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Centaurea montana
Midcoast Friends Meeting; Damariscotta, Maine
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A Buddhist nun, Nyozen of Tokeiji (Japan, 13th Century), would meditate on the Zen nun Chiyono's (Japan; Mugai Nyodai, 1223-1298) enlightenment poem ...
With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together,
and then the bottom fell out.
Where water does not collect
the moon does not dwell.
After insight into the essence of Zen, Nyozen presented a poem to her teacher...
The bottom fell out of the bucket
of that woman of humble birth (i.e., Nyozen);
the pale moon of dawn
is caught in the rain puddles.
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Chiyono, one of the first, possibly the first, woman ordained in Zen, and Nyozen share something in common. They both had their selves, their lives, fall apart. Life and self fall apart together, for they form a unity. We see the world through how we see ourselves.
The two nuns, like us, put forth much effort to keep the sense of self-identity intact. We tend to be attracted to what validates our unreal selves. We habitually turn from what does not support the phantom of our individualistic fiction. The self that falls apart persons often refer to as the false self, or ego, in contrast to the true self.
The main reason this false self is false is that it does not exist. The false self is an absence. No one can find something called ego. This false self is illusory, no more real than someone in your dreams or a mirage of water in the desert. Something was born, and you were told what and who you are. This naming process continues in overt and subtle ways. The challenge is to realize the false self is a functional identity, helpful only to the extent we need to use it. Hence, this illusion is neither good nor bad. We are trained, however, to be unconscious of this fantasy.
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Chiyono's poem introduces us to an essential process of spiritual awakening: "With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together." "This and that" includes our spirituality and its practices. I wrote "essential process" for disassembling the false self means negating how this self seeks to protect itself. I have written elsewhere, therefore, that the success of meditation is in its failure; meditation must fail to succeed.
Meditation, like other spiritual practices, is a way to whittle away at our ego-fascination. We see how our fascination with this fantasy is like a bad dream, for it entails so much suffering. Yet, it is what we think we are; hence, we seek to rebuff the forthcoming of our true self, for the true self appears as a threat. I wrote "think we are," for the only way the imposter self exists is as a thought. Think on this - who you have been trained to think you are has never existed and cannot exists.
* * *
The Christian Bible shares an insightful scripture on the birth - or rebirth - of the true self. The passage, likewise, shows us how the false self gets enamored with external religious observances, and this attachment can evidence the false self at work. Galatians 5.6 reads, "For when we are in union with Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor the lack of it makes any difference at all; what matters is faith that works through love" (GNT).
Circumcision or not being circumcised was a conflict in the early Church. - This is like the difference between Christians who believe baptism is essential to be a Christian and those Christians who do not believe it is essential. - The early Christians, mainly from Judaism, inherited circumcision as a religious rite marking the Jews as distinct from Gentiles. Circumcision was a sign of being on God's team, so to speak, the winning team.
The false self will battle over such particulars, creating divisions of who is in and who is out, who is chosen and who is not. The true self has the insight to separate the essentials from the nonessentials in life and faith. The true self trusts Something other than merely itself and prioritizes love. Hence, the false self is at work in all divisiveness over nonessentials. Where there is love, there is the true self. The true self feels no need or wish to appear remarkable in contrast to others, chosen against the unchosen, or an insider compared with the outsiders. The true self is not defined by gender, race, religion, or sex and does not define or judge others based on such traits. The true self sees the true self of the other, regardless of appearance, for there is one true self. Hence, tolerance can be accomplished by false selves, while stable unity arises only from the true self.
* * *
We adopt a spiritual path for who we are wishes to be free from that we are not, its suffering, and limitations. That-you-are is the means of Spirit's voice within you. Rumi (1207-1273) speaks of the urgency of heeding this Calling...
Listen, oh drop, give yourself up without regret,
and in exchange gain the Ocean.
Listen, oh drop, bestow upon yourself this honor,
and in the arms of the Sea be secure.
Who indeed should be so fortunate?
An Ocean wooing a drop!
In God's name, in God's name, sell and buy at once!
Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls.
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Jesus refers to this Calling as an intangible inspiration from his God - Rumi's Ocean. He says, "No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; ..." (Gospel of John 6.44, NRSV).
In Rumi's poem, the Ocean summons to itself the drop; the drop - you, me, everyone - became a drop to be reunited with the Sea - Jesus' Father. The major obstacle to this reunion is the drop identifying itself only as a drop separate from the Sea rather than a temporal manifestation of It. Between saying, "I am God" and "I am not God" is an unspeakable truth.
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Some Christians have spoken of the fortunate Fall. This Fall is the loss of innocence in the Garden of Eden. In Chiyono's language, the mythical Adam and Eve had the bottom of their bucket fall out. We can surmise that without a Fall, we do not know the sweet taste of grace nor have a conscious, chosen relationship with our Source. We are fortunate when our efforts to keep life and self together fail, and we listen closely to the inner Summons to turn back homeward.
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Chiyono and Nyozen differ in the ending of their poems. The former had written that water no longer reflects the moon after the bottom falls off the bucket. This is so because there is no water to catch the reflection. She may have referred to the formlessness of the Dharmakaya, or formless, ultimate Reality. Nyozen says, in contrast to Chiyono, that the moon is reflected in all the rain puddles. Nyozen points to the relative mirroring the Absolute, matter reflecting Spirit.
Nyozen sees moon-reflections everywhere. The moon refers to Buddha, Buddha-nature, or Dharmakaya. Buddha is attributed with saying, "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form." "Emptiness" refers to the lack of self-nature, or self-enclosure; hence, our nature - drop of the Ocean, Buddha-nature, true self, heart, ... - is boundless. We hold in unitive awareness "drop" and "Ocean," bounded and boundless. We err to forsake either of the two poles while growing into recognition that oneness includes differentiation.
Theists speak of God's omnipresence. Muslims say that the forms of Nature are means of recollecting Allah - they are not God but manifestations of Allah's nature. We see what Spirit is like by contemplating Nature. Rumi, a Muslim and Sufi, would likely agree with most theists, who teach our potential union with God but not our identity as God. Buddhists are more prone to ignore such theorizing altogether, seeing it as a distraction.
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Nyozen speaks of direct experience. We know by encounter, not belief. Outside of experience, persons speculate on others' or their experiences. That is an experience but a step away from the experience before it is limited by thinking and languaging.
Nyozen reminds us to remain faithful to the direct experiences we have of the moon. We mature to have no interest in quibbling about theology, grasping at how we understand the Sacred in contrast to others, or trying to prove others wrong in their experience of Life.
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Last, of import for us ethically concerning others... Nyozen reminds us we are the other. We are puddles made of the same stuff; we each mirror the one Self. We are likelier to be kind and non-harming when having the insight of our oneness - insight meaning experience, not merely theory. How can you hate someone for the color of their skin when realizing she is you? We first come to the acknowledgment of oneness; we, then, grow into realizing oneness. Realizing we each reflect the Sacred, we honor persons equally, regardless of what appears different about us, such as gender, race, sex, religion, and other traits biological and social. Hence, it is good news when the bottom of the bucket falls off. We are fortunate to fall out of the individual self we are not and meet the self we all are. When living from our true self, love is our natural expression to all beings.
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*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox, and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
*Rumi poem "O Drop." Trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski. In Rumi. The Pocket Rumi. Ed. Kabir Helminski.
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