Stalker's confession

I am not an avid traveler, not a climber, I am not looking for adventure and extremely at all. I visit countries selectively - only those to which I have conscious interest. And to drive around the world, just glancing around and leaving pictures and a memory: “I was here,” in my opinion, the top of vulgarity. But it so happened that for several years now I have been led by a group of compatriots to the Holy Mountain of Kailas and other reserved places of Tibet, where there are enough dangers and all kinds of difficulties. Why am I doing this? Mostly, out of personal interest: for some time now I was seriously interested in the life and culture of Tibet, and I experienced in this unusual country, the materials collected there greatly pushed my cultural horizon, gave a new impetus to my research. There is another reason: a feeling, excuse me for a high syllable, duty as a professional orientalist capable of introducing to the spiritual world of Asia those who are interested, and at heart, maybe yearning for eastern wisdom. To send, so to speak, in a promising channel their spiritual searches. A naive and ungrateful desire in general, but what can you do: has not yet outlined this weakness in himself.

It is known that the mountains, and even more so the mountains, covered with spiritual secret, are all arranged in their places and accurately reveal the quality of every human person. The meeting with Tibet and the Himalayas clearly divides my battleship tourists into three groups: some are always a minority-gratefully will introducely to the mystical challenges of the “countries of snow” and begin to look at their lives in a new way; Others remain at a loss, but humbly accept him, believing that their time has not yet come; Still others generally refuse to try to understand where and why they come, begin to grumble and complain about everything: for food, roads, jeeps, guardsuzes, to the garbage, dirt, and uncleances surrounding around ...

The psychology of people of the third category is just as primitive as it is noteworthy in its own way. These are people with money, accustomed to a comfortable life and to the boss, to the immediate execution of each of their whim. They are seriously outraged by the fact that in Tibetan hotels they do not accept their European credit cards - they accept on Canar and Bagams! Why do these people are unable to live a day without a soft bed and a delicious dinner, without the pleasure of flesh and entertainment, they didn’t go to Canar and Bagam, but to Tibet, where with amenities, how could they be easily guessed, the situation is bad? It is easiest to explain their decision to ordinary snobbery: now to ride Kailas and Himalaye is fashionable, so I will celebrate there, then in some Moscow party to flaunt with my Himalayan knowledge. The explanation is true, but still superficial and in any case regarding only a small group of people. Here you can only pomorize, laugh at the bitter-sticks and put a point. But the problem, I think, is much deeper to me: it is related to the fundamental historical choice of mankind. It can be seen that a comfortable life does not give real satisfaction and is not so valuable for the human soul, since those to whom it is fully accessible is ready to exchange it for the hardships of mountain wanderings. And then the question arises: whether life comfort is compatible - this main value of modern secular civilization - with real spiritual experience and if so, how and on what basis?

Different religions with rare unanimity say the same thing: even if you live richly, you must be poor. Why? Because the poor lives directly , he honestly accepts "relevant challenges of being." But he leaves everything to him ... everything remains. The notorious “poverty culture” is not saving money, but an economy, “house -building” of the spirit. And in the domestic plan, life should be convenient exactly so that its material circumstances do not interfere with concentrating on a spiritual feat. As the Greeks that allow you to sit during service in the temple say, "it is better to sit and think about God than to stand and think about the legs." For each person, the measure and even the ascet method should be their own, but in any case they should not cross the line behind which they become an end in itself, the spiritual fruits of the labors obscure themselves. The extremes of the ascetics are for the majority are risky, which is reminiscent of an example of the notorious Capiton of Danilovsky: in Asuzie, he surpassed, probably, all the Zavolzhsky elders, and eventually became a heresirch, the ancestor of the whip. The same applies to the measure of comfort: it should be such that a person does not become a hostage to life amenities. Note that comfort is never absolute, the feeling of inconvenience, the deprivation of something is a natural state of a person, and the meaning of asceticism is just to remove it. In a word, wisdom is to “know that you always have enough” (Lao Tzu). Internal self -sufficiency is the main, even the only reward of a person’s spiritual feat on this earth.

But all this applies to individual human individuals. But what about the scale of world civilization, all of humanity? Can comfort at this level get along with ASSKASE? Europe and Asia answered this question differently. In Europe, I recall, the concept of comfort originally referred to mental comfort. During the secularization of European culture, it shifted to the bodily, material pole of existence, began to denote “comfortable life”, but did not tear a genetic connection with its spiritual sources. Europe knows how to appreciate human dignity among universal satiety - virtue suspiciously animal. “Mirsky asceticism” is a popular motto of the European bourgeoisie, and today few in Europe and even (or rather, moreover, even more so) in America will openly deny the religious connotations of the ideal of comfort. A similar emphasis on the continuity of the spiritual and bodily life-albeit only declared-explains a lot in the vitality of Western civilization and its attractiveness for the rest of the world.

The East was looking for a solution to the problem of comfort, rather, on the ways of ignoring material amenities. True to the ideal of internal self-sufficiency and spiritual peace, he considered life comfort, although permissible, but something insignificant and unnecessary, and even harmful for spiritual development. From this point of view , dirt, garbage and impurity in Tibet (which, in the conditions of highlands, by the way, does not threaten infectious diseases) is not a sign of wildness or mental pathology, but one of many manifestations of ascetic indifference to amenities . On the contrary, Tibetan life in its actual ritual forms, i.e. Within the framework of the same spiritual asuza, it differs in the wealth of decoration, and a colorful decor, and caring attention to every little thing in life.

But are there a common denominator, some kind of general measure of ascetics and comfort? Does the growth of the comfort of life in the modern "consumption society" mean the inevitable death of the ascetic principle? The question is not idle, but very practical and burning, for we are talking about the preservation of the conditions and means of spiritual improvement of a person. I see his positive decision, oddly enough, in the fact that today it seems to many a harbinger of the final death of spirituality (in such an outcome, however, it is not very believed, because for this humanity should renounce humanity in itself). I mean the slow, but true drift of culture towards its self -power, its transformation into a tourist attraction, generally the widespread emergence of an ironic distance in relation to human societies to history. This trend, by the way, is in every possible way encouraged by the Chinese authorities of Tibet, who see in it a great way to at the same time (as if) innocence to observe, and acquire capital. Today, humanity is put in a position when it should recognize the illusion of all historical forms of culture. It would seem, a complete triumph of nihilism? The situation is very delicate for Western religion, professing the letter of the letter to truth. Meanwhile, the identification of the illusoryness of culture leads to the discovery of the phantom nature of experience, which constituted the nature of spiritual enlightenment in the eastern religions. Reality in the East is a pure temporality, self -confidence in its self -discretion or, as the Tibetan lamas said, “the beginning before all the principles”; She opens herself only as a absence, in the haze of her reflections. In the civilization of the “digitized reality”, this truth, which was previously the property of the few elected, can become accessible and what is commonly called the “public” (its character, however, should change itself). The old antinomy of askeys and comfort remains in force, but she has to go through, so to speak, mass trials: can we renounce the external chimera and learn how to live “forever internal”? Such an opportunity is always open, and therefore I do not refuse to be a guide to the world of spiritual experience. Today, more than ever, everyone has a chance to find their own way to heaven. And the comfort of life is not a hindrance to that. Unless, of course, we ourselves do not make ourselves his slaves.

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