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Monk Days

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I am a former teacher and still work in education, which means I get summers off. Long periods of unstructured time tend to drive me crazy. So, counterintuitively, summers end up being somewhat of a struggle for me.

This year I have been experimenting with “monk days.” On these days, I essentially wander around town with periodic breaks to practice meditation. Hospitals often have quiet meditation/prayer rooms as do many universities. So my day ends up looking like this:

Meditation at home
Walk to hospital/coffee shop, read, study, write
Meditate at hospital
Bus across town, walk to university, read, study, write
Meditate at university
Bus to shopping center/book store, read, study, write, talk to people
Meditate in quiet area
Walk/bus to new location (another university, quiet place, etc.)…

Basically these are days of alternating meditation with simple activities. These simple activities range from walking, to reading/writing, to talking with strangers, to cleaning the house.

I really like these monk days. Although I will have to modify my places of meditation because of the current pandemic (perhaps making my locations outside), I’m hoping to do them more often this summer.

Your Path Chooses You

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I don’t think I can choose my spiritual path. I’ve tried experimenting with some different meditation techniques and have explored many traditions. While I do think there are a lot of similarities in what different meditators are doing, some techniques even being virtually identical, there is still a sense in which your path chooses you. My spiritual path – my discipline – is Centering Prayer. I’m not sure I could change that if I wanted to.

Life As It Is

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I’m kind of on a spiritual high right now. When I’m on a high, my problems aren’t gone, but I feel like I’m 100% ok that they are there. I’m 100% ok with life as it is. My problems are there, but they don’t matter.

Phrases like “non-craving” and “non-striving” come to mind.

Thomas Merton | Brothers and Sisters

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Recently, I’ve been consciously trying to see people in the world as my “brothers and sisters.” There is something about that mental category that seems to put me in the right frame of mind to appropriately see, and treat, everyone I encounter.

A Thomas Merton passage comes to mind, from Zen and the Birds of Appetite:

“The self is not its own center and does not orbit around itself; it is centered on God, the one center of all, which is ‘everywhere and nowhere.’ in whom all are encountered, from whom all proceed. Thus from the very start this consciousness is disposed to encounter ‘the other’ with whom it is already united anyway ‘in God.’”


If it is true that we all united by the same Source, then we truly are brothers and sisters.

A similar idea, from a more traditionally Buddhist point of view, came out when I was writing A Great Tragedy:

“Things were good for this group of six and life had been kind to them until this point. Tony was, in fact, sometimes jealous of the members of this group and others like them – those who it seemed life had only smiled upon. Tony didn’t realize that each member of this group was subject to the same wants, desires, fears, and anxieties that Tony himself was subject to. He had yet to realize that they too, simply by virtue of being human, would experience suffering and pain, each in their own way. He had yet to see them as fellow sentient beings, brothers and sisters on the journey of existence. But they were. And Tony would understand that with time.”


With Tony, I’m hoping that, in time, I can naturally see others as my brothers and sisters.

Singing Your Prayers

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I've done a lot of things for a living.  Right now I drive a bus.

My bus is small, designed for people with disabilities and the elderly who have trouble getting around town.  So I get a chance to talk to my riders.

Last week, I picked up an older asian woman, and we had a long ride together.  On the way, she played some music from her phone.  

I didn't recognize the language, so I asked her what the lyrics said.  Her English was broken, so we struggled to have a conversation about it, but she told me they were "prayers to God."  She said they helped her "have a healthy mind and spirit."  It was beautiful music and I enjoyed listening on the ride, even though I didn't understand the words.  As a side note, she also told me she was Buddhist, so to say that "Buddhists don't believe in God" is too simple.  Buddhism is far too diverse for those kinds of statements.  

The encounter reminded me of an old co-worker I used to drive to work with.  She is Hindu and the music she played in the car was often prayers/chants in the Hindi language.  I found it beautiful. 

Singing your prayers.  

Limit Your Screentime

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The last few days I've left the computer at home, gone out with a stack of books, and got to it.  I often read on a Kindle app on my computer or iPad, but recently I've returned to good old-fashioned books.

It's better for your soul.  

A few observations:
 

1. I have got into more good conversations with people at coffee shops or book stores in the last few days than I have in the previous few months.  It's partly because when you're not "plugged in," you present yourself as more open to being engaged.  It's also partly because I feel like I am thinking more clearly without screen time.  I want to engage people in conversation more.  It feels natural.  I'm in "the real world."
 

2. We have way more capacity for sustained attention than we think.  Being on a device lends itself to constant distraction.  Read a passage, check your email, read a passage, look up a book on Amazon, check the news, watch a video, check the price of my cryptocurrency investment, read a blog, read a passage.  

Without the screen, I can give my full attention to what I'm reading for a significant amount of time.  I just got through reading a 500 page novel and a 300 page historical study.  No way I could do that on my iPad.  Even if I go back and forth between a few books during a specific reading time, it's just different.  I'm fully in it.  

An interesting study on this ability (or inability) for sustained attention is found in The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.
 

3. I don't worry about my stuff being stolen when I go to the bathroom.  I go to the bathroom in complete peace. 

 

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing recommends that an aspiring contemplative cultivates three habits.

 

 

 

"Nevertheless, anyone who aspires to contemplation ought to cultivate Study, Reflection, and Prayer, or to put it differently, reading, thinking, and praying."

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reading.  Thinking.  Praying.  I think I do those things better when I'm not on or near a screen. 

Spiritual Practice and Anxiety

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Just a reminder that spiritual practice can induce periods of increased anxiety.  In Centering Prayer, my own tradition, this is sometimes spoken of as the "unloading of the unconscious" which can include exposure to past traumas.  
 

"I call this third moment in the circular movement of Centering Prayer 'the unloading of the unconscious.' 'Unloading' refers to the experience of psychological nausea that occurs in the form of bombardment of thoughts and feelings that surge into our awareness without any relationship to the immediate past. That lack of connection with the source of painful thoughts or feelings is what identifies them as coming from our unconscious...Having carried this emotional pain for twenty or thirty years (or longer), the evacuation process may be extremely painful..."


–Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God

 

"...Centering Prayer is a psychological method and will produce results in that realm, some of them initially painful. In Intimacy with God Keating recounts how a graduate student recently did a thesis on Centering Prayer, along with several forms of Eastern meditation, recommending them as a way to reduce anxiety. Keating wrote back to the man saying, 'Centering Prayer will reduce anxiety for perhaps the first three months. But once the unconscious starts to unload, it will give you more anxiety than you ever had in your life.' For individual practitioners he recommends a limited dosage— twenty to thirty minutes twice a day is the normal prescription— to prevent the premature emergence of material into the conscious. Ten-day retreats rely on a trained staff to help handle a more intensive unloading process."


– Cynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening

 

I have heard and read of similar experiences from those who practice Vipassana and Zazen meditation.  While "the benefits of meditation" in the long term may include a more consistent inner calm, ups and downs are a normal part of most spiritual paths.  
 

 

Her

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I re-watched Her for about the fourth time the other day.  I think it's just brilliant.
 

 
 


One theme that really resonates with the current series on Buddhism is that of impermanence.  We are not the same people, and thus our relationships are not the same relationships, from one day, one month, one year to another.  As shown in the movie, this is both exciting and challenging.  

Overall, Her is a fantastic exploration of what it means to be in relationship, any kind of relationship, with another changing, evolving being. 

It also contains a "hyper-intelligent," non-physical version of Alan Watts, so there's that...

 

Non-Attachment vs. Stoicism

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I was listening to a podcast this week about Pascal's Pensées.  In the discussion, one of the participants made a passing comment lumping the Buddhist idea of non-attachment and Stoicism together.  

I've heard this before, and I think it is a misunderstanding of the idea of non-attachment.

Stoicism has the connotation of moderating emotion.  Not getting too high.  Not getting too low.  It has the connotation of disengaging from the exterior world, because getting too caught up in things will always disappoint.  

When the mystics tell us that we must become unattached to the things of the world, the ultimate goal is not to disengage from them entirely (although this may be needed for a time), but to engage with them fully without finding our life in them, without needing them for our happiness.  

Take the situation of a wedding day.  The Stoic is going to say: "Don't get too excited.  This day is only a temporary high.  The feeling of joy will soon pass, so don't let yourself get carried away."  The Stoic will tell you to moderate your emotion.  The mystic encouraging non-attachment will say: "Enjoy this day.  Fully enter into it.  It is one of the most meaningful and joyous days of your life.  The immediate emotion of this day will pass, yes, but your ultimate well-being does not lie in temporary events or emotions, but in Something deeper within you."

The goal of non-attachment is to fully enter in to life, but without clinging, without looking to the things of the world for our ultimate well-being.  

 

 

The Contemplative Life and Working Out

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I used to be an athlete.  I pretty much had a sport for every season and I was good at most of them.  Football, in particular, was a big part of my life and I had the opportunity to play through college.  

Football is the kind of sport that you're always training for.  In the offseason, even though I was playing other sports, I was always training for football.  Squats, power cleans, bench press, rows, cardio, plyos, sprints.  It was hardcore.  My goal was to have the fastest, strongest body I could in order to be the best football player I could be.

After college, I stopped lifting and working out so much.  Part of it was that I no longer had as much of a reason to.  If I wasn't training to excel in a sport, what was my motivation?  It seemed to me that my motivation to work out, and especially lift weights, was to look better.  Pure vanity.  So I stopped.  I was okay that that season of my life had passed.

Fast forward to my early 30's.  I'm getting old.   Not old old.  But old.  Not working out in your 30's is a different thing than not working out in your 20's.  In your 20's you can get away with it.   You can still be generally healthy without training too much. In your 30's the pounds come real quick.  

So I'm starting to train again.  

Any action can be performed for self and any action can be performed for something beyond self.  In my spiritual life, I've come to the conclusion that, while it isn't necessarily wrong to do things for self, it's just empty.  I think training so that I can have a good looking body is an empty and unfulfilling goal.  It simply leads to more ego – more "I," "me," "mine" – which leads to more unrest.  Training to have more energy, a positive mood, and a healthier body so that I can better serve the world?  That's different.  According to Soren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.  A pure heart wills only "the good."  The saint lives purely to complete the will of God as she understands it.  From this point of view, if an action is directed toward "doing the most good," or "completing the will of God in the world," it comes from a pure motive.  

I can work out for self, or I can work out for something beyond self. 

The author of The Cloud of Unknowing, when speaking about the work of contemplative practice, has this to say about physical training:
 

 

"I am serious when I say that this work demands a relaxed, healthy, and vigorous disposition of both body and spirit. For the love of God, discipline yourself in body and spirit so that you preserve your health as long as you can."

– The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 41

 

 

 




So I'm going to start discipling my body again.  And, as with just about every action I perform in life, I'll probably have mixed motives in doing so.  The less it's about self and the more it's about something beyond self, the better.
 

A Great Tragedy

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A Great Tragedy was recently released and is now available for sale.  For a description, check out the My Books page.  

Expressing a set of ideas through fiction is a different kind of project for me, but it was a good way to explore some ideas surrounding self-will and ego.  I hope to do some more along these lines, perhaps a collection of short stories based on themes from the contemplative writers, in the future. 

And with that I'll be taking a break from blogging for a while.  I'm starting some grad classes so I'll be busy writing other things.  In the meantime, hopefully some of the previous blog posts/pages are helpful for you on the journey.  I've also continued to enjoy interacting with readers, so feel free to contact me with any questions/comments on site content at anthony@thecontemplativelife.org.  


Anthony

 

Doubled Awareness

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Not ready to start my Eightfold Noble Path series yet, so we're going to do a series of quotes and posts that I've had in my back pocket.  I wrote this two weeks ago after an experience at Target.  The concept of "Doubled Awareness" or having an "Inner Observer," is talked about both by those who practice Mindfulness and those who practice Centering Prayer.  It's an odd experience, and if you've never had it, it is hard to describe.  Nevertheless, after having it, I tried to...
 

I was walking through Target today and I became aware that I was experiencing doubled awareness, or the phenomenon of the inner observer. 

This state of mind happens to me, rarely, and usually comes out of nowhere.  As I wrote in my tract on Centering Prayer, sometimes I do feel like I can induce it, but more often than not, when I have the experience, it just happens.

I am writing this about an hour later and want to describe it because it's fresh.

When I am in this state of mind, it's as if I am watching my experience happen.  I am not my thoughts, my actions, or my emotions, but I observe them.  It is as if my whole life is a movie and I am aware that I am watching it.  Reality just kind of flows, and it struck me that 'I'm not coming to my experience with clinging or want.'  Reality is just happening, and I am part of it.  

I feel like I am in control of what I am doing.  In that sense, I'm not 'just observing.'  I still have will.  But it is coming from a different place.  A deeper place inside of me than my mind.  

It isn't an ecstatic state of mind.  I'm not overcome with joy.  But when I am experiencing it, it is clearly preferable to how I normally perceive life.  

I am watching through my eyes, but it's another 'me.'  

 

 

Appeal to God as a Solution to The Absurd

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The Myth of Sisyphus has always stuck in my head. 

In the story, as punishment for a crime (apparently his crime differs in various versions of the story), Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to an eternity of labor.  His task is to push a boulder up to the top of a mountain, knowing that each time he reaches the top, the boulder will come tumbling down and he will have to start again.  This is his task for all eternity.  Heavy labor which serves no purpose; endless, exhausting, meaningless work.  Work he knows is meaningless.  

Albert Camus wrote a famous essay entitled The Myth of Sisyphus in which he uses Sisyphus as an example of the Absurd Man – the person who accepts the absurdity of life and embraces it.  He concludes his essay with these thoughts:
 

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."


For Camus, "the absurd" is "the divorce between the actor and his setting."  We find ourselves as beings who desire meaning and purpose, only to be put in a world in which meaning seems absent.  We live.  We die, and seemingly enter an eternity of non-being.  Anything beyond that is a hope, not knowledge.  All the things we create and accomplish seem to go for naught.  Our work, our lives, seem meaningless in light of our fate. 
 

"...in a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity."

"The absurd is born of this confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."

"The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation."


Camus' essay is an exploration of whether intellectually accepting that life is absurd should logically lead to suicide or not.  In the end Camus rejects suicide as the logical conclusion of the absurd.

Part of the reason that Camus rejects suicide is that he doesn't think the absurd should be solved.  For Camus, to resolve the problem in any way doesn't do justice to the true nature of life.  We must look absurdity straight in the face and embrace it.  We must be happy Sisyphi.

In the course of his essay, Camus interacts with other philosophers who "solve" absurdity in some way.  One example is Soren Kierkegaard who, in the end, appeals to God as a solution to the absurd.
 

"For him...antinomy and paradox become criteria of the religious. Thus, the very thing that led to despair of the meaning and depth of this life now gives it its truth and clarity. Christianity is the scandal, and what Kierkegaard calls for quite plainly is the third sacrifice required by Ignatius Loyola, the one in which God most rejoices: 'The sacrifice of the intellect.' This effect of the 'leap' is odd, but must not surprise us any longer. He makes of the absurd the criterion of the other world, whereas it is simply a residue of the experience of this world. 'In his failure,' says Kierkegaard, 'the believer finds his triumph.'

It is not for me to wonder to what stirring preaching this attitude is linked. I merely have to wonder if the spectacle of the absurd and its own character justifies it. On this point, I know that it is not so. Upon considering again the content of the absurd, one understands better the method that inspired Kierkegaard. Between the irrational of the world and the insurgent nostalgia of the absurd, he does not maintain the equilibrium. He does not respect the relationship that constitutes, properly speaking, the feeling of absurdity. Sure of being unable to escape the irrational, he wants at least to save himself from that desperate nostalgia that seems to him sterile and devoid of implication. But if he may be right on this point in his judgment, he could not be in his negation. If he substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational. The important things, as Abbe Galiani said to Mme d'Epinay, is not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments. Kierkegaard wants to be cured. To be cured is his frenzied wish, and it runs throughout his whole journal. The entire effort of his intelligence is to escape the antinomy of the human condition."


For Kierkegaard, God solves the absurd, either simply because He willed our existence or because He makes possible a better future (i.e. Heaven) – a future which retrospectively makes sense of the present.  

In the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the writer of Ecclesiastes makes the same move.  He first spends chapter after chapter lamenting the seeming meaninglessness of life:
 

"Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever... There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after."

"I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This is also vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun...What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity."

"But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hands of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event (death) happens to the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun."


But, like Kierkegaard, in the end The Preacher appeals to God:
 

"The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."


Even though he doesn't have a firm eschatology to speak of (although he may be alluding to the hope of a final judgment), he solves the absurd by appealing to our duty to God.  For the writer, this is what gives our life meaning.  It is what we are here for. 

Camus sees this as a cop-out, a turning away from the true nature of life.  

I just don't.  I agree with Camus that, without appealing to some type of meaning giver, or some final eschatological solution, life remains absurd.  We hunger for meaning, we want the things we do to be important in some way, but, in the end, we return to dust.  On that view, it will not matter whether we were ever alive or not.  Ultimately nothing will have mattered.  

But I disagree with Camus in that I don't think it's a cop out to look for, and ultimately embrace, an intellectual solution to the absurd.  Accepting the absurd is depressing as hell.  

And so I appeal to God.  Along with Kierkegaard and The Preacher, I hope that this will all somehow all make sense in the end.  That there is something more to existence than a meaningless life and then an eternity of nothingness.  That God is somehow both the Creator and the Redeemer of life.  I don't know what that might look like, and the different religions all have different conceptions of how it will be in the end.  But living with that faith gives me hope, and it allows me to find meaning in life as it is.  
Victor Frankl once wrote:
 

"...ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man... What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic."


We don't know what the ultimate meaning of life is.  But the hope that there is one is a hope that can keep me going.  Maybe there are some out there who can be happy Sisyphi, but I can't keep pushing a rock up a hill without the hope that it's for some greater purpose.  

Opportunity to Support the Site

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Hi all.  

This site has been a really good outlet for me.  It has helped me process my own faith journey, continue to explore contemplative practices and traditions, and keep on trying to understand how it all fits together.  I enjoy writing here as a way to process it all.  

Overall, I think the best thing this site has to offer is introducing people to the contemplative practices.  For me, that's Centering Prayer.  It's interesting to read the mystics and consider the theologies and philosophies that come out of their writings, but the practices are what it's all about.  These practices can change people.  I truly believe that.  

If you'd like to support the site, the best thing you can do is get a free copy of An Introduction to Centering Prayer and post a rating or review.  That's it.  Pretty easy, right?  Getting the tract and leaving a rating or review helps lead more people to the practice and introduces them to the material on this site.  

Reviews of my other books, The Evangelical Experience and A Great Tragedy, are also always appreciated and help make my content more visible.  I will always be willing to shoot you a free e-book copy in exchange for an honest review!  Just email anthony@thecontemplativelife.org to ask!

Thanks for considering, and I wish you the best wherever you are on your journey,

Anthony

 

 

Self-Will vs. Ego

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I'm writing a short book right now.  The opening quote is:
 

"Love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves, and yet at the same time it wants to have the object as its own. This is a contradiction and a great tragedy of life."

– D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddism


As the book progresses, I am wrestling with what it looks like for the "ego to have the object as its own."  I guess I'm really wrestling with was this author means by "ego."  This term is used in a lot of different kinds of writings and is often used differently depending on the author.  It's a hazy term.

For Freud, the ego is the sense of self that mediates between the internalized demands of culture (the superego) and our base drives (the id).

In common usage, the ego is the part of us that wants to be separate and superior when compared to others.  We all know what it means when someone says, "He has a big ego."

A lot of the spiritual writers use the term in a different way.  For these writers, the ego is the sense of self that wants to interpret everything only in how it relates to self.  For them, the ego is roughly synonymous with the natural self-centeredness we all inherit.  We are attracted to things that help us, and we avoid things that don't help us.  We are concerned, mostly, with ourselves.  In contemplative writings, the ego is sometimes contrasted with the "Higher Self," the Atman, the Indwelling of God.

In this last sense, for "the ego to have something as its own" would be simply to use things and people for self-interested purposes.  So we love our spouses, our friends, our kids, but we also use them subtly for our own ends.  We are concerned about how they appear, how they act, because they reflect upon us.  We want them to please us, etc. 

Related to the ego is the concept of self-will.  We seemingly use things to please us all the time.  I go to get ice cream.  Self-will.  I get coffee in the morning.  Self-will.  I buy a pair of pants I like.  Self-will.  

Where I am currently at is that ego, in the sense that the spiritual writers use it, is attachment to self-will.  Concern that I get what I want.  Preoccupation with self.  

We are going to experience self-will.  We have preferences.  We thirst when we need water.  We desire things.  I don't think we can ever get beyond that.  What we can get beyond is attachment to self-will.  Concern that we get what we want.  We can't, I don't think, eradicate self-will, but we can relativize it by losing ourselves in something larger than ourselves – God, service to the world.  I think when the Bhagavad Gita says:
 

"They are forever free who renounce all selfish desires and break away from the ego-cage of 'I,' 'me,' 'mine' to be united with the Lord. This is the supreme state." (2:71)


or
 

"Those who have attained perfect renunciation are free from any sense of duality; they are unaffected by likes and dislikes, Arjuna, and are free from the bondage of self-will." (5:3)


that the writer is encouraging us to lose preoccupation with ourselves.  To develop self-forgetfulness.  Not to get rid of self-will completely.  We still have likes and dislikes, but we are unaffected by if we get what we like or not.

At least that's what I think right now.  

 


 

Recaptured

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"Belongings, assets, and wealth in the end had captured him, this was no longer play, these were no longer frills, rather they had become a burden, and he was chained to them."

– Herman Hesse, Siddhartha


Although it is not physical belongings and wealth that chain me (we each have our own unique attachments), this is where I am at.  I feel like I have tasted contemplative peace, the kind of peace where no external situation matters, where I am completely fulfilled in myself, in God.  Where I stop striving.  

And then suddenly it disappears.  

Then I'm lost and don't know how to get it back.