Salik,
Thanks for a glimpse into your travels and status. I hope you will in fact
write up something LARGER, and as comprehensive as you want it to be, about the
experiences and about the times we've had, and that it will have a very large
and appreciative audience. I think it's useful and needed.
Sufis were big for me, too. I was with Hazrat's clan, The Sufi Order in the
West. This was in the early 1970s in NYC. I desperately wanted a "Sufi-name",
in those days, but, as it happened, I was not to get close enough to actually
allow myself to become a Mureed.
I liked the physical practices, the dancing, Zikr, and meditation. Th emphasis
on the heart was wonderful, and the respectful interpersonal closeness was
remarkably and deeply beneficial.
Our sheik was Shahabuddin Lesh, and he felt himself to be very close to the Zen
tradition in his heart, and told us this. So he sometimes held intensive
meditation retreats which were styled just like Zen sesshin in terms of daily
schedule structure and rules of behavior in order to allow all our practice to
deepen, and especially our practice *together*.
I worked with this group mostly at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
uptown near Columbia, and danced in Sheep Meadow in Central Park (where I once
rode my bike past John Lennon, on another occasion). But I attended Sufi
retreats at their commune downtown, at 11th Street and Second Avenue (a
junk-neighborhood, if ever there was one). It was "Kanaqa as-Safia". They
were on the Fifth floor, and so a little isolated from the street, which was
good.
I was already a Yogi, and sitting was comfortable for me. These were my first
experiences with LONG sitting, in a group context. My introduction to Zen
practice was thus through a Sufi Sheik! What a world we're blessed with (and,
yes, sometimes we realize it).
Ch'an Master Rev. Sheng Yen was my Shih-fu (teacher) from 1979 - 2009; then he
passed away, and continues to be my teacher now. I am his 13th disciple in the
United States. I teach as a Lay Dharma Teacher, still in-training by his
people, and I have taught all the physical methods since 1980, by Shih-fu's
order, and my agreement. I can also teach simple meditation methods, and can
help people establish and maintain good posture and work out physical problems.
BTW, I don't want to come off as suggesting you study those books of the three
writers on Mysticism, which you have already done. I was only trying to say
that they *represent* in their writings what Mysticism is; they give
"case-studies", and SHOW that is experiential, and that it is experience which
defines it. They do not themselves speak from a Mystical perspective (anyway,
I hope not). ;-)
In James, I think especially his two chapters in VARIETIES, on "Conversion",
are absolutely golden. They are like the enlightenment (?) experiences
reported by Westerner practitioners in Kapleau's THE THREE PILLARS OF ZEN, but
especially are like features in the reports by the Japanese woman, Yaeko, in
her letters to her Roshi.
To me, reading the Mystics, or reports about their openings, it's wonderful to
see that awakening can occur in the midst of other traditions, and not just in
Zen. This powerfully gives me further trust or proof that our Zen awakening is
a naturally human condition, and not a "training-effect", as the psychologists
might say about other states; nor, is it an acquirement. It's what's left
after everything is stripped, and what's there always, and has been there,
always. It's our nature. Just "THIS!", as Bill! reminds us kindly, here.
Thank you, thank you again,
--Joe
> "salik888" <novelidea8@...> wrote:
>
> Joe
>
> It is interesting, both words, mystical and realist . . . as we see there are
> those that claim zen/Zen one way or the other . . . I have witnessed
> hard-boiled Zen cases that I practiced along side of that would express a
> 'realist', oftentimes atheistic perspective . . . to them, these terms were
> synonymous. Then there were those from the other side of the equation...
.
.
.
[snip; all may read the rest at the group website]
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