Utter Meaninglessness
It is dangerous to engage in
mystical practice before having attained adequate ego strength to safely do so.
This is an important idea that I attribute to C.G. Jung, although I can’t offer
any more detailed attribution at the present time. If we scratch just below the
surface of such a statement, it appears to contain a contradiction: Since
mystical practice involves dismantling or casting aside our egoic constructs
and defenses, it would seem that not having fully formed ego strength would
just put us that much further along! Is that dangerous, or is it advantageous? Digging
further, however, we can see that, since mystical practice can involve the
dismantling of everything the practitioner might have assumed about the world
and him or herself, there is the distinct danger of a precipitous descent into
nihilism – the darkness of utter meaninglessness. Thus, I must begin this post with
a warning: If you are young and without a solid sense of how you fit into this
world, if you are struggling with depression and are already susceptible to
life’s darkest experiences, if you are currently experiencing the symptoms of a
mental illness that makes it difficult to distinguish between reality and idea,
then please forego reading this post at the present time. Please wait until you
have adequate strength. The rest of you need to realize that what follows is
not a beautiful meadow full of bright and blossom-like thoughts. It will be
more like a stroll down the darkest alley you can imagine! You have been warned…
If you’ve ever taken an
introductory economics class, you likely remember something of the history of
our monetary system. You know that our money used to be backed by gold. For
every dollar in circulation there was a real dollar’s worth of gold sitting in
a vault somewhere. Since going off of the “gold standard,” however, a dollar is
worth a dollar not because it represents a dollar’s worth of gold, a dollar is
worth a dollar because we all agree that it is worth a dollar. A dollar is
worth a dollar by fiat.
Meaning can be like this. At first,
some of the things that we do have meaning for us because, well, they have
meaning – they seem to have the intrinsic value of gold. And so we make plans
to achieve great things, to experience wonderful things, to obtain valuable
things. When we look at things more deeply, however, when we gain greater
awareness, we come to question whether some of what we do is really as
meaningful as we might have thought. Perhaps “living the good life” had great
meaning for you at one time, but then “the finer things in life” came to leave you
feeling empty and unfulfilled. Perhaps reaching the pinnacle of your career was
of utmost importance to you, but then you reached it and came to realize how
very unrewarding it actually was. Perhaps you’ve turned your back on all such
personal accomplishment and have devoted your life to helping people – feeding them,
clothing them, healing them, teaching them, counseling them, ministering to them
– but then you fell prey to the despair of realizing that more and more still
need to be fed and clothed and healed and taught… You came to see humanity is
an endless stream of more and more people with needs without end. The meaning
that you had attributed to your work began to evaporate, and everything began
to seem completely and utterly meaningless.
The provision of meaning is one of
the great benefits of religion. Religion quite often provides the context
within which such feelings of meaninglessness can be contained, oriented, and
redirected. If our religion teaches of reincarnation, then that which is
meaningless over the course of one fleetingly finite life can be seen to have
meaning over the course of many lives that have an orientation towards some positive
goal. If our religion teaches the existence of a heavenly afterlife, then all
of the chaos and suffering and apparent meaninglessness of this life can be
seen within the context of our one day returning to our Heavenly Father.
But what if the default meaning
that a religion might provide has no meaning for you at all due to your inability to
believe? Therein lies the great existential danger that some of us face. For the one
who stumbles upon this utter meaninglessness, for the one who tries to regain
equilibrium in a world without anything that is really stable to hold on to,
the darkness can be darker and more disorienting than the darkest night. This is at least part of why
our engagement in mystical practice can be so dangerous for one who does not
yet have appropriate ego strength.
Some Buddhists don’t like to consider
their meditation practice “mystical.” I won’t quibble over the word. The danger
that Jung spoke of, and the one which I speak of now, exists nonetheless. To
the extent that your awakening brings you into intimate contact with the
impermanence of all things, you will naturally find yourself surveying your
landscape for that which is of ultimate meaning. And to the extent that your
glimpses of emptiness, shunyata, or no-thingness bring you to wonder of the ultimate
meaning of the very practice which has brought you face to face with this emptiness,
you will naturally find yourself surveying your landscape for that which is of
ultimate meaning.
Someone who looks at Buddhist
practice in this way will come to realize that the development of Buddhist
practice was not a foregone conclusion in this world. Likewise, those who do
not have the same faith as Christians do will not consider the appearance of
Jesus Christ on this earth as the inevitability that a Christian might consider it to
be. In other words, if life were to begin again on earth – even human life – we
cannot assume that someone just like the Buddha or Jesus or whomever would appear
again to be our guide and teacher. Whatever guide and teacher happens to appear
will arise out of whatever biological, psychological and sociological
circumstances happen to come to exist.
What then has ultimate meaning?
This is the question that every mystic must be able to live with – whether answered
or not. The now-deceased Zen monk, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, addressed this issue during
his last formal talk as abbot of Antaiji Zen Monastery. He stated that one of
the most important points of Zen practice is to “live by vow and root it
deeply.” What vow? Whose vow? Did he have in mind precisely what that vow
should be? Did he feel that his vow was the same vow as yours should be? Is there
something which is of ultimate meaning that he presumes we are all going to vow
to uphold? Live by vow and root it deeply.
And what is the vow with which I
live? I have come to realize that my mind arises from the entirety of all that
exists. My mind encompasses the entirety of all that exists. Everyone and all
of life arises from all that exists just as “I” do. Thus, my vow is to live in
harmony with all that arises in order to assist in the blossoming forth of the fullest
potential of all “things.” I root this vow in the entirety of all that exists via
my practice of meditation. During meditation I encounter the stillness of mind
that brings me into harmony with all things. During meditation I encounter the
stillness of mind that is rooted in all things. If that sounds mystical, then
so be it. You’re only reading this because you’re a mystic too!
If you would like to explore some
of the ideas that I touch on here within the context of Zen practice, you might
want to check out Shohaku Okumura’s Living by Vow, which I reviewed in a blog
post titled Book Review: Okumura's 'Living By Vow'.
References
Okumura, S. (2012). Living by vow: A
practical introduction to eight essential Zen chants and texts. (D. Ellison, Ed.)
Wisdom Publications.
Image Credits
Mangrove tree by Cesar
Paes Barreto via:
Copyright 2015 by Mark Frank
Comments
Post a Comment