Nothing is moving me except my seeking them.

In May of 2000, I traveled to Andalusia Spain and then Morocco, flying in and out of Madrid and with my southernmost destination Fez. In Cordoba, Spain, I discovered, through a museum dedicated to him, the existence of the great 13th Century Sufi master and saint, Ibn ‘Arabí. My discovery of Ibn ‘Arabí merged with a more general gleaning of knowledge about Andalusia and the Moorish kingdom he was born into, a long period of history that was highly sophisticated, relatively tolerant and populated with extraordinary religious and secular figures – in short, a “Shambhala world,” at least as I began to perceive it and identify with it.

In the spring of 2009, Ibn ‘Arabi "reentered" my life through a series of accidents and meditation experiences (that I will describe in subsequent essays). I began to read some of Ibn 'Arabi’s writing; I found resonate and highly moving correlations between his language, and that of the text of Vajrayana Buddhism I'd studied throughout my adult life. It was as if divisions between the language of "theism" and "non-theism" began to dissolve so that I could understand each through the other. As mentioned, this all happened accidentally, as in this passage from my journal attests: "This morning, the next page of the "sadhana" came to me in the same way the sound of the woodpecker on the neighbor’s roof did – without me looking for it, but simply by grabbing a book on the way to the bathroom (grotto of accidents):"

The Muhammadian is not distinguished except by the fact that he has no station specifically. His station is that of no-station, which means the following: if man is dominated by his state, then he is known only by it. But the Muhammadian’s relationship to the stations is as the relationship of God to the Names – he is not determined by any station that is related to him. On the contrary, in every breath, in every moment, in every state, he is in the form required by that breath, moment, state. His limitation has no temporal continuity. The divine determinations vary at each moment, and so he is variable with their variability. God is “every day at work” and so also is the Muhammadian. From The Unlimited Mercifier by Stephen Hirtenstein.

Defined this way, Lord Mukpo was clearly the perfect “Muhammadian” and to have “no-station” but to become “the form required” by every arising “breath, moment, state” is a most beautiful way of saying “East.” Stephen Hirtenstein writes that the saint “is aware of the constant movement of changes of Divine revelation in each instant, an awareness which only occurs in the heart. “Divine revelations” are the messages of the dralas, steaming forth as the golden rain which continually descends and the turquoise flower which auspiciously blooms. The “limitation of belief” blocks access to the dralas and stands in contrast to the wisdom Ibn Aribí describes:

He who limits Him [to one belief] denies him [when He manifests] in other than what he believes, and accepts closeness to Him only in what he limits Him to, when He reveals Himself. One who is free of this limiting condition does not deny Him but accepts closeness to him in every form into which He changes… The forms of revelation have no end at which they stop.

Having “no-station specifically” is the same commitment to groundlessness as is taught in Buddhism. It means to take the experience of bardo as home; as Lord Mukpo taught in the book Transcending Madness:

Bardo is a Tibetan word; bar means “in between” or you could say, “”no-man’s-land,” and do is like a tower or island in that no-man’s-land. It’s like a flowing river which belongs neither to the other shore or this shore… All bardo experiences are situations in which we have emerged from the past and we have not yet formulated the future, but strangely enough happen to be somewhere.. That mysterious ground, which belongs to neither that nor this, is the actual experience of bardo. It is very closely associated with the practice of meditation. In fact, it is the meditation experience.

This link of The Western Mountain Project will continue with further studies and information sources about Ibn ‘Arabí.

Lord Mukpo Legacy & Studies: The teachings and legacy of Chögyam Trungpa.

Western Mountain Cinema: Documentary films by Bill Scheffel.

I Ching Sudies & Consultaions: Classes and individual consultations offered by Bill Scheffel.

Ibn Arabi Studies: Intersections between the great 13th Century Sufi saint & the drala principle.

Travel Writing: Travel without guidebooks & the origin of the Western Mountain.

Cambodia: Writings, reflections, visions.

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