The Miracle of Mindfulness (Thich Nhat Hanh,
1975) originates from a letter that was written by Thich Nhat Hanh in 1974 to
Brother Quang of the school of Youth for Social Service in a war torn South
Vietnam.
While the intention and
content of this letter was direct and personally aimed at his community in
Vietnam, encouraging them to continue their work in the spirit of love and
compassion, it’s teaching has universal appeal.
The words were translated into English with the same steadfastness and
mindful awareness in which they were originally written. This impacts on how
the message holds the same personal and lively directness for any reader and
demonstrates the short distance there is between eastern and western
contemplative practices.
Thich Nhat Hanh's key teaching is
that, through mindfulness, we can learn to live in the present moment instead
of in the past and in the future. Dwelling in the present moment is, according
to the author, the only way to truly develop peace, both in one's self and in
the world.
In looking at Contemporary Spiritual
writers, many have written about mindfulness:
Henri Nouwen
, Bill
Johnson
,
Anthony de Mello
,
Eckhart Tolle
.
Each one
of these, in their writings convey how the personal spiritual journey
illustrates the common spiritual journey.
How we must let go of all we want to hold on to in order to receive all
that we hope for.
Bill Johnson looks
on the meditation teachings of the east as a gift, comparing it in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition as an act of grace.
The Christian journey is to come to a place where “it is no longer I who
live, but Christ who lives in me”
(Galatians 2:20).
Meister Eckhart gives the insight
that I am not my mind. If ever I am to
find my real self, I must get beyond my mind, I must die to the self that is doing all this thinking. The biggest mistake we can make in life is to
believe that we are the thinker. The Ego
identifies with narrative sense of self but this is not who we really are.
It is the ego
that stands in the way of us being present to our true selves, the part of us
that is connected to spirit, to God.
Meister Eckhart suggests that the ego lives on ‘identification and
separation’, for the ego to exist – it sets the “I” up against the “other”.
The author agrees with Tolle, De Mello,
& Johnson in advocating
the same message – we need to wake up, we
need to die to the egoic selves and discover our real selves.
At the core of prayer and of meditation is
death to self, a total self-forgetting.
‘Waking up’ is not a chronological experience, it is a psychological
experience and part of this journey is to sit with ourselves long enough that
we grow in compassion for ourself and for others.
Thich Nhat Hanh speaks simply and
metaphorically throughout the book and facilitates me, the reader to dialogue
with the text, to see the thread of my own life in how I am present or not in
my life.
He teaches the simplicity of
being present in the world by being aware of our breath.
Taking hold of our breath is in itself
mindfulness.
He
gives many examples of techniques to develop this awareness.
The beginner can start with counting their
in-breath and out-breath.
This can become
a time of contemplative prayer by replacing the inhalation counting of 6 to the
words of scripture or text such as “Our Father who art in Heaven”
He craftfully uses mundane life analogies to
teach us the lessons of mindfulness like eating an orange: A tangerine has sections, if I can eat a
section, I can eat the whole tangerine, but if I am unable to eat a single
section of the orange, I’ll be unable to eat the whole orange!
Currently there is a huge growth in
contemplative psychology where we become liberated from unnecessary suffering
through experiencing ourselves in the moment, exactly as we are.
In our search for meaning and for
comprehending God,
how we ask questions
about God, and experience God is through our brain.
Jill Bolte Taylor
speaks of the left and right brain functions and how they affect us in our
lives.
It is interesting to view
Meditation from this perspective.
Meditation is a right brain function.
It brings us into the here and now, the present moment – how we
experience our world right now.
The
right brain is experiential, energetic, pictorial and kinesthetic, whereas the
left-brain is logical, language and detail orientated.
In deep meditation, we experience ourselves
as ‘not separate’ – that we are all one, we are all part of a greater
whole.
Through meditation we become
more focused, clearer thinking and therefore in touch more with our ‘true
selves’.
Andrew Newberg has done a lot of
work in this field and demonstrates how Neurology meets theology in his book
‘God and the Brain’
He
speaks of the brain having two primary functions that can be considered from
either a biological or evolutionary perspective.
These two functions are self-maintenance and
self-transcendence. The brain performs both of these functions throughout our
lives.
It turns out that religion also
performs these two same functions.
So,
from the brain's perspective, religion is and always will be important to us
beings as part of our ever-striving evolution as it assists the brain perform
its primary functions.
In the west, Christianity lost it’s
contemplative side for a while in favour of doctrine and theology, we were
mentally fragmented.
What was kept in
the shadows during modernity is now trying to surface in post-modernity.
There is a de-structuring of self and of the
world and we are nervous of this.
Like
the Left-Brain, Right-Brain split…. We need to find the balance.
We need to be operating from both sides of
our brain, we need a reclaiming of our contemplative tradition.
We lost our sense of Kairos and only had a
sense of Kronos.
We are now in a time of
returning to contemplative practice and prayer.
In the 60’s there was a movement
from those who where traditionally Spiritual Dwellers to being Spiritual
Seekers. Born into the tradition of
western Christian, there was a movement outwards, a going ‘out from’, a
‘seeking’. This could be analogized by
looking at the seeking of balance with the Left Brain / Right Brain
Many contemporary spiritual writers
speak about this shift to interiority… to going within, to contemplation and to
living in the present moment, the blending of our own Yin and Yang to bring us
to wholeness.
It is this shift in
consciousness, which has led spiritual seekers like myself looking to the east
for a sense of disciplined guidance into ‘the way’
Bernard Lonergan in his book ‘Method in Theology’
presents interiority as a science of consciousness.
The
ground of interiority is simply self-awareness in the midst of the operations
of our consciousness and is grasped only insofar as one discovers it in one’s
own living. Lonergan’s notion of
interiority is important for the study of spirituality, as one of the key
elements is a principle for the critique of spiritual phenomena. Training in the practice of interiority has
potential to assist individuals in discovering critical evaluative principles
within their own experience. One begins
to develop practical, experience-based criteria for assessing the
spiritualities one encounters.
Henri Nouwen in his Return of the
Prodigal Son says;
"Though I am both the younger son and the elder son, I am not to
remain them, but called to become the Father."
Evelyn Underhill, referring to the
story in Luke 10: 38-42, she was fond of quoting St. Teresa's saying that
"to give Our Lord a perfect service
Martha and Mary must combine." She
speaks of the necessary
‘defleshing of
the heart’ for us to have my heart anchored in Christ.
Our experience in the west is that
anytime we come in touch with the Holy Spirit, we try and pin it down with
dogma, we cannot. We cannot make sense
out of the mystery. Maybe this is
something that mindfulness can teach us.
There is always a level of Yin
kicking against Yang.
As a Christian,
the question I must remember to hold myself in balance is:-
Where
is my Anchor? Is my heart anchored in
Christ?
Etty Hillesum had little interest
in any particular organised religion.
In
a time when everything was being swept away in a Nazi war camp, when "the
whole world is becoming a giant concentration camp
" , she felt one must hold fast to what endures - the encounter with God
at the depths of one's own soul and in other people.
Like Thich Nhat Hanh, In the midst of
suffering and injustice, she believed, the effort to preserve in one's heart, a
spirit of love and forgiveness was the greatest task that any person could
perform.
Both of them aligned
themselves with those who suffer and this became their specific form of
religious vocation. But it’s important to note that it was not a vocation to
suffering as such. It was a vocation to redeem the suffering of humanity from
within, by safeguarding "that little piece of You, God, in
ourselves."
He speaks of bringing this little
piece, this God-part of us into all areas of our lives by developing
mindfulness in our walking, eating, answering the phone, working ….. and
expounds how developing this practice will bring us more into our bodies and
therefore more into the present moment and hence, less fragmented. Whenever our mind becomes scattered, we can
use our breath as the means to take hold of our mind again.
One of the ‘promises’ of a regular
meditation practice is that the ‘mind will begin to dwell in the mind.
Your mind will take hold of mind in a direct
and wondrous way which no longer differentiates between subject and object’
Mind
is the ground of everything; and when our mind gets in touch with the
collective mind, everything is possible.
Similarly, in Christianity, we see that God is Spirit -- the collective
mind from which everything manifests --
through this lens, the distance separating Buddhism and Christianity is
very short.
“Life and Death are but two faces
of life and that without both, Life is not possible”.
Like Jesus, who embraced death and so doing
promised life, Thich Naht Hanh speaks of meditating on death.
Meditating until we are at peace with the
decomposition of our bodies.
In doing
this, by overcoming revulsion and fear, life will be seen as precious and not
only our own lives, but the lives of every other person, being and
reality.
We are offered the possibility
of losing the delusion that our own survival is dependant on some other’s destruction.
We have the possibility to walk the path of
Jesus and rise above the impermanence of life and death.
Shortly before his death,
Thomas Merton wrote: “Our real journey
is interior; it is a matter of growth, deepening, and ever greater surrender to
the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.”
Our Spritual path can lead us
to transend the ego. Cynthia Burgeault talks about us ‘loving the ego to death’ We need to develop physic mobility to become
the observer of our experience and learn to dialogue with our expereince. I had a first hand experience of this in 2010
when I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
The rhythm of my sticks as they made contact with the path in unison
with the rhythm of my step facilitated aesthetic absorbsion. I was ‘taken out of myself’ and yet ‘deeper
into myself’ – it became a walking meditation.
Different images, memories surfaced as I walked but I was the observer
of these expereinces. I re-evaluated my
experiences during these times and I was changed. I developed phsycic mobility by seeing things
from a different point of view. I also
had this experience when I took a Vipassana – a 9-day silent mediation retreat. As the days progressed, my egoic self
‘softened’, the observer within me became stronger and I had the opportunity to
dialogue with many of my experiences, many I was remembering/observing for the
first time consciously. This gifted
in-depth breakthrough experience to the mystery of God at work in my life
taught me that attentive interior listening and observing and by implication,
all forms of attentiveness, are spiritual practices and are all gateways to
God.
Meditation is not musing or
daydreaming, but attuning our mental and physical bodies to their spiritual
source. It is prayer from within the
inner self. In prayer we speak to God,
in meditation he speaks to us.
In “Search for God”, the
question is asked: “Will prayer answer for meditation?” Will asking a question answer it? No, but it shows that we desire
information. This is so when we
pray. We show God that we wish for his
guidance and help for the manifestation of his work in our lives. It then takes an attitude of waiting, of
silence, of listening to be able to hear the still small voice within and to
know that all is well. Prayer is
therefore the basis of meditation. This
to me is the true meaning of East meeting West in our dogma teachings.
Bourgeault presents God as a
‘Master’ in wisdom spiritual tradition.
Thich Nhat Hanh, in my opinion walks the true path of Jesus in the fact
that he through example and teachings, is a ‘wisdom teacher’, ‘concerned with the transformation of the whole human
being’.
Thich
Nhat Hanh will be 86 years old this year. He has emerged as one
of the great teachers
of our time. In the midst
of our world’s emphasis on speed,
efficiency, and material success,
Thich
Nhat Hanh's ability to walk calmly with peace and
awareness and to teach us to do the same has led to his enthusiastic reception
in the West.
Although his mode
of expression is simple, his message reveals
the quintessence
of the deep
understanding
of reality that comes
from his meditations, his Buddhist training, and his work in the world.
When Thomas Merton met
Thich Nhat
Hanh at his monastery at
Gethsemani,
he told his students,
"Just the way he opens the door and enters a room demonstrates his
understanding. He is a true monk."
Only
when we are still, may we know God, and when we know Him we are willing to say
and mean, “Thy will be done”. It is then
that He sups with us.
Martina Breen
January 2011 Words: 2667 (including footnotes
& bibliography)
Bibliograpy
Nouwen, Henri J.M.. “The Return of the Prodigal Son, a Story of
Homecoming” London: Darton Longman Todd, 1994
Bolte Taylor.,
Jill. “I Jill
Bolte Taylor (2006)
Nouwen, Henri
J.M. “The Return of the Prodigal Son, a
Story of Homecoming” New York: Doubleday 1996
Underhill, Evelyn. The letters of Evelyn Underhill, Longmans Green & Co. (London 1943)
Audio
Reference
Henri J.M. Nouwen. “The Return of the Prodigal Son, a Story of
Homecoming” Doubleday (NY 1996)
Henri J.M. Nouwen. “The
Return of the Prodigal Son, a Story of Homecoming” London: Darton Longman Todd
1994
Evelyn Underhill. The letters of Evelyn Underhill, Longmans Green & Co. (London 1943)
