The Way of Muri

Before we embark on Muri’s journey, meet our globetrotting sperm whale or witness the march of the spiny lobsters, before we commence our hymn to movement, let us first begin with a little history. My apologies for the lengthy prologue, but the best way to start is with a brief journey back through the centuries…

The ancient philosophers could not comprehend the idea of staying forever in one place. Confucius and Laozi both advocated constant movement. ‘The road, the road, what else but the road?’ was a question posed more than once by the poet and philosopher Zhu Ho. A learned man was not considered as such in the Kingdom of Yu unless he had crossed mountain ranges and travelled at least a hundred
li
. This led to an interesting difference of opinion between the well-known Taoist Lin Peng and his manservant, who was by all accounts reasonably well educated. Lin Peng believed that parents and other mentors should instil in children from birth the idea that life is an infinite journey. The idea of ‘infinity’ should not inspire fear or anxiety in the future traveller – life is simply an eternal march from one point in space to another, during which the noble man has the opportunity to acquire a wealth of knowledge, experience and skills, from the ability to catch butterflies without harming the pollen on their wings to mastery of the swords of Wu. Interestingly, Lin Peng did not restrict his interpretation of the road to the mountains and valleys of the kingdoms of Yu and Wei. This cosmopolitan philosopher was deeply convinced that a traveller should not stop upon reaching the borders of a terrestrial kingdom but was obliged to continue his journey until he reached the ‘borders of Heaven’. It is worth remembering that Lin Peng was also a committed advocate of ‘speculative travel’ – in other words, meditation.

It may sound strange, given the deeply ingrained Chinese tradition of respect, but Lin Peng’s manservant dared to challenge his views on the infinite journey of life. Likening the noble man to an arrow in motion, he reasoned that sooner or later every
arrow must reach its target, thereby ending its flight. Lin Peng disagreed and beat the young man with his staff. However, the question posed by the youth led to an exchange of fire between two ancient Chinese schools of thought – Qin and Bago. The founders of Qin – the direct followers of Lin Peng – based their entire philosophy on a single postulate: ‘Nothing but the road.’ Anyone setting out on the path of ‘a hundred discoveries’ should surrender themselves entirely to the ‘great beauty of infinity’. (Meditation as a means of going beyond ‘all boundaries’ was an intrinsic and obligatory part of the process.)

Their opponents were fiercely opposed to these views. The patriarchs of the School of Bago repeatedly referred to the inevitable end of even the longest of journeys: sooner or later an arrow must always come to rest. These pragmatists declared their main aim to be ‘the noble man’s internal journey of self-perfection’, which would sooner or later lead to a ‘divine state’.

The embittered polemic of the two schools began to break down in the fifth century. Finding an audience amongst his pupils (the ‘blockheads’, as they were derisively labelled), a former adherent of the School of Qin named Yui began to air his own views on the theory of the infinite journey of life. Yui called for an exclusively practical interpretation of the Path – the noble man should travel in the most literal sense of the word, stepping beyond the threshold with sandals on his feet, a straw hat on his head and a knapsack on his back. All ‘speculative’ approaches were heresy as far as Yui was concerned, having no foundation in the original doctrine. Yui maintained that the followers of Qin should spend their lives travelling continuously, not staying in one place for more than three days. When the time came for them to die then they should do so on the road, with their staff in hand. Yui was openly hostile to those who attempted to assign philosophical significance to even the most ordinary of journeys. ‘Walk without thinking!’ was his motto. China became overrun with hordes of ‘blockheads’, who seriously compromised the
teachings of the school. The situation was further complicated by the fact that many of Yui’s pupils who had set out on their own ‘infinite journey’ began pillaging openly and indiscriminately, even going so far as to target Shaolin monks. By the end of the fifth century they had become a serious problem for the authorities and the people of China. Details of several punitive campaigns against the ‘blockheads’ were recorded, the most successful of which was waged in the province of Sichuan. The gangs were dispersed, and their leader was ultimately quartered with blunt knives. As is often the case, the authorities subsequently extended their persecutions to the innocent representatives of the theory of the ‘infinite journey’, and before long they were completely eradicated.

There were some significant changes in store for their opponents too. An individual named Du Pin began to argue that the true end of all journeys is the attainment not of some kind of ‘internal’ goal but rather of a terrestrial and fully tangible one. The heretic was duly exiled to the island of Honshu, where he immediately set about promoting his theory amongst the indigenous people. Revealing poetic inclinations, he affirmed that one man’s path might end with
sakura
blossom in the mountains and another’s in a lowly hut, which he would never want to leave. Du Pin’s attempts to garner a following were largely unsuccessful, though traces of a similar sectarianism can be found in early Japanese chronicles. One such entry refers to a certain Akawa from Nagoya announcing to a crowd of people that the end goal of all his travelling was a honeysuckle bush near the gates of Tanaga. This curious reference – one of very few remaining – is evidence of Du Pin’s influence. However, by the beginning of sixth century the school seemed to have disappeared without trace.

The philosophy of the ancient Chinese ‘wanderers’ attracted an unexpected following in the Arab world, and ardent enthusiasts fanned the dying embers of the debate with uniquely Arabian
passion. These new disciples instantly separated into two camps – the ‘star lovers’ (those who believed in the infinite journey) and the ‘hemlocks’ (those who believed that every journey must come to an end). The practical application of the star lovers’ ideology infuriated the orthodox caliphs. Nevertheless, in spite of the threat of persecution and punishment, their impassioned appeals for people to turn their backs on all that was familiar for the sake of the ‘infinite journey’ stirred up the entire Caliphate. Great crowds of worshippers dropped everything to follow the agitators. Attempts to halt the progress of one such procession in Damascus resulted in a wave of civil disorder. The authorities’ intervention was understandable – the star lovers were emptying entire towns; people everywhere were abandoning their houses and land and leaving the tax collectors with nothing. Many fell foul of the hordes of beggars roaming the roads, who had no qualms about looting entire caravans in their search for food.

The hemlocks, with their talk of the ‘land of the Sun’ that lay on the other side of the Caucasian mountains, represented an even greater danger. Of course in this land there were no rich people, no poor people, and absolutely no understanding of the terms ‘collector of transit dues’ and ‘executioner’ – and this Utopia was but a short journey away. It goes without saying that this clearly stated goal inspired the despairing persecutors to create entire pyramids from the severed heads of the hemlocks’ disciples.

Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of Baghdad, may have been the only one to regard these disturbers of Arabian peace benignly – surprisingly so. Reliable sources also indicate that the doctor and philosopher Al Mohammed Ben Aden, a close friend of the caliph’s, was a passionate believer in the star lovers’ philosophy. In his treatise ‘On the Benevolence of Allah’, and particularly in the immortal ‘Rose of Khiva’, he refers affectionately to these spiritual madmen, who were prepared to ‘fly from star to star, just as butterflies flit from flower to flower’.

The supporters of Sharia law hated the star lovers to such an extent that, to the disappointment of contemporary researchers,
by the thirteenth century nothing remained of them but cloudy memories and romantic legends. No source has ever been found to indicate which country the hemlocks meant by the ‘land of the Sun’. However, enthusiasts still hold out hope of one day uncovering in the dusty libraries of Damascus or Cairo fragments from the mysterious manuscript ‘The Truth of the Samarkand Caravan’, which describes the secret underground passages leading to the Promised Land.

Several centuries passed. In the same year that King Henry IV of France mobilized troops and artillery in a successful attack on the Duchy of Savoy, the Franciscan monk Will Bloomberg –who was the librarian at the peaceful Saint Lucie monastery, which flourished amidst abundant apple orchards just outside Lyon, and an expert on Aristotle – finally became convinced of the validity of his own notes ‘On the Destiny of God’s Creatures’. After obtaining the blessing of Saint Francis (at least so it seemed to him, because ‘a sign was given’ – an internal voice suddenly ordered the modest monk to proceed without further ado), Bloomberg wrote a unique work,
The Essence of the True Path and How it Pleases God
. The erudite monk had finally found a way of peacefully uniting the opposing views of the unforgettable Lin Peng and his recalcitrant servant. As far as Bloomberg was concerned a journey could either be ‘infinite’ or have a specific goal; he believed, perfectly reasonably, that both possibilities had the right to exist. Like a true European he developed a precise classification system, dividing travellers into categories such as ‘passion bearers’, ‘religious believers’, ‘heretics’, ‘curious’, ‘absent-minded’, ‘energetic’, ‘weary’, and so on and so forth. The monk was equally rigorous in his research into the factors that motivate people to set out on journeys, penning entire chapters dedicated to ‘disappointment’, ‘hope’, ‘despair’, ‘ambition’, ‘the search for God’ and ‘the desire for a change of scene’ (Schopenhauer would later term this classification system ‘Bloomberg’s variations’). The meticulous monk even attempted
to fathom the complex issues concerning the ‘truth’ and the ‘non-truth’ of the path. He was obliged to admit that the dividing line between motives that please God and those that delight the Devil is so fine that every case should be analysed individually and at length.

Bloomberg was also renowned for being the first to suggest that creatures from other worlds are capable of travel – spirits, angels, demons, elves, house spirits and various other spirits, both good and evil. He was the one who proposed the first theory on the ‘consciousness of movement of animals’, which was extremely controversial at the time. Alarmed by his own heresy, the monk subsequently reverted to the prevailing dogma on the pre-eminence of man’s relationship with God. However, by drawing specifically on ‘Bloomberg’s variations’, the famous zoologist and mystic Fatherland later formulated the idea that ‘all creatures are capable of reason, and it therefore follows that they have every right to a conscious Path’.

Bloomberg’s own earthly journey came to an end in his ninety-fourth year. He wrote no more than a single treatise, but his legacy was to inspire several generations of metaphysicists and countless travellers – from Amundsen to Aurobindo. One cannot help but be struck by the paradox that one of the greatest travellers of all time spent his entire life in a monastery, leaving it only to shop for provisions in the nearby village.

In the second half of the twentieth century François Belanger, a professor at the University of Geneva and a staunch believer in the philosophies of Lin Peng, repudiated the compromise that the Franciscan had tried to achieve. Doctor Pete Stout, a biologist from Cambridge, became his adversary – and a new battle began.

In a frenzy of excitement, Professor Belanger rallied the new advocates of the infinite journey around himself. Being grossly overweight, he found it difficult to move about and therefore eschewed the conference circuit in favour of the comfort of his own office. By contrast Doctor Stout – the leader of the
opposition, as it were – appeared to be the living embodiment of Mr Sommer. Tall and crooked as a nail, with a rucksack always on his back, the indomitable doctor relentlessly roamed the world. His bald patch and tortoiseshell glasses were a familiar sight at the symposia and conferences frequented by his supporters. On top of everything else, Stout was a fervent supporter of Fatherland’s theory.

Belanger spoke out vehemently against his enemy’s attempts to attribute any kind of intelligence of movement to animals and birds. ‘It must require extreme naivety,’ he raged in the article ‘Stupidity or Idiocy?’ (
Philosophical Herald
, May 1967),

‘to attribute to the rest of Nature that which God bestowed upon Man alone. Naturally, there is no doubting the divine intellect of angels. Nor can we fail to acknowledge the evil intellect of satanic forces. But to argue that the instinctive annual migration of ducks is based on rational thought is another matter entirely, implying regression to a state of childish innocence and a refusal to recognise either facts or reality! It is truly beyond belief when educated men, apparently in full possession of their faculties, suddenly begin to assert (in reputable scientific journals, no less!) that ants and lemmings are driven by human desires! These spurious claims have been taken
ad absurdum
1
by certain philosopher-zoologists, who persevere tirelessly in their attempts to prove the existence of ‘animal language’ and other attributes that we are accustomed to considering the prerogative of
our reason,
given to
us
by God Himself. It is no surprise that these gentlemen continue to hold Fatherland in such high regard! There are all kinds of works being written and ridiculous experiments being carried out with the aim of refuting Pavlov and his reflexes – essentially, what we are currently seeing is a proliferation of pseudo-scientific nonsense, obscurantism and charlatanism. Each of the perpetrators maintains that rational
thought is inherent in animals and insects. How can we respond to this? There is little point in repeating what has already been said a thousand times before, by some of the greatest thinkers of all time – that reason is
ab incunabulis
2
the greatest of God’s gifts to his most beloved offspring, that of all creatures it brings him closest to the Creator and that it permits him alone to experience the joys of infinity!’