What to read today.
Chapter 2: What Contemplation is Not
Is your concept of contemplation evolving or changing in any
way?
Having read to this point, can you say that you have
engaged in contemplation at any point in your life? Sharing with others: What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
Here Merton’s contemplation is sounding like Buddhist mindfulness and with all the same dangers, i.e. falling in love with the feeling. “Contemplation is not trance or ecstasy.” What a shame! This reminds me Pema Chodron’s warning that mindfulness can be just another form of attachment. It seems that there is no easy out.
Posted by Genevieve.
post by william
ReplyDeleteOK i get that contemplation is outside the normal experience, but I wonder about the thinking part. surely we have a connection to the real that allows us to go to places that contemplation "inhabits" and without this we would be zoned out space cadets
I grant you he is taking me outside my comfort zone with this however.
Posted by Second Thoughts
ReplyDeleteToday I read chapter 2 on the subway train. Contemplation is not trance. Ok. Contemplation is not prayerfulness. Ok. Contemplation is not escape. OK. Contemplation is incompatible with prejudiced opinions. I closed the book. I paid attention to the subway car and those in it, tried simply to be present without forming any judgments about who or what was going on. Who's there? Just us. Situation normal. If I'm reading Merton correctly, that is not contemplation either.
Well, maybe I don't know what contemplation is. Or maybe it's like the weather in Newfoundland - just wait and it will show up.
Perhaps it will be some breaking apart of an idea that I hold dear. A burning up.
I plan to be here when and if that happens.
Posted by Second Thoughts. Question for William
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that Merton discounts thinking when in fact contemplation has to involve thinking because without it, a person has to be in a trance (which Merton says isn't what contemplation entails)?