Post-Siddhi Spirituality

First there is immersion--call it paganism, if only functional--and the thought that something, someone, some experience will fulfill.

Then suffering, then deep existential suffering and the realization that nothing, no one will bring this happiness.

Then the quest. The quest for release.

The adventure may be completed in this life or spent tantalizingly close but never to be fulfilled in this life-realm, only in a post-death heavenly existence or in continual incarnations.

Or the adventure does cease in this life; it culminates in the experience of the arhat, the Gnostic, who has seen through the veil, but sees through in order to escape. In a separate formless experience-realm-mysticism.

Then the realization that the Other is This. And then the Boddhisattva Vow--the Vow to continually stay in this, in the lowest of manifestations. To stay affixed to the cross, human and divine, unborn and dying each moment. The great love and sadness for all beings. Asking the Father to forgive them for they know not what they do.

Either those still lost in the games of immersion--whether power, sex, family, service, growth, exploration--or the spiritual seeker, even the arhat-Gnostics. All so delusion-full.

But not much seeming humor in the path of the Boddhisattva, Crucified Christ.

Then Tantra, then the idea that all is play, all manifestation a lucid efflux. A joyous Resurrection, though still marked by the Scars of the Cross (Tantra-yana transcends and includes Mahayana).

Trungpa said something like: Hinayana want to be enlightened. Mahayana want to be nice guy. Vajrayana want to be Powerful Tantric Lord. None of these are necessary.

All of these movements are still in the pre-evolutionary understanding and most importantly in the pre-intersubjective understanding.

I've been meditating more deeply on some of the ideas I touched upon in the last entry. Mostly around how well (if at all) does Tantra-Mahayana act as a guide for living a post-enlightened life in the world, as it currently constructed.

I'm much more Mahayana than Tantrayana. But I wonder what difference it makes if the vow, the Path take place outside the context of anything larger. Of a life inherently connected, part of a larger movement, that is yet not cultish, based on leader-idol worship, ideological, or spiritually totalitarian. Nor yet irrational, violent, deconstructionist, overly abstract, PC, acerbic, burned out, bitter, and deeply wounded.

A simple (somewhat) sane collective, with individual responsibilty and group affiliation, mature intellect and emotion, politically conscious without being politicized, creative, just and merciful.

The Eastern paths in this country are indivudal paths mainly, whose groups assume a social-cultural level of practice, which itself becomes a rigid orthodoxoy, though typically a smiling, "caring", compassionate one--usually in the case of Eastern religious groups in North America it is the green, postmodern wave.

The Abrahamic traditions, particularly Judaism and Christianity in this country, are so democratizing, so flattening, they seek to keep all in the same boat--at the cost of true spiritual growth in its adherents.

I have had to learn that by worrying about whether or not I am fulfilling the Boddhisattva Vow, I create subtle separation and thereby anxiety, guilt, shame, self-censure/judgment, hypocrisy, and so many other conflicting and destructive emotions.

It is a knife's edge to be neither convinced of one's holiness-fufillment of the Vow, nor yet overly concerned about not fulfilling it. I simply have to let it go and trust that in whatever the Vow, the Great Work-Project is being fulfilled through me.

It brings greater clarity and humility. By focusing on whether the Vow is being fulfilled or not it secretly brings self-centered focus. Hence the simultaneous blame and hypocrisy--I am fulfilling it, I am not....either way the subject is "I".

I have also learned that to be a more open vessel for the Vow, I must embrace more of the Tantric-Vajrayana-Resurrectional Path. Creativity and Authentic Power brings healing, justice in human-human relations and in earth-human relations. A child of God, of man, and the earth. A grown Son of the Divine.

Still that focus helps re-center and heal some of those concerns, but still does not get to the deeper issues, I feel. Namely that it is an inherently subjective and not inersubjective, post-metaphysical path. A path with others, though not reduced to others.

Saying in an evlolutionary mode, that the Vow is to remain not just to heal suffering and point towards awakening but to advance manifestation, is helpful I guess. And yes, as this co-creative desire emerges, there are ways to playfully engage this Crucifixion, knowing that one is always already Resurrected. (An evolutionary Tantrayana).

Still it doesn't seem quite to get it. That seems like the same basic outline in a slightly modified format.

What does it mean to just be in this? Not "BE" in some "BE HERE NOW", Eckhart Tolle kinda way. That has its place, I certainly can't discourage it. But what is beyond that? Beyond even the siddhi, the laughing-dangerous man, ebulliently and effortlessly creative and artistic, full of so-called crazy wisdom?

What is the new sanity on the far side of all those? An Ascension almost.

I have no word for any of this. Still the Love of the Vow, the Heat of Tantra, those remain, but in a quieter way. Not purposefully seeking to re-enter the marketplace with open hands disappearing. Still that occurs. There is no choice to the monastery any longer for this generation, hence not a conscious choice to re-enter the marketplace. The marketplace enters us.

What would a poem look like that was neither conscious of its being read nor purely spontaneous and thereby purposefully trying to creatively engage-imitate the Infinite Flow of Formless Form?

What would a post-dual post-nondual poem look like? Or any other work of art, of whatever kind?

I have no clue.