Contemplify NonRequired Reading List for October 31, 2020
October NonRequired Reading List
Contemplative friend,
I have the gift of stupid attention*. Give me a book in a crowded train station and watch me be transported to the Shangri-La of my mind, oblivious to an elephant parade inches away. But if you throw me into a conversation with five chatterboxes yapping over one another you will bear witness to the cartoonish scene of steam whistling out my ears. This natural makeup of my stupid attention reveals all sorts of pearls and shadows. The contemplative work of reorientating my stupid attention is trickier than tickling a housefly.
Contemplation oils the gate of my attention when I go to the meditation cushion to spit shine my interior perception through the practice of objectless awareness. Daily I risk the monotonous task of self-emptying for a Divine centered life. To no one's surprise this commitment puts my ego in huff. My ego takes every opportunity to loosen or tighten (depending on his wobbly mood) the gates of my attention. This foolishness gets old, but what are you going to do? He is a humorless old pal who likes to play captain. So I carry on. This is just what the moment offers. I step up to oil the gate of attention in its current conditions from the boundless depths of perception to harness the vibrations of the God-infused present moment.
I prattle on about cultivating attention because the nuances of perception are becoming more salient. The depth dimension and the linear rat race are both being taken into account. Let me empty my pockets to show you what I am carrying on about.
Objectless awareness, practiced in Centering Prayer, is receptive to the whole of reality without splintering it into the character studies of “this”, “that”, “me”, and “you” (do read this book for a more satisfying roll in the hay with Centering Prayer). The practice of objectless awareness holds the capacity to slowly rachet a change in perception over time.
Stupid attention plays its own hand. Stupid attention is given disproportionately at birth and heightened at various stages of life or through dedicated practice. I do believe that this stupid attention is a distant cousin to objectless awareness. Related, but through marriage. Stupid attention is covertly focused while objectless awareness accepts the blurred boundaries of Reality in unknowing. Objectless awareness has the gusto to blatantly ignore the lines of the script to see the spaces holding the whole story together.
I see both this perception and attention in Jesus. Stupid attention is Jesus saying, “Who touched my cloak?” and objectless awareness in his weathered offering “the wind blows where it will”. These two distinct modes (what you see and how you see) hold distinguished roles in the life of each contemplative. Attention and perception are rooted in the care of one body.
Another angle that is sure to tip over a sacred cow or two. Practicing objectless awareness is grazing in the field of Oneness that grows itself in each blade of grass. Or the momentary awareness of the whole, the raindrop joining a rushing river. Or as Christ puts it, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing”. Particularity grows forth from unity. How we honor particular branches is also how we respect our shared vine. This is where stupid attention comes in handy. Without stupid attention a faux oneness is sought by pruning the branches of particularity to match a supposed ideal branch. It is confusing the branch for the vine. This is akin to declaring “All Lives Matter” in response to “Black Lives Matter”. A rallying cry for an unexamined unity with no particular use. This, in my humble opinion, is to miss the objectless awareness in the object lesson.
D.T. Suzuki says, “In Christian terms [suchness] is to see God in angel as angel, to see God in a flea as a flea.” The particular reveals God as God is in the particular. One would be wise to tremble before verbalizing the vastness of God’s universal gift at the cost of smearing incarnational images of God. The practice of objectless awareness should not turn you into an unflushable turd. It should fling open the bathroom door of perception to let the wind blow where it will.
In the care of one body, attention and perception long for cultivation. Each renewing of the present moment is an invocation to lean into that Divine longing again. This is why we hidden contemplatives in the world wipe the lens of perception, seeking to be as undisturbed as a freshly laid blanket of snow or the unbroken night. Free to attend to the fleas as fleas and the angels as angels. It is a love affair with all that is.
I hear the Sierra bard^ calling us onward:
“This present moment.
That lives on.
To Become.
Long ago.”
*There surely is a more spiritual term than ‘stupid attention’, but I do like it.
^Gary Snyder
October NonRequired Reading List
These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search For Home by Bayo Akomolafe (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
This book shatters perceptions of linearity. Bayo Akomolafe is a multifaceted writer that brings the imaginal into his quest for home-making, place-making, and becoming. This book is unpredictable in its discoveries and echoes of the holy in corners unswept. And the levy of love for his daughter grounds Bayo's words in the relational here and now. I leave Akomolafe's poetics as a teaser of what this searching for home feels like,
“Encircled by crumbling fences and by an encroaching wildness, without maps and without answers, we will have to improvise if the sun is to shine on us tomorrow. The world needs you to fly, to rush into virgin fields and, with hands outstretched, pollinate the flowers...” (p.285)
This book is for anyone bearing the tumult of personal, generational, and planetary stress in a dogged pursuit of home.
Road to Heaven: Encounter with Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
The coo of the call to the contemplative way is just outside my window in the common song birds and musty pigeons. I was looking at the birds of air when the words of Taoist Master Hsueh pecked my mind. Here is his guidance on cultivating practice:
“…you can’t be in a hurry. You have to be prepared to devote your whole life to your practice. This is what’s meant by religion. It’s not a matter of spending money. You have to spend your life. Not many people are willing to do this….You have to practice before you can understand. Lao-tzu teaches us to be natural. You can’t force things, including practice. Understanding is something that happens naturally. It’s different for everyone. The main thing is to reduce your desires and quiet your mind. Practice takes a long time, and you have to stay healthy. If you have a lot of thoughts and desires, you won’t live long enough to reach the end.” (p.82)
This book is for anyone interested in hearing the stories of contemplative hermits living in radical solitude. May it inspire you to immerse yourself further into the inner landscape of solitude.
The Brothers K by David James Duncan (Get it at the Public Library or IndieBound)
My usual habit of reading is to have three books at the ready; one fiction, one non-fiction, and one book of poetry. Each book shares the same nest but flies in its own time. The Brothers K is another one of those works of fiction that took me too long to get into. But I persisted because many of my friends list it at the top of their favorite pieces of fiction. I am so glad I did. The story revolves around the Chances, a working class family in Camas, Washington. Masterful storytelling and subtle character development follows. The questions that percolated in my reading bubbled around the enduring meanings of familial love and familiarity, the bondage and freedom of religion, coming of age and arrested development, struggle and desire. I felt the whole range of emotions while I read The Brothers K. I snorted, laughed, cried quietly (and then loudly), and recognized my own limitations reflected in the characters. Mostly I was warmed by the inner fire of this story's most intimate portraits of vulnerability, resilience, and resurgence. I will be reading this book again and again. It is a masterpiece.
Contemplative Ecology Dialogue Series by Wake Forest University (Learn more and register here)
This was highlighted in September, but I wish do so again. This is not a book, but a series of dialogues. And you can still jump in to participate! The next dialogue is Thursday, November 11 (It is free, but you must register. Do so here). I attended the first two dialogues hosted by Fred Bahnson (you have seen his work highlighted in Contemplify many times) with the focus on the work of contemplative changemakers Alison McCrary, Douglas Christie, and Lia Purpura. I highly encourage you to check it out.
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May your metaphors extend beyond the bathroom
as you stoke the fires of attention in the hearth of perception.
May a flea lead you to the Kingdom of God.
May your branch blow wild in the wind and be stayed by the vine.
In Stupid Attention,
Paul
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P.P.S. The postings to kindle the examined life in a quarantined world are still being knitted together dailyish under Quarantined Qontemplative at the Contemplify basecamp.