Post #128: Homage to the Hotel Orient

15 Aug. 2024 (Vienna)

   No, I am not about to riff on the Hotel California theme, or embark on a discussion of why Orient should be as acceptable a word as East, because it means exactly that, in distinction to the Occident, or West.

   What I am interested in is the venerable Viennese institution by that name, said to be the last old hotel that still rents by the hour (or rather, in blocks of three hours). The kinds of business it has attracted in its long and storied history is not hard to guess at, and I will leave that aspect of things to the reader’s imagination.

   What I wish to ponder is something else, namely what I was up to there this afternoon: nothing very raunchy, but only resting, and doing my daily hour of meditation in a setting that may never have been put to that use before, I imagine. Purists may protest that such atmospherically sullied environments (or so they might say) are not appropriate for one’s spiritual exercises—but I beg to differ. Not only is there a tradition according to which one’s contribution of a different kind of vibration might enrich the place (Vipassana voodoo, the sceptic might sneer), but I also believe that we would all do well to bring a little more meditation to our physical doings, and perhaps a little more earthy physicality to our spiritual activities as well (as Hume recommended to the overly airy and speculative philosophers of his day in the dramatic conclusion to book I of this Treatise of Human Nature).

   The relation between the two domains is complex, but has all too often been reduced to a choice between one or the other, understanding the two as inherent rivals—one worthy and fine, the other ignoble but, bane of our condition, rather too pleasurable and exciting for our own good. Here I cannot help wondering, not for the first time (see especially #80), whether much is really gained, or not rather much lost, when we think of the matter along such rigid lines of either-or (see also #14 on Kierkegaard). I understand the pedagogical intent, especially when addressing young monks who are bound to struggle with the demands of a monastic life (#31 and #55). But there is something artificial about it too, in a world in which celibacy, even if it were considered a high spiritual gift, is not likely to be suitable for many, and possibly quite harmful, or even dangerous, when it is not freely willed but imposed on a recalcitrant disposition or constitution by force or harsh discipline. Nor has it ever been very plausible, as Nietzsche rightly pointed out, to single out the one human activity that by its very nature aims at shared pleasure and arraign it alongside the very real and great crimes that human beings have at all times been guilty of towards each other.

   Even if I were to credit fully the idea that places acquire their own “vibrations” according to the activities habitually engaged in there—rather than powerful mental associations in the minds of those who frequent them, which seems more plausible to me—I would insist that such pollutions, if that is what they are, should be amenable to improvement by contrary intentions, the stuff that all karmic trails and tracks through life are supposed to be made of ultimately. If it is worth honing one’s mindfulness, should it not be applied to our most sensual deeds as well as any other, and should we not, rather than shunning these forms of adult play or trying to banish them, seek to improve the spirit in which, and also the skill with which, they are undertaken, as against treating them as if they somehow stood outside the purposes of life? For in this case, such an adverse judgement would be patently unjust: not only do our mating behaviors have their natural place, they could hardly be more essential to the future of the species, as Schopenhauer insisted so rightly against the customary disdain and neglect of the philosophers (#55).

     The questions raised by commercial sex are not ones that I am comfortable discussing here, especially given the current climate of opinion around the issue, which seems to me very ill-suited to a sensible and sober-minded treatment. At any rate, what I mean to say here is not dependent on taking one or the other position, however well one may know where one stands. The decisive issue, for me, is the question whether the Dhamma on the one hand, and life as human beings actually live it on the other, should be considered at odds, or whether Terence got it right in his famous lines, echoed by Thomas Hobbes, and we, being human, should consider nothing that is human alien to ourselves (Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto). Whether I would have frequented the fine Hotel Orient at a time when its purposes where still unambiguous, on what terms and for what reasons, is not for this text and perhaps not for this blog; what I wish to put on record here is only that it turned out a most memorable place to do my meditation, and one that considerably enriched my short visit to one of my favorite cities in the world.