Day of a Stranger - Thomas Merton

What strikes you about Thomas Merton is the sheer likeability of the man.  He is a 'true man of no status' , a universal man, a shy man without a mask, perhaps what we might term in the local argot 'a good bloke'.  Towards the end of his life he wrote an essay called Day of a Stranger, (1981, Intro. Robert E. Daggy), the word 'Stranger' denoting one who is an outsider to the modern technological world, puzzled by the drives and ambitions of ordinary folk.  This little pamphlet-like work is interspersed by Merton's own black and white photographs from around the hermitage.  Unlike a lot of images in 'spiritual' writing these enhance and do not detract from the text. Of all his writing I think this essay best shows the essence of his personality and where he had arrived at in 1965.  This was an a time when he had just begun to settle into living in his hermitage in the woods at the Abbey at Gethsemani in Kentucky. He had gained separation (in part) from the suffocating world of the abbey life, what he called a 'hot environment' meaning one where busyness ruled if only in a institution of religious men fretting over purpose and meaning.  It reminds one of the atmosphere of modern bureaucracy where all must be engaged and transmitting messages, all is movement and flight. The content is not as important as that one is seen as a party to this game of exchanging messages. Merton had at this time also ripened in his understanding of  Eastern thought, of Zen, Taoism and Buddhism in its various facets. He appears to have adjusted his Christian view to find a place for this wisdom; or perhaps he was heading in the opposite - a place for Christianity in Eastern spirituality. Just to read Day of a Stranger is a 'blessing', a release from the craziness of a particular day and an odd sense of being in a still point with Merton in his hermitage in the woods, with his bare attention to the simple surroundings of the new home and the loveliness of the little piece of Kentucky nature where he lived and had his being.  Here is a self-dialogue from Day of a Stranger

--Why live in the woods?
--Well you have to live somewhere.
--Do you get lonely?
--Yes, sometimes.
--Are you mad at people?
-- No.
--Are you mad at the monastery?
-- No.
--What do you think of the future of monasticism?
--Nothing. I don't think about it.
--Is it true that your bad back is due to Yoga?
--No
--Is it true that you are practising Zen in secret?
--Pardon me, I don't speak English.

Plate 46 from Day of a Stranger

Haiku

I recently posted some self-authored haiku.  I should say that they are in the style of haiku rather than haiku.  They do not follow strict metrical patterns and some are even not about nature or the human in the setting of the natural. I am indebted to R. H. Blyth for the insight I have into haiku, in particular its origins in Japanese Zen Buddhism.  Reading the magisterial four volume Haiku (The Hokuseido Press 1975), first published in 1949, has been the core of my  induction into this gentle art.  I only possess Volume I. Eastern Culture, and have wanted the remaining volumes; I have been put off by the approximately $500 cost. Fortunately the local library had the remaining three volumes,  No. II, Spring, No. III, Summer-Autumn, and No. IV, Autumn-Winter.   Every page of Haiku is infused with the mystique of Zen and one can only surmise that  Blyth had both a scholarly understanding of the art of haiku as well as a deep appreciation of its origins in Buddhism and Zen in particular. It is clear from reading Blyth that the 'study' of Zen is the royal road to haiku both as a reader and practitioner. Blyth also compares the sentiments in haiku to extracts from Western literature which provides a unique view into the occidental genre.

I would say that Section II, of Vol. I of Haiku, Zen, The State of Mind for Haiku, is one of the most moving and profound things I have read. In this section Blyth draws from the qualities that characterise Zen and relates them to the mind of the haiku poet with examples of haiku.

1. Selflessness
2. Loneliness
3. Grateful acceptance
4. Wordlessness
5. Non-intellectuality
6. Contradictoriness
7. Humour
8. Freedom
9. Non-morality
10. Simplicity
11. Materiality
12. Love
13. Courage. 

Pumkin  Mushakoji Saneatsu
Plate 19 from Haiku by R.H. Blyth

Naturalism

Hands up those who are naturalists?  I do not see many hands up.  Perhaps some think this is related to a naturist. Not so, naturalists like to look at things plainly but do not remove their clothes. Nor in this case are they autodidactic observers of nature like Thoreau. Well, naturalism is not an ism at all; it is a world view or a way of apprehending the world; a template if you like based upon what good science has found out about the natural world. In my experience most people are unknowing and unthinking naturalists. It is their unconscious modus operandi; it is their hidden rock of common sense and expectation as to how things work. Almost none think of the balance of the  'four humours' as the basis for health, or that walking under a ladder will bring bad luck. Naturalism has brought light to the world of ignorance and superstition. It is the sine qua non of modern man.

Oddly though people fall back upon non-naturalistic world views. They take their dead to church and temple in the hope that by petitioning an unseen omnipotent being their loved one will be transported to a ultra-mundane world and spend an infinity in bliss in  the presence of celestial beings. One can multiply the examples.  These people consider themselves part-naturalist; it is based upon an assumption that the world is split into natural and supernatural components. Of course, this is a nonsense to the naturalist for naturalism can only be naturalistic; it cannot accommodate the supernatural any more than (at sea level) water might boil at 212 F in one part of the world and 250 F in another.

 So this hybrid naturalism-supernaturalism is a naive contrivance to save one from facing the facts. Better to say you are do not have a naturalistic world-view than say you have a hybrid naturalistic-super-naturalistic world-view. Yet it is so hard to say you are naturalistic.  It is to stand bare in the face of things, the buffeting and swell of what arises by necessity. You have to concede that the world is fundamentally meaningless in human terms.  And yet it is also a comfort for you do not have fall back positions that lack logic, reason and depend upon sophistry or faith assertions. The naturalist also does not fear death for death is merely the end of consciousness.

Fall of Public Man

Some books entertain, some inform and some change the way you think. Of the latter, Richard Sennett's, The Fall of Public Man (Alfred A. Knopf, 1976) was singularly important for me.  The gist of his thesis is that prior to mid 19th Century there was a facility and ease with which people of different rank and station could talk to one another in a public space, for example, in  shop, a park, or when travelling. The 18th Century picaresque novels of Laurence Sterne or Henry Fielding are characterised by these instances. These were encounters between perfect strangers which cultivated the civil society and spread a reassurance that all was well with the world. The actors in these mini-dramas were not conversing as exposed personalities rather as public persona. For example, in the neutral public space, the chimney sweep might talk to the architect, the gentleman to the labourer, the Lord to the publican without any embarrassment or suggestion of talking up or down. Not that the exchange was egalitarian was we might understand it, but that of individuals speaking from the dignity of their respective estates. 

Sennett argues that around about the mid-century things changed. This was influenced by the effects of the Romantic movement with its emphasis upon inner enquiry and self-transformation. This change was subsequently influenced by the budding discipline of psychology, which culminated by the revolutionary impact of the ideas of Sigmund Freud. The theory of the unconscious and primaeval  Id ended forever the naive notion of inner clarity and purpose. For the erstwhile 'public man' a fear developed that the unsolicited conversation of the stranger might be a prying into the inner psychological world.  Soon there was hesitancy all round in the public space, a tendency to avoid eye contact and initiate conversation with a stranger. 

I think this state of psychological vulnerability has become even worse in latter times.  This is despite the faux friendship of social media which is usually conducted between cyber drones rather than real people. The pubic person as distinct from the private  has almost ceased to exist. If a stranger initiates an exchange in a public space we worry about their ulterior motive and the risk that the veil might be penetrated over our sacrosanct inner private world. 

I would like to see a return to the manners of public exchange. There is a proper style of address, demeanour and tone to initiate a public exchange. For instance, it helps to speak to the obvious outer man or woman rather than assume a pose of familiarity; after all seeking familiarity goes with knowing.  Using a proper form of address without being pompous helps. It is notable how calling someone sir or madam puts them at ease. A dignified and pleasant tone is also important. One can also confer on people the worth and dignity of their calling no matter what the 'status' might be in our crude modern reckoning (what a shame that nurses stopped using uniforms). 

DHL 'Poet Without a Mask'

In the introduction to the Penguin edition of D.H.Lawrence's, The Complete Poems, a critic says that DHL is 'poet without a mask' and this is really what he is:  his poems (with the exception of his early rhyming poems) are beautiful effusions of feeling and imagination free from masks of poetic convention or bourgeois comportment. In a way they are slightly mad, but of the spiritual madness type rather than the mental type, or maybe a little of both. Perhaps they are influenced by his chronic TB. Anyhow you cannot fail to be swept along on these ranting flourishes even if you feel that he has gone beyond the envelope.  He could be compared with Walt Whitman; but Walt for all his randy unorthodoxy was still a Victorian in manner and unkempt mode.  Of the literary types, 'priests, prophets and purveyors' DHL is definitely among the prophets.  As a prophetic writer he speaks to the core of man and to the eternal. He speaks less to our particular  time because we are not moved by any man's mighty soul; now there are no great men. It takes a flame to catch onto another flame. 

FLOWERS AND MEN

Flowers achieve their own floweriness and it is a miracle. 
Men don't achieve their own manhood, alas, oh alas! alas!

All I want of you, men and women,
all I want of you
is that you shall achieve your own beauty
as the flowers do. 

Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.
Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of the course stem?
Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?

[I want you to be a savage] as the gentian and the daffodil.
Tell me! tell me! is there in you a beauty to compare
to the honeysuckle at evening now
pouring out his breath. 

PRAYER

Give me the moon at my feet
Put my feet upon the crescent, like a Lord!
O let my ankles be bathed in moon light, that I 
    may go
sure and moon-shod, cool and bright-footed
towards my goal.

For the sun is hostile now 
his face is like the red lion. 

Counterculture

There is a common perception that the counter-culture movement of the late 1960's and early 1970's was primarily a period of exuberant youth seeking escape through 'dropping out', irresponsible idleness, promiscuity and illicit drugs. Without doubt there was plenty of this and being so visible and salacious it attracted the attention of the media and influenced the  lazy eye of history. It is overlooked that the perhaps risible revolt of youth was cynosure of a much broader and quieter reflection about the nature of man, community and work. This can be seen in the flourish of literature on these subjects. To cite a few:  E.F Schumacher, Herbert Marcuse, Charles A. Reich, Alan Watts, Theodore Roszak, Norman O Brown and Paul Goodman. The common theme of  these writers was to question the diminished quality of human life in the industrial state with its worship of efficiency, corporatism, consumerism and conformity. This led to a discussion in society of  alternative ways of organisation and enhancement of human consciousness, in the broadest sense, in living.  

From my comfortable position I participated in this discussion and it changed my outlook of life considerably. I also noticed how society was  picking up on some of these new ideas and incorporating them into mainstream living. One can think of a growth in interpersonal sensitivity, humanistic values, changes in the lives of women, sexual tolerance and a doing away of various stigmas arising from formal religions. The counter-culture movement, of course, failed in its raison d'etre of enhancing consciousness and freeing man from the fetters of the industrial state.  Society is still pretty much the same, and worse in some respects. The survival of the status quo was, however, inevitable and is shared to some extent by all idealistic and utopian schemes. What is disturbing, however, is that the notion of a counter culture no longer exists.  We seem to have capitulated and in doing so have lost our capacity to imagine something better. In this sense the 'System' has had a double victory. A society which does not dream is in danger of losing its heart. 

Robert Persig in Lilia has this to say:

'Of these periods (WWII to 1970; then present), the last two seem the most misunderstood. The Hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoilt children, and the period following their departure as a 'return' to values, whatever that means. The Metaphysics of Quality, however, says that's backward: the Hippie revolution was the moral movement. The present period is the collapse of values.' (my parentheses) 

William Cowper

I am drawn to 18th Century English poet, William Cowper for his personality and poetry. He lived after a mental breakdown in his youth  in the care of friends in the English country side.  His semi-invalid life was punctuated with periods of  intense depressive suffering and, to use the extant term, madness. This fall from respectability of vocation and livelihood followed an attempt to take his highly sensitive soul and precarious mental state into the world of a law clerk. His poetry is the work of a sheltered being seeking through his endeavours to find meaning in the beauty of nature and the rhythms of a retired life. This is complemented with the enlightened and refined spirit of the marvellous century of his life.  So taking his simple materials to hand, his poetry turned to rural scenes, shrubs, trees, snails, rabbits, cats and  homely objects. One might surmise that his plain style was an attempt not to put too much pressure on his fragile nerves; not to force himself into something ambitious and grand. His subjects and his style created a lovely and timeless poetry. Cowper became one of the most beloved poets of his time and emerges from a bevy of 18th Century poets to be read in modern times. His letters are also delightful exercises in gentle manners and tactful sensibility.  I am lucky to have an 1835 fine bound collected edition of his works (Saunders and Otley) and it sits in pride of place in my lounge room bookcase.  Seeking repose on a winter's night before a fire there is nothing so refreshing a to dip into the handsome bindings of my Cowper's Works.

Engraving from Cowper's Works of his house at Weston