Hey everybody,
Welcome to Bringing Meditation to Life,
A podcast in which we immerse ourselves in the intersection of meditation and everyday life,
In which we look at the ways meditation illuminates and deepens our experience of daily living and the ways life itself does the same for our practice.
I'm your host,
Neil McKinlay.
Margaret Lawrence was a Canadian writer and novelist born in July of 1926,
Who died in January 1987.
She's probably best known for a five-piece cycle of fiction set in the imagined Manitoba town of Manawaka.
This cycle started with the novel Stone Angel in 1964 and concluded 10 years later with the award-winning The Diviners.
This last work chronicled the life of Morag Gunn as she struggled to come to terms with her place in the world.
Her place in terms of her family and familial inheritance.
Her place geographically in terms of where she might live and thrive.
And her place vocationally as a writer and storyteller.
The short passage I'm about to read now comes from the final pages of The Diviners as Morag somewhat unexpectedly seems to reach some sort of conclusion in her coming-to-terms journey.
Seems to realize some sort of peace.
And the passage reads like this.
Morag's magic tricks were of a different order.
She would never know whether they actually worked or not,
Or to what extent.
That wasn't given to her to know.
In a sense,
It did not matter.
The necessary doing of a thing.
That mattered.
A fair amount of attention is given to the matter of motivation in Buddhism.
We are encouraged to rouse our motivation by contemplating a teaching known as the Four Reminders,
Which remind us that our normal way of living is often characterized by struggle.
That this normal way of living often has unfortunate consequences for us.
Which reminds us that there is another way to approach the experience of human living,
And that our opportunity to do this,
To engage this other way,
Is brief and fleeting.
The meditative tradition also distinguishes between different kinds of motivation.
The motivation to live a decent life,
The motivation to live free from suffering,
The motivation to see others live free from suffering also.
More conventional or secular engagement with meditation also gives a fair bit of attention to motivation.
Some of us feeling motivated to meditate because of the physical and health benefits it might bring to our lives,
Or the psychological health benefits it might bring to our lives,
Or the ways it might affect our work,
Our relationships,
Our creativity.
All of which is legitimate and appropriate and probably very helpful.
Sometimes however,
My engagement with,
Or maybe I should say my relationship with meditation isn't really explained or articulated or captured by these various categories and lists.
Sometimes when I sit down to practice,
Saying that I'm seeking to reduce the suffering I experience or to improve my focus when I'm working,
Doesn't really express the mystery of the undertaking.
Doesn't really express the fact that sometimes when I sit down to meditate,
My only real motivation is the doing,
Is the practice itself.
With a little bit of reflection,
I think that this quite honestly has sustained my practice as much as anything over the years.
A willingness to give myself to a force that more often than not remains inexplicable to me,
That remains only necessary in my life.
Something I simply must do.
Something,
Something that matters really on these terms and these terms alone.
When I recently found myself coming to the end of Margaret Lawrence's The Diviners,
I was delighted to feel the author giving voice to this.
I was delighted to feel Morag Gunn's coming-to-turns-with journey illuminating something previously only hinted at,
Only sensed in my own life and experience.
Which is,
I suppose,
One of the values and one of the gifts of art in a general sense.
It certainly has been one of the values,
One of the gifts of art in my own practice and path.
So here is that passage from Margaret Lawrence's The Diviners once again.
Morag's magic tricks were of a different order.
She would never know whether they actually worked or not,
Or to what extent.
That wasn't given to her to know.
In a sense,
It did not matter.
The necessary doing of a thing.
That mattered.
So as always,
Thank you for listening everybody.
As always,
Feel free to find out more about myself and my work at neilmckinley.
Com.
In the meantime,
Take care and be well.
Let's keep doing this work together.
Let's keep bringing meditation to life.
