Phronema

The secret is mindfulness during the day; how to achieve it and how to maintain it. Meditation during the morning, first thing if possible, gets things off to a good start. It means always being aware of the aidagara, the space between I and me, or rather, the different ‘me’s that are continually coming to the foreground and fading into the background throughout the day. The I too changes and yet it does not change. — asked for the meaning of this paradox the other day when we were talking about meditation and I was not able to give him a satisfactory answer because I had not thought it through.

According to James the I-self is a creative, free agent, an emergent synthesis of past selves in the present. The I is creative and free because it has the ability to detach itself both from its past and from its present context and choose how it is going to involve itself. In this sense the I is both changing and unchanging. It is changing in the sense that it is a process and its growth and development is linear and progressive. Not unlike a tree, it emerges from the roots of past relationships and its present state is shaped by the surrounding climate and context. The I is unchanging in that it is like the vortex at the eye of a hurricane, like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, the still point at the eye of the storm. All around is movement, and often chaos. The I can choose to involve itself in the movement or remain in the still centre.

Thinking further – I should revise what I said. The I is not unchanging. It is the still point at the centre which is unchanging. The aim of meditation is to find this stillness. From there the whirling clouds and gusting winds can be seen for what they are. Their movement can be seen – how they emerge from the chaos, how they stream through the passing moments, acting and interacting with each other, and how they vanish into the next emergent squall. The I is not the still centre but in that stillness the I can truly be itself. Only from this still point can reality be seen for what it is – ephemeral and insubstantial. ‘Everything flows and nothing stays’, as Heraclitus said. Again he said, panta rei, all things are in a state of flux.

What is this still centre, this empty vacuum at the vortex of the whirling maelstrom? Does every person have their own still centre? What is it and what relation does it bear to I and me? There are, I am sure, mathematical answers to these questions if talking simply about hurricanes or whirlpools, but how does one answer in a personal and in a metaphysical way? And is there a still, unmoving space at the centre of all that is and, if so, what relation does it have to the rest of reality? These are fascinating questions, questions seeking answers from the time of the early Greeks and before, I am sure. Philosophy does not provide the answers though it may help to clarify the questions.

In a 40 minute meditation there are perhaps just one or two moments when I feel a real stillness. They come after 30 minutes or so of constantly bringing the mind back to focus on breathing, just breathing. Then it is simply I who am aware, nothing else. It almost seems that an itch, the sharper and more irritating the better, becomes a blessing because it helps focus the attention. But not even that lasts. Nothing lasts. There is a constant stream of mental activity. In fact the mind is like a butterfly fluttering here and there, wherever there is something to attract and interest it, never still for more than a moment. And the aware I is constantly turning into a me caught up in the thought, or the memory, or experience, or whatever. That is why it is so important to find the stillness, simply to be aware, nothing more. It is a sort of hunger, simply to be in the stillness. It is here that one begins to touch reality, out of the head and in the body, at the centre of a circle of awareness of all that is going on within and round about. That’s all. Nothing more.

But there is more, though the ‘more’ is not a datum of experience. It is deeply felt, though, beneath the threshold of thought and awareness. One is at the limits of awareness and existence. They are there like an impenetrable wall. To be aware of the wall is to know, however dimly, that there is a beyond the wall. There is another side. But when one’s nose is right up against the wall, eyes less than an inch away, one cannot see it for what it is; whether it is as high as the sky, or just an inch or two above one’s head; whether it is so long it girdles the world or is only as wide as an arm’s stretch. Only when one can stand back a bit will one be able to see the wall for what it is. Perhaps it is not a wall at all, but a door.

Meditation this morning. I was distracted by ideas for a project. This was an interesting train of thought that insisted on running even though I kept going back to focus on breathing. I kept telling myself that only being in the present moment was real. Thoughts, ideas, fantasies are all mental constructions and their only reality is their effect on me. Similarly philosophies, theologies, myths, stories and poems – all are similar constructions and their only reality is the effect they have on people’s minds. They are what Popper called World 3 material.

What is the difference between consciousness of the physical reality of body, of breathing and awareness of self so conscious, and consciousness of a train of thought, or fantasies and feelings and emotions? In the second there is certainly less self-awareness. The I is caught up in the subjective experience and is not reflexive. The second is constantly varying, interacting with and being influenced by moods and feelings. The experience can be exhilarating, exciting and moving. But unless these inner dialogues, thoughts, or fantasies are recorded so that they become available to others and so enter Popper’s Third World, they remain as insubstantial as a bubble of foam.

The former, however, does not vary. One of the major difficulties of remaining in it is its unrelieved monotony. The mind seems to abhor monotony as nature does a vacuum. Yet, when one holds to it there is acute awareness of the I, the observer of the me of experience. The I is aware of the breathing, of the body’s posture, of external sounds and of the onset of thoughts and fantasies. The I feels it belongs in the trains of thought and in the imagination. This is its natural habitat, where it longs to be, and to be confined to mere observation is only tolerable for short periods of time. When the I resists being drawn into this subjective mode it sees the thoughts and fantasies for what they are, disconnected ephemera, like dandelion seeds blown in the wind. It is only through prolonged observation that the I comes to perceive that the gap between the observer and the observed is as ‘unreal’ as the thoughts and fantasies, that all is one, but this is not a datum of everyday experience.

It is difficult holding the attention on the cusp of focus on the body (sitting, breathing etc.) and focus on awareness, without drifting off in a train of thought or fantasy. It is difficult to maintain this balancing act because it is non-eventful, often boring, with nothing happening. Habituation quickly takes place and attention drifts. I am beginning to understand the frustrations and agonies of meditation, especially as so much more time is invested in an activity that seems to yield so little benefit. The trouble with daydreaming, trains of fantasy thoughts, is that the mental world is just as real, sometimes more real, than the physical here and now. If the physical here and now is colourful, pleasant or exciting, if it grabs the attention, then of course it dominates. If, however, the physical here and now is dull, uneventful and boring, then the mind displaces it with fantasy. This is why the purveyors of fantasy, soaps, videos, Mills and Boone etc. are so popular. Most people want to escape from the lives of quiet desperation that they lead. Unfortunately the truth does not lie in this mental fantasy world. It can only be found in the physical here and now.

How to penetrate the physical here and now and see it for what it is? How to see beyond, behind, through (whatever the appropriate adverb is) it? There are so many hidden assumptions that have to be uncovered. There is one’s particular worldview that has to be seen as relative rather than absolute; there is the mode of being of the seer himself. This last depends on the previous two, but also on self-understanding and perceived need.

Kolakowski p. 38 on Buddhism.

If, instead of employing our intelligence in satisfying our needs – a vain effort anyway, since the mounting spiral of needs never stops – we try to suppress them and to realise that both the world and the self are an illusion, we can achieve a state of plenitude wherein no imaginary beings imprison us in our apparent exclusivity and separateness from the divine.

I agree with the first part. The second part is badly put. It is not so much that the world and self are an illusion, rather, that neither is as we often understand it. The world is real but it is not an external, fixed and permanent stage on which we act out lives. It is an interactive process of which we are part. The self is not coterminous with the ego but, again, is an interactive process involving other selves and the world. Quite what these processes are, how they relate and where they are going I don’t fully understand – yet. Nor do I agree that the suppression of needs is the right way to proceed. It is the other extreme from gratifying every need. So, back to patient process of practicing simple awareness of being present to oneself, present to others, to the physical here and now, to the Spirit within.

[Kolakowski, Leszek;Religion, Fontana, London 1993]

The reason why Buddhism is so concerned with detachment is because it frees one, not just in a physical sense, but also to be able to experience. Thomas Merton, in his Asian Journal, was struck by how often he encountered ordinary Tibetans going about their everyday tasks humming a mantra. Normally our minds are filled with trains of discursive thought in a reciprocal dialogue with the senses. Thought initiates feelings and emotions; bodily feelings and emotions initiate thoughts. There is a constant interplay which only ceases when the attention is absorbed by a particular task or social interaction. Even there, habituation often allows thoughts and feelings to gain a foothold and interfere with the task in hand.

In meditation, at the beginning at least, the object is to break the thought-feeling interaction and simply become aware. Focusing the attention on the breath, or the mantra does eventually lead to simple awareness. It also leads to something else much more subtle. This simple awareness is a limit situation.

According to Karl Jaspers limit situations are dramatic events, like the birth of a child, marriage, or death of a loved one, in which we become aware of the limits of existence. The fact that we are aware of the limits as limits means that we have in some obscure way seen beyond them. A horizon is only a horizon because we can see beyond it. We are not normally aware of the limits of our existence just as we are not normally aware of the limits of our field of view.

In that simple awareness of meditation, in that, often boring, non-eventful state, we are aware, very dimly perhaps, of the limits of existence, of the horizon of our being. We have acquired an awareness of transcendence. During the day, whenever we are doing anything which does not require mental attention, the mantra, which has being saying itself quietly in the depths somewhere, surfaces and becomes conscious. Once again we are in touch with transcendence and everything falls into perspective. All this is very gentle, very subtle and is easily swamped by feelings. Hence the need for detachment. To quote Peter Harvey:

The citta of one on the Buddhist path should not be at the mercy of outside stimuli, nor of its own moods etc. but should be an island of calm, imbued with self-control, self-contained. It should no longer be scattered and diffused but should be more integrated and consistently directed towards one goal, nibbhana. (Harvey, P.; The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism, Curzon Press. London 1995 p. 55)

I think this process of becoming one-pointed and detached is a return to innocence. Particular memories, attachments and feelings are all aspects of a component of the personality. They are personality-factors. While they are alive and active they designate something of what we are. Time does not heal the wounds of the bad deeds of the past as long as the roots that gave rise to them are still alive and active, and they are active as long as the memories and attachments still have the power to move us. So they have to be exorcised. The process of detachment involves a review, more or less drawn out, of the past. Memories are paraded before the eye of the mind until we can look at them with neither desire nor loathing. To quote Harvey again,

He or she is thus very self-contained and self-controlled, with a “diamond-like citta”, unperturbed and “unsoiled” by anything. His or her senses are not tied to their objects and he has perfected “dwelling alone” by letting go of everything, such as the personality-factors, with no attachment or repugnance. (op. cit. p. 63)

The result will be to see everything like a child, fresh, new, full of wonder, filled with beauty and joy. This is not an easy process. It will involve much suffering. I think the only thing to do is to take each day as it comes, sometimes perhaps, each hour and look no further than the present moment. There is a very telling comment by William Johnston – ‘Buddhists speak out of the experience of enlightenment, Western theologians talk out of books.’ (William Johnston; letter to The Tablet 21 February 1998)

When I am meditating, apart from the times when I am caught up in one distraction after another – which is sometimes most of the time – apart from these times I find myself face to face with nothingness, the void. The mind shies away from this, hence the tendency to be distracted. But it is important to face it, to confront it, to merge with it. This happens rarely but when it does I feel myself on a threshold, a frightening, terrifying threshold – like standing at the very edge of a high cliff and feeling the yawning emptiness below draw like a magnet and you step back because you don’t trust yourself. So we shy away from nothingness although it is the threshold to truth and reality.

It is a bit like a baby waiting to be born. It is conscious but not yet self-conscious. It cannot think, nor can it anticipate, but if it could the prospect of birth would be a scary event even though there is nothing, and everything, to fear. The womb is a warm, secure environment. It presents no challenges, imposes no choices or decisions, no demands are made. The baby is about to be violently thrust out of this environment, which is all that it has ever known, into the unknown.

We all fear the unknown precisely because it is unknown. Such is our deep-rooted insecurity we are more willing to believe that it will be peopled with terrors than with warmth and love. Why are we so insecure? Partly, I suppose, because we are not self-sufficient, we depend so much on others who, like us, are themselves insecure and dependent. We do not have a firm and unyielding basis for our existence, we suffer from the three brute facts of contingency, powerlessness and scarcity. And so we tend to do two things which are really not very intelligent. We shy away from the nothingness and we try to find security in material things.

What is meditation about? It is always a struggle between two modes or being – feeling and rational. I think much of the time we are in feeling mode. Our feelings of like and dislike shape the routine activity of daily life. Performing a task involves the rational mode. As often as not feelings can either hinder or enhance rational mode activity. Yesterday — was trying to change the oil in his motor bike but his feelings about dirt, difficulty and discomfort kept getting in he way of a simple mechanical task. Likewise the pleasure of teaching, sparking off and drawing out ideas and conclusions, enhances doing theology. RM and FM are two sides of the same thing. Meditation helps one become aware of how these two interface. The focusing of the mind during meditation, the being aware of switching from one to the other and of the intermingling of the two is something that can carry over into the rest of the day. This is the meaning of mindfulness. But mindfulness is only the beginning. The task is to become aware of the underlying reality. It is a bit like being at the cinema. We are so caught up in the sights and sounds of the drama on the screen that we lose awareness of our surroundings, of the projectionist, of the streets outside, etc. Even if we are aware of them they are not as interesting at this moment as the drama on the screen – even though they are real and the drama is fiction. Fiction it may be, but when it absorbs our attention it is more ‘real’ than reality. This is one of the hurdles of meditation – getting through the boring phase of bringing the attention back from one distraction after another until one achieves simple self-awareness. To continue the analogy – the film and the cinema only exist because of the social infrastructure that produced them – a world of real people engaged in tasks, projects and creative activities, involved in all kinds of human interaction. The goal in meditation is not just to become self- aware in the minimalist sense of mindfulness but to become aware of the underlying Reality which has given rise first, to me and second, to my mental world.

(Re all this cf. McGinn on Augustine’s mysticism: Mcginn, Bernard . Presence of God: v1 The Foundations of Mysticism (The Presence of God: a History of Western Mysticism). SCM Press, London, 1992. p. 233)

I think one of the problems with meditation is that external stimulation is at a minimum. What stimulation there is soon becomes habituated and ceases to register. For the mind then imagination, fantasies and daydreams can have a more, and a richer, reality than concentration on breathing or mantra. And so it becomes a continual struggle constantly bringing the mind back to attention.

A vague idea is running through my mind. One of the drawbacks, this is very tentative, of the Christian tradition with its anthropomorphic focus is that objects of devotion are often mental constructs, fantasies. Mystics, and those who have a religious experience, glimpse something of the reality behind these constructs. Others who have done some theology may be aware of the gap between the credal formula, the object of worship, and the transcendent reality. But for most the religious life is something that involves the whole person and especially the emotions and, while these intellectual considerations may be acknowledged, it is the emotive life which really matters and which gives flavour to living. To base this emotive life on mental constructs and fantasies seems to me to be laying up trouble for oneself. I am sure that much of the accedie contemplatives suffered from in the past, and perhaps John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, are due to this weaning away from a fantasy life.

In this respect Buddhism has much in its favour. The problem though is that we all need an emotive life, preferably one that is rich and satisfying. Can one find it in the austerity of a contemplative life? Perhaps yes. Perhaps it frees from fantasies, both those of the mind alone and those we project onto others, so that we can relate to others with greater inner freedom and with less clinging and grasping to a wishful desire that they be what we want them to be. We can acknowledge the other in all his/her uniqueness.

Following on from yesterday it struck me this morning that praying for the poor, the suffering, the ills of the world is, although undoubtedly well intentioned, a cop-out. It is counterproductive. Do we really believe that God is going to do something? Many believe in the occasional miracle, and Lourdes and similar places have their devotees, but no one really believes that as a result of our prayers the wicked will be put down and the poor exalted; that the world will be changed. This kind of prayer is a cop-out. It is a sop to our conscience. It lets us off the hook of practical activity. There is nothing I can do about Iraq, or Darfur, or Palestine, or unemployment, or the thousands of injustices meted by the rich and powerful on the poor and disadvantaged, but God is all-powerful and, in theory at least, he could, if he was so disposed, alleviate the situation. My prayers might help in this regard so I’ll say a few prayers. This sort of logic might make me feel a little better but it will do nothing for the suffering and, if I think it through, it is not logic but wishful thinking.

Just imagine if we all believed that our prayers will do nothing to alleviate the ills of the world. Imagine too that we have not become anaesthetised to the sufferings we see daily on our TV screens, that we burned with anger and indignation at the lies, corruption and hypocrisy ever more evident in public life, that we wept for our children searching for a way in an anarchic and materialist world. We would do something.

I think there are two kinds of prayer. There is the prayer that is contemplative, the gradual and progressive unfolding into Reality, the realisation of the True Self and there is the prayer of petition. This latter can widen, I think, the gulf between the individual and God. It can diminish the individual and exalt the Deity, enfeeble and inhibit activity. The prayer that is the deepening awareness of the indwelling Spirit empowers.

Meditation is a struggle to concentrate. There are so many things which come pressing in on the mind, worries, anxieties. Like little terriers, they will not let go but come back again and again to worry and gnaw. In prayer one can pour out all these worries and anxieties, pains and hurts in a wordless flow to God, to Christ. Off-load it all. Here you are. This is too much for me. You take care of it. This can be very satisfying and therapeutic. But meditation is not like this. There is no off-loading, no passing on to another. In meditation you are intensely aware of all the hurts and worries and you just have to let them go. There is no philosophising, no rationalising. These can help to make sense of life but they do not change anything. In meditation there is simply you, sitting, experiencing. I am beginning to understand what tanha means. It is not just wanting or craving. It is being tied in to, hooked to something which, however much you may want to, you cannot let go. It becomes a real effort to detach, to focus, to try to let them go.

The question arises – to what point? What for? Is not this, the ‘real’ me, inextricably part of my relationships? What other me can there be to find? One has to leave the ‘real’, the day-to-day me behind in search of … what? This is the scary part. In the moments of concentration and calm there is nothing, just the raw experience of sitting, breathing. Where does this raw experience lead?

I came across this in Dumoulin’s Zen Buddhism in the 20th Century.

The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of satori. Not, necessarily, that I get unified with a being greater than myself or absorbed in it, but that my individuality, which I found rigidly held together and definitely kept separate from other individual existences, becomes loosened somehow from its tightening grip and melts away into something indescribable, something which is of a quite different order from what I am accustomed to. (D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: Second Series p. 36)

This is an echo of William James – “the further limits of our being plunge into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and merely ‘understandable’ world.” (Varieties of Religious Experience p. 506)