Urban Anonymity as a Mystical Practice

Prem Chandavarka
CnT Architects, Bengaluru, India
prem.cnt@gmail.com

Keywords: practice, spirituality, urbanism, transcendence, mindfulness, mysticism

Workshop Theme

In his edited volume of essays from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that pioneered the conceptualization of modern metropolitan life, Richard Sennett focuses on two significant schools of thought – one in Germany, the other in Chicago. A strong humanist impulse runs through both schools, a core suggestion being that the modern city is a uniquely creative place for its cosmopolitan size, density, and diversity offer an anonymity that forms a liberating contrast to the constricting gaze of tradition in the village or small town. In Germany, Georg Simmel posited the analogy of an urban monk as a new breed of human who can leverage his anonymity to retreat inward and think innovatively. In Chicago, Robert Park proposed the delightful formulation that the role of the city is to foreground the moral range of deviant behavior. Sennett laments that urban studies, as a discipline, has largely abandoned this humanist foundation to “retreat into cocoons of scientific purity.”

If anonymity from others can be liberating, can an anonymity from the self also be liberating? The self is often captured by obligation, habit, bias, quest for approval, material desire, whose noise drowns the discerning whisper of implicit wonder and wisdom within one’s body. If one can achieve anonymity from such capture, one opens the inner core of mystical practice that is fueled by inherent embodied wisdom more than external prescription. Mysticism must merge with theology, demanding an annihilation of preconceptions of both self and God so that both “dissolve into something altogether stranger and yet simpler: an experience of freedom which is not freedom of the will, but freedom from the will.” Seen this way, by affording the potential to combine external and internal anonymity, the city offers fertile ground for mystical practice while being in the midst of a dense field of opportunity.

What theology does the city offer? Juhani Pallasmaa suggests a direction when he points out that every space contains its inherent echo that informs us on the life it contains. The echo of an inhabited house is radically different from one that is uninhabited. Every city has its own echo and if one listens carefully one can discern how this echo changes through the day. Discerning these patterns empowers one in asking “What time is this sound?” and receiving an answer. As attentive practice cross-connects and internalizes such patterns, one begins to tune into the primordial rhythms of the city, merging the self with the wider realm that forms one’s universe of habitation. This recognition requires a mindful attention that looks rather than merely seeing, listens rather than merely hearing, savors rather than merely noticing, and embraces rather than merely touching. Creativity takes a different tack in this approach, not seeking new territory (the space beyond) but discovering subtle, profound, and hitherto unseen patterns within the territory one inhabits (the space between). These subtleties are profound for they offer the gateway to a harmony without which mind, body, and environment discordantly fragment into unsynchronized realms.

Workshop Structure

This 2-hour workshop, designed for 10-12 participants sitting in a circle, will explore this theme. It is expected that all participants will have read this note before the workshop and will offer contributions during the workshop more from personal experience and reflection than from intellectual abstraction. \

The 120-minute duration will be divided into three segments:

1. Provocations (45 minutes)
2. Dialogs with Silence (60 minutes)
3. Offerings (15 minutes)

Segment 1: Provocations

This will be divided into three sessions of 15 minutes, each dedicated to a specific provocation. Each session will start with an articulation of the provocation (stated within one minute) followed by open discussion. The goal of each session is to be provocative rather than comprehensive or conclusive. The three provocations are:

1. Urban Anonymity as Liberating Force.
2. Anonymity From the Self as Liberating Force.
3. The City as Theology: Finding the Space Between.

Segment 2: Dialogs with Silence

The 60-minute duration of this segment will focus on the city as theology and will be divided into 12-minute sessions of open dialog interspersed with 3-minute periods of silence. The goal of the periods of silence is to open space for one’s body to absorb what has transpired in the preceding session of dialog, savoring the space between, uncovering subtleties that can inform the next round of dialog. A short provocation will be offered to kickstart each session of dialog.

Segment 3: Offerings

Each participant will contribute a 1-2 sentence offering (a learning, a finding, a recognition, a possibility, a ……..?) of something discovered within themselves during the workshop. We will consider them as offerings, gifts dropped into a collective basket of potential that everyone can carry home with them. The remaining time after all offerings have been made will be a final session of silence so that participants can absorb some of the subtle vibrations of the workshop.