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#3580 - Wednesday, July 1, 2009 -
Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - The first periodical publication on
nonduality - Submissions welcome
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What Is Grace?
“What is grace”
I asked God.
And He said,
“All that happens.”
Then He added, when I looked perplexed,
“Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?
Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from me
until the heart has
wisdom.”
- St John of the Cross
From: Love Poems from God: by Daniel Ladinsky
posted to Wisdom-l by Tim Smith
St. John of the Cross
(1542 - 1591)
extracts from:
I Came Into the
Unknown
I came into the unknown
and stayed there unknowing
rising beyond all science.
I did not know the door
but when I found the way,
unknowing where I was,
I learned enormous things,
but what I felt I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
rising beyond all science.
It was the perfect realm
of holiness and peace.
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising beyond all science.
I was so far inside,
so dazed and far away
my senses were released
from feelings of my own.
My mind had found a surer way:
a knowledge of unknowing,
rising beyond all science.
This knowledge is supreme
crossing a blazing height;
though formal reason tries
it crumbles in the dark,
but one who would control the night
by knowledge of unknowing
will rise beyond all science.
And if you wish to hear:
the highest science leads
to an ecstatic feeling
of the most holy Being;
and from his mercy comes his deed:
to let us stay unknowing,
rising beyond all science.
English version by Willis Barnstone
posted to Wisdom-l by Tim Smith
full version:
http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/J/JohnoftheCro/ICameIntoUnk.htm
Allow to me to put in a
vote for the recognition that mystics may come in all
denominations, but they are all consumed within the same ecstatic
moment.
Truth is Truth.
Do you know about the "Cloud of Unknowing"? It is
evidence of the not insignificant recognition within the Church
of exactly the kind of wisdom coming out of the East these past
few hundred years. But it was home-grown, as all mystics seem to
be (there is much to think about in this). Check out Wikipedia
for a quick and loose commentary on it:
"The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian
mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the
14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative
prayer and the esoteric techniques and meanings of late medieval
monasticism.
The book counsels a young student not to seek God through
knowledge but through what the author speaks of as a "naked
intent" and a "blind love."
"Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful
stumbling block to our attempts to reach God in simple love [...]
and must always be overcome. For if you do not overcome this need
to understand, it will undermine your quest. It will replace the
darkness which you have pierced to reach God with clear images of
something which, however good, however beautiful, however
Godlike, is not God."
In a follow-up to The Cloud, called The Book of Privy Counseling,
the author characterizes the practice of contemplative unknowing
as worshiping God with one's "substance," coming to
rest in a "naked blind feeling of being," and
ultimately finding thereby that God is one's being.
The Cloud of Unknowing draws on the mystical tradition of
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, which has reputedly inspired
generations of mystical searchers from John Scotus Erigena,
through Book of Taliesin, Nicholas of Cusa and St. John of the
Cross to Teilhard de Chardin (the latter two of whom may have
been influenced by "The Cloud" itself)."
BTW, in case it is not immediately obvious, "science"
in the quote from St. John of the Cross refers to
"knowing," i.e. conceptual knowledge, not the science
that we are familiar with today which is a method to achieve
conceptual knowledge. That didn't exist yet at the time he wrote.
I only mention it because St. John's words point us to a direct
experiential engagement (open awareness?) rather than an
intellectual exercise. Thus he points out among the last few
stanzas that this "knowledge of unknowing" is a higher
knowledge, which seems contradictory... but that's the trick
isn't it :)
Warmly,
James
posted to OpenAwareness by James Corrigan
In Silence
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?
Who (be
quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.
O be still,
while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
“I
will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”
~
Thomas
Merton ~
(The
Strange Islands: Poems by Thomas Merton)
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/In_Silence.html