Skip to main content

Faith and Practice

“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 they also talk of fullness, of wholeness, of union, and of abiding joy. In other words, words are inadequate. The thing must be experienced. But without long and arduous practice, the experience will never come. And in the face of existential fear, keeping up the practice can feel Sisyphean. This is where faith is essential, I am beginning to see. Faith in the words of the teacher, in the lives and testimonies of the saints and mystics. Faith can carry me far beyond reason, deep into the abyss from which the intellect recoils. I believe it is only through faith that I can hope to grow in the grip of doubt.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Casual Holiness

About a year ago I was on my way into a church to attend a meeting. As I approached the door I passed a woman sitting on a red, overturned milk crate near the door. She had dark hair, and she was leaning forward, her bottom coming off the crate, her hands reaching just off the edge of the sidewalk and toward the asphalt of the parking lot. She appeared to be slowly falling forward, tumbling off the crate in slow motion. I had stopped to hold the door for a man who was entering the church just behind me, and as I watched, he approached the woman on the crate. "Here's two of them," he said, handing down a carton of Marlboro Light 100s. "Have a good day." I realized then what the man with the Marlboros must have recognized immediately: the woman had no doubt been reaching for a discarded cigarette butt that someone had tossed down on their way into the church. I felt awed by the man's simple act of compassion. Without the slightest trace of judgement or distast
2 comments
Read more

A Sabbath Day

I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today,           nearly black knobby fruits,           their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted,           dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed,           spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful,           stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths,           purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled,           and returning from that failed trip           we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.
1 comment
Read more

Books That Have Rescued My Faith

I am reading a moving book by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest and founder of Homeboy Industries, which works to educate and employ gang members in Los Angeles. Boyle’s book, Tattoos on the Heart , is a beautiful testament to what the kingdom of God can look like in the twenty-first century. In the book, Boyle sprinkles his heartful stories with quotes from various Christian writers. Reading these quotes, all gathered in one place and in such a spiritually powerful context, I realized how much these same writers have done to rescue Christian faith for me, sometimes gently and sometimes forcefully retrieving it from the confines of the fundamentalist package in which I originally received it and giving it new life and meaning. Yesterday, as I read another of these quotes from Boyle’s book, a surge of gratitude welled up in my chest. I lifted my face and thanked God for these beloved teachers, without whom my relationship with the religion of my childhood, of my culture, would
Post a Comment
Read more