Wild Mercy

You follow the footprints of the Beloved across manifold spiritual landscapes. You catch the same ancient, spicy aroma of love in Judaism that you have tasted in Islam. Your attraction to the lush sensuality of Hinduism does not in any way preclude the way you rest in the intellectual purity of Buddhism. Contemplating the Tao Te Ching strengthens what the Hopi elders have taught you: that the Earth is alive, that she is your Mother, that she is the love of your life.

Institutionalized religious authorities discourage this kind of roaming; they will call you a lost soul. You lie down with the Beloved in so many forms, the purists will call you a slut. The more open-minded may still accuse you of hoping to get to water by digging many shallow wells. As if you were a fool. You are no fool. You are in love, and you will use every available means to reach the living waters of love itself, which you can’t help but notice bubbling up from the altar of every sacred space you have ever entered, including—and maybe especially—the wild spaces of this earth.

You embrace your Beloved through your friendship with Jesus alone or through Jesus plus Buddha. You walk one path or three or eleven different spiritual paths that all bring you home to the One Love. Maybe you say, “No, thank you” to any kind of organized religion and, instead, cultivate a direct relationship with the Beloved in the temple of your own heart. The singular true believers will advise you against all of this multiplicity, recommending that you pick a single tradition and “go deep.” As if your polyamorous spiritual proclivities render you a dilettante. They will mistakenly judge your way as superficial and undisciplined, rather than as the mind-blowingly, heart-openingly, soul-transfiguringly rigorous spiritual practice that it is.

You don’t care that much what they think anyway. You are not about to miss any opportunity to encounter your Beloved and bow down and rise up and take refuge.

Taking Refuge

The world is burning, and if we have any hope of dousing the flames, we need to find ways to resource ourselves and each other.

I have begun to look at the Buddhist teaching of refuge through the lens of the feminine, and the coherence is thrilling me. In Buddhism, taking refuge is a vow, but it’s also a treasure, known as the triple gem or the three jewels. We are invited to take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Traditionally, to take refuge in the Buddha means to look to the life of the historical Siddhartha Gautama, who became “the Buddha”—the Awakened One—as a role model for living an awakened life. Taking refuge in the dharma implies that it is in the body of teachings the Buddha bequeathed to us that we find the practical tools for living an awakened life. Finally, the sangha is the community of fellow practitioners who accompany you on your journey of awakening.

Let’s shift our focus now from a generalized Buddhist perspective to a more universal one and then zero in on an explicitly feminine version of the triple gem. The essential insight at the heart of the concept of taking refuge in the Buddha is that the man known as Siddhartha Gautama showed us what true awakening looks like, right? As it turns out, to awaken mostly means to live with compassion and wisdom, resting in our interconnectedness with all beings, recognizing the truth of suffering, and dedicating ourselves to alleviating it wherever we encounter it. Awakening is our birthright. The Buddha never intended for us to give away our power to him. “Be lamps unto yourselves” were his last words. Yet there are all sorts of role models, lighthouses, campfires available to us, around which we may gather and rest and be fed and wake up.

BUDDHA WOMEN

What would it look like to take refuge in a female version of Ultimate Reality? What if we found our archetypes of awakening among the many women teachers, known and not so well known, across the spiritual traditions and throughout time? While Siddhartha Gautama lived an exemplary life of service, teaching and preaching, a paragon of voluntary simplicity, he was a man, free to do things women cannot. He left his wife and child, for example, to become an ascetic. Jesus too advocated that his followers leave everything and everyone they loved to follow him: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

Not so simple for a woman (I’m sure it wasn’t simple for Siddhartha and Jesus, either, but still). We can certainly choose to leave our kids—and plenty of women have—but we seem to pay a higher price for such a choice than men do. Many of the women mystics we have been exploring here chose to be pilgrims rather than wives, and they had to fight against a prodigious tide in resisting society’s expectations and dedicating their lives to prayer. Sometimes their only option for cultivating a spiritual life was to become a nun, even if their inner experience and temperament rendered them unsuited for monasticism. Many, like the bhakti poet Mirabai and the Sufi ecstatic Rabia, embarked on the spiritual quest without either the support or the constraints of the prevailing religious establishment, and they did so at great cost. Independent of any authorities to back them up, they surrendered to a kind of free fall, involving both ecstasy and loneliness.

Let’s find the brave women who have walked before us and see how they navigated the journey. Let’s investigate female artists, writers, dancers, political leaders, and spiritual teachers who embody qualities we wish to cultivate in ourselves and take refuge in them. Let’s lay down our burdens in their metaphysical laps and drink from their ever-flowing breasts.

DHARMA WOMEN

Take refuge in the dharma in the form of teachings by women. Read their love letters to the Holy One. Gaze at their paintings and listen to their musical masterpieces. Study the Christian mystic Catherine of Siena, the Hasidic master Hannah of Ludmir, the heroic Sufi Noor Inayat Khan. Contemplate the Mary Magdalene pieces by the contemporary Irish American poet Marie Howe. Reread the Song of Songs and pay special attention to the Bride. Look at the Hindu classic the Ramayana through the eyes of Sita. Check out powerful voices among young Muslim and indigenous activists like Mona Haydar and Zeina Hashem Beck, Lyla June Johnston and Malala Yousafzai. Engage in Lectio Divina (sacred reading) with their writings. Refill your cup from the wellspring of women’s wisdom.

SANGHA WOMEN

Let’s take refuge in the companionship of women. When we do not already have a female sangha—a circle that supports one another’s awakening whose members happen to be women—we can convene one. We can get together and reflect on the teachings of Julian of Norwich or the Inanna myth. Or meditate in small groups, take silent hikes with women who are willing to join us in quietly communing with Mother Earth. We can draw with pastels, build coiled pots, grind corn and roll tortillas together while listening to the Mexican ballads of Lila Downs or the antiphons of Hildegard of Bingen. We can keep one another accountable to spiritual practice and encourage one another. Let’s make ourselves a refuge for one another.

This is the most luminous jewel of all. Sangha. Spiritual companionship. Beloved Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh famously said that the next Buddha (you could substitute Messiah or Christ, Mahdi or White Buffalo Calf Woman) will be the sangha. So have about a million women, only no one was listening. As women, we know this in our brains and in our bellies. We are not waiting for some powerful, supernatural, perfected dude to come along and save us. We look to one another, with all our imperfections and vulnerabilities, our mixed messages and hidden agendas, our startlingly gorgeous and ferociously honest wisdom. Connection is liberation. Cultivate it.

deepening

Create an event especially for women on a spiritual path. Maybe it is a silent meditation in solidarity with Syrian refugees or for the restoration of the Amazon rain forest. It could be a writing group using the writing practice methods of Natalie Goldberg (see “Writing Practice Guidelines” for a taste). Perhaps you will be singing sacred chants from one or more spiritual traditions.

Start with a one-time gathering, and if it has legs, run with it and get together on a regular basis. Share leadership. Include food, but only if you can work and eat at the same time; otherwise save the eating for afterward. Blend art and cosmology, political activism and contemplative practice. In other words, let your definition of spiritual community be ample and inclusive. Goddess knows where it will take you.