James Ishmael Ford’s Monkey Mind, "Mind-monkey," 心猿

Let me begin my tribute and thanks to James Ford for his blog “Monkey Mind” with a guess that he’s never experienced living with monkeys. Among Western Buddhists, he would not be alone. I’ve been around long enough to understand the shorthand we use to describe this experience of the mind’s vagaries, and I know the honored etymology of Monkey Mind, originally from the Chinese, "Mind-monkey" 心猿. We’ve all had some experience in meditation of the tenuous connections between jumping thoughts, feelings popping up, sometimes with inexplicable twitching's, swinging from branch to branch, hanging on by our fingernails. This was a metaphor, a vivid linguistic picture, until I moved to India. Here it's been filled out with a more complete experience.


Monkey Mind and Money Matters in an Indian “spiritual” context.

In 2011 on our first trip to India, Ashish and I visited Shimla where east of the city on Jakhu Hill a 108 foot statue of the Monkey God had been unveiled just the year before. But for hundreds of years before that at Shri Hanuman Mandir, monkeys had been venerated and pampered, producing some pretty outrageous ingrained behavior. One jumped me and stole my glasses, my spec’s, and refused to return them without forfeiting a ransom. The animal wanted candy which, along with small versions of its supernatural idol, is readily available from the concessioners set up in the Temple precincts testifying to the long, universal symbiosis between religious observance and extortion. These annoying, religiously-conditioned primates have been crawling over the shrines of northern India for generations. On the 12 km trek up Vaishno Devi in Katra, near Jammu, they steal your overpriced Pepsi’s in a kind of comedy routine, and of course do not pay any delivery cost to the way station at almost 12,000 ft above sea level. And we’re not talking about satisfying basic needs—for monkeys Pepsi is an acquired taste.

OK, perhaps filling out the picture of monkey mind and money is no antidote for the pain of paying the cost of spiritual pursuits, but the experience of real monkeys is closer to the bone. For me at least, seeing the image of god as a creature with such distasteful behavior was a shock. My cynic wants to highlight the cunning of extracting a price without getting anything in return. And theologically we are worlds apart from Norman Vincent Peale’s sermons at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan where he taught Donald Trump and his father: think the right positive thoughts, and cash will pour into the coffers. Here nasty monkeys’ stealing and conniving is seen as just that and not a holy virtue worthy of the celestial realm. It’s as real as the writing in Monkey Mind. In this regard James is not easily distracted.


Monkeys as Kings and Gods in Buddhism

The Hindu pantheon is not unique in elevating the monkey to a revered status. In some Buddhist lore, monkeys are both kings and scoundrels at the same time, in the same body, in the same world, in all worlds. I can still almost hear Zenshin Phil Whalen’s guffaws as Lou Hartman read aloud Arthur Waley's abridged translation of the Journey to the West (Chinese: 西遊記; pinyin: Xī Yóu Jì), Adventures of the Monkey God, two old monks delighting in the ingenuity of Wú Chéng'ēn’s story telling. Also known as Ruzhong (c. 1500–1582 or 1505–1580), he weaves a long tale about the risky transplanting of the Buddhist Teachings they both loved from India to China. It’s based on a true story of another famous monk, Xuan Zang, of the Chinese Tang Dynasty (602-664) who journeyed to India, the birthplace of Buddhism, to retrieve the “true” Buddhist holy books, and when he returned, translated the Sutras into Chinese.

Ruzhong weaves in all kinds of folklore and fantastic tales into a complicated and convoluted plot with a large unlikely cast of fantastic animals, humans, and celestial beings. Over 100 chapters, the Monkey King, Sun Wukong, gains power, rebels against heaven, wins battles, is condemned to death by the Eastern deities, but the Buddha intervenes and traps him under a mountain for 500 years, preparing him to guard Xuan Zang and the Dharma. I’ll skip the Buddhist pig and dragons given the space limitations of a blog post.

It’s late Spring now in the foothills of the Himalayas, and the brown rhesus monkeys have just come down from the mountains—or maybe they’ve come up from the plains. I have no idea why these nasty monkeys seem to appear now in the village, but they’re here. To be fair to the species, their behavior is totally different from their grey langur cousins who live in the higher elevations, but they do not conform to the fanciful literary portrait except perhaps in this way: just as the Monkey King survives the celestial plot to execute him, they won’t disappear. They can’t be silenced, squelched, or eradicated. And this might have been the very quality that the Buddha singled out as important for guarding the Sacred Teachings as they made their way across continents, oceans, languages and cultures.

Everyone hates the brown monkeys. Besides being scavengers, they have ugly orange asses; they scream and fight; they steal my tomatoes just when they’re ripe; they shit all over my balcony, and are not easily scared off. They even throw their shit if confronted. These days, almost as if to highlight our suffering during the epidemic, they crowd the road that runs along the river where cremation gnats receive the bodies of people who’ve died from Covid. Food offerings provide an easy meal.

There are no wild monkeys in San Francisco, and I am a thoroughgoing Westerner. The way that local people deal with “the monkey problem” is for me as new and intriguing as living with monkeys. They simply make lots of space, and live their lives around them.

I’ll contrast it to the way a San Franciscan, for example, might deal with homelessness and poverty. Here there are people who live outdoors, and there are beggars everywhere, but there are no governmental attempts to house, feed or educate the homeless. The liability of drug addiction, here as in San Francisco, seems to be part and parcel of the homeless condition, but it is handled very differently. If an addict is lucky enough to have some family, he or she might get involuntarily locked up in the 30 day detox, the “de-addiction center,” but with no medical follow-up, they are basically left on their own to fight their demons.

Here is another story of living close to the wild, unpredictable, and very dangerous side of nature. Late this Spring near a local water tank, seven people were mauled by a black bear who came down from the high forest. Two died. The tank is located perhaps 500 meters below the Dalai Lama’s residence but still in the dense forest before the large Central Tibetan Authority complex, Gangchen Kyishong, commonly known as the “Library” because it holds perhaps the largest repository of Tibetan Buddhist texts in the world, after the Chinese occupation and wholesale destruction of Tibet’s monasteries. That’s also very close to me so I hear reports, stories of those injured and killed as well as most of the rumors.

My dear friend Bablu left my flat before sundown to return to his village which is adjacent to the Library, and we joke—carry big dunda to frighten off an angry bhaaloo. He knows one of the women who was injured. She tried to fight off the bear without any stick. She escaped alive, but was badly injured. People commended her for a brave fight, but they didn't arm a vigilante posse to stalk the bear and her cubs. That might be a course of action I’d expect if it happened in an American town.

But the presence of the bear and her cubs have made people hyper-vigilant. The furious barking of dogs and loud monkey squalling (I can’t think of a word that describes the sound) served as a warning that the bear was in Bablu’s village next to the Library. And this is as close as I can get to the monkey behavior guarding the Dharma—brown monkeys making a ruckus near a repository of precious texts, warning my friends to keep their dogs inside and watch over their children.

The real lives of people and monkeys is something that has thus far eluded the attention of religious scholars examining the exegesis of Monkey Lore. If anyone can do it, it is James Ford, but alas he might have to sojourn in India for a spell to deepen his understanding. As for me, I will just not plant tomatoes in my garden, and be grateful that monkey screams helped protect the precious children of my dear friends. If he visits, James will not be imprisoned under a rock for 500 lifetimes until he solves some tricky dharma questions, or at least I hope not. (I’ve already mixed monkeys in with bears so I’ll leave the Zen foxes for another time).

Taking the Next Step: A Note on Activism as a Spiritual Practice

This is a chapter from Intimate Meanderings: Conversations Close to Our Hearts, a book that Morgan Zo-Callahan and I put together with several other Jesuits, former Jesuits and their friends.

The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. With the exception of you, all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.’’ Bhagavad-Gita 11:32

Dilip Trasi and Nitin Trasi are committed and skilled practitioners who speak out of their own experience of meditation. Both have a deep understanding of the Hindu meditation tradition and both have worked with authentic teachers. They are also both laymen, not Brahmins, gurus or clergy, who set themselves apart by claiming special knowledge and this, in my view, allows for a freer exchange of ideas as well as a search for a common language in which we can share our experience. However, when questioned about activism and practice, we entered a territory where they felt that they had to offer cautions and reservations. Not that their reservations might not be valid in some cases, but I hope to show if the heart of the spiritual activists’ motivation and practice is of the simple “do-gooder” variety, it does not work as a spiritual practice much less effective community organizing.

One argument against activism runs like this: when faced with a choice between several courses of action, or taking no action whatsoever, we cannot say with certainty which one is the better, and, even if we practice some form of meditation, given that maturity in practice seems to sharpen our ability to discern the shades of grey, we cannot favor one position over another. This caution halts us in our tracks. The idea is not exclusively Eastern. Albert Camus said; “The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” (The Plague)

However, in all cases, no matter what our motivation or position, in any situation, in any relationship, in any community, country, tradition, or time, all actions produce results. Religious precepts, as they are called in Buddhism, recognize that living our lives leaves a trail of consequences. The possibility of making a mistake does not relieve the obligation to try to act responsibly; rather it imposes a further, perhaps more difficult obligation to remain open and test your experience, examine the results, and then change course if you find yourself embarked on an unproductive or negative course of action.

There is a second argument: that the desire to relieve universal suffering really stems from a desire to relieve one’s own suffering, that it is a myth to believe that we actually help others. From a Buddhist point of view, we are all intimately interconnected in a world that is always in flux. Most practitioners recognize that the source of suffering is not outside ourselves, that we are ultimately responsible for the conditions that cause suffering. That is in fact one of the reasons why we act. Activism is not reserved for enlightened beings. Submitting to moral obligation is for both ordinary and “enlightened” people. Besides, the conservative position—don’t act unless you are certain that your actions will have no harmful consequences—presupposes that omniscience, being able to foresee all the consequences of our actions, is available to humans. I have seen no evidence that such awareness is possible, even in supposedly enlightened beings.

And finally, what I would like to call the “conservative position” asserts that the strain on the social order caused by righting a wrong, causes far more pain, confusion and upset than any possible benefit of the actions. I do not buy into the argument that activists are wrong headed, self-indulgent and create harm because they upset the status quo.

The only part of that analysis that I can support is that some consequences of our actions will be unforeseen. But what is wrong with that? It will not stop me from trying to prevent women and children from being sold into sexual slavery or help innocents caught in the crossfire of the civil strife in Iraq. I will say more about any strain on the social fabric when I touch on the practice of non-violence.

Take ending of the enslavement of Africans in America or stopping the holocaust of the Jewish people that came with the Allied victory over Germany in 1945. These were patent evils engrained in the fabric of a society, or the programs of a powerful single party fascist regime. They had to be eradicated by whatever force necessary though we may have to sort out the consequences of both the American Civil War and World War II for several more generations.

Morgan, who is deeply involved in the activist world, said that he too regretted that some activists, though relatively very few, get carried away by their own self-importance. When I questioned Morgan, his objection was that “full fledged” activists who had a lot of unexamined personal motivations made organizing difficult, not that they, with few exceptions, were prone to mistakes that would cause harm in the outcome. But even this is not my experience. Perhaps my position is biased because my sample of activists comes largely from a group that creates effective actions in support of a cause as spiritual practice, not an add-on, or something to do during the rainy season when you don’t feel like meditating. Practice does more than keep an activist focused. It is the source of their action.

Nitin Trasi used this definition of activism in his analysis: A doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue (Webster). I want to suggest that this definition is not broad enough to include cases in which spiritual practice is the real operative factor.

The greatest modern proponent of the spiritual practice of activism was Mahatma Gandhi, and the traditions from which he derived Satyagraha, Sanskrit for “truth force,” were mostly Indian—Hindu, Buddhist and Jain. He also read the gospels of Jesus and was undoubtedly influenced by the saying: “whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do also to me.” In the Western monotheistic traditions, taking care of the world, tikkun in Hebrew, caring for the least fortunate of society, caritas in Latin, has always been part of religious practice, much more so than in Hinduism. When we talk or write about the practice of non-violence as Gandhi developed and practiced it, we are translating the Sanskrit, Ahimsa, which literally means “the avoidance of violence,” but it is impossible not to see the influence of his western education.

Gandhi himself, Martin Luther King, Dick Gregory, as well as the Dalai Lama in his efforts to free Tibet from the oppression of Han Chinese overlords, have all undertaken practice to quell selfish motivation and focus on the goals of clearing a path to justice and equality. Many of the Jesuits and ex-Jesuits represented here in Meanderings use the discernment of spirits outlined in the “Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius” to weigh their activism. The American abolitionists of the 19th century were for the most part inspired by their religious convictions, transcendentalism or Quakerism, worldviews that hold all the created, visible world to be intricately connected and their practice had the flavor of the Great Awakening, with all its limitations—preaching and conversion.

Without humans, aggression, hatred, anger are not a perpetual motion machine. They need our energy to keep the pendulum swinging. A problem arises when, by applying a force strong enough to counteract the prevailing intransigence of a social order which supports evil, inequality and social injustice, we perpetuate the underlying mechanism that holds those structures in place. Halting that engine also has side effects—what will fill the void?

There are always far-reaching effects accompanying any action, violent or non-violent. For example, World War II, which was to be the war that ended war, has not marked the end of aggression and killing. It was not enough to defeat Hitler just as winning the US Civil War was not sufficient to cause the complete freedom of African slaves. (Though there is some evidence that the amount of armed conflict has been reduced since the defeat of Germany and Japan). In the ending of the British rule over India, the Mahatma struggled with the immediate consequences of partition and the bloodshed between Hindu and Muslim. The fast he undertook in an attempt to halt the violence nearly cost his life. He says in The Story of My Experiments with Truth, "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall—think of it, always." It’s just simplistic to think that any one action can end injustice or suffering. It is more a continuing struggle in which humans must engage. The birth of modern India, the largest functioning democracy on earth, has increased wealth and opportunities for Indians of all social strata. This is neither a myth nor inconsequential.

Whether or not one holds to some vague concept of “progress” or the endless repetition of karma due to the consequences of our actions, it seems that the world has changed and continues to change. That all life is impermanent, always being born and passing out of existence seems almost self-evident. Though I have never studied all the ways that the Hindu point of view differs from the Buddhist view, in Buddhism lived experience opens the door to religious practice.

Those who have some taste for practice seem to have chosen the path that was begun by Mohandas Gandhi. As with any practice, Ahimsa takes practice. It is not a theory. Though solidly based on the most ancient understanding of man’s place in the universe, it launches us into the unknown territory of caring for all of humanity, the entire earth in a new way. It requires the most courageous action and deep meditation. It requires that our spiritual practice take on a wider goal than our own salvation or enlightenment.

We are in the middle of such a revolution. The aims of the revolution seem to be clear: clean the environment, curtail the destructive power of our weapons, find new ways of resolving conflict, create universal recognition of human rights. They also include what Jesus taught as ‘charity’—to feed the hungry, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit the prisoners. What is not clear is the path we chose to follow to achieve those goals. The old institutions have failed or are crumbling. What will emerge? Where do we place our bets and focus time and resources? Those who are in the middle of a revolution are least likely to recognize it. They are certainly among the last to appreciate it—they are way too busy tending to immediate concerns of Right Now! We don’t even know if we will succeed.

It will also demand new myths, and I mean myth in the most powerful sense, not fantasy, but images that capture the imagination in a powerful way. And it seems that one of those myths will be the story of the Bhagavad-gita, which has inspired Hindus and fascinated Westerners. In Philip Glass's Satyagraha, An Opera in Three Acts (2001), huge chariots for Arjuna and Krishna with larger than life puppet figures are drawn up on the stage; the prologue is verses from the Gita sung, chanted in Sanskrit. On the Kuru Field of Justice, Lord Krishna tells the warrior Arjuna to put aside pain and pleasure, that action is his moral duty: “Be unconcerned with consequences, with victory or defeat, but act with the world's welfare as your intention” (LA Times, April 2008). Then when the figure of Gandhi walks onto the stage, small and clothed simply in a loincloth as he appears in later pictures; it is a powerful statement of “Truth Force.” But the performance is not left in some reverential version of Indian history—in the third act, Martin Luther King appears behind Gandhi, superimposed in a TV clip of his famous “I have a Dream” speech which electrified a generation of civil rights activists.

I would like to quote what J. Robert Oppenheimer said about his experience at the first test explosion of the atomic bomb, July 16, 1945. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” There may be some exaggeration in his statement. By the time he said it on TV in the 50’s, Oppenheimer had already become an activist working to stop the “Arms Race” and curtail the use of both nuclear fission and fusion in the manufacture of weapons.

Man now has developed a technology powerful enough to destroy himself, certainly to visit unfathomable pain and destruction on his fellow beings. The usual political balance for checking power, aggression and greed do not seem to be adequate to the task. It is not surprising to see that creativity, coupled with the spiritual dimension of reverence for all life, have shown up as potential sources for finding a way, not just to remedy injustice and relieve suffering, but to ensure human survival.

Because Dilip or Nitin didn’t have the opportunity to read and respond to my argument, I will give Dilip the (almost) last word on the subject.

“Let me investigate the useful side of [activism]. Activism in a beneficent sense can be defined as aggressive action towards a specific goal. We always find that in nature there exist thresholds. Right from the atom onwards, we find that a minimum energy barrier has to be crossed to overcome the forces of nature, which is called the threshold force. For example to get free of the force of gravity of the earth, a minimum velocity called escape velocity has to be exceeded (approximately seven miles per second).

“Applying activism to inventiveness, we find that many of the great inventors were intoxicated with only thoughts concerning their invention. Scientists were considered as absent-minded people. But this is the kind of aggressiveness and activism that is necessary to break the thought barrier.

“Finally, applying activism to spirituality, we find that a paradigm change in understanding is necessary, like the quantum jump of an electron, freeing from the influence of the nucleus. Maya is like the intra-atomic force that binds the electron to the nucleus. To overcome the influence of Maya or ignorance, one has to be intoxicated with Atma-consciousness or God-consciousness. Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Ramana Maharshi were typical examples of such persons.”

In the last analysis, any call to action for the spiritually centered person is an act of faith, in the deepest sense—that he or she is called to participate in the action of God loving, caring for our world, that the easing of suffering is part of the dynamic of God’s love. To close, I am not going to quote scripture or give a sermon, but rather quote one of my heroes, the visionary architect, Bucky Fuller (from No More Secondhand God by R. Buckminster Fuller):

Yes, God is a verb,

the most active,

connoting the vast harmonic

reordering of the universe

from unleashed chaos of energy.

And there is born unheralded

a great natural peace,

not out of exclusive

pseudo-static security

but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.

Naught is lost.

Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

"Finding God in All Things"

June 2, 2021

Bonnie Johnson Shurman

Jan. 20, 1944-June 2, 2011

Today is the 10th anniversary of Bonnie's death. I am among the many people who loved her and miss her kind and warm presence. She was an extremely generous woman and expressed her love as wife and mother,  daughter, grandmother and friend, in a way you could count on. 

More than a decade ago, when she was first diagnosed with leukemia, her husband Daniel Shurman told me that she was interested in doing the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, and asked if I could suggest a book that she could use. She did the Exercises and I was blessed to be her guide. But it was her enormous spiritual gift that allowed her truly embody the Teaching of Jesus, and then to share it with others, just as the Lord asks us.

During the years that her cancer remained in remission, she continued to explore the path that her Lord, through Ignatius, opened. She continued to live her life in prayer, exploring and digging further, following her own inspiration and gifts. This mystical bent was always balanced by the consummate professional, a scholar with common sense. 

She found a link between Ignatius and Julian of Norwich via an informal association of seekers who called themselves “the Friends of God.” She wrote about Julian, Ignatius and the Friends of God when she was studying at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is dated March 8, 2005. 

Thank you, Daniel for being the kind of husband who inspires, and for introducing me to Bonnie, To thank Bonnie for the gift of friendship, I am going to post the paper, “Finding God in All Things,” here.

We miss you, Bonnie. and your gentle presence. We are enormously grateful for the gifts you gave us. May you sing with the angels.

I have given this paper the same title as William Barry’s book: Finding God In All Things, A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius (Barry 1991). I was reading the book when Julian of Norwich was assigned in class. The similarities between Julian’s writings and Ignatius’s were striking to me. Both Julian and Ignatius write of multiple sensory experiences with God occasioned by life-threatening illness. Before I understood that Julian was born 150 years before Ignatius, I considered that her visions, like mine[1], might have been delirious manifestations engendered by Ignatian-style guided meditations. When I realized that she lived long before Ignatius, I abandoned the paper I was writing on the general topic of asceticism to delve deeper into parallels, coincidences, and possible connections between these two late medieval mystics.

The theological proposition of this paper is that the writings of Julian in circa 1400 and the writings of Ignatius circa 1525 are representative of a distinct spirituality: God as Friend. God as Friend is a paradigm shift from the dominant spirituality from the 4th century: Deity of Christ; it is distinct though related to two paradigms which were soon to emerge in the reformation: Salvation by Faith Alone and Incarnational Participation. At the end of this paper I will argue that the paradigm of God as Friend is finding new relevance in our time, hence bringing a renewed interest in both Julian and Ignatius.

In my search for a “social network” connecting Julian and Ignatius, I learned about an informal group called “Friends of God” from one of the many websites devoted to Julian. The name for this “association of pious persons, both ecclesiastical and lay [also men and women], alludes no doubt to John 15:14-15[2] … Friends of God appears to have had its origin in Basle between the years 1339 and 1343, and to have thence extended down the Rhine even as far as the Netherlands” (Walsh 1909). I am skeptical that Julian herself had any direct connection with the informal network of German mystics, but there is indirect evidence at least that many of them had access to her writing. One version of Julian’s Short Text (the so-called “Amherst Manuscript”) also contains writings of Friends’ mystics Marguerite Poerete, Henry Suso, and Jan van Ruusbroec (Holloway 1997). The manuscript had been in the Brigittine Syon Abbey; it was owned by the Lowe family and through them found its way to the Low Countries and Rouen (Holloway 1996). While there is no direct evidence of who might have read it and when, there is enough indirect evidence to conclude that Julian’s ideas were circulating among German mystics following her death circa 1425. The German mystics influenced Ignatius through the Carhusian and former Dominican monk, Ludolf of Saxony (Gieraths 1986). Ignatius is known to have read and re-read a four volume Spanish translation of Ludolf’s Life of Christ and to have been profoundly influenced, even converted, by what he read there (Ignatius 2000, p. xiv; Loyola 2000, p. xiv).

The references to Julian’s writing in this paper come from a “Long Text” version translated from the manuscript found in the British Museum. As I read Revelations of Divine Love (Julian 2002), I noted about sixty passages expressing ideas similar to those found the Spiritual Exercises, far too many passages to discuss here.[3] I am concentrating on five concepts that point parallel notions of God as friend; in particular, I am limiting myself to the best examples that reveal similarities in their views of how people carry on friendship with God various media/modes. I use quotations from the work of each to document my argument that friendship with God is created and maintained through intimate communications which take at least five different forms: imagery, senses, colloquy, consolation/ desolation, and prayer. In the conclusion of the paper, I also point similarities in how they describe the nature of this friendship in their discussions of sin, love, goodness, choice, and the indwelling of God in our nature.

Communication is the sine qua non of any friendship. To have a concept of friendship with God, therefore requires that there be some form of media which constitutes that communication. For both Julian and Ignatius, imagery is the most important media and the Passion is the most important topic of that imagery. In examining Julian and Ignatius’s imagery of Jesus’ Passion, such in the illustrative passages below, it is easy to dismiss their perspective on friendship. After all “Body of Christ” imagery was a common theme of medieval piety yet friendship with God was not. I have little knowledge of other writers in the “Body of Christ” genre, so I cannot say that the friendship imagery of Julian and Ignatius is unique. What I observe in their imagery, however, is its intimacy. Both show intimacy with Jesus’ body; this use of imagery signals closeness, friendship.

… All the precious blood was bled out of the sweet body that might pass therefore, yet there dwelled a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ as it was shewed (Julian 2002, p.). 

… Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus hear me. Within Thy wounds hid me (Ignatius 2000, p. xlv).

Simply imagining another in a prayerful way can also create a close relationship with the one imagined with the need for conversation as we typically understand that term. A few months ago my husband and I were contacted by a friend to provide direction to on-line medical information for a friend of his with a rare bone marrow disease. We started to email with both Jim and his wife about Jim’s illness and potential resources in Palo Alto. Mostly we prayed intensely for Jim and also for his wife; we never spoke with them even by phone. When Jim died unexpectedly from a heart attack, both Daniel and I were devastated; we still cry at the thought of Jim. We had lost a dear friend, one whom we knew only through imagery, email, and prayer. It was a dramatic Julian-Ignatian lesson for me: I felt so close to this person and that closeness was entirely the product of my imagining his circumstances and my daily prayers for him. Knowing Jim in this way helped me to experience God in a fresh way; I learned how I can know God without human encounters just as I had known Jim without these encounters.

Imagery in Julian and Ignatius is not only visual, it is also multi-sensory.

I HAD, in part, touching, sight, and feeling in three properties of God, in which the strength and effect of all the Revelation standeth (Julian 2002, p. 197). And then shall we, with His sweet grace, in our own meek continuant prayer come unto Him now in this life by many privy touchings of sweet spiritual sights and feeling, measured to us as our simpleness may bear it (Julian 2002, p. 90). 

The Fifth contemplation will consist in applying the five senses to the matter. … seeing in imagination the persons, in contemplating and mediating in detail the circumstances in which they are… hear what they are saying… smell the infinite fragrance and taste the infinite sweetness of the divinity … touch, for example by embracing and kissing the place where the persons stand (Ignatius 2000, p. 45).

Communicating with one’s Godfriend goes beyond merely experiencing God through ones imagination and senses; both Julian and Ignatius converse directly with God. Throughout the Julian text, she is posing questions to God, and God is answering her, for example: “AND thus our good Lord answered to all the questions and doubts that I might make, saying full comfortably: I may make all thing well, I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well…”(Julian 2002, p. 61); the result of this is conversational. Ignatius uses the term “colloquy” to refer to conversations with God (and also with Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit on occasions): “The colloquy is made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another” (Ignatius 2000, p. 24). These two examples exemplify a pattern of “shewing” vs “exercise” that I find over and over as a distinction between these two books: Julian shows her communication with God; Ignatius instructs the maker of the exercises to perform these same kinds of communications. Thus, “revelation” in Julian becomes “exercise” in Ignatius.

God has special kinds of communication with Julian that I would call, following Ignatius, “consolations” and “desolations.” In Ignatian spirituality, consolidations and desolations are the movements of the spirit—“internal movements” by which we can discern God’s will in our lives. Those making the exercises are taught how to listen or feel for these movements and thereby to guide their lives in accord with God’s will. Again, we see that Julian experiences these interior movements but makes no methodical use of them. Ignatius’s biography describes how he initially experienced them much as Julian did and then learned to put them to use in his own communications with God.

AND after this He shewed a sovereign ghostly pleasance in my soul. I was fulfilled with the everlasting sureness, mightily sustained without any painful dread. This feeling was so glad and so ghostly that I was in all peace and in rest, that there was nothing in earth that should have grieved me. …This lasted but a while, and I was turned and left to myself in heaviness, and weariness of my life that scarcely I could have patience to live. This Vision was shewed me, according to mine understanding, sometime to be in comfort, and sometime to fail and to be left to themselves. God willeth that we know that He keepeth us even alike secure in woe and in weal. And for profit of man’s soul, a man is sometime left to himself (Julian 2002). 

God alone can give consolation to the soul without any previous cause. It belongs solely to the Creator to come into a soul, to leave it, to act upon it, to draw it wholly to the love of His Divine Majesty (Ignatius 2000, p. 119 section 330). ...When one is in desolation, he should be mindful that God has left him to his natural powers to resist the different agitations and temptations of the enemy in order to try him. For though God has taken from him the abundance of fervor and overflowing love and the intensity of His favors, nevertheless, he has sufficient grace for eternal salvation (Ignatius 2000, p. 116, section 320).

On the topic of prayer, Julian and Ignatius could not be more similar. Yet, it is not as simple to point to parallel passages as with the preceding topics. For them, prayer is not just a “doing” – not just a message we send to God, in the form of a petition, for example. Rather, prayer is a way of being in which ones very foundation, ones “ground” is God and therefore prayer is fitting ourselves to that Ground of our being. Julian puts it this way:

OUR Lord God willeth that we have true understanding, and specially in three things that belong to our prayer. The first is: by whom and how that our prayer springeth. By whom, He sheweth when He saith: I am [the] Ground; and how, by His Goodness: for He saith first: It is my will. The second is: in what manner and how we should use our prayer; and that is that our will be turned unto the will of our Lord, enjoying: and so meaneth He when He saith: I make thee to will it. The third is that we should know the fruit and the end of our prayers: that is, that we be oned and like to our Lord in all things; and to this intent and for this end was all this lovely lesson shewed. And He will help us, and we shall make it so as He saith Himself; Blessed may He be! For this is our Lord’s will, that our prayer and our trust be both alike large. For if we trust not as much as we pray, we do not full worship to our Lord in our prayer, and also we tarry and pain our self (Julian 2002).

“Grounded in God” has several implications. First, that prayer is about the will of God and our place in that will. From this the next implication, only implicit in the statement above, that God is eternally present and has already “answered” our prayers in our very existence, our salvation, and in all that we enjoy: “The first is our noble and excellent making; the second, our precious and dearworthy again-buying; the third, all-thing that He hath made beneath us, [He hath made] to serve us, and for our love keepeth it. Then signifieth He thus, as if He said: Behold and see that I have done all this before thy prayers; and now thou art, and prayest me” (Julian 2002). Julian cautions us not to go looking for this or that way that God might have answered our small petitions, but to understand that God is answering even the prayers we have not yet asked. So how then should we pray? We should pray that “our will be turned unto the will of our Lord.” The true end of our petitions is that we become like God, indeed that we are at one with God.

William Barry describes the same understanding in Ignatius in his chapter entitled, “Grounded in God: The Principle and Foundation” (Ignatius 2000, pp. 33ff.). God is up to one action; we can experience the creative action of God which is always at work (Barry 1991, p. 39); Ignatius draws out the implications of our place in God’s one action in the Principle and Foundation: “We must make ourselves indifferent to all created things… Consequently, as far as we are concerned, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a short life. … Our one desire and choice should be what is conductive to the end for which we are created (Ignatius 2000, p. 12, section 23). In other words, it is about God’s will; our prayer is our participation in that will. We are engaged in the world of God’s creating and God is already answering the prayers we have not yet made.

We have seen in both of these late medieval mystics a central concern with our relationship with God and how that relationship is continuously created through various media. The relationship is one of love. While both mystics write extensively on sin, theirs is not the sin of the medieval church or of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, Julian comes as close as one might in her day to saying that her Church is misguided in its notion of sin and salvation (Julian 2002, p. 104). Ignatius’ first week of the Exercises is devoted to examining one’s sin, but the point is not to berate or belittle the maker of the Exercises. Rather, the grace of the first week is the experience of love. “Ignatius expects that God will reveal our sins in such a way that we will actually be consoled. We are to have an increase of faith, hope, and love, be moved to tears of sorrow for our sin, but also to tears of love for a God who has been so good to us” (Barry 1991, p. 51). The heart of the message from both Julian and Ignatius is the goodness of God, the love of God, and the freedom which God gives us in the hope that we will choose to put God at the center of our lives, and participate in God’s mission.

Both mystics are saying that we must look in the world and in ourselves to find God. Their piety is finding God in all things, starting with finding ourselves IN God. “For our Soul is so deep-grounded in God, and so endlessly treasured, that we may not come to the knowing thereof till we have first knowing of God, which is the Maker, to whom it is oned” (Julian 2002, p. 133). This is such a contemporary message; it is not surprising that both mystics are being read more in our time than in any time of the past, including their own.

I have argued here that both Julian and Ignatius provide us with kataphatic paths to relationship with God as friend, one in which we are constantly called to God’s mission, but never coerced or threatened. We are called to examine our own sins, not the sins of others; we communicate with God who already God loves us and forgives us already. This is a contemporary theme. These are mystics for our time.

Notes:

1 Since this is not a “personal reflection paper,” I will not discuss further my own experiences. Suffice to say that the parallels I find in Julian’s writings to my own experiences were the motivation for my choosing this topic.

2 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my father.”

3 References to “Pages” in Julian are to the original manuscript pages; references to Ignatius are to pages in the Vintage-Random House version with section numbers referring to Ignatius original sections.

References

Barry, W. A. (1991). Finding God In All Things A Companion To The Spiritual Exercises Of St. Ignatius. Notre Dame, IL, Ave Maria Press.

Gieraths, G. M. (1986). "Life in Abundance: Meister Eckhart and the German Dominican Mystics of the 14th Century." Spirituality Today 38 (August): Supplementary Book.

Holloway, J. B. (1996) The Westminster Cathedral/Abbey Manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. http://www.umilta.net/westmins.html.

Holloway, J. B. (1997) Godfriends: The Continental Medieval Mystics. http://www.umilta.net/godfrien.html.

Ignatius (2000). The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. New York, Random House.

Julian (2002). Revelations of Divine Love. Grand Rapids, MI, Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Walsh, R. (1909). Friends of God. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Online Edition, K. Knight. 6.

An Afternoon with Chiura Obata and generations of Amish mystics

Originally posted May 6th, 2010

Yesterday I ran into an old friend, Chiura Obata—even though I never met him, I feel that I know him through his work—and I stumbled into the works of some extraordinary Amish women and girls who made useful, and astonishing, household goods to keep themselves and their families warm. I am going to try to describe an experience that opened my eyes to the world in a way that I didn’t expect.

In the late afternoon, I headed to free Tuesdays at the De Young in Golden Gate Park. I had just intended to distract myself, to drift around and see what was up that I haven’t seen recently. Sometimes I direct myself around a museum as if I were my own docent, and sometimes, I just stand in awe. Both these persons were present; I hope you can distinguish their voices.

I walked up the wide stairs at the south end of the building and headed straight back towards the fabric gallery where 48 Amish quilts made between 1880 and 1940 were on display. I was curious. Of course I’ve seen the coffee table books that portray these artifacts as folksy Americana, women’s craftwork, unique and colorful.

Attendant 5, Bryce Marden

One look at the real work destroyed my folksy preconceptions forever. Escher’s disoriented perspective where front and back trade places are essential components without caricatured beetles crawling over them. Georgia O’Keefe’s sensuous lines are stitched in patterns across solid blocks of color. Keith Haring’s strictly drawn, geometrically arranged figures lay flat until the lines start to dance. Then the patchwork itself dances.

These women understood geometric shapes and what happens as the background changes color decades before Josef Albers began his investigations. Jasper Johns had artistic grandmothers, dozens, maybe hundreds. Bryce Marden’s simple elegant repeated loops create the same visual magic that these women did as they set circles on the rectangular fabrics that protected their sleeping children.

Was it the practice of keeping it simple, or community, or cooperation that laid the foundation for what I saw, or is there a magic elixir in the water in Amish country? These artists, women and girls, were absolute masters of every discipline they used, design, color, geometry, and sewing. 

I walked around stunned. I lost track of time. These visionaries and mystics took whatever was at hand, used the careful, precise skills handed down to them by their mothers and created masterpieces. I wondered if they saw their work as being astonishing in the way that I saw it. Actually I suspect that they did, but it was also ordinary fare in their communities.

I will not do these artifacts a disservice by pasting up a catalogue of Internet images, no matter how beautiful, precise or detailed. One will have to give a taste. I have shown a "Shadow Pattern" design. When you see them, be in their presence, you can almost feel the hands and eyes and souls of these extraordinary, mostly anonymous artists.

Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley

The fabric gallery and the wall where Chiura Obata’s Lake Basin in the High Sierra hangs are only a few yards apart. I have been a fan of the Issei Japanese American Obata (1885-1975) since I saw his hanging scroll, Setting Sun, Sacramento Valley, during the closing exhibit at the old De Young back in 2000.

How Lake Basin became a koan that unlocked something inside me may sound disjointed—moving from quilts to a painting on silk—but it didn’t feel that way to me at all. It seemed as natural as stepping into a bath.

Koan is the Japanese word for a particular type of story telling used by old Chinese and Japanese Zen meditation teachers to help a student unlock and experience some aspect of the Buddha's teaching—and make it their own. Sometimes they contain what might be more appropriately called riddles or puzzles, but these are not just linguistic or conceptual. They hold much more than what meets the eye.

I had briefly glanced at Lake Basin before I went into the quilt exhibit. When I finally began my leave taking of the quilts with a promise to visit again before they returned to the care of Faith and Steven Brown, I walked back through the gallery's dark narrow passageway, turned right and stopped in front of Obata’s subtle brushwork. Now, the colors and shapes stopped me.

I had just spent perhaps an hour looking at colors and shapes on flat surfaces with no pretense of perspective, yet with incredible depth and dimension. When my eyes took in Obata’s floating blue lake holding up a mountain of ragged black covered with half melted snow, there it was again, the same one-dimensional quality. Lake Basin was born out of an ancient Chinese scroll that spread pieces of craggy cliffs and trees in brushwork up and down the page with trees and scholars sketched in to create an illusion of depth. Actually, when I study old Chinese scrolls, the small miniature roofs seem to act like footnotes—the painter wants to tell you, “See, that one, it’s in the distance.” But Obata didn’t import Buddhist pagodas to the High Sierra. He painted an American landscape as he found it: water, rock and sky, big and bold. But he also painted with great delicacy and restraint. It is almost reverential.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra

I sat down on the bench that was right there, waiting for the moment. My eyes moved across the surfaces. The lake floated in blue lapis lazuli pigment, completely still except where the tracings of bristle allowed me look down to the lake’s bottom. The sides of its bowl were decorated with green and yellow, new growth. On top, neither behind nor in front, the patched snow softened the dark granite’s sharp edges. The snow seemed to wrap under the mountain's weight and hold it in space; the stylized vertical marks could just as easily have been on the blanket wrapped under a child, stitched in by an Amish craftswoman teaching her daughter to sew.

I sat until the guards began to warn that they would soon close the doors. As I got up I realized that I had been sitting with a visual koan. I say koan because the play of lines and color across the silk revealed that winter holds spring, not in a temporal or sequential way, but as a mother holds her child. I was overwhelmed by the tenderness of Nature. The feeling startled me. It was sudden.

At times in the past, I have held snow on the granite peaks as inhospitable, as terrifying as the tales of Donner Pass, but now another deep understanding was also there, the High Sierra was the Source of the clear bright water that crashes over rocks in Spring making its way towards the Bay. Both points of view are equally true; one does not negate the other. But once I was able to creep inside Obata’s vertical and horizontal lines, his blues and blacks, whites and greens, I found a way to enter the wildness of nature as a friend, with no fear. I don’t know if this understanding will last, but I do know that it was not present before yesterday just as the museum was closing.

The one harsh line I could not cross on Lake Basin is where the mountain touches the sky. I am here on the earth. Both koans and paintings are the works of men, not gods. Words and colors, brushes and pencils, silk and pigments, thoughts and meditation, discourse and dreaming, these are all around us. They are both tools and the stuff we work with.



I am going to conclude with thoughts about humans crafting koans out of their experience, dreams, insight, study and the patient work of meditation. As you scroll down, you will see some of the images that I studied on the Internet. Obata was a professional artist. He painted so he could feed and clothe his wife and children. He did several versions of Lake Basin the High Sierra, a sketch, smaller paintings and wood block prints. I can’t determine the time line for certain. Art curators date the wood blocks and paintings sometime around 1930. The colored pencil sketch is clearly dated 1930. But when I examined the images of each of the works that were available, I am sure that he started the large painting that I'd sat in front of—it is nearly 6' high and 10' feet across—only after he himself had explored the shapes, colors and lines and allowed them to find their own way onto the silk. Perhaps he had a similar friendship with the wild, and felt that same tenderness I experienced Tuesday. I wondered if he kept coming back to his images in the same way that a koan grabs my mind and imagination, becoming more essential with each pass. Perhaps he and his pigment and mineral, brushes and silk shared their experience with me. No, certainly, they did.

Here are some images of the various renditions presented without further comment.

Lake Basin in the High Sierra, sketch, 1930


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, watercolor


Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Tadeo Takamizawa (Printer) color woodcut on paper image: 

11 3/8 x 15 5/8 in. (28.9 x 39.7 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum

These are the pieces of art that I have quoted in post:

Print, Quilt Sale, unknown
Attendant 5, Bryce Marden
Amish Shadow Quilt, Alternate pattern name: Shadows. Maker unknown. Date Unknown. 67" x 63." Nebraska State Historical Society
Setting Sun: Sacramento Valley, CA. 1925. Hanging scroll: mineral pigments (distemper) and gold on silk, 107 1/2 x 69 in.
Lake Basin in the High Sierra, Chiura Obata, cc 1930, painting on silk (69 ½ x 102 ½ inches), made with ink and a brilliant blue lapis lazuli pigment. De Young Museum, San Francisco
Chiura Obata, photograph, UC Berkeley