by Laura K Secor

Hello my Unitarian Friends, 

Today I am bringing you a Gnostic-Zen mashup, courtesy of Kim Rosen and Jane Hirshfield.  

You most likely know the poetry of Jane Hirshfield, which is spare to the point of lean and yet intricate, much like her Buddhist beliefs.  However, you may not know that she has also worked as a translator.  She produced an anthology called Women in Praise of the Sacred, which starts with the Hymn to Inanna, and works its way through history from Sappho to Hildegard of Bingen to Mirabai to Emily Dickinson, with many delightful stops along the way.

Included from the second (or maybe the fourth) century is the Gnostic Gospel The Thunder: Perfect Mind.  Elaine Pagel writes, “Like circles of artists today, gnostics considered original creative invention to be the mark of anyone who becomes spiritually alive.  Each one, like students of a painter or a writer, is expected to express his own perceptions by revising and transforming what he was taught…. Like artists, they express their own insight – their own “gnosis” – by creating myths, poems, rituals, “dialogues” with Christ, revelations and accounts of their visions.”

The text is long, so I am going to suggest that if you lack the desire to read the whole thing in one go, there is an alternative.  Another lovely woman who has influenced my spiritual growth is Kim Rosen.  She has made a practice of speaking poems she has learned by heart, while her friend Jami Sieber plays the cello.  You can find their first collaboration in the album Only Breath.  Recently, they collaborated with Jane and Chloe Goodchild and some other musicians to create a spoken word performance of “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” but with a twist.  While Kim speaks the poem, Chloe sings the concluding verses of the Zen classic The Heart Sutra.  

The words from the Heart Sutra are (in Sanskrit) “Gate, gate, paragate, sam paragate, bodhi svaha,” which means something like, “go beyond, go farther beyond, go farthest beyond, to enlightenment.”  While Kim chants the gnostic verse, Chloe sings the Zen sutra, and Jami accompanies them on electric cello.  This is my preferred way to experience this text, and can create a spiritual high. (https://www.kimrosen.net/creations)

Here is Jane’s offering from “The Thunder: Perfect Mind”.

Sent from the Power,
I have come
to those who reflect upon me.
Look upon me,
you who meditate,
and hearers, hear.
Whoever is waiting for me,
take me into yourselves.
Do not drive me
out of your eyes,
or out of your voice,
or our of your ears.
Observe: Do not forget who I am.

For I am the first, and the last
I am the honored one, and the scorned,
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother, the daughter,
and every part of both.
I am the barren one who has borne many sons.
I am she whose wedding is great
and I have not accepted a husband.
I am the midwife and the childless one,
the easing of my own labor.
I am the bride and the bridegroom
and my husband is my father.
I am the mother of my father,
the sister of my husband;
my husband is my child.
My offspring are my own birth,
the source of my power,
what happens to me is their wish.

I am the incomprehensible silence
And the memory that will not be forgotten.
I am the voice whose sound is everywhere
I am the speech that appears in many forms.
I am the utterance of my own name.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who tell the truth about me, lie,
and you who have lied, now tell the truth.
You who know me, be ignorant,
and you who have not known me, know.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am modesty and boldness.
I am shameless, and I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and I am peace.

Give heed to me,
the one who has been everywhere hated
and the one who is everywhere loved.
I am the one they call Life,
the one you call Death.
I am the one they call Law,
the one you call Lawless.
I am the one you have scattered,
and you have gathered me together.
I am godless, and I am the one
whose God is great.
I am the one whom you have reflected upon
and the one you have scorned.
I am unlearned,
and from me all people learn.
I am the one to whom you reveal yourself,
Yet wherever you think I hide, I appear,
And wherever you reveal yourself,
there I will vanish.

Those who are close to me,
have failed to know me,
and those who are far from me know me.
On the day when I am close to you,
that day you are far from me;
on the day when I am far from you,
that day I am close.

I am the joining and the dissolving.
I am what lasts, and what goes,
I am the one going down,
and the one toward whom they ascend.
I am the condemnation and the acquittal.
For myself, I am sinless,
and the roots of sin grow in my being.
I am the desire of the outer,
and control of the inner.
I am the hearing in everyone’s ears,
I am the speech which cannot be heard,
I am the mute who is speechless,
great are the multitudes of my words.

Hear me in softness,
and learn me in roughness.
I am she who cries out,
and I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
I prepare the bread and my mind within.
I am called truth.

You praise me and you whisper against me.
You who have been defeated,

Judge before you are judged:
the judge and all judging exist inside you,
and the one who formed you on the outside
is the one who shaped you within.

And what you see outside you, you see within.
It is visible and it is your garment.

Give heed then, you hearers,
and you also, angels and those who have been sent,
and you spirits risen now from the dead.
I am the one who alone exists,
there is no one to judge me.
For though there is much sweetness
in passionate life, in transient pleasure,
finally soberness comes
and people flee to their place of rest.
There they will find me,
and live, and not die again.

from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, edited by Jane Hirshfield and taken from the Gnostic Gospels.