Post #124: A Cat Not a Tiger (Aporia in London)

28 July 2024 (at the Bar Italia in Soho, Sunday morning, 7 a.m.)

     In his iconic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki recalls that his teacher, once a particularly stubborn young fellow (and a relative late-comer to Zen), liked to declare, in his seventies, that while before he had been like a tiger, now he had become like a cat. According to Suzuki, he was very pleased whenever he said it…

     Zen is generally a bridge too far for me, but it’s a lovely anecdote of which I was reminded last night, on a Saturday evening in London, when I was getting rather overwhelmed by the crowds and the immense weekend hoopla around Soho at vacation time. Love it or leave it, the elegance and magnificent excesses of London along all kinds of interesting parameters (not all pretty) is still an unmatched setting for making a man feel small.

     Suzuki’s teacher was delighted to be a cat, and a tiger no more: his humility was evidently not of the disenchanted or embarrassed kind. To insist on being no more than a domestic feline takes on a more benign coloring, for a Zen master not an ordinary disappointed human being, when it leaves the creature in question feeling comfortable in its skin, not uncovered and exposed like a Sphinx cat—and also when the affirmation of humility is only a moment or two away from the next lion’s roar (an image much favored in Theravada circles).

     So let me be clear that when I declare myself a mere cat, I am not taking a step back so that I might then leap all the further and higher. For me the matter appears in a more sobering light, tinged and fringed with touches of melancholy. Furless cats look pitiable to me, not majestic, and while I love the dears for their meows and purring (not so much their teeth and claws), they do cut meager figures beside the burning eyes and fearsome symmetry of the tiger, say, or the rippling muscles of the jaguar and leopard, or the great mane of the blond prowling kings of the savannah…

     (Yes, yes, I am aware that the impressively striped predator is supposed to be fearful, if you follow the original literally; but to put it thus would invite misunderstanding, when in this case the fearfulness is meant to be all on one side—mine, not the beast’s. I don’t write tyger either, for all my readiness to bow before William Blake. Very interesting depiction at the National Portrait Gallery, by the way, as I discovered last night. Speaking of which: national museums are free here, a late heritage of the Blair years. Hotel rooms, on the other hand, can easily set you back $300 a night even when they are so tight that your bed is immediately enclosed, like mine, by walls on three and a half sides, leaving no room for a suitcase even. As I said, not all of London’s excesses are endearing.)

     Yet a cat is still a redoubtable creature beside a mouse, you might say. Very well, so it is, and I am not about to disavow any and all personal distinctions in a counter-conceit of perfect humility. I would not claim to be altogether a nobody, except perhaps in an ultimate sense, applicable to us all, that is not primarily at issue here. What I mean to say is only that I seem, to myself, a figure of decidedly diminutive stature besides what I might wish to be, and that there is perhaps no better place than London for reminding me of the fact, or rather the feeling.

     Unlike the aforementioned Zen master (a being far above and beyond the ken of my comprehension, let alone my judgment) I do not wish to pronounce on whether it is a good thing to be a cat or not. I am merely admitting something to myself as much as to anyone, with a sigh and a feeble shrug, as it were, not a cheer or the sound of one hand clapping.

     Most of the time, when we fail to attain something, we immediately downplay our loss and convert into sour grapes what before beckoned so sweetly and irresistibly. We discover previously unexpected reasons why the sought-after prize is not worth having after all, at least not at the price at which it is on offer, and why one is better off (or just better) as one is, without the possession. Let me stress this even at the risk of sounding tedious: I mean to do nothing of the sort. I remain a worldling through and through, who would gladly be more formidable. Alas, if it is beyond my reach, however desirable I may find it, what good can come from lying about it, either to myself or to others, or from pretending that I don’t care when I do? Such untruthfulness just isn’t a good idea, it seems to me.

     I would rather not mortify and denude myself further by cataloguing in specific detail the parameters along which I find myself falling short, or worse. There is no need to give the matter too dark a coloring here; it is enough to say that my limitations look very real to me, that I am not pleased, and that I would rather not dissemble my displeasure, or anything else. The idea that such shortcomings are mere acts of optional self-sabotage, as American can-doers like to profess before others, sounds absurd to me. (Who knows whether they really believe it in the depths of their hearts.)

     At the same time, while no stranger to such discontents myself, I am troubled by the ever less forgiving hyper-competitiveness that has been tightening its noose around ambitious necks so unrelentingly these past fifty years—and no end in sight. It strikes me as an insane way to live, always looking anxiously over one’s shoulders, and with good reason to do so. (“Success is as dangerous as failure,” warns chapter 13 of the Tao Te Ching in Stephen Mitchell’s version: “Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky.” Indeed, indeed.)

     Meanwhile I also agree with Hobbes that the ubiquitous struggle for recognition, honors, and distinguishing prizes is rooted in the human condition—or rather, in the evolution of sentient life itself. Even if we manage to rule certain especially unwanted forms of competition reliably out of bounds, which is difficult enough, others will soon spring up in their place. I am not sure that much can be done about it, except to recognize the problem and temper it where we can, not least by holding to the refrain, tired as it may sound, that outward success (or the appearance thereof) is not, and can never be, everything in life. I would also add that the “safe spaces” we need most urgently are not the familiar ones that privilege some opinions over others and suppress others, while also establishing de facto favored groups, but rather spaces that allow for more fearless experimentation, error, and failure that is survivable, not just physically but also socially and emotionally.

     To resume where I left off a minute ago, I leave to others the belief (or the dream) that everything is possible for them, that all their wrinkles can be ironed out and all their weaknesses overcome by an unrelenting effort of the undaunted will and an unconquerably positive attitude. I bow before their power to bend the world to their specifications, if they can put it in evidence. For my part, I have striven and struggled with my imperfections long and hard enough to know that they are no mere phantoms of the imagination, and probably here to stay. (I hedge a little only because I would not presume to commandeer the future according to my paltry present views. I know little enough of what is, or what was; what business have I with predicting, or rather guessing at, what will be?)

     The more important (and perhaps psychologically telling) thing is that I have no love for these many frailties and follies of mine; they are simply staring me in the face at the moment—at a cat’s eye-level, so to speak—thus a little low for comfort, though not on the very pavement either. Perhaps I am simply getting too old to wish these unwelcome truths away, or to go on making my life an unmitigated struggle against them.

     There are many things that I dare not do anymore, not so much because I absolutely could not raise the courage, but because I do not think it would go well with me if I did. The very idea of invincibility has never seemed even remotely plausible to me, at any point in my life; by now it looks so preposterous that it is only good for black humor, if that.

     Mind you, I do not speak for the Marines, the Rangers, or the Navy Seals of the world, or any number of other heroic can-do types whose example I take, in some cases at least, very seriously indeed. I only speak of what I cannot do, not of what depths of inner resources others might discover within themselves. Whatever may be true of them, my mind does not and will not triumph over matter, or over itself, except perhaps very occasionally and exceptionally. Whoever can move mountains with his faith, his stamina and strength, or his sheer perseverance, can rest assured of my respect. On my end, I can perhaps move a molehill on a good day; on a bad one, a mere survey of the fields before me is enough to stop me in my tracks.

     Endeavor, enterprise, and aspiration—I am not claiming to have become deaf to their call or oblivious to their charm. I hear the message, as Faust proclaims upon hearing the Easter bells ring, but the flesh is frail and feeble, and the spirit not always more dependable these days. My ambitions have not passed away, but they have become a lot more limited, and a little more humble. Get me through the day; keep me sane; let me preserve some semblance of good cheer, or hearty resignation at least; that is already a lot. Yes, I would still prefer more, now as before; but no, I do not any longer expect the day, or the year, to hold any great glories in store. Perhaps that is a little melancholy; it can look that way to me too, but certainly not as crushing as it would once have been. I just understand in how many respects I cannot, that’s all. I wouldn’t call that defeatism; I would call it life. So it goes.

     Let others win what glory they can, and let them enjoy their boons while they are able. I do still envy them a little—wouldn’t it be nice?—but I don’t begrudge them their blessings. Et in Arcadia ego: I hoped for no less than they, once upon a time; but I do so no more. What use such great expectations? Is it tragic to say so, let alone intolerable? I wouldn’t think so; not any more. Why let the aspiring mode, which must run on the hunger of dissatisfaction, spoil any longer the consolations of being a mere cat? A meow or a purr may not be very much, I grant; certainly not something that echoes in the world the way a genuine lion’s roar does. But it can still be precious in its own small way. So let us be happy with what we’ve got, big or small; it is not to be taken for granted and might be the next thing to go.

P.S. (27 Aug. 2024, back in Bangkok): As a friend pointed out to me when I showed him this text, expressing some misgivings about it myself, there is something missing—namely any clear sense of what the trouble really is. The author (I hesitate to equate him with the one writing now, since I really have come to believe that the past is a mere record, the future a fiction) shows a little leg, as my friend put it, and teases the reader with some vague hints, but in the end he reveals very little. And that is a very valid criticism.

     At the time, the author was facing a severe crisis of confidence, compounded by the prospect of an Ancient Greek course about which he had every reason to be apprehensive (see #126), even if it was also something he had been wanting to do for many years. The way things unfolded, starting the next day, justified both his unease and his determination to get it done while there was still time and energy enough, if only barely.

     It seems to me that the author’s ambivalence about whether, or rather how much, he should bare himself in public is no secret, either in this text or in the others. He does not wish to put up a mere façade, to pretend or posture before others, but to give an honest account of the various states of mind he is finding himself in, much as his model Montaigne did in his essays. Never does he claim to be expressing more than the truth of the moment, nor intimate that he is baring all. What tender spots he can bring himself to share, he will show, but there are definite limits to what he can bear to expose, since he is in many ways, and never more than at the moment, a coy fellow and easily embarrassed.

     I am with Freud, in this as in much else, when he writes, with an audible sigh, about the rife mortifications involved in baring one’s soul, or any part of it, before the public, even if it may not look like much to others:* “It was inevitable that I would have to reveal more of the intimacies of my mental life than I could be comfortable with before strangers. This was embarrassing but inevitable, so I resigned myself to it. At the same time, I could not, naturally, resist the temptation of taking the edge off many an indiscretion by leaving things out or making substitutions. I can only express the hope that readers of my work will be able to put themselves in my uncomfortable shoes, and that they will be lenient with me.”

     All that said, there is an added twist to the difficulties that the author hints at in this piece without identifying them very clearly. This not so much because he wishes to shield anything from view, but because he is struggling himself with putting a finger on what exactly is bothering him. There are states of perplexity in life, often quite terrible, where one faces challenges that may be easy to name and describe, but fiendishly difficult to address, let alone resolve. But there is an even deeper—though not therefore equally miserable—state of confusion in which the problem itself loses its contours and becomes diffuse. In this condition, the quest is not so much for a solution as for a clearer sense of what is even wrong. The mood is evident enough, but serves only as a vague signal of something off kilter, with no clear indication of what that something truly comes to. Explanatory connections can be made in sundry directions, as the reader will easily discover for himself, and crude labels might be slapped on various familiar symptoms, but the essence remains elusive.

     It is a deeply unsatisfactory state, though perhaps not as miserable as the aggravated frustration of finding oneself enmeshed in more demonstrable but intractable difficulties. According to the Buddhists, some such sense of dissatisfaction—sometimes more open and clearly seen, sometimes more vague or subtle—is endemic to our unenlightened human condition, curable only by a drastic reorientation of self-no-self towards the world. In this text, and others like it, the chronic unsatisfactoriness of life (Dukkha) has as it were become acute, not in the form of unbearable misery, but in a lingering discontent with an entire constellation and angle on the world. Yes, age enters into the picture, no doubt, and one could slap a simplifying label on the resulting malaise, such as it is (an angle I shall return to in a future post that still awaits proofreading, #131); but it’s not just a question of years, or life-situation, but of uncertainty.

     When he was writing in London, the author found himself in an acute state of aporia, one might say, the echoes of which are still ringing in his ears today. In Greek philosophy (Plato’s Socrates and Pyrrho come to mind especially), ἀπορία was often taken as a precursor to wisdom—the unsettling state wherein false certainties are plowed under to make room for the seeds of more genuine insight. Again, the parallels are noteworthy with the Buddhists, for whom the upheavals of Dukkha, sometimes milder, sometimes more violent, amount likewise to the first noble truth in their teaching, which stands at the gateway to eventual enlightenment (recall #10, #14, #32, #45, #63). What the Greek captures very nicely, however, is the sheer unpleasantness of the condition, for it is closely connected, in its etymology, to difficulties in making a passage or finding one’s way—rough waters in life, one might say, or threatening straights. Aporia in that sense is more than perplexity in an abstract intellectual sense; it involves one’s entire being in straightened circumstances, in being at a loss, embarrassed, perhaps even mortified or distressed. Those in dire want or need, the indigent or destitute, are also said to be ἄπορος.

     The author was not sure, when he was contemplating his own intense reactions to the contemporary European scene, including London (with obvious qualifications), what exactly was ailing him, or what he could, or should, do about his predicament. He was not suffering from the more clinical kind of anxiety, but from a cousin, less immediately debilitating, but existentially troubling nonetheless. He spent the summer looking for answers and remedies, grasping at plenty of straws, with varying success. There is no reason why the texts that emerged as the record of his doings over four complicated weeks should be particularly satisfying or tidy, when the experiences themselves were not. How useful such reflections are to others remains an open question that the author cannot answer; let the diner not the cook determine the merit of the meal. And if it should not be to his taste, let the critic be reminded that he is always free to stop eating and take solace in the fact that it is the author who is stuck with himself, not the reader.

*In my own translation, fairly free and condensed slightly, from the end of the preface to The Interpretation of Dreams, p. 10 in the Fischer Taschenbuch edition, 2009.