Quest Magazine

Living the Season: Zen Practice for Transformative Times

Ji Hyang Padma
Wheaton: Quest, 2013. 230 pp., paper, $14.95.

We live in challenging times. The landscape demands that we live with compassion not just for ourselves but for everything around us. It means transforming ourselves, which entails a journey that is unique for each of us. In Living the Season, Ji Hyang Padma tells us about her own journey and about the Zen practice that enriched her life. She shares practices that will bring awareness and compassion to full expression in this ever-changing world.

Padma's own journey is fascinating. She went through a period of teenage restlessness. When she was fourteen, witnessing a car crash was a turning point for her. She worked as an emergency medical technician, which only deepened her spiritual quest, since it involved doing just what the moment demanded. Her questioning continued. In college, she took up aikido, the martial art of bringing energies into harmony. She discovered a sacred space within herself. Through aikido, she was introduced to Zen shiatsu, a traditional Japanese acupuncture-based form of bodywork that also brings together mind, body, and spirit. The transition to Zen meditation practice was inevitable. Meditation helped her find her core (known as hara in aikido) and respond from a place of centeredness.

Even this was not enough. A new question arose for Padma (and for us it is there as well): what is this for? After graduation from Wellesley College, she moved into a Zen center. She lived with and helped her Zen teacher with community building and also took up a job at an AIDS clinic.

Working with AIDS patients, Padma found that the same question continued to resurface: what is suffering and how do we alleviate it? She traveled to Korea, sat a ninety-day retreat, and was ordained as a nun, receiving her precepts from Seung Sahn, a great Korean Zen master. The practice wasnt easy, but it confirmed her vow to awaken and help others. She was given the name Ji Hyang: Ji means "wisdom"; Hyang means "fragrance." Bringing fragrance to the world through her wisdom was her path. She asked Seung Sahn for advice. He said, "Only do it!" She worked as a Zen center director, serving as abbot, but after five years, the desire for solitude opened a new path for her. She moved to Mountain Spirit Center in California to rekindle her love affair with meditation practice.

It is an amazing journey—learning that the sky is blue and the grass is green. We see clearly and hear clearly. Seung Sahn called this the correct function of life. Padma shares this journey with us through the cycle of four seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Each season opens a new aspect of Zen practice for us. Winter is the season of scarcity, requiring shelter. But even within winter there is life. The seeds are stirring. We come out of that stillness to see emerging life in spring. Spring gives way to beauty of summer. There is fullness around. Autumn bring a season of harvesting. We have learned skillful ways of living. This is the time to offer thanks for the gifts we have received. She quotes Zen master Wu-Men, who said:

Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,
Summer with breeze, winter with snow.
When idle concerns dont hang in your mind,
That is your best season.

Padmas book helps us find our best season. Every chapter includes useful suggestions for practice. We learn impermanence through drawing sketches with water. We learn to work with a great question. As thoughts arise, we may ask, "Who is thinking?" Then we say, "I am thinking." Then we ask the great question: "What am I?" And the answer is "Dont know!" Zen practice means living in this "dont know" state.

In her chapter entitled "Interpersonal Mindfulness: Zen and Relationships," Padma gives us four simple elements of working with relationships: breathing, listening (both to what is said and to what is unsaid), finding our own place of presence (being authentic), and then meeting the others where they reside, joining them, and seeing through their eyes. This is true attunement. 

I loved her tips on compassion. If you are in the line at a drive-in and the person behind is getting impatient and honks at you, do you honk back and glare, or do you buy him a cup of coffee while you are at the window? I tried that the other day, and the look I got from the person behind me was priceless.

In the Indian tradition, seekers who have the same teacher are called brothers and sisters. Ji Hyang Padma and I share that great teacher, Seung Sahn. Well done, sister!

Dhananjay Joshi

The reviewer, a professor of statistics, has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for the past forty-five years. He is a regular contributor to the Indian periodical Lokmat.

God, Science and "The Secret Doctrine": The Zero Point Metaphysics and Holographic Space of H.P. Blavatsky

Christopher P. Holmes
Kemptville, Ontario, Canada: Zero Point Institute for Mystical and Spiritual Science, 2010. xi + 330 pp., paper, $24.95.

In God, Science, and "The Secret Doctrine," Christopher P. Holmes endeavors to show parallels between the cosmogenesis of H.P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine and the cosmology of today. He contends that scientific cosmology is catching up with the massive Theosophical work published in 1888. The parallels are often stunning. Consider lines like these:

"Matter is eternal," says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter of modern science. . . for it is PRADHANA ("original base"), yet atoms are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe . . . There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested matter. (The Secret Doctrine, 1:545; cf. Holmes, 115)

Or, as Blavatsky also wrote:

By "that which is and yet is not" [before the manifestation of the universe] is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of existence that we can distinguish from Nonexistence. (Secret Doctrine, 1:43)

For comparison, Holmes cites the 1985 book Perfect Symmetry by the distinguished physicist Heinz Pagels:

The nothingness "before" the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine—no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number—it is what the existence—a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What "tells" the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.

Holmes's analysis deals not only with the laya or "zero point" state prior to what has more recently been called the Big Bang, but likewise with the curved space and time of Einsteinian relativity, holographic space, the space-time-matter-energy continuum, quantum phenomena, multiple universes, the formation of subatomic particles, atoms, and finally stars and galaxies in the post Big Bang "inflation." In all this, through extensive quotations from The Secret Doctrine and recent scientific writers like Pagels, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Carl Sagan, and others, Holmes illumines the convergences.

That the meetings of meaning are not always evident to those dipping into the Theosophical classic is, first of all, due to Blavatsky's use of anthropomorphic or mythological language to describe what the scientists would phrase in more impersonal and objective terms. When Pagels asks, "What ‘tells' the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe?" the answer is the Great Breath, and the "pregnancy" might be taken more literally than he intended. Blavatsky writes: "The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The Mother swells, expanding from within without, like the bud of the lotus" (Secret Doctrine, 1:62).

The Secret Doctrine uses this apparent anthropomorphism because it adds to the cosmological process the element of consciousness, or more precisely, the unimaginable cosmic levels of what is known in us as human consciousness. Granting that what is inside us may also be outside makes it acceptable, and often profoundly satisfying, to summon up correspondences between cosmic and human creativity, up to the mathematicians call "the empty set." Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of metaphorical, and perhaps more than metaphorical, evocation of giving birth. But long and bitter battles between science and religion have left many in the former camp exceedingly wary of "mysticism" about the cosmos, by which they mean any attempt to universalize consciousness beyond the human plane. In such a universe of thought, Blavatsky's "Eternal Parent Wrapped in Her Ever-Invisible Robes," "Radiant Child," "Fohat" hardening the atoms, and conscious "Builders" working through stars and systems of stars, sound medieval or worse. "Science" may insist instead that the beginning of the universe was a mindless accident or a random incident.

Nonetheless, from several directions ”the mysteries of quantum phenomena, the logic of mathematics, the quandary of the anthropic universe”consciousness, or its universal ground, seems waiting to come back in as a fifth cosmological constituent, along with space, time, matter, and energy. Some recent thought along this line has suggested that the universe resembles nothing so much as a computer simulation. Holmes's study makes it evident that The Secret Doctrine provides a model for a consciousness-guided universe far removed from the theological bugbears that understandably annoy scientific thinkers, while allowing for an inside as well as an outside to the cosmos from the beginning.

God, Science, and The Secret Doctrine is not the only attempt to correlate Blavatsky and contemporary physics and cosmology. One could mention papers presented at the 1984 symposium on H.P. Blavatsky and at the 2007 United Lodge of Theosophists' conference, "Theosophy and New Frontiers of Science." But Holmes does us the service of bringing much of this thought together in a book broadly following the structure of The Secret Doctrine, updating, as it were, the scientific as well as esoteric commentary Blavatsky so ably provided in terms of the science of her day.

Holmes's academic training is in clinical psychology, so professional physicists and astronomers, as well as scholars of The Secret Doctrine and its sources, may find issues to raise in his bold treatment of their material. But Holmes's virtue is that he writes from the standpoint of an enthusiastic inquirer like most of us, communicating the remarkable new importance of  as a guidebook in the cosmic explorations of our day. As such, it is recommended, along with traditional commentaries, for Theosophical study.

Robert Ellwood

The reviewer is former vice-president of the Theosophical Society in America.

God, Science and "The Secret Doctrine": The Zero Point Metaphysics and Holographic Space of H.P. Blavatsky 

Christopher P. Holmes
Kemptville, Ontario, Canada: Zero Point Institute for Mystical and Spiritual Science, 2010. xi + 330 pp., paper, $24.95.

In God, Science, and "The Secret Doctrine," Christopher P. Holmes endeavors to show parallels between the cosmogenesis of H.P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine and the cosmology of today. He contends that scientific cosmology is catching up with the massive Theosophical work published in 1888. The parallels are often stunning. Consider lines like these:

"Matter is eternal," says the Esoteric Doctrine. But the matter the Occultists conceive of in its laya, or zero state, is not the matter of modern science. . . for it is PRADHANA ("original base"), yet atoms are born at every new manvantara, or reconstruction of the universe . . . There is a difference between manifested and unmanifested matter. (The Secret Doctrine, 1:545; cf. Holmes, 115)

Or, as Blavatsky also wrote:

By "that which is and yet is not" [before the manifestation of the universe] is meant the Great Breath itself, which we can only speak of as absolute existence, but cannot picture to our imagination as any form of existence that we can distinguish from Nonexistence. (Secret Doctrine, 1:43)

For comparison, Holmes cites the 1985 book Perfect Symmetry by the distinguished physicist Heinz Pagels:

The nothingness"before" the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine no space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number it is what the existence a necessary consequence of physical laws. Where are these laws written into that void? What"tells" the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe? It would seem that even the void is subject to law, a logic that exists prior to space and time.

Holmes's analysis deals not only with the laya or"zero point" state prior to what has more recently been called the Big Bang, but likewise with the curved space and time of Einsteinian relativity, holographic space, the space-time-matter-energy continuum, quantum phenomena, multiple universes, the formation of subatomic particles, atoms, and finally stars and galaxies in the post–Big Bang"inflation." In all this, through extensive quotations from The Secret Doctrine and recent scientific writers like Pagels, Stephen Hawking, Steven Weinberg, Carl Sagan, and others, Holmes illumines the convergences.

That the meetings of meaning are not always evident to those dipping into the Theosophical classic is, first of all, due to Blavatsky's use of anthropomorphic or mythological language to describe what the scientists would phrase in more impersonal and objective terms. When Pagels asks,"What ‘tells' the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe?" the answer is the Great Breath, and the"pregnancy" might be taken more literally than he intended. Blavatsky writes:"The last vibration of the seventh eternity thrills through infinitude. The Mother swells, expanding from within without, like the bud of the lotus" (Secret Doctrine, 1:62).

The Secret Doctrine uses this apparent anthropomorphism because it adds to the cosmological process the element of consciousness, or more precisely, the unimaginable cosmic levels of what is known in us as human consciousness. Granting that what is inside us may also be outside makes it acceptable, and often profoundly satisfying, to summon up correspondences between cosmic and human creativity, up to the mathematicians call"the empty set." Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of metaphorical, and perhaps more than metaphorical, evocation of giving birth. But long and bitter battles between science and religion have left many in the former camp exceedingly wary of"mysticism" about the cosmos, by which they mean any attempt to universalize consciousness beyond the human plane. In such a universe of thought, Blavatsky's"Eternal Parent Wrapped in Her Ever-Invisible Robes,""Radiant Child,""Fohat" hardening the atoms, and conscious"Builders" working through stars and systems of stars, sound medieval or worse."Science" may insist instead that the beginning of the universe was a mindless accident or a random incident.

Nonetheless, from several directions—the mysteries of quantum phenomena, the logic of mathematics, the quandary of the anthropic universe—consciousness, or its universal ground, seems waiting to come back in as a fifth cosmological constituent, along with space, time, matter, and energy. Some recent thought along this line has suggested that the universe resembles nothing so much as a computer simulation. Holmes's study makes it evident that The Secret Doctrine provides a model for a consciousness-guided universe far removed from the theological bugbears that understandably annoy scientific thinkers, while allowing for an inside as well as an outside to the cosmos from the beginning.

God, Science, and The Secret Doctrine is not the only attempt to correlate Blavatsky and contemporary physics and cosmology. One could mention papers presented at the 1984 symposium on H.P. Blavatsky and at the 2007 United Lodge of Theosophists' conference,"Theosophy and New Frontiers of Science." But Holmes does us the service of bringing much of this thought together in a book broadly following the structure of The Secret Doctrine, updating, as it were, the scientific as well as esoteric commentary Blavatsky so ably provided in terms of the science of her day.

Holmes's academic training is in clinical psychology, so professional physicists and astronomers, as well as scholars of The Secret Doctrine and its sources, may find issues to raise in his bold treatment of their material. But Holmes's virtue is that he writes from the standpoint of an enthusiastic inquirer like most of us, communicating the remarkable new importance of  as a guidebook in the cosmic explorations of our day. As such, it is recommended, along with traditional commentaries, for Theosophical study.

Robert Ellwood

The reviewer is former vice-president of the Theosophical Society in America.

The Forbidden Book: A Novel

Joscelyn Godwin and Guido Mina di Sospiro
San Francisco: Disinformation Books, 2012. 282 pp.,
hardcover, $24.95.

The genre of occult and esoteric fiction has had a somewhat spotty history. Dion Fortune, Dennis Wheatley, Sax Rohmer, and Bram Stoker immediately come to mind as perennial favorites despite their limitations as writers. Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum marked a high point of style and erudition, though the author's cynicism indicated he had little sympathy for his chosen subject, secret societies. More recently, Dan Brown has hit the jackpot with page-turners such as The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol, which in turn inspired a raft of imitators. With The Forbidden Book, one can imagine the authors Joscelyn Godwin and Guido Mina di Sospiro—both academics conversant with esoteric teachings—saying to themselves, "Surely we can do better than this tripe." And so they have.

The Forbidden Book is an engaging occult thriller, well-written and packed with esoteric lore, nearly all of it based on real-world sources. In both literary quality and depth of knowledge it beats Dan Brown at his own game. Thus it is singularly unfortunate that the book was released with so little fanfare and, presumably, a nonexistent promotional budget. If the novel had come out under Dan Brown's byline, it would likely have sold copies in the millions.

In a nod to Brown's formula, the novel's protagonist is a college professor, in this case Leo Kavenaugh of the Italian department at Georgetown University. Leo is invited to Italy by a former female intern with whom he'd fallen in love several years before, but to no avail, as Kavenaugh was a celibate member of the Franciscan Third Order. His former intern, Orsina, hails from a wealthy aristocratic family in the north of Italy and, despite her own love for Leo, has married a wealthy Scottish businessman. With ambiguous motives, she invites Leo to visit her family estate in Verona to help decipher a book of late Renaissance Hermeticism that has been presented to her by her uncle, the Baron Emanuele Riviera della Motta.

Rapidly Leo is drawn into intrigues and mysteries associated with the book and with the baron. A murder ensues, the rather hapless Italian police arrive, and matters get complicated. In the interest of not spoiling the plot, I will leave it at that. Suffice it to say that after a bit of a slow start, the book builds up a good head of steam and delivers a fascinating thriller replete with alchemical, magical, and contemporary political references.

What may not be obvious to most readers, however, is the novel's subtext, a meditation on the work and life of Baron Julius Evola (1898-1974), the controversial Italian exponent of an esoteric and magical "Tradition" whose political implications captured the imagination of young Italian (and other European) post-World War II neofascists
from the 1950s up to the present.

The Forbidden Book's Baron Emanuele Riviera della Motta is an Evola stand-in, complete with young black-shirted followers and a magical regimen modeled on one that Evola and his esoteric associates, a collection of occultists known as the UR group, began to expound in the 1920s. (For more on this, see Introduction to Magic by Julius Evola and the UR Group.)

What Godwin and Mina di Sispiro provide here is an imaginative rendering of the likely real-world impact of Evola's doctrines brought into the present. It isn't a pretty picture.

Another subtext is the personal and moral impact of subscribing to a path of transcendence that raises the seeker to a level above compassionate regard for others. Evola's magical philosophy (like that of this novel's baron) aims for a heroic victory over all downward-pulling forces, leading to the immortalization of one's individual Self. The end result is to render oneself a god. Common sense might suggest that hoping to become a god is inviting the fate of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun.

The Forbidden Book plays out all these possibilities, imbedded in the story of Leo and Orsina's conflicted love for each other and their quest for the spiritual meaning behind their mutual attraction.

The achievement of The Forbidden Book is its melding of occult thriller, esoteric explication, and social critique, all at a level of intelligence higher than the genre's norm. My main criticism would be that the characterization is rather sketchy, a weakness that also plagues Dan Brown's books.

That aside, if you are interested in an occult thriller which provides genuine esoteric insights instead of muddled hokum, The Forbidden Book beckons.

Jay Kinney

The reviewer, founder and former publisher of Gnosis magazine, is the author of The Masonic Myth (Harper Collins), which has been published in five languages. His article "Shhh! It's a Secret: Grappling with the Puzzle of Free­masonry" appeared in Quest, Summer 2013.