Beyond Religion - Ch. 10

Here DL identifies the following key human values: patience/forbearance, contentment, self-discipline, and generosity.

In discussing patience, he really calls it the ability to endure suffering with mental disciplines. He argues, as many others have, that accepting our pain and suffering in life makes it easier to bear. Do you have any experience or personal examples which support this principle?

I have found it helpful at times to draw a line between my actual suffering and my worrying or emotional response to the pain. This allows me to recognize the way I often subconsciously heap misery upon the misery and to call off the dogs of my mental negativity. Your thoughts?

Have you found any gain in DL’s suggestion to see how our bad fortune can sometimes be someone else’s good fortune, seeing things from that larger, less intensely personal perspective?

DL also talks about cultivating a sense of contentment in our lives. How do you limit your own desires and find satisfaction in what you have?

In his discussion of generosity, DL notes that we must “give out of respect for the recipient,” “honoring the recipient’s dignity.” Can you give an example of a specific act of generosity that has done that and one that has not?

So often we limit our discussion and understanding of generosity to material gifts. DL asks us to think of generosity of attitude and behavior and in dealings with others. Again, to encourage each other, please offer a story of when you have experienced such non-material generosity.

Beyong Religion - Ch. 11 - Meditation

This final chapter focuses on some particular internal, contemplative practices DL recommends for those seeking to live compassionately in the world for the benefit of others. It was hard for me not to think of Living Vision's Tuesday night gatherings throughout this chapter, because literally everything we have done since October has been geared toward these very truths.

The mind is a wild horse so difficult to tame...a small boat adrift at sea, being tossed about by every wave. With this in mind - and, in all likelihood, in your bountiful experience - how do you react to the Tibetan meditator's adage that, "I have only one task: to stand guard at the entrance of my mind."

Looking at the particular disciplines and practices DL advocates. comment on each one, particularly where you have some experience or practice. Or, if you prefer, ask a question about each:

Focused Attention

Present Moment Awareness

Cultivating Equanimity

Rejoicing in the Good Example of Others

Those of us who have explored and been involved with any of the contemplative prayer practices know a lot about the first major obstacle DL talks about - distraction. How have you handled distraction effectively in your own prayer life? What advice or wisdom would you share with the group?

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 7

 

On the first page of this powerful and packed chapter, DL claims that, “the complex problems we face in the world…almost always indicate a failure of moral ethics and inner values. At every level we see a lack of self-discipline….Our shared problems do not fall from the sky, nor are they created by some higher force. For the most part they are products of human action and human error.” Do you agree? Why/why not? Why is this even important?

DL also claims that, “In this age of globalization, the time has come for us to acknowledge that our lives are deeply interconnected and to recognize that our behavior has a global dimension.”Respond.

In his section on the “Futility of War,” DL says that, “in this contemporary, deeply interdependent world, war is outdated and illogical. Before you agree or disagree, put this claim in the context of Iran’s current development of nuclear weaponry. How should we and our governments respond?

In his section on the Environment, DL calls us to “face the reality that our excessively materialistic lifestyles are wasteful and come at a considerable environmental cost.” This is not a popular, crowd-pleasing message in the U.S. How do we go about combating such rampant and culturally endorsed materialism?

Speaking of messages that won’t do well in the U.S., DL directly indicts capitalism as “only motivated by profit, without any ethical principle guiding it,” and leading to “terrible exploitation of the weak.” Your thoughts? How should we respond?

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 8

 

What do you think of DL’s “ethic of restraint”?  In what ways, if any, do you consciously practice such restraint in your daily life? In what other ways could you expand your practice of this important ethic? Do you agree with what DL says later about restraint, that it paves the way for us to “give more attention to actively doing good?”

In his section on “Awareness” DL calls us to “honestly observe our own behavior,” and to “bring it under control.” Do you observe yourself in this way? How can we be more attentive to ourselves in this way?

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 9

 

Ch 9 – Dealing with Destructive Emotions

This ch. really hit me hard as I have , in the last few years of my life, come to the profoundly humbling realization that much of my experience and world view is drastically colored by my own emotions and moods. In that light, what DL claims on the first page of this chapter – that “tackling these negative emotions is an important goal of ethical and spiritual practice” – is spot on.

How aware are you of your own genetic predispositions emotionally speaking? Are you more optimistic or depressed? How has that played into your attitudes and actions in the world? Are you aware of when your own “mental projections,” as DL calls them, are ramping up your irrational fears?

Respond to DL’s remark just before the subsection entitled “The Emotion Families,” where he says, “all these afflictive mental states in one way or another obscure our vision by clouding our capacity for discernment. They make us incapable of rational judgment, and thus we might say they steal our minds.”

For me, the crux of Ch. 9 is found in the section called “Understanding the Causes of Affliction.” DL notes that we “tend to see the troublemaker as something outside ourselves. If we reflect deeply, however, we discover that the real troublemaker is within us.” If you listen to the conversation all around us – including the 2 cents that we put in – isn’t it the case the we’re forever blaming others and outside forces for everything that is “wrong” with the world today – politically, economically, religiously, etc.? How do we change the dialogue from blaming others to taking responsibility ourselves?

What did you think of the door slamming story?

Stuck in the Middle...

Tonight at Living Vision, we were practicing the Jesus Prayer, a discipline that involves the repetition of these words: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us.” It’s profoundly simple and deeply transforming, as one moves more deeply into the practice. But something interesting and unexpected happened tonight as I did this practice that I want to share.

As you may know, this prayer has its origin in the Bartimaeus story in Mark 10. The scene is that Jesus is moving down a packed street to Jericho, a regular mob scene. And this blind beggar named Bartimaeus figures out who is walking by and starts shouting at the top of his lungs, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!”

Well tonight in the heart of this particular prayer practice, I began to imagine myself on that street calling out with the words of this very prayer. And what came to me was the sense that Jesus probably wouldn’t have noticed me. He probably wouldn’t have heard or responded to my cry on that crowded Jericho street because I wasn’t so noticeably deformed or so visibly needy.

When you think about it, pretty much all the gospel stories have Jesus responding to and reaching out to the remarkably outcast – blind beggars, lame and disfigured lepers, and raving demoniacs. And so, from deep in the practice of the Jesus Prayer, I had the profound and enduring sense that Jesus’ attention would have been elsewhere, that his compassion would have been drawn to someone “more” obviously in need or more visibly imperiled than I.

This thought pattern and thread continued as I went more deeply into the prayer practice, and I found myself becoming very sad. I suddenly felt as though this had been the story of my entire life – that I was not remarkable or excellent in any outstanding way, but neither was I “sufficiently” needy or messed up in any particularly significant way. I was, instead, stuck in mediocrity, in the middle…and I’m not really aware of any gospel evidence that Jesus deals with us who dwell in the middle. It’s great that Jesus is filled with such compassion for the outcast and the deeply unfortunate. But wouldn’t it be nice if there were at least a story or two in there somewhere when Jesus stopped and had a beer with a guy with all his limbs in tact, with all his senses functioning, but who was dying inside? Or how about a story of a guy who may have had things reasonably together physically but who’d lost his wife and family to divorce or who couldn’t sleep at night because of his economic fears or lack of health insurance?

I can’t help but wonder how many of us are stuck in the middle? How many of us don’t have the drawing card of the alcoholic collapse or the stint in prison? How many of us don’t have the riveting and infinitely marketable testimony of some horrific fall followed by a miraculous healing and salvation? How and where does the Gospel meet US? When do we get our moment with the savior like Bartimaeus and Zaccheus did?

I guess I want to know that if I were on that crowded road to Jericho and cried out “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me!” that he would have stopped…that Jesus would have come to me…to ME with all my limbs and both eyes…and that he would have cared…and listened…and understood. That sure would have been nice…It still would be nice.

The Jesus Prayer Practice – Week 1 – 2/14/12

 

For the month of February and our three Tuesdays within it, we will explore a very particular Christian prayer practice – The Jesus Prayer. Some trace the origin of this particular prayer to Luke 18:35-43 and Mark 10:46-52.

So the practice is quite simple in that it involves merely repeating this exact phrase – “Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me” – over and over and over. There is nothing complicate about it. We use this exact phrasing as our sole focus and purpose. It anchors us and brings us back to the very NAME of Jesus.

Let’s look at the words that make up this powerful and historic prayer. First, the two preliminary phrases are names for God – Jesus Christ…Son of God. We are saying and repeating this name.

The next phrase, “Have mercy on me” or “Have mercy on us” is both a humble statement of who we are in the presence of that God we named in the first two phrases – in need of mercy – AND an affirmation of faith in what God can do, namely have mercy on us, forgive us, restore us, lift us up, or in Bartimaeus’s case, give us sight. Help us to see again. For we too are blind.

So in saying this simple, brief prayer, we are lifting up God and the name of God, we are showing faith in that God as powerful enough to help, to bestow mercy, and we are confessing our own inadequacy – we are in NEED of mercy. In some ways this is the entire essence of the Christian gospel summarized in one prayer – who God is, who we are, and the need we have for God.

Now, just like all our other practices, we can expect to be assaulted with distractions as we undertake this discipline. Our minds will wander. We’ll think about a bunch of other stuff, our relationships, our to-do lists, etc. But so what? That is our nature. The good news in this practice is that the response to distraction is very simple; we just say the prayer again and again. It is our anchor. It is our salvation, the thing we come back to. No frills. No fuss. No great emptying of the mind. Just repeat the prayer again and again.

If you want or need to, you can try just letting particular parts, words of the prayer rise to the top of your conscious – Jesus Christ, or Son of God, or Have mercy upon me. But these words are it. They are the goal and they are the means. They are literally all there is to this practice.

We’ll try it for two 15 minute portions with a little break in the middle.

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 4

DL’s goal is fostering a “universal compassion,” where we expand our “circles of concern until they finally embrace the whole of humanity.”(second to last page of chapter 4) Then in the middle of the chapter, identity, which we spoke of last week, resurfaces as DL calls us to “move beyond our limited or biased sense of closeness to this or that group or identity and instead cultivate a sense of closeness to the entire human family.” Can this be done? How?

Toward the beg DL writes that “people mistakenly assume that compassion is a religious practice.” DL uses as evidence for compassion not being religiously rooted the countless doctors and rescue workers who work to relieve suffering in the wake of tsunamis, hurricanes, etc. Is compassion necessarily a religious based practice? If not, how and through what means is compassion taught/caught, nurtured/conveyed?

DL makes a distinction between empathy and compassion. Is this helpful to you? Why/why not?

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 5

DL begins stating a conflict many see with compassion as a central ethic, namely that it somehow undercuts justice in a society. Do you, personally, see or feel this particular conflict? When “fairness” is paramount, not only compassion but Jesus can get run out of town, right?

Traditionally, have you viewed  and practiced punishment as a form of retribution or prevention?

DL, midway through, highlights his belief that people can change. How vital is this belief if we seek a more compassionate world?

DL advocates distinguishing the action from the actor. He writes, “It is vital to keep in mind the distinction between the doer and the deed.” Sounds a lot like “love the sinner; hate the sin.” Do you buy this? Why/why not?

Beyond Religion Book Group - Chapter 6

On the second page of this chapter, DL defines discernment at “an ethical awareness of what will benefit both oneself and others.” But he is quick to add that such an awareness “does not arise magically, but comes from the use of reason.” He argues that some of what inspires and nurtures this ethical awareness is the prevailing culture in which one lives and education.  Is our American culture and educational system well suited for such a task? Why/why not?

DL highlights interdependence as a key principle in an ethically aware world.  He cites examples of interdependence in the global economy, the natural world, and in he quantum sciences. Again, thinking of our American culture, one of the dominant, driving values in American culture is independence and self-sufficiency. How can we Americans learn to let go of our false sense of independence and self-sufficiency and replace it with a healthy sense of global interdependence – what DL calls “the way things actually are”? Or can we?