Release

What do we have to give up to be free, to be truly ourselves? 

Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.

In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.

It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.

Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.

In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.

In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.

Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:

In pursuit of knowledge,

every day something is added.

In the practice of the Tao,

every day something is dropped.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:

“Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.”

Rather than being morbid, the injunction to be as the dead means to have no cares or burdens, which is a very zen way to travel through life...be it this one or the next!

The Eternal Present

Taoism and Judaism tell us that when the first day was created, the eternal became elusive. As the story of Adam and Eve attests, we humans have always been on a quest to find it.

The day is the foundational unit of time in the Book of Genesis. Creation takes place over six days, and the Creator rests on the seventh. The boundaries around the unit are evening and morning, representing the prinicple of Yin Yang, or the balance of oppositional forces:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. - Genesis 1:5 (KJV)

But before the first day was created, what was the universe like? There were no oppositional forces, only oneness. It is hard to imagine, but a helpful description of this eternal present can be found in Chapter 14 of the Tao Te Ching:

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

This description fits well with the primordial as described in the beginning of the Book of Genesis,

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 1:2 (KJV)

A more interesting exercise, though, is to read the Tao Te Ching passage alongside the Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Christian text dating to 50 C.E. (earlier than the canonical gospels) the eternal present, called the Kingdom of God, is within the self.

Thich Nhat Hanh quotes from the Gospel of Thomas in his wonderful book, Living Buddha, Living Christ:

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

The imagery of the birds of the sky and the fish of the waters call to mind the first week of creation, but this story from the Gospel of Thomas moves in the opposite direction of the Genesis version, backward from the creation to the eternal. The geography of creation includes the sky and the sea, but the geography of the eternal is the unity of the life that is within us with the rest of the universe.

According to the Gospel of Thomas and the Tao Te Ching, the eternal is elusive only when we engage in self-denial. We have to return to ourselves in order to begin to understand it, and reap the benefits of that understanding.

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13:
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

 

If these walls could sing...

In my previous post, I discussed the game of Go. The maze-like iterations of a game-in-progress (below) reminded me of a question I have been thinking about:

When you get to the place you are going, what then?

This is a very human question.

There are a number of writers who have remarked that the journey is the most valuable part of going from points A to B, not the arriving.

There is a problem then, posed to the architects of sacred spaces, which are arrival points in religious life: how do you make them valuable? How do you make them places where meaning can be found?

Is there merit in making a sacred space that is more like a journey than a destination?

Glazed and painted ceramic on plaster in the Imami Madrasa, Isafan, Iran 

In Islamic architecture, geometric shapes and mazes abound. They are symbolic of the eternal and of the position of the Muslim (one who submits) as one who is lost (read: held) in the endless, unfathomable eternity of the One who created the universe, by that merciful One (Ar-Rahman). In the picture above, you have to stop and look up to see it -- staring at the ceiling of your destination, the mosque, you are reminded that your journey of faith continues.

Examples of Islamic calligraphy throughout the Muslim world -- found on walls, entryways, ceilings, etc -- serve as signposts on the road to the divine, beacons pointing the soul toward God via the sacred text of the Qur'an, considered to be God's own speech. These are not only signs along the journey, but also listening posts. The calligraphy of the Qur'an in its multidimensional form is also a beautiful chant when recited by a human voice. It's neat to think of these as walls that are meant to be sung.  

Qutb Minar, Dehli, India

In Christian architecture, labyrinths in Gothic churches offered medieval devotees the opportunity to undergo a spiritual journey in miniature. Divided into four quadrants symbolic of the universe and/or the cross, labyrinths have serpentine paths leading toward a center point representing God, faith, and/or forgiveness. The devotee could spend as much time wandering in the labyrinth as desired until reaching the arrival point in the center. This labyrinth has been in Chartres Cathedral since around 1200CE: 

What seems to be the message from these examples is that within these traditions, discovering that one is lost in the maze of this universe is the exact moment when one is no longer irretrievably lost, but is on the correct path toward the divine. According to the Tao Te Ching, the divine is the path, the Tao, the way of things. 

I'm interested in finding additional examples of "journeys" inside of sacred spaces, so if you have one, please share.

Stones

I've just started studying the game of Go, a 4000-year old Chinese game using black and white stones on a 19x19 grid. It is a strategy game in which two players work to surround and capture territory, but must do so with patience and a willingness to preserve harmony with the opposing side.

The game has been argued as having its origins in ancient Chinese shamanism, and the board representing the universe and the natural balance of yin and yang as echoed in the Tao Te Ching:

"The board must be square, for it signifies the Earth, and its right angles signify uprightness. The pieces of the two sides are yellow and black; this difference signifies the yin and the yang -- scattered in groups all over the board, they represent the heavenly bodies. Following what the rules permit, both opponents are subject to them -- this is the rigor of the Tao." 

-- Pan Ku, 1st century historian 

There are on the Go board 360 intersections plus one. The number one is supreme and gives rise to the other numbers because it occupies the ultimate position and governs the four quarters. 360 represents the number of days in the [lunar] year. The four quarters symbolize the four seasons. The 72 points around the edge represent the [five-day] weeks of the [Chinese lunar] calendar. The balance of yin and yang is the model for the equal division of the 360 stones into black and white.
-- from The Classic of Go , by Chang Nui (Published between 1049 and 1054)  

I like the beauty of the stones and the various patterns that emerge on the board as it is being played. I also like thinking of the game as the creative act of dueling artists laying a mosaic on top of the universe. The materials of the game, in the spirit of the Tao, come from nature -- a wooden board, and stones made out of slate and clamshell.

The relationship between the players is one of opposition, but they are holding each other in the balance -- mindful that they are building something together. According to Yasunari Kawabata, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,

"A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary."

That the game requires attention to balance and a natural give-and-take sort of dance between players makes it appropriate for discussion in lots of classroom settings -- and I especially like how it bridges mathematics with philosophy and religion. Students might like this clip from Hikaru no Go (a teen manga series based on the game of Go), which depicts the potentially serious psychological drama involved in figuring out one's opponent: 

Lacking my own board (hoping to get one soon), I have found a way to play online, and would welcome the opportunity to discuss and play this game with real people.:)