>From SalonMagazine.CoM / IT
<Picture: The monk, the philosopher and the cynic>
Jean-Fran�ois Revel and his son, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, set out to
have a spiritual dialogue -- but the cosmic harmony was shattered when
Christopher Hitchens showed up.
BY CHRIS COLIN | Philosopher Jean-Fran�ois Revel, in a plain gray suit and
topped with an imposing bald head, crossed a leg in his hotel chair with
that great French look -- half auteur, half politician. His 52-year-old
son, Matthieu Ricard, sat propped on an elbow on the bed, draped in the
rich red robes of a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The men exchanged funny smiles,
the kind that at once acknowledges nothing and everything about the gulf
between their existences. There was a book here, one sensed, before the two
even opened their mouths.
The book is "The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the
Meaning of Life," recently translated into English (and 18 other languages)
following enormous success in France. It records 10 days of conversation
between the renowned iconoclastic philosopher (author of "Without Marx or
Jesus," "A History of Western Philosophy from Thales to Kant" and "Why
Philosophers?") and his son, a molecular biologist-turned-monk from an inn
high in the mountains of Nepal, overlooking Katmandu. The dialogue -- which
collides scholarly rigor with spiritual exploration -- covers all the
contemplative bases, from secular ethics to faith, science, activism and
even psychoanalysis.
Awaiting a presentation sponsored by Harper's magazine at the UC-Berkeley
Graduate School of Journalism that evening, the two Frenchmen spoke in
their hotel room about their U.S. tour. How -- after New York, Boston and
San Francisco -- did they like Americans? "It is more important how they
like us," Revel laughed, half seriously. Many Americans, the men agreed,
appeared to be interested for strange reasons.
"The idea of father and son, the sentimentalities -- in Europe, it doesn't
play much. Here it's more important," explained Ricard. In France, he
claimed, people buy the book for the ideas. But in America, the familial
element steeps the book in either sentimentality or conflict; more
compelling than a famous philosopher is the promise of another family
drama.
"The [American] reporters always ask the same question: 'How did I feel
when my son left for India?'" Revel mused.
But readers looking for drama will ultimately be disappointed. Ricard and
Revel present a radical departure from America's archetypal father-son
relationships, and anyone hoping for either tension or tender displays of
affection will find the book Spartan in this regard.
>From their quiet tones and careful manners, it's evident that the two
transcended conversations about curfew long ago. They converse more as
colleagues than filial relations, patiently allowing each other to speak,
and responding with calmness, thought and occasional levity. "Kant was a
great thinker, but his style was worse than the [brochures] on United
Airlines," quips Revel at one point. "Be careful -- in America you might be
sued," Ricard replies.
"Yes, maybe, I hope so."
As an avowed opponent of "totalitarian systems of ideology," Revel was
quick to express his wariness of prescriptive, totalistic visions like that
of his son's Buddhism. Yet despite fundamental disagreements with Buddhist
principles -- "the theoretical background of Buddhist wisdom seems to me
unproved and unprovable," he writes -- he concedes that he finds "very
striking similarities" between his son's beliefs and "many aspects of Greek
philosophy" -- the thinkers who have deeply influenced his worldview.
In contrast, Ricard invokes a down-to-earth ontology, grounding his
ethereal, transcendent views in colorful analogies. Pleasure without
happiness, he says, is "like a burning match, which has a tendency to
consume itself as it burns." Serious but genial, Ricard emanates an air of
irreverence that seems to ease the snarl of life discussions.
For all the patience Revel and Ricard have mastered, their conversation had
its hitches. Listening to these two men, speaking across religions, across
generations, seriously pursuing a common belief in communication, there is
a poignant sense of ships passing in the night. No amount of cooperation
can reconcile two distinct ideologies at their most radical divergences. No
length of discussion can transcend what is, in the end, too many words too
vaguely defined. Nothingness, the self, truth -- these concepts simply
reverberate within Buddhism and Western philosophy too differently for
resolution. One appreciates this book as one appreciates a drop in a
bucket.
And then there was the almost-empty bucket as it was presented at the
Harper's forum. That evening, Feb. 26, the Berkeley journalism school
hosted a panel discussion moderated by Harper's editor Lewis Lapham. Revel
and Ricard, along with journalist (and Salon contributor) Christopher
Hitchens; Rev. Mark Richardson, director of the Center for Theological and
Natural Sciences; and J-school dean Orville Schell met before a full crowd
of journalism junkies, new agers, skeptics and Lapham lovers to air and
examine a few of the book's conversations.
N E X T_ P A G E .|. Hitchens speaks his mind and horrifies the mindful
THE MONK, THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE CYNIC | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - -
The discussion began calmly, with just enough academic panel-style boredom
to make it exciting. Lapham introduced the participants with his trademark
windiness, eventually relinquishing the floor to Revel. "We have realized
that we've ignored Eastern philosophy," Revel said, going on to trace the
Western world's "sudden and widespread interest in Buddhism." Speaking
slightly more personally, Ricard framed his turn toward Buddhism as less of
a defection from the West than a continuation of a larger passion he
originally discovered in molecular biology -- "an enthusiasm for explaining
external reality." Ricard went on to articulate his distinction between
happiness and pleasure, suggesting that the West's interest in Buddhism
might be related to the simple promise of increased happiness.
"Happiness should have a more lasting quality," he said, "so that once you
have discovered within yourself this sort of inner peace, a sense of
fulfillment, a sense of meaning, it doesn't really depend too much on outer
circumstances. Whether they are good or bad, we can somehow use them."
The panel responded. Schell, Lapham and Richardson weighed in with words
about harmony, peace and the search for meaning.
Finally it was Hitchens' turn. He leaned back, ran a hand through his hair
and hit the ground running: "Many of us ... do not think that harmony is
the great goal, or unity or peacefulness, [and] actually quite like hard
questions for their own sake, and enjoy ... the life of the mind. I just
thought if I didn't say this, it's just possible nobody would."
Hitchens, who recently testified for Ken Starr about the lunch-time
Monica-laden commentary of his former friend, Clinton aide Sidney
Blumenthal, seemed anxious to confirm his contentious reputation. For all
his graceful British badinage, Hitchens played the part of American jackass
to an obnoxious T. As though parading his own notoriety, he spoke with
breathtakingly hostile resolve. He called reincarnation "a pathetic
belief," nirvana of the mind "a kind of hell," and to the question of how
to live responded, "by disagreement." He was funny and caustic and upset.
He offered Buddhism little in the way of patient inquiry.
And yet Hitchens -- disharmony incarnate -- deserves a place in an article
about Revel and Ricard. Hitchens articulated the unspoken critique hovering
above their discourse; his was the voice pausing to ask, "Is this even
legitimate? Can this discussion occur?" While Revel may differ with Ricard
as consistently as Hitchens does, he has consented to a dialogue --
perhaps, for Hitchens, this is something like surrender. Perhaps the true
and stalwart cynic refuses to discuss, as he indeed did by the end of the
evening.
It's unclear whether Hitchens was a wonderful or a terrible selection. His
was an entrenched, and arguably brave, resistance to the fuzzy vibe
floating above the panel discussion. His quasi-nihilism functioned as a
perfect foil to Ricard's impassioned devotion, but then maybe a foil wasn't
in order this time. Revel, despite profound disagreement with his son,
modeled his portion of the dialogue in a spirit of understanding and
curiosity, rather than one of antagonism and critique. On a strictly
pragmatic level, as both Hitchens and Revel would surely have it, the
former proved far more productive; not once did Revel refuse to answer a
question or address a point, not once did he substitute venom for content.
Interestingly, Hitchens' tight argument brought him more than once to fifth
century B.C. Athens. He admitted to this being his favorite universe, and
spoke of it with surprising warmth. It was here -- citing Athens' perfect
ideology, its egalitarianism and freedom and beauty -- that a truth about
Hitchens seemed to coalesce in the evening. From his love for Classical
Greece emerged, conversely, a kind of antipathy for the modern world. At
least for an evening, his sole investment in the present day seemed to be
the reveling in its failures, being the first and wittiest to pull back the
curtain here and there. This was not a man to accept a tradition built upon
faith. Ricard watched him calmly, but with a funny look. Maybe the look
said, "I pity you, you who hate yourself and everyone else," but maybe he
was just looking.
"Do you disagree with everything, including yourself?" Ricard asked at one
point.
"Yes," snapped Hitchens.
It had turned ugly. Revel, with his big red impressive face, looked
exhausted. Richardson looked angry. Ricard's grin had faded, and Lapham and
Schell seemed uncertain as to whether all this was OK. The audience, in its
gentle Berkeley way, seemed on the verge of either riot or a standing
ovation.
But this worked. This was discord, and this was entertainment, and
pleasure, and something less than happiness. There was vindication in the
air for Ricard, had he been the man to appreciate vindication. Hitchens was
the cynic at the love-in, the joker at the moment of silence, and people
seemed to sense that all the wit in the world wouldn't get them anywhere
deep. And while he may well have been the voice of reason, the mind
unwilling to be "blissed out," as he once put it, by the warm glow of
Ricard's attractive, extra-rational vision, one couldn't help picturing him
in his next life, a mean little ant, scurrying around in a roomful of
Buddhas.
SALON | March 10, 1999
Chris Colin is a writer living in Oakland, Calif. His last piece for Salon
was about his music teacher and the failed suicide of Tchaikovsky.
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