I want to understand, to get to grips with the fundamental reality of what it means to be human. I thought reading and meditation would get me there. I am beginning to realise that they will not be enough. Much of the reading, especially the Japanese philosophers is very difficult, and requires more than a nodding acquaintance with Zen in order to be understood. I thought meditation would deal with that side of things and for a while meditation seemed to be going really well and I seemed to be making progress. But lately it feels as though I am wading through the dense and clinging mud of the stagnant swamp that is my mind. There is no clarity, no stillness of pure observation, no peaceful contemplation. Neither is there an urgent cry of anguish from the depths pleading to be rescued from the slough of despond.
I know that devoting some short time during the day to meditation is not enough and I think I wrote about this not too long ago. Then meditation was going well and it provided an impetus that persisted through the day. Walking, working, or reading I seemed to be in a state of detached mindfulness. No longer. After what seems like a futile struggle with wayward thoughts and feelings the end of meditation comes with a sense of relief. At last that’s over. I don’t seem to have got anywhere but I hope that, unknown to me, something has been achieved. And I turn to other things. Not that there is anything wrong with the other things. What is wrong is the attitude, the state of mind in which they are done. Living inauthentically, acting from impulse, with laziness, allowing oneself to be carried along by external events – all these lead to apathy and a feeling of general helplessness. Hence the depression and the feeling of getting nowhere. So I need a structure. Not a structure like a timetable dictating when to do this or that but a mindset injecting self-conscious awareness into everything I do.
Reading Michael Barnes: God East and West, and my own musings earlier has made me realise that what I was groping towards earlier has already been clearly laid out in the Eightfold Path. Morality is at the heart of being a person. Not just morality in the sense of not harming others, not sinning – that goes without saying, but morality in the sense that thinking and behaviour are self-conscious; that one is living authentically, engaged in projecting oneself forward as Sartre would put it, and not just drifting and taking the path of least resistance.