hermit's thatch

The development of an ethos of reclusion in ancient China thrived in part because it was more strongly ethical than (any) religion. Ultimately, it was stronger than Confucianism, and found further philosophical support in Taoism. It would be very difficult to transport this ethos to the West or try to embed it in Western religion.

Spring continues in our part of the world. The banana trees that die annually with the frost are reappearing vigorously from the bare soil. Basho, himself a hermit, was felicitously named “banana leaf.” He mentions somewhere how much he enjoyed the leaves against his window in summer, especially with the rain. Presumably, it, too, died, every winter, only to resurrect in the most miraculous way. But everything else is turning green, from the bare branches of the fig to the favored grass of rabbits, who also have returned. As so many sages have said, it is not the suspension of natural law that should be considered miraculous, but rather the existence of the cycle renewed indefinitely. Life itself, every moment of it, is a miracle. Would that we can always appreciate this simple truth.

Business around the house means activity outside the house. In a short time, we have seen bear, deer, foxes, no rabbits (still scared off by the feral cats), raccoons, the usual squirrels, and many birds, including woodpeckers, cardinals, catbirds, mockingbirds, blue jays, sparrows of various sorts, and the silly-looking doves. Feeding birds has meant subsidizing squirrels (whose antics always get a little too cute) and, lately, raccoons, who climb the roof in order to raid feeders hanging from the eaves. I suppose horses don’t count since they are human imports, but they are there, too. And over us all, the stark, often cloudless winter sky at night, with a spectacular moon and busy stars.

The search for authentic eremitism in Western Christianity can be misleading. The Grandmontines were not true hermits at the beginning, except for the temperament of its founder, Stephen of Muret. Soon, that possibility was gone. Likewise the Camaldolese and Carthusians were never genuine hermits in the style of the desert fathers. They are too dependent on the formalities of ritual and sacrament to be true hermits. This, of course, is the pressure of the ecclesiastical authorities. This is not to say that their spirituality was essentially flawed. I dare not judge. But they were not hermits, and they did not live in solitude.

In searching for an apt self-descriptive phrase, I find James Cahill on the scholar-official or scholar-gentleman who comprised the ranks of the hermits of ancient China: “His position in society is anomalous, since his education has not been put to the normal use: he is learned and talented without possessing either wealth or rank.”

There is a felicitous passage by Shunryu Suzuki in the recent collection entitled Not Always So: “Although we have no actual communications from the world of emptiness, we have some hints or suggestions about what is going on in that world — and that is, you might say, enlightenment. When you see plum blossoms, or hear the sound of a small stone hitting bamboo, that is a letter from the world of emptiness.” If we can see every moment that way, we have all the communications we need.

Had to take the dog out at 4 AM. It was about 40 degrees, a clear, black, cloudless sky, with enormous stars. And in the north, a huge Big Dipper was laid out in front of me. The shiver was not just the cold. A beautiful sight!

The psychology of solitude in Anthony Storr and Howard Gardner is too often seen as a tool for creativity. Their books feature composers, musicians, artists, writers, and scientists who easily fit the description of creativity. But what about the rest of us? Here I think Gardner’s introduction of the concept of multiple intelligences relieves us of thinking of creativity as exclusively logical-linguistic. Of course, no one ever thought that creative people were exclusively that, but neither had anyone foreseen alternative intelligences as both an explanation and a temperament (witness schooling, which is almost exclusively logical-linguistic). Gardner’s theory sets the stage for solitude as an expression of the multiple intelligences, expressed differently in each. The spiritual, natural, intrapersonal, spatial – all stand out as uniquely expressive of solitude as a temperament and a goal, not merely a tool.

Is it possible to be a hermit and not live alone? The most famous recluse of ancient China was Liang Hung, who lived as a hermit with his wife Meng Kuang nearly half a century in the late Han. Burton Watson, the translator of Po-chu-i, mentions them as a model of married couples, of conjugal love. And every culture has assumed that aging spiritual masters were attended or looked in on by disciples. Even the solitaries of the Egyptian desert, expected to show up once a week for liturgical services, were checked on when they failed to appear. It is a matter of circumstance. Who can abandon a lifelong companion even after discovering the tendencies toward solitude late in life? Indeed, the harmonious couple will usually function as a single projection of personality.

The Stoic idea of solitude shows how it is impossible to be a hermit in this tradition. One is a recluse, which is different. A hermit “professes” his solitude, while the Stoic resents it as the product of circumstances, and ends by embracing it as his duty. Seneca and Montaigne are representative of this former case; Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius represent the latter. I count Montaigne a fideist, Marcus a true Cynic (in the classical Greek sense, I mean.)