Hikikomori 引きこもり
I confess I come by my asocial misanthropy without much effort. It can be hard for people to really love day after day of solitude with little or so contact with the world---but in written words. Our current situation puts many people in peril of that kind of life, unchosen in their case. Isolation can feel, well, isolating and I'm rooting for your mental health. We live "way out here" and usually quite alone, just the two of us. (There is a new puppy incoming! Hopefully. IF we can travel to get her.)
So today I was reading Dogen, the masterful Zen philosopher. His principal work is entitled the Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵), which means "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye" and it raises all sorts of issues about what it means to be alone and to find wonder in quietude. Shōbōgenzō is actually a compiliation of essays and notes largely strung together.
Or Where We're Going and Not Going Anytime Soon
First, I could be entirely mistaken about this but I was reading Dogen today and one thing led to another. I'm not exactly in my comfort zone here but, really, who is right now?
First, I could be entirely mistaken about this but I was reading Dogen today and one thing led to another. I'm not exactly in my comfort zone here but, really, who is right now?
I confess I come by my asocial misanthropy without much effort. It can be hard for people to really love day after day of solitude with little or so contact with the world---but in written words. Our current situation puts many people in peril of that kind of life, unchosen in their case. Isolation can feel, well, isolating and I'm rooting for your mental health. We live "way out here" and usually quite alone, just the two of us. (There is a new puppy incoming! Hopefully. IF we can travel to get her.)So today I was reading Dogen, the masterful Zen philosopher. His principal work is entitled the Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵), which means "Treasury of the True Dharma Eye" and it raises all sorts of issues about what it means to be alone and to find wonder in quietude. Shōbōgenzō is actually a compiliation of essays and notes largely strung together.
Anyways, Dogen is the most renown proponent of the Soto Zen school and its principal teaching, zazen or "just sitting." Zazen is the thoughtless meditation in which there is no achievement or goal but to sit. Thus, the achievement is called "sudden" inasmuch as there is nothing to "get" but the serenity itself, an awareness of things _merely_ as they are.
Appa was deeply influenced by Zen, particularly the ways in which they find the ultimate in the ordinary. He took to heart that there is literally no goal but to revel in an effortless awareness of the everyday. Why would we aspire to something other than living fully in our humanness? Whether one is meditating or not, the constructs and inventions of our mental states may be nothing more than heuristic or imaginary aids. The sweetness of this deeply austere imperative to thoughtlessness is that one receives and accepts the world as such, what the earlier Sanskrit Mahayana called tathātā, "suchness," things such as they are.
Defeating the ultimate has a way of allowing the everyday to be more meaningful. It's much like being liberated from liberation so that we can get on with the business of being human. I'm pretty sure that Dogen didn't the world enough for that, preferring instead to be more deeply entranced by such insouciant disengagement. Dogen was aiming for very little worldly contact. I'm not sure we want that, not really.
Now all of this roundabout took me further in pursuit of the White Rabbit decidedly absent in the presence of Dogen's suchness. But I discovered a rather fascinating distinction in Japanese.
The word for hermit in Japanese is yamagomori. Yama (山) means mountain and the idea is sequestering yourself away for the _purpose_ of reclusion. The yamagomori is trying to get away, remain unseen, vanish from the world. Okay, that might be my plan if we re-elect Trump. I talk a lot leaving for the Falklands because they certainly have even worse weather than Bristol, New York. Is that even possible? But that would be deciding for yamagomori.
Enter hikikomori. This refers to something far more conventional and more like what we are about to be doing.
Hiku means to withdraw and komoru ( 籠る、こもる) means something like seclusion. It might be translated "social withdrawal," but really it is a ready-made term for the next step in "social distancing." We're being told to stay at least six feet from anyone but things are going a lot further and faster than that. Hikikomori is much more like deliberate seclusion---not six feet away, just away.
In sum, hikikomori is when you just cuddle up with yourself all day, don't leave home, just hang---pretty much alone. It's an almost perfectly acceptable thing to do, as far as I can tell, not really asceticism, not Dogen's hermit nor his awareness without things. It's more just going quiet, going it alone some without the rest of the world. When Japanese use this term it means people who just don't leave home---and sometimes not for a long time.
Please don't mistake me, I see all too vividly the perils of isolation and I really, really hope no one ends up lonely or sequestered in ways that are unhealthy or dangerous. I wrote yesterday quite a bit about not becoming isolated and it's important for us all to look after our mental health as we try to secure our physical health.
Hopefully too you aren't holed up all by your lonesome. I hope you're as lucky as I to share this current hikikomori with someone(s) you love. But as far as I can figure, we are headed to a kind of enforced hikikomori. We about to be told to STAY HOME and have as little contact as possible with ANYONE outside. And that would be pretty much the meaning of hikikomori. Wouldn't it be like the Japanese to have a word for it? Hikikomori. Just in time for America.
Appa was deeply influenced by Zen, particularly the ways in which they find the ultimate in the ordinary. He took to heart that there is literally no goal but to revel in an effortless awareness of the everyday. Why would we aspire to something other than living fully in our humanness? Whether one is meditating or not, the constructs and inventions of our mental states may be nothing more than heuristic or imaginary aids. The sweetness of this deeply austere imperative to thoughtlessness is that one receives and accepts the world as such, what the earlier Sanskrit Mahayana called tathātā, "suchness," things such as they are.
Defeating the ultimate has a way of allowing the everyday to be more meaningful. It's much like being liberated from liberation so that we can get on with the business of being human. I'm pretty sure that Dogen didn't the world enough for that, preferring instead to be more deeply entranced by such insouciant disengagement. Dogen was aiming for very little worldly contact. I'm not sure we want that, not really.
Now all of this roundabout took me further in pursuit of the White Rabbit decidedly absent in the presence of Dogen's suchness. But I discovered a rather fascinating distinction in Japanese.
The word for hermit in Japanese is yamagomori. Yama (山) means mountain and the idea is sequestering yourself away for the _purpose_ of reclusion. The yamagomori is trying to get away, remain unseen, vanish from the world. Okay, that might be my plan if we re-elect Trump. I talk a lot leaving for the Falklands because they certainly have even worse weather than Bristol, New York. Is that even possible? But that would be deciding for yamagomori.
Enter hikikomori. This refers to something far more conventional and more like what we are about to be doing.
Hiku means to withdraw and komoru ( 籠る、こもる) means something like seclusion. It might be translated "social withdrawal," but really it is a ready-made term for the next step in "social distancing." We're being told to stay at least six feet from anyone but things are going a lot further and faster than that. Hikikomori is much more like deliberate seclusion---not six feet away, just away.
In sum, hikikomori is when you just cuddle up with yourself all day, don't leave home, just hang---pretty much alone. It's an almost perfectly acceptable thing to do, as far as I can tell, not really asceticism, not Dogen's hermit nor his awareness without things. It's more just going quiet, going it alone some without the rest of the world. When Japanese use this term it means people who just don't leave home---and sometimes not for a long time.
Please don't mistake me, I see all too vividly the perils of isolation and I really, really hope no one ends up lonely or sequestered in ways that are unhealthy or dangerous. I wrote yesterday quite a bit about not becoming isolated and it's important for us all to look after our mental health as we try to secure our physical health.
Hopefully too you aren't holed up all by your lonesome. I hope you're as lucky as I to share this current hikikomori with someone(s) you love. But as far as I can figure, we are headed to a kind of enforced hikikomori. We about to be told to STAY HOME and have as little contact as possible with ANYONE outside. And that would be pretty much the meaning of hikikomori. Wouldn't it be like the Japanese to have a word for it? Hikikomori. Just in time for America.
