Let us consider Van Gogh’s painting, “The Potato Eaters.”  It is one of his very early works, perhaps not as famous as some of the later work, but a truly remarkable and religious work of art.  Usually people refer to a work of art as being “religious” if what is being depicted is somehow a theme from the Bible or a religious source.  However, every true work of art points us in the direction of a transcendent reality, connects us with what is truly religious, and opens our hearts to a truth that is beyond our surface lives.  (Incidentally, that is why postmodern art like with Andy Warhol is so deeply and seriously a distortion—it proclaims “the surface” as the total reality and celebrates that fact.)

To make this reflection a bit easier for anyone who has not seen this painting, here is a link to view it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van-willem-vincent-gogh-die-kartoffelesser-03850.jpg

What a remarkable scene!  So many would find this sad, even depressing.  There is a sense of darkness–it is night.  Five people are seated around a square table.  Perhaps they are a family; perhaps not. But it is a community of sorts.  Four women and one man.  Potatoes are visible, and perhaps tea is being poured.  The faces and hands reveal life’s toll on these people–it has been hard, very hard.  You will see such faces and such hands in any large city if you take the bus at 6am in the morning with people going to work, or at 6 in the evening with people coming home.  They are all there.

It is a meal of sorts.  It hints of a ritual–as any meal does.  One of course begins to discern a kind of “Eucharistic gathering” here.  A community has gathered around a shared meal, meager as it is.  However, there is no bread and wine here.  That kind of fare would seem to elevate the gathering to a higher social/economic class.  These people cannot afford even bread and wine.

The four faces we see are all different in their expressions.  Two of them look sad or very tired and seem to have given up on life.  Two others show a kind of reaching out in hope.  They are reaching out to the two others.

Note again the darkness.  You can see the windows in the background, and it is night outside.  And the darkness has penetrated and filled the little cottage.  However,….however, there is something else here also….and very prominent, in the center of things.  There is an oil lamp right in the center of the painting, a source of light,  but above the heads of the gathered group.  Note its centrality in the painting–a position of great importance and emphasis.  This light does not overwhelm the darkness; it does not drive it out.  It is simply there, silent, simply present, and although the eaters participate within its glow, they seem to be unaware of the light—it is not something they focus on, but in its glow their life unfolds.  It is always there, above them, almost unnoticed, yet essential for all they do within this darkness of their human condition.  It is also by this light that we are able to see them, their condition, their need.

What is this light?  It is the light of the Resurrection.  It is the light of the Transfiguration.  It is the light seen on the face of St. Seraphim.  It is the light within the darkness of our own situation–it is always there, gentle, soft, not overwhelming in our history, but absolutely essential for our “going on.”    We walk in this light so unaware of its presence.  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him.  He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.  The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world” (John 1: 5-9).

But there is more.  So far we have ignored the one figure whose face we cannot see but who sits right in the center of the gathering.    She is facing away from us and toward the group; we can only see her back.  The reason we cannot see her face is that this is our face—it is you and me there, whoever we are.  No matter who we are socially, we are “among these poor ones.”The observer of this scene is also at this gathering and also practically unaware of this light, though living in it and by it.  And what is our response?  What is the expression on our face?

Have I missed anything in this title?  Oh yes, taxes and the proverbial kitchen sink!  Only kidding.  But seriously, this chapter (Chapter III) of The Art of Prayer is very long, very difficult for proper interpretation, and very important.  So let us begin with a few preliminary remarks.

One cannot overstate the importance of the Mystery of God in our apprehension of what this work says about prayer.  This blog has previously made a big point about the role of a notion of God in our spiritual life in general.  The deeper the sense of the Mystery of God the deeper will be our spiritual life. In fact, without a truly mature sense of the Mystery of God our piety will tend toward a shallowness that is just plain sad–I mean we are called to so much more.  That is just one reason why I am a bit sceptical about people who promote a “personal relationship with the Lord” as the center of their piety.  There is a profound truth in that kind of language but it also can lead to a kind of spiritual Facebook where you “friend” Jesus and share things with him and he helps you, etc.   Even if this is a starting point in the spiritual journey, there is so, so much more than that.  Sadly too many stay right there.

Now not many spiritual writers or theologians have written well on the subject of the Mystery of God–needless to say.  From the early Church with Pseudo-Dionysius to a modern western theologian like Karl Rahner, there are very few who have taught with some depth on God as Ultimate Mystery.  The great problem with general piety and popular piety is to fix on outward images, like paintings and statues of Jesus and holy figures, and then even more importantly to fix on inner images we have of Christ and God.  If you walk into a Catholic or Orthodox church you will find it filled with such images.  Now all this is very good and proper theologically.  It all forms a fitting ambience for worship with all our senses being focused on a transcendent reality.  However, for too many, and this includes monks, they get fixed on the images and make them into a kind of inner reality that becomes the focus of their prayer.  This is not meant to demean any simple person’s prayer, but they are invited to “go up higher, friend.”  In the Orthodox church and in Eastern Christian monasticism the role of icons is enormous and very important, but St. Nil Sorski, the great hesychast, tells us:  “…while practicing inner prayer, do not permit yourself any concepts, images, or visions.”  And St. Theophan the Recluse:  “You ask about prayer.  I find in the writings of the Holy Fathers, that when you pray you must dispel all images from your mind….”  Many other spiritual guides, both East and West, tell us the same thing.  The icons serve as a kind of focusing lens for our heart, the center of our being.  But it is the Mystery of God into which we plunge as we enter true prayer–and with that there are no images, only a profound and unfathomable Presence.

Now something about death.  Why?  Most modern westerners consider this a morbid topic.  That in itself is telling–most spiritual traditions in one way or another consider it as a fact of life needing our attention if we are to make progress on the spiritual journey.  The stereotype of the monk meditating on a human skull is exactly that–a stereotype.  Nevertheless that picture points to a deep truth.  Some Christians will cry foul at this and say that we are to focus on the Resurrection, not death.  They miss the point entirely–first of all, the Resurrection is part of the Mystery of God, so you better be careful in appealing to the Resurrection as if it were something you understood or knew; secondly, it is only when we really know the reality of death that we can begin to grasp the significance and meaning of the Resurrection.  To put it another way–the Resurrection is not a “lifeboat” for our ego self as it starts going down in death.

Well, we will not truly know what death means until we actually experience it, and then it won’t really matter!  But we can at least begin to get some sense of it, and this will make a big difference in our spiritual journey.  It will help if we engage in a kind of imaginative acting out of our own death in our own mind–a kind of mental exercise of our imagination.  So what happens?  Let us imagine a slow death, not through some traumatic sudden event, but one that slowly unfolds within us.  We will certainly feel those last moments as life ebbs from our bodies and our organs begin to shut down and just before we pass into an unconscious state.  All that we have done, all our accomplishments, all our victories and all our gains, all this will seem like nothing at that moment.  The consumer self, the person with all these credentials, the one who lived for recognition, the one who had so many friends, that self will be melting away as a snowman on a warm winter day.   If we are a believer and regret our “sinfulness”,  it may be that we might cry out-silently-to God—like a drowning man’s last cry for help.  It also may be that we have built up a very strong religious ego that seems to rest secure in its confidence in its relationship to God until the very last moment when a great darkness meets it, and there is a moment when that religious ego is shattered and a great doubt arises.  In any case, as our external world vanishes, there is precisely this ego self, this self-constructed world of meaning and various identities and self-constructed narratives about who and what one is that suddenly begins to dissolve.  There is nothing to hold on to.  And who is this who wants to hold on?  Just let go of trying to hold on and let the Darkness and the Nothingness come.    Does this sound scary, morbid, etc.?   Perhaps.   Not really.  First of all, our very ego identity is a kind of nothingness.  It’s “substantiality” is one of the fictions of our life–like Plato’s “noble lie”–something that seems necessary for the moment but the wise person knows otherwise.  But even more importantly, the most initimate encounter with God is at first as if it were an encounter with Nothingness.  Jesus’s words, “Fear not,” are applicable here.  But returning to that fixed identity we have, there is something terrifying in us about being reduced to a common humanity with no credentials.  Various spiritual traditions teach this in various and different ways.  Consider this word from a modern Sufi master:

“When people die, they lose all identities.  They are no

longer Black or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, since they

go back to their origin carrying in them the whole

adamic inheritance.  One day while the Prophet, peace

be with him, was sitting with a group of companions, a

funeral procession passed by, and the Prophet, peace

be with him, stood up.  One of the comrades said,

‘Those are the remains of a Jew!’  The Prophet, peace

be with him, answered, ‘Stand up to honor the son of

Adam when you see a funeral procession.'”

There is nothing the modern world fears most than the thought of death; there is nothing the modern world works at most to conceal and distract us from than this.  Because it puts into question our whole present social matrix.  But more importantly, for our purposes, this kind of realization opens up the door for a deep and fundamentally different sense of inner prayer than popularly understood.  To truly understand what Chapter III in The Art of Prayer is saying, what it’s getting at,  one needs at least all of the above as a kind of primer for benefitting from what is said there.  As we said once before, we are all beginners in the reality of inner prayer, and this is merely a “kindergarten” for a great learning process.

To fully comment on Chapter III alone would require writing a whole book.  So here we will give scattered comments about certain statements.  The chapter itself is divided into 4 parts, and part 1 is called “Secret Meditation.”

What is this “secret meditation”?  Not much is directly said about it, but it’s merits and benefits are listed lavishly by all included authors.  In a sense both words in the term are unfortunate because they can lead to great misunderstandings.

The segment from the Life of Abba Philemon is helpful.  It comes in the form of an archetypal story of disciple and teacher.  The new monk is struggling with his attention being all over the place.  Philemon gives him the Jesus Prayer as a practice, but more importantly he points the monk to be aware of what might be called the “intentionality of the heart”—-what is the heart turned towards.  He is iniating the monk into an inner practice of keeping his intentionality always turned towards the reality of God.  This “secret meditation,” whatever form it takes is merely a tool towards that end.

The next section from the works of St. Theophan the Recluse is interesting in a new way.  Theophan makes the emphatic point that the new monk (or the person beginning the spiritual journey) should begin this inner focus, this inner turning immediately—not after some time doing some preparatory stuff.  The title of the section: “Inner work must begin as soon as possible.  This is extremely important.”  Then: “We may leave all else and turn only to this work, and all will be well.”  The whole point of being a monk or being on the spiritual journey is this, but many forget that and substitute other elements for their concern.  Theophan will return to this point again and again—as you go through the day, doing whatever you need to do, what is your heart turned towards, what is it attentive to, and how do you discern the mystery of God in all this?

Now we come to Part 2, entitled “Unceasing Prayer.”  Indeed, a big topic–but once our attention is fixed within the mystery of God in all we do, this “unceasing prayer” unfolds by itself.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, unceasing prayer does not mean a kind of continual work or striving or “producing” prayer.  Rather:  “You regret that the Jesus Prayer is not unceasing, that you do not recite it constantly.  But constant repetition is not required.  What is required is a constant aliveness to God–an aliveness present when you talk, read, watch, or examine something….”  Furthermore, Theophan makes the point that this unceasing prayer is not some “extra” thing about being a Christian but rather it is the “essential characteristic” of being precisely that.  Wonder what would happen if you started talking about unceasing prayer from the modern pulpit in a modern suburban parish!

Throughout this section Theophan gives all kinds of practical advice about “setting the stage” for this unceasing prayer.  Here you have to remember that the writings are taken from concrete advice given to concrete people who approached him with their own difficulties.  In other words, do not follow his words like in a cookbook.  Get the gist, the spirit, the essence—you may have to leave other things behind that don’t apply to your own particular circumstances.  But always he comes back to the essential points:  “Standing always before God with reverence is unceasing prayer.”  This is quite a loaded sentence even in its brevity.  Some considerations:  standing before the Living God and not just some idea of God means standing in the presence of Mystery, means losing your life in that Mystery, means your own identity is in question–forget who you think you are–drop the credentials—who are you anyway?  Or as a zen master might put it:  Who is it that is standing before God?  (In a Rinzai monastery then you would get whacked with a stick for giving some “smart” answer!!)  Anyway, get the idea…..?

Now we arrive at Part 3, which is all about the Jesus Prayer per se.  For Theophan and this whole hesychast tradition, the Jesus Prayer is “the easiest way to acquire unceasing prayer.”  Of course when they use the word “easy” it is not quite in our sense! Certainly it is not some mechanical procedure that “gets one there.” Nor is it really a technique for them though to someone on the outside it may look like that, and to take it that way may mislead one very seriously.  It is certainly not any kind of shortcut in the spiritual life.

One very important point made in this section is the injunction to avoid all visualizations, images, conceptualizations.  So again to stand in the Presence is not to stand in our idea of the Presence.  In the beginning there is the temptation  on the part of some to imagine the reality of God or Jesus as standing there.  Forget it.  Allow yourself to get lost in the Mystery of God that surrounds you and dwells within you.  Yes, you can have your body turned toward an icon or a crucifix, just as a Moslem turns toward Mecca in prayer, but your heart must dwell in the mystery which is then manifest in every real thing around you, like the boiling water, like the smile on someone’s face, like the hawk circling above, etc.  Let your heart abide in the Mystery.

Theophan also tells us: “No progress without suffering.”  A difficult topic.  This is not meant as a call to masochism; rather it is a sober appraisal of the spiritual journey–that it will be marked by suffering.  There are several levels to this suffering.  It ranges from physical pain to the depths of the heart.  At the deepest level it is said in this tradition (and in the Sufi tradition and perhaps in the Hasidic) that real prayer only begins with a breaking of the heart.  A sobering thought, but it is also an anticipation of the death of an ego identity.

Finally we get to Part 4, the last part, “The Remembrance of God.”  Perhaps not the best choice of words for our purposes because “remembering” is an act that implies a kind of distance.  You remember a dead parent, an absent friend, a past relationship, a forgotten occurrence, etc.  Keep in mind Theophan’s earlier term:  “aliveness to God.”  That is what he is really talking about.  Just another way of talking about unceasing prayer.

Can’t help but comment on the recent elections and our situation today.  It may seem incongruous for a blog on spirituality and monastic values to discuss this, but there is also a good reason for it.  For one thing, politics, for all its nastiness and grubiness, is not not-religious.  It touches on profound religious values and themes.  But even with that, consider as an analogy some great work of art, like Raphael’s “School of Athens,” or Van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters,” or Degas’ ballerinas, etc.   On the one hand each is situated in some historical moment and concrete place and all the nitty-gritty of that situation can be found on the canvas; on the other hand that work of art also transcends its historical situation and opens up on a vast horizon with timeless values.  So it is with our current political/economic/social/cultural situation.  Those of us on the monastic path prefer to fix our gaze on a transcendent horizon, but we are also at the same time inserted into a particular historical situation with its own nitty-gritty stuff that may call for some choices.  If we look at all of this with the right eyes, we too may find that which transcends the nitty-gritty of our history–but we do have to explore that with care.

So taking the plunge, let us recall Dickens’ great novel A Tale of Two Cities.  In the beginning the narrator tells us, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  Indeed, so it is with us at the moment.  But you might say ours is a tale of two classes:  the top 1% and the “bottom” 99%–some perhaps might want to cut that differently, say, the top 5% and the bottom 95%—however you cut it, a huge percentage of the population is being squeezed, the middle class is being eliminated, jobs have been outsourced, the almighty profit is god of all–this is the “golden calf” which we have shaped and around which we are dancing and which we are worshipping whether we realize it or not.  The disparity between the rich and the poor in this country is now the worst it has been in over 80 years–the statistics are there.

Now you would think that there would be some political voices that would address this kind of problem and provide some real solutions, and incidentally take advantage of the situation to be in power for a long time.  Nope.  Not really.  Here also we have “two cities” but it is the “worst of times” in both of them in this case.  First of all, the Republicans(aka “conservatives”) have been the party of American business for over a century.  That’s ok–in the past they were also for protecting American products and industries from cheap competition from foreigners.  Now they are for tax breaks for investors who ship jobs overseas.  In the past Republicans were against “foreign entanglements” and against almost all foreign wars.  No longer.  This Republican Party is NOT the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt(who wanted to conserve the wilderness), Robert Taft, or Dwight Eisenhower.  With genuine conservatives one could have a decent debate/discussion about our values and the direction of the country–they have some real good points to bring to the table.  Not this present bunch!

By the way, here are some words from Eisenhower in 1953 during the height of the Cold War when there seemed to be so little choice in our situation:

“The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.

This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.”

Also, take a look at these words from Eisenhower, from his very last speech as president:

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

The “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that Eisenhower calls for seems to no longer exist.  Well-to-do Republicans seem to be driven purely by the profit motive–getting rich at whatever expense to the common good, whether it be their fellow citizens or the environment, etc.  Middle-class Republicans seem to be totally unaware how they are being brainwashed into voting against their own self-interest.  They are frozen in a kind of irrational fear and anxiety that is very difficult to penetrate or dialogue with.  Then there is a huge “middle America” that pretty much calls itself “independent” or swings one way or another from one election to another.  These folks are also filled with social/economic fear and anxiety, dumb-downed by the entertainment and infotainment media and very susceptible to voting irrationally.  Then, alas, there are the Democrats.  While present Republican leadership seems hellaciously greedy, sinister, almost crazy, what really bothers me and a lot of progressive bloggers is the incredible inability of Democrat leadership to confront, challenge, and CLEARLY present an alternative vision of things.  In this the Dems and President Obama have failed utterly and they paid for it in this election.

Many years ago Ralph Nader said that the two parties were really one party, that they were simply two branches of the Oligarchy Party–the real rulers of this country, the top 1% and their banks and corporations.  I’m beginning to be a believer of that picture.  There are, however, some really good progressives within the Dem Party, but mostly they are pushed into ineffectuality(Kucinch), or marginalized, or killed(like Robert Kennedy or Paul Wellstone), or simply voted out like Russ Feingold from Wisconsin or Grayson from Florida.   The liberal class within the Dem Party has really failed in the last 40 years or so.  Chris Hedges’ book, The Death of the Liberal Class details this historical period very painfully.  Note also how the few real radical voices in this country get marginalized in a very deliberate way by the corporate media:  Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Staughton Lynd, Howard Zinn, etc.  Please read the essay by Chris Hedges’ on truthdig.com about Staughton Lynd: “Heroes for the Beaten.”

The Dems have presented a very incoherent picture.  In a sense, the Dems provide an anesthetic while the corporations operate on us.  We don’t feel the pain right away until it’s too late. Then we discover an “amputation” has taken place!!   Examples and points to be made:

1. The Dems were all for unemployment benefits.  Nice.  But the Dems(during the Clinton era) were also all for NAFTA and outsourcing which allowed the shipping of jobs abroad, the moving of corporate headquarters offshore so corporate taxes cannot be collected, etc.  The Dems seem to want to have it both ways.
2. When Obama took over in January of ’09, the economy felt like the Titanic.  What does he do–he surrounds himself with the banksters, many of the same people who steered the financial world into this mess, and takes THEIR advice to concentrate on the bailing out of Wall Street.  And by the way, the Dems were ALL FOR the deregulation of the financial industry when that was proposed in the 90s.  For a number of analysts what the Dems did was merely rearrange the furniture on the Titanic.  Krugman, Stiglitz and a number of other financial analysts are saying that we are tottering on the edge of a deeper recession than the one of the last years.  People are talking about 10% unemployment as the “new normal.”
3. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, an ex-military guy and a real centrist Dem if there ever was one, proposed a wind-fall tax on the big bonuses the Wall Street boys were getting, the ones that got bailed out by the government.

“I couldn’t even get a vote,” Webb says. “And it wasn’t because      of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren’t going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.

“People look up and say, what’s the difference between these two parties? Neither of them is really going to take on Wall Street. If they don’t have the guts to take them on, and they’ve got all these other programs that exclude me, well to hell with them. I’m going to vote for the other people who can at least satisfy me on other issues, like abortion. Screw you guys. I understand that mindset.”  The key words here are: take on Wall Street.  For some reason the Dems don’t have what it takes to do that. Obama and the Dems did get a LOT of money from the financial industry in 2008.  But when Obama took over in Jan. ’09 he had a golden opportunity to challenge the whole establishment because it was totterting and a solid majority of the people were with him.  He could have been another FDR–instead we got another Clinton.  Either he is politically naïve and weak and a tool of the Oligarchy OR he is part of that Oligarchy.  In any case, many years ago Truman said that when people have a choice between a real Republican and a false Republican they will always choose the real Republican.  That’s why the Dems got a beating this November–the Democrat message smelled and felt and looked like a kind of Republicanism.

1. The health care bill was touted as historic.  A friend tells me his health insurance has gone up 10% this year, and will go up another 10% next year.  He says what does it matter if they can’t drop him because of a pre-existing condition(new law)–he won’t be able to afford the damn premiums!  A couple of good things in the bill, but it was written by the insurance industry to make them happy.  We are the only industrial country with a purely for-profit health insurance monopoly.  Obama never even tried challenging that.  In fact, he cut backroom deals with Big Pharma so that they wouldn’t contest his bill, and in return Medicare cannot negotiate with them on cost of medicine and we can’t get prescriptions filled in Canada–not in any systematic way.   So they can charge whatever they want.
2. Hope and Change.  That was the motto in the Fall of 2008.  Look at the “Change” part.  What happens when Obama comes in—-a lot more of the same old, same old:  backroom deals with corporations, surrounds himself with Washington insiders, “the fox” is guarding the chicken coop in many cases, etc.  A lot of liberal Dems are deeply disappointed at the substantial lack of Change.
3. Obama is rightly concerned about the deficit.  It is horrendous.  So he appoints a Deficit Commission to help him figure out how to manage it and cut it down.  But then he appoints several key people to this commission who are staunch enemies of Social Security.  What the bleep!!!!  Among progressive bloggers this commission becomes known as the “Catfood Commission” because right away its members start talking about having to cut Social Security in order to control the deficit.  In other words, poor old people being reduced to eating cheap cat food.  Their report is due out in about a month.  If it comes out in favor of cuts in Social Security, that would be a travesty.  The deficit has nothing to do with SS—hey, whatever happened to that trillion dollars spent in Iraq??  Fortunately, there are many Dem voices in Congress that are already speaking out about not cutting SS.  This one has to be watched.  The Republicans have a longstanding agenda of trying to dismantle the great programs of the New Deal and SS is one of their chief targets.  They want to privatize it so that would pump tons of money into Wall Street and put us all in the control of the Wall Street boys.  If Obama compromises with the Republicans on this issue, it will be a bloodbath for the Dems in 2012.
4. When FDR came into office, he declared very forcefully about the Republicans: “I welcome their hatred!”  When Obama comes in, he talks of working together with the Republicans–even when they say their chief goal is to knock him off!!  I mean he IS a community organizer but not a leader of a country in great crisis.

And there are so many more points that could be made.  The bottom line is that we ARE in a huge crisis, politically, economically, socially.  There are a few  interesting historical precedents and my favorite one is actually not often mentioned–the 1850s.  The social, economic and political reality of slavery was tearing this country apart.  The Dems of that period failed miserably in meeting this crisis and tried to have it both ways.  They said, let slavery exist in the South, let it not exist in the North, and let the new states vote on whether they want it or not.  This kind of profound incoherence enabled a new party to emerge–ironically enough it was the Republican Party which was formed to meet this crisis and which clearly stood against slavery and against allowing each state to go its own way.  The Republicans won the day and saved the Union.  It may be that a whole new party will emerge from this mess if the Dems continue to fail.  Or maybe the Greens can infiltrate the Dems and take over!!  Just like the crazy Republicans did with the Republican Party!

What this present bunch of Dems don’t seem to realize is that what is needed is a totally new vision of our country, a profound and deep rearticulation of our values and direction.  The “greed is good” era is coming to an end, one way or another.  Dem leadership simply cannot be for making us into “kinder, gentler consumers.”  Sure they can prop up the numbers for a while; make it look like we have turned things around, etc.  Sure they have a number of decent programs, like extending veterans’ benefits, unemployment benefits, student loan interest being reduced, etc., etc.    We will get a few crumbs from the corporate table.  But we are in need of something profoundly new if we are really to survive AND thrive as a people. Not just bits and pieces of legislation to prop up this or that segment of the country, but a wholistic vision of the common good in which we all share. (Incidentally, in several of the European countries like Germany and Sweden I believe, students can go to university for free–they even get a living stipend from the government–the nation considers this an investment in its future–what a different vision and approach to our “make it on your own attitude.”)

At this point we should add that given this kind of social crisis, it is actually a good time to be on the monastic path.  Monks seem to thrive in all bad historic moments!!  One could say that given the deep nature of the crisis the solution is not going to be found in politics–and with this I would readily agree.  But the solution does not exclude politics either(nor economics either) and we have to start making some choices.   It is good not to get lost in the arguments, but it is also important to see the religious consequences of our political choices.  And this brings us to the last point.  How many Catholics are turning to vote Republican is distressing.  Never mind all the Dem problems alluded to above.  The real focus here is abortion.  Catholic bishops and pastors are making all elections this one issue.  Granted it is a very serious issue and one I fully share with my Catholic tradition–I think abortion is a tragic mistake.  But to vote as if that were the ONLY issue is simply wrong, and it leads to bad consequences.  Republicans are taking advantage of this and fooling Catholic voters.  No Republican ever did anything to reduce abortions–not Reagan, not Bush, none of them.  As one commentator put it, they promise Catholics to be against abortion, and what comes out in the end is a tax break for the rich.  It is an awful mistake and an outrage that Catholic bishops, pastors and laypeople are aligning themselves with the Republican vision of things–this is leading to so much pain and suffering and misery in our country for so many people, and this is only the beginning.

There is a Taoist hermit living in the Colorado Rockies, somewhere between Durango and Silverton.  I wonder what he thinks of our situation.  He is lost in a great silence.  Afterall, those who know do not speak.   The others write blogs!

In the Gospel of Luke (16: 19-31) Jesus tells a remarkable parable.  It begins:  “There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.  And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table….”  This is a timeless story and also a very timely one today.  This is a story with very sharply contrasting images, and every detail is significant.  There is the rich man who is obviously living in great comfort, and there is also the poor man who is not only poor but afflicted.  What is important is that the wretched person is right outside the gate of the rich man, and the rich man’s “salvation” somehow is tied up with this person.  What the “rich man” needs to do for his own spiritual well-being, what any person needs to do, is never far away or concealed from their sight.  It is always “right outside their gate.”

This situation maps out a three-level unconcealment of what is required in our relationship to God.  First of all there is the simple economic situation–and the economic question is never not-religious.  Afterall it pertains to the well-being of all God’s children.  In any case, this disparity between the rich and the poor is a matter of conern in this story.  In fact, the whole Bible frowns upon people piling up wealth and ignoring their fellow human beings.  It is a critical question in our own country today because the disparity between the rich and the poor is growing incredibly.  The actual numbers are staggering, but why are the churches, including the Catholic Church so quiet about this very “unBiblical” situation?  Catholics and their bishops seem to be only concerned about abortion–a worthy topic of concern but certainly NOT the only one.  The rich man has this wretched person right outside his gate, but his disregard creates in effect a vast gap between himself and that poor one.  That gap, which can be crossed, or better yet eliminated, in this life, will become impossible to cross when he is dead and when he will badly want to cross that gap because his true condition will be unconcealed from his own eyes.  It is a gap that the rich man chooses to create, and his choice is merely affirmed in his death.  One more thought along this line:  our whole society and economy is amazing this way–we are directed toward “getting rich,” accumulating wealth, people living in mansions and gated communities and protected from mixing with the poor and everyone is on his own.  This is a very unBiblical way of living for those of you who regard the Bible as your guide.  But even without that, there is the example of the Indian billionaire who just built what may be the first “billion-dollar home.”   He will never have to mix with any of India’s poor–a helicopter from his roof will wisk him away whenever he wants to go anywhere.  What strikes one is how “unGandhian” this person is.  Gandhi is actually the perfect example of someone who “kept the Gospel” without the words.  First of all he made a point of becoming aware of his “wretched neighbor”–the millions of poor in India.  Secondly, he did not create any gap between himself and them(by the way, all his personal belongings could be put in one small bag).  And thirdly, most importantly, he did not leave that wretched one sitting “outside his gate,” but brought him in to his own dwelling.  He crossed that gap while it was still possible to do so.

And this brings us to the second level of this parable.  The Gospel implies that the rich man should have brought Lazarus in to his own home.  He and Lazarus are both children of one God, but the way he chose to live denied that reality.  Consider that other great parable, the Good Samaritan.  There the Samaritan comes upon a man beaten and robbed–here is someone “right outside HIS gate”–and he does not leave him there–he is not one locked inside his own so-called rich reality.  He pulls this poor one “into his home,” into his care and concern, into an effective action for his well-being, into a kind of oneness with him.  Strikingly enough, in that parable, the “rich man” is the religious figure of the priest and the Levite, a temple official.  The religious figures are too rich as it were, and they are “feasting sumptously” on their religiosity and so their religiosity is only another chasm they put between themselves and the “wretched one.”  And this brings us now to the third level.

“Lazarus,” the poor afflicted one, is always “right outside our gate.”  He/she may not even be a poor one in any sense.  He/she may be a stranger, a close one, a someone indeed.  No matter, this person is sitting outside the gate of our ego identity–perhaps even unawares of their own affliction.  What is our response?  And how do we open that gate and cross that gap?  And what if it is the very self of God that sits outside our gate in the person of the afflicted one?

Chapter 2 of the book is a collection of excerpts from the writings of St. Theophan the Recluse.  In fact the bulk of this book is from Theophan, one of the most remarkable figures in Russian monasticism.  He lived during the peak of the Hesychast renewal in 19^th century Russia, and also he was one of the most educated men in Russian monasticism.  For something like 20 years he lived as a recluse, but he guided hundreds if not thousands of people through correspondence.  He also had an enormous library which included not only the Fathers of the Church but also western philosophy.

The chapter begins with a continuing theme: what is prayer?  This may seem like a simple question, but in actuality it is a very complex and deep question.  But St. Theophan has a difficult but practical objective to lead us into the depths of inner prayer:  “What is prayer?  What is its essence?  How can we learn to pray?”  The importance of the question is emphasized: “Prayer is the test of everything; prayer is also the source of everything; prayer is the driving force of everything; prayer is also the director of everything.”  The spiritual life is the ground and foundation of all we do and all we are, and prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life.

Next St. Theophan points to “different degrees” of prayer.  In a sense he starts with the outer layers and moves inward.  The 1^st degree has to do with our bodies–this involves reading, bodily posture, and movements like prostrations and kneeling, etc.  This is not superficial stuff because we want to bring our bodies into this flow as it were.  St. Theophan makes a point that this may be hard, especially when we “feel nothing” and don’t feel like praying.  He tells us to have a “moderate rule” of prayer–meaning we should not pile up a lot of physical practices and put large demands on ourselves in terms of getting a lot of vocal prayer done.  But to do something is important, and to keep at it is important because it will lead to a kind of focus on prayer.  And that leads us to St. Theophan’s second degree of prayer.  We are still here in the realm of active, maybe even vocal, prayer, but the important thing is that our attention and our focus is consistently on the reality of God as it unfolds through the words we say or sing.  Then we come to the heart of prayer, the third degree.  Now our focus and attention is continuous.  This is the beginning of inner prayer.  St. Theophan then alludes to an even deeper realm of prayer:  “But there is, they say, [note he does not speak from his own authority–whether this be from humility or because he had not reached that state himself, we do not know], yet another kind of prayer which cannot be comprehended by our mind, and which goes beyond the limits of consciousness: on this read St. Isaac the Syrian.”

Again and again St. Theophan returns to discuss the “essence of prayer.”  Some may find this repetitive, but you have to realize that the editors are simply taking snippets from his extensive writings and lumping it all together in this anthology.  But you can see even from this that St. Theophan returned to this topic all the time.  The essence of prayer is not easy to put into words, but for him and this hesychast tradition it has to do with a kind of turning of the heart toward God and abiding in his Presence.  Let us recall that one of the chief characteristics of being human is “intentionality.”  Intentionality is a kind of turning toward something, a reaching for something, etc.  When we are hungry or tired we turn toward sleep or food–we have an intention to meet that felt need.  When we are in the presence of a friend, we turn toward the person in our attention and relationality.  Our intention is toward fostering that friendship.  Intentions can also be misdirected.  In any case, ultimately intentionality has to do with the core of our being, called “the heart” in this tradition.  What is it turned towards?  That is the key question.  If we understand this, we will understand the real role of asceticism, liturgical prayer, solitude, silence, etc.  We experience a phenominal world, sometime pleasureable, sometime painful; we have a myriad collection of fears, anxieties, desires roaming through our consciousness, we have an ego self, and all kinds of identity markers, both social and inner.  Whatever be the nature of their reality, St. Theophan exhorts us to turn that core of our being toward the Presence of God.  This is going to be real hard work! Precisely because of that whole phenomenal world that percolates in and around us.  Modern life especially wants to capture our intentionality toward consumption and superficial surfaces–it denies the very existence of that “inner room” or it pleads a kind of agnosticism about it.  Ok, so whether it be in St. Theophan’s time or our time, perhaps we will need hymns, vocal prayers, bodily gestures, meditative reading,  etc at the start. The role of the Jesus Prayer comes into play here.  Also, our Islamic brethren can teach us a lot here.  They are called to turn toward Mecca 5 times a day in prayer.  This physical gesture is a physical icon of what they(and we) are called to do at the heart level as we turn toward the Holy Presence.  Once this intentionality of the heart toward that Holy Presence has been firmly established, it will begin to fill all else that we do during the day.  It will also keep us from getting diverted into the superficial realm of modern consumerism.

While at first that turning may have been toward what felt like “nothing” and silence and emptiness, that “nothingness” eventually will become unveiled as a Presence beyond and without words, images, or thoughts.   Then, and this is the big thing, that “turning,” that which we have called prayer, will live in us by a dynamic that is no longer of our own making or effort.  At that point there is only One Prayer and only One who is Praying.

There is one more teaching that St. Theophan alludes to in this chapter, and this is extremely difficult to put into words precisely because it is so easy to misunderstand and misapply.  If we reach that highest level of prayer, we will see that everything in our life is a gift from God.  Everything, and we will accept everything precisely as that.  Thus our sickness, our loss, that “slap in the face,” etc. etc. it is all from God.  Now looking at that “from the outside,” this looks like the worst kind of determinism, a loss of common sense, an abandonment to a sick kind of passivity.  And indeed to teach someone that message without that reality of prayer would be gravely irresponsible.  Here also we touch base with our Sufi friends.  But once we are in that realm of continuous prayer, we see all reality differently.

St. Theophan is also quick to point out to all of us what we have previously termed as “Hesychast’s heart, Beginner’s heart”:

“You must never regard any spiritual work as firmly established, and this is especially true of prayer but always pray as if beginning for the first time.  When we do a thing for the first time, we come to it fresh and with a new-born enthusiasm.  If, when starting to pray, you always approach it as though you had never yet prayed properly, and only now for the first time wished to do so, you will always pray with a fresh and lively zeal.  And all will go well.”

That combination of words sounds jarring–we are not accustomed to seeing any kind of violence attributed to that tradition.  However, there is a new book out that discusses the presence of violence within the Buddhist tradition.  The title:  Buddhist Warfare , a collection of essays by various Buddhist scholars, edited by Mark Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, two scholars of comparative religions.  There is also an intriguing review of this book that first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement(UK) by another Buddhist scholar, Katherine Wharton.  The review was also available through truthdig.com and here is the link:

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/buddhists_at_war_20101008/

It seems to be an uneven book, and the review even more uneven.  There are a number of problems and questions of interpretation.  But first of all one must acknowledge the sad but undeniable historical record of actual violence by proponents of Buddhism.  To those of us in the “Abrahamic religions”: Judaism, Christianity and Islam–well, we are accustomed to the presence of violence in our various traditions, but most Westerners had looked on Buddhism as not being tainted by that kind of thing.  This book does show that is not quite the case.  On another website, in a personal account, Mark Jerryson, one of the editors, tells us why he took up this research.  Here is that website:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/2158/monks_with_guns%3A_discovering_buddhist_violence

Mark spent a year in Thailand studying Buddhism and was jarred to discover monks with guns.  He knew he had to look into this.

In any case, the book details both ancient and modern instances where people who identified themselves as Buddhists carry out or condone or somehow support violent activity.  Japanese Zen seems to come out very badly in this regard.  In Japan Zen seems to have been associated with the warrior class(the samurai, etc.) quite a bit–it made them better warriors.  In this regard there is at least some ambiguity in some of the things that even the great D.T. Suzuki wrote.  And here we come to some questionable things in the book and even more so in the review–apart from the historical record, there is the problem of how to interpret certain words and expressions in Buddhism.  It seems that what some of these scholars are saying–and especially the reviewer–is at the very least very questionable if not outright wrong.  It may be arrogant on my part to say so, but there is also the historical record of many Westerners, scholars and religious folk, who have definitely “missed the boat” in evaluating Asian religions–either idealizing them and projecting their own constructs, their own needs into them or else painting them in such a negative way as if there was nothing of value there.  So it is not, alas, impossible.

First of all, what these authors say about the Buddhist notions of “no-self,” and “emptiness” seems very wrongheaded.  To attribute  these as a cause of the presence of violence in Buddhism is a misreading.  Yes, one can see how a shallow or distorted understanding of these profound notions can lead one seriously astray. But in their essence these are very deep teachings that actually lead one in the opposite direction when correctly grasped.  Thus the importance of a true teacher because Buddhism is primarily learned from a teacher and not from texts.  There are several comments after the book review by various kinds of people and most of them are superficial, but there are at least two comments by informed Buddhists who make this very point.

Another terrible misreading is blaming Taoism for the justification of violence in Buddhism.  Here Taoism is seen as “identification with the raw forces of nature.”  Wrong!  Absolutely wrong.  Sometime soon we will have to discuss Taoism at length.  Needless to say both Zen and Taoism have been used to justify various hedonistic and antinomian ways of life that may include violence–also including a superficial spontaneity.  To name names: Alan Watts came close to this in his books in the 1950s and 60s, and he was very popular in his time.

Another problem both in the book and in the review is the lack of sensitivity to the many-layered nuances of the language in this tradition(and actually in all religious traditions).  Even in American “pop Buddhism” to say “kill the Buddha” is clearly not seen as an invocation to violence.  It refers to a ceasing of objectification, of trying to find a Buddha outside one’s self.  There is a certain amount of this kind of language in Buddhist literature, and we must grant that this kind of language is problematic today.  It can also be found in the other great traditions.  Afterall, the Bhagavad-Gita takes place in the middle of a battlefield, the Jewish Psalms used in Christian worship are filled with language about “smiting the enemy,” etc., etc.  One has to find a way around this language and get to the meaning behind it.  But like the good commentators on the review point out, one also has to look at some very fundamental Buddhist teachings that call one to compassion, to doing no harm to anyone, etc.  And as for D.T. Suzuki, well, he once did say that the essence of enlightenment was to feel the pain of another as one’s own.  Whatever else he might have said, that’s pretty good!

Whatever the failings of this book may be, whatever the problems with the review of the book, they both do remind us that there is a “dark side” in every religious tradition.  Whether this be a misinterpretation of a teaching, or a misappliction, or a cultural distortion of a perfectly good doctrine, whatever be the case, one has to be alert.  Just because something is labeled as “religion” or “spiritual” does not mean we set aside our critical faculties and deny what’s right in front of our noses.  Christians have been doing this for centuries!  Buddhists, welcome to the club!

Now we plunge into the bulk of the text, and the first chapter is an excerpt from a  late medieval Russian hesychast, St. Dimitri of Rostov.  He is a figure almost unknown in the West.  His spiritual writings bridge that span when Russia crosses over from the medieval into its own early modern period.  It is a time before the great hesychast renewal inaugurated by the translations of Paisius Velichkovsky of the Greek compilation known as the Philokalia.  The hesychast tradition was alive and well in the small sketes and hermitages in the Russian wilderness and in certain of the large monasteries, but the general populace and most monks and priests were not much “into it” as we would say today.  Thus St.Dimitri tells us of the paucity of knowledge about inner prayer among people in his time (and this may surprise some or they may consider it an exaggeration).  We might want to say to St. Dimitri that you don’t know how really bad it can get!  And Merton in his The Inner Experience echoes such sentiments.

There is a lovely book on Zen called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  There is the sense that what St. Dimitri is talking about is not only a description of a certain situation in his own time, but more like a state of mind that one should have at any time in approaching the reality of inner prayer.  In a sense, he is saying that we all need to have this attitude of being beginners as far as inner prayer goes.  A clumsy adoption and adaptation of the Zen title would be: Hesychast’s Heart, Beginner’s Heart.  Andre Louf, a Trappist monk and a hesychast teacher of prayer, also points to this as an essential attitude and state of heart as we approach the reality of inner prayer.  St. Dimitri: “Therefore some idea of inner training and spiritual prayer is given here for the instruction of beginners….”  Make no mistake about it, we are all beginners as far as this awesome reality of inner prayer and communion with God goes.  And if we want to make progresss, we will always be beginners–that is the great spiritual paradox.

The title of the chapter is “The Inner Closet of the Heart,” and the word “closet” is a poor translation of the word from the Gospel of Matthew that is often translated simply as “room.”  Nevertheless the idea is the important thing, and St. Dimitri and the whole hesychast tradition relies heavily on this text about prayer.  There we find this call to go into a secret room, an inner room, in order to pray.  Obviously this is not a physical space as such but a whole understanding of the human makeup.  For St. Dimitri and many others, there is this anthropology of “dual spaces” as it were:  the “inner man,” and the “outer man.”  This is found all over in classic Christian spirituality and it has its roots in the Gospel and St. Paul.  If one does not misunderstand it, if one does not take it too literally but sees the metaphorical nature of such language, if it doesn’t become a rigid structure of fixed ideas about the human, it will prove to be helpful and clarifying.  For there is such a thing as outer prayer, for example, and inner prayer–as St. Dimitri points out.  In outer prayer we say a lot of words, we use books, we use gestures, we sing hymns, etc.  The world of inner prayer is quite different.  However, this kind of breakdown of the human world into two parts can also be very misleading.  In a sense there is no outer or inner with regard to prayer.  In fact the hesychasts themselves, as we shall see later, want to lead us to a place where prayer suffuses everything, penetrates everything, fills up everything that we are and we do.

In the hesychast tradition the world of inner prayer has to do with the heart, and this word “heart” is actually a very rich and complex term.  It does not have a simple reference to that physical organ by which our bodies function.  The “heart” here of course refers to the very depths and center of a human person.  It is the place where you and God are one in love and freedom.  We say “in love” because you and God are not physically one, but one in terms of love.  God’s love for you is absolute and infinite and always there–otherwise you would cease to exist. That stranger over there who is a stranger to you is also loved infinitely by God and walks in His Light–unawares though he may be.  So by the mere fact of your existence you are totally one with God in His Love.  What of course is called for is that you respond to this love with your whole being.  That’s the point of the First Commandment.  We also say “in freedom” because tragically enough we can say “no” to this Love.  Nevertheless our freedom (and this we shall have to discuss at length at some point because of its pop misuse), our freedom is already a sign of God’s Presence to us–it is that Divine Life flowing in us of which we are normally so oblivious.

In a sense the very meaning of inner prayer is to abide in that Love and that Freedom, and to abide in it constantly with awareness.  To live by it.  This is the “true bread” “in the desert.”  Our existence itself is a kind of desert.  Because we are scattered creatures filled with varying and diverse desires, fears, anxieties, an outer structure of prayer is very much needed to help us focus.  Furthermore, as St. Dimitri points, a brief, oft-repeated prayer, like the Jesus Prayer helps one focus on that Presence in the heart.  There will be much more about this in later chapters by other authors.  Suffice it to say that St. Dimitri points us in the direction of “continual prayer,” or “unceasing prayer,” which is really a conscious, gentle abiding in the Love and Freedom that brings one existence from moment to moment and every gift moment to moment.  There is nothing that is without that Love, whether it be a trillion stars in the thousands upon thousands of galaxies spread over unimaginable space where light takes billions of years to travel through, or it be a blade of grass, an ant, a little flower, a drop of rain rolling down your window, etc.  In the end you will discover that there is ONLY the Presence of Love, and inner and outer are just temporary terms.

But in the meanwhile let us turn to that inner place and place our attention there and hear our name being called as we are called into existence from moment to moment out of pure emptiness and into the Fullness of Love and Freedom.  As St. Dimitri puts it:  “Man needs to enclose himself in the inner closet of his heart more often than he needs to go to church….”

There have been some recent news stories, feature stories, and websites that have highlighted this interesting phenomenon of people moving toward a lifestyle of living without money.  The most recent example is this Englishman, Mark Boyle.  Here are two links to stories about him:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/05/18/eco.free.economy/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-boyle/mark-boyles-moneyless-man_b_735238.html

http://www.tonic.com/article/the-moneyless-man-mark-boyle-freeconomy/

Then there is the German woman Heidimarie Schwermer, and here is the link to a story about her:

http://www.livingwithoutmoney.tv/

And then about 2 years ago there was a spate of stories about an even more radical American living in a cave outside of Moab, Utah.  He even has his own website which he manages from a public library computer:

http://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/

Apparently there are a lot more people moving in this direction, although of course they are nothing compared to all those who seek more money, etc.  This is actually very interesting for many reasons.  Although there are some real differences among these folk, they do share a basic fundamental thrust which separates them from the “way things are”–which many see as natural and as inevitable as the sun rising and setting.  In one sense there is nothing “religious” about their way of life or their “philosophy”; but in another sense they have a very deep connection with a fundamentally religious view of life and a very real connection to all those who follow a monastic way.  Although there is nothing intrinsically “evil” about money and to be “against money” is not particularly religious in any sense, there is this thing about our relationship to money that is indeed a problem, both socially and spiritually.   And these people have a good sense of that–unlike so many of “professional religious.”

Now if one lives or has lived in a monastery or a Catholic religious house, or if one has visited such a place, one inevitably will realize at some point that one is “encased” in an entity that is worth millions in many instances–the Carthusians in Vermont built their place with very expensive granite, and recently I have been reading of these Carmelite monks in Wyoming who are planning this massive gothic monastery in the Rockies that will cost millions and will depend on a lot of donors.  These days Catholic religious will tell you they are “cash poor” but maybe land rich.  Monasteries/religious institutions that are large landowners are an ambiguous reality at best.  Also, you will see very often these religious institutions being very friendly with rich and powerful benefactors who have acquired their money in very ambiguous ways.  For example:  the Catholic, Peter Grace of the former Grace Corp., who gave lots of money to Catholic religious institutions, also let thousands of people suffer through the notorious pollution the company caused and then refused to take responsibility for it and fought to avoid making it up to the people.  Whatever be the case, it is so amazing how many religious people are either naïve, blind or willfully overlooking their very compromised relationship to money and wealth.  Our secular moneyless friends are there to remind us there is another way.

The traditional defense of the large, well-endowed monasteries is that the individual monk “owns” nothing–it is only their for his use as needed, and the security it provides enables the monk to devote more of his time and energy to prayer and meditation–the main point of his life.  However you deal with that line of thought, it has a long and venerable tradition, and no doubt many good monks and nuns have lived in such a context.  Also, this position seems to appear in other religious traditions–like Buddhism, etc.  The Dalai Lama himself has pointed out that one of the problems with earlier Tibetan Buddhism was that the monasteries were these huge landowners that dominated the whole society–it seemed that everyone was working to support the monks.  He has gone so far as to say that in some ways when the Chinese took over and took everything away from the monks, that at least in this regard they are better now.

Now of course there is a completely different Christian monastic tradition, even older, that takes a completely different approach.  It is against monks owning large institutions, and indeed it suspects all kinds of ownership.  Seeking the same ultimate goal but interpreting the monastic charism in a very different way, it points to poverty in every sense of that word as very essential to the monastic identity.  At the origins of Christian monasticism this is very apparent with our dear friends, the Desert Fathers.  Plenty of stories about that!  When Christian monasticism becomes very institutionalized and very big, reform movements almost always pushed in two directions: solitude, and poverty.  Again, the Desert Heritage.  St. Francis is another interesting example–his focus on poverty is so intense that even in his own lifetime  his own followers abandon that commitment, and he is deeply saddened by that.  In medieval Russia there was this battle of visions of what Russian monasticism should be like.  The two conflicting groups were called: the Possessors, and the Nonpossessors.  The contrast is self-explanatory.  Historically the Possessors won out, and Russian monasticism developed rich, well-endowed monasteries.  However, the Nonpossessors did not disappear.  On the contrary they continued in their own small way, and this is the primary locus for the development of Russia’s greatest spiritual treasure–Russian Hesychasm.  This developed and flourished in the small sketes and hermitages in the forests of Russia.  And yes, to be fair, hesychasts were also to be found in the large monasteries.

Now with all that let us return to our secular moneyless friends!  Are they a kind of hidden monasticism?  Maybe.  Probably not, but why bother with labels.  When Merton met with some of the student leaders of the uprisings in 1968, they told him in effect, “We are the true monks.”  And Merton accepted this challenge and developed it for his very last talk.  He appreciated the fact that they understood better than the official monks that being a monk also meant being in a certain critical relationship to the social fabric of money, ownership, possessions, power, etc.   Otherwise the monk’s renunciations were a mere fiction, a mind-game.  Well, perhaps our moneyless friends and the movement they are part of seems to say something similar.  In any case I find them engaging, challenging, and inspiring.  Yes, certain criticisms could be leveled at them.  For one, they seem inconsistent or  worse, “moochers,”–take Suelo in Utah, for example, he hitches rides when he goes somewhere.  Well, he can only do that because someone else HAS BOUGHT A CAR WITH MONEY!  Or he goes to the library and uses a computer–that’s only there because of someone else’s money.  Suelo has an answer for that:  he uses the example of a bird in a downtown area of a city–the bird makes a nest on one of the ledges of a skyscraper.  So be it.  The bird is not “mooching”–just making use of what’s there to live his life.  Incidentally, the father of this whole movement, Thoreau, was also accused of being inconsistent, and Emerson wrote in his defense, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds!”

Now one could easily say that money in itself is not the real problem and that these people may be missing the main point: what’s in the heart.  True enough.  Suelo comes very close to saying that money in itself is the problem, but the others seem more nuanced.  But what they all point to is the enormous corrupting influence of money in all our institutions: religious, political, social.  Money and all it represents seems to drive our social order.  You know the old saying about the “Golden Rule”:  he who has the gold, sets the rules.  And our friends do this critique in a very quiet, “monastic” way by simply living very, very differently.  Monks could learn a lot from them instead of participating in a social, economic realm that is ordered by and for greed.

A further point:  people have this sense that the given social and economic order is “natural,” “inevitable,” can’t be changed, that there are no possible alternatives.  Our friends here suggest otherwise.  Mark Boyle, the Englishman, does point out that the whole world could not take up his way of life tomorrow–that would be catastrophic, but he does rightly point to the fact that people can do a lot to simplify and reorder their lives around something more than being consumers.  That they can slowly deconstruct this enormous edifice of acquisition, consumption, entertainment gluttony, etc. Again, one can see a very monastic dimension to all this.

Now moving to another voice and quite a different piece of writing, let us turn to the social critic Chris Hedges.  This man is one of the deepest thinking people writing on our social condition today, and his weekly essay can be found on truthdig.com–usually appearing on Mondays.  This particular piece should be read by everyone, and here is the link to it:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/retribution_for_a_world_lost_in_screens_20100927/

Many people find his analysis too much to swallow–it is so uncompromising and so bleak, but I think he hits the bullseye almost every time. (Incidentally, Merton in some of his writings already was hinting at this kind of diagnosis in the 60s).  But now come some questions for us on the monastic path.  Given Hedges’ analysis and given the humble alternative lifestyles of our moneyless friends, inquiring minds should be asking themselves:  What is the role, the place of the monk in the world that Hedges describes?  How can one expect any traditional monasticism to be renewed/rekindled in such an age?   Are our moneyless friends perhaps harbingers of a radically new universal monasticism that will start to appear–a monasticism that might not even carry that label.  The charism does not depend on labels, on institutions, on appearances.  Some have pointed toward something like this years ago.  Certainly there will be monks and nuns who are strictly ecclesially oriented, and that’s ok–many of them are good people who have something to contribute, but the real answer to the technological barbarism and human desolation that we are entering into will come perhaps from monks who hardly look like monks….  One major proviso: yes our friends seem to have one piece of the puzzle of how to live in this civilizational nightmare, but another piece is badly needed.  Those who have gone deep into the human heart, deep into the center of their being, and stand in the Presence from moment to moment–speaking only of my own tradition now, others can be put it in their own terms–hold an absolutely essential other piece of the puzzle of how to live in this kind of age.  Only People of the Heart, as I call them, will be able to navigate through this kind of world without getting lost.  They will be marked by nonviolence, compassion, freedom, perhaps silence and solitude, but not necessarily–also not necessarily with robes or titles for sure.  The “world” as the New Testament would call it, or today we would say, “the System,” is marked by the “sign of the Beast”:  greed, consumption, acquisition, war, violence,  fear, hatred, porn, exploitation, etc., etc.  In a sense the monk’s way has never been clearer!  Something to think about…..

Zizek is a philosopher, a critical theorist, and a Marxist who is very well known and respected in intellectual circles in Europe.  He is the kind of thinker quite prevalent in Europe but increasingly rare in the U.S.(Chomsky might be one example)–someone whose theorizing is focused on actual social realities.  In any case, being a Marxist he would automatically be disregarded here in the U.S., but in Europe they have more intellectual sophistication and do not confuse Stalinist or Maoist communism with Marxism.

It is perhaps not surprising that Zizek has some sharp things to say about religion, but his thinking is cogent and his criticism cannot be brushed off lightly.  In a recent article a Buddhist teacher and author, Ethan Nichtern,  confronts the criticism of Zizek:  “Radical Buddhism and the Paradox of Acceptance.”  Let us quote extensively from Nichtern:

“Critical theorist Slavoj Zizek has an interestingly harsh critique of Western Buddhism and the meditation tools it employs.  Framing his critique in Marxist terms, he argues that Buddhism is the perfect spiritual tradition to be co-opted by our self-absorbed, destructive, and consumeristic society.  For him, Buddhism represents the perfect ideology for passive acquiescence to the world as it is, a panacea of inner peace that fits neatly into an advertising culture where, by now, ‘be present’ could just as well be the slogan of a credit card company as an instruction from a meditation teacher.  Zizek writes: ‘Western Buddhism allows us to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is — what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw.’

In other words, for Zizek, Buddhism, in the context of a Western consumer culture, allows the individual to believe he is transforming his mind without actually changing the conditions of suffering that shape the individual’s society.  This represents a dangerous type of inner peace — a peace not based on true insight into the interdependent nature of reality, but instead based on withdrawal into a mental cocoon, some personal oasis isolated from the turmoil of the world outside.  In this cocoon, the whole world can go to hell, and the meditator can — put simply — be ok with that.  In fact, the meditator can even be a willing actor in a system aiding great oppression, and still live at ease, because it’s ‘all good’ anyway.  By practicing ‘acceptance,’ we simply become comfortable with the status quo.”

This is a very challenging critique, and we should welcome such challenges because they help us clarify our own thinking and perhaps help us see things we couldn’t or didn’t want to see before.  Naturally Zizek’s critique could also be easily addressed to Christian contemplatives–as Merton and others pointed out years ago.  Merton’s The Inner Experience addresses some of these issues.  In any case, Nichtern welcomes the challenge of this critique and then presents an attempt at an answer.

Nichtern’s reply–and Merton’s too to a certain extent–relies on a true understanding of terms such as “peace,” “acceptance,” and “passivity.”  I would also have pointed out to Zizek the example of the Vietnamese Buddhist monks who incinerated themselves in protest of the American war in their country.  No matter what you think of this kind of action, it can never be called “passive” or a “withdrawal into a cocoon.”  But Zizek would then probably reply that in fact he is specifically addressing Westerners taking up Buddhism, etc.  And in that regard he has a point.  Too many have taken up Buddhist or Christian or any other contemplative practices as a means of escape or as an anesthetic to make themselves numb to the dysfunctionality of the world around them, either their personal world or the greater social world.  This is especially true of well-to-do people.  Merton warns us of seeking a “narcissistic seclusion,” of walling ourselves up within the false peace of our religious ego.

Nichtern appears to be coming from the Theravada tradition of mindfulness meditation, so he addresses Zizek’s challenge from that standpoint:

“Of course, for people who don’t practice, meditation can and does come across like a pitchperfect cliché of passivity before the status quo.  When you look at someone sitting there, you might think:  ‘Seriously what does that do for them?  What does it really change about their situation?  How does it better the world?’  We ask these skeptical questions because what we rightfully want is not just the ability to pay attention, but the ability to transform our circumstances.  We want change we can believe in, both internally and externally.  That’s the payoff we are looking for.  Without the reward of transformation coming at some point on the path, meditation is useless.  Buddhist teachers can preach ‘there is no goal’ as much as they want, but most students aren’t going to even stick around long enough to hear the subtleties of what that really means, either.  And there are goals in meditation, by the way, just not the kind that can be achieved in 30 minutes or your money back.  Practical transformation is what Buddhist practice is all about.  It’s also about changing the world.  To practice meditation consistently is to push back hard against the tidal wave of materialism that is quite literally killing the planet.  But transformation is actually step three in a three-step process.”

The first step, Nichtern points out, is mindfulness.  It is the chronic avoidance of our selves, our real self, that lies at the core of mindless consumer culture.  In Nichtern’s tradition this mindfulness is very thorough and intense.  Christian contemplatives can borrow from this tradition but their approach generally will be quite different.  In any case, both will see how their emotions, their feelings, their perceptions can be deployed in a problematic way that leads to further suffering in oneself and in others.  The understanding of what is going on in our minds is important to true transformation of what happens “outside.”  Nichtern:  “Whenever we try to change something before we understand it, out attempted transformation actually comes from habit and assumption, not wisdom.  Solutions that come from habit, as Albert Einstein pointed out, just end up reinforcing the problem.  That’s called samsara….”

The second step, as Nichtern points out, is “acceptance,” and this is the more subtle one.  It has nothing to do with being passive toward the suffering of others to say the least.  What it really means is that when we become mindful, we realize how much about ourselves we really don’t like.  Acceptance has to do with coming to terms with the deep fundamental reality of who we are.   Without too much exaggeration one could say that so much of the hurt and “bad” that people cause in the world comes from a very deep down self-hatred, self-rejection that is then unconsciously projected outward.  In Nichtern’s tradition, there is a very clear, explicit solution:  “There is no product we can purchase to aid this work.  It only comes from the willingness to be with yourself, nakedly, openly, and lovingly, again and again over a long period of time.  Which means we have to spend time with ourselves.  A lot of time.  And the time we spend with ourselves on the cushion is the opposite of passive.  It’s often tough, it’s usually intense, and it leads to a hard-fought, slow-won, revolutionary victory over self-hatred.”  And here we may note a cautionary word for Christian contemplatives–they too have to find their particular way toward this kind of self-acceptance.  To simply call yourself a “sinner” as in the Jesus Prayer, without having some realization already that one is already forgiven, already bathed in the mercy of God, already totally loved and accepted, already “good” in a very fundamental way because God calls me into being, because I am his handiwork moment to moment, well unless one has that realization from the get-go, the mantra-like repetition of calling yourself a sinner can lead to some pathological states of mind.  But we shall address such issues in our postings on The Art of Prayer.

Let us give Nichtern the last words:  “Does the kind of self-acceptance which Buddhist meditation techniques systematically cultivate in the individual really change the world?  Well, no, not alone.  Zizek is right about that, as well as the danger of thinking that acceptance is the end of the journey and believing in any way that we are ‘in it but not of it.’  Eventually you have to get up and do something.  But trying to change your life or the world without a real method for changing your own mind is inherently doomed to failure, because society is just a matrix of the hearts and minds of those who inhabit it.”

The Art of Prayer  is the title of one of the most wonderful books on Christian spirituality that there is.  In fact, in the eyes of this blogger it is a sine qua non of the Christian spiritual life, though there are for sure some that would disagree.  Among modern writings there are only a few others that deserve such accolades–among them would be: Merton’s  The Inner Experience,  and Andre Louf’s Teach Us to Pray–two very different works but of exceptional importance.  Speaking of Merton, The Art of Prayer was in his hermitage and constantly at his side during the 1960s, the last years of his life.  His copy was heavily underlined and referred to in his notes.  What we will do here and in future postings is simply comment on some passages.

The modern English edition comes with a helpful introduction by Kallistos Ware, an English scholar who became eventually an Orthodox monk, and who later became a bishop.  The original work is a masterpiece of Russian Orthodox spirituality.  Basically it is a compilation of various spiritual sources by Igumen Chariton, that is Abbot Chariton of the great Russian monastery of Valamo.  Amazingly enough this was compiled and published during the terrribly repressive years of the Stalinist regime–and Valamo was still a thriving monastery.  The actual material that Chariton puts together ranges from ancient Greek and Slavic sources to the majority being from Theophan the Recluse, one of the greatest Russian spiritual figures of the 19^th Century.  In a sense it is a kind of “Reader’s Digest” of Russian Hesychasm, but of course it is much more than a “digest”–one can go very far just being guided by that work.  In the absence of someone who could guide you in the living tradition, this book will do more than adequately.

The Introduction announces the main theme, the main concern of this book with its very first words:  “What is prayer?”  A very big question.  The reality of prayer ranges from simple words and sentiments addressed to God to what this tradition calls “unceasing prayer of the heart.”  The goal of this collection, and the goal of the Russian Hesychast tradition is precisely to lead one to that unceasing prayer of the heart even as one might begin with simple oral prayer.  It also always assumes liturgical prayer as a kind of constant background of the inner journey.  Now the focal point of this prayer journey as it were is the Jesus Prayer, and it is amazing in its simplicity and power.  And Ware is quite correct in showing the scriptural roots of this prayer.  But before we get to that, there is the important point of the intended audience of this book.  Certainly The Art of Prayer originated in monastic circles and is primarily meant for monks, but it is also offered to all who seek continual inner prayer.  And in the Russian Hesychast tradition, and maybe in not all other traditions, this reality is available to all people, whether they are officially monks or not.  Recall that Dostoevsky’s Fr. Zosima says that monks are not some special kind of people but only what all Christians should be.  In fact a person in any condition or situation, even one who is crippled or paralyzed and helpless on a bed, can practice this prayer and achieve the highest realizations.

Now for some terminology clarification–or maybe we should say a certain caution about mixing up terminology.  Even within this very tradition of Russian Hesychasm there are different terms:  “inner prayer,”  “continual prayer,”  “prayer of the heart,”  “unceasing prayer of the heart,” etc.  These all seem to point to the same reality, more or less.  Among the Western Christian traditions you get terms like:  silent prayer, mental prayer,  contemplation (and this term is also used by Theophan), active contemplation, passive contemplation, infused contemplation, meditation, etc.  Now these seem to have their own distinct and different meanings with some overlap.  And from the great Asian traditions there is the import of the term “meditation” with a whole new meaning of its own.  And even here there are some significant differences among the various Asian traditions.  The best thing to do is not to confuse or conflate these terms.  They all do not point to or refer to the same reality–although they may all have some very positive contribution to make to a spiritual life.  Let each term be taken in the context of its own tradition, and leave it at that.  For our purposes here we will simply focus on this “unceasing prayer of the heart” (and we will use the other equivalent phrases that this tradition uses).  The one thing we can say is that this “prayer of the heart” is not the same as any kind of meditation–it is not about awareness per se, concentration, consciousness, etc.  It is more about a Presence, which slowly becomes the total reality of one’s existence:  “I live now not I, but Christ lives in me.” (St. Paul).

Now from the standpoint of The Art of Prayer and the Russian Hesychast tradition, the unceasing prayer of the heart is found most quickly and most surely through the use of what is called, the Jesus Prayer–this latter is sometime also referred to as the Prayer of the Name, and here we come very close to our Sufi friends.  In fact, within the hesychast tradition the two seem to be almost the same thing.  The writings are not all consistent about this, and in some cases it seems one can arrive at unceasing prayer of the heart by other means.  Kallistos Ware:

In theory the Jesus Prayer is but one of many

possible ways for attaining inner prayer; but

in practice it has acquired such influence and

popularity in the Orthodox Church that it has

almost come to be identified with inner prayer

as such.  In one spiritual authority after another

the Jesus Prayer is specially recommended as a

‘quick way’ to unceasing prayer, as the best and

easiest means for concentrating the attention and

establishing the mind in the heart.

Whatever be the case, our book and the Russian Hesychast tradition focuses on the Jesus Prayer.  This is a prayer of utmost simplicity and seeming superficiality.  In English it is only 10 words:  Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me (and there are variant wordings).  In Greek and Russian the prayer is only 7 words long–first on the lips, then silently in the mind, finally “in the heart.”  And finally the prayer never ceases in the heart, and then one is far beyond any words.  Some people have likened the Jesus Prayer to a Christian mantra, but that is a mistake.  Yes, it has some of those characteristics, and it may produce some effects like a mantra (as Ware implies above), but in its essence it is something different–just like prayer and meditation are different things but may overlap in both effect and significance for any given person.  More about all this as we go through the book.

As a final point for this posting, the scriptural roots of the Jesus Prayer as a route to inner prayer are very significant.  This stands in contrast to a kind of psychological or philosophical approach to prayer–albeit these may be valuable in their own right but they are different.  The foundations of the Jesus Prayer can be traced out in three directions.  First there is this whole thing about “the name.”  In the Old Testament the name of God was itself considered sacred.  It somehow carried the very mystery of God and so it was not to be pronounced out loud.  The Name was seen as an extension of the Personhood of God, and as a revelation of His being in Mystery and Power: “I am Who  I am.”  The Sufis and Islamic mysticism also have these same roots and a very similar mysticism pertaining to the Name of God.  Now from the Christian perspective, when we get to the New Testament, the name of Jesus picks all that up with the additions of “familiarity” and “closeness.”  Jesus in his humanity is the fullest and highest expression, manifestation of the Mystery of God.  But also he is very human with a very human name: Jesus.  Thus in this name we have both the awesome infinite mystery of God and the unspeakable closeness of God to humanity combined in one.  Much more could be said about this, but one can see the theological richness of just the invocation of the Name.

Then there are two moments in the Gospels that are important foundational places for this prayer.  The first is the cry of the blind man (Luke 18:38):  “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”    The second is the prayer of the Publican (or tax collector):  “God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13).  The Jesus Prayer absorbs both of these moments and seeks to place the pray-er in the shoes as it were of both of these people.  In the first instance there is the situation of ultimate blindness and of a realization that there is only One who can remove that blindness.  The blindness that keeps us from seeing our own condition and from beholding the Mystery of God and being totally aborbed into it.  The second instance brings before us one of Jesus’s most powerful illustrations–the difference between the Pharisee and the Publican–two different pray-ers, two very different ways of praying.  First of all, the Pharisee posits himself as some isolated entity who is “unlike” “that sinner”–the Pharisee keeps an account of “his goodness”–this so-called goodness is the doing of his religious ego, and the Pharisee is totally locked inside that.  The Jesus Prayer, on the other hand, takes up the attitude and state of heart of the Publican.  It simply knows the universal need for God’s healing mercy in the human condition.  Here we may note that some people either find this prayer too negative in spirit or if not that they kind of drive themselves into a depressive darkness by constantly invoking that they are “sinners.”  A bit of understanding and guidance here helps a lot, and we will touch on this as we go along through the book.  Suffice it to say for now that the path to inner prayer through the Jesus Prayer leads one into a boundless compassion and a sense of oneness with all people with the realization that we all are immersed in this sea of illusion and delusion which the Buddhists call maya, this illusion of a separate isolated self which then feels a need for self-assertion, self-protection, self-polishing,  self-grasping, etc.  There is the usual way of feeling superior to others–through better education, through wealth, through all kinds of external means; but the most insideous separation and most illusory one is the one where we see ourselves as “religiously better” than other folk.  The Jesus Prayer deconstructs all that and opens our heart to our common predicament and then leads us into the light of the true reality: endless and boundless communion–and ultimately this also includes all animals and all creation–as the great saints have always recognized.