BLOG 177
“The renunciate is not someone who has less life, but someone who has less illusion. Not someone who has rejected the world, but someone who has seen through it. They are not trying to be spiritual. They are not trying to be anyone. They are simply no longer fooled by the costume of identity.”
”Modern Sannyasa: A Quiet Life in the World, but Not of It” (thebrokentusk.com)
Yesterday I started a long overdue process of weeding through closets and drawers to rid us of items that no longer serve us. I was appalled to see the condition of bedding and towels that were stained, worn, mismatched, lacking buttons or stuffing or just plain ugly. Jim helped me pack six giant plastic bags-full to go to a commercial laundry service, knowing that it would take forever and probably break my washing machine were I to clean all of it at home. I despair that much of it will have to be replaced, anyway, but it has served us for enough years that I should be able to dispose of it guilt-free, and go on a minor shopping spree.
I’m always curious about what prompts such ambitious house-cleaning, weight loss, sports goals, higher degree or other self-and-home improvement schemes. Such motivation doesn’t come easily, obviously, or the stuff I am replacing wouldn’t have ended up in such dreadful shape. In my case, the motivation came from a reminder of my mortality, from a desire to clear karma and live more simply. And perhaps more authentically.
With a view to mortality, I’ve lately been curious about the final stage of life described as sannyasa in the Vedic tradition. Vedanta philosophy divides life into four more or less equal stages; student, householder, seeker, and sage (or sannyasin).
On the Broken Tusk (Ancient Insights for a Modern World) website, I came across a very accessible essay that:
“…explores what sannyasa might look like in modern life—not as a costume or performance, but as a shift in identity. It is not one-size-fits-all. Sannyasa today can take many forms. But its heart remains the same: freedom from identification with the world, and the quiet joy of being rooted in what doesn’t change”.
Being rooted in what doesn’t change has always held great appeal for me, offering, as it does, something outside of, or beyond, “the diffuse, anonymous anxiety, the nameless fears, the petty itching lusts and all the pervading hostilities which fill mass society the way water fills the ocean”, as Thomas Merton wrote in New Seeds of Contemplation.
Broken Tusk introduces the “costume of identity” to describe the many roles and aspirations one picks up as one grows from child to parent to retiree and elderhood, ultimately achieving a degree of detachment and equanimity towards everything we once thought we could, should, ought or want to be; the trappings of successful living, according to modern Western society.
Ironically, as we reach a certain age, the idea of downsizing reverses the trend from “getting and spending” to shedding the acquisitions that become more and more a burden as time goes by. I would even argue that the more trapped we are by the trappings of success, the more limitations we place on our inner growth and Self-realization. By Self I mean the part of us that remains when we take away all the layers of personality, concepts and illusions that comprise our costume of identity.
Broken Tusk explains it thus:
“Modern sannyasa doesn’t require abandoning your home, phone, or daily routines. Instead, it asks something subtler: stop clinging to outcomes, drop the performance of identity, and let go of the compulsive need to become someone.
“In a world obsessed with productivity, self-improvement, and perpetual motion, a modern sannyasi lives differently. Not rebelliously. Not dramatically. But quietly—as one who no longer needs to prove, possess, or pursue.”
I’m tempted to paste that last paragraph on my bathroom mirror, so succinctly does it describe the drives that have propelled me in past. It brings to mind the cliché of “being vs doing”, and suggests that now is a very good time to streamline my life.
Before it steamrolls over me…