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.
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