Siddhartha, Hesse and What's Necessary

Herman Hesse was my guru when I was twenty years old.  Maybe he'll be my guru again.

I was standing behind the library at Union College in late 1968 when I met up with Neil Gordan.  We were both seniors but had not really talked since we were freshmen.  He asked me how I was doing and I said not very well.  The Vietnam War  was was raging and leaders were being killed and I was afraid of being drafted and I was depressed and I hadn't been going to classes and hadn't washed or shaved and generally felt lost. He smiled and said read Demian and walked away with a smile on his face.  I'm not sure what the smile meant but perhaps he had an inkling of what I was in for.

I ended up reading the book and not going to class for a week in its aftermath. It had a profound effect on me. It's difficult to understand it's power this far down the road.  I recently tried to reread it and it didn't click at all.  Back in '68 it was a different story. I think it's because gave me a new frame of reference to hang my confused craziness on. His novel depicting Abraxas, a divinity of both good and evil, gave me a rudimentary foundation for looking, again, at spirituality.

 I entered Union as a serious Catholic who vowed not to "lose my faith" among the liberal secularists.  It took about three months. Reading The Martyred by Richard Kim put the biggest nail in the coffin.   It asked a simple question.  How can an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God allow the slaughter of millions of innocents in war? Hmmm. So I ended up in this dead end alley and Herman Hesse helped me begin to find my way out.

As I was saying, maybe he will again.

I'm rereading Siddhartha which appears to be based on Hindu's first three stages of life. (the Wikipedia link is very interesting)  At one point shortly after Siddhartha had met the Buddha and decided not to become a follower he had the following thoughts.

"Both, the thoughts as well as the senses were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, neither had to be scorned nor overestimated, from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived.  He wanted to strive for nothing , except for what the voice commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice would advise him to do so. ...to obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary."


Next post - "Locus of Salvation" or "what I hope works for me when the shit hits the fan."

James McMurtry

A friend just told me about James McMurtry.  This friend is very political.  I used to be very political (see prior post Faith Revisited).  He especially recommended the song, We Can't Make It Here Anymore.  I reluctantly listened to it.  I've been trying to stay away from political stuff.  I honestly feel I have some mild form of PTSD associated with it.  My stomach knots up and I want to get away.  I tried taking part in a march prior to the Bush invasion of Iraq and I had to leave half way through.  
Listening to this song I had the same stomach tightening sensations but I keep playing it.  McMurtry played last week at the new Helsinki club in Hudson.  I wish I was there.  

Coming Home

After we moved to Arizona in 1980,  the idea of "home" became a powerful force in my life.   I missed everything about upstate New York.  Birds, trees, flowers, views, the Hudson, rain, family, customs, hills, fishing,  seasons....everything.  I had no idea how connected I was to this part of our planet. I remember watching ET in a Phoenix theater and bawling like a baby when he was trying to call home.

When we would make periodic trips back there was always excitement and satisfaction.  We would arrive at the airport and drive east on Route 7 from Latham towards Troy.   When we crested the hill where the Hudson valley comes into view and you're able to see most of Troy, Watervliet, Cohoes and Green Island I would feel transformed.  The longing for home finally resolved. Very powerful.  This view still moves me when I drive that road.

After ten years of in the desert Dorothy and I decided that we would do whatever was needed so that we could return to the Northeast.  We were finally able to make the move after spending ten more years in Arizona.  Our daughters were fairly well launched,  I was able to find a work as an addiction counselor in Troy, and Dorothy's boss had made arrangements for her to keep her job in Arizona by telecommuting.

Coming back felt completely right.  It did not feel like a retreat but a victory.  We were able to have this great twenty year adventure where our separation from the familiar and predictable gave us the opportunity,  to change, grow and experience well beyond what would have been possible in New York.  We separated ourselves from all the normal pinnings of support and had to survive.  We did survive and in many ways lived a very fulfilling life but the pull of home was always there.

 We've been back nearly twelve years and the thrill of being home isn't gone.  When I tell people we moved back from Arizona they inevitably ask me why the hell I would do that.  This is especially true mid-winter.   I feel it is a great gift to be so grateful to be living here.

I think I'm writing about this because as I approach retirement I feel my life is about to change at a level comparable to the way it was changed when I moved to Arizona.  This move is more about the geography of the heart.

Last night's dream....

Dorothy and I are driving a rural road I take a side dirt road that is wet from an ongoing rain. After awhile we go down a fairly steep hill and when I get to the bottom I become worried that the car might not be able to get back up the muddy hill.  I turned the car around and hit the gas trying to get momentum to help the climb.  I almost made it to the top but the wheels started spinning in the mud and I had to back down.  At the bottom there was a  river that was rising above its banks and coming close to the road.   We found a seedy looking bed and breakfast/boarding house that stood by itself along the road.  We got a room and I went out for a walk in the rain.  I noticed that the river was higher and worried about Dorothy being in a house that might get washed away.  I walked into a village where all the buildings were very ramshackle and built so that there was no space between them.  Most were one story high and looked deserted, almost like the set of an old western movie.  I heard the crack of pool balls and noticed a building with it's front open to the air and people inside playing pool.  I went in and people ignored me. I went up to one person and tried to ask him if there was any other way out of town than the hill.  He raised his hand as if to signal me that that topic was off limits. Most of the people looked dim witted and had bad teeth.  I was more than an outsider, I felt mostly like a transparent observer.  There was a young man who sat at a table playing the card game Hearts with a few of the locals.  He was well dressed, had good teeth and looked completely comfortable and at peace. I envied him.  I somehow was able to get some information about an old woman who helped people find a way out that didn't involve going up the hill but it was all very vague.  I looked out from the pool hall and noticed a beat up old car, obviously full of locals, speeding up the hill.  It lurched and looked like it was going to get stuck but finally made it to the top and I could hear people in the car cheering.   Someone then told me there was a very narrow part of the road where you could get traction to make it to the top but it was hard to find.   Then I woke up.

Hobbit or Hermit?

All of this soul searching is about pending retirement.  My life is about to change big time.  I'm trying to find a bridge across the chasm.  An avenue to the next stage.  The feelings I have are conflictive.  Hope and fear mainly.  I feel like I'm on a hobbit like quest with goblins ready to jump out at me. I'm energized by the beauty and magic of Rivendell (my spiritual life) and the memory of the Shire (gratitude for the blessings of my life, especially family) but Mt. Doom  is always visible in the distance. The role of family, friends, and fellow travelers is yet to be revealed.


Hindu tradition speaks of the four stages of life. 


 I appear to be entering the third stage which is described as

Vanaprastha - The Hermit in Retreat

This stage of a man begins when his duty as a householder comes to an end; He has become a grandfather, his children are grown up, and have established lives of their own. At this age, he should renounce all physical, material and sexual pleasures, retire from his social and professional life, leave his home, and  go to live in a forest hut, spending his time in prayers.  He is allowed to take his wife along, but is supposed to maintain little contact with the family.

Hermit or Hobbit? Not sure.

Acting "as if" and getting physical

I'm reading Going the Distance - one man's journey to the end of his life by George Sheehan M.D.  George Sheehan was the "philosopher king" of runner's and I read many of his columns and books when I was deeply involved in running during the 1980's.  In this book he documents his struggle to find peace after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He died in 1993.   I'm about two thirds through the book and can't resist sharing some of his writing with you.  The following is an extended passage from pages 96 and 97 of the book.  


 "William James pointed out in the Varieties of Religious Experience that these spiritual experiences have little to do with dogma or theology.  The individual in the private reaches of the soul discovers a means to contact an all-good and all-powerful force and is thereby "saved."


This salvation (which comes from the Latin root salvus, meaning "safe,healthy") is accompanied by an "assurance state" --the feeling that you are now whole and healed.


At first such epiphanies would appear to be gifts.  They seem spontaneous and not willed. James would have none of that. Man is incurably religious, he said, and religion is our most important function.  We can improve our spiritual health in much the way we improve our physical health -- we must develop the dedication and discipline to do our spiritual exercises and enhance our spiritual strength.


In seeking relatively simple ways to enhance spiritual health we can turn again to James for an answer. For him, action and feeling went together; and by regulating action, which is under the direct control of the will, we can indirectly control feeling, which is not. Therefore to be cheerful, we must act and speak cheerfully. To feel brave, act as if we were brave."


Besides "acting as if" Sheehan cites another James suggestion.


"William James in the Gospel of Relaxation writes of 'that blessed internal peace and confidence that wells up from every part of the body of the muscularly well-trained beings and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction.'  James said that this was an element of spiritual hygiene that should not be underestimated." ( The link for Gospel of Relaxation provides the full text of the essay and is interesting reading)


I've clearly been doing some backsliding on my commitment to keep this the Gospel according to Ferd. There is no link for this....yet.  :)


By the way, while I'm off the reservation, I'd like to recommend 

Is Religion 'Built Upon Lies'? Best-selling atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger Andrew Sullivan debate God, faith, and fundamentalism.

Interesting reading from BeliefNet  with themes that intersect some of the ideas the have been surfacing in this blog.   I just read that it's not kosher to delete sections from previously posted blog entries.  That it's better to use the strike through tool.  I guess I understand the reasoning here but I'm still working on it.  In any case after revisiting the Harris/Sullivan debate I'm disinclined to recommend it.   I now find their very long, sometimes brilliant, give-and-take too intellectual, defensive and, perhaps, self-serving.  And it's just not where I'm at. 

Faith revisited again

I keep riding this horse because for me, at this point in my life, it's the crux of the matter. I am looking for patterns of past thinking and behaviors which will help me approach the future with more skill, wisdom and resolve.

In my last post I noted that some of the happiest times in my life was when I was deeply involved in a cause or a project.  Something I could lose myself in.  (How does this jive with the loss of self goal of Buddhism and meditation?)  I don't want the mistakes I made in obsessive involvement repeat themselves by me losing myself on some spiritual path. This aversion to single minded commitment is reinforced by my conviction most of the evil in the world is the work of true believers.  But you're either on the bus or off the bus. Right?

This is difficult.  I want salvation but what price am I willing to pay. There is a part of me that has a strong desire to become deeply involved in Buddhist practice.  To go to  a retreat center and spend months in deep meditation.  Will I lose myself or find where I really reside?

I will soon no longer have a job.  I will wake each day and have to decide how to spend my time.    I don't want want to fade away but I want to be at peace. I want to feel as alive, awake and connected as possible but I don't want this desire to be twisted either by being mindlessly busy to fend off emptiness or by locking myself away in a monastery   So I want the perfect balance between contemplation and engagement, being and doing, having and letting go, stimulation and calmness, attachment and non-atttachment, belief and skepticism.  The Middle Way?  The Golden Mean?  Mindfulness/paying attention and acceptance may be the best operating principles. Easier said than done.  And what if it's the wrong choice.  Second chances may be running out. 

Faith revisited

So I was talking about faith before I got interrupted by life.

By the way, I bit the bullet last week and applied for Social Security. I should start receiving my monthly "award" in January or February. I don't know if I'm ready for this. Last Thursday I got a follow-up call from Social Security asking me if it was indeed true that I made $600 in 1992 from the Arizona Institute for Peace Education and Research. Weird and a bit disconcerting. Of all the things to ask me why would it be that? Maybe it was the feds checking out if I was a national security threat. Creepy

Faith. For me there are two distinct versions.

There is the day-to-day trust that I have in the people and things I interact with and there is a deeper faith that is the keystone of my spiritual life.

I have faith that people and things will respond in a certain way based on experience and information. Faith that the plane will get off the ground, that the traffic light is working, that my friend will meet me as planned. Without it I'm paralyzed. Stuck in my tracks. In my work as an addiction counselor I've come to understand better that there is a wide spectrum of how much faith/trust people can muster as they try to "live life on life's terms." Many people I work with have been deeply damaged by betrayal and/or abandonment early in life and this has made it difficult for them to trust, have faith in anyone or anything.

Last week I wrote the word "love" on the white board and asked a group to talk about what the word meant to them. I watched several people literally shrink in their seats. Their body and face contracting into high defense. One had the courage to say how love did nothing but frighten him and he wanted nothing to do with it. This man, a victim of childhood abuse, said everyone he has ever loved...parents, wives and girlfriends, have all ended up hurting him. Love stinks. Ironically this man has made great progress in treatment. He has remained abstinent, developed sober support, found a job, stabilized relationships and kept his probation officer happy. I think much of this positive response is because he was asked to engage in a program with a clear structure and means to hold him accountable. Concrete not abstract. He was not asked to believe or trust in anything. He was asked to perform or there would be consequences. Few gray areas. Black and white.

I think the point I'm meandering around is that I believe the success in development of a deeper spiritual life is strongly related to our ability to trust. To have faith. (Abraham Maslow and Eric Erikson fit in here but I'm not going to go down that road. I'm going to try to keep this the gospel according to Ferd)

So if I expand this theory on one end of the spectrum you have people who are so damaged they have very little trust anyone or anything. These individuals often learn to deal with life in twisted ways and end up with diagnosable personality disorders. My assumption is it would be very difficult for these folks to have any kind of spiritual life. Faith is an enemy.

So who's on the other end. The enlightened or the hoodwinked? I guess I'd go with the hoodwinked. Blind faithers. Fundamentalists. Bible thumpers. Islamic terrorists. Republicans. Okay, some Republicans and some Democrats. The common denominator is purism. People who believe so strongly in a vision/cause/ideology/religion that they are blinded by the light.

This is getting interesting. I think I'm getting somewhere but it's not where I thought I was going. I'm about to completely reverse my theory. My original thinking was a linear spectrum with those incapable of trust and spiritual development on one end and the other end populated by trustful souls who have a rich spiritual life. By writing the above I'm seeing that its more of a circle or like a dog chasing it's tail. Both ends share the same defect. How they live is mainly determined by external forces. They have lost their autonomy and, perhaps, much of their humanity. They are more defined by dogma or damage than by other less rigid, more human forces. This to me is the root of all evil and the opposite of true faith.

Their security and often sense of purpose resides within rigid boundaries. Elements outside these frontiers become the enemy that needs to be resisted or destroyed. Blind faith versus true?! faith. I feel I'm on a slippery slope.

I was deeply involved in political work during the 1980's. I began this path by working with an interfaith organization that developed in Arizona in response to the wave of refugees that were fleeing to the U.S. to escape the violence in Central America, especially from Guatemala and El Salvador. Initially my church-based work involved helping these refugees find safe haven via the Sanctuary Movement.

Much of this work was done as a high profile challenge to the Reagan administration which was choosing to deport many of these people back into harm's way. Granting them refugee status would be an admission of their political failure. Our church-based movement was infiltrated by government agents and eight of my Arizonan coworkers were indicted conspiracy and a large number of the refugees we were working with were sent back to the danger they had fled.

Prior to the arrests and deportations I was codirecting a refugee social service agency and a man named Jesus Cruz kept showing up wanting to help. After the indictment we found out he was a government agent who was secretly taping conversations including refugee bible study meetings at a local church. Faith betrayed by Jesus.

The arrest and subsequent trial became front page news across the country. (Most of those arrested were eventually convicted but given suspended sentences.) Our projects were soon flooded with people who wanted to volunteer. The new arrivals were a combination of local and out of state church-based volunteers, left wing political activists some of whom were affiliated with political parties strongly committed to Marxist principles, and, predictably at this point, government agents.

These were heady times. There was excitement and passion and commitment. We were taking a stand which we believed had a solid humanitarian and political foundation. Ambivalence evaporated. I and my colleagues were on a crusade for truth and justice. I became totally engaged in the process and committed much of my time and energy to it. I moved from direct service to advocacy. I organized demonstrations, got arrested several times, made speeches, wrote op-ed pieces, published a newsletter, spoke on radio talk shows and organized trips to the war zones of Central America.

Eventually this work led to other politically oriented projects including starting a progressive newspaper and working to establish a vital public access television station in the Phoenix area. The public access struggle involved going head to head with city government officials who were much more influenced by the deep pocketed cable companies. My political life reached a climaxwhen I was arrested at a Maricopa County board of supervisors meeting. The following day I was featured on the front page of local paper being carried out of the meeting in a choke hold. Political work was making me angry and bitter. Time to take a break.

During most of time I was doing political work I was happy, engaged but, in retrospect, inexcusably neglectful of my family responsibilities. I made little money. My wife worked full-time and took care of most of the household responsibilities, including the care and nurturing of our two daughters. I feel shame writing this but I acknowledge it to reinforce the point I'm trying to make. Do you get it?

Faith revisited will be resumed in next entry. Thanks for reading. Comments welcomed. Happy Thanksgiving!