The Mindful Meditative Way...
Mindfulness
is the buzzword of the moment. It seems to be everywhere.
From psychology to
education, from psychotherapy to the worlds of business and management, the
“mindful way of doing things” is the prescribed way of achieving success and
the conduit by which all of these disparate disciplines hope to move to the
next level. This current wave of mindfulness arises primarily from the work of
Dr. John Kabat-Zinn an american professor who, with his book, “Full Catastrophe
Living”, (which itself arose after his own experience of the usefulness to himself
and his clients of a series of exercises proposed by the Buddhist Monk and Zen
Master Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat he attended), opened up the practice of
Mindfulness for the twentieth century. At a time when humanity seems to be
mindless in so many of the directions it is taking Mindfulness, as proposed by
Kabat-Zinn and many others like him, has offered a way of becoming present to
ourselves, to each other and to the transcendent dimension of life in a way
that is accessible to everyone. However, sometimes this way of presenting
mindfulness has led to a false belief that the discipline is one that is only
found in the eastern traditions. In fact, all religions and cultures have
taught that the mindful state is the prerequisite for beginning the meditative
path, and this includes our own Judeo-Christian tradition.
Since Old Testament
times Mindfulness, “Kavannah” in Hebrew, has been taught as an essential
practice on the way of prayer. The revelation of the Divine Name to Moses as he
encounters the burning bush invites the chosen people into a unique awareness
of God as the “I AM”, literally the only One who is truly present, who truly IS
and whose presence is accessed through deepening our awareness of His presence
in every succeeding present moment. The ancient Jews taught that unless the
law, “the Torah”, was observed with Kavannah, with mindfulness, then it could not
be said to be observed truly. Jesus Himself teaches the disciples to dwell in
the present moment, having no care for tomorrow but trusting in the loving
providence of the Father. In teaching them of prayer He insists they must enter
the inner room of their heart and there encounter the presence of the Father
who is already there, present and waiting for us in the present moment. In
speaking of the Holy Spirit, the life of God within them, Jesus teaches them to
perceive the presence of the Spirit as the breath of life, (pneuma), and after
His resurrection breathes the Holy Spirit over them. The ancient fathers of the
Church such as St.’s John Climacus, John Cassian, Benedict, Gregory Nazianzus,
and all those coming from the desert monastic tradition, continually returned
to these ideas and spoke of the necessity of developing the “art of attending
to the present moment”, being mindfully aware, (prosekai), as the essential art
of the man or woman who prays, and they developed many techniques for centering
the mind in the heart through the use of the breath and the “prayer word”,
(versiculum), so as to remain in this inner watchfulness in which the love of
God may be truly encountered and then yielded to in such a way as to allow the
Holy Spirit to begin His healing work of sanctification.
Over the
succeeding centuries many of the saints, mystics and great teachers of prayer
have even spoken of the present moment as a “Sacramental Space” in which, if we
deepen our attention fully enough, become mindful enough, we will be able to
discern the presence of God inviting us into contemplation and then hear the
voice of God inviting us into mission. In modern times saints and teachers such
as St. Therese of Lisieux, Dom John Main, Thomas Merton, Abbot Thomas Keating,
and Pope St. John Paul II have all insisted that this contemplative, mindful
dimension of Christianity must be taught once again as the birthright of all
the baptised and so have preached and taught its ancient way of practicing the
presence of God. Practices as seemingly diverse as Lectio Divina, Centering
Prayer, the Practice of the Presence of God, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy
Chaplet, the Jesus Prayer, Eucharistic Adoration, are all instruments that,
when prayed mindfully, with the attention of the heart, may become ways by
which Divine Grace can lead us into the encounter with that deep stillness and
silence that exists behind the noise of our distracting thoughts and allows us
to “Be Still and Know that I am God.” (Ps:46)
We can, therefore, safely say that
the practice of Mindfulness Meditation, centred on Christ, has always been a part of our prayer tradition
and we must give thanks that the modern wave of Mindfulness has woken us up to
the ever ancient, ever new contemplative path that is distinctively our own as
Christians, while also allowing us a space in which to dialogue with our
brothers and sisters of other traditions and learn from them as they learn from
us. The mindful, meditative path is the path of every Christian and indeed of
every human being, and a universal invitation to know the God who IS and whose “ISness
of Love” is revealed in the precious present moment.
As one of
our own saintly brothers, Venerable Solanus Casey always taught, “All that God
asks of humanity is that they be faithful to the present moment.”
Blessings to you in this present moment...
