mcgyver5: Catholic

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:22:11 GMT

Mark, the instructor at Common Ground read this poem at the talk last night:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you truly want.
Dont go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill.
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
-Rumi

Clinging

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 12:05:37 GMT

Oh, I get it. I go to Common Ground meditation center, take off my shoes in the entrance, sit for an hour and when I come out, my shoes are gone. I get it. I learned that I was clinging to my shoes. Now can I have them back?

Aside from losing my shoes, it was a good talk. On Sunday nights at Common ground, there is a sit for 1/2 hour, with some intermittent guidance from the instructor, then a lecture, then a question and answer session. There are chairs available if sitting on a mat doesn't work for you. It is a Vipassana center as opposed to a Zen center.

The Point of Existence: Chapter 2

Sun, 11 Apr 2004 04:34:53 GMT

If I seem crabby lately, its because I'm reading a book full of sentences like this:

More concretely, we recognize in the experience of self-realization that to be ourselves is to be aware of ourselves as the presence of Being.

Yup. Any more concrete and you are talking about sidewalks. That sentence is right in the middle of a long section that uses the words "suchness" , "isness", and "thereness". I get the sense that the author knows he has 600 pages to fill and he's going to spread himself out and get comfortable. He also threw in the word "facticity".

I obviously still believe there is some insight to be gained here, or I would throw the book down the same crapper that I pitched my $20 into when I bought the thing. The insight in this chapter is the "fall into narcissism", restating once again the theory that our egos get in the way of enlightenment.

Two capacities of the self are particularly relevant to the development of narcissism as we understand it: The first is the capacity of the mind to form concepts and structures of concepts in response to experience. The second is the capicity of the self to identify with different asects of experience, particularly with images in the mind and with habitual emotinoal and physical states.

To me "forming concepts" means something like, when I see the color green, I don't really see it, I just have a concept in my mind of what green is. And "identify with different aspects of experience" is to hitch my wagon to a projected image : father, employee, patriot, swimmer, clown.

He goes on to say how healthy and normal it is to form these associations. However, at some point, something happens that calls it all into question or at least lets you view the self from a totally new perspective. My impression is that the book tries to teach you how to get there without having a near death experience.

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 16:20:01 GMT

“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life because of me will find it."

Matthew 10:37 -10:39

I understand it as follows:

I have an attachment to donuts. I think having a donut will bring me deep happiness and my desire for donuts prevents me from living in the now, or in the kingdom of heaven. This one is relatively easy to get past if you stare at the desire for donuts and see that it is a temporary situation that will blow by like a leaf in the wind.

Well, I also have an attachment to things like cable internet access. The desire for this or the fear of it being taken away prevents me from entering the kingdom of heaven. This is also temporary, a piece of tumbleweed that blows by in the wind and really has nothing to do with happiness. Fine. I can imagine getting down a spiritual path far enough where I can see the impermanence of my internet connection. not there yet! This is why Jesus says that a rich man getting into the kingdom of heaven is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

But then, Jesus tells us that things very close to our hearts, like children, our limbs, even our lives are impermanent. Yet we cling to them as if they will last forever and it is this clinging that prevents us from being true followers of Jesus. So, the instruction is not to abandon our kids to follow Jesus or sacrifice them, but to gain this perspective that they, like everything in this world is impermenant, to gain a perspective where we can watch our love and devotion to our children and see it like a cloud blowing by. But, oh what a cloud! That cloud is what our lives are made of and we should appreciate it, shower attention on it, celebrate it always. I predict that if we could really see things from that perspective, we would be in heaven.

A.H. Almaas

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 04:58:16 GMT

The Point of Existence by A.H. Almaas arrived yesterday. I think it is about getting past the surface manifestations of who we are to get at who we really are.

Yes, it could be like biting into a wad of wet newspaper. The first chapter certainly has that chalky newsprint taste, except it holds out the promise of a series of exercises contained in the book that supposedly will help me pull off this feat of self-realization, which has yet to be defined.

The book claims to be a fusion of spiritual explorations of the self with scientific psychological and philosophical explorations of the self.

It seems that we view reality through "egoic veils". As we cling to the surface definitions of who we are, we miss something deeper. In a sentence, I can't bare to explore a deeper self because it might mean losing cable internet service.

Sat, 03 Apr 2004 16:22:23 GMT

Like the white tail

of that November deer

God vanishes

-john cowan

RRRumble at RRRedeemer!

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 21:52:33 GMT

Now I can't say I never get invited out:

Come watch Jeff Warner, founder of Ultimate Strength Ministries (former professional boxer and WWF wrestler) perform incredible feats of strength with his bare hands, and attempt to destroy his previous brick-breaking record all three nights at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Fridley, MN.

But Wait...there's more! Joe Laurinaitis (former WWF wrestling icon, "The Animal" from the Legion of Doom Road Warriors) has recently teamed up with Ultimate Strength Ministries, and will be on stage with Jeff Warner all three nights as well. Come watch as these two men share not only their amazing physical strength but their powerful faith and amazing testimonies of surrender to the Lord.

Commodification of Irreverence

Sun, 28 Mar 2004 12:08:38 GMT

One of the reasons zen buddhism is no longer a full contact sport is that our culture has commodified irreverence. Irreverence is packaged and crammed down our throats every night. So, those who turn to buddhism or any other alternative, seeking refuge from the dominant culture are probably going to want it solemn and dour and without all the cackling laughter. The minute something in our culture gets held up as an object of seriousness and piousness, it is immediately ridiculed. We are really good at that and I celebrate it every day. One example that comes to mind is the tourist guy on the world trade center. I had a few days to take in the tragedy and then I was laughing myself silly at this.

So what do you do if you are looking for an alternative but the media has packaged the alternatives, when you scream the word "NOW" but find out it's just a CD that you can buy? You sit and find a quiet center and let the 10,000 things come to you instead of rushing out to meet them.

Zen Pranksters

Sat, 27 Mar 2004 16:32:18 GMT

We talked today about how when you read about zen, it is this boisterous, often hilarious practice with monks pushing one another off of chairs and messing with each other's minds, but in practice in so many places, it is this solemn undertaking done only by the terminally careful, so that it ends up being somewhat dead.

You find a monk in a field and ask "Where is Joe?" and he waves a wand back and forth a few times in front of your face and says nothing. Then you decide that this guy is nuts and you go to the next field and find a monk and ask him where Joe is and they guy says, "You were just talking to him"

I so want to try that, except with fireworks. BOOOM!

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 01:07:59 GMT

Notice

by Steve Kowit

This evening, the sturdy Levis
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was - a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick 
walked off a racquetball court, 
showered,
got into his street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed you who read this
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart
& kiss the earth & be joyful
& make much of your time
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not belive it will happen,
you too will one day be gone.
I, whose Levis ripped at the crotch 
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

Wed, 24 Mar 2004 03:12:37 GMT

Went to Clouds in Water zen center just now. It is right in downtown St. Paul. Someone stopped me at the door and asked me if I knew what to do in a 35 minute sit. I said, "Yeah, yeah I know what it's all about."

Except I didn't know.

Zen meditation is different than what I have practiced for the past few months, which is vipassana, also called insight meditation. So different that they pulled me aside for special attention. Zen meditation is breathing and focusing on the breath in order to quiet the mind.. Vipassana is breathing and paying attention to what floats by in order to quiet the mind.

One obvious difference is that Zen meditation has a lot of structure and rules. You hold your hands here. You sew your own robe. You focus here. You sit like this and walk like that. It was explained to me that rules make things easier because then you don't have to decide where to focus your breath or which direction to face.

When the instructor took me out in the hall and told me how things were, he had me sit for 10 minutes with the special posture and special focus on the spot one inch behind my navel. Fire crept into my back and knees, but I got an idea that this kind of practice could produce the kind of holy stupor that I crave. I have decided to leave this type of practice for after I get more practice at the insight meditation.

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 13:25:43 GMT

If you have an hour to spare, Speaking of Faith has a great interview with Karen Armstrong, who wrote The History of God. She also wrote a biography of the Buddha.

One valuable thing she said was that religions share the aspect of compassion, which encourages the practitioner to remove themselves from the throne and make someone else the center. I find that children force me into this role. This is one of the goals of meditiation as well: remove the self from the equation.

Sat, 13 Mar 2004 20:39:36 GMT

Most of the stuff on meditation and Jesus here is lifted straight out of this book, Taking Jesus Seriously- Buddhist Meditation for Christians. The author of which is John Cowan, who teaches my class and who is a priest at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Sunfish Lake, MN.

Anyway, I hear that the Archbishop of Canterbury is reading the book now. He should start a blog so we can all find out how he likes it.

Young Wine is not poured in old wineskins or they might break and aged wine is not poured into new wineskins or it might spoil. (Matt. 9-17) His followers tried to pour his wine into some old wineskins, and the old wineskins of Judaism, Greek Philosophy and Roman organizational principles spoiled the new wine of the reign of God. Jesus's very own relatives found his message so radical that they thought he was out of his mind. His wine had to be changed for the sake of the normal palate.

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:25:05 GMT

"When an unclean spirit leaves a person it wanders through waterless places searching for a resting place. When it doesn't find one, it says, 'I will go back to the home I left'. It then returns, and finds it swept and refurbished. Next, it goes out and brings back seven other spirits more vile than itself, who enter and settle in there. So that person ends up worse off than when he or she started"

-Jesus Q11:24

According to: http://www.livius.org/q/q-source/q1.htm

Q is the name used by scholars to describe a lost source on Jesus' teachings. (The letter is randomly chosen.) It can be reconstructed from the gospels of Matthew and Luke, which are based on two earlier sources: the gospel of Mark and Q. Stated differently, Q is by definition the material that Luke and Matthew have in common that is not dependent on Mark.

Renounce and Enjoy

Tue, 02 Mar 2004 15:21:24 GMT

I went to the Common Ground meditation center again Sunday night. The lecture was on renunciation. The practice of renunciation starts with observing your craving. I crave donuts, sometimes to the exclusion of all other thought. I also crave that the other assholes on the road get out of my way. In this practice I would watch my craving for donuts or green lights and realize three things:

One is that the craving is a burning thing ( and it makes a fiery ring). This is suffering.
Another is that if you observe it for a while, the craving passes even if you don't meet it.
Third, fulfillment of desire does not bring lasting happiness. It is the promise that is never kept.

For me, the craving for donuts is easy to pick out as a problem. I am not saying it is easy to resist the craving for donuts or not feel the urge to jump out of my car and attack another driver. My problem with this practice comes when I crave a clean kitchen floor or I crave to be a better employee, father, citizen, steward. In strict Buddhism, that kind of craving is also a problem. Craving positive things also causes suffering brought on by the delusion that I will have lasting happiness if, for example, I lose 10 pounds. BUT... I am a householder and the best I can do is observe these cravings for things to be better while I act on them.

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:11:05 GMT

Tried out Common Ground Meditation Center last night. They have a Sunday night sitting group, which is a group meditation and a lecture. I got a lot out of it. I might have the difference between Christian meditation and Buddhist meditation:

During the meditation, I was kind of bothered that I might disturb the room if I sneezed. If I was going to be "successful" at this, I wouldn't give a crap. In the Buddhist approach, I would just sneeze and watch the guy in front of me wipe my snots off of the back of his neck, observing my embarrassment from a distance, detaching myself from it, keeping happy, saying, "This is how it is right now and I am happy about it. The focus is on staying "happy" always. The Christian approach to the sneeze problem would be similar in that I would watch my desire not to sneeze and watch my embarrassment about sneezing, but different in that I would accept the embarrassment while observing it, perhaps even going so far as to cover my mouth when I sneezed. The Buddhist goal is to live now and remain happy about it. The Christian goal is to live now and accept the emotion that comes out of the situation. Obviously, Buddhists get angry, but they would probably view experiencing anger as falling off the wagon in some way. Both philosophies warn not to waste your time and energy wishing things were different, but with Buddhism you are supposed to always be happy.

Wed, 18 Feb 2004 12:29:30 GMT

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 00:29:58 GMT

I sat on a park bench for an hour this morning and meditated. The temp was hovering at about zero. I was dressed warmly, but the air slowly scalded my face and legs. I had a very tough time with meditation this morning, not so much because of the cold but because I was really wide awake. My brain kept throwing to-do lists at me and after a while started throwing plots for great sci-fi short stories at me. The plot of one was of a guy who gets ahold of a biofeedback device. A simple little thermometer that clips on to the end of his finger and tells him his skin temperature. After a few weeks of experimenting he finds he can warm his fingers with his mind and do things like heat one finger up to 150 degrees while the one next to it is 50 degrees. He eventually takes it to far and cooks one of his fingers until his knuckle pops like a microwaved egg.

One trick to meditation is not to be frustrated when you find yourself wandering, but to just say, "oh, here I am again in science fiction land" and go back to watching the breath. I then realized it's kind of like wind-surfing where you are cruising along for a while and then you fall off. You gotta recognize the falls as part of the game and get back on. Going back to the breath is like getting back on the board.

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 13:33:00 GMT

I asked a couple of questions of Fr. John Cowan, teacher of meditation and author of Taking Jesus Seriously: Buddhist Meditation for Christians:

My Question:

I sometimes meditate outside in the cold, in a hotel lobby, in the grocery store parking lot or walking to my car. I seem to be able to observe my automatic responses much better when I am surrounded by distractions. I go outside in cold weather and sit on a bench and just get fascinated with the difference between suffering and pain. (pain comes when your nose turns
black and falls off, but suffering comes when you prefer it stays on)

The trouble comes when I practice without distractions. In the
prescribed fashion, I have a spot I go to where I am uninterrupted and while I sometimes have good sessions there, I more often find myself literally floating around the room upside down with just static in my brain. Aside from he occasional nose itch, there is nothing to anchor me. Am I avoiding the hard work by seeking out distractions and working with them? I really have some interesting insights when sitting in a hotel lobby, watching myself worry if the bellhop is going to throw me out.

His Answer:

I sincerely hope you are not "literally" floating upside down.

You say there is nothing to anchor you? How about the breath? If you are like me I keep forgetting the importance of going back to it. If you can focus on the breath that may solve this. If not maybe sitting in a room without distraction is not your cup of tea. It's cold outside. In your experiments please do not freeze your nose off. Or get arrested. If you do, don't tell them you know me or that I told you to do that. However, the idea was to be able to watch the mind during ordinary life, so the sitting in the quiet room should be second to what you seem to be able to do.

My Question:

You refer twice in the book to meditation going awry. Towards the beginning: "If you have trouble in life, be careful that you are not setting yourself up to be a doormat.." (not exact words) and towards the end: "Delusions can be powerful and tricky...." How can I know the difference? Of course I have trouble with life. How can I tell if the "path" is leading me down a rathole of delusion? can you point me to something that defines these hazards a little more?

His Answer:

Are you able to live and enjoy ordinary life? If not that would be a hint that something is problematic. The point of the exercise is to become aware of thoughts and feelings and outside reality from a quiet place inside. If that is the direction it is going that is the direction I am pointing. One guy's definition of nirvana is loving awareness of samsara. The kingdom of heaven is loving awareness of the kingdom of this earth. I suppose there are all kinds of delusions but the delusion I most fear for others is that they are in some special place. The Buddha describes the good meditator as being aware of the breath and of the body as body and the mind as mind.

Samsara seems to be the hindu word for the broken and ever changing material world.

For me, the term "special place" is the feeling that you are escaping through meditation to somewhere where the air is thin and no evil dare encroach.

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 20:17:22 GMT

I looked back through the readings for my class and found some things that spoke to me out of the class I just finished:

Jesus said,

"Whoever does not accept God's imperil rule the way a child would, certainly won't set foot in God's domain"

In chapter 3, this teacher says,

" The reason that Jesus had a bias for children is not because they are innocent even though some of them are. It is not because they are so kind. Lord knows many are not kind at all. It is not that they do good. Even the best of them doesn't do much to improve the world. But they see the world that is there, without delusion. They experience it directly and not through some intermediary idea.

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 23:43:52 GMT

Something I struggle with in thinking about religion or politics or lifestyle is that whenever I get a new insight, or to be more truthful, whenever I start believing something different, I can't share the possibility of being right with anyone. If someone else is right, then I must be wrong. If I am right, which I most certaintly am, then all those other freaks must be wrong. So, it gets under my skin when there are millions of people happily believing something that I find stupid. Part of me automatically goes to work figuring out how to show them the error of their ways, or at the very least least insult them. Except, when I meditate, I can watch that part of me at work and it will just amuse me and relax me. So that is why all of you should meditate. See? There I go again.

Sat, 03 Jan 2004 17:10:14 GMT

I meditation class we are supposed to be concentrating on "be empty, be now" meaning, live in the present. So, during meditation this morning, I had this horrifying vision of the future as a dark squashed place devoid of sensation where we spend most of our waking moments. And in the same moment, I observed my own brain wanting to always be living in the future, which in my vision was pretty close to hell. Also, in our class, we are supposed to try and gaze with loving acceptance on our thoughts and feelings, on our reactions to the world, and so I tried that and felt a wave of respect and sympathy for my brain always wanting to live in the future.

Even though the future is a featureless place devoid of dimension and color, our brave brains or thoughts want to rush there and serve as an advance guard for the flesh. We should commend these little agents, with their backpacks and spy gear as they live so much of their existence in the future. They deserve medals. They deserve our loving attention, especially when we meditate. We should try to keep them in our loving gaze as long as possible and not dismiss them with some epithet like "worrying" or "planning" as if that is a great evil. Obviously, these little friends can't be in the drivers seat all the time, or we would always live in the future instead of enjoying the present and we would miss the kingdom of heaven which is laid out before us right now on the earth.

Mary is usually blue

Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:27:22 GMT

After the Atrium today, Maggie, Frank and I toured the various nativity scenes in the undercroft of the Basilica. Maggie said, "There's Mary!" and turned to me and said, "she's usually blue" and I looked around and it was true. Just about every Mary was wearing something blue. Turns out it signifies her purity. I had no idea.

Kate volunteers as a teacher in the Atrium and I was exclaiming to another Atrium parent how neat it was that the kids are learning all this stuff that I never knew and she says, "Well, you know, Kate is a gifted teacher. "

Meditation and Mary Magdalen

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 02:08:00 GMT

Our instructor, Father John Cowan, has been teaching Buddhist Meditation for Christians for a while and searching for a Christian teaching that warns against giving undue importance to the physical world supports the Buddhist practice of observing "the wheel of life" and our reaction to it from a distance and he found it in the Gospel of Mary Magdalen:

Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature.

There is an interesting lecture by Dr. Stephan Hoeller on the Gospel of Mary. (Beware: It is almost 1.5 hours and he takes about 20 minutes to begin, but he offers some good points that Father Cowan was hitting yesterday, that being born into this world is kind of a sacrifice of wholeness. And we spend our lives clinging to life, worshipping the flesh.

Even when we embrace practices that are supposed to give us a break from the focus on the flesh, we hope for the side effects of longer life, clarity of thought. We do yoga for improved muscle tone! We meditate for greater clarity of mind, so we can get ahead. Christians attend faith healings in hopes of seeing someone's goiter disappear. The point is detachment from the wheel of life, but we turn these things around so they focus us more on the wheel of life.

I have been aware of this as I meditate. The monkey wants results! Every two seconds, the monkey is saying. When can I use this power to subjugate my enemies?

One of the goals of meditation is freedom from automatic responses to the material world, and this is done by first becoming aware of your automatic responses and then realizing that the pain of the world is secondary to the spirit.

And the gospel of Mary seems to support this:

There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called 'sin.'

Somehow they got from this statement to the following statement:

the Savior argues, in effect, that sin is not a moral category, but a cosmological one; it is due to the improper mixing of the material and the spiritual.

and I am not clear exactly how, except that "adultry" here doesn't mean sleeping with someone's life, but the mixing of things that don't belong together, as in adulterated milk. I guess that makes sense. It is wrong to adulterate the spirit with considerations of the material world.

This problem is with us all, obviously, but it gets comical when when you are so consumed by the wheel of life that you think to pull off a really notable miracle, Jesus actually has to physically rise from the dead! ( ..and feed on the flesh of the living?) "

contemplatin' the Celto-Germanic mind

Sun, 02 Nov 2003 20:57:17 GMT

Perhaps the Mediterranean mind is linear. Emotions from dark to bright all co-exist in one long, colorful spectrum. Perhaps that culture teaches children how to express anger and pain and sorrow and they grow up with a nice continuum of emotion.

The Nordic mind, on the other hand, has a schism between the dark and light. Non-linear. Counting to ten looks like "1,2,3, 4, ..umm the square- root of negative 1, 10. " The shadow is lurking always, but doesn't co-exist with the daylight self. So we have Hansel and Gretel, Jeckle and Hyde, James Joyce, etc.

The Germans, perhaps, have bravely taken ownership of this shadow self and based their culture on the dynamic between the shadow and the light.

My only evidence for this is the word "schadenfreude" which translated literally means "damage-joy" but it really means taking pleasure in the troubles of others. A recent slate article has an example:

Pardon my schadenfreude, but Joe Malone's harping on Paul Cellucci's $700,000 personal credit card debt is a lot of fun.

But they don't get it exactly right. In this country, it's always used to say you are enjoying the troubles of your enemies. I don't think that's what it really means. I have a feeling it's darker than that. I mean, who doesn't enjoy the trouble of their enemies? Why do we need a hitched-together German word to describe that feeling? I believe it's a German attempt to give words to the schism between our daylight selves and our shadow selves.

And it is scaryfunny that Americans take a word like that and toss out the shadowy part and both use it wrong and feel smart while doing so. Scary because we find the true meaning of that word unspeakable.

Scary because if we can blame WWII on the schism I speak of, and a culture that at least tried to come up with words for that schism so they could talk to their Jungian analysts about it couldn't help themselves from introducing the rest of the world to their shadows, then what does it say about a culture that completely denies the existence of their shadows?