The Eastern Voyd

Victor Pelevin’s Petr Voyd is a fascinating incarnation of a well established Russian literary hero: Not unlike Bulgakov’s Master, he is trapped between institutional and historical madness. Not unlike Dostoevskian Karamazovs he scrambles to identify his place in an incomprehensible universe that bombards him and his fellow-characters with never ending philosophical conundrums. He weighs, like Tolstoy’s Levin (or better even: like Tolstoy himself) the merits of Eastern vs. Western spiritual philosophy. Like Gogol’s lunatics he is slipping into dreamy absurdity. Throw in some blow from the “Novel with Cocaine”, the spiritual perversion of Blok’s tragic “12”, stir with a good helping of Mahayana Buddhism of the Gelugpa leaning and you get this punk tale of a man who coexists on (at least) two planes of consciousness: as an inmate in a lunatic asylum in present day Russia and as a commissar working for Furmanov’s (and history’s) Soviet Überhero Chapaev.

Chapaev i Pustota is a smart read that pulls few punches in its frantic pursuit of Eastern Enlightenment: it fearlessly throws overboard the likes of Christianity, Western reason, most of psychiatry, physics and a few other disciplines of thought. Yet it never really leaves the fold of the Russian novelist tradition, which has grappled with similar issues as deeply, if less aggressively, for centuries. The most obvious indicator for Pelevin’s traditional approach is perhaps his treatment of women, or rather the lack thereof. The novel is a thoroughly male undertaking. The one truly female character in this book is a glorious caricature of all the haughty, unattainable, beautiful femmes fatales which we know from the canon: Pelevin’s Anna (there is oh so much in the choice of that name) wears the black velvet gowns of her 19th century namesake Karenina; she has the cold aloofness of Turgenev’s Odintseva and even resembles the grand dame of Russian literature herself: Akhmatova. Yes, Pelevin looted his heritage for this novel and mixed us a potent speedball of a read in his cheeky tale of Russian questions and fallacies. Many issues are raised, intelligently, sarcastically, ironically, bitterly even, and in true Russian keeping the spiritual resolution which Voyd is allowed to find as the Raskolnikovs and Levins were before him, remains exclusively male – as is the history, the tradition, the hero, and the image of the woman that we are offered. In short: while the relentless pursuit of Buddhist ideals, rather than Christian salvation is new (at least to me), the ingredients, with which Pelevin works, are well known.

Regardless of the traditional leanings, it is the literary goal that makes this book ultimately successful. Its sole purpose is to chronicle the immense difficulty of mastering the central Buddhist idea that the past and the future do not exist and that all we can transcend is the here and now. The possibilities that open up once this deceivingly obvious hurdle is overcome by the mind is what Pelevin illustrates with irreverent Russian verve: that which we perceive as reality merges with that which we classify as dreams. They become equally relevant planes of consciousness that intersect and coexist outside of time. It is, therefore, Pelevin’s play on time that is the most elegant feat of his book: mind transcends time, knows the Buddhist, and hence what happens in Russia now is not at all removed from what the country experienced in another turbulent period – the revolutionary mayhem and the civil war.

The idea of an “alchemical wedlock with Asia” is carefully combined with the traditional affiliation Russia has with Buddhism: the book is steeped in Tibetan Buddhist imagery. Pelevin traces the heritage from the two Christian capitals to the Mongolian steppes from whence it came with the Golden Hordes. The Mongolian Khanate followed Mahayana Buddhism and the powerful Tibetan Gelugpas (yellow hats) long functioned as the spiritual advisors of the Empire.
No wonder then that Voyd reappears from an exploration of the infinite plane of consciousness in the here and now wearing a yellow hat in what is undoubtedly the high point of the entire novel. It is here that Pelevin manages to convey to his reader an inkling of what it may be like to step out of one’s temporal and spatial perception, accept the inherent non-existence of it all and move freely in the state of mind. This freedom can only be obtained if Russia embraces its Asian (read: Buddhist) heritage, which the majority of the culture has resisted so stubbornly since the battle of Kulikovo.

Considering the tremendous influence the Mongol occupation had on the Russian heritage Pelevin’s wedlock seems not too far-fetched. Of course, he is not the first to suggest this (Khlebnikov, for example, spoke of an “Azosoiuz” in his day), but I have never seen the idea executed so rigorously in Russian fiction before.

on searching for beginnings

As this plane tips its right wing towards the Irish Sea, the sun, which at this early hour sits deep in the south west, pours its heavy orange gold into the cabin. Rick is working on yet another terrible script; folks around us are snoozing, chatting, vacantly looking at the shopping brochure of the airline. Planes more than airports have become the locus of transience, with their often frequentation developing into a kind of peculiar constancy. Some of us write well in planes – what else is there to do, but to cruise along to wherever your mindstream takes you as you are trapped in utter passivity from a to b.

We are on our usual two hour flight to Bavaria with its obligatory turbulences, clouds over the Atlantic, and mainland illumination spreading over the continent like some kind of glowing disease. The only thing that glows up here right now is the horizon and it isn’t electric and loud, as the never ending string of civilized streetlamps, but warmth in golden lavender, soft and majestic.

In the book that lies next to me on the seat between Rick’s window and my isle seat, Thubten Chondron attempts to explain what Buddhists think of the query into the beginnings of mind. Science, she admits, attempts to unravel how our physical universe unfolded, but since mind is not physical, one may ask how it began? She writes: “Our afflictions, which include ignorance, also arise from causes: the previous moments of afflictions. Their continuity goes back infinitely. If there were a first moment of affliction, then we would be able to point to what caused it. If we were initially pure and later became ignorant, where did ignorance come from? It’s impossible for pure beings who perceive reality to later become ignorant. If someone becomes ignorant, he or she wasn’t completely pure before.” (Taming the Mind, p.7)

Is it useless to inquire into the beginnings of time and mind? And are they different to begin with or is the latter as intertwined with the former as it is with matter? “The Buddha”, writes this wise woman, “was extremely practical, stressing that we deal with the present situation and try to remedy it. Getting lost in useless speculation prevents us from focusing on the present and improving it.” (ibid.) Fair enough – the only tangible experience we have of time is the present and any meditation on what happened “before” and possibly “first of all” may well be futile, particularly when we admit just how much the present moment needs remedying. So in day-to-day practice it may well be best to avoid “useless speculation” and fix ourselves in the here and now. But I do find her exclusive, swiping dismissal of such fundamental questions as “what was at the beginning” or “how did the mindstream begin” a bit overzealous. Yes, it is hard to argue that anything besides focusing on the immediate present will lead to an alleviation of problems as they are. But contemplating the notion of the temporal character of time itself, no matter how potentially negligible the investigation may be in the eyes of Thubten Chondron's Buddha, could surely shed some light on our experience of time as we go and hence influence how we deal with the life-span that we are given whilst on this planet.

mission statement

squeezed in between submission deadlines, application procedures, grant proposals, lecture writing, and an immanent departure date for Germany, I made time last night to gather a few friends and colleagues to celebrate. "А повод?" (What is the reason), one invited friend asked me in Russian - and it was pretty easy to answer: My mother got a miraculous break this week in her fight against a debilitating bone condition in her spine. Strange how life can turn on a dime! One minute she was scheduled for another harrowing operation (through her rib cage, past the lung to the front of her upper spine, where a vicious inflammation had eaten an inch diameter hole into her vertebraes threatening her spine to collapse...), the next minute the surgeons discovered that astoundlingly enough her body has begun to build bone matter in the affected areas. She was sent home the same day and is now awaiting physiotherapy in a clinic starting monday.

While everyone in the family is totally aware of the fact that this is a postponement and by no means a cancellation of the ordeal, it has brought great hope to us all. It is a break, as I said. A turn of events that bought us all time, and that is what much of this blog will be about: time and how we as humans in this globalizing world handle it. I am interested in different cultural approaches to this issue, but I will admit right here at the outset that I think the Buddhists have a pretty convincing case in this regard (as in many others). Hence you will find plenty of references and hints at Buddhist thought not only in the postings, but also in my publications, readings, theories and basic convictions. I don't think I can call myself a "buddhist" yet, though - I am still searching...

Another thought system that this blog will explore is that of Velimir Khlebnikov. He has been an incredible mentor and I owe him big time for tearing down limits of thoughts, fossilized frames of reference, cultural narrowmindedness. For anyone who is in search of the global narrative - check out Khlebnikov's writings and enjoy the ride.

Ok, that is perhaps enough for my first blog on this second day of the last month of this year 6. A bientot - and enjoy your time