Buddhism and Salinger as promised
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Fri, 12 Jun 1998 18:49:10 +1000
Good news or bad news depending on which side of the Salinger and Buddhism
argument you're on, but I found my Year 12 Religion research thesis. Enjoy!
I'll post successive installments later on to save space but here is the
intro (I've cut out alot of biographical stuff that we already know): I'll
also put a copy on my webpage so you can read the lot.
JD SALINGER
`However, as a result of the war he suffered a
nervous breakdown leaving a cavernous hole in his psyche and
ruptured views about the morality of the world. This emptiness
was filled in the early 1950's when a casual interest in
Eastern religion during the mid 1940's was aroused, most
probably by the installation of a Ramakrishna Centre near his
home, and the writings of Professor Daisetz Suzuki, who
popularized Buddhism in America. He avidly studied the
teachings of Ramakrishna, Bhagavad-Gita, Chuang-Tzu and the
non - rationality of Zen Buddhism, especially the simple but
enigmatic koans. From this time onwards his stories are imbued
with the sense of spiritual journey found in these
ecclesiastical writings. His first and only published novel
`The Catcher in the Rye' (1951) reflects this inner search and
struggle, and its random quality reflects the non linear
structure of the Zen Koans, in which sense is to be found from
apparent madness.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE WRITINGS OF J.D. SALINGER and ZEN
BUDDHISM.
Often the first thing a reader of Salinger's writings will ask
him or her self after reading one of his stories is `What did
that mean? What was the point behind my journey?'. As one
critic puts it `Salinger's mode of Zen Buddhism offers for
this uneasy and unresolved conflict' ). The teacher/student
relationship is integral to Zen Buddhism. Often Salinger's
characters or will play the part of teacher, while we the
student, and/or another character will recieve from them (and
their author) a koan to solve and thus reach our next stage of
enlightenment. This is very much the case in `The Catcher in
the Rye'. While it appears in the second last chapter that
Holden Caulfield has achieved his moment of enlightenment; his
nirvana, in the last page-long chapter Holden tells us `that's
all I'm going to tell you' and proceeds to ask the kind of
questions which have plagued him throughout the book. It seems
that he has returned to square one, and that is the last
glimpse we recieve of him. However, we realise that the fact
that Holden's quest never ends is an end in itself . Like the
Buddhist cycle he has been reborn and given a new start, and
we realise through this that like Holden, we have undergone a
learning experience. Examining our mind's reactions to this
seeming irrelevance, we realise that with extreme subtlety,
the the story has, like the Zen koan, stimulated the mind into
other planes of thought to the ones we are used to, and as
with the koan we are compelled to find an answer within
apparent non - logic.
One of the main ways Salinger uses this student / teacher
relationship to express his spirituality is to equate his
characters to various real religious figures and principles,
in a way updating their teachings to educate a modern audience
who, like Holden, do not realise until after the journey how
much they have learned.
THE SIMILARITY BETWEEN SALINGER'S CHARACTERS AND PROMINENT
RELIGIOUS FIGURES
There has always been speculation on just how
autobiographical Salinger's stories and characters are. The
media has undertaken many exhaustive searches for the details
that will conclusively prove that he is in fact Buddy Glass,
Sergeant X or Holden Caulfield. In fact, a letter supposedly
exists wherein J.D. Salinger admits that Holden is a portrait
of himself as a young adult ). However, it is also easy to
find the religious figures he embraces in his spiritual life
imbued in the characters he creates in his writing life. Sybil
of `A Perfect Day for Bananafish' is an obvious example, her
name itself meaning in ancient times a mystic or seer. But
Holden Caulfield is the most intriguing, and the similarities
between himself and various religious figures irrefutable.
Like Buddha, Holden recieves his flash of enlightenment after
`meditating' amongst wild animals (at the Zoo). He recieves it
not at a river, but in the rain, water being a baptismal
symbol in many religions - he says
`My hunting hat really did give me a lot of protection,
in a way, but I got soaked anyway. I didn't care, though. I
felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept
going around and around.'
Holden says at the conclusion of the second last chapter, as
he witnesses his sister who he has worried about being exposed
to the harshness of adult life and change, sitting happily on
the carousel - itself a `cycle'.
THE USE OF TECHNIQUES OF ZEN BUDDHIST WRITINGS IN SALINGER'S
WRITINGS.
Salinger also uses the techniques of Zen Buddhist
writings in his own writings. Often, as stated before, his
stories are koans which the reader is beseeched to solve. But
he has also been quoted as saying in relation to his writing
(and before `Catcher' was published) `I'm a dash man, not a
miler. I will probably never write a novel.') He is more
content with short story writing - a method of writing
characterised by its compactness of narration and message. And
one important aspect of Zen is to `convey the message in as
few words as possible'. One of the Four Statements of Zen is
`no dependence on words and letters', and Salinger's message
always comes across in the most direct way possible and always
with the feeling that the rationality of words can never
wholly describe his message - as one critic puts it `When the
gesture aspires to pure religious expression, language reaches
into silence' . The attraction of the koan (and the Japanese
haiku poem, another of Salinger's fixations which is named
after the great koan writer Haikun) is its compactness, its
emotional detachment yet quiet passion - qualities best
characterised by the term `moksha'. Moshka is a state of
impersonal compassion, an attempt to avoid worldliness and
replace it with an effortless and continuous love. And this is
the main aim of nearly all of Salinger's characters. One book
puts it as `a condition of being without losing our identity,
at one with the universe, and it requires... a certain harmony
between our imaginitive and spiritual responsiveness to all
things.' This is an almost perfect description of the aims of
Salinger as a writer and his characters as people. They crave
a oneness and sense from the nonsense-koan that is the world,
but instead are hindered by the human egos of themselves and
those around them. This is the spiritual search Salinger
expresses in his writing.'
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE
www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442