Discipline Without End

Marion Woodman calls paradox the force by which opposing possibilities stretch our consciousness wider. It is what happens when, facing a decision between two mutually exclusive possibilities, you refuse to take either, but look both in the eye, without blinking, until the tension becomes unbearable, and the two possibilities which seemed so distinct fuse into one decision, which is not either possibility, but satisfies each, and transcends both. When you come to the fork in the road in Robert Frost’s yellow wood, you do not take either path, but sit and stare at both of them, until a third path reveals itself. This is the Middle Way, but it is also the transcendent way, the path on a higher plane. It is how Buddhism was founded. It is how we grow up.

Looking back on my life, I see it has been a web of paradoxes. Conflicting impulses have stretched me into a broader and broader humanity. My gift has been the ability to wait. Everything has been done for me - I just had to have the patience to let the bubble stretch, and not believe that every silly idea that crossed my mind was Gospel. I feel that lately I’ve reached a crossroads in my career, where on the one hand I already know the work I love, which requires me most fully, and by which I can give myself most fully away. On the other hand, I find myself longing for a more serious job. I find myself sitting in paradise, dreaming about wearing a suit and tie. Of course I could do both, as TS Eliot did (to some extent, for some time), but I think that would be a lazy decision. I doubt I will do neither. It seems to me increasingly obvious that I want to do the same work, but to do it in a more serious way, in such a way that I command the respect of other people, and am not afraid of my own authority. I am telling myself to take myself more seriously, because my gifts are not trifles, and the world will be far better off if I share them fully.

Another, slower-burning, paradox with which I have been dealing for some years is the tension between freedom and discipline. Seen on one plane, they are opposites. It seems a contradiction for all spiritual teachers to tell me that I am perfect and need add nothing to my own perfection, and then say, almost in the same breath, that I must work hard to achieve it. On the one hand, spirituality says that striving is useless and counterproductive; one the other hand, it tells me to strive to realise that striving is meaningless. Are all gurus, then, fools?

Walt Whitman, the humblest braggart I know, said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” I think any person that does not frequently and smilingly contradict themselves is probably an idiot, and certainly a bore. Everything worth knowing is its own inverse; wisdom transcents logic - right and wrong emerge equally from wisdom, which embraces everything.

A teacher of mine was once travelling through Turkey. In Istanbul he was invited to Sufi Zikr, an event of prayerful chanting. My teacher said he was struck, before the event even started, by the dignity and presence of the men who walked into the room. They were both strong and soft, unflinching but capable of melting at a moment’s notice (I have noticed this mixture of boldness and emotionality in several Middle-Eastern men I know). They were all devout Sufis, and had been praying five times a day for half an hour for many years (including one prayer in the middle of the night). My teacher said that discipline had fused into their bones, and made them extremely strong, and equally beautiful.

Rumi, the Sufi master who said “You are the universe in ecstatic motion” also said “Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.” How to reconcile these two things - that we are made of ecstasy, but must also work hard at ourselves?

I think the answer is that we must find the way that discipline transcends time. We often think of discipline as a path that reaches a destination at some point in the future. An athlete disciplines himself in order to perform well at the Olympics. A writer disciplines his life in order to complete a book. But what is discipline itself? Discipline is a concentration of the energies, ignoring dispersive desires and impulses, into a single goal. Discipline, ironically, is the absence of contradiction. What happens if we direct that discipline not towards some goal in the future, but towards right now? What happens if we give our everything to ourselves, as we are, right here, right now?

I explore this in my meditation practice. I also explore it sitting in the garden with my cat. Snowbell is so unambiguously present in her life. There is nothing in here that distinguishes between ‘Snowbell’ and ‘world’. She lives in a perfect flow state. If I sit in the garden with her, and I am lost in my own world of thoughts and ideas, she quickly leaves me. But if I sit in her world, she will stay next to me for hours at a time. To do that, I have to unruffle my own waters (which, I reason, is the reason I am sitting in the garden in the first place). I have to sit so intently that I hear every noise Snowbell hears. Every time her ears twitch, I must hear the noise she is responding to. I must listen so intently that I miss nothing at all. I become panoramic listening - it is as though I stop hovering above the world, and melt down into it. There is just awareness, and in the middle of it all, no me. Then I smell, then I see, then I feel the breeze, taste the air, sense the life in the day. And it becomes easy - it becomes, in fact, the definition of ease. I am effortlessly myself, just as Snowbell is, and there is nothing to worry me.

Eventually, of course, something removes me from this state. It is still a subtle act of effort. But I suspect, by grace, humans can inhabit this state permanently. Jean Klein described his enlightenment as a state of effortless listening. Jon Bernie says that the background of silence and the foreground of agitation simply swap places in one’s awareness. But, for now, it requires discipline from me. But so does love. So does forgiveness. So does choosing to let go of worries, and simply to be happy. Creativity, my great joy, requires its own discipline. Health requires discipline. Discipline does not mean we contradict ourselves; it means we move singularly in the direction of what we truly want. Discipline is ultimately the ability to decide, which I believe we can hone and strengthen to such an extent, that our decisions change the balance of the world. And then, at some point, the balance comes to predominate, and there is no more decision.

Rumi
Muhammad Suleman Rehman
Muhammad Suleman Rehman Artworks | Saatchi Art