Staying on the Path

I recently encountered the words of a man named Bertrand Russell for the first time.

Bertrand Russell (1872 –1970) was a British man described as a “philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate.”

What a list! How could I have missed him?

In his lifetime he stood up as a pacifist during World War I, and even spoke out again late in his life during the time of the Vietnam War.

In the Prologue to Mr. Russell’s own autobiography he wrote the following passage called: “What I Have Lived For.”

I offer it as a gift to you, as it had been a gift to me, in the hopes that it may put into context the many varied (and buried) sides of ourselves that we become more aware of as we awaken in a spiritual unfolding through our contemplative and religious practices that may be more or less prominent at any given moment in our one, heroic journey through this thing we call life.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

I love Mr. Russell’s honesty and transparency that life may not have always felt like a day at Six Flags Amusement Park, and yet he has “found it worth living, and would gladly live it again.”

It reminds me of Albert Camus who wrote another 20th century philosophical essay titled “The Myth of Sisyphus” in which he concluded a man or woman could have a life worth living while rolling the metaphorical boulder up the hill, not in spite of it.  He said,

The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

I recently shared in my blog entry Poetry 103 some reflections that have generated from these contemplative practices that remind me of Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh’s concept of emotions as seedlings that lie dormant inside of us at all times- until they are not dormant that is.

As I’ve said before, this spiritual life stuff is not for the faint hearted.

I wrote a few months ago about the 2010 film called “The Way” starring Martin Sheen, directed by his son Emilio Estevez.  It is the story of a grieving father who makes the decision to hike El Camino de Santiago in France and Northern Spain in memory of his son who was never able to complete the journey himself.

One favorite aspect of the movie was the salutation “Buen Camino!” used again and again by all the characters who are hiking the trail, as well as all of the folks along the way who are supporting the hikers to continue on.

“Buen Camino” seemed to be both an aspiration and a prayer. By infusing these two words with hope and excitement as well as grit and determination the characters conveyed the understanding that such a journey is not an easy one to follow all the way through to the end.

I imagine saying these words to any fellow pilgrims I meet along my spiritual path, wherever it may take me.  (Which is to say, I could say it to every person I encounter throughout the rest of my day, week, year, lifetime).  I could also say it to every brand new infant baby as they take their first steps on this earth.  Buen Camino. An aspiration and a prayer.

Like Mr. Russell himself, Kudos to all of you, us, who stay on the path toward authenticity, truth, meaning and peace.

And of course, “Buen Camino.”