Kuan Yin's Gentle Rain

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.”

This eloquent description of mercy’s virtue, expressed by Shakespeare through his wise young character Portia, could also be said of Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin, the elegant goddess of love, mercy and compassion, is the most popular and widely-worshipped of all Eastern deities. She is sometimes thought of as a bodhisattva: a being who denies herself the opportunity to enter heaven in order to remain in the world and give help and guidance to mortals. 

Kuan Yin embodies loving compassion, and is the support, guide and protector of all living beings. Her name, which means ‘She who sees sounds’, can be interpreted as ‘She who sees the prayers and cries from the hearts of all people as visible images, and gives them her aid and consolation’. When we open our hearts to her, we feel this ‘gentle rain’ of the goddess: a deep and profound understanding of all our sorrows which goes beyond mere language to describe it. We use such terms as ‘compassion’, ‘love’ and ‘mercy’. But these are only words. These qualities well forth from the goddess in an intermingled whole, inseparable from each other. Kuan Yin sees our sufferings, experiences them herself, and bears them all gladly for our sakes. 

Kuan Yin is the creatrix, the friend in need and negotiator with fate. She is the great goddess of life itself, and even goes beyond all boundaries of religion. Statues of her may be found on almost every Taoist holy mountain, and in almost every Buddhist temple. She is honoured in Shinto, and even within Christianity her identity and what she stands for is widely known. She is petitioned by those women who wish to conceive, and her aid is sought in times of illness and adversity. 

Kuan Yin helps us with the relinquishing of our control over situations, allows suppressed emotions to surface, brings tolerance and empathy, and supports us in the development and experiencing of our softer, more feminine side. She is the patroness of women, and children newly come into the world. Kuan Yin brings the strength of mercy, love, forgiveness and healing to our world. Her colours are white and lavender, and her flower is the five-petalled lotus. For our sakes she remains among us, always ready to take our burdens upon herself, and to give her own virtues to us in return.

But even more than this: it is Kuan Yin’s presence which invites us to become as she is, that we ourselves reflect her being in our own behaviour, both towards others and towards ourselves. Her example is a reminder that the goddess is really us, and that transformation is always possible.

Spirit of the Valley

Spirit of the Valley

The valley spirit never dies 
Call it the mystery, the woman. 
The mystery, the Door of the Woman, 
is the root of earth and heaven. 
Forever this endures, forever. 
And all its uses are easy.

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 6 
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin 

*

There are over thirty translations by various writers in English alone of these beautiful and elusive lines from the Tao Te Ching, all of them offering something different, like a slowly-turning crystal which constantly reflects the light from its many facets. But the light itself which the crystal reflects remains unchanged. The Tao is the light, and the way in which we perceive the Tao is the turning crystal.

Of all beliefs, Tao has been described as the most feminine. If it can be said to have a 'message', then that message urges us simply to let things flow, to offer no resistance. From resistance comes struggle and conflict, both in ourselves and in the world through which we move, because we ourselves project those inner feelings into our outer world. It is described as the Spirit of the Valley, because all things naturally flow to the valley. It is also described as a vessel that can never be emptied and never becomes over-full. No matter how much we drink from it, the vessel is inexhaustible. Greater than this: the more we sustain ourselves from it, the more it gives to us. 

The Spirit of the Valley is a young woman, because a young woman's innocence and purity speaks to our own lost innocence, and reminds us that the pain and separation of a lost Eden is itself an illusion, because only in the outer world of forms is Eden ever lost. In the Valley there is nothing to heal, because nothing was ever damaged. In the Valley, all remains whole and unblemished.

But the Spirit is also the Great Mother, wise beyond words, and always ready to advise. We need only make ourselves receptive to her words. As the Tao describes, it is this door of the woman which is 'easy' to open because the more difficult we imagine it is to open, the more difficult we make it to access what in reality costs no effort. And it is the root of earth and of heaven because at the root lies the source of all things: the eternal and eternally-giving Spirit of the Valley. 

The Lovers

The Lovers

This silence is not the silence

of the vast space between the stars.

Neither is it the silence

of the dim grey light before the dawn.

This is the greater silence of lovers

that has no need of words.

A wide cloth, spread between two

as easily covering as removed:

a white membrane –

both birth-sack and winding-cloth

for past selves left far behind:

forever changed by these infinities

of transformation, gold and white

uniting in an alchemical wedding.

White queen, red king,

and all the world their court.

Glistening, new-formed:

these are no masks they wear

but their true selves

with all else burned away

in the white fire

of love’s simple existence.

For love has no need of masks

and acceptance is all

and everything.

Closer Than Our Breath

Closer Than Our Breath

Are we seekers looking for love, happiness, peace or truth?

Know that all that we seek already exists

Here, in our hearts of hearts.

Let the seeking stop – let us be still,

Let us enter the realm of Silence and realize

True fulfillment and perfect oneness.

By seeking we are only affirming lack

And creating a wall thwarting vision.

Let's stop the search

Let’s call it off and let it go,

And instead, look with the fresh eyes of a new born,

To see without layers of thought, as clear as sunlight,

To see with an open heart as vast as the summer sky,

So we may know that the truth of birth and death

Is closer than our breath

We have sculpted what we wish for into objects,

Things to attain, realize, grasp, and make our own.

In doing so our search is no longer true, our compass awry,

Blind to the truth of who we are.

And who we are is pure awareness itself,

The very source of peace, love, bliss and truth.

We do not need to become, evolve or transform into something else,

But simply to be in our truest essence,

To uncover what is already here,

And if we believe otherwise let us then awaken

From our fitful dreams.

Formless, pure awareness cannot be defined,

Whatever definition or label one may place upon it can never be true.

It cannot be touched

By anything manifested in form, thought or feeling.

It is infinitely pure, infinitely free,

Unbound by space and time,

Self-knowing, self-illuminating, bliss itself.

Without it nothing can be created  
It is the Source, 
The Mother of All.

Yet it is not its creation, but creation is within it

For all exists within pure awareness,

Arising and dissolving within her bosom.

Follow its thread and we’ll discover that

It Is closer than our breath.

Picture by Noell Oszvald

SHE

The black water beckoned. The current here was barely noticeable, and therefore especially dangerous. Only the inhabitants of the district knew the secrets of the river that for generations surrounded the area around the mill and the nearby valley with her silver inconstancy. For a stranger she hid her secrets like a coquettish young mistress. And so she wound her way with soft nibbling movements around the ankles of the innocent admirer who allowed himself to be completely taken in by her carresses, and like the young man tasting fresh love, surrendered to her intoxicating spell.

But as soon as the wild winds of autumn sheered over her waters the river revealed another darker face. Then she cried out and blew her foam-topped waves upwards to the overhanging branches, sighing to grasp what she could not possess. She let her depths seethe and became as dark as the night. The innocent passer-by of summer no longer dared to approach her, and the skimming water beetles disappeared hastily into her darker undercurrents. She raged and stormed like a rejected woman, dragging everything along with her that in her wild anger she could grab hold of. She tore at the banks, shook with her hips until the young trees relented; let the mud from her underbelly swamp the boats of the playing children. She laughed and howled when a child clutched crying to the thin rope of the fragile craft. Then she tugged until the rope was forced loose... and dragging her prey to her secret place deep beneath the surface, carelessly tossed the rope back into the boat as a vain woman tosses her long hair behind her, as the last air bubble on her surface burst like a twig in a fire. Her bosom would rise and fall, rise and fall, with the wild need to destroy.

Until the winds died and the iron cold of winter forced her to silence with its smooth tongue of sleet, covering her body from the depths to the surface under a layer of ice, freezing every movement. Then she surrendered, allowing herself to be walked over. Sharp blades etched lines into her unfathomable soul. Now that the winter freed them from their fears, the villagers illuminated the sails of the windmill and the trees along her naked banks with lanterns. Wooden huts were set up on her ice where tired skaters, huddled over wood fires in braziers, could warm themselves with hot soup.

Sometimes she fought back. Then, just a little, she melted and opened her watery eye. But the people knew her ways too well. They did not allow themselves to be bewitched, but skated instead in a great arc around the gaping hole which had formed. Then she sputtered and spat. But her powers diminished, and instead her sputterings became something rather pathetic. And so with shrunken pride she closed her eye once more.

While she lay imprisoned in her own currents, the river waited confidently for the coming spring. The winter, she knew, would always lose its cold and silent grip over her. She had time. And once the ice had melted and she had regained her natural beauty, then saplings that lined her banks would see her fairness, give her a new sheen, and then she carried out her victory rite. She would sing once more, and let the mill wheels turn at full tilt. She would allow herself to be decorated with water lilies, and her water beetles would smooth the long tangles from her silver hair, and comb the dead branches and drifting boats out of her locks. The tears for those who had been lost would cleanse her banks, and she would flow, her bosom rising and falling, and her hips again would lure the stranger who would lie in her bed. Her dark undercurrents she would keep hidden until the moment when she once more needed to appease her hunger. And the valley dwellers feared that moment. Each year they braced themselves, and each year anew the river extracted her price, and they were not spared. Then there was talk about shutting down the mill and leaving the valley for good. But no-one took the first step, and they dare not look each other in the eye. Instead they gazed towards the dark water where the undercurrent was the strongest, the most invisible, and shook their heads with heavy hearts. Not only did she enchant the unsuspecting stranger. Nobody escaped her allure. 

She gave life and she took it. And so they feared her. But stronger than fear was their love, and as uncontrollable. So they stayed and paid the price, for she flowed as blood through their veins.

Artwork: Water Goddess by Greg Spalenka

Mary Magdalene

These days

the handful of silent stars

to which she projects herself

is more than enough.

There was a time

when she aimed for the sun

and love set all alight.

But now her sun is the pain 

that goes on beating down.

Her heart finds no shade

and all is night.

Only for the pale and distant stars

does she now cast a shadow

but even her star-cast shadow mourns:

the sun stops the perfect completion

for which she yearns

here in this place

beneath the silent stars.

But here…

where sky and sea

and stars and alien shore

enfold her in their sanctuary

and winds of grace

dry up the muddy pools once more…

Here…

where passing clouds

shut out the face of night

her tearful footprints

mirror boundless light.

Imagined portrait of Mary Magdalene painted by David Bergen.

Resurrection

Birth, life, death and resurrection. These are the eternal themes which are reflected in the great myths. A hero is born miraculously – perhaps from the union of a god with a mortal woman. That hero lives his life, performs his heroic deeds, dies a noble and dramatic death, after which he is resurrected as an immortal constellation among the stars.

In nature as well these epic themes are played out in the cycle of the seasons, as we – and our remote ancestors who were crucially attuned to these things – witness each year with the awakening of new life in the spring after its seasonal death in the cold soil of winter. Even in those desert places which have no temperate seasons, the dried husks of seeds can lie dormant in the hard sun-baked ground, sometimes for years, before an infrequent downpour awakens them to sudden life, and the desert blooms like a garden.

The act of resurrection is like a truth that is encoded into the matrix of life, and we respond to that truth when we encounter it in stories. For the Christian Gnostics, the events of the Biblical resurrection were not so much intended to be read as simple history, but as events which mirrored these great truths, which provided a kind of teaching aid to remind them of these profound lessons of life. And these lessons carried a deeper meaning than mere rebirth. Resurrection involves redemption: redemption of the inner self, a shedding of those things which might hinder the process of true spiritual resurrection. These could be a breaking through the ego which tricks us into thinking that our mortal selves are the only reality, or even just the letting-go of those ideas that prevent us from seeing such things in a clearer light.

The letting-go of all these things, of all preconceptions of what make our ‘reality’, is the path of resurrection. But to tread that path involves a process of inner ‘dying’ – not physical dying, but the death of those things which might be holding us back from reaching our true fulfilment as beings intimately connected with, and part of, the greater Mystery.
  
It is no coincidence that the Christian Easter takes place at the time of the year that originally was reserved for the celebration of this process in pre-Christian times, for Christianity layered itself on top of these old festivals, just as churches were often built upon the demolished foundations of pagan temples and other pre-Christian sacred sites. This as well gives an added potency to the Christian story, and the events of the Christian Easter, which unfold upon the greater stage of mythic drama which lies beyond the stage of historical narrative. Easter is the time of resurrection, and a person who takes part in that resurrection during his life, has conquered death.

This is the crown of the Christian Initiation Mystery. He who resurrects in a gnostic sense, has it in his power to work through joy, and to take part in the divine plan of creation. It is a grand perspective, and one which we can let ourselves be inspired by – and not only at Easter!

The Carpenters

The Carpenters

Ours is a work of wood.

It’s what we do, you see:

shaping, planing,

one piece to the other,

length by length

and beam by heavy beam,

cut from the cedar tree.

Adze, plane, auger and saw

chest for a dowry, lintel for a door.

There’s two of us

here in this workshop

scuffing through shavings,

with orders stacking up

and another just come round:

three more beams needed -

only the cross-beams, of course.

The long uprights

wedged, thrust deep into the ground

stand waiting up there on the hill

and we wonder:

this time, who’ll ride the thunder?

Maybe three rebels,

their shouts of sedition unheeded

or they could be three robbers,

bound for heaven or hell - 

or neither of these, who’s to tell?
As if confirmation was needed.

They say some prophet on a donkey

who was greeted like a king

rode by a week ago or more.

But prophet or king,

he’ll wear our wood on his back

and that’s for sure -

bent with the weight of earthly folly

and there’s no lack

of that  - not yesterday

or any time before.

So we’ll shape this tree for a king

and we’ll shape it good

and he’ll carry it up that shadowed hill

and he’ll feel the rub of our wood

and he’ll know its tender mercies

and they’ll be both his and ours

but he’ll feel the weight of our wood no more

as it carries him to the stars. 

Painting: artist untraced

Rachel, a Woman Disciple

Rachel, a Woman Disciple
on Jesus, the Vision and the Man

I often wonder whether Jesus was a man of flesh and blood like ourselves, or a thought without a body, in the mind, or an idea that visits the vision of man.
Often it seems to me that he was but a dream dreamed by countless men and women at the same time in a sleep deeper than sleep and a dawn more serene than all dawns.

And it seems that in relating the dream, the one to the other, we began to deem it a reality that had indeed come to pass; and in giving it body of our fancy and a voice of our longing we made it a substance of our own substance.

But in truth he was not a dream. We knew him for three years and beheld him with open eyes in the high tide of noon. We touched his hands, and followed him from one place to another. We heard his discourses and witnessed his deeds. Think you that we were a thought seeking after more thought, or a dream in the region of dreams?

Great events always seem alien to our daily lives, though their nature may be rooted in our nature. But though they appear sudden in their coming and sudden in their passing, their true span is for years and for generations.

Jesus of Nazareth was himself the Great Event. That man whose father and mother and brothers we know, was himself a miracle wrought in Judea. Yea, all his own miracles, if placed at his feet, would not rise to the height of his ankles. And all the rivers of all the years shall not carry away our remembrance of him.

He was a mountain burning in the night, yet he was a soft glow beyond the hills. He was a tempest in the sky, yet he was a murmur in the mist of daybreak. He was a torrent pouring from the heights to the plains to destroy all things in his path. And he was like the laughter of children.

Every year I had waited for spring to visit this valley. I had waited for the lilies and the cyclamen, and then every year my soul had been saddened within me; for ever I longed to rejoice with the spring, yet I could not.

But when Jesus came to my seasons he was indeed a spring, and in him was the promise of all the years to come. He filled my heart with joy; and like the violets I grew, a shy thing, in the light of his coming. And now the changing seasons of worlds not yet ours shall not erase his loveliness from this, our world.

Nay, Jesus was not a phantom, nor a conception of the poets. He was man like yourself and myself. But only to sight and touch and hearing; in all other ways he was unlike us.

He was a man of joy; and it was upon the path of joy that he met the sorrows of all men. And it was from the high roofs of his sorrows that he beheld the joy of all men.

He saw visions that we did not see, and heard voices that we did not hear; and he spoke as if to invisible multitudes, and ofttimes he spoke through us to races yet unborn.

And Jesus was often alone. He was among us yet not one with us. He was upon earth, yet he was of the sky. And only in our aloneness may we visit the land of his aloneness.

He loved us with tender love. His heart was a winepress. You and I could approach with a cup and drink therefrom.

One thing I used to understand in Jesus: he would make merry with his listeners; he would tell jests and use plays upon words, and laugh with all the fullness of his heart, even when there were distances in his eyes and sadness in his voice. But I understand now.

I often think of the earth as a woman heavy with her first child. When Jesus was born, he was the first child. And when he died, he was the first man to die.

For did it not appear to you that the earth was stilled on that dark Friday, and the heavens were at war with the heavens? And felt you not when his face disappeared from our sight as if we were naught but memories in the mist?

Kahlil Gibran - from Jesus, the Son of Man, 1928

Drawing by Leonardo da Vinci

Angel

Angel

Oh, if only you knew how your face changes

when in the midst of our silent, pure uniting glance,

you lose yourself, turn inwards and move away from 

me !

Like a landscape, that just before was so clear

you become clouded, shutting me out.

Then I wait. I wait silently, often for a long time.

And were I someone such as you

then the pain of a love scorned would kill me.

But now…

now I have infinite patience from the Blessed.

So now, unperturbed, I wait for you,

whenever you might come.

And I take this soft reproach,

not as a reproach, but as absolution.

*

O wüßtest du, wie sehr dein Antlitz sich
Verändert, wenn du mitten in dem Blick,
Dem stillen reinen, der dich mir vereint,
Dich innerlich verlierst und von mir kehrst!
Wie eine Landschaft, die noch eben hell,
Bewölkt es sich und schließt mich von dir aus.
Dann warte ich. Dann warte schweigend ich
Oft lange. Und wär ich ein Mensch wie du,
Mich tötete verschmähter Liebe Pein.
So aber gab unendliche Geduld
Der Vater mir und unerschütterlich
Erwarte ich dich, wann du immer kommst.
Und diesen sanften Vorwurf selber nimm
Als Vorwurf nicht, als keusche Botschaft nur.

Christian Morgenstern

(1871 - 1914)

Painting: Odilon Redon

What Women Truly Wish For

In the place where legend and history intertwine with each other, and the deeds of heroes are more than stories, the bold knight Gawain rides out from the court of King Arthur. Our gallant hero has determined to find an answer to the question which once had been asked of his monarch, and to which the king himself had no answer. Namely: what is it that women truly wish for the most?

Through the deepest woods and wilds our knight rides, until one day in a shadowed glade he encounters a grotesque form standing bent but resolute in the middle of the way. Such a walking rag pile could only be a witch, and indeed so it proves, as the hideous hag looks up and meets the imperious gaze of the knight. He commands her to stand aside and let him pass. Well, of course he does. He is, after all, an important knight on an important quest, and has no time to waste on this hag who seems less of a woman than a demon. But the knight is riding through legend, where all reality is enhanced, and nothing is what it seems. 

In cracked tones the hag announces that she knows the answer to his unspoken question. That, naturally enough, gets our hero’s attention. He demands of her that she demonstrate to him that she indeed knows the question which is in his thoughts, otherwise how can he believe her?

‘I shall do more than that, Sir Knight,’ croaks the hag, ‘I can help you with the answer! But to hear my words, you will need first to dismount and grant me a sweet kiss..’. So driven by curiosity, or by loyalty to his liege, or by remembering that in the legend through which he is riding a kiss can have unexpected consequences, our hero dismounts and (presumably with his eyes closed during the moment) puckers up and meets those leathery lips with his own. Legend remains true to form, and on the instant of those oh-so dissimilar lips touching each other, the hag is transfigured into a beautiful maiden. 

‘And now that your valour has descried my true appearance,’ says the fair Ragnall (for that indeed is the lady’s name) ‘it only remains for you to ask for my hand in marriage, and then the answer which so eluded your king will be given to you. Namely: what is it that women truly wish for the most?’ 

So after some inner turmoil, or perhaps after wrestling with a very un-legendary fear of commitment, our brave knight duly and dutifully pops the question to the fair Ragnall. Ah, but then comes the following question…

‘So what will you now, my dear betrothed?’, asks the lady, ‘that by the day’s clear light I remain as beautiful as you see me now, and that in the grey night’s shadows I take my hag form? Or perhaps you would prefer things to be reversed, and you would have my hag by the harsh light of day, and know me only in the moon’s dim light as you now see me?’ Ah, poor Gawain… what to choose? Once more our hero is plunged into inner turmoil. And perhaps for that very reason he searches ever deeper into his own being for the answer. And the answer comes.

‘Dearest,’ Gawain at last proclaims, ‘you should decide for yourself what you wish, for surely your true form is whatever form you yourself choose to take.’ Ah, our hero has found the perfect answer at last! Marriage duly and dutifully follows… and with the riddle resolved legend prevails, and the shimmering beauty of the fair Ragnall shines forth both by day and by night. 

For what women truly wish for is in the end no different from what men also truly want, which is no less than to be wholly accepted for who they are – whatever that might be, and in whichever way our life’s circumstances might change us.
   

Painting: La Belle Dame sans Merci by Mark Fishman