SEEING AN OSCAR-WINNING SCREENWRITER VISIONS

THE UNSEEN ON SEEING THE TRUTH AND ILLUSIONS

Parabola {Where Spiritual Traditions Meet}

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 PARABOLA { Where Spiritual Traditions Meet }

SEEING
VOLUME 36 NUMBER 3 FALL 2011

6 WHERE'S THE TEMPLE? Trebbe Johnson

In which the author opens "a doorway into the world beyond the known"
➛
14 ILLUSIONS James Opie
Quite a bargain, that grand old painting...or was it?

18 CHERRY TREE BLOSSOM James Whitlow Delano

Amid the devastation of the tsunami, hope and beauty bloom

24 THE UNSEEN RIVER Joyce Kornblatt

Peering into the sacred heart of things

32 THE COSMIC METABOLISM OF FORM Christian Wertenbaker

A meditation on a "great cosmic ecology of consciousness"
➛
38 LOOKING WITH YOUR WHOLE BODY
A conversation with acclaimed artist Jane Rosen

46 SEEING IS AN ACT Jeanne de Salzmann

Rare wisdom on "how to see"

48 AWAKENING SIGHT David Ulrich

What happens when a professional photographer loses an eye?

62 DIGGING DEEPER
A conversation with Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal
➛
66 "SEEING" BY ZEN MASTER DOGEN Kazuaki Tanahashi
Commentary on, and original translation of, the great Zen icon

74 DIONYSOS George Latura Beke

There, in the skies: A golden pathway to the heavens

80 HUGH BROCKWILL RIPMAN Martha Heyneman

Introducing a remarkable spiritual teacher

82 THE EYES OF THE SOUL Hugh Brockwill Ripman

An unforgettable story about crossing the threshold to Reality
 original art by
Kazuaki Tanahashi

88 THE SILENT WITNESS Hugh Brockwill Ripman

Questions, and answers from a man who knows

94 SEEING AND THE YOGA SUTRA Dolphi Wertenbaker

Toward freedom of seeing

EPICYCLE
28 NOMAD GIRL Anonymous | Tibetan Buddhist
Retold by Barbara H. Berger

POETRY
56 VANISHING POINT Tina Schumann
57 SPRING FOR EDWIN Linda Ann Suddarth
58 ANCIENT FRENCH ART HISTORY
LESSONS IN GLASS-ENCASED POOL Anna Roach
59 ~REFRACTION~ Leila A. Fortier

ARCS
60 I LOOKED UP

TANGENTS
100 "GOD AS A VERB" Ron Starbuck
A review of Paul F. Knitter's book WITHOUT BUDDHA I COULD NOT BE A CHRISTIAN, and a
conversation with the author
110 SEEING ART Patty de Llosa
A review of Alexandra Isle's film HIDDEN TREASURES, and a conversation with the filmmaker

BOOK REVIEW
116 EMINENT GURDJIEFFIANS: LORD PENTLAND
James Moore | reviewed by Stephen A. Grant

128 ENDPOINT
 EDITOR & PUBLISHER Jeff Zaleski WHAT IS A PARABOLA?
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Tracy Cochran A parabola is one of the most elegant forms
MANAGING EDITOR Dale Fuller in nature. Every path made by a thrown ball,
every spout of water from a fountain, and
WEST COAST EDITOR Richard Whittaker
every graceful arch of steel cables in a sus-
LONDON EDITOR Tilo Ulbricht
pension bridge is a parabola.
EPICYCLES EDITOR Diane Wolkstein
The parabola represents the epitome of a
POETRY EDITOR Lee van Laer
quest. It is the metaphorical journey to a par-
ONLINE EDITOR Luke Storms ticular point, and then back home, along a
COVER DESIGNER James Sarfati similar path perhaps, but in a different direc-
SENIOR EDITORS Christopher Bamford, tion, after which the traveler is essentially,
Jean Sulzberger, Christian irrevocably changed.
Wertenbaker
Parabolas have an unusual and useful proper-
CONSULTING EDITORS Joseph Bruchac, ty: as in a satellite dish, all parallel beams of
Patty de Llosa, Brian English, Miriam
energy (e.g., light or radio waves) reflect on
Faugno, Lillian Firestone, Gray Henry,
Trebbe Johnson, Winifred Lambrecht, the parabola’s face and gather at one point.
Margo McLoughlin, Jacob Needleman, That point is called the focus.
James Opie, David Rothenberg,
In a similar way, each issue of PARABOLA has its
Martin Rowe, Laura Simms, Richard
own focus: one of the timeless themes of
Smoley, Phyllis Tickle
human existence.

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4 | PARABOLA
 FOCUS | From the Editor

“FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
This passage from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians sums up
the human condition. As we are, we see the world, ourselves, and the
sacred only dimly. But greater clarity and depth of seeing is possible,
Paul promises—as does every major spiritual tradition. And when we
see and know more, it is said, the universe will respond, and know us
as well.
And so this Fall 2011 issue of PARABOLA is devoted to the critical
act of seeing. The bold image on our cover, drawn by artist and
translator Kazuaki Tanahashi, means “see” in Japanese script. Within
the colorful pages that follow, Mark Boal, Oscar-winning screenwriter
and producer of THE HURT LOCKER, talks to us about film as a means
to realize truth, and sculptor Jane Rosen speaks of seeing as an act
of attentiveness that involves body, mind, and feeling. The issue also
features a stunning portfolio by master photographer James Whitlow
Delano, who allows us to perceive beauty and hope among the
devastations of the recent tsunami in Japan, as well as photographs
and memoir by another noted photographer, David Ulrich, that
reveal the suffering and incandescent beauty that can accompany
deeper seeing.
These and other contributors offer spiritual insight as well as
visual. Here theologian Paul F. Knitter explores how two great faiths,
Christianity and Buddhism, can shed light upon one another, and in a
special section, writer and teacher Hugh Brockwill Ripman offers
illuminations through story and Socratic dialogue. In the issue’s
featured book review, a longtime student of two of G.I. Gurdjieff’s
foremost pupils offers revelations about that spiritual master’s legacy.
Poetry, too, can provide memorable visions, and this issue
introduces what we hope will be a recurrent highlight of PARABOLA—
poems from an array of voices that, we anticipate, will have readers
singing with joy. All are invited to submit poems to us; for details,
please visit www.parabola.org.
May this issue of PARABOLA help each of us to see and to be seen.
—JEFF ZALESKI

SUMMER 2011 | 5
 “Where's The Temple?”:
Seeing Behind the Foreground
Trebbe Johnson
A PROFOUND LESSON IN SEEING was revealed to me many years
ago, on the evening of the midsummer day I moved into an old
stone cottage in the Berkshire Downs of England. The event
lasted only a few seconds, but it showed me a key to spying the
wondrous amidst its camouflage.
I was in the upstairs room of the cottage, standing before
open casement windows that overlooked a wild, long-untended
flower garden and creating a writing desk for myself out of an
old wooden door and two sturdy crates. The June nights came
on slowly that far north, but the downs were finally settling into
shadow. At the periphery of my attention, then, something
glowed, and I looked up from my adjustments on the desk to see
what it was. A patch of lilies, star-white by day, now flared silver

6 | PARABOLA
 Mantoku-ji Temple,
Obama, Japan

in the bluing twilight. All the plants in peeked for an instant through a crack
the garden had faded to dark except the in a door and beheld an exalted place
lilies, which looked, at that moment, like a queen’s palace or a lama’s cave.
as if they were radiating back into the If I had looked up just seconds earlier
oncoming night some of the sun they or seconds later, I would not have been
had absorbed by day. And then, as I privy to the sight of lilies holding the
marveled at this botanical perseverance, last light of day and would not have
the lilies were extinguished. The color seen that light drain out of them. And
simply faded, and all the garden was in that instant I understood that if I
plunged into night. were to pay attention to the spaces
I felt I had witnessed something between and just behind the things I
extraordinary, a cosmic process I had thought I needed to look at, there was
not been meant to see. It was as if I had no limit to what I might witness.

FALL 2011 | 7
 Barns near Berkshire Downs, England

THERE IS A DOORWAY into the world They aspire to perceive the unknown
beyond the known. At least that’s what world more clearly and experience it
I believed as a child. I was always on the more intimately. Humans are endowed
lookout for it—glancing sideways at with what Jung called “divine curiosity,”
nesting birds, climbing trees and which “yearns to be born and does not
pretending I lived there, cracking the shrink from conflict, suffering, or sin.”1
ice on ponds and puddles, staring at one Jung was talking about consciousness
spot in the sky. I thought if I could just here, about how hauling the
catch nature from the right oblique unconscious into the bright air of
angle, I would spy the workings of God. consciousness sates this divine curiosity.
It’s human to probe the mystery, not But you could say that we are all seized
just as children, but all our lives and in to a greater or lesser degree by a divine
many ways. We long to peer into the curiosity that makes us feel we’re just on
remote and inaccessible, because we the verge of perceiving the one thing
imagine those elusive places to be more that will clarify and even redeem
exalted than the common areas we pass everything else.
through easily. They seem to hold a Yet the secret world, the keepers of
truth that, because it is unknown, must the mystery, whether birds, gods, oil
therefore be lofty and magnificent, and paint, supernovas, or people with shady
that, once tapped, will be part of us as pasts, are often loathe to share their
well. The mountain climber drawn to secrets with the mortal curious. Myth,
high peaks, the Native American legend, and lore remind us of this truth
Church member who ingests peyote to over and over. When Actaeon witnessed
align with spirit, the artist trying to the goddess Artemis at her bath, she
manifest a more revealing view of punished him by turning him into a stag,
reality, the scientist who explores the and his own hunting dogs tore him to
micro- and macro-universes, and all bits. Psyche lost her beloved Eros when
who question, practice, probe for the she shone a light on his mysterious form
path they’ll know only when they step after she had promised never to look on
onto it—all are on similar searches. him, and when Bluebeard’s wife peeked

8 | PARABOLA
into the room that her husband had Homage to you, Best of Gods!
forbidden her to enter, she inadvertently Be gracious! I want to know you
enrolled herself as the next corpse to be as you are in your beginning.
I do not comprehend
stowed there. Lot’s wife became petrified
the course of your ways.3
into a pillar of salt when she turned back
to glimpse her city of Sodom one last I thought of Arjuna, dashed and
time. And everyone knows that a person sizzling after being granted the vision he
who finds his or her way into the realm so longed for, when I read about the
of fairy and later leaves, either by escape epiphany of the self-trained nineteenth-
or permission, will instantly age a century scholar George Smith. He was
hundred years upon returning to the in the British Museum poring over
world he assumed he’d left behind only ancient clay tablets when the barbed wall
days before. These and other audacious of cuneiform suddenly parted, and he
humans and their terrible fates are cited understood that what he was reading
by the cautious as proof that those who was a tale of the Flood. He was so
peer into what is forbidden, invisible, and excited by his discovery that he leaped
impenetrable will be punished. From up and started tearing off his clothes.
Prometheus, who stole fire from the And then, after he had calmed down a
gods and offered it to the world, to the bit, he returned to his work and
Renaissance painter Caravaggio, whose continued to penetrate the text that,
“Death of the Virgin” was condemned thanks to him, was soon to become
for “realism bordering on blasphemy,”2 known to the world as THE EPIC OF
to contemporary scientists exploring GILGAMESH.4
stem-cell medicine—those who attempt
Partial clay tablet,
to see into the murky frontiers beyond Epic of Gilgamesh, The British Museum, London
the known and drag a new
known into the light are often
considered dangerous.
If the gods do permit a
human a glimpse of the sublime,
it can be too much. In the
MAHABHARATA, when Arjuna begs
to see Krishna in his divine form,
the god consents, but warns
Arjuna that he is going to
provide him with a “divine eye,”
since no human could withstand
an unmitigated view of such
splendor. Even so equipped,
Arjuna is terrified by the vision
that appears before him—and
even then, he longs for more:
Tell me—
who are you
in this terrible form?

FALL 2011 | 9
 Columbia Crest, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington

IT’S NOT JUST THE GENIUS or the nature, both wild and wounded, and
personal friend of a god who can be pay attention to what arises within and
privy to great visions. Sometimes all it without. I have never forgotten the
takes is looking just to the side of the lesson of the lilies, for it is valid
obvious. Seeing the lilies in the garden everywhere, and not just in nature
extinguish the light of day was a boon, either. I have been granted access to
especially happening as it did on my first amazement in a subway, a recycling
night at the cottage. Beginning the next center, a plane, even a funeral home.
morning, I took walks every day in the As John Berger, who has widely
woods, hills, and fields, and then I’d explored the avenues of seeing, has
stop walking and simply wait and look. written: “Not to say that behind
Eventually, invariably, something appearances is the truth, the Platonic
amazing would happen: the reflection of way. It is very possible that visibility is
a hawk flew over a pond, the wind the truth and that what lies outside
chased the clouds across the field, a fox visibility are only the ‘traces’ of what has
dashed through the snow, a single red been or will become visible.”5
berry twirled crazily on the end of a Japanese designers build the interplay
vine. This way of seeing accompanied of the visible and invisible into the
me throughout that year in England and gardens they create. The aesthetic
during several dark years back in New principle of miegakure, or “hide and
York, and it has informed the work I do, reveal,” celebrates the ever-shifting
which stems from exploring how simple delights of overlapping perspective along
and profound it is to spend time in the path that meanders through the

10 | PARABOLA
garden, so that only a slim glimpse of terms) that makes the critical difference.
rock, tree, or waterfall is visible at any It is being as excited as a child and as
one time. It is said that miegakure mindful as an adult that makes all the
imparts vastness to a small space. Like difference.”6 In order to see the
fresh neuronal pathways in the brain, the unfamiliar, the beckoning, the truly
garden path constantly presents the revelatory, we need to open up new
visitor with impressions that rise afresh pathways for those neurons. We need to
and in an ever-new relationship to other look between the lines, nod to the
impressions. All the way along, obvious and then glance quickly to the
something is a little bit hidden and side where the not-so-obvious resides.
something is a little bit revealed. You The Lakota holy man Black Elk
never know what vision, what insight, taught the spiritual version of this
will emerge, and from where. scientific truth when, speaking about
When we see, the world enters us. hanblecheyapi, the ceremony of crying
And, contrary to what we may assume, for a vision, he emphasized that the
it does not flow from eyes to brain as a person who fasts in the wilderness in
stream of purely objective data. We hopes of receiving guidance from the
build the gates that receive our world sacred world “must be alert to recognize
and can rebuild them at any time. The any messenger which the Great Spirit
neuronal pathways that inform how and may send to him, for these people often
what we see are plastic, and they change come in the form of an animal, even one
and adapt not just when we are young, as small and as seemingly insignificant as
but throughout our lives. When a little ant.”7 In other words, don’t get
neurons that are highly connected, or so fixated on what you want to see or
“facilitated,” are repeatedly stimulated, what’s easy to see that you miss what’s
they require relatively little input to fire right before you and doing its best to
and so pass the signal of recognition get your attention.
on to the next neuron, and so on, The old tales remind us subtly yet
deeper into the network. Laura Sewall, repeatedly of the importance of turning
ecologist and author of SIGHT AND our full gaze to those impressions that
SENSIBILITY, writes that, like fish dance at the periphery. So many stories
swimming through rocks in the sea, the are about the quest, of course, the
pattern of firing wants to
take the path of least Hanblecheyapi, GrandPaTree, New Mexico
resistance. We see what
we’re used to seeing,
what we expect to see.
However, vision can
change. “Plasticity is not
simply a matter of
developmental phase.
More essentially, it’s the
act of attending (the
amount of ‘arousal,’ in
traditional neurophysical

FALL 2011 | 11
 earthquake,
tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown
had struck Japan
and the situation
was so sad and
frightening; and also
because, as so many
people in Bali were
remarking, the
Mountain Peaks, Lahul, India weather, for the
third year in a row,
search for that one hidden treasure that was so unusually rainy that the flowers of
will once again bring harmony to the the fruits and crops were being knocked
world. But the heroines and heroes who off the plants, threatening the harvest.
are open to the unexpected along the Why not stop at Tanah Lot?
way and respond appropriately to it are The parking lot was huge, and the
far more likely to succeed than the ones long, narrow street between it and the
who see only what they’ve determined is temple was crammed on both sides with
worthy of their attention and reject tiny stalls selling T-shirts, food, CDs,
everything else. The person who pauses Balinese offerings, and souvenir kitsch.
to give water to an old woman or delays So far the place was meeting my low
a critical journey in order to help an expectations. I reached the end of the
animal is the one we admire and root street and walked down the wide stone
for. He’s the one who bears a sensitivity steps that led down to the stony beach.
to the whole world; she’s the one who The tide was coming in. I could see at a
insists that there is always time to veer glance that the temple, perched on a
off course when something vital high crag perhaps a quarter mile out
beckons. Beauty and epiphany bide across the flattish, black rocks, was
their time in the sidewise glance. inaccessible. Still, people from many
places—Java, Japan, Australia, France,
RECENTLY, on a gray, rainy afternoon on Bali, America—were trying to get as
the island of Bali, a place I visit every close as they could. They were wading
year, I impulsively asked my driver, Eka out on the rocks to get a photo of the
Merta Sedana, to take me to Tanah Lot. temple, which really did look dramatic
I had never been to this temple on the even under the leaden skies, and to take
sea, only accessible at low tide, for it is pictures of one another with the temple
known to be inundated with tourists or the sea in the background.
who come to take photos of the sun as it I was wandering among them,
sets dramatically behind the open-sided watching my footing on the rocks and
structure. But I was curious and needed thinking I wouldn’t stay long, when a
a lift. I was feeling sad because a Balinese wave dashed in and splashed everyone.
friend was very ill and I didn’t know if And it was in that moment of practically
I’d ever see him again; because, just unanimous reaction that I saw the real
two weeks earlier, the devastating spectacle in this event. Every time a

12 | PARABOLA
wave washed over the rocks and dowsed pilgrimage had led to something more
the crowd, people burst into shrieks of wonderful than that sacred place: it had
delighted laughter. They were revealed people of many lands playing
acknowledging this moment of together in the waves. Glancing just
happiness, moreover, not just among behind the foreground, I had been given
their own friends, but with whomever to spy a wonder.
was nearby. It was a shared experience.
Each shower of surf against skirts, jeans, 1 C.G. Jung, THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE
jilbabs, sarongs, and bare legs brought UNCONSCIOUS, trans R.F.C. Hull (New York:
Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 96.
people’s gazes together in a joyous
2 Will Wlizlo, “The Art Sleuth,” Utne Reader,
release of national differences and February 24, 2011, http://www.utne.com/Arts/
personal cares. I took the lens cap off my The-Art-Slueth-Silvano-Vinceti.aspx.
camera and started shooting pictures. 3 THE BHAGAVAD-GITA, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller
(New York: Bantam Books, 1986), Chapter 11,
When I re-entered the parking lot, Eka
Verse 30, p. 103.
was waiting for me. I was so exhilarated 4 Paul Jordan-Smith, “Living Stories,” PARABOLA
that I could not stop babbling to him (Vol. XI, No. 4, November 1986), p. 53.
about what I had seen. Back in the car, I 5 John Berger, THE SENSE OF SIGHT (New York:

pushed the View button on my camera Vintage Books, 1985), p. 219.

6 Laura Sewall, SIGHT AND SENSIBILITY: THE
and showed him some of the photos I
ECOPSYCHOLOGY OF PERCEPTION (New York: Jeremy
had just taken. He looked a while in Tarcher, 1999), uncorrected page proofs, p. 110.
silence. Then he turned to me. “Where 7 Black Elk, through Joseph Epes Brown,

temple?” he asked in surprise. “Hanblecheyapi: Crying for a Vision,” TEACHINGS

FROM THE EARTH: INDIAN RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY,
It was true. I had not taken one edited by Dennis Tedlock and Barbara Tedlock
picture of the temple. For this (New York: Liveright Publishing, 1975), p. 20.

Tanah Lot, Bali

FALL 2011 | 13
 All that glitters may not be
gold . . . or very old . . .

Illusions
James Opie

NEXT TO MY DESK is a small painting of an intimate nativity

scene. Angels float above shafts of light, looking at each other,
looking off at the distance, and at us. Around the manger, only
haloed Mary looks down at the baby Jesus. The eyes of figures
clustered around the infant turn this way and that. The eyes of
only one figure turn toward us. This man’s face bears a quizzical
look, as if he is uncertain and intrigued by what we make of all
this, here on our side of this miracle, and this painted image. If
he is not intrigued in this way, then perhaps he should be. What
my eyes and heart first saw in this painting and what they see
now are quite different. A shift occurred in the two years I have
owned it.
I bought the painting from a local dealer who told me, cor-
rectly, that it was painted “on copper” and “. . . obviously is old.”
He said it was “unsigned” and “probably student work,” allowing
me my own guesses as to its exact age, who may have painted it,
and why the artist created it. Aside from the price, I didn’t ques-
tion him and, in fact, did not want to question him. A nativity
scene painted on copper suggested real age and real value. And
“student work”? Could this possibly be true? This fine painting
was surely not the work of a neophyte. I reflected that the dealer
who owned it specialized in modern work and was not drawn to

14 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 15
 the painting’s religious theme. Could he
be making a significant mistake?
Inspecting it more closely, it became
clear that the style and subject matter
were not from the nineteenth century.
Eighteenth century? No, not eighteenth,
either. Could this be a seventeenth- or
even a sixteenth-century painting to
which someone had applied the term
“student work”? It was quite good, and
priced at only $2,500.
I knew that experienced Oriental rug
dealers can make big mistakes. I have
made several, and not solely during my
early years in business. The notion that Inevitably, as months passed, I looked
the dealer was mis-pricing this old paint- at the painting less often. Then one day,
ing fixed itself in my mind as the itch to gazing into the scene for a moment, I
buy it seized hold of me. By a slight mar- focused on the sole figure who looks out
gin, shallow reservoirs of restraint held me at the viewer. Once more, I felt puzzled
back for one week. Then I returned to the by the expression on his face. Why wasn’t
dealer, worried that the painting was he looking down at baby Jesus, or at
gone. I was in luck; it was still there. I Mary, or perhaps Joseph, or at the cow
quickly wrote a check for twenty-five hun- brushing against him? He looked straight
dred dollars and took the painting home. at me with an expression that seemed
Month by month, I appreciated the incongruous in the sacred scene around
painting more and more. My “apprecia- him. I couldn’t guess what he was think-
tion” was for the work itself, but also for ing, or feeling.
the fact of having acquired a real bargain. For months, whenever my attention
What the painting was really worth, I settled on the painting my eye kept
didn’t know—surely much more than going back to him. One day, submitting
twenty-five hundred dollars. to the light interrogation of his look, I
The more I looked, the more value awoke to a realization: I really didn’t
I saw. The postures of the figures were know anything about this painting. I
a bit stiff, and the baby looked like a remembered a few words the seller had
miniature adult. Along with the fact of spoken. All the rest was supposition. At
being painted on copper, everything fit that moment I decided to take the work
with an “early” age for this piece, much to an art dealer in our city who I know
earlier than the dealer could have known. possesses an excellent eye. I promised
Student work or not, this painting was myself to be totally open to whatever he
quite good! might say.
A year later, my brother, who paints, The last moments of an enjoyable
saw the piece and admired it. Not want- illusion connecting me with this painting
ing to say aloud how old I thought it was, were spent in my car as I drove to this
I said, “It’s on copper.” He said, “It’s dealer’s shop, parked, and walked to his
good, and certainly in great condition.” door. Handing the painting to him,

16 | PARABOLA
waiting for him to speak, I experienced from England and America began visit-
the final seconds. ing the Continent in numbers, paintings
I said, “It’s on copper. The man I like this were produced by quite capable
bought it from said it was student’s painters to be sold to tourists. The sums
work.” changing hands for them were probably
“The style is fifteenth century, perhaps modest, as a rule. I doubt if they were
sixteenth,” he said. “Could it possibly be sold as earlier work, but who knows?
that old?” The arrangement of subject matter in
Something in his voice suggested this painting could be original, and I
that it couldn’t be and, hearing him, a don’t view it as a fake. Sellers back then
crack began to appear in my illusion, may have been entirely honest in describ-
though it was not yet broken. The ing this as new work. Or, perhaps they
hypnotic illusion was still there, though allowed tourists to see whatever they
not for much longer. wished to see and think whatever they
My friend took off his glasses and wished to think. As these things go, this
reached for a magnifying lens. piece isn’t bad.
“If it was painted in the fifteenth or “Did you pay more than fifteen
sixteenth century, could it possibly be in hundred dollars for it?”
such excellent condition?” “I paid twenty-five hundred.”
His question lingered in the air and “It could be worse. It’s a hundred-
the crack within me expanded. Was he year-old painting with strong subject
breaking the news gently? Anyone in his matter, on copper. It’s well done. A
business or mine has to deliver “bad retail customer might pay that much
news” at times: “I’m sorry, but your for it. Acquiring this for inventory, I
rug is actually thirty years old and from would be safe at a figure close to a
Pakistan, not one-hundred years old thousand dollars. So, you didn’t go
and Persian. There must have been too far overboard.”
a misunderstanding.” I didn’t speak with him about the
He added, “The frame looks right larger “price” at hand, the piercing of an
stylistically for an earlier period but . . . illusion, the deflating shift of vision and
[looking at the back] it couldn’t be feeling accompanying the bursting of a
remotely as old as the style and theme of hypnotic bubble.
painting suggest.” From that moment, my relationship
He pointed. “Look, it’s been stained with this painting began to change. It is
on the back, and the gold leaf on the still changing. I now accept the fact of its
front appears to have been fussed with. real age and no longer see it through
Why would they do that? The wood has avarice-tinted glasses. Now when I look
some age, but isn’t at all what we see in at the painting, I relate less to the angels,
frames from three or four hundred or to Mary, or to the baby Jesus, and
years ago.” more to the man who looks out at me—
He then gave it to me straight. at all of us—quizzically, wondering what
“There have always been painters who we see. Is this the face of the artist him-
could pull off work of this quality, which self, wondering if we are still caught, or
is rather high. In the late nineteenth and perhaps have managed to escape from at
early twentieth centuries, when people least one level of illusion?

FALL 2011 | 17
 CHERRY TREE
BLOSSOM
Photography by
James Whitlow Delano

18 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 19
 TOKYO — I stood in Ofunato, in Iwate Prefecture, with
a photographer friend. We were mesmerized by a scene that seemed
too outlandish even to imagine. She told me how her grandmother
described clothes, reduced to rags, hanging from trees after Tokyo
was bombed to the ground in World War II.
The realization that we were standing before a natural disaster
on a similar scale — one that had happened in minutes, not hours —
drove us into silence.
I decided then to return later when the cherry trees bloomed.
Cherry blossoms are so important to the Japanese people on a
symbolic and emotional level. In winter, plum and apricot trees
bloom sparsely and last for months. Cherry trees, on the other hand,
blossom in a riot of flowers but only last one week before petals fill
the wind with organic snow, which accumulates — white — on the
ground beneath them. They represent the transience of life and also
the return of life after a long winter.
Black and white removes the obvious, removes the botanical
ostentation and lets us enter the spiritual, shadowy side of the
rebirth on a grey day. I am after something more important than
pinks and greens.

20 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 21
 The realization that we were standing before a natural
disaster on a similar scale — one that had happened in
minutes, not hours — drove us into silence.

22 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 23
 The Unseen River
Joyce Kornblatt

IN BLACKHEATH, high in the Blue Mountains of Australia, we

live in the clouds. Often the mist is so dense that the village
becomes a dream I cannot quite recall. On such a morning, a
kilometer from our house, the Grose Valley canyon has
dissolved like a wafer in water—forest, cliffs, paths, and flowers
as invisible as if they had never existed. Through the haze,
I’ve walked the vanished footpath from home to escarpment’s
edge, led by the sensation of foot on road. Here in the Blue
Mountains National Park, leaning against a phantom guardrail,
I can hear tourists disembark from ghostly buses whose engines
quiet behind me. Shoes crunch on gravel and grass. These
visitors are ready to take photos, but I have never known
anyone to be upset when the mist hides the valley from view.
Cloud-cloaked, the tourists record the cloud that has swallowed
them. Invisibility is its own natural wonder.

24 | PARABOLA
 Haze, fog, moonless night, the blizzard For a time, the tourists and I are silent
white-outs I remember from my life in the witnesses to this vanishing. Speech
northern hemisphere: The unseen arrives belongs to form, and we are absorbed
as a mystery, a teaching and a provocation. into the formless here. The mist
Incline your attention as the blind do, we obliterates all we take to be “self and
are instructed, toward what the eyes can other,” offering us the Buddha’s central
never know. Here at the look-out—an teaching: “Nothing whatever is to be
ironic term now for a place where so clung to as ‘me’ or ‘mine.’ ” There is
little can be seen—the guardrail is pure comfort in this undifferentiated space
sensation: icy solidity meeting the warm that subsumes distinctions. Paradoxically,
vibration of flesh. At my back, I sense the this blinding heightens my experience of
energy of the eucalypt that rose like an connectedness with my fellow humans,
ancient guardian in yesterday’s light. This reminds me of the truth that none of us
morning it’s a spirit-tree watching over stops at our skin and that the felt sense of
the memory of a world. affiliation does not depend on how we

FALL 2011 | 25
 look to others and they to us. Perhaps,
as well, we are bonded here by fear. I
can’t deny the flutter of anxiety that
accompanies this disappearance of form,
the reminder of what physicists and
mystics observe is the true nature of the
material world: flux and silence.
As if in a gesture of reassurance, the
mist moves toward dissolution. Slowly a
landscape hundreds of millions of years
old emerges again. This must be what
photographers in the darkroom
experience as an image gathers the smallest vibration—a breeze, a moth, a
resolution—a replay of Creation itself. I possum on the porch—impinges on their
hear the digital cameras whirring like a sensitive radar: We’ve turned the unseen
new species of Australian bird along the into something suspect and forbidding,
guardrail. The folds of forested gorge the setting of the sun itself an adversary
appear to our human eyes as a spectrum we work to defeat. When I enter the Blue
of greens, and the shadows of the cliffs cut Mountains National Park, when I gaze
dark geometrical swathes across the soft into the Grose Valley, when I walk one of
tops of these gum trees into which we its winding trails, I am in a realm in which
peer. The cliffs arise out of pre-history hiddeness is as natural as revelation.
again: the layers of ancient Gondwanaland I don’t have to leave the lookout to
sandstone, the dark mudstone band be aware of the unseen. River, birds,
marking Australia’s slow separation from animal life, insects, plants, hikers on the
Antarctica, and the newer rust-hewed rock valley floor—an entire ecology suggests
that followed that great continental itself by sound and inference. The poet
schism. It is like looking at stars whose Mark Strand says: “Is there something
light originated eons before, this intricate down by the water keeping itself from
valley of deep geological time that just us, / Some shy event, some secret of
moments ago seemed not to exist at all. the light that falls upon the deep . . . ? ”
When the Blackheath cloud-cover I learn to trust what I cannot see.
clears and the wilderness at whose edge I Atheist or believer, we all live on faith.
stand is available again as a magnificent From this lookout, the Grose River is a
visual display, the dazzle of detail might murmur whose waters I can only
obscure the fact that, even in this clarity, extrapolate. Hidden beneath a canopy
concealment is everywhere. Wilderness of eucalypts and angophera, this
invites us into an environment as hidden powerful river carved through millennia
as it is visible. The made world—what we of rock until the earth collapsed in on
call civilization—stays lit even at night, as itself, and cliffs and gorges and canyons
if a secreted life were an affront, as if emerged. I see the river’s work, but not
scrutiny were a currency more valuable the river. The endangered platypus
than dollars or yen. Neon, LED displays, makes its home there, that wonderful
office towers never darkened, sensor lights Australian egg-laying mammal few ever
that turn a sleeping house ablaze when see—it is a secretive animal, mostly

26 | PARABOLA
 trust a Resurrection only a few are said to
have witnessed, the return of Jesus to a
Father none have seen. Thomas Merton
deepens the mystery of the sacred:
“There is in all visible things an invisible
fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek
namelessness, a hidden wholeness.”
In the Muslim faith, the faithful bow
down five times a day to a deity whose
invisibility is so central that no image
must be made to represent Allah.
Buddhists turn to the material as the
nocturnal, virtually silent, and even site for meditative inquiry which yields,
conservationists can’t say for sure why paradoxically, the dissolution of the seen
their number is dwindling. And yet world: “Form is emptiness and emptiness
Australia has numerous conservation is form.” Aborigines in Australia walk
organizations dedicated to the well- the intangible Songlines, and Native
being of this rarely viewed creature. American peoples communicate through
The same valley is home ground for ritual and art with an invisible spirit world
birds whose names alone are choir and that guides and guards the human realm.
song: fan-tailed cuckoos, lyrebirds, scrub The unseen is a gift that opens the eye
wrens, pilot birds, origami, spotted of the heart. Theodore Roethke writes:
pardalote. Occasionally their music rises “I wake to sleep and take my waking
from the valley floor, or a creature wings slow. / I learn by going where I have to
from one cliff to another, above the trees go.” Released from the eye’s material
into which I peer. But mostly these birds evidence, we deepen into sight that
are invisible from the look-out’s vantage accepts mystery as ground, that enters
point. I trust the guidebooks that testify dream as a landscape palpable as any
to their presence. I trust the reports from terrain we can measure, sample, and
the climbers who make their way down to mark. Who doesn’t wake to mist and
the river’s edge. Why wouldn’t I believe move through obscurations day by day,
in what I cannot see? All I ever have is a whatever the weather? Antoine de Saint-
limited point of view, a tiny pinhole Exupery says it clearly in THE LITTLE PRINCE:
through which so-called “reality” offers It is only with the heart
me a glimpse, at most, of what manifests. that one can see rightly;
This visit to the Grose Valley, in
obscuring mist and then a so-called What is essential is
invisible to the eye.
clearing that maintains more secrets than
it will ever reveal, is fact and metaphor at As radiant as the view might be—
once. Every spiritual tradition, theistic or from the lookout at Govett’s Leap, from
not, locates itself within the invisible. a roof-top garden in New York, from a
Jews embrace a God who never appears monastery high in the mountains of
in form and a sacred text in which Nepal—it is the hidden that illumines
meanings are hidden, coded, cross- our way, asks us for our trust and takes
referenced, and encrypted. Christians us home.

FALL 2011 | 27
 EPICYCLE

Nomad Girl White Tara

Retold by Barbara Helen Berger
Anonymous | Tibetan Buddhist

n eons past, before the divine lady Tara was known by the

I name of Tara, she sat at the Buddha’s feet and listened to his
teachings, made countless offerings, and meditated deeply.
Finally the monks of the great assembly told her, “You are so close
to enlightenment, if only you would pray to be reborn as a man.
Then you, too, could awaken and become a Buddha.”
But she said to them, “In the enlightened mind of wisdom, there is
no male or female.”
Then she made a vow. “Since no one wants to become enlightened
as a woman, I will do so. Out of compassion for all beings, I vow to
fully awaken and always appear in the body of a woman.”

28 | PARABOLA
ONE DAY ON A HIGH MOUNTAIN PLATEAU, a traveler stumbled and fell and
could not get up again. He was alone, no more than a speck in the vast
land. On his way home from a distant place, he had run out of food and his
last strength. He lay where he fell. And a bitter wind swept over him.
He felt two hands grabbing his legs and dragging him over the ground.
Surely the Lord of Death had come. All senses left him, and the traveler did
not feel the cold anymore. Nor did he know how many nights passed into
days before he stirred awake, a hand touching his cheek.
It was a warm, human hand.
He opened his eyes and saw the face of a girl who lifted his head and
brought a steaming bowl to his lips, urging him to drink. Never had a
broth of tea churned with butter and salt tasted so good.
Through a haze of smoke from a small fire, he saw only a dark cloth
above and around him. Then the traveler knew he must be inside a nomad
tent, sheltered from the wind.
While he drifted back to sleep, warm under a blanket of yak hair, the
nomad girl went about her chores. She kept the fire lit and her eye on the
traveler. Whenever he woke she came with more hot butter tea to sustain
him. Soon, she hoped, he would be strong enough to eat.
Each morning early, she went outside with her bucket to milk the female
of the yak herd. She made some of the dri’s milk into yogurt. And she
stood at a tall wooden churn lifting and plunging the paddle to make the
rest into butter.
Every day she led the yaks to another grazing place, and came back into
the tent, her long braids dusted with snow, bringing more fuel for the fire.
She roasted barley in an iron pan and ground it between two stones. The
traveler woke to the good smell of tsampa. He ate hungrily. Then the girl
smiled, assured he would be well.
Day by day as she fed and cared for him, the man grew stronger. In the
evenings they talked and laughed together. He was happy listening to her
voice as she hummed softly, spinning her prayer wheel into the night.
Then at last, the traveler was well enough to be on his way. With a broad
smile, the girl gave him a woolen bag she had woven herself, filled with
provisions. But he had nothing to give her in return, no way to repay all her
kindness. He could only set out on his journey again, filled with gratitude.
Not far along his way, he turned for a last glimpse of the tent he had left
behind. He saw no trace of it now in the vast land. But could the nomad
girl have packed everything up, loaded the yaks, and moved so quickly to
another grazing ground? Maybe a mist had come over the plain, hiding her
tent from his view like a dream. Would he ever find her again?

FALL 2011 | 29
 Pondering as he walked, he thought of the girl’s eyes glowing in the firelight.
How strange—he had never seen anyone else there, no parents, no brother or
sister to help with the herding. This one girl did the work of a whole family.
Alone, she had saved his life. She had nursed him back to health. Even now she
provided for him whenever he stopped to eat, for she had filled the bag with
tsampa and yogurt and hard white cheese.
As he sat under the infinite sky he wondered, for the bag never seemed to run
out. Every time he stopped to eat he found it as full as before, until at last he
came to his home valley.
But he did not stop in the village. He turned and went up the hill to the
temple first, to see the lama. There he made prostrations and sat at the lama’s
feet and told him all that had happened.
The lama said, “Without any doubt, it was Tara who saved you.”
The compassionate Tara herself? If only he had recognized her! In all the time
he was in her tent, he had never thought to honor the girl. He could have bowed
to the ground and asked for her blessing, her wisdom.
Now he looked up at the lama and asked, “What can I do?”
The lama said, “If you ever hope to find her again, you had better clear the
ignorance from your mind.”
Then he taught the traveler how to contemplate the divinity, Tara, to recite
her mantra, and dissolve her image into himself, like a rainbow melting into the
sky. Then to sit quietly in the empty stillness.
So the traveler went home and did this.
He prayed for all beings who wander and fall in ignorance, like himself.
Day by day his heart grew lighter, his mind more clear. He began to see his
mother, his sisters, his brother's wife, his aunt, his little nieces, his old grandmother,
all with new eyes. How could he be sure who was Tara and who was not?
He began to see her everywhere in the village. People noticed how respectful
he was, how loving and kind. There was a peace about him.
“Ah la la,” said his lama, “you have found her.”
Then the traveler felt a radiance flooding his heart, like the smile of the nomad
girl herself in the tent of his own mind.

This story comes from Tibet, the land where Tara is most known and loved. I found the
seed of it many years ago in TARA’S COLOURING BOOK, by Jonathan Landaw, Andy Weber,
and Nigel Wellings (Wisdom Publications, 1979). The essence of that seed stuck with me
and grew, in time, into this retelling.

30 | PARABOLA
Tara statue near Kullu, India

FALL 2011 | 31
 The Infrared Universe
Light from 1.6 million galaxies
reveals the structure of the local universe.

The Cosmic
Metabolism of Form
Christian Wertenbaker

IT IS FAIRLY OBVIOUS by now that life on earth forms a vast

interconnected and interdependent network. Organic molecules
are recycled over and over, those of one organism providing
food for another. Bacteria transform our waste into soil. Carbon
dioxide is taken in by plants and oxygen released; in animals the
reverse process occurs, in an endless cycle of energy exchange,
ultimately fueled by the sun.
Ecosystems depend on a delicate balance of mutually
supportive interactions, forming a greater organism. For that
matter, any given organism is itself an ecosystem: birds keep the
hippopotamus clean, our intestinal bacteria help us digest. Even
the subcellular organelles that power our cells, the mitochondria,
were, it is thought, once independent organisms. The boundaries
of selfhood become blurred and somewhat arbitrary.
These interrelations extend out to the entire universe. The
Sun, besides providing the energy that fuels life on Earth and
keeping the Solar System in place with its gravity, also interacts
with the Earth and other planets through the solar wind,
shaping the Earth’s own magnetic body and influencing the
weather, which in turn affects all Earth’s creatures. There are
certainly other crucial interactions at this electromagnetic level;
the more we look, the more we find a complex and delicate
order. And the basic elemental building blocks of our world and

32 | PARABOLA
of organic life—carbon, oxygen, nuclei, and that oxygen, carbon,
nitrogen, and the rest—were formed in nitrogen, and hydrogen can join in the
the nuclear furnaces of stars and molecules they form only because of
distributed by the explosions of their specific chemical properties, and so
supernovae, as part of vast cosmic cycles on at every level. But fundamentally,
of stellar formation, growth, and death. what is matter? Physics has long since
reached an impasse in defining it with
IN CONSIDERING THESE THINGS, we any kind of bricks and mortar, or even
generally think in terms of substances whirling particles. Picture: atoms are
being endlessly recycled and mostly empty space, and the subatomic
transformed, in large and small metabolic constituents of everything are both
cycles. But the consequence of all these waves and particles, but not both at the
transformations is to preserve form. An same time, or perhaps neither, but with
organism or an ecosystem is a form, properties of both. Ultimately, the only
whose elements are constantly changing reliable descriptors of the constituents of
while its structure is preserved for a time: matter are mathematical equations, the
its lifetime. It is estimated that every abstract mathematical forms of group
single atom in the human body is theory. So form underlies substance, as
replaced in at most seven years. Most Plato taught, rather than the reverse.
cells, with the exception of many of the If this is so, perhaps intelligent beings
cells of the nervous system, are also such as ourselves, who are capable of
replaced during the lifetime of the body, resonating with (and therefore
some more rapidly, like skin and discovering) the mathematical forms that
intestinal cells, and others more slowly. govern external reality, do not have these
Similarly, the organisms in an ecosystem capacities merely as an accidental
live and die, to be replaced by others, but byproduct of being the fittest organisms
the ecosystem has a longer lifespan. in the evolutionary struggle, but have a
A subtler, often unacknowledged,
materialistic bias in our thinking appears
in the assumption that form is simply the
A silicon atom
result of the properties of matter. Atoms
form molecules, molecules cells, cells
organisms, etc., because the basic
properties of the smaller constituents
determine how they organize themselves
into the larger assemblies. Given the
physical laws that govern the
fundamental particles and forces, and
time for evolutionary processes to work,
everything has become what it is now,
culminating in self-aware organisms that
happen to be able to contemplate these
matters. It is certainly true that quarks
and the strong nuclear force must have
the properties they have in order to form

FALL 2011 | 33
 Kepler's Supernova

more fundamental role in the universe. “And God said, let us make men in our
Just as our bodies transform substances in own image, after our likeness: and let
metabolic cycles of varying complexity, them have dominion over the fish of the
and take part in the larger ecological sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
metabolic cycles of organic life on earth,
every creeping thing that creepeth upon
our minds take in and manipulate, the earth…. And God said unto them, be
transform, break down and build up, in fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
short metabolize, forms—as impressions, earth, and subdue it.”1
perceptions, concepts, memories, and
plans. And we take part in a larger ecology One of the main concerns of the
of form: culture, literature, art, science. ecologically minded is that humanity is
One could say that everything in the despoiling the Earth and disrupting the
universe has three aspects: a physical or web of life. But even this capacity
material aspect, an energetic aspect, and implies its converse: “to replenish the
a form. We share with other creatures earth.” This is not simply to populate it,
the ability to participate in the but to care for it, and maintain it, by
metabolism of matter and energy, but virtue of our understanding, in ways that
seem uniquely endowed by our are obvious and perhaps in other ways
consciousness to participate in the that we now only dimly perceive.
metabolism of form. Human intelligence provides us with a
unique relationship to time: we are not
IN THE VIEW OF the traditional religious confined to the relentless march of our
teachings, human beings have a special bodies through linear time, but are able to
place in the cosmos: remember the past, foresee the future, and

34 | PARABOLA
contemplate all of their possibilities. We contained in the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff.
can look at a tree and see planks and According to Gurdjieff, humans take in
beams and a bridge, look at mud and see three kinds, or levels, of food: ordinary
adobe bricks and a house. We can create, food, air, and impressions. These consist of
repair, and maintain to a degree and with a substances of increasing fineness, but each
flexibility unknown to other creatures. We is metabolized according to the same
are, at our best, anti-entropy machines. general laws. The three foods and their
This capacity of our consciousness is metabolites interact with each other,
evident in all our artifacts, and whether helping each other’s digestion: the clearest
ultimately it will serve to replenish the example is the necessity of oxygen for the
earth or to destroy it is still in the balance. complete metabolism of ordinary food,
But it is possible that our awareness has a which is well known to ordinary
purpose on another level as well. Some physiology and biochemistry. On first
religious and mystical teachings hold encountering this idea, the analogy
that human consciousness, in reflecting between the metabolism of ordinary food
reality, also helps to bring it into being. and the taking in and processing of
According to the Islamic mystic Ibn impressions by the brain may seem far-
‘Arabi, man acts “as the eye through fetched, but there are clear parallels.
which God can see His own creation:”2 The food we eat consists mostly of
“He praises me (by manifesting my macromolecules—proteins, carbohydrates,
perfections and creating me in His form), and fats—which themselves are
And I praise Him (by manifesting compounds of smaller molecules: amino
His perfections and obeying Him). acids, sugars, and fatty acids. These in turn
How can He be independent when I are made up of different configurations of
help and aid Him? (Because the Divine atoms, mostly carbon, oxygen, nitrogen,
attributes derive the possibility of manifes- and hydrogen. The process of digestion is
tation from their human correlates). a progressive breakdown of these large
For that cause God brought me into macromolecules, which contain energy
existence. stored in their atomic arrangements, into
And I know Him and bring Him into much smaller molecules, primarily water
existence (in my knowledge and and carbon dioxide, the atomic
contemplation of Him).”3 arrangements of which are in a much
lower energy state, thus releasing the
A similar concept, though with a less energy of food for use by the body. Some
hierarchical emphasis, appears in Hindu of the molecular constituents of food are
teaching as Indra’s net: also recycled by the body and built up
“In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to again into the proteins, carbohydrates, and
be a network of pearls, so arranged that if fats of the body itself. So the metabolism
you look at one you see all the others of food has at least two results: one on the
reflected in it. In the same way, each same level, which is the maintenance of the
object in the world is not merely itself but body by producing substances, just like
involves every other object and in fact IS those in food, which make up our flesh;
everything else.”4 and one on a “higher” level, which is the
Perhaps the most detailed, though still production of energy to maintain the life
incomplete, elaboration of this idea is of the body.

FALL 2011 | 35
 Impressions also consist of larger formed, or tuned, by our environment of
configurations of smaller elements. A impressions. People born blind whose
visual scene is made up of many shapes sight is restored later in life typically do
and colors, which in turn are made up of not learn to see properly, although the
lines and boundaries between patches of eye is transmitting all the information to
differing contrast and hue. Colors the brain; at best they are like people
themselves can be thought of as consisting using a dictionary to speak in a foreign
of mixtures of primary colors and different language, painfully correlating their
amounts of white, gray, and black, and visual impressions with their learned
ultimately different combinations of perceptions in other sensory modalities.
wavelengths of light. Complex sounds are The reconstituted perceptions are
ultimately combinations of fundamental internal representations of the external
frequencies varying over time. In stimuli, analogous to the reconstituted
processing impressions, the brain breaks macromolecules that make up our bodies.
them down into more fundamental What do these internal representations
components. In the visual cortex, consist of, in material terms? This is an as
individual cells are activated by the yet unresolved question scientifically, but
elementary components of the visual evidence suggests that their physical
scene: oriented lines and edges, spatial correlates may be complex patterns of
frequencies, binocular disparity conveying electromagnetic vibrations in the brain.
depth, basic colors. A wealth of Visual configurations are conveyed to us
information is known about these via patterns of electromagnetic vibrations
processes (and a great deal remains to be —light—and our internal perceptions
known), which I cannot go into here, but may be of the same materiality.
the analogy is clear: impressions are also According to Gurdjieff, our impres-
metabolized via a process of breakdown sions are not fully metabolized in our
into smaller and simpler elements. ordinary state of relative unawareness.
Subsequently, impressions are, so to For metabolism to proceed further, we
speak, reconstituted into our perceptions. must be conscious of ourselves in the act
Something has been added, our of receiving impressions, just as oxygen is
awareness and our interpretations, based necessary for the full metabolism of food.
on experience. The capacity to perceive The full metabolism of food releases
depends on a long process of learning in much more energy than that released in
early childhood. Our brains are partly the absence of oxygen (anaerobic metab-
olism). What kind of energy is released
by the full metabolism of impressions?
Perhaps the energy of consciousness.
Although consciousness is required for
this process to take place, acting like a
catalyst, the result is the production of
even more consciousness. Or more pre-
cisely, it is the addition of consciousness
to the impressions, just as the energy of
life is added to the macromolecules of
Mitochondria
our bodies.

36 | PARABOLA
 This vivification of impressions feeds
our inner life, which needs conscious
impressions to grow, and may also serve
a larger purpose, enabling God to “see”
his own creation through us and other
conscious observers throughout the
universe.

Fig. 1. The Necker cube can be seen in two ways,

THE GREAT PARADOX of quantum theory as either the lower face forward, or the upper face.
is that the form of what we observe in Each way results in a distinct three-dimensional
interpretation of the cube. One can easily switch
looking at the smallest constituents of from one perception to the other, but not see both
matter, for instance whether they consist at once, or easily fail to see either. This is a simple
example of the difference between the external
of waves or particles, depends on the kind pattern that falls on the eyes and the resulting
of observation that is conducted. Some perception, involving a perceptual decision.

argue that the “decision” is made when a

conscious observer appears, others that a “He through Whom we see, taste, smell,
measuring apparatus is sufficient, but in feel, hear, enjoy, know everything, He is
any case, the measuring apparatus was that Self.
made by a human being.5 Perceptions “Knowing That by Which one perceives
have a similar property, for when we see both dream states and waking states, the
something we are making decisions. This great, omnipresent Self, the wise man goes
is made evident in the perception of beyond sorrow.
ambiguous figures such as the Necker “Knowing that the individual Self, eater of
cube (Fig.1), but is going on all the time. the fruit of action, is the universal Self,
So perhaps, in an as yet unclear fash- maker of past and future, he knows he has
nothing to fear.
ion, we are, or can be, part of a great
cosmic ecology of consciousness, main- “Born in the beginning from meditation,
born from the waters, having entered the
taining the form of the universe against
secret place of the heart, He looks forth
the entropy of linear time, because of
through beings. That is Self.
our potential capacity for metabolizing
“That boundless power, source of every
form, made possible by our flexible and
power, manifesting itself as life, entering
encompassing relationship to time itself. every heart, born with the beings, that is
In this process, we become part of Self.”6
everything on a conscious level, just as
we are part of everything on the level of 1 The Holy Bible, King James Version, Genesis
gross materiality. Just as our bodies are 1:26–28.
made up of atoms that once were created ‘ RABI (London,
2 R. Landau, THE PHILOSOPHY OF IBN A
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1959), p. 74.
in supernovae, and passed through a vari-
3 Ibn ‘Arabi, with commentary in parentheses by
ety of inorganic and organic entities, the ‘Abdu ‘l-Razzaq al-Kashani, quoted in ref. 2, p. 74.
material of our inner lives consists of all 4 Charles Eliot, quoted at www.cs.kent.ac.uk/
our perceptions—of other beings, of people/staff/saf/networks/
networking-networkers/indras-net.html.
earth, sea, sky, and stars, and of the fun-
5 There are other theories, and the question of how
damental laws that govern it all—and we the wavefunction “collapses” is not really resolved.
are thereby connected to everything on 6 Katha Upanishad, edited by the author based on
both levels, and to the Whole. multiple translations.

FALL 2011 | 37
 Looking with Your
Whole Body
A Conversation with Jane Rosen

38 | PARABOLA
The first look is a word, a name.
To me anything that is attached to
words and names is a mental looking.
SUCCESS IN THE ART WORLD is a
wildly relative term. And no one
would say that Jane Rosen has not
been successful. But something
happened that took her away from
the kind of success she might have
found had she continued to pursue
her fast start in Manhattan. She
visited the Bay Area, where she
lived on a horse ranch south of San
Francisco. The exposure to the
beauty of the place—the coast, the
hills, the redwoods—made a deep
impression. One day, as she
stepped out of her house, she
looked up and saw a red-tailed
hawk soaring above her. “As I
stood looking up at the hawk, in a
voice as clear as day, I heard these
words: ‘Tell my story’.” RICHARD WHITTAKER: I agree, we don’t see very
Rosen’s drawings and sculptures are much, but what is it when someone stops
born from the perennial questions: What and keeps looking and then starts to see
can nature show us? And what is seeing? more, literally?
Her work shows us something about that. JR: That means they kept looking. And
—Richard Whittaker that shifts what I would call cognitive
gears—so there comes a new moment.
The first look is a word, a name. To me
JANE ROSEN: Seeing isn’t what we think it is. anything that is attached to words and
What we call seeing is “looking.” names is a mental looking. Then, I think
Looking is when you go out and you there is a looking with your whole body
look at something. You have a number of as if there were tentacles that sense and
facts about that thing and you put them touch the totality of the thing you’re
together as a mental construct. When looking at so that the tree stops being
students in my class look at the model leaves, branches, roots. It starts becom-
often they are not seeing it. Paul Klee ing a clustering, a gathering, a drooping,
said to his students, “Yes. I want to draw a lifting, a turning.
what I see, but first you must see what
you draw.” RW: I wonder if there are levels of seeing.

FALL 2011 | 39
 JR: What if the dialogue we’re having drawings? I figured it out. I took the
revolves around finding the right word photograph, which is as abstract as this
so that we both know the experience drawing, the silhouette of a coyote and
attached to that word? As a teacher, the bambi! So then I start to draw the
there’s a huge difference, for example, coyote and I start to understand that
between a sketch and a study. They can he’s an older coyote. He’s alone and
be called the same thing. A sketch is not interested in the deer. He’s more
something that’s sketchy. Looking is interested in eating gophers. There’s a
sketchy. A study is where you’re studying little bit of his former life, but he’s
with your body, let’s say the dog [point- been rejected from the pack. He’s quite
ing to her dog]. You’re observing the beautiful, and he has more of the presence
various movements and states and ges- of a dog. So now I begin to see who the
ture, the presence of restfulness. You’re coyote is, and I’m looking to try to do a
then translating what you see from this drawing of the essence of that coyote. So
study to a piece of paper with the physi- learning to see is learning to put together
cal marks you’re making. And you’re also my sight with my sensation, which can
mentally using the laws you understand take in a much larger view.
about drawing to create an illusion on
that piece of paper. To me, seeing is RW: So this is a seeing that is really coming
having all of these things simultaneously into contact with what’s there, and
in place that open a feeling for the life “looking” isn’t really connecting with
of the thing you’re observing. what’s there.
JR: No. And what’s there is never what
RW: The word “seeing”—what is it? you think is there. It just never is that.
JR: You say, “I see what you mean.” One of the things I find remarkable hap-
So that’s not a visual thing. pened from that amber drawing I did of
a hawk—the falcon is Horus in Egyptian
RW: No, not at all. art. The falcon was considered to be the
JR: It’s an understanding. To me, the act highest energy because it is that which
of seeing is coming into an understanding sees in and out simultaneously, which
of the whole of what’s occurring. Like was the energy of the sun. So I thought,
when I’m struggling, for instance, with okay, I’m going to learn about the hawk,
that drawing of the coyote I did. First, I and I’ve been drawing hawks a long
saw a lone coyote on the hill, and the time. So that amber drawing of the
coyote is standing next to a young deer. hawk, Dave Nelson, the hay farmer ...

RW: Really? RW: This is your neighbor. He’s not an

JR: Yes. I have a photograph. The young artist.
deer is hanging out with the coyote, and JR: Right. He grew up on this land. He
I become very interested. The coyote is goes to pick up his mail at the post office,
there day after day on the hill at about where Leana had put up a little
2 p.m. So now, I’m looking until I can announcement of my show with the
see what is happening. hawk on it. Dave calls me up and says,
The only way I can come to an under- “That’s a damn good drawing of a hawk!
standing is by drawing it. See those two If you don’t mind, if I could get me one

40 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 41
 of them announcements I’d like to take it Dave Nelson!” So without me knowing it,
to Kinko’s. I’m going to blow it up and my seeing of Dave on the tractor and just
make me a poster of that hawk. I spend knowing Dave, somehow it got into the
all day with those hawks cause I’m on my drawing of the hawk and damned if it
tractor, and those hawks follow my tractor didn’t look just like Dave Nelson!
to eat the mice that get pulled from the
haying.” He said, “I know hawks.” And RW: What are the modalities of knowing
he did. “Damn good hawk!” or receiving the world?
I said, “Dave, I’ll give you a drawing JR: A couple of things. One is the word
of a hawk.” “attend,” attendez, to wait. Attention is
He said, “I don’t have any money, to wait.
Jane.”
I said, “Well, you’ve got hay. I’ve got RW: If you are waiting with attention,
horses. I’ll trade you a hawk for the hay.” there is an openness, right?
He said, “Okay. That’s a good deal! I’ll JR: Right. So when you talk about seeing
take that deal.” what is real, to me, there is an invisible
So I’m drawing this hawk for Dave, reality behind the visible reality. What I
and Gus Gutierrez—who takes care of the think it’s supposed to look like, I have to
property—comes into the drawing room let go of, in order to see what it is. That
and looks at the hawk. He doesn’t know demands attending to it—in other
anything about this deal. He says, “Jane, words, waiting—allowing the impression
if you don’t mind me saying, if you put of the bird to come in, rather than going
glasses on that hawk it’ll look just like out to it. It’s a really subtle shift.

42 | PARABOLA
 I keep thinking of working yesterday was needed, and I never would have
on that big bird and just seeing myself figured it out.
literally start chiseling away at something
that looked right, like it was supposed to RW: Can we say there was a seeing there?
be there. But I was listening, and it’s as if JR: You’re serving something else.
the stone started to speak to me rather You’re not in charge. In fact, if I can be
than me imposing on it—even to a point so bold—best case scenario—you’re an
where under the chin, unhh, get this off! objective bystander. You’re just there and
Then it just started chiseling while I’m it’s moving through you, and you’re not
thinking, “What the hell are you doing, in the way.
Rosen?” I started using the tooth chisel,
and I saw Alex hold his breath—because, RW: What is the deepest way of being here?
with the beak, one mistake and it’s over. It has occurred to me that when one has
And sure enough, a piece of the beak gotten down to the almost metaphysical
came off. All the Provencal limestone has place of our being here, that this is a place
lots of fossils and shells in it. So it’s simply of witnessing.
inconsistent to carve. JR: We almost always have a vested inter-
est in the outcome of a sculpture or an
RW: So you can’t count on how each piece idea, or an idea about how we want the
will break off. world to be or how we want ourselves
JR: You don’t know what part is to be and, as a result, we don’t see the
attached to what part. And it came off, sculpture, the coyote, the world, or
and I looked at it. It was exactly what ourselves. So if you let go, which is what

FALL 2011 | 43
 happened to me yesterday, and you Sometimes—I’ve seen this with stu-
follow it, there is a moment where this dents—if I can keep them mentally occu-
other kind of reality becomes visible. pied by giving them three conflicting
That’s what I think seeing is. directions of what to do with their draw-
ing tools, their minds are so busy trying
RW: Our thoughts and desires are always to figure it out, that something more
interfering—but not always. essential can come out and it goes I’ll
JR: But not always. Because here’s the try. It’s like our personalities can blow up
most shocking thing. Often the largest so much, sometimes like a balloon, that
silence I experience is in the midst of they burst and the little impartial guy liv-
noise. All my ideas and the cacophony ing in the belly, who hardly ever gets a
actually pull something out of my belly chance to come out goes “I’ll draw that.
because of the absurdity of it, and there’s I’ll try.”
a double experience. This is where the
quote from the Mundaka Upanishads is RW: I almost want to ask how can one see
appropriate: “Like two golden birds in without being present?
the self-same tree, intimate friends, the JR: You can—on the rare occasion, as I
ego and the Self dwell in the same body. was saying. If there’s so much cacoph-
While the former eats the sweet and bit- ony, it brings up something so fierce in
ter fruits of the tree of life, the latter terms of a desire be free, it can give rise
looks on in detachment.” to a presence to the cacophony. And the

44 | PARABOLA
cacophony, like any good mouse when
you turn the light on, disappears!

RW: Who sees?

JR: It’s a conference. It’s not a “who.”
When I speak of seeing, I feel that the
mind is open and in a relationship to the
hands working, which opens a feeling of
being more fully alive. That is what I call
seeing.
More than one part of you needs to
see. You can’t see with your head alone.
You can’t see with your heart alone,
because it’s very partial. You can’t see
with your body alone because, basically,
I don’t want to put down the cigarette
or the cake.
One day I heard the dogs barking in the
living room. Not a bark like, “Someone is
here,” which is an announcement. Not a
bark like, “Get away from my stuff.”
That’s a territorial thing. Not a bark of fear
like, “Oh, my God there’s a bobcat on the
deck!” It was a bark I wasn’t used to, a
kind of “What are you doing?”
I walked into the living room and could hurt me. I’m going to pet your
there was the raven underneath the chair back and if you don’t try to peck me or
at the dining room table. I looked at this claw me, I will get you out from under
big raven with huge claws and this huge the chair. If you try to peck me or claw
Roman beak. The raven somehow had me, you’re on your own.”
walked into the house before we had She looked at me, cocking her head
become friends and had gotten stuck like she was thinking about it. It wasn’t
underneath the chair. I believe it was a like she understood my words or I
mom and she was coming in looking understood hers. There was something
or food. in my tone that was explaining to her
I looked at the raven and the raven that I was about to make a move. So I
looked at me. She had these beautiful pet the back of the raven and not only
eyes and she blinked at me. It was clear does she not claw me, she pulls her claws
she said to me, “I’m stuck. I don’t know into her belly and tucks her beak into her
how I got under this chair. I can’t get chest. I pick her up and I hold her like
out, and you’ve got two pretty big dogs. this [cradled in her arms] and she is
I’m in a situation here.” perfectly still. I put her out on the picnic
So I looked at the raven and said, table figuring she would make a beeline
“Okay. Here’s the deal. You’re big. You out of there. She turned around, she
have sharp claws and this beak. You looked at me, and she nodded.

FALL 2011 | 45
46 | PARABOLA
Seeing is an act
Jeanne de Salzmann
not what to do and enter into the experience of discovering

T
HE QUESTION IS
but how to see. Seeing is the most what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all
important thing—the act of seeing. at this very moment.
I need to realize that it is truly an act, an Our conditioned thought always wants
action that brings something entirely new, an answer. What is important is to develop
a new possibility of vision, certainty and another thinking, a vision. For this we have
knowledge. This possibility appears during to liberate a certain energy that is beyond
the act itself and disappears as soon as the our usual thought. I need to experience
seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing “I do not know” without seeking an
that I will find a certain freedom. answer, to abandon everything to enter
So long as I have not seen the nature the unknown. Then it is no longer the
and movement of the mind, there is little same mind. My mind engages in a new
sense in believing that I could be free of it. way. I see without any preconceived idea,
I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. without choice. In relaxing, for example, I
This is a fact. It is not the thoughts no longer choose to relax before knowing
themselves that enslave me but my why. I learn to purify my power of vision,
attachment to them. In order to not by turning away from the undesirable
understand this, I must not seek to free or toward what is agreeable. I learn to stay
myself before having known what the in front and see clearly. All things have the
slavery is. I need to see the illusion of words same importance, and I become fixed on
and ideas, and the fear of my thinking nothing. Everything depends on this
mind to be alone and empty without the vision, on a look that comes not from any
support of anything known. It is necessary command of my thought but from a feeling
to live this slavery as a fact, moment after of urgency to know.
moment, without escaping from it. Then I Perception, real vision, comes in the
will begin to perceive a new way of seeing. interval between the old response and the
Can I accept not knowing who I am, new response to the reception of an
being hidden behind an imposter? Can I impression. The old response is based on
accept not knowing my name? material inscribed in our memory. With
Seeing does not come from thinking. the new response, free from the past, the
It comes from the shock at the moment brain remains open, receptive, in an
when, feeling an urgency to know what is attitude of respect. It is a new brain which
true, I suddenly realize that my thinking functions, that is, different cells and a new
mind cannot perceive reality. To understand intelligence. When I see that my thought
what I really am at this moment, I need is incapable of understanding, that its
sincerity and humility, and an unmasked movement brings nothing, I am open to
exposure that I do not know. This would the sense of the cosmic, beyond the realm
mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, of human perception.

From The Reality of Being, by Jeanne de Salzmann. Reprinted by permission.

For more about Jeanne de Salzmann, please visit www.realityof being.org.

FALL 2011 | 47
 A horrific accident . . .
an unexpected blessing

Awakening Sight
David Ulrich Photography by David Ulrich

AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-THREE, I suffered an impact injury

while chopping wood that could have cost me my life. A small
branch, approximately three-quarters of an inch in diameter and
over three feet long, with a fractured tip, flew up and struck me
in the face, directly under the eye. Thankfully, I lived; tragically
(especially for a photographer), I lost the vision of my right and
dominant eye. It was the most traumatic and disabling event of
my life—and by far the most enlightening and life-enhancing.
I did not realize the seriousness of the injury at the time of the
accident. In the emergency room, the physician on duty urgently
consulted an ophthalmologist. At that point, I understood that
my eye had been seriously damaged, and I became terrified of
the possible consequences. The doctor emphatically informed
me that I needed surgery immediately to see if the eye could be
repaired. I implored him to do his absolute best to save my
vision—that I was a photographer and needed my eyes. Fears of
a completely altered life entered my mind. Would I ever be able
to drive again? To photograph? To live a normal life? Would I be
disfigured? He then said something that has burned itself into
my memory of that day. He said calmly and with great assurance:
“You will be as good a photographer with one eye as you were
with two.”

48 | PARABOLA
 After seven or eight hours in surgery— vision my eye had faithfully provided me.
in which the surgeon removed the I did a small series of self portraits of my
fragments of wood, repaired my crushed damaged face and eye, and went to bed
eyeball, tried to repair my massively torn wondering if I would—or could—ever
retina, and performed cosmetic surgery to again feel like a complete human being.
rebuild the lost tissue on the right side of
my face—I was sent to the recovery room. THE VERY NEXT MORNING, I checked
The next week was pure hell. I myself into the hospital to have my eye
underwent multiple tests and surgically removed. After settling into my
examinations to determine whether any room, several hours before surgery, I was
useful vision could be returned to my eye. asked if I wanted a sedative. “Not yet,”
I had no light perception whatsoever due was my answer. It felt important to
to the retinal damage, and was told that I experience this moment as fully as
would not see at all with my right eye for possible. My anxiety was mounting. I
the rest of my life. Medical technology didn’t know what to do or where to
was many years away from transplanting a turn. I decided to take a walk to the
retina, and mine was far too damaged to hospital chapel to try to digest the
repair. My doctor explained that the risk experience. I never knew such
of sympathetic ophthalmia, in which the depression, fear, and despondency—it
good eye follows suit with its injured was completely paralyzing. I was scared
neighbor and also loses the ability to see, to death of the future—and of the finality
was far greater than the chance of seeing of the soon-to-be-performed surgery.
out of that eye ever again—and that it Then, in the chapel, came a moment
should be removed. of realization, in a burst of insight, that
My darkest hours of self doubt changed my attitude toward this event
followed upon receiving his diagnosis. and gave me great strength and an
Many questions arose for me about the unshakable sense of courage. A question
role of fate, or accident, in our lives. Was unexpectedly arose in my mind: If I
this event fated? Or was it simply an cannot let go of something as relatively
accident? Could it have been avoided? I insignificant as one eye, one small part of
recalled an acute memory of a night my body, what will happen when I have
when I was nineteen years old, to completely let go of my entire body,
contemplating my unknown future and when I die? If I cannot withstand this
feeling much hope and promise, in which shock, I will never be able to gracefully
an intuitive feeling persisted—one that I and consciously withstand the moment
could not shake from my consciousness of death. This experience was a kind of
at the time—that I might someday lose test—a foretaste of letting go. From that
an eye. When I reached my friend and moment on, my experience of losing my
longtime teacher, Nicholas Hlobeczy, he eye changed—and the fear and
said simply, “Thy will be done.” depression never returned with
My mother, my girlfriend, and a select anywhere near the same intensity.
group of friends gathered at my home Quite to the contrary; after the
prior to the second surgery, with a bottle realization in the chapel, the entire
of excellent Armagnac, to drink a experience of having the eye removed,
poignant toast to the thirty-three years of of learning to see again, and going

FALL 2011 | 49
50 | PARABOLA
Above: Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante, Utah, 1974

Opposite page
top: Strafed Rock, Kaho‘olawe Hawai‘i, 1994
bottom: Kealaikahiki Point, Kaho‘olawe Hawai‘i, 1994

FALL 2011 | 51
 through the inevitable psychic windshield of his plane, the book is an
transformation, became my personal important reference manual for the
creative quest. A quest that, more or newly one-eyed, full of helpful hints and
less, I welcomed, and of which I tried tricks for navigating through the process
to make the best possible use. of learning to see with reduced
Something had changed in me. I felt capabilities. But for any interested reader,
less under the dominion of my ego, and it returns the act of seeing to an art, to
more open to life, to people, and to the regarding human vision as an intentional
changes inherent in our lives. I learned activity, one full of potential and with
much about myself from questioning perceptual possibilities we have long
why such a massive injury had been the forgotten or glossed over. The imperative
necessary catalyst to deliver me to the of learning to see again is an unusual
threshold of this new state of being. opportunity for an adult; most of us,
A transformation had occurred on though genuinely appreciative of our
many different levels, physical, vision, thoroughly take the act of seeing
emotional, psychological, and spiritual, for granted and are mostly untrained in
due to the ongoing effects of the injury. the banquet of gifts that seeing offers.
It served to break down many of the Observe carefully a young child in
unquestioned and crystallized attitudes the act of seeing and note the sense of
my psyche had developed as an armor; wonder, joy, and curiosity that
and provided an opportunity for accompanies this adventure. A child
renewal, for a regathering of my energies can become completely absorbed in
under different conditions. examining the world through vision—
First, I needed to relearn ordinary through any of the senses, for that
physical tasks: driving a car, pouring matter. Seeing is truly a form of magic,
liquids into a glass, avoiding collisions a perceptual pleasure, a source of real
with doorways or people on my right learning and questioning, and a doorway
side, safely crossing streets, discovering to invisible worlds. As adults, we have
where I needed to sit at a table or in a much to relearn.
restaurant in order to see my companions I offer here the initial realizations
and not just the wall, and acquiring a gleaned through the process of
different sort of respect for my one and recovering my vision in the several
only good eye. It gave me the years following my accident.
opportunity to prune my life down to
the essentials, and to give up superficial
We do not see
interests and nonessential activities. One through our eyes alone
central goal was added to my life’s
purpose: to die seeing, on both a literal PHOTOGRAPHER EDWARD WESTON
and metaphorical level. described the process of his own creative
As I learned to face the challenges of work as “Seeing through one’s eyes, not
living with one eye, I received help from with them.” And Walt Whitman wrote
an instructive guidebook: A SINGULAR VIEW: in LEAVES OF GRASS, “I am not contained
THE ART OF SEEING WITH ONE EYE. Written by between my hat and my boots.” In other
Frank Brady, an airline pilot who lost an words, we see through our entire body.
eye when a large mallard smashed the To focus only on the seeing of our eyes

52 | PARABOLA
is misguided, and represents a common other realizations about what they may
fallacy. Every cell, every part of our body have been experiencing in that moment
is a sensitive receiving apparatus, and all presented themselves. This division of
are connected to the eyes. I remember attention, where we maintain a measure
sitting on a beach years after the surgery, of our awareness within ourselves while
on the island of Kauai, looking at the simultaneously directing some toward
different colors in the world around me, and into the object of our perception,
and feeling each color, locating with stimulated many key experiences for me.
precision where the particular hue It was a remarkable discovery. My
resounded in my body. It was understanding was no longer limited to
symphonic, the way in which colors looking at the outside of things—the
touched different inner regions, and inner world is within the capabilities of
stimulated different thoughts, emotions, our seeing.
and sensations.
When I am attentive, I can sense,
It Is the braIn that sees,
especially on my right side, when sImply makIng use of the eyes
something or someone is there, and can
sense the amount of space separating me THE BRAIN, as I have learned, is a
from the object or person. I am surprised remarkably adaptive instrument. Over
while driving to realize that I do not the course of six or eight months after
always need to look on my right side. I losing binocular vision, the brain learns
simply seem to know or feel when to adapt to the monocular cues of
something is there. But this requires great perspective, such as the way objects
care; it happens only when I am attentive. appear to change size in relation to
Otherwise, my lack of finely tuned depth distance, and the way motion is
perception causes clumsiness and errors perceived relative to space (for example,
of visual judgment. Attention is the key. I bushes in the foreground appear to be
can sometimes sense the character or passing by faster than mountains in the
thoughts of another person by loosely background as we walk or drive), and
resting my gaze on them, and staying depth perception is slowly regained.
within my own body, which provides I also discovered that other senses—
insights and empathetic realizations. especially hearing—become sharper and
I have consciously experimented with more acute when I need to locate
this phenomenon in order to understand objects or persons on my right side.
it. Probably the most vivid impressions Although I suspect that my physical
came on a number of occasions while capacity to hear has not increased at all,
riding the subway in Manhattan. I sounds are now more within my field of
discovered that by empathetically awareness, as I must depend on them to
looking at individuals on the train, I drive, walk, and navigate through space.
could place my attention inside their I now have difficulty getting around
body, so to speak; to feel and sense their adroitly and being attentive in noisy
posture and weight with my own body, environments, or having background
and understand what that posture felt music or the television on while engaged
like, from the inside out. From feeling in activities that require judgments of
the weight and shape of their posture, depth and spatial relationships.

FALL 2011 | 53
 Listening and seeing are interrelated, on our inner state of mind, feeling, and
as are all of our senses. Our physical body. But they are possible. Most of us
vision perceives the light reflected from have experienced moments of inner
objects and our hearing perceives the accord in which, by chance or intentional
vibrations of sound that emanate from, effort, we are open, sensitive, and wholly
or are reflected by, objects or people. I present. The first step on the Buddhist
believe there is a reciprocal relationship Eightfold Path is “right seeing,” which
between all of our senses that can be serves as a fitting foundation for our
encouraged and developed if we wish— journey. In my mind, “right seeing”
and this is true for all sighted, partially implies not only a positive, life-affirming
sighted, or nonseeing individuals. attitude, but also a genuine effort toward
direct, conscious perception.
The nature of our perceptions is
seeIng Is a dIrect experIence
and represents a Way of knoWIng
relative and depends on our state of
awareness and state of being. Suspending
THIS MAY BE stating the obvious, but we the internal dialogue, maintaining a dual
do see what we want to see. What we call attention that embraces both ourselves
“seeing” is generally a reflection of our and the perceived object, and trying to
inner dialogue, which is constant and be fully present to the moment in front
unceasing. Our inner dialogue tends to of us are exercises that assist in the
support our particular world view, our process of seeing.
image of ourself, and our subjective Seeing is an exchange of energy that
beliefs. We know too much; we can name takes place between ourselves and the
and provide a label for everything under perceived objects of our attention. In
the sun. We have our own agendas, our losing the sight of my eye, I learned to
predisposed attitudes, and our own depend to a greater extent on efforts
cultural biases. We rarely see the world in toward self-awareness and connecting
a fresh way or question the numerous with my own body and feelings. I clearly
and often unconscious filters that observed how the objects of my
influence the nature of our perception. perception registered their impressions
Moments of real seeing are beyond the on my being and stimulated widely
labeling propensity of the mind, beyond varying inner sensations and feelings.
what we think we know. Seeing is a step Although I do not fully understand this
into the unknown and requires some process, perhaps the larger potential of
degree of intention and awakening. Real seeing is found in these moments of self-
seeing—of ourselves, of others, and of awareness and the recognition that all
the world—contains three defining impressions we receive register
characteristics: simultaneity, a direct themselves within us. Seeing comes from
perception in the present moment; within ourselves, not from the vague
objectivity, seeing things as they are, as “out there” of the outer world.
best we can; and impartiality, freedom
from judgment. For most of us, governed SEEING CAN BE CULTIVATED, indeed
by our subjective attitudes and cherished must be, if we wish to live full and
opinions, such moments of direct productive lives, sensitively receiving and
perception are rare and depend entirely richly giving to ourselves and others. It

54 | PARABOLA
 Bryce Canyon, Utah, 1974

must always be born in our hearts and undoubtedly, the greatest challenges
minds that we are the primary medium given us, the most potent tests of our
of the creative act—not film or clay, creative aspirations and capabilities.
paints or words. Learning to see,
Adapted, with permission, from THE
learning to be, and learning to come
WIDENING STREAM: THE SEVEN STAGES OF
into accord with the deeper sources CREATIVITY, by David Ulrich, Beyond Words
within and without—these are, Publishing, 2002.

FALL 2011 | 55
 parabola
O
Vanishing Point E
How am I a self
when I am
T
constantly disappearing?
A traveling venue
R
of water
and sinew.
I am a story
Y
I made up
in my head:
Looks good in hats. Stories –
Won’t eat oysters. Just when you think
Fears infirmity. you could not take

Touch me, I am fluid. one more

here comes another.
In all my transparency You keep right on
my body is
betraying me, living –
just as piling up
the plot your stories
demanded.
I would deny this like cordwood
distant progression and the lying-self
of time and cells keeps pace
if the mirror
were not with daily duties:
such a talker. meals to prepare,
pills to take.
Kiss me, I am corruptible.
How could you
So what keep on if you did not
are we deny your vanishing point?
made of ?
Look at me, I won’t last long.

—Tina Schumann
56 | PARABOLA
Spring for Edwin
I went out to meet
the wind half-way;
something new is always
turning up,
though the crows complain.

When Mom died

Daddy went to the ocean
to meet the tossing—
the change halfway.

It should be winter
longer than this.
For a very long time
I should be buried
in snow.

It seems wrong
that the very day
you were buried
change should ripple
out in such a way—

Everything blooms in shock.

The spring equinox has come

and someone else will
be the teller of the seasons
since you are strangely silent.

Yet the master of language

you are, now speaks
in perfect metaphor—wind,
the red-bud tree, the deer
in the back yard . . .

You continue,
evenso,
my heart is in some
snowy place.

—Linda Ann Suddarth

FALL 2011 | 57
 Ancient French Art History Lessons
in Glass-Encased Pool
The shift has happened. I would like to tell you, that this image, this illusion, this
roar is compensation for all you don’t see. Improbably you have on one hand the
resurrection of Jesus and on the other hand Buddha, lighted within and without,
meditating on the Body Tree. As Hollis says, we are all in this subjective trap of
trying to reflect objectively on an always changing supposedly objective world. I am
entangled. And when the clock chimes I expel resounding and fantastical roundness.
I dream about the changing clay shapes in this room and the felt and profound
compilation of 13, 12, 1.5.
Bee-a-trice
I think I will see you again, but not for one hundred years. I feel the distance love
makes and the unseemliness of transcendence.

What are you feeling?

The elegance of rhizomes.
And now?
The letter A
And now?
The sound ur
And now?
The essence of rhizomes.

The past is still, dark, and unperturbed. To navigate change, there is always yellow,
succumbing in wind to the quality of prayer—the nowing, the bowing, when she goes,
I go. If I may give perhaps one suggestion, it would be an eternal growth of authentic-
ity, prosperous thriving, and closets of existential phenomenologies. In one second the
laundry and in the next, fluorescent pink fish. Your soul is a deep purple coral reef your
body no different than ocean—limitless, vast, full of deep emotion. I sail on the boat
of now to then and into the forests brown makes in your hair, in your eyes, and all over
your skin. Your old life will die—you will jump into the water and drown—you will
probably drown in the infinite and infinitesimal guidance that love offers silently and
without warning to every moment of wanting—wanting the world, wanting creativity,
wanting and succumbing. You are a wordless abandoner of the conscious and ever-
striving abstraction. When spirit becomes unveiled and the great soul revels in the
deafening chime of dark and foreboding earth, you will know the triumph of will,
cloudiness, cloudlessness and forgiveness. The heron has made her way among the
palm fronds to fish and you are the wordless rememberence of virtue, cherries ripened
in light soaked orchards and picked to rose your cheeks, giggling dolls—crumbs,
quills, quails and sobbages.

—Anna Roach
58 | PARABOLA
 ~ Refraction~
Listening is the
Cue to your heart's unfolding
A silent gateway to being reborn~ Some
Unseen element blossoming~ Becoming its
Own garden of seasons~ I meet you here...Still
Within all movement~ Untouched within a haze
Of time~ I would stand here behind the curtain
Of your eyes~ My slipping silhouette a sweet
Scented breath~ The bending refraction
Of your night within my light~ Why
Must we be stillborn within
This prism of life? Let
Me touch you
~Here~
Where
There are no
More mirrors to reflect
What can only be seen within
The tunnel of eyes~ Racing directly
To the heartline~ The pulse within the
Bounty of your blood~ My finger print
Against your tender swell~ To press
To my lips some kind of eternity~
The sanguine seal whet
With a promise of
A different
Kind
~

—Leila A. Fortier
FALL 2011 | 59
 ARCS

I Looked Up
hen I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about
T beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I
saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing
in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all
shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred
hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight
and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all
the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.1
BLACK ELK

our vision will become clear only when you

Y can look into your own heart. Who looks
outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.2
CARL JUNG

looked up and saw Japhy running down the mountain in huge twenty-
“I foot leaps, running, leaping, landing with a great drive of his booted
heels, bouncing five feet or so, running, then taking another long crazy yelling
yodelaying sail down the sides of the world and in that flash I realized it’s
impossible to fall off mountains you fool and with a yodel of my own I suddenly
got up and began running down the mountain after him doing the exactly the
same huge leaps, the same fantastic runs and jumps, and in the space of about
five minutes I’d guess Japhy Ryder and I (in my sneakers, driving the heels of
my sneakers right into sand, rock, boulders, I didn’t care any more I was so
anxious to get down out of there) came leaping and yelling like mountain
goats or I’d say like Chinese lunatics of a thousand years ago….”3
JACK KEROUAC

60 | PARABOLA
 he “spark” which is my true self is the flash of
T the Absolute recognizing itself in me.4
THOMAS MERTON

hen I detect a beauty in any of the recesses of nature,

W I am reminded by the serene and retired spirit in
which it requires to be contemplated, of the inexpressible
privacy of life—how silent and unambitious it is. The
beauty there is in mosses will have to be considered from
the holiest, quietest nook.
* * *
My truest, serenest moments are too still for emotion; they
have woolen feet. In all our lives we live under the hill, and if we
are not gone we live there still.5
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

1 From BLACK ELK SPEAKS, by John Neihardt (1932)

2 From the letters of Carl Jung
3 From THE DHARMA BUMS (1958)
4 From LOVE AND LIVING (1965)
5 From a journal entry by Henry David Thoreau, June 22, 1851

FALL 2011 | 61
 Digging
Deeper:
A conversation with
Mark Boal

Mark Boal is the screenwriter and producer of THE HURT LOCKER, which
won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2009. Boal himself
won two Oscars for his work on that film: for his screenplay and for
producing. He is also a veteran journalist. Although hard at work on
a new film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, he took time to
answer a few questions about seeing.
—Jeff Zaleski

JEFF ZALESKI: Earlier this year you published a piece in ROLLING STONE that
reported on illicit killings by American soldiers in Afghanistan. In effect,
you allowed the reader to see certain realities and truths that had been
hidden from view. What is the value of this? What kind of value do you
put on seeing? And what is it in us, do you think, that draws us toward
(or away from) seeing reality?

62 | PARABOLA
MARK BOAL: On a macro level, it seems self- What myths or classic stories helped
evident that an informed public is better shape your understanding of storytelling?
off than an ignorant one, and although I MB: Orwell was a big influence on me. He
have no concrete proof of that statement, showed me a way that fiction, and even
I suppose I try, in my own small ways, to science fiction, could be used to illumi-
add bits of information and data, and even nate a social order. To your point, even
stories, to the collective culture. Having though fiction is by definition not real, it
said that, I don’t know that I’m in any can paradoxically create an environment
position to assess the value of my of truth-telling on a metaphysical scale.
reporting. A writer, I think, never really
knows what his work does to other JZ: It’s difficult to say how the protagonist of
people. I do know that I’m very grateful THE HURT LOCKER has been changed by all he
to have the job, and doing it gives me a sees; at film’s end, he does what he does when
great sense of satisfaction. As for “seeing,” he first appears: he defuses bombs. How has
I suppose journalists try to look deeper seeing certain realities changed you, and, in
into the pond; sometimes they find particular, changed how you go about explor-
ancient, brutal fish down there, sometimes ing (seeing) things, for better or for worse?
they just see a reflection of themselves. MB: Spending time in Iraq was an eye-
opening experience. It inspired me to
JZ: It’s easy to understand how journalism dig deeper into the war in a fictional
can aid seeing. But as a screenwriter, you tell setting than I had as a reporter, to
a story—you create “fiction,” which some explore the psychological contours of
think of as unreality. How can storytelling working a high-risk job on the bomb
allow us to see better what is real and true? squad, its psychic burdens, its morbid

FALL 2011 | 63
 Far left: Mark Boal. Woman pointing: Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker

allure. My ticket to doing that was an JZ: In THE HURT LOCKER, much of the
invented character, Sergeant James—an seeing is done via technology: via
everyman who, like all men, is unique, sighting scopes and binoculars, through
and who represented to me the rough video screens and cameras. How do you
position of the volunteer Army. think technology is affecting the way we
view the world?
JZ: Back to journalism: Today more MB: I’m not sure digital technology is
than ever, in order to gain an audience, having a fundamental effect on the way
journalism must entertain even as it we “view the world.” One of the biggest
informs. What are the particular technological changes impacting the
challenges that arise in today’s culture visual side of things was, of course, the
regarding the seeing of what is real invention of electricity, and the gigantic
and true? shift in lifestyle habits that came when
MB: I’m not very receptive to hand- light bulbs replaced candles in the home,
wringing over today’s culture. The chal- and when cities were built with electri-
lenges to telling a story that is good, in cally illuminated side-walks. It’s hard to
the broadest sense of the word, and say where the personal computer stacks
true, in the broadest sense of that word, up against that sort of watershed devel-
seem to me to be more or less the same opment…. Maybe the digital age is not
as they’ve always been: the same obsta- as radical as it seems at the moment….
cles and barriers that writers and story As for the use of scopes and different
tellers have always faced. Bizarre as it cameras in THE HURT LOCKER, that was due
might sound, I bet there’s a lot about partly to a desire to be faithful to the
today’s culture, except perhaps for the technology soldiers actually deploy in the
ever-increasing decibel level, that a field, and partly it was due to a series of
town crier from Roman times would aesthetic decisions made by director
find recognizable. Kathryn Bigelow.

64 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 65
 “Seeing” by Zen Master Dogen
Kazuaki Tanahashi

T
he view on “seeing” by Dogen, a thirteenth-
century Japanese Zen monk, is rather
unique. He uses the word “dream”
to describe the enlightenment of the
Buddha, and the meditative experience
of all practitioners. Counter to the
common notion that dreams are
unreal and actual phenomena are
real, he asserts that the awak-
ened ones’ profound wisdom is
concrete, the source of all
teaching, while actual phe-
nomena are transient and
unreliable.
Dogen presented this
short essay titled “Within a
Dream Expressing the Dream”
to the assembly of the Kannon-
dori Kosho Horin Monastery in
Uji County, south of Kyoto, on the
twenty-first day, the ninth month,
the third year of the Ninji Era [1242].
The following text is translated by
Taigen Dan Leighton and myself.
(Excerpted from Treasury of the True
Dharma Eye, Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo
Genzo, Shambhala Publications, 2010, with
permission by the publisher.)

THE PATH OF ALL BUDDHAS and ancestors arises

before the first forms emerge; it cannot be spoken of
using conventional views. This being so, in the realm of
buddha ancestors there is the active power of buddhas going
beyond buddhas. Since this realm is not a matter of the passage
of time, their lives are neither long nor short, neither quick nor slow.

66 | PARABOLA
Every dewdrop manifested in
every realm is a dream.

This cannot be judged in an ordinary manner.

Thus, the dharma wheel has been set to turn
since before the first sign of forms
emerged. The great merit needs no
reward, and becomes the guidepost for
all ages. Within a dream this is the
dream you express. Because awak-
ening is seen within awakening,
the dream is expressed within a
dream.
The place where the dream is
expressed within a dream is the
land and the assembly of buddha
ancestors. The buddhas’ lands
and their assemblies, the ances-
tors’ way and their seats, are awak-
ening throughout awakening, and
express the dream within a dream.
When you meet such speech and
expressions, do not regard them as
other than the buddhas’ assembly; it
is buddha turning the dharma wheel.
This dharma wheel encompasses all
the ten directions and the eight facets of
a clear crystal, and so the great oceans,
Mt. Sumeru, the lands, and all buddhas
are actualized. This is the dream expressed
within a dream, prior to all dreams.
Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is
a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the
hundred grasses. What requires questioning is this
very point. What is confusing is this very point. At this
time, there are dream grasses, grasses within, expressive
grasses, and so on. When we study this, then roots, stems,
branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits, as well as radiance and color
are all the great dream. Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.

FALL 2011 | 67
 However, those who do not wish to embracing world, cause and effect are
study buddha dharma believe that not ignored, and all buddhas are unsur-
expressing the dream within a dream passable. Know that being present in all
means speaking of unreal dream grass as situations, the guiding way of all bud-
real, like piling delusion upon delusion. dhas in the amassing of expressions of
But this is not true. When you say, dharma is boundlessly transforming. Do
“Within confusion is just confusion,” still not search for the limits of dharma in the
you should follow the path in the vast past and future.
sky known as “delusion throughout All things leave and all things arrive
delusion.” You should endeavor to inves- right here. This being so, one plants
tigate just this thoroughly. twining vines and gets entangled in twin-
ing vines. This is the characteristic of
THE EXPRESSING OF THE DREAM within unsurpassable enlightenment. Just as
a dream is all buddhas. All buddhas are enlightenment is limitless, sentient
wind and rain, water and fire. We beings are limitless and unsurpassable.
respectfully maintain these names of Just as cages and snares are limitless,
buddhas, and also pay homage to those emancipation from them is limitless. The
names of other buddhas. To express the actualization of the fundamental point is:
dream within a dream is the ancient “I grant you thirty blows.” This is the

Without being within a dream, buddhas do not

emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel.

buddhas; it is to ride in this treasure actualization of expressing the dream

boat and directly arrive in the practice within a dream.
place. Directly arriving in the practice Thus, a tree with no roots, the ground
place is riding in this treasure boat. where no light or shade falls, and a valley
Meandering dreams and direct dreams, where no shouts echo are no other than
holding and letting go, all freely flow the actualized expressions of the dream
like gusting breezes. within a dream. This is neither the realm
The dharma wheel is just like this; of humans nor of heavenly beings, and
turning the great dharma-wheel-world is cannot be judged by ordinary people.
immeasurable and boundless. It turns Who could doubt that a dream is
even within a single particle, ebbing and enlightenment, since it is not within the
flowing ceaselessly within the particle. purview of doubt? Who could recognize
Accordingly, whenever such a dharma is this dream, since it is not related to
turned, even an antagonist nods and recognition? Since unsurpassable enlight-
smiles. Wherever such a dharma is enment is unsurpassable enlightenment,
turned, it freely circulates like the flow- so the dream is called a dream.
ing breezes.
Thus, the endless turning of dharma THERE ARE INNER DREAMS, dream
traverses the entire land. In the all- expressions, expressions of dreams, and

68 | PARABOLA
dreams inside. Without being within a brain, or body, flesh, hands, and feet.
dream, there is no expression of dreams. Without attachment, one who buys gold
Without expressing dreams, there is no sells gold. This is called the mystery of
being within a dream. Without express- mysteries, the wonder of wonders, the
ing dreams, there are no buddhas. awakening of awakenings, the head top
Without being within a dream, buddhas above the head. This is the daily activity
do not emerge and turn the wondrous of buddha ancestors. When you study
dharma wheel. This dharma wheel is no this head top, you may think that the
other than a buddha together with a head only means a human skull, without
buddha, and a dream expressed within a understanding that it is the crown of
dream. Simply expressing the dream Vairochana Buddha. How can you real-
within a dream is itself buddhas and ize it as the tips of the bright, clear hun-
ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable dred grasses? Who knows that this is the
enlightenment. Furthermore, going head as it is?
beyond the dharma body is itself express- Since ancient times the phrase “the
ing the dream within a dream. head top placed above the head” has
Here is the encounter of a buddha been spoken. Hearing this phrase, foolish
with a buddha. No attachments are people think that it cautions against
needed to the head, eyes, marrow, and adding something extra. Usually they

FALL 2011 | 69
 The expression of the dream within a dream can
be aroused by both ordinary people and sages.
70 | PARABOLA
refer to something that should not occur a dream, brings forth buddhas with their
when they say, “How can you add a head unsurpassed enlightenment. These bud-
on top of a head?” Actually, isn’t this a dhas, with their enlightenment, in turn
mistake? speak this sutra, which is the established
The expression of the dream within a expression of the dream within a dream.
dream can be aroused by both ordinary As the cause of a dream is not
people and sages. Moreover, the expres- obscure, the effect of the dream is not
sion of the dream within a dream by ignored. This is indeed one mallet strik-
both ordinary people and sages arose ing one thousand or ten thousand blows,
yesterday and develops today. Know that one thousand or ten thousand mallets
yesterday’s expression of the dream striking one or half a blow. As it is so, a
within a dream was the recognition of thing of suchness expresses the dream
this expression as expressing the dream within a dream; a person of suchness
within a dream. The present expression expresses the dream within a dream. A
of the dream within a dream is to experi- thing beyond suchness expresses the
ence right now this expression as express- dream within a dream; a person beyond
ing the dream within a dream. Indeed, suchness expresses the dream within a
this is the marvelous joy of meeting a dream. This understanding has been
buddha. acknowledged as crystal clear. What is
We should regret that, although the called, “talking all day long about a
dream of the buddha ancestors’ bright dream within a dream,” is no other than
hundred grasstops is apparent, clearer the actual expression of the dream within
than a hundred thousand suns and a dream.
moons, the ignorant do not see it. What
a pity! The head that is “the head placed AN ANCIENT BUDDHA SAID, “Now I
above the head” is exactly the head tops express the dream within a dream for
of a hundred grasses, thousands of types you. All buddhas in the past, present,
of heads, the ten thousand kinds of and future express the dream within a
heads, the heads throughout the body, dream. The six early generations of
the heads of the entire world uncon- Chinese ancestors express the dream
cealed, the heads of the entire world of within a dream.”
the ten directions, the heads of teacher
and student that join in a single phrase, STUDY AND CLARIFY these words.
the head top of a one hundred foot pole. Shakyamuni Buddha holding up the
“Placing” and “above” in “placing the flower and blinking is exactly the expres-
head top above the head” are both sion of the dream within a dream. Huike
heads. Study and investigate this. doing prostrations and attaining the mar-
row is also the expression of the dream
THUS, THE PASSAGE “All buddhas and within a dream.
their unsurpassable, complete enlighten- Making one brief utterance, beyond
ment all emerge from this [Diamond] understanding and beyond knowing, is
Sutra” is exactly expressing the dream the expression of the dream within a
within a dream, which has always been dream. As the expression of the dream
the head placed atop the head. This within a dream is the thousand hands
sutra, while expressing the dream within and eyes of Avalokiteshvara that function

FALL 2011 | 71
 by many means, the power of seeing col- pivoting the brain [actualizing freedom]
ors and sounds, and hearing colors and is just your awakening of the dream
sounds, is fully maintained. The mani- within a dream—identifying with and
festing body is the expression of the actualizing the dream within a dream.
dream within a dream. The expressions
of dreams and of myriad aspects of SHAKYAMUNI BUDDHA said in a verse [in
dharma are the expression of the dream the Lotus Sutra]:
within a dream. Taking hold and letting
go are the expressions of the dream All buddhas, with bodies of golden hue,
within a dream. Directly pointing is splendidly adorned with a hundred
expressing the dream; hitting the mark is auspicious marks,
expressing the dream. hear the dharma and expound it for others.
Such is the fine dream that ever occurs.
WHEN YOU TAKE HOLD or when you let In the dream you are made king,
go, you need to study the common bal-
then forsake palace and household
ancing scale. As soon as you understand entourage,
it, the measuring of ounces and pounds
along with utmost satisfaction of the five-
will become clear and will express the sense desires,
dream within a dream. Without know-
and travel to the site of practice
ing ounces and pounds, and without
under the bodhi tree.
reaching the level balance, there is no
On the lion’s seat
actualization of the balance point.
When you attain balanced equilibrium, in search of the way, after seven days
you will see the balance point. Achiev- you attain the wisdom of the buddhas,
ing balance does not depend on the completing the unsurpassable way.
objects being weighed, on the balancing Arising and turning the dharma wheel,
scale, or on the activity of weighing, but you expound the dharma for the four
just hangs on emptiness. Thus, deeply groups of practitioners
consider that without attaining balance throughout thousands of millions of
you do not experience solidity. Just kalpas,
hanging on its own in emptiness, the expressing the wondrous dharma free of
expression of the dream within a dream flaws,
allows objects to float free in emptiness. and liberating innumerable sentient
Within emptiness, stable balance is beings.
manifested. Stable balance is the great Finally you enter pari-nirvana,
way of the balance scale. While suspend- like the smoke dispersing as the lamp is
ing emptiness and suspending objects, extinguished.
whether as emptiness or as forms, If later in the unwholesome world
expression of the dream within a dream one expounds this foremost dharma,
brings level balance.
one will produce great benefit,
There is no liberation other than
like the merit just described.
expression of the dream within a dream.
The dream is the entire great earth; the
entire great earth is stable. Thus, the STUDY THIS DISCOURSE of the Buddha,
inexhaustibility of turning the head and and thoroughly investigate this buddha

72 | PARABOLA
assembly of the buddhas [in the Lotus dharma wheel . . . throughout thousands of
Sutra]. This dream of buddhas is not an millions of kalpas . . . liberating innumer-
analogy. As the wondrous dharma of all able sentient beings—these fluctuations
buddhas is mastered only by a buddha within a dream cannot be traced.
together with a buddha, all dharmas All buddhas, with bodies of golden hue,
awakened in the dream are genuine splendidly adorned with a hundred auspi-
forms. In awakening there are aspiration, cious marks, hear the dharma and

Hearing the dharma is hearing sounds

with the eye, and with the mind.
practice, enlightenment, and nirvana. expound it for others. Such is the fine
Within the dream there are aspiration, dream that ever occurs. These words
practice, enlightenment, and nirvana. clearly show that this fine dream is illumi-
Every awakening within a dream is the nated as all buddhas.
genuine form, without regard to large or There is the ever occurring of the
small, superior or inferior. Tathagata’s words; it is not only hun-
However, on hearing the words in dreds of years of dreaming. Expounding
the passage, In the dream you are made it for others is manifesting the body.
king, people in the past and present mis- Hearing the dharma is hearing sounds
takenly think that, due to the power of with the eye, and with the mind. It is
expounding this foremost dharma, mere hearing sounds in the old nest, and
night dreams may become like this before the empty kalpa.
dream of buddhas. Those who think As it is said that All buddhas, with
like this have not yet clarified the bodies of golden hue, splendidly adorned
Buddha’s discourse. with a hundred auspicious marks, now
Awakening and dreaming are from the we can directly realize beyond any
beginning one suchness, the genuine doubt that this fine dream is itself all
reality. The buddha dharma, even if it buddhas with bodies. Although within
were an analogy, is the genuine reality. As awakening the buddhas’ transforma-
it is not an analogy, made king in the tions never cease, the buddha ancestors’
dream is the reality of the buddha emergence is itself the creation of a
dharma. dream within a dream. Be mindful of
Shakyamuni Buddha and all buddhas not slandering the buddha dharma.
and ancestors each arouse the mind, cul- When you practice not slandering the
tivate practice, and attain universal true buddha dharma, this path of the tatha-
awakening within a dream. This being gatas is immediately actualized.
so, the Buddha’s path of transforming
the Saha World throughout his lifetime is
indeed created in a dream.
Presented to the assembly of the Kannondori
In search of the way, after seven days is Kosho Horin Monastery, Uji County, Yamashiro
the measure of attained buddha wisdom. Province, on the twenty-first day, the ninth
As for what is described, Turning the month, the third year of the Ninji Era [1242].

FALL 2011 | 73
 Dionysos:
The Mysteries
Made Visible
George Latura Beke

Figure 1. Planetary stairway along the zodiacal light:

bright Venus at the bottom, reddish Mars
in the middle, Saturn at the top

IF YOU’VE BEEN SHOWING a youngster ancient coins that evoke

“the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” or
if you’ve taken him or her to a planetarium, or to an observatory
to see Saturn with a large telescope, be prepared for exponentially
multiplied challenges.
A short while ago, my twelve-year-old grandniece asked: “How
come we can see Jupiter and Venus, but Dionysos is not visible,
like other ancient gods?”
That question had been in my mind for quite some time, and
her query ignited a surprising remembering, which according
to Plato is the process of learning. As it turns out, Dionysos is
linked to a celestial phenomenon, but one so rarely seen that, in
antiquity, it spawned the Mysteries and remains a mystery for
most people today.

74 | PARABOLA
 In his BACCHAE, the Athenian playwright hours of the night, revealing to the initi-
Euripides has Dionysos manifesting a ated a golden pathway to the heavens.
visible light reaching from the earth to And when planets are propitiously
the sky, while in ANTIGONE, Sophocles located along this visible path, we wit-
claims that the god leads the dance of the ness the celestial stairway leading up to
stars, which indicates that Dionysos does the divine abode that formed the basis of
have a connection to phenomena visible ancient astral religion (Figure 1).
in the firmament. The Greek poet Pindar painted the
Dionysos cried out: Maidens, glowing heavenly staircase in his ODES
I bring the man who makes a mockery (c. 400 B.C.), while the description of
of you this phenomenon hundreds of years
And me and my orgies; take vengeance earlier by the greatest Greek poet would
on him! become famous as the Golden Chain
As he addressed them, a light of of Homer.
awesome fire
Was fastened on the heaven and the earth. First did the Fates in their golden chariot
–Euripides, BACCHAE bring heavenly Themis, wise in counsel,
from the springs of Ocean to the awesome
God of many names . . . stair that marks the shining way to
O Bacchos . . . Olympus….
O leader in the dance of the stars –Pindar, ODES
That circle in the night . . .
Come, O Lord . . . Hangs me a golden chain from heaven,
–Sophocles, ANTIGONE and lay hold of it all of you, gods and god-
desses together—tug as you will, you will
Even amateur astronomers know that not drag Zeus the supreme counselor
the stars do not dance. They are station- from heaven to earth.
ary, fixed in their position relative to –Homer, ILIAD
each other due to their great distance In the TEN BOOKS ON ARCHITECTURE of the
from us. The “stars” that do dance are Roman writer Vitruvius (which inspired
the “Wanderers” of our planetary sys- Leonardo’s VITRUVIAN MAN), we also find
tem, the seven visible bodies that course the planetary staircase, while the Greek
along the ecliptic and mark out the con- philosopher Celsus gave his understand-
stellations of the zodiac. For Dionysos ing of the Mysteries of Mithras, a cult
to lead the dance of the Wanderers, he that attracted many adherents from the
too would have to travel along the Roman army and promised the ascent of
ecliptic and soar along the zodiac. the soul through a planetary ladder
Thank heavens, there is a celestial (Figure 2).
phenomenon that fits what Euripides The Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, as
and Sophocles revealed, an awesome well as Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, differing
light in the night sky that follows the from one another in the magnitude of
ecliptic: the zodiacal light. Composed of their orbits as though their courses were at
myriads of dust particles that circle the different points in a flight of steps….
Sun along the path of the planets and –Vitruvius
that, like the planets, reflect the solar In that system there is an orbit for the
glare, this magic dust becomes visible at fixed stars, another for the planets, and
specific times of the year and at particular a diagram for the passage of the soul

FALL 2011 | 75
 MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS
tried to stamp out all evidence
of ancient planetary cults, but
traces survived. The Great
Menorah of the Temple of
Jerusalem that was carried off
by Roman soldiers (as seen on
the Arch of Titus in Rome)
had seven branches, and the
Jewish writers Josephus and
Philo of Alexandria assert that
these seven lights stood for the
planets. The consecutive light-
ing of menorah candles over
days at Hanukkah replays the
ascent through the planets,
with the first candle to be lit
named Shamash, the ancient
mid-Eastern Sun god.
Mirroring this symbolism,
many Christian churches
Figure 2. Mosaic path at Ostia Mithraeum, today have seven lamps before
showing the planetary ladder to heaven the altar, from the REVELATION of John of
Patmos, seven lights that represent the
planets. And when Muslim pilgrims
through the latter. They picture this as a arrive in Mecca, their first duty is to
ladder with seven gates, and at the very circumambulate the Ka’aba: briskly
top an eighth gate…. for the first three circuits (the inner
–Celsus, ON THE TRUE DOCTRINE “planets”: Moon, Mercury, Venus), and
then more leisurely for the remaining
The symbol of the planetary ladder to four circuits (the outer “planets”: Sun,
the heavens was carried at the forefront Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), paralleling the
of Roman legions on standards that bore ancient ascent through the planets.
circles, disks, and crescents representing In PARADISO, the fourteenth-century
heavenly bodies (Figure 3, top). The first Italian poet Dante describes a climb
Roman emperor, Augustus, adopted the through the planets, proving that this tra-
zodiacal sign Capricorn as his personal dition lived on for many generations. But
symbol and, after he was deified, this sign the most amazing survival of the planetary
would appear atop legion standards hun- ascent to the heavens is our week, the
dreds of years later (Figure 3, bottom). seven-day voyage through the planets.
The promise of a heavenly ascension The Roman historian Dio Cassius reveals
inspired legionnaires as they marched that the order of the days of the week is
into battle, with Divus Augustus based on musical intervals, and so if we
(Capricorn) ready to welcome them follow the classical planetary sequence of
into the celestial abode. Vitruvius, we start with the Moon

76 | PARABOLA
(Monday, the first day of the week), skip
three planets (the musical interval of the
fifth) and arrive at Mars (French:
Mardi). Repeating the procedure,
we circle back to Mercury (French:
Mercredi), then on to Jupiter/Jove
(French: Jeudi), to Venus (French:
Vendredi), then to Saturn (Saturday), and
finally arrive at Sunday. Then we repeat
the uphill climb through the planets all
over again, much like Sisyphus.
The Roman encyclopedist Pliny
ascribed the Music of the Spheres to
Pythagoras, while hundreds of years
later the jurist Martianus Cappela
described an allegorical harmonic ascent
through the planetary spheres. Figure 3. Top: Denarius of Marc Antony,
showing standards with Moon crescent at the bottom,
Occasionally Pythagoras draws on the topped by circles or orbs. BoTTom: bronze coin of Gordian
theory of music, and designates the III; on the reverse, Capricorn, the astrological sign of
Augustus, sits atop the flanking standards.
distance between the earth and the moon
as a whole tone, that between the moon
and Mercury as a semitone, between
Mercury and Venus the same, between her What is this great and pleasing sound that
and the sun a tone and a half, between the fills my ears? “That,” replied my grand-
sun and Mars a tone, between Mars and father, “is a concord of tones separated by
Jupiter half a tone, between Jupiter and unequal but nevertheless carefully propor-
Saturn half a tone…. tioned intervals, caused by the rapid
–Pliny, NATURAL HISTORY motion of the spheres themselves….
Gifted men, imitating this harmony on
Philology ascended rapidly from here and
stringed instruments and in singing, have
flew by a half tone as far as the circle of
gained for themselves a return to this
Venus…. Soon she was eager to make the
region, as have those who have devoted
toilsome journey to the sun’s circle—an
their exceptional abilities to a search for
ascent rendered toilsome by its distance of
divine truths.”
three half tones, or a tone and a half.
–Cicero, DREAM OF SCIPIO
–Martianus Capella,
MARRIAGE OF PHILOLOGY AND MERCURY In the sphere of Saturn it [the soul]
obtains reason and understanding … in
In his ON THE REPUBLIC, the Roman Jupiter’s sphere, the power to act … in
orator Cicero mimics Plato’s REPUBLIC and Mars’ sphere, a bold spirit … in the sun’s
invokes a return to the celestial regions, sphere, sense perception and imagination
… in Venus’ sphere, the impulse of pas-
a return because the soul supposedly
sion… in Mercury’s sphere, the impulse to
descends from the heavens acquiring
speak and interpret … and in the lunar
different attributes through the planetary sphere, the function of molding and
spheres (according to Macrobius), increasing bodies.
attributes it will relinquish in reverse –Macrobius,
order once free of the material body. COMMENTARY ON THE DREAM OF SCIPIO

FALL 2011 | 77
 The return of the soul to the celestial the Mysteries of Eleusis (as was Herakles),
regions along the planetary path was the and the connection between the
great secret of ancient mystery religions, Eleusinian goddess and Dionysos
whether the Mysteries of Mithras or the would survive for centuries.
Mysteries of Eleusis, and since the planets God of many names,
must travel beneath the earth, this journey Glorious child of Thebes,
inevitably encounters Death (Hades). Whose mother was bride
Dionysos descended to the To Zeus’ deep thunder!
underworld and returned, just as It is you who guard the fame of Italy,
Herakles came back with three-headed You who look after the embrace, at Eleusis,
Kerberos, and for this they were called Of Demeter, all-welcoming goddess.
O Bacchos …
soter, or savior, as guarantors of the soul’s
–Sophocles, ANTIGONE
safety in the afterlife (Figure 4, top). Just
skirting sacrilege, Aristophanes comically When the Greeks colonized southern
re-invented Dionysos’ otherworldly Italy (Magna Graecia), the city of
journey in FROGS, where Dionysos asks Metapontum minted coins that show
Herakles for advice on how to reach Dionysos on one side, while the reverse
Hades. Prior to his voyage to the has the ear of grain of Demeter flanked
underworld, Dionysos was initiated into by the four-headed torch of Eleusis
(Figure 4, middle). Similarly, silver coins
of the Roman Republic show Liber
Figure 4. Top, coin of Thrace: Ivy-crowned head of
Dionysos; on reverse, Dionysos Soter (Savior). Middle,
(Dionysos) on one side, while Ceres
coin of Metapontum: Head of Dionysos; on reverse, (Demeter) carries torches on the reverse
the ear of grain of Demeter flanked by the four-headed
cross torch of Eleusis. Bottom, silver denarius of the as she searches for her abducted
Roman Republic: Head of Liber (Dionysos); on daughter (Figure 4, bottom), a pairing
reverse, Demeter searches for her daughter,
brandishing torches in a chariot drawn by serpents. that cements the mystical relationship
between Demeter (grain, bread) and
Dionysos (grape, wine).
The influence of the Mysteries of
Eleusis on the Roman world was so
pervasive that Octavian asked to be
initiated there after his victory over Marc
Antony at Actium, acquiring the right to
be called Augustus and to be deified after
his death. Later Roman emperors and
empresses, in order to join the visible
gods in the heavens, would often make
the pilgrimage to the village outside
Athens where the mystic rites were held.
In his ELEUSIS, Carl Kerenyi amply
documents Dionysos’ link to the
Eleusinian Mysteries, rites that were
celebrated in the spring (Lesser Mysteries)
and in the fall (Greater Mysteries), rites
celebrated at night. It is precisely at these

78 | PARABOLA
times of the year that the zodiacal light is
best seen from temperate latitudes, either
after sunset or before sunrise.
Pindar had pointed to the visible “ The work off A. H. Almaas
A
manifestation of Dionysos at harvest places him among the gr greatest
eatest
time, while dithyrambs and cultic hymns psychologists alive today
today.”
.”
implored the god to appear, often in a
—Jack Kor
Kornfield
nfield
stellar context:
May Dionysos, bringer of joy, foster the
grove of trees, Diamond
D iam o n d H
Heart
e a rt
The holy light at summer’s end.
Book Five • Inexhaustiblee Myster
Mystery
ryy
Come, O Dithyrambos, Bacchos, come, A.. H
A H.. A
Almaas
lmaas
Euios, Thyrsos-Lord, Braites, come …
Whom in sacred Thebes the mother fair,
She Thyone, once to Zeus did bear.
The stars danced for joy.…

How could the god possibly

appear when the stars are dancing?
By manifesting himself as a holy light
across the night sky that only those
initiated into the Mysteries would
recognize and understand. In PHAEDO,
Plato alludes to the esoteric content of
these rites: “Many carry the thyrsus,
but few are Bacchi.” The dance of the
followers of Dionysos, like the dance of
the Whirling Dervishes, is the dance of
the planets along the ecliptic, along the
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mystic light that appears only at specific
times of the year.
In order to witness this ethereal light I n the long-awaited fifth—
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for myself, I flew down to Arizona where
Almaas challenges us to explore,
the desert night skies are still dark at
with curiosity and love, our infi-
some distance from light-polluting cities. nite potential as human beings,
An hour after sundown, as I drove along and in doing so to understand
pitch-black roads searching for my bed- profound new things about
and-breakfast, I realized that this was the ourselves, one another, and the
witching hour. Pulling over and turning reality we inhabit.
off all lights, I waited for my eyes to
adjust to the darkness. And there, ever
Shambhala
S hambhala
so faint but undeniably visible, arched
on high the zodiacal light, the celestial
w ww.Shambhala.com
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pathway along which Dionysos leads the
dance of the whirling planets.

FALL 2011 | 79
 Hugh Brockwill Ripman
80 | PARABOLA
HUGH BROCKWILL RIPMAN (1909–80) was the founder of the Gurdjieff
Work in Washington, D.C. He met the Gurdjieff teaching through P.D.
Ouspensky in London in 1934, and with his wife, Mildred, continued to
work with him and Mme. Ouspensky in England until 1946. Then they
were able to follow the Ouspenskys to America, Hugh having been
appointed First Secretary to the British Embassy in Washington. A year
later he took a position at the World Bank and continued to work there
until his retirement in 1972, a job that gave him the opportunity to
travel to many different countries and meet spiritual teachers in other
traditions, Zen and Taoist, Hindu, Tantric, and Sufi.
G.I. Gurdjieff himself returned to America in the winter of 1948, his
first visit since before the war. Although Ouspensky had received the
teaching from Gurdjieff, he had separated himself from his teacher in
1924. From that time on he taught on his own, without mentioning
Gurdjieff, so that his pupils surmised that this teacher was dead or in
some way no longer able to teach. After Ouspensky’s death in 1947,
Mme. Ouspensky, who had never ceased to regard Gurdjieff as her
teacher and through all this time had kept herself informed of his
condition and ongoing teaching, advised her pupils to go to New York
and meet him.
In the book SEARCH FOR TRUTH, Hugh describes the powerful impact
his first meeting with Gurdjieff had on him: “Then Gurdjieff came in—
and instead of there being seventy-one people in the room, there was
one man and seventy two-dimensional figures.... This was a man whom
one could never forget.”
After Gurdjieff left New York in February of 1949, Mme. Ouspensky
gave her pupils the task of gathering a few people who might be
interested in Gurdjieff's ideas and preparing them to meet him when
he returned the following October. But Gurdjieff died in Paris on the
29th of that month and never returned.
Hugh felt a responsibility toward the people he had gathered in
D.C. and was given permission to try to share with them what he had
understood of the teaching. He began with seven or eight people, but by
1980 there were more than two hundred members in the Washington
group and more in groups Hugh had established in nearby cities.
The following selections are from two books that, after years-long
labor, the Washington group first published privately and are now
offering for general distribution.
SEARCH FOR TRUTH is a spiritual autobiography Hugh wrote in 1961 but
did not offer for publication at that time. To this work its editors have
added several essays he wrote between 1949 and 1961.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ALONG THE WAY consists of selections from Hugh’s
meetings with his groups between 1968, when the meetings began to
be taped, and 1980, the year of his death.
—Martha Heyneman
FALL 2011 | 81
 Hugh Brockwill Ripman

THERE WAS A MAN WHO DIED. Among other things, he left to his only
son a sealed package, and a letter that read thus:

This package came into my hands in Central Asia many years ago. One night,
as I lay beside a stream, which wound between barren hills, I had a dream.
When I woke in the morning, the vividness of the dream remained with me,
and inner compulsion led me to make my way to the source of the stream.
There I found an old man, who had figured in my dream.
He entrusted this package to my care and died in my arms a few hours
later. He told me a strange story. To most people it would have sounded
merely fantastic, but there was something in the old man’s face and in his
voice that carried conviction. This is the story that he told me in the hours
before he died:
“This package contains a carpet. This carpet is woven entirely of human
hair. Its weaving was spread over a period of six generations, and the planning
of it and the gathering of material took three generations, so that between the
first conception and the final stitch nearly three hundred years elapsed.

82 | PARABOLA
 “There are four kinds of knowledge, the knowledge of reality, then you put
each valid within its sphere, and each the yourself in danger. What danger I do not
aim of effort among men. Knowledge of the know—perhaps of insanity, perhaps of
body is learned by hand and foot and eye, death.
by imitation and by training. Knowledge of
THE SON OF THE MAN who had died
the brain is gained from books, from teach-
ers, from the exercise of thought. pondered over this letter for many days.
Knowledge of the heart springs from the He considered what he knew of the
experience of emotion. Knowledge of the world and of men. He saw that most
soul is the only one of the four that is men never wondered what meaning life
knowledge of reality, of the mystery which had, what part they played in the pattern
lies behind the things of sense. of life, what mystery lay behind the
“At different times one or another of things of sense. Their world was
these kinds of knowledge is valued and bounded by the limits of their own
sought more than the others—knowledge affairs. If they thought at all of larger
of the brain, today. In other times—espe-
issues, it was only to repeat parrot-like
cially in the first flowering of the great reli-
what they had heard or read.
gions—knowledge of the soul was the aim
that shaped men’s lives. It was during such There were some men whose life was
a period that this carpet was planned and shaped by ambition, which, like a mag-
made. The men of that time knew that net, drew them along a certain course.
their culture, like every other culture on They sought wealth, or power, or fame.
earth, had its life span, and would one day Some emerged from the struggle broken
be a memory, and then not even that; and and beaten; others, stronger or more
they decided to leave behind them a sign cunning, attained their goal. But the
and symbol of their knowledge of the soul.
prizes which fell to the successful were
“This carpet is their memorial. Each of ephemeral things, their grasp of these
the hairs woven into its fabric has been cut
prizes a precarious one. There was no
from the head of a man or a woman whose
wealth so great that it could not be lost
life was spent in strenuous and unremitting
endeavor to achieve the knowledge of real- by theft, by natural disaster, by decay;
ity, and who had achieved that knowledge there was no power so secure that it
before the body returned to earth. The could not be overwhelmed or under-
design of the carpet conveys no meaning mined by conquest, by revolution, by
to the eyes of the body; only the eyes of corruption; there was no fame so well
the soul may read what is written there. established that it might not fall into
“You have heard of the virtue that oblivion, or even turn to infamy. Even if
emanates from holy relics, how they are in such things could be retained during life,
some way saturated with a power. Power the hand of death was always poised,
of this kind flowed into the carpet through
ready to fall in its time without respect
generations of men and women dedicated
for rank or possessions.
to the knowledge that it symbolizes. Its
power is greater than that of lightning.”
Such men as these sought knowledge
not for its own sake, but as a means to
You may understand why I have never
their ends.
made any attempt to open the package. It
is for you to decide whether to leave it There were others whose life was also
untouched, as I have done, or not. But shaped by an aim, but of a different kind:
know that if you do open it, and there is those who struggled to express, through
anything in your heart but the desire for the arts, symbols of the experience of

FALL 2011 | 83
 mankind. Many lacked the talent that attained by the path of religion. But
can give form to such symbols. Many there were many religions, each claiming
developed the techniques of their art, that it was the sole possessor of the truth.
but lacked the vision that can distill The followers of these religions quarreled
the eternity of the symbol. Many were and persecuted one another in the name
corrupted by fame or wealth, or by the of truth.
desire for such rewards. A few, during After many days the son of the man
the centuries, produced masterpieces who had died came to a decision. He
which lived after them. placed his affairs in the hands of trust-
Some men did seek truth for its own worthy advisers and embarked upon a
sake, along the paths of science or philos- search for knowledge. He read many
ophy. For them knowledge was the goal. books, studied under learned professors,
All their efforts were aimed at the discov- and travelled widely, for he wished to
ery of reality. Step by step, building on discover whether the knowledge of
the foundations laid by others before reality could be achieved by the brain.
them, they elaborated and embellished He sought out men famous for their
the achievements of intellect. erudition, and listened to their teaching.
Finally, there were some who claimed To each he finally put the question:
to possess the knowledge of truth, “What do you know with certainty about

84 | PARABOLA
reality?” Some gave one answer, some something of what he had felt, and even
another. Most of them admitted that then he knew that there lay hidden in his
there was no certainty, that all their words meanings which he no longer
learning rested on assumptions which understood.
could not be proved. This is what he wrote:
He came to realize that the scope of
There is a citadel, inviolate,
science is limited to the discovery of cer-
The inmost hidden kernel of the heart,
tain patterns in the behavior of material Changeless, eternal, imperturbable,
things and natural forces. What these A rock unmoved amidst the storms of life,
things and forces were, and why their Girdled by veils of purifying flame,
behavior followed such patterns—these Through which the questing soul, in
questions science either did not face or search of peace,
could not answer. Must pass, and passing suffer, till the spark
The knowledge of reality eluded his Which struggles, all but snuffed, within
this clay,
search, and his desire to attain it grew in
Has blossomed into lightning radiance,
strength. Has shriveled every cinder shred of self,
In the course of his studies he came And borne aloft on phoenix pinions
into contact with men and women of all Can over-breast the battlements, and sink
sorts. In his relations with them he was Tenderly down to silence fathomless.
possessed, and saw them possessed, by
love and anger and pity and sorrow, by Here once I came—and yet not I, not I,
hate and fear and lust and joy, by pride But that in me which strives and seeks
and yearns,
and envy and shame and a host of other
Hungers and fiercely thirsts to break its
emotions. Many times he was led astray
bonds—
by this possession from the search for And deeply drank the silence. Time stood
knowledge. still,
Pondering over these experiences, he And space’s farthest outposts ceased to be.
saw that this possession by emotions, An hour—a day—a century passed by,
though it had taught him much about And suddenly a pang, an agony,
man, did not seem to lead to the knowl- Unutterably deep, shot through my
edge of reality which he sought. soul—
A blackness so intense that light
Nevertheless, there were certain
seemed dead,
moments, most of them connected with A brilliance which paled the lightning flash,
the consummation of a pure love, which A silence sharper than the deepest wound.
had a character different from any ordi- In that eternal moment life was death,
nary experience. They were fleeting Death life. Within my spirit’s riven core
moments, and the memory of them was A door was opened; but to pass that door
never complete. Always it was as though I was not worthy—nor indeed to stand
in darkness the sun had suddenly shone Before it. Arrow-fast my spirit fled,
Seeking with trembling wings familiar
for a moment, but disappeared at once,
Time
leaving in the memory a sense of glory
And friendly Space. Body returned to me;
unknown, touched but not grasped, and I saw the light we know, I heard the sounds
in the heart a deep feeling of peace. Which fall upon the outer ear. I wept,
Only once, and then with great diffi- And felt the warmth of tears upon my
culty, was he able to express for himself cheek.

FALL 2011 | 85
 HE FELT SOME RELATION between these he had no control over these states, he
moments and certain states he had could not by an effort of will reach that
reached in his search for knowledge. threshold, and he always felt that he had
Sometimes he had persisted for a long been given a gift of which he was not
time in directing his attention to a worthy.
problem that required him to hold Fifteen years after his father’s death,
many things simultaneously in his he inspected his heart in order to see
mind’s eye. After making this effort for whether there was in it the pure desire
a long time, he had felt himself per- for knowledge of the soul. He was not
vaded by a vivid sense of expectancy, a satisfied with what he found, and contin-
feeling of being upon a threshold ued his travels, searching for knowledge.
beyond which lay he knew not what— One day, when he was weary and dis-
but something vitally important and couraged, he fell into conversation with a
significant, something which called to stranger, and spoke of his desire to attain
him with a sense of enormous adventure the knowledge of reality. The stranger
and at the same time frightened him by listened with interest and drew him on to
its unknown immensity. tell the story of the carpet, and of the
Feelings of like nature were some- years he had spent in travel and study.
times produced by impressions reaching They talked through the night, and as
him through eye or ear—a sunset or a the sky was growing pale the stranger
symphony, the flash of a bird’s wing told him to go to a house in a certain
against the blue of the sky, the voice of a town where he would find a teacher.
mother crooning to her child. At times He went to this town, but when he
for a whole week he would be filled by called at the house he was told that the
this sense of expectancy, of being on the teacher was away. He called again, only
verge of revelation. At such times all his to be told that the teacher was busy and
senses were unusually sharp, as though could not see him. A third time he
stripped of a covering which normally called, and this time he refused to leave
muffled them, and he felt an emotion to until he was admitted.
which he could give no name. It was a He knew at once that this teacher was
kind of pleasant melancholy, painfully a different kind of man from all the pro-
intense under the stimulus of certain fessors and other learned men he had
impressions, as though he were a musical met. His teaching concerned the way
instrument, the strings of which lay in his that led to the knowledge of reality, and
heart and were plucked, and in the pain the price that had to be paid for the
of the plucking was born the beauty of transformation of the whole man, which
the note. was necessary for progress on that path.
In his mind and in his heart the mem- For ten years he studied under this
ory of these experiences was burned teacher, and he came to understand
deep, and there came to him a growing many things about himself and about the
conviction that he was nearer to his goal world. He came to realize that there was
at such times than he was in any other no possibility of his attaining the knowl-
state, as though the mask of appearances, edge of reality so long as certain obsta-
which hides the mysterious face of real- cles existed within him. Only when he
ity, had almost become transparent. But began to struggle against these obstacles

86 | PARABOLA
did he discover their strength and their flame in his heart. And he took the pack-
persistence. He was torn many times in age containing the carpet, and opened it.
acute inner conflict. Sometimes for And he sat before the carpet without
weeks on end the teacher refused to see sleep or food for three days and three
him. Sometimes he was sunk in despair. nights. The familiar sense of being upon
But he persisted, and gradually his atten- the threshold grew stronger and stronger
tion began to obey his will, and his until his heart was near to breaking in
understanding became deeper and more him. And towards the end of the third
organic. night, when the intensity of his desire to
Some ten years after he first met the cross the threshold was such that he
teacher, he at last turned his steps thought he must die, the eyes of his soul
towards his fatherland, with the hunger were opened, and he achieved the
for the knowledge of reality a white knowledge of reality.

FALL 2011 | 87
 The Silent Witness
Hugh Brockwill Ripman

Like two birds of golden plumage, inseparable companions, the

individual self and the immortal Self are perched on the branches
of the selfsame tree. The former tastes of the sweet and bitter fruits
of the tree; the latter, tasting of neither, calmly observes.
—Upanishads

I SPOKE LAST TIME about the first step in getting to know oneself bet-
ter.… I spoke about a method of observation of self—of one’s thoughts,
one’s emotions, one’s sensations, one’s actions—which requires a special
effort with attention: a division of attention into two parts. One of these
parts is directed towards whatever activity it’s engaged in, whether it be
thought or action or whatever, and the other is directed to the experi-
ence of a point of awareness of what is going on.
I call it the Silent Witness. It’s an impartial, unjudgmental witness to
what goes on. It is extremely difficult to do this, and you will find at first
that you can only do it for a split second, and then you find yourself with

88 | PARABOLA
your attention wholly drawn into what be aware, but it may be different for dif-
you’re doing; but with practice it ferent people. So I feel at this stage that
becomes more possible. it wouldn’t be helpful to put any words
to it. I could do that, but it wouldn’t
Q: Could you say more about the Silent make you any wiser. The thing to do is
Witness? to gain more experience of it for your-
HBR: Well, you start with the fact that it is self, to find how it feels different from
silent. It is not talking or thinking about the ordinary condition when your
what you are doing, but it is aware of thoughts are experienced as “I,” when
what you are doing. You know, for your feelings are experienced as “I,”
instance, that you can be absorbed in a when your body is experienced as “I.”
book and be absolutely unaware of your This is a little different.
posture or the sensations of your body
because you are lost in the book. You Q: I have a hard time differentiating the
also know that if I call your attention to Silent Witness from my mind.
that, you become aware of the posture HBR: Yes, and if you don’t do that, you
and the sensations which are there all the don’t understand what the Silent
time. Witness is. You see, in the ordinary way,
The Silent Witness pays attention to we live in the state which is called “iden-
what goes on in the centers: to what goes tification.” This means that I feel myself
on in the head, to what goes on in the to be my functions. It may be a thought,
heart, to what goes on in the body. It it may be a feeling, it may be a sensa-
simply pays attention. It’s like listening tion—but it is felt to be myself. I am
to music. You don’t have to manipulate hammering a nail—I hammer my fin-
the impressions you receive from music; ger—“Oh, I hurt myself.” Or we
you just receive them. This Silent become angry and say, “I am angry,”
Witness just receives impressions from instead of saying, “Anger is rising in
your behavior. She hears your voice, me.” And the Silent Witness is exactly
both your inner and your outer voice; something that is not a function: not a
she is aware of what happens in you. You thought, not a feeling, not a sensation.
have to struggle towards this. But at any One of the great difficulties of main-
rate, be sure that it’s not thinking or taining this special kind of attention is
internally talking about what’s going on that when one is for a moment aware of
in you. It’s simply being aware, as something, one immediately starts
though each function had a mirror thinking about it, judging it, or what-
placed in front of it. ever. And one’s sense of oneself slips
into these feelings, these judgments of
Q: What is this part that watches me? it, and one is lost. The Silent Witness is
HBR: For the time being, you will not no longer there. It is very difficult to
gain anything by having that defined. realize for oneself that this isn’t a think-
The thing to do is to experience the ing effort. It is a naked awareness. It
Silent Witness. It may not be exactly the takes some people a couple of years to
same thing with everybody. We’re all get it absolutely clear inside themselves,
trying to do the same thing, to have a by experience, what this Silent Witness
Silent Witness whose function is just to really is.

FALL 2011 | 89
 But I wish to emphasize that it isn’t Q: This Silent Witness—is it something
thinking about oneself. When you talk which is innately within us that we don’t
about being drawn back into yourself, recognize?
you are being drawn back into thought HBR: This is a question which always
about yourself, which is not the same comes up: What is the Silent Witness? I
thing at all. You are tempted the whole don’t think it’s very useful to give a ver-
time to react to what you observe, but bal label of some kind. What is important
the moment you do that you are no is to know the difference in oneself
longer observing. And experience shows between the times when it’s there and
that it is extremely difficult not to react. the times when it’s not. It is simply a wit-
Something immediately begins to think ness at this stage, a witness which is able
about it and a running commentary sets to be a witness because part of my atten-
up, or one is pleased that one has tion is in the witnessing. It doesn’t really
noticed something, or one is disgusted help to label it. What matters is that you
with what one has seen, or whatever. experience it. You feel the difference
These reactions draw one’s attention between the state when something is
away from the naked experience of separate and looking on and experienc-
oneself.… ing, and the state in which that is not
there—the state in which the candle
is lit, and in which the candle is out.
The Silent Witness can be consid-
ered to be the germ of something that
can in time, if it grows in strength and
grows in frequency, exercise some
controlling influence and bring some
order into the chaos of the psyche.

Q: I’m not sure of the Silent Witness. I

may have it and I may not.
HBR: It’s not a thinking effort; it’s
simply an effort of witnessing what
goes on in the organism. The
moment you think about it, you’re
not having the direct experience of
it. Think of the Silent Witness as a
naturalist who is trying to observe a
rather elusive animal. Most of the
time, he only catches sight of the
tail disappearing around the corner.
Think of this organism being the
animal you’re observing and the
Silent Witness being the naturalist
who really wishes to find out how
this strange creature leads his life,
to find out by direct observation.

90 | PARABOLA
Q: I would like to learn to
observe myself simply, as I
would a daisy or a butter-
fly, without analysis, with-
out judgment, without try-
ing to understand the
whys.
HBR: Well, before you can
begin to understand the
whys, you need to
observe simply, because if
you try to analyze as you
go along, it is mostly
based on previous notions
about yourself. You don’t
take in a pure impression
of what is happening. You
see, this is constantly at
work in us, whether it is
impressions of ourselves
as we act or whether it is
impressions of other peo-
ple—our impressions are
constantly affected by
previous notions. So it is
indeed desirable and nec-
essary to observe oneself
with the same impartiality
as a naturalist observes a
creature he is trying to
study and to understand its habits. But into comment, one has lost the pure
the trouble is, you see, it is very difficult impression.
to adopt the same stance vis-à-vis oneself One just has to go on trying, and it is
because always something in one feels not an easy thing to do. But one is sim-
that one knows oneself and finds it very ply seeing, in relation to this process of
difficult to look at just what happens and observing oneself, what goes on the
nothing else. whole time when one is observing other
What happens, you see, time and time people and things: one is constantly (and
again, is that for a moment one can cannot help it) interpreting and analyz-
stand aside and impersonally experience ing. It is very difficult indeed, but possi-
what’s happening, but very quickly and ble, to get away from this.
imperceptibly observation changes into
comment, and comment into emotional Q: Isn’t there movement in observation? I
reaction to what one has observed. And don’t see how it could observe without
the moment the observation changes being in motion.

FALL 2011 | 91
 HBR: This quiet thing that observes has demand on the mind or the emotions—
been likened to a mirror in which things things that the body has learnt to do—if
are reflected; a mirror doesn’t have to we practice during those times feeling
move to reflect movement. You see, it ourselves separate from our actions, then
depends on how you understand the gradually, gradually it begins to become
word “observe.” I can understand that possible.
you find in your own experience that you You can use certain techniques.
can’t observe without reacting, but it is Before you are able to talk and remain
the reaction which you experience as conscious of yourself, you can listen and
movement. The observation and the remain conscious of yourself; it is not so
reaction are actually quite separate. You difficult to listen as it is to talk. And if
understand? you wish to stay present to yourself when
This is the way one normally func- you are talking, you can use an anchor
tions: one observes and then something for the attention—awareness of breath-
reacts. When we try to observe our- ing or something like that—which is
selves directly, then it is almost impossi- quite possible to maintain when you are
ble to prevent some kind of feeling or listening, but much more difficult when
thought about what we observe from you are speaking.
arising in us; but one has to keep the So it’s a question of practice and of
feeling or thought about what we seeing these simple activities, which are
observe quite separate from the act of not important in themselves, as practice
observation. grounds where you can develop the psy-
The act of observation sets off the chological muscles which you will need
emotional and intellectual centers com- when things are more difficult.
menting, feeling and thinking about
what one has observed. And it’s very easy AS A HELP in maintaining this Silent
to get caught in the illusion that this feel- Witness for a little longer, take the
ing and thinking about what one has physical task this week of keeping the
observed is observation. It isn’t. It’s soles of both feet flat on the floor when
reaction. And very often, of course, you are standing or sitting. Of course,
when it sets up, it catches one’s attention you will come to yourself many times
so that one’s sense of oneself goes into and find that they are not on the floor.
thinking, and one ceases to have the This will show you how much is
Silent Witness. required to keep present to yourself and
how quickly this awareness goes. See
Q: I don’t know if I am ever truly present, how this connects with the idea that we
especially when speaking. cannot do. You cannot do this; there is
HBR: Speaking is always difficult. It’s certainly not one of you who can do
been recognized for centuries as one of this. So how can we expect to do many
the most difficult things because one other things which are much more diffi-
identifies with what one has to say. So cult? One of the objects of the task is to
we start with less difficult things such as bring home to you the dangers, the
physical chores. If we practice enough precariousness, of your present position,
being present to ourselves with simple so that your wish to escape grows
things that don’t in themselves make a stronger.

92 | PARABOLA
FALL 2011 | 93
 Exploring an ancient teaching
on liberation

Seeing
and the Yoga Sutra
Dolphi Wertenbaker

THE YOGA SUTRA of Patanjali is the foundational and earliest

text on yoga. Dating from about the fifth century BCE, it
reflects an oral tradition in existence long before. The Yoga Sutra
defines yoga as a state of sustained voluntary attention (YS 1:2).
Many practices are suggested; however, an individual is meant to
follow one. The ultimate goal of yoga, Patanjali says, is freedom
or independence (kaivalya) of seeing (YS 2:25).
Freedom of seeing. This is such a striking concept: what does
it mean? Why freedom of seeing rather than freedom of the seer?
Patanjali speaks of a fundamental confusion and entanglement
between the perceiver and the perceived, intrinsic to human
nature, and the cause of our suffering (YS 2:17). He says that
the experiences of life are given us so that we might learn to
distinguish perceiver and perceived (YS 2:18, 23). According
to Samkhya, the system of thought commonly accepted in
Patanjali’s time, in every living being there is something
unchanging called purusha. Everything else is prakriti. Purusha
represents the “master” in ourselves. Prakriti, according to
Patanjali, has a dual role: to be experienced, and to help towards
liberation (YS 2:18). Among the synonyms for purusha is
drashta, the perceiver. Thus, what Patanjali calls the perceiver is
an aspect of this something deep inside that never changes (and
does not die). Other synonyms for purusha, or the perceiver,

94 | PARABOLA
Patanjali statue,
Hardiwar, India

show that it is pervasive throughout instrument, e.g., I am not my body; or

the being (atma), gives life (jeeva), and even: I am not me. Yet that is not how we
is the energy behind knowing (chit). live. Furthermore, we all know of the blind
These ideas take us to a subtle realm. spot in our vision, yet we never notice it:
Ordinarily, we think of what is perceived the mind routinely fills in what is missing.
as external and the perceiver as ourselves. This is true metaphorically as well. Patanjali
Science has elucidated a great deal says that when we are in the state of yoga,
about how perception takes place: the the perceiver appears and we see reality as
functioning of the sense organs and the it is (YS 1:3). Otherwise, what we see are
many levels of processing in the brain. the projections of our own mind, which
Yet, for Patanjali, all of this, no matter we take for reality (YS 1:4). The implica-
how fine, is still in the realm of prakriti. tions are important for our lives, because
The perceiver is other. how we see determines our understanding,
The perceiver is by nature free and which is the basis for action.
independent. Not so the seeing, because How do we move towards true
the seeing passes through our mind and perception? In the beginning, Patanjali
senses (YS 2:20). The perceiver is of a says, our “seeing” is a mixture of
different order from both the perceived memory and imagination (YS 1:42). In
and the instrument of perception. The Sanskrit, memory refers to everything we
instrument of perception is ourselves— know from the past, along with habit and
body and mind. We think we distinguish cultural conditioning. In order to have a
perceiver from perceived, e.g., I am not
that chocolate; or perceiver from (continued on page 98)

FALL 2011 | 95
 WELCOME TO THE

PARABOLA BACK ISSUE LIBRARY

CHOOSE FROM 140 BACK ISSUES TO INFORM, INSPIRE, AND GUIDE YOU ON YOUR JOURNEY.
All Back Issues are $12.50 plus shipping and handling.

1:1 THE HERO In quest of the meaning of Self 12:1 THE KNIGHT & THE HERMIT Heroes of action and reflection
1:2 MAGIC The power that transforms 12:2 ADDICTION The prison of human craving
1:3 INITIATION A portal to rebirth 12:3 FORGIVENESS The past transcended
1:4 RITES OF PASSAGE Symbols and rituals of transformation 12:4 THE SENSE OF HUMOR Walking with laughter
2:1 DEATH Beyond the limits of the known 13:1 THE CREATIVE RESPONSE To represent the sacred
2:2 CREATION From formlessness, something new 13:2 REPETITION & RENEWAL Respecting the rhythm of growth
2:3 COSMOLOGY The order of things, seen and unseen 13:3 QUESTIONS The road to understanding
2:4 RELATIONSHIPS Our interwoven human experience 13:4 THE MOUNTAIN A meeting place of Earth and Heaven
3:1 SACRED SPACE Landscapes, temples, the inner terrain 14:1 DISCIPLES & DISCIPLINE Teachers, masters, students, fools
3:2 SACRIFICE & TRANSFORMATION Stepping into a holy fire 14:2 TRADITION & TRANSMISSION Passages from wisdom into wisdom
3:3 INNER ALCHEMY Refining the gold within 14:3 THE TREE OF LIFE Root, trunk, and crown of our search
3:4 ANDROGYNY The fusion of male and female 14:4 TRIAD Sacred and secular laws of three
4:1 THE TRICKSTER Guide, mischief-maker, master of disguise 15:1 TIME & PRESENCE How to welcome the present moment
4:2 SACRED DANCE Moving to worship, moving to transcend 15:2 ATTENTION What animates mind, body, and feeling
4:3 THE CHILD Setting out from innocence 15:3 LIBERATION Freedom from what, freedom for what?
4:4 STORYTELLING & EDUCATION Speaking to young minds 15:4 HOSPITALITY Care in human relationships
5:1 THE OLD ONES Visions of our elders 16:1 MONEY Exchange between humans, and with the divine
5:2 MUSIC, SOUND, & SILENCE Echoes of stillness 16:2 THE HUNTER Stalking great knowledge
5:3 OBSTACLES In the way, or the Way itself? 16:3 CRAFT The skill that leads to creation
5:4 WOMAN In search of the feminine 16:4 THE GOLDEN MEAN Balance between defect and excess
6:1 EARTH & SPIRIT Opposites or complements? 17:1 SOLITUDE & COMMUNITY The self, alone and with others
6:2 THE DREAM OF PROGRESS Our modern fantasy 17:2 LABYRINTH The path to inner treasure
6:3 MASK & METAPHOR When things are not as they seem 17:3 THE ORAL TRADITION Transmission through spoken word and silence
6:4 DEMONS Spirits of the dark 17:4 POWER & ENERGY The stunning array of atom and cosmos
7:1 SLEEP To be restored, or to forget 18:1 HEALING The return to a state of health
7:2 DREAMS & SEEING Visions, fantasy, and the unconscious 18:2 PLACE & SPACE Seeking the holy in mountain, sea,and vale
7:3 CEREMONIES Seeking divine service 18:3 CROSSROADS The meeting place of traditions and ideas
7:4 HOLY WAR Conflict for the sake of reconciliation 18:4 THE CITY Hub of the human world
8:1 GUILT The burden of conscience 19:1 THE CALL To ask for help, to receive what is given
8:2 ANIMALS The nature of the creature world 19:2 TWINS The two who come from one
8:3 WORDS OF POWER Secret words, magic spells, divine utterances 19:3 CLOTHING Concealing and revealing our inner selves
8:4 SUN & MOON Partners in time as fields of force 19:4 HIDDEN TREASURE Value, hope, and knowledge

9:1 HIERARCHY The ladder of the sacred 20:1 EARTH, AIR, WATER, FIRE Essential elements of all things
9:2 THEFT The paradox of possession 20:2 THE STRANGER Messenger or deceiver, savior or threat
9:3 PILGRIMAGE Journey toward the holy 20:3 LANGUAGE & MEANING Communication, symbol, and sign
9:4 FOOD Nourishing body and spirit 20:4 EROS Human sexuality and the life of the spirit
21:1 PROPHETS & PROPHECY Seeing beyond the veil
10:1 WHOLENESS The hunger for completion
21:2 THE SOUL Life within and beyond our corporeal existence
10:2 EXILE Cut off from the homeland of meaning
21:3 PEACE Seeking inner and outer tranquility
10:3 THE BODY Half dust, half deity 21:4 PLAY & WORK Struggle and relaxation in the
10:4 THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS The mystery of goodness search for meaning
11:1 THE WITNESS Silent guides and unsleeping eyes 22:1 WAYS OF KNOWING Different avenues to truth
11:2 MIRRORS That which reflects the real 22:2 THE SHADOW Cast by the light we follow
11:3 SADNESS The transformation of tragedy
22:3 CONSCIENCE & CONSCIOUSNESS Inner guides to
11:4 MEMORY & FORGETTING What we remember and why understanding one’s being

96 | PARABOLA
22:4 MIRACLES Enigmatic breaks in the laws of nature 29:3 THE SEEKER In search of the Way
29:4 FRIENDSHIP Companions on the path
23:1 MILLENNIUM To what end, to what beginning?
23:2 ECSTASY Joy that transports us outside of ourselves 30:1 AWAKENING Casting off slumber
23:3 FEAR Sign of weakness, or of strength? 30:2 RESTRAINT The power of not doing
23:4 BIRTH AND REBIRTH Journey toward renewal 30:3 BODY AND SOUL Two mysteries
30:4 FUNDAMENTALISM Getting out of the box
24:1 NATURE Exploring inner and outer terrain
24:2 PRAYER & MEDITATION Petition, praise, 31:1 COMING TO OUR SENSES Shaking our senses free
thanksgiving, confession 31:2 ABSENCE AND LONGING The path of yearning
24:3 NUMBER & SYMBOL Languages that disclose the real 31:3 THINKING Thinking as prayer
24:4 EVIL The duality within us, within the world 31:4 HOME The homes of great spiritual leaders
25:1 THRESHOLD Neither here nor there, real nor imaginary 32:1 FAITH Seven great acts of faith
25:2 RIDDLE & MYSTERY Questions and answers 32:2 SEX Spiritual teachings on sex
25:3 THE TEACHER One who shows the way 32:3 HOLY EARTH Our sacred planet
25:4 FATE AND FORTUNE Inevitabilities that speak to us 32:4 THE NEW WORLD Frontiers of the spiritual
26:1 THE GARDEN Cultivating within and without 33:1 SILENCE The place of not speaking
26:2 LIGHT That which illuminates our inner and outer darkness 33:2 GOD Approaching the Unknown
26:3 THE FOOL In search of divine innocence 33:3 MAN & MACHINE Traditions and technology
26:4 THE HEART Where the quest begins and ends 33:4 JUSTICE The Divine measure
27:1 THE EGO AND THE “I” Which one is real? 34:1 IMAGINATION The story issue
27:2 DYING Ending or the beginning of transformation? 34:2 WATER The sacred element
27:3 GRACE Gifts bestowed from above 34:3 THE PATH Finding the right way
27:4 WAR Violence as a means to an end 34:4 THE FUTURE The way ahead
28:1 COMPASSION Actions that embrace others 35:1 LOVE The divine energy
28:2 PRISON Inner and outer confinement 35:2 LIFE AFTER DEATH Beyond the known
28:3 CHAOS AND ORDER The interplay of creative forces 35:3 DESIRE What compels our lives?
28:4 TRUTH AND ILLUSION Seeking clarity amidst confusion 35:4 BEAUTY What transports us; where do we look?
29:1 MARRIAGE Union with the Other 36:1 SUFFERING To be with it, and to let it be
29:2 WEB OF LIFE The interrelationship of being 36:2 GIVING & RECEIVING Gift of life, flow of mediating energies

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FALL 2011 | 97
 clear perception of a chosen object, Patanjali, the purpose is not salvation
memory must be completely purified of or goodness. The purpose is to help
its own content (YS 1:43). Rarely this cultivate a certain quality of mind. Then,
happens in a moment of epiphany; more there is asana or work with the body,
often a process is involved. For example, what we generally think of as yoga in the
if I want to understand breathing, at first West. The aim here is to develop the
there is the image of everything I have qualities of stability and ease (YS 2:46).
been taught about lungs, and various Then there is conscious breathing, which
personal associations. Gradually, if I results in a turning inward and a lifting of
return to the study again and again, the “veils which obscure our inner light”
I may have a direct perception of a kind (YS 2:52, 54). Finally, concentration is
of subtle circulation throughout the possible, and then the deeper states of
body. For Patanjali, the functioning of meditation. The essence of the eightfold
the mind must remain intact, yet not path is also contained in a single practice,
bring in extraneous material. the yoga of action. Here, one tries to
The fundamental problem, according bring to all the actions of life three
to Patanjali, is avidya, a kind of “non aspects: effort, self-inquiry, and an open
knowing.” He defines this as taking things attitude about results (YS 2:1).
for their opposites, for example mistaking Patanjali says that states of attention
the temporal for the eternal, or non-self and disturbance fluctuate in us from
for self (YS 2:5). We live our lives as moment to moment. Furthermore, what
though we would live forever: this is is present in a part of us tends to spread
avidya. We are not generally aware of throughout the whole system (YS 3:9).
avidya, but we can recognize its offshoots, This is why thoughts and feelings affect
especially false identification, ego, reactivity, health and also why doing something
and fear. Under the influence of avidya, with the body affects the mind and
we go about our lives in ways that get emotions. For example, I may be upset
us into trouble. Thus, avidya leads to by some offensive interaction with
suffering. Yet this suffering is what someone, and unable to shake the
motivates us to do something. Recognizing agitation. Yet if I do a short practice with
our pain and our true situation is the first yoga postures, I might feel much lighter
step on the path of wisdom. The moments about it afterward. Similarly, attending to
of recognition create a sense of space, a one’s breathing may change everything.
foretaste of the freedom of seeing. In Samkhya thought, the states we
If yoga is a state of sustained attention experience, like all prakriti, are made up of
and its purpose is freedom of seeing, three qualities, called gunas. The gunas
what is the path of yoga? Patanjali lays are: rajas (expansion, movement), tamas
out an eight-part path. First is a set of (mass, rigidity), and sattva (illumination,
ideals in our attitude toward others: non- lightness). What is essential for perception
violence, telling the truth, not stealing, is predominantly sattva guna. We ourselves
faithfulness in relationship, and non- can be thought of as the “container” in
grasping. Second, in our attitude toward which perception takes place. The guna
ourselves: cleanliness, contentment, quality of this container is affected by
effort, self-study, surrendering the results everything in our lives, including food,
of action. The virtues are familiar, yet for thought, activity, and so on. In order for

98 | PARABOLA
perception to be true, this “container”
must have an appropriate guna quality.
The practices of yoga take us in this
direction, using a variety of approaches.
Ultimately, Patanjali speaks of change
in ourselves occurring indirectly. He
describes what needs to happen as being
like a farmer who simply opens a gate in
his irrigation system to let water flow
(YS 4:3). We do not bring the water
where it needs to go, nor even command
it to go there. Through the practice of
yoga, somehow an obstacle is removed
and the water is allowed to flow.
In a similar way, freedom of seeing can
appear.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra shows that the The Enfolded Universe
bronze vessels, 9 feet
difficulty we have in seeing clearly and
freely is part of being human. Moreover
Lynn Fawcett Whiting
SCULPTURE
it is the cause of suffering. However, MEDITATION • CONTEMPL ATION • PRAYER

the means to free our seeing are also www.lynnfawcettwhiting.com

inherent in our nature.

FALL 2011 | 99
 TA N G E N T

“God As a Verb”
WITHOUT BUDDHA
I COULD NOT BE A CHRISTIAN
PAUL F. KNITTER. ONEWORLD (WWW.ONEWORLD-PUBLICATIONS.COM), 2009. PP. 336. $22.95
PAPER
Reviewed by Ron Starbuck

IN HIS BOOK WITHOUT BUDDHA I COULD NOT BE A CHRISTIAN, Paul F. Knitter,

the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture
at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, helps Christians and
Buddhists participate in an interfaith dialogue, expanding their
spiritual vocabulary. He does so by placing into words, ideas, and
concepts many of the thoughts running through our own hearts and
minds, and opening up for us new ways of understanding “God as a
verb.” In this process, he helps us feel truly comfortable engaging in
an interfaith dialogue and practice.
In this deeply engaging, honest book Knitter honors and
recognizes the complex differences between two traditions while
showing how closely related they are in their approaches to
compassion and loving-kindness. As for the seemingly very different
ways they view ultimate reality—non-theistic and theistic—he reminds
us that all our words about God are symbols. Language itself is
composed of symbols, and when we use words for God, they are
fingers pointing at the moon.

100 | PARABOLA
 Knitter, who holds a licentiate in aware of, one with, something or some
theology from the Pontifical Gregorian activity larger than oneself.” God is an
University in Rome and a doctorate from experience. Knitter explains: “Christian
the University of Marburg, Germany, saints and mystics have described this
passes from his own struggle with a encounter with God as putting on the
dualistic Christian belief to how a ‘Mind of Christ,’ and Christian literature
Buddhist may deal with these questions, includes such expressions as ‘one with
then passes back again to what he has Christ,’ ‘temple of the Holy Spirit,’ ‘the
learned from Buddhism, which has body of Christ,’ the ‘Divine indwelling,’
helped him to retrieve and deepen his ‘participants in the divine nature.’ ”1
own Christian belief. Professor Knitter This is an understanding of the non-
isn’t alone in his journey. Many of us are duality of God that begins for Christians
“double belongers,” a phrase he uses for with kenosis, the Greek word for emptiness.
people drawn into an interfaith dialogue It is a way of understanding Christ as the
that embraces two faiths. “Incarnate Word.” The second chapter of
“In the future Christians will be Philippians, known as the Kenosis Hymn,
mystics, or they will not be anything,” describes the kenosis of Christ:
Knitter states, quoting his seminary
“Let the same mind be in you that was in
teacher, the twentieth-century Christian
Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form
theologian Karl Rahner. Christian of God, did not regard equality with God as
mystical experiences are unitive, something to be exploited, but emptied
allowing the experiencer to begin to feel himself, taking the form of a slave, being
“connected with, part of, united with, born in human likeness.”

FALL 2011 | 101

 bodhisattva, who develops universal
compassion and a spontaneous wish to
attain Buddhahood not for his or her
own sake but for the benefit of all
sentient beings. It is also in the Bible,
in Romans 8:26-27, 38-39 (RSV):
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our
weakness; for we do not know how to
pray as we ought, but that very Spirit
intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
27 And God, who searches the heart, knows
what is the mind of the Spirit, because the
Spirit intercedes for the saints according to
the will of God.

38 For I am convinced that neither death,

nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else
in all creation, will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord.

Stepping back, letting the Spirit live

in us, allowing the Spirit to pray in and
through us, practicing meditation as a
“Sacrament of Silence”3 as Professor
Knitter suggests, emptying and letting
go of the self,4 offers a way to nurture
This is an encouragement to empty and grow within ourselves the
ourselves, to become as servants to one graciousness of spirit that God gives to
another, and to enter into the fullness each of us in ways that are known only
of our humanity, and our full human to God. Knitter’s work offers a way in
potential. This practice of kenosis, of which the mystery and light of Christ
putting on the “Mind of Christ” and may become known through dialogue
emptying our self, is one way a and practice with other sacred traditions;
Christian may come to understand here the Holy Spirit of the Christian
Jesus as redeemer, revealer, reconciler, Trinity becomes boundless, without
and to accept him as savior. Knitter boundaries, without limitations, infinite
touches on kenosis when he explains in love, infinite in acceptance, infinite in
that the “ideal of Christian life is to potential, endless in compassion and
lose one’s own self-centered identity wisdom.
in the wider activity of the risen The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century
Christ-Spirit. It is to step back and Christian mystic Meister Eckhart expresses
let this Spirit live in and as us.”2 This kenosis often in his writings: “God must
stepping back or emptying ourselves of act and pour himself into us when we are
ourselves resonates with the Buddhist ready, in other words when we are totally

102 | PARABOLA
empty of self and creatures. So stand still nor an adjective. God is a Verb! God is
and do not waver from your emptiness.”5 much more an environment in which
Elsewhere the great German master writes: ‘we live and move and have our being’
“Therefore discard the form and be joined (Acts 17:29), or God is ‘above all things,
to the formless essence, for the spiritual through all things, and in all things’
comfort of God is very subtle.”6 And (Eph. 4:6).”
famously: “Only the hand that erases can To this reader, it seems that the more
write the true thing.”7 awake we are to this presence and this
On the Buddhist side, there is the mystery, the more we will come to know
experience of nirvana—sūnyatā or God is here in this very moment, in the
emptiness—and the related concept of eternal now. This to me is the central
dependent origination or arising. Knitter message of Jesus when he teaches us that
affirms that God is best understood his relationship with God the Father
as the “Ground of Being,” an idea (Abba) is intimate, eternal, and within.
introduced by the twentieth-century This presence “above, through, and
theologian Paul Tillich, and through in” constantly calls us into relationships
our relationships. He points out that the of knowing and loving one another all
contemporary Vietnamese Zen Master through our lives, filling us with the
Thich Nhat Hanh “translates Śūnyatā deepest joy when we empty ourselves
more freely and more engagingly as (kenosis) for the sake of others, seeing
InterBeing, the interconnected state of and finding ourselves in others. This
things that are constantly churning out presence is what we feel when we are
new connections, new possibilities, new loved and accepted, when we love and
problems, and new life.”8 accept others, and when we open and
Understanding God through
relationships is critical to Knitter. The
source and power of our relationships
are driven by the presence of the “Holy
Spirit.” The importance of this concept
is summarized by his statement that
“behind and within all the different
images and symbols Christians use for
God—Creator, Father (Abba),
Redeemer, Word, Spirit—the most
fundamental, the deepest truth Christians
can speak of God is that God is the
source and power of relationships.”
Knitter continues: “To take this
concept even further, up to the next level
if you will, God as a verb is the activity of
giving and receiving, of knowing and
loving, of losing and finding, of dying
and living that embraces and infuses all
of us, all of creation. If we’re going to
talk about God, God is neither a noun

FALL 2011 | 103

 give of ourselves selflessly. As it says in
Luke 17: 20-21:
And when the Pharisees had demanded
of Him when the Kingdom of God should
come, He answered them and said, “The
Kingdom of God cometh not with outward
show. Neither shall they say, ‘Lo, it is here!’
or ‘Lo, it is there!’ For behold, the Kingdom
of God is within you.”

Knitter tells us, “A better image of

creation might be a pouring forth of God,
an extension of God, in which the Divine
carries on the divine activity of interrelating
in and with and through creation.” This
pouring forth of God is the engine or fuel
of creation, but we as a “People of God,”
created in the “Image of God,” are also a
part of this pouring forth. How this all
works is also part of the mystery.
Another way to say this might be:
God as the Trinity is the silence and the
stillness before all things, out of which all
creation arises from the nothingness and
emptiness that is without form and void,
an image taken from the first chapter
of Genesis—when there was nothing
except God. It is out of this nothingness
(no-thing) or emptiness that we all arise.
As a lifelong Christian, I have been
taught my whole life that “the way of
Christ” is a way that calls me to love
others unconditionally with great
compassion and loving-kindness. For
myself, this is a call that I must answer by
loving others in all their diversity of
beliefs and ethnicity, even in all their
suffering, and in showing them through
that love how Christ lives and dwells
within my own being.
In the sermon JESUS, THE WAY THAT IS
OPEN TO OTHER WAYS, Knitter quotes John
Cobb, another Christian theologian,
stating: “Jesus is not the way that
excludes, overpowers, demeans other
ways; rather he is the way that opens us

104 | PARABOLA
to, connects us with, and calls us to 1 Paul F. Knitter, WITHOUT BUDDHA I COULD NOT BE A

relate to other ways in a process that can CHRISTIAN (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), p.
14–23.
best be described as ‘dialogue.’ 2 Ibid., p. 88.
“If Jesus really is the Way that is open
3 Ibid., p. 153.
to other Ways, then dialogue with other
4 See Roger Corless and Paul F. Knitter, eds.,
religions and other believers, should be BUDDHIST EMPTINESS AND CHRISTIAN TRINITY: ESSAYS AND
part of what it means to be a Christian. EXPLORATIONS (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990).
As many Asian bishops and theologians 5 Eckhart Society–His Teachings–Letting Ourselves

are saying, today dialogue is a new way of Go–Sermon 4: http://www.eckhartsociety.org/

eckhart/his-teachings; see Maurice O’C. Walshe,
being in church. Today we are called to
trans., THE COMPLETE MYSTICAL WORKS OF MEISTER
be religious interreligiously. Committed ECKHART (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co.,
to Jesus and the Gospel we must also be 2010).
6 Karen J. Campbell, GERMAN MYSTICAL WRITINGS
open to other religions and believers.”9
(Continuum International Publishing Group,
As a Christian—even a Christian-
1991), p. 91.
Buddhist—someone grounded in Christ 7 Urban Tigner Holmes III, A HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN
and intimately involved in this interfaith SPIRITUALITY: AN ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION (New York:
dialogue, I couldn’t agree more. Learning Seabury Press,1980) p. 151.
to value the truth and teachings of other 8 See Thich Nhat Hanh, THE HEART OF

faiths while sharing our own is another UNDERSTANDING: COMMENTARIES ON THE PRAJNAPARAMITA
HEART SUTRA (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1988).
way for a Christian to be embraced by the 9 Knitter, “Jesus, The Way That is Open to Other
risen Christ and to encounter the Holy Ways,” http://www.tcpc.org/library/article.
Spirit at work in the world. cfm?library_id=518, sermon.

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 A Conversation with is always more than we can imagine. It is
clear, therefore, that dialogue, opening
Paul Knitter our hearts and minds to others, is simply
essential. Being a religious or spiritual
RON STARBUCK: From a Christian perspective, person means realizing that there is
how can an interfaith dialogue open us up always more to learn, always more to
to God? respond to, always more to be surprised
PAUL KNITTER: Dialogue is necessary in order by, and that those surprises can be
to be open to and learn evermore about provided for us in our dialogue with
the divine mystery that we call God. The persons of another religion.
whole purpose of the Christian church,
the purpose of any religious community RS: In your role as a teacher at Union
I would say, is to receive and to live the Theological Seminary, how do you see a
very life of that which we call “Ultimate new generation of graduate students and
Mystery.” church leadership approaching religious
There is an awareness that this pluralism?
mystery of God, revealed for Christians PK: Union is an example of a growing
through Jesus of Nazareth, whom we call awareness within Christian seminaries
the “Son of God” as a strong, powerful, that other religions must be included in
saving, and transforming image of God, various ways in the curriculum and in the
is always going to be greater than whole educational philosophy of the
anything we can comprehend. As Jesus school. Christian seminaries are
said, the Father is so much greater than beginning to recognize that in order to
I. In other words the Ultimate Mystery teach Christian theology it is no longer

106 | PARABOLA
sufficient to teach only the Bible, only
the history of the church, only the Why Are We Separated From God?
teaching and doctrines of the church. All Or Are We? Get The True Story!
of that, of course, remains essential.
When other religions are included,
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The Original Sin
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To summarize, there is growing
awareness among future Christian to look at all our traditional ways of
leaders that one can continue to be fully speaking about God, including the
committed to Jesus of Nazareth as savior, Trinity, as symbolic. My predecessor at
as someone who can bring about Union, Paul Tillich, used to say that if you
profound changes for the good in life, understand what a symbol really means
and at the same time be truly open to you will never say it’s just a symbol. A
what God may have to say and reveal symbol reveals, a symbol makes known,
through other religions and traditions. always suggestively. Our Trinitarian
Full commitment to one’s own language is trying to express the way the
identity, and true, authentic openness to Christian community came to experience
the identities of others—this balancing of the mystery of the divine that was
commitment and openness, this is communicated and embodied for them in
something that is clarifying for many Jesus of Nazareth. It is how they came to
students. As it clarifies, it encourages their talk about the mysterious way in which
explorations. It makes theology an all the this one reality of the divine is present in
more exciting and life-giving experience. very different ways in our lives.
It includes God as the incomprehensible
RS: Is there a way for a Christian to be in a source of all reality as well as the expression
relationship with God as three distinct of God as Word, God going out to
Persons found within the Trinity, but also communicate God’s self. And then there is
in a more non-theistic transformative way, the experience that the early community
in a Sacrament of Silence? had of God as this abiding inherent spirit
PK: If we accept that God is beyond all our within our very being, that animates us,
conceptual understanding, then we have that reveals things to us, that calls us to

FALL 2011 | 107

 love. So, there is the father, the son or them be afraid.” ... “Likewise the Spirit
word, and the spirit or animating energy. helps us in our weakness; for we do not
Yet we have to remind ourselves that know how to pray as we ought, but that
while these ways of speaking are very very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep
important for forming Christian experience for words. And God, who searches the
and nurturing Christian experience down heart, knows what is the mind of the
through the centuries, they are symbols. Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
The mystery that they are indicating is saints according to the will of God.”
beyond those symbols. We have to remind When we enter into a practice of prayer
ourselves that the reality of God is more and meditation, into a Sacrament of
than can be caught and captured and Silence, do you think the Holy Spirit is
stirred up in us with the image of a father, waiting for us in that space as comforter
with a theistic image. The great Christian and counselor, to teach us all things, and
mystic Meister Eckhart realized this. He remind us of what Jesus taught, and to
said we must give up God in order to open give us his peace, God’s peace, the peace
ourselves and experience the reality of God that passes all understanding?
beyond God, the divine reality beyond all PK: My simple answer to your question is a
of our concepts of God. definite “Yes.” This is the Holy Spirit, the
I think Christians can still hold to their Spirit that is present, that is active, that is
images of God by recognizing that they moving in ways that we cannot
are symbols. At the same time, they can be understand or foresee, and which are
open to the experience of the divine reality beyond our comprehension. When we do
that is beyond God imagery, beyond our follow these forms of contemplative
way of talking about the divine mystery as prayer, prayer in which we open ourselves
God. We need to get beyond symbols into to the Spirit, without necessarily thinking,
silence. So, yes, I think there can be a kind without holding on to any image, when
of dual practice, which is especially called we open ourselves in profound radical
forth by the dialogue between Christians openness and acceptance of what our faith
and Buddhists. Some Buddhists stress tells us, we have the opportunity of deeply
silence, and some Christians may stress and personally coming to the realization
symbols and images, and doctrines. Yet that the Spirit is part of us, that the Spirit
doctrines call to silence, silence gives life to is given to us.
doctrines. I think it can be a very enriching As a theologian I have read that
way of carrying on one’s spirituality— section from Romans often enough, but
double belonging, double practice, I can also hear it within the context of
exploring various forms of practice. our discussion on Buddhist-Christian
dialogue. As I try to explain in WITHOUT
RS: John 14:26-27 and Romans 8:26-27, BUDDHA I COULD NOT BE A CHRISTIAN, when I
tell us: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, read those words from Romans with, as
whom the Father will send in my name, it were, Buddhist glasses, the words
will teach you everything, and remind you become all the more revelatory, all the
of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave more engaging. Paul is talking about the
with you; my peace I give to you. I do not reality he calls Spirit. I call Spirit the
give to you as the world gives. Do not let reality my Buddhist teacher speaks of
your hearts be troubled, and do not let when he calls me to let go of all

108 | PARABOLA
concepts. To let go and to open myself
utterly to the present moment, in the
trust that this present moment contains
all that I need, that all that I need is
given to me in my very being, in my very
being lived right now, in this moment, in
this particular context. That is the Spirit.
I hope that I’m not being too quick
here but Buddhism has helped me to
appreciate and be grateful for this
wonderful, powerful image of the divine
that we have been given as Christians:
The Path of Druidry
This setting aside of words and imagery Walking the Ancient Green Way
and opening oneself to what St. Paul Penny Billington
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calls God as Spirit, letting that Spirit
British Druid Penny Billington offers a
make itself (or herself or himself) felt clear, structured course of study that
within us, grow within us, to lead us. highlights the mysteries, magic, and
modern practice of this nature-based
That is a beautiful passage, and I think it tradition. Captivating Welsh myths in-
is a passage whose richness can never be troduce key concepts, while practical
exercises help you internalize Druidic
fully appreciated. But I think Buddhism spiritual wisdom.
is a way of helping Christians possibly
appreciate it a little bit more.

RS: Are the Buddhist concepts of

Nirvana-Sūnyatā and the Christian
concept of Kenosis-Self-emptying two sides
of the same coin?
PK: I would not want to say that
Nirvana/Sūnyatā and Kenosis/Self-
emptying are two sides of the same coin. Fire of the Goddess
Nine Paths to Ignite
That might be a little too neat and give the Sacred Feminine
the impression that there are no real Katalin Koda
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differences between them. I would prefer Katalin Koda offers women an in-
to say that they are two different, but novative way to embody the sacred
similar, fingers pointing to the same feminine, presenting nine God-
dess archetypes corresponding
moon. In their different ways— with women’s most important life
Buddhists emphasizing the practice of stages—firebearer, initiate, warrior-
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personal self-emptying that brings about
the realization that our true identities are
not to be found in our selves.

FALL 2011 | 109

 TA N G E N T

Seeing Art

HIDDEN TREASURES:
Stories from a Great Museum
A FILM BY ALEXANDRA ISLES. WWW.HIDDENTREASURESTHEMOVIE.COM.
Reviewed by Patty de Llosa

YOU MAY BE ONE of the millions of people who thrill each year
to the marvels on display in the cathedral-like halls of the Metropolitan
Museum of New York. Like me, you scarcely notice the guards
except to ask where the nearest bathroom is or how to find your way
out. It has probably never occurred to you to think about the more
than two thousand employees whose days and nights are given over
to making your museum experience a special event. What are their
lives like? What awakens their personal excitement in that magical
palace of art?

110 | PARABOLA
 HIDDEN TREASURES: STORIES FROM A GREAT while they relate how their favorite work
MUSEUM will take you on a journey into of art has influenced their lives, Paul
the Met’s secret places. To make this Koestner’s camera sweeps lovingly across
hour-long film, producer/director the referenced painting or objets d’art as
Alexandra Isles has interviewed thirteen the haunting Middle Eastern music of
staff members who protect, collect, G. I. Gurdjieff, played by Laurence
restore, move, clean, or teach at the Rosenthal, soothes the ear.
Met, as well as a trustee whose great- You’ll discover how Rembrandt’s
grandfather started the Lehman SELF-PORTRAIT has served as a trusted
Collection. Their moving personal mentor for many years and how a wish-
accounts lead us to unsuspected corners granting statue gathers coins and hopes
of one of the greatest museums in the to itself every day. A metallurgist
world as they share intimate moments, displays a secret compartment he
luminous with personal appreciations of himself discovered recently while
minor as well as major works of art. And cleaning a sharp Damascus sword made

FALL 2011 | 111

 taking care of the
statue itself. There
are also personal
stories about Lucian
Freud’s portrait of
Leigh Bowery and
Ingres’s Princess de
Broglie. And did you
know what’s in the
weird pigment
recipes used to
illuminate medieval
manuscripts? Or how
one art technician
surmounted the
mammoth task of
assembling a set of
huge Art Deco glass
panels from the
sunken French
luxury liner
Normandie?
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1660
With grace and
subtlety, Alexandra
Moltke Isles has cast
more than a century ago. (It’s hidden a warm light on the lives of each of
under a large emerald.) A night guard these custodians of treasure as she
focuses on a famous landscape that has humanizes for us the enormous collec-
become a living, guiding presence tion that the Met administers. Her pas-
during his lonely early morning vigils. sion for research developed during
A tour guide describes the delight years as Assistant Curator at New
children always find in an intricately York’s Museum of Radio & Television
carved boxwood rosary bead that (now the Paley Center of Media). No
contains a whole scene of tiny people stranger to film-making, she has made a
inside. Another teacher tells how a number of historical documentaries,
dying woman found joy in her last visit most of them edited by Doug Rossini:
to the Egyptian section, where solemn THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE: THE DANISH
funeral objects informed her of that RESISTANCE AND RESCUE OF THE JEWS (1995);
culture’s belief that there is no death, SCANDALIZE MY NAME (1999) about the
only an end to pain and sorrow. black listing of African-American per-
One of the art technicians is drawn formers during the Red Scare; and
to the power of a mysterious wooden PORRAIMOS: Europe’s Gypsies in the Holocaust
Mayan figure. Another credits the (2002).
power of a bronze Ganesha with More akin to the quiet rhythm of
getting her the job she longed for— HIDDEN TREASURES is her later film, the

112 | PARABOLA
delightful HEALING GARDENS
OF NEW YORK (2007). She
says her inspiration for Jean Auguste
HIDDEN TREASURES came Dominique Ingres,
Portrait of the
after a visit to the Freer Princess Albert
Collection in de Broglie, 1853

Washington, D.C., when

she heard a guard answer
questions from a visitor.
“He was so knowledge-
able and proud of the col-
lection,” she says, “that
from then on, whenever I
visit a museum I talk to
the guards.”
Because of the
enormous variety of its
collections, the Met
seemed the most
interesting place to make
the film she had in mind,
but it took years to find
the courage to approach
the authorities. Isles says
ruefully that while the idea of
filming after-hours and on days
when the museum is closed may
sound thrilling, she soon discovered
those were also the times the
housekeeping was done. “There
was always the rattle and hum of
heavy equipment on the move,” she
reports. “And often an unmarked door
would suddenly open and a startled
janitor would become part of the
interview!”
When asked what was the most
exciting aspect of the filmmaking,
she gave a conspiratorial smile:
“Discovering how passionate the
staff members are about what they
do! In fact, by now you’ve probably
figured out that the true hidden
treasures here at the Met are the
people themselves!”

FALL 2011 | 113

 A Conversation with Germany in the 1930s with Leni
Riefenstahl’s film on the 1936 Berlin
Alexandra Isles Olympics. Viewers could easily see how
these two cultures were so different. You
PATTY DE LLOSA: The theme for this issue of didn’t have to say anything. Also, in
PARABOLA is “Seeing,” so can you tell me how SCANDALIZE MY NAME, about blacklisted
you come up with an idea and then turn it black actors, I showed shots of them
into a visual action? from World War II in uniform or enter-
ALEXANDRA ISLES: Works of fine art have a taining the troops or being patriotic, so,
supernatural quality. They can evoke an although I didn’t say anything, you just
emotional response but are, after all, only saw that and could make up your own
canvas, pigment, stone, or wood. mind. In any case, this was their truth.
Conveying that magic was a challenge.
Midway into the editing, and after we PDEL: You said you wanted to make a film
knew what parts of the interviews were about the quiet power these art objects can
going to be included, we went back to have on our lives, as opposed to the block-
the museum to re-shoot many of the buster shows and soaring auction prices
works because they had taken on new that have made art a commodity. How do
meanings after their stories were revealed. you look at art?
In the case of Rembrandt’s self-portrait, AI: It’s not very intellectual, but I go to
seeing it in its formal frame and then museums and galleries with the same
pushing past the frame and into the face wish as going to a play or a movie,
gave the painting a strange animating hoping to be surprised and moved.
energy. With the Lucien Freud portrait of
Leigh Bowery, slowly moving up his PDEL: A documentary of a museum is
huge back toward the ear on his turned- usually about objects, but the storytelling
away head evoked a sense that Bowery aspect of this film is very powerful. How
could hear what was being said about did that come about?
him. The pacing of these moves was very AI: My previous film, THE HEALING GARDENS OF
important. In another case, it was only in NEW YORK, taught me that everyone has a
the editing room that I saw that the story. Until then my films had always had a
object and the person talking about it had historical framework and were told
a strong resemblance to each other. chronologically. HEALING GARDENS was made
completely on intuition and, as with all my
PDEL: Was this challenge different from that previous films, I was incredibly lucky in
of your other documentaries? finding memorable and interesting people
AI: In some films you want to see what who were willing to tell their stories. I
the person who is speaking sees, through follow two rules. The first is that my
their filter, their point of view. In other presence is invisible and silent. The film
cases you may want to try to show how belongs to the storytellers. The second is
other people see them. I did a couple of to do as much research as possible, trust
films about prejudice and you can see the material, and never film re-creations.
what they are up against—the Gypsies
are a particularly good example of that. I PDEL: I understand the Metropolitan
contrasted a film of Gypsy life in recently began a yearlong series on their

114 | PARABOLA
website called Connections, in which staff
members reflect on their favorite works of
art. That’s an exciting result of the film,
the fact that you woke them up, so to speak.
Could you say something about that?
AI: After the showing at the museum I
was told that the film had changed the
administration’s attitude toward the staff.
That hadn't been my intention; however,
inclusiveness is always lurking somewhere
in all my films. The beauty of
documentaries is meeting people who
teach you about the human condition.
For me, the great filmmakers are the
subtle ones. A beautiful example is
SECTION 80, by John Alpert, about the area
in Arlington Cemetery where the soldiers
killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.
It observes quietly and, in doing so,
taught me so much about grief.

PDEL: Can you say what person or people

influenced you most in your approach to
HIDDEN TREASURES? me to him as one of the paper's leading
AI: In September of 2007 I read Holland art critics. Over the three years it took to
Cotter for the first time. His piece wasn’t make the film, his Friday reviews amazed
about art. It was about a road trip he and inspired me with their knowledge,
took in the summer of 1964 when he was sense of wonder, and playfulness. His
just out of high school. His trip took him writing combined a spiritual openness
into Mississippi at the height of the civil with real scholarship. His balanced way of
rights killings, and there was something looking at, and often loving, art made
so warm and direct about his style that I him my guide and teacher, and gave me
made note of his name. The following the confidence to pursue this very
Friday The New York Times reintroduced personal way of looking at art.

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FALL 2011 | 115

 BOOK REVIEWS

EMINENT GURDJIEFFIANS: LORD PENTLAND

BY JAMES MOORE. GURDJIEFF STUDIES LTD. (WWW.GURDJIEFF.ORG.UK), 2011. PP. 106
+ XVIII. $40
Reviewed by Stephen A. Grant

FOLLOWERS OF G.I. GURDJIEFF have long been grateful to

James Moore for the research and insights in his biography
GURDJIEFF: THE ANATOMY OF A MYTH (1991). So it is truly disappointing
that his latest offering falls so short of the standards set by the
earlier book. There are the trappings of serious biography: an
acknowledgment of extensive sources, a bibliography and index,
even photographs. But the substantive narrative, totaling a mere
one hundred pages, consists largely of insignificant facts
arranged chronologically against a background of historical
events. The subject, the famously elusive former head of the
Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, remains a mystery. This
seems a shame, an opportunity lost to examine the life of the
leading figure in the Gurdjieff movement in America for more
than thirty years.

116 | PARABOLA
 By invoking the critic Lytton
Strachey’s EMINENT VICTORIANS, Moore

$5 & (7<3$/
+
signals his purpose to challenge the
hierarchy of the Gurdjieff Work, that is, 5&+(7<3$/
the Foundations organized in Paris, New
York, London, and Caracas by Jeanne de '5 ($0:25.
5($0:25.
Salzmann, Gurdjieff’s closest follower.
Moore accuses the Work of being driven
by personal ambition and politics, a
community in which “clashes of personal
and sectional interest masquerade as
lofty distinctions of principle; cabals
and coups are danced out to celestial
melodies; and great and petty empires
of influence are ruthlessly built, then $VKHDUUGRQ
broken on Fortune’s careless wheel.” 235$+Ö6628/6(5,(6
He claims that Lord Pentland owed his 135Ö62132,17
position to his title, and rose to :(2 ))(5
2))(5
preeminence by slavishly agreeing with 2QHRQ2QH7KHUDS\5HWUHDWV
Mme. de Salzmann: “His exalted Work :RUNVKRSV%RRNV2QOLQH&ODVVHV
status throughout America relied on his ZZZQRUWKRIHGHQFRP
Z ZZQRUWKRIHGHQFRP
agreeing with Madame de Salzmann
35(6(17$7,216$1'
whatever she said.” This argument,
though unkind, would be provocative
:25.6+236
if the biographer could provide at least &+5,67$/$$1
1&$67(5
a modicum of fact or testimony to 0$5&%5(*0$1
substantiate it. But Moore utterly fails 6W)HUULRO)UDQFH6HSW
:HHNORQJ5HWUHDW
to make his case. All he does—with
/RQGRQ8.6HSW
his trademark verbal trenchancy—is (YHQLQJ3UHVHQWDWLRQ
belittle his subject by innuendo and %DUFHORQD6SDLQ6HSW
unsupported denigrations tossed off (YHQLQJ3UHVHQWDWLRQ
as though they were self-evident. 1HZ2UOHDQV/$2FW
3UHVHQWDWLRQZLWK5RGJHU.DPHQHW]
Although presumably unintended, these
%HUPXGD1RY
commentaries end up cumulatively (YHQLQJ3UHVHQWDWLRQ :HHNHQG:RUNVKRS
sounding like petty insults that, at least (VDOHQ%LJ6XU&$6SULQJ
to this reviewer, seem quite unworthy of :HHNORQJ5HWUHDW
an accomplished biographer dealing with 686$10$5,,((6&$92
a distinguished subject. %,//67&<5
At the same time, Moore says enough 2QH:RUOG)HVWLYDO
to reveal the real reason for his attack 7XVFDQ\,WDO\$XJXVW6HSWHPEHU
:HHNRI3UHVHQWLQJ
on the Gurdjieffian establishment. As
)RUPRUHLQIRUPDWLRQFDOO
) RUPRUHLQIRUPDWLRQFDOO
a serious follower of Gurdjieff, he is 6XVDQ0DULH6FDYRRU
concerned that Mme. de Salzmann failed %LOO6W&\UDW
in her responsibility to safeguard the
teaching from deformation. As stated in

FALL 2011 | 117

 earlier writings, he believes that (i) the out of ambition, and does not even
original English version of Gurdjieff’s acknowledge that Lord Pentland viewed
BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON was an Mme. de Salzmann as the person most
authentic text that should not have been qualified to decide how the book should
tampered with, and (ii) the “traditional be revised. This view was correct, given
Gurdjieffian ethos of effort,” a “Stoic the real shortcomings of the English
legacy” of effort and struggle, even version, which she alone understood.
physical “super-effort,” was undermined Gurdjieff’s original manuscript of
by Mme. de Salzmann’s introduction of BEELZEBUB was typed and revised in Russian.
a new “quietism” through collective An English version was composed from
meditation. Both of these conclusions a word-by-word interlinear translation,
are wrong. The original BEELZEBUB was an with each word in English placed above
inauthentic, flawed translation that had the corresponding Russian word in the
to be revised. And “conscious labor” in typescript. This “transposition” was
Gurdjieff’s teaching involves an inner finally edited by the well-known editor
struggle of attention that is above and A.R. Orage, who did not know Russian
beyond the outer exertion required in and was unable to read Gurdjieff’s
preliminary stages of work. original text. The word-by-word
transposition produced an awkward
The original English version of result because of differences between the
BEELZEBUB’S TALES TO HIS GRANDSON was not two languages. Russian is a highly
an authentic text of Gurdjieff inflected language. Through word
Moore charges Lord Pentland with endings indicating gender, number, and
failing to oppose Mme. de Salzmann’s case, it smoothly accommodates long
decision to revise the English edition sentences and needs few prepositions.
of BEELZEBUB, which Moore regards as English, in contrast, has little inflection
sacrosanct. As he wrote earlier, over and relies heavily on word order and
decades Gurdjieff “honed the English prepositions. However brilliantly edited,
text refining its nuances and cadences” the word-by-word English translation of
and imparted “deliberate stylistic BEELZEBUB inevitably produced passages
opacity” in order to require a special that were unwieldy in style compared to
effort on the part of the reader. Moore the Russian text. They were needlessly
accuses Lord Pentland of acting solely complex and, for many readers,

118 | PARABOLA
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extremely difficult to read and translation, and did not deliberately

understand. Most important, the contrive such extreme convoluted
English translation did not correspond opacity to challenge the reader.
to what Gurdjieff had written in As Moore noted in his biography,
Russian. Gurdjieff acknowledged that the English
Moore, along with others, assumes book was a “rough diamond,” and
that, as the initial publication, the counted on Mme. de Salzmann to revise
English version was written or approved it after his death. They both understood
by Gurdjieff, who was present when it that the revisions would entail much
was read aloud. He does not realize that, more than minor corrections. The
in fact, all of Gurdjieff’s work on the deformation here is not in the revised
book was in Russian, and that he had book but in the original transposition
never mastered the English language. from Russian by an editor who did not
He could not have judged, much less speak the language. It is the revised
approved, the English text and had to edition that represents the authentic
rely on Mme. de Salzmann, who was translation of what the author wrote.
fluent in Russian and English, for
reassurance that the meaning was Collective meditation is based on
preserved. Thus the truth is that Gurdjieff’s work with advanced pupils
Gurdjieff did not approve the wording In creating the Foundations, Mme. de
or writing style of the English Salzmann established two core practices:

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FALL 2011 | 119

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120 | PARABOLA
discussion groups for exchanging on is why he spoke in conceptual terms,
work, and classes for doing special dance with illustrations from everyday
exercises called Movements. After fifteen experience. For example, the key relation
years, working mostly in Paris and New among mind, feeling, and body could be
York, she introduced a directed expressed only metaphorically in terms of
meditation in which participants sit in the driver, horse, and carriage. And the
rows facing the person in front. Moore need for a “super-effort”—that is, one
condemns these so-called “sittings” as a beyond our ordinary functions—could
“radical innovation in Work be conveyed only as an “extraordinary
methodology” based on the Zen ordinary effort,” like pushing oneself
meditation practice in Japan. He believes beyond the point of exhaustion. To an
that Mme. de Salzmann’s emphasis on unprepared audience, Gurdjieff could
meditation is a misguided departure not speak about the inner work required
from Gurdjieff’s teaching on either for relating the lower centers or
unrelenting struggle. In fact, the sittings for opening to the higher feeling and
have almost nothing in common with thinking centers. He may, to be sure,
zazen meditation and were a natural have intended initially to reveal more in
extension of Gurdjieff’s own practice his Third Series, but he gave up writing
with more advanced pupils. that book in 1935 and devoted himself
In introducing the sittings, Mme. de to intensive work with individual pupils.
Salzmann did not explain their origin or We know that this later teaching was
purpose. Nevertheless, many years later toward what he called “conscious labor,”
several of us asked her whether there that is, an inner effort to awaken and
were sittings with Gurdjieff. Her answer open to a direct perception of reality
was simple and direct: “Yes, but it was in oneself.
not like today—not so many people. In charging her to carry on his work,
We were only a few. It was called ‘special Gurdjieff instructed Mme. de Salzmann
work’ and we were not allowed to speak to record what she brought, which she
of it to others.” Those who attended the did in notebooks, kept like diaries over a
early sittings in New York remember it period of forty years. The notebooks
was called “special work” and that we show that, in bringing guidance for
were told not to speak of it to others. more advanced stages of inner work, she
Thus the sittings are the same practice continued the line of direct perception
Gurdjieff used in work with Mme. de in senior groups and later refined it in
Salzmann, only on a larger scale. Far sittings to a work for conscious sensation.
from being a deformation, they were This material was arranged and published
simply a form for more advanced inner last year in her book THE REALITY OF BEING.
work implemented when followers The book confirms her total commitment
were prepared. to Gurdjieff’s teaching. In particular, she
To understand the broader context, stresses the importance of meditation
it is necessary to remember that each day to return to the reality in
Gurdjieff’s early teaching, from 1915–24 oneself, a practice recommended at the
in Russia and at the Prieuré, was with beginning of BEELZEBUB. She also makes
people who had no in-depth experience clear that the work in meditation is for
in the inner work for consciousness. This opening to the higher centers, and

FALL 2011 | 121

 redefines inner work as calling for Lord Pentland that the foundations
continual struggle, conscious effort, could not claim to embody the teaching.
and voluntary suffering. Mme. Lannes was deeply disappointed,
In conclusion, James Moore’s and the relationship between the two
concerns about the teaching are to be women was never the same. Viewed in
respected. He did not know that the this context, this book could be
English version of BEELZEBUB was regarded as an exercise in misguided
inauthentic, and that Mme. de loyalty—that is, Moore wrongly assumed
Salzmann’s advanced practice originated a “clash of personal and sectional
with Gurdjieff. Pentland loyalists can interest,” and took it on himself to
also appreciate Moore’s allegiance to his discredit Mme. Lannes’s supposed
teacher Mme. Henriette Lannes, who “enemies,” not realizing that at this level
headed London’s Gurdjieff Society from they were essentially her spiritual brother
its founding. Moore and others were and mother.
aware that before her death in 1980 In the end, however, neither good-
Mme. Lannes had a falling out with faith concerns nor sincere loyalty can
Mme. de Salzmann, but they never knew excuse this “biography”—a thinly
what it was about. The issue involved disguised assault by a professional writer
the Foundations’ stewardship over on a leader regarded with respect and
Gurdjieff’s writings, and their staking affection by Gurdjieffians across
out a claim of primacy in representing America. Mme. de Salzmann and her
his authentic work. Mme. Lannes two closest followers in this country and
proposed inserting a notice in England devoted their lives to this
Gurdjieff’s books proclaiming that they teaching, and to the Work that made it
were published by the Society and other available to everyone, including Moore.
foundations as the original centers for Having myself witnessed their
carrying on the teaching. Lord Pentland extraordinary engagement, I cannot help
refused, rejecting the pretention that any thinking how disappointed, how very
group could claim “ownership” of the sad, they all would be with this book.
teaching or the Gurdjieff movement.
This was a confrontation of high
Stephen A. Grant is a member of The Gurdjieff
principle between the two strong-willed Foundation of New York who, with many others,
leaders in London and New York. In the worked for years under the guidance of Lord
end, Mme. de Salzmann agreed with Pentland and Mme. de Salzmann.

122 | PARABOLA
   
 

      
  

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 CREDITS
P.6–7 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: P.46 Photo courtesy of the de Salzmann family
663highland P.50,51,55 Photos courtesy of David Ulrich
P.8 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Gerry P.60 Photo courtesy of Lee van Laer
Lewis
P.62 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Becca
P.9 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Fae Dorstek; cropped by RanZag
P.10 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Walter P.63 Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment
Siegmund
P.64 Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment,
P.11 Photo courtesy of Dean Leh photo by Jonathan Olley
(deanleh.blogspot.com)
P.65 Photos courtesy of Summit Entertainment
P.12 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: John
Hill P.66–67,69,70 Images courtesy of Kazuaki Tanahashi
P.13 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Viault P.74,76,77,78 Photos courtesy of George Beke
P.15,16 Photos courtesy of James Opie P.80 Photo courtesy of Christopher Ripman
P.18-19,20,21,22,23 Photos courtesy of James P.84,87,90,91,93 Photos courtesy of the collections of
Whitlow Delano members of the Washington, D.C., Gurdjeff
groups
P.24–25, 26–27 Photos courtesy of Dale Fuller
P.95 Photo: Wikipedia. Author: Alak Prasad
P.28 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author:
Otgonbayar Ershuu P.101 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Gakuro
P.31 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: John P.102 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Uploader: Aiden
Hill P.103 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Payal
P.32 Atlas Image obtained as part of the Two Vora
Micron All Sky Survey, a joint project of the Univ. P.111 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Cow
of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and P.112 Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Analysis Center/California Institute of
P.113 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Source: Art
Technology, funded by the NASA and the
Renewal Center Museum
National Science Foundation
P.128 Top: Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Bottom
P.33 Photo: unews.utah.edu. Author: Franz
left: Photo: jeevanathigal.blogspot.com. Bottom
Giessibl
right: Photo: Planetperplex.com
P.34 Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Author:
NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair
ERRATUM
P.36 Photo: www.communicatesscience.eu. Author:
The photograph on pages 62–63 of our Summer 2011
Dr. Henry Jakubowski
issue was incorrectly attributed. That photo of Mount
P.38,39,41, 42–43,44,45 Photos courtesy of Richard Buffalo was by and courtesy of Roxanne Bodsworth.
Whittaker Mt. Buffalo is Dordordonga, the Echidna.

MANY PATHS BURNING

WORLD THE UNKNOWN
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126 | PARABOLA
 PROFILES
GEORGE BEKE, after twenty years at Time, Inc., JAMES OPIE writes and also deals in Oriental
researches lost historic connections through rugs in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of
obscure coins, little-known texts, and ill- APPROACHING INNER WORK: MICHAEL CURRER BRIGGS
understood surviving art. ON THE GURDJIEFF TEACHING.

BARBARA HELEN BERGER is an artist, author, HUGH RIPMAN (1909-1980) studied under
and longtime student of Buddhism. Her P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff and went
books for children include ALL THE WAY TO LHASA: on to lead the Gurdjieff Society of
A TALE FROM TIBET. She has written essays and Washington, D.C., for many years.
retellings for Parabola, and her special interest
in the feminine forms of Wisdom has led her RON STARBUCK is an Episcopal lay person,
to collecting stories of Tara. author-poet living in Houston, Texas. He is
the author of WHEELS TURNING INWARD, a book of
JAMES WHITLOW DELANO is a photographer poetry from Friesen Press. Along with his wife,
who has lived in Asia for seventeen years. His Joanne, Ron attends Trinity Episcopal
work has received awards internationally: the Church. He is deeply engaged in an interfaith
Alfred Eisenstadt Award (from Columbia dialogue, holding a lifelong interest in
University and Life Magazine), Leica’s Oskar Christian mysticism, comparative religion,
Barnack, Picture of the Year International, theology, and meditation.
Photo District News, and others.
For more information, please visit KAZUAKI TANAHASHI is an accomplished
www.jameswhitlowdelano.com. Japanese calligrapher, Zen teacher, author, and
translator of Buddhist texts from Japanese and
PATTY DE LLOSA, author of THE PRACTICE OF Chinese to English, most notably works by
PRESENCE: FIVE PATHS FOR DAILY LIFE, is an Dogen.
Alexander teacher and a consulting editor to
Parabola who lives and practices in New York DAVID ULRICH is a photographer and writer
City. Her new book, TAMING YOUR INNER TYRANT: who teaches at the University of Hawaii
A PATH TO HEALING THROUGH DIALOGUES WITH ONESELF, Manoa. His photographs have been
is available from bn.com, amazon.com, and exhibited in over seventy-five one-person
elsewhere. For more information, please visit and group exhibitions in museums, galleries,
http://tamingyourinnertyrant.com. and universities. He is the author of
THE WIDENING STREAM: THE SEVEN STAGES OF
JEANNE DE SALZMANN (1889-1990) was G.I. CREATIVITY. His work can be viewed at
Gurdjieff’s closest pupil. Upon his death in www.creativeguide.com.
1949, she led the Gurdjieff Work worldwide
until her own death at the age of 101. CHRISTIAN WERTENBAKER, M.D., a senior editor
at Parabola, is a neuro-opthalmologist and a
MARTHA HEYNEMAN is the author of THE BREATHING musician. His interest in the nature of human
CATHEDRAL and many essays that appeared in consciousness and its role in the universe led
Parabola between 1983 and 2005. She met him to study both the spiritual traditions and
Hugh Ripman in Washington, D.C., in 1952. the sciences, particularly neuroscience, via
formal training in neurophysiology, neurology,
TREBBE JOHNSON is the author of THE WORLD IS A
and neuro-ophthalmology.
WAITING LOVER: DESIRE AND THE QUEST FOR THE
BELOVED, and the director of Vision Arrow DOLPHI WERTENBAKER, M.D., works as a yoga
(www.VisionArrow.com), offering journeys therapist in New York City. She is a long-time
worldwide that combine the mythic quest, the student of T.K.V. Desikachar, who opened for
search for meaning, and the exploration of her the world of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. She is
wisdom and insight through nature. In 2009 a KHYF-certified yoga teacher and teacher
she founded Radical Joy for Hard Times, a trainer.
non-profit organization devoted to finding
and making beauty in wounded places RICHARD WHITTAKER is the West Coast editor
(www.RadicalJoyforHardTimes.org). of Parabola and is the founding editor of
works & conversations. A collection of his inter-
JOYCE KORNBLATT is a novelist, essayist, and for- views, THE CONVERSATIONS, INTERVIEWS WITH SIXTEEN
mer English professor at the University of CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS, is available from the
Maryland. She now lives in Sydney, Australia, University of Nebraska Press.
where she is at work on a novel and a book
about grief. JEFF ZALESKI is editor in chief of Parabola.

FALL 2011 | 127

 ENDPOINT
All Is Vanity.
C. Allan Gilbert,
1892

Gossip, and
Satan Came Also. Society, a Portrait.
George A. Wotherspoon George A. Wotherspoon

“You see, but you do not observe,” remarked Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in A SCANDAL IN
BOHEMIA. This is true of most of us, but it is always possible to see more deeply. In 1892, at age
19, the American illustrator C. Allan Gilbert created ALL IS VANITY, a drawing that changes
meaning depending on how one views it. Not long after, another American illustrator, George
A. Wotherspoon, drew two similar works, GOSSIP, AND SATAN CAME ALSO, and SOCIETY, A PORTRAIT.
Not only did Wotherspoon, like Gilbert, hide yet reveal a deeper meaning behind his works’
facades, but his drawings are so reminiscent of Gilbert’s that casual collectors, not observing
the fine differences, often ascribe them to Gilbert.

128 | PARABOLA
 Where Myth
Meets Depth
Pacifica Graduate
Institute’s Program in
Mythological Studies
WITH EMPHASIS IN DEPTH
PSYCHOLOGY is a doctoral
program designed as an integrated
M.A./ Ph.D. sequence that
explores the understanding
of human experience
revealed in mythology,
and in the manifold links
between myth and ritual,
literature, art, and
religious experience.
Special Attention is
given to depth
psychological
and archetypal
approaches to the
study of myth.

An Accredited Graduate School with Two Campuses

near Santa Barbara, California

For more information on Pacifica’s degree

programs, call 805.969.3626, ext. 308
or visit us online at www.pacifica.edu