Loneliness, the Goose in the Bottle

 There is a Zen koan that goes something like this: A woman puts an egg inside a bottle. It eventually turns into a gosling. The woman is delighted and feeds it the best whole grains she could obtain. As goslings are wont to do, it grew into a goose, a beautiful goose in a beautiful bottle. She wanted to give the goose its freedom; she wanted to see it swimming serenely in a nearby pond. She was determined to free it, but the goose had grown too big.  She didn’t want to shatter the bottle, fearing that its shards would harm the lovely bird. How can a full-grown goose pass through the neck of a bottle? How did she get it out? 

We will attempt to solve this koan, after we turn our attention to a black dove that perches on sad shoulders and broods and broods and broods, Loneliness.

The writer, Thomas Wolfe, once wrote, “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

This means that if you’re lonely sometimes, you’re in good company, namely with every other human being on the planet.

Just what is loneliness? I came across a good definition on the internet: “Loneliness is an unpleasant emotion in response to perceived isolation.”  That one can feel lonely in crowds or in company illustrates the importance of the qualifying adjective, perceived.

During a scorching summer day, if you remain alone in an unairconditioned apartment, you are likely to feel hot. During a cold winter day, if you remain alone in an overheated apartment, you are likely to feel hot as well. In each case, the ambient temperature of the room might be very different, yet you feel hot in both instances. In addition, if you’re busy reading or ‘lost’ in pleasant conversation, you might forget for a while your body’s discomfort. Within a certain range of temperature, feeling hot is a subjective phenomenon. Within a certain range of isolation, feeling lonely is subjective as well.

As heat increases, you become more and more uncomfortable; if it continues to increase, you die. Similarly, if loneliness increases, discomfort increases; if it continues to worsen, it is no longer loneliness—the ‘unpleasant emotion’ is now despair, which at the very least can shorten one’s life and at the very worst can drive one to suicide.

Which would you prefer, to visit Venus where the surface temperature is 900 degrees Fahrenheit, or visit Pluto where the surface temperature hovers around 400 degrees below? In either case, your visit would be extremely short. Why not remain on Earth instead? With air conditioning and central heating, one can remain comfortable during the milder temperature fluctuations of our home planet; with meaningful work and social connections, one can survive the metaphorical Pluto of loneliness as well.

2.

Let us imagine a color-scheme totem, with pitch black at the bottom, followed by gray, leading eventually to bright, vibrant colors at the top. The pitch black at the bottom represents despair, hopelessness, death. Just above this black hole is the gray area of loneliness. A person whose emotional core is at this level feels bad, but not as bad as the person would feel if he or she sinks into the abyss below. It is a gray area; if he is lucky or rises with the help, say, of friends, he enters the next level, Solitude. Marilynne Robinson wrote that solitude is the balm of loneliness; I agree with her. I imagine this level as white, that is, colorless, for during solitude one forgets the trouble below and the joys above. One forgets everything except for the task in hand. I have experienced days at the start of which I felt quite lonely, but after a while, lost in writing, reading, or whatever, I forget all about myself and the passage of time. I call it a ‘white’ feeling, since one leaves both positive and negative feelings behind, while one concentrates on the task at hand. One is alone during this time, but one isn’t lonely, having been subsumed into whatever has demanded one’s complete attention.  This is the gift of solitude. On good days, it is fairly easy to pass from the realm of loneliness into solitude; it is very difficult, however, often impossible, to pass from the ‘black hole’ at the bottom, to scurry through loneliness, and become happily lost in solitude. At the bottom, one can’t see where one’s going; it is very difficult, sometimes impossible, to find the stairs that lead to the upper levels.

(How does one exit hell? Trying to ‘pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps’ more likely than not will prove to be futile. One needs a guide, sometimes a guru, sometimes an imagined guide, God, sometimes a pill.  A good, wise friend is best. However, if you find a false friend, one who is blind as you, he will lead you in circles where you might wander-waste a lifetime. Perhaps he might make you happy for a while; perhaps he might give you the illusion that you have found a clearing in a very dark forest. It is an illusion, however; you’re still in hell; your wan face temporarily lit by the will o’ the wisp of a cult.)

 3.

Shakespeare, the greatest writer who ever lived, provides one with a good deal of aesthetic enjoyment—his characterizations have remained unrivaled for four hundred years—and has a lot to teach us as well.

I will now provide a brief quote, pertinent to our discussion, which is spoken by Constance, the wife of the deceased Richard the Lionhearted’s son, Geoffrey. She claims the throne for her son, Arthur, Richard’s grandson. King John, the wily brother of Richard, rejects her claim and favors—you guessed it—himself. It turns out that the tide of war has swept Arthur from Constance’s arms into the hands of the enemy, King John. Constance—who seems to be at least as interested in power as in the welfare of her son—becomes hysterical; she knows that Arthur will be a threat to John as long as the former lives. In her wild lament, Constance speaks the following lines:

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,

For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.

To me and to the state of my great grief

Let Kings assemble. For my grief’s so great

That no supporter but the huge firm earth

Can hold it up.

                                 -- King John, 2.2, lines 66-70

 

She’s onto something here, although she doesn’t know it. I dare say that most in the audiences of King John over the past 400 years haven’t picked up the meaning of these lines, either. If you haven’t as well, you soon shall.

First of all, for our purposes, we may change the word “grief” in the quote wherever it occurs, to 'loneliness' without changing the meaning much. For loneliness is a form of grief and certainly can make ‘his owner’ stoop. (Not every stoop, especially among the young, is caused by a bad back.) Constance goes on to say that her problem is so great that only ‘the huge firm earth’ can support it. She doesn’t know how right she is.

For an explication, we now turn to a quote by the remarkable guru, Ramana Maharshi, a true avatar of wisdom,  of nonduality:

Take, for instance, the figure in a gopuram (temple tower) where it is made to appear to bear the burden of the tower on its shoulders. Its posture and look are a picture of great strain while bearing the very heavy burden of the tower. But think. The tower is built upon the earth and rests on its foundations. The figure (like Atlas bearing the earth) is part of the tower, but is made to look as if it bore the tower. Is it not funny?…

Constance is part of the cosmos, yet imagines herself separate from it. Her sorrows are ‘merely’ chemicals zapping from neuron to neuron in her Atlas-burdened brain. (Modern research has cast considerable doubt on one of the core beliefs of imagined separation, free will.)

The sense of a separate self, which is indeed very strong, is merely a trick of evolution. Without it, there would be no art, politics, culture—or all-out war. (There of course would be no loneliness either.)

The sense of a separate self is, however, ultimately an illusion. For instance, there is no element in the human body that is not found in nature. There are centers in the brain for vision, hearing, emotion, etc. but there is no place where the self is located. (Leonardo da Vinci thought the soul resided in the pineal gland,  the producer of melanin. Just as wrong as da Vinci was in this regard, despite amazing scientific progress, many of us still believe a soul or self  resides within us.)

Constance is like a paper boat floating in the sea, imagining an approaching ripple is a tsunami with her name on it. Isn’t it time for the many Constances of the world to realize that the sea doesn’t contain their names written on water?

4. Conclusion

Thomas Wolfe was wrong; we have seen that loneliness is not an inevitable part of existence. It is simply one of the troubles of a part that imagines itself to be a whole.

What about the goose in the bottle? Imagine the goose to be the consciousness of separation; imagine the body to be the bottle. The self might be the bottle; the Self, however, is not. 

How did the woman get the goose out of the bottle?  By realizing that the self and the Self are one and the same. The Self is never limited to the confines of a bottle! 

And just what is the Self? Cosmic consciousness; satcitananda; wisdom, consciousness, bliss.

There, it is out.