Phronema

It takes a little while to settle into meditation, even first thing in the morning before the day has begun to bring its problems and its distractions. One has to switch off the auto-pilot which got one out of bed and down the stairs and settled for meditation and become aware of exactly what one is doing – posture, breathing, directing thoughts, forming the intention. Then all the attention focused on breathing – on the breath as it comes in, on the pause, on the breath as it goes out, pause, etc. Pretty soon thoughts arise; back to attention on the breathing; a different thought; and so it goes on. Sometimes the thoughts are ideas, concepts. A new way of looking at something strikes me, a sudden insight, and I want to pursue it. This is very interesting. It could lead somewhere. Back to concentrating on breathing. This is not the time. I will come back and think about it later.Someone moves about upstairs. I should let it go, treat it as a noise just like the other inconsequential noises that occur all the time, but I cannot. I am no longer the ‘I/me’ who began to meditate but am now the father. This ‘I/me’ is inextricably involved in this relationship which the noise caused by my son getting up evokes and cannot just ‘let it go’. This ‘I/me’ is, in part, shaped and formed by this relationship, is the relationship. Another noise upstairs, wife getting up, and the husband ‘I/me’ appears. According to Mead the ‘I’ is the subjective self and the various ‘me’s’ are the social selves which arise out of the social context in which the ‘I’ finds itself at each moment. My experience is that it is not as simple as this. Each relationship is bipolar with an ‘I’ and a ‘me’, a subjective and an objective, aspect. ‘Wife’ noises call out the ‘I/husband’ who is immediately caught up in thoughts to do with that relationship. ‘Son’ noises call out the ‘I/father’. Both of these ‘I’s’ can coexist easily side by side. They are robust, formed by intimate personal relationships. In meditation, therefore, when the ‘I/husband’ is beset by thoughts worries, or anxieties it is not enough to say, ‘I must drop these thoughts and get back to focusing on breathing.’ Because the ‘I’ thinking is the ‘I/husband’ and not the ‘I’ who originally began the meditation, nor the subject the meditation is seeking to discover.We are back to anatta (no self) again. The experience of dealing with distractions in meditation is of alternating between these different ‘I’s’, those born of personal relationships and those born of fantasies and day-dreams. These latter can be just as real at times as the former. Behind all these ‘I/me’s’ there is, I hesitate to say another ‘I’, there is a subject. There is an awareness which transcends the subjective awareness of all the various ‘I/me’s’. The discovery of this awareness is the point of meditation.Where does God fit into all this? At present I am simply trying to speak from my experience. I don’t want to make any assumptions based on faith, or Scripture, or theology. It is not that these may not be valid – I hope that what I have always believed and have come to work out for myself is not wrong – but because they are assumptions. They are based on the experiences of others, often in the distant past, or on the assumptions and conclusions of others. Their claim to validity, as opposed to all the claims of all the other religions and philosophies, is open to argument, to say the least. Such arguments are often sterile and circular. The history of Christianity is littered with theological disputes which have led to factionalism, bitterness and even mass murder. So I do not know from my present experience that my beliefs and assumptions are true.Nor do I want to argue from my own memories of religious experiences in the past which, at the time, were profound. They gave an insight and an understanding which I could not otherwise have come to possess. But they are not my present experience and I cannot replicate them now. I know that it is generally accepted, though not by Forman*, that these experiences are transient and passive, but I think this is only partly true, or else it is true of particular kinds of experience only. I think one can, and should, try to understand what it is to be human and, I am assuming, this will inevitably lead to an experience of God. I am not being a Pelagianist here, not even of the ‘semi’ kind. The God of those who condemned Pelagius was believed to be wholly other and utterly transcendent. I have had no experience of this God – by definition such experience would be impossible – but I have experienced One who was wholly other but was also intimior mei meo, as Augustine puts it. Odin makes it very clear that for both Zen Buddhists and for people like Mead and Buber the human self is a nexus of relationships – with the mind, with the body, with others, with nature and, ultimately, with God. So in coming to know myself I will also come to know God.*Forman: WHAT DOES MYSTICISM HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS?, http://www.imprint.co.uk/Forman.html

I feel quieter, calmer inside. There is a deep sense of peace. No longer is there the need to entertain, or to distract myself. Noise grates and I prefer not to turn on the radio, nor do I feel the need to listen to music. One of the problems with the noises made by other people when I am meditating is that they hook the various ‘me’s’ into thinking about the relationships they represent. It is difficult letting go of these ‘me’s’, letting go of the body, letting go of everything except awareness of breathing. Underlying all these me’s – those of the present moment, those that persist in memory and those woven by fantasy – underneath all these me’s is desire (tanha), wanting this, longing for that, hungry, forever yearning and unsatisfied. Only when tanha is extinguished can I really be me – hence the need for silence and simple austerity.

It struck me this morning how natural and unforced this need for austerity is. It does not deny the goodness of the body, or the appreciation of pleasure – unlike the Christian tradition that, for many, is still in thrall to the gnostic dualism of flesh – evil and spirit – good.

I discovered something today meditating in the garden after cutting the grass. I managed to achieve greater concentration for longer at a time than I had been able to previously. Distractions come. Intentions, even strong ones, and wishful determination do not bring about change in a person. Even though I want to meditate and I get frustrated and angry with myself when I cannot concentrate, I am still the same person with all the wants, feelings and desires I seem to have had forever. The fact that I am trying to meditate does not mean they have gone away and that in my meditating I am a different person. As long as I, the same person, am trying to meditate then the will to meditate is just one desire among all the others. The others will assert themselves as soon as habituation, or boredom, weakens concentration.

This afternoon concentration went well and I found that I could let the ‘person’ go. There was just awareness of breathing. Everything else, sounds, body, mind, feelings – I let them all go. For a few brief moments there was no ‘me’ just awareness of breathing. Of course I have read about anatta, and I have puzzled over it, and wondered, and thought I had understood it – but it was only an intellectual grasp of a concept. You only experience the phenomenal ‘me’ when you let it go, and you have to let it go to experience the ‘not me’. Only then is the ‘phenomenal me’ seen for what it is – as the ephemeral and insubstantial, constantly changing kaleidoscope of thoughts, feelings and emotions.

It is very difficult to get a grip on this meditation thing. On one occasion it will go well and the next three or four badly. I am more and more becoming convinced that it is not just an activity among other activities, one in which you can engage and then go on to do other, very different, things. For many it is just that and I do not think it can then become anything more than a simple relaxed unwinding. Nor is it something that pervades the day, in that the morning and evening meditation produce a calming, less stressed attitude to daily events. It is not even that. It needs to go much, much deeper. It is not just a question of the effects of the morning’s mindfulness and focused awareness pervading the day, having an influence. Mindfulness itself must persist; that detached awareness and control need to apply to everything one does. I know I have read this before but the truth of it has only just struck me. It struck me yesterday afternoon walking along the field at the back. It was a glorious day, bright sun, blue sky and the singing of skylarks. Everything had such clarity and beauty – it was as though I was seeing it all for the first time. I felt as though I could stand there for hours, drinking it all in. I thought – it is easy to be mindful here, but after a while the startling clarity and newness will fade. It will become ordinary and then commonplace. My mind will look for distraction. I will want to be entertained, interested, aroused, engaged – anything to get out of this unchanging attitude. And I did just that. I came back and picked up a science fiction book and read for an hour, in spite of the little voice which kept nagging – No. No. You’ve got to stick with it.

Later
Mindfulness is more than just being aware of what you are doing. It is being rooted. In meditation being aware is the easy part, but this only really becomes mindfulness when it connects. There is awareness of breathing; awareness of the mind skittering about and being brought back to concentration on the breathing again; awareness of the body, the stomach rising and falling, of an itch, of external noises. All these constitute awareness but it is a shallow awareness, just of the surface of things, of transient phenomena. It is possible throughout the day, more or less, to be aware like this, to cultivate the semi-detached stance of an observer at a little distance from oneself. But, just as yesterday, it palls. And there is always the centripetal force of the body drawing the mind into subjective immersion in feelings, moods and sensations. All this is the awareness of the individual apart, of an entity among other others. It is not awareness of the depths.

Being aware is like looking at the surface of the sea, seeing the dancing reflections of the sun, the rolling waves, the gulls, boats, people swimming. Then you put on polarised sunglasses and the reflections and glitter of the surface vanish and you can see into the depths, into the deep down shadows and the shallow shades of green. Mindfulness is being aware of the depths of being and the interconnectedness of all things. The problem is how to acquire and how to wear throughout the day those ‘polarised glasses’.

Thoughts raged this morning, provoking feelings of helplessness and futility. Like a river delta my life is a series of shallow streams meandering slowly in search of the sea. If only it was channelled, it would flow with energy and purpose and, who knows, it might even get to a destination – not just come to an end, petering out into a morass at the edge of the sea. This of course is why the contemplative life, as a way of life, evolved in the first place.

There needs to be a framework which includes those things that are conducive to meditation and contemplation, and which excludes those which are not. The stark beauty and simplicity of monastic art and architecture, an icon, a cloister, a Zen garden, are like the surface of a clear, still pool of unimaginable depth. If the water is disturbed only the surface can be seen, but when it is still and silent one can gaze into the depths. When one emerges it is as though the cataracts which covered the eyes of the senses and the mind had been removed and people and the world are seen with a clarity and a beauty that is breathtaking.

In contrast, the garish colours and discordant noises, the vapid laughter and effusive gushings, the hurt, and the anger, and the bitterness of ordinary life lead either to a numbing hopelessness, or a self-destructive anger. It is a hedonistic world of the senses and it is a despairing world of anguish and suffering. It is a world of the blind who do not know that they are blind, who do not know or understand who they are, or where they are going, or even that there is a destination. In this aimless existence many are would-be escapists, some into the vicarious lives of soap-opera characters, some into the insensibility of drug addiction; others pursue money, or pleasure,or power. In spite of this there is so much warmth and humanity. There is love and self-sacrifice. There is a general unarticulated hunger for the Truth, if only one knew what it was.

I am still a beginner at meditation. Some days it goes well, others, like today, badly. The nagging question at the back of my mind is this question of concentration on simple awareness, nothing more. There is a feeling that I should be doing something, praying perhaps, otherwise I will not get anywhere. I do not believe this is true, nevertheless the nagging doubt is there. There is also the temptation to deal with this rationally, by thinking it through. There is plenty in my reading to persuade me otherwise. Yesterday I came across this in Nishitani:

Our ability to perceive reality means that reality realises (actualises) itself in us; that this in turn is the only way that we can realise (appropriate through understanding) the fact that reality is so realising itself in us; and that in so doing the self-realisation of reality takes itself place.
(Religion and Nothingness p. 5)

It is a hard and difficult struggle getting there – it may, perhaps, be the most difficult thing I have ever done. Meditation is like trying to balance on a knife edge. Once one is out of the mind and focused on the simple awareness of breathing there is the danger of habituation. There is very little new sensory input and so the body and then breathing, gradually disappear. I notice tension round my eyes, a sign that I have begun to think. Back to concentration on counting breaths again – and so the cycle goes on, back and forwards. Yesterday and the day before I managed to hold the concentration on counting the breaths quite well. Today I did not manage it at all. It struck me that this problem I have of making sense with simple awareness is similar to that of wrestling with koans. There is no rational answer. Insight, enlightenment, satori, or whatever, will only come when one has broken through that barrier.