As For Me

Psalm 73 Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

Book III: Psalms 73–89

73 ⁽⁰⁾ A psalm of Asaf:

⁽¹⁾ How good God is to Isra’el,
to those who are pure in heart!
² But as for me, I lost my balance,
my feet nearly slipped,
³ when I grew envious of the arrogant
and saw how the wicked prosper.
⁴ For when their death comes, it is painless;
and meanwhile, their bodies are healthy;
⁵ they don’t have ordinary people’s troubles,
they aren’t plagued like others.

⁶ So for them, pride is a necklace;
and violence clothes them like a robe.
⁷ Their eyes peep out through folds of fat;
evil thoughts overflow from their hearts.
⁸ They scoff and speak with malice,
they loftily utter threats.
⁹ They set their mouths against heaven;
their tongues swagger through the earth.

¹⁰ Therefore his people return here
and [thoughtlessly] suck up that whole cup of water.
¹¹ Then they ask, “How does God know?
Does the Most High really have knowledge?”

¹² Yes, this is what the wicked are like;
those free of misfortune keep increasing their wealth.
¹³ It’s all for nothing that I’ve kept my heart clean
and washed my hands, staying free of guilt; 

¹⁴ for all day long I am plagued;
my punishment comes every morning.

¹⁵ If I had said, “I will talk like them,”
I would have betrayed a generation of your children.

¹⁶ When I tried to understand all this,
I found it too hard for me —
¹⁷ until I went into the sanctuaries of God
and grasped what their destiny would be.
¹⁸ Indeed, you place them on a slippery slope
and make them fall to their ruin.

¹⁹ How suddenly they are destroyed,
swept away by terrors!
²⁰ They are like a dream when one awakens;
Adonai, when you rouse yourself,
you will despise their phantoms.

²¹ When I had a sour attitude
and felt stung by pained emotions,
²² I was too stupid to understand;
I was like a brute beast with you.
²³ Nevertheless, I am always with you;
you hold my right hand.
²⁴ You will guide me with your advice;
and afterwards, you will receive me with honor.

²⁵ Whom do I have in heaven but you?
And with you, I lack nothing on earth.
²⁶ My mind and body may fail; but God
is the rock for my mind and my portion forever.
²⁷ Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who adulterously leave you.
²⁸ But for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made Adonai Elohim my refuge,
so that I can tell of all your works.



2 Corinthians 12:11-21 Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

²⁰ For I am afraid of coming and finding you not the way I want you to be, and also of not being found the way you want me to be.

Luke 19:41-48 Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

^{44 (partial)}— leaving not one stone standing on another — and all because you did not recognize your opportunity when God offered it!”




I don’t know very much, but I do know this— it’s very hard to put a wordless understanding into words. Sometimes poetry does a pretty good job, but even poetry needs a shared context to be understood.

I keep hearing the voices of the old Zen teachers muttering and snickering behind all of these texts, as well as the voice of one of my present-day Zen teachers, who often talks about discontent and the stories we tell ourselves.

I do know one thing, that the common English rendition of dukkha as “suffering” isn’t a very good translation of the Sanskrit. I would choose “discontent,” or “dissatisfaction.” Also, I don’t think “samsara” is adequately translated by the phrase “the cycle of rebirth.” I think that a better phrase would be “an existential feedback loop” in which we keep reinventing all of our delusions and misconceptions without ever even noticing that we are doing so.

Here is where I come to the inexpressible. In God we live and move and have our being. God is the Way, God is the Truth, and God is the Light. Christ is the human expression of God, through whom we (human beings) become expressions of God, and God becomes an expression of us.

So, the Zen wisdom that we are all already enlightened, but blinded by our wishes and wants (which in turn cause us to insist that reality must conform to our imaginations) —along with the understanding that we all have “an original face”— this Buddhist understanding can be expressed in a nearly one-to-one correlation with the Christian understanding of God Within.




From my point of view, God is both Within and Without—



Our ‘inner’ Reality connects seamlessly with the ‘outer’ Reality

of traffic jams & sunsets; roadkill & birdsong; birth defects & climbing roses—



They align perfectly

with the generous kindliness and the vicious hatred of humankind—

And so

we keep right on losing our balance and nearly slipping,

and every day we wake up and know that keeping our hearts clean is useless—



It’s hard to understand,

but all we can do is to cross the threshold of the sanctuary of understanding,

over and over again—



The Place where we suddenly ‘get it.’



Then we forget it again —



Teetering on the edge of balance;

letting our tongues swagger through the earth;

wearing our pride like a necklace;

sucking up that whole cup of water—



Being afraid of not finding you the way I want you to be,

and also of not being found the way you want me to be—



All because we did not recognize our opportunity when God offered it—



And once again not one stone will be left standing on another.