Besides literature, I am interested and currently learning more about Buddhism. I thought it would be interesting to consider the 1001 books you must read before you die through a Buddhist lens. I started with The Elegance of the Hedgehog and realized that I am not qualified to give any kind of Buddhist interpretation on anything I read. But I will share what observations I made with the caveat being that I could be completely incorrect with regards to the Buddhist aspects.
The main ideas of Buddhism that I considered while reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog were the Four Noble Truths, The Noble Eightfold Path, and the concept of Emptiness. The following is taken from Way of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Jampa Thaye.
The Four Noble Truths
If it is possible to pare down Buddhism to a set of bulleted points, the above would at least be included. Buddhism is concerned with the fact of suffering, isolating its causes, and attempting to eradicate it. The thesis of TEotH is that life is absurd but also beautiful. I found many examples within the text that exemplified Buddhist principles.
The story of TEotH is told from two narrative perspectives. The first is a 54-year-old concierge and the other is 12-year-old Paloma, a suicidal genius. There is not much by way of plot. Instead we are privy to internal ruminations and observations.
“Day after day, already wearied by the constant onslaught, we face our terror of the everyday…. [T]hat is our endless existence: dreary, empty, and mired deep in troubles” (296). The First Noble Truth states that suffering exists, and this is a fact that most people need no convincing of, especially our narrators. The concierge, Renée, is an autodidact who hides her intelligence so as not to be “doomed to… punishment if I ever sought to make good use of my mind in defiance of my class” (288). Paloma is the one who observes that life is absurd which motivates her decision to no longer participate after her thirteenth birthday.
The cause of suffering, according to Buddhists, is the attachment to self. “I could not cease to be who I was,” Renée says (288).
So how do we escape suffering? “We are, basically, programmed to believe in something that doesn’t exist, because we are living creatures; we don’t want to suffer. So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that is why life has meaning” (24). Paloma takes up journaling, hoping to record profound thoughts and record beautiful moments that might persuade her to change her mind about the absurdity of life.
Renée finds relief in Art. “[T]he human species, given only to survival, slowly matured and arrived one fine day at an intuition of pleasure, the vanity of all the artificial appetites that divert one from one’s initial aspiration toward virtues of simple and sublime things, the pointlessness of discourse, the slow and terrible degradation of multiple worlds from which no one can escape and, in spite of all that, the wonderful sweetness of the senses when they conspire to teach mankind pleasure and the terrifying beauty of Art” (55).
Art and music teach Renée and Paloma the Second Noble Truth. “I have to put myself onto a very special stratum…. I have to forget myself and at the same time be superconcentrated…. [T]o relax, I put on [music] that takes me into a sort of faraway mood where things can’t really reach me… a ‘detached’ stratum of consciousness” (155).
There is no direct discussion of nirvana, as such, but it is still there: “How exhausting it is to be constantly desiring…. We soon aspire to… a blissful state without beginning or end” (204). The Third Noble Truth states that there is a possible cessation of suffering, a break from the circle of samsara, which is the series of birth and death. When a person has reached the level where they have become enlightened and learned detachment, they enter nirvana. And, yes, it does smell like teen spirit.
The Fourth Noble Truth tells how to achieve nirvana: by practicing The Eightfold Path. I am going to briefly give some examples of adherences to the path.
Right View tells us that actions have consequences. “Live, or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well” (114).
Paloma claims the practice of Right Speech: “If there’s one thing I’ll never do, it’s spread untrue rumors to harm someone” (209). She also condemns breaches of Right Conduct: “They drink and smoke and talk as if they were from the projects” (111).
Right Livelihood: “… [W]e tend to decorate our interiors with superfluous things” (161). “Maybe we’re all sick, with this too much of everything.” On the other hand, when “you have less… you enjoy it more” (162).
Right Mindfulness: “You can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral” (163). When speaking of the beauty of grammar, Paloma says, “You have to place yourself in a special state of awareness” (159).
“If you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present.” Paloma decides to always remember the future: death. “We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old [and die].” Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes in The New Meditation Handbook, “The purpose of meditation is to eliminate the laziness of attachment…. We need to contemplate and meditate on our death… until we gain a deep realization of death…. In this way, we will make our human life meaningful” (35, 37).
The final concept I observed in The Elegance of the Hedgehog was Emptiness. In Modern Buddhism, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes, “Emptiness is the way things really are. It is the way things exist as opposed to the way they appear... The realization of emptiness is the very essence of Buddhadharma.” Renée observes that is impossible “to know what we perceive and conceive of as a cat – if that which appears to our consciousness as a cat – is actually true to what the cat is in its deepest being” (60). She is observing the Emptiness that is the cat. The title of the novel also gives an example of Emptiness. The elegance of the hedgehog is that it is spiked on the outside but soft on the inside. What is the true nature of the hedgehog then? What is the true nature of our narrators? What is the true nature of the reader?
I liked this book, but I don’t know if I would recommend it. It’s the kind of book I had seen about a million times. It is unique in tone and the concepts it tries to put forth. It does not purport to be Buddhist, in case you were wondering. But overall, I felt that there was something missing. I didn’t really like the characters and I didn’t care what happened to them and I didn’t care about their problems. But I did like that it was trying to convey something worth conveying.
The main ideas of Buddhism that I considered while reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog were the Four Noble Truths, The Noble Eightfold Path, and the concept of Emptiness. The following is taken from Way of Tibetan Buddhism by Lama Jampa Thaye.
The Four Noble Truths
- The truth of suffering
- The truth of the cause of suffering – attachment to self
- The truth of the cessation of suffering – nirvana
- The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering – The Noble Eightfold Path
- Right View: actions have consequences
- Right Resolve: giving up home to follow path
- Right Speech: no lying, rude speech, gossip
- Right Conduct: no killing, injuring, stealing
- Right Livelihood: beg to feed, only possess necessities
- Right Effort: guard against sensual thoughts
- Right Mindfulness: be conscious of the impermanence of all things
- Right Samadhi: meditation
If it is possible to pare down Buddhism to a set of bulleted points, the above would at least be included. Buddhism is concerned with the fact of suffering, isolating its causes, and attempting to eradicate it. The thesis of TEotH is that life is absurd but also beautiful. I found many examples within the text that exemplified Buddhist principles.
The story of TEotH is told from two narrative perspectives. The first is a 54-year-old concierge and the other is 12-year-old Paloma, a suicidal genius. There is not much by way of plot. Instead we are privy to internal ruminations and observations.
“Day after day, already wearied by the constant onslaught, we face our terror of the everyday…. [T]hat is our endless existence: dreary, empty, and mired deep in troubles” (296). The First Noble Truth states that suffering exists, and this is a fact that most people need no convincing of, especially our narrators. The concierge, Renée, is an autodidact who hides her intelligence so as not to be “doomed to… punishment if I ever sought to make good use of my mind in defiance of my class” (288). Paloma is the one who observes that life is absurd which motivates her decision to no longer participate after her thirteenth birthday.
The cause of suffering, according to Buddhists, is the attachment to self. “I could not cease to be who I was,” Renée says (288).
So how do we escape suffering? “We are, basically, programmed to believe in something that doesn’t exist, because we are living creatures; we don’t want to suffer. So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that is why life has meaning” (24). Paloma takes up journaling, hoping to record profound thoughts and record beautiful moments that might persuade her to change her mind about the absurdity of life.
Renée finds relief in Art. “[T]he human species, given only to survival, slowly matured and arrived one fine day at an intuition of pleasure, the vanity of all the artificial appetites that divert one from one’s initial aspiration toward virtues of simple and sublime things, the pointlessness of discourse, the slow and terrible degradation of multiple worlds from which no one can escape and, in spite of all that, the wonderful sweetness of the senses when they conspire to teach mankind pleasure and the terrifying beauty of Art” (55).
Art and music teach Renée and Paloma the Second Noble Truth. “I have to put myself onto a very special stratum…. I have to forget myself and at the same time be superconcentrated…. [T]o relax, I put on [music] that takes me into a sort of faraway mood where things can’t really reach me… a ‘detached’ stratum of consciousness” (155).
There is no direct discussion of nirvana, as such, but it is still there: “How exhausting it is to be constantly desiring…. We soon aspire to… a blissful state without beginning or end” (204). The Third Noble Truth states that there is a possible cessation of suffering, a break from the circle of samsara, which is the series of birth and death. When a person has reached the level where they have become enlightened and learned detachment, they enter nirvana. And, yes, it does smell like teen spirit.
The Fourth Noble Truth tells how to achieve nirvana: by practicing The Eightfold Path. I am going to briefly give some examples of adherences to the path.
Right View tells us that actions have consequences. “Live, or die: mere consequences of what you have built. What matters is building well” (114).
Paloma claims the practice of Right Speech: “If there’s one thing I’ll never do, it’s spread untrue rumors to harm someone” (209). She also condemns breaches of Right Conduct: “They drink and smoke and talk as if they were from the projects” (111).
Right Livelihood: “… [W]e tend to decorate our interiors with superfluous things” (161). “Maybe we’re all sick, with this too much of everything.” On the other hand, when “you have less… you enjoy it more” (162).
Right Mindfulness: “You can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral” (163). When speaking of the beauty of grammar, Paloma says, “You have to place yourself in a special state of awareness” (159).
“If you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present.” Paloma decides to always remember the future: death. “We have to live with the certainty that we’ll get old [and die].” Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes in The New Meditation Handbook, “The purpose of meditation is to eliminate the laziness of attachment…. We need to contemplate and meditate on our death… until we gain a deep realization of death…. In this way, we will make our human life meaningful” (35, 37).
The final concept I observed in The Elegance of the Hedgehog was Emptiness. In Modern Buddhism, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso writes, “Emptiness is the way things really are. It is the way things exist as opposed to the way they appear... The realization of emptiness is the very essence of Buddhadharma.” Renée observes that is impossible “to know what we perceive and conceive of as a cat – if that which appears to our consciousness as a cat – is actually true to what the cat is in its deepest being” (60). She is observing the Emptiness that is the cat. The title of the novel also gives an example of Emptiness. The elegance of the hedgehog is that it is spiked on the outside but soft on the inside. What is the true nature of the hedgehog then? What is the true nature of our narrators? What is the true nature of the reader?
I liked this book, but I don’t know if I would recommend it. It’s the kind of book I had seen about a million times. It is unique in tone and the concepts it tries to put forth. It does not purport to be Buddhist, in case you were wondering. But overall, I felt that there was something missing. I didn’t really like the characters and I didn’t care what happened to them and I didn’t care about their problems. But I did like that it was trying to convey something worth conveying.
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