Weltanschaung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Wellness

  • Who needs a guru?

    Who needs a guru?

    Nobody does. Certainly not the variety on public offer.

    It is tempting (or perhaps just lazy) to seek someone who claims to “Know”. To have “The Answer”. A cursory search on Amazon will provide you with thousands of authors who will give you the answer if you buy their book. The world is full of wellness retreats and spiritual gurus who suck in money from the gullible in return for a garbled word salad of  fantastical excrement. Sometimes with a dash of “sacred” magic mushroom or gut wrenching ayahuasca added to the mix.

    The world is full of thought systems. Attempts to answer the unanswerable.  I am wary of those who believe they have answers, but they are legion. Some wearing a more traditional cloak, a priest of some recognised religion. Some in the garb of charlatanism – the new agers, the modern druids, the purveyors of woo and auric eggs. Who remembers the venerable Betty Shine.

    The truth is there is little enough to distinguish all these pedlars of hope and certainty.

    But if I had to make a choice, my preference would be for someone who isn’t on the make.

    Traditionally a guru is a mentor or guide to those who seek spiritual knowledge. While the word is Sanscrit, the concept is applicable the world over. Many faiths have their gurus, though they may wear a different guise.

    I was at the National Gallery in London this week, looking at the newly hung and magnificent collection of medieval and early Renaissance paintings. The overwhelming majority of which depict Christian subjects.

    One particular portrait of a monk reached out to me. For all I know he could have been as vile as Rasputin or as drunk as Friar Tuck, but somehow a deep sincerity shone from his face – here was a guru I might have found acceptable. A wise and kindly man living a life of poverty, helping the poor and devoting himself to prayer and good works.  Although for all I know he was one of those who gave the monastic life a bad name and helped to usher in the Reformation.

    But my point is twofold.

    I suspect if I met the genuine article face to face, I would know. A light would shine, it would be blatantly obvious that here was a man who “Knew”.

    And yet I am not at all sure he would have much to teach me. Of course he would be a better person than I. He would be pure in mind and body, a healer of the sick, a man of modesty and humility.

    But he would teach by example, and for that I do not need to sit at his feet. I certainly do not need to read or believe his holy books. All I need to know is that here stands a good man.

    And that is what spirituality is. To me at least. The material world becomes translucent, the futility of ambition and power wanes and fades in a dark corner. I do not need a guru to tell me what I need to do. The way is blindingly obvious.

    But I do perhaps seek his company, his friendship. His goodness.  To bask in the radiance of his obvious decency and begninity.

    That is all I need from a wise man, a guru.

    The only thought system I need is how to behave, how to think, how to act. And after so many years of thought, I do not need anyone to tell me the answer.

    So yes, there are many systems of belief which teach much the same simple message but which have become cluttered with baseless supernatural speculation. You don’t need a guru to tell you all that nonsense.

    If you need a guru at all, it is for companionship along the difficult road of life. Preferably someone rather better than you are. More tolerant, kinder, better intentioned, humbler, further along the road of awareness.

    I don’t need Betty Shine to tell me about auric eggs. I have no interest in running an off-licence and turning water into wine. I don’t need to wail at Yahweh or bless the Prophet. I don’t need theosophy or the Perennial Philosophy. You can keep Madam Blavatsky.

    And if you think about it, you might decide you don’t need gurus either.

    Because quite honestly all you need is to go within. To consider life and where you might have gone wrong (or right). To listen in the silence for a voice, likely your own.

    If I came across a holy man, I would know what I had found and would be glad of it. He might be discovered in a monastery, a desert. He might be a train driver or a bus conductor. But I would know him when I met him.  Even if I didn’t need to be “taught”, I would still enjoy his company.

    So much nonsense spluttered over so many thousands of years. So much violence and greed. So many good ideas twisted and made evil.

    Who needs a guru when it is all so simple. If only we could adopt such simplicity, we would need little else to bring peace.

    Humility and kindness. Nothing else is really needed. Except a great deal of practice.

  • Meditation – a wider perspective

    Meditation – a wider perspective

    So much can be found on the internet on the subject of meditation, and so little of it has any value.

    For better or worse, meditation has become a buzz word and all too often it is used by the “wellness” and “new age” industries to sell less than useful products to the desperate or the foolish and vulnerable.

    Meditation should not be sold. It should be communicated and taught for free.  We would have a better world if this ancient and invaluable spiritual practice was absorbed and above all used by a wider audience.

    How few truly understand the practice. How little I grasped of it when I first started reading the Buddhist scriptures over three decades ago.

    Over the years it slowly dawned on me that meditation was used not just by Buddhists and Hindus but by all other religions worthy of the name.

    To this day however, many remain only vaguely aware of what is involved and there are those who so badly misunderstand the practice that they believe it to be dangerous.

    It will let in evil spirits say some. It is worthless say others. It is the Philosopher’s Stone. A great benefit, a great evil, pointless, life saving. Take your pick.

    But only ever listen to someone who has nothing to sell, no axe to grind. And who has experience culled over some years of practice.

    I can of course only relate my own thoughts, my own experiences but for me this arcane ritual has become ever more essential to my happiness and wellbeing.

    One must not imagine that the practice of sitting quietly for some period of the day and going within is all that is entailed.

    It is an experience which can slowly change your life but without making other far reaching changes to how you think and act and live, it will get you nowhere. In my experience.

    Entwined with the rest of your life, a feedback loop is formed to the extent that cause and effect become indistinguishable.  What is it that has changed your outlook on life, your behaviour? Is it the meditation, or did you make some conscious decision to change your habits, your patterns of thought and follow through on that decision?

    It becomes impossible to tell, since in effect your whole life has become a meditation. Not just those moments when you sit and release your consciousness to wander where it will.

    For some, no doubt their practice will be an attempt at a quick fix, squeezed into their busy schedule of work and play. For others there may be no spiritual element at all – just another spoke to their busy lives, something to tell their friends, something to fit alongside an evening glass of wine. A fashion accessory almost, much in the way that wellness tourists trek to Peru for an Ayahuasca retreat.

    And good luck to such folk. If that is the way they see fit to use meditation, they do no harm to others but equally they gain little benefit for themselves.

    For a few, a life of meditation represents a true retreat from the world.  An all important feature of their very existence. Meditation is much the same as the beauty of endless repetition of psalms in a monastery. Or rosary beads and their accompanying prayer. The whirling of dervishes, ecstatic Kabbala, wailing at the wall in Jerusalem.

    Standing on a mountain in the wild Himalayas playing the solemn dungchen, climbing the Alps and  letting the alpenhorn cast its spell over the glory of the sunlit pastures.

    Of course those who prefer to define their faith within the narrow confines of their own particular dogma would be affronted by such comparisons.  The beauty of Eastern Orthodox prayer is an address to the Christian god only, the rhythmic repetition of the Koran a call to Allah and not a plaything to be enjoyed by an infidel like myself.

    But once you have escaped from the manacles of man made gods and creeds you are free to see the glory of meditative practice as it is.  A release into reality and beauty, a casting off of narrow prejudice and divisive cult.

    A breaking of chains to soar above the dull concerns of man, a window into the mystery at the centre of our reality (however you wish to describe it).

    And from that distance, how small mankind’s concerns seem. How sad the endless struggle for more, how demeaning and foolish the attempt to “own”, to dominate, to control.

    It seems important not to grasp, but to let the process work of it’s own accord.  To let meditation seep into your life, and your life flow into meditation.

    Once you are a little way along the path, it begins to seem unnecessary to travel to Mecca (or anywhere else) to see the face of your “god”. 

    That face seems suddenly to be all around you whether sitting in quiet meditation….Or mending your old bicycle on a summer’s afternoon in the garden.

    It is quiet, it is slow, it is gentle and so becomes your life. An end to speed, to rash judgements, to self importance. No desire to change the world, or its people and a recognition that if it comes at all peace will only appear at its own sedate pace. If the world is ever to change for the better it will not be at the behest of a politician, it will not be swift or dramatic. If it does occur it will be by the slow uptake of kinder thoughts, a recognition that none of us are so very different, let alone better or of greater value.

    Peaceful thoughts, tranquil habits. An abnegation of the ego.

    Perhaps such a transformation will silently occur, perhaps harmony will descend. Or perhaps like most other species, we ourselves will end before we have had a chance at perfection.

    Does it matter so very much? Somehow once you are on an untroubled path, none of it seems quite so urgent or important. The river of life meanders along in its own way, with us or without us.