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Zen Pantheism
Zen PantheismWhat the heck do Imean by the term Zen Pantheism?This magazine article, sent to me by my sister and found in theMarch 1998 issue of "Unity", is a good illustration ofwhat I mean. It is authored by James Dillet Freeman and is titled"Life is a Wonder", from his book The HilltopHeart:Reflections of a Practical Mystic.One morning in my garden I asked Godto bless every living thing. And God asked, "But what is nota living thing?"First of all I thought of air-invisible, inert. But the air leaptinto my mouth and became my living breath. The air became the redof my blood and in the secret furnace of my cells the air becamethe fire of life itself.Then I thought of water-colorless, inert. But drinking the water,I thought, "What is this body that drank the water? Is itnot itself mainly water? This water that I drank is now theessence of my blood and tissues. When, then, is water merelywater and when is it water of life?"Then I thought of earth-brown, inert. "Earth, "Ithought, "is not living, "and I kicked at the clodsunder my feet turned green and put forth leaf and stem and flowerand the grain ripened in the ear. I took the ear, ground it, madebread out of it, and ate the bread. And the bread became the verystuff of myself, so that I could not separate that which was meand that which was earth. This which now was me had but a shorttime before been the clods of earth that I had kicked with myfeet."Surely, "I thought,"there is something that is not living. "I thought ofstones. But even with the thought I sensed the stirring in thestone, and I knew that the immovable, changeless stones werechanging and moving, flowing no less than rivers, to become theliving pith and bone of creatures yet unborn.Oh, then I caught a vision of theworld- not as dead and inert, but as living and alive!Suddenly I saw that even theinfinitesimal particles of which all things are formed- too smalleven to imagine, too small almost to conceive- are alive. Iwatched and I saw that they were dancing; I listened and I heardthem singing.I saw all the world of which I ampart, and I saw that it is life, nothing but life. Everything isalive and has the power of life. Things pass from one phase toanother, from one form to another, but they are always alive.There is no line between living and not living. Both are aspectsof life, as breathing in and breathing out are aspects of breath.There is only the breathing in and the breathing out again.We move through a world ofopposites, but the opposites are not the reality, they are onlyaspects of reality. They are only reality as seen from thisviewpoint- or that. The reality is One, and it is Life.I thought of some of the opposites-of night and day, of evil and good, of hate and love. I askedNight, "What is Day?" And the Night answered, "Iam Day,only seen from the other side."I thought of living and not living,and I saw that life is not the opposite of death, as it isgenerally thought to be. Birth is the opposite of death. Is deaththen but the same door as birth, only seen from the other side?Now we can see things only fromwhere we stand. Can it be that we see only one side of all thatis, as we see the moon?Ah, if we could see life not fromthe viewpoint of the moment, but in the radiance of eternity!We would see not night and day, buteternity; not yea and nay, but truth; not birth and death, butlife; not good and evil, but God.We are the namers. We give names toall things and try to describe them.But when is a rose a rose?When is it a seed? when it is a newplant green with spring? when it is a heart-shaped bud? when itis a full-blown bloom? when it stands thorn sharp against thewinter snow?The universe is the rose of God.The universe is not the fixed andfinished work of a Master Maker, who made it and the things in itas a watchmaker makes a watch. The universe is a living organism,unfolding from within, creatively expressing the creative Spiritof God, from the smallest particle to the largest galaxycontinually breathing, growing, expanding through space and timeand mind and spirit, with no end or limit to the possibility ofdevelopment.And I, too, am the rose of God.When was I, am I, shall I be?Of this that is my body now, howmuch was my body a year ago? Of the stuff that was my body twentyyears ago, does a single atom remain the same?As to my mind, nebulous, delicate,subtle, dancing with thoughts, how shall I make my thoughts standstill long enough for me to say, "This is mymind"? This very thought has altered the configuration.Now from the viewpoint of themoment, I see my existence as an isolated fragment, beginning,ending; but, could I but look from the fixed center of being andtake in the whole reach of reality, I would see that what seemsto be a broken arc is really the perfect circle of eternity.Is this what the Lord of living sawwhen He hung upon the mount? From that anguished, ultimate peakof experience, did He see things not one-sidedly but whole? DidHe look past endings and beginnings, past every appearance ofseparateness, clear to the Animating Principle, and did He seethat the Animating Principle was Himself?And we, when we see things whole,shall we, too, not share the wholeness?O living air, earth, water, breath,blood, flesh, O metamorphosing rocks, there is no begining andending, there is no living and not living. There is only theever-renewing, ever-unfolding expression of infinite life.Walking in my garden, I asked Godto bless every living thing.Even as I asked, I knew that in allthe world there was not one atom that did not leap up inacknowledgment. BACKTOPNEXTThis page hosted by Get your own Free Home Pagegeovisit();
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