journal of reflections by the resident of the Hermitary
The Conversation (an academic newsletter) describes briefly “Why philosophers say solitude can be helpful (even if you didn’t choose it).” Four benefits of solitude are:
1. Freedom to do what you want — any old time;
2. Reconnecting with yourself;
3. Finding your “inner citadel;”
4. Seeing the bigger picture.
Lots of representative quotes from favorite Western classics.
Alas, Paul of Thebes is apocryphal, not an historical hermit; he is sprung from the creative quill of St. Jerome. Young Jerome was irascible, strong-willed, moving deftly within elite circles of Rome. Jerome wrote a hagiographic biography of the supposed first Christian hermit shortly after his own conversion around the age of thirty — although some versions suggest he wrote after offending enough people in Rome that he had to leave for Antioch and Bethlehem, where he pursued his best work. Given Jerome, one can speculate that the aspiring ascetic did not like or may even have been jealous of the success of the recent biography of St. Antony by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, which exaggerated the monumental struggles against demonic forces by the stalwart Antony — contrasted with the style of quiet contemplation and asceticism now animating Jerome.
The story of Paul, living in quiet solitude in his hermit’s cave, is the obverse of the busy Antony fighting demons and organizing ranks of aspiring hermits. Jerome has the young pre-desert Antony seeking out Paul of Thebes for advice. Antony is tolerated, perhaps, and sent by Paul to Athanasius to bring back a burial cloak for Paul. Here Antony is reduced to errand-runner, and he gets back too late. Paul has died in the meantime. A couple of lions have dug a grave for Paul, Antony having forgotten to bring a spade. Not for this story is Jerome associated with lions, but it’s an early clue of where hagiography about Jerome was to go!
The essential attraction of Paul of Thebes lies in his reflective questions to Antony when Antony first happens upon Paul, isolated in the desert. Says Paul, rhetorically:
Tell me, how fares the human race?
Do new roofs rise in ancient cities?
Whose empire now sways the world?
Do any yet survive, snared in the errors of demons?
And here is the essential question of history and human affairs, whether asked by an observer east or west, ancient or modern. That which the average person finds permanent, enduring, important, are for deeper souls reflective of impermanence, temporality, even poignant in its short-lived presence on earth. This wide contemplation of a trajectory that transcends the concerns of average people is what the hermit catches on to. The hermit pays heed to and takes to heart, the lesson of life and death, watching as the world passes.
A number of characteristics of the early desert hermits of early Christianity both distinguish the hermits and also underscore important characteristics of all likeable hermits, regardless of geography, culture, tradition, or era.
In the first place, the desert hermits are distinctly driven by a spirituality of their own design and practice. Yes, they are Christian, after all, and tacitly accept the dogma and teaching of their era and of the ecclesiastical authorities. But their chief interest is crafting of themselves a perfect spiritual vessel, simple, natural, and unencumbered by the controversies and invective of the day. As St. Antony the Great, the first desert hermit, reputedly said, pursue what God shows you to be your strengths. (And as Thomas Merton notes, the bishops were far away and not very interested in the desert!)
Not only was eremitism their strength but their strength was the manner of life suggested by eremitism: filled with disciplined hours of contemplation, quiet cooperation with others, economic simplicity, adaptation to nature, isolation from crowded populations and their curious idlers.
The desert hermits had no interest in entertaining visitors, though they received them with inevitable patience. Two examples of this:
1. Abba Moses was walking by a crossroads when a group of pilgrims came up, asking where the house of Abba Moses was. “Why do you want to see that old fool?” Moses replied. They insisted. Well, then, said Moses, pointing down the road — except that he was pointing in the opposite direction from his hut.
2. A prestigious bishop came to a hermit to hear what he had to say. After a moment of conversation, the hermit asked the bishop if he would take advice. Yes, certainly, replied the bishop. The hermit leaned closer and said, “In the future, if you hear that I am in a certain place, do not come to see me. For if I see you I must see everyone, and then I will have to leave the place.
And so the desert hermits would not concede that any visitor had priority over their solitude, over their spirituality, over their project. At the same time, we see a touch of the attitude that characterized Diogenes, our first favorite hermit.
This attitude extended to the community of hermits itself. One Sunday, a visiting priest (not knowing the way of hermits, presumably) announced that a particular novice brother present must leave the community — for something heard in confession, it is to be surmised. A certain elder hermit, tall and distinguished, stood up and began making his way out. Wait, cried the priest, where are you going? The elder turned and stated quietly that he, too, is a sinner. The priest was humbled and the novice recalled. For the hermit spirituality was different. Abba Moses himself was famous for his advice when asked about what to do to maintain peace of mind. “Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”
And as one amma (woman hermit) noted, what is the point of great learning if you lack humility, if you know the fine points of dogma but lack charity, if you go out to see signs and wonders but do not see the marvel of what can be made of your spirit? She was practical enough, too, to note that what is the point of going out to the desert if your heart is full of the city? (Granted that there is a tradition of “hermit in the city” but that would not differ too much from the amma‘s point.) How imminently practical more advice of the amma: What is the point of fasting if you break your fast with a sumptuous meal? Better to eat less daily and not fast at all.
But these anecdotes hone in on only a few expressions of eremitism, expressions of what might be called self-effacement. Leafing through a book on desert hermits (such as Helen Waddell or Benedicta Ward or Thomas Merton) reveals a panoply of archetypal eremitic expressions of the desert hermits. And it’s hard to choose only one hermit or two among them as favorites.
Some of my favorite hermits of Western antiquity had “attitude.” What is “attitude”? — surliness, crankiness, anti-social behavior? This “attitude” would fit the stereotype of the hermit being annoying — to society at the least, on the edge of mental instability at most.
But plenty of surly and antisocial people are not hermits. Indeed, the definition of the true hermit includes a deeper self-motive: religious, philosophical, spiritual. While motive does not define “attitude” nor escape the stereotype, the historical hermits have never been socially combative, uncharitable, or obnoxious; they are not recluses shunning people, and have been able to converse civilly and affectionately as needed. But the true hermit also does not coddle hypocrisy.
Diogenes of Sinope, a contemporary of Socrates and Plato, lived in ancient Athens in public places, eating, sleeping, even relieving himself in public — a modern “homeless” person, haranguing the wealthy passersby with choice philosophical advice, “Socrates gone mad,” Plato said of him. Because his behavior was excoriated by the nobler people of the marketplace, who also could not stand his critiques, Diogenes was called a dog, which translates to a “cynic,” hence he is attributed founder of the philosophical school of Cynicism.
One day Alexander the Great and his company was in the vicinity, and Alexander thought to amuse himself by provoking Diogenes. He rode up to him and started a conversation, asking many questions. Diogenes said nothing. Exasperated, Alexander finally asked, “Diogenes, what do you want of me?” We can imagine Diogenes shading his eyes with his hand. “For you to go away. You are blocking the sunlight,” came the reply.
Attitude. A certain inappropriateness, dismissiveness, yet a certain restraint while delivering a withering response. Diogenes is not per se a hermit, but the values he holds closest are a preliminary, a basic ethos. After all, Alexander asked of Diogenes what he wanted. Diogenes replies that basically he wants nothing, not only for his personal needs, no riches, goods, or title, but especially nothing from a vain and powerful man. A man of power whom the hermit disdains but finds not relevant enough to be critiqued, argued with, or given the light of day.
Nietzsche presents a Diogenes-like figure in his little vignette of the madman in the marketplace. In the marketplace, the Athenian agora, the rich and well-born are chatting, trading, bargaining, puffing up their reputations, exchanging gossip. A madman at the edge of the crowd, disheveled, muttering, carrying a lantern, approaches. The madman demands to know why everything is business as usual when, in fact, the big news is out: God is dead! The movers and shakers are amused, and taunt the madman, telling him that, no, God is on holiday, gone to sleep, gotten himself lost, is hiding. The madman shouts that no, God is dead, and you, (corrupt loafers!) have killed him! Now what will you do? What water can wash the blood from your hands? Do you not smell the purification already?
But the crowd is merely uncomfortably silenced. The madman looks around, looks at each of them. No, they don’t know. They don’t realize. The news has not reached them, like the light from an imploding star that has not yet reached the Earth. The madman smashes the lantern to the ground. No, he says, I have come too early. And with that he turns and walks away.
Nietzsche’s Diogenes fits the philosopher’s own interests, of course: the grand question that if modern culture has killed the ethical import of God (an import to which they never lived up and used hypocritically), will they now become gods, substitutes for power, for morals? But the hermit always divines a larger tableau to time, nature, and culture, a tableau not discerned by the people who carry on their small circumspect lives and pursue the demands of society and the marketplace. Diogenes fits the sense of attitude that the hermits don’t necessarily reveal -— and certainly not with such flamboyance. But that is their trajectory, as we shall see.
Next: the desert hermits.
Popular media eagerly links apropos music to the sensibilities of the present pandemic. Fans of pop-rock music will find “Living in a Ghost Town” by The Rolling Stones a representative choice. The lyrics mention having to go “underground.” The idea suggests two classic literary presentations of “underground,” namely Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
In both novels, “underground” is not just a physical location but a state of mind of the protagonists, a state of involuntary solitude amounting to alienation, disdain, and distrust of society. In Dostoevsky, the protagonist is a bitter man who cannot tolerate hypocrisy, and prefers his aloneness to the company of those he can no longer tolerate. He blames himself for chasing after them too long, for secretly admiring the station and haughtiness of this crowd whom he tried to impress and persuade to like him but failed miserably to win. So he has consciously decided to live “underground,” having nothing to do with them — though he still resents his failure.
In Ellison, “underground” is a method of self-salvation, a black man abused by both blacks and whites, of different political and social persuasions, all of the others flawed, unreliable, failing to understand the protagonist’s personal plight, or the plight of African-Americans in general (the novel was published in 1952). “Underground” to Ellison’s protagonist is safety, anonymity, the status of being an “invisible man,” meaning that he will no longer attempt to persuade others or justify himself to them, but dwell comfortably in his self-effacement. Ellison acknowledged his debt to Dostoevsky, but did not elaborate any analogy with the historical “Underground Railroad” of nineteenth-century United States history. After all, that underground was a physical pathway out of slavery, and such an equivalent social pathway did not exist in his day.
“Living in a Ghost Town” includes a line lamenting that if the lyricist wants to party during the lockdown, it’s a party of one. True. But it’s always a party of one. If the lockdown ends, if the pandemic ends, will society be any different in the eyes of the solitary,the urban hermit, or the one gone underground?
Anthony Storr, the author of Solitude, A Return to Self, quotes the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s 1958 essay “The Capacity to Be Alone,” where Winnicott notes the popular emphasis on “the fear to be alone or the wish to be alone [rather] than on the ability to be alone.” As Storr and others have since shown, this capacity is not pathological but, in fact, necessary and healthy. And the pandemic is reminding us of this fact.
URLs: Hermitary reviews: https://www.hermitary.com/bookreviews/dostoyevsky.html and https://www.hermitary.com/bookreviews/ellison.html; “Living in a Gost Town”: https://youtu.be/LNNPNweSbp8
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted many columnists, bloggers, and popularizers to comment on solitude, usually addressed as a necessary coping mechanism. They are speaking not of solitude as such but of what author Sue Halpern describes in her book Migrations to Solitude as “involuntary solitude.” But can staying at home, social isolation in a pandemic, equate to the involuntary solitude of the recluse, the prison inmate, the patient with terminal disease, the widowed or bereaved, the mentally ill? A true solitude is not only not involuntary but a profession, a project, an embrace of persona and destiny. Not a small order, compared to what the columnists think of as a spell of isolation calling for lots of time-killers: games and puzzles, movie-binging, and the reading of tomes never intended to be read anyway.
Solitude is the realm of the hermit, the mystic, the creative artist. It belongs to a different realm than physical solitude, than the psychological realm that equates solitude with loneliness. Solitude is assigned to the introvert to a degree, but is otherwise chosen deliberately, if not consciously.
The health worker confronting illness and death is not a solitary, of course. But also not a mere unit working with others as in a military operation. (The vocabulary of war, attack, assault, defense, troops, front lines, etc.is unfortunate and ultimately misleading, revealing how society values the work — and death — of the warrior over that of anyone else.) The health worker holds to a unique and selfless vocation, not an involuntary pursuit. But the moral dimension of their arduous work lifts them, in a time of pandemic, to a loftier realm. Not loftier in an entirely moral sense, for it is not a matter of pointing out heroism versus pedestrianism. All this makes solitude for the person stuck at home–grudgingly conforming to social isolation–an opportunity to pursue better habits. Taking up better habits with reluctance and a willful involuntariness is self-defeating and bad faith.
One good reading source in a time of pandemic is Albert Camus’ The Plague. As an existentialist, Camus is attempting to reveal a necessary truth about any situation, but without moralizing, just plainly and realistically. The plague of the novel is the backdrop to a specific geography and people. Granted that several main characters are clear projections of Camus, that the city is a projection of life itself, does not detract from the detail and suspense of daily existence, or our concern for the fate of the characters.
The chief protagonist is Dr. Rieux, who comes to be in charge of the quarantined city’s medical response, who spends his days and evenings facing the plague and its death ravages unflinchingly. A journalist Rembert wants to escape the city, bribe the sentries that he may break the quarantine and return to Paris, but eventually the example of Rieux convinces him to stay and to work with the doctor. Similarly, the priest Panteloux sermonizes at the beginning that the plague was God’s punishment for the guilty. As the plague continues its course, killing indifferently, Panteloux starts searching for clearer explanations, and joins Rieux in the hospital wards. There, at Rieux’s side, they witness a child die in agony, crying out wretchedly until dying, and the doctor whirls angrily at the priest, stating that the child at least was certainly innocent. We must bend to the mysterious will of God,the priest argues. We must come to love that will. No, replies Rieux. “Until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.” Panteloux searches for the final word, telling himself that he himself must, therefore, have grace. Rieux demurs. Panteloux congratulates Rieux for working for man’s salvation, like himself. “Salvation is much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health, and for me his health comes first.”
The character Tarrou offers a lengthy summary of Camus’ philosophy of life.”Each of us has the plague within him,” he says. “We must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face.” The plague here is not just microbial. It is not just an abstract notion of original sin or human nature. It is the malevolence of the world and society that infects every person. It sits within waiting to manifest itself and infect others. It is, as Tarrou suggests, “a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death.” And until that release, “I know no place in the world of today.” When he refused to follow social conventions of war and violence, Tarrou knew that he “doomed” himself to “an exile that can never end. I leave it to others to make history … I’ve learned modesty. All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims,and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with pestilences.”
“It comes to this,” Tarrou said almost casually; “what interests me is learning how to become a saint.”
“But you don’t believe in God.” [Rieux replies].
“Exactly! Can one be a saint without God? — that’s the problem, in fact the only problem.”
In the end, the characters realize that life in the plague is simply life itself. Suffering and death are always around us, are intrinsic to existence, that they are not separate, that we are the plague itself. That is why we are in this together, not because we form society, friendship, or perform acts of heroism, sanctity, or high morals. Rather, because we are human beings, we live and die, all of us. This is the common, the universal fate we all share,and we owe one another a certain “decency,” as Camus puts it, regardless of our personal beliefs.
One last thought. This is the month of April. The opening line of T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” tells us: “April is the cruelest month …” It is the cruelest month because it taunts us with the coming of spring, the passing of winter, sometimes clear and sunny, sometimes filling the air with sleet and snowfall. Pity the plants perked to raise their heads above the ground to welcome a spell of warmth only to be beaten down. And the birds, their cheerful song and carefree flitters cut short by a sudden cold, killing many. Such is the course of life, misinterpreting the signs, trusting in hopes, expectations dashed, refusing to wait long enough to discover the true nature of the cycle of seasons, the cycles of nature, the cycles of life. Patience and observation are the sage’s strengths, never assuming or grasping, practicing Chuang-tzu’s wu-wei, or “no-action” or, at least no harm.
Q. You have been pursuing meditation?
A. Yes. It is going well. Just an aside, though: I notice in reading here and there a growing corporate and institutional interest in meditation. How can they impart the values of meditation when coming from there?
Q. It’s been coming since the late seventies with the 1975 book Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, a Harvard physician. You could call it a secularization, though its more than that. Benson’s schema was based on Transcendental Meditation, popularized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Which was based on reciting a mantra. Benson was trying to address the excess epinephrine or cortisol in the body, which sets off an overreaction to stress, even when stress is not perceived. The issue is far more complex than was made out to be, and continues to be complex, even though drugs address excess epinephrine and high blood pressure. The issue is complex,too, because each individual has multiple points of stress, some more obvious, most unconscious or subconscious. Today most of the recommended regimes of meditation no longer even try to address the more deep-seated sources. The corporate and institutional programs simply try to get workers fortified enough to reenter the work world every Monday morning, to carry on in the midst of stresses, anxiety, worries, insecurities, just living in the world and being productive enough for somebody else.
A. Is it legitimate?
Q. I suppose the effort is trying to help modern people cope with modern society. Although society, the world, has always been this way, to some degree. That’s why practice of meditation arose in the first place, the condition of living. I am not sure how successful the effort is in imparting particular values. Only in terms of reconciling oneself to the world, life, and oneself. The danger of the corporate method is when it is used simply to inoculate employees to their work, highly stressed and perhaps inimical to their mental health, if not irrelevant, demeaning, or pointless.
A. That’s what I thought.
Q. How about your practice? You are following a traditional system of Zen?
A. Yes. It is going well. Plus I am reading reflectively, poets, philosophers, thinkers. I discovered and am following the advice, the mentality, if you will,of Shunryu Suzuki’s beginner’s mind, trying to maintain the simplicity and the renewed energy each time I sit.
Q. That’s very good. Attitude is important. How are the mechanics?
A. Well,for one thing, I am not distracted by images at all. (Laughs.) Perhaps, I thought, it’s because my eyesight is poor. Without glasses I don’t see much, so closing my eyes shuts out a lot of potential image-making.
Q. Like the old comic strip where the sleeper has a dream bubble over his head but the images in it are out of focus. He puts on his glasses (still asleep) and suddenly the images in the dreamer are clear.
A (Laughs.) They were Borges’s dreamtigers, reversed back to childhood. Where they are clear, but don’t mean much.
Q. What about thoughts?
A. Some people say one ought to observe the thought, note what it is, then ignore it, let it float away, like a cloud. Others say just ignore it. The latter, that’s what I do. If I look at it, so to speak, I give it life, give it credence. Better to let it float past, right? Except sometimes it floats away too slowly!
Q. Yes, best ignore it. What about sounds?
A. Ah, now that’s interesting. First off, I don’t like mantras. Why generate or contrive things? Isn’t breathing enough? At least it is normal, necessary, a reflection of a universal sign of being alive, of being itself. But sound, which is noise? Sometimes I repeat conversations, pieces of news reports or the like. I let them go as soon as I can. And music! Even if I recently listened to music, at the time of meditation I have the snippet of music stuck in my head!
Q. What Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, called “earworm” in his book Musicophilia.
A. Exactly. And very hard to get rid of. Didn’t he say that the only way to get rid of an earworm is to replace it with another earworm?
Q. Yes, unfortunately. Until they give out. Earworms are my trouble, too. You know, it just comes down to not listening to music, at least not too frequently or regularly. A regular music fast is good. Replace music with music that has no melody, no tune, and no rhythm. That would be ambient music, at least that genre that has no intentionality, that reflects a quietude the composer found in a particular state of mind. Another “cleansing” genre is the music, the sound, of the shakuhachi, the Japanese flute. Some traditional works are better than modern ones, though Stan Richardson is a top artist in this regard. Also, I am always searching for true minimalist music, though there are a lot of versions of that, not all reliable. But the search is interesting in itself
A. Yes, very good. I will pursue it.
Q. And for how long are you meditating?
A. Started with ten minutes, then fifteen. Much too short to accomplish much. It takes that long just to silence the earworm, you know, or to cast out that lingering thought-cloud. I am finding twenty minutes good for my present level.
Q.Good. If you can do thirty minutes, so much the better. Then forty minutes. And so forth. But you know yourself.
A. Meditating is almost like exercising that long, especially like stretching that long.
Q. Think of it more like going for a walk. A twenty minute walk is the same as forty minutes, just longer. But if you are focused the walk you will not notice the extra time. And walking you have to plan a route, even if doubling over the same terrain. Not so with meditation. You just launch out until the meditation timer calls you back.
A. True enough. The longer the session, the better the breathing, too.
Q. You will find that the first sign, the regularity, the depth, of breathing. After a while, you are not just observing the breathing, which you are supposed to be doing all along, you are actually falling away from any observation, any sort of spying or overseeing, of the breathing. You may find that you are watching your whole self, not merely the breathing. You may find yourself observing from a point beyond your self, indifferent to your self and that your body is being “breathed.” Sometimes observing the breath too literally can get mixed up with causation. The longer meditation period addresses that by detaching the observer even from the breath, and therefore the self from the self that is breathing or is being “breathed.”
A. That’s an interesting way to look at it. You mean you forget that you are there and sitting and breathing?
Q. Yes, in effect. Of course, you always know, but you are not giving primacy, it is falling away to the process. The mind’s emptiness allows this to happen. That is perhaps a goal of meditation, but we don’t want to talk about goals because we are not trying to accomplish or succeed at anything. We are just sitting and letting the universe express itself during the mind’s silence. Or, frankly, not express itself.
A. And from this silence come all the healthful benefits people want from meditation?
Q.That’s right: calmness, relaxation, lower blood pressure and the like. Lots of what I call “secular” programs aim at these results. They don’t see — or don’t care — what the deep resources that proffer these benefits are. They don’t want to promote a philosophy, after all, not a spirituality. But the resources are there, waiting for us, and only need encouragement, nurturing, watering, so to speak. If these deeper resources help, fine, they will say with a wink. But there is always the sad fact that people will not have the fullest sense of meditation and its potential if they don’t dig deeper into the historical origins and resources of meditation. Meditation isn’t just for coping.
What could be simpler! The great thirteenth-century Zen philosopher Dogen reduces the sum of the journey on the Way to a short essay in his enormous Shobogenzo entitled “The Eight Awarenesses of Great People.” The list of awarenesses is presented not as moral precepts but those characteristics Buddhas (“great people”) have observed and adhered to during their lives. The list is what Dogen describes as Shakyamuni’s last teaching. Here is the list:
1. Having few desires.
2. Being content.
3. Enjoying quietude.
4. Diligence.
5. Unfailing recollection.
6. Cultivating meditation concentration
7. Cultivating wisdom.
8. Not engaging in vain talk.
These points are almost self-explanatory, welcoming to one who seeks simplicity and wisdom, solitude, tranquility and self-awareness. Having few desires frees the self from interdependence and the affliction of chasing after illusions and encumbrances. To be content is to be in the state of having few desires. To be satisfied with little or with what has minimally presented itself promotes the goal of desirelessness. Contentment resists the insistence that things go the way we want them to go. Contentment allows us to tolerate the vicissitudes of life, now and in the future.
We cannot enjoy quietude with our mind pursuing what is happening about such-and-such. Quietude is contentment and simplicity, regardless of what is happening “out there.” Quietude must be a core within the mind. We tend to underestimate the effect of images, sounds, and provocations from the world of red dust. Quietude enables progress enabling the embrace of the next awareness.
Diligence is persistence in following the Way, the path to enlightenment. Diligence also helps us embrace all of the awarenesses. Dogen calls it the ongoing cultivation of virtue. Unfailing recollection refers to mindfulness and persevering in right mindfulness. In itself, mindfulness is an awareness but not a final state or goal, rather an ongoing state. Thus, we are always cultivating meditation concentration, always cultivating mindfulness. This state of mindfulness, expressed in meditation but always present as a context to our mind, is strengthened by our pursuits of simplicity, contentment, quietude, and diligence, which are methods, transformed from ends to means as we advance in mindfulness, as cultivated wisdom grows in our hearts. Of course, it becomes obvious that there is no point, no advantage, indeed a great disadvantage, to engage in vain talk. We are polite, tactful, empathetic, but also aware of how vain talk can steal our concentration.
The eight awarenesses are universal if we are pursuing a spiritual path, of any tradition, in fact, or of none. The awarenesses are integral components to psychology, ethics, philosophy, or plain daily life. The recommendation of awarenesses is for anyone a prerequisite to meaningful advancement. The awarenesses are both a starting-point and a terminus, always on a continuum of daily life and the trajectory of a lifetime.
Sadness and sorrow are universal, but cultures express themselves in different ways. Some cultures observe death and passing with formality, impassivity, steeliness, others wail and cry loudly, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Japanese aesthetics hones precise tools for better articulating these emotions. “Mono no aware” bids us to an evocation of sadness and sorrow in a refined consciousness of impermanence and transience. This places sorrow and passing within a lifelong continuum. The phrase “mono no aware” means,literally, “the poignancy of things.” It attaches beauty to the object at the very moment of its dissipation, its loss. The sentiment perfectly captures the nature of the object or being, the nature of what is happening or becoming, in time. Importantly, mono no aware intends primarily to engage the deep participation of the onlooker.
While this sentiment is comprehensive, we can apply more specifics. Wabi captures the uniqueness of the object, eliciting a striking poignancy that presents the object as solitary, unique, not reproducible, and therefore never to be seen again. Sabi completes this sense in confirming the physical appearance of the object or being, such that the natural condition of it confirms its very impermanence, a feedback to wabi, and both together expressing the condition that evokes poignancy.
Together, or presented together, wabi and wabi define the physical parameters of an object, exhausting characteristics, tactile features, dimension, and the like. But of itself, these enumerations do not equal beauty. That is a third element, shibumi, which arises from the physical as well as the environmental context, the discovery, encounter, or unfolding of the object that stirs poignancy. Beauty stirs poignancy, not the beauty of the onlooker’s subjectivity but the beauty of nature as expressed by the totality of the object and its context. The observer may have to work to discern shibumi, for shibumi assumes a mind already disposed to quiet and silence, arrested now by an unfolding or beholding that an insensitive person will miss completely. The notion of the onlooker feeling like the artist or creator of this object, setting, or scene before them is the beginning of an aesthetic identification that can blossom into a spiritual experience.
The sense of beauty is not merely based on the pleasure derived from considering the object. In the West, aesthetics points to beauty, but evokes a different sense of poignancy, perhaps not poignancy at all but often begrudging resentment, covetousness, or arousal that stirs desire mistaken as identification. What matters in this ignorant scheme is the self. What matters is that the object satisfies the subjective criteria that the onlooker has created, often an acquisitive reaction, closed to nature.
Winter is deep. Snow is thick on the ground.The poignancy of things may be illustrated in an example:
Black-capped chickadees are simple little birds, small, charming, short-lived. They do not migrate but stay the winter, however frigid. Now they are busy pursuing winter paces. Having discovered sunflower seeds in two yard feeders, the chickadees fly back and forth, even on the coldest mornings. Here the beauty is to be identified in the simple appearance of the black, white, and gray little birds, in their dogged flights and feedings, in the persistence of their valiant work under great adversity, their ignorance of or indifference to fate, in the shortness of their beautiful lives.
Another reference to birds can be mentioned here. It is aural, not tactile, not visual: the Zen-like poem of the late poet-singer Leonard Cohen titled “Listen to the Hummingbird.” Here are the lyrics:
Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see.
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me.
Listen to the butterfly
Whose days but number three.
Listen to the butterfly
Don’t listen to me.
Listen to the mind of God
Which doesn’t need to be.
Listen to the mind of God
Don’t listen to me.
Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see.
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me.
The poignancy expressed in the poem rests in the silence of the hummingbird, the silence of the butterfly, and the silence of the mind of God. It is to the silence of each that the poet directs us, not to the sound, the song, the noise, not to the obtrusiveness of his own words, song, or outpouring. The poignancy is deepened by the fact that the singer knows that these are, essentially, his last words, his final expression. We are bidden to not listen to the poet but turn directly to the experience of the objects, which means to the poignancy of the things.
From health and psychology magazines to medical journals, the topic of cortisol is well-covered, if not outright popular. The function of the hormone cortisol is to increase standard defenses of the body, to serve as the body’s alarm system, as the website WebMD puts it. These defenses are raised when perceived stress assaults the body, physically or psychologically, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, regulating inflammation and blood glucose, and other mechanisms for providing the impetus to “fight or flight.”
What most commentators neglect is that the cortisol function often serves as a dysfunctional hijack of otherwise normal bodily functions. The organs directed by the flow of cortisol are the most primitive in the human body: hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal. The cortisol function is a remnant of evolution that modern humans do not require for survival. A primitive Paleolithic hunter might need an alert system to gauge whether to fight or flee from a rampaging woolly mammoth. In primitive times cortisol serves a survival function, and marshals the energy needed to execute whichever decision the person elected: to fight or to flee.
But if the historical stressors no longer exist, the body stills responds as if they do. Such overreactions can create hypertension, heart rate concerns, disruption of hormones, and potential damage to organs that such conditions can precipitate. As if the cortisol hijack is not enough concern, modern stressors have come to replace outdated ones. Stress from domestic relations, jobs, commuting, children, neighbors, debts, living conditions, hostility, safety concerns, the daily news — the list can go on. Yet modern stress sources replace ancient stress sources, and multiply them in number and intensity. Further, we cannot fight or flee. These are not options in modern society. The cumulative effect of numerous stressors essentially points to the backdrop of modern existence. And yet the cycle of cortisol continues, unabated by the profound changes of civilization.
If we further identify the cycle of cortisol in the body, the diurnal rhythm, we observe that during sleep the levels of cortisol are minimal, and that they begin to rise around 4 AM and peak at 8 AM. The emergence of cortisol in this pattern suggests that ideally cortisol benignly awakes one with a gentle nudge not at all related to “fight or flight.” It is a natural biorhythm following the course of the dawn, the emergence of light, a natural cycle renewed every day.
Indeed, monastic traditions East and West historically adopted for its adherents a schedule of prayer and meditation that begins about 4 AM and concludes at 8 AM. This is no coincidence but an unspoken, perhaps intuited, insight. Such a universal tradition is addressing the need to capture the cortisol cycle, assign it a practical function, and engage it for as long as practical. Thus the practice of four hours of prayer or meditation at the beginning of the day addresses the power of cortisol, harmonizes its effects, and harnesses the cycle for good.
In the West, the monastic tradition of observing ritual hours of the day (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) served physiologically to absorb the imprint of all hours, all occasions of fight or flight, superseding subjective ruminations associated with given hours of the day or night. Western traditions varied Matins to midnight or 2 AM, with the rest of the day’s schedule varying by tradition and season. In Eastern traditions, too, hours take on significance. Theravada and Zen Buddhist monks have historically maintained similar schedules, rising at 4 AM to meditate for one hour, then chanting for one hour. At 6 AM, the monks historically went out of the monastery to beg food alms in the villages, returning by 8 AM for breaking their fast, with today’s modern discretion substituting more meditation, chanting, or light work during the latter hours. Hindu monastic routine, too,is nearly identical, further incorporating the seven chakras to address physiology and metabolism into a system of understanding the self. Thus culture, geography, and environment might move the schedule slightly forward or back in winter, or establish slightly different routines within different schedules.
If these grand traditions perceived a necessity to master the cycle we now know as the cortisol cycle, and can pinpoint the time of its rise and fall, then common sense suggests that we,too, should avail ourselves of a significant time of day and make our early daytime hours parallel those of the wisdom traditions.