A huge chunk of my time this school year—and an explanation for why I haven’t had as much time to read—has been taken up by German classes at the EscuA huge chunk of my time this school year—and an explanation for why I haven’t had as much time to read—has been taken up by German classes at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas. This is the state-run (and thus very cheap) language school that offers classes in all of the major European and Asian languages, and even some less common ones. (At the headquarters at Jesús Maestro, they have classes in Hungarian, Finnish, and even Irish!)
I am currently in B2.1 and go every Tuesday and Thursday, from 7-9:30. That, combined with work and trying to maintain a minimum level of exercise, has left me with far less time for reading than I’d like. It is fortunate, then, that we were assigned books from the school library to read for an exam. I chose this one.
The book is adapted to about a B1 level and I had no difficulty in understanding it. It is also filled with pages of exercises, meant to check your understanding, but as it was a library book I was forbidden from doing them (not that I was so eager!). The story itself was rather shockingly violent, particularly the second part, which made it kind of a fun read. I suppose I’ll have to try to read the original someday....more
I decided to listen to this short lecture series as a supplement to Michael Sells’s excellent introduction to the Quran. The two works go well togetheI decided to listen to this short lecture series as a supplement to Michael Sells’s excellent introduction to the Quran. The two works go well together, as Sells is focused very much on the text itself—its many meanings, its use of language, its poetic impact—while Oliver gives a more standard, historical background.
Though there is no time to cover any topic in depth, Oliver gives an able overview of many topics: the cultural milieu out of which the Quran appeared, the treatment of Biblical figures and stories, the Quranic conception of the divine, how the text relates to Islamic practice, and much else. I feel more than ready to read the actual book now....more
This book is an excellent example of a text that is interesting as a historical document, but not as literature. To put the matter more bluntly, The LThis book is an excellent example of a text that is interesting as a historical document, but not as literature. To put the matter more bluntly, The Lotus Sutra has much to teach but is not very fun to read.
Having recently finished The Platform Sutra, I was struck by how different these two Buddhist scriptures are. The former is dense with doctrine and often quite deeply philosophical, whereas this text is full of revelations, miracle stories, and parables. And whereas The Platform Sutra accords pretty well with the Western conception of Buddhism as a secular, humanistic philosophy, The Lotus Sutra is frankly and powerfully religious.
This is not a world of quietly meditating monks, but of divine beings, hungry ghosts, endless eons of time, and extravagant promises of salvation. Indeed, the many layers of heaven and hell—the rewards and punishments doled out by Karma—reminded me very much of Dante’s cosmos (though here, neither state is permanent). Believers are promised to enjoy excellent senses of hearing and smell in their next lives, as well as good health and handsome noses; whereas nonbelievers will have crooked noses, bad skin, and halitosis. In short, no New York City atheist could really get behind the message of The Lotus Sutra.
One of the book’s most curious features is its meta-commentary. It is a story of itself—ceaselessly telling us how many sentient beings were saved by hearing its message. And yet, the book does not appear to have much of a message other than to inform us that it is very important. But I do think that The Lotus Sutra contains at least a few important doctrinal innovations.
Quite significant, for example, is the idea of “skillful means.” This is the notion that a Buddhist teacher may use any strategy to enlighten his pupils, even if that involves telling a lie. Closely related to this is the idea of the “one vehicle,” which holds that every strategy—meditating, memorizing sutras, repeating mantras, donating to monasteries, preaching sermons—are all merely aspects of one great effort to enlighten the world. This may sound harmless enough, but the implication is that the previous preachings of the Buddha were merely a half-truth, tailored to the low capacities of his first followers.
For example, the original doctrine held that the Buddha died and achieved enlightenment; that he was the first discoverer of the way; that there is only one Buddha; and that the path to enlightenment is to be attained only by those who diligently follow the path the Buddha laid for them. But The Lotus Sutra informs us that the Buddha never died; that there have been innumerable Buddhas; and that virtually everyone can become enlightened.
In other words, this sutra turns Buddhism into a kind of universalist religion, wherein merely repeating one line of a sutra or thinking one pious thought is enough to guarantee ultimate salvation. It reminds me very much of the transformation of the original Christian message (love your neighbor, abhor wealth, forgive your enemies) into the medieval Catholic church, wherein absolution could be bought and sins confessed away. In this case, Siddhartha Gautama’s demanding eightfold path is turned into an all-embracing highway, wherein anyone can drive straight to Buddhahood with a bit of goodwill.
This new, welcoming doctrine is not exactly so keen on women, however. The perfect future state of universal enlightenment is pictured as a world without women. And the one woman in the text who achieves Buddhahood—the daughter of the dragon king, Longnü—turns into a man the instant she does so. To be fair, Buddhism is hardly the only major religion with a misogynist streak; and I supposed it may have even been “enlightened” at the time to allow the possibility that a woman may transform into a man.
Thus, despite the text being rather repetitive and mystical, I would recommend it to anyone hoping to learn more about Buddhism. If you like it, you may have secured your future Buddhahood—though, I fear I may have attracted some grave karmic consequences with my review. If you meet a snake with very bad breath in the future, you know what happened....more
As a lamp, a cataract, a shooting star an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this.
This
As a lamp, a cataract, a shooting star an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning view all created things like this.
This is a fascinating group of texts. The first in the book is the very brief Heart Sutra. It is short enough to be memorized and recited, like the Lord’s Prayer; and true to its name, it contains the “heart” of much Buddhist teaching, specifically with the famous lines “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” The sutra is, in essence, a giant negation of conventional reality—all that can be perceived and conceived. The reality of the senses is superficial, transitory, and illusory; and recognizing the emptiness of this reality is fundamental to achieving enlightenment.
The Diamond Sutra is somewhat longer, though still short enough to be easily read in one sitting. Exactly when it was written down is unclear, though it has the distinction of being the printed book with the earliest known date.
This manuscript (now in the British Library) was printed on May 11, 868, about 600 years before Gutenberg’s bible, at the expense of one Wang Jie. Indeed, this good man even specified that it was “made for free universal distribution,” thus putting it into the public domain. The frontispiece—a line drawing of the Buddha surrounded by his disciples—is a lovely work of art in itself. Even the story of the book’s discovery is interesting. The manuscript, along with many others, had been preserved in a section of the Mogao Caves that had been sealed off since the 11th century—perhaps to protect them from plunderers—only to be opened in the early 1900s.
The text consists of a conversation between the Buddha and his disciple, Subhuti. The upshot of this conversation is very much the same as the message of the Heart Sutra: that everything is fundamentally unreal. Thus, beings are beingless, and the dharma is without dharma. (The word “dharma” can apparently mean a great many things, from “the nature of reality,” to “the right way of acting,” to “phenomena.”) Even the Buddha’s own teachings are unreal. But, paradoxically, though all beings are beingless, for this very reason they should be referred to as “beings.” Apparently, this is an attempt to maintain the practical use of language without attributing reality to what our words refer to. In other words, we must use words to communicate, but we should not mistake our statements about the phenomenal world as having any absolute validity.
The Diamond Sutra is praised and referred to in the last text in this volume, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. Written around 1,000 years ago (it doesn’t seem clear when), it is attributed to the sixth Chan patriarch, Huineng, who preached to and instructed his disciples from a raised platform (thus the name). Unlike the other two works, then, which may have been written in India, this one is certainly Chinese in origin. The book is divided into ten sections and, rather like the Bible, is rather miscellaneous in content, containing stories, poems, parables, preaching, and philosophical discussion.
Despite this variety, I thought that the basic message of the sutra was fairly clear. It expounds a form of Buddhism based on introspection. Well, perhaps “introspection” is the wrong word, since it is a basic tenet of this doctrine that everyone’s fundamental nature is the same, and it is only delusions and confusions that make us lose sight of this. As a kind of substrate of the mind, below our attachments to the external world, we all share the same Buddha-nature. Indeed, in this sutra, Buddha is not so much a man as a state of being, and anyone who attains it is fully the equal of Siddhartha Gautama.
The story of Huineng’s ascension to the patriarchate is deservedly famous. The fifth patriarch decided to have a kind of poetry competition, to see which of his disciples should carry on his mantle. Shenxiu, the leading disciple, came up with this: “The body is the bodhi tree. / The mind is like a bright mirror’s stand. / At all times we must strive to polish it / and must not let dust collect.” Yet the illiterate “barbarian” from the south, Huineng, upon hearing this verse, came up with a response: “Bodhi originally has no tree. / The mirror has no stand. / The Buddha-nature is always clear and pure. / Where is there room for dust?” (Once again, note the emphasis on negation, the message that reality is insubstantial.) This was enough to secure him the position.
As you can see, it is a curious feature of Buddhism that it requires the paradoxical use of language to express its tenets. For example, as the sutras repeat, enlightenment consists of seeing the world as “empty” of form—that is, of seeing past the superficial differences that separate one thing from another, one person from another. It means seeing beyond dualities such as bad and good, beautiful and ugly, as these are only expressions of our own egotistical desires, and the enlightened one is theoretically free from any selfish desire. It is, in short, a kind of ego-death, the conquering of all attachment to external goods, in which only the purest form of consciousness remains, seeing the world exactly as it is, as one undifferentiated whole.
Indeed, there is an interesting metaphysical view inherent in these statements, though as far as I know it is not made explicit. It is that the apparent reality of people and things is due to our inability to come to grips with the passage of time. Everything that exists now did not exist previously and will someday cease to exist. Furthermore, all of the matter and energy in the universe swirls in an enormous cycle, generating and destroying all phenomena. In this sense, a mountain, say, is “unreal” since it is only a mountain at this moment, and its existence depends on a host of other factors. Its existence is conditioned and impermanent, and thus superficial.
There is also, arguably, an epistemology inherent in this doctrine. It is that our conceptualization of reality ultimately warps it to such an extent that we merely delude ourselves. In this sense, Buddhism has something in common with Kant’s system (which Schopenhauer would be the first to point out, of course). Thus, when we call a big pile of rocks a “mountain” we are often attributing certain other qualities to it: natural, big, beautiful, and so on. But what is considered “natural,” or “big,” or “beautiful” are highly subjective qualities, which say more about our own perception than the thing being perceived.
In sum, then, conventional reality is “empty” for two reasons. First, because our minds attribute permanence and self-subsistence to things which are, in actuality, impermanent and conditioned. Second, because our desires and opinions do not allow us to perceive things as they really are.
For this reason, language is a source of delusion, since words create a sense of fixity in the mind—a word picks out an object and treats it as if it were stable. Further, the definitions of words often rely on contrasts (hot and cold, old and young), which are expressions of our subjectivity. However, the Buddhist preacher is forced, by the nature of communication, to say that enlightenment is better than delusion, that meditation is good while attachment is bad, that trying to achieve enlightenment through meditation is correct while doing so by reciting sacred texts is wrong. In short, the doctrine can only be expressed using the very dualities that it purports to move beyond. As a result, the sutras are full of seemingly nonsensical statements, such as that an enlightened one both feels and doesn’t feel pain.
The logically-minded reader thus may be repelled by much of this. After all, the content of a self-contraditory statement is precisely zero. And one could easily make the opposite of the above arguments. For example, just because something is conditioned or impermanent doesn’t make it unreal—indeed, that is arguably the very definition of what is real. The fact that our perception of the world is warped by our subjectivity does not make it unreal—indeed, arguably our subjective reality is the only one we can be sure of. And anybody who has read a scientific text knows that language can be a very useful tool for understanding the world.
But this is all probably beside the point. To begin with, I think a Buddhist would likely object to my attempt to formulate this doctrine as a metaphysical or epistemological doctrine. To the contrary, such a system would be antithetical to the entire spirit of the enterprise, which is precisely the attempt to move beyond intellectual attempts to understand and rationalize reality. Rather, I think these paradoxes and negations should be read as attempts to inculcate an attitude, or to induce a mental state.
If I have any criticism of this doctrine, it is that it seems—to put it bluntly—rather defeatist. All human striving is vain; all attempts at satisfying our desires are vain; every effort to understand reality is vain. A Buddhist may disagree with this assessment—and, in truth, my understanding of these sutras is undoubtedly superficial—but seeing the world as unreal and freeing myself of all desire seem rather like death than something to pursue. That being said, like most people, I certainly err in the opposite direction: getting too swept up in trivialities, getting upset over things beyond my control, seeing my world from the narrow perspective of my short-term desires. As a corrective to this unhappy state of affairs, I think there is a great deal of value in this school of Buddhism. I look forward to continually failing to apply it to my life....more
Since I enjoyed a modern translation of the Prose Edda so much, I thought it would be wise to read a modern retelling of these myths. After all, thougSince I enjoyed a modern translation of the Prose Edda so much, I thought it would be wise to read a modern retelling of these myths. After all, though beautiful, the original poems are fragmentary and occasionally confusing, and apart from that book I am rather ignorant of this tradition. Thankfully, Neil Gaiman’s retelling is exactly what I wanted: a book suited for a beginner without being written for children.
Yet the book is not not-for-children, either. By that I mean that there is nothing dense or imposingly literary about the book. It is simple and straightforward. Even so, by the first few pages of every story, I found myself wholly absorbed. Gaiman is clearly a practiced storyteller, and knows how to add just the right details to bring the old tales to life. I was even a bit sad to reach Ragnarok, the final battle, and to say goodbye to Odin, Thor, and Loki—the three great characters from these myths. Until we meet again, great bearded ones!...more
One of the first book I truly loved was an illustrated collection of Greek myths, told for children. Even in a simplified and sanitized version, the sOne of the first book I truly loved was an illustrated collection of Greek myths, told for children. Even in a simplified and sanitized version, the strangeness of an ancient mythology fascinated my young mind. Unlike stories written for children—or even for young adults—these myths were full of morally ambiguous characters and real tragedy. The good guy did not always win, did not always get the girl, and was not even necessarily good. And the tricks, powers, and battles of these mythological figures were far stranger and more compelling than the superheroes I was familiar with.
I was happy to find, then, that my early fascination with mythology remains unabated. These Old Norse poems are as full of wonderful images, memorable tales, inspiring heroes, and complex villains as their Greek counterparts. Though written down sometime in the 13th century, the poems originated from a much earlier, pagan tradition—that of the Vikings. Much like Homer’s Greeks, this was a heroic society, wherein craftiness, strength, and valor were the highest values, and the concepts of honor and shame occupied the place of our notions of altruism and fairness. One can see this clearly, albeit humorously, in the Lokasenna, in which Loki walks into a party and insults the other gods in astoundingly lewd terms. His accusations of sexual impropriety are not just punchlines, but serious matters that might upset the moral order.
Thor is, of course, present in these poems, just as mighty as he is in the comic books, and just as dense as he is in the movies. Odin is a surprisingly interesting character—a frightening and mysterious being, wise but not necessarily benevolent. The advice attributed to him in the Hávamál is one of the high points of the book. I found the poems about heroes to be rather less interesting than those about the gods—the plots less focused, the characters less memorable—but they do give a clearer picture of the people who originated this mythology. Not being able to read the original, and not having read any other translation, all I can say is that I found Jackson Crawford’s version to be quite readable....more
I am not what you would call a spiritual person. Quite the opposite. However, living, as I do, in a secular world, and trying my best to be rational, I am not what you would call a spiritual person. Quite the opposite. However, living, as I do, in a secular world, and trying my best to be rational, I have come to feel the gap in my life that would normally be occupied by religion.
When life presents us with a difficulty—anything from the death of a loved one to run-of-the-mill ennui—we have little recourse but to drink, spill our guts out to friends, or go to therapy if it gets bad enough. In other words, we must either try to improvise a solution or seek medical intervention. A spiritual or religious practice at least gives us a blueprint—beliefs to fall back on, or rituals to guide us through. The only problem is that, for many like me, those beliefs are not compelling, and those rituals are not meaningful.
The practice of mindfulness, then, attracts me because it is a kind of secular religion—one requiring no membership, no creed, and no voluntary donations. It is merely a method of regulating oneself, a technique that can be practiced anywhere at any time. This is essentially how Muesse presents it in this series of lectures. And he does quite an admirable job. Muesse explains the basic idea, takes the listener through a series of guided practices, and shows how mindfulness can be useful in many different contexts—from eating, to driving, and even to confronting one’s own mortality. By the end, I think he makes a convincing case that mindfulness practice is a valuable tool in dealing with life’s trials and tribulations.
For my part, I greatly appreciate how mindfulness can help with anxiety, sadness, or anger. But I sense the practice’s limitations when confronted when the more joyous parts of life—having fun, relaxing, or falling in love. Sometimes, it is desirable to put some mental space between oneself and one’s emotions. But being absolutely swept away in a passion is one of life’s great experiences; and though detachment is wise in many contexts, some things are worth getting attached to, even if that means enduring suffering in the future. But as Muesse does not present mindfulness as a complete life philosophy, I cannot really find fault with this course.
So if you are feeling a little sad, or anxious, or just experimental, you can do as Dr. Dre said, and “get straight and meditate like a Buddhist.” And this course would be a good place to start....more
Authentic joy is not a euphoric state or a feeling of being high. Rather, it is a state of appreciation that allows us to participate fully in our
Authentic joy is not a euphoric state or a feeling of being high. Rather, it is a state of appreciation that allows us to participate fully in our lives.
In my life, times of crisis or great change, though painful, have had the power to reawaken me. I remind myself of what is important and what is trivial; I take joys in simple things and appreciate everyday good fortune; I empathize more readily and react more kindly; I feel fully myself and fully aware.
But such elevated states quickly fade. Routine is reestablished, and I find myself, once again, absorbed in trifles, disturbed by petty annoyances, numb to beauty, dull to my surroundings, careless of other people, focused on nothings, and generally unaware. This is not a particularly happy state. I do not even like myself when I am in this humdrum mode of existence. Like Hamlet, I feel as if I am bound in shell, hounded by bad dreams. I want a way to reawaken the state of mind that crises have elicited from me—but without the crises, of course.
This is why I turned to Pema Chödrön, hoping that her secular Buddhism might help to crack my existential nut. The central premise of this book is that the crisis state I described above—one of openness to the world, sympathy with others, joy in simple things—is basic to human life, and gets covered up through fear. We fear emotional pain so we do not empathize or connect with others; we fear change so we stick to familiar paths that do not allow us to grow; we fear failure so we create grandiose illusions about ourselves and then work to preserve them. And so on, fearing this and that, with the end result being that we close ourselves off.
Now, philosophers and psychologists can argue whether any state is basic to human life, and what is the mechanism through which unhappiness arises. But in my experience it is certainly true that overcoming fears helps to reconnect me with the world in that basic, joyful way I described above. In this book, Chödrön is focused on overcoming fear through empathy; and she offers several meditative exercises to cultivate fellow-feeling: “The point is to contact an earnest feeling of goodwill and encourage it to expand.” I have tried these exercises, with limited success I am afraid, but I think that the concept is sound: that we can develop our compassion, which will allow us to act both more ethically and live more happily.
In the meantime, however, I am afraid it’s back to the nutshell for me....more
A far more accurate title for this book would be Why Mindfulness Meditation is Good. For as Wright—who does not consider himself a Buddhist—admits, heA far more accurate title for this book would be Why Mindfulness Meditation is Good. For as Wright—who does not consider himself a Buddhist—admits, he is not really here to talk about any form of traditional Buddhism. He does not even present a strictly “orthodox” view of any secular, Western variety of Buddhism. Instead, this is a rather selective interpretation of some Buddhist doctrines in the light of evolutionary psychology.
Wright’s essential message is that the evolutionary process that shaped the human brain did not adequately program us for life in the modern world; and that mindfulness meditation can help to correct this bad programming.
The first of these claims is fairly uncontroversial. To give an obvious example, our love of salt, beneficial when sodium was hard to come by in natural products, has become maladaptive in the modern world where salt is cheap and plentiful. Our emotions, too, can misfire nowadays. Caring deeply that people have a high opinion of you makes sense when you are, say, living in a small village full of people you know and interact with daily; but it makes little sense when you are surrounded by strangers on a bus.
This mismatch between our emotional setup and the newly complex social world is one reason for rampant stress and anxiety. Something like a job interview—trying to impress a perfect stranger to earn a livelihood—simply didn’t exist for our ancestors. This can also explain tribalism, which Wright sees as the most pressing danger of the modern world. It makes evolutionary sense to care deeply for oneself and one’s kin, with some close friends thrown in; and those who fall outside of this circle should, following evolutionary logic, be treated with suspicion—which explains why humans are so prone to dividing themselves into mutually antagonistic groups.
But how can mindfulness meditation help? Most obviously, it is a practice designed to give us some distance from our emotions. This is done by separating the feeling from its narrative. In daily life, for example, anger is never experienced “purely”; we always get angry about something; and the thought of this event is a huge component of its experience. But the meditator does her best to focus on the feeling itself, to examine its manifestation in her body and brain, while letting go of the corresponding narrative. Stripped of the provoking incident, the feeling itself ceases to be provocative; and the anger may even disappear completely.
Explained in this way, mindfulness meditation is the mirror image of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT). In CBT the anger is attacked from the opposite side: by focusing on the narrative and subjecting it to logical criticism. In my experience, at least, the things one tells oneself while angry rarely stand up to cool analysis. And when one ceases to believe in the thought, the feeling disappears. The efficacy of both mindfulness meditation and CBT, then, is based on the interdependence of feeling and thought. If separated—either by focusing on the feeling during meditation, or the thought through analysis—the emotion disappears.
This, in a nutshell, is how mindfulness meditation can be therapeutic. But Wright wants to make a far more grandiose claim: that mindfulness meditation can reveal truths about the nature of mind, the world, and morality.
One of the central ideas of Buddhism is that of “emptiness”: that the enlightened meditator sees the world as empty of essential form. The first time I encountered this idea in a Buddhist text it made no sense to me; but Wright gives it an intriguing interpretation. Our brain, designed to survive, naturally assigns value to things in our environment based on how useful or harmful they are to us. These evaluations are, according to Wright’s theory, experienced as emotional reactions. I have quite warm and fuzzy feelings about my laptop, for example; and even the communal computers where I work evoke in me a comforting sense of familiarity and utility.
These emotions, which are sometimes very tiny indeed, are what give experiential reality a sense of essence. The emotions, in other words, help us to quickly identify and use objects: I don’t have to closely examine the computers, for example, since the emotion brings their instrumental qualities quickly to my attention. The advantages of this are obvious to anyone in a hurry. Likewise, this emotional registering is equally advantageous in avoiding danger, since taking time to ponder a rattlesnake isn’t advisable.
But the downside is that we can look at the world quite narrowly, ignoring the sensuous qualities of objects in favor of an instrumental view. Visual art actively works against this tendency, I think, by creating images that thwart our normal registering system, thus prompting us into a sensuous examination of the work. Good paintings make us into children again, exploring the world without worrying about making use of things. Mindfulness meditation is supposed to engender this same attitude, not just with regards to a painting, but to everything. Stripped of these identifying emotional reactions, the world might indeed seem “empty”—empty of distinctions, though full of rich sensation.
With objects, it is hard to see why this state of emptiness would be very desirable. (Also it should be said that this idea of micro-emotions serving as registers of essential distinctions is Wright’s interpretation of the psychological data, and is rather speculative.) But with regards to humans, this mindset might have its advantages. Instead of attributing essential qualities of good and bad to somebody we might see that their behavior can vary quite a bit depending on circumstances, and this can make us less judgmental and more forgiving.
Wright also has a go at the traditional Buddhist idea that the self is a delusion. According to what we know about the brain, he says, there is no executive seat of consciousness. He cites the famous split-brain experiments, and others like it, to argue that consciousness is not the powerful decision-maker we once assumed, but is more like a publicity agent: making our actions seem more cogent to others.
This is necessary because, underneath the apparent unity of conscious experience, there are several domain-specific “modules”—such as for sexual jealousy, romantic wooing, and so on—that fight amongst themselves in the brain for power and attention. Each module governs our behavior in different ways; and environmental stimuli determine which module is in control. Our consciousness gives a sense of continuity and coherence to this shifting control, which makes us look better in the eyes of our peers—or that’s how the theory goes, which Wright says is well-supported.
In any case, the upshot of this theory still would not be that the self doesn’t exist; only that the self is more fragmented and less executive than we once supposed. Unfortunately, the book steeply declines in quality in the last few chapters—where Wright tackles the most mystical propositions of Buddhism—when the final stage of the no-self argument is given. This leads him into the following speculations:
If our thoughts are generated by a variety of modules, which use emotion to get our attention; and if we can learn to dissociate ourselves from these emotions and see the world as “empty”; if, in short, we can reach a certain level of detachment from our thoughts and emotions: then, perhaps, we can see sensations arising in our body as equivalent to sensations arising from without. And maybe, too, this state of detachment will allow us to experience other people’s emotions as equivalent to our own, like how we feel pain from seeing a loved one in pain. In this case, can we not be said to have seen the true oneness of reality and the corresponding unreality of personal identity?
These lofty considerations aside, when I am struck by a car they better not take the driver to the emergency room; and when Robert Wright gets a book deal he would be upset if they gave me the money. My point is that this experience of oneness in no way undermines the reality of distinct personal identity, without which we could hardly go a day. And this state of perfect detachment is arguably, contra Wright, a far less realistic way of seeing things, since being genuinely unconcerned as to whom a pain belonged, for example, would make us unable to help. (Also in this way, contra Wright, it would make us obviously less moral.)
More generally, I think Wright is wrong in insisting that meditation can help us to experience reality more “truly.” Admittedly, I know from experience that meditation can be a great aid to introspection and can allow us to deal with our emotions more effectively. But the notion that a meditative experience can allow us to see a metaphysical truth—the unreality of self or the oneness of the cosmos—I reject completely. An essentially private experience cannot confirm or deny anything, as Wright himself says earlier on.
I also reject Wright’s claim that meditation can help us to see moral reality more clearly. By this he means that the detachment engendered by meditation can allow us to see every person as equally valuable rather than selfishly considering one’s own desires more important.
Now, I do not doubt that meditation can make people calmer and even nicer. But detachment does not lead logically to any moral clarity. Detachment is just that—detachment, which means unconcern; and morality is impossible without concern. Indeed, it seems to me that an enlightened person would be even less likely to improve the world, since they can accept any situation with perfect equanimity. Granted, if everyone were perfectly enlightened there would be no reason to improve anything—but I believe the expression about hell freezing over applies here.
Aside from the intellectual weakness of these later chapters, full as they are of vague hand-waving, the book has other flaws. I often got the sense that Wright was presenting the psychological evidence very selectively, emphasizing the studies and theories that accorded with his interpretations of Buddhism, without taking nearly enough time to give the contrasting views. On the other hand, he interprets the Buddhist doctrines quite freely—so in the end, when he says that modern science is confirming Buddhism, I wonder what is confirming what, exactly. And the writing, while usually quite clear, was too hokey and jokey for me.
Last, I found his framing of meditation as a way to save humanity from destructive tribalism as both naïve and misguided. In brief, I think that we ought to try to create a society in which the selfish interests of the greatest number of people are aligned. Selfish attachment, while potentially narrow, need not be if these selves are in enmeshed in mutually beneficial relationships; and some amount of attachment, with its concomitant dissatisfactions, seems necessary for people to exert great effort in improving their station and thus changing our world.
Encouraging people to become selflessly detached, on the other hand, besides being unrealistic, also strikes me as generally undesirable. For all the suffering caused by attachment—of which I am well aware—I am not convinced that life is better without it. As Orwell said: “Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.”...more
We do not consider how we are going to vomit; we just vomit.
Chögyam Trungpa was a charismatic and controversial figure in the Western popularizati
We do not consider how we are going to vomit; we just vomit.
Chögyam Trungpa was a charismatic and controversial figure in the Western popularization of Buddhism. As a teenager in Tibet, Trungpa fled the Chinese in an escape that involved swimming across a river under gunfire, climbing the Himalayas, and running so short of food that he had to eat his leather belt and bag. Eventually he emigrated to the United States, where he founded several schools, and pioneered a secular interpretation of Buddhism, Shambhala Training. You may be surprised to learn that Trungpa, far from being an ascetic monk, also had notorious penchants for bedding his female students and for going on drunken debauches.
My interest in Trungpa was sparked by reading a book on meditation by his disciple, Pema Chödrön, which I thought was excellent. Spiritual Materialism, Trungpa’s most famous book, contains two series of lectures Trungpa gave, in 1970-71, about the pitfalls of the spiritual path and how to overcome them. As such, this series of lectures is largely theoretical rather than practical—how to think about the spiritual path rather than what to do once you’re on it—even if there are practical ramifications.
‘Spiritual materialism’ is Trungpa’s term for the ways that the ego co-opts spirituality for its own benefit. ‘Ego’ is our sense of self. In Buddhist thought, this sense of self is illusory; the self is a process, not a thing. Ego is the mind’s attempt to create an illusion of solidity where none exists. Put another way, ‘ego’ is the mind’s attempt to reject impermanence.
This attempt takes many forms. We modify our environment, manipulating the material world and bringing it under our control, in order to create a perfectly comfortable world that never challenges or disappoints us. We create intellectual systems—positivism, nationalism, Buddhism—that rationalize and explain the world, that define our place in the world and dictate to us rules of action. We also attempt to analyze ourselves: we use literature, psychology, drugs, prayer, and meditation to achieve a sense of self-consciousness, an awareness of who we are. All of these are the ego’s attempts to solidify both itself and its world, to see the universe as a series of defined shapes rather than an endless flux.
This project of solidification can even use spiritual techniques in its own benefit. The goal of meditation is the dissolution of the ego and the absence of struggle. And yet many who embark on the spiritual path see meditation as a battle with the ego, an attempt to break certain habits, to overcome certain mentalities, to free themselves from illusions. If spirituality is seen in such a way—as 'you' against 'something else'—then you will hit a wall; and this wall will only get stronger the harder you push against it. Only when you give up trying to destroy this wall, when you stop struggling, does the wall disappear; for the wall was the product of your own ‘dualistic’ thinking—once again, 'you' against 'something else'—and ceases to exist when you stop trying to destroy it:
“There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom. This egoless state is the attainment of buddhahood.”
It is no use, therefore, to practice acts of extreme asceticism, forceful acts of self-denial. It is no use to try to overcome your own negative qualities—to strive to be good, kind, caring, loving. It is no use to accumulate vast amounts of religious knowledge; nor is it beneficial to accumulate religious titles or honorifics. True spirituality is not a battle, not a quality, not an ultimate analysis, and it is not an accomplishment. All of those things belong to a person, whereas enlightenment contains no sense of me and not-me.
This is my best attempt to summarize the core message of this book. (And please excuse the ponderous style; I've been reading Hegel.) Yet I’m not exactly sure how to go about analyzing or evaluating it. Indeed, such criticism seems totally antithetical to the ethos of this book. But I’ll try, nevertheless.
There is an obvious contradiction between Trungpa’s stance on intellectual analysis—as the ego’s vain attempt to solidify its world through intellectual work—and the analysis that he himself undertakes in this book. If all analysis is vain, what makes his any different? To this, I think he would respond that analysis is fine if we take the right attitude towards it—namely, as long as we keep in mind that our analysis is not identical with the reality it attempts to describe, that we can never describe reality perfectly, and that there’s always a chance we are wrong. More succinctly, I think he’d say analysis is fine as long as we don’t take it too seriously. By his own admission, there is no ‘final analysis’ of the human condition; and enlightenment is characterized by the absence of any need to analyze.
Still, there does seem to be the idea in Trungpa’s system that, in attaining this ego-less state, we are experiencing the ‘truth’ of reality, whereas before we were mired in the 'illusions' of the ego. In this, you might say that the system is esoteric: true knowledge is the purview of only the truly enlightened. True knowledge, in other words, is not transmissible through speech, but is the result of privileged state which only a few achieve. Bodhisattvas become authorities through their enlightened states, beings who must be listened to because of their special, higher perspectives. Again, I think Trungpa would respond that even the ideas of ‘knowledge’ and 'truth' are dualistic (they involves the sense of ‘me’ knowing 'something else'), and thus this idea is not applicable to the enlightened.
Putting all this aside, it’s worth asking whether this ego-less state is even desirable. Could we have science, technology, literature, or love without a sense of self? An ego-less world might involve less suffering; but isn’t there something to be said for suffering? Trungpa describes the ego as a monkey creating various worlds—creating for itself its own heaven and hell, a world of animal desire and human intellect—and moving through these self-created worlds in a vain search for perfect happiness, only to have each of its own worlds collapse in turn. And yet, even if I accepted Trungpa’s premise that this struggle is vain, I still think it’s an open question whether perfect tranquility is preferable to vain struggle.
All reservations notwithstanding, I still thought that this book was an enlightening read. While I may be skeptical about the prospect of enlightenment and ego-death, I do think that meditation, as a method of slowing down, of savoring one’s own mental life, and of learning to accept the world around you, is an extremely useful technique. And as a technique, its end is an experience—or perhaps, better yet, an attitude—and the theory that goes along with meditation does not constitute its substance; rather, theory is just a pedagogical tool to help guide less experienced practitioners. It is in this light, I think, that these lectures should be read....more
The knower of Yoga should preserve his semen and thereby conquer death. Emission of semen is death; preservation of semen is life.
This is a fascin
The knower of Yoga should preserve his semen and thereby conquer death. Emission of semen is death; preservation of semen is life.
This is a fascinating little book. Hardly anything is known about its author, Swami Swatmarama, other than that he created this book, which is largely a compilation of earlier teachings, in the 15th or 16th century. Even so, this has been enough to send his name down the ages; for this book is one of the most important sources of Hatha Yoga.
After reading a book on Buddhist meditation and Christian spiritual practices, I figured that I'd read something about Hindu Yoga. This book, being a classic, seemed perfect. Alas, it wasn't so. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika is short, and is written in the style of a cookbook or a telegram. The brief paragraphs of instruction, littered with technical terms, skipping from subject to subject, need interpretation, clarification, and expansion in order to be put into practice; and this volume lacks a scholarly apparatus.
Even so, I gave it my best shot. After some introductory remarks, Swatmarama begins by describing several asanas, or postures. These were accompanied by helpful photographs of a young, smiling woman demonstrating the positions. Gamely, I tried to recreate these photographs in the privacy of my room, but quickly found that my body is far too stiff and ungainly to contort itself into even an approximation. Obviously, these things take time.
You may be curious to learn that "yoga," as it is understood in the trendy Western world, consists almost entirely of these asanas, or yoga postures. But asanas comprise only a small portion of Hatha Yoga. Swatmarama also recommends several rules of diet and conduct, for example: “Avoid bad people, fires, women, travel, early morning baths, fasting, etc., and actions that hurt the body.” You are also advised to “live in a secluded hut free of stones, fire, and dampness to a distance of four cubits in a country that is properly governed, virtuous, prosperous, and peaceful.” (Unfortunately for me, my hut is a bit stoney.)
Much of Swatmarama’s advice is alarming and questionable: “Assume Utkatasana [squatting posture] in water as deep as the navel. Insert a tube into the anus. Contract the anus. This cleansing is Vastikarman.” Men are advised to retain their semen by tensing their abdomen, and women their menstrual blood. He also gives instructions for cutting your own frenulum (the membrane that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth) so that the tongue can be extended properly in his exercises.
For me, one of the most striking aspects of Swatmarama’s system is that its benefits are often pictured in purely physical terms: “The yogi who holds the tongue upwards for even half a second is saved from poison, disease, death, old age, and so on.” The promise to conquer disease, old age, and death is repeated over and over in the book; comparatively little is said about spiritual or even psychological benefits.
I am, of course, intentionally focusing on all the oddities. Much of it, such as the yoga postures, the advice on breathing, and the section on Nada yoga (focusing on sounds), is impressive and even moving. Nevertheless I cannot recommend the book to those seeking to learn yoga. It is far more valuable as a historical document than as a manual....more
Pues abrigo cada vez más la convicción de que nuestra filosofía española, está liquida y difusa en nuestra liter
(See below for English translation)
Pues abrigo cada vez más la convicción de que nuestra filosofía española, está liquida y difusa en nuestra literatura, en nuestra vida, en nuestra acción, en nuestra mística, sobre todo, y no en sistemas filosóficos. Es concreta.
Cuando intento aprender un idioma, leo siempre a los filósofos que han escrito en esa lenguaje, por dos razones. Primero, porque me gusta la filosofía ; y segundo, porque el vocabulario de la filosofía—especialmente en las lenguas romances—es bastante similar, con muchas palabras con una raíz común latín y griego. Y el filósofo mas conocido de España, mención aparte de Ortega y Gasset, es Unamuno.
Sin embargo, te aviso de que este libro no es filosofía sensu strictu. Si lo tienes en cuenta desde el principio, te ahorrarás mucha frustración. Unamuno no desarolla argumentos lógicos, ni crea un sistema consistente. Este libro es, más bien, una colección de ensayos, una obra de literatura, un grito de dolor y de alegría, un tratado místico, y finalmente un poema en prosa. Unamuno no está intentando resolver ninguno de los problemas tradicionales de la filosofía; este libro es una expresión del la crisis de su vida.
En su opinión, el problema central de la vida es la muerte. El hecho de que cada hombre va a morir, y ninguno quiera: “No quiero morirme, no, no quiero ni quiero quererlo ; quiero vivir siempre, siempre, y vivir yo este pobre yo que me soy e me siento ser ahora y aquí, y por esto me tortura el problema de la duración de mi alma, de la mía propia.”
Por esta razón tenemos el anhelo de inmortalidad. Este anhelo es simplemente una expresión de la vida, es decir, el anhelo de inmortalidad es la vida misma. En contra de la vida está la razón, que no puede creer en Dios ni en la inmortalidad. Entonces, se nos abren tres opciones: o nos sometemos a la razón, o nos sometemos a la fe, o vivimos con una pelea entre ellas.
Unamuno elige esto último. La vida deseable, en su opinión, es una vida de dolor, angustia, lucha, éxtasis, y exasperación. El individuo vale más que el universo, el individual de carne y hueso que lo existe, y por eso no debemos someternos a algo abstracto, impersonal, ideal. Unamuno no desea el cielo tradicional, donde no hay tiempo, y los beatos no tienen cuerpo ni identidad, sino que todo el mundo están absorto en la visión beatifica. Él quere una continuación infinita de esta vida, nuestra vida de carne y hueso, con toda nuestra esperanza e ilusión, pero sin el miedo terrible a la muerte.
Unamuno se considera a su mismo católico, pero su libro está lleno de herejías. Tras la publicación de este libro, la Iglesia Católica lo añadió a la Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Unamuno está, por ejemplo, en contra del escolasticismo de Santo Tomás de Aquino. El Dios de los escolásticos no es Dios, solo su idea, esto es, una abstracción estéril y vana. Tienes que creer en Dios con tu corazón, no con tu cabeza ; tienes que creer antes de saber, no saber antes de creer. Se puede ver que Unamuno está influido por Pascal y su apuesta, y también el existencialismo de Kierkegaard, a quien Unamuno llama “hermano.”
Aunque no soy cristiano y no creo en dios ni en la vida después de la muerte, admiro a Unamuno por su originalidad y su fe. Filosofía no es, según él, una cosa intelectual ni abstracta, sino una expresión de la vida inquieta y anhelada. En sus palabras: “El mundo intelectual se divide en dos clases: dilettantes de un lado y pedantes de otro.” Seguro que Unamuno fue un diletante, pero también fue artista y, lo más importante, un hombre sincero y ferviente.
Fue también un escritor, un escritor magnífico. Su prosa es viva y eléctrica. Escribe como un místico en trance o un profeta gritando en el desierto. Por eso, si todo demás no bastase, debes leer sus libros:
¿Cuál es, pues, la nueva misión de Don Quijote hoy en este mundo? Clamar, clamar en el desierto. Pero el desierto oye, aunque no oigan los hombres, y un día se convertirá en selva sonora, y esa voz solitaria que va posando en el desierto como semilla, dará un cedro gigantesco que con sus cien mil lenguas cantará un hosanna eterno al Señor de la vida y de la muerte.
I am coming more and more to the conviction that our Spanish philosophy is liquid and diffuse in our literature, in our life, in our action, and above all in our mysticism, and not in philosophical systems. It is concrete.
Whenever I try to learn a language, I always read its philosophers, for two reasons. First, because I like philosophy; and second, because the vocabulary of philosophy—especially in the Romance languages—is quite similar, with many words sharing a common Latin or Greek root. And the most well known Spanish philosopher, apart from Ortega y Gasset, is Unamuno.
However, I must warn you that this book is not philosophy sensu strictu. If you keep this in mind from the beginning, it will save you a lot of frustration. Unamuno doesn't develope logical arguments, nor does he create a coherent system. This book is, rather, a collection of essays, a work of literature, a cry of joy and pain, a mystical treatise, and, in the end, a poem in prose. Unamuno wasn't trying to resolve any of the traditional problems of philosophy; this book is an expression of the crisis of his life.
In his opinion, the central problem of life is death: "I don't want to die, no, I don't, nor do I want to want to die; I want to live forever, forever, and live as the poor self that I am and that I feel myself here and now, and because of that I am tortured by the problem of the duration of my soul, of my own soul."
For this reason we have the desire for immortality. This desire is simply an expression of life, that is to say, the desire is life itself. Against life is reason, which cannot believe in God or immortality. Thus we are left with three option: submit to reason, submit to faith, or live with a constant battle between the two.
Unamuno chose the last one. The desirable life, in his opinion, is a life of pain, anguish, struggle, ecstasy, and exasperation. The individual is worth than the universe, the individual of flesh and blood is all that exists, and for that reason we should not submit to anything impersonal, abstract, ideal. Unamuno did not desire heaven as traditionally conceived, wherein there is no time, and the beatified have neither body nor identity, and everyone is absorbed in the beatific vision. He wanted an infinite continuation of this life, our life of flesh and blood, with all our hopes and dreams, but without the terrible fear of death.
Unamuno considered himself a Catholic, but his book is full of heresies. After the publication of this book, the Catholic Church added it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Unamuno was, for example, against the scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The God of the scholastics is not God, only the idea of God, that is, a sterile and vain abstraction. You have to believe in God with your heart, not your head; you have to believe to know, not know to believe. You can see that Unamuno was influenced by Pascal's Wager, as well as the existentialism of Kierkegaard, whom Unamuno calls "brother."
Even though I am not a Christian and believe neither in God nor the afterlife, I admire Unamuno for his originality and his faith. Philosophy was not, for him, an abstract and intellectual thing, but rather the expression of a restless and yearning life. In his words: "The intellectual world is divided into two classes: dilettantes on the one side, and pedants on the other." Unamuno was certainly a dilettante, but he was also an artist, and, most importantly, a fervent and sincere man.
He was also a writer, a magnificent writer. His prose is vivid and electric. He wrote like a mystic in a trance, like a prophet screaming in the desert. For that, if nothing else suffices, you should read his books:
What is the new mission of Don Quixote today in this world? To cry out, to cry out in the desert. But the desert hears, even though men do not, and one day it will become a jungle of sound, and this solitary voice will be planted in the desert as a seed, from which a gigantic cedar will grow with one hundred thousand languages singing an eternal hosanna to the Lord of life and death.
Enlightenment isn’t about going someplace else or attaining something that we don’t have right now. Enlightenment is when the blinders start to com
Enlightenment isn’t about going someplace else or attaining something that we don’t have right now. Enlightenment is when the blinders start to come off.
When I was in high school, I spent a few years going to Tae Kwon Do classes. I was never any good. Every time we had sparring practice, I got whooped—that is, unless I accidentally kicked my opponent in the crotch (which I did a lot). But besides the fun of hand-to-hand combat, one thing that kept me coming back was the meditation. After every class, we would spend about ten minutes in a guided meditation. These were not easy. Most often, the master had us holding an uncomfortable or difficult pose, until all my muscles were quivering and shaking and I collapsed.
Sometimes all I felt was pain and struggle; but other times, something would happen. As I listened to the master talk about energy flowing through my body, I could actually feel it. I felt strange forces in my arms and legs, seeming to move through me. This was weird, since I didn’t believe anything the master was saying—at least not in a literal way. I didn’t believe in qi, or energy centers in the body, or any of that stuff; but I felt something, and it was interesting.
This experience left me with a lingering respect for and curiosity about meditation. A book by David D. Burns about anxiety recently reawakened this curiosity. As I read about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I kept thinking that it reminded me of what I knew (or thought I knew) about Buddhism. Besides that, Burns himself drew some parallels with Buddhism in his discussions of fear. So I decided to look into it. A Buddhist friend of mine suggested Pema Chödrön as a place to start; and this book, a practical guide to meditation, seemed perfect.
I was surprised by what I found. The type of meditation Chödrön advocates doesn’t involve holding difficult postures or enduring pain. You don’t even have to close your eyes. Instead, you find a spot, sit up straight, cross your legs (or don’t), and stay there, eyes open, breathing in and breathing out. You don’t focus on energy centers or the cosmic flow of qi. Instead, you just try to focus on your breath. You breathe in, breathe out, and try to keep your attention on the present moment.
I have been doing these exercises for a week now, and I can tell you that being present, focusing on the moment, is far more difficult than you’d think. My mind is like a boiling, bubbling cauldron. Memories randomly appear; fearful fantasies flash into being; my to-do list nags me; an itch on my head irritates; my leg is falling asleep; a sound triggers an association; a smell makes me think of food; and spasms of impatience surge through me as the time wears on.
Meditation certainly hasn’t induced a Zen-like calm in me so far. But it says a lot that now I’m aware of all these things. Just sitting there noticing what happens in my head, and letting it all pass through me, has been tremendously interesting. I realize that my very brain is not totally under my control. Things are always happening in there, constantly, spontaneously, which draw my attention from the moment; and it takes effort not to get sucked in.
One of the things I like most about Chödrön’s approach is its versatility. You can make anything your object of meditation. You can focus on sounds, sights, tactile sensations, or the taste of an apple. You can focus on fear, anger, sadness, joy, on fantasies or memories. Anything in your life can be the object of meditation, as long as you use it as an opportunity to reconnect with the present moment. Meditation gives you the self-awareness—not through conceptual discussion, but first-hand experience—to learn what your mind is doing and how to interrupt your habitual patterns.
What I find especially appealing is the philosophy. Well, perhaps “philosophy” isn’t the right word; it’s more of an attitude or a mindset. Through the attempt to reconnect with the moment, you realize how much of your experience is transformed by the conceptual overlay you put on top of it. Our heads are full of judgments, opinions, beliefs. We are constantly telling stories about our lives, with ourselves as the protagonist.
Have you ever had an experience like this? When I was in college, I accepted a job doing surveys over the phone. But I was extremely nervous about it. I imagined respondent after respondent yelling at me, hanging up on me, and my manager angry at me and chastising me, and me having a breakdown and getting fired. This fantasy was so strong, I almost couldn’t make myself go to my first day of work. But when I finally did make myself go, shivering with fear, and when I finally made myself call, my voice quaking, I realized that I could do it. What seemed impossible in my imagination was easy in reality. In fact, I ended up loving that job.
This is what I like to call the “novelistic imagination.” Your mind is a natural dramatist—at least, mine is—and it can tell the most outrageous stories about your past, present, and future. But the interesting thing, I’ve found, is that we’re actually quite bad at imagining how things will be. We’re good at imagining possibilities—especially worst-case scenarios—but bad at imagining experiences. That’s because, when we use our novelistic imagination, we assume that life is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But life is not a story: it’s a collection of moments. And the present moment is so different, and so much richer, than all the wild fantasies in our minds.
My hunch is that we evolved our novelistic imagination as a way of avoiding danger by running scenarios. “If I go so far away, maybe I won’t be back by sundown, and the hyenas over there might smell me, etc.” The problem is that this gets out of hand, which is why we humans get so many stress-related diseases—not to mention suffer from chronic anxiety. We developed the mental faculty to anticipate danger and avoid it; but we can’t turn it off, so we sense danger everywhere.
This is taking me pretty far from the book (so you know it’s a good book, because it’s making me think). I’ll only add that this book strikes me as an ideal introduction to meditation. Chödrön writes with warmth, humor, and understanding. She is brief and to the point, but you don’t feel that she’s leaving anything out. She is practical, encouraging, and inspiring. I encourage anyone whose curious to try it. You can be a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, or an atheist like me—it doesn’t matter. Meditation is not about believing certain things. To the contrary: it’s about getting past your beliefs about the world, and experiencing the world itself....more
Just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises, so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing th
Just as taking a walk, journeying on foot, and running are bodily exercises, so we call Spiritual Exercises every way of preparing and disposing the soul to rid itself of all inordinate attachments, and, after their removal, of seeking and finding the will of God in the disposition of our life for the salvation of our soul.
Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556), the founder of the Society of Jesus, has a claim to being among the most influential Spaniards in history.
His beginning was quixotic. The son of a Basque nobleman, his imagination was fed, like the Don’s, on tales of knight errantry and romance. This led to a career in the army, cut short by a canon ball that struck and permanently crippled his leg. His shattered bone had to be set, and then re-set twice, in order to heal properly; and by then his injured leg was too short, and he had to endure months of painful stretching. He walked with a limp the rest of his life.
During his convalescence, deprived of his usual adventure stories, he read about the lives of the saints. This, combined with the pain and immobility, worked a religious conversion in him. When he healed, he resolved to devote his life, no longer to earthly glory and the favors of young Doñas, but to God and the Catholic Church. Thus, eventually, the Society of Jesus was formed, which bears the military stamp of its founder in its dedication, organization, and devotion.
The Jesuits soon acquired a reputation for being excellent educators. Voltaire himself, no friend of anyone in a robe or a hood, received his early education from Jesuits, and always had a good word to say about his instructors and his tutelage. The success of the Jesuits in education is somewhat ironic, considering its founder’s lack of interest in formal schooling. In the words of this edition’s translator, St. Ignatius wrote in “limping Spanish,” since he had “only the elements of an education” and used the Spanish language “with little knowledge of its literary form.”
I should pause to note that this translation, by Louis J. Puhl, a Jesuit himself, is excellent. The language is clear, simple, and idiomatic. To achieve this, he had to depart somewhat radically from the original sentence structure, as well as abandon the sixteenth-century Spanish idioms used by St. Ignatius. He justifies this by noting that the book is meant to be a practical manual, not a work of literature, and I think he is right.
The Spiritual Exercises is meant for a month-long retreat. To that end, the exercises are divided into four weeks. We begin with an examination of our conscience. What sins are we committing? We are invited to compare our many sins with the fallen angels, now demons in hell, who committed only one sin. Then we are instructed to contemplate the sin of the rebellious angels and the first sin of Adam and Even in the Garden. What is the nature of those sins? What makes them tempting? What makes them abhorrent in the eyes of God? After that, we shall vividly imagine the tortures of the damned: the smell of burnt bodies, the screams and cries of the hopelessly sinful, the burning flames and the sea of writhing flesh. (The epic of Dante or the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch are helpful.) This is the first week.
The schedule is demanding: “The First Exercise will be made at midnight; the Second, immediately on rising in the morning; the Third, before or after Mass, at all events before dinner; the Fourth, about the time of Vespers; the Fifth, an hour before supper.” I don’t know how many hours that would be in total. Elsewhere, he says: “One who is educated or talented, but engaged in public affairs or necessary business, should take an hour and a half daily for the Spiritual Exercises.” I imagine this total number of hours would increase for somebody on a spiritual retreat.
Before I mention what I liked, I will state my reservations. For me, the fixation of sinfulness and the terrors of hell have always been the most disagreeable aspects of Christianity. I don’t think it is healthy to despise one’s own body, to focus relentlessly on one’s faults, or to act in accordance with a moral code for fear of eternal torment. For somebody, such as myself, who has grown up in the post sexual liberation era, quotes like the following are hard to swallow: “I will consider all the corruption and loathsomeness of my body. I will consider myself as a source of corruption and contagion from which has issued countless sins and evils and the most offensive poison.”
In one section, St. Ignatius even recommends hurting oneself for penance: “The third kind of penance is to chastise the body, that is, to inflict sensible pain on it. This is done by wearing hairshirts, cords, or iron chains on the body, or by scourging or wounding oneself, and by other kinds of austerities.” And in another section, he states that all believers must submit unhesitatingly and completely to the church: “If we wish to proceed securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle: What seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so defines.” Neither of these strike me as a good idea.
All these reservations aside—and if a pagan such as myself can judge—I think that this book can be profitably used by contemporary Christians seeking to have a deeper spiritual experience.
I myself tried to do some of the exercises in this book. This was a challenge. I am not a Christian and my knowledge of the Bible is not as intimate as could be desired. What is more, I did not have an hour and a half every day; the most I was willing to spend was half an hour. In any case, even if I was a practicing Catholic, these exercises are not meant to be used without a knowledgeable guide. My attempt to do the exercise was an experiment to see if I could interpret the mythology of Catholicism in a way that had meaning for my own life. And I am happy to report that, despite some struggles, I made considerable progress in experiencing this grand faith, which I have long admired as an outsider. And if a lost soul such as myself can do it, I'm sure that believing Catholics have much to gain....more
Virtually all of the books in this series that I have read have the merit of doing precisely what they promise to do. This book is no exception. KeownVirtually all of the books in this series that I have read have the merit of doing precisely what they promise to do. This book is no exception. Keown gives us an overview of the history, practice, cosmology, ethics, and the different varieties of this world religion, and he does so in prose that is easy to understand.
If I have any criticism to make, it is that Keown’s background as a specialist in Buddhist ethics shifts his focus to the abstract rather than the concrete. That is, he is very strong on the theory of Buddhism but not so much on its practice. I would have preferred more details on the history and sociology of the religion—the rituals involved, say, or the associated styles of art and architecture—rather than the chapter on ethics. For what it’s worth, Keown believes that abortion goes against Buddhist ethics, but then backtracks from that stance somewhat.
However, writing a fully satisfactory introduction to such a widespread religion with roots reaching back millennia—and to do so in the span of 150 pages—is impossible. Keown did his noble best, and the product is a useful, readable work....more
It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls
Last week I spend five days walking on the Camino de Santiago.
It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls
Last week I spend five days walking on the Camino de Santiago. I know, probably that doesn’t sound terribly impressive to anyone who walked all the way from France, but I still had a great time. Every morning we set out before sunrise, when the lush landscape of Galicia was still shrouded in mist and twilight. We walked on and on, guided by the conch shell signs that point the way. We reached the pilgrim's hostel just as the heat of the day began to take hold. My back sore, my feet blistered, I would drop my backpack and stretched out in my bunkbed.
Besides walking, sleeping, and eating, the only thing I did was read this book: St. Teresa’s book on prayer. It seemed like an appropriate choice. Both Santiago (St. James) and St. Teresa are patron saints of Spain; and yet they represent two very different periods in Spain’s history. The cult of Santiago dates from the time of the Moors, when Christians needed a figure to rally around during the Reconquista. St. Teresa, on the other hand, lived during the Counter-Reformation. As the Catholic world was coming apart, Catholic officials were understandably skittish at even a hint of unorthodoxy. Thus St. Teresa’s mysticism was first viewed with suspicion, and she was even picked up by the Inquisition. But after some investigation, it was decided that St. Teresa posed no threat to orthodoxy; to the contrary, she helped to reinvigorate the faith.
This context is necessary to understand this book, or at least half of it. This is because, although ostensibly guide for prayer, it is also a handbook for avoiding the suspicions of heterodoxy. It is full of advice for those having mystical experiences on which visions to discount, because they are products of Satan or the imagination, and which visions to accept. Teresa also explains when you should yield to one’s prioress or confessor, and when you should stand your ground. St. Teresa was obviously acutely aware of the paranoid climate, and thus this book is as full of pragmatic counsel as religious guidance. She even explains in the beginning that the only reason she wrote the book was because she was commanded to.
As James Michener pointed out, the most striking thing about St. Teresa is this seamless mixture of pragmatism and mysticism. For somebody who reported feeling her soul leave her body, she comes across as remarkably down to earth. Several times, she quotes or references a Biblical passage and then adds parenthetically “Well, at least I think that’s what it says,” as if she couldn’t be bothered to go look it up. She also frequently comments on how inadequate she feels to the task at hand; and a few times she says that she’s unsure whether she is repeating herself, because she wrote the last bit a while ago and she doesn’t have time to reread it. The final effect is really charming, as if she just sat down and dashed off the whole thing between breakfast and lunch.
These interior matters are so obscure to the mind that anyone with as little learning as I will be sure to have to say many superfluous and even irrelevant things in order to say a single one that is to the point. The reader must have patience with me, as I have with myself when writing about things of which I know nothing; for really I sometimes take up my paper, like a perfect fool, with no idea of what to say or of how to begin.
Ironically, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the religious content was what least impressed me. The book is divided into seven mansions within the crystalline castle that represents the soul. Each progressive mansion is one step closer to God. Despite this organization, however, I found the chapters quiet repetitive; the divisions from one stage to another didn’t strike me as very clear. The general tendency is for the mystical experiences to keep growing in intensity, which culminates in the experience of a burning mixture of pleasure and pain that seems to come from nowhere. This is the inspiration for Bernini's famous, and famously erotic, portrayal of the Saint.
What most bothered me was that the mystical and orthodox strains in Teresa’s thought did not go easily together. Perhaps this is only my taste. One thing I enjoy about mystic writings is their grand conception of the cosmos, the notion that everything apparently opposite forms one complete whole. Thus mystic texts, in my experience, tend not to be especially preoccupied with moral injunctions, since they regard good and evil as a kind of illusion.
But in Teresa, the emphasis on wickedness, on personal shortcomings, on temptation, and in general the whole moral framework of Catholicism made her system as much about avoiding sinfulness and unorthodoxy as achieving a mystical experience. For example, I’ve heard mystics say that each person is a part of God, but Teresa councils that we should contemplate God to realize our own foulness and lowliness. I don’t find that very appealing.
On the fifth day after we began, at about noon, I found myself standing in front of the two towers of Santiago Cathedral. Later that day, I finished the final pages of this book. I had taken a pilgrimage of the body and soul, and hopefully I’m better for it. In any case, I enjoyed myself and learned something. ...more
Loading...
