Spiritual Hitchhiking

I apologize in advance for what may seem like a narcissistic and egocentric posting, and I must state that my goal is to talk about my spiritual path only because I believe - and hope - that it will resonate with the experiences of some readers.

Raised in Spain and educated in a tolerant and enlightened Roman Catholic school of which I have only fond memories, I returned to my native England in the late 1990s where I enrolled at university and studied Literature. The title of my degree was quite generic, English Studies, but it should have been called ‘French Studies’ because the emphasis of the educational curriculum was on studying critical theory and focusing on the works of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Baudrillard, Althusser and Lyotard among many others.

 At first, I was fascinated by this approach to the study of Literature and Humanities because I had already read Nietzsche, Freud, Emil Cioran, the French Existentialists and the American Beats and these erudite Marxist, structuralist and post-structuralist philosophers academically approved my atheism. But perhaps due to an innate rebellion or because I like to go against the grain, it was during this period that I read the Confessions of Saint Augustine and other spiritual readings such as a book on the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Little by little and after experiencing a personal crisis on several fronts of my life, I realized that ‘man does not live by bread alone’ and so my spiritual exploration began.

Zen Buddhism with its emphasis on meditation and its relatively easy-to-digest dogmas for a secularized Westerner was the first stop on my path. The practice of Zazen or Zen meditation had a great impact on me and for a fairly long period I was a member of the Buddhist Society of Pimlico where I practiced Zazen assiduously. I read voraciously about Buddhism, and this combined with my meditation practice helped me to center myself and have a spiritual focus for the first time in my life. My personal problems and my way of seeing the world up to that point had brought me stress, anxiety and perhaps what Churchill called his ‘black dogs’. I was aware that it was necessary to find a new truth that mere intellection had not yet given me, at least not fully. Living without God became synonymous for me with living without hope and when I got married and had the enormous privilege of being a father, I realized that I could not live without hope. 

 I discovered in my "aesthetic and superficial" atheism one of my greatest mistakes: it was an atheism inherited from my generation that I defended tooth and nail without really knowing why, a fashionable atheism that was comfortable but that I had not subjected to rational scrutiny. Of course there is a school of atheism that is intelligent, academic and that finds in positivism and in the philosophy of the 20th century scientific justification for its atheism, but that had not been my personal experience.

If the ideas of Freud, Nietzsche and Marx do not have the relevance today that they once had, Jung's ideas still endure and continue to arouse much popular interest. I think this is due to the fact that Jung does not ignore mysticism or spirituality and accepts that they are an integral part of what it means to be human. One of the great problems of the twentieth century is that spirituality was confused with church and church with religion. In an ideal world they should be the same thing, but we know that this is not the case. Life, the human condition is a mystery and there are questions that have no answer: Can something come from nothing? What turns blood into breast milk? Where do we come from, who are we, where are we going, why are we here? Philosophy and science do not give us satisfactory answers. The mystery that is God needs another language, other cognitive faculties. Reason alone does not work here. We need to use what the Classics called Nous, a term currently used in Orthodox Christian Theology: the ‘eye of the heart’ or the ‘mind of the soul’, that is, that faculty that lies beyond discursive language and that can be awakened through the so-called noetic prayer in the Orthodox tradition and that we can simply call meditation or contemplation. In 2009 I became interested in the Amidist branch of Buddhism (Jodo Shinsu), which is a devotional Buddhism, and then I became interested in the Soto branch of Zen Buddhism and had the enormous privilege of doing a spiritual retreat at Eihei-ji in the Japanese province of Fukui. Eihei-ji is the most important monastery of this tradition, founded by Dogen, who in turn developed Zen Buddhism in Japan after studying in China in the 13th century.

I became a member of the Buddhist Society in 2010 and practiced zazen daily. My ennui, inherited from so much existentialist reading, began to wane and I felt less anxious. The ‘black dogs’ disappeared. I learned to live in the moment or, at least, I learned how important and fundamental it is to live in the moment.  I discovered that the here and now is fundamental, but it was impossible for me to commit myself beyond my daily meditation and even though Zen Buddhism (and Buddhism in general) provides us with superb moral and ethical guidance, it was difficult for me to take that leap of faith and study the Dhampada or the Shobohgenzo with anything other than an academic interest. Zazen helped me to enjoy psychological hygiene, but I found it difficult to take my exploration further, and this was because since I was a child the figure of Jesus had left a deep mark on me and seemed to be calling me from afar. The problem was the cultural baggage that accompanies Christianity and that is often detrimental and a barrier, especially for a person educated in the cultural sensibilities of the 20th century. I found in exoteric Christianity many dogmas and impositions that went against logic and reason and that also seemed to me to be completely out of place in the 21st century. 

I did not identify with Buddhism, but almost by chance I discovered the existence of the World Community for Christian Meditation and the work of the Benedictine monk Laurence Freeman. Here I found a flexible, kind and ecumenical Christianity that did not seek to impose its dogmas by force. The emphasis is on inner work; on praying in our chambers. 

 This international organization was founded by the British Benedictine monk John Main who was sent to India as a missionary in the mid-twentieth century. In India he came into contact with Hinduism and Buddhism and with the meditative practices of the local Hindu monks. It was there that he developed his concept of Christian meditation inspired by the Eastern model and the contemplative tradition of Christianity, using the mantra Maranatha (in Aramaic, 'come God') which is still used today. Of course, John Main's ecclesiastical authorities did not want to hear about these things. But John Main persevered in his project of reinstating this fundamental component of Christianity that is meditation. And although saying that meditation is an essential component of Christianity sounds like a historical falsehood, it is not so. Contemplation and meditation have been a fundamental part of Christianity since the dawn of Christianity, as witnessed by the works of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the Rule of Benedict and the contemplative tradition of Orthodox Christians, as well as the life of Jesus himself and his 40-day retreat in the desert.

The Bible is open to interpretation and that is precisely where its strength lies as a Holy Book. The only problem with all religions is fundamentalism and what Basque writer Javier Otaola so aptly calls “confessional mortgages” that apply a literal version to their reading of the Holy Book. One might think that the interpretation of this world movement of Christian meditation is radical and that it has read what it wanted to read in the Bible to justify itself. But Jesus himself speaks in parables and does not use literal language and with that he leaves us an important precedent. Parables adapt to new needs and interpretations. One of the examples in the Gospel where Jesus exhorts us to the contemplative path and to understand that being is more important than doing is found in Luke 10:38:

At the House of Martha and Mary

38 As Jesus was on his way with his disciples, he came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he said. 40 Martha was overwhelmed by her many tasks. So she came to him and said, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" 41 Jesus answered, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the best, and no one will take it from her." 

 This is almost a mini-example of psychology that invites us to follow Maria's example and focus on what is really important, advice that is perhaps more important today than ever, in an age in which we are incapable of 'being' and where 'doing' indiscriminately seems to be the only way to exist and obtain ontological validity.

In the history of Christianity there are several authors who touch on this subject, such as Origen (186-251), a native of Alexandria, who studied philosophy with Ammonio Sacca, who was Plotinus' tutor. Origen speaks to us of the three paths of Christian life: ethics (where we purge ourselves of vices and acquire virtue, corresponding to the book of Proverbs in the Bible), physics (corresponding to the book of Ecclesiastes, where the need for metaphysics is expressed by its author) and enoptic or divine contemplation (corresponding to the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon). 

The first step is metanoia or change of attitude or positioning, the second step is contemplation "seeing God in all things" and the third step is knowing Christ. These three paths seem very relevant to me today: we cannot expect a person raised in the Western secularism of the 20th century to accept without further ado a whole series of dogmas and impositions that in many cases clash with reason and human rights. It is always necessary that there is a compromise between faith and reason and to know God, we must first know ourselves. Meditation is the method that helps us to observe our thoughts and to subject them to scrutiny. Origen calls praying "prosoche" which means to pay attention in classical Greek. Another parallel with Buddhism where meditation consists of learning to pay attention to the here and now, not to "live" in the past or in the future. The second step is contemplation "to see God in all things" and the third step is to know Christ. These three paths seem very relevant to me today: we cannot expect a person raised in the Western secularism of the 20th century to accept from the start and without further ado a whole series of dogmas and impositions that in many cases clash with reason and human rights. It is always necessary that there is a compromise between faith and reason and to know God, we must first know ourselves. Meditation is the method that helps us to observe our thoughts and to subject them to scrutiny. Origen calls praying "prosoche" which means to pay attention in classical Greek. Another parallel with Buddhism where meditation consists of learning to pay attention to the here and now, not to "live" in the past or in the future.

Throughout history this contemplative and essentially spiritual aspect of Christianity detached from politics and dogma has continued to this day: Hildegard Von Bingen; Meister Eckhart, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Ignatius of Loyola... the anonymous author of the 14th century manuscript "The Cloud of Unknowing"; Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, John Main, Roger Schütz, Laurence Freeman, Pablo D’Ors and many more.

This approach is necessarily linked to a liberal and flexible conception of theology. This movement is returning to Christianity a practical function where praying is meditating, where we seek God within ourselves. Of course, meditation does not require the abandonment of prayer, which is the spiritual practice par excellence of Christianity - Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi - but meditation is a complementary way of praying and of finding the silence from where God can speak to us. 

 Meditation and prayer help us to overcome confessional and interreligious barriers and therefore offer us a path to faith, but to a new, spiritual, inclusive faith adapted to the times in which we live and to the needs of humanity in the 21st century.