The Psychology of Zen

Today I am reading Chapter 3 “The Psychology of Zen” from V. Walter Odajnyk’s Gathering the Light. This Chapter discusses Zen meditation, which seeks to activate what Jung called the uroboric archetype of the Self: that is, the transcendent potential world of being that contains all the archetypes before they separate out and take on manifest form. In Zen this archetype is defined as Pure Consciousness or Formless Form. Odajnyk applies the insights of Jungian psychology to the interior developments that take place in the course of Zen meditation: the effects of the posture and the focus on breathing and counting; the work with a koan; alterations of the ego complex; and the nature of satori. During the course of the discussion, introduced is the concept of a "meditation complex" to account for the psychic structure and energy that appear when the ego gives up its unifying role of consciousness and before that role is taken over by the Self. (The term “complex” is used in the neutral way that Jung did, as a "feeling-toned cluster of psychic energy.") #zen #meditation #ego #satori #energy #koan

What is Meditation

Today I’m reading from Chapter 2 of V. Walter Odajnyk’s Gathering the Light: A Jungian View of Meditation which describes the psychological processes that take place during meditation. By directing psychic energy inward, meditation activates the complexes and the archetypes, with different forms of meditation activating different archetypes and giving rise to different experiences and results. The topics covered include attention; concentration; "deautomatization," the freeing up of psychic energy that normally flows into our habitual responses; the role of the ego complex during meditation; the loss of body sensations; visions of light; and the psychological limits of enlightenment. #meditation #zen #psychology #enlightenment

A little help staying centered during the Holiday Season

Disillusioned with the consumer driven yearend holiday season, which seems to start earlier and earlier every year, where Black Friday overshadows Thanksgiving and robs us of the symbols and symbolic messages that bring value to our spiritual and mental health, I have returned to Mariann Burke’s Advent and Psychic Birth. Rich in depth and metaphor, I’m using it as a daily devotional, to help me stay focused during this runaway time of the year where we can easily get lost to external events and mindsets that lead us away from ourselves and the meaningful relationships in our lives. I’m not against gathering together for holiday parties and celebration, which I consider a normal integral part of our lives. My goal, however, is to stay focused on the symbolic meanings of these holidays so that they can be celebrated with a greater understanding of how and why they came into existence, and it turn experience them with more meaning and joy.

Though I am the publisher of Advent and Psychic Birth, I currently reading and using the book as a daily devotional for my personal mental and spiritual health. This is not an advertisement meant to ‘sell’ you a Fisher King Press publication. It is a message only to bring awareness to a very worthy and valuable publication that speaks to all of us during this time of the year. I republished Advent and Psychic Birth a few years ago, after it had been out-of-print for nearly two decades. I published it for a few reasons, much of which is related in the previous paragraph, but also because it has eternal life, an eternal message that should never be ‘out-of-print’. I’m proud and grateful to be the publisher of Mariann Burke’s Advent and Psychic Birth as well as her book, Re-Imagining Mary: A Journey Through Art to the Feminine Self. Thank you, Mariann Burke, for digging deep into the depths of soul and bringing back to us your hard-earned gold!

Here are a couple of paragraphs form Advent and Psychic Birth:

Whatever one's religious persuasion one cannot help being touched by the poetry of the Hebrew and Christian biblical Advent texts. The Advent liturgy offers a rich fare of images: images of death and destruction, images of hope, of struggle, of waiting, of pain, puzzlement, questioning, doubt, images of birth and of love. Psychologically speak­ing, it is more important to experience an image than to interpret it or to relate it to mythological sources, helpful though this may be. Experiencing opens us to the energiz­ing power of the image which "feeds" us, giving us sub­stance and meaning. Whether the image comes from the Bible, Koran, I Ching, Tarot, or from our dreams and visions, the image brings us in touch with a wisdom and shared experience of humanity. Images of Advent speak to us of our yearning for life, even as the One whose birth we celebrate came to give us life "to the full."

Probably no other time of the year evokes in us such a range of emotional response--from sadness to joy--as the weeks leading up to the feast of Christmas. The word, "Advent," from the Latin, adventus, means "coming" or "approach." The word connotes a longing or hunger for something more in life, something intimated but still unfelt. For Christians this longing focuses on the divine child, a child who was embodied in the Jesus of history, and who, from a psychological perspective relates us to "unborn" as­pects of ourselves. Advent, then, is the season of the unborn. And it is this aspect of Advent that we will explore as images of psychic pregnancy and birth. Each of us nurtures some promise that wants to be born. Psychic birth refers to any potential aspect of ourselves that longs for realization; it refers to our "becoming" who we are meant to be.

Advent and Psychic Birth is available as a Google Play eBook.

On Educating Hearts and Souls

Fundamentalism in any form, religious or otherwise, divides humanity - divides individuals at the very core of their being. When we are at odds within, we in turn become at odds with others. Reconciliation must first take place within our very own beings, becoming reconciled with aspects of our selves that have been marginalized and cast away as a useless 'other' - only then can we become reconciled with all of our brothers and sisters in this world. Education must be more than heady intellectualism - in addition to our minds, we must become educated within our hearts, within our souls.

Lifting the Veil is a book that can help educate our minds, as well as our hearts and souls.

Mel Mathews, is the author of several novels, including the Malcolm Clay Trilogy (Fisher King Press). His books are available from your local bookstore, a host of on-line booksellers.  © 2015 Mel Mathews

Zen and the Poetic Insight of Alvaro Cardona-Hine

Mel Mathews: Having recently published one of your collections of poetry, The Song Less/on (il piccolo editions), undoubtedly I am a big fan of your work. However, today I'd like to learn more about your just published Phantom Buddha (Alba Books). Why the title: Phantom Buddha?

Alvaro Cardona-Hine

Alvaro Cardona-Hine: Phantom Buddha is an autobiographical novel dealing with the time in my Forties when, after reading extensively about Zen Buddhism, I began actual practice under a Japanese Zen Master who turned out to be a womanizer. The woman I was with was lured away from me. It was a painful experience that took me several decades to translate into a novel. There is a blend of reality and dreams I had during those days that accentuates the condition of a man in the most dire of circumstances. My friend Pierre Delattre, author of Tales of a Dalai Lama, consider this work of mine to be a breakthrough into a new kind of literature.

MM: How long has Phantom Buddha been in the making?

ACH: I began to write Phantom Buddha decades ago but, for one thing, the painful nature of the experience made postponing and rewriting a matter of many years. The fact that my wife, Barbara McCauley Cardona and I, have started our own publishing firm, made me abandon any doubts and complete the work.

MM: What impetus fueled the writing of Phantom Buddha?

ACH: Phantom Buddha is essentially an expose of a man who has recently been exposed in the Buddhist community and by the New York Times for the moral fraud that he is. Zen is the clearest, most demanding, and most subtle paths to personal liberation that exists, and there is absolutely no room in it for scoundrels such as Joshu Sasaki who takes advantage of the cupidity of female students.    

I was able to overcome my initial disappointment and went on to study with Prabhassa Dharma Roshi, who some 14 years ago, before she died, named me a sensei, or teacher.

"A male 'Eat, Prey, Love.'"

Man in Search of His Anima, a.k.a. His Soul

Menopause Man-Unplugged 
reviewed by Elizabeth Clark-Stern

It was - in retrospect - a risky thing to do: reading a book written by my publisher. It is fiction, but every writer's soul and character comes through in their work. What if his book revealed a person different from the one I knew through phone calls and emails? What if I didn't like it? All reasonable cautions. But I was curious. As it turns out, so is Malcolm Clay, the protagonist. Curious, rebellious, always drawn to the off-center. Well, so was I, starting with the second book in the series, Menopause Man-Unplugged, after giving the first, LeRoi, to a friend.

"I loved it," he said, "A male Eat Prey Love."

I was intrigued. I learned from reviewing another Fisher King Book, Eros and the Shattering Gaze: Transcending (Male) Narcissism by Ken Kimmel, that a woman can learn a great deal about herself by reading books about men. I was still nervous. I knew Mathews' book wasn't academic like Kimmel's. Mel had to be capable of creating a fictional world I was willing to dive into, get lost in, and enjoy, or would I be lost in a quagmire of words and images I couldn't relate to?

Turns out, my worries were a totally ridiculous spinning out of my own "dark side." I fell right into this book - a true Page Turner. While it is technically fiction, it reads like the journal of a very real man, with all his quirks, complexities, and goofball humor, falling for the wrong women, drawn to the wrong situations while desperately searching for the light. I don't know if this was Mathews' intention, but it reads like a prose version of the goofy guys in movies like Hangover - with a very real quest at its core. He throws in poetic references that belie his superficial kick-back persona, such as a framed copy of 'The Definitive Journey' by Juan Ramon Jimenez, Spain's great poet and author of one of my favorites, Platero and I.

the song less/on - "some of the best ever written"

the song less/on

A book of poetry by Alvaro Cardona-Hine

“Some of the best ever written . . .” 


--Tom McGrath in The National Guardian 


reviewing the haiku in The Gathering Wave.

“Cardona-Hine is far more tuned to silence than Eliot; there are no phases to his theology. He offers no disciplines, nor even Zen vacancies; he offers arrivals . . . This gentle poet has little to do with the hysterical attenuated surrealism which has in recent years dominated the better little magazines. Or with archetypes of the Great Mother or other theorizing . . . It is understandable that poets want to move out into the universe, to dream of being moles, to sink into mineral veins, to make wild dissociated images that dissolve the self. But Cardona-Hine preserves the sense of human self-hood, human wonder, adventure.”

–Benjamin Saltzman in Kayak 
reviewing Words On Paper.

Alvaro Cardona-Hine was born in Costa Rica in 1926 and was brought to the United States by his parents in 1939. By 1945 he was writing poetry then went on to translate Cesar Vallejo, write novels, make a living as a painter, and compose music which has been performed in various parts of the country. He is the recipient of an NEA grant, a Bush Foundation Fellowship and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. He lives with his wife, the poet and painter Barbara McCauley, in the small village of Truchas, in New Mexico, where the two manage their own gallery.

Product Details
* Paperback: 170 pages
* Publisher: il piccolo editions; First edition (Jan 1, 2013)
* Language: English
* ISBN-13: 978-1926715889
* www.fisherkingpress.com

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 

Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 

and a growing list of alternative titles. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

Mel Mathews, is the author of several novels (Fisher King Press). His books are available from your local bookstore, a host of on-line booksellers, or you can order them directly from his website at: www.melmathews.com © 2012 Mel Mathews