Invisible Harmony (Collected Essays on Quiet Observation and Responsibility)

Author: [India] Raymond Panikkar
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Heaven Above (Here Elsewhere) If you act for rewards in heaven, you may indeed receive what you desire, but this is not the action of contemplation—the action of love, whose entire concern is what is being done, without any preconceived notions of perfection or rewards. The contemplative eats when eating, sleeps when sleeping, prays when praying, as the masters remind us. They act "without a why" (sunderwarumbe), as the Eckhart Master said. The contemplative does not imagine what the next life means, as if the life now being experienced is not life, not existence, not things themselves. According to the vast majority of traditions, the contemplative experiences reality, God, heaven, Brahman, liberation, nirvana, enlightenment, awakening, truth, existence, or nothingness precisely in the actions being performed, in the situations being experienced, in this world. The contemplative life is already a state of heaven, the ultimate life, as mystics say. The Syrian Saint Isaac (St. Isaac of Syria), this desert hermit of the Eastern Christian contemplative tradition, spoke of the inner heart as heaven: "Because they are one and the same; 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, he who has seen me has seen the Father." No more is needed. You do not need to go anywhere. Nirvana is the world (samsara), the world is nirvana, as the Mahayana Buddhist asserts.
Rabi'a al-Adawiyya, this great Muslim woman who transformed from a flutist into a recluse, sang, "If I must go to hell, so be it; heaven is hell, you are here." To desire anything, even not to desire, already shows a lack of the contemplative spirit; you have not reached that sacred neutrality, which the Ignatian tradition and the Vedantic spirituality emphasize, transcending all differences, so that, as the Upanishads say, the contemplative 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 are no longer suitable to describe actions that are believed to have transcended them. "These two thoughts (in the awakened one) do not arise: I have done evil, I have done good," the aforementioned Upanishad explicitly states. New innocence is not something that can be claimed at will. The contemplative does not need heaven above, because for the contemplative, 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 that Christian desert hermit 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 attaining nirvana or winning heaven. This is why the contemplative does not debate doctrines. The mystic accepts established doctrines, but his faith does not rely entirely on them. The mystic's faith goes beyond the requirements of a belief system. Doctrines are crutches, at most channels or lenses, but they do not include the walking, water, and landscapes implied in these traditional metaphors. Dogmas are assumptions, "opinions" (in the original sense), not true vision (theoria). As Nicholas of Cusa repeated the words of the Eckhart Master, "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 you" (nomemueve, miDios, paraquererte / el cielo que me tienes prometido), as the contemplatives of the Spanish Golden Age often said, striving to show the positive side of "silence"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 act, but Vedanta adds that this path does not lead to liberation (moksha). Modern people may not believe in a God who rewards good and punishes evil, may not be so concerned with heaven above, but the vast majority of their activities are driven by the eyes fixed on the various Mammons, which have rewards and punishments, and are not above but "behind." The contemplative is indifferent to such stimuli. They have already discovered in their hearts that the blessed (makarioi) are those who are empty. Money is not an temptation for the contemplative. They do not despise money; they simply do not cling to it. They do not need it in the same way as modern people do. For this reason, a civilization that needs money to live is antimystical.
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