Tag Archives: Montaigne

2. Pay attention

One book of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s lectures refers to the Flame of Attention, pointing out that the meaning of the word “attention” is a reminder of the perils of constant watchfulness – you must be “at-tension”, so at any moment you can react in a myriad of ways to any number of encroaching or interrupting signals. This peripatetic vigil, if not conducted carefully, can result in a huge, and probably considering the likelihood of perilous events pretty low, mostly hyper-prioritized and undue stress on the attendee. There is always the danger of micro-managing, even oneself. The trick, I think – and probably both Montaigne and Krishnamurti would agree – is to be aware, rather than attentive. To be conscious, if not fully cognizant. The Buddha and so many other spiritual guides suggest the same: to be in the world, but not of it, you must be fully open to the information constantly being presented, but you must learn to observe it and let it go. The instant I discovered this in Montaigne, the word mindfulness immediately came to mind. There is however so much psychobabble currently about mindfulness (in theory and practice) that it is in danger of becoming a parody of itself.

Pay attention, but don’t get lost in the details. That’s a hard thing for an ADHD hunter-gatherer to accomplish, particularly in our “busyness is holiness” and “look busy, the boss might be watching” Protestant-driven culture of work for work’s sake. We spend a lot of time talking but very little effort thinking about just breathing. Just this morning, I said to myself, until you change the way you hear, you can’t change the way you listen. Until you change the way you listen, you can’t change the way you see. Until you change the way you see, you can’t change the way you think. And until you change the way you think, you can’t change the world.

One of the duties of a Bard, as traditional defined in Celtic culture, is serving as the historian, the memory, of your own culture. This includes not only where it is today, but where it started, how it traveled the path from there to here, and what indicators point to where it might be in the future. A lot of emphasis is placed on remembering things: verse forms, definitions, cultural events – the usual hows, whys and wherefores. As someone trained in that tradition (I first became associated with official Bardic business as a member of both the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) and Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) pagan (more accurately, neo-pagan) traditions. The ADF was not for me, but I did manage to digest and complete the OBOD’s Bardic grade lessons and complete the required initiation. Among a lot of pretty useless information (if only because it involved attempting to reconstruct a system based on a fantastic, romantic interpretation of a long-past reality, from a language and culture with which I had insufficient familiarity), there is at least the idea that someone is responsible for keeping an eye on everything that’s going on. This appeals to my distrust of cultural specialists; that the history of one thing should be detailed and kept “sacred” completely separately, and in isolation from, each other thing’s history – that there should ultimately be at the top a mere conglomeration, but no real sense of synthesis or, to borrow Buckminster Fuller’s term, synergy, has always seemed to fall flat.

Falling flat – now there’s an interesting concept. I immediately think of Hamlet’s mournful, “oh, how flat and unprofitable are the things of this world” and I want to say, “well, things are flat because you lack perspective.” Perspective, however, is not just the ability to see things from varying points of view. It is the desire to do so – and the belief that just as Ramakrishna put it, A lake has several ghâts. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it ‘jal’; at another the Mussalmâns take water in leather bags and call it ‘pâni’. At a third the Christians call it ‘water’. Can we imagine that it is not ‘jal’, but only ‘pâni’ or ‘water’? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences.

 

Share This:

1. Don’t Worry About Death

I can honestly say that right now, I don’t worry all that much about dying. I don’t fear what is, or isn’t, to come. I thank my parents, and their introduction to their parents’ religion, but an otherwise free-thinking non-religious upbringing. Although of course soaked in that Protestant idea of work as a holy thing, their point of view was “let them draw their own conclusions” – a logical perspective for an engineer and a biologist. I often felt that the holy trinity of our house, rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, was Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Henry Ford. For some time now, probably first felt instinctively when I was around 10 or 11, but definitely reinforced after taking a hit of acid and then subsequently reading Ram Dass’ Be Here Now in the hours after receiving news of my father’s death in 1993 (at age 28), I’ve believed that we are after all merely energy borrowed that must at some point be returned. I do worry over those I leave behind: how will their needs be met, how will they cope with any grief over my absence, is what I leave behind the best possible representation of what I have been? Of course, others’ happiness and peace of mind is ultimately not my responsibility. There is little I can do, especially after I’m gone, to ensure that those I love continue to seek and find happiness and peace rather than sadness and strife. While I don’t fear death per se, I do fear becoming a burden on anyone in that period preceding my departure. That I would need someone else to tend to my care and feeding, like a pathetic zoo animal, causes me continual worry. Not enough worry, however, to look to my physical care to a greater degree or attempt in any serious way to that deterioration.

There are have been periods in my life where I seriously considered signing out prematurely. Which raises, of course, an interesting question: what does it mean “to die too young”. You expire exactly at the time you expire, not a moment later or sooner. So much of “if only they had lived longer” sentimentality is nothing but greed. We want more art, more sacrifice, more for us, out of the life in question. I rarely see this idea suggesting that the extra time is desired to allow us to give more to the person we miss.

The years 15-18 were especially trying for me. Likewise, a later interval between 22-25 was also difficult. I think part of the problem was, as is often the case, that I really didn’t have anyone’s problems other than my own to occupy my time. In those years I was single and really didn’t have close friends. Isolation, I think, more than any other factor, contributes to depression and hopelessness. Of course on the flip side, I find social immersion with people with whom I find no common ground, no shared interests, equally as oppressive.

But a death wish, or desire to stop living, is NOT the same as boredom, and certainly not temporal hopelessness or that sense of simply being overwhelmed. I think focusing on one’s hopelessness is worrying about your life, not your death. After all, depending on your spiritual bent (and the strength of those convictions), death is either an end, an upgrade, or a detention.

 

Share This:

Using Twenty Questions as a Starting Point

Maybe a better way of organizing a life is using something like Franklin’s admirable virtues and contrasting one’s life events against it. In that vein, Sarah Blakewell’s How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer is perhaps more helpful. In any case, it’s a starting point – and every journey, or so we’re told, must have one.

 

Share This: