The Art of Contemplation

One late evening, my uncle Juan Siesta, who was taking some courses on oratory, climbed to a chair and gave the following speech.

The frenzy speed of modern life has made difficult the art of contemplation. The days pass. They gather into weeks, then into months, and years, and perhaps, even more years.

Arteries grow old and reactions slow without the acquisition of the wisdom that comes with the assimilation of experience.

Wisdom, wisdom, I am talking about wisdom.

If life is to have meaning, if things we do are not illusion, if there is a reality in ours efforts and undertakings, then we have to stop and ask ourselves why are we doing whatever is what we are doing. And then decide with real freedom. Make sure that our choices are more than appearance, that we make real choices.

To come to such a decision is itself an act of faith. It assumes that blind, mechanistic forces that we can neither resist nor understand do not drive the universe. That freedom is possible. Our final view of the universe is always an act of faith, rather than reason, because it rests on a first principle that cannot be proved.

The ancients said that it couldn't be dispute in matters of taste. "De gustibus is non disputandum."

Perhaps the same could be said about principles, although this will be disputed, and disputed vigorously. For with one principle you will become a religious orthodox, and with another you will become an atheist materialist.

I don't mean that is indifferent being one or the other. What I mean is that with the infinite variety of men, now and for a long time to come, one man's meat will be another's man poison.

What I desire for each one of you is the apprehension of the principles upon which your working faith is founded.

Because you have faith, or at least a working hypothesis of your relation to the entire scheme of things on which your life is founded. Whether this hypothesis is formulated or unformulated, it still exists and your actions are witness to it.

Your hypothesis may range all the way from the belief that life has purpose to the belief that is utterly without purpose, that nothing can be done to give it sense or meaning. But your hypothesis exists. Do you know what it is?

Self-knowledge. The frenzy speed of modern life makes difficult the contemplation required for self-knowledge.

I am not talking here against modern life. I am not talking about the good old days. Most of us would not be here if the good old days had not been changed for the better.

Disease and famine would have cut off our ancestors, or us and of those who survived only a fortunate few would achieve education.

We must not overlook the triumphs of science and technology.

But somewhere along the pathway of progress, the art of contemplation has been lost.

The Society of Friends, certain Roman Catholics, and occasional mystics have preserved the art of contemplation. They are very few and they are among us. You can identify them because they retain an anchorage in a sea of ceaseless motion, of disquiet, of drifting. They posses an integrity, calm and assurance, a wholeness of mind and body that is a kind of holiness.

This wholeness, this holiness, I crave for you.

It will be difficult to achieve. All the forces of modern life conspire against it.

Competition, activity for its own sake, the lust for success and power make difficult the art of self-mastery.

We are slaves and not masters. The newspapers, the radio, the television interrupt our days and disturb our nights. Everyone is a little tired, a little anxious, and a little bit incorrect in judgment. The cult of adrenaline and violence is rampant in our youngsters.

Yet this needs not to be so. It is so because we allow it to be so. We allow others to make decisions for us. Without interruptions, we expose ourselves to the influence of the media, radio, television, papers, games, and movies. All are plenty of violence and killing. We are not longer in control of ourselves. How do we know that one day, one of us who look very normal, will take a gun and kill somebody?

Many years ago Mark Twain said that he once stopped reading the newspapers for 7 years and there where the seven happiest years of his life. At those times the remedy seemed a little drastic, but perhaps nothing less than a radical remedy will now halt the disease. Until newspapers, television, and the entertainment industry in general have learned that men cannot survive in perpetual crisis, they are in danger of reprisal.

The people made schizophrenic by perpetual crisis, may well construe his own "freedom of the press" and not watch it anymore. Nothing compels you to give up your sanity, even though the world conspires to drive you mad.

You can make it a rule of your life to withdraw each day into quit and contemplation, and look upon the deep places of human experience. "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord," said the Psalmist, "and the firmament show his handy work." Modern man cannot afford to loose the sense of wonder, and look for wisdom to understand the destiny of men. We must struggle to apprehend the principles or our faith, and to achieve that distillation of experience that is wisdom.

History records the flow if civilizations, and the trend have been upward. Yet there is little evidence that modern man has better mind than the prophets of Israel and the sages of Greece or Rome. They have believed that what they did made a difference in the long history of human kind, even in human destiny itself.

You too have a choice, and the choice is real. Either you go on with the frenzy speed of modern life, immersed in activity for the only sake of activity, or you allow contemplation in your life.

The search of wisdom, the possession of integrity, the calm and self- assurance, the wholeness of mind and body, all that is a kind of holiness. This wholeness, this holiness, I crave for you.

Then my uncle Juan Siesta stepped down from the chair in a very dignified manner.

Julio Romero was visiting us. After finishing his glass of wine he said, "Oh, dear. Living in a big city must be something!"

Pretty Rosita who was sitting on the lap of granddad Donateo (we forgive all his eccentricities and hope God will forgive him, too) pouting her lips said, "I hope you still will buy me a television set, daddy."