Today, my doctoral supervisor asked me: “what is the purpose of contemplative practice in the midst of this pandemic?” I answered: “To help us remain upright amidst great disruption.” Later, I reviewed this extemporaneous reply and decided that it could use some elaboration. In this blog post, I consider what contemplative practice offers in trying times, how awareness cultivates a space for wisdom and kindness amid the gripping forces of tragedy.
By contemplative practice, I refer to a family of techniques, methods, and rituals which hone the qualities of attention. They can take the form of physical movement, sensory attunement, and mindful awareness — each practice is undertaken with the intention of returning to the present, open to the totality of sensation and experience unfolding in the immediate present. Modern variations of contemplative practices abound, from squared breathing, to Yoga, from Vipassana to Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction. Each of these practices share a deliberate effort in the development of attention.
Beyond contemplative practice, there is contemplation writ large, contemplation as a way of life. The effects of consistent and committed practice suffuses the practitioner, such that her tastes shift, priorities evolve, and values change. In the light of awareness, every moment is charged with promise, the instructiveness of ever-present mystery appears in its mundane guises. Contemplation is the tone and timbre of a life lived in wakefulness, the landscape that hosts the rolling hills of thought and the serpentine rivers of mentation.
The contemplative trains herself to recognize the instructiveness of every moment, the wisdom inherent in every situation. Not every event is worthy of celebration; some events are tragic, others atrocious. The loss of a job leads to hardship; the collapse of a business can be devastating. The vicissitudes of life are often cruel, and no religious or spiritual blather should gloss over these travails. Contemplative practice is not indifferent to suffering, nor naïve about the pernicious circumstances that assail us. The return to awareness is not a denial of adversity, but a deliberate commitment to re-cognize the truth revealed in the moment, a faith in the inherent wisdom of life, that each experience has the potential to break open the blinders of habit, the scales of normalcy that obscure our vision. This revelation never promises to be pleasant or easy, but it can lead to greater understanding of ourselves, our sub-conscious defences against all that threatens to destabilize the anxious and fragile ego.
Rather, the commitment to practice provides steadiness in the midst of great uncertainty, a measure of constancy in the midst of upheaval. We don’t have to be grateful for a terrible event, but we can be grateful for the moment, because the immediate present — with all its jagged edges digging into our bruised hearts — is another opportunity to peer into the mystery of the self, the mystery of the universe unfolding through and with the self.
This re-cognition of experience, and of experience as the object of awareness, involves a curious act of distanciation (but not of separation), whereby I am not boiling in my own suffering, tumbling with convulsive anxiety that rocks inner life. In practice, I look at my experience with some compassion and curiosity: Look how anxiety has its way, how it fills the rib-cage with glowing embers, how doubt rises like smoke against the cold. None of these emanations are inherently good or bad; they are merely the colours of protean consciousness. By recognizing these inevitable turnings, I gain some composure in the face of uncertainty. I am not captive to the torrents that shake the mind, but I ground myself in a capaciousness that contains both the stricken land and the raging storm. Both the experience, and the act of looking at experience, become instructive.
The contemplative life does not guarantee that everything will turn out alright — and I warn against any program that proffers this illusion — but rather offers this wager: If I learn to pay attention, I will discover that life has a way of teaching me what I need to learn. Be warned: A life of wakefulness tends in a certain direction. It steers toward the uncomfortable, the uncertain, the untrodden paths shunned by those domesticated by ease. Wakefulness “favours the risk-taker rather than the ticket-taker”[1]. And in venturing deeper into depths unfathomed, the contemplative discovers a source of confidence not otherwise available in moments of convenience and comfort. For this reason, I don’t believe that a contemplative life is primarily characterized by tranquility. Peace is the by-product of a capacity to abide the undiminished wholeness of life, and not to be sought as the salve that abolishes suffering once and for all.
In the thick of the pandemic, when health is in jeopardy and economic prospects are bleak, contemplative practice provides some grounding. The commitment to look, and to look again, to peer deeper into the ineffable mysteries that call out to us. They call on us to relinquish artifice, return to authenticity, open to vulnerability, and reveal the tender compassion underneath plates of armour. Times are tough. Yes, we suffer and we weep. But let us weep in the clear light of awareness, the awareness that affirms every tear as that which springs from the ocean waters of humanity.
[1] Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures, First edition (New York: Mariner Books, 1995).
Lovely posting, Dave! I think had I been asked the question, my answer would have been "Same as it ever was." Your answer is much more eloquent and, in a much more detailed and philosophically precise fashion, makes much the same point.
One thing I especially appreciate about your answer is that it avoids the pitfall a number of people seem to fall into, including people who are well-intentioned but should know better. The answer becomes contemplation in service of … living through a pandemic, various forms of social justice, better health, less stress, improved grades and SAT scores, and any other number of such instrumental ends. We end up with the whole McMindfulness phenomenon, where contemplation is reduced to an instrumentalist prescriptive.
Well, no. A thousand times, no.
You make a profound point that both addresses the role contemplation plays in our contemporary world and, at the same time, gets to what I think is the heart of contemplation: "… there is contemplation writ large, contemplation as a way of life." There it is, same as it ever was.