Month: June 2004

Perhaps because of its unreformed origins in an archaic era — archaic in the chronological sense — Islam has historically had little place for hermits, even in advanced Sufi thought. Thus Khwaja Hafiz, speaking of the unity of God, reproves the hermit: “Speak to the recluse in his solitude and say: ‘There is no real difference between the Kaaba and the idolhouse. Wherever you may look, there equally is HE.'”
This, too, is the argument of most of Christianity and of seculars. They reject eremitism as an egoism that scorns the community of charity and good works, and is therefore a false perception of reality. Eremitism does reject “society” as a contrivance of human imposition, while at the same time confirming that, yes, God is present everywhere. The hermit might well argue, however, that God is not present in the affairs of men. God is equally in the Kaaba and the idolhouse, and is equally not in the Kaaba and the idolhouse. God is present in the heart, mind, and soul, and that is precisely why God is best found in solitude, which all mystics and Sufis acknowledge.

In her book Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty, Jean Shinoda Bolen uses the image of the Greek goddess Hestia as the archetype of women who have come to appreciate solitude. Robert Graves (in his Greek Myths) finds this reference in Apollodorus: “The self-effacing goddess Hestia resigned her seat at the high table in his [Dionysius’s] favour; glad of any excuse to escape the jealous wranglings of her family, and knowing that she could always count on a quiet welcome in any Greek city which it might please her to visit.”
Hestia’s gesture abandons the contentious to their own world to find her home in the simple. She projects warmth, security, reflectiveness, a sense of accomplishment and contentment with her self. Hestia is the hearth in the home, the centering fire that makes every home a temple and sacred place. As Bolen puts it:

Artemis and Athena were externally oriented, while Hestia’s is an inwardly-focused consciousness needed for meditation, contemplation, and prayer. The Hestia archetype is introverted. She looks inward to intuitively sense the essence of a situation or the character of a person. She has a natural detachment and seeks tranquility, which is most easily found in solitude.

Reading Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: the Emotional World of Farm Animals. Masson’s books have always been pleasant romps through the intriguing world of animal intelligence, but here he addresses a sobering reality. Domesticated animals (besides dogs and cats) have formed an intimacy with human beings over centuries, yet are treated with astonishing cruelty and contempt. Pigs, hens, sheep, cows, and ducks, observed first hand in safe and natural settings, are gentle and spontaneous creatures full of simplicity, affection, and obvious intelligence. They have evolved to be naturally congenial creatures with a clear range of consciousness familiar to humans. Yet they are confined in painful and filthy conditions within ghastly mills where they not only suffer but are unnaturally chemicalized, then slaughtered, in order to be eaten by humans. Much of this is due to our sheer ignorance and indifference, Masson believes. It is a matter of becoming aware of what we subsidize, support, and consume, just as with thoughts, behavior, and cultural products as a whole. As Gandhi said, humanity will never evolve spiritually until it leaves off the killing and eating of sentient beings.

Atheism has always been a skepticism born of politics, a point of view arising from the realization that power and authority define what society respects and, ultimately, venerates. But this skepticism has not deterred atheism from embracing and extending power and authority over others. The ancient pontiff who delivered the auspices to the Roman emperor we would call cynical — not because he disbelieved the gods of Rome but because he pretended to believe, and would continue to pretend as long as he preserved his own power and authority. Yet if that priest of the gods really did believe in the gods, or whether he did not, would the political and social consequences have been any different? This is beautifully dramatized in Miguel de Unamuno’s story San Manuel Bueno, martyr.
The compelling logic in human affairs is not belief but actions, morals — or, if you will — psychology and personality. To believe in the gods does not justify the conquest of Carthage and Persia. To not believe in the gods does not justify the conquests either. How disillusioning to discover that a religious authority whom one has admired does not, in fact, believe what he has been saying for years. But how equally disillusioning to discover that the free-thinking believer in liberty against tyranny covets power and authority over others.

Wendell Berry, the political/environmental/agrarian writer, cites a 1907 traveler to China who noted that the average agrarian household of twelve was self-sufficient on two and a half acres, using, of course, traditional (i.e., organic) means of farming. Perhaps Berry and his source were not aware of the reclusion movement of ancient China, but the evident life of Tao Chien, for example, certainly confirms the traveler’s observation. The farm and concomitant village were essentially economic units of eremitism, viewed as independent of the palace and the urban environs that constituted the only economic alternative. Cycles of difficult weather, drought, floods, were all possibilities to prepare for, but not as pernicious as were urban equivalents: humiliation, corruption, abuse, and execution.

1. I saw the bears the other day, but, alas, only two of the original four (mother and three cubs), about which I had written more than a year ago. These were probably siblings, possibly sisters from their wariness and their observant stroll. Where was the peevish brother who had tossed about and explored and one day come up to a window to peer inside mischievously? And the attentive and kind-eyed mother who would stuff seeds to maintain her lactation for the cubs, and who always kept an eye on the straying cubs as they climbed trees or explored too far from mother’s range and had to be called back with a stern grunt?
2. Sitting indoors with a full view of a bird feeder hanging from an eave, I recall an unusual little cardinal visiting regularly last year. My eye was drawn to him (it was a grayish-red, hence male) because he sat within the feeder trough rather than perch like his fellows. Was he so greedy and slothful as to occupy the feeder for himself in comfort? One day I realized the explanation. The bird was half-perched, a withered leg dangling from the feeder edge. He could not stand fully upright. He had managed valiantly so far, but he would not return when woodpeckers scared him off, and his feeeding sessions were labored and short. I wondered how he got on. I only saw him a few times more.

Jean Giono’s “The Man Who Planted Trees” is a wonderful tale of a hermit in Provence who takes upon himself the planting of oak trees in a barren, desolate landscape. The man lives in a clean little house, tending sheep (which he later gives up for bees); he had lost his family before the war (WWI). He knew that of the 100,000 acorns he planted, about a tenth would grow into trees and prosper. That is a given of life , an acceptable reality. It does not trouble him. The story is so measured, reflective, so full of empathy that it stands alone as a paradigm for life itself. The first English language printing is filled with clean and quiet woodcuts worthy of appreciation in themselves.
Brought to our attention by a friend of Hermitary. Also suggested is the half-hour animated film of the story, which our friend considers “the best and most accessible portrayal” of what a hermit is.

That religions, especially Western theisms, are rooted in specific historical and cultural circumstances does not of itself impinge upon their “validity.” The truth of a given belief depends upon the belief’s approximation to what is perennial, what is common and transcendent among all religions. Of course, the Western theisms have historically maintained that they are unique and exclusive, cutting off their ability to transcend local culture and society by being so rooted in history. It is left to mystics, saints, and sages of these traditions to pull the elements of belief and good will up, up to that level of the perennial and universal.
To the hermit or solitary, already disposed to minimizing the effects of society and culture on his/her vision of reality, the approach to the perennial and transcendent can be easier. The hermit or solitary is already disposed to thinking like a sage, even if not quite sagacious. By no longer depending on the social side of religion or theism, the nature of things drops foible human interpretation. Nature (or Tao or God) can speak directly to the heart and mind.
Though modern atheism is built upon rejection of the social and cultural premises of theism and religion, it does not share the perennial because it still needs the social and cultural context, the approval of history. Thus atheism remains equivalent to theism in its inability to transcend time and space. Nevertheless, many scientists, especially the prominent physicists of the early twentieth century, do pursue a transcendent view of the universe as the equivalent of sages of the past.

Atheism is not the skepticism of antiquity with reference to the gods nor that of the Age of Enlightenment with its nascent individualism. Modern atheism is based on science, mathematics, and logic. Its fruit is positivism, behaviorism, technology, and materialism.
Modern culture continues to subsist on the moral capital of theism, both in positive and negative ways. Scholasticism only codified the dichotomies of theism that continue to plague society: war versus peace, liberty versus authority, charity versus justice, obedience versus power. In short, theism made no progress on these essential issues. But atheism, rather than point to a resolution of these dichotomies, has instead created the technological tools that allow the powerful in society and the world to choose the negative of the dichotomies. Modern science, technology, and cultural materialism have allied themselves to the most primitive elements of theism to produce institutions and powers inimical to humanity.

Atheism creates of theism — its antagonist — a system and logic that is a counterpart to be refuted point by point. This assumes that theism is a logos, what the Greeks called a system of rational knowledge. That theism, especially as derived from the Western scriptural tradition, should be looked upon as a logos is partly the fault of scholasticism, confuting belief and reason. The counterpart knowledge that neither theism nor atheism take into account is gnosis, which is knowledge derived from intuition, insight, experience, and wisdom. Hence Alan Watts could quip, “If you say that you believe in God, I will say that I do not. If you say that you do not believe in God, I will say that I do.”