Robert S de Ropp the Master Game

SEEING THE UNSEEN

AN OSCAR-WINNING SCREENWRITER

ON SEEING THE TRUTH

VISIONS AND ILLUSIONS

Parabola {Where Spiritual Traditions Meet}

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SUMMER 2011 FALL 2011 PLEASE DISPLAY UNTIL PLEASE DISPLAY UNTIL OCTOBER 31, 2011  JULY 31, 2011 $9.50 / $11.50 CANADA$9.50 / $11.50 CANADA

Now available in trade paperback from Ballantine Books

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PARABOLA { Where Spiritual Traditions Meet }

SEEING VOLUME 36 NUMBER 3 FALL 2011

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WHERE'S THE TEMPLE?  Trebbe Johnson In which the author opens "a doorway into the world beyond the known"

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ILLUSIONS  James Opie Quite a bargain, that grand old painting...or was it?

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CHERRY TREE BLOSSOM  James Whitlow Delano Amid the devastation of the tsunami, hope and beauty bloom

24  THE UNSEEN RIVER  Joyce Kornblatt  Peering into the sacred heart of things

32  THE COSMIC METABOLISM OF FORM Christian Wertenbaker A meditation on a "great cosmic ecology of consciousness"          ➛

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LOOKING WITH YOUR WHOLE BODY A conversation with acclaimed artist Jane Rosen

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SEEING IS AN ACT  Jeanne de Salzmann Rare wisdom on "how to see"

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AWAKENING SIGHT David Ulrich What happens when a professional photographer loses an eye?

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DIGGING DEEPER A conversation with Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal

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"SEEING" BY ZEN MASTER DOGEN Kazuaki Tanahashi Commentary on, and original translation of, the great Zen icon

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DIONYSOS George Latura Beke There, in the skies: A golden pathway to the heavens

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HUGH BROCKWILL RIPMAN Martha Heyneman Introducing a remarkable spiritual teacher

82  THE EYES OF THE SOUL Hugh Brockwill Ripman An unforgettable story about crossing the threshold to Reality

original art by Kazuaki Tanahashi

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 THE SILENT WITNESS

Hugh Brockwill Ripman

Questions, and answers from a man who knows

SEEING AND THE YOGA SUTRA

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Toward freedom of seeing

Dolphi Wertenbaker

EPICYCLE

NOMAD GIRL

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Anonymous | Tibetan Buddhist 

Retold by Barbara H. Berger POETRY

VANISHING POINT  Tina Schumann SPRING FOR EDWIN Linda Ann Suddarth ANCIENT FRENCH ART HISTORY LESSONS IN GLASS-ENCASED POOL Anna Roach ~REFRACTION~ Leila A. Fortier

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ARCS 60

I LOOKED UP

 TANGENTS 10 0 "GOD AS A VERB"

Ron Starbuck 

A review of Paul F. Knitter's book WITHOUT BUDDHA I COULD NOT BE A CHRISTIAN, and a conversation with the author 11 0 SEEING ART

Patty de Llosa

A review of Alexandra Isle's film HIDDEN TREASURES, and a conversation with the filmmaker BOOK REVIEW 11 6 EMINENT GURDJIEFFIANS: LORD PENTLAND

 James Moore | reviewed by Stephen A. Grant  12 8 ENDPOINT

EDITOR & PUBLISHER Jeff Zaleski

WHAT IS A PARABOLA?

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Tracy Cochran

 A parabola is one of the most elegant forms in nature. Every path made by a thrown ball, every spout of water from a fountain, and every graceful arch of steel cables in a suspension bridge is a parabola.

MANAGING EDITOR Dale Fuller WEST COAST EDITOR Richard Whittaker LONDON EDITOR Tilo Ulbricht EPICYCLES EDITOR Diane Wolkstein POETRY EDITOR Lee van Laer ONLINE EDITOR Luke Storms COVER DESIGNER James Sarfati SENIOR EDITORS Christopher Bamford, Jean Sulzberger, Christian  Wertenbaker CONSULTING EDITORS Joseph Bruchac, Patty de Llosa, Brian English, Miriam Faugno, Lillian Firestone, Gray Henry, Trebbe Johnson, Winifred Lambrecht, Margo McLoughlin, Jacob Needleman, James Opie, David Rothenberg, Martin Rowe, Laura Simms, Richard Smoley, Phyllis Tickle

The parabola represents the epitome of a quest. It is the metaphorical journey to a particular point, and then back home, along a similar path perhaps, but in a different direction, after which the traveler is essentially, irrevocably changed. Parabolas have an unusual and useful property: as in a satellite dish, all parallel beams of  energy (e.g., light or radio waves) reflect on the parabola’s face and gather at one point. That point is called the focus. In a similar way, each issue of PARABOLA has its own focus: one of the timeless themes of  human existence.

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PARABOLA (ISSN: 0362–1596), 20 West 20th Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10011, is published quarterly  by the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, Inc., a not-for-profit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent of applicable law. To donate, or for other questions call 212-822-8806.

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WEBSITE www.parabola.org DISTRIBUTION For U.S. & Canada: Rider Circulation Services: 323.344.1200 www.rcsmagazines.com Other foreign distribution: Daimon Verlag, +(41)(55) 412 22 66 www.daimon.ch MICROFORM COPIES are available from University  Microfilms,Inc. PARABOL A is indexed in the Religion  Index of Periodicals, Abstracts of English Studies, Book Review Index, Current Comments, Human-  ities Index, Humanities Abstracts, Humanities  International Complete, CERDIC , Religion and  Theological Abstracts, and InfoTrac’s Expanded   Academic Index.  All material copyright © 2011 by the Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition. Reproduction or use  without written permission is prohibited. Printed in the U.S.A.

VOLUME 36, NO. 3, FALL 2011

FOCUS | From the Editor

“FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS , DARKLY ; but then face to face:

now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” This passage from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians sums up the human condition. As we are, we see the world, ourselves, and the sacred only dimly. But greater clarity and depth of seeing is possible, Paul promises—as does every major spiritual tradition. And when we see and know more, it is said, the universe will respond, and know us as well.  And so this Fall 2011 issue of P  ARABOLA  is devoted to the critical act of seeing. The bold image on our cover, drawn by artist and translator Kazuaki Tanahashi, means “see” in Japanese script. Within the colorful pages that follow, Mark Boal, Oscar-winning screenwriter and producer of T HE  H URT  L OCKER , talks to us about film as a means to realize truth, and sculptor Jane Rosen speaks of seeing as an act of attentiveness that involves body, mind, and feeling. The issue also features a stunning portfolio by master photographer James Whitlow  Delano, who allows us to perceive beauty and hope among the devastations of the recent tsunami in Japan, as well as photographs and memoir by another noted photographer, David Ulrich, that reveal the suffering and incandescent beauty that can accompany  deeper seeing. These and other contributors offer spiritual insight as well as  visual. Here theologian Paul F. Knitter explores how two great faiths, Christianity and Buddhism, can shed light upon one another, and in a special section, writer and teacher Hugh Brockwill Ripman offers illuminations through story and Socratic dialogue. In the issue’s featured book review, a longtime student of two of G.I. Gurdjieff’s foremost pupils offers revelations about that spiritual master’s legacy. Poetry, too, can provide memorable visions, and this issue introduces what we hope will be a recurrent highlight of P  ARABOLA — poems from an array of voices that, we anticipate, will have readers singing with joy. All are invited to submit poems to us; for details, please visit www.parabola.org. May this issue of P  ARABOLA  help each of us to see and to be seen. —JEFF ZALESKI SUMMER 2011 | 5

“Where's The Temple?”: Seeing Behind the Foreground  Trebbe Johnson  A PROFOUND LESSON IN SEEING was

revealed to me many years ago, on the evening of the midsummer day I moved into an old stone cottage in the Berkshire Downs of England. The event lasted only a few seconds, but it showed me a key to spying the  wondrous amidst its camouflage. I was in the upstairs room of the cottage, standing before open casement windows that overlooked a wild, long-untended flower garden and creating a writing desk for myself out of an old wooden door and two sturdy crates. The June nights came on slowly that far north, but the downs were finally settling into shadow. At the periphery of my attention, then, something glowed, and I looked up from my adjustments on the desk to see  what it was. A patch of lilies, star-white by day, now flared silver

6 | PARABOLA

Man#ok$-ji Temle, Obama, Jaan

in the bluing twilight. All the plants in the garden had faded to dark except the lilies, which looked, at that moment, as if they were radiating back into the oncoming night some of the sun they  had absorbed by day. And then, as I marveled at this botanical perseverance, the lilies were extinguished. The color simply faded, and all the garden was plunged into night. I felt I had witnessed something extraordinary, a cosmic process I had not been meant to see. It was as if I had

peeked for an instant through a crack in a door and beheld an exalted place like a queen’s palace or a lama’s cave. If I had looked up just seconds earlier or seconds later, I would not have been privy to the sight of lilies holding the last light of day and would not have seen that light drain out of them. And in that instant I understood that if I  were to pay attention to the spaces between and just behind the things I thought I needed to look at, there was no limit to what I might witness. FALL 2011 | 7

Ba!n" nea! Be!k"hi!e Do%n", England

THERE IS A DOORWAY  into

the world beyond the known. At least that’s what I believed as a child. I was always on the lookout for it—glancing sideways at nesting birds, climbing trees and pretending I lived there, cracking the ice on ponds and puddles, staring at one spot in the sky. I thought if I could just catch nature from the right oblique angle, I would spy the workings of God. It’s human to probe the mystery, not  just as children, but all our lives and in many ways. We long to peer into the remote and inaccessible, because we imagine those elusive places to be more exalted than the common areas we pass through easily. They seem to hold a truth that, because it is unknown, must therefore be lofty and magnificent, and that, once tapped, will be part of us as  well. The mountain climber drawn to high peaks, the Native American Church member who ingests peyote to align with spirit, the artist trying to manifest a more revealing view of  reality, the scientist who explores the micro- and macro-universes, and all  who question, practice, probe for the path they’ll know only when they step onto it—all are on similar searches. 8 |  PARABOLA

They aspire to perceive the unknown  world more clearly and experience it more intimately. Humans are endowed  with what Jung called “divine curiosity,”  which “yearns to be born and does not shrink from conflict, suffering, or sin.” 1 Jung was talking about consciousness here, about how hauling the unconscious into the bright air of  consciousness sates this divine curiosity. But you could say that we are all seized to a greater or lesser degree by a divine curiosity that makes us feel we’re just on the verge of perceiving the one thing that will clarify and even redeem everything else.  Yet the secret world, the keepers of  the mystery, whether birds, gods, oil paint, supernovas, or people with shady  pasts, are often loathe to share their secrets with the mortal curious. Myth, legend, and lore remind us of this truth over and over. When Actaeon witnessed the goddess Artemis at her bath, she punished him by turning him into a stag, and his own hunting dogs tore him to bits. Psyche lost her beloved Eros when she shone a light on his mysterious form after she had promised never to look on him, and when Bluebeard’s wife peeked

into the room that her husband had forbidden her to enter, she inadvertently  enrolled herself as the next corpse to be stowed there. Lot’s wife became petrified into a pillar of salt when she turned back  to glimpse her city of Sodom one last time. And everyone knows that a person  who finds his or her way into the realm of fairy and later leaves, either by escape or permission, will instantly age a hundred years upon returning to the  world he assumed he’d left behind only  days before. These and other audacious humans and their terrible fates are cited by the cautious as proof that those who peer into what is forbidden, invisible, and impenetrable will be punished. From Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and offered it to the world, to the Renaissance painter Caravaggio, whose “Death of the Virgin” was condemned for “realism bordering on blasphemy,” 2 to contemporary scientists exploring stem-cell medicine—those who attempt to see into the murky frontiers beyond the known and drag a new  known into the light are often considered dangerous. If the gods do permit a human a glimpse of the sublime, it can be too much. In the M  AHABHARATA , when Arjuna begs to see Krishna in his divine form, the god consents, but warns  Arjuna that he is going to provide him with a “divine eye,” since no human could withstand an unmitigated view of such splendor. Even so equipped,  Arjuna is terrified by the vision that appears before him—and even then, he longs for more:

Homage to you, Best of Gods! Be gracious! I want to know you as you are in your beginning. I do not comprehend the course of your ways.3

I thought of Arjuna, dashed and sizzling after being granted the vision he so longed for, when I read about the epiphany of the self-trained nineteenthcentury scholar George Smith. He was in the British Museum poring over ancient clay tablets when the barbed wall of cuneiform suddenly parted, and he understood that what he was reading  was a tale of the Flood. He was so excited by his discovery that he leaped up and started tearing off his clothes.  And then, after he had calmed down a bit, he returned to his work and continued to penetrate the text that, thanks to him, was soon to become known to the world as T HE  E PIC OF  G ILGAMESH .4 Pa!#ial cla' #able#, Epic of Gilgamesh, The B!i#i"h M$"e$m, London

Tell me—  who are you in this terrible form?

FALL 2011 | 9

Col$mbia C!e"#, Mo$n# Rainie! Na#ional Pa!k, Wa"hing#on

or the personal friend of a god who can be privy to great visions. Sometimes all it takes is looking just to the side of the obvious. Seeing the lilies in the garden extinguish the light of day was a boon, especially happening as it did on my first night at the cottage. Beginning the next morning, I took walks every day in the  woods, hills, and fields, and then I’d stop walking and simply wait and look. Eventually, invariably, something amazing would happen: the reflection of  a hawk flew over a pond, the wind chased the clouds across the field, a fox dashed through the snow, a single red berry twirled crazily on the end of a  vine. This way of seeing accompanied me throughout that year in England and during several dark years back in New   York, and it has informed the work I do,  which stems from exploring how simple and profound it is to spend time in IT’S NOT JUST THE GENIUS

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nature, both wild and wounded, and pay attention to what arises within and  without. I have never forgotten the lesson of the lilies, for it is valid everywhere, and not just in nature either. I have been granted access to amazement in a subway, a recycling center, a plane, even a funeral home.  As John Berger, who has widely  explored the avenues of seeing, has  written: “Not to say that behind  appearances is the truth, the Platonic  way. It is very possible that visibility is  the truth and that what lies outside  visibility are only the ‘traces’ of what has been or will become visible.” 5 Japanese designers build the interplay  of the visible and invisible into the gardens they create. The aesthetic principle of miegakure , or “hide and reveal,” celebrates the ever-shifting delights of overlapping perspective along the path that meanders through the

garden, so that only a slim glimpse of  rock, tree, or waterfall is visible at any  one time. It is said that miegakure imparts vastness to a small space. Like fresh neuronal pathways in the brain, the garden path constantly presents the  visitor with impressions that rise afresh and in an ever-new relationship to other impressions. All the way along, something is a little bit hidden and something is a little bit revealed. You never know what vision, what insight,  will emerge, and from where.  When we see, the world enters  us.  And, contrary to what we may assume, it does not flow from eyes to brain as a stream of purely objective data. We build the gates that receive our world and can rebuild them at any time. The neuronal pathways that inform how and  what we see are plastic, and they change and adapt not just when we are young, but throughout our lives. When neurons that are highly connected, or “facilitated,” are repeatedly stimulated, they require relatively little input to fire and so pass the signal of recognition on to the next neuron, and so on, deeper into the network. Laura Sewall, ecologist and author of S IGHT AND  S ENSIBILITY , writes that, like fish swimming through rocks in the sea, the pattern of firing wants to take the path of least resistance. We see what  we’re used to seeing,  what we expect to see. However, vision can change. “Plasticity is not simply a matter of  developmental phase. More essentially, it’s the act of attending (the amount of ‘arousal,’ in traditional neurophysical

terms) that makes the critical difference. It is being as excited as a child and as mindful as an adult that makes all the difference.” 6 In order to see the unfamiliar, the beckoning, the truly  revelatory, we need to open up new  pathways for those neurons. We need to look between the lines, nod to the obvious and then glance quickly to the side where the not-so-obvious resides. The Lakota holy man Black Elk  taught the spiritual version of this scientific truth when, speaking about hanblecheyapi , the ceremony of crying for a vision, he emphasized that the person who fasts in the wilderness in hopes of receiving guidance from the sacred world “must be alert to recognize any messenger which the Great Spirit may send to him, for these people often come in the form of an animal, even one as small and as seemingly insignificant as a little ant.” 7 In other words, don’t get so fixated on what you want to see or  what’s easy to see that you miss what’s right before you and doing its best to get your attention. The old tales remind us subtly yet repeatedly of the importance of turning our full gaze to those impressions that dance at the periphery. So many stories are about the quest, of course, the Hanbleche'ai, GrandPaTree, Ne% Me&ico

FALL 2011 | 11

Mo$n#ain Peak", Lah$l, India

search for that one hidden treasure that  will once again bring harmony to the  world. But the heroines and heroes who are open to the unexpected along the  way and respond appropriately to it are far more likely to succeed than the ones  who see only what they’ve determined is  worthy of their attention and reject everything else. The person who pauses to give water to an old woman or delays a critical journey in order to help an animal is the one we admire and root for. He’s the one who bears a sensitivity  to the whole world; she’s the one who insists that there is always time to veer off course when something vital beckons. Beauty and epiphany bide their time in the sidewise glance. R ECENTLY , on a gray, rainy afternoon on

the island of Bali, a place I visit every   year, I impulsively asked my driver, Eka Merta Sedana, to take me to Tanah Lot. I had never been to this temple on the sea, only accessible at low tide, for it is known to be inundated with tourists  who come to take photos of the sun as it sets dramatically behind the open-sided structure. But I was curious and needed a lift. I was feeling sad because a Balinese friend was very ill and I didn’t know if  I’d ever see him again; because, just two weeks earlier, the devastating 12 |  PARABOLA

earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown had struck Japan and the situation  was so sad and frightening; and also because, as so many  people in Bali were remarking, the  weather, for the third year in a row,  was so unusually rainy that the flowers of  the fruits and crops were being knocked off the plants, threatening the harvest.  Why not stop at Tanah Lot? The parking lot was huge, and the long, narrow street between it and the temple was crammed on both sides with tiny stalls selling T-shirts, food, CDs, Balinese offerings, and souvenir kitsch. So far the place was meeting my low  expectations. I reached the end of the street and walked down the wide stone steps that led down to the stony beach. The tide was coming in. I could see at a glance that the temple, perched on a high crag perhaps a quarter mile out across the flattish, black rocks, was inaccessible. Still, people from many  places—Java, Japan, Australia, France, Bali, America—were trying to get as close as they could. They were wading out on the rocks to get a photo of the temple, which really did look dramatic even under the leaden skies, and to take pictures of one another with the temple or the sea in the background. I was wandering among them,  watching my footing on the rocks and thinking I wouldn’t stay long, when a  wave dashed in and splashed everyone.  And it was in that moment of practically  unanimous reaction that I saw the real spectacle in this event. Every time a

 wave washed over the rocks and dowsed the crowd, people burst into shrieks of  delighted laughter. They were acknowledging this moment of  happiness, moreover, not just among their own friends, but with whomever  was nearby. It was a shared experience. Each shower of surf against skirts, jeans,  jilbabs, sarongs, and bare legs brought people’s gazes together in a joyous release of national differences and personal cares. I took the lens cap off my  camera and started shooting pictures.  When I re-entered the parking lot, Eka  was waiting for me. I was so exhilarated that I could not stop babbling to him about what I had seen. Back in the car, I pushed the View button on my camera and showed him some of the photos I had just taken. He looked a while in silence. Then he turned to me. “Where temple?” he asked in surprise. It was true. I had not taken one picture of the temple. For this

pilgrimage had led to something more  wonderful than that sacred place: it had revealed people of many lands playing together in the waves. Glancing just behind the foreground, I had been given to spy a wonder. 1 C.G. Jung, T HE  A RCHETYPES AND THE  C OLLECTIVE  U NCONSCIOUS , trans R.F.C. Hull

(New York: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 96. 2 Will Wlizlo, “The Art Sleuth,” Utne Reader ,

February 24, 2011, http://www.utne.com/Arts/ The-Art-Slueth-Silvano-Vinceti.aspx. 3 T HE  B HAGAVAD -G ITA , trans. Barbara Stoler Miller

(New York: Bantam Books, 1986), Chapter 11,  Verse 30, p. 103. 4 Paul Jordan-Smith, “Living Stories,” P  ARABOLA 

(Vol. XI, No. 4, November 1986), p. 53. 5 John Berger, T HE  S ENSE OF  S IGHT  (New York:

 Vintage Books, 1985), p. 219. 6 Laura Sewall, S IGHT AND  S ENSIBILITY : T HE  E COPSYCHOLOGY OF  P ERCEPTION  (New York: Jeremy 

Tarcher, 1999), uncorrected page proofs, p. 110. 7 Black Elk, through Joseph Epes Brown,

“Hanblecheyapi: Crying for a Vision,”

T EACHINGS 

, edited by Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock  (New York: Liveright Publishing, 1975), p. 20. FROM THE  E   ARTH : I NDIAN  R ELIGION AND  P HILOSOPHY 

Tanah Lo#, Bali

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 All that glitters may not be  gold . . . or very old . . .

Illusions  James Opie

NEXT TO MY DESK  is

a small painting of an intimate nativity  scene. Angels float above shafts of light, looking at each other, looking off at the distance, and at us. Around the manger, only  haloed Mary looks down at the baby Jesus. The eyes of figures clustered around the infant turn this way and that. The eyes of  only one figure turn toward us. This man’s face bears a quizzical look, as if he is uncertain and intrigued by what we make of all this, here on our side of this miracle, and this painted image. If  he is not intrigued in this way, then perhaps he should be. What my eyes and heart first saw in this painting and what they see now are quite different. A shift occurred in the two years I have owned it. I bought the painting from a local dealer who told me, correctly, that it was painted “on copper” and “. . . obviously is old.” He said it was “unsigned” and “probably student work,” allowing me my own guesses as to its exact age, who may have painted it, and why the artist created it. Aside from the price, I didn’t question him and, in fact, did not want to question him. A nativity  scene painted on copper suggested real age and real value. And “student work”? Could this possibly be true? This fine painting  was surely not the work of a neophyte. I reflected that the dealer  who owned it specialized in modern work and was not drawn to 14 |  PARABOLA

FALL 2011 | 15

the painting’s religious theme. Could he be making a significant mistake? Inspecting it more closely, it became clear that the style and subject matter  were not from the nineteenth century. Eighteenth century? No, not eighteenth, either. Could this be a seventeenth- or even a sixteenth-century painting to  which someone had applied the term “student work”? It was quite good, and priced at only $2,500. I knew that experienced Oriental rug dealers can make big mistakes. I have made several, and not solely during my  early years in business. The notion that the dealer was mis-pricing this old painting fixed itself in my mind as the itch to buy it seized hold of me. By a slight margin, shallow reservoirs of restraint held me back for one week. Then I returned to the dealer, worried that the painting was gone. I was in luck; it was still there. I quickly wrote a check for twenty-five hundred dollars and took the painting home. Month by month, I appreciated the painting more and more. My “appreciation” was for the work itself, but also for the fact of having acquired a real bargain.  What the painting was really worth, I didn’t know—surely much more than twenty-five hundred dollars. The more I looked, the more value I saw. The postures of the figures were a bit stiff, and the baby looked like a miniature adult. Along with the fact of  being painted on copper, everything fit  with an “early” age for this piece, much earlier than the dealer could have known. Student work or not, this painting was quite good!  A year later, my brother, who paints, saw the piece and admired it. Not wanting to say aloud how old I thought it was, I said, “It’s on copper.” He said, “It’s good, and certainly in great condition.” 16 |  PARABOLA

Inevitably, as months passed, I looked at the painting less often. Then one day, gazing into the scene for a moment, I focused on the sole figure who looks out at the viewer. Once more, I felt puzzled by the expression on his face. Why wasn’t he looking down at baby Jesus, or at Mary, or perhaps Joseph, or at the cow  brushing against him? He looked straight at me with an expression that seemed incongruous in the sacred scene around him. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking, or feeling. For months, whenever my attention settled on the painting my eye kept going back to him. One day, submitting to the light interrogation of his look, I awoke to a realization: I really didn’t know anything about this painting. I remembered a few words the seller had spoken. All the rest was supposition. At that moment I decided to take the work  to an art dealer in our city who I know  possesses an excellent eye. I promised myself to be totally open to whatever he might say. The last moments of an enjoyable illusion connecting me with this painting  were spent in my car as I drove to this dealer’s shop, parked, and walked to his door. Handing the painting to him,

 waiting for him to speak, I experienced the final seconds. I said, “It’s on copper. The man I bought it from said it was student’s  work.” “The style is fifteenth century, perhaps sixteenth,” he said. “Could it possibly be that old?” Something in his voice suggested that it couldn’t be and, hearing him, a crack began to appear in my illusion, though it was not yet broken. The hypnotic illusion was still there, though not for much longer. My friend took off his glasses and reached for a magnifying lens. “If it was painted in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, could it possibly be in such excellent condition?” His question lingered in the air and the crack within me expanded. Was he breaking the news gently? Anyone in his business or mine has to deliver “bad news” at times: “I’m sorr y, but your rug is actually thirty years old and from Pakistan, not one-hundred years old and Persian. There must have been a misunderstanding.” He added, “The frame looks right stylistically for an earlier period but . . . [looking at the back] it couldn’t be remotely as old as the style and theme of  painting suggest.” He pointed. “Look, it’s been stained on the back, and the gold leaf on the front appears to have been fussed with.  Why would they do that? The wood has some age, but isn’t at all what we see in frames from three or four hundred  years ago.” He then gave it to me straight. “There have always been painters who could pull off work of this quality, which is rather high. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when people

from England and America began visiting the Continent in numbers, paintings like this were produced by quite capable painters to be sold to tourists. The sums changing hands for them were probably  modest, as a rule. I doubt if they were sold as earlier work, but who knows? The arrangement of subject matter in this painting could be original, and I don’t view it as a  fake . Sellers back then may have been entirely honest in describing this as new work. Or, perhaps they  allowed tourists to see whatever they   wished to see and think whatever they   wished to think. As these things go, this piece isn’t bad. “Did you pay more than fifteen hundred dollars for it?” “I paid twenty-five hundred.” “It could be worse. It’s a hundred year-old painting with strong subject matter, on copper. It’s well done. A  retail customer might pay that much for it. Acquiring this for inventor y, I  would be safe at a figure close to a thousand dollars. So, you didn’t go too far overboard.” I didn’t speak with him about the larger “price” at hand, the piercing of an illusion, the deflating shift of vision and feeling accompanying the bursting of a hypnotic bubble. From that moment, my relationship  with this painting began to change. It is still changing. I now accept the fact of its real age and no longer see it through avarice-tinted glasses. Now when I look  at the painting, I relate less to the angels, or to Mary, or to the baby Jesus, and more to the man who looks out at me— at all of us—quizzically, wondering what  we see. Is this the face of the artist himself, wondering if we are still caught, or perhaps have managed to escape from at least one level of illusion? FALL 2011 | 17

CHERRY TREE BLOSSOM

Photography by  James Whitlow Delano

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TOKYO — I stood in Ofunato, in Iwate Prefecture, with a photographer friend. We were mesmerized by a scene that seemed too outlandish even to imagine. She told me how her grandmother described clothes, reduced to rags, hanging from trees after Tokyo was bombed to the ground in World War II. The realization that we were standing before a natural disaster on a similar scale — one that had happened in minutes, not hours — drove us into silence. I decided then to return later when the cherry trees bloomed. Cherry blossoms are so important to the Japanese people on a symbolic and emotional level. In winter, plum and apricot trees bloom sparsely and last for months. Cherry trees, on the other hand, blossom in a riot of flowers but only last one week before petals fill the wind with organic snow, which accumulates — white — on the ground beneath them. They represent the transience of life and also the return of life after a long winter. Black and white removes the obvious, removes the botanical ostentation and lets us enter the spiritual, shadowy side of the rebirth on a grey day. I am after something more important than pinks and greens.

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The realization that we were standing before a natural  disaster on a similar scale — one that had happened in  minutes, not hours — drove us into silence.

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 The Unseen River  Joyce Kornblatt  IN  B LACKHEATH, high in the Blue Mountains of Australia, we

live in the clouds. Often the mist is so dense that the village becomes a dream I cannot quite recall. On such a morning, a kilometer from our house, the Grose Valley canyon has dissolved like a wafer in water—forest, cliffs, paths, and flowers as invisible as if they had never existed. Through the haze, I’ve walked the vanished footpath from home to escarpment’s edge, led by the sensation of foot on road. Here in the Blue Mountains National Park, leaning against a phantom guardrail, I can hear tourists disembark from ghostly buses whose engines quiet behind me. Shoes crunch on gravel and grass. These  visitors are ready to take photos, but I have never known anyone to be upset when the mist hides the valley from view. Cloud-cloaked, the tourists record the cloud that has swallowed them. Invisibility is its own natural wonder. 24 | PARABOLA

Haze, fog, moonless night, the blizzard  white-outs I remember from my life in the northern hemisphere: The unseen arrives as a mystery, a teaching and a provocation. Incline your attention as the blind do, we are instructed, toward what the eyes can never know. Here at the look-out—an ironic term now for a place where so little can be seen—the guardrail is pure sensation: icy solidity meeting the warm  vibration of flesh. At my back, I sense the energy of the eucalypt that rose like an ancient guardian in yesterday’s light. This morning it’s a spirit-tree watching over the memory of a world.

For a time, the tourists and I are silent  witnesses to this vanishing. Speech belongs to form, and we are absorbed into the formless here. The mist obliterates all we take to be “self and other,” offering us the Buddha’s central teaching: “Nothing whatever is to be clung to as ‘me’ or ‘mine.’” There is comfort in this undifferentiated space that subsumes distinctions. Paradoxically, this blinding heightens my experience of  connectedness with my fellow humans, reminds me of the truth that none of us stops at our skin and that the felt sense of  affiliation does not depend on how we FALL 2011 | 25

look to others and they to us. Perhaps, as well, we are bonded here by fear. I can’t deny the flutter of anxiety that accompanies this disappearance of form, the reminder of what physicists and mystics observe is the true nature of the material world: flux and silence.  As if in a gesture of reassurance, the mist moves toward dissolution. Slowly a landscape hundreds of millions of years old emerges again. This must be what photographers in the darkroom experience as an image gathers resolution—a replay of Creation itself. I hear the digital cameras whirring like a new species of Australian bird along the guardrail. The folds of forested gorge appear to our human eyes as a spectrum of greens, and the shadows of the cliffs cut dark geometrical swathes across the soft tops of these gum trees into which we peer. The cliffs arise out of pre-history  again: the layers of ancient Gondwanaland sandstone, the dark mudstone band marking Australia’s slow separation from  Antarctica, and the newer rust-hewed rock  that followed that great continental schism. It is like looking at stars whose light originated eons before, this intricate  valley of deep geological time that just moments ago seemed not to exist at all.  When the Blackheath cloud-cover clears and the wilderness at whose edge I stand is available again as a magnificent  visual display, the dazzle of detail might obscure the fact that, even in this clarity, concealment is everywhere. Wilderness invites us into an environment as hidden as it is visible. The made world—what we call civilization—stays lit even at night, as if a secreted life were an affront, as if  scrutiny were a currency more valuable than dollars or yen. Neon, LED displays, office towers never darkened, sensor lights that turn a sleeping house ablaze when 26 |  PARABOLA

the smallest vibration—a breeze, a moth, a possum on the porch—impinges on their sensitive radar: We’ve turned the unseen into something suspect and forbidding, the setting of the sun itself an adversary   we work to defeat. When I enter the Blue Mountains National Park, when I gaze into the Grose Valley, when I walk one of  its winding trails, I am in a realm in which hiddeness is as natural as revelation. I don’t have to leave the lookout to be aware of the unseen. River, birds, animal life, insects, plants, hikers on the  valley floor—an entire ecology suggests itself by sound and inference. The poet Mark Strand says: “Is there something down by the water keeping itself from us, / Some shy event, some secret of  the light that falls upon the deep .. . ? ” I learn to trust what I cannot see.  Atheist or believer, we all live on faith. From this lookout, the Grose River is a murmur whose waters I can only  extrapolate. Hidden beneath a canopy  of eucalypts and angophera, this powerful river carved through millennia of rock until the earth collapsed in on itself, and cliffs and gorges and canyons emerged. I see the river’s work, but not the river. The endangered platypus makes its home there, that wonderful  Australian egg-laying mammal few ever see—it is a secretive animal, mostly 

nocturnal, virtually silent, and even conservationists can’t say for sure why  their number is dwindling. And yet  Australia has numerous conser vation organizations dedicated to the wellbeing of this rarely viewed creature. The same valley is home ground for birds whose names alone are choir and song: fan-tailed cuckoos, lyrebirds, scrub  wrens, pilot birds, origami, spotted pardalote. Occasionally their music rises from the valley floor, or a creature wings from one cliff to another, above the trees into which I peer. But mostly these birds are invisible from the look-out’s vantage point. I trust the guidebooks that testify  to their presence. I trust the reports from the climbers who make their way down to the river’s edge. Why wouldn’t I believe in what I cannot see? All I ever have is a limited point of view, a tiny pinhole through which so-called “reality” offers me a glimpse, at most, of what manifests. This visit to the Grose Valley, in obscuring mist and then a so-called clearing that maintains more secrets than it will ever reveal, is fact and metaphor at once. Every spiritual tradition, theistic or not, locates itself within the invisible. Jews embrace a God who never appears in form and a sacred text in which meanings are hidden, coded, crossreferenced, and encrypted. Christians

trust a Resurrection only a few are said to have witnessed, the return of Jesus to a Father none have seen. Thomas Merton deepens the mystery of the sacred: “There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek  namelessness, a hidden wholeness.” In the Muslim faith, the faithful bow  down five times a day to a deity whose invisibility is so central that no image must be made to represent Allah. Buddhists turn to the material as the site for meditative inquiry which yields, paradoxically, the dissolution of the seen  world: “Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” Aborigines in Australia walk the intangible Songlines, and Native  American peoples communicate through ritual and art with an invisible spirit world that guides and guards the human realm. The unseen is a gift that opens the eye of the heart. Theodore Roethke writes: “I wake to sleep and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go.” Released from the eye’s material evidence, we deepen into sight that accepts mystery as ground, that enters dream as a landscape palpable as any  terrain we can measure, sample, and mark. Who doesn’t wake to mist and move through obscurations day by day,  whatever the weather? Antoine de SaintExupery says it clearly in T  HE  L ITTLE  P RINCE : It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;  What is essential is invisible to the eye.

 As radiant as the view might be— from the lookout at Govett’s Leap, from a roof-top garden in New York, from a monastery high in the mountains of  Nepal—it is the hidden that illumines our way, asks us for our trust and takes us home. FALL 2011 | 27

E P I C Y C L E 

Nomad Girl Retold by Barbara Helen Berger Anonymous | Tibetan Buddhist 

n eons past, before the divine lady Tara was known by the name of Tara, she sat at the Buddha’s feet and listened to his  teachings, made countless offerings, and meditated deeply. Finally the monks of the great assembly told her, “You are so close  to enlightenment, if only you would pray to be reborn as a man. Then you, too, could awaken and become a Buddha.”  But she said to them, “In the enlightened mind of wisdom, there is  no male or female.”  Then she made a vow. “Since no one wants to become enlightened  as a woman, I will do so. Out of compassion for all beings, I vow to   fully awaken and always appear in the body of a woman.” 

I

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White Tara

ONE DAY ON A HIGH MOUNTAIN PLATEAU , a traveler stumbled and fell and could not get up again. He was alone, no more than a speck in the vast land. On his way home from a distant place, he had run out of food and his last strength. He lay where he fell. And a bitter wind swept over him. He felt two hands grabbing his legs and dragging him over the ground. Surely the Lord of Death had come. All senses left him, and the traveler did not feel the cold anymore. Nor did he know how many nights passed into days before he stirred awake, a hand touching his cheek. It was a warm, human hand. He opened his eyes and saw the face of a girl who lifted his head and brought a steaming bowl to his lips, urging him to drink. Never had a broth of tea churned with butter and salt tasted so good. Through a haze of smoke from a small fire, he saw only a dark cloth above and around him. Then the traveler knew he must be inside a nomad tent, sheltered from the wind.  While he drifted back to sleep, warm under a blanket of yak hair, the nomad girl went about her chores. She kept the fire lit and her eye on the traveler. Whenever he woke she came with more hot butter tea to sustain him. Soon, she hoped, he would be strong enough to eat. Each morning early, she went outside with her bucket to milk the female of the yak herd. She made some of the dri’ s milk into yogurt. And she stood at a tall wooden churn lifting and plunging the paddle to make the rest into butter. Every day she led the yaks to another grazing place, and came back into the tent, her long braids dusted with snow, bringing more fuel for the fire. She roasted barley in an iron pan and ground it between two stones. The traveler woke to the good smell of tsampa . He ate hungrily. Then the girl smiled, assured he would be well. Day by day as she fed and cared for him, the man grew stronger. In the evenings they talked and laughed together. He was happy listening to her  voice as she hummed softly, spinning her prayer wheel into the night. Then at last, the traveler was well enough to be on his way. With a broad smile, the girl gave him a woolen bag she had woven herself, filled with provisions. But he had nothing to give her in return, no way to repay all her kindness. He could only set out on his journey again, filled with gratitude. Not far along his way, he turned for a last glimpse of the tent he had left behind. He saw no trace of it now in the vast land. But could the nomad girl have packed everything up, loaded the yaks, and moved so quickly to another grazing ground? Maybe a mist had come over the plain, hiding her tent from his view like a dream. Would he ever find her again? FALL 2011 | 29

Pondering as he walked, he thought of the girl’s eyes glowing in the firelight. How strange—he had never seen anyone else there, no parents, no brother or sister to help with the herding. This one girl did the work of a whole family.  Alone, she had saved his life. She had nursed him back to health. Even now she provided for him whenever he stopped to eat, for she had filled the bag with tsampa and yogurt and hard white cheese.  As he sat under the infinite sky he wondered, for the bag never seemed to run out. Every time he stopped to eat he found it as full as before, until at last he came to his home valley. But he did not stop in the village. He turned and went up the hill to the temple first, to see the lama. There he made prostrations and sat at the lama’s feet and told him all that had happened. The lama said, “Without any doubt, it was Tara who saved you.” The compassionate Tara herself?  If only he had recognized her! In all the time he was in her tent, he had never thought to honor the girl. He could have bowed to the ground and asked for her blessing, her wisdom. Now he looked up at the lama and asked, “What can I do?” The lama said, “If you ever hope to find her again, you had better clear the ignorance from your mind.” Then he taught the traveler how to contemplate the divinity, Tara, to recite her mantra, and dissolve her image into himself, like a rainbow melting into the sky. Then to sit quietly in the empty stillness. So the traveler went home and did this. He prayed for all beings who wander and fall in ignorance, like himself. Day by day his heart grew lighter, his mind more clear. He began to see his mother, his sisters, his brother's wife, his aunt, his little nieces, his old grandmother, all with new eyes. How could he be sure who was Tara and who was not? He began to see her everywhere in the village. People noticed how respectful he was, how loving and kind. There was a peace about him. “ Ah la la ,” said his lama, “you have found her.” Then the traveler felt a radiance flooding his heart, like the smile of the nomad girl herself in the tent of his own mind. This story comes from Tibet, the land where Tara is most known and loved. I found the seed of it many years ago in T ARA ’S COLOURING BOOK , by Jonathan Landaw, Andy Weber, and Nigel Wellings (Wisdom Publications, 1979). The essence of that seed stuck with me and grew, in time, into this retelling.

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Tara statue near Kullu, India

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The Infrared Universe

Ligh! from 1.6 million gala%ie re#eal !he !r"c!"re of !he local "ni#ere.

 The Cosmic Metabolism of Form Christian Wertenbaker

by now that life on earth forms a vast interconnected and interdependent network. Organic molecules are recycled over and over, those of one organism providing food for another. Bacteria transform our waste into soil. Carbon dioxide is taken in by plants and oxygen released; in animals the reverse process occurs, in an endless cycle of energy exchange, ultimately fueled by the sun. Ecosystems depend on a delicate balance of mutually  supportive interactions, forming a greater organism. For that matter, any given organism is itself an ecosystem: birds keep the hippopotamus clean, our intestinal bacteria help us digest. Even the subcellular organelles that power our cells, the mitochondria,  were, it is thought, once independent organisms. The boundaries of selfhood become blurred and somewhat arbitrary. These interrelations extend out to the entire universe. The Sun, besides providing the energy that fuels life on Earth and keeping the Solar System in place with its gravity, also interacts  with the Earth and other planets through the solar wind, shaping the Earth’s own magnetic body and influencing the  weather, which in turn affects all Earth’s creatures. There are certainly other crucial interactions at this electromagnetic level; the more we look, the more we find a complex and delicate order. And the basic elemental building blocks of our world and IT IS FAIRLY OBVIOUS

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of organic life—carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and the rest—were formed in the nuclear furnaces of stars and distributed by the explosions of  supernovae, as part of vast cosmic cycles of stellar formation, growth, and death. IN CONSIDERING THESE THINGS,

we generally think in terms of substances being endlessly recycled and transformed, in large and small metabolic cycles. But the consequence of all these transformations is to preserve form. An organism or an ecosystem is a form,  whose elements are constantly changing  while its structure is preserved for a time: its lifetime. It is estimated that every  single atom in the human body is replaced in at most seven years. Most cells, with the exception of many of the cells of the nervous system, are also replaced during the lifetime of the body, some more rapidly, like skin and intestinal cells, and others more slowly. Similarly, the organisms in an ecosystem live and die, to be replaced by others, but the ecosystem has a longer lifespan.  A subtler, often unacknowledged, materialistic bias in our thinking appears in the assumption that form is simply the result of the properties of matter. Atoms form molecules, molecules cells, cells organisms, etc., because the basic properties of the smaller constituents determine how they organize themselves into the larger assemblies. Given the physical laws that govern the fundamental particles and forces, and time for evolutionary processes to work, everything has become what it is now, culminating in self-aware organisms that happen to be able to contemplate these matters. It is certainly true that quarks and the strong nuclear force must have the properties they have in order to form

nuclei, and that oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen can join in the molecules they form only because of  their specific chemical properties, and so on at every level. But fundamentally,  what is matter? Physics has long since reached an impasse in defining it with any kind of bricks and mortar, or even  whirling particles. Picture: atoms are mostly empty space, and the subatomic constituents of everything are both  waves and particles, but not both at the same time, or perhaps neither, but with properties of both. Ultimately, the only  reliable descriptors of the constituents of  matter are mathematical equations, the abstract mathematical forms of group theory. So form underlies substance, as Plato taught, rather than the reverse. If this is so, perhaps intelligent beings such as ourselves, who are capable of  resonating with (and therefore discovering) the mathematical forms that govern external reality, do not have these capacities merely as an accidental byproduct of being the fittest organisms in the evolutionary struggle, but have a

 A ilicon a!om

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Kepler' S"perno#a

more fundamental role in the universe. Just as our bodies transform substances in metabolic cycles of varying complexity, and take part in the larger ecological metabolic cycles of organic life on earth, our minds take in and manipulate, transform, break down and build up, in short metabolize, forms—as impressions, perceptions, concepts, memories, and plans. And we take part in a larger ecology  of form: culture, literature, art, science. One could say that everything in the universe has three aspects: a physical or material aspect, an energetic aspect, and a form. We share with other creatures the ability to participate in the metabolism of matter and energy, but seem uniquely endowed by our consciousness to participate in the metabolism of form. the traditional religious teachings, human beings have a special place in the cosmos: IN THE VIEW OF

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“And God said, let us make men in our own image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth…. And God said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.”1

One of the main concerns of the ecologically minded is that humanity is despoiling the Earth and disrupting the  web of life. But even this capacity  implies its converse: “to replenish the earth.” This is not simply to populate it, but to care for it, and maintain it, by   virtue of our understanding, in ways that are obvious and perhaps in other ways that we now only dimly perceive. Human intelligence provides us with a unique relationship to time: we are not confined to the relentless march of our bodies through linear time, but are able to remember the past, foresee the future, and

contemplate all of their possibilities. We can look at a tree and see planks and beams and a bridge, look at mud and see adobe bricks and a house. We can create, repair, and maintain to a degree and with a flexibility unknown to other creatures. We are, at our best, anti-entropy machines. This capacity of our consciousness is evident in all our artifacts, and whether ultimately it will serve to replenish the earth or to destroy it is still in the balance. But it is possible that our awareness has a purpose on another level as well. Some religious and mystical teachings hold that human consciousness, in reflecting reality, also helps to bring it into being.  According to the Islamic mystic Ibn  Arabi, man acts “as the eye through  which God can see His own creation:”2 ‘

“He praises me (by manifesting my  perfections and creating me in His form),  And I praise Him (by manifesting His perfections and obeying Him). How can He be independent when I help and aid Him? (Because the Divine attributes derive the possibility of manifestation from their human correlates). For that cause God brought me into existence.  And I know Him and bring Him into existence (in my knowledge and contemplation of Him).”3

 A similar concept, though with a less hierarchical emphasis, appears in Hindu teaching as Indra’s net: “In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if   you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact IS everything else.”4

Perhaps the most detailed, though still incomplete, elaboration of this idea is

contained in the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff.  According to Gurdjieff, humans take in three kinds, or levels, of food: ordinary  food, air, and impressions. These consist of  substances of increasing fineness, but each is metabolized according to the same general laws. The three foods and their metabolites interact with each other, helping each other’s digestion: the clearest example is the necessity of oxygen for the complete metabolism of ordinary food,  which is well known to ordinary  physiology and biochemistry. On first encountering this idea, the analogy  between the metabolism of ordinary food and the taking in and processing of  impressions by the brain may seem farfetched, but there are clear parallels. The food we eat consists mostly of  macromolecules—proteins, carbohydrates, and fats—which themselves are compounds of smaller molecules: amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids. These in turn are made up of different configurations of  atoms, mostly carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. The process of digestion is a progressive breakdown of these large macromolecules, which contain energy  stored in their atomic arrangements, into much smaller molecules, primarily water and carbon dioxide, the atomic arrangements of which are in a much lower energy state, thus releasing the energy of food for use by the body. Some of the molecular constituents of food are also recycled by the body and built up again into the proteins, carbohydrates, and fats of the body itself. So the metabolism of food has at least two results: one on the same level, which is the maintenance of the body by producing substances, just like those in food, which make up our flesh; and one on a “higher” level, which is the production of energy to maintain the life of the body. FALL 2011 | 35

Impressions also consist of larger configurations of smaller elements. A   visual scene is made up of many shapes and colors, which in turn are made up of  lines and boundaries between patches of  differing contrast and hue. Colors themselves can be thought of as consisting of mixtures of primary colors and different amounts of white, gray, and black, and ultimately different combinations of   wavelengths of light. Complex sounds are ultimately combinations of fundamental frequencies varying over time. In processing impressions, the brain breaks them down into more fundamental components. In the visual cortex, individual cells are activated by the elementary components of the visual scene: oriented lines and edges, spatial frequencies, binocular disparity conveying depth, basic colors. A wealth of  information is known about these processes (and a great deal remains to be known), which I cannot go into here, but the analogy is clear: impressions are also metabolized via a process of breakdown into smaller and simpler elements. Subsequently, impressions are, so to speak, reconstituted into our perceptions. Something has been added, our awareness and our interpretations, based on experience. The capacity to perceive depends on a long process of learning in early childhood. Our brains are partly 

Mi!ochondria

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formed, or tuned, by our environment of  impressions. People born blind whose sight is restored later in life typically do not learn to see properly, although the eye is transmitting all the information to the brain; at best they are like people using a dictionary to speak in a foreign language, painfully correlating their  visual impressions with their learned perceptions in other sensory modalities. The reconstituted perceptions are internal representations of the external stimuli, analogous to the reconstituted macromolecules that make up our bodies.  What do these internal representations consist of, in material terms? This is an as  yet unresolved question scientifically, but evidence suggests that their physical correlates may be complex patterns of  electromagnetic vibrations in the brain.  Visual configurations are conveyed to us  via patterns of electromagnetic vibrations —light—and our internal perceptions may be of the same materiality.  According to Gurdjieff, our impressions are not fully metabolized in our ordinary state of relative unawareness. For metabolism to proceed further, we must be conscious of ourselves in the act of receiving impressions, just as oxygen is necessary for the full metabolism of food. The full metabolism of food releases much more energy than that released in the absence of oxygen (anaerobic metabolism). What kind of energy is released by the full metabolism of impressions? Perhaps the energy of consciousness.  Although consciousness is required for this process to take place, acting like a catalyst, the result is the production of  even more consciousness. Or more precisely, it is the addition of consciousness to the impressions, just as the energy of  life is added to the macromolecules of  our bodies.

This vivification of impressions feeds our inner life, which needs conscious impressions to grow, and may also serve a larger purpose, enabling God to “see” his own creation through us and other conscious observers throughout the universe. quantum theory  is that the form of what we observe in looking at the smallest constituents of  matter, for instance whether they consist of waves or particles, depends on the kind of observation that is conducted. Some argue that the “decision” is made when a conscious observer appears, others that a measuring apparatus is sufficient, but in any case, the measuring apparatus was made by a human being.5 Perceptions have a similar property, for when we see something we are making decisions. This is made evident in the perception of  ambiguous figures such as the Necker cube (Fig.1), but is going on all the time. So perhaps, in an as yet unclear fashion, we are, or can be, part of a great cosmic ecology of consciousness, maintaining the form of the universe against the entropy of linear time, because of  our potential capacity for metabolizing form, made possible by our flexible and encompassing relationship to time itself. In this process, we become part of  everything on a conscious level, just as  we are part of ever ything on the level of  gross materiality. Just as our bodies are made up of atoms that once were created in supernovae, and passed through a variety of inorganic and organic entities, the material of our inner lives consists of all our perceptions—of other beings, of  earth, sea, sky, and stars, and of the fundamental laws that govern it all—and we are thereby connected to everything on both levels, and to the Whole.

Fig. 1. The Necker c"be can be een in !$o $a&, a ei!her !he lo$er face for$ard, or !he "pper face. Each $a& re"l! in a di!inc! !hree-dimenional in!erpre!a!ion of !he c"be. One can eail& $i!ch from one percep!ion !o !he o!her, b"! no! ee bo!h a! once, or eail& fail !o ee ei!her. Thi i a imple e%ample of !he difference be!$een !he e%!ernal pa!!ern !ha! fall on !he e&e and !he re"l!ing percep!ion, in#ol#ing a percep!"al deciion.

THE GREAT PARADOX  of

“He through Whom we see, taste, smell, feel, hear, enjoy, know everything, He is that Self. “Knowing That by Which one perceives both dream states and waking states, the great, omnipresent Self, the wise man goes beyond sorrow. “Knowing that the individual Self, eater of  the fruit of action, is the universal Self, maker of past and future, he knows he has nothing to fear. “Born in the beginning from meditation, born from the waters, having entered the secret place of the heart, He looks forth through beings. That is Self. “That boundless power, source of every  power, manifesting itself as life, entering every heart, born with the beings, that is Self.”6 1 The Holy Bible, King James Version, Genesis

1:26–28. 2 R. Landau, T HE  P HILOSOPHY OF  I BN  A RABI  (London, ‘

George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1959), p. 74. 3 Ibn  Arabi, with commentary in parentheses by  ‘

‘

‘

 Abdu l-Razzaq al-Kashani, quoted in ref. 2, p. 74. 4 Charles Eliot, quoted at www.cs.kent.ac.uk/

people/staff/saf/networks/ networking-networkers/indras-net.html. 5 There are other theories, and the question of how 

the wavefunction “collapses” is not really resolved. 6 Katha Upanishad, edited by the author based on

multiple translations.

FALL 2011 | 37

Looking with Your Whole Body A Conversation with Jane Rosen

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The first look is a word, a name. To me anything that is attached to words and names is a mental looking. is a  wildly relative term. And no one  would say that Jane Rosen has not been successful. But something happened that took her away from the kind of success she might have found had she continued to pursue her fast start in Manhattan. She  visited the Bay Area, where she lived on a horse ranch south of San Francisco. The exposure to the beauty of the place—the coast, the hills, the redwoods—made a deep impression. One day, as she stepped out of her house, she looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk soaring above her. “As I stood looking up at the hawk, in a  voice as clear as day, I heard these  words: ‘Tell my story ’.” Rosen’s drawings and sculptures are born from the perennial questions: What can nature show us? And what is seeing? Her work shows us something about that. SUCCESS IN THE ART WORLD

—Richard Whittaker

JANE  R OSEN: Seeing isn’t what we think it is.

 What we call seeing is “looking.” Looking is when you go out and you look at something. You have a number of  facts about that thing and you put them together as a mental construct. When students in my class look at the model often they are not seeing it. Paul Klee said to his students, “Yes. I want to draw   what I see, but first you must see  what  you draw.”

RICHARD WHITTAKER : I agree, we don’t see very 

much, but what is it when someone stops  and keeps looking and then starts to see  more, literally?  JR: That means they kept looking. And that shifts what I would call cognitive gears—so there comes a new moment. The first look is a word, a name. To me anything that is attached to words and names is a mental looking. Then, I think  there is a looking with your whole body  as if there were tentacles that sense and touch the totality of the thing you’re looking at so that the tree stops being leaves, branches, roots. It starts becoming a clustering, a gathering, a drooping, a lifting, a turning. RW: I wonder if there are levels of seeing .

FALL 2011 | 39

JR:  What

if the dialogue we’re having revolves around finding the right  word so that we both know the experience  attached to that word? As a teacher, there’s a huge difference, for example, between a sketch and a study. They can be called the same thing. A sketch is something that’s sketchy. Looking is  sketchy. A study is where you’re studying  with your body, let’s say the dog [pointing to her dog]. You’re observing the  various movements and states and gesture, the presence of restfulness. You’re then translating what you see from this study to a piece of paper with the physical marks you’re making. And you’re also mentally using the laws you understand about drawing to create an illusion on that piece of paper. To me, seeing is having all of these things simultaneously  in place that open a feeling for the life of the thing you’re observing. RW: The word “seeing”—what is it?  JR:  You say,

“I see what you mean.” So that’s not a visual thing. RW: No, not at all . JR:

It’s an understanding. To me, the act of seeing is coming into an understanding of the whole of what’s occurring. Like  when I’m struggling, for instance, with that drawing of the coyote I did. First, I saw a lone coyote on the hill, and the coyote is standing next to a young deer. RW: Really?  JR:  Yes.

I have a photograph. The young deer is hanging out with the coyote, and I become very interested. The coyote is there day after day on the hill at about 2 p.m. So now, I’m looking until I can see  what is happening. The only way I can come to an understanding is by drawing it. See those two 40 |  PARABOLA

drawings? I figured it out. I took the photograph, which is as abstract as this drawing, the silhouette of a coyote and the bambi! So then I start to draw the coyote and I start to understand that he’s an older coyote. He’s alone and not interested in the deer. He’s more interested in eating gophers. There’s a little bit of his former life, but he’s been rejected from the pack. He’s quite beautiful, and he has more of the presence of a dog. So now I begin to see who the coyote is, and I’m looking to try to do a drawing of the essence of that coyote. So learning to see is learning to put together my sight with my sensation, which can take in a much larger view. RW: So this is a seeing that is really coming 

into contact with what’s there, and  “looking” isn’t really connecting with  what’s there. JR: No. And what’s there is never what  you think is there. It just never is that. One of the things I find remarkable happened from that amber drawing I did of  a hawk—the falcon is Horus in Egyptian art. The falcon was considered to be the highest energy because it is that which sees in and out simultaneously, which  was the energy of the sun. So I thought, okay, I’m going to learn about the hawk, and I’ve been drawing hawks a long time. So that amber drawing of the hawk, Dave Nelson, the hay farmer .. . RW: This is your neighbor. He’s not an 

artist. JR: Right. He grew up on this land. He goes to pick up his mail at the post office,  where Leana had put up a little announcement of my show with the hawk on it. Dave calls me up and says, “That’s a damn good drawing of a hawk! If you don’t mind, if I could get me one

FALL 2011 | 41

of them announcements I’d like to take it to Kinko’s. I’m going to blow it up and make me a poster of that hawk. I spend all day with those hawks cause I’m on my  tractor, and those hawks follow my tractor to eat the mice that get pulled from the haying.” He said, “I know hawks.” And he did. “Damn good hawk!” I said, “Dave, I’ll give you a drawing of a hawk.” He said, “I don’t have any money, Jane.” I said, “Well, you’ve got hay. I’ve got horses. I’ll trade you a hawk for the hay.” He said, “Okay. That’s a  good deal! I’ll take that deal.” So I’m drawing this hawk for Dave, and Gus Gutierrez—who takes care of the property—comes into the drawing room and looks at the hawk. He doesn’t know  anything about this deal. He says, “Jane, if you don’t mind me saying, if you put glasses on that hawk it’ll look just like 42 |  PARABOLA

Dave Nelson!” So without me knowing it, my seeing of Dave on the tractor and just knowing Dave, somehow it got into the drawing of the hawk and damned if it didn’t look just like Dave Nelson! RW: What are the modalities of knowing 

or receiving the world?  JR: A couple of things. One is the word “attend,” attendez , to wait. Attention is to wait. RW: If you are waiting with attention,

there is an openness, right?  JR: Right. So when you talk about seeing  what is real, to me, there is an invisible reality behind the visible reality. What I think it’s supposed to look like, I have to let go of, in order to see what it is . That demands attending to it—in other  words, waiting —allowing the impression of the bird to come in, rather than going out to it. It’s a really subtle shift.

I keep thinking of working yesterday  on that big bird and just seeing myself  literally start chiseling away at something that looked right, like it was supposed to be there. But I was listening, and it’s as if  the stone started to speak to me rather than me imposing on it—even to a point  where under the chin, unhh,  get this off!  Then it  just started chiseling while I’m  thinking, “What the hell are you doing, Rosen?” I started using the tooth chisel, and I saw Alex hold his breath—because,  with the beak, one mistake and it’s over.  And sure enough, a piece of the beak  came off. All the Provencal limestone has lots of fossils and shells in it. So it’s inconsistent to carve. RW: So you can’t count on how each piece 

will break off. JR:  You don’t know what part is attached to what part. And it came off, and I looked at it. It was exactly what 

was needed, and I never would have   figured it out . RW: Can we say there was a seeing there?  JR:  You’re

serving something else.  You’re not in charge. In fact, if I can be so bold—best case scenario—you’re an objective bystander. You’re just there and it’s moving through you, and you’re not in the way. RW: What is the deepest way of being here? 

It has occurred to me that when one has   gotten down to the almost metaphysical   place of our being here, that this is a place  simply of  witnessing. JR:  We almost always have a vested interest in the outcome of a sculpture or an idea, or an idea about how we want the  world to be or how we want ourselves to be and, as a result, we don’t see the sculpture, the coyote, the world, or ourselves. So if you let go, which is what FALL 2011 | 43

happened to me yesterday, and you follow it, there is a moment where this other kind of reality becomes visible. That’s what I think seeing is. RW: Our thoughts and desires are always 

interfering— but not always. JR: But not always. Because here’s the most shocking thing. Often the largest silence I experience is in the midst of  noise. All my ideas and the cacophony  actually pull something out of my belly  because of the absurdity of it, and there’s a double experience. This is where the quote from the Mundaka Upanishads is appropriate: “Like two golden birds in the self-same tree, intimate friends, the ego and the Self dwell in the same body.  While the former eats the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree of life, the latter looks on in detachment.”

44 |  PARABOLA

Sometimes—I’ve seen this with students—if I can keep them mentally occupied by giving them three conflicting directions of what to do with their drawing tools, their minds are so busy trying to figure it out, that something more essential can come out and it goes I’ll  try . It’s like our personalities can blow up so much, sometimes like a balloon, that they burst and the little impartial guy living in the belly, who hardly ever  gets a chance to come out goes “I’ll draw that. I’ll try.”  RW: I almost want to ask how can one see 

without being present?  JR:  You can—on the rare occasion, as I  was saying. If there’s so much cacophony, it brings up something so fierce in terms of a desire be free, it can give rise to a presence to the cacophony. And the

cacophony, like any good mouse when  you turn the light on, disappears! RW: Who sees?  JR: It’s a conference. It’s not a “who.”

 When I speak of seeing, I feel that the mind is open and in a relationship to the hands working, which opens a feeling of  being more fully alive. That is what I call seeing. More than one part of you needs to see. You can’t see with your head alone.  You can’t see with your heart alone, because it’s very partial. You can’t see  with your body alone because, basically, I don’t want to put down the cigarette or the cake. One day I heard the dogs barking in the living room. Not a bark like, “Someone is here,” which is an announcement. Not a bark like, “Get away from my stuff.” That’s a territorial thing. Not a bark of fear like, “Oh, my God there’s a bobcat on the deck!” It was a bark I wasn’t used to, a kind of “What are you doing? ” I walked into the living room and there was the raven underneath the chair at the dining room table. I looked at this big raven with huge claws and this huge Roman beak. The raven somehow had  walked into the house before we had become friends and had gotten stuck  underneath the chair. I believe it was a mom and she was coming in looking or food. I looked at the raven and the raven looked at me. She had these beautiful eyes and she blinked at me. It was clear she said to me, “I’m stuck. I don’t know  how I got under this chair. I can’t get out, and you’ve got two pretty big dogs. I’m in a situation here.” So I looked at the raven and said, “Okay. Here’s the deal. You’re big. You have sharp claws and this beak. You

could hurt me. I’m going to pet your back and if you don’t try to peck me or claw me, I will get you out from under the chair. If you try to peck me or claw  me, you’re on your own.” She looked at me, cocking her head like she was thinking about it. It wasn’t like she understood my words or I understood hers. There was something in my tone that was explaining to her that I was about to make a move. So I pet the back of the raven and not only  does she not claw me, she pulls her claws  into her belly and tucks her beak into her  chest . I pick her up and I hold her like this [cradled in her arms] and she is perfectly still. I put her out on the picnic table figuring she would make a beeline out of there. She turned around, she looked at me, and she nodded. FALL 2011 | 45

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Seeing is an act Jeanne de Salzmann

 T

HE QUESTION IS not

what to do but how to see . Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom. So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts themselves that enslave me but my  attachment to them. In order to understand this, I must not seek to free myself before having known what the slavery is. I need to see the illusion of words and ideas, and the fear of my thinking mind to be alone and empty without the support of anything known. It is necessary  to live this slavery as a fact, moment after moment, without escaping from it. Then I  will begin to perceive a new way of seeing. Can I accept not knowing who I am, being hidden behind an imposter? Can I accept not knowing my name? Seeing does not come from thinking. It comes from the shock at the moment  when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand  what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing,

and enter into the experience of discovering  what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment. Our conditioned thought always wants an answer. What is important is to develop another thinking, a vision. For this we have to liberate a certain energy that is beyond our usual thought. I need to experience “I do not know” without seeking an answer, to abandon everything to enter the unknown. Then it is no longer the same mind. My mind engages in a new   way. I see without any preconceived idea,  without choice. In relaxing, for example, I no longer choose to relax before knowing  why. I learn to purify my power of vision, not by turning away from the undesirable or toward what is agreeable. I learn to stay  in front and see clearly. All things have the same importance, and I become fixed on nothing. Everything depends on this  vision, on a look that comes not from any  command of my thought but from a feeling of urgency to know. Perception, real vision, comes in the interval between the old response and the new response to the reception of an impression. The old response is based on material inscribed in our memor y. With the new response, free from the past, the brain remains open, receptive, in an attitude of respect. It is a new brain which functions, that is, different cells and a new  intelligence. When I see that my thought is incapable of understanding, that its movement brings nothing, I am open to the sense of the cosmic, beyond the realm of human perception.

From The Reality of Being , by Jeanne de Salzmann. Reprinted by permission. For more about Jeanne de Salzmann, please visit www.realityof being.org.

FALL 2011 | 47

 A horrific accident . . . an unexpected blessing 

Awakening Sight David Ulrich

Photography by David Ulrich

 A T THE AGE OF THIRTY -THREE, I suffered an impact injury   while chopping wood that could have cost me my life. A small branch, approximately three-quarters of an inch in diameter and over three feet long, with a fractured tip, flew up and struck me in the face, directly under the eye. Thankfully, I lived; tragically  (especially for a photographer), I lost the vision of my right and dominant eye. It was the most traumatic and disabling event of  my life—and by far the most enlightening and life-enhancing. I did not realize the seriousness of the injury at the time of the accident. In the emergency room, the physician on duty urgently  consulted an ophthalmologist. At that point, I understood that my eye had been seriously damaged, and I became terrified of  the possible consequences. The doctor emphatically informed me that I needed surgery immediately to see if the eye could be repaired. I implored him to do his absolute best to save my   vision—that I was a photographer and needed my eyes. Fears of  a completely altered life entered my mind. Would I ever be able to drive again? To photograph? To live a normal life? Would I be disfigured? He then said something that has burned itself into my memory of that day. He said calmly and with great assurance: “You will be as good a photographer with one eye as you were  with two.” 48 |  PARABOLA

 After seven or eight hours in surgery— in which the surgeon removed the fragments of wood, repaired my crushed eyeball, tried to repair my massively torn retina, and performed cosmetic surgery to rebuild the lost tissue on the right side of  my face—I was sent to the recovery room. The next week was pure hell. I underwent multiple tests and examinations to determine whether any  useful vision could be returned to my eye. I had no light perception whatsoever due to the retinal damage, and was told that I  would not see at all with my right eye for the rest of my life. Medical technology   was many years away from transplanting a retina, and mine was far too damaged to repair. My doctor explained that the risk  of sympathetic ophthalmia, in which the good eye follows suit with its injured neighbor and also loses the ability to see,  was far greater than the chance of seeing out of that eye ever again—and that it should be removed. My darkest hours of self doubt followed upon receiving his diagnosis. Many questions arose for me about the role of fate, or accident, in our lives. Was this event fated? Or was it simply an accident? Could it have been avoided? I recalled an acute memory of a night  when I was nineteen years old, contemplating my unknown future and feeling much hope and promise, in which an intuitive feeling persisted—one that I could not shake from my consciousness at the time—that I might someday lose an eye. When I reached my friend and longtime teacher, Nicholas Hlobeczy, he said simply, “Thy will be done.” My mother, my girlfriend, and a select group of friends gathered at my home prior to the second surgery, with a bottle of excellent Armagnac, to drink a poignant toast to the thirty-three years of 

 vision my eye had faithfully provided me. I did a small series of self portraits of my  damaged face and eye, and went to bed  wondering if I would—or could—ever again feel like a complete human being. THE VERY NEXT MORNING, I checked

myself into the hospital to have my eye surgically removed. After settling into my  room, several hours before surgery, I was asked if I wanted a sedative. “Not yet,”  was my answer. It felt important to experience this moment as fully as possible. My anxiety was mounting. I didn’t know what to do or where to turn. I decided to take a walk to the hospital chapel to try to digest the experience. I never knew such depression, fear, and despondency—it  was completely paralyzing. I was scared to death of the future—and of the finality  of the soon-to-be-performed surgery. Then, in the chapel, came a moment of realization, in a burst of insight, that changed my attitude toward this event and gave me great strength and an unshakable sense of courage. A question unexpectedly arose in my mind: If I cannot let go of something as relatively  insignificant as one eye, one small part of  my body, what will happen when I have to completely let go of my entire body,  when I die? If I cannot withstand this shock, I will never be able to gracefully  and consciously withstand the moment of death. This experience was a kind of  test—a foretaste of letting go. From that moment on, my experience of losing my  eye changed—and the fear and depression never returned with anywhere near the same intensity. Quite to the contrary; after the realization in the chapel, the entire experience of having the eye removed, of learning to see again, and going FALL 2011 | 49

50 |  PARABOLA

Above: Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante, Utah, 1974 Opposite page top: Strafed Rock, Kaho olawe Hawai i, 1994 bottom: Kealaikahiki Point, Kaho olawe Hawai i, 1994 ‘

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through the inevitable psychic transformation, became my personal creative quest. A quest that, more or less, I welcomed, and of which I tried to make the best possible use. Something had changed in me. I felt less under the dominion of my ego, and more open to life, to people, and to the changes inherent in our lives. I learned much about myself from questioning  why such a massive injury had been the necessary catalyst to deliver me to the threshold of this new state of being.  A transformation had occurred on many different levels, physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual, due to the ongoing effects of the injury. It served to break down many of the unquestioned and crystallized attitudes my psyche had developed as an armor; and provided an opportunity for renewal, for a regathering of my energies under different conditions. First, I needed to relearn ordinary  physical tasks: driving a car, pouring liquids into a glass, avoiding collisions  with doorways or people on my right side, safely crossing streets, discovering  where I needed to sit at a table or in a restaurant in order to see my companions and not just the wall, and acquiring a different sort of respect for my one and only good eye. It gave me the opportunity to prune my life down to the essentials, and to give up superficial interests and nonessential activities. One central goal was added to my life’s purpose: to die seeing, on both a literal and metaphorical level.  As I learned to face the challenges of  living with one eye, I received help from an instructive guidebook:  A S INGULAR  V IEW :  T HE  A RT OF  S EEING WITH  O NE  E YE . Written by  Frank Brady, an airline pilot who lost an eye when a large mallard smashed the 52 |  PARABOLA

 windshield of his plane, the book is an important reference manual for the newly one-eyed, full of helpful hints and tricks for navigating through the process of learning to see with reduced capabilities. But for any interested reader, it returns the act of seeing to an art, to regarding human vision as an intentional activity, one full of potential and with perceptual possibilities we have long forgotten or glossed over. The imperative of learning to see again is an unusual opportunity for an adult; most of us, though genuinely appreciative of our  vision, thoroughly take the act of seeing for granted and are mostly untrained in the banquet of gifts that seeing offers. Observe carefully a young child in the act of seeing and note the sense of   wonder, joy, and curiosity that accompanies this adventure. A child can become completely absorbed in examining the world through vision— through any of the senses, for that matter. Seeing is truly a form of magic, a perceptual pleasure, a source of real learning and questioning, and a doorway  to invisible worlds. As adults, we have much to relearn. I offer here the initial realizations gleaned through the process of  recovering my vision in the several  years following my accident.  W e do not see through our eyes alone

PHOTOGRAPHER  EDWARD W ESTON

described the process of his own creative  work as “Seeing through one’s eyes, not  with them.” And Walt Whitman wrote in L EAVES OF  G RASS , “I am not contained between my hat and my boots.” In other  words, we see through our entire body. To focus only on the seeing of our eyes

is misguided, and represents a common fallacy. Every cell, every part of our body  is a sensitive receiving apparatus, and all are connected to the eyes. I remember sitting on a beach years after the surgery, on the island of Kauai, looking at the different colors in the world around me, and feeling each color, locating with precision where the particular hue resounded in my body. It was symphonic, the way in which colors touched different inner regions, and stimulated different thoughts, emotions, and sensations.  When I am attentive, I can sense, especially on my right side, when something or someone is there, and can sense the amount of space separating me from the object or person. I am surprised  while driving to realize that I do not always need to look on my right side. I simply seem to know or feel when something is there. But this requires great care; it happens only when I am attentive. Otherwise, my lack of finely tuned depth perception causes clumsiness and errors of visual judgment. Attention is the key. I can sometimes sense the character or thoughts of another person by loosely  resting my gaze on them, and staying  within my own body, which provides insights and empathetic realizations. I have consciously experimented with this phenomenon in order to understand it. Probably the most vivid impressions came on a number of occasions while riding the subway in Manhattan. I discovered that by empathetically  looking at individuals on the train, I could place my attention inside their body, so to speak; to feel and sense their posture and weight with my own body, and understand what that posture felt like, from the inside out. From feeling the weight and shape of their posture,

other realizations about what they may  have been experiencing in that moment presented themselves. This division of  attention, where we maintain a measure of our awareness within ourselves while simultaneously directing some toward and into the object of our perception, stimulated many key experiences for me. It was a remarkable discovery. My  understanding was no longer limited to looking at the outside of things—the inner world is within the capabilities of  our seeing. It Is the braIn that sees , sImply makIng use of the eyes

THE BRAIN, as I have learned, is a

remarkably adaptive instrument. Over the course of six or eight months after losing binocular vision, the brain learns to adapt to the monocular cues of  perspective, such as the way objects appear to change size in relation to distance, and the way motion is perceived relative to space (for example, bushes in the foreground appear to be passing by faster than mountains in the background as we walk or drive), and depth perception is slowly regained. I also discovered that other senses— especially hearing—become sharper and more acute when I need to locate objects or persons on my right side.  Although I suspect that my physical capacity to hear has not increased at all, sounds are now more within my field of  awareness, as I must depend on them to drive, walk, and navigate through space. I now have difficulty getting around adroitly and being attentive in noisy  environments, or having background music or the television on while engaged in activities that require judgments of  depth and spatial relationships. FALL 2011 | 53

Listening and seeing are interrelated, as are all of our senses. Our physical  vision perceives the light reflected from objects and our hearing perceives the  vibrations of sound that emanate from, or are reflected by, objects or people. I believe there is a reciprocal relationship between all of our senses that can be encouraged and developed if we wish— and this is true for all sighted, partially  sighted, or nonseeing individuals. seeIng Is a dIrect experIence and represents a Way of knoWIng

THIS MAY BE stating the obvious, but we

do see what we want to see. What we call “seeing” is generally a reflection of our inner dialogue, which is constant and unceasing. Our inner dialogue tends to support our particular world view, our image of ourself, and our subjective beliefs. We know too much; we can name and provide a label for everything under the sun. We have our own agendas, our predisposed attitudes, and our own cultural biases. We rarely see the world in a fresh way or question the numerous and often unconscious filters that influence the nature of our perception. Moments of real seeing are beyond the labeling propensity of the mind, beyond  what we think we know. Seeing is a step into the unknown and requires some degree of intention and awakening. Real seeing—of ourselves, of others, and of the world—contains three defining characteristics: simultaneity, a direct perception in the present moment; objectivity, seeing things as they are, as best we can; and impartiality, freedom from judgment. For most of us, governed by our subjective attitudes and cherished opinions, such moments of direct perception are rare and depend entirely  54 |  PARABOLA

on our inner state of mind, feeling, and body. But they are possible. Most of us have experienced moments of inner accord in which, by chance or intentional effort, we are open, sensitive, and wholly  present. The first step on the Buddhist Eightfold Path is “right seeing,” which serves as a fitting foundation for our  journey. In my mind, “right seeing” implies not only a positive, life-affirming attitude, but also a genuine effort toward direct, conscious perception. The nature of our perceptions is relative and depends on our state of  awareness and state of being. Suspending the internal dialogue, maintaining a dual attention that embraces both ourselves and the perceived object, and trying to be fully present to the moment in front of us are exercises that assist in the process of seeing. Seeing is an exchange of energy that takes place between ourselves and the perceived objects of our attention. In losing the sight of my eye, I learned to depend to a greater extent on efforts toward self-awareness and connecting  with my own body and feelings. I clearly  observed how the objects of my  perception registered their impressions on my being and stimulated widely   varying inner sensations and feelings.  Although I do not fully understand this process, perhaps the larger potential of  seeing is found in these moments of selfawareness and the recognition that all impressions we receive register themselves within us. Seeing comes from  within ourselves, not from the vague “out there” of the outer world. indeed must be, if we wish to live full and productive lives, sensitively receiving and richly giving to ourselves and others. It SEEING CAN BE

CULTIVATED,

Brce Canon, Utah, 1974

must always be born in our hearts and minds that we are the primary medium of the creative act—not film or clay, paints or words. Learning to see, learning to be, and learning to come into accord with the deeper sources  within and without—these are,

undoubtedly, the greatest challenges given us, the most potent tests of our creative aspirations and capabilities.  Adapted, with permission, from T HE  W IDENING  S TREAM : T HE  S EVEN  S TAGES OF  C REATIVITY ,

by David Ulrich, Beyond Words Publishing, 2002.

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Vanishing Point How am I a self  when I am constantly disappearing?  A traveling venue of water and sinew. I am a story I made up in my head: Looks good in hats.  Won’t eat oysters. Fears infirmity. Touch me, I am fluid.

In all my transparency my body is betraying me,  just as the plot demanded. I would deny this distant progression of time and cells if the mirror  were not such a talker. Kiss me, I am corruptible.

So what are we made of ?

parabola O E T R Y Stories –  Just when you think  you could not take

one more here comes another.  You keep right on living – piling up  your stories like cordwood and the lying-self keeps pace  with daily duties: meals to prepare, pills to take. How could you keep on if you did not deny your vanishing point? Look at me, I won’t last long. —Tina Schumann

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Spring for Edwin I went out to meet the wind half-way; something new is always turning up, though the crows complain.  When Mom died Daddy went to the ocean to meet the tossing— the change halfway. It should be winter longer than this. For a very long time I should be buried in snow. It seems wrong that the very day   you were buried change should ripple out in such a way— Everything blooms in shock. The spring equinox has come and someone else will be the teller of the seasons since you are strangely silent.  Yet the master of language  you are, now speaks in perfect metaphor—wind, the red-bud tree, the deer in the back yard .. .  You continue, evenso, my heart is in some snowy place. —Linda Ann Suddarth

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Ancient French Art History Lessons in Glass-Encased Pool The shift has happened. I would like to tell you, that this image, this illusion, this roar is compensation for all you don’t see. Improbably you have on one hand the resurrection of Jesus and on the other hand Buddha, lighted within and without, meditating on the Body Tree. As Hollis says, we are all in this subjective trap of  trying to reflect objectively on an always changing supposedly objective world. I am entangled. And when the clock chimes I expel resounding and fan tastical roundness. I dream about the changing clay shapes in this room and the felt and profound compilation of 13, 12, 1.5. Bee-a-trice I think I will see you again, but not for one hundred years. I feel the distance love makes and the unseemliness of transcendence.  What are you feeling? The elegance of rhizomes.  And now? The letter A   And now? The sound ur  And now? The essence of rhizomes. The past is still, dark, and unperturbed. To navigate change, there is always yellow, succumbing in wind to the quality of prayer—the nowing, the bowing, when she goes, I go. If I may give perhaps one suggestion, it would be an eternal gro wth of authenticity, prosperous thriving, and closets of existential phenomenologies. In one second the laundry and in the next, fluorescent pink fish. Your soul is a deep purple coral reef your body no different than ocean—limitless, vast, full of deep emotion. I sail on the boat of now to then and into the forests brown makes in your hair, in your eyes, and all over  your skin. Your old life will die—you will jump into the water and drown—you will probably drown in the infinite and infinitesimal guidance that love offers silently and  without warning to every moment of wanting—wanting the world, wanting creativity,  wanting and succumbing. You are a wordless abandoner of the conscious and everstriving abstraction. When spirit becomes unveiled and the great soul revels in the deafening chime of dark and foreboding earth, you will know the triumph of will, cloudiness, cloudlessness and forgiveness. The heron has made her way among the palm fronds to fish and you are the wordless rememberence of virtue, cherries ripened in light soaked orchards and picked to rose your cheeks, giggling dolls—crumbs, quills, quails and sobbages. —Anna Roach

58 | PARABOLA

~ Refraction~ Listening is the Cue to your heart's unfolding  A silent gateway to being reborn~ Some Unseen element blossoming~ Becoming its Own garden of seasons~ I meet you here...Still  Within all movement~ Untouched within a haze Of time~ I would stand here behind the curtain Of your eyes~ My slipping silhouette a sweet Scented breath~ The bending refraction Of your night within my light~ Why Must we be stillborn within This prism of life? Let Me touch you ~Here~  Where There are no More mirrors to reflect  What can only be seen within The tunnel of eyes~ Racing directly  To the heartline~ The pulse within the Bounty of your blood~ My finger print  Against your tender swell~ To press To my lips some kind of eternity~ The sanguine seal whet  With a promise of  A different Kind ~ —Leila A. Fortier

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ARCS

I Looked Up T

hen I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And world.  And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing  in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And being.  And I saw that that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was w as holy. holy. 1 BLACK ELK 

 Y 

our vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. 2 CARL JUNG

“I

looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twentyfoot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling  yodelaying sail down down the sides of of the world and and in that flash flash I realized it’s  impossible to fall off mountains you fool  and with a yodel of my own I suddenly  got up and began running r unning down the mountain after him doing the exactly the same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about five minutes I’d guess Japhy Ryder R yder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of  my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn’t care any more I was so anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain goats or I’d say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago….” 3  JA CK KE KERO ROUA UAC C

6 0 | PARABOLA

T

he “spark” which is my true self is the flash of  the Absolute recognizing itself in me. 4 THOMAS MERTON

 W 

hen I detect a beauty in any of the recesses rec esses of nature, I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in  which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible privacy of life—how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from the holiest, quietest nook. * * * My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they  have woolen feet. In all our lives we live under the hill, and if we are not gone we live there still. 5 HENRY DAVID DAVID THORE AU THOREA U

1 From B LACK  LACK  E LK  LK  S PEAKS  PEAKS , by John Neihardt (1932) 2 From the letters of Carl Jung 3 From T HE  HE  D HARMA  HARMA  B UMS  UMS  (1958) 4 From L OVE O VE AND L IVING  IVING  (1965) 5 From a journal entry by Henry David Thoreau, June 22, 1851

FALL 2011 | 6 1

Digging Deeper: A conversation with Mark Boal

Mark Boal is the screenwriter and producer of T HE  HE  H URT  URT  L OCKER  OCKER , which  won the Academy Award for Best Best Picture of 2009. 2009. Boal himself  won two Oscars for for his work on that film: film: for his screenplay screenplay and for for producing. He is also a veteran journalist. Although hard at work on a new film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, he took time to answer a few questions about seeing. —Jeff Zaleski

JEFF  Z ALESKI: Earlier this year you published a piece in R OLLING  OLLING  S TONE  TONE  that 

reported on illicit killings by American soldiers in Afghanistan. In effect, ef fect,  you allowed the reader reader to see certain realities realities and truths that had been  been  hidden from view. What is the value of this? What kind of value do you   put on seeing? And what is it in us, do you think, that that draws draws us toward  (or away from) seeing reality?  6 2 | PARABOLA

MARK BOAL:

On a macro level, it seems selfevident that an informed public is better off than an ignorant one, and although I have no concrete proof of that statement, I suppose I try, in my own small ways, to add bits of information and data, and even stories, to the collective culture. Having said that, I don’t know that I’m in any  position to assess the value of my  reporting. A writer, I think, never really  knows what his work does to other people. I do know that I’m very grateful to have the job, and doing it gives me a great sense of satisfaction. As for “seeing,” I suppose journalists try to look deeper into the pond; sometimes they find ancient, brutal fish down there, sometimes they just see a reflection of themselves. JZ: It’s easy to understand how journalism 

can aid seeing. But as a screenwriter, you tell  a story—you create “fiction,” which some  think of as unreality. How can storytelling  allow us to see better what is real and true? 

What myths or classic stories helped  shape your understanding of storytelling?  MB: Orwell was a big influence on me. He showed me a way that fiction, and even science fiction, could be used to illuminate a social order. To your point, even though fiction is by definition not real, it can paradoxically create an environment of truth-telling on a metaphysical scale. JZ: It’s difficult to say how the protagonist of  T  HE H URT  L OCKER  has been changed by all

he  sees; at film’s end, he does what he does when  he first appears: he defuses bombs. How has  seeing certain realities changed you, and, in   particular, changed how you go about explor-  ing (seeing) things, for better or for worse?  MB: Spending time in Iraq was an eyeopening experience. It inspired me to dig deeper into the war in a fictional setting than I had as a reporter, to explore the psychological contours of   working a high-risk job on the bomb squad, its psychic burdens, its morbid

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Far left: Mark Boal. Woman pointing: Kathryn Bigelow, director of The

allure. My ticket to doing that was an invented character, Sergeant James—an everyman who, like all men, is unique, and who represented to me the rough position of the volunteer Army. JZ: Back to journalism: Today more

than ever, in order to gain an audience,  journalism must entertain even as it  informs. What are the particular challenges that arise in today’s culture  regarding the seeing of what is real and true? MB: I’m not very receptive to hand wringing over today’s culture. The challenges to telling a story that is good, in the broadest sense of the word, and true, in the broadest sense of that word, seem to me to be more or less the same as they’ve always been: the same obstacles and barriers that writers and story  tellers have always faced. Bizarre as it might sound, I bet there’s a lot about today’s culture, except perhaps for the ever-increasing decibel level, that a town crier from Roman times would find recognizable. 64 |  PARABOLA

Hurt Locker 

JZ: In T  HE  H URT  L OCKER , much of the

seeing is done via technology: via sighting scopes and binoculars, through  video screens and cameras. How do you  think technology is affecting the way we  view the world?  MB: I’m not sure digital technology is having a fundamental effect on the way   we “view the world.” One of the biggest technological changes impacting the  visual side of things was, of course, the invention of electricity, and the gigantic shift in lifestyle habits that came when light bulbs replaced candles in the home, and when cities were built with electrically illuminated side-walks. It’s hard to say where the personal computer stacks up against that sort of watershed development…. Maybe the digital age is not as radical as it seems at the moment….  As for the use of scopes and different cameras in T  HE  H URT L OCKER , that was due partly to a desire to be faithful to the technology soldiers actually deploy in the field, and partly it was due to a series of  aesthetic decisions made by director Kathryn Bigelow.

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“Seeing” by Zen Master Dogen Kazuaki Tanahashi he view on “seeing” by Dogen, a thirteenthcentury Japanese Zen monk, is rather unique. He uses the word “dream” to describe the enlightenment of the Buddha, and the meditative experience of all practitioners. Counter to the common notion that dreams are unreal and actual phenomena are real, he asserts that the awakened ones’ profound wisdom is concrete, the source of all teaching, while actual phenomena are transient and unreliable. Dogen presented this short essay titled “Within a Dream Expressing the Dream” to the assembly of the Kannondori Kosho Horin Monastery in Uji County, south of Kyoto, on the twenty-first day, the ninth month, the third year of the Ninji Era [1242]. The following text is translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and myself. (Excerpted from Treasury of the True

T

Dharma Eye, Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, Shambhala Publications, 2010, with

permission by the publisher.)

and ancestors arises before the first forms emerge; it cannot be spoken of using conventional views. This being so, in the realm of buddha ancestors there is the active power of buddhas going beyond buddhas. Since this realm is not a matter of the passage of time, their lives are neither long nor short, neither quick nor slow. THE PATH OF ALL BUDDHAS

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Every dewdrop manifested in  every realm is a dream.

This cannot be judged in an ordinary manner. Thus, the dharma wheel has been set to turn since before the first sign of forms emerged. The great merit needs no reward, and becomes the guidepost for all ages. Within a dream this is the dream you express. Because awakening is seen within awakening, the dream is expressed within a dream. The place where the dream is expressed within a dream is the land and the assembly of buddha ancestors. The buddhas’ lands and their assemblies, the ancestors’ way and their seats, are awakening throughout awakening, and express the dream within a dream.  When you meet such speech and expressions, do not regard them as other than the buddhas’ assembly; it is buddha turning the dharma wheel. This dharma wheel encompasses all the ten directions and the eight facets of  a clear crystal, and so the great oceans, Mt. Sumeru, the lands, and all buddhas are actualized. This is the dream expressed  within a dream, prior to all dreams. Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. What requires questioning is this  very point. What is confusing is this very point. At this time, there are dream grasses, grasses within, expressive grasses, and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as radiance and color are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy. FALL 2011 | 67

However, those who do not wish to study buddha dharma believe that expressing the dream within a dream means speaking of unreal dream grass as real, like piling delusion upon delusion. But this is not true. When you say, “Within confusion is just confusion,” still  you should follow the path in the vast sky known as “delusion throughout delusion.” You should endeavor to investigate just this thoroughly. THE EXPRESSING OF THE DREAM within

a dream is all buddhas. All buddhas are  wind and rain, water and fire. We respectfully maintain these names of  buddhas, and also pay homage to those names of other buddhas. To express the dream within a dream is the ancient

embracing world, cause and effect are not ignored, and all buddhas are unsurpassable. Know that being present in all situations, the guiding way of all buddhas in the amassing of expressions of  dharma is boundlessly transforming. Do not search for the limits of dharma in the past and future.  All things leave and all things arrive right here. This being so, one plants twining vines and gets entangled in twining vines. This is the characteristic of  unsurpassable enlightenment. Just as enlightenment is limitless, sentient beings are limitless and unsurpassable. Just as cages and snares are limitless, emancipation from them is limitless. The actualization of the fundamental point is: “I grant you thirty blows.” This is the

Without being within a dream, buddhas do not  emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel. buddhas; it is to ride in this treasure boat and directly arrive in the practice place. Directly arriving in the practice place is riding in this treasure boat. Meandering dreams and direct dreams, holding and letting go, all freely flow  like gusting breezes. The dharma wheel is just like this; turning the great dharma-wheel-world is immeasurable and boundless. It turns even within a single particle, ebbing and flowing ceaselessly within the particle.  Accordingly, whenever such a dharma is turned, even an antagonist nods and smiles. Wherever such a dharma is turned, it freely circulates like the flowing breezes. Thus, the endless turning of dharma traverses the entire land. In the all68 |  PARABOLA

actualization of expressing the dream  within a dream. Thus, a tree with no roots, the ground  where no light or shade falls, and a valley   where no shouts echo are no other than the actualized expressions of the dream  within a dream. This is neither the realm of humans nor of heavenly beings, and cannot be judged by ordinary people.  Who could doubt that a dream is enlightenment, since it is not within the purview of doubt? Who could recognize this dream, since it is not related to recognition? Since unsurpassable enlightenment is unsurpassable enlightenment, so the dream is called a dream. THERE ARE INNER DREAMS, dream

expressions, expressions of dreams, and

dreams inside. Without being within a dream, there is no expression of dreams.  Without expressing dreams, there is no being within a dream. Without expressing dreams, there are no buddhas.  Without being within a dream, buddhas do not emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel. This dharma wheel is no other than a buddha together with a buddha, and a dream expressed within a dream. Simply expressing the dream  within a dream is itself buddhas and ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable enlightenment. Furthermore, going beyond the dharma body is itself expressing the dream within a dream. Here is the encounter of a buddha  with a buddha. No attachments are needed to the head, eyes, marrow, and

brain, or body, flesh, hands, and feet.  Without attachment, one who buys gold sells gold. This is called the mystery of  mysteries, the wonder of wonders, the awakening of awakenings, the head top above the head. This is the daily activity  of buddha ancestors. When you study  this head top, you may think that the head only means a human skull, without understanding that it is the crown of   Vairochana Buddha. How can you realize it as the tips of the bright, clear hundred grasses? Who knows that this is the head as it is? Since ancient times the phrase “the head top placed above the head” has been spoken. Hearing this phrase, foolish people think that it cautions against adding something extra. Usually they 

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The expression of the dream within a dream can  be aroused by both ordinary people and sages. 70 |  PARABOLA

refer to something that should not occur  when they say, “How can you add a head on top of a head?” Actually, isn’t this a mistake? The expression of the dream within a dream can be aroused by both ordinary  people and sages. Moreover, the expression of the dream within a dream by  both ordinary people and sages arose  yesterday and develops today. Know that  yesterday’s expression of the dream  within a dream was the recognition of  this expression as expressing the dream  within a dream. The present expression of the dream within a dream is to experience right now this expression as expressing the dream within a dream. Indeed, this is the marvelous joy of meeting a buddha.  We should regret that, although the dream of the buddha ancestors’ bright hundred grasstops is apparent, clearer than a hundred thousand suns and moons, the ignorant do not see it. What a pity! The head that is “the head placed above the head” is exactly the head tops of a hundred grasses, thousands of types of heads, the ten thousand kinds of  heads, the heads throughout the body, the heads of the entire world unconcealed, the heads of the entire world of  the ten directions, the heads of teacher and student that join in a single phrase, the head top of a one hundred foot pole. “Placing” and “above” in “placing the head top above the head” are both heads. Study and investigate this. THUS, THE PASSAGE “All buddhas and their unsurpassable, complete enlightenment all emerge from this [Diamond]  Sutra ” is exactly expressing the dream  within a dream, which has always been the head placed atop the head. This sutra, while expressing the dream within

a dream, brings forth buddhas with their unsurpassed enlightenment. These buddhas, with their enlightenment, in turn speak this sutra, which is the established expression of the dream within a dream.  As the cause of a dream is not obscure, the effect of the dream is not ignored. This is indeed one mallet striking one thousand or ten thousand blows, one thousand or ten thousand mallets striking one or half a blow. As it is so, a thing of suchness expresses the dream  within a dream; a person of suchness expresses the dream within a dream. A  thing beyond suchness expresses the dream within a dream; a person beyond suchness expresses the dream within a dream. This understanding has been acknowledged as crystal clear. What is called, “talking all day long about a dream within a dream,” is no other than the actual expression of the dream within a dream.  A N ANCIENT BUDDHA SAID, “Now I express the dream within a dream for  you. All buddhas in the past, present, and future express the dream within a dream. The six early generations of  Chinese ancestors express the dream  within a dream.” STUDY AND CLARIFY  these words. Shakyamuni Buddha holding up the flower and blinking is exactly the expression of the dream within a dream. Huike doing prostrations and attaining the marrow is also the expression of the dream  within a dream. Making one brief utterance, beyond understanding and beyond knowing, is the expression of the dream within a dream. As the expression of the dream  within a dream is the thousand hands and eyes of Avalokiteshvara that function FALL 2011 | 71

by many means, the power of seeing colors and sounds, and hearing colors and sounds, is fully maintained. The manifesting body is the expression of the dream within a dream. The expressions of dreams and of myriad aspects of  dharma are the expression of the dream  within a dream. Taking hold and letting go are the expressions of the dream  within a dream. Directly pointing is expressing the dream; hitting the mark is expressing the dream.

pivoting the brain [actualizing freedom] is just your awakening of the dream  within a dream—identifying with and actualizing the dream within a dream. SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA  said

in a verse [in

the Lotus Sutra ]:  All buddhas, with bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned with a hundred auspicious marks, hear the dharma and expound it for others. Such is the fine dream that ever occurs.

or when you let go, you need to study the common balancing scale. As soon as you understand it, the measuring of ounces and pounds  will become clear and will express the dream within a dream. Without knowing ounces and pounds, and without reaching the level balance, there is no actualization of the balance point.  When you attain balanced equilibrium,  you will see the balance point. Achiev ing balance does not depend on the objects being weighed, on the balancing scale, or on the activity of weighing, but  just hangs on emptiness. Thus, deeply  consider that without attaining balance  you do not experience solidity. Just hanging on its own in emptiness, the expression of the dream within a dream allows objects to float free in emptiness.  Within emptiness, stable balance is manifested. Stable balance is the great  way of the balance scale. While suspending emptiness and suspending objects,  whether as emptiness or as forms, expression of the dream within a dream brings level balance. There is no liberation other than expression of the dream within a dream. The dream is the entire great earth; the entire great earth is stable. Thus, the inexhaustibility of turning the head and  W HEN YOU TAKE HOLD

72 |  PARABOLA

In the dream you are made king, then forsake palace and household entourage, along with utmost satisfaction of the fivesense desires, and travel to the site of practice under the bodhi tree. On the lion’s seat in search of the way, after seven days  you attain the wisdom of the buddhas, completing the unsurpassable way.  Arising and turning the dharma wheel,  you expound the dharma for the four groups of practitioners throughout thousands of millions of  kalpas, expressing the wondrous dharma free of  flaws, and liberating innumerable sentient beings. Finally you enter pari-nirvana, like the smoke dispersing as the lamp is extinguished. If later in the unwholesome world one expounds this foremost dharma, one will produce great benefit, like the merit just described.

of the Buddha, and thoroughly investigate this buddha STUDY THIS DISCOURSE

assembly of the buddhas [in the Lotus  Sutra ]. This dream of buddhas is not an analogy. As the wondrous dharma of all buddhas is mastered only by a buddha together with a buddha, all dharmas awakened in the dream are genuine forms. In awakening there are aspiration,

dharma wheel . . . throughout thousands of  millions of kalpas . . . liberating innumer-  able sentient beings —these fluctuations  within a dream cannot be traced.  All buddhas, with bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned with a hundred auspi-  cious marks, hear the dharma and 

Hearing the dharma is hearing sounds  with the eye, and with the mind. practice, enlightenment, and nirvana.  Within the dream there are aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana. Every awakening within a dream is the genuine form, without regard to large or small, superior or inferior. However, on hearing the words in the passage, In the dream you are made  king, people in the past and present mistakenly think that, due to the power of  expounding this foremost dharma , mere night dreams may become like this dream of buddhas. Those who think  like this have not yet clarified the Buddha’s discourse.  Awakening and dreaming are from the beginning one suchness, the genuine reality. The buddha dharma, even if it  were an analogy, is the genuine reality. As it is not an analogy, made king in the  dream is the reality of the buddha dharma. Shakyamuni Buddha and all buddhas and ancestors each arouse the mind, cultivate practice, and attain universal true awakening within a dream. This being so, the Buddha’s path of transforming the Saha World throughout his lifetime is indeed created in a dream. In search of the way, after seven days  is the measure of attained buddha wisdom.  As for what is described, Turning the 

expound it for others. Such is the fine  dream that ever occurs . These words clearly show that this fine dream is illuminated as all buddhas . There is the ever occurring of the Tathagata’s words; it is not only hundreds of years of dreaming. Expounding  it for others is manifesting the body. Hearing the dharma  is hearing sounds  with the eye, and with the mind. It is hearing sounds in the old nest, and before the empty kalpa.  As it is said that  All buddhas, with  bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned  with a hundred auspicious marks , now   we can directly realize beyond any  doubt that this  fine dream  is itself all  buddhas with bodies . Although within awakening the buddhas’ transformations never cease, the buddha ancestors’ emergence is itself the creation of a dream within a dream. Be mindful of  not slandering the buddha dharma.  When you practice not slandering the buddha dharma, this path of the tathagatas is immediately actualized.

Presented to the assembly of the Kannondori  Kosho Horin Monastery, Uji County, Yamashiro  Province, on the twenty-first day, the ninth  month, the third year of the Ninji Era [1242].

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Dionysos:

 The Mysteries Made Visible George Latura Beke

Figure 1. P"a$e)a'- ()a'a- a"%$g )he .%daca" "gh): b'gh) Ve$*( a) )he b%))%#, 'edd(h Ma'( $ )he #dd"e, Sa)*'$ a) )he )%&

IF YOU’ VE BEEN SHOWING a

youngster ancient coins that evoke “the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” or if you’ve taken him or her to a planetarium, or to an observatory  to see Saturn with a large telescope, be prepared for exponentially  multiplied challenges.  A short while ago, my twelve-year-old grandniece asked: “How  come we can see Jupiter and Venus, but Dionysos is not visible, like other ancient gods?” That question had been in my mind for quite some time, and her query ignited a surprising remembering, which according to Plato is the process of learning. As it turns out, Dionysos is  linked to a celestial phenomenon, but one so rarely seen that, in antiquity, it spawned the Mysteries and remains a mystery for most people today. 74 | PARABOLA

In his B  ACCHAE , the Athenian playwright Euripides has Dionysos manifesting a  visible light reaching from the earth to the sky, while in  A NTIGONE , Sophocles claims that the god leads the dance of the stars, which indicates that Dionysos does have a connection to phenomena visible in the firmament. Dionysos cried out: Maidens, I bring the man who makes a mockery of you  And me and my orgies; take vengeance on him!  As he addressed them, a light of awesome fire  Was fastened on the heaven and the earth. –Euripides, B  ACCHAE  God of many names . . . O Bacchos . . . O leader in the dance of the stars That circle in the night . . . Come, O Lord . . . –Sophocles,  A NTIGONE 

Even amateur astronomers know that the stars do not dance. They are stationary, fixed in their position relative to each other due to their great distance from us. The “stars” that do dance are the “Wanderers” of our planetary system, the seven visible bodies that course along the ecliptic and mark out the constellations of the zodiac. For Dionysos to lead the dance of the Wanderers, he too would have to travel along the ecliptic and soar along the zodiac. Thank heavens, there is  a celestial phenomenon that fits what Euripides and Sophocles revealed, an awesome light in the night sky that follows the ecliptic: the zodiacal light. Composed of  myriads of dust particles that circle the Sun along the path of the planets and that, like the planets, reflect the solar glare, this magic dust becomes visible at specific times of the year and at particular

hours of the night, revealing to the initiated a golden pathway to the heavens.  And when planets are propitiously  located along this visible path, we witness the celestial stairway leading up to the divine abode that formed the basis of  ancient astral religion (Figure 1). The Greek poet Pindar painted the glowing heavenly staircase in his O DES  (c. 400 B.C.), while the description of  this phenomenon hundreds of years earlier by the greatest Greek poet would become famous as the Golden Chain of Homer. First did the Fates in their golden chariot bring heavenly Themis, wise in counsel, from the springs of Ocean to the awesome stair that marks the shining way to Olympus…. –Pindar, O DES  Hangs me a golden chain from heaven, and lay hold of it all of you, gods and goddesses together—tug as you will, you will not drag Zeus the supreme counselor from heaven to earth. –Homer, I LIAD 

In the T EN  B OOKS  O N  A RCHITECTURE  of the Roman writer Vitruvius (which inspired Leonardo’s V ITRUVIAN  M  AN ), we also find the planetary staircase, while the Greek  philosopher Celsus gave his understanding of the Mysteries of Mithras, a cult that attracted many adherents from the Roman army and promised the ascent of  the soul through a planetary ladder (Figure 2). The Moon, Mercur y, Venus, the Sun, as  well as Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, differing from one another in the magnitude of  their orbits as though their courses were at different points in a flight of steps…. –Vitruvius In that system there is an orbit for the fixed stars, another for the planets, and a diagram for the passage of the soul

FALL 2011 | 75

MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS

Figure 2. M%(ac &a)h a) O()a M)h'ae*#, (h%$g )he &"a$e)a'- "adde' )% hea+e$

through the latter. They picture this as a ladder with seven gates, and at the very  top an eighth gate…. –Celsus, O N THE  T RUE  D OCTRINE 

The symbol of the planetary ladder to the heavens was carried at the forefront of Roman legions on standards that bore circles, disks, and crescents representing heavenly bodies (Figure 3, top). The first Roman emperor, Augustus, adopted the zodiacal sign Capricorn as his personal symbol and, after he was deified, this sign  would appear atop legion standards hundreds of years later (Figure 3, bottom). The promise of a heavenly ascension inspired legionnaires as they marched into battle, with Divus Augustus (Capricorn) ready to welcome them into the celestial abode. 76 |  PARABOLA

tried to stamp out all evidence of ancient planetary cults, but traces survived. The Great Menorah of the Temple of  Jerusalem that was carried off  by Roman soldiers (as seen on the Arch of Titus in Rome) had seven branches, and the Jewish writers Josephus and Philo of Alexandria assert that these seven lights stood for the planets. The consecutive lighting of menorah candles over days at Hanukkah replays the ascent through the planets,  with the first candle to be lit named Shamash, the ancient mid-Eastern Sun god. Mirroring this symbolism, many Christian churches today have seven lamps before the altar, from the R EVELATION  of John of  Patmos, seven lights that represent the planets. And when Muslim pilgrims arrive in Mecca, their first duty is to circumambulate the Ka’aba: briskly for the first three circuits (the inner “planets”: Moon, Mercury, Venus), and then more leisurely for the remaining four circuits (the outer “planets”: Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), paralleling the ancient ascent through the planets. In P  ARADISO , the fourteenth-century  Italian poet Dante describes a climb through the planets, proving that this tradition lived on for many generations. But the most amazing survival of the planetary  ascent to the heavens is our week, the seven-day voyage through the planets. The Roman historian Dio Cassius reveals that the order of the days of the week is based on musical intervals, and so if we follow the classical planetary sequence of   Vitruvius, we start with the Moon

(Monday, the first day of the week), skip three planets (the musical interval of the fifth) and arrive at Mars (French: Mardi ). Repeating the procedure,  we circle back to Mercury (French: Mercredi ), then on to Jupiter/Jove (French:  Jeudi ), to Venus (French: Vendredi ), then to Saturn (Saturday), and finally arrive at Sunday. Then we repeat the uphill climb through the planets all over again, much like Sisyphus. The Roman encyclopedist Pliny  ascribed the Music of the Spheres to Pythagoras, while hundreds of years later the jurist Martianus Cappela described an allegorical harmonic ascent through the planetary spheres. Occasionally Pythagoras draws on the theory of music, and designates the distance between the earth and the moon as a whole tone, that between the moon and Mercury as a semitone, between Mercury and Venus the same, between her and the sun a tone and a half, between the sun and Mars a tone, between Mars and Jupiter half a tone, between Jupiter and Saturn half a tone…. –Pliny, N  ATURAL H ISTORY  Philology ascended rapidly from here and flew by a half tone as far as the circle of   Venus…. Soon she was eager to make the toilsome journey to the sun’s circle—an ascent rendered toilsome by its distance of  three half tones, or a tone and a half. –Martianus Capella, M  ARRIAGE OF  P HILOLOGY AND  M ERCURY 

In his O N  T HE  R EPUBLIC , the Roman orator Cicero mimics Plato’s R EPUBLIC  and invokes a return to the celestial regions, a return  because the soul supposedly  descends from the heavens acquiring different attributes through the planetary  spheres (according to Macrobius), attributes it will relinquish in reverse order once free of the material body.

Figure 3. Top: De$a'*( %f Ma'c A$)%$-, (h%$g ()a$da'd( )h M%%$ c'e(ce$) a) )he b%))%#, )%&&ed b- c'c"e( %' %'b(. BoTTom: b'%$e c%$ %f G%'da$ III; %$ )he 'e+e'(e, Ca&'c%'$, )he a()'%"%gca" (g$ %f  A*g*()*(, ()( a)%& )he f"a$!$g ()a$da'd(.

 What is this great and pleasing sound that fills my ears? “That,” replied my grandfather, “is a concord of tones separated by  unequal but nevertheless carefully proportioned intervals, caused by the rapid motion of the spheres themselves…. Gifted men, imitating this harmony on stringed instruments and in singing, have gained for themselves a return to this region, as have those who have devoted their exceptional abilities to a search for divine truths.” –Cicero, D REAM OF  S CIPIO  In the sphere of Saturn it [the soul] obtains reason and understanding … in Jupiter’s sphere, the power to act … in Mars’ sphere, a bold spirit … in the sun’s sphere, sense perception and imagination … in Venus’ sphere, the impulse of passion… in Mercury’s sphere, the impulse to speak and interpret … and in the lunar sphere, the function of molding and increasing bodies. –Macrobius, C OMMENTARY ON THE  D REAM OF  S CIPIO 

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The return of the soul to the celestial regions along the planetary path was the great secret of ancient mystery religions,  whether the Mysteries of Mithras or the Mysteries of Eleusis, and since the planets must travel beneath the earth, this journey  inevitably encounters Death (Hades). Dionysos descended to the underworld and returned, just as Herakles came back with three-headed Kerberos, and for this they were called soter , or savior , as guarantors of the soul’s safety in the afterlife (Figure 4, top). Just skirting sacrilege, Aristophanes comically  re-invented Dionysos’ otherworldly   journey in F ROGS , where Dionysos asks Herakles for advice on how to reach Hades. Prior to his voyage to the underworld, Dionysos was initiated into

Figure 4. T%&, c%$ %f Th'ace: I+-c'%$ed head %f D%$%; %$ 'e+e'e, D%$% S%e' ( Savior  ). Mdd"e, c%$ %f Mea&%$*#: Head %f D%$%; %$ 'e+e'e, he ea' %f g'a$ %f De#ee' f"a$!ed b he f%*'-headed c'% %'ch %f E"e*. B%%#, "+e' de$a'* %f he R%#a$ Re&*b"c: Head %f Lbe' (D%$%); %$ 'e+e'e, De#ee' ea'che f%' he' da*ghe', b'a$dh$g %'che $ a cha'% d'a$ b e'&e$.

78 |  PARABOLA

the Mysteries of Eleusis (as was Herakles), and the connection between the Eleusinian goddess and Dionysos  would survive for centuries. God of many names, Glorious child of Thebes,  Whose mother was bride To Zeus’ deep thunder! It is you who guard the fame of Italy,  You who look after the embrace, at Eleusis, Of Demeter, all-welcoming goddess. O Bacchos … –Sophocles,  A NTIGONE 

 When the Greeks colonized southern Italy (Magna Graecia), the city of  Metapontum minted coins that show  Dionysos on one side, while the reverse has the ear of grain of Demeter flanked by the four-headed torch of Eleusis (Figure 4, middle). Similarly, silver coins of the Roman Republic show Liber (Dionysos) on one side, while Ceres (Demeter) carries torches on the reverse as she searches for her abducted daughter (Figure 4, bottom), a pairing that cements the mystical relationship between Demeter (grain, bread) and Dionysos (grape, wine). The influence of the Mysteries of  Eleusis on the Roman world was so pervasive that Octavian asked to be initiated there after his victory over Marc  Antony at Actium, acquiring the right to be called Augustus and to be deified after his death. Later Roman emperors and empresses, in order to join the visible gods in the heavens, would often make the pilgrimage to the village outside  Athens where the mystic rites were held. In his E LEUSIS , Carl Kerenyi amply  documents Dionysos’ link to the Eleusinian Mysteries, rites that were celebrated in the spring (Lesser Mysteries) and in the fall (Greater Mysteries), rites celebrated at night. It is precisely at these

times of the year that the zodiacal light is best seen from temperate latitudes, either after sunset or before sunrise. Pindar had pointed to the visible manifestation of Dionysos at harvest time, while dithyrambs and cultic hymns implored the god to appear, often in a stellar context: May Dionysos, bringer of joy, foster the grove of trees, The holy light at summer’s end.

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Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come, Euios, Thyrsos-Lord, Braites, come …  Whom in sacred Thebes the mother fair, She Thyone, once to Zeus did bear. The stars danced for joy.…

How could the god possibly appear when the stars are dancing? By manifesting himself as a holy light across the night sky that only those initiated into the Mysteries would recognize and understand. In P HAEDO , Plato alludes to the esoteric content of  these rites: “Many carry the thyrsus, but few are Bacchi.” The dance of the followers of Dionysos, like the dance of  the Whirling Dervishes, is the dance of  the planets along the ecliptic, along the mystic light that appears only at specific times of the year. In order to witness this ethereal light for myself, I flew down to Arizona where the desert night skies are still dark at some distance from light-polluting cities.  An hour after sundown, as I drove along pitch-black roads searching for my bedand-breakfast, I realized that this was the  witching hour. Pulling over and turning off all lights, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. And there, ever so faint but undeniably visible, arched on high the zodiacal light, the celestial pathway along which Dionysos leads the dance of the whirling planets.

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Hugh Brockwill Ripman 80 | PARABOLA

(1909–80) was the founder of the Gurdjieff   Work in Washington, D.C. He met the Gurdjieff teaching through P.D. Ouspensky in London in 1934, and with his wife, Mildred, continued to  work with him and Mme. Ouspensky in England until 1946. Then they   were able to follow the Ouspenskys to America, Hugh having been appointed First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington. A year later he took a position at the World Bank and continued to work there until his retirement in 1972, a job that gave him the opportunity to travel to many different countries and meet spiritual teachers in other traditions, Zen and Taoist, Hindu, Tantric, and Sufi. G.I. Gurdjieff himself returned to America in the winter of 1948, his first visit since before the war. Although Ouspensky had received the teaching from Gurdjieff, he had separated himself from his teacher in 1924. From that time on he taught on his own, without mentioning Gurdjieff, so that his pupils surmised that this teacher was dead or in some way no longer able to teach. After Ouspensky’s death in 1947, Mme. Ouspensky, who had never ceased to regard Gurdjieff as her teacher and through all this time had kept herself informed of his condition and ongoing teaching, advised her pupils to go to New York  and meet him. In the book S EARCH FOR T RUTH , Hugh describes the powerful impact his first meeting with Gurdjieff had on him: “Then Gurdjieff came in— and instead of there being seventy-one people in the room, there was one man and seventy two-dimensional figures.... This was a man whom one could never forget.”  After Gurdjieff left New York in February of 1949, Mme. Ouspensky  gave her pupils the task of gathering a few people who might be interested in Gurdjieff's ideas and preparing them to meet him when he returned the following October. But Gurdjieff died in Paris on the 29th of that month and never returned. Hugh felt a responsibility toward the people he had gathered in D.C. and was given permission to try to share with them what he had understood of the teaching. He began with seven or eight people, but by  1980 there were more than two hundred members in the Washington group and more in groups Hugh had established in nearby cities. The following selections are from two books that, after years-long labor, the Washington group first published privately and are now  offering for general distribution. S EARCH FOR  T RUTH  is a spiritual autobiography Hugh wrote in 1961 but did not offer for publication at that time. To this work its editors have added several essays he wrote between 1949 and 1961. Q UESTIONS AND  A NSWERS ALONG THE  W  AY  consists of selections from Hugh’s meetings with his groups between 1968, when the meetings began to be taped, and 1980, the year of his death. HUGH BROCKWILL  R IPMAN

—Martha Heyneman FALL 2011 | 81

Hugh Brockwill Ripman

THERE WAS A MAN WHO DIED. Among

other things, he left to his only  son a sealed package, and a letter that read thus: This package came into my hands in Central Asia many years ago. One night, as I lay beside a stream, which wound between barren hills, I had a dream.  When I woke in the morning, the vividness of the dream remained with me, and inner compulsion led me to make my way to the source of the stream. There I found an old man, who had figured in my dream. He entrusted this package to my care and died in my arms a few hours later. He told me a strange stor y. To most people it would have sounded merely fantastic, but there was something in the old man’s face and in his  voice that carried conviction. This is the story that he told me in the hours before he died: “This package contains a carpet. This carpet is woven entirely of human hair. Its weaving was spread over a period of six generations, and the planning of it and the gathering of material took three generations, so that between the first conception and the final stitch nearly three hundred years elapsed.

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“There are four kinds of knowledge, each valid within its sphere, and each the aim of effort among men. Knowledge of the body is learned by hand and foot and eye, by imitation and by training. Knowledge of  the brain is gained from books, from teachers, from the exercise of thought. Knowledge of the heart springs from the experience of emotion. Knowledge of the soul is the only one of the four that is knowledge of reality, of the mystery which lies behind the things of sense. “At different times one or another of  these kinds of knowledge is valued and sought more than the others—knowledge of the brain, today. In other times—especially in the first flowering of the great religions—knowledge gions—kno wledge of the soul was the aim that shaped men’s lives. It was during such a period that this carpet was planned and made. The men of that time knew that their culture, like every other culture on earth, had its life span, and would one day  be a memory, and then not even that; and they decided to leave behind them a sign and symbol of their knowledge of the soul. “This carpet is their memorial. Each of  the hairs woven into its fabric has been cut from the head of a man or a woman whose life was spent in strenuous and unremitting endeavor to achieve the knowledge of reality, and who had achieved that knowledge before the body returned to earth. The design of the carpet conveys no meaning to the eyes of the body; only the eyes of  the soul may read what is written there. “You have heard of the virtue “You vir tue that emanates from holy relics, how they are in some way saturated with a power. Power of this kind flowed into the carpet through thr ough generations of men and women dedicated to the knowledge that it symbolizes. Its power is greater than that of lightning.”  You may understand why I have never  You made any attempt to open the package. It is for you to decide whether to leave it it untouched, as I have done, or not. But know that if you do open it, and there ther e is anything in your heart but the desire for

the knowledge of reality reali ty,, then you put  yourself in danger. danger. What danger I do not know—perhaps of insanity, perhaps of  death. THE SON OF THE MAN who

had died pondered over this letter for many days. He considered what he knew of the  world and of men. He saw that most men never wondered what meaning life had, what part they played in the pattern of life, what mystery lay behind the things of sense. Their world was bounded by the limits of their own affairs. If they thought at all of larger issues, it was only to repeat parrot-like parr ot-like  what they had heard or read. There were some men whose life was shaped by ambition, which, like a magnet, drew them along a certain course. They sought wealth, or power, powe r, or fame. Some emerged from the struggle broken and beaten; others, stronger or more cunning, attained their goal. But the prizes which fell to the successful were ephemeral things, their grasp of these prizes a precarious one. There was no  wealth so great that it could not be lost by theft, by natural disaster, by decay; there was no power so secure that it could not be overwhelmed or undermined by conquest, by revolution, by  corruption; there was no fame so well established that it might not fall into oblivion, or even turn tur n to infamy. infamy. Even if  such things could be retained during life, the hand of death was always poised, ready to fall in its time without respect respe ct for rank or possessions. Such men as these sought knowledge not for its own sake, but as a means to their ends. There were others whose life was also shaped by an aim, but of a different kind: those who struggled to express, through the arts, symbols of the experience of  FALL 2011 | 8 3

mankind. Many lacked the talent that can give form to such symbols. Many  developed the techniques of their art, but lacked the vision that can distill the eternity of the symbol. Many were corrupted by fame or wealth, or by the desire for such rewards. A few, during the centuries, produced masterpieces  which lived after them. Some men did seek truth for its own sake, along the paths of science or philosophy.. For them knowledge was the goal. ophy  All their effor efforts ts were aimed aimed at the discovery of reality. reality. Step by step, building on the foundations laid by others before them, they elaborated and embellished the achievements of intellect. Finally,, there were Finally wer e some who claimed to possess the knowledge of truth,

8 4 |  PARABOLA

attained by the path of religion. But there were many religions, each claiming that it was the sole possessor of the truth. tr uth. The followers of these religions quarreled and persecuted one another in the name of truth.  After many days the son of the man  who had died came to a decision. He placed his affairs in the hands of trust worthy advisers and embarked upon a search for knowledge. He read many  books, studied under learned professors, and travelled widely, for he wished to discover whether the knowledge of  reality could be achieved by the brain. He sought out men famous for their erudition, and listened to their teaching. To each he finally put the question: “What do you know with certainty about

reality?” Some gave one answer, some another. Most of them admitted that there was no certainty, that all their learning rested on assumptions which could not be proved. He came to realize that the scope of  science is limited to the discovery of certain patterns in the behavior of material things and natural forces. What these things and forces were, and why their behavior followed such patterns—these questions science either did not face or could not answer. The knowledge of reality eluded his search, and his desire to attain it grew in strength. In the course of his studies he came into contact with men and women of all sorts. In his relations with them he was possessed, and saw them possessed, by  love and anger and pity and sorrow, by  hate and fear and an d lust and joy, by pride and envy and shame and a host of other emotions. Many times he was led astray  by this possession from the search for knowledge. Pondering over these experiences, he saw that this possession by emotions, though it had taught him much about man, did not seem to lead to the knowledge of reality which he sought. Nevertheless, there were certain moments, most of them connected with the consummation of a pure love, which had a character different from any ordinary experience. They were fleeting moments, and the memory of them was never complete. Always it was as though in darkness the sun had suddenly shone for a moment, but disappeared at once, leaving in the memory a sense of glory  unknown, touched but not grasped, and in the heart a deep feeling of peace. Only once, and then with great difficulty, was he able to express for himself 

something of what he had felt, and even then he knew that there lay hidden in his  words meanings meanings which which he no longer longer understood. This is what he wrote: There is a citadel, inviolate, The inmost hidden kernel of the heart, Changeless, eternal, imperturbable,  A rock unmoved amidst amidst the storms of life, Girdled by veils of purifying flame, Through which the questing soul, in search of peace, Must pass, and passing suffer, till the spark   Which struggles, struggles, all but snuffed, within this clay cl ay,, Has blossomed into lightning radiance, Has shriveled every cinder shred of self,  And borne aloft aloft on phoenix pinions Can over-breast the battlements, and sink  Tenderly down to silence fathomless. Here once I came—and yet not I, not I, But that in me which strives and seeks and yearns, Hungers and fiercely thirsts to break its bonds—  And deeply drank the silence. Time stood still,  And space’s space’s farthest outposts outposts ceased to be.  An hour—a day—a century century passed by, by,  And suddenly a pang, pang, an agony agony,, Unutterably deep, shot through my soul—  A blackness so intense that that light seemed dead,  A brilliance brilliance which paled the lightning flash,  A silence sharper than than the deepest wound. In that eternal moment life was death, Death life. Within my spirit’s riven core  A door was opened; but to pass that that door I was not worthy—nor indeed to stand Before it. Arrow-fast my spirit fled, Seeking with trembling wings familiar Time  And friendly Space. Body returned to me; I saw the light we know, know, I heard the sounds  Which fall fall upon the outer ear ear.. I wept,  And felt the warmth of tears upon my cheek.

FALL 2011 | 8 5

between these moments and certain states he had reached in his search for knowledge. Sometimes he had persisted for a long time in directing his attention to a problem that required him to hold many things simultaneously in his mind’s eye. After making this effort for a long time, he had felt himself per vaded by a vivid sense of expectancy, a feeling of being upon a threshold beyond which lay he knew not what— but something vitally important and significant, something which called to him with a sense of enormous adventure and at the same time frightened him by  its unknown immensity. Feelings of like nature were sometimes produced by impressions reaching him through eye or ear—a sunset or a symphony, the flash of a bird’s wing against the blue of the sky, the voice of a mother crooning to her child. At times for a whole week he would be filled by  this sense of expectancy, of being on the  verge of revelation. At such times all his senses were unusually sharp, as though stripped of a covering which normally  muffled them, and he felt an emotion to  which he could give no name. It was a kind of pleasant melancholy, painfully  intense under the stimulus of certain impressions, as though he were a musical instrument, the strings of which lay in his heart and were plucked, and in the pain of the plucking was born the beauty of  the note. In his mind and in his heart the memory of these experiences was burned deep, and there came to him a growing conviction that he was nearer to his goal at such times than he was in any other state, as though the mask of appearances,  which hides the mysterious face of reality, had almost become transparent. But HE FELT SOME RELATION

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he had no control over these states, he could not by an effort of will reach that threshold, and he always felt that he had been given a gift of which he was not  worthy. Fifteen years after his father’s death, he inspected his heart in order to see  whether there was in it the pure desire for knowledge of the soul. He was not satisfied with what he found, and continued his travels, searching for knowledge. One day, when he was wear y and discouraged, he fell into conversation with a stranger, and spoke of his desire to attain the knowledge of reality. The stranger listened with interest and drew him on to tell the story of the carpet, and of the  years he had spent in travel and study. They talked through the night, and as the sky was growing pale the stranger told him to go to a house in a certain town where he would find a teacher. He went to this town, but when he called at the house he was told that the teacher was away. He called again, only  to be told that the teacher was busy and could not see him. A third time he called, and this time he refused to leave until he was admitted. He knew at once that this teacher was a different kind of man from all the professors and other learned men he had met. His teaching concerned the way  that led to the knowledge of reality, and the price that had to be paid for the transformation of the whole man, which  was necessary for progress on that path. For ten years he studied under this teacher, and he came to understand many things about himself and about the  world. He came to realize that there was no possibility of his attaining the knowledge of reality so long as certain obstacles existed within him. Only when he began to struggle against these obstacles

did he discover their strength and their persistence. He was torn many times in acute inner conflict. Sometimes for  weeks on end the teacher refused to see him. Sometimes he was sunk in despair. But he persisted, and gradually his attention began to obey his will, and his understanding became deeper and more organic. Some ten years after he first met the teacher, he at last turned his steps towards his fatherland, with the hunger for the knowledge of reality a white

flame in his heart. And he took the package containing the carpet, and opened it.  And he sat before the carpet without sleep or food for three days and three nights. The familiar sense of being upon the threshold grew stronger and stronger until his heart was near to breaking in him. And towards the end of the third night, when the intensity of his desire to cross the threshold was such that he thought he must die, the eyes of his soul  were opened, and he achieved the knowledge of reality.

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 The Silent Witness Hugh Brockwill Ripman Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the  individual self and the immortal Self are perched on the branches  of the selfsame tree. The former tastes of the sweet and bitter fruits  of the tree; the latter, tasting of neither, calmly observes. —Upanishads

about the first step in getting to know oneself better.… I spoke about a method of observation of self—of one’s thoughts, one’s emotions, one’s sensations, one’s actions—which requires a special effort with attention: a division of attention into two parts. One of these parts is directed towards whatever activity it’s engaged in, whether it be thought or action or whatever, and the other is directed to the experience of a point of awareness of what is going on. I call it the Silent Witness. It’s an impartial, unjudg mental witness to  what goes on. It is extremely difficult to do this, and you will find at first that you can only do it for a split second, and then you find yourself with I SPOKE LAST TIME

88 | PARABOLA

 your attention wholly drawn into what  you’re doing; but with practice it becomes more possible. Q: Could you say more about the Silent 

Witness?  HBR: Well, you start with the fact that it is silent. It is not talking or thinking about  what you are doing, but it is aware of   what you are doing. You know, for instance, that you can be absorbed in a book and be absolutely unaware of your posture or the sensations of your body  because you are lost in the book. You also know that if I call your attention to that, you become aware of the posture and the sensations which are there all the time. The Silent Witness pays attention to  what goes on in the centers: to what goes on in the head, to what goes on in the heart, to what goes on in the body. It simply pays attention. It’s like listening to music. You don’t have to manipulate the impressions you receive from music;  you just receive them. This Silent  Witness just receives impressions from  your behavior. She hears your voice, both your inner and your outer voice; she is aware of what happens in you. You have to struggle towards this. But at any  rate, be sure that it’s not thinking or internally talking about what’s going on in you. It’s simply being aware, as though each function had a mirror placed in front of it. Q: What is this part that watches me?  HBR: For the time being, you will not

gain anything by having that defined. The thing to do is to experience the Silent Witness. It may not be exactly the same thing with everybody. We’re all trying to do the same thing, to have a Silent Witness whose function is just to

be aware, but it may be different for different people. So I feel at this stage that it wouldn’t be helpful to put any words to it. I could do that, but it wouldn’t make you any wiser. The thing to do is to gain more experience of it for yourself, to find how it feels different from the ordinary condition when your thoughts are experienced as “I,” when  your feelings are experienced as “I,”  when your body is experienced as “I.” This is a little different. Q: I have a hard time differentiating the 

Silent Witness from my mind. HBR: Yes, and if you don’t do that, you don’t understand what the Silent  Witness is. You see, in the ordinary way,  we live in the state which is called “identification.” This means that I feel myself  to be my functions. It may be a thought, it may be a feeling, it may be a sensation—but it is felt to be myself. I am hammering a nail—I hammer my finger—“Oh, I hurt myself.” Or we become angry and say, “I am angry,” instead of saying, “Anger is rising in me.” And the Silent Witness is exactly  something that is not a function: not a thought, not a feeling, not a sensation. One of the great difficulties of maintaining this special kind of attention is that when one is for a moment aware of  something, one immediately starts thinking about it, judging it, or whatever. And one’s sense of oneself slips into these feelings, these judgments of  it, and one is lost. The Silent Witness is no longer there. It is very difficult to realize for oneself that this isn’t a thinking effort. It is a naked awareness. It takes some people a couple of years to get it absolutely clear inside themselves, by experience, what this Silent Witness really is. FALL 2011 | 89

But I wish to emphasize that it isn’t thinking about oneself. When you talk  about being drawn back into yourself,  you are being drawn back into thought about yourself, which is not the same thing at all. You are tempted the whole time to react to what you observe, but the moment you do that you are no longer observing. And experience shows that it is extremely difficult not to react. Something immediately begins to think  about it and a running commentary sets up, or one is pleased that one has noticed something, or one is disgusted  with what one has seen, or whatever. These reactions draw one’s attention away from the naked experience of  oneself.…

Q: This Silent Witness—is it something 

which is innately within us that we don’t  recognize?  HBR: This is a question which always comes up: What is the Silent Witness? I don’t think it’s very useful to give a verbal label of some kind. What is important is to know the difference in oneself  between the times when it’s there and the times when it’s not. It is simply a witness at this stage, a witness which is able to be a witness because part of my attention is in the witnessing. It doesn’t really  help to label it. What matters is that you experience it. You feel the difference between the state when something is separate and looking on and experiencing, and the state in which that is not there—the state in which the candle is lit, and in which the candle is out. The Silent Witness can be considered to be the germ of something that can in time, if it grows in strength and grows in frequency, exercise some controlling influence and bring some order into the chaos of the psyche. Q: I’m not sure of the Silent Witness. I 

may have it and I may not. HBR: It’s not a thinking effort; it’s simply an effort of witnessing what goes on in the organism. The moment you think about it, you’re not having the direct experience of  it. Think of the Silent Witness as a naturalist who is trying to observe a rather elusive animal. Most of the time, he only catches sight of the tail disappearing around the corner. Think of this organism being the animal you’re observing and the Silent Witness being the naturalist  who really wishes to find out how  this strange creature leads his life, to find out by direct observation. 90 |  PARABOLA

Q: I would like to learn to 

observe myself simply, as I  would a daisy or a butter-   fly, without analysis, with-  out judgment, without try-  ing to understand the  whys. HBR: Well, before you can begin to understand the  whys, you need to observe simply, because if   you try to analyze as you go along, it is mostly  based on previous notions about yourself. You don’t take in a pure impression of what is happening. You see, this is constantly at  work in us, whether it is impressions of ourselves as we act or whether it is impressions of other people—our impressions are constantly affected by  previous notions. So it is indeed desirable and necessary to observe oneself   with the same impartiality  as a naturalist observes a creature he is trying to study and to understand its habits. But the trouble is, you see, it is very difficult to adopt the same stance vis-à-vis oneself  because always something in one feels that one knows oneself and finds it very  difficult to look at just what happens and nothing else.  What happens, you see, time and time again, is that for a moment one can stand aside and impersonally experience  what’s happening, but very quickly and imperceptibly observation changes into comment, and comment into emotional reaction to what one has observed. And the moment the observation changes

into comment, one has lost the pure impression. One just has to go on trying, and it is not an easy thing to do. But one is simply seeing, in relation to this process of  observing oneself, what goes on the  whole time when one is observing other people and things: one is constantly (and cannot help it) interpreting and analyzing. It is very difficult indeed, but possible, to get away from this. Q: Isn’t there movement in observation? I 

don’t see how it could observe without  being in motion. FALL 2011 | 91

HBR: This quiet thing that observes has

been likened to a mirror in which things are reflected; a mirror doesn’t have to move to reflect movement. You see, it depends on how you understand the  word “observe.” I can understand that  you find in your own experience that you can’t observe without reacting, but it is the reaction which you experience as movement. The observation and the reaction are actually quite separate. You understand? This is the way one normally functions: one observes and then something reacts. When we try to observe ourselves directly, then it is almost impossible to prevent some kind of feeling or thought about what we observe from arising in us; but one has to keep the feeling or thought about what we observe quite separate from the act of  observation. The act of observation sets off the emotional and intellectual centers commenting, feeling and thinking about  what one has observed. And it’s very easy  to get caught in the illusion that this feeling and thinking about what one has observed is observation. It isn’t. It’s reaction. And very often, of course,  when it sets up, it catches one’s attention so that one’s sense of oneself goes into thinking, and one ceases to have the Silent Witness. Q: I don’t know if I am ever truly present,

especially when speaking. HBR: Speaking is always difficult. It’s been recognized for centuries as one of  the most difficult things because one identifies with what one has to say. So  we start with less difficult things such as physical chores. If we practice enough being present to ourselves with simple things that don’t in themselves make a 92 |  PARABOLA

demand on the mind or the emotions— things that the body has learnt to do—if   we practice during those times feeling ourselves separate from our actions, then gradually, gradually it begins to become possible.  You can use certain techniques. Before you are able to talk and remain conscious of yourself, you can listen and remain conscious of yourself; it is not so difficult to listen as it is to talk. And if   you wish to stay present to yourself when  you are talking, you can use an anchor for the attention—awareness of breathing or something like that—which is quite possible to maintain when you are listening, but much more difficult when  you are speaking. So it’s a question of practice and of  seeing these simple activities, which are not important in themselves, as practice grounds where you can develop the psychological muscles which you will need  when things are more difficult. in maintaining this Silent  Witness for a little longer, take the physical task this week of keeping the soles of both feet flat on the floor when  you are standing or sitting. Of course,  you will come to yourself many times and find that they are not on the floor. This will show you how much is required to keep present to yourself and how quickly this awareness goes. See how this connects with the idea that we cannot do. You cannot do this; there is certainly not one of you who can do this. So how can we expect to do many  other things which are much more difficult? One of the objects of the task is to bring home to you the dangers, the precariousness, of your present position, so that your wish to escape grows stronger.  A S A HELP

FALL 2011 | 93

Exploring an ancient teaching on liberation 

Seeing

and the Yoga Sutra Dolphi Wertenbaker

THE  Y OGA  SUTRA  of

Patanjali is the foundational and earliest text on yoga. Dating from about the fifth century BCE, it reflects an oral tradition in existence long before. The Yoga Sutra defines yoga as a state of sustained voluntar y attention (YS 1:2). Many practices are suggested; however, an individual is meant to follow one. The ultimate goal of yoga, Patanjali says, is freedom or independence (kaivalya ) of seeing (YS 2:25). Freedom of seeing. This is such a striking concept: what does it mean? Why freedom of seeing rather than freedom of the seer? Patanjali speaks of a fundamental confusion and entanglement between the perceiver and the perceived, intrinsic to human nature, and the cause of our suffering (YS 2:17). He says that the experiences of life are given us so that we might learn to distinguish perceiver and perceived (YS 2:18, 23). According to Samkhya , the system of thought commonly accepted in Patanjali’s time, in every living being there is something unchanging called purusha . Everything else is  prakriti . Purusha represents the “master” in ourselves. Prakriti, according to Patanjali, has a dual role: to be experienced, and to help towards liberation (YS 2:18). Among the synonyms for purusha is drashta , the perceiver. Thus, what Patanjali calls the perceiver is an aspect of this something deep inside that never changes (and does not die). Other synonyms for purusha, or the perceiver, 94 | PARABOLA

Patanjali statue, Hardiwar, India

show that it is pervasive throughout the being ( atma ), gives life ( jeeva ), and is the energy behind knowing ( chit ). These ideas take us to a subtle realm. Ordinarily, we think of what is perceived as external and the perceiver as ourselves. Science has elucidated a great deal about how perception takes place: the functioning of the sense organs and the many levels of processing in the brain.  Yet, for Patanjali, all of this, no matter how fine, is still in the realm of prakriti. The perceiver is other. The perceiver is by nature free and independent. Not so the seeing, because the seeing passes through our mind and senses (YS 2:20). The perceiver is of a different order from both the perceived and the instrument of perception. The instrument of perception is ourselves— body and mind. We think we distinguish perceiver from perceived, e.g., I am not that chocolate; or perceiver from

instrument, e.g., I am not my body; or even: I am not me. Yet that is not how we live. Furthermore, we all know of the blind spot in our vision, yet we never notice it: the mind routinely fills in what is missing. This is true metaphorically as well. Patanjali says that when we are in the state of yoga, the perceiver appears and we see reality as it is (YS 1:3). Otherwise, what we see are the projections of our own mind, which  we take for reality (YS 1:4). The implications are important for our lives, because how we see determines our understanding,  which is the basis for action. How do we move towards true perception? In the beginning, Patanjali says, our “seeing” is a mixture of  memory and imagination (YS 1:42). In Sanskrit, memory refers to everything we know from the past, along with habit and cultural conditioning. In order to have a (continued on page 98) FALL 2011 | 95

WELCOME TO THE

PARABOLA BACK ISSUE LIBRARY CHOOSE FROM 140 BACK ISSUES TO INFORM, INSPIRE, AND GUIDE YOU ON YOUR JOURNEY.  All Back Issues are $12.50 plus shipping and handling. 1:1 1:2 1:3 1:4

 THE HERO In quest of the meaning of Self  MAGIC The power that transforms INITIATION A portal to rebirth RITES OF PASSAGE Symbols and rituals of transformation

12:1 THE KNIGHT & THE HERMIT Heroes of action and reflection 12:2 ADDICTION The prison of human craving 12:3 FORGIVENESS The past transcended 12:4 THE SENSE OF HUMOR Walking with laughter

2:1 2:2 2:3 2:4

DEATH Beyond the limits of the known CREATION From formlessness, something new COSMOLOGY The order of things, seen and unseen RELATIONSHIPS Our interwoven human experience

13:1 THE CREATIVE RESPONSE To represent the sacred 13:2 REPETITION & RENEWAL Respecting the rhythm of growth 13:3 QUESTIONS The road to understanding 13:4 THE MOUNTAIN A meeting place of Earth and Heaven

3:1 3:2 3:3 3:4

SACRED SPACE Landscapes, temples, the inner terrain SACRIFICE & TRANSFORMATION Stepping into a holy fire INNER ALCHEMY Refining the gold within ANDROGYNY The fusion of male and female

14:1 DISCIPLES & DISCIPLINE Teachers, masters, students, fools 14:2 TRADITION & TRANSMISSION Passages from wisdom into wisdom 14:3 THE TREE OF LIFE Root, trunk, and crown of our search 14:4 TRIAD Sacred and secular laws of three

4:1 4:2 4:3 4:4

 THE TRICKSTER Guide, mischief-maker, master of disguise SACRED DANCE Moving to worship, moving to transcend  THE CHILD Setting out from innocence STORYTELLING & EDUCATION Speaking to young minds

15:1 TIME & PRESENCE How to welcome the present moment  15:2 ATTENTION What animates mind, body, and feeling 15:3 LIBERATION Freedom from what, freedom for what? 15:4 HOSPITALITY Care in human relationships

5:1 5:2 5:3 5:4

 THE OLD ONES Visions of our elders MUSIC, SOUND, & SILENCE Echoes of stillness OBSTACLES In the way, or the Way itself? WOMAN In search of the feminine

16:1 MONEY Exchange between humans, and with the divine 16:2 THE HUNTER Stalking great knowledge 16:3 CRAFT The skill that leads to creation 16:4 THE GOLDEN MEAN Balance between defect and excess

6:1 6:2 6:3 6:4

EARTH & SPIRIT Opposites or complements?  THE DREAM OF PROGRESS Our modern fantasy MASK & METAPHOR When things are not as they seem DEMONS Spirits of the dark 

17:1 SOLITUDE & COMMUNITY The self, alone and with others 17:2 LABYRINTH The path to inner treasure 17:3 THE ORAL TRADITION Transmission through spoken word and silence 17:4 POWER & ENERGY The stunning array of atom and cosmos

7:1 7:2 7:3 7:4

SLEEP To be restored, or to forget  DREAMS & SEEING Visions, fantasy, and the unconscious CEREMONIES Seeking divine service HOLY WAR Conflict for the sake of reconciliation

18:1 HEALING The return to a state of health 18:2 PLACE & SPACE Seeking the holy in mountain, sea,and vale 18:3 CROSSROADS The meeting place of traditions and ideas 18:4 THE CITY Hub of the human world

8:1 8:2 8:3 8:4

GUILT The burden of conscience ANIMALS The nature of the creature world WORDS OF POWER Secret words, magic spells, divine utterances SUN & MOON Partners in time as fields of force

19:1 THE CALL To ask for help, to receive what is given 19:2 TWINS The two who come from one 19:3 CLOTHING Concealing and revealing our inner selves 19:4 HIDDEN TREASURE Value, hope, and knowledge

9:1 9:2 9:3 9:4

HIERARCHY The ladder of the sacred  THEFT The paradox of possession PILGRIMAGE Journey toward the holy FOOD Nourishing body and spirit 

20:1 EARTH, AIR, WATER, FIRE Essential elements of all things 20:2 THE STRANGER Messenger or deceiver, savior or threat  20:3 LANGUAGE & MEANING Communication, symbol, and sign 20:4 EROS Human sexuality and the life of the spirit 

10:1 WHOLENESS The hunger for completion 10:2 EXILE Cut off from the homeland of meaning 10:3 THE BODY Half dust, half deity 10:4 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS The mystery of goodness 11:1 THE WITNESS Silent guides and unsleeping eyes 11:2 MIRRORS That which reflects the real 11:3 SADNESS The transformation of tragedy 11:4 MEMORY & FORGETTING What we remember and why

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21:1 PROPHETS & PROPHECY Seeing beyond the veil 21:2 THE SOUL Life within and beyond our corporeal existence 21:3 PEACE Seeking inner and outer tranquility 21:4 PLAY & WORK Struggle and relaxation in the search for meaning

22:1 WAYS OF KNOWING Different avenues to truth 22:2 THE SHADOW Cast by the light we follow 22:3 CONSCIENCE & CONSCIOUSNESS Inner guides to understanding one’s being

22:4 MIRACLES Enigmatic breaks in the laws of nature 23:1 MILLENNIUM To what end, to what beginning? 23:2 ECSTASY Joy that transports us outside of ourselves 23:3 FEAR Sign of weakness, or of strength? 23:4 BIRTH AND REBIRTH Journey toward renewal 24:1 NATURE Exploring inner and outer terrain 24:2 PRAYER & MEDITATION Petition, praise,

29:3 THE SEEKER In search of the Way 29:4 FRIENDSHIP Companions on the path 30:1 AWAKENING Casting off slumber 30:2 RESTRAINT The power of not doing 30:3 BODY AND SOUL Two mysteries 30:4 FUNDAMENTALISM Getting out of the box 

 thanksgiving, confession 24:3 NUMBER & SYMBOL Languages that disclose the real 24:4 EVIL The duality within us, within the world

31:1 COMING TO OUR SENSES Shaking our senses free 31:2 ABSENCE AND LONGING The path of yearning 31:3 THINKING Thinking as prayer 31:4 HOME The homes of great spiritual leaders

25:1 THRESHOLD Neither here nor there, real nor imaginary 25:2 RIDDLE & MYSTERY Questions and answers 25:3 THE TEACHER One who shows the way 25:4 FATE AND FORTUNE Inevitabilities that speak to us

32:1 FAITH Seven great acts of faith 32:2 SEX Spiritual teachings on sex  32:3 HOLY EARTH Our sacred planet  32:4 THE NEW WORLD Frontiers of the spiritual

26:1 THE GARDEN Cultivating within and without  26:2 LIGHT That which illuminates our inner and outer darkness 26:3 THE FOOL In search of divine innocence 26:4 THE HEART Where the quest begins and ends

33:1 SILENCE The place of not speaking 33:2 GOD Approaching the Unknown 33:3 MAN & MACHINE Traditions and technology 33:4 JUSTICE The Divine measure

27:1 THE EGO AND THE “I” Which one is real? 27:2 DYING Ending or the beginning of transformation? 27:3 GRACE Gifts bestowed from above 27:4 WAR Violence as a means to an end

34:1 IMAGINATION  The story issue 34:2 WATER The sacred element 34:3 THE PATH Finding the right way 34:4 THE FUTURE The way ahead

28:1 COMPASSION Actions that embrace others 28:2 PRISON Inner and outer confinement  28:3 CHAOS AND ORDER The interplay of creative forces 28:4 TRUTH AND ILLUSION Seeking clarity amidst confusion

35:1 LOVE  The divine energy 35:2 LIFE AFTER DEATH Beyond the known 35:3 DESIRE What compels our lives? 35:4 BEAUTY What transports us; where do we look?

29:1 MARRIAGE Union with the Other 29:2 WEB OF LIFE The interrelationship of being

36:1 SUFFERING  To be with it, and to let it be 36:2 GIVING & RECEIVING Gift of life, flow of mediating energies

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FALL 2011 | 97

clear perception of a chosen object, memory must be completely purified of  its own content (YS 1:43). Rarely this happens in a moment of epiphany; more often a process is involved. For example, if I want to understand breathing, at first there is the image of everything I have been taught about lungs, and various personal associations. Gradually, if I return to the study again and again, I may have a direct perception of a kind of subtle circulation throughout the body. For Patanjali, the functioning of  the mind must remain intact, yet not bring in extraneous material. The fundamental problem, according to Patanjali, is avidya , a kind of “non knowing.” He defines this as taking things for their opposites, for example mistaking the temporal for the eternal, or non-self  for self (YS 2:5). We live our lives as though we would live forever: this is avidya. We are not generally aware of  avidya, but we can recognize its offshoots, especially false identification, ego, reactivity, and fear. Under the influence of avidya,  we go about our lives in ways that get us into trouble. Thus, avidya leads to suffering. Yet this suffering is what motivates us to do something. Recognizing our pain and our true situation is the first step on the path of wisdom. The moments of recognition create a sense of space, a foretaste of the freedom of seeing. If yoga is a state of sustained attention and its purpose is freedom of seeing,  what is the path of yoga? Patanjali lays out an eight-part path. First is a set of  ideals in our attitude toward others: non violence, telling the truth, not stealing, faithfulness in relationship, and nongrasping. Second, in our attitude toward ourselves: cleanliness, contentment, effort, self-study, surrendering the results of action. The virtues are familiar, yet for 98 |  PARABOLA

Patanjali, the purpose is not salvation or goodness. The purpose is to help cultivate a certain quality of mind. Then, there is asana  or work with the body,  what we generally think of as yoga in the  West. The aim here is to develop the qualities of stability and ease (YS 2:46). Then there is conscious breathing, which results in a turning inward and a lifting of  the “veils which obscure our inner light” (YS 2:52, 54). Finally, concentration is possible, and then the deeper states of  meditation. The essence of the eightfold path is also contained in a single practice, the yoga of action. Here, one tries to bring to all the actions of life three aspects: effort, self-inquiry, and an open attitude about results (YS 2:1). Patanjali says that states of attention and disturbance fluctuate in us from moment to moment. Furthermore, what is present in a part of us tends to spread throughout the whole system (YS 3:9). This is why thoughts and feelings affect health and also why doing something  with the body affects the mind and emotions. For example, I may be upset by some offensive interaction with someone, and unable to shake the agitation. Yet if I do a short practice with  yoga postures, I might feel much lighter about it afterward. Similarly, attending to one’s breathing may change everything. In Samkhya thought, the states we experience, like all prakriti, are made up of  three qualities, called  gunas . The gunas are: rajas  (expansion, movement), tamas  (mass, rigidity), and sattva  (illumination, lightness). What is essential for perception is predominantly sattva guna. We ourselves can be thought of as the “container” in  which perception takes place. The guna quality of this container is affected by  everything in our lives, including food, thought, activity, and so on. In order for

perception to be true, this “container” must have an appropriate guna quality. quality. The practices of yoga take us in this direction, using a variety of approaches. Ultimately, Patanjali speaks of change in ourselves occurring indirectly. He describes what needs to happen as being like a farmer who simply opens a gate in his irrigation system to let water flow  (YS 4:3). We do not bring the water  where it needs to go, nor even even command command it to go there. Through the practice of   yoga, somehow somehow an obstacle is removed and the water is allowed to flow. In a similar way, freedom of seeing can appear. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra shows that the difficulty we have in seeing clearly and freely is part of being human. Moreover it is the cause of suffering. However, the means to free our seeing are also inherent in our nature.

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 T A N G E N T

“God As a Verb” Verb” WITHOUT BUDDHA I COULD COULD NOT BE BE A CHRISTI CHRISTIAN  AN  PAUL F. F. KNI TTER. ONEW ORLD (WW W.ONEWORLD-PUB LICATIONS LICATIONS.COM), .COM), 2009. PP PP.. 336. $22.95 PAPER

Reviewed by Ron Starbuck  IN HIS BOOK  W ITHOUT  ITHOUT  B UDDHA  UDDHA  I C OULD  OULD  N OT  OT  B E  E A  A C HRISTIAN  HRISTIAN ,

Paul F. Knitter, the Paul Tillich Professor Pr ofessor of Theology, World World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, helps Christians and Buddhists participate in an interfaith dialogue, expanding their spiritual vocabulary. He does so by placing into words, ideas, and concepts many of the thoughts running through our own hearts and minds, and opening up for us new ways of understanding “God as a  verb.” In this process, he helps us feel truly comfortable engaging in an interfaith dialogue and practice. p ractice. In this deeply engaging, honest book Knitter honors and recognizes the complex differences differ ences between two traditions while showing how closely related they are in their approaches to compassion and loving-kindness. As for for the seemingly very different dif ferent  ways they view ultimate reality—non-theistic and theistic—he reminds us that all our words about God are symbols. Language itself is composed of symbols, and when we use words for God, they are fingers pointing at the moon. 1 0 0 | PARABOLA

Knitter, who holds a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical P ontifical Gregorian University in Rome and a doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany, passes from his own struggle with a dualistic Christian belief to how a Buddhist may deal with these questions, then passes back again to what he has learned from Buddhism, which has helped him to retrieve and deepen his own Christian belief. Professor Knitter isn’t alone in his journey. Many of us are “double belongers,” a phrase he uses for people drawn into an interfaith dialogue that embraces two faiths. “In the future Christians will be mystics, or they will not be anything,” Knitter states, quoting his seminary  teacher,, the twentieth-cen teacher twentieth-century tury Christian theologian Karl Rahner. Christian mystical experiences are unitive, allowing the experiencer to begin to feel “connected “connecte d with, part of, united with,

aware of, one with, something or some activity larger than oneself.” God is an experience. Knitter explains: “Christian saints and mystics have described this encounter with God as putting on the ‘Mind of Christ,’ and Christian literature includes such expressions as ‘one with Christ,’ ‘temple of the Holy Spirit,’ ‘the body of Christ,’ the ‘Divine indwelling,’ ‘participants in the divine nature.’ nature.’” ”1 This is an understanding of the nonduality of God that begins for Christians  with  wit h kenosis , the Greek word for emptiness. It is a way of understanding Christ as the “Incarnate Word.” The second chapter of  Philippians , known as the Kenosis Hymn , describes the kenosis of Christ: “Let the same mind be in you that was in  Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form  of God, did not regard equality with God as  something to be exploited, but emptied  himself, taking the form of a slave, being  born in human likeness.” 

FALL 2011 | 1 0 1

bodhisattva , who develops universal compassion and a spontaneous wish to attain Buddhahood not for his or her own sake but for the benefit of all sentient beings. It is also in the Bible, in Romans 8:26-27, 38-39 (RSV): Likewise the Spirit helps us in our  weakness; for we do not know how to  pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows  what is the mind of the Spirit, because the  Spirit intercedes for the saints according to  the will of God. 26

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things   present, nor things to come, nor powers , 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else  in all creation, will be able to separate us   from the love of God in Christ Jesus our  Lord . 38

This is an encouragement to empty  ourselves, to become as servants to one another, and to enter into the fullness of our humanity, and our full human potential. This practice of kenosis, of  putting on the “Mind of Christ” and emptying our self, is one way a Christian may come to understand Jesus as redeemer, revealer, reconciler, and to accept him as savior. Knitter touches on kenosis when he explains that the “ideal of Christian life is to lose one’s own self-centered identity in the wider activity of the risen Christ-Spirit. It is to step back and let this Spirit live in and as us.” 2 This stepping back or emptying ourselves of  ourselves resonates with the Buddhist 102 |  PARABOLA

Stepping back, letting the Spirit live in us, allowing the Spirit to pray in and through us, practicing meditation as a “Sacrament of Silence”3 as Professor Knitter suggests, emptying and letting go of the self,4 offers a way to nurture and grow within ourselves the graciousness of spirit that God gives to each of us in ways that are known only to God. Knitter’s work offers a way in  which the mystery and light of Christ may become known through dialogue and practice with other sacred traditions; here the Holy Spirit of the Christian Trinity becomes boundless, without boundaries, without limitations, infinite in love, infinite in acceptance, infinite in potential, endless in compassion and  wisdom. The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century  Christian mystic Meister Eckhart expresses kenosis often in his writings: “God must act and pour himself into us when we are ready, in other words when we are totally 

empty of self and creatures. So stand still and do not waver from your emptiness.” 5 Elsewhere the great German master writes: “Therefore discard the form and be joined to the formless essence, for the spiritual comfort of God is very subtle.” 6 And famously: “Only the hand that erases can  write the true thing.” 7 On the Buddhist side, there is the experience of nirvana —sūnyatā or emptiness—and the related concept of  dependent origination or arising. Knitter affirms that God is best understood as the “Ground of Being,” an idea introduced by the twentieth-century  theologian Paul Tillich, and through our relationships. He points out that the contemporary Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh “translates Śūnyatā more freely and more engagingly as InterBeing , the interconnected state of  things that are constantly churning out new connections, new possibilities, new  problems, and new life.” 8 Understanding God through relationships is critical to Knitter. The source and power of our relationships are driven by the presence of the “Holy  Spirit.” The importance of this concept is summarized by his statement that “behind and within all the different images and symbols Christians use for God—Creator, Father (Abba), Redeemer, Word, Spirit—the most fundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God is that God is the source and power of relationships.” Knitter continues: “To take this concept even further, up to the next level if you will, God as a verb is the activity of  giving and receiving, of knowing and loving, of losing and finding, of dying and living that embraces and infuses all of us, all of creation. If we’re going to talk about God, God is neither a noun

nor an adjective. God is a Verb! God is much more an environment in which ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:29), or God is ‘above all things, through all things, and in all things’ (Eph. 4:6).” To this reader, it seems that the more awake we are to this presence and this mystery, the more we will come to know  God is here in this very moment, in the eternal now. This to me is the central message of Jesus when he teaches us that his relationship with God the Father (Abba) is intimate, eternal, and within. This presence “above, through, and in” constantly calls us into relationships of knowing and loving one another all through our lives, filling us with the deepest joy when we empty ourselves (kenosis) for the sake of others, seeing and finding ourselves in others. This presence is what we feel when we are loved and accepted, when we love and accept others, and when we open and

FALL 2011 | 103

give of ourselves selflessly. As it says in Luke 17: 20-21:  And when the Pharisees had demanded  of Him when the Kingdom of God should  come, He answered them and said, “The  Kingdom of God cometh not with outward  show. Neither shall they say, ‘Lo, it is here!’  or ‘Lo, it is there!’ For behold, the Kingdom  of God is within you.” 

Knitter tells us, “A better image of  creation might be a pouring forth of God, an extension of God, in which the Divine carries on the divine activity of interrelating in and with and through creation.” This pouring forth of God is the engine or fuel of creation, but we as a “People of God,” created in the “Image of God,” are also a part of this pouring forth. How this all  works is also part of the mystery.  Another way to say this might be: God as the Trinity is the silence and the stillness before all things, out of which all creation arises from the nothingness and emptiness that is without form and void, an image taken from the first chapter of Genesis—when there was nothing except God. It is out of this nothingness (no-thing) or emptiness that we all arise.  As a lifelong Christian, I have been taught my whole life that “the way of  Christ” is a way that calls me to love others unconditionally with great compassion and loving-kindness. For myself, this is a call that I must answer by  loving others in all their diversity of  beliefs and ethnicity, even in all their suffering, and in showing them through that love how Christ lives and dwells  within my own being. In the sermon  J ESUS , T HE  W  AY  T HAT IS  O PEN TO  O THER  W  AYS , Knitter quotes John Cobb, another Christian theologian, stating: “Jesus is not the way that excludes, overpowers, demeans other  ways; rather he is the way that opens us 104 |  PARABOLA

to, connects us with, and calls us to relate to other ways in a process that can best be described as ‘dialogue.’ “If Jesus really is the Way that is open to other Ways, then dialogue with other religions and other believers, should be part of what it means to be a Christian.  As many Asian bishops and theologians are saying, today dialogue is a new way of  being in church. Today we are called to be religious interreligiously. Committed to Jesus and the Gospel we must also be open to other religions and believers.” 9  As a Christian—even a ChristianBuddhist—someone grounded in Christ and intimately involved in this interfaith dialogue, I couldn’t agree more. Learning to value the truth and teachings of other faiths while sharing our own is another  way for a Christian to be embraced by the risen Christ and to encounter the Holy  Spirit at work in the world.

1 Paul F. Knitter, W ITHOUT B UDDHA I C OULD  N OT  B E   A  C HRISTIAN  (Maryknoll,

NY: Orbis Books, 2002), p.

14–23. 2 Ibid ., p. 88. 3 Ibid ., p. 153. 4 See Roger Corless and Paul F. Knitter, eds., B UDDHIST E MPTINESS AND  C HRISTIAN T RINITY : E SSAYS AND  E XPLORATIONS  (Mahwah,

NJ: Paulist Press, 1990).

5 Eckhart Society–His Teachings–Letting Ourselves

Go–Sermon 4: http://www.eckhartsociety.org/ eckhart/his-teachings; see Maurice O’C. Walshe, trans., T HE C OMPLETE M YSTICAL  W ORKS OF M EISTER  E CKHART  (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2010). 6 Karen J. Campbell, G ERMAN M YSTICAL W RITINGS 

(Continuum International Publishing Group, 1991), p. 91. 7 Urban Tigner Holmes III,  A H ISTORY OF C HRISTIAN  S PIRITUALITY : A N   A NALYTICAL I NTRODUCTION  (New

York:

Seabury Press,1980) p. 151. 8 See Thich Nhat Hanh, T HE  H EART OF  U NDERSTANDING : C OMMENTARIES ON THE  P RAJNAPARAMITA  H EART  S UTRA  (Berkeley, CA:

Parallax Press, 1988).

9 Knitter, “Jesus, The Way That is Open to Other

 Ways,” http://www.tcpc.org/library/article. cfm?library_id=518, sermon.

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FALL 2011 | 105

A Conversation with

Paul Knitter RON  STARBUCK: From a Christian perspective,

how can an interfaith dialogue open us up  to God?  PAUL  KNITTER: Dialogue is necessary in order to be open to and learn evermore about the divine mystery that we call God. The  whole purpose of the Christian church, the purpose of any religious community  I would say, is to receive and to live the  very life of that which we call “Ultimate Mystery.” There is an awareness that this mystery of God, revealed for Christians through Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call the “Son of God” as a strong, powerful, saving, and transforming image of God, is always going to be greater than anything we can comprehend. As Jesus said, the Father is so much greater than I. In other words the Ultimate Mystery 

106 | PARABOLA

is always more than we can imagine. It is clear, therefore, that dialogue, opening our hearts and minds to others, is simply  essential. Being a religious or spiritual person means realizing that there is always more to learn, always more to respond to, always more to be surprised by, and that those surprises can be provided for us in our dialogue with persons of another religion. RS: In your role as a teacher at Union 

Theological Seminary, how do you see a  new generation of graduate students and  church leadership approaching religious   pluralism?  PK: Union is an example of a growing awareness within Christian seminaries that other religions must be included in  various ways in the curriculum and in the  whole educational philosophy of the school. Christian seminaries are beginning to recognize that in order to teach Christian theology it is no longer

sufficient to teach only the Bible, only  the history of the church, only the teaching and doctrines of the church. All of that, of course, remains essential.  When other religions are included, and the dialogue is expanded to include other traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Native  American spiritualities, it has two primary effects. For some students this engagement with other religions becomes an eye opener and a heart opener that calls them to do some further theological homework about how they have understood themselves. For other students this is an opportunity  to answer so many of their own nagging questions about their Christian beliefs and identity, especially beliefs that hold up Jesus as the only savior. To summarize, there is growing awareness among future Christian leaders that one can continue to be fully  committed to Jesus of Nazareth as savior, as someone who can bring about profound changes for the good in life, and at the same time be truly open to  what God may have to say and reveal through other religions and traditions. Full commitment to one’s own identity, and true, authentic openness to the identities of others—this balancing of  commitment and openness, this is something that is clarifying for many  students. As it clarifies, it encourages their explorations. It makes theology an all the more exciting and life-giving experience. RS: Is there a way for a Christian to be in a 

relationship with God as three distinct  Persons found within the Trinity, but also  in a more non-theistic transformative way, in a Sacrament of Silence?  PK: If we accept that God is beyond all our conceptual understanding, then we have

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to look at all our traditional ways of  speaking about God, including the Trinity, as symbolic. My predecessor at Union, Paul Tillich, used to say that if you understand what a symbol really means  you will never say it’s just a symbol. A  symbol reveals, a symbol makes known, always suggestively. Our Trinitarian language is trying to express the way the Christian community came to experience the mystery of the divine that was communicated and embodied for them in Jesus of Nazareth. It is how they came to talk about the mysterious way in which this one reality of the divine is present in  very different ways in our lives. It includes God as the incomprehensible source of all reality as well as the expression of God as Word, God going out to communicate God’s self. And then there is the experience that the early community  had of God as this abiding inherent spirit  within our very being, that animates us, that reveals things to us, that calls us to FALL 2011 | 107

love. So, there is the father, the son or  word, and the spirit or animating energy.  Yet we have to remind ourselves that  while these ways of speaking are very  important for forming Christian experience and nurturing Christian experience down through the centuries, they are symbols. The mystery that they are indicating is beyond those symbols. We have to remind ourselves that the reality of God is more than can be caught and captured and stirred up in us with the image of a father,  with a theistic image. The great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart realized this. He said we must give up God in order to open ourselves and experience the reality of God beyond God, the divine reality beyond all of our concepts of God. I think Christians can still hold to their images of God by recognizing that they  are symbols. At the same time, they can be open to the experience of the divine reality  that is beyond God imagery, beyond our  way of talking about the divine mystery as God. We need to get beyond symbols into silence. So, yes, I think there can be a kind of dual practice, which is especially called forth by the dialogue between Christians and Buddhists. Some Buddhists stress silence, and some Christians may stress symbols and images, and doctrines. Yet doctrines call to silence, silence gives life to doctrines. I think it can be a very enriching  way of carrying on one’s spirituality— double belonging, double practice, exploring various forms of practice. RS: John 14:26-27 and Romans 8:26-27,

tell us: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit,  whom the Father will send in my name,  will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave  with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let  your hearts be troubled, and do not let 108 |  PARABOLA

them be afraid.” ... “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that  very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” When we enter into a practice of prayer  and meditation, into a Sacrament of  Silence, do you think the Holy Spirit is  waiting for us in that space as comforter  and counselor, to teach us all things, and  remind us of what Jesus taught, and to   give us his peace, God’s peace, the peace  that passes all understanding? PK: My simple answer to your question is a definite “Yes.” This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that is present, that is active, that is moving in ways that we cannot understand or foresee, and which are beyond our comprehension. When we do follow these forms of contemplative prayer, prayer in which we open ourselves to the Spirit, without necessarily thinking,  without holding on to any image, when  we open ourselves in profound radical openness and acceptance of what our faith tells us, we have the opportunity of deeply  and personally coming to the realization that the Spirit is part of us, that the Spirit is given to us.  As a theologian I have read that section from Romans often enough, but I can also hear it within the context of  our discussion on Buddhist-Christian dialogue. As I try to explain in W ITHOUT  B UDDHA  I C OULD  N OT  B E A  C HRISTIAN , when I read those words from Romans with, as it were, Buddhist glasses, the words become all the more revelatory, all the more engaging. Paul is talking about the reality he calls Spirit. I call Spirit the reality my Buddhist teacher speaks of   when he calls me to let go of all

concepts. To let go and to open myself  utterly to the present moment, in the trust that this present moment contains all that I need, that all that I need is given to me in my very being, in my very  being lived right now, in this moment, in this particular context. That is the Spirit. I hope that I’m not being too quick  here but Buddhism has helped me to appreciate and be grateful for this  wonderful, powerful image of the divine that we have been given as Christians: This setting aside of words and imagery  and opening oneself to what St. Paul calls God as Spirit, letting that Spirit make itself (or herself or himself) felt  within us, grow within us, to lead us. That is a beautiful passage, and I think it is a passage whose richness can never be fully appreciated. But I think Buddhism is a way of helping Christians possibly  appreciate it a little bit more.

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FALL 2011 | 109

 T A N G E N T

Seeing Art

HIDDEN TREASURES: Stories from a Great Museum  A FILM BY ALEXANDRA ISLES. WWW.HIDDENTREASURESTHEMOVIE.COM.

Reviewed by Patty de Llosa

 Y OU MAY BE ONE of the millions of people who thrill each year to the marvels on display in the cathedral-like halls of the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Like me, you scarcely notice the guards except to ask where the nearest bathroom is or how to find your way  out. It has probably never occurred to you to think about the more than two thousand employees whose days and nights are given over to making your museum experience a special event. What are their lives like? What awakens their personal excitement in that magical palace of art? 110 |  PARABOLA

H IDDEN  T REASURES : S TORIES FROM A  G REAT  M USEUM  will

take you on a journey into the Met’s secret places. To make this hour-long film, producer/director  Alexandra Isles has interviewed thirteen staff members who protect, collect, restore, move, clean, or teach at the Met, as well as a trustee whose greatgrandfather started the Lehman Collection. Their moving personal accounts lead us to unsuspected corners of one of the greatest museums in the  world as they share intimate moments, luminous with personal appreciations of  minor as well as major works of art. And

 while they relate how their favorite work  of art has influenced their lives, Paul Koestner’s camera sweeps lovingly across the referenced painting or objets d’art  as the haunting Middle Eastern music of  G. I. Gurdjieff, played by Laurence Rosenthal, soothes the ear.  You’ll discover how Rembrandt’s S ELF -P ORTRAIT  has served as a trusted mentor for many years and how a wishgranting statue gathers coins and hopes to itself every day. A metallurgist displays a secret compartment he himself discovered recently while cleaning a sharp Damascus sword made FALL 2011 | 111

Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait , 1660

more than a century ago. (It’s hidden under a large emerald.) A night guard focuses on a famous landscape that has become a living, guiding presence during his lonely early morning vigils.  A tour guide describes the delight children always find in an intricately  carved boxwood rosary bead that contains a whole scene of tiny people inside. Another teacher tells how a dying woman found joy in her last visit to the Egyptian section, where solemn funeral objects informed her of that culture’s belief that there is no death, only an end to pain and sorrow. One of the art technicians is drawn to the power of a mysterious wooden Mayan figure. Another credits the power of a bronze Ganesha with getting her the job she longed for— 112 |  PARABOLA

taking care of the statue itself. There are also personal stories about Lucian Freud’s portrait of  Leigh Bowery and Ingres’s Princess de Broglie. And did you know what’s in the  weird pigment recipes used to illuminate medieval manuscripts? Or how  one art technician surmounted the mammoth task of  assembling a set of  huge Art Deco glass panels from the sunken French luxury liner Normandie ?  With grace and subtlety, Alexandra Moltke Isles has cast a warm light on the lives of each of  these custodians of treasure as she humanizes for us the enormous collection that the Met administers. Her passion for research developed during  years as Assistant Curator at New   York’s Museum of Radio & Television (now the Paley Center of Media). No stranger to film-making, she has made a number of historical documentaries, most of them edited by Doug Rossini: T HE  P OWER OF  C ONSCIENCE : T HE  D  ANISH  R ESISTANCE AND  R ESCUE OF THE  J EWS  (1995); S CANDALIZE  M Y  N  AME  (1999) about the

black listing of African-American performers during the Red Scare; and P ORRAIMOS : Europe’s Gypsies in the Holocaust 

(2002). More akin to the quiet rhythm of  H IDDEN  T REASURES  is her later film, the

delightful H EALING  G  ARDENS  OF  N EW  Y ORK  (2007). She says her inspiration for H IDDEN  T REASURES  came after a visit to the Freer Collection in  Washington, D.C., when she heard a guard answer questions from a visitor. “He was so knowledgeable and proud of the collection,” she says, “that from then on, whenever I  visit a museum I talk to the guards.” Because of the enormous variety of its collections, the Met seemed the most interesting place to make the film she had in mind, but it took years to find the courage to approach the authorities. Isles says ruefully that while the idea of filming after-hours and on days  when the museum is closed may sound thrilling, she soon discovered those were also the times the housekeeping was done. “There  was always the rattle and hum of heavy equipment on the move,” she reports. “And often an unmarked door  would suddenly open and a startled  janitor would become part of the interview!”  When asked what was the most exciting aspect of the filmmaking, she gave a conspiratorial smile: “Discovering how passionate the staff members are about what they do! In fact, by now you’ve probably  figured out that the true hidden treasures here at the Met are the people themselves!”

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Portrait of the Princess Albert de Broglie, 1853

FALL 2011 | 113

A Conversation with

Alexandra Isles PATTY DE  L LOSA:

The theme for this issue of  P  ARABOLA  is “Seeing,” so can you tell me how   you come up with an idea and then turn it  into a visual action?  ALEXANDRA  I SLES: Works of fine art have a supernatural quality. They can evoke an emotional response but are, after all, only  canvas, pigment, stone, or wood. Conveying that magic was a challenge. Midway into the editing, and after we knew what parts of the interviews were going to be included, we went back to the museum to re-shoot many of the  works because they had taken on new  meanings after their stories were revealed. In the case of Rembrandt’s self-portrait, seeing it in its formal frame and then pushing past the frame and into the face gave the painting a strange animating energy. With the Lucien Freud portrait of  Leigh Bowery, slowly moving up his huge back toward the ear on his turnedaway head evoked a sense that Bowery  could hear what was being said about him. The pacing of these moves was very  important. In another case, it was only in the editing room that I saw that the object and the person talking about it had a strong resemblance to each other. PDEL:

Was this challenge different from that  of your other documentaries?  AI: In some films you want to see what the person who is speaking sees, through their filter, their point of view. In other cases you may want to try to show how  other people see them. I did a couple of  films about prejudice and you can see  what they are up against—the Gypsies are a particularly good example of that. I contrasted a film of Gypsy life in 114 | PARABOLA

Germany in the 1930s with Leni Riefenstahl’s film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Viewers could easily see how  these two cultures were so different. You didn’t have to say anything. Also, in S CANDALIZE  M Y  N  AME , about blacklisted black actors, I showed shots of them from World War II in uniform or entertaining the troops or being patriotic, so, although I didn’t say anything, you just saw that and could make up your own mind. In any case, this was their truth. PDEL:

You said you wanted to make a film  about the quiet power these art objects can  have on our lives, as opposed to the block-  buster shows and soaring auction prices  that have made art a commodity. How do   you look at art?  AI: It’s not very intellectual, but I go to museums and galleries with the same  wish as going to a play or a movie, hoping to be surprised and moved. PDEL: A

documentary of a museum is  usually about objects, but the storytelling  aspect of this film is very powerful. How  did that come about?  AI: My previous film, T HE  H EALING  G  ARDENS OF  N EW  Y ORK , taught me that everyone has a story. Until then my films had always had a historical framework and were told chronologically. H EALING  G  ARDENS  was made completely on intuition and, as with all my  previous films, I was incredibly lucky in finding memorable and interesting people  who were willing to tell their stories. I follow two rules. The first is that my  presence is invisible and silent. The film belongs to the storytellers. The second is to do as much research as possible, trust the material, and never film re-creations. PDEL:

I understand the Metropolitan  recently began a yearlong series on their 

website called Connections, in which staff  members reflect on their favorite works of  art. That’s an exciting result of the film, the fact that you woke them up, so to speak. Could you say something about that?  AI: After the showing at the museum I  was told that the film had changed the administration’s attitude toward the staff. That hadn't been my intention; however, inclusiveness is always lurking somewhere in all my films. The beauty of  documentaries is meeting people who teach you about the human condition. For me, the great filmmakers are the subtle ones. A beautiful example is S ECTION  80, by John Alpert, about the area in Arlington Cemetery where the soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. It observes quietly and, in doing so, taught me so much about grief. PDEL:

Can you say what person or people  influenced you most in your approach to  H IDDEN  T REASURES ? AI: In September of 2007 I read Holland Cotter for the first time. His piece wasn’t about art. It was about a road trip he took in the summer of 1964 when he was  just out of high school. His trip took him into Mississippi at the height of the civil rights killings, and there was something so warm and direct about his style that I made note of his name. The following Friday The New York Times  reintroduced

me to him as one of the paper's leading art critics. Over the three years it took to make the film, his Friday reviews amazed and inspired me with their knowledge, sense of wonder, and playfulness. His  writing combined a spiritual openness  with real scholarship. His balanced way of  looking at, and often loving, art made him my guide and teacher, and gave me the confidence to pursue this very  personal way of looking at art.

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FALL 2011 | 115

BOOK REVIEWS

EMINENT GURDJIEFFIANS: LORD PENTLAND  BY JAMES MOORE. GURDJIEFF STUDIES LTD. (WWW.GURDJIEFF.ORG.UK), 2011. PP. 106 + XVIII. $40

Reviewed by Stephen A. Grant

FOLLOWERS OF G.I. GURDJIEFF have long been grateful to James Moore for the research and insights in his biography  G URDJIEFF : T HE  A N ATOMY OF A M YTH  (1991). So it is truly disappointing that his latest offering falls so short of the standards set by the earlier book. There are the trappings of serious biography: an acknowledgment of extensive sources, a bibliography and index, even photographs. But the substantive narrative, totaling a mere one hundred pages, consists largely of insignificant facts arranged chronologically against a background of historical events. The subject, the famously elusive former head of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, remains a mystery. This seems a shame, an opportunity lost to examine the life of the leading figure in the Gurdjieff movement in America for more than thirty years. 116 |  PARABOLA

earlier writings, he believes that (i) the original English version of Gurdjieff’s B EELZEBUB ’ S  T  ALES TO  H IS  G RANDSON  was an authentic text that should not have been tampered with, and (ii) the “traditional Gurdjieffian ethos of effort,” a “Stoic legacy” of effort and struggle, even physical “super-effort,” was undermined by Mme. de Salzmann’s introduction of  a new “quietism” through collective meditation. Both of these conclusions are wrong. The original B EELZEBUB  was an inauthentic, flawed translation that had to be revised. And “conscious labor” in Gurdjieff’s teaching involves an inner struggle of attention that is above and beyond the outer exertion required in preliminary stages of work. The original English version of  B EELZEBUB ’ S  T  ALES TO  H IS  G RANDSON  was not an authentic text of Gurdjieff  Moore charges Lord Pentland with failing to oppose Mme. de Salzmann’s decision to revise the English edition of BEELZEBUB , which Moore regards as sacrosanct. As he wrote earlier, over decades Gurdjieff “honed the English text refining its nuances and cadences” and imparted “deliberate stylistic opacity” in order to require a special effort on the part of the reader. Moore accuses Lord Pentland of acting solely 

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out of ambition, and does not even acknowledge that Lord Pentland viewed Mme. de Salzmann as the person most qualified to decide how the book should be revised. This view was correct, given the real shortcomings of the English  version, which she alone understood. Gurdjieff’s original manuscript of  B EELZEBUB  was typed and revised in Russian.  An English version was composed from a word-by-word interlinear translation,  with each word in English placed above the corresponding Russian word in the typescript. This “transposition” was finally edited by the well-known editor  A.R. Orage, who did not know Russian and was unable to read Gurdjieff’s original text. The word-by-word transposition produced an awkward result because of differences between the two languages. Russian is a highly  inflected language. Through word endings indicating gender, number, and case, it smoothly accommodates long sentences and needs few prepositions. English, in contrast, has little inflection and relies heavily on word order and prepositions. However brilliantly edited, the word-by-word English translation of  B EELZEBUB  inevitably produced passages that were unwieldy in style compared to the Russian text. They were needlessly  complex and, for many readers,

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extremely difficult to read and understand. Most important, the English translation did not correspond to what Gurdjieff had written in Russian. Moore, along with others, assumes that, as the initial publication, the English version was written or approved by Gurdjieff, who was present when it  was read aloud. He does not realize that, in fact, all of Gurdjieff’s work on the book was in Russian, and that he had never mastered the English language. He could not have judged, much less approved, the English text and had to rely on Mme. de Salzmann, who was fluent in Russian and English, for reassurance that the meaning was preserved. Thus the truth is that Gurdjieff did not approve the wording or writing style of the English

translation, and did not deliberately  contrive such extreme convoluted opacity to challenge the reader.  As Moore noted in his biography, Gurdjieff acknowledged that the English book was a “rough diamond,” and counted on Mme. de Salzmann to revise it after his death. They both understood that the revisions would entail much more than minor corrections. The deformation here is not in the revised book but in the original transposition from Russian by an editor who did not speak the language. It is the revised edition that represents the authentic translation of what the author wrote. Collective meditation is based on Gurdjieff’s work with advanced pupils In creating the Foundations, Mme. de Salzmann established two core practices:

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discussion groups for exchanging on  work, and classes for doing special dance exercises called Movements. After fifteen  years, working mostly in Paris and New   York, she introduced a directed meditation in which participants sit in rows facing the person in front. Moore condemns these so-called “sittings” as a “radical innovation in Work  methodology” based on the Zen meditation practice in Japan. He believes that Mme. de Salzmann’s emphasis on meditation is a misguided departure from Gurdjieff ’s teaching on unrelenting struggle. In fact, the sittings have almost nothing in common with zazen meditation and were a natural extension of Gurdjieff’s own practice  with more advanced pupils. In introducing the sittings, Mme. de Salzmann did not explain their origin or purpose. Nevertheless, many years later several of us asked her whether there  were sittings with Gurdjieff. Her answer  was simple and direct: “Yes, but it was not like today—not so many people.  We were only a few. It was called ‘special  work’ and we were not allowed to speak  of it to others.” Those who attended the early sittings in New York remember it  was called “special work” and that we  were told not to speak of it to others. Thus the sittings are the same practice Gurdjieff used in work with Mme. de Salzmann, only on a larger scale. Far from being a deformation, they were simply a form for more advanced inner  work implemented when followers  were prepared. To understand the broader context, it is necessary to remember that Gurdjieff’s early teaching, from 1915–24 in Russia and at the Prieuré, was with people who had no in-depth experience in the inner work for consciousness. This

is why he spoke in conceptual terms,  with illustrations from everyday  experience. For example, the key relation among mind, feeling, and body could be expressed only metaphorically in terms of  the driver, horse, and carriage. And the need for a “super-effort”—that is, one beyond our ordinary functions—could be conveyed only as an “extraordinary  ordinary effort,” like pushing oneself  beyond the point of exhaustion. To an unprepared audience, Gurdjieff could not speak about the inner work required either for relating the lower centers or for opening to the higher feeling and thinking centers. He may, to be sure, have intended initially to reveal more in his Third Series, but he gave up writing that book in 1935 and devoted himself  to intensive work with individual pupils.  We know that this later teaching was toward what he called “conscious labor,” that is, an inner effort to awaken and open to a direct perception of reality in oneself. In charging her to carry on his work, Gurdjieff instructed Mme. de Salzmann to record what she brought, which she did in notebooks, kept like diaries over a period of forty years. The notebooks show that, in bringing guidance for more advanced stages of inner work, she continued the line of direct perception in senior groups and later refined it in sittings to a work for conscious sensation. This material was arranged and published last year in her book T  HE  R EALITY OF  B EING . The book confirms her total commitment to Gurdjieff’s teaching. In particular, she stresses the importance of meditation each day to return to the reality in oneself, a practice recommended at the beginning of B EELZEBUB . She also makes clear that the work in meditation is for opening to the higher centers, and FALL 2011 | 121

redefines inner work as calling for continual struggle, conscious effort, and voluntary suffering. In conclusion, James Moore’s concerns about the teaching are to be respected. He did not know that the English version of B EELZEBUB  was inauthentic, and that Mme. de Salzmann’s advanced practice originated  with Gurdjieff. Pentland loyalists can also appreciate Moore’s allegiance to his teacher Mme. Henriette Lannes, who headed London’s Gurdjieff Society from its founding. Moore and others were aware that before her death in 1980 Mme. Lannes had a falling out with Mme. de Salzmann, but they never knew   what it was about. The issue involved the Foundations’ stewardship over Gurdjieff’s writings, and their staking out a claim of primacy in representing his authentic work. Mme. Lannes proposed inserting a notice in Gurdjieff’s books proclaiming that they   were published by the Society and other foundations as the original centers for carrying on the teaching. Lord Pentland refused, rejecting the pretention that any  group could claim “ownership” of the teaching or the Gurdjieff movement. This was a confrontation of high principle between the two strong-willed leaders in London and New York. In the end, Mme. de Salzmann agreed with

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Lord Pentland that the foundations could not claim to embody the teaching. Mme. Lannes was deeply disappointed, and the relationship between the two  women was never the same. Viewed in this context, this book could be regarded as an exercise in misguided loyalty—that is, Moore wrongly assumed a “clash of personal and sectional interest,” and took it on himself to discredit Mme. Lannes’s supposed “enemies,” not realizing that at this level they were essentially her spiritual brother and mother. In the end, however, neither goodfaith concerns nor sincere loyalty can excuse this “biography”—a thinly  disguised assault by a professional writer on a leader regarded with respect and affection by Gurdjieffians across  America. Mme. de Salzmann and her two closest followers in this country and England devoted their lives to this teaching, and to the Work that made it available to everyone, including Moore. Having myself witnessed their extraordinary engagement, I cannot help thinking how disappointed, how very  sad, they all would be with this book. Stephen A. Grant is a member of The Gurdjieff  Foundation of New York who, with many others, worked for years under the guidance of Lord  Pentland and Mme. de Salzmann.

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CREDITS P.6–7 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: 663highland P.8 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Gerry  Lewis P.9 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Fae P.10 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Walter Siegmund P.11 Photo courtesy of Dean Leh (deanleh.blogspot.com) P.12 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: John Hill P.13 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Viault P.15,16 Photos courtesy of James Opie P.18-19,20,21,22,23 Photos courtesy of James  Whitlow Delano P.24–25, 26–27 Photos courtesy of Dale Fuller P.28 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Otgonbayar Ershuu P.31 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: John Hill P.32 Atlas Image obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey, a joint project of the Univ. of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and  Analysis Center/California Institute of  Technology, funded by the NASA and the National Science Foundation P.33 Photo: unews.utah.edu. Author: Franz Giessibl P.34 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair P.36 Photo: www.communicatesscience.eu. Author: Dr. Henry Jakubowski P.38,39,41, 42–43,44,45 Photos courtesy of Richard  Whittaker

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P.46 Photo courtesy of the de Salzmann family  P.50,51,55 Photos courtesy of David Ulrich P.60 Photo courtesy of Lee van Laer P.62 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Becca Dorstek; cropped by RanZag P.63 Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment P.64 Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment, photo by Jonathan Olley  P.65 Photos courtesy of Summit Entertainment P.66–67,69,70 Images courtesy of Kazuaki Tanahashi P.74,76,77,78 Photos courtesy of George Beke P.80 Photo courtesy of Christopher Ripman P.84,87,90,91,93 Photos courtesy of the collections of  members of the Washington, D.C., Gurdjeff  groups P.95 Photo: Wikipedia. Author: Alak Prasad P.101 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Gakuro P.102 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Uploader: Aiden P.103 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Payal  Vora P.111 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Cow  P.112 Photo: Wikimedia Commons P.113 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Source: Art Renewal Center Museum P.128 Top: Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Bottom left: Photo: jeevanathigal.blogspot.com. Bottom right: Photo: Planetperplex.com ERRATUM The photograph on pages 62–63 of our Summer 2011 issue was incorrectly attributed. That photo of Mount Buffalo was by and courtesy of Roxanne Bodsworth. Mt. Buffalo is Dordordonga, the Echidna.

BURNING

WORLD SPRING 2012

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 THE UNKNOWN FALL 2012

PROFILES GEORGE  BEKE, after twenty years at Time, Inc.,

 J AMES O PIE writes and also deals in Oriental

researches lost historic connections through obscure coins, little-known texts, and illunderstood surviving art.

rugs in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of   A PPROACHING  I NNER  W ORK : M ICHAEL  C URRER  B RIGGS  ON THE  G URDJIEFF  T EACHING .

B ARBARA  H ELEN B ERGER  is an artist, author,

HUGH R IPMAN (1909-1980) studied under

and longtime student of Buddhism. Her books for children include  A LL THE  W  AY TO  L HASA :   A T  ALE F ROM T IBET . She has written essays and retellings for Parabola , and her special interest in the feminine forms of Wisdom has led her to collecting stories of Tara.

P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff and went on to lead the Gurdjieff Society of   Washington, D.C., for many years.

 J AMES W HITLOW  D ELANO is a photographer

 who has lived in Asia for seventeen years. His  work has received awards internationally: the  Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia University and Life Magazine ), Leica’s Oskar Barnack, Picture of the Year International, Photo District News, and others. For more information, please visit  www.jameswhitlowdelano.com. P ATTY DE L LOSA , author of T HE P RACTICE OF  P RESENCE : F IVE P  ATHS FOR D  AILY L IFE , is an

 Alexander teacher and a consulting editor to Parabola  who lives and practices in New York  City. Her new book, T  AMING Y OUR I NNER  T YRANT :   A PATH TO HEALING THROUGH DIALOGUES WITH ONESELF , is available from bn.com, amazon.com, and elsewhere. For more information, please visit http://tamingyourinnertyrant.com.  JEANNE DE  S ALZMANN (1889-1990) was G.I.

Gurdjieff’s closest pupil. Upon his death in 1949, she led the Gurdjieff Work worldwide until her own death at the age of 101. M ARTHA HEYNEMAN is the author of T HE B REATHING  C  ATHEDRAL  and many essays that appeared in Parabola  between

1983 and 2005. She met Hugh Ripman in Washington, D.C., in 1952. TREBBE J OHNSON is the author of T HE W ORLD  I S A  W  AITING L OVER : D ESIRE AND THE  Q UEST FOR THE  B ELOVED , and the director of Vision Arrow 

(www.VisionArrow.com), offering journeys  worldwide that combine the mythic quest, the search for meaning, and the exploration of   wisdom and insight through nature. In 2009 she founded Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places (www.RadicalJoyforHardTimes.org).  JOYCE  K ORNBLATT is a novelist, essayist, and for-

mer English professor at the University of  Maryland. She now lives in Sydney, Australia,  where she is at work on a novel and a book  about grief.

R ON  S TARBUCK  is an Episcopal lay person,

author-poet living in Houston, Texas. He is the author of W HEELS  T URNING  I NWARD , a book of  poetry from Friesen Press. Along with his wife, Joanne, Ron attends Trinity Episcopal Church. He is deeply engaged in an interfaith dialogue, holding a lifelong interest in Christian mysticism, comparative religion, theology, and meditation. K  AZUAKI T ANAHASHI is an accomplished

Japanese calligrapher, Zen teacher, author, and translator of Buddhist texts from Japanese and Chinese to English, most notably works by  Dogen. D AVID  U LRICH is a photographer and writer

 who teaches at the University of Hawaii Manoa. His photographs have been exhibited in over seventy-five one-person and group exhibitions in museums, galleries, and universities. He is the author of T HE  W IDENING  S TREAM : THE  S EVEN  S TAGES OF  C REATIVITY . His work can be viewed at  www.creativeguide.com. CHRISTIAN W ERTENBAKER , M.D., a senior editor

at Parabola , is a neuro-opthalmologist and a musician. His interest in the nature of human consciousness and its role in the universe led him to study both the spiritual traditions and the sciences, particularly neuroscience, via formal training in neurophysiology, neurology, and neuro-ophthalmology. DOLPHI W ERTENBAKER , M.D., works as a yoga

therapist in New York City. She is a long-time student of T.K.V. Desikachar, who opened for her the world of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. She is a KHYF-certified yoga teacher and teacher trainer. R ICHARD  W HITTAKER  is the West Coast editor

of Parabola  and is the founding editor of  works & conversations . A collection of his inter views, T HE C ONVERSATIONS , I NTERVIEWS WITH  S IXTEEN  C ONTEMPORARY  A RTISTS , is available from the University of Nebraska Press.  JEFF  Z ALESKI is editor in chief of

Parabola .

FALL 2011 | 127

ENDPOINT  All Is Vanity . C. Allan Gilbert, 1892

Gossip, and Satan Came Also. George A. Wotherspoon

Society, a Portrait . George A. Wotherspoon

“You see, but you do not obser ve,” remarked Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in  A S CANDAL IN  B OHEMIA . This is true of most of us, but it is always possible to see more deeply. In 1892, at age 19, the American illustrator C. Allan Gilbert created  A LL  I S  V  ANITY , a drawing that changes meaning depending on how one views it. Not long after, another American illustrator, George  A. Wotherspoon, drew two similar works, G OSSIP ,  AND  S  ATAN  C  AME  A LSO , and S OCIETY ,  A  P ORTRAIT . Not only did Wotherspoon, like Gilbert, hide yet reveal a deeper meaning behind his works’ facades, but his drawings are so reminiscent of Gilbert’s that casual collectors, not observing the fine differences, often ascribe them to Gilbert.

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