I am writing this in some haste because I do not want to let the thoughts and emotions in my mind leave me.
Today at church I was very distracted with care and worry, much more than usual. An encounter with a friend on the walk to church today left me realizing how I have committed myself to a path which it will be hard to move back from…to stay in Chicago with no job and no idea what is to come next, to commit my remaining money and energy to this time. I am ashamed to say that though the teachings today were good and the hymns moving to the soul, I did not put the concentration into them which I should have.
Feeling spiritually neglectful and somewhat lonely, I decided to spend some time in meditation. I put a Miles Davis record on the stereo and began reading a book I once purchased for a dollar at the Melrose Avenue Sunday swap meet at Adam Strauss’s recommendation: Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha.
By the time I reached the final chapter, I had turned off the music, forgotten about the clothes in the laundry, and was reading in nervous, excited concentration.
What I found warmed my heart.
For those of you who have not read it, Siddhartha is not about the Buddha but another man named Siddhartha, who desires to find the true Self, and after an encounter with the Buddha (called Gotoma), he begins a journey in which he exchanges his spiritual life for the purely secular life, then casts that off to learn from a good ferryman named Vasudeva…and in old age, he makes an extraordinary discovery.
Hesse is a great writer, and in his structure he perfectly mirrors Siddhartha’s quest. Everything Siddhartha learns at the time is presented as a great truth, but as the story continues each truth is either proven to be the basis for another truth or is flatly contradicted. The culmination of these truths is in the final chapter, when Siddhartha is reunited with his oldest and dearest friend, Govinda, in the days of the Buddha’s passing.
“”The potential Buddha always exists in the sinner; his future already there. The potential hidden Buddha must be recognized in him, in you, in everybody. The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people–eternal life.
During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is present, everything is Brahman. Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good–death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly. Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me. I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of the stair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.
Love is the most important thing in the world. It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and respect.”
My parents, my mentors, my friends, have all told me time and time again that God puts nothing in our way which we can’t handle, that everything happens for a reason, that there is such a thing as karma. And though I have tried to believe it, I have especially as of late, with age and responsibility settling in on me, looked back and felt nervous about my choices, felt wrong, felt that my past has been marked by foolishness and consumption and squandering. And I think of myself so often as a sinner who does not use the gifts God gave him, who falls over and over again into the same dark corners, who is not good enough, who does not try at time to be good enough and who feels when he tries that it is futile. Why did I study the Humanities, I ask myself, instead of that which could prepare me for a career in the modern economy? Why was I not more careful with the money I won? Why do I enjoy good food, good wine, books, etc. as I do when I should be thankful to have a roof, clothes, and simple food, when there are so many with less in the world? This question always makes me afraid that someday I shall have nothing and no one and be a desolated, ignored man…and writing this I feel so ashamed, ashamed that I shall break my parents’ hearts that I have not listened and that I feel wrong by the goodness they have showered on me, that I further wrong the Lord by not trusting in Him, that I pain my friends and my girlfriend by saying that I regret the decisions I made which enabled them to come into my life. Knowing all this, I have long persisted in such a manner of thinking, wanting to reject my past, feeling lesser than everyone else, that my choices and attitudes will shatter me.
But in reading and absorbing Siddhartha, I begin to recognize the error of this way of thinknig, an error which no one ever quite put into words I could understand as Hesse does. Like Siddhartha, I compared myself and set myself up against an imaginary world, an ideal to live up to where there are certain choices which bring you peace and prosperity both worldly and spiritual.
I begin to see there is no such world, that in the multitude of humankind, people I pray for every night when I ask God to bestow justice on sinners and comfort those who are hurt by sin and who repent, there are so many paths to follow, and I have long believed that the way to faith is to follow your own path.
Now I see the next step: the way to the best life is to follow your own path. But NOT a self-centered path. Following your own path means that to do what you know is right, you must absorb all that is happening around you, make your choice, and make both your actions and those of others fit in with what you value and what you believe.
Then…in studying the Humanities, I have learned how to see with clear, true eyes the world I live in, to find pattern and meaning in the most unlikely places, and now to embark on a mission to share those meanings with others.
And at the same time, because I live in the secular world, my careers must be ones in which I subordinate myself to the needs of others, to work hard for other ends which will feed my own end.
If I have learned to appreciate the good life, it has also helped me appreciate the simple life. And if all is the same, then I know in times of strict, lean living as I shall be embarking on now, there will be moments to come of richness and joy, that the simple pleasures of a glass of cold water and a good book and a little electricity give me as much contentment as a great meal.
If I have moved too much and spent money on social occasions, the places where I have been always lead me to people I have met who are now true, caring friends who listen and help and share and with whom I listen, help, and share. This is a treasure beyond the worldly which I know will sustain me if an hour of need ever truly arises.
And if I cannot approach the ideal I set myself before my bountiful God and my loving parents, God above all, they are aware that every misstep is actually a step on the path to wisdom, where I must learn in my own way what all humans must learn, and to use that knowledge not in the way of regret but in the way of change. I have told my parents these words before, but I never understood their full meaning. I thought the change had to come to approach the ideal. The change only has to come to give me what I need to satsify myself in the context of the world that I live in, to bring me into unity with my surroundings.
There I will experience peace. There I will find hope and love. There I will be home.
I must not scorn what I did before, for all of it was the loved, the valuable, the holy, and from it I shall find the lovelier, the thoughts and deeds of greater value, and the true holiness of being at one with the great plan of life. Of being at one with my past, present, and future, of all leading into each other and all flowing to the spirit.
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