Good Morning Everyone,
“Spiritual” is a word commonly associated with religous belief and practice. I often say, from my friend Claude Anshin Thomas, Zen is a disciplined spiritual practice. Often people will refer to themselves not as “religious,” but as “spiritual.” In a class I taught for several semesters at the Academy for Jewish Learning, I used a text entitled, Jewish Spirituality, and most students seemed more comfortable with this reference to themselves than as religious people. Because Zen is often not thought of as a religion, it is usually relegated to the “Eastern Philosophy” sections or the “New Age” sections in bookstores, likewise in people’s minds. Clearly, Zen is not something we can easily put in a box, thank goodness.
What does it mean when we use the term, “spiritual”? Especially when posing it as a counter-point to “religious”? Our friend, Brad Warner, goes to lengths in his books, especially, “Sex, Sin, and Zen” to distance Zen from “spirituality” altogether casting spirituality as an idealism. He writes, “It (spirituality)takes the view that the spiritual world, the world of ideas, imagination, and mental formations, is the true reality. Matter is regarded as secondary at best or sometimes non-existent. We are spirits trapped inside bodies…” (p. 13).
In my copy of his book I scribbled in pencil a note, “vocabulary problem” suggesting to myself that we often have a rather narrow view of some words, this one in particular. Let’s talk about this.
Spirituality comes from the root, “spiritus” or breath. Now, let’s say we are standing in front of the Grand Canyon as the sun rises. The visual image, no, the total visceral package, takes or breath away. Then we analyze: 1. “Materialism:” this is a way we have of describing the literal, material, aspects of light striking rocks, impacting our eyes, being interpreted by our brains, and uttering, “Wow!” We try to describe the breath-taking “Wow” and get caught in 2., “idealism.” All of which draws our attention from the actual, direct experience of spiritus. Rudolf Otto, a religious scholar, once wrote a book called, “The Idea of the Holy.” In it he describes this experience and calls it “mysterious tremendum.”
The thing is, we really do not have language for our direct experience of the power of the universe. And the language we do have takes us into the worlds of philosophical discourse and away from the experience of “Wow!”
I think it is a good idea for us to stick with the experience itself, though. It is that total sensation of breath-taking power that is the thing to stay with. In the Bible, it is said God spoke and through his breath the world was created. When we sit outside and the wind moves across our face and through the trees, we could say we experience his breath. The Hebrew word for “spirit” in this context is “ruach” which means breath or wind. The framers of the bible, much like we, did not know what to do with these experiences, sitting as they did, outside under the stars witnessing and experiencing the wonders of the natural world. So, quite naturally, they, as we, thought about their experience, framed it in words, and made wonderful art, literature, philosophies, and even religions, out of their ideas.
Zen, on the other hand, asks us (in my opinion) to go back to the root of the word, spiritus, and it is in the root of the word’s sense, that I argue Zen is a spiritual practice. Our practice is rooted in the breath and our experience of ourselves in the breath without recourse to words.
Zen is not “spiritual” in the sense of soul or disembodied spirits or other ideas about the breath or the so-called vital force or energy supporting life. Zen is rooted in the spirit itself, that which comes before the thought of spirit, the breath. The breath in its actual direct experience. To touch this in a deep and abiding way, we must practice. Hence, a disciplined, spiritual practice. Through this we can begin to see how our breath is connected to everything. It is revealed in how we experience the touch of a cup of coffee, the touch of the keys on our fingertips, the experience of anxiety, joy, sorrow. Our breath is our touchstone and this is why we pay close attention to it.
Be well.
“Spiritual” is a word commonly associated with religous belief and practice. I often say, from my friend Claude Anshin Thomas, Zen is a disciplined spiritual practice. Often people will refer to themselves not as “religious,” but as “spiritual.” In a class I taught for several semesters at the Academy for Jewish Learning, I used a text entitled, Jewish Spirituality, and most students seemed more comfortable with this reference to themselves than as religious people. Because Zen is often not thought of as a religion, it is usually relegated to the “Eastern Philosophy” sections or the “New Age” sections in bookstores, likewise in people’s minds. Clearly, Zen is not something we can easily put in a box, thank goodness.
What does it mean when we use the term, “spiritual”? Especially when posing it as a counter-point to “religious”? Our friend, Brad Warner, goes to lengths in his books, especially, “Sex, Sin, and Zen” to distance Zen from “spirituality” altogether casting spirituality as an idealism. He writes, “It (spirituality)takes the view that the spiritual world, the world of ideas, imagination, and mental formations, is the true reality. Matter is regarded as secondary at best or sometimes non-existent. We are spirits trapped inside bodies…” (p. 13).
In my copy of his book I scribbled in pencil a note, “vocabulary problem” suggesting to myself that we often have a rather narrow view of some words, this one in particular. Let’s talk about this.
Spirituality comes from the root, “spiritus” or breath. Now, let’s say we are standing in front of the Grand Canyon as the sun rises. The visual image, no, the total visceral package, takes or breath away. Then we analyze: 1. “Materialism:” this is a way we have of describing the literal, material, aspects of light striking rocks, impacting our eyes, being interpreted by our brains, and uttering, “Wow!” We try to describe the breath-taking “Wow” and get caught in 2., “idealism.” All of which draws our attention from the actual, direct experience of spiritus. Rudolf Otto, a religious scholar, once wrote a book called, “The Idea of the Holy.” In it he describes this experience and calls it “mysterious tremendum.”
The thing is, we really do not have language for our direct experience of the power of the universe. And the language we do have takes us into the worlds of philosophical discourse and away from the experience of “Wow!”
I think it is a good idea for us to stick with the experience itself, though. It is that total sensation of breath-taking power that is the thing to stay with. In the Bible, it is said God spoke and through his breath the world was created. When we sit outside and the wind moves across our face and through the trees, we could say we experience his breath. The Hebrew word for “spirit” in this context is “ruach” which means breath or wind. The framers of the bible, much like we, did not know what to do with these experiences, sitting as they did, outside under the stars witnessing and experiencing the wonders of the natural world. So, quite naturally, they, as we, thought about their experience, framed it in words, and made wonderful art, literature, philosophies, and even religions, out of their ideas.
Zen, on the other hand, asks us (in my opinion) to go back to the root of the word, spiritus, and it is in the root of the word’s sense, that I argue Zen is a spiritual practice. Our practice is rooted in the breath and our experience of ourselves in the breath without recourse to words.
Zen is not “spiritual” in the sense of soul or disembodied spirits or other ideas about the breath or the so-called vital force or energy supporting life. Zen is rooted in the spirit itself, that which comes before the thought of spirit, the breath. The breath in its actual direct experience. To touch this in a deep and abiding way, we must practice. Hence, a disciplined, spiritual practice. Through this we can begin to see how our breath is connected to everything. It is revealed in how we experience the touch of a cup of coffee, the touch of the keys on our fingertips, the experience of anxiety, joy, sorrow. Our breath is our touchstone and this is why we pay close attention to it.
Be well.
No comments:
Post a Comment