Tag Archives: contemplative

Empty

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I’d like to talk about emptiness as a way of perceiving. The writer Gay Watson explores a translation of sunyata—first offered by T. Stcherbatsky—that is far richer than the mere lack that “emptiness” connotes: relativity. All phenomena arise in dependence, or relative to, conditions; or, per one interpretation of quantum theory, they exist solely in relation to being observed. Since, according to this interpretation, our act of perceiving is fundamental to the fabrication of our constructed reality, I wonder, could this be one reason the Buddha included perceiving (samjna) in the five aggregates as an essential constituent of our conscious experience?

The word emptiness tends to bring up an image of a dark abyss, a black hole, and people think, “There’s nothing! It’s all empty.” Or worse yet, “Nothing matters.” But relativity, as this translation suggests, means that what we perceive is relative and relies on our framework of recognition (e.g., biological, evolutionary, cognitive, psychological, and sociocultural). It also depends on all the causes and conditions that have supported its existence.

Nikki Mirghafori, Dreaming Together, Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2023

When I first encountered the Buddhist concept of dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda, in Sanskrit) many years ago, it was one of the things about the philosophy that made immediate sense to me. Of course all things depended upon preceding causes – people aren’t born unless their parents met; they wouldn’t have met without being in the same place at the same time, which in turn relied upon chains of other events and conditions stretching back into a seeming infinity of past time – and of course everything done today has consequences far into a future of which we have only the faintest idea. And this being the case, all things and processes are empty (Śūnyatā) of independent self-existence: everything that is only is relative to something else, and will in itself give rise to conditions which we think of as “the future”.

During the long years that I was more or less involved with the Christian contemplative tradition, this was one of the things that left me constantly slightly uneasy. I knew of nothing that directly – at least in terms of orthodox doctrine – corresponded to Śūnyatā. Deep in the teachings of Meister Eckhart, of course, there is that sense of radical interconnectedness – that we are only what we are as we are related together in God – but that was beyond my pay grade at the time!

As Nikki Mirghafori points out, the relativity within which all phenomena arise is also relative to our own perception of it; there is nothing of which we can speak as if it were what it is except as we perceive it. It doesn’t make sense to think like that. We are ourselves part of the web: things are what they are relative to us, just as we are who we are relative to them. There is nothing else; no thing else. We, and all that is or has been, rest in the open ground, which is no thing at all. What matters is to be still enough to see.

Tao is empty – its use never exhausted.
Bottomless – the origin of all things.

(Tao te Ching, tr. Addis & Lombardo, 1993)

Home again

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We’ve been away in Durham, visiting old haunts, and we’re just beginning to pick up where we left off. In the meantime, some words from Bankei, who always manages to surprise me:

Don’t hate the arising of thoughts or stop the thoughts that do arise. Simply realize that our original mind, right from the start, is beyond thought, so that no matter what, you never get involved with thoughts. Illuminate original mind, and no other understanding is necessary… all you’ve got to do is acknowledge with profound faith and realization that, without your producing a single thought or resorting to any cleverness or shrewdness, everything is individually recognized and distinguished of itself. And all because the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind is unborn and smoothly manages each and every thing.

…that which isn’t concerned with self-power or other-power but transcends them both is what my teaching is about. Isn’t that right? When you listen this way with the Unborn, you transcend whatever there is. And all the rest of your activities are perfectly managed like this with the Unborn too. For the man who functions with the Unborn, whoever he may be, all things are perfectly managed. So, whoever he is, the man of the Unborn isn’t concerned with either self-power or other-power, but transcends them both.

Peter Haskel, Bankei Zen, Translations from the Record of Bankei

Turning the light around

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Turning the Light Around is a simple yet powerful Taoist meditation that you can easily explore on your own. The “light” that’s referenced here is the light of awareness—the very awareness that is aware of these words right now. And turning this light around means withdrawing the focus of awareness from external phenomena and toward progressively more internal phenomena until, eventually, the light of awareness is shining on itself alone, like the sun illuminating only itself.

Here’s how:

1. Instead of paying attention to the sights and sounds of the external world, turn your attention—the light of your awareness—inward to the movement of breath in your body and other physical sensations. With your eyes closed—and preferably sitting in a relatively quiet place—feel the breath and other internal sensations for a couple of minutes.

2. Now, become aware of the awareness that’s doing the noticing (of breath and physical sensation). Shine the light of awareness on awareness itself. Actually, there is just one awareness, like there’s only a single brightness of the sun even as it illuminates itself.

3. Simply rest in this awareness, which is the light of Tao, shining through your human body-mind.

Elizabeth Reninger, Taoism for Beginners

This radically simple but actually profound teaching from Elizabeth Reninger echoes Sam Harris’ basic introduction to Dzogchen (“looking for the one who is looking”, Waking Up, pp.138-140). Harris points out that such teaching is traditionally given by direct instruction from a qualified teacher; but he himself, on the Waking Up app, gives the instruction very clearly and usably in one of his guided meditations as part of the introductory course – this needs absolutely to be taken in sequence – and discusses the consequences for our sense of self in rather greater depth.

Harris points out,

Given this change in my perception of the world, I understand the attractions of traditional spirituality. I also recognize the needless confusion and harm that inevitably arise from the doctrines of faith-based religion. I did not have to believe anything irrational about the universe, or about my place within it, to learn the practice of Dzogchen. I didn’t have to accept Tibetan Buddhist beliefs about karma and rebirth or imagine that Tulku Urgyen or the other meditation masters I met possessed magic powers. And whatever the traditional liabilities of the guru-devotee relationship, I know from direct experience that it is possible to meet a teacher who can deliver the goods.

Waking Up, p.136

Actually following one of these techniques as part of one’s own spiritual practice does however give one great respect for those who insist on the traditional teacher/disciple relationship. Simple as it may appear when explained by Reninger or Harris, it is hard to overstate the profound effect it can have not only on one’s sense of self but on one’s whole perceptual system; on one’s “benign user illusion”, to borrow Daniel Dennett’s term. In my own experience, this can, especially if it occurs concurrently with any other profound spiritual or emotional upheaval, like grief or bereavement, lead to a spiritual crisis that, while it may ultimately be deeply healing, can in the short term be anything from disconcerting through to terrifying. (The parallel with psychedelics here is not lost on me!)

High-octane though I may have made these techniques of radical nonduality sound, they are in themselves utterly simple, and accessible to anyone within the framework of a stable contemplative practice. They are not esoteric, nor are they in any sense unnatural; to recover the direct realisation of one’s fundamental lack of separation from the open ground of being itself – the Tao, Eckhart’s Istigkeit – is the source of unshakeable peace and wholeness. Sitting still, the bright plane of what simply is, and holds all that comes to be, opens out; somehow, it is not other than limitless love itself.

[If anyone has been affected by anything in this post, or merely wants to be prepared, there are hopefully useful links to the Spiritual Crisis Network and other resources on my own advice page on this site.]

Simple presence (republished)

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I was planning this evening to write a post on the radical simplicity of practice, and how it actually doesn’t need most of the religious and organisational trappings that have accumulated, like barnacles on a ship’s hull, over so many years, when it occurred to me that six months ago I had written precisely that post. Here it is again:

—

Achieving or revealing spontaneous presence is not about striving or effort but about relaxing deeply into the natural state of mind. It’s like a river flowing effortlessly down a mountain—there’s no force or control, just a natural movement in harmony with gravity. When we stop trying to control or manipulate our thoughts and experiences, we allow awareness to flow naturally. By simply resting in the present moment, without grasping or pushing away, we recognize that this spontaneous presence is always there, like the river’s flow…

Achieving spontaneous presence is not about adding something new but about recognizing and resting in the innate clarity and awareness that is already there, ever-present, like the sun behind the clouds.

Pema Düddul, ‘Finding Presence: A teaching and practice on the Four Yogas of Dzogchen Semde’ in Tricycle Magazine, October 2024

This teaching carries so many echoes of shikantaza, of what we know of the simple practices of classical Taoism, that it reminds me of the essential plainness that seems to me the truest contemplative practice. I have long felt that the complexity of religiosity, with its rules and rituals and its levels of attainment (whether Christian or Buddhist or whatever else) is – at least for me – the enemy of the contemplative life.

Earlier this year [2024] I wrote:

Words, when it comes to spiritual things, are signs only in the sense we mean when we speak of hints and premonitions as “signs”, not in the sense of street signs, or signs on office doors in a hospital. They are not, by their very nature, precise and prescriptive; it is their very vagueness that allows them to be used at all, for they can do no more than offer us a glimpse into someone else’s experience – a window, if you like, into that which it is to be them.

We risk all manner of missteps when we conflate the term “spirituality” with concepts like religion, or the supernatural; and we risk worse when we consider it intrinsically opposed to science, or to critical thinking.

As I get older, it increasingly seems to me, perhaps counterintuitively, that religion itself only gets in the way of the spiritual life. Doctrine, scripture, tradition: they are beside the point, mere distractions. Elizabeth Reninger: “The only thing that needs to die is our mistaken belief in separation, the habit of seeing our human body-mind as existing separate from the ever-transforming patterns of the cosmos as a whole.”

Stillness, the open awareness of what simply is, would appear to be all that is needed: only to give up all of our effort and striving, and quite plainly and naturally rest in the vast openness of what is – which is all we ever were or could be. It really is that simple.

Quietism, merely

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I have written on several occasions before – most thoroughly perhaps here – about quietism on this blog. But what exactly is it?

Quietism, as a contemplative tendency – it is too diffuse in time and background to be called a movement – is usually described as “that [which], in general, holds that perfection consists in passivity (quiet) of the soul, in the suppression of human effort so that divine action may have full play. Quietistic elements have been discerned in several religious movements, both Christian and non-Christian, through the centuries…” (Britannica)

Quietism, despite having a chequered history among Christians – it was often spoken against as a way of passivity, an accusation levelled at Christian Quietists from the C12 Beguines right through to William Pollard and Francis Frith among nineteenth century Quakers – is a no more than a basic and essential practice of simple unknowing in most schools of contemplative life, from the early Taoists in China,  through the Zen pioneer Dogen’s teaching of shikantaza (just sitting) in thirteenth century Japan, to the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti in the twentieth.

Of course in times of great peril and anxiety such quiet may seem an odd response, but as Andō pointed out in her post I reproduced yesterday, it may be the only true response. Hidden within the darkness and distress there is peace, and the coming light; but it can’t be seen from a place of fear and anger. From the standpoint of a febrile activism it truly appears not to be there. Only in absolute quiet, in an inward listening for the silence between appearances, can we touch the still point of the turning world (Eliot).

In some way that I struggle to explain in words, we deeply need those who, like Andō, have the courage to sit still in silence. To merely wait, hidden, in the “vast and shining presence” (Tara Brach) of what is, is perhaps the single most powerful thing that any of us can do.

Brass rings?

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Following a contemplative path outside of any formal tradition has many benefits, as I have often pointed out here; but it has drawbacks as well. There are pitfalls in the contemplative life that a good teacher would be quick to point out, but which we might struggle to recognise for ourselves. (This is one of the many reasons I so depend upon what I have called contemplative reading.)

One of commonest problems – one that more or less everyone encounters sooner or later, especially if they enlist the aid of psychedelics at any point in their journey – is mistaking spiritual experiences for spiritual realisations. Traleg Kyabgon:

The distinction between spiritual experiences and realizations is continually emphasized in Buddhist thought. If we avoid excessively fixating on our experiences, we will be under less stress in our practice. Without that stress, we will be better able to cope with whatever arises, the possibility of suffering from psychic disturbances will be greatly reduced, and we will notice a significant shift in the fundamental texture of our experience.

There are many accounts in Tibetan Buddhist literature of how spiritual disturbances may arise, but all point to fixation on experiences as the cause. Fixation on our experiences is seen as another variation of fixation on the self.

Kyabgon underlines, of course, how this discernment is embedded in Buddhist teaching. Cynthia Bourgeault puts it from a distinctively Christian perspective:

So here’s a tough one: suppose, going back to that metaphor of boats on the river [thoughts arising during practice], you were suddenly to see amid the flotilla Jesus Christ himself calmly walking toward you on the water, smiling as he reaches forth his hand. The mystical brass ring! What do you do now? Put Centering Prayer on pause and grab it, right?

Wrong. The instructions remain the same. “If you catch yourself thinking, you let the thought go.”

Ouch!

What should we do as solitary contemplatives? It’s impossible to list all the potential missteps on the way, even supposing I were myself aware of them all. I can only reiterate the immense depth of wisdom available in the literature already, not only in books such as I have listed, but online, for instance at Tricycle Magazine (Buddhist) and Contemplative Outreach (Christian) . Serious, attentive reading is an essential part – for me at least – of practice. It really is that important.

Out of great darkness (a reblog)

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The endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light.

— St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul.

For those finding themselves lost in the darkness right now…

Does a seed know darkness, or miss the light, before it even breaks the surface, to grow and bloom?

Hidden in an empty field — ten thousand unborn flowers.

Is it already growing, reaching for the light, already there, hidden, unseen?

Look for yourself, enquire within, turn your attention away from the world, and to the depths of your very being, and you will find the light, masked by this darkness. It is not gone, it is merely hidden behind a veil of disbelief.

Knowing that this is so, reflect on your own seasons of darkness and light, and how they move you, shift you, and so much more is revealed by them.

Hidden in great darkness — great light.

[This is a straightforward reblog: words and image by Andō]

Listening in the silence

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So when you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in. As you listen to the thought, you feel a conscious presence — your deeper self — behind or underneath the thought, as it were. The thought then loses its power over you and quickly subsides, because you are no longer energizing the mind through identification with it. This is the beginning of the end of involuntary and compulsive thinking.

When a thought subsides, you experience a discontinuity in the mental stream — a gap of “no-mind.” At first, the gaps will be short, a few seconds perhaps, but gradually they will become longer. When these gaps occur, you feel a certain stillness and peace inside you. This is the beginning of your natural state of felt oneness with Being, which is usually obscured by the mind. With practice, the sense of stillness and peace will deepen. In fact, there is no end to its depth. You will also feel a subtle emanation of joy arising from deep within: the joy of Being.

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

This inward listening of which Tolle speaks is truly, as he himself says a few pages later, the preliminary state for becoming aware of the present moment as it happens. In his own words,

Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation.

Simply to sit still, listening, is really all we need to do. The arising of thoughts then becomes thinking no longer, but just another appearance in the bright field of open awareness. We can listen to the thoughts bubbling up and falling away, without feeling that we are thinking them, just as we can listen to the cooing of the wood pigeons in the trees across the garden, the rising and falling of traffic sounds, or our own breathing.

Listening is an entirely open attention – undefended, accepting – to what may come. Aside from the strange moments of illumination sometimes hidden within great trauma and shock, there is no other time we are so open to what actually is. It may be the truest state we humans are heir to. And it is important to realise – which is why listening is so powerful a practice – that this is not something we achieve, or do: it is something we allow.

It seems to me that at its heart, all true contemplative practice is a way to this acceptance, as Tara Brach so memorably pointed out; which is why the radically simple ones appear to be the best, whether just sitting (shikantaza), naked intention (Centering Prayer) or some kind of repetitive practice such as hesychasm or the Nembutsu. All of them, when practised faithfully, lead to silence and to listening.

Lost in hope (republished)

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Rereading some of my old posts from the period of the recent pandemic, I was struck by how relevant three of them seemed to our current situations of division and unease. Here is the third of them:

—

Hope, in the conventional sense, is, as we have seen in the last couple of posts here, generally tied to a sense of outcome. We hope something will turn out all right; we hope something else will not happen. Cynthia Bourgeault points out that what she terms mystical hope is not tied in this way. It has a life of its own, “without reference to external circumstances and conditions.”

I have noticed myself that, at least after some years of steady contemplative practice, the experience of what we think of as “loss” – serious accident, illness, bereavement, loss of livelihood, money, or status, for instance – is not accompanied by a loss of hope at the deepest level. Of course, hope in a good outcome is lost – the worst has happened, something is irretrievably broken – but underneath it all there is what feels for all the world like some kind of certainty. Beneath the quicksand is a solid ground, the bedrock of what is. As the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk saw (Habakkuk 3.17-19) though all else fails, at the end there is something more like presence than anything else.

In a long article in Tricycle Magazine, Kurt Spellmeyer reminds us that the Buddha’s illumination came only after the most profound experience of helplessness, when he was so starved and dehydrated that had a passing village girl not brought him rice and milk, he might very well not have lived the night. This, like Habakkuk’s prophecy, may or may not be historical, but it contains as profound a truth: only at the very end of conventional hope, even in our own survival, can we find that which is beyond any result or outcome, beyond any thing whatever.

This brings us, of course, to the thought of our own death. Here is the ultimate helplessness: at the end we shall be bereft of everything, even of the ability to draw the next breath. There will be no more chances, nothing to decide. Richmond Lewis, in a coma from which he was not expected to recover, had a vision of his own death very similar to experiences I have had of being close to physical death, which he memorably described as “dissolv[ing] into light”.

What could this mean? Is it a comforting(?) illusion? An artifact of failing neural circuitry? It isn’t possible, of course, to answer such a question in a way that would satisfy a scientific researcher. We are describing an experience, a “something that it is like to be”, in Thomas Nagel’s words. It does not admit of experimental verification, or if it did, the experimental subject would be in no position to report on the outcome of the experiment! But as an experience, it is as definite and actual as any: far more so than almost any other. But an experience of what?

The nearest expression of it that I can find is that it is an experience of absolute unknowing, of pure isness.

Tara Brach writes, of “the open, wakeful emptiness of awareness”:

[W]hen we look within, there is no entity, no mind-substance, no self, no thing we can identify. There is just awareness—open empty awareness. We can’t locate any center, nor can we find an edge to our experience. Unless we anchor ourselves again in thoughts, or grasp after desired sensations or feelings, we have nowhere to stand, no firm ground. This can be disconcerting, scary, incredibly mysterious. While there may be a profusion of activity—sounds, sensations, images—there is no thing to hold on to, no self behind the curtain managing things. This seeing of no thing is what the Tibetan teachers call “the supreme seeing.”

But this emptiness, this “no-thingness,” is not empty of life. Rather, empty awareness is full with presence, alive with knowing. The very nature of awareness is cognizance, a continuous knowing of the stream of experience. In this moment that you are reading, sounds are heard, vibration is felt, form and color are seen. This knowing happens instantaneously, spontaneously. Like a sunlit sky, awareness is radiant in cognizance and boundless enough to contain all life…

With practice, recognizing our natural awareness takes less and less of an effort or sense of doing. Rather than climbing up a hill to get a view, we are learning the art of relaxing back and wakefully inhabiting the whole vista. We look back into awareness and then simply let go into what is seen. We become more at home in awareness than in any story of a self who is falling short or on our way somewhere else. We are at home because we have seen and experienced firsthand the vast and shining presence that is the very source of our being.

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance, Ebury Digital 2012 (pp. 315, 317)

It seems to me that that “vast and shining presence” is not only the light into which we dissolve, but the ground of our being itself – and our death merely the letting go into what is seen…

Hope against hope (republished)

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Rereading some of my old posts from the period of the recent pandemic, I was struck by how relevant three of them seemed to our current situations of division and unease. Here is the second of them, which I realise is more in the nature of a reblog of a reblog!

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I had been intending to write a follow-up to yesterday’s post, Hopeless?, when it occurred to me that I had written just such a post years ago, on my old blog, covering the same subject, using some of the same sources, almost exactly, if you will make allowance for rather more overtly Christian language that I would probably use today. It is worth remembering, in this context, how closely parallel the Jesus Prayer and the Nembutsu are, as I suggested yesterday. Here it is:

—

In her luminous little book Mystical Hope, Cynthia Bourgeault writes of the difference between the mystical hope of her title and the standard, upbeat product that is tied to outcome: “I hope I get the job.” “I hope they have a good time on holiday.” “I hope Jill finds her cat.” “I hope the biopsy is clear…” If we are dependent on “regular hope”, she asks, where does that leave us when it turns out to be cancer, when our friends disappear on their holiday in the Andes?

Bourgeault goes on point out that there seems to be quite another kind of hope “that is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. Beneath the ‘upbeat’ kind of hope that parts the sea and pulls rabbits out of hats, this other hope weaves its way as a quiet, even ironic counterpoint.” She goes on to quote the prophet Habakkuk, who at the end of a long passage of calamity and grief, suddenly breaks into song:

Though the fig tree does not blossom,
   and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails
   and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold
   and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
   I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
   he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
   and makes me tread upon the heights. 

Habakkuk 3.17-19

Here is a hope that in no way depends upon outcomes; a hope that lifts us up in spite of the worst, that leads us, with Job, closer to God the more “hopeless” the circumstances. It can be found too in the writings of William Leddra, Corrie ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Irina Ratushinskaya… But how? Where could such a hope come from, that sings even in the mouth of the furnace?

Cynthia Bourgeault suggests three observations we might make about this seemingly indestructible hope, which she calls mystical hope:

  1. Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.
  2. It has something to do with presence – not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand.
  3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within.

Bourgeault remarks that one more quality might be added to the characteristics of mystical hope: that it is in some sense atemporal – out of time. “For some reason or another,” she says, “the experience pulls us out of the linear stream of hours and days… and imbues the moment we are actually in with an unexpected vividness and fullness. It is as if we had been transported, for the duration, into a wider field of presence, a direct encounter with Being itself.”

Thomas Merton (whom Cynthia Bourgeault also quotes here) writes:

At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

As Cynthia Bourgeault recognises, this awareness, whether sudden or gradual, of the “last, irreducible, secret center of the heart where God alone penetrates” (Mansur al-Hallaj) may come out of a clear blue sky as well as out of the storm. But perhaps I might be permitted to make a small observation from my own experience: it seems to be in times of absolute inner poverty, when almost all worldly satisfactions and securities have been withdrawn by pain and circumstance, when realistically there is no hope at all of the upbeat variety left, that these moments of clarity and presence most often manifest. Perhaps this is the sheer mercy of God coming to us when there is nothing else left to us, but there does seem to be one other factor involved here, and to me it seems to be crucial to understand this. Regular, faithful practice appears to be in some way essential. Now please hear me: I am not saying that practice will put us in control of these moments of illumination – they are pure grace – nor that practice will somehow bring them about. But practice will open our hearts to their possibility; it will dim the incessant clamour of thought and grasping, to the point where we can glimpse the initial glimmer of that inner light, and stand still and watch.

Another point occurs to me. If we look at what I have just written about inner poverty, and the lack of satisfaction and security, and about pain and straitened circumstances, one has almost a recipe for classical asceticism, for hair shirts, hunger and scourging, for enforced celibacy and for the enclosed life. This is, it seems to me, to misunderstand the mercy of God. It may very well be that God grants to those who have nothing else to look forward to but pain and lack, these radiant glimpses of glory, but to attempt to force God’s hand by artificially producing the external conditions of divorce, disability or the concentration camp seems to me to be foolishness, to put it as charitably as I am able. But practice, the “white martyrdom” of faithful and unremitting prayer, is another matter entirely, one where the Jesus Prayer, “hallowed by two millennia of Christian practice… consistently singled out… as the most powerful prayer a Christian can pray” (Bourgeault, op cit.), seems perfectly fitted to our path, not only as a means of hesychasm, of stilling the heart, but simply as a prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

——

I wrote the above text at a time when I was beginning to be seriously ill with a heart problem, and it seemed to me to be as clear an answer to my own questions as I could find. I would still stand by it today. Hope lies in the emptying of self, the abandonment of “regular hope” in the “objectless awareness” (Bourgeault) of contemplation. Perhaps Pema Chödrön (see her passage quoted in Hopeless?) has a point after all.