Author: Meng-hu

Jacob Grimm once summarized the world represented by the fairy tale as a closed circle of archetypal human beings, a defined and inevitable social circle. This circle included, of course, kings, princesses, ogres, and the like, but

above all, fishermen, millers, charcoal burners and shepherds, who have remained close to nature …

This closeness to nature is a key characteristic of solitary occupations, especially that of the historical hermit, but more importantly, closeness to nature is the source of the solitaries’ insight and wisdom. The ancient Chinese saw in such archetypal solitaries of nature what it called the “Rustic Sage.” These solitaries dwelt in a natural habitat and held fast to a clear disdain of ambition and desire. What could there be of such vices in forest, mountain, desert, or distant and solitary place?

A traveler encountering these figures, as often portrayed in fairy tales, would discover unexpected generosity and service, so much different from the world of society, the world of red dust. On the other hand, if the traveler’s motive was unclean, the solitary would ignore or avoid him, as we see so often in the stories of the Christian desert hermits.

The setting of the solitary must remain unique, having nothing to do with the commerce of society. Without the power of wisdom, the habitats of desert, mountain, and forest seem bleak and hostile. As the German poet Novalis wrote of the fairy tale:

In the genuine fairy tale, everything must be strange, mysterious, and incoherent. … The whole of nature must be mixed up with the spirit world in a wonderful way; it is the age of universal anarachy, the freedom and natural state of nature before the foundation of the world. This age before the creation of the world, just as the state of primitive nature, is a strange image of the eternal kingdom.

Novalis was thinking of the fairy tale world and its state of “universal anarchy” as an image of nature and humanity before the opppression of society and power came into being to destroy the solitude of wise souls and to force those who lived in spontaneous harmony with nature to conform to contrived laws of the powerful and profligate. The powerful are universally profligate in the fairy tales because the fairy tales know and present human nature as it really is in its social expression. (The occasional benign king is presented as either naive, ignorant, gullible, or very wise, and that is why he does not abuse his power.) In these tales it is always up to children and solitaries (or the mystical third-born sibling) to rescue others from worldly powers, then to return to the pursuit of the natural order again, clinging to it as long as possible.

The “strange image of the eternal kingdom” mentioned by Novalis is a life and environ that reflects the simple wisdom that the fairy tale solitary has discovered, nurtures, and clings to. Would that this kingdom within us, this eternal kingdom, could grow and give us confidence. Only the simple habits of the solitary can let it emerge within our own lives.

Western scriptural religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) present God as a solitary. By definition, monotheism defines God as solitary. Even removing anthropomorphism, this depiction of God is alien to human beings, who are raised in social settings and for whom interdependence is necessary to existence. God does not elect to be a hermit. The solitude of God is not voluntary.

The recognition of this profound solitude of God has not been lost on those who reflected on the logic of creation. If God created the universe from nothing (ex nihilo), then creation is not something of God but some stuff that is different and alien from God, even if it is loved or nurtured by God. What is this stuff of creation and from where did it come?

The early medieval Arab philosophers were the first to propose emanation as an alternative to creation because it reshapes the solitude of God. It makes the universe intrinsically part of God instead of an alien substance. Though orthodox (with a small-case o) thinking is uncomfortable with emanation, emanation is implicit in Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Gnostic thought — and in Jewish, Sufi and Christian mysticism and in the Orthodox concept of divinization. (It is, of course, intrinsic to other religions of Europe and beyond, but these are not monotheistic as such). Emanation rescues the universe from an unfathomable gulf between God and everything else.

To admit that God is absolutely solitary is for the mystic not only an alienation but a painful and wretched wound to heal or gap to close. It is as if an enormous abyss separated human beings and God, and human consciousness could never bridge it. The penny catechism portrays God as wanting to share his goodness with a like-minded creature, but there is no solace in this explanation. The yearning of God in his solitude is a frightening pathos. This yearning can never be satisfied, and in the biblical stories it is not. The solitary God, seeking solace, tries and fails to create the perfect companion, which is to say that the biblical authors recognized the profound Otherness of God in his solitude and could not bridge it. Instead, the powerful contrived revelations to themselves, which, in turn, cannnot explain or justify or their supposed authority. Nor can they bring the people solace or knowledge of God.

Mysticism is a solitary path. Mysticism recognizes that emanation accounts for imperfection, and takes the route of love as a way of flinging the divine spark of human consciousness directly into the path of the yearning God so that the two (God and the spark) may be reunited. The mystic seeks to tear down the solitude of God and make God desire to be engaged, to yield, to give of self, to make God respond. But mysticism itself is a very solitary project. The mystic is like the one lover who alone knows how to woo the other, the other whom a third person cannot know or imitate. And whether this union merely obliterates the lover — the solitary mystic — without revealing a path for the rest of us is the grand risk involved in trying to fathom the frightening solitude of God.

Several years ago, a strong storm split an old oak tree out back. The winds caught the branches and split the trunk through the exact center, half-way down. Since then, the tree has split almost to the base. Yet the tree survives, almost unchanged, something of a marvel.

There are strories of medieval Europe about hermits who lived in just such tree hollows, and a fairy tale (if I recall) about a punished king who was trapped in the hollow of a great tree and only freed by a passerby years later. These are storeis about trees as much as hermits. They attest to the awe inspired by great trees that dwarf human size or just challenge our sense of longevity and courage with their silent and enduring presence. The forests of medieval Europe once evoked not only terror but sanctuary, filled not only with wolves, witches, and gobbins, but also with hermits, and with kind spirits of water and trees.

The forest created by the hermit Elzeard Bouffier in Jean Ginono’s wonderful tale The Man Who Planted Treestestified to the potential that, as the protagonist reflects, “Men could be as effectual as God in other realms than that of destruction.”

But the destruction of such forests is now world-wide and is a horrible testimony to the baseness of human society’s rapacious capacity to destroy. It is a grave symptom of a deep flaw that cannot be overcome collectively. Just as with the forest today, so too with individuals who follow the marketplace and the conventions of society. They are cut down by worldliness, consumption, and conformity. Human inclination is to destroy collectively, not to create. Only an individual can create, and survive.

We survive as the ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang-tzu showed us, remarking that the old gnarled tree survives, whereas the normal healthy tree is cut down, for the carpenter cannot use the gnarled tree and passes it by. We must be like the gnarled tree, like the old split oak, like the hermit in the forest who disdains the modern consumption and commercialism that has destroyed so much of nature. That is how we save ourselves, can save others, and can save the forests.

Every tradition prays. One could say that every religion is bound to pray, for religion is an anthropological way of defining the universe, and prayer is an expression of how far it has gotten in this task. Theistic and non-theistic religions pray. Something else is meant by prayer in the latter case if it has to do with God, yet at the same time something more fundamental is meant by both forms of prayer.

In western scriptural religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), prayer is usually a form of petition asking God for favor. But this is the case with all religions, even more clearly in ancient and primitive religions of multiple deities where aspects of nature are distributed among the gods. After petition, motives of prayer begin to show the degree of the religion’s sophistication: praise, contrition, gratitude. Each form of prayer represents a predisposing psychological state, which in turn is a universal that is expressed culturally. The cultural expression shows a range from simplicity and spontaneity to complex theological justifications.

Yet what is most heartfelt prayer is that which is simple, genuine, and closest to the innate psychology that transcends culture and taps into the universal. The more layers of theology are applied to the phenomenon of prayer (the more “knowledge,” to use Nietzsche’s term) the less genuine the expression of the individual, and certainly of the culture. This is where prayer is most public and also most easily manipulated: prayer for victory in war, prayer for profit and wealth, prayer for good health while abusing the body, for deliverance from pain and sorrow while ignoring reflection and introspection. Ultimately, institutional prayer devolves into the appearance of the contrived and cynical. We think of the ancient Roman auspices, during which an army commander on the eve of battle tells the priest what to say about the signs from heaven in order to reassure the troops of heaven’s favor and upcoming victory. And, of course, this scene can be reproduced in religions and states everywhere, in every era.

Genuine prayer is spontaneous awe. It is an insight into the natural order that glimpses the transcendent order, if only for a moment, and expresses this awe. For that matter it can be a poem or a sigh, let alone a formulaic religious expression. This is the essence of genuine spirituality: to marvel, to stand impressed and overwhelmed but spontaneously, not in a contrived or artificial or second-hand way. Yet most people do not perceive prayer this way, neither those who believe nor do not believe a particular religion. No wonder that mystics do not form collectives or speak freely even in their congregations, for their perceptions are spontaneous and come when they will, and between times they develop an understanding of their insight and experience in order to nourish their own view of the universe. All else is “so much straw,” as Thomas Aquinas put it when he experienced a mystical insight, even after writing his many tomes of theology. This is the touchstone of prayer’s simplicity, yet it eludes the majority of people.

True prayer is gratidue. We experience this gratidue not by repeating prayers but in becoming conscious of moments of spontaniety, as when one sees a rising sun or a flight of birds or a field of flowers or a work of art and is thankful for the experience, for being alive for such moments, even if the gratitude has no object or hearer. These moments we want to bow or kneel or make obiesance to All. No distinction of culture or belief matters to this core sense of gratitude. As long as we appreciate the moment, this very moment –that has nothing to do with the past or future, with the evils of humanity in the past or present, with the impenetrable sufferings of human existence — then this is gratitude. And this is prayer.

Awe and gratitude are the same, after all. The same motive compels the sensitive soul to pray, to be united to everything that seems not to be us. To be completely selfless in this expression means to fully embrace a sense of humility, however, and to acknowledge our complicity with what culture has done to the true sense of gratitude and awe. To pray means to separate ourselves from the accidentals of culture but to fully acknowledge that we are part of everything in the first place.

Loneliness is not solitude. Loneliness is born of separation from a loved one, from what one does well or happily, from familiarity and symbols of reassurance, whether cultural or personal. This type of painful emotional separation is clearly involuntary.

Loneliness militates against the apparent core of human personality, which is sociability. Aristotle pronounced the human being a social animal, and ever since, loneliness has accompanied lack of social opportunity, regardless of the culture or beliefs of the person. In short, loneliness is an intrinsic condition of human existence.

What strange personal power, then, when someone can enter this state of “loneliness” voluntarily, like a prisoner of conscience or faith. In such cases, loneliness is not likely to be a deterrent to their determination or will.

But the revolutionary or martyr is not necessarily a healthy psychological model for everyone. We may want to imitate the fervor of belief or the determination, but we instinctively feel that there is an unnatural price to be paid. Loneliness is only part of this price for those without such fervor. Few people can suffer it voluntarily, for it is never a voluntary thing. Loneliness is always imposed by circumstance, already lurking in the subconscious, like an inkling that life is not right, that a flaw tears at the fabric of the universe, and that loneliness is only a manifestation of this bigger hunch. The feeling of desolation or abandonment is the sense that no human consolation is possible, that no insight can rescue the incomprehensible and cruel ways of the world.

Solitude is only just removed from loneliness in physical terms, and that is why the two are often confused. We are all alone, ultimately, and the confusion of th two can persist in most people’s minds until they understand the difference between voluntary and involuntary. Distinguishing the two points to an aspect of solitude that is not clear to those who do not reach a certain spiritual maturity. This matruity signals a readiness and capability to use the fruits of solitude for good ends. It means that an insight and relationship with solitude that is easily confused with the rote and unconscious version (loneliness) is truly a tool for crafting a philosophy of life and a right disposition toward suffering.

This does not mean that the solitary is exempt from suffering, even from loneliness. Many solitaries have good interpersonal relationships: they are siblings, children, parents, spouses, friends. They are ordinary. Solitaries are not exempt from loneliness because they can still experience the emptiness of the universe and the attraction of love at a human level — both at the same time.

An exemplary solitude full of sensitivity and humanity was that of the Zen monk-poet and hermit Ryokan, of whom I have written elsewhere. Ryokan stood at the great threshold of meaning. A hermit, he easily identified with the people he met: a farmer, a passing woodsman, children of the village, an old city friend come to visit. In later life, frail and ill, he lived with a young nun who was a poet and disciple.

We instinctively identify with Ryokan’s honesty, for the solitary is not a cold and indifferent ego but has, through solitude, discovered what is common to all of us.

I sit quietly, listening to the falling leaves —
A lonely hut, a life of reninciation.
The past has faded, things are no longer remembered.
My sleeve is wet with tears.

In his book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales talks about survivors based on physical risk: military pilots, astronauts, mountain climbers, river rafters, firefighters, surfers. Survival here has a very masculine ethos, though Gonzales tries to make his list of psychological survival skills applicable to everyday survival. But the last words of the book confirm the original focus when the author proposes the “Gutter Theory of Life.”

It goes like this: You don’t want to be lying in the gutter, having been run down by a bus, the last bit of your life ebbing away, and be thinking, “I should have taken that rafting trip …” or, “I should have learned to surf …” or “I should have flown upside down — with smoke!”

Funny, but in one’s last moments, such thoughts seem quite irrelevant. One might just as well think: “I should have gazed at one more flower, one more moon,” or, “I should have hugged my spouse more often.”

Gonzales goes on to wonder if the last thought of a certain astronaut who died in a motorcycle accident wasn’t “I did it all!” Regardless of who he was or what he had done, maybe he really thought, “Dying in the gutter. Ha!”

Yuan Mei, the eighteenth-century Chinese poet, is uncannily reminiscent of fith-century Chinese poet Tao Chien (about whom see Hermitary article). Both were recluses from government service, both characterisitic recluses “with family,” that is, married and with children but separating themselves from society by living near small farming villages. Both wrote eloquently about daily life and simple values. Yuan Mei held an income from teaching and writing that included selling funerary inscriptions. Both men are model householders but ultimately recluses.

Both write of mountains, waterfalls, clouds, of paintings and flowers and their love of books. For example, Yuan Mei relates how his wife had to get him to stop reading and get to sleep:

Cold night, reading,
forgetting sleepp.
The embroidered coverlet has lost its fragrance,
and the brazier is cold.
My lady swallows her anger, but
snatches the lamp away,
and and tells me: Do you know what time it is?

When it comes to books, Yuan Mei admits that

Of ten I read, I might remember one,
So much the worse that in a thousand years
there will be more books, no end …

Every word that is written
I want to read each one, that’s all.

There is no philosophizing about the vanity of knowledge here. Tao Chien used similar images, as when he ended a day’s work in the field early, washed up, and had time to spend poring over his books. This is a practical simplicity that socializes with sages of the past, not gossipers of the present.

On a trip somewhere, Yuan Mei notices a little village that inspires his reclusive ideal:

There’s a stream, and bamboo,
mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hid and clouded village,
Mild and tranquil place.
A few tilled acres,
a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I have to live,
to get that simple?

Then there is a passage most reminiscent of Tao Chien, the recluse with family:

At last to lead
my wife, my children, by the hand,
into some wilderness
to till my own small kingdom.

In his most recent book, Healthy at 100 (2006), John Robbins reviews four isolated cultures whose members showed great health and longevity: the Abkhasia of th Caucasus mountains, the Vilcabamba of the Andes, the Hunza of the Himalayas, and pre-WW II Okinawans of Japan. These idyllic lands and societies have been studied before. They were living exemplars of proverbial utopias. I remember reading about the Hunza in the 1970’s, about their simple life in the mountains– and about the enormous apricots they cultivated!

It is not until after ranging over a variety of diet and health topics and nearly at the end of the 350+ page book that we are told that none of these societies is the same today, all fallen victim to war, technology, development, and globalization.

One might have expected this fate. These isolated lands and cultures were the true “hermit” lands, not the politically ostrasized countries of current news. Positive solitude or negative alienation would have not been in evidence in these lands, at least in theory. This would be due to their close relationship to the land, and to what must be called the universal Way, however a particular culture conceives it. We would almost be watching early Chinese or early Celtic culture recreated from millennia ago, where the first hermits would be shamans.

These cultures will especially remind a reader of the Tao te ching of Lao-tzu’s depiction of the ideal society:

A small country of few people.
Machines are not needed.
People take life and death meaningfully.
No one travels far.
They do not use their boats or carriages.
They do not display armor or weapons.
They knot rope rather than write.
Their food is plain and wholesome.
Their clothes are fit but simple.
Their homes are secure.
The people are happy in their ways.
Though they live in sight of their neighbors
and hear crowing cocks and barking dogs,
Yet they live in peace with each other
as they grow old and die. (80)

Isabel Colegate quotes writer V. S. Naipaul’s book The Enigma of Arrival in describing Naipaul’s short visit to England and his eccentric landlord, reminiscent of the employers of ornamental hermits, themselves a bit strange. Dispensing with the background of his landlord, one sees instead a simple portrait of what often afflicts the recluse who is an involuntary solitary. Interestingly, accidie turned his landlord into a recluse, not the other way around (the hermit suffering accidie). That is a clue to the evolution of recluses generally, though not necessarily to the creation of hermits.

Writes Naipaul:

Here in the valley there now lived only my landlord, elderly, a bachelor, with people to look after him. Certain physical disabilities had now been added to the malaise of which I had no precise knowledge, but interpreted as something like accidie, the monk’s torpor or disease of the Middle Ages which was how his great security, his excessive worldly blessings, had taken him. The accidie had turned him into a recluse, accessible only to his intimate friends.

If I was not so self-conscious, I would probably spend at least an hour some brisk morning sitting next to trees and shrubs, listening to and watching the dew slide off one leaf and strike another. After all, the French scientist Jean-Henri Fabre spent hours watching ants at work. When I was a child, I was chided for wasting time doing that very thing after reading about Fabre in a children’s encyclopedia. So perhaps that is why the self-consciousness lingers.

Back to the dew. Some leaves of trees and bushes, such as those of the enormous Buddha’s Belly bamboo in the front that shield passersby from the house (or vice-versa, I guess) seem coated in a fine dark green sheen. On them the dew shimmers like ice and drips noisily (so to speak) onto the next leaf and down a chain or slide to the ground. Other plants hold dewdrops for a moment and then, suddenly, the dew is gone. One must wait patiently and capture the moment of movement, which comes without advanced notice or fanfare.

I don’t know which metaphor is better or if both are object lessons, but the element of slowness and deliberation, versus sudden disappearance after glowing, seem two ways of being. Then there is the dew on the grass, which lingers far longer than on the trees and shrubs, and finally disappears back into its very roots. Another metaphor? Or something to enjoy as it is? banishing my tendency to find something behind the something, thus missing the something right in front of me. Oops, there I go again …