The Daily Eudemon

Riddle: What literary genre has historical roots that predate Socrates; features hundreds of American writers including Thoreau, Washington Irving, and Edith Wharton; and is a genre that you’ve probably never even heard of?

Answer: American gardening literature.

Don’t roll your eyes.

It’s a thing.

In fact, American gardening literature is a big thing.

I have three volumes of gardening literature anthologies in my home library alone. Amazon has an entire department dedicated to “Gardening & Horticultural Essays.” Yes, just “essays.” It has two dozen other departments dedicated to gardening and horticulture in general.

The genre of American garden writing runs the gamut from technical to inspirational, from garden bed blueprints to meditations on weeding.

There are, for instance, seed catalogs that merely list seed specifications. They hardly qualify as literary endeavors. And then there are literary seed catalogs . . . those rare (and free!) publications that are informational, occasionally witty, and serious about their prose (one of my favorites is published by Wild Garden Seeds in Oregon).

Among contemporary books, you have The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, which is my standard “go-to” book but hardly qualifies as serious literature. And you have Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening, by theologian-gardener Vigen Guroian, which might be lovely but scarcely talks about gardening techniques.

And then you have The Tao of Vegetable Gardening by Carol Deppe, which is a beautiful hybrid: mostly how-to gardening advice, but laced with a meditational bent that, though rarely overt, informs the book as a whole.

Deppe’s book is what I mean by “American gardening literature.” It’s packed with gardening advice from a highly-educated and experienced gardener (Deppe holds a PhD in biology from Harvard), but it’s about (oh so much) more, as evidenced by its subtitle: Cultivating Tomatoes, Greens, Peas, Beans, Squash, Joy, and Serenity.

Before creation, nothing existed. There was no matter, no energy, no desires, no images. God then created everything. As a result, everything that is, is from Him, and things have existence only in so far as they partake in the Creator, the source of all being. But when Adam sinned, he detached the world from God. He, in other words, detached the world from being. Through Adam, man lunged away from Being itself and plunged towards its opposite: Nothingness.

Joseph Epstein is the best essayist alive. He’s urbane, funny, self-deprecating. He’s a fine stylist, and he’s remarkably well-read.

I remember William F. Buckley marveling at Epstein’s erudition and wondering how Epstein could have so many anecdotes and references at his disposal. Coming from a guy of Buckley’s learning, that’s high praise.

So it was with great interest that I turned to his essay, “Joseph Epstein’s Lifetime Reading Plan” (found in this book) and his attempt to respond to a recent college graduate’s question: “What books should I read?” This question, Epstein said, was nothing less than asking, “How do I become an educated person?”

Epstein used the question to launch his essay, but he didn’t provide a list of books. He suggested that a person always have a classic going: Cervantes, Tocqueville, Montaigne, Homer, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Plato. That’s thumpingly good advice, especially for someone like Epstein (and me), who always has two or more books going at once. It keeps one’s reading life varied.

But what about a list? Epstein said there is no dispositive list, and he’s right. The canon of Western civilization alone is neither settled nor static, there isn’t enough time to read everything in one lifetime, and everyone’s situation is different.

One list won’t fit all.

Still, I think a list is possible.

Mine is below.

The supernatural and paranormal. Postmodernism and critical theory. What could be the connection?

“Let me tell you about COVID, the COVID vaccine, and Bitcoin.”

If any person starts telling me about those things, I write them off.

All three of those things are new and huge. As a result, they occupy a weird spot in the world of opinion: Everyone needs to have a stance on them and nobody’s stance is worth anything.

It’s difficult to reconcile such a paradox, but here’s one way: Take your stance, be prepared to shift it, and keep it to yourself.

Beliefs and practices, yes. Dogmas and preaching, no.

Stoicism is, at bottom, all about silencing the mind. Dispassion in the face of things that otherwise arouse passion. Resignation in the face of things that disappoint. Indifference in the face of things that raise emotions.

Mental silence. It’s a good trait, but human development didn’t stop with the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, and neither did the development of Stoicism.

Stoicism, you see, had a child.

And her name was “Hesychasm.”

Whereas Stoicism is all about quieting the mind, Hesychasm is, at bottom, all about quieting the heart.

Chuang-Tzu was not a Zen practitioner. He lived about 750 years before Bodhidharma and was the second greatest philosopher of the Tao (after Lao-Tzu).

He was playful in his approach to the Tao, and it’s that playfulness that mixed with the seriousness of Buddhist metaphysics to create the Zen phenomenon.

Chuang-Tzu was one of the greatest proponents of the Chinese concept of wu-wei: non-doing, non-action. His was a wu-wei born of a profound humility that seeks nothing for oneself, not even self-improvement.

Chuang-Tzu’s profound humility emanates from his perception of the Tao, which is a mysterious “force” that surpasses all understanding . . . especially the “understanding” born of discursive reasoning, categories, and rules.

Chuang-Tzu rejected all such things because they exist outside oneself. The problem with things outside oneself is, because they exist outside, a person needs to strive to attain them, but the mere act of striving, Chuang-Tzu taught, is defeat.

It’s important to emphasize that even striving for goodness or virtue is defeat. The mere act of striving, no matter for what, is defeat because it’s steeped in self-aggrandizement. The person who seeks to improve himself is discontented with himself, which necessarily means he thinks he should be more than he really is.

It is, in other words, pride.

It runs counter to the deep humility Chuang-Tzu was trying to explain. Man, he taught, out to be content with his natural state: simplicity, obscurity, unimportance, littleness.

Chuang-Tzu’s teaching provides a response to the paradox that has dogged Christian spirituality for 2,000 years: the mere desire to be selfless is selfish. Chuang-Tzu said don’t be selfish; practice profound humility; accept yourself as you are in your simplicity, obscurity, unimportance, and littleness.

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