The Case for Bilingualism

Many of us have heard reports of a recent occurrence in New York City, which took place in a fast-food facility. A professional white man went into a rage because the employees had been talking in Spanish. Not to him, mind you, but to Spanish-speaking customers and among themselves. He shouted, as one might suspect, statements such as, "This is America, and we speak English here.” He informed them that he was paying for their welfare, and that they had no business in this country if they continued speaking Spanish. He assumed that they were all illegal immigrants, and he threatened to call ICE agents. Ridiculous, sad, outrageous, stupid.

I had previously watched a YouTube video which portrayed a working-class woman who passed the time waiting in line at a store by screaming at two women speaking in Spanish among themselves, after making purchases. The screaming woman said similar things as the man did in the first incident.

You might think that this is going to be an article about the intolerable amount of racism and xenophobia in this country, abetted, no doubt, by a president who shares and foments incivility. Although I certainly vigorously oppose the demonization of any group as evinced by the two egregious examples quoted above, there has been a widespread outcry—at least in liberal circles—against the rant of the professional, as there would have been against the working-call woman, if the incident on YouTube had gone viral as well. Suffice it to say here that as a non-Hispanic Spanish speaker, I find incidents such as these to be, well, nauseating.

The subject here, however, is the brains of the two racists quoted above; more broadly, I am writing this article to advance the case of bilingualism, which confers remarkable health and cultural benefits.

The Perils of Monolingualism

Well, that might be an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

Now that Americans are living longer, there is a lot of interest in how to live a healthy, longer life. Many pundits and researchers have provided lists of ways to preserve and even enhance brain function. Most people are well aware of some of the items on the list: eating well, exercising regularly, etc. I’m not sure that people are as aware of one factor that is on every list: the benefits of bilingualism. A recent study concluded that bilingualism delays the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease by an average of four and a half years. At any age, functional MRIs of the brain, (fMRIs), indicate that bilinguals develop better cognitive skills and are better at multitasking as well. They also tend to earn about $7,500 more per year than monolinguals do.

There is no doubt about it: foreign language proficiency benefits the brain, just as there is no doubt that exercise benefits the body. You want stronger muscles? Exercise. You want to make new neurons and improve brain function? Learn another language.

Americans have a distinct advantage from speaking English as a first language. English might not have more native speakers than a few other languages, such as Chinese, but English is undoubtedly the most important language in the world. Studying English as a second language is the first choice of the majority of those who speak other languages. To have at least a working knowledge of English is increasing considered to be of the utmost importance.

There is also a disadvantage for the majority of Americans whose mother tongue is English: there is little incentive to learn another language. There are millions of Hispanics in this country, many of whom are fluent in Spanish, yet when they interact with non-Hispanics, it is almost always in English. Why bother to learn another language when in the United States, and increasingly around the world, you can get by with English?

We have already listed one reason: it is one of the healthiest things one can do to preserve and improve brain health. Here is another, saliently expressed by the great German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen. Translation: "Those who don’’t know foreign languages don’t know anything about their own." (Notice that Goethe uses the word ‘language’ in the plural—for him bilingualism wasn’t enough! I agree).

Speaking a foreign language forces the brain to “switch gears,” as it were, since syntax and grammar vary widely among languages. Foreign-language learning may be considered to be a brainy type of aerobic exercise, equally beneficial to the body-mind complex which makes us human. Being bi- or multi-lingual also enhances  one's perspective, and enables one to be a better citizen of his own country as well as that of the world. As an example, my ability to speak German, French, Spanish and English has made me feel at home in those countries which speak these languages. I’ve become familiar with their histories and with their cultures, especially with their literature and music. This has enabled me to see my own country in a much broader context. I can say without a doubt that this knowledge has made me a better citizen—and it is also a lot of fun! In our book club, for instance, I read the book we’ve selected in the original, if it was first written in one of the languages I know. This provides heady brain exercise for sure, but it also enriches our discussion, since the feel of the book in its original is often different from its translation. Knowing the historical and cultural context of the book in question increases one’s understanding of the book as well.

Monolingual Americans often think that theirs is the culture of the world. Speaking other languages destroys that myth, thereby reducing cultural arrogance, to everyone’s advantage.

22% of American are said to be bilingual, bilingualism being defined as being able to hold a conversation in the language in question. I do not really believe it. Why? When I was practicing medicine, I would on occasion see a Hispanic patient who spoke little English. I had a nursing assistant who worked with me, who studied Spanish all through high school. One day, I told her to inform a Spanish-speaking family of patients waiting in a room that I would be in to see them soon. “I can’t do that,” she told me, “they speak too fast.” It turned out that she could say little else beside ¡Hola!, even though she had studied Spanish for four years!

There is a melting-pot tradition in the United States; speaking a foreign language in public, as we have seen, is sometimes viewed as being unpatriotic. Trickle-down racial animus, originating from the venomous xenophobia of the current American administration, is also a factor, since most non-English speaking immigrants today are also non-white.

Not only for the sake of our brains, but for the sake of comity both here and abroad, this hostility needs to be vigorously challenged.

57% of bilinguals in the United States speak Spanish and English. It is our second language; this current status needs to be strengthened. Many second generation Hispanics are fluent in Spanish; this ability dips significantly however, in the third generation. Spanish may well go the same route as German in the United States, that is, suffer the same precipitous decline. We should not allow this to happen.

We already have a precedent for considering Spanish as a second language: Puerto Rico is part of the United States. I doubt that at any time soon Congress will pass laws for the preservation of Spanish; I would, however, welcome them. Bilingual schools starting in the early grades, for instance, would benefit us all.

I have suggestions for those who want to learn more Spanish. If you are a beginner, contact duolingo.com for free quality lessons; if you are more proficient, contact slownewsinspanish.com. Attend a Spanish-speaking meetup, which are located in many areas. Whenever you see something written in Spanish, read it. Google the words you don't know. For those more proficient in the language, listen to Spanish news on Univision TV every day This is a great way to learn Spanish and to gain a new perspective on the news. Other suggestions: choose Spanish subtitles on DVD movies. If you get the New York Times electronically, there is a link to obtain many of the article in Spanish. There are so many opportunities to learn Spanish! And, no matter your proficiency, speak to Spanish speakers in their language; you will be surprised at the pleasant responses.

I had a pleasant language-related encounter recently. I was at the self-checkout counter at a large grocery store. I had the option to follow instruction in Spanish, which I selected. A clerk came over to me and said, "Sir, I think you made a mistake. I can change it back to English for you." I told her that the choice was deliberate. I commented, "I guess I don't look Hispanic, but remember the pope is an old white man too!" We both laughed. I couldn't help feeling a little sad, however, that my appearance alone made my bilingualism stand out.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on one side, Stephen Miller on the other; Justin Trudeau on one side, Donald Trump on the other; brain health on one side, dementia on the other—la elección depende de ti.

Mementos Mori: Reflections After A Visit to a Portuguese Chapel

Memento mori! Remember death! Why? That is the subject of this essay.We shall begin with one of the most famous mementos mori, which my wife and I encountered on a recent trip to Portugal. After mentioning a few additional examples, we will then discuss the purpose of these reminders, the promulgation of which has long since disappeared in contemporary culture, if not in nature, where they abound. Why were momentos mori created? What are the benefits derived from a healthy contemplation of death?

I would like to answer that last question before proceeding with our discussion. When I was a medical student, many years ago, I did a rotation at the famous Hospital for Sick Children in London. I remember attending an autopsy of a middle-aged man there; I recall that his stomach contained the residue of antacid—He was, poor man, apparently ignorant of the origin of the chest pain in the hours before a massive heart attack felled him. Over the lintel of the entrance to the dissection room was the following Latin inscription, which I have not forgotten to this day: Hic gaudet mors succerere vitae, that is, “Here death triumphs in order to give succor to life.” This is a good definition of a memento mori with the following caveat: there is nothing sweet about this succoring, it is indeed bitter. The antithesis of sweetness, however,  can be quite salutary, like the consumption of the Indian vegetable kaipukku, “bitter gourd,” which lowers blood sugar, while, at least in my opinion, being tasty as well.

1, A Capela dos Ossos, The Chapel of Bones, Évora, Portugal 

Évora is an ancient town, of Celtic origin, located in the Alantejo region of Portugal. Once of great economic importance, it is now (at least on first impression) a somewhat sleepy town. The central square, dominated by the Gothic cathedral, is impressive. There are many fine historic buildings, one of the most famous being the ruins of a first-century Roman temple which was probably dedicated to the emperor Augustus.

Not far from the central plaça, stands the 16^th century Church of St. Francis. It is a rather unimpressive building from the outside; it contains the skeletal Mother of All Mementos Mori, the famous Capela dos Ossos, Chapel of the Bones. Its interior is decorated with the bones of approximately 5,000 persons: skulls festoon the columns, skulls, look down at you from the supporting arches of the chapel. The skulls look surprisingly small, perhaps an effect of perspective; they are placed with an exact periodicity that reminds me of the colorful, little pill-sized candies fastened to wax paper, each about an inch from its neighbor, which I sometimes bought at a fair when I was a kid. But these weren’t candies, far from it; the chapel contained the skeletal remains of enough people to fill Grand Central Station on a busy day in New York.

Over the entrance to the chapel the following message is inscribed:

NÓS OSSOS AQUÍ ESTAMOS, PELOS VOSSOS ESPERAMOS

Translation: We Bones Are Here, Awaiting Yours

Here are some photos we took of the chapel:

The chapel dates from the sixteenth century, the time of the Counter Reformation. To counter the superficialities and degenerations of the Catholic Church during Luther’s time, the Counter Reformation tried to win the hearts and minds of the faithful by demonstrating interest not only in gold-brocaded bishop’s mitres, but in the inner world of the individual as well.  These days one might attempt to stay the onslaught of Protestantism with a guitar mass; in the sixteenth century, however, a good memento mori was thought to be a condign way of scaring the bejesus out of people, hoping that would increase dedication to an institution that claimed to possess the keys to salvation.

There is more than a parochial reason for a memento mori, however, one, as I hope to demonstrate in this essay, that is much needed today.

There is, also, however, a more mundane reason why the remains of so many were exhumed. At the time of the church’s construction, there were over forty cemeteries in the  Évora region—the town, as mentioned, is very ancient. It was decided to put the land of those cemeteries, many contained in monasteries no longer in use, into the hands of the still (at the time) flesh-covered bones of the living.

Instead of reburying the bones, however, they were put on permanent display in order to help reduce the vanity of that factory of vanities, the human brain.

2. The Poem

On the wall of A Capela dos Ossos is an early nineteenth century poem, attributed to a parish priest of the church, Fr. António da Ascenção Teles. It is a good example of a Petrarchan sonnet, remarkable for having originated from the quill of an amateur poet, and quite appropiate to quote here. I present first the original Portuguese poem, followed by my non-Petrarchan translation.

Aonde vaís, caminhante, acelerado?

Pára…não prossigas maís avante;

Negócio, não tens maís importante,

Do que este, a tua vista apresentado.

Recorda quantos desta vida têm passado,

Reflecte em que terás fim semelhante,

Que para meditar causa è bastante

Terem todos maís nisto parado.

Pondera, que influido d’essa sorte,

Entre negociaçães do mundo tantas,

Tão pouco consideras na morte.

Porém, se os olhos aqui levantas,

Pára…porque em negócio deste porte,

Quanto maís tu parares, maís adiantas.

Where are you rushing off to, traveler?

Stop…Do not proceed any farther;

You don’t have any business more important

Than this one here, right before your eyes.

Recall how many have already died,

Reflect that you will have a similar end;

Mortality is reason enough for everyone

To pause here awhile and meditate.

Think how little you reflect on death;

Caught up in the things of the world,

Ponder how these things apply to you.

If, moreover, you choose to lift your eyes,

Pause—for, before a theme of this import,

The more you stop, the more you advance.

The more you stop, the more you advance—a perfect definition of the purpose of a memento mori.

3. Other Examples Of Mementos Mori

a. A Scene from a Play

I recently attended a performance of Waiting for Godot, excellently performed by the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C.  A literary momemto mori, one made of words, occurs in the seond act. The dialogue is spoken between the down-and-out pair, Vladimir and Estragon, better known in the play by their clownish names, Didi and Gogo;

Estragon:  Well, If we gave thanks for our mercies?
Vladimir:  What is terrible is to have thought.
E.               But did that ever happen to us?
V.:              Where are all these corpses from?
E.:              These skeletons.
V.:              Tell me that.
E.:              True.
V.:              We must have thought a little.
E.:              At the very beginning.
V:               A charnel house! A charnel house!
E.:              You don't have to look.
V.:               You can't help looking.
E.:               True. 
              
 --Act ll:154-166)


There are no stage directions for this dialogue. In the production we saw, Vladimir looks directly at the audience when he says, "Where are all these corpses from?" One is reminded here of the first stanza of Whispers of Immortality, in which T.S. Eliot refers to the Elizabethan playwright, John Webster: "Webster was much obsessed by death,/And saw the skull beneath the skin/And breastless creatures underground/Leaned backwards with a lipless grin." Vladimir, in this episode of very effective theater, saw our skulls beneath the skin. It is our future; the silent arrow of contingency pierces the heart. Vladimir has thus transformed the entire audience, and, by extension all humanity, into a (briefly) living memento mori. 

We might view ourselves as gods, except for this one nasty detail: gods don't rot. For Vladimir and Estragon, this is a source of great pessimism--thinking, according to Vladimir, must confront suffering and mortality, and is thus for him "a terrible thing." We don't have to look, after  all; many do their best not to, despite the ubiquity of sickness and death.  If one thinks, however, one can't help looking. We are once again confronted with the Buddhist assertion that pessimism can be closer to the truth than a glossy-eyed optimism.  On the way to wisdom, we might first fall  from a superficial knoll into a ditch; there are indeed many obstacles on the narrow road to full maturity. But the purpose of life as Buddha and others saw and see it, is not to wallow in ditches. We are to climb out of the ditch and move on.

b. A Tomb in Southwark Cathedral

I mentioned earlier that I participated in a clinical elective at Guy’s Hospital, the London Hospital for Sick Children, during my last year of medical school in 1971. Not far from Guy’s is Southwark Cathedral, on the south bank of the Thames near London Bridge. I often stopped there to marvel at that fine, medieval building, and to meditate there as well, inveterate meditator that I was then, and am still. I was struck by a memnto mori in the cathedral, a stone statue of a cadaver in an advanced state of putrefaction. (I remember the little stone worm crawling up its arm—at least I think I do; it might well be the stony phantasm of a later dream, projected onto the statue by faulty memory.There are many examples of statues like this; mementos mori were very much in vogue during the medieval period. Here is a photo, taken from the internet:

How many passers-by have contemplated here, who have long since passed on? I have been one of them, soon to pass on as well.

c. Daguerreotypes of the Dead

Daguerreotypes were the first photographs, achieved by a laborious process that included an iodine-sensitized silvered plate and mercury vapor. (Hope those early photographers used masks, but I doubt that they did). The method was invented by Louis Daguerre in 1839; it took little time for daguerreotypes to enjoy world-wide popularity. (There were many in antebellum New York, several of which Walt Whitman frequented, resulting in several portraits of the great poet).

Throughout history, humans desired not only progeny, but to “immortalize” their features in portraits to be hung on walls. In the last half millennium or so, paintings or sketches were the sole methods available to achieve this aim. Many portraits of Lady This or Lordy That have survived; the faces of Tim the Cobbler and Anne the Seamstress, however, were generally able to be recalled, after a generation or so, as well as the nuzzle of a once-beloved lapdog, or as well as the face of a long-since discarded clock. Daguerreotypes, the polished ancestors of modern selfies, changed all that. Soon everyone would be snapping everyone else. But not so soon. New products tend to be expensive; daguerreotypes were no exception. Relatives often forgot to have taken a daguerreotype of their loved ones while the latter lived. Better late then never. Thus began the custom of post-mortem photography, which lasted even into the beginning of the twentieth century. These were often the only likenesses of the loved ones in question; they were for this reason often among a family’s most prized possessions.

To the modern eye they constitute odd examples of memntos mori. Everyone wanted the portraits of their loved ones to look natural and life-like. They often looked macabre and deadly; after all, you can’t make a cadaver say 'cheese.'

Here are two examples:

The second example seems to us moderns to border on child abuse. That poor little girl! I can only imagine her subsequent nightmares. The Chapel of the Bones is a fine place for adult contemplation; taking little children there is, however, ghastly. 

Mementos mori are thus best-suited for adults, especially older adults, in order to foster wisdom that tends to grow as one ages. 
Why is that? Many adults, even older adults, alas! are afflicted by narcissism and are sorely in need of the jolts mementos mori can provide. (Yes, I admit it, they don't always work. Those most in need of contemplation and reflection are often the least likely to undertake the considerable effort needed to become more wise. Nevertheless).

4. A Buddhist Meditation on Death

In the Therevada Buddhist classic, The Way of Mindfulness, still a sacred text in many Buddhist countries, there is a section entitled “The Nine Cemetery Contemplations.” It is still much in use in the East, but, as I’ve read, not in the West, where, perhaps even among some monks, the slightest bit of dust tends to be swept inattentively under the rug, Times have changed, however. I must admit that I’ve never meditated as instructed here; this doesn’t mean that they can’t be of use to some persons. As we shall see in our interpretation of mementos mori, their purpose is not to induce a morbid feeling; their purpose is to lead us to a life of love and wisdom, and to use time better to achieve this goal. I will only quote the beginning of the cemetery contemplations here:

After explaining body-contemplation in the form of the modes of materiality, the Master said, “And further,” in order to explain body-contemplation through the nine cemetery contemplations.

UDDHUMATAM—“Swollen”. By reason of the swelled state of the corpse comparable to a pair of wind-filled bellows owing to the gradually uprisen bloatedness after death.

VINILAKAM, “Blue”… Blue is that corpse which is reddish in the protuberantly fleshy parts, and whitish in the purulent parts...It seems to be as though covered with a blue mantle…

VIPUBBAKAJATAM—“Festering” is the corpse that is full of pus flowing from the broken parts or from the nine openings of the body.

“He thinks of his own body thus: ‘Verily, this body of mine, too, is of the same nature as that dead body, is going to be like that body, and has not got past the condition of becoming like that body.

              

--The Way of Mindfulness, Colombo, 1949, page 103

Etc., etc. You get the idea.

5. What is to be learned from Momentos Mori?

Two objections come to mind regarding the benefit of mementos mori. The first and lesser objection is that the creator of a specific memento mori might have an ulterior motive. In the case of the ossuary in Portugal, a product of the Counter Reformation, the goal of mementos mori were not merely to frighten people, but to utilize fright to better maintain the populace under control of the Catholic Church. Terrified by the sight of death, an individual might be induced to abandon worldly ways, at least temporarily, and think of salvation. According to Catholic doctrine at the time, the Church provided the sole means of getting into heaven. Hence, existential anxiety was fostered among the populace in order to help keep the Church foremost in people’s minds. 

Another more modern use of mementos mori are Halloween-like frights, such as in horror films, designed more or less to isolate a common dread for a cathartic release, so that one could subsequently forget about death, presumably forever.

The other and more widespread objection today is that mementos mori are morbid, and serve no real purpose, other than to foster sadness or even depression. There is a thin line here; morbidity for its own sake is not the true purpose of mementos mori, at least the way I see it. Anyone with a significant tendency toward depression is best kept away from mementos mori; let that person work on his or her depression first. Mementos mori work best for those, to use Keats's famous phrase, who are "half in love with easeful death," or who are so lost in non-essentials that they have forgotten just what the essentials are; to become wholly in love with the beauties and challenges of life.  "Had we but world enough and time,/This coyness, Lady, were no crime...,: as Andrew Marvel famously wrote. (Failure to manage time well is, of course, not confined to the ladies!)

Persistent gloominess  generally results when egotistic desires are thwarted. This isn’t dying but Death, death-within-life, which is to be avoided—and mementos mori can help here to do just that. I’m reminded of a poem of e.e. cummings which illustrates the division of a natural, inevitable phenomenon, dying, and the evil of Death:

Dying is fine)but Death

?o

baby

i

wouldn’t like

Death if Death

were

good; for

when(instead of stopping to think)you

begin to feel of it,dying

‘s miraculous

why?be

cause dying is

perfectly natural;perfectly

putting

it mildly lively(but

Death

is strictly

scientific

& artificial &

evil & legal)

we thank thee

god

almighty for dying

(forgive us, o life!the sin of Death

Thus, the purpose of recalling death is to put an end to ‘the sin of Death’—hopefully once and for all.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the Preacher. I do not agree. Vanity of vanities, almost all is vanity—that’s a lot closer to the truth. (Without this “almost’; without the hope of rising to the next level, mementos mori would be macabre and nothing else.

Buddha famously formulated The Four Noble Truths centuries ago. The First Truth is that life is suffering; the Second, that this suffering is caused by desire; the Third is that elimination of suffering can be achieved by the elimination of desire; the Fourth outlines the path to achieve this goal. Stated thus, Buddhism has little to say to us today. But once we interpret suffering as mental suffering caused by egotistic desires, Buddha’s wisdom shines. The anguish resulting from encountering the world while wearing ego-distorted glasses is why we see life as suffering. One of the chief distortions from wearing these cloudy lenses is forgetting that everything we see is contingent, including, of course, ourselves. 

Adam and Eve gained the knowledge of individuality, the knowledge of birth and death, by eating the forbidden fruit; they were stopped, however, from eating from the Tree of Life which would have conferred immortality. They gained consciousness, and this is a very great gift. It also has a great drawback: the knowledge of death. Imagining that the ego is of cosmic importance, however, and might even last forever, can do great harm; vanity can kill. A poem by Shelley is appropriate here:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert…Near them on the sand,
half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
tell that its sculptor well these passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The had that mocked them, and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, yet Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, bondless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Two types of  egotism result from wearing self-distorted glasses, one leads to suicide, while the other leads to narcissism. Shelley’s poem is a literary memento mori; it would have been perhaps beneficial if Ozymandias himself had a vision of what would happen to Self Built on Sand in the future. Lord knows how much destruction and suffering could have been averted if Ozymandiases had sense knocked into them by a memento mori.

We have seen and are still seeing—I’m writing this in May, 2018—the effects of having a narcissist wield political  power. There is a great neediness in such people; they need admirers only, not friends or colleagues. It is a situation that is causing harm to our democracy: the trouble arises from seeing Ozymandias in the mirror, instead of a mortal, contingent being. It is naive, of course, to imagine that a memento mori could convert an extreme narcissist into a balanced human being, but for those less afflicted by pride, a memento mori might help a lot to jolt one back onto a path of  balanced maturity.

Once one takes off those delusional lenses from one’s eyes, one is able to see the great world we live in, and the great beings that each one of us is; we can thus finally see the world through the eyes of love and wisdom. Once the heart is no longer worn on one's sleeve, it can return to its central place. Everything we see is then a source of wonder, as Walt Whitman wrote in the Leaves of Grass:

And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

That is the purpose of mementos mori: to shame silliness out of us.

Epilogue

Once a memnto mori completely accomplishes its task; once we have given up vanity and live a balanced life of love and wisdom for ourselves and for others, the work of mementos mori is done. The life of the Hindu sage, Ramana Maharshi (1979-1950) is instructive here. At any early age, he was beset by the terror of death. After this experience, he became completely identified with cosmic consciousness; Death or vanity had no place in his life from then on. When, years later, a person reminded him of his birth name, Venkataraman Iyer, he replied with a smile, “That person died long ago.” He faced his own impending death from cancer with supreme equanimity. When followers showed their anguish at the thought of losing him as a great teacher, he replied, no doubt with the same smile: “Where could I go from here, and how?” He had long since become one with cosmic consciousness. As Walt Whitman wrote in Leaves of Grass “How can the real body be buried?”

Hindus usually cremate their dead; it is thought to be a purification rite. Great sages are buried, however; no need to pass through fire twice.

Permanent identification with the cosmos, however, is very rare indeed. Only for such extremely rare individuals, mementos mori are no longer necessary. Most of the rest us come in and out of cosmic consciousness;  joyful work, artistic creation, acts of love and wisdom, all involve the transformation of ego-noise into selfless music. 

Whenever we fall from the heights of higher consciousness and land on the rocky terrain of the machinations of an injured self, an occasional  memento mori can help us see that we might be on the path not only of spiritual death, but of physical death as well. In summary, the purpose of mementos mori is to shame the silliness out of us and to send us in the right direction.

I will now summarize a lovely poem by Edna St.Vincent Millay:

I shall die, but that's all I'll do for death;
I'm not on his payroll.

If a memento mori can induce us to stop working for death-in-life in the service of a fictive, tyrannical  boss inside the skull, occasionally seeing the skull behind the skin will have served its purpose well. Then we can retire to life--hard work!

Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Pessoa, and Ninguem

Nirmala and I recently returned from Lisbon. Our visit to the Portuguese capital was very brief; in addition, we were on a group tour, and had only a few hours to ourselves. I reveal myself here as an unabashed admirer of Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers of the past century: we asked directions to A Brasileira, the café Pessoa frequented during his lifetime. I read about a brass statue of Pessoa in front of the café, and wasted little time to walk the mile or so to this destination. Here are some pictures of us at the café:

A recent article of mine, Ramana Maharshi, Pessoa, and Niguem, available on my blog and on the internet, contained a discussion of the inscription at the base of the statue, a quote of Pessoa’s from his most famous work, The Book of Disquiet. “To read is to dream, guided by another.”

I began my discussion as follows:

An interesting quote! It is, however, only the opening phrase of a passage of remarkable insight. This will be discussed at length in a subsequent essay.

This is that subsequent essay; we shall now begin our detailed analysis of the full passage.

2.

We present the passage from the book in the original Portuguese and in the excellent translation of Richard Zenith:

Ler é sonhar pela mão de outrem. Ler mal e por alto é libertarmo-nos de mão que nos conduz. A superficialídade na erudição é único modo de ler bem e ser profundo.

Que coisa tão reles e baíxa que é a vida! Repara que para ser baíxa e reles basta nâo a quereres, ser-te dada, nada depende da tuo vontade, nem mesmo da tuo ilusão da tuo vontade.

Morrer é sernos outros totalmente. Por isso o suicidio é a cobardia; é entregarmo-nos totalmente a vida.

                                               
                                                 --Livro de Desassosego, 229

To read is to dream, guided by someone else’s hand. To read carelessly and distractedly is to let go of that hand. To be only superficially learned is the best way to read well and be profound.

How shoddy and contemptible life is! Note that, for it to be shoddy and contemptible, all it takes is you not wanting it, it being given to you anyway, and nothing about it depending on your will or even your illusion of your will.

To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice: it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.

                                                    
                                           --The Book of Disquiet, 229

First Paragraph

The opening sentence, which is inscribed on the statue’s base, is quite appropriate for inclusion there. It encourages one not only to read, but to become absorbed by what one is reading; to allow what’s being read to read the reader, as it were. We certainly can use all the encouragement we can get to read more in this age of cable. computer streaming, and cell phone. But the quote has a certain Hallmark-card quality; a bit too pat when it stands alone. The next sentence goes a little deeper:.a good book demands and deserves one’s undivided attention. The image of letting go the hand that is guiding one is quite effective, as one would expect from the hand of a major poet. The last sentence shocks us and comes as a complete surprise. “To be only superficially learned is the best way to read and be profound.” That’s hardly what's taught at schools and  implied at universities! It seems to contradict common sense. Pessoa is not the kind of writer to shock for shock’s sake, however. What does he mean? The rest of the passage will make what he is saying clearer, as we shall see; this sentence is in perfect agreement with what follows. Pessoa is informing us here that we must leave our egos behind and forget all the cleverness that makes us smile before the mirror, when we read. We are not to overwhelm the text we are reading with an inner dialogue of commentary, we are to let the text overwhelm us. We must not interpret Hamlet as we read the play; that will come later. First we must let Hamlet interpret us. We must become the stage, as it were, on which the play occurs, not some Euro-trash director commenting behind the scenes. I interpret “being profound” here as leaving one’s ego completely behind, thus, as it were, becoming the world. Concentration and ego are veritable oxymorons. One of the many ways good music and good literature delight is by giving us a profound relief from ourselves.

Second Paragraph

How shoddy and contemptible life is! Note that, for it to be shoddy and contemptible, all it takes is you not wanting it, it being given to you anyway, and nothing about it depending on your will or even your illusion of your will.

I remember reading somewhere that Buddhists teach that unhappy persons are closer to the truth than happy persons are. This statement must be qualified. Certainly Buddha’s First Noble Truth teaches us that life is dukkha, suffering, or perhaps better translated as 'insufficient', that is, what you think will satisfy you completely ultimately won’t. (It often takes a long time to realize this.)  So, according to Buddha, those who seem happy while denying the Four Noble Truths are living a life of illusion—what I would call a double illusion, since the primary illusion is that we are each a separate self. Persons who seem happy while living lives full of greed, hate, and delusion often do great harm to others as well as ultimately to themselves.

This doesn't mean, however, that life in itself is shoddy and contemptible. Far from it! My favorite Yiddish proverb is ibergekummene tsuris iz gut zu dahrstellen, (“it is good to depict overcome sorrow"). Buddha’s entire teaching is a call to joy, a guide to lead us bey dukkha. As profound as Pessoa is, we must concede that Buddhism in its essence goes even deeper.

Ramana Maharshi, the greatest Hindu sage of the past century, taught that our true nature is bliss, not sorrow. Sorrow denotes an ego in the web of anguished self-centered desires. Suffering is always associated with the ego. Important here is to remember what Ramana said as he was dying from cancer in an age when the availability of analgesics was severely limited. “There is pain, but there is no suffering.” He had transcended ego, he had transcended suffering.Transcending the pain that the body is heir to, however, was not a goal of either the Buddha or Ramana Maharshi.

Pessoa was not a happy man. He lived a very isolated life. He stated in The Book of Disquiet that if his heart knew what his brain knew, it would stop beating. This is not the highest stage of wisdom.

What Thomas Mann said about Nietzsche is noteworthy. He said that Nietzsche is undoubtedly very profound; his life of extreme isolation, however, is not an example to follow.

The Hindu expression,  satcitananda, is much closer to the truth. Sat is wisdom, cit is consciousness, and ananda denotes bliss.

It is also noteworthy to state that a fake gurus’s incessant quoting of this compound word doesn’t make him a true guru—Just about all gurus, at least in my opinion, are fake. Ramana Maharshi, however, certainly wasn’t.

Pessoa’s profundity cannot be denied. That it has its limitations, however, is also apparent.

Third Paragraph

Before we interpret the third paragraph, I would like to write a few words about the ending of the second, namely that life is given to us and it doesn’t depend upon our will. The question of free will has exercised philosophers for centuries. I am convinced that free will is indeed an illusion, an assertion for which I cold cite much scientific evidence, for which space is lacking here. The individual, separate from the environment, is not an objective reality, but belief in it has greatly improved our chances of survival. This “Darwinian illusion” of an objective self is, however, very strong. I am convinced that free will does not exist, yet I schedule events and meetings on my Iphone neverthless. This is not a contradiction; that a dreamer dreams is to be expected.

I have a “higher I” inside myself, as it were; my everyday I functions as if it weren’t there.  If I completely realized my identification with my “higher I,’ I would be a sat guru. I am not.

Pessoa reveals here that he realizes that free will is an illusion. His problem is that he is suffering spiritually and knows no exit. It’s as if a hammer in an unknown hand were pounding on his hand, which is unable to move. Not a good situation to be in; I am convinced that there is an exit from despair, other than suicide, but it is not easy.

Now let us proceed to an analysis of the final paragraph, the most important of all: To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice; it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.

To die is to leave despair behind; suicide, however, is cowardice, since it’s an escape—a very strange escape at that, stopping suffering by a deliberate destruction of the sufferer. Pessoa is not a coward; he accepts his fate and will not leave its terrible exigencies voluntarily. The important thing to do is to surrender ourselves completely to life.

Note the paradox here: if we surrender ourselves completely to life, we transcend ourselves. Once one viscerally realizes that the illusion of the self is not a necessary burden to carry, we may not be able to disard the burden completely, but, if we work on it, we can certainly lighten the load. To surrender ourselves completely, however, is a kind of death, since our poor little suffering, sickly phenomenal ego must die to achieve it.

This is why Jesus taught that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Once the cross is thoroughly borne, it disappears—there is no one left carrying it anymore.

If Pessoa had ever been able to completely surrender to life, his despair would have ceased and would have been replaced by an ineffable condition, which we hint at with the words 'joy' or 'bliss'.

Now let’s turn a moment to the Portuguese text. The equivalent of the English, “it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.” The Portuguese begins this phrase with “é”. This translates as “is”—One must recall, however, that verbs in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian can stand alone, the pronoun, as in Latin, is contained in the verb. Thus, in English this “é” must be translated as “it's” or “it is.” But a subtlety is lost here. “é” in the text  occurs after a semicolon; it thus can be interpreted as applying to “ler”, “to read” in paragraph one; it also can refer to “to die” in the last paragraph. In other words, becoming absorbed in a book is a kind of death, because our ego is no longer there. Similarly, surrendering ourselves completely to life is a kind of death as well. Once one is absorbed by life as by a good book; once one realizes the illusory nature of the ego, the imaginary egotist inside the brain, the Wizard of I pulling the levers behind the curtain, as it were; this central mirage which gives you so much anguish, disappears like a cube of sugar in a hot cup of tea.

The death which Pessoa refers to in the third paragraph is Life, a state of being which Buddha referred to as Nirvana and Ramana Marshi referred to as Moksha.

This excerpt from Pessoa’s masterpiece is a good illustration of the Buddhist teaching that unhappy people can be closer to the truth than happy ones. Without being a Buddhist or a Hindu, Pessoa, on his own, leavened this passage with the truth of Buddhism and advaita Hinduism. It is an extraordinary passage, worthy of contemplation, internalization, and realization. It contains the difficult, wonderful answer to anguished questions concerning the human condition.