Phronema

Meditation is hard. It is very difficult to maintain attention without letting distractions draw the mind away. And distractions can be so seductive, especially those fantasies which flatter and expand the ego. They can become so real that they shape behaviour, actions and attitudes. Hence the importance of concentration and letting the thoughts and distractions go. Hence too the wisdom of the Buddhist approach. It is agnostic. It requires only a commitment to seeking the truth. The faith it requires is the belief that the truth can be found and that meditation is a sure way, though not the only way. Now I know why I am suspicious of so much of modern spirituality – things like the Enneagram. They seem to me to be ego-centric. They flatter and expand the ego. They focus attention on it when ‘it’ is as ephemeral as the drone of flies on a summer day. Meditation should not become an episode in the day, a sort of fugue state separated from other activities. Mindfulness and one-pointedness should persist throughout the day.

Meditated for half an hour in the garden this afternoon. It has been a beautiful day, full of life. A strong south-west wind bringing showers and vast cumulus clouds chasing their shadows across the wheat-fields. Sitting in the garden, buffeted by the wind, eyes closed, focusing on simply being aware of all round about. It was easy to believe that life pervades the whole of the cosmos. Certainly motion does. I am coming to understand why meditation demands a moral way of life. It was interesting looking at some of the statements on meditation to be found on the Internet which suggested that moral behaviour is an option. On the contrary it is a fundamental requirement, always has been and all religions have emphasised this. What has been exercising me is why this should be so. The answer lies in the fact that meditation is a search for the Truth. Enlightenment, its goal, is to know the Truth. Now the Truth is that all are one, whether you understand this as all having the same Buddha nature, or all being incorporated into the Body of Christ, or tat tvam asi. All the great religions have this insight somewhere in their tradition. The sad thing with the tendency towards sectarianism today is that this is too often forgotten. Even the Catholics, who should know better if they were mindful of their mystical traditions, are increasingly caught up in an emphasis on the supreme importance of dogmatic orthodoxy.

Reading Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen*; he makes the interesting remark (p. 17) that Chinese and Japanese masters stress that only upon full enlightenment can one truly know good from evil. There is something in this. Of course one knows good and evil in an egocentric sense from a very early age. Good is what pleases and evil what hurts. But to know in a cosmic sense, to see the inter-connectedness of all that is and the ramifications of even the most neutral-seeming actions, that is another matter. So often evil comes in the guise of good, good for the subject, that it is not recognised for what it is.

What an interesting connection with the Genesis myth and the command given to Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge because then they would be like God. They would cease to be like innocent children and know good and evil. In the Hindu tradition ignorance is the great evil precisely because it prevents the discernment of the real good, ultimate reality. Another reason why prescriptions and ethical codes are necessary. ‘Obey the nature of things and you are in concord with The Way’ said Seng Ts’an. This concordance must reverberate through one’s whole being and facilitate the search for the Truth. In a sense one has found the Truth but does not yet know it.

In Zen meditation great emphasis is placed on the importance of hara. This is the region just below the navel and is seen as the physical and spiritual centre of the body. The attention should be focused here. It takes one out of the head and into the body. The centre of gravity shifts to its proper place and one no longer feels top heavy. The whole body feels lighter, head raised, shoulders straightened, one is at ease with oneself, more detached, more able to see body and self in perspective. Kapleau makes a comparison between the agonised and tortured attitude of Rodin’s Thinker and the peaceful tranquillity of the Buddha in the lotus posture. Such a little thing and such a profound change.

*Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen, Anchor Books, New York, 1989