| Subject: She's got us surrounded-- the Goddess |
Author:
Kate
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Date Posted: 09:52:17 04/25/02 Thu
-- and She has both a gargantuan appetite for All of It (She 'finished the goose, with the bones and the beak; pray, how did [She] manage to do it?} AND a wicked, mocking wit. E.g., from an essay by Mariana Caplan, entitled "Adventures of a New Age Traveler" in a book I highly recommend-- Radical Spirit. (Here she is illustrating a series of what she has called 'Zen boyfriends')
"Jake thought he had become enlightened, though he wouldn't have dared to say as much. He had become a student of one of those Indian teachers who skillfully create mystical experiences in their groupies by momentarily cutting through their psychological blocks, then declare them enlightened from the experience. In such a situation, the master gets a swollen head and an immense reputation for being able to enlighten people, and thousands of Western hippies who are afraid of really living life get to think that they have risen above it, and then proceed unsolicited to try to bestow the same boon upon others.
Jake was a living example of such a situation. The first night was all right as far as Zen boyfriends go. I enjoyed hearing of his adventures over a cappuccino, only occasionally irritated by his references to having 'seen through the nature of reality' or having 'become one with everything.' Of course by early evening he needed space, but that was to be expected.
The next day, however, as we walked in Muir Woods, he tried to do his spiritual number on me. As a definition of his spiritual approach in a sentence, nondualism is based on the tacit recognition of the oneness, or nonseparation, of all things. It means that 'I' doesn't exist separately from you or any other animate or inamimate being or thing: all is one. However, there is a big difference between being able to spew these words (as I just did) and living as one who abides eternally in the truth of this reality.
'Jake, if we are going to hang out together I need to feel like you're really here with me and not always so detached,' I opened the floor.
'But who is the "you" who wants to hang out with the "me"?'
'*I* am the me and YOU are the you!'
'There is no difference, so we can never really be apart or together-- it's all the same.'
'You're full of shit.'
'But who do you think is the "me" that is full of shit?'
'I think it is YOU!'
'Who's getting angry?'
'*I'm* getting angry.'
'Look into my eyes, what do you see?'
'You.'
'Look more deeply. Now what do you see?'
'I see a lonely man who thinks he's enlightened.'
Extremely frustrated and teary-eyed, I walked away and sat on a log by the stream trying to figure out why it was so important to me to try to get through to him.
'Why did you come all the way over here to cry,' he sat down beside me, fully believing in his own innocence.
I looked at him with that end-of-the-relationship look in my eye. 'Because there is no one there to hold me if I cry, and I'd just as soon cry alone than cry with nobody.'"
I offer this hoping you all will get as big a chortle out of it as I did. But, seriously, folks: Paradox is the the tightest squeeze there is. It's no wonder we blunder so, trying to reduce the tension of holding the opposing truths. We want to blur the distinctions, we want to amputate one of the sides-- because the irreconciliation feels, more and more terrifyingly, like it will be the death of us. Because, in a very real sense, IT WILL. We're not disturbed because we're ignorant; we're disturbed because we've eaten the apple and we know TOO MUCH.
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