THE LITERARY MINDFULNESS OF T S ELIOT

‘We must be still and still moving.’
T S Eliot, ‘East Coker’ (from Four Quartets).

Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (1888-1965)

Whenever I am in London—and it is quite often these days as my wife and I have a son living and working there—I usually stay in South Kensington, very close to Gloucester Road Tube station. I am familiar with the area and its hotels, shops, restaurants and churches. 

One such church, where my wife and I have attended services several times, is St Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road. It’s a traditional Anglo-Catholic parish—‘bells and smells’ Anglicanism, if you will, but I like it. My favourite modern poet T S Eliot, pictured, was a churchwarden there for 25 years.

I first read the poetry of T S Eliot when I was at high school. It was compulsory reading. (In June 1964 Eliot said to the American comedian Groucho Marx, whom he admired, that he [Eliot] had no wish to become compulsory reading.) Anyway, I fell in love with Eliot's poetry almost 50 years ago and I have loved it ever since. How often have I said to myself interiorly these lines from 'The Hollow Men' ...

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. …

... as well as these and other lines from ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’:

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table …

…   …       …

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

…   …       …

St Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road, South Kensington

T S Eliot played a key role in the transition from 19th century romantic poetry to 20th century modernist poetry. Like many writers he explored the nature of time and eternity and, in so doing, one get glimpses of the nature of mindfulness. Now, if you had mentioned the word ‘mindfulness’ to Eliot when he was alive he would probably have asked, ‘What is that? Being mindful of others?’ Be that as it may, mindfulness is explored in his poetry in the context of time and eternity. Take these lines from ‘Burnt Norton’ (No 1 of Four Quartets):

...         …       …

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

...         …       …

Only through time time is conquered.

...         …       …

T S Eliot memorial plaque,
St Stephen's Church,
Gloucester Road, South Kensington

There is indeed a ‘still point’. It is the ‘stillness’ between the inbreath and the outbreath and between one heartbeat and the next. It is palpable and non-palpable. It is a timeless moment and yet it is also a moment of time, or rather a moment in time, as well. The still point involves no actual physical movement forward or backwards—there is just stillness. There is no past and no future but just the eternal now. Everything is contained within the eternal now. All duration—or time—is total and complete in the eternal now. There is an eternal quality about the now. It is forever new. The present moment has its unfolding in the eternal now for it is nothing other than that which presents itself before us in and as the now, which embraces past, present and future. It is in the eternal now that we have our presence. Indeed, the eternal now is omnipresence and we are immersed in it. We live, move and have our be-ing-ness in the eternal now. These ideas are explored in the first few lines of ‘Burnt Norton’:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

…   …       …

Words move, music moves

Only in time; but that which is only living

Can only die. Words, after speech, reach

Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,

Can words or music reach

The stillness, as a Chinese jar still

Moves perpetually in its stillness.

Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,

Not that only, but the co-existence,

Or say that the end precedes the beginning,

And the end and the beginning were always there

Before the beginning and after the end.

And all is always now. …

English Heritage blue plaque,
3 Kensington Court Gardens,
Kensington

Mindfulness, which is the art and practice of being fully present and choicelessly aware in the eternal now, from one moment to the next, involves no words, no speech, no music and no movement. Mindfulness is stillness. There is no judgement or interpretation of the context, internal and external, of one’s moment to moment experience of life. The only movement, ever onwards, is the movement or flux of life itself. In Eliot’s words, ‘all is always now.’ So, forget the 'burnt-out ends of smoky days' ('Preludes'), the 'butt-ends of [your] days and ways" (‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’)—and start living mindfully.

Life may be movement but there is always that ‘still point’ which is to be found everywhere and between one moment and the next. To use a Biblical phrase, the still point is ‘the refreshing’ (cf Is 28:12 [KJV]). Unceasing movement is tiring—even exhausting. We need to find that still point which, paradoxically, can only be found in the midst of the unceasing movement. So, get quiet, calm the body, and feel the stillness—or, as Dr Norman Vincent Peale wrote, ‘Sit still, be silent, let composure creep over you.’ Do you want to be calm? If so, practise calmness. Practise stillness. Practise quietness. Practise silence. You see, the very truth of your be-ing is calmness, stillness, quietness and silence. A good way to start—and finish for that matter—is to sit stil and get the body calm. If the body is calm, your mind will soon be calm. Be still.

Most have heard, sometime or other, these lines from the final stanza of ‘Little Gidding’ (No 4 of Four Quartets):

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

However, the lines that follow take up once again the idea of the still point:

Through the unknown remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning:
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
…   …       …

Gloucester Road Tube station,
Gloucester Road, South Kensington

The stillness between two waves of the sea. The voice of the hidden waterfall. The source of the longest river. Powerful imagery.

Find the stillness within you—indeed, within all things. The still point is to be found everywhere because it is everywhere. Mindfulness, in my humble opinion, is the best way to find that still point. Listen. Observe. Watch. Be alert. Remain choicelessly (that is, non-judgmentally) aware. Be fully present from one moment to the next.

Notes. 

1.    The line, 'Every moment is a fresh beginning,' comes from Eliot's play The Cocktail Party. 

2.   BBC Radio 3 has aired Dear Mr Eliot: When Groucho Met Tom, a musical fantasy woven round the real-life meeting of T S Eliot and Groucho Marx in June 1964 after a three-year correspondence. 

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PRACTISE MINDFULNESS—AND SLEEP WELL!

My favourite comedian Groucho Marx was a lifelong insomniac. He tried most things to help him sleep, but apparently to little avail. ‘I can sleep anywhere but in bed,’ he once exclaimed.

According to a 2015 study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, mindfulness meditation is one of the most powerful tools for improving your sleep ... and the quality of your sleep.

In the study, 49 adults, all of whom reported having sleep troubles prior to being enrolled in the study, were split into two groups. One group was instructed to complete a mindfulness meditation program while the other simply attended sleep education classes which mostly focused on instructing the participants on various ways to improve their sleep habits. Each group participated in their respective programs for six weeks. By the end, the results showed that those who were meditating experienced less insomnia, fatigue, and depression compared to those who weren't practising mindfulness meditation.

The results confirm a 2008 study which demonstrated that wellbeing and mindfulness are positively associated with sleep quality and with a morning circadian preference. Results from a sample of 305 undergraduates revealed positive associations among measures of emotional, psychological, and social well-being, mindfulness, sleep quality and morningness (that is, the characteristic of being most active and alert during the morning).

As I see it, there are two elements of mindfulness that are helpful in dealing with insomnia—choiceless awareness and non-resistance. You can’t sleep? Don’t resist it. Stop fighting against it, for whatever we resist persists. Simply be aware—non-selectively aware—of whatever passes through your mind. Watch it. Observe it. Don’t fight against it. Give those mental movies no power, by being only barely attentive to their content. Let it pass … for it will. And let it go. Try this—and you will be amazed at the difference it makes.

Studies:

Black D S, O’Reilly G A, Olmstead R, Breen E C, and Irwin M R. ‘Mindfulness Meditation and Improvement in Sleep Quality and Daytime Impairment Among Older Adults With Sleep Disturbances: A Randomized Clinical Trial.’ JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(4):494-501. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8081

Howell A J, Digdon N L, Buro K, and Sheptycki A R. ‘Relations among mindfulness, well-being, and sleep.’ (2008) Personality and Individual Differences, 2008;45(8):773-777. doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.08.005

META-ANALYSIS SHOWS ASSOCIATION BETWEEN MINDFULNESS AND RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION

The great American comedian and writer Groucho Marx, pictured, could be serious at times. In his 1959 autobiography Groucho and Me the thrice-married star had this to say about what he referred to as ‘true love’:

I believe … that real love only appears when the early fires of passion have cooled off and the embers just lie there smoldering. This is true love. This relationship has only a bowing acquaintance with sex. Its component parts are patience, forgiveness, mutual understanding and a high tolerance for each other’s faults.

A meta-analysis published in the February 2016 issue of the Journal of Human Sciences and Extension provides empirical evidence that the current literature on mindfulness and relationship satisfaction indicates that more mindful individuals have more satisfying, connected relationships.

The meta-analysis looked at the results of 12 studies, including two mindfulness intervention studies. Overall, mindfulness was shown to enhance relationship connectedness and satisfaction. The authors stated (at pp 96-97):

… [M]indful practices are typically taught as an individual practice. There are, however, mindful practices that have an explicit focus on others, such as loving kindness meditations or aikido communication practices, which focus on caring for others. In addition, mindfulness practice is about noticing many dimensions of the self, including feelings and thoughts related to relationships and interactions.

The results of this meta-analysis further validate the recent efforts to include mindfulness training in relationship education. The authors of the meta-analysis state that future basic and applied research to inform enhanced models of best practices for community education focused on promoting relational health is encouraged.

Study: McGill J, Adler-Baeder F, and Rodriguez P. ‘Mindfully in Love: A Meta-Analysis of the Association Between Mindfulness and Relationship Satisfaction.’ Journal of Human Sciences and Extension. 2016;4(1):89-101. ISSN: 2325-5226 (Print).

Acknowledgment. Groucho and Me, by Groucho Marx. Originally published: New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1959. Copyright © 1959 by Groucho Marx. Copyright renewed © 1987 in the name of Arthur Marx as son. All rights reserved.

HAVING NO DESTINATION, WE ARE NEVER LOST

Having no destination,
I am never lost.

    --Ikkyū.

I am an iconoclast and a heretic. I reject all claims and assertions of supernatural religion and authority. In the words of Thomas Paine, my own mind is my own church. So, it is no surprise that I have a soft spot—no, not that one—for other iconoclasts, heretics and freethinkers. Ikkyū [pictured left] was one such man. He was a 15th century Japanese Zen Buddhist monk. He not only revitalized Zen but also had a profound influence upon the Japanese tea ceremony. 

Now, Zen has always sought to cut through the crap so as to arrive at a direct, immediate and largely intuitive experience of life, but Ikkyū’s radical approach was really something to behold. He was an iconoclast extraordinaire. In any field of any endeavour we need the man or woman who says, ‘But the Emperor has no clothes!’ That is why I’ve always loved the American comedian Groucho Marx, who spent his entire life deflating the pompous, the pretentious and the phony. We need more people like that.

Here’s the second most profound piece of metaphysical wisdom---there is nowhere to go. I’ve told you this story before, but I’ll tell it again. A young man is on his way home. He comes to the banks of a wide, and very deep, river. He finds he is on the ‘wrong’ side of the river. The river is fast flowing, with numerous rapids. There is no bridge or other means available for crossing the river. The young man sees an elderly Buddhist monk standing on the other side of the river, so he yells over to the monk, ‘Oh, wise one, can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?’ The monk ponders for a moment, looks up and down the river, and yells back, ‘My son, you are on the other side.’ Yes, wherever we want to 'go', we are already there. The young man wants to get to the other side of the river, only to be told that he is already on the other side of the river. To reach the other side of the river is to see that this very side here is the other side. When there is no separation in our mind between one side and the other, then in that very moment we are one with the very livingness of life flowing through us and all things. 

The author at a Japanese tea ceremony.

And the first most profound piece of metaphysical wisdom is this. Well, it follows directly from the first. It is this---truth is right where you are. People strive for worldly success and for the approval and admiration of others but those things will not take you away from yourself—not for long, anyway. Truth—also known as reality and life—is right where you are. All we need to do is to see things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. That’s where mindfulness comes in.

Listen to these words from Ikkyū:

Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning -- already gone --
thus should one regard one's self.

The folly and blind hope of supernatural religion is that we are going to live forever in one place or another, with one such place supposedly being more attractive than the other. I do not believe that. We come from dust and to dust we return. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In one sense, we remain part of life’s self-expression—for life cannot other than be. That, as I see it, is the true meaning of those words, ‘The spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ec 12:7), but I am in absolutely no doubt that at the point of death our consciousness as a separate, thinking, feeling individual together with what we call our personality, comes to an abrupt and very final end. If you want to believe otherwise, that is your prerogative. As I see it, we are, in the words of Ikkyū, like ‘vanishing dew’, a ‘passing apparition’, a ‘sudden flash’. In the words of Shakespeare, taken from what is my favourite play of his, The Tempest:

…       …       …       …     We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Ikkyū is, however, saying more than that. He is making a comment about how we should regard ourselves. Most of us take ourselves far too seriously, thinking that we will be remembered long after we are gone. A few of us will live on longer in the memories of others. As George Eliot expressed it in her poem 'The Choir Invisible':

Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues.

That is very sweet sentiment but the plain and simple truth of the matter is this---most of us will be completely forgotten in two or three generations. How's that for a reality check?

Lake Ashi, Kanagawa Prefecture, Honshū, Japan.

Photo taken by the author.

Ikkyū had much to say about so-called sacred texts. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most sacred texts contain some helpful advice on the art of living—along with a lot of unhelpful and divisive nonsense. The task is to separate the wheat from the staff. Listen to what Ikkyū has to say about sacred texts:

Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.

…       …       …       …

I've burnt all the holy pages I used to carry 
but poems flare in my heart.

The concept of ‘original mind’ in Zen is a most important one. Imagine for a moment that you had not been brought up in the faith or belief system of your parents or particular culture. Indeed, imagine that you had not been inculcated in any way to believe this or that about life. You would then have a mind which was entirely culturally free and unconditioned. Such is the nature of your ‘original mind’. Is it possible to have such a mind today? Well, people such as J. Krishnamurti say that it is indeed possible for the mind to decondition itself entirely. For my part, I am still working on the task.

I love what Ikkyū has to say about poetry. My late father used to say that there was more wisdom in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám than in The Bible. Maybe. Maybe not. I think Dad was telling me more about what he didn’t or couldn’t believe as opposed to which work contained more wisdom. After all, The Bible contains some great poetry as well, and the Book of Ecclesiastes has a similar tone to much of its writing as the Rubáiyát, although the latter does seem to be promoting a more earthy approach to life and its fleeting pleasures.

Take a good look at the religious fanatic. It does not matter which religion he or she is fanatical about. The fanatic has completely lost their original mind. He or she can no longer see and appreciate things as they really are. Everything gets filtered through, and distorted by, their belief system. Yes, the same thing can happen to the atheist and nonbeliever. However, Ikkyū is making the point that any study of sacred or spiritual books, as well as meditative practices, can result in your losing your original mind. One good way of deconditioning your mind, and returning bit by bit to your original mind, is to spend more time communing with nature. That is very good advice.

Well, I haven’t burnt all the ‘holy pages’ in my home library. There are still hundreds and hundreds of books on religion and spirituality, as well as on many other subjects, on my bookshelves. However, I have burnt something, and that something is this---the mindset that says, ‘This, you must believe’, ‘The Bible says …’, ‘God has spoken His final word in …’, and ‘There is only one way … .’

You are never lost when you know the way home. And where is ‘home’? Well, it is right here, where you are now. Look around you. Look within you. What do you see? What do you feel? It is life. You are an expression of the spirit of life. That life did not begin with your birth. It will not end with your death. Recover your original mind, and start seeing and experiencing things as they really are.

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