Where All Ladders Start

Where All Ladder’s Start, Acedia and Zeal

…Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

-- W.B. Yeats

In December I caught a cold. The cold turned into bronchitis and a spell of illness that lasted more than two months. In addition to the common symptoms associated with upper respiratory illness, the ailment was tangled to an imprecise spiritual malaise that made me nearly insensible to the world during its course. At its core was a kind of lingering apathy that resisted all persuading, indulging or willing-away with forced optimism or good cheer. During that stretch, I appeared, on the face of it, a competent enough member of the community: a payer-of-bills; a person who met deadlines and someone who generally showed up on time. Still, there remained a kind of lingering apathy that was largely unaccounted for in normal circumstances. The overall effect was the dull apprehension what it would be like not the care.

The Greek word acedia means “absence of care” or a mental disposition related to spiritual torpor, ennui, distraction, boredom or apathy. And while the terms are often bundled with what we now label as depression, the reality is much more intricate and complex. What we call boredom, apathy or torpor that plagues us today, may be closer to the ancient specter of acedia in contemporary garb.  In Buddhist terms, acedia, in its most toxic expression, is a derivative of Moha papanca, or proliferation of thoughts based upon unpleasant experiences. Sloth, then, is a form of repetitive clinging grounded upon certain karmic inclinations that spin and self-perpetuate.

Kathleen Norris, a Christian writer who has been plagued by both depression and acedia, writes: “The boundaries between depression and acedia are notoriously fluid: at the risk of oversimplify, I would suggest that while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer.”

Someone afflicted with acedia is incapable of caring and may be unable of mustering even the intention to care.  The suffering person remains in a kind of dungeon of spinning, negative thoughts and the impossibility of sharing or articulating the malaise is itself a component of the pain and contributing factor to the essential condition.  The Christian desert monastics called acedia the “noonday demon” because the malaise usually struck during the heat of the day when the monks were vulnerable to hunger and fatigue and began to doubt their commitment to the religious life. 

“The demon of acedia—also called the noonday demon—is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all. He presses his attack upon the monk about the fourth hour and besieges the sound soul until the eight hour.  First of all he makes it seem the sun barely moves, if at all, and that the day is fifty hours long. He then constrains the monk to look constantly out the window, to walk outside the cell, to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour (-or lunchtime).” –  Evagrius Ponticus (345 – 399), The Praktikos

Today, it can be argued acedia is no longer a noon-time affliction; rather, its duration can stretch on for 24 hours allowing one contemporary Benedictine to remark: “We are speaking in cosmic time and it is always noontime somewhere.”

Acedia has its place among the five hinderances—sensual desire, ill will, restlessness and doubt—and once possessed, the Buddha said, “lead away from nirvana” causing the mind to become stiff, dull and indistinct.  The Buddha christened such hinderances as “encircles of the mind,” likening them to giant vines that fix themselves to trees, making their hosts “bent, twisted and split.”

Traditional antidotes to acedia include a whole-hearted engagement with the quotidian, or the details of everyday life. “Dian” in quotidian has its etymology in the “divine, to shine or bright star.”  Immersing ourselves in our tasks is what Dogen Zenji sometimes termed “throwing yourself into the house of the Buddha” and is an expression of our connection to life. Taking care of the everyday details – opening the mail, washing the dishes, answering the phone – with unstinting attention is an opportunity to realize our individuality and universality.

The first pure precept is often presented Do No Evil, or the restraint of evil. One model of understanding the restraint of evil is to refrain our inclination toward distraction (which is a kind of unwholesome condition) -- or what distracts us from where we are, what we are doing and who we are with. 

Similarly, the intention to act for the benefit of others can be a corrective to acedia.  By acting for the assistance of others, our community is the beneficiary of the action and we are at the same time encouraging ourselves and benefiting ourselves. In giving the gifts of fearlessness, Dharma and material things we are enacting the first paramita and benefitting others as well as ourselves.  In the same way, the tenzo (cook) enacts individual practice and community practice. By cooking, the tenzo is doing an individual practice which only she can do through her mind and body, and community practice which extends out infinitely. Her life is tethered to all being and is enacted for all being by working in the kitchen.

In contrast to acedia, the paramita of energy as defined by Shantideva in the Bodhicaryavatara, as a kind of ethical act and curative to the default setting of self-referencing and self-concern. In that sense, the paramitas can also be understood as priorities, or something of the foremost importance. “Parami” is related to “paramam” which means something of importance. If we worship and make a priority out of things that are largely beyond our control -- material wealth, power, youth or status – then we are essentially serving something which we can never have enough, never feel we have enough. Worship power and you will feel weak and afraid. Worship wealth and you will never have enough. Worship beauty and you will always feel plain.  Worship mutable things  and realize the  gnawing sense of having had and having lost some infinite thing. On one level, we already know this because for centuries it’s been collected in myths and proverbs and parables and is the basis of all the classic stories. On the other hand, we can consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. We can decide what to attend to. We can decide what to worship.  

The paramita of energy or zeal in the Bodhicaryavatara is a formidable corrective to acedia and used in a skillful manner, compliments and supports the other remaining paramitas.  The Sanskrit word for energy is virya, which in Buddhist terms has come to signify the energy of accomplishment, the effort and courage to realize spiritual exertion to its end.  Shantideva’s chapter on energy reads, in part, as a kind of guide to cultivation of positive dispositions of the unconscious mind. By cultivating the wholesome qualities of zeal, patience, morality, wisdom, tolerance and wisdom, we influence the unconscious mind and train as bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas, then, are devoted to this training without residing in the results. Simultaneously, this training without results is occurring within the stillness of zazen which seeks nothing other than itself.

The activity of energy--along with the remaining five paramitas-- then, are the kind of practices that go beyond themselves (transcendent practices) for the development of a bodhisattva and for all being.

The activity of cultivating energy can be understood in terms of what Kodo Swaki Roshi called “thief nature” and “Buddha nature.” From the view of “thief nature” I might cultivate energy for personal benefit, as a means of personal improvement or to get something in the bargain. From the perspective of Buddha Nature my actions are for the benefit of all being and there is nowhere to go and nothing to get.

The priority of the bodhisattva vow comes from the earliest Mahayana, long before Zen. We may not really know what it means. We may not know how to do it. It is a wish, an aspiration. But it is our vow, the effort of our lifetime, to be carried out with energy, gratefulness, clemency, non-condemnation, understanding, and sorrow.

Spring comes with its flowers, autumn with the moon,
summer with breezes, winter with snow;
when useless things don’t stick in the mind,
this is your best season – Wumen Huaikai