It's taken me a couple of weeks to recover from Holy Week. I don't know if there's such a thing as too much preaching, but if there is, Holy Week is it. At the same time, I talked a lot about souls in my sermons, which got me thinking.... (That's always dangerous, I know.)
One ideal to which the classic practice of mindfulness drives us is the realization of no-self. No-self can be a difficult concept. For many it can seem self-abnegating. Thich Nhat Hanh, however, handles the idea with a grace and richness--that I frankly have come to expect from him. He explains that the "self" that mindfulness confronts is the self that's possessed with itself--that is both in love with itself (this is the concept of manas that I've talked about elsewhere) and that sees itself as an independent, self-sufficient being. The self as an island, if you will, and an island that must be better than all of the other islands around it.
The goal of mindfulness practice, in this context, is to get us to see the deep interrelation of our selves with the world that surrounds us. That we have no self apart from the intricate web of relationships in which we live and move and have our being. Our selves are born of many non-self elements--of the many people in our lives, or our experiences, of the quality of our environment. (It really does shape you differently to grow up in the moist warmth of New Orleans as opposed to the dry heat of Arizona.) For Thich Nhat Hanh, we realize no-self when we recognize that we inter-are--that our lives are bound up with the world in which we live.
So does no-self imply no-soul? Not at least the way I understand the idea of soul--an idea that I've learned from Christian mystics, especially Julian of Norwich. Our soul is precisely our capacity for relationship---or not just the capacity but the reality of the relationships which our lives are grounded. To be more precise, from a Christian perspective our soul is that place where we stand in an intimate and original (or originating) relationship with God. It's not just that our souls are married to God, but that the marriage is the content of our soul. (Notice, this isn't to say that our souls are God---but that they are bound up with the life of God.)
For me, the God dimension of this doesn't negate the Thich Nhat Hanh's deep sense of our interbeing with the world that surrounds us. If the truth at the heart of each of us is this original relationship with God, then in and through this relationship, our lives/souls must be bound up with one another--with the whole of the creation as well. For me, the God dimension of this adds depth and mystery to Thich Nhat Hanh's sense of interbeing---and our truth is precisely in this depth and mystery.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Diligence
I've written before about our bondage to our habits, but habits can be freeing as well. They free us in simple ways. I have a habit of wearing the same outfits each day of the week--green pants/black shirt for Monday, sweats for Tuesday (yoga day), blue pin-striped shirt/khaki pants for Wednesday, etc.... It's not profound, but it saves energy when I don't have to plan my wardrobe.
Habits can free us in more profound ways, though. I've talked about living mindfully, attending to the present moment, opening ourselves to the grace at hand. If we have to constantly remind ourselves to live mindfully--if mindfulness is a repeated conscious act--then we're not really being mindful. We're attending to mindfulness, and not the present moment. Our minds are having to constantly recall our need to be mindful, and soon this too will exhaust us. We are truly mindful, we have opened ourselves to grace, only as we have made a habit of this. Thich Nhat Hanh calls this reprogramming ourselves for the habit of happiness.
Diligence is a key component of this reprogramming. It's the intentional farming of our attention, weeding out those things that distract us from the grace of the moment and nurturing what opens us to that grace---weeding out an overriding concern for how much we have or how successful we are, for example, while we nurture simple awareness. Thich Nhat Hanh offers a couple of thoughts I find helpful on this. ("Buddha Mind, Buddha Body")
First, he urges us to organize our lives in ways that don't encourage the distractions. We need to be serious about nurturing a habit of happiness, and we do this by taking seriously what gets in the way and avoiding it. Too many days, I wake up, come out, and turn on my computer. Then I'm surprised that I spend more time than I want in front of it, neglecting deeper, richer things. Maybe if I just didn't turn it on for a few hours....
Second, he reminds us of a practice called "changing the peg." It's carpenter's practice of driving out a rotted peg in a structure by driving in a new peg. So too, one way to drive away distractions is to not merely shoo them off, but to replace them with what's rewarding. I don't just turn off my computer, but I turn and ask my son to work a puzzle....
I want to spend more time thinking about how to nurture a habit of happiness--of simple awareness.
Habits can free us in more profound ways, though. I've talked about living mindfully, attending to the present moment, opening ourselves to the grace at hand. If we have to constantly remind ourselves to live mindfully--if mindfulness is a repeated conscious act--then we're not really being mindful. We're attending to mindfulness, and not the present moment. Our minds are having to constantly recall our need to be mindful, and soon this too will exhaust us. We are truly mindful, we have opened ourselves to grace, only as we have made a habit of this. Thich Nhat Hanh calls this reprogramming ourselves for the habit of happiness.
Diligence is a key component of this reprogramming. It's the intentional farming of our attention, weeding out those things that distract us from the grace of the moment and nurturing what opens us to that grace---weeding out an overriding concern for how much we have or how successful we are, for example, while we nurture simple awareness. Thich Nhat Hanh offers a couple of thoughts I find helpful on this. ("Buddha Mind, Buddha Body")
First, he urges us to organize our lives in ways that don't encourage the distractions. We need to be serious about nurturing a habit of happiness, and we do this by taking seriously what gets in the way and avoiding it. Too many days, I wake up, come out, and turn on my computer. Then I'm surprised that I spend more time than I want in front of it, neglecting deeper, richer things. Maybe if I just didn't turn it on for a few hours....
Second, he reminds us of a practice called "changing the peg." It's carpenter's practice of driving out a rotted peg in a structure by driving in a new peg. So too, one way to drive away distractions is to not merely shoo them off, but to replace them with what's rewarding. I don't just turn off my computer, but I turn and ask my son to work a puzzle....
I want to spend more time thinking about how to nurture a habit of happiness--of simple awareness.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Showing Up
Evidently Woody Allen is the one who said that "90% of success is just showing up." I was looking for the author of the quote on-line, and I found it on a blog that was highly critical of the idea in its turn. "That's not what we need to teach our children." was the response. "We need to expect far more of them than just showing up." I understand the respondent's frustration, but I don't know that he understands how hard it is to "just show up." If any of us could show up--and I mean really show up--on a consistent basis, our lives would be so much richer. What we'd have to offer the world would be so much deeper.
In many ways, that's what the spirituality of mindfulness is about. It's about showing up. Thu Nguyen, a mindfulness teacher here in Fairfax County, once taught a small group of us at my church how to hug one another mindfully. (It's a practice he learned from Thich Nhat Hahn.) His point was that so often when we hug, we don't actually manage to show up for our hugs. It's a motion that we go through, but we aren't really there for the other in the hug. We aren't there ourselves, so we certainly can't be attentive to them whatever they are bringing to the hug. A mindful hug is hug where you actually pause in the midst of your life to show up for the hug. You see the other person and ask them to see you. You take them thoughtfully, so that you can hold them for as long as they would like to hold you. Again, you're present to them. Present to the hug. That's the point of the hug anyway, isn't it? Really, with the hug, 100% of success is showing up.
I come back again to the question of spirituality and mindfulness, and the spirituality of teaching mindfulness in a secular setting. I realize that this idea of "just showing up" is essential both to the practice and the spirituality intrinsic within it. We want to teach our children how to be mindful so that they can be present--so that they can show up for their lives and for the world. Mindfulness is the practice of being there, and not somewhere else in your head distant from the moment before you. Too often we think that we need to do more than show up, and so we're off looking for that more, absenting ourselves from the present. We communicate that to our children, and they too struggle for the more, forgetting to just show up for life there and then.
I don't know how to put a percentage on the importance of showing up, but I know there's nothing more that I want from myself, from my children, and from anyone with whom I'm in relationship. Just show up. If only it were that easy.
In many ways, that's what the spirituality of mindfulness is about. It's about showing up. Thu Nguyen, a mindfulness teacher here in Fairfax County, once taught a small group of us at my church how to hug one another mindfully. (It's a practice he learned from Thich Nhat Hahn.) His point was that so often when we hug, we don't actually manage to show up for our hugs. It's a motion that we go through, but we aren't really there for the other in the hug. We aren't there ourselves, so we certainly can't be attentive to them whatever they are bringing to the hug. A mindful hug is hug where you actually pause in the midst of your life to show up for the hug. You see the other person and ask them to see you. You take them thoughtfully, so that you can hold them for as long as they would like to hold you. Again, you're present to them. Present to the hug. That's the point of the hug anyway, isn't it? Really, with the hug, 100% of success is showing up.
I come back again to the question of spirituality and mindfulness, and the spirituality of teaching mindfulness in a secular setting. I realize that this idea of "just showing up" is essential both to the practice and the spirituality intrinsic within it. We want to teach our children how to be mindful so that they can be present--so that they can show up for their lives and for the world. Mindfulness is the practice of being there, and not somewhere else in your head distant from the moment before you. Too often we think that we need to do more than show up, and so we're off looking for that more, absenting ourselves from the present. We communicate that to our children, and they too struggle for the more, forgetting to just show up for life there and then.
I don't know how to put a percentage on the importance of showing up, but I know there's nothing more that I want from myself, from my children, and from anyone with whom I'm in relationship. Just show up. If only it were that easy.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Spirituality and Mindfulness II
I had a lovely weekend thinking together with folks about how we can enrich the lives of our children and youth by opening them to mindful living. Nothing radical, but perhaps revolutionary. The goal is to make space for intentional quiet and self-awareness in the classroom---the kind of quiet and self-awareness that forms our brain in healthy ways and open our hearts to the world.
I came to the conference with the questions of my last post in mind. The issue of spirituality is acute when thinking about mindfulness in education. It's imperative if you want to bring the basic healthy practice of mindfulness into a classroom that be a secular practice--that it be about stress reduction, about creating mental space for clear decision-making and richer awareness of self and other. The fundamentals of mindfulness practice are so rich, and they can be appropriated in any context.
At the same time, not only was it clear implicitly that a deep spirituality was at work in almost everyone speaking at the conference, but when I explicitly asked about it in one small group, the response was quite warm. Everyone present acknowledged the need for a "secular" approach to mindfulness in a school setting---but everyone also avowed that the practice of mindfulness for them was deeply spiritual. The basics of this spirituality are humility, compassion, and an awareness of the deep connectedness of life.
Susan Kaiser Greenland got at one of the most essential truths of this when she reminded folks of the need to be mindfully rooted oneself if you're going to offer the practice of mindfulness to others. It's not simply a collection of techniques--like typing--that you can teach simply by running through the mechanics. Mindfulness is a way of being--of being peace, being open, being connected, being compassionate--and it's a way of being that's infectious. You can offer others mindful practices, but these will best lead them into mindful being if you, the teacher, embody the reality into which you are inviting them.
I was grateful for the weekend, and for Richard Brady, who organized it.
I came to the conference with the questions of my last post in mind. The issue of spirituality is acute when thinking about mindfulness in education. It's imperative if you want to bring the basic healthy practice of mindfulness into a classroom that be a secular practice--that it be about stress reduction, about creating mental space for clear decision-making and richer awareness of self and other. The fundamentals of mindfulness practice are so rich, and they can be appropriated in any context.
At the same time, not only was it clear implicitly that a deep spirituality was at work in almost everyone speaking at the conference, but when I explicitly asked about it in one small group, the response was quite warm. Everyone present acknowledged the need for a "secular" approach to mindfulness in a school setting---but everyone also avowed that the practice of mindfulness for them was deeply spiritual. The basics of this spirituality are humility, compassion, and an awareness of the deep connectedness of life.
Susan Kaiser Greenland got at one of the most essential truths of this when she reminded folks of the need to be mindfully rooted oneself if you're going to offer the practice of mindfulness to others. It's not simply a collection of techniques--like typing--that you can teach simply by running through the mechanics. Mindfulness is a way of being--of being peace, being open, being connected, being compassionate--and it's a way of being that's infectious. You can offer others mindful practices, but these will best lead them into mindful being if you, the teacher, embody the reality into which you are inviting them.
I was grateful for the weekend, and for Richard Brady, who organized it.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Spirituality and Mindfulness
I'm going to a two day conference on Mindfulness in Education over the weekend. Susan Kaiser Greenland is the keynote speaker, and I'm looking forward to hearing her. Much of my work with children I've learned from her wonderful book, The Mindful Child.
The conference, though, has me thinking about the connection between mindfulness and spirituality. SKG works out of the tradition of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction that was born out of the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, among others. This tradition defines itself explicitly as a secular science so that it might find a home in medical science and in public schools. It attends to the very real physical, measurable effects of mindfulness training, especially the capacity of mindfulness training to reduce stress in our lives. Mindfulness training is directed in almost all traditions first to taming the "monkey mind" that will literally wear us out if we let it.
My practice of mindfulness began, in some sense, with this secular approach. I was simply trying to keep my mind from spinning in a dark time. (See my first post, Getting Started) But I quickly discovered the links between mindfulness training and my own practice of prayer, and as my practice of prayer deepened into contemplative prayer, so did my mindfulness practice deepen. Only when I discovered the practice of mindfulness in the Buddhist spiritual tradition through the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, however, was I able to put a name on the practice of mindfulness and bring it into more explicit connection with my understanding of the spiritual life.
There is a difference between secular practices of mindfulness and those that overtly acknowledge the spiritual reality to which this practice opens us. I don't know how to name this difference, except to say that the spiritual traditions around the practice of mindfulness are always pushing us to open ourselves to something more through the practice. The model from Kabat-Zinn emphasizes stress reduction in the title, and that certainly is a product of mindfulness training, but its only a preliminary stage for spiritual traditions of mindfulness. In the spiritual practice of mindfulness, we try to free ourselves from the stress of life not as an end in itself, but as a means to opening ourselves to something more--to our relationship with creation and, more significantly, to our relationship with the Life in which creation "lives and moves and has its being."
A last thought. However much there is a difference between the spiritual and secular practices of mindfulness, I would also want to emphasize their continuity. Reading through the work of anyone writing about MBSR, you find constant reference to the something more. That's the power of opening yourself to life--you can't help but to be touched by the something more that fills it. For me, this continuity is important for understanding my spirituality. It helps me grasp that the life of the spirit isn't something separate from my embodied life. I'm not delving into the magical or supernatural when I immerse myself in the spiritual. Rather, I'm simply engaging life in its depth dimension. God's creation is one, and the spiritual life exists in a unity with the physical and psychological life. That's so much of the beauty and the mystery of creation.
The conference, though, has me thinking about the connection between mindfulness and spirituality. SKG works out of the tradition of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction that was born out of the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, among others. This tradition defines itself explicitly as a secular science so that it might find a home in medical science and in public schools. It attends to the very real physical, measurable effects of mindfulness training, especially the capacity of mindfulness training to reduce stress in our lives. Mindfulness training is directed in almost all traditions first to taming the "monkey mind" that will literally wear us out if we let it.
My practice of mindfulness began, in some sense, with this secular approach. I was simply trying to keep my mind from spinning in a dark time. (See my first post, Getting Started) But I quickly discovered the links between mindfulness training and my own practice of prayer, and as my practice of prayer deepened into contemplative prayer, so did my mindfulness practice deepen. Only when I discovered the practice of mindfulness in the Buddhist spiritual tradition through the work of Thich Nhat Hanh, however, was I able to put a name on the practice of mindfulness and bring it into more explicit connection with my understanding of the spiritual life.
There is a difference between secular practices of mindfulness and those that overtly acknowledge the spiritual reality to which this practice opens us. I don't know how to name this difference, except to say that the spiritual traditions around the practice of mindfulness are always pushing us to open ourselves to something more through the practice. The model from Kabat-Zinn emphasizes stress reduction in the title, and that certainly is a product of mindfulness training, but its only a preliminary stage for spiritual traditions of mindfulness. In the spiritual practice of mindfulness, we try to free ourselves from the stress of life not as an end in itself, but as a means to opening ourselves to something more--to our relationship with creation and, more significantly, to our relationship with the Life in which creation "lives and moves and has its being."
A last thought. However much there is a difference between the spiritual and secular practices of mindfulness, I would also want to emphasize their continuity. Reading through the work of anyone writing about MBSR, you find constant reference to the something more. That's the power of opening yourself to life--you can't help but to be touched by the something more that fills it. For me, this continuity is important for understanding my spirituality. It helps me grasp that the life of the spirit isn't something separate from my embodied life. I'm not delving into the magical or supernatural when I immerse myself in the spiritual. Rather, I'm simply engaging life in its depth dimension. God's creation is one, and the spiritual life exists in a unity with the physical and psychological life. That's so much of the beauty and the mystery of creation.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Naming
Many cultures have a tradition that suggests that naming someone or something gives you power over them. It's an idea embodied in the Rumplestiltskin story. Having named my five-year old, let me just say, "Hah!" I have no power over him, and he would mock me if I suggested that I did. Knowing his name--that doesn't even give me any definitive knowledge of him. He is a mystery to me in so many ways, and I know that this mystery will only deepen as he ages. But knowing his name, what I do have is a relationship with him. He, likewise, relates to me in so many ways through my name--Daddy--though he was also excited to discover that I was named "Stephen" as well.
The second chapter of Genesis offers the story of God's creation of the Adam and all living things, and in the story the many creatures pass before Adam and Adam names them. Too often we've thought this story permits our domination of creation--a "name = power" kind of thing. But even if we don't make that mistake, we are wont to think that knowing a name, we are able to define something. We can put it in a box. This is a cat, and so it's not a dog, and this is what it means to be a cat.... I love all that we've learned through scientific inquiry, but too often it's only encouraged this trust in our ability to define. Now I can know my cat or my son at a genetic level. But does that really allow me to know them?
There's a deep belief in the mystery of all creation embedded in almost all spiritual traditions. Nothing is an island to itself---we and the world around us have no clean definition. Our life is bound up with our fellow creatures, and it is more profoundly bound up with our creator. So to know the name of anyone or anything--it can't offer us a definition since no definition exists. Instead, it offers a relationship. That's what Adam gained in Genesis. A relationship with all of creation. That relationship allows us to explore the mystery of another, to explore the life that we share.
There is a deep power to names, but it takes wisdom to understand that power and then to live into it.
The second chapter of Genesis offers the story of God's creation of the Adam and all living things, and in the story the many creatures pass before Adam and Adam names them. Too often we've thought this story permits our domination of creation--a "name = power" kind of thing. But even if we don't make that mistake, we are wont to think that knowing a name, we are able to define something. We can put it in a box. This is a cat, and so it's not a dog, and this is what it means to be a cat.... I love all that we've learned through scientific inquiry, but too often it's only encouraged this trust in our ability to define. Now I can know my cat or my son at a genetic level. But does that really allow me to know them?
There's a deep belief in the mystery of all creation embedded in almost all spiritual traditions. Nothing is an island to itself---we and the world around us have no clean definition. Our life is bound up with our fellow creatures, and it is more profoundly bound up with our creator. So to know the name of anyone or anything--it can't offer us a definition since no definition exists. Instead, it offers a relationship. That's what Adam gained in Genesis. A relationship with all of creation. That relationship allows us to explore the mystery of another, to explore the life that we share.
There is a deep power to names, but it takes wisdom to understand that power and then to live into it.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Habitual Love
Our freedom consists of two things, really. The lesser freedom that we talk about most frequently is what we call freedom of choice. It's a freedom from--from bondage, from compulsion, from enforced conformity. At its most mundane, it's the freedom to choose carrots or peas as you move through the cafeteria line or, if you're my son Andrew, to reject them both and choose a cookie instead. Freedom from is an important freedom. It's freedom from slavery in the many senses of that term, and I don't mean to diminish it by calling it a lesser freedom. It's the freedom that I wrote about in my last post about habits and our freedom from their domination.
But there is a second freedom. It is the freedom for something, or as monastic thinkers would put it, the freedom to love whole-heartedly. Freedom for implies freedom from. I can't be free to love one thing if I'm bound by my love of another. Whole-hearted loving is grounded in the ability to choose what or who we love, but it also goes beyond this choice. A simple example: I love my wife, and I find my love is able to deepen to the degree that the freedom of this love shifts from being the freedom of choice--the freedom to survey an array of women each day and choose which one I should love--to a freedom simply for her, so that my energy is not exhausted by a daily choosing, but can devote itself to knowing her and loving her more fully. I don't choose each day to love Cyndi. I simply love her, and the question for me is how I might move more into that love. (Not that I always give that question the attention that I should, or that my other habits don't crowd it out all too often.)
To say that I simply love Cyndi is to say that I've formed a habit of loving her--and I realize that can sound dangerous. Love that is mere habit sounds dull and repetitive--almost an afterthought. It sounds that way, but if you've moved to such a non-considered relationship, then you really aren't loving at all. Loving,..., true loving implies mindfulness. It implies paying attention. It implies a heart that is engaged. The true habit of love is whole-hearted, and so it can never be an afterthought.
To be mindful, then, is a two-step. It's to attend to our habits so that we might free ourselves from the habits that bind us. But we do this so that we can form new habits--habits of love or, more particularly, habits of loving what is life-giving. Mindfulness both brings to our attention what gives life, and then it allows us to give ourselves (in freedom) to the habit of loving what gives life.
The Gospel passage read in the lectionary this coming Sunday reminds us that we can't love God and mammon. The suggestion is that we free ourselves from the possession of material things---that we loose the bonds of that habit--so that we can give ourselves fully to the habit of loving God. A first step in the deepening of the spiritual life is to move from an obliviousness to God to a place where we ask ourselves if we will love God. A second step is when we stop asking ourselves if we'll love God because we are now asking ourselves how we will love God. That's the habit of love, and it is truly a gift.
But there is a second freedom. It is the freedom for something, or as monastic thinkers would put it, the freedom to love whole-heartedly. Freedom for implies freedom from. I can't be free to love one thing if I'm bound by my love of another. Whole-hearted loving is grounded in the ability to choose what or who we love, but it also goes beyond this choice. A simple example: I love my wife, and I find my love is able to deepen to the degree that the freedom of this love shifts from being the freedom of choice--the freedom to survey an array of women each day and choose which one I should love--to a freedom simply for her, so that my energy is not exhausted by a daily choosing, but can devote itself to knowing her and loving her more fully. I don't choose each day to love Cyndi. I simply love her, and the question for me is how I might move more into that love. (Not that I always give that question the attention that I should, or that my other habits don't crowd it out all too often.)
To say that I simply love Cyndi is to say that I've formed a habit of loving her--and I realize that can sound dangerous. Love that is mere habit sounds dull and repetitive--almost an afterthought. It sounds that way, but if you've moved to such a non-considered relationship, then you really aren't loving at all. Loving,..., true loving implies mindfulness. It implies paying attention. It implies a heart that is engaged. The true habit of love is whole-hearted, and so it can never be an afterthought.
To be mindful, then, is a two-step. It's to attend to our habits so that we might free ourselves from the habits that bind us. But we do this so that we can form new habits--habits of love or, more particularly, habits of loving what is life-giving. Mindfulness both brings to our attention what gives life, and then it allows us to give ourselves (in freedom) to the habit of loving what gives life.
The Gospel passage read in the lectionary this coming Sunday reminds us that we can't love God and mammon. The suggestion is that we free ourselves from the possession of material things---that we loose the bonds of that habit--so that we can give ourselves fully to the habit of loving God. A first step in the deepening of the spiritual life is to move from an obliviousness to God to a place where we ask ourselves if we will love God. A second step is when we stop asking ourselves if we'll love God because we are now asking ourselves how we will love God. That's the habit of love, and it is truly a gift.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Breaking Habits or Loving Them?
Augustine first introduced me to habits. Not those simple things that we call habits--that I bite my nails or drop my dirty clothes on the floor. No, I mean the darker habits that we harbor--habits of envy or anger or lust. The habits of our hearts that lead us, too often, where we've promised not to go. The habits that led Luther to write about the bondage of our wills. Luther's bondage language goes back at least to Augustine. Augustine believed deeply that God had created us with free wills, but as experience lent him its wisdom, he because more aware of our forfeiture of that freedom. We freely choose to chain ourselves, he argues. We make a simple decision--we commit a simple act--and we forge the first link of a chain. Then another decision or act follows the first, and then another, and before we know it, we have willingly forged a chain of habit that makes us into people that we would never choose to be. It's a story that most addicts know well. Augustine's recognition is that we are all addicts in some sense--we all have an addiction to envy or self-pity or lust or pride....
Any addict can also tell you that we forge strong chains---that's a part of the strength of our wills. But we have to know that we nonetheless maintain our God-given freedom. We are bound by our habits, but we are not lost to them. We still have some simple freedoms---the freedom to pay attention, the freedom to love, the freedom to be open to God's grace.
Mindful Prayer--habits cannot take it away from us, though they can impinge on our commitment to it. But we have the simple freedom to notice our breath, to quiet ourselves, to get out of the way to pay attention to the grace that surrounds us. I'll write about the effect of this attention to grace on our habits some other time. Simply put, grace can quietly unwind the chains in which we've bound ourselves, if we just give it the time.
But mindfulness can address our habits more directly, as well. When we learn to quiet ourselves, to be aware of our thoughts and our intentions even as they're giving birth to our actions---as we learn to quiet ourselves, we can notice the energy of habit as it arises within us. I notice the anger that's immediately spurred when someone cuts me off on the freeway, and I can notice as it requests that my foot depress the accelerator just that little bit extra. But what do I do with it then? There are times when I can just reject the habit in the moment, but I know that it doesn't go away. I know that it lurks, waiting until my guard is down. Is there another option?
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that I can love my habit, instead of rejecting it. Loving it, of course, doesn't mean following it whole-heartedly. No, it means to notice it and let it know that I notice it. I can attend to it. I can invite it out into the open. I can bring it out of the darkness in which it hides and ask it why it is so tormented. He writes that when we notice a habit we can say to it, "Oh my dear habit energy, you are a long-time friend of mine I know you too well. I will take good care of you." (Buddha Mind, Buddha Body, p. 80) The habit does not, then, immediately evaporate. If only it were that easy. But if we live in a begraced world, then I believe that a constant exposure of our habits to the world's grace has to have a softening effect--a transformative effect. I don't know that my habits will ever go away, but if they can just become a bit more pliable, a little less insistent, then by grace I can find freedom amidst the chains.
Any addict can also tell you that we forge strong chains---that's a part of the strength of our wills. But we have to know that we nonetheless maintain our God-given freedom. We are bound by our habits, but we are not lost to them. We still have some simple freedoms---the freedom to pay attention, the freedom to love, the freedom to be open to God's grace.
Mindful Prayer--habits cannot take it away from us, though they can impinge on our commitment to it. But we have the simple freedom to notice our breath, to quiet ourselves, to get out of the way to pay attention to the grace that surrounds us. I'll write about the effect of this attention to grace on our habits some other time. Simply put, grace can quietly unwind the chains in which we've bound ourselves, if we just give it the time.
But mindfulness can address our habits more directly, as well. When we learn to quiet ourselves, to be aware of our thoughts and our intentions even as they're giving birth to our actions---as we learn to quiet ourselves, we can notice the energy of habit as it arises within us. I notice the anger that's immediately spurred when someone cuts me off on the freeway, and I can notice as it requests that my foot depress the accelerator just that little bit extra. But what do I do with it then? There are times when I can just reject the habit in the moment, but I know that it doesn't go away. I know that it lurks, waiting until my guard is down. Is there another option?
Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that I can love my habit, instead of rejecting it. Loving it, of course, doesn't mean following it whole-heartedly. No, it means to notice it and let it know that I notice it. I can attend to it. I can invite it out into the open. I can bring it out of the darkness in which it hides and ask it why it is so tormented. He writes that when we notice a habit we can say to it, "Oh my dear habit energy, you are a long-time friend of mine I know you too well. I will take good care of you." (Buddha Mind, Buddha Body, p. 80) The habit does not, then, immediately evaporate. If only it were that easy. But if we live in a begraced world, then I believe that a constant exposure of our habits to the world's grace has to have a softening effect--a transformative effect. I don't know that my habits will ever go away, but if they can just become a bit more pliable, a little less insistent, then by grace I can find freedom amidst the chains.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Keeping Time
Every morning, Christopher and I go to his preschool. He runs up the steps and struggles to open the exterior door. (It really is very heavy.) He runs to the first interior door. (You'll note that the verb "run", as well as the verbs "bounce," "jump," "hop," and "bang" will be used quite frequently in juxtaposition with Christopher's name.) He opens that door, and then goes sprinting down the hallway. Every morning. And every morning I smile. It's precious.
This morning I smiled, but it was a little bittersweet. I knew that 15 years from now, as I was sending him off to college (or wherever he goes) I'll have a faint memory of this sweet time, and I'll miss it. I'll wonder where it went. I'll long for it and want it back--even, I'm guessing, while I won't want to give up those future years as well.
This entry isn't another meditation on staying in the moment, since it's the only moment that we have. Yes, one lesson from my recognition of the reality of time and change is that I need to treasure each moment with Christopher, because none of them will last forever.
No, this entry is a reflection on my desire to keep time--to possess it and not let it go. I don't want to just experience that moment with Christopher in the hall. I want to freeze it and lock it away as mine forever. I don't just want to experience the moment in the moment--I want to stay in the moment, even as I want all of the other moments, past and future. I want to keep time--to own time. And I know that it's futile.
How should I respond to the futility? I have a number of thoughts. An obvious one is to acknowledge it and learn to let go as a response. If I know I can't hold on to the moment, then at least I can alleviate the desperation of clutching after it as it escapes. Acknowledging futility gives evidence of a bit of wisdom. It even opens the way to self-knowledge. It opens me to the humility of recognizing that I don't own time. That's what it is to be human. Ultimately, we rent, we don't own.
A second thought is to let go of ownership so that I can just be present to the moment. (Okay, so maybe this is just another entry on staying in the moment, but it's different from the last one.) There was nothing bittersweet in my time with Christopher. The bitter only came with my desire to possess and the frustration of that desire. Let go of the desire and just stay with Christopher!
But there's the third impulse--the mystical/spiritual impulse. It's what I'll call a recognition of the flow---of the divine life that was/is there in that moment. I'll talk about that flow elsewhere--it demands multiple blogs of its own. But the divine--God--is present in all of these moments--and God holds all of these moments within. God does own them, if you will. And God can own me--does own me. If I can be present to God in the midst of my presence to each moment, then I can maintain my presence to them even in the midst of their passing. God is God of the living, Jesus tells us. If God is the God of that moment with Christopher, then that moment lives in God and it is alive to me as I learn to live in God.
I can't keep time, but God can, and God can keep me. Now if I can just learn to be kept.
This morning I smiled, but it was a little bittersweet. I knew that 15 years from now, as I was sending him off to college (or wherever he goes) I'll have a faint memory of this sweet time, and I'll miss it. I'll wonder where it went. I'll long for it and want it back--even, I'm guessing, while I won't want to give up those future years as well.
This entry isn't another meditation on staying in the moment, since it's the only moment that we have. Yes, one lesson from my recognition of the reality of time and change is that I need to treasure each moment with Christopher, because none of them will last forever.
No, this entry is a reflection on my desire to keep time--to possess it and not let it go. I don't want to just experience that moment with Christopher in the hall. I want to freeze it and lock it away as mine forever. I don't just want to experience the moment in the moment--I want to stay in the moment, even as I want all of the other moments, past and future. I want to keep time--to own time. And I know that it's futile.
How should I respond to the futility? I have a number of thoughts. An obvious one is to acknowledge it and learn to let go as a response. If I know I can't hold on to the moment, then at least I can alleviate the desperation of clutching after it as it escapes. Acknowledging futility gives evidence of a bit of wisdom. It even opens the way to self-knowledge. It opens me to the humility of recognizing that I don't own time. That's what it is to be human. Ultimately, we rent, we don't own.
A second thought is to let go of ownership so that I can just be present to the moment. (Okay, so maybe this is just another entry on staying in the moment, but it's different from the last one.) There was nothing bittersweet in my time with Christopher. The bitter only came with my desire to possess and the frustration of that desire. Let go of the desire and just stay with Christopher!
But there's the third impulse--the mystical/spiritual impulse. It's what I'll call a recognition of the flow---of the divine life that was/is there in that moment. I'll talk about that flow elsewhere--it demands multiple blogs of its own. But the divine--God--is present in all of these moments--and God holds all of these moments within. God does own them, if you will. And God can own me--does own me. If I can be present to God in the midst of my presence to each moment, then I can maintain my presence to them even in the midst of their passing. God is God of the living, Jesus tells us. If God is the God of that moment with Christopher, then that moment lives in God and it is alive to me as I learn to live in God.
I can't keep time, but God can, and God can keep me. Now if I can just learn to be kept.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Time
I worry less and less these days if I have the time for this and that, and more about simply having Time. That’s largely because I’ve found that even if I can make time for this and that, I can’t make Time. Time is a gift. I don’t mean tomorrow’s time, or our total allotment of time on earth—though that is a gift as well. I mean this time. This day. The only time that we actually have, unless we ignore it and let it slip away, leaving us with no time at all.
Cyndi and I were talking last night about how cold this winter has been, and I realized that we’ve only just begun February. I longed for March, but then I realized, “Do I really want to just throw February away?” I don’t know how many more Februarys I get. Maybe I should treasure this one. I need to remember how to treasure even the cold, if cold is what fills the time. That’s a part of our problem with having time. We have it only by opening ourselves to what fills it. When we want to avoid the latter, we lose the former. We have no time left. Oddly, though, if we open ourselves to the time—if I remind myself to want February, at least while it’s February—then that transforms what fills February, as well. The cold is the embodiment of the time, and if I value the time, then I’ll learn to value the cold.
So often, when Jesus talks about time, he asks us to remember that time is a treasure. The rich man who fills his barns to secure his future—he loses both barns and future and misses the one the treasure that he couldn’t lose—the opportunity to love today. Likewise, Jesus reminds those who are anxious about their many things—their clothes, their food, their wealth—he reminds them to see the blessings of today, of this time, and to let those other things tend to themselves. To put it another way, if we fill our time with things, the things overwhelm our time. But if we treasure our time for itself, we will find treasures within it--treasures that he hadn't noticed when we were so preoccupied with our things.
Time is a treasure. It’s what God first creates, to hold whatever other treasures that God would give us. Do I tend to the treasure? Do I recognize that I can find God in it, if I’ll just open my eyes—put away distractions. Time—this time—this moment—now—it touches on eternity. Will I find the time for Time?
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Getting Lost
I was at Council for the Diocese of Virginia the last couple of days. It was an unpleasant experience for me, as that kind of experience always is. Not because of the content of the meeting, and I enjoyed seeing old friends there. But simply being at an intimate gathering of close to a thousand folks in a room--it's overwhelming for me. I end up feeling scattered. Dislocated. Lost.
Earlier today I celebrated at the burial service for a wonderful older parishioner. It was a gift to be able have a part in his service--to celebrate his life and, even more, the life he has in God. Yet, again, it's a discomfiting experience for me. It's another experience in which I get lost. Not dispersed across a sea of faces though. More lost in the face of death. However much I believe that we abide in God, by grace, through death, I am still aware at a deep level that in death we are undone. Confronting that reality, I am always undone, at least for a bit.
What do these two experiences challenge in me? I suppose that a western psychological approach would use the term "ego"--that my well-guarded sense of self is attacked in either situation. I think that's right, but I'm not sure that it goes far enough. I'm attracted to the Buddhist term that I've learned in the psychology of Thich Nhat Hanh--manas. Manas is that consciousness within us that turns in on our selves and finding something to desire within us, worships that aspect of our self. It's that propensity within us to set our self up as a deity, as a self-sufficient, independent, and dare-I-say ultimate being. To put it more simply, it's that tendency within us to assume that we're special, by which we mean extra-special, or even more-special-than-everyone-else. And it banks everything on that specialness, and so it must assume that this specialness will endure.
But then we get lost in a crowd of thousands, each of whom is special in their own way. Each of whom has so much in common with us--and who wants to be common. Each of whom challenges our claim not just on specialness, but on the prize of being ultimately special. And death, well it reveals the speciousness of the whole enterprise. We are not an enduring island. What is most common about all of us is that we do not abide---at least not in splendid isolation.
Thich Nhat Hanh would like us to use experiences like these to see our interrelation with all things. He would hope that this challenge to our ego, to the manas within us would not destroy us, but would lead to see that our richness and glory lie precisely in our commonality--that our lives are interwoven with one another, and that any desire within us to exist in splendid isolation only blinds us to the true richness of our interbeing with all around us.
In my experience of quiet, I find the deepest truth of this interbeing in the life of God that we all share. It's not just that we're related each to one another, but it's that we are all rooted in God--in the source of this great life that we share. God abides, and we each abide with one another as we abide in God. The ocean of faces at my meeting--I need to embrace the rootedness in God that I share with each of them. The burial service--it needs to be an icon for me of my rootedness in God. It can free me from an isolation that's not so splendid, and so it can invite me into a fellowship that is resplendent with life.
Earlier today I celebrated at the burial service for a wonderful older parishioner. It was a gift to be able have a part in his service--to celebrate his life and, even more, the life he has in God. Yet, again, it's a discomfiting experience for me. It's another experience in which I get lost. Not dispersed across a sea of faces though. More lost in the face of death. However much I believe that we abide in God, by grace, through death, I am still aware at a deep level that in death we are undone. Confronting that reality, I am always undone, at least for a bit.
What do these two experiences challenge in me? I suppose that a western psychological approach would use the term "ego"--that my well-guarded sense of self is attacked in either situation. I think that's right, but I'm not sure that it goes far enough. I'm attracted to the Buddhist term that I've learned in the psychology of Thich Nhat Hanh--manas. Manas is that consciousness within us that turns in on our selves and finding something to desire within us, worships that aspect of our self. It's that propensity within us to set our self up as a deity, as a self-sufficient, independent, and dare-I-say ultimate being. To put it more simply, it's that tendency within us to assume that we're special, by which we mean extra-special, or even more-special-than-everyone-else. And it banks everything on that specialness, and so it must assume that this specialness will endure.
But then we get lost in a crowd of thousands, each of whom is special in their own way. Each of whom has so much in common with us--and who wants to be common. Each of whom challenges our claim not just on specialness, but on the prize of being ultimately special. And death, well it reveals the speciousness of the whole enterprise. We are not an enduring island. What is most common about all of us is that we do not abide---at least not in splendid isolation.
Thich Nhat Hanh would like us to use experiences like these to see our interrelation with all things. He would hope that this challenge to our ego, to the manas within us would not destroy us, but would lead to see that our richness and glory lie precisely in our commonality--that our lives are interwoven with one another, and that any desire within us to exist in splendid isolation only blinds us to the true richness of our interbeing with all around us.
In my experience of quiet, I find the deepest truth of this interbeing in the life of God that we all share. It's not just that we're related each to one another, but it's that we are all rooted in God--in the source of this great life that we share. God abides, and we each abide with one another as we abide in God. The ocean of faces at my meeting--I need to embrace the rootedness in God that I share with each of them. The burial service--it needs to be an icon for me of my rootedness in God. It can free me from an isolation that's not so splendid, and so it can invite me into a fellowship that is resplendent with life.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Rest and Recreation
I'm on vacation this week with my family. We've had a fun and relaxing time--except when it hasn't been relaxing. I have this way of just turning off when I go on vacation. I try to let go of schedules and projects and anything that "needs" to be done, and I find that this recharges my batteries to a degree. My mind, with no focus, tries to float in the ether, and it has a certain spring in its step when returns to ground.
So far, so good, right? Except that letting my mind just float often offers little relaxation. When I let it float--when I let it on its own with no guidance or direction--it too often sets off on its own course. Unfortunately, my mind sets a course that resembles a drunken sailor when it has no goal. (Not that I've ever seen a drunken sailor, but I liked the image.) It's not just that it wanders. It weaves, and spins and turns in on itself. My mind, when left on its own, joins the monkeys, and soon I'm dizzy and anything but relaxed.
I need to learn to practice, even when I'm on vacation. I want rest, but even more I want recreation when I have a time away. Time away means putting away the distractions--the urgent things that try to possess us. But it doesn't mean that I need to put away practice. I don't need to put away the pursuit of peace. That's what I'm doing when I practice mindfulness, I'm pursuing peace. Why would I want to rest from that?
In some sense, this is just a practical point. Thich Nhat Hanh points out repeatedly that mindfulness practice is more restful than a nap, and Thomas Keating will say the same thing about centering prayer. A nap--and for me, vacation is often like an extended nap with activities--a nap tries to let our minds turn off, but really it just turns the mind over to itself and its propensity for spinning. A practice of mindfulness or quiet prayer, on the other hand, occupies the mind with silence. It engages the mind in rest. Our minds demand engagement. They are like three year olds. The question is whether we'll leave them to their own devices, or will we devise an engagement that suits our purpose. (If you don't know which is the better choice, let me assure you as the father of a three year old, don't leave them on their own.)
What strikes me, as I ponder this--peace is something positive. It is a pursuit, an activity, a positive content of the mind. We don't find peace just by absenting ourselves from distraction. We find peace--we recreate--by actively engaging ourselves with peace. Peace is a focus, and it's a focus I need to maintain even on vacation.
So far, so good, right? Except that letting my mind just float often offers little relaxation. When I let it float--when I let it on its own with no guidance or direction--it too often sets off on its own course. Unfortunately, my mind sets a course that resembles a drunken sailor when it has no goal. (Not that I've ever seen a drunken sailor, but I liked the image.) It's not just that it wanders. It weaves, and spins and turns in on itself. My mind, when left on its own, joins the monkeys, and soon I'm dizzy and anything but relaxed.
I need to learn to practice, even when I'm on vacation. I want rest, but even more I want recreation when I have a time away. Time away means putting away the distractions--the urgent things that try to possess us. But it doesn't mean that I need to put away practice. I don't need to put away the pursuit of peace. That's what I'm doing when I practice mindfulness, I'm pursuing peace. Why would I want to rest from that?
In some sense, this is just a practical point. Thich Nhat Hanh points out repeatedly that mindfulness practice is more restful than a nap, and Thomas Keating will say the same thing about centering prayer. A nap--and for me, vacation is often like an extended nap with activities--a nap tries to let our minds turn off, but really it just turns the mind over to itself and its propensity for spinning. A practice of mindfulness or quiet prayer, on the other hand, occupies the mind with silence. It engages the mind in rest. Our minds demand engagement. They are like three year olds. The question is whether we'll leave them to their own devices, or will we devise an engagement that suits our purpose. (If you don't know which is the better choice, let me assure you as the father of a three year old, don't leave them on their own.)
What strikes me, as I ponder this--peace is something positive. It is a pursuit, an activity, a positive content of the mind. We don't find peace just by absenting ourselves from distraction. We find peace--we recreate--by actively engaging ourselves with peace. Peace is a focus, and it's a focus I need to maintain even on vacation.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Practice
I shared with a friend recently that Tuesday was yoga day for me. (I get strange looks when I show up at the office in my sweats--or at least I imagine that the looks are strange. I'm always quick with my explanation.) My friend asked what my practice was?
I was perplexed at the question, largely because I'm not sure that I have a yoga practice. I mainly just show up at Yoga on Tuesdays and do whatever Maryam tells me to do. I made up an answer to the question--or really, I simply told them what I had done in the past two or three days, and gave the vague impression that I do that all the time. I knew that I needed a practice, and so with my answer came a silent vow that I would do this all the time, so that it really was my practice. We'll see how silent vows work.
Prayer, mindfulness, meditation---they bear fruit in our lives only if they are truly a part of our lives. Only if we have a practice, a regular routine of participating in the activity. They are supposed to become a part of us, and they can do that only if they become a regular part of our lives. I know that, yet I struggle to follow through on it. Why is that?
I've decided, at least for today, to lay the blame wholly on the word "practice." What am I meaning, or even more, what am I hearing when I call myself to practice? My association with the word has been indelibly shaped by my early forays into athletics. In that context, practice is what you did to get ready for the game, or if you were a musician, what you did to get ready for the performance. In this context, practice isn't the real thing. The game or the performance--they're what you're aiming for, and the practice is only to get you ready for those.
When I think of my spiritual practices and my struggle to practice them--a lot of it stems from this concept that practice is only there to get me ready for something more real. In part, it's because I need practice before I can really feel that I have a spiritual practice. This is most clear to me with my yoga. I can do some of the asanas, but only with a sense of mediocrity at best. Other asanas I can't even begin to approximate. I feel as if I need to practice yoga for a long time before I'm ready to do yoga. This sense of my inadequacy is inhibiting, and it infects most of my spiritual practices. It's hard for me to commit myself to prayer if, with a five year-old and a three year-old, my time of silent prayer often verges into nap. I need a lot of practice before I'm really praying.
This flies in the face of the spiritual realities that I'm trying to engage, of course. Any instructor of yoga will tell you that your practice is simply your practice. There isn't an "ideal" practice and then our various deformations of them. There is simply our engagement with the discipline. Whatever the shape of that engagement, it's nonetheless authentic if we approach it so.
Likewise with prayer. Julian of Norwich is clear that God is far less interested in our proficiency in prayer, and far more in the intention behind it. If we enter prayer seeking to open ourselves to God, then God honors that, however exhausted we may or may not be.
This thought addresses a second concern I have with "practice." Even if I feel proficient in my spiritual practices, they still stand as "mere practice" in the back of my mind. There's a part of me that still believes that I am disengaging from real life to practice these other things whenever I set aside time for prayer or yoga or mindful attention. Again, in part that's because I'm not clear that I'm doing "real yoga" or "real prayer", but it's also because we live in a world that doesn't recognize the spiritual realities that these practices address.
So how does Julian's thought help? I find it meaningful with my practice of prayer to see that time as a setting aside space in my life to be with God. It's a time to give myself to a relationship. I know and understand relationships. My world knows and understands relationships. So my spiritual practice makes sense, and suddenly becomes very real for me when it becomes less a practice and more a time for relationship. It's a time to devote myself to my beloved. I make time for my children. I make time for my wife--though I want to get better at that. I can also make time for God, and for the world--for simple attention to the world. I can do that--I just need to practice.
I was perplexed at the question, largely because I'm not sure that I have a yoga practice. I mainly just show up at Yoga on Tuesdays and do whatever Maryam tells me to do. I made up an answer to the question--or really, I simply told them what I had done in the past two or three days, and gave the vague impression that I do that all the time. I knew that I needed a practice, and so with my answer came a silent vow that I would do this all the time, so that it really was my practice. We'll see how silent vows work.
Prayer, mindfulness, meditation---they bear fruit in our lives only if they are truly a part of our lives. Only if we have a practice, a regular routine of participating in the activity. They are supposed to become a part of us, and they can do that only if they become a regular part of our lives. I know that, yet I struggle to follow through on it. Why is that?
I've decided, at least for today, to lay the blame wholly on the word "practice." What am I meaning, or even more, what am I hearing when I call myself to practice? My association with the word has been indelibly shaped by my early forays into athletics. In that context, practice is what you did to get ready for the game, or if you were a musician, what you did to get ready for the performance. In this context, practice isn't the real thing. The game or the performance--they're what you're aiming for, and the practice is only to get you ready for those.
When I think of my spiritual practices and my struggle to practice them--a lot of it stems from this concept that practice is only there to get me ready for something more real. In part, it's because I need practice before I can really feel that I have a spiritual practice. This is most clear to me with my yoga. I can do some of the asanas, but only with a sense of mediocrity at best. Other asanas I can't even begin to approximate. I feel as if I need to practice yoga for a long time before I'm ready to do yoga. This sense of my inadequacy is inhibiting, and it infects most of my spiritual practices. It's hard for me to commit myself to prayer if, with a five year-old and a three year-old, my time of silent prayer often verges into nap. I need a lot of practice before I'm really praying.
This flies in the face of the spiritual realities that I'm trying to engage, of course. Any instructor of yoga will tell you that your practice is simply your practice. There isn't an "ideal" practice and then our various deformations of them. There is simply our engagement with the discipline. Whatever the shape of that engagement, it's nonetheless authentic if we approach it so.
Likewise with prayer. Julian of Norwich is clear that God is far less interested in our proficiency in prayer, and far more in the intention behind it. If we enter prayer seeking to open ourselves to God, then God honors that, however exhausted we may or may not be.
This thought addresses a second concern I have with "practice." Even if I feel proficient in my spiritual practices, they still stand as "mere practice" in the back of my mind. There's a part of me that still believes that I am disengaging from real life to practice these other things whenever I set aside time for prayer or yoga or mindful attention. Again, in part that's because I'm not clear that I'm doing "real yoga" or "real prayer", but it's also because we live in a world that doesn't recognize the spiritual realities that these practices address.
So how does Julian's thought help? I find it meaningful with my practice of prayer to see that time as a setting aside space in my life to be with God. It's a time to give myself to a relationship. I know and understand relationships. My world knows and understands relationships. So my spiritual practice makes sense, and suddenly becomes very real for me when it becomes less a practice and more a time for relationship. It's a time to devote myself to my beloved. I make time for my children. I make time for my wife--though I want to get better at that. I can also make time for God, and for the world--for simple attention to the world. I can do that--I just need to practice.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Rooted
In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali follows his initial discussion of detachment with a prolonged attention to our relationship with God. He has told us that we need to be freed of the cravings for the world that bind and distract us, and he has noted that a "complete understanding of [our] true self" will liberate us from these distractions. Such an understanding will open to us the state of Yoga, the ability to attend fully to the world as it has been given to us.
This is always the goal--the state of Yoga--an ability for live-giving openness and attention. Some are simply born into this state, Patanjali tells us, but most of us must strive for it, and it can seem at best a distant possibility. A first, foundational step towards this goal, then, is faith. "Through faith, which will give sufficient energy to achieve success against all odds, direction will be maintained. The realization of Yoga is a matter of time." (Yoga Sutras, 1.20) We need faith, but not faith in general or in ourselves or in yoga. We need faith in God. We need faith in the one who envelops our world and gives it to us. We need to attend to God, and from such attention we will perceive our true nature--that liberating truth--and we will be girded for our journey. (Yoga Sutras, 1. 24-29)
What is this true nature that faith reveals to us? Simply speaking, it's that we are rooted, or more fully, that we are rooted in God. We are rooted in the eternal. We are rooted in fullness.
This sense of our rootedness--it's at the heart of the practice of the mindfulness and the spiritual life, and it means several things. It is, first, an emptying. It tells us that we are not rooted in ourselves, but that we are only as we are in a live-giving relationship with life around us. It calls us out of ourselves. This is its first attack on our craving. It displaces us from any pedestal of possession. It reminds us that the world does not belong to us, but rather we belong to an Other.
This sense of rootedness calls us out of ourselves and it calls us to relation with the Other. It reminds us that this relationship is essential to us, and so we need to attend to it. We must open ourselves, for any attempt to close ourselves off will only cut us off from the soil that gives us life. This will diminish craving because it will diminish hunger. If we can be fed, then there is less for us to crave.
Finally, this sense of rootedness reminds us that we are not rooted in general, but that we are rooted in the eternal--in Fullness. If we are rooted in the eternal, then we are freed for the world. We find that we are not needy for the world because the One who has made the world a Gift to us feeds us. We don't need to hunger for the world because we are already well-fed. This frees us to attend to the world, to give thanks for the world. It frees us for Yoga.
This is always the goal--the state of Yoga--an ability for live-giving openness and attention. Some are simply born into this state, Patanjali tells us, but most of us must strive for it, and it can seem at best a distant possibility. A first, foundational step towards this goal, then, is faith. "Through faith, which will give sufficient energy to achieve success against all odds, direction will be maintained. The realization of Yoga is a matter of time." (Yoga Sutras, 1.20) We need faith, but not faith in general or in ourselves or in yoga. We need faith in God. We need faith in the one who envelops our world and gives it to us. We need to attend to God, and from such attention we will perceive our true nature--that liberating truth--and we will be girded for our journey. (Yoga Sutras, 1. 24-29)
What is this true nature that faith reveals to us? Simply speaking, it's that we are rooted, or more fully, that we are rooted in God. We are rooted in the eternal. We are rooted in fullness.
This sense of our rootedness--it's at the heart of the practice of the mindfulness and the spiritual life, and it means several things. It is, first, an emptying. It tells us that we are not rooted in ourselves, but that we are only as we are in a live-giving relationship with life around us. It calls us out of ourselves. This is its first attack on our craving. It displaces us from any pedestal of possession. It reminds us that the world does not belong to us, but rather we belong to an Other.
This sense of rootedness calls us out of ourselves and it calls us to relation with the Other. It reminds us that this relationship is essential to us, and so we need to attend to it. We must open ourselves, for any attempt to close ourselves off will only cut us off from the soil that gives us life. This will diminish craving because it will diminish hunger. If we can be fed, then there is less for us to crave.
Finally, this sense of rootedness reminds us that we are not rooted in general, but that we are rooted in the eternal--in Fullness. If we are rooted in the eternal, then we are freed for the world. We find that we are not needy for the world because the One who has made the world a Gift to us feeds us. We don't need to hunger for the world because we are already well-fed. This frees us to attend to the world, to give thanks for the world. It frees us for Yoga.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Detachment and Thanksgiving
One goal of the spiritual life is to stop craving the world. To be released from our addiction to things, to feelings, to experiences. To move to a place where we can simply be and be with whatever God gives to us.
The fruit of this goal is named in various ways, but I find it ironic to note that "detachment" and "thanksgiving" are two of the names given it. Detachment and Thanksgiving--they seem to pull us in opposite directions, but I find them to be coupled.
Alexander Schmemann, a Russian Orthodox theologian, claims that we were created to be eucharistic beings. That's a fancy way of saying that we were created to give thanks--to receive the world that we've been given with gratitude. The goal of the spiritual life is to move into this Eucharistic way of being.
Pantanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, instructs us that the practice of yoga opens up the way of detachment for us. Detachment, here, does not mean a disdain for the world. It means a letting go of our craving for the world, and we let go so that we can be attentive to the world. We detach so that we can attend to the world single-mindedly. I think this single mind is the mind of thanksgiving.
We practice mindfulness so that we can let go of our craving for the world. We can stop seeing the world as something to be consumed, to use Schmemann's language. When we let go--detach--then we can attend to the world with care, without desperation. The fruit of this careful attention is thanks. The world around us is gift. We cannot help but to be moved to thanks for this world if we only notice it. If we only detach, so that we can see the truth of it. That is a goal of the spiritual life.
The fruit of this goal is named in various ways, but I find it ironic to note that "detachment" and "thanksgiving" are two of the names given it. Detachment and Thanksgiving--they seem to pull us in opposite directions, but I find them to be coupled.
Alexander Schmemann, a Russian Orthodox theologian, claims that we were created to be eucharistic beings. That's a fancy way of saying that we were created to give thanks--to receive the world that we've been given with gratitude. The goal of the spiritual life is to move into this Eucharistic way of being.
Pantanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, instructs us that the practice of yoga opens up the way of detachment for us. Detachment, here, does not mean a disdain for the world. It means a letting go of our craving for the world, and we let go so that we can be attentive to the world. We detach so that we can attend to the world single-mindedly. I think this single mind is the mind of thanksgiving.
We practice mindfulness so that we can let go of our craving for the world. We can stop seeing the world as something to be consumed, to use Schmemann's language. When we let go--detach--then we can attend to the world with care, without desperation. The fruit of this careful attention is thanks. The world around us is gift. We cannot help but to be moved to thanks for this world if we only notice it. If we only detach, so that we can see the truth of it. That is a goal of the spiritual life.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Melting Manas
There's a seduction to blogging about mindfulness. It's the seduction of wisdom or profundity. Or more, it's the seduction of making the blog the point. "I'm interested in mindfulness so that I can write about it. So that I can be an expert on it. So that I can be profound, and maybe even others will recognize that." Suddenly, mindful living has gone out the window in the name of thinking about mindful living.
Thich Nhat Hanh describes in many places manas, which is one aspect of a Buddhist view of the human condition. Manas is that manifestation of our consciousness that latches onto some virtue or characteristic within us and falls in love with it. It's the way that we worship some part of our selves, almost as a defense to assure ourselves that we are enough, and here to be enough usually means to be more than everyone else. Manas turns us in on ourselves, and it cuts ourselves off from the world. It does not make us whole.
Mindfulness is a practice directed at melting away manas within us. It's a practice of quieting manas so that we can see the world to which we are tied so intimately. Or it's a way of seeing the world to which we are tied so intimately, so that we can quiet manas. And mindfulness is always about the practice. We don't quiet ourselves and open ourselves to the world for any other reason than the opening and the quieting. If we write about it or talk about it, that's nice, but it's not the point. Living mindfully, living spiritually is the point. If I write about this, it can only be because I've found something here that I want to share, that I want to describe, that I want to explore more fully myself, and I explore it by talking about it with you.
Thich Nhat Hanh describes in many places manas, which is one aspect of a Buddhist view of the human condition. Manas is that manifestation of our consciousness that latches onto some virtue or characteristic within us and falls in love with it. It's the way that we worship some part of our selves, almost as a defense to assure ourselves that we are enough, and here to be enough usually means to be more than everyone else. Manas turns us in on ourselves, and it cuts ourselves off from the world. It does not make us whole.
Mindfulness is a practice directed at melting away manas within us. It's a practice of quieting manas so that we can see the world to which we are tied so intimately. Or it's a way of seeing the world to which we are tied so intimately, so that we can quiet manas. And mindfulness is always about the practice. We don't quiet ourselves and open ourselves to the world for any other reason than the opening and the quieting. If we write about it or talk about it, that's nice, but it's not the point. Living mindfully, living spiritually is the point. If I write about this, it can only be because I've found something here that I want to share, that I want to describe, that I want to explore more fully myself, and I explore it by talking about it with you.
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