Buddhism doesn’t need saints

 And by the way, don’t cry too much over Thích Nhất Hạnh.

Dorothy Day said: "Don't call me a saint, I don't want to be dismissed that easily." Of course Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, proposed her for canonization as soon as he could. The old left wing Catholic in me finds it ironic that a man who is the complete antithesis of the kind of life Day proposes for a modern Christian calls her Blessed Dorothy. She might accuse him of dampening her radical voice, even silencing the anarchist grandmother who confounded comfortable notions, but I wouldn't hesitate, not even for a nano second.

Pushing for sainthood lets purveyors of religious doublespeak, cults, snake oil and associated pyramid schemes off the hook for their flagrant sins. I will also argue that the whole rigmarole of canonization is just lip service to what Jesus calls Christians to do. We don’t really have to go and take care of lepers. Saint Damien did it. Pray to him that we be spared. Or in the case of the Founder of the Catholic Worker, someone can take care of the castoffs our materialistic culture dumps on the Bowery as long as it’s not me or my kids.

One of the reasons that the leaders of the Protestant Reformation dismissed saints was to end the superstitious practice of encasing some bones in the local cathedral to entice lucrative pilgrim spending as well as defund the Papal ponzi scheme of selling indulgences to cover the extravagant cost of building Saint Peter’s in Rome. Every organized religion needs a building maintenance fund so this might be just have been marketing but it has always felt a bit underhanded to me.

There are some people who want to make Issan Dorsey into a Buddhist saint--gotta have a saint in high heels. Of course we could do worse. 

Before I started work at  Maitri Hospice, the Dalai Lama’s rain-maker, the Yogin Yeshe Dorje visited. He and Issan got on very well, one of those connections. The rainmaker grabbed Issan and said, “You’ve created Buddhist Heaven.” Issan laughed. Later when I asked Issan about the visit, he smiled and said, “He was a very nice man, but he didn’t pay the water bill.”

All that is just a preface to something that has been creeping to the surface as the tributes pour in for Thầy, “The Saint of Mindfulness, Beloved Thích Nhất Hanh,” and I need to say it. Whether he really was a very nice Buddhist dude, or even if he was just an ordinary flawed human like the rest of us, don't for a minute think that the work of being mindful, practicing, looking after our interconnected world can be done by anyone else but us, and that includes all the difficult bits. Don’t waste a lot of tears or weave nostalgic odes about all the really good teachers dying. The Lord Buddha died too, quite a few years back.

We can't allow ourselves to get distracted by any cult of personality. We can't get off the hook no matter how hard, by whatever devious means we try. We have to do the work ourselves.

I began with the caution from Blessed Dorothy Day undermining the whole sanctification scheme, and I will close with a hopeful note from the same complicated woman who lived an exemplary life, "The world will be saved by beauty." Amen.

Looking at The Particular Examen of Saint Ignatius with Fresh Eyes

 "This May be Heresy, but I don't care." 

A reformulation of the “Particular Examen” in Saint Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises

I intend to explore the possibility that Saint Ignatius's Examination of Conscience, the Examen, might be useful as a rigorous way to focus our inner search. It’s an Open Source for anyone who wants to lead a full life in their communities and the universe. It’s probably not for individuals who confine themselves to a predetermined set of rules or conventions about behavior, love or faith, and don’t welcome questions. Leave that to the True Believer. 

I hesitate to edit Ignatius. He was not an atheist or a non-theistic hidden Zen master. His Exercises, however, spring from inner experience, prayer and meditation, and I want to test the hypothesis that they hold up outside Catholic theology. I have removed references to a deity, or to any external guidance not because I denigrate a particular belief, but I trust most believers can quickly fill in the blanks. Leaving them open might also allow space for new understanding or insight. In places I have left the words “faith,” “love,” “grace,” “presence,” “guidance,” and “goodness,” not as absolutes but rather focus points. Look for faith and presence in our lived experience instead of returning to old sermons about how to behave and be good. Examine our inner landscape. Include emotions, memories, and dreams. Think with every part of ourselves, right down to the bones,

Ignatius recommends undertaking the Examen for a relatively short period of time, 10-15 minutes, at three distinct times every day: upon rising, before the mid-day meal, and upon retiring. In the morning, as your day is not yet filled with conscious and unconscious actions, you resolve to reflect and remember what you are going to look for if you have identified a ‘chief characteristic.’ Usually you will hone in on what you’ve determined is your greatest obstacle to living in freedom and love--some trait, a repeating negative pattern, a persistent inner dialogue, resentment or prejudice. This becomes a tool that helps focus your review of the day’s events. It is almost always a moving target. You might work with a spiritual director to figure out a useful self-interrogation.

Here are the steps of the Examen*

• Quiet yourself. Become aware of the simple goodness of the universe. We see the gifts of life, the blessings of this human world through faith, the eye of love. Be thankful.

• Look within to see clearly, understand accurately, and respond generously to what is occurring in our lives.

• Review the history of the day (hour, week, or month) in order to see concrete, specific instances of the influence and activity of what we have identified as our chief characteristic. These can be detected by paying attention to strong feelings that may have arisen in situations and encounters. Over time more subtle feelings will become apparent. 

•  Examine these instances, our actions, reactions, words and feelings to see whether you have collaborated with deep inner guidance or yielded to the influence of evil in some way. Express gratitude and regret.

• Plan how to use our own inner guidance skillfully to avoid or overcome the negative influence of the chief characteristic in the future.

November 16th, 2006

The Examen was a breakthrough in the pedagogy of prayer. Human beings are certainly capable of self-examination, and Christians can find inner peace and clarity without Ignatius’s guidance. But he did recommend a method of prayer radically different from the ritual of confession and penance (although he certainly didn’t exclude them). He crafted a way to examine our inner landscape, the particular set of inner motivations and proclivities that govern our lives, and then refocus with an intention that we set for ourselves. 

Many people believe that prayer is like “talking with God,” and that it is the most natural of any communication. I don’t believe this is even close to the truth. For Christians it would mean that the results of Original Sin magically disappear with baptism or conversion. This is not supported by most of what we can gather from the records left by mystics and saints, and it certainly flies in the face of most Eastern teachings regarding humankind’s sleeping, inattentive, deluded state.

If God actually speaks to us, how do we know that our own channels are not jammed with well-intentioned instruction and misinformation at best or unexamined prejudice and obfuscation at worst? I recently saw some clips from a TV documentary called “Camp Jesus” about a fundamentalist summer camp for children. After the adult woman leading a prayer group made the rather startling accusation that Harry Potter should be in Hell, there was an interview with a young 12 or 13 year old boy who was a preacher. The boy said with absolute conviction that he regularly talked with God about his future, but when the camera switched to his father, also a preacher, and I began to listen for the subtext of what the father said, I felt that a strong, irrefutable case could be made that his son's “godly” conversations were nothing more than interiorization of subtle and overt parental messages and prejudices. I am certain the kid believed that Harry Potter was hell bound, and sadly he was destined to be just like his dad.

Prayer has to be taught and learned. How it is taught changes. We learn about love as we live out our lives; we share, and try to teach our children, from our experience. This learning cannot happen in a vacuum: my friend Daniel Shurman refers back to this phrase from Episcopalian liturgy: what is the Spirit saying to the Church? We are always listening and learning, both from the Source of All That Is and from one another.

After filling the page with distillation of Ignatius and reflections, I remember the caution of a very astute Jesuit spiritual guide: “Our capacity to deceive ourselves is infinite!” This leads to another set of cautions: don’t be duped and fall for an easy answer, but on the other hand, don’t let this caveat become an excuse to give up your quest when you become discouraged because you certainly will. Stick with it.

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Notes

It was very difficult to find the exact text of Ignatius for the Particular Examen online. The internet is flooded with many people using the header “The Examen of Saint Ignatius,” and then freely adapting them. I have lots of company; whether or not it is good company, the jury is out. While my adaptation is admittedly one of the most theologically extreme, I have explained at some length my reasoning, and include an English translation of the original text from The Spiritual Exercises. 

*The text:

The first point is to give thanks to God our Lord for the gifts received.

The second point is to ask for the grace to know my sins and to root them out.

The third point is to demand an account of my soul from the moment of rising to that of the present examination, hour by hour or period by period. The thoughts should be examined first, then the words, and finally the actions.

The fourth point is to ask pardon of God our Lord for my faults.

The fifth point is to resolve to amend with the help of God’s grace. Close with the Lord’s Prayer.

My conversation deals with the Particular Examen, and the text from the Exercises is specifically for what is known as the General Examen. The steps are the same for both. The general examination surveys all the morally significant actions of the day, so far as we can recall them, while in the particular examination we focus our attention on one particular fault against which we are struggling and the corresponding virtue we are trying to cultivate. 

From The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. Edited by Fr. Martin Royackers, S.J.

__________________

The woman who inspired this essay, Annemarie Marino, died on May 20, 2006. I will always remember her bright mind and generous heart. We had wonderful conversations. Please add your prayers to mine that she has found peace and her heart's desire.

And my deep gratitude to Bonnie Johnson who inspired so many by the way she lived her life. She continues to be a source of my inspiration.

I invite anyone who reads this and wants to comment or share something about their experience using the Ignatian Examen to leave a comment or contact me. If you are interested you can also check out the wide selection of books, articles, and websites that Morgan Zo-Callahan and I put together, An Ignatian Bibliography.

The Dynamism of Desire, A book conversation

Lonergan and The Exercises of Saint Ignatius

The following conversation about The Dynamism of Desire, Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J. on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola* was recreated from several emails. The participants are Morgan Zo-Callahan (MZC), Robert Rahl (RRR), Joe Mitchell (JM), John Lounibos (JL), Don Maloney (DM), Gene Bianchi (GB).

All but Mitchell and Maloney are contributors to Intimate Meanderings; personal information is in the first pages of the book. By way of introduction Joe Mitchell is an enthusiastic student and facilitator for Non Violent Communication (Marshall Rosenberg). He was a Jesuit from '62-'71. Don Maloney lives in Okinawa, Japan, where he teaches for the University of Maryland Asian Division. He was a Jesuit from '52-'83.

MZC: I’m encouraged by Lonergan's thesis that we humans “can learn and know well,” and that this learning and knowing leads to loving well, which then governs how we act as responsible human beings, aware of our being interconnected. We’re, so to speak, “maturing” our ability to make decisions from our deepest hearts and well-informed intelligence.

RRR: Yes, for Lonergan Dynamism is the process of realizing potential, moving from experience through understanding to judgment and, in the practical order, taking action based on judgment. Desire is what motivates the process, what kick-starts the dynamism. By nature we all desire to know and we all desire to be fulfilled.

JM: I have a juicy quote from the book: “Bernard Lonergan's analysis is to help one understand the inbuilt dynamic of the human subject and so to reach authenticity and self-transcendence. …Authentic human living, then, consists in self-transcendence. Achieving human authenticity is a matter of following the built-in and self-transcending laws of the human spirit.”

MZC: Robert, you have outlined the steps that are included in the process: experiencing, understanding, judging, choosing, and intending to live those joyful values with the zest of free flowing life. Say more.

RRR: Insight summarizes Lonergan's three-step program for human cognition (knowing): experiencing, understanding, and judging. There is a fourth step when the subject moves from cognition to volition (choosing): being attentive to experience (experiencing), posing questions in pursuit of understanding those experiences (reflecting), evaluating those understandings (judging), and making decisions or taking action (deciding).

MZC: How does Lonergan get from “Insight” to The Spiritual Exercises? I think that I can see that it will not be hard to locate discernment because of the 4th step, volition or choosing.

JM: Another quote: “The primary role of the Exercises is to foster the dynamism of desire, what Lonergan calls "the eros of the human spirit.” Desire is the most powerful dynamic in any aspect of life—human life or divine. The dynamism of desire is at work in God, not just in us. And the most wonderful moment in our connection with God is when we finally realize that the passion and desiring of God is in fact our own deepest most precious desiring for ourselves. That is the ultimate dynamism of desire! 

GB: I like your focus on one of the points in the book: that religious goals, when they are not corrupted, bring out the best in the human; that there’s an innate human spirituality to be cultivated. And you lifted up the ecumenical aspect of all this, that non-Christian spiritualities move in the same direction.

JM: To quote: “Lonergan's ideas can be helpful to other religions besides Christianity. Today whether one is a Christian or not isn't essential as to the possible efficacy of doing the Exercises.” 

DM: Another way of saying that might be that "seeking of God in all things" is the true impetus of Jesuit spirituality, which is none other than Christian spirituality, and which includes Hindu and Buddhist spiritualities, even if they do not "name" what they seek as we do. 

GB: I would like to return to the idea of desire. I wasn't going to comment on the Dynamism of Desire since I haven’t read the book, and maybe the word "desire" is handled nicely in the book. But there is a further and maybe ultimate stage of getting beyond our personal desires, our "me-drama" of fears and wants to be at peace in the moment, in the now (without getting passive about world suffering). Desire, frequently driven by fear, pitches us toward the future and often becomes excessive (this word is important.... I’m not saying that all desire is bad). Let me illustrate this from the Good Samaritan narrative and some eastern stuff. The Samaritan is plunged into the now of the bleeding guy on the road. He was riding along with sweet thoughts about his girlfriend in Jericho, the candle-lit supper of roast lamb and her soft bed. He doesn't even have a cell phone to call and explain. The “now moment” pulls him out of his "me drama." In Christian language, it's beyond his desires to what is called unselfishness, unconditional care.

DM: Many moons ago, I heard Bernard Lonergan speak at Georgetown, or was it at LMU? He seemed stiff and uncomfortable and delivered his wisdom in a monotone. I never did worship at his altar, although I knew many who underwent the epistemological "conversion" experience that Lonergan's thought seemed to trigger. However, when I read that "achieving human authenticity is ...following the in-built and self-transcending laws of the human spirit,” and the "eros of desire," I am reminded of Karl Rahner's view of man, outlined in "Hoerer des Wortes." Of course, Karl had his followers, too, (I am admittedly one of them)--and he, too, delivered his convoluted German in a monotone. But neither Bernard nor Karl could or would claim to be a prophet. 

GB: I agree with you, Don, about the "sanctifying" well, almost, of old texts like the Exercises, and even the Gospels, as if they had to be beyond critique (any nay-saying) and were always adaptable to any century. I don't hear a word of harder criticism about trying to adapt a 16th century mind to today. I had the same feeling during the 500-year honoring of Ignatius, Xavier and Faber. All fine men, to be sure, but we don't entertain any nay-saying about them on virtually anything. It's like an older habit of holding that Aquinas said it all and better than subsequent philosophers.

DM: Of course, and I assume that you can still do the Exercises without having read or been converted to Lonerganism. This new book, according to some, finally gives us the "key" to what Ignatius really meant. I am skeptical, first, about the "deification" of Ignatius and his writings. I doubt he would claim for himself what we are making of him. He was as limited in perspective and theology as any good man in his century and asking "what Ignatius would do today" is as futile as asking what any of us would do if inserted into 16th century life as a 16th century person? 

JL: I suggest Jesuits or former Jesuits may be the worst judges of Ignatius and his exercises due to the duress of circumstances when we made them or the particular retreat director(s) one had. My unforgettable one was an Alaskan missionary of the Oregon province, (I met many remarkable Alaskan missionaries) who compared the call of Christ the King to the lead sled dogs you depended on to survive in the Arctic.

As for Ignatius and the Exercises, I cannot speak to them without mentioning Bill Meissner, S.J. 's work, Ignatius of Loyola, The Psychology of a Saint, on the psychology of Ignatius and the psychology of the Exercises. Consider the times Ignatius lived through. Consider his spiritual exercises as the work of a layperson. Consider how many unique personal leaders followed him. 

DM: Ignatius's exercises are, to me, sometimes lifted to the level of the New Testament, that is, as a special "latter day revelation of God" good for all times and all peoples, if only their true meaning can be plumbed. 

JL: The Christian test of the Exercises should be whether they lead a person to closer and more joyful service of Christ. I still think the four-week structure of the exercises and the contemplation on love to be works of genius for Inigo. For Inigo, after all, the director of the person making the retreat was the Holy Spirit, as little as that may be apparent to the literalist reading of his text or the rationalists who taught us how to meditate. The Dynamism of Desire. That is clearly the point of the discernment of spirits.

MZC: Thank you all. So I think we can conclude that Lonergan’s work is useful to help us examine the Exercises, and I have to say that most of us still look back into the experience itself rather than a theory. And on that note, I am going to give the last word about spiritual experience, at least for the conversation, to Gene who has a quote from an American Zen master.

GB: This is from Toni Packer's The Silent Question: "What unfolds in awareness is a new, subtle listening that may not ever have been experienced before, because most of the time it has been drowned out by all the other noises (desires/fears) taking place in the bodymind.... Can all the rush of wanting, the silent ambition underneath it, the neediness hiding behind it-- can all of that reveal itself in quiet listening and looking...That is why it's so very important to come to a place of silence, stillness and wondering.... where one can enter into an almost motionless not-knowing." Finally, here's how she describes the now experience: "Awareness replaces thinking and fantasizing about myself with simply being here-- computer humming, keyboard clicking, wind rattling, snowmelt dripping, heart beating, back paining, breathing in and out, in and out -- one moment at a time."

*Lonergan, Bernard, The Dynamism of Desire, Bernard J F. Lonergan, SJ on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. (The Institute of Jesuit Sources in St. Louis, 2006)

Robert Doran, SJ, has been at the forefront of publishing Lonergan's Collected Works. You can view his web site, or register and dive into the seas charted by Lonergan at 

http://www.bernardlonergan.com.

Boston College’s Lonergan Institute: http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/lonergan/institute/about_institute.html