Category Archives: mindfulness

“Say it Ain’t So, Buddha!”

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Buddha must be turning over in his grave this morning. The New York Times has a story about “radical Buddhism” in Myanmar (Burma) which reports re an anti-Muslim movement in the country spearheaded by Ashin Wirathu. To illustrate his extremism, he recently described a massacre of Muslim children in one city as a “show of strength,” declaring, “If we are weak, our land will become Muslim.”

Of course, I know enough about religious history to know that extremism finds its way into all spiritual teachings, Buddhism included. But this is the most flagrant example I remember in my life time of Buddhist extremism. And this current “flavor” is merely another rendition of a favorite theme of all small-minded people of any persuasion, “us vs. them” with “them” always being a catch-all category for people who we disagree with or do not like. We must always remember that when we are captivated by an ego need to categorize our world, we will inevitably find ourselves comfortably ensconced in the luxurious confines of “us” while someone else is always banished into “them.”

This is binary thinking, the spawn of ego-mindedness run amok. Instead of using Reason to find common ground, to search for inclusiveness, this gift is used to carve the world up into pieces and always leaves the “carver” in isolation. Or to look at it slightly differently, this “carver” is horrified by his own isolation and misuses the God-given Reason to perpetuate that isolation. As Goethe noted, “They call it Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

 

Ego Integrity and Humility

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How do I find common ground with other people? How do I use my Reason to find commonality rather than using it as a means to carve up the world, separating myself from the world to gain an illusion of mastery? (And technically, when I “carve up” the world, I have already carved up myself!) Now, Reason by its very nature is a separation from self, from others, and from the world. But, it has the capacity to explore and to look beyond itself and to find an “encompassing” that includes those who we have always assumed were “out there.” (“Encompassing” is a term used by philosopher Karl Jaspers.)

I am talking about drawing less rigid boundaries, making the distinction between “me and thee” less pronounced. Now the distinction must be maintained in a very important sense or boundaries will collapse and we will have a catastrophe on our hands. And relevant to this is the ability to handle contradictory notions at one and the same time—for example, that I am separate and distinct in this world but no I am one with this world, I am “my brother’s keeper” but “no I’m not.”

Clinically speaking, the issue here is “ego integrity.” This refers to having an ego which is mature enough to “get over itself” or to soften its boundaries here and there, to be more “inclusive” and less “ex”-clusive. But ego integrity comes hard as the ego by nature does not like to entertain the notion that it is less than the final authority. It does not like to have its viewpoint (presuppositions and premises) questioned.

Being “Right” is a Pyrrhic Victory

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I’ve had a life-long battle with “being right.” It is certainly not unrelated to having been born and bred in “right-wing” social, political, and religious culture in the deep South of the United States where “rules” predominate. And it is always “rules” that makes one “right,” or allows him to think that he is. I think very early on I had a heart like most people but then I was offered a bargain, “Hey, you forgo that tumult in your heart where emotion and reason are doing battle, give in to reason and let it reign, and you will have the consolation of being ‘right.”’ So I spent the first two decades of my life assiduously striving to live according to the rules, failing to see just how closely this life-style approximated that of the Pharisees who Jesus upbraided so often. Since then, the “ruled” life has slowly given way to the burgeoning power of emotion, a process that received a boost in my mid-thirties when I discovered poetry. Now, nearly three decades later there is some indication that this warfare is getting closer to resolution as emotion and intellect are working much more in tandem than ever before. Now instead of using my intellect to rigidly carve up the world…and myself…I use this gift to seek common ground with others believing that there is a Unity that underlies this world of multiplicity.

And having those two dimensions of the heart working in tandem should be our goal. When “flesh and mind are delivered from mistrust” (Auden), we are witnessing something akin to the Spirit of God being present though the “Spirit of God” certainly needs more discussion than I choose to give it now. Reason, without the balance of emotion (or heart) is just an effort to stay in control, to tyrannize one’s own self and simultaneously try to tyrannize those around him. Therefore, Goethe was astute when he noted, “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

Now occasionally the old demon of “being right” will surface again. Recently it teased me briefly and then I took the bait slipped into the “being right” mode. It was a veritable black hole for a while until I managed to right myself and escape its clutches. For, there is no end to “being right”. We have the Taliban as one example of this but we have similar expressions of the same dark force present in our own country. And, yes it got me recently. It will always be a temptation for it is so wonderful to “know” that you are right and to “set someone straight.”

I offered a snippet of Auden’s observation about this matter earlier. Now I will share the context:

If…like your father before you, come
Where thought accuses and feeling mocks,
Believe your pain: praise the scorching rocks
For their desiccation of your lust,
Thank the bitter treatment of the tide
For its dissolution of your pride,
That the whirlwind may arrange your will
And the deluge release it to find
The spring in the desert, the fruitful
Island in the sea, where flesh and mind
Are delivered from mistrust.
(W. H. Auden “The Sea and the Mirror)

 

The Courage to Be

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To be is to be vulnerable. To be is to live life on the edge, outside the comfort zone of those “well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken) Theologian Paul Tillich wrote a marvelous book on this subject entitled, “The Courage to Be” in which he related this matter to Jahweh’s Old Testament declaration, “I am that I am” or “I am the Being One.” And it does take courage to venture into “be-ing” in our life and not merely living it on automatic pilot.

T. S. Eliot described this vulnerability as “an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.” Life is so fragile and we know this in the depth of our hearts but are mercifully spared too much awareness of this vulnerability. Eliot noted, “Human kind cannot bear too much reality.” And it is good that we know that we can’t and know how to find “fig leaves” to hide this nakedness most of the time. But it is so important to know that the “fig leaf” is there and to take it off occasionally and find that God will meet us there.

Humility Comes Hard to the Humble!

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By this, I mean that if you have been enculturated with “humility” then it is really difficult for Humility to penetrate your “humble” heart. Most pieties come to us first through enculturation and we subscribe to them because of  ego satisfaction that comes from a very basic need to fit in, to adopt the values of our culture. And this was the problem that Jesus saw with the Pharisees, reproaching them for the very premise of their “humility”, calling them “whited sepulchers.” And people never like having their premises, their preconceptions, questioned and those who deign to put them on the table are asking for trouble.

With this in mind, I don’t really think it is possible to be “humble.” For it is basic human nature to take ourselves too seriously, to defensively cower before the scrutiny of “otherness”, and fight vehemently against anyone who tries to challenge our smugness. But, I do think there is Humility in the world, and active in the human heart, and always seeking to find expression. I like to think of it as a process of “humility-ization” that is always underway, the process of bringing to our conscious awareness our shortcomings, including the “thoughts and intents of the heart.” But this process, this Divine operation, will not force itself upon us but is always there awaiting our willingness to examine our heart. And, if we are willing to submit ourselves to this scrutiny, from time to time we will be stung with sudden insight that our noble vision of ourselves are less noble than we wanted to assume. “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive,” said W. H. Auden.

There is a danger with this line of thought that I will be understood to mean that human nature is dark and evil. No, but this nature is “human” and therefore naturally prefers blinders rather than the light of the Eternal day. And, when we are “pricked alive”, we merely bleed “human” for a moment before we find the Grace to accept the insight and grow.. And, when we are so “exposed”, we might ask ourselves, “Why did I ever assume otherwise”? Maturity means learning to accept short comings as a routine part of being a human and being open to learning about them when circumstances bring them to our attention. Sure, we can then be overwhelmed and even grovel before god and man, but why? Why not just recognize, “Oops! There I go being human again.” And we can discover that there is Beneficence in this universe that forgives us, a Beneficence that I like to describe as “the Grace of God.” But this Grace is always awful at first in that we must first experience the “awful” pain of “self” awareness, recognizing that we weren’t quite as virtuous as we thought. So it is not that this Grace is “awful” but that our experience in being disillusioned of our pretenses is “awful”.

I think this is relevant to what the Apostle Paul meant when he cried out, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.” He sincerely wanted to do good…and did a lot of good…but occasionally he would be exposed by God’s “discerning Spirit” and would see his shadow side at work. He would then bleed human for a moment, then ask himself, “Why am I surprised?” and then get on his feet again and resume his walk of faith. In the words of Auden, “We wage the war we are.”

 

Some Subtleties about Prayer

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In January when the Republican Party was still reeling from their unexpected loss to President Obama two months earlier, there was a lot of noise about ousting Senator John Boehner as Speaker of the House. But, according to a story in the Washington Post last week, several members of the House prayed the night before a critical vote on the issue and were “led” to spare Mr. Boehner. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-republicans-have-broken-into-fighting-factions/2013/06/03/7533e606-b8ff-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_story_3.html)

Now, I’m always in favor of prayer in any circumstances, being it even ceremonial or perfunctory. I feel that any prayer is a venture to a field of reference outside of ourselves and is good. However, I am always given pause with public prayer, or public reports of prayer, and how “the Lord’ answered the prayers. For, I feel that often prayer is merely a request to get from On High what we want for our own selfish purposes. We pray intently and fervently for what we already want for motives which are often base; and then occasionally when we get a prayer answered we take great pleasure, announcing that “God intervened” through our humble petitions. Well, don’t forget that there is the phenomenon of a “blind pig finding a walnut every now and then.”

Sure, we should pray for what we need, we should make “our petitions known to God” but I think it is really important to remember that prayer can be an exercise in self-indulgence. To many Christians, or believers of any cut, view God as some concretely existing “Teddy Bear in the Sky” who waits for our beck and call, ready to give us exactly what we want, failing to recognize that many people at the same time might be praying with equal fervency for just the opposite. Some, of course do recognize this, but take comfort in the pious observation, “Yes, but then we are right with the Lord and so the Lord will listen to us”, implying that those who look differently on the issue are not “right with the Lord.” The implicit assumption belies an arrogance that makes me suspect that the prayer never gets beyond the halo of the pray-er.

I think at some point in our spiritual life we need to get beyond the point of seeing God at our beck and call, ready to “smite” those who disagree with us, ready to bring about our own purposes which, upon honest scrutiny, could often be seen as merely childish and selfish whims. At some point we need to get to the point where we sincerely conclude our prayers with, “Thy will be done,” and recognize that His will might be different than our own

Now, let me be honest. I’m holding forth about a group of conservative politicians with whom I certainly have a bone to pick. And, I think there is a degree of validity to my argument. However, I must admit that all of this discourse is merely revealing of what I recall my prayer life being about through most of my life. It has been really hard to “get over myself” and the process is not complete yet! We need to follow the advice of T. S. Eliot who noted that we must “Purify our motive in the Ground of our beseeching.”

Silence is Golden

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Most of my life I have viewed Quakerism as quite strange. The notion of a service consisting almost entirely of sitting quietly just didn’t make any sense. “That’s just silly” I would have wanted to say. “Say something!” But now a significant portion of my weekly worship is spent in silent meditation and I see so clearly the significance of silence. Silence is necessary from time to time to give our “monkey mind” a rest, to follow the advice of the Psalmist, “Be still and know that I am God.” There is some fear that this “literarylew” thing I got going on is largely chatter and that one of these days God is going to “Todd Akin” me and just “shut this whole thing down.” I understand that the great Catholic theological Thomas Aquinas had a profound mystical experience in his early fifties and, after written many basic theological treatises of the Catholic faith, never wrote another thing the rest of his life. “It is all straw,” he supposedly said.

And the notion of silence in spirituality is very Indian. And the Quaker about whom I blogged this morning, Thomas Kelly, noted that he had consulted with Hindu spiritual teachers and had studied the teachings of the Vedas. That must have been a daring move for a Quaker in 1931 for I think of Quakers as a very conservative variant of the Christian faith and conservatives Christians look askance at Indian spirituality.

I have been drawn to the wisdom of Gerard Manley Hopkins on the subject of silence long before I had any reason to know why. In the poem, “The Habit of Perfection” he declares that only when we “shut up” and embrace silence can we acquire eloquence:

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: 5
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light: 10
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust 15
So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side! 20

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet
That want the yield of plushy sward,
But you shall walk the golden street
And you unhouse and house the Lord.

And, Poverty, be thou the bride 25
And now the marriage feast begun,
And lily-coloured clothes provide
Your spouse not laboured-at nor spun.

A Quaker Perspective on Prayer

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We pray, and yet it is not we who pray, but a Greater who prays in us. Something of our punctiform selfhood is weakened, but never lost. All we can say is, Prayer is taking place, and I am given to be in the orbit. In Holy Hush we bow in Eternity, and know the Divine Concern tenderly enwrapping us and all things within His persuading love. Here all human initiative has passed into acquiescence, and He works and prays and seeks His own through us, in exquisite, energizing life. Here the autonomy of the inner life becomes complete and we are joyfully prayed through by a Seeking Life that flows through us into the world of men. (“A Testament of Devotion” by Thomas R. Kelly)

Kelly, who was a Quaker writing in the first half of the 20th century, presents here a notion of prayer that is far removed from what I was taught. Kelly saw prayer, not just as something we do, but as something that is done to us. Prayer is a spiritual process that we can tap into if we humble ourselves, find an always elusive purity of heart, and open ourselves up to the Infinite.

But here I have posed a problem for the old “concrete thinking” lew that still abides in the depths of my heart and he wants to shriek, “This is nuts!” And, I might add that occasionally in my Sunday School class, where we approach spirituality in similar “non-duality” terms, I will occasionally facetiously announce, “This is nuts!” For, I know that my friends also see how complicated and subtle this approach to spirituality is and how that it does not fit the mind and temperament of everybody. Approaching spirituality in this vein involves the ability to hold contradictory notions in the mind at the same time and most people can’t do that. And, I might add, most people should not do that and should approach spirituality in their own way. For, God works through us all and expresses Himself through us all, even through those that I might disagree with or at times even dislike!

But, at times it is hard to maintain this humble approach in the face of an old “un-literary” lew with his (its!) concrete thinking shrieking at him, who wants to proclaim from the rooftops, “THIS IS THE TRUTH! BELIEVE LIKE ME! TURN OR BURN!” I have the nagging need to “be right” which I keep at bay most of the time. But at times it gets triggered and then the black hole that it is gnaws at my soul for a few days. For, the need to “be right” is a black hole and will devour a soul if given into. It is much easier to “know” that you are right than to have hope, confidence, and faith that there is a “Right” that is present in this universe that is seeking expression through us all, even those that believe differently than I do.

And let me close with Shakespeare’s profound observation about prayer in Hamlet, where King Claudius kneels and prays, “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” And then T. S. Eliot noted, “Prayer is more than an order of words, or the sound of the voice praying, or the conscious occupation of the praying mind.”

 

Emptiness, Kenosis, and Art

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I’m really into emptiness. Yes, it says something about what I’m made of! And, actually I think that is quite accurate as, according to Eckhart Tolle, quantum physics says that we are about 95% empty space.

Now emptiness to me means the “stuff out there,” meaning, some “external reference point.” (Oh, if my mom could hear me saying this, she would echo Hamlet’s mom, “Oh what a noble mind is here o’er thrown.” Well, in mom’s case, she probably would not elevate me to “noble.”)

Emptiness, such as the Christian doctrine of “kenosis” and the existentialist notion of “nothingness” convey to me merely the notion that there is something “out there” beyond the “small bright circle of our consciousness” (Conrad Aiken). Our finite minds cannot grasp it all which is what Einstein recognized when he noted that the end result of his studies was that a mystery lay at the base of existence. Einstein recognized that even his brilliant intelligence could not wrap itself around the majesty of life.

My grasp of this mystery is intellectual. I admit it. I humbly confess and beg to atone for this sin but I am just “stuck in my head,” damn it! But I’m married to an artist and musician, and I know artists and others who approach life with a different conceptual apparatus. (I try to straighten them out, to get them to see things the “right” way but they only look at me with bewilderment!) And therefore I increasingly embrace “otherness”, the fact that there are other ways of approaching this incredible mystery that we are all caught up in, that actually has encompassed us, that has “caught us up in” itself.

I would like to share with you a blog from a visual artist that a sister of mine has turned me on to which often really intrigues me. His name is Robert Genn and he just approaches reality differently than I do; he is much less “verbal” and I really like that. His emphasis is on the importance of emptiness, or “nothingness”:

Back around the turn of the 20th century, household gadgets, from sewing machines to new fangled vacuum cleaners, were decorated with floral or other motifs. In those days, people thought things looked better when they were covered with busyness. Sewing machines themselves were sometimes made in the form of dolphins, angels or even snakes. The wide ranging art critic Sir Herbert Read (1893-1968) wrote, “The necessity of ornament is psychological. There exists in man a certain feeling which has been called horror vacui, an incapacity to tolerate an empty space. This feeling is strongest in certain savage races, and in decadent periods of civilization.”

While sophisticated Asian art tends toward the spacious, and minimalism is not yet out of fashion in the West, Western art reveals a general trend for decoration. While we may indeed be living in decadent times, my argument is we’re just being Aristotelian: “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

Fact is, a blank space may be the much needed rest period that comes before the action. It may also be the part of the work that sends the viewer yawning. A bit idiosyncratic and certainly not for everyone, I make actors of my blank spots, especially the interminable ones. Spaces can often be gradated, blended, softened, hardened or at least formed into a strong negative area. Spaces also need nearby busyness to be effective in their spaciousness, just as sophisticated neutral tones and grays are needed for the surprise and excitement of nearby colour.

A significant space in many landscapes is the sky. While plain skies have their value, a more active and complex sky can bring drama to otherwise ordinary work. “The sky,” said John Constable, “is the principal actor in your painting.”

In sculpture, the surrounding space becomes as significant as the figure. “You leave space for the body,” said Henry Moore, “imagining the other part even though it isn’t there.”

To my eye, paintings and other art take their strength from a calculated dance in which the various elements come together, interact, and move apart. No matter what the subject matter or motif, abstract style or realistic, negative and positive spaces contrive to juxtapose in a way that engages the viewer’s eye. Like a lot of art concepts, this isn’t the only way to go, but it’s a valuable one.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “A painter is a choreographer of space.” (Barnett Newman)

Esoterica: A painter who understood the value of space was Henri Matisse. Subject matter was often second to the organization of flats. “The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive,” said Matisse. “The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.” Attention to space gave Matisse permission to play with colour. Some of the most interesting and spatial of Matisse’s works were his figure studies. We’ve taken the liberty to post some of my favourites at the top of the current clickback.

Rumi on the “Faculty of Judgment”

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Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there

Rumi was addressing what the philosophers call the “faculty of judgment”, that human ability to carve the world up into categories so that he can have the illusion of controlling it. And, I think Rumi knew this cognitive apparatus was an essential part of being a human and actually allowed him to create his world. But Rumi saw that it was necessary to not be confined by this conceptual prison and had learned that it was possible to occasionally lay aside this whirligig and meet someone out “there.”

To approach the matter clinically, Rumi was speaking of “object-separateness.” He saw that the whole of the world, and especially other humans, lay beyond the grasp of our thoughts about them. He knew that we tend to “live in the small bright circle of our consciousness beyond which lies the darkness,” the “darkness” being a boundary that we must venture into if we are to ever go “out there” and meet someone. And this is essentially a spiritual enterprise.

In this brief poem, Rumi addressed one particular bifurcation of the world that we are familiar with, that compulsive need to label some people “right” and some people “wrong.” (And, what a coincidence that I so often happen to fall into the “right” category????) Certainly, “right” and “wrong” are valid labels in this world and Rumi knew that. What he was saying is that we don’t need to wield the distinction like a weapon and can, on occasion, give it a rest, perhaps offering someone who we first want to label ‘wrong” a little bit of grace. The best example I can think Jesus offering forgiveness to the Samaritan woman at the well when he was legally required to condemn her and stone her to death.

Rumi knew there was a karmic law that is written in the universe—when one has a compulsive need to be right, he will create wrong.