“Everywhere I went I inquired as to the local whereabouts of a spiritual director or a devout spiritual guide. Eventually I was told that in a certain village there was a landowner who had lived there for a long time and who spent all his time working out his salvation. He had a chapel in his own house and never went out, but continually prayed to God and read spiritual literature. When I heard this I gave up walking and took to my heels to get to this village. When I arrived there, I found the gentleman in question. “What is it that you require of me?” he asked.
“I have heard that you are a man of prayer and wisdom. In the name of God, would you please explain to me the meaning of the Apostle’s words, ‘Pray unceasingly,’ and how one is to pray in this manner? I want to know this, yet I cannot understand it at all!”
“He was silent for some moments. Then he looked closely at me and said, “Unceasing interior prayer is the continual striving of a person’s spirit toward God. To succeed in this delightful exercise, you must beseech the Lord more frequently that He teach you how to pray unceasingly. Pray more and ever more earnestly, and the prayer itself will reveal to you how it can become unceasing. This effort will take its own time.”
“Having said this, he offered me refreshment, gave me money for my journey, and let me go on my way. He did not, after all, provide me with an explanation.”
The Pilgrim’s account at the beginning of the Way of a Pilgrim.
(Trns Olga Savin, Shambhala Publications, very slightly edited)
I just love this small account. The pilgrim finds a koan, one of those mysterious assertions from before the creation of the stars and planets, an assertion that contains within it an invitation. For the pilgrim it’s:
Pray unceasingly.
In the King James the passage from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 goes:
Pray without ceasing.
From there he finds someone to help set him on his way. I love that it is neither a priest nor a monastic, but a merchant. He gives a very circular bit of advice to pray unceasingly in order to find how the prayer itself will reveal itself as unceasing. The great loop of heaven and earth.
The passage ends with him being sent on his way without an explanation. Which reminds me of my koan teacher noting that after being given a koan and something about breathing the koan or letting the koan breath you, “of necessity we are given insufficient instructions.” Thrown into the koan, allowing the koan itself to instruct. Thrown into the prayer, allowing the prayer itself to instruct.
Later he’d be given a new prayer. Or, from my perspective a koan.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
The Jesus prayer. The prayer of the heart.
I think the Way of a Pilgrim was the first book that showed me there might be a bridge between my Zen life and the Christian contemplative traditions.
The Way of a Pilgrim, or a “Candid Narratives of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father.” (Откровенные рассказы странника духовному своему отцу) is an account of an anonymous Russian’s pilgrimage of the heart following the way of the Jesus Prayer. No one knows if it is an actual account or a pious story written as a guidebook. The manuscript, written in Russian, was found in Mt Athos, the closed Greek peninsula that is home to a cluster of Orthodox monasteries and hermitages.
There are at least six versions in part or whole in English now available, including Olga Savin’s cited above. The translation I read was by an Anglican priest, Fr Reginald Michael French, first published in 1931. He believes it was written in the second half of the Nineteenth century.
I came to it when reading J. D. Salinger’s novel Franny and Zooey. Salinger had a long time interest in Zen and in the novel he presents the Jesus prayer as a practice similar to what might find in dharmic religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. It would appear I am not the first to read Salinger and then move on to the Way of a Pilgrim.
Nor the last to agree.
These days I am much taken with manuals of the spiritual life. And The Way of a Pilgrim is an amazing one. Along with the usual caution that the practice is most wisely taken up under the guidance of a spiritual mentor. That is true.
And. I recommend starting by reading the book.
Then you can find your guides. Maybe within the Orthodox traditions. Maybe among the emerging Zen Christian teachers. Or, well, your heart can guide you. Just remember to also bring along some common sense.
Then the way is thrown wide open…
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