McDonalds Memo - The Hidden Ground of Love

On simplification. 

There is a sutta in the Buddhist texts where after a lot of terse, involved instruction on how to quiet the mind, the Buddha simply says that - if such fails - we should just grit our teeth and try robust effort! I suppose that there is a time for silence and a time for speech, for simplicity and verbosity, a time to let go and a time to hang on, make effort. (As far as verbosity is concerned, I certainly hope so!)

In the past I have often opened threads on "Wisdom" and what it actually is. I often quote a Buddhist scholar, Edward Conze, who defined wisdom as "the mind/heart, thirsting for emancipation, seeing deep into the heart of reality." Such seeing is not conceptual or even self-aware, or at least I do not understand it as such.

All definitions are just words, some simpler to understand than others. Sometimes, reading the latest "philosopher" I reel away in incomprehension. It all seems far away from the OT phrase "a little child shall lead them."

But I think wisdom is grace, gift. It is never our own. When the gift has been given/received then we are totally unaware of having it. It simply becomes part of us, to be given to others. To think we "have it" is to lose it.

I think of a letter Thomas Merton once wrote, which contained that beautiful paradox, a letter written to E.D.Andrews, an expert on the life and beliefs of the Shakers (or the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing). Andrews had sent Merton a copy of his book, Shaker Furniture, and Merton was responding to the gift.

This wordless simplicity, in which the works of quiet and holy people speak humbly for themselves. How important that is in our day, when we are flooded with a tidal wave of meaningless words: and worse still when in the void of those words the sinister power of hatred and destruction is at work. The Shakers remain as witnesses to the fact that only humility keeps man in communion with truth, and first of all with his own inner truth. This one must know without knowing it, as they did. For as soon as a man becomes aware of "his truth" he lets go of it and embraces an illusion.

Such a paradox as I see it, supports Faith. If we follow some sort of path, way, of "no-calculation" and yet we find the gift of love flowering in our mind/hearts, not of self, then there is only one source - that which Merton called "the hidden ground of love" (for which there is no explanation)