Words From Ken

Ten years ago I had the opportunity to attend a silent retreat led by Raimon Panikkar, who was then Professor of Comparative Religions at University of California, Santa Barbara. Just by chance, while going through some materials for the New Gaia, I came across my notes from that time. I was surprised and pleased to find them so relevant to this issue, so I will share them with you here.

May 31.  Last evening at 5 PM we met as a group with Fr. Panikkar. He briefly previewed our subject, “The Silence of Life”, and emphasized that our effort would have to be communal, even though that word is one that often just “fills our mouths”. He said that he was not to be our “spiritual cocktail butler” and that, consistent with the concept of silencing the mind, he did not know exactly what was going to happen. But as a general framework: 8 AM Breakfast in silence, and silence then until 10:30 AM meeting; 12 PM lunch in silence, then silence again until 4 PM meeting; 5:30 dinner, then quiet talk if necessary, private meetings with him if necessary, then 8 PM meeting and silence until next morning.

June 1 AM. Our first real meeting then was last night. Fr. Panikkar spoke more specifically about the silence of life, by which he meant the silencing of the intellect, of the planning, conniving, the plotting of our minds, even when we are trying to do good things. He spoke of the tragic over-emphasis on the masculine approach as opposed to the feminine one, which is willing to wait in patience and faith for fecundation by the Spirit.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. If by that we mean what do we hope to attain, what do we hope to accomplish, what are we striving for, we are already missing the point. We cannot have any “idea” of what we want, or the innocence is already lost. Even “he who sees God,” wrote Dionysius the Aropagite, “and knows what he sees, does not see God.” Fr. Panikkar told a funny story about a tightrope walker. When people asked, “How do you do it?” he replied, “It is very easy, you just walk. But don’t think.”

 

The moment you start thinking, worrying, plotting, even the most simple task becomes difficult if not impossible, not to mention sterile. He finished by wishing us a pleasant sleep, which has something to do with the life of silence. As I was falling asleep I thought of the four pillars of Brahman which are,

normal waking consciousness

dream-filled sleep

dreamless sleep

something beyond the sleeping and waking state.

Keeping busy I was.

May 31, 12:30 PM. This morning Fr. Panikkar began speaking  about self-confidence, which is different from the self-importance derived from the feeling, “I am rich, I am powerful, I am beautiful, I am Holy.” It is self-importance, according to the Buddhist texts we he cites, that will destroy us. But true self-confidence comes from an another source, one which is indeed silent, empty, and of an order altogether different from the many trappings of reality, good or bad.

He referred to a recent talk with Tom Berry. Berry’s thrust is that all traditional religions are inappropriate because they evolved at times when people were not destroying the planet as they are today. Therefore, the Bible, etc. should be “put on the shelf” while we are using every thought, every resource, every action to stem the tide of destruction and prevent our eventual doom, which of course would make all religious expression meaningless. Fr. Panikkar is in agreement with the general assessment of our situation. In fact he has recently made some mathematical calculations of a statistical nature, which show that within our lifetimes a nuclear disaster will occur which will destroy ¼  to 1/3 of all life on the planet. When he submitted this information to NASA they said they were aware of this but that his analysis was probably many times too optimistic!

But in spite of this devastating realization, one which does not allow us to stand idle in any way, there is also a more general realization. What if we do avoid nuclear catastrophe, reverse the tide of pollution and exploitation of the earth and even, just to be on the safe side, see every human being happy, peaceful and productive? Still, in 4 billion years the sun will go out. Some time before this the planet will no longer sustain life. “I am not satisfied with 4 billion years,” says Fr. Panikkar. My little ego is, of course, but life is more than that and life is not satisfied with any framework of time.

It is only by this awareness that life does transcend time, that there is an existential core of existence which does not need to obey the dictates of time, that true self-confidence can emerge. Otherwise it is just self-importance, and self-importance is ineffectual and ultimately destructive. In fact it is only without this self-importance that on can actually roll up the sleeves and take effective action in these very important though temporal matters.

So today we are to do a very simple exercise. There has been so much emphasis in modern society on the masculine energy, the super achiever, the self-important person, and this exercise is an attempt to reveal the opposite element. Our retreat is “The Silence of Life”, and this exercise is specifically the silence of the body. We don’t have bodies, we are bodies, and yet so often we do not trust our bodies and thus ourselves. We prod and poke them, make them move and jump about often out of sheer nervousness.

So this exercise, the silence of the body, and also the self-confidence of the body, is just to let the body become immobile, static, quiet, still. Don’t make it be still, let it be still. Trust the body. And then take note of  “personal units of time”, which are not the same as hours, minutes or even natural rhythms, but are segments of time in which the body can remain still. And then notice that all of these personal units of time, whether of duration 1 minute, 5 minutes,  or even much longer, are yet connected and in a sense homogeneous.

The Silence of Life as experienced does not occur within our rational framework and within our rational concept of time. This is something different from life; it is the source of life. It cannot be destroyed today, tomorrow or even in 4 billion years, for it does not exist in time. In conclusion Fr. Panikkar made some hesitant remarks about sitting in a comfortable position, straight spine, etc. and also mentioned that he very rarely sees, in the West, yoga performed with the right motivation, i.e. to discover the Silence of the Body.

6 PM. Every traditional religion has pointed to the fact that there is a hope which lies not in the future but the present, within the very matrix of temporal reality. The fact that in cultures where many of these religions developed it was indeed very difficult if not impossible to have hope in any conceivable future made it perhaps easier for these people to maintain and communicate this understanding. 

In today’s world, where we have every comfort, every security, every promise for good things, workable solutions—the true sense of hope has atrophied. We hold hands and sing “We shall overcome, we shall overcome,” but we overcome nothing. Hope for the future will always be frustrated. Not that we do not work for a better future, but a better future can only be the result of better work in the present, and this can only come about when our hopes are pinned not on the future, but upon the Invisible Presence, or as the Upanisads says, the Inner Controller, the Atman.

This inscrutable, invisible, undefinable presence, this Atman, this Brahman, is our Self which is in all things. One of the most universal metaphors in all religious, poetic and philosophical language is that of the drop of water, falling through the air, splashing into the infinite sea and disappearing; not only in the sense of dying, losing its temporal individuality, but also in the sense that all finite reality bears this relationship to the Infinite. 

And if  we think of drops of water hitting the sea it is true enough that this represents death, the loss of that surface tension that holds the drop together, just as the “surface tension” of our small egos, our self-importance temporarily holds our individualistic lives together. In this sense, according to the metaphor, Atman is not Brahman—the drop (self) exists only until it hits the water and then— Splash! But if we think not of the drop of water but as the water of the drop, then water is just water, whether in the form of a drop or the infinite ocean, Atman-Brahman.

If we think we are like a drop of water then we hope, we hope, but we know we are falling and so we can only hope that Brahman (Heaven) is a nice place, and then…Splash. But if we realize the true Self, the water of the drop, which is not different from the water of any other drop or of the Infinite Sea, then our hope is centered on the present, on the inner reality, the only doer, the thinker and knower of all things.

          “This is the Lord of all, this is the all-knowing. This is the inner controller.

                This is the source of all, for this is the origin and the end of being”

June 1, AM. Last night the talk was much less formal, less challenging in a way, and at first I was a little let down. But this morning I see it differently, and I must admit that I feel very good right now. It has been somewhat up and down since I’ve been here. First this great longing and determination to accomplish this thing(?) whatever that is, and next frustration and regret at having more or less missed it, never getting quite there, coming up short, or long… And the “message” last night was just this: Life is not a challenge, life is not a burden or a series of obstacles to be conquered or overcome. Life is given. We cannot “do” anything. Atman, the real Self, simply is, and all we can do is let Atman be. Let life live. Trust life. And that is Self-confidence. 

So here I was again last night, poised for struggle, ready to conquer, with intimations of victory, and once again it will slip from my grasp. Fr. Panikkar told a story two Chinese fellows who were walking along the street towards evening. The one said to the other, “Come on friend, let’s have a drink and enjoy the evening together.” The other was offended and said, “I do not have time for drinking and talking. I must be working for the revolution. Other things are a waste of time.” The first fellow replied, “What good is the revolution? What does it accomplish if two fellows cannot have a drink together and enjoy the evening?”

What is this “revolution” all about? What good are all these plans, strivings and vain hopes for some grand future if in the meantime (which is all there really is) we cannot experience and enjoy life? Again last night it happened that my disappointment,  my let-down, was my lesson. Someone asked Fr. Panikkar how much time should be spent in contemplation, or pure non-utilitarian past-time. How do we balance our lives so that we do not on one hand find ourselves too busy and on the other hand become so other worldly that we do not take care of things?

“Rule of thumb,” he replied, “50-50.”  “But you don’t mean half of every day should be non-goal oriented?” “Yes.”  “But I sleep 8 hours and eat and other things and then work 8 hrs…”  “You can count sleep, if you sleep well. Eating you should enjoy. Half the time should be just letting life live. Then you can also work, plan and all those things because you cannot totally escape the times. But it is important to establish a rhythm in order to not be drawn into a world of total busy-ness, so that the Atman, the third eye, should not become atrophied. Otherwise the cure will become much more painful.”

Wed., PM. Not much to say. There is an inner presence who (which) dwells in Silence and cannot be known by any sense faculty, but (like the water of the drop) is no different from the Infinite. There is no way to “get at” this inner presence, Atman, true Self, only stop creating obstacles. Let it Be. Give up the craving ego. Stop trying to be an “I”. There is only one “I”, and that is God, Atman-Brahman. “I am Brahman,” says the Upanisads. We are the Thou of God, “for in my inmost heart,” Romans 7, v. 22, “I agree with God’s law.”

1:00 PM. Final Gathering.  Whatever we do, all our important tasks and responsibilities, are ultimately futile and even destructive unless we have the sense of the inner presence, the Atman, the Christ. This exists neither outside ourselves (transcendent), nor deep within ourselves (again transcendent, though often a mistaken concept of immanence), but which is truly immanent, the very matrix of reality, about which nothing can be said or done—which simply is.

Unless we can stop making obstacles to Being, all our doing will be frustrated. This will take some faith. How do we know things will “get done” if we our not willing, with our great self-importance, to take the responsibility  and organize the show? What if we say, “All right God, or Atman,  or Spirit, I will trust you, do your thing,” and He or It doesn’t do it or does it not to our own personal liking? What if this Doing even involves personal change on our parts? Maybe even a little discomfort? Well, one cannot approach the Inner Presence just to seek consolation.

I remember that while saying goodbye Fr. Panikkar told us not to try to pack our experiences into memories to be regurgitated when necessary; and for this reason, I think, I have not often looked at these notes or considered sharing them. The value of what we did was measured strictly by the authenticity with which we experienced it, and this is true of any moment. But somehow coming upon them again I experienced an authenticity which I felt was worth trying to communicate.