A few years ago, in the midst of an extended episode of acute anxiety, I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I was initially hesitant, for a variety of reasons. The first was that, emblazoned across the cover, was the loud pronouncement that the book is an ‘International Bestseller’. There is a kind of snobbery within me that dictates that if the unwashed masses head in one direction, I must go in the other. That is why, for example, it took me ages to admit that the Arctic Monkeys are in fact pretty good: the mere fact that they were hugely popular turned me off the idea of listening to them. The second thing that militated against my reading The Power of Now was that a cursory googling seemed to suggest that Eckhart Tolle did not have any real ‘credentials’. Here he was talking about something so powerful as getting your life in gear, and he didn’t appear to have a PhD, go to a fancy university or have articles published in peer-reviewed journals. I’ll admit that this concern of mine might sound a bit esoteric, but my upbringing imbued in me an inflated sense of the importance of academic credentials.
However, I decided to give the book a go, and found it wonderfully enlightening. Contained in the book are snippets of what I suppose is Buddhist thought, but I gave myself permission not to be concerned with these ideas in an academic sense. I was in academia before becoming a professional poet, as well as for a couple of years subsequently, and my automatic instinct was to seek the historical provenance of the ideas propounded in the book, as well as to look for holes and fallacies within them. But since this type of thinking was in large part what lead to the episode of anxiety in the first place (and continues at times to do so), I took the very conscious decision not to do these things. I decided to read the book on its own terms, and see whether any of the ideas resonated with me. I decided to get off my high horse, to come down from my ivory tower, and to wallow in the muck with the multitudes. In other words, I decided to read the book as a human rather than as an academic.
Within the book I came across the idea of satori. Now this is a term which is used within Buddhism, and as I have intimated I do not want to get bogged down in academic issues of etymology, history or philosophy. I simply want to highlight the sense in which this term is used in the book, and to discuss what it means for me. Tolle states that satori refers to a “flash of insight, a moment of no-mind and total presence” (79). I’m not sure how the concept is elucidated elsewhere, but I think I recognise what is being described. I look at it like this: the anxious mind is a jumble of chaos and static, but within the miasma are occasional flakes of hope. What we need to do, in the first instance, is to recognise the flakes.
What are these flakes? Occasionally, when I am very anxious, I get the occasional flash of insight. When I say ‘flash’ I literally mean that the feeling often lasts for no more than a second or two, before the waves of anxiety tumble back in. Nor are they flashes that carry with them any particularly oracular truths; they are simply ephemeral sparks of light that say everything will be OK, that none of this really matters very much, that I can handle it, that at my deepest core I am bigger and more solid than the thoughts that are bothering me. I don’t know if this is the way satori is 'supposed' to feel, but it is the sense in which, upon reading The Power of Now, I understand the term. If anxiety is a waterfall of gravel and garbage, then satori is noticing the occasional flake of gemstone within the torrent.
The injunction in the first instance would simply be to notice the flakes, acknowledge their presence. These flakes are what we truly are, they are our essence. I don't think it would work, during a period of anxiety, to be too vigilant about wishing the flakes into existence, or trying to grab onto them too firmly when they do appear; it is more about noticing them, and then letting them pass. Tolle states that satori "only reveals itself to you when you are present" (80), i.e. when you come out from under the waterfall and start paying attention to its constitution. So next time you find yourself persecuted by anxious thoughts, step back a bit. Take a step back and notice what you are doing; be conscious of yourself. See if there are any flakes within the flowing lava of your experience. Notice them. Put your hand out, and let the flakes fall gently through your fingers.
(I would be very interested to hear whether others can relate to the kinds of experience I'm describing. Do please feel free to get in touch or to add your comments below.)
