Daniel Herman - Zen and the White Whale: A Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick

Zen and the White Whale

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bethlehem

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herman, Daniel, 1980

Zen and the White Whale : a Buddhist Rendering of Moby-Dick / Daniel Herman.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61146-156-5 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-61146-157-2 (electronic)

1. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891. Moby Dick. 2. Melville, Herman, 1819-1891--Philosophy. 3. Zen Buddhism in literature. I. Title.

PS2384.M62H375 2014

813'.3--dc23

2014007741

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

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Herman Melvilles Moby-Dick and the teachings of Zen Buddhism share a central premise: that the ultimate truths of the universe cannot be distilled by conventional understanding, and that our intellectual and spiritual exasperations

Despite dispensing advice to the contrary, Herman Melville, by all historical accounts, was himself unable to resist chasing the White Whale, and engaged in a lifelong pursuit of these ultimate truths. One place this quest led him, as has become more clear in recent years, was toward an interest in the teachings of what we now know as Buddhism, which had become much more widely known in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century. Melville was a voracious reader, and knew of the historical Buddha through William Rounseville Algers The Solitudes of Nature and of Man (1867) and, in particular, the widely-read volume The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold (1879).

But one cannot ignore that the short poem suggests a rather simplistic (and heavily Christianized) understanding of Buddhist soteriology, Clarel spends 18,000 lines desperate for the Levants desert to slake his spiritual thirst, and surely the traditionally Christian imagery and allegory is more central to Billy Budd than any ostensible Buddhist influence. So why wonder about Melvilles exposure to what was, at the time, a strange esoteric faith? Because decades earlier, I will argue, a much younger, intellectually adventurous Herman Melville demonstrated a profoundly sophisticated understanding of Buddhist philosophy in Moby-Dick. Such regression from a sophisticated understanding of Buddhism to a simplistic one is on the face of it unlikely, and part of my study of Melvilles interest in Buddhism will be to explain why it may have happened.

Not long before he died, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a twentieth-century Japanese Zen master pivotal in bringing Buddhist practice to the West, told his students, Life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. Incidentally, so is Moby-Dick. It is the story of a young man who joins a whaleboat, the Captain of which is on a vengeful quest for a certain sperm whale. After chasing the whale around the world, they finally find him, at which point the whale rams the ship and the ship sinks.

It is a relatively simple premise, but for decades, scholars have struggled to affix definitive meanings to this kaleidoscopic book, and the eponymous white whale at its elusive center. In both its central narrative and tangential meanderings, Moby-Dick allows for myriad interpretations, from a Freudian focus on unconscious desires and sexual repression to a political scientists study of manipulative leadership and dictatorial power. Although these interpretations differ markedly from one another, the questions with which they concern themselves are the same ones that human beings ask of God, or the universe: What does it all mean? Where did it come from? How are we supposed to understand this life? What are we supposed to do with it? Herman Melville, again, struggled with these questions his entire lifeindeed, it is this inquiring impulse that would have led him to explore Eastern religions.

In this respect he is not unlike Captain Ahab, whose inability to abide with uncertainty drives the course of the narrative. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of Melville, [He] will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief.

So perhaps it is appropriate that the very notion of the White Whale has become colloquial shorthand for something that is unattainable, but will nevertheless be steadfastly pursued. Japanese Zen traditions have a proclivity toward unattainable, seemingly paradoxical vowssuggesting that although a task may be impossible, there is merit in the attempt. Melville himself warns us that the whale must remain unpainted to the last Any endeavor that points away from oneself, that searches for answers beyond ones own mind, is doomed to fail. With that in mind, let us meet our narrator.

Ishmael begins the story very close to ending his life. He tells us little about where he has come from (other than he used to be a schoolteacher), but he makes clear that the only thing that can save him is to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. These first chapters (the so-called land chapters) leave no doubt that there remains little resemblance between Ishmael the restless roustabout wandering around Manhattan and Ishmael the sagacious narrator recalling his former self. The most obvious differenceit almost seems as if Ishmael is caricaturing himselfis in his social interactions. He is disgruntled, unsettled, and morose; pugnacious, impatient, and verbose. His friendship with the savage Queequeg has an immediate and profound effect on him, to be discussed at length later on. But it is when he steps aboard the Pequod that the Ishmael of the land chapters evaporates, and, for vast sections at a time, almost ceases to exist as a personage on the whaleship. His place is taken by Ishmael the narrator, speaking backward into the past, with his avatar stowed somewhere below-deck. Within this narration, and the sundry explorations and preoccupations that occupy much of the book, Ishmael presents a comprehensive testimony regarding the means of his spiritual development from the former Ishmael to the latter.

This spiritual practice (surely it is not too much to call it that) is remarkably closely aligned with the two main branches of Buddhist meditation: tranquility (or shamatha) meditation, and insight (or vipassana) meditation. It is for this reason that, while Ishmael spends a great deal of time explaining why both water and whales are essential to his spiritual journey, not everyone on the Pequod has access to this largesse. Captain Ahab has his own unique relationship with waterand, needless to say, also with a certain white whale. But his unshakable conviction that the way to resolve his existential questions is through destroying Moby Dick is precisely the reason he does not progress toward wisdom as Ishmael does. In fact, not only does he not progress, but the unrequited hunt plainly has a detrimental, even devastating effect on Ahab, as well as on those around him. As Zen master Nanquan (748835), one of the most important teachers of the Tang period in China, said, If you try to direct yourself toward it, you go away from it.