“Once, while Mahatma Gandhi’s train was pulling slowly out of the station, a reporter ran up to him and asked for a message to take back to his people. Gandhi’s reply was a hurried line scrawled on a scrap of paper, ‘My life is my message.'” So writes Indian spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran (December 17, 1910 – October 26, 1999) in his book Your Life Is Your Message: Finding Harmony with Yourself, Others, and the Earth.

It’s Easwaran’s deepest belief that no matter what crises may threaten the world, we can live in harmony with our highest ideals — and help others do the same. To illustrate his point, he compares humans to elephants for both are keystone species.

Easwaran writes:

Conservation biologists call the elephant a “keystone” species. Just as an arch cannot stand without its keystone, many other species, and sometimes entire ecosystems, would be lost without the elephant. On the African savannah, the elephant’s foraging creates a mixture of woodlands and grasslands, making the savannah hospitable to many more creatures, from the zebra to the giraffe to the baboon. In drier climates, it provides water not only for itself but for all the other species by creating new water holes and even digging wells. Because of the elephant, a huge, hungry animal with gentle habits, the entire ecosystem flourishes.

I believe that we human beings are meant for no less a role. Today, because of our skills and technology, human society has assumed the position of keystone in the vast, delicately balanced arch of nature. Like the elephants in the forest, our lives affect all the other creatures, plants, and elements around us. They all depend upon us for support and protection.

However, currently our influence is far from benign. Rather than supporting the rest of life, the human beings seem to be at odds it with it. Scientists tell us how our activities are not only driving other species to extinction but are threatening the water, soil, and atmosphere on which our own lives depend. We seem to lack the genuine capacity to relate even to our fellow human beings. The alienation of city lives, the increase in poverty, and abuse of drugs suggest that we lack the wisdom to protect even ourselves, let alone the rest of nature. Yet, in another sense, there is still a great promise today. Easwaran writes:

Even in some of the countries most troubled by poverty or civil war or pollution — many thoughtful people are making a deep, concerted search for a way to live in harmony with each other and the earth. Their efforts, which rarely reach the headlines, are among the most important events occurring today. Sometimes these people call themselves peace workers, at other times environmentalists, but most of the time they work in humble anonymity. They are simply quiet people changing the world by changing themselves.

[…]

Through such unobtrusive, almost inaudible work, the changes we would like to see in the world around us can begin immediately in our own lives, making us more secure, more contented, and more effective. Each of us has the capacity to become a little keystone, a healing and protecting force in the family, with friends, at work, in the community, in the environment.

Such little changes may seem painfully small when compared to the kinds of crises we read about in the headlines but, Easwaran notes, “there is no instrument of change more powerful than a well lived life.” Taken together, our small daily efforts add up to a very powerful force that, in the years to come, can become a spiritual revolution, providing a firm foundation for the kind of political, economic, and ecological improvements we need to make. And it all begins with ourselves, Easwaran writes:

The only way to influence people for the better — your family, your friends, your club, your class, your clinic, your society, even your enemies — is through your personal example. Harmony with the environment — the alleviation of our environmental crisis — and harmony with others — the easing of our social, political, and economic difficulties — both begin with a third harmony: harmony with ourselves.

The rest of Your Life Is Your Message goes on to offer us a simple eight-point program of spiritual growth drawn from the major world religions designed to help us achieve tranquility and become more compassionate, loving, and confident people. The program is adapted to the demands of an active modern life and spread out across the three chapters of the book: 1) finding harmony with yourself; 2) finding harmony with others; 3) finding harmony with the earth. Complement with Aristotle and his teaching on happiness as a quality of a complete life.

Books being the original internet, I’ve followed an analog hyperlink from Ray Bradbury’s lovely Zen writing manifesto to discover another treasure trove of wisdom — Dorothea Brande‘s (1893–1948) altogether indispensable Becoming a Writer. And after ravenously devouring all of it, I want to share one delicious piece that seems to me of profound importance, for it not only applies to the art of writing but also to the art of living.

Noting that every piece of writing is an essay in persuasion, while we hold our readers’ attention, to see the world with our eyes, Dorothea Brande writes:

Here are a few questions for a self-examination which may suggest others to you. It is a by no means exhaustive questionnaire, but by following down the other inquiries which occur to you as you consider these, you can come by a very fair idea of your working philosophy:

Do you believe in a God? Under what aspect? (Hardy’s ‘President of the Immortals,’ Wells’ ’emerging God’?)
Do you believe in free will or are you a determinist? (Although an artist-determinist is such a walking paradox that imagination staggers at the notion.)
Do you like men? Women? Children?
What do you think of marriage?
Do you consider romantic love a delusion and a snare?
Do you think the comment ‘It will all be the same in a hundred years’ is profound, shallow, true or false?
What is the greatest happiness you can imagine? The greatest disaster?

And so on. If you find that you are balking at definite answers to the great questions, then you are not yet ready to write fiction which involves major issues. You must find subjects on which you are capable of making up your mind, to serve as the groundwork of your writing. The best books emerge from the strongest convictions — and for confirmation see any bookshelf.

Complement these essential questions on Becoming a Writer with Mortimer Adler’s questions on becoming a reader.

No parent can bear the thought of losing their child. Yet circumstances beyond our control don’t discriminate — the lives that had only begun to blossom are taken away and hurled into the darkness of oblivion. When that happens, where does one seek consolation, some edge to hold on to, some light to orient by?

In February of 1950, Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879–April 18, 1955) became that light in a remarkable letter to a grief-stricken father who had just lost his son. Their heart-rending correspondence is included in Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul — the result of Naomi Levy‘s three-year inquiry into the mystery of the scientist’s sagely advice and into the mystery of the human spirit.

The grieving father writes:

Dear Dr. Einstein,
Last summer my eleven-year-old son died of Polio. He was an unusual child, a lad of great promise who verily thirsted after knowledge so that he could prepare himself for a useful life in the community. His death has shattered the very structure of my existence, my very life has become an almost meaningless void — for all my dreams and aspirations were somehow associated with his future and his strivings. I have tried during the past months to find comfort for my anguished spirit, a measure of solace to help me bear the agony of losing one dearer than life itself — an innocent, dutiful and gifted child who was the victim of such a cruel fate. I have sought comfort in the belief that man has a spirit which attains immortality — that somehow, somewhere my son lives on in a higher world.

With poignant and cathartic despair, the grief-stricken father goes on to contemplate the primacy of spirit over matter, for otherwise the world is nothing more than a “moral chaos,” then adds:

I write you all this because I have just read your volume ‘The World As I See It.’ On page 5 you stated: ‘Any individual who should survive his physical death is beyond my comprehension … such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.’ And I inquire in a spirit of desperation, is there in your view no comfort, no consolation for what has happened? Am I to believe that my beautiful darling child — a blooming bud that turned its face to the sun and was cut down by an unrelenting storm — has been forever wedded into dust, that there was nothing within him which has defied the grave and transcended the power of death? Is there nothing to assuage the pain of an unquenchable longing, an intense craving, an unceasing love for my darling son?
May I have a word from you? I need help badly.
Sincerely Yours,
Robert S. Marcus

Einstein, himself a father of two boys, takes time to respond to the anguished father with the following letter:

Dear Dr. Marcus,
A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish the delusion but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.
With my best wishes,
Sincerely
Albert Einstein

When Naomi Levy came across this touching letter it shook her to her core. She was drawn to it because it was bringing her comfort in the face of her father’s senseless murder many years prior. She saw Einstein’s words in the scheme of her life and the greater whole she would come to know in the intervening years. She believed that someday all people across the globe would come together, not by denying their unique faiths, rituals, or traditions, but by raising their hands and voices in unity. We must, she insisted, free ourselves from the cognitive walls that make us think we are strangers to one another. She prayed each day that we can learn to care, expand our circles of compassion, and shatter the delusion of our separateness.

With this belief, she reveals Robert Marcus’ letter which comes full circle and shows us his intimate thoughts on the immortality of the soul:

Today was Thanksgiving, my son, our first Thanksgiving without you and three months since you left us. … Today we missed you, more than ever, my precious child — all of us, even Tammy. Sitting in the restaurant we felt your presence near and when we went to the movies to see ‘Ichabod and Mr. Toad’ you were on the seat beside me.

[…]

I have sustained myself with the hope and consoled myself with the belief that somehow, somewhere we shall meet again. My unceasing love for you is immortal, my son; it is a stream direct from the fount of God and can never dry up; it must be satisfied in eternity; in that higher life to which death opens the door. I believe all this, my precious Jay.

We shall once again be united in eternity, my darling. May God redeem my soul from the grasp of the grave as I know he has received you, my precious child, into the house of everlasting life and has breathed into you the breath of life eternal.

Complement these letters from Einstein and the Rabbi with One Voice Children’s Choir song of comfort, hope, and renewal.

One of the most influential Japanese poets of all time, Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) elevated haiku from a mere literary pastime into an exquisite poetic craft. Leaving his hometown of Ueno behind, he moved to Kyoto where he studied poetry and Zen as a young man and later became a Buddhist monk. This, perhaps, is why his verses are marked by wabi-sabi, an aesthetic that evokes seclusion, melancholy, imperfection and leans towards modesty, simplicity, and transience of all things. The Essential Haiku collects his most delicate and vivid poems as well as his intimate thoughts on the art of one breath-long exclamation of delight that became the sole purpose of his life.

Basho writes:

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.

The basis of art is change in the universe. What’s still has changeless form. Moving things change, and because we cannot put a stop to time, it continues unarrested. To stop a thing would be to halve a sight or sound in our heart. Cherry blossoms whirl, leaves fall, and the wind flits them both along the ground. We cannot arrest with our eyes or ears what lies in such things. Were we to gain mastery over them, we would find that the life of each thing had vanished without a trace.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things — mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity — and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

The secret of poetry lies in treading the middle path between the reality and the vacuity of the world.

One must first of all concentrate one’s thoughts on an object. Once one’s mind achieves a state of concentration and the space between oneself and the object has disappeared, the essential nature of the object can be perceived. Then express it immediately. If one ponders it, it will vanish from the mind.

In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can be called, for lack of a better name, a windswept spirit, for it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by the slightest stirring of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

For a person who has the spirit, everything he sees becomes a flower, and everything he imagines turns into a moon. Those who do not see the flower are no different from barbarians, and those who do not imagine the moon are akin to beasts. Leave barbarians and beasts behind; follow nature and return to nature.

Every form of insentient existence — plants, stones, or utensils — has its individual feelings similar to those of men.

When we observe calmly, we discover that all things have their fulfillment.

One needs to work to achieve enlightenment and then return to the common world.

Complement these enlightening passages from The Essential Haiku with the art of jisei, a Japanese death poem.