Phronema

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.

Meditation went much better this morning. The usual problem of constant distractions and then, in desperation, I remembered that counting the breaths rather than a mantra is advised by many. It had never appealed to me before, striking me as too cold, methodical and impersonal – the mantra, after all, had meaning although one did not attend to the meaning. The trouble with the mantra is that it is easy to habituate and then you are no better off than before. So I started counting. It worked very well. It kept my attention focused on the breathing and the fact that it was a sequential progression meant that one was less likely to habituate.

Just simply being aware does seem rather a waste of time, especially if what you want to do is pray. Perhaps you want to cry ‘out of the depths’ of anguish, or simply be still in the presence of love, or sing praises filled with awe and wonder. At these times sitting still, leaving thoughts and feelings on one side to simply be aware goes against the grain. But then, on another day there will be no exultant feelings, no tortured anguish, just a dull apathy, heavy with boredom. And you wonder where all the fine thoughts and feelings have gone. Even the pain of suffering almost seems more bearable than this tedium. But you make the effort and you concentrate on counting the breaths and simply being aware.

Later, when you allow yourself to think discursively again, you realise that meditation has distanced you from your thoughts and feelings; that however exhilarating or agonising these feelings were they were not permanent. The only thing you can be absolutely sure of is that they will change and that you have no control over them. Yesterday you may have felt touched by the infinite love at the heart of being, today you may be dull and weepy, tomorrow you may be wracked by suffering. Nothing is fixed, or certain, or permanent. There are no guarantees about the future. It is then that you begin to realise the importance of simple awareness in meditation.

The fact that it distances you from your thoughts and feelings and that it gives you a perspective from which to be aware of them so that you are not caught up in them is immensely valuable. You are no longer their prisoner, one day up, the next day down. You have begun to find the still point.

The various me’s, or selves, are very real. Those of the past – the child of a mother and father, the friend, the lover, the victim etc., are not dead. They reside in memory and it only takes some little trigger – a scent, a sound, a snatch of music – and their powerful feelings and emotions become real and alive again in the present. Once more we are caught up in the world of this former me and the memory is always tinged with sadness. If it was a happy time there is sorrow that it is no more. If it was a sad and bitter time the memory of it floods into the present. Thoughts of, ‘If only…’ and, ‘What if…’ cloud the mind. The past can weigh heavily, a burden that encumbers the present. The secret is to let it go. Only this now is real.