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Wisdom Poem
Chinese Art and Greek Art
*Rumi. Translated Coleman Barks.
The Prophet said, “There are some who see Me
by the same Light in which I am seeing them.
Our natures are ONE.
Without reference to any strands
of lineage, without reference to texts or traditions,
we drink the Life-Water together.”
Here's a story
about that hidden mystery:
The Chinese and the Greeks
were arguing as to who were the better artists.
The King said,
“We'll settle this matter with a debate.”
The Chinese began talking,
but the Greeks wouldn't say anything.
They left.
The Chinese suggested then
that they each be given a room to work on
with their artistry, two rooms facing each other
and divided by a curtain.
The Chinese asked the King
for a hundred colors, all the variations,
and each morning they came to where
the dyes were kept and took them all.
The Greeks took no colors.
“They're not part of our work,”
They went to their room
and began cleaning and polishing the walls. All day
every day they made those walls as pure and clear
as an open sky.
There is a way that leads from all-colors
to colorlessness. Know that the magnificent variety
of the clouds and the weather comes from
the total simplicity of the sun and the moon.
The Chinese finished, and they were so happy.
They beat the drums in the joy of completion.
The King entered their room,
astonished by the gorgeous color and detail.
The Greeks then pulled the curtain dividing the rooms.
The Chinese figures and images shimmeringly reflected
on the clear Greek walls. They lived there,
even more beautifully, and always
changing in the light.
The Greek art is the Sufi way.
They don't study books of philosophical thought.
They make their loving clearer and clearer.
No wantings, no anger. In that purity
they receive and reflect the images of every moment,
from here, from the stars, from the void.
They take them in
as though they were seeing
with the Lighted Clarity
that sees them.
Comments
Theory, even that termed sacred, spiritual, or religious, is not the heart of Wisdom. Theology and scripture is still one step from the purity of immediate Contact with the Light.
When we attach ourselves emotionally to thought, varied thoughts become colors unable to reflect the world and allow change. God is filled with change, however, for God is Intimacy with all of Nature. The unity of God embraces the multiplicity of life forms, even as God lives within them each and all.
Making "the loving clearer and clearer" is shared~relational Ecstasy. We receive, we give. We reflect each other. We join with each other, we live in each other. We are subjects to each other. Neither one is object to the other. Our being complete~together forms a larger whole we would never have known without the embrace of our two completenesses in One.
As my thoughts become a barrier between God and me, they shut me off from the realization of the Beauty and Mystery of the other. When I see the other through any veil, I fail to see the other clearly. And I must stay close to God, for I can know her as her only as she is in God. Indeed, the other is with me now as she is only as we together are in God eternally.
My Lord, colorless I must be. I must see the contourless Spirit giving life and shape to the other, embracing, at the same time, the aspects that make her soul manifest unlike any other before, now, or forever. Grace me to surpass religious and spiritual thoughts. These thoughts that ushered me to the threshold of the Inner Sanctum, may they drop helpless before the Basilica of Pure Love.
My God, to know the other, I must know her directly, with no intervening expectation of who she is. I must relish her Isness as Mystery. I cannot know her through a veil defining her. The covering, however subtle, My Lord, would obscure her Truth and Beauty. That is not the Love I seek. I seek only her, not my thoughts of her. And You have made her, essentially, as I, a Mystery springing eternally from the Fountain of Pure Attraction, which springs forth among the Trinity in Whom she and I receive our shared yearning and capacity for Loving.
Holy Spirit, I must train to become more comfortable with my own Mystery, not fleeing into comfortable or uncomfortable self-images of who I think I am or have been told I am. I Am, for You Are.
Contemplation is that exercise in, at first, tolerating that Naked Isness that melts away all else but Ising. Contemplation becomes an enjoyment I relish, having conditioned myself beyond toleration into the ecstasy of Pure Knowing.
Wisdom Poem
What is the link between the clarity of nonattachment in the Prayer of the Heart and relationship with others?
See next page for Invitation to writer's contemplative village, purpose of OneLife, data on ordering author's book and upcoming devotionals 2008, and material on citations.
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