Hozho

Last updated on: October 8, 2021 at 9:38 am by Spiritual Naturalist Society

Hozho 2021-10-08T09:38:39-04:00 Spiritual Naturalist Society

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

by Thomas Schenk

With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk

In the above song, the Navajo word, “hozho”, has been translated as beauty, but it has also been translated as peace, balance, and harmony. To be “in Hozho” is to be at one with and a part of the world around you.

The word “hozho” doesn’t translate readily into English, but I think that the feeling the word expresses is clear to anyone familiar with spiritual experience: it is the feeling of being centered and whole, or in religious terms, of being holy.

Helping people gain something like hozho, the experience of wholeness, is one of the main values of spirituality. It is one of the main reasons that in our fractured times, so many people still seek it. In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade expresses this desire for wholeness as a “thirst for being.” He provides abundant examples of how earlier societies organized their space and time to keep in contact with this primordial sense of completeness – of being at or near the center of being, which symbolically was thought of as the center of the world.

In Taoism, this sense of primordial being is called “the return to the root.” Of this it is written

Everything upon perishing withdraws into its root…in which the many become the one. From the viewpoint of the Tao Te Ching this withdrawal is not the loss, nor the mere completion of individual life; it is the individual’s recovery of the everlasting universal life. The individual sheds individuality, which has a beginning and an end, to become one with the universal life process. (1)

In a flourishing, creative life, we are always in danger of losing our center, of falling from harmony, becoming worn out. When that happens, in returning to the root we regain our center, our harmony, our hozho.

The quote above continues: :

Activity dissipates life’s energies and leads to murkiness. But in quieting down, signifying a return to the root and a regathering of energies, the murkiness clarifies and one is again prepared for new activity….In the root, all is quiet.

The value of quietness is common to many forms of spirituality, particularly the more contemplative.

In Christianity, the equivalent of “hozho” would be holiness, of walking in the way of God. Christians, particularly in the monastic traditions, found or created quiet environments where they could strive for holiness without distraction.

There is considerable difference between the Navajo concept of hozho and the Taoist concept of returning to the root, and between either of these and the Christian concept of holiness, but all involve an effort to regain one’s centeredness and balance when these have been lost and put great value on this sense of wholeness and inner peace. How very different each of the three concepts are from the near religious value many people place on busy-ness in our modern society.

The opposite of “being,” as Eliade uses the word, is randomness, distraction, inner turbulence. The poet T. S. Eliot uses the apt phrase, “distracted from distraction by distraction,” (2) to characterize the mental state of many people in the modern, secular world. In an earlier section of the same poem he uses another apt expression, “the still point of the turning world,” (3) to characterize a deep spiritual centeredness and quietude. I think the Navajo, the Taoist and certainly the Christian contemplative could all relate to that expression.

In a recent article, I characterized spirituality as turning the noise of life into the music of life. The concept of hozho is a great example of what I mean by that. What makes this effort distinctly spiritual is that it cannot be accomplished by the ego. neither our will nor our intellect can bring it forth. It can only come from a submerging of the ego in some greater otherness.

In the theistic traditions this greater otherness is usually God; in Taoism it is the Tao and in Buddhism, buddha nature. However, such metaphysical entities are not necessary, though they very well may be helpful. I have found that the practice of mindfulness, stripped of any further religious or metaphysical purpose, can also open us to this otherness of which the individual ego is but a small, ephemeral part. As a naturalist, I believe that the world operates on natural law, and the gift of hozho, the return to centeredness and harmony, is from a natural grace resident in our psyche. (4)

To the extent that Spiritual Naturalism is a form of spirituality, I think the spiritual side of it is to help people attain something like hozho: centeredness, wholeness, focus and inner peace. Since our vocabulary for spiritual terms is still not particularly rich, perhaps we should adopt the Navajo word “hozho” to refer to this thing we value. It’s a nice earthy concept.

Subscribe to The Spiritual Naturalist Society
Learn about Membership in the Spiritual Naturalist Society

__________
The Spiritual Naturalist Society works to spread awareness of spiritual naturalism as a way of life, develop its thought and practice, and help bring together like-minded practitioners in fellowship.

Notes:

Quote is from The Tao Te Ching: A New Translation with Commentary, by Ellen M. Chen. It occurs in the commentary on Verse 16. (IMHO, Chen’s translation is the best of the many English translations available and her commentary is full of insights on philosophical Taoism.)
From section III of “Burnt Norton,” part of The Four Quartets.
From section II of “Burnt Norton.”
I provide more details on what I mean by “natural grace” in an article entitled Natural Grace, published on April 13, 2017.

Previous Post

October 3, 2021

Jewish Religious Tradition and Spirituality in a Naturalistic Perspective

Next Post

October 14, 2021 A Closer Look at Paideia and Buddha’s Awakening

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Spiritual Naturalism Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 August 2017 July 2017 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 January 2015 December 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz