I want to translate this article to Vietnamese, can anyone help me? Chào cả nhà, mình cần translate một bài viết sang tiếng Việt nhưng nó hơi khó. Nếu có ACE nào có thể thì help mình với nhé. Thanks. Anthony de Mellos Spirituality for Our Troubled Times By Thomas Farrell (about the author) Permalink Duluth, Minnesota, June 14, 2012: For me, reading Anthony de Mellos new book REDISCOVERING LIFE: AWAKEN TO REALITY (2012) was like listening to an old friend once again. When I was in the Jesuits, I had the opportunity to listen to Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931-1987), from India preach a retreat in Denver from June 19 to July 10, 1980, to a group of Jesuits. Drawing on my notes from Tonys 1980 retreat in Denver, I discuss his thought frequently in my book WALTER ONGS CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (2000), the revised edition of which is scheduled to be published in 2012. Tonys new book is the transcript of the 1984 preached retreat that he gave via satellite. For the 1984 preached retreat, Tony was in India speaking via satellite to people at Fordham University in New York City. The new book also includes the question-and-answer periods, which enabled Tony to clarify his thought for his audience. Certain themes in this new book by Tony are familiar to me from his 1980 retreat in Denver. As a result, Id like to offer my reflections here by way of adding nuance to a certain point he discusses. It strikes me that Tony is basically discussing the kingdom of God that the historical Jesus proclaimed, except that Tony does not refer explicitly to the kingdom of God. Instead, he speaks of being happy. However, he thinks that we excel at making ourselves unhappy. He writes, for example, about our having desires so intense that we would refuse to be happy unless they were fulfilled (page 44). Sound familiar? Our desires lead us to form attachments. But our desires also lead us to false beliefs -- the beliefs that without the desired attachment, we cannot be happy. In this way, we make ourselves unhappy. As a result of being unhappy, we are filled with sorrow. Where there is sorrow, there is no love, he says (page 43). The root of sorrow is desire/attachment. In addition, attachment brings anxiety. So he recommends nonattachment as the corrective antidote. In this way, our being happy does not depend on our attachment. He suggests that nonattachment enables us to be happy and to be open to love. The happy person know[s] no anxiety at all and has no inner conflict at all (page 33). No inner conflict at all? That is a tall order. Our inner conflicts usually come from childhood traumatizations, although those early psychological wounds can also be compounded by further psychological wounds later on. Thus to have no inner conflicts at all, we would have to be healed of our psychological wounds. This is obviously easier said than done. But it can happen. On page 43, Tony says, Tell me, when you grieve, whom are you grieving for? Whos loss? Thats self-pity. In short, when I grieve certain losses in my life, I am grieving for me because I am the one who has experienced the loss. No doubt about that much. Incidentally, the Victorian Jesuit poet says as much in his poem titled Spring and Fall. The poem opens with the following lines: Margaret, why are you grieving/ Over Goldengrove unleaving? The last two lines of the poem say, It is the blight man was born for,/ It is Margaret you mourn for. Now, Tony in this new book wants to persuade us that we can be happy regardless of what happens to us. So we can be happy when we experience certain losses in our lives. I understand his basic point. However, I want to examine Tonys statement that mourning our losses is self-pity, because we are mourning for ourselves. I want to raise this question: What in us is prompting us to mourn our losses? Alice Miller and John Bradshaw and others have taught us to think about and reflect on the Child Within (also known as the Inner Child). Moreover, John Bradshaw likes to say that grief is the healing feeling. I would suggest that when we mourn our losses, our Child Within is activated and is undertaking the mourning. In short, the Child Within surfaces as a result of our loss and is leading us to mourn our loss. But so what? How does this explanation of our mourning process advance our understanding? Isnt mourning still self-pity, as Tony says it is? No, it is not exactly self-pity. Rather the activation of the Child Within is a signal to us that the Child Within is still hurting, probably from traumatization in early childhood. But if the Child Within is still hurting, should our sorrow signal us to attend to the Child Within? Yes, it should. Moreover, it signals that deep stuff in our psyches is surfacing, traumatizations from our early childhood. Put differently, our sorrow and mourning should signal us that we have unresolved grief issues that we should attend to. We need to parent the Child Within as we ourselves were not parented in the traumatizations of our early childhood. But wouldnt such belated parenting of our Child Within be self-pity? No, not exactly. It would be remedial parenting. If our efforts at such remedial parenting work, then we will emerge in a fresh new psychological condition in which we will be ready to listen to some of the things Tony says about attachments and nonattachment and being happy regardless of our losses. As paradoxical as it may sound, Tony says, Where there is love, there is no desire (page 42). There is no desire in the sense of attachment for oneself, no desire to possess and cling to somebody or something for ones own sake, no desire to dominate and control somebody else for ones own sake. Attachment means I gotta get you. It means, Without you, I will not be happy. If I dont get you, I wont be happy. I cannot be happy without you (page 42). If you were not actively engaged in making yourself miserable, you would be happy (page 43). In conclusion, Tony de Mellos new book is challenging food for thought.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 05:02:10 +0000
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