Study Guide: The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapters 5-7

This week we work with the following three chapters:

Chapter 5, “How contemplation requires us to hide all people and all things past, present, and future, and all accomplishments, under the cloud of forgetting” (19-20). 

Chapter 6, “A short look contemplation, through dialogue” (21-22).

Chapter 7, “How to deal with your thoughts during contemplative prayer, especially when curiosity and natural intelligence intrude” (23-25). 

Each chapter is short and relatively easy to understand.  It for these reasons that it’s best to let them speak for themselves.  You’ll find that a lot of extensive commentary is not necessary.  You are your best reader.

Taken together, these chapters show us how to enter contemplative prayer, what to expect, and how we can progress in our contemplative-prayer journey.

Chapter 5 brings us again to the cloud metaphor and puts us between two clouds: one above us and one below us. 

Imagine yourself between the two clouds.  While on your way to that place, here are some interrelated questions that you may wish to ponder and discuss:

1. What does Anonymous call these two clouds?

2. What’s the difference between these two clouds?

3. What or who is above the top cloud?

4. What or who is below the bottom cloud?

5. Why is it necessary to be between the two clouds in contemplative prayer?

6. Suppose we have some good thoughts about God. What does Anonymous suggest we do with such thoughts? Why?

7. Suppose you experience some memories about your life. What does our Teacher suggest we do with such thoughts? Why?

8. Why and when is it okay not to be between the two clouds?

9. When is it best to be “inbetween” the two clouds?

Anonymous urges that we go somewhere that many contemplative traditions (Sufi, Buddhist, Hindu) also recommend.  In contemplative prayer we go to somewhere inbetween “this” and “that”—to a place that is a no-place, to a place where all is One.

When I took “first precepts” (beginner’s vows) on April 22, 1990, at a Buddhist monastery, Zen Master Seung Sahn presented me with this Buddhist wisdom saying written in Korean calligraphy; it now hangs framed in my book room:

Here is the translation:

Good and evil have no self-nature;

“Holy” and “unholy” are empty names.

In front of the door is the land of stillness and light.

Spring comes; the grass grows by itself.

A question: Is it possible to see connections between what Anonymous urges and what my Buddhist teacher wrote saying that we can look out the front door and see “the land of stillness and light”?

At the beginning of Chapter 6, Anonymous imagines that we might now have a question: “How do I think on God as God, and who is God?” 

How does he answer and what important observation does he make?

In his final sentence of Chapter 6 Anonymous urges us to beat on, pierce, and smite (as various translations render the ME verb smyte) “that thick cloud of unknowing.”  How do we Christian contemplatives using Centering Prayer do that?

In Chapter 7 Anonymous tells us that he fully realizes what often happens while we are in the midst of contemplative prayer.

1. Is his description true to your experience?

2. How are we to work within the paradox that (1) we need to meditate with words and (2) we need to go beyond meditating with words?

3. Our Teacher introduces the use of “a little word on one syllable.”  This recommendation is a foundational encouragement in our Centering Prayer practice.  How does it help and “protect” us as “shield and spear” as we beat upon the cloud of unknowing?

4. Anonymous tells us about two little words he uses. Would you like to share your little word with others?

How might you sum up what Anonymous says in Chapters 5-7?

As always, comments are welcome!