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Jean-François 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-François 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.
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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