A Movement Toward Liberation
“Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use all those hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It’s like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.’”
Blue Cliff Record, Case 89 (first point)
This past Tuesday, on October 22nd the Dominican friar and Catholic theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez died. The friar was 96. Most articles about him mention he was, I guess the preferred term seems to be “diminutive” by at least the third sentence. I couldn’t find anything official about his actual height. But according to a colleague, the Reverend Peggy Clarke, minister at the Community Church in Manhattan, who is 4’ 10,” said in response to my query that when she met him, she calculated he was about 5’2. Making him a full two inches taller than the great Thomas Starr King, Universalist theologian, abolitionist, and Californian hero in the run up to the Civil War. In case you needed to know.
Perhaps more important, with the 1971 publication of his book, Toward a Theology of Liberation, Father Guitérrez, a theologian based in Peru, found himself at the center of a theological revolution. In 1983 then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of what was once called the Inquisition, directed the Peruvian bishops to investigate the professor. As the Catholic writer John Allen writes, the cardinal was concerned with a number of issues regarding Gutiérrez’s teachings, “including an allegedly Marxist view of history, a selective reading of the Bible to focus on material redemption, and a class-driven concept of theology.”
When we think about those questions encompassed with words like “social justice,” perhaps especially as they touch on the issues of poverty and the poor, well, religions are all over the map.
An honest look at religion through history suggests their biggest job is social cohesion. And with that religions tend to support the status quo, whatever that status quo might be. But, as the good father shows, there are those, always, pushing back on the many justifications for what are often terrible things. The persistence of poverty is a glaring challenge to our human societies. For all sorts of reasons.
It seems the good father raised some important spiritual questions. Questions it feels to me, especially at this moment, worth looking at. How do we actually meet this world of hurt? Do we act passively, or even retreat from what often feels inevitable? Or is there something else calling us?
The world and our inner paths are complicated things. Actually “complicated” is very much a part of this mess that is our lives. Kind of its hallmark, don’t you think? We here are about the deep matters of the heart, the contours of our minds, and the ancient quest for healing. A lot of what we do is about the inner life. And, as I’ve long noticed, sometimes to my grief, to ignore the rubber meeting the road is its own mistake.
So, yes, complicated. For those of us committed to the interior path, to the quest for awakening, and manifestation: how do we meet this complexity that manifests in so many ways? Like, for instance, this in this political season?
Perhaps you’re familiar with that story from the Pali canon. It comes from the Kucchivikara-vatthu, in this version I’m sharing, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.
Now at that time a certain monk was sick with dysentery. He lay fouled in his own urine & excrement. Then the Blessed One, on an inspection tour of the lodgings with Ven. Ananda as his attendant, went to that monk's dwelling and, on arrival, saw the monk lying fouled in his own urine & excrement. On seeing him, he went to the monk and said, "What is your sickness, monk?"
"I have dysentery, O Blessed One."
"But do you have an attendant?"
"No, O Blessed One."
"Then why don't the monks attend to you?"
"I don't do anything for the monks, lord, which is why they don't attend to me."
Then the Blessed One addressed Ven. Ananda: "Go fetch some water, Ananda. We will wash this monk."
"As you say, lord," Ven. Ananda replied, and he fetched some water. The Blessed One sprinkled water on the monk, and Ven. Ananda washed him off. Then — with the Blessed One taking the monk by the head, and Ven. Ananda taking him by the feet — they lifted him up and placed him on a bed.
Then the Blessed One, from this cause, because of this event, had the monks assembled and asked them: "Is there a sick monk in that dwelling over there?"
"Yes, O Blessed One, there is."
"And what is his sickness?"
"He has dysentery, O Blessed One."
"But does he have an attendant?"
"No, O Blessed One."
"Then why don't the monks attend to him?"
"He doesn't do anything for the monks, lord, which is why they don't attend to him."
"Monks, you have no mother, you have no father, who might tend to you. If you don't tend to one another, who then will tend to you? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.
Rummaging around I found Jayarava Attwood’s translation of the heart of that story as “If you would care for me, then tend to the sick."
When I first heard that line “whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick,” Well, I immediately thought of that saying attributed to Jesus which is collected in the gospel according to Matthew, (25:40 if you’re interested), “Truly, I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.”
The Sutta goes on to describe characteristics of good and bad care. Although I find the most important point that no one is exempt from caring for others. And more, what you do for the sick you do for the Buddha.
This connection between the holy one, both in Christianity and Buddhism, and care for others, especially those in need hints at deep currents of our existence. It hints at who we are, and what we do, and how it matters. How can anything be more spiritual than that?
In that strangest of the Christian gospels, the worst in some ways and the most mysterious and inviting in others, the gospel according to John, Jesus is said to say, “I am the vine, and you are the branches…” It goes on. But for here, for this moment, let’s stay with that strange assertion of radical interdependence.
It certainly takes me to the line from the Blue Cliff that I began this reflection with. The first part of a compelling conversation between two wise practitioners of the intimate way.
“Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use all those hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It’s like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.’”
I think there’s something deep in this call, in the double call, from Jesus as well as from the Buddha. More than a double call. It is the universal seeking particularity. It is the true resonance of our living hearts, where wisdom and compassion are themselves not two.
For me, like with the deeper teachings of the Mahayana, not all of which are obvious in the Pali narratives, the heart of it speaks to how we are all of us bound up together. Intimately. So intimately. So much so one could say we’re in fact involved in a project of mutual creation. We birth out of each other. We are sustained by each other. And, in time, we shall simply fold back into each other.
This radical mutuality, this profound interrelatedness has many facets. The most important is an invitation into our own saving insight. The Buddha also has those multiple bodies. The Buddha is the vast open, the Boundless, the empty of all categories. And. The Buddha is historic, is cause and effect. This and the other, not two. And the Buddha is all our dreaming, the magical rise and fall of worlds. Perhaps we can even say not three. I hope we notice within this complicated the deep invitation into our own encounter with the heart of the great healing.
We’re offered several gifts here. One is a direct pointing to how the universe presents, how the unfolding universe at least so far as we humans are going to encounter it. This world, of flowers and rats, of peace of many kinds and of terrible. This world with the rich and the poor, and the struggles of life. And. We’re presented with the wild openness of all these things and at the same time shown the intimate causal relationships of everything rising and falling together. A teaching. A pointing. An invitation.
To our open hearts. And to see our relationships mutually rising and falling.
Now, in that sense of invitation there are two other things here. One is a simple description of what the awakened life looks like. And the other is a practice, an invitation into knowing the mystery itself.
As to that first thing. The Buddha lifting that sick monk up to a bed, the Buddha washing him, the Buddha giving him something to drink. Jesus feeding the hungry, healing the sick. The enlightened life as demonstrated by the sages is one of service. Of care. And it is focused on those most in need. The sick. The prisoner. The immigrant. The poor.
And there’s a practice here. As we care for each other, as we attend to what Jesus called the least of us, the least in common regard for sure, we are manifesting the great way. Even if we don’t yet see into the true matter of our mutual interpenetration in this strange world, we are in our actions participating in it.
And.
Maybe it is found in the moment advocating for the poor in the best way our understanding takes us. Like the diminutive friar’s dream. And, like that friar, and his call, focusing on material salvation. Focusing on a meal. And like another wise teacher Dom Hélder Câmera, asking why are there poor people in ways that don’t just assume they’re responsible for their condition. Looking at the web, which is not always just or fair. As we do this, we might find we are participating in the ancient rhythms of a holy and wise life.
When we care for another. When we act for one another.
We are like our mother Guanyin, even asleep, turning, and reaching for a pillow.
It is a movement toward liberation.
Saving the many beings. And ourselves into the bargain.
Just this.
Just this.