Meeting the Messiah: 4 – Where am I now?

 The foundational story of Christianity – the story of Jesus, his ministry and death, and of how he inspired his followers to take the Gospel (the 'good news') out into an ever widening world – is the central pivot on which the faith hangs. It is what differentiates it from the other Abrahamic faiths. 'God', known by one name or another – or even as the unnamable – exists in them all. Jesus exists in two of them – Christianity and Islam – but Jesus Christ, the man-god, exemplar and teacher of the 'second commandment – "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Mark 12.31) – only exists in Christianity. The authenticity of his story and teachings are crucial to Christianity's supposed authority and allure; but therein hangs a thousand and one questions.

Through my school years I was exposed to the Jesus story both at the daily school assembly – the required "daily act of collective worship"  – and the required lessons of 'Religious Education'; and, for those unlucky enough to be sent to a boarding school, compulsory Church attendance on Sundays plus an act of "collective worship" every evening. Enough exposure to have some familiarity with at least the outlines of the Jesus story. Exposure, which if anything acted as aversion therapy: by fourteen I was a sceptic, by sixteen an iconoclast, and by eighteen a cast iron atheist.

What I had received was, we might say, was the standard version of the Jesus story – if fact, given the established status of the Church of England, the authorised version – framed within a lapsarian theology, which I had reacted to with vehement distaste. I found so much of it repugnant: it was antithetical to life, to joy, to drinking the substance of being, to celebrating each breath. I had to agree with Nietzsche, that the paviours of Christianity were life denying "afterworldsmen". Christianity fed on guilt: it induced it, and then it fed on it. Repentance and penance and falling on the mercy of an unseen and unseeable being who judges and weighs every second of your life, who might just admit you to the golden afterworld, or condemn you to eternal, unimaginable and unspeakable suffering, and who was so insecure as to require regular and repeated doses of praise and worship (I am a jealous God Exodus 20: 2-6) were the substance of the religion – and I was having non of it. You could not have put more distance between me and Christianity if you tried. 

The numinosity of life led me via the East – Buddhism, Daoism, Zen, Dzogchen – and back again to the West, where I found myself sitting in Quaker meetings and once again encountering versions of Christianity, but transformed by the journey I had been on. My eyes did not fall on it in the same way as the young man's eyes. I felt sorry for what it has so often become, but heard once again echoes of the far off teachings of that wandering Galilean rabbi. 

Researching Irene Pickard's archive forced me to reacquaint myself with the Jesus story – to meet the messiah – to update both my understanding of the story and my relationship with it. Her archive was full of reference to modern theological thinkers, ranging from her mentor, Rendel Harris, through Carl Barth, Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Thomas Merton and Don Cuppit, with whom she corresponded about his television programme Who is Jesus? (1977). One thing they all had in common: their Jesus was not the one I had been introduced to and rejected. 

Carl Gustav Jung, whose works provided the lenses for Irene to see her spiritual questing through, detected in the human psyche a nodal point – an archetype – around which all our spiritual feelings, images, and ideas clustered, which he called 'the god archetype'. He suspected that it was universal, but the form it would appear in would vary depending on the cultural material available. He also thought that it was itself evolving, finding better fits for its expression, which is why religions came and went. The evolution of Christianity out of Judaism and its supplanting Paganism throughout the Roman Empire, being an example. Its emerging form being made by the transfer of pre-existing symbols from earlier religions, such as that of the god-man who undergoes a cycle of death and rebirth. He suggested that if a better fit for the archetype came along, then Christianity itself would be replaced.

So what versions of 'Jesus'  – according to Jung, the Christian manifestation of the archetype – are on offer? They seem to range from the Jesus of the evangelicals, based on assumptions of Biblical inerrancy, and the certainty of the coming judgement, and even something strange and apparently not in the Bible called the 'rapture'; through the long established Jesus of Catholic dogma, with the elevated role of his mother to that of divine interceder; on via various demystifying versions, such as those emphasising Jesus as a Jew teaching Judaism to Jews, to the entire thing being a fabrication, a fiction, a didactic vehicle, a myth. Take your pick. 

One thing I think can be observed. At the budding point at which new religions are born, almost invariably there is a charismatic teacher who is focussed on reforming the pre-existing religion. The reforms may be accommodated by the faith absorbing the reforms, or by the formation of a new sect within the tradition – think here of the birth of the Franciscans, or the Jesuits – or by a schism developing, and a new branch of the religion being formed – think here of Martin Luther and the Reformation resulting in the formation of the Protestant Churches, or later of the splitting off of the non-conformist churches and sects – or by the formation of entirely new religions. The rejection of the reforms, and often the death of the charismatic teacher – sometimes at the hands of defenders of the original faith – leads to their followers either having to abandon the reforms, or set off on their own, as is seen with the birth of Sikhism, the Bahá'í or the Mormons. In each case at the budding point there is an inspired teacher. It is their followers who create the new faith: it was probably thus with Christianity.

What do I think? I know we have the texts containing the Jesus story – a legend if you will. I suspect that the Gospels are woven out of oral traditions about the sayings and doings of principally one, but may be more, charismatic itinerant Jewish teachers. The Gospels, thus created, seem to chart a progress of increasing deification, starting with Mark, where Jesus is infused with the wisdom of God manifest as love at the moment of his baptism, who then tried to live that out; through Matthew and Luke where, as well as his resurrection and ascension, the divine and miraculous origins of his birth are added; to John where, in highly literate and educated Greek, the story is reworked to emphasise the Passion – the god come to earth to suffer and redeem.

In Christianity I feel there are two distinct voices: that of Jesus the teacher, and that of Paul the evangelist. The one teaching a here and now immanence of the Kingdom that is open to all seekers (Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: Matthew 7:7); of inner revelation that will transform life; of a Jew teaching Jews to stand and live in the immanent presence of their Lord in the hope of the imminent coming of his kingdom as a result (right living leading to right ordering of the world through mass alignment with the right living); and the Greek speaking Paul, racked with guilt because of his persecution of followers of Jesus, who postpones the kingdom to an afterlife, as he is unfit to live in the immanence. His Greek speaking heritage making tenable the notion of Jesus as a god-man and the existence of an afterworld: both grafts onto the original Jewish stock.

The evangelist Paul was mission driven. First to defend Judaism against the Jesus sect, then to spread the teachings of that sect as far and wide as he could, regardless of the distinction between Jew and Gentile. It is interesting that he received his transmission of the teaching in Damascus from a community with at least three degrees of separation from Jesus, who were transmitting via an oral tradition, the intent of which was to proselytize not to preserve historical accuracy. It contained what inspired them, not what was testable as historic fact. They were fired up by the revelation of spiritual truth. Paul did travel back to Jerusalem but fell out big time with Jesus community there, and took his version of the teaching to the Romano-Greek world as a result. The Aramaic speaking Jesus community in Jerusalem's influence was largely destroyed along with the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, hence Paul's version came to dominate. 

For me some of the words of the legendary Jesus of the Gospels resonate deeply. Fewer of Paul's. I cannot say I ascribe to the cosmology or eschatology that, following Paul, is inbuilt into so much of Christianity. For me Jesus is one of the great wisdom teachers, one not to be ignored, but just one. His teaching of immanence corresponds well with what I have from my wanderings in the Buddhist world. His ethic of love the real heart of the diamond: om mani padme hum! (The jewel at the heart of the lotus). 

But I dare say my views are heretical and an anathema to many.  

Meeting the Messiah: 1

In researching Irene Pickard's archive it is inevitable that confronting the fundamental issue of the authenticity of Christianity was unavoidable. Hide as I might, investigating and challenging my own relationship to that vast two thousand year old tradition was not something I could duck out of. Inevitably, the very nature of the contents of the archive meant confronting my own understanding of what spirituality might be, what religions are, what role they have, and perhaps must have, in our lives, at a psychological level, if not also at a cultural and social level. 

I have for much of my life been a secular atheist, detached from involvement in any religious practice, believing myself immune to whatever appeal religions might have, protected by my intellectual training in the cannon of analytic philosophy. Religions were, ultimately, absurd, and their claims easily dismantled by the progressive application of ruthless logic. They had no useful part to play in life. They were at best delusions, at worst positively harmful. They were full of pre-scientific understandings of life, that necessarily melted away as the range and depth of our collective scientific understanding expanded. It was inevitable that they would be discarded into the dustbin of history, to borrow phrase much loved by Marxists. A lovely, clinically clean, brave new world was emerging due to intellectual advances, in which, no doubt, everything would be reducible in the end to a series of elegant mathematical formula or algorithms: intellectually satisfying in a mechanical sense, and sterile.

Only, that's not quite the truth about what happened to me. At about the age of thirty I collided with Zen Buddhism in the form of koans – intricate, logic destroying verbal Rubic cubes. Turn and turn them as you might, logical solutions are simply not possible. They twist the mind until eventually you are forced out of the comfort zone of your everyday frames of reference. Whoops! Bang! There goes the security of logical reduction used in defence of the frames of reference that you did not even know you had, but which had held your life in place until then. 

It was a bit like being plugged into Douglas Adam's Ultimate Perspective Vortex. You, naked and raw, are plugged in at one end and the vast complexity of the universe at the other. It is pretty clear which is going to win. Exposure to Zen induces a certain intellectual humility thereafter, and an openness to exploring what seemed intellectually off limits before. 

Having passed through the bowels of Zen, and on via Tai Chi and Qigong, where I encountered other meditative traditions, I have for the last decade been under the guidance of a Dzogchen practitioner from the Tibetan tradition: but I have also become a Quaker. I learned a little about them from my time teaching History, and I wanted to take a risk and try out going to a Meeting. What I did not expect was to fall through the silence into a place of honesty and welcome where I felt at home. It was whilst dipping my toes into the Quaker pond that I encountered Irene's archive.

As a researcher you are supposed to try to maintain some sort of objectivity in order to report on what you have found, however you are inevitably affected by exposure to your subjects' milieu of spiritual influence – you have to walk the same paths as the people you are studying – if in no more than you have to read what they read, read their comments as they digested what they were exposed to, read what they themselves wrote, and try to understand their understanding: you have to get inside their heads. It is a bit like wearing somebody-else's clothes and vicariously living aspects of their life whilst vainly trying not to be affected. You are inevitably changed by the experience.  

Historically, whether we like the fact or not, Christianity has done more to shape European culture than any other tradition, and via Europe, due to the technological and imperial explosion of the last three hundred years, the world. As a result an otherwise obscure Palestinian Jew of the first century CE has become the most influential spiritual teacher in history. Some influencer! Some obscurity! 2.382 billion followers (according to Wikipedia) beats anything on social media. It was clearly time to come to terms with the leviathan.

In the ten years since encountering Irene's archive, I have absorbed a very great deal that has deepened and widened my understanding. It has taken me places I would not have otherwise chosen to go, including having to come to some sort of terms with Christianity. Not my natural inclination. My early exposure to Christian piety had, I thought, inoculated me against having anything to do with 'faiths' – I do include them all – and led me to what I thought was a non-faith way: Buddhism. At least, that how Buddhism is often presented to the West, as being principally composed of meditative practices focussed on liberating the mind from the shackles of attachment. I now know that it is much more than that, and at bottom is just as much a faith-way.

Whatever my own views of Christianity, as a researcher I had to try to understand the Christianity of my subjects. Firstly there was Quakerism, at least that of the time of my subjects, which in itself meant delving into Quaker history. Then I had to try to understand Rendel Harris's Christianity – Irene's one time employer and mentor – and, the biggest ask of all, that of Carl Gustav Jung – the greatest intellectual influence on four of my subjects – Irene Pickard, Elined Kotschnig, P.W. and Marjory Martin – and significant in the life of the fifth, Bertram Pickard.

My subjects also met and were influenced by a number of the more prominent theologians of their time: Carl Barth, Adolf Keller, Visser 't Hooft, Paul Tillich and Martin Buber, among others. I had to develop at least a nodding acquaintance with their thoughts and even those of theological thinkers such as Kierkegaard.

It has been an interesting journey. It has made me realise that my early rejection of Christianity was based on a very simplistic understanding – but that vision is, after all, what I had been fed by the compulsory religious education and attendance as required in UK schools when I was young. I now know it to be a vastly more complex spiritual path. One that has left its footprint all over European thought, even those supposedly post-Christian traditions such as Humanism or Marxism, both hugely influenced by the Christian ethic, and in some ways being simply Christianity with God sucked out.

Ah, God – that's another problem, and one I still haven't come to terms with yet: the universe seems to get along perfectly well without. According to Jung I may be stuck at the 'death of God' stage. He may be right.

Peace: A Three Piece Suite

Peace: A Three Piece Suite

The first peace, the deepest, the root from which it grows; the silence that calms and heals; the point of is-ness when there is no I, no me, no not me, no knowing, no not-knowing, no you, no not-you, no us, no not us – just pure being and the ground-of-being – the rest point of being in the moment – at one with the in-breath, the drawing-in of all that there is and all we are part of – open and accepting to whatever comes. At one with the out-breath, circulating fully and giving out all that we are. Being without attachment or aversion as the Buddhists say. Knowing that the attachments and aversions are what distorts and blinds.


The second being at peace with those around you. Being at peace with the small things of life; a peace that begets patience and concern; a ministry of presence for others, wholeheartedly witnessing their being, no matter how small the transaction, no matter how small the moment. Others are not simply instruments to our well-being - they are not background music to our songs - it is together that we are the choir of life. We are each and all witness to each other; we are each and all ministers one to another. It is of the small things of life that the world is woven.


The third piece is that world peace; that of governments and societies; that of renouncing violence as a means, as a political weapon, of not letting war be, as Clausewitz remarked, “… a continuation of politics by other means”. It is not the continuation of politics - it is the failure of politics, in fact, the greatest of all its failures.

Having recently visited a country that has been at peace for two-hundred years, that has not killed or harmed even so much as one person in its name, I cannot but feel shame to come from a country that has not even managed a decade in those two hundred years when it has not killed and maimed, has not wrought violence and havoc, has not devastated lives in its name.




This is the three piece suite of peace - and one on which we could all sit comfortably if we choose.

[Published in the Friend of 24 February 2017]

Escatalogical faiths versus karmic faiths

The monotheistic faiths offer a static view of the human's position in life. The task is to avoid becoming tarnished with sin. We starts pure[ish] - original sin aside - and, only if we proceeds blamelessly throughout life will we have succeeded. We must preserve the innocence of childhood in our minds and lives. The development of all adult characteristics is a deterioration from this paradigm state. As of necessity we will become defiled by developing into adulthood we must throw ourselves upon the mercy or grace of the deity as our only hope of not suffering eternal punishment.

Buddhism and Taoism by contrast are developmental. One grows with experience. One learns the path and trains the inner and outer being, honing them to greater degrees of perfection. We are all Buddhas becoming, if not in this life, then in the next. We are seekers after enlightenment, both separately and collectively. For the Taoist it is the white haired sage who is the epitome of attainment. He has shaped and honed his being until, being totally at one with the Tao, he becomes an immortal.

The life that is living you

The life that is living you is older than you, it has lived many lives before, passed on through generation to generation. Consider well its past and all the lives it has lived before it came to live you.

Ask what of it will pass on beyond you? Ask what of it radiates out from you?

Knowing this is to know that you are merely its guardian, its custodian, its keeper; it is on loan to you just for now from this planet that has let you be born and has sustained you through every breath you take.  

Just maybe you might feel the same too?

Why I am a unitarian*:

Because of the connectedness that underlies all things.

Because of the inseparability of the material and the divine.

Because seeking and not knowing is the path.

Because all paths are as one path.

Because of the partiality of any understanding.

Because of the inexpressibility of the truth.

Because of the life-light that burns through all people.

Because of the understanding that goes beyond words.

Because of the peace that passes all understanding.

Because of the temporarily of the self.

Because of the temporarily of humanity.

"We are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically" Carl Sagan

http://bit.ly/cDZhrY

 * unitarian with a small capital, not Unitarian with large one, because the word denotes a way of seeing our place in the universe and not the membership of a particular faith group - as admirable, or otherwise, as their beliefs may be.

From your first breath to your last

From your first breath to your last you will vie with the complexities of living; the multi-role-playing, many faceted torrent of each day pouring through you, like it or not. Staring blankly at a wall will not free you from this, nor from the obligations that it will trust upon you. But it was this torrent of meaning suffused life that brought you to the threshold of Zen, even for those born into traditional Buddhist societies.

It is in the dynamic tension between intelligent engagement with the everyday and meditative detachment that the path of growth lies. Each should inform the other; a dialogue between meaning and silence in which neither has the last word. Empty headed wall-staring is, ultimately, nothing more than self-indulgence - I would take a stick to anybody so obsessed.

Now get dressed again!

Although, in Western terms, ultimately Heraclitan, the no-self of Buddhism points to the impermanence and transience of all that may be experienced - even the qualia of your sense experience can vary depending on your state of health, or as an effect of taking psycho-active substances; or, for that matter, the impermanence of conciousness it self, which can be turned on or off by accident, as in coma, or by the use of anaesthesia; or can be fractured into the unintelligible kaleidoscope and meaninglessness of dementia.

But it may also get you to dig deeper, to see the whole “you” package as no more than a temporary phase that is to be passed through, perhaps to be replaced by another “you” at some other time or place. This is in part a mind-trick that in Buddhism lends plausibility to the doctrine of re-incarnation - but beware, it is a mind trick. 

So, strip away everything until your Buddha-nature stands naked – but then know that Buddha-nature is also an illusion.

No-mind is in itself just as phantasmal as mind.

Now, having totally undressed yourself and discovered that you are not your cloths, get dressed again.

Some Buddhist Scatterings

How can we be compassionate if we have never known suffering?
How can we help others if we have not known joy?

If we do not radiate joy others do not take light. We are the light in their darkness as they are the light in ours.

Your time is meditation is not an end in itself. Nor is it there just to enrich you.

The tranquillity of detachment is only meaningful in the context of passionate engagement. Passionate engagement is only meaningful against the background of the tranquillity of detachment. Each feeds the other in a virtuous spiral.

Realms of rebirth? Reincarnations? Who's fantasies are these?

Zen in the art of feeling

Emotions are strong, powerful beings; they are bigger than us; they extend out beyond us and fold us into the world; they are the ropes that hold us in place, the glues that bond us together, the thermostats and gauges by which we experience our well-being, or lack of it. Without them we would only be half alive soliptical zombies, or even automatons. What point would there be in life if you never wished to dance with joy? Never knew excitement, anticipation, longing, love, grief, loss or any and all of the other pantheon of emotions? They very much are just such a stuff as life is made out of.

The point is to know them for what they are. To let them be an honest part of your life. To let them flow through you like the natural streams that they are, not to dam them up, divert them, trap them or let them become foetid and stagnant. It is the psycho-dramas that we play that diverts them and which can make them so destructive. (At this point think of R D Lang or of CBT, and such like.)

Imagine your emotions as a wild horse upon which you must ride. You can just cling on, suffer and be carried where they will take you, or master the horse, tame it, make a friend of it, harness its energies and develop a harmonious relationship with it. You care for and nurture your emotions much as you would any other animal which you have. It is a life long companion that will carry you well, even through the heat of battle or on long and perilous journeys. Your emotions are your allies - let them not be your masters.

The point of much meditation is to observe yourself as a rider. This you can only do when you learn to quieten the incessant head chatter, the fleeting psychodramas, the pseudo images of self. Then you can let go of all of that and simply be. Only when you can sit, purposeless and quiet, that can you begin to learn. It is like developing a good seat in ridding so that you sit naturally and balanced and in a harmonious way with your horse. In this case the horse happens to be yourself.

A good rider is a good companion to ride with. A poor rider is a liability, or even a danger, to themselves and to others. They are not fun to ride with. They would be disastrous to undertake a journey with.

Zazen, or Zen style meditation, sometime call whole-hearted sitting, is a counterbalance to action. It is where one learns to sit well on one's own being, so that when faced with action you do not become unseated. It is the schooling ring where you master the seat that will enable you to ride through anything.

Traditionally many Samurai warriors would practice Zen because it gave them the supper clear mind with which they could face whatever their bonds of duty demanded of them. Likewise the taiko drummers practice zazen to give them the clarity of mind needed to perform. Good zazen lead to clear minded, and therefore more effective, living. It is no accident that great art, music, drama, sporting achievement or intellectual attainment all require a clear mind.

If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.

So you have dealt with the illusion of the everyday self and have created the "ghost in the machine", your escape pod, discovered the Buddha within, found your real nature. Now you need to destroy that illusion, that Buddha Nature, and wake up.

The Twin Illusions

Some speak of “absolute or divine consciousness” as opposed to “everyday consciousness”, or some such terms, suggesting that our routine states of mind are not fully real, that the state of consciousness we experience in meditation is somehow more so, that our everyday is no more than an illusion. This thinking is so much a part of the ways of seeing our human predicament intrinsic of in the traditions of Buddhism and Hinduism, amongst others faiths, and now absorbed into the New Age and other “think” of our Western mind.

However, I wonder, in the light of our modern scientific insights into the brain, whether it is these traditionally described states of mind that are not the real illusion, the real misconception, the real misunderstanding. The distinction between the “illusionary” nature of everyday life and the deeper “reality” of the meditative mind being no more than that between “background consciousness” and “foreground consciousness”; the trick of meditation being no more than learning to avoid higher level excitation of the brain whilst allowing, or even boosting, lower level excitation, thus experiencing the “background” state without its being masked by the foreground “noise” of higher level activity. A state that may we be very pleasurable and may lead to increased levels in the brain of those chemicals that lead to feeling of well-being, happiness, confidence, euphoria or even ecstasy, and which may therefore be taken as being more “real” in some sense.

In such brain states one may well believe that one is experiencing “oneness with everything”, or “unity with the divine”, or “being in the presence of God” or … ; well, that will depend on which discourse tradition you subscribe to as to how you will describe it. But, I am sorry to report, the meditative state may be no more “real” than the everyday state, just as much an “illusion”, but a grand illusion as opposed to a collection of petty illusions of the everyday.

Being carried away by the power of the experience of the meditative state can lead being deceived into believing in that grand-illusion every bit as much as you were originally deceived into believing in the petty-illusions. I suspect that part of understanding the “middle-way” is to learn that both polls, clinging to the petty-illusions of the the everyday state or clinging to the grand-illusion of the the meditative state are mistaken. In the end you are reduced to the ground of just being, no more, no less

Perhaps that is why so many Zen masters have resorted to hitting their pupils in order to force them to recognise their ground-state, to liberate them from the twin illusions.

An Ultimately Heraclitan Buddha

Although ultimately a Heraclitan answer, no-self points to the impermanence and transience of all that may be experienced; even the qualia of your sense experience can vary depending on your state of health, or as an effect of taking psycho-active substances; or, for that matter, the impermanence of conciousness itself, which can be turned on or off by accident, as in coma, or by the use of anaesthesia; or can be fractured into the unintelligible kaleidoscope and meaninglessness of dementia.

But it may also get you to dig deeper, to see the whole “you” package as no more than a temporary phase that is to be passed through, perhaps to be replaced by another “you” at some other time or place. It is in part a mind-trick to lend plausibility to the doctrine of re-incarnation; but then, re-incarnation is a doctrine that lends plausibility to the belief in a "self".

Strip away everything until your "Buddha-nature" stands naked – but then know that Buddha-nature is also an illusion and strip that way too. 

No-mind is in itself just as phantasmal as mind: the ultimate deconstruction. 

Self, no-self, no no-self, no "self" at all, no "no-self" at all, just words being stretched over the moment like a very inadequate pair of underpants. Do us all a favour and take them off, or, on second thoughts, keep them on. 

Now, having totally undressed yourself and discovered that you are not your cloths, get dressed again in your being, in your meanings, in your culture.

Random notes on sitting practice

How can we be compassionate if we have never known suffering?
How can we help others if we have not known joy?

If we do not radiate joy others are not warmed by us: we are the light in their darkness as they are the light in ours.

Your time sitting is not an end in itself, nor is it there just to enrich you.

The tranquillity of detachment is only meaningful in the context of passionate engagement. Passionate engagement is only meaningful against the background of the tranquillity of detachment. Each feeds the other in a virtuous spiral.

Realms of rebirth? Reincarnations? Who's fantasies are these?

Falling through time

I am no more than a bundle of absurdities falling though time and laughing.

Each breath

Drink each breath for they are all that we have.

The Foo Dogs Know

The first breath, the birth breath, that in-breath with which we join the world, us hung between that and the last breath, the out-breath, the death-breath with which we leave the world, and between, the mad dance.

The Foo-dogs know. She, mouth closed, is the in-breath, made through the nose in Buddhist practice. He, mouth open, is the out-breath, made through the mouth in Buddhist practice. They, the first and last, the alpha and omega, the guardians standing at our entrance and our exit and all life and fortune lying between.
She protecting those who enter in past her. He protecting those who exit out past him. Either side they stand of many doors. She, foot on their child, mindful of family and home - those things for which we enter in. He, foot on the world, mindful of work and voyaging - those things for which we exit out.

She, mindful and accepting all that enters in, is the inward practice of meditation, of finding the peace, the love and the divine laughter within.

He, mindful and accepting of all that exits out, is the outward practice of embracing each moment of life and what falls in our path, and of giving out love and care for the world.

Words fall like raindrops

Words fall like raindrops on the surface of a pool, each making their disturbance for a while, making patterns of ripples that soon die away; patterns that are soon replaced by other patterns and overlaid by yet more, each supper-imposing, each cancelling out what was there before, each building in apparent complexity - but none of them , not one, is the pool.

Stop the words falling and, as it calms, the depths of the pool begin to be seen.

Sort of tantric

Thubten Yeshe:

..each one of us is a union of all universal energy. Everything that we need in order to be complete is within us right at this very moment. It is simply a matter of being able to recognize it. This is the tantric approach

David Gordon White:

... the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the Godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways.

Only take away the intentionality of "the Godhead", or its existence as something other than the energy that flows through time, that was and is everything. Our wonder to be open to it, to be the witnesses of this dance of the divine, to feel its spark, its heat flowing through us. To know that we are no more than the dust given shape and form by it. For a while to be its eyes and ears, to be its body and senses, to dance its joys and to shed its tears.