In the Fall of 2019 I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for the first time. I was living in Oregon and working as a psychiatric pharmacist at a mental health and drug rehabilitation facility. A colleague – a psychologist – had recommended the book to me a year earlier. We’d been eating together and the conversation turned to books. I remember that she professed The Alchemist to be her favorite, and said she was even considering getting a quote from the book tattooed on her body. She was still debating which part to tattoo it on…I remember being nonplussed and slightly disdainful of her and her recommendation. Too commercial for my taste, I thought, and lacking serious rigor and depth. This was my judgement then. By revealing this unattractive judgement I don’t mean to condemn either my friend or myself. It is simply how I felt at the time. In any case, a year later I decided to read the book and of course I found that I quite enjoyed it. In the story, a young Andalusian shepherd boy dreams of a treasure buried near the pyramids in Egypt, and decides to disrupt his tranquil life by setting off in quest for the treasure. I was struck by what I interpreted to be the novel’s central allegory. Namely, that we already have everything we need to be happy, but that often we have to go a long way to know it. Or said with a more spiritual slant, we already have (or are) what we are searching for. Mystics often add by way of warning that in our very searching we tend to build a story around ourselves that prevents us from seeing IT, our true nature. This piece of advice did not appear to figure as strongly into the philosophy of The Alchemist, which seemed to (at least in my reading) opt towards the conventional lens of celebrating the seeker and his quest. I’ll describe more of the shared plot of this teaching story later, when I talk about my introduction to an older variation.
Rumi says – “Do not be a seeker wrapped up in your quest. Repent of your repenting.”
My second acquaintance with an older version of this same teaching story came only months later. In December of 2019 I had decided to take a well-deserved solo vacation. Still in my safe, conventional career, but starting to lean out slowly. I had gotten it in my head that I wanted to visit a big city. I guarded my vacation days in plans to to make a short international trip. Impulsively, I chose Vancouver, B.C.. A week before the trip I tried in vain to change my destination. The typical frozen fog (pogonip) of the winter season had descended upon Oregon, and I wasn’t relishing the thought of going from frozen fog to dreary rain. Mexico City! Please let me change my ticket to Mexico City. But no, it was too late. According to the airline the ticket was unalterable. A week later I found myself in a hostel in downtown Vancouver, B.C., in self-imposed holiday exile.
I fancied myself too mature to join in the youthful shenanigans with my fellow hostelites. But it appeared I hadn’t been mature enough to avoid getting myself in this situation in the first place. On day two it dawned on me that this whole vacation had been a big mistake. I wanted to be back in Oregon, with my privacy, my quiet morning routine, my work where I at least felt a little useful and not so lonely and disconnected from everything. But alas, there were still 8 days to go.
I tried to do a few good deeds here and there when I saw a chance. I lent my phone charger to a friendly Mexican guy one morning. He was a bohemian type who looked to be traveling around with his guitar. He said he’d spent the previous night at a woman’s place, but later on there had apparently been a falling out, and when I came across him in the hostel lobby he was contemplating whether to book a room for a night or not. I left him to charge his phone in the lobby and went to buy him a toothbrush and toothpaste at the corner market. When I returned he thanked me and laughed lightheartedly – all smiles and positivity – and we parted ways amicably while I wondered what his inner life was like… Does he also suffer from the acute day-to-day appreciation of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of everything?
On another day I helped a small Asian girl carry her luggage down the stairs. On a third occasion I walked into a supermarket with a homeless fellow and let him pick out whatever he wanted. I also had a few friendly conversations with fellow guests in the hostel dining area over breakfast. These small moments sprinkled throughout the vacation helped me feel a little better. But just a little. What I really needed was communion, not just communication. And that is hard to find. I wouldn’t say that I’m unhealthily introverted or misanthropic. But during this season of my life I felt (and still feel) that by socializing with those who don’t understand the…well I suppose I might call it the paradigm, or the ambition from which I’m operating – that by socializing and getting too caught up in those others around me, I’m contaminating my heart-wish and moving in “the wrong direction.” And so, based on this well-intentioned but perhaps overly idealistic stance/feeling, I spent the ten days almost entirely alone. Better to practice going into my aloneness than running away from it with others who don’t get it. That’s how I felt.
As luck would have it, it only rained for nine of my ten days in Vancouver. Nonetheless, even the unceasing rain was not lacking in Canadian courtesy. It made up for itself by offering a fine misty drizzle rather than a downpour. This quality of the rain made it possible to walk around for a good 15 to 20 minutes and only feel slightly damp. The trick, I soon learned, was to step inside somewhere long enough to dry out a little bit, and then I could walk about some more – following this pattern for an entire morning even – without ever becoming properly, completely wet. The rain of course made taking a bus out of the city and into nature less attractive. In nature I wouldn’t have much shelter to keep me from getting fully soaked – an unappetizing prospect to be sure. I found myself in libraries or bookstores for most of the trip. I discovered that the large, multi-story central library was my favorite in the city. One morning, in the course of ducking inside shops for temporary refuge, I found myself in a place called Indigo bookstore. A well-known, two story shop frequented by locals and visitors alike. I decided to linger, and was soon leafing through “The Essential Rumi” translated by Coleman Barks. The book was in a small section devoted to poetry in the front of the store, to the side of the check-out area. I bought it and decided to take it back to my nook in the central library, where I sat and read for hours. It was there, one rainy afternoon, that I experienced my second encounter with the teaching story. I found it suddenly, towards the middle of the book, and in that instant of recognition my heart leapt. Oh Rumi, how wonderful that you wrote about this too! The poem was called “In Baghdad dreaming of Cairo, in Cairo dreaming of Baghdad.”
In Rumi’s version, as might be gleaned from the title, the protagonist starts in Baghdad. Keep in mind that during the time Rumi was writing (13th century), Baghdad would have been one of the world’s foremost cultural centers. In Rumi’s version, as in Coelho’s, the protagonist’s destination is Egypt. Rumi’s poem, like all of his poems, makes ingenious leaps and tangents, weaving subtle references and daring metaphors together to bring together multiple messages under an overlaying theme. Here, I’ll just limit myself to describing some of the skeleton plot of his poem insofar as it relates to the shared teaching story we have in mind.
Rumi’s protagonist is a young Baghdadi who inherits a fortune but squanders it. One afternoon, while sleeping next to the well in his front courtyard he has a dream about a treasure in Cairo. He decides to undertake the long, arduous journey and by the time he arrives in Cairo he’s out of money and in rough shape. The poem has an exquisitely succinct line. I no longer have the book for reference, but the line is something to the effect of – “determination and shame and hunger kept pulling him forward and backward and sideways.” In any case, the young protagonist decides to beg in the streets at night in order to get some coins for food. He needs to keep himself alive in order to keep pursuing his dream. Unbeknownst to him, there has been a recent rash of night robbers in Cairo, and the night guards have been given new, severe orders to kill anyone they find prowling the streets at night. Soon they come upon the young man and seize him. They are about to strike him when he calls out in desperation. “Wait! I can explain!” I’m not a thief he says, and he goes on to explain why he is there, telling them everything about his dream. His explanation is of course slightly ridiculous. How often do people set out and risk everything just for a dream? A literal dream, I mean. Not a long-held ambition. But the captain of the guard believes him. “Always the simple truth has this effect. It carries an undeniable flavor and gravity.” The captain of the guard orders his men to free our Baghdadi, but not before he gives him some parting advice. “I believe you,” he says. “You’re no thief. But you’re a fool.” You see, it so happens that the captain of the guard had had a similar dream, “but I wasn’t dumb enough to go off chasing it.” The captain describes his own dream to our protagonist. In the captain’s dream, the treasure was not in Cairo, but in Baghdad, on such and such a street, at such and such a house, and finally at the bottom of the well of the house’s front courtyard. Without knowing it, the captain has described the protagonists very own house! The protagonist returns home and finds the treasure buried at the bottom of his own well.
Rumi writes about the story’s message in the following way: “It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home. I will search for the Friend with all my passion and all my energy, until I learn that I don’t need to search. The real truth of existence is sealed until after many twists and turns of the road. As in the algebraical method of the two errors, the correct answer comes only after two substitutions, after two mistakes. Then the seeker says, ‘if I had known the real way it was, I would have stopped all the looking around.’ But that knowing depends on the time spent looking!”
The metaphor of “digging one’s own well” (keeping in mind that the protagonist’s treasure was at the bottom of a well) has also been employed by mystic teachings of various traditions throughout the millennia. In another Rumi poem, there is mention of tearing down your house (which I take as a metaphor for the ego, or personality attachment, or small-self) and digging in the foundations. I interpret this to be an exhortation to take my attention away from building myself up towards all the shiny baubles of the external world, and instead turning my attention humbly within. Again, I believe this exhortation is universal amongst spiritual traditions. Having said that, it seems (to me at least) that the path is also extremely subtle, and it isn’t always easy to know if we’re on the right track. Later in our Baghdad-Cairo poem, Rumi says:
“I don’t know whether the union I want will come through my effort, or my giving up effort, or from something completely separate from anything I do or don’t do. I wait and I fidget and I flop about as a decapitated chicken does, knowing that the vital spirit has to escape this body eventually, somehow!”
I left Vancouver’s multistory central library that evening and walked slowly back to my hostel. The streets were crowded, and bright, glamorous advertisements vied with the current of well-dressed pedestrians for my attention and interest. I did my best, if only for the short walk back to my room, to stay centered within myself. A few days later I was back in Oregon. Seven months after that I left my career. Nothing too dramatic or sudden, though. One has to be responsible about these things. I gave my boss seven months notice to find a replacement. I didn’t talk about an inchoate spiritual heart-wish that I feel compelled to follow. I explained my decision in terms that I thought might be more relatable. I talked about feeling that I’d climbed the career ladder too quickly, and now wanting to give myself the opportunity to step off the ladder, look around, and see if my ladder was indeed leaning against the right wall (a great image that I had taken from 7 Habits by Covey). I talked about wanting to do an “Eat, Pray, Love thing” now, while I’m still young and without dependents. They understood, and moreover I received encouragement from some others saying they wished they’d done the same thing when they were younger. I left on good terms with everyone.
Let’s fast-forward to December 2020. I am driving across the country in a Honda sedan with all of my possessions. I’m on my way to my parents’ house back out East. I’ve just attended a meditation retreat, and in the not-too-distant future I’ll be flying back out to California to live at a Zen monastery, which will challenge me and put my spiritual ambition to the test more than ever before. But I don’t know all that yet. I feel free – free like only movement and wide-open spaces can sometimes make you feel. I must have been on a state highway in Southeastern Oregon, making the long road trip across the USA once again, except this time alone and headed the other direction. In Eastern Oregon the land is vast and towns are far apart. The nearest town was almost a 100 miles away and there wasn’t a human trace in sight aside from my car and the road. Imagine – you’re on the road. Just you and the sun and the sky and the earth in all directions as far as you can see. Everything as pure and clean and simple as the very first day of existence. The complications and noise of the world are a long way from you now. You are elated. You roll down the windows and whoop spontaneously and joyfully into the wind. After a while your elation begins to settle into a calm contentedness. You roll up the windows again and turn on your audiobook, and that’s when it happens. That’s when I came across the final version of the teaching story.
I was listening to collected stories of Borges. Again, as with Rumi, that initial spark of recognition was a delicious thrill. Whereas Rumi interpreted his version of the story within a poem, and Coelho developed it into a novel, Borges, in his concise and inimitable way, sketches it in the form of a short story. Borges calls his short story “The Tale of the Two Dreamers”. In his version, the protagonist begins in Cairo and travels to Isfahan. I happened to have spent five years of my childhood in Isfahan, so I was therefore delighted that Borges found it to be a suitably exotic locale for his version of the tale. Aside from some minor differences, Borges keeps basically the same plot. I can’t say that I took a lot specifically from Borges’ version of the story. Mainly, I felt that the timing of its appearance in my life bore a profound poetic symmetry. I don’t feel it is necessary to rehash any of the plot again here.
It might be useful at this point to talk about the actual chronological order of the appearance of these tales, rather than just the order in which I encountered them. The original version of this story, as it turns out, predates even Rumi. It appears in what we now know as Night 351 of the 1001 Arabian Nights. The Arabian Nights, of course, are an anthology of stories that were compiled over many centuries, beginning in India, migrating through Persia, then eventually coming into the Arab world where they took on the form we are familiar with today. Rumi would likely have drawn inspiration from the tale in the “Arabian Nights” collection (although they may not have been called that at the time) and woven it into his 13th century poem. Next came Borges, who published his “Tale of Two Dreamers” in the 1930’s. Lastly, Coelho published The Alchemist in 1988. These are, I should also clarify, the versions I have been introduced to. I am not discounting the possibility of there being others, perhaps many others.
I like this organic, iterative process of telling and retelling stories, and I think it’s beautiful that so many authors have made this particular story their own over the years. It’s fitting that it found its very origin in the mysterious, author-less abyss that is the 1001 Nights. I can imagine sometime in the near future when someone might write a new version of the story, perhaps called “In New York dreaming of Tulum” or some such.
Now I don’t know about you, but I personally find the story’s underlying message to be very edifying. Basically, it’s reassuring us that we don’t have to have our shit figured out. Yes, we are very lucky these days to have access to the internet and all the accumulated wisdom of the past. Many times, in many ways, you may have heard the message that a happy man is a man with a certain set of attitudes, not a certain set of circumstances, and that traveling around the world in search of fulfillment is often misguided. You may be better served by staying put and looking within yourself. You are already complete as you are, you just don’t know it yet. And so on. And yes, this is all wise advice. But I think a trap that might be easy to fall into, especially if you’re a highly idealistic young person such as myself, is that if you hold onto these ideals too tightly, it actually takes you in the wrong direction. These truths may be true for those spiritual masters and wise ones who originally said them, but to you and me they are just an intellectual exercise – I don’t really know them to be true in my bones. So live your truth. Make your mistakes. Flop around like a decapitated chicken. Act according to your own best judgement and your own guts, always doing your best – until finally, maybe, if you’re diligent and honest and lucky, you might one day know from your own experience and in your own marrow that you truly don’t need to go around looking for anything outside yourself to make you happy. As Rumi ecstatically says:
“The water of life is here. I’m drinking it. But I had to come all this long way to know it!”
Always at the Beginning 