Sailing Home

Using Homer's Odyssey to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls

Norman Fischer

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781416560395
• Topic: Persönliche Entwicklung
• Subtopic: Psychische Verfassung & Wohlbefinden

Homer's Odyssey has a timeless allure. It is an ancient story that is significant for every generation: the struggle of a homesick, battle-weary man longing to return to love and family. Odysseus's strivings to overcome divine and earthly obstacles and to control his own impulsive nature hold valuable lessons for people facing their own metaphorical battles and everyday conflicts -- people who are, like Odysseus, "heartsick on the open sea, " whether from dealing with daily skirmishes at the office or from fighting in an international war. Sailing Home breathes fresh air into a classic we thought we knew, revealing its profound guidance for navigating life's pitfalls, perils, and spiritual challenges. Norman Fischer deftly incorporates Buddhist, Judaic, Christian, and popular thought, as well as his own unique and sympathetic understanding of life, in his reinterpretation of Odysseus's familiar wanderings as lessons that everyone can use. We see how to resist the seduction of the Sirens' song to stop sailing and give up; how to bide our time in a situation and wait for the right opportunity -- as Odysseus does when faced with the murderous, one-eyed Cyclops; and how to reassess our story and rediscover our purpose and identity if, like the Lotus-Eaters, we have forgotten the past. With meditations that yield personal revelations, illuminating anecdotes from Fischer's and his students' lives, and stories from many wisdom traditions, Sailing Home shows the way to greater purpose in your own life.You will learn a new way to view your path, when to wait and when to act, when to speak your mind and when to exercise discretion, how to draw on your innate strength and distinguish between truth and deception, and how to deal with aging and changing relationships. Sailing Home provides the courage you need for your journey, to renew bonds with your loved ones, and to make the latter portion of life a heartfelt time of spirit and love, so that -- just as Odysseus does -- you can defeat the forces of entropy and death.

Part One

Setting Forth

Cutting through distraction and avoidance to begin the story

“And the sun set, and all the journeying ways were darkened.”

—The Odyssey¹

1 /The Sea of Stories

Our lives are full of stories, inundated by them. The day begins with the drama of the morning news and continues with stories we hear from friends, family members, coworkers, acquaintances. Popular songs regale us with stories, as do the movies, the Internet, the newspaper. Almost all our institutions, from business to psychotherapy, from school to pulpit, organize their messages through story. And at night we fall asleep to tales told in books, magazines, or television, and even our dreams weave our souls into the spell of story.

You’d think we would tire of stories, that we’d have heard it all by now. But our appetite for them is unabated. Creating, processing, and interpreting stories is a major industry, and at any given moment there are literally millions of people working on the creation of new stories that we will consume, discuss, fret about, dote over, forget, and remember.

This human obsession with stories is as old as language. Long before the printing press, or even the written word, people told stories, in verse or in song; they were blurted out loud during walking or working, whispered at night, declaimed from the holy places. People remembered and invented stories, sacred stories, profane stories, jokes, parables, fairy tales. From childhood we gravitate toward the good story and its endless fascination: “Tell it again!” children have always cried. Probably now more than ever we have access to stories from all cultures, all times, more stories every day than we could possibly absorb or pay attention to.

If you listen to stories closely, critically, and long enough, you begin to discern patterns. Boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl back. Pride leads to a fall. Within happiness lurks the seed of tragedy. Power corrupts. The world wears down a noble character. Love suffocates, we need to break free. A hero overcomes an evil adversary. In all stories there’s conflict or pressure, tension that builds to a release. Action rises, crests, then falls. Stories end happily, sadly, or with open-ended questions. I suppose you could make a list of ten or twenty or fifty plot categories into which almost all stories would fit. You could create diagrams that would chart the action of almost any story. A Russian folklorist named Vladimir Propp once did an exhaustive survey of fairy tales and folk stories in European cultures and was able to do just this. As Propp and others after him discovered, stories have deep structures with predictable variations, which is probably why they are so satisfying, even if we have heard them a thousand times. Like children, we want to hear again what we have heard before, for reassurance, because every story has a beginning and an end, a satisfying and predictable order. Stories reflect our hopes, our dreams, our fears. Just as we don’t tire of looking at ourselves in the mirror, though we can be reasonably sure of what we are going to see, we never tire of stories no matter how repetitive they may be. Through stories we can experience our lives experimentally, without consequences. Through them we can safely share the common human drama, of which our own life is but a small reflective sliver.

But stories can also be enormous distractions. Immersed in the latest soap opera on television, the newspaper, the tabloids, or in the lives of our friends, we can avoid tending to what is real in our own experience, to the truth or the challenge of our living, or to the real horrors and joys of the world.

Many centuries ago the Buddha noticed with compelling acuity the way in which absorption in stories—even in our own personal stories—could, and usually did, function as an avoidance mechanism, to disastrous effect. Immersed in the passion of the tale, we forget who and what we really are, and, heedless of our patterns of thought and behavior, we go on suffering driven and unexamined lives, hurting ourselves and others in the process. This is why the Buddha devised the doctrine of “Nonself,” by which he meant not that the self did not exist, but that the self depicted in stories, in gossip and myth, and in our own repeating emotional tape loops, is not a true self. Every story, by hooking us to its plotline and shaping us through its narrative structure, says far too much that is not true, and far too little that is.

As an antidote to the human obsession with stories, the Buddha taught moment-by-moment attention to the elements of perceptual, emotional, and intellectual experience. He once said, “In the seen let there be only the seen; in the heard only the heard.” In other words, let go of the story and pay attention to the actual facts of your life. When you pay attention to these facts, the Buddha felt, without being swept away by the exciting plotline of your story, you will be able to see what kinds of thoughts and deeds lead to suffering and trouble, and what kinds of thoughts and deeds lead to happiness. Seeing clearly, you will choose what’s happy over what’s not happy, and your life and the lives of those around you will improve.

As a follower of the Buddha’s teaching, I have trained myself over the years to live my life in this way, paying less attention to my story, and more attention to the fleeting moments that come and go with a tremendous fullness of emotion and perception. Being less subject to the heights and depths of my story, and more aware and tolerant of the patterns of my thinking and feeling, I think I am a happier, more balanced person.

And yet, there’s no denying stories, one’s own or anyone else’s. To be human is to tell your tale and listen to someone else’s. But it would make a difference to know that stories are stories. They are real, but not in the way we think they are when we take them too earnestly and allow them to mesmerize us. Stories are true as stories but not true as life. They require interpretation and reflection if we are to draw lessons from them. Stories teach us through their shapes, sounds, structures, and suggestions, their between-the-lines content that speaks to us through our souls rather than our minds or even our hearts.

To know that my story is not exactly mine, but is rather a wave rising up within the sea of stories, is to appreciate my story and everyone else’s in a new, wider, and more significant way. Maybe by looking at stories this way we can see them as large and mysterious. Then perhaps we won’t need to cling any longer to one particular version of our story as the only true story, the story of victimization or trivialization or despair or boredom; instead we might begin to see our many stories as stories of humanness, of being-aliveness, not just our own small possessions. And then, perhaps, we can be inspired by our own stories, and begin to make use of them in a new way.

Imagine: Go back in your memory to the first vivid event of your childhood that comes to mind. Maybe it’s something you saw or heard, a snatch of image, a fragrance, a taste. Maybe an expanse of green grass you played on, the way it smelled and stretched out under the sun. Maybe the taste of your first birthday cake. Remember the feeling of that moment; how the place seemed, the people, the furniture, the weather. Ground yourself for a moment in the physicality of this memory. Let yourself be in it with a relaxed, curious attitude.

Now set aside this moment and begin to tell yourself the story of your life. But don’t tell it résumé-style, with the usual distancing facts, where you went to school, what you accomplished, whom you married, dates of your children’s births, and so on. Tell it instead as if it were a myth, the untold, hidden tale of what really occurred, the half-remembered, seemingly insignificant things, moments when you were startled suddenly out of your ordinary stupor and felt a more robust significance. Chart your life path from one such moment to the next, choosing a few moments from childhood, a few from adolescence, a few from young adulthood, and beyond. Take time to do this.

Now connect the moments one to another so that you can begin to see the narrative thread that holds them together. You could even, possibly, write all this down. Or tell it to an intimate friend. And then, when you are finished, you could do it again, with a completely different set of moments. And again and again, probably, if you wanted to. And each of the stories would be true. Each would be the story of your life. And each would feel as if it were the story also of others’ lives.

Try this now, if you can. It will give you a different feeling about your life. “Who do you think you are?” will become a much more interesting question.

Thinking about The Odyssey in my talks at meditation retreats made me appreciate the possibility that stories, if we receive them in the right way, can heal us. Contemplating the old story of Odysseus’ wanderings, experiencing it as the profound metaphor that it is, gave my listeners and me an expanded, more emotional sense of our own peregrinations, our own attempts at making the odyssey of return. Odysseus wasn’t exactly the hero we had previously taken him to be, when we read Homer’s poem years before. In fact, Odysseus was a lot more like us than we had remembered—sometimes a hero, yes, but just as often a fool, a hothead, a lover, a father, a friend. The opening lines of the poem set forth the basic aspects of his character:

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns

driven time and again off course, once he had plundered

the hallowed heights of Troy.

Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,

many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,

fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.¹

Odysseus is not a simple man. Buffeted about by time and fate, he has endured much, has been thwarted time and again by forces beyond his control. In his travels—many of which he did not choose, they were chosen for him, often against his will—he has encountered and observed many sorts of people, and has learned to make use of their ways to further his own aims when he could. He has few illusions, for he has known hardship, despair, and suffering. A leathery, shifty fellow, Odysseus is a character actor more than a leading man. He is a survivor. He can be brutal when he is cornered, and he is just as willing as the next man to plunder and pillage, as he did at Troy. But he is at the same time deeply loyal, enduringly true to his wife Penelope and to Ithaca, his native land. He is a great talker, a storyteller whose tales, most of them false, are always persuasive. He is also a master of disguise who can appear as a beggar or a mighty warrior, depending on the situation. From time to time he succumbs to his passions, or even to his world-weariness. Often at crucial moments he does exactly the wrong thing, compounding his problems.

The Greek phrase rendered here as “a man of twists and turns” suggests that Odysseus’ chief character trait is his wiliness. He is above all clever, deceptive, and persuasive. In ancient Greek culture this sort of quick-witted, strategic trickiness was much prized. Thanks to their intellects, more than to their strength and courage, innovative entrepreneurial people were able to craft and shape reality in order to win victories and advance societies. Athena, the goddess of wisdom who also invented many domestic arts, as well as music, appears frequently in The Odyssey as Odysseus’ most important protector. She is also described as cunning and clever. And yet, prized and admired as these traits are, they are also understood to be problematic, for trickiness and cunning are just as likely to bring us trouble as to get us out of it. This double-edged aspect of Odysseus’ character figures strongly in his story, just as it does in ours. We, too, in order for us to become persons capable of surviving and thriving in this tricky world, have to be wily and cunning. If we are too innocent, too naïve, we’ll be destroyed. So we have to become pleasing people—people who can shift and change shape as conditions warrant. But our cunning and trickery have their downside, for the worldliness we develop to ensure our outer successes eventually becomes embedded in the identities that we craft for ourselves to get through this dangerous world. We begin to believe our own deceptions, and slowly drift away from our truer, more vulnerable, less presentable inner selves. This may be fine at first, but as time goes on it becomes untenable, until one day, like Odysseus, we too find ourselves “heart-sick on the open sea.”

The ten-year war at Troy finally ended, Odysseus is now determined to return home to Ithaca, where his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, await him. But ten years is a long time to be away, and in Odysseus’ absence things on Ithaca have deteriorated. Sure that Odysseus must be dead by now, suitors vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage occupy his household. Their profligate, disorganized ways (they spend days and weeks feasting, drinking up Odysseus’ storehouses of wine, slaughtering his cattle) threaten to destroy Odysseus’ home and substance.

The suitors represent life’s blind and relentless tendency toward disorder and entropy. They are all desire, appetite—sheer, thoughtless, comfort-seeking. Absence from home is dangerous: while we are away things fall apart. When we don’t pay attention to our inner life, it naturally, gradually, devolves into chaos and confusion. Someone moves in and slaughters our cattle, drinks up our wine, and dissipates the spiritual treasures we were born with and possessed as children. Without maintenance, a house falls down; without weeding, the fields go wild; and without tending, our inner lives will slowly but surely become disordered, so that when we need them most, when the circumstances of our mature lives require them, our moral fiber, our wisdom, our compassion, and our love are no longer there for us.

The situation on Ithaca in Odysseus’ absence is dire. Though things seem normal enough (as they may seem in our lives), and though no one is particularly noticing (as is also the case with us), disaster is brewing.

The Odyssey’s prequel, The Iliad, is a poem of going forth, a poem of honor, glory, conquest. In it, Odysseus and his comrades, led by Agamemnon and Achilles, set out for Troy to avenge the abduction of Helen, defeat the Trojans, and prove their valor. The Odyssey is a poem of return: the war is over now, and the struggle is for home. Going forth is necessary when we are young. We have to prove ourselves, seek our fame and fortune, find out who we are in the world so we can build what we have been given to do in our lifetime. Returning is the work of more experienced people, who, having gone forth in bright dreams, have encountered the twists and turns of pain and suffering, and so are ready to come home. Coming home sounds comforting and restful, but, as we have seen, it is not easy. In our absence powerful forces of destruction have gathered, and when we arrive we will have to do battle with them if we are to establish our rightful place. Odysseus’ return, full of many twists and turns, takes twenty-four books of The Odyssey to complete! And the journey of return that we must take after we have gone forth may be just as long, just as perilous.

The Odyssey has a second, powerful hero: the sea. In world literature, the seascapes in The Odyssey are justly famous. Odysseus’ adventures take him from island to island, each a small emerald shining in the vast, embracing sea. So many of the poem’s most memorable lines are loving but terrifying descriptions of the sea, which is “wine dark,” swells with mountainous tumult, heaves with steep valleys, blows up fearsome gales, glows in the sunrise, glistens at midday, shimmers in the moonlight. It is the province of powerful gods, who control its flow and use its power to achieve their own willful ends. Whenever the action of the story is to be advanced, the characters must quit the land and set out to sea. Doing so, they take their lives in their hands, for they never know what will happen, whether the gods will bless them and bring them safely to port, whether they will be swept away to a far land inhabited by strange and menacing creatures, or perish in the icy depths.

About the sea, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil says, “[it] is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it. On the contrary, this adds to its beauty. If it altered the movement of its waves to spare a boat, it would be a creature gifted with discernment and choice, and not this fluid, perfectly obedient to every external pressure. It is this perfect obedience that constitutes the sea’s beauty.”² The sea’s perfect obedience is to the world’s force, not human desire.

The sea has been Odysseus’ nemesis. The sea god Poseidon has been angry with him (later we will see why), which has caused him no end of trouble. Cast off cou...