November 14, 2023

I heard an interview recently with Zen practitioner and teacher Henry Shukman. At one point in the interview he described koans as paradoxical questions that call out to our souls on some fundamental level. Our mind wants to understand them, but can’t; part of the point of a koan is to break through the mind’s desire to understand and get to a more fundamental understanding. Shukman put forth a couple koans for the listener to ponder, and I understood what he meant: on some level I intuitively wanted to chew on the question, to sit with it and try to connect with what it wanted to teach me.

This interview contributed to my hypothesis that I would eventually need to find a buddhist monk to help me hone my spiritual practice. I outlined before that I instead found a minister, a church, and a group that are guiding my practice in a more Christian vain. I left out an interesting detail in that decision: upon returning to church and in the process reading scriptures again, I found the Gospels in general and Jesus’ teaching in particular to be koan-like. Jesus’ teachings tend to be paradoxical. We’ve often tried to make logical sense out of these teachings, but I’m starting to understand that Jesus’ teachings are meant to be experienced, to be felt, and to be known in a way the mind can’t fully comprehend. Just read the Sermon on the Mount and see if you can make it make sense. I still cannot.

More broadly, I’ve been struck by how often I now read scripture and think some version of “I think I know what he’s trying to convey, I’ve experienced a version of that before”. To be very clear, there’s still plenty of scripture that bewilders me, and plenty (particularly in the Old Testament) that I find dated or even misleading. But scripture now calls out to me in a way it didn’t before.

Today I want to dig into a couple passages that I’ve found interesting recently. The first is the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 and 3. Generally the way I learned this story was that the serpent represented the devil, that under the serpent’s influence man chose sin over God, and that man has been irredeemably sinful, but by the grace of God, ever since. Read through this lens, the story of Adam and Eve feels a bit like mythology to me. And perhaps it is. But I actually think the story gets at a deeper truth. To me, Adam and Eve choosing to eat from the tree of knowledge represents the elevation of the human mind and ego to be on equal footing with God and nature. On some level we recognize that humans are unique among species in that whereas other species tend to live more in harmony with nature and the world around them, humans appear to be unique in our desire to modify, manipulate, and control our environment. Somewhere along our evolutionary path, we developed the capacity for rational thought; then we convinced ourselves that our capacity for rational thought put us in control of ourselves and our destinies (or to use religious lingo, we convinced ourselves that our capacity for rational thought put us on equal footing with God). We made gods out of our egos. Whereas less intelligent creatures are more often bound by their instincts or emotions, humans layer in a capacity for rational thought which we increasingly use to override our intuition and emotion. Indeed, at this point we humans appear to have a deeply held belief that our rational minds are superior to our emotional, intuitive, and spiritual selves. To me, the story of Adam and Eve is the story of humanity elevating our rational minds and egos and suppressing our emotional and spiritual selves, putting ourselves out of balance (and in spiritual/biblical terms, putting unnecessary separation between us and God); effectively, humanity has been striving and struggling to get back to wholeness ever since.

The second interesting story is that of Cain and Abel. Of particular interest is the section of Genesis 4:3-8. Cain and Abel both bring offerings to God, but God only looks upon Abel’s offering with favor. Cain becomes angry and God effectively points out to Cain that his own shortcomings (in this case, his own stinginess toward God) serve as the true source of his anger. Unwilling to face the truth, Cain kills his brother instead.

This story blows me away. Each of us harbor our shortcomings. As far as I can tell, we loath being confronted with our shortcomings. We will do practically anything to avoid admitting and addressing our shortcomings. I’ve long thought that we dislike most in others those characteristics we dislike most in ourselves. I’m now coming to appreciate that we dislike seeing our shortcomings in others precisely because we want to avoid noticing these shortcomings in ourselves. And so we criticize, we belittle, we shun. If those attempts don’t work, we escalate to punishment and eventually potentially even violence. It’s breathtaking to ponder how much of the world’s violence is caused or at least abetted by someone’s attempt to avoid confronting their own shortcomings. Which brings us back to Cain; Cain so didn’t want to confront his own stinginess with God that he killed his own brother in an attempt to avoid admitting the truth to himself. The point of the story is not to warn us not to be like Cain; the point of the story is to warn us that we are all like Cain. And of course the solution is simple: with God’s help, we acknowledge, accept, and love our shortcomings as part of who we are, and then live as an expression of that love. But the solution requires our ego to surrender its illusion of control, which brings us back to Adam and Eve.

Let’s move to the New Testament, where Matthew 14 tells the story of Jesus walking on water. Jesus had sent the disciples ahead of him in a boat that was getting getting rocked by a storm. Jesus appeared to them walking on water. Peter, with Jesus’ invitation, gets out of the boat to walk toward Jesus, until he gets distracted by the wind and begins to sink.

One of the tools Christian spiritualists use is to put oneself in the passage, typically as one of the participants. Personally, I found the idea of getting out of a boat during a storm too hard to comprehend. What occurred to me is that 1) we all have storms in our lives, as represented by those areas of frustration or emotional turmoil; 2) we also all have boats, meaning those things to which we cling in the mistaken belief that they keep us safe; and 3) we all have those miracles, like walking on water, that seem impossible but are in fact very much available to us if we pursue them in harmony with God.

I’ll be the first to admit that until very recently I assumed the Bible had little to teach me. I’m now somewhat overwhelmed at the wisdom contained within. Not all passages are interesting. In particular, I don’t find resonance in God’s punishments in the Old Testament, these again read like mythology to me, and don’t resonate with God as I experience God. From what I can tell, God’s paradox is that God wants to enter our lives and flow through us, but that God only enters where God is invited. Thus, our punishments are not meted out by God, but rather as the natural consequences of our own (or others) actions, or admittedly sometimes occur by random chance. But God is there to soothe and heal us, even in the face of unfair or unjust punishment, if only we allow for God’s presence.

I love you both,

Dad