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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.