Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Franny Glass taught me the Jesus Prayer when I was 13 or 14. JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey was the first adult book that changed my world, and Zooey was more or less disposable. My interest was in Franny, the freshman at Yale, youngest of a family of strange and exceptional people, trying to pray incessantly and winding up having a nervous breakdown on her parents’ couch. I identified with her. My best friend, Jennifer, was also devoted to F&Z, and she sent me a copy of The Way of a Pilgrim, the Russian Orthodox text Franny carries around with her in her bag, as a gift. It is the story of a man wandering on foot and encountering various teachers, one of whom gives him the practice of repeating the Jesus Prayer ceaselessly. It was the first spiritual book in the Christian tradition I ever read, other than the Gospels themselves. Before that, I had mostly read mythology, and for a while I was interested in books on Wicca and neo-paganism and the occult. Then I discovered Buddhism, and, as senior in high school, I wrote a term paper on Eastern philosophy in Salinger’s work, which is now lost to the sands of time. It wasn’t until I was 23, after I had experienced something I could not explain that somehow revealed the significance of the Cross to me, that I began to take Christianity seriously.

The Jesus Prayer is still my favorite mantra. There are other prayers that I use. The Serenity Prayer feels like home to me (I accompanied my parents to AA meetings as a child, and we always seemed to have a tapestry of the Serenity Prayer hanging on a wall.) The Lord’s Prayer/Our Father is something I seem to have known all my life, even though I rarely went to church growing up, and I came to appreciate it more after reading commentaries by St. Teresa and Simone Weil. I remember repeating it in my mind through two hour tai chi/kung fu classes at the Shaolin Center I went to in New York. When I was praying the Divine Office consistently, I used to wake up with O God, come to my aid, O Lord, make haste to help me already on my lips. When I am meditating I often find myself chanting gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā from the Heart Sutra in my mind, or simply calling the name Avalokiteshvara (the boddhisatva of compassion). But none of the other mental prayers I know arise in my mind as spontaneously or as frequently in everyday life as the Jesus Prayer. I’ll say it to myself as I’m falling asleep at night, without even realizing that I’ve started. I say it when I get distracted. I say it when I feel sorrow. I say it when I’m waiting in line for communion at Mass. I don’t say it ceaselessly, but never seems to be far from my heart.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind;
Love envieth not;
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
But rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things,
Hopeth all things,
Endureth all things.

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophesies, they shall fail; whether there are tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three: but the greatest of these is Love.”

– I. Cor. xiii

“Why is love greater than faith, because the end is greater than the means. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is the object of connecting Man with God? That he may become like God. But God is Love. Hence faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper’s cost. It is too cheap — too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would do more for him, or less (18-19).”

“Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day (25-26).”

“It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then is to give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not at his own things, but on the things of others — id opus est. ‘Seekest thou great things for thyself?’ said the prophet; ‘seek them not.’ Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake . . . The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving (32-33).”

“[It] is perfectly certain — and you will not misunderstand me — that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him (38).”

“Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of . . . the Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice (44).”

“Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for agony nor prayer. That is your practice . . . Do not grudge the hand that is molding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. You remember Geothe’s words: Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. ‘Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.’ (45-46)”

“To make it easier, I have named some of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is something more than the sum of its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, tremendous ether. And love is something more than all its elements — a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living, thing. By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love (46-47).”

– Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing in the World

The Practice of Tonglen (from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)

Each of us has a “soft spot”: the place in our experience where we feel vulnerable and tender. This soft spot is inherent in appreciation and love, and it is equally inherent in pain.

Often, when we feel that soft spot, it’s quickly followed by a feeling of fear and an involuntary, habitual tendency to close down. This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and cling to pleasure. In practice, however, covering up the soft spot means shutting down against out life experience. Then we tend to narrow down into a solid feeling of self against other.

One very powerful and effective way to work with tendency to push away pain and hold onto pleasure is the practice of tonglen. Tonglen is a Tibetan word that literally means “”sending and taking.”" The practice originated in India and came to Tibet in the eleventh century. In tonglen practice, when we see or feel suffering, we breathe in with the notion of completely feeling it, accepting it, and owning it. Then we breathe out, radiating compassion, lovingkindness, freshness; anything that encourages relaxation and openness.

In this practice, it’s not uncommon to find yourself blocked, because you come face to face with your own fear, resistance, or whatever your personal stuckness happens to be at that moment. At that point, you can change the focus and do tonglen for yourself , and for millions of others just like you, at that very moment, who are feeling exactly the same misery.

I particularly like to encourage tonglen, on the spot. For example, you’re walking down the street and you see the pain of another human being. On-the-spot tonglen means that you just don’t rush by; you actually breathe in with the wish that this person can be free of suffering, and send them out some kind of good heart or well-being. If seeing that other person’s pain brings up fear or anger or confusion, which often happens, just start doing tonglen for yourself and all the other people who are stuck in the very same way.

When you do tonglen on the spot, you simply breathe in and breathe out, taking in pain and sending out spaciousness and relief. When you tonglen as a formal practice, it has four stages:

1) First, rest your mind briefly in a state of openness or stillness.

2) Second, work with texture. Breathe in a feeling of hot, dark, and heavy, and breathe out a feeling of cool, bright, and light. Breathe in and radiate completely, through all the pores of your body, until it feels synchronized with your in-and out-breathe.

3) Third, work with any painful personal situation that is real to you. Traditionally, you begin by doing tonglen for someone you care about. However, if your stuck, do the practice for your pain and simultaneously for all those just like you who feel that kind of suffering.

4) Finally, make the taking in and the sending out larger. Whether your doing tonglen for someone you love or for someone you see on television, do it for all the others in the same boat. You could even do tonglen for people you consider your enemies–those who have hurt you or others. Do tonglen for them, thinking of them as having the same confusion and stuckness as your find or yourself.

This is to say that tonglen can extend indefinitely. As you do the practice, gradually, over time, your compassion naturally expands– and so does your realization that things are not as solid as you thought. As you do this practice, at your own pace, you’ll be surprised to find yourself more and more able to be there for others, even in what seemed like impossible situations.