The Mundane Way

After reading the day's prayers and scripture selections from my small copy of Magnificat  magazine the other day, I looked out from my office into the school library and was momentarily stunned by the fact of God's presence. Not that I felt anything directly, but I was struck by the truth that God was there--in that room, that building, at that moment. Through my doorway I saw the beat-up computers and the tiled ceiling strung with orange lights for Halloween. For the moment there were no students, and somehow their absence enhanced my sense of the Presence that filled the room--filled and embraced it at the same time, even though no one was there to be filled and embraced by it. This Presence, I realized, suffuses the room day after day, pouring itself moment by moment into every painted cinder block in the wall, every wooden chair, every book standing on the old shelves, every pixel on every scratched and smudged computer screen. This ordinary room blazes with glory. How ve

Now that it is fall I have been opening a window in my meditation corner in the morning. With the blinds up and the window cracked, the dark seeps in with the cool air, along with the stirring sounds of the approaching dawn. One morning, a s I sat on my meditation bench, eyes closed, knees on the floor, I heard a smallish creature trot by just below the open window. In spring or summer I would likely not have heard anything, but with a blanket of brown leaves on the ground, the nimble feet made a light crunching sound on their way through the yard. The animal's gait was too rhythmic for a squirrel's distinct intermittent patter, which is often followed by a sharp rattle as it scurries up the chain link fence or scratches its way around the grooved bark of an oak tree. Nor was the passing animal loud or loping enough to be a loose dog, common as those are in the neighborhood. Neither was it a bird, hopping about and kicking up leaves to get at the bugs and worms in the grass.

Mainstream American culture is addicted to security, convenience and comfort. Ads of all kinds bombard us endlessly, promising products and services that will please, excite, satisfy, comfort or reassure us just the way we like. In short, they're selling a fantasy. Life is not always comfortable, secure or convenient. It is often messy, uncertain, fragile, confusing and unpredictable. What is the cost of our dependence on comfort, security and convenience? In addition to the strain on our wallets, what is it costing the earth, our bodies, our communities, our souls? I don't want to get extreme about this, but it might not hurt to allow myself to experience a bit of discomfort or to live with a minor inconvenience rather than buy something to "fix" it. If c onsumerism is the belief that the solution to every problem or the fulfillment of every need ends with a purchase, I could try instead to imagine solutions and satisfactions that don't involve acquiring anot

I think very young children children know much more of Truth in a much more immediate way than adults can fathom. They can't tell us about it, of course, but not because their vocabulary or linguistic development are lacking. It's because there are no words with which to tell such a thing. Even those rare souls who have glimpsed Truth as grown men and women are ultimately at a loss to convey what they've seen, though many have tried and I'm grateful for their efforts. The Truth as seen by children and mystics cannot be described fully; it can only be experienced fully. So say those who have had the experience, anyway. I wouldn't know. What a child knows intuitively, the youth slowly forgets, and the adult must work tirelessly for the rest of his life to have even a faint hope of recovering it.

The growing awareness of one's imperfection that comes with spiritual progress is not a shame-filled experience, but a pure, humble and healing awareness. It comes as we begin to glimpse, very faintly, the vastness of divine love, the depths of peace, the unshakable faith of those precious few souls who know God face to face. In these glimpses, we realize that the perfection to which we are called is so far from our current state that to feel ashamed seems silly. The task is so nearly impossible that it's a wonder we're on the path at all.

I am drawn to the idea that I may be "used" by God in many ways of which I am unaware. This possibility regularly quells the ego-driven notion that I should be doing something "special" or more "spiritual" than what I'm already doing in my daily life. Instead of getting up in the middle of the night with my young daughter, or changing the oil in our family's cars, or bringing home enough money to allow my wife to stay home with our children, I should (so my ego says) be volunteering at a homeless shelter, leading a meditation retreat or protesting mountain top removal. Of course any of these things have their place and they all meet real needs, but I'm not sure they are more important, more spiritual or more meritorious than the other activities. I don't think God does the same kind of spiritual accounting that I do. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that the "God works in mysterious ways" principle can be a cop out. God will use

“If you die a little bit every day of your life, you won’t have too much to worry about on your final day.” Fenelon Die before you die. I read that somewhere a while back. Die before you die . Suffer the sloughing off of old thoughts, resentments, fears, calcified guilt. Allow the withering of your self-will, your craving for selfish pleasures large and small, your demands for certainty and comfort beyond what you can reach through faith. Absolute certainty and comfort come only after the ego dies. Pursue the death of the ego, but not fanatically. Keep in step with God, whose pace will seem slow at times. When it does, that is good. It means you are allowing him to carry you. Imagine a small child walking beside her father. Though the father walks slowly, the child must hurry to keep up. But if he picks her up, she no longer seems to be moving quickly, though her rate of progress has not changed. If you try to outpace God by walking on your own, you will tire out and may lose your

“One should not reason too much; it is enough if one loves the Lotus Feet of the Mother.” Ramakrishna This hits me today. I was just thinking (there I go again!) about how I have such trouble keeping my attention on the mantram whenever I try to repeat it. I believe part of the reason is I start thinking about the mantram: how important it is to repeat it regularly, the benefits of doing so, how I might find more opportunities to do it, and so on. Of course, the minute this kind of pondering begins I’ve lost the mantram itself. What’s so damned frustrating is I often don’t even notice that I’m getting pulled away before I’m down the rabbit hole again. Ultimately what drives my distraction is fear. I am afraid, or rather my ego is afraid, of the emptiness, the void into which it seems the mantram will carry me. Absence of thought equals absence of self, and absence of self equals nothingness, a blank. So the reasoning mind sees it. And in a sense it is true, the great ones say. But

"At once the spirit sent him out into the desert." Mark 1:12 This statement immediately follows God's declaration of love for and approval of Jesus after Jesus is baptized by John. Maybe God wanted Jesus to be aware of his favor before he entered the challenging period in the desert. Don't take difficulty as a sign of God's absence or displeasure. It may be just the opposite.

“The situations we struggle with that are the most difficult for us are also the ones in which we need mindfulness the most.” Jon Kabat-Zinn As Eknath Easwaran says frequently in his talks, pain is necessary for growth. In times of difficulty or uncertainty, spiritual practice becomes a lifeline, and if I allow challenging circumstances to drive me deeper into my practice, rather than away from it, I will be making the most of my pain. Someone told me recently something to the effect that it is not getting an answer that does me good but seeking an answer. The desire and the search are what shape my thoughts, my character, my life. This does not mean I need to spend a long time struggling with, pondering or grasping for a solution to a particular problem. It means I am to remain open, curious, unattached, willing to take the next step in the process but equally willing to find the path blocked and to turn in another direction. As one person, describing their way of discerning G

As much as I benefit from having a routine, I seem to benefit just as much from having occasional breaks from the routine. Stepping away from my daily and weekly rounds offers perspective, giving me a broader view of my path and where I might be headed. Without this vantage, it would be extremely difficult to reflect meaningfully on my life and make the needed adjustments.

“...anything beyond need tends to become burdensome. If you have it, you have to take care of it!” Peace Pilgrim Simplicity of living is a worthy goal, but how does one already loaded down with possessions go about it? Perhaps it’s different for each person. Some may be able to rid themselves of most of their stuff without much trouble. Others may need to unburden themselves gradually. What comes to me as I consider Peace Pilgrim’s statement is that the first step may be simply to observe for myself the truth of what she says. Do I see how some of my unnecessary possessions have become a burden, either because of the upkeep they require, the money I spend to hold onto them, or the energy I use fussing over them when they break? In what other ways do my possessions become a burden? How do they weigh me down or cause me trouble that could be avoided if I didn’t have them? What would I stand to gain by giving them up?

This post is a reflection on a poem by Meera, a 16th-century poet and mystic of India. The quality that stands out to me in this poem is devotion. It’s a quality I often envy in other spiritual aspirants, particularly those who have a strong attachment to a particular divine incarnation: Krishna, the Buddha, Jesus. Though I grew up in the Christian tradition, in which personal devotion to Jesus is an essential component, I have not often felt a strong connection to any divine figure. Somewhere in his writings Eknath Easwaran suggests that we abandon the search for our own Divine Ideal and instead place ourselves humbly at the feet of them all, letting one of them choose us instead. I find this advice comforting and have reminded myself of it many times, especially when I feel discouraged about my apparent lack of devotion. Still, it sometimes seems that the Divine Ideals are taking their time making a decision. I can say without hesitation, however, that I am devoted to the pract

“Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him.” Sri Ramakrishna I am comforted and encouraged by the first part of Sri Ramakrishna’s statement. My path, which to me doesn’t seem that unique or strange now, is certainly outside the bounds of what was acceptable in the religious context in which I grew up, and may perhaps still seem strange to many who profess faith in Christianity, particularly in this part of the country. I am continually grateful to have the loving words of great masters like Ramakrishna, Swami Ramdas and my own teacher, Eknath Easwaran, to remind me that there are indeed many paths to God. What is less comforting is the second part of the statement, that one must “sincerely and ardently” desire union with God in order to reach the goal. Despite my strong and increasing commitment to spiritual practice and inner growth, I confess I still lack the deep and all-encompassing yearni

Jesus was not a Christian challenging Jews. He did not come to proclaim that one religion (Judaism) had it wrong and another (Christianity) had it, or would have it, right. Jesus was a Jew challenging Jews. He did not repudiate Judaism but the obsession of many of its members with the formalities and regulations that obscured the religion’s core principles. He sought in part to bring his people’s minds and hearts back to the central message, the whole point, of their religion. In that way, he was much like the Hebrew prophets of old leading right up to John the Baptist, his precursor. Or like the Buddha, who had much to critique about the crust that had accumulated on the Hinduism into which he was born.  If Jesus had come as a Hindu, he would undoubtedly have challenged the caste system, as Gandhi did, particularly its labeling of some members of society “untouchable.” If he were to come today, as a Christian, what would he find displeasing in this religion that bears his name?

“...by the work of contemplative love man will be healed.” The Cloud of Unknowing It is work, there should be no mistake about that. One of my biggest misconceptions about the spiritual life--before I actually started living it--was that it shouldn’t involve much effort. Even prayer, which I understood I should be doing regularly, I didn’t think of as work. What “work” I did conceive to be part of spiritual living was more along the lines of a to-do list: read scripture, attend regular religious services, pray. If I checked these things off the list often enough, I was doing alright. If I didn’t, I wasn’t. I had no idea of what true spiritual work looks like--the work of meditation, for instance, in which I try every day to train my unruly mind to attend to the thoughts I choose. Or the work of forgiveness, that searching, humbling effort to see myself in the one I resent, or at least to see that their hurtful actions come, as mine do, from ignorance or busyness or fatigue and

“It is amazing how many loving desires arise from the spirit of a person who is accustomed to this work.” The Cloud of Unknowing In my best and truest moments what I most want is to grow more and more “accustomed to this work” of loving, of peacemaking, of being a small reflection of God’s light. It is not glamorous work; in fact, it is often barely noticeable except by a few of those who benefit by it. More challenging, I often don’t notice it myself, though I am the one doing it (or trying to). Only God can see the whole of this lifework of sanctification, and that must be for the best. If I were aware of the process any more than I am now, I would likely be as overwhelmed by my failures and missed opportunities as I would be falsely assured by my successes. Better for now to walk by faith and not by sight.

I began meditating in the summer of 2008, when I was 23. I had had no prior experience of meditation, but I was eager to deepen my spiritual awareness. The previous eighteen months of my life had been some of the most spiritually and emotionally difficult I'd ever known. Depression had often drained my passion for life during that year and a half, and my recent marriage had already suffered some heavy blows, due largely to my own seemingly intractable selfish attitudes and behavior. Fortunately, during the spring of 2008 I experienced a powerful breakthrough as a result of some work I had done with a spiritually-focused group dealing with addictions, work that paved the way for my introduction to meditation. One day, a friend in the group who knew I was seeking a method of meditation suggested I read a book by someone named Eknath Easwaran . The book was called, simply, Passage Meditation , and I ordered it online soon after my friend mentioned it to me. When it arrived, I opened

This post is a reflection on the article " The Need for a Teacher ," by Eknath Easwaran. What struck me most in Easwaran's article is his injunction to go slow and to allow my body, mind and will to develop the strength and resiliency necessary to continue to progress on the spiritual path, even as the challenges increase. I tend to be impatient with the pace of my progress, so I’m grateful for Easwaran’s reminder that trying to force or rush spiritual growth is dangerous. In practice, going slow might mean taking incremental steps in, for example, training the  senses. Rather than giving up coffee  altogether, for instance, I might try drinking a bit  less than I’m used to. Or, for an even smaller but still effective experiment, I could  choose a different mug, leaving my preferred one in the cupboard for another day. I have  tried both of these options recently, and have found I was able to loosen up my  preferences just a bit. As Easwaran teaches, juggling my

Jesus is as inscrutable as any enlightened sage. Indeed, he is as inscrutable as God himself. As he says in  John’s gospel, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (3:8). The Buddha says something remarkably similar in the Dhammapada: “Like the flight of birds in the sky, the path of the selfless is hard to follow” (7:92). And the Hebrew prophet Isaiah says plainly, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (55:8-9). Any attempt to explain the whole of Jesus, as unavoidable as such explanations may seem to the religiously minded (among whom I count myself), is doomed from the start. You might as well try to explain a squirrel, or a beech tree, or a raindrop. And yet the difference between Jesu

I read last night that Easwaran ’s devotion to his own spiritual teacher, his grandmother, led him later in life to a devotion to Sri Krishna, the divine incarnation his grandmother worshiped. He described the process as a kind of inheritance his grandmother passed on to him through her own devotion to Krishna. I find hope in this, since I have not felt much devotion to the great incarnations (Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, etc.) but am beginning to feel a flicker of devotion to Easwaran himself. I think I’ve felt hesitant to devote myself to a teacher so contemporary and down-to-earth as Easwaran, but obviously neither of those qualities precludes deep spiritual awareness. Another reason for my hesitance to allow myself to become a devotee of Easwaran is that he himself encouraged his students to direct their ardor toward one of the classic divine figures. Lastly, and this may be the heart of it, it just feels wrong to express religious devotion to any being other than a “recognized” incarna

“Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold.” Peace Pilgrim I often get to feeling dissatisfied and wistful, wishing I could give more of my time and resources to “important” work--serving the homeless or other marginalized people, agitating for changes in America’s climate policy, or some other CAUSE. These are not necessarily wrong desires, and in fact if I hold them lightly and humbly they may grow into helpful actions. But even if they did, that wouldn’t necessarily mean I had experienced any lasting inner change. I could give every minute to helping the homeless or the sick and still be fearful and angry. In that case, in spite of my outward actions I would still be adding to the world’s suffering. The far more difficult and less glamorous work of inner growth can be undertaken in almost any circumstance, and if my desire to relieve suffering is true, I will try every day to chip off a little more of my sel

The other day at a 12-Step meeting I heard someone say that for him God was like a radio signal, ever-present and available to anyone ready to receive him. He said his job was to “always be building a better antenna.” This concept of God works for me on at least a couple levels. First: God is ever-present but not always perceived. Yes, God is everywhere, but that doesn’t mean I will necessarily encounter him. I must prepare myself for the encounter (build a better antenna) through prayer and mediation, service, silence, and anything else that bucks my self-will. Second: radio waves are transmitted from somewhere. For the spiritual seeker, the counterparts to the giant transmission towers are the world’s saints and sages. Through their wisdom and deep insight, these luminous figures transmit the sometimes elusive meaning of the scriptures as well as their own intimate experience of the mystery of God. When we read and reflect on their lives, we point our antennas toward the source o

“...stay alert and attentive to the way you are progressing in your vocation.” The Cloud of Unknowing Do I consider the spiritual life to be my vocation? If not, why not? It is certainly the most important work I do in my daily life, and my success in that work bears directly on my success in all other areas of living. How do I know if I am progressing in this vocation? Eknath Easwaran says plainly that the measure of spiritual success is growth in love. Not psychic visions, or healing powers, or material wealth, or anything else but an increasing desire and ability to consider and work for the welfare of all in my every act and thought. Maybe no one has stated this truth more eloquently than St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” How do I know if I am growing in love? That’s a question worth sitting w

I heard a short sermon once in which the preacher said something to the effect that eternal life was equivalent to knowing God. It brought to mind what John says in his first epistle to the early Christian church: the proof that we know God is that we love, and love of God is best demonstrated in love for others (I John 4:7-12; 19-21). My takeaway from all this was: eternal life = knowing God = loving God = loving others. I wrote the preacher after the service to share my thoughts. He agreed with my equation and added an important caveat. Since we are all of us creatures of our culture, he said, we tend to understand love the way our culture presents it, which doesn’t necessarily jibe with the reality of the divine love that Jesus--or, I would add, the Buddha, or Sri Ramakrishna, or Swami Ramdas, or Peace Pilgrim--embodied. Because of these competing and often contradictory concepts of love, it is essential that we maintain a healthy self-criticism and not blithely assume that what w