John Miedema

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 4

In Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books, Lynne Sharon Schwartz tells how her attention was caught by a piece in the New York Times by

a Chinese scholar whose “belief in Buddhism … has curbed his appetite for books.” Mr Cha says, “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and not let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking.” … Lying in the shadow of books, I brood on my reading habit. What is it all about? What am I doing it for? And the classic addict’s question, What is it doing for me? … Buddhism aside, there is no Reader’s Anonymous, so far, to help curb this appetite.

I confess I am a book addict. My habit is kept to a minimum by the slowness of my preferred reading speed, a few pages at a time, with at least minutes for reflection in between, and an insistence on writing something about what I have read before moving on to the next book. It is like a smoker who cannot physically handle much nicotine, and so only smokes a few cigarettes a day. But while I’m being honest, I do scan vast quantities of information every day online; I just keep forgetting to count that as reading. Typical addict.

In Slow Reading, I reviewed the research by Ross (2006) in which avid readers find reading a happy surrender, transporting him or her to another place. Nell’s (1988) research on “ludic” or pleasure reading indicates that some readers may experience an altered state of consciousness. Is it a high? I still experience this altered state, though I am convinced that my best experience of it was reading as a child, when purpose and time did not matter. Am I still chasing that first reading high? Sounds like trouble.

Addictions are a kind of self-programming, a robotic response. Would an enlightened mind be free of books? Have you seen the movie version of The Razor’s Edge, with Bill Murray in one of his few serious roles? After spending time in a monastery, he is sent to spend time meditating alone on a mountain. A monk gives him his books to take along. One day, he becomes enlightened and burns his books.

Is my reading simply an addiction? Buddhism and its theme of freedom from attachment speaks to me too, so I think about it. Perhaps reading is an addiction, but not simply. If I ask myself Schwartz’s question, “What is it doing for me?”, I can easily answer, quite a bit. I know what addictions are like. Seven years ago I quit a twenty year smoking habit. I have not looked back; I pity the poor smokers. While reading does share some of the compulsive nature of addictions, it builds me up rather than breaks me down. I wake up feeling a bit better off rather than worse off. I do not wish that I had never started reading, and I encourage my kids to take it up. Reading is a sister of thinking, and for that we humans are hard-wired.

Perhaps when I am old and grey, I will be wise enough to transcend reading, but not today.

Nell, V. (1988). Lost in a book: The psychology of reading for pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Ross, C.S., McKechnie, L. (E.F.) & Rothbauer, P.M. (2006). Reading matters: What the research reveals about reading, libraries, and community. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.