To Blog or Not to Blog is the Question

Here is a short story by one of my my favorite authors, J.D. Salinger. In this short story Teddy, from his book Nine Stories, the author writes one of the best treatises on Hinduism anyone can write in just 6-7 pages , ok 20 but the rest is pure crap.

The story is about this kid, Teddy who is going back to US from England on a ship along with his parents and sister, Booper. The story starts with Teddy pestering his parents and he looks like any other kid. But the reality is that he is a mystic and is the focus of attention of the learned at the major universities of the world.

The crux of the story is conversation between Teddy and a person called Bob Nicholson, a highly educated guy from Harvard or someplace. In less than 5-6 pages JD salinger explains a lot about Hinduism . Every single line is pregnant with meaning.

Teddy tells Bob that he had mystical experiences, what he calls “getting out of the finite dimensions”, since he was four and he achieved Nirvana when he was 6 , when he saw his sister drinking milk and saw that everything was God and that she was pouring God(milk) into God(her). Teddy tells Bob that in his last birth, he was a ascetic in India but fell out of grace for being associated with a woman and abandoning meditation and was born in the US, to suffer for his bad karma.

Teddy thinks that it is not good to be emotional, reflecting the Hindu and Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment, as everything is ephemeral.

On a question asked by Bob on how one can get out of finite dimensions, which the Hindu philosophy time and again urges people to do, Teddy answers that one should stop looking at objects as stopping at one place. He goes on to add that everything is continous. On being pooh-poohed by Bob, Teddy sarcastically tells him that he is just being logical.

Hindu philosophy believes that everything is part of God. To give an analogy, some scriptures say that we are just leaves of the big tree called God, and by doing Yoga and seeing objects through ones mind, one can get out of finite dimensions and see oneself as part of God.

Teddy tells Bob that what Adam ate in the Garden of Eden was an apple containing Logic and intellectual stuff and that one should vomit it from the system. The trouble, Teddy tells Bob, is that people dont want to see the way things are and that they dont want to achieve God where it is peaceful and want to be reborn.

Nirvana and Moksha in Hinduism mean achieving God and getting rid of rebirth.

When asked by Bob whether Teddy predicted death of some professors, Teddy tells him that he didnt but just wanted to warn them about certain times and predicts his own death (in a few minutes) in a very subtle way that the readers and Bob dont understand it in the first pass. Teddy even goes on to say that people have died thousands of times but are still afraid of death, again reflecting the Eastern philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism.

Teddy gives Bob a good analogy between life and dreams and tells him that reality is nothing but an illusion, again an imminent part of Hindu philosophy.

On asked by Bob about what changes should he do to the educational system if he were in charge, Teddy tells him that he would teach kids on how to meditate and then make them spit whatever their parents and adults taught them and teach them self-knowledge and would not teach them the conventional subjects.

Self-knowledge is stressed in both the Hinduism and Buddhism.

On asked by Bob whether he would be interested in research say medicine when he grows up, Teddy tells him that doctors are too shallow and talk too much about cells and all that. Teddy tells Bob that he knows how to grow. He has done it unconsciously from his birth. All he needs is to meditate and get that knowledge to the foreground and he should be able to treat himself without any medicine and everyone should do the same.

It has a sixth-sensish end too, which makes you think over and over again logically, which is what Teddy has urged all over the story not to do.