Kairos, Koans and Conversion 9: I sing of Buddha, fat and happy.

Careful distinctions are called for if Under the Influence is to avoid the charge of proof-texting, and that from the triply offensive perspective of 3 major world religions at once.  Granted, Eastern religions are better than Western ones at accepting the legitimate wisdom in other traditions: to Western religions, equivocation is a problem to a degree not echoed in their Eastern counterparts.  But for the sake of being equally robust in identifying differences and similarities, before we unpack St. John’s “Book of Signs,” let me admit something: comparing Jesus’ Jewishness to Buddhist ideals could be as fishy as discount sushi.   

KKC 8’s rousing cry that Jesus is the bodhisattva of bodhisattvas very nearly forgets the uniquely Jewish aspects of his status as “mediator.”  In the Jewish Scriptures, covenants—which were made in blood—were binding to the death, and transgressions of covenant called for blood to be shed.  Jesus is one whose suffering has payouts for his people as a whole.  The “communal benefit” of redemptive suffering is uniquely Jewish, and no amount of emphasis on the the Bodhisattva’s compassion for others can put one at ease with simply equivocating Buddhism and Christianity.

That said, there is precedent for equating buddhism with its predecessors, and it yields an image that will help us. I’m speaking of the iconic snapshot of a seated Buddha.  He’s laughing, fat and happy.  The fact is, such depictions are not originally buddhist.  The figure is actually the Chinese folkloric figure Buddai.  He was eventually identified as Maitreya, the future buddha, and the enlightened one has been horrifically overweight ever since.

There is room in Buddhism for the perspective that enlightenment is not simply stoicism, it is fulfillment.  Fat and Happy Buddha is helpful to us because John’s “Book of Signs” depicts legitimate fulfillment as the terminus of Jesus’ Miracles.  Their message might be “trust that reality is plenty.”  Let’s take a look at each miracle, and why that might be the case.

In John 2:1-11, Jesus turned water into wine.  It should be noted that Jesus didn’t turn water into “acceptance of lack of wine.”  Fullness, not stoicism is the goal.  In John 4, Jesus heals an official's son.  This was done from a distance.  The official was not present for his Son’s healing, and it bases “attribution of the miracle to Jesus” forever on the official’s trust that it’s so.  Jesus healing of a lame man in John 5:1-18 is perhaps the most “buddhist” of the Johanine signs.  The curative powers of the pool are famous, and smack slightly of superstition, because when the the waters ripple, they’re accessible only to those who are first to submerge themselves. Jesus orders the man simply to stand and walk.  He’s cutting out unnecessary steps between potential and realized healing.

When Jesus Fed 5,000 in John 6, most striking is the contrast of perspectives.  The Apostles were concerned about the mechanics of providing a meal to that many using 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Jesus sat and gave thanks.  The food was multiplied in being broken, and it’s distributed.  Jesus is teaching us that, for those with the disposition to witness it, reality is ample and generous.  This is echoed in the “walking on water” incident.  The apostles are in a storm-tossed boat, and when Jesus walks toward them on the water, their initial terror is replaced by peace of mind.  When Jesus enters the boat, not only are hearts and seas both calmed, “immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.”  A successfully solved koan eliminates the distance between aspiration and fulfillment.  This story gives that maneuver a divine face.  The Fullness at the other side of Emptiness is henceforth and forever named Jesus.  

When the Jews question his healing of a blind man in John 9, they accuse Jesus of “being a sinner.” The healed one says “i don’t know if he is a sinner.  What I know is, I was blind, and now I see.  If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”  The Proof, apparently, is in the pudding.  This is ultimately true in the case of raising Lazarus from the dead.  Jesus tells Martha “I am the resurrection and the life” making the renewal reserved for “the last day” present in a reanimated Lazarus.  In many ways, the Jesus of Johanine miracles is quite “buddhist”: he makes aspirations immanent—as all good Koans do.  He cuts out self-made human solutions for the sake of more expedient divine ones. 

 Jesus is the embodiment of mu.  Putting a personal face on the core of transformation, along with the notion that there is something to be resurrected from nothingness, all of this is perhaps more Jewish than it is buddhist.  In the final analysis, we have a messiah who is celebratory, whose authority engenders trust that’s unavoidably Jewish. I am reminded of the tidbit I picked up in college, that in Judaism, failing to enjoy the goods of the earth compromises one’s eventual access to Abraham’s bosom.  The Porrisover Rebbe of later Jewish tradition would say “When God sends sadness, we ought to feel it.”  

Fr. Feliciano, my old novice master, summed it up well.  He used to say “Salvation is not simply about Kenosis, but kenosis for the sake of Pleroma.”  In english, that’s “emptiness for the sake of fullness.”  If you’re like me, and your sad little neuroses tend to give anti-self language too much play, the fullness at the end of the journey means much-needed potential rest.  All of this is to say: mahatman is a refuge from samsara.  Mahatman is also Jesus, and Jesus is us.  Emotional equilibrium is impossible for those who end-run around feelings.  Life is to be celebrated, and wept-over, an abundance to be drank to the dregs.

Flouting Islam’s prohibitions against alcohol, the poet Rumi tells a story about Allah.  Allah and his follower go out drinking one night, and as the evening waxes late, the God’s devotee becomes falling-down drunk.  In the end he speaks the line of lines: “The one who brought me here will have to take me home.”  Emptiness dies, and rises as a fullness called Christ.  In him we weep and laugh and have our being.  If we can call the chinese god of overweight hilarity an enlightened one, then we can certainly do the same, thank you Jesus, with ourselves. 

On Health and Happiness

The paradox is this: for the divine source, nothing is more important than wellness and enlightenment.  But for the sick, who long for health, nothing is less important than wellness.  And for those who long for transformation, nothing is less important than enlightenment.

I have begun getting real with myself about spiritual dynamics.  The last few months for me have been a constant look at my liabilities.  It has been immensely difficult.  Recently, though, I have begun to realize that this kind of orientation is incredibly important.

In June 1st’s “Refocusing my Practice: Salutations from One About to Die”  I talked about the fact that, for me, Zeal is a depressant.  In AA, after a recovering addict gets a handle on the chemical side of his addiction—after he stops drinking to dull his feelings—that addict has to learn, in a positive sense, how to feel again.  And it means many harrowing moments of facing reality without the help of a drug.  Chemical sobriety can be measured with AA tokens, in terms of days and months and years. Emotional sobriety is a more complicated, lifelong process, of actively owning what drugs helped him evade.  It's not as quantifiable

I call my drug of choice "Zeal," but it goes by other names.  Zen teachers call it “Zen sickness:” it’s the period where Zen is all a student can think about, the barbaric yawp that he sounds from every rooftop.  I suppose it’s helpful.  Those who are zealous or Zen-sick definitely become more proficient in the intellectual knowledge of their subject matter.  Zeal caused me to major in theology in college.  But it caused me, as well, to unwittingly substitute self for God.

For me, Zeal is a drug because of the quantity of Self-Awareness it implies.  I would have sucked at  Mysticism if Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle was the only account of how one becomes close to God.  Teresa of Avila, for all of the confusion of the spiritual journey, could say with fairly certain accuracy where she was in relation to the father.  I have not handled, and would not handle, similar knowledge well.  Any indication of spiritual proficiency sends me careening into how awesome I am.  Teresa had the wherewithal to keep her focus on God’s generosity.

Thank goodness there’s John of the Cross.  Thank goodness, for Zen students, for the importance of Mu.  John of the Cross talked about hidden ladder mysticism.  He said that it’s possible to approach God in a way the practitioner can’t see, to have God do the work while all that’s visible is one’s interior mess.  Mu is the same way:  wherever you think you are, you're not. 

Over the last few months, I’ve discovered new footing.  It gave rise to Under the Influence, and is the only reason I continue to be substantively spiritually engaged.  Amidst the gratitude of such new orientation, old obstacles arose as well.  Confronted with my own inner chaos, and newly equipped with the negative mystical tool that “working on mu” is, at first I became way too attached to moments of peace that characterize renewed spiritual practice.  I found myself going into meditation with the longing to return to peaceful states I’d been given in the past.  Subtly, I was trying to arrive, by my own efforts, at the states of Egoic release God had given by his generosity.  It’s an early and insidious form of idolatry. Luckily enough, this isn’t exactly my first rodeo.  I saw myself being attached to that peace, and knew that, left unchecked, I’d attribute it to myself rather than God, and repeat past fuck ups.

One of my two best friends--the Iranian Jew with Zen training, not the Filipino German ex-con and Cabinet Maker-- often says "Whenever I talk to people about Zen, I just can't wait to shut the fuck up."  He is, as I am, aware of the disgust that spiritual desire can present one with.  He presents bliss in the form of a story.  For the buddhist monk, sitting alone in his cave, the ideal is to arrive at the end of the day and say "Not one thought of Zen today."  Of course, noting the lack of Zen is as good as thinking about Zen, but to hell with semantics.  The fact is, spiritual ideals can fill one up with as much self-conscious egotism as anything else. 

So I am learning to live without my drug: without zeal, I am slowly learning to be normal and feel things again.  This summer, spiritual work has simply been hard.  Meditating doesn’t always relieve the background noise of egoism.  Meta-thinking, trying to take an observational stance on the fruits of my thoughts, is a goal that ranks as a close second to inner silence.  Even being able to meta-think, however, involves a mix of willingness and grace that I can’t be assured will always present itself when I want it to.  

I have come, all over again as if it were the first time, to two conclusions.  Firstly, I’m not in charge, and cannot heal myself.  I use, all too consistently, my "longing for God" to justify stirring the pot when it isn't my kitchen in the first place.  Secondly, whatever is transcendent is working on me.  I don’t know what to call it, and I don’t know what it’s doing, or what it has done or how I got here.  I am maximally confused.  

But I am learning to prefer divinely-authored confusion to self-designed certainty.  Since Under the Influence began, I have had moments of connection with the “stuff” of Catholicism, Judaism, Zen and Hinduism.  And yet, rather than pushing me toward identifying with any of these religions, it has pushed me toward the very opposite.  Religions are useful, and much of what they say accords with the Truth.  Meister Ekhart said “I pray to God to free me from god.”  As often as the deities that present themselves have turned out, by and by, to be of my making, I resonate with him daily.  But the minute I formulate a statement that involves “God” and “I,” we two are separate.  To be more precise, I pray for forgetting: I want to be in his embrace, but forget there are two of us involved.   I want the Truth, not the things that point to it.  

There’s an oft quoted spiritual maxim that sums this up.  It’s acquired a meme-like ubiquity.  I did some research, and found it fist in meme form.  So I suppose I should say it’s potentially trite, and I can’t vouch for its accuracy.  The maxim goes “A man said to the Buddha, ‘I want Happiness.’ Buddha said, first remove ‘I’, that's ego, then remove ‘want’, that's desire. See, now you are left with only Happiness.” That applies, I’ve found, to any object.  Happiness, Spirituality, enlightenment, God, or the energy to do a rainy-day grocery run.  Goals, minus ego and desire, yield actualization.  I truly hope this is accurate.  If it is, may God preserve me from being certain of it.

Kairos, Koans and Conversion 8: The "I AM" Statements

I wish the early disciples of Jesus would simply have consulted one another.  A Judean Messianic version of Comic Con would have been a helpful meeting of the minds.  Mark’s “Blind Bartimaeus” said “Rabbi, let me see again” without knowing Jesus was the first person he’d lay eyes on.  John 4’s depiction of the Samaritan woman at the well shows a Christ who says “I am he [the messiah] the one who is speaking to you.”  Both in his earthly life, and under the guise of a stranger, (recall, from KKC 6, how discarding expectations is linked to recognizing the risen Christ) Jesus has several Koan-like interactions, the full answering of which partly involves calling the person doing the speaking Lord and Messiah.

In a similar vein, Jesus’ interaction with Nicodemus in John 3:12 is a stand-alone Koan.  After waxing lengthy with Nicodemus about the importance of being born from above, he says “I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe.  How can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”  

The rest of the Gospel of John, in the form of Jesus’ seven “I AM” statements, goes on to answer that question.  At first glance, one would think this post needed to part ways with Zen, given Zen’s classic and canonical antipathy to the self.  However we find a helpful container for Johanine Christology precisely in the Zen teaching on “What a Bodhisattva does with his Self.”  In order to make sense of Jesus, then, let me begin by outlining, in a laymen’s under-informed broadstrokes, two approaches a bodhisattva might have to Selfhood.

One is the majority view: since Nirvana is a space of total dissolution of self (anatman), the bodhisattva actually delays enlightenment and retains his self long enough to help others.  Such a view of Bodhisattva-osity is actually helpful.  For a buddhist with a hardline anti-self belief set, delaying enlightenment means retaining the self, means remaining in a world of samsara and suffering because of it.  Christ as suffering-servant finds some resonance here.  

The other view of self is perhaps more resonant with John, and Judaism as a whole.  Minority voices in Buddism, such as the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, claim the Bodhisattva has a transcendently-balanced Self (mahatman).  (This is all wikipedia searchable under “Atman, Buddhism.”

However, I’m stealing these sentiments from the excellent 2006 lecture of Dr. Tony Page, delivered at the University of London and transmitted through nirvanasutra.net.)  Dr. Page quotes the sutra: “on the morning of Buddhahood, he [the Bodhisattva] obtains the sovereign Self” (chapter entitled “On Pure Actions”), and on the all-pervasive presence of the Buddha, who cannot truly be seen and yet can cause all to see him, the Buddha comments that  “Such sovereignty is termed ‘the Great Self’.”

In terms of Under the Influence’s Buddhist/Christian dialogical effort of seeing Jesus as a Koanic Teacher, we can come down on the self in two different ways, then.  Both are right, and both helpful: I am sure we’re looking at a continuum here, not a dichotomy.  If the self is bad, then remaining in it causes Christlike suffering.  If the self yields to a transcendent Self, then it points to the atman, (the soul, or true self), as Jesus points to the father.

The reason I’ve chosen to place Jesus in a “First Bodhisattva” sort of role is because it conveys one of the Johanine Jesus’ themes better than do the prevailing models of messiahship.  This insight is at the core of what Jesus was attempting to teach Bartimaeus: Jesus self-identifies as the mediator par excellence.  In John, Christ’s kingdom is one of absolute authority, wielded in willingness to suffer.  He lays hold of mahatman, claims the “I AM” at the core of his identity.  Certainly there are differences between Buddhist and Christian cosmology here.  The bodhisattva has, at his core, no “Higher being” who is entirely other and transcendent.  He mediates enlightenment and Buddhahood—makes the buddha present, at the very most.  Regardless of what’s being transmitted, the mechanisms of mediation are similar, and very much at work in both the Bodhisattva and Christ.

Let’s take a look at the seven different ways Jesus self-identitifies.

• Jesus is the way not to hunger:  “I am the bread of life" (John 6:35) “I am the bread of life” whoever comes to me will never be hungry.  Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.  From this scripture we don’t get a sense of whether Jesus is going to fill that hunger and slake that thirst by satisfying it, or whether life itself is the object of that longing.  Hunger has multiple levels. 
• Jesus is the way to see “I am the light of the world" ( John 8:12; 9:5) Whoever follows Christ will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life  Jesus goes further in your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid…it is not I alone who judge, but I and the father who sent me.  (The Light of life is the “mantra” just as the ability to sleep is the mantra in Yoga nidra.) (Using Dualism to his advantage)
• Jesus is the way to the Father.  ”I am the gate for the sheep" (John 10:7, 9) Following the father’s familiar voice.  Jesus the “gate for the sheep.”  Jesus is that thing through which we pass to access the father.
• Jesus as the self-sacrificial way to safety.  ”I am the good shepherd" (John 10:14) Jesus says, here, that he lays down his life for his sheep, making way for the switch from the judges model of messiahship, in which he’s a political king, to Isaiah’s suffering servant model, in which he dies a tortured failure.  (We spoke of these in KKC 6)  That said, in the expiation of sin that takes place for those who follow his lead, a disciple transcends his need for security by entering into vulnerability.   
• The way to life amidst death)"I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25) (Lazarus) I am the resurrection and the life Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live. Again, please recall the discussion of belief in KKC 6.  Those who realize that they already are Christ, those that make Christ’s journey themselves, have been increasingly “believing in him” throughout their journey.  Those that don’t, though they say they “believe,”
• By being the Way, Jesus is also the Goal.  ”I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) If you know me, you know my father also.  Whoever has seen me has seen my Father.
• Jesus is “the vine” to our “branches.”  ”I am the true vine" (John 15:1, 5)  For the Branches to remain in the vine, they need to remain in what is most foundational about themselves.  So all prayers must remain in the mantra, all words must remain in divine silence, in a space of passive volition.  That passive volition is a space of “Betweenness”, an observational space, that we have to occupy in order to cooperate with something larger than ourselves. 

Commentators say there’s a “Dualism” in John.  I disagree.  A dualism is a permanent separation. There is certainly a distance between where we are and where we need to be.  That distance is the very stuff of Koans.  Jesus posits darkness and light, heaven and earth as traversable space.  What’s more, he offers seven I AM statements, in which he invokes the divine name.  Far from being metaphor, he truly identifies these things with himself.  He offers himself as the Mantra of prayer, the push off the blue cliff and the force that sends his disciples hurtling toward the ground of their being.  I brought this up in May 18th’s The Rights to being Right: Ghandi said “I used to believe God is love.  Now I believe love is God.”  Jesus offers these I AM Statements to say not so much “I AM what gets you to the father,” but “what gets you to the father is me.”  So he allows his own image to be eclipsed by light, by sheep gates and shepherds and vines.  He allows his function as mediator and mantra to come to the fore.

Jesus locates himself with every previous messiah, every bodhisattva, every mantra, every guru:  anyone or anything that, when it came down to it, showed people the way and got the job done.  It was a messianic ideal in which function determined form.

So the answer given to Nicodemus is given to us all: Jesus was the Mahatman, whose self-sacrifice is the death of the ego, and the rebirth of our non-egoic self.  When we come to a space, not of seeing Jesus, not of new worlds realized, but of pure seeing, we will have arrived at nowhere by means of nothing.  God will be made visible in us, but not to us. St. Paul said our true selves are hidden with Christ in God.  In short, Jesus would have said that both he himself, and God, are hidden in our true selves, the substance of what remains when “the old is gone, and the new has come.”  It’s a blindness I myself would be privileged to see, and a daily death I’d be privileged to get accustomed to suffering.

The Sound of Silence: Continued Corrections of Language

Alright, let’s get honest.  My psychology  is pretty warped.  It wasn’t till I spent 7 years being largely silent that I realized it.  Before that, I could have blissfully, plausibly denied it, but denial’s like a childhood garment that an adult rediscovers and tries on.  Neither for the adult nor for the garment can the clock be turned back, and it’s impossible to ignore how ill-fitting and conspicuous it is.   My thinking is both dualistic and dysfunctional, and it changes how I hear church language.  Just like dysfunctional children come from larger, dysfunctional families, dualistic believers come from dualistic institutions. 

Regarding dysfunction, I’ve spoken about it before: I live in a body that doesn’t work, and came from a home that had its problems.  Being numb and stuffing emotions became my default setting.  I became addicted to crisis, in part because it was a staple in my upbringing, and in part because it was a way to feel something (anything) other than numbness.  What began as a form of keeping myself safe became a way of moving through the world.  My childhood need for safety became the need for control common to adult children: it became an inability to allow problems time to be solved.  It became a resistance to collaborating with even the most well-meaning of others.

At a certain stage, my needs for security and approval moved fluidly from parents who couldn’t suffice them to a religion that couldn’t suffice them.  At the time it happened, I didn’t know those needs were there, and I didn’t know my expectations of fulfillment were out of whack.  I had a child’s understanding of both, that expected total fulfillment in this life, when it was, in truth, only available in the heavenly jerusalem.  But it should be said that both religion and parents are, to a child, transcendent authorities.  All theological concerns are endowed with greater importance by the transcendent authority to which they’re connected.

So long as questions have transcendent answers coming out of denial is always risky business.  Let me break down for you some of the theological concepts that have, because of dualism and dysfunction, concealed real misunderstandings.

Attention and Focus:  Normal people give stressful situations their attention for a limited time, then step away from them.  Dysfunctional people continue to stress when the stressor is gone: it’s a trait called hyper-vigilance, an ultimately harmful equation of attention with force.  In my adult life, I’ve struggled to be present to my responsibilities when necessary, to step away from them when I can.  

God and Devotion:  Like St. Paul, I made a God out of my ideas about God.  Ultimately, I divinized my ego.  Devotion to that God was the ultimate, unknowingly selfish act: rather than uplifting the mind and heart to God, I turned the will inward toward myself, and it aggravated previously underdeveloped Obsessive Compulsive traits.

Authority:  Dysfunctional people have dysfunctional relationships with God.  Drug addicts treat God like he’s a drug—a source of consolation and need fulfillment that either succeeds in fulfilling expectations, or fails at it.  Codependents treat God as they do their close associates, dissolving the boundaries of the ego until what’s left is a mess of enmeshment, of care-taking, and of legitimate needs bypassed in the name of “sacrificing for God’s sake.”   What would have been ideal is two individuated beings (us and God) communing across the boundaries of self.  What would have been healthy is limited giving with the genuineness of one who knows his limits.  But for dysfunctional people, alas and alack, no dice.

This leads to all sorts of confusion.  Is “Authority” speaking from the scriptures?  Is “Authority” inside us?  The answer rings with a traditional Catholic “Both/And” statement.  Authority speaks from both the scriptures and our hearts.  However it’s also a “Yes/But” statement: yes, God speaks from the scriptures, but he doesn’t excuse us from separating out his voice from the prejudices of the human writers.  Yes, the voice of God is inside us, but it isn’t our ego, not even our egoic plans for spiritual advancement.

Those who wonder about the question of authority should examine what they mean when they say the word “Should.”  Dysfunctional people often claim their plan of action “should” be followed, with a certain amount of anxious insistence.  But a functional, not to mention contemplative perspective predictably asks the following questions: If the authority is coming from scripture or conscience, how nuanced and informed is the perspective?  If it’s coming from experience, how detached is the person from the emotional content of the experience?  If it’s coming from a church hierarchy, how broadly knowledgeable is the person on the range and the history of hierarchical perspectives.  Perspectives that are nuanced, detached and knowledgeable are the ones that most smack of healthy, nondualistic influences.

Grace: Dysfunctional people think grace is a drug dispensed by the God they’re dependent upon.  In fact, rather than an all-holy heroin, grace is more like methadone.  It’s the ability to live with less, to tolerate our separateness from God, to downplay our even our most pious manipulations until his own action makes itself miraculously apparent.

If the misunderstandings of dysfunction were the end of the story, we could count ourselves lucky.  But we have dualistic consciousnesses as well, and many of our highest ideas simply slap graffiti on the cracks in the wall.  It’s worth recalling the remarks made in July 24’s “Why I’m a pluralist, and other Travelogues.”  Transubstantiation and Divinization both seek to overcome the dualism, between substances on the one hand, between creator and creature on the other. As far as “the list of words we only need because we think dualistically” is concerned, the following could be added:

The Image and likeness of God/ becoming like God:  To give importance, as our first parents did, to “becoming like God” is to neglect the importance John the Beloved later gives to “being with God,” and both neglect the importance the Christian East gives to “becoming God.”  Ultimately these three concepts narrate the journey from completely fractured, to healing but fragile, to restored and healthy again.  It is important for Christian believers to ask, when they use “image and likeness” language, if their true meaning isn’t subtly caught up in the dualist “being like God” when the term, spoken with a unified consciousness, means something more like “becoming God.”  I would rather be God in slightly uncomfortable quiet than “be like God” and be able, easily, to verbalize it.  

Cataphasis and the deposit of faith: In via positiva or Cataphatic spiritualities, words and concepts play a positive role in creating peace of mind and rest in God.  The deposit of faith is an accumulation of things about the truth of which we can be fairly certain, owing to 2 millennia of heavenly confirmation.  A dualistic mind automatically a confuses the concept of God with the Godhead itself, the deposit of faith with the trust faith required of those who truly possessed it.  A dualistic mindset forgets that cataphasis eventually yields to apophasis, images to imagelessness.  

All of this is simply to say that language can conceal wounds that silence uncovers.  And language about the divine does this more completely than most.

Silence, and contemplative experience, is a large part of the solution to all this.  In silence, falsehood is safe to admit: attention is decoupled from force, God from ego, authority from narrow-mindedness, and the detachment of grace from the addictiveness of the world.  In the contemplative experience granted by consistent meditation, it’s possible to cut out the steps our dualistic mindset has imposed on us.  The shortest route between God and us is a non-path, whereon we realize that we are what we sought to be like, that when we are truly with ourselves we will find the one we’ve sought all along.   The Heart Sutra says form is emptiness, emptiness is form.  The Tao says “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.”  The Catholic Church has said that too, that words are only ghostly approximations of silence, the Logos only a finite version of the Infinite Mouth it came from.  To the degree that we listen, perhaps we have a chance to hear this for ourselves.