Advent and Communion (part 2): "Of thy mystic supper, O Son of God..."

One of the valuable aspects of Ch’an or Zen meditation is that it trains the mind to be immediately present. There’s nothing daydreamy or nebulous about it. It’s sharp-edged, crystalline in its clarity, focused. This is why many Zen teachers insist, in fact, on keeping the eyes and ears open while meditating: one should not lose oneself in surrounding sights and sounds, but stay mentally concentrated, undistracted, and attentive in the moment – appreciative of everything but diverted by nothing. It is a discipline whose goal is to steer clear of rationalism, emotionalism, fantasy, and delusion. If I were to sum up what makes it valuable, it’s that it promotes presence of mind, not mental absence (and some types of meditation do promote the latter). Ch’an emerged from philosophical Taoism, and its original purpose was to recognize, with the help of meditation, the uniting power (Te) of the Way (Tao) operating in all things. We could say – taken as far as the analogy can go – that this ancient Chinese discipline suggests something akin to the cultivation — to use Christian language — of an incarnational or sacramental awareness. In Eastern Christian ascetical practice, there exists something similar: through the Holy Spirit (“everywhere present and fill[ing] all things,” to quote the daily morning invocation of the Spirit in Orthodox devotion) one is brought to the contemplation of “the inner nature of things,” which – not to put too fine a point on it – is God’s “working” or “energy” (ἐνέργεια).