From Wobble to Diamond

Dear Friends,

This week, we continue with the psycho-spiritual issues raised and answered by the conversations between Christ and Peter.

Just to recap: last week we reviewed the delicate omni-availability of the human soul. That is, Peter is really Peter when his mind and speech are in line with the Way of the world (Matthew 16:16-18). A more hostile presence is speaking through him when he rejects the Way (Matthew 16:22,23). Any power can speak through us, depending.

At this point, Peter may not yet be quite representative of the modern human being since his sense of the truth comes straight from God (Matthew 16:17). It is explicitly not from his personal, emotional life of attachment (“flesh”), and in this way he resembles the “children of God” referred to in the Prologue (John 1:13), rather than those who come subsequent to the Word being made “flesh” (John 1:14).

The point of the events in Palestine, and actually throughout the earth at that time (cf. the Mahayana turn within Buddhism), seems to have been to effect a change in the structure of the human being, so that it is from the flesh (that is, from out of the all-too-human in us) that we have access to the Way.

We see the quality of this changed structure through Peter’s transformation, from 3-time denier to 3-time affirmer (John 18:17,25,27; John 15,16,17). The all-too-humanness of his shocked, conflicted denials, is brought into relation, by Christ’s repeated questions, to the later affirmations. And this is the whole point: the errant mind-stuff of the denials transmutes into the human warmth he feels for Christ and his readiness to work for others with compassion. (The word for “love” repeatedly used by Peter in his affirmations is the humble “philein,” not the supernaturally-tipped “agape.”)

In Buddhist terms, this has to do with the teachings around Bodhicitta, or the tenderness of the human heart. This vulnerability, availability, delicacy, this heart-wobble, can become a heightened capacity for participation in the Way.

To turn things around, Peter had to have an intuition out of his own heart's power that rose as high as his emotional lows sank low. And it took practice, three times anyway, to change his vacillating heart into a diamond.

In group, we’ll address the Greek “flesh,” “feed,” "rock" and “sheep” as terms of art in this context.

Our overall group project, coincident with that of the Gospels and Mahayana Sutras, is to turn more of ourselves into effective love. And today we’ll jointly send what we can muster of this inner efficacy to address the issue of lethal missiles, from rocks to bullets to bombs.

with love,
Michael