Contemplative Inquiry

August 9, 2017

STEPHEN BATCHELOR: THE EVERYDAY SUBLIME

Stephen Batchelor explores his view that “the mystical does not transcend the world but saturates it”. For me, this discussion has a resonance beyond the ranks of ‘secular Buddhism’. The passage below is from his book After Buddhism: rethinking the Dharma in a secular age (1). I am attracted to his view of ‘the everyday sublime’ and for me at least, its relevance extends well beyond Batchelor’s specific context.

“Meditation originates and culminates in the everyday sublime … [It] is about what is happening to this organism as it touches the environment in this moment. I do not reject the experience of the mystical. I reject the view that the mystical is concealed behind what is merely apparent, that it is anything other than what is occurring in time and space right now. The mystical does not transcend the world but saturates it. ‘The mystical is not how the world is,’ noted Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1921, ‘but that it is.’

“As understood by Edmund Burke and the Romantic poets, the sublime exceeds our capacity for representation. The world is excessive: every blade of grass, every ray of sun, every falling leaf is excessive. None of these things can be adequately captured in concepts, images, or words. They overreach us, spilling beyond the boundaries of thought. Their sublimity brings the thinking, calculating mind to a stop, leaving one speechless, overwhelmed with either wonder or terror. Yet for we human animals who delight and revel in our place, who crave security, certainty and consolation, the sublime is banished and forgotten. As a result, life is rendered opaque and flat. Each day is reduced to the repetition of familiar actions and events, which are blandly comforting but devoid of an intensity we both yearn for and fear.

“To experience the everyday sublime requires that we dismantle the perceptual conditioning that insists on seeing ourselves and the world as essentially comfortable, permanent, solid, and ‘mine’. It means to embrace suffering and conflict rather than to shy away from them, to cultivate the embodied attention that contemplates the tragic, changing, empty and impersonal dimensions of life, rather than succumbing to fantasies of self-glorification or self-loathing. This takes time. It is a life-long practice.

“The ordinary sublime is our ordinary life experienced from the perspective of the fourfold task [NB Batchelor’s reframe of the Buddhist four noble truths JN]. …

An open-hearted embrace of the totality of one’s existential situation
A letting go of the habitual restrictive patterns of thought and behavior triggered by that situation
A conscious valorization of those moments in which such reactive patterns have stilled
A commitment to a way of life that emerges from such stillness and responds empathetically, ethically and creatively to the situation in hand.

“Understood in this way, meditation is not about gaining proficiency in technical procedures claimed to guarantee attainments that correspond to the dogmas of a particular religious orthodoxy. Nor is its goal to achieve a privileged, transcendent insight into the ultimate nature of reality, mind, or God. In the light of the fourfold task, meditation is the ongoing cultivation of a sensibility, a way of attending to every aspect of experience within a framework of ethical values and goals.

…..

“As a sensibility, meditation enables us to cultivate an understanding of moment-to-moment experience much as we develop an appreciation of art or poetry or nature. Grounded in the body and the senses, we value an open-mindedness to what is unfamiliar, probe our sensorium with relentless curiosity, listen attentively to what others have to say, are willing to suspend habitual attitudes and opinions, and questions what is going on instead of simply taking things for granted. The disengagement of meditation is not an aloof regard (or disregard) but a perspective that engenders another kind of response to what is happening. And it begins with the breath, our primordial relationship to the fabric of the world in which we are embedded.”

Stephen Batchelor After Buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2015

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August 7, 2017

POEM: AU VIEUX JARDIN

I have sat here happy in the gardens,

Watching the still pool and the reeds

And the dark clouds

Which the wind of the upper air

Tore like the green leafy boughs

Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;

But though I greatly delight

In these and the water lilies,

That which sets me nighest to weeping

Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones

And the pale yellow grasses

Among them.

Richard Aldington in Imagist Poetry edited by Peter Jones London: Penguin, 1972 (Modern Penguin Classics)

The Imagists were a short-lived yet influential movement in early 20^th century poetry in the English language. Whilst an organized and at that time mostly young group, they were based in London and included both British and expatriate American members. The Imagist collections of the 1914-17 period include the work of: Ezra Pound; Richard Aldington; H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); Amy Lowell; D.H. Lawrence; William Carlos Williams; Ford Maddox Ford; T.E. Hulme; James Joyce; Marianne Craig Moore; E.E. Cummings; John Gould Fletcher. Years later, T.S. Eliot paid tribute to the Imagists as a formative influence.

The Imagists had three rules, designed to encourage freshness and clarity in observation and precision in expression. For me this gives them contemplative interest. Ezra Pound in particular was fascinated by Chinese and Japanese poetry, then beginning to become available in the West.

Direct treatment of the ‘thing’, whether subjective or objective.
To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the presentation.
As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

In the poem above, I was particularly moved by the way in which freshness, clarity and precision allowed the poet to both feel and contain strong emotion. For me, contemplative spaces embrace such feelings, whilst also providing a clear space around them.

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August 4, 2017

A BIRD OF RHIANNON

“They went to Harlech, and sat down and were regaled with food and drink. As soon as they began to eat and drink, three birds came and began to sing them a song, and all the songs that they had heard before were harsh compared to that one. They had to gaze far out over the sea to catch sight of the birds, yet the song was as clear as if the birds were there with them. And they feasted for seven years”. (1)

The three birds are blackbirds, known as the birds of Rhiannon. They are at least partly of the Otherworld, for Rhiannon is a potent deity, linked to the moon and sovereignty. In the story of How Culhwch won Olwen (2), the giant Yspadadden Pencawr demands that the hero Culhwch capture Rhiannon’s birds to entertain him on the night before his death – a death which will immediately follow his daughter Olwen’s marriage to Culhwch, to whom his kingship will be passed. Yspadadden describes the birds as “they that wake the dead and lull the living asleep”.

Hence, in The Druid Animal Oracle (3). The blackbird is understood as “a being who can send us into the dreamtime and who can speak with discarnate souls”. The Oracle also points out that “Blackbirds are fond of rowan berries, one of the sacred trees in Druid tradition. …. Eating these berries, the blackbird is able to connect us with his healing song to the regenerative powers of the Otherworld and the Unconscious”.

In How Culhwch won Olwen, a blackbird also figures as one of the oldest animals who need to be consulted in a quest to rescue the Mabon, the divine youth of Brythonic tradition, from imprisonment. As the Jungian scholar John Layard (4) says, “all these figures conduct us back into the past, which is the equivalent to psychic depth … into the heart of the mother-world below, the matrix out of which all life grew up and the ever-renewing source of it”. The blackbird is in fact the youngest and most accessible of these helpful animals, “functions of instinct that assist if we are humble enough to ask their help”. For Layard, the blackbird is the bearer of “a maternal spirit-message”.

In the apparent world, my wife Elaine and I share our back garden with a pair of blackbirds, and sometimes chicks, for some months of the year. They are here now. They do sing both at dawn and dusk, with the twilight song for me the most notable. They have chosen a slightly hidden space and our willingness to have a relatively unkempt garden is partly for their sake.

I have recently been visited by another blackbird, also in a garden. This garden is both familiar and unfamiliar, known and not known. It appeared to me in a state of mild to moderate trance, and resembles the Sophia’s garden I used to work with as an innerworld nemeton. But much has changed. Sophia’s garden had a link to a temple and was well kept. Generally, it was a noonday kind of place, bright sun flashing on the fountain at the centre, illuminating the water. There were rose beds surrounding it, and fruit trees trained up mature brick walls. Alternatively, it was a place of magical silence in black night, lit up by full moon and stars. Now there is no temple. The fountain and rose beds, whilst still in place, show signs of reduced maintenance. It is twilight, liminal, with limited visibility.

A blackbird appeared and sang to me in this space, meeting me on mutually safe and accessible ground. Its message was one of availability and reassurance. I returned it in a spirit of openness and friendly affirmation. And then I was back in everyday reality. Now I simply wait, tentatively expectant, open to further connection.

Sioned Davies The Mabinogion Oxford University Press, 2007 The second branch of the Mabinogi
Sioned Davies The Mabinogion Oxford University Press, 2007 How Culhwch won Olwen
Philip & Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid animal oracle: working with the sacred animals of the Druid tradition New York: Fireside, 1994
John Layard A Celtic quest: sexuality and soul in individuation Dallas, TX: Spring Publications, 1985

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August 2, 2017

CONSERVATION IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

What does ‘conservation’ mean now? A thoughtful reconsideration.

The Earthbound Report

What does conservation look like in the Anthropocene era? That’s a question I found myself asking as I read Chris D Thomas’ stimulating book Inheritors of the Earth. If we recognise that human activity is now shaping the whole of the earth, what implications does it have for conservation? I’d suggest it has pretty serious implications, because many long established notions around nature and wilderness are disturbed by the idea of the Anthropocene. We can’t hope to leave nature alone and ‘untouched’ by human presence if our presence is ubiquitous. Nowhere can be reserved and set aside if the whole planet is changing. The global effects of human activity challenge our whole understanding of wildness and wilderness.

Thomas argues that we need “a conservation philosophy that is based on natural change, with humans centre stage: partly because we have already brought about so many changes to the world that…

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July 26, 2017

MAKING PERSONAL VOWS

On Monday I completed a Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) course (1). It was not strictly Buddhist, but the teachers and all the participants were sufficiently Buddhist influenced to have had existing experience of both of mindfulness and loving-kindness practices. At the same time I believe that the overall approach can offer something for anyone concerned with the issues addressed.

One of these is making and living with vows. In this context, we make the vows to ourselves and there are two key criteria. The first is that the vow anchors an intention, rather than operating as a binding contract. The second is that vows flow out of our core values. Hence, we need to get clear about these values before making any vows.

The process for checking core values is a simple one. Bringing warm-hearted awareness to ourselves and our experience, we imagine being near the end of our lives and looking back. We ask ourselves what has given us the deepest satisfaction, joy and contentment. What values did we embody that gave our life meaning? In other words, what core values were expressed in our lives? Possible examples given by the people who developed the MSC programme are: compassion, generosity, honesty, courage, family, loyalty, service, curiosity and nature.

Having done this, we select a core value that we would like to manifest for the rest of our lives and write it in the form of a vow. In the construction of the vow, ‘May I …’ language is recommended. This strengthens a kind of commitment which is about working towards, and deepening into, the expression of the core value, rather than getting tied up in a drama of binary obedience/disobedience.

When making my own vows, I found it good to remember that they are personal and not set in concrete. They can be further changed and developed – or even dropped, if they cease to sit well. They are tools rather than rules. With the two below, I found that care with language was key to the credibility of the vow. Worded to be both simple and demanding, such vows can allow for degrees of fulfilment, and provide a kind of coaching.

May I be loving and compassionate in my personal interactions

Mindful Self-Compassion begins with ‘self’ but doesn’t – and couldn’t meaningfully – stop there. One of its merits is to resource loving-kindness and compassion to others and in the wider world. It is a preventative measure against cold charity and compassion fatigue. In the context of this vow, loving-kindness and compassion are specific terms. Loving-kindness is a basic stance of positive regard, not necessarily fuelled by natural empathy or emotion beyond a basic inclination to warmth. Compassion is loving-kindness in a situation where the other person or being is suffering. MSC, and the wider culture of Buddhist lovingkindness, provide working methods that include being kind to ourselves when we struggle with the stance of loving-kindness and compassion towards others. In working with this vow, I am not dependent on factors like self-image or passing sentiment. I have practices to support me in making the vow meaningful.

May I experience abundance in simplicity

This vow depends on a dance between two qualities that might be thought of as pulling in opposite directions. To the extent I might experience a tension myself, I am challenged to develop my understanding both of ‘abundance’ and of ‘simplicity’. One synthesis, an important one, finds a path through living lightly on the Earth as a personal witness in the face of world-pillaging and climate crisis. There’s a set of lifestyle choices to be made here, finding riches within apparent frugality. But for immediate experience, I go straight to simplicity. By this I mean slowing down, and opening to the simple now. I immerse myself in the texture of what is abundantly here and freely given. I look out of my window at late summery yellow-green ivy … abundance-in-simplicity comes in and sits on my shoulders. The point of the vow is to remind me of the miracle of being alive and to open me more fully to the gift.

(1) https://centerformsc.org/

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July 21, 2017

MARY MAGDALENE

Tomorrow, 22 July, is dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The passage below is from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene (1), one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels driven underground in the later 4^th century C.E. due to Orthodox repression. These words show the importance of Mary Magdalene as a teacher to many people in the early Christian movement and beyond, and as the Christ Sophia to some (2).

“Peter said to Mary:

‘Sister, we know that the Teacher loved you

Differently from other women.

Tell us whatever you remember

Of any words he told you

Which we have not yet heard’.

Mary said to them:

‘I will now speak to you

Of that which has not been given to you to hear.

I had a vision of the Teacher,

And I said to him:

Lord I see you now

In this vision.

And he answered:

You are blessed, for the sight of me does not disturb you.

There where is the nous* lies the treasure.”

(1) Jean-Yves Leloup The gospel of Mary Magdalene Rochester, VA: Inner Traditions, 2002 (English translation and notes by Joseph Rowe. Foreword by Jacob Needleman)

(2) http://www.sophian.org/

Nous* Mary’s vision is a vision of the nous. Leloup’s commentary suggests that ancient Christian Gnostics understood nous as the “finest point of the soul”, an intermediate realm between the purely sensory and the purely spiritual, giving access to a vein of prophetic or visionary sacred knowledge.

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July 18, 2017

POEM: LOST

Desolate and lone

All night long on the lake

Where fog trails and mist creeps,

The whistle of a boat

Calls and cries unendingly,

Like some lost child

In tears and trouble

Hunting the harbor’s breast

And the harbor’s eyes.

Carl Sandburg Chicago poems, New York: Dover Publications, 1994. (First published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, in 1916)

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) left school aged 11, working in a variety of jobs such as barbershop porter, milk truck driver, brickyard worker and wheat harvester. He enlisted with the 6th. Illinois Infantry in 1898 and served in the Spanish-American War.

In 1913, he moved to Chicago and became one of a group of writers responsible for the Chicago Renaissance in arts and letters. His work reflects an awareness of the U.S. as an increasingly urban nation, frequently celebrating the drive and energy of the working people of the industrial Midwest. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950.

However, in the poem above, a note of loneliness and alienation is conjured up by the whistle of a boat on Lake Michigan – alienation, yet with some hope, or hint of a hope, of homecoming.

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July 14, 2017

‘RESTING IN GOD’

Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) explores a Christian term in his The Art of Living (1). He says: “In Christianity there is the phrase, ‘resting in God’. When we let go of all seeking and striving, it is as if we are resting in God. We establish ourselves firmly in the present moment; we dwell in the ultimate; we rest in our cosmic body. Dwelling in the ultimate doesn’t require faith or belief. A wave doesn’t need to believe it is water. The wave is already water in the very here and now.

“To me, God is not outside us or outside reality. God is inside. God is not an external entity for us to seek, for us to believe in or not believe in. God, Nirvana, the ultimate, is inherent in every one of us. The Kingdom of God is available in every moment. The question is whether we are available to it. With mindfulness, concentration and insight, touching nirvana, touching our cosmic body or the Kingdom of God, becomes possible with every breath and every step.”

I tend not to use theistic language myself. But I do recognize and understand it, and I also see its value in building bridges between traditions. Thay has an interest in Buddhist Christian dialogue that goes back to the time of his friendship with Rev. Martin Luther King in the 1960’s, after Thay was forced to leave his native Vietnam. He has subsequently written Living Buddha, Living Christ (2).

We can find these bridgebuilding efforts echoed on the Christian side – for example by Father Jean-Yves Leloup, an Orthodox priest, and student of Christian Gnostic gospels, including that of St. Thomas (3). He has also engaged in Christian-Buddhist dialogue with the Dalai Lama (4). We find here a note that has parallels, without being identical, to that of Thich Nhat Hanh.

“His disciples said to him:

When will the dead be at rest?

When will the new world come?

He answered them: what you are waiting for has already come,

But you do not see it.” Logion 51, Gospel of St. Thomas.

“What we have been waiting for, the peace and fullness we yearn for, is already here. … Eternal life is in the very heart of this life. It is the uncreated dimension of our present life, which cannot die. To look for it elsewhere is to depart from it.” Later (Logion 61) Yeshua (Jesus) is translated as saying, ‘I come from the One who is Openness’, and Leloup comments: “Rilke once said Openness is the least blasphemous name for God. It is the name that is least defining and qualifying. Openness is the infinite space within the very heart of space, containing all and contained by nothing.” In Openness, “the body is open to the energies of the cosmos, the heart is open to a deep compassion, and the mind is as clear as a mirror, serenely reflecting the multitude of appearances.”

(1) Thich Nhat Hanh The art of living London: Rider, 2017

(2) Thich Nhat Hanh Living Buddha, Living Christ London: Rider, 2012 (Foreword by David Steindl-Rast; introduction by Elaine Pagels)

(3) Jean-Yves Leloup The gospel of Thomas: the gnostic wisdom of Jesus Rochester, VA: Inner Traditions, 2005 (English translation and notes by Joseph Rowe. Foreword by Jacob Needleman)

(4) Jean-Yves Leloup Compassion and meditation: the spiritual dynamic between Buddhism and Christianity Rochester, VA: Inner Traditions, 2009 (Translated by Joseph Rowe. Dedications to Father Seraphim at Mount Athos and to the Dalai Lama, Ocean of Comapssion)

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July 13, 2017

BOOK REVIEW: MERLIN

Elen Sentier’s Merlin Once & Future Wizard is a marvel, highly recommended. The author effortlessly charms us into a fresh and extended understanding of Merlin, introducing us to a “huge, ancient, wise and powerful” being – teacher, trickster and friend. For me, her introductory Who Is Merlin? chapter offers the best description of the essential Merlin I have ever read.

“Merlin is a liminal being. Liminal means a threshold, a place between past and future, between here and there, between one world and another … and he is always standing at that threshold. He is that place. And that ever-changing constant threshold is now, the here-and-now, and it’s constantly in motion like the sea”. Merlin teaches us, if we are willing, to “be continuously and consciously aware that you stand in the middle of change all the time, whatever is going on”. This is a lifelong learning. It cannot be hurried, and it cannot be branded or packaged.

Happily, however, it can be pointed towards, “if you can find someone who knows Merlin intimately and is willing to walk beside you on your journey to know him – and there are quite a few of us about if you look … You don’t feel alone, and they help you stop that nasty subliminal feeling that you really are nuts.”

Elen Sentier walks beside us to great effect. She has known Merlin since early childhood, when she joined the company of walkers-between-the-worlds, which means having a foot in the everyday world at the same time as having the other foot in the otherworld. She describes herself both as “an ordinary elderly woman” and an “awenydd”, or spirit-keeper in the old Brythonic tongue.

For readers who are new to Merlin, the book takes care to cover Merlin in history, stories and poetry – and even adds (for me at least) new material from the Welsh Marches in the chapter Pig Moor: Dyfrig, Ergyng and Mynydd Myrddin. But the greatest strength of Merlin Once & Future Wizard is the personal sharing interwoven with this traditional lore, showing how the author’s own relationship with Merlin has unfolded. At heart this book is a personal testament to a life lived under Merlin’s influence and inspiration. The effect is to give it added weight and authenticity, supported rather than undermined by an informal and chatty style.

Elen Sentier Merlin once & future wizard: Winchester UK & Washington USA: Moon Books, 2016 (Pagan Portals series)

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July 12, 2017

AIMLESSNESS

We often talk about our ‘path’ or ‘journey’, and this can have a value. Yet at heart spirituality is about being somewhere rather than getting somewhere – recognising the home we have never left.

“The concentration on Aimlessness means arriving in the present moment to discover that the present moment is the only moment in which you can find everything you’ve been looking for, and that you already are everything you want to become.

“Aimlessness does not mean doing nothing. It means not putting something in front of you to chase after. When we remove the objects of our craving and desires, we discover that happiness and freedom are available to us right here in the present moment.

“We have a habit of running after things, and this habit has been transmitted to us by our parents and ancestors. We don’t feel fulfilled in the here and now, and so we run after all kinds of things we think will make us happier. We sacrifice our life chasing after objects of craving or striving for success in our work or studies. We chase after our life’s dream and yet lose ourselves along the way. We may even lose our freedom and happiness in our efforts to be mindful, to be healthy, to relieve suffering in the world, or to get enlightened. We disregard the wonders of the present moment, thinking that heaven and the ultimate are for later, not for now.

“To practice meditation means to have the time to look deeply and see these things. If you feel restless in the here and now, or if you feel ill at ease, you need to ask yourself: ‘what am I longing for? What am I searching for? … What am I waiting for?”

Thich Nhat Hanh The art of living London: Rider, 2017

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