Open Spirit Two

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I’ve been re-visiting Huston Smith’s writing on World Religions. He has that perfect balance for me of a fine intellect and a great heart …and this edition has pictures too!

Members of the new group ‘Open Spirit’ gathered for our second meeting on Monday and we got straight into continuing our reflections on the nature of suffering even as we made the tea. Rosie and Ifa have sadly suffered another bereavement in their extended family in the Cameroon. There they are faced with sufferings that can seem almost unsurmountable – from corruption, counterfeit medicines, environmental destruction etc. A family can lose members of an entire generation to disease, leaving young people not only struggling to simply survive but also without the experience and guidance of their elders, which in turn brings conflicts and more suffering.

Then thoughts turned to the writings of a woman in a concentration camp and her observation that suffering often does not bring out the best in people. Some will do whatever they can, often at the expense of others, to lessen their own suffering alone. This woman was offered the chance of personal freedom from the suffering of the camp but chose to remain to care for others, which speaks of another level of freedom. So we had found our way to the Buddha’s second truth….tanha….‘the desire for private fulfilment‘  at the root of suffering.

We each had reflections to share from having carried last weeks question through our lives. Noticing how easily we lose that open sense of being connected to a larger whole. But somehow living with that spirit of enquiry had opened some space in moments of suffering….just to be able to pause rather than react (and withdraw or lash out, however subtly!) and to be able to compassionately ask in that moment, ‘what’s going on, what is the nature of this suffering?’ Not to have to find an answer, or a judgement (‘I’m so selfish…useless…anxious…needy’…delete as appropriate) Just to be interested or, as Adrienne Rich would say, to have a care for all the many-lived, unending forms in which we find ourselves.

Our emphasis for this week’s meeting was more on practice than discussion and so we spent an hour in silence. Firstly in walking meditation outside in nature and then sitting still. I was focussed simply on breathing and awareness of the body, including a fair amount of physical discomfort and pain as mental and emotional tangles played out in physical tensions. All week I’ve kept returning to the breath. I’ve had in my mind Thich Nhat Hahn’s teachings on training oneself to be a free person through simply practising being present and how one conscious breath can bring us back into the present. This seems manageable in a way that ‘deciding to become a really spiritual person and spend several hours every day in meditation’ does not! I also like his idea of having a beautiful pebble in one’s pocket to remind one to breathe and smile. It’s like a kind of everyday, any moment rosary.

The question that had emerged by the end of the session was ‘what is my burden and how can I set it down?’ I think I’ll be taking that pebble with me this week, to help me remember to breathe and put down some of the much heavier inner boulders that I otherwise carry around!