Category: Meditation

Suggestions on How to Meditate

Some time ago I wrote a post entitled Meditation: What and Why? I was meaning to write a follow-up on the how of meditation, but didn't  get around to it. But recently a friend asked for some practical  suggestions. So here goes. I recommend first reading the What and Why entry. There I explain what meditation is and list some of its uses.

Time. The best time to meditate is early in the morning, before sunrise. Any monk will tell you that. One can meditate at other times, but it is easiest in the morning for obvious reasons: it is dark, cool, and quiet, and one's mind, refreshed by sleep, has not yet been sullied by the day's doings.

Burmese-150 Posture. There is only one really good meditation posture and that is seated on the ground or floor on a comfortable mat and cushion.  Shankara reputedly could meditate while sitting in snow, but you and I are not Shankara. I use a regulation Zen black meditation mat and cushion. The mat should be thick and large enough so that no part of the legs or buttocks touches the floor. The cushion, which should be very thick and almost spherical in shape, is placed between the buttocks and the mat. The idea is to elevate the buttocks in such a way that one comfortably achieves a posture in which the back is straight. I do not recommend sitting crosslegged in the full- or half-lotus positions, as this can be hard on the knees. I recommend the Burmese posture as illustrated on the left. The knees and shins are flat against the mat, making for comfort and stability, in a posture that can be maintained easily for an hour or more without moving.

Stretching. I like to do a little stretching before beginning the meditation. While seated in the Burmese position, I bend forward and slowly bring my forehead down to the mat. This is more easily achieved if the hands are clasped behind the back and elevated. Breath deeply and proceed slowly. After a few repetitions, stretch the hands toward the ceiling and extend upwards as far as possible. If you are the bhaktic (devotional) type, this gesture can be one of supplication.  I then twist my trunk and neck to the right (left) after placing my  left (right) hand on my right (left) knee. Be careful, no jerking. Finally, I do a series of neck rotations. Placing my chin on my chest, I slowly rotate the neck around, keeping the head as close to the body as possible, Do this a few times in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions.

Breath. Now that you are properly seated, concentrate on your breathing. The main thing is to 'belly breath.' Push the diaphragm out and draw the breath slowly and deeply into the lungs. Then exhale fully without holding your breath at any time. Imagine on the out-breath that you are exhaling not only air but all manner of mental detritus: negative thoughts, useless memories, worries, etc. Attend carefully to the breathing process. This attending is already a form of meditation, a form of entering into the Inner Citadel. Imagine that you are trying to draw your center of gravity lower and lower toward the mat and farther and farther away from the discursive mind.

Relaxation. The next step is to relax every part of your body while keeping the spine straight. Starting from the top of the head with the scalp, forehead, facial muscles, release any tension encountered, proceeding to the neck and shoulders, and all the way down. 'Exhale' all physical tensions along with stale air and useless thoughts.  If nothing else, this feels good and will lower blood pressure.

Theme. So much for preliminaries. One now needs a theme upon which to focus one's attention. There is no end to the number of themes; one must choose one that is appealing to oneself. One might start discursively, by running through a mantram, but the idea is to achieve a nondiscursive one-pointedness of attention. Some  suggestions.

1. A Christian of a bhaktic disposition might start with the Jesus Prayer which is used by the mystics of Eastern Orthodoxy: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." One tethers one's mind to the mantram to the exclusion of all other thoughts, repeating it (in thought) over and over. One then gradually whittles it down to one  word, say, 'Lord' by progressively dropping 'a sinner,' 'on me a sinner,' 'have mercy on me a sinner,' and so on. One then repeats 'Lord,' 'Lord, 'Lord,' . . . in an attempt to sink into mental quiet.  I describe mental quiet in the above-linked post.

If one feels oneself slipping into mental quiet, then one must let go of the mantram and simply abide passively in the state of quietude, without reflecting on it, analyzing it, or recalling how one got to
it. The approach to mental quiet is a phase of active working; this is difficult enough. Even more difficult is the phase in which one lets  go of this work and simply rests in it. There will be a very strong temptation to analyze it. If at all possible, resist this temptation.

2. A more metaphysically inclined Christian who is fond of St. Augustine might experiment with the phrase, 'Lord, eternal Truth, unchanging Light,' reducing it to one word, whether 'Lord' or 'Truth'
or 'Light.'

3. I have had good results with a line from Plotinus' Enneads, "It is by the One that all beings are beings." This is a very rich saying that can be mulled over from several directions. Everything that is, IS. What is it for a thing TO BE? And what is the source of the being of that-which-is? It is by the One that all beings are. What does 'by'  mean? And what is the One? Although one starts discursively, the idea is to penetrate this ONE, to become at-one with it. As Plotinus would say, it is a flight of the alone to the all-One. Of course, it cannot  be grasped: any grasping is discursive. One is digging for the &#0
160; nondiscursive root of the discursive mind, a root that is itself rooted in the ONE which is the source of all phenomenal entities and unities.

4. A classical theme of meditation is the Self, or, if you insist, the absence of a Self. Here is one of the ways I approach this theme. I start by closely attending to my breath. I think of it objectively as air entering though my nostrils and travelling to my lungs. And then I think about my body and its parts. Here on this mat is this animated body; but am I this animated body? How could I be identical to this   animated body? I have properties it doesn't have, and vice versa.  Am I this breath, these lungs, this cardiovascular system, this animated body? Or am I the awareness of all of this? How could I be any object? Am I not rather the subject for whom all  objects are objects? Am I not other than every object? But what is this subject if it is not itself an object? How could there be a subject that was not an object or a potential object? Is it nothing at all? But there is awareness, and awareness is not any object. There is patently a difference between the awareness of O and O, for any O. To be for a human being is to be in this transcendental difference. Is this difference nothing? If it is not nothing, what differs in this difference? 

One can pursue this meditation in two ways. One can reduce it to a koan: I am awareness and I am not nothing, but I am not something either. Not nothing and not something. How? I am something, I am nothing, I can't be both, I can't be neither. What then is this I that is nothing and something and not nothing and something? One can take this as a koan, an intellectual knot that has no discursive solution but is not a mere nugatory puzzle of linguistic origin, to be relieved by some Wittgensteinian pseudo-therapy, but a pointer to a dimension  beyong the discursive mind. The active phase of the meditation then  consists in energetically trying to penetrate this riddle.

Note that one needn't dogmatically assume or affirm that there is a dimension beyond the discursive mind.  This is open inquiry, exploration without anticipation of result.

Or, instead of bashing one's head against this brick wall of a koan, one can just repeat 'I,' 'I', 'I' in an attempt at peacefully bringing the discursive intellect to subsidence.

More later. Further topics: duration; pre-meditation; post-meditation; strange phenomena regularity of practice; ethical prerequisites.

Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

Dennis E. Bradford sent me three comments via e-mail on my recent Butchvarov post.  I omit the first and the third which are more technical in nature, and which I may address in later posts.    Bradford writes,

Second, and this separates me from Butch, Larry [Blackman], and you, I reject your assumption concerning the narrowness of philosophy.  You mention a conceptual impasse that is “insoluble on the plane of the discursive intellect, which of course is where philosophy must operate.”  I object to the “of course.”  To be a philosopher is to be a lover of wisdom and who says that our only access to wisdom is via the discursive intellect?   In fact, I deny that.  As far as I can tell, the Buddha was the greatest philosopher and the wisest human who ever lived, and his view was that limiting our examination only to the domain of the discursive intellect prevents one from becoming wise.

Actually, I don't disagree with this comment.  It is a matter of terminology, of how we should use the word 'philosophy.'  For me there are at least four ways to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  This post provides rough sketches of how I view the first three.  I end by suggesting that the pursuit of wisdom involves all three 'postures.'  (Compare the physical postures in the three pictures below.)

 

Rodin

Philosophy

Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them. Discursive reason is reason insofar as it articulates itself in concepts, judgments, arguments, and systems of argument. As the etymology of the term suggests (L. currere, to run), discursive reason is roundabout rather than direct — as intuitive reason would be if there is such a thing. Discursive reason gets at its object indirectly via concepts, judgments, and arguments. This feature of discursive reason makes for objectivity and communicability; but it exacts a price, and the price must be paid in the coin of loss of concreteness. Thus the oft-heard complaint about the abstractness of philosophy is not entirely without merit.

Note that I define philosophy in terms of the activity of discursive reason: any route to the truth that does not make use of this ‘faculty’ is simply not philosophy. You may take this as a stipulation if you like, but it is of course more than this, grounded as it is in historical facts. if you want to know what philosophy is, read Plato.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson says somewhere, "Philosophy is Plato, and Plato philosophy."  (I quote from memory!)  And there is this from  Keith's blog. 

The nearest thing to a safe definition of the word "philosophy", if we wish to include all that has been and will be correctly so called, is that it means the activity of Plato in his dialogues and every activity that has arisen or will arise out of that.

(Richard Robinson, "Is Psychical Research Relevant to Philosophy?" The Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 24 [1950]: 189-206, at 192.)

This is in line with my masthead motto which alludes to the famous observation of Alfred North Whitehead:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.  I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings.  I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.  [. . .] Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, The Free Press, 1978, p. 39)

Discursivity, then, is essential to philosophy as a matter of definition, a definition that is not merely stipulative but grounded in a possibility of our nature that was best realized in Plato and what he gave rise to.

Thus Jesus of Nazareth was not a philosopher, pace George Bush. If you insist that he was, then I will challenge you to show me the arguments whereby he established such dicta as "I and the Father are one," etc. I will demand the premises whence he arrived at this ‘conclusion.’ Argument and counterargument before the tribunal of reason are the sine qua non of philosophy, its veritable lifeblood. The truth is that Jesus gave no arguments, made no conjectures, refuted no competing theories. There is no dialectic in the Gospels such as we find in the Platonic dialogues. This is not an objection to Jesus’ life and message, but simply an underscoring of the fact that he was not a  philosopher. (But I have a nagging sense that Dallas Willard says something to the contrary somewhere.)  Believing himself to be one with the Father, Jesus of course believed himself to be one with the ultimate truth. Clearly, no such person is a mere philo-sopher, etymologically, a lover of wisdom; he is rather (one who makes a claim to being) a possessor of it. The love of the philosopher, as Plato’s Symposium made clear, is erothetic love, a love predicated on lack; it is not agapic love, love predicated on plenitude. The philosopher is an indigent fellow, grubbing his way forward bit by bit as best he can, by applying discursive reason to the data of experience. God is no philosopher, thank God!

Agreeing with Bradford that a philosopher is a lover of wisdom, I yet insist that he is a lover and pursuer of wisdom by dialectical means, assuming we are going to use 'philosopher' strictly.  This use of terms does not rule out other routes to wisdom, routes that may prove more efficacious.

Indeed, since philosophy examines everything, including itself  (its goals, its methods, its claim to cognitivity), philosophy must also examine whether it is perhaps an inferior route to truth or no route to truth at all!

Genuflection Religion

Religion (from L. religere, to bind) is not fundamentally a collection of rites, rituals, and dogmas, but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to live in the truth, as opposed to know it objectively in propositional guise, seeks to establish a personal bond with the Absolute. Whereas philosophy operates with concepts, judgments, arguments and theories, religion proceeds by way of faith, trust, devotion, and love. It is bhaktic rather than jnanic, devotional rather than discriminative.  The philosophical project, predicated on the autonomy of reason, is one of relentless and thus endless inquiry in which nothing is immune from examination before the reason’s bench. But the engine of inquiry is doubt, which sets philosophy at odds with religion with its appeal to revealed truth.  If the occupational hazard of the philospher is a life-inhibiting scepticism, the corresponding hazard for the religionist is a dogmatic certainty that can easily turn murderous. For a relatively recent example, consider the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. (This is why such zealots of the New Atheism as Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling, et al. are not completely mistaken.)

The philosopher objects to the religionist: "You believe things for which you have no proof!" The religionist replies to the philosopher: "You sew without a knot in your thread!" I am not engaging in Zen mondo, but alluding to Kierkegaard’s point that to philosophize without dogma is like sewing without a knot in one’s thread. The philosopher will of course reply that to philosophize with dogma is not to philosophize at all. Here we glimpse one form of the conflict beween philosophy and religion as routes to the Absolute. If the philosopher fails to attain the Absolute because discursive reason dissolves in scepticism, the religionist often attains what can only be called a pseudo-Absolute, an idol.

The reader must of course take these schematic  remarks cum grano salis. It would be simple-minded to think that cold impersonal reason (philosophy) stands in simple and stark confrontation to warm personal love (religion). For philosophy is itself a form of love –- erothetic love – of the Absolute, and without the inspiring fervor of this longing love, the philosopher would not submit himself to the rigorous logical discipline, the mental asceticism, without which serious philosophy is impossible. (I speak of real philosophers, of course, and not mere paid professors of it.) Good philosophy is necessarily technical, often mind-numbingly so. (The reader may verify that the converse of this proposition does not hold.) Only a lover of truth will put up with what Hegel called die Anstrengung des Begriffs, the exertion of the concept. On the other hand, religious sentiments and practices occur in a context of beliefs that are formulated and defended in rational terms, including those beliefs that cannot be known by unaided reason but are vouchsafed to us by revelation. So in pursuit of taxonomy we must not fall into crude compartmentalization. The philosopher has his devotions and the religionist has his reasonings.

Buddha Mysticism

Turning now to mysticism, we may define it as the activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need for direct contact with the Absolute, disgusted with verbiage and abstraction as well as with mere belief and empty rites and rituals, seeks to know the Absolute immediately, which is to say, neither philosophically through the mediation of concepts, judgments and arguments, nor religiously through the mediation of faith, trust, devotion, and adherence to tradition. The mystic does not want to know about the Absolute, that it exists, what its properties are, how it is related to the relative plane, etc.; nor does he want merely to believe or trust in it. He does not want knowledge by description, but knowledge by acquaintance. Nor is he willing, like the religionist, to postpone his enjoyment of it. He wants it, he wants it whole, and he wants it now. He wants to verify its existence for himself here and now in the most direct way possible: by intuiting it. ‘Intuition’ is a terminus technicus: it refers to direct cognitive access to an object or state of affairs. You should think of the the Latin intuitus as used by Descartes, and the German Anschauung as used by Kant. The intuition in question is of course not sensible but intellectual. Thus the mystical ‘faculty’ is that of intellectual intuition. The possibility of intellektuelle Anschauung was of course famously denied by Kant.

 Wisdom

The ultimate goal for a human being is wisdom which could be characterized as knowledge of, and participation in, the saving truth.  One who attains this goal is a sage.  No philosopher is a sage, by definition.  For a philosopher, as a lover (seeker) of wisdom, is not a possessor of it.  One does not seek what one possesses.  The philosopher's love is eros, love predicated on lack.    At most, the philosopher is a would-be sage, one for whom philosophy (as characterized above) is a means to the end of becoming a sage.  If a philosopher attains the Goal, then he ceases to be a philosopher.  If a philosopher gets a Glimpse of the Goal, in that moment he ceases to be a philosopher, but then, after having lost the Glimpse (which is what usually happens) he is back to being as philosopher again.

At this point a difficult question arises.  Is philosophy a means to sagehood, or a distraction from it?  I grant that the ultimate Goal cannot be located on the discursive plane.  What one ultimately wants is not an empty conceptual knowledge but a fulfilled knowledge.  Some say that when a philosopher seeks God, he attains only a 'God of the philosophers,' an abstraction.  (See my Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers.)  The kernel of truth in this is that discursive operations typically do not bring one beyond the plane of discursivity.  One thought leads to another, and another, and another . . . and never to the Thinker 'behind' them or the divine Other. 

And so one might decide that philosophy is useless — "not worth an hour's trouble" as Pascal once said — and that one ought  either to follow the path of religion or that of mysticism.  That is not my view, for reasons I will need a separate post to explain.

For now I will say only this.  Philosophy is not enough.  It needs supplementation by the other paths mentioned.    Analogy.  You go to a restaurant to eat, not to study the menu.  But reading the menu is a means to the end of ordering and enjoying the meal.  Philosophy is like reading the menu; eating is like attaining the Goal. 

But it is also the case that religion and mysticism require the discipline of philosophy.  There is a lot to be said on these topics, and it will be the philosopher who will do the saying.  The integration of the faculties falls to philosophy, and an integrated life is what we aspire to, is it not?  We seek to avoid the onesidedness of the philosopher, but also the onesidedness of the mystic, of the religionist, of the moralist, not to mention the onesidedness of  the moneygrubber, the physical fitness fanatic, etc.

Buber on Buddhism and Other Forms of Mysticism

Robert Gray e-mails:

Dear Bill,

I am appreciating Kerouac month. Here is something on Buddhism in Buber's I and Thou that may be of use.

Nor does he [Buddha] lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability to say You . . . . All doctrines of immersion are based on the gigantic delusion of human spirit bent back into itself — the delusion that spirit occurs in man. In truth it occurs from man – between man and what he is not. As the spirit bent back into itself renounces this sense, this sense of relation, he must draw into man that which is not man, he must psychologize world and God. This is the psychical delusion of the spirit.  ( pp.140-141 / part 3 : Tr.Kaufmann, Ed: T&T Clark Edinburgh 1970)

Thank you for reminding me of these Buber passages which I had planned eventually to discuss.  The context of the above quotations is a section of I and Thou that runs from pp. 131 to 143.  Here are some quickly composed thoughts on this stretch of text.

In this section Buber offers a critique of Buddhism, Hinduism and other forms of mysticism (including Christian forms such as the one we find in Meister Eckhart) which relativize the I-Thou relation between man and God by re-ducing it (leading it back) to a primordial unity logically and ontologically prior to the terms of the relation.  According to these traditions, this  primordial unity  can be experienced directly in Versenkung, which Kaufmann translates, not incorrectly, as 'immersion,' but which I think is better rendered as 'meditation.'  As the German word suggests, one sinks down into the depths of the self and comes to the realization that, at bottom, there is no self or ego (Buddhism with its doctrine of anatta or anatman) or else that there is a Self, but that it is the eternal Atman ( = Brahman) of Hinduism, "the One that thinks and is." (131)

Either way duality is overcome and seen to be not ultimately real.  Buber rejects this because the I-Thou relation presupposes the ultimate ineliminability of duality, not only the man-God duality but also the duality of world and God.  Mysticism "annuls relationship" (132) psychologizing both world and God. (141).  Verseelen is the word Kaufmann translates as 'psychologize.'  A more suggestive translation might be 'soulifies.'  Mysticism drags both God and the world into the soul where they are supposedly to be found in their ultimate reality by meditation.   But spirit is not in man, Buber thinks, but between man and what is not man.  Spirit is thus actualized in the relation of man to man, man to world, man to God.

At this point I would put a question to Buber.  If spirit subsists only in relation, ought we conclude that God needs man to be a spiritual being in the same way that finite persons need each other to be spiritual beings?  Is God dependent on man to be who he is?  If yes, then the aseity of God is compromised.  A Christian could say that the divine personhood subsists in intradivine relations, relations among and between the persons of the Trinity.  But as far as I know Trinitarian thought is foreign to Judaism.  Anyway, that is a question that occurs to me.

The "primal actuality of dialogue" (133) requires Two irreducible one to the other.  It is not a relation internal to the self. 

Buber is not opposed to Versenkung as a preliminary  and indeed a prerequisite for encounter with the transcendent Other.  Meditative Versenkung leads to inner concentration, interior unification, recollectedness.  But this samadhi (which I think is etymologically related to the German sammeln) is not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but is properly preparatory for the encounter with the transcendent Other.  "Concentrated into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter — wholly successful only now — with mystery and perfection.  But he can also savor the bliss of his unity and, without incurring the supreme duty, return into distraction." (134)

Buber's point is that the mystic who, treading the inward path, arrives at the unitary ground of his soul and experiences sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss) shirks his supreme duty if he merely enjoys this state and then returns to the world of multiplicity and diremption.  The soulic unity must be used for the sake of the encounter with God.

Buber seems to be maintaining that Buddhist and other mysticism is an escape into illusion, an escape into a mere annihilation of dual awareness for the sake of an illusory nondual awareness:  "insofar as this doctrine contains directions for immersion in true being, it does not lead into lived actuality but into 'annihilation' in which there is no consciousness, from which no memory survives — and the man who has emerged from it may profess the experience by using the limit-word of non-duality, but without any right to proclaim this as unity." (136) 

Buber continues, "We, however, are resolved to tend with holy care the holy treasure of our actuality that has been given us for this life and perhaps for no other life that might be closer to the truth." (136-7, emphasis added)

This prompts me to put a second question to Buber.  If there is no other life, no higher life, whether accessible in this life via Versenkung or after the  death of the body, and we are stuck with this miserable crapstorm of a life, then what good is God?  What work does he do if he doesn't secure our redemption and our continuance beyond death?  This is what puzzles me about Judaism.  It is a worldly religion, a religion for this life — which is almost a contradiction in terms.  It offers no final solution as do the admittedly life-denying religions of Buddhism and Christianity.  Some will praise it for that very reason: it is not life-denying but life -affirming.  Jews love life, this life here and now, and they don't seem too concerned about any afterlife.  But then they don't have the sort of soteriological interest that is definitive of religion.  "On whose definition?" you will object.  And you will have a point.

 
When I think of the vibrant bond between Sal and Dean, I am reminded of Buber's I-You .
Kerouac's restless spirit sought always to renew the I-You in Neal and in life; Both became submerged in I-It.  (Minding the final paragraphs of On the Road)

Well, both Kerouac and Cassady were brought up Catholic and so were steeped in the ultimate duality of man and God; but both occupied themselves with mysticism with its dissolution of the ultimacy of I-Thou.  And so perhaps we can say that the spiritual lives of both involved an oscillation between I-Thou and I-It.

 

 

Logic’s Limit

Logic is not to be denigrated, nor is it to be overestimated. It is an excellent vehicle for safe travel among concepts and propositions. It will save us from many an error and perhaps even lead us to a few truths. But it cannot move us beyond the plane of concepts and propositions and arguments. It aids safe passage from thought to thought, but cannot  transport us beyond thought to the source of thoughts, to their thinker, the transcendental condition without which there would not be any thoughts.  It cannot transport us to the Transdiscursive.  For that a different vehicle is needed, meditation.

Meditation: Three Baby Steps

First, drive out all useless thoughts.  Then get rid of all useful but worldly thoughts.  Finally, achieve the cessation of all thoughts, including spiritual ones.  Now you are at the threshhold of meditation proper.  Unfortunately, a lifetime of work may not suffice to complete even these baby steps.  You may not even make it to the threshhold.  But if you can achieve even the first step, you will have done yourself a world of good.

The idea behind Step One is to cultivate the ability to suppress, at will, every useless, negative, weakening thought as soon as it arises. 

Modern Media and the Deterioration of Spiritual Life

During my first visit to St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox monastery (Florence, Arizona)  in February 2004, I purchased Harry Boosalis, Orthodox Spiritual Life According to Saint Siloan the Athonite.  What follows is a passage to give users of the new media pause.  It was published in 2000 before blogging really took off, and before texting, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter:

Writing nearly sixty years ago about the harm of newspapers and base books, one wonders what St. Silouan would say if he lived today. Our world differs markedly from the one in which St. Silouan lived.  In today's 'Age of Information' — and certainly even more in the world of tomorrow — the constant influx from the multiple forms of media can only hinder one's pursuit of true prayer.  These modern forms of 'entertainment' and news media, as well as the much more complex web of world-wide communication systems, including the ever-increasing role of computers and the expanding use (or abuse) of the Internet, have contributed to a fundamental deterioration of spiritual life, as well as an overall  'de-personalization' fo contemporary man and society.  Even well-intentioned believers are now infected with this insatiable desire for more and more frivolous information, futile knowledge, and superficial 'entertainment.'  Ultimately, much of this remains not only useless for one's personal well-being, but according to St. Silouan it also has a direct and negative impact on one's spiritual life. (pp. 67-68)

Monks naturally gravitate towards deserts.  But even in a desert one is not safe from media dreck.  So one must seek out the desert in one's desert. 

 

Mental Quiet and Enlightenment/Salvation

In yesterday's post I claimed that the proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet, but listed as an ultimate goal the arrival at what is variously described as enlightenment, salvation, liberation, release. In a comment to the post (from the old blog), Jim Ryan raised a difficult but very important question about the connection between mental quiet and salvation. What exactly is the connection? I would like to pursue this question with Jim’s help. I believe he is is quite interested in it since he tells me that he has been thinking about this question for the last twenty years. One way to begin is by outlining the possible positions on the relation between mental quiet and salvation. There seem to be three main positions. On the first, mental quiet and salvation have nothing to do with one another. On the second, there is a positive (non-identity) relation between the two. On the third, the two are identified.

Meditation: What and Why

Here are some preliminary thoughts on the nature and purposes of meditation. Perhaps a later post will deal with methods of meditation.

Meditation Defined

We need to start with a working definition. The question of what meditation is is logically prior to the questions of why to do it and how to do it. The proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet. I say ‘proximate’ to leave open the pursuit of further, more specific, goals, and so as not to prejudge the ultimate goal which will be differently conceived from within different metaphysical and religious perspectives. It would be tendentious to claim that the ultimate goal of meditation is entry into Nibbana/Nirvana, or union with the Godhead, or realization of the identity of Atman and Brahman. For these descriptions import metaphysical schemes acceptance of which is not necessary to do meditation. All the major religions have  their mystical branches in which meditation is cultivated despite differences in metaphysical schemes.  The meditating monks of Mt. Athos whose mantram is the Jesus Prayer subscribe to a Trinitarian metaphysics according to which Jesus Christ is the Son of God, a metaphysics incompatible with that of a Buddhist who nonetheless can employ a similar technique to achieve a similar result.

Continue reading “Meditation: What and Why”

The Demons of the Desert

The desert fathers of old believed in demons because of their experiences in quest of the "narrow gate" that only few find. They sought to perfect themselves and so became involved as combatants in unseen warfare. They felt as if thwarted in their practices by oppponents both malevolent and invisible. The moderns do not try to perfect themselves and so the demons leave them alone.

Grades of Prayer

1. The lowest grade is that of petitionary prayer for material benefits. One asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or, as in the case of intercessionary prayer, for another. In its crassest forms it borders on idolatry and superstition. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of mundane benefits, and this amounts to idolatry, the worshipping of a false god.

Continue reading “Grades of Prayer”

The Inconceivable

It is arguable that all religions and salvation-paths point to the Inconceivable and terminate in it if terminus they have. The Nibbana of the Pali Buddhists. The ontologically simple God of Thomas Aquinas. A theory of the Inconceivable would have to show that it is rationally admissible that there be something that cannot be grasped rationally. The theory would not be a grasping, but a pointing to the possibility of the Ungraspable. It would include a discursive refutation of all attempts at foreclosing on this possibility. The theory would deploy itself on the discursive plane, but the purpose of it would be to point one beyond the discursive plane, to make a place, as it were, for the possibility of the Transdiscursive.

But such a philosophical project is self-contradictory. If you say that the Inconceivable is possibly existent, then you exclude its necessary nonexistence. You make a determinate predication of the Inconceivable and therefore think it, conceive it, as having the property predicated. But then you fall into contradiction by affirming something of that of which nothing can be affirmed. There is no transcending the duality of thought if you are to think at all. A 'theory' that consists of a pointing to the Transdiscursive must needs be gibberish. The Real is exhausted by the discursively graspable. Outside it, nothing.

Is this a good objection or not?

Control Your Mind!

A thought arises. Interrogate it: Whither? To what purpose? The climber tests each foothold before putting his weight on it. So should we test each thought before living in it and losing ourselves in it. Why? Because the seed of word and deed is in the thought. To control thought is to control the seed of word and deed. Meditation, if nothing else, is a training in thought control. Daily meditation releases the mind's wonderful power of self-regulation.

The Problem of the Fugitive Thought: Write It Down Before It Escapes!

If you are blessed by a good thought, do not hesitate to write it down at once. Good thoughts are visitors from Elsewhere and like most visitors they do not like being snubbed or made to wait.

Let us say a fine aphorism flashes before your mind. There it is is fully formed. All you have to do is write it down. If you don't, you may be able to write only that an excellent thought has escaped.

"But there is more where that one came from." No doubt, but that very one may never return.

The problem arises in an acute form during the meditation hour. Properly installed on the black mat, one is installed in nondiscursivity. If philosophy is disciplined thinking, meditation is disciplined nonthinking. But then a thought, rich in content and fully formed, intrudes. You would honor it as you honor Athens. But it is the meditation hour: the time to attempt the flushing out of all thoughts without exception, the hour for rapt listening from within the depths of mental quiet. You are pulled between Athens and Benares. If you think one thought you will think two, ten, twenty and you will move farther and farther away from the thoughtless root of thinking. What to do?

If you arise from the mat to go to the desk you break the spell. But you don't want to ignore the thought. Truth must be chased down every avenue. Perhaps the solution is to keep a special notebook by the meditation mat. Write the thought down for later rumination, then get back to thougtlessness.