MINDFULNESS ACCORDING TO TIME

It’s about TIME---no pun intended of course.

The February 3, 2014 issue of TIME magazine has a cover story entitled ‘The Mindful Revolution’---an apt title if ever there was.

You see, if and when you commit yourself to the regular, daily, and moment-to-moment practice of mindfulness---and I hope you do---you do indeed experience a revolution of sorts. The nature of that revolution is not unlike that word ‘repentance’ which, as any Christian minister (especially one of the evangelical kind) will tell you, involves both a turning away (from oneself and the ‘evil spirit’ of separateness, that is, sin, to use a Biblical word)  and a turning to or toward (a Power-not-oneself, that is God). Repentance also involves a profound change of heart (that is, mind and perception) and, of course, behaviour.

Now, how, you may ask, is mindfulness like repentance? Are you saying mindfulness is religious, even Christian? No, I am certainly not saying that. As I have often said you don't need to be at all religious to practise mindfulness. Mindfulness is not religion. Got that? Anyone can practise mindfulness, no matter what their religion or lack of religion. Now, back to the first question, namely, how mindfulness is like repentance. Well, mindfulness involves, firstly, a turning away from resistance and separation in the forms of labelling, analyzing, judging, and condemning ‘things’ as they happen (that is, unfold in consciousness from one moment to the next), and secondly, a turning to or toward the reality of the actual content (both internal and external) of the present moment---in all its directness and immediacy. 

You see, mindfulness is not a retreat or withdrawal from reality. Not at all. Mindfulness is a full-frontal engagement with reality, that is, life as it unfolds from moment to moment---and that is truly a revolutionary experience if ever there was one.

Thank you, TIME magazine. Your cover story has introduced the ‘science’---as you rightly call it---of mindfulness to its widest audience yet.

Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME.
All rights reserved.

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THE EMERALD CITY REALLY IS GREEN

It’s not all that clear in the book The Wizard of Oz, but in subsequent Oz books the author L Frank Baum, having changed elements of the storyline more than once, made it unambiguously clear---the Emerald City really is green. There is no need for special green spectacles to be worn, to make it all look green!

The Emerald City, in the initial book, was not emerald (or green) at all. It was merely white, but each visitor to, and inhabitant of, the city was given green-tinted glasses which made everything appear green. They were told the glasses were necessary to shield them from the blindingly shiny green colour---the ‘brightness and glory’ of the city---but it was a hoax, as are most of the claims of conventional religion. (NOTE. In the 1939 movie the Emerald City really was green.)

I am not that old. I am only 57, but I well remember a time when Roman Catholics were prohibited by their church from reading the Bible in their homes or otherwise in private, and from attending any services (eg weddings or funerals) in Protestant churches. As recently as 2007 Pope Benedict XVI declared that Christian denominations other than his own were ‘not true churches.’ And Protestants, especially evangelicals, were---and still are---often no better, with their cries against ‘Popery.’ Most of the Baptist ministers I have known---including the one who was the celebrant at the marriage of my wife and I in 1980---took the view that Catholics weren’t really Christians. (I only mention Baptists because I was reared as one.)

John Algeo, in a wonderful article entitled 'The Wizard of Oz: The Perilous Journey,’ writes:

The green glasses are like the dogmas that religious wizards insist their followers adopt so their ecclesiastical cities will look green and vital.

The joke is that the Emerald City really is made of emeralds; it really is green, quite naturally. Religion really is what it says it is--a place of treasures and marvels--but the humbug wizards who have got themselves put in charge of it--the priests and ministers--have no faith in the natural value of their city, so they require the unnecessary and artificial spectacles. They think that emeralds need the assistance of green glasses. ...

The Emerald City is green! There is no need for special green spectacles to ‘make’ it look green. That reminds me of studying Philosophy as an undergraduate. The lecturer would say, ‘The sky is blue. The sky does not become any bluer because you believe it to be blue. Further, the proposition---the sky is blue---does not become any truer because you believe it to be true.’ As already mentioned, Baum changed the storyline of Oz such that, after the Emerald City was conquered by General Jinjur and her Army of Revolt, the use of green spectacles was discontinued, for the city itself is green (see The Marvelous Land of Oz). I love that. They came to realise that there was absolutely no need for the green spectacles. More and more people are coming to realise that the special green spectacles dispensed by organized religion are not only unnecessary, they actually distort reality. Good stuff! Bring it on!

Yes, the world really is green---and note that word ‘green.’ We don’t need any special glasses to see that. Beliefs and dogmas are thought coverings or veils (āvarnas). That is how Shakyamuni Buddha referred to them. These thought coverings or veils do not reveal reality, indeed they distort reality. How? Well, they prevent us from knowing and experiencing things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. Belief is conditioning. Knowledge is experiential. Bugger beliefs and dogmas!

Beliefs and dogmas are a menace to society---and a total, impenetrable barrier to true knowledge and wisdom. Beliefs and dogmas are always someone else's 'version' of reality---the result of someone else's conditioned mind, mental habits and fragmentary thinking, that is, the past. There is nothing of any value to believe, and there is nothing to be gained by believing anything or anyone. Just observe. Then you will know---and understand.

Beliefs and dogmas, being 'mechanical' in nature, and constructed entirely of past thoughts, are for spiritual cripples---that is, those who can't, or won't, think for themselves. In that regard, I have always found helpful these words attributed to the Buddha: 'Do not believe, for if you believe, you will never know. If you really want to know, don't believe.'  The current president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Rev. Peter Morales, has stated:

Religion is not about what you or I or Baptists or Catholics or Jews or Muslims or Hindus believe. I would even go a giant step further: Belief is the enemy of religion. Let me repeat that: Belief is the enemy of religion. [Emphasis in the original]

Morales goes on to say that any religion that is focused on belief is 'a dangerous corruption of true religion.' True religion, according to Morales, is 'about what we love, not about what we think.' It's 'about what you and I hold sacred.' The Unitarian Universalist movement, says Morales, offers religion beyond belief, 'religion that transcends culture, race and class ... religion where we can grow spiritually, a religion where we can forge deep and lasting relationships, a religion where we can join hands to help heal a broken world.' That is the kind of religion - or metareligion - that I embrace.

The great thing about mindfulness is that it ensures that there are no barriers between you---the person that you are---and external reality. That’s right---no barriers. So, forget all about beliefs, dogmas, priests, mediators, gurus and anything else that seeks to interpose itself between you and reality and your direct, immediate and unmediated moment-to-moment experience of reality. Beware of all ‘humbug.’ Eschew it! The Emerald City is green. It really is! Let us rejoice in that fact---and come alive!

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BETTER TO NOT BELIEVE AT ALL

‘There is hope for whoever does not know what to believe.

Human belief is a combination of superstition, gullibility and mental laziness.

We need not believe anything; we need to find, to see, to know.’

Vernon Howard.

Forgive me if I return to a familiar theme. I have often said that one of the great things about being a practising Buddhist – with the emphasis on the word practising – is that there is no need to believe anything … and nothing to believe.

Now, even within Christianity there have been some enlightened souls who have written of the dangers of belief. Take, for example, that great Modernist of last century, Harry Emerson Fosdick (pictured left), who famously wrote, ‘Better believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. Belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a man can cherish.’

Having just re-read Brideshead Revisited – a book which, despite the author’s apparent intentions, fails to convince me of the reasonableness of Catholic Christianity over non-belief – I say, good stuff, Dr Fosdick, but why believe at all? Belief is not a criterion of truth. What is real does not become any more real because we believe that it is real, nor does the proposition ‘X is true [or real]’ become any truer because we believe that it is true.

For me, the Biblical prayer, 'Lord, I believe; help my unbelief' (see Mk 9:24), would be better expressed as, 'Lord, I believe; help me instead to know and understand.' Yes, follow the advice of the psalmist: 'Be still, and know that I am God' (Ps 46:10).

The current president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Rev. Peter Morales (pictured right), the Association’s first Latino president, has stated:

‘Religion is not about what you or I or Baptists or Catholics or Jews or Muslims or Hindus believe. I would even go a giant step further: Belief is the enemy of religion. Let me repeat that: Belief is the enemy of religion.’ [Emphasis in the original]

Morales goes on to say that any religion that is focused on belief is ‘a dangerous corruption of true religion.’ True religion, according to Morales, is ‘about what we love, not about what we think.’ It’s ‘about what you and I hold sacred.’ The Unitarian Universalist movement, says Morales, offers religion beyond belief, ‘religion that transcends culture, race and class ... religion where we can grow spiritually, a religion where we can forge deep and lasting relationships, a religion where we can join hands to help heal a broken world.’ That is the kind of religion – or metareligion – that I embrace.

But what exactly is the problem with 'beliefs,' you may ask? Well, Shakyamuni Buddha referred to beliefs as being in the nature of thought coverings or veils (āvarnas). These thought coverings or veils do not reveal reality, indeed they distort reality. How? Well, they prevent us from knowing and experiencing things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. Belief is conditioning. Knowledge is experiential.

I have always found helpful these words attributed to the Buddha: 'Do not believe, for if you believe, you will never know. If you really want to know, don't believe.' There is also this sound advice from the Pāli texts:

In what is seen, there should be only the seen;
in what is heard, only the heard;
in what is sensed, only the sensed;
in what is thought, only the thought.

Yes, we need to safely 'navigate' our way through life, but beliefs actually stand in the way and hold us back. What we really need is ... knowledge ... and understanding.

It was that great meditation master Sunlun Gu-Kyaung Sayadaw (pictured left), the founding father of the Sunlun way of Buddhist vipassanā meditation, who taught that there is so much that we can know. We can know that we are alive … in the sense of being part of the flow or procession of life. We can know that we are persons among persons. We can know that sensations arise in us, and as respects each such sensation we can know the fact of its existence … as well as the fact of its strength or weakness. More importantly, we can know each sensation - as a bare fact - as and when it arises … and as it truly is … in all its directness and immediacy.

Yes, there is so much we can know that, well, there is simply no need to believe anything at all. In any event, the very act of formulating a 'belief' causes an otherwise present reality to die away, because (as Sunlun Gu-Kyaung Sayadaw would constantly point out) the very nature of a belief is a mental construct based on an already past reality. That is, by the time a particular belief has been formulated, the reality upon which that belief is purportedly based is no longer a present reality. It is now the past. Beliefs lock us into the past. Beliefs imprison. They do not liberate. They are chains that bind us.

You may ask, ‘Is that all there is to life? Is there no more than that? Just life as it arises? As we see and experience it?’ Well, I suspect that we cannot truly know more nor less than that, but either way it is enough for me. Direct and immediate contact with reality – of that we can be truly mindful. And for that we should be truly thankful.



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