To survive modernity you have to reject the traps and lures of modernity, and replace them with things that have endured from the past. You have to look for what is Lindy.
Modernity brought us things like margarine, social media and W-2 hell. But margarine is not Lindy; butter is. Staring at screens all day is not Lindy; connecting with others is. Working all the time is not Lindy; work with appropriate rest and recovery is.
In other words, we already know most of the things that we should do in modernity. These things already exist in our cultures and in our traditions. As author Wayne Muller phrases it: "we only need to remember."
Which brings us to the author's conception of the Sabbath, perhaps the most Lindy of all ideas. Muller shapes the Sabbath into an extended metaphor for remembering how to rest, how to pace yourself, how to work into your life moments of mindfulness, meditation and connection--all the things that modernity takes away.
Thus this book is a quite beautiful reminder to "practice the Sabbath" in the broadest possible way. It is a cheerful, quiet and meditative book: a daily devotional-type resource you can pick up every day or so, read a short chapter, think about it a little bit, and then return to your life a bit more mindful, a bit more awake than you were before.
[A quick affiliate link to Amazon for those readers who would like to support my work here: if you purchase your Amazon products via any affiliate link from this site, or from my sister site Casual Kitchen, I will receive a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!]
Each chapter contains a brief recommended exercise to help us "practice Sabbathing." [Always nice to be introduced to a new verb!] The author suggests practices like:
* Quietly lighting a candle to signify the end of a day of labor
* Letting a heavily-used appliance or technological device (anything from a smartphone to your television) go unused for a Sabbath period
* Spending a certain amount of silent time outside, in nature
* Even creating an "altar" in your home where you keep various sacred and meaningful objects.
It is fascinating to think about how sabbath-type cycles occur everywhere in nature: in the passage of the seasons, in animal hibernation, in plant quiescence--even in the biological stress-recovery cycle that happens in fractal fashion at every level of life, from cells to organisms to entire ecologies. Just as cells recover from damage or stress, organisms like our bodies--with appropriate rest--adapt to training or recover from illness.
Once again, you and I already know these things. We just need the occasional reminder.
A brief final note: I am not sure why, but much of what I've been reading over the past several years has turned out to offer tremendously useful advice for navigating modernity. I humbly offer here a reading list in the hopes that you might also find it helpful. Links are to book reviews on this site.
The "How to Navigate Modernity" Reading List:
Jacob Lund Fisker: Early Retirement Extreme
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz: The Power of Full Engagement
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin: Your Money Or Your Life
Timothy Miller: How to Want What You Have
Neil Howe: The Fourth Turning Is Here
Thomas M. Sterner: The Practicing Mind
Humphrey Bancroft Neill: The Art of Contrary Thinking
Correlli Barnett: The Collapse of British Power
Michael Hudson: J Is for Junk Economics
W.G. Hill and Harry D. Schultz: Perpetual Traveler
Balaji Srinivasan: The Network State
James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg: The Sovereign Individual
Daniel J. Boorstin: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
Ivan Illich: Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health
Robert S. Mendelsohn: Confessions of a Medical Heretic
H. Gilbert Welch: Less Medicine, More Health
C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters
Martin Buber: I and Thou
Katsuki Sekida: Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy
Burton Watson: Four Huts: Asian Writings on the Simple Life
Donald A. Norman: The Design of Everyday Things
Tyler Disney: Deep Response
Shimazaki Toson: Before the Dawn
[Readers, what follows are my notes and reactions to the book--they are here to help me order my thinking and better remember what I read. Feel free to stop here, but also feel free to skim the bolded parts below.]
Notes:
Remember the Sabbath
1ff On the loss of a healthy rhythm of rest and recovery in modernity; how we are seduced by "more." "A 'successful' life has become a violent enterprise." [Good quote.] With our business and exhaustion, we are at war against our own bodies, our children, our spirit, our communities, and the earth.
5ff "We have forgotten the Sabbath." The author speaks of "Sabbath" both literally and as a metaphor here. On the Sabbath as a reminder that everything you've received is a blessing, that you remember to delight in your life, and to delight in the fruits of your labor. On the Sabbath as a lifestyle adjustment for modernity but also a spiritual and ethical precept.
7 On the virtues of rest: "When we act from a place of deep rest, we are more capable of cultivating what the Buddhists would call right understanding, right action, and right effort."
8 The author extends the Sabbath concept still further: while it is technically a specific day of the week in Jewish and Christian traditions, the author thinks of it in the sense of "a Sabbath afternoon" or "a Sabbath hour" or "a Sabbath walk"; he also talks about exercises for readers in the book that can take a few hours or even just a few moments to practice. Also on the idea that Sabbath gives us permission to not work, and it helps us escape the all-too-typical modern guilt that we have for taking time to rest.
13 Quite a striking poem here by Jane Kenyon, "Let Evening Come" [see photo]
Part I: Rest
Rest for the Weary
17 "There is more to life than merely increasing its speed." -Gandhi
17ff The author describes a time where he was in the hospital near death with streptococcal pneumonia; then a side thread on how people take away your energy: one extra conversation, one extra phone call, one extra quick meeting, "what can it cost?"
20 Interesting comment here: when people are threatened with major illness the author notes "the mixture of sadness and relief they experience when illness interrupts their overly busy lives." Since the author's own recovery, "I take more walks. I play with my children, I work mostly with the poor, and have stopped seeing patients. I write when I am able, and I pray more." [Sometimes a serious illness really does get you to stop chasing the dime... It starts to seem appropriately pointless, so you stop chasing.]
The Joy of Rest
23ff On people coming to the author's Sabbath retreats, exhausted from work, to the point when they would fall asleep during meditations. Various biblical examples of instances of rest: see Moses in the desert where God says "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." Several examples here of Jesus resting, even instances where he ditched his disciples--as well as all people who were surrounding him to be healed--to go into the wilderness and pray. And then the quote from the famous Psalm "He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul."
27 Cute exercise here of a Sabbath practice of choosing at least one heavily used appliance or device in your home and letting it "rest" for a Sabbath period.
Legalism and the Dreary Sabbath
29ff Comments here on the increasing legalism of the Jewish rules for Sabbath; the author argues that "it became a day of lethargy and depression rather than sensuality and delight." Also on the Sabbath becoming an official day of rest in the Roman empire thanks to Emperor Constantine; this "inaugurated a long period of governmentally enforced Sabbath-keeping." [uh, that is until Julian the Apostate relentlessly repealed all this stuff!] Further examples of American Protestantism increasing the severity and duration of Sabbath obligations; the idea here is with all of this is a cultural substrate, it's no wonder we chafe at Sabbath "restrictions"; instead the author wants readers to focus on the idea that "The Sabbath is given to you, not you unto the Sabbath." Section here on making love on the Sabbath and that "the Talmud tractate on marriage contracts states that the righteous couple should make love every Friday night." [Heh]
33 A Sabbath practice here of making a mindful weekly Sabbath meal, inviting friends to partake.
A New Beginning
35ff On the Genesis creation story; the author shares what sounds like a linguistically shaky alternative translation of the beginning of Genesis, saying an alternative translation is "In a beginning when God began to create..." thus implying an ongoing creation and cycles of creation; Also on Exodus where we learn that on the seventh day God rested and was refreshed; and the literal meaning of the verb "refreshed" here is "exhaled."
37 Interesting paragraph here on the Dalai Lama seeking advice from Jewish scholars on religious observances for people in exile--as the Jews were historically, and as the Tibetans are in the modern day. Also an interesting claim here about closer reading of Genesis where it says "on the seventh day God finished God's work" meaning that the work wasn't finished until the rest period happened--that the rest was actually a part of the work.
39 A practice here of choosing a mindfulness trigger like the "mindfulness bell" at Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village; some sort of minor act or mental trigger that serves as a Sabbath pause, where you take in a mindful breath, and then go about your day.
It Is Good
40ff On the fundamental goodness of the creation story, "And God saw that it was good"; on the author feeling this fundamental goodness in the world, but never having a name for it--certainly as a therapist he never had a diagnostic term for it; he saw this "goodness" articulated only in poetry and spiritual texts.
42ff On self-fulfilling beliefs: that if we believe our soul is flawed, or our creation is flawed, we will greet silence with fear, we'll be afraid to look at ourselves, we'll be afraid of what we'll find. Also comments here on Jesus's Sermon on the Mount, where he said blessed are the meek, the poor, etc. "He did not say 'Blessed will be the poor when they finally achieve a certain level of economic independence.'" As the author phrases it, "Do not wait to enjoy the harvest of your life; you are already blessed." Also paraphrasing Thomas Merton that "we harbor a hidden wholeness."
46 A practice here where the author suggests blessing people and even things; also on practicing a form of "guerilla compassion" silently blessing people in ahead of us in line at the bank, or people in cars next to us in traffic.
Fear of Rest
48 [Note the quote here]:
Rabbi Levi saw a man running in the street, and asked him, "Why do you run?" He replied, "I am running after my good fortune!" Rabbi Levi tells him, "Silly man, your good fortune has been trying to chase you, but you are running too fast."
48ff On caring for others, but not caring for ourselves with the same conviction; retelling the story of Jesus and the expensive oil and the famous quote "You will always have poor with you, but you will not always have me." On compassion also for the giver.
50ff On why people fear quiet because they're afraid that they're empty inside, that there's a void that we're terrified of, so we do anything to fill in the space, to avoid thinking about it; the author talks about how "all creation springs from emptiness" and that all life has emptiness at its core: the author looks at "emptiness" as a positive thing. On how most people are afraid of whatever might come up in an "empty space" when they're quiet and alone; hence all the rush and hurry and busyness, it's all to avoid what seems like the abyss.
55 On practicing silence: literally refraining from speech [and thus by implication refraining from judging or responding to what you see, hear or feel]. On how silence alters perception: "We see differently in silence, when we are not expected to comment, analyze, or respond." [Well said.] Also on the Buddhist concept of "right speech" which "includes the concept of refraining from speaking words that are not absolutely necessary." Also a good quote here from Father Arsenius, one of the Holy Desert Fathers: "I have often repented of having spoken, but never of having kept silent." [It's interesting: I spent about two years very gradually reading through The Sayings of the Holy Desert Fathers, and now that I read this book, I realize that was a very restful form of Sabbath exercise for me.]
Dormancy
57ff "Dormancy" discussed here in the context of plants, on plant "quiescence" to prepare for the next cycle of abundance and growth.
60 The recommended practice here is to make "a Sabbath box" where you put in the box those things that you do not want to use (something symbolic if the item is too large); also the box can "hold" a particular worry, or some certain thing you feel you have left undone: thus you could write on a piece of paper a word or list of things you'd like to leave behind for the time being.
Part II: Rhythm
The Rhythm of Creation
65ff The author discusses the rhythm of his days after he got out of the hospital from his pneumonia infection; he had to take naps every day, there was a rhythm where a good day was followed by a bad day, strength followed by periods of weakness. He talks about the visceral surrender he experienced. Discussion of various cycles in life, cycle of the seasons; also on the agricultural harvest, which has its own rhythm over the course of the year; on the rhythm of raising children, the various cycles as they grow older, the various seasons of life; no living thing lives without these cycles and these rhythms. The author calls it "a remembrance of a law that is firmly embedded in the fabric of nature."
70 The practice of "the Sabbath walk": a walk without any purpose, thirty minutes or so of ambling, preferably in nature, without trying to get anywhere, just remaining silent and letting your senses observe and guide your walk. "At the end of thirty minutes notice what has happened to your body, your mind, your sense of time."
Inner Music
71ff Discussion of Carolus Linnaeus [this is the Swedish biologist who formalized the naming system for organisms] and his flower garden, where he had arranged flowers that opened and closed their blossoms an hour apart, so he could tell time via his garden. [Wild.] Discussion here of circadian rhythms that present themselves in various forms throughout nature; also on "entrainment" to a circadian cycle and photoperiodism [an organism's ability to respond to varying periods of light and dark].
74 A recommended practice here of following your breath, observing the cadence and rhythm of it.
Hurtling Toward the Eschaton
76ff On modern Western civilization with its technology, somehow persuading us to think we are in some sort of golden age; on our modern "messianic eschatology of progress," seeking peak efficiency, more productivity, etc. The author calls this a pyramid scheme [he's right], and also note the interesting insight here that because we are persuaded that the future is a perfect place, therefore now is therefore somehow imperfect. The future always eludes us, so we redouble our efforts to reach it, thus we are never present, satisfaction is forever just out of reach.
79 To replace this model of progress, the author presents a different model: cyclicality. "Sabbath challenges the theology of progress by reminding us that we are already and always in sacred ground."
80 Recommending the practice of spending time in nature, in silence.
Let It Be
82 "Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you."
--Lao-Tzu
82ff On how "Sabbath requires surrender"; on the Jewish practice of a strict Sabbath starting time: 4:30pm, whether we're ready or not. "We stop because it is time to stop." [Interesting to think about this: since work is never done, since there's always more to do, this puts an artificial deadline on things, an artificial stopping point, and it makes us stop and breathe a little bit; note also you likely get more done by working with periodic rest periods than by going all out!]
84 A couple of interesting points here where the author quotes a friend, Henri Nouwen, an "astute student observer of our worried, overfilled lives" who insisted that "the noise of our lives made us deaf, unable to hear when we are called"--to the point where our lives are becoming absurd. And then a discussion of the word Latin word surdus which means "deaf" and is the root of the word absurd. Also thoughts here on the artificial urgency of modern life, whereas the Sabbath cultivates a sense of eternity; it shows that all things can wait.
85 "The theology of progress forces us to act before we are ready. We speak before we know what to say. We respond before we feel the truth of what we know. In the process, we inadvertently create suffering, heaping imprecision upon inaccuracy, until we are all buried under a mountain of misperception." [I like the phrase "the theology of progress," that is well put.]
86 The recommended practice here is to carve out specific time for prayer; the author quotes Brother David Steindl-Rast [probably very much worth looking into some of his writings] in an example of praying the Angelus when the bell rang at his school [this reminds me of Elder Porphyrios and his recommendation to say the exceedingly simple, seven-word Jesus prayer.]
The Book of Hours
88 Note the poem here from Ryonen Genso, the zen teacher who disfigured her own face because her beauty distracted those around her.
88ff On the Catholic Book of Hours, with specific prayers for various times of day, various holy days, etc; also on the idea that liturgical ritual is meant to be repeated, there's no perfect performance or finishing, you're never done. "The perfection is in the repetition."
90 Also interesting comments here about churches "paralyzed by the assumption that we must make this year's Christmas pageant better, more dramatic, more impressive, more spectacular than the last." [Even a church can get caught up in the theology of progress!] "You are not going anywhere. Millions have done this before you, and millions will do it after you are gone."
92 The recommended practice here doing contemplative reading, divine reading/lectio divina; also comments about reading aloud when alone with oneself. [Reading aloud is a much, much different experience cognitively too, you notice more somehow, you see more in the text.]
Part III: Time
A Life Well Lived
97 "If a country is governed wisely...
People enjoy their food,
take pleasure in being with their families,
spend weekends working in their gardens,
delight in the doings of the neighborhood."
-Tao Te Ching
[It's intriguing to invert this (already wonderful) quote, but to ask instead, "Can these things still be done, even in a country that is not governed wisely? I argue you can still stay in your circle of control and do these things! The skill of being able to do just that might become a superpower at times when your country is not governed wisely. It reminds me of the Charlie Munger quote that you want your company to be able to survive being run by an idiot CEO, because one day it most assuredly will be. Likewise, you have to be able to survive, and survive well, when your country is run by idiots, because most assuredly it is.]
98ff The author addresses certain presumptions in modern society, where "time is money," where we don't value essential human values, where we trade them away in the marketplace, and how our culture spends money as a pastime: we literally use time to spend money while also using time to get money! [The author's point is well taken here: a languid summer afternoon spent sitting on a porch or reading a book is free! But renting jet skis or going to Disneyland or having a jam-packed tour of Europe is expensive--which makes you have to go back into the marketplace to earn more money. Hence the authors of the book Your Money Or Your Life famously replacing the phrase "making a living" with "making a dying."] Also comments here on the increasing number of hours that we work which displaces participation in family and civic life--or for that matter spiritual life. [The author here is scratching at a lot of the ideas discussed very usefully and deeply in Your Money Or Your Life.] Finally, "Sabbathing" is of course free, or near-free.
102 Recommending the practice of setting aside time for play.
Seize the Day
103ff On W.K. Kellogg, who, during the Depression replaced the traditional three eight-hour shift schedule with four six-hour shifts to add 30% more jobs; the commentary here is about how the workers preferred the six-hour shift because it gave them more family time and leisure time; also interesting that during World War II--because of Franklin Roosevelt's executive order mandating longer work weeks--Kellogg had to go back to the eight-hour shift schedule, but then after the war they went back to the six-hour system. But then, sadly, in the 1970s as a new generation of workers wanted more money (according to the author) and thus in 1984 the workers voted to return to the eight-hour shift. "W.K. Kellogg's bold and creative experiment had come to an end."
107 The recommended practice here is to "create an altar": something simple in your home where you can place images, sacred objects or things that hold meaning to you, as a visual reminder of what you hold sacred.
Why Time Is not Money
108ff On the development of the measurement of economic activity, the concept of GDP, how it's useful on some levels, but, as the author puts it, it is also "astonishingly myopic, and insidiously dangerous--even violent" as he gives an example of a government-employed military pilot executing a bombing, which causes various "GDP-increasing" expenditures on burials, rebuilding the destroyed buildings, etc. [Basically this is a good example of the "broken window fallacy" and the author is correct: this actually does increase GDP!] Also noting that helpful volunteering produces zero GDP. On the idea that this skews our values and skews the activities of entire economies, but yet this has "become part of our collective belief system."
113 The recommended practice here is to think carefully about your personal, inviolable precepts that guide your life; make a list of them and speak them aloud on Sabbath.
A Deeper Wealth
114ff On various examples of what the author calls "economic perversity": like the fact that teachers and ag workers get paid very little while people who make our movies and build our computers get paid a thousand times as much. Note also the author here gives examples where very small amounts of financial capital--when combined with a wealth of time capital--can produce true riches for families and communities. The author argues "Both time and money are essential commodities for building a just and healthy world." On ideas like courage creativity and wisdom "grow only in the soil of time." On the notion that yes, you need time, some money, but also a willingness to think outside the box.
118 The recommended practice the author shares here is to find a peer, or a friend, or someone who you can go to for guidance. Note the quote here from Jesus "When two or more are gathered, there I am in your midst."
Part IV: Happiness
The Pursuit of Happiness
123ff Various instances where we are instructed and encouraged to seek joy in life: quoting Jesus, the Buddha, also quoting secular thinkers including both Aristotle and Jefferson who both viewed the pursuit of happiness as an important value.
124 [Very interesting quote here]: "As our time is eaten away by speed and overwork, we are less available to be surprised by joy, a sunset, a kind word, an unplanned game of tag with a child, a warm loaf of bread from the oven. But for all our striving and accomplishment, our underlying need for happiness does not withdraw and disappear. So we pursue happiness on the run, trying to make our lives more and more efficient, squeezing every task into tighter increments, hoping to somehow "get' our happiness when we are able to fit it in. When our happiness fails to appear--when we are tired, weary, and spent--we turn to the marketplace for help. There, we are offered something that looks very much like happiness--a tantalizing substitute for happiness--something more easily acquired, more quickly and conveniently bought and sold. We are offered the satisfaction of desire." Next a discussion of how this is ultimately unsatisfying: that desire only gives birth to suffering under the Buddhist concept, and the craving for what we desire actually causes great sorrow. "If we are always seeking for what we do not have, he said, we will always be disappointed."
126 Finally, comments here on how the more rushed and hurried we are, the more we're willing to trade happiness for desire--and over time the less we will be able to discern the difference. And then on the Tibetan Buddhism concept of the "hungry ghost": a being with a very small throat but an enormous belly that can never consume enough to satisfy its appetite; on the idea that we've built a "hungry ghost economy" that produces suffering rather than creating happiness; and thus the answer to craving is "rest with the Sabbath," where we focus more on our abundance than on what we lack, and we take delight in what we already have.
128 The recommended practice here is to "practice thanksgiving": giving thanks when arising, when going to sleep, for friends, family, food, before meals, etc. Basically this would be what Timothy Miller would call the practice of Gratitude in his book How to Want What You Have. Also interesting comment here about Meister Eckhart, saying if the only prayer we ever prayed our whole life was "thank you," that would be enough.
The Gospel of Consumption
129ff Comments here from the industrial commentator Edward Sheffield Cowdrick (and others) concerned about the increasing wealth and leisure of American citizens, and on these guys' [disturbingly successful] attempts to produce a new economic gospel of consumption; on the rise of marketing, advertising and media publicizing the spending examples set by the rich, all meant to fuel a drive to increase consumption [I've heard about this "movement" before, but honestly it has always appeared to me to be a post hoc idea long after the fact; that some system that works so well to get people to desire stuff must have been "created" somehow--by bad guys. It could be I guess, who knows.] On how this has only accelerated since then, as the author claims "Americans now consume twice as many goods and services, per person, than we did in 1945... We work more hours, we buy more things, and the economy prospers."
131 An unintentionally amusing Malthusian comment here from the author (remember this book was written in 1999) as he talks about how there is a car for every 1.7 people in the United States and in China (again in 1999) there is one car for every 600 people; the author wrings his hands here, asking "what will happen when the marketplace tries to deliver 500 million automobiles to the "well-cultivated hunger of the Chinese market? There is not enough steel, petroleum, or rubber--to say nothing of clean air available to suck through the additional engines--to sustain even this relatively tiny increase in consumption. So who will be asked to give up their desires first?" [Obviously we've since seen that China is well able to make and sell far more cars than this author's worst nightmare, and the marketplace did respond with plenty of steel and rubber etc. His point is still completely valid about global consumerism, but Malthusianism always seems to cause people to fall into traps that aren't really there, and thus experience anxiety that they don't need to.]
132 "Happiness is the single commodity not produced by the free-market economy. Worse than that, when we are happy, we don't feel the need to buy anything. The Sabbath, a day of delight, a day to be at peace with all we have, is a radical, dangerous prescription."
133 The recommended Sabbath practice here is to take an hour in your favorite store [today you could do this from your home and visit your favorite website!], and resolve to shop but not spend a single penny and "let yourself feel the tug of buying"; listen to the voices that speak to you, observe any struggles or discomforts that arise, and observe any spaciousness that arises as you let each item go and walk away. "What do you notice about your mood, your sense of sufficiency, as you leave the store at the end of this practice?"
Selling Unhappiness
134 "In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is acquired.
In pursuit of wisdom,
every day something is dropped."
-Lao Tzu
[Like with many of the best Zen quotes, this one makes you sit and think, and roll it over in your mind a little bit to consider the implications. For that matter Zen quotes themselves also encourage a general mental practice of not resolving things too quickly, not deciding what something "means." "Reading Zen koans and thinking about them" should be one of the author's recommended Sabbath practices!]
135ff On advertising selling happiness, selling being young and at ease, selling perfection, selling a life without trouble; but the obvious subtext here, the real message, is you will never be happy unless you buy what we are selling. We know that you are not happy; essentially the entire industry is saying you are not happy, you do not have enough, you are not enough. Thus what is being sold here is dissatisfaction. And then of course there's even a marketplace for selling the cure for dissatisfaction: as in Buy this yoga video! or these Zen gardening tools! Thus even spirituality [in reality, pseudospirituality] can become a desire that's sold to us.
137 "It is imperative that we recognize that our particular model of civilization is actually designed to produce suffering... Sabbath is a time to stop, to refrain from being seduced by our desires... You cannot buy stopped. You simply have to stop."
138 The recommended practice here is to create a morning ritual: the example here is to wake up in bed but do not get up out of bed, to practice not being worried by your impending responsibilities for the day; the author borrows a friend's term "slotha yoga" to describe this.
The Tyranny of Choice
140ff The author describes his attempt at growing a flower garden in Santa Fe; it got eaten alive by gophers and jackrabbits; he decides to put up a fence, and he uses the fence as a metaphor for a useful boundary to keep things out that would do us harm; also he uses it as a metaphor for an escape from the relentless choices offered to us by the marketplace; the fenced-in area is a place of "restriction" that actually gives us freedom from all these choices.
145 The recommended practice here is to "choose one pleasurable activity that is easily done and takes little time" and do it daily, like writing a short poem or doing a simple drawing.
Sensuality and Delight
147ff This mini-chapter discusses discussion of how the Sabbath emphasizes sensuality and touch.
153 The recommended practice here is to take off your shoes and let your feet touch the Earth, the floor or rock; on the idea that you are "standing on holy ground."
Part V: Wisdom
Doing Good Badly
157 "The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." -Voltaire
157ff The author talks about the 1970s when he worked on "deinstitutionalizing" minor juvenile offenders to keep them out of the criminal justice system; he laments the fact that they didn't spend enough time thinking about the communities that they would be returned to. "We were rushed, flush with our own compassion... we were in a terrible hurry to do good." Basically this is a section on doing unintended harm. "Everything is more dangerous at high speed."
160ff The author then extends the idea to "hurrying" our children; also on the idea of taking up a meditation practice to give us a retreat and protection from hyperactivity; on the idea of "hectic healers" producing more and more social programs with negligible or questionable results. On the concept [more or less] of "first do no harm" [although the author doesn't phrase it this way]. Also on the Buddhist concept of "choiceless awareness": listening and seeing with openness and curiosity.
163ff The recommended practice here is to imagine a situation or a problem that concerns you, then observe the changes in your body while you think about it, and then visualize a solution or a resolution to it as if the problem already "knows" how to be resolved. "How does this change your feeling about the dilemma?"
Be Still and Know
165ff "Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom." Through meditation or stillness we see better, we hear better; on the idea that we can see through or around a problem better when we're quiet, when we have rest. [This is a good example of what Krishnamurti calls seeing, truly seeing, before you can see the actual underlying problem or think your way through to a solution.] On the Taoist saying "To the mind that is still, the world surrenders." On how meditation and moments of rest and prayer "disrupt the pattern of desperation that infects our thinking."
169 "Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?"
-Tao Te Ching
170 The recommended practice here is to "sleep on it": again, think of a particular problem that concerns you and then imagine forces at work already healing what needs to be healed; then just sleep on the problem and then "look at the problem again, and see what has grown there, quietly, invisibly in the night."
Nobody Special
172ff On practicing humility, on doing your work quietly, in secret, the author does not phrase it this way but this chapter gets to Nassim Taleb's notion that "genuine virtue is practiced in secret" and that virtue-signaling is the exact opposite of virtue. The author makes an interesting comment here talking about a friend of his describing spiritual life as a life of "downward mobility": towards more humility, more service to others, less honor and recognition, etc. Also comments here on the "theological premise" of confessing one's weaknesses rather than showing one's strengths.
174 Other examples from Jesus: see for example the Good Samaritan, who gave help totally anonymously, also the poor woman at the temple who quietly made her small donation.
175 On the idea of becoming "nobody special" [the author is presenting a valid and compelling ethical framework for this idea, but it's also quite fascinating to think about how becoming nobody special actually fits in with a lot of other aspects of navigating modernity. See for example Perpetual Traveler and its discussion of "the gray man": someone who doesn't stand out, who isn't loud, flashy or ostentatious; obviously this gets to a different set of motivations, but we can see the same underlying behavior serving multiple highly useful purposes.]
178 The recommended practice here is to set aside a period of time where you will not be disturbed, during which you can sit, or walk, or meditate, or read or pray, etc. The section here cites the Holy Desert Fathers saying "Go into your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."
Being Sabbath
179ff The author talks about how, throughout his life, people seem to want to tell him their stories or unburden themselves to him; he describes a striking scene where he went to his advisor at the University of Rochester full of bravado about going to Harvard, and this man saw his confusion and said, simply, "You seem sad." The author became extremely emotional right then and now tells the reader that this man's "kind, quiet presence changed my life." He gives other examples here where there's nothing to say, there's no solution to the problem, the only response is silence or prayer.
183 Note this beautiful quote at the end of the chapter from Yeats: "We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet."
184 The recommended practice here has to do with "thinning"--applying the idea from gardening--as a metaphor towards our life: thus the practice here is to let go of things, remove things, give things away, cut back on things, do less. The idea here is that thinning your garden gives vegetables space to grow, thus practicing thinning in your life gives you space to grow.
Beginner's Mind
186ff On Suzuki Roshi and his concept of Beginner's Mind: the willingness to accept unknowing [this is I think only a small part of this massive, massive concept]; on the overconfidence we sometimes get because we have good health, because we work hard, etc.; The author retells the Zen tale about the father and his son who breaks his leg so the army cannot draft him, basically a story that shows blessings can turn into disaster, which can turn into blessings. Also on the idea that in modernity, where we're used to instant gratification, we can't handle "not knowing," we can't handle letting things go unknown, we want to know immediately what's going to happen next.
189-90 Interesting story here about Alfred Hitchcock and the actor Hume Cronyn working late into the night on a scene they just couldn't get right; Hitchcock starts goofing off, telling silly junior high-caliber jokes and getting everybody laughing; later Cronyn asked him why he did that, and Hitchcock said "You were pushing. It never comes from pushing." Another anecdote here about Werner Heisenberg wrestling with a physics problem and then saying "Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's wait for two weeks, and let it solve itself." Thus the idea here is to cultivate a "receptivity of mind" as the author phrases it.
191 The recommended practice here is taken from the ritual cleansing involved in the Sabbath, so the author suggests "Sabbath baths."
Part VI: Consecration
Mindfulness and Holiness
195ff This is a chapter on giving time and attention to our lives, whether we're eating, whether we're thinking of people who we lost; the author describes it as "consecrating": things, people, our loved ones, and so on.
198 The recommended practice here is a sort of confession-type practice where you speak of the things that you feel need forgiveness.
The Way of Enough
200 "I make myself rich by making my wants few." -Thoreau
200ff This chapter begins with a story about the "manna from heaven" story from the Bible, and how there was enough for each day, but if you tried to save it over to the next day, the manna would spoil and breed worms; also Buddhist monks are not allowed to keep food overnight, so each day they would beg for their food for that day. The author brings us into a discussion about the difference between "abundance" and "sufficiency": one is a response to scarcity and the other invokes satisfaction and well-being. [Essentially the idea here is to draw a huge distinction between hoarding and "enoughing."]
201ff On the idea of "petitionary prayer" being discouraged during Sabbath time; you're supposed to be attentive to what you have, not what you want or need.
203 The recommended practice here is when you gather for a Sabbath meal, set a place--an empty place--for all the people who join you in spirit; the idea here is to stay mindful of all who we've loved or who have loved us, and all who have gone before and will come after us.
Ownership
204ff On being mindful of what we possess; on making sure the things we bring into our lives receive proper time and attention [the author doesn't say it this way at all, but the more time you spend playing Tetris with your stuff the less time you have to focus on things that are genuinely important.] a retelling here of a version of the story of Aristippus and his lentils: here using Mulla Nasrudin: "If you would learn to flatter the emperor you would not have to live on chickpeas and bread." Also comments here on the jubilee year, every 49th year in Hebrew culture, where debts were canceled, lands were returned to their original owners, etc. The idea here is that nothing really belongs to us--it's all on loan from God.
208 The recommended practice here is to go through your home and look at the things you've accumulated, and pick something, along with someone to receive it, and give that thing away. "This is the beginning of true wealth."
Breaking the Trance
209ff The author uses a metaphor of being in a movie theater, being entranced by the movie, really drawn into it, and then, suddenly, the film breaks and the lights come on, and you're yanked out of the trance that you were in; he extends the metaphor to think about day-to-day life: the "trance" of your work for example [or the "trance" of consumerism], when in many ways it's just as much of an illusion; also the author gives the example of Chinese medicine, "where the first step in treatment is to break the old pattern."
Part VII: A Sabbath Day
215ff "This sketch offers a few suggestions to help you begin to shape a Sabbath day."
217ff Starting with the Evening: suggestions for reading scripture, particularly Psalms, to help with maintaining attention, also poetry or other spiritual reflections. Also lighting candles, or ringing a bell, to bring yourself to a state of mindfulness. Also on engaging in the practice of blessing.
222ff Morning: the author shares examples here of people going to worship service, another person who journals in the mornings on the Sabbath, examples of staying in bed and literally doing nothing.
226ff Afternoon: here the author recommends "unrepentant napping," meditative walking, spending time in nature, practicing a musical instrument; see also the example here of a rabbi defying traditional Sabbath prohibitions against using electricity by saying "I cannot imagine a Sabbath without my stereo. I do not believe God would want me to have a Sabbath without Mahler." [Interesting.] Other ideas include writing letters, dedicating time to making calls to friends that you don't get to see as often as you'd like, simple prayer, etc.
To Read:
Lewis Thomas: Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
David Steindl-Rast: Essential Writings
David Steindl-Rast: You Are Here
Benjamin Hunnicutt: Work Without End
Edward Sheffield Cowdrick: Manpower in Industry
Jelalludin Rumi: The Essential Rumi
Czeslaw Milos: The Collected Poems: 1931-1987