What I'm Reading: March & April 2023

The Dawning Moon of the Mind & Open to Desire

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my “What I’m Reading” series. Some of the books I feature in this series will be ones I’ve read on my own, and others will be books I’ve read with this community as a part of the MGSW Book Club. (We’re only nine days into the May book club, so there is still time to join us - to see what we’re reading and to sign up, click here.)

The Dawning Moon of the Mind: Unlocking the Pyramid Texts by Susan Brind Morrow

There is no need to look to anyone to explain it, this numinous world. The properties that extract us and render us back into it — the miracles of conception, birth, and death — are properties belonging to all that exists. Pure energy, the nature of light, underlies all. We emerge from and dissolve back into this radiant ground. Not only can you know this, you are this.

The Pyramid Texts, discovered in 1880, are a set of extensive hieroglyphic carvings found inside a tomb in Egypt. Around four thousand years old, they are considered to be the world’s earliest known extensive body of writing. 

The Dawning Moon of the Mind by writer, translator, and scholar Susan Brind Morrow isn’t a book about the Pyramid texts, but rather, an invitation into a long-forgotten, numinous and animate worldview. Egyptologists had previously dismissed the Pyramid Texts as frivolous, nonsensical incantations, but Morrow recasts and retranslates them as seminal works of poetry that can be seen as inspiring and breathing life into the stories behind the world’s major religions.

Is it possible that what is conventionally thought of as religion is not a record of historical events but is based on poetic formulations of the actual world?

Morrow contextualizes the Pyramid Texts in the period of time in which they were written — a time when science, mathematics and written language were not in conflict with the natural world, but instead, based on and inspired by the natural and recurrent cycles of nature. The position of the rising stars, the cycle of the moon, and the sun’s movement across the ecliptic provided navigation, inspired measurement and geometry, and dictated periods of harvest, fertility, death, and rebirth. For the ancient Egyptians, animism provided the foundational underpinning of both ephemeral meaning and tangible materiality. The spiritual realm and the earthly realm were not separate entities, but one and the same.

The astonishingly naturalistic hieroglyphs that comprise the Pyramid Texts belong to the realm of empirical observation that is the basis of both science and poetry. They are both things, and metaphors arising from the astute observation of the intrinsic qualities of things. This is what enabled written language to develop: abstraction developed from metaphor. As Emerson wrote, ‘Language is fossil poetry.’

If all of this feels hard to grasp, that’s because it is. The subject matter and the writing style of The Dawning Moon of the Mind is embedded with a worldview that however admirable and desirable, still feels difficult to comprehend, let alone embody. It’s one thing to say we understand animism, and the cyclical nature of time, but it’s another thing to live it and be it. 

The Dawning Moon of the Mind left me feeling eager to learn more about ancient Egyptian culture, ancient languages, and also tantra, as Morrow credits much of the inspiration for the Hindu/Buddhist practice of tantra to the culture and religion of ancient Egypt with it’s spiritualization of sexual union, and rituals dedicated to awakening Kundalini energy.

I didn’t spend nearly enough time with this book as I would have liked because I started reading late and needed to catch up in time for our book club discussion, which you can watch the replay of below. I’m looking forward to re-reading The Dawning Moon of the Mind sometime soon because I’m certain there is an infinite amount of knowledge woven through it’s pages.

Big thanks to Jenny Kellogg for choosing this book, and for helping me lead the discussion!

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Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught by Mark Epstein

Desire is the crucible within which the self is formed.

In December 2020, I interviewed Madeleine Sorkin and Henna Taylor, the founders of The Climbing Grief Fund. At the end of our conversation, one of the books they recommended was The Trauma of Everyday Life by Mark Epstein. I loved the title of this book, and immediately purchased it, read it, and invited Mark on the podcast…

#52 Buddhism, Psychology & The Trauma of Everyday Life with Mark Epstein

Turns out, Mark Epstein, who is a psychiatrist, therapist, and Buddhist, has written many fascinating books, including Open to Desire, which I’d known about for years, but somehow didn’t get around to reading until now. Epstein’s books offer various reframings of traditional modern/Western approaches to Buddhism, and Open to Desire is specifically focused on challenging the conventional narrative that claims Buddhism is anti-desire.

To start, Epstein clarifies that the conventional translation of the Buddha’s first Noble Truth — “life is suffering,” isn’t totally accurate, as “dukkha,” the word the Buddha used to describe suffering, actually has a more subtle translation — “pervasive unsatisfactoriness”. The Buddha’s second Noble Truth, typically translated as “the cause of suffering is desire,” is also challenged by Epstein, who claims that “clinging” is a more of an accurate word for what the Buddha meant, rather than “desire.” 

Epstein reminds us that the Buddha’s teaching about following the Middle Way refers to the importance of finding balance between the right-handed path of renunciation and asceticism and the left-handed path of following our desire’s hunger for indulgence. The path toward enlightenment, then, is to engage with awareness, presence, and acceptance, somewhere between what it is we want and what it is that actually exists.

Desire teaches us, not by gratification, but by constantly undercutting itself, by never being entirely satisfied. It rubs our faces in reality by always falling a bit short of its goal. This is desire’s secret agenda, to alert us to the gap between our expectations and the way things actually are. In so doing, it shows us that there is something more interesting than success or failure, more compelling than having complete control.

Desire, Epstein claims, is something that can be harnessed for both spiritual and psychological growth, so long as we approach it with awareness and intention, and ensure that it emerges from a place of self-awareness.

The understandable, but misguided belief that to become enlightened one must reject attachment, desire, and passion, misses the point completely, especially because denying our desires doesn’t actually make them go away. By denying our desires, we simply push them into the shadow realm. This need to forcibly control and manage our desires is in direct opposition to the Middle Way, which is meant to be a path of surrender, and total acceptance of what is, including, of course, an acceptance of what it is we desire.

Interestingly, the same shame and self-punishment present in our rejection of desire is also present in our understanding of renunciation. According to the Dalai Lama, renunciation, like desire, is also meant to arise out of self-awarenesss, not as a force we impose on ourselves.

The Western cultural overlay that insists suffering and suppression provide a path to enlightenment directly contradicts what the Buddha had in mind, according to Epstein. We can be addicted to detachment just as much as attachment, and we can cling to renunciation just as much as indulgence. The only way to find balance is to honestly confront our idealizations, and to accept our unavoidable tendency to cling to things, people, and ideas too tightly. 

This book reminded me of a quote from Angels and America that I’ve always loved. When Prior, one of the main characters, is chosen as a prophet, he travels to heaven to return the prophecy he’s given, rejecting its proclamation that humans must “stop moving” in order to restore God’s faith and love in humanity.

We can't just stop. We're not rocks – progress, migration, motion is ... modernity. It's ANIMATE, it's what living things do. We desire. Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still desire for.

The truth is, if there’s any God or archetypal spirit worth worshiping in my life, it’s desire. Desire has always been a guiding light in the dark — illuminating both ultimate potential and inevitable limitation. Inclusive of the pain and consequence such curiosity and hunger portends, my desire has always served as a force in my life worthy of respect and devotion.

“The infinite,” Epstein explains, is reachable only when we open ourselves fully to the breadth of what life has to offer, allowing our desires to teach us, challenge us, and ground us. Ultimately, we learn balance, but only through curiosity and radical acceptance. 

For all of these reasons and so many more, I found Open to Desire incredibly validating, and feel grateful to have been able to read and discuss this book with the MGSW community as a part of our book club. To watch the recording of our discussion, click below.

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