the Kingdom is inside you, and outside you

This from Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D. Eharman:

... [T]he Gospel of Thomas [is] a valuable collection of 114 sayings of Jesus, many of which may reflect the historical teachings of Jesus, but all of which appear to be framed within the context of later Gnostic reflections on the salvation that Jesus has brought. Unlike the Gospels of the New Testament, in this Gospel Jesus does not talk about the God of Israel, about sin against God and the need for repentance. In this Gospel it is not Jesus' death and resurrection that bring salvation. In this Gospel there is no anticipation of a coming Kingdom of God on earth.

Instead, this Gospel assumes that some humans contain the divine spark that has been separated from the realm of God and entrapped in this impoverished world of matter, and that it needs to be delivered by learning the secret teachings from above, which Jesus himself brings. It is by learning the truth of this world and, specially, of one's one divine character, that one can escape this bodily prison and return to the realm of light whence one came, the Kingdom of God that transcends this material world and all that is in it.

A remarkable document, an ancient forgery condemned as heretical by early proto-orthodox Christians and lost or destroyed, until the remarkable discovery of the Gnostic library in Upper Egypt, near Nag Hammadi, preserved now for us as the secret sayings of Jesus, which, if rightly understood, can bring eternal life.

Elaine Pagels writes in her book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas:

Thomas’s gospel offers only cryptic clues – not answers – to those who seek the way to God. Thomas’s “living Jesus” challenges his hearers to find the way for themselves: “Jesus said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these words will not taste death,’” and he warns the disciples that the search will disturb and astonish them: “Jesus said, ‘Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled; when he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and will rule over all things.” Thus here again Jesus encourages those who seek by telling them that they already have the internal resources they need to find what they are looking for: “Jesus said, ‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.’”

Yet the “disciples [still] questioned him,” Thomas writes, “saying, ‘Do you want us to fast? How should we pray? Should we give alms? What diet should we observe?’” In Matthew and Luke, Jesus responds to such questions with practical, straightforward answers. For example, he instructs them that “when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret.” When you fast, “put oil on your head, and wash your face.” And “when you pray, play like this, [saying], ‘Our Father, who art in heaven. . . .’” In Thomas, Jesus gives no such instruction. Instead, when his disciples ask him what to do – how to pray, what to eat, whether to fast or give money, he answers only with another koan: “Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate; for all things are plain in the sight of heaven” in other words, the capacity to discover the truth is within you. When the disciples still demand that Jesus “tell us who you are, so that we may believe in you,” he again deflects the question and directs them to see for themselves: “He said to them, ‘You read the face of the sky and the earth, but you have not recognized the one who stands before you, and you do not know how to read this present moment.’” ...

Yet Thomas’s Jesus offers some clues. After dismissing those who expect the future coming of the kingdom of God, as countless Christians have always done and still do, Thomas’s Jesus declares that

the Kingdom is inside you, and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will see that it is you who are the children of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.

This cryptic saying raises a further question: how can we know ourselves? According to Thomas, Jesus declares that we must find out first where we came from, and go back and take our place “in the beginning.” Then he says something even stranger: “Blessed is the one who came into being before he came into being” But how can one go back before one’s own birth – or even before human creation? What was there before human creation – even before the creation of the universe?

"Blessed is the one who came into being before he came into being," reminds me of the Zen koan "What did your face look like before your parents were born?", also known as the concept "original face." It is the same, no?

Hui-neng, the 6th Patriarch of Ch'an -- Chinese Zen -- said, "See what at this very moment your own face looks like - the Face you had before you, or indeed your parents, were born - there is nothing hidden. If you look within and recognize your own ‘Original Face', all secrets are in you."

Wikipedia offers a nice, succinct page re Original face that provide three ancient Zen poets' takes on what the concept means to us.

Contempory Zen Master Wu Kwang, a Gestalt therapist, offers a long psychology-based take on the concept. I am particulary taken by this idea found at the end of his article/essay "What is your original face?":

Another provocative implication of this [koan] is that time goes not from past to present to future, but, psychologically, from present to past. If you touch the moment where you perceive your original face before your parents were born, then you can also see how you give birth to your own parents! If you are having a moment of unencumbered freedom, and then begin to step back into the mental and emotional attitudes of better or worse, should or should not, good or bad, valuable or not so valuable, at that moment you are giving birth to a relationship with authority figures and parental edicts. At that moment, you give birth to your parents - whether your real parents or little bits and pieces which you extracted from them that sit in your mind-belly, giving you a lot of indigestion.

When you perceive that, you begin to take some responsibility in the present for what you are carrying around. 'Ihis sense of responsibility gives you a tremendous sense of freedom, and hopefulness, and a way to work with all of these things.

Buddha and Nietzsche spar in the Court of Heaven

The long quote that follows is from Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, published in 1945 – which, one source tells me, was the best-selling book of philosophy in the English-speaking world during the 20th Century. According to Wikipedia, Russell (1872 – 1970) “was a British philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist.…

“A prolific writer, Russell was a popularizer of philosophy and a commentator on a large variety of topics. Continuing a family tradition in political affairs, he was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism.”

Here, Russell discusses sympathy as a matter of ethics and imagines a confrontation between Friedrich Nietzsche and Buddha before Almighty God in the Court of Heaven:

Sympathy, in the sense of being made unhappy by the suffering of others, is to some extent natural to human beings; young children are troubled when they hear other children crying. But the development of this feeling is very different in different people. Some find pleasure in the infliction of torture; others, like Buddha, feel that they cannot be completely happy so long as any living thing is suffering. Most people divide mankind emotionally into friends and enemies, feeling sympathy for the former, but not for the latter. An ethic such as that of Christianity or Buddhism has its emotional basis in universal sympathy; Nietzsche’s, in a complete absence of sympathy. (He frequently preaches against sympathy, and in this respect one feels that he has no difficulty in obeying his own precepts.) The question is: If Buddha and Nietzsche were confronted, could either produce any argument that ought to appeal to the impartial listener? I am not thinking of political arguments. We can imagine them appearing before the Almighty, as in the first chapter of the Book of Job, and offering advice as to the sort of world He should create. What could either say?

Buddha would open the argument by speaking of the lepers, outcast and miserable; the poor, toiling with aching limbs and barely kept alive by scanty nourishment; the wounded in battle, dying in slow agony; the orphans, ill-treated by cruel guardians; and even the most successful haunted by the thought of failure and death. From all this load of sorrow, he would say, a way of salvation must be found, and salvation can only come through love.

Nietzsche, whom only Omnipotence could restrain from interrupting, would burst out when his turn came: “Good heavens, man, you must learn to be of tougher fibre. Why go about snivelling because trivial people suffer? Or, for that matter, because great men suffer? Trivial people suffer trivially, great men suffer greatly, and great sufferings are not to be regretted, because they are noble. Your ideal is a purely negative one, absence of suffering, which can be completely secured by non-existence. I, on the other hand, have positive ideals: I admire Alcibiades, and the Emperor Frederick II, and Napoleon. For the sake of such men, any misery is worth while. I appeal to You, Lord, as the greatest of creative artists, do not let Your artistic impulses be curbed by the degenerate fear-ridden maunderings of this wretched psychopath.”

Buddha, who in the courts of Heaven has learnt all history since his death, and has mastered science with delight in the knowledge and sorrow at the use to which men have put it, replies with calm urbanity: “You are mistaken, Professor Nietzsche, in thinking my ideal a purely negative one. True, it includes a negative element, the absence of suffering; but it has in addition quite as much that is positive as is to be found in your doctrine. Though I have no special admiration for Alcibiades and Napoleon, I too have my heroes: My successor Jesus, because he told men to love their enemies; the men who discovered how to master the forces of nature and secure food with less labour; the medical men who have shown how to diminish disease; the poets and artists and musicians who have caught glimpses of the Divine beatitude. Love and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations; they are enough to fill the lives of the great men that have ever lived.”

“All the same,” Nietzsche replies, “your world would be insipid. You should study Heraclitus, whose works survive complete in the celestial library. Your love is compassion, which is elicited by pain; your truth, if you are honest, is pleasant, and only to be known through suffering; and as to beauty, what is more beautiful that the tiger, who owes his spendour to fierceness? No, if the Lord should decide for your world, I fear we should all die of boredom.”

“You might,” Buddha replies, “because you love pain and your love of life is a sham. But those who really love life would be happy as no one is happy in the world as it is.”

For my part, I agree with Buddha as I have imagined him. But I do not know how to prove that he is right by any argument such as can be used in a mathematical or a scientific question. I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die. But I think the ultimate argument against his philosophy, as against any unpleasant but internally self-consistent ethic, lies not in an appeal to facts, but in an appeal to the emotions. Nietzsche despises universal love; I feel it the motive power to all that I desire as regards the world. His followers have had their innings, but we may hope that it is coming rapidly to an end.

Now, I don’t think that Russell quite has Buddha right. Buddha would not spar in such an ordinary, worldly way, nor would he baldly make heroes of some at the expense of others. Also, Buddha would love the world as it is; only with a change in attitude towards it and appreciation of it. Also, Russell's imagined Nietzsche is wrong to believe that Buddha's cure is one of non-existence [Woe, is THAT ever a complex tangent I won't go into here.] But Russell’s overarching point is sound, it seems to me: that the reasons for sympathizing with or loving the world are hard to justify using cold logic alone. Only someone who has the complete toolkit of emotions could begin to understand.

Living in Homeless World, as I now am, I sometimes see stark instances of people not having the complete toolkit, such that they enjoy the passion play of physical fighting, or other instances where the pain of others is cause, in them, for pleasure. Being Buddhist, I have great hope that folks who are acclimated to the mean streets can and will, one day, find the angels of their better natures and see changes in themselves as the flowering of their true Selves.

Merton's "the Vision in Louisville"

Below is a quote -- a whole short section, really -- from Trappist monk Thomas Merton's 1966 book Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander that I found by way of a snip in Bad Buddha, the blog of ebwrite's (aka, Ed). I understand, from further research, that the quote below is a rather well-known bit of Merton's writing, later dubbed by fans "the vision in Louisville."

The realization that Merton experiences is as pure a demonstration of Plotinus's path to spiritual awakening as I could ever have hoped to find. Again, from my earlier post on the Roman philosopher, here is Ken Wilber's pithy statement of Plotinus's Path that Merton fulfills: Flee the Many, find the One; having found the One, embrace the Many as the One.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion: the illusion that by making vows we become a different species of being, pseudoangels, “spiritual men,” men of interior life, what have you.

Certainly these traditional values are very real, but their reality is not of an order outside everyday existence in a contingent world, nor does it entitle one to despise the secular: though “out of the world,” we are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest. We take a different attitude to all these things, for we belong to God. Yet so does everybody else belong to God. We just happen to be conscious of it, and to make a profession out of this consciousness. But does that entitle us to consider ourselves different, or even better, than others? The whole idea is preposterous.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.” To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

This changes nothing in the sense and value of my solitude, for it is in fact the function of solitude to make one realize such things with a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the other illusions, and all the automatisms of a tightly collective existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how much it belongs to them—and that I have a responsibility for it in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone, they are not “they” but my own self. There are no strangers!

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.

Again, that expression le point vierge (I cannot translate it), comes in here.* At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Several things that I have learned from my dive into Christianity these last few months I find in Merton's words here.

Merton tells us his "seeing" is unteachable or unmapable -- it's a gift. Paul wrote about the gift of love in I Corinthian 13. Paul, much like Merton, wrote of the delicious future event when men might no longer "see through a glass, darkly," but instead see each other "face to face," knowing each other, completely, likening it to how we are known by God.

Merton uses the phrase "shining like the sun" to refer to what people really are like. This comes from the books of Matthew and Revelation and is used in one of the so-called 'extra' stanzas of Amazing Grace, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Here, the line from Matthew that describes Jesus:

And He was transfigured before them; and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as light.

And here, Stowe's stanza of Amazing Grace:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We've no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we first begun.

------

* A few pages earlier in his book, Merton wrote, "Massignon has some deeply moving pages in the Mardis de Dar-es-Salam: About the desert, the tears of Agar, the Muslims, the 'point vierge' of the spirit, the center of our nothingness where, in apparent dispair, one meets God -- and is found completely in his mercy."

Flyer to be circulated at Loaves and Fishes

Your Time Has Value
Your Life Has Meaning

Last Friday morning, a few people, focused solely on their own wants or needs, rushed into Friendship Park after the gates opened, oblivious to safety considerations. It was the ill-thought determination of Park or L&F management that the park should then be evacuated and closed and that it (and other L&F services, such as Men’s Washroom) should remain closed for a period of thirty minutes.

This “toddler’s time out” imposed upon all the “guests” of the Park is demonstrative of a nanny-management philosophy in place at Loaves that treats the adult users of its services as irresponsible children.

Solely because of the big-hearted generosity of Sacramento-area individuals and businesses, Loaves & Fishes exists – as a facility to promote the well-being of people who have fallen on Hard Times. These individuals and businesses provide Loaves & Fishes with over $5,000,000 each year to improve the lives of displaced people like you and me.

By closing the park for thirty minutes, in an act of impetuosity, L&F imperils the ability of people to get to work or meet court dates or make it to other appointments or to otherwise achieve something or get full measure from their day. While no one doubts there is compassion at the heart of Loaves of Fishes, one has to wonder if the people in charge are enough aware of the implications of their acts and how fantastic and amazing and worthy of ‘a break’ the people they serve are. Basically, Loaves has abundant heart, but inadequate head; compassion, but not wisdom.

Regular users of Loaves’ services are greatly appreciative of what they receive and view what they receive as life-saving. Absent Loaves and Fishes, many of us would go hungry, left on the mean streets with a foul body odor, in misery and despair. But while this is true, it is fair to ask if the Loaves and Fishes operation is nearly as good as it should be and if it is getting enough “bang for the buck” from the donations it receives.

Loaves and Fishes operating culture believes in lines and queues, like the welfare office; a parent-to-child transactional mode, like the welfare office; punishing all for the “misbehavior” of a few, like kindergarten teachers and Nazis in Poland. If there was greater appreciation for poor people’s lives, on high, I think there would be motivation to fix these very evident flaws of operation.

Life is a process of ‘becoming,’ a combination of
states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state
and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
-- Anais Nin

8/18/08 homelesstom.blogspot.com

Life is a process of 'becoming'

Life is a process of ‘becoming,’ a combination of
states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state
and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

-- Anais Nin in 1932

Two Men Down in the Mission Dorm

Dawn came, cold and clear.

It would be fifteen minutes until the sixty of us would be allowed to leave the dorm room at the rescue mission, but with early-morning light coming through the windows, I could now see the man to the right of me who had been wheezing for many hours, keeping me from being able to sleep. Actually, there was only a caucasian foot of his that I could see. The rest of him was covered by a blanket, pink in a print of scattered small-child’s toys. The blanket rose and fell, gently, as the man inhaled and exhaled, noisily.

My brothers in this room, crowded with bunk beds, were starting to awaken: a man nearby was talking quietly on his cellphone; the bathroom door was getting pushed open, flashing the room’s bright light on us, and then slamming shut. I felt the need to piss.

I began the process of putting myself in order – to use a urinal, shave, brush my teeth. I made my bed, a lower bunk, #46, a necessary act to reserve it for my next night’s slumber.

Other men began moving around, getting themselves ready for the new day: hopping down from upper berths; slipping past each other in the narrow spaces between beds; straightening sheets and snapping blankets into place. Morning greetings, conversation and laughter overcame the snorting, breathy sounds of men still sleeping.

The man in Bed 48 continued to wheeze.

At the moment designated in the rules read to us each night, Richard, whom, unlike us, is in The Program, a work and religious-education intensive, entered the room, rattling the cowbell in his hand, releasing us to go downstairs to dress and get breakfast and leave. I pointed out my suffering neighbor. “This man’s down,” I said. Richard rang the bell close to the fellow’s head.

On Saturday mornings there’s no bus that stops in front of the Union Gospel Mission, so I carry my heavy duffel bag down Bannon Street and east on North B. A wailing fire truck passes me headed the other way. It’s followed shortly by a wailing ambulance.

The next evening, in the period before ‘lights out’ in the dorm, the man who had the bed to the left of mine, J.B., was a few beds away talking with Milton. On J.B.’s bottom-bunk bed, numbered 44, sat a guy breathing with some difficulty. The guy’s reserved bed was some yards beyond, but it was at bed 44 where his energy flagged and he stopped to sit. Michael, who’s in The Program and formerly worked as a nurse, was with the sick fellow.

“Do you have emphysema?” Michael asked. The guy nodded. “Do you need an ambulance?” The guy was unsure. The mission’s night manager, Bill, was summoned and arrived with his cellphone. “Do you want an ambulance?” The guy nodded. Bill started to dial. The guy changed his mind. Rest is what he needed, he believed. Only some sleep. Michael aided his charge at lying down on his side.

J. B. was disgruntled to lose his lower bunk, but quickly reconciled himself to the situation and took his blanket and moved to the upper bunk that had been reserved for this new, sick guy.

I told Michael the sick fellow now needed a blanket. Michael said he didn’t need one right now – in the still-warm dorm room – but would get him one later when he checked in on the fellow. I asked where Michael could be found if something should happen. He said, “Probably out back, lifting weights.” Fine.

At 10 o’clock, when the lights were switched off, I vowed to try to sleep lightly, to be aware if the sick fellow made any sound of distress. But if he made a sound, I didn’t hear it. I fell into a deep, selfish sleep and only awoke around 2am to find my sick compadre just as he had been: breathing deeply as if his breaths were consciously forced. I got up and gave the poor fellow my yellow cotton blanket. “Rest as best you can, my friend,” I said. I doubt that I was heard.

Without my blanket, I could not keep from being cold in the dorm, but his allowed me to stay alert to anything awry from my neighbor.

At about 4am, the man stirred and I went over to ask if he needed to go to the bathroom. He motioned that he did. He summoned more energy from within himself than I expected and walked and did his business with only directional guidance from me. But when I got him back to his bunk, he collapsed and it took some effort on my part to get his bedclothes aright such that he might rest, warmly.

My neighbor continued with his uneasy sleep as later I and my dozens of brothers did those things to get us out of there and into the brisk day’s air. After a hardy breakfast, walking east on North B, I could see the flashing lights and hear the wails of a fire truck and ambulance coming toward me.

That night, Michael would tell me that he’s seen people in the emphysema-suffering man’s condition in his duties when he was employed as a nurse. The man wouldn’t be alive for long, he told me. “The important thing is that his soul be saved.”

Tom Armstrong is homeless and has been staying at the Union Gospel Mission most nights for the last three months. He is Buddhist.

An ambulance is called to 400 Bannon at a rate of perhaps 50/year. Men get sick at the mission, but most often the emergency calls relate to fights just outside the premises. On the sidewalk just outside the gate, every night there are perhaps forty people sleeping or partying.

The Politics of Entitlement

Instead of emphasizing the vulnerabilities of the homeless as the rationale for caretaking policies, political advocates for the homeless (although they acknowledged the vulnerability of the homeless) trace the roots of this privation down institutional rather than behavioral paths. They blame government welfare or housing subsidy cutbacks for pushing poor people into the streets. They tend to identify the homeless as constituents as opposed to clients, thus justifying political organizing for the homeless on the ground of social justice for fellow citizens rather than the individual need of clients. However, since the homeless can exert little collective political pressure on their own, the advocates have ended up utilizing the images of vulnerability to create public support for the care of the homeless. …

… In debates about social rights the work ethic reasserts itself with a vengeance. The belief that normal citizens deserve by right only those social benefits they have earned remains a formidable ideological obstacle to the reform efforts of the advocates. As a result, the benefits and virtue of spreading responsibility for the homeless through an expanded welfare state stirs up considerable disagreement – not just between conservatives and liberals but, even more important, among liberals themselves.

… The public seems willing to help the visibly dependent and vulnerable, but it stops short of supporting policies that would subsidize housing for the poor. Ironically, the result has meant increased funding for emergency and transitional shelters, whose residents are likely to find it increasingly difficult to leave. Increasing shelter populations are in turn justifying increased expenditures for additional caretakers and services, producing a new type of public, nonprofit welfare bureaucracy.

Attempts to reverse this situation have also floundered, in part, because of homeless people’s lack of political muscle. Efforts to organize this population have proven largely ineffective because of the profound uncertainties the homeless face every day.

From a section “The Politics of Entitlement” in the book New Homeless and Old by Hoch and Slayton.