C’est l’Ennui!—l’oeil chargé d’un pleur involontaire,
Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka.
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!*
Baudelaire “Au Lecteur”
In our culture of hyper-stimulation, silence has become the rarest of commodities. In the evening of an overcast, humid, post-solstice sabbath, a siren swirls off in the distance while some unseen high-pitched mechanical blower/sandblaster/particle-collider keens like an instrument of torture.
To me, a native of the Lowcountry, summer’s official beginning is a sad occasion. The best weather is already behind us. The drip drip drip of days will winnow with less and less daylight as the ambitious resolutions of early June melt in the heat like wax sculptures – the hot tub not repaired, the school work delayed, the evenings, mornings, afternoons dissipating inevitability into oblivion.
*It’s the soul-stunting boredom – an involuntary tear in the eye.
Smoking the houka, he dreams
of gallows. Reader, you know this exquisite malady.
You, hypocrite reader – my soulmate – my brother!
very loosely translated by I-and-I (who assures you it sounds great in French)
Ennui, by Askerov
O, woe is me!
Even though I have access to an array of Robert Altman films I can stream instantly via Netflix, Nashville is not available; the beach that is exactly .32 miles away is teeming with vulgarians, the gorgeous vista behind our house muted by the cloud cover.
Bill Clinton, you can’t even begin to feel my pain!
Perhaps, the decadent, entitled, whining dissatisfaction sampled above stems from my disinclination to seek out silence. The East has provided us with techniques to subdue what zen masters call “the monkey mind,” i.e., the brain’s tendency to flash from idea to longing to memory the way a spider monkey slashes from tree to tree to tree.
spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi)
One of the many beauties of Buddhism is that it provides its practitioners a regimen of exercises that transforms the mind – to switch metaphors – from murky strom-tossed waters into a glassy pool that reflects things as they are. Buddhism relies on self (not supernatural) reliance in the paradoxical quest to annihilate ego.
“If you understand real practice, then archery or other activities can be zen. If you don’t understand how to practice archery in its true sense, then even though you practice very hard, what you acquire is just technique. It won’t help you through and through. Perhaps you can hit the mark without trying, but without a bow and arrow you cannot do anything. If you understand the point of practice, then even without a bow and arrow the archery will help you. How you get that kind of power or ability is only through right practice.”
― Shunryu Suzuki, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen
Jeff League: Bonsai Tree with Blossoms
Oh, but if right practice were only that easy! The changes are oh so slow. After all, according to Buddhist teachings, it’s a regimen that may take lifetimes rather than weeks to perfect.
Plus, the Faustian temptations – the webs (worldwide/ otherwise) that stretch out to snare us. Why assume the half lotus when I can watch reruns of What’s My Line? on YouTube or channel surf with a television monitor that provides images that seem more wonderful than the flora and fauna outside my window?
Not to mention the restive hardwired desires for sustenance and sex.
Nevertheless, as the adage goes, charity begins at home, and right practice is ultimately a matter of self will. In fact, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus offers a superb example of the dangers expressed at the beginning of this post – the tendency to shrug off the profound for the superficial, to squander precious moments in fruitless distractions. Remember, Faustus sold his soul to achieve greater knowledge, to understand how the cosmos functioned, yet soon enough started wasting his powers in trivialities, e.g., playing magical tricks on his adversaries and conjuring illusions like Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships/And toppled the topless towers of Ilium.
The 16th century equivalent of computer porn.
Of course, the mind itself consists of the most delicate of chemical balances. What we so naively consider our substantial selves is an illusion conjured by a delicate mixture of amino acids, monoamines, acetylchlorine, nitric acids, etc.
A hit of illicit acid or a doctor prescribed dose of Prednisone can transform the seemingly substantial you from Jekyll to Hyde, begging the metaphysical/existential question who or what am I?*
Certainly, successful meditation must alter our brain chemistry in some mysterious way that leads to serenity. Here’s an anecdote from Ram Dass (aka Richard Albert) on the subject:
*Note to former students: Cf. Raskolnikov, Harry Haller, Stephen Dedalus, Oedipus, Hamlet, Othello, Emma Bovary, Milkman, Willy Logan, Merseault, Elizabeth Bennet, Raskolinkov, Mr. Kurtz, Dorothea Brooke . . .
In 1967 when I first came to India, I brought with me a supply of LSD, hoping to find someone who might understand more about these substances than we did in the West.
When I had met Maharajji (Neem Karoli Baba), after some days the thought had crossed my mind that he would be a perfect person to ask. The next day after having that thought, I was called to him and he asked me immediately, “Do you have a question?”
Of course, being before him was such a powerful experience that I had completely forgotten the question I had had in my mind the night before. So I looked stupid and said, “No, Maharajji, I have no question.”He appeared irritated and said, “Where is the medicine?”
I was confused but Bhagavan Dass suggested, ” Maybe he means the LSD.” I asked and Maharajji nodded. The bottle of LSD was in the car and I was sent to fetch it. When I returned I emptied the vial of pills into my hand. In addition to the LSD there were a number of other pills for this and that–diarrhea, fever, a sleeping pill, and so forth. He asked about each of these.
He asked if they gave powers. I didn’t understand at the time and thought that by “powers” perhaps he meant physical strength. I said, “No.” Later, of course, I came to understand that the word he had used, “siddhis,” means psychic powers. Then he held out his hand for the LSD. I put one pill on his palm. Each of these pills was about three hundred micrograms of very pure LSD–a solid dose for an adult. He beckoned for more, so I put a second pill in his hand–six hundred micrograms. Again he beckoned and I added yet another, making the total dosage nine hundred micrograms–certainly not a dose for beginners. Then he threw all the pills into his mouth. My reaction was one of shock mixed with fascination of a social scientist eager to see what would happen.
He allowed me to stay for an hour– and nothing happened. Nothing whatsoever.
Although we must cast a skeptical eye on anecdotal evidence, logic itself suggests that we at least give meditation a try, even if it yields something less than guru-dom. If it can help us shed delusions and rediscover wonder in the everyday, why not take the plunge? Meditation is religion neutral – the Southern Baptist and Shite Muslim (they have more in common than you might imagine) can practice meditation in honor of their respective deities.
It has in my negligible experience helped me to focus outside of myself to discover a certain interrelatedness, and the twenty minutes it costs can be scheduled between texting and checking emails – sometime during the evanescent day’s decline into darkness.
Just try to make sure you’re somewhere quiet.
photograph by Judy Birdsong
Rahsaan’s recent problems are more profound than yours. Blind from early childhood, he’s recently suffered a stroke that has left one side of his body partially paralyzed, so he’s had his tenor saxophone modified so he can play with one hand. Kirk was famous for playing more than one instrument at once, two saxes and a nose flute, but obviously, those days are done, yet, good God, you’d never guess that the tenor solos on 5000 Lb. Man are coming from the horn of a one-armed man.
Flipping through the yellowed pages of my 1957 paperback, I’ve been hanging out in monasteries, crumbling estates, filthy hovels, roadhouses, and prisons. Dostoyevsky’s celebration of suffering dwarfs whatever current troubles the reader tends to be enduring – in my case defending our household from an invasion of sugar ants (Monomorium pharaonis).
You Do Hoodoo 