Crossing over?

[Tariki]

One of the most popular images in Buddhism is of "crossing over".........from the "near shore" to the "farther shore". The trajectory seems to be from "here" to "there"................

Although a Buddhist myself (and the dharma, like Christianity, has "many mansions") I find more appealing the idea expressed in the poetry of T S Eliot..................that we "return to the place where we started from and know it for the first time"........(after all our explorations!). Auden expresses somewhat the same thought, in his words....."For the garden is the only place there is, yet we shall not find it until we have searched everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert". The "garden" is already there, in our hearts, yet we are blind.........

The second set of images speaks more of reconciliation, even acceptance and forgiveness, rather than any dissatisfaction with what "is" and the attempt to "transcend" it/ourselves and reach a "better place"...........or become a "better" person. (Pure acceptance seems, paradoxically, the ultimate transformation.)

Words are only words - fingers that point at the moon..........images are only images................Yet ideas and images and words are powerful mediums for guiding us on our various paths.

From "here" to "there"................."crossing over"....? Or "returning to where we started from (and knowing it for the first time)"......?

Perhaps all a bit vague! (and speaking of my own path, all to do with my own refusal to "betray" this world - the only one I have ever known - for the sake of some imagined "other")

Any thoughts...opinions.....??

Thanks
Derek

[pohaikawahine]

It is my belief that when we cross or passover it is connected with the movement of the internal spiralling energy up the spinal column into the brain .... this is the process of visions, revelations or entering paradise. Others may not agree, but if what I believe has truth then one would not betray the world we live in because both worlds (that of the material and that of the spiritual) exists within each other. One does not have to leave the material world (physically) to do this, but one will leave it spiritually and can return. Just my thoughts to share on the subject. he hawai'i au, pohaikawahine

[earl]

Originally Posted by Tariki

One of the most popular images in Buddhism is of "crossing over".........from the "near shore" to the "farther shore". The trajectory seems to be from "here" to "there"................

Although a Buddhist myself (and the dharma, like Christianity, has "many mansions") I find more appealing the idea expressed in the poetry of T S Eliot..................that we "return to the place where we started from and know it for the first time"........(after all our explorations!). Auden expresses somewhat the same thought, in his words....."For the garden is the only place there is, yet we shall not find it until we have searched everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert". The "garden" is already there, in our hearts, yet we are blind.........

The second set of images speaks more of reconciliation, even acceptance and forgiveness, rather than any dissatisfaction with what "is" and the attempt to "transcend" it/ourselves and reach a "better place"...........or become a "better" person. (Pure acceptance seems, paradoxically, the ultimate transformation.)

Words are only words - fingers that point at the moon..........images are only images................Yet ideas and images and words are powerful mediums for guiding us on our various paths.

From "here" to "there"................."crossing over"....? Or "returning to where we started from (and knowing it for the first time)"......?

Perhaps all a bit vague! (and speaking of my own path, all to do with my own refusal to "betray" this world - the only one I have ever known - for the sake of some imagined "other")

Any thoughts...opinions.....??

Thanks
Derek

Hi Derek. As always, you're near-poetic thoughts provide such wonderful stimulus for contemplation. In TS Eliot's famous words is the implication that 1 cannot arrive without first departing; that 1 cannot know without first puzzling. "Pure" acceptance never seems to come without the pulls & tugs first of resistance to "other," whether the other is personal pain, a stranger, or the existential angst of trying to figure "it" out. Whether it's the Christian saying "Thy will be done" or the student of zen asking him or herself, "what is this?" before the release of acceptance into what those phrases imply there is initially resistance, retreat from the other. Necessarily so, for we cannot close the gap between apparent otherness and ones "self" without meeting the other, meaning to cross over the boundary of who we thought we were, what we thought was acceptable. Always the meeting is beneficial to the evolution in the process of discovering what self/other might mean. Take care, Earl

[Tariki]

"Pure acceptance"

I remember way back on another forum, one guy saying that his own mantra was "THIS IS IT"...........total affirmation. I bulked at this at the time, and in my own particular self-righteous way (!) told him so. The "mantra" made me angry - I saw it in the light of Blake's words from "The Four Zoas", that it "is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity..................to hear sounds of love in the thunder storm...........while our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruit and flowers"

"Pure acceptance" with so much suffering - and so many who suffer?

Anyway, "at first mountains are mountains, then mountains are no longer mountains, then they become mountains again" Why not just cut out the middle man? Remain as we are? As you say Earl, some sort of "exploration"........some journey of understanding is necessary. I do think the "mood" of this journey often needs to change........in the sense indicated by the Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa when he spoke of "spiritual materialism".............this means "the stepping out of ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgement, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking". This seems to echo the Shin teaching of deep hearing.........the deep hearing of our own "infinite finitude"..........the deep realization that we are ordinary and ignorant, that ultimately there is no place to go (and perhaps, no "one" to go there!)

In Shin (Pure Land) Buddism the mood changes when we see that what we first experienced and understood as "self power" was in fact "other power", that we have been not so much seeking as that we have first been found.

Ultimately there is no "self" nor "other"..........just the graceful acceptance.

In Shin we seek to live the life of the nembutsu............."Namu-Amida-Butsu"............this finite, foolish self is embraced by unbounded infinite compassion. Each grows in the light of the other until they become one. Bits of rubble are turned to gold.

Derek