Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 74

Poem 74

If you realize that all things change,

there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

If you aren't afraid of dying,

there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future

is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

When you handle the master carpenter's tools,

chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Commentary

ST Augustine defined time as the measure of change.  John Henry Cardinal Newman stated that to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.  Change is of the very essence of things.  This is a very old philosophy dating back to the sixth century B.C., the time of Heraclitus at least.  So it isn't hard to believe that the Tao Te Ching from the fourth century B.C. should preach something similar. 

Indeed, there is nothing we can really hold onto in the world, even though the lessons of our ego is such: that we can hold on to things.  Not alone does our ego insist on holding onto things, it also insists on getting more and more things, on expanding the human grasp on things.  Nations do the same as the historical rise of nationalism and two world wars have taught us.  Yet, we still haven't learnt the lessons of history.  Every generation has to learn its lessons the hard way, it would appear.  When I was growing up my father used to quote an old proverb: "There are no pockets in a shroud" or sometimes he used to put it even simpler still, "You cannot take it with you."  We spend a lifetime building up ourselves (i) getting a good education, (ii) being successful at our jobs or professions, (iii) reading a family, (iv) stocking our brains/minds with the highest of cultural acquisitions and yet all these things in the end will fade from our grasp.  All religions and all spiritualities worth their salt teach this wisdom.  Yet, it should not be used to frighten us from living.  It should be used like the Buddhists do, learn to live life all the fully, with deeper values.  They do this through meditating on how transient are the things of this world and by realising deep within that everything changes and we change too within those changes.  When I was a student of the Latin language our teacher used to quote Ovid who declared:  "Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."  It translates: "The times change and we change with them."  We cannot even bring all our learning, all our well-stocked minds with us either.  We simply disappear when we die.  Perhaps we may linger in the memories of those who love us, those who are still left alive after us.

The lesson to us from these few stanzas are to learn to be humble, to declare our ignorance, to say "no" to the blandishments of the ego and to value the dignity of life by living in the present.  That is why the writer advises us not to attempt to control the future.  Such is as foolish as trying to catch the wind or like trying to be a master carpenter with none of the skills.  It would seem that our egos lead us often into false expectations and we simply "cut our hands" with the carpenter's tools.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 62

Poem 62

The Tao is the center of the universe, 
the good man's treasure,

the bad man's refuge.

Honors can be bought with fine words,

respect can be won with good deeds;

but the Tao is beyond all value,

and no one can achieve it.

Thus, when a new leader is chosen,

don't offer to help him

with your wealth or your expertise.

Offer instead

to teach him about the Tao.

Why did the ancient Masters esteem the Tao?

Because, being one with the Tao,

when you seek, you find;

and when you make a mistake, you are forgiven.

That is why everybody loves it.

Commentary

Recently, I read the bestselling book of the renowned Franciscan writer and mystic Fr. Richard Rohr about the practice and nature of contemplation, or, as we generally call it today, meditation.  It is a gem of a book, and its title sums up its essence and power, namely Everything Belongs.  Another less powerful way of stating this powerful insight would be to say that in spirituality everything connects to everything else.  Spirituality is all about connecting and connectedness.  And so, in our above poem, we read that "The Tao is the centre of the universe."  It is the centre about which everything holds.  It is, as it were, the nucleus of the atom at the level of quantum physics where everything holds in wonderful balance between the clusters of positive protons and neutrons and negative electrons spinning about it.

It is hard to believe that it is forty one years since the physicist Fritjof Capra wrote his ground-breaking and enthralling book called The Tao of Physics which has always enjoyed a cult status.  The learned Capra teases out wonderful parallels between quantum theory and relativity on the one hand, and Eastern mysticism on the other.  He describes with great clarity what physics has to say on the nature of the universe, and in particular our theories about space and time.  He underlines the similarities between physics and how Shintoism, Buddhism and so on view the universe.  It is also more than a little interesting to note that Niels Bohr, the famous Nobel physicist adopted the t'ai chi t'u (better known as the Yin-Yang symbol) as his family coat of arms after a trip to China in the 1930s as he felt it symbolised the concept of wave-particle complementarity.  Heisenberg was also another physicist who was well aware of such parallelisms between quantum mechanics and Eastern religions and philosophy.  Lastly, with respect to Capra's opus, it is worthwhile to return to what the author himself says in his epilogue to his book: "Physicists do not  need mysticism, and mystics do not need physics, but humanity needs both."

Humanity needs both physics and mysticism and the heart and goal of both is indeed parallel and similar, viz., the search for a unifying theory of everything and unity with the Godhead respectively. Perhaps, in the final analysis, both quests are one and the same, or at least converge at the one point. After all parallel lines are said to meet at infinity in the ideal line.

We are all seekers, who in the Tao, are true finders.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 47

Poem 47

Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,

sees the light without looking,

achieves without doing a thing.

Commentary

Windvane on the lungomare in Catanzaro Lido, January 2016

It is becoming increasingly hard  to come up with new insights with respect to the Tao Te Ching and consequently avoid boring the reader unduly by too much repetition.  I have referred to the balance of opposites many times here already.  However, a central pair of polar opposities that springs to mind is that between Inner and Outer. Indeed, this polarity is quite common in early philosophy and theology in general.  The great early Christian scholar St Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430) was one of the scholars within the early Church to highlight its importance.  Augustine was a restless seeker who sought the meaning of life both in the outside material world and also in the inside spiritual world.  According to his own account of his quest for meaning which he delineated in his wonderful classical biography The Confessions he found the former, while sensually stimulating, to be spiritually stultifying:

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you.  And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged in to those lovely created things which you made.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.  You were radiant and resplendent - you put to flight my blindness.  You were fragrant, and I dew in my breath and now pant after you.  I trusted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.  You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

Admittedly, Augustine went on to condemn the material things of this world, most especially those related to the body as vitiated with evil and to elevate the spiritual realm to a rather esoteric stratosphere.  In other words, I believe he did not manage to hold the two poles in a healthy balance.  However, whatever about our criticisms of Augustinian philosophy and theology, we cannot overlook his insight that a spiritual dimension inheres within us.  In fact, Augustine spoke of his community of fellow friars as being on a shared journey to God and that this same God could be met in their code of practice (moral behaviour), the priciples they subscribed to (the Christian creed) and in their cultic practices (what I mean here by the word "cult" is any particular system of religious practice or worship: religious ceremones like Mass and so forth). He aslo recommended a life of prayer and meditation that followed a process which he called "interiority," namely that it was by a process of "going within" in prayer that one communed with God.

Now back to poem 47.  Our Taoist author is in essence doing exactly as St Augustine recommended above, namely that he suggests that we can be open to the Tao without physically opening our door and going outside.  Even without doing that, we can open our hearts out to the whole world.

Again, the idea of humankind's ignorance is an old epistemological tenet dating back many years.  Socrates encouraged his hearers to continually declare their ignorance as they sought out deeper and wider knowledge.  That knowledge could best be discovered by a process of asking tough questions to elicit ever clearer answers.  Augustine built on Socrates through Plato by recommending what he described as a "docta ignorantia" or "learned ignorance." This is the sense of the second stanza which declares that "the more we know, the less we understand." If one imagines a sphere as being the amount of accumulated knowledge learned by humankind then as knowledge grows the sphere obviously grows and while we have amassed more knowledge and wisdom there is a gowing surface of knowledge over against an ever-expanding universe of unknown knowledge and wisdom.  In that very same sense, it is often said that the more we know, the more we know what we don't know. This is, in effect, the epistemological thrust behind the lines of the second stanza.

Sometimes we need to rest and to cease from all activity to be open to life.  To be busy is a great pastime but it can often lead to mindlessness and drift on the one hand or an obsession with work or with pleasure on the other.  It is in this sense that we must read the lines of our final stanza:

The Master arrives without leaving,

sees the light without looking,

achieves without doing a thing.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 43

Poem 43

The gentlest thing in the world

overcomes the hardest thing in the world.

That which has no substance

enters where there is no space.

This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,

performing without actions:

that is the Master's way.

Commentary

Poppy, Easter 2014, Ardgillen Park, Skerries

What we have in the above poem are hard words - ones that contradict our lived experience. I remember an old teacher once remarking to me that there is an ancient animalistic instinct in the herd to tear the weakest member apart limb from limb.  He was remarking on how certain pupils can be bullied because they are perceived as weak.  However, I hasten to add here that this reported anecdote is over thirty years old and that since those times much has been done here in our schools in Ireland to write up good policies and establish equally good anti-bullying practices in our schools and work places.  However, that old teacher's comments still stand.  I suppose it's an ancient instinct that goes back to the survival of the herd in pre-historic times.  And yet, I was more than a little surprised to get hundreds of references on Google to the topic of crushing the weak.  Here is a report that appeared relatively recently in the October 21st 2015 edition of the The Tribune, which is a North Indian Newspaper published in Chandigarh, and the following quotation therefrom is worth reading in connection with our above poem:

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Prime Minister, Haryana Chief Minister, the BJP and RSS of practising “politics of crushing” those who are weak.

“This is an attitude shared by the Prime Minister, Chief Minister of the state and the entire BJP and RSS. The attitude is if somebody is weak, he can be crushed. What you have seen is the result of this attitude,” Gandhi said while visiting the Dalit family that lost two children on Tuesday in an attack allegedly by upper caste members in Sunped village near Ballabhgarh.

Two children were burnt alive and their parents suffered burn injuries allegedly after some upper caste members set their house afire while they were sleeping.

The village today erupted in grief and indignation, with the locals blocking the National Highway 2 in protest. (See CRUSHING THE WEAK )

Tulip, Easter 2014, Ardgillen Park, Skerries

I was horrified also to find that there was a Facebook page dedicated to, I quote "Crushing the Weak for Fun" and which has the following "raison d'etre" appended to it under its "About" tab: "This page is dedicated for (sic) all those who believe that the physically and intellectually superior should crush those weaker or less financially stable than they, as sport."  Undoubtedly, it was set up as a "spoof" or "send up" page (I hope) judging by the only photograph on the totally empty profile page.  The whole thing is devoid of content bar what I have reported here, but that the idea should have occurred to those who attempted to set it up mirrors how sick society can be at its lowest and basest level of behaviour.  

More flowers in Ardgillen Park, Skerries, Easter 2014

However, I will leave it to the reader of these few words to add their own examples of how they have experienced the weak being crushed in their lives.  What I wanted to illustrate here is that, more often than not, deep wisdom can contradict lived experience in the short term, in the actual "now" of experience, in the very horrific and painful occurrence of one tragedy or another.  And yet, we know that there is a greater perspective, a wisdom that needs longer to play out, a reflection on experience that issues in a wisdom that is paid for in pain and tears over a longer stretch of time.  That's why no wisdom tradition worth its salt offers easy answers or instant cures or miracles.  I have referred in these posts before to the habit within well-established religious and spiritual traditions of setting up paradoxes, seeming contradictions and a balancing of opposites in a healthy tension that offers no easy answers but rather provokes deeper questions that search out and shine a certain little light into the darker corners of experience.  It is in this sense and in this sense only that the above Taoist poem must be read.  It is stating the deepest truth in a paradoxical way. Yes, indeed, gentleness is a great strength as witnessed by that great master of non-violence and peace, the wonderful Mahatma Gandhi whose practice of non-violence eventually ended in the freedom of India -  though the people of all traditions had to experience much suffering in a chieving it. He showed that those who brutalised the people who demonstrated non-violence in their stance for justice were in fact brutalising themselves in the long run.  And yet, we know that such methods simply could not have worked against the likes of a Hitler or a Stalin, dictators of such an evil level that it required a necessary violence to bring them down and eventually establish justice.  It is then, with all of these experiences and the necessary reflection on those experiences taken into account that we read the Tao Te Chin or any other spiritual text.  In short, life is as complex as the people who go to make it up.  Let us resist an over-simplification of life.  Let us paint it in its full complexity and proceed by contemplating the paradoxes and the tension of opposites that all deep religious and spiritual texts require us to do.  There simply is no alternative to right living and right practice.  Now, let us practise getting to know our deeper selves through pondering meditatively once again our chosen poem:

The gentlest thing in the world

overcomes the hardest thing in the world.

That which has no substance

enters where there is no space.

This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,

performing without actions:

that is the Master's way.

Namaste, friends.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 42

Poem 42

The Tao gives birth to One.

One gives birth to Two.

Two gives birth to Three.

Three gives birth to all things.

All things have their backs to the female

and stand facing the male.

When male and female combine,

all things achieve harmony.

Ordinary men hate solitude.

But the Master makes use of it,

embracing his aloneness, realizing

he is one with the whole universe.

Commentary

Flowers, Ardgillen Park, Skerries, Easter, 2014

Numerology made up a significant part of ancient religions. One, Two and Three are well known sacred numbers.  One represents unity or wholeness. Two is especially symbolic for Taoists:  followers of Taoism believe in the complementary and opposing forces of Ying and Yang. Threes, triads and triangles were always important in both ancient and modern religions, too. The 'Three Pure Ones' are the highest ranking gods in the Taoist trinity, they are The Grand Pure One, The Jade Pure One and The Supreme Pure One.  It is in the sense of the symbolism of numbers that three is seen as generative of all life.  These reflections may give some insight into stanza one above.

I have mentioned many times in these commentaries that the Tao is very much based on the balance of opposites, on the tension between obvious polarities, e.g., light vs dark, day vs night, white vs black, fire vs water, expanding vs contracting, height vs depth and so on and so forth.  Another polarity is undoubtedly male vs female. In Taoist philosophy this balance of polar opposites is called Yin (dark, feminine, open to life and possibility) and Yang (bright, masculine, defensive, protective and, therefore, somewhat closed).  Basically, this healthy tension of opposites describes how contrary forces are actually complementary or interconnected or interdependent in the natural world and in our experiences of that world. Indeed, they are so mutually bound up with one another that they seem to give rise to one another. This basic duality is a major trait of classical Chinese science and philosophy. Further, it is central to the understanding and practice of traditional Chinese medicine and a major principle of the practice of different forms of Chinese martial arts and physical exercise of all types.

Mountains over Delphi, March 2008

Chinese philosophy argues that everything has both yin and yang aspects (for instance shadow cannot exist without light.) Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object depending on the criterion used as a basis for our observation. The yin-yang (as shown in the taijitu symbol shown herewith) shows a balance between two opposites with a portion of the opposite element in each section. A basic rule regarding the relationship between yin and yang is that the YANG (masculine) protects the YIN (feminine) and the YIN nurtures the YANG and that together they form a complete whole.  Everyone has a max of yin and yang qualities. Men are essentially more YANG - in body, temperament and behaviour while women are essentially more YIN.  Again, each of us has some of the other energy, and in each of us our yang protects our yin. 

Solitude is a much misunderstood condition or experience.  Religious and spiritual folk of all denominations and none understand what solitude is.  Indeed, so do all creative people whether they belong to the Sciences or the Arts.  In solitude the "creative juices" or "inspiring muses" work effectively.  If the present author does not get at least a couple of hours of solitude daily he will be out of sorts and will become grumpy.  It is a special time for me to "re-charge my batteries" and re-empower myself to do my daily work as a Resource Teacher responsible for the education of some ten autistic adolescent boys.  I love the job, and thrive on it, but if I do not get my two hour daily dose of time alone in solitude, I am useless both to myself and to all with whom I work.  Real solitude has nothing to do with loneliness or being alone in the sense of being abandoned by others.  Loneliness is all about absence of others and the feeling of absolute loss of their presence in your life.  On the other hand, solitude is all about presence - about being present to oneself in a deep way, about even being present to others though they are not with you as you simply do not miss them as they are their in your heart.  This is where the spirituality of solitude comes in: I am here sitting alone, and yet I feel the presence of all the people who mean much to me in my life. In the stillness of my heart and in the solitude of my soul I truly feel their presence in my life.  Now, with these thoughts and feelings in my mind, I am re-reading the final stanza of the above poem: You see the Master, or any meditator who is serious about his periods of stillness embraces his aloneness or solitude and realises that he is truly one with everything and everybody in the universe.  In other words, meditation and mysticism in all spiritual traditions calls us into a realisation that we are merely just one little insignificant part of a more significant whole. 

Thoughts on the Tao te Ching 34

Poem 34

The great Tao flows everywhere.

All things are born from it,

yet it doesn't create them.

It pours itself into its work,

yet it makes no claim.

It nourishes infinite worlds,

yet it doesn't hold on to them.

Since it is merged with all things

and hidden in their hearts,

it can be called humble.

Since all things vanish into it

and it alone endures,

it can be called great.

It isn't aware of its greatness;

thus it is truly great.

Commentary

Pond, Parc de Montsouris, Paris, June, 2006

From the beginning of civilisation, human beings have been preoccupied with getting to know and understand the things of the world and indeed themselves.  It is perhaps beyond argument that self-consciousness was and is the key to all civilisation.  One of our early musings as to what life was about concerned the nature of the environment that surrounded us.  The earliest philosophers proposed the make-up of that environment to be the four essential elements, namely earth, air, fire and water.  One can readily understand why a lot of cultures proposed their surroundings to be constituted by these basic elements, for they were self-evidently in front of them, and they needed all of them to survive.

Turtle on the same pond of Parc de Montsouris

What may not be so evident is that ancient cultures also proposed that there was a fifth element that made up reality, viz., an element called "quintessence" from the word "quint" which means "fifth." Hinduism and Buddhism proposed this fifth element as did the Greeks, with the Hindu calling it "akasha" and the Greek philosophers naming it the "aether," a term indeed that persisted in the history of science right up to the late nineteenth century. Indeed, it is also worth noting here that what we now call the natural sciences were once called natural philosophy and that the knowledge of the sciences grew out of the thrust to and thirst for knowledge which began in wonder, that is, in philosophy itself.  Moreover, it is worth noting here also that one of the big questions in philosophy is that of the nature of reality? Is reality all that is noted/noticed/documented by the five senses, that is empirically or is there more to reality?  The idea of the fifth element brings with it all these bigger questions of philosophy as the nature of reality is inextricably linked with other big questions like the origin and destiny of life and all its possible meanings.  The WIKI article on the classical elements is worth perusing for those who require a little extra background on the subject than is demanded in this brief post. See Classical Elements.

My footprints in the sand, Donabate, summer 2006

Living in our modern world where global warning is without doubt drenching, swamping and even drowning our places of habitation and work in water, we cannot but be ever more cognisant of this major element of the four.  Water, both fortunately and unfortunately, will manage to get anywhere at all as those poor souls who have been flooded out in their very homes will attest to.  The human body is mostly water, and we are anywhere between 50 and 75 per cent constituted of it depending on our age, sex and physical condition.

Is it any wonder, then, that the essence or quintessence (that fifth element!) of life, the very Tao is imaginatively described as having the attributes of water, that it "flows," that it "pours itself into its (creative) work," "it nourishes infinite worlds." and yet it does not hold on to them; rather it lets them go to flourish on their own.  Like water, the Tao does not cling onto things, it flows through and by them and lets all things go.

Indeed, all things, our Taoist poet tells us, vanishes into the Tao, and s/he reliably tells us that it alone will endure forever.  Interestingly, and paradoxically, our author believes that the Tao is not conscious of his/her/its own greatness.

Once again, by way of conclusion please read over the above poem and let a line, a phrase or a word suggest itself as a mantra for five minutes meditation.

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 23

Stanza 23

Express yourself completely,
then keep quiet.
Be like the forces of nature:
when it blows, there is only wind;
when it rains, there is only rain;
when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.

If you open yourself to the Tao,
you are at one with the Tao
and you can embody it completely.
If you open yourself to insight,
you are at one with insight
and you can use it completely.
If you open yourself to loss,
you are at one with loss
and you can accept it completely.

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

The good old worker bee,  I took this photograph in 2010

Commentary

The above poem is essentially about the twin skills of openness and listening.  Both these skills lie at the heart of the practice of meditation.  When we sit to meditate we firstly relax our bodies and de-stress it bit by bit.  Then we concentrate on the rhythm of our breath as it oxygenates our body and expels carbon dioxide through our nostrils - that basic process physiologists and biologists call respiration.  In meditation circles we call the attention to our respiratory apparatus simply "the act of returning to or paying close attention to the breath." This simple act is one of sheer receptivity to the breath that keeps our very body alive in this moment in time.  In holistic practices like that of Focusing, invented by Dr. Eugene Gendlin the person engaged in the process focuses on the "felt sense" of some problem,  Essentially focusing like mindfulness uses those skills used for thousands of years by the different masters and practitioners of meditation in the various religious traditions.  

The sand on Donabate Beach, 2013

In focusing one is literally listening to how we hold certain feelings in our bodies.  I would argue that meditators actually do that very naturally anyway.  It is also my contention that mindfulness is secular meditation and that modern authors who peddle their wares in the form of books, CDs and DVDs on mindfulness stole the clothes of the traditional meditators, but that is a story for a different post than this one.

Another major theme in the above poem is that of self-expression.  Such expression can be done in many creative ways: in art of all kinds, in literature, in poems, in music, in dance, in mime and in sculpture and architecture and so on.  Then, once one has expressed how one feels, the author recommends that we learn to keep quiet.  This is good wisdom as we must for sure express all our emotions, especially negative ones as unexpressed feelings will eat and gnaw away at us forever until they are given expression through one medium or another,  However, there is nothing worst than someone who continually repeats the same old moan and never has the courage to do anything about it.  Such is not what our Taoist writer has in mind.  He (or she) sees the expression of feelings as being therapeutic once expressed.  In this way, the person gets whatever is weighing them down or even lifting them up off their minds.

The second stanza sings the praises of openness which it also sees as essentially healing and therapeutic.  Such openness allows us to feel empathy with our inner self, with others and indeed with the source of all life which some of us dare call God.  Interestingly, the poet recommends that we be open both to negative and positive experiences: On the one hand we can be open to the positive experience of insight and by being so open we become one with it.  On the other hand, we can be open to the negative experience of loss and in so doing becoming one with loss.  Such an openness paradoxically helps us accept that loss and learn to live with it from day to day.  In short, such openness allows the human spirit to heal.

The author invites us in essence to open ourselves to the Tao and in so doing we open ourselves to the healing powers of the universe.  The final stanza works like a chorus and is worth repeating as it is really a summary of the whole poem:

Open yourself to the Tao,
then trust your natural responses;
and everything will fall into place.

In conclusion, some word or phrase or line may suggest itself as a matra for meditation or as a thought to inspire a short period of contemplation.  I wish the reader of these few words peace and happiness in the now of experience.  Namaste, friends!

Thoughts on the Tao Te Ching 19

                                                                              19

Throw away holiness and wisdom,

and people will be a hundred times happier.

Throw away morality and justice,

and people will do the right thing.

Throw away industry and profit,

and there won't be any thieves.

If these three aren't enough,

just stay at the centre of the circle

and let all things take their course.

Commentary

The Tao Te Ching, like all serious books of wisdom, works by way of paradoxes and the setting up of oppositional tensions between ideas.  Why? Well, quite simply, wisdom, like truth,  is "rarely pure and never simple.” (That quotation on truth comes from The Importance of Being Ernest by Oscar Wilde).  John Keats implies this same understanding when he says that we humans must make sense of life's deeper mysteries by what he termed a process of "negative capability" that he described quite paradoxically as that attitude of mind "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."  One could say that this encapsulates something similar to what Eastern spiritualities and practices, especially Zen, mean by the practice of contemplating koans.

Sand on Donabate Beach, summer 2015

With that simple introduction, let us reflect on the above stanzas of Poem 19.  Holiness and Wisdom which parade themselves as proclaiming the answers to big questions are mere sham and pretence.  Real wisdom and holiness don't parade themselves in front of others and belong to a natural and real humility.  Morality and Justice, when likewise paraded before others inasmuch as they signal a superficial application of both virtues, are also mere sham and pretence.  A society where "industry" and "profit" are all that count will inevitable invite more people to commit crime out of sheer frustration at being at the bottom of the heap.

The writer of these stanzas calls the reader back to the centre point or the still point of being where the meditator, the contemplator or the disciple will achieve a state of equanimity, an attitude of mind that is untroubled by life's vagaries.

I will finish this brief post with my usual invitation to the reader to reflect on the above stanzas in a meditative way and allow a phrase or word from those stanzas to stir the spirit within.  Happy meditating.

NAMASTE

Journal of a Soul 72

Looking Within

Portrane, Co. Dublin, February, 2015

Do you ever just sit and think? Do you ever take time out to see where life is going for you? Or is your life so busy that you rush from one activity to the next? If you are reading this, chances are that you have a few free moments at your disposal. This is a short invitation to look inwards, to answer the call to step within yourself.

At the start of most journeys we are full of expectations and sometimes anxieties. We don't know what surprises are in store for us further down the line. The journey inwards is no different. In fact it is probably the most frightening of all journeys - we are afraid of what we may find or uncover in our real selves. We may find a lot which we don't like, and which we may not want to change. Certainly we will find the negative, but if we journey long and deep enough we will unearth the positive too.

Life today happens at such a fast pace. We constantly rush to keep appointments and run to catch the bus or train. With a little reflection it becomes apparent that not alone are we rushing to somewhere or other, but we are also running from somewhere or other. With a little more reflection we realise that we are running away from ourselves a lot of the time.

When you are alone in your home what do you do with the silence? Do you fill it with every possible distraction? Do you hurry to turn on the television, radio or stereo? Must you always find something, no matter how trivial, to keep yourself occupied? What about positively deciding not to do any of these things? For once why not do nothing? Yes, that's what I've said, simply try doing nothing. We are all afraid to look into silence, perhaps because we really hate feeling lonely, feeling alone, being just an island cut off from the mainland of life.

Reflections on a Rock: Portrane, Co. Dublin, February, 2015

Next time you are alone why not try challenging silence or even embracing it. As the legendary Snoopy of cartoon fame says, "Sometimes I sits and thinks. Sometimes I just sits." There is a lot of wisdom in that. Try just sitting in silence with your eyes closed. Get yourself into a relaxed position with your back straight - a kitchen chair is ideal. Too soft or comfortable a chair and it's bedtime! A simple exercise like tracing all the sounds both inside and outside the house, letting them come and go into your consciousness, is a simple way to begin. Just relax and let all of the strain drain from your body, down your arms and legs and out. This is not just simply an exercise in relaxation. Yes it is that, but it is much more. It is an exercise in awareness, becoming aware of yourself most essentially. The more you become aware of yourself the more you will know yourself. Of course, this is a long journey, and it will not just happen all at once. As soon as you have begun to become present to yourself you are ready to start out on the most important journey you can take - the journey into self and to self -awareness.

Journal of a Soul 24

Being Aware

Reflection of sun in Compass Monument at Howth Harbour, June 2013

The heart of meditation is being aware.  The great Jesuit spiritual writer, Tony de Mello, sees this as the foundational principle of meditation.  In fact, he has written a superior book on this topic with that very name, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. (Image Books: 1992).  In all his writings, he talks about the practice of meditation as being an act of "waking up"  or "becoming aware." 

Consciousness

Another way of stating the substance of my opening paragraph here is to state that when we meditate we get to the heart of things as far as being human goes, namely that we arrive at pure consciousness.  Professor Lavine in From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (New York, Bantam Books, 1984) states that "existentialism says that I am nothing else but my own conscious existence."   Unfortunately, as de Mello points out, very few people go about in a conscious state of awareness - in fact, we do a lot of things rather unconsciously.  Have you ever arrived at work, having driven there to find that you have quite forgotten what you had encountered on the way there? Whatever about existentialism, meditation is certainly about really being fully conscious of one's being, not just at the specific moment of meditation but hopefully at other moments throughout the day also.

Michael A Singer states in the book I have been discussing in the last two posts - The Untethered Soul - "Consciousness is the highest word you will ever use.  There is nothing higher or deeper... Consciousness is pure awareness." (p. 28)  Now the meditator's job is to arrive at that centre of awareness through his or her practice of awareness. This centre of awareness, Singer calls, in a lovely metaphor, "the seat of the self."  There is considerable reflexivity going on here.  Not alone are you aware, but you are also aware that you are aware.

The wonderful thing about Singer's book is that, in true spirit of meditation it cuts sheer through all denominational allegiances or none:

But now you are aware that you are aware.  That is the seat of the Buddhist Self, the Hindu Atman and the Judaeo-Christian soul.  The great mystery begins once you take that seat deep within. (p. 29)

Journal of a Soul 23

Humpty Dumpty Has A Great Fall

Sunset, Malahide, Co Dublin, June 2013

When we are stressed, things begin to shatter and scatter all over the place.  It is as if the windscreen of our view on the world has shattered into a million pieces.  We might even recall the apt words from W.B. Yeats' poem The Second Coming: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."  Yeats was, of course, referring to a global crisis or disintegration of civilization in the wake of the First World War. The next line, which most people do not quote, strongly confirms  this truth: "mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." However, perhaps the idea of personal disintegration is as horrible an experience or fear as that of the more global disintegration of the outer world.  Yeats had summed up wonderfully in these first quoted words the experience of either inner (micro or personal) or outer (macro or global) disintegration.  One thing is sure, disintegration is a horrifying experience as anyone who has experienced any form of break down or falling apart will aver.

Putting Humpty Dumpty Together Again

We humans are at base a contradictory and paradoxical sort.  We are, on the one hand driven by greed, envy, anger or ego to conquer, desecrate, rip apart and destroy both things and other sentient beings, and, on the other hand, we are inspired by justice, generosity, pity or love to help, consecrate, embrace, lift up and bind together both things and other sentient beings.  Those of us who are by nature optimists believe that the second human impulse to the good vastly outweighs the former, the impulse to evil.  In other words we are here brought back to the inevitable mystery of squaring good with evil.  Freud spoke about these in terms of The Desire to Live: Eros and The Desire to Die: Thanatos.  Indeed, in speaking so, he was commenting on the basic paradoxical nature of the human condition.

Meditation Helps Put Humpty Together

I better begin this paragraph with a caveat which I will write is capitals here: THERE SIMPLY IS NO EASY ANSWER: THERE IS NO PANACEA.  Meditation is no panacea, no instant quick fix.  Rather it is a help, a sort of brush to help us clean up the breakages of our life - excuse the rather awkward metaphor here.  There is a centre of agency, a Still Point, a Seat where the Observer or Witness sits and from which we calmly review the scattered and broken pieces of our life.  As one who tries his best to pull himself together, I find that time spent in meditation helps me to "get my act together,"  a very common metaphor indeed, but nonetheless very true.  Meditation has to be practised on an on-going and regular basis to give one equanimity and peace of mind where things somehow hold together or cohere for us as we go through our daily tasks.  One won't feel 100% most of the time, if ever, but certainly  you will not be in the failure or no grade stakes where everything shatters completely.

My shadow, June 2013

Michael A. Singer in The Untethered Soul (See last post for details of this book and a link to his home page) suggests that we must move from "an outer solution consciousness" to "an inner solution consciousness" (p. 16).  He goes on to stress that there is a part in all of us that can "actually abstract from your own melodrama.  You can watch yourself be jealous or angry..." (p.16)  I admit that this is far easier said than done.  If one has fallen apart there is no amount of meditating that will bring you back together.  You may have to have medical intervention first, as I did, before I had gained enough stability to sail alone and embrace meditation as a repaired yacht might sail anew into the wind.  I have dealt with students with ASD and OCD where CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) had not a hope of being deployed until the lads had been brought to stability by psychiatric intervention.  Hence,  my caveat in the first few lines of this paragraph.  However, once this caveat has been accepted, reality and commonsense being equally embraced, meditation, then and then only can and does work wonders.

Pointed Questions on the Road to the Still Point or Observer's Seat

Singer refers to one of his teachers Romana Maharshi (1879-1950) who used to recommend that the way to attain inner freedom was to "continuously and sincerely" ask the question "who am I" as you meditate. (p. 23)  In this way, I believe, that such questioning will bring one ever nearer the Still Point of Being or the Observer's Seat (my metaphor for SP).  To finish this post I'm going to use the questions I will use for my meditation session immediately after writing this post:

• Who am I that sits here?
• Who is the thinker of these thoughts?
• Who is the feeler of these feelings?
• Who is feeling this sadness that now inhabits my soul?
• Who is experiencing this confusion?
• Who is feeling this fear?
• Who is feeling this love?
• Who is the one who asks these questions?
• Who, O who is this "I"?

And so on, ever inward to the Still Point... ah but the journey is so long and so slow... caveat, caveat... caveat...