Spirits Calling

"My soul glowed from the fire of your fire. Your world was a whispering water At the river of my heart." --by the poet Rumi

While in love we often fear, often unconsciously fear, that another will subsume us, that we will drown in relationship, and to some extent this is true. The ego must move aside for the opening to the path to love. Love and the soul however will not be lost or drown in another. Rather these are our immutable essences; they cannot be lost or drowned, and yet ego strongly fears this fate. Our sense of self-protection that is ego rapidly assesses any situation in which we must potentially yield to be a threat.

There is a fundamental mystery to the soul, however, writes Deepak Chopra in his book, The Path to Love. He writes further, "its integrity is not violated by merging with another person. The blending of two spirits brings more to the union than each partner started with. The process of soul-making that used to be [for me alone] "me" is now for "us." The poet Rumi expressed this thought with these words:

My soul glowed from the fire of your fire.

Your world was a whispering water.

At the river of my heart.

With the growth of spiritual realization is the awareness that two can be as one; that the multiple aspects of the Dharmakaya are are work; that the Christian idea of a triune relationship within the soul of a great spirit, communing with God are all infinite and possible. While in the state of ego, on the other hand, persons remain isolated and self-protected as if in a siege mentality. There then is no room for the other; often a feeling of isolation and a vague, undefined loneliness results. Yet spirit calls to us powerfully, first, in romantic love. 

We fall in love and for the first time as Rumi passionately writes, we have the opportunity to engage our self into self as an expansion of identity. The Spirit uses relationship as its vehicle. No man is an island; spirit calls to us to overcome our fears such that love may be its replacement.

Once in relationship, however we gain a foothold over ourselves despite the passion, despite the growing self awareness, and ego often returns to us with a vengeance. Falling in love is delightful; it is passion, and a glimpse of the spirit itself. Being in love, love itself entails commitment, and a certain struggle. Many who come to this place in their spiritual journeys feel a sense of loss, and fear what is to come next. 

Relationships have consequences. While they give to each person a sense of belonging, friendship, security and compassion, love also demands something from each partner. Things like patience, devotion, persistence are part of the work and struggle to be realized along the path. Sometimes relationship is hard and painful. Resolution brings joy, and it brings disappointment. "The only real difference between romance and relationship, spiritually speaking, has to do with surrender. Surrender comes naturally to two people when they first fall in love." Love's first flush gives us the courage to do that, to be fearless and act under its protective power. Spiritually, surrender is a solution to the paradox existing between ego and spirit. 

Yet persons who love, who are intimates, over time often find that the ego, now returned carries them on its own agenda. Lovers play games to test one another, they withhold themselves; they are unwilling to give to spirit, and they are unwilling to give to and serve one another. Surrender now must be conscious. It must be an act of free will, of choosing this as your path. Chopra writes, "this isn't to say that surrender isn't hard work; it is conscious work. As such it can bring the same joy and delights as falling in love, the same sense of play which relieves lovers of the ego burdens." 

The British writer and poet, D. H. Lawrence wrote, "That is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust, the sapphire of fidelity. The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love."

A free loving commitment of the will made to another is the realization over time of: peacefulness, a companionship and a trust made by the Spirit to another which is, and is not self. "When they are fully committed... they see God in each other." On that basis, they are able to surrender, not to one another so much, as to surrender themselves to the God in each other, and to the God, the Dharmakaya in all things. Dharma is an ancient idea. It means perhaps most fully, sacredness. In its Sanskrit origin, dharma means to sustain or uphold. 

Thus what upholds, honors, or respects another's life is in keeping with dharma. It is, for example in dharma not to tell lies, to deceive oneself or others. Dharma looks to the sacred, it is tied to and intimately guided by spirit. Dharmakaya, likewise, is Karuna, love; love then is a guiding force emanating from the great being, the Dharmakaya. Thus surrender in relationship is surrender to spirit, to dharma. In the Way of the Beloved, the dharma is "a vision of spiritual equality; when you perceive life through this vision, separation ends."

Blame, Seeing Someone Like Us

"It's not your fault, but I'm blaming you anyway!" --Unknown 
"Looking deeply, we are not fooled by signs." by Thich Nhat Hanh

While one person may fancy himself as clever to place blame regardless, another may be more skillful and clear thinking to realize that carefully looking, they are not fooled by signs. And so it is the way. Some of us are more skillful at any given time than others, but all of us need deep looking and compassion for our less skillful means.

Look at things as more or less skillful. When we are less skillful, we are inclined to blame. Without more skillful means we suffer and we cause others to suffer us. "Forgive me and teach me so that I can be more skillful next time," writes Thich Nhat Hanh in his book, Talks from a 21-Day Mindfulness Retreat. With this mind, we will not blame or have the desire to punish our self or others. Without judgment, compassion may take its place and skill arises. These seeds can bring much happiness to you and to others.

Likewise, If we can say there in a place whose beginning and end are known, then we are fooled by signs. Yet when looking deeply, perceiving the inter-being of matter, we see that there is no clear edge. There is self and non self, world and non world, all are one within the many, and the many are the one. This is the true nature of inter-being, teaches Hanh.

In Cultivating the Mind of Love, Hanh writes of those who find their hearts cold. They do not understand themselves; they do not understand others. He writes, "If we look around, we see many people who are like dead persons, carrying their own dead bodies on their shoulders. We need to do whatever we can to help them... They need to be touched by something." What 'something' can water their seeds of understanding? What might awaken their compassion?

Hanh records the story, The Stranger by French writer Albert Camus. In the story the main character finds that he is imprisoned and will be executed in three days time. What has his life come to? What did it mean? Why is he alive? Suddenly he sees "that life had meaning" and he began to live that meaning, the words, the earth, the sky, it all meant something to him for the first time. For him the end was the last, just as the first. It was the first time he paid attention, and it was the last time he would pay attention there on his last day, the day of execution.
It was there always, the seeds of understanding-the sky, the  leaves, the scent of the ground, something that wakes them up, that brings them alive. He saw that now.

"The energy of compassion in you will transform life and make it more beautiful. Compassion is always born of understanding, and understanding is the result of looking deeply." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

Sunyata

"All the world's religious traditions have potential to help us become better human beings." -- The 14th Dalai Lama, writing a forward in the book, The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale.

People, notes the 14th Dalai Lama, "eat rice because it grows best where they live, not because it is either better or worse than bread." Likewise he notes, "the world's religions share the same essential purpose. We must maintain respect and harmony among them... Religion, for most of us depends on our family background-- where we were born and grew up. I think it is usually better not to change that." In the book, The Mystic Heart by author Wayne Teasdale, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama writes an introductory forward to the volume which follows.

Teasdale starts this work with the notion of moral duty. This may be tough one for some to swallow in a world where every man is his own individual, corporate entity. "Consider that domination, cruelty, greed, violence, and all our other ills arise from a sense of insufficient and insecure being. I need more... but it's never enough... All these others threaten us, intimidate us, make us anxious. We can't control them... Our actions [may] turn to openness, trust, inclusion, nurturance and communion... Raising our hidden knowledge of unity, rearranging our dynamism, is something we can practice."

The Mystic Heart takes up the idea of the inter-relatedness of not only religions, but also of persons. Teasdale writes at length, establishing common ground between the world faiths, those of thousand years standing and those emerging. He writes of the commonality of the monastic experience, and he writes about the Buddhist notion of sunyata. Sunyata is often translated from the Sanskrit to mean void or emptiness, but this is the clumsiness of words.
It is also described variously; here a phrase hits home, 'sunyata or how to untie what has never been tied.' This may be closer to its truer meaning and sense of emptying, unloading, freedom. Sunyata is a central tenet of Buddhist thought. Sunyata is a positive thought, to be empty, to be free to receive.

 Emptiness not only empties everything else, but also empties itself. There is the passage  in the Prajnaparamita Sutra, also called The Heart Sutra which states:

   Listen, Shariputra, Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. The same is true for feelings, mental formations and consciousness.  version from: The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh

Sunyata then, contains characteristics of wisdom and compassion. Wisdom in  recognizing the light of   suchness, everything in its own nature. All things are equally recognized by their suchness. The wisdom  of  sunyata is inseparable from the compassion aspect of sunyata. Sunyata is compassion-- light, realization, an awakening of the creative, essential nature of all -- and then nothing. Sunyata is comprised of all things, all judgments, all moral, and all ill in the ultimate world.

Emptying ourselves of  the false self or the unconscious identity of mere self-interest, is in the way to a larger identity of the divinity. A similar result happens within the process of  Sunyata. Awakening to the Buddha mind universal, develops compassion.  And yet Sunyata calls for a universal mind, free of all constraints so as to heed the great intelligence-mind of the Dharmakaya.

It is rain that falls so totally into the river. What then is the water, what then, the rain?