ABOUT JUDGING, OR NOT

Nov 7th, 2009
You may well ask, what gifts come from what is apparently bad and tragic?

Payson and I had a huge fight about a week ago. Divorcing is easy in America. There is so much social and cultural support for it. Most of my friends here, or at least 70% of them, are single and/or divorced. I don’t mean to judge it from a ‘moral’ point of view at all, but I do believe (after having been much married and divorced myself) that there is a certain learning that takes place from sheer persistence, and from being aware that one cannot really judge one’s experiences and label them so easily as black and white.

To back track, in the heat of our fighting we seriously touted breaking up. I came downstairs to my study, wounded, embattled, hurt. It was definitely, no denying it, a ‘bad’ experience. But Payson went the extra mile to make up, and believe me, we now have a better marriage. The possibility of divorce had taken our marriage hostage and we both had to listen and talk. There was no getting around communication. So, the bad thing was a good thing and its effects beneficial all around. We now have a more loving relationship, and I got a great chapter for my novel out of our fight, to boot.

But in all honesty I have to admit that there are times when ‘bad’ seems just that. Fuzzy Brain Syndrome certainly seems like it. Old age, as my mother keeps saying again and again, is a terrible thing. There’s no going forward, and there’s no going back. As some bumper stickers say, life is a bitch and then you die.

I have paused here at this thought for a long time. Made myself some tea, turned on the heater in my study, taken a shit. (Why do we say, ‘taken’? Why not, ‘given’? Early humans took and gave back. But we, with our crappers are not giving back, making manure but putrescence, rot. Well, that’s a whole different ‘not now’ meander).

Fortunately, when you are scribbling, you can always go back to the thought you had lost: sheer, unmitigated suffering. Is some suffering an exception to the spiritual fact that suffering is good? That Rumi, in the following quote, is right?

When the blossom is shed,
the fruit comes to a head;
when the body is shattered,
the spirit lifts up its head.
Mathnawi, I, 2929

Truthfully, I do not know. But fortunately, Socrates has taught me that not knowing, admitted, acknowledged, honored, is good. That great story will have to wait. I cannot exceed 1000 words. I’ll let Maulana Rumi give the answer in the following story.

YOU NEVER KNOW WHY

Ahmed was sleeping peacefully in an orchard when he was suddenly and rudely awakened to find that for no reason, a stranger was beating him to a pulp.
“What . . .? Why are you . . .?” Ahmed asked, but more blows answered his queries. The stranger’s eyes bulged with rage.
Stunned, barely awake, and wondering if this was a nightmare, Ahmed tried to ward off the blows, but the onslaught was relentless.
“Oh God,” Ahmed cried inwardly. “What sin have I committed? I am a good man, and I haven’t harmed anyone. Why then are you punishing me?”
Ahmed managed to run away from the stranger as fast as he could, and rested, panting and frothing, under an apple tree. But the stranger pursued him, and grabbed him under the tree.
“Who are you and what have I done to you . . .” Ahmed began, but the stranger was obviously deranged. At the point of his sword he forced Ahmed to eat the rotten apples that had fallen on the ground.
“Eat! Faster! More!” cried the stranger, stuffing the apples into Ahmed’s mouth.
Ahmed had many questions to ask the stranger, but his mouth was full of apples. Nonplused and almost crazed, Ahmed replayed in his mind all the other tragedies that had befallen him in his life, and came to the conclusion that life was inherently absurd and full of meaningless suffering.
“I curse you!” Ahmed screamed inwardly at the stranger. His stomach was so full that he couldn’t breathe. And just when he thought he was going to faint, the stranger began to whip him.
“Run,” screamed the stranger. “Run! Faster! Faster!” Gorged with the apples, exhausted, sleepy, his feet and face covered with bleeding sores and wounds, Ahmed ran and ran, the stranger in hot pursuit. All night the stranger chased and tortured him. At dawn they came to a stream, and the stranger made Ahmed go down on his knees and drink the water like an animal.
“Drink!” he yelled. “More, drink more!”
Ahmed drank till he could drink no more, then sat up on the bank, and threw up everything he had eaten and drunk.
“This is the end,” he thought to himself. “We suffer like this all our lives and then we die.”
He looked up at the stranger and said, “I will die easily if you just tell me why.”
Without any words, the stranger pointed his sword at Ahmed’s vomit. There, amidst the rotten apples lay a long, black snake, writhing and hissing, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth.
“I was riding by when I saw the snake slither into your open, snoring mouth,” the stranger explained.
“But . . . but why didn’t you just tell me the reason? I would have obeyed you meekly, done everything you asked me to, and borne your blows knowing that my suffering had a purpose!”
“Because,” replied the stranger, sheathing his sword and putting away his mace and whip, “had I told you that you had swallowed a black snake, you would have died of fright. This was the lesser suffering.”
Ahmed fell at the feet of the stranger, and said, “O blessed is the hour you saw me. Blessed is the suffering you inflicted to awaken me.”

From Pilgrimage to Paradise (Penguin, 2009)

Posted by kamla Nov 8th 2009

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