Invisible Harmony -- A Collection of Essays on Contemplation and Responsibility

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Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Above (here refers to elsewhere) If you act for rewards in heaven, you may receive what you desire, but this is not contemplative action—the action of love, where the entire concern is what is being done, without preconceived notions of achieving perfection or receiving rewards. The contemplative person eats when eating, sleeps when sleeping, and prays when praying, as the masters remind us. They act "without a why" (sunderwarumbe), as the master Eckhart said. The contemplative person does not imagine what the next life means, as if the life being experienced is not life, not existence, not things themselves. According to the majority of traditions, the contemplative person experiences reality, God, heaven, Brahman, liberation, nirvana, enlightenment, awakening, truth, existence, or nothingness in the actions they perform, in the situations they experience, in this world. The contemplative life is already a state of heaven, the last life, as mystics say. St. Isaac of Syria, the desert monk of the Eastern Christian contemplative tradition, spoke of the inner heart as heaven: "Because they are one, to enter one is to enter both." If this is not the case, if there are still other desires, you have not yet reached contemplation. "Teacher, I have been with you for three years: what have I gained?" The Hindu guru replied, "Have you lost anything?" The Christian Gospel says, "Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father." No more is needed. You do not have to go anywhere. Nirvana is the world (samsara), the world is nirvana, as the Mahayana Buddhist tradition asserts.
Rabia al-Adawiyya, the great Muslim woman who transformed from a musician into a recluse, sang, "If I must go to hell, so be it; heaven is hell, it is you, right here." Longing for anything, even not longing for anything, already indicates a lack of the contemplative spirit; you have not reached that sacred neutrality, which the Ignatian tradition and the Vedanta school of spirituality emphasize, transcending all differences, so that, as the Upanishads say, the contemplative person is considered "beyond good and evil." The phrase "beyond good and evil" should be understood correctly. If you do what you believe is wrong, then of course you have not transcended good and evil. We might question whether it is possible to transcend good and evil, but once this possibility is acknowledged, the concepts of good and evil no longer apply to describe actions that are considered to have transcended them. "These two thoughts (in the awakened one) do not arise: I have done evil, I have done good," the Upanishads mentioned above clearly state. New innocence is not something that can be claimed lightly. The contemplative person does not need heaven above, because for them, everything is sacred: they see the "sacred" as mundane. They eat forbidden bread, burn idols, place their feet on linga images, and do not observe the specific rules of the Sabbath. Why? Because they see all mundane things as sacred. The heart of the contemplative, as the Christian desert monk affirmed, is a "heart that burns for every being, for humans, for birds, for animals, for demons, for all creations."
"(God's will) is done in heaven as it is on earth," an ancient prayer says. The famous Sufi mystic Ibn al-’Arabi affirmed that those who discover this truth "have grasped the secret of the spiritual path." The Mahayana Buddhist tradition says, "Kill the Buddha if you meet him!" Kill Christ if you meet him! This could become a Christian mahavakya. Contemplation does not worry about tomorrow; it does not concern itself with achieving nirvana or winning heaven. This is why contemplatives do not debate doctrines. Mystics accept established doctrines, but their faith does not entirely depend on them. The mystic's faith goes beyond the requirements of a belief system. Doctrines are crutches, at most channels or glasses, but they do not include the walking, water, and landscapes implied in these traditions' metaphors. Dogmas are assumptions, "opinions" (in the original sense), not true vision (theoria). As Nicholas of Cusa repeated the words of Master Eckhart, "Truth can only be understood by itself"; this view was also repeated by Ramana Maharshi and many others before and after—each saying it independently, because for each person it is a direct discovery. Any assertion not based on itself cannot be absolutely true. The contemplative knows, "My God, I do not love you for the heaven you have promised me, but moved by it" (nomemueve, miDios, paraquererte／elcieloquemetienesprometido), as the contemplatives of the Spanish Golden Age often said, striving to show the positive side of "silentism"②, once again revealing what the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist scriptures spoke of several centuries ago: you should neither be indifferent (careless) nor overly concerned (careful), because you are neither "lacking" (less) nor "full" (full), but free and carefree.
The Mimamsa texts say that the sacrifice (svargekamoyajeta) performed to go to heaven is a great deed, but Vedanta adds that this path does not lead to liberation (moksa). Modern people may not believe in a God who rewards good and punishes evil, may not be as concerned with heaven above, but the majority of modern people's activities are driven by the lure of Mammon, which offers rewards and punishments, and is not above but "behind." Contemplatives are indifferent to such stimuli. They have already discovered in their hearts that the blessed (makarioi) are those whose minds are empty. Money is not a temptation for contemplatives. They do not despise money; they simply do not cling to it. They do not need it in the same way modern people do. For this reason, a civilization that needs money to live is anti-contemplative. P5-9