The postman

[Michael Larkin]

Yesterday I watched Kevin Kostner again in the film "The postman". It wasn't well received by all critics, but I rather like it and was struck by how the hero of a post-apocalyptic world, stumbling across a dead postman whilst on the run from the evil army of 8, dons his outfit and takes his letters.

He then manages to gain entry to a stockade pretending to be a postman for the re-emerging US government. It's a lie, of course: all he wants is a square meal, but somehow his fiction takes root and eventually a US mail network is set up, the despotic leader of the 8 army defeated, and the government resurrected for real.

I wondered why I hadn't noticed before the similarity between the plot of the film and that of the Arabian nights story "Caravan of dreams". The full tale is in Idries Shah's Tales of the Dervishes, though he summarises it thus in the preface to his book that goes by the title of the tale:

In one of the best tales of the Arabian nights , Maruf the cobbler found himself daydreaming his own fabulous caravan of riches.

Destitute and almost friendless in an alien land, Maruf at first mentally conceived - and then described - an unbelievably valuable cargo on its way to him.

Instead of leading to exposure and disgrace, this idea was the foundation of his eventual success. The imagined caravan took shape, became real for a time - and arrived.

May your caravan of dreams, too, find its way to you.

It's funny that the original Arabian nights tale never really hit home with me, despite being familiar with it for decades, and yet when watching The postman, and not even for the first time, it struck a chord.

Why? Because I suddenly saw that the story is more than fairy tale. Its structure seems embedded in everyday existence. How often have we conceived a desire for something, without the slightest assurance that we would obtain it, and yet eventually, it materialised? How often, in fact, have we gone supremely confident into the mist of the future, achieved an end, and not paused to think how miraculous that process is?

One can think of examples large and small. I remember kids I knew who always wanted to be something - an electrician or surgeon, and ended up being just that. They didn't doubt they would get there, and went for it. So what, one tends to say, there's nothing mysterious in that - they went to school, got qualifications and training, did the work, and the outcome was completely logical.

But think about it. The universe is such that we can conceive a desire, and with certain efforts, attain it. We aren't completely buffeted by events we can't control, at the mercy of blind chance. We can, at least to some extent, shape our own future. But that isn't possible without being able to formulate a desire. Desire is the key to creating our own destiny.

Once one cottons on to the idea that one can do this in familiar, worldly areas, and sees how truly miraculous it is, it seems less miraculous how it might happen in unfamiliar areas, ones that we term "spiritual". Why can't we formulate a desire to realise our true purpose in life, "go to school" (however one might conceive of that), and, through appropriate efforts, achieve it? Perhaps even more pointedly, how can we achieve it without starting with the desire?

And what is desire? In one sense, it seems to be unrealised potential, something that already exists without having come into manifestation; but, a little more than that, the identification and acknowledgement of that unrealised potential.

[Rajan Arulganesan]

Is the word aspiration any better?

[Michael Larkin]

I think you're probably right, Joanne: it is the attachment to the desire rather than the desire itself that causes the problem, and that can apply with "spiritual" as much as "material" desires.

Which raises an interesting thought: is a desire to which one is not attached actually a desire? Should we have some other name for it, perhaps? Is this just an example of language creating problems, restricting our ability to think in new ways?

[Rajan Arulganesan]

That is a good take on 'desire' Joanne, it is also a very mature attitude not to be attached to your desires, but indulge in it as if were a dream and not get disappointed if its not fulfilled. I should aspire to this.

[Rajan Arulganesan]

After the various musings related to this post, I had to re - think my whole understanding of desire. When I first read Tahir shah's Caliph's House, I took it literally and thought the book somehow sort of promotes a sort of blatant materialism. You know how he talks about being fed up with grey old London, poky flat and how he wanted to live like a king surrounded by beautiful things. Now I think I have a better understanding. It is about not being afraid to dream, being able to let go of everything that's familiar and to take a huge leap in to the unknown, etc. I think if I re-read it in a few years, other dimensions may become visible.

[Michael Larkin]

Sorry I haven't been commenting - I looked on the main page and it appeared that things weren't moving, but I should have looked more carefully.

How do you separate naked greed from desire? That's the $64,000 question. Mike mentions the distinction between ordinate desires, i.e. ones that are in conformance with the permissible or laudable, and ego-driven desires.

Sometimes, it's easy to spot the ego-driven ones: I want to win the lottery, buy a mansion and live like a king. I want to be the top of the class, I want to qualify for the Olympics and get a gold medal and appear on the award podium... whatever.

Ordinate desires can be more difficult. But I'd say a worthwhile desire isn't concerned about how the goal is to be achieved: whether that will have to involve difficulty, pain or unpleasantness, for example.

I think prayer might come in. The true prayer isn't asking God for a Mercedes Benz. In fact, it probably isn't asking for anything specific and identifiable. It's asking for the ability to be in such a way that God's work can unfold through us, whatever that might entail for us... it's "Thy will be done", and "Help me not get in the way of that happening".

Yes, desire does tend to have a bad name. Buddha seems to say that desire is the root of all suffering, and he's probably right, but that could be referring only to egoic desire, the kind that creates expectations and disappointments.

[Mike MacLeod]

This is something I wonder about, but mostly in context with those who speak against it. I remember that in the 1.1 version of HR James made a comment to the effect that feelings of disappointment or darker ones of frustration or anger were at the root caused by expectation of some desire being fulfilled and then reaction when it was not.

He may not have meant this in a dismissive way, but it pinched me, so I looked more closely, and I began to wonder if there were truly "ordinate" desires, as Aristotle proposed, and learned desires that were ego-driven only. Certainly the body has "expectations" of being able to find a place to shelter itself from the weather, and food, and air, and (moving outward from the most basic needs) companionship, love, and meaning.

Certainly how a person pursues these things makes a difference, and his or her reaction to frustration shows how developed a person's relation to his or her world is, but is it true that all desire is wrong? I don't know if Buddhism makes any distinction between ordinate desire and any other. The Taoists probably just seek the middle way, the path of the Tao through spacetime.

[Rajan Arulganesan]

But think about it. The universe is such that we can conceive a desire, and with certain efforts, attain it. We aren't completely buffeted by events we can't control, at the mercy of blind chance. We can, at least to some extent, shape our own future. But that isn't possible without being able to formulate a desire. Desire is the key to creating our own destiny.

Having thought about this for a while, I see what you mean about this Michael, the intensity of the desire matters, I think. But, how do you separate naked greed from desire?

[Mike MacLeod]

"What is happiness to you, David?"
Vanilla Sky recently took second place on a list of most polarizing movies, but from the perspective of my Sufi experiences it was one powerful meditation on reality, self, love, ego, desire, and of course happiness. I can't think of any movie where the central character goes through such a cascade of emotions and revelations as in the last ten minutes of VS. I have probably watched it two dozen times.