The Medieval Christians had a word for it—coincidentia
oppositorum—the unification of opposites. For me the “Noche”
of St. John of the Cross represents not one, but many such unifications.
For most of my life I have been a teacher of Buddhist
meditation. My approach is "user friendly" but at the same
time "industrial strength." I fully intend for students to
reach at least the initial stages of classical mystical experience.
In my tradition, this comes about through experiencing
ordinary sense events with radical attentiveness and openness...so radical
that the sense domain literally melts into vibrating space. Eventually
even those vibrations die away. Die
away into what? This is the point that is so difficult to convey.
They die away into a special kind of nothing, a full nothing that is rich and
deeply fulfilling.
Each of the world's traditions has a technical term for
this most special nothing.
Buddhist: shūnyatā
Christian:
nihil per excellentiam
Jewish:
ayn
Islamic: fanā'
Taoist:
wύ
Native American: grandfather – represented by
the empty space between the four direction stones (in the sweat
lodge)
West African: the vibrating space egg that is the
source of the world
People are often put off by such negative language, all
this talk of "emptiness" and "no self." Does the
nihil of the mystic really differ from the nihil of the nihil-ist? Yes.
Because the path to the void is different, the experience of it is
different, and radically so! It is a cessation that contains within it
the cumulative richness of the entire sensed world. Todo y nada,
the ultimate coincidentia oppositorum.
Read La Noche Oscura carefully. On one
level it is a richly sensual, almost pornographic account of a young girl's
nocturnal romantic adventure.
The breeze blew over the castle wall and as I
ran my fingers through his hair, with his gentle hand he pinched my neck...
But at the same time it vividly conveys the vacuous and
impersonal nature of direct encounter with the divine.
In darkness, and safe...without light or
guide...in a place where no one would appear…EVERYTHING stopped…
Think
of who wrote this poem. St. John was one of the most hardcore celibate
renunciates in the history of Christianity. His practice of self-denial
and consensual pain actually frightened his fellow monks (who were pretty
hardcore themselves!) How extraordinary that such a person could portray
the sensuality of love with such appreciation.
On my flowering
breast, which I reserved entirely for Him alone, there he dwelt, and slept and
I caressed him…
Actually
it all makes sense. Why practice
self-denial or self-torture? There
are many pathological reasons but only a few healthy ones.
Put in a nutshell, skillful austerity purifies the sense gates
by breaking down the viscosity in their flow.
This reduces suffering, but it also simultaneously elevates the
satisfaction derived from the senses. The
way to gage the effect of your asceticism is not how much you suffer but how
much richer and more fulfilling your sensual life becomes!
Another unification of (seeming) opposites.
La
Noche Oscura
moves me because it so brilliantly portrays the simultaneous richness and
vacuity that characterizes the day-to-day experience of a true mystic…the
“oneness of Bliss and Void” as the Tibetans put it.
I
was originally trained as an academician, and I still have a great love for
study and research. Although
known for his poems, St. John was also a well-educated scholastic in the
Catholic intellectual tradition. Many
people read La Noche Oscura and are touched at the level of feeling.
But what most people don’t know is that every phrase in the poem
relates to some specific aspect of contemplative technology or Christian
doctrine. St. John intended to
write a detailed prose commentary on the poem explaining its subtle
intellectual content, but he did not live long enough to complete it.
His goal was to unite the affective energy of a lyrical poem with the
intellectual impact of a carefully reasoned essay.
Another integration of worlds.
I
grew up as a Jew in Los Angeles during the ‘50s. My early relationship to the Christian world around me was
one of fear and loathing. When I
began Buddhist practice in Japan in the late ‘60s, I was amazed to find many
Catholic priests and nuns participating in Buddhist retreats there.
Through
contact with these people, I came to realize that the experiences I was having
as a Buddhist meditator had parallels in Christianity, that indeed there is a
universal core of meditative/mystical experience shared by all cultures and
times. Understanding this has
allowed me to feel a harmony between my Jewish background, my Buddhist
training and the Christian milieu in which I live.
À propos of the Jewish connection, St. John’s lifelong friend and
spiritual confidant, St. Teresa of Avila, was 100% ethnically Jewish; her
father was forced to convert (twice!) by the Inquisition.
The Roman Catholic Church officially ranks St. Teresa as its greatest
authority on mystic states. I
must admit deriving considerable “nachas” (satisfaction) from all this!
Think
of how different our worlds are, San Juan de la Cruz and I.
He: a 16th century Roman Catholic priest writing for the
very Inquisition that expelled my ancestors from Spain.
Me: A 21st century Jewish Buddhist techno-rationalist.
Yet, reading La Noche Oscura, his greatest poem, I can honestly
say, “Yes, I understand what your life was ultimately about.
That’s where I live too.”