Names for things

I continue to be haunted by the question of language and tradition. There are untold depths within any religious tradition, and within each there is a contemplative core, often unrecognised by most followers of a religion, and all too often opposed by its hierarchy.

There are great practical similarities between practices like Centering Prayer, Sōtō Zen meditation, vipassana and others, but they are set within very different traditions. For those of us in the West in the 21st century it is often very difficult to read even modern texts in English whose conceptual bases are as different as 14th century English monasticism (Centering Prayer draws much of its inspiration from The Cloud of Unknowing), 13th century Japan, or the Pali of the 3rd century BCE. Christian mysticism as a whole is rooted in the Bible, mostly in the New Testament Greek of 1st century Palestine and the surrounding territories.

Within each tradition there are living communities of contemplative practice, and many who have felt the call to a life of prayer and contemplation have left their homes, and sometimes their countries in search of this continuity. At times they have learned another language or languages, and taken on an entire culture different to the one in which they were born. But is such an upheaval necessary, or even advisable?

If nothing else, the current pandemic has show to many of us that our inner lives are far more independent of a physical community of faith than we had thought, and for those of us who are part of a religious tradition involving a regular physical rite such as the Eucharist, even to some degree independent of the priestly administration of such a rite. But a spirituality stripped of all tradition and history can seem barren and artificial, just as assuming the mantle of a tradition rooted in another culture can seem alien and uncomfortable.

Certainty is of course a poor fit for the contemplative life, and it may be that there is still a long way to go before a comfortable home is found for contemplative practice in these days; in any case, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic is still in the very recent past.

To change people’s consciousness, we have to find a way to reach their unconscious. That’s where our hearts and our real agendas lie, where our mother wounds, father wounds, and cultural wounds reside. The unconscious is where it all lies stored, and this determines a great deal of what we pay attention to and what we ignore. While it took modern therapy and psychology for us to recognize how true this was, through apocalyptic literature, the Scripture writers were already there. We can’t get to the unconscious logically, literally, or mechanically. We have to fall into it, I’m sorry to say, and usually by suffering, paradox and the effective use of symbols.

Richard Rohr, from In the Footsteps of St. Paul (audiobook)

Rohr might have mentioned that the unconscious cannot be hurried, either! This is why, awkward and counterintuitive though they so often are, and burdened with at times unsought resonances and prejudices from other cultures, there is still so much power in the linguistic formulations and texts of the past. Our minds have roots: we cut them, often, at our peril.

#Buddhism #CenteringPrayer #CloudOfUnknowing #contemplative #language #RichardRohr #Zen

Frames

The spiritual life can be a difficult thing to live with. Once one realises for oneself the emptiness of the “universe of concrete things in eternal categories” (Brian McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed and the Disillusioned), of Newtonian mechanics and dualistically interpreted perceptions, the question of how to live arises in ways that are not only personally unsettling but potentially disruptive to the society in which most of us have grown up.

The Abrahamic religions in their popular, one might say political, forms provided a solid dualistic foundation for life and society – “God’s in his heaven–all’s right with the world” as Robert Browning had it – just as classical mechanics formed a solid, readily calculable foundation not only for physics but for all the sciences. As the revolution in mathematical physics initiated by Einstein and others, and the revolution in biology and paleontology initiated by Darwin, shook the scientific community, so the invasion of Eastern thought and practice (and the revival of the non-dualism inherent in the Christian contemplative tradition), together with the developing psychological disciplines, shook many of the foundations of Western self-understanding.

For those of us who grew up in the turmoil of the 60s the problem could easily become acute. Were we to cling to the imagined certainties of the past, or cast ourselves adrift on the foam of the psychedelic ocean? Were we to seek for no less imaginary certainties among the outward forms of Eastern religions, or were we to become Einzelgänger und Einzelgängerin, tracing our own paths on the leaf-litter of philosophy and metaphysics?

It is easy, at times fatally easy, to fall into New Age formlessness on the one hand, or into some kind of fundamentalism on the other. Perhaps some of the cults and cult-like groups that have formed over the years have been failed attempts to blend these two incompatible directions.

I don’t wish to seem to condemn any of my fellow seekers after truth and insight. Once the medieval conception of a state-sponsored compulsory religion – such as still holds sway in some Muslim societies – has fallen away, choice becomes inevitable. (Even atheism and agnosticism are in this sense choices, albeit nominally negative ones.) The spiritual life needs teachers, though, and teachers often imply institutions, if only to validate their teachings. Many teachers of the spiritual life whom I most admire have remained within, or thrown in their lot with, traditional religions, from Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault in the Christian tradition, to Pema Chödrön and Brad Warner in the Buddhist. But there have been others who have not, whether like Jiddu Krishnamurti they rejected an institutional role, or like Sam Harris never adopted one outside of the academic community.

For myself, I feel that while I will always be grateful to the institutional teachers I have encountered over the years – in my case mostly within the Christian contemplative tradition – I have been happiest and most settled in myself outside religious institutions altogether. I wrote recently:

As I have found myself increasingly at variance with institutional religion, Christian, Buddhist or whatever, and increasingly sceptical of its value either in the life of the spirit or in the life of society, so my naturally eremitical inclinations seem to have strengthened – dramatically so since the enforced isolation in which so many of us found ourselves during the earlier months of the recent pandemic. The opportunity for online fellowship and collegiality of one kind or another changes our expectations of community and communication almost daily.

Despite the value of frameworks of doctrine as a protection from delusion and indiscipline, I am profoundly indebted to those who have sought to delineate the spiritual path outside those traditional frameworks, whether like Tara Brach or Stephen Batchelor they still call themselves Buddhists, or whether like Harris today or Alan Watts in the 60s, they reject such definitions. As I grow older, paradoxically perhaps, I feel less dependent on them myself.

#AlanWatts #BradWarner #community #contemplative #CynthiaBourgeault #PemaChodron #practice #RichardRohr #SamHarris #StephenBatchelor #TaraBrach #trust

Atheism and the Tao

The Tao that can be spoken is not the true Tao
The names that are given do not contain their true meaning
Within the nameless is the true meaning
What is named has a mother and she is the mother of ten thousand things
The un-seeable is always seeable within the internal to those who are not bound by desire
Those who live in a state of desire see only the external illusion of manifestation
These two opposites are born from the same source
The source contains its mystery in darkness
Within the darkness is the darkness that is the gateway to the mysteries

(Tao Te Ching, tr. Dennis Waller)

In all the translations of, and the writings about, the Tao (when spoken, ‘Dao’) there is an insistence that words and names are superfluous, that the Tao – while apparently having no objective reality of its own – can only be experienced subjectively. It is a philosophy, a pursuit of wisdom and a study of natural realities. Tao is not a religion: that is Taoism. We must, however, use words to explain how Tao came to be written down, what part it played in history and what its relevance is in the modern world.

(Pamela Ball, The Essence of Tao)

As Pamela Ball points out, the Tao is not a religious concept, any more than my much (over?) used phrase “the ground of being”, which I derived originally – if I remember correctly – from Paul Tillich via Richard Rohr. But in many ways they are both pointing towards the same truth: that the ontological source of all is, though quite literally inconceivable, able to be encountered.

So what has any of this to do with atheism? Well, it is next to impossible to approach this inconceivability of the utter beginning of what is from within the creedal framework of organised religion. (A few have managed it – witness Eckhart’s Istigkeit or Merton’s point vierge – but they are rare geniuses out on the perilous edge of their faith.) But without these constraints it seems more possible, if no easier, to find words for what has all too often been set aside as ineffable.

This is why experience, whether by a formal practice of meditation or by sheer force of circumstance (as in, for instance, near death experiences), will never be supplanted by even the most sophisticated reasoning. “I can’t find the words…” may be the beginning of wisdom.

#atheism #contemplative #DennisWaller #LaoTzu #MeisterEckhart #PamelaBall #PaulTillich #religion #RichardRohr #Tao #ThomasMerton #unknowing

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.”

#RichardRohr #Quote #Quotes

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.”

#RichardRohr #Quote #Quotes

Opgenomen in de stroom van wording (2)

Er is iets aan het verschuiven. Alsof we, na eeuwen van rationalisering en onttovering, opnieuw leren luisteren naar wat ons overstijgt. Velen noemen het een spirituele of religieuze heropleving. Maar wat zich aandient, reikt dieper dan de traditionele vormen waarin religie ooit werd gegoten. Het is geen beweging van buitenaf, geen oproep tot dogma’s of regels, maar een verlangen van binnenuit.

Steeds meer mensen beseffen dat we verdwaald zijn geraakt in een geconstrueerde, bedachte wereld — een wereld die ons heeft losgemaakt van directe, oorspronkelijke ervaring. Zonder innerlijk kompas voelen we ons onzeker. Op zoek naar houvast grijpen we naar nieuwe, bedachte zekerheden, waarmee we ons juist verder verwijderen van wat wezenlijk is. Zo verliezen we onszelf steeds meer.

Er zijn signalen dat het seculiere scepticisme zijn hoogtepunt voorbij is. Voorzichtig durven we het weer over “God” te hebben.

Iain McGilchrist spreekt liever over the sacred, het heilige, dan over religie. Zijn werk toont hoe onze wereld steeds eenzijdiger is gaan steunen op de rationele, controlerende linkerhersenhelft. Maar nu groeit het besef dat we iets wezenlijks zijn kwijtgeraakt: ons diepste gevoel van verbondenheid en het vermogen tot verwondering. De capaciteit om ons open te stellen voor het mysterie van het bestaan — niet als iets wat we kunnen verklaren met ons intellect, maar als een levende werkelijkheid waarin wij zelf zijn opgenomen.

Deze wending herkennen we in wat sommigen mystiek christendom noemen. Niet het moralistische, op bekering gerichte geloof, maar een vorm die draait om directe ervaring. Niet over een God buiten ons, maar over een diep doorleefd besef van verbondenheid.

Richard Rohr spreekt in dit verband over het Christusmysterie. Hij benadrukt dat Christus geen exclusief bezit is van het christendom, maar een universeel principe, werkzaam in alles en iedereen. De Christus die hij beschrijft is niet alleen de historische Jezus, maar de Levende Aanwezigheid die al het geschapene doordrenkt. De goddelijke Adem die ons uitnodigt tot eenwording — tot thuiskomen in wat altijd al aanwezig is.

De Headless Way van Douglas Harding sluit daar verrassend op aan. Een eenvoudige maar radicale oefening: draai je aandacht om en kijk van waaruit je kijkt. Je ontdekt — zo zeggen velen — dat daar geen hoofd is. Geen afgescheiden zelf, geen centrum dat bestuurt. Alleen openheid — een non-duale aanwezigheid zonder grens of middelpunt. Dit ‘hoofdloos zijn’ is voor Harding geen theorie, maar een directe ervaring van leegte die vervuld is van alles.

En dan is er Dzogchen, de ‘grote perfectie’ — misschien wel de meest vrije vorm van boeddhisme. Zij wijst voorbij oefening en inspanning naar de inherente volmaaktheid van het hier en nu. Ook hier geen zoektocht naar verre verlichting, maar een ontwaken in de altijd aanwezige natuurlijke staat. Alles is al aanwezig, open en helder. Er is niets te bereiken — alleen te herkennen.

In diezelfde geest nodigt Gangaji ons uit tot radicaal stoppen. In de traditie van haar leraar Papaji en de advaita vedanta, wijst zij niet naar een verre bestemming, maar naar de eenvoud van dit moment. “Stop. Wees stil. Wees rustig. Ontdek wie je bent,” zegt ze. Niet door nog meer te doen, maar door alles te laten voor wat het is. In die stilte ontdekken we wat altijd al hier was: de vrede van ons ware Zelf. Gangaji spreekt over de bevrijding die ontstaat wanneer we ophouden met zoeken en ons volledig overgeven aan wat is. Geen mentale constructie, geen geloof, maar een levende, directe ervaring van thuiskomen in de open ruimte die we zelf zijn — helder, grenzeloos en vrij.

Misschien tekenen zich hier de contouren af van een nieuwe spiritualiteit. Of beter gezegd: een oud weten dat opnieuw tot leven komt en ons uitnodigt tot een andere manier van zijn. Geen geloof dat veroordeelt, scheidt of eist, maar een uitnodiging om de sluier op te lichten. Om thuis te komen in het mysterie van de wordingsdrang. Om, in de woorden van McGilchrist, opnieuw eerbied te voelen voor het heilige.

En misschien is dat precies waar onze tijd om vraagt.

Luuk Mur ( 1952) is psycholoog en heeft een drietal boeken geschreven over de door hemzelf ontwikkelde hulpverleningsmethode communitysupport. Hij is lid van de Dzogchen Community Nederland. Dzogchen is een vorm van Tibetaans boeddhisme waarbij veel belang wordt gehecht aan de ontwikkeling van individueel bewustzijn. Bij deze traditie streeft men naar non-dualiteit van het bewustzijn. Mensen zijn zich niet alleen bewust ( je weet dat je dit leest), maar je kunt je ook bewust zijn van dit eerste bewustzijn. Dit meta-bewustzijn wordt ‘gewaarzijn’ genoemd.

Dit is een automatisch geplaatst bericht via ActivityPub.

#Bevrijding #christendom #DouglasHarding #dzogchen #God #HeadlessWay #IainMcGilchrist #innerlijkKompas #RichardRohr #verwondering #wareZelf

I forgot to cancel my free #Audible trial so I had two credits to burn. I used one on Everything Belongs by #RichardRohr. @bookstodon

#spirituality #christianity #prayer