hermit's thatch

Q. You have been pursuing meditation?

A. Yes. It is going well. Just an aside, though: I notice in reading here and there a growing corporate and institutional interest in meditation. How can they impart the values of meditation when coming from there?

Q. It’s been coming since the late seventies with the 1975 book Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, a Harvard physician. You could call it a secularization, though its more than that. Benson’s schema was based on Transcendental Meditation, popularized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Which was based on reciting a mantra. Benson was trying to address the excess epinephrine or cortisol in the body, which sets off an overreaction to stress, even when stress is not perceived. The issue is far more complex than was made out to be, and continues to be complex, even though drugs address excess epinephrine and high blood pressure. The issue is complex,too, because each individual has multiple points of stress, some more obvious, most unconscious or subconscious. Today most of the recommended regimes of meditation no longer even try to address the more deep-seated sources. The corporate and institutional programs simply try to get workers fortified enough to reenter the work world every Monday morning, to carry on in the midst of stresses, anxiety, worries, insecurities, just living in the world and being productive enough for somebody else.

A. Is it legitimate?

Q. I suppose the effort is trying to help modern people cope with modern society. Although society, the world, has always been this way, to some degree. That’s why practice of meditation arose in the first place, the condition of living. I am not sure how successful the effort is in imparting particular values. Only in terms of reconciling oneself to the world, life, and oneself. The danger of the corporate method is when it is used simply to inoculate employees to their work, highly stressed and perhaps inimical to their mental health, if not irrelevant, demeaning, or pointless.

A. That’s what I thought.

Q. How about your practice? You are following a traditional system of Zen?

A. Yes. It is going well. Plus I am reading reflectively, poets, philosophers, thinkers. I discovered and am following the advice, the mentality, if you will,of Shunryu Suzuki’s beginner’s mind, trying to maintain the simplicity and the renewed energy each time I sit.

Q. That’s very good. Attitude is important. How are the mechanics?

A. Well,for one thing, I am not distracted by images at all. (Laughs.) Perhaps, I thought, it’s because my eyesight is poor. Without glasses I don’t see much, so closing my eyes shuts out a lot of potential image-making.

Q. Like the old comic strip where the sleeper has a dream bubble over his head but the images in it are out of focus. He puts on his glasses (still asleep) and suddenly the images in the dreamer are clear.

A (Laughs.) They were Borges’s dreamtigers, reversed back to childhood. Where they are clear, but don’t mean much.

Q. What about thoughts?

A. Some people say one ought to observe the thought, note what it is, then ignore it, let it float away, like a cloud. Others say just ignore it. The latter, that’s what I do. If I look at it, so to speak, I give it life, give it credence. Better to let it float past, right? Except sometimes it floats away too slowly!

Q. Yes, best ignore it. What about sounds?

A. Ah, now that’s interesting. First off, I don’t like mantras. Why generate or contrive things? Isn’t breathing enough? At least it is normal, necessary, a reflection of a universal sign of being alive, of being itself. But sound, which is noise? Sometimes I repeat conversations, pieces of news reports or the like. I let them go as soon as I can. And music! Even if I recently listened to music, at the time of meditation I have the snippet of music stuck in my head!

Q. What Oliver Sacks, the neurologist, called “earworm” in his book Musicophilia.

A. Exactly. And very hard to get rid of. Didn’t he say that the only way to get rid of an earworm is to replace it with another earworm?

Q. Yes, unfortunately. Until they give out. Earworms are my trouble, too. You know, it just comes down to not listening to music, at least not too frequently or regularly. A regular music fast is good. Replace music with music that has no melody, no tune, and no rhythm. That would be ambient music, at least that genre that has no intentionality, that reflects a quietude the composer found in a particular state of mind. Another “cleansing” genre is the music, the sound, of the shakuhachi, the Japanese flute. Some traditional works are better than modern ones, though Stan Richardson is a top artist in this regard. Also, I am always searching for true minimalist music, though there are a lot of versions of that, not all reliable. But the search is interesting in itself

A. Yes, very good. I will pursue it.

Q. And for how long are you meditating?

A. Started with ten minutes, then fifteen. Much too short to accomplish much. It takes that long just to silence the earworm, you know, or to cast out that lingering thought-cloud. I am finding twenty minutes good for my present level.

Q.Good. If you can do thirty minutes, so much the better. Then forty minutes. And so forth. But you know yourself.

A. Meditating is almost like exercising that long, especially like stretching that long.

Q. Think of it more like going for a walk. A twenty minute walk is the same as forty minutes, just longer. But if you are focused the walk you will not notice the extra time. And walking you have to plan a route, even if doubling over the same terrain. Not so with meditation. You just launch out until the meditation timer calls you back.

A. True enough. The longer the session, the better the breathing, too.

Q. You will find that the first sign, the regularity, the depth, of breathing. After a while, you are not just observing the breathing, which you are supposed to be doing all along, you are actually falling away from any observation, any sort of spying or overseeing, of the breathing. You may find that you are watching your whole self, not merely the breathing. You may find yourself observing from a point beyond your self, indifferent to your self and that your body is being “breathed.” Sometimes observing the breath too literally can get mixed up with causation. The longer meditation period addresses that by detaching the observer even from the breath, and therefore the self from the self that is breathing or is being “breathed.”

A. That’s an interesting way to look at it. You mean you forget that you are there and sitting and breathing?

Q. Yes, in effect. Of course, you always know, but you are not giving primacy, it is falling away to the process. The mind’s emptiness allows this to happen. That is perhaps a goal of meditation, but we don’t want to talk about goals because we are not trying to accomplish or succeed at anything. We are just sitting and letting the universe express itself during the mind’s silence. Or, frankly, not express itself.

A. And from this silence come all the healthful benefits people want from meditation?

Q.That’s right: calmness, relaxation, lower blood pressure and the like. Lots of what I call “secular” programs aim at these results. They don’t see — or don’t care — what the deep resources that proffer these benefits are. They don’t want to promote a philosophy, after all, not a spirituality. But the resources are there, waiting for us, and only need encouragement, nurturing, watering, so to speak. If these deeper resources help, fine, they will say with a wink. But there is always the sad fact that people will not have the fullest sense of meditation and its potential if they don’t dig deeper into the historical origins and resources of meditation. Meditation isn’t just for coping.

What could be simpler! The great thirteenth-century Zen philosopher Dogen reduces the sum of the journey on the Way to a short essay in his enormous Shobogenzo entitled “The Eight Awarenesses of Great People.” The list of awarenesses is presented not as moral precepts but those characteristics Buddhas (“great people”) have observed and adhered to during their lives. The list is what Dogen describes as Shakyamuni’s last teaching. Here is the list:

1. Having few desires.
2. Being content.
3. Enjoying quietude.
4. Diligence.
5. Unfailing recollection.
6. Cultivating meditation concentration
7. Cultivating wisdom.
8. Not engaging in vain talk.

These points are almost self-explanatory, welcoming to one who seeks simplicity and wisdom, solitude, tranquility and self-awareness. Having few desires frees the self from interdependence and the affliction of chasing after illusions and encumbrances. To be content is to be in the state of having few desires. To be satisfied with little or with what has minimally presented itself promotes the goal of desirelessness. Contentment resists the insistence that things go the way we want them to go. Contentment allows us to tolerate the vicissitudes of life, now and in the future.

We cannot enjoy quietude with our mind pursuing what is happening about such-and-such. Quietude is contentment and simplicity, regardless of what is happening “out there.” Quietude must be a core within the mind. We tend to underestimate the effect of images, sounds, and provocations from the world of red dust. Quietude enables progress enabling the embrace of the next awareness.

Diligence is persistence in following the Way, the path to enlightenment. Diligence also helps us embrace all of the awarenesses. Dogen calls it the ongoing cultivation of virtue. Unfailing recollection refers to mindfulness and persevering in right mindfulness. In itself, mindfulness is an awareness but not a final state or goal, rather an ongoing state. Thus, we are always cultivating meditation concentration, always cultivating mindfulness. This state of mindfulness, expressed in meditation but always present as a context to our mind, is strengthened by our pursuits of simplicity, contentment, quietude, and diligence, which are methods, transformed from ends to means as we advance in mindfulness, as cultivated wisdom grows in our hearts. Of course, it becomes obvious that there is no point, no advantage, indeed a great disadvantage, to engage in vain talk. We are polite, tactful, empathetic, but also aware of how vain talk can steal our concentration.

The eight awarenesses are universal if we are pursuing a spiritual path, of any tradition, in fact, or of none. The awarenesses are integral components to psychology, ethics, philosophy, or plain daily life. The recommendation of awarenesses is for anyone a prerequisite to meaningful advancement. The awarenesses are both a starting-point and a terminus, always on a continuum of daily life and the trajectory of a lifetime.

Sadness and sorrow are universal, but cultures express themselves in different ways. Some cultures observe death and passing with formality, impassivity, steeliness, others wail and cry loudly, with weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Japanese aesthetics hones precise tools for better articulating these emotions. “Mono no aware” bids us to an evocation of sadness and sorrow in a refined consciousness of impermanence and transience. This places sorrow and passing within a lifelong continuum. The phrase “mono no aware” means,literally, “the poignancy of things.” It attaches beauty to the object at the very moment of its dissipation, its loss. The sentiment perfectly captures the nature of the object or being, the nature of what is happening or becoming, in time. Importantly, mono no aware intends primarily to engage the deep participation of the onlooker.

While this sentiment is comprehensive, we can apply more specifics. Wabi captures the uniqueness of the object, eliciting a striking poignancy that presents the object as solitary, unique, not reproducible, and therefore never to be seen again. Sabi completes this sense in confirming the physical appearance of the object or being, such that the natural condition of it confirms its very impermanence, a feedback to wabi, and both together expressing the condition that evokes poignancy.

Together, or presented together, wabi and wabi define the physical parameters of an object, exhausting characteristics, tactile features, dimension, and the like. But of itself, these enumerations do not equal beauty. That is a third element, shibumi, which arises from the physical as well as the environmental context, the discovery, encounter, or unfolding of the object that stirs poignancy. Beauty stirs poignancy, not the beauty of the onlooker’s subjectivity but the beauty of nature as expressed by the totality of the object and its context. The observer may have to work to discern shibumi, for shibumi assumes a mind already disposed to quiet and silence, arrested now by an unfolding or beholding that an insensitive person will miss completely. The notion of the onlooker feeling like the artist or creator of this object, setting, or scene before them is the beginning of an aesthetic identification that can blossom into a spiritual experience.

The sense of beauty is not merely based on the pleasure derived from considering the object. In the West, aesthetics points to beauty, but evokes a different sense of poignancy, perhaps not poignancy at all but often begrudging resentment, covetousness, or arousal that stirs desire mistaken as identification. What matters in this ignorant scheme is the self. What matters is that the object satisfies the subjective criteria that the onlooker has created, often an acquisitive reaction, closed to nature.

Winter is deep. Snow is thick on the ground.The poignancy of things may be illustrated in an example:

Black-capped chickadees are simple little birds, small, charming, short-lived. They do not migrate but stay the winter, however frigid. Now they are busy pursuing winter paces. Having discovered sunflower seeds in two yard feeders, the chickadees fly back and forth, even on the coldest mornings. Here the beauty is to be identified in the simple appearance of the black, white, and gray little birds, in their dogged flights and feedings, in the persistence of their valiant work under great adversity, their ignorance of or indifference to fate, in the shortness of their beautiful lives.

Another reference to birds can be mentioned here. It is aural, not tactile, not visual: the Zen-like poem of the late poet-singer Leonard Cohen titled “Listen to the Hummingbird.” Here are the lyrics:

Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see.
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me.

Listen to the butterfly
Whose days but number three.
Listen to the butterfly
Don’t listen to me.

Listen to the mind of God
Which doesn’t need to be.
Listen to the mind of God
Don’t listen to me.

Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see.
Listen to the hummingbird
Don’t listen to me.

The poignancy expressed in the poem rests in the silence of the hummingbird, the silence of the butterfly, and the silence of the mind of God. It is to the silence of each that the poet directs us, not to the sound, the song, the noise, not to the obtrusiveness of his own words, song, or outpouring. The poignancy is deepened by the fact that the singer knows that these are, essentially, his last words, his final expression. We are bidden to not listen to the poet but turn directly to the experience of the objects, which means to the poignancy of the things.

From health and psychology magazines to medical journals, the topic of cortisol is well-covered, if not outright popular. The function of the hormone cortisol is to increase standard defenses of the body, to serve as the body’s alarm system, as the website WebMD puts it. These defenses are raised when perceived stress assaults the body, physically or psychologically, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, regulating inflammation and blood glucose, and other mechanisms for providing the impetus to “fight or flight.”

What most commentators neglect is that the cortisol function often serves as a dysfunctional hijack of otherwise normal bodily functions. The organs directed by the flow of cortisol are the most primitive in the human body: hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal. The cortisol function is a remnant of evolution that modern humans do not require for survival. A primitive Paleolithic hunter might need an alert system to gauge whether to fight or flee from a rampaging woolly mammoth. In primitive times cortisol serves a survival function, and marshals the energy needed to execute whichever decision the person elected: to fight or to flee.

But if the historical stressors no longer exist, the body stills responds as if they do. Such overreactions can create hypertension, heart rate concerns, disruption of hormones, and potential damage to organs that such conditions can precipitate. As if the cortisol hijack is not enough concern, modern stressors have come to replace outdated ones. Stress from domestic relations, jobs, commuting, children, neighbors, debts, living conditions, hostility, safety concerns, the daily news — the list can go on. Yet modern stress sources replace ancient stress sources, and multiply them in number and intensity. Further, we cannot fight or flee. These are not options in modern society. The cumulative effect of numerous stressors essentially points to the backdrop of modern existence. And yet the cycle of cortisol continues, unabated by the profound changes of civilization.

If we further identify the cycle of cortisol in the body, the diurnal rhythm, we observe that during sleep the levels of cortisol are minimal, and that they begin to rise around 4 AM and peak at 8 AM. The emergence of cortisol in this pattern suggests that ideally cortisol benignly awakes one with a gentle nudge not at all related to “fight or flight.” It is a natural biorhythm following the course of the dawn, the emergence of light, a natural cycle renewed every day.

Indeed, monastic traditions East and West historically adopted for its adherents a schedule of prayer and meditation that begins about 4 AM and concludes at 8 AM. This is no coincidence but an unspoken, perhaps intuited, insight. Such a universal tradition is addressing the need to capture the cortisol cycle, assign it a practical function, and engage it for as long as practical. Thus the practice of four hours of prayer or meditation at the beginning of the day addresses the power of cortisol, harmonizes its effects, and harnesses the cycle for good.

In the West, the monastic tradition of observing ritual hours of the day (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) served physiologically to absorb the imprint of all hours, all occasions of fight or flight, superseding subjective ruminations associated with given hours of the day or night. Western traditions varied Matins to midnight or 2 AM, with the rest of the day’s schedule varying by tradition and season. In Eastern traditions, too, hours take on significance. Theravada and Zen Buddhist monks have historically maintained similar schedules, rising at 4 AM to meditate for one hour, then chanting for one hour. At 6 AM, the monks historically went out of the monastery to beg food alms in the villages, returning by 8 AM for breaking their fast, with today’s modern discretion substituting more meditation, chanting, or light work during the latter hours. Hindu monastic routine, too,is nearly identical, further incorporating the seven chakras to address physiology and metabolism into a system of understanding the self. Thus culture, geography, and environment might move the schedule slightly forward or back in winter, or establish slightly different routines within different schedules.

If these grand traditions perceived a necessity to master the cycle we now know as the cortisol cycle, and can pinpoint the time of its rise and fall, then common sense suggests that we,too, should avail ourselves of a significant time of day and make our early daytime hours parallel those of the wisdom traditions.

In her 1934 essay, “Analysis of Oppression,” the earliest in a series of political essays, the twentieth-century French philosopher Simone Weil touches upon the state of nature as a vital insight into the nature of human beings in society. Oppression is such a fundamental aspect of social relations that Weil does not stop short at the conclusion of Marx that oppression is intrinsic to material conditions and means of production. Weil sees oppression as a more profound human expression engendered by more specific conditions than contemporary labor or production. She criticizes the Marxian position as one of “correspondence.”

Weil notes that the idea that the function creates the organ is an idea of Lamarck, an outdated notion of biology. Darwin replaced “correspondence” with the notion of conditions of existence. Function is not a cause but the result. The evolution of anything social is essentially derived from each person as he or she is, individually, whether temperament, education, custom, bias, activities, in short in human nature. Weil argues that the conditions of existence, both the natural environment and the contrived social environment with its tools, equipment, and form of social organization, already dispose the individual. And if each individual enters an existing social context and its material means and conditions, the spectrum of oppression, always accompanying (as in Lamarck), is always a condition of human society.

The most primitive economy reflects Rousseau’s original state of nature. Though Weil never mentions Rousseau, the primitive state may thus be projected as far as material conditions. In this social organization, the level of production is extremely low or limited, with each person attempting to sustain himself individually or as a nuclear unit o a family. The division of labor is based on sex. Each family produces essentially what it requires for existence, probably no more, subject to environment and nature. There is no oppression because there is, strictly speaking, no social organization. Aggression, violence, and war consist of pillage or extermination, not conquest or occupation, which cannot be consolidated given the necessities of survival. Paralleling animals, the need for observation, intuition, and mastery of technique, occupy each individual’s every effort, excluding complex social organization.

As Weil puts it, “At this stage, each man is necessarily free with respect to other men, because he is in direct contact with the conditions of his own existence, and because nothing human interposes itself between them and him.” Weil notes that in primitive conditions, nature is divinized as all-powerful and determining. At this stage, the relationship to environment is the only form of servitude.

The development out of primitive economy is itself the replacement of nature as compelling force by other human beings. The force exerted by the compellers or oppressors is oppression itself. Power or force, exerted on the part of some over others, parallels the compulsion by the force which is nature and environment, but another factor advantages the oppressors, namely privilege. Power consolidates all of the mechanisms of oppression: inequality, authority, monopoly. The oppressor essentially intervenes in the life of the primitive man, the ordinary man simply exercising the effort to live and work. Intervention terminates independence, autonomy, and equality. As nature’s divinized power wanes and the oppressors’ power replaces it, the oppressors divinize their privilege. Weil elaborates:

“This is what happens to begin with when the religious rites by which man thinks to win nature over to his side, having become too numerous and complicated to be known by all, finally become the secret and consequently the monopoly of a few priests; the priest then disposes, albeit only through a fiction, of all of nature’s powers, and it is in their name that he exercises authority. Nothing essential is changed when this monopoly is no longer made up of rites but of scientific processes, and when those in possession of it are called scientists and technicians instead of priests.”

At this point, then, the evolution of human society begins. Social structure and history take off. As soon as this point is reached, too, the trajectory is established: the dominance of the few over the many, regardless of geography, culture, or era. The question then becomes how humanity can extricate itself from this apparently inevitable dilemma. For the sake of speculation about the state of nature the question asks how the individual, let alone the masses, can return to a state of equality and industry that is without oppression, a status of tolerance at a minimum, peace and stability at most. Centuries of history have failed to provide a mechanism for alleviating oppression, and, indeed, oppression grows more acute in time as both man and nature have become oppressors. Weil concludes that oppression seems intrinsic to society. “It would seem that man is born a slave, and that servitude is his natural condition.”

Self-effacement is presented by standard dictionaries as the disposition of a withdrawn personality lacking self-assertion or social sensibility. To not take initiative and stake out one’s ego, even in an ephemeral situation, is seen as a character flaw, a lack of personality, or more serious on the spectrum of social disorders.

This notion of self-effacement is quickly refuted in the anecdotes of historical hermits.

Self-effacement was a virtue among historical hermits, not because it was a useful device for dropping out of situations but because it was a reflection of a deeper philosophy of living, wherein helping others was not to be taken as a credit or exception, and withdrawal not to be taken as a weakness but strength, transcending the momentary.The project of the historical hermit required a declining of the worldly, tacitly expressed in self-effacement.

Some of the best anecdotes about self-effacement will illustrate the virtue, in a way that is startling to the modern observer. The stories break down false perceptions. Because so many sayings and anecdotes were gathered about the Christian desert hermits, here are three representative anecdotes. (The names of the characters are, for now, omitted as distracting.)

1. A chatty theologian came to visit a famous old hermit and elaborated on many theological fine-points. The hermit remained silent, so that the miffed theologian left, commenting to the old man’s assistant that the hermit had said so little. The assistant asked him to wait. He went in to the old hermit and explained how the theologian was offended. The hermit replied that the theologian was talking about subjects the hermit knew nothing about. “I only know about the passions of the soul,” he explained. The assistant went back to the theologian and explained the hermit’s response. The theologian went back in, spent the rest of the visit listening to the old hermit’s wisdom, and went away edified.

2. A bishop having heard of a famous old hermit was eager to visit him and showed up one day. He chattered about his work and his ecclesiastical responsibilities. He made personal observations. The hermit was largely silent. The bishop noticed and was ready to leave. He asked the hermit for some parting advice. The hermit looked at the bishop and said, “You ask my advice. Then, please heed it. Never come here again. You will return to your city and speak freely about me, and I will be inundated with visitors, and so I will have to leave this place, my home, and go further into the desert.”

3. The hermits in the desert lived in individual huts, cells, or cottages, within proximity of one another, coming together once a week for religious services. One Sunday, the hermits were all assembled, listening to a visiting priest (who had probably heard confessions). The priest announced that a certain Brother So-and-So must leave the assembly immediately because he was a sinner. The young man, shamefaced, did so. At that moment, an austere old hermit with long gray beard, most esteemed, stood up and began to make his way out of the assembly. “Wait, Abba!” cried the priest. “Where are you going?” The old hermit turned back half-way. “I, too, am a sinner,” he said quietly.

These stories represent different and refreshing ways of viewing self-effacement. Silence is a form of withdrawal, tacit disapproval. Perhaps the silent hermit of the first story seems “passive-aggressive.” He does not complain but replies to bad behavior with silence. One can imagine his assistant knowing this routine and absorbing the burden of the chatty theologian’s annoying presence.

In the second story, the hermit is more bold, saying exactly what is wrong with the bishop’s behavior. The hermit safeguards his solitude, his spiritual priorities, and has little sympathy for or interest in the worldly responsibilities of the bishop. Thomas Merton once quipped that the desert hermits were so successful because the bishops were far away.

In the third story, self-effacement is intrinsic to the old hermit’s spirituality, and he protects the young brother’s opportunity to remedy his life and make progress, while this solution does not occur to the visiting priest, invoking the authoritarian solution of humiliation. The old hermit, further, protects the solidarity of the hermits in general, who are dedicated to helping one another, not ostracizing any who makes an effort.

In this regard is a short anecdote about a young brother who comes to a wise old hermit and confides his troubles, plagued by certain thoughts for the last thirty days. “You have been plagued by these thoughts for thirty days?” says the old hermit. “I have been plagued by such thoughts for the last thirty years!” The hermits were humble, realistic, and dogged in their pursuit of virtue. Why, then, should they put down another?

One of the great desert hermits was Moses, a black man who had been a robber, knew the world well, and then came to spirituality, becoming a hermit. Moses is famous for his cogent advice to a young brother who asked what to do about thoughts. Moses said, “Go to your cell and stay there, and your cell will teach you everything.”

In a further anecdote about Moses, self-effacement is again expressed as a method of guarding solitude. It happened that he was out walking near a crossroads. A party of pilgrims approached. They asked eagerly for the cell of Moses. Moses replied, “Why do want to see the cell of that old fool?” But the pilgrims insisted on knowing the whereabouts of the cell of Moses. “In that direction,” said Moses, pointing exactly in the opposite direction of his cell.

Something piquant about these stories suggests that the desert hermits were no fools. The hagiography of Athanasius, filled with monsters and demons, does not ring well with the quiet persistence and psychology of the hermits. Similarly, the salacious hermit portraits of Flaubert and Anatole France entirely miss the strength of spirituality and self-effacement that is authentically reprinted in the desert hermit sayings.The tales are for modern mentalities.

A wonderful and literal story of self-effacement is to be found in Kamo no Chomei’s Hosshinshu, a collection of hermit stories from twelfth-century Japan. For many years, a brilliant instructor of novices had taught at a particular temple, garnering great repute and many disciples. But the old teacher longed for the solitary life, and one day he retired, disappearing from the temple and the city. Years passed. One day a man was traveling to a distant province. He had been the teacher’s disciple many years before. The man came to a wide river. He could not pass, for there was no bridge, but others lingering on the shore informed him that a ferryman would escort them all across momentarily. The ferryman appeared. The traveler looked up. The ferryman was his old teacher. Tears welled in his eyes. He wanted to say something. They had eye contact, just for a moment. The teacher acknowledged nothing. The travelers entered the ferry, the traveler of the story sitting at the fore of the boat in order not to see his teacher, and not to be seen with tears in his eyes. At last, they reached the other shore, and the traveler walked on, continuing his journey. Two months passed when the traveler made the return trip. He came to the same river, but another ferryman was working there. The traveler asked other travelers about the ferryman he remembered, describing him. “Oh,” they replied. “About two months ago, he abruptly left. We have never seen him again.”