The way you feel about books is the way I often feel about the internet: just so many words. And of course they are more than that, if one finds the right words, and reads them attentively (preferably printed up on paper, which is how I read this essay). There is only so far that knowledge can take us, especially spiritual knowledge—compared to, say, information on how to build a chicken coop, or do a math equation, or fix a washing machine.
But there are probably ways, subtle ways, that spiritual knowledge settles into our mind, even when we seem to have forgotten it, and subtle ways that it shapes our perceptions and experiences. And hopefully those ways are good ways.
At least the act of reading demands a certain type of focused attention, and also exercises vocabulary, logic, imagination, memory, and other aspects of mind, which keep us rooted in ourselves. Even when carefully reading a book we don’t like, we are having an experience like somebody working out in a gym, and not wanting to work out, but still building muscles as a result.
In a world where AI is threatening to do a lot of the heavy mental lifting for us, reading actual books, with our actual minds, may help protect and nourish our essential humanness.
Bottom line: keep the books. And hey, if you don’t want them, I will give you my shipping address.
Don't get me wrong. There are more than a few books that they would have to pry from my cold, dead hands. As it were. I am the first to say have learned a lot from books. But slowly I also begin to better see the limitations of the bookish life.
My larger point, such as it was, is how our attachments can weigh us down. Not just books, of course, but anything. Most often it is the things we aren't even aware of, or the things we think we can't possibly do without. For me the tangible analogy was my books that I will be porting around the country. That to me mirrors the other things I am carrying that are not so tangible.
I hope all is well. And perhaps we will talk soon. -Jack
Perhaps there is a time in our lives for books, or certain other attachments, and perhaps there are times when we need to move on? I don’t know. Just thinking out loud.
While I do love my books—just the sight of them gives me a feeling of warmth and home—I’m less certain of how attached I am. Perhaps it is actually warmth and home that I am attached to, and books are an incidental part of this.
Obviously in some spiritual frameworks, all attachments are undesirable and should be let go of. I’m not assuming this is precisely how you feel, although I have encountered other writers/commentators who lean very strongly in that direction.
All this comes back to a question that has hovered between us in our various conversations, often implicitly, of how we should respond to attachment, and even what it is. Somehow the answer seems more individual or idiosyncratic than generalizable to me, although I recognize that in some systems (e.g., Buddhism) there is only one answer.
I used to have a similar relationship to books and was loathe to part with them. Eventually, however, my need for orderliness would assert itself and trump my need to hang on to books. Over the last few years, it has been getting a lot easier to shed my property, books included. One thing that really helps is that I have only one bookshelf, and it has only three shelves. I really dislike seeing books piled up everywhere; again, the orderliness thing. The other thing that has helped is that over the years, for all the hundreds of books I've given away, I have only bought back one or two of those books. And, despite my intentions, I have re-read few of the books I do keep. My tastes have also changed. Now, I buy fewer books for the purpose of "informing" myself on a particular subject. Instead, I have bought a lot of poetry books, which are meant to be experienced rather than strictly understood, and actually benefit from multiple readings. None of this change was willed by me; it simply evolved (or devolved, depending on your viewpoint.) Perhaps it came from a recognition, conscious or not, that for all books I have read, I am still at the beginning, spiritually wise. I get so much more just staring at some nearby hills or sitting quietly in the cathedral which I attend. Of course, I still have in my head a list of books that I "should" read. But now I know that I probably won't read them, and I am at peace with that.
This is sane. I hope that this is the direction I am pointed in. Thank you. Sitting in silence and being out here in the wilderness has taught me far more than a thousand books. No doubt I will continue to read, but perhaps without the voraciousness of the past. I would prefer to really live with a book, chew on it, meditate on it. No need to rush.
I know exactly what you mean. I am currently reading The Mystery of Christian Life by St Sophrony the Athonite and finding it most rewarding by just reading one or two paragraphs at a time then meditating on it. My old self would have finished the book in a week and in truth, been little the wiser for it.
This way though it is nourishment for the soul and so much easier to put thought into action.
Many blessings on your travels - and thank you for sharing the fruits of your monastic sojourn in this forum. We've been blessed by your prayer, and your gift at articulating your journey.
It's an important topic, the limited value of knowledge in general, and books in particular. I'm reminded of how St. Francis of Assisi was particularly suspicious of books. I try to keep to the discipline of only reading that which I believe will help support my life of prayer and my life of work on the land (gardening/ecology/forestry texts). Even so, it's easy to read far beyond my ability to integrate. For me, the discipline is to limit my mental work to that which is in service to the rest of life and vocation. My biggest temptation is to over-read in trying to understand the pathologies of our world - and alas, substack is my most common way of doing this....
OK, enough writing. My next task today is to go cut a new door in an old mobile chicken pen, to get it ready for it's newest inhabitants that will move from the barn to the field this week. :-)
I wish you well as you transition onto the pilgrim's road.
This is it exactly. I am certainly not advocating that anyone start throwing away their books. Or to stop thinking about the world. Rather, the past year has shown me how I can carry so much of burden and often don't even know I am doing it. Or that one could even put it down. I have to wonder why it takes so long to see that more clearly and to even want to let it go. But letting go, day after day, is probably a far better way to deal with the pathologies of the world than all my intellectual analyses ever have or will. So the practice continues.
I hope the cutting of the chicken pen door goes well.
Blessings to you and everyone at Metanoia. Hopefully we will talk relatively soon.
"But letting go, day after day, is probably a far better way to deal with the pathologies of the world than all my intellectual analyses ever have or will."
Amen to that Jack, that is rapidly becoming my take on the subject too.
The more we accept that we don't NEED to know or understand everything, the more content and peaceful we become.
When I first became a wanderer, I sold everything I had and gave all my books to the Samaritans - I reckon they weighed in at about two tons. Now I try and make it a rule to give away a book once I have read it. I keep a very few - The Cloud of Unknowing, Shunryu Suzuki, the gospels (on my phone).
I like the zen story of the professor who went to visit the zen master. The master offered the professor tea. When he poured the tea, the master kept on pouring until it overflowed. The professor was shocked at his carelessness. The master said, “when the cup is full, how can it receive any more?”
Thank you for your sane response. It seems the more we try to fill ourselves up with what won't actually work the emptier we feel. The response? Jam more in! Funny how that doesn't every really work. It is in emptying ourselves that we are made full.
At some point, I hope to get it all down to a list like yours. I think giving the book away is a good way to do that. There are only a few books I would ever replace if lost. Most of what I kept this time around is because I know I wouldn't ever replace them. Odd.
For me, all that reading was driven by a desire to understand, to figure it out. Eventually I realised that even if I could figure it out, intellectually, it wouldn’t change a thing. I think St. Paul said something appropriate. As you say in your piece, the end of “understanding” and “knowing” is the beginning of it all
Alternatively, perhaps all we really need to know are simplicity, meekness, childlikeness, forgiveness and love. These are the things of eternity. All the rest are worldly things. So do all our books help us with the task of eternity?
For a couple decades I would park books, records and cassettes into storage units then wander someplace, come back, get an apartment, put everything on shelves ordered just so, then after awhile back into a new storage unit….wash rinse and repeat.
Like you, David, I wonder if only a handful of books, truly read and absorbed are all we need. The rest is God’s work in us. And so, I’ve too been giving away and selling, buying far fewer newer books. I wonder if I only really need about a half dozen…
Jack, it’s perhaps not that we’re all wanderers on this earth, but rather strangers on this earth. It is not our home. It is a place to work out where our home is.
There was a strange poet who I adored when I was younger. Georg Trakl. Exceptionally strange work. It’s where I was first introduced to the stranger on this earth theme, though his wasn’t spiritual but rather psychological. The theme has stayed with me for three decades. Only recently has it brought me peace though.
I like your description of the Western Faustian Bargain--one which, sadly, I am extremely tempted by. Lately I have been convicted of the fact that, for the most part, I already know enough. Not that there won't be new things to learn, but that at this point in my life, I do not need to seek out more knowledge, but rather put into practice the things I already know, to be faithful to the responsibilities that God has already entrusted to me. To that end, I have dramatically cut back on the amount of reading or other information consumption that I engage in (across all forms of media), and trying to be much more intentional about what I do feed to my mind.
What you are doing seems very sane to me. Really, how much do we need to know before we are ready to act? Ready to live in unknowing and trust rather than expertise? Or sometimes just the illusion of expertise.
My guess is that ultimately we won't be taking a written exam after death.
I have to agree with what you say here Jack, even though I have been spending my time recently writing a book, and after reading your thoughts I do wonder who does it benefit, at the end of the day it not like a book on theology going to put my name in lights.
I remember when I was doing my theology degree, I came away from it thinking that was three years wasted, simply because it was three years of scanning the surface of so many topics, that you came away feeling you were no clearer on anything, and because of the work load you didn't get the time to process and think on things deeper, the only think it gave me was a passion for the subject, and if anyone ask me if I would recommend a theology degree, I would probably say no, because I have learned more reading theology for myself.
I think Nicholas of Casu thoughts are true because we never get any further than learned ignorance, and this is seen through when we look at any bibliography, is that i might write a book or essay but the sources I consult are purely finite, in the sense I have only so much time to read these sources, i can only read sources in a particular language, and I'm sure there would be many other limitations, so how many books have I not consulted, how many other books have I not consulted because they have been written indifferent languages, so reading we are never going to be an authority on anything, as the author of Ecclesiastes said it's all vanity, and maybe that the main reason why I want to write a book, just to say that I have.
This is the struggle, isn't it? I know very well--in my own sphere--what you are expressing here. All of our striving to know...and what do we end up knowing? Even if we do somehow become a noted expert in some field or other, there will likely be a counter-expert who takes a very different view. It is never-ending and at least in my own life, has proven to be exactly as Ecclesiastes says it is. Though it has taken me decades to really believe it.
What I see in myself is someone who has held on to so many things that didn't work, in fact made me miserable, because if nothing else it provided me with a worldly identity. Or at least I thought it could. But that turns out to be a source, if not the source, of our delusion and suffering.
What I have been calling the Arsenios Option, i.e., fleeing the world of ambition and distraction, sitting silently in silence, and dwelling in stillness is actually simple. Even when I am all twisted about and anxious, it remains simple. Too simple to gain notice of the world makers Nothing to do, and nothing left undone.
It is in losing ourselves--our identity--that we find wisdom. It isn't something we need to cultivate but rather to consent to and allow. The trade-off is that there is no worldly benefit. Quite the opposite. In nameless simplicity we are nothing and nobody.
Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching:
Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!
Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don't care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.
Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.
Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharp;
I alone am dull.
Other people have purpose;
I alone don't know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.
This is always available to us. And it doesn't necessarily mean heading up to a cabin in the mountains to practice (though, who knows, it has greatly helped me clarify things).
I have spent my life wanting to "be somebody" and in our culture, like most, it means achieving something and gaining status. The means of gaining an identity to collect all the cash and prizes such might bring. But it is killing us all. Another way is available.
Thank you for your reflections. You hit the bullseye as far as I can tell.
Thanks for you response Jack. I think that is the issue, that it's is easy to diagnose the problem, but much harder to escape the labyrinths of corridors and blind alleys we get lost in, and the worst labyrinth is the one where you live in your head and if I'm brutally honest I am tired of living in my head, I just feel I have been living in quicksand for most of my life and I am up to my neck, and slowly going under and I know something has to give, something radically has to change, because most days I just find life deeply underwhelming, you just go through the same meaningless valueless rubbish on a daily basis, and I am at the end of my rope. The world we live in is just so superficial, so fake, toxic, nuts and I just wonder were it is all going, and having three children of my own, I just feel a sense of horror, of hopelessness for what is in store for them. At times I even feel a sense of guilt for bringing them into this fucked up world (pardon my French). Over the years I have just become a very angry person, I have become a stranger to myself, of which I am not a very pleasant person to be around a good lot of the time. So I do find life a struggle and I just can't find any joy, or peace, or meaning and I know that God is there somewhere, but he is very much hidden, I don't read the Bible as much as I should, but I just picked it up and started reading the book of Job, to my wife's dismay, and I find Job's steadfastness and his steely eyed honestly admirable, especially in the face of the well worn religious diatribes of his three protagonists, and I feel the book of Job just speaks to my own personal battles with myself, and the sense to that I am talking into the void, and that I need God to shake me, to change me, to release me from this darkness that surrounds me, but to be honest I don't know how to begin to be released from these shackles that chained me into this dark night of the soul.
It's like we believe that if we read enough, think about it enough, etc., we can safely coax God out of his hiding place. Or that our eyes will learn to see him in the dark. Libraries are filled with such attempts. But my experience has been that this only leads to the opposite. The more I do so the more he seems even more distant and hidden than ever.
Forgive me if this sounds trite, but there is only surrender, radically letting go. Which is not something we can do ourselves. We can't control it, only agree to it and rest in it. The void, one way or another, is coming for us. Why fight it? We can let it do its work in us as excruciatingly painful as that will be. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God--because it is the way of the cross.
I am trying to get at that and express it, even minimally. It is slippery topic, to say the least.
Thanks for responding again Jack. If I am honest when I posted that last response a major part of me felt ashamed that I let myself get so emotional, I just felt this platform wasn't a suitable place for such a outburst, and to be honest I wanted for the ground to open up and swallow me, after posting it I just wanted to take it all back, to rewind back the tape and delete it from view, but saying that I have felt like this for a very long time maybe it was better to get it out of my system, to let the guard down, to stop acting a part, putting on this false persona, that everything is ok to everyone around me, that this persona is the real me, when in reality everything to crumbling around me, and I no longer know who the real me actually me, I have been living this false persona for so long, I don't know what true or what's false anymore. So what you say is not trite, simply if I have been living this false persona for so long, a false persona that only brings misery, then I do need to let go, but to be brutally honest I don't know how too, I have lived this persona for so long it has become second nature, so yes letting go is the remedy, cure to my ills, but where, how does one begin, would you have any advise on the best path forward, or how I begin this walk or renewal, of facing my demons of which there are many, any pointer would be a most welcome help, many thanks Garreth.
Letting go is not something we can *do*, let alone manage and control. All I can offer is taking up, if you haven't already, a contemplative practice. I realize you have family responsibilities, so do what you can. We are made for silence and in it we are slowly--often glacially-- put to right. We have nothing to do with it and our job is to just keep showing up.
But make no mistake that it may very wlll at first, and perhaps for a long time, intensify matters. What is now hidden will be made manifest. We are unable to choose to let go of what we don't even know we are holding onto. I know in my case I have held onto so much, and so tightly, that it is almost always both a complete surprise and utterly familiar when something else emerges into my awareness.
I am hardly an expert on anything. But for all the things I have tried *only* silent prayer has proven able to go as deeply as is needed. Only in silent prayer has it been shown that the things that have troubled me for so long can be released.
It is advisable, where possible, to find a guide. I know that can be difficult these days. I went without one for a long time. Even a wise older friend can be helpful.
I am on record stating that our world is a fundamental lie, and we were all raised in it to one degree or another. Life can be quite different, we can live in the truth, in beauty, and in goodness. But it will necessarily look much different that we thought it would.
As Eliot had it in concluding the Four Quartets:
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
COSTING NO LESS THAN EVERYTHING.
All is is delusion. Any of us, right now, all the time, can begin. All shall be well. This is what we were made for.
The method is hardly a method at all:
1) Sit comfortably in silence.
2) Let all things be both inwardly and outwardly. Our help is not needed.
3) When noticing that one has become caught up in thoughts, sensations, imaginings, etc, the act of noticing this is already a return. Repeat.
4) Setting a kitchen timer, or phone, etc. for a reasonable period of time 10-20 minutest to start, helps.
5) There is no way to fail. It doesn't depend on us at all. Not even a little.
Thank you for this honest reflection—it hits home. I have been living in Turkey for the past few years and will also be leaving soon (returning to the US) and I too will be burdened with books when I do. I recently read a little book by Robert Johnson (ironically because I hadn't read it and didn't want to pack it again without having done so...) in which he examined the transformation of the psyche in comparison with three fundamental stories of Western literature: Don Quixote, Hamlet, and of course—Faust.
It struck me from reading this that what you are describing feels like the beginning of a kind of threshold process, which many of those reading your essays here are very sympathetic to, the transition from Hamlet's exasperation with "Words words words", to Faust's attempt to integrate the shadow cast by a life lived in letters, by confronting the limitations of a relentless pursuit of more understanding.
I very much appreciate your description of this intuition; that at certain point, after half a life immersed in books one has a kind of choice to make—to shift one's gaze from the page, to somewhere beyond it, to that which the words themselves are pointing like fingers to the moon. In my limited understanding this is something of what is intended in lectio divina: reading in a sacred manner.
Johnson includes the following zen proverb in his introduction, it felt appropriate in this conversation:
“When I was young and free, the mountains were the mountains, the river was the river, the sky was the sky. Then I lost my way, and the mountains were no longer the mountains, the river was no longer the river, the sky was no longer the sky. Then I attained satori, and the mountains were again the mountains, the river was again the river, and the sky was again the sky.”
Anyway, there's more I could say on the topic but I think for now, I'll just say: 'Thank You' and Vaya con Dios.
Thank you for this comment. This is it exactly. I had read more than a few books by Robert Johnson long ago, but I don't think I have read the one you mention. Maybe I did, but was too young to get it. I will try to track it down--from a library this time.
As beautiful as a life of books can be--and let's face it, its beauty is 90% of the allure-- there are so many ways it can be a kind of trap. Where what we intend as a search for understanding and life becomes something not unlike the opposite. The question becomes: am I willing to leap out of the net of words, out of the infinite bibliography into...what? Into what all the books in the world cannot contain. That is the hope.
Most of us are given glimpses over the course of our lives and when we do it is the most reality we ever experience, beauty beyond telling. But, of course, that sense fades and the necessities of life reassert themselves.
What are we willing to give to find it, to be found by it, and live in its world rather than the far smaller one we so meticulously construct. We all know, intuitively at least, that this leap is not without its attendant risks. If those who went before us are any measure--and I think they are--it means risking everything. Better not to even go down that road otherwise.
On the other hand, it is also quite easy to linger for a lifetime at the precipice. Neither fish nor fowl. That seems to be worse choice going. Leap, and the net will appear--or so goes the Zen saying. Who will trust taking that leap? Honestly, it often keeps me up at night. Probably because I don't see any reason to turn back.
I hope your move back to the states is a smooth one. Thank you again for your beautiful comment.
To me this is the best, most insightful piece you have written here. Maybe you are wiser than you realise! I have just read the Cloud of Unknowing for the first time so you certainly struck a chord with me.
Every blessing on your travels - do keep your friends here up to date on it all. I, for one, look forward to hearing how it all goes and to reading more of your reflections.
Thank you for the kind words. I am getting the impression from some of the comments that the takeaway from this post was that one shouldn't have books. That wasn't really my point. So I have been wondering whether this one was a bit of a failure.
More importantly, I am glad to hear you have read The Cloud of Unknowing. One of my all-time favorites. A book that always seems to reveal even more upon each reading.
God willing, I will continue on with this substack. I intend to do some smaller updates re: being on the road. Hopefully some podcasts in the near future.
It was clear to me that you were just making the very good point that you can’t research or think your way to the ultimate truth I.e God. To attain that you have to take a different route - an emptying and submission to Him. Your words have made me think that maybe it’s better to read for pleasure rather than to keep striving for knowledge.
I would urge you to keep writing, as long as it doesn’t become a chore for you, and I await in hope for your next instalment.
Yes, that is it exactly. It's like we want to endlessly look at maps, but never enter the territory. An odd proclivity. But also, it struck me that in lugging books around the country in my 20 year old station wagon, that there is also this tendency in me to carry around at a high cost that which no longer serves. Even more bizarre. I don't always know why I am doing so.
I have very much enjoyed writing this substack. It has been clarifying for me in many ways. My intention is to keep going with it. Thank you for the encouragement.
According to Zhuangzi, Lao Dan said 'The Six Classics are just the stale footprints of the former kings - how could they be that which leaves the footprints? ...Footprints are produced by the gait, but they are not the gait itself.'
I've given away more books than I own, but still have shelves upon shelves of these dusty old footprints. That said, I'm not planning on leaving this hilltop until I'm in a box, and the books are another layer of insulation on the walls.
I don't see myself ever giving up on my love for books, but rather that I need to see what they can actually provide more clearly than I have. They can never give us the thing itself (the thing itself which is no-thing itself, of course). It is easy to get fooled by books and turn them into something they are not. A good part of our madness, I submit, stems from misreading books--and by extension other technologies. Not misreading the content, but misreading the medium itself. Virtual reality is nothing new.
And at least with all your books you will stay warm. I hope you are well. -Jack
Jack, this is such an enneagram 5 problem! I think a high proportion of your readers might be 5ish folk, too.
For the last week or so I have been thinking of some advice I saw for type 5 that said, "You are most effective when you stop refining concepts and actually get into action."
I have plenty of action these days but I often feel the addict's hankering for a fascinating idea to delve into arise. It can be counter-productive for sure. I'm learning to laugh at it a bit.
Another bit about type 5 from Riso and Hudson: "Actually, Fives are among the least materialistic of the types and are happy with very few creature comforts. They are avaricious, however, about their time, energy, and resources. They are greedy for knowledge and for the means of improving their skills and expertise..... Because they feel incapable and helpless, they believe that they must gather and hold onto all those things that will make them capable and secure. They may collect back issues of magazines, or compile extensive notes and books on the few areas that interest them, or collect records and CDs until their house is overflowing." Or if the book was more recent it might say collect substacks. Then this further exposure -- "Fives often get locked into what we call preparation mode. They gather more and more information, or endlessly practice, never feeling that they are prepared enough to move into action."
You are moving into action now, and I wish you bon voyage! As for me, a book just arrived in the mail today called Keeping a Family Cow. I had read a library copy but felt I must buy it to be prepared for my future. Ahhh, how sillly I can be. Anything other than focus on the mundane question before me of what dinner can be made out of the contents of my fridge.
I suppose if one hasn't ever had a family cow, it might be useful to have a trusty guidebook. This did make me laugh a bit. Mostly because there is one last book waiting for me at the mailboxes out here (a 10 minute drive away it turns out). Another version of the Tao Te Ching. Like I really need that.
But even so progress in reducing the type-5 need to accumulate knowledge, etc has in fact happened. Two years ago there was no possible way I could have fit all my books in a mid-size station wagon. Small victories!
But it isn't only the type-5 intelleckshual types. Most everybody is clinging to something. And often don't even know it, don't want to know. Clinging to what we think we absolutely need and can't possibly do without--the very same thing which is holding us back.
I hope dinner goes well for the McClardy family! -Jack
Thank you, I'll begin laughing at my E5 hankering for the 'fascinating idea.' (but it FEELS SOOO GOOD!) Haha, for how long? (but it UNRAVELS TRUTH) hehe, for whom?
Like you, I tend to collect books, some are easy to let go of, others aren't. Like you, I find that I, though far from wise, I carry most of what I need around already. I don't need another book on zen - I know how to sit (whether I can follow through is another matter). So by rights, books should be far easier to let go of, no? :-)
Best wishes to you on your journey towards letting go of what you don't need at this point! :-)
We have what we need already. This is exactly the point. Which doesn't mean we never read, but that we remember we already have what we need. Then books can serve their actual purpose. And we can take or leave them as necessary.
The nth spiritual book is just a crutch, isn't it. It may give us such a feeling of accomplishment because it is much much harder to DO than to READ ABOUT.
That is really the crux of the matter. The irony of collecting books on letting go and then not wanting to let go of the books. We are curious creatures!
But I have shed many of them over the past few years. And of course the problem isn't really the books. It is my own clinging that is the problem. May this letting go continue for all of us.
Maybe we should smile more kindly on our tendency to hold on to books - if the world will be saved by beauty, surely it is natural to hold on to the beauty of words and books, too. :-)
Sending kind thoughts from my place in the univers to yours.
I've heard it said that the collecting of books and the reading of books is actually two different hobbies, and I've definitely found that to be true in my own experience. I have a growing concern that the ever expanding pile of "to be read" books on my nightstand is going to collapse one night and smoother me in my sleep. I recently re-read "The Way of the Pilgrim", though this time with the second book (or perhaps it's just the full version) that I didn't realize existed the first time I read it. So much I missed not having that the first time around!
I really resonate with your reflection on the limitations of learning by reading (not to say it isn't still an important tool!). Truth is ultimately a Person and as such, true knowing is participatory. Books, podcasts, blogposts and the like can all be helpful aids that point toward that participation, but I eventually have to take that final step off the page an into living reality. This is something I'm continuing to learn as I love reading and can still often confuse it with the goal (i.e. reading about prayer vs actually praying).
F_S- Apparently the Japanese even have a word for it. Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them. An international phenomenon!
Of course books can be a great help to us in all sorts of ways. It is seeing how I have become attached to them in unproductive ways that has long troubled me. We are like birds reading about flying rather than just flying. I buy books on letting go--a whole library, even--and truck them around like a load of bricks. But I am getting better at it. Slowly.
But it also leads me to ask what else am I carrying that I am not so aware of. The things the eyes cannot see. That is the real question. Attachment to books is probably only the tip of the iceberg. A mere symptom.
Wisdom is a weird idea, right`? As you suggest It has no natural relationship to ‘intelligence’, neither to ‘learning’. That was St Paul’s take on the matter. One thing Paul knew, and I would love you take on the road with you is this: wisdom is no big deal. Wisdom is not some holy contraband freighted across earthly borders by mystics, prophets, gurus, beatniks, nor even holy fools. It is not some God almighty alchemic magic neither. It is that which common-sense smells like when you wash all the horseshit out of it. Have a grand trip, Jack. Vaya con Dios, baby.
Bradley- That is a great question. At the moment I am rereading Dostoevsky. I finished Crime and Punishment and am about halfway through The Brothers Karamazov. I can 't recommend Dostoevsky enough. His big five novels are (in a possible order for reading: C&P, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, Bros K. Other fiction: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller and the Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Also, The Cloud of Unknowing, the Mystical Theology and Divine Names by Dionysius the Areopagite, and the sermons of Meister Eckhart.
Thank you, Jack, for pointing me to stillness before God, a place of rest and peace. Jesus assures us we maybhave a flowing spring of life within us as pure gift, and his yoke is easy and his burden light. I need just be. It is all gift!
Beautiful. You are right, it is all there for us. But we tend to turn away, often without even knowing we are doing so. We only need to keep turning back until we realize there was nowhere to go in the first place.
The way you feel about books is the way I often feel about the internet: just so many words. And of course they are more than that, if one finds the right words, and reads them attentively (preferably printed up on paper, which is how I read this essay). There is only so far that knowledge can take us, especially spiritual knowledge—compared to, say, information on how to build a chicken coop, or do a math equation, or fix a washing machine.
But there are probably ways, subtle ways, that spiritual knowledge settles into our mind, even when we seem to have forgotten it, and subtle ways that it shapes our perceptions and experiences. And hopefully those ways are good ways.
At least the act of reading demands a certain type of focused attention, and also exercises vocabulary, logic, imagination, memory, and other aspects of mind, which keep us rooted in ourselves. Even when carefully reading a book we don’t like, we are having an experience like somebody working out in a gym, and not wanting to work out, but still building muscles as a result.
In a world where AI is threatening to do a lot of the heavy mental lifting for us, reading actual books, with our actual minds, may help protect and nourish our essential humanness.
Bottom line: keep the books. And hey, if you don’t want them, I will give you my shipping address.
Peter-
Don't get me wrong. There are more than a few books that they would have to pry from my cold, dead hands. As it were. I am the first to say have learned a lot from books. But slowly I also begin to better see the limitations of the bookish life.
My larger point, such as it was, is how our attachments can weigh us down. Not just books, of course, but anything. Most often it is the things we aren't even aware of, or the things we think we can't possibly do without. For me the tangible analogy was my books that I will be porting around the country. That to me mirrors the other things I am carrying that are not so tangible.
I hope all is well. And perhaps we will talk soon. -Jack
Perhaps there is a time in our lives for books, or certain other attachments, and perhaps there are times when we need to move on? I don’t know. Just thinking out loud.
While I do love my books—just the sight of them gives me a feeling of warmth and home—I’m less certain of how attached I am. Perhaps it is actually warmth and home that I am attached to, and books are an incidental part of this.
Obviously in some spiritual frameworks, all attachments are undesirable and should be let go of. I’m not assuming this is precisely how you feel, although I have encountered other writers/commentators who lean very strongly in that direction.
All this comes back to a question that has hovered between us in our various conversations, often implicitly, of how we should respond to attachment, and even what it is. Somehow the answer seems more individual or idiosyncratic than generalizable to me, although I recognize that in some systems (e.g., Buddhism) there is only one answer.
Hopefully we will be able to have this discussion soon. I think it is a very interesting one.
I used to have a similar relationship to books and was loathe to part with them. Eventually, however, my need for orderliness would assert itself and trump my need to hang on to books. Over the last few years, it has been getting a lot easier to shed my property, books included. One thing that really helps is that I have only one bookshelf, and it has only three shelves. I really dislike seeing books piled up everywhere; again, the orderliness thing. The other thing that has helped is that over the years, for all the hundreds of books I've given away, I have only bought back one or two of those books. And, despite my intentions, I have re-read few of the books I do keep. My tastes have also changed. Now, I buy fewer books for the purpose of "informing" myself on a particular subject. Instead, I have bought a lot of poetry books, which are meant to be experienced rather than strictly understood, and actually benefit from multiple readings. None of this change was willed by me; it simply evolved (or devolved, depending on your viewpoint.) Perhaps it came from a recognition, conscious or not, that for all books I have read, I am still at the beginning, spiritually wise. I get so much more just staring at some nearby hills or sitting quietly in the cathedral which I attend. Of course, I still have in my head a list of books that I "should" read. But now I know that I probably won't read them, and I am at peace with that.
Jim-
This is sane. I hope that this is the direction I am pointed in. Thank you. Sitting in silence and being out here in the wilderness has taught me far more than a thousand books. No doubt I will continue to read, but perhaps without the voraciousness of the past. I would prefer to really live with a book, chew on it, meditate on it. No need to rush.
That is my hope. Be well.
-Jack
I know exactly what you mean. I am currently reading The Mystery of Christian Life by St Sophrony the Athonite and finding it most rewarding by just reading one or two paragraphs at a time then meditating on it. My old self would have finished the book in a week and in truth, been little the wiser for it.
This way though it is nourishment for the soul and so much easier to put thought into action.
Jack!
Many blessings on your travels - and thank you for sharing the fruits of your monastic sojourn in this forum. We've been blessed by your prayer, and your gift at articulating your journey.
It's an important topic, the limited value of knowledge in general, and books in particular. I'm reminded of how St. Francis of Assisi was particularly suspicious of books. I try to keep to the discipline of only reading that which I believe will help support my life of prayer and my life of work on the land (gardening/ecology/forestry texts). Even so, it's easy to read far beyond my ability to integrate. For me, the discipline is to limit my mental work to that which is in service to the rest of life and vocation. My biggest temptation is to over-read in trying to understand the pathologies of our world - and alas, substack is my most common way of doing this....
OK, enough writing. My next task today is to go cut a new door in an old mobile chicken pen, to get it ready for it's newest inhabitants that will move from the barn to the field this week. :-)
I wish you well as you transition onto the pilgrim's road.
Pax Christi,
Mark
Mark-
This is it exactly. I am certainly not advocating that anyone start throwing away their books. Or to stop thinking about the world. Rather, the past year has shown me how I can carry so much of burden and often don't even know I am doing it. Or that one could even put it down. I have to wonder why it takes so long to see that more clearly and to even want to let it go. But letting go, day after day, is probably a far better way to deal with the pathologies of the world than all my intellectual analyses ever have or will. So the practice continues.
I hope the cutting of the chicken pen door goes well.
Blessings to you and everyone at Metanoia. Hopefully we will talk relatively soon.
-Jack
"But letting go, day after day, is probably a far better way to deal with the pathologies of the world than all my intellectual analyses ever have or will."
Amen to that Jack, that is rapidly becoming my take on the subject too.
The more we accept that we don't NEED to know or understand everything, the more content and peaceful we become.
Amen.
When I first became a wanderer, I sold everything I had and gave all my books to the Samaritans - I reckon they weighed in at about two tons. Now I try and make it a rule to give away a book once I have read it. I keep a very few - The Cloud of Unknowing, Shunryu Suzuki, the gospels (on my phone).
I like the zen story of the professor who went to visit the zen master. The master offered the professor tea. When he poured the tea, the master kept on pouring until it overflowed. The professor was shocked at his carelessness. The master said, “when the cup is full, how can it receive any more?”
David-
Thank you for your sane response. It seems the more we try to fill ourselves up with what won't actually work the emptier we feel. The response? Jam more in! Funny how that doesn't every really work. It is in emptying ourselves that we are made full.
At some point, I hope to get it all down to a list like yours. I think giving the book away is a good way to do that. There are only a few books I would ever replace if lost. Most of what I kept this time around is because I know I wouldn't ever replace them. Odd.
Be well. -Jack
For me, all that reading was driven by a desire to understand, to figure it out. Eventually I realised that even if I could figure it out, intellectually, it wouldn’t change a thing. I think St. Paul said something appropriate. As you say in your piece, the end of “understanding” and “knowing” is the beginning of it all
Alternatively, perhaps all we really need to know are simplicity, meekness, childlikeness, forgiveness and love. These are the things of eternity. All the rest are worldly things. So do all our books help us with the task of eternity?
For a couple decades I would park books, records and cassettes into storage units then wander someplace, come back, get an apartment, put everything on shelves ordered just so, then after awhile back into a new storage unit….wash rinse and repeat.
Like you, David, I wonder if only a handful of books, truly read and absorbed are all we need. The rest is God’s work in us. And so, I’ve too been giving away and selling, buying far fewer newer books. I wonder if I only really need about a half dozen…
Jack, it’s perhaps not that we’re all wanderers on this earth, but rather strangers on this earth. It is not our home. It is a place to work out where our home is.
There was a strange poet who I adored when I was younger. Georg Trakl. Exceptionally strange work. It’s where I was first introduced to the stranger on this earth theme, though his wasn’t spiritual but rather psychological. The theme has stayed with me for three decades. Only recently has it brought me peace though.
"Though we are all pilgrims we still need to choose this path of losing and losing until there is nothing left to lose." What a line. It hit me hard.
I like your description of the Western Faustian Bargain--one which, sadly, I am extremely tempted by. Lately I have been convicted of the fact that, for the most part, I already know enough. Not that there won't be new things to learn, but that at this point in my life, I do not need to seek out more knowledge, but rather put into practice the things I already know, to be faithful to the responsibilities that God has already entrusted to me. To that end, I have dramatically cut back on the amount of reading or other information consumption that I engage in (across all forms of media), and trying to be much more intentional about what I do feed to my mind.
Jonathan-
What you are doing seems very sane to me. Really, how much do we need to know before we are ready to act? Ready to live in unknowing and trust rather than expertise? Or sometimes just the illusion of expertise.
My guess is that ultimately we won't be taking a written exam after death.
I hope all is well. -Jack
I have to agree with what you say here Jack, even though I have been spending my time recently writing a book, and after reading your thoughts I do wonder who does it benefit, at the end of the day it not like a book on theology going to put my name in lights.
I remember when I was doing my theology degree, I came away from it thinking that was three years wasted, simply because it was three years of scanning the surface of so many topics, that you came away feeling you were no clearer on anything, and because of the work load you didn't get the time to process and think on things deeper, the only think it gave me was a passion for the subject, and if anyone ask me if I would recommend a theology degree, I would probably say no, because I have learned more reading theology for myself.
I think Nicholas of Casu thoughts are true because we never get any further than learned ignorance, and this is seen through when we look at any bibliography, is that i might write a book or essay but the sources I consult are purely finite, in the sense I have only so much time to read these sources, i can only read sources in a particular language, and I'm sure there would be many other limitations, so how many books have I not consulted, how many other books have I not consulted because they have been written indifferent languages, so reading we are never going to be an authority on anything, as the author of Ecclesiastes said it's all vanity, and maybe that the main reason why I want to write a book, just to say that I have.
Garrett-
This is the struggle, isn't it? I know very well--in my own sphere--what you are expressing here. All of our striving to know...and what do we end up knowing? Even if we do somehow become a noted expert in some field or other, there will likely be a counter-expert who takes a very different view. It is never-ending and at least in my own life, has proven to be exactly as Ecclesiastes says it is. Though it has taken me decades to really believe it.
What I see in myself is someone who has held on to so many things that didn't work, in fact made me miserable, because if nothing else it provided me with a worldly identity. Or at least I thought it could. But that turns out to be a source, if not the source, of our delusion and suffering.
What I have been calling the Arsenios Option, i.e., fleeing the world of ambition and distraction, sitting silently in silence, and dwelling in stillness is actually simple. Even when I am all twisted about and anxious, it remains simple. Too simple to gain notice of the world makers Nothing to do, and nothing left undone.
It is in losing ourselves--our identity--that we find wisdom. It isn't something we need to cultivate but rather to consent to and allow. The trade-off is that there is no worldly benefit. Quite the opposite. In nameless simplicity we are nothing and nobody.
Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching:
Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!
Other people are excited,
as though they were at a parade.
I alone don't care,
I alone am expressionless,
like an infant before it can smile.
Other people have what they need;
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.
Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharp;
I alone am dull.
Other people have purpose;
I alone don't know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.
This is always available to us. And it doesn't necessarily mean heading up to a cabin in the mountains to practice (though, who knows, it has greatly helped me clarify things).
I have spent my life wanting to "be somebody" and in our culture, like most, it means achieving something and gaining status. The means of gaining an identity to collect all the cash and prizes such might bring. But it is killing us all. Another way is available.
Thank you for your reflections. You hit the bullseye as far as I can tell.
Be well. -Jack
Thanks for you response Jack. I think that is the issue, that it's is easy to diagnose the problem, but much harder to escape the labyrinths of corridors and blind alleys we get lost in, and the worst labyrinth is the one where you live in your head and if I'm brutally honest I am tired of living in my head, I just feel I have been living in quicksand for most of my life and I am up to my neck, and slowly going under and I know something has to give, something radically has to change, because most days I just find life deeply underwhelming, you just go through the same meaningless valueless rubbish on a daily basis, and I am at the end of my rope. The world we live in is just so superficial, so fake, toxic, nuts and I just wonder were it is all going, and having three children of my own, I just feel a sense of horror, of hopelessness for what is in store for them. At times I even feel a sense of guilt for bringing them into this fucked up world (pardon my French). Over the years I have just become a very angry person, I have become a stranger to myself, of which I am not a very pleasant person to be around a good lot of the time. So I do find life a struggle and I just can't find any joy, or peace, or meaning and I know that God is there somewhere, but he is very much hidden, I don't read the Bible as much as I should, but I just picked it up and started reading the book of Job, to my wife's dismay, and I find Job's steadfastness and his steely eyed honestly admirable, especially in the face of the well worn religious diatribes of his three protagonists, and I feel the book of Job just speaks to my own personal battles with myself, and the sense to that I am talking into the void, and that I need God to shake me, to change me, to release me from this darkness that surrounds me, but to be honest I don't know how to begin to be released from these shackles that chained me into this dark night of the soul.
Garreth-
It's like we believe that if we read enough, think about it enough, etc., we can safely coax God out of his hiding place. Or that our eyes will learn to see him in the dark. Libraries are filled with such attempts. But my experience has been that this only leads to the opposite. The more I do so the more he seems even more distant and hidden than ever.
Forgive me if this sounds trite, but there is only surrender, radically letting go. Which is not something we can do ourselves. We can't control it, only agree to it and rest in it. The void, one way or another, is coming for us. Why fight it? We can let it do its work in us as excruciatingly painful as that will be. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God--because it is the way of the cross.
I am trying to get at that and express it, even minimally. It is slippery topic, to say the least.
I am with you on this, brother.
Be well.
-Jack
Thanks for responding again Jack. If I am honest when I posted that last response a major part of me felt ashamed that I let myself get so emotional, I just felt this platform wasn't a suitable place for such a outburst, and to be honest I wanted for the ground to open up and swallow me, after posting it I just wanted to take it all back, to rewind back the tape and delete it from view, but saying that I have felt like this for a very long time maybe it was better to get it out of my system, to let the guard down, to stop acting a part, putting on this false persona, that everything is ok to everyone around me, that this persona is the real me, when in reality everything to crumbling around me, and I no longer know who the real me actually me, I have been living this false persona for so long, I don't know what true or what's false anymore. So what you say is not trite, simply if I have been living this false persona for so long, a false persona that only brings misery, then I do need to let go, but to be brutally honest I don't know how too, I have lived this persona for so long it has become second nature, so yes letting go is the remedy, cure to my ills, but where, how does one begin, would you have any advise on the best path forward, or how I begin this walk or renewal, of facing my demons of which there are many, any pointer would be a most welcome help, many thanks Garreth.
Garreth-
Better here, than not at all.
Letting go is not something we can *do*, let alone manage and control. All I can offer is taking up, if you haven't already, a contemplative practice. I realize you have family responsibilities, so do what you can. We are made for silence and in it we are slowly--often glacially-- put to right. We have nothing to do with it and our job is to just keep showing up.
But make no mistake that it may very wlll at first, and perhaps for a long time, intensify matters. What is now hidden will be made manifest. We are unable to choose to let go of what we don't even know we are holding onto. I know in my case I have held onto so much, and so tightly, that it is almost always both a complete surprise and utterly familiar when something else emerges into my awareness.
I am hardly an expert on anything. But for all the things I have tried *only* silent prayer has proven able to go as deeply as is needed. Only in silent prayer has it been shown that the things that have troubled me for so long can be released.
It is advisable, where possible, to find a guide. I know that can be difficult these days. I went without one for a long time. Even a wise older friend can be helpful.
I am on record stating that our world is a fundamental lie, and we were all raised in it to one degree or another. Life can be quite different, we can live in the truth, in beauty, and in goodness. But it will necessarily look much different that we thought it would.
As Eliot had it in concluding the Four Quartets:
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
COSTING NO LESS THAN EVERYTHING.
All is is delusion. Any of us, right now, all the time, can begin. All shall be well. This is what we were made for.
The method is hardly a method at all:
1) Sit comfortably in silence.
2) Let all things be both inwardly and outwardly. Our help is not needed.
3) When noticing that one has become caught up in thoughts, sensations, imaginings, etc, the act of noticing this is already a return. Repeat.
4) Setting a kitchen timer, or phone, etc. for a reasonable period of time 10-20 minutest to start, helps.
5) There is no way to fail. It doesn't depend on us at all. Not even a little.
Choose to begin.
I hope that helps.
Be well. -Jack
Dear Jack,
Thank you for this honest reflection—it hits home. I have been living in Turkey for the past few years and will also be leaving soon (returning to the US) and I too will be burdened with books when I do. I recently read a little book by Robert Johnson (ironically because I hadn't read it and didn't want to pack it again without having done so...) in which he examined the transformation of the psyche in comparison with three fundamental stories of Western literature: Don Quixote, Hamlet, and of course—Faust.
It struck me from reading this that what you are describing feels like the beginning of a kind of threshold process, which many of those reading your essays here are very sympathetic to, the transition from Hamlet's exasperation with "Words words words", to Faust's attempt to integrate the shadow cast by a life lived in letters, by confronting the limitations of a relentless pursuit of more understanding.
I very much appreciate your description of this intuition; that at certain point, after half a life immersed in books one has a kind of choice to make—to shift one's gaze from the page, to somewhere beyond it, to that which the words themselves are pointing like fingers to the moon. In my limited understanding this is something of what is intended in lectio divina: reading in a sacred manner.
Johnson includes the following zen proverb in his introduction, it felt appropriate in this conversation:
“When I was young and free, the mountains were the mountains, the river was the river, the sky was the sky. Then I lost my way, and the mountains were no longer the mountains, the river was no longer the river, the sky was no longer the sky. Then I attained satori, and the mountains were again the mountains, the river was again the river, and the sky was again the sky.”
Anyway, there's more I could say on the topic but I think for now, I'll just say: 'Thank You' and Vaya con Dios.
Ian-
Thank you for this comment. This is it exactly. I had read more than a few books by Robert Johnson long ago, but I don't think I have read the one you mention. Maybe I did, but was too young to get it. I will try to track it down--from a library this time.
As beautiful as a life of books can be--and let's face it, its beauty is 90% of the allure-- there are so many ways it can be a kind of trap. Where what we intend as a search for understanding and life becomes something not unlike the opposite. The question becomes: am I willing to leap out of the net of words, out of the infinite bibliography into...what? Into what all the books in the world cannot contain. That is the hope.
Most of us are given glimpses over the course of our lives and when we do it is the most reality we ever experience, beauty beyond telling. But, of course, that sense fades and the necessities of life reassert themselves.
What are we willing to give to find it, to be found by it, and live in its world rather than the far smaller one we so meticulously construct. We all know, intuitively at least, that this leap is not without its attendant risks. If those who went before us are any measure--and I think they are--it means risking everything. Better not to even go down that road otherwise.
On the other hand, it is also quite easy to linger for a lifetime at the precipice. Neither fish nor fowl. That seems to be worse choice going. Leap, and the net will appear--or so goes the Zen saying. Who will trust taking that leap? Honestly, it often keeps me up at night. Probably because I don't see any reason to turn back.
I hope your move back to the states is a smooth one. Thank you again for your beautiful comment.
Be well. -Jack
Hi Jack,
To me this is the best, most insightful piece you have written here. Maybe you are wiser than you realise! I have just read the Cloud of Unknowing for the first time so you certainly struck a chord with me.
Every blessing on your travels - do keep your friends here up to date on it all. I, for one, look forward to hearing how it all goes and to reading more of your reflections.
Rick-
Thank you for the kind words. I am getting the impression from some of the comments that the takeaway from this post was that one shouldn't have books. That wasn't really my point. So I have been wondering whether this one was a bit of a failure.
More importantly, I am glad to hear you have read The Cloud of Unknowing. One of my all-time favorites. A book that always seems to reveal even more upon each reading.
God willing, I will continue on with this substack. I intend to do some smaller updates re: being on the road. Hopefully some podcasts in the near future.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Hi Jack
It was clear to me that you were just making the very good point that you can’t research or think your way to the ultimate truth I.e God. To attain that you have to take a different route - an emptying and submission to Him. Your words have made me think that maybe it’s better to read for pleasure rather than to keep striving for knowledge.
I would urge you to keep writing, as long as it doesn’t become a chore for you, and I await in hope for your next instalment.
Every blessing for your road trip, Rick
Rick-
Yes, that is it exactly. It's like we want to endlessly look at maps, but never enter the territory. An odd proclivity. But also, it struck me that in lugging books around the country in my 20 year old station wagon, that there is also this tendency in me to carry around at a high cost that which no longer serves. Even more bizarre. I don't always know why I am doing so.
I have very much enjoyed writing this substack. It has been clarifying for me in many ways. My intention is to keep going with it. Thank you for the encouragement.
May all be well with you. -Jack
According to Zhuangzi, Lao Dan said 'The Six Classics are just the stale footprints of the former kings - how could they be that which leaves the footprints? ...Footprints are produced by the gait, but they are not the gait itself.'
I've given away more books than I own, but still have shelves upon shelves of these dusty old footprints. That said, I'm not planning on leaving this hilltop until I'm in a box, and the books are another layer of insulation on the walls.
Br. F-
I don't see myself ever giving up on my love for books, but rather that I need to see what they can actually provide more clearly than I have. They can never give us the thing itself (the thing itself which is no-thing itself, of course). It is easy to get fooled by books and turn them into something they are not. A good part of our madness, I submit, stems from misreading books--and by extension other technologies. Not misreading the content, but misreading the medium itself. Virtual reality is nothing new.
And at least with all your books you will stay warm. I hope you are well. -Jack
Jack, this is such an enneagram 5 problem! I think a high proportion of your readers might be 5ish folk, too.
For the last week or so I have been thinking of some advice I saw for type 5 that said, "You are most effective when you stop refining concepts and actually get into action."
I have plenty of action these days but I often feel the addict's hankering for a fascinating idea to delve into arise. It can be counter-productive for sure. I'm learning to laugh at it a bit.
Another bit about type 5 from Riso and Hudson: "Actually, Fives are among the least materialistic of the types and are happy with very few creature comforts. They are avaricious, however, about their time, energy, and resources. They are greedy for knowledge and for the means of improving their skills and expertise..... Because they feel incapable and helpless, they believe that they must gather and hold onto all those things that will make them capable and secure. They may collect back issues of magazines, or compile extensive notes and books on the few areas that interest them, or collect records and CDs until their house is overflowing." Or if the book was more recent it might say collect substacks. Then this further exposure -- "Fives often get locked into what we call preparation mode. They gather more and more information, or endlessly practice, never feeling that they are prepared enough to move into action."
You are moving into action now, and I wish you bon voyage! As for me, a book just arrived in the mail today called Keeping a Family Cow. I had read a library copy but felt I must buy it to be prepared for my future. Ahhh, how sillly I can be. Anything other than focus on the mundane question before me of what dinner can be made out of the contents of my fridge.
Clara
Clara-
I suppose if one hasn't ever had a family cow, it might be useful to have a trusty guidebook. This did make me laugh a bit. Mostly because there is one last book waiting for me at the mailboxes out here (a 10 minute drive away it turns out). Another version of the Tao Te Ching. Like I really need that.
But even so progress in reducing the type-5 need to accumulate knowledge, etc has in fact happened. Two years ago there was no possible way I could have fit all my books in a mid-size station wagon. Small victories!
But it isn't only the type-5 intelleckshual types. Most everybody is clinging to something. And often don't even know it, don't want to know. Clinging to what we think we absolutely need and can't possibly do without--the very same thing which is holding us back.
I hope dinner goes well for the McClardy family! -Jack
Thank you, I'll begin laughing at my E5 hankering for the 'fascinating idea.' (but it FEELS SOOO GOOD!) Haha, for how long? (but it UNRAVELS TRUTH) hehe, for whom?
Like you, I tend to collect books, some are easy to let go of, others aren't. Like you, I find that I, though far from wise, I carry most of what I need around already. I don't need another book on zen - I know how to sit (whether I can follow through is another matter). So by rights, books should be far easier to let go of, no? :-)
Best wishes to you on your journey towards letting go of what you don't need at this point! :-)
We have what we need already. This is exactly the point. Which doesn't mean we never read, but that we remember we already have what we need. Then books can serve their actual purpose. And we can take or leave them as necessary.
The nth spiritual book is just a crutch, isn't it. It may give us such a feeling of accomplishment because it is much much harder to DO than to READ ABOUT.
Quakeress-
That is really the crux of the matter. The irony of collecting books on letting go and then not wanting to let go of the books. We are curious creatures!
But I have shed many of them over the past few years. And of course the problem isn't really the books. It is my own clinging that is the problem. May this letting go continue for all of us.
Be well. -Jack
Maybe we should smile more kindly on our tendency to hold on to books - if the world will be saved by beauty, surely it is natural to hold on to the beauty of words and books, too. :-)
Sending kind thoughts from my place in the univers to yours.
I've heard it said that the collecting of books and the reading of books is actually two different hobbies, and I've definitely found that to be true in my own experience. I have a growing concern that the ever expanding pile of "to be read" books on my nightstand is going to collapse one night and smoother me in my sleep. I recently re-read "The Way of the Pilgrim", though this time with the second book (or perhaps it's just the full version) that I didn't realize existed the first time I read it. So much I missed not having that the first time around!
I really resonate with your reflection on the limitations of learning by reading (not to say it isn't still an important tool!). Truth is ultimately a Person and as such, true knowing is participatory. Books, podcasts, blogposts and the like can all be helpful aids that point toward that participation, but I eventually have to take that final step off the page an into living reality. This is something I'm continuing to learn as I love reading and can still often confuse it with the goal (i.e. reading about prayer vs actually praying).
F_S- Apparently the Japanese even have a word for it. Tsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them. An international phenomenon!
Of course books can be a great help to us in all sorts of ways. It is seeing how I have become attached to them in unproductive ways that has long troubled me. We are like birds reading about flying rather than just flying. I buy books on letting go--a whole library, even--and truck them around like a load of bricks. But I am getting better at it. Slowly.
But it also leads me to ask what else am I carrying that I am not so aware of. The things the eyes cannot see. That is the real question. Attachment to books is probably only the tip of the iceberg. A mere symptom.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Wisdom is a weird idea, right`? As you suggest It has no natural relationship to ‘intelligence’, neither to ‘learning’. That was St Paul’s take on the matter. One thing Paul knew, and I would love you take on the road with you is this: wisdom is no big deal. Wisdom is not some holy contraband freighted across earthly borders by mystics, prophets, gurus, beatniks, nor even holy fools. It is not some God almighty alchemic magic neither. It is that which common-sense smells like when you wash all the horseshit out of it. Have a grand trip, Jack. Vaya con Dios, baby.
Unfortunately, the horseshit is often piled fairly high. Speaking for myself, of course.
John, good to hear from you. How have you been?
My dear old dad has a PhD. He once told me that the degree system really means:
B.S. - Bull shit
M.S. - More of the same
Ph.D. - Piled higher and deeper
This made me laugh.
Hi Jack, just wanting to let you know that I'm keeping you in my prayers, rudimentary and faulty as they doubtlessly are. Hope you're well.
Cheers,
Quakeress
Quakeress-
Thank you. I need all the help I can get!
I hope you are well. -Jack
What are the 5 most transformative books you would recommend?
A grief observed , rediscovering the goodness of creation are the 2 most influential books I’ve read recently
'Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation' looks great. I will need to check that out further. Thank you,
Bradley- That is a great question. At the moment I am rereading Dostoevsky. I finished Crime and Punishment and am about halfway through The Brothers Karamazov. I can 't recommend Dostoevsky enough. His big five novels are (in a possible order for reading: C&P, The Idiot, Demons, The Adolescent, Bros K. Other fiction: A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller and the Road by Cormac McCarthy.
Also, The Cloud of Unknowing, the Mystical Theology and Divine Names by Dionysius the Areopagite, and the sermons of Meister Eckhart.
Just off the top of my head.
What are your top 5?
-Jack
Okay, my list was more than five...
Thank you, Jack, for pointing me to stillness before God, a place of rest and peace. Jesus assures us we maybhave a flowing spring of life within us as pure gift, and his yoke is easy and his burden light. I need just be. It is all gift!
Jeff-
Beautiful. You are right, it is all there for us. But we tend to turn away, often without even knowing we are doing so. We only need to keep turning back until we realize there was nowhere to go in the first place.
-Jack