Purity of Heart | Remorse, Repentance, Confession: Eternity’s Emissaries to Man

In the second chapter of this work, Kierkegaard gets very serious.  There is certainly a heavy tone throughout, but it is felt most strongly in this section.

For Kierkegaard it is not an option to will one thing.  Not something we are at liberty to choose if it happens to suit us.  For Kierkegaard, it is one’s duty to will one thing.  Not to do so is a moral failure before God.  Not to do so is good old fashioned sin.

Within the world’s contemplative traditions there are various ways to look at what needs to be overcome in the process of spiritual transformation.  One common, probably the most common, lens is that of personal “attachment/craving” – we crave and are attached to things in the external world (or even internal realities, often concepts we have about ourselves), things that we get our life from but which are ultimately temporary, without substance, illusory, impermanent.  Breaking those attachments (in some traditions, in order to be attached ultimately to God) leads to liberation – part of which includes the release of the “selfless self,” one’s “Buddha Nature,” etc.  The language of attachment and craving is characteristically Buddhist, but also finds expression in the Christian contemplative tradition, for instance in the writings of St. John of the Cross.  

Another lens to look at what needs to be overcome is the lens of sin.  It is our sin, our moral failure, that stands in the way of liberation.  We must repent and turn from that sin in order to find God. One thinks of Dante climbing the Mountain of Purgatory in The Divine Comedy, passing those who are being purified of the sins they have committed in life.  Kierkegaard is first and foremost a Christian, and the themes of sin, guilt, repentance, and forgiveness are never far away.  

Interpreting the path through the lens of sin and repentance lends to a feeling of weight, of sobering, a sense of seriousness.  It adds a moral dimension to the contemplative quest. We are morally obligated to turn away from our biased self-will towards the Good.  Feel the difference, for instance, between saying “repent of your vanity” vs. “lose your attachment to your vanity.”

In Chapter 2, Kierkegaard speaks mainly of two guides – remorse and repentance – which should bring us back to the Good.  If we are honest with ourselves, if we unflinchingly look at our lives, remorse should lead to a feeling of guilt, in turn leading to repentance and a turning back to the Good.  

“There is, then, something which should at all times be done.  There is something which in no temporal sense shall have its time.  Alas, and when this is not done, when it is omitted, or when just the opposite is done, then once again, there is something (or more correctly it is the same thing, that reappears, changed, but not changed in its essence) which should at all times be done.  There is something which in no temporal sense shall have its time. There must be repentance and remorse. 

One dare not say of repentance and remorse that it had its time; that there is a time to be carefree and a time to be prostrated in repentance.  Such talk would be: to the anxious urgency of repentance – unpardonably slow; to the grieving after God – sacrilege; to what should be done this very day, in this instant, in this moment of danger – senseless delay.  For there is indeed danger. There is a danger that is called delusion. It is unable to check itself. It goes on and on: then it is called perdition. But there is a concerned guide, a knowing one, who attracts the attention of the wanderer, who calls out to him that he should take care.  That guide is remorse. He is not so quick of foot as the indulgent imagination, which is the servant of desire. He is not so strongly built as the victorious intention. He comes on slowly afterwards. He grieves. But he is a sincere and faithful friend. If that guide’s voice is never heard, then it is just because one is wandering along the way of perdition.  For when the sick man who is wasting away from consumption believes himself to be in the best of health, his disease is at the most terrible point. If there were someone who early in life steeled his mind against all remorse and who actually carried it out, nevertheless remorse would come again if he were willing to repent even of this decision. So wonderful a power is remorse, so sincere is its friendship that to escape it entirely is the most terrible thing of all.”

There is nothing “contemplative” here outside of a yearning for a self (sometimes called the selfless-self, Buddha nature, Atman/Brahman, True Self, the Holy Spirit/Christ working within) that is committed only to the Good.  This is good old fashioned Christian preaching.  

The contemplative practices, if one is so inclined, can be seen as “means of grace” for unlocking this self.  This is something Kierkegaard doesn’t touch on, so far as I see, in this work.  

Purity of Heart | Introduction: Man and the Eternal

In the Introduction to his work, Kierkegaard, through an opening prayer, anticipates themes that will return:

“Father in Heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, Thou that giveth both the beginning and the completion, may Thou early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing. Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass. Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between. Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption. So in this time of repentance may Thou give the courage once again to will one thing. True, it is an interruption of our ordinary tasks; we do lay down our work as though it were a day of rest, when the penitent (and it is only in a time of repentance that the heavy-laden worker may be quiet in the confession of sin) is alone before Thee in self-accusation. This is indeed an interruption. But it is an interruption that searches back into its very beginnings that it might bind up anew that which sin has separated, that in its grief it might atone for lost time, that in its anxiety it might bring to completion that which lies before it. Oh, Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man’s burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing.”

For Kierkegaard, a well lived life is a life in which one has “willed one thing.”  

“As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.”

But something lies in the way.

“Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass.  Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between.  Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption.”

Anything that lies in between the soul and God, or the soul and willing one thing, is, for Kierkegaard, sin.  

In this introductory prayer, a basic outline of the entire work is present.  The soul’s goal is to will one thing. Sin lies in the way. The correct response is repentance and a turning back to the one thing.  The rest of the book will essentially elaborate on these themes.

In the remainder of the Introduction, Kierkegaard explores things in life which have their time.

“...the talk about the natural changes of human life over the years, together with what externally happened there, is not in essence any different from talking of plant or of animal life.  The animal also changes with the years. When it is older it has other desires than it had at an earlier age. At certain times it, too, has its happiness in life, and at other times it must endure hardship.  Yes, when late autumn comes, even the flower can speak the wisdom of the years and say with truthfulness, ‘All has its time, there is a time to be born and a time to die; there is a time to jest lightheartedly in the spring breeze, and a time to break under the autumn storm; there is a time to burst forth into blossom, beside the running water, beloved by the stream, an a time to wither and be forgotten; a time to be sought out for one’s beauty, and a time to be unnoticed in one’s wretchedness; there is a time to be nursed with care, and a time to be cast out with contempt; there is a time to delight in the warmth of the morning sun and a time to perish in the night’s cold.  All has its time.’”

There is a time to dance with delight, and a time to weep with sorrow.  A time to work, a time to rest. A time to prosper, and a time to wilt. But there is something that always has its time – the Eternal – and something that ought always be done – the Good.

Kierkegaard Introduction and the "Knight of Faith"

This is a good broad overview of some of Kierkegaard’s religious thought from Academy of Ideas.

Kierkegaard’s conception of the “Knight of Faith” reminds me of the final stage of the Zen Ox-Herding Pictures – “Returning to the Marketplace.”

Purity of Heart Series

I am beginning a short series on Soren Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. Kierkegaard is a daunting author to tackle, and I will be keeping things pretty broad in this series. One gets the feeling that you could read even his short works over and over again, with new ideas presenting themselves each time. Kierkegaard, in his preface, seems to think similarly. Of this work he says:

“It is in search of that solitary ‘individual,’ to whom it wholly abandons itself, by whom it wishes to be received as if it has arisen within his own heart; that solitary ‘individual’ whom with joy and gratitude I call my reader; that solitary ‘individual’ who reads willingly and slowly, who reads over and over again, and who reads aloud – for his own sake.”

I feel like you sometimes have to read Kierkegaard “willingly and slowly,” “over and over again” just to get what he’s trying to say! Regardless of the details of this work, I find the broad idea of having the goal of achieving Purity of Heart – to relativize self-concern and simply will “the Good” (or perhaps “God’s Will”) – to be core to many contemplative traditions and authors. The contemplative journey can be summarized in many ways – achieving Union with God, losing all attachments, realizing the Self, etc. As I’ve said before, I think a good way to synthesize some of these ideas is by summarizing the contemplative journey as “the path from self to no-self.” In this case, the path is from willing simply your own good, to willing the Universal Good. If Purity of Heart isn’t the goal of the contemplative quest, it’s at least a byproduct of the journey.

Soren Kierkegaard was a 19th Century Danish philosopher who sought to renew authentic Christian faith within his contemporary “Christendom.” Kierkegaard was a prolific author whose well-known works include Fear and Trembling, The Sickness Unto Death, and Either/Or as well as many Christian devotional writings. He is often thought of as the father of existentialism.

Thomas Merton | A Ground of Silence

The following audio is from Thomas Merton’s On Solitude and Togetherness.

Om is the Bow

“Om is the bow, soul is the arrow,
Brahman is the arrow’s goal,
One must strike it undiverted.”

They Never Rule Over Him

“‘This Brahmin,’ he said to a friend, ‘is no proper merchant and will never be one, there is never any passion in his soul when he conducts our business. But he has that mysterious quality of those people to whom success comes all by itself, whether this may be a good star of his birth, magic, or something he has learned among Samanas. He always seems to be merely playing at the business affairs, they never fully become a part of him – they never rule over him, he is never afraid of failure, he is never upset by a loss.’

The friend advised the merchant: ‘Give him from the business he conducts for you a third of the profits, but let him also be liable for the same amount of the losses, when there is a loss. Then, he’ll become more zealous.’

Kamaswami followed the advice. But Siddhartha cared little about this. When he made a profit, he accepted it with equanimity; when he made losses, he laughed and said: ‘Well, look at this, so this one turned out badly!’”

– Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Thomas Merton | Being Ourselves

The following audio is from Thomas Merton’s On Contemplation.

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

“C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity makes a brilliant observation about gospel-humility at the very end of his chapter on pride. If we were to meet a truly humble person, Lewis says, we would never come away from meeting them thinking they were humble. They would not be always telling us they were a nobody (because a person who keeps saying they are a nobody is actually a self-obsessed person). The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less. 

Gospel-humility is not needing to think about myself. Not needing to connect things with myself. It is an end to thoughts such as, ‘I’m in this room with these people, does that make me look good? Do I want to be here?’ True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings. 

True gospel-humility means an ego that is not puffed up but filled up. This is totally unique. Are we talking about high self-esteem? No. So is it low self-esteem? Certainly not. It is not about self-esteem. Paul simply refuses to play that game. He says ‘I don’t care about your opinion but, I don’t care that much about my opinion’ – and that is the secret. A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a gospel-humble person. The truly gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or her toes. It just works. It does not draw attention to itself. The toes just work; the ego just works. Neither draws attention to itself.

Here is one little test. The self-forgetful person would never be hurt particularly badly by criticism. It would not devastate them, it would not keep them up late, it would not bother them. Why? Because a person who is devastated by criticism is putting too much value on what other people think, on other people’s opinions. The world tells the person who is thin-skinned and devastated by criticism to deal with it by saying, ‘Who cares what they think? I know what I think. Who cares what the rabble thinks? It doesn’t bother me.’ People are either devastated by criticism – or they are not devastated by criticism because they do not listen to it. They will not listen to it or learn from it because they do not care about it. They know who they are and what they think. In other words, our only solution to low self-esteem is pride. But that is no solution. Both low self-esteem and pride are horrible nuisances to our own future and to everyone around us.”

– Timothy Keller, The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness

The Mount of Purgatory

The image below is a painting by Gustave Dore, depicting Dante and Virgil at the base of the Mount of Purgatory. I am currently reading The Divine Comedy. Richard Beck recently did a wonderful series on Dante and the Divine Comedy starting here.

Life as purgatory – as a process of purification – is an image that appeals to me. Life as soul development.

Alone in a Dark Wood

“Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and found myself
alone in a dark wood.”

The Man Who Was Thursday, Job, and The Problem of Evil

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

– Job 1:6-11

"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.' It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whom he has accused.”

– G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet in the Gospel of Matthew

As a follow-up to the Historical Jesus Series, I just released Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet in the Gospel of Matthew. I realize this is a controversial subject matter, but it is one that has profound implications for the life of faith. In my opinion, this topic has been almost completely ignored by the modern church. Whether one agrees with the conclusions presented in this essay or not, “Jesus as Apocalyptic Prophet” is a view that any serious student of the New Testament will at least need to engage. Personally, although this subject matter was distressing to me when I first encountered it, I believe it ultimately led to a broader and more life-giving understanding of religion and spirituality. More information about this tract can be found on the My Books page.

Luminous Dusk | Soldiers

“My late father fought in the Second World War as an enlisted man. He told me that he discovered what he was up to only after he returned home and read a few books. In the midst of battle, ignorance and confusion governed. Knowledge consisted of concrete imperatives: go left, retreat, hold your fire, cross the bridge, walk the road, take the town. How his deeds furthered some master plan he knew not: there was for him no big picture. My father could not see the forest because he was a tree. He just followed orders and tried to stay alive. Those of us who are religious are like my father. We know that we are in a war but not how it goes or how it will eventuate; and few of us are generals. Our lot is rather to be good soldiers – to live according to the imperatives upon us and to save our souls.”

– Dale Allison, The Luminous Dusk

This quote very much reminds me of Viktor Frankl’s thought. We don’t know the ultimate meaning of life. In the absence of that knowledge we have to ask ourself what our meaning is. What is life calling us to?

Effects and Interpretation

I am more certain than ever that the practice of Centering Prayer, over the long run, leads to positive changes in my life. I am less certain than ever how to interpret what is actually happening during Centering Prayer.

Life As It Is

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 | Passive Prayer

To end this series, I’d like to post some brief audio from a collection called Thomas Merton on Contemplation. In this collection, Merton speaks about a wide variety of topics surrounding prayer and the contemplative life. Here, he addresses “passive prayer” – which is often how Centering Prayer, my own personal practice, is described.

A related quotation about passivity that I can’t pass up listing with this post comes from Aldous Huxley’s The Divine Within: Selected Writings in Enlightenment.

"Now, very briefly, I must just touch on the means for reaching this state. Here, again, it has been constantly stressed that the means do not consist in mental activity and discursive reasoning. They consist in what Roger Fry, speaking about art, used to call ‘alert passivity,’ or ‘determined sensitiveness.’ This is a very remarkable phrase. You don't do anything, but you are determined to be sensitive to letting something be done within you. And one has this expressed by some of the great masters of the spiritual life in the West. St. Francois de Sales, for example, writing to his pupil, St. Jeanne de Chantal, says: 'You tell me you do nothing in prayer. But what do you want to do in prayer except what you are doing, which is, presenting and representing your nothingness and misery to God? When beggars expose their ulcers and their necessities to our sight, that is the best appeal they can make. But from what you tell me, you sometimes do nothing of this, but lie there like a shadow or statue. They put statues in palaces simply to please the prince's eyes. Be content to be that in the presence of God: he will bring the statue to life when he pleases.'"

Thomas Merton | Starting From Being

The final quotation for the Merton series comes from his Zen and the Birds of Appetite. A longer term project I have is to write a tract/book on comparative apophatic spiritual practice. This quotation seems to fit perfectly for that project.

“...let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man.  It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division.  Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being. This is totally different from an experience of self-consciousness.  It is completely nonobjective. It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as a quasi-object. The consciousness of Being (whether considered positively or negatively and apophatically as in Buddhism) is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness.  It is not ‘consciousness of’ but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such disappears.

Posterior to this immediate experience of a ground which transcends experience, emerges the subject with its self-awareness.  But, as the Oriental religions and Christian mysticism have stressed, this self-aware subject is not final or absolute; it is a provisional self-construction which exists, for practical purposes, only in a sphere of relativity.  Its existence has meaning in so far as it does not become fixated or centered upon itself as ultimate, learns to function not as its own center but ‘from God’ and ‘for others.’ The Christian term ‘from God’ implies what the nontheistic religious philosophies conceive as a hypothetical Single Center of all beings, what T.S. Elliot called ‘the still point of the turning world,’ but which Buddhism for example visualizes not as ‘point’ but as ‘Void.’ (And of course the Void is not visualized at all.)

In brief, this form of consciousness assumes a totally different kind of self-awareness from that of the Cartesian thinking-self which is its own justification and its own center.  Here the individual is aware of himself as a self-to-be-dissolved, in self-giving, in love, in ‘letting-go,’ in ecstasy, in God – there are many ways of phrasing it.

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 whose 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.’”

Thomas Merton | Disposition to Humility and Pliability

“The gift of prayer is inseparable from another grace: that of humility, which makes us realize that the very depths of our being and life are meaningful and real only in so far as they are oriented toward God as their source and their end.

...even the capacity to recognize our condition before God is itself a grace.  We cannot always attain it at will. To learn meditation does not, therefore, mean learning an artificial technique for infallibly producing ‘compunction’ and a ‘sense of our nothingness’ whenever we please.  On the contrary, this would be the result of violence and would be inauthentic. Meditation implies the capacity to receive this grace whenever God wishes to grant it to us, and therefore a permanent disposition to humility, attention to reality, receptivity, pliability.”

Thomas Merton | Brothers and Sisters

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.