Today I meditated on huatou. The
beginning felt a bit awkward because I was struggling with scattered mind and
body pains. But I started to relax into the realization that my pain is an okay
part of me. And I found, in this process of being okay with who I am, that the
pain did not become such an obstacle or a nuisance anymore. This seems
important to me, because it wasn’t just about accepting the pain alone. It was
more like an experience of accepting my moment 360 degrees. It is a total acceptance
of being as I am now. On the other hand, if I had only focused on ‘accepting
the pain’, there would already have been an attachment to the pain as myself. I
would be identifying with one part of an experience, rather than embracing the
whole experience. And I found that when I did this, it was easier for the
huatou to come to mind. I was able to see my whole being as an open and changing
field where things could potentially come and go, rather than attaching myself
to this abstract concept of ‘pain’. So I think, in a way, what works for me is
that I am seeing pain in the context of a total, all- encompassing potentiality
for being.
As I mentioned in my previous
entry on Carl Rogers (June 6), I think a big part of self-acceptance for Rogers’
patients came from realizing that I am never just a particular phenomenon arising. However, that phenomenon is a
pointer to who I am, so we cherish it as part in a total comprehensive
experience. In that way, we continue to experience the enfolding of these
experiences (painful or pleasurable) into an overall sense of mind. I tend to
think of this self-acceptance as a turning downward into soul. Rather than
trying to shoot upwards to become enlightened, I go downward to pick up the
parts of me that don’t seem enlightened at all or which seem as obstacles. This
is exactly the kind of ‘mulch’ that makes the lotus grow in the first place,
because those ‘obstacles’ represent un-integrated materials. They are parts of
our being that we simply don’t accept, and often don’t want to accept either.
In his book Education and the Soul, John P. Miller (2000) describes soul as a kind
of middle space between the self and the spirit. Here is what he has to say
about spirit:
Spirit is the divine essence
within. It is the part of us that is beyond time and space. Through spirit, we
experience unity with the divine…There is an ascendant quality to spirit….Simply
put, the spirit calls us to look upward toward the heavens. (p.24)
Miller contrasts this concept of spirit with soul. According to Miller, soul “connects
ego and spirit. There is more of a sense of depth than of ascendance as we tend
to look down into our souls.” (p.24) Furthermore, Miller maintains that soul is
what attempts to connect “humanity with our divinity” (ibid). Without soul,
spirit may become too abstract, while the human might become too mundane.
When I first
started to meditate, I didn’t have too much of a notion of ‘soulful’ life. I
simply regarded meditation practice as the way to somehow get to the mind to a
state of realization. Nowadays, I think soul is about the messy stuff that
often deeply affects the way we get to that ‘state of realization’. It’s about
realizing that I am human, and therefore I am not going to be able to push
myself into any spiritual state, no matter how hard I try in the moment. Soul
is the gentle reminder that the stuff of spirit is deeply organic, like a tree.
A tree never grows perfectly straight, no matter how hard I try to cultivate it
in this way. Similarly, there is room in meditative practice to just observe
how the mind is functioning, without assuming that there are always going to be
these blissful experiences coming out of that. The mind is often compared to a
wild ox in Chan/Zen Buddhist lore. Would I expect an ox to always obey my
command and wish? If that were the case, the ox would just as well be dead! The
wildness of the ox has much to teach about mind. Mind is not something to be mastered
according to self’s wish for control.
Soulful
experience, for me, is letting the wild, unpredictable and strange ‘thus-ness’
of mind and heart manifest. I honestly don’t know whether that is conditioned
mind or unconditioned mind. All I know is that there are functions of mind, and
practice is not about fighting those functions.
A soulful experience honors the energies of mind, whatever they happen
to be. It is the same way as honoring a natural being, such as a tree. When we see a tree, we see a structured flow
with a special design that is uniquely its own. Who are we to impose our
designs on the tree’s design? In that sense, a soulful knowledge of the tree is
something that honors the tree’s unique telos. So there is a special kind of humility
there. No matter how much education I have accumulated, I simply don’t know the
real essence or force of a living being’s energies. I cannot experience it
myself. I can only experience what is happening within me at this moment. The
rest is a mystery.
Imagine
what life would be like if we were to regard our closest friends and loved ones
as having deep souls that come from divine sources and mysterious energies. James
Hillman did so in his book The Soul’s
Code. Hillman suggests that all beings have a unique design which, like a
tree, grows downward to touch the earth. The unfolding of a tree is not ‘given’
automatically at birth, but it rather lies in a potential which takes the form
of an acorn. One of the beautiful things about this metaphor is that the soul
is both manifest and potential. But it is never a finished ‘thing’. Everything
we see is just one moment in its great unfolding, and that unfolding is always
unknown to us. We see bits and pieces, but only glimpses of the totality of
what a being is or can become. For Hillman, the goal of soul is to realize
itself in community with other souls. And, to springboard on Hillman’s remark,
I think that the big picture becomes one about realizing interdependence and
the integral aspect of communities. It is impossible for a soul to be nurtured
by itself.
To
close this entry, I want to suggest a set of ideal conditions for nurturing
soulful life and experience. This is not an exhaustive list (Soul, as I
understand it, is a never-ending journey). But it helps me to understand what I
need to do to honor the soul in my own spiritual practice:
1) Soul
should not be confused with temporary feelings, sensations or moods. As I mentioned in my vignette about pain in
meditation, a strong feeling of pain is not the full picture of our being. It
is one part of an unfolding being. By accepting the totality, all the feelings
take an honorable place in the being, rather than dominating the sense of who
we are. And it is also a reminder that other people’s expression of pain is not
a final statement about their souls, no matter how loud their cries or shouts
may be. So we need to go deeper than seeing the emotion to understand its
unfolding meaning in someone’s inner blueprint.
2) Soul
is a kind of unfolding force-field, not a distinct, concrete, fixed ‘thing’.
That is, we honor the structural, dynamic complexity of soul rather than trying
to cage it. Nobody would think that a tree starts and ends as an acorn, but
often we believe that we are limited by who we think we are now. Soul always exists in a paradox of being and
becoming. We are the soul but in another way, the soul is a much bigger design
than our rational consciousness can grasp.
3) Soul
thrives on natural curiosity. Our curiosity about the soul is not about
trying to satisfy a whim, and it is not about trying to fix the world to make
ourselves more controlling of others. Rather, it is more about beholding the
wonder of a being that was never in our control to begin with. The experience of
soul is much like being able to see the uniqueness of a tree, and not asking
the tree to be anything more than what it was designed to do in that moment. An
attitude of surprise and respect is quite useful when encountering this soul.
4) Soul
has its own delicate unfolding. It is not helpful to be too forceful and
imposing upon the unfolding energies of soul, especially when we are taking up
a spiritual practice. A gentle and forgiving softness is needed to understand
soul and allow it to flower.
5)
Soul
thrives on mutual wonder and acceptance. The more I can truly accept the
peculiar energies that make me who I am now, the more I own those energies.
Rogers (1967, p. 304) ,suggests that accepting my emotions means I can be more
tolerant and understanding of those in others. But more importantly, I am not
imposing my emotions on others, expecting them to give me permission to have
those emotions. Rather, I fully accept what I am experiencing, without
demanding that others validate or share my feelings in turn. While it is certainly
wonderful to experience that validation, one no longer requires that from
others.
Again, this is hardly an exhaustive list, but it is intended
to open space for further discussion and exploration of the soul and its place
in spiritual life.
References
Hillman, James (1996), The
Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling. New York, NY: Random House
Miller, John P. (2000), Education
and the Soul: Toward a Spiritual Curriculum. New York, NY: State University
of New York Press.
Rogers, Carl (1967), On
Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable.
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