(published in JigsawZen.com 2005)
I’m not really fond of recommending books. Somehow, the times I have spoken well of some particular book, or convinced someone to read one, the result has been quite disappointing. I suppose books either do something to you or they don’t. That might depend on the book itself, but it surely depends on your frame of mind and your particular circumstances at the time. All the same, it’s quite a turn-off to get a bad review of a book you thought was great. In spite of that, every now and then I take my chances and recommend a book to someone only to later remind myself that I shouldn’t have.
However, my policy of not recommending books doesn’t mean that people can’t recommend books to me. In fact, some people insist on recommending books that will change my life; books that I have to read. And that’s about what happened a few days ago. A person I know, let’s call him Charlie, not only recommended a book to me; he bought it, had it wrapped up as a gift and gave it to me. It was one of those awkward moments. ‘Hey, thanks so much! I’ll read it! ... Yeah, when I retire…’ Initially, I had the strongest impression that this book would just sit on my bookshelf collecting dust. However, a few days later Charlie asked me if I had started reading it so I could discuss it with him. Boy! I was trapped. So I just had to go ahead and read the damn thing.
The book was lousy to say the least. I read it in Spanish so perhaps part of the fault was in the translation. Anyway, it’s basically one of those New Age Self Help books about how some ancestral wisdom that has been kept a secret all these years can make your life a dreamlike pastel of spirituality. This one is disguised as a sociological documentary and the tale of an inner journey towards spirituality at the same time. The book was written by Marlo Morgan and is called ‘Mutant message down under’. It’s about an American woman who has the mysterious privilege of being dragged along by a tribe of Australian aborigines on a three month walk through the Australian deserts. Of course, as the journey progresses, so does an inner journey in which the author discovers the ancient wisdom of the tribe members.
It’s a novel, OK? But the author clarifies that it is based on actual facts and that the tribe and its wisdom are the ‘real deal’. In fact, there has been quite a bit of debate as to the authenticity of Morgan’s tale and the book was recently reclassified from ‘non-fiction’ to ‘fiction’. I don’t really give a damn if it’s real or not. Some day I’ll write about my feelings on why certain claims don’t need to be ‘authentic’ to be true or vice versa (sometimes, very ‘authentic’ claims are simply rubbish.) What I am interested in, in any case, is how the views of the author reflect a number of myths or collective opinions that are pretty widespread and how those collective opinions rest on nothing but themselves.
But first, let’s take a look at the book. Morgan claims that this tribe is in perfect communion with the universe and all of nature. They use the little resources available in the desert to satisfy their needs and are very careful not to disrupt the balance of nature. They are happy and healthy and live a life more spiritual than we, poor alienated westerners, could even dream of. They have preserved the original design of mankind not letting it be deformed by the vices of civilization (they call themselves the ‘Real People’ while we are the ‘Mutants’). They ‘perceive’ the nutritious roots of certain plants without the need of digging (and causing the useless death of those plants without mature roots) and they even use telepathy as a way of communicating among themselves through long distances.
I thought the book sucked. However, if you want a more level headed opinion you can check this fairly balanced review of the book here: http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/mutantMessage.html
First, I would like to tackle the idea that primitive cultures lived more harmoniously with nature and were somehow more spiritual or less alienated from their true nature than we are (we, being the urban-capitalist-technology dependant-compulsive consumers.) I have bumped into this idea a number of times but perhaps a nice example of this myth comes across in Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with wolves’. The white man, with all his sophisticated weapons and uniforms and industry tramples carelessly over the gentle and wise Sioux community, whom we learn about through John Dunbar’s account of the time he spent with them.
This inverse parallelism between technological and urban sophistication and natural wisdom, gentleness and spirituality has its roots in the Promethean myth. Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Now this was a grave offense since the use of fire was the prerogative of the gods. So, in order to appease their fury, he taught humans how to offer sacrifices to them. In the end, however, he was punished by Zeus (he was tied to a rock and a mythological bird would eat out his liver every day… heeeww…) But Zeus also punished mankind by sending Pandora and her box. You know the rest of the story… As the introducer of fire and inventor of sacrifice, Prometheus is seen as the patron of human civilization. What did we learn from the Promethean myth? We learnt that civilization puts us at odds with the natural forces. Famine, disease and other evils are what we get for being civilized.
Mary Shelley gave a twist to the Promethean myth when she wrote her famous novel ‘Frankenstein’. In this new version of the myth, man, through science and technology plays god and basically does stuff that only god should be allowed to do. The consequences are dire of course. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator indicating that the irresponsible use of technologies can have harmful consequences. This reinvented myth has impregnated our psyches. We feel that our technology based society, basically our urban western life styles, are at odds with the way things ought to be. We are alienated by our own artificial creations.
Based on this myth, of course, redemption comes when we renounce our sophisticated and over technified life styles and adopt more ‘natural’ ways. Hence, primitive societies and simple life styles in contact with nature have become the epitome of redemption and spirituality. But this is not necessarily true. Of course, it could be true in some ways, but not as a general rule. As we do with so many things, we tend to idealize that which we don’t have and excessively bitch about what we do have. If you feel alienated and out of touch with yourself, don’t go blaming it on civilization and please don’t daydream about the simple life: it’s just a fantasy we have come to believe in.
My Zen teacher once told me of a retreat he had organized in the hills of Córdoba, a province that’s just about in the middle of Argentina. He had found a guy who was letting rooms in a remote outpost in the sierras. This was a chance to have a five day Zazen retreat in the middle of nowhere, in contact with nature and living the simple life. Many students signed up and were pretty excited about being out there in contact with nature. It turns out that the son of the housekeeper was a bored teenager who longed for the excitement of the urban life and spent his hours listening to heavy metal rock so loud that you could hear it for miles. These people had traveled far looking for a ‘spiritual experience’ (nature, simplicity and silence) and ended up surrounded by blaring loudspeakers. Everyone was terribly pissed off but my Zen teacher just thought it was a good example of how reality has this bad habit of not conforming to our fantasies about it.
The second thing I wanted to discuss in this article is the idea that in order to acquire legitimate knowledge on some specific subject, you should travel far away to the ‘true source’ of that knowledge. I suppose that if you want to learn how to surf, it’s only logical to go somewhere with waves. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to other stuff and least of all to ‘spiritual’ matters. I don’t really like the word ‘spiritual’. Let’s say that you want to understand your life better or have an intuitive understanding of reality. Would it do you any good to go search for the lost wisdom of the Australian aborigines?
Many people seem to think it would. It goes more or less like this: the Truth is something very concrete and real, yet somehow we don’t seem to have it or understand it and none of the folks we know or run into every day seem to have it either. Therefore, it must be somewhere else, somewhere far away or in possession of someone special; in India, in the forbidden books of
But first, let’s take a look at the book. Morgan claims that this tribe is in perfect communion with the universe and all of nature. They use the little resources available in the desert to satisfy their needs and are very careful not to disrupt the balance of nature. They are happy and healthy and live a life more spiritual than we, poor alienated westerners, could even dream of. They have preserved the original design of mankind not letting it be deformed by the vices of civilization (they call themselves the ‘Real People’ while we are the ‘Mutants’). They ‘perceive’ the nutritious roots of certain plants without the need of digging (and causing the useless death of those plants without mature roots) and they even use telepathy as a way of communicating among themselves through long distances.
I thought the book sucked. However, if you want a more level headed opinion you can check this fairly balanced review of the book here: http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/mutantMessage.html
First, I would like to tackle the idea that primitive cultures lived more harmoniously with nature and were somehow more spiritual or less alienated from their true nature than we are (we, being the urban-capitalist-technology dependant-compulsive consumers.) I have bumped into this idea a number of times but perhaps a nice example of this myth comes across in Kevin Costner’s ‘Dances with wolves’. The white man, with all his sophisticated weapons and uniforms and industry tramples carelessly over the gentle and wise Sioux community, whom we learn about through John Dunbar’s account of the time he spent with them.
This inverse parallelism between technological and urban sophistication and natural wisdom, gentleness and spirituality has its roots in the Promethean myth. Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Now this was a grave offense since the use of fire was the prerogative of the gods. So, in order to appease their fury, he taught humans how to offer sacrifices to them. In the end, however, he was punished by Zeus (he was tied to a rock and a mythological bird would eat out his liver every day… heeeww…) But Zeus also punished mankind by sending Pandora and her box. You know the rest of the story… As the introducer of fire and inventor of sacrifice, Prometheus is seen as the patron of human civilization. What did we learn from the Promethean myth? We learnt that civilization puts us at odds with the natural forces. Famine, disease and other evils are what we get for being civilized.
Mary Shelley gave a twist to the Promethean myth when she wrote her famous novel ‘Frankenstein’. In this new version of the myth, man, through science and technology plays god and basically does stuff that only god should be allowed to do. The consequences are dire of course. Moreover, the creation rebels against its creator indicating that the irresponsible use of technologies can have harmful consequences. This reinvented myth has impregnated our psyches. We feel that our technology based society, basically our urban western life styles, are at odds with the way things ought to be. We are alienated by our own artificial creations.
Based on this myth, of course, redemption comes when we renounce our sophisticated and over technified life styles and adopt more ‘natural’ ways. Hence, primitive societies and simple life styles in contact with nature have become the epitome of redemption and spirituality. But this is not necessarily true. Of course, it could be true in some ways, but not as a general rule. As we do with so many things, we tend to idealize that which we don’t have and excessively bitch about what we do have. If you feel alienated and out of touch with yourself, don’t go blaming it on civilization and please don’t daydream about the simple life: it’s just a fantasy we have come to believe in.
My Zen teacher once told me of a retreat he had organized in the hills of Córdoba, a province that’s just about in the middle of Argentina. He had found a guy who was letting rooms in a remote outpost in the sierras. This was a chance to have a five day Zazen retreat in the middle of nowhere, in contact with nature and living the simple life. Many students signed up and were pretty excited about being out there in contact with nature. It turns out that the son of the housekeeper was a bored teenager who longed for the excitement of the urban life and spent his hours listening to heavy metal rock so loud that you could hear it for miles. These people had traveled far looking for a ‘spiritual experience’ (nature, simplicity and silence) and ended up surrounded by blaring loudspeakers. Everyone was terribly pissed off but my Zen teacher just thought it was a good example of how reality has this bad habit of not conforming to our fantasies about it.
The second thing I wanted to discuss in this article is the idea that in order to acquire legitimate knowledge on some specific subject, you should travel far away to the ‘true source’ of that knowledge. I suppose that if you want to learn how to surf, it’s only logical to go somewhere with waves. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to other stuff and least of all to ‘spiritual’ matters. I don’t really like the word ‘spiritual’. Let’s say that you want to understand your life better or have an intuitive understanding of reality. Would it do you any good to go search for the lost wisdom of the Australian aborigines?
Many people seem to think it would. It goes more or less like this: the Truth is something very concrete and real, yet somehow we don’t seem to have it or understand it and none of the folks we know or run into every day seem to have it either. Therefore, it must be somewhere else, somewhere far away or in possession of someone special; in India, in the forbidden books of
occultist Europe, inside the pyramids at Gizah, in possession of a forgotten tribe of Australian aborigines or in the lost continent of Atlantis. We (I’ll include myself in this one folks) have a tendency to believe that the Truth is some sort of well kept secret, available only to a few privileged who manage their way up the Himalayas for an appointment with Lama Watchamacallit.
When I was a kid of about 17, I briefly joined a rather curious Raja Yoga group. My acquaintance with them was very short because they kind of gave me the creeps. Anyway, there was this woman who talked and talked. She interrupted the teacher every few moments with some silly comment. The amount of stupidity that came out of that woman’s mouth was unbelievable. But the rest of the group paid a lot of attention to her. You see, she had been to India. Twice! She had met the important people at the headquarters! I felt a stab of envy when I was told she’d been to a retreat in India, wondering if the experience of being so close to those wise men and women had in some way affected her or made her more ‘advanced’ than I was. What a loser…
During the 13th century, the wisdom of Zen had its headquarters, so to say, in China. In fact, if you happened to live in Japan at the time, almost anything cultural had it’s epicenter in China. If you expected to be someone in the Zen world and hadn’t been to China, your chances were slim. Zen texts, as most of the important literature in Japan, were written in Chinese and Buddhist ceremonies were carried out in Chinese as well. Of course, all the big Zen Masters were from China. Where else would they be from? Most of the Zen (Ch’an) Monasteries since the time of Bodhidharma were located in an area called Shaolin. You might remember that old TV series Kung Fu with David Carradine… That’s right Little Grasshopper…
It so happened that there was a bright young Zen monk in Japan called Dogen (1200-1253). Dogen was very bright but hadn’t been to China yet. Many elders thought Dogen had a great future ahead and decided he was to be sent to China to learn Zen with the hot shots. With great effort, they sent him all the way there to bring back some of their wisdom. Years later, as the time for Dogen’s return approached, the excitement grew among the monks. What great teachings would he bring back from the land of the wise? But when he returned, Dogen bluntly said: “I have come back empty-handed. I have realized only that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical.”
This is a legendary comment that is filled with different meanings. We will concentrate only on one though. Where do you need to travel to in order to learn that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical? Do you need to go to India, Tibet, China or the Australian Outback to learn that? Obviously not. What Dogen meant, among other things, is that to learn about reality you don’t really need to go anywhere. The truth is always right in your face. We keep pushing it aside to see all these far away mysterious places full of excitement and fantasy, but our very own efforts to search for reality in exotic places result only in distraction from the real –right in you face- deal.
While you chew on that, I have to figure out a way to tell Charlie what I think about the book without hurting his feelings…
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