Community

Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing or solitude. These too are times for your community. They allow you to be deeply present to your people and speak words that come from God in you. When it is part of your vocation to offer your people a vision that will nurture them and allow them to keep moving forward, it is crucial that you give yourself the time and space to let that vision mature in you and become an integral part of your being.

Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. Your community might need you as a presence that offers courage and spiritual food for the journey, a presence that creates the safe ground in which others can grow and develop, a presence that belongs to the matrix of the community. But your community also needs your creative absence.

You might need certain things that the community cannot provide. For these you may have to go elsewhere from time to time. This does not mean you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind. Do not be afraid to ask for these things. Doing so allows you to be faithful to your vocation and to feel safe. It is a service to those for whom you want to be a source of hope and life-giving presence.
 

- Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love

Moving On

Is blogging holding me back? Is it a way in which I am still clinging to my old academic life? Is it a crutch I am depending on because I am afraid to be in the world on my own? If so, maybe it is time to let go of the crutch and to walk on my own two feet into the new world with philosophy in my heart, and not necessarily as a achievement which I can point to ("There! That blog is what I have achieved in my life!").

 

Why do I feel such a need to have the blog? At first I told myself it was a way to show that I was not afraid to speak out loud. Now I wonder if it is because I am afraid to be silent. Maybe I am afraid that all the philosophy ideas that I have will remain within me without expression, and will crumble and die away within me if I don't have a format in which I can make them public. But do I cling to the philosophy ideas as a way to escape from the world in front of me? Maybe because I lack the confidence to think that I can be in the world just by myself as I am? Possibly. Very likely.

 

I am tired of feeling as if my mind has this side project that I have to dedicate a lot of my energy to. And I am tired of wondering if having such a side project is keeping me from unifying my whole being into the present, just where I am. Perhaps this focus on blogging is keeping me from really thinking about and committing to a new career. And perhaps that is keeping me from moving on with my life and growing in new ways such that later philosophy might reenter my life in a fresh and unexpected way.

 

This much I know: I don't want the rest of my life to be defined by my writing random philosophy posts on a blog, and me telling myself that this is me doing a grand project. I want to grow. I want to experiment. I want to learn new things. I want a good, meaningful job. I want to be grateful for the academic philosophy I learnt and which I have internalized. And I want to be open to new ways in which that internalized knowledge might express itself in my life, without me constantly clinging to that knowledge as if it was a treasure I cannot let go.

 

Do I have ideas about mind, action, consciousness, philosophy, Wittgenstein, education, multi-culturalism, etc. which are interesting and possibly novel, and which could be appreciated in an academic context? I think so. But even if that is true, does that mean that is the path my life has to take, so that I have to cultivate those ideas and dedicate my life to them? I don't think so. I want more out of my life. Or at least something different. I want not just to understand the mind, but to experience new modes of consciousness. I want not just to have a theory of action, but to act in a way which reflects freedom and confidence. I want the knowledge of mind, action and philosophy to be reflected in my life, in my consciousness, in my very being. I want to see if such a life and such a mode of being produces new knowledge and new forms of awareness which I am not able to even imagine right now. My guess is "yes". That is an experiment, the experiment of my life.

Goodbye Monk Idea

I am not a monk.

 

I am not a monk. I am not a monk. I am not a monk.

 

This was obvious all along in my life. I never entered a monastery. I never publically identified with a religious order. I never took on vows of poverty or celibacy. I never committed in any systematic way to spiritual practices, even to more mundane ones such as prayer or meditation. I hardly ever sat still even for fifteen minutes with my mind focused on God or the Universe. I found that too hard. Maybe even more importantly, I found it too bizarre and other-wordly, as if it was voodoo magic.

 

Nonetheless, I felt within me that I was a monk, or on the path of one, or had the calling of one. And I felt that my philosopher identity was inseparably connected with that monk identity. Here was one of the reasons I had trouble identifying with the philosophy profession from early on. I got bent out of shape in my head about silly things such as how professional philosophers are always doing philosophy over drinks, or at nice restaurants, as if it was just another job. Somehow I imagined that the public philosophy I would be a part of would involve things like fasting or restraining from indulgences. Not that I ever did this myself. Though I tortured myself about it with pangs of guilt, as if I were a weak-willed hedonist. And I tortured myself about how I could be part of a profession which did not exhibit even the need for any such habits.

 

When I left the philosophy profession a part of me thought that I was now truly embarking on my monk path. That is, even though I was married and I was not part of any spiritual institution. So outwardly not a monk. But somehow, inwardly, finally, truly on the path of my monk calling.

 

But I realize now this whole monk thing in my head is over. Many of the questions I have been raising to myself about the philosophy profession--in particular, how it is compatible with everyone excelling at philosophy--are ones which apply equally to any monk role. If a philosophy professor is not universalizable, a monk is even less universalizable. I almost can't believe why I ever thought otherwise. Somehow for me being a monk was always equivalent with being on the side of the everyday joe. But, of course, monks have their structures of power and privilege, even if it is not explicitly in terms of money or fame. Monks were the product of an older time when they were seen as the spiritual shamans, who did, as it were, the spiritual work in the community, and which everyday householders could not do. In this sense, being a monk meant being initiated into a special, privileged knowledge, which was not in the purview of the everyday person. In our democratic age, can this idea still have a resonance? I don't think it can in the same way it did in the past.

 

Goodbye monk idea. I don't know how you came into my life, but it is long overdue that I said goodbye to you. Farewell. I am off into a new world without premeditated concepts constraining my sense of myself.

Vocation

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

- Thomas Merton

The Divine

I belong to no nation, no civilisation, no society, no race, but to the Divine.

  

I obey no master, no ruler, no law, no social convention, but the Divine.

  

To Him I have surrendered all, will, life and self; for Him I am ready to give all my blood, drop by drop, if such is His Will, with complete joy; and nothing in His service can be sacrifice, for all is perfect delight.
 

- The Mother, Words of Long Ago, 1920