Meditation Guides - Break - But Not Really

Just finished: Journey of Awakening, Ram Dass

Now reading: Fireflies, Honey, and Silk, Gilbert Waldbauer

On deck: ??

As I kind of predicted, I haven’t been reading that much since my summer job started. I’ve gotten through four books, which is probably higher than the national average in terms of “how many books people even read in a year,” but in addition to work, I’ve had so many doctors appointments after work and then sports commitments besides that that I haven’t even really been able to take afternoon walks, which, historically, have been my favorite part of the summer. In the past two weeks, I finished Ram Dass’s Journey of Awakening, a guidebook to meditative practices, and Fireflies, Honey, and Silk, which is an entomologist’s reflection on the different bugs that humans have used across history for a variety of different purposes. The books are similar, in that both are written by clear experts on the topics and refer frequently to the works of other experts, and both provide different ways of looking at or being in the world. Ram Dass offers self-improvement and awareness of the interior; Waldbauer offers the relationship between insects and humans and awareness of the exterior world. I think it’s fair to say that we might all be like caterpillars or silkworms who, when we begin a transformation, will come out on the other side as completely different beings. These are also, more or less, my last two self-chosen books before I get really into reading for curriculum development so that my department can have what we need to start the school year.

What I enjoy about Ram Dass—his lectures and his books—is that his tone is always like a reassuring mentor and yet almost never comes across as being particularly pedantic. Journey of Awakening provides both practical recommendations for meditative spiritual practice as well as guidance on the practice of learning itself, and, of the two books I’ve read these past two weeks, I think this is the one I’m more likely to return to on a regular basis. Ram Dass doesn’t try to claim that one single practice is any better than any other, and, in fact, makes frequent reference to a variety of different spiritual practices throughout the book. The second half of the book—the directory—I can assume was, at the time of publishing, hugely valuable, but unfortunately, the book faces the same pitfalls of any guidebook: the limitation of print means that directories frequently fall out of date with no immediate way to fix that, though the presence of the internet means that this doesn’t have to impact contemporary readers much, if at all. Ram Dass readily acknowledges the difficulty of meditation, though he balances this with the justifications of picking up the practice in the first place, as well as why it’s worthwhile to keep at it. I would probably recommend reading Journey of Awakening before getting into anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn, though the authors complement each other in a home library.

Waldbauer’s approach to insects in Fireflies, Honey, and Silk is somewhat more limited in that his scope has been self-limited to the insects people like and insects that people have used to benefit their own lives. While that limitation provides a guideline and keeps the book from trying to cover too much in too short a space, Waldbauer notes some of the problems of such a restriction and this kind of approach in the epilogue, where he describes his own frustration as an entomologist that he didn’t spend enough time talking about the ecological roles of these bugs, and I suspect that this might be a real place of dissatisfaction with his own work. While there’s importance, obviously, in highlighting the ways in which insects help humans, anthropocentric explanations of the natural world—rather than being able to take a comprehensive view of the natural world which includes but doesn’t necessarily prioritize humans—tend to send the message that nature only matters in so much as it benefits people. Arguably, this has been the dominating narrative about nature in the United States in particular since the Puritans arrived in 1620. It’s important to know how people have transformed their landscapes through the introduction of certain plants and insects, like the introduction of honeybees to North America, at the same time that we ought to be aware of the ecological significance of those insects to the environment beyond their immediate relation to people; this, again, is something I think Waldbauer makes clear in his epilogue.

When I look at the books on my wishlist and when I look at the books I have left to read in my apartment, the running themes have to do with how we fit into our environment and our histories: personal, family, culture. So I guess despite knowing that anthropocentrism is problematic for a few reasons, I tend towards immense degrees of it in my own thinking and worldly engagement. Or maybe not; I’m concerned with the natural world and its conservation not just because I’m in it, but because it’s not just me in it.

We’re creeping towards the end of the summer—or maybe racing towards it. I got more sun over the weekend, and there’s a week and a few days left at the camp I’ve been teaching, but most mornings lately, I’ve needed to wear a sweatshirt. I went for a walk to get ice cream at the same time I started longing for leaves to change color. This year, mosquitos have been conspicuously absent—though my homeowning friends have been inundated with earwigs. Even though I generally have more time for reading in the fall and winter, I’m wanting to slow time down. I want to follow Ram Dass’s advice to just “Be here, now.”