Running in Retreat
Dan Raa poses a good question on November 22: is retreat running away?
By retreat he means meditative retreat: the kind that where you sit by yourself most of the day doing an internal practice. Sometimes that practice is simply concentration, sometimes it is analytical thinking about one's existential status, and sometimes it is devotional intention towards a deity in preparation for analysis. There is a lot you can do just sitting. Actually the phrase "just sitting" is more of a Zen concept in which one tries to simply be. Zen practitioners will sit and do this, or just sit, while on retreat. Dan, however, is talking about Tibetan style practice that is often quite different. When he mentions the mala, I think he is speaking of mantra recitation: devotional practice oriented around a particular deity who is resident in one's own teacher that has the added effect of developing concentration.
Point being: retreat in this sense is a retreat from the mundane concerns of life that necessarily draw one's attention into a social sphere. Taking care of business is consuming of time and attention as well as intention. Westerner often think that meditation retreat is escape and hiding from the ills and concerns of everyday life. In a conventional sense, they are right. However, from the perspective of the practitioner, sitting still to do one's mantras and practice can be something more deeply concerned with the welfare of the world than shouting protests on the street corner.
I have always shyed from public protest. I have certainly participated in them from time to time, but they often felt (both in practice and in my own reflections upon them) impotent. Social confrontation like protest does not get to the root of the world's problems. I think that if humanity is to "get better" (implicit morality), we must transform our intention. If we organize people and change social policy, we can make the world a better, homier, comfier place. But, the fact is that in organizing societies, someone will always be on the losing end of the stick. Even if they are the oppressor and, by all Marxist thinking, deserve a forced diminution in living standard, they will still be forced upon and will suffer by it.
If people transform from the inside out, their intention to do good can be the force of good in the world. If people are transformed from the outside, where their actions are made to fit a large vision of society, the individuality that drives moderns will be squashed.
Hmm... I am not sure I have been clear, but don't blame me too much: I am stuck in O'Hare limbo hotel bar and have to go get Nils from the jaws of the capital beast.
Peace, comments, and thanksgiving.
Oh, I forgot about the running part, I will get back to that.
By retreat he means meditative retreat: the kind that where you sit by yourself most of the day doing an internal practice. Sometimes that practice is simply concentration, sometimes it is analytical thinking about one's existential status, and sometimes it is devotional intention towards a deity in preparation for analysis. There is a lot you can do just sitting. Actually the phrase "just sitting" is more of a Zen concept in which one tries to simply be. Zen practitioners will sit and do this, or just sit, while on retreat. Dan, however, is talking about Tibetan style practice that is often quite different. When he mentions the mala, I think he is speaking of mantra recitation: devotional practice oriented around a particular deity who is resident in one's own teacher that has the added effect of developing concentration.
Point being: retreat in this sense is a retreat from the mundane concerns of life that necessarily draw one's attention into a social sphere. Taking care of business is consuming of time and attention as well as intention. Westerner often think that meditation retreat is escape and hiding from the ills and concerns of everyday life. In a conventional sense, they are right. However, from the perspective of the practitioner, sitting still to do one's mantras and practice can be something more deeply concerned with the welfare of the world than shouting protests on the street corner.
I have always shyed from public protest. I have certainly participated in them from time to time, but they often felt (both in practice and in my own reflections upon them) impotent. Social confrontation like protest does not get to the root of the world's problems. I think that if humanity is to "get better" (implicit morality), we must transform our intention. If we organize people and change social policy, we can make the world a better, homier, comfier place. But, the fact is that in organizing societies, someone will always be on the losing end of the stick. Even if they are the oppressor and, by all Marxist thinking, deserve a forced diminution in living standard, they will still be forced upon and will suffer by it.
If people transform from the inside out, their intention to do good can be the force of good in the world. If people are transformed from the outside, where their actions are made to fit a large vision of society, the individuality that drives moderns will be squashed.
Hmm... I am not sure I have been clear, but don't blame me too much: I am stuck in O'Hare limbo hotel bar and have to go get Nils from the jaws of the capital beast.
Peace, comments, and thanksgiving.
Oh, I forgot about the running part, I will get back to that.
posted by Breathing at 4:27 PM
1 Comments:
I think of social transformation as being change from the outside. Perhaps a powerful clique, or even a democratic process, determines the best course for a society, a course that requires some change from the current norm. That change will often (and this may be an issue of means) hand down the change from above. The few tell the many that they need to do a certain thing (pay taxes, not do drugs, drive the speed limit, avoid abortion, or cease littering).
The change is socially enforced with rules, coercion, blame, guilt, and other social mechanisms for getting others to do what one wants. Some change their behavior. Some don't.
Those that do, change they the way they act in the world in response to pressure from the outside. Perhaps they still want to litter, do drugs, or speed, but they don't because they are afraid of the social consequences of those actions (jail, shame, ostracism).
Change from the inside is change of the content of our persons. The social can make us act differently, but it cannot make that action voluntary in a true sense. In order for human activity to be altered completely, the change must arise from the inside, from human spirit.
Gandhi's famous quote to this effect: "we must be the change we wish to see in the world."
He does not suggest we make the change in the world by acting on the world; rather, he suggests that we be, ourselves, the way we wish the world to be. This being can be infectious when it meets others. It is also the best (most powerful, most accurate, most authentic) place from which our action in the world should spring.
dsequsm: the sound of squishing about in the mud harmonizing with the soft sliding of frogs in a bog.
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