hermit's thatch

How often is repeated the notion that you can tell everything about a person according to how they act in a group. The modern jargon of team-building, focus groups, and interest communities depends on this psychological model, a replacement of the religious community or guild by the business model of productivity in a workplace. But the pressure to conform when in a group is great. Creativity has no productivity model. The most creative efforts of human beings are the products not of groups but of solitude. The builders of cathedrals were groups of laborers but the solitary who conceived of the cathedral worked alone. I am not thinking of Chartres but the cathedral of our purest being. It is the creative principle in the universe that we, in solitude, allow to emerge and work and create, through us. First there is labor — and dust, anguish, pain — but then, as the debris settles unattached to the cathedral, the cathedral rises to the sky, infinite, clean, unattributable to any hand or mind, not even our own.

States always redefine the meaning of words to fit their ends, especially during war; certainly not just in modern times. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides mentions how the state and the war of his day (the Peloponnesian War) changed radically the meaning of words. “A thoughtless act of aggression was now regarded as courage; to think of the future and wait … cowardice; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character …” Similarly, justice has been redefined by states as the rectification of injury and wrongdoing, when in fact nothing is rectified if the entire context of the “wrongdoing” is never addressed. The unhappy motive of such justice is often vengeance, terror, and fear-mongering. Though it is not difficult to notice this historical characteristic of states and institutions, those engaged with them seldom change them. Their complicity lends credence. Only the soliary or the sage can disengage from this process, which is not disengagement from the world but from the values that artificially prop up these institutions.

A little beige butterfly lay on the grass at my feet, feebly moving its wings once in a while. It seemed injured or weak, even dying, I thought — a sad contrast to the big healthy butterflies amongst the flowers. Then the stiff breeze let up a moment. The little butterfly quickly rose into the air and joined the large butterfly amongst the flowers. So. It was the breeze that had buffeted the little butterfly, which instinctively lay low rather than uselessly fight the elements, waiting attentively for its auspicious moment.

The historical problem of transmitting the thought of ancient sages has been that they wrote very little or nothing at all. How to transmit to new generations the nuances and living spirit of not merely ideas but a whole manner of living? Today the problem is compounded. There are abundant sources of information but no particular focus on living itself, which is preempted by increasingly more virulent technology, culture, and economics. No matter how much we may know, our need to survive seems to overtake the life changes we need or want to pursue.

Solitude helps us by simplifying ourselves of the accretions of society and culture. Solitude can give us a glimpse of what our daily lives ought to be, plain and without contrivance. We only need a glimpse, a moment — the famous flash of a lightning strike. Then all our information about ancient wisdom can be absorbable, like the gentle nutrients nourishing a flower.

Increasingly, labyrinths are being used as psychological therapy, the idea being that there is an exit after the challenges, which is reassuring and builds confidence and contentment. In that regard a labyrinth is not a maze, where there are many dead ends and no assurance that there is a safe exit. But in history and lore — and in collective personal experiences and the patterns of dreams –the labyrinth is a maze because in real life we don’t know whether there is a safe exit and we do experience dead ends from which we must back away and begin again. In history and lore, the maze is only broken by a supreme sacrifice of one’s life or that of a surrogate or “scapegoat” — we can think of the youth sacrificed to the Minotaur or, more emblematically, Jesus. Ultimately, however, the sacrifice takes the form of “death” to the world, renunciation of the world and its red dust. Negotiating the maze of life means simplifying, rarifying, dwindling the self until it is indistinguishable from the universe and slips effortlessly through the maze like an ether or a spring breeze.

The half a dozen egrets are barely visible as they feed in a watery ditch below the ground line of green and brown. Behind them is a solid wall of dark green woodland. Something startles them and they ascend quickly, a brilliant series of black and white against the rich backdrop. The egrets hover a moment, then glide back down to a slightly different spot, again hiding but the tops of their heads.

In the pre-dawn fog, a lone owl quietly hoots his five notes, three short, then two low and longer. He is not the rooster attempting to awaken anyone with loud and celebratory cries, calling attention to himself. The ear must strain to detect his solemn remarks amid the rising bird cries. The owl notes the end of night not the beginning of day. His forlorn and reflective sound is like a last comment on the possibilities of the diurnal cycle, now quietly ended.

Most spiritual traditions expect that the individual will need to associate with a group of practitioners and learn from a master or spiritual director. This assumes a culture wherein the group is inherently trustworthy and wise, and the individual holds not merely an open mind but an attitude open to obedience or authority. And the results are not guaranteed. For the solitary, the goal of searching for such trustworthiness is not only unlikely to be fulfilled but the whole idea of such a search seems to oppose personality, temperament, and judgment. In the Dhammapada (61), the Buddha says simply: “If on the great journey of life you find no one who is better than yourself, joyfully walk alone.”

Documentary war photographs, says Susan Sontag among others, have the potential to stir the viewer to aspirations for peace as much as prurient and violent passions. The manipulation of images today makes cruelty and heroism part of the same source. Only the modern technological means of capturing images has changed, however, not the age-old passions. The virulence of passions is ancient. By stirring memory, whole peoples build up and are overtaken by their worse vices. Forgetfulness becomes treasonous to the desire for vengeance (usually falsely identified as justice). And the conditions of the present only serve to fuel the passion of vengeance. To recommend not forgetfulness but transcendence may seem frivolous and irrelevant to an oppressed people, as does an appeal to the oppressor for humanity and peace. It is our dependence on the here and now that dooms us. We are punished by our own cruelty, violence, passion — but we do not learn from them, instead wanting to engage them again and forever, like Laacoon.

Nearly all meditative practices, East or West, employ a mantra or sound or prayer as a focal object. But the mantra becomes an accompaniment, for it is contrived by the meditator. Not only might many practitioners be unaware of the full meaning of the words but they might as well be repeating any words from any foreign tongue without knowing their meaning. Instead of cultivating sound, we ought to be cultivating silence. In cultivating silence we do not hear ourselves, that is, our “selves” and, emptied of self, we can be filled with the universe.