I came across these wonderful words of wisdom from Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim through an old friend of mine who has undergone many recent transformations. I think he shared this quote from The Way of Transformation with me about a year ago, and it read it again today.
The things that struck me about this quote were his statement about meditation as a way “to face life, and to encounter all that is most perilous in the world,” and his mention of the Ground of Being.
The Ground of Being comes up frequently in Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh‘s dharma talks. He identifies the Christian idea of the Kingdom of God with the Ultimate Dimension in Buddhist teachings and relates the two to the Ground of Being of Paul Tillich.
I learned that von Dürckheim became a Zen master and was responsible for launching Zen in America because of his relationship with D. T. Suzuki.
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The man who, being really on the Way, fails upon hard times in the world will not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort and encourages his old self to survive. Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a “raft that leads to the far shore.” Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of practice is not to develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted, broken and battered – that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let go his futile hankering after harmony, surcease from pain, and a comfortable life in order that he may discover, in doing battle with the forces that oppose him, that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites. The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life, and to encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When this is possible, meditation itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise from the unconscious – a process very different from the practice of concentration on some object as a protection against such forces. Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns whole-hardheartedly to confront the world that threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened.
From the book, The Way of Transformation by Karlfried Graf von Dürckheim |
Are you willing to “be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted, broken and battered” in your meditation practice. This is the way of transformation. Please share.
