Guided Meditations

I have been practicing sitting meditation for 35 years, first learning from the written instructions in Zen Mind, Beginner Mind.  For the first 20 plus years of my practice, I assumed that sitting meditation was a single “thing” – and always did what I would now describe as mountain meditation or shikan taza – resting my mind in my hara (the region just below my belly button) and being firmly present and concentrated there.  After I joined Thich Nhat Hanh’s Sangha 11 years ago, after so many years practicing by in isolation, I began to realize the diversity of what people call sitting meditation – and as I took advantage of that diversity, I enriched my practice with so many (too many?) options for what to do when I sat down.

 I occasionally would experiment with guided meditations in Thay’s style (as described in The Blooming of a Lotus), but really didn’t find them compelling generally.  However, lately I have been using recorded guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Tara Brach fairly regularly (once every week or two) – particularly when I feel tired or my mind is particularly busy or I feel anxious.  I am finding it a useful supplement to my regular sitting practice – a way of reinforcing and supporting helpful attitudes towards sitting, and making clear choices about the kind of meditation I wish to do – vipassana or tonglen or resting in the breath.

Do you use guided meditation as part of your personal practice? If not, why not?

If you do use guided meditations, which ones do you use, and why do you choose to use them?

Spiritual Activism

I am reading the introduction (by Coretta Scott King) to a book of sermons by Martin Luther King, Strength to Love and contemplating: what are the essential elements of spiritual activism? 

In the introduction, I found two key themes, interbeing and the primacy of love. Interbeing is word coined by Thich Nhat Hanh for an idea expressed so well by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

A spiritual activist is one whose work is driven by, ground in, the awareness of this interdependence - her desire for change is rooted in the knowledge that all suffering is her own suffering, and the compassion that flowers from that knowledge. So when she sees suffering in the world, she is moved to respond - to change the systems and structures in the world that create suffering as well as responding directly and compassionately to those who suffer. 

And the tactics a spiritual activist chooses are also rooted in that knowledge, because those he works against, whose behavior he endeavors to change, are also his brothers and sisters. Because of that, it is impossible for the spiritual activist to fully separate means from ends.  As Coretta Scott King writes, 

Noncooperation and nonviolent resistance were means of stirring and awakening moral truths in ones opponents, of evoking the humanity which, Martin believed, existed in each one of us. The means, therefore, had to be consistent with the ends.

The primacy of love is the second essential element of spiritual activism. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes

To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.  This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.

This ethic of love affects our relationships to our coworkers and our opponents. For myself, I am profoundly imperfect in its application - but the knowledge of it informs and teaches me all day.  For example, an organization with which I am deeply involved is having a small financial crisis - something that is affecting so many activist organizations in these times.  If I ask the question, what is best for the organization, I get a clear answer. But when I instead ask the question, What would love do?, I get a deeper and more complex answer, that is more aware of the humanity of the staff, instead of seeing them as only vehicles to moving the mission of the organization. 

As I reflect on these things, I have many questions. One has to do with effectiveness - are spiritual activists less effective, and have less impact, because their view is more complex and because they might be unwilling to consider tactics that are aggressive?  Or are they more effective because their work serves the larger goal of creation of a new world, a "beloved community"?  Is the difference in effectiveness only short-run vs long-run?

Let me know what you think in the comments.