A How-To for Henry: Devotional

Here are the "Brahmin" selections by Thoreau from The Laws of Menu, appearing in The Dial, January 1843.

One can readily understand the importance of these for Thoreau as "A Way" to make a life...to instigate Action from Principle.


THE BRAHMIN.

43.  "When a Brahmin springs to light, he is born above the world, the chief of all creatures, assigned to guard the treasury of duties religious and civil."

44.  "Whatever exists in the universe, is all in effect the wealth of the Brahmin, since the Brahmin is entitled to it all by his primogeniture and eminence of birth."

45.  "The Brahmin eats but his own food; wears but his own apparel; and bestows but his own in alms: through the benevolence of the Brahmin, indeed, other mortals enjoy life."

46.  "Although Brahmins employ themselves in all sorts of mean occupation, they must invariably be honored; for they are something transcendently divine."

47.  "He must avoid service for hire."

48.  "He may either store up grain for three years, or garner up enough for one year, or collect what may last three days, or make no provision for the morrow."

49.  "Let him never, for the sake of a subsistence, have recourse to popular conversation; let him live by the conduct of a priest, neither crooked, nor artful, nor blended with the manners of the mercantile class."

50.  "Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be crooked in his ways; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief."

51.  "He must not gain wealth by any art that pleases the sense; nor by any prohibited art; nor, whether he be rich or poor, indiscriminately."

52.  "Though permitted to receive presents, let him avoid a habit of taking them; since, by taking many gifts, his divine light soon fades."

53.  "A twice-born man, void of true devotion, and not having read the Veda, yet eager to take a gift, sinks down together with it, as with a boat of stone in deep water."

54.  "A Brahmin should constantly shun worldly honor, as he would shun poison; and rather constantly seek disrespect, as he would seek nectar."

55.  "For, though scorned, he may sleep with pleasure; with pleasure may he awake; with pleasure may he pass through this life: but the scorner utterly perishes."

56.  "All that depends on another gives pain; all that depends on himself gives pleasure; let him know this to be in few words the definition of pleasure and of pain."As for the Brahmin who keeps house,-"Let him say what is true, but let him say what is pleasing; let him speak no disagreeable truth, nor let him speak agreeable falsehood : this is a primeval rule."

57.  "Let him say 'well and good,' or let him say 'well' only; but let him not maintain fruitless enmity and altercation with any man.''" Giving no pain to any creature, let him collect virtue by degrees, for the sake of acquiring a companion to the next world, as the white ant by degrees builds his nest."

58.  "For, in his passage to the next world, neither his father, nor his mother, nor his wife, nor his son, nor his kinsmen, will remain in his company: his virtue alone will adhere to him."

59.  "Single is each man born; single he dies; single he receives the reward of his good, and single the punishment of his evil, deeds."

60.  "When he leaves his corpse, like a log or a lump of clay, on the ground, his kindred retire with averted faces; but his virtue accompanies his soul."

61.  "Continually, therefore, by degrees, let him collect virtue, for the sake of securing an inseparable companion; since, with virtue for his guide, he will traverse a gloom- how hard to be traversed! "

62.  "Alone, in some solitary place, let him constantly meditate on the divine nature of the soul; for, by such meditation, he will obtain happiness."

63.  "When the father of a family preceives his muscles become flaccid, and his hair gray, and sees the child of his child, let him then seek refuge in a forest:"

64.  "Then, having reposited his holy fires, as the law directs, in his mind, let him live without external fire, without a mansion, wholly silent, feeding on roots and fruit;"

65.  "Not solicitous for the means of gratification, chaste as a student, sleeping on the bare earth, in the haunts of pious hermits, without one selfish affection, dwelling at the roots of trees; for the purpose of uniting his soul with the divine spirit."

66.  "Or, if he has any incurable disease, let him advance in a straight path, towards the invincible north-eastern point, feeding on water and air, till his mortal frame totally decay, and his soul become united with the Supreme."

67.  "A Brahmin having shuffled off his body by any of those modes, which great sages practiced; and becoming void of sorrow and fear, rises to exaltation in the divine essence."

68.  "Departing from his house, taking with him pure implements, his water pot and staff, keeping silence, unallured by desire of the objects near him, let him enter into the fourth order."

69.  "Alone let him constantly dwell, for the sake of his own felicity; observing the happiness of a solitary man, who neither forsakes nor is forsaken, let him live without a companion."

70.  "Let him have no culinary fire, no domicile: let him, when very hungry, go to the town for food; let him patiently bear disease; let his mind be firm: let him study to know God, and fix his attention on God alone."

71.  "An earthen water-pot, the roots of large trees, coarse vesture, total solitude, equanimity toward all creatures, these are the characteristics of a Brahmin set free."

72.  "Let him not wish for death; let him not wish for life; let him expect his appointed time, as a hired servant expects his wages."Entirely withdrawn from the world,-"without any companion but his own soul, let him live in this world, seeking the bliss of the next."

73.  "Late in the day let the Sannyasi beg food: for missing it, let him not be sorrowful; nor for gaining it let him be glad; let him care only for a sufficiency to support life, but let him not be anxious about his utensils "

74.  "Let him reflect also, with exclusive application of mind, on the subtil, indivisible essence of the supreme spirit, and its complete existence in all beings, whether extremely high, or extremely low."

75.  "Thus, having gradually abandoned all earthly attachments, and indifference to all pains of opposite things, as honor, and dishonor, and the like, he remains absorbed in the divine essence."

76.  "A mansion with bones for its rafters and beams; with nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for mortar; with skin for its outward covering, filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with faeces and urine; "

77.  "A mansion infested by age and by sorrow; the seat of malady, harassed with pains, haunted with the quality of darkness, and incapable of standing long; such a mansion of the vital soul, let its occupier always cheerfully quit."

78.  "As a tree leaves the bank of a river, when it falls in, or as a bird leaves the branch of a tree at his pleasure, thus he, who leaves his body by necessity, or by legal choice, is delivered from the ravening shark, or crocodile, of the world."

A Sublime Uneventfulness, or No Path to the Civilized World

As this comes at the close of "Sounds" in Walden I will offer that I hear this in Melville.

All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning-wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited in—only squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whip-poor-will on the ridge-pole, a blue jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech owl or a cat owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale—a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow—no gate—no front-yard—and no path to the civilized world.

***

...turn we then to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The three mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun- set; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner -- for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.

Moby Dick, "The Mast-head"

American Liberty

"Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,--as it is to some extent a fiction of the present,--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology." HDT

"And in this country one sees that there is always margin enough in the statute for a liberal judge to read one way and a servile judge another." RWE

[I'll admit to a slight grin as I typed "servile judge".]

It was not until 1828 that Dissenters gained legal equality in matters of religion and education in England. Hazlitt, in 1818, wrote the following eloquent praise of his coreligionists, the sectaries--the men and women who embodied what Edmund Burke had called "the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." The nonconformists, Hazlitt wrote, "are the steadiest supporters of [England's] liberties and laws, they are the checks and barriers against the insidious or avowed encroachments of arbitrary power: and they are depositaries of the love of truth." Dissent or religious individualism was always more a state of mind than a doctrine, and it was opposed to the Establishment...[emphasis added]
--Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company

"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Handle With Care", Esquire Magazine (March 1936).

I would like to think one might be able to conceptualize "individualism" in two distinct ways, both of which seem readily applicable to what we think of as "mine".

1) Property
2) Liberty

You can see how these two "ideas" are difficult to hold in the mind at the same time. And perhaps we are coming to what seems like a clear rift in our national consciousness in consequence of these ideas "coming apart" in our minds.

Let's define the terms:

1) ownership; right of possession, enjoyment, or disposal of anything, especially of something tangible

2) freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.

We are a nation beholden to propertied interests--and that includes our own if we are owners or debtors--houses, cars, land, etc., yet we are a nation whose mythology is one where Liberty is a central tenet.

It turns out, though, that Liberty is only an abstraction (a powerful one to be sure, but most useful for the human drive to creativity); and that Property is regnant in the world at large.

1) Conservative: Possessive: Tradition: Establishment: Servile
2) Liberal: Creative: Subversive: Dissident: Equality

Which do you prefer?

I saw the Sacs & Foxes at the Statehouse on Monday--about 30 in number. Edward Everett addressed them & they replied. One chief said "They had no land to put their words upon, but they were nevertheless true." RWE

A Business Wholly Mistaken

Charles Koch spouting nonsense in the WSJ today:

Years of tremendous overspending by federal, state and local governments have brought us face-to-face with an economic crisis. Federal spending will total at least $3.8 trillion this year—double what it was 10 years ago. And unlike in 2001, when there was a small federal surplus, this year's projected budget deficit is more than $1.6 trillion.

I'm not saying this is true or false--just that it's "only" rhetoric for the WSJ audience and it's nonsense...first of all, what is "overspending" in this context? Why do we spend and why are there deficits? Here's the simplest formulation I know: Governments spend on what is "necessary" to uphold the duty of Provision for the citizenry. Governments, to balance this needful spending must take in money in the form of taxes. Without appropriate taxation we fall into deficits.

There are any number of arguments for and against taxation and what indeed is "necessary" spending. There are any number of arguments for and against government period. (That government which governs least is best--right, Henry?)

However, people like Charles Koch argue from a particular motivation and it's not one that includes the welfare of the "common man" (unless he considers himself common). Let me reiterate that there are no "free markets" and all things become "cronyism" when the Capitalist amasses enough wealth to buy the officials. In reality, most of us today NEED our government to protect us from the "free market" that wants to take everything we have from us.

Digby has a fine post discussing/dissecting this opinion piece.

Whitman, from Democratic Vistas, again in Crase, I think speaking to the Tea Party mentality that the Koch's cultivate to their benefit:

The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general comfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth....So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, and on those out of business. She asks for men and women with occupations, well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash in the bank--and with some cravings for literature, too; and must have them, and hastens to make them.[my bold]

Perhaps, though, it's better to think of each and every single one of us in this way:

The whole object of the universe to us is the formation of character. If you think you came into being for the purpose of taking an important part in the administration of events, to guard a province of the moral creation from ruin, and that its salvation hangs on the success of your single arm, you have wholly mistaken your business. (Emerson, Journals 1828)