Meditating across Time and Space - Mantra and "The Cloud of Unknowing"

I bought something on the internet a little while ago. Because I had to pay postage to get it here, to make the postage fee worthwhile, I added a few second-hand books to the box. One of the books is "The Relaxation Response", written by Herbert Benson, MD., Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Hypertension Section of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. Dating from the 1970’s, it describes simple meditative techniques.

Over the years I’ve picked up quite a few books on meditation, yoga and related topics, and I don't always find inspiration, but this book was a little bit different.

The book describes meditation and its benefits. Despite the Hippy Flower Power counterculture of the 60’s and 70’s, I’m assuming meditation was not mainstream in 1974. Therefore Benson starts by ‘grounding’ meditation, writing fairly extensively on the health benefits of meditation, before placing it in the familiar structure and social setting of Christianity.

To do this, he touches briefly on all the various religions & cultures which have practiced a form of contemplation or meditation over the centuries. For me it became really interesting when he refers to medieval texts and Christian scriptures from the Middle Ages, and more specifically a book called “The Cloud of Unknowing”.

It motivated me to do a bit more research on the history of meditation across cultures generally, and “The Cloud of Unknowing” specifically.

As you can imagine, all the Eastern religions include instructions in meditation in some form or fashion: Yoga and Yogic meditation influenced the Brahmins and Hinduism, Buddhism and Tantrism, Taoism and all the other -isms, as well as Vedic literature: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, etc. Confucius includes many instructions and koans on meditation. All these cultures include a method using a word, sound or syllable, also known as "mantra" or "japa" meditation.

The Middle Eastern religions such as Sufism – a mystical Islamic practice of finding God through personal experience, includes training on mindfulness and The Koran itself instructs in the method of achieving a calm state of mind: “let the worshipper reduce his heart to a state in which the existence of anything and its non-existence are the same to him.” The teaching describes the practice of using a word as “an object to dwell on”, using the repetition of a syllable to clear the mind. "Repeating the word “Allah, Allah” as a way to still the mind, let him not cease saying it continuously, and at last he will reach a state when the motion of his tongue will cease and it will seem as though the world flowed from it.”

The Jewish Torah and the Orthodox Jewish Hassidic practice of "hit-bode-dut" – which means “self solitude” – also incorporates the practice of “yishuv haDa’at” (settling the mind) and offers instruction on “meditating on a spiritual concept to open the heart and deepen awareness until it becomes part of our consciousness.”

Delving further, I learnt that Christian literature, going back to the 3rd Century, is literally and liberally peppered with references to mindfulness, finding peace through silence and self-contemplation, using words to still the senses and the mind.

The old Byzantine writings from the 4th to the 14th Century explain to us in various ways how to "bring God and peace into our heart", particularly in the form of the beautiful writings from the Greek Orthodox Philokalia. The practice is called “the Prayer of the Heart” and the lovely instructions are to “...sit down alone and in silence. Lower your head, shut your eyes, breathe out gently, and imagine yourself looking into your own heart. As you breathe out, say “Lord Jesus Christ have Mercy on me”. Say it, moving your lips gently, or simply say it in your mind. Try to put all other thoughts aside. Be calm, be patient and repeat the process very frequently. The invocation should be timed to the rhythm of breathing….”

Around the time of St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th Century, a monk wrote :“ ... you know, brother, how we breathe, we breathe the air in and out. So, sitting down in your cell, collect your mind, lead it into the path of the breath along which the air enters in. Constrain it to enter the heart, altogether with inhaled air, and keep it there. Let this be your constant occupation, never to be abandoned. For this work, by keeping the mind free from dreaming, renders it unassailable to suggestions of the enemy and leads it to Divine desire and love.”

St Teresa - also known as the patron saint of headaches :) - writes about “a passive attitude” as being the Soul’s transcendence of earthly things: “... so the soul raises herself to a loftier region as she withdraws her senses from exterior objects…. Those who adopt this method almost always pray with their eyes shut…because it is making an effort not to think about earthly things.”

Spanish Fray Francisco de Osuna demonstrates in the 16th Century how to use the word “no” as a way to keep the mind in a passive attitude … “I warn you against discussing the matter further in your mind…. To examine into a matter, it would be a hindrance … therefore shut the door with “no”."

My favourite teaching by Fray Francisco is ”...you must also know that the world is by nature deaf, which must be understood to mean in this case that the soul, which is mute … should also be deaf regarding thoughts which drag it down … Therefore it is well to include two words: deaf and dumb … for the one forbids the wandering thoughts and the other prevents those that would arise from our many occupations and levity…”

Also there are the very poetical and beautiful descriptions in “The Cloud of Unknowing” which is what motivated me to research all this in the first place. An anonymous book of Christian texts from around the 14th Century, The Cloud of Unknowing was thought to be written by a Carthusian priest. It's probably anonymous because it would have been considered heresy to write about discovering God as a "pure entity, beyond any capacity of mental conception and so without any definitive image or form." The writer goes on to explain how we can all "regardless of education, knowledge or intellect, be knit to God” through using a technique which he describes as “losing all awareness of himself”.

The book offers beautifully worded and strong counsel on how to overcome distractions during contemplation: “Try to cover thoughts with a thick cloud of forgetting as though they never existed, neither for you nor for any other man.”

He goes to to write about “special ways,” which can be used in order to achieve contemplation: “...and if you think that the labour is great, then you may seek to develop special ways, tricks, private techniques, and spiritual devices by means of which you can put other thoughts away. And it is best to learn these methods from God by your own experience rather than from any man in this life. Although this is so, I will tell you what seems to me to be the best of these special ways. Test them and improve upon them if you can.”

One means he offers up is the use of a single syllable such as “God” or “love”:

“Choose whichever one you prefer, or if you like, choose another that suits your tastes, provided that it is of one syllable. And clasp this word tightly in your heart so that it never leaves it no matter what may happen. This words shall be your shield and your spear whether you ride in peace or in war. With this word you shall beat upon the cloud and the darkness, which are above you. With this word you shall strike down thoughts of any kind and drive them beneath the cloud of forgetting.”

I think poets, artists and writers often know the meaning of contemplation or meditation, even if it's not in the form of Mindfulness as we know it today. In 1846, Emily Bronte writes about what to me sounds very much like meditation:

“…a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends; Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony, That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

“…My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:

“…Oh I dreadful is the check—intense the agony— When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.”

To end with a more modern quote I found in one of the second-hand yoga books, a description by Joseph Campbell: "..You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be."

Have a wonderful week.

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Mx