|
Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of
Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe
SECRET
MATTER,
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
Articles
and Excerpts:
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Wedding Cake Liberation
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
The
cause of homosexuality
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
You're
Not A Wave
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection,
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.
"The Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the Cross &
the
Dark Night of the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me Tell You a Secret
Religious Articulations of the
Secret
The Collective Unconscious
Driving as Spiritual Practice
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
Gay
retirement and the "freelance monastery"
Seeing with Different Eyes
The
mystical
experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding Your Tiger Face
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
About Alien Abduction
In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
|
Three Wonders
Joseph Campbell's beautiful description of
the myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Peace is at the
heart of all because Avalokiteshvara-Kwannon, the mighty Bodhisattva,
Boundless Love, includes, regards, and dwells within (without
exception) every sentient being.
The perfection of the delicate wings of an insect, broken
in the passage of time, he regards--and he himself is both their
perfection and their disintegration.
The perennial agony of man, self-torturing, deluded,
tangled in the net of his own tenuous delirium, frustrated, yet having
within himself, undiscovered, absolutely unutilized, the secret of
release: this too he regards--and is.
Serene above man, the angels; below man, the demons and
unhappy dead: these all are drawn to the Bodhisattva by the rays of his
jewel hands, and they are he, as he is they.
The bounded, shackled centers of consciousness,
myriadfold, on every plane of existence (not only in this present
universe, limited by the Milky Way, but beyond, into the reaches of
space), galaxy beyond galaxy, world beyond world of universes, coming
into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life,
and like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by
the multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle
of itself--lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory:
these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet
inexhaustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is
the essence of Emptiness: “The Lord Looking Down in Pity.”
But the name [Avalokiteshvara] means also: “The Lord Who
is Seen Within.” We are all reflexes of the image of the Bodhisattva.
The sufferer within us is that divine being. We and that protecting
father are one.
This is the redeeming insight. That protecting father is
every man we meet. And so it must be known that, though this ignorant,
limited, self defending, suffering body may regard itself as threatened
by some other--the enemy--that one too is God…
New life, new birth, new knowledge of existence (so that
we live not in this physique only, but in all bodies, all physiques of
the world, as the Bodhisattva) was given us. This is the meaning of the
image of the bisexual god.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with
a Thousand Faces, pp. 160-161.
The sculpture above of
Avalokiteshvara on a tiger throne was
done by Kip Dollar. It sits in Toby Johnson's meditation space.
Read more about the story of the
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara on Toby Johnson's website:
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara as World Savior
Finding Your Tiger Face
You're
Not A Wave
Toby
believes this story is especially appropriate for gay men to meditate
on.
Read:
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
The
Three Wonders
It is said there are Three Wonders of the
Bodhisattva to meditate upon. The first is that the Bodhisattva is
simultaneously male and female, transcending the polarities, like the
Two-Spirit persons of Native-American (and pop gay) lore. Sometimes
Avalokiteshvara is portrayed icongraphically as male on the right side
of the body and female on the left.
The second wonder is that from the Bodhisattva's perspective there is
no distinction between life and release-from-life, between samsara and
Nirvana no ascertainable difference: time and eternity are one. In the
jargon of the New Age: “This is IT,” no difference between now and life
after-death, no distinction between the longing for God and the
experience of living life, no goal to achieve.
And the third wonder is that the first two are the same. Transcending
the polarities of male and female is a necessary step in achieving
enlightenment and a contribution to the evolution of consciousness.
The spirituality of the myth of
Avalokiteshvara is called:
The Way of Joyful Participation in the Sorrows of the
World
|
