Walking Away From It All

You’ve probably heard some version of the story of the father who left the house one night to buy cigarettes and never came back.

Most would call him a ‘douche,’ and would be right, in some cases. But what about the others? What compels them to walk away?

You cannot tell me you’ve never felt the impulse. Late at night, perhaps, after a hard day, looking out the window by a sink full of dirty dishes and glasses trying to catch your breath, wondering if there is not more to life, and longing to leave everything behind to find out.

This unease led Siddhārtha Gautama to leave the comforts of his father’s palace, his wife Yaśodharā and newborn son Rāhula toward a spiritual journey to discover the causes and remedies for human suffering.

Call the Buddha an enlightened deadbeat, if you must.

The world would not have Paul Gauguin’s exquisite painting ‘Orana Maria’ had he chosen to remain by his family’s side in Copenhagen, making no money selling French tarpaulins to a Danish market who did not want his tarpaulins instead of risking everything to travel alone to Tahiti in search of a new vision in art.

On the same year and country my father was born, George Dibbern left his wife and three daughters and sailed his 32-foot ketch ‘Te Rapunga’ toward New Zealand to reunite with his Maori spiritual Mother.

The world was marching toward a second world carnage. Unemployment in Germany had reached four million. Suicides were a daily occurrence. Idle and in despair, the citizens of the Weimar Republic of the 1930s were besieged by a dizzying number of political parties spouting their competing ideologies, each claiming to have the answer to their predicament.

In the middle of this maelstrom stood George Dibbern, unable to subscribe to any of them.

‘Te Rapunga’ means longing, or seeking, and is referenced in the third step of the Maori creation myth — the predawn moment of anticipation.

While still in Germany, Dibbern tried to make ends meet by operating a shipyard with his cousin. But the business was failing. To raise money, he twice sold the ‘Te Rapunga’ only to have it returned to him when the buyers could not come up with the cash to pay him.

Think about it: Dibbern tried twice to rid himself of his longing but it kept coming back. Having twice denied mine, every time I think of this part of his story, I recall this poem by the Greek Constantine Cavafy:

“Like the beautiful bodies of those who died before they had aged,

sadly shut away in a sumptuous mausoleum,

roses by the head, jasmine at the feet — 

so appear the longings that have passed

without being satisfied, not one of them granted

a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.”

The shipyard business failed and Dibbern had no other choice but join a rock-breaking crew. At the end of his rope, he considered:

At present, I can no longer be a member of one nation, only a member of a larger group —  humanity. I cannot grow roots here; I think so differently from everyone else. I am not meant to be what I am now. What is the good of adapting myself ninety-nine times.

What’s madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? — Theodore Roethke

One night, back from his back-breaking job, George entered the kitchen, looked at his wife, and asked: “What would you do if I were dead?”

Faced with her stupefaction — quickly morphing into rage and despair — George tried to clarify what he meant: how he already felt dead, but dead in life.

A few weeks later, he set sail.

Writer Henry Miller said this about Dibbern:

“He takes the path in order to become the path. Some might think that George was unadaptable, a man unfit for human society. This is not true. If anything, it is society which is unfit to accommodate itself to a man like Dibbern. It is the purity and integrity of men like Dibbern which make it difficult for them to fit in our world. Living his own life in his own way, Dibbern makes us realize how much life can be enjoyed even on the fringe of society. It is not his ideal; he is striving desperately to participate, to be at one with his fellow man, but on the best terms, i.e., on the terms of his own best self. Nor did he wait to lead the ideal existence until some mythical day in the future. He lived the ideal life right then — as much as he dared and could. And that is the difference between a rebel and a man of spirit.”

As Dibbern was saying goodbye to his three young daughters, he thought:

Perhaps it is more important that, someday, I may be an understanding comrade to my children than be a provider now.

Pretty gracious, if you ask me.

For of what use is it to children to see their father return from work with a lifeless look in his eyes as he contemplates all his denied longings pustulating like unstitched wounds? To hear him vilify his boss, ridicule his co-workers, recount the office skullduggery, complain about the long hours and the commute, or fret about the bills as he finishes his third glass of wine while mindlessly thumbing his cellphone.

Many fathers exact on the hides and hearts of their children the ire of their frustrations, the thunderbolts of their distress, the suffocating anguish of their dispassionate marriages, the festering anger of their unfulfilled desires, and the dull ache of their tedious, apathetic existence.

No surprise most children fear growing up, or rebel against their elders.

In that wretched state, what wisdom can a father impart if he hasn’t taken the time to grapple with the thorniest questions of existence, or the courage to journey through the dark and malodorous corridors of his psyche until coming to terms with the angel in himself and the devil in himself, or the humility to challenge all the mythologies he has half-wittingly accepted as truth? In that state, it would be more benevolent if he met each of his children’s questions with: “I don’t know,” rather than playing God twenty-four hours a day.

Soon after sailing, believing a flag represented one’s beliefs and principles, George Dibbern refused to fly the obligatory Nazi flag with the swastika and raised one of his own design. He later rejected his German passport and created his own with the following declaration:

“I, George Dibbern, through long years in different countries and sincere friendship with many people in many lands, feel my place to be outside of nationality, a citizen of the world and a friend of all peoples. I recognize the divine origin of all nations and therefore their value in being as they are, respect their laws, and feel my existence solely as a bridge of good fellowship between them. This is why, on my own ship, I fly my own flag, why I have my own passport and so place myself, without other protection, under the goodwill of the world.”

Here’s the thing about walking away, though. If it serves no other purpose than to run away from responsibility, it is as pointless and futile as taking a vacation to “recharge.”

All successful escape artists have one life saving trick: they know all about their chains.

Most of us don’t.

That’s the reason our escapes are fleeting.

So very few ever think of taking leave that they too might enjoy the fruits of paradise. Almost invariably they’ll confess that they lack the courage or imagination. “Too late” he probably murmurs to himself. How illustrative, this attitude, of the woeful resignation men and women succumb to! What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice. — Henry Miller

Walking away (from work, the rat-race, the place you live, your relationship, etc.) is meaningless unless you arrive at a new orientation to life. Otherwise, it’s just like any other vacation, for which, under your shorts, Tommy Bahama shirts, flip-flops, sunscreen and hat, you fold and pack your same old prejudices, addictions, illusions, self-delusions, fears, insecurities, vanities, and hungers, and then, upon returning, you realize you never took the time to unpack, air-out, inspect, and transform all that junk, so when you pop open your suitcase it all comes flying back out again, back into your closet, there to continue haunting you until your next escape.

I know this well, having attempted it a few times with disastrous consequences.

But the latter, during which you reorient yourself to life, that is a spiritual journey, which begins when you doubt the conventions and deals of the mundane world and walk towards an unknown destination — like Buddha to the Bodhi Tree, Gauguin to Tahiti, and Dibbern to the open sea. The real escapist, you see, is the man who adapts himself to a world he does not subscribe to. It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society, said Krishnamurti.

And it is not just doubting societal conventions but realizing how many you’ve half-wittingly adopted as your own. What’s essential is to examine each shiny trinket you have received as part of your initiation into the modern world, and above all, to discover what treasure you’re giving up in exchange. Your entire life?

For what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul — Jesus

A prison break is no easy matter; you must first know all about your prison. A new world is not simply made by trying to forget the old, Henry Miller proclaimed, but made with a new spirit, with new values. Contrary to what many believe, it doesn’t require you to go anywhere. In fact, it’s often the case that a “change in scenery” only creates further distractions that will lead you astray.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes, said writer Marcel Proust, and it’s one that is yours alone to undertake.

“It cannot be undertaken other than by ourselves,” said famed mythologist Joseph Campbell. “In the story of the Arthurian knights, each set out in search of the Grail (a spiritual, rather than a material goal) by ‘entering the forest at its darkest part,’ that is, at the place where no one has cut a path before.”

Most never break free, leaving it up to the next generation, as Rainer Maria Rilke poignantly rendered in this poem :

“Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.”

Buddha showed us a path away from suffering.

Gauguin gave us the Orana Maria.

Dibbern left us a chronicle of his spiritual journey in his book ‘Quest.’

If you are to remain “inside the dishes and in the glasses,” unable or unwilling to break free, the next time you hear a story of a man who did, think twice before you judge him, for he may one day return with a gift for you and the rest of humankind.

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Read my escape story.

Why Are We Here?

In some regions in Mexico, the hummingbird is known as ‘Porquesí,’ meaning “just because” — a wonderful and poetic name for what seems but a caprice of nature… a jeweled whim!

In Oaxaca, they call it ‘Biulú’, or ‘what remains in the eyes,’ for once seen, no one can forget this ecstatic little bird plumed with divinely superfluous beauty.

God, the great Ecstatic, speaks and struggles to speak in every way he can, with seas and fires, with colors, with wings, with horns, with claws, with constellations and butterflies, that he may establish his ecstasy. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Asked by theologians what one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of his creation, British biologist, J.B.S. Haldane answered: “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”

350,000 known species!

Just because.

The Western, scientific mind, however, appears incapable of apprehending this superfluous beauty without demanding a functional answer for its purpose.

At what cost, I wonder?

Does knowing that the hummingbird flaps its wings 12–90 times per second, or that it’s the only bird that can fly backwards, or that it makes a single migratory journey of 2000 miles in Winter make it more beautiful or memorable? Or does it have the opposite effect? Isn’t the magic spoiled once we discover the magician’s secrets? While we might still be impressed by the magician’s sleight-of-hand, would we not be thereon barred from becoming enraptured? a word that, at origin, means “carried off bodily.”

Piglet: “How do you spell love?”

Pooh: “You don’t spell it, you feel it.”

If we, for instance, knew every biological change occurring in the male and female bodies during sex, would we ever again move “out of our minds” to be lost in sensation? Might knowing everything about the function actually provoke disfunction? Might knowing, say, that 87% of adults in Greece report having sex at least once a week not cause anxiety among U.S. adults where only 53% do?

Tell me… how often do you have sex? Are you performing like a Greek? Should you? Can you?

What’s the purpose of sex among humans anyway? Reproduction?

Not only, says Mexican poet Octavio Paz. It is so much more… “it’s an erotic ceremony in which sex is transformed into metaphor. In this sense, it is similar to language. The agent that moves both poetry and eroticism is our imagination. Poetry erotizes language as imagination transforms sex into a passionate erotic ritual.” Passion, says David L. Norton, is but an arabesque upon animal sexuality. Focus on the mechanics and you’ll kill Eros, or ardent desire.

Wanting to know is part of our cultural DNA. Our curiosity has helped advance the human adventure. But I can’t stop wondering if our insistence on dissecting, measuring, inspecting, prodding, analyzing, labelling, and trying to discover the purpose of everything precludes an embodied participation with the rest of creation.

Do not “all charms fly at the mere touch of cold philosophy?” asked Edgar Allan Poe.

What Do You Do?

After losing all my wealth, I dreaded accompanying my wife to parties. We lived at the time in one of the most expensive places in the U.S. and I had had little success finding a job. I dreaded parties because of the unease I felt when asked the trite question: “What do you do?” — a question actually used to measure us against an arbitrary standard of value and success.

Infuriated by this insistence on wanting to pigeonhole my humanity, I soon came up with this answer: “As little as possible to enjoy life as much as possible.” As you can imagine, I wasn’t invited much thereafter.

Had they instead asked me, “What’s your story?” I would’ve kept them spellbound for hours.

But having a story doesn’t neatly answer society’s demand for a purpose-driven narrative so perhaps it’s time we change the term ‘human being,’ to ‘human doing.’

In Paulo Coelho’s ‘Manuscript Found in Accra’ he says that if we were to ask a river if it feels useless because all it does is flow in the same direction, it will answer, ‘I’m not trying to be useful; I’m trying to be river.’ Ask a wildflower if she feels useless for just making copies of herself and she’ll answer: ‘I’m beautiful. Beauty is the sole purpose of my existence.’

Ask a poor person in my native country about his purpose in life and he’ll likely answer, “to survive,” before punching you in the nose.

An [American] reporter from a local newspaper came to our house to interview my wife about the Japanese tea ceremony. This reporter continually asked, “What is the meaning? What for? Why do you do that? What is the purpose for that?” This kind of question was directed at everything in the making of tea — at every gesture, every implement. Without thinking or deliberating, my wife finally replied, “No meaning… meaningless meaning. It is purposeless purpose.” — Buddhist Gyomay Kubose Sensei

In Taoism, a Chinese philosophical tradition dating back 3000 years, there is a principle called Wu-Wei, or purposeless action. The Western mind, as I said, has a hard time with this. I say this because I still do.

Without a concrete purpose, what would motivate action? Without the need for nectar, what would propel the hummingbird toward the flower? Without goals, what would get us out of bed? Where would I, say, find the motivation to write my book if not for my express purpose of wanting to help boys become good men.

Like in sex, I think the crux lies in spontaneity. By not trying too hard. By focusing on the process (erotic ritual) not the target (orgasm).

“The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will recede. What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.” — Eugen Herrigel, ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’

In ‘The Way of Chuang Tzu,’ Thomas Merton says, “the true character of wu-wei is not mere inactivity but perfect action. In other words, action not carried in conflict with the dynamism of the whole — or Tao (The Way) — but in perfect harmony with the whole. It is not mere passivity, but action that seems effortless and spontaneous because performed rightly — in perfect accordance with our nature and with our place in the scheme of things. It is not conditioned or limited by our own individual needs and desires. It is complete free because there is in it no force and no violence.”

Forgive me for bringing sex back into the picture, but I cannot avoid imagining how rapturous the sexual experience would be under wu-wei.

Chuang Tzu vividly conveys the wisdom and efficacy of spontaneous action — or going with the flow — in this story:

At the Gorge of Lu, the great waterfall plunges for thousands of feet, its spray visible for miles. In the churning waters below, no living creature can be seen.

One day, K’ung Fu-tse [Confucius] was standing at a distance from the pool’s edge when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He called to his disciples and together they ran to rescue the victim. But by the time they reached the water, the old man had climbed out onto the bank and was walking along, singing to himself.

K’ung Fu-tse hurried up to him. “You would have to be a ghost to survive that,” he said, “but you seem to be a man, instead. What secret power do you have?”

“Nothing special,” the old man replied. “I began to learn while very young and grew up practicing it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don’t struggle against the water’s superior power. That is all.”

To allow oneself to surrender and go with the flow can be frightening because it challenges some of our most basic assumptions about life, about who we are as humans, and about our role in the world. From a Taoist point of view, our most cherished beliefs are precisely those which lead us to a state of disharmony and imbalance — that we exist as separate beings, that we can exercise willful control over all situations and that our role is to conquer our environment and progress.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey

“Humans cling to progress,” says John Gray in ‘Straw Dogs,’ “not so much from genuine belief, as from fear of what may come if they give it up.” Gray calls humanism, not science, but religion — a doctrine of salvation.

If progress is an illusion, how are we to live?

Gray says the question assumes that humans can live well only if they believe they have the power to remake the world. The aim of life, he said, is not to change the world, it is to see it rightly.

The hummingbird does not struggle to change or remake the flower. Nature shapes its bill according to the flowers in its proximate environment. Therefore, its actions, as Merton said about wu-wei, seem effortless and spontaneous because performed in perfect accordance with its nature and its place in the scheme of things.

What happens when humans live in discord and dissonance?

I’ll let author Sam Keen respond:

“Stress is not simply a dis-ease; it is a symptom that you are living somebody else’s life.

Depression is more than low self-esteem; it is a distant early warning that you are on the wrong path and that something in you is being pressed down, beat on, imprisoned, dishonored.

Burnout is nature’s way of telling you you’ve been going through the motions but your soul has departed.”

One way I have found to place myself in harmonious accord is to ask myself “why” I do what I do, instead of “what for”.

“What for?” implies a specific target: The publication of my book, the notoriety, the acclaim, and the potential material rewards.

Asking “why” shifts my attention to subjective, but ultimately more lasting rewards. I am writing my book to help boys grow into good men. To restore balance and harmony to the world. Because while writing it, I enter a state of flow and never feel like I’m working. Because by nature, I have a talent for writing and have found a need in the world that can be served by it.

While still purposeful, this focus engages and activates my heart, body, mind and soul — Psyche and Eros.

One day, I hope to transcend even further, and answer the question of “why am I here?” like the hummingbird: “Just Because,” thus becoming unforgettable for having discovered that a spiritual life is not a search for meaning or purpose, but a release from both.

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Follow my journey.

Hunger Artists

“And the world will be better for this. That one man scorned and covered with scars, still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable star.” – Miguel de Cervantes

In Chapter 11 of Theo’s ongoing journey, while visiting his brother in Florida, he wonders:

“As I consider my brother’s two houses, two boats, his devoted wife, three wonderful children, and his comfortable life enveloped in tropical balm, I wonder, with a slight degree of frustration, why it has fallen on me to be so restless and dissatisfied…always asking myself: Is this it?

The poet Stephen Dunn has a term for people like me: ‘Hunger Artists’ he calls us, “all going forward because the food they ate tasted wrong and the world was sad.” But I’m beginning to sense that moving forward is not enough. Finding better-tasting food to bring joy back to the world should be the purpose of any quest.”

The poem to which he refers reads:

“In spite of their lack of humor

I love Thoreau and Jesus, Marx

Malcom X. I love their obstinate courage,

Hunger Artists all, going forward

Because the food they ate

Tasted wrong, and the world was sad.”

“All the heroes, the saints, the seers, the explorers and the creators partake of it. They do not know where their impulse is taking them. They have been possessed for a time with an extraordinary passion which is unintelligible in ordinary terms. No preconceived theory fits them. No material purpose actuates them. They do the useless, brave, noble, the divinely foolish and the very wisest things that are done by man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that man is no mere creature of his habits, no mere automaton in his routine, no mere cog in the collective machine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky.” – Walter Lippmann

Theo appears consumed by that “divine dissatisfaction” dancer and choreographer Martha Graham spoke about – “a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.”

Is it madness?

Or is it the only path available when you sense that the world is mad?

“Much Madness is divinest Sense –

To a discerning Eye –

Much Sense – the starkest Madness –

’Tis the Majority

In this, as all, prevail –

Assent – and you are sane –

Demur – you’re straightway dangerous –

And handled with a Chain.” – Emily Dickinson

Or nailed to a cross…or forced to kill yourself by drinking hemlock.

Like author E.B. White, who once said he held one share in the corporate earth and was uneasy about its management, Theo considers the scorecard:

From the year 1500 to 2000:

– Human population has increased 14-fold.

– Production 240-fold.

– Energy consumption 115-fold.

Impressive! But…

as author Yuval Harari asked after presenting those figures in his book ‘Homo Sapiens’: are we happier as a result?

“Did the wealth humankind accumulate over the last five centuries translate into a new-found contentment? Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gatherer who 30,000 years ago left her handprint on a wall in Chauvet Cave?”

 

 

If the answer is not a resounding and categorical “YES!”, what’s the point?

Theo is in the process of turning over his share – his membership card to the world – and is walking away.

But away where? What for?

He considers the legacy of other Hunger Artists:

“After Jesus, the Catholic Church, the Crusades, the Inquisition, pedophiles.

After Buddha, unbridled capitalism, sweatshops, call-centers, pollution, anomie – a consuming greed in both India (its cradle) and in China.

What about Socrates’ Greece: near financial collapse, unemployment, despair.

Thoreau’s Walden?: despoiled planet, life diminished.”

The world does not seem to want to listen, as I wrote in ‘Off with Her Head!’

We don’t want to hear:

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” – Jesus

Or

“I am convinced that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime if we will live simply and wisely.” – Thoreau

Or

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates

Or Buddha’s second truth: Suffering is caused by selfish craving and personal desire.

“We have capitulated, in order to fit in.” Theo recalls his brother’s earlier words as they sit under a clear, starry sky.

Theo wants to “fit out”, and midway in his journey, he is still struggling to rid himself from the suffocating clutch of all the beliefs he’s unwittingly assumed.

“Mine,” he wrote in his First Letter to his crew, “is a spiritual journey, in which I intend to question all the conventions of our modern world – all the ideologies, myths, and illusions that shape our understanding of the world – and think everything anew, as if for the first time: What is Happiness? What is Love? Why Death? What’s the meaning of our short presence on this Earth? How can we live with greater joy, purpose, and presence? I am headed towards a new orientation to life, if you will.”

Some have branded his journey as “escapism”.

To which his response is to quote Henry Miller:

“The real escapist is the man who adapts himself to a world he does not subscribe to.”

Godspeed Theo! Stay hungry, and bring us better tasting food.

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