Invisible Harmony - A Collection of Reflections and Responsibilities

Author: None
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: Above (here refers to elsewhere) If you act for rewards in, you may receive what you desire, but this is not contemplative action—loving action, whose entire concern is what is being done, without preconceived notions of achieving perfection or gaining 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 master Eckhart 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,, Brahman, liberation, nirvana, enlightenment, awakening, truth, existence, or nothingness in what is being done, in the situation being experienced, in this world. The contemplative life is already a state of, 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: "Because they are one, to enter one is to enter both." If this is not the case, if there are 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 asserts.
Rabia al-Adawiyya, the great Muslim woman who transformed from a musician to a recluse, sang, "If I must go to hell, it does not matter; is this hell, you, right here." Longing for anything, even not longing for anything, already shows a lack of the contemplative spirit; you have not reached that sacred neutrality, emphasized by the Ignatian tradition and the Vedanta school of spirituality, which transcends 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 no longer fit to describe actions believed 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 arbitrarily. The contemplative does not need the 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 everything mundane as sacred. The heart of the contemplative, as that 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 care about achieving nirvana or winning. This is why contemplatives do not debate doctrines. Mystics accept established doctrines, but their faith does not depend entirely 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 spoke it independently, because for each it was 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 you have promised me, but moved by you" (nomemueve, miDios, paraquererte／elcieloquemetienesprometido), as the contemplatives of the Spanish Golden Age often said, striving to show the positive side of "silencismo"②, once again revealing what the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist scriptures said centuries ago: you should neither be indifferent (careless) nor overly concerned (careful), because you are neither "lacking" (less) nor "full" (full), but free, carefree.
The Mimamsa texts say that the sacrifice (svargekamoYajeta) for is a great thing, but Vedanta adds that the path to this will not grant liberation (moksa). Modern people may not believe in a God who rewards good and punishes evil, may not be so concerned with the above, but the vast majority of modern people's activities are driven by the lure of Mammon, which has rewards and punishments, and is not above but "behind." The contemplative is indifferent to such stimuli. They have already discovered in their hearts that the blessed (makarioi) are those whose minds 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. For this reason, a civilization that needs money to live is anti-contemplative. P5-9