The Inner Voice of Love

What does it mean to love someone, and what is the relationship between loving someone and loving oneself? What does it mean to be a good friend?

These are questions we deal with throughout our lives -- our students deal with them, and so do we.

Buddhism suggests detachment as the ideal state of being. In such a state, close friendships are possible -- but like anything else, they will always lead to dukkha, or dissatisfaction, if a person is trying to seek personal fulfillment from them. The only way to peace and contentment is by realizing it within, not by trying to find it in others.This is symbolized in the lotus flower, which is also important in Hinduism and Jainism (see previous post).

The lotus is a challenging symbol for me because its cold beauty renders it unapproachable. While I struggle to think of it as an ideal for personal behavior, I understand and appreciate its importance in Asian religious traditions.

For another perspective on friendship, I am reading The Inner Voice of Love, journal of late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen, which he wrote after the interruption of a friendship caused him to enter a period of severe depression. He describes it as a time lived in utter darkness.

"It seemed as the door to my interior life had been opened, a door that had remained locked during my youth and most of my adult life. But this deeply satisfying friendship became the road to my anguish, because I soon discovered that the enormous space that had been opened for me could not be filled by the one who opened it. I became possessive, needy and dependent, and when the friendship finally had to be interrupted, I fell apart" (xv).

"The interruption of friendship forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there, to choose, in the face of it all, not death but life" (xvii). 

In his journal, he admits his failure to truly love himself as a cause of the brokenness of previous friendships: 

"Many of your friendships grew from your need for affection, affirmation, and emotional support. But now you must seek friends to whom you can relate from your center, from the place where you know that you are deeply loved. Friendship becomes more and more possible when you accept yourself as deeply loved. Then you can be with others in a non-possessive way" (80).

Acknowledging his need of encouragement to become the person he wants to be, he dares himself:

"Dare to love and to be a real friend" (81).

The conclusion of the book ends on a positive note, but not in a rose-colored glasses sort of way. It is his reflection eight years after keeping the journal. He writes of what he gained from the experience, including an increased self-awareness:

"I have also learned to catch the darkness early, not to allow sadness to grow into depression or let a sense of being rejected develop into a feeling of abandonment....What once seemed such a curse has become a blessing. All the agony that threatened to destroy my life now seems like the fertile ground for greater trust, stronger hope, and deeper love" (117). 

I don't know what happened to Nouwen's friendship that became "interrupted," because he doesn't write about it specifically in the conclusion. As far as what he does write, I am very much drawn to the sentence,

"I have also learned to catch the darkness early..."

I can relate to this kind of relationship to self much more than that of the lotus -- total detachment -- but some detachment is required in order to be able to perceive the "darkness" that he mentions.

I wonder what a Buddhist re-phrasing of Nouwen's words might be. Perhaps, "Become aware of your suffering early, in order to be able to free yourself from it." I don't think that would be too far off from what Nouwen is trying to say.

El Sagrado Corazon

"Your heart is greater than your wounds." 

-Henri Nouwen

How religious traditions deal with suffering is a question that always leads interesting places. While suffering is commonly depicted as a journey, it also can be a place with its own geography. Babylon, for example, is a place synonymous with suffering in the Hebrew Bible:

"By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion." (Psalm 137:1)

In Buddhism and Hinduism, the geography of suffering is internal, located in the human mind.

In Christianity, suffering is in the drama of Christ's passion before and during his crucifixion on the cross at Golgotha. As Miguel Rojas Mix (1987) has argued, in the Baroque art of the Counter-Reformation, blood-drenched Christs were "sacred actors in a human tragedy."

This week, while teaching about art in colonial Latin America, I came upon this painting of the Sacred Heart (El Sagrado Corazon de Jesus) from 18th century Mexico: 

Alegorías del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús y la Santísima Trinidad, 1747

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary dates to the life of 17th century French nun Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, who succeeded in establishing it in her convent after years of religious visions. The heart represents Christ's compassion and suffering for humanity. Notice in the painting that it bears a marking of the crucified body of Christ (on left, below the crown of thorns).

As a symbol of intense feeling and pulsating energy, the heart of Christ is a baroque element that resonated with Nahuatl-speaking Mexicans whose indigenous religious practices centered around heart sacrifice as necessary means for keeping the universe in motion.  While those practices had long ceased by the 1700s, Nahuatl poetry preserved the importance of the heart as the seat of life and of the spirit:

"I sing so that I may rejoice the Cause of All, 

as the dawn approaches in the house of thy heart."

I am interested in how the Sacred Heart is an external representation of suffering using something so interior and vital to the human body. No longer hidden inside of the chest, the heart of Christ bleeds openly for humanity. It is raw, lacerated, and often covered in throbbing veins. Christ stretches out his arms to anyone who will come close to it.

Town of El Morro, Baja California, Mexico

The late Catholic priest Henri Nouwen argues in his book, The Inner Voice of Love, that we cannot deal with our suffering intellectually -- we must feel it deeply in our hearts. For him, the journey out of suffering begins with becoming aware of one's wounds and then opening oneself to feeling their intense pain.

Because suffering is central to the human experience, it is a great theme to deal with when examining religious traditions, comparatively or not.

However you may be dealing with suffering, much heart to you in your journey.