I was reading Hafidha Sofia’s blog Never Say Never to Your Traveling Self, where she asked for definitions of a list of terms like spirit, soul & psyche. It fired me up & I responded. Now I’ve thought perhaps it worth while to massage that reflection a bit and post the result here.
I limited myself to reflecting on soul and spirit rather than her whole list of terms. Now, I’m not particularly interested in spirit or soul seen as somehow separate from who we are in and of our bodies. And spirit and soul are conventionally used in this way. They are also conventionally synonyms for one another. Nonetheless, there’s something about these terms, one word derived from Latin and meaning ultimately “breath,” while the other deriving from Old English probably meaning “sea.” The juicy part, I find, is how they each suggest essence or ultimacy and point to that which means the most to us.
As such I believe spirit and soul can have enormous value if instead of being taken for things somehow outside or beyond the fleshy stuff that eats and loves and hates and hurts and dies; but rather as deep perspectives we share as human beings in all our limitation, and which knowing more deeply can help us on our journey in this precious, wild, and passing life. I also think they’re best divided into two terms rather than taken as synonyms.
To help on this project I’d like to offer a couple of definitions from my principal Zen teacher John Tarrant that I’ve dredged up from his lovely, dense and compelling study The Light Inside the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life.
For spirit John offers: “Sometimes we want to live inside the source itself, and bend toward it like the heliotrope to changing light. To take this path, this whole direction, is to face toward ’spirit.’” He adds “Spirit is the center of life, the light out of which we are born with eyes still reflecting the vastness, and the light toward which our eyes turn when our breath goes out and does not come in again.”
For soul John Tarrant offers: “In love with the multitudinous world, soul is pagan: it falls headlong into matter. Scattering its affections, it likes to merge – with chocolate, gardening, a fast car, a lost love. And while it brings delight, it brings misery too, joining with rage, jealousy, and vanity.”
He goes on to suggest “Where spirit is certain of its paths, soul, like Dante in the dark wood, is always losing its way.”
Here I believe we’re discussing the poles of our interior lives. As such we need to be able to identify them. Not having a sense of these aspects of who we are has us walking in a cloud and leads to many sorrows. Knowing, doesn’t liberate us from hurt, but takes us surely on the way of depth, a much more important thing than avoiding pain.
Of this I am confident.
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