Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton Page A
Authors: Alain de Botton
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into three parts,
corpus
(body),
animus
(mind) and
spiritus
(spirit), each of which must be carefully looked after by any decent hostelry.
In the tradition of St Bernard, Catholic retreats continue even today to provide their guests with comfortable accommodations, extensive libraries and spiritual activities ranging from the âexamenâ â a thrice-daily survey of the conscience, carried out alone and in silence (usually with a lighted candle and a statuette of Jesus) â to sessions with counsellors who have been specially trained to inject logic and morality into believersâ confused and corrupted thought processes.
Although the specific lessons taught therein may differ markedly, Buddhist retreats embody an equal commitment to the whole self. After hearing of one in the English countryside specializing in seated and walking forms ofmeditation, I resolved to see for myself what benefits might be derived from a course of spiritual exercises.
At six in the morning one Saturday in June, some 2,573 years after the Buddha was born not far from Kapilavastu, in the Ganges river basin, I sit in a semicircle with twelve other novices in a converted barn in Suffolk. Our teacher, Tony, begins the session by inviting us to understand the human condition as it is viewed through Buddhist eyes. He says that most of the time, without having any choice in the matter, we are dominated by our ego, or, as it is termed in Sanskrit, our
Ätman
. This centre of consciousness is by nature selfish, narcissistic and insatiable, unreconciled to its own mortality and driven to avoid the prospect of death by fantasizing about the redemptive powers of career, status and wealth. It is let loose like a demented dynamo at the moment of our birth and does not incline to rest until we breathe our last. Because the ego is inherently vulnerable, its predominant mood is one of anxiety. It is skittish, jumping from object to object, unable ever to relax its vigilance or engage properly with others. Even under the most auspicious of contexts, it is never far from a relentless, throbbing drumbeat of worry, which conspires to prevent it from sincere involvement with anything outside of itself. And yet the ego also has a touching tendency constantly to trust that its desires are about to be fulfilled. Images of tranquillity and security haunt it: a particular job, social conquest or material acquisition always seems to hold out the promise of an end to craving. In reality, however, each worry will soon enough be replaced by another, and one desire by the next, generating a relentless cycle of what Buddhists call âgraspingâ, or
upÄdÄna
in Sanskrit.
The Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, 1708: a resting place for the body, mind and spirit. Each zone of the monastery was assigned a different part of the self to heal. The body was to be looked after by the kitchens and the dormitory, the mind by the library and the spirit by the chapel. ( illustration credit 4.16 )
Nevertheless, as Tony now explains, this sombre picture of one part of ourselves does not have to define all that we are, because we are endowed too with the rare ability, reinforceable through spiritual exercises, occasionally to set aside the demands of our egos and to enter into a state of what Buddhists call
anÄtman
, or egolessness, during which we can take a step back from our passions and think about what our lives might be like if we were not burdened by the additional and painful need to be ourselves.
It is a sign of the Western bias towards the intellect that it comes as a surprise to be told that we should begin the business of setting aside our egos not primarily through logical argument but rather by learning to sit on the ground in a new way.
As Tony specifies, our capacity to reorient our priorities will critically depend on our ability to stand up, shake our limbs loose for a minute and then rearrange our bodies in the Vairocana
corpus
(body),
animus
(mind) and
spiritus
(spirit), each of which must be carefully looked after by any decent hostelry.
In the tradition of St Bernard, Catholic retreats continue even today to provide their guests with comfortable accommodations, extensive libraries and spiritual activities ranging from the âexamenâ â a thrice-daily survey of the conscience, carried out alone and in silence (usually with a lighted candle and a statuette of Jesus) â to sessions with counsellors who have been specially trained to inject logic and morality into believersâ confused and corrupted thought processes.
Although the specific lessons taught therein may differ markedly, Buddhist retreats embody an equal commitment to the whole self. After hearing of one in the English countryside specializing in seated and walking forms ofmeditation, I resolved to see for myself what benefits might be derived from a course of spiritual exercises.
At six in the morning one Saturday in June, some 2,573 years after the Buddha was born not far from Kapilavastu, in the Ganges river basin, I sit in a semicircle with twelve other novices in a converted barn in Suffolk. Our teacher, Tony, begins the session by inviting us to understand the human condition as it is viewed through Buddhist eyes. He says that most of the time, without having any choice in the matter, we are dominated by our ego, or, as it is termed in Sanskrit, our
Ätman
. This centre of consciousness is by nature selfish, narcissistic and insatiable, unreconciled to its own mortality and driven to avoid the prospect of death by fantasizing about the redemptive powers of career, status and wealth. It is let loose like a demented dynamo at the moment of our birth and does not incline to rest until we breathe our last. Because the ego is inherently vulnerable, its predominant mood is one of anxiety. It is skittish, jumping from object to object, unable ever to relax its vigilance or engage properly with others. Even under the most auspicious of contexts, it is never far from a relentless, throbbing drumbeat of worry, which conspires to prevent it from sincere involvement with anything outside of itself. And yet the ego also has a touching tendency constantly to trust that its desires are about to be fulfilled. Images of tranquillity and security haunt it: a particular job, social conquest or material acquisition always seems to hold out the promise of an end to craving. In reality, however, each worry will soon enough be replaced by another, and one desire by the next, generating a relentless cycle of what Buddhists call âgraspingâ, or
upÄdÄna
in Sanskrit.
The Cistercian monastery of Clairvaux, 1708: a resting place for the body, mind and spirit. Each zone of the monastery was assigned a different part of the self to heal. The body was to be looked after by the kitchens and the dormitory, the mind by the library and the spirit by the chapel. ( illustration credit 4.16 )
Nevertheless, as Tony now explains, this sombre picture of one part of ourselves does not have to define all that we are, because we are endowed too with the rare ability, reinforceable through spiritual exercises, occasionally to set aside the demands of our egos and to enter into a state of what Buddhists call
anÄtman
, or egolessness, during which we can take a step back from our passions and think about what our lives might be like if we were not burdened by the additional and painful need to be ourselves.
It is a sign of the Western bias towards the intellect that it comes as a surprise to be told that we should begin the business of setting aside our egos not primarily through logical argument but rather by learning to sit on the ground in a new way.
As Tony specifies, our capacity to reorient our priorities will critically depend on our ability to stand up, shake our limbs loose for a minute and then rearrange our bodies in the Vairocana
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