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PART II: Jaideva Singh’s Vedanta and Advaita Shaivagama of Kashmir

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JS Vedanta and Advaita

We will now turn to Jaideva Singh’s discussions of non-dualism in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. Vedanta and Advaita Shaivagama of Kashmir is a short book of 51 pages and consists of the transcripts of three lectures that Jaideva Singh gave in 1984 as Banka Bihari-Hemangini Pal memorial lectures at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Kolkata, India. As these were lectures, they are flowing, have minimal references and footnotes, and are a good introduction for the novice. The three lectures are: “The Philosophy of Vedanta,” “The Philosophy of Shaivagama,” and a short “Comparative of Vedanta and Advaita Shaiva Philosophy.” I have heard it said that we should not use the term “Hinduism,” but rather should use “Vedanta” or “Advaita Vedanta.” Vedanta comes from the religious texts, the Vedas. Advaita means “non-dualism.” However, there Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta appear to be one of many different philosophies that make up the larger concept that “Hinduism” seeks to represent. Just as there are many different Christian sects and “Christianities” there are many different “Hinduisms” and “Buddhisms.” We can use words to understand the world, but we can also use words to muddy the waters of reality and confuse things and bring about dualisms and separations. This is the challenge that the mystics have after glimpsing unitary reality when they try to bring back and teach what they have experienced. Jaideva Singh starts his lecture with the statement, “An unfortunate fact about Vedanta is that it is generally considered to be synonymous with Shankara’s philosophy. Advaita or Vedanta has come to mean the philosophy as propounded by Shankara,” (1). Shankara lived, most likely, during the first half of the 8th century CE and is credited with unifying different schools of Hinduism and distinguishing Hinduism from Buddhism. Singh states that in his lecture “we shall try to go to the original source and see what the truth yields to us…we shall take our stand entirely upon the Upanishads,” (1).

Lecture 1: “The Philosophy of Vedanta”

Singh structures this first lecture around four major topics: 1) “The svarupa [nature] of Brahman,” 2) “The essence of the human being,” 3) “The relation of the essence of the human being to Brahman,” and 4) “The relation of the world to Brahman.” Brahman refers to the “world-ground” or the essence of Reality.

  1. “The svarupa of Brahman” – Singh describes the negative (what Brahman is not) and the positive approaches (what Brahman is) of understanding the nature of Brahman, Reality. A) The negative approach recognizes that we cannot reach or capture Brahman through human thought. “Reality is beyond the senses and thought,” Singh writes, because it is “thought or vikalpa that always sunders Reality into two,” (4). This is a common point that mystics make, that thought is based on separation and division and thus is not a tool that is made for understanding holistic, unitary Reality. The negative approach also recognizes that “thought is relational in nature…thought has always a subject-object duality, nay even a triad, viz, knower, known and knowledge,” (4). The very basis of thought divides into dualism, or even into a triad that gives the false perception that reality is made up of separate pieces, rather than its true nature being unitary. This is similar to Joseph Rael’s concept of noun languages and verb languages. Noun languages are based on separation and verb languages are based on connection. B) The positive approach recognizes Brahman as Sachchidanada subjectively and satyam, jnanam, and anantam, objectively. This approach recognizes the unity of the knower, the known, and knowledge. Sachchidanada is the triad of “sat, chit, ananda—existence, consciousness, bliss,” (5-6). Objectively this corresponds to “satyam, jnanam, anantam—truth, knowledge, and infinity,” (6). The challenge of non-dualism is to capture how diversity is within unity, rather than separate from it.
  2. “The Essence of the Human Being” – this is a short section that essentially describes the “vehicles of the Self,” roughly a kind of mind-body-spirit set of distinctions that describe separate dimensions of human being yet are holistic in their interrelation, (8).
  3. “The Relation of the Essence of the Human Being to Brahman” – this section describes the ways of understanding that the human being and Brahman are non-dual, they appear as diversity, but they reflect an underlying unity. Singh states that Brahman is “the eternal subject which can never be reduced to an object, the eternal knower that can never be reduced to the state of the known,” (10). He quotes the saying, “By what can the knower of all knowledge be known?” (10). While there is apparent diversity of human beings from Brahman, our true nature is not duality, but non-duality. Singh has a nice paragraph that sums up a unitary view:

    As the rivers that flow towards the ocean, having reached it disappear ; their name and form are destroyed and they designate the ocean, even so of this spectator, these sixteen parts (five organs of the sense + five organs of action + manas + tanmatras) that tend towards the Purusha, on reaching the Purusha, disappear ; their name and form are destroyed and they are designated simply Purusha. That one continues partless and immortal, (12).

    Druidstone Sunset

    Sunset from Druidstone Inn, Pembrokeshire, Wales (D. Kopacz, 2018)

    Singh describes our apparent separation as a “forgetfulness of…true Self,” and that the individual, “becomes a voluntary exile in order to realize better the sweetness of home,” (13).

  4. “The Relation of the World to Brahman” – here Singh describes how the world, as well as the human being, are simply transitory manifestations of the deeper, underlying unitary reality of Brahman. Creation is not of a separate substance than the Creator. The Creator creates creation out of the Unitary Self, hence sayings such as “All is Śiva.” “Brahman is the origin of all beings ; all beings proceed from Him and are dissolved in Him,” (14). Singh describes two different methods for realizing this unitary essence of Reality. The first is meditation on the word-sound Om, which is one sound made up of four different parts “a, u, m, and the ardhamatra after m are the true representatives of Brahman,” (15). Here we are back to sound-mysticism in which the sounds contain the essence. Sometimes the essence is reduced from the four sounds of aum (a, u, m, silence) to just the first letter, A, which contains all the rest of the letters, sounds, and words within it, for instance:

              “I am the self in the inner-most

               heart of all, I am their

               beginning, middle and end. (10.20)

               The science of the soul among sciences, (10.32)

               I am the speech of the letters,

               I am A.” (10.33)

(Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, cited in Louise Landes Levi, Sweet on My Lips: The Love Poems of Mirabai, 17).

The other meditation Singh speaks of is on the heart-centre, the Dahara-Vidya which is recommended in the Chhandogya Upanishad, which he quotes. “What is here in this city of Brahman is an abode, a small lotus-flower. Within that there is a small space. That should be searched out, that is what one should desire to understand,” (15).  Singh ends this lecture reminding us that this is the “mystic heart,” not the physical heart. “One has to meditate on it. This leads to the transformation of the empirical mind into the Divine,” (15). This is what Joseph Rael and I are working on in our next book, Becoming Medicine. Going into the center or our own heart, which is also the center of the universal heart, the center of the medicine wheel, a journey which sacralizes us into medicine.

Lecture 2: “The Philosophy of Shaivagama”

We will not go into exhaustive detail of this lecture which makes up the bulk of the book and covers the 36 Tattvas of Universal Experience, amongst other things. These describe the series of stages from the Ultimate Unitary Reality through the various possible states of manifestation which can be viewed both as a 36 rung ladder out of the Unitary into diversity and back from diversity into Unity. This is a very helpful introduction to Kashmiri Shaivism and would be a nice reference for reading any of Singh’s larger works of translation.

Singh describes some of the different terms used to represent Unitary Reality, such as annuttara (the Highest Reality), however all these terms represent “the changeless principle of all change,” (17).

Shiva and Shakti are not different. It is the same Absolute which from one point of view is Shiva, from another Shakti. From the point of view of prakasha, Shiva is vishvottirna or transcendent to the universe. From the point of view of vimarsha or Shakti, he is vishvamaya or immanent in the universe, (17-18).

Ardhanarisvara

Ardhanarishvara (painting & photo, D. Kopacz)

Shiva and Shakti, the universal masculine and universal feminine are in a yin-yang-like relationship, each is part of a larger whole. Through science and logical thought, which we have so developed in Western languages and cultures, allows us to see how things are distinct and separate and this has given us tremendous knowledge and power over the material world, and yet we lose something of our souls when we specialize in the function of separation over the function of union. In becoming masters of what Joseph Rael calls “ordinary reality,” we may bring about our own destruction by becoming illiterate in “non-ordinary reality” which is the realm of unseen interconnection. Singh describes the roots of the word maya, often translated as illusion. “Maya is derived from the root ‘ma’ which means ‘to measure out.’ That which makes experience measureable, i.e. limited, and severs ‘this’ from ‘I’ and ‘I’ from “this’ and excludes things from one another is Maya,” (31). It is interesting to ponder this cross-culturally to look at the project of knowledge in the West which so highly values objectivity and the ever increasing division of the whole into parts which can be separated, isolated, and then controlled and manipulated. Singh might say that the project of knowledge in the West is purely a function of learning diversity and separation, maya, or that which is transitory and illusory. Physical science, based on the scientific principle of objectivity, is only half of reality, and perhaps not the most important half, because its knowledge comes at the expense of holistic, spiritual, and intuitive elements of human beings and of Ultimate Reality.

One of the teachings that Singh describes near the end of this lecture is that of Varanyoga, which describes a vibration of “an imperceptible, inarticulate sound which is known as varna,” which goes on “naturally and continuously in every living creature,” (42). “No one sounds it voluntarily, nor can any one prevent its being sounded. The deity abiding in the heart of living creatures sounds it himself,” (42). Perhaps this is why the Sanskrit word for the heart chakra is anahata, meaning a sound which is “unstruck.” The essence of Reality is always vibrating out from the heart of every individual. The Truth is closer than you think, because when you think you separate yourself from it, but when you allow the vibration to resonate within your heart, you become that which you have been seeking.

Lecture 3: “Comparative of Vedanta and Advaita Shaiva Philosophy”

This lecture is just a few short pages and brings together the chapter on Vedanta and the chapter on Shaivagama and it describes the popular philosophy of Vedanta as a kind of dualism as it rejects immanence and rejects the world of physical reality as being unreal. Shankara’s Vedanta sees action in the material world as only capable of producing karma. Kashmiri Shaivism, however, sees action as a manifestation of the ultimate, rather than a veiling or distraction of the Ultimate. “Shaivagama takes kriya [activity], in a wide sense, in the sense of chiti-shakti, in the sense of spanda, throb or pulsation to manifest,” (44). Singh points out that Shankara is distinct from Brahman. “If maya is something quite external, then advaita [non-dualism] cannot be maintained. If maya is shakti of Brahman, then surely, it is an activity of Brahman,” (45).

This distinction of whether or not maya is something separate from or is a unitary aspect of Brahman has practical as well as theological implications. In a dualistic, transcendent-only spirituality (whether Hindu or Christian) we see a correlation with the devaluing of the Earth, of the body, of women. Mother Earth, matter (which is an English word that comes from the root Latin, mater, or “mother”), and the feminine are all related principle ideas. In Hinduism, maya is feminine, and orthodox teachings are often misogynistic. However, Kashmiri Shaivism recognizes the feminine Shakti as a manifestation of, not as separate from, Shiva. Kashmiri Shaivism thus preserves elements of the ancient mother goddess spiritualities of ancient India, which formed a zone of the veneration of the goddess across India and the Fertile Crescent. Singh writes, “Maya is the creative power of the Divine, Maya is not a power of illusion,” (47). Further, Singh writes, “Manifestation only means making explicit what is implicit. Variety is not contradictory to unity,” (48).

The ideal of mukti [liberation] in Vedanta is kaivalya or isolation just as in Samkhya-yoga. The only difference is that in Samkhya-yoga, it is isolation from prakriti [the changing natural world], in Vedanta, it is isolation from maya. The ideal of mukti in Shaivagama is shivatva-yojana or being integrated with Shiva.

According to Vedanta, the world is annulled in mukti. According to Shaivagama, the world appears to be a form of Shiva-consciousness in liberation, (51).

Singh describes Shaivagama, Kashmiri Shaivism, as a true non-dual tradition that recognizes the essence of the Divine as both manifest within physical reality and also transcendent to physical reality. Non-dualism is not just an esoteric, theological concept, it is an organizing framework that changes the way we view human nature, physical reality, and the Divine. It brings us into harmony and unity with all that is. The practical concern is that those whose belief system is based on duality see the world through the lens of separation, of us/them. This leads, ultimately, to oppression and abuse of women, indigenous people and those who are labelled as “other” or “enemy of the people.” It also leads to exploitation and degradation of the environment because people functioning in dualism do not see that they are part of the environment and part of the Earth and think they can act without feeling any impact or repercussions of their actions. Perhaps, now more than ever, we should be striving for an experience of non-duality in order to become the medicine that is much needed in our current wounded world and fractured political state.

PART III: Jaideva Singh’s An Introduction to Madhyamaka Philosophy

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JS Madhyamaka

This review has gone on longer than I thought it would, but still I think it is worth a brief review of Singh’s An Introduction to Madhyamaka Philosophy, originally published in 1968. This 64 page booklet describes the difference between Mahāyāna and Hīnayāna Buddhism, which turns out to also hinge on a similar distinction of dualism and non-dualism as does Singh’s discussion of Vedanta and Shaivagama. Hīnayāna is also known as “Southern Buddhism,” or “Original Buddhism,” and is found largely throughout Southern India and Southeast Asia, (1). Mahāyāna is also known as “Northern Buddhism,” and “Developed Buddhism,” and spread from Northern India into Tibet, China, (influencing Zen), and into Japan and Korea. These terms that we have and that scholars use have an obvious political or polemical nature as those followers of Mahāyāna described their school as “the higher vehicle” and Hīnayāna as the “lower vehicle.” Singh follows the development of Madhyamaka Philosophy, a root aspect of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Madhyamaka traces back to Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka Śāstra. Many of the Madhyamaka texts were lost in their original Sanskrit, but have survived through translations into Chinese, Japanese, and Tibetan. In the 1830s a series of bundles of Sanskrit texts were found in Nepal, including Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka Śāstra. Madhyamaka refers back to the Buddha’s teaching of “madhyamā-pratipad (the middle path),” (4).

Nāgārjuna (c. 250-150 BCE) has a legend associated with his name, as Singh describes.

Nagarjuna_at_Samye_Ling_Monastery

Image taken by Benjamin Matthews on visit to Samye Ling Monastery, Dumfriesshire, UK, on 1 May 2004.

Nāga means a serpent or dragon. Arjuna is the name of a tree. It is said that he was born under an Arjuna tree, and he visited the submarine kingdom of the Nāgas, where the Nāga king transmitted to him the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra which had been entrusted to the Nāgas by the Buddha.

The word ‘Nāga’ however, is symbolic of wisdom. The Buddha is said to have remarked, “The serpent is a name for one who has destroyed the āsavas (passions),” (5).

One of the core teachings of Nāgārjuna is śūnyatā. This word is often translated as “emptiness” or “insubstantial.” Here we find the universal truth of the mystic that “empirical knowledge could not give us an insight into Reality,” (8). Singh reviews the literary sources of Madhyamaka Philosophy.

The most important of these works are the prajñāpāramitā sūtras. Prajñā-pāramitā is generally translated as ‘perfect wisdom.’ The word ‘pāram-itā’ i.e. ‘gone beyond’ suggests that it would be better to translate prajñā-pāramitā as ‘transcendent insight’ or ‘transcendent wisdom.’ The Tibetans translate it in this way. In all countries where Mahāyāna is a living religion, the following prajñā-pāramitā mantra is generally recited: Gate, gate, pāraṁ-gate, pārasaṁgate Bodhi, svāhā i.e. “O wisdom which has gone beyond the beyond, to thee Homage,” (9).

Another important Madhyamaka text is the Vajracchedikā, Diamond Sutra, an early abridgement of the prajñāpāramitā sūtras, “translated into Chinese probably in the 5th century A. D. This translation was printed in China on 11th May, 868. This is said to be the oldest printed book in the world,” (9). Singh writes that the Prajñāpāramitā was later condensed into mantras. One of these “Ekākṣarī says that the perfection of wisdom is contained only in one letter, viz. ‘a’. Ultimately Prajñāpāramitā was personified as a goddess to be worshipped,” (9-10).

Nāgārjuna’s primary philosophical tool was prasaṇga which reduced any statement of ultimate fact in words or argument to absurdity. Given the true nature of Reality as śūnyatā (emptiness), any positivistic description of Reality was bound to fall short of capturing reality. One can trace this concept into Zen teachings which constantly challenged the novice to drop their discursive mind’s attempt to understand and put reality into words. Ultimate reality is found more in silence and stillness than in mental and verbal description, thus the emphasis on silent meditation in so many spiritual traditions.

We will not go into detail of Nāgārjuna’s method of prasaṇga, other than to mention that any argument or statement can be broken down into a four-part dialectic:

  1. A positive thesis

  2. A negative counter-thesis

  3. A conjunctive affirmation of the first two

  4. A disjunctive denial of the first two (16)

Nāgārjuna draws on Buddha’s statement that “he neither believed in Śāśvata-vāda, and absolute affirmation, nor in Ucchedavāda an absolute negation. His position was one of madhyamā prati-pada (literally, the middle position),” (15).

Singh describes the positive contributions of Nāgārjuna around the concept of dharmaiṣanā. This concept teaches that even in error there is a secret longing for truth. “It says that the tendency of man to seize the relative as the absolute is, at root, the secret-inchoate longing in the heart of man for the absolute (dharmaiṣanā),” (21). Thus, there is an inherent longing for the absolute in every person, however the longing can get attached to something fleeting and passing, but even in its delusion, it still is revealing the essence of the longing for the divine. Nāgārjuna wrote, “That which is of the nature of coming and going, arising and perishing, in its conditioned aspect is itself Nirvāṇa, in its unconditioned aspect,” (22). There is non-duality, again according to Nāgārjuna, “Nothing of phenomenal existence (saṁsāra) is different from nirvāṇa, nothing of nirvāṇa is different from phenomenal existence,” (29).

Once he is awake to the conditionedness (Śūnyatā) of the conditioned, his sense of values changes. He becomes a transformed man and then his dharmaiṣanā, his mysterious longing for the Real finds its meaning and fulfillment, (21).

If one already has dharmaiṣanā, but does not know one has it, how does one seek and find it? “The only way of reaching the goal is to realize that in the ultimate sense there is no goal to be reached,” (26). Thus, it is not a matter of seeking, it is a matter of stopping the seeking after a long period of exhausting seeking. To shift from outward action into inward stillness. “It is not the world that we have to change, but only ourselves,” (29).

Returning to the distinction between Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna, Singh sums it up: “the ideal of Hīnayāna is individual enlightenment; the ideal of Mahāyāna is universal enlightenment,” (30). The Hīnayāna-ist understands the concept of enlightenment, but seeks it for the escape of the wheel of birth and death, making the categorical mistake of thinking that his or her ego is separate from all of humanity and all of existence. This is still a form of dualism. The Mahāyāna-ist recognizes that there is non-difference between self and other and thus that enlightenment must include all sentient beings, otherwise it is only partial. “The Bodhisattva (Pāli, Boddhisatta) seeks supreme enlightenment not for himself alone but for all sentient beings,” (31).

Another distinction is in the nature of the Buddha as well as between dualism and non-dualism.

Hīnayāna was entirely intellectual…it was the human aspect of the Buddha which was emphasized.

In  Mahāyāna, Buddha was taken as God, as Supreme Reality itself that had descended on the earth in human form for the good of mankind, (35).

               …

The philosophy of Hīnayāna was one of radical pluralism, that of Mahāyāna was undiluted non-dualism (advaya)…

The approach to truth adopted in Hīnayāna was one of mystically-tinged rationalism, that adopted by Mahāyāna was one of super-rationalism and profound mysticism, (36).

The source of dualism for Hīnayāna (as well as for Vedanta) is in splitting the dual meaning of Śūnyatā (or maya). Śūnyatā is the pregnant void, emptiness which yet contains all things. “Śūnyatā is an abstract noun derived from śūnya. It means deprivation and suggests fullness,” (37). To view something as separate, or even to believe that one can separate from or transcend one aspect of reality to enter another reality is a false presumption, because there is only Absolute Reality.

The world is not a conglomeration of things. It is simply process, and things are simply events. A ‘thing’ by itself is ‘nothing’ at all. This is what is meant by the śūnyatā or emptiness of all dharmas, (39).

Thus, all teachings, all explanations of reality are empty. The development of philosophies and schools of thought that positivistically explain reality are doomed to failure. In fact the Truth is beyond all philosophies.

Dark Energy Moving through Dark Matter

Dark Energy Moving Through Dark Matter © D. Kopacz

“Śūnyatā was declared by the Buddha for dispensing with all views or ‘isms’. Those who convert Śūnyatā itself into another ‘ism’ are verily beyond hope or help, (43).

Śūnyatā is not the final goal of the teachings, however.

Meditation on the śūnyatā (emptiness) is only a preparation for the spiritual discipline of prajñāpāramitā…The functional prajñā puts an end to the darkness of ignorance and thus the eternal prajñā comes to the fore. In the eternal prajñā, one cannot find even the distinction of ignorance and knowledge. It is an ever-present luminous knowledge. It is the ‘eternal light in the heart of man.’ Particular objects arise and perish, but the light of this prajñā keeps ever shining, (45).

Heart at the Center of Dark Matter

Heart at the Center of Dark Matter © D. Kopacz, 2016 

While Nāgārjuna teaches the emptiness of all dharmas (which can mean “scripture, doctrine, religion” as well as the “impersonal energy behind and in everything”), there is a more expansive concept of Dharmakāya meaning “the principle of cosmic unity,” (47).

The Dharma-kāya is the essential nature of Buddha. As Dharmakāya, the Buddha experiences his identity with Dharma or the Absolute and his unity (samatā) with all beings. The Dharmakāya is a knowing ; loving, willing being, an inexhaustible fountain-head of love and compassion, (47).

I remember in my East Asian Religions class at university, with Professor Peter N. Gregory, he would talk at length about Buddha nature. Professor Gregory would recount all the different stories about monks asking masters about what Buddha nature was and who or what had it and did not have it. I remember him gleefully recounting one story in which the answer was that Buddha nature was “even in shit and piss!”

Extreme, one-sided views lead to fundamentalism, a dangerous issue so prevalent in today’s world. Fundamentalism is based on a belief that there one’s own belief-group owns the truth and is justified in discriminating against, imprisoning, or even killing those who are do not share the same beliefs. Singh reminds us of the Buddha’s teaching of the Middle Way.

Extremes become dead-ends of eternalism and annhilationalism. There are those who cling to nonbeing and there are others who cling exclusively to being. The great Buddha meant, by his doctrine of madhyamā pratipat (Middle way), to drive home the truth that things here are neither absolute being nor absolute non-being, but are arising and perishing, forming continuous becoming, and that Reality is transcendent to thought and cannot be caught up in the dichotomies of the mind, (50).

The Absolute and the world are not two different sets of reality posited against each other, (51).

Reality is not one thing or another thing, but all things. Reality is “both transcendent and immanent. It is transcendent as ultimate Reality, but it is present in everyone as his inmost ground and essence,” (57).

Reading in Iceland

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It is said that 1 in 10 people in Iceland will publish a book. The everlasting daylight of summer gives way to cold and darkness in the winter where people must get creative to occupy themselves. (There is also a high percentage of musicians in Iceland). Reykjavík has a lot of bookstores and there are many Icelandic authors – about half the books are in English and half in Icelandic in the stores.

I have long wanted to go to Iceland – something about the natural beauty, and maybe the creativity goes along with that in some way. In planning the trip, I had been more aware of my Welsh ancestry, but I do have a small percentage of Scandinavian DNA, 3% by Ancestry.com estimates. Maybe this was through various ancient European migrations, more recent linkages through my father’s Polish side (where we cannot get back much more than my Great Great grandparents who immigrated to the USA), or perhaps most likely through Viking raids into Britain (my mom has a surprisingly high percentage of Scandinavian DNA).

I walked through several bookstores, looking to pick up a book by an Icelandic author. Laxness novels were well represented, but what caught my eye was a trilogy by Jón Kalman Stefánsson and these books accompanied me throughout our journeys in Iceland, on the 8 hour plane flight back to Seattle, and for my first week back in the States as I finished reading them. I liked them so much that I will provide a short review of the books (possibly giving away a little bit of plot), or maybe just list a few of my favourite quotes. Not only were they great books that I found very gripping, but also, perhaps one gets a bit more of a feel for a culture reading its literature and going into the inner psychological and narrative realms, in addition to moving through the beautiful and awesome landscapes.

The weather was very nice when we were in Iceland, but internally I was whipped by the cold sea water and snow and ice of Iceland winter as I read Kalman’s books. Death, life, poetry, the life and death demands of writing and reading, the struggle to find home, to find identity, and the struggle of creatives to find a place in society that often did not provide a place for creativity are some of the themes of these books: Heaven and Hell; The Sorrow of Angels; and The Heart of Man.

 

Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell (2)

“Our words are a kind of rescue team on a relentless mission to save past events and extinguished lives from the black hole of oblivion, and that is no easy task; along the way they are welcome to find some answers, then get us out of here before it is too late. Let this suffice for now, we’ll send the words on to you, those bewildered, scattered rescue teams unsure of their task, all compasses broken, maps torn or out of date, yet you should welcome them. Then we shall see what happens,” (3).

Thus begins the book which follows “the boy” (no name is given which makes him a kind of everyman/everyperson). He has lost everyone he cared about in his life. Father drowned at sea, he and his brother fostered out to homes in other villages. He receives letters from his mother, until she and his young sister die of illness. His mother wrote him about her and his father’s passion for books and reading.

“We thought continuously about books, about being educated, became fervent, frantic, if we heard of some new interesting book, imagined what it might be like, spoke about its possible contents in the evenings, after you’d gone to bed. And later we’d read it in turns, or together, when and if we managed to get hold of it, or a handwritten copy of it,” (34).

The boy is befriended by Bárður, another lover of books, and they work on fishing boats, out in the sea, fishing for cod. One early morning they are preparing for sea. Bárður goes back to the house to read through some lines of Paradise Lost, to read to the boy and savour when they are out at sea with the crew in the small sixareen. Bárður remembers the poetry, but he forgets to bring his waterproof coat and a sudden winter storm lashes down upon the crew while they are pulling up their lines.

Bárður had taken the boy to the village to visit an old blind sea captain, blind like Milton was when he dictated Paradise Lost. Kolbeinn, the blind captain says to Bárður, “you see…it will change your life, which could certainly use a change,” (55). The book does certainly prove to change Bárður’s life. As they row out to sea, Bárður is thinking about the lines from Paradise Lost. Kalman doesn’t bother setting off quotes when someone is talking or reciting lines of poetry, it all runs together without clear separation of inner and outer.

“Bárður pants and mumbles something, in snatches of the strain…cowl casts…colour of dusk. All of their hearts beat fast. The heart is a muscle that pumps blood, the abode of pain, loneliness, joy, the one muscle that can keep us awake at night,” (50).

When the rain and snow starts, Bárður realizes he does not have his waterproof.

“Damned waterproof, I forgot it, and Bárður curses more, he curses having focused unnecessarily on memorizing lines from Paradise Lost, so focused that he forgot his waterproof…This is what poems can do to us,” (60).

It begins to become clear, quite quickly, that Bárður’s life is in danger. Their captain, a man of few words, begins to chant. He goes through a kind of shamanic transformation – such is the power of words when they are forged deep within the center of being. Words have an energy and his chants begin to build up heat as he recites the only poems he knows, at first about heroism on the sea, but eventually obscene verses. As the heat builds, perhaps the heat of these words can save him from the foolishness fix that carrying poetry rather than a waterproof have gotten him into…

“The verses gush out of him. As if to exorcise the arctic cold itself. The verses become steadily more raw, more violent, and Pétur is transformed. He is no longer a silent, serious skipper, the workhorse, something ancient and dark awakens in him, this is no longer poetry that wells up from within him, poetry is for laggards and schoolmen, this is a primitive force, a language with deep roots in a dim subconscious, sprung from a harsh life and ever present death. Pétur grows burning hot and he rocks rhythmically on the thwart, slaps his hands now and then on his thigh when the rhyming words become so heavy that it is difficult for the human body to handle them, because the human body is delicate, it cannot bear the impact of large rocks, cannot bear avalanches, the stinging cold, cannot endure loneliness, cannot endure rhyming words heavy with antiquity, saturated with lust, and this is why Pétur slaps his thigh, to bring words forth, and the five men start in surprise, everyone bound by this primitive power streaming from their skipper…Pétur has taken off his sou’wester, he has been sweating,” (63-64).

Maybe this ancient force of words that has awakened from deep within the skipper can save Bárður, but alas, a doubt arises in Pétur’s mind, in his heart, and the words sputter to a halt and Bárður murmurs

“nothing is sweet to me, without thee, mumbles Bárður, the line of poetry written in the letter Bárður finished last evening, addressed to Sigriður… (71)…Bárður always went out at 8.00 to gaze at the moon and at the same time Sigriður watched as well, there were mountains and distances between them but their eyes met on the moon, precisely as the eyes of lovers have done since the beginning of time, and that is why the moon was placed in the sky,” (103-104).

Bárður freezes to death and dies in the boat before they get to shore and the boy has lost his anchor to this world again.

“Some poems take us places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness. Some poems change the day, the night, your life. Some poems make you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you’re dead,” (85).

The boy is driftless, without purpose, without connection to the social world. He decides he will kill himself, but first he needs to return the copy of Paradise Lost that Bárður borrowed from the blind sea captain, Kolbeinn. This book that caused the death of his friend becomes the thing that keeps him alive, at least until he can return it. He struggles over mountain and snow. Returns the book, but rather than kill himself he is taken in by a group of intellectuals, misfits, and very interesting people who live on the fringe of society. Like a band of punk rockers, they find companionship through the thing they have in common: not fitting into society.

One person he met had studied and journeyed abroad and was a reader of books:

“He’d been in the habit for many years of making long journeys, most often abroad, since there is nothing to see in Iceland except mountains, waterfalls, tussocks and this light that can pass through you and turn you into a poet,” (118).

I thought this line was quite interesting – the very reason that someone might have wanted to leave Iceland to see the world is now the very reason that so many tourists journey to Iceland: to see “mountains, waterfalls, tussocks.” I’m not sure if many of the tourists who venture through Iceland on guided tours notice “the light that can pass through you and turn you into a poet.” But maybe that explains why so many Icelanders become writers – this light that is turning them all into poets, poets, who, like all poets, have no choice but to let lose their words upon the world.

“But why tell you these stories?

What terrifying powers, other than despair, fling us over the Unnameable in order to tell you stories of extinguished lives?

 Our words are confused rescue teams with obsolete maps and birdsong in place of compasses. Confused and profoundly lost, yet their job is to save the world, save extinguished lives, save you and then hopefully us as well,” (95).

I won’t tell you the rest of the book and neither will I tell you more of the plot in the next two books, but I will share a few more quotes from the next two books.

 

The Sorrow of Angels

Sorrow.2

“Our movements may be uncertain, hesitant, but our goal is clear ― to save the world. Save you and ourselves with these stories, these snippets from poems and dreams that sank long ago into oblivion. We’re in a leaky rowing boat with a rotten net and we’re going to catch stars,” (10).

The book starts with what sounds like the dead speaking from beyond the grave, or maybe it is all the Writers in the world speaking out to all the Readers. The book has more harrowing journeys over snow and blizzards and sea. This book continues the theme of those creatives who have to write, who have to question the meaning and value of what is given them in this world and in the social structures.

“He who stays up too late is poorly fit for the next day’s work, but he who doesn’t follow his dreams loses his heart,” (24).

I will just provide one other quote from this book and we will skip the plot:

“Of what other use is poetry unless it has the power to change fate?” (26).

 

The Heart of Man

The Heart of Man

“Where do dreams end, where does reality begin? Dreams come from within, they trickle in from the world that we all have inside us, possibly distorted, but what isn’t distorted, what isn’t dented?” (9).”

This book continues on these themes of inner and outer reality,  of what is created and what exists, of the inner movements of the heart against the struggles against the background of the social and physical landscapes. The boy is growing up. As I read these books I’m reminded of Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, but there is a bit of playfulness here along with a struggle against ending up bitter, like Louis Ferdinand-Céline if he had remained a poet and social critic and had not become a nihilist and anti-Semite. Kalman has elements of Existentialism, but he has hope, hope that the poets words can be rescue teams, search parties, that they can somehow find and redeem the heart of humanity.

“A nation that translates little, focusing only on its own thoughts, is constricted, and if it boasts a large population it becomes dangerous to others, as well, because most things are alien to it except for its own thoughts and customs. Translations broaden people, and thereby the world. They help you understand distant nations. People hate less, or fear less, what they understand. Understanding can save people from themselves. Generals have a harder time getting you to kill if you possess understanding. Hatred and prejudice, I say to you, are fear and ignorance; you may write that down,” (163).

How appropriate is this quote is – written in 2011 in the Icelandic and translated to English 2015 – with the rise of nationalism in the United States and around the world! Would that help us in our current state of the rampant rise of nationalism, intolerance, and the radical “other-ing” happening across the globe? Where can we find the light to fight this darkness sweeping the globe?

“I don’t know where the darkness comes from, yet I think that it comes from the same place as the light, and I think it grows dark because we let it happen. I think that it’s difficult to attain the light, often very difficult, but I also think that no-one attains it for us…If we don’t set out on our own, life is nothing,” (333).

Like Carl Jung, Kalman sees the light and dark arising from the same place. As Jung wrote:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

The boy, who often is more aware of his inner mind and heart as he struggles with the sea and the snow, which claim many victims throughout the books. He struggles to find out who he is, he struggles to learn love and his own heart, he struggles to find his way in a world that seems created for people who are non-reflective. As persistently the environment struggles to erase and eradicate life, there is this compensatory realm of the inner world of the heart and the way it journeys out into the outer world through word and stories – trying to find some meaning and truth.

“This is a war against oblivion, in the hope that hidden within the stories are words that free us from our fetters. You as well,” (87).

This ends our review of Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s trilogy. I have material for one more post following our trip from Reykjavik to Vestmannaeyjar Island, the last leg of our trip that circles back around to Keflavik airport and back to Seattle.



 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
The Being Behind Becoming


				

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A Review of Songs for Siva: Vacanas of Akka Mahadevi, translated by Vinaya Chaitanya (2017).


Songs for Siva cover


A small hardcover volume filled with poems seeking to move from duality and separation into divine union ― Songs for Siva is a new translation by Vinaya Chaitanya of the 12th century poet, Akka Mahadevi. She was known as “sky-clad” (digambaras), as she was of the tradition of the wandering saint, clad only with the hair she was given.


               If the cloth that covers them slips,


               Men and women become shy.


               If you, lord of life,


               Envelop the whole world,


               What is there to be shy of?


               If Channamallikarjuna, jasmine-tender,


               Sees with the whole world as eyes,


               What shall you cover and hide, O man? (145)


The foreword by H.S. Shivaprakash describes Akka’s writing as “poetic without being poetry, spiritual without being religious or scriptural,” (vii). Transcending duality, Shivaprakash further states that Akka’s pathway of Siva is “where heaven and hell become one in the clear understanding of continuous awareness, turning nectar and poison into each other,” (viii).


               You grasped the space within the space


               That no one knows


               And handed it to me,


               O Guru Channamallikarjuna, jasmine tender (92)


Translator, Vinaya Chaitanya, provides an informative and intriguing introduction to Akka Mahadevi. Chaitanya draws parallels between the 12th century Virasaiva movement that Mahadevi was part of, and the translator’s own wisdom lineage of Narayan Guru: speaking out against discrimination and oppression based on separation and difference such as “caste, sex, language or dress,” (xvi). Chaitanya quotes Narayana Guru, “Humanity is of one caste, of one religion and of one God,” (xxix). As well as looking forward to the present, Chaitanya also looks back to the past, describing the Virasaiva movement as a continuation of the pre-Aryan, pre-Vedic “older, more contemplative tradition associated with Siva,” (xxiii). This movement accorded equal status to the sexes and there are “thirty-three vacanakartis (women writers of vacanas)” whose poems are known, (xxiv).


               I saw the divine form…


               I saw the great one


               Who makes all the males female.


               I saw the supreme guru


               Channamallikarjuna, jasmine-tender,


               Ever united with the primal Sakti.


               Seeing him, I am saved. (141)


Ardhanarisvara
Ardhanarisvara


One of the fundamental human differences that is frequently a basis of discrimination is male and female. Chaitanya writes, “It is the dialectics between male and female that makes for the creative evolution of the world. When these opposites are united in harmony, there is peace and contentment; when the balance between them is lost, there is suffering,” (xii). The longing for union that Akka Mahadevi expresses toward her Lord Siva, whom she calls Channamallikarjuna, goes beyond the union of male and female, which is still a form of separation and dualism, to a state of mystical union with the Divine. A.K. Ramanujan translated Channamallikarjuna as “jasmine-white Lord,” in his translations of the 1970s, whereas Chaitanya chooses a slightly different translation, “jasmine-tender,” and continues to use the original in the poems as well, Channamallikarjuna (“Channa means ‘beautiful’; mallika is jasmine; arjuna meaning ‘bright’ or ‘white’”).


               My mind is unhappy.


               It cannot become empty


               Forgetting the two.


               Show me how you can become me,


               O, Channamallikarjuna, jasmine-tender. (10)


Like another Bhakti poet, Mirabai, Akka Mahadevi was married to a husband, but considered herself married to God, in Mirabai’s case Shyam (Krishna) and for Mahadevi, Śiva. The poems are called vacanas, meaning “to give one’s word” or “to make a promise or commitment,” (xxiii).


               Like treasure hidden by the earth.


               Like taste hidden by the fruit…


               Channamallikarjuna, jasmine-tender,


               Hides as the being behind becoming;


               No one knows him. (9)


Aside from the timeless beauty of these poems, which express the ancient mystical longing to transcend dualism, these vacanas are topical today ― when we live in such a time that focuses so very much on walls and borders, differences and separation. We need reminders of our human unity and of the sacred and divine Oneness that transcends and swallows all our differences into the vast Cosmic Ocean of Being, out of which all this becoming arises.


 


 


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
Review of Walking the Medicine Wheel by Michael H. Cohen


				

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Thank you to Michael H. Cohen for his kind and thoughtful review of Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD. You can read the entire review here. A few excerpts below.


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CAN INDIGENOUS HEALING SYSTEMS RESOLVE COMPLEX, MODERN CLINICAL PROBLEMS SUCH AS TRAUMA AND PTSD?
































“Answering this question, as part of a larger inquiry into integrative medicine, psychiatrist and integrative physician David Kopacz, and Native American visionary Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow), have written Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD.”


“Importantly, the book notes that ‘the real importance of ceremony is that we are not just going through meaningless motions, but that our motions are full of deep meaning, our motions are the motions of creation.’


Healing not only helps the person – it changes the cosmos.


That is why this is such an important book. Walking the Medicine Wheel shares wisdom from two divergent traditions—one clinical and the other focused on healing through imagery, sound, poetry, introspection, visioning. The quest is nothing less than clearing the fog of the aftermath of war, instilling sacredness, and reclaiming the whole self.”











			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
Review of Gerald Arbuckle’s Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad


				

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Gerald Arbuckle is an anthropologist and Catholic priest from New Zealand who lives in Australia. He has written on a variety of topics including bullying, humanizing health care reform, humor, Pope Francis, and his latest book is on varieties of fundamentalism in the modern world.


Fundamentalism cover


In Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad, Gerald Arbuckle brings his understanding of culture as an anthropologist and his perspective as a theologian who sympathizes with the broad-mindedness and inclusiveness of Pope Francis. Recognizing that there is a “global epidemic of fundamentalism both religious and political,” he examines fundamentalism across the world and throughout history, paying particular attention to the rise of fundamentalism in the United States (what he dubs “Trumpism”), Islamic terrorism, the reforms of Pope Benedict, and even “siloism” in health care that creates fragmentation and competition. (28). He views fundamentalism as something all “individuals, cultures, and religions have a capacity for,” and that it is a “form of organized and institutional or civic religious anger in reaction to secularization, political changes and globalization; it often intimidates or coerces people to achieve its ends,” (28). He describes a typical fundamentalist leader as someone who “is a populist, homophobic, charismatic, authoritarian man who likes to bully,” (15). The book is very topical given the current fundamentalist movements across the globe that appear to be breaking out in an “epidemic.”


What is perhaps most useful in the book is in understanding how “we” (each and every one of us) can so easily turn to this ideology as a way of simplifying the world and resorting to black and white categories based on separation of the larger whole into smaller sub-parts. While it is useful to understand “others” fundamentalism as a response to cultural trauma and disorientation, it is more important to seek out our own fundamentalism. The sense of us vs. them paves the way for subtle discrimination all the way to self-righteous violence and genocide. Viewing fundamentalism as a reaction to cultural trauma and cultural disorientation, Arbuckle sees fundamentalists as “boundary setters” who oppose “openness and choice,” (9). He also describes suppression of dissent, even of moderate opposing views (such as we see with the stereotypical demonization of the media by fundamentalists). Arbuckle sees a spectrum of violence that can begin with a manipulation of facts on one end and physical violence against people at the other end. He describes the common fundamentalist tendency toward paranoia (which a psychological perspective understands as a projection of fantasies about one’s own unconscious on to another group).


In response to cultural trauma, Gerald Arbuckle describes four different possible reactions or solutions (75).


    

  • escape into an unreal golden age or utopian past
    • 

  • chronic paralysis
    • 

  • seeking to refound or reform the culture in light of changing circumstances
    • 

  • fundamentalist movements
    • 



We see all four of these responses “at home and abroad.” Many in the United States feel paralyzed, many escape into glorifying the past, but the fundamentalist movements are the most dangerous and are the primary focus of the book. Arbuckle does describe an alternative to fundamentalism: refounding narratives are positive solutions to cultural trauma that draw on the founding beliefs of a culture while adapting those beliefs to changing times.


Refounding is a process of storytelling whereby imaginative leaders are able to inspire people collaboratively to rearticulate the founding mythology of an institution and apply it to contemporary needs through creative dialogue with the world. The purpose of refounding narratives is to find a positive way out of trauma by allowing people to reenter the sacred time of their founding with imaginative leaders who are able to rearticulate the founding mythology in narratives adapted to the changing world. (93).


By mythology, Arbuckle does not mean something that is false, but rather a story that makes emotional sense of the past. The difference between a refounding narrative and a fundamentalist solution to cultural trauma is that the fundamentalist response is “closed to dialogue and…dissent” (94). The fundamentalist response is strident, closed, rigid, and aggressive, whereas a refounding narrative is creative, collaborative, open, and ultimately regenerative. There is a great deal of similarity in Arbuckle’s description of refounding narratives and the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell described, in which an individual and culture separates from traditions that are no longer adaptive, transforms into a new identity (by getting in touch with the “sacred time”), and then returns back to society, bringing personal and cultural transformation. Whereas a refounding narrative creates new meaning and new modes of being while incorporating the essence of the past, fundamentalist reactions are based on “ideological necrophilia,” the “blind fixation on dead ideas,” so that there is nothing new, only an aggressive attempt to recreate a past that may or may not have even existed in reality (78).


Gerald Arbuckle describes, in his last chapter, a number of antidotes or responses to fundamentalism, what he calls pastoral responses. A few of these follow.


    

  • We are all in danger of becoming fundamentalists.
    • 

  • Have a sense of humor. As Arbuckle amusingly points out “there is not much fun in fundamentalism” (155)
    • 

  • We need to be aware of the dynamics of prejudice and discrimination.
    • 

  • Receive without prejudice migrants and parishoners from cultures different from our own as Christ would wish.
    • 

  • Be alert: Ideology is a prejudice that is integral to all fundamentalist movements.
    • 

  • Cultivate the art of dialogue, which is the antidote to fundamentalism.
    • 

  • Remember, violence in all its forms, for example terrorism and bullying, is contrary to the Gospel.
    • 



Arbuckle Head Shot


Gerald Arbuckle provides a much-needed discussion of the cultural and religious roots of fundamentalism (both our own and other’s) as a response to cultural trauma and disorientation. He calls for us to be open and inclusive and to engage in refounding narrative of continually returning to the “sacred time” of the mythological roots of our cultures and histories and be continually adapting these to the present moment. Particularly for Americans it is of utmost importance to be aware of fundamentalist movements within the United States that can foster violence against ourselves as well as others. If fundamentalism functions through this separation of groups into self/other, then perhaps the antidote is to see us as all connected and all related, that, after all, is one of the founding narratives of this country of immigrants. We must use the same eyes to look at ourselves as we use to look at fundamentalism abroad. As Pope Francis encourages us, we should strive to be builders of bridges, not walls.


 


“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel” (Pope Francis, in Arbuckle, xi).


 


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
A Review of Patient-Centered Medicine: A Human Experience


				

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A Review of Patient-Centered Medicine: A Human Experience


By David H. Rosen and Uyen Bao Hoang


Book Cover


This is a new and updated edition of Medicine as a Human Experience originally published in 1984 by David H. Rosen and David E. Reiser with two guest chapters by George L. Engel (one of the founders of the biopsychosocial model still taught in medical schools). As a disclosure, one of the current authors, Uyen, is a friend of mine whom I know through living and working in New Zealand.


This new edition features a foreword by Andrew Weil, MD, who puts the book in context within the current frameworks of the biopsychosocialspiritual model of medicine and integrative medicine. Dr. Weil writes that not only does Patient-Centered Medicine “define the role of health professionals in the new model of medicine that is coming into being, it gives a great deal of practical advice about the attitudes and skills they should develop to care best for patients” (ix).  The current edition includes Norman Cousins’ (author of Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart) original foreword entitled “Physician as Humanist,” which invokes the framework of humanism as a partner or counter-balance to the technological and interventionist aspects of medicine. Cousins stresses the interconnectedness of science and humanism, ending with the statement, “I pray that, even as you attach the highest value to your science, you will never forget that it works best when it serves your humanity” (xvii).


The book next includes a prologue, written by Dr. Uyen B. Hoang. Uyen tells of her own path as a healer, as a Vietnamese-born American, training in medicine, going through burnout in the contemporary practice of psychiatry in the United States, and then moving to New Zealand to practice, “in search of something greater, on a quest for expansion and truth” (xxv). With honesty and integrity, Uyen brings her own personal experiences of medical practice to the book which bridges the thirty-some years since the book was first written. Dr. Rosen also shares personal elements of his own work and journey to humanize the more theoretical aspects of the text.


The text elaborates the four essential principles of medicine as a human experience: acceptance, empathy, conceptualization, and competence, stating that these are required to prepare physicians to be “compassionate champions for health” (4). The grounding of the book is in the frameworks of humanism and the psychotherapeutic understanding of human relationships. George Engel’s two chapters give us the opportunity to read, in his own words, the ideas of the founder of the biopsychosocial model. Throughout the book, Drs. Rosen and Hoang focus on the idea that there is no separation between the humanistic and scientific approaches. Rather than a duality between the art and science of medicine, they offer the perspective that the therapeutic relationship is rooted in the human science of presence and connected observation.


What could be improved in this book for the next edition? I think the authors do a good job of retaining the focus of the original and updating it to the present times. I think a larger discussion of what is now called the biopsychosocialspiritual model that Dr. Weil mentions in his foreword could be helpful. Another area to consider is the work on compassion-based practices as an antidote to burnout. These elements are present in the book, but could be further developed. That said, this book easily joins the work of other healers such as Robin Youngson, Tony Fernando, Allan D. Peterkin, Andrew Weil, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, and the late Lee Lipsenthal who have been engaged in what I call the compassion revolution in medicine.


Patient-Centered Medicine: A Human Experience gives the reader a great overview of biopsychosocial, humanist and psychotherapeutic perspectives of human interconnection and inter-relatedness. It combines the enthusiasm of the younger psychiatrist with the wisdom of the older psychiatrist in order to guide students, doctors, nurses, and clinicians through training and into practice. Patient-Centered Medicine is also a source of renewal for practicing doctors and clinicians, reminding us all why we went into medicine and health care in the first place.  Drs. Rosen and Hoang close with the following sentences: “We must encourage introspection, healthy relationships, play, openness, and joyous, creative expression. We must spawn a generation of doctors who are not afraid to love” (142).


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David H. Rosen and Uyen Bao Hoang


 


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
Re-humanizing Medicine Review


				

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AMWA logo


The American Medical Writers Association has published a review of Re-humanizing Medicine: A Holistic Framework for Transforming Your Self, Your Practice, and the Culture of Medicine.


Front Cover


You can find the full review at this link. Below are some excerpts from the review written by Debamita Chatterjee.


“Re-humanizing Medicine by David R. Kopacz is an incisive reflection on the existing medical practices of an increasingly corporatized world. At the same time, it seeks to teach the medical and health care community how to correct that dehumanized outlook by being more compassionate and holistic.”


“Considering the absurdly frenetic pace of modern medical practice, this book does an excellent job of nourishing the soul of practicing physicians first, thereby helping them to regain their humanity. This, in turn, may translate into a more humanized treatment of patients and, ultimately, establish a pathway to a whole new paradigm of medical practice.”


“This book helps us to understand, appreciate, and correct the wrongs of modern-day medicine by inspiring us to be more connected—to be more human.”


 


Reviewer: Debamita Chatterjee


Debamita is a graduate of the University of Rochester in biomedical sciences. She has written for the University of Rochester Medical Center and journals including eLife and The Scientist.

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
Spirituality Today Book of the Month: Walking the Medicine Wheel


				

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spirituality-today


Spirituality Today has selected our book, Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD, as Book of the Month!


Spirituality Today is based in the UK and focuses on “Challenging Paradigms and Expanding Consciousness.”


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You can read the full review of the book at this link.


Excerpts from the Spirituality Today review.


In Walking the Medicine Wheel its authors offer an approach to repairing the shattered psyches of PTSD suffers through a number of different healing modalities. These are essentially anchored within and around the mandala of the Medicine Wheel of Native American Tradition – a map through which initiates can more closely understand and appreciate mankind’s relationship with those natural forces that permeate through the world of spirit and the psyche of man.


This framework is remarkably similar to many Western psycho-spiritual constructs and has a particular resonance with ideas expressed by Carl Jung in his philosophy of personal individuation. Here the concepts of the Four Directions within Native philosophy and the Four Functions in Jungian analysis merge and complement each other.


…within the pages of this book such sufferers may well discover a vitally important lifeline…the ideas presented here should demonstrate to everyone that opportunities for personal growth can emerge even from the darkest recesses of the sort of fractured mindset that trauma creates.


This book has been beautifully produced and has a real quality feel to it. The inclusion of the remarkable visionary artwork of Native American Joseph Rael has resulted in a publication that carries with it an energy that stimulates the soul of its reader along the way.


…a publication with a warm heart – one that beats loud and clear from within its pages and which I feel reaches out to those suffering in pain and torment as a result of the nightmares derived from their military service.


In short, Walking the Medicine Wheel is a remarkable and highly impressive collaboration between two insightful, spiritual-warriors ― two hardened veterans of front-line psycho-spiritual conflicts whose combined approach to the challenge of trauma has created a deeply moving and very humbling publication indeed.


Thanks Spirituality Today for the review!


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Link to our videos on Walking the Medicine Website.


 

			

	
	



				
					


	

		
		
Review of Marsha Snyder’s Positive Health: Flourishing Lives, Well-Being in Doctors


				

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Positive Health


I first met Marsha Snyder, MD, MAPP, an American psychiatrist, at the Health of Health Professionals conference in Auckland, New Zealand, 2011. I have sat in on her presentations over the past three offerings of the Australasian Doctors’ Health Conference/Health of Health Professionals conference. Marsha sums up her years of work and personal experience in this book, Positive Health: Flourishing Lives, Well-Being in Doctors, published 2014 – the same year as my book, Re-humanizing Medicine. Marsha’s book adds to what I have been calling the counter-curriculum of self-care and compassion revolution in health care.


Snyder


Marsha describes a curriculum that builds on positive psychology, which she studied under Dr. Martin Seligman for her Master’s degree at University of Pennsylvania. She creates an expansive curriculum of positive health and builds upon evidence-based principles of resilience and positive psychology to transform “physician ill-being” into well-being and flourishing.


Marsha describes five themes for her book:


 

1) The “cause of ill-being in medical students extends beyond the students, into issues with faculty and administration.” 


2) Many “physicians who are troubled or burned out relate some of their difficulties to ethical issues in the system.”


3) There is a need for “understanding, defining, and teaching of resilience skills to physicians.”


4) The “creation of well-being in doctors and the rest of society by incorporating the science of positive health.” 


5) Medical “training and practice must move out from an outdated pathology-based model to a health-based/prevention-based model,” (page 2). 


Marsha adds in various exercises, including mindfulness, and discussion questions to the curriculum and stresses the need for “spirited multi-disciplinary teams.” She includes a chapter on “Spirituality and Well-Being,” defining spirituality as “a search for the sacred,” (240) and she reviews the links between spirituality and health. I particularly like the chapter, “Posttraumatic and Post-Ecstatic Growth in Medicine.” I was familiar with posttraumatic growth which describes the potentially transformative response to trauma, but I had not heard of “post-ecstatic growth,” which describes how highly positive experiences can also lead to transformative growth of “different areas of the self, including meaning in life, self-esteem, or social bonds,” (233).


Positive Health: Flourishing Lives, Well-Being in Doctors is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the need for self-care and personal growth in doctors and health care workers. Marsha’s focus goes way beyond limiting the negative to expanding joy and flourishing in the lives of those working in health care.