A Wrong Flame
from 
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With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,
______________________________
Stillness,
broken only by the sun's arc
across the wooden floor;
Silence,
broken only by the smack and crack
of cookstove embers;
An irregular,
punctuating cadence,
gently speaks:
Slow down!
______________________________
Back from the Refuge, I feel refreshed. While there I chopped wood, transferred water, stained the stair railing, and did other chores. Of course, I also ran and walked through the woods, read, and otherwise thoroughly enjoyed myself.
One of the books I picked out of our library was New Seeds of Contemplation, a collection of essays by Fr. Thomas Merton. I highly recommend this little collection. Fr. Merton was a contemplative Catholic monk and had a clear understanding of Zazen. His first two essays on what is and is not contemplation are wonderful. I also thought his piece called "The Wrong Flame" was excellent.
In it he addresses the problem of seeking while contemplating (meditating). Feelings of spirituality, deep understanding, and holy excitement are dangerous, he explains, because you "may attach the wrong kind of importance to these manifestations..."
He goes on to say we can often become so attached to our senses in meditation that we develop a "taste for sentimental pictures and sticky music and mushy spiritual reading" and thus our "whole interior life" can be "a concentrated campaign for 'lights' and 'consolations' and 'tears of compunction', if not 'interior words' with, perhaps, the faintly disguised hope of a vision or two..." (Merton, 1961: pp. 246-247).
My sense is he is dead on with this. A spiritual practice without a disciplined understanding of what is and is not practice, is dangerous because it seduces us into thoughts and words, and feelings about a practice and from that, about our spirituality, if not our actual connection to the Infinite.
We practice to practice. We do not practice to become enlightened, closer to God, or holy or spiritual or anything else. We practice to practice. This is our life.
Be well.
Good Morning Everyone,
______________________________
Stillness,
broken only by the sun's arc
across the wooden floor;
Silence,
broken only by the smack and crack
of cookstove embers;
An irregular,
punctuating cadence,
gently speaks:
Slow down!
______________________________
Back from the Refuge, I feel refreshed. While there I chopped wood, transferred water, stained the stair railing, and did other chores. Of course, I also ran and walked through the woods, read, and otherwise thoroughly enjoyed myself.
One of the books I picked out of our library was New Seeds of Contemplation, a collection of essays by Fr. Thomas Merton. I highly recommend this little collection. Fr. Merton was a contemplative Catholic monk and had a clear understanding of Zazen. His first two essays on what is and is not contemplation are wonderful. I also thought his piece called "The Wrong Flame" was excellent.
In it he addresses the problem of seeking while contemplating (meditating). Feelings of spirituality, deep understanding, and holy excitement are dangerous, he explains, because you "may attach the wrong kind of importance to these manifestations..."
He goes on to say we can often become so attached to our senses in meditation that we develop a "taste for sentimental pictures and sticky music and mushy spiritual reading" and thus our "whole interior life" can be "a concentrated campaign for 'lights' and 'consolations' and 'tears of compunction', if not 'interior words' with, perhaps, the faintly disguised hope of a vision or two..." (Merton, 1961: pp. 246-247).
My sense is he is dead on with this. A spiritual practice without a disciplined understanding of what is and is not practice, is dangerous because it seduces us into thoughts and words, and feelings about a practice and from that, about our spirituality, if not our actual connection to the Infinite.
We practice to practice. We do not practice to become enlightened, closer to God, or holy or spiritual or anything else. We practice to practice. This is our life.
Be well.
