Treatise on Emptiness
In a bookstore I accidentally ended up at the section on Tao, or
more precisely, by the Treatise on Emptiness.
I rejoiced, since that day I was perfectly empty.
What an unexpected meeting — the patient finds the doctor,
the doctor doesn’t speak.
–Adam Zagajewski, from “Without End”
One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
Which form of proverb do you prefer: Better late than never, or Better never than late?
Lewis Carroll
The beauty of the unconscious is that it knows a great deal—whether personal or collective—but it always knows that it does not know, cannot say, and dare not try to prove or assert too strongly; because what it does know is that there is always more—and all words will fall short. The contemplative is precisely the person who agrees to live in that unique kind of brightness (a combination of light and dark that is brighter still!). The Paradox, of course, is that it does not feel like brightness at all, but what John of the Cross calls a “luminous darkness,” or others call “learned ignorance.”
In summary, you cannot grow in the great art form, the integration of action and contemplation, without 1) a strong tolerance for ambiguity; 2) an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety; and 3) a willingness to not know and not even need to know. This is how you allow and encounter mystery. All else is mere religion.
Fr. Richard Rohr
Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
— Wislawa Szymborska, "Under One Small Star" from Could Have, 1972
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
–unknown
Poetry is an incessant hovering between sound and meaning.
–Paul Valéry
(via wood s lot, merci mw)
Enlightenment is not about knowing as much as it is about unknowing; it is not so much learning as unlearning. It is more about entering a vast mystery than arriving at a mental certitude. Enlightenment knows that grace is everywhere, and the only reasonable response is gratitude and the acknowledgment that there is more depth and meaning to everything.
Fr. Richard Rohr
IN SPRING
Your grasses up north are as blue as jade,
Our mulberries here curve green-threaded branches;
And at last you think of returning home,
Now when my heart is almost broken….
O breeze of the spring, since I dare not know you,
Why part the silk curtains by my bed?
Li Bai (701 – 762)
Although I'm continuing to post my "found" small stones and an occasional photograph every day this month, I wanted to leave this post at the top of the blog for a few days to try to encourage more of you to leave a comment and to read the ones that have been left so far. I've spent a lifetime trying to develop my own "natural aptitude" for music and art and self-expression, but also for spirituality — and trying to explore the connections between these areas, which I find self-evident but I realize many do not. However, I'd argue that everyone is born with the potential for creativity and spirituality — some with more natural aptitude, to be sure — but life (often in the form of teachers and institutions) destroys our joy, dulls our senses, and undermines our confidence. Unfortunately that often happens at such an early age that people can never find their way again. This happens, I would argue, with gifts of the spirit just as much as with gifts of creativity, and is even more problematic in societies where spirituality is confused with organized religion, difficult to speak about, and where "masters" are rare or unrecognized because they don't necessarily go around wearing robes or clerical collars…
"His kind of faith is a gift. It’s like an ear for music or the talent to draw"
Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen
Profound aesthetic experiences, no less than the religious experiences of which James wrote, deserve to be thought of as gifts to the spirit. They may engender a sense of awe and mystery, and of the sublime; they may provoke a feeling of being privileged and so of gratitude. The experience may be at once elevating and humbling. These represent important points of contact with religious moments.
The points of contact are not limited to such reactions. Artistic and religious virtuosity both involve, even begin with, natural aptitude, as noted in the quotation from Crimes and Misdemeanors. Some are more given to these things than others. And in both domains, hard work, genuine focus — at times single-minded — is essential if one is to approach one’s potential. We are less apt to think this way about the religious domain than the artistic. But a religious giant, a Mozart of the spirit, is a rare find; she is (certainly typically) one who has labored strenuously in pursuit of excellence. And just as one who is tone-deaf can appreciate the musically gifted as responding to something of substance, one who is less able than another in matters of the spirit can recognize the latter’s accomplishment. Needless to say, being tonedeaf is a rare condition in either domain. Ordinarily people occupy an intermediate position within a wide spectrum of which being tone-deaf is at one extreme.
from "The Significance of Religious Experience" by Howard Wettstein, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside.
What do you think?
