Letter to an old friend

Thank you for giving us a celebratory meal last night. One of the (many) things I like about you is – no nostalgia! (and not much medical talk either) which is refreshing and necessary at my age as we approach our 50th wedding anniversary.

It occurred to me this morning that next year will also be the 50th anniversary of my ordination as a Church of England priest but I have no inclination to mark that. One of the reasons why is contained in the book I am sending you. I first came across this French philosopher [Andre Comte-Sponville] when I was doing an OU course on virtue ethics about four years ago and read his ‘A Short Treatise on the Great Virtues’. This latest book [A Little Book of Atheist Spirituality] is a compassionate contribution to the somewhat sterile debate sparked off by Dawkins et al about the existence or otherwise of God.

For me the core of the book is on page 192: “Whether they are believers or not, mystics are those who no longer lack God. But is a God who is no longer lacking still God?” To discover in my mid 70’s that I no longer lack God (or as Martin Laird puts it in ‘Into the Silent Land’: “God does not know how to be absent.”) has been one of the most profound gifts of my life; my only regret being that I did not get it when I read Honest To God in 1963. But then I suspect even John Robinson himself didn’t fully realise the implications of what he was saying. Bishops, as well as us priests, had too much invested in keeping the institution going to see the implications of a ground of Being approach. Plus, nobody taught us the simple ‘how to’ of contemplative prayer. It was considered too otherworldly, too monkish, and what we wanted above all was to be relevant, God help us. (See, there I go again, expecting help from outside when it’s already here inside.)

Looking back I can see that, like a goldfish nosing against the side of the bowl, I was looking blindly for this insight. It caused grief to [my fiance] during our engagement because I felt torn between marriage and ordination. I hadn’t understood Bonhoeffer’s definition of chastity: ‘the total orientation of life towards a goal’. Nor had I understood (along with almost everyone else in Christian churches) what Jesus may have meant by ‘deny yourself....’. Just think how much unnecessary grief and suffering that verse has caused sincere Christian people! It has taken two non-Christian writers to help me over this threshold into the promised land – Eckhart Tolle and Andre Comte-Sponville. Of course since then, armed with their insight I have rediscovered that ancient Christian tradition of contemplative prayer. The irony is that those who are now teaching it in ways which ‘ordinary’ lay people can understand and practice are mostly Roman Catholic monks. Does the Vatican know what they are saying? I hope not because their most holy and reverend father Ben would probably silence them.

Perhaps with your combination of psychotherapy and Shakespearean insight you have avoided the worst excesses of our spiritual inheritance. Perhaps you have known much longer than me how to “take upon’s the mystery of things”. I hope so dear friend.
My love to you

Haiku

My daughter gives me a book of haiku for my birthday (The Everyman's Library of Pocket Poets. Edited by Peter Washington with translations from the Japanese by R. H. Blyth). Suddenly I realise that haiku are of the essence of the Now. Here are two by Basho:

Summer in the world -
floating on the waves
of the lake

I sit here
making the coolness
my dwelling-place.

Here's a modern one by Kerouac:

Missing a kick
at the icebox door
it closes anyway.

Then there's a section of haiku-like passages from what you might call 'traditional' western poets,like this one by Adlington:

A young beech tree
on the edge of the forest
stands still in the evening.

Or this from Walt Whitman

Far in the stillness
a cat
languishes loudly.

Birthday

So, on my 78th birthday I make two resolutions. One, to stop telling people how old I am. It’s either a boast or it’s manipulative. Two, to be wary about reminiscing. The past is dead and gone. My experience may or may not be relevant to a younger person. The skill is to discern the relevance of what I have to offer, with a presumption that silent attentiveness is better.

I notice worries about not being able to remember details of some recently past events. Worries are like greenfly. You see one or two and if you don’t do something immediately, before you realise it, they have multiplied into thousands.

When things go wrong.

Surfing, I stumble upon Fr. Thomas Keating on youtube He's a Roman Catholic monk from the USA. I have heard of his method of 'centering prayer'from Cynthia Bourgeault. These are people who practice what, in Christian terms, is called contemplative prayer. When I was a young man contemplative prayer was seen as an esoteric, other-worldly discipline practised by people shut away from the 'real' world in monasteries. It turns out, of course, that contemplative prayer is simply the Now Show in Christian tradition and it is, in fact, the most practical of human disciplines, instantly transferable to everyday life. For people who like to use the word 'God', Fr. Keating explains it in simple accessible language.
For centuries the Christian tradition suffered from the idea that God is not here. He's somewhere else and getting in touch with him involves an arduous journey away from everyday life into special places, using special language and religious ritual. So, when things went wrong on this journey, we blamed ourselves. We were sinners who needed to repent. Someone has said, 'most of our anxiety comes from our search for tranquility'. We get upset when things 'go wrong'. Then we add a distressing story about what has happened so we have two layers of 'upset' and then the mind can really have a field day making us feel bad. There's a telling line from a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins, written when things were really going wrong for him. He begins,

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring."

It's a vivid evocation of the kind of mental distress we can get into if we start blaming ourselves when things go wrong.

Thomas Keating is one of those people who, in rediscovering the Christian tradition of contemplative prayer, is helping us to connect with folk in many religious traditions (and non-religious too)who understand that we have all the resources we need to cope with life already deep within us. Now, when things 'go wrong' there's no need to beat myself up. I just notice without judgement what is happening, let it be and let it go. It's a simple discipline. Sometimes when things really go wrong is not an easy one to practice but in essence it is simple.

Yesterday's technique

Yesterday my yoga/meditation was good. Today I try to remember exactly what it was that made it good. What technique was I using? But the Now Show doesn't work like that. Today is today. I have to start afresh, as if I had never meditated in my life before. What worked yesterday did so because it was appropriate for me then. To borrow yesterday's practice for today's discipline is to turn it into a technique. In the spiritual life I am like a recovering alcoholic. I am only as 'good' as this present moment. I can only say, 'today, at this moment, I haven't drunk the intoxicating draft of mind games and religious techniques'. Spiritually speaking I can't devise plans which will work in the future, nor can I be sure that what worked yesterday will work today. I can only trust that moment by moment I shall find the grace to be present and centred. The paradox is that such presence requires discipline and I suppose you could say, 'well there you are! - that's technique!' But somehow it isn't. The discipline is to seek to stay in touch with who I really am and that means not being carried away by mind games through which I seek the security of knowing how things are going to work out in the future

Happiness

Sarah Montague does an interview on the BBC Today programme this morning with a French scientist, turned Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard. (sp?) He is supposed to be the happiest person on the planet according to the introduction. "How do you learn to be happy?" asks Sarah. Ricard tries to explain that meditation is not about finding happiness. It's about long term mind training which produces powerful gamma brainwaves which are associated with altruistic love. "So we should meditate to fill our minds with love?" suggests Sara,or "just sit still and think of something nice". Matthieu is, I suspect, somewhat perplexed by this line of questioning. "Are you ever sad?" asks Sarah. "Of course," replies Matthieu but then there wasn't any time left in the busy Today programme schedule for any more on the subject.

Do the Today editors and Sarah Montague really understand so little about meditation that they choose to approach the interview with this line of questioning? It's rather sad if this is the case. Meditation is not about trying to change anything. It's about noticing what is actually the case with me at this moment. It is good to know, however, that there is scientific evidence to show that such a simple discipline produces measurable effects in the working of the human brain. Perhaps one day we'll be teaching this discipline to school children just like we teach them to read, write, sing, and play games.

The Good and the Bad (but not the Ugly)

Today my morning session of yoga/meditation went well. I wasn't thinking about the next posture while in the one I was in. I was centred on my body and aware of the difference between imagining this limb, this organ and actually experiencing it in the here and now. 'This is good' said my mind, until I remembered that, to the witnessing presence in me, 'good' thoughts, like 'bad' thoughts, are just ... thoughts. They are not who I really am, this wordless, silent consciousness/Being which I share with the rest of the universe. I am offered a glimpse of the radical trust in this witnessing presence in my depths which Jesus called for when he said, "Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not neither spin. Yet I tell you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." But in his parable of the sower Jesus talks about the seed which falls where weeds grow up and choke it, with the cares and worries of the world. So it is as I move into my daily life after meditation. Decisions, decisions! Planning, ethical choices, chores, things I 'ought' to do, the kind of person I 'ought' to be; they can all crowd in demanding attention, distracting me from the present moment which is the only one I have to be alive in, the only one in which I can stay trustingly centred. If I am centred then most of the decisions and 'issues' seem to fall into place.

Cynthia Bourgeault points out that when I am present as the witness of my thoughts and emotions it is as if I 'back into' the still, silent centre which is within me and everywhere. I don't have to fight the thoughts and distractions. Centredness is there as I witness them - the good and the bad - without judgement.