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Since last month's My Own Walking blog post, I've had further thoughts on the metaphorical import of seeing a three legged dog running down a street. Having stated that I felt that it gave form to how I felt about Buddhism, as essential lacking a fourth leg. This statement has since then, not felt quite on the real money. Running the risk of dragging things further into the metaphorical woods of 'taking this far too seriously' I've made some adjustments to the interpretation. That may be all religions have a missing fourth leg to them, an absent quality, a divinity or a potential. These represents things not easily made conscious to the rational mind, often generally couched as being ineffable. And this sense of there being an absent, can be mistaken for your chosen religion being lacking. Treating this 'wonky' ill fitting aspect as a failing, when actually it is a fully functioning part of it
Look at that fourth leg, is this to be apprehended as a phantom limb? Why does this metaphorical three legged dog not just instantly fall over? The three legged dog has to keep running, maintain momentum because to stop would risk instability and hence prone to falling over. Any 'phantom' fourth leg performs a vital but invisible function of helping keep things upright. If you apply such a metaphor to spiritual practice, this 'phantom fourth leg' can only be apprehended through our imagination 'bodying forth this thing unknown'. The 'phantom fourth leg' is something we place faith in. What we believe, but perhaps do not know for certain to be true. Faith, emboldens our imagination, to apprehend that 'phantom limb' we intuit to be there, but cannot normally see or tangibly touch, whether that is a creator God, the Enlightened state, or a Universal consciousness. The 'phantom' nature of that fourth leg explains why faith can sometimes wobble or fail us.
Malcolm Guite describes the difference spiritually between what we apprehend and what we comprehend. When we apprehend something partially, we get a glimpse, or touch on something but can't quite yet grasp it. We are on earth, whilst what we apprehend is in the heavens. Whereas to comprehend is to fully grasp and be knowledgeable of something, about which you no longer have doubts or uncertainties. To comprehend is to bring the apprehended heavenly thing down to earth. So whatever we simply apprehend will be to some degree unknowable or ineffable to us. It will be beyond normal sentience. But through the use of a faith inspired imagination we can reach out to tug on the edge of it's veil. Comprehension can be a fleeting flash, then vanish.
When dealing with ultimate apophatic states, we are always working blind in a darkened room. It maybe, that what we are feeling is actually there, or is it something is being conjured up by our senses, then reified by our mind. This can confuse us as we oscillate between the two polarities. We want some certainty, but cannot rule any probability out when approaching the ineffable. Does the ineffable reach out to us through our sense faculties? How much do we 'make' belief? How much is 'the making of belief' the work of the ineffable, how much conjured up in our minds eye?
The agency of doubt, sensitively applied, is important in clarifying what we have faith in. To sift through the nature and qualities of what it is we are experiencing. For we only have the limitations of our senses to apprehend the ineffable, to discern wether we are being communicated with through the senses or deceiving ourselves through them. The watershed between vision and fantasy can prove narrow. And such a firm distinction itself, might prove an illusory one. Whichever place we decide to rest our faith upon, will be arrived at through shaking hands with the most fundamental auspices of our doubtfulness, whilst standing in the midst of apprehension. This is the work in progress of any 'religious calling'.
Kosho Uchiyama would refer all the time to 'opening the hand of thought.' He was pointing us towards the closed down nature of our minds and imaginations. Our human tendency to think we comprehend what reality is actually like, understand what Enlightenment is actually like. Once we believe we know, we shut down our receptivity to anything else, we clench the sensing fingers of our minds into a hard fist of knowing. We cease maintaining an open hearted hand, to proffer a welcoming gesture to any new thought or experience, to encounter and engage with this fully. We can turn spiritual practice into a focusing and narrowing down of our options, rather than encouraging a broader receptivity beyond what we currently can apprehend. We all struggle to keep the hand of thought open. So easily trapped are we by the box of tricks that is the rational mind.
The spiritual life could be seen as like a three legged dog running purposefully down a street hell for leather towards its imagined goal. We keep on running, because the energy and momentum we achieve is misperceived as an expression of the depth of our devotion. Afraid to stop lest we lose that and fall flat on our deluded faces. If we have little sense for what that 'phantom fourth leg' might consist of, where we stand in relation to it, then all that intensity of running might lead us towards nothing. Apart from burnout. How we imagine the mystery that is Enlightenment, is something I need to reflect on further.
