio). It is, as far as I know, the only published dharma teaching about same sex marriage by a Buddhist teacher of your stature. Thank you. We are all in your debt.

I know that you would have been delighted to know that your student Ian and his spouse Trevor were married on July 10th of this year in Canada. The ceremony they designed was very much in line with the form that you used for marriages in Diamond Sangha for years. Ian and Trevor may also be the first of many legally married same sex couples to pledge their love in the tradition of the Buddha Way that has been handled into our care. Your stand for the equality of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender people is a part of your legacy that has touched all of us deeply.

For more information about Robert Aitken Roshi, his life, family and work—his Buddhist practice, the teachers in his lineage, or his writings, please visit the Robert Aitken Official Site, and the site of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha.

Kindergarten Theater of the Absurd

2011-11-14T08:32:00.001-08:00

By my rough count, two years after Benedict's overture to disaffected Anglican/Episcopalian priests, about a 100 US Episcopalian parishes, priests, wives and congragations now affiliate with the church of Rome. There are another 50 priests in England, and 3 bishops.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Is there anything else behind Vatican’s announcement of a no-fault path to the one true church for disaffected Anglicans?

Bishop John Shelby Spong, who is one of my heroes, in what he calls Ecclesiastical Kindergarten Games in the Washington Post, October 22, 2009, put these words in mouth of Rowland Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

"Your Holiness,… we are very pleased to transfer to you these fringe members of our church who still define women as subhuman and who regard homosexual persons as deviant and abnormal. We hope they will be happy in a church like yours. We Anglicans, however, must move on to engage our modern world. In the spirit of our new relationship, in which each church is free to offer solace through an invitation to those in our respective communions whose consciences are disturbed, we offer this new ecumenical initiative. We invite all gay Roman Catholic clergy who are tired of hiding in dishonesty to become Anglicans. To ease their transition we will allow some Roman liturgies to be used. We also invite all those alienated Roman Catholic lay people who can no longer twist their minds into first-century pretzels in order to assent to dogmas that the intellectual revolution of the past 500 years has rendered unbelievable to come now into a Church where they can explore truth with minds not fettered by the myth of "divine revelation." We invite those lay people who believe in sexual equality and who have long favored both the marriage of clergy and the ordination of women to the priesthood to come to us so that they will no longer have to live with spiritual schizophrenia. We invite those Roman Catholics who choose to practice birth control as a moral choice in an overpopulated world and who can no longer tolerate being told that family planning is evil and therefore condemned by God, especially since they have no intention of refraining from doing it, to consider becoming Anglicans, which would mean that they could stop living a lie. We will also receive your clergy without the indignity of re-training or re-ordaining them. We might require them to undergo some classes in thinking for themselves, since they have had little experience in that, and we might ask them to undergo sensitivity training in human relations. In the western world we have learned that this kind of training is necessary both in business and in such things as police instruction to deal with entrenched prejudices."

I love Spong’s fire, and think he’s right on. But, trying to keep an open mind, I would love to see a transcript of last Saturday’s friendly chat between Ratzinger and Rowan. Other than the obvious power grab and numbers game that has overtaken compassion, love, and forgiveness as the principle focus of our ecclesial institutions, is there something worthy of interest?

In the run up to the meeting, Williams asked: "Is there a mechanism in the church that has the clear right to determine for all where the limits of Christian identity might be found? … Is the integrity of the church ultimately dependent on a single identifiable ministry of unity to which all local ministries are accountable?"

I don’t pay much attention to the high-sounding arguments of theologians of any bent. But the evidence on the ground answers Williams question with a resounding NO. Most of the compassionate work, listening to the inspiration of the Jesus teaching, caring for people in poverty, looking after people with HIV, happens outside Rome, outside the spooky voodoo of Papal oracles.

As a gay man, I find it somewhat interesting that Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, and the Anglican Oxford movement, seem to be at the center of the controversy coming to a head. John Henry, perhaps the patron saint of Benedict’s Anglican rehabilitation program, became a catholic, and eventually supported Pius IX’s aspirations for infallibility. Most commentators agree that Newman was gay, though most certainly celibate. Although arguments about higher authority have to happen outside the sexual context, they never do. In that sense I am firmly Freudian: Love your Daddy.

Oh Blessed John, you’d have had a hell of time getting a cardinal’s hat in this day and age if you ever showed any emotional interest in your younger men friends–which you did. Maybe you might not have even been ordained if you had not dedicated your considerable intellectual gifts to the support of the Papacy.

I doubt that Benedict played footsie with Rowland under the table in Rome last Saturday. Both are far too straight-laced. But make not mistake: being gay, or not being gay, or staying in the closet, is the background of all their high-minded theological debate.

I would be inclined to dismiss the whole sham as real theater of the absurd except for one issue that they avoided. Their manufactured crisis shifts the focus, and scrutiny, away from the racism, homophobia, and horrendous violation of human rights underway across the globe, but especially in Uganda where it is aided and abetted by the arch-conservative, catholic-leaning Anglican hierarchy. I wonder if these men—they are mostly men—have even read the testament of Jesus, much less taken it to heart.

If we are to avoid a repeat of the Rwandan tragedy in Uganda, this time with gay people being the scapegoats, the rest of the world has to be vigilant, ready to apply pressure and step in if necessary. A strong case can also be made that the reactionary Anglican clergy in Nigeria are turning a blind eye to corruption in that oil rich country. Benedict and Williams’s sideshow is distracting the world’s attention from these real situations. Because Rome and Canterbury are from rich countries, wear fancy clothes, and are so self-important, the press’s is not giving full attention to the dangerous situation in Uganda and Nigeria. I hope that these potentates aren’t intentionally malicious, but being self-centered and stupid is hard to excuse in dire circumstances.

All the self-identified Christians I know would answer to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rhetorical question this way: there is no clear, ultimate authority to decide who can follow the teachings of Jesus and who is disqualified, especially by being gay or a woman priest. The real question that’s going to tell the Pope that he is not what he says he is, that he makes no real difference in any positive way. A strong case could be made that his myopic, narcissistic focus allows great evil to be sanctioned by some of G_d’s men.

Follow up

21 November, 2009, 4:26 PST BBC News
“The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope agreed to seek closer relations between Anglicans and Catholics at a meeting in Rome, the Vatican has said.”

Translation of the double speak: Williams backed down, at least publicly, and decided that it was probably the Christian, and no doubt gentlemanly, thing just to make nice, be polite and not ask embarrassing questions. The Pope didn’t give an inch and might have said something like, “Well Bill, lets see how many “souls” I pick up for the RC side come January after Levada finishes the final details for immediate, penalty free conversions. Oh, and by the way, are you free for drinks and dinner when I come to London to elevate Newman to sainthood?”

Another possible scenario was sketched out by Damian Thompson of the Telegraph.co.uk, “… They both know that it’s all over.” Given that this high level meeting to discuss the momentous challenges that face Christians today lasted a mere 20 minutes, Rowan might have, in a polite and gentlemanly way to be sure, blew off the pope and delivered something like Spong suggested. “Thanks for taking these meddlesome priests and bishops. Good luck.” I doubt if there was any appeal to a higher authority. Leave that to high-level apologists, who these days are all much less gifted and thoughtful than Newman who at least tired for cogency and clarity in his thinking.

A final note: A Rogue Gallery

A quick glance at the results of the photo ops: really bad haircuts and goofy outfits. Goggle Images filled out the gallery. These guys are out of central casting, or the same gene pool -- hard to figure with celibate clergy on the Roman side. Do these guys inspire anyone to obedience to a higher authority, or G_d forbid, some connection with the transcendent (or at least a Hollywood version of spirituality)?

Rowan, honey, you need to see your barber; really, you’re a mess. You look like you live in a cave. But the public certainly won’t think you or your hairstylist is gay, which is a plus, I guess.

Does Newman in old age look as unhappy as I imagine or is it the gravitas imposed by Sir John Everett Millais?

The sketch of him as a young man is postitively handsome.

The photograph just shows an old man.

Please don’t blame me—I didn’t take the pictures. And no excuses—I won’t hear that poor Ratzinger just takes a bad picture. He’ll die with that odd sneer unless you believe in miracles.

All’s well that ends well – or badly. Pray!

Duane Michals, a fortunate man

2011-11-13T14:01:00.001-08:00

The Work of Duane Michals, an appreciation
November 16, 2011
[Originally posted November 16, 2008]

“To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.”

Today I discovered the photography of Duane Michals. I was startled, but I suppose not really surprised--very often the work of artists leads the way, shapes the way that we see the world, and well in advance of the day-to-day understanding of the majority of people.

I had been thinking a lot about the discrimination that gay and lesbian people feel, especially when attacked as we were when California Prop 8 passed. Here was the work of a gay artist who was dealing with being cut off from the mainstream honestly, boldly, creatively in 1965. Though only a decade older than me, he was deep into his work before I had even come to terms with my own queerness.

THE UNFORTUNATE MAN

The unfortunate man could not touch the one he loved
It had been declared illegal by the law
Slowly his fingers became toes and his hands gradually became feet
He began to wear shoes on his hands to disguise his pain
It never occurs to him to break the law.

I'll post a selection of some of his work that is available online with some transcriptions--if possible.

Salvation

A FAILED ATTEMPT TO PHOTOGRAPH REALITY

How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy.

I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles,

and people with reality itself, and believed that

a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph

of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will

never able able to photograph it and can only fail.

I am a reflection photographing other reflections

within a reflection. To photograph reality

is to photograph nothing.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PART OF A MAN’S BODY

I think it must be there

Where the torso sits on and into the hips. ...

Things are queer

Duane Michals, born February 18, 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, is a poet, philosopher, and a photographer. I have found some of his work available online. His books are also available for purchase.

What is the "Real Work" of the Enneagram?

2011-11-01T20:51:00.000-07:00

Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley 1971-1976

I have been personally engaged in the study of the Enneagram since 1972 when I began four years of intense personal work in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT group. Until now I have only spoken privately with friends about the proliferation of books, teachers and controversy about the Enneagram. In all the hubbub, I hope that the real value of this work is not lost or diluted to the point that it becomes no more than an interesting curiosity.

This was the first of a series of articles about the Enneagram, its history and use as well as its spread among the Jesuits. I created a database, An Enneagram Bibliography, using online resources as well the recommendations of Enneagram students. I have included books, studies, DVD’s, tapes and other materials that deal primarily deal with the Enneagram as it is presented in the West plus materials from the Gurdjeiff sources which contain information of interest to the Enneagram enthusiast.

One current myth about the Western transmission of the Enneagram runs something like this: in the early 1970’s, Claudio Naranjo, fresh from his short and incomplete training with Oscar Ichazo in Arica Chile, begins a tentative conversation with a select group of therapists and teachers in a Berkeley living room. He distributes crudely mimeographed nine pointed figures to the experienced self-observers he has called together to flesh out the sketchy outline of personality characteristics that Ichazo had developed for each point. Then these highly trained psychologists and teachers set about the task of connecting Claudio's and Ichazo’s fragmentary notes with well documented psychological research and the best diagnostic tests.

As someone who is devoted to the study of ideas and the ways in which they shape culture, I love stories of discovery and invention. Some of the stories are obviously self-serving while others have the ring of real experience. In either case, still filled with many assumptions, obvious and hidden, they are rich in information.

Sometimes it is very clear that the myth itself is part of the teaching method—for example, a great Japanese Zen Master copied a key koan collection the night before he secretly left China. His teaching emphasized the immediacy of zen insight, diligence of practice and the spontaneous breakthrough: stay up through the night and enter a new world before the sun lights your ordinary one.

In other cases the myth supports the domination of one school over another. Elaine Pagels and others have shown convincingly that the Council of Constantine authorized only the Jesus Teachings that supported the authority of the bishop of Rome as opposed to the Gnostic teachings that were equally prevalent in early Christianity. This move was so successful in suppressing an idiosyncratic teaching that we only knew about these sects from the polemical literature written to brand them as heretical until the remnants of a Gnostic library were discovered in the Egyptian desert in 1948.

I think that both these motivations can be found in the Enneagram myth: an early substantiation of the early link between Enneagram study and serious, scientific psychological investigation, and secondly, that the basic elements of Helen Palmer’s “authentic” narrative tradition come from the “Source” itself and were somehow misplaced.

I do not wish to sound mean-spirited, but this smells like either a carefully crafted version to promote Palmer’s teaching or, at best, her followers over-simplified reading of history in the light of their experience and what they have been told about her oral teaching method and her sources in Naranjo’s work. Any myth, distortion or fabrication that is in the public record or published materials is fair game. I would like to describe that seminal period from my own experience.

In the Fall of 1971, Claudio Nanranjo began to teach a small number of students in Berkeley (beginning with 25 to 30, SAT grew to more than 100 by 1975). He had recently returned from Arica where he had been part of another group of 50 Americans, self-selected from the vanguard of people who represented the new thinking centered in Esalen California, the first Americans to work with Oscar Ichazo. Aside from Nanranjo, John Lilly was the most prominent, and the most steadfastly insistent on maintaining an independent stance.

I estimate that Naranjo spent more than two years connected to Ichazo and Arica, whether in preparation, traveling, conversations with Ichazo, participating in all the exercises in that first Arica Training as well as experiences where Ichazo directed him personally. (Claudio, for example, did live in a solitary retreat for 40 days in the Arican desert - his only contact with other humans was Ichazo driving out to see him everyday). I will let Naranjo speak for himself about these experiences as he has done in his teaching and writing and will certainly continue to do in the future.

When I joined SAT in September of 1972, I found myself in a more ordinary group than the Arica pioneers from Esalen. We were relatively younger, perfect students for Claudio’s teaching, spiritual idealists of the 60’s generation, liberated in our attitudes towards sex and drugs, deserted by the faiths of our collective fathers, holding strongly to the idea that spiritual practice could overcome the ills of society that was becoming increasingly materialistic and egocentric, aggressive and greedy. There were a few Ph.D.’s, several Ph.D. candidates, two priests, a Jesuit and a Franciscan, medical doctors, school teachers, a designer, several carpenters, a sprinkling of licensed therapists, but far more therapists in training. A good cross section of ordinary, highly educated, college town Berkeleyites.

We worked together at general meetings on Tuesday or Thursday evenings—these were shock points, times according to some Sufi tradition, when real change was possible. At other times during the week, we also broke into small group meetings. Most of us meditated for at least a half hour everyday, wrote in our journals, focused our work, our self-remembering, through directed exercises that were suggested, or “indicated,” by Claudio and delivered by either Rosalyn Schaffer or Kathy Speeth (who as a child sat in the lap of Mr. Gurdjeiff and taught us the sacred dances, the “movements” of Gurdjeiff).

Frequently on Saturdays and Sundays, Claudio sat on a tattered sofa in the front of a large living room of an old fraternity house on Hearst Avenue while we sat on the floor. Claudio would begin saying, “Let’s do zazen,” and we sat in meditation for an hour. Then Claudio began to talk informally, exploring points on the Enneagram, asking questions, telling Sufi teaching stories about a character called Mullah Nasrudin, even stories about cats. (I can remember that Sunday very well because by the next Friday I owned two stray cats). There were many references to G.I. Gurdjeiff, the trickster; Claudio was very familiar with the work of Gurdjeiff though he never claimed that he had ever been trained or authorized by any of Gurdjeiff’s successors.

It was always a lively conversation. Claudio drew on his expertise as Fritz Perls's foremost disciple and explored conjunction of meditation and psychological practice. There was always psychological work. It was also creative and challenging; for example, as a classical pianist, he created mediation experiences with Beethoven symphonies.

One thing was clear to all of us: Claudio Naranjo was, during that period of time, an inspired teacher. Something of a momentous spiritual nature had happened to him in Arica, and we were present while he was unpacking that inspiration. We were part of a great experience, willing guinea pigs in a psychological spiritual experiment.

This first use of the Enneagram as a teaching tool for spiritual growth and inner work was not delivered on crudely mimeographed diagrams although there were copies of Enneagrams that we used to make our own notes and observations. Claudio Naranjo developed and tested his work in real situations with a group of bright people who were dedicated to self-understanding and deep inner work. It felt more like a crucible than a study group. It certainly was not just the intellectual exercise that is portrayed in the literature that began to appear about 10 years after Claudio finished his initial work.

In the next post I will try to probe the muddied origins of the Enneagram, looking for signs of its descent in psychobabble.

To review my Enneagram bibliography, please follow the link.

Feed the hungry ghosts! Stop feeding greed!

2011-10-29T21:59:00.001-07:00

October 29th, 2011

Tonight the Castro will be crawling with lots of hot guys all dressed up. Included will be the ghosts of Halloweens past present and future! To mark the event, I am republishing a post I wrote for "spiritually incorrect" several years ago.

Years ago our PZI meditation group worked with the koan, Save the Ghost. I began my own investigation by examining with the true dharma eye some of the more domesticated members of the ghost family—the ones hidden in my closet—spiritual versions of Adams family, though with somewhat more insidious, painful tricks and quips plus a big dose of Freud.

However this morning as I was settling into my comfortable routine, checking email and editing yesterday’s writing, a far more viscous and pervasive monster trumped onto the stage, a Godzilla on steroids breathing fire hot enough to destroy little ol' me and my fantasy world with one big blow. It made its entrance with announcement that the United States' Senate could not find the votes, being too distracted by other important matters, making it "impossible" to pass any legislation to curb the continuing environmental degradation of the planet we all share. Hell no!

Actions speak louder that words! Therefore I issue an immediate attention action alert to all Buddhists: Feed the hungry ghosts! Stop feeding greed! [Lest we forget: that greed is not outside you or me. Own it or die.]

First the oil spill, then the hand wringing, then the brouhaha, then today the news that Congress will not pass an environmental bill (you’re kidding, right?), then the conflagration of billions of dollars of wealth (well they say it’s just on paper—until you have to pay the grocer) in milliseconds because we have learned to grab so fast!

My mind, no, my gut drags me into dark thoughts about the greed that seems embedded in our culture, in the artifacts of modern life. We have created these monsters that feed on our greedy dark side. Starve them to death, or least put them on Jenny Craig, which might be worse.

There is some history in the Buddhist world, traditional remedies, for dealing with powerful ghosts just as in Christian mythology there are always the fallen angles to contend with. In Buddhism, these nasty, powerful beast-gods, through the power of blessed bodhichitta, the mind of enlightenment, convert to the Way and become our guardians. The black protector above with four arms and dripping skulls cinched around its belly is the rather well know Mahakala.

And as my attention has recently been so focused on meditation and the images that we use, hold, carry, create, I searched out images of hungry ghosts. Almost immediately I began to imagine that maybe I could cook up some magical Tibetan-style visualization that would help start the letting go, stamping out destructive little mind.

I don't have much more to say really I’m just throwing my thoughts-concerns into the fire of the koan, along with some images that grabbed me. Am I done?

I found images of our phantoms and then tied to match them with what other Buddhist cultures have created up by way of appeasements.

NO, THERE IS MORE!

And yes, when I said “other.” I came to the sudden realization that we spend far too much time winging and groaning, complaining and attacking the "other," trying to get some Asian recipe right as if that would save our skin. Goddamn it, shut up, eat your hamburgers, eat your tofubergers, then sit-stand-shout, “Thanks ancestors, now here’s what we’re going to do.” We have to fill in the blank ourselves.

America stands at the center of this man-made crisis. Are we going to be responsible? Or are we going to duck for cover under lovely Buddhist robes? The choice is ours, not some god's.

I could get behind creating some American Buddhist rituals to appease our own hungry ghosts, though that is just a place to start. Don't let religion fool you. Actions have to equal words, even solemnly chanted ones.

And when I speak of rituals for exorcising hungry ghosts, I’m not talking Halloween in the Castro though that might be another good place to start. Yeah, wait a minute, it certainly packs some powerful antidotes. We can't let any tight-assed practice squeeze all the fun out of ritual. There's already way too much suffering.

I guess I did have something more to say.

Case 32: A Philosopher Asks Buddha

2011-09-10T12:52:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine once said, “The West doesn’t need another religion. If the new Western Buddhists just set up a competing cult, what’s the value in that?” Certainly I needed balance, still do in fact, when getting lost in a long theological rant was my spiritual practice. Sitting quieted my mind just enough so that I could hear other voices besides my own. That pretty much ended the rants--well almost. I also learned that hearing, listening is just the first step towards understanding, and ultimately compassion.

Just over a month ago on Ignatius day, I talked about a Zen koan and the Jesuits who have practiced Zen and gone on to teach in the koan tradition. Of course I won’t even try to predict where their practice will take them or their students. But I will encourage anyone, no matter what beliefs they cherish, to practice meditation with their whole heart, 100%
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Mumonkan - Case 32: A Philosopher Asks Buddha

A philosopher* asked Buddha:
"Without words, without the wordless, will you you tell me truth?"

The Buddha kept silence.

The philosopher bowed and thanked the Buddha, saying:
"With your loving kindness I have cleared away my delusions and entered the true path."

After the philosopher had gone, Ananda asked the Buddha what he had attained.

The Buddha replied, "A good horse runs even at the shadow of the whip."

Father Ignatius would have approved of the Buddha's answer. I think that it might point to the heart of the Buddhist-Zen connection. And for the record I am not at all suggesting a fundamentalist, hierarchial interpretation of "blind obedience."

Here is a list of the Jesuit Zen teachers and other Catholic religious who have followed this path.

Fr. Hugo Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J. (dec. 1990)
Fr. William Thomas Hand, S.J. (dec. 2005)
Fr. Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi
Ruben Habito, Roshi (former Jesuit)
Fr. Bill Johnson, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J.
Fr. Robert Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi
Bro. Tom Marshall, S.J. (dec. 2010)
Fr. Ama Samy, S.J., Roshi

and their students:
Sr. Elaine MacInnes Roshi, member of Our Ladies Missionaries
Bro. Kevin Hunt Sensei, Trappist

May their practice help relieve suffering and free all beings.

I’ll end this post with a poem by Rumi.

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?
Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?
Who comes to a spring thirsty
and sees the moon reflected in it?

Who, like Jacob, blind with grief and age,
smells the shirt of his son and can see again?
Who lets a bucket down
and brings up a flowing prophet?
Or like Moses goes for fire
and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

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

A vagrant wanders empty ruins
Suddenly he's wealthy.

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

*”The Philosopher” is sometimes translated, “the pagan.” The Buddha’s questioner is not a member of the sangha or even a lay follower no matter which role you choose.

Science vs. Spooks

2011-08-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

Skepticism, scientific research and the Nostradamus effect
[revised 8.10.11]

In certain quarters here, in New Age California, it is believed that the uniquely western contribution to "spiritual" efforts will be the application of the scientific method to the eandeavor. Perhaps this is just another chapter of the age-old science vs. religion debate, or even a new path to understanding. But I would like to examine a shadier side of this undertaking, the bias of those who sponsor the research: who's buying and why, and what does any of this have to do with science? I call it “Science vs. Spooks and the Nostradamus Effect.”

In the mid to late 70's, there were a few straightforward attempts by serious practitioners to use standard tests, psychological and psysiological, to measure the effects of meditation. A second wave of this type of objective investigation was to apply standard psychological instruments to measure changes in persons who did some workshop or training -- were the “benefits” real change that lasted, or just a kind of workshop high?

And it was not long before the producers of the various trainings and workshops saw that positive results would be a great marketing tool. These were people connected to the world of psychology, some professionals and some who had transformative experiences, and they wanted to present them to a larger audience. Of course it takes money to support these projects.

I worked on staff at two human potential companies, Landmark Education and the Hoffman Institute, when “scientific” studies undertaken. I participated in the creation and execution of one.

This was the scenario: The company found money, just as drug companies do when testing a new product. Then in the case I know best, a PhD psychologist on staff shopped around university graduate psychology departments for grant-hungry professors willing to design and execute a study. The instruments of measurement, assessment of the results were negotiated. The size of the sample and a time table were set. A fee was paid. There was also a promise to have the results, if they are positive, published in a professional peer-reviewed journal.

Though the usual requirements to insure that the results are impartial and not stacked were in place, there are three areas where, in my view, the participation of the company skewed the “scientific investigation.”

The researchers were charged to look for the positive psychological results and determine if they were lasting. As a 'graduate' of the course I was one of several people who pre-tested the instrument that the researchers designed. Then, through the in-house psychologist, there were 'adjustments' in what was measured with an eye to the marketing.

The testing began. At some point, perhaps three months into the process, the researchers began to worry that the sample would not be large enough to support “significant results,” and staff members began telephoning participants, using a carefully designed script to encourage them to complete the questionnaires. Though I was not asked to make any calls, I overheard them, and to be totally honest, I did not detect any kind of coercion other than to complete and return the questionnaire. But there were also a series of support' calls to graduates at specific intervals, so the plea to return the evaluation was not extraordinary. Now if I got a support call, reinforcing my positive experience, and then, a few weeks later, another making sure I completed a questionnaire for the study, well, you get the picture.

Though this kind of action might be ethical -- falling within the conditions of impartiality -- it seems to me that if I did not feel strongly enough to send my report back to the researchers, my lack of enthusiasm indicated something.
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And the final, and most flagrant area of manipulation was in publication of the results. It bordered on out-right deception. Although the researchers themselves were to write up the final results submitted to professional journals, perhaps even a presentation at some conference (I left the company before it was complete), there were interim reports: "After six months, participants report more confident and loving conversations with their spouses and children." This assessment of initial data was written by the in-house psychologist to “report” the results of the study to graduates. But when the president of the company read the report, he claimed that this was just too much scientific “jargon.” In my view it was not the overwhelming positive result he thought he’d paid for. I actually stood around his desk with a group of staff as he reworked every sentence, striking any word or phrase that seemed too guarded, asking us as witnesses, "I think that this (his punched-up phrase) says the same thing, doesn't it?" When I asked the in-house psychologist himself about the revisions, he was non-committal, "I suppose that could be said about X," and turned the conversation to the cost of his new home in the foothills.

There is nothing criminal or even terribly important in this manipulation of scientific inquiry--drug companies do it all the time and we pay for it when you factor in the cost of their malpractice insurance. And what has this to do with our friend Nostradamus, a 17th century French seer and astrologer whose puzzling riddles have a cult-like following? In 1654 he wrote: "In the City of God there will be a great thunder, Two brothers torn apart by Chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. ... The third big war will begin when the big city is burning." Well, obviously he predicted the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

Did that phrase about the two giants collapsing really 'foretell' the attack on the World Trade Center towers? I bet we could find a rich paranormal enthusiast to fund a study that proves--beyond a shadow of a doubt--that a certain percentage of the American public, after hearing those sentences read to them in a carefully scripted phone survey, believe that Nostradamus really predicted 9/11.

This is one way to defend against the terror of the unpredictable. I choose to remain skeptical.

The Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess

2011-07-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

The Very Short Sutra on the Meeting of the Buddha and the Goddess
by Rick Fields

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 thoughout all the worlds to come. May you be with the saints forever.

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.

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

Of Course Marriage Makes a Difference for Gays!

2011-07-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 24, 2011

To celebrate the first day that same sex couples can marry in New York, I am going to republish a piece I did when we were fighting against Prop 8 here in California. Next year San Francisco! It's a red letter day!

Among my Canadian gay friends, 100% are in stable, loving relationships; among my States-side gay friends, I used to be able to say somewhere in the range of 4-5% were married, but now, sadly, that figure is more like 2% as I recently heard of the divorce of some dear friends after 25 years as a couple.

As soon as marriage becomes a real possibility, apparently gay men—at least in greater numbers than one might have supposed—have simply said, "Of course. There is no reason to deny us any of the fundamental rights given to most other men and women."

Instead, here in "the land of the free," burdened (or should I say “cursed”) by the myth of humankind’s fallen state, we are left to throw stones at one another for being more or less sinful, for being hypocrites, for having an “essentially disoriented” nature. Living as an under class, we are susceptible to all the ills of having to make do, to prove ourselves, to justify our loves and our emotions.

Thanks to my friends Bruno and Josetxu from Spain for the great photograph. They will soon be married in a civil ceremony in that Catholic country, and have, obviously, created their own blessing for their relationship from On-High. We can, and, will create our own blessings. Please join me in sending this couple our best wishes. May the Blessings of All the Universe shower on them!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Has the Dalai Lama lost a few pounds? He's looking great.; 2:55 PM
tellallsaid...: LOL. I agree. We should all do so well when we're his age. :); 3:45 PM
Dinosaid...: Hi, about gay marriage, it make a difference for gay guys. I am glad to see more and more gay couple to be accepted by the crowd and even could have welfare as a real couple, for instance, marriage, religion and law. The fact of getting a marry for gay guys should be put into a important position to discuss. Although I agree that, I know there are still some problems behind. although although ..., I am also glad to face and sovle them one bye one. However, this article is a good news for me. They both brave others by being a couple. They look sweet, and it touches me. With my blessing to them. :)

Zen comments on the 12 Steps

2011-07-09T16:10:00.000-07:00

Today I find myself totally swept up in the hanging man's dilemma as I begin to re-work Step 1 of the 12 Steps. The Big Book puts the first step in simple, straightforward language: "I admit that I am powerless over … [alcohol, drugs, food, sex]—that my life has become unmanageable."

It's just the first step on a journey, and in my case, there is a story connected with my personal surrender.

Here's the koan, "Hsiang-yen: Up a Tree," case 5 of the Mumonkan, as my teacher, John Tarrant Roshi, presented it during a retreat.

"Hsiang-yen: Up Tree"

The priest Hsiang-yen said, "It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can't touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, `What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?"

It's been at least 6 years since I looked at the case. I told another story about Hsiang-yen (Kyogan), the teacher it is attributed to, in a piece I wrote about a difficult and wonderful conversation that I had with my mother a few months before she died ("The Gift of Tears"). Hsiang-yen must have been a immensely gifted teacher if he continues to inspire others to be honest and human more than a thousand years after his death.

Even if I'd never heard of Bodhidharma, there are questions in my life that I can't evade—my life depends on my answer. (It might not be entirely clear to a XXIst century reader that the question about Bodhidharma coming to the West carries an enormous weight for any monk or layperson practicing with a Zen Master. It is one of the keys that unlocks the wonder of the practice and the Buddha Way. He or she has to answer it.)

Mumon, Wu-men Hui-hai (無門慧開), the Chinese Ch’an Master (1183-1260) who complied this koan collection from earlier stories and “public cases” (Chinese: kung-an, 公案) comments: "If you can respond to this dilemma properly, you give life to those who have been dead and kill those who have been alive."

I was asked a question that carried the same weight. It actually looked like a simpler one, deceptively so. At my first 12 Step meeting, when I heard the question, "Are there other alcoholics/addicts present?" I automatically answered, "Yes." At the time I couldn't grasp that the question was a life or death issue—I only vaguely acknowledged that there were real human beings involved. I certainly didn't realize that it would turn my world upside down. I was about to learn that answering it truthfully meant that I was about to lose a life I'd become comfortable with, even loved in a weird, perverted way. It was a life of deception and I'd learned to talk my way around it so well that even I believed its lies.

I had been practicing meditation for decades, and still I didn't recognize the Zen-like immediacy in the language—right now, right here, are there people in this room who suffering real biological and psychological effects of drug and alcohol abuse? Yes, I talking to you. If I'd really been paying closer attention, it might have been easier to see the delusions I'd have to give up to admit that I'd lost control of my life (if I ever had any). That is the baseline for any real conversation about sobriety. Another question seems follow an honest "yes:" Am I even sober enough to examine my addiction clearly and envision the kind of life that might open up if I were willing to move beyond denial? Who can I rely on as I began to examine my life? There is an answer and I had it—my sponsor was very direct: “Cut the bullshit and get real.” We all need real friends we can talk with, men and women who leave any pretense at the door.

Both the spirituality of the Big Book and Zen, I think, start from the same place: what experience got me stuck? It’s my dilemma, not the person on the cushion next to me, or the homeless guy stinking of urine on the bus that I can’t move away from. [At some point, I figured out that his dilemma has lots of the same identifiers as mine, but that recognition is not where I began]. In Zen I am never asked to believe anything outside my own experience, not even for a split second.

What transformed this question for me from an intellectual consideration about the nature of addiction and alcoholism to one with all the force of Bodhidharma's coming to the west and facing the wall for 9 years in meditation? I found myself hanging from a branch by the skin of teeth. My roommate had committed suicide, and I started binging. Very quickly I began spinning out of control. A friend asked me if I knew that I needed "a break."

After the shock of discovering my roommate's body dead for at least three days, when the police and medical examiners suggested that I call a friend, he was the man I called. My friend dropped what he was doing, came right over, put an arm around my shoulder and listened without any judgment to whatever came out of my mouth as they carried Dean's body down the stairs. As I look back over those few days and weeks, he proved the depth of his friendship even more: he wouldn't allow me to play the victim, "Oh you poor guy, how horrible!" or indulge any self importance or fake heroism to let myself off the hook—he reminded me I was just a guy who happened to be standing by when a tragedy unfolded. Of course I had to clean up a mess not entirely of my own making before I could move on. I had no other choice if I was going to choose life. He encouraged me to face the circumstances without drama, and get it done. Friends don't get any better.

So when this friend asked me about my binge, I felt an obligation to examine my life and answer him truthfully. It took me a few days to give him an answer, but that moment might have saved my life.

A long meditation practice follows me into the 12-step work, not as baggage but as a friend. When I listen to some person in one of the rooms coming to terms with the concept of a Higher Power, having been told that his or her program depends on acknowledgment and surrender to Something greater than the self, I can only admire the struggle and right-mindedness of their effort. My own experience was, at one time, very similar, but at some point the practice of meditation, or maybe just growing older with more life experience, dismantled most of the conceptual notions I had believed and put my trust in. What replaced it was a far more intimate sense of how I am, at the core of my being, connected to the profound inner-working of the universe.

And even though my own inner experience started to become clear after long hours on the meditation cushion, I know that this path is open to anyone, even in blink of an eye. So meditate. Just do it.

The instructions to enter the koan’s world are really quite simple: Sit down, straighten out your spine so that you can stay awake and alert, focus on your breath, and pay attention. That is probably enough meditation instruction to get started. Then as I settle into my meditation, if I choose, I can get real about how I respond to Hsiang-yen’s question, What do you do when you're hanging from a branch by your teeth? I put myself in the place where my life depends on my answer, where really, no kidding, I'm going to fall into an abyss when I open my mouth. I don’t believe anything, not for even a split second, that I have not experienced myself, but I have also come to trust, thanks to my Zen teachers, especially John Tarrant, and my own experience, that the koan will grab me where it needs to in order to shake an honest answer loose.

Perhaps our answer allows us to simply fall into the unknown, perhaps follow the example of the trees own leaves in the Fall. Thank you, Lucille Clifton, for the capping verse:

The Lesson Of The Falling Leaves

the leaves believe

such letting go is love

such love is faith

such faith is grace

such grace is god

i agree with the leaves

A Zen Master looks at Same-Gender Marriage

2011-06-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

Today I have a sense that the prejudice surrounding total equality for lesbians, gays, and other sexual minorities is breaking up at an accellerated rate. The vote in the New York Senate last Friday might be the tipping point.

In October of 1995, Robert Aitken Roshi gave testimony before the special commission set up in Hawaii to recommend changes in that state's recognition of same sex relationships. In 2008 I asked Bob if I could take his testimony and rework it into an op-ed piece that could be used in the fight against Prop 8. He agreed -- he was a teacher who loved to bring dharma combat into any arena where it might make a difference. To honor Bob and to mark Friday's vote in NY, I am going to post "A Zen Master looks at Same Gender Marriage." I'll also include a link to a Spanish translation I prepared for the Spanish language press.

A Zen Master looks at Same-Gender Marriage
by Robert Aitken with Ken Ireland

Robert Aitken Roshi was one of the most widely respected American Zen teachers. In 1959 he and his wife, Anne Hopkins Aitken, founded a Zen Meditation community in Hawaii, the Honolulu Diamond Sangha. Today there are Diamond Sangha affiliated centers in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. He was also co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He died on August 5th, 2010 in Honolulu. He was 93 years old.

The word Zen means "exacting meditation," which describes the central practice of the Zen Buddhist and from which emerge certain quite profound realizations that can be applied in daily life. Most practitioners come to a deep understanding that all life is connected and that we are each a boundless container that includes all other beings. The application of this kind of intimacy can be framed in the classic Buddhist teaching of the Four Noble Abodes: loving kindness, compassion, joy in the attainment of others, and equanimity.

Applying these Four Noble Abodes to the issue of same-sex marriage, I find it clear that encouragement is my recommendation. Over my long career of teaching, I have had students who were gay, lesbian, trans-sexual and bisexual, as well as heterosexual. These orientations have seemed to me to be quite specific, much akin to the innate proclivities which lead people to varied careers or take paths in life that are uniquely their own. We are all human, and within my own container, I find compassion—not just for—but with the gay or lesbian couple who wish to confirm their love in a legal marriage.

Although historically Zen has been a monastic tradition, there have always been prominent lay adherents. Those who enter the state of marriage vow to live their lives according to the same sixteen precepts that ground the Buddhist monk's and nun's life in the world. This way of living opens our path into life. Like life itself, marriage is absolutely non-discriminatory and open to all.

Buddhist teaching regarding sexuality is expressed in the precept of "taking up the way of not misusing sex." I understand this precept to mean that any self-centered sexual conduct is exploitative, non-consensual—sex that harms others. In the context of young men or young women confined within monastery walls for periods of years, one might expect rules and teachings relating to homosexuality, but they don't appear. Homosexuality seems to be overlooked in Zen teachings, and indeed in classical Buddhist texts. However, my own monastic experience leads me to believe that homosexuality was not taken as an aberration, and so did not receive comment.

All societies have from earliest times across the world formalized sexual love in marriage ceremonies that give the new couple standing and rights in the community. Currently both rights and standing are denied to gays and lesbians who wish to marry in all but three of the United Sates. If every State acknowledged the basic married rights of gay and lesbian couples, young men and women just beginning their lives together, as well as those who have shared their lives for decades, a long-standing injustice would be corrected, and these fellow citizens would feel accepted in the way they deserve to be. This would stabilize a significant segment of our society, and we would all of us be better able to acknowledge our diversity. I urge the voters of California to keep gay and lesbian marriages legal. This is the most humane course of action and in keeping with perennial principles of decency and mutual encouragement.

The Ontological Odd Couple

2011-06-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

July 31, 2004
Revised September 16, 2006
Republished 6/6/2011

I decided to republish this piece. 7 years ago I thought that the answer to my own reservations about Hoffman and his work could be answered by a simple recounting of historical facts and events. I was also prompted by the efforts of proponents of the HQP to recast, revise, and distort them--let's not mince words, I mean lie about them. However, after disentangling Hoffman's bizarre and abusive behaviors from the modality of the Process itself, I still feel strongly that anyone who feels inclined to undertake this work ought to exercise caution. As far as I can see, there is nothing original or other-wordly about his insights or his methodology both as presented nearly 40 years ago and in their current iteration. I'd advise anyone to undertake an ordinary course of therapy with a licensed professional rather than the HQP.

Introduction

Success has many fathers and mothers.

When creating an historical account, you have to start at the beginning and get it right. Some facts, times, and dates can be accurately reconstructed from documents, letters, transcripts and personal calendars, if you are lucky enough to have them, but the messy parts of bringing something new into the world are, for the most part, buried and lost.

The original Process, the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy (FHPT), was created by Bob Hoffman and the people he gathered around him between 1968 and 1973, most notably Claudio Naranjo.* It had to fight for a marginal existence, competing with other offerings in the world of human potential that were then beginning to appear in California. Though the firm hand of Hoffman was always present during this period, he sought input from many sources (who sometimes did not even know that Hoffman was talking to others about the same issue). But he attributed final changes to his spirit guide, Dr. Fisher, which, I will argue, was part of the story he created to make a plausible claim that a tailor from Oakland could be the source of a complete psychological treatment.

It is ironic that the marketing efforts required to breathe life and cash into a new offering also distort the original vision. Reshaping history creates the impression that the Process came full blown from a pure source, and the people who do the difficult work of bringing something new into a world are elevated far beyond who they really are. Unrealistic expectations become a false standard to evaluate personal experience and it becomes more difficult to use one’s own inspiration to gain self-knowledge and liberation.

No course of psychotherapy can produce real changes in people if it remains only theory. It changes. It reaches into areas that its creators cannot predict. If promises and expectations cannot be fulfilled, they have to be modified or eliminated. However, this evolution is distinct from marketing. Sadly, in our culture, promoting a brand name, writing persuasive copy, will prevail and in the process the contributions of many talented people are cut and lost. When these contributions are marginalized and their value neglected (or, in the worst scenario, attributed to others), the world itself loses something of its humanity and love.

What follows is just an inclusive footnote to the revised story.

*Naranjo is best known as the person who introduced and developed the Enneagram as a tool for self-analysis and spiritual development in the West.

My Purpose and Sources

I propose to outline the early development of the FHPT from the basement ‘reading’ room in Hoffman’s clothing store on 15th Street in Oakland to the SAT group process that is the foundation of today’s Quadrinity Process. I will not cover any of the subsequent additions and deletions since the creation of the seven-day format. My interest is to examine the 13-week process, the exercises and mind trips (now called ‘visualizations’) that remain the framework of the HQP, to see if this yields an insight into how a very simple insight became a course with sequential series of scripted emotional ‘events’ and a recognized 'product' in the human potential market place.

The primary source of information about the early development of the FHPT is my own experience. In 1972-73, I was in the first SAT group that Naranjo used to create a group process to accomplish “a loving divorce from mother and father” that Hoffman promised. Later in the spring of 1973, I was one of approximately 55 people Hoffman invited to be in his first 13-week group that he himself “took through” the Process in Tolman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. The following year I was trained as an FHPT therapist and group leader which became my primary work for several years. I lead the 13-week processes for PSI and later, I worked privately with smaller groups for another three years.

Another primary source is Hoffman himself and my conversations with him from 1972 until his death in 1997. Our friendship was at times rewarding and at other times strained and painful. While he was alive I did not talk about the personal qualities and idiosyncrasies that gave me some insight into inner workings, puzzles and deep-seated sources of the unhappiness of the complex man. Extremely concerned about his public image, he imagined that he had to present himself to world as straight, a guy who had “his act together.” Most people who were at all close to him, certainly those who worked with him closely, knew that Hoffman was gay, but he never publicly acknowledged his homosexuality. In this day of liberation and acceptance, however, his deception, his closeted life, cannot be overlooked. A good case could be argued that the process itself grew out of his conflict about being a man who loved men, his difficulty forming and nurturing close relationships, his creativity and sensitivity, and perhaps some of his inner doubts about the worth of his work.

I do not know all the people who contributed to the development of Hoffman’s work. They are legion. I have not included hearsay material from people with whom I did not work or with whom I didn’t have focused conversations. Many disappeared after working with Hoffman and making a significant contribution to the Process, such as Dr. Ernest Pecci, M.D., a psychiatrist who founded PSI, The Center for Psycho-Spiritual Integration, to present the 13-week Process. I trained as a therapist under Pecci and worked with him for more than two years in the 70’s. Pecci’s psychotherapeutic model was heavily influenced by New Age spirituality. My last personal contact with Pecci was a phone call about 1977 when he warned me that Hoffman was going to sue everyone that he, Pecci, had trained unless we ceased to offer the Fischer-Hoffman Psychic therapy to the public. (Nearly everyone who was offering some version of the FHPT ceased under Hoffman’s threat of legal action, with the exception of one or two practitioners who had split with Hoffman before PSI, substantially altering or modifying it. He was also not successful in shutting down the Anti-Fisher Hoffman Process that was offered in the Bagwan Shree Rajneesh’s ashrams in Pune and Antelope).

Some key people are dead, among them Julius Brandstatter, the man who coined the word ‘Quadrinity’ to reflect the four aspects of being human— physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional. I met Julius and his wife Miriam when they returned from Israel in the 70’s; their work with Hoffman continued through the re-casting of the Process into the current seven-and-a- half-day format. In the opinion of most observers, their contribution was never fully acknowledged by Hoffman. I had several long conversations with Miriam in 2006. It was she who created the organization and flow for Hoffman’s early sessions. Hoffman would call Miriam in Israel and tell her what he presented that week with SAT, and later in Tolman Hall. Miriam, a well-trained psychotherapist, then returned what she had presented in Israel, as an orderly, effective outline which Hoffman filed and used for the next Process.

The most important person in this story was dead before Hoffman had the powerful experience that gave birth to the Process. In the first years, Dr. Siegfried Fisher assumed the status of legend and myth in the story of the Process as Hoffman’s guide. His name was removed from the original title when his widow threatened to file suit. She claimed that there was no personal friendship between the two men and that her husband’s professional reputation was threatened by Hoffman’s claims. I will briefly examine both claims below.

Many of the people with whom I had extensive conversations became estranged from Hoffman, among them Ilene Cummings and Stanley Stefancic, who both served as Executive Director of the Institute after Hoffman’s return from Mexico. Besides long and thoughtful discussions about the origins of the Process and the contributions of various players, Stefancic showed me several documents, lists of the unique terms and phrases that were intended as teaching tools in the HQP (e.g. “negative love,” “giving to get,” “illogical logic, nonsensical sense”), as well as descriptions of several elements in the Processes, (including the bitter sweet chocolate ritual, and spirit guide and sanctuary mind trip), that Hoffman and his lawyers prepared when he was considering lawsuits against those he considered pirates. (I have used quotes around words and phrases that Hoffman habitually used to describe either his methodology or the concepts that were the underpinning of his spiritual worldview.)

Other people were constant friends and supporters from their first meeting with Hoffman until he died. Although I know these people and have had conversations with them, I have not used anything they told me in my presentation. Cynthia Merchant, personal assistant to Hoffman and a Hoffman Quadrinity Teacher, worked as the editor of the lengthy transcripts of Hoffman’s presentations that became the core of today’s Process. Ron Kayne, early supporter, by Hoffman’s admission, created the “guide and sanctuary mind trip,” as well being the ghost writer for Hoffman’s book, Getting Divorced from Mother and Dad and the first version of the Negative Love Syndrome.

When I became serious about uncovering and documenting the origins of the FHPS, I interviewed several of the members of Naranjo’s first SAT group who had worked individually with Hoffman. Ron Deziel gave me important information about the bare bones of Hoffman’s initial work heavily laced in psychic practice borrowed from the Spiritualist Church.

While some of what I will present is not easily reconciled with the proposed image of an inspired “intuitive,” or kindly and wise Jewish grandfather, I feel it vital to record another version of Hoffman’s inspiration and preserve it in a small corner of universe, and especially to note in some detail Claudio Naranjo’s contribution. It is a dangerous thing to allow a story of real creation and inspiration to become too sanitized. The contributions of this highly talented man who was present at a certain moment and responded wholeheartedly to Hoffman’s questions and requests without concern for his own personal gain and enrichment cannot be neglected.

The Inspiration

I heard Hoffman describe the inspiration for the Fischer-Hoffman Psychic Therapy many times. The rather bare outline of this otherworldly encounter never varied. In the middle of a night in 1967, the figure of a recently departed friend, the psychiatrist Siegfried Fischer, appeared at the foot of his bed and revealed to him the missing link in psychoanalytic therapy: the concept of negative love, the stream of negative behaviors unconsciously passed from one generation to the next. Then Fischer’s spirit being took Hoffman through his own psychic therapy, uncovering the roots of his own inherited patterns of behavior and liberating him with a new understanding that reached into the depths of his emotional being. Hoffman said that he was able to forgive his parents for all the negativity he had experienced growing up. He knew that “everyone is guilty and no one to blame.” Fischer disappeared with the promise to return and assist Hoffman to complete some of his own unfinished work, his karma, and that Hoffman could help “move on.” Hoffman said he heard the phrase “doors will open” when he asked Fisher how he, a tailor, would enter the world of professional psychotherapy and present this insight as the missing piece, an antidote to the endless cycle of analysis.

Who was Siegfried Fischer? Hoffman claimed that Fischer was an acquaintance, a friend of his wife’s family, a Viennese-trained psychiatrist who had escaped from Austria before Hitler’s invasion, making his way to San Francisco. I confirmed the basic outline of the Fischer story from the public record. Siegfried Fischer did emigrate in the 40’s and practiced psychotherapy at Langley Porter; he wrote Principles of general psychopathology: an interpretation of the theoretical foundations of psychopathological concepts, (New York, Philosophical Library, 1950).

Hoffman presented a scenario of convivial after-dinner conversations with Fischer. They chatted and argued about the existence of the psychic realm, life after death, and questions about the efficacy of psychotherapy. I can’t overemphasize the Spiritualist Church’s doctrine: “truth” spoken by disembodied spirits to spirits inhabiting human bodies, satisfying karmic obligations. Fischer was the scientific materialist and believed none of it. The telling had the feel of an apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil, psychotherapy vs. a psychic tailor, the psychic declaring victory after death.

After hearing this part of story, with slight variations, innumerable times, I, and several other participants, began to feel that Hoffman had an ax to grind with the enterprise of psycho-analysis, that he had probably had a failed experience in therapy himself. I began to suspect that he had been Fischer’s patient and quit, still in transference. I asked Hoffman if he had been Fischer’s patient and he said yes, that he and his wife had seen Fischer for family therapy with their son Michael. Nothing about any friendship. I am convinced that Hoffman created a good yarn, a myth, and lied about his personal friendship with Fisher to present himself as a reliable source.

Fischer’s widow maintained that he was never a personal friend of Hoffman or Hoffman’s wife. When Hoffman continued to use her husband’s name, Fischer's heirs filed a lawsuit against Hoffman. Hoffman acceded to the demands of the Fischer family, and changed the name of the FHPT to the Quadrinity Process. However, he still claimed, both in private conversation and group presentations, a personal friendship with Fischer and that Fischer was his spirit guide. [He asked me if I had had any psychic contact with Fischer. His criterion for authentic contact was a vision of Fischer as a real life persona, complete with grey hair, glasses, and white coat. Hoffman told me that he was fairly certain that Naranjo had experienced Dr. Fischer as a spiritual entity, but my vision was less certain.]

Hoffman claimed that Fischer guided him as he began to work with people who started to come to him for psychic readings. From my conversations with several people who did psychic therapy with Hoffman in the “reading room” of his 15th Street shop, Hoffman’s initial work contained the following elements. After some discussion of the problems that were plaguing a person’s life (and legendary “forceful” persuasion), and making lists of his or her parents' negative traits, Hoffman instructed clients to write an emotionally-charged autobiography of their life from birth till puberty. Then he began to direct the “prosecution” of Mother and Dad for programming a defenseless child with negative emotional traits. An “anger letter” to his or her parents capped the prosecution which provided some release as well as giving Hoffman an opportunity to evaluate the depth of the client’s emotional state.

Then Hoffman “psychically read” the emotional history the client’s parents, living or dead, describing events without prior knowledge, often including times and places, that explained and cemented difficult emotional traits into their emotional make up. This was the parents’ “defense”: to see that negative love was passed from one generation to the next. This is the concept of “negative love”: that his or her parents had unwillingly “adopted” these negative traits themselves, driven by their own emotional history and therefore could not be blamed. These deep, psychically verifiable, understandings led to the experience of forgiveness and compassion for one’s parents. “Everyone is guilty and no one to blame.”

And finally, through the mediation of Dr. Fischer and their personal spirit guide, the client got “Closure” by cutting the psychic ties to his or her parents. In a “mind trip,” the client yanked out the umbilical cord that connected his or her emotional child to their parents and allowed them to grow up to their chronological age. As an emotional adult, the client could for the first time experience unconditional love for their parents. The tools for breaking the habit of negative behaviors, now just phantom symptoms of imagined hurt, were repetition of positive traits, a process called “recycling,” and avoidance of negative behaviors by “putting your awareness on your awareness” using rudimentary self awareness exercises. There were also tapes of sessions with Hoffman and written negative trait lists and positive alternatives for reinforcement.

The original elements of the Process, according to Ernie Pecci, were the prosecution of Mother and then the defense of Mother, the prosecution of Father and the defense of Father plus the “Closure.”

One other piece was introduced into the FHPS before Naranjo took on creating the group process with Hoffman. The imagined conversation between the client’s emotional child and the emotional child of the parent came from Transactional Analysis. Hoffman’s no longer read his patients psychically to uncover his or her own parents’ emotional history. Hoffman found facilitators trained in transactional analysis, and adapted an existing technique, a path that he was to follow many times throughout the creation of the Process. If Fischer had really communicated to Hoffman, “doors will open,” perhaps he knew that Hoffman would not hesitate to break down doors if he found them stuck.

The Development of the Group Process

When I arrived in Berkeley in 1972, I was a 28-year-old Jesuit seminarian. I also knew that I needed psychological help—my own spiritual practice had opened up as many blank spaces as it had satisfied—and I was at a loss for any real solutions. I had been in therapy but the result only put me in a huge dilemma: I knew I was gay but denied it; I wanted to experience intimacy in my life, and I wanted to have a spiritual life. My vow of celibacy presented a definite obstacle to intimacy. I had come to Berkeley to work with a Jesuit priest named Bob Ochs who was a student of Naranjo. I had heard that Naranjo was about to begin to “introduce” his group to the work of a man he considered a modern shaman, a tailor from Oakland who was psychically guided by a deceased Viennese psychiatrist, a man who was able to introduce people to the core of psychological understanding in a very swift and complete way. This was a real “Hail Mary,” but would a Jesuit lead me down a dead end?

At our group’s first meeting with Bob Hoffman, he wore very expensive clothes—a race-track sport coat and tie. Standing behind Rosalyn Schaffer, Naranjo’s representative, he appeared uncomfortable. When he began to speak, it was soon obvious that he was not educated in any psychological discipline, but he dominated the room, alternatively talking then yelling in a kind of dumbed-down jargon filled with what became known as ”Hoffmanisms.” The paradoxical definition of “negative love was illogical logical and nonsensical sense,” and if we didn’t understand that, we were just playing dumb out of negative love; if we thought he was too well dressed, it was negative transference and an indication that we didn’t love ourselves. I was trapped, but I had just moved all the way from New York and had nowhere else to turn so I sat and took notes.

This was the very beginning of the creation of the group Process. It is very clear from Hoffman’s written notes in Stefancic’s possession that Hoffman credited Claudio Naranjo for transforming the FHPT into a group process. It is also clear from every interaction between them that I witnessed over more than 20 years, that Naranjo always regarded Hoffman as a modern day shaman, just as he was introduced on that September evening. Naranjo would from time to time poke fun and try to deflate Hoffman, but he also respected the kernel of Hoffman’s insight.

Not only did Naranjo shape the group process, he also gave Hoffman a measuring stick to evaluate the effect that the FHPS had on participants. Lacking psychological training, Hoffman needed Naranjo’s validation, but at the same time he never trusted the techniques that Naranjo introduced to yield insight. He felt that psychotherapy was at base a misguided enterprise and any kind of self observation was, at best, far too slow and, at worst, a head game. His style was to evaluate and attack people, then point to their emotional reactions as example of negative programming, almost always violating the boundaries of professional behavior.

Naranjo was usually absent from Hoffman’s group interactions and, I suspect, just let Hoffman conduct himself in any way he chose. But Naranjo did craft the interactive exercises for most of the sessions. I will discuss two exercises in some detail, the “bitch session” and the “child/intellect confrontation.” They highlight Naranjo’s major contribution to the Process and laid the groundwork for the experiential HQP that is now produced worldwide.

Hoffman instructed us to list our parents’ negative traits. He defined a negative trait as any behavior that was “giving to get,” “buying love,” “withholding love.” This warped economy of love thwarted the free exchange of affection to satisfy our innate desire to love and be loved. (Naranjo examines Hoffman’s view in “The End of Patriarchy”). As we listed our parents’ negative traits, Hoffman insisted that we had adopted them, every one of them, even if we had rebelled against them as children and they occurred as negative reactive behavior. He insisted that this was the sum total of what we knew about love, that our emotional life was infantile, and that we gave emotional love in the vain hope of having it returned, deprived of our birthright to give and receive love freely. This simple model became the foil that Hoffman used to reflect our behavior back to us, a rudimentary self-observation: the memory of past behaviors in relation to our parents revealed how we conducted our emotional life. Our list of negative traits became his confrontational tool. In the SAT group, Claudio also used dyads and other tools of self-observation, notably the study of the enneagram, meditation, and methods adopted from Gestalt, but Hoffman again thought those techniques cumbersome and slow.

We were then instructed to take the list of negative traits and recall scenes from our childhood, before puberty, where we had experienced these traits exhibited by our parents, and write down our reactions. Our emotional autobiography was to be as emotional as possible; we were not to censor ourselves as we wrote. (The Emotional Autobiography is no longer used— Hoffman told me that it was not necessary but I suspect that it took too much time for the compressed version).

That first Fall there were at least five weeks dedicated to this prosecution of Mother. It was mid-October when we began the bitch session. I mention this because it was the first time I noticed Hoffman’s urge to move the process ahead while it appeared to me that Claudio was testing psychological methodology as applied to the FHPT. My observation was of course obscured by the fact that I was a participant with enormous transference already underway. Subsequent events confirmed my initial impression.

The bitch session, which replaced the “anger letter,” was an experiential expression of anger, directed at a parent, using explicit language, physical motion, beating pillows, and screaming. It was first conducted with the group members observing the person on the “hot seat” and then providing feedback about the depth and expression of the anger. (A personal note here: this experience was for me one of the major breakthroughs in my entire adult life. It took weeks for me to really allow myself to express my own anger, but when I finally did touch the depth of my rage at my mother, it altered the course of my life. It was as if a huge veil had been lifted and I had to admit that I was an angry person. But more important, I recognized that I had a range of feelings that I’d struggled to avoid all my life, that I had constructed my life to avoid these feelings. At that moment I became solidly engaged in the exploration of myself to achieve some degree of resolution and freedom.)

The introduction of the “bitch session” was important to Hoffman. It was his first experience of psychological work allowing a person to experience the level of emotional release that he had been unable to achieve with his “anger letter.” It also, in my view, pointed to a rapid way to induce the level of feeling and emotion that is the hallmark of the current version of the HQP. Later Pecci introduced another technique for inducing very early infantile feelings, the “primal,” an adaptation of Reichian body work, borrowing its name from the then-popular Primal Scream Therapy; it also continues to exist in some form in the current HQP.

The next of Naranjo’s contributions that I would like to discuss is what is now known as the “Child/Intellect Bitch Session.” This does not follow the chronological sequence because it actually occurred after Hoffman had begun to do his own work. While I worked in the first FHPT Process, I continued my participation in the SAT group. One night I took the hot seat when Naranjo himself was doing Gestalt therapy. In the FHPT, the client visualizes his or her self as composed of four parts, the physical self, the intellectual self, the spiritual self and the emotional self. The emotional self can assume whatever age where the client or patient feels some block or experiences some incident that remains unresolved. In a dream sequence that I began to act out, alternately taking the role of a stern mother and a vulnerable child, with Naranjo’s coaching, I experienced myself at war with myself, perpetuating in a kind of stalemate, hiding from my sexual feelings and repressing them fearing my mother’s disapproval. Anger and frustration surfaced, and the solution that I had crafted, the choice of the celibate religious life, began to look like just that, a solution I had crafted and not the vocation that I was trying to follow. As a follow up, it was suggested that I try to craft another kind of truce between the emotional child and the intellectual self, represented in the session as my disapproving mother. I was among the first of several people who used the persona of the child and intellect on the hot seat. Very soon Hoffman introduced an exercise where the emotional child and the adult intellect alternately expressed anger and frustration, eventually arriving at a kind of truce. This became know as the Child/Intellect Bitch Session and continues to exist in a different form in the HQP today.

In the middle of January, Hoffman and Naranjo decided to end their group experiment with SAT. Hoffman told us that he would take us to a place where we could stop the defense of father and that he would conduct his own 13-week group process in Tolman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. (I later learned that he had been diagnosed with bladder cancer and was going to retire to Mexico to either heal or die; that he had made the decision to entrust his group process to Pecci; and that the training in Tolman Hall was to introduce a pool of people to the group process who might be trained as therapists, or ‘teachers’ as we were called.)

The hallmark of the 13-week process was the order and the pace. The specific assignments for each week were due three days after the session; Hoffman reviewed them and his taped comments were back in your hands at the beginning of the next session. In every session Hoffman lectured, shouted, cajoled, confronted, intimidated, humiliated, bullied, abused us. He called us ass holes and negative love buyers. This behavior perhaps forced some people to examine themselves, but it far exceeded professional boundaries appropriate for therapist/teacher, student/patient relationship. Hoffman justified his behavior by claiming that his basic message was so simple that it was hard to grasp without his unyielding confrontation: human beings deserved a satisfying emotional life but were prevented from achieving that goal by their parenting, the adoption of the negative traits of their parents.

He conducted other portions of his course through “mind trips” and I will mention two of them, the parents’ funeral and the birthday party, because together with the other exercises already mentioned, these fill out nearly every essential element (except “Vindictiveness,” “Play Day,” and “Dark Side”) of present HQP. After the prosecution and defense of both parents, we were asked to close our eyes and imagine that we were awakened in the dead of night by a phone call: our parents had been involved in a car crash and were near death. We were asked to follow the course of events from the emergency room to the graveside. Bob told me that this “came through” as he was speaking. Furthermore he said that if we experienced a full range of emotion, we could actually set aside our anger towards our parents and begin to experience unconditional love for them. There was another mind trip when we were asked to visualize the birthday party that we never had, where we were celebrated and feted for who we were and not who we had to pretend to be in order to experience our parents’ love. During the whole time I practiced the 13-week FHPT, I know that Hoffman struggled with achieving the high level of emotional experience he considered necessary to produce the emotional freedom he saw as the goal. Both remain today in the HQP as elaborately produced events, with music, props, food. When combined with suggested visual images, they can and do induce the powerful emotional states Hoffman sought. I suggest that Naranjo’s early introduction of experiential exercises into Hoffman’s basic framework made it possible for Hoffman to create the controlled emotional rollercoaster of the current HQP.

Conclusion

As the history of the process is being revised and cleaned up as a product of the human potential movement, I have tried to leave a footnote about the people who helped Hoffman in order that their important contributions are not neglected, attributed to others, or lost regardless of copyright.

I had also hoped to shed light on how an “inspired insight” makes itself known in the world, examining how a core insight into human nature could become a coherent, repeatable experience that would provide people an access to their own emotional life and deepen their awareness of their own spiritual lives. Frankly I do not know if any process is able to deliver this result in a sustainable way, but there is always the possibility that even a split second experience of unconditional love might be enough to alter centuries of abuse.

However, I am certain that I demonstrated that the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy and the subsequent Hoffman Quadrinity Process came into existence through the combined efforts of Bob Hoffman and Claudio Naranjo, that it required both men to bring it to life, that the HQP would not exist at all without the generous contribution of Claudio Naranjo. Hoffman borrowed widely and used anything that he thought might be useful. He relied on Naranjo more than anyone, but also others like Pecci, to fill out his vision and give it legitimacy.

Claudio Naranjo was constant in his friendship and support. I saw Naranjo demonstrate respect and love for Bob Hoffman from the time he provided him with a group that he could use to create the FHPT to his last meetings with Hoffman while he was dying from liver cancer in his Oakland home. Naranjo thought of Hoffman as a modern day shaman, a man who received an inspiration, an insight that broke into his life unexpectedly and that he wrestled with for the rest of his life. On the other hand, their relationship was not easy—Hoffman, untrained and impetuous, a tradesman by nature and choice, Naranjo, skilled and intellectual, a thorough professional—they were an ontological odd couple.

And finally, a personal evaluation, one that was also hard won.

In the last analysis, it is not difficult to create the circumstances for unique experiences that are extraordinary or yield real insights.

Teachers, real ones and charlatans, have been doing this for ages. Their bag of tricks include meditation and self-analysis, as well as trance and hypnotism, auto suggestion, even bullying as a way of barging through defense mechanisms. Despite his claims to the contrary, Hoffman made ample use of the more nasty tricks with complete impunity, always taking the higher ground. (He was, for example, never angry with anyone, but ‘righteously indignant.”) But when it comes to actually seeing if his results were lasting, the evidence is scarce or relies very heavily on anecdotal evidence. Many people say that the experience was powerful, but if they made real changes in their lives, if they were happier and not living under another despotism, however benevolent, the majority of those I interviewed had found a sustainable spiritual practice and devoted themselves to it.

In my own experience of directing people in the Process, I cut as much as I could of the trappings of the spiritualist church. I found them fraudulent, or at best embarrassing and useless. I dropped Hoffman’s inflated claims that the Process was all the therapy that anyone needed, that it was Freud’s missing link. I introduced conversations that allowed clients to explore how their early emotional programming influences their lives here and now. But listening deeply to 40 individuals a year began to take too much of a personal toll for a meager income, and I stopped offering the Process when Hoffman threatened a lawsuit. I certainly had no stomach and no money to face off in court over his intellectual property.

I have not kept in touch with people that I worked with. But one person, a very articulate and bright African-American, and his Process were memorable. Early on in the prosecution of Father, the name Jim Jones kept coming up in our sessions—my client said that Jones was a remarkable psychic, a healer, a prophet, a seer. I had never heard of Jones and though the People’s Temple was only a few blocks from where I lived in San Francisco, I felt no desire to “check him out.” I just kept encouraging my client to examine any transference he might have to Jones. After a few more weeks and the “prosecution of father,” I noticed that Jones’s name was not coming up. I asked how he was feeling towards Jones. He replied that Jones was just another fraud preying on the black community. He left the Peoples’ Temple before the exodus to Guyana and escaped the horrific aftermath.

Just that result is enough for me.

Don't ask, Don't tell

2011-05-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

[Originally posted January 6, 2008]

Blogger and friend Charles Gates (You have a friend) asked me how I felt about Jesuits having their sad histories as pedophiles show up in the news—and the courts.

Charles, my first response approaches profound embarrassment—that some men with whom I shared the ideals of Ignatius took advantage of their position as priests to prey on children; I can hardly believe that their pathology wasn't checked. Was a bishop or religious superior not being responsible? (The evidence seems to point in that direction.)

But the word “embarrassed” is not exactly right. “Profoundly disappointed” might be closer: I have experienced the power of the Spiritual Exercises, and felt the enthusiasm and vision of Ignatius who was a religious genius, again for want of a better word. I felt I shared that deep feeling with so many men I admired, Arrupe, Berrigan, Chardin, Colombiere, Dulles, Drinan, Faber, Nobili, Ricci, la Salle, to name just a few famous ones, but many others, ordinary men who lead prayerful, inspired lives for a few years or a lifetime, Charlie, Joe, Thom, Drew, Joep, Kaiser, TJC, Marshall, Morgan, Neal, Bob, Jan, Freddie, Ray and many more. These men were, and continue to be interested in dedicating their lives to help others. They are all my heroes.

My naiveté allowed me to think that I shared this spirit with every priest, every Jesuit, and I imagined that I had enough experience with human nature, as the old confessional examination goes, “with myself and others,” to recognize the shadowy demons that most every human has. So, Charles, my next reaction is unspeakable sorrow for those who placed their trust in a person they thought close to the teachings of Jesus, a conduit for God’s mercy and forgiveness, and were manipulated. This is not how the universe is supposed to work. This cannot be the world that Jesus has saved, or the Mystical Body that believers hold up as a beacon to the world.

There was still some piece of the puzzle missing.

I noticed that the institutional response in every diocese and religious order across the United States was always the same: stonewall all investigations and never admit guilt. There were of course plenty of apologies, especially from those whose behavior was the most egregious, Law and Mahony. As one commentator said, profound apologies are not an admission of wrongdoing. Airlines routinely issue profound apologies to families of those killed in a crash caused by mechanical failure or an "act of God," as the insurance companies’ liability claims quaintly phrase it. The game seemed to be protecting the assets and “good name” of the institution which precludes any admission of guilt—“Our lawyers will not allow us to comment any further. Thank you. Next question?”

Then I noticed that institutional response did not come close to addressing anyone’s real concerns. When asked why he did not tell parishioners the reason he removed a priest who was arrested having sex with teenage boys in the back of a car, one religious superior said: "Why should they [need to know]? This is an Internet cruising thing. This is anonymous sex. This doesn't involve people at the parish. It wasn't a priest thing. He wasn't dressed in a collar." (No, he actually was in drag with lipstick and blush.) Apparently the private life and professional conduct of a priest were now separate and distinct, something I had never learned in the 11 years that I trained to be a Jesuit. People under pressure say and do stupid things.

I never had any inappropriate contact with a minor, during the time I was a Jesuit or since. And I do not know any Jesuit, gay or straight, who did. It was simply unthinkable, even in a time when the freedoms felt after John XXIII’s aggornamento were leading to all kinds of experimentation. It was unthinkable and yet it happened. So my third response was to look again into the situation more deeply, and this time include an examination of my own responsibility as a gay man with a vow of celibacy, to see if I could find in myself something beyond embarrassment, disappointment, blame, or, yes, even relief.

I make no secret that my last years in the Jesuits were very difficult and painful for me. I wanted to be a Jesuit, but I found celibate life extremely difficult, and I intended to honor my solemn promises if I remained in the Society. I was in therapy dealing with my own self-sabotage, self-loathing, and unconscious homophobia—parts of myself that lagged behind my intellectual acceptance, but there was never any real doubt in my mind that being gay was totally OK, healthy and a perfectly acceptable way of living in the world.

It is an open secret that there are many, many gay men throughout the entire body of Roman Catholic clergy, members of religious orders, and even the hierarchy. It is also no secret that the official position of the magisterium is that homosexuality is “disordered.” (I doubt that this falls within the infallible teaching.) And the solution to this contradiction for most gay priests, even if they have never broken their vow of celibacy—Secrecy! You might talk about it with your partners, if you have any, perhaps your superiors, perhaps your confessor, but never go public. Or as I say in the header for this post: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That is the first commandment.

Never having been circumspect about my own opinions or process, I was very open within the Jesuits community when I was coming out. I broke the first commandment.

Perhaps John McNeill had the same experience. If he had not come out openly "as a Jesuit priest, as a moral theologian, as a psychotherapist, as a person who is himself gay, and as a human being," he might still have a comfortable psychotherapy practice on the Upper West Side. I cannot answer that question for John, and I do not know if he would agree. But this I do know, if I had not come out fully as a gay man, I would have missed out on being able to know and express some of the deepest emotions that a human being can feel. For me there never really was any choice, but that non-choice, for some very difficult reasons, was the hardest choice of my life.

There is a pact of complete silence that gay priests are forced to obey. I was shocked by what I discovered, and if it is true, which feels very likely to me, it shows that the cult of secrecy starts right at the top.

An Open Letter to Hans Küng

2011-05-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

This post is a response to Fr. Küng's open letter to the Bishops of the Roman Church published in the Irish Times [reposted in full on Orate Fratres]. The cover of Time was on June 7th, 2010 issue. It took me more than a few hundred words to say half the message of this graphic.

Dear Father Küng:

I want to say tell you how much I appreciate your stand against the thousand-year-old tradition of priestly celibacy in the Latin rite. I admire both its eloquence and urgency.

However, I would be uncomfortable if you were to take the lead in the effort to reverse this policy of mandatory celibacy.

It is not that I don’t find your arguments cogent. They are.

It is not that I disagree with your overall assessment that the insistence on papal infallibility is a huge blunder. It is. I also admire your conduct after you were disciplined for arguing against the declaration of Vatican I and refusing the back down.

It is not that I disagree with your analysis that the insulation of the priestly class has resulted in a massively dysfunctional organization that relies on secrecy, manipulation, and force to preserve its power. The current crisis has demonstrated that beyond any shadow of a doubt.

It is not, as some may argue, that you might appear to have an ax to grind with the current leadership, Benedict and his Curia. You have never denied that you do, but have always maintained an admirable level of civility. There have been too many revolutionary leaders who've stepped out of prison and sounded the call to arms when the political winds change.

It is not that you might appear to be fanning the winds of scandal for political change. The world is dong it; the press is doing it; religious leaders of other churches are doing it; rank and file members of the Latin rite are doing it; the elite leadership in Rome themselves are doing it through their defensive, strident, and often just plain stupid pronouncements.

If the Latin rite's leadership in Rome refuse to take responsibility, no one can force them to. No one can force them to do anything. They have insulated themselves against any outside moral force. Even if we could tell them how to resolve the untenable situation they have created—if those who have been gravely injured and those who are rising up in indignation could agree on a remedy—that would still only satisfy those groups. It might be a good first step, but it does not address the root problem.

It is the failed leadership itself that has to decide what they must do to take responsibility for the crisis. As far as I can see, the only solution is for them to make themselves accountable to the Teaching of Jesus. We can only say that what they’ve done so far, in our view, has not measured up. They will use their authority to claim that it does. Their professional class, priests and lay people in their employ, will claim that it does, but so far, public reaction indicates that few people believe them. I don't believe them. As the poet says, “The lady doth protest too much.” Please keep pointing to the failure of their argument.

In 1517 when Luther nailed 95 good reasons why the papal Ponzi scheme devised to finance the grandiose rebuilding of the mother church of the Latin rite was not in accord with the Teaching of the Gospel, the revolt that ensued was not just about money. Rather Luther unleashed a complete reexamination of the Christian life: how to live a good life, your “works," and what constitutes sin and failure when faith counts on the Gift of God’s grace and forgiveness.

So far, the public debate, the accusations and recriminations, the posturing have all have been about the role of the church’s leadership in a cover-up. The fact that the crimes themselves touch human sexuality at its core is only spoken of very carefully and obliquely. No one yet dares examine the perversion of Church teaching on sexuality. Luther began a revolution in the way humans were able to view their relationship with the transcendent. I hope to see a powerful movement that will free us from the tyranny of onerous teachings on sexuality that are steeped in denial and negativity.

Hans Küng by David Levine

And that is why I hope that you, Father Küng, do not assume the leadership in ending the 1000-year-old celibate stranglehold on Latin rite.

I hope that a whole new generation of powerful, thoughtful, skillful, faithful Christian leaders emerge. I hope that they begin to analyze the structures of our economic and political systems and find ways to make every voice heard, especially the ones that Jesus loved, the poor and disenfranchised. I hope that men and women assume equal leadership roles in the church so that every person who asks for grace, blessing and forgiveness is welcomed. I hope that they envision a new spirituality of sex so that every man and woman can enjoy its mystery, grace, and wonder in love and freedom. And that might be only a small beginning of the list of their accomplishments. Our God is generosity and love.

There are some who think that the role of religion in our 21st century lives is far less powerful than 500 years ago, and this crisis will fade away. I don’t think it will. I hope it doesn’t. If it does, we will lose an opportunity to find God once again in our lives.

The early followers of Jesus were very clear about one teaching: the Kingdom of God is at hand. And when it didn’t appear in any recognizable way, they transformed their hope, looked for the Kingdom with fresh eyes, and took action. They realized that this process itself was as endless and as the boundless as the love they saw in Christ Jesus. They began to see the Kingdom wherever and whenever it appeared, and they made it appear when only they could envision It. That place is always right here. That moment is always right now.

With gratitude and love,

Ken Ireland

For another recent article by Fr. Küng, go to http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/apr/01/why-celibacy-should-be-abolished/

Gabriel Whispers to Muhammad: Be a Prophet of Peace

2010-09-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

by Morgan Zo-Callahan and Ken Ireland

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate One, the Merciful, Praise be to Allah. And we add, “Praise Compassion, Praise true Love for ourselves, others, the environment, and the poor.”

This joint piece began as a reflection about Morgan’s real face-to-face meeting with three American Muslims at the Rosemead Buddhist Temple where he practices. That was a very interesting story and so characteristic of the way in which he approaches his interior life—always seeking and always looking for an outer expression of interior work. I recalled that John Lounibos in his essay in Intimate Meanderings, My Path to Islam, made the observation that most Americans are uneducated about religion, including “their own.” Suddenly, a new focus for the article about Morgan’s experience began to take shape: How to begin a conversation among ordinary believers from any religious community and the followers of the Prophet, religious people, who after 9/11 had real questions for one another? What resources would you try to have on hand as everyone was grappling for his or her own answers? What are good ways to frame questions? And finally, what, if any, results you might be able to expect? – ed.

This paper will cover these topics:
• Talking with real Muslims
• Poets and Sufis, Rumi and Hafiz
• The Five Pillars
• Ordinary Muslims and Christians and reform
• The Shari’a and the roots of radical Islam
• Antidote to extremist interpretation: View the entire life of the Prophet.
• New voices! Support the best spokespersons for Islam
• Muhammad’s Dream of Gabriel

The events of 9/11 shocked our political sensibilities as liberal Americans with some religious sensibility; we’d always assumed that religion, at least the kind of core beliefs in the Deism of the founding fathers, was good, even essential, for our democracy. That day, radical Muslim fundamentalists claimed their god was pleased that they drove two aircraft into New York City’s twin towers killing a huge number of innocent people.

Those horrible events, plus the actions-reactions that followed, left most of us feeling helpless. Morgan and I shared the impulse to do something, but visceral reactions to what we read in the press open very few possibilities other than attack and reprisal. Given our education and, especially, our shared Jesuit and Buddhist training, we knew that any course of action we chose had to involve a deeper understanding of Islam as a religious expression of living a life dedicated to God. Although neither of us was completely ignorant about the teaching and history of Islam, there was some blind spot, and the worst part was that there was no strategy to guide action, study and prayer.

At an inter-faith conference at Rosemead Buddhist Monastery, Hindus, Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Jains, Sikhs, and Muslims held talks and discussions, prayers and meditations; there was also sharing about various programs that serve the poor and promises of mutual support. At the conclusion of the meeting, as people mingled in small groups, continuing conversations from the formal part of the gathering and saying good-bye, Morgan found himself talking with three Muslims and a Buddhist monk from Thailand.

Morgan had read Karen Armstrong’s warning: “To cultivate a distorted image of Islam, to view it as inherently the enemy of democracy and decent values, and to revert to the bigoted views of the medieval Crusades would be a catastrophe.… Be kind to everybody. It doesn’t matter what tradition you belong to.” Though he knew it wouldn’t be easy, he had to say what he felt in his heart: “Why aren’t there more protests from Muslims against violent terrorism, against intolerance towards women and gays?” he asked animatedly. The Muslims were calm and direct saying Muhammad was a prophet of peace; the Thai monk commented that he seemed angry, that this interfaith conference is all about espousing peace.

There was an insight in that moment, and the beginnings of a real conversation: Morgan knew he had both to look inside for the source of his feelings, and talk to real Muslims, not some impressions that he carried from his reading or the press. And he began a conscious effort to clarify and deepen his understanding of Islam. Some of his feelings were deeply angry, but the monk, just by his comment and presence, helped Morgan see that he could engage in conversation without being angry. At the same time, this encounter in an atmosphere where shared humanity felt more important than any particular religion, stimulated a desire to go deeper into Islam and the mind set of Muslims, especially those who are our fellow citizens. Morgan was talking sincerely and directly with Muslims; he did not hide his anger; and he asked some difficult questions.

The Muslims that Morgan encountered that day wanted to answer his questions as honestly they could. They pointed out that in many of the fifty-three Muslim countries being a moderate could be a ticket to jail or, even, to beheading. So we have to consider the circumstances and conditions of the one who is speaking out. But “we are American Muslims,” they said. “We want to live in a pluralistic democracy.”

They had a fairly long, friendly conversation, first connecting as humans, some attitude adjustment, some levity and laughter, which allowed for meaningful interchange. Morgan felt he was listening to real people, not from Rumi’s thirteenth century, not in an idealized or merely intellectual way, but now, talking with believers who embrace Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance.

These Muslims told Morgan that the Islam they follow and were taught is fundamentally rational and human which translates as being peaceful and non-violent. “No rational person is a suicide bomber.” The majority of Muslims are not radicals or terrorists. They reminded everyone that all prejudice is wrong. They related personal incidents that happened to them in the milieu of the heightened emotions after 9/11. One related an experience of racial and religious hatred directed at her, just for being a Muslim. She was yelled at, pushed, called names. She said she felt as if the frustration of 9/11 was being screamed and spat upon her. She added with a smile, that she had plenty of understanding American friends who comforted her.

Since 9/11 many Muslims complain that they have been stereotyped, automatically considered fanatical; compared with other religious traditions, inferior and, compared with other people culturally, as not quite human. They say other Americans assume that they must be silently in favor of terrorism; they’re called “brainwashed,” afraid to speak up for tolerance, civility, and mutual understanding. This is a very harsh indictment of prejudice. Muslims make up less than 1 percent of the total US population (2.3 million). Sixty-five percent are immigrants who hail from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, not Arabia (most Arab immigrants are Christians). So the numbers are small enough in this country that their complaint can be overlooked.

However, it is not an American tradition to allow racial and religious prejudice to remain unchallenged. The Iranian-born American writer and scholar of religions, Reza Aslan says, “There are millions of Muslim Americans who have fully reconciled their Islamic and American identities and who are solidly middle-class and integrated into every level of American society. They’re our doctors, our lawyers. Sixty percent of them own their own homes. They’re the most educated ethnic minority in this country. And they’re living proof that this idea that there is one fundamental clash between Islam and the West is absurd. Here is Islam in the West, and it’s doing just fine. They are working diligently to provide a counterweight to these ideologies of fanaticism and Puritanism and violence and extremism, but they’re being ignored.” (Sun magazine, December 2006)

Such interfaith conferences have stimulated Morgan’s interest in continuing to learn and become friendlier towards Islam and Muslims, to develop a sense of what Muslims are about in a most genuine sense. This has to happen before we can all open our hearts, while at the same time being vigilant against violence in Islam, or in any religion, or in ourselves. We cannot change Islam to suit our expectations, but we can educate ourselves, and experience ourselves as equals, whatever our religion or spiritual practice, believer, atheist or agnostic, man or woman, gay or straight. Our study and conversations have helped us see that American Muslims are people of good heart, who have no intention to follow blindly tribal norms of their ancestors or their native lands, and it is only a small number of radical Muslims worldwide who hold “ideologies of fanaticism and Puritanism and violence and extremism.”

We would like to encourage the kind of dialogue that Morgan experienced at the interfaith dialogue at the Rosemead monastery, and the rest of the paper will be suggestions about the conditions that encourage these kinds of exchange. We both hope that this produces a balanced image of Islam and the followers of the Prophet.

لا إله إلا الله

In the late 70s, Morgan began a Ph.D program in Comparative Religion under Professor Haridas Chaudhuri at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. His work included Arabic, and comparative religion—Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism—but his first real encounter with Islam was reading about Sri Ramakrisha’s three-day retreat of worship, meditation, prayer, based on the teachings of Muhammad. During the retreat, Ramakrishna said he felt no attraction to do his Hindu rituals. He immersed himself in Islam and would go on to praise and honor Islam as a true way to know the Eternal.

Muhammad, as Karen Armstrong writes: “made a distinctive and valuable contribution to the spiritual experience of humanity.” Our minds may immediately go to the heart-felt wisdom of the Islamic poets, Hafiz and Rumi whose wonderful human touch expresses a most exquisitely true religion as lived and practiced. Genuine teachers and teachings point the individual to life and joy within one’s own being.

Reading Rumi and Hafiz has been a continued habit, but after 9/11, Morgan wanted to go back to deeper study, and if possible, some conversations about Islam. He says: “I’ve been learning that my own level of human maturity and understanding has a lot to do with how I relate to someone else and how I talk to them about the two most interesting but taboo subjects: religion & politics. How do we each live in a religiously plural society? Can this pluralism, with welcoming conversations, be enriching for us all?”

Rumi and Hafiz can open our eyes to spiritual dimensions never seen before. “The word Sufi comes from the Arabic suf, wool, for the simple coarse, woolen garments worn by early mystics. Sufis were concerned about the new wealth and excesses that accompanied imperial expansion and rule.… They emphasized the importance of a spiritual life of piety, fasting, and prayer. Sufis stressed the spirit over the letter, seeking to experience enlightenment or the presence of God. In place of intellectual or legal understanding, they followed a more mystical path.” (The Geography of Religion, p. 359)

Poetry is also a way to begin to read scriptures of the great religions as literature, rather than as historic or literal fact. We value them as evoking imaginative and poetic modes of consciousness that point the way and encourage us to be better human beings. Every religious tradition is given much of its heart and inspiration from its particular forms of mysticism and from its highest moral values for the individual who requires respect, rights and dignity. This mysticism promotes a feeling of connectedness to all others. Gary Schouborg, who is a scholar and contributor to Meanderings, says that this kind of knowledge is esoteric rather then exoteric understanding, expanding in a useful way the meaning of esoteric understanding beyond some specialized, ritualized secret knowledge.

What a marvel Rumi is! He inspired the Mawlawyiwah order, better known as the Whirling Dervishes. We have both witnessed their sacred dance, twirling elegantly, chanting Koranic verses, tall red cone hats, thick black belts cinching their flowing white skirts—spinning yet focused, centered, graceful, swinging in ecstasy. This is art, poetry, dance, and prayer all together. As young seekers in the late 1970s, disillusioned by our own Catholic religion as the only, true faith, Rumi taught us to look for a faith behind all faiths, the inner confidence of goodness and genuine joy, and pointed a real path to the heart of real religion through the cultivation of the interior life.

Rumi is now well known in the United States, but perhaps Hafiz is not. Morgan only became aware of him when his friend, Lily Hsu, gave him a copy of The Gift, poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master. Born around 1320 in Shiraz, Iran, Hafiz (Shamseddin Muhammad) is a phenomenon of insight, poetry, intelligence, love that can arise in any human. Can such a revered poet offer the world, in the present circumstances of religious fanaticism, an artistic call for the respect for human freedoms and one’s own deepest desires? Goethe wrote of Hafiz that he “has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly, a madness I know well.” And Emerson said of him, “He fears nothing; he sees too far; he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to be.”

In one poem Hafiz asks,

What
Do sad people have in
Common?
It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.
What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
So religious
Like
That.

Our religion can either be fresh, friendly, and of service, or it can become just a stale shrine for worshipping past religious expressions or, even worse, it can inspire violence. A tentative answer is also found in his poetry:

How
Do I
Listen to others?
As if everyone were my Master
Speaking to me
His
Cherished
Last
Words …

(The Gift, p. 99, translated by Ladinsky)

This is how we might listen to Americans who are Muslim if we are courageous and able to be completely open to the religious expression of another. It has some of the feeling as Merton’s description of listening in The Hidden Ground of Love, 1985: “By being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen which cannot be learned any more than breathing), we can find ourselves engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of love for which there can be no explanations.”

The great periods in Islamic history when Muslims scholars inter-mingled peacefully with other religious scholars could serve as models, and provide possible remedies to stop destructive conflicts and wars. Political, civil and religious freedoms allow for creativity to flourish. To extend true inner happiness into our own intimately inter-related world, these conditions have to be encouraged.

By the eighth century, it took one year to get from one end of the vast Muslim empire to the other. Yet Baghdad’s House of Wisdom invited scholars who were Hindu, Christian, Jewish, as well as Muslim, to think collaboratively, to do art, philosophy and science. In medicine, the first study of germs began, as well as the hospital system; mental illness was addressed. Western medicine would use their anatomical descriptions for six hundred years. The Muslims developed Arabic numerals; trigonometry; algebra; astronomy; engineering. It was a period of respect for the various cultural and religious sources of knowledge. The Muslims made a gift of Greek writings by first translating them into Arabic. From the eighth to the thirteenth centuries, there were more religious, philosophical, medical, geographical, historical, and astronomical works in Arabic than in any other language.

In Cordova, Spain, this ninth and tenth century Muslim “City of Light,” was filled with libraries, open tranquil streets, large homes, running water, when in Paris people lived in shacks, along the sides of the river. Viewing the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, when he visited, Morgan felt imbued by lovely textures, space, light, water fountains, marble pillars, artful designs and curves, inter-playing to delight and facilitate the flowering of human hearts.

لا إله إلا الله

It also seems, before any real conversation can begin, that there ought to be some understanding of the basis of Islam and the Five Pillars: faith in one God; charity; prayer; fasting at Ramadan; if possible, pilgrimage to Mecca.

The first pillar, shahada, is “bearing witness” to Gabriel’s message to Muhammad: There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger. There’s also a bearing witness to all the great teachers and prophets who preceded Muhammad in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the gospels of Jesus.

The second pillar is salat, group prayer and worship, most commonly five times a day (dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, evening). Muslims prepare by cleaning their space of worship and by ritual washing with water or with sand if water is unavailable, bowing to the knees, making prostrations, and finally sitting or kneeling for recitations and meditation.

The third pillar is zakat, meaning “to purify,” “to bless,” “to increase.” It consists of tithing, alms giving—both of which I consider forms of activism—for the poor, for worthy causes. “Alms are for the poor and the needy.… ” (Qur’an 9:60) “By paying it, one is aspiring to attain blessing, purification and the cultivation of good deeds.” Muslims contribute 2.5 percent of their annual income as a compassionate practice. (Islamic Free Market Institute, Vol. V, No. 1, Dec. 10, 2002)

The fourth pillar is sawm, fasting during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month; continuing the purification, the practitioner examines his or her thoughts, actions, intentions, relationships, much like in the Examen of St. Ignatius or Buddhist mindfulness meditation. One releases such rocky emotions as jealousy, greed, excessive lusting. We’re encouraged to let go the emotions which torture us, into the spaciousness created by meditation. Eid-al-Fitr is the happy celebration of breaking the fast and cleansing introspection. It’s time to play and be happy, to socialize, to give and receive gifts.

The fifth pillar is the hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca, usually about sixty days after Ramadan. Mecca is sacred to Muslims. Ali Sharitate writes in The Geography of Religion: “As you circumambulate and move closer to the Ka’aba, you feel like a small stream merging with a big river.” Morgan had that same feeling of awe when, many years ago, he entered the sinking cathedral in Mexico City to see paintings of St. Ignatius and other saints. Pilgrims spend five days in Mecca, worshipping, meditating, visiting various holy sites, such as Medina where one can touch the tomb of the Prophet, just as in Vatican City, Morgan was able to “touch” the tomb of St. Peter.

لا إله إلا الله

If we look for nourishment and wisdom within what’s best in the great religious traditions, as lived and taught by seasoned, accomplished practitioners who are sensitive to contemporary culture, this is the place to begin a conversation. Muslims can turn to the Five Pillars to find a way of peace and happiness. For Buddhists the way out of inner and outer violence is through the Four Noble Truths and practice.

Several years ago, Morgan heard the Dalai Lama speak at the University of California Irvine. While struck by his good humor, and lack of anger, his really listening and refraining from the blaming of others, Morgan couldn’t help thinking about the sufferings of Tibet. Here was a man full of joy and intelligence. What could be a better ‘advertisement’ for Buddhism? One woman, a Roman Catholic, asked him if she should convert to Buddhism to find “liberation.” The Dalai Lama said all religions can lead to liberation, and laughing said “perhaps no official religion at all.” He said it’s usually best to stick to your own religion and really live it—study other religions, so you can practice your own religion even better! “I reverence all the religions,” he said. “And I reverence each person.”

The dark side of human nature, however, can be a stronger force than any religious ideas. Not all Buddhists conduct themselves with the non-violence and poise of a Dalai Lama; not all Buddhists are free from using violence as a tool for control and domination. In Korea Morgan watched mobs of Buddhist monks hurling bottles and fists at other monks, fighting over who would control the largest temple in Seoul. He had a sinking feeling, but also saw a lesson of how strong a force our attachment to power can be. What conditions all conspired together to bring about this bloody conflict? We can appreciate that this angry confrontation doesn’t exemplify the rich ground of Buddhism.

More recently we saw the attempted uprising in Burma (Myanmar). The military oligarchy there claims to be Buddhist, yet they kill and imprison Buddhist monks. They also have a dreadful history of forcing children to be soldiers. As American Buddhist practitioners, and to most of the world, this is totally contrary to Buddhist practice.

The limitations of both ordinary Muslims and Christians with regard to real, widespread reform are apparent. If we cannot cause real reform in our own religions, how can we ask Muslims to clean up their own houses? “Ordinary believers” are not so encumbered by theology and tradition as the higher level within churches and mosques, we can begin to have real conversations with real people, working on our own prejudices and feelings. Not entirely wed to the past, this is the only possible course of action.

It is unfair to use Pope Benedict’s apparent faux pas in a public lecture (September 2006) at the University of Regensburg where he once taught, to denigrate the authority of his position as a teacher of the Gospel message, but it might be an example of how not to set up a useful conversation. It does not seem possible for believers of various religious faiths to speak to one another if the past keeps getting in the way?

The Pope quoted a 1301 work attributed to Manuel II Paleogus, who was one of the last Byzantine emperors of Constantinople before its fall to the Ottoman Empire: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Very few people heard anything other than the quote, and didn’t care that it was taken out of context.

The Pope’s staff was perhaps unaware of modern Islamic scholarship that contradicted the Pope’s implied objection to Islam. Mustafa Akyol, a Muslim journalist from Turkey, observes: “Pope Benedict said that the Koranic verse ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ is ‘of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.’ However, that verse, numbered 2:286 is actually a very late verse. The traditional Islamic consensus was that this verse was revealed in the Medinan period, when Prophet Muhammad and Muslims were not powerless, but in fact, were the rulers of their own state. This is one reason why the great majority of Muslim scholars accept that forced conversion is against Islam.”

History shows that violence is possible within all religious traditions, at various times and to varying degrees. The Church of the early Middle Ages actively promoted warfare and violence against Muslims; the Pope organized armies and lobbied with kings and princes to recapture Jerusalem. Plenary indulgences combined with looting and plunder seemed to be a winning combination. And to be fair, the Pope ought to have acknowledged that “forced” conversions were practiced by the clergy who followed Portuguese and Spanish armies to the new world and India.

It also seems that the Pope’s remarks have to be seen in light of a very different situation in Europe. As distinct from the United States, the population of immigrant Muslims into the EU is substantial and gaining in political power. The European press is filled with anecdotal reports that seem to reinforce the prejudice that Muslims will not and cannot integrate into the culture of western democracies.

But as one Muslim critic of the Pope’s remarks, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said: “most westerners don’t listen to him anyway, so why should we?” (MSNBC Sept. 17, 2006). After examining the situation carefully, Thomas Haidon, of the Free Muslim Coalition (http://www.frontpagemag.com; 1/18/08) makes an insightful criticism: “The current model of interfaith dialogue which superficially focuses on general high level and common traits of faiths has failed.

An effective meaningful framework for “safe” dialogue must be developed which also focuses on the “difficult” issues in Islam that Muslims have failed to address.” And, from the perspective of Roman Catholics, the top-heavy authority within the Church either is unable to address these issues or refuses to see them outside ancient history.

What might a “framework for ‘safe’ dialogue” look like? This would be a good beginning: if your words inflame the person or persons you’re talking with, quickly acknowledge it, and then try to see where you were misunderstood, or what in you seems to be blind to the other person’s point of view. You may have been wrong in your assumptions.

لا إله إلا الله

The Shari’a and the roots of radical Islam

Wahhabism (from Saudi Arabia, eighteenth century) and Salafiyya (late nineteenth, early twentyieth century in various countries) are usually puritanical, extremist, intolerant, homophobic, militant, and violent. Since 9/11, we’ve paid more attention to religious extremists coming from these two movements. Wahhabism is a form of Sunni Islam, coming from Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab (1703–91) who called for a “pure” practice of Islam. Followers of Wahhabism have fought with other Sunnis, as well as Shiites and non-Muslims. In the 1920s, Wahhabi-trained warriors, Bedouins, allied with the founder of the modern Saudi kingdom, Abd al Aziz ibn Saud, attacking fellow Sunnis in Arabia (western part) and also Shiites in Iraq. So Wahhabis became, and remain, a politically powerful faction in Saudi Arabia and within the Saud family.

Salafiyya, sometimes used interchangeably with Wahhabism, became very strong during the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s. During that period, the fighters would be indoctrinated in large numbers in mosques. Al Qaeda comes from elements of this movement.

Power and dogmatic religion do not combine gracefully. So when there’s no separation of church and state, there’s power and money available to back up violence, to provide madrasas, mosques, which indoctrinate young people into intolerance and militancy. Studies show that there are some tolerant Saudi school textbooks, but many which are not. Students are forced to conform to Wahhabi beliefs. Law and belief are mostly undifferentiated in Saudi Arabia. Radical Islam lacks the freedom of thought based in reasonable discourse, at least by western standards.

Islam is dangerous when viewed and lived as a religio-political dogmatic ideology of authoritative Shari’a, which calls for violent imposition of jihad as war, waged against “infidels” and also against Westernized Muslims who are considered “apostates.” Such radical Islam wants to control and impose its dogmatic interpretation of the Shari’a on others.

We feel that even dealing with the terror of this fundamentalist interpretation of jihad, there is an opportunity to understand Islam more deeply. We are still faced with the question what can I do? I want to change my own attitude to be jihadist in a spiritual, inner way, rather than in violent, destructive ways. There is an inner, spiritual meaning of jihad within the heart of Islam. We have had to face our own confusion about Islam. Muhammad said that it is wrong to take one’s own life, so how can terrorism be justified? Professor Carl Slawski comments: “It is important to emphasize the theological difference between greater (or primary) jihad (work to perfect oneself) and lesser (or secondary) jihad (converting unbelievers, which via individual extremist textual interpretation, gets morphed into violence unto death of the infidel).”

لا إله إلا الله

Faith demands that we acknowledge the absolute accountability of each individual before God, and that communal solidarity should never impede honest self-criticism, nor should it lead to injustice against other groups. –Ingrid Matteson

As Americans we find great wisdom in the U.S. Constitution to protect freedom of religion, religious expression and to ban government from dictating what the people must believe. But this tradition, and its common law roots, are not something that are shared with the Muslim code of law, the Shari’a, where the basis is that entire polity, the Ummah, be in accord with God’s will as envisioned in the Qu’ran. Although there is still concern for what we would call “human rights” in the west, there is not the same legal recourse as in the United States for those who are suffering oppression, even if it were in the name of religion.

Muhammad says: “A person should help his brother, whether he is an oppressor or is being oppressed. If he is the oppressor, he should prevent him from continuing his oppression, for that is helping him. If he is being oppressed, he should be helped to stop the oppression against him.” Does this mean that contemporary Islam encourages more individual personal expression and choice? Will Islam protect human rights or stop oppression, because it is truly a serious Islamic obligation? Reza Aslan says, “If we are going to talk about human rights, we have to discuss them on a country-by-country basis. Nobody in their right mind would say that the Muslim world is free of human-rights violations, but to say that human rights and Islam are incompatible is ludicrous.”

Doug McFerran, another contributor to Meanderings, writes privately: “Just as Muslim businessmen have managed to work around the Islamic prohibition against lending or borrowing money at interest, Muslim citizens, in the United States at least, have accepted democratic values without feeling they have betrayed their religion. Islam today is going through a difficult time of adaptation; the fundamentalism found in such places as Saudi Arabia and in Bin Laden’s movement will be seen for the anachronisms they are, rather than as the wave of the future.” The Islamic fundamentalists would like the Sahari’s to be seen as set in their efforts to purify within Islam. Yet history again shows that the system was developed over several centuries after the death of Muhammad and his early followers.

Within a Western context, it’s certainly legitimate to challenge Islam’s religious and societal leaders, just as Catholics question and criticize their pope and bishops. Our contemporary circumstances force us to fiercely criticize crimes, even if they are supported by religious leaders and their followers. It does not seem acceptable to allow the Vatican or fundamentalist Christians to meddle in U.S. elections or in same sex marriage debates just as much as it does not allow the justice system here or in Europe to turn a blind eye to honor killings.

We need to be clear what is acceptable behavior in affluent, tolerant democracies and what is unacceptable: homophobia, abuse of women, honor killings, what is called euphemistically “family law” in some western countries (i.e. that a Muslim household stand outside the rule of law and is allowed to continue practices of “tribal” justice which often contravene western notions of individual rights). We do not and will not condone slavery—Muhammad had slaves and slavery still exists in parts of the Islamic world—yet slavery remains unacceptable in a civilized world. The practice of polygamy, common in Arab culture at Muhammad’s time, will not find wide acceptance in modern western cultures. The execution of women for a variety of offenses by stoning or the beheading of homosexuals cannot be tolerated by the international community. This is barbarism.

لا إله إلا الله

Antidote to extremist interpretation: View the entire life of the Prophet.

There are many qualities that make Muhammad a compelling spiritual figure for our times. He is the only major religious founder who was a family man, not a celibate, throughout his entire career—he fathered six children and was totally devoted to his wife, Khadijah; he was a successful merchant who conducted his affairs in an ethical, admirable and profitable way and did not withdraw from the world after his experience of the Transcendent; he was a mystic who spoke very personally about his inner turmoil—he went through a genuine spiritual transformation, rooted in his whole-hearted devotion to the one God, the Compassionate. He was also a reformer and innovative spiritual leader. He wasn’t always a man of peace—he lead armies and killed in battle, but by the end of his life, he actively sought peace, and we will argue, by extension, would have no part of today’s terrorist actions or fanatical interpretation of the Qu’ran.

The story of Muhammad’s life has been told by biographers and historians with more knowledge and skill than we have. We will consider in broad strokes a few incidents that tell of the times when Muslims lived in peace and inspired diversity and acceptance of others, a story that we as non-Muslims have to consider.

When he was forty years old, Muhammad retreated to a cave, questioning the materialistic aspects in the Meccan market places. We have heard the story of how he heard a voice telling him to “Recite … recite in the name of your Lord who created; he created man from a clot. Recite, by your Most Generous Lord, Who taught by the pen; He taught man what he did not know.” At first Muhammad fled to the lap of Khadijah, terrified by the voice, confused, but impelled irrevocably into a deep spiritual life in response to Gabriel’s message. As he gained in his confidence as a messenger of God, however, he preached against greed, materialism, and covetousness.

Over the period of twenty-two years during which Muhammad ‘recited’ the 114 chapters of the Qu’ran, he proclaimed there was only one God and that surrender to God brings true peace. After he had finished writing down the last verses of the Qu’ran, he is reported to have said, “It was as if the scripture were written on my heart.”

Islamic scholars have noted the differences between the verses of the Qu’ran that date from the early, Meccan period and later Medinan verses. The verses can be viewed as either contradictory, or evolving in wisdom, and in some cases abrogating the earlier verses. This type of textual analysis is now widely accepted by most Christian scholars and theologians, though not in the most fundamentalist readings. And that is certainly reflected in the range of Muslim understanding of the Qu’ran. Muhammad grew in his understanding over the span of his life, just as we all change, adapt, and grow in our own practice.

Muhammad insisted that Christians have the right to practice their religion without fear. After he was established in Medina, a community of Christians lived at Najran was under his care and protection: “If anyone infringes upon their rights, I myself will be their advocate.” He also wrote one of the world’s first constitutions, the Covenant of Medina.

He promoted rights and privileges to women in his early community. Muhammad was married to Khadijah for twenty-two years, giving them two boys who died in childhood and four girls who survived. Khadijah and Fatima, his youngest daughter, were said to have best exemplified his teachings. Muhammad defended the rights of orphans, widows, and the poor.

Muhammad challenged the conventional, age-old society of many tribes, many gods. During Muhammad’s early life as a community leader, when the Ka’aba fell into disrepair and the sacred black stone fell (Abraham was said to have founded the Ka’aba and the black stone to have fallen from the heavens), the chiefs of four clans argued bitterly about who should return the black rock to its proper place. Muhammad suggested that all four carry the black symbol reverentially, each holding a corner of a rug on which the rock was placed.

He asked his disciples to be accepting and understanding, even when confronted. He taught by example: in Mecca, he was constantly berated and taunted by an opponent to his teachings. This “protester” would throw garbage and obstacles in Muhammad’s path, and his disciples urged him to retaliate, but Muhammad refrained. When he noticed no trash or obstructions in his path, he inquired about his “adversary.” It seems he was deathly ill, confined to his bed. Muhammad then went to the man’s home to ask after his health, to wish him well and to say that he missed the encounters on the road.

After Muhammad and his followers were in control of Mecca, he gave up warring and made a treaty with tribes who had been adversaries. He did not demand that his religious title as “Prophet” be put on the document, which horrified some of his followers. He signed as “Muhammad, the son of Abdulla” to the treaty that brought an extended time of peace. Peace. Why won’t we let it last?

Muhammad’s farewell teaching, “to regard life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust,” ended long held customs of raiding and vendettas. “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.… Remember that you will indeed meet your Lord … it is true that you have certain rights with regard to your women but they also have rights over you … an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab, also a white person has no superiority over a black person nor a black has any superiority over a white—except by piety and good action” (The Geography of Religion, pgs. 350-1).

لا إله إلا الله

New voices! Support the best spokespersons for Islam

If this is to be a conversation, and it has to be, at least in Europe and the United States, how does one enter in without prejudice and without dictating?

Writers like Reza Aslan and Karen Armstrong and scholars-activists such as Ingrid Mattson point out one possible direction. Movements for reform are growing within Islam; inter-religious dialogue and learning are increasing. There are dedicated activists and dedicated thinkers arising within Islam. Let’s listen to each other.

In October of 2007, prominent Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars, clergy and laity met in Los Angeles to discuss scriptural passages that are “hostile” to other religions (Cf. Los Angeles Times, October 20, 2007). Similar conferences are planned in 2008 and 2009 in Germany and in Israel, respectively. Muzammil Siddiqui, chairman of the Islamic Law Council of North America, spoke of a “troublesome” passage in the Qu’ran (5.51) which says: “You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies; they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them—God does not guide such wrongdoers.” Siddiqui explains that it is only extremists who use such texts to promote distrust of other religions. “The idea behind this verse is not that Muslims should shun Jews and Christians, but that they should stand up on their own feet and do their best.” It was written at a time when Muslims of Medina were a minority and some Muslims wanted to ally themselves—from fear—with Jews or Christians for protection. It was saying if you really are into what I’m saying as a prophet, then strap on your balls and engage the practice, even if we’re not popular or influential. Don’t run to religion just for its security. This is an important step in the direction that faces the “difficult” differences within religion. These conferences are being given to implement what Thomas Haidon recommends: inter-religious talking about important, serious, “difficult” topics, to really ask each other our most burning questions.

On October 13, 2006, thirty-eight Islamic authorities, leader and scholars—with differing denominations—from all around the world delivered a letter to Pope Benedict XVI by the Royal Academy of The Toyal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Jordan. They proposed offering the true teaching of Islam to affirm the common ground between Muslims and Christians: to be in love of God and of our neighbor, the two great commandments (http://www.acommonword.com).

Muslim women will be at the heart of the leadership for a renewed generation of Islam. Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Infidel, Free Press) calls for a reform, “Enlightenment,” within Islam to overcome the inequality, the fundamentalism, the abuse of women in the name of religion, in particular, in Africa.

Irshad Manji is a thirty-eight year old Canadian Muslim, a self-declared “mouthy chick” and “out” lesbian. She wrote The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith (http://www.muslim-refusenik.com). “Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves.… Will we move past the superstition that we can’t question the Koran? By openly asking where its verses come from, why they’re contradictory, and how they can be differently interpreted, we’re not violating anything more that tribal totalitarianism.… ”

Mohja Kahf (author of The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf) encourages respect for all religions despite differing customs and beliefs. “Does wearing a veil make you less American than wearing a yarmulke or a Mennonite bonnet?” Mohja also criticizes her own Islamic religion. “The egalitarianism that the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) preached never much budged Arab tribalism. The Qu’ran’s sexual ethic, enjoining chaste behavior and personal responsibility was for both men and women, not tribal ownership of women’s sexuality.”

The Pakistani-American writer Munawar Anees was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his work encouraging cultural and religious pluralism. Munawar Anees received his Ph.D in biology (Indiana University) and has dedicated his life to the study and teaching of Muslim religion and science. He’s written six books, including Islam and Biological Futures and Guide to Sira and Hadith Literature in Western Language. He founded the journal Periodica Islam; he’s religious editor of the online encyclopedia, Nupedia. He co-founded the Journal of Islamic Philosophy which can be found on the scholarly and extensive Web site http://www.muslimphilosphy.com. Anees calls for reform—intellectual, economic and cultural. He says “a strategy of change in the Muslim world is one of the crying needs of the hour … how to revive the culture of learning, how to revive the culture of tolerance, how to revive the culture of liberalism.” (Cf. What is Enlightenment magazine, May-July 2004) Anees wants to get at the roots of why an “ossification” has happened in Muslim thought and behavior, why “an inward-looking attitude” has led to literalism, fundamentalism and the rejections of others’ opinions and ways of living. Muslims must learn “the magnanimity of critical self-analysis.” Anees points out that Muhammad in the later part of his life allowed Jews and Christians to live as they pleased, without trying to force conversion. In fact, Anees says that this openness to other schools of thought is inherent in Islam: “According to the teaching of the Prophet, one’s cognizance of the Almighty is inseparable from the cognizance of the Muslim tradition of liberalism and tolerance.”

لا إله إلا الله

Muhammad’s Dream of Gabriel

Once Muhammad dozed off after evening prostrations and found himself in the angel Gabriel’s company, riding on horseback from heaven to Jerusalem. “Muhammad alighted on the Temple Mount, the Temple of the Israelites, where Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets welcomed him into the circle. Offered goblets containing wine, water, and milk, Muhammad selected the one with milk—a sign of the middle way of Islam, neither indulgent nor austere.…

From that spot, Gabriel led Muhammad up a ladder into heaven, where God greeted him and told him that the devout must pray fifty times a day. On the way down the ladder, Moses advised him that daily prostrations could number as few as five but still fulfill God’s wishes,” (The Geography of Religion, p. 344). How interesting that Moses trimmed down God’s demands by 90 percent! And that some of the greatest prophets from Judaism and Christianity are together in this communication.

This is a dream of unity and cooperation among the great religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Muhammad finally fully drank from the milk of a “middle way,” a balance to promote harmonious living, that we all together “have life more abundantly.”

A final story shows a human, light and wise Muhammad.

Muhammad goes out late at night to pray in the desert. And his young wife, Aisha, thinks he’s going to meet another woman. So as he’s going out into the silence of the desert (as Jesus would do), Aisha, full of anger and condemnation, stomps out to confront him. Muhammad looks at her enraged face and says, “Oh, Aisha, Lovely, have you brought your little Satan with you?”

“What little Satan?” she answers, calming down in his serene presence.

“Every human being has a little devilish part, their nafs.”

And she, softly now, roundly open-eyed, asks sweetly: “Even you, O prophet of God?”

“Yes, even me. However, I made mine a Muslim.”

صوفية

Issan Tommy Dorsey Roshi

2010-09-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Remembrance of the 20th anniversary of the death of Issan Tommy Dorsey Roshi (March 7, 1933 — September 6, 1990)

Last night at Maitri Hospice I was honored to speak during the wonderful celebration of Issan’s legacy on the 20th anniversary of his death. Here is the written version of my remarks.

Welcome!

One bright afternoon, Isaan was walking down Hartford St. towards 18th with Steve Allen and Jerry Berg. They were headed to the hamburger place that used to be right next to Moby Dick’s, close to the corner. That might not be important unless you want to know if Issan loved hamburgers—he did—but you have to know that Steve is a Zen priest, a close friend of Issan, his dharma heir, and the first Executive Director of Maitri. Jerry Berg was an early supporter of the hospice, a successful lawyer and prominent leader in the gay community.

As they walked, Steve and Jerry were talking about possible legal structures for the hospice while Issan lagged behind. He noticed a bottle lying on the sidewalk and bent to pick it up. Yes, any humors that he was an incarnation of Mr. (or Miss.) Clean are well founded. But when he noticed that the bottle was rather beautiful and might be worth keeping, he took out the rag that he kept neatly folded in his monk’s handbag, and began to polish it. Suddenly, a Geni appeared! It had to be a Buddhist Geni, a Bodhidharma look-a-like, with a shaved head, droopy ears and a bright robe. The Geni looked at Issan and Issan looked back, a staring match of wonderment. Steve and Jerry turned around to see what Issan was holding Issan up and stopped dead in their tracks.

The geni spoke the time honored script of genies: “Because you have freed me after many lifetimes of being cramped-up in that god damned bottle, you, yeah, I guess all three of you, get one wish. It’s just one so you’d better make it good.”

Steve didn’t hesitate: he knew his Buddhism and asked to be released from his karma and enter Buddhahood, or nirvana, or the Pure Land, right there and then. Just as he was about to raise his palms in ghasso, the traditional gesture of respect—poof, he was gone.

Jerry thought to himself, that was powerful magic. I’m going for it. I’m not getting any younger so how about a great life in a heaven modeled after Palm Springs—but without the humidity—endless pool parties, rafts of handsome men, an eternal nosh that never made you fat? As he smiled and waved good-bye—poof, he disappeared too.

The Geni turned to Issan who was left standing alone—it might have been wonderment on his face, maybe just a bit puzzled. The Geni said, "OK, honey, it's your turn, what does your little heart desire?

Issan didn’t hesitate, “Get those two numb-nut girls back here. We have a hospice to run.”

Del Carlson and Issan, best friends

Tonight we’ve come together to remember Issan Dorsey.

Jana just lead us in an ancient ritual to call upon the powers that guard the unseen world from which we can still feel Issan’s presence from time to time. Perhaps we can also allow ourselves to enter that world tonight to see him, to hear him, and allow ourselves to be inspired and get the strength we need to live our own lives as completely and authentically as we can.

There are many reasons why we might want to remember him—for most of us who knew him and loved him—we cherish who he was for us, the way he moved through the world. We remember the kindness of his actions—and his great one-liners.

For those of us who meditated with him, he inspired us by his depth of his practice—the way that he carried his understanding of the Buddha’s teaching into his life seamlessly. The man who sat in the zendo was not one bit different from the man who had a martini at the gay bar around the corner or who listened carefully to everyone’s point of view during a staff meeting.

For those of us who worked with him, we knew that his projects had heart. No matter how complex they became when we tried to made them real, no matter what problems or difficulties arose, Issan always directed us back to the heart of the matter—love, compassion, service.

For those of us who only know him by having read about him or heard about him, or having worked at Maitri, you still know him. He didn’t write any books himself, but he left a real example of how humans can look after one another with love and friendship. Here it is! We’re standing in the middle of it right now. And that is perhaps the best way to know him, by trying to look after one another throughout our entire lives in ways that make difference and bring us closer together.

Tonight we are going to try to bring him back into our lives as a way to honor him, and thank him, and be inspired again by his vision for home and hospice for people with AIDS.

I have heard more than 100 versions of this story over the years: "if I hadn’t met Issan at the door of City Center or Tassajara, if he hadn’t really hugged me, told a joke, said a few words that calmed me down immediately, I wouldn’t have struck around—I wouldn’t be here today." He was a man with the ability to find those few words that you needed to hear in the moment, words that came from the heart, words that gently cleansed the sting of whatever was troubling you. He was a man with an open heart. He was truly a Zen priest.

He was also a man whose path to Zen was among the most odd ball that I’ve ever read about in Zen’s almost 2 thousand year history. Many senior Zen students of Suzuki Roshi have told me that when they saw the bedraggled hippie with dirty feet walk though the doors of Sokoji Temple on Bush, there was never a more unlikely candidate for roshi. Yet when this effeminate, gay, drug-addicted drag queen discovered the path of meditation, he found his life and never turned back.

Issan and me in the garden at Hartford Steet, photo byRich Gerhearter

I have moments when a single phrase that Issan said to me just comes up, for no apparent reason. He had an uncanny ability to take complex issues and say what was important in a few words. Some people can only understand an issue presented in its most simplistic form. But Issan’s few words didn’t show any lack of understanding. When I worked with him (and particularly when I talked about my meditation practice with him), I felt his few words go very deep.

And for gay man like myself, part of the large influx to San Francisco of gay, lesbian and bi men and women during the 70’ and 80’s who were, by and large, alienated from the religious practice of our mothers and fathers, a simple, light-hearted message that went to the heart of the matter was perfect. And if it were delivered with perfect timing and some campy trimmings, all the better.

Once at a staff meeting I was fretting over something that was stamped “urgent” (it seemed as if almost every item in my to-do pile had some red flag, screaming “right now,” “get me done”). Issan just reached out, touched my hand and said, “We’re at war. I’ve been at war, and it’s not fun—well not always fun. We can still have some parties.”

Back in 1988 and 89 sometimes more than a hundred men a week were dying from the effects of HIV/AIDS. It was a disaster the dimensions of which the nation as slow to recognize. There wasn’t time, money or resources to do everything that needed to get done, much less do it perfectly. Somehow, I knew that if I could just focus on what was in front of me, and get that done, it usually turned out to be exactly what was required. And for those of you who know me, it’s something I still struggle with. Thanks Issan—your teaching continues.

And the story also reminds me that when you’re at war, you also find out quickly who your friends are. When the epidemic hit full force, after all the political posturing and bullshitting, our community found resources within itself to care for a tragedy of unbelievable proportions. And we were helped by large number of generous men and women from the wider community who saw beyond whatever labels were being thrown around then—forgive me if I’ve blocked them out—and stepped forward to ease the suffering of some fellow travelers.

Issan saw Maitri as much more than just a Buddhist hospice, though it was deeply Buddhist to its very roots. He shaved his head, and wore a Soto priest’s patch-work robe, he bowed and chanted in Sino-Japanese, but he understood very clearly that real wisdom, what we call prajna, is not the sole property of any religion.

I want to tell a story about the Mass that my friend, Joe Devlin, a Jesuit priest, said in the zendo at Hartford Street early in 1990.

I had asked Joe to come by and say Mass for the Catholic men in the Hospice. It was a Saturday evening, and Joe was due to arrive at 5. I was scrambling, assembling a few basics, actually just the essentials, bread, wine and a clean tablecloth for the dining room table. Issan, who was at the time in the final stages of HIV disease came downstairs in his bathrobe, to ask when “Father Joe” was due to arrive and see what I was doing. After I explained, he said with a big smile, but firmly, “Mass will be in the zendo, not the dining room.” Then he took over and directed all the preparations with the same care that he would have given to a full-blown Zen ritual. He went back upstairs and when he came down again, he was dressed in his robes. He greeted Joe at the door with a hug and kiss, thanking him for coming and telling him that Mass would be in our chapel, the zendo.

Issan and five or six of us sat in meditation posture on cushions while Joe improvised the ancient catholic liturgy, beginning with a simple rite of confession and forgiveness. When it came time to read from the New Testament, Joe took a small white, well-worn book out of a pocket in his jacket, and said that his mother had told him that the story he was about to read contained all the essentials for a true Christian life.

Then he read from the gospel of Luke, chapter 11, the parable of the Good Samaritan. For any of you who need a refresher course in New Testament studies, this is a story about a man who is robbed, taken for everything he has, savagely beaten and left by the side of the road to die. All the people who might have helped, even those who should have helped, chose to walk on the other side of the street when they saw him—except for the Samaritan. Now the Samaritan in Jesus’s day was the guy whom good upstanding members of the community might have called the equivalent of “faggot” or “queer.” He was an outcast, but he was the only person who actually stopped and took some real action to help the poor fellow out. So Jesus teaches here that real love is shown through actions, not words.

The next morning—Sunday mornings were the usual gathering of the Hartford Street community—Issan began to talk about Fr. Joe and the liturgy. He was exuberant. He had fallen in love with Luke's parable, and Joe. He turned to me and asked, “What was the little white book that Fr. Joe read from?” Startled, I said that was the New Testament. “Oh,” said Issan, “it must have been in Latin when I heard it as an altar boy—or something, but it was exactly how we should lead our lives as Buddhists.” He then said that during the Mass he had the experience of really being forgiven and that the experience had allowed him to feel peace, even appreciation for his early religious training.

When Joe and I had dinner together the night before he flew back to Boston, I told him what Issan had said. A few days later, the small New Testament that had been in his jacket for years arrived in an envelope addressed to Issan. Before Issan died 6 months later, during one of out last meetings, he asked me to thank Joe again for the zendo mass after he was gone. I did. And that New Testament which passed from the pocket of Joe’s jacket to Issan’s spare bookshelf at Hartford Street to my altar, I have since passed on to another person who asked a dharma question about one the stories in the gospel of Jesus.

If I were to give a nice sounding Buddhist name to the next story, it might be something “like there’s nothing too small that you can let escape your attention, even if no one’s going to notice,” but I think that “They never get the pleats right” tells the story better.

When Maitri was on Hartford St., we carried on a full meditation schedule plus running the hospice. One Saturday we were sitting meditation from 5 in the morning till dusk. Issan was not sitting, actually he was in bed and his doctor, Rick Levine, was monitoring a fever that had spiked at about 103 the previous day. That evening, he was to preside at the wedding of two men, old friends, at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. 20 years ago Issan married same sex couples in the religious tradition of Soto Zen—long before the issue of gay marriage exploded, Prop 8 passed, was then voided—well, you know that story.

Sometime after lunch I noticed his white koromo, fresh from the dry cleaners, hanging on the coat rack in the hallway. The koromo is a simple kimono style garment that a priest wears under the Okesa, the Buddha’s robe that is worn over the left shoulder. With the full robe, not much of the koromo is visible. It’s really like ceremonial underwear.

I went back to my cushion in the zendo. When I came up stairs again about 3:30 to fix tea before the last block of sitting, there was Issan in the living room, in his bathrobe, with a little head band, and swear dripping from his forehead behind an ironing board. He was ironing the Koromo fresh from the dry cleaners. I stopped on the stairs and I had to stop myself from telling him to get back to bed, follow his doctor’s orders and save his strength. I am sure he saw the shocked look in eyes. He turned to me, chuckled and said, “They never get the pleats right.” I certainly wasn’t going to argue with a man who was obviously in a deep state of meditation.

He did preside over the wedding and it was fabulous. Steve and Shunko who were also part of the ceremonial team, came home relieved though complaining about the two husband’s gift list of toasters and table service, “Nothing for the Hospice!” Issan was quick to diffuse them—it was a very special day for the couple who were setting up house together for the first time.

And here is another lesson I learned from Issan, one that took me a long time to digest and one that I still struggle with: there is always enough money to do what you need to do. And most likely, in the best of circumstances, it will be just enough, not a penny more or a penny less. When you are tight, (or if you’re tight) it’s probably time to reorder your priorities.

Over more than 2 decades, Maitri has rethought its priorities many times and revised its budget accordingly. New drugs have increased the longevity of persons with AIDS, and the death rate has plummeted. But new issues have arisen: some people can’t manage the rigorous schedule of drug administration and need training; partners and family who are caring for people with more limited abilities imposed by HIV need a break to care for themselves and thus Maitri’s respite care program and training in self-care.

The new director along with the board will continue to adapt and reinvent Maitri’s programs to maintain the two hallmarks of Issan’s vision: quality care and a true home. This is also a place where we might dedicate our energy tonight: to support them as they chart new directions and promise to do what we can when they ask for whatever they’ll need, ideas, resources and of course money.

In the last year of Issan’s life, a local musician with some spiritual roots had a minor hit. I’m talking about Bobby McFerran’s, ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Issan loved the song and sometimes would hum or sing a bit of the lyric and then say, “that’s good but I think he should add, ‘Just do the best that you can.’ We aren’t asked to do more, but that’s more than enough.”

So I’ll end my stories here with the refrain: “don’t worry, be happy, do the best that you can.” Issan, you showed us whatever you can do with your own mind and heart is more than enough to make a lasting impact in the world.

And now finally to wrap it up, I’m going to return to my Buddhist joke:

Issan knew that he wasn’t a one-man show—even in his drag days he didn’t perform alone. He was not the Lone Rangerette, or Mary Tyler Moore facing adversity with a smile and disarming off the wall comments though he had some of that quality. Actually if I had to pick TV character for him it would be Rue McClanahan who played Blanche Devereaux in the “Golden Girls,” one of his favorite TV shows. So I can hear telling me, “Ken, be a sweetheart, and thank everyone.”

All of us are intimately connected with one another. The inner workings of an organization as complex as Maitri are also connected to us. As I look at this web, this net, the list of people whom I should thank is longer than the list of names I am going to read. But I will take a few minutes to read some names and I ask you to join me in acknowledging these people and offering them our deep gratitude.

Steve Allen, who returned from nirvana to help Issan (in his case, an innovative temple in Crestone Colorado), represents the many Buddhist practitioners who interrupted their own lives and practice to be with Issan as death approached. They include Steve’s wife, Angelique Farrow, Shunko Jamvold, David Bullock, David Sunseri, David Schneider, Lucien Childs, Zenshin Phil Whalen, Angie Runyon, Paul Rosenblum, Rick Levine, Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Richard Baker roshi, Kobun Chino roshi, John Tarrant roshi, Joan Halifax, Frank Osteseski, Ram Dass, Wendy Johnson and the gang from Green Gulch who brought cartons of food every week for the kitchen, Rob Lee whose photographs you see displayed here tonight, Tozan Mike Gallagher and Joshi Paul Higley, men with HIV who were ordained as zen priests, who practiced at HSZC and added enormously to the richness of our practice. I’ll humbly include myself among this group. I began my formal Zen practice at Hartford Street/Maitri Hospice and that has been an enormous gift. The privilege of being allowed to do this work changed my life.

Jerry Berg was a wonderful human being and fabulous leader in the San Francisco gay community. He can stand for all the men and women who were not members of the Buddhist community but generously stepped forward into important roles that ensured the success of Issan’s vision. They include, Richard Schober, Will Spritzma, Richard Fowler, George Heard, Tim Wolfred, Bill Musick, Tim Patriarcha (who is Buddhist), Tova Beatty, Maura-Singer Williams, Christine Vincent, Lynn, our head nurses, beginning with Jan Clark, and Anne, Visiting Nurses and Hospice, now Sutter-Home-Health, and Glo Newberry-Smith; I want to thank the hundreds of individuals who gave whatever they could afford, whether time or money, Jim Hormel, Al Baum, Jon Logan to name just a few; our volunteers, board members, Traci Teraoka, Sally Anne Campbell, George Stevens, Boone Callaway, Anne O’Driscoll who cooked great hearty meals, Jane Lloyd who cut hair, Bob Gordon and Bill Haskell, and perhaps a hundred more wonderful men and women who gave of themselves to be with our residents; I want to thank all our CNA’s, Gary, Ichto who’s been with Maitri for more than 20 years, Joyce Cabit, who has also been with us almost from the beginning to name just a few; I have to thank the many small businesses that helped with services, like Marcello’s pizza. Friday night pizza dinner was a highlight of the week and allowed the cook a well deserved night off. I also want to include the designers, craftsmen and carpenters who helped us covert 61 Hartford Street into a hospice, only mentioning 2, Alberto, and Juan (Issan thought you were about as handsome as men come), and I have to thank those who transformed the building where we’re standing now, especially Sylvia Kwan and Joseph Chance. You helped Issan create Buddhist heaven.

And finally I want to thank the almost 950 men and women who made Maitri their home during the last months and days of their lives. You allowed us the privilege of being your servants, and walk with you as you completed your earthly journeys. Your generosity taught us lessons we can never forget. You changed our lives.

The list goes on but I have to stop here. To all the many people and organizations who’ve shared and contributed to Issan’s vision over nearly 25 years, our heartfelt thanks.

Thank you all for your kind attention. Thank you, Issan. As is said in the traditional closing prayers for celebrations like this: May the teaching of your school go on forever. May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page.

MESSY, MESSY LIFE

2010-08-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

by Jacqueline Kramer

[This piece appeared in the September 2010 "Hearth," the newsletter for the group of mothers that my friend, Jackie, works with online. For more information please go to www.hearthfoundation.net. It is also a continuation of the conversation that she and I had after visiting a powerful exhibit of Amish quilts at the DeYoung this past Spring. I am going to ask Jackie for a picture of her quilt. For now this 1930 Amish crib quilt will stand in.]

My daughter’s best friend went into labor this morning. We were awoken by a call from Sarah’s father, “She’s five centimeters. If Nicole is coming, she better come now.” I had been languishing in bed. The weather outside was thick, overcast, chilly, and my bed playfully teased me with a warmth it had practiced all night and finally perfected in the morning. I tore myself from this divine comfort and moved into full gear.

The quilt, where is the quilt? Sarah had come over on a clear June day and picked out about 10 pieces of blue fabric from my quilting cabinet. They were all blue, each one of them-blue. Most had patterns on them like stars and planets. Some looked like watercolor paintings. There was a large piece of blue corduroy and an even larger piece of blue velvet left over from matching dresses I made for Nicole, my mother and myself when my mom was still alive. I sat with this strange arrangement of fabrics, different than I would have chosen. I would have added a bit of orange or yellow to set off the blue. Sarah’s choice challenged me to design in a wholly new way. I cut a couple of hearts out of each patterned fabric and a couple of squares to sew the hearts on and then mixed them all up with a starred heart on a water color square here and some sort of cosmic looking heart on a floral square there. The hearts were all appliquéd onto the squares then Nicole, Nai’a and I spread them out on the floor moving them around until we found an arrangement we liked. The blue velvet was cut in lattices and the squares were sewn to the lattice.

This whole process, of completing the front of the quilt took weeks. The project was draped over a chair in my art studio until another chunk of time showed up. Every time I went into the art studio I would think, “I better finish that quilt. You never know with labor, it can happen any time.” Eventually a chunk of time became available and I pinned the quilt front to the blue corduroy with batting between the front and back. Proud of myself for getting this far, I let the unfinished quilt sit for what felt like a long, long time but was only a month. One quiet evening I sewed up the long sides in my signature style. But there was a problem. There was not enough corduroy to finish the top and bottom so they lay open with exposed edges, ready to be finished, as I sat with the question, “How shall I sew up the ends?”

The question I asked, the question I truly did not know the answer to, was deposited in the same place that I put each koan I’m working on. I think of it as the Don’t Know place. I have all sorts of unanswered questions there, and most of them, the big ones, swim around happily unopened. While this question was enjoying its stay in the numinous part of my consciousness I suddenly felt an impatience to answer the question before the answer rose to the surface. That happens with koans too. I grope around for something to say about them when I have nothing. The question of how to sew up the ends of the quilt sat with “Not knowing is most intimate” and “How is my hand like the Buddha’s hand?” ripening. Now and then I would peek in and see how things were progressing. But the quilt koan did ripen before messy, messy life intruded on my process. Woken up out of a dreamy morning sleep, in a haze, the answer needed to be spoken NOW! Nicole was going to Santa Cruz in 15 minutes, that’s all the time I had to come up an answer. So I turned the ends under, pinned them shut and asked Nicole to sew up the ends when she got there.

The solution to the quilting koan was inelegant at best. But elegance, grace and beauty are not always how koans, and life, show up. Sometimes they show up in beautiful flashes with waves of bliss in their wake but sometimes they just show up as old tin cans or dishes with spaghetti on them or diapers that need to be changed. Either way, there is a glow about them. They meet us where we are and, since life is messy, they may appear to be messy as well so that we may take it all in, the red, red rose and the scratch on the car. Yet, there can be something magical and wondrous in even the most inelegant solutions. The quilt was finished quickly and any quilter would wince to see those cut off ends. But Sarah would now wrap her baby in a quilt that was warmed by both mine and Nicole’s hands and within the stitches of the quilt rests a reminder that life doesn’t need to be perfect. Every time Sarah looks at the quilt she will remember to embrace the messiness of life. Though the quilt is imperfect, it is still beautiful, maybe even more beautiful for it’s flaws and what they bring. This is my blessing and wish for Sarah on this day as she is being initiated into the feminine world of the mother, that she embrace the messiness of life, finding her happiness in however things appear.

Tommy D, the boy as pretty as the girl next door

2010-05-22T20:19:00.000-07:00

Del and Issan in Santa Fe

I can't let these pictures Of Issan and some of his friends sit on my computer's hard drive out of sight. They were, I think, a gift from Del Carlson to the Hartford Street Zen Center. Jeff Thomas scanned them and sent me digital copies. I found a few others in various and sundry places.

This is the earliest photo of Issan I found. I'd recognize that face anywhere.

He shaved his head.

He wore a dress and did his hair.

He was never afraid to share the spotlight.

Issan and James

Shunko Jamvold, Del Carlson, Angelique Farrow, Steve Allen, Issan Dorey

To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page.