hermit's thatch

Early morning, listening to music featuring a koto. At the moment of executing the guitar equivalent of a tremolo (called, I gather, oshi tome yuri-iro in Japanese), my ubiquitous woodpecker-friend executes a “tremolo” on the metal raingutter. Six-fifty A.M., of course. And a perfectly timed duet of five seconds that makes me laugh out loud.

How startling to be awakened in the middle of the night by moonlight streaming through an uncurtained window. It is almost a metaphor for enlightenment, especially when beginning in a dream no longer remembered. What is best remembered is the profound silence.

Two non-verbal attempts to capture moonlight: Debussy’s familiar piano piece, Clair de lune, and Chirico’s Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (indeed, any number of his paintings). (I don’t know enough about Chirico to know if moonlight is portrayed but certainly night is.) Both of these works are “surreal” in that we never really experience moonlight, only the feelings within us evoked by it. Yet these feelings, evoked in a living being by an inanimate object, are (if it does not sound pompous) intimations of the mysteries of consciousness.

At least four things necessary for solitude would seem to be: 1) experience, 2) discipline, 3) study, and 4) maturity. By these I mean several things.

First, by experience, that a person should learn not only what the world is like but what they themselves are like, monitoring the self, its feelings and responses. This guides a person to cultivate experiences which enhance not degrade. Second, discipline is the ability to discern where one’s desires and attachments stray and to control or channel them towards better things. There is physical discipline as well as mental discipline, and both should be pursued. Third, study can be cerebral book-learning (invaluable in today’s world) but also acquiring or developing a skill or sensitivity, what Gardner calls one of the “multiple intelligences.” It can be any of ten such; his books are useful discussions of what too many people assume is just one intelligence, that taught in schools: logical-linguistic. A skill (even a sensitivity or avocation), which is the directing of an intelligence, puts one in touch with the self and its place in the world. Lastly, a solitary should be mature and come to this state of life and mind consciously, not out of rejection, pity, or thwarted ambition. We have to “earn” solitude.

With twilight our activities should recede. If we listen to music, read, or converse quietly, it should be with a sense of distension, resolution, tranquility. Just as the stars do not appear abruptly like artificial lights, so our thoughts should appear softly, tranquilly. Our thoughts as evening progresses need not be brilliant. Like the stars, they should be merely sufficient to nestle our dissolution into night.

Twilight is the hour of dissolution. Sunlight does not simply disappear. Sunlight dissolves, and with it the clear shapes of trees, the contours of the land, the harsh outlines of buildings. In cities, artificial lights sally forth as if to battle twilight and coming darkness, as if to stave off an imagined offense. In traditional Jaina practice, no lights appear at twilight, for darkness is not unwelcome. “Do not hurt the darkness,” goes the saying. “The night is beautiful.”

The woodpecker that drills futilely at the metal gutters every morning is not adapting to the amount of sunlight at 6:50. Presumably the same bird, it has become as reliable as temple or church bells. Cloudiness or the change in the sunrise does not affect it. At 6:50 the woodpecker alerts the world to its presence and to the time of day – not aware that he has yet to break his fast drilling there.

The Western tendency is to interpret the idea of “learning from nature” as something Darwinian, a notion from Spenser or Hobbes suggesting competition and violence. Nature is seen as “red in tooth and claw,” subject to the principle of “survival of the fittest.”

This is all a projection of Western thinkers ascribing motives to Nature. But understood in a different way — influenced by Eastern thought — Nature is that non-sentient if not inanimate, set of features we experience as mysterious, self-sufficient, reflecting the infinite wisdom of the universe, and from which an unagitated person can “learn”: the sky and stars, the course of water, the lofty and silent trees, the morning glory.

The rain is perfect: steady, sometimes strong, but constant, throughout several days and evenings. I turn off music — any music — in order to listen to the gentle patter of rain, especially at night. The ancient symbol for purification is still fresh, perennial, despite the layers of cultural diversions. The rain pours on the trees, birds, flowers, the man-made objects. One day, caught in the rain while insisting on finishing a garden trim, I want to bolt into the indoors, but, already soaked, I linger, and let the rain wash through me. …

Mahavira, the Jain sage, expressed a truly benign view of looking at trees — and, by extension, all living things: When you see trees in parks, on hills, in the woods, do not say these trees are fit for palaces, gates, houses (which is what the sinful say); rather, say, these trees are tall, many-branched, noble, magnificent (which is what the holy say).

Is that a Painted Lady in the garden? A butterfly, I mean. My field guide is vague. Are the stripes black or brown, close to the wing edge or not, is the orange too light or is it yellow, is there a back tip? I look up to check. Too late. The butterfly has floated away.