Spiritual-Teaching.org
Letter #34 - Acedia
It came to me the other day while reflecting upon a statement in a
marvellous book Aflame (Learning from Silence) by Pico Iyer that what I
unknowingly suffered from for many years prior to reaching Arunachala was
acedia. 1
The author wrote about it as a major obstacle encountered by anyone
treading an authentic spiritual path in whatever form it may take. I was not
familiar with this word and looked it up. Acedia, I discovered, is despondency
and listlessness, connected with depression. In its more gross manifestation, a
lack of attention, apathy and more relevant to this essay, “without care”. This
lack is due in part to depression and expresses itself as laziness.
The notion was eventually subsumed into one of the seven deadly sins, sloth.
.But acedia is a slippery condition that does not lend itself to a neat explanation,
much like the nebulous effects it has upon us all who experience it. At best we
now broadly define it as sloth but it is more subtle than that. Imagine a prisoner
confined to a solitary cell for the majority of the day. The overriding feeling can
be one of pointlessness and despair.
At times, we all are stuck within invisible walls that are much like glass;
We can see out but are powerless to initiate a change.
Acedia is a minefield which us ordinary people experience before and after
entering a genuine spiritual path. In fact, it is not just a major contributing factor
to suffering but appears to be a necessary preliminary condition because without
it, would we question our destiny in the world and seek a resolution? Anyone
who has read The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham perceives the familiar
dilemma faced by the protagonist Larry Darrell. That is, life does not seem to
have any meaning. It is a twilight zone of half-light, of chaotic, compulsive
thoughts and feelings that arise out of nowhere and to no purpose and lead
nowhere. One’s sense of purpose is frozen.
One of the many forms it manifests is as self-pity that generates indolence, or in
a plain statement:
“I don’t give a damn”.It is a prevalent affectation particularly
during adolescence. In active spirituality, it strikes frequently in the midday
hours when the mind and body are somewhat tired after a morning’s exertions.
The Christian desert fathers would identify it as the “plague that stalks at
noonday.”
For us, this affliction can occur because of too much stress and too many
demands on one’s time and attention. When we cannot fulfil expectations, we
tend to close down and become remote as we blindly grapple with conflicting
demands and generally refuse to recognise what is troubling us.
There is another side to this challenge because many of us tend to coast along
and take things for granted, and as a consequence do not develop and mature,
until disasters befall us which cause us to wake up whether we like it or not.
The vulnerable teenage years are especially conducive to this insidious
condition. Some retreat even further into their own dream world and ignore the
jabbing elbows of everyday reality. Or they develop a neurosis or a psychosis to
supplement the disparity between their own fantasies and the unyielding
surface of external reality.
Then why is it that we can be apathetic and not care? It could be a
pervasive social trait of the society in which one lives; it could be a generational
habit passed on through the ages like a defective gene. It could be the result of
over stress and too many conflicting sensations and thoughts that do not appear
to make sense.
It could be something simple akin to sloth or gluttony, such as
eating too much, so much so that the body spends its energy and time digesting
the over intake of food and has little spark left for other matters. It is a fact that
the digestive powers play a major role in our well-being. Too much food and we
want to do nothing but lounge about without a care in the world while our
stomach toils. That is why food intake is disciplined on the spiritual path, not to
deny us pleasure but to retain our limited energies for a higher purpose. Clean,
nutritious and generally light food is essential. In fact, too much of anything is
not good for us. The Buddha’s Middle Way showing us a balanced life of
moderation is a prerequisite.
In the Collected Works of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi there is related
an incident that happened in the ashram.
‘Complaint of the Stomach’.
One day there had been feasting at the Ashram. Many had been upset by
the large quantity of rich food. Someone quoted the following complaint about
the stomach by the Tamil poetess, Avvayar:
‘You will not go without food even for one day, nor will you take enough
for two days at a time. You have no idea of the trouble I have on your account,
Oh wretched stomach! It is impossible to get on with you!’
Bhagavan immediately replied with a parody giving [the ego’s complaint
and] the stomach’s complaint against the ego.
“You will not give even an hour’s rest to me, you stomach! Day after day,
every hour, you keep on eating.
“You have no idea how I suffer, Oh trouble-making ego! It is impossible to
get on with you!” 2
This is an interesting identification. The stomach and the ego have the same
function. Both eat, whether it is the gross food of our physical stomach or the
subtle impressions gobbled up by our insatiable ego, ahamkara. Both never
cease to either crave for suitable food, an actual or imagined hunger, and then
complain when there is too little or more often, too much, resulting in either
indigestion or a headache.
Then how do we remain unaffected by these insatiable demands? What we
read, watch or cultivate in our thinking and emotions are so important. The first
hesitant steps are the learning of how to say no. It is a slow cleansing process
that often culminates in a heated conflict, originating both from external and
internal sources. In yoga, this is called tapas, and is much like the rubbing of
two objects together that generates heat. The fire of conflict creates an
intolerable tension and finally one is faced with the decision to either succumb
to a temptation knowing it is transient or, resisting the suction power of the
enticement, which if successful, leaves one oddly at first disgruntled as if a toy
has been snatched away, yet one remains calm and resolute.
Once years ago, I walked around sacred Arunachala with five rupees in my
pocket. I wanted to treat myself to a delicious masala dosa at a hotel in town
after completing most of the eight-mile circuit of the hill. It happened there was
a sadhu, or mendicant, part way round to whom I gave a rupee or two, and then
another until there was just sufficient for the dosa. Much of the time walking
round the hill was spent dreaming how I would enjoy a dosa. When finally, I
arrived at the hotel there was another sadhu outside the entrance who looked
starved. I hesitated and in the conflict between my desire for the tasty dosa and
the outstretched hand, I reluctantly gave the sadhu the money and walked
home with an empty pocket and stomach, and a far from a saintly mood replete
with hazy dissatisfaction. However, as a consequence, that one small gesture of
saying no to my desire strengthened the power to resist unnecessary wishes. The
dosa no longer seemed important. I was no longer led by my tongue and its
sense of taste. Each marginal step we take frees us of our constricted solipsistic
world that is deliberately unaware of others, and means that our own petty
wants are relegated and our consciousness is enlarged degree by laborious
degree, minimal though it may appear to be at the time. It all counts.
And with every positive step comes a tiny liberation from undesirable thoughts.
Energy that was sucked up in worthless distractions and frittered away, is now
like money in the bank. Have you ever noticed someone who has a certain
charisma about them? Their minds are focused in the moment. There is a
stillness, a watchfulness as they carefully listen. This did not happen by accident
but by regular discernment between that which is as vapid as candy floss and
that which is worthy of retention.
Thus, an essential part of the act of stillness is the cessation of our desires to
fill our belly or mind with material that energises our physical body or ideas or
feelings that satisfy our curious, voracious minds. The static generated by these
activities drowns out the delicate tendrils of the heart that hear that which is
beneath the surface. True silence is not an absence but rather a fulfilment. In the
same respect, the silence in the presence of Sri Ramana Maharshi at the present-
day Samadhi (tomb), or the Old Hall where his physical form sat for many
years, is not a vacancy but a tremendous force which breaks down our carefully
constructed image of ourselves, magically heals it and launches one into a
higher sphere of being. That Silence was no empty wave of the hands or
abstract philosophical conception but an active force field that can radically
transform anyone who was open to its intense operation. Acedia is nowhere to
be seen. Nor sloth, nor gluttony.
________________________________
1. Accidie is another spelling of the same concept.
2. The Collected Works of Sri Ramana Maharshi, p.137. 2019.
