Sean Sakamoto's Open Salon Blog

Don't Follow That Guru Into The Sweat Lodge

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:10:31 -0400

After reading this in-depth rundown with insightful commentary on the tragedy near Sedona, I was reminded of an essay I wrote regarding spirituality and destruction.

In this post on Making Light, Teresa Nielsen Hayden comments on the use by the guru, James Ray, of language that invokes war, death and sacrifice.

It reminded me of Timothy Treadwell, the subject of the documentary "Grizzly Man" by Werner Herzog. Here is the essay I wrote after seeing that movie.

Four Simple Questions That Might Save Your Life.

After watching Grizzly Man, the incredible new documentary about the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, I couldn’t stop thinking about this strange man who committed suicide by bear, all the while pretending that he was actually helping protect them from poachers who essentially didn’t exist. As wild as his story was, there was a thru line that seemed very familiar. Timothy thought he was living out of love for bears, but in fact he was consumed by his own appetite for destruction, and while his format was unusual, we are all vulnerable, capable of making the same deluded mistake.

In his outstanding book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, Christopher Hedges writes on page 158 “Sigmund Freud divided the forces in human nature between the Eros instinct, the impulse within us that propels us to become close to others, to preserve and conserve, and the Thanatos, or death instinct, the impulse that works towards the annihilation of all living things, including ourselves.”

In the Grizzly Man, we learn that before he discovered his love for bears, Timothy was bent on self-destruction. He was an alcoholic, and nearly died from his excesses. What seems to have rescued him from his obsession to drink was a higher calling to protect the grizzly bears of Alaska. An ecologist who knew him is interviewed in the film, and she goes so far as to say that Timothy’s desire to be a bear, to be other than human, was a religious experience.

Later, in the film, Timothy is shown thanking the bears for rescuing him from his previous life of drinking. Carl Jung, in a letter to Bill Wilson, a co-founder of alcoholics anonymous, described what he believed to be the only solution to an alcoholic obsession with drink. He describes the recovery from alcoholism of a mutual friend.

“His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.”

He concludes his letter with these words,

“You see, "alcohol" in Latin is "spiritus" and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.”

In Timothy’s case, he had the religious experience that Jung describes, a selfless, spiritual awakening of sorts, that freed him from the grip of his obsession with alcohol. Unfortunately, the god with whom he communed was not Eros, but rather it was Thanatos wearing a bear suit. As Mr. Hedges explains, in the beginning, love and destruction feel the same. He was lifted out of his mundane concerns, delivered from his vice, but the mechanism of his freedom was a renewed devotion to Thanatos, not Eros. As Hedges writes on page 159, “The initial selflessness of war mirrors that of love, the chief emotion war destroys. And this is what war often looks and feels like, at its inception: love.”

If it were so easy to discern the difference between the paths of love and destruction, then perhaps fewer would chose the latter and more would choose the former. How could Timothy have known that his noble calling to save the bears was actually a slow path to suicide? It’s actually very obvious. In fact, in hindsight, much of our race’s greatest follies should have been visible from a long way off. It is simple to discern, but it is not easy. The allure, the seduction, and the promise of belonging to something that cures the boredom and pain of daily life is strong.

How can we prevent ourselves from following the siren song of Thanatos? I have devised a simple checklist to discern the difference. It’s hardly all inclusive, and it’s not exact, but it may help to start the process of self-questioning and introspection that might derail a selfless devotion to the path to ruin.

1. What language do I use when I describe object of my devotion?

Perhaps Timothy could have paid attention to the words he used to describe his time with the bears. Phrases like “Decapitation at any moment,” “Life on the edge of destruction,” and “die doing what I love” came up often. They were clear warnings. If one is engaged in an activity that can be described as dangerous, deadly, on the edge, or harrowing, there’s a chance that Thanatos is in the driver’s seat.

2. Does my cause require me to take up arms?

If learning how to use a rifle is part of your cause, there’s a possibility that your love of freedom, the fatherland, god, or the revolution might actually be a hitch in the Army of Thanatos. History is full of cases where armed force was necessary to thwart the armies of Thanatos, but it’s a safe bet that if you’re armed, you should ask serious questions about whether Eros or Thanatos are calling the shots in your devotion to selfless service.

3. Is it possible that the people whom I’m trying to help may mistakenly be killed?

If euphemisms like collateral damage and friendly fire are part of your campaign, then you might actually be on the wrong path.

4. If you die, will you die doing what you love?

I’d say that overall, a love shouldn’t require your expiration. Certainly self-sacrifice is part of love, but conditions that require the ultimate sacrifice are very, very rare. If your passion routinely puts you in deadly situations, then you have probably given yourself to Thanatos. Extreme sports come to mind, but there are many ways people find a transcendent, spiritual experience by courting death. The spirit that they seek is destruction, not love, remember, they feel the same in the beginning, but they are not the same, one is a creative force, and one is destructive. Again, I refer to Hedges, on page 171 “The Thanatos instinct is a drive toward suicide, individual and collective.”

These are but four simple questions, neither an authoritative or complete list. If anyone who reads this would care to add criteria, or refine my suggestions, I welcome your comments. I believe that scrutinizing our passions, and looking for traces of Thanatos is some of the most important work we can do in our lives.

There's No Heat In My House, And I Like It

Thu, 8 Jan 2009 17:01:57 -0500

"It's so weird that you heat your whole house," my wife said one winter. She's Japanese, and when we first got married, in the United States, we got a lot of mileage out of the "I can't believe you people actually do this" conversations.

Recently, we moved to Japan and the tables have turned. It's my turn now and, among other things, perhaps my biggest culture shock was, at first: "I can't believe you people don't heat your houses." That's right: there is no heat in our new Japanese home, and in this culture, that is not remotely unusual.

Despite growing up in Michigan, I have always been a total wimp about the cold. That's why, when we decided to move, my biggest worry was surviving the winter. The language barrier, the food, the culture shock, all seemed manageable, but not the cold. I have always hated being cold, especially indoors.

It's been four months, now, and we're in the dead of winter. We live in a rural village. Our apartment is concrete with no insulation. My breath clouds the air; it condenses on the windows and turns into a sheet of ice. I wear a wool cap to bed, to breakfast, and everywhere else. I've always thought that it's just not supposed to be cold inside, but as far as the Japanese are concerned, I thought wrong.

Like the fish for breakfast, I've adapted to the situation much faster than I expected. As is usual for me with most things I used to dread, I've even come to see some great benefits my new situation. There is an upside to having a freezing cold home. The best part about it is a something called a kotatsu.

The kotatsu is a low table with a small electric heater underneath. There's at least one in every home (that's my wife and little boy sitting at one in the photo). The top of the table lifts off, and a quilt goes over the legs. Then you put the top back on. Everyone sits around the table with the quilt over their laps, and the heat keeps your lower body warm. It's cozy, like sitting by the fire.

Because the rest of the house is freezing, the kotatsu gets a lot of action. It's the first place I go in the morning, and the last place I leave at night. We eat at the kotatsu. We enjoy nabe, long family meals with a pot of boiling water on a portable burner. We dip meat, veggies, and noodles into the pot and then scoop them onto bowls of rice. The boiling water heats the room, and the hot meat and veggies taste great.

When we're not eating, we play board games around the kotatsu, or just sit quietly and listen to music.

Another strategy for surviving the cold is the hot bath we share at the end of the day. We have a tiny, but deep bathtub. We fill it up with freezing cold water, and then fire up the propane heater next to it to warm up the bath water.

All of use the same bath water, but it's much better than it sounds, because before we get in, we scoop the water over our heads, soap up and rinse off. Then we take our turns squeezing into the tub. That heats us up enough to make the transition into bed, carrying a hot water bottle to keep our feet warm all night. We don't drain the tub, we pump it into the washing machine the next day do to the daily wash, which we hang up in the hallway. Even in the winter, our clothes dry in a couple of days.

We're not alone. Part of what makes this situation bearable is that everyone does it. We're not making some sacrifice that everyone else forgoes. I have no one nearby to envy. At the high school where I teach English, all the students and teachers have a kotatsu at home, they each bring a hot water bottle to bed, and they all wake up to the same freezing cold air. We're all in it together, and I'm the only person who even knows anything different.

There's another reason I appreciate this new experience, too. It is what the Japanese call "Gaman." It means "endure," or "tolerate" but there's more to it than that. It ascribes value to enduring something difficult. To Gaman is a principle, its a virtue. It's a cross between hanging in there and fighting the good fight.

There are times when gaman is a pain. Sometimes enduring hardship as a virtue when the situation could just as easily be made more comfortable seems nuts. But as a cultural value, doing your best and enduring hardship is refreshing. I won't speak for other Americans, but my experience has often leaned too far the other way when it comes to putting up with difficulty without complaint.

I like finding the easy way, I seek comfort, I reach for whatever might soothe the least bit of discomfort I feel. This wouldn't be so bad if it actually worked. But too often I've emerged woozy from another day of escapism and wondered if there wasn't another way. The connection between comfort, consumption, and happiness seems to be more tenuous than I once thought. Here I am in Japan, my fear of a heatless winter come true, and I'm happier than I've been in years.

The unintended result is that I'm consuming less resources, though that was never really a goal of mine, spending much more time with my family, and feeling a strange satisfaction in knowing that I'm taking the more difficult path and doing just fine. It's got me wondering about the value of gaman and how it fits with living a more sustainable lifestyle, and how maybe it's not that foreign a concept.

Wasn't there a time in America when hard work was valued just for the fact that it was hard? Weren't we more stoic in years past? I'm really asking because I have no idea, just a feeling. I always mocked the scorn of the old timers when they told me how they walked miles in ten feet of snow uphill both ways to school and back. The Grandpa Simpson's of the world whose quaint sacrifices seemed hopelessly outmoded.

Still, there was a pride in their voices that I didn't really understand. Now, maybe, I do. I like huddling around the kotatsu, the simple pleasure of a hot bath at the end of a cold day, and the hot water bottle at my feet. I like putting up with the winter chill.

And the great news is, I don't have to worry about leaving the milk out.

This post was first published on http://www.noimpactman.com