by Bruce E.R. Thompson.
What did the Sufi master say to the hotdog vender?
Wait. I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten the punchline to that joke. I must be getting old. Give me a minute. If I think for a bit, perhaps I’ll remember what I was going to say. It was going to be really funny. Maybe it still will be if I can just…
Plato says that a good idea—a truth—is easier to remember than a bad idea. Plato compares good ideas to statues by Daedalus, the legendary craftsman, inventor, and sculptor. His statues looked so real—so expressive—that Kings who owned them would chain them to the floor for fear they would come to life and try to run away. A good idea is like one of those statues: it is tied to reality by a logos—a chain of reasoning. If you temporarily forget a good idea, you can always rediscover it by finding a piece of the chain, and then following it link by link until you recapture your lost idea. Bad ideas are untethered. Once forgotten, they are gone. So, if my joke is worth telling, I’ll stumble across the punchline in a minute. If it isn’t worth telling, then neither of us are worse off for my forgetting it.
Doesn’t life itself sometimes seem a bit like a senior moment? We walk into this world only to discover that we don’t know why we are here. Is there something I was meant to do? If so, do I need to die and be reborn to remember what it was? Damn.
Perhaps forgetfulness is not such a bad thing. The protagonist of Albert Camus’ The Fall (La Chute)—if he can be called a protagonist—describes his descent into existential despair as beginning with the recovery of his memories. He had previously been satisfied with himself and the life he was living, looking kindly upon others and feeling himself to be both modest and admired. But then he began to remember incidents in his life in which he did not come off as the hero. He began to remember slights to himself that were not so much forgiven as simply forgotten. Forgetfulness and forgiveness accomplish much the same thing: the putting aside of regrets and recriminations, but of the two, forgetfulness is easier. Forgiveness—especially self-forgiveness—is hard.
Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not as honest as forgiveness, and it comes with the risk that memory might return. As Plato says, the truth is chained down, and so is not easily forgotten. The discovery by Camus’ protagonist that he had always lived a selfish life, as if his own happiness were his only concern, made him realize that he was an isolated consciousness, with no reason to care about anyone but himself. But that is the path to existential despair. He began to think, “Life is meaningless. The sooner I die, the better off I will be.” Damn.
But Plato’s idea that truths are shackled to reality by a chain of logic comes with an interesting corollary that may help us avoid existential despair. Just as we can discover a good idea by tracing a chain of thought, we can later remember the same idea by tracing the same train of thought. Remembering is no different in principle than discovering the idea in the first place. Learning is just a matter of remembering what we already know! Hence, Plato draws the conclusion that we already know everything, and merely need to remember that we already know it.
In Plato’s dialogue Meno Socrates illustrates this point. Socrates is in conversation with his friend, Meno, when the subject comes up. Socrates asks Meno to call in a young, uneducated boy—one of Meno’s household slaves. The boy is happy to oblige. Using a stick to draw on the sandy floor, Socrates draws a group of squares. By drawing further lines and by asking the boy questions, Socrates leads the boy to “discover” a proof for the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem. Having once followed the proof, the boy is confident of the truth of the theorem—as if he had known it all along.
God, of course, knows everything that can be known. (It is part of his job description.) Indeed, by some accounts, God is the only being that knows everything. Hence, if Plato is right that we already know everything, then we are God! Notice that this does not make us individual gods; it makes us identical to the one God that there is.
But, if we are all-knowing, how could we possibly not know that we are God? How could we have forgotten such an important fact about ourselves? Rene Descartes took this as proof that we are not God. Hindu philosophy, however, gives a very different answer. According to orthodox Hinduism, even God is subject to isolated senior moments. We all are God, but we have forgotten that fact! Our task on earth is to recover our memory of who we are.
One fanciful story (from the Ramayana) that illustrates this quest is the legend of the monkey god, Hanuman. Hanuman was a typical monkey: full of mischief and trouble. But he was also a divine being—an avatar of Shiva, and so an aspect of Brahman. Hanuman was devoted to Rama (another aspect of Brahman). According to the story, Hanuman had divine powers, but as a child he used his powers to play pranks on the sages who cared for him. At last, the sages grew tired of his pranks, so they cast a spell on him that caused him to forget his divine powers. This kept him out of trouble. But then a time came when he was called upon to join the battle against the evil king Ravana and his army of demons. Ravana was on the island called Lanka (now Shri Lanka) across the sea. Hanuman did not know how to get there, although he knew it was vitally important that he do so. The bear god, Jambavan, reminded Hanuman of his powers, including the ability to leap vast distances, and the ability to change his size and to take many forms. In that moment Hanuman remembered who he was: a divine being, one with God. He leaped across the sea to Lanka and…
Oh, I now remember the punchline to my joke.
When the hotdog vendor asked the Sufi master, “What do you want, pal?” the master replied, “Make me one with everything.”