John Main, Awakening 1, Meditatio Series. 2014, p.23
I want to try to give you a summary of the basic theology of meditation. The first thing that we have to understand is the wonder and marvel of silence. I want you to listen to this from the Maitrya Upanishad:
There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence in our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one’s mind and one’s subtle body rest on that and rest on nothing else.
In the Christian tradition, St Ignatius of Antioch wrote these memorable words of his: ‘It is better to be silent and real, rather than to talk and be unreal.’ This is the purpose of our meditation: to come to that ultimate reality, the ultimate reality which is beyond our mind. The great tragedy of our time is that we think that we will get everything by our ratiocination. We in the Christian tradition are almost as bad as anyone in this by our defining man as a rational creature. What we have to learn to do is to be silent, to be filled with awe, and to worship. And worship is impossible without first silence, because once we come into the presence of the Mystery all we can do is bow and bend low.
I want to stress to you that the authority that is needed for the proclamation of the Gospel can only be gained if we undertake that pilgrimage so that we can encounter within ourselves, in the silence of our own spirit, the loving silence of the Lord Jesus. This is what we need, men and women of authority who speak out of their own experience, who speak of what they know.
For most modern people, silence is a very threatening thing; it’s very difficult for people to sit in silence. This silence is something that we have to get used to, that we have to work for. Now when we begin to meditate, as you may know already from your experience, we have to face that fantastic indiscipline of our minds. Our minds are just hopping away like a little child who has just been given a hoop or something like that, and we cannot control it. It’s just whizzing around everywhere as we are trying to say our mantra and just saying, ‘It’s impossible; I can’t do it.’ That is the first thing you’ve got to do, you’ve got to face that initial shame that you cannot control your mind. And as long as we cannot control it we cannot come to that deep silence within us, because the din is too great. That’s where the mantra and the simplicity of it fulfils its first task: to bring those surface areas of the mind into harmony with the deeper peacefulness within. That is the first task of the mantra.
A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Public Domain
What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
“Life is but an empty dream!”
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
“Dust thou art, to dust returnest,”
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,–act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.
