Sadhana: A Way to Transformation

I look out my window and see the dogwood in the backyard bursting with white pedals. She’s such a beauty. Her blossoms, and the scattered yellow daffodils on the new grass, make it official. It’s time for spring cleaning. This year I feel a particular need to let go of another layer of what I’m clinging to. Maybe a few layers.

My Backyard Dogwood

I’m starting with the closets. The one filled with old files. What documents do I keep. What can be saved digitally or simply tossed.

I opened a box stacked in the back and found an article I wrote years ago as a graduate student at Fordham University. Its title is A Way to Transformation. There are stains on the upper left corner where the paper clip has long since rusted. The paper is now a yellowed beige color. It made me smile. I shake my head because…well…I can’t believe I wrote it in 1981. You are what you feel, right?   

I’m genuinely surprised how pertinent the subject of transformation is for me now as it was then. It’s a personal synchronistic moment. How interesting that I found this article in spring, a season when various spiritual traditions emphasize self-reflection and renewal. And, it hasn’t escaped me that given our current political, moral and ethical crises, transforming who we are as a people has never been more essential.

Old Becomes New Again

Though the article was written long ago, maybe I can find some clues about how to handle my present. Who knows. Maybe 40+ years ago I offered advice to my future self.

The article’s focus is the book Sadhana by Anthony deMello SJ. I pause a minute to root around in the bookcase for my copy of the book. I find a well-read 1978 first edition. The binding is gone. Adhesive tape is brown with age but it’s still holding the cover in place.

As a Jesuit priest born in Bombay India, deMello offers a fusion of East/West spirituality. His work reminds Christianity that it’s been rooted in India since the first century. India’s eastern influence deepened this tradition with emphasis on prayer spaces, breathing, controlling the over-thinking mind, stillness, and a focus on body sensations so evident in yoga practices.

I’ve been a student of spiritual traditions and practices for a long time. Expanding our minds and hearts to embrace a blend of spiritualities enhances our journey toward well-being.

Sadhana

Sadhana is an ancient Sanskrit term. It is a word that encapsulates a need for consistent daily practice that doesn’t prescribe to one path or one way of being. Rather, it emphasizes developing a deep awareness of everything in us and around us in pursuit of balance and harmony.

After a few years in Japan where I practiced zazen daily I returned home to begin master’s studies at university in the Bronx. In my new urban environment, I was missing the utter quietness. A part of me wanted to recreate the inner stillness I felt in the zendo where I meditated. However, what I really needed was to begin again. To do a spiritual spring cleaning and create a way of being in my new space.

I began using the suggested meditations in deMello’s Sadhana as my guide. My 40+ years article chronicled preparation for a whole new meditative experience by first observing my body. For weeks this was my focus…paying attention versus telling myself to be still or evoking quiet. I reflected, “I could feel how tired I was… a deep pain brought attention to my right shoulder. It was as though all my tension concentrated in that one spot.”

Over time I sensed something else…resistance. The whole self-observation process became very uncomfortable. Again, I wrote, “I feel that with the strength of wild horses my ego holds tightly to illusions about my inner self.”

It takes time and discipline to face fears and manipulative illusions in order to continue the process of transformation. Even amidst the unique fog of youth, I understood that I could sit in folded sitting positions practicing yogic breathing for a long time. Yet somehow I found that allowing myself to experience self-love to be immensely difficult.

All those years ago I began to see that in the face of unearthing self-illusions, pure and simple tenderness is at the heart of their transformation. The whole process takes patience and the willingness to begin again over and over to feel, then unearth, all our closely held inner myths.

Well, as I said, I’m feeling a wonderfully synchronistic moment that the reflections of my younger self should appear at this time. The self-awareness, tenderness, and inner transformation of Sadhana is needed again.

So, this spring I’m going to become the observer. I’ll begin with the body as I did before. It’s time to pause and give thought to what’s happening in my life and around it. I will practice Sadhana. I will pay attention to what emerges and, most importantly, greet it with loving respect. Inner stillness persists. Recognizing the presence of my inner core will sustain me through the concerns of a tumultuous societal climate. This gives me hope.

Sending blessings.