The human as lived

The other day Carlo Nanni of the UPS said that the problem with formation was that it concentrated too much on the spiritual to the neglect of the human.

I replied saying that, according to us in the Dicastero, the two absolutely important aspects to be emphasized were precisely the spiritual and the human. (I could have added that the intellectual is important, but that by and large we are giving sufficient attention to it, though we could question the methods, the effects, and so on. Then there is also the pastoral, which needs serious attention: not simply engaging in various apostolates, but processing and learning from them.)

Yesterday Nanni went a step further: he said it was not enough to "talk" about the importance of the human, as one more category "up there" among others. We need to pay attention to the "vissuto," which is messy, confused, which includes light and darkness (my words), the affective, the bodily, the sexual.

And here also we are fundamentally in agreement. Not enough to talk about the human as an anthropological category. "Learning by experience the meaning of the Salesian vocation" involves precisely this kind of sustained attention to the "vissuto," to Erlebnis; to dwell before it and to own it; to find there the voice of the Lord. There in our concrete, messed up, fucked up humanity. "In the belly of the whale, Jonah learned to pray." 

Integration of Yoga into religious formation

Another thing that the Yoga-sutras have borrowed from Buddhism is the notion of bhumi (land) in the sense of level or state of the mind in its advance towards kaivalya. These bhumis are: ksipta (restless), mudha (torpid), viksipta (distracted), ekagra (one-pointed), and niruddha (suppressed). The first two involve the predominance of rajas and tamas respectively; in the third sattva is predominant with some rajas. The fourth is the predominance of sattva. The fifth is the arrest of all gunas, but persistence of samskaras in the 'unconscious'. (Very much what Vipassana teaches.)

I was thinking: this is what we need to stress in our novitiate and post-novitiate. Obviously all our candidates, and all of us too, are restless, torpid, distracted, and we have to become one-pointed. But even at this fourth stage there is the work of handling the subconscious. Only beyond this is kaivalya or whatever it is that is homologous to kaivalya....

Hence the practice of sitting... under guidance.

"[T]he Yoga of Patanjali may at its best approach 'natural mysticism'" (Guidelines 256) A judgment shared also by Bede Griffiths.

Managing oneself

Peter Drucker, great management guru, has been saying recently that he is no longer interested in teaching leaders how to manage people, but rather how to manage themselves. And Dee Hock: If you look to lead, spend 40% of your time on yourself, your character, motivations, principles, conduct.

Like Bulchand used to say years ago, quoting scripture: If you cannot look after your own household, how can you look after the household of God?

And so also formation: 40% of time looking after oneself. Learning how to manage oneself. The rest will follow.