In an earlier post, I talked about the "three ways" of knowing the Ultimate. In actuality, I was speaking of only ONE aspect of the Ultimate - the transcendent / God / masculine dimension of the divine Source. According to Wilderness Mysticism, just as most species in Nature are the result of a mother and father - or at least of one principle that is weighted more heavily toward the masculine and another weighted mostly in the direction of the feminine - so the Ultimate is composed of TWO major aspects, roughly corresponding to "God" on the one hand and "Goddess" on the other. What I described earlier was more masculine / transcendent / Singular in orientation, what we might call the "vertical" aspect of Divine union.
However, there is also a more feminine / immanent / web-like or "horizontal" dimension, one that has in fact been sorely neglected by many of the world's great religious traditions. In the experience of vertical union, Form and Emptiness (or images and the Imageless) trade back and forth. Or, more accurately, between Absolute Emptiness, and forms as relative expressions of Emptiness. in the experience of horizontal union, different forms trade back and forth. Here, each creature is actually a version of every other creature. As Muskogee poet Joy Harjo says, "the grizzly bear is one version of a human being, and a human being is one version of the grizzly." In Ralph Waldo Emerson's "principle of correspondence" (which, oddly enough, is called "transcendentalist"), Nature mirrors humanity and humanity mirrors Nature.
Here again, the three ways of knowing apply. In the kataphatic way (with verbal image), we might say, for example, that a still lake incarnates human tranquility in lake-form, and the human soul incarnates lake-ness in human form. Here, the conceptual SIMILARITY between the two - which can, to a degree, be expressed verbally - is the key feature. However, the apophatic way (without verbal image) then comes along and reminds us that the essence of each of the two forms is essentially unsayable. Zen Buddhism specializes in this realization. Speaking personally, I experience the essential apophatic mystery of a thing - what might be called a "still point" or a "flash" of "suchness" - when another creature GRASPS my awareness and empties itself into my own sense of being-embraced and held by it. In other words, I experience the creature's essential mystery in the MOVEMENT or self-emptying of the other into my perception. I love this moment, for it is essentially mysterious, or what Meister Eckhart called "the silent desert into which no distinction ever peeped." Then, of course, there is a corresponding self-emptying of my own human self into the other creature in my act of loving it for itself. This again is a part of the apophatic way.
Then the third way - that of supereminence - comes along and says; "I have an idea - let's become poets and use paradoxical images to describe one another!" Zen poets - who, of course, use words as a part of their craft - are especially skilled at this. For example, Dogen Zenji can say: "The green mountains are always walking. You should examine in detail this quality of the mountains' walking. Do not doubt mountains' walking even though it does not look the same as human walking . . . They walk more swiftly than the wind .. . Therefore, investigate mountains thoroughly. When you investigate mountains thoroughly, this is the work of the mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves become wise persons and sages." Here, words are used playfully in bringing together things that seemingly have NO OBVIOUS SIMILARITY, yet which are nevertheless - and playfully - capable of being experienced AS each other!
Photo: Variations on Indian Paintbrush, Grand Teton National Park, WY, July 6, 2015
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