ATMAN

I just finished reading Hermann Hesse's 1922 classic novel Siddhartha, about a man in India 2500 years ago searching for meaning, talking with the Buddha, but, instead of donning a golden robe and becoming a Buddhist, continued on searching for his own personal enlightenment. The book reminded me how similar my own beliefs have become to a core belief of Hinduism.

Years ago in India I saw that over the centuries Hinduism has strayed from its earliest pure teachings even more than have Christianity and Islam. Though I went there thinking I might find spiritual guidance, the boisterously kaleidoscopic, bizarre-to-me world of cults and philosophical schools encountered were no more engaging than what I'd seen in other cultures. Religions are like Christmas trees: People kill the tree, set it up and ornament it in eye-dazzling ways that send opposite messages to what the living tree had taught.

And yet, from books I'd learned that at the heart of Hinduism lies the concept of Atman. The New Oxford American Dictionary installed on my Kindle defines Atman as "The spiritual life principle of the universe, esp. when regarded as inherent in the real self of the individual." The word is derived from the Sanskrit Ātman, which literally means "essence" or "breath."

When I sit at the hut's door looking into the woods thinking thoughts often expressed here, I see it all as "spirit-turned-into-forest-and-old-man," something outrageously beautiful and mysterious, spontaneously gushing from "the spiritual life principle of the Universe," or Atman.

This concept keeps me from becoming too cynical about life when I reflect, for example, that our human thoughts and feelings are inventions of our bicameral brain-computers, in which one side of the brain registers a jumbled harvest of sensory stimuli, while the other side invents or borrows stories and explanations to "make sense" of what's being perceived. Moreover, our brains are predisposed to interpret our perceptions one way or another, depending on our genetic programming. It's all mechanistic, and somehow depressing, even devastating, if the thinking stops there.

But, at the hut, I don't stop there. I keep in mind that the genius of equipping humans with bicameral brains, and having the brain's predispositions programmed in our genes, are circumstances gushing from "the spiritual life principle of the Universe," from Atman. I don't despise Bach's fugues because they're played on mechanical pianos or electronic synthesizers. It's "the spiritual life principle of the Universe" expressed in those fugues that's important to me, that gives them and me meaning and beauty. What's around me right now, and I myself, are piano-like gushings out of Atman, and we all make a fugue. The neat thing about being a thinking, feeling human on Earth is that we can be both part of the fugue, and listen to, too.

I suspect that it's not incidental that the Atman concept arose in India, with her Himalayas and hard-to-reach foothills. In isolation at high altitudes where daily life distills into dazzling sunlight, crystalline fresh air, broken jagged peaks, and all-expressive clouds above, below and around, thoughts soar, thoughts refine, and one doesn't care what those in the dozing, simmering lowlands do and think, and so eventually one begins to know Atman. At least, that's how I figure it.

Here at the hut I lack high physical elevation vividness, but at age 70 I'm approaching a decent metaphorical altitude, plus I do have a good view of the sky out over the Papaya plantation below the slope, and right beneath the porch there's a deep pit at the bottom of which lies a confusion of meaningless shattered rocks, and all around, all through the year there are plants and animals as expressive as any passing cloud, if you really pay attention.