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Equanimity - Holy journey of love and patriarchy
Equanimity is a Buddhist term – it is one of the 4 Brahma-Viharas, so if you looked at equanimity you might consider that zandtao’s journey had gone more deeply into Buddhism as suggested in the last chapter on the threshold. But that chapter was written soon after crossing the threshold and zandtao’s autonomy has taken him away from Buddhism towards a love-wisdom balance – and for zandtao that is the meaning of equanimity.
Without realising it, once he crossed the threshold of autonomy zandtao began a journey towards love. This started with the book Real Love LINK in which he investigated the love of Sharon Salzberg’s Metta, and then considered bell hooks love in patriarchy. This opened his eyes to the connection of love and patriarchy from where he stood, and it became far clearer when he looked at Stephen Batchelor’s secular path in Buddhism, and through his own questioning of Secular Path? LINK did see a secular autonomy and practice giving guidance as what might be a core secular practice of 8 components:- IMAGE.
In looking for equanimity zandtao’s autonomy was taking him away from Buddhadasa’s practice. Whilst Buddhists would claim they were looking for unconditional love, this was not indicated in their practice. Where is the powerful motivation that love brings? For zandtao’s own practice this led to a modification of Buddhadasa’s MwB, and whilst the modifications are in line with Buddhism as compassion he felt it necessary to rename his practice as ZPAP LINK to Appendix A.
For zandtao his practice is now more concerned with developing spiritual love - unconditional love. Buddhadasa’s 2nd tetrad, as with the 4 foundations of mindfulness, is concerned with vedana, and Buddhadasa’s 4 stages lead to dealing with vedana through calm; for zandtao the highest vedana is love and calm is a stage to calm emotions before being directed by love.
In the 4th tetrad Buddhadasa is reconnecting with Dhamma but zandtao felt it necessary to change these stages to include a greater emphasis on love-wisdom balance – equanimity. In doing this his practice culminates in the development of love and wisdom in the chakras leading to the vision of tathata.
When love and wisdom combine in this way tathata is confronted by patriarchy. Whilst patriarchy can tolerate any wisdom that denounces it it cannot accept any embodiment of love that directs towards ending patriarchy. In this way zandtao saw the institutions of wisdom religions such as Buddhism as being compromised by patriarchy because they lack the motivation of unconditional love. In this way the doors began to be opened to love traditions such as Agape and Michael Beckwith.
But immediately he turned to love he connected with Nicola Amadora, and his current z-quest is concerned with her book Unleashing Love – and more. Nicola’s work was very much concerned with trauma and spirituality LINK to reflection and transcript, and this led zandtao to consider Sacred Wounds. He began to call his Sacred Wounds the Holy khandha because like the khandhas there is a sense of permanence in life. Whilst the khandhas end with death how can there be life without the khandhas of body, vedana, sanna, sankhara and any required consciousness. But equally how can there be any life without dealing with the Sacred Wounds – Holy khandha. Whether we call what happens in upbringing trauma or not, conditioning whether as patriarchal requirement or ancestral healing comes together providing a Sacred Wound. Seekers as with all individuals have to deal with such wounds, and it is their duty in consciously evolving consciousness – Eckharts 2nd mystery. Buddhism might call this karma but in terms of his autonomy that was not a concern because his journey was taking him towards love traditions. And this journey although still his path of autonomy he can also now call his Holy journey.
The recognition of this journey arose when working on Sacred Wounds – why was bill born catholic? This led to his consideration of East-West LINK. His birth in Catholicism had not led to loving God but being lapsed, and without the love this led towards wisdom traditions. On upheaval he was moved towards compassion and experiencing love overcoming upbringing and Sacred Wounds, but it took a long while to reach consideration of unconditional love because of the emphases in wisdom traditions.
He did not “go east” with a background of loving God, he was in a faith vacuum IMAGE. So this indicated love traditions, yet the home of love traditions is also the home of patriarchy – patriarchy is more concerned with war than love; zandtao considers patriarchy the enemy of love. To understand this zandtao “go west” – similar to Nicola.
This leaves zandtao with a huge task ahead – understanding going west, the love traditions. Just by chance zandtao clicked on an interview with Oprah and Anita Phillips – he like this because Anita’s “garden within” was concerned with trauma - Sacred Wounds. He also listened to a talk – preaching? – Heart over Mind LINK 2, and in this reflection hopes he gives some kind of fair understanding as to what Anita advises as the path; her tradition is not zandtao’s.
This left zandtao with an understanding that he has to limit what he is investigating – trying to correlate his own path with Anita’s requires far more knowledge and understanding than zandtao has. But his investigation led to some questions:-
Can there be an unconditional love of God whilst the seeker is not free from conditions? With a Buddhist practice zandtao automatically describes these conditions in terms of his own practice. Follow paticcasamuppada – release egos. Egos arise in kilesa, upadana and attachment to khandhas. This is how zandtao prepares the best vihara – IMAGE 3 memes.
Whilst Anita spoke of responsibility, beyond emotional balance how was she preparing the best vihara – earthen vessel?
Anita was a good opening for zandtao to start understanding “going west”, but Anita was very different from his lapsed Catholicism. But his use of the term Holy journey came from Caroline Myss whose book LINK was concerned with grace. Zandtao is now calling the 5 Dhamma comrades the “5 graces”, and thinks that Caroline’s book follows on from Nicola’s Unleashing.
Despite unconditional love of God being the core of a Love tradition, quite clearly these traditions have been controlled by patriarchy; when we consider missionaries, we see the tradition as being the vanguard for war and colonisation. This leads to the questioning concerning the grace of embodiment, where is the evidence of love through Christian traditions in western society? One might argue that there is not sufficient Christianity yet right-wing Christianity is the core of US Republicanism and we could argue that US Republicanism is a leading source of patriarchy - imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy; none of imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy is love.
This opens up a lot of questions as to how patriarchy has gained control of love traditions but western society is not the embodiment f love traditions.
And there is a final Sacred Wound that zandtao has recognised. When zandtao looked at Catholicism in his earlier years he saw FAKE. Whatever might be right or wrong with his limited catholic upbringing, what stuck with him was perceiving fake LINK. Over the autonomy threshold he jumped to love perceiving that love was not central to the institutions of wisdom traditions. Zandtao sees fake, he see the delusions that arises around various acceptances of patriarchy; that is zandtao’s duty – a Sacred Wound.
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