Church of the Churchless

My quest for the meaninglessness of life

I've spent most of my 58 years looking for the meaning of life. That was easy.

I've found lots of meanings in religion, family, friends, jobs, volunteer work, books, causes, charity, martial arts, television, nature, food, sex—you name it, I've probably found some sort of meaning in it.

But as I said before, and before that, I'm now on a quest for meaninglessness. That's tough. Everywhere I turn, there's meanings staring me in the face. And on one level I want them. I'm addicted to meaningfulness. It's what makes life, well, meaningful.

However, like James Park said in his intriguing, but not quite right on for me, cybersermon on "Looking for the Meaning of Life," there's a residual hollowness in all the meanings—even spiritual or religious—with which we desperately try to fill the perceived emptiness in our lives.

When we seek to make our own lives "meaningful", we might be struggling with two different sorts of meaninglessness. We can create many kinds of relative meanings within the assumed areas of meaningful life: money, achievement, love, marriage, children, enjoyment, & religion.

But even when we have fulfilled such meanings, we might still feel an ultimate hollowness, a spiritual or existential meaninglessness. This deeper meaninglessness is not overcome by any of the relative meanings we are able to create or achieve. Ultimate meaning comes only as a gift —independent of whatever relative meanings we can achieve.

Basically, I don't disagree. Park's endpoint, though, is "the removal of existential meaninglessness, not the attainment of any specific meanings." Myself, I'm drawn toward that very existential meaninglessness.

I guess you could call that my new meaning in life. Which, logically, sort of undermines the quest for meaninglessness.

But, hey, complete consistency isn't my goal. When you're trying to go beyond meanings, you've got to expect that some (or a lot) of paradox and confusion will pop up along the way.

Here's what isn't confusing to me: when you pull on an ultimate meaning thread, trying to figure out what the end is attached to, it always comes back loose in your hand.

This isn't true of relative meanings. They may be circular—this depends on that which depends on something else—but at least you have a sense of firm connectivity.

Yesterday my daughter gave birth to her first child, Evelyn Elizabeth Vos, reportedly the absolutely cutest baby that has ever existed in the history of Earth (I believe my daughter, even without having seen any photos yet).

I am the father of Celeste; she is the mother of Evelyn; and so the chain of meaningful relationships goes, without end (since anyone without a relationship to another human doesn't exist).

This is the sort of "emptiness" Buddhists speak of —an interdependence in which everything is connected.

There's another sort of emptiness though, the ultimate metaphysical, philosophical, scientific, spiritual, or mystical variety (ultimate truth-seeking comes in quite a few flavors).

Even when it seems that you've come to a pinnacle of understanding, a Mystery void lies beyond.

"God created the heavens and the earth." Who created God?

"Superstrings form the structure of time and space." What forms superstrings?

"It's possible to experience union with the oneness of existence." How would you ever know it?

Go ahead, try to imagine any meaningful statement about ultimate reality, or any meaningful experience of it, without someone (like me) being able to say, "And behind that is…what?"

The question mark points to the meaninglessness that lies just beyond the furthest extent of human meanings. It isn't to be feared. It's real. And it's not going away.

Ever.

So why not embrace it? Of course, that's impossible. But we can turn in its direction, setting our compass heading for Meaningless Mystery, experiencing with wide-eyed interest the scenery along the way, knowing that the ultimate destination won't ever be reached.

It's funny. The past three posts now, I've started off intending to say something that I never get to. Maybe next time. Maybe not.

Really meaningful meaning, I seem to be learning, is always around the next bend. Since I never catch up to it, I'm more comfortable seeing it as "meaninglessness" now.

And that's become the most meaningful thing to me.

Boundless existence—the backdrop to life’s meaning

Boundless existence. Can you sense it? Can you think about it? Can you relate to it?

No, no, and no. So says Milton K. Munitz in his provocative book, "Does Life Have a Meaning?" I thoroughly enjoyed this short (114 page) exploration of one of the deepest questions we all struggle to answer.

This was the last book Munitz, a distinguished emeritus professor of philosophy, wrote before he died. It's profoundly philosophical, but there's as much of Munitz, the man, between the covers as Munitz the academic philosopher.

It's obvious that he wrestled with the mystery of existence throughout most of his life. I'd read an earlier book of his on that very subject. I liked "Does Life Has a Meaning?" more, because here Munitz persuasively describes how "existents" like you and me relate to boundless "existence."

Short answer: in no way at all. Boundless existence has nothing to do with the things that exist within it—existents.

The awareness of Boundless Existence consists in dwelling on the basic fact that Boundless Existence is totally without properties, that it is utterly unintelligible, that it lacks any materials or powers of its own, that it does not have any concern or interest of one sort or another, conscious or otherwise, that might affect positively or negatively, or contribute in any way to, the character and achievability of various types of meanings in the lives of human existents.

The consequence for our lives are the consequences of having this awareness of the unique "character" of Boundless Existence—the fact that it has no character or properties of its own! It is this realization that is of great import-ance to us.

That passage may sound intellectual. Actually, what Munitz is gesturing toward is anything but. It's the least intellectual no-thing in existence. Because there's no way you can wrap your mind, your emotions, your senses, or any other faculty around Boundless Existence.

How could you? It's boundless. The closest we can come to it is through an awareness of profound wonder that existence exists. Boundless existence is simply That. There's no What to it—none at all.

To become aware of Boundless Existence calls for entering a different mode of experience. It is not reached by a leap of faith. Nor does it consist in a type of access that affords a special source of knowledge It is simply a wholly unique mode of awareness that reveals a different level of Reality from that which comes from observation and the use of concepts of any sort.

I can't tell whether Munitz' awareness of Boundless Existence is anything like my own. However, I resonate with his words—which point toward a empty wordlessness that is utterly unlike any experience we could have of this world, or any other world.

I've looked into that void and it has terrified me. I called it "non-existence," but I might as well have termed it Boundless Existence. Each is a nothingness that has no contact with the something that I am, and hope to continue to be.

Since it is devoid of all properties, Boundless Existence is another way of interpreting and sanctioning the use of the concept of "Nothing."

In just about every mystical tradition that I'm aware of, that's the final terminus of the spiritual path: Nothing. The ultimate beyond—formless, nameless, boundless, timeless, everything-and-anything-less.

You reach the right hand of God, you embrace Buddha nature, you enjoy the unveiled visage of Allah, you achieve union with divine light and sound. And yet…beyond all that, is That.

Boundless existence. The floor upon which everything else rests, yet never is sensed in any fashion (because then it'd just be another thing). Like Munitz, I often feel that I'm aware of it.

But never when I try to be. It's like a unseen presence that flits away on any attempt at closer inspection. Ah, there! The lightest possible grasp is the only way to feel that you're coming close to getting a grip on it.

There's a lot more to say about this unsayable awareness. I might give it a go in another post or two. For now I'll end with how Munitz answers his question: Does life have a meaning?

No. There isn't a meaning.

At the very beginning of this book, I quoted the remark Wittgenstein makes in his Tractatus that "the solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem."

…The notion of the meaning to life—that it is in some way singular, ultimate, or all-encompassing—is a mirage and wholly gratuitous.

…There are meanings of one sort or another in every life of every human existent.

…The awareness of Boundless Existence as a dimension of Reality ("the world") in which we live, has its own distinctive consequence in making the problem of life vanish.

…The problem vanishes insofar as one has an awareness of the situation of the lives of individual human existents "in" Boundless Existence, and that since Boundless Existence is Nothing, Emptiness, then in this respect life has no meaning either.

But stop! Don't commit suicide! Wait for Munitz' final conclusion. It brings back meaning into life.

Because it's within our power to find meaning wherever and however we choose. In typing a blog post. In drinking a glass of wine. In watching an episode of "Dancing With the Stars." All of which I'm either experiencing at this moment, or just about to.

Boundless Existence, the ultimately ultimate reality, doesn't give a rip. There's no meaning in Boundless Existence because there is nothing at all in Boundless Existence. That's why it's boundless. And existence.

Munitz says, and I agree with him, that our lives are meaningful in whatever fashion we make them. You won't find the meaning of life "in some preassigned cosmic or divine source and authority."

Interactions with other existents—people, places, things, pets, nature, whatever—are what provides meaning for us. We can't interact with Boundless Existence, which has nothing in common with what is commonly called "God."

So it's up to us. Entirely.

Munitz cautions against disengaging from everyday life and withdrawing "into a focused, exclusive, meditative absorption into the wholly featureless character of Boundless Existence."

Rather, he says, we should let an intensified awareness of Boundless Existence (it's "emptiness") serve as the backdrop for our various worldly interactions.

Interestingly, the only quasi-spiritual quotation in his book, so far as I recall, is this quotation from the Zen Patriarch Hui-Neng in a footnote:

"The capacity of mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness.

If you do you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars, and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and grasses, bad men and good men, bad things and good things, heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness.

The emptiness of human nature is also like this."

Beneath buckets of thought, a formless thinking pool

Taoism shuns thoughts, while adoring thinking. Flowing along further with Thomas Cleary’s Taoist Meditation, a focus of my previous post, here’s some additional Taoist sentiments.

Thinking about the Way is correct; thinking about things is error. The Way is inherent in us; when you think about the Way inherent within us, thinking itself is the Way…Thinking is a door of entry into the Way, whereas thoughts are roots of obstruction of the Way.

“I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. As noted before, Descartes had this much right. If he’d stopped with his Meditations at this point in his philosophizing, who could argue with him?

Thinking, in the Taoist (and Cartesian) sense of consciousness without thoughts, is the root of who we are. Prior to a thought is…something. Undefined, murky, elusive, yet marvelously aware.

The Great Way is formless; the Universe is the Way with form…There is nothing in the world but one mind. Stirring thoughts create all objects. If thoughts are not produced, objects are spontaneously gone. When you thoroughly examine stirring thoughts, thoughts too are empty and silent. So we know there is nothing lost when deluded and nothing gained when enlightened, because the true mind not dwelling on anything neither increases nor decreases.

I spend some meditation time every day looking into a well. A deep well. Could even be a bottomless well. Not only that, very possibly it has no sides either. Can’t be sure. Haven’t plumbed its depths yet, nor its circumference.

Closing my eyes, darkness. Stopping thoughts (even for a moment), emptiness. And yet, there’s a thinking-rope that connects it all: the depths, the thoughts, the awareness.

Out of the dark pool of consciousness comes a thought. It jumps into a bucket of cognition and is raised to the surface, where I peruse it. Bucket after bucket, thought after thought, attention stays concentrated on what emerges from the mysterious dark pool.

Our real nature is spiritual and most subtle; when thoughts stir it flies off, invisible. If you want to stabilize it, you must look into the source…Just let there be uncovered openness above the stabilized mind and groundless vastness below the stabilized mind. Old habits dissolve, new habits are not created; not bound or obstructed by anything, you get out of the net of the world.

Not so easy to do as to say, though. That uncovered openness and groundless vastness is so damn unsettling. I’m used to occupying myself with a discrete job: hauling up the buckets, then lowering them again to pick up another interesting thought.

When I try to slippery slide my way straight down the thinking rope, I get close to the formless pool. Dipping my toe in feels good. Further submerged, even better. But sinking totally below the surface…difficult to do. Some part of me keeps getting caught on a rising thought bucket. Up I go again.

Better remind myself of the Taoist diving instructions.

As soon as you notice a thought arise, immediately extinguish it; arrest thoughts as they arise, in order to make your mind peaceful and quiet.

Next, even though you may not obviously have any obsessions, still floating, wandering, random thoughts are also to be extinguished.

Work diligently day and night, never giving up for a moment; but only extinguish the stirring mind, do not extinguish the shining mind.

Disappear into the empty mind; do not disappear into the possessive mind.

Do not dwell on any thing and the mind will be stable.

This method is mysterious, with benefits that are very profound. Unless you already have affinity for the Way and have undivided faith in it, you cannot really appreciate it.

Religion asks us to have faith in something. Taoist faith, mystical faith, spiritual faith—this is faith in nothing. Which could turn out to be everything. But until all the somethings go, the nothing that could be everything hides around the thing-corner.

Views of person and self are certainly thoughts, but so are views of attachment to religion, and these must be eliminated too.

…Noncontrivance means not musing or mulling. Though you may act in the midst of love, desire, anger, accumulation, gain, and loss, be always uncontrived.

Even when involved in things, be always unconcerned.

If you concentrate totally, moreover, clarify your mind and purify your will, nourish your energy and make your spirit complete, you will drift into the land of freedom and enter the village of nothing-whatsoever.

…It is all a matter of making space the place you store your mind, using abstruse silence as the place you rest your spirit.

There’s plenty of room in the cosmos’ maxi-storage center. They say it’s easy to find. Just scoot straight down the thinking rope. When you reach the end, let go. And do what comes naturally.

In quiet sitting, whether or not there is a specific process, you should not cling to form…This is called drawing a snake with legs on it; you will bring trouble on yourself.

When we look into the source of this problem, we find it can be attributed to one’s own fixation, inflexibility, and habituation to biased views.

…Practicing the Way is cultivating and nurturing the Way of nature, the natural course.

Sounds easy. Just erase those legs on the snake.

When nothing is something: God

In my last post, I focused on a plagiarized passage that I found in a book published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas. What’s more interesting and significant than the plagiarism, though, is what this misquoted quotation from W.T. Stace points toward:

Nothing. Which he, along with many other mystics and mystically inclined writers, equates with God.

Even the plagiarist, J.R. Puri, seems to agree. For after he steals Stace’s words to speak of a state of pure consciousness that has no empirical content other than itself, consciousness aware of consciousness, Puri says:

And this self-realization is often eventually spoken of as God-realization.

In “Mysticism and Philosophy” Stace himself says this after the passage that I quoted previously:

Since the experience has no content, it is often spoken of by the mystics as the Void or as nothingness; but also as the One, and as the Infinite. That there are in it no particular existences is the same as saying that there are no distinctions in it, or that it is an undifferentiated unity. Since there is no multiplicity in it, it is the One. And that there are no distinctions in it or outside it means that there are no boundary lines in it between anything and anything. It is therefore the boundless or the infinite.

The paradox is that there should be a positive experience which has no positive content — an experience which is both something and nothing.

In Robert K.C. Forman’s book about Meister Eckhart that contains the plagiarized passage, Forman says that for Eckhart the birth of God’s “son” within the soul is a Birth of emptiness within. Eckhart says:

The soul should give Birth to nothing inside herself, if she wishes to be the child of God in whom God’s Son shall be born—in her nothing should be born.

More Eckhart on the same theme:

It appeared to a man as in a dream—it was a waking dream—that he became pregnant with Nothing like a woman with child, and in that Nothing God was born, He was the fruit of nothing. God was born in the Nothing. Therefore he says: “He arose from the ground with open eyes, seeing nothing.”

Below Forman summarizes Eckhart’s core mystic thesis that nothing needs to be done to realize God; what is needful is to undo one’s preoccupation with things and thoughts.

As we have seen, for Eckhart God shares a ground with the soul’s ground, and He has so shared it since man’s preexistence. But in “ordinary” experience, in which man is attached to various cognitive objects, the soul attends to the powers and through them to the external world.

As a result, his thoughts bubble incessantly, and what he perceives as “his” needs enthrall his attention. Activities cover over this place “like a mist over the sun.” By looking in the wrong direction, outward instead of within, the religious “overlooks” this “place” within himself, and hence attends not to God but to the creaturely.

…God is the nothing, is in the nothing, and it is God who is “born” when one is “pregnant” with nothing.

Pretty darn simple. And scientific, the way I look at it. The great mysteries that science has not yet been able to fathom are existence, life, and consciousness. The roots and nature of each are hidden in the depths of…who knows? For we human would-be mystery-unravelers are conscious, existent, and alive.

We’re trying to unravel what we are, a snake swallowing its own tail proposition.

So, as I mentioned before, for many years I’ve enjoyed the plagiarized passage in Puri’s book because it points to the ultimate mystery: me. And you. Each of us is a bit of the grand cosmic Mystery that we’re trying to understand.

It makes sense that we start with what we’re already in direct contact with, existent living consciousness, rather than some distant God. And if unity is at the root of it all, then “us” is going to be the same as “cosmos” anyway.

What bothers me about J.R. Puri, apart from his plagiarizing, is that he shies away from the implications of Stace’s statement that consciousness empty of empirical content is identical with the One—God.

His devotion to the RSSB teachings, which emphasize the necessity of a guru for god-realization, causes him to say a few pages later:

The real object of human love must be the Perfect, the Absolute. And it is through such love that salvation can be attained… But—and it is a crucial but—the all-pervasive, formless entity of God cannot be the object on which our feelings can be fixed or attached.

And what cannot be within the range of “feeling” cannot be within the scope of love. Indeed, for such an entity we cannot be sure even of His existence, let alone His love or worship.

…The master [guru] is the manifest form of the Lord, and it is the manifest form that can be the object of love. And if God can only be realized through love, the master is an indispensable link for God-realization.

Huh? On page 59 Puri said that the self-realization of pure consciousness is equivalent to God-realization. That is, the ultimate reality often called “God” is realized by achieving a state of inner emptiness in which nothing is present but the ground of being—the One.

Yet on page 90 he says that emotional attachment to a particular form of God, the guru, is essential. Actually, Eckhart and many other introvertive mystics (such as Plotinus) taught that attachment to material or mental forms is not only inessential for higher understanding, but an insurmountable hurdle.

A main reason I’ve soured on the RSSB approach to meditation is that it takes such a roundabout route. The meditator’s goal is to unite his or her consciousness with the formless One. But getting there supposedly is facilitated by filling one’s mind with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and imaginings of the guru’s physical form.

That never made much sense to me. Now it makes no sense at all. I’m too old to take roundabout detours. I very much want to know ultimate reality (assuming it is knowable). The shortest and quickest likely way—that’s for me.

I often think about the very first sentence in my book about Plotinus, “Return to the One.” This line flowed easily from my typing fingertips. Maybe I should have stopped right there and not written another word.

If something has been lost and you’re not sure where to look for it, there’s good reason to start searching right where you are rather than far afield.

Puri would have us look for our self in the guru’s mind and body. I’m with Stace, Eckhart, Forman, and Plotinus: the One will be realized by becoming the one we truly are, not someone else.

Wu is the way

Yesterday Laurel and I enjoyed a pleasant coffee house conversation with David, a fellow churchless Salem resident who happened upon this blog. He emailed me a while back and we finally got together to chat about matters both mystical and material.

During deep “what’s it all about” talks like the one we had, I find it as interesting to hear what comes out of my mouth as what others have to say. Sometimes I spout out sentiments that surprise me, because if someone else were to utter them, I’d be inclined to think claptrap.

For example, I told David and Laurel, “More and more I’m wondering if there is any meaning-of-life problem that needs to be solved. Maybe my only problem is that I keep thinking there is a problem.”

As soon as those words left my lips I heard New Age platitude! echoing in my self-critical brain. Well, it could have just been the triple latte talking. Nonetheless, I do often say to myself, “Wu is the way.”

Wu-wei is the Taoist term for effortless doing. For most of us, acting takes action. But the Taoist ideal is wei-wu-wei: action without action (“wu” is a negative; “wei” means act or do).

David shared some fascinating stories about his thirty-odd years of spiritual journeying. He’s bounced back and forth between doing the Eastern thing, then the Western thing. Mystical experiences have come his way whichever side of the philosophical continental divide he was on.

Almost always, he said, those experiences were separate from the teachings he was studying or involved with at the moment. Something universal seemed to be what touched him, not a particularized manifestation of higher reality: Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Jehovah, or whatever.

So now David is convinced that dogmas and theologies, as well as the organizations that promulgate them, stand between us and whatever truth may lie beyond the physical. These aren’t roads to reality; they’re barriers.

Remove all that and you’re left with just the Wu Way—the non-existent path that appears before you when there is nowhere else to go.

I think I’m on it right now. And when I stop thinking that, I’ll really be on it.

The key non-travel tip, according to wiser minds than my own, is keeping to the Wu Way when there is both something to do and nothing to do. I mean, it’s a lot easier to do nothing when you’re motionless than when you’re moving.

I’ve revealed that there isn’t much to reveal about my mystical experiences. However, if I dredge my memory back to when I was nine or ten, I can come up with a comic book-related story about what, if I stretch the definition of “mystical experience” to bursting, perhaps could qualify.

At an early age I had a vast comic book collection. That’s mostly what I spent my allowance on each week: those marvelous 10 cent windows into other worlds.

At my mother’s urging, I sold boxes and boxes of my comics for $50 (which now certainly would be worth hugely more), and bought, at my mother’s urging, a Civil War era rolltop desk. So the comics are gone now. All gone.

Except for a few memories. The most distinct is of a page that showed a band of travelers in a long-forgotten Earth era standing on the shore of an sea that stretches beyond the horizon. I can’t recall what sort of adventure they were on, but it was vitally important that they cross the sea.

Without a boat, how? They’re perplexed. Until one of them says, “The water is vanishingly near freezing. Any sort of disturbance will change it to another state.” He picks up a stone from the beach. Throws it into the water.

And, flash, the sea changes to ice. I can still see the frozen ripples radiating out until there was ice from beach to horizon. Then, dressed in their animal skins, the adventurers walk out onto the frozen surface.

D.T. Suzuki relates the story of a Zen adept:

My first koan was ‘Wu’. Whenever a thought was stirred in my mind, I lost no time in keeping it down, and my consciousness was like a cake of solid ice, pure and smooth, serene and undisturbed.

And that of another:

I was returning from an out-of-town trip and was about to climb a flight of stone steps, when the solid ice that had been clogging my brain for so long unexpectedly melted away, and I forgot that I was walking on the roadway.

Who also said, about his state before that experience:

My mental condition then was like the reflection of the moon penetrating the depths of a running stream the surface of which was in rapid motion, while the moon itself retained its perfect shape and serenity in spite of the commotion of the water.

There’s Wu in all of this, I’m sure of it. It’s just so damn difficult to discern that nothing. The more I look for it, the less evident it is. Eventually, I suspect, it’s going to dawn on me that I should just stay put and let that S.O.B. come to me.

God wants to be forsaken

My churchlessness and agnosticism is adored by God. Yes, God looks upon me with more favor than all those worshipful Christians, Muslims, Jews and other religious types.

For God wants to be forsaken. Happy to oblige, my friend. It’s a pleasure to comply with the divine will.

I learned about what God wants from Meister Eckhart, the German theologian and mystic. He’s got some excellent doctrinal credentials, chief among them being accused of heresy by Pope John XXII.

You know that a Catholic is pointing toward the truth when he’s branded a heretic. So we need to take seriously the advice Eckhart proffered in one of his sermons.

Of course, it sounds astonishing to say that the soul should forsake God, but I assert that it is more important for the soul to forsake God to attain perfection than it is for the soul to forsake creatures, or all will be lost.

The soul must exist in a free nothingness. That we should forsake God is altogether what God intends, for as long as the soul has God, knows God, and is aware of God, she is far from God.

Now, it isn’t easy to understand Eckhart. He recognized that himself, concluding another sermon in this fashion.

Whoever has understood this sermon, I wish them well. Had no one been here, I would still have had to preach it to this collecting-box. There are some poor folk who return home and say, “I wish to sit down, to eat my bread and to serve God.” But I say by the eternal truth that these people shall remain in error and can never attain what those others attain who follow God in poverty and in exile. Amen.

D.T. Suzuki, a teacher of Zen, explains that for Eckhart “God” and “Godhead” are “as different as earth is from heaven.” Godhead is empty of everything that can be known, perceived, understood, comprehended. So, says Suzuki, to Eckhart pure nothing “is the highest point at which God can work in us as he pleases.”

With him God is still a something as long as there is any trace of movement or work or of doing something. When we come to the Godhead, we for the first time find that it is the unmoved, a nothing where there is no path to reach. It is absolute nothingness; therefore it is the ground of being from whence all beings come.

If this isn’t unclear enough, here are some additional Meister Eckhart quotations that have the delicious effect of overturning our unduly stable metaphysical apple cart.

But I say that if someone perceives something in God and gives it a name, then that is not God. God is above names and nature.

Taking leave of God for the sake of God is the greatest act of renunciation that someone can make.

Therefore we ask God to free us from “God” so that we may be able to grasp and eternally enjoy truth where the highest angels, the fly and the human soul are all one—in that place where I desired what I was and was what I desired.

Your soul should lose all her mental nature and should be left non-mental, for if you love God as “God,” as “Spirit,” as “Person,” as “Image,” then all this should be abandoned. You must love him as he is a non-God, a non-Spirit, a non-Person, a non-Image.

You are never better placed than when you are in complete darkness and unknowing.

Ah, thank you Meister Eckhart. I’m reassured that my meditation is going just fine.

Hey, God, shut up! No more conversations

Like a good lapsed Catholic, I will begin by confessing that I’ve never read “Conversations with God.” Nor any other of Neale Donald Walsch’s follow-up books (whatever or whoever God is, “wordy” certainly defines the supreme being).

I have, however, perused brief articles such as I found in a New Connexion issue that I’d picked up at a natural food store, needing some reading material to accompany my lunch of whole wheat pizza.

In a “What Does God Really Want?” interview, Walsch clues us in to the meaning of life as revealed by the Big Man Upstairs. Who, to encapsulate Walsch’s core message, is you. And me. And Neale Donald Walsch. Though a few of us get to enjoy million dollar book deals as a result of our identity with God, and most of us don’t, sadly.

Appealingly, I learned that God doesn’t require anything of us. Not meditation, or study, or anything else. Right now each of us is experiencing our own divinity. If we don’t know this, it’s because we aren’t willing to have the experience.

Somewhat paradoxically, however, Walsch says there are tools and techniques with which people can move themselves into the actual experience of God. Conveniently, these will be described in his latest book, “The Holy Experience.”

The article says that sample chapters are available for free on Walsch’s website. I couldn’t find any mention of them, but lots of unfree stuff for sale was easy to locate.

Well, the New Connexions piece told me that the central thought of “What God Wants” ($14 direct from Walsch and Co., $14.95 at Amazon) is “contained in chapter 13, and that chapter is a series of blank pages.” Thus I suggest saving your money. Why pay for nothing when that’s available gratis?

I may sound unduly critical of Walsch. Actually, I think he’s on to something. Fame and fortune, certainly. Yet also more than that. Heck, anyone who raises the righteous ire of true believing Christians earns kudos from me (some criticisms here and here). And positively, the notion that God speaks to each of us equally appeals to my churchless soul.

Yet what intrigues me the most is the question of what happens when God stops yapping away. Walsch whipped out a yellow pad and started scribbling when he began to get inspirations from God. Which, he’d be the first to admit, means from himself. (But calling his book “Conversations with Me” would have put a crimp in his publishing deal, for sure).

In the same vein, I’ve had plenty of conversations with God. I’m having one right now, in fact. I search my consciousness for inspiration, get a flash of insight, and transmit it through my touch-typing fingers to a computer screen, where it soon will be uploaded to this blog so that others may admire my divinity.

We all do this. There’s no reason to believe that Walsch has any special connection with truth that anyone else lacks. He’s a skilled marketer and purveyor of feel-good New Age platitudes. I’ve got a certain talent for communicating my own platitudes. So do we all.

The conversations we have with ourselves are interesting, no doubt. They keep me blogging away most days. But are the words inside my head, the ones that I speak to myself in a recursive blabfest that has lots of entertainment value but previous little wisdom, what I’m really after?

If so, I’ve got it.

If not, I don’t. And that’s a lot closer to how I feel.

God, my good friend whom I’m told is me, you need to learn how to shut the fuck up. Once in a while, at least. Now I know that we’ve been having this conversation for a long time. Ever since I started meditating in 1969, right?

I think it’s time to take our relationship to the next level. By which I mean, you need to take a hike. Adios, amigo. It was nice knowing you. Sayonara. One of us is unnecessary, and since I have a special fondness for me, I’m letting you go. Not that I believe you’ll depart my cranium immediately. This likely will be a gradual goodbye.

Walsch’s philosophy, says one of his critics, basically is monistic. Sounds right to me. There’s only one thing going on in the cosmos. Let’s call this “God.” And take this to a logical conclusion. Conversations require two to verbally tango. So who is talking to who when we’re conversing with God?

Probably Walsch has an answer to this question. But no matter. To my increasingly monistically inclined mind it’s wrong. The whole idea of questions and answers, speakers and listeners, words and silence, seems off-base when it comes to the ultimate.

I can’t prove that assertion. Or even clarify it. It’s just what God told me to say. That son of a gun is still hanging around.

Not seeing is believing

Andrew Sullivan offers up another alternative to “I’ll believe it when I see it” and “I’ll see it when I believe it.”

In his TIME essay, “When Not Seeing is Believing,” Sullivan points toward “I’ll believe it when I don’t see it” as the preferred theology for the 21st century. Or any century in which fundamentalism threatens to rend the fabric of secular civilization.

How, after all, can you engage in a rational dialogue with a man like [Iranian president] Ahmadinejad, who believes that Armageddon is near and that it is his duty to accelerate it? How can Israel negotiate with people who are certain their instructions come from heaven and so decree that Israel must not exist in Muslim lands?

Equally, of course, how can one negotiate with fundamentalist Jews who claim that the West Bank is theirs forever by biblical mandate? Or with Fundamentalist Christians who believe that Israel's expansion is a biblical necessity rather than a strategic judgment?

There is, however, a way out. And it will come from the only place it can come from--the minds and souls of people of faith. It will come from the much derided moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews and humble Christians.

The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time.

I like Sullivan’s embrace of spiritual doubt. He says, “If God really is God, then God must, by definition, surpass our human understanding…There will always be something that eludes us. If there weren’t, it would not be God.”

However, I feel that Sullivan goes further than is justified in claiming that God can be partially comprehended via Scripture, reason, religious authority, and our own experiences of the divine.

He doesn’t explain why, if this is so, religions are all over the theological map. It’s difficult to discern much agreement between Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism on what It is all about.

So I wish that Sullivan had left off the last two words of, “If God is beyond our categories, then God can’t be captured for certain.” Give fundamentalism a dogmatic inch, and it’ll take an undoubting mile.

The tent of “I don’t know” can comfortably hold every person on Earth. But allow differing species of certainty to creep in under the flap and pretty soon the screeching and hollering will begin.

Infidel! Evil-doer! Pagan! Apostate! Devil-worshipper! Unbeliever!

It’s difficult to envision what a genuinely uncertain belief in God would look like, though. If doubt is the mainstay of a spiritual practice, what separates believers from the faithless?

Well, seemingly nothing. Which brings us all under the tent of unknowing, a nice place to hang out together.

The joy of nihilism

Nihilism has a bad rep. For many the word signifies anarchy, destruction, meaninglessness, bombs thrown by black-garbed acolytes of Nothing. (I copied these images from nihilist web sites; it’s nice not to have to worry about copyright laws; nihilists don’t sue, I assume.)

I have a “nihilism” wrist band. I don’t wear it very often, but when I do it gives me a good feeling when I glance down at it. Free. Independent. Open-minded. That’s what nihilism means to me.

I like the definition offered by the Catholic Encyclopedia: “a Nihilist is one who bows to no authority and accepts no doctrine, however widespread, that is not supported by proof.”

Well, I do bow to authority—if it’s garbed in a judge’s robe, police uniform, IRS agent suit, or such. However, if we’re speaking of religious authority then I am becoming more of a nihilist all the time. Proudly.

This morning I was reading Don Cupitt’s intriguing book, “After God: The Future of Religion.” Cupitt has some good things to say about spiritual nihilism.

It is very postmodern suddenly to realize that we no longer actually need roots, identity, stability, or a provenance. We can do without all those things. Me, I don’t want them anymore. I prefer to be without identity. I’d like to belong to no ethnic group, and to have no Other. They call me a nihilist: but I’m beginning to feel at ease, at home in nihilism.

A friend recently spoke about her churchless evolution. She said that after she stopped going to gatherings of her faith, there was a period during which she felt a sense of loss. Old beliefs were fading away. Old friends also, at least those whose friendship was conditioned on her remaining part of the religious fold (which means they weren’t genuine friends to start with).

The church newsletter kept coming in the mail each month. She’d look at it and feel some pangs. This and that was happening, meetings and celebrations that she used to enjoy being part of, and now she wasn’t. Then…

One day the newsletter came and she started to smile. And laugh. Glory, glory, free at last! Those old connections didn’t matter anymore. The past was past. Now is now. Not having a firm religious belief became joyful rather than problematic.

“Now I’m free to explore whatever sort of spirituality I want to,” she said. “I pick and choose from the spiritual smorgasbord, enjoying what is tasty to me.” She isn’t dining any more on what someone else has ordered for her. She’s trusting her own taste buds.

Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.” Yet to me and my friend, having nothing sure to believe in doesn’t feel like an absence. It’s a warm, energetic, exciting presence of limitless possibility, of explorable territory, of untapped potential.

Cupitt speaks about three tricks, heritages of the old religions, that are worthy of being kept. One trick is “The Blissful Void.”

The Blissful Void is the trick of relaxing completely, slowing oneself and one’s passions down until the self is, as it were, dispersed into the fleeting insubstantial emptiness of all existence. You must learn to experience nihilism as levity, lightness. The strange unexpected happiness this brings is a wonderful deliverance from the fear of death, loss, and suffering.

So, as I see it, nihilism is far removed from meaninglessness. As this definition points out, it’s a rejection of blind faith, not a rejection of reality. It’s a commitment to the “nothing” that remains when dogmatism, authoritarianism, intellectualization, imagination, and rationalization are swept away.

Buddhism and Taoism say that this suchness is what’s really real. I think they’re on to something.

Or rather, nothing.

Adyashanti bursts my orgasmic bubble

Just as I predicted, I’ve been enjoying Adyashanti’s “Emptiness Dancing.” But I was disappointed when I read this morning that enlightenment isn’t going to be something like an infinitely extended orgasm.

Well, to be more precise Adyashanti left open at least a slight possibility that this could be the case. So I won’t let my hopes die entirely. He did say, though, that orgasmic enlightenment wasn’t his experience. And since his breakthrough occurred after 15 years of Zen meditation, I’ll take him at his word.

However, my experience of enlightenment was simply the demolition of everything that I thought it was going to be. And I have never met anyone who has truly and authentically awakened to the Truth who has ever said anything other than that.

I have never met a single person who has come back and said, “Adya, you know it’s pretty much like I thought it would be. They usually come back and say, “This is nothing like anything I thought it would be. And this is nothing like any of the spiritual experiences I have had before in my life, including experiences of bliss, love, union with the divine, or cosmic consciousness.”

Makes sense. I like how Adyashanti keeps emphasizing that experiences always are transitory—even mystical ones. So they aren’t what the genuine spiritual seeker is really looking for: enduring truth. A state of being, on the other hand, never ceases to be.

Like, I’ve always been aware of being whatever I am for as long as I’ve existed as a self-aware human being. Yet I’ve also had lots of experiences that have come and gone, most of which I’ve consciously forgotten.

So there’s the being that is the lasting me, and then there is the conglomeration of transitory experiences that I often (or usually) mistake for the entity that I am. My problem, says Adyashanti, is that I’ve never gotten in touch with awareness pure and simple.

Recognize that there is nothing that experiences this moment, but even that nothing is known and experienced. There is something mysterious that knows, something mysterious that experiences in this moment, but you can’t say what it is because, when you say what it is, it’s not that.

It’s closer, more immediate. As soon as you think about it, you see it’s not that thought. It’s before that thought. No description is necessary, so just rest on that edge, on the precipice, on the direct experience, directly feeling as though you do not exist and yet knowing that you do.

One thought about this mystery sets apart heaven and hell. Thought rips the unity into pieces to be analyzed by the mind. But silence unifies…Don’t get lost in thought or you miss your life. Just simply relax, and relax, and relax. It’s the simplest act of faith and trust.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

When there are no voices speaking in my head—my voices, crazily speaking to myself what I already know—everything falsely religious fades away. Where is Jesus when I’m not thinking about him? Where is Buddha, God, Allah, Tao, Guru? Dead and gone, along with all the other fantasies that have only as much reality as my mind gives them.

Silence. Stillness. Simply being what I am when I’m not busy pretending to be someone else. That’s when the wild real things start to appear. They shy away from pretension. They don’t like the company of hypocrisy.

The only way to enter silence is on its own terms. You can’t go there with something, only with nothing. You can’t be somebody, only nobody. Then entrance is easy. But this nothing is actually the highest price we ever pay. It’s our most sacred commodity.

We will give our ideas, our beliefs, our heart, our body, our mind, and our soul. The last thing that we’ll give is nothing. We hold on to our nothingness because that’s our most sacred commodity, and somewhere inside we know this.

Only the nothing enters the silence; that’s the only thing that gets in. The rest of what we are just bangs at the nonexistent door. As soon as you want something from the silence, you are moved outside of silence again.

Shhhuuuusssshhhh.

St. John of the Cross: “nothing, nothing, nothing”

This afternoon I came to appreciate the wisdom of St. John of the Cross’ emphasis on “nada, nada, nada.” And I didn’t even need to be given a koan by a Zen master. A worthy substitute, I can assure you, is trying to install a Linksys wireless router.

My old one had inexplicably stopped working. The new one wouldn’t start to work. My first call to India-based tech support led to a koanic download that supposedly would solve all my problems.

Nada. It didn’t.

What I kept getting, after dutifully connecting the router as instructed, was an error message that basically said, “We have been able to connect to the Internet. But your router is a mystery to us. We are unable to configure it because the installation program does not support this strange device we’ve encountered. Good luck, and goodbye.”

I’d bend down to stare at the router sitting under my wife’s desk. Yes, it was a brand new Linksys WRT54GS router, fresh out of the box, which I was trying to install via Linkys’ configuration program. The whole thing was a mystery. Just like God.

I took the path of hoped-for enlightenment so many have followed: I journeyed to India. Again. Via a toll-free number. This time my tech support guru led me through a manual install. It seemed to get the router working, but now my ThinkPad laptop couldn’t connect to it as I was able to before.

I had a sneaking suspicion that this might just possibly have something to do with the laptop falling off a TV table yesterday. Indeed, IBM tech support (in Atlanta) told me where the wireless hardware switch could be located. It’d been knocked to the “off” position.

Yet my wireless Internet connection was still nada. Nothing. A software problem was suspected. I tried to turn the software on. Nada. Nothing. I wasn’t able to perform a system restore, as IBM had suggested. Nada. Nothing. I was at my wit’s end—which doesn’t take long to reach when it comes to wireless computer mumbo-jumbo.

I gave up. I started composing a “help” message to IBM tech support, hoping to reach a more exalted level of software competence. I confessed my ignorance. I pleaded for a return call.

Then I glanced at the Wireless Network Connection icon. It was back to normal looking. I disconnected the modem cable. I was online! I had done nada. Nothing. Yet I was connected. Clearly, a message from the great god Nada in support of the Wu Project.

I had an overwhelming desire to get in touch with my inner nothing. An attitude of gratitude for getting my wireless Internet back. I took a nap. Nada for twenty minutes. Then I picked up a St. John of the Cross book and read some before I meditated. Not quite so much nada as with my nap. But a lot more nada than I’d experienced while working on the router problem.

Nothing can be a wonderful something. Doing nothing finally got my wireless connection working. Hopefully it’ll get my soul in good order also (assuming I have one).

This passage from St. John is from his creative tribute to nada, a sketch of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel.

To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing.

To come to possess all
desire the possession of nothing.

To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing.

To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing.

To come to the pleasure you have not
you must go by a way in which you enjoy not.

To come to the knowledge you have not
you must go by a way in which you know not.

To come to the possession you have not
you must go by a way in which you possess not.

To come to be what you are not
you must go by a way in which you are not.

Science shows God does not exist

Ah, excellent! More support for my Wu Project. Physicist Victor Stenger has concluded that “beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.”

This quote is from the Amazon description of his forthcoming book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.” Provocative title. I’m stoked. Amazon has gotten my pre-order. Just need to wait for January 2007 to have my faithless faith invigorated.

Stenger came to my attention recently when I read a review of his “The Comprehensible Cosmos” in New Scientist. Since I found it difficult to comprehend even much of the one page review, I figured that I’d wait for Stenger’s next book—which appears to be less technical—than plow through this title.

I did appreciate this passage from Marcus Chown’s review, however:

The symmetries that lead to the laws of physics are exactly the same as those that would apply if the universe were completely empty. They are the symmetries of the void.

Wu! And…Whew! Great news. I’ve got this primal fear of non-existence, so it’s comforting to know that the something of this universe is founded on nothing. The seeming emptiness of the void, says Stenger, is the source of everything. Chown writes:

Something came from nothing, he [Stenger] says, because something is more stable than nothing. In the beginning, there was the void, governed by the laws of the void, but the void changed into something more structured—rearranged nothing, if you like—just like featureless water changing into crystalline ice because at low temperatures ice is more stable than water.

It’s nice to know that something is more stable than nothing. Hopefully this means that the something I am now won’t revert to a formless blob of nothingness after death. But if it does, the good news is that I won’t be around to worry about it.

What I find most inspiring about Stenger’s yet-to-be-published book is that science has found absolute no trace—nada, zilch, nicht—of God in the universe. This is the conclusion I’ve come to also, albeit from a more mystical perspective.

After thousands of years of people meditating, contemplating, praying, and otherwise searching for some demonstrable sign of God’s presence, the result is total absence. Zero verifiable evidence has been put on the religious table. All we have are subjective claims, not objective facts.

As Stenger says, this is just what you would expect if God does not exist. It is also just what you would expect if there were a reality beyond the physical that does not interact with materiality other than through the laws of nature.

Either way, religious worship is a crock. Almost certainly divinity never has, nor ever will be, found outwardly in a person, book, icon, or holy place. If it is to be found at all, it will be inwardly—in the depths of the unfathomable mystery that manifests as life, consciousness, existence.

Nothing is what we find when we look within. After thirty-five years of meditation I can testify to that. Yet this nothing may, repeat, may, be akin to, if not identical with, ultimate reality.

Such is the ageless message of great mystics. And it is entirely compatible with the message of the new physics. There’s no God out there. Perhaps, though, there is in here.

Take a browse around Victor Stenger’s website. I like his style. It’s refreshing to find a Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy who also is an adjunct philosophy professor.

To find God, get off the mind road

Churches are big on mind roads. That’s what they want you to travel on. In the church’s theological car, of course. Propelled by faith that you’re eventually going to get to God. Driven by the savior, mediator, master, guru, or prophet who supposedly knows the territory.

Problem is, nothing travel-worthy is apparent apart from the belief that there is. That’s why it is a mind road, not a real road. The pavement is cobbled together from passages found in holy books, words heard from the mouths of holy teachers, images seen by eyes that have gazed upon holy places and icons.

Which are all in the mind of the believer. When the belief is gone, so is the mind road. Real roads aren’t so ephemeral. When I’m driving on I-5 from Salem to Portland, if I take my eyes off the road or allow my mind to daydream about a more pleasant activity, the road is still there.

Not so with a mind road. So the advice of the sincerest spiritual sages throughout the ages is to get off it, if you’re on one. As most people are. If you belong to an organized religion, you’re on a mind road. If you consider that you’re on a defined spiritual path, you’re on a mind road.

And it could be said that if you’re occupied with thinking about how to get off the dead end of an imaginary way to God, you too are on a mind road. “You” likely includes me as I write this, and you as you read this.

But there’s a big difference between some short ruts that lead straight into the wilderness of divine Mystery, and a four-lane freeway of theological speculation that goes on, and on, and on, leading nowhere but to Blind Faith.

Zen Buddhism is small on mind roads. Zen says that they don’t lead past the Gateless Barrier. I don’t know what this barrier is. If I did, I suppose I’d be beyond it. So I’ll stop traveling on my mind road and let Wu-men, a thirteenth century master of the Rinzai school, speak about another way.

“Mu” is Japanese. “Wu” is Chinese. The words roughly mean “without” or “have not.” Roughly is the operative adjective, as Wu-men explains.
-----------------------------

(From “The Gateless Barrier: the Wu-men Kuan,” translated and with a commentary by Robert Aiken)

A monk asked Chao-chou, “Has the dog Buddha nature or not?”
Chao-chou said, “Mu.”

Wu-men’s Comment:

For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers. For subtle realization it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road. If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors, if you do not cut off the mind road, then you are a ghost clinging to bushes and grasses.

What is the barrier of the Ancestral Teachers? It is just this one word “Mu”—the one barrier of our faith. We call it the Gateless Barrier of the Zen tradition. When you pass through this barrier, you will not only interview Chao-chou intimately.

You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers in the successive generations of our lineage—the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears. Won’t that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?

So, then, make your whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand hair follicles concentrate on this one word “Mu.” Day and night, keep digging into it. Don’t consider it to be nothingness. Don’t think in terms of “has” and “has not.” It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to vomit it out, but you can’t.

Gradually you purify yourself, eliminating mistaken knowledge and attitudes you have held from the past. Inside and outside become one. You’re like a mute person who has had a dream—you know it for yourself alone.

Suddenly Mu breaks open. The heavens are astonished, the earth is shaken. It is as though you have snatched the great sword of General Kuan. When you meet the Buddha, you kill the Buddha. When you meet Bodhidharma, you kill Bodhidharma. At the very cliff edge of birth and death, you find the Great Freedom. In the Six Worlds and the Four Modes of Birth, you enjoy a samadhi of frolic and play.

How, then, should you work at it? Exhaust all your life energy on this one word “Mu.” If you do not falter, then it’s done! A single spark lights your Dharma candle.

Wu-men’s Verse:

Dog, Buddha nature—
the full presentation of the whole;
with a bit of “has” or “has not”
body is lost, life is lost.

The glory of being spiritually lost

If you feel like you’re spiritually lost, be thankful. Smile. Laugh. Dance. Your lucky star is shining brightly on you. You’re way closer to the mystery we call “God” than those who believe that they’re on a well-marked path to the divine.

There’s no such thing. I’m not confident of much when it comes to religion and spirituality. But I’m quite sure that the road to God doesn’t have any white lines down the middle of it. You can’t see, feel, hear, smell, or touch it. The surest way to know if you’re off the track is to say, “Ah, this is the way.”

The cosmos doesn’t reveal its ultimate secret—whatever that might be—so easily. If there was a road map to God, or a guide who could take a seeker there, this reliable spiritual direction finder would have risen above the many spurious claimants whose cacophonous urges to “Follow me!” make the world’s religious bazaar so noisy.

For about thirty years I believed that I’d found a singular path to the divine. I thought that Sant Mat, in the guise of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, had it all. A living guru who served as a guide. A map of the mystic territory to be traversed. A meditative technique to move you along.

When it dawned on me that I wasn’t getting anywhere, nor, by their reports, were any other of the many fellow disciples that I regularly conversed with, I faced some choices: continue on with my seemingly progressless path; search for a path that showed more promise in taking me where I wanted to go; or embrace the path of pathlessness.

I’ve settled on the last option. Both my heart and my mind say Yes, Yes, Yes to it. For how long they’ve been making this utterance, I can’t say. Maybe my whole life. I don’t know when I wrote these scribbled words that were on a piece of paper that fell out of “The Bijak of Kabir” when I picked the book up this morning.

Lost. Get more lost. Further lost. So lost that I’ll never be able to find even myself. So lost I can’t even find the meaning of “lost.” Darker. Deeper. Where the wild things roam. The place that I’ve always avoided because it’s the place that I know I have to go. One day. On death day. I’m afraid to look into that hole. It will swallow me. I want to be eaten alive. So I won’t die again. There’s no avoiding it. But it’s the easiest thing to miss. The obvious always is.

I can tell you, it’s devilishly difficult to become spiritually lost. I mean, utterly lost. I keep finding paths in the wilderness of my mind. In my daily meditation I frequently find myself saying: “God damn it, I’m still following some tracks!”

Even when I finally seem to be lost—what a joy—I eventually realize that I’ve been following a trail marked “Lost.” I’m still on my way to somewhere, not nowhere.

Reading a book about pathlessness isn’t the same as being there. But “The Bijak of Kabir” encourages me to keep on looking for the emptiness that has no entrances, no exits, no ground, no air, no walls, no floor, no anything. And no nothing.

Here are some thoughts that are attributed to this 15th century North India mystic who eschewed all religions and didn’t write a word.

Seek the bird’s, the fish’s path. Kabir says, both are hard. I offer myself to an image: the great being beyond boundaries and beyond beyond.

Heaven and hell are for the ignorant,
not for those who know Hari.
The fearful thing that everyone fears,
I don’t fear.
I’m not confused about sin and purity,
heaven and hell.
Kabir says, seekers, listen:
Wherever you are
is the entry point.

Pandit, you’ve got it wrong.
There’s no creator or creation there,
no gross or fine, no wind or fire,
no sun, moon, earth, or water,
no radiant form, no time there,
no word, no flesh, no faith,
no cause and effect, nor any thought
of the Veda. No Hari or Brahma,
no Shiva or Shakti, no pilgrimage
and no rituals. No mother, father
or guru there. Is it two or one?
Kabir says, if you understand now,
you’re guru, I’m disciple.

Remembering the empty, the easy,
a light broke out.
I offer myself to a being
based on nothing.

Drop family, drop status,
seek the nonexistent space,
destroy the shoot, destroy the seed,
reach the unembodied place.

Knowledge in front, knowledge in back,
knowledge right and left.
The knowledge beyond knowledge
is my knowledge.

Moving within limits: man.
Moving without limits: saint.
Dropping both limits and non-limits—
unfathomable thought.

In the wood where lions
don’t tread
and birds don’t fly,
Kabir ranges
in empty meditation.

Use the strength of your own arm,
stop putting hope in others.
When the river flows through your own yard,
how can you die of thirst?

They searched and searched, searched some more—
it just kept disappearing.
After all that search, when they couldn’t find it,
they gave up and said, “Beyond.”

Religious knowledge totals exactly zero

Zero: it never fails to astound me that this is the sum total of genuine religious knowledge accumulated throughout human history. There have been so many worshippers, so many devotees, so many seekers of divinity.

And the demonstrable metaphysical facts that have been accumulated from all of this effort? None. Absolutely none. There is not a single shred of objective evidence that reality consists of anything more than the universe we know now.

If there were, such a fact would have been trumpeted in banner headlines across every newspaper in the world. Core scientific theories would have had to be revamped. Possessors of this truth would have had a permanent seat on Oprah’s couch reserved for them.

Nonetheless, I’ll admit that religions meet many human needs. They give believers a sense of community, relief from anxiety concerning the unknown, an opportunity to engage in altruistic service, comforting rituals, and other benefits.

Yet none of this addresses the core religious quest: discerning the nature of God (or, for godless religions, of ultimate reality).

If we were to grade religions on their demonstrable metaphysical accomplishments, they’d get an “F.” In the arena of earthly achievements, I’d grant them a “C” (the Crusades, Inquisition, Islamic terrorism, and other negatives bring down their grade).

Virtually every religion, spiritual path, or mystic practice claims to know the truth about God or ultimate reality. Every teaching has it’s A, B, C’s down. For example, “There is (A) a personal God who (B) loves us and can be reached through (C) the Lord’s grace.”

The problem is, an X, Y, Z exists for every A, B, C: “There is (X) a universal impersonal power that (Y) is detached from creation and can be reached through (Z) meditative effort.”

What we have then, is an overarching religious equation that sums to precisely nothing:
(A + B + C +… ) – (X + Y +Z + …) = 0.

In other words, the purported truths cancel each other out. Another more radical way of considering this equation is that each of its terms also is zero, since every metaphysical statement is unproven and so lacks any truth value.

Regardless, I’m led to conclude that either nothing exists beyond the physical, or whatever exists is so ineffable as to be nothing that can be described or confirmed in worldly terms. My mind impels me to lean toward the first option, while my heart (and fear of nonexistence after death) makes me hope that the second option is true.

In either case, we’re left with a big fat religious zero. Nada. Zilch. Nicht. Nothing.

The only question is whether this nothing is really Nothing, or whether it is a reflection of the nature of Everything. That’s what my Wu Project is all about—trying to lay bare the essence of nothing.

It’s like trying to catch invisible butterflies with a net made out of the void. Decidedly challenging. And infinitely entertaining.

Let go. Then let go of letting go.

I’m attracted to simple spirituality. That’s probably because my mind is complex, like most people’s minds are. I need to balance myself out. Yin and yang.

So when I come across a believable one-sentence summation of spirituality, it catches my eye. And my heart. This is from Thomas Keating’s wonderful “Open Mind, Open Heart,” one of my favorite books.

I think it can be said that the essential point of all the great spiritual disciplines that the world religions have evolved is the letting go of thoughts.

Yes. On this Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, and Taoism can agree. (I’m not sure about Judaism, the most thought-obsessed religion). Or rather, the mystics of these traditions are in agreement. For they recognize that no thought, emotion, or perception can encompass the unfathomable mystery of ultimate reality, which many call “God.”

Keating advocates the practice of centering prayer. He says that this is different from mantra meditation, but in many respects it is similar. Keating says that the mental repetition of a word—“God,” “love,” “peace,” whatever appeals to you—is an act of intention, not attention.

That is, your goal isn’t to attend to the mantra, but rather you intend to unite with what lies beneath the contents of ordinary consciousness. As Voltaire said: God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. (Or maybe it was someone else who said this.)

Head for the center of yourself and you’ll find God. That’s the idea, for Keating and countless other mystics. He says:

Centering prayer is an exercise in letting go. That is all it is. It lays aside every thought. One touch of divine love enables you to take all the pleasures of the world and throw them in the wastebasket. The Diamond Sutra says it all: “Try to develop a mind that does not cling to anything.” That includes visions, ecstasies, locutions, spiritual communications, psychic gifts. These are not as valuable as pure consciousness.

I admire a Catholic priest who quotes the Diamond Sutra. I also admire Keating for his sensitivity to the games meditators play. As a long-time meditator myself, I know what he is talking about.

Letting go is tough enough. Letting go of letting go—that’s much tougher. But essential. I manage to stop thinking. Then a thought comes, “Wow! I’m not thinking!”

Oops.

Well, at least my intention is to let go of thoughts, which naturally includes theological dogma, metaphysical hypotheses, imagined higher powers, and all other mental machinations that draw me away from my center. And after letting go, I’d like to be able to let go of letting go.

To just be whoever I am when I’m not engaged in trying to be someone else.

Followers of fundamentalist religions and sects have an opposite intention. Their goal is to hold on. And more: to hold on to holding on. They only are interested in finding what they already believe to be true. If an astronomer puts a green cheese filter over the lens of his telescope, that’s how the moon will appear. Falsely.

Truth is found with open clear eyes. Yesterday I happened to glance down at the counter of a store where my wife had just bought a hat. A saying was taped to the wood: “You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.” Nice.

I’ve spent many years in an Indian mystic tradition where the guru is considered to be the end-all and be-all. Essentially, god in human form. I was told to distrust any spiritual realization that wasn’t in accord with the guru’s teachings. The result was set in stone, like the tablets of Moses. “Thou shalt experience X, Y, and Z.”

I’ve let go of those rigid presumptions. Now, I’d like to be able to let go of letting go. I can’t make that happen. That’d just be another form of clinging to an expectation. Keating says:

Trying dilutes the basic disposition of receptivity that is necessary for the growth of contemplative prayer. Receptivity is not inactivity. It is real activity but not effort in the ordinary sense of the word. If you want to call it effort, keep in mind that it is totally unlike any other kind of effort.

It is simply an attitude of waiting for the Ultimate Mystery. You don’t know what that is, but as your faith is purified, you don’t want to know. Of course, in a sense you are dying to know. But you realize that you can’t possibly know by means of any human faculty; so it is useless to expect anything. You don’t know and can’t know what you are waiting for.

Wu. We keep coming back to Wu.

Tuning in to religion-less religion

A few days ago I used the term “religion-less religion” in a "I'm working on my Wu" post. Over at the Yoga Loft, they’re asking, “See It Three Times, Is It More Than Coincidence?”

I don’t know. Could be a cosmic synchronicity. Could be a random happening. Could be something else. Regardless, I enjoyed what the Yoga Lofter had to say about religion-less religion. The first time this term came up was in a conversation with his or her mother.

We agreed that all the world's problems seem to stem from people trying to stick the concept of God into religion. So many wars, so much blood, so much ego, so much waste--all in the name of God.

Amen to that. This morning I picked up Meister Eckhart, the medieval Christian mystic, and read:

Also you should not wish to understand anything about God, for God is beyond all understanding. A master says: If I had a God that I could understand, I would not regard him as God.

If you understand anything about him, then he is not in it, and by understanding something of him, you fall into ignorance, and by falling into ignorance, you become like an animal since the animal part in creatures is that which is unknowing.

If you do not wish to become like an animal therefore, do not pretend that you understand anything of the ineffable God.

What then should I do?

You should sink your “being-you” into his “being-him,” and your “you” and his “him” should become a single “me” so that with him you shall know in eternity his unbecome “isness” and his unnameable “nothingness.”

Wu. We always come back to Wu.

I poked around Yoga Loft while I was there and also liked this post about “Allowing Ourselves to Be Penetrated.” Yes, guys, it’s OK. They’re mainly talking about life here.

I’m working on my Wu

Maui is a good place to work on my Wu Project. “Wu” is a Chinese term that means no, nothing, nada, negation, not. That pretty much describes me on the beach: a lump of nothingness that is content to do…nothing.

Except, what I almost always do. Think about the nothing that I’m doing. I mean, even when I’m just lying on my mat, staring blankly at the ocean, stuff is going on inside my head. I’m aware. I’m perceiving. And, I’m judging.

A cell phone rings a few feet away. I think, “Good god! Cell phones should be banned from the beach. Why does she have to talk to her friend now?”

A woman on a beach towel lights up a cigarette. I think, “She’s got children! Doesn’t she know how bad second-hand smoke is for them? Her doctor should give her a lecture.”

An overweight couple saunters by. “America, the land of obesity! They’re killing themselves with calories. Is it so tough to exercise and give up desserts? Come on, people.”

So, yeah, I’m doing nothing outwardly, but inwardly a whole lot of chatter is going on. That’s why I’ve been working on my Wu more assiduously today. “Wu,” after all, can be a mantra as well as a term.

Heck, anything can be a mantra. Om. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Juicy fruit. Banana. Whatever.

I’ve used several mantras over the almost forty years I’ve been meditating. I’ve found that the choice of sounds doesn’t matter, so I’ve become a believer in shorter is better. The anonymous author of “The Cloud of Unknowing” advised a one syllable mantra (though, as a medieval Christian, he didn’t use that term).

He favored “God.” To me, “Wu” is synonymous. It connotes mystery, via negativa, the nothingness from which somethingness emanates. But again, whatever. The only thing that matters, in my experience, is shutting down the mental chatter with a mantric smother. Then I feel much more in touch with what’s simply there, as contrasted with my complex commentary about what I’m perceiving as there.

Just a cell phone ringing. A woman talking to her friend.

Just a woman smoking a cigarette. Enjoying a vacation with her husband and children.

Just two people walking down the beach. Who happen to be hefty.

Wu, Wu, Wu. When I negate my thoughts, judgments, criticisms, and comments about what I’m perceiving on Napili Bay, what’s left is much closer to what is really there. As the Buddhists say, suchness. What is.

Last night Laurel and I walked into one of the Lahaina art galleries on Front Street. I overheard one of the staff explaining a painting to another couple. He was showing them how the artist had drawn faces that aren’t apparent until you realize that they are part of the ethereal sky, not the earthy landscape.

You know, the figure and ground sort of thing. I stared and stared at the painting, unable to see what the guy was talking about, until flash!, there the faces were. I was looking for them in the outline of a mountain, while that outline actually demarcated the faces in the sky.

This was a lot like my Wu work on the beach today. I found that when I was my normal thinking/judging/critical self, my perceptions were focused on me. Whatever I saw, it all came back to me.

People weren’t just people. They were objects of my praise, neutrality, or scorn. Waves weren’t just waves. They were objects that (at the moment) were too small for boogie boarding and, hence, useless to me.

But when the mantra was working, a sudden shift would occur. I’d simply observe while listening to “Wu, Wu, Wu,” rather than my thoughts. Things just were, rather than things that instead should have been this or that, because I’d prefer them so.

For me, spirituality has come down to changing how I relate to the world. I want to perceive reality as clearly as possible, not through the glass of my own prejudices, darkly. I don’t know how this happens, but I like what D.T. Suzuki says about “Wu” (in Japanese, “Mu”). In Zen practice “Mu” or “Wu” is used as a koan. “Has a dog the Buddha nature?” “Mu.”

Go figure it out, says the Zen master. Except you can’t think it out. Thinking won’t lead to a Zen-acceptable answer. Suzuki says that Mu literally means “no,” but when used as a koan the meaning doesn’t matter. It is just a meaningless sound from which meaning may eventually erupt.

This monotonous repetition of the sound “Mu!” will go on until the mind is thoroughly saturated with it and no room is left for any other thought. The one who thus utters the sound, audibly or inaudibly, is now completely identified with the sound. It is no more an individual person who repeats the “Mu!”; it is the “Mu!” itself repeating itself.

When he moves it is not he as a person conscious of himself but the “Mu!” The “Mu!” stands or sits or walks, eats or drinks, speaks or remains silent. The individual vanishes from the field of consciousness, which is now thoroughly occupied with the “Mu!”

Indeed, the whole universe is nothing but the “Mu!” “Heaven above, earth below, I alone am the most honored one!” The “Mu!” is this “I.” We now can say that the “Mu!” and the “I” and the Cosmic Unconscious—the three are one and the one is three.

When this state of uniformity or identity prevails, the consciousness is in a unique situation, which I call “consciously unconscious” or “unconsciously conscious.”

No concepts there. No dogmas there. No theologies there. All that is there is what is there. Sign me up for that religion-less religion.

An old koan rises from my past

So, yesterday there I am re-reading my long ignored copy of “Zen in the Art of Archery.” I turn a page and find a rent receipt from August 1968 stuck in the book.

College days. Beginning of my junior year at San Jose State. Had recently gotten back from Europe, where I’d spent the second semester taking classes in Zadar, Yugoslavia. I’d rented an apartment with a couple of other hippie potheads. That explains the reference to three cleaning deposits.

I idly turn the receipt over. Find some handwriting. Mine. I read: “There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light.”

Well, fuck me! I think, sitting there in my meditation sanctum, a rarely-used tiled shower stall where I retire every morning with a big cup of coffee to read and contemplate the mysteries of the cosmos. Plus the all-too-familiar ramblings of my own mind, which usually drown out the mysteries.

I’m pissed. Who the hell do I think I am, writing such Zen-ish crap at the age of nineteen just so I could drive myself even crazier at fifty-seven? What irks me, seriously, so much that I feel a few tears starting to form, is that this sentence precisely captures my present existential dilemma.

“There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light.” That’s it in a nutshell. That’s the koan I’ve been wrestling with for the past thirty-eight years, and I’d completely forgotten that I’d given it to myself on the back of a rent receipt in 1968.

I wondered whether I’d copied down that line from Eugen Herrigel’s classic description of how he set out to learn archery while he was living in Japan and ended up learning Zen. I’ve scanned through every page, including his concluding treatise on “The Method of Zen.”

Can’t find it. Nor does the sentence pop up on a Google search. I could have read the line somewhere else. Or, as seems likely, I was using the receipt as a bookmark and used the back of it to write down an idea that came to me.

Regardless of the source, this line encapsulates my personal koan. It wasn’t given to me by a Zen master. I gave it to myself. I believe each of us has a koan of this sort, a deep down in the gut paradox that simultaneously drives us crazy and is the lifeline that we cling to for sanity.

That’s where my tears came from. From 19 (and even before) to 57, this koan has been tearing me philosophically, spiritually, and mystically to pieces. Also, keeping me from falling apart. In seventeen words it sums up the essence of everything that I’ve been writing, reading, and pondering for almost four decades.

Sitting on my meditation cushions, it blew me away that with GPS exactitude my extensive inner journeying from 1968-2006 seemingly has brought me around with pinpoint precision to the identical philosophical position from which I started.

Blooming buzzing confusion.

And yet…

There’s that word. Seemingly. I clutch onto it. It’s something to hold onto. Hope that what appears to be going around in circles actually is some sort of spiral. An upward spiral, I wish. But even downward would be better than circularity. I want to get somewhere. Heaven is best, but I’d prefer Hell to nowhere.

“There will be light when there is no darkness and through darkness we cannot find the light.” Oh yeah, Brian, you got that right. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the finger pointing at the moon isn’t the moon. I’m sure I knew that back in 1968 too, but there are lots of ways of knowing.

Thinking knowing. Feeling knowing. Perceiving knowing. And the Zen sort Herrigel writes about: knowing that isn’t knowing because it isn’t something apart from you that you can know. It is you.

Not this, not that. None of the above, because it isn’t above or below. Somewhere else. Not dark, not light. Something else.

Herrigel asks the Master how the target is hit without the archer’s taking aim. He gets this reply:

“You are under an illusion,” said the Master after awhile, “if you imagine that even a rough understanding of these dark connections would help you. These are processes which are beyond the reach of understanding. Do not forget that even in Nature there are correspondences which cannot be understood, and yet are so real that we have grown accustomed to them, just as if they could not be any different.

“I will give you a puzzle which I have often puzzled over. The spider dances her web without knowing that there are flies who will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam, gets caught in the net without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them ‘It’ dances, and inside and outside are united in this dance. So, too, the archer hits the target without having aimed—more I cannot say.”

Wu.

Spiritual emptiness: it’s a good thing

Most people consider spiritual emptiness something to be avoided. After all, if we’re not filled with the love of Jesus, Buddha-like compassion, the fear of God, or whatever (and there are lots and lots of whatevers) then we’re empty.

Isn’t emptiness a bad thing? When the gas tank is empty, your car stops running. When the cupboard is empty, you’ve got nothing to eat. When the bookshelf is empty, you can’t do any reading.

But what about when your spirit, or mind, is empty? Is there really nothing there, or is there more there when nothing is there than when something is there?

If you liked that last sentence, you’ll love my “Science, Spirit, and the Wisdom of Not-Knowing” essay that I’ve previously plugged on my HinesSight weblog. Of course, writing a quasi-scholarly 24-page footnote filled essay on the subject of not-knowing is a decided oxymoron.

But so is my whole Wu Project, since I’ve been engaged in making something out of nothing by thinking about Wu/Mu. One thought I’ve been having concerns faith.

Who has more faith? Someone who opens himself to a particular anticipated manifestation of divinity, or someone who opens himself unreservedly to however the divine might manifest?

I say, the second person. And in my Not-Knowing piece I provide some quotations from various traditions to back up this assertion (sources are shown in the essay):

For Taoism, “In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired; in the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.”

For Kabbalah, “Ein Sof precedes thought, and it even precedes the Nothingness out of which thought is born.”

For mystical Christianity, “God can be found only by learned ignorance.”

For Zen, “you instantly ‘see’ and understand that things are by virtue of what they are not, and that they owe their being to this not-being which is their ground and origin.”

For Sufism, “what outwardly appears existent is really nonexistent, and what seems to be nonexistent is really Existence. The outwardly paradoxical conclusion is that if man desires existence, he must seek it in his own nonexistence.”

For Buddhism, “if you want to reach the other shore of existence, give up what is before, behind, and in between. Set your mind free, and go beyond birth and death.”

Often you hear religious leaders say, “A tea cup can’t be filled unless it is empty,” to illustrate the importance of being receptive to the inpouring of spiritual teachings. But if the tea cup of our mind is thinking “Where’s the tea? Bring on the tea!” it isn’t truly empty or receptive. It’s got some decided expectations about what is going to fill it.

Back in the days when I was a Radha Soami Satsang Beas speaker, I used to frequently quote Tulsi Sahib’s mystic poetry that begins, in this translation, “Cleanse the chamber of your heart, so that the Beloved may enter. Remove all the foreign impressions, so that He can take His seat there.”

Sounds great. This is a scientific approach to spirituality. Get the instrument of consciousness clear and see what godly impressions it picks up. The problem is, most would-be spiritual scientists have already decided what characteristics the “Beloved” has. Their divine investigation is marred by preconceived ideas that skew the research program.

Here’s another perspective on spiritual emptiness that is closer to my own. Of course, an even truer perspective can be found in what immediately follows the colon at the end of this sentence:

Best answer often is “None of the above”

My manly self-image isn’t based on mechanical aptitude, so my ego is letting me share these stories. Then I’ll turn to my area of real competence: analyzing the anecdotes.

Saturday morning I sold our old generator to a guy who saw my ad in the classifieds. He said he’d come by around eight. I figured that the sale would go more smoothly if the generator would start. Sometimes it’s a terror to get going when it hasn’t been started for a while.

I don’t run the generator very often, so I got out the manual and reviewed the start-up procedures. They were listed as bullet points. Looked pretty straightforward. Just then the guy drove up. I said, “Hey, you’re younger than me, it’s early, and I’m not warmed up. Why don’t you pull the starter cord?”

He did. And then he did again. And again. I read him the instructions. Open choke. Pull three times. Close choke. Try again. We did all that. Still wouldn’t start. I started to feel this deal slipping away.

Then he walked over to the other side of the generator. “Look,” he said. “The Run/Stop switch is on Stop.” He flipped it to Run. Pulled the cord once. It started right away. I felt like a fool. I told him how I felt. He was gracious. “Missing something obvious with a machine, happens to me all the time.”

Somehow I don’t think it happens to him as often as it happens with me (he does maintenance work for a local government) but I appreciated the camaraderie. I told him that I’d just read the starting instructions and it didn’t mention the Run/Stop switch. He looked at the manual. Pointed out a line in the paragraph above the bullet points: “Make sure the Run/Stop switch is set to Run.”

I’d been focusing on getting the choke set right and making sure the fuel valve was open, neither of which had anything to do with the generator not starting.

Second story: I recently got a new DR Field and Brush Mower. After unpacking it the time came to add oil and gas. I took the oil cap off and started pouring in a quart of oil. Then I thought, “Soon I’ll be able to put the cap back on and fire this baby up.” Which brought to mind another thought: “Where did I put the cap?”

I looked around. I didn’t see it. I remembered that the cap was black, like the one on the old DR mower. I was looking for a black cap, no doubt about it. I couldn’t find the damn thing. I’d rolled the mower back a ways to get it more level before adding the oil. I figured the cap might have fallen under the mower. I figured wrong.

After ten minutes of looking around our carport I started to get pissed. Actually, that happened quite a bit earlier. But after ten minutes I was really pissed. It just seemed absolutely bizarre that I couldn’t find something that I was sure was right at hand. I kept retracing my steps. I even looked in the house, thinking that I might have absentmindedly carried the oil cap inside with me when I took a break to eat lunch.

Then I looked down at my feet. There it was, plain as day. A yellow oil cap. I’d been looking for something black. My brain kept ignoring the oil cap even though I’d looked at it many times in the course of my searching. I’d been zeroed in on black. My problem hadn’t been that the oil cap was hidden, it was that I’d been looking for the wrong sort of object.

In both cases I’d fallen into what Robert Persig calls the “truth trap.” At least, it’s darn close to it. In his classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” after talking about the truth trap of yes/no logic, Persig says:

Because we’re unaccustomed to it, we don’t usually see that there’s a third possible logical term equal to yes and no which is capable of expanding our understanding in an unrecognized direction. We don’t even have a term for it, so I’ll have to use the Japanese mu [“wu” in Chinese].

Mu means “no thing.” Like “Quality” it points outside the process of dualistic discrimination. Mu simply says, “No class; not one, not zero, not yes, not no.” It states that the context of the question is such that a yes or no answer is in error and should not be given. “Unask the question” is what it says.

Mu becomes appropriate when the context of the question becomes too small for the truth of the answer. When the Zen monk Joshu was asked whether a dog had Buddha nature he said “Mu,” meaning that if he answered either way he was answering incorrectly. The Buddha nature cannot be captured by yes or no questions.

Is the reason the generator won’t start because the choke is in the wrong position or because the fuel valve is in the wrong position? Mu. None of the above.

Will I find the black oil cap if I look long and hard enough? Mu. Wrong question. I won’t find a black oil cap, but I will find a yellow oil cap.

The Wu Project meanders on. I’m getting results from my investigations continuously. Generally the data are telling me, Mu.

Tracking the trajectory of my Wu Project

Here’s documentation of my first original quasi-spiritual insight. Today I dragged this piece of paper out of my “treasures box,” where I keep various memorabilia from my youth.

I wrote the poem when I was 13 after gazing up at the stars one night from the backyard of our rural home in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It goes like this:

Look up to the heavens
What is there?
Tiny pinpoints of light
But is that all?

Look past the stars
Into the blackness of the void.
What lies there, waiting for man’s first faltering steps
Into the darkness of the universe?

What unknown mysteries lie
Where human eyes cannot see?
In the darkness of the void, perhaps there are things
We should not know, and not find out.

I find it interesting how Wuish—how nothingness oriented—I was back then. I look at my handwriting and try to remember how I felt when I came into the house, sat at my beloved rolltop desk with all the cubbyholes, and wrote those words.

That feeling is lost. But I do remember walking into the living room where my visiting grandmother, Eva H. Lewis, was chatting with my mother and some neighbors. I read my poem to everybody. At first there was absolutely no reaction. They were probably thinking, “What the ____ is this all about?” Can’t blame them.

Then my grandmother spoke up. “I like it!” That’s all she said. And that’s all I needed. I went back to my room feeling affirmed.

My grandmother grew up in New Mexico. She wore dramatic Hopi jewelry, big turquoise-encrusted necklaces and bracelets. She was into organic gardening in the 1950s. She bought one of the first Volkswagens imported into the United States. She was a character, an out-spoken freethinker. And she liked my poem!

Which was about…nothing. Mystery. Darkness. What lies on the other side of light. In short, Wu/Mu.

It’s said that Zen is a journey from “First there is a mountain, then there isn’t, then there is.” The trajectory of my spiritual journey could be similarly (though seemingly inversely) described as “First there is nothing, then there isn’t, then there is.”

Here I am in India at the age of 29, standing in the grounds of the Western Guest House at the headquarters of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (near Beas in the Punjab). Melany and Jim Ramsey are on the right, Jim and Connie Said are on the left. And there I am, lean, beardless, and serious looking in the middle.

I’d gone to the “Dera” because I’d never seen the guru who had initiated me six years prior. I spent two weeks immersing myself in meditation, satsangs (talks), and evening question and answer sessions with Master Charan Singh. It was great. I was devoted. I was sure that I’d found the Truth with a big “t.”

I was still sure in the early 1990s, when the photo for a “sevadar” (volunteer) identification badge was taken. In my 40s now, I’d become hirsute. My crazed expression aptly reflects my spiritual predilection at the time: essentially 100% committed to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas philosophy. I still believed that I had found something I could hold onto for the rest of my life.

And at the age of 57? Now I’m back to nothing. I’m 13 again. I’m still staring into the blackness of the void, except now it is the emptiness of my understanding of my spiritual understanding. When I look past the flickering insubstantial lights of my metaphysical thoughts, emotions, beliefs, hunches, hopes, imaginings, and such, I gaze upon a void.

Which is why I’m embarking on what I call The Wu Project. It’s not serious. Yet also it is. I’ve got few hopes for it. Yet also I’m staking my life on it. I’m still not sure if it is wise to venture into the void. Yet it also seems to me that there is nothing more important to do.

I’m totally confused. Which means, I can only hope, that I’m right on track. As a commenter said recently:

...Woo Woo...(sound of a train a'comin)...Woo Woo...

Wu or Mu? I talk with a cow fancier.

Two days into the Wu Project, I’m right on track. Of course, the great thing about this project is that there’s no way I can be off track. Since the root meaning of Wu is negation, you’re most Wuish when you’re doing the least.

Such is the essence of wu wei, a Taoist term that can be roughly translated as “effortless action.” Wei means to do or act. Stick “wu” in front of it and you’ve got not-doing. Or better put, doing without doing.

So I’ll be taking it slow and gentle with this Wu Project of mine. Which, I need to emphasize, is truly mine. I’m not putting it forth as a model for anyone else, though I do believe that everyone should have a Cosmic Project of some sort—a quixotic crazy doomed-to-failure attempt to fathom the deepest mysteries of the universe.

I’ve decided that for now mine is the Wu Project. Yours could be whatever you want it to be. I’d recommend that you fashion your own unique project, because life is too short and singular to spend it copying someone else. But it’s a free cosmos. If you choose an off the shelf project such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, or any other organized “ism,” have at it. With enthusiasm.

I will admit to having some grandiose conceptions about the Wu Project, however. I’m prone to grandiosity, so that figures. I’ve been pondering this whole Secret of the Universe thing for about forty years and am finally making some significant progress. I’ve reduced the complexity of the subject down to a “there are two kinds of…” simplicity.

To wit, there are two kinds of approaches to unraveling the Secret of the Universe: positive and negative. This isn’t an original idea (what is?). Mysticism is commonly divided into the via affirmativa and via negativa, the way of fullness and the way of emptiness.

Some people want to be filled with a divine vision, belief, concept, love, being, insight, inspiration, presence, or such. Other people want to be emptied of everything, including all that supposedly divine stuff. I’m with them. It’s equally wildly crazy and totally logical.

But I’m digressing from my intention to report on how the first two public wearings of my Wu t-shirt went. I wore it to my Tai Chi class on Monday and today, where I expected it would have an appreciative audience. Indeed, two people asked about the shirt: my marital arts instructor, Warren, and a fellow student, Russell.

Russell didn’t know what the Chinese hanzi for “Wu” meant. Warren did. My conversation with Russell was more satisfying because he uncritically accepted my definition. I like it when people agree with me.

I also like it when people disagree with me, because then I have an opportunity to show them why I’m right and they are wrong (which, I usually presume, must be the case). However, it is unsettling when someone neither agrees or disagrees with me. I can’t say that I dislike it, because there isn’t anything not to like. Nor, to like.

Such a situation is, in short, Wuish. And that’s how Warren acted after I replied to his question: “So, Brian, what do you think your t-shirt means?” I launched into a wonderfully focused description of the alternative meanings of “wu” (“mu” in Japanese). I was concise and utterly accurate, in my not-so-humble opinion.

Warren then walked over to a bench, sat down and said, “Well, OK. If that’s what you think…” I waited for him to say something more. He didn’t. And then he didn’t some more. I waited for him to tell me what he thought “wu/mu” meant. I wanted to know.

Warren has spent a lot of time in the East (Korea and Japan, mainly). He’s married to a Japanese woman. He teaches a class in Eastern Medicine at a college. He’s Taoist through and through. “Come on, man,” I thought, “give me the answer.”

He wouldn’t. He just sat on the bench staring off into space. I recollected that some dude supposedly cut off his arm in order to be accepted by a Zen master, so I figured that I could at least ask one more time. “I want to know. What do you think it means, Warren?”

“Emptiness. You have to be empty before you can be filled.”

Good answer. We talked some more about wu/mu. Warren suggested that my next t-shirt should have the Mu/Wu ideogram on the front and a picture of a cow on the back. That way if someone asked what the image meant I’d say “mu” and turn around.

Nice. I’ll keep the idea in mind. But the main idea of the Wu Project is not to have ideas in mind. However, since “wu” means negation it should also be fine to not not have ideas in mind, which lets them back in.

I’ve got a lot to do if I’m going to figure all this stuff out before the project ends. Also, a lot not to do.

The Wu Project

I’ve decided that it’s time for me to formally kick off the Wu Project. First, I need to point out a few things that the Wu Project is not. It doesn’t have anything to do with an Oregon congressman. Nor, with a well-known rap group.

We’re talking here about the real Wu. Which, because it signifies nothing, is pretty darn hard to say anything about. Nonetheless, I’m drawn to try. And even more perhaps: to be.

It’s a dream of mine. To be Wu. Not the Chinese character. Not the various Wu-associations Wikipedia talks about. Something else. What remains when all the somethings that I’m not are negated and just the nothing that I may be remains.

“May be” is the operative word here. There are no guarantees with Wu. It’s the ultimate mystery. You can’t rely on it for anything, because there is no thing there. Or so they say. And I tend to believe them.

I’m not sure where the Wu Project is heading. It’s just something that I feel drawn to set out on. Over the years I’ve been inspired by the “they’s” and “them’s” alluded to in the paragraph above. But more inspiration isn’t what I’m after now, either as a consumer or a disseminator.

Again, it’s something else. Can’t really put my finger on it. How could I? Wu is untouchable. Yet not unsayable. More accurately, you can do word-dances all around Wu. The subject is so deep, the dancing never stops. Until, it does.

My first big executive decision concerning the Wu Project was what to name it. English doesn’t have a suitable word in its vocabulary. So I had the Chinese “Wu” and Japanese “Mu” to choose between.

Wu it is. I resonate more with Chinese philosophy and culture. I’m a student of Tai Chi and settle into the Wu Chi posture many times each class. Plus, I don’t want to think of a cow when I’m contemplating the absence of something.

My next move was obvious. A project needs a t-shirt. I made one through CaféPress. It’s being modeled by the panther who lives in my office.

A project name. A project t-shirt. A new weblog category. I’m ready to roll. Let’s see where Wu and I wander off to.