It is a hard thing to talk about spiritual progress, the work, or anything like that. However, I do think it important to try to convey things, even when the expression is imperfect. The idea of 'progress' as is usually understood in the secular world, is often conflated with acquisition, getting more; more experience, more knowledge, more sensitivity, or on a coarser level, more grades and titles, or advancement along an imaginary spiritual path where one compares oneself to a standard, "can I do this practice?", "have I mastered this technique?", "have I 'attained' xyz experience?" or worse yet, we use this as a measuring rod to compare ourselves with others.
I find that old habits die hard. Though actively engaged in some sort of practice most of the time. Daily zazen, reading sacred texts, or whatever it may be, there is always that niggling urge to obtain something, often this entails some piece of knowledge, but as often as not it is something material. It could be a book, or a robe, a tool of some sort that, or expertise in a practice, link to a lineage or spiritual tradition, along with the badges to prove it, for example the insignia of a particular order. If I could just acquire it, would bring value to my inner life, validation, somehow make me more real, at least in the eyes of those susceptible to such things.
We might call this spiritual consumerism. It is certainly something I am prey to from time to time, a trap which, while I am aware of it, fall into occasionally nonetheless, and worse, I sometimes seek it out! My taste for nice things, high quality items, means that I am often tempted to buy this or that item, and there is always the impulse to affiliate with this or that group, identify as something, and have the badge to prove it. I want to be able to officially call myself an initiate, or a Buddhist, or a contemplative, even though I know that these are just labels. I feel that this is another expression of the sort of spirit that causes people to move from group to group, religion to religion, not just spiritual tourists, but spiritual consumers looking for the next thing.
This is at bottom, no different from the sort of consumerism that makes a person need to buy the latest smart phone, the latest car, a bigger house, or whatever. Though there is commonly a tendency to wish to show these things off to others, more deeply they fulfill a sort of self regard, a spiritual narcissism. How would I look in this robe, do I want to be seen reading this book, I will feel fulfilled if I could only regard myself as this or that sort of person....and believe it!
Such knowledge makes me realise how far from the path of the wise I really am; not even a beginner, really I am just out smelling the flowers, a spiritual tourist, a deer grazing greedily in a forest, even half aware that a tiger stalks. I don't have time, I need to get up and moving, but just...one...more...bite.
This is "going wider" making ourselves bigger, regarding ourselves and trying to make ourselves more real, more important, in the mistaken belief that this is the path. On the other hand, experience shows that no matter what we grasp at, however we present ourselves, everything we have and are is constantly passing away. This world and everything in it, in a sense, has already passed. The moment we know a thing it is in the past, and we continue to flow down the river of time in a boat (the body) which is itself in the process of fragmenting. There is nothing to hold on to.
The Christian mystics refer often to interior poverty, simplicity, and things which are very much out of favour these days when we still like to believe that we can have it all. This sentiment is common to other traditions; Buddhism in particular, and monasticism in most societies has an element of voluntary poverty, of renunciation. I find that as things go on, even while I still fall prey to spiritual narcissism, there is a sort of appreciation of what these old mystics were saying. While the call to "go wider" is ever present, there is also the silent call, dry and unattractive, but quietly insistent, deeper and richer, like mature wine left long bottled in a cool cellar, to "go deeper", go further into each moment, even amongst my narcissism and greed, go deeper.
Even while the ego struggles with meaning, or the lack of it, as time wears on and the appreciation of the poverty of that greed, that narcissism comes ever to the fore and shows me the vanity of much of what I do. Renunciation becomes less of a choice, not an option as such, but an acceptance of my natural state, the acceptance of the human condition. Aware of the shackles that bind, like a vine that grows tighter as I struggle, a thirst that increases as I drink, as Liber 65 would say.
If I could learn to be silent, to withdraw from the spiritual marketplace as much as the temporal, and instead of casting about for this or that thing, to cease 'looking for a sign', but to sit quietly in my room. To sit on my inner silence like a bird nursing an egg, then I might actually learn something worth knowing.
No comments:
Post a Comment