Zen, Salinger and Carlos Castaneda
Mattis Fishman (mattis@argos.argoscomp.com)
Fri, 19 Jun 1998 13:48:33 -0400 (EDT)
Hello All,
Carlos Castaneda how that name comes up...
I have wanted to mention him many times, and perhaps
it is appropriate now after the fine discussion of Salinger's
spiritual development and its influences.
Castaneda also shows us his own newly acquired insights,
which he puts into the mouth of the redoubtable Don Juan, though
in his case I do not recall that his influences were traced to Eastern
mystics, rather to people like Ouspensky and Gurdjieff (though I am sure
I have misspelled the names). As the series progressed from "Don
Juan", A Separate Reality, Jouney to Ixtlan, he grew more adept
at being the brujo (read guru) he would like to be, though he had a habit
of dating his entries to attribute his later thoughts to Don Juan's earlier
utterances. This roughly corresponds to Matt K's description of JDS molding
and reshaping his characters as he was exposed to new spiritual ideas, and
even to what has been refered to as the two-Seymour phenomenon.
The problem with Carlos C., as I recall, was that he originally presented
his writing as factual, and an anthropology dissertation. A fascinating,
if nit-picking book by Richard DeMille, tried to demonstrate that it was
largely (if not totally) fabrication. Perhaps, Will, you are aware of what
the final verdict, or Mr. C's final admission, was.
In another way, I think he illustrates a point (apologies to Brian Fenton)
about Zen and Salinger. That is, I think one should make a distinction between
writing that is zen-like in its impact and theme, versus a writer trying
to embed zen teachings, or consciously imitate a zen-methodology (if that is
not an oxymoron, what is?). I do not think that JDS's Eastern awareness
led him to try to preach these ideas to the world (with the exception of Teddy)
or even adopt a style which imitated the riddle-contradition-koan methodology.
However, JDS's writing, even if we grant that it is totally western in
structure (the short story), and its reliance on words and rationality, has
the ability to lead one into new insights, perhaps by emphasizing the
contradiction, perhaps by not *explaining* everything. Sort of like talking
"prose", it is possible for anyone to talk "zen", if he has the hard-earned
vocabulary at his disposal. Of course, I may have fallen into the pitfall
of calling anything that sounds anti-rational "zen", but I have a feeling
that that is what we are all talking about anyway.
(aside: I really enjoyed reading the interchange between Camille and Matt.
I was a pleasure to read such nicely formulated posts that seemed to
flow together so well. It seemed like such a good example of what the
bananafish forum can be like)
While we can point out the zen-likeness in traditions from Sufi mystics
to Talmudic scholars (a fascinating sidelight is that the Talmud actually
inquires whether it is permissible to clap, a form of mourning, with one hand,
to which the reply is, typically, "and is it possible to clap with only one
hand?") Carlos Castaneda makes a good example. His character, a Mexican
brujo ("sorcerer") is as unrational as they come, and yet I don't think
there was any intention to pattern him on an Eastern guru type. On the
contrary, I think Mr. C. was trying to illustrate (or invent, as you will)
a sensitivity to mystical experience that was not Eastern or Western, but
native Indian.
His books, my favorite being Journey to Ixtlan (with Tales of Power being
quite low in my estimation, sorry Will), are eye opening, and had a
tremendous impact on me, and a lot of us in the early 70's. They
will have the greatest impact, though, on people who have a personal exposure
or close association with psychoactive substances and what might be
called subjective reality.
all the best,
Mattis
(I am off to Palo Alto next Monday for a week, but hope to be able
keep up with my email, I mean, I'm addicted)