hermit's thatch

When Nietzsche announces the death of God – through the persona of Zarathustra and the madman in the marketplace – his statement is not a theological one but a cultural one. Philosophy maintains a logic or set of parameters for understanding ramifications for culture, though this process is as much that of the historian or anthropologist.

Nietzsche himself was professing neither atheism nor nihilism. On the contrary, he observes that Western morality has been historically – and precariously – based on traditional Christianity. Over centuries, Western society weakened its belief system, eventually scoffing at its own foundation.This was not simply a secularism. The West increasingly depended on an ethics founded on a system no longer efficacious. The process may have been a historical exhaustion, while rationalism, science, and technology, hastened the defaulting of religious belief to a public morality. What rationalists and atheists did not pursue was to understand and anticipate the effects of the demise of this singular structure on the ethics of society at large. To them, the topic was an abstract matter of proof versus refutation, of belief versus non-belief, without a cultural context. What happens when society at large comes to realize the basis of its ethics?

Nietzsche argues that God maintains an inner logic, an inner life, so to speak. The biblical or scriptural presentation of God maintains this inner logic so long as the society reflected the sociological structures wherein the entire cultural structure supported itself. The scandals of medieval popes or wars of religion in the Reform centuries had no effect. When the structures of society began to change dramatically, economic, material, environmental, the foundation began to change. Kierkegaard may have been the first insightful philosopher and Christian on the topic of God.

Kierkegaard observes the difficulty of belief or faith in God. The doubt would not have arisen in an earlier era, and this paradox furthers Kierkegaard’s distress. He observes the inevitability of faith as subjective, that a believer becomes a blind “knight of faith,” that no institutional presence or church could compel or persuade in the modern era. Further, Kierkegaard reacts in horror to realize the implications of two famous biblical stories. God demands that Abraham sacrifice his son, a potential murder. Kierkegaard wonders how Christians can continue to celebrate the figure of Abraham, realizing the existential despair that Abraham suffered at the whim of God, and the decision to resist God against ethics. Then, too, God hatches a bet with the Devil to torment Job and test his fidelity. Kierkegaard thus observes that God and ethics are not necessarily compatible within the Christian tradition. Kierkegaard does not reject the existence of God but Nietzsche logically follows up the social implications.

The madman in the marketplace is a vivid story. Here is Nietzsche’s own text, from his Joyful Science:

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. “Whither is God?” he cried; “I will tell you. We have killed him — you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us — for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto.”

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars — and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: “What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?”

An article writer in a past issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle described his personal interests, how little they intersected with worldly concerns, and asked rhetorically:

Am I out of the loop? Well, that depends. As William Carlos Williams wrote, “It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.” I’d argue that I’m in the loop, the loop that Hsieh Ling-yun and Meng Hao-jan and Wang Wei and Han Shan and Su Tung-P’o and Shih-wu and countless others call home. It’s a bigger loop, an older loop, a far more stable and enduring loop.

That much said, it is difficult, isn’t it, to write on a computer, flip a switch for electricity, expect the refrigerator to preserve food, drive a vehicle down the street — and still claim to be out of the loop. The loop is bigger not just because we think we can afford to absent ourselves from parts of it, but because, happily, we have access to historical resources like the ancient Chinese poems. The content of ancient poems is just one example of an intellectual alternative to a physical reality.

The Taoists understood that only “heaven and earth” last. Buddhism called it impermanence. But these are natural law, so to speak, the nature of things, in short, the Tao. Today (and from the beginning, really) the evanescent is not what infects or undermines the “ten thousand things” but rather the material and artificial culture that surrounds us daily and rips us away from nature. Moderns might call the Tao flux, but not impermanence, permitting moderns to enjoy the worldly concerns our writer disdains. (One strives for a deeper metaphor than “heaven and earth” when reflecting on the destruction of earth itself, while the populace blithely ignores nature.)

Being in the loop with the ancients is always relevant because human culture is itself primarily a superficial gloss to material existence, an epiphenomenon that ignores the authentic values that we glean from remnants like poetry. We can weary of art, music, or literature as so much manipulation when a product for mass consumption pursued one day and discarded the next. In contrast, the ancient Chinese poets present a structure from feelings, and present feelings with structure. This structure and the well of authentic observation from which they emerge is transcendent. At the same time that the ancient poets bid us to pay attention to the moment — for it is the whole outpouring of the universe at the given time — we find in poetry the preservation of moments, reproduced for us accidentally, not consciously. For us, who have access to it, we grasp it deliberately and affirmatively.

The “moment” is brokenly understood by moderns who assign it a hedonism of spirit, a false epicureanism. For the ancient Chinese poets, as Taoists or Buddhists, the moment is the instance of the Tao to be understood. It is to treasure the snow in winter and not long for the flowers of spring. It is to treasure the fruit of summer and not rue the coming autumn; it is to treasure the falling leaves of autumn and not reflect on the snows of winter. It is to appreciate the moment before it is gone and not to resent its passing, not to rue what is gone or what is to follow.

This is not romanticism of the moment but a profound awareness of what is real. All of time is the Tao or Path, and the path is only ourselves watching in silence and awe. To this loop, yes, we can become a part, for it is a big loop and we have already been a part of it all along.

Wabi and sabi are familiar concepts of Japanese aesthetics in part because they are readily applied to objects of art, therefore tangible, observable, providing feedback to the artist and crafter making an object distinct from their mental construct. But this acquaintance and literal method of verification of the product of aesthetic principles tends to overlook deeper aspects of wabi and sabi and the concepts behind them.

In the first place, the concepts of wabi and sabi were not originally artistic or even aesthetic but religious and philosophical. Since ancient Shinto times in Japan, nature was identified as the source of spirit, including animism that posited the existence of spirits in natural objects such as mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks, but also the source of inspiration, strength, and guidance. The primitive view of nature deepened over the centuries with the influence of Buddhism, where nature already carried an epistemological component.

A fruitful philosophy of nature arose that evaluated existence and relationship of beings and constructed a way of perceiving reality and encompassing its sense of mystery or enigma. The concept of yugen emerged, the term literally meaning “dimness,” an apt sense of mythological origin and perceived governance of the universe that is elusive, difficult to grasp or define, less control. Human beings were at its mercy and enlightenment meant learning to cope with mystery, with yugen.

Yugen accommodates the sense of mystery that does not assume too much knowledge, too much surety, and dares not carry arrogance or presumption. Rather, a still and thoughtful observance and sense of wonder or awe is fostered by yugen, restoring human beings to their proper place in a large universe which occasionally reveals glimpses of itself and its inexorable ways, but mingled with beauty, provoking moments of awe and wonder.

Expression of yugen were religious as much as artistic, the latter reflecting the urge to depict and speak openly in order to hit upon insight, the religious view content to organize the sentiments of mystery into ritual and familiar expression. The Japanese waka and haiku poets came to excel in approaching yugen, just as literary drama from novels to No plays came to present situations and circumstances where human beings could approximate mystery or yugen as it engulfed their lives, circumstances, and feelings.

A second important principle of Japanese aesthetics gives animation to yugen through literature and art: mono no aware. The phrase literally means “the ah! of things” or “the poignancy of things,” referring to the evanescence or impermanence of things, understood not only as a religious concept of Buddhism but as an emotional construct, human feeling expressed in daily moments of insight, irony, and reflection. Like yugen, mono no aware can be traced to Chinese artistic expression, made unique, however, by Japanese culture.

In the arts mono no aware is expressed by an object or event or sequence, depicted in a painting, a drama, a sequence of events within disappointment and sadness in the lives of men and women, in a painting, a musical passage, a poem evoking the trembling beauty of an insightful moment felt, then lost, or by nature itself, as in the perpetual turn of the seasons, the glorious emergence of cherry blossoms only to see them inexorably fall to the ground, the cry of birds and insects in late autumn foreseeing their shortening days, the solitude of the moon casting its silent light during the long darkness of night.

Returning to yugen, to the sense of mystery that seems to govern and at times abandon the universe, does not obliterate the reading, learning, and thinking of the ages, but puts it all in perspective. The sources of mono no aware sentiment are all around us, yet only in pausing to note them do we note also the intrinsic nature of the sources, and the intrinsic nature of all beings, including ourselves.

Some years ago, a Wall Street Journal article argued that introverts are happier when acting or behaving like extroverts, who, the article maintained, are happier than introverts generally. This conclusion was repeating a common understanding not popularly questioned until Susan Cain in her 2012 book Quiet: the Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking and in her TED talk, where she argued that, specifically in the employment setting, introverts have unique skills that can establish their sense of achievement and satisfaction if the organization will accommodate them. Accommodation simply means managerial awareness of psychological distinctions that can better tap the contributions of all personalities, including introverts, who are thoughtful, observant, detail-oriented, circumspect, imaginative, and critical thinkers and excellent trouble-shooters.

A psychological trial at the University of Australia, first reported in the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest, now shows that introverts are better off not acting or behaving like extroverts.

As the researchers conclude: “dispositional introverts may reap fewer wellbeing benefits, and perhaps even incur some wellbeing costs, from acting more extroverted.” The negative observation by introverts was not merely a memory bias, having been told over and over in the past that extroverts are always happier. Rather, researchers noted that the environment fostered by managers, what researchers called “intervention,” directly affects outcomes.

Introvert personality preferences should be accommodated to help foster the preferred outcomes of the organization. “By allowing more freedom to return to an introverted ‘restorative niche,’ a less intensive intervention might also result in fewer costs to negative affect, authenticity and tiredness.”

The conclusion is more reserved that Cain’s, to be sure, but helps begin to establish a more objective view of the issues involved.

URL: https://aeon.co/ideas/acting-like-an-extravert-has-benefits-but-not-for-introverts

Anthropology has long shown that religion, rather than an intellectual contrivance or a set-out system of commandments and controls, is simply a social and cultural phenomenon, evolving in a cultural group like agriculture, healing, food-preparation, or rituals of birth, marriage, and death. Religion is loftier because it intends to address the origins of the universe and the trajectory of human existence within a perceived scheme.

But because religion is a common phenomenon, a universal expression, its contents can be cataloged and compared. The panoply of detail is fascinating, and comparative studies inviting. How each culture finds an interpretation of the universe that fits its own physical and psychological experiences reveals a criteria for self-understanding, regardless of an individual’s social or cultural upbringing. The process mitigates hostility towards one’s own culture while promoting understanding of other’s cultures. Thus distilling common factors is both a relativizing process but also a “scientific” process. Once information is gathered, imagination and creativity salvage the effort from the extremes of exceptionalism on the one hand and relativism and science on the other.

Since no modern can adhere to the practice and ritual of a given religion without, in effect, betraying or ignoring the cultural specificity of the given ritual, the dilemma for the sensitive and respectful has been to create syncretic approximations to a more universal religion, synthetic approximations to universal systems of thought, decorated by spiritual or ritualized elements.

In the Eastern world, such syncretism has been more natural: Vedanta as the product of Vedic and spiritualized Hinduism, Zen as the product of Taoism and Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism as the product of Buddhism and Bon. The distinction between popular ritual and intellectual thought, too, has been easier to maintain in the East, as even the Dalai Lama has noted. The religious tensions of the East have been promoted by external imperial expansion, as in the Muslim presence in India, the coming of Christian missionaries in China and Japan, or diasporic circumstances, as suffered by the Rohingya in Myanmar.

In the West this tension has been more intrinsic to history. Persecution, pogroms, and wars of religion have dominated Western history not only in antiquity and Early Modern Europe but even today, where violence, however, is transmuted into cultural rivalry. After the rise of science and technology, the displacement of institutional religion excluded popular spiritual alternatives other than esotericism. The influx of Western-language translations of sacred books from the East in the late 19th century, promoted a new syncretism, dominated by Theosophy, which linked Western spiritism and generic supernaturalism with imagined Tibetan Buddhism, with its deities, demons, and angels. Permutations such as Fourth Way, New Thought, anthroposopy, and other syncretic bodies of thought emerged. The premise of many syncretisms is that a more original or root body of knowledge, necessarily esoteric, exists at a level never explored or consciously suppressed by the major religious authorities.

This premise now crosses the East and West divide. Helene Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, believed that in Tibetan Buddhism were to be found mysterious supernatural powers as much as universal knowledge, and hidden masters who knew this knowledge and skills. G.I. Gurdjieff similarly presented hidden masters as the source, in his estimation the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood. In a curious inversion, the successors of Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, identified a young J. Krishnamurti as Theosophy’s forthcoming World Teacher, for which Krishnamurti was being groomed. After much education, travel, and socialization around the world, Krishnamurti rejected the ideas of the Theosophists, but he became a world teacher after all. And Krishnamurti’s premise is basically that no body of thought or tradition derived from institutions is reliable or believable. Krishnamurti combines a Socratic philosophical method of questioning with a Buddhist emphasis on self and enlightenment of self as a contemplative project.

Where does the syncretism that especially animates the Western interest in yoga, meditation, and similar practices go for vindicating the logic of the new thinking? Here T.D. Suzuki (or a successor) explains the nature of Buddhism to Westerners, and Westerners explain Buddhism to readers of specialized presses or glossy magazines that offer expensive retreats in highbrow locations around the world. As with the subject of religion, the new syncretism can be viewed simply as a cultural phenomenon. Only a given individual and the person’s intellectual effort can reconcile truth, but that is an intellectual effort that frustrates the very goal of syncretism. Is one best off sailing new waters, or familiarizing oneself with already-met waters? Or realizing that whatever waters one encounters, the river is different every time one attempts to step into it.

The eminent Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870-1945) spent much of his life in Kyoto, teaching at the university there and, after retirement in 1927, writing. He used to take breaks to walk along a quiet tree-lined path from the university along a canal, with several shrines and temples along the way. In those days, the path was doubtless solitary and restful, but since then it is populated with tourists, visitors, and small vendor stands catering to them. The path is called “Philsopher’s Walk” or “Path of the Philosopher,” retaining a sense of what it may have been like a century earlier when Nishida walked it.

In a parallel vein, philosopher’s walks are named walkways in Heidelberg, Germany — along the Neckar River, a scenic path popularized by Romantic-era writers and thinkers — and in Toronto, Canada — between the University of Toronto and a quiet old residential area. The Heidelberg area has plaques and signage, being close to old shops and a church. The Toronto path was a deliberate plan for pedestrian access to and from certain academic buildings and beyond.

A walking path conceived as a nature trail near Ripton, Vermont, is named for the American poet Robert Frost, who, however, did not walk this route during his lifetime but lectured and taught nearby for a while later in life. The US National Park Service maintains this interpretive trail, as it is called, and has put up placards of Frost poems along the trail.

(As an aside concerning Kyoto: the city of Kyoto was a priority target site for nuclear bombing for the United States Targeting Committee in World War II. The Secretary of War Henry Stimson intervened to suggest that post-war relations with Japan would suffer if Kyoto was destroyed. But the art historian and archaeologist Langdon Warner may have been the more influential voice, arguing forcefully concerning preservation of the cultural jewel of Japan that housed thousands of shrines, temples, a university, and other historically significant sites.)

The philosopher’s paths suggest a counterpart: a “hermit’s walk” or “hermit’s path.” Perhaps they exist already for some, in a deep forest somewhere, unmarked and unintended, perhaps in a public park, with placards of hermit quotations or sayings carried in the walker’s mind. Such sayings would probably include poems of Chinese wilderness poets, a passage from a Hindu or Buddhist sage, a saying of Paul of Thebes, a passage from Rousseau, Thoreau, or Muir. There are many possibilities, slanted toward nature versus society, toward the mystical or spiritual versus the formal and engaged. And perhaps a little composition book to read and reflect upon, filled with favorite sayings collected over years of reading, while taking a moment to sit on a boulder or mound, taking a break from walking. The latter, empty and meditative, a quiet state of mind in nature, is the ideal. The experience may a nearby destination or a planned visit to a nearby park, a frequent practice or an occasional vacation. Nature bathing with a little thoughtfulness is a salutary experience.

The great dilemma for dwellers of small or tiny houses is what to do with books. (Here, of course, we are not referring to electronic formats, which are sometimes a reluctant necessity; enlarging fonts for old eyes is a boon, but reading them is an aseptic experience without spatial-temporal marker, aesthetically and tactically empty, a kind of defeat.)

One rule of some simplicity advocates is that for every new book, an existing one must go. This is a hard rule when one’s collection is already considered essential, and especially after experiencing regret over a favorite or needed book long discarded. Nor does “discarding” seem a harsh word for this mechanical treadmill or quota system. Besides, who can say that what was good won’t become essential, that what was redundant and disposable becomes a much needed and now lacking insight or contained an important point overlooked or underappreciated at the time. It can be argued that giving books to a library is a good and charitable use, but having spent a career in libraries it must be said that few donations are deemed useful by the powers that judge. Let us admit, too, that a book sale or even an arrangement like Book Crossing is poor treatment of a treasured tome that is being booted from the collection based on draconian numbers. Seems as heartless as abandoning a puppy, or worse.

Ancient Chinese poet-recluses have all mentioned the limits of their book collections, sometimes rather few books at that. We only hear of Tao Chien’s books when he sits at night to browse the “Classic of Mountains and Seas” (Shan hai jing), probably his only book. Han-shan, recently reclused from court service, tells us of daily life, that

with his son he picks wild fruit
with his wife he hoes between rocks
what does he have at home
a shelf full of nothing but books.

But that was before he became a hermit, some sources suggesting that poverty and starvation killed his family.

Po Chu-i built a two-room house for his wife, daughter, and his own anticipated retirement from court. He describes the cottage in loving detail, mentioning dimensions, windows, bamboo and hemp, beams and rafters, wooden benches, two screen partitions, favorite objects: a ch’in, or lute– and books, Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist.

Stonehouse built a tiny house or hut about ten feet wide. From the outside the hut looks cramped, he admits, but he does not mind because he owns so little: a grass mattress, a slab of wood for a pillow, a gilt statue of the Buddha (and three clay ones fashioned by his own hand). Stonehouse tells us that at night he moves a “book stand to read sutras by moonlight,” but doesn’t mention any other books.

The Japanese hermit Kamo no-Chomei described his hut in detail, including his images of the Buddha. He tells us that “on the wall that faces the north I have built a little shelf on which I keep three or four black leather baskets that contain books of poetry and music and extracts from the sacred writings. Beside them stand a folding koto and lute.”

The eccentric Japanese recluse-monk Kenko, whose “Essays in Idleness” reflects a somewhat Epicurean angle to solitary living, notes (not unlike Tao Chien), that “The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.” Among his preferred reading, Kenko includes Po Chu-i and the Taoist classics of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu.

Lastly, for now, is the Japanese poet-hermit-monk Ryokan.

Ryokan describes his hut in one poem as a “three-mat hut,” but in another passage as “four-mat.” He refers to the same hut, of course, not necessarily to the number of tatami mats as flooring but to the relative size of his “little grass hut,” what he sees as “little more than four bare walls.” He mentions his one window. There is no apparent niche or divider; Ryokan speaks of “sitting along in my empty room.” On a wall several poems are written. On the bed and strewn on the floor are books of poetry. His possessions include one robe (probably two sewn as one but thin nevertheless), and a walking stick. He employed a “solitary lamp” and a hearth that burned firewood or charcoal. Ryokan mentions a kettle and a rice steamer, plus his ubiquitous bowl.

Skipping a few centuries we come to Michel de Montaigne, the French Renaissance writer of “Essays,” including a favorite titled “On Solitude.” He tells us he had plenty of room for books (being also a lawyer and civil servant) but took a different tact. He disagrees with Pliny’s advice to use solitude to devote oneself to study, for even books and learning, says Montaigne, are a tyranny. “Books are pleasant; but if by associating with them we end by losing gaiety and health, the best parts of us, let us leave them.” Further, “I like only pleasant and easy books which entertain me,” he declares, “or those that console me and counsel me to regulate my life and my death.”

Montaigne does not contradict the Chinese or Japanese hermits. Everyone values books, and if more are helpful, why not keep them, wherever in the house or hut one must find a place for them. Whenever one comes across a used book in a shop or library that is quite valuable, the surprise and delight of discovery is always refreshing. But, more glumly, its owner may have parted reluctantly with the book, or not understood it, or was forced by wrong-headed advocates of simplicity. Or perhaps its owner is no longer with us. Long life to that one who has passed, to one who loved good books as much as we do.

In an article by Raymond D. Havens titled “Solitude and the Neoclassicists,” reviewed in Hermitary, the author notes that the dry rationalist British writers of the 18th century had a deep loathing of solitude and anything or anyone interested or attracted to solitude. The author traces the attitude to anti-clericalism (solitude being identified with monks), Enlightenment enthusiasm, and a disdain for religious thought. They narrowly defined solitude as retirement at best, sloth and dissipation at worst, and held a deep aversion to being alone.

For British attitudes more sympathetic to solitude, therefore, one must turn to the eras just before and just after the 18th century. Thus the poet Alexander Pope composed “Ode to Solitude” in 1700, just before the rationalist era took hold, and John Keats composed “O, Solitude!” in 1816. Interestingly, while we may think that reflections on solitude are the provenance of age and maturity, Pope composed his poem at 12 years of age, and Keats when he was 21. For both poets, the poems were their first effort. Pope understands the nature of solitude as withdrawal and anonymity. Keats, a sociable and gregarious youth, saw solitude perfected by sharing it with a like-minded companion.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
“Ode to Solitude”

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixed; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.
______________________________________________

John Keats (1795-1821)
“O Solitude!”

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,-—
Nature’s observatory whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

In every major world religion, the emergence of eremitism or a more restrained form of solitude practice emerges at a very specific historical point in the evolution of the given religion. One may even consider such a moment a precondition to the emergence of eremitism or an equivalent practice of solitude. The question of what can sustain eremitism over time will be found within the moment itself.

And if “religion” is broadly defined as a way of looking at the universe and responding to large questions, then the historical model might be broadened to include primitive religion as well as philosophy itself. The important factor is the larger context of society and culture.

Consider Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. All of these are “scriptural” religions, to some decree, meaning that the religion presents a set of texts as authoritative. At the same time, each of these religions emerges from specific historical, cultural, social, geographic, environmental, material,and perhaps psychological, contexts. These avenues of reflection and investigation are rich, indeed. For now, here are very brief considerations of each:

Hinduism emerged from the the distinctive myths, deities, stories, rituals, prayers, and societal practices of the conquering Aryans in India. The myriad gods, their foibles and desires expressed in stories, and the social hierarchy or caste system they created around priests, warriors, mercantile, and household classes, comprise the structure in which the religious injunctions were pursued. The scripture is the Rig Veda, which has no spirituality, because the society and dominant Brahmin class had no need for it. But as that intellectual class came to recognize the shallowness of rote rites, prayers, and inadequate comprehension of self and universe, succeeding generations of Brahmins compose the Upanishads, spiritualizing the religion and forming Vedanta. In this new, refreshing spiritual movement emerges the primacy of the hermit, as a social and religious option.

Judaism reflects its desert origin in a sky god, unusual as a single deity, thus monotheism, which may have had Egyptian origins or simply reflect the stark geography of its earliest adherents. Its priests and scholars accommodated myth and history with ritual and doctrine in its scripture, dominated by the harsh image of the deity Yahweh, shaping the psychology of the Hebrew and Jewish culture. Rigidly communal in social expectations, structuring society around the family and community, the exhaustion of the old scripture after the diaspora gradually saw emergence of mysticism, especially in medieval Western Europe and later in Eastern Europe. In these mystical forays, the practice of solitude and tolerance of scholarly eccentricity in pursuit of spirituality became options to the serious adherent. Though no formal eremitism emerged in the Judaic tradition, instances of solitary behavior were tolerated.

The content of earliest Christianity remained the experience of the first generation or two witnessing the historical Jesus, for Jewish scripture retained a moral and priestly hold for a century and more. Christianity became split between adherents of the historical sense of community and values versus the emergent priestly and ecclesiastical structure that regularized (or “sanitized”) the sayings and teachings into ritual, doctrine, and dogma. As the latter forces dominated, the first wave of hermits emerged in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, lasting several hundred years and strongly reflecting a spiritual versus ecclesiastical preference. Eventually scattered geographically from their desert settings, eremitism consolidated in Greece, Ethiopia, and parts of Europe. But in Europe the ecclesiastical movement dominated (less so in Britain, southern Italy, and later, in the Low Counties). Eremitism only reached its apex in Europe with the emergence of a significant mystical movement in the later Middle Ages. Christian eremitism virtually disappeared after the Protestant reform and emergence of nation-states.

Islam shares many characteristics of Judaism, not only as an Abrahamic religion and its conception of God, but in terms of initial geography and the dominance of communalism, discouraging social life outside of family and group. A rapid 7th-century expansion from Persia to Egypt, North Africa, and Spain, could not contain a strict ritualism from welcome intellectual influences. A spirituality built around mysticism evolved into Sufism, with its emphasis on solitude as an individual practice towards greater comprehension and identification with God. As with Judaism, no hermit movement emerged, but the primacy of solitude in spirituality, however restricted or rarefied, is a notable feature.

Buddhism represented a new religious phenomenon among world religions. For centuries, the compelling moral weight of traditional ascription of sayings and teachings of historical Guatama were sufficient to guide the adherent. The religion remained largely the practice of a spiritual “elite,” leaving myth, ritual, and doctrine to the mass of societal adherents, the tenor of which was governed largely by the particular society or country. Unlike Brahmins, the Buddhist monks seldom interacted with society except on a “shamanic” basis, as in bestowing wishes, prayers, and healing formulas, especially in Tibet, where the transition from the local Bon religion sustained these rituals. Eremitism seemed inevitable in Buddhism, especially among an intellectual class not residing in large ecclesiastical structures like monasteries but pursuing Buddhism as philosophy, with a willingness to follow some ritual prescriptions as religion. The rich reflections of the historical hermits of China and Japan automatically include an entirely spiritual component, something between philosophy and poetry, weaving an eremitic movement that often absorbs the entire expression of Buddhism.

In each instance above, though sketchily presented, an inevitable conclusion emerges: eremitism thrives when ecclesiastical structure is weak or absent, when a mystical or spiritual sense of the universe is evoked, pursued, and applied and appreciated, when rote ritual and doctrine is exhausted, and when the social structure itself is challenged by the popular realization that conventional thought and formulas are insufficient to represent the heights to which the given religion can attain.

Minimalism and simplicity are often and erroneously made to be synonymous. Minimalism is a style of art and aesthetics, while simplicity refers to a style of life or of being, although it can refer to a style of doing things. It may seem that our life-style should be a form of art, and that therefore one can conflate the two terms. However, minimalism attempts to identify what can be quantitatively removed with the increasingly better results, as in a work of art or music. Colors, objects or musical notes are removed in order to achieve an effect constructing the work with fewer parts or pieces, with fewer notes or shades, but creating a new and different effect. In painting, a canvas with one color is presented. But the intent is not simple. The intent is to absorb the multiplicity of reality into a particular mood of sudden expectation, of sudden realization. In music, minimalism often repeats a series in order to achieve an effect that, as with art, is absorbing the whole of reality at the moment, and brings the listener to a poignant mood. This achievement of mood is the whole purpose of any piece of music, but in minimalism the effect is specific: emotional, poignant, evanscent.

In simplicity, life is streamlined of complexity as to convey plainness, normalcy, and regularity, an approachability based on clarity. Simplicity can be material clarity, reduction without loss of function, plainness in its deliberate elimination of color, nuance, hue, or time lapse. But simpllicity does not evoke emotion, rather drains it, neutralizes it, eliminates it as subjective. Simplicity is not the minimalizing of complexity but the return to original state, to what was sufficient at one time and can be restored to that state, appreciated as it was. Simplicity calls for a lack of judgment, opinion, or subjective imposition. Minimalism still wants you to go somewhere, while simplicity is self-sufficient and exists without you.

No better reference to a clarifying tradition in regard to minimalism and simplicity is to be found as in wabi-sabi. Here the emotional content of solitude and impermanence penetrate the assumption of control, artistic or otherwise, and the notion of imperfection (in nature and in the human product) undermine any goal of self-sufficiency. Thus, our minimalism must be precise in conveying emotion, yet it will be contrived if removed too far from nature itself and from the patterns we observe in nature, which include simplicity.

Religion and spirituality are seen as synonymous in belonging to a pool of thinking about social and historical events and phenomena. But spirituality has never been a necessary component of religion, and is often at odds with the anthropological and cultural function of religion.

Nowadays, people who are religious belong to particular sects, while those who still miss an other-worldliness derived from religion, construct an idealized, somewhat sanitized, version of religion that is called “spirituality.” As Western religious sects declined in influence during the twentieth century, spirituality as an alternative emerged. Usually spirituality was pursued by those encountering Eastern thought and realizing the primitive lack of depth in their own Western tradition. Theosophists and New Thought adherents had begun this process long ago, with a curiosity about India and Tibet, and twentieth-century successors rediscovered China and Japan. Spirituality assigned to Eastern thought allowed a new perspective for Westerners that their old religions had never pursued, with their anthropological emphasis on ritual and rote belief. Eastern thought promised a spiritual dimension accessible without ritual or weekly tithes. Undoubtedly, Western religions stopped growing (qualitatively) when their secular counterparts, the nation-states of the West, collapsed into internecine civil wars (dating from turbulent late medieval times) on to the international wars (the destructive World Wars). But more fundamentally, Western religions exhausted their theology, after which spiritualized forms of mysticism emerged. Mysticism blurred the hard definitions, dogmas, and categories so favored by ecclesiastical authorities, so that the reaction to mysticism further desiccated the religions. No wonder that today’s expression “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual” or a version of it rings inevitable but also a bit vacuous. One wants to be more specific about truth.

Meditation and relaxation are not dictionary synonyms, but given the restless mood of modern society, the desire for tranquility equates methods of relaxation with the credentials of meditation. But relaxation is the temporary suspension of the effects of traumatically ruthless society and culture, and bound to expire as soon as the individual is plunged back into the modern world. Relaxtion is sold by business interests specifically as the remedy for coping, but it was never the remedy for coping with harsh materialism, but rather for dropping out of it to discover and pursue the temporary pleasures. In this process, popular media legitimizes a particular socio-economic status and its conditions, endorses an existing relationship to money, labor in a modern technological world, and the acceptance of the materialization of culture.

Hermit and recluse are old favorite terms of juxtaposition often made synonymous by dictionaries. Strictly speaking, with a few technical exceptions, a recluse has a psychological fear of people, whereas the hermit does not. The so-called “North Pond” hermit of Maine is a classic recluse who dared not encounter people, though his fear of them was because he stole from them. What hermit would steal from anyone! Perhaps his reclusion was strategic, but it certainly made for mental stagnation and dependence, certainly not eremitism. Yet the popular media continues to call him a “hermit.” Juxtapose Po Chu-i or Ryokan, true hermits, who expressed the sentiment: “It’s not that I don’t like people, it’s just that I am so very tired of them.”