Refuge

7 December 2023

Refuge

Yesterday a friend came to visit.  He will be moving away soon and we wanted to have some visits before that happened.   I made a vegan lunch for us.  As usual we spent hours in good conversation.

One of the topics of conversation was our history of involvement in spiritual traditions.  In my friend's case he was born into a Protestant Christian family and for a long time felt comfortable within that tradition.  He had a particular admiration for his father’s adherence to this tradition.  Eventually, though, he decided to depart from this tradition and he sought spiritual refuge in other, though still Christian, traditions.  As his interest in mysticism grew and deepened he found himself more and more unable to fit in and made attempts to find a community of others with a similar focus.  He was unable to do so and reconciled himself to a solitary path.

My own story, though it shares a similar conclusion, started off differently.  I wasn’t raised in a religious home.  I had only vague notions of Christianity.  When I became interested in religion and spirituality it was Buddhist teachings that I found most agreeable.  But like my friend, as I became more and more inclined to a mystical understanding I sensed a wider and wider gap between me and the community of practice, the sangha.  Eventually I departed and wandered through a number of traditions seeking a community of others who were similarly inclined to mysticism and the journey to the transcendental.  With great reluctance, I concluded that this was very unlikely to happen and resigned myself to a solitary journey.

A few comments:

1.  Ideally a spiritual community supports those who are engaged in the journey to the transcendental.  In this situation the spiritual community is a refuge from worldly concerns that facilitates such a journey.  That is the purpose of religious groups including churches, monasteries, and other religious organizations.  If they do not live up to that purpose then they have failed.  Most religious groups today have failed in that purpose.

2.  The tendency today is for religious groups to get sidetracked by secular concerns such as political activity, psychological interpretations, and therapeutic practices only slightly modified for their weakly religious context.  The consequence of this transformation is that those who seek guidance regarding the transcendental find that there is no one in their community who even knows what they are talking about. 

3.  If a gardening club was taken over by people dedicated to politics and therapy the consequences would be clear: there would be no more talks about soil, fertilizer, time of year to plant particular flowers, watering, and so forth.  Instead there would be talks about who was running in the next election, or how the latest self-help book had worked out for members.  If someone new joined and asked when they were going to have talks and demonstrations about gardening, the new person would be told that he had a view that was no longer valid, that electioneering was real gardening, and that if he really wanted to be a gardener he better align himself with the new regime.

4.  The difficulty is that people genuinely do have personal and political problems and because these problems are genuine they don’t see any reason why they should not bring them up in the context of a religious group.  They take attempts to keep the focus of religion and spirituality on the transcendental as a dismissal of their concerns.  It’s not; but I can understand where they are coming from.

5.  This tendency to transform religious and spiritual organizations into secular groups has been going on for a long time.  But there has been a change in that people who advocate for this secular transformation have become more adamant about it, and much less tolerant or accepting of anyone who does not agree with their secular orientation.

6.  This has left a lot of people in the situation of having to go it alone; sometimes people like this are referred to as ‘solitary practitioners.’  I observe this across the whole spectrum of religions and spiritualities; from Wicca to Platonism this is a trend that I think is growing.

7.  Younger people seem to be more accepting of the idea of a solitary practitioner.  People my age tend to have a kind of nostalgia for an idealized communal practice.  Younger people aren’t sentimental about this and seem to step into solitary practice with more grace and less personal drama.

8.  In Buddhism there is a ceremonial commitment known as ‘Taking Refuge.’  It is a three-fold commitment consisting of Taking Refuge in the Buddha, Taking Refuge in the Dharma (the Buddha’s Teachings), and Taking Refuge in the Sangha (originally the community of Buddhist monks and nuns.)  It is this third refuge that the solitary practitioner questions.  The reasons for this questioning have to do with the often political co-opting of sanghas, or the involvement with worldly finance, interpersonal rivalries that often dominate sanghas, the merging of state and sangha, and so forth.  For those dedicated to contemplation and study, it is often necessary to depart from such an organized institution.

9.  There is historical precedence for today’s solitary practitioners.  The forest dwellers of Buddhism and other Shramana traditions are an example.  The early Desert Fathers who separated themselves from Christian institutions so that they could dedicate themselves to asceticism is another.  We need to recover these precedents to nourish our own solitary journeys.

10.  As I have written before on this blog, I regard Platonic writings such as the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus as the Temple of the Text.  They are a refuge from worldly distractions and concerns.  In some ways, I think that this Temple of the Text is stronger and more enduring than material temples; and for me the Temple of the Text is more nourishing.

11.  In some spiritual traditions, such as orthodox Christianity, there is what is known as the ‘communion of Saints.’  Recently I have felt that this idea illuminates how I feel about our Platonic ancestors; people like Socrates, Plato, Xenocrates, Plutarch, Maximus, Plotinus, Porphyry, Hypatia, Boethius, and so forth, right down to modern practitioners of the Platonic Path.  They are a living presence both individually and collectively.

In Porphyry’s biography of Plotinus, Porphyry briefly mentions that his community held some kind of gathering on the anniversary of Socrates and Plato.  It’s not clear to me if this was their birthdays or their death days, or some other kind of date.  But it is an intriguing passing reference to honoring their spiritual ancestors.  Perhaps something like this can be done today?  I’m not sure what form it would take; it could be very simple, something like a vegan meal that included a toast to Plato, Socrates, or some other Platonic Sage, an acknowledgement of their living presence.

12.  We are used to a communal vision of spirituality, but perhaps that is changing.  Perhaps spirituality will evolve in the future to resemble something more like gardening which is done by most people as a solitary activity.  This doesn’t mean that solitary Platonist practice would be sealed off from the world.  Just as a gardener enjoys sharing their craft with others, so the Platonic practitioner enjoys sharing their path with others.  Just as the significance of gardening is not diminished because of its predominantly solitary nature, so also the significance of the Platonic Path is not diminished by its solitary nature.  The Platonic Path is hidden in plain view.