"There is a pair of shoes love wears and the coming
is a mystery."
-Carl Sandburg

Religions, at their cores, are love stories. This is such a simple thing to say that I will lose some scholarly street cred for saying it. After all, religions are so complicated, internally diverse, impossible to essentialize, embedded in cultures, connected to political, social and economic spheres, etc.... right? In fact, what we can't really nail down about any particular religion is endless.

But what I keep returning to the more I study and teach about religion, is that within each major religious tradition, you will find an opportunity to grapple intensely with the concept of love. Devotion, in whatever form, is to participate in a love unfolding.

I am really interested in the eternal/ephemeral duality that the divine is portrayed as having in multiple traditions, and will take up this topic more in-depth in a future post. Mystics are especially attuned to this duality and experiencing and seeking the love of the divine, often at great peril to their own psychological and emotional stability. Some traditions, such as Jewish mysticism, hold that getting too near to this esoteric dimension of Divine love can be dangerous.

Love language abounds in the orthodox liturgical traditions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Sikhism in expressing the relationship between humans and the divine. Like ancient Egyptian love poetry, the Song of Solomon reflects an oral love poetry tradition in ancient Israel that has been interpreted by both Jewish and Christian theologians as symbolic of the relationship between God and His people, steadfast, but also full of longing:

"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him."

"I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: "Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night."

Hindus experience the love of the divine gaze while standing in the presence of murtis and performing puja, and have a rich sacred history in which deities are capable of ardent, sexual love. The loving, peaceful gazes of the Buddha and Jainist Tirthamkaras -- not deities, but still arguably dimensions of the sacred -- imbue the spaces of Buddhist and Jain temples with a sense of divine love.

The Qur'an, unlike the Hebrew Bible, is stylistically more like a collection of fervent utterances of the heart, although I am not intending to personify the Muslim concept of Allah, without form and indivisible. Throughout the Muslim world, the Qur'ran (click here to listen) has been thought by many as having a beauty in Arabic that eclipses even the most beautiful of love poems.

Where I want to go with this is that religion in the public sphere and media is most often cast as something that fuels hatred and the ongoing culture wars, between liberals and conservatives in the United States and between the West and the Islamic world. Teachers of religion have an opportunity to present religions, (in all of their complexity, granted), as approachable, despite how alien to a student's own experience -- not to challenge a student's own beliefs, but to promote mutual respect and understanding.

Who doesn't understand the human need for love? When we can approach a topic from something a student understands, rather than just filling them with information, we have a better chance of creating a meaningful learning experience. And when it comes to religion, the world is definitely in need of us doing this work.

Palace in time

Keeping with the theme of Zen but circling back a bit to architectural motifs in religion as well...

In his beautiful work, The Sabbath, A.J. Heschel imagines Jewish sacred time in palatial terms:

"The seventh day is a palace in time in which we build."

If you have been reading my earlier posts, you'd see the likeness of this metaphor to that of St. Theresa of Avila's castle of the soul. I like architectural metaphors in conveying religious ideas...clearly! BUT that's not the connection I am interested in making here.

Heschel argues that the Sabbath, a palace in time, is built by non-action. This is a palace that you can only build by non-being/non-doing. Building by not-building sounds a little paradoxical, no? And this is why it becomes a very interesting idea. He writes,

"Indeed, the splendor of the day is expressed in terms of abstentions, just as the mystery of God is conveyed via negationis, in the categories of negative theology which claims that we can never say what He is, we can only say what He is not."

Those familiar with observing Shabbat according to Jewish law know well all the things that are prohibited on that day, including kindling a fire or electrical spark, driving, carrying bags or children out of the house (unless there is a ritually kosher eruv in place), etc. Given how we depend so much on electricity, the internet, riding in vehicles or mass transit in our daily lives, Shabbat is essentially an anti-day. It is the emptiness in time where no other emptiness exists.

What really attracts me to Heschel's discussion of Shabbat as a time for non-action is that it resonates with the Chinese concept of wu-wei, non-action, expressed in Taoism and in Zen Buddhism. Heschel's paradox of how to build a building would be well received in these contexts.

Consider these passages from the Tao te Ching:

"Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place."

*

"We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable."

Heschel would agree that Shabbat is very much like the hole in the middle of the wagon, or the emptiness inside of the pot -- it is the part of the week that makes the rest of the week useful.

Like Taoists and Zen Buddhists, Heschel advocates that it is in the abstaining from performing rituals and other outward displays of worship that leads one to the doors of the most glorious time-place in Jewish life: Shabbat, a place in which the egotistical self and attachment to worldly concerns no longer exists, and one finds renewal and love. He writes,

"Six days a week we try to dominate the world; on the seventh day, we try to dominate the self."

He also writes,

"Much of its spirit can only be understood as an example of love carried to the extreme."

The goal of zazen, seated meditation in Zen Buddhism, is just to sit -- and deeply be, without "doing" anything, achieving a state of total awareness of the present moment with a calm mind. In such a meditation, the self no longer exists and one is able to glimpse with loving eyes at the interconnectedness of all things.

Re: my previous post on Zen poems - I would like to cite another poem that illustrates Heschel's palace in time:

Stillness

十方同聚會 The ten directions converging, 

個個學無爲 Each learning to do nothing,

此是選佛場 This is the hall of Buddha's training

心空及第歸 Mind's empty, all's finished.

Pretty cool connection, huh? Shabbat shalom!

Zen Punk

Is there room in religion for rebelliousness, sarcasm and pessimism?

What about blasphemy and breaking taboos? Scatological humor??

Zen poems are confounding because they break conventional expectations of what religious devotion looks like.

Here's a poem that beginner students might expect to be Zen, because it is about serenity and is reverent toward nature: (poems source)

Contentment 

As the pines grew old and the clouds idled 

He found boundless contentment within himself. 

And here are some poems that students might not expect at all to be Zen:

This is Our World

We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up; 

This is our world. 

All we have to do after that–

Is to die.

Angsty poem? Well, not really, but that is how students will probably read it...I'm thinking that this poem is probably going to irk some Millennial generation kids because they will think it is very depressing. :) 

Free Spirit

Every day I'm either in a wine shop or a brothel, 

A free-spirited monk who is hard to fathom; 

My surplice always appears torn and dirty, 

But when I patch it, it smells so sweet. 

A surplice is an outer garment made of cotton or linen. Discussing its odor is a little scandalous in this context, no? :)

A Death Verse

I rebuke the wind and revile the rain,  
I do not know the Buddhas and patriarchs;  
My single activity turns in the twinkling of an eye,  
Swifter even than a lightning flash.  
Death verse of Zen master Nanpo Jõmyõ (titled Daiõ Kokushi 大應國師, 1235-1308) (Zen Buddhism: A History, Japan, 40)

This poem shows a dying Zen master rebuking what is generally sacred in Buddhism: nature and the buddhas, or awakened ones.

Chang Chiu-ch'en's Poem of Enlightenment

In a moonlit night on a spring day, 

The croak of a frog 

Pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into 

a single family!
The Upasaka Chang Chiu-ch'en (張九成) was pondering a koan when he was in the toilet. Suddenly he heard the croak of a frog, and he was awakened, as evidenced by the following lines:" (The Golden Age of Zen 284)

The last poem takes on a new connotation when you read the liner notes -- that Chang Chiu-ch'en reached enlightenment on the toilet hearing a 'frog croak'...I wonder if the frog croak is supposed to be taken figuratively? :)

So how do we reconcile the punk-rock-ishness of the latter poems with the much more reverent earlier one (and the many others like it)? This contradiction gets to the very heart of Zen -- and is a wonderful problem for students to wrestle with.

Castles Made of Sand

I am interested in religious architecture, and especially in the concept of God's house, or the dwelling place of the divine, in various religious traditions. In my previous post, I explored the metaphor of the castle in St. Theresa of Avila's writing as representative of both the soul's journey to faith and God's dwelling place in the human soul.

As I was writing that post, I was reminded of the mandala in the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition -- itself a symbol of the cosmic dwelling place of God. Mandalas are intricate, colorful geometric creations made primarily of sand. Here's my favorite video (soundtrack by Radiohead) of a sand mandala being created and destroyed:

Unlike the Moorish castle in St. Theresa's writing, a bastion of strength and permanence, a mandala is intended to be an ephemeral creation and literally something that is blown away with the winds. As soon as it is created, it is destroyed, reminding those who create it of the impermanence of all things.

The intense focus and time required to create a mandala is supposed to be meditative for the monks performing the work, who are tasked with focusing on nothing but what they are doing in that very moment.

The mandala is a visualization of the dwelling place of Vajrayana Buddhist deities, which rather than being actual gods worshipped, are archetypes of buddhas, or awakened beings. Here is an excerpt from one of the Vajrayana sutras invoking those beings:

Inviting the Eight Vajra Spirits
We respectfully invite the Green Vajra Who Banishes Disasters.
We respectfully invite the Vajra Who Banishes Toxins
We respectfully invite the Yellow Vajra Who Grant Wishes
We respectfully invite the White Vajra Who Purifies Water
We respectfully invite the Red Vajra Whose Sound Brings Fire
We respectfully invite the Vajra Who Pacifies Disasters
We respectfully invite the Vajra Purple Worthy
We respectfully invite the Vajra Great Spirit.

Like the interior walls of the Moorish castle covered in arabesques, the mandala is characterized by interweaving geometric designs that evoke a sense of eternity. When you stand in front of one, your body and mind are drawn into the solemn and beautiful presence of the divine.

What I like most about mandalas is they attach a sense of impermanence to the divine. Creating mandalas means that the buddhas inhabiting them will be passing by for awhile, and then will leave. Both the preparation for their stay and the destruction of their abodes are blessings. I am reminded of this "passing by" quality of the presence of God in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Kings 19:11-12 (NIV translation), when God appears in a whisper after Elisha has emerged from a cave:

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Whispers and sand offer an interesting contrast to more enduring religious symbols, like the Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem, or the Cathedral/Mezquita of Cordoba in Spain. That the divine is also depicted within these and other religious traditions as inhabiting ephemeral spaces (and potentially having ephemeral qualities of being) is a beautiful problem to consider that would likely make for a rich classroom discussion.

God is on the journey, too.

I am lately interested in the confluence of architecture and religion (see earlier post). I want to explore how architecture can be used symbolically in constructing visual images of the journey to faith, or awakening. In this post, I will focus on the imagery of the castle in the mystical writings of St. Theresa of Avila.

St. Theresa of Avila, one of the pre-eminent religious figures of the 16th century, whose religious reforms forever altered the Christian monastic world, symbolized the soul and its journey to faith as a castle, with seven mansion-sized rooms. In the seventh room dwells the loving God. Her most famous work, The Interior Castle (1577), was intended to bring Christians closer to ultimate communion with God, and as St. Theresa described it, in His secret chamber. She writes,

"Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse."

Her metaphor of the castle was arguably borrowed from Islamic and Jewish mystics writing in Spain during the "Convivencia" period a couple of centuries earlier -- when Islamic, Jewish and Christian artists informed culture and people lived in relative stability and conviviality. Here's a picture of a Moorish castle on the Costa del Sol in Southern Spain:

As a metaphor for both the soul and its journey, a stationary castle seems a little awkward, clunky even -- St. Theresa addresses this directly:

"Now let us return to our beautiful and charming castle and discover how to enter it. This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in! There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains."

The architecture of the castle, while accessible to any lover of God who enters its doors, makes only a private union possible. Unlike a cathedral with expansive nave to comfort and hold a mass of devotees, the castle walls and interior labyrinth of rooms make the process of seeking God a lonely one, and finding Him the most intimate experience ever. This intimacy is echoed in the words of 8th century female Sufi Islamic mystic poet Rabia al Basri,

"With my Beloved I alone have been,
When secrets tenderer than evening airs"

The Ineffable in His intimate dwelling place--an interior room of the castle of the soul--unlike the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, is accessible to those who have the courage to walk inside. It takes effort, though, to find him.

The elusive nature of God, for Saint Theresa, creates a delightful suffering for the soul on its journey. This "delicious pain," as she describes, causes her to be ever more fervent in finding that ultimate, lasting intimacy.  But it is there -- if not to be experienced in this lifetime, then in the eternal life.

From His castle, the human soul, God beckons as a lover to the one who journeys. According to St. Theresa, God isn't stationary in that castle, but also on His own journey. She writes, "The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." This reminds me of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself",

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

I am sure that I would have hated to live in one of St. Theresa's reformed convents, having to go shoeless and perform strict austerities in order to meet her demands for getting closer to God. There is something, though, about her passion for seeking the love of the divine that is attractive to me. And, I love her for her willingness to walk through those castle doors.

A lot can be said about a water fountain.

There are some incredibly beautiful drinking fountains and reflection pools in Islamic architecture. But what I like to ask students is..... so what??

Water is not just water in the Islamic world, it connects humans to the primordial beginnings of mankind, and brings humans into an intimate relationship with God. Sure, water is important in most belief systems for ritual, but water in abundance and active is characteristically Islamic. Water is de-ritualized in a sense in these spaces because it is a feature of the architectural environment. For example, no religious professional guards the rights to the water, and unlike "holy water" in other faith traditions, it doesn't have supernatural powers. According to Muslim sacred history,

Innallaha ta'ala khalaqa kulla shay’im minal-ma’.

“Allah created everything from water.” (Related by Ibn Hibban.)

The Prophet Muhammad, through his revelation, said that water, not light, was the first thing God created. And why did God start with water? Because it was necessary for all living things? To refresh? Interesting question for discussion. Water was important in central Arabia during the time of the Prophet (and still today), being a desert land where water is scarce. That God would be so closely associated with water tells us something about Islam's view of God -- as providing rest, comfort, rejuvenation... as does the oasis for the bedouins in the desert.

But there is also something symbolic about the eternal in water. I should clarify: in Islam, water isn't eternal; only God is eternal. But that water was created first makes it the closest to eternity of anything in creation. In its liquid and gaseous states, water doesn't really have a beginning or end. This quality of water reminds me of the poem by Jewish poet Yehuda Amichai, "The waters cannot return in repentance"

The waters cannot return in repentance

To where would they return?

To the faucet, the sources, the ground, the roots,

the cloud, the sea, into my mouth?

The waters cannot return in repentance,

every place is their seas/days of old, their waters of old,

every place a beginning and end, and a beginning.

On the social level, drinking fountains also symbolize egalitarianism -- they are communal places where anyone can come to drink, regardless of age, gender, class, etc., again calling to mind the unity, or oneness of God.

It's neat how something so mundane as a water fountain can be imbued with the sacred -- but in Islam, that is exactly the point. :)

Repairing the World: Vishnu, Jesus, et al!

I am fascinated with how major world religions deal with the issues of sin and of the world as a place that needs fixing.

Since I don't have a lot of time tonight, I am going to be writing this blog post in installments. I will deal mainly with Hinduism here, but my intent is to eventually examine the above-mentioned issues in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and possibly other religious traditions.

Hinduism

In Hinduism, Lord Vishnu is the restorer and protector of the world -- taking on human form to come to Earth and fix things when they go wrong. He does this until the work becomes simply too much for him, and then Lord Shiva comes and destroys the world with fire. For a comparative religious cross-reference, see Genesis 6:6-7.

One of Vishnu's incarnations, Sri Venkateswara, is called "Supreme Lord, Destroyer of Sins." This is Jesus's role in Christian theology, the human incarnation of the divine sent to redeem the sins of the world.

In Hinduism, the world is very broken. We live in the kali yuga, the fourth age, notable because it is the age when the divine has retreated almost entirely from our grasp. No longer does God mingle with humans, as in the first age, or even journey secretly down to Earth in disguise, as in the last age. All we have now are our own creations -- temples, rituals, icons, religions -- attempts to evoke the divine as best as we can.

Gloominess aside, if you visit a Hindu temple, (see "Where Man Becomes God" for more information on Hindu temples) you realize how even a broken attempt to realize divinity can be breathtaking. The Sri Venkateswara Temple of Cary, NC is one of my all-time favorite religious hang-out spots because it so powerfully lends a sense of the sacred.

Ready, Set, Discuss: "Jihad"

‎"Everybody's at war with different things...I'm at war with my own heart sometimes." -Tupac Shakur

 

As a world religions teacher, I have lately been very interested in examining the concept of jihad from a comparative religions perspective. Jihad is a great subject for discussion, because it is a topic with many layers of meaning that is treated one-dimensionally in the news. 

 

While we examine the world of Arabia in which the Prophet lived, and the concept of jihad related to the struggle for the survival of the Muslim community against Meccan adversaries, we also examine the Prophet's teaching about the jihad within one's self, or personal jihad. I am especially interested in the Sufi Islamic understanding of jihad as a war against the "nafs," or ego, and one's own desires. 

 

 

Reading Jihad in Sufi Islam: Jihad Al-Nafs

 

"...the chatter of vain passions, ambition, envy, love of praise and compliments--all of them worldly bonds blinding the heart." - Hakeem Tirmidhi, Jihad al-Nafs

 

The film New Muslim Cool is the story of Hamza Perez, a Puerto-Rican Muslim rapper who lives in Pittsburgh, PA and strives to make a difference in his community through music, family and social work. In this film, Hamza discusses the concept of jihad as "struggle," making it universal to the human condition. Hamza's own struggles of trying to live a religious life (as a former gangster) according to the example of the Prophet Muhammad while dealing with setbacks such as FBI surveillance and obstacles to his prison ministry are especially poignant. This film is excellent for presenting the Sufi concept of jihad al-nafs and great for class discussion.

 

 

Reading "Jihad" in Buddhism

 

Sufiism's jihad al-nafs, the struggle against the ego, can be explored alongside the teaching of the Buddha that the essence of life is dukkha, or suffering/dissatisfaction. Buddha's major teaching, the Four Noble Truths, is that this suffering is caused by tanha, or desire for personal gratification. The Buddha's Eightfold Path teaches followers how to overcome this desire. The message is simple: the implementation, not so easy -- it requires diligent, daily practice.

 

Buddhism's notion of "emptiness" or anatta (no-soul) -- the idea that we have no ego or essence that sets us apart from the rest of the universe -- also has a counterpart in Sufi Islam -- the concept of "non-existence"; there is no way to separate oneself from Allah, the all-encompassing Love. The poet Rumi writes,

"Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof."

Reading "Jihad" in Hinduism

 

Lord Krishna's conversation with Arjuna on the battlefield is the setting for one of the most beloved Hindu texts, the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna the warrior is in crisis about whether to go into battle against his own family members. The message that Krishna, Lord of all worlds, gives to Arjuna, is to fight the battle, because it is his duty. The story is a metaphor for the struggle within the self to fulfill the laws of the universe, or dharma. Arjuna must rid himself of all desire in order to faithfully accomplish his duty, which means detaching himself from expecting any particular outcome.

 

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: The giving up of activities that are based on material desire is what great learned men call the renounced order of life. And giving up the results of all activities is what the wise call renunciation." -- Bhagavad Gita 18:2

 

Kirshna's counsel to Arjuna to relinquish attachment to outcomes in serving the Lord is echoed in the words of female Sufi mystic and poet Rabi'a al Basri (8th century CE): 

 

"O my Lord,

if I worship you
from fear of hell, burn me in hell.

If I worship you
from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.

But if I worship you
for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face."

 

Reading "Jihad" in Christianity 

Like the Buddha, who struggles with the demon Mara while seeking enlightenment under the bodhi tree, Jesus struggles with being tempted by the Evil force in the wilderness, Satan, while preparing for his ministry. Also like the Buddha, Jesus emerges victorious: 

^1"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

 ³The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

 ⁴Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'

 ⁵The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷So if you worship me, it will all be yours."

 ⁸Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" 

Jesus's temptation is very similar to Buddha's time under the bodhi tree in that it demonstrates an almost supernatural power on Jesus's part to resist desire for self-fulfillment -- comfort, food, wealth, and fame. In this way, the story's message is similar to Lord Krishna's message to Arjuna and the Prophet Muhammad's teachings to his followers: serve the Lord, and do not attach yourself to outcomes.

Summary

I hope that you will take away from this post that "jihad," while a polarizing term used to "other" Muslims in the media, is a multi-faceted term. One dimension rarely discussed is the esoteric dimension -- the inner daily struggle to free oneself from the entrapment of the ego, suffering, and desire. This inner struggle is a near universal concept in major religious traditions, and depicted in the sacred histories of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. There are still more examples from these and other religious traditions that I didn't include in this blog post. Enjoy the search. Peace! 

 

Being Nobody

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Dont tell! they'd banish us--you know!"
-Emily Dickinson

If you want all kids to feel comfortable expressing their views, it's important to check your ego at the classroom door. I haven't always been able to do this -- but when I start a course, I try to set a tone early that I can laugh at myself and that I enjoy genuine humor as part of learning. I usually try to break the ice by telling some stories that allow them to laugh along with me. From then on, if a day goes by where we don't laugh together, then I feel as though it didn't go as well as it could have.

I'll never forget my first year of teaching at my current school when a student known for her quietness in class wrote in her evaluation of me, "Thanks for not being scary." Kids are deeply involved in the project of figuring out identity, which as we all know, can be very stressful at times -- it is good to model the ability to not take yourself so seriously to relieve some of the pressure they feel all the time. They need us to be the adults -- and part of being an adult is not feeling like you have to prove something.

Resources for How to Start Discussions

University of Michigan's Center for Research on Teaching and Learning: "Teaching Strategies: Discussion-based Teaching and Handling Controversial Discussions in the Classroom"