Chapter 6. Four Principles of the Path

A buried treasure is not uncovered by merely uttering the words “come forth”. You must follow the right directions, dig, remove the stones and earth from it, and then make it your own. In the same way, the pure truth of Atman, which is buried under Maya and the effects of Maya, can be reached by meditation, contemplation and other spiritual disciplines such as a knower of Brahman may prescribe.

— Shankara (Hindu)

Whether you are a jnani or a bhakta, all the spiritual practices you will be undertaking are governed by four fundamental principles: attention, commitment, detachment, and surrender. These principles apply not only to the practices in a general way, but to each moment of their implementation. Therefore, it’s a good idea to have some understanding of what, from a mystic’s point of view, they actually entail. So, let’s examine them one at a time.

Attention

The twentieth-century Christian mystic Simone Weil sums up the importance of attention in no uncertain terms:

Attention animated by desire is the whole foundation of religious practices. 117

As we have already seen, paying attention is key to attaining Enlightenment. Only when our attention is freed from the Story of I does an opportunity to Realize our true nature open up. But what exactly is attention?

Obviously, attention is closely related to awareness, but the two are not synonymous. As we shall see in later chapters, it is possible to be fully aware and yet not be attending to anything in particular. So perhaps we should think of attention as a power of awareness. In fact, let us define attention as the power of awareness to focus on various phenomena that arise in the total field of consciousness . These can be sensory phenomena like sights, sounds, sensations, etc. Or they can be mental phenomena—thoughts, images, memories, fantasies. Most of the time, our attention is absorbed by combinations of sensory and mental phenomena which make up the various events and activities of our everyday lives.

Sometimes attention seems to be subject to our control. This is true even when we find the object or activity we need to attend to unpleasant. A good example might be filling out your income tax returns. If you are like most people, this is not a task you relish. Nevertheless, with a little effort you can still force yourself to focus on it long enough to get the job done.

Sometimes, however, attention seems not to be under our control. For example, you might be trying to concentrate on figuring out your tax returns when, suddenly, you hear a loud crash coming from the street outside your house. If something like this happens, you will have a hard time keeping your attention focused on your taxes. Instead, it will automatically fly towards that sound, like iron to a magnet. In such cases, we often say that something has captured our attention.

Situations like this also show that attention is something quite distinct from our other mental faculties, such as thinking, judging, or feeling. If, for instance, you do hear a loud crash, it will be your attention that responds first. Then, once it has fastened onto the sound, your thinking mind might say something like, “What was that? Oh, it must have been a car crash. How terrible!” In other words, only after attention has moved to the sound will thoughts, judgments, and feelings about what you heard come into play.

This distinction between naked or bare attention and the other faculties is quite important for spiritual practices, especially when it comes to meditation and mystical prayer. Many meditation and prayer manuals talk about learning to control the mind, or mind training, but the English word mind is a pretty vague term. It can mean attention, but more commonly it refers to our thought processes. When mystics talk about training the mind, however, what they usually mean is learning not so much to control our thoughts, but our attention, so that little by little we can begin to liberate it from the Story of I .

Commitment

Buddhists often refer to spiritual practices as skillful means. Now, learning any kind of skill in life usually requires a commitment. If you want to learn to play the piano, for example, you have to make a commitment to practice on a regular basis. What’s more, this practice will not always be enjoyable, especially in the beginning. Usually, you start by playing a prescribed series of notes or scales over and over again. Even though you might find this quite boring at times, you still have to maintain your commitment to practice; otherwise, you will never be able to play with the kind of freedom that comes from real mastery. The same holds true for spiritual practices like meditation, prayer, keeping precepts, etc. If you want to master them you have to make the same kind of commitment to practice.

But beyond committing to engage in specific practices, there is an even deeper kind of commitment you will have to make if you are going to become a serious seeker. Sooner or later, you are going to have to choose what the main goal of your life is to be: is it to attain worldly success or spiritual Realization? This is crucial because, as Jesus says,

No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. 118

And you will find the exact same teaching in other traditions as well. Thus, the Buddha told his disciples,

There is a path that leads to worldly gain.
Another road leads to nirvana.
Let the seeker, the disciple of the Buddha,
Embracing seclusion,
Take the path to wisdom and enlightenment. 119

Likewise, the Upanishads declare,

There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and lead to different ends. 120

Here’s how Rumi puts it:

Oh friend! Which are you? Are you ripe or raw? Are you dizzy from sweetmeats and wine, or a knight on the field of battle? 121

The reason for stating this choice so starkly is that, from a mystic’s point of view, worldly pursuits represent a kind of practice in their own right. The more you act out of your self-centered conditioning, the stronger that conditioning grows. Consequently, even if you engage in formal spiritual practices a few hours a day, but spend the rest of your time conducting business as usual, you won’t make much headway. The Tibetans compare this kind of part-time practice to someone involved in a lop-sided game of tug-of-war. For example, if you meditate for only one out of twenty-four hours, they say it’s as though you were a single person pulling against a team of twenty-three people at the other end of the rope. The same is true with the path as a whole. It’s not something you can do only in your spare time. Ultimately, it’s going to require a total commitment on your part.

In psychological terms, this means re-writing your Story of I . Instead of identifying yourself as a worldly seeker whose fundamental commitment is to enhance and protect yourself, you must assume a new role—that of a spiritual seeker dedicated to completely dismantling the delusion that you are any such entity. The fifteenth-century Christian mystic St. Catherine of Genoa gives a glimpse of what true spiritual commitment entails:

So vehement is the soul’s instinct to rid itself of all that impedes its own perfection that it would endure hell itself to reach that end. For that reason the soul tenaciously sets about casting aside all those things that could give the inner self specious comfort. 122

For some seekers this will mean becoming an external renunciant—that is, someone who literally gives up all worldly ties and possessions to live as a monk, nun or wandering mendicant. Many of the world’s greatest mystics adopted this life-style, and there are a number of good reasons for doing so. One is that external renunciation provides a kind of crash course in detachment. Money, job, friends, family, material security, and social status are all abandoned with a single stroke, giving you much more time to pursue your formal practices. Here is how the Buddhist Anguttara-Nikaya Sutra sums up the advantages of such a life:

Full of hindrances is household life, a refuse heap; but pilgrim life is like the open air. Not easy is it, when one lives at home, to fulfill point by point the rules of holy life. How, if now I were to cut off hair and beard, put on the yellow robe and go forth from home to the homeless life? 123

External renunciation, however, is not for everyone—nor is it universally recommended. Judaism discourages such a life-style, while in Islam it is positively forbidden. In these traditions the ideal, even for someone walking a mystical path, is to remain in the world as a householder, fulfilling all one’s obligations to one’s family and community.

One reason for this negative attitude is that becoming an external renunciant for the wrong reasons can be spiritually disastrous. If, for example, by forsaking your role as a householder you left your family destitute, such a selfish act would certainly undercut any benefits renunciation might confer. And if your motive was to prove your spiritual superiority over other people, then, instead of helping to dismantle the delusion of self, your renunciation would actually end up reinforcing it.

In fact, true renunciants do not really decide on such a course of action. They simply obey an irresistible call that wells up from the deepest recesses of their souls. Here is how Lalleshwari describes what happened to her:

Because of my love for God
a flood of renunciation
filled my mind.
I stopped tying up my hair
and threw away my sārī.
I wrapped myself in an old robe
and went to live in a lonely place,
occasionally keeping company with sādhus . 124

Moreover, while external renunciation may be appropriate for some seekers, it is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for completing the path. Many great Gnostics attained full Enlightenment without ever abandoning lay life. This is because the real problem lies not in worldly things, per se , but only in our attachments to them. Thus, the great fourteenth-century Tibetan master Longchen-pa writes,

The appearances themselves do not bind (you to the delusions of Samsāra ) because if you do not attach by clinging to the appearances, they will not defile you, since there is no connection. The bondage is the attachment, and it is important to abandon that attachment. 125

This is also why Ramana Maharshi, who was himself a thorough-going external renunciant, used to tell his disciples this:

Whether you continue in the household or renounce it and go to the forest, your mind haunts you. … It is no help to change the environment. The one obstacle is the mind; it must be got over whether in the home or in the forest. If you can do it in the forest, why not in the home? Therefore, why change the environment? Your efforts can be made even now, whatever be the environment. 126

In fact, in some ways walking a spiritual path as a householder can be more powerful than taking the road of external renunciation. As a householder you will encounter more situations that trigger your self-centered conditioning, which means you will have more opportunities to interrupt and destroy it.

But although becoming an external renunciant may not be essential for walking a mystical path, it is essential that you become an internal renunciant—i.e., someone who, while remaining in the world, renounces all hope of attaining happiness from it. Until you can do this, you will always be torn between worldly and spiritual pursuits, and never able to submit yourself completely and whole-heartedly to the path and its demands.

Detachment

Making a commitment to the spiritual path naturally leads to cultivating detachment from worldly things. This is because, as the Hasidic masters say,

There [in the highest realms] all things are as one; Distinctions between “life” and “death,” “land” and “sea,” have lost their meaning. But none of this can happen as long as you remain attached to the reality of the material world. 127

In fact, cultivating detachment is regarded as indispensable in all mystical traditions. Hui-Neng explains why:

If we never let our mind become attached at any time to any thing, we gain emancipation. For this reason we make “non-attachment” our fundamental principle. 128

Mira Bai agrees:

Give up faith in the world.
Mirā is the slave of courtly Giridhara [Krishna],
She has adopted the path of simple detachment. 129

And after comparing detachment to the other virtues, Meister Eckhart concludes that

Detachment is the best of all, for it purifies the soul and cleanses the conscience and enkindles the heart and awakens the spirit and stimulates our longings and shows us where God is and separates us from created things and unites itself with God. 130

But despite its universality, detachment has been one of the least understood of all spiritual principles. The most common error seekers make is to take detachment to mean the complete eradication of all desires and aversions. Such people imagine that if they were truly detached, the most beautiful objects could be paraded before them and they would experience not a smidgen of pleasure; or that innocent children could be slaughtered at their feet and they would feel not a flicker of pain. But this kind of cold-blooded stoicism is emphatically not what spiritual detachment is about. In fact, what this notion of detachment actually represents is the supreme dream of the ego which would like nothing better than to be completely insulated from the world’s sufferings. Such a state of indifference, however, is about as far as you get from genuine Enlightenment, so we had better take a closer look at what mystics mean when they talk about cultivating detachment.

First of all, what are to be detached from are not all desires and aversions, but only personal or self-centered ones—that is, desires and aversions which have as their aim the enhancement or protection of the self. Sometimes this is made clear in the teachings themselves, as when Anandamayi Ma insists that

It is personal desire that is the very cause of suffering. 131

Much of the time, however, it is not made clear, as when the Buddha says,

Make headway against the current with your energy.
Scrupulously avoid desire, O noble one. 132

One reason for this omission is that the words used in English translations are not as precise as the words in the original languages. For example, the Buddhist Dhamapada (from which the above quote was taken) was written in the Pali language. Now the Pali word for desire is tanha . But tanha only means desire for self-gratification. It emphatically does not mean such things as the desire for Liberation or the desire to make other beings happy. 133 In fact, a path that isn’t animated by a burning desire for either Truth or God can easily degenerate into a set of lifeless rites and rituals, devoid of any real spiritual value. Thus, the nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox mystic Theophan the Recluse warns his students:

Take care not to fall into the way of those who walk coldly along with correct outward behavior, yet lack the inner feelings which sanctify a man and attract the grace of God. 134

The same applies to aversion. Self-centered aversion to people, things, or situations is certainly an obstacle on the path. But an aversion to the world of delusion is not only a positive feeling that should be fostered, it is often considered a prerequisite for successfully engaging in spiritual practices. Thus, the contemporary Buddhist master Lama Gendun Rinpoche says,

If we think carefully about the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary worldly existence, we will recognize that it is characterized by suffering. We should therefore aim directly at Buddhahood and turn our minds away from worldly values. In this case there is a firm foundation for our spiritual path. 135

Another source of misunderstanding is that many spiritual texts were originally meant to serve only as notes for oral instructions given by teachers in face-to-face meetings with their students. Consequently, they employ a short-hand style which omits detailed explanations of all the psycho-spiritual subtleties of a particular teaching. In these cases, we have to rely on the context to make clear what sort of desire or aversion is being referred to. For example, when Anandamayi Ma says, “So long as there is desire, the experience of want and sorrow is—from the worldly point of view—but natural,” 136 she is talking about self-centered desire. But when she declares that “All desire must be for God only,” 137 she is talking about love and longing for the Divine, which is obviously something positive to be cultivated.

One way to avoid confusion about this is to get into the habit of mentally inserting self-centered in front of terms like desire and aversion whenever the context calls for it. So, for instance, consider the following passage from the Bhagavad Gita :

Wisdom is clouded by [self-centered ] desire, the ever present enemy of the wise, [self-centered ] desire in its innumerable forms, which like a fire cannot find satisfaction. 138

But even though self-centered desires and aversions are obstacles on the path, still this does not mean that you should try to suppress them. For one thing, such a strategy can never work. Any desire, aversion, or other emotion that you try to repress will only re-emerge later in another form. But more importantly, even if you could get rid of desire and aversion, this is not the goal of a mystical path. Why? Because, like everything else in the cosmos all emotions are, in reality, manifestations of the Divine. It is only when we experience them in distorted form, through the prism of the Story of I , that they cause us suffering. In their natural or liberated form, they are what the Tibetans call the wisdom energies of our innate Buddha nature; or, as the Kabbalists put it, Divine sparks which have fallen from the World of Love.

In future chapters we will be discussing practices designed to purify these sparks and transform these energies, by recognizing their true nature. In the meantime, it is important to remember that you can only recognize the true nature of anything by paying attention to it when it is present in Consciousness—never when it is absent. Therefore, it’s a big mistake to try either to push away desires, aversions, and emotions once they have arisen, or try to stop them from arising in the first place. Instead, what you need to do is to cultivate true detachment which, spiritually speaking, means that you try to stay present with whatever arises in Consciousness, without grasping at anything, or pushing anything away . In other words, instead of reacting to emotional phenomena in your habitual way, you simply allow them to arise and pass, all on their own. By cultivating this kind of detachment, you can begin to interrupt your conditioned patterns of behavior.

This is a little like shifting a moving car into neutral. The engine is still running but it’s no longer propelling the car forward in the direction it has been going, and so it gradually rolls to a stop. And the more you can do this with your life—the more you can remain in a detached and unfettered state—the more a space of awareness begins to open up in which there is the possibility of moving in a totally new direction, of acting in a completely unconditioned way—a way which is genuinely spontaneous and free, because it flows not from your deluded ego, but from Consciousness Itself.

Surrender

This brings us to the last and highest principle, surrender, which is extolled by mystics of all traditions. But what does it really mean?

At the most rudimentary level, every time you let go of some attachment, you may be said to have surrendered it. And because detachment follows from making a commitment, and making a commitment from trying to pay attention, it would seem that surrender simply grows out of the first three principles. But while this is true in a certain sense, there is a subtle yet important difference between surrender and the other principles. Paying attention, making a commitment, and practicing detachment are all things that, from a relative point of view, you can do by exercising your self-will. Surrender, however, always requires the relinquishment of some portion of will.

This capacity to surrender your self-will is essential for walking a spiritual path because, for most people, the sense of self-will lies at the core of who they think they are. And yet from an absolute point of view there really is no such thing as self-will—which is why Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita ,

A man totally confused in his self-consciousness imagines: I act . 139

In the Hindu and Buddhist traditions, the delusion that there is some self who can will actions is considered to be the primary thing that perpetuates our self-centered conditioning, or karma , as it is called in the East. Here is how Walpola Rahula explains it from a Buddhist perspective:

The Sanskrit word karma (from the root kr to do) literally means ‘action’, ‘doing’. But in the Buddhist theory of karma it has a specific meaning: it means only ‘volitional action’, not all action. … “Thirst’, volition, karma, whether good or bad, has one force as its effect: force to continue—to continue in a good or a bad direction. Whether good or bad it is relative, and is within this cycle of continuity (samsāra ). 140

To be free of the delusion of self, then, means to be free of self-will. Thus, the Upanishads say,

The man who surrenders his human will leaves sorrows behind and beholds the glory of the Atman by the grace of the Creator. 141

Mystics of the three Abrahamic traditions express this using different terminology, but the practical result is the same. When you act out of your own volition, you are opposing your will to God’s will. This naturally puts you in conflict with Creation and causes you to suffer. The solution, then, is to surrender your own will and defer to God’s will in all things, which is why Cerno Bokar tells his Sufi students,

Seek nothing else but the desire to please God. Don’t lose confidence in God. Accept the position He chooses for you; efface your own will and abandon yourself to His. 142

Teresa of Avila agrees:

What matters is not whether or no we wear a religious habit; it is whether we try to practice the virtues, and make a complete surrender of our wills to God. 143

Unfortunately, however, that is something you can never actually do. Why? Because as long as you are willing yourself to surrender your will, you are exercising the very will that must be surrendered. And yet if you make no effort to surrender your will, nothing will change. Your self-centered conditioning will continue to grow stronger and stronger—which is why mystics seem forever to be urging us to exercise our will to do things like pay attention, make a commitment, practice detachment, and, yes, even surrender our will! So how can we escape this dilemma?

Well, first of all, you may have noticed that this paradox of practice closely resembles the philosophical paradoxes that result from trying to describe the nondual nature of Reality. As is the case with those philosophical paradoxes, paradoxes of practice can never be finally resolved by the thinking mind. They can only be dissolved by Gnosis. In the meantime, you can take the mystics’ exhortations this way: as long as you believe you have self-will, instead of using it to pursue worldly things which will only serve to deepen your delusion, why not apply it to those disciplines and practices that can destroy that delusion forever?

Moreover, if you do this, you will start to discover a kind of judo trick that happens at every juncture of the path. It is precisely by making an effort to surrender your will and failing, that your will gets stymied and your effort exhausted. And whenever your will gets stymied and your effort gets exhausted surrender happens. This, in turn, opens you to a mysterious guidance that will carry you into the next stage, until finally you come to feel that it is no longer you who are doing the practices at all. Rather, the practices are doing you—or, as the thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei Dogen used to say about the Buddha’s dharma (teachings and practices),

You turn dharma, [then] dharma turns you. 144

In theistic traditions this kind of guidance is attributed to the action of a Divine grace, which is always available as a free gift, given either by God or one’s Guru. Even so, you must still make an effort to open yourself to receive it, for as Ramana Maharshi says,

The Grace of the Guru is like an ocean. If he [the seeker] comes with a cup he will only get a cupful. It is no use complaining of the niggardliness of the ocean; the bigger the vessel the more he will be able to carry. It is entirely up to him. 145

Likewise, Ibn al-‘Arabi writes,

The gift of God is not withheld. But you want Him to give you something that your preparedness cannot receive. Then you attribute the withholding to Him in that which you seek from Him, and you do not turn your attention toward the preparedness. 146

And this preparedness consists precisely in exhausting your own efforts in order to free up enough space for grace to operate. Here is how Theophan the Recluse explains it:

Nothing comes without effort. The help of God is always ready and always near, but it is only given to those who seek and work, and only to those seekers who, after putting all their own powers to the test, then cry out with all their heart: Lord help us. 147

Summary of Part I

So, I hope all this has given you an overview of what the mystics teach about delusion, Enlightenment, and the spiritual path, as well as some understanding of the two basic approaches—jnana and bhakti—and the four principles of attention, commitment, detachment, surrender. The rest of this book is for those of you who wish to roll up your sleeves and actually put these teachings into practice. Some sections give instructions more suited to jnanis, others give instructions more suited to bhaktas, while some are for both. But whichever you feel you are at the present time, you should still at least read through all the chapters, even if you don’t plan to engage in the practices described. Many seekers begin their journeys as jnanis, but end up bhaktas, and vice versa. Consequently, you should have some idea of what all the different practices entail in case you want to go back and undertake one or more of them at a later date .