Cloud Atlas, Mitchell

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

2004

Britain          

Plenty of authors are willing to tell us how bad things are. Literary fiction readers lack not for doom and gloom. Even that former harbinger of a comedic, post-racial society to come, Zadie Smith, seems to want to tear down hope in her latest tome, NW. Maybe I should be okay with that. And maybe I’m just getting old, but I admit – I want literature to offer a silver lining of hope even at the bottom of a dark truth cloud. Like I tell my students – it’s easy to point out what’s wrong; it’s a lot harder to figure out where we go from here. Cloud Atlas, a beautiful, dense, “Russian nesting doll” of a book, manages to do both.

Cloud Atlas is about reincarnation. (If you’re not sure just watch the movie; it is impossible to miss). The lives of the six characters it follows don’t overlap so much as brush up against one another. Luisa Rey swears she’s heard the Cloud Atlas Sextet by Robert Frobisher somewhere before. Robert Frobisher reads Adam Ewing’s diary. Zackary of Baily’s Dwelling worships Sonmi as a god. Sonmi is influenced by a film made by Timothy Cavendish. Timothy Cavendish reads mystery novels written by Luisa Rey. And so on. The book begins in 1845 and moves chronologically through time to the two futuristic narratives – Sonmi, a “fabricant” in a “corpocratic” society in 2144, and Zackary, a goat herder in Hawaii in a distant future after “the fall.” After this outward movement, the book moves in again, like clouds wafting in a never-ending progression across the sky. The cyclical rotation is highly thematic. David Mitchell wants us to know that he’s talking about recurrence, repetition, eternity, the way the Earth rotates, and our continuous cycles around the wheel of the Earth, from birth to death to birth again. Though he mentions Christian, secular, and scientific ideas, as well as Buddhist ones, Mitchell suggests that Buddhism is the most useful because it acknowledges reincarnation and interbeing (that we are reborn as different people in different lifetimes, and that we are connected to everyone else in unexpected and unseen ways). Despite several mentions of Buddhism and strong thematic connections, Mitchell isn’t merely proselytizing; the book is entertaining and unique enough at the level of story that it avoids being polemical (many have written that the movie does not succeed in this regard; I would agree, but think that it’s fun to watch anyway. Then again, I agree strongly with its claims).

On the one hand, the message of the text is obvious – déjà vu comes up in every section and, in case you didn’t get it, each character has a comet shaped birthmark, suggesting that they might be one of the others reborn. This is all familiar to me from my study of Buddhism.  But something Robert Frobisher, the character from the 1931, says complicates my understanding of Mitchell’s concepts of reincarnation and time. The composer, Frobisher says, “Rome’ll decline and fall again, Cortes’ll lay Tenochtitlan to waste again, and after, Ewing will sail again, Adrian’ll be blown to pieces again, you and I’ll sleep under Corsican stars again, I’ll come to Bruges again, fall in and out of love with Eva again, you’ll read this letter again, the sun’ll grow cold again. Nietzsche’s gramophone record. When it ends, the Old One plays it again, for an eternity of eternities.” According to Frobisher, not only will we be reborn to another life on Earth, but maybe into the very same one. The structure of the book also indicates that we are doomed, if not to literally return to the same time, place, and body, then at least to repeat the same patterns “for an eternity of eternities.” Is there no Nirvana, no extinction, no respite from the cycle to look forward to?

Cloud Atlas is not only about reincarnation but also about the nature of that recurrence. The book suggests that though we progress, we also fall back. The struggle between the forces of good and evil is ongoing. While Mitchell doesn’t offer a lot of hope that evil will ever be permanently abolished, he does hint that good could be. So, while it seems we are unable to permanently “fix” the world, in fact it takes our very best efforts just to maintain the status quo. As these things tend to go, the movie is more uplifting than the book, showing a vision of interconnection that dwells more on the heroic acts of extraordinary individuals than the negative doings of the masses. Still, Mitchell leaves us with a tentative hope. At the very end the 19^th century notary, Adam Ewing, expresses disgust with the world, and the desire to create a better one for his son. To do this, he proclaims, he will work for the Abolitionist cause. He imagines that his father-in-law’s response to this will be that it’s an admirable but impractical goal; people will never change; Adam’s actions will be nothing more than a drop in the ocean. To this hypothetical critique Adam replies, “Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?” Adam wants to end slavery and, indeed, chattel slavery was abolished. On the other hand, the book questions the “once and for all-ness” of an idea like the “end” of slavery, since, in the future sections, slavery returns, albeit in a different guise.  The indication might be that the equally strong forces of good and evil are at work at all times. Sometimes the good is heavier, and sometimes the bad. What we do, Mitchell suggests, does alter the course of history, even if it doesn’t do so permanently. We may not be able to change the nature of people in general, but if we change the way we are, we will affect the quality of our own and others’ worlds right now. Stasis may be the only progress available, but it’s not nothing.

Empire of the Senseless, Acker

Empire of the Senseless

Kathy Acker

1988

USA

I tried to read this book by Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless. I read to about pg. 75 out of 227 and I just can’t go on anymore. It’s fairly rare that I put down a book, but life is too short not to enjoy the hours you spend reading. Reading is supposed to be fun; even when it’s difficult there should be some element of enjoyment in it. I am not having any of that with this book. This book is FUCKING NUTS. It’s about a half-human/half-robot? And a pirate? I never would have guessed that, actually, but that’s what it says on the back. There are a lot of references to literary theory, lots of rape, and now some pretty intense apocalyptic, suicidal imagery… and I’m done reading. I get it – you’re experimenting and testing the boundaries, fucking with the status quo, the hegemony, the patriarchal norms and whatnot - maybe it just seems so dated and boring because it’s 2012, not 1988. 80’s Gertrude Stein… something better read in a theory course than on your couch alone. Oh, if only I had a theory course…

The reason I decided to try this book in the first place (which I already had because a friend who was downsizing gave it to me) was because another friend recommended it. Not directly, exactly, but we were talking about one of the classes I’m teaching now, called “The Art of Non-Fiction,” in part about the differences between fiction and non-fiction writing. And my friend said, “Oh, you would like Dodie Bellamy then.” And I said, “Who’s she?” And my friend said something about “New-Narrative,” a blending of fiction and non-fiction, and she said, “Kathy Acker is the same movement, kind of,” and I thought “I have that one at home,” and that is why I started reading. But I’m stopping. I’m stopping now. It’s much too much for one girl alone.

I’m pretty sure the friend who gave me this book, as well as the one who recommended it, must have read it for a class because surely, no one is reading this for fun. I would try it again, but I would need the help of a brilliant professor and, alas, I am not that professor myself. One of the many, many times I wish I was still a student in college, instead of the teacher…  

Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers, Hanh

Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

Thich Nhat Hanh

USA

1999

“You love the apple; yes, you are authorized to love the apple, but no one prevents you from also loving the mango.”

I picked this book up because I am interested in the similarities between Jesus and Buddha, and because I find my faith and understanding expanded every time I read one of Hanh’s books. This topic, in particular, has meaning for me. When I was first learning about Buddhism the idea of letting go of my spiritual tradition, Christianity, was very hard for me. Of course, there were a lot of things about it that I didn’t feel comfortable with, hence my search for an alternative, but at the same time there were, and are, many aspects of the religion that I find meaningful, and that I was hesitant to give up, most of all the teachings of Jesus Christ. But Thich Naht Hanh says that we don’t have to abandon one tradition when we embrace another. In fact, he says, we shouldn’t.

First of all, Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who lives in a religious community in France, says that it is a mistake to focus on the teachings, on dharma or dogma, only, ignoring our lived experience. “What is the Dharma? The Dharma is not a set of laws and practices, or a stack of sutras, or videotapes, or cassettes. The Dharma is understanding, it is the practice of loving-kindness as expressed by life. You cannot see the Dharma unless you see a person practicing the Dharma […]”. According to Hanh, we get caught in ideas, concepts, and notions, and this is an obstacle to true understanding. This is as true, he says, in Buddhism as it is in Christianity. We have to let go of the idea that we already know everything. “Understanding is a process. It is a living thing. Never claim you have understood reality completely.” We have to allow learning to happen through experience, not just by reading and listening to monks and nuns, priests and pastors. Hanh seeks to guide Christians not by converting them to Buddhism, but by helping them to practice their own religion more deeply.

Hanh clearly wants to stay away from criticizing Christianity, yet the implicit critique is everywhere. There’s no doubt he thinks Buddhism offers more opportunity for inner peace and ease of suffering than Christianity does – at least in the way it is taught and practiced today. He seems to want to make the case that the same ideas could be found in both traditions, if one just looks at them a little differently. For example, “Practicing Buddhist meditation does not transform our person into a battlefield, the good side fighting the evil side. Non-duality is the main characteristic of Buddhist teaching and practice. […] We learn in Buddhism that the negative is useful in making the positive. It’s like the garbage. If you know how to take care of the garbage, you will be able to make flowers and vegetables out of it.” The Christian tradition, Hanh continues, can benefit from this kind of insight as well. “As I see it, if there is a real encounter between Buddhism and Christianity, there will be a very drastic change within the Christian tradition, and the most beautiful jewels in the tradition will be able to emerge.” I have to agree; in my experience the idea that the good side of me was constantly fighting the bad was exhausting and demoralizing. As soon as I recognized, through my study of Buddhism, that I didn’t have to reject any part of me, but rather water “wholesome seeds” and kindly acknowledge but not water “unwholesome” ones, I immediately felt better, calmer, and more able to be loving and friendly to myself and others. I think Hanh is saying that non-duality is inherent in Jesus’s teachings too, but it has become lost in the way we understand it, and that is bad for all of us.

Hanh goes through the Lord’s prayer and the Apostle’s Creed, analyzing each line and reinterpreting it through a Buddhist lens. The meaning he takes from it is often essentially the same, yet also completely different and, for me, easier to understand. For example, how do we understand Jesus’s claim at the last supper that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood? In the Christian church they talk about “transubstantiation” which means that, somehow, the bread and wine we eat and drink at communion literally becomes Jesus’s body and blood. In contrast, Hanh writes, “‘Take, my friends, this is my flesh, this is my blood.’ Can there be any more drastic language in order to wake you up? What could Jesus have said that is better than that? You have been eating ideas and notions, and I want you to eat real bread so that you become alive. If you come back to the present moment, fully alive, you will realize this is real bread, this piece of bread is the body of the whole cosmos.” Hanh’s interpretation retains the essential truth of the Christian one – that the bread literally is Jesus’s body – but adds to it the truth of  inter-being. We are all literally the bread, Jesus’s body, and every other thing in the world. We are all made of the same things; every single thing it part of every other single thing. Jesus is not gone; he is you and me, the bread we eat and the air we breathe. Are we so set in our beliefs about communion that our practice can’t be deepened by adding this new understanding to it?

There is so much more good, profound stuff to talk about in this book. But I think you should read it and then come back and leave me comments about which parts were most meaningful to you. The book will give you insight into Buddhism, and hopefully a deeper appreciation for your own tradition, too. Hanh writes that in Vietnam missionaries caused suffering by telling the people that they had to abandon their traditions and take up Christianity instead. Hanh says, “We don’t want to do the same thing to our friends.” Instead, he talks about the time he has spent in Europe, and how because he was deeply rooted in his own culture he was able to develop another set of roots in the Christian tradition as well. This has added to his understanding of reality, and this is what he offers to us in this and all his books. 

The Way Out of Suffering, Percival and The Third Noble Truth

~a continuation of my discussion of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, read through the lens of Buddhism's Four Noble Truths

So, now, even though I have a few jobs, and am very grateful for that, I have yet to be paid by them in any significant way, and so hubby and I are still living on credit. Sometimes, I let this get me down. But when that happens, I remind myself that if only I didn’t want anything, then I wouldn’t feel bad about not having it. So instead of thinking about how I can get the ice cream, the new dress, the museum admission (especially since I already know the answer: by patiently waiting for those paychecks) I concentrate on not desiring those things in the first place. Or at least, I remind myself that I should be concentrating on not desiring those things in the first place. That I should be more like the silent, though much spoken of Percival in The Waves.

For the “pagan” Percival the trick of indifference (one of Woolf’s favorite words) works quite well. Bernard, for example, notes Percival’s “curious air of detachment,” and explains that, "being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his own advancement, save that he had also great compassion.” I share Bernard’s admiration for these qualities in Percival. I, too, want to “master the art of living” so that I can “spread calm” around me through my “indifference” to my own advancement. But it’s going to take some time to unlearn what society has taught me – the exact opposite, that ambition is king and acceptance weak.  

Percival, who “reads a detective novel, yet understands everything," is observed only from outside and never gives a firsthand account of himself because, unlike the other characters, he has already reached nirvana, a state of non-self, a freedom from personality. His indifference, his solid simplicity, his lack of desire are his strengths. They are everything. They are, in fact, the Third Noble Truth epitomized: “The Third Noble Truth is that suffering can be overcome and happiness attained. This is perhaps the most important of the Four Noble Truths because in it the Buddha reassures us that true happiness and contentment are possible. When we give up useless craving and learn to live each day at a time, enjoying without restlessly wanting the experiences that life offers us, patiently enduring the problems that life involves, without fear, hatred and anger, then we become happy and free. Then, and then only, do we begin to live fully. Because we are no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish wants, we find that we have so much time to help others fulfill their needs. This state is called Nirvana. We are free from psychological suffering” (buddhanet.net). Like Percival, when we find the peaceful happiness of being freed from our own fleeting desires, then we can concern ourselves with the real needs of others.

An attitude like Percival’s may make a good life, but perhaps it doesn’t make great fiction. Accepting what life hands you with equanimity creates a profoundly peaceful existence, but it lacks the drama of Rhoda raging against the “violence” of the world, Bernard, trying so desperately to “sum it all up,” or Louis seeking fame and fortune to overcome his perceptions of his less than admirable heritage. It is perfect that Percival is absent, that he is a void, an emptiness, and that he dies as such, without us ever hearing his voice, or knowing his “self” – because he wants nothing, he has escaped the tyranny of the self. Percival is the empty center around which Woolf builds her story, and the truth at the heart of it. 

Rhoda and Bernard, The Waves and The Second Noble Truth

I have left Rhoda and Bernard for last because they are special cases regarding the concept of attachment. They have by no means fully reached enlightenment, but Woolf indicates that they may be further along the path than their companions.

Rhoda

Of all the characters in The Waves, Rhoda is the most difficult to generalize about. She doesn’t fall into the standard female roles like Jinny (whore) and Susan (mother), except perhaps for the tragic figure of the crazy woman. Certainly, Rhoda has an incredibly difficult time dealing with everyday reality, as the following quote from her demonstrates. "I cannot make one moment merge in the next. To me they are all violent, all separate; and if I fall under the shock of the leap of the moment you will be on me, tearing me to pieces. I have no end in view. … But there is no single scent, no single body for me to follow. And I have no face. I am like the foam that races over the beach, or the moonlight that falls arrowlike here on a tin can... But since I wish above all things to have lodgment, I pretend ... to have an end in view" (94). Undoubtedly, we are meant to feel sorry for Rhoda, but I don’t think it’s for the “simple” reason that she is unable to adjust to the world or, as critics have made so much of, because she might be a lesbian. Rather, we are meant to feel sorry for Rhoda because she understands or senses more about the true nature of the world than the others do, and it is her solitude in that understanding that is crazy, not Rhoda herself.  

 In a sense, Rhoda’s lack of attachment to any one person or thing, her lack of a “face,” is an advantage along the path to enlightenment. Despite her discomfort in every possible scenario, Rhoda repeatedly expresses an understanding that life is an “illusion," that there is something beneath the surface that the rest of the characters do not perceive or, if they do, do not find as troubling: "This is here and now. This I say is the present moment; this is the first day of the summer holidays. This is part of the emerging monster to whom we are attached" (46). Rhoda has got the mindfulness thing down; she is aware of each moment as a part of a greater whole. Interestingly, she calls this sum of moments a “monster to whom we are attached.” This phrasing calls to mind the Buddhist concept of life as suffering (surely, such is the case for Rhoda), and that it is precisely our attachment to it which causes our suffering. Thus, Rhoda is a woman in constant conflict; she longs for a fixed place ("lodgment") while fighting with her own understanding that no such fixity is possible. 

Sadly, far from providing comfort and direction for Rhoda, her insights only separate her further from the rest of the world. Towards the end of the book we learn that Rhoda has committed suicide, as Virginia Woolf herself would do ten years after the publication of The Waves. 

Bernard

If one can use traditional novelistic terms to speak of The Waves, then Bernard is its main character. In the last section, this would-be writer attempts to “sum up” his waning life. “The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life” (176) says Bernard. Yet, he goes on, “But in order to make you understand, to give you my life, I must tell you a story – and there are so many, and so many – stories of childhood, stories of school, love, marriage, death, and so on; and none of them are true. Yet like children we tell each other stories, and to decorate them we make up these ridiculous, flamboyant, beautiful phrases” (176). Like Rhoda, Bernard believes that there is something beyond the veil, beyond the words we use to describe reality. He recognizes that our attempt to name or describe things is in a sense futile; look again a moment later and the thing will be different. You will be different; you will not see it or understand it in the same way from moment to moment.  

Bernard seems particularly aware that “our eternal flux,” as he calls it, impermanence, change is the nature of reality. Perhaps Bernard’s fatal flaw is the same as Rhoda’s - that he desires permanence, to stick things in place with words. But as he nears the end of his life he begins to understand that this will never be possible, not just because he is not the writer he wants to be, but because of the nature of reality. Words and phrases are only symbols; they can never come close to the real thing. Thich Nhat Hanh seems to be express the same idea in a book I picked up from the library yesterday: “In Buddhism, we speak of nirvana. We are not supposed to speak of nirvana because it is the level of the noumenal where all notions, concepts, and words are inadequate to describe it. The most we can say about nirvana is that it transcends all notions and concepts” (Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers). Nirvana, heaven, God, the meaning of life - surely these are the most important things we can know, and yet our only device for considering them - words - is woefully inadequate. 

At the end of his life, Bernard wrestles with the inadequacy of his medium for the task he has set himself. “Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is dispatched – love for instance – we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next” (186). Yes, Bernard, let’s do. For how else are we to make our way in the world? And certainly, how in our writing? “But it is a mistake, this extreme precision, this orderly and military progress; a convenience, a lie” (189). Underneath it all is “a rushing stream of broken dreams, nursery rhymes, street cries, half-finished sentences and sights” “alive too and deep” (189). Bernard, the writer, wants to convey something specific, real, timeless, with clarity and precision depth. Yet “how impossible to order them rightly, to detach one separately, or to give the effect of the whole,” especially when one understands that life is not like that, at all (190). Is this Woolf’s problem as well? Was the difficulty or perceived futility of her task, her life’s work, perhaps, part of the frustration which led her to take her own life?

And yet Bernard/Woolf offers a solution straight from the pages of Buddhist scripture: “To see things without attachment, from the outside, and to realize their beauty in itself – how strange! And then the sense that a burden has been removed; pretence and make-believe and unreality are gone, and lightness has come with a kind of transparency” (195). Non-attachment releases Bernard from the burden of clinging to the desire to create and be appreciated for his art. But now, once the vision is attained, Bernard faces the bigger problem, perhaps the same problem Rhoda was dealing with, though with less clarity: how to continue living in the world among a population with blinders on. “How can I proceed now, I said, without a self, weightless and visionless, through a world weightless, without illusion?” (212). Bernard finds he cannot “describe the world seen without a self” “save that it fades, save that it undergoes a gradual transformation” (213). Bernard’s description could be applied to the project of The Waves itself.

Bernard seems well on his way to complete enlightenment, yet only a few pages later he crashes sharply back to earth again. “My hat is off – I have dropped my stick. I have made an awful ass of myself and am justly laughed at by any passer-by. Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays on us, one moment free; the next, this” (217). Isn’t this the nature of insight for most of us? One moment, you know, the next you are worried about the people laughing at you for tripping up the stairs. Bernard still cares about what the passers-by think of him – he is brought back to the wheel of suffering by his desire to appear a certain way to those around him.

Next up - Percival, and the Third Noble Truth: the truth of the cessation of suffering. 

The Waves of desire, the 2nd Noble Truth

The Waves and the Second Noble Truth, part 2

“Louis was disgusted by the nature of human flesh; Rhoda by our cruelty; Susan could not share; Neville wanted order; Jinny love; and so on. We suffered terribly as we became separate bodies.” – Bernard’s summing up

First, an update: it seems like as soon as I wrote that last post about my job search, the interview requests started coming in. I was offered several classes and accepted two each at NYC College of Technology and Marymount Manhattan College. Two more weeks to full time teaching! I’m nervous, but very much looking forward to back-to-school (and back to bringing in a paycheck…).

Meanwhile, back to our friends in The Waves. If you’ll remember from last time, I told you that the second Noble Truth in Buddhism is the truth of the origin of suffering. Suffering comes from somewhere; it comes from our inability or unwillingness to let go of desire. In The Waves, Woolf returns to her characters’ desires again and again. Very often, they state their longings specifically and straightforwardly, usually accompanied by the suggestion that desire, and/or the character’s inability to fulfill desire, causes them to suffer. For example:

Jinny

Jinny is a sensuous being, attached to matters of the flesh, of sensation. From the very beginning, when they are small children, Jinny is particularly aware of physicalality. “The back of my hand burns, but the palm is clammy and damp with dew” (4). “I burn, I shiver, out of this sun, into this shadow” (6). In addition to what is happening to her own body, Jinny is constantly monitoring how others respond to her physical presence. In a way, she is detached from the worries and preoccupations of the mind that plague her counterparts, yet she is not completely free, after all; she must be wanted by men to feel secure. "Only when I have lain alone on the hard ground, watching you play your game, I begin to feel the wish to be singled out; to be summoned, to be called away by one person who comes to find me, who cannot keep himself from me…" (32). This need is what separates Jinny from complete happiness since, as she admits freely, eventually she will grow old, and the male gaze will no longer be a constant.

Neville

Like Jinny, Neville, too, wants love. But the type of love he desires is different. A passing tryst is not enough for Neville; he desires full possession of another, a soul-love: "But by some inscrutable law of my being sovereignty and the possession of power will not be enough; I shall always push through curtains to privacy, and want some whispered words alone" (42). At first, his love object is the silent Percival, admired by all the characters but particularly worshipped by Neville. As my epigraph from Bernard suggests, another of Neville’s desires is “order,” a quality he also finds epitomized by Percival. "The reign of chaos is over. [Percival] has imposed order" (88). As we all know, order is not something that can be maintained at every moment, thus, Neville’s grasping for it gets in the way of his happiness. As, too, does the fact (or his perception) that he “excite[s] pity in the crisis of life, not love” (93). 

Susan

A good little hippie like me is inclined, at first, to feel like Susan is the one who’s got it all figured out. Her desires are so wholesome, so natural, that initially they almost seem selfless. "I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions" (37). "I shall go upstairs to my room, and turn over my own things, locked carefully in the wardrobe; my shells; my eggs; my curious grasses. … So gradually I shall turn over the hard thing that has grown here in my side" (38). How can one find fault with a person whose prized “possessions” are shells, eggs, and grasses? And yet, freedom from desire is not about desiring the right things, it’s about not clinging to desire at all. Susan clings to the Earth and eventually to her children, whose lives are, naturally, more dear to her than her own yet whose needs and wishes, one might argue, usurp her ability to be free of wishes altogether. "I shall never have anything but natural happiness. It will almost content me. … I shall be debased and hide-bound by the bestial and beautiful passion of maternity. I shall push the fortunes of my children unscrupulously. I shall hate those who see their faults. I shall lie basely to help them. I shall let them wall me away from you, from you and from you. Also, I am torn with jealousy.  ... I love with such ferocity that it kills me when the object of my love shows by a phrase that he can escape. He escapes, and I am left clutching..." (95). Here Woolf’s language strongly echoes that of Buddhism; Susan’s “ferocious clutching” keeps her from finding true peace. 

Louis

Louis constantly reminds the reader, and himself, that he is different, isolated from the other characters by his father, “a banker in Brisbane.” As an Australian, Louis, though technically British, would have been seen by most in England in the 1930s as inhabiting a lower position in the English class system than those who were born on the British isle. The desire to be embraced as an equal among his peers is at the forefront of Louis’s desires from a young boy: "Yet that [the boasting boys] is what we wish to be, Neville and I. I watch them go with envy" (32), to an old man: “Life has been a terrible affair for me. I am like some vast sucker, some glutinous, some adhesive, some insatiable mouth. I have tried to draw from the living flesh the stone lodged at the centre” (147). Interestingly, Louis seems to realize that there is some benefit to ceasing to desire, and even to exist, yet he expresses doubt that such peace will ever be his. “Perhaps I shall never die, shall never attain even that continuity and permanence […]” (148). He will likely not, I should think, until he stops seeking continuity and permanence in a world that so rarely provides such comforts.

But to fully appreciate the extent to which Jinny, Susan, Neville, and Louis are caught up in the circle of desire, thwarted fulfillment, and more desire, we must have something to measure them against. Rhoda, Bernard, and the silent, off-stage specter of Percival provide just such a contrast. Be looking for a post about them later this week!

The Waves, Woolf, part 1

The Waves

Virginia Woolf

England

1931

"I have been traversing the sunless territory of non-identity. A strange land. I have heard in my moment of appeasement, in my moment of obliteration satisfaction, the sigh, as it goes in, comes out, of the tide that draws beyond this circle of bright light, this drumming of insensate fury. I have had one moment of enormous peace. This is perhaps happiness. Now I am drawn back by pricking sensations; by curiosity, greed (I am hungry) and the irresistible desire to be myself.”

Virginia Woolf is generally considered a Modernist. But if Modernism is concerned with the individual, as I have argued here before (http://mostlynovels.blogspot.com/2011/11/you-dont-love-this-man-deweese.html), then The Waves is an odd example of it. Woolf doesn’t ask the question, “Who am I?” in the usual way. Identity in The Waves, I would argue, not only doesn’t have anything to do with what one is like, but in fact the particularities of our personalities actually cover up the truth about what we are. As Louis says, "It is Percival … who makes us aware that these attempts to say, 'I am this, I am that,' which we make, coming together, like separated parts of one body and soul, are false. Something has been left out from fear. Something has been altered, from vanity. We have tried to accentuate differences. From the desire to be separate we have laid stress upon our faults, and what is particular to us. But there is a chain whirling round, round, in a steel-blue circle beneath" (99, italics mine). To describe ourselves as individuals, Woolf says, is to miss the ever-present “steel-blue circle” just beneath. We desperately want to dwell on, to hold on to what makes us unique, special, different – but it is precisely this desire which makes us miss out on the truth.  

To say that our differences don’t matter is an unusual conclusion, but The Waves is definitely not an average novel. In fact, Woolf herself did not describe it as a novel at all, but as a “play-poem.” This makes sense in that the whole book is dialogue, yet the characters never really “speak.” For the most part, the dialogue is internal (even though we’re notified of the speaker each time by the convention “Rhoda said,” “Bernard said,” etc.) The book follows six characters – Rhoda, Jinny, Susan, Neville, Louis, and Bernard  - from nursery school to late middle age. A seventh central character, Percival, is silent, though much spoken of.

No one would blame you if you finished reading The Waves, put it down, and said, “What the hell?” It is hard to figure out. Unless of course you read it through the lens of Buddhist thought; in which case, it makes all the sense in the world. But how can I explain what I mean, without getting deep into Buddhism, and without knowing how much you know about that? You’ve probably heard it has something to do with enlightenment, and maybe you’ve seen a monk or two wearing the saffron robes, but my guess is that the majority of my readers probably feel a little bit lost when I hop on my Buddhist soapbox. So how about if I just tell you a little bit about it? Virginia Woolf is hard to understand, and Buddhism is hard to understand, too. But I think looking at the two together will make things easier. Let’s try.

The first thing to know about Buddhism is that it’s based on the Four Noble Truths. Let’s start with just the first one for now.

The first Noble Truth is that there is suffering. Maybe you have heard something about this before. I think the first noble truth can seem, by turns, both completely obvious, and completely misleading. First of all, you might think, as I did when I first heard it – well, duh! Obviously life is full of suffering. I’ve been suffering this whole time – that’s why I’m coming to Buddhism in the first place, to somehow get rid of this suffering. What I mean when I say that it’s misleading, is that many people, myself included, when they first hear about the first noble truth, take it to mean that all of life is suffering. But actually, to say that everything is suffering is quite different than to say that there is suffering. Buddhism is saying the latter, not the former. Buddhism in fact recognizes that there are a lot of spaces for pleasure in the world, and that it is okay and even good to acknowledge the possibility of pleasure, as long as we don’t cling to it (but we’ll come back to that later). It is important to recognize that the first noble truth merely admits the existence of suffering; it does not personalize it.  

In fiction, and in religious texts, phrasing is important. The first noble truth does not say “I suffer,” or “I have pain,” or “I feel sad, scared, anxious, alone, afraid,” etc. etc. It doesn’t mention mine or yours at all. It only says, “there is.” One of the central tenets of Buddhism is the idea of non-self, that this notion we have of ourselves as possessing certain qualities and emotions is false. We are not “selves,” individually, but small parts of the vast whole which is made up of everything in the world. Maybe the monk Ajahn Sumedho can explain it better than I can. In The Four Noble Truths he explains that “to let go of suffering, we have to admit it into consciousness. But the admission in Buddhist meditation is not from a position of: ‘I am suffering’ but rather, ‘There is the presence of suffering’ because we are not trying to identify with the problem but simply acknowledge that there is one. It is unskillful to think in terms of ; ‘I am an angry person; I get angry so easily; how do I get rid of it?’ – that triggers off all the underlying assumptions of self and it is very hard to get any perspective on that. … We tend to grasp and identify rather than to observe, witness and understand things as they are” (17). The first noble truth does not judge; it simply acknowledges.

Upon reading The Waves for the second time, I noticed that some of the characters speak in this non-possessive way. "There is agitation and trouble here. There is gloom. … There is anguish here" (8). "I shoot to the bottom among the weeds and see envy, jealousy, hatred and spite scuttle like crabs over the sand as she speaks. They are our companions. … Here are hate, jealousy, hurry, and indifference frothed into the wild semblance of life. These are our companions" (116). Interestingly, these two examples come from Bernard and Rhoda, respectively, the two characters I believe to be most advanced on the path to enlightenment, or seeing things as they truly are. In contrast, some of the other characters speak in a less “skillful” way: Susan, “Now I will wrap my agony inside my pocket-handkerchief" (7), and Neville, “I excite pity in the crises of life, not love. Therefore I suffer horribly" (93). Unable as they are to separate the “violence” of emotion from their concept of them“selves,” they struggle to see beyond the “veil” into the truth of reality.

The second Noble Truth is that there is an origin of suffering, and that the origin of suffering is attachment to desire. But more on that later – this is enough to think about for one day!    

East of Eden, Steinbeck

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

1952

USA

Are people inherently good, or are they evil? What about individuals? Can we change our destiny, or are we in fact “born this way” and unable to change? That’s the question John Steinbeck tackles and (I think successfully) answers in his epic and entertaining novel, East of Eden. I could write 20 pages or more on this book, but with respect for your time, dear reader, I won’t. Just know that to get the real deal, though, you should read it yourself, and then write your own report in the comments section, to which I will happily reply.

East of Eden follows two sets of brothers – Adam and Charles and, later, Adam’s sons, Cal and Aron. The Biblical story of Cain and Abel provides a framing device for these two separate but very much connected tales. In case you forgot, Cain and Abel are the brothers from Genesis who each made offerings to God, but God preferred Abel’s gift over Cain’s, prompting Cain to kill his brother in a fit of jealousy. When he’s questioned about Abel’s whereabouts, Cain answers with the famous line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The story is important not only because it’s echoed in the relationship between the brothers, but also because it’s discussed at length by several of the characters, and used by them (and by Steinbeck) to make sense of the world.

The problem with the Cain and Abel story, for the characters in East of Eden, is its deceptive simplicity. If Cain was just a bad person, then he could not have helped killing his brother, and where is the instruction in that? Also, why does this story remain one of Christianity’s most popular, told again and again when so many others are forgotten?  The answer, according to Lee, an amateur philosopher and Adam’s servant in East of Eden, hinges on one particular word. Whether or not God promises Cain, before he murders his brother that Cain “shall” rule over Abel, or commands him, “thou shalt” rule over him, or whether he offers this as one out of many options, “thou mayest,” makes all the difference in the world, according to Lee. “Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” In other words, we have freewill. We can’t escape the fact that we’re shaped by our own natures, which may tend toward the light or the dark, but we do not have to be slaves to our natures. With intention and acceptance, Steinbeck says, we can overcome them.

Some have complained that Steinbeck’s treatment here is heavy-handed, too obvious. Indeed, his message is not shrouded in metaphor and literary invention like so much of what we take to be good literature. And yet, despite how obviously the author tries to serve us his meanings on a platter, it’s still possible to miss them, because though his writing isn’t particularly subtle, the things he’s writing about are. If acceptance of the simultaneous existence of both good and evil – in each of us – were easy and unproblematic, there wouldn’t be wars and killing and crime. In reality, the grey area is troublesome, and freewill creates a lot more complications than either of the false paths of obedience or fatalism. The quest to find comfort in a middle way between extremes is what drives all of us, then, since the time of Cain and Abel, to Steinbeck, to now, because whether we like it or not, in-between, “both/and,” sometimes but not always is the nature of the world. We don’t live in Eden, but we don’t live in Hell, either. To live fully, we’re going to have to accept this middle ground for what it is – not great, not terrible, but true. Life isn’t simple, but we may as well embrace the paradoxes, Steinbeck tells us, with an open, active mind, and a bottle of ng-ka-py. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, trans. Thurman

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Padma Sambhava

Translated  by Robert A.F. Thurman

Tibet

8^th or 9^th century

What did I think The Tibetan Book of the Dead would be like? Well, not like what it is, that’s for sure. Yet if I had to say in a general way what I thought before reading it I guess I expected it to disclose some secrets or insights about what happens when we die, and it definitely does do that. According to The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between, as it is known in Tibet, dying is extremely weird, scary, and dangerous. Unlike in Christianity, where it’s what you do before you die that determines what will happen in the in-between (and if you’re Protestant, like I was, then there are only two possibilities) in Tibetan Buddhism the real work of deciding the fate for your next life begins after you’re physical body is dead. That’s not to say that what you do before you die doesn’t matter; it does, but mostly because it either prepares you, or leaves you dangerously unprepared, for what comes after. 

Though Tibetan Buddhists believe that life is “boundless,” and that, since we do not come from nothing and therefore cannot become nothing, our lives must go on in some form, they are nonetheless quite worried about dying. Indeed, because the in-between stage, when a being passes from one life to another, is so fraught with choices, Tibetans are probably even more concerned about death than we are. Thurman tells us, “But the core of Buddha’s discovery was the essential reality of freedom – that underlying the lived reality of existence is the immediacy of total freedom, especially freedom from suffering, from bondage, from ignorance. This essential freedom can be realized by the human mind as its own deepest and most true condition. This realization makes it possible for freedom to prevail over the habitual suffering of personal experience. So the realized individual is thenceforth held apart from suffering; not held in anything, but held out of binding patterns” (14). The death point is one of the opportunities to separate oneself from suffering, but it is also a time and place where “binding patterns” are more comforting and tempting than ever before. Enlightenment realization doesn’t just happen. One has to condition herself in order for non-suffering to become reality. How to do that?

The Great Book of Natural Liberation has a few suggestions. The first, naturally, is to prepare for death during your life. This means, among other things, practicing personal mind control. “In order to create something, first you have to imagine it. And imagination can be extremely powerful in life-between reality,” as well as in this life (14). If one is practiced in imaginative meditation, then he will be better able to deal with the powerful images his mind presents to him in the in-between, and be more prepared to fend them off with calculated ideations of his own.

The second part of the book is the readings and prayers that the living read to the deceased person in order to help them navigate through the six realms of the in-between and make the best choices possible. “For at the death point every being, especially a human being, has the ideal opportunity to discover real freedom from addictive habits, delusive perceptions, and misleading conceptions. Therefore, in Tibetan culture it is considered important to help a loved one through the actual process of death, to avoid distracting and frightening places such as hospital emergency rooms, and to arrange circumstances where the assistants can stay with the body at least for some hours” (120). Though in our culture crying and showing our sadness over death is expected, in Tibetan and other Buddhist societies this type of behavior, at least around the dead person, is frowned upon because it distracts the deceased from the crucial work of navigating the in-between, and may make them cling to the life they’ve left, which is counter-productive in the quest for enlightenment or, if complete freedom cannot be attained, then the best possible rebirth in this or another realm.

The deceased needs her full concentration at the death point because as she traverses the in-between realms beautiful and terrifying images of deities, light, and demons will appear to her. What the prayers in the Book of Natural Liberation remind us is that all of these – pleasant and terrifying – are emanations of our own mind, and it is our reaction to them that will determine our next phase of being. One thing I found really interesting about the translation I read was that while the author described the images of the Buddhist deities and figures in precise detail, he also mentioned again and again that if one was from a different religious background then they should practice becoming comfortable with the gods, angels, and demons from their own tradition, as the images that will appear to you are those that are already in your mind.  So if you’re Christian you will want to spend time visualizing and becoming comfortable with the distressing imagery in the book of Revelations, as well as with the comforting spirit of Jesus Christ as, according to Thurman, these figures can help you find your way to a place of peace and liberation rather than fear, aversion, and clinging when you realize that they are merely images from inside you, and not real in any other way.

I’m very glad I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I feel I have a stronger understanding of Buddhism itself, and have plenty of new ideas about death to process. But I also recommend the book because its central message is one that is useful well before we die, and can be summed up in a single question which I would like to remember to ask myself, and answer honestly, when my mind begins to attack me in my waking, daily life: Is this (problem, image, fear, worry) real, or is it all in my head?

To the Lighthouse, Woolf

To the Lighthouse

Virginia Woolf

1927

England

“No, the other was the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too.”

            The essence of the book is that everything one thinks, feels, and sees is real, at least for that moment. One wants to sum the book up with some definite truths – either there is connection among people, or there is not connection among people and we all, as Mr. Ramsay says, “perish, each alone.” Come on, Woolf, make up your mind already! a reviewer might be inclined to shout. But the flashing in and out is, of course, the point. Can people connect, the book asks? Yes. When, how? Seldom, it answers; the how changes all the time.

            The book has three parts: The Window, Time Passes, and The Lighthouse. The first sets the scene of the Ramsay family at what might be considered the height, or heyday of their communal happiness. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are staying at their house at the seaside along with their eight children and several family friends. Though the story comes to us primarily through the consciousness of Mrs. Ramsay, the thoughts of a few of the children and several of the guests are also conveyed. The overall impression is of a cozy life of pleasure, marred by only fleeting disturbances of emotion.  

In the Time Passes section we are told, in small, bracketed paragraphs, that Mrs. Ramsay and two of her children have passed away in separate incidents. The beautiful and melancholic descriptions of nature, light and shadows here reminded me a little of Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson, which I have reviewed on this blog before.

Finally, in The Lighthouse, a few of the family members – Mr. Ramsay and two of his children – and two of the guests return to the seaside house. This section is primarily told through the still (happily) unmarried painter, Lily Briscoe.

            “Was there no safety? No learning by heart the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown?” 

            These thoughts of Lily’s hint at one of the central themes of this book, and of all of Woolf’s fiction – Time. How do we, and how do others, change? Why does everything always change? Perhaps most importantly, what remains? All of the characters in To the Lighthouse ask themselves these questions in different ways. What they do not do, however, is ask each other. This brings us to the next most important theme in the book – Connection. Everyone here seeks connection with others, and all find moments of it. For no one, though, does this sense of connection to humanity last longer than a few brief, blissful moments. This remains true. The characters’ understanding and acceptance of that truth changes.

            All of the typical Woolf elements are here: waves, the seaside, rocks, light, shadows, parties, artist characters. And, as I said, so are her usual preoccupations – Time and Connection. It’s tempting to judge a writer, such as Woolf (or Robbins, or Auster, or Austen, or Huxley, etc etc) for getting stuck on a theme or a particular set of questions. We could dismiss these writers as “one trick ponies,” but I contend that in so doing we would miss out on each of their beautiful attempts to convey what haunts and inspires them.

            What do you think? If a writer always comes back to the same themes, do you get bored? Do you stop buying their next books? Or do you find that you love their voice, style and particular way of looking at the world so much that you don’t mind the repetition, instead enjoying journeying along with them on a new, slightly different foray into their obsessions?

Between the Acts, Woolf

Between the Acts

Virginia Woolf

1941

England

“And if we’re left asking questions, isn’t it a failure, as a play?”

I can’t help but feel that critics have missed the point of Virginia Woolf’s fiction altogether, and when I think about that I find that I’m not surprised she ended up killing herself. I don’t mean that killing herself was the right thing to do, or that I fully understand why she did it, because of course we should all be brave and carry on, and because of course I am personally not able to write like Virginia Woolf. Still, when I read proclamations like the one on the back of my copy of Between the Acts, I feel deep sympathy for the famous writer: “Miss La Trobe is Virginia Woolf’s burlesque of herself as artist, and through her she states the truth about the artist and his increasing endeavor to make his audience see.” Probably I’m missing a great deal of Walter Allen’s argument because I’ve only read this single sentence on the back of my book, but based on this excerpt I have to wonder if he’s read the book at all, or any of Woolf’s other novels. Surely Allen is correct that Woolf presents aspects of herself as artist through the character of the playwright, Miss La Trobe, but I find the idea of assigning the person of “Woolf” to just one character at best limited, and at worst to miss the point of every Woolf novel I’ve ever read.

A short novel, Between the Acts is set in a single day in 1939. As in all of Woolf’s work however the passage of time and the “spirit” of the various ages play as much of a role as the present moment, giving the reader a broad-lens view of the world as well as a close-up of a variety of characters. On this particular day there is to be a play on the grounds of the country home of the aging brother and sister, Bart and Lucy. The plot consists mostly of these two, along with some friends and family, attending the play. The narration is omniscient, giving us a great deal of insight into the major and minor characters’ thoughts. A second, somewhat more accurate, blurb on the back of my book says that “during the performance the spectators are held together. Unity appears to be triumphant. But not for long. When the play ends they fall apart again. And even between the acts the semblance of unity is lost…” I agree with the essence of this statement, but not the tone. It seems to me here to be presented as a pessimistic message, but it is only gloomy if read without the lens of Buddhism. With “right thinking” in terms of Buddhism, one can observe the truth of reality without judging it. Unity and disunity, pain and pleasure, beauty and ugliness are real, present, and constantly in flux. This book dwells on impermanence but hints that it is not a cause for despair. Instead, Woolf suggests, we should look to the present moment, not the past or future, for our enjoyment of life and all its fleeting charms.

The recurring image of the church is the most conclusive evidence to support my point that Woolf is exploring larger spiritual questions here than merely the role of the artist. The profits raised by the play, we and are told, will be used to install electric light in the church, thus “illuminating” it (i.e. “enlightening” it?). Convention, in this case symbolized by the Christian church, works as a blind which veils reality. Though Woolf questions the church, and its adherents’ unexamined belief in it, she doesn’t ridicule believers. Lucy, in her earnest search for spiritual meaning via her Christian faith, is respectfully and sympathetically rendered. Yet her brother’s thoughts about her - “How imperceptive her religion made her! The fumes of that incense obscured the human heart. Skimming the surface she ignored the battle in the mud.” – also carry weight. And still, again, we must consider that it is the Reverend who, at the end of the play, offers what is (in my opinion) a plausible interpretation not only for the play, but for the novel itself. “…we are members one of each other. Each is part of the whole. […] We act different parts; but are the same.” The Buddha himself can hardly explain interconnection better. And isn’t it lovely that it comes from a man of God in Woolf’s vision? What do you make of that?

For reasons as yet unclear to me, Virginia Woolf was either unaware (partially, perhaps, but surely not totally), or unable to accept or openly acknowledge the teachings of Buddhism, despite the fact that they crop up all over her work: nothing is solid, everything is constantly changing, true reality is hidden, everything ends, the past and the future are no longer with us; all we have is the present moment, and that is often painful. Or maybe the truth is that she understood Buddhism, but also recognized the necessity of finding another, and another, and still another way to convey these truths in order to reach as many audiences, and as much of herself, as possible. Most probably, it is all of these, and more. Between the Acts is conflicting, unclear, momentary, fleeting, weighty, beautiful, and melancholy because that is how life is. It is the work of a brilliant mind trying and, in my opinion, succeeding at inventing a new plot – that of exploring life as it really is: troubling, tense, and full of contradictions.   

The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov
written 1928-1940, published 1973
Russia

“The devil only knows…”

The first novel I’ve read since finishing my Master’s degree in English was, perhaps appropriately, The Master and Margarita. Although I didn’t enjoy every moment of the reading, I do think it is a good book because I keep thinking about it and making connections days later.

The novel is about the devil. His name is Woland. He has a three part retinue made up of Koroviev, Azezello, and a large black cat called Behemoth. These three make up the unholy trinity, except of course it doesn’t quite line up, since God “The Father” is himself a part of the Christian Trinity, and here Woland is separate from it. This troubles me somewhat, as one interested in Christian symbolism, but it’s not, I think, as important as the book’s message, which is (I think) that the devil – i.e. an opposing force to God - is not a horrible tragedy, but necessary.

How can “evil” be necessary? In the Master and Margarita Bulgakov demonstrates that sometimes “bad” can be a force of “good,” and vice versa. For example, in writing a novel about the contentious Christian figure, Pontius Pilate, the Master performs an act of “good.” In loving Margarita he commits “evil,” because Margarita is already married. Yet, both writing and love bring the Master pain and happiness. One action is considered “right” and one “wrong,” but their results do not accord to their supposed moral values. The novel questions what moral value really means – an extremely appropriate and telling approach, considering the climate of censorship in which Bulgakov, in Soviet Russia, wrote.

The fact that the novel begins with and continually returns to Pontius Pilate was a source of confusion and (mostly) enjoyable intrigue for me. Looking back at the book as a whole, I have an idea as to why Bulgakov chose Pilate to make this point. In the Bible, which is more or less populated by characters whose moral status is clear and known (especially in the Old Testament) Pilate stands out as someone both extraordinarily important, and as someone whose morality remains ambiguous. Pilate, of course, was the Prefect of Judaea when Jesus was put to death on the cross. Though the Bible (and the Master’s novel) portrays Pilate as sympathetic to Jesus (Ha-Nostri, in Bulgakov’s text) one feels compelled to cast judgment on him since, however unwillingly, he carries out the public’s request to release another prisoner, and instead crucify Jesus. In the Bible Pilate infamously washes his hands in front of a crowd of onlookers, perhaps attempting to absolve himself symbolically of his role in the death.

According to the characters in Bulgakov’s text, Pilate’s crime is cowardice: he lacks the courage to admit his beliefs and defy the public’s, and the government’s, wishes. So, should Pilate be sent to Hell? Bulgakov seems not to think so. Neither do I. Our reasons, I think, are similar; Pilate’s “bad” action was ultimately an essential cause of the “good” that came out of it –that is, the resurrection of Jesus and his triumph over death. For the premise of the Christianity of the New Testament to work, Jesus must die, otherwise he cannot rise from the dead to “conquer sin” and offer eternal life to his followers. Hence Pilate (or if it hadn’t been Pilate, someone else) had to allow Jesus to be killed. Good and evil are intertwined; one cannot exist without the other. Thus, in a sense, one is in fact composed essentially of the other. The Bible suggests this, though many Christians forget it. If we cannot tell what action is really good, and which is really bad, The Master and Margarita compels one to wonder – does the world have any meaning, order, or logic to it? Or is everything merely a great game of absurdity? What do you think Bulgakov is saying?