RUSSEL AND THREE IDLE MEN

They retreated to serenity

I enjoy laziness.Hence I left my job when I crossed the age,40.Of course,I had read the wonderful essay,In Praise of Idleness(1932) by Bertrand Russel.But I don't hold him responsible for my quitting the job.

When I called it a day,I didn't know much about Matthieu Ricard,Richard Cohen or Pico Iyer.All of them had retreated much earlier.

Russel

 One thing that I remember about Russel is that when he was having sex with a girl,her sister was the watch woman outside the door-I don't remember where I read it;it has to be in his autobiography.I have also read a book by his daughter.So,it seems Russel was not that much lazy!
When Pablo Neruda was having sex with a poetess,Spanish play wright Federico Garcia Lorca was the watchman below the tower:it is there in Neruda's autobiography.Neruda used to collect autographed panties from his women as keepsake.He won the Nobel prize because he was not lazy.
Russel quotes the famous story of the traveler in Naples. The traveler saw twelve beggars lying in the sun(it was before the days of Mussolini) and offered a Lira to the laziest of them.Eleven of them jumped up to claim it,so he gave it to the twelfth.
Russel doesn't subscribe to the conservative view which says "Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do".What a man earns,he usually spends,and in spending he gives employment.As long as a man spends his income,he puts just as much bread into people's mouths in earning.The real villain is the man who saves.The expenditure of most civilized nations consists in payment for past wars or preparations for future wars.
Work,Russel observes,is of two kinds.One:altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter.Two:telling other people to do so.The first is unpleasant and ill paid.The second is pleasant and highly paid.
My job was of the second kind.But I found it monotonous.So  retreated.In retreat there is silence and silence is the highest form of monotony.Or rather,sublimated monotony.A ragamalika!

Ricard

Matthieu Ricard decided to retreat when he completed his doctoral thesis in Molecular Genetics at the Pasteur Institute in Paris,under Nobel laureate Francois Jacob.So,when he got his PhD in 1972,he decided to forsake scientific career and to practice Tibetan Buddhism.He is now in the She Chen Tennyi Dar Gyeling Monastery in Kathmandu ,Nepal.
Matthieu Ricard was born in 1946 as Jean-Francois Ricard  in Aix-les-Bains,France,to renowned philosopher,Francois Revel.His mother was the lyrical abstract painter Yahne Le Toumelin.Ricard grew up among the French intellectuals.
Leaving France,he studied with Kanguur Rinpoche in the Himalayas.He was a close student of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche until Rinpoche's death in 1991.Ricard is a wonderful photographer of the Himalayas.Henri Cartier-Bresson said:"Matthieu's spiritual life and his camera are one."
His dialogues with his philosopher father,The Monk and the Philosopher and the book,The Quantum and the Lotus he co authored  with Trinh Xuan Thnan are best sellers.He is also the author of Tibet,an Inner Journey,Monk Dancers of Tibet,Himalayas:Journey to Enlightenment and Motionless Journey:From a Hermitage in the Himalayas.He has translated several Buddhist books including,The Life of Shabkar.
The researchers in the University of Wisconcin have found him the happiest man in the world.Neuro Scientist at Wisconcin,Richard Davidson wired up Ricard's skull with 256 sensors and the scan showed that while meditating on compassion,Ricard's brain produces a level of Gamma rays -those linked to consciousness,attention,learning and memory,never reported before in neuro science literature.This phenomenon is called neuroplasticity.The scan also revealed excessive activity in his left prefrontal cortex of brain compared to right,giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness.Ricard has studied the brains of meditators,including himself, who have undergone a minimum retreat of three years.Since 1989,he is the French interpretor of Dalai Lama.

Cohen

Leonard Cohen(born 1934) after making his mark as a musician,poet and novelist,retreated to the Mount Baldy Zen Center near Los Angeles.Five years of seclusion followed;in 1996 he was ordained as a Rinzai Zen Buddhist monk and he took the name,Jikan,meaning silence.He was personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi.Roshi appears in the documentary on Cohen's monastery years,Spring,1996.
Cohen,a Canadian Jew,second only to Bob Dylan,returned with the album,Ten New Songs in 2001. The album included the poem,The God abandons Antony by the Greek poet,Constantine Cavafy.I have seen a movie Cavafy (1996)based on the life of Cavafy by Greek director,Yivannis Smargdis.The film is dominated by silence.
I mentioned the Spanish play wright,Lorca in the beginning.Cohen named his daughter Lorca,in honor of the play wright.Lorca began to suspect his manager,Kelley Lynch in 2004.She shared it with Cohen and he found an unauthorized credit card transaction of $75000.Then he found that $ 5 million from his retirement/charity funds have gone and only $1,50,000 remained.Soon,his old business associates began to sue Cohen.In 2006,Cohen made his first public appearance in 13 years,with the Book of Longing.Cohen had suffered depression during much of his life.His early works included themes of depression,self-harm and suicide.Redemption became a theme in the post monastery years.
Pico Iyer (born in 1957)retreated to the cradle of Buddhism,Japan,in 1992.He lives in a village without cell phone,car,bike or television,with sporadic email access.He lives with his Japanese wife,Hiroko Takinuchi and two children from an earlier marriage.

Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer's writing goes back and forth between the monastery and the air port.He is the best travel writer in the world today.His articles have appeared seven times in the annual Best Spiritual Writing anthology.He has said about himself:"I am a multi national soul on a multi national globe on which more and more countries are polyglot and restless as airports.Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school.I fold up my self and carry it around as if it were an over night bag".Here,there is an inner search.Inevitable,because he is Sidharth Pico Raghavan Iyer.Sidharth in his name is Buddha and Pico is the Florentine neo-Platonist,Picodella Mirandola.His father Raghavan N Iyer and Mother Nandini Nanak Mehta had moved as academics from India to Oxford where Pico Iyer was born.Raghavan was Philosopher and political theorist.
The one favorite line of mine is from Milton's On His Blindness:They also serve who only stand and wait.
It is certain that one can have an alternate life.I am waiting for my Rinpoche.

see my post,RAIMON PANIKKAR HAD HIS ROOTS IN KERALA





 


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