Still Fasting
S o, I lament to a friend, my biggest fear about fasting is if I am doing it out of stubbornness and pride rather than being constantly focussed on the reason for doing it, somehow it won’t count. I worry about praying wrong, about fasting wrong. I sat down to say prayers this morning, wanting some sort of purification, and was interrupted by a child needing something and was out-of-proportion frustrated, unable to focus at all from the frustration, until finally I sat down to the journal and this is what hit me. What I have been longing for is less purification than a lobotomy. I have been wanting to be so freed from thinking selfish, self-involved thoughts, freed from confabulation and mixed motives, in a way that was, perhaps, not completely realistic. But, if in fact stubbornness and pride help me to sometimes to do the thing I ought to do, to follow Bahà’í law, then maybe they aren’t sins exactly (not that there is much of a Bahà’í focus on sin, mind you) but are traits that are subject to a purification in being put to good use.
It’s sort of like the game I used to play of “Opposite Virtues” where I thought maybe the whole idea of virtue could be nullified since in a given situation you could call on justice or you could call on mercy, both virtues, right? and justify whichever course of action you felt like doing anyway. Patience or eagerness? Persistence or the humility to know when to give way? But we don’t think of muscles that act in opposition as nullifying each other, to have only flexors or only extensors would be, well, useless — you’d stretch out your arm, and there it would be… So I suppose virtues could act in the same way?
I have carried around the T.S. Eliot
The last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
maybe a little too long. My friend reminded me that we are told to look on each other with a “sin-concealing eye” and suggested that I go easy on the self-scrutiny, or at least try for more fair and balanced instead of going straight for the exoriation. Sometimes the right deed outweighs all of the various reasons that may have brought it about.
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In which she tries to have a thought.
I don’t know particular much about virtue. I know a little bit, of late, about extensors and flexors. They are as you say, both needful. So I wonder if this bit of Eliot is the one without the other? I mean, I haven’t read Murder in the Cathedral? But often plays get wrote as an author struggles to come to grips with some internal agon, give all the voices airtime, not have to choose a side? So I don’t know if that fragment of dialogue is addressed out of an unreliable Archbishop, etc.
Then there’s an old Zen thing about students accosting their teacher all upset, because people are coming to hear dharma talks just for the free food. But the teacher just smiles and says, Great. Whatever gets them in the door. Then the dharma will do its work from that point.
Told and retold to myself during years of sesshin when I’d sit there all tearful and think I’m doing it WRONG. Because Herself used to give this talk in which she said, If you’re here on a self-improvement kick, this practice won’t stick, won’t become a permanent part of your life. Whereas if you’re here because you feel compassion for all beings, you might be a lifelong Zen student. And I’d be all whooping up on myself because of my reprehensible self-improvement kick (her exact words) (well, the reprehensible part is mine) and then I’d think, hey, if I came here for the free food, okay then. Maybe I’ll stick around for the saving-all-beings part too. Who knows?
But whoever said trying for more fair and balanced, I like that person.
)
PS I love how even “in recovery” from ideas about being wrong/bad, or, actually, ESPECIALLY in that very process, we come right up against our most tenacious ideas about being wrong/bad. Ha ha! Etc.
Why was I so PREACHY today. I don’t know why I was so PREACHY. Ugh, sorry!
See, even your excoriation makes me smile, offers comfort because, oh, it’s not just ME. But of course, I didn’t hear preachy, but, rather that you got it, so maybe I am not so far out there with my crazy religion thing as to have completely alienated any reader foolish enough as to still be here with me thorugh my low-blood-sugar rantings.
Also, my next blog is going to be titled “Reprehensible Self-Improvement Kicks.”
Still here. Neither alienated nor feeling foolish. Thinky, perhaps a bit overwhelmed.
I could contribute to the next blog.
Group blog! Like a group hug.
I realize that it’s a little late to be adding my two cents worth, but the thing I kept thinking about when reading this post and then the comments is “act your way into right thinking.” I have been told this over and over and over again, and thank God because I’ve never been any good at all at thinking my way into right action, though I tried valiantly for years, nearly to death’s door. So this is one instance when it’s okay to say, who the hell cares what your varying motives are? Your fasting, which is more than the rest of us slobs will probably ever get around to doing. (And hurray! It’s almost over!)