Clear Heart Open Mind: A Commentary on Tibetan Meditation, by Catherine Rathbun (Jetsun Yeshe)
Clear Heart Open Mind is a reflection on the Tibetan meditative practice of Chenresig. Those who follow my blog or are aware of my sometimes hyper-rational predilections may wonder why I’m reviewing a book about mystical practices. I beg your indulgence. I’m of the view that the culture of the rational brain reached its zenith long ago, and the activity we now regard as rational thought is only tenable as a turning inward, a more mature self-examination that laments the losses that were demanded by the application of reason. The content of that hyper-rational predilection reflects, I believe, a broader social trend, what David Tracy calls a “disenchantment with disenchantment.” Reason has proven itself unreasonable, and the only rational approach to life is to acknowledge the irrationality at the center of our being. This has become apparent as we witness how science has delivered to us tools for self-destruction, efficiencies that enable boundless consumption, and a naïve optimism that we will be able to deploy those same tools and efficiencies to rescue a faltering biosphere.
I was born in the early sixties and already the culture of the rational brain was in decline. Of course I wasn’t old enough to swim freely on the changing tide but I was aware that something was happening. After all, these were my formative years. This was the time of the first wave – the first significant contact between Eastern mystical practices and the West. Hesse’s Siddhartha was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became popular in the sixties. Huxley wrote of his experiments with mind-altering drugs and their relationship to mystical experience. The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, adapted Zen practices to Roman Catholic monastic life. And hundreds of thousands of American G.I.’s found themselves unexpectedly exposed to the Buddha’s influence when they were shipped to destinations in Southeast Asia.
It was in this context that teacher and author, Catherine Rathbun, a self-confessed hippie, embarked on her own spiritual journey. She began formal meditation training in 1969, studying under a number of teachers and traveling to Morocco, India, camping in game parks in Africa, then to New Zealand and Sri Lanka. Returning to Canada ten years later, she settled in Toronto where she began to teach Buddhist practices and founded a meditation center, Friends of the Heart. It is also worth noting that Lama Catherine (Lama means teacher) started out as a professional dancer. The body awareness that the discipline of dance demands is in ample evidence throughout her writing as an adjunct to her practice.
Lama Catherine wrote this book in answer to the needs of students, to serve as a bridge between the teachings of the Tibetan tradition and those (like me) born into the culture of the rational brain. Her book is an exemplum of the second wave. Most Westerners of the sixties and seventies were, like the Beatles, dabblers and experimenters. It is those who committed their lives to these practices who have become teachers to the next generation. Although they began life inculturated in the West, they have internalized these teachings in a way that earlier contacts could not. So, for example, reflecting the first wave in The Doors of Perception, Huxley writes:
“Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”
And again:
“The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.”
I believe Huxley is wrong to suppose that the desire for self-transcendence is motivated by the need to escape. While this characterizes the motivation of some people some of the time, I believe most people are driven by a longing for return from the many separations which plague our lives and which all may have their psychological roots in the moment of birth. In any event, the need for escape is an unworthy motive and has no place in Buddhist meditation. It is the assessment of someone who stands on the outside looking in and, poking and prodding like a good scientist, makes his best guess as to what must be happening inside the mind of the meditating figure seated before him. Unfortunately, it is a frequent criticism from Western theologians and philosophers, and one which persists. See, for example, this recent comment from the materialist philosopher and cognitive theorist, Daniel C. Dennett in Breaking the Spell:
“Consider, for instance, those contemplative monks, primarily in Christian and Buddhist traditions, who, unlike hardworking nuns in schools and hospitals, devote most of their waking hours to the purification of their souls, and the rest to the maintenance of the contemplative lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. In what way, exactly, are they morally superior to people who devote their lives to improving their stamp collections or their golf swing?” (p. 306)
Dennett is alluding to an ethical critique: meditation is a narcissistic practice which fails to do any good in a world full of need, or what Lama Catherine acknowledges as the “sin of quietism” (310). In bridging divergent views, part of Lama Catherine’s aim is to dispel stereotypes and demonstrate an integrative view, one in which the distinction between self and the world is illusory. Love of the self is simultaneously an expression of love for the world with the consequence that one cannot help but act ethically in relation to the world.
Let us turn to the book itself. First, as indicated above, I come to this as a person steeped in Western habits of thought. My experience in meditation is limited. I was introduced to meditative practice through mindfulness, ironically, as part of a (scientific) double-blind study to determine its effectiveness for people who have experienced multiple episodes of major depressive illness. As a consequence, I have little to say about those parts of the book devoted to the interior experience of the Chenresig practice except to point out that they are there. So, for example, Lama Catherine devotes a chapter to each syllable of the great mantra: Om Mane Padme Hung. In each chapter, she reflects on the significance of the syllable and what one can expect when intoning it, cautions when it produces an effect which takes the student by surprise, and offers a prayer at end of the reflection. In other words, it serves as a guidebook for the student. Each chapter is organized so that it can stand alone rather than as a cumulative set of studies. This allows the student to focus on one element of their practice at a time without feeling burdened.
Instead, I’ll comment on what might be described as the “bridging passages,” those passages laced throughout the book which draw parallels between Tibetan Buddhist teachings on the one hand, and Christian and Western secular teachings on the other, or which answer critiques such as those I’ve mentioned above.
Dualism
One of the cornerstones of Western thinking was definitively articulated by Descartes in the third of his Meditations on First Philosophy – the notion of mind-body dualism: our minds are distinct from our bodies, and because we are primarily thinking things, we are distinct from the physical universe, including animals. Descartes didn’t invent this idea. Perhaps the author(s) of the Book of Genesis did when t(he)y said that God granted man dominion over the earth. Whatever the source, the consequence in the West is a pervasive attitude of entitlement and empowerment that has manifested itself in indiscriminate plunder of natural resources, slaughter of animals, and abuse and enslavement of those humans we have chosen to define out of humanity. Sadly, we have only modified our behaviour in light of scientific evidence demonstrating a causal relationship between consumption and climate change, the possibility of sentience in non-human species, and the genetic fact that there is no such thing as a non-human human. Yet these are truths which a compassionate heart/mind has known for 2,500 years.
From a Buddhist perspective, dualism is illusory. Instead, there is the notion of interdependent arising:
“From this perspective there can be no separation between body and mind, between us and our health and the health of the leopard frog or the Great Lakes salmon. Far from waiting for the government to fix things, or private industry to become compassionately engaged, Buddhist philosophy places the responsibility squarely upon the shoulders of each and every person” (17).
Meditation produces an expanding awareness of interdependent arising with obvious consequences on a number of fronts, including our personal relationships and our relationship to the environment. Concerns for both threads are woven throughout the book.
For example, in the chapter on the bodhicitta (finding a higher purpose; the Buddha heart/mind) where the interdependent arising is introduced, we find this line from a Mahayana prayer: “May I awaken speedily for the sake of all sentient beings” (25). The interior work of the individual meditating is neither interior nor individual but fosters a positivity that ripples outward. This is reiterated in the chapter titled “The Need to Develop Love and Compassion.” The “development of the positive self begins and ends with coming into a state of love,” but this is not enough. A person can be loving without being effective. What is needed in addition is compassion “for compassion is love in action” (133). But she doesn’t shy away from the darker side of relationship either. In a discussion of the dangers of righteous anger she cites the poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, “Please Call Me by My True Names.” Compassion must embrace both victim and perpetrator. A similar message can be found in the story of Jesus and the adulteress (John 8:1-11): “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Those filled with righteous anger are called to identify with the object of their anger.
On numerous occasions, Lama Catherine expresses compassionate regard for the natural world and concern for the terrible hurt we have inflicted upon it. She makes explicit reference to the dualist approach which separates us from the natural world, calling it a “pernicious attitude” (67) and a “delusion” (68). She cites Rachel Carson, Al Gore and David Suzuki as obvious examples of individuals who have sounded the alarm, yet we persist in behaving as if we live apart from the world which sustains us. In the chapter titled “The Adornments of Chenresig,” we are presented with the image of an extinct antelope on the shoulder of Chenresig and a series of questions about its meaning which culminates with: “What responsibility does this give us in our treatment of nature?” (181) Later, and more pointedly, she speaks to the need for ethical motivation:
“Since we are working to awaken all-accomplishing wisdom where actions and motivations are one and the same, ethics must strongly come into play. If ethical motivation and action could begin to take hold in the halls of business, our global economy would develop very differently. Where is the sword that will create this? Can we avoid the global disaster that is coming towards us? Do we need a nuclear war to wake us up? Must we endure choking fumes in our cities, large tracts of land unusable through agricultural poisoning, before we wake? These things are painfully close at the beginning of the 21st century. What are we doing about them?”
These examples of concern for our relationship with sentient beings and the natural world illustrate how inappropriate it is to suggest that Buddhism lacks ethical engagement.
Science
I find it curious that, although Buddhism is incompatible with the dualism of modern scientific method and its presumption of objectivity, nevertheless Lama Catherine speaks of “the scientific approach of Buddhism” (34) and speaks too of the teachings of the Abhidharma as a “science of the mind” (70). How do we account for this apparent contradiction?
Western science is, at bottom, a set of epistemological claims about how we go about discovering new facts, and about the limits of what is discoverable. In a sense, that is how Buddhism functions as well. They differ in the their vantage points and the tools they use in the act of discovery. The virtue of the Abhidharma is its careful observations and its catalogue of both the body’s organs and the movements of consciousness. It is scientific because it is as empirical as any Western document, but directed inward. It reminds me of the Jesuit epistemology of Bernard Lonergan who set out to capture the human mind in the act of knowing. He observed that we cannot know anything simply by taking a good look at it; instead, we must begin by looking inward at the structure of our own consciousness, which he then catalogued in painstaking detail in his work, Insight. Lonergan stood as a precursor to the postmodern philosophers who recognized the contingent nature of our knowing, its subtle dependency upon power relationships, and the instability of the modern concept of Truth. In light of these developments in Western thought, it may be fair to suppose a convergence between Buddhist philosophy and Western views on science and the nature of knowledge.
There were several occasions when I caught myself balking at claims made by Lama Catherine. These involved claims which a Western reader would label supernatural or, more pejoratively, superstitious: discussions of past lives, auras and non-corporeal beings called Protectors. But these are introduced with an attitude that differs from what we are accustomed to encounter in our Western spiritual leaders. Here, there is no demand that we believe in these things before we set out on our journey; merely an invitation that we “come and see,” which sounds strangely like the empiricism of science. This is coupled with a general caution: “I have learned over my long years of practice that there is certainly more to our world than we think. If we pay attention without reacting negatively to such phenomena, we can learn a great deal” (305). This sounds much like Hamlet’s advice to his rational friend Horatio who had having difficulty accepting Hamlet’s conversation with a ghost.
Play
Perhaps “plasticity” should be added to the word “play” to describe a suppleness of the mind. Buddhist philosophy fosters a capacity to live without the necessity of resolution, to hold opposites in balance, and to flow within a changing world. Lama Catherine introduces the notion of play in a discussion of symbolism:
“Being able to play with symbolic images enables us to open the dimensions of symbolism. Symbolism is always personal as well as transpersonal and if we act as if there were only meaning, we are limiting the creative play of mind and the potential for awakening through its dynamism.” (165)
In part, is it this creative play of mind that has allowed Buddhism to enjoy a syncretism which other spiritual systems resist. While some Western teachers of Buddhism have treated their students as converts or as people who have crossed a threshold or who have engaged in a renunciation, it is entirely intelligible to be a Buddhist Christian or a Buddhist Jew because Buddhism provides more the method and less the content for the unfoldment of a spirit. It seems easier to cope with this mixture when we approach it with a playful attitude.
Related to this is the notion of Truth. What we take to be Truth is, in fact, a portrayal of Truth. Because Truth (found in the Dharmadhatu or realm of knowledge) is transmitted through ordinary people like you and me, it is limited by the particularity of our circumstances. This accounts for variations in the claims of different religions and philosophies. We all may draw from the same well, but if we speak different languages, then the words we use to describe our water will differ.
It occurs to me, too, that a playful mind may also be more ready to attend to the world with a compassionate regard. Compassion is, in part, an imaginative leap into the mind and heart of another, which can be difficult if we are called to take that leap into the mind and heart of someone we’d rather avoid, like Thich Nhat Hanh’s sea pirate. Approaching this as a supposition (“What if?”), or as an adventure, can soften the fear and anxiety that might otherwise accompany such a leap.
A final note about the physical book. Clear Heart Open Mind is self-published, or rather, written by Catherine Rathbun with the obvious and loving support of colleagues and students at Friends of the Heart. She writes in a clear prose which evidences a care and attentiveness consistent with the practice she teaches. The first printing was 300 copies, though it deserves wider distribution.