The forest dweller

Forest-dwelling is more a state of mind than a plan of action. It is the time in which things do not matter in the same way they did when we were younger

In the midst of the great city of Chicago, I live as a forest-dweller. Forest-dwelling is where I am now in my life, and I am satisfied-or, more precisely, grateful-to be there.

Ancient Hindu texts wisely divide life into three basic stages of life: in the first, you study; in the second, you marry and become a householder; and in the third, you go and live in the forest….

Forest-dwelling is not necessarily retirement; it is more a state of mind than a plan of action. It is the time in which things do not matter in the same way they did when we were younger, the time when we achieve the attitude prescribed in the Bhagavad Gita, 'action without ambition' (nishkama karma). I still teach and write as I have done for over forty years, more than ever, in fact, but without the all-consuming hunger for achievement that drove me for so many years…

There are of course things about aging that I don't enjoy. I hate it when various parts of my body stubbornly refuse to do their jobs. And it irks me that some of the younger generation of scholars in my field regard my work as vieux jeu; somehow I went to bed one night an enfant terrible and woke up an old fuddy-duddy. Yet I would not for a minute change places with those young scholars…I can say, and write, whatever I really think, one of the privileges of an eminence grise (or old fuddy-duddy).

Best of all, I have finally discovered the pleasures of solitude, of sitting on the deck of a house overlooking a freshwater marsh in Cape Cod, with the waves streaming in onto the beach of the Bay beyond, just sitting there, listening to the wind in the trees, looking at the sky, at the water, watching the red-tailed hawks cruising, and the otter making his way up the river, and the doe with her fawn coming to the bank of the river to drink. This, too, is my forest-dwelling.

Reprinted by permission of Aleph Book Company